#been divorced three times and remarried four to the same woman

[mrsthunderkin]

Panique~*•°○☆▪︎°•○~

[jqmalikhsgib]

quest

seven

warning: mentions of sexual relationships

when you parked your car at the coffee shop emily told you to meet aaron your heart pounded. you had no idea what was coming. all you knew was he was upset.

he had every right to be. you kept his kids from him. you didn’t even let him explain what emily saw. come to think of it, you didn’t even let emily explain.

as soon as you heard her utter the words ‘i saw hotch and haley in his office’ you ended the call. you couldn’t hear anymore. but knowing what you do now, you felt you deserved everything coming to you.

spotting aaron sitting at a table you take a deep breath and head inside. you sit right across from him and give him a small smile.

aaron hands you a cup. “decaf still, right?”

you hum as you take a sip. “thank you.”

the two of you sat in silence for a minute. it felt longer though. you missed him. everything about aaron you missed. you missed the way he smelled, his beautiful smile, the way he made you laugh, the way he listened. you missed his touch.

his touch,

god did you miss the way aaron touched you. rather it would be as simple as holding your hand or the way he would hold you when you fucked.

aaron could be a gentle lover. he would whisper sweet nothings in your ear as he made love to you. tell you how beautiful you were and how good you were to him.

but he was also rough! if he got a little jealous or you two argued about something so minor, he’d fuck you like you meant absolutely nothing to him! and you loved it.

you tried not to think too much about it, but you noticed he has been working out. his muscles were bulging more than before.

you also noticed he still wore his wedding band. something you felt a sense of pride in. despite being divorced he still showed everyone he was taken. even if it weren’t true.

you did the same. you loved aaron. knowing you could never move on from the man that gave you the best years of your life and the three, four babies you adored! nothing would ever change that. if wearing the ring meant you would never be with anyone else again, you were okay with that.

“should we start?”

you didn’t know what to say. just humming as he cleared his throat.

“i made a promise to you i would love you unconditionally. i married you because i meant every single word. and i would never intentionally hurt the woman i love. i broke that vow by having an emotional affair with my ex wife. i hugged her for too long, held her hand, kissed her cheek, even cuddled her from time to time. but i never went as far as sleeping with her. and i wouldn’t have blamed you if you wanted to divorce me after knowing the truth. instead you left. part of me kinda happy you did. foyet was after me and my family. it’s one of the reasons why haley and i reconnected. i needed him to see he could never break this family up. fortunately he didn’t know about you,”

“what do you mean?”

“i made sure the team kept you hidden from the moment we met. i didn’t need anyone to know i had remarried. if i could go back i would have done the same with haley.”

you wanted to hold his hand. you knew he was still grieving. haley was his first everything. completely losing her destroyed him. on top of losing you all in the span of a few months apart. he went through hell for the longest.

“after foyet died i tried finding you. i even tried to get penelope to trace you. she declined. i was very pissed i almost fired her. but she wanted to protect you. i couldn’t be mad at that,”

“aaron, im sorry. i—i thought with me out of the picture you’d be better off. i wanted you to be happy. i knew it would have been a hard decision if i stayed. i didn’t want you to choose me because i was pregnant. i wanted you to choose me because you loved me.”

“they’re my kids too yn! mine! you left knowing this. knowing that you were carrying our babies. i didn’t get to be there for them. i didn’t get to hold you hand while you gave birth, wake up all hours of the morning to feed them or change them, watch them start to crawl, watch them walk for the first time, i miss two birthdays yn!! two. you made that decision for me. you made the decision to leave and take our children with you. i—knowing this, finding this out from jj, i didn’t know how to feel.”

you turned your head guilty. you couldn’t look him in the eyes. you knew as soon as you did the tears would just come pouring out.

the two of you stayed silent for awhile. aaron clears his throat before speaking.

“i promised jack i would bring you home. please don’t break his heart again.” aaron states. he leaves money on the table before leaving you alone with your thoughts.

when you arrived at your sister house you sigh. all you wanted to do was hug your babies. you missed them and needed a little comfort right now.

the moment you saw them playing with their cousins you smiled. they were the cutest. you always wanted them to know their older cousins.

“mamma!” izzy was the first to spot you. she waddles her way towards you.

“izzy!” you copied her.

“miss mamma.” she smiles at you.

“miss you too baby. you and your siblings.”

“up, mummy!” aurora raises her arms.

you gently pick her up. you missed when you use to be able to carry all three of them at the same time. now they were bigger and a lot heavier. you could only pick them up in twos.

you kiss aurora’s cheek as you son walks over to you. he pulls on your shirt. you bend down to his level and set your other two babies down.

“hows my shy boy?”

he shrugs his shoulders. you frown. you really wished he was a little more outgoing. but you couldn’t blame him. you were just as shy growing up. you still are.

you kiss theo’s cheek gently. “mama missed all three of her babies.” you hug your kids tightly. not too tight. but enough.

“mama! you being silly.” isabella laughs.

“oh, am i?!” you start to tickle them. she giggles uncontrollably. you laugh before kissing them on the forehead.

“why don’t you go play with your cousins while i talk to your aunt, okay?”

your three mini me’s walk over to their cousins as you walk towards your sister.

“so, how’d it go?”

you sigh. “as good as it could. he wants me to move back home.”

“you have a life here though. he can’t expect you to pack your bags and move three two year olds!”

“i don’t know abby. i did take two years away from him and the triplets. plus i have a son back home who misses me.”

“well are you two gonna at least work your shit out? because if not then what?”

you shrug. “i gotta at least try, yeah? you didn’t see abby! we both still have our wedding bands on. legally we’re divorced but mentally and emotionally we’re still married. i have to fight for my marriage.”

“i understand little sister. i just worry. with everything that just happened i don’t want you to spiral. plus, i just got you back. i don’t want you to leave.” abigale pouts.

“i know. but ill be back to visit!”

“promise?”

“swear it.”

you two continue to talk. catching up on everything you missed before you headed out to figure out your move.

aaron had came by the next morning to help you pack and to meet the kids for the first time. he was nervous and excited all in one.

he knew what it was like to raise one child for nine years. now he was transitioning from one to four. he still couldn’t believe it.

he was a father of four. four beautiful kids who he adored. he already loved his babies. he couldn’t wait to raise them with you. and hopefully work your shit out to have more in the future.

when he arrived you weren’t shocked at all he had went shopping. he spoiled jack so much you just knew he’d spoil your other three.

“hi.”

“hey. come in! the kids are in their pen.” you opened the door wider to allow him inside. aaron smiles as he walks to the living room.

he got a bit of a glimpse of them the other day. seeing them face to face like this made him gasped. all three, beautiful as ever. you two made the cutest little babies.

“izzy, theo, roe! id like you to meet someone.” the three of them look up at their mom and sees a tall man. they had no idea who he was but he looked friendly.

“who’s that mamma?” izzy was the first to ask.

“remember how i told you daddy was off being a super hero and catching the bad guys? how he’d be back to take us home? well, he’s back. and he’s right there.”

“papa?” theo questioned.

aaron bends down. “that’s right! im your dad little buddy.”

“daddy!” izzy walked over to aaron and hugs him. aaron chuckled as he holds his daughter.

“love daddy.” aurora states.

aaron wanted to shed tears in that moment. but he held himself together and hugged all three of his kids as they walk over to him.

“goin home to brudder?” theodore asked.

“yeah. going home to brother.”

slow burn but not too slow because i don’t have the time for the shit! i want them together!!!!!

but how did you guys like this part? i think it’s cute! had to put the babies in there. they’re adorable

peep aaron already planning to have more kids with the reader!!

if you wanna be added or unadded to the taglist please let me know

taglist:

@ivebeenthearchersstuff @shergoretzxx @slut4ethan @rosiehale23 @madesavage05 @whotfskai

[ratralsis]

Strings: Mini-Prequel and Mini-Sequel

In the time between my first attempt at writing the story I'm currently calling "Strings" and the version that I just posted, I took a couple of short-story-writing classes from the same school that I then took two longer novel-writing classes from.

Because I lack creativity, or possibly because I thought it would be fun, I decided to use characters from Kevin and Marigold's little story in a couple of the prompts.

One prompt was to write a 250-word story based on the phrase "Love Hurts." This is what I wrote.

Henry tilted his head from side to side, his neck cracking loudly. He yawned, alone in his car with his briefcase and a fast food bag, still slightly warm from holding the dinner he'd eaten while driving. He grabbed the briefcase and walked to the door of his house.

He knocked. After a moment, the door was opened by an older woman who looked almost as tired as he felt. "You can't keep doing this," she said.

"It won't be forever, ma," he sighed, raising his arms for a quick hug. The briefcase made the motion clumsy.

"Until when, then?" She asked. "Until the girls are old enough that you just leave 'em by themselves all day?"

His shoulders dropped. He looked past his mother at the curtains. Pale blue. Emily's idea, bought just over a year ago. Before the twins, when it was the two of them living here. Now it was the three of them. It had never been the four of them.

He swallowed that thought along with a piece of hamburger bun that had been stuck in his teeth. "What do you want me to do? I gotta work. I'm all they've got."

"No, for half the day, I'm all they've got," she said.

"And I appreciate it," he said. "But we're both too tired for this right now. Can we talk about it this weekend? Please?"

"Fine," she said. "They're asleep, God only knows how much longer."

"Alright, ma," Henry sighed. "Good night. Love you."

This is much of a prequel as I ever plan on writing for Marigold. 250 words, all of them very carefully chosen as I pared down a much longer piece until it fit that requirement, about Henry as a young man, and Marigold and Lily as tiny babies who don't even really appear.

Henry's struggling to get by. He's working overtime at the law firm, trying to establish himself as a lawyer or possibly still trying to pass the bar, I'm not really sure myself, at age 26 or so, while the girls are still too young to be left alone. In another year, he'll have remarried, and in a few more, he'll have divorced, and then a decade or so of peaceful days before one of his daughters dies in a car accident.

It's not worth writing more about him. I love Henry as a character, but his story, to be blunt, doesn't interest me much. As a character, he's fascinating, though. He's worked hard and found himself thrown about by fate and chance in a million different directions, and through it all, he's perservered, and worked hard, and done his best to keep his chin up. When we meet him in the main story, he's 47 or 48 years old, still working, making somewhere around $100,000-200,000/year in his day job (but not, like, millions), living in a big house with a big yard, but he's living by himself, and finds himself facing life as an empty nester while also knowing he's going to have to keep working for probably another decade or two before retiring. He's not sure he made the right decisions, but he did what he thought was right, and now things are the way they are and nothing can change the past.

But what's the conflict in his story? If I actually wrote it out, it would just be "Decent, hard-working guy keeps having bad things happen to him and his family," and that's not an interesting story.

So no prequel for Henry, but I absolutely love the 250 words I did write. "It had never been the four of them" is one of the best sentences I've ever written.

A while later, as a POV exercise, I wrote this three-part story. It's a sequel to the main story, and I really enjoy it, too.

Part 1. Marigold arrived home later than she had planned. There was no way to sneak into her apartment after the guests had already arrived. She tried to look on the bright side: this way, she could avoid the suspense of having to wait for them to show up.

She had helped Kevin set up the Christmas decorations earlier in the week, so those were no surprise. The bright paper streamers along the walls were his idea, as was the tree in the corner that took up a bit more of the room than she would have preferred. It did look nice, though, she had to admit. Extra chairs had been placed at the table, but nobody was sitting at it.

She hadn't known what food he was going to be preparing, and the spicy smell of it hit her like a wall as she walked in, guitar on her back. Her heart in her throat, she scanned the front room, hoping to see Kevin first. She saw him, but he was standing near the kitchen, chatting happily with the guests of honor: his parents.

Part 2. "Oh, there you are," Kevin said, turning to face her when he heard the sound of the door. "I was just finishing up the grand tour, such as it is."

"Oh, great," she said, giving them her best stage smile. "Let me put my guitar away, and I'll be right back for introductions, okay?"

Kevin smiled back and nodded. His parents said nothing, staring almost blankly at her. She darted into her music room and placed the guitar case against the wall. She could fuss with it later. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and came back out. Kevin and his mother had disappeared back into the kitchen, leaving his father standing by himself. She walked over, stuck out her hand, and looked up at him. He was as tall as his son--nearly a foot taller than she was.

"So, I'm Marigold, and you must be Mister Stiles."

He took the offered hand and shook it. "Please, just Kevin," he said. "I think we can be on a first-name basis."

"Sure, but, that's also what I call, you know, Kevin Junior?" She kept smiling, though it felt a bit strained at this point.

Part 3. "I'm sure I can figure out which of us you mean from context clues," he said. "So, my son told me you're a musician. Tonight's performance ran late?"

"Um, well, sometimes that happens when I'm playing a reception," she said. "I'm paid by the hour, so when the family is willing to keep paying me to stick around, I… let them. Plus, they're more likely to leave me a good review if I'm a good sport, you know?"

He furrowed his brow slightly and looked closely at the petite woman in the pink dress in front of him. "Certainly. And that's what you wore to a wedding reception?" He asked.

She bobbed her head to one side and continued smiling. He wondered if this was her best dress. "Yep," she said, after a moment. "Sure did. I'll be right back, I'm just going to get a drink."

She was back in only a moment, full glass in hand.

"I like the decorations," he told her, gesturing.

"Thank you," she said. "They were Kevin's idea, actually."

"I know," he said. "I still thought you should know that I liked them."

"Okay," she said, and downed most of her glass.

I can't remember what all of the rules were, but I believe Part 1 was required to have no dialogue, part 2 to be from one character's point of view, and part 3 to be from another's. Part 3 is meant to be from the point of view of Kevin Stiles Sr., though it's not as obvious as I wish it were given how short the story is.

I loved writing this, because I loved showing Kevin's dad as this very uptight and stiff conservative sort of guy who looks down on Marigold's line of work and lack of education (she's a high-school dropout with a GED, remember), sees her as irresponsible (for showing up late to an event like this Christmas party), and wonders if the outfit she has on is really the best she has (maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it's what she wore to a wedding reception where she played acoustic guitar for just as many hours as her client was willing to pay her to). He's not a bad guy, but he's not willing to meet Marigold at her level or engage with her as an equal. He doesn't accept that she's going to have trouble calling both him and his son "Kevin," because, even if this guy says he'll know who she means, when they're at the dinner table and she says "Say, Kevin," both Kevins are going to look at her and she's going to have to point at one of them.

Marigold also has a rough relationship with alcohol in the original story. After her car accident, she quit drinking. It's the real reason why she refused a drink from Kevin on the night they first met. Her "I don't drink while I'm working" excuse was a lie. She doesn't drink alcohol because the last time she did, she thought it was a good idea to get behind the wheel of a car and her twin sister died. It's based on a guy I knew whose drunk driving accident scared him sober, but I don't know how common it really is.

Yet, in this sequel story, she downs most of a glass of something that presumably has alcohol in it simply because Kevin Sr. is being kind of weird to her and she's having a hard time coping with it. So either

A) She's gotten over her fears of alcohol and now drinks on occasion, B) There's actually no alcohol in her drink and she just finds the act of drinking ANYTHING to be calming, or C) I thought it was funny and knew nobody else in my writing class could possibly have read her story and known she didn't drink.

Take your pick.

While I truly love the character of Kevin Sr. as seen here, as the guy from whom Kevin Jr. gets his serious and boring sides from, a stereotypical no-nonsense German dude (Kevin is 1/2 German, 1/4 English, and 1/4 Mexican, though only the 1/4 Mexican part is specifically mentioned in the story; Marigold's ethnicity was spelled out in an earlier draft as being equal parts South Korean, Syrian, Northern Indian, and Puerto Rican, but I decided for this draft that it was more fun to just leave her as "light brown" and never let the reader actually know), but going on from there, it's not the most interesting story. It would just be Marigold having a very awkward night, and while I did truly love writing from her POV after so long writing from Kevin's, and showing her fears and insecurities for once instead of Kevin's, as well as showing how Kevin appears to her from the outside for once, where does it go from here? Eventually, Kevin Sr. and Mary will leave, and Marigold will sigh heavily and say "Wow, that was rough" and Kevin will say "Haha what" and then they'll… live happily ever after, probably?

Again, there's not much conflict there. I don't want to bring back anything from Marigold's past to threaten the happiness that she and Kevin have together. No childhood friend is going to appear and threaten to get her canceled online. Her probation officer isn't going to show up and threaten to lock her up because she crossed state lines. Her career isn't going to fizzle out and force her to get a real job. Kevin's not going to lose interest in her and find solace in the arms of another woman. They're just going to be a boring couple like every other boring couple from here on out. They'll have ups and downs. Maybe Marigold will eventually be able to have kids, and maybe she won't. Maybe they'll adopt, and maybe they won't. Maybe they'll drift apart in ten years and get divorced, and maybe they won't.

I'm really and truly happier not knowing. I'm happier leaving them just as they are, a young couple starting their adult lives together, unsure of themselves but sure of each other, doing their best to face things one day at a time, just like everyone else.*

*I love this kind of ambiguity in storytelling sometimes. It's why the second chapter ends with Kevin saying that he isn't sure if five minutes will be enough time to make up for two months of not having kissed Marigold. What happens next? Does he give her a little peck on the lips? Does he shove his tongue into her mouth? Do they fuck right there on the loveseat?** It's whatever you want it to be. I'll never tell.

**They probably didn't fuck on the loveseat. They really did only have five minutes, after all. But given that Kevin reflects on how he's seen Marigold's spiderweb tattoo before when she shows it him a few months later, it's reasonable*** to assume that, at the very least, he's seen her in her underwear.

***My headcanon is that Kevin's social awkwardness and Marigold's fear of letting someone get too close to her mean that neither of them has as much experience with sex as they want the other to think they do (it's entirely possible that they began the story as a couple of virgins), but it's not on the page, so it really is just headcanon, and mine is no more valid than anyone else's if it's about things that didn't make it into the story.

So there won't be a prequel or a sequel, because I've already written them, and they were a lot of fun, and there's nothing else to say about Kevin Stiles and Marigold Spade that I want to say.

For now, at least. If I live long enough, I may change my mind.

This is already more of an afterword than I had planned. There won't be more.

[arifhosen129]

Why is it not allowed for a woman to have multiple marriages or multiple husbands in Islam?

(scientific explanation)

A Jewish embryologist (who was also a religious scholar) openly stated that there is no other religion in the world that is purer and purer than the Muslim woman.

The whole incident happened when Robert, a Jewish professional, an embryologist associated with the Albert Einstein Institute, announced his conversion to Islam. The only reason for which was the knowledge of the verses regarding the order of Iddat for divorced women mentioned in the Qur'an and the mystery and wisdom behind setting a limit of three months for Iddat.

Allah Ta'ala has asked a divorced woman to keep a gap of three months before remarrying. He said in the Holy Quran,

وَٱلْمُطَلَّقَٰتُ يَتَرَبَّصْنَ بِأَنفُسِهِنَّ ثَلَٰثَةَ قُرُوٓءٍۚ

That is, 'divorced women will wait up to three months'. (Surah Al-Baqarah, 228)

This verse paved the way for the discovery of DNA by a modern science and found that the protein in one man's semen is 62% different from another man's.

And a woman's body is like a computer. When a man has intercourse with her, the woman's body absorbs all the bacteria and keeps it in her body. Therefore, if a woman marries another man or has intercourse with several men at the same time after divorce, her body accumulates different types of DNA that produce dangerous proteins and cause serious diseases.

Studies show that 32% to 35% of protein is lost from a woman's body after her first period, and 67 to 72% of her DNA is destroyed after her second period. And after the third menstruation up to 99.9% of the protein is eliminated. The uterus is then completely cleared of the previous DNA and ready to accept the new DNA without any side effects.

A courtesan copulates with many men, causing bacteria from different men to enter her uterus and accumulate different types of DNA in her, causing her to contract fatal diseases.

In the case of a widowed woman, the provision of Shariah is that her Iddat is longer than that of a divorced woman i.e. 4 months and 10 days. This is because the former DNA is not eliminated quickly from her body due to grief and anxiety, it takes longer than before, and for this the women's Iddah is fixed at four months and ten days. Allah says in the Holy Quran:

وَٱلَّذِينَ يُتَوَفَّوْنَ مِنكُمْ وَيَذَرُونَ أَزْوَٰجًا يَتَرَبَّصْنَ بِأَنفُسِهِنَّ أَرْبَعَةَ أَشْهُرٍ وَعَشْرًاۖ

That is, 'Those of you who die leaving wives shall abstain from them for four months and ten days.' (Surah Al-Baqarah, 234)

Faced with this fact, an expert doctor conducted research at two different locations in the United States.

One. Only one husband's DNA was found in the fetuses of the women in the neighborhood where Muslims of African descent lived. Two. In other neighborhoods where Native American women live, DNA from more than two or three men has been found in their fetuses.

Then when the specialist doctor examined his own wife's embryo, he discovered the shocking fact that his wife had three different DNA. Which means his wife was cheating on him and only one of his three children was his own, the rest were from other men.

The doctor is then convinced that Islam is the only religion that guarantees the safety of women and the harmony of society. And be sure that only Muslim women are the cleanest, purest and most chaste in the world.

#Copied

[dwellordream]

“The Jewish approaches to breast-feeding were based on Greek medicine and on foundations the Jews shared with their neighbors, Christian and Muslim. From a medical perspective, breast milk was seen as part of the blood system. When women nursed, they often did not menstruate. Therefore, according to ancient medicine, breast milk was menstrual blood that turned into milk, and when a woman became pregnant again, the milk turned back into blood. This idea, as well as the belief that pregnant women could not nurse, were at the foundation of the legal principles concerning breast-feeding. On the whole, the baby’s father and his power are at the center of these discussions. By law, only in exceptional circumstances could someone other than the father decide how his child would be fed and cared for. In Roman society, for example, the father was responsible for employing a wet nurse. 

As we saw above, according to Jewish law, the father was responsible for the nursing of his son or daughter. The halakhic principles were meant to protect the life of the infant as well as provide a clear-cut division of labor between both parents. Early Christian law does not contain any discussions of nursing or of who is obligated to nurse. In what some see as one of the great accomplishments of early Christianity, infanticide was strictly forbidden. There were, however, no guidelines concerning nursing such as those found in Jewish sources. Research on the first centuries of Christianity has suggested that many Roman women breast-fed their own children, although women of the highest social and economic status hired wet nurses. Despite the evidence of this social reality in which wet nurses were frequently employed, it seems there was no legislation concerning the social arrangements made, nor was there legislation concerning the remarriage of nursing mothers.

Medieval families shared similar characteristics. In some cases, the mothers nursed their infants themselves, while in other households, especially in the wealthier ones, wet nurses were hired. The medieval compilers of canon law were concerned with nursing mothers in a number of instances, but were mainly interested in the implications of nursing on correct marital relations; hence, they do not discuss the welfare of children or the remarriage of mothers. Rather, they forbid nursing women to have sexual intercourse with their husbands. The reason for this prohibition, however, was not to prevent an additional pregnancy, but rather, because they realized that a nursing woman’s chances of conceiving were not good, and they did not want good Christians to have sexual relations for nonreproductive purposes. 

Despite this difference, the social circumstances of breast-feeding in Jewish and Christian societies contained many similarities, as I will demonstrate later in this chapter. The Koran, on the other hand, presents a legal system that is much closer to the Jewish legal principles outlined above. As in Judaism, Islamic law defined twenty-four months as the period of breast-feeding. A woman who was divorced during this period and continued to nurse her child received full support from the infant’s father for the duration. In contrast to Jewish law, however, a widow was not forbidden to remarry during this time. Moreover, Islamic legislation was far more flexible with respect to the sending of an infant to a new wet nurse, even after it was used to its own mother or wet nurse. 

Islamic law differs substantially from Jewish and Christian legislation with respect to the implications of breast-feeding. Islamic legislation developed a system of complicated kinship connections defined through wet nursing, that were expressed through marriage prohibitions. Children who were not biologically related but who were the “milk children” of the same woman were not allowed to marry each other. This complex system shows how one of the medical beliefs outlined above was interpreted by Muslim lawmakers. Since milk was understood to be blood that had turned into milk, two children who nursed from the same woman shared this milk-blood. Consequently, marriage between them was understood as a form of incest. 

…Although the care of infants was the responsibility of their mothers, in many cases, especially in the cities, the mother was assisted by a wet nurse. The wet nurse’s position in the house varied from place to place and among the different social classes, but she was always an employee bound by contract to her employers. In medieval Jewish society, as in Christian society and according to the Mishna, the wealthier a woman was, the more likely she was to employ a wet nurse. Studies of Christian households have outlined the terms by which wet nurses were contracted. They demonstrate that, although the wet nurse was usually supervised by the infant’s mother, she was hired by its father. In cases in which the wet nurse was married, the contract was made between the infant’s father and the wet nurse’s husband.

…From a legal point of view, there were only two instances in which a woman was responsible for hiring a wet nurse herself—if she gave birth to an infant out of wedlock, or if she was a widow. Otherwise, the father of the infant—whether husband or ex-husband—was supposed to take care of these issues. Research on wet-nursing practices in medieval Christian society has identified a number of guidelines regulating the terms of employment of wet nurses. First of all, wet nurses were hired for a defined period of time and were expected to remain for the full allotted period. In addition, they were expected not to become pregnant until the end of this time. To this end, part of the wet nurse’s salary was withheld until the agreement had been fulfilled. 

…Scholars who have studied wet-nursing practices in Christian society have discussed the contracts wet nurses or their husbands signed when taking on new employment. In many cases the agreement was that the wet nurse would lose part of her salary if she left her job before her contract allowed her to do so. Many of the women who left their jobs early did so because of an additional pregnancy that prevented them from continuing to work. One of the ways employers tried to ensure that wet nurses would not leave their employment was by obtaining securities that would guarantee their stay. In other cases, they had the wet nurse, or her husband, swear that she would not break her contract.

We find some mention of this practice in Jewish sources as well, although no contracts from the medieval period have been found. The Mordekhai mentions three different ways of ensuring that a wet nurse would remain with an infant throughout the entire period she was needed or, at least, minimizing the potential damage of her leaving. He mentions vows/oaths, guarantees, and the option of hiring two wet nurses so that at least one of the two will stay on. Other sources provide further details of these practices. Oaths seemed to have been common. Women who swore not to leave their position usually committed themselves not to marry if they were single, and not to conceive, if they were married.

In the case of married women, this promise came under the category of vows by which a woman denies herself something. Since (according to Num. 31:10) such vows may be annulled by the husband, some legal authorities saw this oath as not sufficiently binding. However, it should be noted that in the case of a Christian wet nurse, the Jewish legal authorities were not willing to accept her oaths as valid. The rabbis argued that because Jews feared that gentiles would harm their children, no Jew would risk his child’s life and continue to employ a Christian wet nurse who wished to terminate her contract. Monetary guarantees or securities were another matter. As in Christian society, the wet nurses (Jewish and Christian) often agreed to forfeit a part of their promised wage if they left early. As for employing two wet nurses, this was a costly as well as a risky business. After all, both wet nurses could decide to leave, and then the infant would be no better off. 

This point does come up, however, in another Spanish responsum, written by R. Solomon Ibn Aderet (Rashba, thirteenth century). He discusses a case in which two wet nurses were hired, and the question addressed to him is whether one of them may be allowed to get married, as the child is used to nursing from two women, and if one of them cannot continue she may be replaced. In addition to their wages, the wet nurses received clothing and food. Moreover, it seems that it eventually became customary to provide wet nurses with gifts at certain times of the year. The Jewish sources discuss this custom in connection with non-Jewish wet nurses, but it is likely that this was the prevailing custom when employing Jewish wet nurses too, as it was between Christian employers and their wet nurses.”

- Elisheva Baumgarten, “Maternal Nursing and Wet Nurses: Feeding and Caring for Children.” in Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe

[salixj]

(December 21, 2020 / JNS) It’s one of the few rap videos around that features a lead singer in frockcoat, tallis and shtreimel—paired with a cascade of gold chains (one bearing a Magen David) and leopard-skin scarf—dancing with guys from the ‘hood facing off against others in Chassidic garb.

As such, “Mothaland Bounce,” where our hero proudly calls himself “Hitler’s worst nightmare,” reveals much about the man behind it and what it means to be a passionate and deeply committed Jew of color.

Because for Nissim Black—successful rapper, father of six and Orthodox Jew—the video makes a strong statement about how Jews of color merge their very disparate identities into a (nearly) seamless whole.

(Fans may want to check out Black’s newest rap video “Hava”—a thoroughly Nissim spin on the traditional “Hava Nagila”—its release timed for the first night of Hanukkah).

Black is perhaps the most famous of today’s Jews of color. (Readers of a certain age will recall when singer Sammy Davis Jr. could claim that honor).

Though the term itself has gained traction in the last decade, there have always been Jews of different races. Scan the globe today, and you’ll find Ethiopian Jews and the African Lemba tribe whose men test positive for the Kohen gene, a marker of the Jewish priests.

What’s more, many Sephardic, Cuban, Mexican and Yemenite Jews consider themselves Jews of color. Not to mention the murky waters surrounding pockets of the Black Hebrews found in Israel (largely in Dimona and Arad in the Negev Desert) and around the Diaspora, many of whom claim descent from the ancient Israelites.

The numbers are equally murky. Estimates range from 6 percent to 12 percent—or even as much as 15 percent—of today’s Jewish population being Jews of color. But there is little in the way of standardized definition of who is a Jew; some studies count all the members of a household as Jewish household when only one member actually is. But when researchers Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M. Sheskin held the disparate estimates of Jews of color up to the light of demographic standards earlier this year, they concluded that the percentage of Jews of color “is almost certainly closer to 6 percent nationally [from the 2013 Pew study] than 12 to 15 percent. And this percentage has not increased significantly since 1990, although it is likely to do so in the future.”

It stands to reason that this year of painful racial tensions across North America could trigger an internal debate in African-American Jews, especially those who came to the faith not through birth or adoption, but who, like Black, embraced Judaism as adults.

And embrace it many of them do—with passion, perseverance and a deep appreciation—often overcoming raised eyebrows, insensitivity and even downright racism in the process. With a surprising number of them finding their spiritual home in Orthodox Judaism.

Nissim Black

Damian Jamohl Black, whom the world knows now as rapper Nissim Black, was born into a family of Seattle drug dealers in 1986. His childhood was pockmarked by FBI raids on his home, his dad was taken away in handcuffs, and he was accustomed to assorted incidents of street violence and crime. By 9, he was smoking marijuana, and plants were growing in his room. By 12, he’d joined the family business.

The only faith Black was exposed to back then was his grandfather’s Islam. His first religious service? A mosque, which he attended until his grandfather went to prison.

But at 13, Black was pulled into Christianity by missionaries. He now says it was the best thing that could have happened to him. “This was the first time I was around people who had normal healthy relationships. No one sold drugs, they had a heart for kids from the inner city, and their summer camp was the most fun I’d had in my life,” he recalls. “Becoming religious saved me from the world of street gangs.”

By high school, he was “the poster child of the missionary center.” That’s when he met the woman who would become his wife. As a Seventh-Day Adventist, Jamie (now Adina) went to church on Saturdays. They wed in 2008 but remarried in an Orthodox ceremony after their conversion five years later.

By 19, Black was making rap music professionally, and his mother died of an overdose. But by 20, Christianity was beginning to feel foreign to him, and he began wondering what the Jews walking in his neighborhood on Saturday mornings were up to. “I went to Rabbi Google and found Chabad.org. And it all began to make sense,” he says. “I told my wife [they were newlyweds] that I didn’t want to celebrate Christmas and Easter anymore. Pretty soon, she was doing her own digging into Judaism.”

The couple’s conversion followed in 2013 and aliyah to Israel three years later. The Blacks now make their home in Ramat Beit Shemesh with their six children, ages 1 to 12. “I wanted my kids to grow up here,” he says, “where they’d see Jews of different shades all praying the same prayers.”

“I’ve checked every box, right?” he says with a laugh. “One rabbi at my yeshivah told me, ‘You have a lot of strikes against you: You’re black, you’re a convert and you’re a Breslov Chassid. And in all these things is your greatness.”

Maayan Zik

Maayan Zik was 13 when her soul woke her up. Growing up in Washington, D.C., with her mom and sister—her parents divorced when she was in first grade, and she didn’t see her dad for another 10 years—she attended Catholic schools and was close with her maternal grandparents, Jamaican immigrants who took her to museums and taught her the value of hard work and education.

Accompanying her Jamaican-born grandmother to church every Sunday, by 13, Zik had “begun to wonder if what my family believes is right for me.” She explored a number of world religions, but when she saw a photo of her light-skinned Jamaican great-grandmother Lilla Abrams, whom family lore says was Jewish, “I realized I had to go way back to find out who I am.”

When she moved to an apartment in 2005 in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., she noticed the previous tenant had a left up a poster of a white-bearded man. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to find out who you are.’ The man turned out to be the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Two years later, after courses and a summer seminary program, she converted. Thirteen years later, now 36, Zik remains there—with her Israeli-born husband and four children. “This somewhat awkward coexistence that lives inside me” fades into the background when she begins to pray, she says. “Having a personal conversation with God as part of the Jewish people, it’s who I’ve always been; I just didn’t know it.”

Mordechai Ben Avraham

Black and Mordechai Ben Avraham are both African-Americans from the West Coast (Seattle and Los Angeles, respectively), and both found Judaism in their 20s. But their early environment could hardly have been more different.

Growing up in an affluent neighborhood with a successful businessman father and a professor mother, “my focus was on how someday I could make more money than my dad.”

Ben Avraham’s spiritual journey took him from Sufism to the Kabbalah until at 22 he experienced Shabbat in a Carlebach-style minyan. “It was like I was floating in outer space. This is what Jews do? This is amazing! The Torah, the prayers, this beautiful spiritual system God gave to the Jews for people to transform themselves—they literally grabbed my heart.” His conversion was complete in 2013 with his move to Israel three years later.

Now 39, the former TV producer is living in the heart of Jerusalem’s religious Mea Shearim neighborhood, working towards his rabbinical degree and publishing a book on the joys of Torah as a black Jew.

But why would anyone who’s already making a huge leap religiously and culturally choose to embrace Orthodoxy with its full menu of mitzvot, accepting the Torah as Divine and committing to living within halachah (Jewish law)?

“If someone is going to make this big of a change completely based on their need to go beyond, there’s a very real tendency to go what many would consider ‘all the way,’ ” says Henry Abramson, dean of Brooklyn’s Touro College and author of The Kabbalah of Forgiveness: The Thirteen Levels of Mercy in Rabbi Moshe Cordovero’s Date Palm of Devorah (2014), among other titles.

A shared history

Much of this tendency to search spiritually can be traced to African-Americans’ religious experience in America, adds Abramson. “Since the 1960s, we’ve seen the phenomenon of questioning the Christianity foisted on their slave ancestors.”

And though Islam has attracted many of these disenfranchised souls—in part, he says, because the black Muslim culture permeated prisons beginning in the 1960s—Judaism offers another option.

Ben Avraham maintains that, in a spiritual sense, Judaism may feel familiar to those raised in the black church. “Like Judaism, gospel Christianity is an intense personal relationship with God without any intermediaries,” he says.

This is a connection Ben Avraham experiences every day of his life. “Living in Mea Shearim, in a fundamental way, I’m around people who are just like me. I just connect with my Chassidic neighbors.”

A growing fissure

But after the 1960s and ’70s, when Jews fought alongside blacks for civil rights in the United States and in South Africa, “there’s been a growing fissure between blacks and Jews,” says Rabbi Maury Kelman who, as director of Route 613, a New York City conversion program, has welcomed many students of different races into his classes.

And, with last summer’s rise in violence between the African-American community and the religious Jewish community, primarily in New York,” says Black, “lately, it’s gotten uglier.”

‘I cried all the way home’

Not everyone in the Jewish community rolls out the proverbial red carpet for someone of color.

After working up the courage to walk into synagogue on Shabbat, Zik couldn’t miss the two women glaring at her, eventually yelling at her to get out and threatening to call the police before giving chase.

“I cried all the way home, but my friends would not let me give up,” she says. “I also knew from everything I’d read about the Rebbe, with his emphasis on love and kindness, that eventually this would be the right place for me.”

“Unfortunately, like in all communities, you’ll find the occasional ignorant Jew or racist,” allows Kelman, who offers programs on the importance of accepting the convert.

A time of racial tensions

With this year’s heated racial debates and demonstrations following the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, where does that put Jews of color, with feet in both the African-American and Jewish worlds?

Zik, for one, helped lead a rally in Crown Heights this summer where black neighbors shared their experiences with racism. “It was a reminder,” she says, “that the Torah teaches us to protect the rights of all God’s children.”

And the learning goes both ways, she adds. “When black friends ask me if now that I’m Jewish, do I have money? I tell them about the Jews I know who struggle to pay for rent, food and their kids’ yeshivah tuitions. I tell them that, when I’ve had my babies, neighbors bring us meals and help furnish the nursery. People here always want to do another mitzvah.”

Ben Avraham also says he better appreciates African-American history because he is a Jew. “We can see our own story reflected in the Torah,” he says. “Our two peoples had so many struggles just to survive.”

Adds Black: “Just knowing there are black religious Jews can help the two communities see they aren’t completely separate after all—not to judge each other so quickly.”

Kelman agrees. “Black Jews can be a terrific bridge chiefly because they have credibility on both sides. It’s increasingly important to teach our fellow Jews that we’re a family that comes in different colors, that Judaism is colorblind,” he says. “Once they convert, they’re just as Jewish as any of us—and our diversity only strengthens us.”

‘Something bigger than myself’

By the end of “Mothaland Bounce,” the guys from the ’hood and the Chassids are dancing together with Black as ringmaster.

But it may be “A Million Years” that’s Black’s love letter to Judaism.

In this 2016 music video (with singer Yisroel Laub), Black takes a journey proudly carrying a Torah throughout Israel—archeological digs, mountain caves, a busy shuk (marketplace) and Jerusalem’s Old City—turning heads as he goes. (Don’t miss the moment when Black stops to let some haredi kids lovingly kiss the Torah), finally nestling it inside a synagogue’s ark.

“Since I was a kid, I was looking to be part of something bigger than myself,” says Black. “I prayed and prayed, and finally, I knew who I needed to be, a Jew, and where I needed to be, the Holy Land. It took time but now God’s answered my prayers. And one thing I know is that to God there is no such thing as color. He sees us for who we are inside.”

As he raps:

“I came from a distance Where everything was different … I called out to You And You showed me that You listened … I gave my all to You And You showed me who I am.”

[goldeneyedgirl]

JaliceWeek21 - Day 7: No Dialogue: This Time

Is... is this what organisation feels like? Having a fic ready to post?

Kayla wanted more Divorce Jalice, which I haven’t posted outside of Discord yet, but this is basically a snapshot of their reconciliation. 

he.

I saw you for the first time when we were seventeen and, Alice, I fell in love with you first sight. God, I was a goner who made a complete fool of himself trying to impress you and, despite my very best efforts, somehow you felt the same way.

It takes him the best part of the week to write the letter.

He struggles to find the words he wants to say. It feels a little dangerous, even writing the letter - she made herself clear when she moved in, that she didn’t want to remarry him. That it had taken months of negotiations for Alice to even agree to move in. And then there had been the long debate about her paying her share, even though her freelancing was successful and she was rarely at a loss for work, every trip to the ER left her exhausted for days. She didn’t make a salary, didn’t have any benefits… it just wasn’t reasonable or even expected for her to cover exactly half of the household expenses plus her own - he knew how much she loathed taking money from her family, but had made peace with it when she had no other choice.

And they had been had reached a good place, together. He’d argue it was better now than it had been when they were younger - there was so much laughter, so much conversation, and there was never a night when he didn’t look at her, curled up asleep in his arms, when he didn’t thank every power on earth that he’d been given another chance with Alice.

This… this was something else entirely. This was putting his entire heart in her hands, and risking losing her entirely. He knew Alice, better than he had before, and he knew that if she wasn’t at least a tiny bit open to this, she’d just move out again. Give them both ‘space’.

So, he writes the letter over and over again until it’s as good as it’s going to get. Then he writes it again because he’s smeared the ink.

But finally, it’s done, and he keeps it in his bag - like a ticking bomb. He goes home, they have dinner together and go to bed early to make love and watch the end of a movie. He sleeps with her in his arms, and he tries not to think that if this all goes wrong, this will be it - the very last time. That she’ll be gone again, like a ghost, and he already knows how wrong that will feel.

He leaves her sleeping the next morning, with a kiss to her temple. He walks across the road to the bodega for the good bagels and a bunch of flowers. He leaves them in the kitchen, and props up the letter in front of the vase.

And then he pulls the rings out. The fine, etched wedding ring, and the sapphire engagement ring. The initials and dates are engraved in the inside of both rings, three sets of Whitlock grooms and brides. He’d felt like a failure when he’d taken them back, had broken a link in an unbreakable chain. They were always destined to be passed to one of Rosalie’s children, but freely given, maybe even bequeathed. Never across a conference table, in front of lawyers.

Never as an act of pity and kindness when he had been buzzing from whatever cocktail of pills and alcohol he’d chased with an espresso before he signed away any legal or emotional connection to Alice.

Fuck, he was still ashamed and guilty. He still hated himself, especially now he knew the entire story.

He stares at the rings in his hand and hopes. That’s all he has left. Hope. And then he tucks them into the envelope.

It’s done. Whatever happens next, it is what it is.

she.

I have struggled with how close I came to losing you forever, and I think I always will. I need you to know that you are, and have always been, the best and most precious thing to me.

It’s a normal morning when she wakes up. Jasper leaves the curtains drawn these days, leaves her to sleep the morning away, if that’s what she needs. There have been a few little set-backs with her health over the last few years, but mostly she’s good.

No, not good. Better than good. Happy, content, loved. It’s more than she ever hoped for, in those dark days between one failed surgery and the next; when she and her surgeons had to debate the benefits of more surgery versus a full transplant, and she was alone with no one to lean on, no hand to hold.

Looking back, she wants to comfort her past self, let her know that better days are coming, that Jasper will come back to her - and her Jasper, not the man she divorced - and she’ll be okay. That every empty hospital room, every nurse that pitied her lack of flowers, and family and friends clustered around her bedside as she waited for the doctors’ verdict, her chest stitched and stapled and swathed in bandages, is just another step closer to things being wonderful again. That she and Jasper are both better people, better friends, better partners and lovers for everything that happened.

She gets out of bed, and heads towards the bathroom - detouring into her bedroom to retrieve clothes. She’s got a half-done piece on her desk, one that needs to be finished and shipped to her client in the next week or so.

After her shower, she locates her phone. The lock-screen is a photo of her and Jasper, the weekend he dragged her to California for some conference. They’re sprawled out on a sun-lounger together, grinning at the camera. It’s her favourite photo of him, of them. She can see his tattoos snaking around his side, his arm, his shoulder, and his neck; his hair is pulled back in a ridiculous ponytail she finds impossibly sexy, and the smile on his face is pure, unadulterated happiness. She’s tucked into his side in the silly (he called them ‘hot’ and ‘adorable’) heart-shaped sunglasses he’d bought her when she forgot hers. She’s got her hands clasped against her chest, her head nestled against his, and she’s smiling too. She remembers being so nervous about wearing a bikini for the first time, with her scars, but he’d convinced her, and they’d had a great day. A few people stared, but that was normal.

That had been the week he’d started wearing his wedding ring again, and when she’d asked, he’d dismissed it by saying he was tired of people hitting on him, even after he told them he wasn’t interested - and at the conference, with alcohol and the beach, it would be more annoying.

She’d let him think she believed that excuse and let it go.

It’s after eleven, and there’s no messages from him. Usually when she gets up, there’s at least three or four - maybe a photo of good coffee art if he stops by his usual place; a link to a restaurant or a movie he thinks they’d enjoy; or maybe an article that will make her laugh. And always a ‘good morning beautiful’ just before lunchtime.

Not today, not yet. Not so much as a dirty emoji message as a joke. There’s one from Rosalie (lunch on Friday), one from a prospective client, and one from Esme (family lunch on Sunday, can she and Jasper bring a dessert).

She frowns as she slips into the kitchen, and her gaze falls on the flowers - a mess of bright yellows and blues and pinks and purples. They’re beautiful and unnecessary and she’s already reaching for her phone again when she sees the letter propped up against it.

And for a second, she thinks her heart stops.

they.

I know you didn’t buy whatever I told you about me wearing my ring again. Because it was never about anyone else. It’s about you and me, and my commitment to you - my promise that as long as you’ll have me, I’ll be here. And that’s why I want you to have these back - because they have always been yours.

He walks home the long way. Home, in that moment, feels like a trap. Until he gets there, slides the key into the lock, he still has a partner, a girlfriend, a quasi-wife who told him so damn clearly that she didn’t want more than what they had.

(He knows it all now. The depth of the hurt, the pain. Pondering if she should have just cancelled the surgery and died quietly in the bed next to him whilst he drank and got high and fucked around behind her back. The days she spent in a hospital bed, alone and forgotten whilst he sat in a hard plastic chair in a church basement and admitted he had a problem. The long nights in the ER, holding her breath that it was just a false alarm, and nothing to worry about. Couples therapy had been as damning as it had been cleansing, and he carries her lost years with him everywhere, reminding him to be better, reminding him of how close it all came to being unfixable. He understands why she shies away from remarrying him when their marriage was always tangled up in so much hurt, but it doesn’t stop him from wanting more, wanting the most she can give.)

She’s in the kitchen, cooking dinner, when he walks in the door. That has to be a good sign. The apartment is warm and cosy, and it feels more like a home than anywhere he’s ever lived. He doesn’t want that to change.

Clutching his peace offering - a raspberry cake from the place a few blocks away - he walks into the kitchen.

She’s always the most beautiful woman in the room, in the world, to him and that’s no different tonight. There are no words for her, flitting around the kitchen like she knows what she’s doing, the curl of her hair against her cheek, the way she bites her lip as she checks something on the stove.

The way she brushes her hair out of her face with a hand that is wearing a fine, etched wedding ring, and a sapphire engagement ring that has their initials and wedding year engraved on the inside, and his heart definitely freezes in his chest and she’s wearing them again and that’s not something he let himself hope for. He prepared himself for the very worst and he’s found the very best and he doesn’t know what to say.

She meets his gaze with that warm smile, the one that is a little secretive and knowing that she only ever offers to him, and he holds out the cake like an offering and as she takes it, her eyes lighting up, he moves around the island to scoop her into his arms and kiss her. She squeals and somehow manages to put the cake down before she throws her arms around his neck, and he can feel her smiling against his lips.

He kisses her like it’s the very last time he’ll ever kiss her, like he’s trying to prove something. And maybe he is. Maybe he’s always going to be making up the past to her, like he can erase the hurt, the pain, the suffering. But they don’t have a time machine, and she’s long since made peace with everything that happened. Addiction is an illness, like everything else, but one that never truly goes away. The same way her heart will always been a little bit broken, he will also have that struggle. Maybe some day it will win again; there will probably be days when he does fall, just as long as there are more days he doesn’t. And that’s okay - she didn’t fall in love with him expecting him to be perfect. And the more she thinks about it, reflects on the apologies and the things he’s told her about everything that happened, she knows he never intended to hurt her.

Jasper’s been the centre of her universe since they were seventeen, since he looked across a classroom at her like he was starstruck and then grinned, that same grin he’s wearing now like he’s won an unwinnable prize. As if she could have resisted him, back then and right now.

That everything she is to him, he is to her.

He pulls back to look her in the eyes, to take her hand wearing the rings and to kiss it. She kisses him again hard and that’s all he needs to hoist her over his shoulder, her squealing and laughing, and it’s the best sound in the world as he turns off the stove and the oven, and sweeps her off towards his room.

Towards their room, both of them giddy, drunk on each other, on the idea that they’re in the same place at the same time, happy, healthy, and whole. Together, forever (this time.)

There is nothing in the world I love or will even love a much as I love you.

[ottomanladies]

Can you explain the political marriages between the Ottoman dynasty and the giray dynasty? Some sources claim that Salim's daughter is married to Saadat giray. Can you give me more information about Salim I Harem?

By some sources, I guess you mean Alderson, as he is the only one I could find that says this: un unnamed daughter of Selim I's married Mengili Giray's son and successor, Saadat Giray Han, and had a son with him called Ahmed.

Sakaoğlu doesn't seem to believe this because he could not find any information about this princess, not even when she died or where she was buried.

I have already described Selim I's harem but it's been such a long time and in the meantime I have done some more digging so I am going to talk about it once more.

The harem of Selim I

Consorts

Alderson wrote that he [Selim I] had four wives, three of whom were named Ayşe, Hafsa, and Taçlı Hatun. He claimed that the last one’s name was unknown. Even if he wrote that Ayşe was the daughter of the Crimean Khan, that she was married to Mehmed, Bayezid II’s son, and that Selim married her upon Mehmed’s death at a young age, it is not true. Because we know that during the reigns of Bayezid II and Selim I, Mehmed’s mother and wife were paid and stayed in the Old Palace. According to Hafsa Sultan’s endowment, the woman’s name was Ayşe. Therefore, it is highly likely that Ayşe and Hafsa were the same person. Taçlı Hatun was married at the end of the Çaldıran War to Tacizade Cafer Çelebi. Lütfi Pasha, who participated in this war, described it most clearly in his history. However, even if it is understood from the letters Hafsa Sultan wrote to Yavuz Sultan Selim that Yavuz had other wives other than her, their names cannot be determined. — M. Çağatay Uluçay, Padişahların Kadınları ve Kızları

Ayşe Hafsa Hâtûn (later Vâlide-Sultân): concubine of slave origins, her origins are obscure:

It took the Ottoman populace a long while to discard the assumption that the mothers of princes and princesses were all royally born. This reluctance, present even today, helps to explain why legend has long claimed Suleyman’s mother Hafsa to be a Giray Tatar princess. Hafsa may well have hailed from the northern Black Sea region or even been a gift of the Tatar khan to the Ottoman court, but she was in fact a captive convert of modest origins, like virtually every woman in the imperial harem at the time when she entered it, probably the early 1490s. The tenacious story of Hafsa’s royal Tatar pedigree probably has something at least to do with a different sort of association she enjoyed with the Crimean Khanate. Hafsa accompanied Suleyman on his first political assignment as prince when in 1509 he was appointed, at the age of fifteen, to serve as governor of Caffa. The city was capital of a ribbon of territory running along the southeastern shores of the Crimean peninsula that constituted a province under direct Ottoman rule. In Caffa, Suleyman and his mother doubtless had contact with the Tatar authorities, perhaps with the khan himself. — Peirce, Empress of the East: How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire

She is sometimes called also Hafisa or Hafiza. She was the mother of Süleymân I, Hatice Sultan, Fatma Sultan and possibly Beyhan or Hafsa Sultan. Ayşe Hafsa was the first concubine to receive the title of sultan, therefore making her the first valide sultan. She was also the first woman to build an imperial mosque complex, the Sultaniye in Manisa.

Children

The same mystery that surrounds Selim I's consorts also surrounds his sons. According to tradition, he supposedly killed them all except for Süleymân after he had designated him as heir. Another theory holds that all his other sons simply died in childhood and that Süleymân was the only prince to survive into adulthood.

Süleymân I (27.4.1494/1495 - 7.9.1566): 10th sultan of the Ottoman Empire

Şehzade Orhan (1500?-1510?)

Şehzade Musa and Şehzade Korkut: died little

Alderson instead calls Selim I’s other sons: Abdullah, Murad and Mahmud

His daughters are also a matter of discussion among historians: from their number to their actual names, nothing is set in stone so far.

Gevherhan Sultan (1494?-?): figures only in Öztuna. She married İsfendiyâroğlu Dâmâd Sultân-zâde Mehmed Bey, the son of her aunt Fatma (daughter of Bayezid II)

Hatice Sultan (before 27.4.1494-1582?): Öztuna believes that her second name was Hanım. As Ayşe Hafsa's daughter, she must have been older than Süleymân. Her marriages and children are a matter of speculation:

according to Dumas and Turan, she married Bostancıbaşı İskender Paşa in 1508; widowed in 1515, she married Çoban Mustafa Paşa in 1517. Mustafa Paşa was, for the occasion, elevated to the rank of vizier

That she married İbrâhîm Paşa is a tradition that has long since been dispelled.

With her first husband, she had Sultân-zâde Mehmed-Şâh Bey, Sultân-zâde Süleymân Bey, Sultân-zâde ‘Alî Bey, Nefîse Hanım-Sultân and Sultân-zâde Kara ‘Osman-Şâh Bey/Paşa (1510?-1567/68), though ‘Osman-Şâh is sometimes ascribed to her sister Hafsa. It is not certain if Sultân-zâde Mehmed-Şâh Bey (1525?-?), and X Hanım-Sultân were her children from her second marriage as Mehmed-Şâh was also the name of İbrâhîm Paşa's son with his wife Muhsine Hatun. Hânım Hanım-Sultân is buried in Hürrem Sultan's tomb and called Hatice Sultan's daughter on her plaque. We don't know when she was born but she lived long enough to be married to a Abdü'l-Kerîm Bey.

Fatma Sultan (before 27.4.1494-1556): daughter of Ayşe Hafsa, she had three husbands during her life: Mustafa Paşa, governor of Antalya, but the marriage was dissolved because he was homosexual. Her second husband was Grand Vizier Kara Ahmed Paşa, possibly married in 1532, who was executed on 28 September 1555. Her third and final husband was Hâdim İbrâhîm Paşa, a eunuch, and possibly a love match. She was buried in the mausoleum of her second husband, Ahmed Paşa. All her marriages were childless.

Beyhan Sultan (?-before 1559): if she was Ayşe Hafsa's daughter, she must have been born before 1494. She married Ferhâd Paşa, former chief of the Janissaries and afterwards governor of Rumelia, of Damascus and ultimately second vizier. He was executed by her brother Süleymân I in 1524. She seems to have re-married after 1524, to a Mehmed Paşa with which she had İsmihân Hanım-Sultân. According to Dumas, İsmihân was Ferhâd Paşa's daughter and Beyhan never remarried. Beyhan is also called Peykhan in some harem documents.

Hafsa (or Hafisa) Sultan (1500?-1538?): she was born in Trabzon. According to Uluçay, Ayşe Hafsa was her mother (though this would make her date of birth earlier than 1494). Her first husband was Grand Vizier Dukaginzade Ahmed Paşa, whom Selim I executed in 1515, according to Sakaoğlu. According to Uluçay, she married İskender Paşa, former bostâncıbaşı; Öztuna, on the other hand, claims she had married an unnamed Ağa, and Selim I's bostâncıbaşı. Her second husband is a matter of discussion as well:

Öztuna claims she married Gaazî Çoban Mustafa Paşa (but it seems that he was married to Hatice)

According to Alderson, Dumas and Sakaoğlu, she instead married Boşnak Mustafa Paşa

According to Alderson and Sakaoglu, she had only one son: Sultân-zâde Kara ‘Osman-Şâh Bey/Paşa. Hafsa Sultan died on 10 July 1538 and was buried in the Sultan Selim Mosque.

Şah, Şah-i Huban or Devlet-Şah Sultan (??-1572): daughter of an unknown concubine who resided in the Old Palace as late as 1556, therefore giving credit to Uluçay's theory that Selim I had more consorts other than Ayşe Hafsa but that we lost their names. She married Lutfî Paşa around 1523 and had İsmihân Hanım-Sultân with him. She was a very pious person:

Suleyman’s sister Shah Sultan would prove a prolific patron, although of relatively modest projects (over the course of her long lifetime, she endowed three mosques, three dervish lodges, and other smaller structures in three different Istanbul neighborhoods) — Peirce, Empress of the East: How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire

Her brother Süleymân I granted her a divorce after Lutfî Paşa had tried to hit her:

Shah was wed to the Albanian Lutfi Pasha, grand vizier from 1539 until his dismissal and forced retirement in 1541. The rupture was precipitated by an argument between the couple over Lutfi’s harsh punishment of a prostitute, possibly possibly circumcision or the branding of her genitals. In the heat of dispute, the vizier committed an unpardonable act—he struck his princess wife, grounds for their divorce and his banishment. A notable patron of dervishes, Shah continued to observe her sufi piety through further endowments. — Peirce, Empress of the East: How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire

After her divorce, she did not remarry and instead retired in the Old Palace.

Şehzade or Sultanzade Sultan (??-??): her existence is proven by harem records of the Old Palace, where she figures with her daughter, Ayşe. According to Uluçay, she was married to Çoban Mustafa Paşa but that seems impossible, as Çoban Mustafa Paşa seems to have been Hatice Sultan's second husband. He also says that he died in 1527-28 but he actually died in 1529. Uluçay also called her Hanım.

According to Öztuna, a granddaughter of Selim I firstly married Grand Vizier Koca Sinân Paşa and then married in 1596 Dâmâd Güzelce Mahmûd Paşa, but the marriage lasted less than a year because she died in June 1597. Dâmâd Güzelce Mahmûd Paşa would later become Murad III’s daughter Ayşe’s third husband. Another granddaughter married Pertev Paşa and had a son with him called Ahmed who died before his father. I could not verify these claims but maybe one of these granddaughters was Şehzade's daughter.

[reallifesultanas]

Portraits of Selim II's daughters/II. Szelim lányainak portréi

Selim II had four daughters, Gevherhan, Şah, Esmehan and Fatma. Esmehan and Gevherhan became influental women of their era.

Gevherhan Sultan

Gevherhan Sultan was most likely born in 1544 as the daughter of later Selim II. Her mother was presumably Selim’s favorite concubine, Nurbanu, but considering her life path, we can’t be sure of that. She spent her childhood in her father’s province with her parents, sisters, and younger brother. A major change in their lives may have taken place in 1558, when Sultan Suleiman appointed her younger brother, Murad, to his own princely province. We are not left with any unequivocal evidence that his sisters accompanied Murad or not, but according to tradition, the girls who were Murad's full-sisters should go with him, so Esmehan certainly and perhaps Gevherhan left with the young prince also.

She moved to Istanbul in 1562 in the company of two of her sisters, Şah and Esmehan. Sultan Suleiman decided to marry Selim's daughters off in that year. Gevherhan's husband was Piyale Pasha, an admiral. During the sixteen years of their marriage, two daughters, Ayşe Atike (1563 -?), Fatma, and a son, Mehmed were born. During their marriage, there were rumors that Gevherhan had once stabbed one of their slaves with her own hands when she saw her husband stroking the slave girl's neck. It is not known whether this story is true, but it certainly well illustrates the assumption that a sultana could not have been humiliated or cheated by her husband in any way so that he could get away with it.

After the death of her first husband in 1578, she remarried in 1579, this time it was her younger brother, Murad, who chosed a husband for her, Cerrah Mehmed Pasa. Their marriage was balanced, with Gevherhan strongly supporting her husband’s political career. According to some sources, it was thanks to Gevherhan's support that Cerrah Mehmed Pasa was the one who circumcised Gevherhan's nephew the future Mehmed III in 1580. Either way, the event brought the pasha, the prince, and Gevherhan very close together. Three years later Gevherhan gifted a beautiful Bosnian slave girl to Mehmed when he received his own province. This Bosnian slave later became Handan, the mother of the future Sultan Ahmed I.

Gevheran and Mehmed Pasa were at the peak of their political careers when Mehmed III appointed Cerrah Mehmed Pasha as Grand Vizier in 1598. Thanks to her husband’s rank, Gevherhan was able to get into top political circles and certainly kept in constant contact with Handan and her son, Ahmed. The latter is supported by the fact that the influence of Gevherhan and Cerrah Mehmed Pasha did not diminish even after Ahmed's accession to the throne. Young Ahmed certainly wanted to express his gratitude to Gevherhan and Cerrah Mehmed for having played a very important role in bringing his parents together in the past. Ahmed believed that without Gevherhan and her husband he could never have been born, so he owes them a debt of gratitude for his existence as well. Unfortunately, Ahmed did not have the opportunity to reward Cerrah Mehmed, as the pasha died on January 9, 1604. However, he treated Gevherhan with great reverence, sending her thousands of gold coins, and a dress with sable fur, which was so rare that only Handan and Safiye received a similar one from the young Sultan in December 1603. In February 1604, Ahmed again donated a stable fur silk dress, but this time only Gevherhan and Handan received it. Ahmed later named one of his daughters Gevherhan, certainly in honor of his aunt. Gevherhan’s salary in Ahmed’s life was 350 asper per day, which was particularly high compared to her rank.

She did a lot of charity during her life, including building a madrassa in Cağaloğlu. Gevherhan lived a long life, certainly being still alive in 1623 when she last amended her will. She appointed his daughter's husband to be the superintendent of his foundations, in return for which he was guaranteed a daily salary of 80 aspers. The fact that she did not entrust it to her daughter may indicate that Ayşe Atike may have already passed away. But according to the will of Gevherhan, she also left money for her children, so perhaps in addition to Ayşe Atike, her other children also reached adulthood, or she possibly had grandchildren.

Şah Sultan

Şah was probably the future Selim II's eldest child, his firstborn daughter, borning in 1544. It has long been held that her mother was Nurbanu, but there is no evidence for this, and even second-hand evidence suggests that Şah was not Nurbanu's daughter.

In 1562, a great turning point came in her life, for on the orders of her grandfather, Sultan Suleiman, she was married off along her two sisters. For her, the chief falconer, Çakırcıbaşı Hasan Agha, was appointed as a husband, who was of lower rank than the husbands of her two sisters. This fact may also suggest that Şah may not be the future Murad III's full sister, so was not Nurbanu's daughter. Later, of course, Hasan Agha also has risen and became a vizier. Probably no child was born from this marriage.

She had been married to Hasan Agha for twelve years, after his death in 1574 she could choose a husband by herself. Her choice fell on Zal Mahmud Pasha, with whom she married in 1575 and they lived in true love based marriage. Their love is legendary and is a refreshing exception among political marriages. They had at least two children, a girl who married Abdal Han when she reached adulthood; and a son, Köse Husrev Pasa, who became an influential statesman and eventually died in a battle against the Safavids.

Unfortunately, Şah and Zal Mahmud were not able to take part in the upbringing of their children for long, for in the autumn of 1577 they both fell ill and, according to legend, they died at the same minute on the same day. However, the reality is less poetic, Şah died on November 3, while Zal Mahmud 12 days later. They were both laid to rest in the jointly built Zal Mahmud Pasha Mosque Complex. Their children were certainly raised by the Valide Sultan, Nurbanu until her own death in 1583, and then Sultan Murad III took care of them.

An ambassador was just present when Şah’s funeral took place and wrote of the event: “Today (3 November 1577) at 12 o'clock we witnessed the funeral of Mahmud Paşa’s wife, daughter of Sultan Selim. It was a modest ceremony. […] There was a crowd on either side of and behind the coffin. (Sokollu) Mehmed Paşa was first, the Chief Judge of Rumelia next to him. Behind them were Mustafa Paşa, Ahmed Paşa, Sinan Paşa, the Chief Judge of Anatolia, the governor of Rumelia and the Commander of the Janissaries, all docked in black clothes and riding horses. The Janissaries had replaced their usual headdresses with turbans."

Esmehan Sultan

Esmehan Sultan was born in 1545 to Nurbanu and later Selim II. Unlike her sisters, Gevherhan and Şah, Esmehan was without a doubt Nurbanu's daughter. For this reason in 1558 she most likely followed Nurbanu and Murad to his new princely province and that was the place from where she moved to Istanbul in 1562 for her own marriage.

Of her sisters, Esmehan married the highest-ranking statesman, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, Grand Vezir of Sultan Suleiman I, who later during the reign of Selim II, and even during Murad III he run the empire. At least four children were born from their marriage, three sons, Ahmed (1563? - 1566), Pir-Mehmed (1566? - 1567?), Sokolluzade İbrahim (1565 - 1622?), and a girl Safiye (1563? -?), who was married to Lala Mustafa Pasa, Grand Vezir's son.

Through her husband and her own rank, Esmehan was the most influential sultana of the empire for years. In wealth, only her aunt, Mihrimah, could overtake her, but in influence, almost no one could. With Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, they supported several grandiose construction projects, such as the Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Mosque Complex and the Esmehan Sultan Mosque Complex. Esmehan’s personality was very dramatic, which she often allowed to manifest. Thus, for example, she organized her nephew, Mehmed’s circumcision ceremony, which included a child being nearly killed by a hired assassin, but rescued by a nymph-dressed young girl.

Knowing her personality, it is not surprising that she also regularly supported her mother in her political affairs. Thus, for example, she also played a key role in convincing France to gave back two Turkish women capture on the sea. She also had an influence on her brother, which she and her mother tried to exploit. Nurbanu didn't really get along with Murad's favorite, Safiye, and she was doing her best to turn Murad to other women. Esmehan was there to help her mother and in the end, she was the one who successfully introduced two very well educated, beautiful women to Murad. Murad accepted the gift and from then on his monogamous relationship with Safiye ended.

In 1579, her husband, Sokollu, was murdered, widowing her at the age of just 34. The young woman immediately wanted to get married again and wanted a young, handsome husband at all costs, which was understandable given the fact that Sokollu was 40 years older than her. At first, she wanted the famously handsome Özdemiroğlu Osman Pasha, but the pasha rejected the marriage offer. Many wondered why anyone would reject the most influential woman in the empire. We will never know the answer, but one of the possible options is that Özdemiroğlu Osman Pasa was simply in love with his first wife and did not want to divorce, yet others believe that the appearance of Esmehan may have been the reason. Esmehan is one of the few sultanas whose appearance-records have survived. Those who were lucky enough to meet her all said that Emehan was short and not pretty or beautiful at all, but they also noted that her intelligence and cheerful personality still amazed the people around her. Esmehan may have inherited her appearance and nature from her grandmother, Hürrem Sultan, who was also thought to be short and not a classical beauty.

However, after the rejection, Esmehan finally found a young husband, Kalaylıkoz Ali Pasa, the governor of Buda. However, the marriage did not last long, for on August 5, 1585, Esmehan gave birth to a son and then died of complications three days later. The boy, Mahmud, survived his mother with a month. Esmehan was buried in the mausoleum of her father in Aya Sofia. Her son, Mahmud, was buried in the mausoleum of her first husband, Sokollu Mehmed.

Fatma Sultan

Fatma Sultan was born in 1559 as the child of later Selim II and an anonymous concubine. Undoubtedly, Nurbanu was not her mother, as she was not in Selim's harem at Fatma's birth, and her will also reveal that Nurbanu was not her mother. Nurbanu had left Selim's province not long before when she accompanied Prince Murad to his province. Since 1546, Selim has paid special attention not to have more children, which is why the birth of Fatma is certainly due to an accident.

Fatma married Kaniyeli Siyavuş Pasa in 1574, who was the beylerbey of Rumelia and later became a Grand Vizier also. Their marriage was certainly happy, for she used all her influence to persuade her brother Murad to spare the pasha's life when he fell out of the sultan's favor. The pasha eventually survived Fatma as well. From their marriage four sons, Ahmed (1573 - 1582), Mustafa (1575 - 1599), Abdülkaadir (1577 - 1583), Süleyman (1579 - 1583?), and a girl were born.

Fatma died in 1580 after the birth of her daughter. The child also died shortly after birth, as he was a premature baby. Fatma still had time to make a will. From this, we know that her mother was not Nurbanu, for Fatma left her mother with a daily salary of 40 aspers. Thus, although the name of Fatma's mother remains an eternal mystery, we know that she survived her daughter and Selim II as well. She was buried in her father’s mausoleum at Aya Sofya. She did a lot of charity during her life, just like her sisters. Among other things, she built a madrassa, an elementary-school in Edirnekapi, but she also distributed a lot of money after her father’s death to say prayers for his soul.

Used sources:P. Kayaalp - The Empress Nurbanu and Ottoman Politics in the Sixteenth Century - Building the Atik Valide; Y. Öztuna - Kanuni Sultan Süleyman; U. Dakic - The Sokollu family clan and the politics of vizireial households in the second half of the sixteens century; S. Faroqhi - The Ottoman Empire and the World around it; C. Imber - The Ottoman Empire 1300-1650; D. A. Howard - A history of the Ottoman Empire; L. Peirce - Empress of the East; L. Peirce - The imperial harem; Pinar Kayaalp-Aktan, The Atik Valide Mosque Complex: A testament of Nurbanu’s prestige, power and piety; Necdet Sakaoğlu - Bu Mülkün Kadın Sultanları; Ömer Düzbakar, Charitable Women And Their Pious Foundations In The Ottoman Empire: The Hospital of The Senior Mother, Nurbanu Valide Sultan

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Gevherhan szultána

Gevherhan szultána legnagyobb valószínűséggel 1544-ben született az akkor még hercegi rangot viselő, leendő II. Szelim lányaként. Anyja feltehetőleg Szelim kedvenc ágyasa, Nurbanu volt, ám figyelmebe véve életútját nem vehetjük biztosra ezt. Gyermekkorát apja maniszai tartományában töltötte szülei, húgai és öccse társaságában. Életükben nagyobb változás történhetett 1558-ban, mikor Szulejmán szultán kinevezte öccsét, Muradot egy saját hercegi tartományba. Nem maradt ránk egyételmű bizonyíték, hogy testvérei Muraddal tartottak e, ám a tradíció szerint azok a lányok, akik Murad édestestvérei voltak, tehát Esmehan biztosan és talán Gevherhan is a fiatal herceggel tartottak.

Öccse tartományát, vagy apjáét - amennyiben nem Murad édestestvére volt - minden bizonnyal 1562-ben hagyta el másik két lány testvére, Şah és Esmehan társaságában, amikor Isztambulba mentek. Ekkor Szulejmán szultán úgy határozott, kiházasítja Szelim lányait. Gevherhan férje Piyale Pasha, admirális lett. Házasságuk tizenhat éve alatt két lányuk született, Ayşe Atike (1563 - ?), Fatma szultánák és egy fiuk, Mehmed. Házasságuk során olyan pletykák keltek szárnya, miszerint Gevherhan egyszer saját kezüleg szúrta le egyik rabszolgájukat, amikor meglátta, hogy férje megsimogatja a lány nyakát, amikor elhaladt mellette. Nem tudni, hogy igaz e a történet, azonban azt mindenképpen jól szemlélteti már a feltevés is, hogy egy szultánát semmiképp sem alázhatta meg, csalhatta meg a férje, úgy hogy ezt megússza.

Első férje 1578-as halála után 1579-ben újra kiházasították, ezúttal öccse, Murad választott számára férjet, Cerrah Mehmed Pasa személyében. Házasságuk kiegyensúlyozott volt, Gevherhan erőteljesen támogatta férje politikai pályafutását. Egyesek szerint már az is Gevherhan támogatásának volt köszönhető, hogy Mehmed Pasa volt az, aki 1580-ban körülmetélte Gevherhan unokaöccsét, a leendő III. Mehmedet. Akárhogyan is, az esemény nagyon közel hozta egymásoz a pasát, a herceget és Gevherhant. Hogy a körülmetélést megkoronázza, Gevherhan egy gyönyörű bosnyák rabszolgát ajándékozott Mehmednek, amint a herceg 1583-ban saját tartományt kapott. Ez a bosnyák rabszolga lett később Handan szultána, a leendő szultán I. Ahmed édesanyja.

Gevheran és Mehmed Pasa politikai pályájuk csúcsát akkor élték, mikor III. Mehmed 1598-ban kinevezte Cerrah Mehmed Pasát nagyevzírnek. Férje rangjának köszönhetően Gevherhan a legfelőss politikai körökbe kerülhetett és minden bizonnyal állandó jelleggel kapcsolatot tartott Handannal és fiával, Ahmeddel is. Ezutóbbit támasztja alá a tény, hogy Ahmed trónralépése után sem csappant meg Gevherhan és Cerrah Mehmed Pasa befolyása, sőt! A fiatal Ahmed mindenképp ki akarta fejezni háláját Gevherhan és Cerrah Mehmed irányába, amiért azok korábban igen fontos szerepet játszottak szülei összehozásában. Ahmed úgy vélte, hogy Gevherhan és férje nélkül ő maga sosem születhetett volna meg, ezért létezéért is nekik tartozik hálával. Sajnálatos módon Ahmednek nem volt alkalma Cerrah Mehmedet magjutalmazni, ugyanis a pasa 1604 január 9-én elhunyt. Azonban Gevherhan szultánát nagyon nagy tisztelettel kezelte, több ezer aranyat küldött neki, valamint egy prémmel díszített ruhát, mely olyan ritka volt, hogy Gevherhanon kívül csupán Handan és Safiye szultána kapott hasonlót a fiatal szultántól 1603 decemberében. 1604 februárjában Ahmed újra prémes selyem ruhát ajándékozott, ám ezúttal csak Gevherhan és Handan szultánák kaptak. Ahmed később egyik leányát is Gevherhannak nevezte el, minden bizonnyal nagy-nagynénje tiszteletére. Gevherhan fizetése Ahmed életében 350 asper volt naponta, ami különösen magas volt rangjához viszonyítva.

Élete során rengeteget jótékonykodott, többek között építtetett egy madrassát Cağaloğluban. Gevherhan hosszú életet élt, 1623-ban még minden bizonnyal életben volt, hiszen ekkor módosította utoljára a végrendeletét, mely módosítás szerint lányának férjét nevezte ki alapítványainak felügyelőjének, melyért cserébe 80 asperes napi fizetést garantált neki. Az, hogy nem lányát bízta meg arra utalhat, hogy Ayşe Atike talán már elhunyt, esetleg nem találta őt alkalmasnak a feladatra. Utóbbit valószínűsíti, hogy a végrendelet szerint Gevherhan gyermekekre is hagyott pénzt, így talán Ayşe Atike mellett más gyermeke is megérte a felnőtt kort, esetleg unokái lehettek.

Şah szultána

Şah szultána volt valószínűleg a leendő II. Szelim legidősebb gyermeke, első szülött lánya, aki 1544-ben születhetett. Régóta tartja magát az, hogy édesanyja Nurbanu szultána volt, azonban erre nincs semmiféle bizonyíték, sőt a másodlagos bizonyítékok inkább úgy sejtetik, hogy Şah nem Nurbanu lánya volt.

1562-ben életében nagy fordulat állt be, ugyanis nagyapja, Szulejmán szultán parancsára két másik lánytestvérével együtt férjhez ment. Számára a fő solymászt, Çakırcıbaşı Hasan Agát jelölték ki férjül, aki másik két testvérének férjeihez képest alacsony rangú volt. Ez a tény is arra utalhat, hogy Şah talán nem a leendő III. Murad édestestvére volt, ezáltal nem Nurbanu lánya. Később természetesen Hasan Aga is feljebb jutott a ranglétrán és vezír lett belőle. Valószínűleg nem született gyermek ebből a házasságból.

Hasan Agával tizenkét évig voltak házasok, 1574-es halála után maga választhatott férjet. Választása Zal Mahmud Pasára esett, akivel 1575-ben házasodtak össze és igazi szerelmi házasságban éltek. Szerelmük legandás és üdítő kivétel a politikai házasságok között. Legalább két gyermekük született, egy lány, aki a felnőttkort megérve férjhez ment Abdal Han-hoz; és egy fiuk Köse Husrev Pasa, aki befolyásos államférfi lett és a szafavidák elleni harcban hunyt végül el.

Şah és Zal Mahmud sajnálatos módon nem vehettek hosszan részt gyermekeik nevelésében, ugyanis 1577 őszén mindketten betegek lettek és a legenda szerint ugyanazon a napon ugyanabban a percben hagyta el őket az élet. A valóság azonban kevésbé költői, Şah november 3-án hunyt el, míg Zal Mahmud 12 nappal később. Mindkettejüket a közösen építtetett Zal Mahmud Pasa dzsámiban helyezték örök nyugalomra. Gyermekeiket minden bizonnyal Nurbanu Valide szultána nevelte saját 1583-as haláláig, utána pedig III. Murad szultán gondoskodott róluk.

Egy követ épp jelen volt, mikor Şah temet��se zajlott és így írt az eseményről: "Ma déli 12 órakor láttam, ahogy eltemetik Mahmud Pasa feleségét, Szelim Szultán lányát. Igen egyszerű ceremónia volt, ám hatalmas tömeg gyűlt össze a koporsó mindkét oldalán. Szokollu Mehmed Pasa, a nagyvezír volt az első, majd Rumélia főbírója követte őt. Mögöttük Mustafa, Ahmed, Sinan pasák és Anatólia főbírója vonult, valamint Rumélia beglerbégje és a főjanicsár vezető. Mindnyájan feketébe öltözve ültek lovaikon és még a janicsárok is lecserélték szokásos fejfedőiket turbánra."

Esmehan szultána

Esmehan szultána 1545-ben született Nurbanu és a leendő II. Szelim lányaként. Nővéreivel, Gevherhannal és Şahhal ellentétben, Esmehan minden kétséget kizáróan Nurbanu lánya volt. Emiatt 1558-ban nagy valószínűséggel követte Nurbanut és Muradot annak hercegi tartományába és innen ment férjhez is 1562-ben.

Testvérei közül Esmehan kötött a legmagasabb rangú államférfival házasságot. Férje Szokollu Mehmed Pasa lett, Szulejmán szultán nagyvezíre, aki később Szelim uralkodása során, sőt még III. Murad uralkodása alatt is vezette a birodalmat. Legalább négy gyermeke született Szokollu Mehmed Pasától, három fiú, Sokollu Ahmed (1563? - 1566), Pir-Mehmed (1566? - 1567?), Sokolluzade İbrahim (1565 - 1622?) és egy lány Safiye (1563? - ?), aki a felnőttkort megérve megházasodott Lala Mustafa Pasa, nagyvezír fiához nőül menve.

Férje és saját rangja révén Esmehan a birodalom legbefolyásosabb szultánája volt éveken keresztül. Gazdagságban csupán nagynénje, Mihrimah szultána tudta lekörözni, befolyásban viszont szinte senki. Szokollu Mehmed Pasával több grandiózus építkezési projektet is támogattak, így például nevükhöz köthető a Szokollu Mehmed Pasa mecset komplexum és az Esmehan Szultána mecset komplexum. Esmehan személyisége igen drámai volt, melyet gyakran engedett megnyilvánulni. Így például ő szervezte unokaöccse, későbbi III. Mehmed körülmetélési szertartását, melynek része volt, hogy egy gyermeket egy felbérelt gyilkos próbál megölni, de megmenti egy nimfának öltözött fialat lány.

Drámai személysigét ismerve nem meglepő, hogy édesanyját is rendszeresen támogatta annak politikai ügyeiben. Így például kiemelt szerepe volt abban is, hogy a franciáktól sikerült visszaszerezniük egy néhány éve a tengeren elfogott hajó két török, női utasát. Emellett befolyása volt öccsére is, melyet édesanyjával közösen igyekeztek kihasználni. Nurbanu ugyanis nagyon nem jött ki Murad kedvencével, Safiyével és minden erejével azon volt, hogy Muradot más nők felé fordítsa. Esmehan ebben segítségére volt édesanyjának és végül ő volt az, aki sikerrel mutatott be két igen jó nevelésű, gyönyörű nőt Muradnak. Murad elfogadta az ajándékot és onnantól kezdve megszűnt monogám kapcsolata Safiyével.

1579-ben férjét, Szokollu Mehmedet meggyilkolták, ezzel alig 34 évesen megözvegyült. Az ifjú szultánának azonnal házaosdni támadt kedve és mindenáron fiatal, jóképű férjet akart, ami érthető volt, figyelembe véve a tényt, hogy Szokollu Mehmed 40 évvel volt nála idősebb. Elsőre a híresen jóképű Özdemiroğlu Osman Pasát nézte ki, a pasa azonban elutasította a házassági ajánlatot. Sokakban felmerült a kérdés, hogy miért utasítaná el bárki a birodalom legbefolyásosabb nőjét. A választ sosem fogjuk megtudni, ám a lehetséges opciók között szerepel az, hogy Özdemiroğlu Osman Pasa egyszerűen szerelmes volt első feleségébe és esze ágában sem volt elválni; megint mások úgy vélik, hogy Esmehan szultána külseje lehetett a frigy útjában. Esmehan azon kevés szultánák közé tartozik, akinek külleméről maradtak fenn feljegyzések. Akiknek volt szerencséjük találkozni vele, mind azt mondták, hogy Emehan alacsony és egyáltalán nem csinos vagy szép, azonban megjegyezték azt is, hogy intelligenciája és vidám személyisége mégis levette a lábáról a körülötte lévő embereket. Esmehan talán nagyanyjára, Hürrem szultánára üthetett, akiről szintén úgy tartották, hogy alacsony volt és nem klasszikus szépség.

A visszautasítás után azonban Esmehan végül talált egy fiatal férjet, Kalaylıkoz Ali Pasát, Buda kormányzóját. A házasság azonban nem tartott sokáig, mert 1585 augusztus 5-én Esmehan életet adott egy fiúgyermeknek, majd három nappal később belehalt a komplikációkba. A fiú, Mahmud egy hónappal élte túl édesanyját. Esmehant apja mauzóleumában helyezték örök nyugalomra az Aya Sofiában. Fiát, Mahmudot első férje, Szokollu Mehmed mauzóleumában temették el.

Fatma szultána

Fatma szultána 1559-ben született a későbbi II. Szelim és egy névtelen ágyas gyermekeként. Minden kétséget kizáróan nem Nurbanu gyermek volt, hiszen születésekor Nurbanu nem tartózkodott Szelim háremében, emellett végrendeletéből is kiderül, hogy nem Nurbanu az édesanyja. Nurbanu nem sokkal korábban elhagyta Szelim tartományát, hogy Murad herceggel annak tartományába utazzon. Szelim 1546 óta különös figyelmet fordított arra, hogy ne nemzzen több gyermeket, épp ezért Fatma születése minden bizonnyal egy véletlen balesetnek köszönhető.

Fatma szultána 1574-ben ment férjhez Kanijeli Siyavuş Pasához, aki Rumélia beglerbégje volt, majd később nagyvezír is lett. Házasságuk minden bizonnyal boldog volt, ugyanis minden befolyását bevetve győzte meg bátyját Muradot, hogy kímélje meg a pasa életét, amikor az kiesett a szultán köreiből. A pasa végül Fatmát is túlélte. Házasságukból négy fiú, Ahmed (1573 – 1582), Mustafa (1575 – 4.1599), Abdülkaadir (1577 – 1583), Süleyman (1579 - 1583?) és egy lány született.

Fatma 1580-ban halt meg lánya születése után. A gyermek szintén nemsokkal születése után elhunyt, hiszen koraszülött volt. Fatmának még volt ideje végrendelkezni. Innen tudjuk, hogy édesanyja nem Nurbanu volt, ugyanis Fatma 40 asperes napi fizetést hagyott édesanyjának. Így bár Fatma anyjának neve örök rejtély marad, de tudjuk, hogy lányát és Szelimet is túlélte. Apja mauzóleumában az Aya Sofyában temették el. Élete során sokat jótékonykodott testvéreihez hasonlóan. Többekközött létrehozott egy madrassát, egy iskolát Edirnekapiban, de nagyon sok pénzt osztott apja halála után is, hogy imákat mondjanak lelkéért.

Felhasznált források: P. Kayaalp - The Empress Nurbanu and Ottoman Politics in the Sixteenth Century - Building the Atik Valide; Y. Öztuna - Kanuni Sultan Süleyman; U. Dakic - The Sokollu family clan and the politics of vizireial households in the second half of the sixteens century; S. Faroqhi - The Ottoman Empire and the World around it; C. Imber - The Ottoman Empire 1300-1650; D. A. Howard - A history of the Ottoman Empire; L. Peirce - Empress of the East; L. Peirce - The imperial harem; Pinar Kayaalp-Aktan, The Atik Valide Mosque Complex: A testament of Nurbanu’s prestige, power and piety; Necdet Sakaoğlu - Bu Mülkün Kadın Sultanları; Ömer Düzbakar, Charitable Women And Their Pious Foundations In The Ottoman Empire: The Hospital of The Senior Mother, Nurbanu

[dameronology]

circles

this isn’t fan fiction -- it’s just something i wrote out of boredom bc i was in my feels and want to have a lil catharsis 

The break-up was hard.

Expected, yes. A long time coming, even more so. But easy? No. Not in the slightest. 

It had been building up slowly but surely for the better part of two years, seeping into the little cracks in their foundations and steadily making them deeper. What had started as minor annoyances and tolerable grievances had blown into unbearable pain, suffocating what little they had left until it had withered away and died completely. The hardest part, perhaps, was that it didn’t make sense. They had worked so well at one point - taken random getaway breaks on weekends just because, went for spontaneous drives at 3AM just to listen to the Killers’ new album for the twentieth time, got drunk and gave each other the most ridiculous hand poked tattoos. Everything that had made them so good existed solely under the joy of their heyday, basking in the glow of how easy it had been to be so young and stupid. 

Nothing had mattered. There hadn’t been a single worry in the world. No pressure to settle down, no pressure to be an adult just yet or to take anything too seriously. The fact they were completely different people is what had made it so good, so fun. The perfect balance of vulnerability and stupidity; fragility and naivety. She’d existed solely for him and he lived entirely for her; the centre of one another’s orbit, gravitating around one another in circles, toing and froing in the best way possible. 

That was the problem: circles. 

Months turned into years, and soon their young adulthood stretched into their mid twenties, early thirties. The issue of their difference was easily ignored by domestic routine; working long hours, focusing on promotions, paying off their college debt. They found a nice house on the outskirts of Philadelphia - two bedrooms and a big garden. He had said the second room was perfect for kids, and she’d commented on what a perfect home office it would have made. They’d laughed it off. That was something they’d become good at it; making a joke out of red flags, passing them off as if they were tiny quirks. 

That was the beginning of the circles. Waking up early, working all day, coming home late. Having a date night every Saturday with less-than-stellar sex, because that’s what Cosmopolitan had promised would keep the spark alive. Every other one of their friends had broken up with their respective college partner; some had gotten married, some had kids, some had gotten divorced, some had gone to prison. Meanwhile, they’d stayed entirely the same. What was it he’d said about it? We’ve just matured. 

It was on the way home from his dad’s 60th birthday party that he’d brought up the idea of a future. Not just a future, but the future. Marriage, kids, mortgages, all the long term stuff that should have been expected when you’d been in a relationship as long as they had. What had it been? Ten years, maybe. It wasn’t unfair of him to expect it from her, or at least to see it reasonable that they have the conversation. She’d nervously laughed it off, making a joke about how their five-year-old rescue dog was close enough. He’d smiled at her terrible joke, before dropping the conversation entirely. 

Circles, again. 

A cycle of him broaching a subject of the future, and her making a bad joke to dodge it. Everyone around them was upsizing houses and getting married - or remarried - and having their second, third, fourth child. The world around them was going at a thousand miles an hour and yet, she refused to take her foot off the brake. Nothing about them had changed. She saw it as a good thing. He couldn’t stand it. 

That was the beginning of their descent. They’d both realised that they were too different to possibly keep their worlds intertwined; whilst they’d once gravitated towards each other, they now polarised. The issue laid in the difference between knowing things were bad and admitting things were bad. Their relationship was so familiar - so constant and steady. It had become a comfort blanket for them both. They’d made a habit of holding onto the promises they’d made as twenty-somethings, perhaps forgetting that the people who had those pledges all those years ago weren’t the same ones who were trying so hard to keep them. 

It had taken a pregnancy scare for them to realise it. When there was only one line in the window of the test, she’d been relieved. He’d been gutted. Their simultaneous sigh of relief and we can try again next month was a testament to the bigger picture; a testament to the different things they so desperately wanted. A career woman and a family man, together only because of their love for another. There came a point where they had to ask themselves if it was enough, if their feelings were enough common ground to justify staying together.

They could have compromised. Instead of the three kids he wanted, they could have had one. She could have worked less and he could have stayed at home with their hypothetical children. Isn’t what relationships were about? Compromise. But, that probably applied to what colour you painted the kitchen, or whose parents you went to for Christmas. Not fundamental things like how many kids you had, or where you lived, or things that you needed to be happy. 

That was probably the bit that hurt the most. She needed a high-pressure job and career satisfaction to be happy. He needed a domestic life and kids of his own. There was nothing wrong either of those things, but there was something missing from their respective lists: each other. 

The break-up itself wasn’t the hardest part, nor was telling their families or cancelling the holiday they had booked for the following year. The grief and shock didn’t truly hit them until they were packing their respective belongings.

Stood on opposite sides of the bedroom, metres feelings like miles. The air between them was thick with tension; unanswered questions and what-ifs. What if we just tried a little harder and what if this was supposed to be it? All questions that neither of them dared answer, for fear of going back on the decision. The trepidation of leaving behind what they’d thought was going to be forever was already swallowing them whole; eating them alive and consuming their entire beings with memories of lost laughter and sweet memories. They were packing up the bedroom that they’d shared for almost a decade, stripping the four walls of bittersweet conversations and forced destiny. 

They took the photos off the walls. Ones of them in Paris, ones of them in New York, ones of them in London; all younger, past versions of themselves, before the glow in their eyes had been dimmed by the revelation of dull reality. False promises of domestic bliss that lead to false hopes of happiness; a sad reminder of a better time, when they hadn’t realised that forever would never quite come to fruition . All gone now. All laid to rest, surrounded by bubble wrap and forced into a storage unit downtown that they’d half-heartedly agreed to go halves on. 

The house was sold quickly - something the estate agent had told them was lucky. Nothing about the situation felt lucky, but having the weight of the shared property off their shoulders took the burden off of everything a little. The extra money was good too. She moved back to the city and invested in a loft, whilst he purchased an almost-identical house to their old one, just a few streets away. She had a balcony and he had a backyard. 

A few more years went by, and they both got what they wanted. She made partner at her firm and started to earn triple figures, reaping the rewards of her hard work and playing in the big leagues. He found a nice, simple woman and got married, eventually having three kids, all with chubby cheeks and toothy smiles. Letting go of another had been the best thing they’d ever done; their relationship had tied them down, forced them to give up what they wanted because staying was easier than going.

Almost six years to the day that they broke up, they passed one another in the street. She was just leaving a meeting, and he’d taken his family into the city to watch a game. It was on Fifth Street, not far away from the first apartment they rented together. Their eyes met - strange eyes, but ones they each remembered so vividly - and they smiled. Nothing was said. Nothing had to be said. They were whey they needed to be.

[wingsofkpop]

Finding SKZ - 1: CB97

pairing(s): Hybrid!Bang Chan x Reader, Hybrid!SKZ x Reader

genre: Hybrid!AU, Dystopian!AU, heavy Angst, Fluff, eventual Smut

warning(s): Mature language, mentions of violence, mentions of abuse

word count: 5,6k

synopsis: After rescuing an abandoned hybrid from his fate of death, he has on other favor to ask of you. Not only do you have to find his eight other hybrid brothers, but you have to keep them safe from the deadly dangers of your city: Miroh 

chapter directory 

The world isn’t as it was before.

Your great-grandfather used to tell you these words everytime the sun would sink beneath the horizon. You often wonder if he chose to do this on purpose, and somehow, felt safer with the absence of light. It was almost as if his comments were shielded beneath the dark of night, like a grieving wife shields her face with a black, opaque veil. Maybe he was afraid of getting in trouble. To this day, certain people still vanish into thin air without so much as a blink of the eye. Swallowed into the night without a trace.

Your great-grandfather lived in the Old World, before the devastation of WWIII and the rebirth of civilization under the New World. He used to tell stories of his time as a little boy growing up on a planet separated into continents, countries, regions, cities. During this time, different languages ranging from use of words to sounds to hands were spoken and thus, further diversified the population. This was the time before the Mass Genocide, before 95% of the population was taken out by extreme warfare and nuclear technology. Most of the languages and texts died with them, along with most other means to diversity.

Your great-grandfather’s favorite stories to repeat over and over again were those of his travels. His mother had been a successful business woman and continuously received one business trip after the other. They journeyed across the Earth together, visiting countries called Zimbabwe and Jordan and exploring cities like Budapest, Moscow and New York. He said his favorite place was Sydney as the oceans of Australia always seemed to sparkle and the sky always brightened. You’d seen pictures in history books from school, but they never brought his descriptions to justice. He was always good at putting an image inside your head.

You also often wonder what the world would have been like if the war never happened. It’s difficult to believe that your home could have been totally different if one event never occurred. If billions of people never died, would Miroh still have been created? Would the people of the earth still have united into one less than harmonious civilization? Or would there still be fighting? Even if one war could have been prevented, who’s to say the human race would have only been delaying the inevitable. Maybe fate has it set in stone for people to kill each other. The world is run by corruption, power and greed anyway.

That’s one thing that hasn’t changed in the New World.

A vibration sounds within the vicinity. You quickly connect the signal to your cell phone and retract the device from your pocket. Time away from your phone had allowed a collection of notifications to begin, the majority being text messages from your aunt.

Ever since you moved out, she had been keeping a close eye on you. Invitations to dinner, packages in the mail and calls about your day happened almost four, five times a week. And as much as you loved her and her compassionate heart, she failed to realize that you were an adult who could take care of herself. You didn’t need her help. Not anymore anyway.

After your mother’s death at sixteen, your aunt had taken you under her wing. The first few years were tough. You barely finished high school and were less than motivated to attend college. But you knew a decent education is what your mom would have wanted for you, so here you are: A student at one of Miroh’s most prestigious universities.

Your aunt wanted you to stay in the offered dorm rooms, but you couldn’t handle living with a bunch of strangers as roommates. With a portion of the inheritance your mom left, you were able to afford a nice apartment in the city only walking distance from your campus and the coffee shop where you work. And although you would never tell her to her face, you were glad to be a good couple hours away from your aunt’s home. It just made your life much more stress free that way.

You scroll past your aunt’s invitation to Sunday brunch and instead discover the original source of the vibration: Your father.

Your dad and mom divorced when you were about ten, deciding that their marriage was broken and could never be salvaged. Your dad remarried only three months after their official split, and began having children of his own only after a year. Truth be told, your father and you were never close, which is why you initially went to live with your aunt after your mom passed. Even so, you both still make the effort to meet up at least once a month just to catch up. You’ve considered completely cutting him out of your life, but then you remember your mom and what she would have wanted.

You quickly accept your dad’s request on meeting up two weeks from Tuesday, telling him to let you know which restaurant he chooses for lunch. Satisfied, you lock and put away your phone, then return your attention to the vacant cafe. You really shouldn’t be looking at your phone during your shift, and normally you don’t, but your last customer had finished his latte a little over ten minutes ago and left you to your lonesome. And you were the only employee willing to stay to close up shop today, so your coworkers left a long time ago. You didn’t mind though, it’s extra pay.

You glance at the clock across the room, discovering the time to be about five minutes after closing. With a sigh, you untie the apron from around your waist and head into the backroom to grab your stuff. The only issue about staying after late is the walk back to your apartment. It’s not that the paths are unsafe, but more so you hate walking in the dark. The streets tend to become strangely silent at night and it’s not the most easing feeling.

After tugging on your winter coat and securing your bag, you head back into the main shop. You make sure that everything is in place before turning your attention to the doors, which were already locked, courtesy of the alarm system your boss installed a couple weeks ago after the thieving incident. You weren’t there when it happened, but apparently some couple tried to break into the shop while one of your coworkers stayed after to clean. Again, you weren’t there, so you don’t know all the details. But you do know that your coworker ended up in the hospital with a couple broken ribs and a concussion.

You exit the coffee shop and prepare to go on your way, pausing to tug on the door handle just in case. Content in its rigidness, you begin to make your way down the dim and snowy sidewalk. Even though your path is illuminated by various street lamps, your muscles can’t help but tense at every shadow you catch in your peripherals. Maybe you should have considered taking the bus.

You manage to make it the two blocks to your street without fault. The nervous feeling coursing throughout your body lessens substantially now that your apartment building is in your sights. On instinct, your pace quickens and your mind wanders to the things waiting for you at home: A late dinner of ramen to ease the ache of your stomach, a nice, hot shower to take away the chill of winter and your warm bed waiting to be utilized all weekend long.

A sudden clatter has your attention returning to reality. You flinch at the noise and like a deer in headlights, pause. Peering down the alleyway, you’re able to make out a couple silhouettes through the snowflakes and the darkness. All the more reason to run the rest of the way to your apartment. And you move to do so as well, that was until another strange sound reaches your ears. You recognize it to be a cry, human-like and agonizing, as if they were in pain.

Against your better judgement, you pull out a bottle of pepper spray you keep handy in your bag and start to creep into the alleyway. In your other hand, to aim your phone flashlight toward the moving figures, who become rather alerted at your presence. Just when your about to catch a glimpse of their faces, they’re gone, having escaped out the other end of the alley.

A sigh of relief passes through your lungs as your grip on your weapon releases slightly. You turn to exit back onto the street and really return to your home, but that same pained whimper stops you. You snap around again and raise your flashlight, catching the sight of another figure just a few feet in front of you.

After getting closer, you’re able to distinguish the figure was not a human at all, but some sort of male hybrid. Your eyes widen at the wolf-like ears emerging from his blonde scalp and the fluffy tail laid limp at his side. The hybrid was naked from the waist down, exposing a concerning amount of bleeding wounds and dark bruises littering his chest. He looked like he was attacked by something, or someone. The most sickening feature was the fact he was chained to an impenetrable metal pole and had a large muzzle covering his face from the nose down. A large metal cuff encased his right wrist, and by the looks of it, it was tight enough to draw blood which had already long dried against his skin.

“Oh my god,” You murmur, lowering to kneel in front of the hybrid. His deep brown eyes stalk your every move, filled with a blend of fright and sadness which has your heart breaking even more. More cuts and bruises were painted across what you could see of his face, which was also snow white. The realization that he was out here in the cold for god knows how long with barely any clothing hits you fast and hard. Without hesitation, you rip the coat from your body and carefully move toward the hybrid. In a soft voice, you say, “Don’t be afraid, okay? I’m just going to put this around you…”

The hybrid makes no remarks, and for a moment you couldn’t tell if he understood you, much less heard you. After a couple seconds, you decide to test your luck and approach the wounded creature. He doesn’t react and easily allows you to throw the jacket around his quivering body. Because of his broad shoulders and muscular stature, the coat only covers so much of his skin, but it’s better than nothing.

You move onto the next issue: Somehow freeing him from his restraints. The task is a lot easier said than done, considering he was chained so escape was impossible. So, you decide to start with the contraption around his mouth. You warn him of your plan once more, before reaching out to pull the muzzle from around his head. When your hands brush against the tips of his ears, it was like touching ice. You need to warm him up. Fast.

With the muzzle off, more of his face was visible. You can’t help but notice his rather sharp jawline and smooth skin. Knowing yourself, you would have spent more time analyzing his features, but you have a greater concern that requires your attention first,

Gently, you take the hybrid’s wrist into your hands to better inspect the cuff. There was a hole meant for a key, which you obviously didn’t have. You couldn’t exactly break it either, so you decide on the next best option. You quickly grab your bag and pilfer through the contents to find what you’re looking for. With a sigh of victory, you take out the found paper clip and using the pointy end, try to pick the lock. After your fourth attempt, a click sounds in your ears and the metal falls from his wrist with a thud. You don’t spare the time to celebrate though, and instead help the hybrid to his feet.

The two minute walk to your apartment took over twenty, considering the hybrid could barely move and you kept crumbling beneath his immense weight. Luckily, when you do manage to get him through the door, no one is in the lobby to start asking questions (your neighbors aren’t the most private people). You drag him into the elevator, prop him up against the wall and admit an exhausted huff. The ride to your floor is oddly silent and tense, and more than once, you caught your new companion staring at you. You decide not to question it, knowing he’s probably a little scared.

You managed to transport him into your apartment fairly quick and noise free, so not to disturb your sleeping neighbors. The hybrid, for the most part, could stand on his own, which allows you the time to secure your door and toss your unnecessary belongings in a nearby corner. Your next destination is to the sofa, where you quite literally pile blankets on top of him. Later, when he’s much warmer, you’ll run him a bath. You can’t warm him up too fast.

You compile some hot towels and water bottles as well, making sure to only directly apply the towels to his neck and chest. The bottles are hidden beneath the blankets, safe away from any skin to skin contact. Making sure you’ve done everything you can for him at that moment, you rush into the kitchen to cook that ramen you mentioned earlier. Only this time, dinner for you would have to be a bit later than usual.

Five minutes and lots of nail biting later, you’re spooning the soup into a large bowl and sprint back into your living room. You nearly drop the dish in fright, noting how the hybrid’s eyes were shut. After making your presence known though, his eyelids part and expose the sad irises from before. You try not to let his sullen gaze affect you, but you were always an empathetic person and it takes a lot of will not to do so. You’re surprised you didn’t burst into tears how you found him that alley.

“Can you eat?” You ask, kneeling beside the couch to offer him the cup. “It’ll help to warm you up…”

The hybrid doesn’t answer, but moves to sit himself up. You help him, tugging aside a couple of the blankets and replacing the towel that had slid from his neck. He reaches to take the soup from your hands, but you refuse, shaking your head, “I’ll feed you. I don’t want you accidentally spilling it and burning yourself.”

Reluctantly, he nods and allows you to spoon a mouthful of soup onto his tongue. He inhales it greedily, barely taking three seconds to swallow and parting his lips for more. It takes even less time for him to empty the cup than it took for you to make the soup. Once he’s finished, the hybrid leans back and closes his eyes.

You take the time to scan his face, which thankfully had begun to flush with a little color. Like you saw before beneath all the cuts and bruises, his skin was smooth and nearly free of any flaws, mind the occasional acne scar. His nose was long and on the wider spectrum, but fit his features purposely. His lips were badly chapped, a result of time outside in the cold. You made a note to go out and buy some chapstick soon. You could always use some too.

Your eyes can’t help but trail up to his furry ears, hued a light silver. You wonder if he is derived from some sort of dog, or possibly wolf. You weren’t entirely familiar with hybrid species, seeing as this is the first time you have ever met one face to face.

From your biology class, you know hybrids were invented about half a century back. It was actually an accident. Scientists were originally looking for a cure for cancer and attempted to mix human DNA with different kinds of animal DNA. You can’t remember a lot of the details, but they somehow ended up with an embryo for the very first rabbit hybrid, which was then conceived by a human volunteer. From there, they went on to make so many different species, dogs, cats, mice, reptiles. Anything they could get to match with the human DNA. Eventually, they compiled a great enough number to where they could breed amongst themselves. Everybody at that time wanted one.

The public, for the most part, accepted the new creatures. Many people adopted and took care of them as they would regular pets, which was nice since majority of the animals died out during the Mass Genocide.

However, as time went on, life for hybrids became a lot worse. Without any rights, humans began to treat them like, well, like animals. You’ve seen so many news stories showcasing hybrid mistreatment, abuse and cruelty. Just a month ago, one of your friends told you that her dad nearly killed their family’s hybrid for accidentally breaking a plate. It makes you wonder what ever happened to him...

When you lower your gaze back to his eyes, you find the hybrid staring right at you. A couple moments of awkward silence roll by until a gentle smile emerges across his lips. His expression carries over his gratitude, which has the corners of your own lips upturning. When he speaks, or tries to, his sound is hoarse and quiet so it takes you a second to think over his words. Beneath his croak, you can trace the hit of what seems to be an Australian accent. For a moment, you can’t help but think of your great-grandfather’s story.

“I’m Chan.”

Still smiling, you reply, “It’s nice to meet you, Chan. I’m glad you’re alive.”

~~*~~**~~*~~

You didn’t know what was going through your head when you offered Chan a place to stay the morning after the night you basically saved his life. To be honest, you didn’t know what was going through your head the moment you decided to help him at all. Then again, you weren’t just going to leave him out there to die. You couldn’t live with yourself if you allowed that.

It’s been a week since the incident, and Chan is almost fully healed. Most of his bruises faded to gray and all his wounds closed, leaving his skin even more flawless than before. Your guess was right, by the way. Chan concluded that he was a wolf hybrid. You knew by the ears and tail, but really didn’t want to assume.

You tried not to let that concrete knowledge change anything, but you were still a little wary. Most hybrids were known to be derived from domesticated animals, and those that weren’t had a track record of acting out of instinct. One of your aunt’s friends adopted a lion hybrid and ended up in the hospital after it out of the blue attacked her, nearly ripping out her throat.

You didn’t think Chan was capable of such violence though, since the hybrid is sweeter than sweet could be. Yesterday, you woke up to the smell of pancakes and found that he had actually made you breakfast, knowing you had work in just a little under an hour. You felt nice after that. No one has ever done something like that for you. And Chan is a really good chef.

The two of you bonded a lot over the week. Although, you didn’t learn as much about him as he did you. Genuinely, he seemed curious about your life, and given his previous situation, you really didn’t have it in you to voice your annoyance over the issue. What you did manage to find out is vague, but tells you enough about the kind of life Chan has had thus far.

He was created in a laboratory, which is pretty rare for hybrids nowadays, and grew up there. He was thrown in the real world almost three years ago when he was purchased by some guy with a bunch of money. His owner was an asshole (a kind word for you to use honestly) and when he wasn’t beating him, he was neglecting him for days on end and leaving him to fend for himself. That’s how he ended up in that alleyway. The bastard got tired of supporting him and left him to die. You’ve never wished death on anyone before, but this guy really deserves a knife shoved down his throat.

Chan became really quiet after that and sort of shut down for the night. You didn’t mind though. Something like that cannot be easy to remember, much less handle. One thing that almost made you laugh was when Chan expressed his sympathy for the loss of your mother. Although after a while, it made you feel even worse, considering he never even had parents other than the scientists.

Anyway, you made it clear to the hybrid that whatever he decided to do from then on was up to him. You would give him the support he needs either way. However, if he chose to stay with you, you wanted him to at least stay inside the apartment when you weren’t there with him. Hybrids caught traveling without a human escort have two fates: One, they’re taken by the MHA (Miroh Hybrid Association) and put into hybrid adoption centers and pounds, or two, they’re picked up by hybrid traffickers. And even when you took Chan to the store to get some things, a lot of people weren’t happy with the fact he was off a leash. You would never do anything like that to him. And you made that very clear when Chan asked.

You hated the idea of being Chan’s “owner,” which is why adopting a hybrid never interested you in the first place. Unlike most people, you saw hybrids as other types of humans. Sure, their DNA is a lot different, but they still bleed the same color blood. Who are you to collar a hybrid, declare yourself their master and take their freedom away?

You sigh for what seems to be the millionth time in the past hour. Right now, you had no motivation to listen to your psychology professor’s lecture on Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. You already read the chapter over the weekend and completed this week's homework so you were pretty much ahead of the game. You were already studying for your final in a couple weeks. This course was probably the easiest out of your others since it’s based on the textbook. You’re really grateful for that considering you’re not doing the best in your sociology class.

This was the longest time you were away from Chan in the past few days and you didn’t like it one bit. Ever since you walked out the door this morning, your mind couldn’t help but wander to him. You were paranoid about the fact that the hybrid might get himself into some trouble and have no way to contact you. You never gave him your cell phone number, which was stupid on your part. You just hope he’s okay.

Your eyes shift to the clock mounted above the smart board and you have to physically stop yourself from crying out in glee. There was only one minute left until your professor was forced to let you and your classmates run free. You quickly pack your things while also attempting to be as inconspicuous as possible. The last time your professor caught a student packing up early, he had to stay another hour after to help him clean. You can’t afford that today since you promised Chan you would be home in time for dinner.

Once the alarm your professor sets each day before class rings, you’re up out of your seat and making a mad dash for the door. Thankfully, you make it there before the rush occurs and are already outside when everyone else exits the classroom.

You try to keep a fluid pace all the way back to your apartment, but you end up sprinting the final block. When you enter your building, you bid the security guard a quick greeting and slide into the elevator with an elderly couple just when the doors were about to close. The ride takes too long for your liking and once the ding indicating your floor finally sounds, you’re out the machine at lightning speed and fitting the key you already prepared into your door.

When you swing it open, you’re met with an uneasy silence that has your nerves standing on end. Your panic only builds after you call the hybrid’s name and receive no answer. After tossing your bag into its homely corner, you make your way through your apartment, finding both the living room and kitchen empty. Your only other option is Chan’s makeshift bedroom, which used to be your office. You find the door cracked, a single strand of light bleeding into the dim hallway. Hesitantly, you call the hybrid’s name once more and push the door ajar.

Chan was sat at the desk, typing away on your laptop. Beside the computer was a bunch of papers the hybrid had obviously printed out. He was scribbling in a notebook, rather fervidly it seemed. You notice the earbuds you bought him the other day in the wolf ears atop his head and how you could pick up the music blasting through them from where you’re standing. He couldn’t hear you if he tried.

You step into the room and prepare to make your presence known before Chan whirls around in his chair. His eyes immediately find yours and a smile lifts to his lips. He quickly switches off his music and rips the pods from his ears. Still smiling, he hums, “You’re home. Did you just get in?”

“Yeah,” you answer with a grin of your own. It still caught you a little off guard whenever he did things like that. Somehow, he always knew you were there even if he couldn’t hear you calling his name. You move across the room to stand in front of him and continue, “I was thinking about ordering pizza tonight. What do you think?”

Chan nods, “That sounds good. I actually wanted to talk to you about something first.”

“Oh?” Your eyebrows furrow at the odd request. The thought of him possibly leaving makes you sick. He’s only been living in your apartment for a week, but you’ve gotten used to having him around. It’s been hard being by yourself ever since you and your old partner decided to split. Again, you try to ignore the nauseous wave that attacks your stomach and instead say, “Okay. What is it?”

Chan sighs and angles his head to look back at the laptop screen. You’re alarmed by his sudden mood drop and peer over the chair to see what’s stolen his attention. You find an article about an upcoming new exhibit at the Miroh city zoo featuring a never before seen creature. You’re too far away to read anything other than the headline, but you can tell whatever it’s about is extremely important to Chan.

“You remember when I told you I grew up in a lab?”

You nod.

“Well, I wasn’t alone,” Chan reaches across the desk to pick up one of his papers. He checks it before handing it to you, which you accept warily. You lift the piece eye level, glancing across the various sections describing the creation of nine different hybrids. You find what you assume to be Chan:

CB97

Species: Grey Wolf

Creation Date: 10.3.2297

Diet: Meat

Behavior(s) Observed: Calm, patient, only aggressive when provoked

Interaction: Relates well with humans and other hybrids

See page 3 for full report

“I grew up with all eight of them,” Chan explains while you quickly skim through the other reports. “We were like a family.

“Woojin was the oldest after me so he helped me take care of the other boys. He liked to sing too. He had one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard.

“Then there was Minho, the most mischievous and sly guy you’d ever meet. He always found a way to make us laugh, even in the worst of times.

“And Changbin, one of my best friends. He listened to me when no one else would. I remember we used to stay up for hours talking about living freely outside the laboratory… Too bad it didn’t go how we planned.

“Anyway, next were the ‘00 liners: Hyunjin, Jisung, Felix and Seungmin. The best group of people you could ever be stuck in a room with.

“And then our youngest, Jeongin. I worry about him the most. He was so young when I left… All of them were…”

“What happened to them?” You ask.

Chan shakes his head, “I don’t know. We were all separated after they deemed us acceptable to go out into the public. Woojin was the first one to sell, then Seungmin, then me.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Riddled with confusion, you toss the paper back onto the desk and look toward the hybrid expectantly. He holds your gaze for a few seconds, allowing you enough time to catch the desperation and hope embedded within his dark brown irises.

He suddenly turns again, this time reaching for the notebook he was previously writing in. Staring over it, he offers it to you and says, “Here.”

You glance across his messily scrawled notes with a puzzled expression. He had written countless names of different locations, addresses, phone numbers, basically anything you could think of.

You stare at the page, allowing yourself a moment of hesitation before muttering, “You’re going to find them, aren’t you?”

“They’re my family, (Y/N). They’re all I have.”

“You know how dangerous this is, don’t you?” You feverishly shake your head, “Chan, Miroh is the most dangerous place for hybrids. Why do you think I barely let you outside this apartment?”

“I know that, (Y/N),” Chan rises from his seat and grabs your elbows. His sudden touch takes your breath away. “And I will be forever grateful for everything you have done for me. I know you’re a kind person, which is why I’m asking you to help me.”

Your eyes flutter shut when you release a defeated sigh, “What can I do?”

“I just need some supplies and some money. Not a lot, just enough to get me around the city.”

Your eyes shoot open at his request while your head moves to shake back and forth again, “Absolutely not. I am not letting you travel around this city by yourself.”

“(Y/N)-”

“-Don’t argue with me on this, Chan.” You notice Chan’s ears flick in annoyance, but continue to make your case anyway. Like hell are you going to allow him to lead himself into a death trap. “I’ll help you find your brothers. But there’s no guarantee I’m going to be able to keep all of you safe here.”

The hybrid shakes his head, “Don’t worry about that. Once I find everyone, we’re going to find Yellow Wood.”

“Yellow Wood-” Your eyes widen at the mention of the foreign place. From your knowledge, Yellow Wood is a place outside of Miroh where hybrids are said to be free once they cross the border. The only issue is that it’s considered a myth, since whoever travels the journey to Yellow Wood is never seen again. The path to get there is a death trap, so most assume they die and the government buries their bodies. What a way to go.

“I know it seems crazy,” Chan obviously notices your doubtful expression, “But, I know it’s real.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because,” Chan reaches behind his body to grab his tail. Shocked, you watch as he parts his fur to reveal a bronze key sewn into his flesh. He continues, “Back in the laboratory when I was on observation, this one person came to see me.

“They told me that I didn’t belong in this world and that I needed to get out as soon as possible before it’s too late. They gave me this key and told me to find the door that leads down to Hell.”

You scoff, “Great. That easy, huh?”

“(Y/N), please. At least try to believe me.”

Chan’s pleading expression has your stubbornness wavering, especially combined with the sad eyes he bestows upon you. You so badly wanted to believe him, but it’s not that easy. How can you believe in a place that has no evidence of existence?

“I-I don’t think it’s a good idea,” The hybrid’s face falls at your retort. Although, you continue, “We’ll talk about it more when we get there. Right now, we have to work to get there first.”

His mood immediately lifts at the mention of the current situation. He nods in agreement, gesturing toward the paper still between your fingers, “I know for sure where Seungmin is. Before he was taken away, I was able to get the name of the person who bought him.”

“Okay, great. We just need to figure out how to get to him.” Easier said than done.

“I have somewhat of a plan. But, I need your word, (Y/N).” Chan places his hands on your shoulders this time, staring straight into your eyes. You feel your pulse race at his sudden gaze, hoping the hybrid wouldn’t notice the sudden change in your body.

“I trust you, a lot more than I really should. But I need to know that you’re with me. No matter what.”

You don’t hesitate, “You have my word, Chan. Let’s go find your brothers.”

“Stray Kids,” He corrects with a chuckle. “We used to call ourselves Stray Kids.”

You nod, “Okay.

“Let’s go find Stray Kids.”

[juleshq]

*  𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐠𝐨𝐬  here  and  do  i  have  the  tea  for  you  .  𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐒 is  back  in  bridgehampton  for  the  summer  ,  living  off  the 𝐃𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐎 family  𝟐.𝟑 𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧  net  worth  .  must  be  nice  to  come  back  home  to  the  hamptons  ,  i  wonder  what  her  fellow  class  of  2017  grads  think  of  her  return  .  you  know  ,  she  was  known  around  town  as  the  𝐂𝐎𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄 and  for  bhs  senior  superlatives  pronouns  was  crowned  as  𝐌𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐓𝐎 𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐏𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐕𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐒 & 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐃 .  i  wonder  if  that  still  holds  true  today  ,  a  lot  can  change  when  you  go  off  to  𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐘 and  study  𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐘  .  either  way  ,  i  bet  she  is  still  very  𝐀𝐅𝐅𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐄 , 𝐃𝐄𝐕𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐃 , 𝐃𝐄𝐂𝐄𝐈𝐓𝐅𝐔𝐋 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐒𝐔𝐁𝐉𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄  . hopefully  this  time  next  year  the  plans  to  𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐌𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐋 come  true  .  in  the  meantime  ,  i  look  forward  to  seeing  her  blast  𝐢 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐫 (𝐁𝐔𝐓 𝐈 𝐍𝐄𝐄𝐃 𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐄) 𝖇𝖞 𝐤𝐚𝐥𝐢 𝐮𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐬  at  every  hamptons  function  .  it’s  going  to  be  a  wild  summer  home  ,  welcome  back  .

i  don’t  think  i’ve  EVER  been  this  excited  to  plot  and interact with a group of people ,  u  all  seem  like  such  beaut  ppl  &  i’m  in  love  already  but   i’m  a  little  . . .  intimidated  ADFJH .  anyways  ,  i’m  not  going  to  ramble  bc  i’m  ready  to  get  down  to  business  ,  i’m  sammie  &  i  go  by  she  /  her  pronouns  !  under  the  cut  is  a  long  bio  on  jules !  i  will  GLADLY  give  you  a  synopsis  on  this  chaotic  mess  pls  just  ask  ,  HERE  is  her  pinterest  board  please  ignore  the  sudden  amount  of  pins  of  just  her  , also  i’m  down  to  plot  here  or  on  discord  ,  my  discord  is  @ᵘ ᵍᵒᵗ ᵃ ᵈᵒˡˡᵃʳ ?#3246  

* / BASICS

full name: juliana kaia dicaprio

nicknames: jules , julie / juli 

age & dob: twenty-one , august 14th , 1998

place of birth: long island , new york .

sexuality: heterosexual ( that she knows off )

bender: cisfemale

* /  MORE BASIC INFO

languages: english, french, some spanish.

religion: catholic

education: high school , majoring in biology at stanford

occupation: unemployed

drinks, smokes, & drugs: all of the above

* / PERSONALITY

zodiac sign: leo

likes: dark chocolate , tea in the morning , white roses , instigating bad situations , wine , black coffee , the smell of freshly brewed coffee , talking with strangers , long travels , adventures , being called “ angel ” , popcorn , quick tex responders , products made with silk , athletes , crime shows / films , crowded rooms , glitter .

dislikes: fake designer bags , people who don’t know how to lie , f , people who wear pearls regularly , long text messages , voicemails , men who are cheap , people who chew with their mouth open , humming ,  thrift shops , water-poof mascara , the smell of grass , extensive planning , and arrogance & stupidity combined .

bad habits: breaking promises to herself & others , not thinking before doing , fixating with her hair when nervous .

secret talent: juggling

fears: aging terribly , being widowed , drowning , being buried alive .

positive traits: alluring , convincing , affectionate , ambitious / devoted , systematic .

negative traits: manipulative , conniving , deceitful , dishonest , subjective .

* / APPEARANCE

tattoos: dagger on right index finger , “ devil ” on left index finger .

piercings: three in each ear , cartilage .

* / FAMILY INFO.

parent names: claire boucher & david dicaprio .

parent relationship: divorced .

sibling names: annalise , ashton , keller , & wade .

sibling relationship: step siblings & half .

children: none .

pets: 2 family dogs on her moms side.

* / BIOGRAPHY

i’m sorry it got long

             𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐘𝐋𝐄𝐑’s entire childhood was spent in the spotlight -- her father was a huge rockstar in the 70's & 80's, and her mother a model . Claire spent her childhood between Florida , California , and New York , attending red carpets , premieres , etc. Claire attended Stanford to obtain a bachelor in science but was in and out of modeling in her teens and early twenties .

            𝐃𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐃 𝐃𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐎  lived an affluent life more under the radar . His grandfather is CEO of JD banking , one of the four largest banks in the world . He attended Princeton as the rest of his family did . He got involved in the company business at a very young age as did his brothers , but went on to become the new CEO after his fathers unfortunate passing in 2002 .

            𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐒 was and will forever be her parents pride & joy . her parents were high school sweethearts & got married young -- at a twenty-two / twenty-three . they had been trying for two years to start their own family but jules’ mother struggled . thanksgiving in the hamptons , a dicaprio family tradition the day is engraved in her mothers memory , in 1997 , they announced to their family that after years of trying , they were pregnant .

            𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐒 grew up completely pampered ; bi-weekly trips to the nail salon with her mother and annual father-daughter trips . her mother was her best friend until she began morphing jules into what she thought was perfect . making sure she spoke at least one other language , was active in school , extracurriculars , how she presented herself . her mother cared about image due to her own childhood of growing up in the spotlight . besides the near brainwash to fit her mother’s image of perfect , everything was ideal &  ‘ normal ’ up until the summer before her freshman year of high school . her mother discovered the affair her father had been having for months with a woman he did business with . he claimed it was due to the fact that jules’ mother had returned to some normalcy and wanted to work again , modeling and doing some traveling , therefore he ‘ just missed her around ’ . jules was aware of everything going on  , heard the countless nights they spent arguing in the opposite wing of the house , she picked up on her father being late to family dinner because “ he had work to do ” . her parents tried their best to keep her in the dark for the sake of her sanity , innocence , and view on her father . jules went along with it all , the daddy’s girl in her was in denial for all of the months leading up to their divorce . at the end , her mother got full custody of her .

             𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐈𝐕𝐎𝐑𝐂𝐄 came two “ yes ” parents . everything became a competition between the two , trying to one up the other ; who took jules on the better summer vacation , had the most over the top christmas morning , etc . it  was insanely manipulative & jules there wasn’t a time period where jules felt more alone ; not having a sibling to relate to , she was embarassed to tell her peers the real reason why her parents split , it was so cliché . both parents didn’t take too long to remarry , her father found another stay-at-home wife and her mother lucked out with a lawyer ten years older than she . her step-father had two daughtes & son with whom jules hated in the beginning – it  was a lot to take in and she was used to being the only child . her father went on to have a child with his new wife two years after their marriage . it was all an immense amount of change within seven years .

              𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄 for jules had been constantly changing since the news of her father’s affair , she’d spend her summers & holiday’s going back & forth between each parents in the hamptons until her father moved to calabasas to be closer to his wife’s family as soon as the baby was born . jules had always been a wild , reckless child at heart and the divorce between her parents only allowed her to push her limits even more . the two-three years her parents spent processing their divorce were her golden years -- she could not get in trouble with her parents and they never got upset with her . she took advantage of it all and abused drinking , hanging out with boys , you name it . she loved the attention she received from any male figure -- it made up for the lack of attention she was getting from her father once he got the boot .

              𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐆𝐄 was where jules found her safe space ; she could be her wild self , far away from home and only a five hour drive from her father that she still rarely sees . she joined a sorority , joined the exec board , was forced to join french club by her mother , all while maintaining a 4.08 gpa .

           *  ` 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐖𝐈𝐒𝐄 jules has always been a wild child . she’s always had a desire for attention , all eyes & attention on her , though the B I R T H of her uncontrollable desire for attention from males stemmed after her parents divorce . the lack of attention from her father allowed her to realize her dad wasn’t the only one who could spoil her & every man was basically the same . she’s not super close with either of her dads at the moment and sees her father about three times a year , two of which are holidays & every now and then the spontaneous visit from him in cali .  

          𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐒 is a h u g e  cry baby in the sense that she hates not getting what she wants . its not on purpose most of the time , it’s the way she was raised and the nature of her parents . she’s never had to ask for anything twice & hates doing so . though she’s a huge cry baby , she will try her best to mask her actual tears . she does a good job of seeming innocent , she’s that one friend that is super sus & lies a lot & keeps secrets but somehow is so good at convincing people other wise ? she’s a huge flirt , even when she’s not doing it on purpose , it’s sort of a weird practice or habit she’s grown into ? she feels empowered in the weirdest way of owning men and being able to form their opinion of her for them , this stems from her newly founded daddy issues  it’s more so due to the fact that her relationship with her father began to diminish once he moved out . she is & has been on her “ fuck love ” rampage .

       𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 do whatever she wants and will hide her bad intentions . she lives for chaos , loves enjoys pushing limits & boundaries . she loves a game of cat & mouse / teasing just knowing she has someone in her grip is what helps her sleep at night . she is a bit crazy . . .  the type to watch someone’s snap score go up . def that type to block and unblock someone 238473 timES . she has an underlying need of approval from others and she almost needs to be liked by everyone she meets .

     𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 she wants to model & be a playboy bunny BUT her dad would literally disown her if she didn’t follow her family legacy and attend stanford or yale to use her brains for good . she’s in school to be a pediatrician because at the end of the day she loves children and always wanted to seek a job in the healthcare field . she has plans to attend yale’s medical school after her senior year is complete at stanford .

i really based her off of american beauty & angela in the movie ( if you’ve seen it omg ily ) g

[laventadorn]

Part 1/2 I was wondering if you had any ideas/headcanons wrt Eileen/Tobias? JK doesn't really go into how they met, but given the little info he gives us its pretty clear the type of marriage they had. But, I was wondering why Tobias acted the way he did. Not that he needs a reason, but I love backstories. Do u have one for the Snapes? Personally, I sawa bit of parallel with how Seamus described how his muggle dad didn't know his mom was a which until after the wedding. I can sort of see...

I wrote one for my first HP fic, in fact! Heavily influenced by Jane Austen lmao

I would change some aspects of this now, but this was the version I dug up from my Ancient Writings: 

(readmore, y u no work)

Eileen’s parents’ marriage was arranged, as many pure-blood marriages are. The Princes were a very old, distinguished line, but impoverished, while her mother’s family was relatively new, in a pure-blood sense, but wealthy. Her parents set up the marriage with Mr. Prince, who was rather older than their daughter, but she agreed to it. However, within a short time she was unhappy, since her husband, raised to frugality, was rather miserly and she was spendthrift; and being younger, she wanted to do a great many things that it was not in his temperament to agree to. When Eileen was about five or six, her mother ran away, abandoning her child and her marriage, eloping to Europe with a lover. Her husband was so humiliated and enraged that he forbade anyone in the household to speak her name ever again. He destroyed all evidence of her existence in the house—the possessions she had left behind, the paintings they’d had commissioned, even renouncing her personal house-elf. Even when he learned, three years later, that she’d died in conditions of poverty and hardship, it didn’t soften him toward her; instead, he only believed she had got what she deserved.

When Eileen was seven, he remarried, this time to a widow, one of the Blacks, who had endured a childless marriage of some fifteen years until her husband was killed rather stupidly trying to learn how to ride a dragon. She had no wealth, but Mr. Prince still had his wife’s fortune, and Mrs. Black’s impeccable bloodline meant more to him in any case. She and Mr. Prince were rather meant for each other, however: both were nip-farthings, both joyless and cruel, and both rigidly traditional. They believed in duty, propriety, and unstinting obedience from their children. 

Mrs. Black, now Mrs. Prince, thought worse of the former Mrs. Prince than even her husband did. To her, a woman’s infidelity was the worst of vile sins, and she pitied her new husband for having married such a filthy whore. She was sorry that the former Mrs. Prince had left behind a little girl, since naturally the daughter of such a whore would turn out just like her. 

But Mrs. Prince was determined to do her duty by Eileen. She raised her to be a proper pure-blood wife—dutiful, obedient, graceful and silent. She beat into her the importance of propriety, telling Eileen how vital it was that she give no one any cause to say how like her mother she was, however much she would surely have the same sort of base, wicked urges as that slut. She also impressed upon Eileen the necessity of marrying into a pure-blood family of stature, since her mother was a fine example of the rubbish that rose to the surface of bad blood.

Within a few short years, the new Mrs. Prince had rewarded her second husband with twin sons. These boys had the benefit firstly of being boys, always a plus in pure-blood families, as well as the added bonus of not having a piece of trash for a mother. The practice of favoring the sons over the daughters was standard in pure-blood families, but the sins of Eileen’s mother worsened her lot. Nothing Eileen ever did was right enough or good enough or proper enough in the eyes of her family; and at school she had no friends, since the pure-blood daughters of Slytherin were fully aware of her mother’s story and had been forbidden from associating with her. Eileen was not pretty, and her home life was too miserable to make her good enough company to compensate for her other defects. Her father pretended she did not exist, her brothers teased and tormented her, and her stepmother ruled her whole life with a fist of iron. 

Eileen retreated into her schoolwork, into books and knowledge. In second year she did make one friend, a Ravenclaw named Constance Marlowe. Constance was a very tranquil person. Her mother was Muggle-born, and she would tell Eileen about her Muggle grandparents. Eileen had never met Muggles. Her father and stepfather loathed them, but they loathed Eileen, too, and loved her brothers and the pure-blood families who treated Eileen as if their cruelty was simply preempting every nasty thing they suspected she would ever do. 

Then in fifth year, while visiting the sea shore on summer holiday, Constance drowned. Eileen went to her funeral, to which many of Constance’s Muggle relatives had come. They looked like regular people, although they dressed funny. After that, Eileen hated the ocean, but realized that Muggles were capable of human thought and speech, which her family had always led her to believe they weren’t.

When school ended, she returned to live at her father’s house, since pure-blood women of her family’s stature did not get jobs; they got married. But with Eileen’s reputation, her looks, and her father’s desire to spend as little money on her dowry as possible, she received no offers. Her blood was not even decent enough, balanced as it was by her mother’s betrayal. So for more than ten years, Eileen lived in her father’s home, a companion to her stepmother, an object of mockery to her brothers and the children they went on to have.

By the time she was thirty, everyone, even she, was certain she would never marry. Her stepmother even came to relax her restrictions, since she had kept Eileen wrapped so tightly out of a duty to maidenly propriety. A thin, unattractive thirty-year-old witch was not likely to be prey to any lascivious attentions or whims. Uncaring now of the reputation she had so viciously guarded, Mrs. Prince let Eileen out of the house for longer periods of time … although she might not have, had she known Eileen was visiting Muggle haunts.

On one of these jaunts, when she was about thirty-one, Eileen met Tobias. She had gone, in fact, to the seaside town where Constance drowned, perhaps out of a morbid desire to torture herself. He was there, too, trying to get away from his life for a bit, since he’d just gotten divorced. 

He had married young when his girlfriend got pregnant unexpectedly. He’d done his duty by her, quitting school and going to work at the mill, but a few months before the day he met Eileen, his wife had sat him down and said she’d fallen in love with some other bloke, but she wanted to do right by Tobias because he’d always done right by her. She and he weren’t in love, hadn’t been since the very early days, even if they’d rubbed along together easily enough, and he said as long as he could keep seeing his girl, they’d be all right. So they divorced amicably, and she married the other bloke, who was a bit older and balding and sort of fat, but a jolly sort, which Tobias had to admit he was not. Lorraine’s new husband looked a bit like Santa Claus to Tobias, and he knew his daughter would like her step-father, if she didn’t already. And although as a young man he’d agreed to the marriage of necessity and had never really been bitter about it, happy enough with his wife and daughter for company, he had wanted more from his life than he’d wound up with at thirty-five: divorced, uneducated, in a dreary, pointless job.

As she was talking with him, Eileen realized she wanted more than anything to get away from her family. She realized how purely she hated them, as if the hatred ran through her blood. She decided to scandalize them utterly: packed up her marriage chest and ran away, to live with Tobias without marrying him, hoping to drive her father and step-mother both to an apoplectic fit, but at least one or the other if she could manage it. 

So she and Tobias simply lived together for a while, until Eileen got pregnant. She had been guarding against this, but the magical world had an old wives’ tale that wizarding babies wanted to be born so badly that sometimes, you couldn’t stop them. When she told Tobias, he wanted to get married, and although she didn’t really, she didn’t want her child to suffer the ignominy of being the bastard of a whore. So they were married, very quietly, only Tobias’ ex-wife in attendance with her family. Not wanting to give birth to a daughter that would live the life she’d had, Eileen mixed a very Dark potion to ensure the birth of a son.

So Severus was born. She put an ad in the Daily Prophet, hoping her family would see it, in case it would give them an aneurism. 

Before Severus was born, but when she was close to due, Tobias asked her if the baby would have magic. Eileen said, “It is likely, but he may not.”

“What happens if he doesn’t?” Tobias asked.

Eileen shrugged. “Then he doesn’t.” She wanted her son to be a wizard, but she was no longer in the magical world; a Squib child would not matter to her now. She had brothers; she was not even the end of the line. 

It was impossible to tell if babies had magic, so for several years after Severus’ birth it was a moot issue. Eileen continued to work spells, because Tobias said he didn’t mind, he actually thought it was pretty interesting. And then one day when Severus was about four or five, he worked magic, and out of nowhere Tobias blew up at the pair of them. Eileen was so shocked she actually flinched away, because although she knew Tobias had a temper, he’d never turned it on her. Severus burst into tears. And then Eileen pulled herself together and reacted, rage and hatred boiling up out of her through her wand, and she turned it on her husband, the way she’d always wanted to do to her brothers, her father, her step-mother, the children at school, and she blasted him across the room and into the bookshelf.

Severus screamed. Eileen stood frozen, looking at Tobias’ unconscious body slumped under an array of books. She blasted them off him and found he was bleeding from cuts all over his front. She hastily flooed them all to St. Mungo’s, where he was swiftly patched up. Although the Healers gave her funny looks, they did nothing to her because she was a witch and he was only a Muggle, and there weren’t legal protections in those days for the Muggle spouses of wizards and witches.

Tobias wasn’t the same after that. Eileen didn’t know whether it was the shock of her turning her magic on him, or Severus’ own magic manifesting, or even the trip to St. Mungo’s, because his face as he looked around the hospital as they left had been haunted. After that, he began to drink more. Although he’d always had a few on the weekends and even more on holidays, he was soon never seen without a drink in his hand or the scent of alcohol on his breath. He wouldn’t tell Eileen what was wrong, and it was impossible to get anything from the mind of a drunk person; even trying it made one disoriented. 

She expected him to leave them; expected to wake up one morning and find him gone, but for some reason he never did. They settled into a life where Tobias would go for days avoiding her and Severus, hardly speaking to them when sober, muttering when inebriated, with occasional outbursts of temper that Eileen would sometimes curtail, but at others simply weather out. As a young child Severus was at first frightened, then hurt, and once he grew older, resentful.

Once, when Severus was about seven, she did wake up in the middle of the night and find Tobias in Severus’ room, watching him sleep. Tobias was just drunk enough to be honest. He looked up at her with haunted eyes and said, “Do you hate that I can’t do it?”

“Do what?” she asked, bewildered.

“What you can do. What he can do. Do you hate me because I can’t?”

Eileen just stared at him. “Is that why you act like this?” He didn’t say anything, just looked back at Severus. “No, I don’t hate you. That would be like hating the sky because it’s blue.”

When he spoke, she almost didn’t hear him. “Sometimes I hate you, though. Both of you.”

It took Eileen much longer than it should have to understand what Tobias was really telling her: that he hated them for being able to do something he never would. He hated them for having the power of magic when he was only a Muggle. That look on his face in St. Mungo’s had been shock at an entire world he’d never guessed existed; and now that he knew of it, he also knew he would only ever be on the outside looking in.

But she had not understood this in time. She resented his drinking; he resented her powers; they resented each other’s resentment. And at the heart of it, they came to hate the other for a second chance that had turned to ash, just as the first chance had. 

Eventually Eileen realized that the same barrier that stood between her and Tobias had blocked him off from Severus, and she simply quit trying to bridge it. She drew Severus into the circle of her magic, eschewing any acknowledgment of the non-magical world he was half a part of. She had always meant Tobias to show him that part, and now Tobias would not. She taught Severus about his magical bloodline, the House of their family’s allegiance, the world he would enter once he was old enough, the powers he would wield. Although she punished him if he looked in her books without her permission, she taught him hexes and curses and spells that would get him respected among his Slytherin peers, that would receive him the notice of families he would need to impress in order to gain entrance into the society that should have been his—both of theirs, had her life gone much differently. She raised him more as she had been raised, in a manner typical for pure-blood daughters: with strictness and not much indulgence, because she’d loathed the men her brothers had become, alternately indulged and ruthlessly punished as they had been, as the beloved sons of two cruel, cold-hearted people. 

In teaching Severus about the world she had left, sending him off into the future he ought to have, Eileen realized she had never been happy in the world of magic. She had known the truth of that, lived it all her life, but never articulated it to herself. But she was not happy in the Muggle world, either; she did not understand it, couldn’t navigate it. It was too vast and unfamiliar for her even to know where to start. As she prepared Severus for Hogwarts, Eileen realized the only time she had been anything close to happy was in that seaside town when she had met Tobias, and she had believed, for a handful of days, that the future would be different from the past.

But it hadn’t been. Now Tobias was gone, and only Severus was left. And even though she had tried her hardest to make it otherwise, she realized that Severus was just as out-of-place as she had ever been; she, the daughter of a whore, the pure-blood wife of a Muggle with a wizard for a son. Severus was the child of two people whose lives had been wasted for them by others; sent as hardly more than a baby into the world of pure-blood politics with such a tiny arsenal of anything they would see as promise, in love with a naïve Muggle-born Gryffindor. If Severus wanted the Muggle-born, he would cut all his chances of entering good society; and if he got the Muggle-born, he would find himself in the midst of people who regarded his magic with jealousy and suspicion.

That was the true curse of the half-blood, she thought. You were always trapped between worlds that didn’t know how to claim you.

.

.

.

*Snape doesn’t have those uncles anymore cuz they died off somehow, and he doesn’t have contact with his dad’s first family. He doesn’t strike me as someone who has a large extended family he pals around with, although I’m sure they exist. I have 1 jillion cousins I know absolutely nothing about, not even their names.  

[vldanya]

Name: currently goes by Anya Katz; full family name is Eunhye “Anya” Natalia Chou-Katzayev

Stage name: Anya

Birthday: August 26, 1995 

Gender + pronouns: she/her

Hometown: Paris, France

Company: Summit Media

Group / Soloist:  Lark

Position: Leader, main vocalist (1)

Variety interest?: Yes

Faceclaim: (g)i-dle’s Jeon Soyeon

Skills

Acting: 5/10

Singing: 10/10

Dancing: 10/10

Rapping: 3/10

Variety: 3/10

divorce tw, alcoholism mention.

anya knows how to love. to love the sugar-snow beneath her skis on the canadian rockies. to love the romantic atmosphere as she walks a lonely parisian night. to love the neon markets in downtown seoul. to love the furious scottish seaside, or the tender californian cliffs.

to love the promise of adventure.

her mother, you see, was a showstopper— a monster, if you will, in the world of actors as well as in the basest sense of the word.

as a woman who grew up poor in the rural areas of busan, all that kim dahee wanted was that she would never again want for a thing. she did care for anya, at least a little. it was her father she didn’t care for: chou dongwoo, a humble chicken-store owner with the kindest eyes of any man on the planet and a stout, welcoming build. dahee loved him— really, she did. but they say she was a white bird in a blizzard, or a blue dolphin in the sea: someone like dongwoo never had a chance to catch her. when dahee drops week-old anya on dongwoo’s porch, it’s carelessly, with a warning to allow visits at least once a week.

in the end, though, it was dongwoo who named her.

“my sweet, sweet eunhye,” he whispers as he kisses her small head each night.

age 4.

andrei katzayev comes into their lives on a simple business trip to propose an advertising gig for dahee. they want to expand their fine liquor empire’s reach into south korea, you see, and anya’s mother is the clearest choice for her notoriety. she  is obviously obsessed with the sheer power that andrei bleeds from every pore. anya, on the other hand, falls in love with his presence.

he is handsome, with blond hair and a fine-boned jawline. he is the heir to the katzayev group, who are affluent and well-spoken and practically russian royalty. but, above all, he is patient and kind: his laugh is a deep, rich baritone, and he has no shortage of it.

one small business trip turns into him staying in seoul out of concern for the way dahee treats anya. he becomes close with both her and dongwoo, and winds up buying a high-rise in seoul to split his time between in order to keep an eye on dahee. to keep her in check when it comes to her daughter and ex.

andrei is the one who practically raises anya for her formative years. it’s interesting, the way anya was named by two fathers; he always had a difficult time saying “eunhye.” it’s how the name anya came to be.

it’s through andrei’s intervention that monthly visits with dahee go from four, to three, to two. and before she knows it, anya is on a private jet to moscow once every other week to visit andrei, the generous man who has taken in this girl and her father as his own.

one day, she thinks, she might become a pilot.

age 5.

if the affair between an actress and a nobody was the talk of south korea, then the custody battle between an actress and that same nobody is even bigger news.

this time, though, it’s different. this time, andrei is there to protect the child.

the trial hardly lasts a week; andrei’s brought in the best lawyers money could buy, and the best bodyguards who keep the camera’s from anya’s face. kim dahee is labelled a cheater, a liar, a minx— but there’s only one label that anyone really cares about.

she is unfit to keep custody.

age 6.

moscow probably isn’t the best place to raise a child, but cameras aren’t good companions. both andrei and dongwoo agree that anya needs some time away from seoul until the media circus dies down.

when anya and andrei move their belongings into a ridiculously large mansion on the outskirts of paris, it’s with a scream of glee that she leaps into dongwoo’s arms, for andrei had spent the past year applying for a working visa for the younger man. it’s important, he believes, that anya grows up with as many positive influences and support systems as she can. so in come the katzayev aunts and uncles, the grandmothers and grandfathers, the cousins and nieces and nephews, to greet the newest addition to their family. andrei isn’t set to take over the company until the current matriarch passes, so much of his time he devotes to his adopted daughter.

dongwoo earns his keep as the personal chef to the katzayev family and eventually remarries a lovely french artist, cecilia beaulieu, and within a year they introduce anya to her newest half-sister anne-marie. they stay in the katzayev guest house for a few years before purchasing their own townhome in the city. 

the chou and katzayev families begin an alliance and friendship that, unbeknownst to them, will last for many more generations to come.

age 10.

but the story isn’t over yet. what proper adventure ends just when things are getting good?

it’s at andrei’s insistence that his daughter grows up to be a clever, well-adjusted, independent young woman. her dream of pilotry is not yet forgotten, so he buys her a plane that he promises she will be able to fly as soon as she is licensed.

as for anya herself . . .

anya is bored. she’s not technically allowed to start practicing pilotry till she’s fourteen, nor is she really supposed to lift a finger. clean? the maids do that. cook? the chefs do that. if there was a way for andrei to spoil her into not having to go the restroom herself, he would.

with that, a permanent nest is set up in the corner of the estate library with strict orders by her-ten-year-oldness herself not to touch it. not even her beloved cousins are allowed in, for anya loves to learn. andrei has hired a tutor for her to learn latin, french, brush up on her korean and russian and english. the nest is complete with soft blankets, overstuffed pillows, and books— admittedly— dog-eared, it’s anya’s second home.

her third home is parisian streets. anya looks often mismatched when she slips on her well-loved tennis shoes, muddy with adventure, with a light sundress. and over that comes her favorite woolly cardigan, too large but satisfyingly fuzzy. then over that, a purse: one that her stepmother cecilia crocheted herself, and in it anya religiously stuffs a frozen apple, some cheese crackers, jam, and an orangina bottle with a couple scoops of sugar. the gps tracker goes on and attaches to her stockings. the navy blue baseball cap is painstakingly adjusted over a lovely low bun. jingling with coins, young anya sets out everyday in search of a new story to tell.

age 13.

her frozen apple for the day has thawed out enough to eat when anya decides to settle down next to a trash can by the mona lisa and eat her meal. she’s used enough to the routine that she’s good at sneaking food behind security guards’ backs. andrei is out for the next week, and it happens to be one of the weeks that dongwoo is working on opening his own restaurant and cecilia is going to be at her art house. so for tonight, anya’s got paris.

the venus de milo is stupid, and the seine smells a little bit gross, and anya’s hair is down as she walks the same streets with a sense of romantic languidness.

but that— that’s new. curiosity piqued, anya steps closer to a little glass door. the light refracts off it in a vibrant rainbow. she hasn’t seen this building before; and what she hasn’t seen in paris is that with which she is in love.

it’s the voice of an angel. resonant, clear, in an octave where anya cannot tell if it is a man or a woman. she peeks through the door, colors falling upon her face, and listens for hours. the old masters catch her eventually, of course. they chase her away with a broom, because who cares if she’s the heiress to the katzayev empire? she laughs with glee as she hikes up her skirts and teases them over her shoulder, the wind catching her hair as she makes her grand escape.

she knows now.

she has to sing.

age 18.

to give up one dream for another is a dangerous game. her flying lessons have been going spectacularly, and the door is open for her to inherit the katzayev liquor business. she’s everything to make her father proud, and an outspoken, opinionated, fierce young lady.

even more dangerous is the return to korea, where the face of her younger self was plastered across tabloids. but five years of being a singer aren’t enough to cut it, not for anya; she’s made up her mind to return to korea, where she’ll work with performance groups, then return to france or russia or america, and bring the culture there. she sings until her voice gives out, dances until her ankles are sprained, then dances after they’re snug in a compress. 

eventually, she hears about an audition opportunity, and to her, it’s her next big chronicle-in-the-making. she becomes a main vocalist for summit media on hard work alone.

age 24; present-day.

anya katzayev, which she shortens in korea to anya katz for the sake of pronunciation, fancies herself a well-rounded person. educated, skilled, protective, commandingly charismatic. . .

. . . and a bit of a spitfire. maybe it’s the environment in which she grew up, but it’s a bit of a tough role to chew as she performs on joy tv. She’s talented enough that she manages to land a spot in the group, but her family always told her to speak her mind. in conservative korea, that’s a bit of a vice. it’s obvious how much she tries to bite her tongue. but when she can’t . . .

“why are you feeding her so little?” she says critically to a staff member who buys only a salad for one of her future group members. “don’t starve my sister.”

“it’s not fair that those pip girls have to conform to what the public thinks their concept should be,” she mentions offhandedly with a resolute nod as the group walks through the airport. “let strong women be strong women.”

“someone should give particle a break,” she announces, the bold words at odds with the delicate way she eats her kimbap. “they have to deal with sasaeng fans— who, by the way, hardly pass as fans— and strict schedules? it shouldn’t be allowed.”

“my mother is nobody to me, no matter how famous she may have been,” she declares, because by the time people realize that anya katz is kim dahee’s daughter, the girls’ names have been revealed. “my father raised me to understand that family doesn’t treat each other the way that woman treated me.”

all on camera, too. “she’s a handful,” is what the staff members say about her. “that anya is a handful.” but she is a fighter. she so obviously cares for her group members in that way that her russian family raised her to. it’s that which sings to the public.

anya katz: the fiery leader who can take on the force of the world.

[elijahwintcrs]

❝ You know that your skin is glitter and sometimes you choke on it but you have never been breakable. You are a million shades of shimmer and even in the dark you cannot pass for dullness.❞

❄ · · · ELIJAH WINTERS has been in Ellingham for NINETEEN years and they look exactly like KATHERYN NEWTON. Having turned TWENTY-ONE years old on their last birthday, they are currently a PROFESSIONAL FIGURE SKATER and ARE HAPPY WITH THAT. Known as the PHOENIX, it’s no secret that they're CONFIDENT & HARD-WORKING, but also IRRITABLE & ARGUMENTATIVE. If you’re to meet them, please remember that they are CIS WOMAN and use SHE/HER. { JO + 26 + SHE/HER + EST }

Pinterest.

Stats Sheet.

Triggers: divorce mention, light mention of verbal abuse, injury mention.

— Her parents met later in life than most. Her father was thirty-four and her mother twenty-nine. They go married in a rush claiming ‘true love’ and ‘soulmates’ and while it seemed to hold true for Elijah’s father, her mother had slowly began to feel otherwise. Two years after their marriage, Elijah’s birth became the glue to keep their little family together. A wide-eyed baby girl who nothing but love for the both of them-- until even she wasn’t enough. The Winters split little by little: her father’s new business took him away and her mother’s long lost dreams of becoming an ice dancer kept her and Elijah at the ice rinks. Lonely dinners, nights without getting tucked in and birthdays and holidays spent alone-- it took twelve years for it all to fall apart. 

—  Elijah’s mother introduced her to ice skating as soon as she possibly could. At the age of three, she started mini lessons which as time passed would become more and more serious and the nights spent dancing and skating grew longer-- especially since her mother had chose to homeschool her. Unlike her mother, Elijah had a natural talent for dancing, balance and being able to glide across the ice and it would set her on a path that she wouldn’t be able to deviate from until...she physically couldn’t do it. While her dream wasn’t the same as her mother’s, Elijah didn’t seem to mind. She felt at home on the ice, enjoyed the cold days spent spinning around the rink and most definitely didn’t mind the glittery dresses her mother would dress her in for competitions. She worked hard, probably harder than any child should have and had plenty of medals to show for it. Her mother tended to get greedy for her daughter’s victories and while living her dream through Elijah her eyes where more set on the winnings that her own child.  Eventually that greed-- those medals glimmering in her eyes and the money from sponsorships growing ever so steadily-- lead to divorce papers written up by Elijah’s silent father when Elijah turned ten.

—  All was well after the divorce was finalized. Everything shifted back into its place despite her father moving out of the old family home-- leaving it to his daughter and her mother though they seemed to spend more time in Quebec City for her lessons. Elijah began seeing him less and less with her mother finding multiple reasons to keep her away from her father ( lessons, homeschooling, dance practice, etc.). It went from seeing him everyday ( even if it was brief ) to seeing him once a week, to once every three weeks and eventually only facetime or a phone call every once in a while. Still, Elijah powered through the grueling practices and tough competitions keeping that hurt locked away so that she could focus on her mother’s goals. She became overworked and exhausted which would lead to the first disaster in her career. It was an easy move, one that she could do in her sleep but that day it sent her into the ice hard enough to turn the world black.

— Her first suspension was at a mere twelve years old and her mother grounded her to the Ellingham estate to wait out the after affects of the concussion. They still trained in ballet and drove up to the rinks every weekened, but those few months were the worst. Elijah sat silently, listened to the curses her mother yelled at her over the potential loss of their sponsors. Elijah knew she’d messed up and somehow she would just take it as it was and improve. Next time she wouldn’t make mistakes. Next time she wouldn’t be as tired. Next time she’d practice harder. Next time there wouldn’t be a next time.

— Over those three months that she was grounded, her mother grew close to a handsome man who’d approached them during one of the practices at the rinks. Coffee turned to dinner dates, dinner dates turned to ‘sleep overs’, ‘sleep overs’ turned to boyfriend and girlfriend and before the year was up her mother had decided to move them into his home. He was nice, sure, but Elijah didn’t care for him. He wasn’t her father but she wasn’t sure how she felt about him either. However, his arrival meant rest for Elijah. She could sleep in...she could be a normal teenager. Elijah, as per usual, kept quiet about her feelings. She used her nights alone to speak with her father and go out with what little friends she managed to keep from childhood. She even managed to get a few whole weeks with her father as long as she showed up an hour early for stretches and kept up with her school work. In a way, she was thankful for her future step-father but that’s as far as she extended her friendship to him. Within the next few years, she would take home two more championship gold medals and in the end her mother remarried.

— Winning the senior Canadian championship gold medal sent her straight to the international competitions. A lot of her time was spent on first class flights back and forth from the areas to home. After years of bronzes and silvers, at the age of seventeen ( 2015: two days before her birthday ) she finally won her first world championship gold. The attention she’d garnered for her skating only tripled after her gold medal. Elijah began refusing unnecessary interviews and photoshoots with magazines, her mother and father accepted all the offers. Her mother bathed in her spotlight while Elijah withdrew focusing on practicing for the next competition. She won gold at the world championships the following three years in a row. The season began again and her preparation for the 2018 Olympics started-- but this time her mother set her eyes on a new category: Pairs.

— In between her olympic training, Elijah began training for the pairs world championship in early april. Putting her trust fully into someone else wasn’t something that came easily to her. She had admired the skill it took to dance and skate as one person but...trusting them with her body, with her choreo, with herself wasn’t something she dealt with easily. She her partner was more than capable of the lifts and tosses but Elijah was fine on her own. She was reluctant in practicing the routines with her partner and often threw him the cold shoulder but as time would have it, she warmed up to him. After the initial adjustment and the whole ‘learn to move as one’, their practices went on smoother and they slowly mastered their moves. The Olympics put a hold on their progression but she came home holding a silver for singles and a gold for ice dance. However, her victory was shortly lived as when she got back home it was back to practicing between the parties her mother threw and the ones thrown for her. This carried on until they were finally ready for the first competition of the new season. The pair made it beautifully through the first half of the routine but a simple mistake, only a misstep caused by rough ice, forced her career to come to a crashing halt. Her partner lifted her into the air effortlessly but his skate caught and sent them both to the ice. Though he tried to avoid it, Elijah took the brunt of the fall injuring her knee, shoulder and head badly all at once. 

— The media, of course, blew up with words of foulplay or just how bad she--they were and that’s why she ended up in the hospital nursing the injuries. From the moment she opened her eyes, her mother berated her about the accident nonstop and her partner’s texts of apologies and worries only felt like he was taunting her. And Elijah just couldn’t take any more. So she ran. Right back home to her father’s abandoned home in Ellingham-- to the small little town who didn’t care who she was. She could hide from everyone and everything-- and recover.  She would recover right? 

— And now she’s spending her time pushing herself to hard, being a grinch with a knee brace--- and pushing her limits trying to practice her dance and perhaps she takes a trip to quebec city sometimes. She’s currently ignoring her family’s calls and her partners as well-- trying to get back to  how things were when she was younger ( though it wasn’t too much better than it is now ).

PLOTS:

FAMILY FRIENDS: Her mother is quite a social butterfly and would have networked really well in the neighborhood especially since Elijah made a name for herself. I could see her being a part of a like ‘mom friend group’ LOL and you know how kids always k now the other kids because ‘playdates’ or the like.

CHILDHOOD BESTFRIEND(S): I think it’d be fun if she had friends that started skating with her when she was younger and since their moms wasn’t intense like Elijahs, they kind of always tried to pull Eli out of that kind of ‘you always have to be practicing’ mindset and let it be okay that she wanted to do normal kid/teenager things. 

EX FRIENDS: Maybe they had a falling out, maybe Elijah didn’t have enough time for them or she wasn’t around enough and they fell out of touch. Maybe they are jealous of her success and she’s jealous of their normal life. 

EX BOYFRIENDS: Elijah would have definitely been the type to date behind her mother’s back ( oH YES she is one of THOSE moms because ‘YOU HAVE TO FOCUS’ ) but she’d be preoccupied with skating to really be emotionally involved. perhaps they could have had a causal relationship or they kind of caught feelings and she’d be the type to run from feelings-- or they both ran. Who knows but i think it’d be fun!

SKATING PARTNER: this one is kind of super important to her story and i have a lot of thoughts for him ( i’ll end up sending in a formal wanted connection for him) BUT i think they would have needed to spend a lot of time together during that year of practice and all the lifts and things. I figure they would be almost best friend level ( at least to other people  because Elijah is too busy putting up cold fronts ) but i feel as if the conflict that is between them because SHE sees it as him ruining her life ( OK DRAMA QUEEN ALERT ) but he couldn’t help the accident but i feel he’d try to make amends because Good GuyTM

[lazymysteries-blog]

The Laci Peterson Case: Did Her Husband Really Do It?

Laci Peterson

Laci Denise Peterson was born on May 4, 1975, in Modesto, California to parents, Sharon and Dennis Robert Rocha. She had an older brother named, Brent Rocha and a half-sister named, Amy Woodward. Laci’s parents divorced when she was very young and both parents eventually got remarried. As a child, Laci loved working on the dairy farm that her family owned and gardening with her mother. That love for the outdoors and plants would influence her later in life.

Laci graduated from Thomas Downey High school where she was a cheerleader before attending California Polytechnic State University where she majored in Ornamental Horticulture. It was during her college years in 1994 that Laci would meet her future husband, Scott Peterson. They met at a cafe her friend worked at and they immediately hit it off. In 1997 they got married and three years later in October 2000, they purchased a house in Laci’s home town Modesto, California. During this time Scott was working at a European fertilizer company and Laci was working part-time as a substitute teacher while dedicating the rest of her time to being a “perfect” housewife according to her mother and half-sister. In 2002 Laci became pregnant with their first child. They were expecting a baby boy on February 16, 2003, who they planned to name Conner. 

The Disappearance of Laci Peterson

December 24, 2002, started as a normal day for the Petersons. Laci was watching cooking shows, preparing to mop the floor, and getting her home ready for Christmas the next day. At 9:30 am Scott left his home to go fishing at the Berkeley Marina. Laci Peterson was never seen alive again. At least that’s what Scott Peterson claims. Can we really trust him though? Well, let’s see… Other than Scott the last two people who had spoken to Laci were her mother, Sharon and her half-sister, Amy. On December 23 both Laci and Scott went to a hair salon that Amy worked at to get Scott’s monthly hair cut and that night around 8:30 pm Laci spoke on the phone with her mother. They had no idea that that would be the last time they would speak to Laci again. 

At 2:15 pm on the 24th Scott sent a message to his wife saying, “Hey, beautiful. It’s 2:15. I’m leaving Berkely.” When Scott returned home he saw that his wife’s 1996 Land Rover was parked in the driveway and he made his way into their home. Upon entering the house he noticed that his wife was not home but it didn’t worry him too much, he assumed that she was with her mother. Scott told the police that once he got home he took a shower and washed his clothes because they were wet from fishing. Multiple news outlets including the New York Post and The Modesto Bee report that Ron Grantski, Laci’s stepfather, reported her missing after Scott had called Laci’s mother at 5:15 pm when Laci still had not returned home. However, ABC News reports that Scott was the first person to report Laci as a missing person from their Modesto home. 

When police arrived at the scene and began searching the home they found Laci’s sunglasses, keys, and wallet in her purse in a closet. The dinner table was set for the following night and one of the detectives on the case found a phone book opened to a defense lawyer. During the search, police noticed Scott’s extremely calm demeanor. That night the two lead detectives questioned Scott. Originally Scott said that he had gone golfing that day but then later backtracked and stated that he had gone to the Berkely Marina. The police force immediately launched a search for Laci Peterson. Within the first two days of Laci’s disappearance, before any huge media coverage, there had already been 900 people involved in the search for her. After nationwide coverage of the case, that number almost doubled in size to over 1,500 people searching for Laci. A reward of $25,000 was offered to anyone with info on Laci’s disappearance but that price would end up gradually increasing to $500,000.

The Murder of Laci Peterson

On April 13, 2003, a couple who were out walking their dog found the body of a late-term fetus at the San Fransisco Bay shore in Richmond’s Point Isabel Regional Shoreline Park. The umbilical cord of the corpse was still attached to its body and it had been torn instead of cut or clamped. Nylon tape was around the neck of the fetus and there was a large cut on the fetus’ body. Just one day later the body of a previously pregnant woman was found washed up on the eastern rocky shoreline one mile away from where the fetus was found by someone passing by. The body was so decomposed that it was unrecognizable. She was decapitated and her limbs were missing. The forensic pathologist determined through DNA testing that the bodies were, in fact, Laci and Conner Peterson. The forensic pathologist claimed that he couldn’t determine how Laci or Conner died or whether or not the fetus had been born alive or dead but then went on to contradict himself in court when he said, “It was her death that caused Conners while he was in the uterus.”

The conviction of Scott Peterson in the murder of Laci and Conner Peterson

On January 17, 2003, it was publicized that Scott had been having an extramarital affair with a massage therapist named, Amber Frey. The affair had begun about mid-November and allegedly Scott had told Frey that he was a widower about two weeks before the disappearance of his wife. Shortly after Frey found out about Scott’s involvement in the disappearance of Laci Peterson she contacted the police and agreed to assist the police by secretly recording their phone conversations. According to Frey Scott had told her that he was celebrating the New Years’ Eve in Paris but later admitted that he had been in Modesto searching for his missing wife. At this point, the public, Laci’s family, and the police force were extremely suspicious of Scott Peterson. 

On April 18, 2003, Scott was arrested near La Jolla golf course. He claimed to be meeting his brother and father for a game of golf. However, his car was filled with random things including $15,000 in cash, 12 viagra pills, survival gear, camping equipment, several changes of clothes, four cellphones, and two driver licenses. One was his and the other was his brothers. In addition to all of that his naturally brown hair was dyed blond. Scott and his family insisted that his car was in the condition that it was in because he had been living out of it in an attempt to avoid the press and his hair was dyed blond for the same reasons. According to Scott and his family, the police failed to mention that Scott had actually spoken to the police while his hair was dyed blonde.

On April 21, 2003, Scott was charged and pled not guilty to, two felony counts of murder with premeditation and special circumstances. Judge Al Girolami of Stanislaus County Superior Court moved his trial to San Mateo County because of the Bias of the people against Scott Peterson in Stanislaus County. Scott’s trial began on June 1, 2004, and on November 12, 2004, he was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Laci Peterson and second-degree murder in the death of his unborn son Conner. He was sentenced to death but his order is postponed along with 737 death row prisoners in California for the duration of Gov. Gavin Newson’s tenure.

My Thoughts

Before I started doing my own research on this case I felt that there was a huge possibility that Scott was innocent, however, as I continued my search for answers I realized that the chances of him being innocent were a lot slimmer than I had originally thought. At this point, I can genuinely say that I have no idea whether or not he committed this crime but I do know one thing. If he isn’t guilty he is most definitely the world’s unluckiest man. Either that or karma really had a chip on its shoulder for Scott Peterson. 

On one hand, I can’t help but notice that it seemed like from the start that the entire world hated him. Unfortunately, that hatred, no doubt, influenced Scott’s conviction. The fact of the matter is there is little to no physical evidence against Scott Peterson. The only physical evidence there was, in this case, was a single strand of Laci Peterson’s hair found in a pair of pliers in Scott’s boat. The rest of the “evidence” against Scott was purely demeanor driven. Which under normal circumstances just wouldn’t have been enough for someone to be convicted of a crime of this caliber. In addition to all of that, the way the investigation was conducted was so shady to me. The defense team performed a test to see if a 150-pound human can be thrown over a small boat and they determined that it could not be done. The court refused to conduct the test in trial claiming that it would be too dangerous to test which literally proves that they knew it couldn’t be done. The fact that they never even attempted to take this evidence into account just shows how unfair the trail was. In addition to that, the police failed to investigate a break-in that happened across the street from the Peterson’s house the day of Laci’s disappearance. Why not investigate something like that? Why not explore all avenues? This is not justice. This investigation was not conducted with Laci’s best interest at heart. Justice would have been investigating until the person convicted was absolutely guilty of the crime.

On the other hand, Scott’s demeanor is… to say the least creepy. On more than one occasion he has incriminated himself. Besides, the affair and the possible attempted getaway he has refused a polygraph test and acted suspiciously during interviews, most notably,  in an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC’s Good Morning America Scott referred to his wife in the past tense before her body was found saying, “She was amazing.” These things and many others have me asking myself why an innocent man would continuously do and say things that mirror the actions of someone who is guilty. 

My final word is that I hope that Scott Peterson can have a retrial. Not for him but for Laci. I just can’t help but feel like so many questions about her murder have gone unanswered. That is just not fair to Laci or her family. What are your thoughts? Do you believe that Scott Peterson did it? Or do you think that it was someone else? Discuss your thoughts in the comment section. 

 Until next time, bye.

SOURCES

https://time.com/3461244/gone-girl-scott-peterson/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/blind-injustice/201801/is-scott-peterson-innocent-part-one

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/70rkn6/could_scott_peterson_be_innocent/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Laci_Peterson

https://www.eonline.com/uk/news/901220/secrets-lies-sadness-laci-peterson-s-murder-is-long-solved-but-here-s-why-the-case-won-t-rest

https://members.huntakiller.com/blog-articles/2017/8/16/new-docuseries-questions-scott-petersons-guilt

http://www.statementanalysis.com/scott-peterson/

https://www.bustle.com/articles/160363-what-happened-to-amber-frey-scott-petersons-girlfriend-shes-trying-to-put-the-case-behind-her