#and the title is meh

[the-wardens-torch]

Prism

((This one is inspired by real life events. My father was a musician, and before he died - 6 years ago today, actually - he gave his old acoustic guitar to a friend of his… Which made a few of my relatives quite angry, but struck me as perfect.  I don’t play guitar after all. So now instead of being buried in my garage, it helps a queer woman teach music to autistic kids.))

Falerin had his eyes closed, but he could tell by the murmur of voices and the shuffling of feet that he had gathered a small crowd.  Breathing deeply, he moved his fingers across the keys of his accordion, touching each one as if it were a tiny, delicate bird. The melody that issued forth from the instrument was soft and low, and as he sang in accompaniment, his voice was like blue smoke on black velvet. The song was lonely and wistful, a song of sea and sky that seemed otherworldly echoing through the streets of Ul’Dah.

When the last of his song’s ghostly notes had been whisked away on the stiff desert breeze, the small crowd began to disperse.  Falerin graciously accepted their tips,  meeting each with a charming wink or a friendly quip.  The last one to approach him was a Roegadyn woman about his age, who furtively handed him enough gil to buy several decent meals.  When he looked up to thank her, he noticed that her eyes were red, and she was clutching a handkerchief to her nose.

“I can’t have been that bad… Or else I don’t think you’d be tipping me this much.” he said, his brow furrowing with concern over his sly smile.

“I-I’m sorry… Its just…” the woman took a deep breath and twisted her handkerchief in her hands, not meeting his gaze. “I’m sorry to ask this, but does that accordion… I think it was... “ she shut her eyes tightly and paused for a moment  “Does it have a… little carving of the sun on the back?”

Falerin’s eyes grew wide and his face paled slightly.  He knew without even looking that the drawing was there… Crudely but lovingly scratched into the red enamel just behind the keys with a sharp bit of metal. The voice of an old sailor named Rymmharr Sylbundsyn’s voice drifted into his mind on a salt-scented breeze of fond memory.

I scratched it on there on the day she was born because her name means “Sun Daughter.”

“Are you… Sunnthota?”

The woman nodded her head, meeting his gaze for just a second before squeezing her eyes shut as a fresh flood of tears came.

“You know my name… He must have talked about me.“ she said, a wistful smile coming to her tearful face. “That accordion was my father’s. When his accordion didn’t come home with his body I… wasn’t sure what had happened to it.”

“I-I’m so sorry… He, he talked about you all the time… If I’d have known where to find you I would have…”

Fal hesitated, looking grimly at his feet, not able to finish his sentence. Would have what? The old sailor had given the instrument to him with his blessing. He could even prove it with a letter written in the man‘s own hand… But how would Sunnthota feel if she knew her own father had given his most prized possession to someone she didn’t even know? He didn’t want to break her heart any more than it already had been. He took a deep breath, hugging the instrument to him for a long moment.

“If you want it back, its yours. I never meant any harm… An officer gave it to me when they came to send his body home. I-I would have looked for you but all I knew was that you lived in Ul’Dah.”

Falerin had intended to hold the instrument out for Sunnthota to take, but his muscles were paralyzed by the love he had for the wonderful old thing.

Sunnthota closed her eyes and crossed her arms in front of her chest, holding the handkerchief to her face.

“No, no… I’m not here for that. Its…. He would want someone playing it. I-I‘m… happy. If I had it, it would just gather dust.  No one would know how to take care of it, let alone play it. The last couple of times that he was home before he… passed-” -she paused here to take a deep breath, as if just saying that he was gone was like losing him all over again. “-before he passed away a few summers ago, he told me about a Hyuran boy he’d met in the Cieldalaes who could play almost as well as he did. He seemed to think that your talent was being wasted. I… I can see, well, hear, that you‘ve gotten to be even better than he was.” She blew her nose politely and cleared her throat.

“Your name is Falerin, isn’t it?”

Falerin choked back a lump in his throat and nodded, now fighting tears himself.  She had said his name with a reverence one might normally reserve for a long lost family member. As she spoke, something opened in his mind’s eye like a dusty brown moth, spreading its wings to reveal a whorl of heretofore unseen colors.  For the first time in a long while, he was at a loss for words. But in a situation like this, words in conversation were clumsy things; wan and dull.  Recalling a single line of postscript in the old sailor’s hand, Falerin stared down at the rickety, crooked-rayed little sun.

P.S - Her favorite song is The Briar and the Rose.

Concentrating on the whorl of color, Falerin stood up straight and began to play.  That particular song was so familiar to him that scarcely had to think about it, but the lyrics caught in his throat somehow.  As if the moth-turned-butterfly could only escape through his fingertips.  But a gently hollowed-out song was a beautiful place for memories to nest, and perhaps she was imagining his voice singing over the notes the same way he was.  For a brief second, two complete strangers shared a memory.  An overlapping rainbow of two spectrums wrought from the same prism of song.

When he looked up from the song, Sunnthota was watching him with a sad smile. Tears were streaming from her eyes again.  Eyes that he now saw were the exact same frost-gray as her father‘s.  Looking at her, he could almost hear Rymmharr’s voice telling him to press the keys more gently, and smell the aura of spiced rum and sea salt that always seemed to hover around him. Had anyone on Sapphire Avenue been paying attention, they might have noticed which one of them reached out first to hug the other.  Was it the sister meeting her new brother, or the brother meeting his new sister?

It really didn’t matter.

((And here’s your reminder that every work leading up to this is on my Ao3))

[mittthrawnuruodo]

ND-5 & tags

[fungerhead]

“yeah this is my girlfriend karin and her boyfriend daan and daans boyfriend marcoh”

[sannie-hannie]

Jeonghan for anan magazine

[gunsatthaphan]

“will you be my boyfriend?”

[cosmicgesture]

Ok so somebody talk to me about Hades 2 please oh my god.

Like?? Is it supposed to be a sequel? Why are the designs different? (Mostly speaking about Hermes bc he's the one I've seen most of and he looks totally different from the first game???) I know the player character is a woman. Who is she and what's her goal??

[phaedraismyusername]

Gave into the FOMO and dropped everything to reread the Hunger Games series, then read the prequel, and now I can't find anything else I want to read

[evyonagray]

Wedding Vows

You are my Paris. You are my New Orleans. Baby, you are my Home. I'll warm myself with the embers of your rage, I'll keep your lips from ever losing their smile, I will stand with you in life, death, and after death. I will be your conscience when you are blinded by betrayal I will be your shield when you have no fight left in you, May the magic in you and me witness the legacy we build.

– Evyona Gray

[niyana-the-ambiguous-mobian]

Just saw Kung fu Panda 4.

Well, it was certainly a movie…..

Action was good, music was a banger as always, voice acting was top notch, no surprise there.

That’s all I got positive wise.

[aro-culture-is]

Aro culture is really wishing u had a special word other than ‘best friend’ for your best friend so people know they’re special when u refer to them :3 (without having to change your relationship to them)

.

[skyloftian-nutcase]

It had been two weeks since it was all over. They’d spent the majority of their time in Kakariko Village. Impa had been gentle and fastidious in her care of the princess, and Link felt a little out of place at the sight of it – the two remembered each other, remembered everything of the past. Impa could tell Zelda of what had happened since, and Zelda could be nostalgic with Impa. Link could really offer neither, he supposed, though he’d seen more of Hyrule nowadays than Impa had.

Despite all of this, though, both Link and Zelda struggled. Link spent his spare time sparring or traveling the area, resting in Hateno, helping the villagers in both places. Zelda just… rested. After two weeks, even Impa was showing signs of uncertainty and worry. Link didn’t know what to do.

The swordsman sighed as he kicked a pebble into a pond, watching a frog hop away. He had so little understanding of the past, he felt useless to help. But at the same time, he just felt useless, period. His entire purpose and life mission when he’d woken up, the main goal he’d built his entire identity around, was over. Zelda spent a hundred years holding the Calamity at bay and now it was over.

It was over.

And they were both left with… they didn’t even know.

Maybe that was the issue, then. Neither knew what to do now. Neither knew how to move forward after they’d spent so long being stuck in the past.

Well, Link wasn’t quite stuck in the past. He couldn’t remember it. Maybe that was why it still seemed to hold him hostage. Either way, the wounds of the Calamity were everywhere, whether it was remembered or not.

Link stared at his reflection in the water. Now what?

He sighed, falling into a seated position in front of the pond. The frog from earlier landed on a lily pad. He watched it aimlessly, mind restless and heart hurting. As he watched it, the world seemed to fade around him, his body growing light, and he recognized the feeling, the sensation, and his eyes widened a hair – he… hadn’t had new memories trying to resurface since the Calamity had been defeated.

Link took a small, shaky breath, letting his mind go where it wanted to, drifting into the past.

He’s home. The lighting is a little dim since it’s raining. There are sniffles by the stairway, and he feels the need to go to them, but whispers to his left catch his attention.

“Til, this is ridiculous. A funeral for a frog? Really?”

“Honey, she loved that frog!”

“She saw it for maybe a few weeks, didn’t she?”

“Yes, and she loved it! She even named it.”

His father sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re proposing we hold a funeral. For a frog that lived by the pond for a few weeks. Because Lyra is upset that it died.”

“That’s exactly what I’m proposing,” his mother replies.

“Til, everything dies, if we held a funeral for every single thing we’d be mourning our entire lives.”

“This isn’t about mourning, Abel,” his mother argues. “It’s about learning to close a chapter of your life and move forward. She’s young, this is a good way for her to learn this.”

His father watches her skeptically and then sighs again. “Very well.”

His mother smiles and nods, heading towards the stairs and kneeling, blocking someone from view as she speaks softly. His father approaches him, and he stands a little straighter, eyes watching him with unspoken curiosity.

“Well,” his father huffs. “I suppose we should put on our formal attire for this, seeing as it’s an important affair.”

He catches himself midway into smiling, unsure if this is an actual joke or a grumble, but the wink he gets from his father make shim relax. He nods and the pair go their separate ways, and the world fades and spins dizzyingly for a moment before he finds himself standing outside. He and his father are dressed in colorful regalia, a hat keeping his head warm in the damp air. His mother is wearing dark, somber clothes, and he sees a little girl—his sister—holding a candle in front of the pond. He can’t hear the words being spoken, or even tell if there are words being spoken, but somehow, he feels… at peace.

Link gasped, startled as he opened his eyes, cheeks chilled by tear tracks that had half dried. For a moment he just sat there, processing what he’d just seen. That was—he’d seen his—

He shook his head. Somehow… that felt…

He glanced up at the sky and looked beyond it, his heart racing, and he struggled to catch his breath before looking back down at the pond.

Grief over a family he didn’t know anymore welled up inside him, but the lesson they’d taught him burned even more. He rose, taking a steadying breath, clenching his fists and closing his eyes as the tears fell.

He knew what they needed to do.

The next day, Link and Zelda stood at Fort Hateno, flowers in the princess’ hands, Link dressed in his freshly cleaned champion garb. The pair looked out over the field and all its wreckage.

Zelda took a shaky breath, and stepped forward, as if she were getting ready to address a crowd of people, as if the dead were all standing there waiting. Link felt as if they were, he felt the gravity of the situation sitting heavily on his shoulders.

At the same time, though, he felt… good. This felt right. And he…

The images of his memory came unbidden, of faces he barely knew in his mind but knew in his heart.

They’d lost so many.

“Calamity Ganon… is gone,” Zelda said, her voice thick but growing stronger. “The plague that destroyed our land is no more. So you… you all can rest. We thank you for your sacrifices, we mourn you for your loss, we beg for forgiveness that it… that it took this long.”

Link stepped forward, his shoulder brushing hers. When she glanced at him, he offered a smile. No more regrets, Zelda. This isn’t about that.

Zelda seemed to read that in his expression, and she nodded, closing her eyes.

“It’s over,” she whispered, kneeling and placing flowers by a stone they’d found and decided to use for the occasion. “It’s over.”

And for the first time in two weeks, Zelda cried. And for the first time in his living memory, Link cried.

And as the sun set and their tears dried, they smiled, and moved on together.

[inhidingxoxo3637]

Marquez announcing his retirement would be the funniest thing possible rn

[madamemachikonew]

Periodic reminder of the greatest line in an anime dub ever.

[wovenstarlight]

I wonder if anyone would be interested in seeing the sclass refsheet I have.... lists all important terms in kr and eng primarily character names but also includes the stylistic choices like formatting and system window translations and a list of all mentioned skills with notes on whether they're acquired and optimal/initial skills or not... OH ALSO THE REPLACEMENT ENGLISH ALPHABET I USE FOR WHEN THEY SEND FUCKED UP SYSTEM MESSAGES. some of y'all writers would probably like that right

[meetsthebones]

i think there is a really fucking good single album that could and lowkey should have been assembled from the songs across the 2 albums

[louwhose]

The New School Teacher

Written for @zelinktines24 day 26: Dancing? Here?

There was a new teacher at the schoolhouse in Hateno. She smiled at him. And Link knew he was doomed to have a crush on her.

Read on AO3