#a whole year of enya...

[daily-pramanix]

What in the name of-?

What is this blog?

How long have you been posting the same picture of Enya everyday?

They're not even Reblogs! They're all individually made! What?

Oh? A lost traveler emerges from the snow! Please, join us by the fire and rest your weary feet. We have plenty of room and ^w^'s to share!

[mewhenimanangel]

cherry, eren jeager

— synopsis. eren is enamored by you, the way you carry yourself, the way you dance…he wants to know more of you

—chapter 1 ౨ৎ

𝜗𝜚 content!: au-highschool, ballet dancer reader, teen romance

nia’s ౨ৎ notes: i’m writing again! (ʃƪ ˘ ³˘)

next ౨ৎ

you packed your pointe shoes into your duffel bag, brushing back the bits of hair that strayed from your slick bun.

you were dangerously close to being late for practice today and you knew mrs jeager didn't play like that. you looked in your mirror to make sure everything was in place. you wore a black leotard under a pair of dance shorts and pink leg warmers.

you rushed out of your house and into your mom's suv. she had a cigarette between her manicured fingers as she retouched her lip gloss in the rear view mirror. "hey baby you ready?" she asked, fastening her seatbelt.

"yeah...where are you going?" you squint your eyes at her, she looked a little more glamorous than usual. "gonna go run some errands, see if i can run into that sexy mr ryan" she smirked as she put the car in drive. "mom gross, please stop drooling over my math teacher" you shook your head. "oh come on, you know he's cute. he's got that whole bee keeping thing going on"

"yeah so do you" you joked. "hey!" she slapped your thigh. "i'm just joking! you look as young and beautiful as ever" you smiled, putting your earbuds in"

if it wasn't for your best friend, lana, you swore your mom was your best friend. after your dad passed away, it was just you, her, and your little sister, enya.

ever since you were six you've been dancing, specifically ballet and contemporary. you always loved dance but when your dad died, it lost its spark. four years ago, you sat in ballet practice when your phone rang and your former teacher scolded you for interrupting practice but told you you could go in the hall to answer.

you remember the feeling of your heart breaking when your mom told you the news and that she was getting you early.

don't be mistaken, the love you have for ballet is always there but a small part of you feels like you're only in it to please your mom.

your mom had you at 17 and sometimes you felt like you ruined her life. you've heard her ballet stories since you were little. she was in her prime and destined for greatness, until you came along.

her parents were more orthodox and made her go through with the pregnancy, she never danced the same again after that.

even though you felt guilty, it only made you want to be better, it made you want it more because you felt like you owed it to her.

you put your earbuds away when you saw the familiar dance school come into view. "bye mommy" you said putting your bag over your shoulder. "bye baby, i'll see you later" she kissed your cheek.

after changing out of your sneakers and into your dance shoes, you joined lana and the other girls to stretch. things have been competitive at the school lately ever since mrs. jeager announced she was putting on a recital.

all your peers were working extra hard to be noticed by your teacher, including you of course but you kept it nonchalant. today, she would be announcing who she chooses as her lead dancers.

"annie's literally going insane in the bathroom right now" lana walked up to you as you sat drinking your water. "she needs to relax, it's not like the show's going on broadway...plus i'm sure she'll literally get the solo. she's always kissing jaeger's ass" you scoffed.

"better keep your voice down, i've heard that mrs jaeger's planning on picking you" she smirked. "i doubt it" you shrugged.

mrs jeager walked into the room and told everyone to line up. "alright girls, as you know we'll be putting on my own show in three months and i need you girls in tiptop shape, no matter what part you get. now i'm choosing, drum roll please..." you all tapped your feet.

"y/n! you're my soloist!" she smiled at you. "what? me?" your eyebrows rose. lana immediately shook you by the shoulders out of excitement while the other girls clapped. though, you could feel annie's gaze burning into you. she was jealous.

"yes you, you've shown the most improvement this year and i'm entrusting you to shine through with this role, congratulations" she smiled at you.

mrs. jeager went on to list everyone else's parts for the dances before practice commenced. you were so excited to go home and tell your mom.

once practice was over you began to pack up your things and change out of your shoes. "y/n, come i'd like to talk to you about the solo" mrs jeager called you over. you said bye to lana and grabbed your bag.

"okay so for the solo i wanted a somber yet sensual and scandalous song so i chose

cherry by lana del rey, im sure you know it all you girls seem to love her." she told you.

she went over the details of the outfit she wanted you to wear, she explained the choreography, told you you would have to come in for extra lessons. she began to explain why she chose you when the door behind you opened.

you turned around to see her son, eren, walk in.

he was in a hoodie and jeans that sweeped the floor, long hair pulled back into a low effort bun, headphones wrapped around his neck.

you've known eren for years now, he was in your math class at school and he would often stop by the dance school to see his mom. you can't recall ever talking to him though.

he kind of ran with his own little crowd, most often with mikasa and admin, you think his name was?

he was pretty chill at school, you knew he was on the basketball team, he was never really in anyone's business. the only time you ever heard things about him was when girls would talk about how hot he was, and you feared they were right.

he didn't say anything to you before asking his mom for their house keys. "i've taught you better manners than that, i know you see me talking to someone" she scolded him.

this was when he decided to acknowledge you. eren stared at you, taking a moment to let his eyes trail down your body, admiring the way your leotard and shorts clung to you.

it's not like he meant to ignore you, you just make him a little nervous. it was one thing to see you at school in the uniform you somehow made look good, but it was another to see you like this - sweat making you glisten, hair messy yet perfect, clothes tight on your body.

eren's had his fair share of things with girls in the past but something about you stressed him out, so he decided it was best to avoid you.

"hey" he finally greeted you to which you smiled and waved. god, even your smile was tantalizing. "y/n here is gonna be my soloist, gosh you should see her dance!" he awkwardly smiled and nod his head.

"can i have them now?" he asked his mother. she digged through her purse and gave him the keys. "you can go now we were having an important conversation" she beckoned him away.

he scoffed and made his way to the door. you turned your head ever so slightly only to be me with him looking back at you too.

a smirk graced his lips, dropping when he saw you looking at him. now it was your turn to hide your smile.

[cressidagrey]

Something good and right and real - Chapter 11

Summary:

Azriel had spent centuries believing that he of all people didn't deserve a mate. And if anything, the last three years had just galvinised that particular belief. And then he meets her.

The first time Oriana met Azriel, she thought that he reminded her of a skittish cat. Shy and a little bit broken. Good for him that she absolutely excelled in fixing the things around her.

Warnings:

Definitely NSFW

Notes:

I put a lot of world building into this. If you don't recognise it from canon, I probably invented. Or I forgot that canon existed.

(thanks to @firefly-graphics for the super pretty dividers!)

Oriana hadn’t thought that it was going to feel like this . 

She hadn’t. 

(But then, she had never been mated before, so what did she have to draw a comparison? Her wedding night at 19, when she had been filled with more trepidation than anything else?)

She only knew that her whole life narrowed to Azriel, onto that moment in the middle of their living room. 

And then they met in a clash of lips and tongue, his knife clattering to the floor and she just hoped that the blueberries weren’t going to stain anything important because…

That was the last thought she had. 

The last thought as Azriel lifted her in his arms and somehow managed to get them into their bedroom without running into any walls. 

Oriana wasn’t a big help, she knew that . 

Oriana’s hands uselessly clawed at his shirt as he kissed her, his tongue pressing against the roof of her mind, arousal punching through her so harshly and suddenly that her knees grew weak. 

She managed to pull her head back enough to gasp for breath before she fainted from lack of air. “You know I bought lingerie just for you,” she managed to blurt out. 

Pretty lingerie, too. In cobalt blue. 

She had thought that he would like that. 

And really, who was she to refuse him anything? 

“Later,” Azriel growled and that sound was enough to make her shiver. And then he had his mouth on her again and she didn’t really think anymore. 

Finally, he pulled back, a broad, scarred hand cupping her cheek, leaning his forehead against his. “How do you want me?” he asked her, his voice hoarse. 

“I don’t care,” she breathed. “I don’t care. I just want to have you.” In whatever way she could get away with. Whatever he wanted. 

His hands went to the back of her dress and she turned in his arms, letting him open the laces that kept it closed. She kicked off her shoes at the same time, as he bunched up the dress and pulled it over her head. 

A pained noise escaped him, as he reached out to her back. She froze as she felt his fingers touch her right lower back, the exit wound of when the sword had pinned her to the floor. 

It had entered her front lower belly at an angle, slicing through her near diagonally. Thankfully not severing her spinal cord, but gone straight through her womb and intestines. 

If it hadn't been for Enya...

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered, touching the scar, nearly painfully soft. 

Her heart constricted at it. The way he touched her with so much care, always terrified that he did something that was going to make her run from him…

She wondered if he was ever going to believe in her love for him. If he was ever going to trust in her the way she trusted in him. 

She didn’t know when, but someday, his scarred hands had started to give Oriana more safety than anything else in her life. She had started to trust in him, in his unassuming presence, the steadfast calm of him. 

So when she leant back against him, she did that with the full trust that he would take her weight. 

“You won’t,” Oriana promised. He wouldn’t hurt her. She didn’t think he had that in him. And still, she wanted him to feel safe with her, safe in the knowledge that if he did something, something that was too much for her to take, that she would tell him. 

“Give me a safe word,” she said softly. “I say it and everything stops.”

“Lake,” his response was immediate. 

“What’s yours?” Oriana asked and she felt him hesitate. She wasn’t sure if it was just the idea of having a safeword for himself or if it was something else. 

“Cell.”

Of course, Oriana would get a safeword with a myriad of beautiful memories connected to it. Of course, Azriel would pick one for himself that was everything but that. 

She didn’t comment on it. 

She couldn’t, not right now. 

So instead, she turned in his arms, embracing him. 

“You aren’t going to hurt me,” she promised. He pressed a kiss against her forehead, a hand gently smoothing down her hair. 

“I don’t want to ruin you, either,” he admitted, something dark in his voice.

She couldn’t help but snort. 

“Sweetling, I am a lot of things, but a virgin is not one of those,” she pointed out drily. Granted there had only ever been Wynstan but they had still been married for a good few decades. “I am your mate. I am pretty sure that means I am yours to ruin.”

Somehow these words were what he had needed to hear. He kissed her again and she shuddered as she felt his shadows brush against her skin. 

“Not today,” he bit out, aloud. Normally she felt him dismiss the shadows worldlessly. Just a thought and off they went. But today, he said it aloud, glaring at the swirling darkness. 

To her surprise though, they went without a discussion. 

He ran a hand questioningly over her undergarments and she smiled, stepping back to strip out of them. 

She made quick work out of it, crawling into their bed in their house, throwing back the blankets and relaxing, right there, watching him. Waiting. 

He drank her in, every inch of her body, his eyes nearly as pitch black as her hair. 

He nearly stumbled into bed in his hurry to join her, throwing off the shirt and pants he wore and then he was there, next to her. Azriel cupped her cheek again, warm kisses raining on her face. His thumb gently traced her brow. 

“Don’t hide your eyes,” he requested, his voice soft. 

It took her by surprise. She hadn’t expected that. She just stared at him but pulled back the glamour she kept on them, letting them flare to life. 

Nobody had ever asked that of her. 

“I want you. All of you,” Azriel said softly. “Your eyes are you. Every time they are just pitch black I feel like something is missing.”

She smiled at that, leaning into his touch, turning her head to press a kiss to the inside of his hands to one of the worst scars. 

"Anything else?" she asked softly. 

"Your hair."

She pulled out the two pins that kept it up during the day, letting the dark curls fall around her waist, shaking her head so they settled. 

“Tell me I can touch you,” he whispered.

“Everywhere you want,” she whispered right back, twining her arms around his neck. 

That was all he needed. One hand slid down over her neck, his mouth finding hers again as fingertips softly trailed over her clavicle and her arm to her fingertips…up again, down her torso, in between the valley of her breast…and then over her ribs, up again, until callouses and mottled skin rasped against a sensitive peak and she gasped. 

He swallowed her sound, pulling back slightly to repeat the touch, circling her breast, even as they tightened to a near-painful point, her arousal racketing up. 

She wanted to reach out to touch him, to be the one to make him come but all she could was moan at his ministrations until he caught her nipple between his fingertips and she whimpered. 

“Will you give me two?” he asked her, nearly conversationally and she stared at him. He may acted like nothing bothered him but she could still smell his desire. 

It was filling the room, intermixing for both of them. 

His cedar mist and her jasmine fire. She wasn’t even sure what the result would be. Nor did she care. 

“Two?” she repeated hollowly. 

Just…now? How…

“Yes,” Azriel said evenly. “Will you give me two peaks? Drench my fingers?” 

“I…Then we’ll be here in three days,” she exclaimed. “It was hit or miss when I used to…” She didn’t get to answer the rest of the way. Probably better. 

He caught her mouth in another bruising kiss. 

It had been hit or miss the last time she had sex. Granted, Wynstan and her marriage had been a fucking mess at this point and so their sex had been…questionable if anything. And it had never been a desire-filled clash of wills anyway. 

It had just been…something they had done because people expected that of them. Sometimes she had gotten something out of it. Especially when she had taken matters into her own hands. 

It was better when it was just herself, but then she had the problem of shutting up her brain that ran a million miles an hour and…there had only really been a few occasions since when she had even wanted to even touch herself. 

Azriel growled against her mouth, the sound somehow resulting in a rush of wetness between her thighs. 

He pulled back, only to go back to attacking her neck with kisses, lips and teeth against her sensitive skin.

“It…takes a long time. I have been the one in charge of my own orgasms since I was 18,” she managed to get out, her voice wrecked. He pulled back, staring at her. She couldn’t help but catch her lip between her teeth and then he caught it with his thumb. 

“That’s unacceptable,” Azriel told her, his voice low. “You are going to come and you are going to say my name while you do it.”

She swallowed. 

There was not one fucking way where she was going to be in charge, was there? 

She couldn’t find it in herself to care, nor could she stop the squeak that escaped her as his hand reached the apex of her thigh and dipped one thick finger between her lower lips. 

“You are drenched ,”  he bit out these words before he caught her mouth in another bruising kiss…and then, really it was just a question of hanging on to him. 

While Azriel made it his mission to take her apart. 

Every noise she made was catalogued by him. Every twitch of her body that felt so overstimulated by him and being surrounded by him…all of it made a roadmap for him, made it possible for him to push her higher and higher. 

One single finger pressed inside her, a faint burning stretch that made her gasp, his thumb finding the bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs and she shook, fingernails biting against Azriel‘s shoulder. 

He wasn’t going to do this, was he?

He was. 

The rhythm he set was just at the edge of too much. 

A thick finger that stretched her, a thumb circling that nub…her back arched on her own account. 

He took that as an invitation, catching one breast in his mouth, a warm, wet tongue rasping around a hard nipple. 

And then somehow it was just the faint bite of his teeth against her breast, thumb still circling her knot as she shook apart, clenching against his hand, surrounded by him, owned by him.

She tumbled headfirst into her first peak, his name a gasp leaving her mouth. “Azriel!” 

“Cauldron, you are beautiful,” he breathed, letting go of her breast. 

“Azriel,” she whispered, her breathing coming in rapid gasps. 

“That’s one,” he said evenly. 

One?

…By the cauldron.

“There is no way you can…” she tried to protest. That was how far she came. 

He moved faster than she thought he even could. One moment she had been on her side, his hand still buried between her legs… the next she was on her back and he loomed over her. 

“What did you just say, love?” he said softly, hazel eyes near black with his desire. She swallowed. “No way I can make you come again for me?” Azriel offered, his voice gentle. She managed a nod. 

“We’ll see about that,” he told her, a grin widening over his features. He pressed a kiss against her unresisting lips and she curled a hand against his ribcage…and then he left her mouth and worked himself down her body, dropping kisses wherever he went, feather-light and gentle. Somehow a harsh contrast to how intense he was being, to how he had thought that she…

Well. He parted her legs and she slid them open for him to settle between them, swallowing once again as her brain finally caught up with what was happening. 

She opened her mouth to protest, but then he licked her from her hole to that bundle of nerves and there was nothing left anymore, just a whimper leaving her mouth. 

She had thought that his fingers were clever. Shee had thought that he had been…quick to make her come, quick to let her find her peak like that. That he had somehow figured out a way to read her moans and give her exactly what she needed…and not…

Her hands gripped the bedsheets in a white-knuckled grip as her body started to shake, the arousal in her belly tightening to a fever pitch, her breathing coming in pants. 

He buried his finger into her once again, his tongue concentrating on the apex of her thighs, stretching her open.

“I…I…so good. So good.” She was reduced to babbling, her eyes closed, fireworks already exploding behind them as he prodded and pushed her towards her release, his finger slowly sinking inside her and then withdrawing again. 

More.

“Can you take another one?” Azriel asked, lifting his head from between her legs and she managed a whimper, maybe an affirmative. 

She wasn’t even sure. 

She just knew that his mouth went back to making her lose her cauldron-forsaken brain and then she was stretched seemingly impossibly wide with another thick, ridged finger slipped inside her. 

“There we go,” he whispered against her, his breath cool against her drenched and overheated flesh.

There we go.

Her body shuddered, her legs tightening against his arms that kept her stretched open, pinned to the bed, unable to escape. 

She had thought two fingers were all she could take. Azriel had broad hands and…

And then he somehow pressed a third finger inside her. 

He actually did it. 

What she had thought was nothing but male mating posturing…yeah, he had every fucking reason to be as arrogant as he liked about it, because she shattered. 

There was no other word for it. No other word that could possibly describe the feeling as she seemingly reached a cliff's edge and hurled down over it, a high-pitched noise leaving her throat as she shook through it. 

He pulled his fingers from her, absolutely drenched in her slick, and by the time she once again felt able to open her eyes, he had already pressed kisses to her quivering form, over her stomach and breast. 

“I think I proved my point,” Azriel whispered against her pulse point and she managed a weak laugh, loosening the death grip she had on the sheets to lay her hands on his shoulder. 

“You did, Sweetling,” she promised him, lightly pulling at his hair, until he slipped upstairs to kiss her properly, and she moaned at the taste of herself in his mouth. 

She let her hands wander, down his shoulders to his side, then between them, reaching to take him in hand to return the favour….he shuddered at her hand wrapped around him, a hiss escaping him. 

She swallowed. 

Suddenly his insistence on making her come at least twice made perfect sense because he was massive . 

Titania had been right to talk about proportionality. 

Still, there was absolutely no hesitance in her anywhere. Nothing, but the need within her firing up again, or maybe it had never even left her, as she swirled her thumb over the head of his cock, catching that bead of moisture...it made him hiss once again . 

“I want you,” she whispered and he growled against her neck. 

“If it’s too much…” he warned her. It wouldn’t be. She was sure about that. 

Oriana was also sure that she had never been more ready for the taking than she was at that particular moment. 

So letting go of him and wrapping her legs around his waist was clearly the reasonable thing to do.

Very reasonable. 

He made a noise low in his throat, moving impossibly closer to her and she could finally feel him throb against her, hard and massive and big.

“It won’t be too much,” she promised him, as he leant his forehead against her.

It wasn’t. 

It was heat and pressure and her body giving way and the sight of Azriel above her, wings stretching out and her reaching out for him. 

It was her body stretching to take him and a burning sensation, of the fire welling up inside her as she forced herself to take a deep breath even when it seemed impossible.

She met his eyes, curling a hand against the nape of his neck, kissing him.

And then finally, he hit the end of her, coming to rest against her. 

He didn’t move. 

“It’s alright. I can take it, sweetling,” she cooed.

She could. For him, she would take everything.

The first snap of his hips made her see stars. The second made the bond in her chest bloom brightly, the golden bond coming into stark focus.

It was right there, thrumming with their love and pleasure, with every passing second growing stronger and more solid.

She couldn’t describe it any differently. 

Oriana had thought when the bond snapped for the first time that it had already been a solid string tying her to Azriel. She had thought it was strong.

It was nothing against what it turned into at that moment.

It had been nothing but the thinnest of threads, nothing but a wisp of connection, a quiet echo of feelings.

Now…now it was a rope. Strong and supple and flexible. A rope that tied her to Azriel, that connected their feelings. 

Everything he felt poured over her. All his adoration, his pleasure and his love. A maelstrom that took her and she could do nothing to fight against it. 

Not that she wanted to. She never would want to. 

This was Azriel. The male she loved. 

Her mate. 

Her everything. 

And as her nails bit into his shoulders, she fell apart. 

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

The moment the mating bond had first snapped in Azriel’s mind, would always count as one of the most shocking moments in his long, immortal life. 

But the moment they finally accepted the mating bond and it solidified in place…that would always be one of the most beautiful things he had ever felt. 

It solidified and Oriana’s mind collided with his, bursting open with feelings. She drenched him. Drenched him in her love, the feeling so strongly that it made his very heart shudder. 

She loved him. 

He had doubted many things in 540 years of life. 

But he would never be able to doubt the depth of her love for him. 

Not when he dwelled in it, when she poured it over him, pushing it into the bond, warming and nurturing him. 

Her love. The very essence of her, of bright and brilliant Oriana, who loved him. 

For some cauldron-forsaken reason, she loved him like that . 

It all culminated in that. 

He splintered apart at the seams, there was no other explanation for it. 

He splintered apart, as mind-numbing pleasure took over his body, and all he could concentrate on was Oriana. Oriana underneath him, Oriana’s love, Oriana, surrounding him, her warm body so welcoming to him, wrapped around him to the best of their ability. 

He came back to himself slowly, still shuddering with the strength of the bond between them, but he wasn’t the only one. 

She clutched him to him, holding him so tightly, her chest still rising and falling rapidly. 

He pushed up on shaky arms, not wanting to hurt her with his weight.

“No, don’t go, Sweetling,” she protested, her voice hoarse, eyes blinking open, protest seemingly pouring over their bond. 

“Shhh, I don’t want to hurt you,” he shushed her softly, managing somehow to pull out of her and collapse next to her…pulling her as tightly against his side as she could. 

“I thought this would be different,” he finally whispered, breathing in the scent of her and him, intermixing into something beautiful. The smell of blood hit his nostrils.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, desperation bleeding into his eyes, immediately taking in her still form and Oriana’s eyes blinked open

“What?” she asked him. 

“I smell blood,” he explained, eyes still tracking over her body. He couldn’t see blood, but that didn’t mean anything. 

What had he done? Where had he hurt her? He knew that he had been rough with her but he hadn't...

But then Oriana was reaching out for him, her hand touching his side, where she had clung onto him and came away wet. 

“It’s yours,” she said, eyes widening. “I…My fingernails.”

Oh.

Relief poured out of him all over her as she blinked at him. But then he could feel Oriana’s regret, tinged with sadness and apology, pushing against him.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered, sitting up, carefully reaching out to see the already-closing wounds. 

“I didn’t even feel it,” he admitted. “Don’t be sorry." He didn't want her to be sad. Not because of this. Not when he had enjoyed every fucking moment of it. 

She fixed him with a glare. “I made you bleed.”

“I have bled for a lot less than our pleasure,” he shot back. 

“Azriel,” she said quietly, seemingly searching for words. Finally, she sighed. “At least let me clean it up,” she bargained, reaching over to her bedside table that she had bought in some kind of antique shop a few weeks ago. He had gotten one as well, though they definitely weren’t matching.  

“Did you stock your bedside table with potions?” he asked her, as she pulled out one.

“Yes, because I am paranoid and if I accidentally burned you I wanted to be prepared,” Oriana admitted. “I had my sister send them to me.” 

“Did you think that was going to happen?” he asked her curiously, shifting slightly as she poured said potion onto a rag and pressed it to his side. 

“No,” Oriana said quietly. “But I wanted to be prepared if something did happen. I was counting on the mating bond stopping my magic from hurting you, if I am being honest.”

“You weren’t scared that I was going to hurt you?” he asked her and she just looked at him. 

“No, Azriel. I didn’t think that for one moment,” she said softly. “If my emotions are high, my magic tends to lash out. All I have come to know about you, makes me think that if your emotions go high…you would rather shut down. Unless your temper gets the better of you.”

She was right. She was so fucking right. 

Sometimes it scared him about how much Orianaa seemed to get him. 

His exact opposite in so many ways, a complimentary half in others…his equal in all. 

“At least you didn’t put us both on fire,” he finally said drily, figuring that that was the safest thing to say. Her hand came away from where she had wiped the blood from his skin. 

“That’s not funny,” she said, though he could feel her amusement bleed over the bond. 

“It’s a bit funny. You need to admit that,” he gave back, reaching back out to touch her as she put away the rag and the whatever tonic she had put on his skin. 

He rolled his shoulder, not even feeling a twinge at his skin moving. 

She curled back up with him, though he could still feel her apology thrumming through the bond. 

He batted it away with a wave of his adoration for her and she huffed, stretching out in their bed, unapologetically naked. 

Cauldron, she was gorgeous like that, all lush curves, not a single angle anywhere in side. Long limbs, well muscles by her work, near black skin that seemed to swallow all sunlight stretching over her body, and there in her face, these eyes that he adored so much. 

“I thought it would be…worse,” he admitted as he turned so that he could bed his head on her stomach, stretching his wings over both of them. 

“You thought you would feel less than yourself? Less in control?” Oriana guessed, burying a hand in his hair, scratching her nails over his scalp delicately and he moaned softly at the sensation. 

“Yes,” he whispered. “I thought it would be more…feral.”

“I think we were plenty feral,” Oriana admitted drily. “I got my claws in you after all.” 

He couldn’t help but snort. “I thought sex was all we were going to think about. Unable to have an actual conversation,” he said thoughtfully.

“Or maybe, once we sated the first…wave of…desire, it’s banked until it comes back,” Oriana suggested. 

He could see that. At least then it would make sense why it took other faes weeks to finally be fit for companionship again.

He traced his fingers over her stomach thoughtfully, tripping over the puckered scar tissue and she shivered underneath him in response. 

“Do you feel that?” he asked her curiously. “I don’t always have feelings in my hands.” Sometimes it prickled like needles under his gnarled skin…sometimes they were overly sensitive. And sometimes they were numb.

“I do,” Oriana said softly. “If the weather changes especially.”

It was the same for him. 

“It went straight through you,” he said softly, still tracing the long line. Whoever had healed it for her, had done a phenomenal job at at least trying to make the slice less jagged than it had been. Still, it was long and brutal. “I could have lost you before I ever met you,” he whispered against her skin as he pressed a kiss against her skin, against the scar that could have claimed her life. 

It could have killed her, easily. And if it had…he would have never met her. Never got what he now got from her. Never gotten this, this mating bond, this moment right there in their bed, where the bond between them thrummed with love and sweetness and could imagine a future for the two of them. 

He hadn’t expected as she lifted one of his hands to her mouth, raining a myriad of kisses over his scarred skin. “I could have lost you too,” Oriana said softly. “But I haven’t. We haven’t.”

He shuddered as the bond flared back to life between them, as the banked desire flared back to life. 

“I think I was right,” Oriana breathed, her eyes glowing with fire. 

She was right. She always was right.

He nary brought out a noise as he crawled back up her body, as she stretched out underneath him, seemingly revelling in the presence of him on top of her. 

He wanted to remember every single second of this, even when he knew that it would all be lost in another wave of desire. 

He wanted her and she wanted him, the scent of her want thick in the air as he kissed her again, her body easily opening up underneath him, a soft gasp from her as he slid back into her like he had never left in the first place. 

He promised himself to go slow this time, to savour every moment, as the bond between them flexed and her desire was reflected onto him, flickering like warm, painless flames all over him. 

She was careful this time, no nails biting in his skin, flat hands rubbing over his sides and then hands carefully reaching out to touch the delicate skin of his wings. 

He shuddered above her, wings spreading out for her touch on her own accord as Oriana looked at him, the flames in her eyes flickering.  

Illyirans were taught from a very young age to be careful with their wings. And especially Azriel who hadn’t even learnt to fly until he had been far older than any other Illyrian…he had always been…careful with them. 

They were seen as an Illyiran’s pride, their greatest joy, their biggest strength… their biggest weakness they had. 

Not even Cassian and Rhys reached out to touch his wings because they knew how weird he could be about them. 

But Oriana…she reached out and she touched and he loved every fucking moment of it. 

He arched into her touch, revelled into it, as her arms stretched out so that she could grip the talon at their tip, his wings shuddering against her grasp, strong hands that were being so carefully with him, that touched him with so much care and love and when they left marks, then it were marks of love. 

All she left behind her were marks of love. 

She shuddered against him and he kissed her, tasting her, drinking her in, everything that she was offering to him for the taking. 

She has said that she was his to ruin. 

And he was sure he was doing a brilliant job at it, but he couldn’t help himself. 

Couldn’t help but chase after even more pleasure, of losing himself in the warm embrace of her body and mind and loving every minute of it. 

Azriel didn’t know what he had done in his life to somehow deserve Oriana. 

He didn’t know, nor did he care. Not right now. 

Not when he could lose himself in her, when she held him close to her, embracing him, her love cocooning him and keeping the world at bay. 

His sanctuary.

[gancegancerevo]

Rides to Lake Silberneherze Thoughts

It was great. The second major visit to Kjerag sees us return three years after the previous event to see how the nation has built itself up after the Saintess reforms the political system of Kjerag and accepts the Silverash clan’s plans to open the country to outsiders.

Degenbrecher is the main selling point of the event in my opinion and damn did they work hard to make her appealing. She’s not only very strong, very skilled, very pretty, and a lot less long-winded than the other politicians, she’s also got her own story. It’s quite beautiful to see someone immigrate to a new country and have it just be a story of finding a home you can settle with. She’s the kind of character who’s physically strong enough to survive hardship. And in a sense, she is emotionally strong as she does not hold any grudges against her old nations. Probably in part because she’s beaten up the ones she needs to and let go of what she doesn’t need. She’s very much her own person and she herself has decided she wants to stay in Kjerag as one of its people. Makes you think about all the immigrants who makes their homes in new countries and how that experience is unique to them.

Leto was adorable in this event. The way she takes everybody she passes by and makes them her friends is hilarious and wonderful. It’s also great that they made her a competent field operator. She was able to sense and threaten a Trillby Asher all by herself even if that went awry. She also knew when to call up her superiors when she needed help.

One of the best parts about her arc here is how they turn the classic father-daughter reunion on its head. Because for one, Tatyova, her mother, is alive and well. And seems to be perfectly capable of continuing to care for Leto. Leto ultimately doesn’t care about her father, as she should. Arctosz’s decision to make his family leave for political safety makes it obvious that he knows nothing about the wider world. His privileged upbringing means he has no idea about how others would treat a single mother and what it means for a child to grow up without a father. The thing that really brings it into perspective for me is the attack on Chernobog. If you don’t know how bad it was, read the Ursus Student Group side stories. It makes every excuse Arctosz make seem extra moronic. This story takes the “looking for a long lost father” trope and makes it an ode to all the mothers who had to deal with single-parenthood themselves.

Harold is quite interesting. He’s your classic bumbling high-spirited old man except he’s also a Victorian military officer. Like Degenbrecher, he’s someone who also adjusts well to Kjerag life finding work as a veterinarian and doing old man things. In spite of this, he remains loyal to Victoria and when told that he would need to attack the people he’s lived with for months, he ultimately sides with his country. This is an interesting contrast to bring in this story. About how some people would throw away their old countries while others would remain loyal. Though overall, he was just fun to watch. Especially when paired with Leto or others who humor him.

By far my favorite part of visiting Kjerag is seeing the Saintess and Enya and Kjarr do not disappoint.

Before I gush about yuri though, I should say I love how Enya, and especially her relationship with  Enciodes has evolved. She’s much more active in the goings-on of the nation and is willing to use the Saintess as a state official rather than just a ceremonial position. She and Enciodes managed to separate their personal lives from their work in nation-building and it’s so interesting to see it play out. Enya inserting herself when Enciodes tries to avoid more direct interactions. The whole banquet scene with Harold. It was great especially when they both admit that the Head of the Silverash clan and the Saintess have a similar vision and plan for Kjerag’s development and both go silent when others ask about the relationship between Enya and Enciodes Silverash as siblings.

Enya and Kjarr have to be the most wife and wife coded characters I’ve seen in Arknights so far. Like a pair well into their golden years, they have a mutual respect and trust of one another while still disagreeing on some issues. There’s also that sense of both of them playing an active role in the relationship rather than the usual one stays at home and one works sort of dynamic. I especially like when Kjarr is like “babe, are you sure I shouldn’t use my god powers?” and Enya keeps insisting that they can’t rely on god to fix things for them. And of course the eternal pestering of Kjarr for a statue adjustment. If she can’t ask Enya for it, she’ll let Degenbrecher and the Trillby Asher do it. I always love Enya and Kjarr and this has cemented my favorite Kjerag dynamic even more.

Lastly, I really appreciate the way they included the Doctor this time. It’s not the take control of a situation you’ve only been aware of for a few hours. Instead, they made reasonable assumptions about what others are plotting and taking a few small steps to push pieces into the best place possible. Kinda like how they can’t rely on Kjeragandr, they also can’t rely on the Doctor of Rhodes but that doesn’t mean either of them can’t do one small move themselves.

P.S. What do you mean Kjerag has a battleship under Lake Silberneherze. Though it might be more shocking that Enciodes expressed approval of Sciurus before Ratatos did AND that Ratatos liked Sciurus naming the battleship Walnut to mess with her kids.

[theoutcastrogue]

The Bard's Songs

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

More than twenty years ago (well fuck me) I made a mixtape for our d&d campaign. That was when people used to burn audio CDs, and this was mixtape #39 (out of 271). I think I was playing an elf bard at the time.

I'm posting it here for posterity, for nostalgia, and as a snapshot of vanilla d&d lore/mood, as I experienced it back in the day. If it seems frightfully basic and predictable, well it was. Pretty much everything in that list is from Britain or Ireland or somehow evoking them. But hey, I ain't from there. It was exotic for me!

So it's vanilla and predictable, my little escapism soundtrack. And you know what else it is? A damn good compilation if I say so myself. "Fisherman's Blues" is one of best albums of all time, Loreena McKennitt is a genius, the Chieftains are giants, Pavlov's Dog are one of the few dad rock bands whose hits didn't age terribly, and hey, because I just listened to the whole thing again, when Enya stops singing "May it be" and the track continues with the Shire and the Fellowship leitmotifs, I am FULLY crying again, just bawling over here.

So here's to 2024, and the next 20 years of roleplaying, or as long as we got. Happy new year, everyone. Squeeze every drop out of life, and may your aim be true. The bard's songs will remain.

Tomorrow will take us away Far from home No one will ever know our names But the bards' songs will remain

In my thoughts and in my dreams They're always in my mind These songs of hobbits, dwarves and men and elves Come close your eyes You can see them too

The Bard's Songs

The Waterboys - The Stolen Child [poem by W. B. Yeats, recited by Tomás Mac Eoin]

Van Morrison & The Chieftains - My Lagan love [trad. Irish]

Savina Yannatou - A fairy's love song [trad. Scottish, Hebrides]

The Waterboys - Dunford's fancy

The Waterboys - When will we be married? [trad.]

Van Morrison & The Chieftains - Carrickfergus [trad. Irish maybe]

Loreena McKennitt - All Souls Night

Loreena McKennitt - The highwayman [poem by Alfred Noyes]

Fairport Convention - Crazy man Michael

Fairport Convention - She moved through the fair [trad. Irish]

Marianne Faithfull - Scarborough Fair [trad. English]

Donovan - Guinevere (live)

Pavlov's Dog - Valkerie

Pavlov's Dog - Episode

Enya - May it be [LotR: The Fellowship of the Ring]

Blind Guardian - The Bard's song (In the forest)

Loreena McKennitt - The Stolen Child

This Compilation (P) 2003, Store of the Worlds, Inc. | No Rights Reserved

[phoenixqueenwrites]

So, about a month ago, in the throws of a mild fever, I could not sleep to save my life. My brain was in 100% fanfiction mode at midnight, but I couldn't concentrate enough to actually write. Around 11:30-midnight my brain said "you should make your Solavellan child in Veilguard." So I spent, I kid you not, two hours, in character creator trying to craft the perfect combination of Enya and Solas. So, I'm going to share her with you in the most random and disorganized Tumblr post because I'm on my phone.

Please enjoy Iveanen:

First 6 are her, last 4 are for comparison. I still feel like I did a pretty good job.

A few things about her:

Her best friend, in the whole world, basically her brother, is Kieran. He was there when she was born and even though there is a solid 11 years between them, they are thick as thieves. Also, both INCREDIBLY arrogant. Like so unforgivably arrogant at times. And why not? His mother is Morrigan, and hers is the Inquisitor. Elf or not, she was raised in Val Royeaux. Her "Auntie" is the Divine. Her "Uncles" are Magister Dorian Pavus and Viscount Varric Tethras. And Morrigan became one of her mother's best friends in the aftermath of Inquisition. No matter what way you turn it, she was going to be pretty proud of herself and that before you add in that her father is The Dread Wolf.

She and Kieran are also both powerful, powerful mages and were trained outside of Circles because there was no way in all of Thedas Enya was letting anything like what happened in the Circles happen to her daughter. Especially when Ivea manifested her magic at about 3. And though the Circles have been reformed and the college of Magi also exists, she is still very wary of anything regarding the Chantry, even if the Divine is one of her dearest friends. Morrigan trained them instead, nurturing their skills and sharing with them her far more natural understanding of magic. As did Enya when she was able.

Enya did everything in her power to be there for her throughout her whole upbringing. No matter the situation, no matter the cost, if there was no reasonable danger to Ivea's life, she was present. After the loss of her clan and the dispersal of her inner circle, Enya wasn't about to let even one moment she could have with her daughter, which led to some really fun times in Ivea's preteen years.

Ivea is headstrong, intelligent, and rebellious at times, but she really does mean well and when she is reminded to slow down and think compassion and empathy ARE what lead her, even if she can be brusque and occasionally self-righteous while accomplishing her goals. She knows what she wants, and what she believes, and she is not afraid to speak her mind.

She equal parts resents her parentage and loves it. It grants her no anonymity and she detests how people look at her when they know. But she also is unabashed in using it to her advantage when she needs to, and on a certain level enjoys how, when she leans into it, she can use it to intimidate and make her point.

Her relationship with her father is complex. Fraught in no small part with resentment for how she watched her mother deal with his absence and how as she grew older, she watched him justify his actions by ignoring a world she and her mother feel is redeemable. She sees him for who he is and loves him for how he has cared for her, and wishes that he could just let go of this insistence that the world will be better without the Veil. She wants him to see that she IS safe with it. That she doesn't need Arlathan to take power into her own hands, she just needs the same belief as her mother that there are ways to change hearts and minds both through hard work and careful conversation and the slow growth of leading by example. The power her mother has amassed, however resented, is weilded expertly after so many years, and she wishes he could trust and see that his way is not the only way to save Thedas. She loves him, but she's also frustrated and furious with him for never quite listening.

[eternal--returned]

I just woke up to my second day out of the hospital. I went in to the ER with an ulcer flare that had drained my blood and made me weak on 11/6. For 11 days I laid in the hospital bed waiting to see if steroids would get the flare under control. In those days there was zero progress. Eventually they would place a feeding tube down my nose into my stomach. I had it in for three days before I had a vomiting fit and the tube came up with everything else. The 11 days were horrifying in the lack of improvement. I was slowly wasting away in the hopes that the inflammation would finally stop, but since I had lost so much weight and blood and strength we opted finally for surgery. The surgery would be life changing in many ways. They were going to cut me open using the same incision spot I had in February of this same year. That spot had healed so well and I was so proud of it. I was nervous about how the surgery would change parts of my life. They were removing my colon and placing an ileostomy and I would have to wear an ostomy bag that would hang from the right side of my abdomen for an unknown period of time and would some day be reversible. Thinking how that would change what I wear and ideas about what it would be like and how different taking care of that new appendage would be. I also knew the surgery would mean that I very likely will not have to deal with ulcer flares again because the source of it all would be eliminated. I would also eliminate my very rising chances of getting colon cancer at some future point.

The day of surgery brought at least SOMETHING - finally something different to try and to do. As I was wheeled down to the ER in the early afternoon, they were still working on getting the OR ready. I was set in my bed outside against the wall. With a few moments to myself I closed my eyes and felt strongly how much better I was about to feel. It was such a clear certainty that I was immediately buoyed up and I happily greeted all that would be working on me telling them how grateful I felt for how good they were about to make me feel. It brought in good energy and everyone smiled and seemed pleased and excited to get going.

After surgery I did feel immediately better. I knew progress would happen now. But I didn't have any clue that the next couple weeks would try me and break me past limits I had inside myself.

The first problem after surgery was that I just . . . couldn't pee. The simplest thing in the world. Apparently it's a very common occurrence for men post that particular surgery. I was told that if I couldn't pee in 6 hours that they had to ultrasound my bladder to check the fluid level and if I was above a very small amount they would have to cath me. I woke up from surgery with a full catheter installed during surgery. Hurt like a motherfucker when they pulled it out that same day. So my urethra already looks and feels all the way inside scraped and sore and dry. I did NOT want to be cathed again. It terrified me. It felt like such an invasion. I stared to obsess about peeing. I would try to calm myself: to relax my pelvis in different ways, patting my chest with my hand, thinking about being calm and outside in the sunshine, and music. Feel the Flow became the mantra I would repeat over and over in my mind. Then suddenly in a brilliant and funny and just really tender mercy . . . I thought of the song Orinoco Flow by Enya. I was like - omg, I have to make a Pee playlist and that will help me relax and get the message through my body to let it flow man - sail away sail away sail away. I got my playlist made. It ended up being about 3 hours of Enya and like that Return to Innocence song and one of those Gladiator songs and that Adiemus song. That playlist became so important. Enya became so important. I had my nice speaker on with Enya filling the room the whole rest of my stay. The whole time. My spotify stats for the year just got destroyed. I hadn't thought about Enya or listened to her music since high school. I think I had two of her albums, maybe three. I would fall to sleep to them all the time. But I hadn't listened to her in 25 years and suddenly it's all I wanted.

I couldn't pee though. Cathed. So unpleasant and I was getting near to breaking. I was a shaky mess and it took great effort to talk in a voice that sounded so fucking weak and weary. I was frayed. I was also on the clock. 6 hours until they would come check again, and if there was too much fluid, a cathening was coming.

I couldn't calm myself. The Enya stuff was helping, but I could think of nothing else but that soon I would be cathed again if I couldn't pee. I came up with a plan with my nurse. I told her to give me a 20 minute warning before she brought in the ultrasound machine so I could just go try one final time. No luck. No pee. The pleading I did there in that bathroom. I was begging any and every god and ancestor and good feeling in the world to just let me pee. The end of my penis was starting to look so sad and worn. I knew I would break if they cathed me again.

After the second cath I was talking to my nurse. Nurses are absolute angels. What a hard job. What amazingly caring and nurturing people. I had some of the most amazing discussions with my nurses over the three weeks I was there. So my nurse comes in and I'm so obviously just a shaken and terrified mess. She's like - talk to me. I told her I couldn't get cathed again. I was surprised at how I'd lost control of myself when they did it the second time. She told me that if I couldn't pee in the 6 hours that they would have to just go with installing a full cath because cathing me too many times was becoming it's own problem. Freaked me out. She told me I had to figure out some way to acceptance - that it would help me if I could. Help to at least calm me down and steel myself. I spent that 6 hours with the same mantra of feel the flow. I would imagine rivers, water moving, trying to make myself feel like water. I kept trying to move my pelvis in different ways. I couldn't feel a lot of what was even happening down in that area because I was on some pretty powerful pain meds, so it was difficult to figure out what magic button to push, which muscles to constrict or relax. I was moving blind, pleading with my body to release. Suddenly my 20 minute warning came. Back to the bathroom. It took 19 minutes of that 20, but finally, one of the greatest reliefs of my entire existence...I peed! OMG I PEED! I celebrated like it was the greatest achievement I would ever have. Relief flooded me. No full catheter. I called my nurse in immediately and was in tears as I told her and we celebrated together. It was such a good pee party.

My second problem after surgery is that my veins were failing. I was still so dehydrated. There's a saline shortage in America right now. Usually I'd have been on a continuous saline drip via IV my entire stay. I only ever got 2 bags of it and only when it was the most dire. So . . . no fluid in the veins, veins thus were plain worn out. When they would inject anything into my IVs (there were all sorts of medications that were being flushed in all through the day) it would hurt. They had to go so slowly. But I had to get a blood transfusion. My red cell count had dipped past the point they were comfortable with, so we had to get that blood in. And it had to come in at a relatively high speed because it would eventually get too warm. I was very concerned that it would hurt my arm, because just two days earlier they tried an infusion of iron. It was that infusion that ruined the vein on my left arm. We get the blood started and I can tell immediately that eventually it will hurt. I just wanted to see how long I could bear it - hopefully I could just fight through it. Unfortunately that was not to be the case. It began to ache and then burn. I told them we had to stop. I'd had another IV placed in my right arm by the super special ultrasound tech phlebotomist (by the way, my favorite person in the world to have be good at their job is whatever phlebotomist is sticking me). The issue is that it just never really worked. We would use it for small injections, but it just didn't sit right. But we tried it. We get the right side hooked up to the machine and I'm waiting praying that the pain will be bearable enough to get the rest in. But the machine didn't like something about the situation and would refuse to send the drip down.

Shit. Faced with yet another IV placement. I called my nurse in and talked her through my thoughts. I was terrified. She told me they would get the ultrasound tech and that they would get it. She was so confident. I told her we had done that though already on the right arm and that particular IV NEVER worked. So why would it work this time? I told her I'd lost faith in my veins. They were failing. If the last ultrasound stick didn't work, why should I believe it will this time? She was so good to give me the space to talk through all this. She stayed so calm and nonjudgmental. And when I'd gotten my anxieties out, she just said you're gonna have to trust that this is going to work because it's what you need to get better. You know you need this blood, and you know that we have to get that IV placed to make that happen. I did know it. Of course I did. And of course I would tell them to do it and I just focused on being positive and having faith that it would work. I was plagued by concern about if I could maintain my composure during the process. I prayed that they would find a good vein quickly without much digging.

My nurse knew me so well by that point that she came in very prepared. She brought with her the ultrasound tech, and with brilliant foresight, another nurse whose only job was to hold my hand and give me encouragement through the process. It shouldn't be a big deal, right? But again - I'd been there so long. Through so many terrible things that were all so invasive. I was a withered, weak, shaking human who had reached breaking, and I was on the verge of breaking yet again.

And boy did I break. The ultrasound tech started in my left arm. She looked around for awhile. Finally found a spot she seemed confident with. My two nurses had my hands and were saying nice things to me, trying to keep my mind occupied. Tech goes for the stick and . . . keeps digging and digging at my jumping vein. I lost it. Just completely lost myself. I never have heard the sounds I made come out of me before. The uncontrollable moaning and crying from the depths of whatever sorrow that exists inside me that had been pent up over 45 years. My body contorted outside my control. I finally was able to at least get my back back against the bed. Both nurses were using their full weight to hold me down. I wailed. I wailed like a three month old baby wails, with a voice of a 45 year old man. It was a terrible, horrifying sound. I could hardly believe I could cry like that.

The tech had given up on the left arm at my pleading. So she moved to the right. My two nurses were trying to get me to breathe. I was heaving. My chest. Heaving as I cried. I couldn't gain control. But I focused on breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth they said. I was on the verge of hyperventilating because of the huge gulps of air I would bring in. There was so much violence being reacted to by my physical body. I just kept breathing. In through the nose out through the mouth. It was something I could latch on to and focus on. The tech was underway on the right arm. Digging at a jumping vein, but I could tell she was close. I just kept listening to the nurses about breathing. Suddenly I felt the click. Connection. They quickly got the blood going while my two angel nurses tried to calm me. I was still uncontrollably crying, but breathing better. They suddenly asked about music. What's your favorite band? I blurted out Spoon. They laughed. I told them to grab my phone and I played Wild by Spoon - a song which had been one of those hugely inspiration songs I listened to a number of times on my knees in the shower to pump myself up after my previous surgery. And the world, still so wild, called to me / I was lost, I'd been kept on my knees. I would sing that with such conviction in the shower on my knees. The world was certainly calling me and I wanted back at it's wildness badly. The song helped. It played twice. By the second time I was just able to moan sing the chorus. It felt good. I knew I needed to change to Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. I told them to get me my phone. I get it going, turn it all the way up, and let the song wash over me as I continued to whimper as I slowly steadied my breathing. By the time the song started for the third time, I was ready to moan sing along. I sang over and over and over and over again the words All I want in life's a little bit of love / To take the pain away / Getting strong today / A giant step each day. I just kept singing. And they were so kind to let me. Over and over in a round. Finally after about 20 minutes I was breathing pretty normally. But it had broken me. I didn't know I could so completely lose control of myself. I was so shocked at the depth, at the tenor, the terror and suffering that were in those noises I had made.

I feel so good today. What felt like being in a torture camp for three weeks is over. I am whole and well. I literally and figuratively had dead parts of me cut away. Now I am left with a living whole. My body will heal from the damage done and because of how I broke, in that breaking were worlds and walls I had built up that needed to come down. The process and amount of pain it took to make that breakdown happen was so amazing to watch unfold. I now have the opportunity to rebuild in a healthier way. Healing is coming fast. I'm so proud of my body. Of the enormity that it can contain and hold. I'm so grateful for the miracle of it. I will do such a better job of showing that love to my body.

[black-arcana]

NIGHTWISH's TUOMAS HOLOPAINEN Doesn't Rule Out Second Solo Album

In a new interview with Finland's Tuonela magazine, Tuomas Holopainen — the keyboardist and main songwriter of NIGHTWISH — was asked if there is a chance of a follow-up to his solo album based on a graphic novel called "The Life And Times Of Scrooge McDuck", written and illustrated by Don Rosa. "Music Inspired By The Life And Times Of Scrooge - Written And Produced By Tuomas Holopainen" came out in April 2014 via Nuclear Blast.

Tuomas said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "It's not that long ago that I had this idea — it's kind of a musical idea — that I got really excited about. And I was thinking we can't do this with AURI and we can't really do this with NIGHTWISH either. So maybe another solo project kind of thing at some point in the future. I don't know. It's so early still, but maybe.

"After I finished doing 'Scrooge' 10 years ago, I thought this was a one-timer," he continued. "'Never again. Don't really need [to do another one]. But if there comes an idea that doesn't fit AURI or NIGHTWISH, maybe I have to go solo again. And both bands are musically so varied that you can do almost anything with those two labels. But if the theme would be something that the other bandmembers can't really relate to, then I might have to turn to the option of going solo. That's what happened with 'Scrooge'. I mean, the NIGHTWISH members don't have such an intimate relationship with a duck as I do. [Laughs] So that's why I had to go solo."

Regarding the possibility of him performing material from "The Life And Times Of Scrooge McDuck" live at some point, Tuomas said: "Um, I don't know. It would be an interesting experience. I know that album has a bit of a cult status already and that it would be a success. But at the moment, I'm not really feeling it. But I've learned never to say never. So let's see.

"I've been asked to do the whole album a few times, actually, even on main stage of a rock and roll festival on Saturday night," he added. "I don't think it would have worked, but we have to wait and see."

"Music Inspired By The Life And Times Of Scrooge - Written And Produced By Tuomas Holopainen" contained 10 songs, with total duration of approximately 60 minutes. The music was said to be in the soundtrack / classical / folk genre in the vein of Vaughan Williams, Michael Nyman, James Newton Howard and Enya.

Pip Williams did the orchestral arrangements for the "Life And Times Of Scrooge" disc, continuing his collaboration with Tuomas after the NIGHTWISH records "Once", "Dark Passion Play" and "Imaginaerum".

There were a number of guest musicians appearing on "Life And Times Of Scrooge", including the London Orchestra, The Metro Voices (a choir from London) and four lead vocalists: Alan Reid, Johanna Kurkela, Johanna Iivanainen and Tony Kakko. Other guest appearances included Troy Donockley (uilleann pipes, low whistles, bodhran),Mikko Iivanainen (guitars and banjo),Teho Majamäki (didgeridoo),Jon Burr (harmonica) and Dermot Crehan on the solo violin. The recordings took place during August - October 2013, first at Angel Studios in London, then in various locations around Scotland and Finland.

NIGHTWISH's new album, "Yesterwynde", is due on September 20, 2024 via Nuclear Blast. It marks the band's tenth studio LP, following on from the release of "Human. :II: Nature." in 2020.

Photo credit: Tim Tronckoe (courtesy of Nuclear Blast)

[witchthewriter]

𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 𝒇𝒐𝒓 @gvnegvld.

𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒

𝑫𝒆𝒔𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏

𝐈 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐉𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐧𝐨𝐰! I was going to go with Pod, but I think he was a bit too similar to you. So I thought Jon would be better instead! He has that grumpy/moody personality except with the person he's in love with. With you, I think he would be so so soft. Almost like you're so fragile and precious that he needs to protect you 24/7.

𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒆𝒔

Human... except animals feel an afinity towards you. Is there something paranormal about you? Supernatural?

𝑷𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒓/𝑨𝒃𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚

You have dreams, dreams that come true. They happened since you were a child, and your parents didn't understand. However, they did love you and did all they could do protect you. They knew you would be used for this ability - possibility even killed for it by ... anyone.

𝑯𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒐𝒏𝒔

Jon treats you with a lot of respect; valuing your opinions, desires, and autonomy. He strives for a partnership built on mutual respect, where both parties feel valued and heard. So, you know you will be protected, heard, loved and whatever you say will be listened to instead of brushed away.

He would be a tad awkward at first to show affection, especially PDA. But one day, when he was saying goodbye for a few days, he gave you a huge kiss and forehead touch (yes Tormund was wooping and whistling the whole time)

Seeks out your hand wherever he is. While being side by side at dinner, walking the barracks, sleeping in bed etc.

Gave you this so you will always have a piece of him no matter where he is, or what may happen to him. (it's simple because that's Jon's style)

Always gives you his extra furs (because you would be staying in Winterfell for a while). And when you travel, you're always his first priority - makes you bed first, helps you off your steed, makes sure you've drunk water and eaten.

He would propose to you after six months of being together. You may not think that's a long time, but to someone who was fighting for his life for many years, it is a long time.

𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒆 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒈

Pure As The Driven Snow by Rachel Zegler

Caribbean Blue by Enya

Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush

𝑹𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆𝒔

Stoic & Moody (Jon) x Ray of Motherfcking Sunshine (You) (also known as grumpy x kind trope)

Cold Hearted Person (lost faith in love) (Jon) x Warm Hearted Person They Couldn't Help But Fall In Love With (You)

Bull-Headed & Headstrong (Jon) x Understanding & Light-Hearted (You)

𝑷𝒍𝒐𝒕 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆

Trust and Dependence

Entwined Destinies

Shared Vision and Purpose

𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒇𝒂𝒗𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖

Your soft-heart. Your intuition. Loyalty. Sensitivity. It would take him a while to realise just how much he leans on you. He really relies on you - but never asks you to use your abilities; he doesn't want to know too much. It freaks him out. Except ... for one time. He asked if you could see if you stayed together. And you know what, you do.

𝒀𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒃𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅

Sansa would be your best friend for sure. She and Arya would welcome you with open arms. They would adore you. At first they'd be wary - lets be fair though, they've been through a lot. But after getting to know you, they would think you were the best. Probably start saying they like you more than Jon!!! (Just to rile him up ... but they really do think you're amazing.)

𝑾𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒚𝒐𝒖'𝒓𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆

I think you're a mix of Pod and Missandei; kind, intelligent, clumsy, but you have your moments of poise. Underestimated a lot of the time, those that come to know you, realise that you hold great knowledge and understanding.

𝒀𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒑𝒆𝒕

It shocked everyone when a unicorn appeared. Then, somehow, everyone was even more shocked when it approached you. The Dreamer, the girl that many thought weird because of her intuition and abilities.

Unicorns aren't seen much throughout Westeros. They're unique, one of a kind, they're pure magic... a lot like you.

It made sense that a Unicorn would decide to follow you around; bonding herself to you. You could warg through her, something that no one thought could happen.

(I just have to tell you that everything I've written here is actually canon. All the creatures and species I've spoken about are real in the Ice and Fire Universe!)

[medusinestories]

So you know that post about Enigma's "Sadeness" going round, where everyone in the 90ies was into Gregorian Chants for a month?

It was NOT just a month.

The 90ies is a whole decade of unexpected and weird bangers which were based on combinations of synth, traditional instruments, traditional music, choral work and religious music. This is why there was always a whole section in shops called "New Age" (which pretty much meant "weird music we can't classify").

So Enigma releases "Sadeness" in 1990 and it becomes wildly popular in Europe. The band is still going strong apparently, though I haven't heard of any of their other music.

In 1993 in France, another Gregorian Chant banger came out: the soundtrack from a (terrible) comedy called Les Visiteurs.

If the theme sounds familiar, it's because in 1996 the composer Eric Lévy formed the band Era (also still going to this day) and the song "Ameno" was another banger. The album was apparently France's biggest musical export in 1996.

In 1994, another choral banger hit the charts. Written phonetically in a language that sounds like Latin, it was used in adverts and the album generally sold really well.

Okay so how was it possible for this many Latin-sounding choral work weird-ass bangers to get so popular? Well, IMO, someone paved the way for them.

Enya topped the charts for weeks in 1989 with her album Watermark and single "Orinoco Flow". Her music heavily relies on choral work, is heavily inspired by religious and classical music, with her own Irish spin on it. While "Orinoco Flow" sounds quite far from that dark Gregorian style, a number of lesser-known tracks definitely have a feel of it. This is my favourite from 1995, all in Latin (other notable ones are "Cursum Perficio" and "Tempus Vernum"):

And if you're one of those snobs poo-poohing Enya as "just cutesy ambient music", she is still Ireland's bestselling solo artist 35 years later, in spite of the fact that she doesn't tour and only releases an album every 5 years or so. She has influenced many artists, been used in soundtracks and sampled into several songs which themselves became hits. Her music is complex and varied - if you care to dig further than her singles.

And since it's Christmas, it's only appropriate for me to end with this gorgeous adaptation of a Christmas hymn:

[vortexdoll]

hehe me again (🕯 anon if you must), could I request anything w Pope with a reader who collects things? doesn't matter but if you need ideas, like funko pops, cds, pokemon cards, maybe seashells? and how their dynamic would work? since he is a pretty organized person and whatnot, he could like organize their collection of things since they have it just kinda thrown together? idk 😔🙏

A Place for Everything

A/n: Thanks so much for the request! I really enjoyed writing this one, and I hope you liked it! Let me know what you think or if there’s more you’d like to see!

Pope Heyward x reader

Summary: Pope brings order to the reader’s beautiful chaos by helping organise her eclectic collections, showing his care through quiet, thoughtful acts of love.

Warnings: N/a

Word count: 1,050

Your room looked like a secondhand shop and a tide pool had a lovechild. The cracked windowsill was covered in mismatched jars filled with seashells—spirals and fans and half-broken bits that still looked beautiful to you. Your CDs lived in a few milk crates you’d stolen from behind the gas station, no rhyme or reason to how they were arranged. You liked the chaos. Mostly.

Pope didn’t say anything the first few times he came over. Just glanced at the piles of shiny discs and vintage ticket stubs, and the tiny stuffed alligator someone had given you as a joke, and your cluttered nightstand that always had a seashell or two perched on it like it was their home now.

You caught him once, staring at a cracked CD case that had no cover art.

“Is this Nirvana or, like… Enya?” he asked cautiously.

You blinked up from your spot on the floor, where you were painting a shell with glitter nail polish. “Honestly? I don’t remember.”

He smiled, setting it down gently like it might break. “That’s kind of impressive. It’s like a mystery collection.”

That was the moment you realized Pope wasn’t judging your chaos. He was just… trying to understand it.

About a week later, he showed up at your door holding something behind his back.

“No offense,” he said, grinning, “but your CD organization is a war crime.”

You gasped dramatically. “How dare you! That’s years of effort you’re insulting.”

“Effort?” He raised an eyebrow. “You literally tossed them all in a box. Some of them are upside down.”

You shrugged, playful. “They like it that way.”

He held up a small, handmade wooden shelf, painted your favorite color, with enough space for at least fifty CDs. “Well, they’re about to like this better.”

You blinked. “You built me a CD shelf?”

He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly shy. “I mean, yeah. Thought you might want a way to show ‘em off. You’ve got some cool stuff in there.”

Your heart did something very embarrassing in your chest.

He spent the next two hours helping you go through every CD you owned. You sat cross-legged on your bed, naming albums off the top of your head, while Pope gently wiped off dusty cases and sorted them into piles.

“You want them by genre? Artist? Year?” he asked, fully in project mode.

“Surprise me,” you said, watching the way his brows furrowed when he focused.

He ended up arranging them alphabetically and color-coordinated the spines. You didn’t even know he could color-coordinate spines.

Once the shelf was full, you stared at it, kind of stunned.

“This looks… legit,” you said.

Pope sat next to you, brushing his shoulder against yours. “Told you it would. You collect the coolest stuff—you deserve to see it.”

You leaned your head on his shoulder. “You’re gonna spoil me, Heyward.”

He chuckled. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

⸻

The next time he came over, he brought tiny mason jars. “For your shell collection,” he said. “We could label them by beach, or size, or weirdness level.”

“Weirdness level?” you laughed.

“I feel like that purple one with the hole in the middle is like, at least a Level 8.”

You ended up spending the whole afternoon reorganizing your seashells, sitting on your porch with the sun warming your legs and Pope writing tiny labels in his neat handwriting.

“This one’s from that day we skipped school and went to the north shore,” you said, handing him a tiny scallop-shaped shell. “Remember? You swore we saw a dolphin.”

Pope smiled. “We did see a dolphin. You just weren’t looking.”

You rolled your eyes. “You saw a wave.”

He gently tucked the shell into a jar labeled North Shore Finds and passed it back to you. “Agree to disagree.”

You stared at the neat little rows of shells, now organized and shiny and somehow even more special. It wasn’t like you needed everything to be perfect. You liked your clutter. Your randomness. But Pope made it feel intentional. Like your collections weren’t just messes—they were memories worth preserving.

“Thanks for helping me with all this,” you said softly. “You didn’t have to.”

He nudged your leg with his. “I like being part of your world. Even if it’s made of seashells and bootleg Avril Lavigne CDs.”

“Bootleg?” you gasped. “That’s vintage!”

He laughed, leaning in to bump your shoulder again, this time letting it linger a little longer.

“Okay, okay. Vintage. My bad.”

You smiled, watching the sunlight dance through the jars. Everything looked brighter when he was around. Not just your collections—but you, too.

Maybe that was the best part about Pope: he didn’t try to fix your chaos. He just made space in it for himself.

[cressidagrey]

Something good and right and real - Chapter 5

Summary:

Azriel had spent centuries believing that he of all people didn't deserve a mate. And if anything, the last three years had just galvinised that particular belief. And then he meets her.

The first time Oriana met Azriel, she thought that he reminded her of a skittish cat. Shy and a little bit broken. Good for him that she absolutely excelled in fixing the things around her.

Warnings:

Rhys Bashing, Discussion of Murder

Notes:

I put a lot of world building into this. If you don't recognise it from canon, I probably invented. Or I forgot that canon existed.

(thanks to @firefly-graphics for the super pretty dividers!)

Tartera lived in the mountains surrounding Velaris. 

Not unlike Hewn City, a whole world carved from the mountain. Hollowed out, held together by magic. Though, they had done it first. 

There were legends of her kind, of the first Tartera fairies being carved from stone itself. Maybe that was why they felt so at ease in the mountain. 

Oriana easily admitted that while she could withstand fire like every Tartera, she did like the sun and the fresh air. 

Cyrus hated going into the mountain. Probably not helped by the fact that he hated the fire as well. 

Still, once a year, for their grandmother’s birthday, they went into the mountain, Oriana holding a ball of fire in her palm as they made their way through the entrance, greeting the guards and then walking deeper into the mountain. 

It should just be around midday. Lunch promised to be a less formal affair than dinner ever had been, and her grandmother would probably be holding court like she usually did. 

Oriana had never actually asked how old her grandmother was. A few millennials maybe?

Her mother was close to 800 years old, after all, her oldest sister was around 600. 

Oriana was the youngest just over 200 years of age. 

But Cyra, Custodian of the Mountain…well, she was older than all of them. 

She could tell stories about things that hadn’t happened in centuries, about people long dead, a time before the great war…

Cyra had lived through it all. 

Still, their grandmother wasn’t the first member of their family that they met. That honour belonged to her brother Samson, a guard member that protected the mountain from…well, anybody that thought that they should get a cut out of the precious metals and gems they mined eyes day. They didn’t have many, enchantments and wards kept out…most if not all. 

He greeted them with a nod, a dark red cloak wrapped around broad shoulders, fastened with the traditional brooch, which made it obvious to what creed he belonged. 

“Cyrus, Oriana,” he rumbled, always a man of few words. 

“Samson,” she responded, having absolutely no qualms about coming up to him and hugging him, even when he never quite hugged her back. He never told her to stop either. And she knew he would do that if it really bothered him. “How has it been?”

“Not much has changed since last year,” he responded. “Titania was wondering when you two would finally arrive.”

Of course, their oldest sister would wonder. She was the first daughter of the first daughter after all. 

It marked her as 2nd in command to the mountains and their realm, if one could call it like that. 

They lived under the command of the Night Court but within the mountain, the word of her Grandmother was law. 

The word of Adara was law. The word of Titania was law. Then Althea, Titania's eldest daughter… 

Then Enya, their middle sister. 

It had never needed to go further down the line than that. 

Which was good for Oriana, because then it would have been her word that would be listened to, and nobody wanted that. 

She would make a really bad Custodian of the Mountain. Oriana wasn’t prideful enough to admit that. 

She much preferred the art of making jewellery over the art of ruling. Oriana would leave the ruling to her grandmother and mother and sister and niece. 

Oriana would stay in the forge. 

Still, she was the third daughter of the first daughter. If they kept to something as human as a title…well, then she would probably be something akin to a princess. 

A runaway princess. Who didn’t particularly like the title either. 

In the mountain, she was chattel of a sort. 

Not high enough in the line of succession to have any right to reign. But high enough that she had been used to broker an alliance between her family and Wynstan’s. Giving them a tertiary claim to her grandmother’s council table and cementing her mother’s claim to the headship of the mountain. 

“Well, here we are,” Cyrus responded with a sigh... “Just when we said we would come.” Samson just shrugged, all of them well used to their eldest sisters’ moods, and followed along with him to the Great Hall. 

Oriana pulled back her shoulders, patting down her unruly curls that escaped the bun she had urged it into that morning and then walked into the Great Hall behind her brothers. 

Their entrance was marked with the quietening of conversation until it finally ceased completely. Her fist clenched at that, but she said nothing, the smile on her face set in place, her shoulders back, every step measured. 

She wore one of her more traditional gowns, something that Enya had made for her years ago because she didn’t want to listen to her mother’s comments that she would make with near certainty if Oriana wore anything that wasn’t obviously Tartera in its origins. This was. This had her sister all over it. 

Complete with the belt comprised of chains and charms, that Oriana had made herself, every single one carrying her maker’s mark. 

She wore her creed openly, there for everybody to see. 

People stared. Of course, they did. 

Decades ago, the sight of Oriana had been common among the Great Hall, among the other fairies living in the mountain. 

She had worked here, lived along them. There had been no reason to think of her as anything but Tartera, even with her pointy ears. 

She had kept most of her abilities quiet, no fire dancing at her fingertips unless she was in the forge…no flames flicking through her eyes.  Then Wynstan…had happened, and her magic had been in a state of flux. She was quite certain that people had been terrified of her. 

Now…Now, with her only being here so rarely…well, Oriana was legend and myth. 

Oriana Fireborn, Third Daughter of the First Daughter. 

It was whispered behind her back. 

She wondered what some of them would think if they knew about what lay beneath the skirts swishing around her ankles. 

What she wasn’t wearing openly was the harness that kept the two knives Azriel had given her strapped to her thighs.  But it was still there, easily able to be accessed, thanks to the slits in the side seams of her skirt.

She highly doubted that she would even need them, but she was also quite sure that the only reason he hadn’t told her to wear them, was because he didn’t think she was going to agree to it. 

Jokes on him. She definitely agreed. 

Granted, the only person she had ever really thought about stabbing in the mountain was no other than Wynstan’s older brother Titus, but that could change.

And if the knives weren’t enough….well, she had Azriel’s shadows wrapped around her wrist, twisting themselves through her bracelet stacks, until it seemed like they were polished onyx and part of them. 

Her grandmother was holding court at the High Table. Even as tiny as her grandmother was, she still somehow seemed larger than life to Oriana. And the curtsy came to her like a second nature. 

“Oriana.” She was home. Old, wrinkled hands gently patted her cheek. “Let me look at you, little flame.”

She leaned into her grandmother’s touch, let the glamour that she kept around her eyes fall and her grandmother stared into the flames of her eyes, flicking merrily. 

Somehow her grandmother just seemed to know things. She stared at Oriana and a pleased smile appeared on her face. She wondered if her grandmother somehow knew about Azriel. 

“Happy Birthday,” Oriana said quietly. 

Her grandmother hummed. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” she told Oriana pointedly. 

Cyrus took her place as she rose gracefully and stepped to the side, dipping into a shallower curtsy as she reached her mother. 

When she was younger, Oriana had wanted to be like her mother. Otherworldly beautiful, bleeding elegance with every step. 

The one thing she had inherited from her was her height. Gracefulness had been something hard-won and definitely not inbred for her. 

And finally, Oriana had realised that while she could put on a mask of something similar to her mother if the situation called for it, she had absolutely no want whatsoever to spend every hour and every day like that. 

She was fine with that. 

“Mama,” she greeted her and her mother mustered her. She had the sudden want to twitch under her gaze and pat down her hair, but she didn’t. She wasn’t a youngling any longer. She was over two centuries old. Her mother should be well used to Oriana showing up, smudged with soot and still neck deep in the theory behind one of her enchantments. 

That was what she excelled in. 

“You are looking…well,” her mother finally said quietly. “Are you ready to come back to life with us properly?”

Of course. 

Regardless of how long Oriana stayed living in Velaris, regardless of how well she did there…her mother could still not understand it. 

Of course not. 

To her mother, every position within the mountain was higher than anything Oriana could reach outside of it. 

Within the mountain she had been one of the best, respected and even feared…Outside Oriana played at being a simple shopkeeper as far as her mother was concerned. 

“Not on a bet,” Oriana responded drily. “I quite like my life in Velaris.”

Her mother just sighed. 

“You were always odd,” came the voice of her oldest sister to her side and Oriana smiled at her. 

“Titania,” she greeted her. 

“Not bored yet of making nothing but earrings and bracelets?” Her sister asked, as always prodding and probing to find a chip in her armour. The problem was only that Oriana knew Titania’s playbook by heart. 

“It’s quite relaxing,” she responded evenly. “I think I of all people deserve that after what happened.”

Her sister softened. 

Regardless of how prickly Titania could be, there were a few things Oriana could count on. Titania would prickle and prod, but nobody else was allowed to do that same, or hell would rain onto them. 

And Titania adored her husband and daughter more than life itself. 

“I’ll never understand you,” Titania muttered under her breath, making Oriana laugh softly.

That was just the opening said husband and daughter needed to slide into the conversation, with Anthea happily coming bouncing right up and hugging her tightly. She had only celebrated her 20th birthday months ago, a child her sister had longed for desperately for decades until they had finally gotten her.

“Aunt Oriana!” Anthea sing songed. “So do I get a gift?” she asked her and Oriana couldn’t help but snort in amusement. 

“You aren’t the one whose birthday it is,” she pointed out reasonably. Anthea pouted. 

Oriana sighed, slipping off one of the many bracelets she wore. The one that she had made with Anthea in mind, a white opal inset. 

She held it out to her eldest niece, who snatched it up. 

“I am your favourite,” she singsonged. “Thank you!”

Toron, Anthea’s father, snorted in amusement, reaching out to ruffle Oriana’s hair. She glared at her brother-in-law. He gave her a bright grin in response. 

“You are all ridiculous,” Enya said, crossing her arms. The middle sister. “At least you are wearing a proper dress. I was terrified that the High Fae Fashion may have started to drag on you.” 

“I like my gowns. Especially this one. You made it after all,” Oriana agreed peacefully, taking a seat between Toron and Enya. 

“And what did you bring back for me?” Toron asked her. 

“You are too old for gifts,” she hit back with a roll of her eyes, amused beside herself.  

“700 years isn’t old,” he disagreed with a pout. 

“True, you are nearly a spring chicken,” Enya sniped under her breath. 

“Where’s Kiran?” she wondered, eyes searching around the room. 

“Where do you think he possibly could be?” Enya snorted in amusement. Right. Stupid question. Probably somewhere deep inside his forge. 

“How’s the leg holding up?” Oriana asked Toron and he shrugged. She looked down under the table as he pulled up his pants leg, showing the gold and silver prosthetic leg. He had lost his leg in the same accident that had killed Oriana’s father. 

The prosthetic leg had been made by himself, enchanted by Oriana and fitted by Enya, a healer by Creed. 

It worked a treat for him, still, it had taken decades to perfect it and Oriana still worried that it was going to stop working one day and she couldn’t fix it. 

She fixed everything. 

“All good,” he promised her. “Though I figured since you were here, you were going to take it apart once again.”

“Don’t think I have the time for it, I am not planning to stay longer than 3 days,” she admitted. “But I’ll check up on it.”

“Oh?” Toron asked, so much said in such a small noise. 

“I have things to take care of back in Velaris,” she admitted before she finally got to actually eat some of the food that was waiting for her. 

She slipped right back into the midst of her family. Now that she wasn’t with them year-round, she could appreciate them a whole lot more. Crazy, how that sounded. 

Still, she listened to the newest gossip that Enya provided and followed along with her sister as Enya dragged her to her room to get ready for the evening ball. 

“What have you done to your poor hair?” Enya asked her, pulling a grimace as she picked out the few dozen of hairpins that Oriana used on a normal day to keep her hair contained. 

It was long and thick and curly, and it never seemed to quite do what she wanted. So up into a bun it went, so that it wasnÄt going to interfere with her work. 

“Nothing?” Oriana asked and Enya growled at her. She knew better than to say anything when her sister got like that, dousing her hair in some kind of potion or other. 

She held her tongue, even when she worried about going bald. 

Still, whatever Enya did to her hair, for once managed to make it look…well, manageable. The curls were shiny and defined, and it was soft to the touch, falling to her waist in onyx black ringlets. 

“I’ll get you a bottle,” Enya muttered under her breath. “I can’t look at you when you look like that.” 

Oriana bit back the amusement. 

It wasn’t like she didn’t care how she looked. She was big enough to own too many dresses and way too much jewellery. But she was far removed from her older sisters, for whom all of that was a secondary calling of sports. 

If Enya wasn’t busy stitching up flesh, she was stitching up dresses. 

Still, Oriana sat through Enya’s primping and prodding with no protests, because that was how Enya showed her love. 

Oriana just snuck her jewellery in response. 

“You have a gown?” she asked Oriana, who just stared at her. 

“You mean a gown that you aren’t going to let me wear anyway?” she responded drily and Enya huffed. 

Oriana bit back a smile.

Enya did let her choose her own jewellery, let her pin back one side of her hair with a couple of pins decorated with white opals, her grandmother’s favourite stones. 

And then Enya brought out the dress. 

Marigold yellow layers upon layers of nearly shine through silk, so thin that everything could ruin it…so thin that it would be seethrough if there wasn’t so much of it. 

That together with a yellow-gold gem-studded belt that she had made for Enya years ago, so wide that it would cover much of her midsection. 

“I think it will look beautiful,” Enya told her, brokering no argument, already starting to unlace the back of her dress for her. 

“It’s gorgeous,” Oriana agreed as she pulled her dress over her head. 

For a moment, Enya was quiet. 

“Oriana.”

“Yes?”

“Any particular reason why in the world you have knives strapped to your thighs.”

Oriana would make a truly horrible spy, because she totally forgot that she had them. 

She had been so busy with…practically everything else that the knives that had been a comforting weight just hours prior had been promptly forgotten. 

Somehow she thought that Azriel would look at her with this face somewhere between amusement and tragic despair. 

“Call it protection?” Oriana suggested and Enya just glared at her. 

“Can you even use them?” her sister asked her. “Maybe we should have Samson show you how to do it. Before you accidentally stab yourself.”

“I can use them,” Oriana defended herself. “He taught me how to use them.”

“Samson?” Enya wondered. 

She bit her lip. 

“No,” she admitted. “My mate.”

Enya just stared at her. 

“Cyrus knows. Now you.”

And then there was only a soft shocked sound before Enya enveloped her into a tight hug. “Oh, Oriana. I am so pleased for you,” her sister whispered. 

Oriana knew that she meant it. 

Enya maybe didn’t want a mate for herself, but that didn’t stop her from being supportive of her.  

“When did it happen?” Enya asked her as she let her go, picking up the dress and helping Oriana pull it over her head. 

“A few weeks ago,” Oriana said softly. “I was just walking the streets…and there he was. I stumbled right into him.”

Enya would listen to all the details that Cyrus really couldn’t care less about. 

“So he's High Fae?” Enya asked her. 

“No,” Oriana answered. “Illyrian.”

“Illyrian,” Enya repeated, her eyes widening nearly comically. “He has wings .”

Oriana couldn’t hold back the laugh at that, because she had half expected that reaction though probably not for the reasons that one might think. 

“Oh yes, he has,” she agreed. Beautiful Wings at that. All of him was beautiful.  

“He can fly ,” Enya said wondrously and Oriana nodded. 

“He even took me flying with him,” she teased her sister. 

“I am so jealous,” Enya said with a sigh. “Does he have a brother I can borrow or something? Just for the flying?”

 “I’ll ask him,” Oriana volunteered and Enya just sighed once again, before shrewd eyes finally stared at the at the necklace that was still around her throat. 

“What about…” Enya started and Oriana interrupted her. 

“I am taking it off.”

At least she hoped she would. 

Oriana had a plan. 

She just hoped it would work. 

“You are?” Enya asked her, sounding surprised. 

Oriana just nodded. “Tonight.”

The faster she got it down, the quicker she was free of Wynstan and everything that marriage represented to her. 

And she didn’t want to wear the necklace anymore. 

She had taken notes after notes on it, written down the runic array she had used, and taken it apart…she would be able to replicate the protection she had on it. She was sure of that. 

Now she just needed to break it. 

“Why tonight?” Enya asked her quietly.

Of course, her sister was going to pick up on that. 

“Because nobody is going to be in the fire chamber when they are busy dancing,” Oriana answered honestly. 

“You want it to melt off you,” her sister responded, her voice flat. 

Oriana just shrugged. 

“I’ll sacrifice it. Return it to the mother,” she said softly. “It seems fair.”

And if the normal fire wouldn’t suffice…well, then she hoped that the eternal flame would be willing to lend a hand. 

“Why now?” 

“I waited for a century. I am not willing to wait any longer. ”

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

Her grandmother’s birthday celebration started with dinner and continued with dancing. 

Even Kiran came out of the forge at that, drinking too much sweet wine and having a grand old tie. 

And Oriana…well, she was happy that she got to dance. Even when the thoughts were crossing her mind of what she would be doing soon. As soon as the celebrations had started, when everybody was busy dancing…well. 

But right now she was enjoying herself. Right now, she was taking the opportunity to soak up the atmosphere and laugh when Toron twirled her around the floor. 

Or at least that had been the plan. 

But everybody knew what was said about best laid plans. 

She was twirled around by her brother, and then she suddenly wasn’t anymore, because the partners changed…and while it should have been Toron…well, Titus decided he should cut in. 

Which was just what Oriana needed. Not. 

Her former brother-in-law. He reminded her of Wynstan, a few inches taller, but the same dark hair, the same proud nose…

She could see her husband in his features, and somehow that was a specific kind of torture. 

“Oriana,” he greeted her, his voice cutting, even with just the simple word. 

“Titus,” she responded, forcing a smile on her face that hopefully looked like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. 

She was quite sure that she was failing. 

She tried to ignore the way his eyes trailed over her body, tried to ignore how the necklace heated in warning, and swallowed against it. 

She didn’t like this. Not at all. 

“You are still wearing it,” he said, his voice near mocking. 

“I am,” she agreed serenely. She was still wearing it. 

“You have been wearing it longer than the marriage was ever valid.” True. She was. “How does it feel to wear it when you are the one who killed it?”

Right.”

“How am I supposed to have killed him when it was his experiment?” she asked. 

She told herself that a lot over the years. It had been his experiment. He had been the one who had started it. 

She had just been…she had come in after it had already started. 

For years that’s what she had clung to. She had told herself that it was an accident. That Wynstan just hadn’t been careful enough. That it was a tragic accident and that if he had just been more careful, then it wouldn’t have needed to go down like that. 

And then…then she remembered every minute detail of what had gone down that day. 

 And she remembered…she remembered…she remembered how it should have killed her not him. How it had been supposed to kill her, not him. 

And how her own magic had responded, turning the flames away from herself and against him. 

His accident turned attempted murder, turned self-defence, turned…burning him to a crisp with all the might of magical fire that she had never pulled out of herself before…and hopefully never would again. 

“He made the mistake that cost his life. I was just caught in the crossfire.”

She said the words that she didn’t believe. The official version that people believed. 

“And you believe that?”” Titus hissed to her. 

She ignored that, ignored the stabbing pain somewhere in her chest region. It didn’t matter. 

“I believe that there is nothing I could have done differently,” she finally said, as she stepped back, as she finally could snatch back her hand from his grasp and get the hell away from him. 

She just knew that her eyes must be flaring, no longer the pitch black that she kept carefully pulled over them so that they didn’t terrify everybody that she met. 

The flames within her were flaring, licking out. 

Sometimes she could nearly feel it, the fire that she kept tightly leashed inside herself. 

Oh well, why not throw in some emotional turmoil when she was already at it? 

She shouldn’t have expected any differently. 

Sneaking out of the Grand Hall was easy, faeries too busy with the celebration to give her more than a second look. And even if they did, all they expected was for her to be tired and walk to her room and be done with it. 

She wasn’t. 

A part of her calmed as she walked further into the mountain. Down and down and down, right there into the middle, where the fire chamber resided. 

A circular room, deep into the mountains. And if one looked up when they stood inside it, one would be able to glimpse the night sky through the near tunnel-like opening at the top. 

The ground and walls were smooth through millennia of use, black and sooty. 

Opened the door, walked into the room, and closed it again. 

She was home. 

Regardless of where she lived, in the mountain or in Velaris, in her tiny apartment…there was one place that was always going to be her true home. 

And that were the flames flickering before her. 

Maybe it was because she had been born into their embrace. Maybe it was because like called to like and the fire within her recognised its kin. 

Maybe it was just her mind making it all up. 

But as she stood there, before the first ring of fire…she relaxed. 

It was the work of minutes as she pulled her dress over her head and left it carefully folded laying on one of the ledges in the wall, pulling off every bit of jewellery that she wore, the knives Azriel had given her…all of it. 

Until she was left in her wedding necklace and nothing else. 

She prodded off the shadow of her wrist. 

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she promised them quietly when they seemed to cling to her. 

Mistress, what are you doing? they asked her, their many voices intertwined in one. 

“I am going to take off my necklace,” she explained. “And for that, I need to walk into the fire. I don’t want you to get hurt in the flames. They won’t do anything to me, but I don’t know how they’ll react to you.”

They listened to her, but they still seemed anxious as they skittered away. 

It was going to be fine. 

She had thought about it. Nothing should happen. The fire should melt off the necklace, the enchantment would break, and all would be well. 

Oriana stared into the shadows for just a moment, feeling deep inside herself for that glowing string of fate, tied around her rib. She pushed all the love she had for Azriel into it. 

And then she turned and walked into the fire. 

At first, nothing happened. 

The first circle wasn’t even knee high as she breached it, but it immediately roared to life as she stepped through the boundary. 

Nearly playfully, the flames flicked along her skin, their heat a balm to her that not a lot of things would be able to replicate. 

She stood there for just a moment, waiting for the necklace to heat up, for the metal to grow molten and bendy. 

The outermost ring was the one they used for their ceremonies. The flames had been used to close the necklace in the first place. As a child, she had been passed through them at the blessing ceremony that came after her birth. She had walked through them when she had bled for the first time and became a woman in the eyes of her people. 

And she had been born into these flames like not many were. Her mother had chosen to give birth here, after a difficult pregnancy, hoping that this would mean that her child would be blessed. 

Oriana often wondered if that was the reason why her powers were as strong as they were. 

The flames that had seen her first minutes on the earth spilt upwards. 

But still, the necklace didn’t budge. 

She reached up, feeling the necklace heat up against her skin and she hissed as she felt that the fire was magical in nature. 

She didn’t have much time. 

Normal fire couldn’t hurt her, could hurt no Tartera. But Magical Fire was another question entirely. 

She had no other choice. 

She had hoped that the first ring would be enough, but she should have known that it wasn’t. 

She pushed herself through the next ring, and could nearly feel how that fucking necklace was already lashing out at her, her own magic turning against herself. 

Oriana had been so fucking stupid and now she was paying the prize for it. 

The heat kicked up so high that it was nearly making her nauseous 

Still nothing. 

Magic swirled around her as she clenched her teeth, as she tried to ignore the heat and the pain and the fear that wanted to grip her as she breached the third circle. 

This was too much. She shouldn’t have done this. She knew that. 

The heat was too much, the magic growing stronger in every consecutive circle. 

One didn’t simply walk through these circles. 

They protected the eternal flame within them and they were going to kill her if they judged her purpose to be anything but pure. 

And to be honest, it wasn’t pure.  It was desperate. 

I am sorry. I am sorry, she chanted desperately in her mind, hoping that this would be enough. Just the third circle. That needed to be enough. 

I can’t wear it anymore. I was stupid, but I just wanted to be free. When I made it, I just wanted to protect myself. I just didn’t want to be in the same situation again. I didn’t want to be bartered off. I just wanted to be safe…

She felt more than heard the magical crack. 

she forced her eyes open, even when the heat and pain of the necklace burning against her throat, seemingly making it impossible to breathe forced her against the stone floor, the fires of the third circle still burning around her. 

The Eternal Flame lit before her, in the very centre of the rings. 

Every Year, when it was time, the oldest of their people sacrificed themselves for its continued revival. Walked through the rings and never came back. 

The flame brought them into their afterlife, and in return, the magic of the donors wrapped itself around the mountain and the Tartera. 

Purely Magical. Eternally old. 

If Oriana petitioned it and it found her lacking, it would kill her. Or it would kill her anyway. 

Sometimes, very rarely. The Eternal Flame gifted a piece of itself to make it possible to forge something from it. 

Never enough for more than a single thing. Never given to anybody more than once. 

And now…now there she was, on her knees in front of it, and the necklace was going to kill her soon if she didn’t…

I want to be with my mate. 

I just want to be with him. 

Please. Please. Please. 

Please take it from me so I can be free. Please. I just want to be with him. I just want to love him. To cherish him. To protect him. 

She had been born into these flames. 

And so she reached out to them. 

They rushed up and up and up, the heat too much. 

They enveloped her once again like a favoured child. 

She gasped, tipping forwards, feeling the heat rush through her, feeling the magic of it punching through her, painless and quickly, her own enchantments not a single match to the powers of eternity. 

It pushed through every cell of her being, her own power feeling like kindling for it. 

And still…she wasn’t scared. 

The eternal flame was nothing more than gentle lickings of warmth against her skin, a roaring inferno to anybody else, white and blue as it took from her and melted away her necklace like it had never been there. 

She swore she could feel amusement coming from it as it cradled her close. 

“You are all my children after all, Little Flame.” the flame whispered to her and Oriana wished she could respond, but she couldn’t. “Love him. Cherish him. Protect him.”

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

[bigfatbreak1]

Enlighten me, what music does Minnie-jean listen as the angsty punk teen she is? Fascinated to know as we all have **very interesting** tastes in music at that age. (14-year-old me listening to rubber band noises on loop)

Minnie-Jeanne loves any music that’s “out there.”

For the first decade of Minnie-Jeanne’s life; her taste in music was mix of her parent’s favourite artists. Her dad blasted Motörhead on his truck’s radio and her mom was Kate Bush’s biggest stan. As she got older; she discovered not only the Cocteau Twins, but also Bjork, Enya, and a whole host of other wacky musicians. Minnie-Jeanne is allergic to contemporary pop, not because she thinks it’s bad, but because it’s just not stimulating. And yes; she loves Chappell Roan.

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (6-12 Apr 2025)

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

🥰 Fan Service (Rosie Danan) - this was just so! much! fun! and given my usual low tolerance of cishet contemp romances, that's saying something. Nailed the whole 'being-in-fandom' vibe, even calling out some of the more toxic aspects, without ever shitting on it, in a way that can only be done from someone on the inside.

😍 Murder by Memory (Dorothy Gentleman #1) (Olivia Waite, author; Blair Baker, narrator) - delightful scifi cozy mystery novella set on a generation ship - as someone who loved The Spare Man, I gotta say I am all on board with this publishing trend. also: Dorothy Gentleman? incredible name, chef's kiss. Absolutely cannot wait for more of Dorothy's adventures.

💖💖 +72K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

In The Long Run (musette22) - MCU: shrunkyclunks, 12K - this fic is described by the author as "mostly 💫 vibes 💫 and unapologetic smut, with a bit of soulmates and angst thrown in the mix"; said vibes are heavily influenced by '70s rock, especially The Eagles' "Peaceful Easy Feeling" which all adds up to be wonderfully delicious

Misplaced Pencils (Somanywords) - MCU: stucy, 13K - lovely & poignant look at Steve Rogers & his relationship to drawing throughout his life (with a side of his relationship to bucky thrown in 😉)

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

The Sam Sanders Show - How Did Marsai Martin Conquer Child Stardom?

Home Town Takeover - s3, e5

Smartypants - s2, e3

QI - series Q, e2-4, 7-8, 11-14

Um, Actually - s10, e6

Game Changer - s7, e1

Doctor Odyssey - s1, e13-14

D20: The Ravening War - "The Seventh Kingdom" (s17, e5)

D20: The Ravening War - "The Heart of the World" (s17, e6)

D20: Adventuring Party - s12, e5-6 (The Ravening War)

The Fall Guy

Doctor Who - s2 (series 15), e1

D20: Titan Takedown - "Party Animals" (s25, e1)

D20: Titan Takedown - "Bouts and Boogies" (s25, e2)

D20: Adventuring Party - s20, e1-2 (Titan Takedown)

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

Pop Pantheon - Disco: Past & Present (with The Clive Davis Institute's Jason King)

Off Menu - Ep 285: Sally Phillips

Imaginary Worlds - NSFW Ancient Tales, Myths and Riddles

⭐ Twenty Thousand Hertz+ - Inside Apple: Sonic Accessibility

Our Opinions Are Correct - Severance and the New Hellscape (w/ Carl Zimmer)

Desert Island Discs - Cyndi Lauper

The Sporkful - Comedian Matteo Lane Says ‘Your Pasta Sucks’

Off Menu - Ep 286: Rhod Gilbert (Live in London)

Pop Culture Happy Hour - The White Lotus

The Curious History of Your Home - Clocks

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - The Black American West Museum

Switched on Pop - Miley Cyrus goes avant-garde

Dinner’s on Me - Matt Bomer

99% Invisible - Everything Is Tuberculosis

David Tennant Does a Podcast With…Georgia Tennant

Persuasion by Jane Austen - Persuasion 11. | The Tale of Mrs Smith

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Dying For Sex

⭐ Vibe Check - If You Don’t Want to Be Edged, Get Out of My Bed

⭐ Decoder Ring - Spring Break Forever

Decoder Ring - An MTV Spring Break Karaoke Misadventure

Imaginary Worlds - Blueprints for Utopias

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Pop Culture That Changed Our Minds

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - What Makes a Pest?

⭐ One Song - Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song"

Shedunnit - Book Club Fact File: The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

Shedunnit - Book Club Conversation: The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

No One Saw It Coming - Stealing the Mona Lisa: The Crime That Created a Legend

You're Dead to Me - Marco Polo: history’s most famous travel writer?

Hit Parade - Only Girl in the World Edition

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

The Muppets

"Bad For Me" [Dee Dee Bridgewater] radio

Who Believes In Angels? [Elton John & Brandi Carlile] {2025}

Rock Radio • 1990s

Groove Cruise

'80s Rock Revival

50 Years of the Piano Man [Billy Joel] {2022}

Beats & Soul

AC/DC

Ratt radio

The Darkness Radio • Rock

Enya

[procrastinationau]

What are some of your favorite scenes/moments in Procrastination AU that you most want fanart of?

oh gosh

I mean any procrastination au fanart would put me absolutely over the moon tbh, I don't really care what scene or character or even if it's just a stick figure, I would treasure it.

that said uhhhh some moments that I really love/would love to see fanart of...

the scene in Big Apple chapter 6 where Rai tries to flirt with an oblivious Jack on the Dojo-train and then falls over

the scene in the first Sal and Rai interlude where Sal very pleasantly asks chase what the fuck he's planning with his kid. this one would probably be a little hard to draw but i love it a lot

omi meeting Jermaine for the first time, specifically the part where the sun comes out and hits Jermaine and Omi's seeing him with like, shoujo lens flare. heart eyes motherfucker (chapter 3 of big apple)

basically the whole of big apple chapter 8. I wanted to draw an art piece to go with it that was split into quarters with each one showing the different characters and their respective internal conflicts but never got around to it

basically anything from dude is that enya though to be fair that one's mostly jack and rai sitting and talking. rai bellyflopping onto his hotel bed while sal watches a dog show and eats plantain chips in the other bed is a fun image

rai emerging from the alley covered in trash and going "the name is raimundo, punk!" in his intro is an image i still love. also the showdown in that one has fun visuals

god so many of these are big apple. in my defense that one took nearly a year to write and is the biggest chunk of the au so far

honestly the scene i would most love to see fanart of is in the finale and is huge spoilers so I can't share it yet lmfao. but i've had it written for ages and can't wait to share it.

EDIT EDIT EDIT I FORGOT ABOUT SAL'S NEW YORK FIT!!!!!!!!!!! GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was going to draw it and never did.

[jennaishonest]

*•.¸♡About me♡¸.•*

This is very weird I’ve never made like an actual official post on here before and I’m usually a ghost user but recently as we all may know TikTok may be getting banned, in the event of that happening I will be moving some of my old edits over here because this is the app I feel most comfortable on . I will still be editing and posting edits over here and I would love taking suggestions on who and what to edit so feel free to message me or comment under this post.

Some things about me:

I’ve been editing for almost two years.

I’ve been noticed by Twaimz, Larray, Lauren (emowhofromwhoville), Miranda Rae, sapphire blaze, and Sarah Jeffery. (Yes Maggie from the charmed reboot and Audrey from descendants .)

my favorite YouTubers: the Sturniolo triplets, Tara yummy, benoftheweek, the kalogeras sisters, quenlin Blackwell , Josie Kay, Garrett watts, And of COURSE emergency intercom (drew and enya)…(Kinda a crazy list of people.😭)

A FEW of my favorite movies: Scott pilgrim against the world,the whole twilight saga,uptown girls, death proof, and scream. (Big fan of horror movies in general.)

My favorite music artist :Sza, pinkpanthress, Laufey , grimes, tv girl , The Sundays, the cranberries,frank ocean, Tyler the creator, Lana del Rey, clairo, and The Weeknd.

Favorite colors: dark red ,dark purple,hunter green,light pink, and black

Age and birthday: 16 oct’9th

(Uh that’s about it for now because Idk what else to say but i follow back so feel free to follow if you wanna be moots!)

Gif by me!