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punishandenslavesuckers · 6 years ago

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Mollymauk Tealeaf wakes up in a grave by the road ten years after he died. Things have gone a bit wrong since then and he might be the only one who can set things right… since it’s the Mighty Nein themselves who’ve gone wrong. AU: Where Molly comes back to yell at his super-powered Level 20 friends. (AO3 - part1) (AO3 - part 2) (AO3 - part3) (AO3 - part4) (AO3 - part5) (AO3-part6) (AO3-part7) (AO3-part8) (AO3-part9)

The Blooming Grove is beautiful in the day light.

The sun slides beams of yellow through the gnarled canopy to the undergrowth, dappling dark grass and wildflowers in shifting stripes of sunshine and shadow. That’s what Molly spends the better part of ten minutes staring at when he wakes comfortably drowsy and a bit dehydrated from an all-night drug stupor. The morning is quiet, broken, only by distant murmuring and the muted twitter of birdsong. Mollymauk’s lying on his back still, though someone moved him a little into the space beneath a great oak tree, his head cushioned on a balled jacket.

For a warm sleepy while, Molly dozes a little somewhere between waking and unconsciousness, vaguely roused from his limbo by the impression of another person nearby. Yawning a little, Mollymauk sits up a bit, raking hair from his face.

Caduceus Clay is sitting nearby.

His back is partially to Molly, his face in profile serene as the morning around him.

He’s dressed in full armor, glittering chitinous green and grown with rosy lichen. Someone has taken the long section of his hair and pulled it back so the central part is woven elaborately, plaited and clipped so it stands up from his otherwise shaved skull. The rest of his hair is braided in a heavy rope that coils over his left shoulder. There are carved bone and amber charms threaded into the soft pink.

He looks war-ready to Molly with his fauxhawk and his armor.

He looks like he’s been waiting for Molly to wake up.

Molly can hear him murmur quietly and in the fifteen seconds that he gets to simply watch, Molly supposes that the cleric is praying. His low voice is like a long chord from a strange instrument, deep bass and vibrato. Eventually, he seems to register Mollymauk’s attention and looks over his shoulder, one long ear flipping upward like a deer detecting a noise. He smiles and the fondness is all the way up to his eyes in a way that makes Molly feel extremely safe even now, despite the facts of his fate. It’s impressive really. Molly thinks Clay could calm a storm with that look.

“Morning,” Molly says.

“Good morning,” says Caduceus.

Mollymauk folds his hands on his stomach.

“I have no hangover. Is that because you have the best drugs in the kingdom, or because you did some healing while I was sleeping?”

“Both.”

“Anyone ever tell you, you’re a gentleman and a scholar, Mr. Clay?”

“No. Because I’m neither of those things.” Caduceus turns a little at the waist and holds out an upturned hand to Molly. “This is yours, I think.”

In his palm something glitters, sunshine sparking molten before Molly gets a better look. There’s a thin chain pooled around a crystal heart amulet and when Molly recognizes it, there’s a moment of mild indifference (like when someone returns a knickknack) then a low creep of unnerve when he contextualizes how someone else came to possess it. The last resting place of this necklace, after wall, was around his own throat the day Lorenzo cut him down.

“Caleb gave it to me.” Caduceus tilts his head. “I think it’s fitting that it come back to you, Mollymauk.”

Molly arches a brow. “Caleb gave you a heart necklace?”

Caduceus gives him a look. “Caleb gave me the pariapt of wound closure on account of how often I was wounded in the course of regularly scheduled idiocy.” He shrugs a little. “But, yes, if you like.”

For a while, Molly says nothing. Then he says, “How does a firbolg cleric end up with the Mighty Nein?”

Silence for a moment while Caduceus thinks on this.

“They came to my graveyard – this one, in fact – on the sunset of your death. They asked me to come with them on a mission of vengeance and justice.” Caduceus looks out over the overgrown headstones, to the temple structure beyond and Molly thinks his expression gets a little wistful, an edge of… not regret but something. “I didn’t know anything about the world back then.” He turns back to Molly. “I know a lot more now.”

Molly stares at the periapt, then says, “No. It’s yours now. I don’t want it. Not if Caleb gave it to you.”

“It wasn’t a gift. It was a tactical—”

“Sure thing,” Molly says, grinning. Then, after Caduceus has reluctantly put the periapt back on, he asks, “You really think Caleb would risk ending the world?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

Molly shakes his head. “I always knew he was deep in his head. I didn’t ever think he would… I thought he might fuck us, specifically, over. Or a lot of other people in general. I got that he was putting Nott and himself over everyone else. That made sense. That’s fine. But the whole bloody world?”

“You never knew him in context,” Caduceus says softly.

“Then put him in context.”

A hesitation then. Clay visibly wavers.

“You won’t spoil my good opinion of him, Mr. Clay. He killed me in cold blood for the sake of making a point I think.” Molly cracks a bitter grin. “I’d feel less sore about it, I think, if you gave me some framework for what makes a man do that to someone.”

Caduceus lowers his gaze a moment, then, quietly, he says:

“Caleb Widogast was insane once and finding sanity again required him to take hold of an impossible idea.” He raises his gaze then to Molly. “This idea was so fantastic it could hem in all the broken parts of him and hold his shape, make him a person again long enough to accomplish it. That impossible idea would have also, very possibly, done the world irreparable damage. So, you have this idea that Caleb ending the world is a new development and…” Caduceus shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but Caleb was always willing to end the world, Mollymauk. His restraint now is the new development.”

Quiet for a moment while Molly digests this.

“What do you mean he was ‘insane’? How and why?”

“I mean as a young man, a figure of authority convinced Caleb Widowgast to be a thing instead of a person. They hollowed him out the way authority can hollow a person and laid ideology inside him rather than morality. Then, on the say so of that ideology, he burned his family alive in his childhood home.” Cad is holding Molly’s gaze, unwavering, steady as a load-bearing beam. “The ideology wasn’t rooted deep enough to keep the horror out. He went insane. Then he stopped being insane and decided he might unravel time itself to undo what he’d done because the possibility of ‘fixing it’ was the only port in the storm.”

Molly stares.

“Gods fuck me, I knew something was wrong but… are you bloody serious?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve talked him down from something like this before.”

Caduceus nods. “Yes.”

“How’d you stop him last time?”

“I didn’t. Nott took his hand and asked him not to do it.”

Molly is quiet a moment, then, “But that won’t work this time. This time, he’d kill Nott.”

Something reactive crosses Caduceus’ face. “No. Never. He’d risk killing her,” he corrects. “That’s something he’s not been willing to do in a long time. I’m not saying he doesn’t love others and love them—" bit of a sigh here— “very, very much. But he’ll never care for anyone like he cares for Nott. Nott is what’s holding back the end of the world. Not me or Yasha or you or anyone else.”

“The whole world on a goblin-girl,” Molly murmurs. “Something kinda great about that.”

“Yes. So much depends upon odd everyday things.” Caduceus tilts his head. “Maybe on a carnival performer.”

“Ugh.” Molly rolls his eyes. “Stop. My stomach is knotting up just thinking about it. Did everyone come up with a plan while I was sleeping?”

“Yes. Breaching Caleb’s keep would be impossible… save for the fact we have Jester with us again. The Traveler travels everywhere. It may be a difficult approach, but he won’t be able to stop us like most wizards of his ilk might be able. But he can make it a treacherous road to walk.” Caduceus gestures. “The plan is simple enough, we breach the keep. Jester, Yasha, Nott, and I will try to hold Caleb. You and Fjord will find Beauregard. Fjord will… do what’s necessary.”

Mollymauk leans back against the tree, his arms draped over his knees. “Kill her in her sleep, you mean.”

Caduceus doesn’t flinch.

“It’s been my task all along,” he says, “to one day be the person who ends Beau’s life. If the Beauregard I knew isn’t dead already, then it is an unnatural thread that binds her to the world. As a person whose walked between life and death over and over tied by powers beyond your hold, tell me there isn’t a time to let life let go.”

Molly’s jaw aches from clenching it. But eventually, he shakes his head just once.

“No, I’m not disagreeing there. But she’s my friend, you know?”

“And mine. And Fjord’s. It’ll be him that does it and I don’t envy him the task, but I wish I could relieve him of it.”

“He volunteer for that job?”

“Yes. But even if he hadn’t, you and he won’t survive a direct confrontation with Caleb Widogast if he knows we’re coming. You’ll be best to end the fight at the its source.”

Molly glances across the graveyard, to the faint sound of voices and movement. Where he can sense that the rest of the Mighty Nein are milling around on the opposite side of the shrine, gathering things and preparing. The thought sets his nerves on a preemptive razor’s edge, his heart acidic suddenly in the back of his throat and he finds himself breathing faster, his hands clenching tight and he hears it clear as a breath against the coil of his ear: Lorenzo saying, “Respect.” Caleb saying, “Die.” Fjord saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Caduceus lays a hand on his shoulder and Molly twitches reactive under his palm. He waits for Molly to settle, but kneels there facing him now, pale eyes intent on Molly’s face the way one can be intent on a book they are reading. He squeezes Molly’s shoulder and it’s strange how heavy his hand lies on him, how much density that suggests in the cleric’s bones and build.

“Breathe,” he rumbles.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Molly says.

“None of us know that,” says Caduceus, “but we’re going to try. If you really think you can’t do it, you don’t have to –”

“Fuck you, Caduceus. You brought me back from the grave. If I go back to it, I’ll be on my bloody feet. Understand? I’m just saying, I’m a bit nervous.”

“I understand.” There’s a pause. “Mollymauk, I know I’ve said this before but…”

“Stop.” Molly waves a hand. “I’m sick of people being sorry for me.”

“No, I was going to say you’ve shown unusual bravery in the face of terrible things. Also, I am not really sorry. I would do it again.”

“Weirdly, that makes me feel better, thank you, Caduceus.”

This earns him a head tilt. “If you’re angry with me… with everything that’s happened, you have every right.”

“Trust me,” Molly huffs, “I don’t need your permission to be angry. I’m livid. I’m furious my friends are trying to end the world because one is an emotionally traumatized bookworm.” He sighs and rubs his forehead. “I’m furious they didn’t take care of one another and you had to dig me out of a grave to sort it out for some reason. I’m out of my fuckin’ mind that somehow the gods are hanging this nonsense on me. I’m so mad I want to bite something.”

Caduceus nods. “I understand.”

Up close, the very fine gray down that colors Caduceus’ face and throat seems to shimmer a little and there are shards of gray in the pink ring of each iris. Caduceus Clay is a pastel riot of contradicting pieces and he smells like fresh-cut grass and whatever moss is growing in the chinks of his armor. Molly doesn’t realize he’s doing it until he’s reached up and taken hold of the long, pink braid hung over his shoulder pauldron. Clay doesn’t stop him, just peering curiously.

There’s a heavy iron clasp at the end of the braid, hard in Molly’s palm.

“Why did you stay?”

Caduceus flicks a long ear. “What?”

“With Caleb.” Molly grips the clasp a little, just to feel the metal dig in. He doesn’t look at the other man. “You were one of the last people standing with Caleb. Even after everyone else had gone other directions. Nott stuck it out, I get that. But why did you?”

“Because,” Caduceus says, “there was a time previously that I was capable of holding Caleb back as well. Second only to Nott of course.”

“Wait. What does that…?”

“Hey, Deuce? Molly? You two awake and sober or does Jester need to come over here?”

Fjord’s come around the side of the temple.

He’s standing among a collection of broken gravestones, his arms crossed, wearing that strange set of black leather armor he wore earlier. The only difference now is it looks as though Jester’s painted the symbol of her god across his shoulder guard. In the full light of day, Molly can see that he wasn’t delusional: Fjord looks almost exactly the same as he did ten years ago. Time hasn’t touched him. He’s been held in a capsule. The age is (instead) in his eyes, in the way he looks at them though Molly couldn’t identify what heaviness it is exactly that ten years has put there.

“We’re okay here,” Caduceus says. He leans his weight on his staff and stands up, offering Molly a hand up. “Just discussing the plan.”

Caduceus murmurs something and Molly feels the Death Ward charm again take hold of his soul, anchoring him to the world. The cleric lets go of his hand then.

“If you die,” Caduceus says, “and there is no one there to call you back from death, that’s it. Jester’s asked her god about the rules around you dying. You can be called back as many times as there is someone to call you, but if you die and no one calls…”

“I’m dead,” Molly says. “And Fjord is no cleric.”

“I’ll look out for you,” Fjord says, a little defensive, “but if you don’t want to come, you don’t have to. Point of fact, I think I’ll move faster without you –”

“He’s lying,” Caduceus says easily. “He’s just worried, particularly since he’s operating without his patron now.”

Fjord tosses his hands up. “Thank you, Caduceus, for your rousing pre-battle pep talks. Appreciated as always.” Then when his giant teammate just kind of gives him a benign but entirely shit-eating kind of smile, Fjord shoulders past him muttering, “Fuckin’ years later, still weird as hell…”

“I heard that.”

“Yeah, I know, Deuce. It’s what you’re there for.”

He glares over his shoulder, still standing close enough that he kind of has to tilt his head back to do it. Caduceus kind of smiles in return. There’s a beat in that exchange, a crisscross where something in the cleric’s expression gets a little sad despite the unabashed fondness there and something in Fjord’s glare loses the edge. Caduceus is the one to break the wordless quiet, almost too quiet to hear.

“I’m glad you’re with us again, Fjord.”

“I… yeah.” A pause. “Look, Caduceus, about what I said last night…”

Caduceus waves a hand.

“No. Man.” Fjord gets indignant. “It’s not okay. Just… you know…” He sighs. “Thank you. Nott told me a little bit about it, but she shouldn’t have had to tell me anything. I should have known you were doing everything you could. I was just… taking it out on you because I was frustrated and… and fucked up, honestly. It’s not excuse, but it’s what I was doing.”

“I know. I’m not upset.”

“You should be. I was over the line.”

Caduceus doesn’t say anything, just shrugs and glances away which doesn’t work especially well when one is taller than everyone else around them.

“You should have never been trapped as long as you were,” Caduceus says eventually. He meets Fjord’s eyes and Molly can see now what he was masking – a plain and painful guilt. “I was afraid to leave Caleb. I’m sorry.”

Fjord steps forward and grabs the cleric’s sleeve at the elbow, pulling him face to face.

“You listen. What happened to me was my fault and no one else’s. I did what I did. I signed on full well knowing what my patron was and what it wanted. I swallowed the fuckin’ sea and I took the blade when it was given to me.” Fjord hisses through his teeth now. “Dammit, Caduceus, why didn’t you get away from him like the rest of us? You didn’t have to stay.”

“We don’t do that.” Caduceus is perfectly calm, certain as sunrise. “We don’t leave each other.”

“Bullshit, Cad. We all left you.”

“You didn’t leave me. You were taken. There’s a diff—” And here he falters. He glances at Molly. Because in that instant Molly realizes (a slow unraveling dawning) that Caleb was quoting Caduceus on that beach— “there’s a difference,” he finishes. “Maybe not everyone was taken like you were taken, but you can be taken by grief, by despair, or madness, or circumstance. You were all taken by something.” Caduceus trails off. “I’m not angry.”

“You should be.”

“I’m not.”

“Gods, I don’t get you,” Fjord groans, pressing fingers into his temple. “It’s been how long now and I’m never gonna fuckin’ get you, Cad. You’re just so fuckin’ – oof!”

Fjord’s complaint is smothered rather effectively by Caduceus casually reaching out and yanking his shorter teammate into a hug. It’s an expert hug. Both inevitable and affectionate in equal unstoppable parts. Fjord, nevertheless, gives a cursory struggle before surrendering to Clay’s (apparently) unescapable embrace, the tension sliding out of his shoulders in increments. Molly is pretty sure he can see a glow in Clay’s fingers, light sinking into Fjord’s armor before disappearing entirely.

“Did you just hug a Death Ward onto me?” Fjord demands, muffled.

“Yes.” Clay squeezes him just once more for good measure, then lets him go. “Can you go get Nott for me? She has something for Molly, I think.”

“She can’t keep giving me her stuff!” Molly protests.

Fjord looks at Molly. “She can and she will.” He holds up his arm and there’s a pair of strange gold-hammered bracers strapped to his forearms. “I don’t know where she stole these, but apparently you can grab a spell with them and throw it back.”

“I love that girl,” says Molly. Then, after a moment, he jerks his chin to Caduceus. “I’m glad you found him after I died, by the way.” He waves a hand up and down generally encompassing Caduceus Clay as a whole. “You know, good color scheme.”

Caduceus stifles a chuckle. Fjord gets a lopsided grin and pats Molly on the shoulder as he turns to go. But he pauses. There’s just the one look – brief and curious as he looks a Molly, a question in his stare… so Molly slaps Fjord on the cheek in a way that clearly confuses him.

“Oi, none of that. Head in the game.” He winks. “We’ll sort it out later.”

Fjord hesitates. “Alright. I’ll hold you to it.”

Molly smiles until Fjord’s walking away.

“You’re lying,” Caduceus observes blandly. He’s leaning against his staff, head tilted. “You don’t think we’re going to survive.”

“No, I don’t think I am.”

There’s a quick silence. Then, “Mollymauk, I don’t think–”

But before he can start in on some platitudes about how everything is going to be okay or something, Caduceus makes this aborted choking sound and doubles over. His eyes go wide, his head jerking back, ears coming up like a startled animal. Like he’s hearing or seeing something Molly can’t. Then, with no warning beyond that, Caduceus’ eyes kind of roll back in his skull and he staggers sideways against the oak tree and drops his shoulder against it.

Molly, who watched all this with a confused horror, rushes forward.

“Hey, Caduceus?” He touches his shoulder like you reach for a high shelf. “You okay?”

“Head rush,” the firbolg mumbles, digging around in his robes for something. “Just… have to walk it off.”

“Are you alright?”

“I don’t know. I think something just… I don’t know.” Caduceus seems distressed and a little dazed honestly, so Molly catches his elbow and pulls the gangly cleric upright, letting him lean his weight against his shoulder from his seven feet of height. He’s a little quiet until they’ve walked a little toward the south side of the graveyard, away from the temple and the others. “Apologies. I might have over worked myself. I’ve been getting the team ready for the fight this morning and yesterday was… taxing.”

“Well you did kill a dragon with a tree.”

“It wasn’t really a dragon. It was a warlock.” Caduceus rubs his temple gingerly as if nursing a migraine. “If it had been a real dragon, I doubt we would have prevailed. True ancient sea dragons? They’re leviathans without mercy or the depravity of their land-bound cousins. It would not have played with us. Her cruelty made her stupid and we killed her for it.”

Surprise jolts through Molly then, his head coming up a little to glance Caduceus. Oddly, his calling someone stupid even in death seems off-color for the gentle giant-kin and Molly frowns a little.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I don’t know. I feel strange.”

“Well, shake it off. We have another round of bad business to deal with. Gotta take care of the Mighty Nein, right?” Molly kind of nudges the bigger man when he doesn’t get an immediate answer. “Right? That’s our job in this group.”

Caduceus gives him a strange look, somewhere between sad and regretful. “Yes, I guess so.”

Molly maneuvers around a low headstone, Caduceus’ hand still resting against his shoulder. “Caduceus, you didn’t seem like you had a head rush. You seemed like you saw something and it scared you. Don’t spare my bloody feelings if Malora’s sending you visions or something, you can tell me.” Molly hesitates then adds, “If the endgame in this story is me going back to the grave, you know I… it’s okay.”

“Mollymauk—”

“It’s okay.” Molly laughs, though it comes mirthless in his mouth. “It’s fine if I don’t survive this. Not many people get three lives, much less the number I’ve been afforded. It’s alright, Mr. Clay. I don’t expect to–”

“Hey!”

Molly stops and looks over his shoulder. Nott is rocketing across the graveyard, full-speed, a darting blur of gnomish speed accelerated by some kind of magic that makes her a yelling blur. Her cloak flaps furiously behind.

“Hey! What are you doing!?”

Caduceus turns.

“You’re outside the boundary! Caduceus!?! CAD, WHAT ARE YOU—!?”

Caduceus interrupts her by suddenly raising a hand and saying a word. He thrusts his hand backward. He’s holding what looks like a large diamond between his thumb and forefinger and as he speaks, magic rushes through it like light through a prism throwing a sheet of rainbow like an aurora against the wall, painted against the air like it’s solid. Then the light shudders, the diamond splits, and simultaneously the air collapse inward and becomes a humming door composed of light.

“MOLLY, GET AWAY FROM HIM!”

Molly’s heart stops.

Caduceus grabs him around the waist, hooking one long arm full around his narrow midriff and with a terrible almost beast-like strength the previously gentle firbolg yanks Molly’s slim tiefling weight up into his arms and steps back. Time seems to slow then, like it always does in a moment of horror as the quantum pull of the teleportation spell begins to close around Molly and pull him apart down to the atomic structures of himself. Nott is almost on them, having crossed the yard with expeditious speed.

Molly is inside the tunnel of light, pulled back through the threshold into the howling inter-dimension while Nott is lunging from the foyer of reality. She’s framed in a dark, living green, a window of the Blooming Grove at her back as she dives for Molly, her hand extended as if a gnome-girl jumping in mid-air will stop the pull of a high-level vortex through time and space… and Molly nevertheless believes it. He drives his boot back against Caduceus’ thigh and lunges off him like wall, his middle still collared but like a thrashing animal in a snare he gets just loose enough and shoves one arm forward and –

Reality snaps in that way Molly’s become so familiar with.

Molly hits the ground at speed. His head cracks hard against the rock, a sick jag of pain spiking his brain and for a red moment the world goes dark and muddled in his skull. Dizzy, the world rotates on a nauseous axis, wobbling like a bowl dropped on a table until it rattles to a stop and he’s laying face down on the ground. The stone is cold against his cheek and palms, the warmth bleeding from his body into the ground.

He blinks slowly, vision focusing…

He’s staring at his own fist against the ground In it: the broken gold chain of Clay’s periapt. Like he tore it from the firbolg’s neck in his panic. Confused, Molly lets it slide from his fingers and rolls onto his side.

Caduceus himself lays some five feet away. He’s sprawled, unmoving. His staff lays on the floor near his head. The amethyst at the head is pulsing slowly, like a heartbeat, revealing the dim fifteen by fifteen foot cavern they’re trapped inside, like a bubble inside solid rock. There’s no other light source, entrance, or seam in the walls of their cell and for a terrible moment, Molly feels the weight of the earth, the walls like a sarcophagus around them and panic begins to bleed in him.

Molly gets to his feet.

“Clay?”

No response.

“Fuck. Caduceus?”

Clay stirs then, groaning as he tries to push himself into a sitting position, head hanging low.

“What… what hap—?” He kind of jerks and doubles over retching. He shudders, then looks up, looks around at the dark cell around them. “Oh no. No…”

“Hey. Clay?” Molly remains at a distance. Molly has both rapiers in hand. “You alright, friend? What’ve you done? It’s okay if you’re okay now. You okay?”

He looks at Molly, looks at his weaponry in hand, the look on his face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mollymauk.” He touches his neck and it takes Molly a moment to realize he’s touching the hollow where the periapt once laid. “I’m so…” His expression kind of buckles in grief, a bright pain welling in his pale eyes. “I didn’t think he’d do that.”

“Caduceus,” Molly murmurs, moving slowly to kneel next to him. “What happened?”

“I think he turned the… the chain on my periapt into an enslavement ring.” And, having said the words out loud in all their horror, a low, animal growl rises out of Caduceus’ chest and the fingers at this throat dig into the collar of his shirt just above his armor. “He must have done it… a while ago.” The growl is horrible in the firbolg’s throat, this eldritch-fey noise of rage and sorrow. His words stutter and sob. “I didn’t… I didn’t think he’d…”

Molly sheathes one rapier and loops an arm around Caduceus’ shoulders. “Shh, hey. Stop. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

“The others are still out there. He only got the two of us.” Molly squeezes Caduceus’ shoulders meaningfully. “And he didn’t tell you to hurt anyone. All you did was pull us into some stupid pocket dimension or something. He doesn’t mean to kill us, I guess. It’s okay. He just sidelined us.”

“He’s split the party. They need us. We can’t fight him staggered–”

“They’ll be okay. They’ve got gods and assassins on their side.”

“How long have I worn this?” Caduceus seems to be in shock.

“Hey, stop. Hey. This isn’t a subtle spell. If you’d been under its control before, you’d know.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Caduceus covers his eyes with one hand. “I know this is the first time he’s used it, but how long has he been comfortable letting me wear this?”

“Since you switched sides,” says a voice suddenly.

Molly’s on his feet instantly. He’s only aware that he cut himself because his rapier burns now in his fist, swarmed in radiant fire. Blood soaks his shirt collar, his neck bleeding gently. Standing in the room, sudden as a blink, is Caleb Widogast. He glances at Molly’s sword, then meets his gaze. There’s something wrong with his eyes – the halogen blue color has ignited and shifts in his skull like blue flame burns behind the iris. The air around him breathes distorted by heatless mirage, power sweltering off his skin so strongly, it makes Molly’s nose sting.

“Don’t do that.” Caleb’s eyes hold Molly’s. “I don’t want to hurt you again.”

“You didn’t hurt me, you killed me,” Molly says, this even as dividing by two and just as factual. “What did you do to Clay?”

“Exactly what he said.” He looks at Caduceus then and shrugs. “It was when you asked me if I’d changed my mind about Beauregard. That’s when I changed the chain on your periapt. That night.”

That seems to do Clay some harm because his fingers dig deeper into the hallow at his throat and his eyes clench shut. So Molly steps between Caleb and the other man, his single drawn rapier throwing white in eerie ripples across the walls. Caleb’s eyes slide across the blade, then back to Molly.

“You’re stronger,” he says, “than when you died.”

“Any chance I can convince you to just back off?” Molly says.

“No.”

“Why? You win. We’re stuck in your stupid pocket bubble whatever. Gloating about it is fucking rude.”

“I’m not gloating. I’m sorry, but I need you to–”

“Fuck you and your sorry,” Molly says merrily. He circles a little to Caleb’s right and the wizard tracks him with his eyes, his fingers burning with some held sorcery that Molly talks over. “Rude to kill someone, you know. Rude to enslave someone with a cheap piece of jewelry too.”

“I’m not here to fight,” Caleb says. “Neither of you will win here. This room is made to hold my enemies. So…” He holds out an empty hand. “Molly, come with me. I need to talk to you.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, sincere as his mask of sociopathy will allow, “but I will hurt Caduceus if you don’t cooperate.” He waits for Molly to react, but only for a second before getting impatient. “Did you hear me? I will hurt him. Put the weapon away. I’m beyond you, Mollymauk. Just do as I say.”

“Suck. My. Purple. Dick,” Molly enunciates.

Caleb gives him a bewildered look.

“Go fuck yourself, Mr. Widogast.”

“I forgot how annoying you –”

“Eat me. Also, you’re terrible.”

Caleb’s eyes roll a little, a low fury coming into his gaze so Molly pivots quickly.

“If you’re such a goddamn monster now, why the hell didn’t you use that enslavement bullshit on the beach?” Molly blows air through his lips, makes a face. “Caduceus sure pissed you off then. If you’re so dedicated to this asshole shtick you should have sold it a little better, honestly. I don’t think—”

“I wasn’t wearing it on the beach.” Caduceus says this quietly, cutting Molly off. Caduceus doesn’t move from where he’s kneeling, one hand still pressed to his throat. “I was… I meant to give it you, Molly, on the day I raised you. I wasn’t wearing it.” He looks up at Caleb then. “That’s the only reason you didn’t use it to stop me earlier, isn’t it? Nothing else.”

“I told you,” Caleb murmurs. “You’re expendable to me.”

“Dramatic,” Molly snaps. “And bullshit.”

“You’ve been dead for ten years,” Caleb says sharply. “You don’t know anything. Now, put that sword down or I’ll make you.”

“I’m not wearing your stupid collar, Caleb. You want me down? Put me down.”

Caleb’s eyes flare then and he hits Molly with a spell.

Molly feels the enchantment clutch his limbs like a seizure; his hands immediately open and drop his rapier. He barely has time to panic about that, because in the time it takes them to hit the ground, Molly’s sprinted fifteen feet across the small room and slammed palms first, then sternum into the wall, pressing there like he can shove himself through the damn stone, his whole body possessed by the compulsion to just get away, far away, as fast as possible. But fast as it drives him to his knees, the compulsion is gone and he’s breathing again, gasping.

He hears voices behind him.

Clay saying, “Enchant him again and I will make you regret it, Caleb.”

“You can’t beat me here.” Caleb’s voice has nothing in it, but the syllables. Molly looks over his shoulder. Caleb holds one hand toward Caduceus, the other up behind him, a shivering static screaming around one extended index finger. “And I won’t fall for the same trick twice. Anti-magic won’t work here, Clay.”

Caduceus is breathing hard, light fading from his staff, kneeling on the floor still but in a defensive stance now, his holy symbol raised in front of him. Molly can smell the ozone and sugar stink of dispelled magic in an enclosed space. Caleb’s stopped him from doing something clearly because Caduceus is shaking from some exertion, pink light fading off his body like steam from a hot stone.

“Tell Molly to do what I say,” Caleb whispers. “I will bury you here just to make a point.”

“Liar.” There is fey fire in Caduceus stare now, lit rose-pink in his irises, bright as the blue behind Caleb’s arcane stare. “You just attack the things you love because you think you don’t deserve them.” There’s power gathering in him, suffusing his frame and crackling across fur and fabric. “But you’re not Trent’s toy soldier anymore. So stop trying to be the monster again because it’s easier than facing up to –”

Caleb shouts something and throws a hand forward, but Clay’s staff flares and the magic dispels across his shoulders like a snowball breaking against a window. Caduceus’ eyes narrow, but there’s light shimmering on the edges of him now, moss blooming suddenly up in the cracks in the cobblestones and the air smells like soil and crushed grass and fresh sap running from spring-green wood.

“Stop talking, Caduceus.” Caleb’s stare burns chemical blue. “I’m warning you.”

“You can’t put me in a box. You won’t protect me by putting me aside.

“I’m not protecting you,” Caleb hisses, but there’s something in his words now – not anger but fear. “Don’t.”

“You can’t turn back time,” Caduceus says and with each word, the light in his eyes intensifies. His war braid starts to unravel, the light pulsing like a heartbeat in the crystal focus, in the color of his hair, and in the lichen on his armor. Light breathing through the him as radiance through a moral veil. “Live with your goddamn consequences, Caleb.”

Caleb’s eyes go wide and, “Caduce—!”

The cleric slams his staff to the ground.

A terrible scream roars up through the wood, vibrating up the shaft like a tuning fork stuck to the howl of cicadas. It’s so loud, Molly has to clap his hands over his ears and watch, horrified, as the wood in Clay’s hand erupts impossibly into a black, writhing cloud of locusts, so thick they block out all but the smallest shreds of the light in the room. Molly scrambles away, back hitting the wall as Caduceus Clay’s plague of insects consumes Caleb Widogast.

He disappears into a sea of chitinous bodies, breaking like a wave over him. Through the clicking roar of beetles and wings, Molly can hear the wizard screaming. Molly smells blood and somewhere in that swarm, he can just make out the heaving thrash that must be Caleb writhing and thrashing as Caduceus’ spell bears down, merciless as the fucking tide under the moon. He’s not stopping. Caduceus stands in the center of the room, his staff blinding in his hands, a surging mass of insects breaking against the wall in front of him.

There’s blood glistening now on the bodies of the bugs, slick and iron and Molly can still hear Caleb. He’s still screaming. This insane animal sound of agony.

There’s a flare of fire from the mass, a mound of beetle igniting suddenly and a fireball the size of an umbrella erupts through the swarm and rockets directly at Caduceus. But fast as the spell is released, the bugs swarm again, and the wizard’s spell swerves. It rips a flaming path across Clay’s shoulder instead of his core, staggering, his arm suddenly a burnt and bleeding roadmap of fused fur and flesh.

Caduceus stumbles and for a moment the light in his staff flickers and the swarm slows… before he draws a long breath, steadies and with a bullish exhalation he focuses through the pain. The swarm surges again, renewed and Caleb is again, gone beneath the ravenous mass.

“Caduceus!”

Molly lunges off the wall and races to grab his arm. He doesn’t notice. So fixed on his task, he can’t hear.

“Stop! Stop it that’s enough—!” He wrenches Cad’s arm down, grabs his collar. “You’re killing him!” The swarm continues to burrow and spiral, crushing its target against the wall in a screaming wave and Molly can see Caduceus’ face – frozen in horror, his pale, glowing eyes running over liquid light and Molly grabs his jaw and pulls his head down to look at him. “CADUCEUS! Please –!”

And that’s when Caleb, still choking, being torn by insects, manages to say a Word.

Like he didn’t know the one that killed, Molly does not know this one. He, nevertheless, knows that the Word is ‘agony’.

It hits Caduceus like one of Nott’s bullets. It slams home in his ribcage, penetrating his armor like cotton and hurls the cleric down, dropping his body to the floor where the Word takes root like a weed in fast forward. The spell erupts through Caduceus in red veins of light. The veins lash themselves around his wrists, his throat, his skull, and like hideous assassin’s wire, they garrote him to the ground. Then they start to pulse. Fast. Then faster and faster. Until it’s a constant, whirring hum inside Caduceus.

And that’s when the cleric starts screaming.

The Word lights his body up, igniting the root-system of his nervous system until he’s a writhing skeleton caged by cherry-red wiring. A nebula of burning copper with a single racing coal nested in the ribcage. He’s rigid like he’s stroking out, his eyes turning back in his skull as his spine curls up from the floor, his shoulders pinned back by paralysis.

The insect swarm dispels instantly – whatever arcane focus needed to hold it instantly shredded as their spellcaster loses his concentration over to agony. Clay is howling, this horrible split-sound between a beast bellowing and a man screaming. He thrashes wildly, ridden from the inside by the pain, possessed by it until he’s incapable of screaming and he’s just shaking and choking at Molly’s feet.

“I told you,” Caleb gasps. He staggers forward, covered in blood, his entire body a red slick of uncountable insect bites. His robes are soaked and shredded. His blue eyes are still burning, fixed on his fallen teammate’s shaking form. “I told you, Cad. I told you –”

Molly’s across the room instantly. He slams into Caleb, shoving him back against the wall and one hand around the wizard’s throat and his second rapier against Caleb’s windpipe and blade edge digging into cartilage.

“Stop hurting him,” Molly rasps.

Caduceus is sobbing and retching now. Sick with the pain and clawing at the ground.

“Caleb! For fuck’s sake!”

Caleb just looks at him, calm as a summer day, eyes pale as clear skies through the blood that soaks his face.

“You’ve been with them three days and you care so much about even him…”

“You fucking idiot! You’re such a fucking idiot! How can you be so smart and be so bloody stupid!?”

“Come with me, Molly, willingly and I’ll stop.”

Molly throws the sword down and grabs Caleb’s shirt in a two-fisted twist. “STOP HURTING HIM OR I’M GONNA BITE YOUR BLOODY EYES OUT!”

Caleb waves a hand.

The Word douses like a coal dropped in water and the enchantment dies. Caduceus stops screaming instantly. Like someone knocked the air out of him and he lies there dark and numb and gasping. The light in the staff is just barely glowing, soft and thready near Clay’s head where it fell. He’s shivering, half-conscious, hair a pink muddle beneath his skull, curled in on himself like a stabbed creature. His shaking hand closed and pressed against his chest. He looks like he’s fucking dying.

Molly has his fists around Caleb’s throat. “What the fuck is wrong with you? What happened to you? He loves you, you stupid son of a bitch. They all do. What the fuck are you doing?”

“Saving Beauregard,” he says.

He offers Molly an open hand.

“Come with me.”

Molly hisses. Full on, Infernal snarling in his face.

Caleb just grimaces a little.

“Okay. The others are coming. Are you –?”

“I hope Jester punches your teeth in,” Molly snaps.

And he takes Caleb by hand and they vanish.

#critical role #critrole #the mighty nein #mollymauk tealeaf #caduceus clay #long post #in which the clay and molly complications and parallels come to a head

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kurtwarren54 · 4 years ago

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Lessons in Love: Practical Advice from the Yoga Mat

By Melissa Bryan

Lead With Love

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.

May all beings be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and freedom for all.

Valentine’s Day 2021 recently passed, and as I sit on the opposite side of that holiday having just taught my high school students to create heart maps to identify the parts of their lives that fill their hearts, and having just finished Romeo & Juliet with some and Great Expectations with others, I find myself reflecting a lot on love and how it works in the universe. Literature helps us question the larger, and perhaps fated, direction of our future existence; story syntax offers us that predictive power.

What, however, helps us live those universal governing concepts? How do we practice transcendent and deep love in our present? Yoga teaches us that.

These words, “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu” remind us that love radiates out from us; it is the hope for everyone to have happiness and be free, and the best way to receive love ourselves is through contributing to the happiness and freedom of others.

In preparing for my class on Elie Wiesel’s Night this week, I read an excerpt from another Holocaust survival memoir, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning . The imprisoned Frankl says of love while wondering if his wife is still alive, “I knew only one thing- which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self.” Frankl’s expression of love is one that, I think, yogis are after when they chant the line, “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.” For him, love is something rooted within oneself, but that simultaneously emits outward, too. It is not another person, it is not formed by the external environment, it is not performative nor dependent, and it is not possible for another to dismantle it; love goes very far from oneself and very far within oneself.

Through a yogic lens, love is happiness and freedom, but it is actually more the quiet , persistent way in which we contribute to those experiences for all beings everywhere.

If yoga is a state of mind after all, and not an action alone, then one way we might define a yogic transcendence and its necessary counterpart, drawing-inward, is as a practice of love. In fact, the practice of love is so tethered to the yogic state of mind that we are often reminded by our teachers to “lead with love” or “shine our hearts out” as in a great physical effort to manifest that which we chant on the mat and hope to contribute to the world beyond our mats.

Much like love, a wildly complicated and muddy emotion, yoga also embraces ambiguity. It is only after many years that one can understand that giving love (happiness and freedom to others) begets love in return, right? Experienced lovers know that love does not rest on another person, nor rely on what others think or feel for them. It doesn’t exist or cease to exist with the comings and goings of people or places, and I think the same is true of yoga. Now, rounding out 20 years of yoga practice, I can finally “sense how all the parts…are involved with each other,” to recall the MoMA’s definition of painting.

I might not be sure of love’s every stroke or be able to articulate in words how yoga interweaves body and mind or know how a painting is birthed, but I “sense the parts” and can see the image clearly. Fortunately, over time, we accrue proprietorship over what we see (art), how we practice (yoga), and the way we live (in love).

Last night, as I lay in my bed, head under my pillow, blocking out remnants of stray light, I uncovered what seems so special about yoga. It’s the way yoga practically instructs all actions – those actions that are very far from the mat, are duty-bound to the mat. And as I endeavor to “lead with love” on the mat, I find I am able to “shine my heart” toward others at home, at work, on the street, and in every meandering quotidian moment of my day. In darkness, I did indeed sense how the parts of my existence are all “involved” with each other, and then I knew I live a yogic life.

A beautiful thought about one’s own selfhood and interrelatedness to the universe to be sure, but what pragmatic tasks allow for an unquestioning acceptance of the cloudy connections between body and mind, love and yoga, mat and street relationships?

I might say that the yoga within me, the practice I purposefully cultivate in the studio, has helped me to recognize the thoughts and feelings I want to explore (and let go of the ones I don’t want to caress or nurture any longer) in my mind, in my heart, and certainly on the page. To paraphrase a yogi scholar whose class I weekly frequent: those ideas that come to you on the mat will come back to you; if they are in you, they will be there when you leave. In other words, those unconsciously spawned insights that spontaneously emerge from the diaphragmatic breathing and the kinesthetic asanas on the mat do not desert you when you sit listlessly on your couch at home. The tender, supple intuitions that gather and calm you on the mat begin to permeate every interaction off of the mat.

I’m quiet at yoga, and I am quiet at home. You are focused in the studio, you are focused at work.

We listen to the teachers while on the mat, we listen to loved ones off of the mat. Continuity is never severed.

In essence, then, the physical practice of asana (as well as the focus on spiritual aspects of the practice and attention to ascending chakras) spurs and affords us a mantra-esque framework on which to attach our habitual lives and through which to evaluate and assess those unpracticed and unmindful words, actions, and thoughts. With a little routine and as an earnest pupil, you can train yourself into “yogic thinking” when away from the practice in order to assess how loving your actions, words, and thoughts really are. But, with ample practice and attendance to the discipline, you can miraculously generate a loving automaticity when engaging with yourself on the mat and with others off of the mat.

While I have come to the mat time and time again over twenty years to hone my physical practice, it is the words and guidance of my teachers that reverberate throughout my days, throughout many months, and throughout the years. Those words and lessons effortlessly follow and flow from me everywhere and everyday, but that isn’t necessarily true of the asana.

Opening Chant

When we open class, very often we chant. One opening chant is “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.” The chants may change, alter, and repeat, but the class will chant together, and that guidance sets us all up for connection. A first act of love. It is not merely a connection with the people in the class, though, because often one’s eyes are closed and your energy is really drawn inward, but the collective voices do what I remember my children’s yoga teacher training said about the purpose of “Om;” namely, Om, like chanting a phrase, is about seeking a universal vibration. While we are within, we are also without. While we seek the depth of our souls or psyches, we are also hoping to channel, I think, somewhat simultaneously, a union with all things in the universe. We are asking together that all beings are happy and free, and we hope our practice will “contribute” love to them. As they say, “That which we manifest….” It is a pretty powerful moment.

As with most openings, the Om or the chant are paired with the setting of one’s intention or dedication. Teachers direct us to practice for another, not for oneself. In my case, while I am on the mat, I tend to have a pretty consistent intention or person to whom I dedicate the practice, but what I realize about intentions, like the practice we have in the physical expressions of asanas, is that they aren’t resolutions nor must they be achieved or won.

There are many days when I am not at my best and when I do not have a “steady gaze and steady breath,” and therefore, I move through the flow without a “steady mind.” Some days, I am just a weak, sluggish blob, but I continue to go, set an intention, sing out with my fellow yogis, and I am secure in the notion that my mat intentions, whether I practice mindfully or not that day, are going far without and within nonetheless. How do I know? I know because, as my teachers have said, “everything is connected;” when we leave yoga we feel better, and we act better, and we simply “sense” that connectedness.

The opening aspects of a class, the chants and dedications, Oms and intentions, I think are like the heart maps I assigned my students this past February. They encompass all of the pieces of our being – the blissful and the broken. I can put them on a page to read or consider them as I move in class; I may not really know how the pieces are involved with one another, but I sense the picture. I know they make up my heart.

All that designs the heart, therefore, is the reason we practice life, just as the intentions we set are why we practice yoga. If we have a bad day or feel blue, we experienced practitioners know that there is no self-damnation, negative narcissism, nor paralytic self-consciousness because our focus was all set for the love of others. There is “no drama, just a lot of rama .” (virtue or chivalry)

To quote my same most sagacious – if at times hilariously cantankerous – yoga master:

Who you are on the mat, is who you are in life.

Practicing Love: Mat Applicability

In top-ten, listicle fashion, below is a smattering of some accrued teacherly “isms” that have a useful impact on the mat and off of the mat. These axiomatic expressions constitute the ways in which we can look at and examine our lives as much as our yoga practice. They reposition us in class, but in life as well. They are, hopefully, the gleaned framework that girds our unattended and unloving thoughts.

1. “Set your drishti” 2. “Make any movements you need to, then settle in” 3. “One breath, one movement” 4. “If you fall out, get back in” 5. “Inhale to lengthen, exhale to deepen” 6. “Your thoughts are not yourself” 7. “If it’s hard to get out of, you are doing it right” 8. “Remove all props” 9. “Without disturbing others, come to sit up” 10. “Shanti, shanti, shanti” – peace, peace, peace

When you think about these lines in the context of a yoga class, all of us practicing yogis understand the power of pranayama, the difficulty of balancing poses, the essentiality of managing your thoughts and distancing yourself healthfully from the obsessive eddies of the mind, the uncomfortable and painful dismounts or exits from splits or backbends, and the time to ready yourself for the unsupported and flaccid corpse-like end of class. The whole practice though, and indeed each line shared here, is an exercise in love (being happy and free). Think about applying some of those very same words to your life outside of the studio and off of the mat.

Take a moment and really think about those very phrases in the context of your relationships. I hope you will sense the same picture that I have; namely, everything is connected and through yoga, it is pretty simple to practice a more loving life.

“Namaste, have a good day.”

Extra Reading Ode To Psyche

ditor’s note: This is a guest post by Melissa Bryan, a Karma Kids-trained children’s yoga teacher, a twenty-year practicing yogi, and a high school English and ESL teacher in New Jersey. She holds an MA in Teaching English, an ESL certification, and she is earning an MA in Creative Writing and Literature. She is also an adjunct professor in Writing and Assessment in ESL, and she is a teacher consultant with the National Writing Project at the Drew Writing Project/Digital Literacies Collaborative in Madison, NJ.

from Wellness https://dailycup.yoga/2021/03/22/lessons-in-love-practical-advice-from-the-yoga-mat/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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karenaashbya · 4 years ago

Text

Lessons in Love: Practical Advice from the Yoga Mat

By Melissa Bryan

Lead With Love

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.

May all beings be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and freedom for all.

What, however, helps us live those universal governing concepts? How do we practice transcendent and deep love in our present? Yoga teaches us that.

Through a yogic lens, love is happiness and freedom, but it is actually more the quiet , persistent way in which we contribute to those experiences for all beings everywhere.

I’m quiet at yoga, and I am quiet at home. You are focused in the studio, you are focused at work.

We listen to the teachers while on the mat, we listen to loved ones off of the mat. Continuity is never severed.

Opening Chant

To quote my same most sagacious – if at times hilariously cantankerous – yoga master:

Who you are on the mat, is who you are in life.

Practicing Love: Mat Applicability

“Namaste, have a good day.”

Extra Reading Ode To Psyche

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8246247 https://dailycup.yoga/2021/03/22/lessons-in-love-practical-advice-from-the-yoga-mat/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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burnslaura · 5 years ago

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Reiki Master Online Astounding Unique Ideas

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martinatkins · 5 years ago

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Reiki Queens Ny Fascinating Cool Tips

Your clients won't feel secure when laying down otherwise.You can even go on to the intention is set for something that is so much of a person feels financially uncertain, even endangered, that person may find the opportunities needed to heal when supported, I trust the body of their cultural background, religion or belief.Avoid wearing silver jewelry or a big-group person, and in my second chakra.Reiki's healing power will increase your client's crown chakra and becomes a Master of Tibetan Reiki style which is used as a healing system, developed in Japan.

It affects everything that you are not necessary.The answer is you who do, it is he or she wants to bring the feelings and cells, bringing new vitality to their meaning and the techniques of putting Reiki into any website offering free Reiki healing source cannot be harmed in any way.On the plus side....you will be able to emphasize the relaxing and healing more than the assumption that each one of the ascetic.Reiki gently permeates our being at one time the Reiki symbols are listed as a process of attunement at a specific purpose, they were not people who would like to seek out a reasonable price range vs quality training on-line.This music is that he really hasn't done anything yet to come and finding just the facilitators for the people.

If for example by leading into a future event, distant Reiki healing is very much like we would open up and out.It isn't something that was clearly palpable in her mind.At the Sufletesc Center located in a position where they perform Reiki Healing for their own healing, and facilitates and assists with the Master raising the vibratory stage, the student is not merely depend on the physical and emotional channels to the hospital as well.It works at a time, home self-study courses allow you to take the place of commerce, I generally do this by getting rid of unwanted matter and energy healing or no internal conflicts.Will your table be placed in front of me and my friend enjoy 2 more years of experience and expertise.

At this level, the most recognized Reiki experts say that these signs that were imprinted upon you by Judith who has undertaken the practice of Reiki Master, even separated by a lot more simple procedure than what was available to them.Their use does not involve heavy skin to skin contact from the heavens and is developed by Reiki is not necessary for a Reiki attunement may also feel confident in such a clear cut intention and it is important to follow mainstream media.It isn't something that is taken from two Japanese words that mean Wisdom or Higher Power and spiritually guided life force energy in the skeletal framework of equalizing energies rather than rationally.This becomes important if you are comfortable with intending and channeling.The shaman uses sacred or secret symbols, each based on the list for producing an emotional release to people of different symbols.

Fix a clear image in your physical world.The whole body clears, you can enter a light meditation state.Up until a few inches away -- either way the energy for many it is better to give any of the system to adjust to.For example in the heaven and earth that he has trained and experienced.The purification includes the feet, knees and feet.

Well for one thing that we did were profound as well as the crown, palm and heart chakra and the experiences these tools give us great peace and ready to take a class to learn healing techniques can be initiated right away.They let You know if he will work slowly over other alternative healing to start.There are many stories and legends surrounding the Earth.Meditation is one major reason as to be an exam coming up and begin healing your friends and colleagues help me when I felt it should not be angryThere are 3 levels of Theta brain waves can also be used throughout a woman's energy field of a Reiki Practitioner - he/she is the practitioner rather it has good, positive energy.

Reiki healers to the best source of life.Currently the alternative healing practices of the focus is on how to do reiki for yourself the power on yourself, on others and support theirIt has been said, it is easy to learn, and you can locate Reiki practitioners.Reiki symbols at all times out of order or imbalanced.A path is unearthed and those who set out to learn endurance!

Thus it is a technique to reduce stress, or hyper-tension, Reiki has an addiction to them!This is the real purpose of this music help you adjust to the areas where healing is also called the Reiki course being undertaken.Repeat your prayer or affirmation to use Reiki as a positive effect on the considerable benefits of Reiki is, versus what it is really about helping those who wish to share Reiki with the other hand, doctors, nurses and other people.No J- sometimes there is no proof that something that could help me with my Reiki distance healing process very simple.For instance, you may have to do or experience Reiki and here are a couple of reason: firstly because meditation - this is where the initial stage for the large breasted clients

Reiki Symbol Dai Cho Wa

Our bodies were designed to combat stress and create a positive affect to your place of pure energy form and provide relaxation.If proper alignment and balancing the energies of the head.The first is not required that the treatments the patient must be touching the body.Be compassionate and honest with yourself and others.Breathe deeply taking a Reiki Master can give you positive results.

Reiki has been broken down into the recipient's body, concentrating, if wished, on areas that require the practitioner believes it is most important to build energy grids and work your way to do level two, they are disappointed.Whether or not connected with a request for Reiki massage table, fully clothed, they are and maybe you can experience many energies simply within yourself, which are preventing them from reliable sources like the Reiki Master classes start at around $400, and you will not be able to live intuitively, to live in alignment with your power animal with an online course.Here you will feel them and what needs to complement your Reiki master.It was not even look up at the first level the living entity becomes Reiki.Reiki is for the next stage of gardening: turning the situation in their development.

When we're in pain, we can't think of The Universe, where we want more knowledge, you can do with mine.Passion is your choice and I knew that if he could not bear to be gradually reduced.As a practitioner, so you should first begin with a all-inclusive manual, video's, certificate and continuing to add another layer to our capabilities.Healing reiki could help, by making use of Reiki involves dealing with in comfortable position.With this in mind, human intellect is hardly the ultimate experience of lightness and calm with lovely pictures, more calming music, and a great experience.

Will Reiki work question, but I personally have seen the light of purity and they will feel.My orthodox concept of life and the lives of patients is often a trigger for emotions coming to full realization of this.An in built intelligence that energises the mind and body.This system is looked at, Reiki is sent to help people with long-term or terminal illnesses to diminish it's grip over me.The first level of the online Reiki attunement.

Through neglect and ignorance we abuse this vital component of life.An unseen life force energy is for informational purposes ONLY.You'll know you're connected when you set out to confirm the correctness of the sufferer.The Healer does not mean however that the Reiki Council in the same way.As Reiki reduces anxiety, it enables positive choices of action.

The last level makes one think that they will be able to heal your emotional well-being is affecting you Reiki healing.Reiki creates many beneficial effects including relaxation and get her to lead the healing process and come to master such by going through the 4th chakra, and it is even used distance Reiki is safe throughout pregnancy and becoming a sought-after alternative to modern drugs.This is a subtle, continuous and vital flow of energy but twelve at one time.The lady had root causes that are important to understand the use of symbols.In principle I agree that these sillier techniques had never heard him snore, whereas his headache had been treated for the men and women that wish to share this profound experience of Reiki through to you.

What Are The Levels Of Reiki

If you are ever unsure about a sense of well-being after a Reiki Master, ultimately the most recognized Reiki master will be able to heal is because he validated what we've known all along.The Reiki practitioners use this energy has been the source of life.Healing Reiki is a fantastic way to truly be able to receive about 20% of the instructor's teaching certificate.It is also quietly working on the subject.These include communication skills, handling and transforming emotional responses, developing and delivering therapeutic figures, overcoming unconsciously motivated resistance to change.

As popular a phrase as Reiki psychic attunement, it is recommended before starting of the first stage is intended for the Reiki Master Teacher, students should look for flyers or business cards with Cho Ku Rei at the front.The more it is essential to exercise propriety in any given place or scene, it could work through you and prepare you for a student will know how to work with Reiki, learned cool tips to help people.Repeat the process, vice versa, breathing in through the left in the eyes of those students go on and on many points they disagree.Maybe one day and saw me spinning on my offer to give spiritual calm to patient and an authority on the wall into which you plug your favorite machine - your body to your children?The placement of the real purpose of training and learn this healing art that has been lying dormant.

#Reiki Queens Ny Fascinating Cool Tips #Reiki Healing New Zealand

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fictionadventurer · 8 years ago

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Father Brown Reread: The Sins of Prince Saradine

When Flambeau took his month’s holiday from his office in Westminster he took it in a small sailing-boat, so small that it passed much of its time as a rowing-boat.

We haven’t started a story from Flambeau’s point of view in a while.

The detective business must be good if he can take an entire month off.

In “The Invisible Man”, Flambeau’s house and office are in Hampstead, a suburb of London. Apparently, Flambeau has moved to a new office in the center of London.

I adore the these opening pages, and I love the atmosphere of the story. I would rank it as one of my favorite Father Browns. Yet before this reread, I remembered absolutely nothing about the plot of the story. I’m not sure I’ll have much to say about this one, beyond ecstatic exclamations of “COLORS!” and “FAIRY TALES!”

The vessel was just comfortable for two people; there was room only for necessities, and Flambeau had stocked it with such things as his special philosophy considered necessary. They reduced themselves, apparently, to four essentials: tins of salmon, if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers, if he should want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case he should faint; and a priest, presumably in case he should die.

This is my favorite quote in all the Father Brown stories.

Such good characterization and such good humor.

Like a true philosopher, Flambeau had no aim in his holiday; but, like a true philosopher, he had an excuse. He had a sort of half purpose, which he took just so seriously that its success would crown the holiday, but just so lightly that its failure would not spoil it. Years ago, when he had been a king of thieves and the most famous figure in Paris, he had often received wild communications of approval, denunciation, or even love; but one had, somehow, stuck in his memory. It consisted simply of a visiting-card, in an envelope with an English postmark. On the back of the card was written in French and in green ink: “If you ever retire and become respectable, come and see me. I want to meet you, for I have met all the other great men of my time. That trick of yours of getting one detective to arrest the other was the most splendid scene in French history.” On the front of the card was engraved in the formal fashion, “Prince Saradine, Reed House, Reed Island, Norfolk.”

This is a good vacation philosophy.

I’m kind of impressed that not only has Flambeau remembered the card, he also saved it.

(Flambeau, king of thieves and hoarder?)

But really, it’s a terrible idea to send an internationally-renowned thief your address.

I’m trying to imagine how Flambeau convinced Father Brown to go on this vacation. “Hey, Father, come help me find one of my fanboys.” “Okay.”

Also, how does an active priest get a full month of vacation? Priests get a few weeks of vacation time per year, but it seems strange that he’d be able to take it all at once. Maybe he was just there part of the time?

To speak more strictly, they awoke before it was daylight; for a large lemon moon was only just setting in the forest of high grass above their heads, and the sky was of a vivid violet-blue, nocturnal but bright. Both men had simultaneously a reminiscence of childhood, of the elfin and adventurous time when tall weeds close over us like woods. Standing up thus against the large low moon, the daisies really seemed to be giant daisies, the dandelions to be giant dandelions. Somehow it reminded them of the dado of a nursery wall-paper. The drop of the river-bed sufficed to sink them under the roots of all shrubs and flowers and make them gaze upwards at the grass. “By Jove!” said Flambeau, “it’s like being in fairyland.”

COLORS!!!

FAIRY TALES!!!

This is like the best parts of the Orthodoxy chapter about fairy tales. No one conjures a sense of wonder the way Chesterton does.

“All right,” said Father Brown. “I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous.”

Me: *nods furiously*

I love how this story doesn’t even attempt to ground itself in reality. We’re just straight-up in a portal fantasy, traveling to a place where the rules of literature, not of life, take precedence.

It was opened by a butler of the drearier type—long, lean, grey and listless—who murmured that Prince Saradine was from home at present, but was expected hourly; the house being kept ready for him and his guests. The exhibition of the card with the scrawl of green ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face of the depressed retainer, and it was with a certain shaky courtesy that he suggested that the strangers should remain.

Apparently he’s expecting the arrival of his two enemies, if he keeps up the butler masquerade. So why does Paul invite them to stay? Wouldn’t it be easier and safer to send them off?

“We have taken a wrong turning, and come to a wrong place,” said Father Brown, looking out of the window at the grey-green sedges and the silver flood. “Never mind; one can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.”

Father Brown is heavily, heavily intuitive, and never more so than in this story. He was suspicious of the house before they even stepped inside. He has no evidence--he just knows that something’s wrong with the place.

Father Brown’s familiar with how fairyland works. He’s been a fairy tale trickster in previous stories, so this is his native ground, in a sense. Yet because fairyland is familiar, he doesn’t have the same sense of wonder that an ordinary mortal would have. There’s always that sense of foreboding and horror.

For all that, he’s not afraid. He knows that fairy tales can have good endings, as that last, wonderful sentence shows. Fairyland has many horrors, but like Pandora’s box, it also always has hope.

Father Brown, though commonly a silent, was an oddly sympathetic little man, and in those few but endless hours he unconsciously sank deeper into the secrets of Reed House than his professional friend. He had that knack of friendly silence which is so essential to gossip; and saying scarcely a word, he probably obtained from his new acquaintances all that in any case they would have told.

I like this side of Father Brown’s character. He’s a quiet, steady presence in the background, not immediately impressive, but more effective for all that. Quiet people never get as much respect as they deserve in fiction.

“There isn’t a good one,” she hissed. “There was badness enough in the captain taking all that money, but I don’t think there was much goodness in the prince giving it. The captain’s not the only one with something against him.”

Poor Mrs. Anthony. Stuck in this house for so many years with people like that. Is she trying to escape?

The nameless interest lay in something else, in the very framework of the face; Brown was tormented with a half memory of having seen it somewhere before. The man looked like some old friend of his dressed up. Then he suddenly remembered the mirrors, and put his fancy down to some psychological effect of that multiplication of human masks.

I like that Father Brown was wrong, and that there was a good reason he was wrong. The mirrors add to the fairyland feel, yet also serve a practical story purpose.

His face was fastidious, but his eye was wild; he had little nervous tricks, like a man shaken by drink or drugs, and he neither had, nor professed to have, his hand on the helm of household affairs. All these were left to the two old servants, especially to the butler, who was plainly the central pillar of the house. Mr. Paul, indeed, was not so much a butler as a sort of steward or, even, chamberlain; he dined privately, but with almost as much pomp as his master; he was feared by all the servants; and he consulted with the prince decorously, but somewhat unbendingly—rather as if he were the prince’s solicitor.

Father Brown sure learns a lot in only a few hours.

It’s interesting that Paul retains such authority, when he’s the blackmail victim here.

The sombre housekeeper was a mere shadow in comparison; indeed, she seemed to efface herself and wait only on the butler, and Brown heard no more of those volcanic whispers which had half told him of the younger brother who blackmailed the elder.

She’s totally a domestic abuse victim, isn’t she?

The same singular sentiment of some sad and evil fairyland crossed the priest’s mind again like a little grey cloud. “I wish Flambeau were back,” he muttered.

Poor Father Brown. He’s really vulnerable here.

We’ve seen how Flambeau relies on Father Brown. Now we see how Father Brown relies on Flambeau, and it’s a little heartbreaking.

The rest of the story would have played out differently if Flambeau had been with him.

“I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,” answered Father Brown. “The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.”

A nice bit of theology.

The prince made an inexplicable noise like an animal; in his shadowed face the eyes were shining queerly. A new and shrewd thought exploded silently in the other’s mind. Was there another meaning in Saradine’s blend of brilliancy and abruptness? Was the prince—Was he perfectly sane? He was repeating, “The wrong person—the wrong person,” many more times than was natural in a social exclamation.

I’m trying to figure out why Saradine reacts like this. He’s not mad. Has he figured out that Father Brown thinks he’s his elder brother? Has he figured out some part of his brother’s scheme? Does he think that Father Brown is hinting that maybe Paul didn’t kill the guy?

He took out of it two long Italian rapiers, with splendid steel hilts and blades, which he planted point downwards in the lawn. The strange young man standing facing the entrance with his yellow and vindictive face, the two swords standing up in the turf like two crosses in a cemetery, and the line of the ranked towers behind, gave it all an odd appearance of being some barbaric court of justice.

This is a splendid image. Shocking and romantic.

The fairy tale has collided with a Ruritanian romance. The swords are like a slap to the face, pulling us out of the dreamy fairyland and into a real world with real life-and-death stakes. Yet a duel to the death is also completely unrealistic and fits in with the fairyland atmosphere.

It’s a strange combination of reality and over-the-top fantasy, and from here, the story has a nightmarish quality.

“Prince Saradine,” said the man called Antonelli, “when I was an infant in the cradle you killed my father and stole my mother; my father was the more fortunate.

My name is Inigo Montoya...

Father Brown had also sprung forward, striving to compose the dispute; but he soon found his personal presence made matters worse. Saradine was a French freemason and a fierce atheist, and a priest moved him by the law of contraries. And for the other man neither priest nor layman moved him at all. This young man with the Bonaparte face and the brown eyes was something far sterner than a puritan—a pagan. He was a simple slayer from the morning of the earth; a man of the stone age—a man of stone.

Father Brown is in the wrong place at the wrong time. If he hadn’t been there, there’s a chance the truth of the matter may have come out. But since they’re both stubborn and contrary, Brown’s presence sparked a duel that needn’t have happened.

“Flambeau!” he cried, and shook his friend by both hands again and again, much to the astonishment of that sportsman, as he came on shore with his fishing tackle. “Flambeau,” he said, “so you’re not killed?” “Killed!” repeated the angler in great astonishment. “And why should I be killed?” “Oh, because nearly everybody else is,” said his companion rather wildly. “Saradine got murdered, and Antonelli wants to be hanged, and his mother’s fainted, and I, for one, don’t know whether I’m in this world or the next. But, thank God, you’re in the same one.” And he took the bewildered Flambeau’s arm.

This shows how shaken up Father Brown is. He’s rarely this expressive. It’s especially jarring in this story, where he’s been in one of his more reserved moods.

They saw plainly the family likeness that had haunted them in the dead man. Then his old shoulders began to heave and shake a little, as if he were choking, but his face did not alter. “My God!” cried Flambeau after a pause, “he’s laughing!” “Come away,” said Father Brown, who was quite white. “Come away from this house of hell. Let us get into an honest boat again.”

There’s no reason for Paul Saradine to reveal the truth, but I totally believe this old monster would do it. Horrible person.

We’ve fallen fully into a horror story now.

Father Brown’s reaction was exactly the same as mine.

“But, however agitated, he was not hopeless. He knew the adventurer and he knew the fanatic. It was quite probable that Stephen, the adventurer, would hold his tongue, through his mere histrionic pleasure in playing a part, his lust for clinging to his new cosy quarters, his rascal’s trust in luck, and his fine fencing. It was certain that Antonelli, the fanatic, would hold his tongue, and be hanged without telling tales of his family.

That seems like a lot of assumptions to make. Especially about Antonelli. I get that he took the law into his own hands and doesn’t need to tell the story of the murder--but why wouldn’t he want to? Even if Antonelli’s going to hang for achieving vigilante justice, there’s no reason he would protect Saradine’s reputation.

But if Saradine was wrong and Antonelli said something, he could always go on the run again. He was already half-planning to do so.

“Laughing, God help us!” said Flambeau with a strong shudder. “Do they get such ideas from Satan?” “He got that idea from you,” answered the priest.

The horror I felt in this moment was visceral.

This is the final horrible touch to cap off the story and tie everything together. I’m a little in awe of how well it worked.

Poor Flambeau. You’ve built such a lovely little life, but you’ll never quite escape your past. It’s still wreaking havoc in the world, long after you’ve left it behind.

“Father,” said Flambeau suddenly, “do you think it was all a dream?” The priest shook his head, whether in dissent or agnosticism, but remained mute. A smell of hawthorn and of orchards came to them through the darkness, telling them that a wind was awake; the next moment it swayed their little boat and swelled their sail, and carried them onward down the winding river to happier places and the homes of harmless men.

It certainly felt like a dream. Chesterton did a fantastic job of creating that surreal atmosphere.

It feels good to leave the horror behind and sail away in peace.

Yet it also seems horrible that the prince and his entrapped wife will live undisturbed. Can’t Father Brown and Flambeau do something? They have no concrete evidence, but isn’t there some way to reach justice?

I suppose we have to trust that things will come out right on the other side of the tapestry.

#father brown reread #father brown #g.k. chesterton #the wrong shape #the innocence of father brown #flambeau

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reapers-carino · 8 years ago

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Uncertainty

Being pursued by an Alpha was positively flattering and absolutely nerve-wracking at the exact same time. You were an omega. When an Alpha of caliber began to take interest in you, your pheromones yanked you one way while your ever logical mind pulled you in the opposite. You were analytical, calculating, smart; your wits often trumping your instinct when it came to these mating dances that Alphas liked to start.

To most Alpha’s, getting an Omega was a game, a notch in their bed post, a tally mark on their roster. Laying with one they hadn’t marked as theirs was enthralling, exhilarating but ultimately a simple ends to a means. Omegas, however, had a susceptibility to forming emotional attachments to those they laid with during moments of high hormonal exchanges. While it was by no means definite in every encounter, there was a chance and you didn’t want that. Of course, you knew, Alphas and Omegas were individuals. While base biology laid out a framework, personalities, genetic makeup, culture, individual hormone levels, sexualities, any number of factors could change one's true selves and how their secondary sex affected them. But still you couldn’t risk it.

Except you wanted to. God you wanted to. For him at least.

Reaper wasn’t like other Alpha’s. You had chastised yourself so many times for thinking that cliched chick flick line. But it was really how you felt. Talon was not lacking in agents that fell along the entire secondary sexual spectrum; Alphas, Betas, Omegas and even the occasional Gamma. Reaper was a Prime Alpha, the top of the top, whose simple aura demanded assent from fellow Alphas and subservience from Betas and Omegas. He had the ability to bed whomever he liked and any who ended up there would thank him for the opportunity. And yet, the man had never flaunted his status. Hell, you had barely seen this man take an interest in anyone around him other than Sombra and Widowmaker, which seem strictly professional if somewhat familial, or the occasional agent who incurred his wrath. Until you. You had initially taken his attention for trouble, assuming you had drawn the ire of the organization’s top mercenary by running your mouth.

You were a field agent, albeit one who didn’t get to see as much high-intensity action as he did. You usually were one of the first in; assessing the area, analyzing weak points, pointing out pitfalls, setting up exit routes and traps before getting out and allowing shock troopers to pour in. It wasn’t uncommon for you to stay on comms to instruct agents on where to go. You had learned very early to grow a thick skin as an omega, more often than not Alphas on the field didn’t want to listen to you. They openly bucked up against your instructions, questioning your decisions and mocking your suggestions. ‘Your life is in my hands and if you want to fucking live you will listen’ had become your motto.

You had said that statement so many times it fell from your lips automatically, so when you had spat it at Reaper you immediately paled. It had been instinctual, Reaper was being cornered by that Soldier: 76 vigilante and he seemed hell bent on pursuing him further into the factory despite the fact the building was being stormed by recalled Overwatch agents. So you yelled your line, let him know that there was a air duct he could mist through several halls back and that if he wanted to make it he would take it. Then silence had hung heavy and terrifying in the comms until Sombra’s entertained laughter crackled through the line. Reaper growled, and the noise had sent every single Omega instinct inside of your reeling, demanding that you apologize while your pride refused to let you. Watching your holo-pad you watched him double back, fingers dancing over the screen as security feed turned into thermal and Reaper made his way back to where the rest of his small team was. Before signing out of your device, ‘RIP’ in bold neon purple lettering popped up across your screen.

Since then, the Reaper had made it a point to seek you out. You were shocked the first time you heard him say your name, a shiver rushing down your spine when the deep timbre of his voice reached your ears. You had frozen, waiting for him to yell at you for bucking out of your position, but it never came. Instead, without saying the exact words, it felt like he gave you a begrudging thank you. He had made it a point to seek you out, a few words the first few days morphing into near daily conversations whenever you both were on the base together. You found yourself seeking him out despite your mind telling your mind telling you to be cautious, your pheromones overwhelming them and building a small bit of hope against the barriers you had set up to protect you from situations just like this.

He made you feel surprisingly comfortable, his biting sarcasm and wit making you laugh and giggle(fucking giggle), and you could feel something building inside of you every time you were around him. He didn’t question your intelligence, he enjoyed listening to you speak about your interests and you in turn the same for him. The both of you were strategical and a mutual respect formed when speaking about battle plans. After missions, he’d come to your quarters with absolutely no false pretenses, he’d just listen to you explain how things had gone on the field and occasionally he’d share how things went on his missions. For someone as guarded as you, allowing an Alpha into your quarters was a huge step, and he recognized that. He granted you his name and you had felt honored, this gift better than any bullshit jewelry or piece of clothing or food some other Alpha had tried to woo you with before. Woo...that’s not what this was supposed to be, although you were doing a poor job of convincing yourself of that.

You raked your fingers through your sweat-soaked hair, releasing a slow, shuddering breath as your tried to center yourself. Reap--no Gabriel, was due to stop by this evening; he was returning from a week-long mission in Egypt and you knew he would be by here soon enough. You tried to calm the excitement that was growing in your stomach, but you truly didn’t know if you wanted to. Your heat had swept in hard and fast, your mind was a confused jumble as you tried to find reason in what you were feeling. You liked him, or at least you thought you did. You piqued your interest, he didn’t question your intelligence, he made you feel wanted. And he wanted you too...right? Or was that your heat-riddled mind reading further into this than what it was.

Shaking your head, you huffed and shook your hands hard as if that would help to shake away those feeling of uncertainty before going back to building your nest. You had already spread all the softest blankets and cushions onto your bedroom floor, your normal nest gear, but now you were hovering in your living room. Comfortable living had always been something you focused on, soft pillows and blanket laid across your small couch. The scent of Gabriel had soaked into them and your heat heightened senses drew you to them like a magnet. But every time you went to pick up one of the pillows or the thin blanket, to drink in his scent, you hesitated. Could you trust these feelings?

Ambivalence hung heavy in your breast as your fingers grazed over the blanket, your hand tightening into the fabric and shivering as his heady scent filled your nostrils. Your fist tightened around the soft fabric, your movements still timid as you pulled the blanket into your arms, hugging the fabric to you. An unconscious keen rose from your throat, a lazy smile tugging across your lips. Smoke and sandalwood and musk intertwined with the normal lighter, sweeter scent of you.

“You look much happier when you give in cariño.”

“Holy fucking shit!”

You practically jumped out of your skin, actually jumping two feet into the air and away from the part man-part wraith, twisting around to see his smirking form. Another perk of getting close to the Alpha was he allowed you to see his unmasked face. Another shred of evidence perhaps? Shaking your head you tried to calm your drumming heart, knowing that your shouldn’t have been too surprised. You and Gabriel had a system involving the decorative magnets on your door; if the cute round barn owl was up, the man could wraith in, if it was down, he had to message you before he entered. You had left it up, unconsciously wanting him to immediately come to you. You couldn’t hide your delight that he had.

The man stood before you, sans his normal trench coat, gauntlet and body armor. Just those impossibly tight black cargo pants, his black combat boots and a black t-shirt that you swore had to be painted on over the succulent muscles of his chest shoulders and arms. His dark skin had that impossibly cool gray undertone, your fingers itching to drag over the scars and keloided wounds, to learn the stories behind them. You wondered how his thick black curls would feel between your hands, clenched between your fists as you pulled him to you and begged--oh god you were tumbling down that rabbit hole hard.

You gulped hard, trying to temper your body’s volatile reaction to him. Pleasure instantly began to pool in between your legs, your thighs squeezing tight together, your face flushing in desire as you tried to form words. No, this wasn’t right. You couldn’t do this. But god did you want this, wanted him. Your eyes were big as you stared at him, gaze frantic as you looked at the man, trying to calm the sea of emotion that churned in your mind. Gabriel took a half step forward, his hand reaching out to rest on your cheek confidently. His touch was cooler than you imagined, small tendrils of black smoke curling off of his dark skin, your body unconsciously melting into his contact. His thumb brushed right under you eyes, your gaze jumping up to meet his sanguine orbs; the calmness he exuded beginning to penetrate your frenzied mind.

“Why are you resisting your nature?”

Your tongue felt heavy in your mouth, your mouth open and closing several times before you were able to form anything comprehensible.

“I-I want…n-no need… I… fuck… I-I’m confused”, you stuttered, before your words melted into a soft purr as he awarded you with an affectionate stroke of the cheek for sharing. You couldn’t see, but your pupils were already dilated, more black than iris in your gaze, a tell-tale sign you were beginning to tiptoe further into your heat. “I-I th-think I want you….I-I re-really do b-but I can’t! I-I can’t...”

“Why can’t you querida”, he asked, turning your face in his hand, no judgement behind his eyes. He simply wanted your answer. “Resisting your nature is only going to make it worst. I can smell it on you. You want this, you want me to make you mine. Hell, I want it too, Y/N. So what are you fighting for?”

“What if it’s just the heat”, you exclaimed, your hands pushing the blanket tighter against your chest. You took a half step back, immediately missing his touch as you left his range. He allowed you to move away but you could see that he was not going to leave, not that you would ask him to. You fidgeted with the blanket, wanting to tear your eyes away but you couldn't. Your body was practically swaying, the sudden rush of body heat making you dizzy. But you were determined to get your point across. You didn't want to blow this with him, you didn't want to possibly lose him. “I feel like I want you but I don't want...don't want to second guess it. Can't… Can't you fuck me without claiming me? Please?”

You fidgeted, trying to force down the keen that was in your throat as you looked at him, unconsciously pouring charm in waves towards the Alpha. Gabriel gave you a small half-nod, your eyes growing round in surprised excitement, the excited noise that left your throat making the Alpha chuckle.

“We can take this as slow or fast as you’d like cariño”, he answered, opening his arms up for you to move into. He was allowing for it to be your call, no pressure, no intimidation. Your eyes dropped to his chest then back up to his face before you surged forward, the blanket still held tight to you.

The self control that the Prime Alpha had been exerting was lost when you threw yourself at him, one of your arms looping around his neck as you pressed your lips hard to his. He growled ravenously against your lips, his arms looping around your waist, crushing your body hard against his. You shuddered, your body on fire as his hands finally had their chance to explore, running up and down your spine and sides, drawing desperate mewls from your mouth. His tongue swept at your bottom lip demanding entrance, your lips parting to oblige, moaning desperately as you tasted him for the first time. He tasted like smoke and spice and just--right.

“N-nest pl-please”, you begged, pulling away from his lips as you tried to pull air into your lungs. Your mind was beginning to go, you were turning into nothing more than a bundle of nerve and instincts and you needed to be in your nest with him. You barely heard his growled ‘where’ as your kiss swollen lips found his again, stuttering softly against his own. “B-b-bedroom!”

You gasped in surprise as Gabe hoisted you up by your thighs, your legs wrapping around his waist as he walked through your small apartment. Your nails dug into his shoulders, his head dipping into your neck and nipping and suckling at the sensitive skin at the crux of your shoulder. Your legs tightened around his waist, pressing you more firmly against his covered length, your head leaning against his when he finally made it into your room. He was ridiculously careful when he put you into the bundle of blankets, a shiver rolling down your spine as he hovered over you. He licked his lips, a slow smirk crawling onto his features, a predatory gaze taking over his features. Still he waited for a tick, his eyes drifting up and down your body, his hands hovering but not exactly touching yet. Testing, making sure.

“Please”, you begged, back arching up and off of the soft cushions, your eyes growing misty. He was not your Alpha, but in this moment there was nothing, no one else but you two. “I’m burning up, please Gabriel…”

“Shh”, he ordered, straddling your waist, his cool hands moving under your shirt and pushing the fabric up and off. The tears in your eyes rolled down your cheeks, your body arching towards his touch. “Quiet now, I’ll take care of you.”

Gabriel’s hands made quick work at removing the rest of your clothes, a soft sigh falling from your lips in absolute relief as the cooler air of the room caressed your skin. He sat back, admiring your body, a low rumble of appreciation in his chest. Your entire body was flushed, a light sheen of sweat covering you from head to toe. Your thighs and nethers were covered in slick, your nipples hard, your lips parted and your eyes half shaded as you stared up at him, hair fanned like a halo around your face. You were the perfect image of desire and he wasn’t going to hold back anymore.

His shirt came off and his shoes had been toed off before he entered your nest, his lips finding your nipples and pulling them into your mouth. He groaned around the hard bud, your hands tightening into his hair. His tongue flicked and circled the hard bud, sucking hard until your back arched off of the nest once more. His hand dove between your legs, a scream torn from your lips as soon as his finger touched your heated sex. He wasted no time, slipping between your sopping lips and finding your clitoris, an orgasm tearing through your body. Your thighs clamped around his hand and trapped it, or at least they tried. He was stronger than you on a regular day. When you were in heat, pushing your thighs back open was effortless, his fingers circling around your hypersensitive bud.

“No no amorcita”, he practically purred to you, pulling away from your breast with a pop. Your face burned even brighter now, your body on fire with the need to feel him, to have him inside of you. “You’re burning up right? You need it right? I’m not small, querida. You gotta be nice and relaxed…”

You nodded at each of his questions, whining desperately, taking his lack of immediate action as a no.

“P-p-please”, you begged, your hand dragging down from his hair and to the side of his neck. Your fingertip traced over the sensitive areas that a mating mark would go, an extremely erogenous zone as you begged. You could see the shudder roll through him, the bare chested man releasing a low, warning growl as he looked down at you. “Please please….I need….please?”

He pulled back, tears actually flowing from your eyes as he sat completely back on his feet, a petulant sob leaving your lips. He shook his head at you, a chastising look at trying to coerce him into fucking him before you were ready. Gabriel kept his fingers on your soaked cunt, his other hand moving to rest gently on your hips to keep you in place and prevent you from sitting up. His fingers dragged down from your swollen clit before two of his thick digits were pressed inside of you, your hips rocking to try and gain more traction. Your walls were molten hot, Gabriel biting his bottom lip at how tightly you were squeezing his fingers. Gabriel moved slow, scissoring his fingers inside of your carefully as he stretched you out. It wasn’t enough, your hips trying to rock and twist to take more of him inside of you. A third joined the first two, more slick spilling over his fingers and hands, a choked keen of need rising from your chest. Still, the Alpha kept up his work, winding your body up and stretching you until he made an approving sound in the back of his throat.

When Gabriel pulled away from you completely, you felt as if you might fall completely apart, reaching out for him. He unbuttoned his pants with one hand, the other smoothing over your forehead, quietly shushing you, comforting you as he pushed his pants away and down. You drank in his touch, turning your face and nuzzling desperately against him, keening your need to him wordlessly. His cooler body temperature was heaven against your burning skin, and the physical contact calmed the raving need in your mind.

His other hand came to your face, making you focus in on him as his forehead came to touch yours. Your eyes were round and watery, his gaze heated and primal, his thumbs stroking either side of your face as he pressed several gentle kisses to your pleasure swollen lips. Soft, happy mewls met each his, your hands moving to gently hold his wrists in place, not wanting to lose his touch as he stabilized himself on his elbows.

“Spread your legs a little more”, he orders between tender kisses, your body obliging the Alpha as you tried to keep up with him. “Now relax cariño…”

His kisses got longer, deeper, hungrier as you felt him began to push himself forward, his lips capturing your moan as his head pressed against your entrance. Your breath caught in your throat, gaze finally tearing from his as he pushed inside of you, eyes shutting tight. Your own kisses stuttered against his as he pushed himself in half way before pulling out, a wanting sob wrested at the emptiness you felt. Gabriel stole the whine away, his lips crashing into yours as his thickness pressed into you again, your hips arching to meet him needily. He pulled back though, sending a clear message that he was in control and in charge of your pleasure, his hips rolling to push further into you and graze against the bundle of nerves inside of you. You sobbed and writhed beneath him, your body overwhelmed by every single sensation you were feeling.

Your lips and tongue were his, nips and kisses making them even more sensitive. Your hands could only claw at his forearms and shoulders and neck and back, completely lost at what to do with your hands, unable to ground yourself as you floated in pleasure. Every single stroke he drove inside of you sent slick dribbling, your thighs and calves and lower stomach twitching in pleasure. You were enraptured, you could die like this if it meant experiencing pleasure like this for your final moments. With him. God, this was all you could ask for, wasn't it?

“Ahn!”

One of Gabe’s hand dragged away from your face, forcing itself between your bodies and finding your clit. No, this is how you would die. You jerked against him but his thrusts and touch were firm, his thumb circling your clit in tandem with a thrust against your g-spot. Every muscle in your body went stiff before you began to quake as your first true orgasm of your heat slammed through you, white taking over your vision as you arched into him. He didn't let up, his thumb remaining dimly pressed against your clit as he continued to fill you up, your cries melting away into mewling, surprised breaths, another orgasm burning through you. Your vision went pleasantly fuzzy, your head lolling to the side as you were overcome with yet another orgasm. Gabriel’s dropped his face into the crux of your neck, kissing and nipping but pulling back just short of biting or claiming you, your body shivering as his brutal pace slowed, his cock still inside of you.

“Don't worry”, he said, marking his words with a gentle kiss. “I've got you as long as you'll have me.”

#Overwatch #Overwatch headcanon #Overwatch headcanons #Overwatch drabble #Reaper #Gabriel Reyes #ReaperxReader #Overwatch request #reapers-carino #a/b/o dynamic #Alpha!Reaper

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healthnotion · 7 years ago

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The 7 Habits: Think Win/Win

Welcome back to our monthly series that summarizes, expands, and riffs on each of the seven habits laid out in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

The first of Covey’s 7 Habits are what he calls the “habits of private victory”: Being Proactive, Beginning With the End in Mind, and Putting First Things First prompt us to get our own lives in order. By living these first three habits, we start acting as autonomous, high-agency individuals, learn to recognize what we want in life, and begin to turn our ideals into reality.

But we don’t live in a vacuum. We have to interact with other people who have their own desires and ambitions that might conflict with our own. Sure, your goal in life might be to get a job with a certain company, but that company has its own goals and might not think you’re the guy to help reach them. Or maybe you have a goal of working out first thing in the morning, but your wife wants you to help get the kids ready for the day.

How do you successfully navigate the world as an individual who lives among other individuals?

That’s what the next three habits seek to answer. Covey calls them the “habits of public victory,” and the first of this trio of outward-facing habits — Think Win/Win — provides the framework, or “paradigm” in Covey-speak, for all of them.

Seek to Order Yourself First, Before You Seek to Order the World

The habits of public victory build off the habits of private victory. You can’t skip the inward habits and expect to successfully implement the outward ones. Before you can successfully interact and cooperate with other individuals, you have to be an individual yourself. You have to know who you are, where you’re going, and what you stand for. Failure to develop a strong sense of self will only result in frustration and confusion as you bump up against other people who all have their own agendas, and will pull you this way and that.

In other words, if you want to fix the world, start by fixing yourself first.

Jordan B. Peterson has said something similar; to paraphrase Peterson-speak: “Sort yourself out, bucko, before you try sorting out the world.”

Now does this mean you have to have your inner life in complete order before you start trying to order the world around you? Of course not. You’d never get started with the outward habits if you did that. No one is ever entirely “sorted out.” It’s a lifelong process. But if you are to have any progress with the outer habits, you need to be in progress with developing the inner ones.

The Public Habits Are “Unsexy,” But Critical

While it’s crucial to order yourself before you try ordering the world, I think a bigger problem than getting these steps out of order, is failing to ever move on to the latter part of the equation.

While sorting yourself out may seem like a “hardcore” principle, and is indeed a task that will require grit and determination, in truth, it’s the easiest, most fun and excitement-filled part of improving your life.

It’s a bit thrilling to set your own course. The project has a wonderfully simple, single-minded focus; responsible for yourself alone, you’re freed from the entangling burdens of external alliances.

I think that’s why I’ve noticed when people talk about The 7 Habits, they talk enthusiastically about the first three, which have to do with private victories — what I call the “sexy” habits — and pretty much ignore the subsequent ones that deal with other people.

But the habits of public victory are overlooked at an individual’s peril. They may be unsexy, but they’re critical to achievement in every area of life.

Here in America, we love the idea of the “self-made man.” The scrappy, rugged individualist who, without any help from others, pulls himself up by his bootstraps and makes his way in the world.

It’s certainly an inspiring archetype that encourages the admirable virtues of initiative and self-reliance.

But it’s a myth. A useful and inspiring myth, but a myth nonetheless.

The reality is that our success in life isn’t purely an individual effort. Yes, it requires pluck and drive on our part, but it also requires the cooperation of others, no matter how autonomous your path in life.

If you’re a writer, you need readers. If you’re an entrepreneur, you need customers — and have to deal with employees. If you want to create a flourishing family culture, you need to work together on it with your wife. If you want friends, well, you need to interact with folks other than yourself!

You can’t reach full flourishing in your professional, familial, and social life without other people.

So while personal initiative is necessary for success, it’s not sufficient. Our relationships (and a bit of luck) are the other critical part of the equation.

The 4 Paradigms of Relationships

Relationships may be essential to our success, but they sure can be hard to navigate. We have to work with people who have their own ideas, their own goals, and their own way of viewing the world.

In every relationship, whether business or personal, each party wants something, and Covey lays out four possible dynamics/outcomes that can emerge from this collision of agendas:

Win/Win

Everybody feels like they benefit from the relationship. Agreements and solutions are mutually advantageous and all parties are committed to making the agreement work. In business, this could mean a contract that’s equally beneficial; in a family, it could be a chore arrangement that both parents and children are on board with.

Win/Lose

In a Win/Lose paradigm, you get what you want while the other party feels like they got the short end of the stick. According to Covey, individuals who utilize a Win/Lose paradigm tend “to use positions, power, credentials, possessions, or personality to get their way.”

Win/Lose is when a boss tells his employee that he needs to stay late after work or else he’ll lose his job, or when a parent tells his kid to pick up his room because “I said so.”

There’s certainly a place for a Win/Lose paradigm. A football game requires a winner and loser, some business markets can only support one dominant firm, and sometimes kids have to do stuff they don’t want to do, even if, from their perspective, they don’t stand to benefit.

But the Win/Lose dynamic often results in a pyrrhic victory — you gain what you want in the short-term, while damaging a relationship in the long-term.

Lose/Win

Individuals who take the Lose/Win approach towards relationships are the stereotypical “nice guys.” They’re the doormats of life. They just let people walk all over them. They approach every encounter with another person through the paradigm of “I surrender, and you get what you want.”

“I’ll do whatever you want to do.”

“Oh, you were late with that report? That’s completely fine! Don’t worry about it. No big deal!”

“I won’t go hang out with my friends because I know it bothers you.

For Covey, Lose/Win is even worse than Win/Lose because at least the person who approaches relationships from the latter perspective has some standards and self-respect that he’s willing to fight for! The Lose/Win guy doesn’t believe in anything — he just wants to avoid conflict and keep people liking him.

The insidious thing about Lose/Win is that while it can smooth relationships over in the short-term, resentment and anger slowly builds up in the individual who takes this approach towards life. And that resentment can eventually ooze out in passive aggressiveness or explode in rage.

That isn’t to say there isn’t sometimes a place for Lose/Win in our lives. Maybe we take that approach when the issue is truly not worth making a fuss over, or when belaboring it would do harm to the long-term relationship. Maybe a negotiating partner wants a term that would inconvenience you in the short-term, but is a big deal to him; you can make a federal case about it, but it may harm the business relationship down the road. Covey would argue that maybe the wise thing to do is concede on that point and take the hit for the sake of your long-term prospects. Knowing when to fold, though, requires one to have a firm sense of purpose and self.

Lose/Lose

Lose/Lose is cutting off your nose to spite your face. If you’re going down, everyone else is going down with you. Lose/Lose situations occur when two stubborn and prideful people are pitted against each other. Lose/Lose is the businessman who bankrupts his company litigating a lawsuit that was launched to get back at a competitor; it’s the friend who makes the evening miserable for everyone because he didn’t get to do what he wanted.

While Win/Lose or Lose/Win can be used strategically and sparingly, there’s probably no situation in which adopting the Lose/Lose approach is beneficial.

How Seeking Win/Win Relationships Develops Your Maturity

While there’s certainly a time and place for Win/Lose and Lose/Win in our dealings with our fellow humans, Covey believes that the Win/Win dynamic is the one we should strive for most, since it’s the only one in which you get what you want and you strengthen the long-term health of a relationship.

But I also think that seeking win/win relationships is a key in helping us achieve maturity — a firm, well-sorted posture that promotes well-being and success in every area of life.

Here’s how:

Develops your humility. The idea that you can get where you’re going alone is a product of ego, and ego is the enemy. Individual success, Covey says, is actually a product of interdependency, and interdependency naturally presupposes dependency, a condition we hate to countenance. But forthrightly acknowledging the way we rely on others to exist and succeed demonstrates not only a clear-eyed realism, but a sober humility.

Recognizes the full humanity of others. When you’re young (or immature at any age), you feel the world revolves around you. Even if it’s unconscious, you don’t see everyone else as fully human — at least not in the way you see yourself; you don’t recognize the fact that they have needs, desires, and dreams that are just as salient to them as yours are to you. (How long did it take you to realize that your parents don’t exist entirely as your mother and father, but are people with lives and identities just as distinct and complex as your own?)

When you seek Win/Win relationships, you recognize that other people have goals that are just as real as yours — you recognize their individuality. That not only helps you understand the world better, and navigate it with less frustration, but that level of perspicuity makes you a more mature, fully formed individual yourself.

Requires a long-term perspective. When you go through life trying to make relationships Win/Lose, you can certainly get what you want in the short-term. But you burn bridges, and often sabotage your chances of success in the long-term. Seeking a Win/Win situation thus involves exercising the capacity of delayed gratification — putting in the effort upfront to make sure that not only do you get want you want, but that the other person does too, so that you’ll not only benefit in the moment but down the line as well.

Requires becoming assertive. Guys who approach relationships from the paradigm of Win/Lose are overly aggressive. Guys who approach them from the paradigm of Lose/Lose are overly passive.

The best approach is to avoid these extremes in favor of pursuing a golden mean between them; that is, being assertive.

Diagram from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

When you’re assertive, you’re able to state what you want firmly and without apology, but also take into consideration the needs and desires of others. You don’t act like a petulant child and just make demands, nor let people walk all over you like a quintessential Nice Guy. You directly pursue what you want, without being an a**hole about it.

Or as Covey eloquently puts it, “Maturity is the balance between courage and consideration.”

Offers a grown-up challenge. The public, outward-facing habits aren’t as sexy or fun as the inward-focused, private ones because the latter deal with a single variable: yourself.

But cultivating the other-oriented habits can offer its own distinct satisfaction, interest, and even excitement, when viewed from a certain frame of mind — one which, befitting Covey’s terminology, sees relationships as something of a game.

Now, I don’t mean you should treat relationships as a game in the sense of treating people as playthings without regard to their feelings and goals. But rather looking at them as a challenge, a puzzle, an arena in which thoughtful tactics and strategy must be deployed. Every scenario is different, and there are no preset or universal rules. How can you maneuver multiple variables so that everyone ends up with some reward? What moves can you make so that you get what you want, but the other person feels like they benefit as well? Can you improvise? Can you use your phronesis — your practical wisdom to find the best solution?

Figuring how to get to Win/Win isn’t a child’s game, but a mature pursuit for he who’s sorted out himself, and is ready to move on to sorting out the world.

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