#Wind Cave buried stories

[yeyinde]

WILLOW TREE MARCH

John Price x Reader | Fae!AU

"They'll give you gifts," your gran says, shaking her head. "Things from their realm. Little trinkets and gems—" geodes, sapphires and diamonds, raw gold and coral; "—and you must never accept them," a whittled deer made of sequoia under your pillow; crow bones buried in the garden."Because if you do, if you do, they'll never let you go."  "Why?" You asked, blinking at her.  "Because it's a courting ritual, and to accept means… well," her mouth twists in wry disdain. "Just don't." 

—WARNINGS: 18+ | SMUT fae shenanigans, mythological nonsense; unsafe sex, smut in random places, slight exhibition kink if you squint; Dom-ish Price, soft Price, pining Price; fae trickery (dubious consent on account of the trickery but not really); unreliable narrator; ahhhhhh, body horror (??????????) —TAGS: Fluff, AU, mythology —WORD COUNT: 8,5k —Based on this ask

There's a thick forest at the edge of your town. It curves along the coastline, breaching the yawning maw of the inlet—the last safe haven before the open ocean—and can be found almost nowhere else in the entire world. A unique ecosystem comprising vaguely familiar flora and fauna. Brown and Black bears. Wolves. Sitka-black-tailed deer. Ravens. The waters that crest through the forest are full of salmon, steelhead, and river otters. On the coast of the inlet, you can find whales, sea lions, seals, orcas, and porpoises swimming offshore. 

It's protected, in large part, by its sheer vastitude. Spanning a massive chunk of your home, it stretches far north with curling fingers cutting through the granite of the crumbling coast, and as deep south as its knobby knees can reach. 

From above, it looks like a child curled on its side, knees tucked to its chest. It's this pose alone that makes others revere it as some sacred being, slumbering mindlessly until the day it cracks open its eyes, and awakens to the new world. A child god made of conifers, red cedar, spruce, fir, pine, birch, and hemlock. Mossy caves of granite and limestone. Thick colonies of moss, liverworts, plume moss, and common haircap. 

The forest is linked to your town only by a small strip of land that juts out from a raging ravine with currents too dangerous, too deadly, to try and traverse. An archipelago all on its own, untouched by greedy, human, hands because of its placement. 

It's insulated by the vast ocean on its front, and a series of insidious looking mountains ready to swallow wandering mountaineers whole if they get too close to the sleeping child. Protected and safe by anyone who might try to harm it. 

You used to dream about the forest. A nightmare dredged up about whispers and calls. Lured close to the edge of the river where a man would hand you his heart—sap-stained, and charred; a brittle piece of Bristlecone pine that felt fragile and worn—and told you to come back for him. To wait for him. 

You'd wake in a cold sweat each time, heart pounding so fast that it almost felt like you were dying.

(Maybe you were. Maybe you did.)

You don't know if you believe the stories told about people wandering into the gaping chasm of the forest and never coming out. It's not uncommon for people to get lost, after all. But it feels distinct and archaic. Old. Something about the way the wind howls sounds different from the other woodlands scattered around your home. 

It sounds like a beckoning call. A mother calling their child home for dinner. Come to me, the Chinook bellows. Come home now, dear. 

You never venture too close. You know all too well what happens to children who do.

His name is—was now, you suppose—Kyle, but no one called him that. To everyone in town, he was simply known as Gaz. 

Newcomers to the isolated archipelago are a rarity—so much so that news of the new family's arrival sent waves through the community, making Gaz an instant star overnight, all without him even setting foot on the shores. 

None of that mattered, though. He fit in with an ease that seems almost preternatural when you think about it, as if he was meant to be there. And maybe he was. Maybe the soft rolling valleys were destined to be his home where flowers bloomed in the spring, and Arctic tern trilled from the branches. 

Gaz was unique, different. 

He picked dandelions with the same intensity that picked fights with the bullies in the neighbouring town, the ones who tried to pick on the smaller kids in the community. 

With his fists always covered in dandelion oil and bruises, face caught between a grimace and a grin, like he was never sure if he wanted to spit at their feet or tell a joke, he stood against the onslaught with an anger that seemed to crackle in the air like fireworks. Ready for battle. Thirsty for blood. 

His anger never waned even when he turned back to the group, eyes cresting in satisfaction, and body trembling with adrenaline, and you could scent the rage in his smile, hear it in the soft words he muttered to the kids, telling them everything would be alright. 

Gaz was everyone's friend. The person you told your deepest secrets to, the one you planned adventures with. He was a rock—always armed with snappy jokes to make you smile, and advice when you needed it. 

He was everyone's friend—yours especially—but you can't remember if anyone was his best friend. He was polite. Distant. 

It started in the summer. His hands were always cold, and he kept them shoved deep in his pockets, clenched tight around the latchkey his parents gave him. 

He started to seem almost liquid then. Temporal. You'd reach for him, brushing your hands against his arms or shoulders just to assure yourself that he was really there.

You noticed that his eyes would list sideways, head tilted, slanting toward the forest. It looked to you as if he was listening to something. To some unheard noise or call that only he could hear. 

When you asked about it, he'd always blink, surprised, as if you'd woken him up from a dream quite suddenly. Then, he'd smile, and shake his head. 

"Don't worry about it," he'd say, shrugging. "Just the wind."

He'd bend down and pick a dandelion for you, holding it out between pudgy fingers with a grin that seemed to mimic the cresting moon. 

"For you."

He picked them for three springs before he, too, became another victim of the endless forest. Another empty tomb in the overcrowded graveyard.

Missing, they said, but not forgotten. 

You think about him often. 

(Even more so when you, too, begin to hear your name echoing through the forest.)

Beware the woods, your grandma says. Especially when it calls your name. 

(You never understood why something that sounds so comforting, so sweet, could ever be dangerous. It sounds like an old friend calling you over to play. 

"Never go," she snaps, her hands lashing out to grip your arms tight. You feel her knobby fingers digging into your bones. "Never listen, and stay away—"

"You're hurting me, gran—"

Her rheumy eyes burn into yours. "Stay away—!"

(You wisely never speak about the whispers in your head, keeping them to yourself. A secret just for you.)

You leave town when you're old enough, when the hisses in your head grow too loud to ignore, and it feels as though they're scratching at your skull. 

(Clawing at the walls.)

"Crazy weather, eh?" The first mate mutters nervously, eyes tilted upward as the sky darkens into an angry grey. "Came outta nowhere." 

You leave, and you don't look back. 

(But oh, how the forest screams.)

She calls you back several years later with a phone call. Your gran has passed. 

You think you should mourn, but it's been so long since you thought of home, that you don't remember what she looks like anymore. The sound of her voice is a whisper in your head—the cadence gone, the tone flat. 

But you don't cry, and you don't grieve—she's been dead for a long time now, after all. Ever since your mum went missing all those years ago, she's always seemed more of a ghost than a person. Living as if her body hadn't realised her heart was long dead. 

You go back only because you think your mum would have wanted you to. 

(And pretend it isn't because the silence in your head is suffocating. Without the whispers, it feels as if you're missing something. A part of yourself forever lost in the forest.

You wonder if anyone has found it by now.)

Nothing has changed since you turned your back on the town that raised you, the forest that stole from you. 

It's the same buildings. The same market. The same roads. The same houses. 

The people, too, seem largely unchanged by the years that have passed. 

The friends from your childhood who stayed meet you at the graveyard, eyes filled with sympathy as they ask how you're doing. 

She'll be missed, they lie sweetly to you. Everyone loved her. 

She was a hermit, you want to scream. A woman driven mad by ghosts and fairytales and terror. 

You nod, instead, and let them lead you around the town on a grand tour as if anything about this beautiful, haunting place had changed since you ran away. 

It gets easier to force a smile when they ask if you're okay. 

"Fine," you murmur and wonder if your voice even carries over the whispers. "Just—yeah. Fine."

North of the town is where the river separating the lonely forest carves a path, not at all dissimilar to an idyllic trough, through bedrock and sand, and flows into the sea. 

The estuary is dangerous in high tide when the rapid ascent of water on the sandy shores hides the rip current that is known to form when the two bodies of water meet. 

It's a dangerous place to get caught in. 

This beach was impressed upon you as deadly from a young age, almost in equal—if not greater—measure than the rapacious forest across the river. You know the dangers of standing on the slippery bedrock. 

But as the sun glows a burnt orange in the distance, and the endless ocean before you darkens into an almost unfathomable black, you can't help but find the view from the cliff's edge to be the most mesmerising thing you've ever seen. 

It looks like a painting. A brush stroke of tigers eye in the centre of the cresting sun that gradually fades out into xanthous, and rings of hazy peach; the light of diminishing star smears coruscating rings of persimmons into the indigo water. The gradual fade into gradients as the waves lap closer to the shore is reminiscent of liquid sapphire and smelting amethyst. 

The picturesque view is more befitting of a pastel postcard, an ethereal pastiche of the Ninth Wave—a moment of life imitating art, or—perhaps—the same view Ivan Aivazovsky stumbled upon when he set out to render the haunting beauty of the ocean in oil. 

The cresting waves arch into curled petals of white before setting upon the sloping beach with frenzy. It's the roar of those hungry waves that seem to, if only for a moment, drown out everything in your head. 

There are no whispers. No songs. No screams. Vengeful hissing can't climb to a higher decibel than the frothing waters slamming against jagged bedrock. 

All is quiet—except the sea. 

You lean into it. The closer you get to that precipice, the quieter everything in your head goes. Sounded sucked into the vacuum of the ocean. The endless song of the sea. 

Another step. Another. 

For a moment, you're free. 

The forest doesn't scream for you. Your grandmother doesn't dig her teeth into your gyri, hands clawing at the space behind your eyes. You don't think of her, or your mother, or Gaz, or anyone else unfortunate enough to get consumed by this damnable place where fairy tales split the seams apart, and merge with reality. 

It's peaceful. 

You take another step—

A hand curls over your shoulder, tugging you back. 

Anger pools, thick and acidic, on your tongue, but the flash of your ire, your vexation, is dashed by the sound the waves make when it slams into the spot you were just standing. 

It slashes across the concrete as the stranger pulls you into his broad chest, heat nearly liquifying your spine. 

He sucks in a breath. You feel his chest expand with it. When he breathes out, you taste gunpowder on your tongue. 

"Gotta be more careful n'that, love." 

You've had near-misses before. Flirted with the reaper. Ripped yourself from the jowls of death himself. 

This isn't anything new.

And yet—

Your eyes drag up, meeting flat black boring down at you. His hood is pulled over his forehead, casting shadows down to his jaw. 

"You—"

Your teeth sink into your tongue. Emotions lash through you like the flick of a bullwhip, shredding your skin until it's raw and oozing. The tail pulls away whenever you try to wrap your fingers around one of them—relief: you're not dead; embarrassment: how could you be so stupid; shame: saved by a stranger; and—

Visceral terror. Panic. 

It bludgeons its fist down your throat, barbed knuckles clawing at the soft tissue of your esophagus until you taste blood on your tongue. 

Panic tastes of ozone and leaks, thick and warm like molasse, down your throat. 

"Hey," he murmurs, and the sound of his voice, his low timbre, is porous, calcined. The rough scratch scours through the haze of fear threading through your sternum. "C'mon on, now. Gotta breathe, yeah?" 

It's his hands on your shoulder—hotter than grenade fire—and the thick scent of musk, of stale smoke and kerosene sweat, that break through the gossamer of your acrid panic. He spins you around to face him, eyes fixed on your face. 

"That's it," he says, soft, soothing. "Keep breathin'. You ain't dead yet." 

You come to yourself in pieces. The world bleeds with startling clarity around the blurred edges. Home, you think. Maybe.

Once upon a time. 

You blink. Blink again. 

The hand still on you—heavier, you find, than an anvil—lifts, his thumb brushing over the curve of your jaw, swiping over the sweat-stained skin.

You can't see his eyes through the shadows cast over his face. A stranger. You've never seen him before. 

They didn't say anyone new moved to town. 

"Who are you—?"

"You don't know?" 

And then his hand is gone, taking all the heat in your body with him. 

It lifts to his vest, thick fingers, gloved in yellow, curling over the butt of his cigar. 

You must make a face. A grimace. A whisper of bemusement. Whatever it is, it makes his lips twitch under the shorn burnt umber of his beard. 

"I'd share," he mutters, teething sinking into the hilt as he pats himself down for a lighter. "But I ain't got the time."

"Shouldn't be smoking in a provincial park, anyway." 

The words are dragged out of you. Numbed, gritty. 

It makes him snort. "Maybe—;" he cups his hand around the end, thumb striking the ignition of the lighter. He inhales, and the red circle at the tip illuminates the cerulean blue tucked away into the folds of his hood. The plume of smoke curls over him like a shroud. "But I doubt a cigar is gonna bring the whole forest down, mm? 'sides, we all have our vices, don't we?"

With that, he leaves you standing in the tendrils of smoke that billow out from his caustic mouth. No goodbye. No name. Nothing except the hum of his touch buzzing through your veins. 

Your head is numb. Thoughts congealing into hardened clay. 

Yeah, you think sluggishly, eyes dropping to the drenched pavement where the ocean narrowly missed you. Swallowed you whole. We do. 

(Yours is bad decisions that reek of napalm. 

Men who scour your hands raw when you touch their coarse surface.)

You find him again in some desolate pub on the fringes of town a few days later. It looks like it's one strong gust of wind away from blowing down. Dilapidated. Rusted from the harsh salt of the ocean to the north. 

He lifts his head when you slide into the empty chair on the left, but says nothing about your unexpected company. 

Instead, his lips curl over the cigar sawed between his teeth. A grin, you think. 

You wonder if he was expecting you. 

(Wonder, then, with a touch of something warm gnarling in your belly, if you surprised him.)

The barkeep wanders past, brows lifting at you in question. 

"Um, a vodka soda—"

The man, Price you learned from the locals with a great of digging, snorts. 

"Ain't got none of that here, love. Two scotches. Neat." He leans over, thick fingers grasping the middle of the cigar, an inch away from the bristles on his upper lip, and pulls it away, ashing it in the tray in front of him. "And a bottle of spring water." 

"Scotch?" You echo, leaning your elbow on the sticky counter. He reeks of smoke. Sweat. Blood. Gunpowder. You veer closer, soaking in the astringent tang of him. Everyone on this island smells of daffodils and cotton; clean and neat and innocent. He reeks of danger. Everything inside of you screams to stay away. "I don't drink scotch."

The cigar burns in the tray. He pulls back, shifting in the chair. His elbow rests on the counter, the other arm is slung over the back of his seat. The picture of appeasement, of a satiated tiger eying a little mouse sniffing past it. There's no immediate danger, and his posture is relaxed. Open. But his eyes—

Price turns to you, then. His legs are spread, knees notched apart, taking up more space than you offer him. A looming presence. Dominating. Confident. He's not doing it on purpose, you don't think, he's just—

Big. 

His legs are too long. Thighs are too thick. 

Something gnarls behind your ribs when you take in his bare face. It's different, smaller, without the bulky black hood thrown low on his brow. His hands bare, leaving him in only casual clothes that stretch taut around his broad body. 

The beanie on his head, pulled low on his forehead, makes him look roguish, rough. The picturesque presentation of a bad boy down to the pelt-brown leather Levi jacket stretched taut around his broad shoulders. 

He looks older, somehow, without the tenebrous of night shading him in dark indigo. Aged like a fine whisky. All burnt umber and ivory. 

The charcoal colouring brightens the heavy blue of his eyes—crushed bluebonnets and powdered graphite; a black hole centre—and the frame of his brown lashes dusting over his clean cheeks makes something pool in your lower belly. 

(You wonder if he'd taste of whisky sour.)

"Well," he murmurs, brow lifting. It makes the skin on his forehead crinkle. He has laugh lines cresting around the corners of his eyes. They stand out to you, now. Void of the shadows you're used to. "You do when I'm paying."

The scotch, the cigar, the dingy pub that reeks of stale cigarettes and is perfumed in a dusting of nicotine that films every surface coalesces into incipient vice. 

His hand moves from where it's loosely curled around his glass, and rests, heavy and warm, on your thigh. 

When he leans in, you taste calcine on his breath. 

The acrid tang is a balm to the blisters in your raw esophagus. You meet him in the middle, smaller hands curling over the wool lapels of his jacket, tugging him into you. 

"Never thanked you for saving me," you murmur, his beard grazing your lips. A tickle. A brush. 

Price sucks in a deep breath, eyes liquifying into an intense azure. "No need to thank me, love. As much as I love the ocean, you don't belong there, do you? No," he adds, decisively. Sure. "You belong on land. The earth. You're wild, like the forest, aren't you?"

It's an out. An escape. An option to flee from the cosm that folds around you like a nebulous cloud. 

You could take it. Back up, away. Walk out of this dingy pub on the wrong side of town, and forget the man who reeks of nicotine, smoke; who leaves ashes behind on your skin when he touches you. 

The only one who stares at you from the unfathomable black of his eyes, lashes shrouded in tenebrous, and makes you falter. Makes your heart lurch, jumping to sit at the bottom of your throat.

You should pull away. Stay away from the man who leaks ethanol and nitroglycerine. From the man who smells of acrid smoke. Gunfire. 

You should. 

But your fingers tighten in the lapels of his jacket, pulling him closer. Closer. 

The bridge of his nose is warm when it presses against your own. 

His eyes spark, wildfires. A blazing forest. 

"You said something about vices." His chest rumbles in response to your hushed words. 

"So I did." 

Smoke singes your nose when you brush your lips over his. Warm. Chapped. Dry. You taste ash. Humus. The bitter tang of dandelion oil. 

"Got some time tonight?" 

"Thought you said I shouldn't be smoking."

"We're not in a park, near flammable trees," your hand falls to his chest. His heart thuds beneath your palm. Thick, full. Your eyes lift to his, lidded and heavy. You gaze at him from under your lashes, coy. Demure. You wonder if he can see how eager you are beneath the sly cut of your lids. "Are we, Price?"

The use of his name makes his lips quirk. A small, secretive thing that you can't read. 

"No, we're not." His hand slides down, curling over your knee. "Don't know what you're gettin' into, love." 

"Oh, no?" You taunt, breathless. Even through all your layers, you still feel his searing heat on your skin. His eyes drop when your tongue lashes out, wetting your lower lip. "And what's that?" 

A frisson shudders over his face. Lashes fluttering. He leans forward, resting the rim of his beanie on your forehead. 

When his eyes slide open, all you see is arsenic white pooled around Prussian blue. "More than you could ever dream of." 

Your trembling fingers curl into the lapels of his jacket. For leverage, maybe; or to hide the quiver in your joints from his widening eyes. 

And so, you kiss him. 

A messy punch to the mouth with your sun-blistered lips. 

His mouth parts, wry curls flutter when he inhales sharply. And then—

He devours you. 

It's messy. More sealed lips glueing together than it ever could be considered a proper kiss, but it feels more like a homecoming than stepping off the boat, and you tuck that inside your pounding chest. 

(The whispers in your head seem to sing when his lips touch yours.)

You taste bark on your tongue when it slips over his. Loam. Moss. Something earthy and rich. His beard scratches your chin, your lips, but you pull him closer, hungry for more—for the taste of wilderness on his tongue, for the respite from the whispers, the screams. Like the ocean, he, too, is a vacuum, swallowing everything whole until just you remain, stripped down to nothing but sensation and want. Bare, raw. 

Your teeth ache when you pull away, fingers curling into the coarse hair along his chin. The whips of his wry curls scratch your palm. 

You never want to let go. 

Price's eyes are noctilucent clouds; a storm over a rainforest. He'll ruin you. Devour. Destroy. Take, and take, and take until there is nothing left. 

Your lips tremble when you speak, words tremulous with your desire, your eagerness, when they slip past your bruised mouth. 

"I can think of a few that are better than smoking." 

Price shudders. 

"Where did you go?" Your friend asks, eyes swinging from the cards spread out in front of him—the Idiot, Solitaire—to you. They burn into the side of your face, the same place Price touched with bare knuckles, and said you belong to the forest, don't you? "Missed dinner."

You ate Doro Wat in a small shop after Price fucked you stupid in the dingy bathroom of the pub, face scraping against the waterlogged wallpaper that chipped with each brutal thrust of his hips. 

Like that, hmm? Can barely take me, love, but you're so fuckin' greedy for it, ain't you? 

You're sure the barkeep heard your moans as they bounced off the jaundiced walls. 

(You still hear him hissing in your ear. Still feel him splitting you apart.)

You try not to shiver. 

"Ate already," you shrug, bundling your sleep clothes tight in your trembling hands. When you stand, his eyes follow you. "So. Um—"

"You okay?" 

"Yeah," you say, shifting on the balls of your feet. "I've—" You think of his eyes, gyre white, and wonder if this is what it feels like to get swallowed by the sea. "I've never been better."

"Good," he says, smiling. "I worry about you, you know?"

You nod. "Yeah," you say. "Me, too."

You break apart in the shower, falling into pieces as you make yourself finish, thinking about nothing but the phantom stretch of his cock seated deep inside of you, the taste of his come pooling on your tongue.

It balms the residual burn in your esophagus, and you know, then, when you throb, still wanting his touch on your skin, that you've always been terrible at telling yourself no. 

It can't happen. It can't.  

There's a strange magnetism about him—an uncanny sense of mystery and familiarity sutured together. 

It feels a little bit like staring at the looming maw, the event horizon, of a black hole. Unfathomable black. No way out. 

There's something that feels a bit like forewarning inside your chest when he brushes against you, and presses his lips on the skin behind your ear—a secret place only he knows, where only his fingerprints have ever been. You feel his touch even when he's gone. Haunted by the memory of his rough hands and rasping tenor. 

Running would make sense, you think, watching the ferries come and go. You have enough money for a ticket, and you've yet to even unpack your bag. 

You don't know who he is, but you've given him everything. All of it. There's nothing left inside of you to hand over, but he keeps looking at you as if he's waiting for more. 

"Waiting for a ride?" 

You glance back at the operator with a divot between your brow and cotton inside your ears. 

You want to say yes, but you shake your head instead. 

"No." I can't leave. "Just enjoying the view."

You find birch branches stripped of leaves, juniper berries, maple leaves, spindles of dogwood, bushels of fir, and bouquets of bog rosemary, northern bluebell, fireweed, and wintergreen on your doorstep each morning, laid gently against the old welcome mat. 

You should toss them out, and throw them away. How does he know where you live, anyway? It would make the most sense; be the wisest decision. 

Instead, you tuck them inside your notebook, pressing them against the pages where they'll be safe. 

(You try not to think too much about why they never die.)

It happens again. And again. Again—

It becomes a ritual for the few months you're back in town. The leaves, twigs, petals, pines, and seeds all show up at your door each morning and come nightfall, you're drawn to him like a moth to a flame. 

He finds the nastiest looking pub in the city, and you find him there after dark. 

He sits, smokes a cigar. Orders two scotches, and a bottle of spring water. Teaches you how to drink it properly—none of that sugary cocktail shite; just pure whisky, love, as it should be—and lets you puff on the damp end of his cigar, eyes gleaming in the soft yellow light above as he takes in the way your lips curl over the wet tip.

He stares at you like he's indulging you. 

Like he knows. 

And maybe, he does. 

Maybe he sees the way your jaw works, tongue lashing over the tip just to chase his taste. The heat in your cheeks, your eyes, as you gaze at him, open and raw and wanting. The way you list toward him. Eager for it. For him. His touch, his smell. 

He must, you think, but he's a right bastard. 

He doesn't give it until the end of the evening, when everyone has gone home. When it's just you and him and the barkeep that glowers at you something ugly when you stand on shaky legs, and whisper you're going to the washroom. 

Your fingers curl over the chipped porcelain, back arched as you stare at the face in the mirror. 

You can't remember if it's you. 

Whisky has polluted your synapses. The thick scent of smoke, the tobacco from the cigar, has congealed into resin over that little bundle of axons and nerves that control your impulse, logic. 

Stupid. 

You stare at the thing in the mirror, and wonder if the basal want on your face was so apparent to him as it is to you. If he saw the dark gleam of hunger, greed, impatience, swimming in your ink-smudged depths. 

The door rattles. Clicks. 

The squeak of the hinges is the only warning you get before Price is there, liquified in the doorway and clouded in smoke. 

His hand curls over the worn, peeling frame. Eyes dance with the same hunger, same want, as the ones that flicker across the surface of the mirror. 

"Couldn't wait for me, eh, love?" He breathes, his chest expands with his exhale. Scenting you, you think. You wonder if he can smell the slick pooling in your panties. The desperation brimming in your veins. "Wanted it that bad, huh?"

He moves. A mountain of a man now filling up the entirety of your gaze until all you see is him. 

You used to want to climb mountains. In training, they always warned of summit fever. Of that little part of your head that just wanted it to be over, to reach the very top of the precipice. Impatient, it couldn't wait. It made you spring up, and climb higher and higher before you were ready, prepared. 

You think of it now when your hands lift, curling over his broad shoulders. 

("Summit fever will get you killed," they say.)

"Just shut up and fuck me, Price." 

His eyes flash. "Greedy little thing, aren't you?"

You are. Painfully so. 

It etches in your ribs like a sickness, festering in your mouldering bones. Rotting you from the inside out. 

A crutch in the searing heat of skin, sweat, and sin. The feeling of him taking you apart, breaking you down into atoms and molecules that bubble in the lining of your head becomes so commonplace, so often forget who you are when you're pushed up against a wall, being filled to the brim by him.

He leaves madness behind when he goes, and the world that divides fantasy from reality begins to crack, to splinter. 

You hear his voice in your head late at night when the wind blows through the window, carrying the scent of the forest.

"Come home," he rasps in your ear. 

The scratch of his beard seems to scrape against the little thread keeping you tied down to reality. It's frayed and worn by his hands. You wonder when he'll sink his teeth in the silk, and snap the line. Untethering you from your binds.

Come home to me. Come back to where you belong—

Price takes you out to dinner three months after this—whatever it is—starts. After your house becomes more of a garden, writ with the wild remnants of the forest, after each passing day. Full of bushes, and branches. Twigs and precious gems. He gives you raw gold, and open geodes full of amethyst, and sapphire. Canopy leaves, and bark from the trees. 

He leaves a whittled deer made from the red wood of a giant sequoia, and the likeness of the little fawn makes you believe that one day, it'll come to life in your living room.

(You leave a dish of water near the doorway—just in case—and wonder if you're becoming just as mad as your gran.)

He shows up at your doorstep, the bleached antlers of a great pronghorn in his hands. It's decorated with vines and moss weaved over the ivory in intricate braids and knots that you can't even begin to unravel. You marvel at the gift as he tells you he's taking you out for dinner. 

There is no discussion. He doesn't ask, he just—

Does. 

"Found a spot," he says, arms crossed over his broad chest. The cable-knit sweater pulls, stretched taut over his bulk. "Think you'd like it."

You don't know what to say. The antlers feel heavier in your hands, and warm to the touch. You try not to shiver when you set it down beside the little fawn.

"Oh," you say, but know you've never turned him down yet. It's all—

So much. 

Your home is slowly becoming one with nature, with vines growing on the walls in great blooms of wisteria and lilac; the old floor boards under your feet shudder and creak as little saplings sprout through the cracks. You wake up at night and taste earth in your throat, feel the grass beneath your fingers. The breeze in your hair. The call of an arctic tern. 

You dream of running through the forest. Of being chased. You breathe and feel the little seeds inside of your lungs start to take root. Soon you'll bloom with dandelions.

"Okay," you say, and wonder if the madness rummaging around your head will turn into a beautiful sequoia in the end. "Let's go."

The tavern is busy on a weeknight, crowded with a swell of mainlanders who'd ventured out for a camping trip over the long weekend. 

You sit with your back straight, and listen to him talk about a hike he wants to take with you in the morning. Through the woods, he says, and you don't ask which one. You know. You know. 

(It's time. It's time.)

There are alarm bells ringing in your head, but they're drowned out by the crooning whispers. 

But the line is only frayed and worn, and despite the lure in his voice, the itch in your head to say yes, you hesitate. Falter. 

The woods are dangerous. 

You don't want to go. 

He seems to sense it. His brows knot together. 

"You want to, don't you?" 

You fiddle with your napkin and try not to meet his arsenic stare. "It's… dangerous."

"I'll keep you safe."

"It's probably time for me to leave, anyway." 

The air in the room turns frigid all at once. You think you can see white plumes of condensation when you shakily breathe out, teeth chattering. 

"Price—"

"Didn't wanna do this, love," he says, voice hushed. Barely a whisper. His eyes are lavascapes. "But you ain't givin' me much of a choice, are you?"

"What—?"

The words die on your tongue when movement flashes in the corner of your eye. A man weaves, liquid, through the mindless crowd, cutting a path like the parting red sea. 

His eyes are honeycombs. In his hand, he holds a limp dandelion. 

It takes you a moment to make out the strange man who looms in the background. A splash of colour among sfumato. 

It's Gaz.

The childish swell of his cheeks has sunken into angled, sharp bone. Slender fingers twirl the flower around, around, around—

It's hypnotic. You stare, horrified and awed—a strange amalgam of emotions that slip down your spine: worry, elation, panic, comfort—as his pink lips part into an easy, familiar grin. The cresting sun breaching the horizon. Eyes slanting in playful derision. 

He looks like he's torn between telling a joke and spitting vitriol. Making you laugh, and then making you cry. 

It buzzes in the air, electrified fingers dancing down your spine, and then just as quickly as the boy who disappeared reemerges into the land of the living, into this bastardised reality, he gives one last sharp, fanged grin, a mordant wink, and then he's gone.

He slips through the door, and without hesitating, you give chase. 

Price says nothing when you go. Or maybe he does, but you can't hear anything except the rustling of leaves in your head. 

Gaz, it whispers. Gaz, Gaz, Gaz.

(It's time for the lost little boy to come home.)

The rocks sit in a zigzag pattern through the frothing waters, a deceptive bridge that connects the valley to the coast. You feel the tremulous rattle of the water slicing against the hollow cavern beneath your feet. A ledge chiselled from the blunt erosion of the rapid currents below. One day, they say, the granite shelf will give and a massive hole filled with howling water will fill it. 

Try not to be the idiot standing on the ledge. 

You feel the power of the currents even on the peat-covered edge. 

The water in front of you is deceptive. A calm, rolling surface at the shoreline almost seems to beckon you inside. Come take a dip in the cool waters. Grow fins and gills and chase the river otters through the currents. Feast on the wily salmon, and see if your feet can touch the sandy streambed. 

But the river's fatality is nearly assured. No one has survived a dip in these waters that act as a serrated knife, carving chasms and channels through the granite below. The currents will rip into you, pulling you until your body is crushed against the wall, or into an unsearchable cave. 

One slip, you think. Just one. 

But—

The man in the bar flickers through your mind. His honeycomb eyes, fanged grin. Ethereal in his beauty like a painting of a god in oil and raw canvas. Carved likeness of a Stygian prince. 

It was Kyle. It was Gaz. You know it. Know it deep within your bones, your marrow.

Taking the first step to the jutting slate that peaks just a few precious inches from the raging waters is easier, then, when you think of the boy who plucked a dandelion from the earth, and tucked it behind your ear. It makes the risk less daunting when it's for him. 

For his parents who sunk into themselves, into the crater his absence left behind. A deep depression into the earth that swallowed them whole.

They moved last year after laying down a bouquet of flowers at the mouth of the forest. 

You toe your shoes off, leaving them at the embankment, and then you leap. The perch is slick with waterlogged moss, slimy. It wobbles under you, but you catch yourself, stabilising. Steady. You huff. One down, four more to go. 

Up close, they look so far apart. A chasm between each rock. An endless abyss that will rip you into pieces. 

Still. Still. You have to find him. Have to. 

You step, toes sliding in the algae. The rock beneath is stained green. It wobbles again when you bring your other foot down on top of it. The loud clack of rock scraping against rock is heard, unmuffled by the roaring water that tugs on the stone. You feel the push against your feet. 

Two more. Two more. 

You take another step, and then—

You fall—

The world drips into focus, a steady trickle of cognisance that paints the world in shades of greens and browns. An eagle soars above the canopy, their shadow swooping through the thick tangle of conifers reaching to the heavens.

The bed of moss beneath you is damp—lush with dew and softer than your mattress at home. You sink into the ground when you breathe, caught in an embrace. The vines curl over your wrists, your ankles, as if refusing to let go. 

It should scare you—and maybe it does—but there's something against your head, fingers digging into your temples, and you feel nothing except a warm serenity leaking in. Thought spool into liquid gold, threads that weave together in a knotted clump. Indistinguishable from each other, and unreachable when they slip deeper into the honeyed-thick fog that curls around your mind. A temper from logic, from fear. Anything that isn't pure, artificial comfort is filtered through and cast aside. 

You don't know why you're here. 

One moment, you felt the coils of the raging currents sinking its claws into your flesh, pulling you under the deep waters, and then—

Heat on your face. The sun's desperate attempt to filter through the corded canopy and touch the forest floor. The shrill call of an eagle on the prowl. The tender caress of the moss below cushions your body. 

You should be underwater. Pressed tight against the side of the rocks until you were swept downstream and spat out in the inlet, waterlogged and dead. 

You draw humid air into your lungs until it swells against your ribcage. The steady thud of your heart tells you that somehow, somehow, you're alive. An empty brag—thud, thud; thud, thud—that seems to call out to the birds in the emergent layer, the ones nestled in their branches as they watch your feeble attempt to reconcile how you survived. 

It's strange, you think, but the soporific warmth coursing through your veins does not let you panic. 

You are—

"Foolish." 

The warmth turns molten. You try to sit up, but the vines tighten around your limbs. If you weren't so vulnerable, you think it would almost feel like a hug. 

The soft crunch of the moss tells you the voice—the man—is moving forward, toward you. You want to scream, but your tongue is thick, and your mouth is numb. 

"What you did there was stupid," he says, and the forest around you seems to come alive in his anger. Pulsing. The branches sway and the leaves rattle without any wind. The trees bend down, coming inward. You hear the scream of a fox in the distance. The chuff of an agitated brown bear. 

Primordial signs tell you to run.

But you're trapped. 

Price steps closer, falling to his knees beside you. You can see him now, and suddenly you wish you'd been swallowed by the waves. 

His face is writ with anger, brows tightening together in displeasure. 

He seems imbued with the forest. One with the lush green that swells around you. Burnt umber and icy blue. Ethereal, unnatural. Something in your hindbrain tells you to run from that man that looks as if he could swallow you whole.

"Tryin' t'die on me, hmm?" 

His hand lifts, and you feel his warm knuckles graze your temple. Soft, gentle, despite the ire in his eyes, and the irritation clenched in his jaw. 

"Gonna hav'ta try harder than that, love." 

You weren't trying very hard at all, you think, dazed, dizzy. You weren't trying at all. 

"You're mine," his eyes flash, and you feel the press of gravity against your skin, pulling you down to the soft earth. Your fingers twitch. The fog inside your head clears. 

Blinking up at him, you catch the scattering supernovae echoing in the corners of his eyes; galaxies of pine and cedar, humus and tussock. They bloom from the black hole in the centre, surrounded by sapphire blue. He's not human, you think, but it doesn't surprise you because you already knew. Have known, really—ever since you asked around for his name and watched the same strange fog seep into their eyes as they struggled to remember a man they claimed to know. 

Ever since you found bushels of figs on your doorstep. 

A crown of pine needles and crow feathers. 

Price leans over you, brows knotted together like the gnarled, weaving trunk of a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine. 

There's a forest fire in his eyes. "You're mine, aren't you?" 

You think about the trinkets left on your doorstep. The whispers, the screams. 

"Did you ever give me a choice?" 

The tension in his brow snaps taut. Agony frissons through the spaced canyons; whet from ire and slick from sorrow. He bends down, and shakes his head. 

"I've always given you a choice," his words are smouldering logs, crackling with his pain. "I've always told you to go, but you couldn't stay away, could you?"

Price takes you on the mossy forest floor, fingers digging into the peat as you sink, down, down, down—

His hand under your head, cradling the back of your skull, keeps you from getting swallowed by the grass knoll that breathes and trill against your spine. 

Fire licks in the crevasses of his eyes, molten desperation you can't ignore. He rages above you, quivering in the fading glow of the sunset struggling to slip through the canopy. No longer a man but a myth. He hangs over you with his canines bared, and flashes of anger and sorrow scorch the path his teeth leave behind on your skin. 

You're becoming unmoored. Each touch, and brush; each sweep of his tongue soothing the indents of his razor-sharp teeth all seem to loosen the ties that thread through your soul, anchoring you to the world that stands in full bloom before you. 

The forest shudders with his frantic pace; each piston of his hips leaks his fervent anguish and makes the trees croon, and creak as they bow their foliage in sorrow. His pain lashes through their roots, and rent the air in two. A fox mourns his loss in the distance. A wolf yowls in agony. His brethren lifting their muzzle to the sleepy moon, and howling out the melody of their despair. 

It's too much, too much, and you fall into pieces in his hands, shivering beneath him as the woods around you tremble and quake. It's a mesmerising dance. 

He finishes with a grunt that makes the world shudder anew, spending himself as deep inside of you as he can, as if he could overwrite your empty spaces with himself. Fill you to the brim until you are bursting with him, with life. Tulips for your eyes. Furze for veins. Moss for hair. Peat soil for blood. 

When he speaks, the world falls silent. 

"You don't know it yet, but you will. You've always been mine. Always belonged to the forest, to the earth. To me."

Despite his words, he lets you go. 

And you run, run, run—

Your toes dig into the wet soil near the stream. The desperate catapult across the ravine halted at the very last moment, leaving you winded and shaking. Hands clenched into tight balls by your side. Quivering with fear, with the adrenaline rush still roaring in your veins. 

You don't know what you're doing. 

The whispers in your head go silent. 

The absence of sound makes you mourn, and you think about his agony. The pain when he took you, the resignation when he let you go. 

You think of him, and you know. 

I've always told you to go, but you couldn't stay away, could you?

You scent napalm in the air, cloying despite the acrid burn that scalds your lungs when you breathe in deep, holding it there. 

You think of the chest inside your closet. The pieces of yourself you left behind. The way he fits you like a puzzle, like he was made for you. Designed with your rough edges in mind. Softening your hard lines; scouring your gritty surface it was smooth and shiny like fire Opal and precious gems. 

Ever since you felt his hand on your shoulder, you haven't been able to let go. 

(You don't even think you ever really tried.)

Come to me, the forest says, honey in your ears. It sounds like the rapid beat of a million birds' wings, ready to take flight. Pulsing and alive and full of wonder, childish glee. 

The earth blooms in your chest. You feel the soft, tender caress of the leaves against your skin, the moss sinking between your toes. Clinging to your flesh, desperate to get inside, and take refuge in your heart. Come home to us.

Your grandmother warned you to stay out of the forest, that it was dangerous. Deadly. Wrong. But how can it ever harm you when it touches you so sweetly? 

The branches curl around your ankles as you walk, leading you, guiding you, to the place where you belong. The forest opens around you, spreads apart and makes room for you to pass, touching you as you go, taking little pieces of you. Strands of your hair, the salt from your tears. Pieces of clothes. Parts of your soul. 

You pluck your heart out of your chest, and leave it beneath a gnarled sequoia. She will protect it forever. 

Moss grows inside of the empty space. A tern makes a nest inside of it, filling it with a bed of pine needles, and twigs from the junipers. You feel a mouse make a home in your rib cage, burrowing between your bones. You place your hand over your side, and feel her nuzzle against your palm. 

"You're safe now," you say. "We're almost home."

It's Gaz who greets you with a crown made of sugi. When he cups your face, you feel raging rivers and streams in his palms, and now that you are home. 

"Missed you, dandelion," he breathes, and his voice turns into a Chinook that crests over the mountains. "But there's someone who wants to see you."

His hands slide down to your wrists, and you feel the sun grazing your skin when he spins you around, around, around—

"Now," he leans down, pressing his lips to the shell of your ear. You hear the Falcons nesting in his chest, and smell pine in his breath. "He's been an impatient bastard, you know? Just moping about ever since you left—"

A scoff. You lift your head and feel the swell of the earth beneath your feet. Dizzying. Wanting. 

He waits for you in the thicket, eyes made of sapphire and stone. When he breathes, the forest swells with his breath, and you taste loam when you swallow. 

"A sorry sap, thinkin' you were runnin' away, and all. But you won't, will you?" Gaz pushes you forward, and his laughter rings in your ears. "Not anymore."

Price meets you in the middle, his eyes sparkling embers. A baptism in fire. You feel the heat on your skin, and shiver. 

You used to be afraid of forest fires, but you know, now, that sometimes trees need to burn before they can truly grow. 

Lodgepole roots bud under his skin, rippling veins across a ravine. He rests his hand against your cheek, thumb brushing the dawn redwood needles that bloom under your skin. 

"Welcome home."

"They'll give you gifts," your gran says, shaking her head. "Things from their realm. Little trinkets and gems—" geodes, sapphires and diamonds, raw gold and coral; "—and you must never accept them," a whittled deer made of sequoia under your pillow; crow bones buried in the garden."Because if you do, if you do, they'll never let you go." 

"Why?" You asked, blinking at her. 

"Because it's a courting ritual, and to accept means… well," her mouth twists in wry disdain. "Just don't." 

You don't tell her that you already have. You don't mention the sticks and precious stones that always ended up on your windowsill. The whispers of the forest calling your name. 

You nod sagely instead, fingers tightening around the sap stained heart chiselled from Bristlecone Pine. The charred ends are warm in your palm. You feel it pulse. 

Will you accept this? My heart? Will you keep it safe for me? 

"I will."

This was meant to be light and fluffy and smutty but now it's. This. And um. Oops. I hope you enjoyed it!

JOHN PRICE MASTERLIST | NAVIGATION PART THREE OF COD X MYTHOLOGY ⁞ SOAP ● DRAGON PRICE

[froginthesoil]

𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞, 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞.

— ganyu ⭑ diluc ⭑ zhongli

— gender neutral | comfort ⭑ platonic

— cw: implied depression. ⊹ ࣪ ˖

— ganyu

a soothing breeze caressed your skin as you wandered through the field of glaze lilies, guided by ganyu's careful hold of your hand. how gentle she was when she had offered to bring you along for one of her walks, wanting to witness your smile once more.

with a small, "oh," she paused in her steps and motioned for you to do the same. "look, y/n, over there."

the plenilune moon provided enough light for you to discern the shape of a juvenile deer, calmly lifting its head to bite the sunsettias off a tree. "they usually flee the areas patrolled by the milelith..." how fortunate, you both thought, to receive such a sweet sight — and ganyu held the hope that this experience would serve as encouragement for you to spend time out of your thoughts. she turned her head toward you with a smile, not missing the way your lips hesitantly curled up in response.

━━━━━━━━━ 𓍊𓋼

— diluc

never would you have thought that the young master would be capable of such affection... but there you were, nestled comfortably in diluc's arms as he held you close to himself. silence remained between the two of you while he was thinking, feeling a sense of responsability toward you. "you need a purpose," he eventually murmured against your hair, his words accompanied by a sigh. "something to keep you going, no matter what mother nature throws at you."

something to keep you going... your hopelessness must have been visible in your expression, given diluc's embrace tightened so slightly in response. "y/n, don't dismiss it." his words are firm, carrying a sense of conviction that he needed during the darkest moments of his life — however fear-inducing the idea of pushing yourself was, though, it was soothed by the light scents of lavender and rosemary emanating from the young master, and the protective hand pressed against the back of your head.

his resolve had always struck you as strong against the winds that might try to bend it, seemingly endless no matter how many difficulties he faced. something deep inside you thought, can i be capable of climbing out of this pit, too ?

━━━━━━━━━ 𓍊𓋼

— zhongli

"dearest, the sun has risen," were the sweet words that awakened you in the morning, an encouragement that came from a place of care.

zhongli made sure to prepare some necessities for you, having planned to bring you outside for a stroll near mt. tianheng, knowing you'd appreciate the underground pond inside one of the caves. he had discerned the interest you seemed to have in nature and, much to his pride, particularly in stones.

knowledgeable as he was, zhongli was content to give detailed explanations about every natural phenomenon you encountered during your stroll, and analysed every layer present inside one of the stones you've found on the path. sometimes, his perceptive gaze would see hints of the personality he came to love about you — a curiosity that seemed to never run out, admiration as you listened to his stories so intently. zhongli eventually placed one of his hands on your shoulder, under the pretense that you were straying from the path... when really, he was reassured to find that your self was not completely gone, merely buried until it felt safe enough to shine once more.

[thefallennightmare]

Just Pretend-eleven

Parings: Noah Sebastian x Musician! Reader

Warnings/Tropes: language, angst, fluff, smut, star-crossed lovers, right person/wrong time, cheating, talks of mental abuse.

Summary: “I can wait for years, heaven knows I’m not getting over you.” A story about two star-crossed lovers, that always find their way back because their souls are entwined. The universe desperately attempts to bring them together, no matter what the cost.

Authors Note: for this one, no theories or what ifs. it's all from our owns personal experience which makes it cathartic for us and maybe some of you. MUST LISTEN TO EILEY BY TOO CLOSE TO TOUCH! DURING THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER, OVER AND OVER AGAIN. HEADS UP: there will be talks of suicidal thoughts throughout this chapter so please please please, read with caution.

Collaborating With: @thescarlettvvitch(better give her all the love as well)

Tags: @thescarlettvvitch @ozwriterchick @waake-meee-up @notingridslurkaccount @niicoleleigh @sammyjoeee @xxrainstorm @dominuslunae @notmaddihealy @malice-ov-mercy @crimson-calligraphyx @iknownothingpeople @writethrough @thebadchic @blackveilomens Claudia on Tumblr @tobe-written @blacksoul-27 @loeytuan98 @loverofagoodbeard @comfortcharactercraze @lma1986 @plutonikchaos1 @spicywhenspeaking @lyschko666 @somewhere-diamond @hi-fancy-seeing-you-here @koskeepsake

READER

My feet took me almost in autopilot mode to the end of the hallway where the door urged me forward while my heart kept screaming at me to turn around; go back. The tears that gathered in my eyes were blinding me and I could barley see as I pushed through the door, quickly ascending the staircase. So many questions filled my brain and nearly knocked me on my ass, I had to grasp at the railing. I gasped for breath, my lungs being crushed by the weight of leaving him. His broken eyes begging me to come back, not to leave. But my own issues kept me from following my heart.

Why did I leave? Why did I fucking leave? Why couldn’t I just talk? Why did I leave him like that?

Those usually bright eyes filled with so much darkness and sadness, it made me stumble over my feet as I neared the door that led out to the roof of the hotel. The wind brushed around me in rapid waves as I came to a sudden halt in the middle of the roof. Even though it was four in the morning, the hustle and bustle of the city noise carried all the way up here.

Why was I so worried about a future I wasn’t even sure I was going to have?

My mind was clouded with images of Noah and how I left him I didn’t realize I was standing at the edge of the roof until my foot slipped. I cursed while steading myself on my feet and stared down at the passing cars. If I was being honest, I wish I didn’t save myself from falling.

As I stood at the ledge, memories of Noah and I played in a loop in my brain as the weight on my chest caved in. Two hearts that beat in sync but they could never be.

When he first stepped off the bus, taking all the breath out of my lungs.

The day at the zoo where he bought me the stuffed wolf; the one Trey tossed out of the bus in his rage.

Our afternoon at the beach where we had a heart to heart conversation, one of many, and it made me realize Noah was someone I could trust. He made me feel so free and alive that day; like the crow.

When he analyzed my lyrics that first night of tour in the green room and how passionate he looked.

A choked sob crawled out of my throat when the memory of the night we lost Keaton slammed into me. Then his funeral and how broken Noah was that entire day. I thought I lost him into the darkness that was grief but no, quite the opposite happened. My lips tingled as I remebered our first kiss, the one we shared that night.

I should have known how fucked I would be for Noah Sebastian from that moment.

“Fuck!” I screamed while falling to my knees, sobs plowing through my entire body.

My chest finally caved in, bones crushing into dust, as that negative voice that buried itself so deep within years ago continued to chastise me for my decision.

You’re a fucking idiot.

How could you leave him like that?

He begged you to come back. He wanted you to stay until the morning.

Did you expect him to be okay with never having a family?

What man doesn’t want a future like that?

I told you he wouldn’t want to stick by all that bullshit.

“Stop it!” I smacked my palms onto my forehead repeatedly to quiet the voices.

It didn’t work; they only got louder and more persistent.

I tried to tell you, babe. Being with him only leads to heartbreak.

“Just get out! Get out of my head! I beg, please, just get out! Get out of my head before I cave in!” I screamed, now digging my palms into my eyes.

I was absolutely exhausted and unbelievably unhappy. I hated myself and was so angry for what I did. Noah and I were so happy and to see him smile that grin, the corners of his eyes crinkling made my heart burn in my throat. The tattoos that covered his toned stomach with slight pudge in the center. Soft skin and a comfortable smell I wanted to be buried in.

A mochi. My mochi.

No, not yours. You walked away.

I ruined it. I possibly, could have, most definitely destroyed the best thing that could have happened to me, besides this band. My hands shook, my body, my knees were weak. I should have stopped by my hotel room to bring some alcohol with me on this venture up here but knew if Chase or Malcolm saw me, they’d want to know what happened.

Shit.

Everyone had to know by now what happened, I’m sure they do.

Oh god, what did I do? To hurt Noah was like walking on broken glass. I never wanted to hurt him.

But you did, you bitch, you did!

“Oh Keaton,” I sobbed on my knees. “I ruined everything. You knew him better than me, what would he have done if I told him the truth and stayed!?”

Besides Chase and Malcolm, Keaton knew about my secrets only because he was there when the pain was unbearable. He helped me through it. So now, in this desperate time of need and confusion, I called out to the one person who couldn’t give me an answer.

CHASE

“Fuck, what do you think happened?” Malcolm wondered while tossing on a sweater.

I quickly stepped into a pair of sweatpants then ran a hand over my buzzed head. “I don’t know. But whatever it was, fucked both of them up.”

His hands shook as he tried to type something out on his phone and knowing Malcolm better than anyone, I knew he was seconds away from his own panic attack.

“Steven,” he wiggled his phone. “He’s wondering if there’s anything they can do to help find her?”

“No,” I said a little too quickly. “Tell them to take care of Noah; we’ll take care of Y/N.”

She was our responsibility; we made that promise to her father years ago when he came to visit. He couldn’t watch after her so he entrusted us to. We failed with Trey; we let him burry his claws so deep into her and now we’re afraid that whatever happened with Noah we wouldn’t be able to get her back.

Malcolm realized that too because his hands shook and breathing became uneven.

“Hey,” I said softly while covering his hands with my own. “We’ll find her, we always do.”

“I know,” he swallowed. “I’m just-worried. She told me earlier that she was going by Noah’s room to hang out. I didn’t think-.”

I cupped his cheek and pressed a tender kiss to his lips. “Why don’t you stay here in case, she comes back. I think I know where she might be.”

Malcolm eased into my touch, emerald eyes glowing from the moonlight casting in through the window, and if it was any other moment, I’d tell him I love him.

He knew already, but I still liked to remind him.

“I love you,” he breathed a long deep breath.

With a final kiss, I muttered I loved him back against his lips, before pocketing my phone and slipping out of the room. I didn’t bother checking throughout the hotel for her. There’s only one place she’d be.

The roof.

Y/N’s always had this fascination with behind higher than others. She wanted to feel like one of the Gods on Mount Olympus. But I didn’t doubt right now, she felt smaller than a peasant in past Athens.

The door to the roof was open, cold winds blowing down the fire escape stairs as I reached the top, eyes immediately landing on a figure curled up with their knees to their chest, sobs being drowned out by the noise from down below in the streets.

Panic set deep within my stomach as I neared her. “Y/N?”

At first my voice was quiet, so I said her name again, this time deeper; louder as I kneeled in front of her. “Y/N!”

Her eyes struggled to open due to how swollen they were from her crying, mascara running down her cheeks and staining her face.

“Sweets,” I sighed with slumped shoulders.

“Chase?” My name came out raw, a clear sign that her voice had gone horse; from what, I wasn’t sure.

“What are you doing up here?” I questioned while taking off my sweater and wrapping it around her shoulders.

She was only wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Her lips were blue from the cold of the predawn air and she shivered as I rubbed my hands up and down her arms.

“Oh, gods. What did we do?” Y/N cried while falling into my chest.

For a moment, I didn’t move her although I knew I needed to get her inside to warm up, but I decided another minute wouldn’t hurt. She needed that extra minute to let out all of her pent-up feelings and doubt. Something happened in that room between her and Noah tonight and I didn’t care how long it took, she would tell us what happened.

I hushed her cries with a soothing hand to her back, cradling her, until the cries lessened and her body went limp against me; she must have dozed off again. So lifting her into my arms, I carried her back down the stairs towards our floor and as I turned the corner, our room only two doors down, I stopped mid-step when my eyes landed on Steven and Matt.

Anger filled me for the briefest of moments but I tried to let it go. None of knew what happened so it wouldn’t be right for me to get upset with either of them. They weren’t in the room with Noah and Y/N.

“She okay?” Matt asked.

I nodded. “Found her up on the roof. She’s fucking freezing and I don’t know how long she was up there for.”

Steven sighed while running a hand over his tired face. “I’m glad she’s alright; given the circumstances. We’ll let the others know.”

Not bothering to say anything else, I stepped between the two of them so they could get a good look at how broken Y/N was; blue lips, puffy eyes, and face stained with makeup and tears. Noah wasn’t the only one hurting, she was too.

When I knocked on the hotel room door, I could physically see the relief fall away from Malcolm’s shoulders as he opened the door, letting me step inside.

“Get the blankets,” I motioned towards the bed.

He pulled them away so I could lay Y/N gently into the bed, both of us covering her with the mounds of blankets; and a few from the closet. As I stepped away to let her sleep, cold fingers wrapped tightly around my wrist.

“Chase.”

My name came out broken on her chattering lips and I laid a gentle hand on her face. “Get some rest, sweets. We can talk in the morning.”

She shook her head. “No, I n-nee-need-.”

Malcolm sat on the edge of the bed next to her while I stood behind him. “What do you need?”

“No-Noah,” Y/N forced out through the chills her body continued to attack her with.

“Y/N,” I sighed. “He’s not in a good place right now.”

Her eyes glimmered with tears before they fell from her eyes in groves. “It’s all my fault.”

Malcolm tensed under my touch on his shoulder. “What happened?”

Y/N remained silent as she stared up at the ceiling for a few long beats then she turned over in bed so she could face towards us, clutching the pillow closer to her chest.

Now I kneeled down in front of her so I could look directly into her eyes. “You need to tell us what happened.”

Malcolm wiped away her tears as she let out an unsteady breath. “I asked him a stupid fucking question.”

“What did you ask Noah?”

There was a slight hesitation in her words. “Where he wanted to be in 10 years.”

Malcolm and I shared a look with each other, not sure how that simple question could cause this much damage between them. Y/N could read us like a book, from start to end, so she immediately knew what we were thinking.

“Noah said one day, he wants a family, a dog and cats and a little wooden house,” she explained flatly.

Then it all clicked into place, the puzzle of the night with that simple word; family.

That subject always had been a sore subject with Y/N so we never brought it up. We knew how hard she had to work for things, especially that, so it was understandable why she freaked out the way she did.

“Sweets, it’s alright,” I cooed while brushing the hair away from her face. “He didn’t know.”

Malcolm agreed with a nod while rubbing her back. “I’m sure if you talk to him about it, Noah will understand.”

Suddenly, she was pushing away from us and stumbling out of the bed, both of us watching her pace with worry in our eyes.

“You guys don’t understand the pain. You don’t know how he looked!” Y/N pounded her chest. “It’s like a huge hole has been punched through my chest. This pain is the reminder, he is real.”

“Y/N,” I cautioned while rising to my feet and slowly walked over to her. “Everything will be alright.”

She jerked her hand away from me. “No, it won't! I did what I always do, Chase! I panicked and ran away. I so badly wanted to stay. Fuck, you guys should have seen his face when he asked me to stay- the crinkles, the cheeks, so sweet I just- I can’t believe I did this. I’m so damaged, guys, so damaged.”

I stood there frozen, unsure how to console Y/N because we’d never seen her like this; so broken. Tears fell from her eyes as her chest caved in with each deep, stuttering breath. As Malcolm pulled her into his arms, I took out my phone and typed out a message to Nicholas.

I know what happened.

MALCOLM

“Are you sure you two will be alright?” I asked while adjusting the bag on my shoulder.

Chase nodded while wrapping a protective arm around Y/N’s shoulder; she hasn’t slept since he brought her back into the room just a few hours ago. She was running on fumes, we all were, but I knew the long day she had ahead of her. She needed every ounce of energy she could find.

“We’re mostly going to pick up Salem,” Chase said.

Fuck, the cat.

I cringed at the mention of Y/N’s cat; soul as dark as its fur.

“I swear that cat fucking hates me,” I grumbled while leaning closer into Chase.

He chuckled while leaning up to kiss me, since I was a few inches taller than him. “I would say thats not true but we all know it is.”

Y/N let out a soft chuckle. “I’ll do my best to make sure he stays out of your guys’ room.”

I had to admit; it was really good to hear her laugh, even if it was a quiet one.

“You sure you don’t want me to come with you?” I asked.

Her face flinched with my words but she quickly recovered. “Yeah, we’ll be fine.”

“Last call for flight 3E for Los Angeles. Now boarding.”

The three of us glanced over towards the group of people that were sitting in the same lounge we were. Nicholas was sitting next to Noah, who refused to lift his gaze from the chip nail polish on his fingers. Jolly was talking with Folio and when he felt us staring, Nicholas gave a curt nod to Chase.

Without Y/N noticing, he pulled out his phone to send a text to Nicholas. After we told him we knew what happened, we promised we would tell him everything; about Y/N, her condition, and why she left.

“Do you?” I asked Y/N, nodding towards Bad Omens.

She shook her head, not daring to look any of them in the eye. “I can’t.”

“Okay,” I smiled weakly. “Call me when you guys land, I want to make sure everything goes smoothly.”

Chase and I shared a kiss before I pulled Y/N into my chest, her arms wrapping around me.

“Thank you,” she muttered into my shirt.

It was hard for me to show affection but for her; I found it easier.

I placed a kiss on top of her head. “Anytime, buttercup.”

With a final wave towards the two people that mean everything to me, I turned my back and fell into line with the large group of others that were flying back to Los Angeles. I stood a few spaces behind Noah, who could barley lift his head up, the weight of what happened last night pressing down on his shoulders. Guilt ate away at my insides knowing that I could fix it but it wasn’t my place too. The part of me that needed to fix the bad with something good was overpowering. Any time something got too tense or awkward, I was always there to smooth it over with my humor; but this wasn’t one of those times.

“Hey.”

Turning on my heels, I gave a small smile towards Jolly. “What’s up, man?”

“You’re not going to Vegas?”

We both took a step forward as the line moved slowly. “No, I’m heading back to LA to get our new place set up.”

“Right,” Jolly nodded. “You’re only a few miles from us now.”

“Yea.”

Silence fell between us and I shifted on my feet, my anxiety about this whole situation suddenly becoming too overbearing. I felt as if my lungs were being crushed from the inside out. Knowing that someone I loved was hurting because of a choice they made killed me. I wanted to fix things. I needed to fix this. It’s what I’d done all my life as the middle child. I was there to fix my younger brothers smile when our dad hit him a little too hard. I was there to fix my mom when my dad took his anger out on her instead. I hated not being able to fix the division that stood between Noah and Y/N.

Breathe, Chase’s voice cooed in my mind. Deep breath in, long breath out.

“They’ll be alright,” Jolly’s voice broke me out of my inducing panic.

We watched Noah’s head lift finally from the ground as the flight for Las Vegas was called. His eyes danced around the room, searching for someone, but it was too late. Y/N and Chase had made it to the other end of the airport, their flight leaving minutes after ours. Defeat and possibly anger radiate off of Noah as he handed his boarding pass to the attendant behind the desk and grumbled his thanks before slipping down the long hallway towards the plane.

“She didn’t mean to break him,” I defended Y/N. “She’s going through something that takes a lot out of her every month. It’s a constant battle between what she wants and what her body needs.”

“I know,” Jolly nodded. “We’re here if any of you guys want to talk.”

I bumped fists with him. “Thanks, man.”

READER

There’s a thousand voices in my head, all saying the same fucking thing, and I hoped they didn’t take a rope around my neck.

Pathetic.

You can’t give him what he wants.

He won’t wait for you. He’ll find it with someone else.

I slammed the pillow over my head to smother the voices away. The darkness that clouded over my room did nothing to help the raging pain that pounded within the confines of my skull. Everything hurt and screamed for release but I did nothing. I’d rather let my body succumb to it than ease it because once the pain was gone, memories of Noah crept back in and I didn’t want to be reminded of what I did.

How beautiful his face looked when he asked me to say until morning.

How broken his face looked when I said no.

And how destroyed his face was when he begged me to come back.

Noah’s face haunted me every single night the last two weeks that I refused to sleep for longer than a few hours because I would eventually wake with a scream, his name echoing off my walls. The guilt of walking away sat heavy on my chest as I sat in bed, scattered pens, papers, and a fully charged laptop at my feet.

Rain pelted hard against the large windows of my bedroom and I sighed, knowing there was another full day of storm's head; figuratively and literally.

Salem’s soft meow broke me from my frozen trace and I picked him up from the floor to set him in my lap. He purred loudly as I scratched his head, letting the softness of his black fur calm my racing heart.

“I know Chase already fed you, stop trying to get second breakfast.”

It had been a few weeks since I moved in with Chase and Malcolm, all of us falling into living together quite fast, until the pandemic hit and forced us inside. I didn’t mind it, being holed up in my room with my writing and Salem, but Chase was going stir crazy. He was the social one out of the three of us, and knowing he couldn’t go out to see friends or even go for a hike was making him bang his head against the wall.

Malcolm, on the other hand, loved staying home. He spent the time writing music on his bass or baking bread. According to Chase, the first few batches weren’t that great, but he didn’t dare tell Malcolm that.

I stayed in my room most of the day, only seeing one of them when they occasionally checked in on me or brought me something to eat; like right now.

A soft knock on my door made me tear my gaze away from the page full of lyrics.

“Hey sweet,” Chase said while leaning against the doorframe. “Are you hungry?”

I shook my head.

Salem jumped off of my lap and scurried towards the light that poured in from the hallway, clearly having enough of the dark somber of my bedroom.

“You have to eat something,” Chase sat at the end of my bed.

I pulled my knees to my chest and rested my chin on them. “I’m not hungry. I’ll come down and eat something for lunch soon.”

“It’s almost six in the evening, Y/N,” he sighed. “You’ve been up here all day.”

Shit, have I?

Glancing to the clock on my nightstand, I realized he was right.

“Oh,” I shrugged. “I’ve been busy.”

Chase pointed to the papers in front of me, a silent way of asking if he could read it so I agreed with a nod.

I wanna feel something. That's not the touch of your breath on my neck. I wanna feel something. That's not the weight of your world in my head. And all the walls are caving in.

“This is really good,” he mused while handing it back to me.

I simply hummed in response, not exactly sure what he wanted me to say.

“Anything else?” I asked after some silence, keeping my eyes trained hard to the rain splashing against the window behind Chase.

His jaw ticked. “You’re killing yourself, Y/N. I hate seeing you like this.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. Just call him and explain-.”

My eyes snapped over to Chase. “No, there’s nothing to fucking explain. I walked away from him, I hurt him, Chase. He won’t forgive me.”

“You don’t-.”

“Yes, I do! You don’t see what I see!” I pointed to my head. “Every fucking night his face haunts me. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat because it makes me fucking sick.”

I choked on a sob as tears slipped from my eyes down to the scatter of pages on my bed. My cries drowned out the rain as Chase pulled me down to bed, letting me lay against his chest, the wetness of my mistakes staining his shirt.

Memories of Noah will always fucking haunt me; how devastated he looked as I turned my back to him. I tried to force them away by thinking of anything else but truth was is I didn’t think he was going anywhere, soon. I’ve done some things that I can’t speak and I tried to wash Noah away, but he wouldn’t leave. Although, part of me was almost begging him to keep haunting me just, so I had an excuse to see his face.

I think I’m possessed, that was the only explanation. He put a fever inside me and I’ve been cold since I left him in that room weeks ago.

CHASE

I walked passed Y/N’s door again; she needed to eat. She hasn’t eaten anything since dinner last night and that was a small bowl of cereal. It was nearly two in the afternoon and if she continued at this rate, she’d be a mess of skin and bones. I was supposed to be out with Malcolm but felt as if I should stay back. Something was deep-rooted in my gut that I needed to be home with Y/N today.

My knuckles raised to the wood of her door, ready to knock, but stopped when I heard that song play yet again. Y/N’s had it on repeat every day for the last three days, nothing else coming from her room besides Keaton’s voice.

Fuck, why did she have to torture herself like this?

I sighed, knowing this was going to be a whirlwind, and pressed my ear to the door. Her soft, broken, voice singing. Suddenly the music stopped for a few seconds before Y/N replayed it and got louder.

Who was she talking to?

“How can you say this was all part of your plan, start explaining?”

“I knew you wanted me to meet him! I fucking knew it! Well guess what, Keaton?! I did; I fucking did, and now look! Look what happened!”

Keaton.

I ran a hand over my buzzed head and quickly typed out a message to Malcolm, who was out shopping. Since the ban had been lifted a few days ago, we were planning a small vacation just the two of us in a few weeks and he was buying things we needed.

Well, as long as Y/N was in the right headspace, we would leave her. But with what I was hearing on the other side of the door, I was afraid our vacation would have to get pushed back.

She’s blasting Eiley again. But now she’s talking to Keaton, blaming him for her meeting Noah. I don’t know what else to do, Mal.

What sounded like something falling over and breaking made me press my hear against the door again.

“Left with this hole, six feet of dirt I can’t fill,” Y/N’s raw but powerful voice called out into the air.

My phone buzzed with a text from Malcolm.

We need to talk with Nick. There’s not much else we can do, babe.

I sighed, knowing he was right, and quickly sent a text to Nick to see if he was free sometime next week. I remember him saying in our Hollow Omens group chat he was flying back from Virgina on Friday to see everyone.

Of course, neither Noah nor Y/N would ever respond in the chat, not wanting to risk saying something to each other. Maybe if they did, she wouldn’t be talking to the ghost of her best friend.

“Oh god, it hurts,” she wailed and I could picture her clutching her chest. “Why did I do this? Why did you fucking leave us both like this?”

A loud thud had me taking a step away from the door, thinking she was about to come barreling through but realized she was throwing things against the door and walls of her bedroom.

“I’m no better than you! I fucking left him. He wanted me, all of me, and I fucking left!”

“Oh, sweets,” I let out a shaky breath, hands reaching for the doorknob.

“He was mine, he was mine!”

She was mine; she was mine!

I hesitated opening the door at what I heard. Did she? Did Y/N change the lyrics of the song so it was as if she was saying Noah was hers?

Something fell to the floor, glass shattering, and Y/N’s ear piercing screams dug the knife deeper into my heart and I slammed through the door, it slamming against the wall next to me. All the blood drained from my face at the scene in front of me; Y/N was curled up on the floor crying, a framed photo on the floor smashed to pieces. She was clutching a piece of glass in her hand, droplets of blood falling to the wood floor beneath her.

“Fuck, Y/N!” I cursed while sliding on my knee’s in front of her to snatch the piece of glass from her tight grip, slicing my fingers. “Oh, come on sweets, get up! Don’t-don’t do this.”

Fear of what would have happened if I went out with Malcolm dug their nails into me but I refused to acknowledge the pain. Not right now, I can think of the what if’s later. Righ now, Y/N needed me.

Hollow, sunken, and bloodshot eyes stared up at me through the tears that clouded her vision. “I ruined everything, I ruined everything! His face! You didn’t see it! You don’t know!”

Her ramblings had been the same for a month now, never changing.

“Sweets, hey, it’s okay.” I cupped her face. “You didn’t, you’ll figure this out! You’ll talk to him, he’s not gone for good, Y/N. He’s here, he’s here.”

It killed me holding her; she was in agony. She felt like she ended Noah for good. It was almost as if she confused her feelings of grief and heartbreak into two. Noah was alive, his flesh and blood was still awake, he was numbing but he was there. She needed to remember this; she needed to know the feelings she was suffering through had a chance to get better.

“He’ll never see me the same,” Y/N kicked the broken frame away from us but I could see what picture it held; Noah and her at the zoo while they waited for the wolves to come out of hiding.

Unbeknownst to them at the time, I smacked Bryan’s chest so he could take a few pictures of them.

“Just give it time, just give it time.” I said while holding her, rocking her back and forth.

A little kiss on her head. My sister, my friend.

MALCOLM

“Hey sugar baklava,” I knocked on the door frame to Y/N’s room.

She was sitting at the large bay window, sunshine brushing its bright rays across her pale face and dark floors. It's been a few days since Chase found her with the piece of glass in her hand and ever since then, we made it a rule that she had to keep her door open. We didn’t care if she continued to hide away up here but the door needed to be open. It might have been a teenager rule, but we didn’t want to take any chances. We already knew she was hiding things from us so this was the only way.

“Where’s your head at?” I leaned up against the wall while crossing my arms over my chest.

Y/N chuckled at the nickname but I could see there was no light behind those usual bright eyes. She’d been sitting in that same spot for the last day and a half; hair not washed since I can’t remember when, clothes piled up, notebooks out with a variety of lyrics scribbled on every pages and her laptop always had a full charge due to the plug remaining inside it.

Through the pain, she smiled up at me. “Just the usual, contemplating my fucked life and all its wonders.”

I inhaled deeply while stiffing up straight. “I know what you’re going to say, but you are more than welcome to hang out with us at Applebees later. They have dollarRitas.”

“Thank you, maybe,” she smiled weakly.

“I’m worried about you.” I sighed with concern. “We all are.”

Salem clawed his way out from underneath her bed to stretch wide in the one spot on the floor the sun touched. If it wasn’t for that furry little creature that hated my guts, I don’t want to think of where Y/N would be right now.

“I’ll be fine,” she reassured while holding up a granola bar. “Bring me back some tacos?”

“Deal,” I smiled.

Turning my back to leave, her voice called after me. “Mind feeding Salem on your way out?”

My eyes cast down to my feet as the black cat sat between them, dark green eyes staring deep into my soul.

“Fuck, Y/N. Your cat wants to kill me,” I shivered at the thought.

She chuckled. “As long as you feed him, you’ll live!”

MALCOLM

The noise of the city faded to a dull buzz as I set down my second empty margarita class and pushed away the rest of my lunch. We were sitting on the patio at Applebee’s, the warm Los Angeles air doing nothing to ease the shake in my bones.

“How’s she doing?”

I nodded towards Nick who sat across from Chase and I. “Depends on the day you ask. But after the other day, we’re watching her like a hawk.”

He raised a brow. “What happened?”

Chase and I shared a look before eventually telling Nick about catching her with a piece of glass in her hand.

“You don’t think-?”

“I don’t know what to think, man,” Chase took a long drink of his beer. “I catch her breaking shit then holding a piece of glass in her hand so tight she cuts herself? Thankfully, she didn’t need stitches but if I wasn’t home, who knows what could have happened. She’s playing with her health and I don’t know what to do to help her.”

“What do you mean?” Nick wondered.

I ran a hand through my hair and sighed. “She hasn’t been taking her medication. There’s at least six more pills than there should be. And two extra vials.”

“What about Noah?” Chase asked, suddenly not wanting to change the subject.

He adjusted the sunglasses that was perched on his nose. “His drinking is getting worse. We want to be stoked because he’s written two really great songs but the alcohol dulls the excitement.”

Chase spun the ice in his drink with the straw and sighed. “Y/N has Eiley on blast until 2 am, hunched over in pain and screaming into her pillows. Writing at random. It’s killing me, to watch her like this.”

“Noah’s been playing Sympathy a lot too, while downing the bottle of whiskey and writing. A fuckin mess, man,” Nick leaned back into the chair.

“Can I tell you something?” Chase asked.

“Shoot,” Nick nodded.

“If fucking hurts to hear this but sometimes, when she plays Eiley, so faintly I can hear her singing. There’s a part in the song where Keaton’s broken as he says she was mine-fuck- I hear Y/N sometimes crying and changes the words-.”

Chase paused, trying to find the right was to convey what he was feeling and Nick tilted his head in wonder.

“He’s mine, he was mine. He was mine,” I finished for Chase, knowing he wouldn’t be able to get the words out.

“She regrets it all, Nick.” Chase rested his arms on the table so he could look directly at Nick. “I think-no I know, she loves him. Y/N fell for him so hard, and I don’t think she’ll ever forgive herself for leaving that room.”

“I know,” he sighed. “That’s why I’m on her side for this as well. You told me what she’s going through, it makes sense why she freaked out the way she did.”

I shifted in my seat. “Did you tell Noah?”

“No,” Nick firmly shook his head. “That's something you two or Y/N has to tell him.”

Chase reached for my hand under the table and once our fingers were linked, I gave Nick my best stern gaze. “We have to do something.”

For a long few beats, we were silent, thinking of ways that we could help these two talk again. They weren’t going to do it on their own; the needed help.

“We’ll shoot them both a text,” Nick began. “Same time, telling them to get their heads out of their asses, because let’s be real- they’re stubborn as hell and won’t listen to us directly. They need an outsider to call them both out to wake the hell up.”

“So what? I text Noah while you text Y/N?” Chase wondered.

Nick nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. They need help, they both do, desperately and they need each other. They’re just being ridiculous about it.”

There was a clear hesitation in my expression with Nick's idea. “You know it’s not gonna magically happen over night though right?”

“Of course not, but I have a hunch it’ll work,” Nick assured while throwing some money on the table for his lunch.

“What we need to do is get them to seek help. They have soon many unresolved issues, deep-seeded. They need to get help and get them to at least be friends again. They’re in love with each other. That won’t change, but the circumstances have to.”

READER

The pillows muffled my screams as I clutched my abdomen, the stabbing, sheering pain spreading through my veins like wildfire. Every fiber of my existence was screaming at me to stop the pain, make it all go away, but I ignored it. I needed to feel this; it was the only thing that made me feel anything at all.

Eiley played on a loop through my speakers as I spoke into the air above me.

“Choose me over him, I often wonder why.”

“How can I face him again, Keaton? How? How can I ease the pain, he’s mine. He was mine.”

Rolling over to my other side once the pain stopped for a few moments, I started at the basket on top of my nightstand. 1, 2, 3, 4, bottles, and one syringe. They just stare at me. I counted each bottle, and that syringe repeatedly. A reminder of the work it takes to make myself normal. A reminder of what happens every month like fucking clockwork. A reminder that no man would ever want to stay with me and deal with this alongside me.

“Noah would,” I muttered into the pillow that was stained with my tears.

Yeah? Well you ruined that, sweetie.

I’ve had fans ask me, “how do I keep myself from losing myself entirely?” All I can tell them is that it can’t rain all the time. I hide the pain behind a smile and slip into a parallel universe.

I’m constantly making a series of small holes in a row, mistakes I made in my membrane between here and there until an opening exists. And who can resist an opening?

So do I take the meds? Or do I lay here and rot?

I’ll take them tomorrow. It’s already too late in the day, no need to take them.

It was the same thing I told myself every morning when I would wake up and stare at the medication. The same thing for the last month.

Maybe if I stopped taking them, I would go back to my natural state. I could succumb to the natural order of things, or maybe the pain would be so severe I’d be fine with dying.

Okay.

No. Stop. Stop that!

The voices continued to fight with each other as I dug my palms into my eyes, hoping his haunting face would leave; even for a few seconds.

Maybe I could wait for the dust to settle.

Eiley started playing yet again and I narrowed my eyes up towards the ceiling. “If this is all part of your plan, Keaton then start explaining because this is fucking bullshit. You wanted us together, well fucking give me a sign it’s worth it.”

I stared at those bottles and wondered why any of this mattered when my phone buzzed from underneath my pillow. Groaning, I had every intention of ignoring it, thinking it was the Hollow Omens group chat of Folio saying something he thought was funny; most of the time it was. But today, the pain was so debilitating that I wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

Nicholas: Hi.

I sucked in a breath, not expecting a solo text from him. I wanted to leave him on read because there was no reason for him to be texting me. What’s there to say? He's my friend, but Noah is his brother, why would he care about me at all? I hurt his friend.

But.

That one word weighed heavy on my mind as my shaking fingers typed out two letters back.

Hi

The bubbles popped up and stopped, then popped up again, before proceeding to another text.

I hope you’re alright, Y/N. and doing okay. I hear you moved in with the guys, a great idea and I’m glad you’re settled in.

That message I left on read only because I was hunched over my bed now, dry heaving saliva into the bowl that had a permanent spot next to my bed on the floor. The pain was becoming too much; like an animal with razor like claws were digging through my skin to be set free. My stomach was being ripped to shreds.

It wasn’t until almost an hour later once the pain and my screams of agony finally stopped that I had the courage to look at my phone; the text from Nick smacking me in my face.

Y/N, first I just wanna say this: it isn’t my business to step in or to make assumptions I know everything. I had a talk with Chase and Malcolm, and I understand to a degree what you’re feeling right now. I will admit, I was angry at you; you hurt my friend. Noah isn’t doing well right now, but he’s trying. However, I’m trying to remain mutual about this. I see what you both have; I see what you’re both capable of even if you don’t right now. He needs something; he needs someone stable in his life who can give him the comfort he’s been searching for; I thought that could be you; you acted as if it was. Maybe it still is?

Ten minutes in between this text and the next one.

I would never step in and say something like this to anyone, but because of our current friendship and the situation that’s in front of us, I had to. Because I care about you both. Noah deserves better than what you did; he deserves better than walking out with more questions than answers. But you deserve better than the trauma Trey left you with. My friend’s not perfect but he’s not that fucking guy. All I ask is that you dig deep and see that you can really work through this. Not just alone but together. Don’t be a stranger, Y/N. Please don’t. We miss you.

My eyes blinked a few times at the screen, wondering if what I just read actually was there. Everything Nick said was one hundred percent the truth. Especially the part where Noah deserves better than what I did. But so did I. I also deserved better than what Trey left me with.

I gazed back up towards the ceiling, a small smile pulling at the corners of my lips. “Thanks, Keaton.”

READER

When I was supposed to be awake, I was asleep. When I was supposed to sleep, I was silent. When a pleasure offered itself to me, I avoided it. I wrote that fucking song repeatedly, a better perspective- a perspective of what I wanted to do that night.

I’ll face my fear of the cold nights

When you leave me behind

I felt your hands in my hair

I felt your breath on my neck

Yeah, I need to feel you again

Just wanted to say good night

Our eyes fighting the light

But I’m not ready to say good night oh

I try and hold on tight ‘cause it’s just not time to say good night

To say good night

One song completed last week and another one just needing the finishing touches. It was all falling into place; well, most things. All I wanted was for Noah to call me when he woke up. I wanted to be in his sweet dreams. But almost three days after Nick texted me, my phone remained silent. Nothing, no texts or calls from Noah. Which at the moment was fine because currently, Malcolm and Chase stood at the foot of my bed with their arms crossed over their broad chests, eyes staring daggers into me.

“The syringe?” Chase asked.

I nodded. “This morning.”

“Pills?” Malcolm then questioned.

Playfully rolling my eyes, I filled my palm with the variety of differnt pills and tossed them into my mouth, swallowing them down with the orange juice they’d brought up minutes ago. I even opened my mouth wide to show them I wasn’t hiding them under my tongue.

Malcolm physically relaxed but Chase wasn’t convinced quite yet.

“Did you call?”

I groaned. “Yes, dad. I have an appointment on Tuesday at ten in the morning. Did you want to drive me there too?”

“You bet your ass I am,” he narrowed his eyes before breaking out into a huge smile. “I’m proud of you, sweets.”

“Me too, buttercup,” Malcolm ruffled my hair.

I playfully smacked his hand away before motioning towards the open door of my room. “Feel free to close it on your way out.”

Salem meowed from his perched on the open window and I realized it was nearing five in the evening. “Oh, dinner time.”

I went to stand from the bed but Malcolm playfully pushed me back down.

“I got it. Let’s go, Salem,” he tapped his thigh a few times, my cat quickly following out of the room.

Chase watched with amazement in his eyes as I let out a lighthearted laugh, one that he hadn’t heard in so long, no doubt.

“What?” I asked, grabbing my phone that buzzed on my bed.

He shrugged before walking out. “Nothing, it’s good to hear that laugh again.”

Smiling, I looked down at my phone but nearly dropped it as I read the message over and over again. Chase noticed my face right before he stepped through the doorway and motioned towards my phone.

“Who is it?”

Mochi 🧋🥟: Hi.

My heart hammered against my chest and it felt like I couldn’t breathe, the butterflies in my stomach fluttering wildly with life I thought would never return.

“Shit, shit.” I muttered while showing Chase the message.

“Well fucking answer him, Y/N.”

“I- what do I say?” I asked as my breathing became erratic.

Fuck, it was like I was a teenager texting her crush for the first time.

“Start with a simple hello. Today’s the first day of you getting your life back in order.” Chase left a kiss to the top of my head before leaving me alone to my own choices.

I stared down at the phone, thumbs hovering over the screen, wondering what the fuck I was going to do.

Do I take Chase’s advice and get my life back in order? Or do I remember all the pain and agony, dark nights where I contemplated ending it all?

[chocogi]

Wherein the Creator is also known as the Holy Puppeteer, courtesy of the people she puppeteered around to see Teyvat in its glory.

Your hair stuck to the sides of your face. The trench coat you threw on to brave the snowy walk to the mall fluttered behind you, tattered and torn.

You were bleeding, you were tired, and you were running.

They shrieked and glared at you. Babbling about disrespect and Creator and death.

Hot tears slid off your cheeks and froze on the ground.

Your lungs burned; blood and soot decorated your clothes. The footsteps you left behind in the pristine snow of Dragonspine stood out with crimson charm.

Your blood stained the snow and laced it with gold. The snow foxes emerged from the icy corners and watched you flee.

You are alone.

Your skin is sickly pale and painful, golden strings erupted from your fingertips, grappling for anything that may save its master.

You play them around for your entertainment. You watch their stories play and do nothing. It is out of your hands, you didn’t know.

You didn’t know, you swear you didn’t know.

The strings thicken and wrap around you, hopelessly providing what little insulation it can to preserve your body heat. You’re getting desperate, the hot pain of the string and the stinging cold of the icy winds muddling your conscious. Everything’s a blur and you don’t know what’s happening anymore.

Why are you here?

The snow crunches under you as you fall, wrapped in a cold, golden cocoon of string. And suddenly, you cry out in relief.

Warmth spreads through you. You hug yourself and immediately flinch. It’s so warm, why is my skin so cold?

You distantly notice you stopped shivering.

The heat ramps up but your skin still feels freezing and soon you curl up and what is happening-

It’s too hot, why is it so hot-?

Your vision blurs; not that it matters, all you see is a wall of gold anyways. The heat feels like its boiling your blood and in response you try to rip off your clothes, push the pretty walls away, anything to balance out the sudden heat you’re feeling.

Black spots invade your sight and soon your wall of gold is a cold dark void.

Your body slowly stops moving as it puffs out your last breath.

A shimmery golden.. mass is not really what Albedo was expecting to see in the desolate land of Dragonspine, but here he is.

Even more surprising is the flora growing around and on it, uncaring of the freezing winds and the lack of soil.

If there’s no soil, there wouldn’t be enough nutrients for it to even bloom, right?

Maybe it’s another spectacle waiting for him to study.

Unsheathing his sword, he trims off the stray threads and cuts into the mass of suprisingly durable string.

The Cinnabar Spindle falls to the ground. Lifeless black, as cold as the snow around your carcass, bore dread into horrified teal.

Constellations littered your pale skin and the fading cosmos stay visible in your irises. If that wasn’t already a dead giveaway to who the body belonged to, the golden string from your fingertips is confirmation of your identity enough.

Without waiting another minute, he buries all the string, cuts it off and away from your fingers, picks you up, and bolts for his lab.

The rest of Teyvat who knew Albedo are left to question why Klee disappeared along with him, why neither of them can be found anywhere, and why Teyvat slowly caves in on itself.

They look to their statues of you only to be met with more puzzlement when they’re met with a cracked and curled statue, once smooth marble now jagged at the edges, and gold stripes from their anguished, stone eyes to the bottom of their cheeks.

The statue itself is surrounded by a puddle of molten gold and withered plants, the sight allowing the forming pit of despair in their guts to grow.

aka chocogi challenges themself on how to say you dont know anything about hypothermia without saying it directly

sorry lmao i was dead for some time

edit three people want a part two so have my brainrot

[sundove88]

Introducing Anime Ever After!!

Ever wanted to experience classic fairytales but through the lens of legendary and lesser known anime?

Well, Anime Ever After is for you!!

Synopsis: An anthropology of famous stories from around the world retold through the lens of legendary and lesser known anime, with modern twists, turns, and lessons about. From the depths of the sea in DBZ: Waves of Freedom (The Little Mermaid) to the realm beyond the clouds in One Piece: Beyond The Sky (Jack and The Beanstalk), this ever expanding treasury of tales has something for everyone.

Framing Device: An anime loving teenager is telling classic fairytales to the kids they babysit as bedtime stories- with a twist!

Side Note: Nursery Rhymes being adapted is more for Shrek. So they won’t be here- sorry about that. But they do a good job at it. This anthology is meant for readers 12 and up, due to some of the themes in some of the stories.

Btw, look for the posts that have anime ever after on them as one of their tags. Here’s the list of tales (So Far):

Dragon Ball Z: Waves of Freedom (The Little Mermaid)

My Hero Academia: Heart of Glass (Cinderella)

Attack on Titan: Red Hood (Little Red Riding Hood)

One Piece: Beyond The Sky (Jack and The Beanstalk)

Naruto: Sleeping Shadow (Sleeping Beauty)

Sword Art Online: The Match Player (The Little Match Girl)

FullMetal Alchemist: Iron Wolves (The 3 Little Pigs)

Fairy Tail: Mirrors of Deceit (Snow White)

Inuyasha: Soul of The Beast (Beauty and The Beast)

Bleach: Brushes of Fate (The Magic Paintbrush)

Fruits Basket: The 12 Dancing Zodiacs (12 Dancing Princesses)

Black Clover: The Frog Knight (The Frog Prince)

Hunter X Hunter: Spreading Your Wings (The Ugly Duckling)

Demon Slayer: Demon of The Northern Wind (The Snow Queen)

Black Butler: Beyond The Tower (Rapunzel)

Yu Yu Hakusho: Sweet Temptation (Hansel and Gretel)

Doraemon; Fearless Feline (Puss in Boots)

Gintama: Peachy Keen (Momotaro)

Sailor Moon: Lady of The Waxing Moon (Princess Kaguya)

Haikyuu: Bear-ly Faltering (Snow White and Rose Red)

Railgun: Little Warriors, Big Impacts (Thumbelina)

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All That Glitters (Rumplestiltskin)

Yu Gi Oh: Diamond in The Rough (Aladdin)

Konosuba: The Royal Test (The Princess and The Pea)

Tokyo Ghoul: The Crimson Amulet (The Red Shoes)

Akame Ga Kill: Fashion Gambit (The Emperor’s New Clothes)

Ouran High School Host Club: Wings of Perseverance (The Wild Swans)

Rurouni Kenshin: The Ronin’s Trials (The Steadfast Tin Soldier)

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagan: Cage of Steel, Heart of Platinum (The Nightingale)

Cowboy Bebop: Written in The Stars (The Weaver Girl and The Cowherd)

Death Note: The Golden Pen (King Midas)

Neon Genesis Evangelion: No Strings Attached (Pinocchio)

Fate: The Chosen Sword (King Arthur)

BanG Dream!: Melody of Deceit (The Pied Piper)

Code Geass: The Princess and The Pig Man (The Swineherd)

Jujitsu Kaisen: The Light Within (The Buried Moon)

Blue Exorcist: Blazing Bonds (The Firebird)

Spy X Family: Secret of The Statue (The Happy Prince)

Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic: The Enchanted Key (Alibaba and The 40 Thieves)

Re:Zero: Gilded Feathers (The Golden Goose)

Saint Seiya: Divine Trials and Godly Tribulations (The 12 Labors of Hercules)

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: Claws of Gold, Hearts of Gold (Goldilocks and The 3 Bears)

One Punch Man: A Hero’s Humility (King Thrushbeard)

Future Diary: Wishful Obsession (The Fisherman and His Wife)

Sket Dance: A Tale of Three Tricksters (The 3 Billy Goats Gruff)

Precure (All seasons): The Sweetest Holiday Ever (The Nutcracker)

Food Wars: A Recipe For Courage (The Brave Little Tailor)

Spice and Wolf: Against All Odds (The Princess on The Glass Hill)

Noragami: Stolen Sun (Amaterasu and The Cave)

Monogatari: Secret Confidants (The Elves and The Shoemaker)

Steins;Gate: Azure Secrets (Bluebeard)

Tokyo Revengers: Neverlanding, Never Faltering (Peter Pan)

The Promised Neverland: Emerald Truths (The Wizard of Oz)

Toriko: Sweet Pursuit (The Gingerbread Man)

Kill La Kill: A Royal Mix Up (The Prince and The Pauper)

World Trigger: The Silent Springtime (The Selfish Giant)

The Seven Deadly Sins: Curse of Shade and Malice (The Shadow)

Cardcaptor Sakura: Salt and Sugar (The Salt Princess/Cap O Rushes)

Assassination Classroom: Honeyed Words (Diamonds and Toads)

Way of The House Husband: Out of The Cage (Jorinda and Joringel)

Danganronpa The Animation (It covers all the games): Makoto in Wonderland (Alice in Wonderland)

D Gray Man: Song of The Sparkling Swan (Swan Lake)

Persona 5 The Animation: Way Down We Go (Hades and Persephone)

Soul Eater: United We Stand (The Six Who Went Far)

Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The 5 Magical Musketeers (The 3 Musketeers)

Aggretsuko: Four Man Band (The Bremen Town Musicians)

Tokyo Godfathers: A Holiday Journey (A Christmas Carol)

Revolutionary Girl Utena: Emotions Set Free (The Princess Who Never Smiled)

Sonic X: True, Blue, and Noble (Hans The Hedgehog)

Magiknight Rayearth: Noble Flame, Changing Tide, and Guiding Wind (The 3 Princesses of Whiteland)

A Silent Voice: Beyond All Boundaries (East of The Sun, West of The Moon)

A Whisker Away: A Feline Fairytale (The White Cat)

Your Name: A Little Bird Told Me (The Singing, Springing, Lark)

Love Live: A Fateful Adventure (Journey to The West)

Captain Tsubasa: Winging It (The Seven Ravens)

The Ancient Magus Bride: Entrapped Beauty (The Lindworm)

Overlord: Seeds of Trust (The Juniper Tree)

Delicious in Dungeon: Cooking Up Trouble (The Magic Porridge Pot)

Medaka Box: The Truth Above All (The Goose Girl)

Chainsaw Man: Demonic Assistance (The Golden Bird)

Taikobo: Legend of The Lost Kingdom (Urashima Taro)

Revue Starlight: Masked Secrets (Phantom of The Opera)

Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin: Path of The Canine (The Boy Who Cried Wolf)

Dr. Stone: Into The Wilderness (The Jungle Book)

Fire Force: The Flames of Charity (Robin Hood)

Shaman King: Mystery of The Marsh (The Marsh King’s Daughter)

Rave Master: Cloak of Secrets (Donkeyskin/Many Furs)

Ranma 1/2: Loyal, Brave, and True (Mulan)

Karakuri Circus: The House Within The Woods (Vasilisa The Brave and Beautiful)

Devilman Crybaby: Three Hairs of Gold (The Devil With 3 Golden Hairs)

The Irregular at Magic High School: Ring of Enchantments (The Bronze Ring)

Bobobo: One Hairy Tale (Prince Hyacinth)

Shakugan No Shana: Three Dogs, Three Heroes (The Tinderbox)

Nisekoi: Yellow With Affection (The Yellow Dwarf)

Kaiju No. 8: Don’t Get Salty (Why The Sea is Salty)

Kinnikuman: A Mission in Patience (The Tortoise and The Hare)

Oshi No Ko: The Price of Stardom (Little Brother and Little Sister)

Case Closed: Stolen Hearts and Stolen Fortunes (The Master Thief)

Pokemon The Series: An Electrifying Rescue (The Lion and The Mouse)

Hyperdimension Neptunia: The Animation: A Tale of a Thousand and One Nights (1,001 Arabian Nights)

Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Ribbiting Adventure (The Frog Princess)

Dr. Slump: A Quacktastic Journey (Drakestail)

Katekyo Hitman Reborn: Windows to The Soul (One Eyes, Two Eyes, Three Eyes)

Kochikame: From Faux to Genuine (Don Quixote)

Yo-Kai Watch: Cat Artist Unknown (The Boy Who Drew Cats)

Kaguya-Sama: Love is War: To Love and To Be Loved (Turandot)

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Feathers of Joy (The Blue Bird)

DanMachi: Forgotten Evil Unleashed (Pandora’s Box)

Hellsing Ultimate: Blood Ties (Dracula)

Claymore: The Monster Unleashed (Frankenstein)

Thanks to @sam-rexian and @crystallinedreamsfinelypowdered for helping with some of these!

[freetobeeyouandme]

Chapter 12: This Is The Part Where Someone Gets Stabbed In the Back and We All Act Shocked

...actually that title is a lie. The stabbing happens in the front, but either way there is violence and so, what bliss. Will has a vision, Mike makes a bold move, and the party is no closer to fighting One because, shocker, there is more to the story.

Tags: M, Graphic Descriptions of Violence, Fantasy AU, Canon Typical Violence, Canon Typical Horror, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn

Summary:

Mike Wheeler hates High School, so when he almost dies and falls through a portal to another world, he’s not going to complain. Especially not when that world does not only have swords and magic but seems to work exactly according to the rules of his favorite tabletop role-playing game. But his euphoria might be short lived because the party of adventurers he falls in with turns out to be the target of an evil god and the fate of the world might rest on their shoulders. So, exactly like his games of D&D. Except the wanna-be Paladin soon realizes that being a hero is much harder in real life than it is in-game. - Or, Mike gets isekai’d into a world where D&D is real.

An excerpt and taglist below the cut:

Excerpt:

There is a small, rational part of Mike’s brain that knows that people sometimes wake up and get out of bed in the middle of the night. He has gotten up to get a drink before and then again later because the drink had finished circling through his system. There is no reason, really, why the same principle shouldn’t also apply to dragonborn Clerics living in a fantasy world, and for all he knows Will has simply stepped out to relieve himself.

And yet the first thing Mike feels on seeing Will gone is panic. He wants to say that it is because Will hadn’t even wanted to get up for breakfast yesterday, but his sleep foggy brain doesn’t think about that later, when it’s already too late. For now he opens his eyes, finds the sleeping bag beside him deserted, and bolts upright as the realization that something is wrong wakes him up worse than chugging a whole six pack of cokes would have. He brings his blanket up around him to protect him from the cold – and sees the fire pit has puttered out. The reason for that is the third thing he notices: Someone has left the door to the barn open as they went out, and the wind whipping inside has blown out the flames. The reason he can see all of that in the first place is that it’s not the middle of the night. Sunlight streams through the open door, making the snowflakes that drift and collect in a solid pile around it glitter white and gold. It also lights up the soundly sleeping shapes of his friends around him, some buried under blankets and cozied up to each other as their unconscious bodies react to the shift in temperature but none yet rested enough to properly react to the danger. However long they had decided to go last night, the practice had wiped them out good: No one seemed to have stayed up for watch, which spoke favorably for the trust they had built as a team but also would have left them wide open to an attack. Especially since the snow dizzying around the entrance does so in lazy whirls more so than the storm that had raged when they went to bed.

It’s good news for their journey and gives Mike some hope that when he finds their wayward Cleric it won’t be frozen into a Will-cicle.

Mike pulls on his boots as quietly as he can, secures his blanket around his shoulders and tip toes out into the freezing waste beyond. The snowstorm has abated more than he anticipated, leaving the surrounding fields and woods clearly visible, as is the destruction One’s descent up the mountain had wrought on them. In the advancing flurry of the storm they hadn’t been able to see the black tendrils that sneak up their trunks, boring into and under the bark and leaving the pines look half dead. The farmhouse to his right doesn’t look much better, the wooden slats that make up the building rotted and caving under the weight of the snow. Mike has barely set a foot outside when the groaning of the building catches his attention, and he watches in horror as the roof over the front porch caves in, sealing off the entrance. He whirls on the barn with his heart beating an even faster staccato in his throat, but at least the side building has managed to avoid the worst of it. The dead remains of vines reach like the grasping fingers of the dead up the side of the building, but at least the structure looks intact.

It still doesn’t mean they should dawdle for much longer now that the skies are clear again.

He tears his eyes away from the building, surveying the rest of the clearing that farm occupies for a clue to where Will could have gone, and finds him at the far edge of it, a dark and still figure. Mike approaches carefully, not wanting to startle his friend, but Will doesn’t so much as twitch, even when he should be able to hear the snow crunching under Mike’s feet. His gaze is fixed on something in the far distance, far above the line of trees, but either dragonborn vision is better than that of humans or Will isn’t fully awake, because Mike can’t find whatever he is looking at. Considering the way his hands hang limply at his side and his shoulders slump, the latter seems more likely. And when Mike rounds him, he finds that Will’s eyes are indeed fixed on nothing: They’re rolled so far back into his head that only the whites are showing, and not even the cold wind rustling his thin tunic seems to be enough to snap Will back to reality.

Unofficial Tag List (aka you interacted with my posts about this fic, please tell me if you want me to not tag you in the future (or want to be added)): @smalltownwheeler @wheelerpilled @wrong-energy @foodiewithdahoodie @doggozzy @gardenfairie @beelikesbirds @beverlysclown @yickarus @sourdough-el @hessolivagant @hesquietoday @oldfashionedmorphine @total-serene560 @bylersrise @hawkinsunderground @generalstorecashier @snixx @camel-casing @bylersbear01 @turningsoft @casatoan @maru-chu @mid13s @goldentrunks @bunnybylerfangirl @willbyersenthusiast @letterstomichelangelo @drowninginideas @fluffyfangirl @artsyna @absolutelynotyouidiot @bymarara @unknowmiau @are-you-reddie @elherself134 @longtallglasses @kennahjune @easilyentertained99 @bylerschapter @eli-being-silly @bylerina

[scotianostra]

On 6th March 756, St Baldred, or Balfred, the hermit monk of the Bass Rock, died.

His name has many different spellings, also the year of his death differs somewhat around the net, anything from 608 AD to 756, his feast date however is always quoted as March 6th.

Baldred seems to have come from Lindisfarne in Northumbria to spread Christianity to the Lothians. He founded a Monastery at Tyninghame and choose a life of seclusion.

He lived in a cell on the Bass Rock antis said died there and legend has it three communities vied for the right to bury him, Auldhame, Tyninghame and Prestonkirk. The story goes that after a night of prayer, three identical bodies were found, each wrapped in its winding sheet ready for burial. This was probably a later invention intended to explain why three local churches established shrines to Saint Baldred.

There are several tributes to St Baldred in the area, including St Baldred’s Cave at Seacliff Beach, which is said to be where he slept after coming ashore.

[birbwell]

Tell us about different monastery burning motifs! Would be interesting to hear how each of them work narratively

hi! this was mostly explored when @st-vesta and I were yelling incoherently about it. I also don't have a very good grasp on The Name of the Rose as I've only watched the show. tbh I'm really only confident of my interpretation of PotE SO WITH THAT IN MIND

[SPOILERS FOR THE NAME OF THE ROSE, THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH AND PENTIMENT]

Right from the get-go their burnings are very different in when they come into the narrative. It comes very early on in Pillars of the Earth, with Kingsbridge Cathedral burning down right near the start. It's the force that drives the plot. Pentiment's Kiersau Abbey goes up in flames in the end of the second act as a culmination of the long-standing tensions over the course of five (?) years. The Name of the Rose ends its story with the burning of its mountain monastery.

How do they happen? Till the last second, Kingsbridge's fate was kinda just strung on a line of bad luck and split-second decisions. A forest boy named Jack tags along with a mason's family, becomes refugees of a burgeoning civil war, and ends up in Kingsbridge. He gets the idea to burn down the cathedral to give the kindly mason a job, and isn't even fully sure of his decision as he lights the vault boards on fire. He’s just a child. 

And yet.

Fire is a catalyst. As much as it is a catastrophe, it also presents three groups of people all fucked by the hellscape of 12th century England with an opportunity to build something brighter. Aliena’s family and earldom taken by the Anarchy, Philip and his languishing priory, and Jack, coming from the fringes of society all working together to pull their futures out of the ashes of the cathedral… Kingsbridge and its town start thriving again. 

(Fire is very much a motif in PotE. Someone as powerless as Jack using this volatile force of nature to bring down something as grand and sacred and built-to-last as a stone church! The Church controlling fire to produce a ‘miracle’ and restore faith in the institution! Fire as Hell, the only thing that has ever scared William Hamleigh! Fire as hope, Philip treading the aftermath and watching the sun rise with Tom!! I;m very ill)

Kiersau and Tassing, on the other hand, have been fostering tensions that would eventually destroy the monastery. It is the powder keg’s inevitable explosion. Neither the village nor the abbey are willing to back down, so it culminates in a situation where one or the other caves in. Nobody has been having a Good Time for a Long Time. Especially not Claus. In his grief, he walks into the library and sets it on fire.

Fire is an answer. It is a terrible, terrible night. We are told that the Benedictines scattered to the wind. We don’t get to see the immediate aftermath, but does it matter? Magdalene explores the abbey and it is still the same derelict cathedral from years ago. She wasn’t there to witness it, but there its soot-stained carcass stands as a reminder of tragedy. Some saw it as a victory, certainly- the humble villagers triumphing over their Benedictine landowners. Things grew from it, though- Wojslav and Matilda find their new chapter of life here, Mathieu and Illuminata find new, loftier prospects outside of Tassing, and Andreas finds a way out of an unhappy life.

The mountain monastery in The Name of the Rose has a long-kept secret, and attempts to unearth it are met with death. It goes up in flames after a week of murders as a last-ditch effort by Jorge to destroy its library and bury its secret for good.

Fire is the end. No matter how grand and complex the library labyrinth was, it would have never held up against fire. William and Adso didn’t succeed. They couldn’t have saved the library and they couldn’t stop the deaths. Jorge did what he set out to do! The elusive Finis Africae is still shrouded in mystery and anyone who knew of the contents is dead! The monks disband and William comes out of it disillusioned. 

TBH, all three of them make use of monastery burnings to destroy some hidden truth or secret. The history of Tassing? Records largely in flames, and even given to distortion, since we, the player, are able to interpret that segment! The truth about the White Ship? Gone with Prior James’ bones! And Finis Africae. Fire, if anything, can hide and rewrite. 

TL;DR: fire do many thangs and pyromaniacs everywhere are right.

[modern-inheritance]

MIC Lore: The Lake by the Meadow

In the wide swaths of forest surrounding Ellesméra, there is a hidden Meadow. Few know of it. In later years, during a time of consequence, an elf was buried under a solitary willow tree at the Meadow’s center. Before then, it was a wide open field of wild flowers and sweet grasses, a creek and pond at one of the sprawling corners, where a mischievous pair of young elflings caught many frogs and toads and salamanders, watched minnows swim and spent nights marveling at the stars in their ceaseless dance above. Where dragons once flew, they traced out their missing shapes in the clouds, proclaimed their storied names and the adventures the great creatures once took to on wings of brilliant color.

Not far from this Meadow, is a Lake. This Lake is also hidden, though many more know of it than the Meadow. It is told of in many a story, little ones warned of it. It is not to be feared, but to be cautious of. 

You see, this Lake is very deep. There are places where darkness swallows up any light. There are shallows that are enticing to splash in on hot days. Cliffs perfectly carved out by the wind and rain to climb and leap from in great displays of acrobatics and bravery. Even caves, some half submerged, shallow enough to wade into with the cool teal water swirling around shins and waists as light dances from reflected ripples along the ceiling. Others are deep, twisting, inescapable. 

One of the little ones, the boy, he swore that his father told him of a ship at the bottom of the lake. They spent many afternoons searching for it, one of those ships that carried their people across the seas millenia ago, sunken here to forever connect them to their mysterious homeland. 

She watches them. Luminescent eyes wide. Confused as to why they came here after she was alone so long.

~~~~

Yo, this was literally just going to be like three bullet points but this came out instead. I donno if I'll ever finish the narrative part but, anyway, fun bit of Du Weldenvarden lore for MIC!

There is a benevolent sea/water nymph/siren/scale-patch-webbed-extremeties sorta creature/person living in this lake.

Arya, Fäolin, and later Glenwing all swim here. No one else does. Mostly because they think the creature prefers to be alone.

TBH, she DOES prefer the solitude. She was likely an elf that altered her appearance a looonnnng time ago, continued to do so more and more, and eventually sorta lost herself in it. She's sentient and conscious and all that, but she's lost much of the social aspects.

She typically doesn't speak (and only then through mental contact), but she communicates/attempts communication through sounds similar to whale singing in shorter bursts. If you've ever seen Pokemon The Movie 2000 (The Power of One) and you hear Lugia's underwater singing, that's sorta the vibe. She makes other sounds like inquisitive burble-chirps, etc. She understands what she's saying, and it's completely understandable if you know the language, but it's only her language. She's lost the ability to vocalize any other way.

The other elves warn kids away from there because there was a time when the creature was easily frustrated by others not understanding her not long after she lost her vocalization skills, and could get violent. She didn't exactly realize she wasn't speaking.

She's calmed down over the centuries, though many still avoid her and her lake just for safety and the belief that she's most at peace alone. And because a few elves have disappeared around there and there's a question of if she drowned them.

Arya and the boys swim there regularly. It's their spot. And the creature does not mind them. Hell, she swims with them at times. If they dive deep she'll follow them down to make sure they surface alright. Since she usually comes out between dusk and dawn, if she's grumpy she'll leave a rotted piece of wood somewhere on shore and it tells them to go away.

Arya spends a decent amount of time at the Lake when she returns. Iz finds her out there one of the first times, with Arya diving down deep to touch one of the shallower bottom spots (probably 30 meters still) and Iz warns her that it's dusk soon. Arya waves it off with a 'She's never had a problem with me.' "You've been gone a long time." 'Not any longer than before.' "...I told her you were dead." '...Good point. I'll tell her from the shoreline.'

She's honestly a very nice lady when you get to know her, just very much an Other in the sense that there is absolutely nothing alike to her anywhere in Alagaesia and she's okay with that.

Chillin' in a lake. Mer person esque. She's got a good life. and munches on many fishes.

[ccruelgods]

[ stargazers]

the first sign that something was wrong was that the number of snarky remarks flores would usually make dropped drastically.

even reina made note of such, and she typically didn't show much regard for the other deities. throughout the entire conversation between marina, reina, and the Oracle, not one mean comment has snaked out of the mouth of the latter. it was..strange. even after the conversation had ended, flores had silently left to her own devices.

reina knew where she had went, it waa the same spot every time, she mentally noted, and, making her way to a small flower field, she stood behind the nature deity.

"flores." reina suddenly spoke, voice mimicking the hum of a thousand bees in perfect harmonization, with just a hint of sharpness, not enough to sting, just enough to make an imprint.

the young deity glanced up at her, a scowl playing on her lips as she lifted herself up from the bed of flowers she had been kneeling in. reina was quick to note that this was done much slower than usual.

"what did julius do this time?" the oracle sighed, weariness in her tone.

"nothing." reina replied with a hum, moving beside the other in one quick, fluid motion. flores shifted away, narrowing her eyes.

"then why are you here, huh?" she hissed, the air crackling for a split second with warning. "come to berate me? come to mock me? i know what i sa-"

"stop this. you are being immature." reina interrupted sharply. flores scoffed, standing up in a huff.

"there it is! was wondering when you'd insult me, you dick." she rolled her eyes, not bothering to give the other deity a chance to respond before stomping off.

there was a river that flowed with the cleanest, most clear water, leading to a cave that contained untold stories, a cave that would soon hold a dead prince, and a blue-haired goddess. the river itself, however, was where she was going. with a sharp huff, flores silently followed along the river, letting the sound of the water flowing drown her thoughts, and losing herself in the sounds of nature.

she followed, and she listened, and she let the river and the wind guide her to a rather secluded spot near the banks, hanging vines shielding her from vision. flores let out a quiet, delighted laugh, turning to the river with a short bow.

"thank you." it was only polite, after all, to thank someone for their services. but, frowning, she noticed the company of another deity crouching beside the river, and stiffened, thinking reina had arrived before her.

"...the water's running warmer today." a low, muffled voice intoned mildly, one hand dipped into the stream. around where he stood, the grass had wilted just a bit, and the flowers seemed to droop. face hidden behind a long mask, the young Lord turned to face the newcomer, who sighed in relief, making herself a spot beside him and subtly fixing the wilting grass and flowers, restoring them to their previous state.

"julie." flores whispered, internally cursing as her voice cracked. she couldn't focus on it, though, and she refused to. it was unprofessional. she couldn't help the tears pricking her eyes, and she buried her head in her knees.

"....flores?"

the younger deity didn't look up, and julius frowned, slipping off the mask and, without another word, sitting down properly beside her and carefully placing a hand on her head, messing with her hair affectionately. out of all the deities, the two of them were closest. julius never judged flores for being upset or her temper or her sharp tongue, and flores did her best to be supportive on reina's worst days, when she'd fly into a rage at julius, leaving him bloodied and bruised, be it mentally or physically. they understood each other, and enjoyed each other's company.

"i wish i wasn't a joke to everyone." she murmured, shifting unhappily.

"hmm." julius responded, a hum of acknowledgement. flores suddenly stood up, the vines around the two curling dangerously in her sudden emotion.

"its because im the youngest!" she exploded suddenly, not caring about the angry tears this time. "nobody takes me seriously! everyone just thinks im inexperienced, or don't know what im talking about. i hate it! i hate it! god damnit!"

julius was quiet for a moment, processing the information, but before he could respond, flores continued.

" and another thing! reina and marina always act like im stupid. they act like i don't know anything! they'll talk about something and then try to 'break it down further' for me as if im too stupid to understand it. THEY'RE the stupid ones!"

pausing, she glanced at julius, who was looking at her with an almost pitying look. instead of comforting her, this sparked even more emotion, and she pointed an accusatory finger at him with a hiss.

"dont! don't fucking do that! don't fucking pity me, julius. im not helpless. why do you all treat me like i am?! god! if its not forcing me to be an adult, you're all just acting like im a TODDLER."

the vines around them began to curl around the two tighter, the nearby plants also beginning to grow past their intended height.

"flores—" julius attempted, but the younger deity wasn't listening, still fuming.

"you just-you can't even stand up to reina! you're-you're so—ugh!" she broke off with a frustrated sound that mixed with a sob and collapsed to the ground in an angry heap, gripping the soil tightly as if it would help.

julius was quiet for a moment. her comment had stung, and it had stung bad, but it was the truth. as painful as it may have been, he couldn't stand up to the deity he called his sister. with a sigh, he turned back to the river, listening to flores' angry sobbing.

"you know," he began quietly, and he heard her breath hitch in surprise. "i don't think you're a joke."

flores scoffed, sitting up to glare at him with angry yellow eyes. "you're just saying that. i am not—"

"yes, i know, you're not stupid. i didn't say you were." julius cut her off patiently, pausing this time to see if he'd receive a reply, and when he received none, he continued.

"and im not 'just saying that'. you're not a joke to me. you're very important, miyabi. you've done...so much more than a deity your age should have." he sighed again, god, he did that a lot didn't he, and was caught off guard when a weight was suddenly pressing against his front. flores had silently climbed into his lap, clutching him tightly in a death grip.

he stopped talking, then, hesitating before wrapping his arms around the other in response. for a short while, there was nothing but the sound of flowing water, but the silence wasn't uncomfortable. when he felt the Oracle's body go slightly limp in his arms, he wasn't surprised to see that she had fallen asleep, eyes shut tight in her rest. he couldn't help but chuckle a bit, standing up carefully and, taking care not to jostle the little deity, laid her down in the bed of flowers by the bank, taking note of the fact that flowers seemed to automatically follow her, before putting his mask on, and leaving.

he knew that flores wouldn't want him to be there when she woke. she was independent, yes, but she was still...technically....a child. and similar to mortal children, every now and then, she needed to express things, whether they be negative or positive.

lost in thought, he bumped into marina, who scoffed with a sharp 'oh!'

"sorry." he murmured, meeting her cold gaze.

"its fine, julius. where's flores?" marina waved a hand dismissively, placing the other on her hip and waiting for an answer.

julius was silent for a moment, contemplating, before shrugging lightly.

"i am afraid," he began, smile safely hidden behind the mask. "that i do not know."

marina groaned loudly, spinning around and marching off, presumably to find reina and ask her. Julius let a laugh escape him, smile never disappearing.

flores was definitely going to be grateful for that.

[rotomblr-askgames]

《 The Magnus Archives themed ask game 》

The Vast

Space or the ocean? Why?

What's your favorite constellation?

Flying or Water type?

The Slaughter

Do you like battling?

What's your favorite form of physical exercise?

Fighting or Steel type?

The Corruption

How do you handle being sick?

Do you still talk to your exes?

Poison or Bug type?

The Buried

Do you mind small spaces?

Do you like caves?

Ground or Rock type?

The Eye

What's youe favorite thing about yourself?

What do you wish had been taught in school but you learned on your own?

Psychic or Dark type?

The Hunt

What do you consider the most misunderstood "predator" pokemon?

What pokemon do you think is commonly categorized as a prey pokemon but shouldn't be?

Dragon or Fairy type?

The Stranger

What's your favorite play or opera?

Do you like puppets or dolls better?

Steel or Ice type?

The Dark

Do you use a nightlight?

Were you afraid of the dark as a child? If yes, are you still?

Water or Dark type?

The Desolation

What makes you feel warm inside?

Have you ever burned your bridges with someone, on accident or on purpose?

Fire or Steel type?

The End

What's a nice story you have about a loved one who has passed on?

Funniest story about you and a loved one who has passed on?

Ghost or Ice type?

The Flesh

Favorite meat dish?

What's one thing you wish you could change about yourself?

Grass or Normal type?

The Lonely

Are you an introvert, extrovert, or ambivert?

What's your favorite way to wind down when you're by yourself?

Ghost or Flying type?

The Spiral

What's something you find confusing? (Don't say math.)

What's an obscure topic you're highly educated on?

Poison or Psychic type?

The Web

Do you think you're easy to fool?

Do you like surprises?

Bug or Normal type?

The Extinction

Do you prefer to read or play video games?

For background noise, do you prefer music or movies?

Electric or Poison type?

[sapphicwizards]

The Grave Robber's Burial

If you kill someone, they execute you. Simple. If you desecrate a grave, they banish you. I never understood that. Should it not be a greater crime to jeopardize someone's immortal soul than to end their life on earth? It should be if you truly believe in the afterlife.

I found myself under several feet of stone. The blizzard outside was silent except when the wind blew at exactly the right angle to shoot a jet of ice and snow through a crack in the ceiling. The inside of the black pyramid was completely hollow except for the casket at the center. At least, that's what we thought based on the echo. We only had one lantern left.

Under the occasional wailing wind was the clank clank clank of my partner's pickax. Where the casket had been out in the open the last time I was here, it was now buried under a dome of clear ice. The pyramid had flooded at some point since then. That was probably my fault too.

The cold kills you by stripping away your will to live. It makes you forget all the reasons you have to keep going. It makes living hard and dying as easy as falling asleep. My partner, Bobby wasn't going to die easy, and he wasn't going to forget what it was he had to live for. He wouldn't let me forget. He was a good kid. Ambitious, angry, loyal to a fault. He stayed loyal no matter what.

Me, I hadn't had anything to live for in a long time. After I was banished, I came to this wild country where everything is different. The people here worship the evil sun and burn their dead. According to my people, none of them will ever see Paradise. Still, there are enough older graves to make my living. These lands were not always ruled by the sun god. I wandered, and plundered, and drank, and went through companions over the years. As an old man, I became tired and yearned for the homeland I could never return to.

I think that's what brought me to the Oracle. I climbed the steep steps of the cave, torchlight animating the shadows on the walls. She told me one thing: you will die on the twentieth day of April. The priestesses told me the message likely meant more than I knew, but they were wrong. I understood perfectly. I was going to die, and there would be no one to bury me. After that, I traveled from village to village, begging anyone who would listen to bury me according to the customs of my people. The answer was always the same.

You are a stranger. We will not waste the labor of ten men for your foreigner's superstition.

My people believe in the journey that souls undertake upon their death. We bury our dead with their belongings and we pray for their safe passage into Paradise. When you die, you are no longer protected from the wrath of the evil sun. That's why we put our dead under a foot of stone. So he cannot see them.

It was in Sunset, a town that was half in the sun's country, and half in my native land. On the sun's side is where I met Bobby. I noticed him at a laundromat. He had the dark curly hair of my countrymen and it was cut short - a sign of disgrace. I'd cut my hair when they banished me. Bobby hadn't broken the law though, he'd just broken a promise.

On cold nights by the campfire, it was difficult to avoid getting to know each other. I knew I only had a few weeks to live, so even if I was betraying him, I wanted to save him as much grief as I could. He would play his harmonica and tell me stories of our homeland. His ex-wife was also a musician, and it was obvious that he was deeply in love with her.

The day we caught sight of the pyramid is the day I told him the truth. I reassured him that the tomb was so old that we weren't really doing anything wrong. The soul inside was long gone by now - although this I knew for a fact because I'd plundered it myself a decade ago. I worried that night, but when I woke to find him tending the horses in the morning light, I knew he would come. We drank our coffee and hiked up through the wind and the cold.

This time, the black pyramid was covered in ice. The first few days were clear with the evil sun's light glinting off the white snow and falling into the black stone. On the 19th, a blizzard covered the sky, and that night is when we finally broke in. The sun would have risen on my death-day, but I'd never see it again.

Clank clank clank PLUNK.

Bobby's pickax made contact with the obsidian cover on the casket. I'd gone to sit down with the pretense of taking a quick break, but I knew what was in store for me on this day and what would happen if I stopped moving. My feet and legs ached, but slowly the sensation faded. A warm numbness overtook my whole body little by little. I felt like I was being tucked into bed, with sleep just a blink away.

"Hey boss get over here!" Bobby looked over at me and his face dropped. "Hey boss?" The young man carefully walked over the ice to my side. He took his blanket out of his pack and wrapped it around me. He tried getting me up. I'm a small old man and he is young and strong, but my legs were already far gone. "Hey man you don't want me to get all the treasure for myself do you?"

His concerned words faded into the blackness of the tomb. My tomb. My consciousness slipped away. I no longer felt cold. I felt nothing at all. Even on death's door I couldn't bring myself to believe in the afterlife. I just wanted someone to bury me.

[ilexdiapason]

what is the mushtyn au

WELL CRIM MY FRIEND it's essentially an au about listener martyn and jimmy. sooo much more detail under the cut.

it starts. with tem tj_shouting @definitelynotshouting. who has the hunger au, in which watchers are cosmic entities that feed off strong emotion. and someone asked tem what listeners would be in this au, and tem said "uhhhh idk fungus that feeds off sound waves". and i went Yoink

so in the mushtyn au, i take a rare canon compliant approach and i make martyn a pawn of the listeners rather than a listener himself. after all, grian was a pawn of the watchers for 50 episodes of evo before they made him into a watcher, right?

but i combine the events of canon with the fungus approach, thus creating mushtyn. who is "symbiotically" (parasitically) infected by a listener, following its instructions in the hope that it will set him free, when really it's just leading him down the path that will generate the loudest screams that it can feed off.

every time he dies it gets a little stronger. but in double life, where our story starts, nobody's really watching out for martyn's health, right? his soulmate doesn't want him, his nether buddy is too focused on painful revenge, his summoning pal has a soulmate of his own to run around after, and god knows jimmy's happy with tango now. (though he'd die first anyway. he always does.) nobody notices if martyn's blinking starts to slow, his skin gets a little more yellow, his mouth moves less when he talks. and if they did they certainly wouldn't chalk it up to fungal possession spreading a film over his eyes and winding mycelia up the back of his brain stem. martyn has, of course, not told anybody about the listeners at all, because the day martyn is honest about his problems is the day he dies.

but then he dies.

and he doesn't come back.

cleo shoots up, respawned and red and raging, but she can feel something missing immediately and she knows he's gone. somehow, their bond's been broken. she immediately takes this to grian, whose only conclusion is that, somehow, martyn's gone. completely gone from double life.

(things don't pan out too differently from there. but she still calls out the name of a soulmate that can't reach her when she falls to her final death.)

at home on hermitcraft, too, they can't reach him. grian's not too sure where martyn was exactly going inbetween games, but all the messages he sends are not being read. his communicator is lying somewhere in double life and not being touched.

there's someone else, though, who is sending a lot more unread messages.

because - look. jimmy dies a lot. he always has. it's been bad lately, bad enough for his latent canary wings to manifest themselves, apparently... but it was always a thing.

but, somehow, the one person who he never minded the teasing from (besides tango, who's different, he didn't do the teasing) was martyn. and now martyn's just. gone? forever?

doesn't make sense. jimmy gets worried. jimmy gets scared. jimmy gets desperate.

jimmy starts looking.

he doesn't find much. he can't go back to a lot of the old worlds where he knew martyn, mainly evo, which is long dead and buried. nor can he really visit the life worlds without the overwhelming sensation of eyes pressing in on him from every angle, obtrusively, constrictively. he can't stay long before he feels the urge to duck for cover, to hide behind this thicket of trees and

jimmy trips and falls and kicks up forest debris where he lands, and lands hard, and on his way up something catches in his throat.

of course he tries to cough it up first, his natural bodily defenses kicking in, choking and spluttering and spitting out whatever it is he's just swallowed. but of course that does nothing, because he's got a listener in his system now.

(martyn died with no fanfare, shot in a tunnel with no way out, his remains sinking into the deep and flowing through the caves until they found new purchase in the water cycle. martyn was nothing but a fine mist of fungal matter for a while, but fungi spread, and martyn is all over the forest by now, subsisting off the quiet noises of the wind and the leaves. the occasional terrified shriek of a sheep when one of pearl's remaining dogs comes to finish it off.

jimmy's yell as he went down, and his presence, was all that martyn needed to have his in.

because martyn didn't want to be a pawn of the listeners, okay, he's just gone down too many stupid paths before and one of them had to end in his inevitable slow death, right? but now that he's here, now that he's one of them - he's got a new diet, and he's got to get out of here.

another listener would never choose jimmy solidarity as their host. he dies far too quickly every time. there'd be no point in damning yourself to starvation if you could help it.

but if that listener happened to have an emotional attachment to jimmy solidarity... well, he might be tempted to give it a shot at keeping the guy alive. and besides, what other options has he got?)

jimmy's first sign of the difference of his new existence is that whatever it is that's just infected him feels like a friend. not friendly, per se - he's well aware of how possession goes, although he doesn't have much experience himself, and he knows that outside forces can trick you into thinking that they're good - but specifically a friend. it doesn't really hit him until they're well and truly back on empires that this is martyn, come back, only for him. martyn, who cannot speak in words, but who assures him through electric signals to the back of his brain that it's really him.

that jimmy is - (and here martyn hesitates for a second) - destined for greatness, if only he'll follow martyn's instructions. let martyn keep him alive.

jimmy does. martyn's always been the better at staying alive.

when he's back on empires, though, things start to deteriorate. jimmy loses sight of his missions, of his friends. he moves through the world a little detached, a little jerky. joel makes jokes about him being made of wood. jimmy shoots him down angrily, because he's not a toy. (and what he is is none of joel's business. and where martyn went is none of joel's business either. that's a secret only jimmy is allowed to know.) a thin film forms across his eyes, his gold hair glowing slightly more golden as the infection spreads - because where martyn held off the transformation as long as he could, fueled by spite and hatred, jimmy loves and trusts martyn. jimmy lets martyn take him wherever they want to go. jimmy lets martyn keep him alive.

(there is a ringing in his ears.)

the crossover is fraught, too, because jimmy's been promised a happy ending, he can't have that if the hermits just leave, what does he have if he doesn't have all his friends here together happy forever? and nobody else quite gets it when he tells them that. because you're not gonna have all of your friends on one server, are you, tim, there's always gonna be people you don't always see. they don't get it. they don't have martyn like jimmy does.

anyway um that's about as far as i got. the inherent romance of destructive devotion, corruption, letting what you love consume you, etc. letting your nature hurt the ones you care about the most. here's how listener jimmy can still win but make it heart-wrenchingly painful. further questions welcome ^_^

[murderandcoffee]

what's your story about? i saw your post about your friends not reading it and i'm curious! do you have any snippets you wanna share?

it's a fantasy story about a royal heir who, in order to be viable as the next ruler of her kingdom, must complete her education in a neutral territory located between the four kingdoms of her homeland. however, a war between her kingdom and one of its neighbors forces her to attend the academy under a false name, with only a handful of people aware of who she really is. during her stay at the academy, the resurgence of the war, the outing of her identity, and the uncovering of a long-buried evil all threaten her life, as well as the lives of those she cares about.

I know that's vague, but if I go into much more detail I will literally rant for an hour fjdskalfjsdk

here are the introductions of a couple of the main cast of characters! (under the cut)

Theo knew that he shouldn’t go any farther. The caves beneath the Academy were dangerous to be in, even for those who knew them well. Cave-ins, rock slides, and floods could happen in the blink of an eye, and if he was caught in one, Theo’s body wouldn’t be found for months, years, decades. But Kings, did he want to keep going. The light of his lantern illuminated a hole in the wall before him that was just wide enough for him to squeeze his shoulders through, and which had definitely not been exposed the last time he was here. From the way the light was swallowed up in the next cavern, he was sure that it was sizable. A place like this was exactly where brutes liked to lay their eggs, tucked away safely deep underground. Theo could hear his mother’s voice in his head, reprimanding him for doing something as foolish as what he was about to do. He’d gotten hurt in the caves dozens of times before, and each time his mother had forbidden him from going back into them, but curiosity always got the better of him. It was his duty, wasn’t it? Even with the Academy’s efforts, dragons still only numbered in the hundreds. Theo had to do whatever he could to find viable eggs in order to conserve the species. So, Theo thrust the arm that held the lantern into the hole in the wall, found a place to set the lantern down, and proceeded to wriggle into the hole head-first. The process took him a couple of minutes—he didn’t want to tear his sweater, as it was awfully comfortable, and one of his favorite colors—but after much cursing, panting, and squirming, he slid to the cool stone floor on the other side. Theo allowed himself to regain his breath before he stood, grabbed his lantern, and looked around.

...

Cait had only seen dragons a handful of times before. Their migratory path rarely brought them far enough north for her to glimpse them rollicking through the skies or darting between boulders and trees in the vast forests that engulfed her home. The weather was often too cold for the dragons to be comfortable, and the mountain winds were treacherous. But there had been a few years, scattered here and there, when the city bells had rung an uncommon, exuberant song that called the people out into the streets, where they all turned their gazes skyward and watched as glimmering figures danced in and out of the clouds. The last time Cait had seen the dragons, she had been just shy of fourteen. Now, seven years later, she tilted her head back and followed the path of a long-necked dragon with scales that were the same shade as the early spring growth on the trees below it. The dragon circled like a carrion bird before folding its wings in and diving, hurtling down towards the bottom of the valley that cradled them. It disappeared below the tree line, swift as an arrow. Cait smiled. A hand snatched Cait’s wrist, its grip firm and steadying, and Cait didn’t even realize she’d been falling until Toby righted her. With a sigh, he said, “Please watch where you’re going. That’s the second time you’ve nearly tumbled right down the mountainside.” The stones that had come loose beneath Cait’s step rolled away, disappearing into the grass. The valleyside wasn’t exceptionally steep right here, but a fall like that would have been by no means pleasant. Cait scooted closer to the center of the path. Toby, always vigilant, moved between her and the edge. Tobias Fischer, Cait’s personal guard, best friend, and brother in every way but blood, towered over Cait by nearly a foot. He was a very handsome man—he had broad shoulders, a strong jaw, warm brown eyes surrounded by a faint dusting of freckles, thick ruddy hair, and an old scar across one tan cheek that was impossible to see except for when the lighting was just right. His posture was impeccable, and at a glance he looked meaner than a mountain lion. Cait loved him dearly. “You can’t just expect me to not look at the dragons,” she said after a minute of walking in silence. “I would never ask you to not look at the dragons,” Toby replied evenly. “However, if you almost fall into a ravine again, you will be looking at the dragons from the safety of the wagon.”

[dailyadventureprompts]

Doesnt the Skyscour Clan feel like the sort to follow the Revolation Tyrant Mnyull? Or, rather, ride at his front...

Imagine the days leading up to impact, portals tearing onto unsuspecting planets, ships descending from the silver void, legions of untold number raiding whole wildspaces.

Then they suddenly scatter, with or without their prize, the star vikings and astral war boys clear out as if smoked like bees.

Only days, if even that, are given to the raided few before a cosmic armageddon makes impact.

Campaign: Shore of the Silver Sea

As this eagle eyed reader mentioned, there’s been a trend in my writing over the past few months, seemingly unconnected occurrences that herald something great and cosmic, the emergence of a new campaign to launch your parties from the beach of the mundane into the vast and wondrous depths of the astral sea.

Our Story begins as many do, in the aftermath of a great storm: With the party having only a few nights past taken shelter in a portside tavern known as the Long Walk, waiting out the rain and the wind in the traditional manner: sitting by the hearth with the other patrons as they listen to the old salts spin yarns. One of those patrons was fellow of the royal botany society, who was more than happy to hire the party on as guides and escorts as he explores and documents the flora of the coast. This intrepid ( if a bit tepid) expedition rapidly heats up as the party stumble across a hidden cove and the fresh wrecks of two ships, one civilian, one royal navy, cast far from the sea and left without survivors.

This discovery leads the party to getting caught up in a silent tug-of-war between the navy and a secretive faction of smugglers, with one wrong decision ( likely them filling their packs with plundered goods) ending the party up on the wrong side of the law.  On their way back to town however, the party watch as a light falls from the sky over the barony, forever changing their fates as they return to a realm that’s been touched by the stars.

Early Game

One of the tall tales told by the sailors at the Long Walk was of a marauding reaver king who invoked the ire of the sea god, who in turn brought down a wave so mighty that it smashed the reaver’s fleet to splinters and buried him in the rubble of his own castle.   Buried so they say.. along with all the treasure he had taken from raiding richer ports... and while the story is likely exaggerated... it wouldn’t hurt to go take a look, would it?

Strange rumours trickle in from the hinterlands, odd folk on the roads, sightings of unnatural animals, talk of a cave where whispers of the past and imagined tomorrows dance. All of these threads will lead the party to a meeting with a potential mentor, an old lighthouse keeper who holds the mystery of the stars and stands against the cold cruelty of the void. Perhaps he can shed some illumination on the party’s current struggles

The star’s falling has caused chaos in the region’s capital: an arson spree, the baroness forcefully conscripting oracles,  sightings of a dragon out in the wilderness. Trekking along with a professional hunter, the party discover that they are not on the tale of some feral drake looking to move into new territory, but a full dragon who seems to be purposefully searching the region with the help of a masked rider.

As it turns out, the dragon and rider are travellers from the astral sea, pilgrims following an omen from the goddess of guidance and starlight. They followed the star across worlds until it landed in the barony, and was eventually misplaced by a hapless young man rounded up by the baroness’s agents shortly after becoming an accidental oracle and asking the party for help earlier on their travels. Reuniting the star with its chosen seekers grants the party a vision of the future, of an attack they will not have time to avert.

Mid Game

Hollowed out by eons of immortality and war, a clan of astral elves has ripped open a portal and begun raiding the original port city the party started their adventure in, snapping up goods and taking hostages. Here is a decision point: should the party rush to save the innocents before help can be raised, they will be overwhelmed, taken captive and hauled away to the raider’s stronghold. Should they rally their new allies and arrive in force, they will be too late, and will have to seek out another means of travelling beyond the reaches of the waking world.

In the latter option, the party will find themselves portalling to Lydestrum, a city of glass floating in an eternal gyre of mist and wind, and the hub of their outerworld adventures. Here they might begin their search for the pirates by seeking rumors at the alien filled docks, make an alliance with local powers by helping to wrangle some storm-tossed architecutre, or simply sign on to a spelljammer ship and begin to learn their space-legs.

The bright maiden Urania is not the only goddess at work among the stars, for as the party explore the city they hear the name and see the handiwork of Nyx, Mother of Primordial Darkness. Catching a night blessed thief is enough to earn the party Nyx’s attention, who decides to rope the party into a little wager involving her astronomic counterpart and the disaperance of a sacred lantern before an imporatant voyage.

After meeting an artisan who can make marvelous weapons out of light, the party end up getting snared in local politics after this new friend is kidnapped from their shop. The trail leads them into conflict with blackmarket dealers from the plane of exiles and getting mixed up with the glass city’s political powers. 

Tangling with the astral sea’s criminal element may have just paid off, as the party have managed to snag themsleves a star-chart pointing to what just might be the haul of a lifetime: The long abandoned manor of an archmage hidden in the vastness of the silver sea. What they find instead is a labyrinth of nightmare and splendour and fungus, which just might hold power and secrets that will aid them as the campaign closes.

One of the expeditions sailing out of the star port has its aim on discovering the much speculated origin of an eerie signal coming from a haunted nebula. As luck would have it, this happens to be a regional base of the elven pirates who attacked the party’s homeworld, who destroy the ship they’re travelling on, capture their companions, and leave the party stranded in the frigid barrens of a meteor field. Searching for shelter, they find the origin of the signal: the partial wreck of a long abandoned jammership still attempting to deliver its message. With a little elbow grease and some ghostly aid, the party can take this ship as their own, bring vengeance against he pirates, and begin hunting for the villains who set this all in motion.

Late Game

The party’s enemies are not simply slavers and pirates, they are recent converts to the following of Mnyull the revelation tyrant, a god of interplanetary conquest. He has tasked the rabid immortals with the reunification of their long scattered army, and the reactivation of the ancient weapon they were once tasked with guarding, a labour to which many including the party’s old friends have been put to work. If Mynull’s plan comes to completion, whole systems will be forced to submit, and if the party can bring evidence of this to their allies in Lydestrum, they may just have a chance to fight the pirate fleet on equal terms.  

Fighting an army is one thing, defeating a god is another, and so the party are counselled to seek out the great celestial sage who makes weapons at the star-goddess’s behest. Therein the party must undertake a sea-spanning quest to gather the materials necessary to withstand their struggle: Venturing into shadowed vaults within the core of a moon-sized forge, seeking out the most dangerous and beautiful of lights at the edge of known space.

The Revelation Tyrant cares nothing for the fate of his pawns, merely that victory is achieved in his name, and so has planted the same vision of supremacy into the Skyscour elves as he did the leaders of Lydestrum.  The idea of a weapon that could strike far away worlds, tribute and glory delivered by subjugated neighbours, a threat to that glory by a challenger from afar and the need to strike before that challenge is made. No matter who wins the battle, Mnyull benefits from the outcome, as the leader of the victorious force will be struck by further visions and ascend as the Tyrant’s physical avatar.

The Party will be hunted, possibly by former allies, into the depths of wildspace, unable to return home lest they single out their humble world as a target for the weapon. In that lonely and desperate moment the goddess will appear to them: Nyx, merciful but resigned will offer them a shroud, a means of hiding their world from Mnyull’s sight and sparing themselves the conquest others will doubtlessly suffer provided they give up sailing the astral sea forever. Bright Urania offers them a chance, a divinely ordained heading to slip back around their pursuers, back past the fleet they helped to provision and the weapon they ensured would be completed, and right to the foot of the tyrant’s throne. It is only a chance though, no guarantee they can pull it off without loss and sacrifice, no guarantee that they will win in the end.

We all know what the party will choose, Nyx does too, and when the heroes jet off to go on their suicide mission they’ll do so with the ancient goddess working from the shadows to turn aside the eyes of wary sentries. She’s had a cold, dark vault beyond the boundaries of reality picked out for Mnyull for quite some time. She just needed him to make the mistake of incarnating himself in one place so she could stick him in there all at once.

Art

[sunstone-smiles]

10: Hello! Here’s a cute idea for the cloak prompt, with Iris and van Zieks. In some situation, maybe it’s cold or she’s just curious, van Zieks ends up sharing his cloak with Iris, who gets very excited and a bit too playful about it.

A Cloak that Pokes

Author’s note: Aww! Yes! This was an adorable idea! I hope you all enjoy Day 10 of Tickletober: Cloak! (From Miya and Mia’s Tickletober list!)

Series: The Great Ace Attorney

Characters: Iris Willson and Barok van Zieks

Word count: 817

Summary: Van Zieks offers Iris part of his cloak to keep her warm from the cold, which leads to a playful reaction he didn’t expect.

—

A cold chill runs throughout the town on this foggy October day, where the sun is hidden beneath thick blankets of clouds. Van Zieks hails down an open-top carriage to get Iris and him to their destination of 221B Baker Street. While Sholmes was on a case, the little inventor paid van Zieks a visit in his prosecutor’s office. There was no specific business to attend to, Iris just wanted to spend time with him. So, as van Zieks quietly did his work, Iris was in the room with him, quietly scribbling on a notebook for one of her stories. He appreciated the visit.

When Iris was ready to leave, van Zieks insisted that he come with her. He knows Iris is perfectly capable of walking home by herself, but van Zieks feels much more comfortable if he can be there to protect her as he escorts her home.

Once they board the carriage, the two sit side by side on seats lined with red fabric. The horse’s hooves clack and clop on the street as they move. A few minutes later, a cold chill rushes through the air like a gust of wind whistling in their ears. Iris wraps herself tighter in her sweater. Her cheeks and nose have a slight shade of pink. She tries to cuddle her face closer into her chest.

Seeing movement in the corner of his eye, van Zieks glances down at the girl. He notices the pink chill in Iris’s face as she tries to warm her small body.

“Iris, you’re cold,” van Zieks says in a worried, yet soft voice.

“Just a bit. I’ll be alright though, Mr. Reaper,” Iris speaks with politeness, but there’s a slight shiver to her words.

“No, you’ll catch a cold that way.” Van Zieks lifts up the side of his vampire-like cloak. The cloak drapes off his arm like a curtain ready to shield the harshest weather. “Here.”

Iris graciously takes the offer and scoots closer to van Zieks’ side. The prosecutor lays the side of the cloak down and Iris becomes enveloped in the comforting warmth of the fabric.

“Whoa,” Iris’s little eyes sparkle with wonder. “I’ve never been in a cloak before.” The little girl snuggles deeper into the dark cloth. “It’s so warm. Thank you for sharing, Mr. Reaper.” She then tucks herself and her entire face under the cloak as if she disappeared by venturing deeper into a cave. 

“Yes, I’m glad you’re happy,” van Zieks says. He looks ahead. “Now this way you can stay warm–Gahack!”

Van Zieks suddenly flinches mid-sentence when he feels a poke to his side. He glances down at his cloak, where the girl is hidden inside it. 

“Iris, be careful—Ack!” The prosecutor jumps again from another poke. He hears a little giggle from under his cloak and the girl peeks her head out. 

“Sorry, Mr. Reaper. I’m trying to keep my hands warm,” Iris says with a smile. She hides under the fabric again.

“No, you’re not,” van Zieks speaks to his cloak, seeing through to the girl’s ruse. “You’re—Ahack!” Another poke, this time to his ribs. He knew it. Now Iris is just being playful.

“Iris!” Van Zieks’ breath hitches again as more tiny pokes are delivered consecutively to his torso. Some pokes even turn into fluttering fingers, purposely trying to tickle him.

Huffs of airy giggles start to release from van Zieks. A wobbly smile twitches on his face and he buries his face into his shoulder. He doesn’t want Iris to be exposed to the cold, so he takes her little tickle attack, doing his best to stay completely still and control his wriggling.

But a sudden scratch to his ribs causes a quiet yelp of giggles to be let out. He leans a bit to the side and gently tries to grab the little girl’s wrists from under his cloak. Iris giggles again and evades his capture. To those who didn’t know there was a little inventor under his cloak, one would think that van Zieks was arguing with his wardrobe.

“Is everything alright back there, Mr. van Zieks?” the driver of the carriage asks over his shoulder.

Van Zieks immediately straightens himself in his seat and swallows the giggles bubbling in his chest. “Y-Yes. Everything is fi-ihihine,” a patch of soft, yet audible giggles leak from van Zieks from another scribble to his ribs. He slaps a hand over his mouth, hoping that the coachman was unable to hear that last part. He glares down at his cloak and moves his hand. Iris peeks her head out again with a cheerful laugh.

This is going to be a long carriage ride, van Zieks thinks to himself. He observes the little girl’s smiling face. He leans back into his seat. A subtle, yet warm smile to beat the cold appears on his own face. But, it could be worse.