#Tin Filling line system

[nichromepackaging]

From Fill to Finish:Mastering Packaging with Nichrome’s Integrated Systems

[nichromeafricapackagingmachine]

How to Choose the Right Packaging Machines for Your Dairy Business

The dairy industry in Africa is growing rapidly, and with it, the demand for efficient and reliable dairy packaging solutions. Whether you’re packaging milk, milk powder, or other dairy products, choosing the right milk packaging machine is critical to your business’s success. With so many options available, how do you decide which machine is best for your needs?

At Nichrome Africa, we specialize in providing cutting-edge dairy packaging solutions tailored to meet the unique requirements of the dairy businesses. In this blog, we’ll guide you through the process of selecting the perfect milk packaging machine for your operations.

1. Understanding Your Business Needs

Assessing Your Dairy Business Requirements

It is essential to evaluate your business needs before investing in any dairy packaging solution. This evaluation could be based on the following points.

What is the nature of your dairy products? (Liquid, powder or both)

What is your production capacity?

What would be the volume and quantity you’ll be packing with these machines?

What packaging format do you need (e.g., pouches, bottles, sachets)?

The packaging machine manufacturers offer a variety of packaging machines tailored to your packaging needs. For example, the milk pouch packing machine offers CSSP format pouches that are ideal for milk packaging and could be customized for the packaging of the curd. There are also Milk-filling machines attached to complete packaging systems to pack the milk in bottles or cartons. Whereas the milk powder packaging machine is specific to the powder packaging.

At Nichrome, we offer a wide range of milk packaging solutions designed to adapt to various business scales and needs. Our team can help you assess your requirements and recommend the best machine for your operations.

2. Types of Dairy Packaging Solutions

Exploring Your Options

There are several types of milk packaging machines, each catering to specific needs. Let’s explore these:

Milk Pouch Packing Machines: Ideal for packaging liquid milk in pouches. These machines are cost-effective and widely used in the dairy industry.

Automatic Bottle Filling Line Liquid: This is an automated, sustainable and highly efficient way to pack the milk into glass bottles. Going beyond the milk packaging machines, this line offers a complete packaging system.

Automatic Bottle Filling Line Solid: This is an automated system to pack solid dairy solutions like milk powder, custard powder, etc. into small jars.

Milk Powder Packing Machines: Designed for packaging milk powder in sachets or bags, ensuring precision and hygiene.

Tin Filling and Packing Systems: This is again a complete filling and packaging system ideal for packing milk powder into tins.

Nichrome’s range of milk packaging machines includes advanced options including high-speed, automatic milk packing machines like Fillpack Servo 15K Alpha and milk powder filling machines like Multitrack Stickpack with Multi Head Servo Auger Filler for small sachets and Excel 400 with Servo Auger for pouches, ensuring that you find the perfect solution for your business. It also offers end-to-end packaging solutions for bottle and tin filling.

3. Key Features to Look For While Choosing the Right Milk Packaging Machine

What Makes a Great Milk Packaging Machine?

When selecting a milk packaging machine, consider the following features:

Automation Level: Choose between manual, semi-automatic, or fully automatic milk packing machines based on your production needs. The ratio of the production count should be directly proportional to the level of automation.

Speed and Efficiency: High-speed machines can significantly boost your output. However, it is critical to check the precision and accuracy in packing with the pace.

Durability and Maintenance: Opt for machines made from high-quality materials that require minimal maintenance.

Compatibility: Ensure the machine is compatible with your preferred packaging materials.

Nichrome’s milk packaging solutions are designed with these features in mind, delivering high performance, reliability, and ease of use. They also offer PLC-controlled solutions to pack with precision and avoid any wastage due to spillage.

4. Budget Considerations

Understanding the Cost of Milk Packaging Machines

The cost of milk packing machines varies depending on factors like:

Machine type and automation level.

Production capacity.

Additional features (e.g., sealing, labelling).

For example, an automatic milk packing machine price may be higher than a semi-automatic model, but the long-term ROI often justifies the investment.

At Nichrome Africa, we offer cost-effective dairy product packaging solutions without compromising on quality. Our team can help you find a machine that fits your budget while meeting your production needs.

5. Evaluating Suppliers

Choosing the Right Partner for Your Packaging Needs

Selecting a reliable supplier is just as important as choosing the right machine. When evaluating suppliers, consider:

Experience and expertise in the industry.

After-sales support and maintenance services.

Availability of spare parts and training.

Nichrome has decades of experience in providing milk packaging solutions to businesses. Our commitment to customer satisfaction and comprehensive support services make us the ideal partner for your packaging needs. We provide support for the complete lifecycle of packing your product. We are dedicated to evolving as per the changing consumer preferences. We listen and understand your requirements and enhance our solutions to cater to your product packaging needs. We also offer customized solutions tailored to your production requirements.

Conclusion

Choosing the right milk packaging machine is a critical decision that can impact your dairy business’s efficiency, productivity, and profitability. By understanding your needs, exploring your options, and partnering with a reliable supplier like Nichrome, you can find the perfect solution for your operations. At Nichrome, we’re committed to delivering innovative dairy packaging solutions that meet the unique needs of African dairy businesses. Explore our range of milk packaging machines today and take the first step towards transforming your packaging process

[severus-snaps]

A greasy-haired teenager sat alone in a dark bedroom, pointing his wand at the ceiling, shooting down flies...

never given this line much thought before but it fits with what Bellatrix says about Spinner's End being a "Muggle dunghill" and the dirty river etc, on top of the infamous collection of information in Two Up, Two Down post I love so much.

what follows is another moment for me of realising just how hard snape had it and the likely conditions he grew up in

he didn't have any older siblings (that we know about) to borrow clothes from, which was why he was in his parents' clothing; the fact that he wasn't loaned any clothes that fit marginally better or were even for boys from the neighbours suggests that the Snapes weren't particularly close to the other families, and i expect a large number of flies in the house (enough to be shooting down, enough to spot when harry only saw the memory fleetingly) suggests poor sanitation in the home

It's not just a case of Bellatrix being judgy about a Muggle neighbourhood, currently falling apart with houses on the cobbled streets boarded up and with broken windows, and a dirty, smelly river; Snape's home growing up was considered "a poor recommendation" even when he was a child. Two up, two down houses were, in that period (and even before) often falling apart, known for being unsanitary and unsafe, as well as damp and cramped together. they were never intended to be nice; they were thrown up so that workers could be near the factories, and that was about the only concern at the time

There's some really vivid descriptions of living in these sorts of houses around, but I've just found this one from facebook (with images I've added from flashbak.com):

The house had no electric supply and relied solely on gas for everything.

One wall in each room had one gas mantle fitted to it for light and when the mantle became faulty it would smell and the light would become less bright and eventually cease to do the job and need replacing.

There was a coal fire grate in each room but only the living room fire was kept lit to keep the costs down because although people worked long hours wages were low and money was in short supply.

In the kitchen the heat from the stove when cooking provided some warm that also made its way upstairs into the bedrooms.

During the winter months when the house was particularly cold overcoats were placed over the blankets on the beds for extra warmth for the children in the front bedroom. While the parents slept in the smaller back bedroom.

There was only one water tap in the house situated in the kitchen and the kettle or pans had to be filled when hot water was required. They were heated on the stove and because there was no bathroom the young children were washed in the large sink or a tin bath while others went to the public baths situated nearby, local to the area.

The toilet was in the back yard and was also unlit, leaving the gas light from the kitchen to light up the yard through the window.

Toilet paper was old newspapers that had been cut up into squares and made ready for use.

All flooring in the house was covered with lino with the exception of the living room that had a rug in the centre for comfort and to help prevent wear and tear. Since the end of the world war II there had been shortages and many households struggled to get basic food stuff and clothing.

The black market had been active for some years and those that had the money would get what they needed, while for those that had little depended on the rationing system introduced by the government to make sure that everyone got at least basic food stuff.

The I.D. card had been introduced because of the war and was proof of who you were and was used for the benefit of rationing. There were often queues at the butchers and many families got the scrag ends and scraps that were left over.

When it came to clothing, families would put aside what was worn by one child until the next child had grown enough to wear them and every item including shoes were cleaned and repaired if possible and put away and saved for later use.

In those days children at play preferred to play outside and regularly would play along the canal and the neighbourhood streets and alleyways. There were very few cars around and despite the unclean air from the surrounding factories they would play all day outside until they were called in.

In those days there were very little restrictions on pollution and it was normal to wake up in the mornings to smog that sometimes lasted all week. A real pea souper as they say

but like... imagine snape growing up there, like that, with no sense of community and parents who couldn't afford to or weren't able to care for him properly. this is so far beyond 'weasley poor' with their warm, cosy home and plenty to eat; this is gaunt poor, improper housing, and conditions that regularly made people ill

perhaps the Snapes had to rely on the black market to even eat enough, if they could afford it; I'm picturing chest infections and frost on the insides of the windows over the winters, and flies crawling in the house in the summers - and apparently limited use of magic at the time snape was growing up to rectify any of it, else the descriptions wouldn't be so consistently negative (and evocative) with a potential swarm of flies in his bedroom

(wonder if he was underage here, and using his wand since his mother would've had one, or whether it's a snippet of post-hogwarts snape; the next memory is of snape on a broomstick, so presumably that's at hogwarts, and he was underage in the fly memory, trapped/hiding/sulking in his room)

then he gets to hogwarts with the likes of the malfoys, who have a whole mansion and peacocks and house elves and can afford anything they want, and they look down on the weasleys and their comfortable one-'moderate'-income supporting a seven-child home as if they were cockroaches. what on earth would they have thought of snape, if they knew? he had factual knowledge of the magical world, but i doubt he had that "raised in the magical world" vibe they so desperately want to protect

[cod-thoughts]

Sorry you got some bad news, I hope you're doing okay <3 Numbers for the ask game; 4, 7, 38 please!

I'll be fine, it's just stuff on top of stuff on top of stuff so uhh not the best time and i have my finals starting in a few days too so its uhhh not great but i'll be fine it is what it is :O

Ask game in question!

4: How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

Oh boy theres a LOT, i use notion to like keep track of all my ideas cause it syncs nicely and its a good archive, i dont use it to write cause the spell check sucks lol but its good storage. The problem with that system tho is the moment i get an idea i jot it down there so theres currently 47 ramblings and ideas, some are similar so i eventually combine them! I did a random number generator to pick the idea lol and it was number 13: reverse dating trope, basically people not believing that a couple is together! Havent decided who yet but its probably gonna end up as a 5+1 knowing me lol

7: Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

This was hard, mostly cause i dont think most of my stuff is that good but id have to say this section from day 1 of ghostpriceweek and its probably the work im most proud of to this day, i just think it flowed so well and that their voices are really solid. Here's a part of it that i like for no particular reason:

"He’d finished heating up a tin of beans, stirring it absently before putting the lid on it to keep it warm, and set the kettle on for tea, knowing Price would be done soon. The small tasks felt grounding, almost domestic—there’s that word again, strange but, maybe, it was what had been playing at the edges of his mind for a while now. This rare ease, this strange new rhythm. Ghost found himself watching the steam rising from the kettle, a bit lost in the warmth that filled the air.

He wasn’t quite sure when it happened—when the lines between Price as a superior, a mentor, had blurred into something… more. It was a disquieting thought, one he’d been trying to keep at bay, though not with much success. And here he was, cooking up beans and making tea, so utterly settled in Price’s presence that the prospect of leaving, of returning to the job, made him feel something uncomfortably close to hollow.

He never imagined this was even possible for him. To be alive and wanting something so fiercely. To want a life outside of being a soldier. It was all he ever knew but as the kettle clicked and he made them a cup each, exactly how Price liked it, it hit him like a blow: this was it. This was what he wanted, more than he’d ever wanted anything.

The bathroom door creaked open, and Price emerged, towelling his hair. He’d discarded his usual gear in favour of an old grey t-shirt, soft and worn, that clung to his still-damp skin. He looked… ordinary. Beautifully ordinary. Ordinary was the wrong word entirely for that man, Ghost realised, because there was something extraordinary in the way Price took up space, in how naturally he filled the room."

38: Talk about a review that made your day.

OOO this was somehow even harder omg i love every comment or tag i get they all bring me immense joy, even if its just a bunch of emojis i love it thank you <33 but i will say that these in particular made my day as it was an absolute mess of a day and i was really doubting everything; about to delete said story but @nekrosmos the angel that he is dropped this in the tags and so did @jgvfhl (excuse the light-mode my desktop for some reason decided its in light-mode lol) and it made me literally light up and altered my brain chemistry for that whole day so thank you both genuinely <33 and sorry for the random tag whoops

[nocturne-of-illusions]

Maybe I’m just stupid but I downloaded Python, I downloaded the whole tumblr backup thing & extracted the files but when I opened the folder it wasn’t a system it was just a lot of other folders with like reblog on it? I tried to follow the instructions on the site but wtf does “pip-tumblr-download” mean? And then I gotta make a tumblr “app”? Sorry for bugging you w this

no worries! i've hit the same exact learning curve for this tool LMAO, so while my explanations may be more based on my own understanding of how function A leads to action B rather than real knowledge of how these things Work, I'll help where i can!

as far as i understand, pip is simply a way to install scripts through python rather than through manually downloading and installing something. it's done through the command line, so when it says "pip install tumblr-backup", that means to copy-paste that command into a command line window, press enter, and watch as python installs it directly from github. you shouldn't need to keep the file you downloaded; that's for manual installs.

HOWEVER! if you want to do things like saving audio/video, exif tagging, saving notes, filtering, or all of the above, you can look in the section about "optional dependencies" on the github. it lists the different pip install commands you can use for each of those, or an option to install all of them at once!

by doing it using pip, you don't have to manually tell the command line "hey, go to this folder where this script is. now run this script using these options. some of these require another script, and those are located in this other place." instead, it just goes "oh you're asking for the tumblr-backup script? i know where that is! i'll run it for you using the options you've requested! oh you're asking for this option that requires a separate script? i know where that is too!"

as for the app and oauth key, you can follow this tutorial in a doc posted on this post a while back! the actual contents of the application don't matter much; you just need the oauth consumer key provided once you've finished filling out the app information. you'll then go back to your command line and copy-paste in "tumblr-backup --set-api-key API_KEY" where API_KEY is that oauth key you got from the app page.

then you're ready to start backing up! your command line will be "tumblr-backup [options] blog-name", where blog-name is the name of the blog like it says on the tin, and the [options] are the ones listed on the github.

for example, the command i use for this blog is "tumblr-backup -i --tag-index --save-video --save-audio --skip-dns-check --no-reblog nocturne-of-illusions"... "-i" is incremental backups, the whole "i have 100 new posts, just add those to the old backup" function. "--tag-index" creates an index page with all of your tags, for easy sorting! "--save-video", "--save-audio", and "--no-reblog" are what they say they are.

⚠️ (possibly) important! there are two current main issues w backups, but the one that affected me (and therefore i know how to get around) is a dns issue. for any of multiple reasons, your backup might suddenly stall. it might not give a reason, or it might say your internet disconnected. if this happens, try adding "--skip-dns-check" to your options; if the dns check is your issue, this should theoretically solve it.

if you DO have an issue with a first backup, whether it's an error or it stalls, try closing the command window, reopening it, copy-pasting your backup command, and adding "--continue" to your list of options. it'll pick up where it left off. if it gives you any messages, follow the instructions; "--continue" doesn't work well with some commands, like "-i", so you'll want to just remove the offending option until that first backup is done. then you can remove "--continue" and add the other one back on!

there are many cool options to choose from (that i'm gonna go back through now that i have a better idea of what i'm doing ksjdkfjn), so be sure to go through to see if any of them seem useful to you!

[acidicegret001]

Steel, iron, nuts and bolts Poor man's gold in rusted vaults Scrap, tin, wheels and gears Shift by shift and year by year Rod, beam, sheet and plate Ironclad, you sealed your fate All that shines shall fade in time Welded put the day you signed

The production line You better do your best, forget about sunshine 'Cause you won't see it where you're going And the only thing you know is You won't get to have your lunch on time Or ever again, 'Cause every second you spend That isn't meeting an end that an executive penned Is another debt that you render that'll let them extend Upon the length of your tenure where you're ever condemned

Well, would you look at that, life's coming thick and fast I run and zig and zag amid the tat, pick and pack, bric-a-brac Click and drag, mix and match, stick a stack in my sack 'Til it could fill a skip of scrap then bring it back quick as a flash

We're scrappy and resilient, we're happy and we're diligent But that's just if you're listening to marketing transmissions Contractually itinerant, a dastardly predicament Entrapped within a system hauling scrap for the omnipotent Voices in the radio that point us in which way to go The base we're excavating What we're paid and then the pay we owe Uncertain of the purpose to the service that we're slaving over Purge the lunar surface of its worth to meet the daily quote

Some of us are living to work Some of us are working to live Some of us are making while others are just taking And some of us are dying to give

Whoop! Yay! Hooray! Another day at the office Slaving away and generating the profits Heading straight for the pockets of the laziest bosses If it wasn't for me, then they'd be making a loss It's a struggle working double shifts, selling my soul So my landlord doesn't have to do any at all I'm clearly very important while you're merely a drone

Giving me steady employment just to dwell in a hole That I can barely afford, belly unfilled like Oliver Twist Begging for more, I don't want to exist No longer stomaching it, wanna be somebody diff' But I'm stuck as it is, so stuff it, double my shifts Rub out the family time in your diary, erase it all They'll only hire me if I'll be reliably available Yet, I appear, clearly entirely replaceable (The irony's I find it to be kind of inspirational)

Anxiety will make you more inclined to reach a greater goal Until you find me crying quietly against the wall I miss my wife, I miss my kids, I miss my life, can't live like this Perhaps for once if salary might rise in line with rent We'd have the funds to rise and shine, not rise in line, content To sacrifice our family lives to those on high, hell-bent On empires founded on the thousands drowned in the cement

I am the very model of a model employee I never leave my shuttle, can't afford to pay those fees My overtime does overtime, I work nine days a week And I never hit that bottle 'til it's time to take a pee

Some of us are making a killing While some are barely making a living Is a life worth saving without life savings It's a nine-to-five, 25-to-life in prison

Lift off, ticktock, the big clock's a-ticking Drift in, dropped off at the drop ship's position Sod tip top condition, a tip's what you live in Drop shipping top tip - "Tips will not be given"

With this cost of living what do lives cost? Well, the customer ain't fussed over the lives lost We're discounted, under the counter, half off In stocks, at the gallows for the price drop To rock bottom, ba-da-da-dum Sing the jingle, give a whistle, here's your lot, plod on It's official, sacrificial, sing the company song Before they bop the stop-button on your oxygen

Two guys moonlight on a new moon nightly Tryna find loot like, "Ooh, that'll do nicely" Lamp, cookie mold, jar, fish, stop sign Pan, whoopie, gold bar, gift box, MINE! No, mine No, MINE!

Should you be hurt in our place of employment It'll be worse than a band-aid and some ointment There isn't a nurse with whom to make an appointment There's really just certain doom, painfully poignant Each day tossed upon the scrapheap Struggling to meet pay, care to mind the gap, cheap Labor can be replaced when there are fatalities Several men a week slayed, tumbling from the gantries

In what kind of dimension is debris so decrepit Worth more than all the lives amongst the men you send to get it? The minions paid a pittance from the millions you inherit And then billed for the equipment Before they get to spend the credits

"Have you had an accident at work that wasn't your fault?" "No, you haven't, it absolutely was your fault!"

Some of us are living to work Some of us are working to live Some of us are making while others are just taking And some of us are dying to give

We all bought the production line We all toe the production line We all march in production line We all signed the production line

It's a hell of a show, better the devil you know Just another shift, try to keep a grip Haven't slept a wink and my vision starts to drift We're here to sell you your soul, next day and ready to go Filling up the ship, just another trip Maddened, on the brink, in no position to resist The wheels of progress, they turn, so get ahead or go home I got a quota to meet or else it's over for me And when my rota's complete then I can hopefully leave Just never question what burns to run the engines below We were sold on a dream but now they won't let us sleep Take a moment to grieve and you'll owe them a fee

My school careers adviser couldn't be any nicer She was just like, "Might as well give up and die, bruh" It isn't that likely we'll experience retirement When staying alive's a minimum requirement I've trained, I've tried, 'til I'm strained, I'm tired I'd trade my trade for a train driver's But I'm afraid that the end of the line Isn't a place I'll arrive 'til the end of my life

I am the very model of a model employee Because I'm used to being toyed with by those far bigger than me Painfully aware my fate to bear's as cog in a machine Just one more face cast off to space for products on a screen

Production line Production line Production line Production line Production line Production line Production line Production line

We all bought the production line We all toe the production line We all march in production line We all signed the production line

Some of us are making a killing While some are barely making a living Is a life worth saving without life savings It's a nine-to-five, 25-to-life in prison

Some of us are living to work Some of us are working to live Some of us are making while others are just taking And some of us are dying to give

It's a hell of a show, better the devil you know We're here to sell you your soul, next day and ready to go We all signed the production line

[rabbitmacabre]

Bambi any prns ᤣ९ '01

A floral box full of magazine cutouts, my antique curiosity cabinet, a silver cookie tin full of lace scraps and ruffle trim. This is my cherished little corner of the internet.

Art is the blood of life. If you wish to fill your space with my phlebotomist musings (art prints) click here

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘ ⋆༺♱༻⋆ ⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

I'm Bambi, the co-host of our system (pro dx). We're neurodivergent , chronically ill, and queer (taken by our lovely partner <3). I find comfort in haunted houses, collecting bones, and indulging in how odd and romantic life can be if one looks long enough. As I cannot work I currently sell my art as a way to get by, click the link under the bat if you wish to support me~ I am shy but kind, please send an ask (anons on) or message me if you'd like to speak. I may be active and not respond, don't take it personally, I will answer you when I have the energy <3

tags:

#my affectionate infection (my brain spewed onto a canvas, my veins splayed across stanza and line)

the wiles of a #lily-livered lamb (nonsensical text posts)

#spectre caught on camera (don't look too close)

#unlock my curiosity cabinet (trinkets, knick knacks)

[kadavernagh]

TIMING: Worm Day in Feb LOCATION: An appropriate battlefield PARTIES: @kadavernagh & @banisheed SUMMARY: Worms fight for the pride of their banshee. Love is a battlefield. CONTENT: Wormspice

“Lá na bPéist,” Siobhan said, grinning the way an animal sometimes only seems to right before it lunges. “Last worm writhing, yes.”

War would be waged at dawn. Regan marched into the clearing she had designated for Siobhan, a big tin jar in her hands, previously filled with coffee grounds, and now full of writhing worms. She didn’t think her newly-purchased worms truly desired anything – what an enviable, simple life in many ways – and they especially had no interest in fighting Siobhan’s worms. But this was a matter of pride. Siobhan assumed that Regan’s worms were undignified and meek, odorless and scrawny, and Regan was tired of bearing her insults. 

Her skin prickled as a long figure appeared across the clearing, the sun creeping up behind her and casting her face in shadow. She would have her own worms with her. And if they were as girthy as Siobhan claimed, why could Regan not see them from here? Not so impressive.

“Lá na bPéist,” Regan greeted her. It was the customary way. Day of the Worms. There was no ‘happy’ in front of it; it was only a simple and respectful declaration of the day. “My worms challenged you, and I picked the location, so I will be generous and allow you to set reasonable perimeters. Will this be down to the last worm standing – so to speak – or do you have something else in mind?”

--------

Violence was a necessity. Since the first forms of microscopic life, it seemed, violence was a language to claim dominance. Or so Siobhan assumed, banshee literature was often flirtatious with the truth. At least one book claimed that all life was born out of a big bone, contradicted by another book that claimed the big worm in the sky birthed them which was also contradicted by another book that was simply a picture of a skeleton shrugging. Science is an afterthought but violence, still, was an art. What Regan didn’t know, with her skinny worms, was that their little worm war didn’t start here. Their war began the moment Siobhan laid eyes on her unseasonable winter coat. In order for something to be strong, something else has to be weak: a rule of language that Siobhan knew intimately. She wouldn’t be weak. 

Her happy, healthy, girthy worms writhed in the box she brought them in. She was pained to rip them from their happy home inside her compost system, where they had lived for months, lovingly tended to, fertilizing the earth that she used for her garden. For Death to be appreciated, Life needed to be respected as well. But there was no doubt in Siobhan’s mind that this truth escaped Regan. She probably purchased her worms wholesale online. 

“Lá na bPéist,” Siobhan said, grinning the way an animal sometimes only seems to right before it lunges. “Last worm writhing, yes.” She snapped the locks open from her plastic box, upturning her girthy worms upon the ground. The worms, unlike malnourished counterpoints, flourished in Siobhan’s delicate compost. They were indeed larger and thicker, though the girth may have been slightly exaggerated. There was something…odd about them, however. A line from Wurmsten’s Pride and Wormjudice flashed in her mind: it was a truth universally acknowledged, that a single worm in possession of girth must be in want of a mate. 

Siobhan shook her head, surely their passionate wiggles were nothing more than an eagerness to shed worm blood. “Go on, leanbh, or does the sight of my thick worms make you envious?”

--------

The Jade sauce came too late. Regan had done her best with the worms given her tardy start (with preparations, not… to everything else Siobhan surpassed her in), but her worms still looked mangled and pencil-thin. They took only occasional interest in apple slices and they kept squiggling into the sides of the container like they had no sense of place or orientation. But she had come here to win. And Siobhan was a boastful creature, wasn’t she? Her worms couldn’t be so grand as she claimed. They were probably just as grey, just as aimless.

“I agree to your terms. May the best worms win, cailleach.” There were no prizes or trophies in these wars of worms, only bragging rights. Siobhan would like the extra pin in her lapel, and Regan needed something she could surpass Siobhan in. Had the course of her life run smoother, she would have believed that needing something was enough to make it happen, but if anything, it created obstructions at every turn. Right. Confidence. She had Jade in her corner, even if she wasn’t present now. That was enough, right? Regan held onto that as she unceremoniously dumped her worms from their tin home. They collected by her feet, and she shook a little so stragglers could roll off her boots and join the rest of the squadron. “I was advised to read to them. They’re engorged with–” She would not admit she had read them Tana French “– harsh tales of the moors.”

Any fleeting confidence she held deflated when Siobhan dumped her worms on the ground, too. They were at least twice as thick as Regan’s, colored like cherry red lividity, and they squirmed with such vigor in comparison. Were… were her worms depressed? She glanced over to the limp mass at her feet, disappointed. It was the look her 1st grade art teacher used to give her when she handed in a drawing of a dead cow for the tenth time. But Regan would not abandon them; if no one believed in them, all bets of winning were off. She would take a line from Siobhan’s book and lob a competitive insult. That would inspire her worms. “I’ve seen better worms,” Regan said, arms crossed, as her stomach cramped from the lie. “Your worms are too soft. You have coddled them. They may have girth, but they know nothing of resilience.” She clenched a fist, fingernails against scar tissue. “Mine have thrived even under suboptimal conditions.” Her gaze sharpened as she met Siobhan’s eyes. “It’s no surprise. You’ve grown soft in your time away, too, haven’t you?”

The worms were in motion. Kind of. They were slow, groping for each other through the dirt in blindness. Siobhan’s took off first, faster than worms ought to move, but Regan’s were sluggish. She decided they were using their resources to fortify themselves. But as Siobhan’s came closer, her worms began wriggling anxiously, inching closer. They knew who their opponent was now. Good. Good. They tangled into a slimy cluster, two tense banshees casting shadows over them.

There was no blood. Where was the blood? They were entwined, were they not? “Are they…” The worms were wrapping up in each other with bulging clitellae, which was surely just an effort at strangulation. They didn’t have teeth. It was their way. “See how clever mine are, drawing yours in with a false sense of security.” Yes. Her worms might not have been pretty, but they were clever, weren’t they? 

--------

It was the Austen that had done it. Why hadn’t Siobhan read to her worms about harsh moors? Why did she think Austen—and her worm counterpart, Wurmsten—would be good material for the worms? That was how they knew, that was why she was thinking of it; their girth made them in want of a mate. It seemed none of Austen’s—and Wurmsten, who claimed her novels were entirely unrelated to Austen—commentary on class and society were absorbed into their slimy bodies. That was why Siobhan read Austen—and Wurmsten, who might have only been known in one niche banshee community but made a healthy living of decaying flesh anyway—in fact: for the wit! The cunning! Certainly, nothing about the romance; it hardly occurred to her. The worms had taken the wrong message away. If only she had read them harsh tales of the moors.

Siobhan’s cheeks pinked like the worms’. “I was reading them The Art of War,” she lied through clenched teeth, swallowing back a bubble of acid. “This is simply what I’ve taught them: ‘a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy’. They are…foraging on the enemy.” Foraging could be one word for it, if the meaning was stretched enough, though the more obvious word burned on her tongue. The worms paired up, sealing wet, throbbing clittella to another’s body. Encasing themselves in mucus, Siobhan turned her head away as a particular white fluid bubbled out of the worms. Something was, in a way, being foraged. 

“There is nothing false about this.” Siobhan leveled her gaze on Regan, careful to keep her eyes away from the foraging worms; her face blazed red. “Our worms have—Our worms are…” If she didn’t give it a name, if she didn’t say it, could she deny the truth? In a way, with a stretched definition and artistic liberties, they were foraging on the enemy. “It’s a new technique of war,” she said, “you wouldn’t know it; it’s not in whatever books about moors you’re reading. It is obviously very complex. The girth on my worms is at least eighty percent knowledge. Perhaps I am not soft. Perhaps you are just…hard.” 

--------

The ground by Regan’s feet swelled with worms. Her worms, as sad and grey as they were (a few more weeks of Jade juice would have done the trick), had perked up to the presence of Siobhan’s vivacious worms, and were wiggling in response with more gusto than they had displayed in the entire time they had been with Regan. Not only did their swarming continue – it expanded – spreading over to Siobhan, a giant, pulsing mat of mucus and wriggling pink bodies. She had more or less abandoned the idea of this being worm cunning… attempting to believe something did not make it true, and all illusions in her life were undergoing a slow crumble as her departure neared.

Regan knew little about the secret mechanics of worm copulation, but that melding and fluid seemed reproductive in nature, and Siobhan, well… Regan didn’t know her cheeks could be that color. This was the woman who wore a turtleneck that was missing half its fabric. She had practically done a strip tease with a winter coat. She could blush? Regan studied the couplings, more certain by the second. “They’re… no, they’re definitely, uh…” She couldn’t quite say it either. But Siobhan was acting strange. For a banshee, hard was right. “Hm. I never thought I would hear you provide me with a compliment,” Regan said, raising a brow (she couldn’t look away from the worms, though; they were hypnotic). Unfortunately, it was not true – she was softer than Siobhan and in all the wrong ways. And it was the whole problem, the reason why she needed to go back. “Careful. You may convince me not to go with you, if I am hard. But then, your judgement is frail, isn’t it? You read your worms classic literature thinking it wouldn’t put… these notions in their small minds. Mine are only going along with it – they were poised for battle, then yours romanced mine.”

The ground sounded moist with worm love, like hands sliding into mayonnaise. And Worm Day was not the time for love. Regan’s fists clenched and she found her face growing hot, too. Fates, this really was happening. Was this really what was meant to occur? Her worms were fornicating with the enemy! What had gotten into them? Did that mean – was it actually love? It was beyond reason, like all love, as far as Regan could tell. Could it be, when they lacked the capacity for such emotion? That question made her belly ache (unclear why). 

“We can’t separate them.” Regan spoke with certainty, but her voice was thick with something. She wasn’t sure where it came from (or the sentiment of not separating lovers). Some worm mucus probably got in there. She finally tore her eyes from the worm orgy and they landed on a very red Siobhan. “Can we agree on this? They remain together.” Was it worth throwing in that she meant the worms also could not be physically separated? Because that also seemed true. They had melded together, holding fast. 

--------

“They are fucking.” Finally, Siobhan said it. “No,” Siobhan corrected herself, “they are making delicate, sensual worm love.” It was obvious to her, and her inability to look the worms directly in their anuses (they did not have eyes), that their passion extended beyond the realms of necessity; love was linking bodies together, stabbing each other with setae so the no new copulation could be committed, and then wiggling away to eat detritus. Worms knew love, of course they had felt a connection to the words of Jane Austen. “You are hard, maybe. Regan, you are very hard. You are erect with hardness. I cannot--I cannot deny the worms. Perhaps that makes me soft.” Siobahn turned around, shutting her eyes to the worms and the world. They possessed something she did not: love. And a slimy, pink, wiggling segmented body (but oh, how she wished for one). 

Where had she gone wrong? From the beginning, it seemed. From loving her worms. From wanting a garden at all, from creating her compost bin. For wanting a life that wasn’t allowed to her. For imagining she might be a worm, writhing with girthy freedom in the dirt free to make love to wormever she pleased and eating as much manure as she wanted. She was a banshee; banshees didn’t do what they pleased. It was all wrong, all along: the war, the worms, the Regan. It was wrong to make innocent creatures act out her fantasies of power. They were worms and worms will do as they want: they will wiggle, they will secrete mucus, they will eat more than their weight each day. They did not have eyes, or legs, or arms, or lungs, but they could make love (they probably did not understand “love” at all, but Siobhan would only realize this after crying about her worms in the privacy of her house). 

Siobhan turned around again, tears pooling around her brown eyes. “You’re right. You—child, baby, newborn infant with no knowledge—are right. We cannot separate these worms.” A war was defined by its binary nature; by winners and losers. The worms had won. Perhaps she had gone soft, perhaps the worms had changed her, perhaps it was the air and the occasion of worm day, but she didn’t care how emotional she came off. “If you love a worm…” She clutched at her slow-beating heart. “...let them go.” And she did, against her better judgment, love these worms. 

“You…” Siobhan furiously wiped her eyes. Sniffling, she pointed at the other banshee. “...Will say nothing of this during our plane trip—and you will be coming with me. You will. But we have let these worms go—we are accepting a truce on this day. Another Worm Day, and there will be another, we will fight our worms again.” Siobhan sighed. “May your worms be less aroused by my girthy worms next time.”

And with that, the worms wiggled into the sunset.

[box-of-chaooos]

I can’t remember who gave me this prompt but thank you tysm!!

Stuck on the bus and this caught my eye so let’s go

Any adaption but I’ll be writing in the 1986 ver

The emerald city, a sparkling palace of peace and wonder that sat in the centre of oz, ruled by the kind and wise king who was recently crowned, king scarecrow. The straw man was a wonderful king and made all the people happy as could be but he was bored. Bored out of his new mind it wasn’t as fun as he’d imagined it to be it was much slower, much much slower. Nothing new ever happened no excitement no action, sure it wasn’t a terrible thing it made the working system smooth and well oiled but dull as could be.

At the moment the king was going through old possessions of the wizard, left behind trinkets and inventions piled up in the other room, there was bound to be something interesting there. He searched through many chests finding boxes some empty some filled with little bits and bobs, one had a little wooden horse to make inside. He found puzzle boxes and sparkling jewellery some of which he put on just for the fun of it, admiring himself in the mirror with a giggle but nothing was very attention keeping or eye catching. He needed a book, a nice big interesting book to read with action and drama something adventurous to make him new brain fizzle with pictures and imaginary scenes of the book turning words into pictures. He settled on the idea and had a look through more chests. The wizard had so many books old ones new ones even ones in a different language but they where all more instruction like than story books. He shouldn’t have been surprised the wizard would’ve needed something to help build his inventions but he’d had hope there would be at least some sort of story book. He sighed and sat ontop of a crate glumly putting his head in his hands. He had so much energy to spare and so little time to use it. He shifted uncomfortably something was under him and it wasn’t nice. He stood up turning around to see what was under him. A book. A deep green cover dusty and old with worn edges and a beautiful picture on the front of a princess and a frog. Intrigued by the illustration scarecrow picked it up and dusted it of slightly. The picture was a little bit faded but the colours just seemed to catch his attention. He wasted no time running back to the throne room and sitting down in his velvet throne eager to read this precious jewel he’d found.

Time ticked by and scarecrow was absorbed into the book, slumped lazily with his legs over the thrones arms swinging them back and forth subconsciously as he read the book. It was fascinating a witch, a princess and a prince turned into a frog by a magic spell, there was small pictures here and there which made scarecrows eye shimmer. He was almost finished with the book, it wasn’t lengthy but wasn’t short either. Eyes glued to the book they scanned along the lines of words he began to mutter to himself. “And the princess leaned in, kissing the frog turning him back into the handsome prince he was before” he read, but something made him itch with curiosity. What was kissing? He flipped the page and saw an image of the princess and the frog with their lips touching gently. Was that was a kiss was than? Gently pressing lips to another as a show of love? He was amazed and an idea sparked in his brain. The tin man, perhaps tin man would know after all he was a human once and with a partner at that. He giggled a common occurrence when he was excited or happy and got up the book was tossed aside for now. Since becoming ruler he and the tin man and lion had all found shortcuts to each other’s domains which cut the time practically in half. He grabbed his hat and put the crown on the throne heading down the steps and out the dark room all together.

Winkie country a land once desolate and filled with worry was now filled with life, winkies where free to work and where happy as could be especially with their new ruler leading them. Tin man was having a ball really, he was polished as he needed making his tin shine like diamonds in the light, he was able to forge weapons for the winkies, gardening tools so they could grow crops and plant beds of pretty poppies around the land. The winkies country had never been better. At the moment tin man was in the old witches castle that sat on a little ledge, he was potting up some lovely purple flowers he’d received from a winkie lady as a thank you for restoring their land. Purple, a colour that showed royalty and power but also a colour that reminded him of his dearest friend, the scarecrow. Scarecrows eyes, his beautiful violet eyes, even just paint so filled with life and a passion for living it. It made tin man swoon any time the straw man looked to him with those eyes with that wide smile his new heart would skip a beat he swore he could hear his tin drumming as it hit the metal so hard. His heart was fluttering just at the thought of scarecrow. Soft glove hands, the smell of fresh straw, his voice his laugh his plush body he looked so huggable and warm. “Tin man?” Someone called. He just wanted to hold scarecrow closely. “Tin man?” To love him with all his heart and tell him that. “Tin man!” He jumped startled by the voice. He looked over and saw those exact amethyst eyes glistening at him.

“Scarecrow!” Tin man chuckled happily standing up. “It’s good to see you” he said shaking hands with him. They hadn’t seen each other for a while since they where now kings. “How’s everything in the emerald city?” He asked starting up conversation. “Oh slow but it’s wonderful really, everyone’s very kind and friendly” scarecrow replied. “That’s wonderful” tin man smiled but noticed that his straw friend seemed to be a little fidgety like there was something he wanted to say or ask but wasn’t sure. “Tin man,” he began softly “do you know.. what kissing is?” He asked. Tinman felt his heart skip again, did scarecrow want to kiss him? “I, yes I know what it is… why?” He was getting nervous with anticipation. “Well I was reading this book about a princess and a frog.. and they kissed and I was just wondering…” he shuffled about a little putting his head down. “how does it work?…”

If y’all want a continuation I may have somethin for ya! Keep an eye out hehe I’m back into oz again.

[nichromepackaging]

Top 5 Features to Look for in Pharmaceutical Packaging System

Pharmaceutics carry critical importance in human life. Every practice involved in this healing industry requires meticulous operation. From the course of treatment to the dosage measures and storage, every aspect is managed with the utmost precision. This precision is well reflected in keeping all the drugs from damage and contamination. How is this precision attained? Pharmaceutical packaging…

[revisitingstoneybrook]

Dawn and the Big Sleepover: Chapter 10

I'm getting up to where I left off when I did this for the snark group on LJ, so entries may be sporadic coming up so I can actually write the new content!

In this chapter, Dawn catches some kids cheating the system.

"That's a big box!" And with that, Dawn starts this off with a great, big...

Dawn's remarking on the big box of donations from Buddy Barrett. As soon as he sets it down, Dawn asks if he's expecting a receipt, and sure enough, Dawn has to scribble one down for him. Damn, these kids are taking this seriously! I wonder if Dawn regrets ignoring Mary Anne's concerns that the kids would get too competitive. She glances at the thick legal pad she's holding, which is filled with inventory of all the stuff that had been donated. She said at one point, there was a line of kids waiting to drop stuff off at the barn. See how influential the BSC is? More like, see how powerful Kristy's mind control is.

Dawn takes down what Buddy brought over - various clothes and food items. Included in there is a silk nightgown, which I'm guessing is something from Victoria's Secret, since Mrs. Barrett is Stoneybrook's resident MILF and all. Dawn asks Buddy if his mother was cool with donating an entire case of powdered baby formula and he says yes, since Marnie grew out of it ages ago (and has moved onto eating Kleenex). Before Dawn can ask anything else, Buddy asks again for a receipt, so Dawn gives it to him and he leaves. Three more kids show up right after Buddy, and one of them is the little smartass from the BSC's assembly, Rob Hines, and Dawn remarks he's been to the barn three times that week. Wow, more foreshadowing!

When she finally closes shop for the day, Dawn looks around at everything in the barn, which is now crammed full with donations. Some of the stuff is the usual things you'd see getting donated to a clothing drive, including old and worn shoes and ancient fashions like a leisure suit. Uh oh, did Tommy Pickles donate his dad's old disco suit again?

However, Dawn also comes across a gorgeous, silky nightgown with what looked like a hand-painted flower pattern, brand new running shoes, and some designer dresses. Ok, if there's all these nice clothes at Dawn's barn, brought in over the past week, why haven't angry parents been storming in, with kids in tow, to claim their clothes that their dumb kids took without asking? Are the parents in Stoneybrook that stupid? Dawn is too busy wondering why some of the donations are so nice. Wouldn't she have some suspicions after reading Claudia's entry in the BSC notebook about the garage sale at the Rodowskys'? Then again, maybe she couldn't make it through, since that was a particularly painful Claudia entry.

She looks next at the food donations, and surprises us by not bitching about the cans of beef stew and tuna ("Why are these MONSTERS donating cans of DEAD ANIMAL CARCASS?!?"). Instead, she finds it very odd that among the nutritious, inexpensive, and long-lasting donations, there's gum and candy bars and tins of cookies and imported chocolates and caviar and a canister of hot cocoa. Well, the gum and caviar's kind of weird (and wouldn't that be perishable too?), and chocolate would melt if it was shipped, depending on when this book takes place. But I don't see anything wrong with cookies. My Girl Scout troop used to volunteer every year at the town food drive, which was held at a local church, and our job was to sort everything by type (corn, peas, cranberry sauce, etc), then split it among the boxes that were going to each family. And we used to get unique donations too - cake mix, frosting, cookies, I vividly remember finding a bag of tortilla chips in one of the collection boxes. It may not be a staple but non-perishable is non-perishable. Right? Dawn also thinks donating hot cocoa is stupid because why would anyone send hot cocoa to people who lived in the desert? People living in warmer climates never drink hot cocoa, Dawn?

Ok, I spoke too soon about Dawn not realizing that kids are cheating with the relief drive. Her eyes travel over to another area of the barn, and she observes suddenly, the nice stuff didn't seem so...nice. Over there is a brand new suit with a receipt from the tailor's in the pocket, with the name HINES on it. So apparently Mr. Hines bought a suit last week, had it tailored, then decided to give it away. Something was very wrong. And after what had happened at the yard sale, I had a feeling I knew exactly what.

Bravo, Dawn. The last horse finally crosses the finish line.

The next morning, Dawn tells Mary Anne her suspicions, and Mary Anne said she was thinking the same thing too. Dawn wants to know why Mary Anne didn't say anything (and I do too - why do these girls never say anything and keep stuff to themselves?), and Mary Anne said she didn't want to assume. Besides, I imagined how happy the pen pals would be when they saw such nice things. Because she's sweet, innocent Mary Anne who could never pass judgement on anyone. Until she brings her passive aggressive side out.

Dawn doesn't know what to do about it. Mary Anne says they should talk to the kids, and while Dawn complains that they can't show up at everyone's houses, Mary Anne says they won't have to, since the ones who keep showing up with unauthorized donations will be back, since they're trying to rack up receipts to count towards a prize.

Conveniently, the Hines family shows up later that morning. They can't be looking for their stuff, because they don't mention anything about it. Mary Anne and Dawn instead take the opportunity to thank the family for their generous donations and point out how nice it was to donate a brand new suit. Immediately the parents remember "Hey! We were looking for our stuff, what's it doing here?" and Mr. Hines asks Rob about it. Rob says he took the suit by mistake. I don't care how young this kid is - even I knew at 7 years old that if I wanted something that belonged to my parents, I asked. Mr. Hines also finds a pair of his shoes that he had been looking for, and Rob says he took them because his dad never wears them. Geez, we got someone competing for Claudia in the "Has the Least Amount of Logic" department.

Mr. and Mrs. Hines apologize for the mix-up, take their things back, and leave some bags of donations in return. And sure enough, like the entire town had been listening in on Mary Anne and Dawn's conversation that morning, a few more families show up to get their things back. Finally!

Mary and Dawn also think up an idea to remedy this situation, so they won't have to deal with any sticky-fingered kids anymore - the children now have to bring a permission slip, which includes a list of what they're donating and signed by a parent when they bring stuff to the barn. Problem solved.

And I'm kind of glad Kristy wasn't here for this part, or else she would have flipped a shit and started panicking that the Hines family would ring every doorbell in Stoneybrook, warning families that the BSC encourages kids to steal.

[lucillewalterblack]

Happy Halloween!

Last time in the world of Blood Ties & Brickways, a group of nineteen-year-olds went grocery shopping and fought a giant squid with the power of flying ointment soap and lycanthropy.

This time, we check in two years later, to meet a trio of detectives trying to solve a triple murder despite corruption, prejudice, and an apathetic justice system. Unlike before, this isn’t a finished story, so make sure to check on them - they can’t catch a killer without you to see it, after all.

Strap in, folks. Happy endings are thin on the ground here, but you might just meet some new friends.

(crossposted to Patreon as a public post here)

“What do you mean, exactly, by ‘murdered’?”

“I mean what I said,” the crackling voice spat out over the phone line. Every other word was choked up with static, popping and hissing thanks to humans and their damn cell phones clogging up the air with nothing to shield them, but somehow the whole sentence was intelligible. Small miracles, or so they would have said in the sixties, when they only had to contend with radio fucking up spells and wards. Now, forty years later, the copper landline was dying, smothered by the digital age. Humans had finally found their answer to magic, and it seemed to have limitless potential.

But none of that mattered now.

“Murder,” she said again, savoring the word. “You’re sure.”

“Do you really think I’d call you personally if I weren’t sure of it?”

“You might, if you wanted to annoy me.”

Silence on the other end of the line, because it was true, and then the answer, coming out in one exhausted-sounding “Rosamund Lilly’s fucking granddaughter is dead.”

“Shit.”

“And Juliet’s human, and their halfbreed bastard.”

“She was married, wasn’t she?” It was a bitter, snide little comment, the sort that made her feel good for saying it.

“Handle it,” Ignatius Bowen growled into the other end of the phone line, and hung up so fast she could feel the pop of the receiver slamming into its cradle in his office. The wind swept around her ankles, kicking up her coat and sending dead leaves skittering down the cracked pavement. The humans around her passed her by without a word, barely looking at her even though she hadn’t bothered with any glamour. Other Court detectives would be surprised by that, but she knew ordinary people too well. They generally didn’t care what you did, so long as it didn’t stop them from their doings.

Alecto Vine hung up the pay phone, turning on her heel and stalking off down 38th street towards Central Avenue. She cut a nice tear in the world as she walked, tracing a razor-clean line in the air in her mind until she could step through it and into the next layer up. People appeared around her, filling the streets, all reading an extra edition of the Sentinel, all staring at the same photos. ‘JULIET LILLY MURDERED’ was splashed across the front page above the fold, but it wasn’t worth reading. Too much time wasted on secondhand news, and not enough detail from the scene of the crime.

She fished in her pocket, pulling out a tin box that fit into the palm of her fingerless-gloved hand, and popped it open. Inside were a set of charms wrapped in wax paper, organized in neat lines, all in different colors. Homing flares, to mark her impending arrival, and signal anyone who bothered trying to clean up that they should fucking stop. Her fingers closed around a black one - the first time in a solid half-century in the service of the Court that she’d ever needed to bother with the colors for murder. Hopefully the last, but she wasn’t one to believe in that kind of faerie tale. Her hand flicked up, tossing the flare into the air; the paper fell away and it sped off over her shoulder towards Lilly Memorial Hospital, spitting sparks as it went. She’d follow it soon enough, but she wasn’t stupid enough to go poking around a Lilly heiress’s death bed alone. That kind of thing took more than two hands, and meant she’d need eyes in the back of her head. Since the only duplication spells that even slightly worked on live subjects would leave her flanked by shadows that would flake off ash and char as they moved and would dissolve into dust inside half an hour, that meant paying some calls.

“You’d better be home,” she muttered under her breath, pushing out and back with a subtle personal-space spell that let her slide through the people on the sidewalks and in the streets like water. “Both of you.”

As an institution, the Court detectives weren’t much better than a shambling, barely-animated corpse. It was a little more than a decade shy of two hundred years since the old Prince Consort Aster Grey had been assassinated and Queen Melodia had abdicated, fleeing the Night’s Throne in a fit of misery and selfishness and abandoning the Night Court’s citizens to the whims of the Great Houses, and the detectives had held on grimly despite the mess they’d been left to wade through. Things weren’t any better for the Bright Court on the coasts, either – their queen had supposedly sequestered himself in a burst of fire and fury shortly after Melodia, sundering the ties between the two sides of the royal coin forever.

It hadn’t taken long for the familial politics to set in. No Queens on the throne meant no Court structure proper, which meant no taxes or recruitment drives, which meant no money that didn’t come from direct donations from the Houses, which meant that the only people signing up to take the oaths were either devoted to the cause of impartial justice and arbitration or – more likely – they smelled blood in the water and knew they could get people to pay them off if they nudged investigations down the preferred trails. Once upon a time, Alecto had been the former, when she was something resembling a fresh-faced idealist. Ignatius Bowen had been the latter since the day he was born, and he outranked her, and he was damned hard to kill in a way that wouldn’t turn out like the same splashy murder she was chasing down now.

It was good money, being a detective, especially if you had few scruples and less of a spine. Every Great House paid their share and even fought to outdo one another in their donations, forming a display of civic pride and duty that would be impressive if it wasn’t a pathetic power grab. If nobody else paid more than you did, nobody else had more sway over the Court detectives who’d inevitably come looking for skeletons in the walls and closets, and the greatest of Great Houses were neck-and-neck in the kind of race to the bottom that would bleed any other family dry.

The end result was a twisted equilibrium, equality by way of a decades-long stalemate where every crime was political and every wrong had a good chance of never being righted. A rotten system, but the only one that anybody with no money or no allies could turn to. Time passed, the years had worn down, good recruits had come in and burned out while chasing reform that never came, and the whole institution kept clinging to life by the strained tips of its fingers, digging cracked nails into mortar while promising justice and fighting against its own rot to deliver.

Alecto knew she was the better part of at least one thumb, and she was on her way to get the rest of her fellow bones and joints.

Her feet carried her to a hulking, all-brick house that sat on the corner of College and 38th, its four haphazard stories stacked on top of one another with little regard for physics or building codes. Once upon a time it had been a Morwood house, but they’d sold it off when their fortunes turned sour and retreated behind the gates of Crown Hill, leaving the new owner to divide it up and rent out each floor by itself. Several generations of renters had come and gone since then, each one at least a little hopeful that they’d find some gold or arcane artifact hidden in the walls and each one unsuccessful. Alecto was sure that anything valuable was long gone - the Great Houses were nothing if not thorough whenever they ceded property back to the common people, and the Morwoods especially were notorious for hoarding. Odds are there were secret passages and false-backed cupboards and hidden spaces under floorboards or behind panels in the walls, but they were almost certainly empty.

She scoffed at herself, shaking her head. The person she wanted was on the ground floor, and was far too sensible to bother with that kind of treasure hunting, at least while there were puzzles to solve and lawbreakers to chase. She ignored the flaking paint and the ivy creeping up over the brick walls, bypassing the front door and its porch entirely. At this hour of the day, she’d have more luck at the back of the house, and so to the back she went, moving straight for the withered and overgrown garden and a dingy, long-dry birdbath that sat within view of a window she recalled as being grimy and spotted with dust and mold.

Her approach was not unnoticed. Wards and alert spells pooled around her ankles as she walked, sounding off half a dozen proximity alarms and creeping down into her boots. They tried to hold her. It only took a few thoughts spiraling in the opposite direction to their winding to break them, and she was through and picking up her pace again. By the time she stood in front of the window it was thrown open and a lanky, half-dressed woman with more height than she knew what to do with was hanging out of it from the waist up, a sword in one hand and a spark of red-gold fire in the other. When she saw Alecto, she groaned, smothering the fire in an instant and slumping against the windowsill.

“What the fuck is your problem?” she demanded, her red hair coming out of its low braid and frizzing around her bony shoulders. “Normal people knock!”

“Juliet Lilly and her husband and her kid are murdered,” Alecto said. “Get some clothes on.”

The performative indignation melted away, leaving nothing but deadly serious intention. When Vicia Vetchling wanted to, she moved like a human soldier, sliding into straight-legged jeans and heavy boots and flannel like a second skin. She tossed her sword onto her unmade bed, where Alecto could see it shrinking back into an athame again.

“What happened?” she asked, stepping into her boots and snapping at them to tie themselves.

“Dunno yet. Got the call from Bowen twenty minutes ago. I want you at Lilly Memorial in ten more.”

“A Lilly?” Vicia said, tugging her braid out from under her flannel. “A fullblooded Lilly. Murdered.”

“Yeah. Looks like it.”

“Shit.”

“Don’t think about it yet. Edna in there with you?”

Vicia froze, letting her eyes slide back toward the window, probably wondering how anybody knew she’d gotten herself a girlfriend again.

“I want her along, if she is,” Alecto said, ignoring the echoes of weekday gossip and the unspoken how-in-the-hell-did-you-figure-us-out? that hung in the air. “I don’t give a damn about what happens when you’re off duty, but she’s smarter than anybody the office will send over, and you know it.”

Vicia gaped at her. She shrugged and scoffed, jerking her head toward the front door.

“Both of you. I mean it. Tell her to put a barrier up, full preservation, all of it.”

“But – !”

“Did I say anything about the rest of your life?” Alecto asked. “Except to say I don’t give a damn?”

“No, but – !”

“So do your job.”

“... okay,” Vicia said. “Okay. Fine.” Her shoulders settled as she groaned and relaxed a little, at least enough to pull a sheath for her athame through the air and into her hand. She dropped it, letting it strap itself to her thigh. Her athame followed, sliding into place where she could easily grab it.

“Both of you. Lilly Memorial. Ten minutes. Find the room with my flare in it. You see anything dangerous, use the mirror, call me.”

“What about you?”

Alecto angled her head toward Broad Ripple. “Gotta get Adelaide. We’ll be there in half an hour tops. Faster if there’s no trouble.”

“Right,” Vicia said, pulling her braid out from under her shirt. “I’ll tell Edna to take her coffee to go.” She made for the door into the rest of the apartment, but paused, Alecto holding her gaze and refusing to let her go.

“Don’t be stupid,” the older woman said. “Don’t be brave. Fuck if I know what happened. I’m not going to two funerals. Or three.”

Vicia nodded, slowly and purposefully.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I know.”

“Good,” Alecto said, and turned on her heel, leaving as abruptly as she’d come and purposefully not answering any questions. Vicia’s private life tended to resemble the grease trap in a drain, but when it came to boots on the ground and a quick reflex, there was no one better, not even her twin sister Vigna. Reliability was more important in a Court detective than nearly anything else, and she was reliable, and could take direction, and knew she was in the wrong whenever Alecto had to shout at her. Who she was fucking, and why, didn’t matter, not unless it made her late for a patrol. And Edna Moore would be a welcome presence at any crime scene, even if she was a weird little bookworm who did all her casting through six layers of simile and metaphor.

The walk to Adelaide and Jason Short’s house in Broad Ripple was a short one, helped along by a charm that Alecto laid down into the soles of her boots that sent her zipping along the sidewalks and keeping pace with the interurban tram when it came by. Fast spellcasting and faster thinking meant she could push past or dodge any of the idiots in the street without breaking her stride. On an ordinary day it might take an hour to walk between the houses of her former trainees. She was going to make it in ten minutes, and every damn second counted, because she could only keep the vultures writing for the Sentinel at arm’s length for so long.

People on either side of her scattered out of the way, sensing magic in the air. A few of them glared or protested, but she ignored them, pushing if you can’t keep pace get out of the street thoughts in their direction with a flick of her eyes until they cleared out and let her move. She was, ultimately, too damn old to break her back puttering around in between tram cars and shoppers’ bags and children clinging to their parents’ hands, and there was more than enough space to let her through.

Somewhere in her head, an imagined Ignatius laughed at her. He loved very few things more than getting under her skin, especially when she couldn’t do anything about it, and this case was already burrowing into her. She knew it wouldn’t let her sleep, wouldn’t let her take a day off until it was solved. Faerie murder was practically unheard of. Modern faerie murder was supposed to be totally impossible. No one knew how Aster Grey had died, and he was the last one to drop dead when he wasn’t supposed to, and if somebody had figured out what killed him and was using it to take shots at Lillys…

“... even if it isn’t the Balls, they’ll get the blame,” Alecto muttered out loud, finishing her thought quietly enough that nobody heard her. “Even if they’ve got nothing to do with this, they’ll have Rosamund howling at their door demanding blood for blood.”

Thinking like that made her wonder if it wasn’t the Balls. They were the obvious first choice for suspects, and whoever had done this was counting on that. House Lilly and House Ball had been at each other’s throats since before they adopted their current surnames a century and a half ago, moving through borrowed identities and architectural styles and intermingling with five hundred human families while their own lineages stretched back into antiquity, diametrically opposed to one another at every turn. Presently, the Lillys held sway in Indianapolis and Bloomington, while the Balls held Muncie and Fort Wayne, and their charitable donations and infrastructure projects and competing influences turned towns like Anderson or Lafayette into tense front lines in private culture wars.

Juliet, rest her soul, was half-Lilly and half-Morwood, split between prideful bravado and quietly decaying history gone to seed. Alecto didn’t know much about her, only that she’d grown up running wild in Crown Hill, and had rejected the private tutors and governesses typical of fullblooded faerie children, instead demanding to go to proper school like the half-fae and the human clairvoyants and the other castoffs of society. She’d befriended Virgo Ball, another high-ranking fullblood daughter of a venerable house, who was her own age. It was the first friendship of its kind in recent memory, made all the more biting by the fact that Virgo had come to school after disowning her family for being a lot of bigots. From what Alecto knew it was a purely symbolic gesture – none of the Great Houses liked to let their children go, and it would take more than adolescent anger to convince the current matriarch, Selene, to loosen her grip legally.

Other than making history in her choice of roommates and friends, Juliet had done reasonably well at school socially and excelled in all her classes. She didn’t have any siblings, though her father had a few, and she had no cousins or ambitious disinherited aunts and uncles on the Lilly side who’d see her rise to maturity as a threat to their own fortunes. She’d carried on bucking tradition by not only falling in love with a human man but marrying him, pledging to take his last name in a defiant display of solidarity with the underclasses. Her daughter by him would be legitimate and recognized –

– or would have been, if she’d lived.

Alecto turned the corner, slipping out of her spell but not breaking her stride. The world slowed around her and the pieces began to fall into place in her head. Juliet was young, and pretty, and the only Lilly daughter to carry on the family name, and she had thrown away her pedigree and her history to study with the lower orders and to call herself Mrs. Fern. She knew that was the why of the murder, even if the how and who weren’t trembling in her fingers yet. Having human lovers was a tradition as ancient as the fae themselves were, and bearing their children before sending them out to be servants and emissaries was so ordinary the school both Juliet and Virgo attended had originally been intended to teach half-faerie bastards their place in the world. Marrying them, though – that was dangerous. That sent the wrong kinds of messages to the people keeping their shambling society running.

That was the kind of thing that would get you targeted as a troublemaker.

“Don’t think until you’ve seen the room, Vine,” she muttered. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Can’t bring anything but trouble.”

She was standing at the edge of the Shorts’ front steps, and she let the last of her spells go, sending them out into the breeze that swept down the street. Her anger and futile frustration left with them. She walked up to the front door, counting off the wards she tripped as she mounted each step. Vicia piled on every kind of detection and repulsion spell until her rooms were a quagmire waiting to catch unsuspecting opponents, but this house and its owners were a little more cautious. Alecto knew the jaws of their trap would close over her if she were unwelcome, but she wasn’t unwelcome. She reached the front door just as Adelaide opened it from the other side.

“I saw the paper,” she said, already dressed in a high-collared blouse and a ruched and ruffled skirt with a slit high up one side to show off black lace stockings patterned with vines and flowers. “I wondered if you’d be coming.” Her blonde hair was pulling itself into a sleek bun , tucking loose ends in and smoothing out bumps and frizzes.

“Yeah, well, either us or Ignatius.”

“Fuck Ignatius,” Adelaide said, pulling a cloak from the rack on the wall and throwing it over her shoulders. Like Vicia, her athame was strapped to her thigh, and like Vicia, she really only carried it for show. The pair of them were fullblooded Fae from respectably venerable but less flamboyant Houses. Magic ran in their veins. “He’s an asshole.”

“So we’d better get to Lilly Memorial before he decides we’re not handling it,” Alecto said bluntly. “Hey! Jason! I’m stealing your wife!”

“Can’t be stealing if she’s asking for it,” Jason Short answered, coming out of one of the rooms deeper in the house to say goodbye. He was taller than his wife, with a sharp-featured face to counter her round one, and he carried a bright-eyed baby in his arms, which made Alecto raise an eyebrow.

“You know I wouldn’t have come if I knew you’d already delivered,” she said.

“I’m fine,” Adelaide said. “It was an easy birth, I knew when they were coming, we had them at home, they’re fine. I was cleared for duty yesterday, you can check with the office if you want.”

“Can you pass a level five check?”

“Vine, I swear on the Thrones – ”

“She’s fine,” Jason said. “I wouldn’t let her go if she wasn’t, or if Winnie needed her.”

“Winnie?”

“For Winston and Winifred,” Adelaide said, and kissed both her husband and her baby before her cloak tied itself into place around her shoulders. “They’ll need both names.”

“Wouldn’t picking one be more efficient?” Alecto asked. Adelaide laughed at her.

“Not with this one,” she said. “Let’s go.”

“Be safe,” Jason said, looking from his wife to Alecto. “Both of you.”

“Eh,” Alecto shrugged. “Do my best.”

“Vine,” the other two said in unison. She shrugged again.

“What? It isn’t as if I can predict whether or not I’ll drop dead. Not anymore.” She chuckled. “Haven’t seen this kind of action in decades, not since the sixties and Union Station. Come on, Short, keep up.” Alecto turned on her heel and went down the steps, and Adelaide darted out the door behind her.

“Did you have to be so morbid?” she asked. Her Court pin came creeping out of a hidden pocket and stuck itself above her left shoulder so everyone could see the Night’s Throne heraldry and know she was working.

“It’s not morbid, it’s practical.” Alecto kept a brisk pace, not bothering with her own pin. Her face was enough proof. “Can’t be too careful.”

“You act like you’ve seen half a dozen murders, when I know this is the first.”

“First for our kind. Halfbreeds, werewolves, vampires, clairvoyants, skinchangers – their bodies are a dime a fucking dozen, Short, and if we’re going to start turning out like them, I’m right to be gloomy.” She stopped at the corner, offering her arm to Adelaide. “I’m not walking the rest of the way downtown.”

“Got it,” the younger woman said, slipping a hand through the crook in Alecto’s arm and throwing its free counterpart into the air in front of them.

“No,” Alecto said.

“Sorry,” Adelaide said as the daylight began to dim around them. “Can’t stop it now. Live a little, why don’t you?”

“Adelaide, I don’t fucking want to –”

The seams between the layers of the world thinned and widened, and they were sucked through like water down the bathroom drain. Alecto gave up protesting.

There wasn’t really such a thing as being good at sidestepping, but Adelaide came close. The pair of them popped into the black of the void-between-worlds, standing in the center of a million layers interconnected with threads of song and blood. Adelaide raised her arms, drawing up her will and her focus into her chest, and brought them down with an exhalation sharp enough to push her backward. A gold thread shot out into the swirling color, striking home and finding their destination on the first try. Her aim was damn near perfect, and her lines cut like glass knives, and she was fast, twisting up time so the whole thing only took a fraction of a second.

The back side of the thread curled around both of them, and Alecto felt the tension from the anchor on the other side before it pulled both of them through. From where she stood, they were only in the dark for the blink of an eye, but it was enough for her to catch a glimpse of the web of color and be afraid. There had been a High King before Melodia took the Night’s Throne and Mayra took the Bright Seat, and he was somewhere beyond the light and the safety of the blood wards, waiting and watching.

“Made it,” Adelaide said smugly, stepping onto the solid linoleum floor of Lilly Memorial’s third floor like it didn’t faze her at all to stick her head outside the walls of reality on a regular basis. Faint music filled the hall, peppered with dim conversation that couldn’t quite be heard over the sound of a pair of competing songs.

“You’re insane,” Alecto grumbled. “Can’t you teleport like an ordinary fucking faerie?”

“Loosen up, Vine,” Adelaide said. “You’re just terrified of the void.”

“I’ve got a lot of good fucking reason to be!”

The other woman shrugged as she started walking, mimicking her and laughing when it made her scowl. “Come on,” she said, cutting off the conversation before it could get started. “I bet that’s Vicia I hear.”

“One of these days you’re going to get yourself into some real shit, Adelaide Short, and I won’t be there to say ‘I told you so!’”

“One of these days you’ll admit I’m smart!” came the answer, echoing down the hall.

“Hmph,” Alecto grumbled, following behind and wishing she didn’t feel the urge to make the admission now.

Adelaide came to a halt in front of the twisted wreck of a metal door that had very obviously been blasted off its hinges.

“This must be it,” she said, angling her head toward the doorway it had come from. “Unless there’s two of these rooms in the same hospital.”

Alecto rolled her eyes as Adelaide wandered off to do something she hoped was related to their job. It would be too easy to snipe about observational skills, so instead she leaned through the doorway and felt it bounce backward off a fresh blood ward. Music echoed back and forth inside her head, half Shakespears Sister and half “California Dreamin’”.

“Don’t touch,” an oddly serene voice told her from somewhere between the conflicting vocal lines.

“My crime scene, Moore,” she retorted, and then added “But good, the barrier will hold.”

“Once I’ve got a full memory imprint you can come in,” Edna Moore said. She stood in the middle of the room, arms extended and eyes shut while the hair that had escaped from its pins floated about her head in a pale halo and every inch of everything gleamed pearl and silver.

Vicia sat in the window, one boot dangling just above the floor, and she watched the other woman like she’d hung the moon with every gesture. Alecto wasn’t sure what, if anything, had convinced her former pupil to fall head over heels for a plain, always-prim-never-pretty mother of three with a bad hip and a failed marriage under her belt, but to look at the pair of them, they’d never been happier. Something pricked in her chest, the kind of thing that felt like sentiment or

“Ooh, is this the new girlfriend?” Adelaide asked, pausing just far enough from the barrier that it wouldn’t push her backward. “I was chatting up the nurses. They’ve got a lot to say.”

“Yeah?” Vicia asked. “Like what?”

“Quiet, please,” Edna said; there was just a hint of annoyance in her voice intermingled with a playfully good mood. “I am working.”

Vicia shut up, looking appropriately chastised, and Adelaide rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything else. The music mingled together and grew louder, coming out into the open air and bleeding off Edna’s excess power while she focused. Half-formed images of the past few hours started hovering behind Alecto’s eyes, showing off ghostly figures going about the business of having a baby. They stopped too abruptly for it to be natural, cutting off just as a collection of electric guitars and drums surged to a halt.

“Done,” Edna said. Her low-heeled shoes hit the floor with a dull clack, and she set about readjusting her hair back into its pins. “Darling, you can stand on the floor now.”

“Great,” Vicia said, rolling up onto her feet again. She flicked her athame toward the door; the blood ward sputtered out.

“What did you find?” Alecto asked, crossing into the room and going straight for Edna.

“A proper mess, really,” the older woman said. “I got the last six hours, but I can’t hold it forever. What I can say now is that it seems the room was fully warded, both by Juliet and by Miss Ball, and – !”

“Wait,” Alecto interrupted. “Virgo Ball was here?”

“Oh, yes,” Edna said. “But I couldn’t tell you more. My head’s full at the moment; I must needs return to the Courthouse to deposit the imprint and then perhaps I can think of analyzing it.” Her eyes had gone all glassy. It gave Alecto an uneasy feeling.

“Finish your sentence before you go, at least,” she said. It sounded like grousing; she didn’t care.

“The room was fully warded,” Edna repeated, “both by Juliet and by Miss Ball, and yet despite that warding, something penetrated their spells quite easily, and proceeded first to attack Mr. Fern and then his wife.”

“It got past their blood wards?”

“So quickly it was almost as if they weren’t warded at all.” Edna sounded almost intrigued, like the bloodstained floor and the burned remains that were lying on a pair of hospital carts were a puzzle she could solve.

“Edna,” Vicia called from the window.

“Mm?”

“Go empty your head, you sound like an axe murderer again.”

“Oh, dear, I do, don’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“Going,” Edna said, turning around on her heel and vanishing before she’d made a full circle. Alecto shivered.

“She gives me the creeps, why did you start dating her?”

“Because I’m in love with her, Vine,” Vicia said. “And you’re the one who told me to bring her.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Adelaide cut in, smirking a little too brightly.

Children, Alecto grumbled to herself. She rolled her eyes. “You said you talked to the nurses?”

“Oh, yeah,” Adelaide said. “Got the full rundown from them.” She reached into a cloak pocket and pulled out a notebook, flipping through the pages.

“And?” Vicia asked.

“Getting to it! Thrones, none of you are patient.”

“There’s a murder to solve,” Alecto replied. “What’s patience?”

“Here’s my notes,” Adelaide declared, holding the book up almost triumphantly. “Right. Juliet and her husband Jamie came in with Virgo Ball, and it was unexpected. The floor nurse said they weren’t planning on coming in for the delivery until next week, but she went into labor early.”

“Foul play?” Alecto asked.

“No, I don’t think so. She was past her due date.”

“So?”

Adelaide laughed a little, shaking her head at both other women. “So, because I’m the only one here interested in having kids, I’ll tell you that once you’re past the due date you can deliver just fine if you’ve got a part-human child, or you’re also part-human yourself. They’re not like our babies. You don’t know when they’re coming.”

“That doesn’t sound horrifying at all,” Vicia remarked.

“There’s a reason we all make such a fuss about halfbreeds. It’s not a guarantee that nothing will go wrong.”

“Anything else I should know about childbirth, Short?” Alecto asked. Best to cut Adelaide off before she went on a tangentially related ramble regarding babies, especially with her own at home waiting for her.

“Just that if you’re only part-faerie you don’t have any magic of your own at all during the process. They’re not born controlling it like we are, and the mother’s own defenses would kill the child if something went wrong, so they don’t have it until they Bloom. And ordinary human babies are helpless, I mean, they can’t call for help, they can’t sit up, they can’t do anything. You have to hold them right so they don’t break their necks. Like those birds that are born without eyes.”

“What happens to the mother’s magic, then?” Alecto asked.

“It dulls down,” Adelaide said. “Gets less potent, so that the baby can be born.”

“So whoever this is killed two grown adults who couldn’t fight back, and a little tiny baby that couldn’t even lift its head?” Vicia asked. “That’s fucked.”

“You’re telling me.” Adelaide flipped to the next page of her notebook. “Anyway, things went okay – Juliet warded the room, because, well, she’s a Lilly, they can’t go anywhere without shielding something off, and then Virgo Ball took some of her blood and double-warded it on the advice of the floor nurse.”

“Because of the impact a birth has on her magic,” Alecto said.

Adelaide nodded. “Just in case.”

“Why all the fuss?” Vicia asked. “It’s pretty normal for Great House fae to have halfbreed children, isn’t it?”

“It’s not normal to marry your human lover,” Alecto replied.

“Or to take his last name,” Adelaide added. “Which she did.”

“... shit, and she’s a Lilly, too.”

“Raised a Morwood. That explains it.”

“Oof, yeah,” Adelaide winced. The love match between Cymbeline Lilly and John Morwood had been just as scandalous a few decades ago as Juliet’s own marriage had been last fall. On paper, the Morwoods were as prestigious and ancient as any other Great House. In reality, they’d fallen far from their former heights, left with nothing but their name and their ancestral estate. They’d been quietly phased out of the unofficial list of suitable matches for faerie heirs looking to marry, and then Cymbeline had chosen John so publicly that she might as well have thrown a bomb into her mother’s sitting room on Christmas. They hadn’t ever been as vulnerable as their daughter, though. They kept within the Morwood lands and kept their heads down, and people forgot.

It wouldn’t be the same with Juliet. Alecto could feel it.

“Why didn’t she have the baby at Crown Hill?” Vicia asked. “It makes no sense.”

“Damned activism,” Alecto said. “Her precious principles. ‘If Lilly Memorial is good enough for the peasants, it’s good enough for me.’ That sort of thing.”

“You’d think somebody’d tell her that she’s got a giant target on her back.”

“Probably not,” Adelaide cut in. “I mean, her grandmother still acknowledges her, her mother’s still powerful, her father’s family is old and respectable. It’s not like she’s ever had to prove herself in a fight.”

“Probably why Virgo Ball was here, actually,” Vicia mused. “Weren’t they close?”

“Best fucking friends,” Alecto said. “Didn’t you see the wedding pictures? Virgo was her maid of honor.”

“Checks out,” Adelaide said. “She’d be looking over her shoulder more than once, after all the times her sister’s tried to turn her into something breakable.”

Juliet had been an only child. Her parents weren’t particularly interested in rebuilding a dynasty, and by all accounts had been perfectly happy with their one kid to carry on the family name. Virgo, on the other hand, was the oldest of four girls, and the only one of them to burn her own name off the Ball family registry and storm out of the house when she was fifteen thanks to the same principles that had gotten her friend killed. She had a room at the Morwood estate in Crown Hill, and an apartment that had been given to her by her aunt Alcyone, but even so, it hadn’t been a clean break. Two of her sisters, the supremely private Andromache and the effusively sociable Astraea, were normal enough. One kept her face out of the press and had a reputation for poisoning people who tried to pry into her life; the other was the beloved baby of the family and was already engaged to her cousin Aidan, primed to start popping out kids of her own once she turned eighteen in a few years. The third, though…

Alecto groaned.

“Fuck me,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Vetch, make the rounds. I want to know where Cassiopeia Ball’s been all day today and yesterday.”

“Fuck,” Vicia groaned, shaking her head. “Fuck me. You really think she’s involved?”

“It’s a hunch. Her and that creepy fucker she’s dating because her mom likes him.”

“Oh, so it’s not just her, you want me to track down Thomas fucking Fisher too.”

“Go drag Vigna out of Aurelia Vance’s bed and bring her along, if you want backup.”

“That’s not the problem. I know I can handle myself, and it’s Vin’s day off. I don’t want to bother her.”

“So what’s the problem, then?”

“I don’t wanna go looking for her, or for him, and especially not the pair of them together.”

“Tough shit. You signed up for it when you signed on to the job.”

“If she doesn’t want to, let me,” Adelaide offered. “I always want to go looking for her.” A bright smile played over her face and eyes. “I’ll find her.”

“No,” Alecto and Vicia said together.

“What?”

“The last time you and Cass Ball went at it you blew up a city block?” the red-haired woman suggested.

“Jason won’t be happy if I bring his wife home in two pieces,” Alecto added.

“She’s got it out for you after you caught her boyfriend kidnapping those kids,” Vicia finished. “You might not remember the shit she screamed at you, but I do.”

“And you’ve got a baby waiting for you at home. No. Not you.”

“Come on,” Adelaide said, “it’s not like I’ll be doing anything dangerous. Just a routine roundup.”

“Absolutely not,” Alecto said.

“But Vine – !”

“No, Short.”

Adelaide groaned, but she didn’t protest further.

“Good,” Alecto finished up, barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

“What do you want from me, then?” Vicia sighed. “Or Vin, I guess, if I rope her in.”

“I either want a verified alibi with witnesses who aren’t scared shitless of what she’ll do to them, or I want her ass behind a desk at the Courthouse so I can ask both of them what they’ve been up to.”

“You want us to bring her in. You want us to bring both of them in.”

“I didn’t say it would be easy, I said I wanted it done.”

Vicia groaned. “Fine. Fuck me getting to bed at a reasonable hour, I guess.”

“You mean fuck you going out for a drink with Thora Tadmure,” Alecto corrected.

“How did you – ?”

“Don’t go to the bar every night, Vetch. It’s bad for your liver.”

Vicia ran a hand over her face. “You’re too fucking invested in my personal life, you know that?”

“Can’t have you turning up dead when it’s your number up for patrol, can I?” Alecto asked, and shooed off the younger woman with one hand. “Now go find me my suspects.”

Vicia groaned a final time, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. She didn’t say anything, but she threw her teleportation spell behind her and spun on her heel into the casting, shooting up her other hand to flash her middle finger as she vanished.

“Dramatic motherfucker,” Alecto sighed. “Come on, Short. There’s nothing we can learn from here that we won’t get from the memory imprint, unless you need to talk to more nurses.”

“No, I hit everyone who was on this floor when it happened. There’s nobody who was scheduled to be here who mysteriously never showed up, either.”

“Good. Less likely we’ll find a corpse shoved down an elevator shaft.” Alecto was already walking for the door, and Adelaide had to run for a few steps to catch up.

“Eugh, don’t remind me about that,” she replied. “I was fishing bone fragments out of my hair for a week.”

“Next time, maybe look before you leap.”

“Sure I will,” Adelaide laughed, “and you’ll stop needling all of us about our personal habits.”

“Hmph,” Alecto grunted as they turned into the stairwell, and she pretended she didn’t hear Adelaide chuckling at her.

[sarandipitywrites]

word find tag

@winterandwords tagged me to find blood, blue, blow, and black in my draft - thank you! go check out their snippets here if you want some brilliant imagery in your day (which you do).

sending no pressure tags to @space-writes, @snooeycatwrites, @bluberimufim, @nettleandthorne, @authoralexharvey, and an open tag for anyone else who wants to search their WIPs for drown, sunlight, bone, and bright.

now, time to search drafts 2 and 3 of Dead Roots, Dark Water for those words:

blood

Samos had once said that Jak's mind was a riptide: calm on the surface, with churning chaos fit to drown a man beneath. It hadn't been a compliment; sages were meant to be calm to their core, dispassionate and serene. He tried to summon some of that ocean current, to wash over his brain and cool his blood. Keira didn't need to cool her mind; it wasn't a fire, or an undertow. It was a prism, catching thoughts and inspiration like rays of sunlight and refracting them into rainbows.

blue

Daxter hauled himself up to the second roof, above the loft. Thatching fibers crunched beneath his feet, musty sweetness on the ocean breeze. The ocean. It stretched out before him, going for miles and millennia until blue water met blue sky in an infinite horizon, broken only by the misshapen shadow of Misty Island in the distance. His breath hitched and he blinked the stinging sunlight from his eyes. Was this why Jak was always climbing things? Because he wanted to see until forever?

blow

“Here’s what you’ll do.” Daxter’s voice, cold and sharp as a razor, cut Jak to the bone. “You’ll go back to Krew. You’ll tell him that Brutter’s cred line is closed. If you or any of Krew’s boys try and fuck with Brutter again, you’ll be beggin’ to die as quick as the guards on that slave transport.” He nodded to Jak. With one final squeeze, Jak released Hob and got to his feet. He watched every move as Hob staggered up and brushed himself off. Hob eyed the pile of his belongings on the floor. His mask, hanging limp around his neck, did nothing to hide his stubbled scowl. He tore his gaze away. “Krew don’t take kindly to bein’ double-crossed, Brutter.” “Krew can kindly blow it out his ear.”

black

Jak dragged the coffee tin across the table and sank his fingers into the soil. Sweet, earthy air wafted up from the pot as the soft, wet dirt packed under his claws up to the nailbed. A thrill ran down his spine and bubbling, bright rightness filled his chest, suffused his body until he was nearly vibrating with it. Daxter squawked something about dirt and carpets but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, not the chirping in his head or how much effort it took to move his prosthetic. As he lifted the plant from the pot and inspected its root system — no fewer than a third of the fern’s rhizomes harbored black root rot at the tips — he hummed contentment. A piece slotted back into place — a piece he hadn’t even realized he was missing — as though it had never left at all.

[radix-outpost]

Something I'd been trying to figure out for the longest time was what to do with the Animamates as the classic anime presented them. In the manga and Crystal, they murdered their planets' guardians to gain Sailor Galaxia's favour, but not only did the classic anime leave this out, it implied that they really were true Sailor Guardians (via Tin Nyanko being partially healed).

I'd seen a few proposed solutions here and there, but none really worked for my classic-based AU purposes... and then, last night, it hit me:

The Animamates all have star motifs on their fukus. What astronomical phenomenon is both made of stars and often named after animals and mythical creatures?

They're constellation guardians. Which not only keeps with the overall theme of "Sailor Stars", but fills a niche that isn't really explored much in any continuity (AFAIK).

I put together a list of who's associated with what, with some fine-tuning by Lan (her suggestions have two asterisks).

Lead Crow: Corvi

Aluminum Seiren: Hydra

Tin Nyanko: Lyncis

Iron Mouse: Coma Berenices, which has mice galaxies in it

Heavy Metal Papillon: Scarabaeus**, an extinct constellation

Pewter Fox: Vulpecula

Titanium Kerokko: Makara (aka Capricornus)**

(more musing under cut)

AU-wise, they're still lower on the totem pole than planetary or even lunar guardians, which may be what drove them towards Sailor Galaxia in the first place--yeah, you guys might represent whole planets, but we're the teammates of the most powerful Sailor Guardian to have ever lived! Ha ha whoops Galaxia is possessed by Chaos and now we're all brainwashed.

After Galaxia is freed, she resurrects her four Animamates (with one hell of an apology lined up, presumably) and seeks out the rest. Given how many constellations there are, it's unlikely that she'd only end up with seven Animamates total.

To be determined: if they just continue hanging out with Galaxia (with Phi, Chi, and the river girls coming in later) or if a fellow Animamate becomes their leader. I did want to reuse the idea of a "Sailor Osmium Phoenix" somewhere...

(Should the latter come to pass, then Sailor Chi's role would be modified to "middle-woman between Galaxia and literally every single Sol System guardian". She and Phi are still not nice people, so you can imagine how that goes.)

[runimanio]

2024 Game Clear #4 Mega Man X: Command Mission

This is an interesting one, a tradition turn based Mega Man X RPG that has much to love, but also leaves me wanting in a lot of way. Perhaps because this is the final X series game I needed to play it also left me thinking about the storytelling & characterization of the X series so this will probably be a long one

The story here is that a maverick named Epsilon has formed a army aptly named the Rebellion Army to occupy Giga City and form a reploid supremist state and now the Maverick Hunters must intervene! If your familiar with the X series this will sound extremely in line with the general plotline the action games tended to have & it's clear that the developers really wanted to translate as much stuff and mechanics from those games into a RPG format (there's even a boss rush teleport room at the end!)

That thinking creates a pretty neat battle system but being so loyal to the plot structure of the main series X really does the story of a RPG & the new charters a disservice, you could very easily cut this 20 hour game into a standard X platformer & lose very little of the actual meat.

X and Zero are fully in their deadly serious mode that they've been in in for the late series X games, gone are Zero's days of confidently giving a thumbs up we're full broody edge lord & X is in cop mode at all time which is a shame since this could've been a great way to really explore these two in more depths then normally allowed.

I liked the new characters but they don't really get anything to do here, after their recruitment there character arc is pretty much done & i'm pretty sure Spider aside, the other 3 maybe talked to Zero & Axel maybe once throughout the entire game. I wish I could tell you anything about Marino or Cinnamon other then what written on the tin. Massimo is a brute struggling to live up to his mentor name, Marino is a thief who unexpectedly finds herself embroiled into the conflicted, Cinnamon is a living blacksmith forge i guess? And Spider is a bounty hunter who's later actions makes me question his early actions. They all have a lot of potential they're just unserved.

Let's move on to a lighter note for a bit, This battle system is pretty cool, it uses a turn system similar to the Digimon Story games (it's probably comes from something older but I'm blanking lol) where you can see the upcoming order of who moves first & even have your unit act multiple times before your enemy can under the right circumstances, two buttons can be equipped with special weapons that use Weapon Energy to fire and can be used before taking your action for the turn. Instead of healing items you have sub tanks you can collect and fill that you can pull from for healing.

Action Trigger are essentially limit breaks where you use all your weapon energy & play a little mini game for a big attack, its a little repetitive and i don't love doing a Mario Party style stick rotation for Cinnamon's heal trigger but it's fine & everyone has a hyper mode which is a temporary transformation that massively buffs the character or even in some cases change out their weapons and Action Triggers, X and Zero have secret unlockable Hyper modes that are super OP and fun to use.

It's a really fun and unique system & I do appreciate that I never really felt I need to grind but it can get pretty old when your binging through the game since enemy can feel pretty spongy and the encounter rate sometimes can a little aggressive where I'll get out of a battle and slightly adjust myself to get my barring again only to be thrown back into a battle immediately but sometimes i would go several rooms without any encounters so it probably varies.

And when you get lost the constant battles can be grating & getting lost can be easy as the entire game looks like this

All the stages feel like I'm exploring a bunker with almost entire game being made up of narrow hallways, even Giga City the city in the sky kinda just feels like another a bunker also slight tangent about the game's world it's funny that even in this RPG the X world is devoid onscreen humans, I don't know what Sigma and all the other Mavricks are complaining about, seems like the humans are doing a great job leaving reploids alone!

It probably sounds like I really didn't like the game but I did ultimately enjoy the game but I just see so much untapped potential in this game, these characters & this world, I can imagine a version of this game were Massimo has a longer character arc struggling with feeling like he's failing to honor the mantle, Maybe Marino learning to believe in the cause, More of Cinnamon learning what she wants to do beside just being a actual tool for people to use. My mind races with possibilities with this world & I only got a fraction of what I would've liked.

I truly wish it got a sequel because this is a very solid base to build on & really Mega Man has always been an iterative franchise but in hindsight of all the baggage the next generation would bring, the mega man recession of the late aughts, & Inafune gaining more power within Capcom & apparently hating the idea of a X RPG to begin with Command Mission was probably made at the last possible moment it could've been made.

Anyway here's some random thought to end off on

recontextualizing Axl's A Trans ability into summons is very cool

Everyone in the city getting new dialogue as the story progresses is neat

Cinnamon's design uses the red cross logo so this game is a violation of the Geneva Convention

I'm not really sure why they needed this to take place in 22XX causing it to have no place in the timeline due to the Zero games also taking place then other than maybe wanting to remove themselves from the earth is damaged after X5 continuity idk

This version of Ultimate Armor is crazy, X ain't playing around anymore no way Dr. Light signed off on this lol

After her chapter Marino never vocally speaks again for the rest of the game, she didn't deserve to be done like that.

Absolute Zero is very cool

Shout out to my friend Talion for gifting this to me for Christmas, thanks buddy!

[stephensonhouse]

History Bites!

Rhubarb became quite popular in 19th-century cooking, both for its medicinal uses and as a tart fruit substitute in desserts. Recipes using rhubarb often balanced its natural sourness with whatever sweeteners were available. We think the following recipe is a keeper, especially if you love rhubarb as much as we do.

Rhubarb Tart (Modern adaptation)

Ingredients:

~Rhubarb (1 lb, chopped)

~Sugar (½ lb or more to taste)

~Shortcrust pastry

~Optional: pinch of ground ginger or lemon zest

Instructions:

Put uncooked rhubarb and sugar in a sauce pan with a small amount of water. Simmer for about an hour or until rhubarb is soft. Let cool.

Add a pinch of ground ginger (common in period recipes). Stir.

Roll out pastry and line a tart tin.

Fill with rhubarb mixture and sprinkle sugar over.

Optional: Cover with a pastry lid or make a lattice top.

Bake in a moderate oven (about 350°F / 175°C) until pastry is golden and rhubarb is bubbling.

"A new system of domestic cookery : formed upon principles of economy, and adapted to the use of private families", 1807, Maria Eliza Ketelby Rundell, This book included many fruit pies and tarts, often adapting the filling based on availability. Rhubarb, gaining popularity after being cultivated more widely in England around 1800, began appearing in printed tart recipes by the 1820s–1830s.

#HistoricalRecipes #VintageCooking #OldFashionedRecipes #19thCenturyCooking #RegencyEraFood #HistoricalBaking #FoodHistory #stephensonhouse #museum