#Wayward Sunlight Art

[waywardsunlight]

Doodles of the sigil conversation (Post ASIAS, pre- Hollow Mind)

[katnip-buttercups]

I couldn’t find any art of Rue with her butterfly wings so I had to draw something

[assortedseaglass]

Talk Refined - Chapter One

Michael Gavey x Reader

[Masterlist]

Summary: When Michael Gavey unwittingly insults a fellow Oxford student, they enter into a game of intellectual cat and mouse.

Content Warnings (this chapter in bold): Language, Smut, Saltburn Spoilers

Pool was never your forte. Truth be told, you were more of a darts girl. There was something though, in the soft click of the balls knocking together and the damp thunk of them landing in the pocket that scratched an itch on your over-worked mind.

Hilary term was coming to an end, and with it brought the dread that your extended essay title had been submitted. ‘“For the sake of some colour;” women as decoration, in response to Turner’s High Street, Oxford (1810)””. No going back now.

You’d escaped the January madness that had descended on your best friend, Esme. Like most other courses, she had exams at the start of the new year and spent her days in the library and nights in the pub. Much like now, come to think of it.

“You’re up,” you called to your friend as you missed potting a red. “Esme!”

“Sorry! Sorry,” she shimmied between the pool table and a few pub patrons, taking her cue in hand and leaning over the felt green. Click, thunk. A yellow sank into the corner pocket.

“Who were you talking to?” You indicated a man in his early twenties, eyeing up Esme’s backside as she leant over the table to reach another yellow.

“Bartender,” she missed the ball and passed the cue back over the table. You took it and swiftly potted a red. “Nice one. Just borrowing this,” she lit her cigarette with a metal lighter. When she was done, she tossed it back to the bartender and he winked.

The two of you’d met at a humanities and arts, inter-college social less than two weeks into your first term. Dress as your subject and be ready for a night of frivolity even Elagabalus couldn’t imagine. You’d found some of silk scarves in a charity shop, bought cheap pearls from Primark and gone as the Girl with a Pearl Earring. Outside the Blenheim was where you first spotted her. Dressed in a bedsheet draped as a peplos, she had climbed a lamppost and was swigging wine straight from the bottle. That is a girl I want to be friends with, you’d thought, and promptly beelined for her and begged for the bottle.

“You doing philosophy?” You asked after chugging the cheap merlot.

“Classics. And you, I’m guessing history-”

“History of art, yeah.”

The next morning, you’d woken in her dorm room at Brasenose, the autumn sunlight blinding and your breath smelling as if something had crawled inside you and died there. Esme didn’t mind. Her mouth was stained red from the wine and a hickey the size of Brazil adorned her neck. You’d been inseparable ever since.

“Bollocks,” you missed potting a red and, as Esme swept to grab to pool cue, the pub erupted in song.

“RUBY RUBY RUBY RUBY!”

“Ahah ahah ahaaaaaaaah!” Esme sang the refrain in your ear as she twirled you round, the cue discarded on the table.

“DO YA DO YA DO YA DO YA!?”

“Fuck’s sake,” It was hard not to smile despite your best efforts. You felt like a twat but no-one was looking at you. All were too busy singing to notice the two tipsy girls dancing by the pool table. In any case, the only person whose opinion mattered to you was the one spinning you in her arms. One wayward spin and bumped you into the pool table. Giggling, you opened your arms to be embraced once more-

“Oh shit,” Esme whispered hastily, suddenly standing straight and flattening her hair. “Got any lip gloss?”

“Erm,” you patted your pockets. “No sorry.”

“Damn,”

“Who’ve you seen?” you smirked, standing by your best friend’s shoulder and following her line of sight. Well, it could have been any number of students in the packed pub. There were some rugby lads, double polos with both collars popped. Pretty boy Felix Catton and his posse of poshos. It could have even been that girl Eleanor, now greeting a friend at the bar. Esme and Eleanor hooked up at the Brasenose Christmas party. Esme said it was “unexpected” and “not her usual flavour”, but you’d met her once after tutorial, and the way she looked at her tutor’s bottom as it wiggled down the corridor in her Peacock’s pencil skirt was not one of envy. “Well?” You asked impatiently. “Who is it?”

“There, blue check shirt, dark hair.” Esme pointed at the bar where such a man was standing. Two pints of lager in hand, he turned and seemed to look around the pub. “Cute, isn’t he? He’s at Brasenose too, doing English I think.”

“Oh right.” As a Wadham girl, you had never seen this boy before. You supposed he was quite good-looking, in a boy-next-door sort of way. You thought perhaps he would be bonny, were it not for the solemn expression on his face. He meandered through the crowd to a small table at which sat another boy.

The two were starkly different. Where Esme’s boy was dark haired, the other was fair. Esme’s boy was stocky, but even sat down the other was gangly, and while Esme’s boy clearly wasn’t an avid reader of Esquire, the blond boy looked like he’d rolled around Oxfam’s bargain bin in total darkness and worn whatever stuck; a pair of baggy cargo shorts pulled up far too high and cinched tightly with a black belt, a pair of Merrell trainers and a novelty tshirt. THIS IS HOW I ROLL. Below the wording was an anagram and equation.

If it weren’t for the middle-aged glasses and frankly atrocious haircut, he’d be quite good looking too. Two Oxford virgins; Trinny and Susannah’s wet dream.

“What’s his name then?”

“Oliver, I think.” Esme was licking her lips and fussing with her bangles.

“You look great,” you swatted at her hand. “And the other one?”

“No idea. They’re always hanging around together. Oliver,” she said his name with some uncertainty. “Oliver never says anything, the other one’s always talking a mile a minute but I haven’t really seen him about. Doesn’t go to any parties.”

“Him and the girl with-”

“Agoraphobia.” You said in unison. The characters of Esme’s college were more vivid to you now than those in a Dickens novel.

“I bet he does maths,”

“I told you, he does English.”

“No,” you tut. “The other one.”

“I reckon it’s physics.”

“Put a pint on it?”

“You’re on,” Esme smacked your hip. “Come on, there’s a table by the bar.”

Following the plume of her cigarette smoke, Esme led you to the sticky wooden table and ordered you a pint of Thatchers. She, a pint of Stella. At the table beside you both, Maybe Oliver and The Other One were talking quickly. Well, the maths-slash-physics boy was. Maybe Oliver was staring distractedly towards the other end of the pub. You looked over your shoulder. Felix Catton was settling down with another round of beers, his stupid eyebrow piercing gleaming in the low pub lights.

“Swap with me,” Esme whispered.

“What?”

“Swap with me so I can look at Oliver.”

You sighed and stood up, shuffling round the table to sit parallel to Oliver. Esme smiled at him as she sat down and he smiled back. When she giggled, you kicked her under the table. Now across from maths-slash-physics, you could see him clearly.

This close, you stood by your assessment that he could have been handsome. His light eyes were framed by not just those hideous glasses but thick, dark lashes. He had a jawline and cheekbones that would make Agyness Deyn jealous. His lips, though strangely curved were plump, and he had a distracting habit of frequently wetting them. But there was something so distinctly and undefinably creepy about him. He talked like a snake, quickly with hissed “s”s and “t”s. You noticed with unease that he barely blinked as he watched for any minutia in his friend’s reaction, and he moved with an almost jerky stiffness. All elbows and angles. This strange combination of beautiful and revolting made him impossible to ignore. Like catching yourself in the mirror after dying your hair. A strange feeling of the uncanny.  

He caught your eye, sensing you staring at him, and you quickly glanced at Esme. Shit. She’d been talking to you about something.

“-of course, it’s easy to compare the Iliad and the Aeneid, but really they’re very different.”

Aha. She was trying to impress, hoping Maybe Oliver would hear. “Oh yes?” You leant forward on your arm and wiggled your eyebrows at her. “Tell me more.”

Esme was clearly delighted that you’d cottoned on to her plan. Brushing her hair from her shoulders and leaning forward too, she continued. “Well, you have to start with the language. One is Greek and one is Latin. Now, we go through this in linguistics. Everyone has to get up to speed with their Greek and Latin so we’re all on the same level-”

You giggled and she kicked you under the table. Esme knew you already knew this and didn’t care. You knew that Esme was just showboating. When you kicked her back she got the giggles and glanced at Maybe Oliver. His eyes were still trained on the back of the pub, and she sighed, taking a gulp of beer. In perfect symmetry, you drank your cider and in the lull you admired the lengths your friend went to flirt with a seemingly average boy.

“-Jameson spends the whole time staring at her tits, completely ignoring the fact she can barely do her times tables.”

Esme choked a little on her drink and your eyebrows shot upwards with barely contained glee. This was far more interesting. You and Esme watched each other, communing telepathically about the intriguing conversation between the boys next to you.

“-times tables, Oliver!”

“Told you it was maths!” You whispered at Esme. Without a word, she got up with a smile to buy you another pint.

“-just fuck off and do history of art, love, save us all the trouble!”

You stilled in your seat, cider halfway to your lips. Did he just-? You ran the sentence over in your mind. “Fuck off and do history of art, love, save us all the trouble.” It wasn’t the first time you’d encountered snobbery about your selected study. Friends from school deemed it “hoity-toity,” and even your parents had worried about your career prospects.

“But what can you actually do with a history of art degree?”

You’d thought Oxford would be different. Surrounded by other young minds, eager for knowledge and an appreciation of the world around them, freshly opened up like your first bottle of champagne; long-awaited, exciting and with a little bit of bite. Just for the adults.

“Excuse me?” Your heart was pounding in your chest as you leant over a little and smiled at the pair of boys. You were proud of your subject but that eagerness to prove its, and your, worth was impossible to ignore. Oliver and Maths Boy looked at you.  “Do you,” you cleared your throat. “What’s wrong with history of art?”

The gangly boy scoffed and turned rigidly in his chair to face you. Like most other nerds, you’d expected him to shy away from anyone outside of his carefully selected circle. This boy, however, seemed to take up an enormous space in your mind. He was confident. Already taken aback by his vicious comment, that threw you even more.

“What’s wrong with it? It’s an easy option that’s become an elitist haven for the middle class.” He pushed his glasses up his long nose with a bony finger. “You ever met any of those ‘students’?” He put air quotes around that last word and you flinched, neck bristling with anger. You doubt he’d have noticed if you put your top over your head and did the Cupid Shuffle; he continued as if nothing happened.

“Load of public-school wankers spouting their useless opinions on aristocrats lounging about in gilded frames, just so they can justify getting a job in daddy’s gallery. It’s an irrelevant, niche subject for people who think their view of the world is superior to us mere plebs’.”

“Michael,” Oliver murmured. He turned to you, not quite looking you in the eye. “Sorry-”

“Here’s your pint,” Esme placed another Thatchers before you. Both you and “Michael” ignored your friends.

“You think it’s irrelevant?” You took a swig of cider without taking your eyes off him. Angry little prick, this fella. You knew the like; maths, physics, economics, law. The students were all the same. Thinking they were better than everyone else because they could swan off into the sunset with £40k job straight out of uni and reap the benefits that the arts provided them without any need to know better. The designer clothes and fast cars, the beautiful buildings they worked in, the nails on the woman ripping open the condom wrapper…

“What’s irrelevant?” Esme said brightly. She held out her hand for Oliver. “Esme, hi.”

“Oliver-”

“History of art, apparently.” You said haughtily.

“Ouch. Who said that?” Esme sat down beside you, still smiling at Oliver.

“Michael.”

“Who’s Michael?”

“Michael Gavey.” The man in question announced himself by extending a long arm in Esme’s direction. She shook his with slight shock and raised her eyebrows at Oliver. He lowered his head in shame.

“Our girl here’s a history of art student.” Esme patted your hand. If you, Esme and Oliver expected this to soften Michael, it didn’t work.

“Ah,” he smiled, mirth lighting his eyes. “That’s why you’re so tetchy. Which school was it then? Cheltenham? Roedean?”

“She went to state comp actually,” Ever your champion, Esme came to your defence.

“Scholarship student?” Michael sneered.

“No,” you rebuffed quickly.

“What’s wrong with that? Me and Oliver here are.”

“Nothing You were the one trying to get me to say it was.”

Michael smiled with satisfaction and an awkward silence fell between the four of you. The clink of glasses and drunken chatter continued around you. This wasn’t the first charged student encounter that had happened in this pub, nor would it be the last.

“I suppose you think maths is superior?” You folded your arms and raised an eyebrow. A challenge. Prove it then.

“Of course it is,”

It was your turn to scoff. “Why can’t there be room for both?”

“There is room for both. Mathematics is just more important.”

“Jesus,” Oliver rubbed his hands over his face.

“Mathematics is the foundation for everything. The modern world as we know it wouldn’t exist without it. Technology, healthcare, finance, governance, everything. It prevents chaos. Without mathematics, society would collapse.” He fidgeted in his chair to turn more vividly towards you, his hands excitedly grasping for something in front of him that didn’t exist. Maths, probably. “We create predictions and complex design systems so that life as we know it can exist, and continue to exist.”

He looked at you as though you should have been impressed. You supposed his excitement was quite sweet. In truth, you knew maths was important. History of art student though you were, you weren’t an idiot. You were at one of the world’s top universities for God’s sake.

“But what’s the point of existing if there’s nothing to enjoy? To live for?”

“Pardon?” What had he expected? For you to roll over and kiss his feet? Take him round the back of the pub for a quick knee tremble? “Oh yes, Michael, tell me more about Fermat’s conjecture! More! More!”

“Art is what makes life worth living for. Its history helps us understand politics, religions, societies and peoples of the past.”

“All that from staring at a Bruegels?” Michael looked at Oliver with a laugh, hoping for back up. Oliver was tearing up a beer mat.

“Yes!”

“Well, it’s never done anything for me.”

His arrogance and ignorance was astounding. This final comment was the drop that sent you overflowing with exasperation. “Yes it has,” you snapped. Michael glared at you. “Aside from what I literally just said, art has done everything for you. Take today for example.”

At this, Michael sat forward. He couldn’t resist a reasoned argument with concrete evidence.

“You woke up this morning at Brasenose, is it?” He nodded. “At Brasenose, in a dorm with Carol Vorderman posters on the walls, posters designed by graphic designers who studied art. Those posters line the walls of a building almost five hundred years old. From barely known architects to Powell and Moya, each added to its history with their extensive understanding of art and beauty. For some reason you then got up and decided to put on that God awful tshirt which, although many would believe otherwise, was designed to be aesthetically pleasing or visually arresting. The latter it certainly is. There you go. Art.” You were on a role.

“I’m assuming you had lectures or tutorial today? The book you read? The covers were made by, you guessed it, artists. You came here with Oliver and decided to get a craft beer because you’re a pretentious prick, and got the darker of the two because, and I agree with you here, the label is prettier. You’re gonna go home in an hour or two when you’ve had one too many pints and ogled that pretty girl at the bar,” you pointed at Eleanor. “Whose thong caught your eye above her low rises. Fashion? That’s art by the way and extremely influential on society ‘as we know it’.” You quoted him back and loved the way his lips quirked into a tight line.

“And thinking of her and her pretty thong, you’ll whack out ZOO mag and whack out a swift one over some big-titted page three girl in a pair of lace knickers that were designed by someone with a fashion degree. Art.”

Esme and Oliver stared at you. A manic, self-satisfied smile was plastered on your face, and when you downed your pint to cool down from the warmth that outpouring had exerted, Oliver actually smiled. Michael said nothing. Did nothing. He was entirely, utterly unreadable. You wanted to smack him.

He glanced from you to Esme, to Oliver and at last to his pint. Like you had done, he picked it up, finish it in three gulps and placed it back on the table. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus.” What the fuck was he talking about? He spoke to his friend as if you and Esme had ceased to exist. “Going for a slash. Get me another pint please, Oliver? Thanks.” He stood from his chair, unfurling like a stick insect, and made purposefully for the gents’.

Your mouth fell open. Esme chuckled nervously. “He’s a charmer,” she said to Oliver.

“Yeah, ‘scuse,” he muttered, shuffling awkwardly to the bar.

You both sat in your chairs, baffled silence befalling of you. “Well, no double dates for us then.” Esme said.

You laughed. “No date for you fullstop.”

“Yeah,” Esme glanced at the bar where Oliver was now waving at someone. You watched as he made his way over to Felix Catton and his friends. “Bit dull, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Oliver sat down as the rest of the posho’s table cheered. “Though if he’s friends with Felix Catton…?”

“Didn’t realise you were so shallow?” Esme teased.

“I’m not! But the parties, Esme, the parties!”

“I know, I know, I’ll remember that Christmas one forever. Oh God, here he comes,” Esme shrank in her seat. Michael was weaving through the crowd back towards the table.

“Why isn’t he going to sit with Felix and Oliver?” You whispered. “He better not be coming back here.”

You and Esme watched as his approached slowed, faltering when he noticed Oliver and his pint were missing. He glanced around, looking at his feet as if to find Oliver on the floor. It was painful. Watching the realisation dawn on his face. You and Esme knew it before he did.

A hand raised in the air; he had spotted Oliver at Felix’s table. You watched, with pity and embarrassment, as Michael waved and Oliver turned away.

“Shit,” Esme said.

Hand moving to push up his glasses, Michael, with head hung low, left.

“Shit,” Esme said again. “Bet you feel like a bitch for shouting at him now.”

And despite his pomp and arrogance, his cynicism and creepiness, you really did feel awful.

Notes: The amount of research I did for this was wholly unnecessary. Added some links because 2006/2007 was quite a place. The script hit me like a fucking train. It says, “Back with Michael: CRUSHED.”

Many thanks to @thecruel for their help with the transcript of the Saltburn pub scene, and to @ewanmitchellcrumbs for the Michael Gavey inspo, your headcanons are always spot on.

Tags: @lexwolfhale* @theoneeyedprince @lovebittenbyevans @fan-goddess @ellrond @very-straight-blog @arcielee @tsujifreya @liv-cole @myfandomprompts @annoyingkittydetective* @elizarbell @solisarium @thekinslayersswordhand @nightdiamond8663* @slowlysparklyninja* @kate-to-the-ki @bellaisasleep @xxxkat3xxx @lacebvnny @moonriseoverkyoto @ewanmitchellcrumbs @moonlightfoxx @pendragora @aemonds-holy-milk @st-eve-barnes @sapphire-writes @babyblue711 @targaryenrealnessdarling @slytherincursebreaker @bottlesandbarricades @valeskafics @anjelicawrites @exitpursuedbyavulcan @barbieaemond @chattylurker @itbmojojoejo @humanpurposes @cyeco13 @heimtathurs @in-a-mountain-pool

*could not tag

[batboyblog]

My Super Gay/Queer Reading List

The Long Run by James Acker

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Another Dimension of Us by Mike Albo

Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak

Alan Cole Is Not a Coward by Eric Bell

Alan Cole Doesn’t Dance by Eric Bell

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

Felix Yz by Lisa Bunker

Last Bus to Everland by Sophie Cameron

Dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara

Peter Darling by Austin Chant

Carry the Ocean by Heidi Cullinan

The Love Interest by Cale Dietrich

Half Bad by Sally Green

Half Wild by Sally Green

Half Lost by Sally Green

Heartbreak Boys by Simon James Green

Gay Club by Simon James Green

You’re the One That I Want by Simon James Green

We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Henstra

Totally Joe by James Howe

After School Activities by Dirk Hunter

At the Edge of the Universe by Shaun David Hutchinson

The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried by Shaun David Hutchinson

We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson

The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley by Shaun David Hutchinson

A Complicated Love Story Set in Space by Shaun David Hutchinson

The Boy Who Couldn’t Fly Straight by Jeff Jacobson

Haffling by Caleb James

The Lightning-Struck Heart by T.J. Klune

A Destiny of Dragons by T.J. Klune

The Consumption of Magic by T.J. Klune

A Wish Upon the Stars by T.J. Klune

The Extraordinaries by T.J. Klune

Flash Fire by T.J. Klune

Heat Wave by T.J. Klune

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg

The Bridge by Bill Konigsberg

Destination Unknown by Bill Konigsberg

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

Every Day by David Levithan

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

Ryan and Avery by David Levithan

How to Repair a Mechanical Heart by J.C. Lillis

Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell by Tobias Madden

When Ryan Came Back by Devon McCormack

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Fraternity by Andy Mientus

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller

Hero by Perry Moore

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

More Than This by Patrick Ness

Junior Hero Blues by J.K. Pendragon

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

When Everything Feels Like the Movies by Raziel Reid

Kens by Raziel Reid

Emmett by Lev A.C. Rosen

Jack of Hearts by Lev A.C. Rosen

Camp by Lev A.C. Rosen

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez

Rainbow High by Alex Sanchez

Rainbow Road by Alex Sanchez

So Hard to Say by Alex Sanchez

The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers by Adam Sass

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer

All Kinds of Other by James Sie

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera

More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Freak Show by James St. James

Ray of Sunlight by Brynn Stein

The Dangerous Art of Blending In by Angelo Surmelis

366 Days by Kiyoshi Tanaka

The Language of Seabirds by Will Taylor

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Wild and Crooked by Leah Thomas

Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

Spin Me Right Round by David Valdes

Always the Almost by Edward Underhill

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White

Tumblr got rid of yellow so I couldn't do pride colors, sorry!

If you want help picking something out just send me an ask with what kind of thing you're looking for and I'll select something for you, and if you end up reading something because you saw this list, please let me know

[tallymonster]

Memories of Us chapter 9

AO3 link

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

Little baby warning, it does get angsty and there are some mentions of sex, no smut yet though, sorry guys.

Giving @cheesy-cryptid all the flowers for their beautiful art. Without it I wouldn't be writing this massive project I have given myself lol

Also giving flowers to my bestie @micropoe10 ✨ she's gonna be reading parts of this for the first time with everyone so I can't wait to see her reaction hehehe

Tag list:

@justporo @satanicspinosaurus @sleepy-timaeus @tragedybunny @davenswitcher @wayward-hel

Chapter 9

why cuts aren't healing

The relationship between Astarion and Octavia had changed since her little intrusion. She had seen him walking around without the glasses, finally. Whatever reasoning he had for that was lost on her, since he stopped speaking directly to her.

 He would just stare, those fire orange eyes seemed to burn into her seething with a mix of disappointment, rage, betrayal. Gale had the unfortunate duty of passing her messages from Astarion, working as their in between. 

 The cold notes Astarion would send in with Gale were only about work. No smarmy comments, no sarcastic airs, just boring work. Octavia crumples up and throws the note in the garbage next to her.

 "Do you think he's ever going to speak to me?" She asks Gale, flatly. She inhales deeply and slumps down on the chair. 

 "Octavia, you literally broke the one rule the man has for ALL OF US. What were you expecting? A handshake? A pat on the head? Please."

 Gale looked at her with an annoyed face, his tone not much further. "Listen, let him brood, it'll be good for him. For you too. Maybe you'll learn what 'private' means."

 Gale isn't hiding that he's mad, but there's a hint of concern behind it. He obviously cares for Astarion, but he can only do so much for these two. 

  --------------------—-------------------

 In his dusty office, Astarion still obsesses over the argument with Octavia. She was so afraid of him. Even as she was being torn down, she still looked at him with a nurturing curiosity.

 The entire thing confused him, why did she smell like Tav? Why do her eyes look at him like hers did? She reminded him so much of his lost love. Was he imagining it, or was it the regret playing tricks on his mind again?

It had been one hundred and fifty years since he let the human go. She was desperate to join him in the Underdark, she could help him, they were in love after all. 

 Somehow Astarion couldn't ask her to give up her life in the sunlight for him. She screamed, begged, pleaded, fought, and cried. Nothing would move him from this firm stance. He couldn't take her from the only life she had known above ground. Especially not now that they were all being hailed as heroes. 

 The look on her face when he denied her was still seared into his memories. The necessary pain he had to put her through to save her. He was too cowardly to face it, so he left in the night. 

 Never looking back at the Elfsong Tavern, never seeing his friends, letting them all kill him in their minds. They were all dead now, or they assumed he was. There was no point in dwelling on his own actions. 

 Still, he can't help but wonder, what happened to them? Did Lae'zel and Shadowheart ever forgive his choices? Was his Gale truly happy like the letters his great grandson gave him said? Did Wyll and Karlach even make it to Avernus? Astarion let the sorrow fill his core, the despair growing and twisting into total apathy. 

 He often thought of his last night with Tav, the way he had to lie to calm her down. Her tears as he kissed her worries away. His hands on her body, feeling her come undone with every touch. She crashed her lips on his desperately, the worry and insecurities followed by hunger and lust. 

 Her soft cries of pleasure and heartbreak echo in his ears as they have each night for almost a century and a half. Her slow caresses were pleading him to stay, to never leave her alone. They had grown so much together, she trusted him with her blood, her body, and her heart. They had risked everything and came out the other side. 

 He decides then to bring her to bliss one last night before never indulging in her ever again. To feel her running hot in his icy veins, warm with her glorious blood. She was always so generous with her gifts. Her blood, her love, her body. He should be ashamed to want to leave them all behind. 

So many have killed for the type of love and affection that he had in his hands. He was foolish to let it slip through like the ashes he would turn into if he walked into the sun like he imagined so long ago. 

 His mind couldn't help but wonder.

 

Was she happy? Did she forget him? Did she ever have the family she wanted? She always wanted kids, and even though he wasn't sure if he could give her some without dangerous risks, he would have done it for her. Even if he wasn't sure he ever wanted them himself, he .

 He closes his eyes and hears her voice, soft and melancholy in the cold white hue of the moonlit night.

 I will do anything for you, I love you. 

 You have me, my Star.

 I'm yours forever. 

 Don't leave me. 

 

Please.

 The memories were all too painful, he tried hard to suppress the anger, grief and regret. but it burned like a house fire. Slowly, then all at once. He slams one of his fists onto the desk in front of him. The pain shoots up his wrist and arm, making his shoulder vibrate. 

 He winces and swipes off the papers on his desk, he keeps punching the desk until he can't feel his right hand. The good thing is that he won't be too badly hurt if he kills a big animal tonight. It should still be easy to catch a deer, even in this weakened state. 

 

The aggression won't stop, he wants to yell, to destroy this whole facade, but he can't. His whole 'new' life is built on the foundation of his old one. He can't move on, no matter how many times he's lied to himself about it. No matter how many times he's tried he can still sense her. 

 There was a bit of a complication now, though. Octavia reminded him so much of her. The thought kept replaying in his head, all the little things he had noticed these last months.

 She had the same tilted laugh, the same sweet smile that lights up her face, her way of challenging him to get a playful rise out of him. Maybe there was something there but now he can't face her. Why had she violated his only wish, what could possibly compel her to sneak in and spy on him like that? 

 Astarion lets all the emotion rise, his breathing quickens, his chest feels like it's tightening, the pain that was in his arm takes over his whole body and he falls into the chair behind him.

 His head throbs, and it almost feels like that fucking tadpole made its way back inside him. The room is spinning and shrinking all at once. The shadows in the corners slowly growing darker around him.

  The sound that comes from him erupts from his lungs, a rumbling sob that he can't suppress. The little he feels now comes out in giant tears, he gasps for air as if he's digging himself out of the grave again.

 Nothing can stop the flow of emotions rippling from within. The shaky breaths tumble out, bathed in the chill of the room. He buries his head in his hands and lets it all melt away. 

 The sorrow he feels washes over him, the memories and lost time all pouring out. The weight of the years, the grief, all the stupid things he said and did that hurt them. He never meant to do any of it. He was just trying to protect them. His loneliness kept them safe, it was the only thing he could tell himself after all these years of self isolation.

 As much as he hates putting up his walls with Octavia, she seems remorseful enough to respect this distance he's forced upon them. Practically punishing herself to gain back his favor. He can tell with the way she'll quickly turn away when he catches her looking at him, or how her eyebrows do that thing…

 Oh no. 

 Oh Gods…

 The realization hits him all at once. He's got to apologize if he even thinks this could work in his favor.

 She deserves some compassion from him, at least. It's time to let go of the fear and to show someone he can be open to feeling like this again. 

 He's scared, always has been. It feels different now somehow, he only has to open the door and let it in, whether it will welcome him or engulf him in its flames was to be discovered in due time.

[chronicbeans]

To be Timeless, for the Sun (A Short Welcome Home AU Story)

Looks like you were snooping around in the Boss' office! Let's see what you find! Oh! And don't get caught! (I really gotta find a name for this AU I have going on-).

TW: Cults, Narcissism, Mentions of Killing, Written Descriptions of Gore

☀️What are you doing? This is a bad idea. Snooping around in your boss' office after work hours is simply devious, at best, if not outright criminal! If curiosity killed the cat, however, your pelt would be hung up and dry if you didn't do something to satisfy that curiosity. After all, satisfaction brought that curious cat back, right?

☀️You have seen your boss, William Dorelaine, entering the Playfellow Workshop after hours. He even brings a group of people with him. Most of those people look the same, with only one person being different everytime they enter. You never stick around long enough to see them leave. He has also taken to talking, more than usual, about how he knows great things. He has always had narcissistic tendencies, but something is causing it to grow.

☀️You turn on your flashlight, peeping around Mr. Dorelaine's office. The first thing your eyes snap onto is the large Welcome Home poster behind his office chair. His favorite character has always been Home, for some reason, and this poster has Home front and center. Turning around, you see the little Home figure on his desk, alongside a matching Wally Darling figure. His desk is a mess, with papers strewn about.

☀️You flash the light up, seeing the numerous clocks in his office. How many clocks does one man need? Most of them don't even seem to be working, as the hands are still as stone. The wallpaper is odd, too, with its sun and moon patterns. You have been noticing the increase of day and night murals around the studio, but you always thought it was for the childish art style and not the contents of it. Or maybe something like "the sun will always rise tomorrow"? To make a children's show, you need a positive attitude and to be in the right mood to do it. Now you are starting to realize that your boss might just like suns and moons. Good for him, you guess? It isn't hurting anybody, after all.

☀️Then, you spot it: a book on his desk, with a symbol on it. It looks sort of like a sun, with a crescent moon in one half of the circular center, and an hourglass right in the middle of it all. You assume it must be a diary of sorts, due to the little lock on the side. Diaries are the only book that you can think of having locks on them, after all. Mr. Dorelaine has always been pretty crafty, after all. He loves to modify things to make them "more beautiful" in his eyes. Considering his apparent love of suns and moons, as well as his clock collection, it wouldn't be that odd for him to put a design like that onto his diary. After all, the two hatchets by his door have little designs on them. He decorated everything.

☀️You pick up the book, and to your surprise, it is unlocked. How odd... You flip through it, starting at the first page. "The leader has told us to write down our experiences in his care. That is what I shall do, with great joy." You raise an eyebrow. So this is a diary, of sorts. Just a bit more complicated. Leader? You really are starting to feel like you have found something you shouldn't have. You can't stop now, though. You might as well read further. You could take it home with you, but Mr. Dorelaine will then notice that something so important is missing. He'd probably do anything figure out who it is that took it...

☀️You flip forward a few pages. "The great leader took me in when I had nowhere to go. Fresh out of college, he saw my brilliant potential, unlike the others. I was a wayward soul with no control over myself. This waywardness made me have no purpose in my life. He took me in and corrected me. He showed me the brilliant sunlight of the divine dimension waiting for those who take the good path in life. He gave me purpose."

☀️You feel uneasy... this sounds like a cult. You regret not taking your camera with you. You could've taken pictures of this if you brought it. You don't want to call the police without adequate information, though. You need to read just a bit further. Flipping ahead, you find a page that has a smudged, red thumbprint on it.

☀️"It was a bit scary, at first. However, the leader told me it was a necessary deed. The divine plan for my brother's show couldn't be completed with him in the picture. It was after the party, when he was walking to his car, that we took him to the leader. My heart was pumping so hard and fast that I could hear it in my head. Everything was a blur that night. The last thing I remember of that night was taking a hatchet and cracking his skull open, before red covered my shoes. I then..."

☀️You slam the book shut. You have to get out of here. NOW. You were right when you read the first part. This is something you shouldn't have seen. You need to call someone. The police! You have something to tell them that is going to make them start an investigation. Even if the first part, about the odd, cult like behavior isn't enough to cause them to look into Mr. Dorelaine, this part about his brother? It is going to be enough. You turn around, and-

☀️There stands William Dorelaine, a scowl on his pretty face. He shuts the door, locking it as he asks "Snooping around my office? Explain yourself. Now. What did you see?"

☀️Your face must be as pale as a ghost, right now. He continues, grabbing one of his two hatchets and walking over to you. No... no, no! The diary entry... This isn't good! "Are you proud of yourself? What did you see? How much do you know?" You swallow thickly. It is probably better to be honest, right? You are much more scared of lying, only for him to catch it and get more angry. If you are honest, there is an ever so slight chance he might spare you, right? You open your mouth, saying "I umm... I saw the book. I'm sorry! I won't tell anybody about what I read! I-"

☀️He shushes you, glaring down at you as he moves the hatchet in his hands, as if daring you to speak out of turn. "I can't trust you. Do you know just how important all of this is? Just how important YOU are?" You raise an eyebrow, shaking your head. He chuckles "Of course you don't. Unlike myself, you haven't seen the light. I have been waiting for an excuse to get you tangled up in this community I am a part of. You would be perfect. Curious, wayward, no future plans or purpose outside of the present... Just like I was before I was brought in."

☀️You shake your head, causing that scowl to return to his face. "You should be grateful that I am sparing you. You'll soon see. Our purpose is to become timeless. To worship our sun for eternity, so that we will bask in its glory and warmth. It is far too much for me to explain at the moment. It is unfortunate we had to have this conversation under such... unfortunate circumstances. Don't worry, though. We will care for you."

☀️ You're trapped. As he was speaking, his friends entered the room. Looks like you have no choice but to go along with them...

☀️"You'll see. Welcome Home is just the start of something far greater. Just wait and watch."

[tgarnsl]

if you're still doing the wip ask game, could you tell us a little about 'necro' and 'woods'? :3

‘necro’ is a joke title for the less catchy title of Putting the Romance Back into Necromancy. tl;dr (too long; didn’t write): Ewen stops Keith from fully dying, but brings him back in a half-alive form that, despite Ewen’s best efforts, is still dying (though not in a body horror way. more in a ‘time is running out’ way.)

‘woods’ is the one you’ve seen before, which is kind of a blend of folk ballads and heavily influenced by The Decembrists’ Hazards of Love album. essentially, vaguely Tam Lin but with some additional elements. warnings for mentions of suicide attempt (fairly non-explicit.)

necromancy:

“Your friend will die,” said Archie quietly but firmly, as Ewen shut the door to Keith’s bedchamber behind him. “The spell you wove to draw his mind back to his body was not enough. For whatever reason, his soul remains trapped on the border between life and death, neither quite one nor the other.” He shook his head. “It is a black art, Eoghain, to stop a man’s natural death in this way: such things are proscribed for a reason. I cannot imagine what drove you to such lengths.”

Ewen could give him no answer, for the truth was so simple as to be absurd. He had stayed Keith’s death for no better cause than that of his fear of losing yet another he loved. A stupid, selfish fear, and one that Keith now paid the price for.

woods:

You return to me at last, whispered a voice as smooth as water into Keith’s ear. My wayward child.

“I have come to ask a boon, Mother,” said Keith.

Speak.

“I have done as you asked. I served as a soldier of the King and brought victory to his kingdom.”

And in exchange, I gave you the form of a man to wear. Would you ask more of me yet?

Between the trees, the figure of a regally tall woman emerged, as pale and glowing as the moon.

“It is not for my sake that I ask this of you,” said Keith. His mother paused before the tallest of the standing stones and looked at him, her gaze piercing.

No, she said. Her lips did not move as she spoke. It is for his sake. And Keith saw in the black depths of the stone, as vividly as though it were before him, a vision of Ewen Cameron, lying curled on his side beneath the roots of a great oak, just as Keith had left him. His face was ashen, and he shivered a little in the cold, but he did not stir as thin roots pushed their way free of the soil and wrapped themselves around his legs and body.

He is dying.

“Yes,” said Keith, his nails digging into his palm. “Can you heal him?” The roots tightened around Ewen’s injured arm, and Keith watched as Ewen's face twisted in agony. “Mother—”

I can heal him. But I would ask a boon in return. Her beautiful face was blank.

Keith bowed his head. “Anything,” he said. “My life, my body…”

Give him to me, so that I might do with him what I will.

Ice gripped Keith’s heart. “No, no,” he stammered. “Ask me for anything but this, please.”

He will die.

Keith met her night-black eyes. “But he is my true love,” he said. A pathetic, weak excuse, but it was the truth.

Ah, my poor child, said his mother, a smile spreading across her face like a rift opening in the earth. You forget yourself too easily. She moved towards him, the dead leaves of the forest floor muffling her steps. Would you like to remember? She waved her hand, and Keith saw before him the life that had once been his. He saw the great oak, where beneath a canopy thick and green with new life, a young soldier, who knew little of affection, awkwardly and with great sincerity swore pledges of love and fidelity to a woman with hair the colour of sunlight. Too late, he remembered.

“No,” he murmured, but it was not enough to stem the tide of memory. He saw the woman again, smelled her powder and perfume, heard her high, lying voice and the snap of ivory as she broke her fan, frustrated that he would not respond to her. He listened to nothing of what she had to say; he would not even look at her. He stood already beneath the great oak, a length of rope in his hand.

It should have been a good end, a clean end. But the branch had been rotten, and he had fallen. And there he lay, at the foot of the great tree, as a silver woman bent over him and promised that in exchange for his memories and service, he would live. He could not refuse her.

[ultratreeservicesau]

Seasonal Pruning Calendar: When to Prune Different Tree Species

Pruning is like the gentle art of tree grooming – a way to help your trees look their best, stay healthy, and flourish year after year. It's a bit like giving your garden a haircut, but with a purpose. However, just like with haircuts, the timing of when you trim your trees can make a world of difference. To be a tree-taming expert, you need to follow a seasonal pruning calendar that takes into account the unique needs of different tree species.

You see, trees aren't all the same, and neither are their pruning schedules. Some prefer a springtime trim to usher in the growing season, while others thrive on a late fall snip when their leaves have fallen. By knowing when to wield your pruning shears, you can unlock the full potential of your trees, enhancing their beauty and ensuring their vitality.

Let's dive deeper into the seasonal tree pruning Sydney calendar and provide more details on why each season is the ideal time for pruning different tree species:

Spring Pruning: March to May

Fruit Trees (Apple, Pear, Cherry, Peach): Pruning fruit trees in spring is all about setting the stage for a bountiful harvest. By trimming before bud break but after the coldest part of winter, you encourage vigorous new growth and maximise fruit production. Focus on removing dead, diseased, or crowded branches to improve air circulation and sunlight penetration.

Deciduous Trees (Maple, Oak, Elm): Early spring is the perfect time for pruning deciduous trees. They're still dormant, which means they're less stressed by the process. Pruning before new leaves emerge but after the harshest winter weather has passed minimises the risk of injury during pruning in winter.

Flowering Trees (Dogwood, Magnolia, Cherry Blossom): These trees should be pruned immediately after they finish flowering in the spring. Waiting until after flowering ensures you won't accidentally remove flower buds for the next year. Pruning at this time helps shape the tree and maintain its aesthetic appeal.

Summer Pruning: June to August

Evergreen Trees (Pine, Spruce, Juniper): While summer isn't the primary pruning season for evergreen trees, it's suitable for light maintenance. Trim any wayward branches to shape the tree and remove dead or diseased growth. Avoid heavy pruning during this season to prevent undue stress.

Fall Pruning: September to November

Deciduous Trees (Maple, Oak, Birch): Late fall, when the leaves have fallen, is the ideal time for structural pruning of deciduous trees. The absence of leaves allows you to better assess the tree's branching structure and make precise cuts. Pruning at this time also prevents winter storm damage.

Oak Trees: If you have oak trees, it's critical to prune them in late fall to reduce the risk of oak wilt disease transmission by sap-feeding beetles. Pruning in late fall or winter is safer because the beetles are most active in the spring and early summer.

Winter Pruning: December to February

Dormant Fruit Trees (Apple, Pear, Cherry, Peach): Pruning dormant fruit trees during the winter months is essential for their overall health and shape. Doing so before late winter or early spring allows wounds to heal before the growing season, reducing the risk of disease entry. Focus on removing dead, weak, or crowded branches.

Shade Trees (Maple, Oak, Elm): Winter is an ideal time for major structural pruning of shade trees. Without leaves obstructing your view, you can better assess the tree's form and make precise cuts. This helps in maintaining their structural integrity and aesthetics.

Evergreen Trees (Pine, Spruce, Juniper): While not the primary season for evergreen pruning, light maintenance pruning can be done in winter. Remove dead or diseased branches to improve the tree's appearance and health.

Remember these general pruning tips:

Always use sharp, clean pruning tools to make clean cuts that heal quickly.

Remove dead, diseased, or crossing branches to improve airflow and reduce disease risk.

Never remove more than 1/3 of a tree's canopy in a single year to avoid stress.

Consult an arborist for larger or more complicated pruning tasks.

By adhering to this seasonal pruning calendar and considering the specific needs of different tree species, you'll be well on your way to maintaining healthy, beautiful trees in your landscape. 

[celcstialls]

brilliant fingertips traverse the plain of bare, tanned back before him - uncalloused faux flesh mapping each dip of muscle and wayward scar. albedo loves him like this, morning sunlight filtering through the curtains and bathing the resting calvary captain in a golden glow. he thinks he looks angelic, a flawless creature - a god, this prince, suited for him and him alone. sweet kisses follow the path of markings along kaeya's shoulder, a sign of their hurried couplings past, before he reaches the captain's ear. sweeping away dark hair, a heart-breakingly reverent kiss finds the younger man's cheek, and is punctuated by a whisper soft murmur in a language long dead. "happy birthday, kaeya. i look forward to so many more with you."

Gently stirred from his slumber- the stretch of his back is almost cat-like. To be woken by the cool touches of his favourite Alchemist is most certainly a pleasant awakening for the Calvary Captain.

Eyes, blue and gold, glance over his shoulder to admire the manmade beauty before him. As much as the other would probably deny it- Albedo is quite the work of art, for someone so talented in the craft.

Kaeya purrs out a sigh, those lingering kisses soothing any cravings his soul demanded, body shifting ever so slightly so that one could snake an arm comfortably around the other's waist. "Every day is something to look forward to with you in it, Albedo." The knight replies. His ancient words are rusty, but speaking to him in that tongue, it just feels right. Quickly, he cranes his neck to meet the other's lips- stealing one more kiss, with a smile. "Thank you."

[ncmvds]

:: Hallows Eve Verse

|| Hello and welcome my friends... below lies the Halloween verse for Apalla and Nova. Go forth with caution! 👀 👻 🎃

The ancient house creaked and moaned heavily in the dark autumn breeze, but stood firm in the light of the full moon. A faint flicker of a candle could be seen from the front window- as warm as it might have been, most had not the courage to go near on such a frightful night.

The folk living in the town nearby all knew of the cursed sisters that lived in the woods, rarely to be seen. The eldest; as pale as the first snow, seen frequently mumbling to shadows that reached-out to her in the street.

Then the youngest; friendly and approachable, her smile bright in the sunlight but harboring large sinister fangs. The rumor circled of her hunts in the dark to feed her carnivorus appetite.

Both haunted the town with their presence all year, but tonight was the time of the unnatural- the monstrous and the dead.

Tonight was Halloween.

|| To make things a bit more clear, in this verse Nova is a medium that can talk to spirits, ghosts, and demons, but it very much hinders her everyday life. Especially because most of the people in town thinks she's crazy, but also some of the things she sees can be truly horrifying like mangled and rotting spirits, children's pained screams in the night, and whispered secrets of the beyond that she has never wanted to know. Apart from that, she is a human in this verse. Her hair is a reasonable length (still long) and she still has albinism.

|| Apalla, on the other hand, was cursed as a child to be a monster. She essentially looks the same as her canon verse, but her features are much more monstrous and cat-like. (ie basically this art here done by the lovely @cardiacginger !! 💋 💋) Apalla requires human meat in order to survive and often goes out at night to hunt for wayward souls that no one would miss.

[waywardsunlight]

Majestic Creatures

[hitorimaron]

blue

[potteresque-ire]

Commentary ~ Little Red Little Green Episode 18, “Fruits & Found Family”

Link to original post in Chinese, posted 2021/05/23. Link to official English translation.

(Disclaimer / Notes + Commentary under the cut!) (TW: possible eating disorder)

Disclaimer / Notes:

While the posts by Little Red Little Green (LRLG) are among my most favourite candies, I’d like to remind everyone that they are fake rumours, and should be read and enjoyed as such. ie, all CPN below!

The English translation linked above is the only one authorised by the Fake Rumour House; therefore, please treat all content below as a very casual, very *unofficial* convo between fellow turtle friends! ❤️💛💚

With Chinese being a highly region-specific language, my reactions to it is necessarily filtered through my background, which is, admittedly, somewhat removed from Gg’s, Dd’s and LRLG’s. However, it is not uncommon for even c-turtles (and several times, LRLG themselves) to be lost with what they read / heard due to regional differences ~ which reflects the reality of communicating in the Sinosphere. In fact, the regionality of the dialects used by different “characters” in LRLG’s dialogues is among the most critical elements that make these posts so authentic-sounding, and so difficult to replicate. A fun activity of following LRLG is to watch c-turtles patch their regional knowledge together, from local slangs to food choices, to make sense of what’s going on. 

Okay, with that all said *phew* ... onto the commentary! “p. X” refers to the panel number in the official English translation (there are 7 total in the Twitter post). 

p1. “Fairy”

Likely referring to the similarity between Gg’s current role for 玉骨遥 (The Longest Promise) and LWJ. Dd was praising Gg for being “fairy-like”; Chinese “fairies” (仙) have a certain style especially in visual media, similar to ... LWJ’s ~ otherworldly, white robes that billow in the wind, peaceful to the point of distant, scholarly, delicate. In between the lines, Gg likely said he was simply playing LWJ (hence, the ”act another me” in the translation), which Dd protested... and said Gg was simply playing himself. Whether that means DD IS NOT LWJ!!!!! 😡😡😡 or something else, we’ll know what we get to watch the show!

p1-p2. “Heat”

Yes about the Chang’e 嫦娥 reference!! Despite Houyi 后羿 shooting down 9/10 suns and saving the day, his wife is, indeed, more famous (and therefore the star, the more powerful one), because she’s frequently featured in Mid-Autumn festival art, along with her pet rabbit 玉兔 (”Jade Rabbit”),:

(Chang’e with her bunny, traditional Chinese painting. Source.)

Below is Gg’s rendition of Chang’e / Jade Bunny pair ~ Chang’e being the superman in the drawing while Jade Bunny is crouching on the planet!! 

Guess of the missing convo from Gg’s side: Gg had wanted to bring something to Hengdian (where the filming of The Longest Promise was taking place) to cool himself down, and Dd had said it wasn’t necessarily. Hence Dd’s “My bad my bad” and the promise to send that something to Gg.

The loveliest line in this segment for me—and for many c-turtles— is the one about white hair. Turning grey a common, but very old-fashioned way of expressing worry and poor Dd, who hasn’t even turned 24, is claiming he was turning white because he got so worried every time Gg complained about the heat (Aww). 

Turning grey with worry isn’t limited to romantic situations — it may happen to doting parents with wayward children, for example, or to ancient patriots over their crumbling kingdom. However, it’s also one of the more (very!) dramatic ways to communicate tragic love in Chinese fiction before Western influence allows “love”, as a term / word / character, to be used explicitly in writing romance. 

Here’s a little example, a little diversion that may be of interest. Those who are familiar with the Wuxia classic Return of the Condor Heroes 神雕俠侶 by Jin Yong 金庸, whether it’s the book or its numerous visual adaptations, may remember how the hero, Yang Guo 楊過, went white at his temples overnight after his Shifu and lover, Xiao Long Nv (小龍女), didn’t show up at the cliff at the end of his 16-year wait for her.  

Set photo from a TV adaption of Return of the Condor Heroes, 1995. Turtles may find the actress playing the perenially white-wearing, calm-to-the point-of-aloof Xiao Long Nv, Carmen Li 李若彤, familiar ~ she also played Lan Yi in The Untamed. 

The 16-year wait, the invitation to Carmen to play Lan Zhan’s ancestor (when the two shared similarities in aesthetics and personality), were two of the three references from Return of the Condor Heroes I picked up from The Untamed (the last one was more specific—WWX mentioned Yang Guo’s master 獨孤求敗). This tribute is unconfirmed, but MXTX did say before that Jin Yong’s works were her inspiration. I also read a (small) discussion on whether LWJ’s hair carried a few pieces of white in the final episode, or if the lighter strands in it were a trick of the sunlight. (Here’s a screenshot of the approximate place to look!!) 

While I lean towards the latter (the sunlight), turning white with worry, with love, is a tradition in Chinese storytelling. Here’s a little something I’ve noticed too, on this note ~ both in the actual interviews and in these fake rumours, Dd’s word choices, the way he conveys emotions are sometimes surprisingly traditional. It can be because of his background (which would require a study of how Luo Yang people and Koreans talk); it can be because the traditional way of talking allows for fewer words to be said, fewer things to have to be explicitly explained (example: LWJ), but the effect is that Dd has supplied the most romantic lines in LRLG’s posts because of that ~ romantic because it harks back to the rhythm, the themes of old poetry, of ancient stories that, as were true everywhere in the world, were about love. 

Okay, back to the rumour (and hoping Dd won’t look like Bad Wig Yang Guo in a few more summers!) ....

The line after the one about white hair ... the way I understand the original Chinese sentence is “Heat is The Reason”: ie, anything Dd wants Gg to do and Gg disagrees, Gg would use heat as The Reason (R) to not do it. This anything may be eating, for example, which also has a strong possibility as conventional Chinese wisdom says that heat causes people to lose appetite. Dd’s worry would therefore be: Gg refusing to eat because he claims it’s too hot to do so.

“Corny joke” ~ the Chinese for this is, literally, “cold 冷 joke 笑話”, which becomes a pun as the gzry (team members)’s joke was about the (cold) winter and black hair. So... Dd threw a corny joke to combat a corny joke :D .

p3. “Apple”

The first half I also had to rely on c-turtles to help me interpret what it meant! Regional dialects aside, LRLG has captured dls’s very quick wit, the way his ideas freely hop from one concept to the next and this hopping carries traditional + popular cultural references that I know only a fraction of, not being a local after all. 

I’ve read an additional interpretation of this segment: “big fruit” 大果兒 (as in dls: “Those are all big fruits, all big fruits”) is a Northern Chinese, traditional slang for women—dls might have connected that with the previous line in the convo about being Guowang, as explained in the translation, and “big and juicy” + “touch to feel” being suggestive phrases. Then, given the rare usage of the big fruit = women slang, dls expressed surprise that Dd understood what he meant, went on to say he expected Gg to know it (implying Gg could’ve taught Dd the meaning) ... 

Which led to the entertaining part of this segment. Dd was like “You guys (= Gg + dls) talked?” Dls appeared to have thought of the scenario customarily inviting this question (scenario: someone on the verge of catching their spouse cheating) and began playacting that scenario, started to stammer ... as if he had just been got caught trying to chat up someone’s spouse  ~  ”I-I-I....how to say it ...”. Dd caught on dls’s playacting and went along, continued with the “accusation”: “You’re stammering”. Dls then noted that Dd’s accusation was scary and Dd smiled, ending the playact ~ so, ah, readers, never mess with Dd’s spouse!! Dd gets scary!! 

(BTW: ”nijia na kouzi” 你家那口子 was explained in the translation for a reason ~ It’s a warm, friendly term for a dear friend’s spouse. 😊)

p4. Lychees

Lychees. Has everyone tried them? It’s important not to over-eat them though...

In which the “Feeding Gg” saga continues! This segment is one of those that are wonderful for fic writers who wish to capture Gg and Dd in words. Gg, like many brought up in traditional families, has trouble saying “no” outright, which is often considered rude. As such, he resorted to delay tactics, something he had also done with the fried noodles in The Makeup Room BTS. 

In the BTS, his delay tactics had been to argue that Dd hadn’t eaten his box of noodles and therefore, he couldn’t start (~2:35 mark)—as proper manners indeed dictated. In this dialogue, his delay tactics was to say he’d eat the lychees later, that the lychees would make him too full for the proper meal (rice). 

A cute thing about this convo is that rather than pouting and grumbling his only being LWJ’s replacement (as he had hilariously done in the BTS), Dd had, apparently over the last three years, become an expert on countering such delay tactics. He peeled the lychees, which not only removed a major obstacle for eating, but also set a timer as peeled lychees get dry quickly (and Gg, despite being a picky eater, didn’t seem to like to waste food). He said the fruit could make appetiser. He got the help of their team members, who assured Gg that two lychees would be all right.

Gg’s response to the assurance... takes a little time to explain. 

The original Chinese line for “Great, great, you’re so awesome” was 絕了絕了你們絕了。 “絕了”, a popular phrase used by Chinese netizens, was repeated three times.

絕, literally, means the extreme, the absolute, the end. 絕了 means pretty much the same ~ a thing that is 絕了 is standing en pointe at the edge of the cliff that is The Absolute End of a spectrum. It is the Ultimate. It can't be surpassed. It’s unbeatable. 

絕了 is usually used in a positive sense, as in the English translation, with the positive being implied. If I say the LWJ photo above is 絕了, for example, I don’t need to specify that the extreme in 絕 stands on the good end. It’s understood given the audience of this post are mostly turtles (HELLO *waves*). We’re all heart-eyes here. We agree, without saying, that this photo is The Top, The Pinnacle; it can’t be better. 絕了 is higher praise than Excellent; it’s so good that there are no adjectives for it. Its own presence defines How Good It Is. 

But 絕了 doesn’t have to be positive. If my audience is Su She ... he’s likely to take the same “This LWJ photo is 絕了” to mean the Mariana Trench kind of Absolute—the bottom of the bottom, the Unbeatable, Adjective-Defying Worst. 

絕了 allows for that understanding too.

In this scenario, I interpret Gg’s 絕了 as taking the meaning of both extremes (which make it a fantastic phrase choice!): that Gg thought Dd and the team members were being both the Absolute Best (for thinking of Gg, caring for him) AND the Absolute Worst (for going against his wish to not eat!) Gg’s 絕了 also signals defeat; if Dd and his team members were The Absolute ... Whatever, then poor Gg had no choice but to yield to their wishes. I can already imagine his “I can’t believe I lose this way” Look (see: every rock-paper-scissors he lost, which was ... pretty much all of them), mixed with, perhaps, a healthy amount of bunny tooth warning (how dare Dd et al banded up against him)...

Those bunny teeth had to be taken care of, right? And so Dd went on to say lychees being good omen that ensure things would go smoothly for the eater... targeting Gg’s being a, as c-turtles call it, 小迷信 (literally, “Little Superstitious”, a young + adorable + superstitious person). Dd said that to help Gg justify the choice to eat, to make Gg feel better about his defeat. 

(Of note: I had actually never heard of lychees being associated with good luck before, and a quick search online also didn’t yield any result. This could be a relatively rare association Google failed to catch ... or something Dd made up on the fly to make Gg happy.) 

(Lychees have, however, been associated with romance. If Emperor’s Smile 天子笑 was The Love Drink in The Untamed, then what is Concubine’s Smile 妃子笑? Answer: it’s the RL name of a type of lychees, lychees being the fruit very much adored by Yang Yuhuan 楊玉環, the consort of the Emperor Xuanzong (685-762 BCE) of the Tang Dynasty and one of the four most beautiful woman in Chinese history. Since lychees had only been grown in southern China, the emperor had had the fruit couriered, in express mode involving many horses, to the palace up north to please his favourite wife. Lychees had become a symbol of love from that historical tale.)

Did Gg get Dd’s message then, the love and care packaged in those peeled, sweet fruit awaiting his bite? Yes, but not without a little more fight! “Eat eat eat, (I’ll eat) until you go bankrupt” is a literal translation of his final line. Tonally, I can see the following as being an alternative translation: 

“Fine fine fine. I’ll eat, it’s not like I can bankrupt you by eating anyway!”

If it sounded a little sulky, that’s because it did ... a little sulky AND fiery. As expected from our favourite Chongqing Big Pepper 😂😂😂 (Poor Gg).

Dd smiled at that, needless to say. He won!!! He got Gg to eat!! The world shall rejoice!! 

p5. “Showtime”

There’s a show coming up for Dd (the YH concert maybe?), and Gg offered suggestions. 

The sweet point of this segment is about half-way down the conversation, in the piece of paper 📄 Gg gave to Dd (after “This is for you.”). Dd took the paper, noted the many words on it, and started saying 我把我整個靈魂, translated as “I bring my entire soul”.

c-Turtles have, based on these words, hypothesised that Dd was about to read out a quote that Gg had written on the paper, with the list of items Gg thought Dd should take, before Gg stopped him with a call of his name (“WYB”). The quote was included on the translation (”I give you my entire soul...only, a little good, love you.”) I have also talked about the same quote, in more detail, here.

I’m equally stumped on the final line of this segment. (Sorry!!)

p6. “Found Family”

It’s a heartwarming segment. While LRLG had previously noted that the TTXS bros had communicated with Gg, this segment made clear that they care for him like they do for Dd ~ as family.

* dls mailed Gg a lot of fruit for sharing with the film crew. “Family member needs to be impressive” is a rough translation, but this line does defy simple translation because 排面 a highly cultural concept that has much to do with the equally complex, Chinese concept of face (which this article explains... somewhat adequately). The message to take home is that dls cared enough about Gg that he wanted to make sure Gg wouldn’t lose face in front of the film crew; that, by having enough gifts (fruits) for everyone, Gg wouldn’t be viewed as cheap or inadequate or stingy, or whatever adjective that wouldn’t befit his top idol status. Because dls saw Gg as a member of his family. 

* The prescription from hg had been mentioned in a previous LRLG rumour. 方子 is a Chinese medicine prescription, which, unlike Western formulations, is individualised both to the discomfort / ailment and to the “body constitution” of the person who'll take it, the latter deciding the kind of ailments the person is susceptible to, and which ingredients are expected to be more effective. Chinese medicine also places a strong emphasises on long-term conditioning, whether it’s for recovery from a certain condition or for general good health. A good 方子 is therefore a far more complex and personal thing than, say, a scribble of “paracetamol” / “acetaminophen” on a piece of paper. :D

* fg’s gift for Gg (xx) is something for the waist. A brace support, maybe? For example?

My favourite line in this segment is when hg asked what will Gg and Dd do when they reach hg’s age. Given that the last two items (the prescription and xx) were health-related, I interpreted it as hg worrying about Gg and Dd’s health when they grow old... with all the health problems they already have. It’s the kind of thing a worried parent say to their children ~ my mom has said the same thing to me as well. 😢

p6. “The Cat Paw”

Not quite sure what’s happening here ... not sure what the cat paw is. (Sorry!!) But that é in the translation is Dd’s signature laugh (collection here), which is written as 鵝 (”Goose”) in Chinese 😂.

p7. “The Cat Toy”

Dd appeared to be shopping for a cat’s toy (something that can “hook the cat” in the translation, such that the cat can entertain itself and not rely on human companionship as much). Gg had already bought the toy though and sounded quite proud of it, told Dd to return the toy. The implied cat was, of course, Nut (堅果 Jianguo)... which had been repeatedly referred to in LRLG’s posts as Gg’s daughter.

p7. “Cool vs Cute”

Gg is often viewed as cute, and Dd as cool. Did Dd dislike Gg taking cute pictures for public consumption? Were they scheming an exchange of image? :D

And that’s it for this issue! Ooh, this took unexpectedly long ... I apologise for the ridiculous delay between the original post and this commentary! 

(I wrote half of it, then RL struck and I forgot about it.) (I’m hopeless.) (I need a 方子 for poor memory!!)

[batboyblog]

Super Gay Reading List

The Long Run by James Acker Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli Another Dimension of Us by Mike Albo Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak Alan Cole Is Not a Coward by Eric Bell Alan Cole Doesn’t Dance by Eric Bell The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan Felix Yz by Lisa Bunker Last Bus to Everland by Sophie Cameron The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara Peter Darling by Austin Chant Carry the Ocean by Heidi Cullinan The Love Interest by Cale Dietrich Half Bad by Sally Green Half Wild by Sally Green Half Lost by Sally Green Heartbreak Boys by Simon James Green Gay Club by Simon James Green We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Henstra Totally Joe by James Howe After School Activities by Dirk Hunter At the Edge of the Universe by Shaun David Hutchinson The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried by Shaun David Hutchinson We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley by Shaun David Hutchinson A Complicated Love Story Set in Space by Shaun David Hutchinson The Boy Who Couldn’t Fly Straight by Jeff Jacobson Haffling by Caleb James The Lightning-Struck Heart by T.J. Klune A Destiny of Dragons by T.J. Klune The Consumption of Magic by T.J. Klune A Wish Upon the Stars by T.J. Klune The Extraordinaries by T.J. Klune Flash Fire by T.J. Klune Heat Wave by T.J. Klune The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg The Bridge by Bill Konigsberg Destination Unknown by Bill Konigsberg The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan Every Day by David Levithan Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan How to Repair a Mechanical Heart by J.C. Lillis Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell by Tobias Madden When Ryan Came Back by Devon McCormack Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston Fraternity by Andy Mientus The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller Hero by Perry Moore I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson More Than This by Patrick Ness Junior Hero Blues by J.K. Pendragon The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros When Everything Feels Like the Movies by Raziel Reid Kens by Raziel Reid Jack of Hearts by Lev A.C. Rosen Camp by Lev A.C. Rosen Carry On by Rainbow Rowell Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez Rainbow High by Alex Sanchez Rainbow Road by Alex Sanchez So Hard to Say by Alex Sanchez The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers by Adam Sass The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer All Kinds of Other by James Sie They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith Freak Show by James St. James Ray of Sunlight by Brynn Stein The Dangerous Art of Blending In by Angelo Surmelis 366 Days by Kiyoshi Tanaka The Language of Seabirds by Will Taylor Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas Wild and Crooked by Leah Thomas Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas Spin Me Right Round by David Valdes Always the Almost by Edward Underhill Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White

Blue= realistic fiction Purple=fantasy/magic Green=for younger readers Pink=sci fi/magical realism

if you want help picking out a book send me an ask, also I love it when people let me know they read a book off the list

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

We Were Something, Don’t You Think So? [Chapter 5: The Saint Petersburg–Moscow Railway]

You are a Russian grand duchess in a time of revolution. Ben Hardy is a British government official tasked with smuggling you across Europe. You (kind of) hate each other.

This is a work of fiction loosely inspired by the events of the Russian Revolution and the downfall of the Romanov family. Many creative liberties were taken. No offense is meant to any actual people. Thank you for reading! :)

Song inspiration: “the 1” by Taylor Swift.

Chapter warnings: Some more sexual tension, drama on a train (not snakes on a plane), language, use of weapons, violence, death.

Word count: 7.8k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @imtheinvisiblequeen​ @okilover02​ @adrenaline-roulette​ @youngpastafanmug​ @m-1234​ @tensecondvacation​ @deacyblues​ @haileymorelikestupid​ @rogerfuckintaylor​ @yourlocalmusicalprostitute​ @im-an-adult-ish​ @someforeigntragedy​ @mo-whore​ @mellowfellowyellow​ @peculiareunoia​ @mischiefmanaged71​ @fancybenjamin​ @anne-white-star​ @theonlyone-meeeee​ @witchlyboo​ ​

Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

In Paris, the Prince of Wales is on leave.

He has a frosty glass of champagne in one hand, a cigar in the other, his head resting in the swale of Marguerite’s bare belly as they lay together in an unmade bed. They haven’t gone to sleep yet, and the first fingers of gilded sunlight are creeping up over the windowsill like the legs of a spider. A hundred miles away on the front, David’s fellow Grenadier Guards are fixing their bayonets and shoveling out trenches and stirring coffee in pots made of upturned helmets; but the Prince of Wales is spared such inconveniences as often as he can be. Marguerite twirls locks of his wispy blond hair and sips red wine, clumsily, drunkenly, splashing wayward crimson beads on her naked chest and giggling when David rises to lick them away.

“I heard the most awful rumor,” he says mid-yawn. His voice is groggy, his eyes sore and dipping shut for longer and longer intervals.

“What’s that?” Marguerite asks. She’s a skilled courtesan, unshakably glamorous, frivolous and cunning and fun. She’s exactly the sort of girl he likes.

“People are saying that one of the Romanov grand duchesses died in an accident. A stable burned down or something. Or maybe it was a greenhouse, I don’t recall. Somewhere out in the godforsaken wilderness, wherever they’re being held captive. I suppose it doesn’t really matter where. It might as well be the end of the world.”

“Horrible,” Marguerite murmurs sympathetically, stroking David’s cheek with the backs of her ringed, artful fingers. “You two were close?”

“In a manner of speaking. She was my father’s favorite out of all the cousins…and you know how infamously difficult he is to please. I probably would have ended up marrying her someday.”

“Oh, you poor thing.” Marguerite’s concern seems genuine. She’s a woman of the world, she has that wisdom that only comes with being battered by life; she knows she has no future as anybody’s wife, and she knows that David having a wife would change nothing between them, just as her own existence changes nothing between David and all those other women he occasionally calls home. “As if that family hasn’t suffered enough.”

“Uncle Nicky isn’t entirely innocent of wrongdoing, darling, believe me. But yes, they’ve fallen upon very hard times indeed.” David takes a deep, lazy drag off his cigar. “In any case, as in most tragedies there’s a silver lining to be found.”

“Is there?” Marguerite says, smiling angelically down at him. She knows how to read men, and she knows when their moods are lifting like sails awash with wind. She knows when it’s alright to smile again. “Tell me, mon chéri.”

“Well, Tatiana is still available.” David finished his champagne, puts out his cigar, and closes his eyes at last. “And she’s always been the most beautiful one.”

~~~~~~~~~~

I come downstairs in the morning with my hair clean and flowing and scented with perfume left for me by my considerate (if excessively gregarious) Italian hosts, my white dress painstakingly rid of cat hair, my steps proud and gliding. I had said that I wanted to feel more like myself, and that was true; but I also wanted to feel like someone Ben might notice if he passed her on the street, someone he might even like if he didn’t already know that her family was royal and therefore irredeemably distasteful to him. It occurs to me—as the Persians and Birmans and Himalayans observe with petulant eyes and swishing tails—that I could no more help being born to a tsar than Ben could help being born to an impoverished drunk, and I wonder what it will take for us to forgive each other. I find Ben outside in the courtyard, grim and smoking and watching the sun rise over townhouse roofs and thinning treetops.

“Looks great,” he says coolly when he sees my dress, then scoops up a handful of dirt from the garden and hurls it at me.

“Hey—!”

“And throw a sweater or something over it. And put your hair up.” He points at me with his cigarette. “You’re a typist, not a princess. Remember that, Your Majesty?”

“Your Imperial Highness.”

“I’ll get it right eventually.”

“You’re running out of time,” I pitch back. And that’s true: today we leave Moscow, and tomorrow we’ll be in Saint Petersburg, and a week or so after that we’ll be in London and have parted ways for the rest of our disparate lives. But Ben doesn’t seem to like that I’ve said this. His brow furrows, his frown deepens, there’s a new darkness in his eyes, jade turned to hunter. My best efforts have not won me any ground at all. He never cares what I’m wearing. I’m such an idiot, I tell myself with a sickening, sinking feeling, staring down at my shoes.

“Let’s go pack up the cart,” Ben says, a bit more gently now, the ice in his veins melting away. “The next service at Saint Basil’s starts in an hour.”

“Okay.” But I hesitate.

Ben sighs. “You still haven’t figured out how to braid your hair, have you?”

“I have not,” I admit.

“Alright.” He puts out his cigarette in an empty flowerpot and opens the back door for me. “We’ll take care of that too.”

~~~~~~~~~~

As it turns out, Joe Mazzello hasn’t been flirting with me after all; or, rather, he hasn’t been flirting with me any more than he flirts with literally everybody. He bats his scant auburn eyelashes at the women in church, at the pretty young street vendors thrusting handmade scarves and piping hot chebureki under our noses, at the harried mothers in the train station with disarrayed hair and wailing children, even at the stooped middle-aged lady pushing a cart loaded up with pavlovas and candies through the hallway of our train car. Joe attempts to charm his way into a discount—no easy feat considering his very poor Russian and the cart lady’s nonexistent English, let alone Italian—and I eventually intercede to translate. As the cart lady closes our compartment door and ambles away and Joe feasts upon his pavlovas (one of every flavor: vanilla, raspberry, honeycomb, and lemon cream), he studies me with those shrewd dark eyes.

“Your Russian is very good,” Joe says, wiping crumbs from his lips with the back of one hand.

I shrug, busying myself with my copy of Tarzan of the Apes, dismissive, flippant. “I’ve practiced a lot.”

“Yes, perhaps, but your Russian is better than your English.”

I startle, dropping my book. It hits the floor with a thump. I scramble to grab it, dodging Joe’s narrowing eyes, fidgeting with my dress and my tattered green sweater and my braided hair, stammering some useless reply. Ben—who had been writing in his notebook and gazing out the window as the bloody afternoon sun races towards the horizon and the train cuts through the Northern European Plain—peers over at Joe with a look that I’ve never seen from him before. It’s a warning that bites like glass, that’s dark like thunder, that sears the words from my throat.

“It is not my business,” Joe relents at once with an easy, acquiescent grin. He takes a bite of his honeycomb pavlova and flourishes his hands aimlessly. “I am but a humble deserter of my own country, what do I know about anything? Your Russian is eccellente, Lana bella donna, that is all I am meaning by this.”

“That’s all you mean, you muppet,” Ben corrects, resuming his notes.

“That’s what I said, Beniamino! Oh mio Dio. Mamma mia.” Joe sighs and shakes his head, chewing his pavlova like a cow, raising his eyebrows at me. “He is always so scontroso, no?”

Scontroso, I know, translates to grumpy or disagreeable. “He’s alright,” I reply, smiling. Ben ignores us. I wonder what he’s writing about, what he’s planning to put in his future bestselling New York Times article, what he’s going to say about me; but now this is simple curiosity rather than dread. Ben and I have been getting along better lately. We’ve forged a vague sort of alliance. Whatever he’s going to reveal to the world, it can’t be that bad.

“So,” Joe says. “Tell me, Lana bella donna, what do you have waiting for you in London? Family? Friends? A gentleman caller, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” I muse, thinking of the Prince of Wales. Great Britain is no Italy or Greece, that’s for certain, but it’s warmer than Russia and relatively safe and civilized and never too far from the ocean. I think with time I could learn to call such a place home, to cherish it. I found myself struggling to remember why I’d ever been so attached to a future in a Mediterranean kingdom to begin with. That younger, simpler, carelessly romantic version of myself felt so distant now, like an old friend waving goodbye from the railing of a ship before dissolving into nothingness.

Joe chuckles and nods. “Yes, I knew it, this must be true. Of course you have a fidanzato. A lovely lady like yourself? You might have five or ten. Or seven, one for every day of the week, no? Mario on Monday, Teodoro on Tuesday…”

“Why do they have to be Italian?” Ben interjects crossly.

“Not a fidanzato,” I tell Joe. A fidanzato is a boyfriend or even a betrothed, it’s a much too consequential word for what David Windsor actually is. He’s a family friend, he’s a distant relative, he’s a royal, he’s my guarantee of lifelong security, he’s perfectly acceptable in both my own and my family’s eyes…but no one could claim that we are engaged. Not quite yet, anyway. “He’s more like…a probable suitor. Or an admirer.”

Joe crinkles his angular nose at me. “A what?”

“He’s more like a corteggiatore.”

“Okay, okay, whatever you say, Lana bella donna. But I can see with my own two eyes. You cannot pretend to be so innocent. You have hot blood. You cannot fool me. My first language might be Italian, but all my people are also fluent in love.”

Ben groans as he continues jotting down presumably tantalizing details in his leather-bound notebook. He had been in better spirits earlier today—passing me sarcastic half-smiles in Saint Basil’s Cathedral, miming the priests’ continuous swinging of censers that billowed incense smoke, tugging at the tail of my braid to distract me from chanting, all the while never losing that warm candlelit playfulness—but his mood is descending with the sun. He pauses his writing and glowers out the darkening window, searching for the right words. The thin, latticed scars on the backs of his hands are visible only when the lamp light hits them a certain way, a patchwork of insubstantial, ever-vanishing threads like spiderwebs.

I run my hands down my braid, self-conscious, inadvertently loosening the strands that Ben wove together this morning. He frowns at me with disapproval, his brow low. I say to Joe: “To be perfectly forthcoming, I’m a bit apprehensive about the whole thing, actually.”

Joe’s pavlovas have disappeared entirely, a fact he mourns with yearning stares at the crumbs on his sweater. “About what, signora? This London boy?”

I can’t believe I’m telling him this. I’ve never told anybody this. “Yes. And no. About love in general, I suppose.”

Joe is mystified; this I can glean from the flailing of his hands, which I’m learning to read like a new language, like English or Italian or French or Latin or inky brushstrokes of Japanese. “But Lana bella donna, what on earth could there be for a woman like you to be so anxiety about?”

“Anxious about,” Ben corrects with a smirk.

“Silenzio,” Joe throws back.

“Well…this love business.” I know more than Mother thinks I do—in part due to my voracious reading, more so from the scandalous and covert gossip that Anastasia used to relay from the soldiers she formed and discarded infatuations with more changeably than the weather shifts from parched to rain—but still far less than I would prefer. Mother has always vowed that she would speak to each of us just before our wedding night, fill in all those persistent blank spots, unearth the mysteries, calm our roiled nerves. I’m not sure why I have to wait that long. It seems like an awfully swift turnaround from knowing next to nothing to having the weight of the world on my shoulders; after all, the production of a suitable heir is a pursuit that holds dynasties hostage in the interim, a blade pressed to the jugular.

I suddenly realize that they’re both waiting for me to elaborate. Joe is watching me with his chin atop his interlocked fingers, his expression open and curious. Ben has glanced up from his notebook. Part of me likes that he cares enough to notice, to listen. Part of me now feels very, very nervous.

I say quickly: “I suppose I just don’t want to be unprepared and disappoint my husband.”

“Ah, this is not possible, signora,” Joe replies brightly. “Not if you are with the right man. You see, many people make this misunderstanding. Love is not really about the skill. It is all about the chemistry.”

“Where the hell did you learn that word?” Ben asks.

“From a certain lady friend who happened to study the chemistry, Beniamino!” Joe replies, exasperated. “Now please, I beg you, do not interrupt when I am dispensing invaluable wisdom.”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” Ben grumbles and turns back to the window.

Joe continues: “Anyway, as I was saying, if you have the passion with a person then the rest will come naturally. It is just like pasta. The salt goes with the boiling water, but you never add olive oil to the water, never. Tagliatelle goes with the Bolognese. Spaghetti goes with the carbonara. And everybody knows that bucatini goes with the amatriciana. And the bread is for mopping up any sauce that is left when all the pasta has been eaten, not for smothering with butter or parmesan cheese, oh, che orrore!” He shudders.

“Whoops,” Ben says.

“If you are bread and this man in London is a splash of leftover marinara,” Joe informs me as earnestly as a mathematics tutor. “Then you will have the chemistry and it will all work out for the best. Your bodies will speak to each other. You will have a natural passion, and you can work out the rest of the details in time. You will be happy. As you deserve to be. As we all deserve to be. Even grumpy Beniamino over there.”

“Alright,” I say, still toying with my braid. I am aware that I am burdened with fears I didn’t have a week ago. Maybe it was Ben who gave them to me, with all his deep-rooted cynicism and unwelcome inquiries; or maybe the increasing ugliness of this country—of this world, of this time we inhabit like zoo animals in their chains—has cast everything I thought I knew into question. Papa and Mother have always been devoted to each other, have always had an effortless sort of connection and a heat that runs beneath their skin and flushes to the surface even after decades together. That’s something I’d like to have for myself one day. But perhaps it’s less of a guarantee than I’d imagined. And perhaps the realization of my relative powerlessness in such a momentous matter has rolled over me all at once like a cold sweat, like a fever. “But how do I know if a man is…what did you say, Joe? Marinara sauce. What if he’s butter or cheese or something even worse and I just don’t realize it until it’s too late?”

Joe smiles. “You should know if you have chemistry with someone, Lana bella donna. It is as obvious as the sun or the moon. You cannot miss it if it’s there.”

I comb back through all my memories with the tall, blond, dashing David Windsor: pleasantries exchanged over champagne, polite strolls through the gardens, the prince practicing his French with me, my sisters and I cheering him on from the sidelines of the polo field. I try to remember a time when he had touched me with anything like passion, like urgency. I try to remember the look in his eyes. But then I realize I can’t recall his eyes at all; I instinctively want to assume they’re blue, but I can only picture green irises that oscillate from seafoam to pine to emerald.

No, David’s eyes are blue, I remember now. Blue like a lake, blue like the sky. And perhaps one day my children will have the same ones.

“He’s just so dignified,” I burst out with a flustered, panicky laugh. “He’s, he’s…well, you know the type. He’s an aristocrat of sorts. So composed, so courteous. He’s never done anything that could be misconstrued as improper. He’s too…too respectful. Too well-bred. He cares too much about my honor. He would never do anything to malign it.”

I don’t intend to check to see how Ben reacts to this, but I do anyway. He’s not rolling his eyes, he’s not grumbling or snorting or even chronicling how ridiculous he thinks I am in his little notebook. He’s just staring at me, his pen hovering over the page, his face unreadable.

Joe heaves out a great sigh and touches his fingertips to his forehead. “I do not know, signora. I would never try to steer the path of your life. But I myself would not marry anyone unless I was positivo that we shared a chemistry.” He pauses, then adds for a dash of levity: “Unless perhaps they were very, very, very rich.”

I chuckle just like Joe wants me to, I relax my shoulders and place my hands serenely in my lap; I gulp down those chaotic pricklings of unease. But my mind is a lightning storm over the ocean, thrashing and thunderous.

Joe pivots to Ben. “What do you think of this chemistry situation?”

Ben shifts restlessly in his seat and lights himself a cigarette. “I wouldn’t know anything about it.”

“What do you mean, Beniamino? Don’t you have someone pining away for you back home? Come to think of it, in all this time I cannot remember you ever mentioning a lady friend. How bizzarro. Surely you must have some relevant experience with which to enlighten us.”

“Nope,” Ben says.

“I cannot believe that. A man like you?” Joe turns to me. “A man like him? With no lovers to be found? No, no, it is not possible. You are a bugiardo, my friend.” A liar, he means. “And not even a convincing one! Come on, I can see you are blushing, tell us everything before we are forced to resort to torture.”  

“All I do is work,” Ben returns brusquely. His cheeks do look rather ruddy; and this time there’s no cold, violent Russian wind to explain them.

“But amico, there is always time for love!”

Ben smokes and stares out the black window and says nothing.

“You really don’t have a wife? Not even a betrothed? Not even an occasional paramour?” I don’t plan to ask this, but I can’t resist. It doesn’t make any sense. In my social circle, it would be unthinkable for a man like Ben—as beautiful as he is, as clever as he is, mid-twenties and brimming with sharp potential—to be unspoken for. He would have a revolving door of suitors decked in ballgowns and tiaras, trunks full of love letters, incessant party invitations; or, more likely, he would already have some bejeweled, dutiful wife and ever-growing pack of children with green eyes and pale cheeks prone to bloodrush. But Ben isn’t a royal. To most of the world, he’s nobody at all. And this is a strange thing for me to remember.

“No,” Ben replies.

“Never?” I press, bewildered.

Now Ben turns to look at me. “Never.”

“But…why?”

“Maybe I’m saving myself for marriage. Just like you.” There’s an edge to his voice, a razorlike glint in his eyes. He exhales smoke into air that’s taut with silence. “Except that no one will claim my value is diminished if I change my mind.”

And then he smiles at me, he actually smiles, crookedly, cruelly. Joe’s jaw falls open and a helpless little gasp escapes like the squeak of a mouse. I’m glaring at Ben; no, I’m seething. There’s scarlet heat sloshing in my face and my neck and the palms of my hands. But there are all these layers to what I’m feeling, like I’m a book with a hundred pages, like I’m Russia itself built of air and trees and topsoil and sediment and permafrost that never feels the sun. There are too many layers for me to name.

“Well!” Joe exhales, slapping his scrawny thighs and hopping to his feet. “Sounds like you two have some things to work out. I’m going to go track down that cart lady and see if I can buy myself some more pavlovas. I might be gone for a while. People are known to get lost on trains. Who could know how long it will take me to find my way back to our compartment?”

“No—!” Ben and I immediately object in unison.

But Joe cannot be dissuaded. “Enjoy the privacy! Ciao!” He slips out the door and is gone.

I cross my arms and lean back in my seat until my back meets the plush red upholstery, frowning at Ben. “That was unnecessary,” I say darkly.

“Technically, this entire situation is unnecessary.”

He’s blaming Papa again, he’s blaming my family, he’s blaming people like me for the burden of having to drag some tiresome grand duchess across war-torn Europe. And, even more than that, he’s making his predilections perfectly clear: that he could never respect someone like me, let alone desire her. This doesn’t matter, because it’s an impossibility anyway, it would be like the stars longing to reach out and touch the earth. But somehow it feels like it matters a lot.

I stand, which seems to alarm Ben. His taunting smile vanishes. “Where are you going?”

“To the Ladies Room. Why, do you want to watch?”

“Just get out,” he snaps, and returns to scrawling irritably in his notebook.

I breeze into the hallway, close the compartment door behind me, and cover my face with my shaking hands. “It’s fine,” I whisper to myself in Russian. “Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. None of this matters. Soon I’ll be in London with my family, and more likely than not by spring David and I will be planning our wedding.” This last part doesn’t make me feel any better, so I drop it.

I roam down the hallway—in no hurry to accomplish my task and thereafter return to the compartment where Ben is waiting—to the other end of the train car and step inside the tiny, single-stall Ladies Room. When my eyes hit the mirror, I jolt like bodies sometimes do when they’re teetering on the edge of sleep. The girl there—the woman there—shocks me. In my head, I still picture myself as a Romanov daughter: delicate, spotless, long flowing hair, serene and static as a photograph. But this is not what I see in the smudged mirror hanging over the sink. My dress is wrinkled and freckled with dirt and doesn’t fit as well as I remember; maybe I’ve lost weight, or I’ve gained weight, or my weight has redistributed itself somehow, but in any case my dress hangs in some places and pulls tightly in others and I am left feeling entirely inelegant. My braid is hastily-done and messy, escaped strands of hair falling around my ears and sticking to my forehead and my cheeks. But worst of all is my face. I don’t look young or fresh or placid or graceful; I don’t look like someone who belongs in a photograph of a royal family. My eyes are feral and my skin dotted with muddy fingerprints and my mouth quivering with emotions tugging at their frayed leashes. I look like someone who would make my mother cover her eyes and turn away with a perfumed handkerchief pressed to her pinched lips. I look like some fearful, shattered nobody. I look like a peasant. I look like someone who works with her hands until the bones split beneath calloused skin.

“Enough,” I scold myself in Russian, in my own language. I do not have the luxury of crumbling. I cannot afford the self-indulgence of battling with all these unfamiliar, clamoring questions that are biting at me like wolves. I press my palm to the cold glass of the mirror, and this I speak in English, so that no one who might overhear could understand: “I am still a grand duchess, whether I look like one or not. And my family still needs me. And there are still miraculous things that wait for me after this journey is over.”

Out in the hallway there are two young men returning to their own compartment, their faces stubbled with dark burgeoning beards, their hands kept warm in the pockets of their worn black coats. They speak to each other in a Russian that is unrefined but still comprehensible to me. They are smiling, they are chuckling, they are unencumbered with clandestine cares like mine. I find this charming.

“Good evening, lady,” they call to me in their unsophisticated Russian.

I nod a shy hello. They smell like cologne and beer and autumn air, but they also smell like smoke; this reminds me of Papa, but it reminds me of Ben too. I like these men, I decide. “On your way to Saint Petersburg?” I ask them.

“On our way to a magnificent future!” the shorter man announces joyously.

“We have tickets for a ship to America,” the taller one explains.

“Where the streets are paved with gold and jobs fall from the sky like rain,” the short one recites like a poem, with grand sweeps of his arms.

His friend rolls his translucent blue eyes. “Dmitriy, please, you exaggerate.”

“Anywhere is better than here, Ilya,” Dmitriy counters. And then, turning to me: “Don’t you agree? I have cousins in New York City. They make ten dollars a week and eat two meals a day. That’s two meals with meat! Not just potatoes and cabbage boiled in water. Not just dreams of potatoes and cabbage when there are none to be had. It is paradise on earth.”

“I’m headed there myself,” I say, for no particular reason. “Maybe we will meet again across the ocean.”

“If we do,” Dmitriy replies with a grin. “We must have dinner together sometime. It will be my treat.”

“Yes, absolutely. I will look forward to it.” I pass by them in the narrow hallway; and as I do, the train lurches to one side. Dmitriy is knocked off-balance and collides with me. I slam into the door of their compartment with a yelp like a small dog’s.

“I’m so terribly sorry!” Dmitriy says, steadying himself, and then reaches out to help me. His hands take my waist. “Are you alright, lady…?”

His words die, and his face shifts from mortification to intrigue. I realize why with a swelling of terror like a wave. His hands have felt not just lace, not just flesh, but the peculiar unyielding shapes of the imperial jewels sewn into my dress. His fingers explore the outline of what was once my mother’s sapphire necklace. “What is that?” he asks me with soft wonder.

“Nothing.”

“Ilya, open the door,” Dmitriy orders, nodding to their compartment. Ilya does so. And then together, they drag me inside.

“No—!” I scream, before Dmitriy muffles my cries with the nicotine-dusted palm of his hand.

“Ilya, my knife. Get it from my bag.”

“What’s going on?”

“There’s something sewn into her dress. Coins maybe, I’m not sure. But it must be valuable. Just look at her face. She’s petrified.” I struggle as Ilya gives Dmitriy the knife and Dmitriy prods me with his free hand, finding more bulges of jewels against my hips, my ribs, my spine. “What in the name of God…?”

I thrust my elbow into his stomach and Dmitriy doubles over, gasping. “Ben!” I shout, only once, before Dmitriy has me pinned against the wall with his knife at my throat.

“Listen,” he hisses in that artless breed of Russian. “We’re not going to kill you. We’re not even going to hurt you. We just want your money. And it seems like you have more than you could possibly need anyway, right? So what harm is there in us taking some? Your family will make sure you are alright. You must have a good one, with an accent like yours. We don’t mean any harm to you, lady. Really. There are no hard feelings. We’re all just rats jumping off the same sinking ship. But Ilya and I need this money more than you do. And you’re going to let us take it.”

Dmitriy removes his hand from my mouth, yanks off my tattered green sweater, and begins to cut. Slits open in the fabric of my dress like gaping mouths. Swaths of lace flutter down to the floor. He holds up my mother’s sapphire necklace, glittering like sunlight on the Atlantic Ocean, the most expensive thing he’s ever seen. “Oh my god,” he marvels.

“Jesus,” Ilya says.

“Help me,” Dmitriy instructs him. “Feel for the bumps so I can cut them out.”

They spin me around, roughly, uncaringly, and read my secrets like Braille. I place my palms on the black window. Outside are whirling shadows of pine trees and frost grass and earth and stars. As they incise my family’s history from me—diamond earrings, emerald bracelets, yellow topazes that were once imbedded in rings, rubies that were once part of one of Mother’s tiaras—I feel tears streaming down my cheeks and leaving tracks in the dirt there. I feel weak and horrified and violated. But I also feel anger, an anger that is deep and red and all-consuming; and my anger is not for these men, it’s not for Ben, it’s not for the revolution or the war or the common people or the world or anything else that I had once blamed for upending my former life. My anger is for Papa not sparing me from this fate by being a better tsar. It’s for Mother not telling me the truth about the world, for never bothering to learn it herself. And it’s for myself as well: for my ignorance, my shallowness, my recklessness that may very well cost me and Ben our lives. For once the initial high of their good fortune has faded, surely these men will begin to wonder: What kind of person carries jewels like this? What kind of woman have we found?

“Ben,” I whimper, so quietly that Dmitriy and Ilya don’t even notice. If we’re discovered, he’ll be killed. I might be sent back to the wilderness, I might get to see my family again…but Ben won’t. He doesn’t deserve to have his life stolen from him. He’s barely begun to glimpse the good parts of it.

I hear the compartment door roll open. I feel Dmitriy and Ilya’s hands drop off me. The knife clatters as it hits the floor. And when I turn to look, I see Ben standing in the doorway with his pistol raised.

“Let her go,” he says in Russian. His voice is steady, but his hand holding the pistol is shaking just enough for me to notice.

The men back away from me with their raised fists clutching loose glistening gemstones and ropes of necklaces, bracelets, strings of pearls to thread through long, clean, aristocratic hair. Ben’s green eyes dart to the men, to the jewels, to me, to the hanging scraps of my mangled dress; and within seconds, he has pieced it all together. Shame bubbles up in me, but Ben betrays no emotion at all.

With the muzzle of his pistol, Ben points to the jewels in the men’s hands. “Give them back to her.”

Dmitriy and Ilya hesitate, glancing at each other.

“Do it now,” Ben orders.

I offer my empty, trembling hands, and the men fill them with the jewels they’d cut from my dress. Metal and gemstones clink against each other with high, tinny chimes. The weight compounds until I struggle to hold it, and then there is no more for the men to give.

Ben says to me in English, so the others cannot understand: “Go back to our compartment. Wait there. Do not come looking for me. Do not make a scene. If I don’t come back, tell Joe to escort you to London and he’ll do it. Do you understand me?”

My stomach plummets, my blood goes cold. If he doesn’t come back? “Ben, why—?”

“Go.” He shoves me out into the empty hallway.

I stagger towards our compartment, and peer back over my shoulder to see Ben forcing the men at gunpoint down the hallway in the opposite direction and out the door that leads to the open-air platform between the train cars. “Everything will be fine,” I can hear Ben promising in his stilted Russian as they disappear into the roaring night air. “I will make you leave the train but that is all…”

And then the door closes and they are gone.

I barricade myself in our compartment and lay my jewels on the table and press my knuckles against my mouth to keep from screaming. I pace back and forth with tears hemorrhaging from my eyes. If he doesn’t come back? If he doesn’t come back? For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m not worrying about my family. I’m not even worrying about myself. I’m not thinking even the faintest bit about this mission or Christmas in London or my Uncle George or his eldest son, the one I will probably be married to in a year’s time. Everything I’m made of, every shred of bone and muscle and marrow, is aching for Ben.

It seems like forever before he comes back, but he does. Ben opens the sliding door, steps inside, and closes it again without a word. He secures his pistol in his holster. He looks at me. And then he swipes at a few scattered droplets on his left cheekbone: blood. The red smears across his face. And then I understand perfectly. Ben killed those men. He shot them, and he threw them off the platform, and he left their bodies in the wilderness to be eaten by vultures or wolves or the simple savagery of nature. And he did it because I left him no other choice.

“Oh god,” I moan, sobbing. “It’s all my fault, Ben, I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t,” he says, coming closer.

“I made you kill those men, I made you do it, because they found the jewels and if they told anyone about it we’d be discovered, oh my god, I’m so sorry, Ben, I shouldn’t have had the jewels in my dress and I shouldn’t have lied to you about it and I’m just so sorry—”

“Stop,” Ben pleads, grabbing my face with his hands, staining me with Russian blood.

He’s going to yell at me again, I think, miserable, staring up at him through tears. He’s going to yell at me and tell me what a useless, sheltered idiot I am, and when he does he’ll be right.

But Ben doesn’t yell. “I’m not mad,” he says softly. “Okay? I’m not mad. I get it, I understand why you didn’t want to tell me. It’s my own fault. It’s alright. Everything’s alright. We’re safe now. I’m going to keep us safe.”

“I don’t deserve this,” I choke out in a whisper. “I’m burdening you and risking your life and making you kill people and it’s all for me and I don’t deserve it.”

“You do,” Ben insists.

“No, I don’t, and I’m sorry, and I don’t want to do this to you anymore—”

“Look, I’m fine, I’m not hurt and I’m not dead and I’m not mad, so can you please just stop fucking apologizing?”

My head is shaking, tears flooding, my fingers gripped around the lapels of his coat. “Ben, I won’t be able to live with myself if something happens to you because of me—”

“Listen, listen to me, nothing’s going to happen to us—”

We’re both talking at once, me looking up at Ben, him looking down at me, our bodies interweaving unbeknownst to us; and I don’t know who moves first, but somehow now his lips are on mine, and all that screaming anarchy in my skull has vanished.

It’s nothing like I feared a kiss might be: premeditated, intentional, awkward, effortful. There’s no anxiety in my mind, in my flesh. There’s no fear of imperfection. There is only a seamless clicking into place and a weightlessness that swallows the floor out from under me. And I don’t know if it’s the same chemistry that Joe was talking about earlier, because it doesn’t feel like our bodies are speaking to each other; it feels like there are no words at all, not here, not anywhere in the world. This feels like something beyond words, or perhaps above them, something older than language and brighter than the stars.

Ben breaks away abruptly. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” he says in a rush, breathless, repentant, pleading, showing me the white palms of his hands like flags of surrender. Then he buries his face in them and collapses into his seat and doesn’t look at me for the rest of the night.

~~~~~~~~~~

In London, King George V is sinking into a hot bath; in Saint Petersburg, an increasingly infirm Sir Buchanan is propped up on pillows in bed and flipping languorously through a newspaper; and in Passchendaele, Franklin Hardy is hunkered in his trench coat stained with mud and sweat and other men’s blood, scribbling down a letter home as cold rain pours all around him. But in Yekaterinburg, the family of the man who was once the tsar is fast asleep.

The house moans as wind howls through the rafters, the drafty walls, the floorboards. Winter is an approaching storm. The birds have flown south; the air smells like metal. Beneath a pile of frayed, moth-eaten blankets, Tatiana Romanov is dreaming of a Christmas ball in London. Her gown is red, a vicious sort of red, a more brilliant red than anything she’s ever seen. Rubies hang from her neck and wrists. She’s nursing a flute of champagne and giggling with her sisters, ignoring the wolfish stares of rigid young men who will grow up to be dukes, emperors, lords, admirals, kings. Tati has never managed to cultivate an appreciation for men, has never given them much thought at all, has always found them coarse and brutish and unfeeling and hungry. She won’t dance with any of them tonight if she can help it. Except for Papa, of course; Papa is nothing like most men. Papa is what God must have had in mind when he first imagined men, before all those primordial, biological corruptions burrowed into their skulls and rendered them so inescapably mortal.

Someone is shaking her awake now, urgently, roughly; and for a moment Tati thinks that maybe the time has come for them to be rescued, that her favorite sister has made it to London and secured their family’s asylum there. But no, there hasn’t been enough time: it will take another few weeks at least, unless her sister has somehow figured out how to sprout wings or airplane propellors, which Tati doubts. Then what’s going on?

Tati blinks in the darkness. The shadow standing by her bedside is too tall to be any of her siblings and too broad to be Mother or Papa. Also, they are prodding her shoulder with the muzzle of a pistol.

“Get up,” the guard says in guttural, peasant Russian. “Now.”

“What’s going on?” Tati asks.

“Get up.”

“Is Mother alright? Is Alexei? Did he have another hemorrhage—?”

The guard rips away the blankets and drags Tati off the bed by her slender forearm.

“Stop it, let go of me, that hurts—!”

“Get up,” he commands again, seething in the dim, dreamlike bedroom. “And come with me.”

The guard escorts Tati—the muzzle of his pistol digging into the flesh between her shoulder blades—through the hallway, down the staircase, and into the basement. She doesn’t know his name, she doesn’t even recognize his face; the guards come and go these days, progressively becoming (it seems to Tati, anyway) more filthy, less educated, more hateful. In the basement, the walls are adorned with yellowed, peeling wallpaper and nothing else. The floor is dusty and bitterly cold beneath the soles of her feet. The other guards are standing with their rifles in hand, bayonets fixed, and this does not alarm Tati; there have been armed men watching her since infancy, because she was born into a family worth protecting. And there under naked bulbs of stark electric light—huddled together against the wall farthest from the stairs, their eyes wide and flitting—the rest of the captive Romanovs are waiting for her.

Papa has one hand on Mother’s shoulder, one hand on Alexei’s. Mother is clutching Olga to her chest as Olga sobs softly, pitifully, Mother’s arthritic hands smoothing her loose hair. Maria and Anastasia embrace Tati as she rushes to them, their fingers twisting into the fabric of her nightgown like hooks into a fish, holding on tightly as a child might do to the string of a kite clawed away by the wind.

“What’s happening?” Tati whispers in Russian, because that’s all she’s allowed to speak.

“They must be moving us again,” Mother says. Her voice is low and level. She is too exhausted to feel panic anymore; or perhaps she only swallows it down to hide it from her children.

“Can we have some chairs, please?” Papa asks the guards. “While we wait. Please. For my wife and my son, at least.” Alexei is whimpering and placing almost no weight at all on his left leg. His knee is still hideously swollen and bruised from being bumped on a table several days ago.

After some discussion, the guards bring two chairs, one for Mother and one for Alexei. In the hushed basement, Tati listens to see if she can hear anything beyond the walls: the growl of truck engines, the stomping of hooves, the voices of men. She can detect no preparations for their departure. She wonders what could be worse than here, where the windows are covered with newspapers and they are not permitted to speak in English and they have to ring a bell to be allowed out of their locked rooms. She wonders where her favorite sister is now, how Sir Buchanan’s brooding blond press attaché is treating her. She worries about her almost constantly.

Several of the guards are leering at Tati as she stands there, groggy and disoriented in her nightgown. She shivers and crosses her arms over her small chest and tries not to make eye contact. So many people are envious of her, so many women would kill to be her, because Tati is the most beautiful Romanov daughter and everyone has always agreed on this matter, as if it’s as immutable as the snow being cold or the ocean being deep. But no one has ever asked Tati how she feels about this. She’d give away her face for free if she could, she’d happily shed that great female triumph that she’s done nothing to earn. If Tati was less beautiful, she wouldn’t be so valuable in the royal marriage market, she wouldn’t have filled her parents with proud expectations as their most prized offering to trade; she’d just be one of five extraneous grand duchesses, and maybe then she could slip away into a nunnery somewhere and forever evade those mysterious, messy, ravenous grapplings of men.

Papa takes off his robe and drapes it across Tati’s trembling shoulders. Then he glares at the guards, glares like a monster, like a tiger or a brown bear or a viper. It is strange for Tati to see him so angry. Papa is never angry.

“You have no decency,” Papa scolds the guards, somehow regal even in his simple blue cotton pajamas. They hang off him like sheets hang off a child pretending to be a ghost; he’s lost so much weight since his abdication. He’s lost so many pieces of himself. “We’ve done nothing to you. We follow your rules and obey your orders, we dutifully rise when you jostle us awake in the middle of the night, we move from prison to prison at a moment’s notice. So don’t you spit your hatred at us. And don’t you dare frighten my children. We’ve done nothing to you.”

“You’ve done everything to us,” a guard says simply, and the man who was once the tsar has nothing to offer in reply.

Down the stairs comes the heavy plodding of boots. It’s the leader of the guards, an eternally unsmiling man with grey eyes and a scraggly black beard and a wool flat cap. He is carrying a single rolled-up piece of paper. He stands beside his men, unrolls the paper, and clears his throat.

“Are we leaving now?” Papa asks. “Where are we going? My wife and children need their shoes and winter coats. Can I go upstairs to fetch them—?”

“Nicholas Romanov,” the man reads. “You are an enemy of the people and must not be permitted release under any circumstances. Therefore, you will now be executed.”

“What?” Papa says, not understanding, not believing. He turns to his wife and his children, who are frozen with their mouths agape. “What did he say?”

But the only answers are smoke and screams and gunfire. It happens in an instant, and yet somehow it feels very slow: Papa reaching for Alexei, Mother crossing herself, Anastasia stumbling towards the staircase before the guards are on her with their bayonets. And as Tati’s back hits the wall, she is reminded of her dream, of the color of Christmas and her ballgown and her rubies, of a red more vivid and savage than anything she’s ever known: red, red, red.

[be-the-spark-flyboy]

I’m Right Here

Oh My God They Were Roommates

A/N: it’s been 84 years

Pairing: artist!Poe x reader

Warnings: none

Word count: 500-ish

—-

When you woke up that morning, Poe was kneeling on his mattress, watering his plants as Beebee stretched out on the small patch of sunlight shining on the floor. “You’re up early,” Poe turned around at the sound of your voice giving you a small smile.

“Couldn’t sleep,” His eyes were downcast, lacking its usual sparkle. It was almost eerie watching him silently turn back to his task. No whistling peppy tunes or chattering a mile a minute about his day. You propped yourself up on your elbow, watching him for a few more seconds.

“Poe?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s wrong?” Poe sighed heavily, plopping down onto his bed hugging.

“I don’t know,” he rubbed his eyes, shoulders drooped. “Don’t feel great,” Poe looked tired. He must have stayed up painting all night again. But usually he would be snoring by the time you were up. You pat the space beside you on your own bed.

“Come here,” he slowly shuffled over to your side of the room, climbing under your blanket and squeezed into your side. You threw your arms around him and you laid there together long enough for Beebee to felt out and join you. It warmed your heart how easily the orange tabby took to you.

Poe had told you how he and Leia had found and housed eight orphaned little kittens until the first seven had found a different home and the last had run away. Said cat had returned home once the season had turned cold only to run again after. And hence the tradition of the wayward cat, affectionately named Big Bastard no. 8 (BB8), returning home for the winter season was born.

The cat currently wedged himself between yourself and Poe for the optimal warm spot in the bed. But Poe didn’t make fun or even smile at the cat’s antics like he usually does. Even Beebee seemed bothered by his lack of reaction and head butted Poe on the chin as he absent-mindedly pat his tiny head.

“I didn’t get it,” he breathed against your shoulder. Oh. There had been a temporary art teacher position open at the community centre near by which Poe desperately needed. He had actually been excited about it teaching, but unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be. “Don’t think I can make rent this month,” he mumbled.

“That’s fine, I can cover for this month,” you reassured him, playing with the strands of his hair. You know he hated asking this of you. But the third month you were living here, when you had no job or money to your name, it was Poe who helped you out. So of course you were going to do that for him too.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“What are friends for?” Poe threw his arm around you, pressing his face into the crook of your neck.

“It’s gonna be okay, Poe. I’m right here with you,” you pressed a kiss to his hair.

—-

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