#behold...my beloved tiny creature | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

deepperplexity · 3 years ago

Text

Prompt: 9. Strings Attached

Pairing: Turpin x Wife!Reader

POV: Second, Reader

Setting: Christmas Party at a grand estate

Continuation of: Prompt 4. Biting Cold

A/N: So, I heard you, shall we continue this little story then? After all, dear Richard is owed a little pleasure too after that carriage heating - isn’t he? 🙊👀

Tags/TW’s: Smut [Kissing, Praise, Gift-wrapped, Dom/Sub, Penetration, Oral Sex, Bondage], Lots Of Love.

Word Count: 2.4k+

Masterlist page // Masterlist post // AO3 // LINK TREE

The ball-like Christmas party was a wonder to be part of. Especially on Richard’s arm. You weren’t keen on people chatting too much with you, or strangers trying to invade your personal space — with Richard by your side that was never a problem. Some may have felt lonely, excluded even, from the bustle of the party when none dared come close or strike up a conversation (at least not without your husband’s showed approval) but you quite enjoyed it.

You were safe, protected, cared for and held on to tightly by the only person who mattered to you. A man none dared insult, interrupt or even approach without some sort of indication that he was willing to speak with them. Still, none dared enter his personal space — only you were welcome there. Welcome to touch him, speak freely with him, to be close to him. It was a privilege that you valued beyond anything else in the world.

That he had a few hours ago gifted you with a toe-curling, heating orgasm none would ever know. But you did. He did. All the pleasure between the two of you was for none to know but the pair of you to enjoy. And boy, oh boy did you enjoy it; him.

You giggled quietly while Richard spoke with the host in a short, dismissive manner. The short, stout man raised his brows at you but quickly found his neutral expression when Richard glared at him.

“I apologise, I simply thought of something most enjoyable, my Lord,” you said to the man with an innocent smile. He softened while Richard looked down on you with a raised brow. “Will you excuse me, darling?” you asked quietly, your eyelashes fluttering while your cheeks turned rosy. His eyes widened, just enough for you to notice. “Certainly,” he stated calmly even if the tiny smirk playing at the corners of his lips told a different story for less than a second.

“I shall find you momentarily,” he continued after a breath and you nodded before you said goodbye to the host of the grand celebration for higher society before family and true friends would claim all’s attention closer towards Christmas Day. The only attention you wished to garner was that of your beloved husband though. And that you most certainly had.

≪⁕≫

The door closed silently, a mere click of a sound echoing from the other side of the room. You stood by the bed in the guest room that had been arranged for you and Richard at the grand estate, waiting for him in your stockings and a red satin string that was wrapped around you as if you were a present for him. It curled around your thighs, stretched up in a V over your upper body — the silky fabric rubbing against your nipples teasingly — only to flow over your shoulders and become one line before twisting and wrapping around your waist until the two ends tied together in a simple bow. The ends dangled right at your pelvis.

Your body was nearly fully showcased for him yet the view you offered where that of your back while you listened to his breathing grow heavy. It was such a small difference, but each part of Richard was controlled — ordered and precise — so to hear his breath hitch and falter, growing heavier and deeper, made you feel utterly powerful.

“Love,” he exhaled as your bared cunt began to wet the string where it was wrapped several times from all directions over your core. The part of you only he had ever touched, tasted, smelled, filled. “What, in god’s name, is this wondrous creature I’m beholding? This cannot be my sweet little wife, my pure little flower, my innocent little love,” he hummed with a thundering vibration in the low tone. It made your entire body heat and soften.

You had never done such a thing before, it was so vulgar — so erotic. But for him, you wished to be every bit as lust-inducing as he was to you wrapped in the finest velvet and softest silk, the lightest of cotton; a glorious present for you to unwrap each and every evening. You wished to grant him that same thing, no matter how nervous you had been thirty seconds ago, how many times you had to convince yourself over and over that he would appreciate it, that he would enjoy it. Enjoy you daring to do such a thing as dress yourself in a mere string and stockings.

You dared not turn while his footsteps echoed out, moving him ever closer. Your stomach corded itself with knots, your palms turned damp and it felt as if you weren’t able to drag enough air into your tight lungs. And then he touched you.

The second his warm finger began to stroke a line from your shoulder to your bum, along the string at your back, you felt yourself let go of your inhibitions. His touch was light but worshipping. “You are exquisite, my love,” he exhaled with awe in his voice. You leaned your head back and closed your eyes as his finger skimmed your buttock and stroked along the line of your stocking before sliding over to the other leg and repeating the motion upwards to your shoulder.

He grabbed your neck sturdily. A gasp slipped between your lips. He stepped into you, his nose in your hair and his stomach against your back while he inhaled your smell without hiding it. “Richard,” you moaned as his other hand wrapped around your front, splaying out over your stomach atop the red silk. “I shall enjoy this,” he murmured darkly before his teeth graced the shell of your ear and you whimpered. “Hush love, you have done most beautifully,” he continued and the praise sent spikes of pleasure through your very soul.

“Turn for me, love,” he commanded gently but he twisted you around with the hand gripping your neck while you obeyed. There was no fighting the demand in his voice. You loved that. Loved that he could be so dominant, and commanding, yet you never doubted he held you at the forefront of all his actions — your safety and comfort of the utmost importance for him. “Merry Christmas,” you exhaled as you came face to face and he smiled. That special smile that was for you and only you. When his heart was overflowing with love, appreciation, and awe for you; that was when he gave that smile.

“Merry Christmas, love,” he said in return and leaned forward to plant the softest of kisses atop your forehead. “I love you,” you whispered while every nerve in your body was set aflame by his hold of you. “As I love you.”

He leaned back and released your neck, taking half a step back. He admired your body, from head to toe and lingered in certain places you knew he had a particular fondness for. All your fear, your worry, your self-consciousness, it all melted away under that adoring gaze.

“You are perfection,” he whispered, almost as if it weren’t meant for your ears. “Such a gift,” he continued and your breath hitched as he hooked your eyes with his grey ones. They were endless, love-filled, clear and open. All for you.

“Stand still, sweetness,” he demanded quietly and you nodded. At a loss for words when he became that man in the bedroom. He could be the sweetest lover, the gentlest of bedders, or he could be him. You loved both equally but when your husband took command and allowed some of that dominance he had in his veins to shine through you got excited. After all, you trusted him completely.

So, you stood still. Your chest heaved and your thighs rubbed together but there was nothing you could do about that. “Such pretty string,” he murmured as he lazily dragged his finger along it down your front. “Such, a pretty, bow, my love,” he continued as his finger grabbed one of the ends and began to tug. You wanted him to rid you of the now-stifling silk and touch you everywhere. To take and claim, ravage and caress. You were his and you wished him to be as desperate as you to re-establish the never faltering law of it being so.

His fingers hooked the string and, with a jerk, you were flush against him. The edge of his lips turned upwards in a smugly satisfied smile. You radiated heat, his warm finger against your soft stomach sent chills along your spine, stiffening you.

“So pretty,” he said, “like the day I found you.” “Richard, please,” you said while you tried to hold your hands still — to not reach for him or bury your fingers in the gloriously grey strands of hair skimming the neckline of his gorgeous coat and shirt perfectly matched with a lush cravat. “You are mine, mine alone,” he said and grabbed your neck with his free hand before slamming his thin lips against yours. You moaned and melted into him, unable to resist touching him for another second.

He groaned as you tugged at the lapels of his coat, skimming your hands upwards to his neck before embedding your fingers between the soft strands of hair you always ended up tugging on. He grabbed one of the ends of the string and pulled it, unravelling the bow effortlessly. “You never cease to amaze me,” he said into your mouth, against your hungry lips.

He took half a step back, dragging a whimper from you at the lack of contact. But then he went down on one knee, pulling the string away from your body gently, methodically, while watching the slightly red marks left behind. Leaning in, he kissed your upper thighs, your stomach, the mound of your core. You were on fire for him. Seeing him kneel before you were a pure aphrodisiac.

As he kissed his way up your body he slowly rose and dragged the string with him. Once you were free of it he directed you to the bed, pressing down on you until you laid flat on your back among the lush covers. “Hands,” he demanded and you offered them to him. He tied you up, pulled them over your head and tied the string to the bed. Your chest heaved, your skin covered with a slight misting of sweat from the pure heat of your insides while he straddled you, leaning over with a hand by each side of your head.

“All tied up for me,” he said and kissed you before backing down along your body, leaving a new trail of kisses searing your sensitive skin. When he reached your cunt and began to lick and suck you writhed beneath him. Moaning, calling his name like a prayer. He built you up, up, up while the sound of a muted Christmas carol from the ballroom ended up fully tuned into his movements.

You exploded a mere moment later, your entire body convulsing and trembling while your dear husband lapped at your entrance with a satisfied humming. “Mine,” he said and kissed each of your inner thighs while he raised himself up on his knees.

You looked with hooded eyes up along his body, the light dusting of grey chest hair, the rounded stomach he boasted so perfectly paired with his thick thighs and strong arms connected by broad shoulders. He was magnificent. “Mine,” you said in return and his eyes widened with a wave of lust muddling the clear grey colour.

He grabbed your hips, and with one single thrust, he was buried within you. You gasped and threw your head back at the amazing sensation. Richard’s groan filled the room as he pressed himself a bit further in, filling you completely.

“Beautiful,” he said and you looked up at him only to see him view you with the warmest of adorations in his eyes. It made your heart ache. Before you had become close, there had been only cold grey in those eyes of his but now, now they shined and shimmered with all things lovely. Always for you, only for you, with and by you.

You tugged on the red satin string holding your arms in place, wanting to touch him yet being fully into the restriction keeping you in place for him. You would give yourself to him in any manner, whatever he needed or wished for you wanted to be. As he was all things for you.

He straightened and grabbed your thighs, tugging you down so far the string was fully stretched and tensed. It dug into your wrists, offering a hint of pain with the pleasure he provided, heightening it. And then he moved, withdrawing and pummelling back in with vigour. Drawing moans from the both of you while the bed rocked.

Your body burned, his grunted breaths and quiet moans filled your ears while your own body tightened and tensed as he built you up once more by each stroke hitting the perfect spot in your already sensitive core. When he moved his hands down to make one of his thumbs circle your clit you cried out.

He kept going, taking your pleasure while you convulsed and shook by his actions until he thrust into you harder and harder, more erratic in his motions while he chased his own climax. You whimpered and moaned as your orgasm was dragged out by him and then he stilled. With a guttural groan, he spilt into you. Claiming you anew, marking and searing you with his cum.

After a moment of silence filled only by your shared panting and the muffled music of the live orchestra down below he laid down atop you, supporting his weight on his elbows while untying the string. The second your arms were free you wrapped them around him. Exhausted and blissed out, happy and contented beyond measure.

“I love you, angel.” “As I love you, my sweet love.” “When you spoke of our marriage coming with strings attached, I must confess these were not the type of strings I imagined,” you smiled out, knowing full well what strings had been attached to your marital bond.

Richard chuckled, “Indeed. Quite preferable strings, though. Do you not agree, my sweetness?” “I wholeheartedly agree,” you answered and kissed his cheek while he snaked his arms in under you. “Any strings, I’ll tie any and all strings to have you,” you continued as his breath hitched, right by your ear. “You stole the words out of my mouth, my love.”

Masterlist page // Masterlist post // AO3 // LINK TREE

A/N: Oh, I just adore Richard! 😭 He’s just so amazing, gosh I love him… I hope you enjoyed this continuation of prompt 4 darling! I had so much fun writing this, and isn’t it just so wonderful to imagine our dear Judge Turpin in a happy marriage filled with mutual love? Gosh, I love it… I hope you feel the same darling 💚

Taglist: @lizlil @snapefiction @darkthought15 @monstreviolet @flowerdementia @marvelschriss @once-upon-an-imagine @ravennight41 @caseydoodles98 @slytherinprincess03 @theconsultingdetectiveswife @grimmyhild @monster-energies @myobscureimaginarium @snowblossomreads @eternal-silvertongued-prince @cherryglossie @setsuna-meiou31 @helena211 @a-queen-and-her-throne @justsaturn0 @turvi @imwithyoutiltheendofthelinebucky @sunnylikesfrogs @mamawolfsmith16 @dianilaws @elizabeth-baelish @severuslovebot @leah1243 @thethotthatbreathes @rickmandowneyjr @yellowbadgermole @snapesangel @commodoreseverus @snowblossomreads @leah1243 @reinekefoxart @reiketsunomizunomegami @lokisbjchn

Want to be tagged? 💚 You can tag yourself HERE! Or tell me and I’ll gladly tag you! 😍

[Dec:2022]

#rickmas2022 #turpin #turpin x reader #judge turpin #christmas fic #christmas #smutty #sweeney todd #fanfiction #deepperplexity fic #deepperplexity #plex #rickmas #x reader

49 notes · View notes

domina-noctisim-archive · 3 years ago

Note

The raven did not want to interrupt her reading / she was so beautiful when she was absorbed, moreover her delicacy and the harmonious features of the face made her look like a statue or an angel dedicated to the contemplation of the beauty of the world. This Muninn saw when his eyes were on her, when he gave his whole attention to that creature who, in her own way, had changed his life. By now, going to her to see how she was doing was a practice that he could not escape from as it was what put him in a good mood. Then, let's face it, how could he stay away from her?

He approached her without announcing himself, gathered her silky hair in a gold and ruby clip that he had bought her / they were tiny roses that underlined Ai's gaze, that's why he had taken it, thinking of her as soon as he saw it. Having her cervix uncovered, Muninn leaned towards her, placing his lips on her neck, first inhaling the sublime perfume then leaving a trail of kisses, which rose towards the jaw and then moved on to the lobe, which he nibbled tenderly. ❝ I missed you, my lady. ❞

▌┊ ⸻ A star frozen in time was reading one of her beloved historical best-sellers when she felt something brushing her graceful long hair. That honeyed fragrance, that ETHEREAL affectionate touch, as if she’s a porcelain statuette, can only belong to one person. A tender smile graces her physiognomy as her epidermis shivers at the FERVOUR of his lips upon her denuded neck. Ai closes her eyes for a succinct moment, losing herself in his caresses. How is it possible to withstand something so tempting? She can’t. The princess wants to have Muninn by her side constantly. ❝Why are you tormenting me like this?❞ A giggle relinquishes her ajar margins while an audacious hand goes behind his cranium, hauling him to herself. She inclines her head behind and kisses his lips lightly. ❝Now let me behold your gift.❞ Whispers against Muninn’s margins while gradually inspecting her winsome appearance in the elliptic mirror, admiring the dainty adornment. ❝You have extraordinary taste, my love.❞ She’s content. Ai will cherish that present perpetually. ❝It’s magnificent. I’ll use it tomorrow at the soiree.❞

#:3 #HERE HAVE SOME FEELS #(PRIMAL II - MAIN)

1 note · View note

kirishwima · 5 years ago

Note

I know its late, but I hope you're feeling better If not, here's a mysme HCs sk - Elizabeth 3rd gets out and comes back pregnant :3

awe i love this! we had this happen with our dog back in cyprus, only he left the neighbours dog pregnant lmao (ngl the puppies were adorable tho)

* MC really, really didn’t mean for it to happen

* They came back home to the penthouse one day, and the moment they opened the door, a white fluff came dashing out the door at the speed of light

* MC couldn’t believe Elizabeth just ran out-she’d seen the door open a million times before but she’d never felt the need to even move from wherever she’d been laying at, neverless dash out the way she did

* They immediatly called Jumin, who was still at work, as they also dashed out the house and down the stairs, hoping to catch Elizabeth before she had a chance to leave the building; how fast could a cat even run?!

((the answer is Very. V e r y fast my gosh they’re little sonic the hedghehog hybrids when they want to be))

* Jumin of course didn’t blame MC; he was however insanely worried over Elizabeth, and left his office the moment he got the call, alerting all his security personel to drop what they were doing and scour the streets for Elly

* Lo and behold, Elizabeth was no where to be found; for hours MC and Jumin searched, looked through the whole city with no Elizabeth the 3d in sight.

* When they let the RFA know what was going on, they received an answer as to why Elizabeth had left the way she did; Yoosung told them it was currently mating season, and if unneutered cats caught a whiff of another cat they’d chase them to the end of the earths to uhm. bOink

* Jumin you multimillionaire cat-obsessed nerd, why haven’t you neutered Elizabeth?! Didn’t you know cats over 6 months old should be neutered for the sake of their health??

* Apparently, Jumin hated the thought of having to have Elly undergo such a ‘life changing procedure’-ergo, this was the result.

* They both spent the night on the couch wide-awake, wondering what they could do, how they could find her...

* ...Only they didn’t have to.

* A few minutes after midnight, a call came to Jumin’s phone from his chief of security-apparently Elizabeth the 3d was patiently waiting at the main gates of the building, waiting to be let in and back to the comfort of her beloved penthouse.

* They both wondered how come she came back so fast on her own, but the relief overwhelmed the curiosity, and they were contnet to just snuggle Elly, showering her with love (and an actual shower my god Elizabeth did you roll in mud?! Her fur turned from pearly white to an ashen gray with dust and mud!!)

* Neither of them realised anything was wrong for quite some time-not until Elizabeth’s belly started to get bigger and bigger a few months after that incident.

* Jumin insisted it must’ve been because of her food; he refused to believe it could be because his precious pure Elizabeth the 3d could’ve possibly boinked another cat, especially one Jumin hadn’t met and approved of, nope, no way she did-

* -only that’s exactly what it was ((sorry Juju)), or so the vet confirmed.

* MC was ecstatic about the news-Elizabeth would have babies! Tiny little kittens! Even the RFA group chat exploded in congratulations, even Zen begrudgingly admitted that a litter of tiny little kittens could be a cute sight from far, far away

* Jumin...had a harder time coming to terms with it. He looked to Elizabeth with a frown, like a disapproving father who refused to accept that his little girl wasn’t quite so little anymore.

* Yet the moment MC told him to imagine a tiny little version of Elizabeth, a kitty with big baby blues and silky white fur, well, he couldn’t say he hated the imagery of that.

* He was even more posessive over Elizabeth the 3d all the way through her pregnancy; he was so obsessed with making sure she received the best care she could, that he basically had a team of the worlds best vets on call 24/7.

* And when her due date came along, he refused to even go to work until he saw that both Elly and the kittens were all safe and sound.

* It took a few hours, hours during which Jumin paced back and forth, nearly making a hole in the ground from his anxious tapping as he waited outside the vet’s surgery room (he refused to let her give birth at home; what if something went wrong?! He needed her to receive the best care possible, to diminish any and all risks to her health).

* And then, there they were; Elizabeth the 3d, tired and sleepy, but with 4 little hairless kittens hiding their little heads onto their mothers’ fur.

* MC doubted they’d ever seen Jumin this happy. He petted Elizabeth, took the little kittens into his arms as he looked at them with an almost religious awe; this little things came from his Elizabeth the 3d? She’d brought these beautiful creatures into the world?

* “Of course”, he concluded, “Only a creature as beautiful as her could give life to equally majestic beings.”

* MC...couldn’t say anything to that. The kittens really were darn cute, and they loved to watch them grow day by day, seeing their fur grow, their eyes open, them taking their first steps-even they had to agree it was the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen.

* Jumin was surpried to see that there was in fact, no little kitty identical to his Elizabeth. One was a mix of black and white, the entirety of its tail a silky black along with its ears, whilst two of them were white with black spots, and the last one, the smaller of the bunch, was entirely black except for a tiny white spot at its neck.

* Even so, Jumin loved each and every one of them equally. He wouldn’t even entretain the thought of giving any of those kittens away, not even to V (and definitely not to Seven who begged and pleaded with him day after day).

* He did allow the rest of the RFA to drop by and meet the little fluffs; he even allowed each of the rest of the members to name each kitty, much to MC’s dismay;

* And that’s how the kitties ended up with the names Spot (by Zen, who genially couldn’t think of a better name), Zen Jr (by Jaehee-even though Jumin vehemently refused to call it so), Robocop the Fourth (by no one else than Seven, of course), Jinx (by Yoosung-she’s his favorite LOLOL character!), and lastly, the little black kitty V instantly bonded with, which he named Luna-a kitty as dark and majestic as the contrast of the night’s bright moon.

* Jumin eventually agreed to give Luna to V-he saw how much the two instantly bonded, and both he and MC agreed having a little soul to take care of would do V good after all the things he’d been through.

* And they were right-he loved Luna and gave her the best care possible, making her the centre of a lot of his paintings and photographs, which Seven immediatly shared online for millions of people to coo over.

* They weren’t just Elizabeth the 3d’s babies; they were now part of the big, big RFA family.

-Send me a headcanon/scenario for the Mystic Messenger characters to react to!-

#i loved this and sorta made the kitties look like what my cat and his siblings look like lmao #mystic messenger #mysme #mysme headcanons #mystic messenger headcanons #mysme prompts #msystic messenger prompts #elizabeth the 3d #jumin han #mysme V #jihyun kim #yoosung kim #mysme Zen #Jaehee Kang #Luciel Choi #mysme 707 #Saeyoung Choi #Anonymous

120 notes · View notes

secret-engima · 6 years ago

Text

Forged in Fury-verse Drabble: Mother’s Rage

( @sparklecryptid @an--angel--can--fly @ertrunkenerwassergeist @skyshinigamialchemist *slaps this down on the table* BEHOLD. THE CONTEXT FOR MY PREVIOUS POST. IT’S ONLY ... MILDLY ANGSTY. SURPRISINGLY. Also tagging @wolfsrainrules @ean-sovukau @rayearthdudette. Also also, I blame you for this Moose. Your HCs on Ramuh and Leviathan have INSPIRED me and that inspiration finally culminated in this ... and also a few other things that are still in progress *flails*.)

They had not come to Altissia seeking an audience with Leviathan. They had come because the Empire was there and because Regina was never one to waste a resource or a chance to earn another ally. Sylva had tentatively offered to speak to Leviathan, to rouse her and ask for her favor —Regina had already won the favor of Shiva and Ifrit after all, it was not impossible she would win the Hydraean’s— but Regina turned her down. It was too much risk to the city, and so long as the Astrals did not actively get in her way, Regina honestly preferred not to deal with them —she didn’t trust them, didn’t trust that actively seeking a Blessing rather than earning it by accident would not carry a price she refused to pay—.

So perhaps it was no surprise that when Regina made a point not to seek out the Hydraean…

The Hydraean came to her.

“Mortal.” Regina exhaled slowly, closed her eyes, inhaled the salty tang of the waterfront air and listened to the telling screams of terror and then reverent, petrified silence of the world around her where seconds ago there had been chatter and cheer. Then she opened her eyes and looked up into the looming features of Leviathan.

“Hydraean.”

Beside her, Sylva’s breath hitched, confusion and fear vibrating against Regina’s senses —because Leviathan was supposed to be slumbering, not here, rising out of the bay in front of the hotel Regina and her group had just stepped out of on their way to meet the Prime Minister— and Regina felt her Storm bristle at her back, ready to pull her away from the Astral before them and defend her even if it cost his life. She mentally thanked Cid for clamping a firm hand on Cor’s neck before he could to more than lay a hand on his sword hilt.

The Hydraean didn’t seem to notice or care about any of it. She only had eyes for Regina, “Mortal,” repeated the Astral with a twitch of her great, silver-blue fins, “Defier of Fates, She Who Spits in the Face of Prophecy and Walks With the Accursed, yet has earned the favor of both the Glacian and the Fallen Infernian. So you finally come to my resting place. Are you here to beg favor?” A flash of spear-like fangs, the already huddling, cowering crowd of civilians sobbed in terror, hands over their ears in pain at the booming, indecipherable tongue of the Astrals.

Regina wasn’t really all that surprised that she was an exception. That she could understand the Hydraean when a glance at her companions revealed all but Sylva and Ardyn watching on in uncomprehending confusion. She turned her attention back to Leviathan, “No, honored Hydraean. I am not here to beg your favor, I did not even intend to wake you from your slumber.”

“Yet you bring the Accursed into my city, bring him over the surface of my waters. Did you really expect me to stay silent?” One great eye tilted toward her and there was scorn in the slitted gaze, “Did you really expect to avoid confrontation with me when you have blatantly defied the will of the Draconian and dare to consort with the foul Accursed?”

Regina felt something inside her go cold and deadly, felt the soft pulse of Shiva’s ice in her belly and Ifrit’s counterpart hum of heat up her spine as she shifted to more fully stand between Leviathan and the cringing Ardyn, “His name is Ardyn, he is my kin and he is no more foul or accursed than I am.”

“Blind, ignorant, arrogant worm,” growled the Astral before her with a ripple of magic that made the waves tremble, “can you not feel his taint? Can you not smell the stench of the scourge on him?” Regina bared her teeth right back, refused to cower in shame or fear as Ardyn was doing behind her back, ignored Ardyn’s whispered plea for Regina to back down from the fight brewing between her magic and the Hydraean’s. Leviathan snorted, a great billow of steam and a swirl of magic that made the bay waters rise like open waves before settling, “He is the Accursed, foul and plague-ridden and tainted.”

“And who’s fault is that, exactly.” It took a moment for Regina to identify her own voice, so soft and cold, rolling with the oldest language she knew. She’d … almost forgotten she could sound like that. But now she remembered, and when she breathed, the salty air felt like shards of ice in her lungs. Leviathan reared back in shock and Regina repeated, “Who’s. Fault. Is. That.”

Leviathan narrowed her eyes dangerously, “You dare imply that the Astrals are to blame for the Accursed?”

Regina tilted her head, ignoring Sylva’s hands on her arm and the plea of her Lightning in her ear to stop, “What I am implying is that if the vaunted Guardians of Our Star had actually done their job, the Starscourge wouldn’t have been a problem and Ardyn wouldn’t have had to sacrifice himself trying to save people from something that humans are not meant to cure.”

Leviathan’s roar of rage churned the waves out in the bay to a frenzy, sending boats jolting and bucking against their restraints and making people scream as the Hydraean loomed even further out of the water, her coils seeming to stretch on forever into the sky even as her head lowered to snarl right in Regina’s face, “Insolent Mortal! What gives you the right to dare speak to the Hydraean this way? What right have you to question us and fight against prophecy?”

Regina’s favored sword was in her hand in an instant, rage in her blood and violet tinting the air with crystal fractals as she pointed the blade at Leviathan’s head and bared her teeth. She didn’t notice the ice spreading out from her feet to freeze the nearest waves, didn’t register the others scrambling back as her shoulders became cloaked in violet fire. She barely registered her voice deepening with magic to a dangerous, inhuman pitch as she snarled back, “I have every right! The Chosen King you plan to sacrifice is my son! My child! My beloved baby is on your alter of sacrifice before he is even conceived! What do you expect me, a MOTHER, to do BUT question your will and fight your prophecy?”

Leviathan’s head jerked back as if slapped, pupils blowing wide enough to swallow the color of her great eyes in black. Around them, the stormy waves stilled. Settled to soft, gentle ripples against the soaked Altissian cobblestones, reflecting the twisting storm clouds that had formed overhead in response to the clashing magics of the Hydaean and a single, desperate human mother. Leviathan stared and Regina breathed, deep and ragged and fragile in her own fury, blade still pointed accusingly at the Hydraean’s looming frame.

A slow blink and Leviathan’s pupils settled into something between the furious slits or wide-blown shock of before, “A mother.” Another blink, a slow hiss and a sudden, disbelieving softening of her voice from crashing ocean waves to far off thunder, “All of this. All this defiance, the freeing of the Accursed, the swaying of the Oracle, the winning of the Glacian’s and the Fallen Infernian’s favor, the defiance of prophecy and the spitting in the face of the Draconian who blessed your line … because you are a mother?”

Regina inhaled, exhaled, felt the inhuman power of her voice fade into something tired even as she kept her blade up and ready for a fight, “…Yes. That is why I fight. That is what everything I have done was for.”

“He is not even conceived in your womb. You do not even have a mate to help you bear him yet. You have never even seen his face or heard his heartbeat. And yet,” Leviathan’s head tilted very slowly to one side, “you love him. An intangible concept and yet your heart beats solely for him. How can you so fiercely love something that is still just an idea?”

Regina stared into wild, distinctly inhuman eyes in a face that was as far from human as could be. She stared at swaying, house-sized fins and spear-sharp teeth, the embodiment of the ocean in all its terrible, beautiful glory.

She lowered her blade and answered with a simple, “Didn’t you?”

The world went still. The tiny waves flattened to pure, reflective grey-black glass, the sea breezes faded, the storm clouds stopped rumbling. All of the world held its breath in shock. Crystalized in fragile silence of disbelief.

Leviathan didn’t twitch so much as a fin as she rasped, “I … I do not understand.”

Regina flexed her fingers over her sword hilt, repeated in a voice as soft as a breeze, “When you first looked upon humanity, upon the little sailors cobbling together their boats of fragile wood and cloth. The tiny children who looked at your waters and saw not just the danger but the adventure. When you first looked, really looked at the members of humankind who loved your waters as fiercely as if they had been born to them and not land. Wasn’t there a moment? Where something inside you went, ‘I could have children’? A moment where you looked upon your oceans, wild and terrible and free and realized that you didn’t have to be alone anymore? That these little, fragile creatures you had never bothered to pay attention to before could mean something? Could be your children, your little ones, your sons and daughters of the sea?”

Regina met Leviathan’s gaze without fear and whispered, “And then, before you ever picked out which humans you would Bless, before Blessing those humans and making them your children was anything more than just an idea, a concept in your mind-. Didn’t you love them? Didn’t you feel ready to do anything for them if it meant that when the day came that they did exist, they would be happy?” A breath, shaky and pained with memories she could not afford to weep over now, and her sword slipped away into armiger from nerveless fingers as she instead raised her hands from her sides in an unspoken plea.

“That’s why you’re called Tide-Mother, isn’t it?”

A breath. An eternity. A frozen heartbeat of time where Regina stared at the Leviathan and the Leviathan stared at her and the both of them saw, clear as a painting, the reality of the other. The reality of times unwound and betrayals unhealed.

Of children, loved and lost and gone, leaving nothing but memories and bleeding, broken hearts behind.

Then Leviathan threw back her head and screamed.

The storm erupted into a down pour and the glass-still waters surged toward the skies as the Tide-Mother wailed old grief and pain and rage to the heavens. Regina breathed past the flashes of memory-love-loss-pain that pressed against her senses through the heavy magic pushing and pulling through the air like a tide, past the images of a people Blessed and loved and then taken away by Steel and Fire and mistakes and greed.

As the rain pelted down onto the streets and soaked her to the bone in seconds, Regina tilted her head back to face it and let it mingle with her own tears.

Finally, the Tide-Mother’s head tilted back down toward the earth, the rain settling from a torrent to a mournful patter on skin and scales. Leviathan sounded so very weary as she said, “I was indeed a mother once. And my love reached from sea to sea. But my children are gone now, and those who traverse my waves are nothing more than the scattered bones of Solheim’s folly.” A blink and a contemplative, mournful look down at Regina, “I do not care for humanity anymore. They belong to Bahamut now, and when he saw fit to lay the Prophecy upon them, I felt nothing as I slept beneath my waves. I still do not care whether humanity lives or dies. But you do not fight for humanity, do you? You fight for your unborn child and your Chosen and them alone, even if it means burning down the world around you.”

Leviathan suddenly laughed, old and dark as the promise of a hurricane, “I do not care for humanity,” she repeated, “But I care even less for the arrogance of the Draconian that led to my children’s deaths.” Slitted eyes assessed Regina, and this time when she bared her spear-length fangs it was in a smile, “I will Bless you, Mother of the Chosen. I will Bless you so that you might save your child from the fate that befell my own.”

Regina narrowed her eyes, “And what do you require in return?”

Leviathan’s smile grew, “You will teach your children in ways of the sea, the proper ways, not the soulless metal things they use in these days. Do not lie, I sense the ocean in your soul, you were once a wave-rider. Pass that knowledge on so that I might once again have little adventurers upon my waters, true sea-children who can feel the heartbeat of my tides and do not fear the wrath of my storms for all they are wary of it. They will carry my Blessing through your blood and they will be mine indirectly. This is what I desire of you. I desire…” Leviathan tilted her head, growling and considering to herself as if in search of something, some word to summarize her deal.

Feeling a little bit disbelieving, but also not, Regina asked dryly, “You … will give me your Blessing in exchange for being able to pass that Blessing on through my blood, the same as the Draconian’s was passed to me.” A blink and a look at the wide-eyed Ardyn and Sylva, then she clarified, “Basically … you … want me to give you grandchildren?”

Leviathan seemed to roll the word over in her head a few times, then hissed, greedy and victorious, “Yes. That is what I desire. Grandchildren. New wave-riders and TideSingers.”

“I won’t let them be sacrificed to you. If they choose to live on land more than the sea that is their choice for all generations after. You will not put them on strings like puppets.”

“Of course not,” she snorted back, “I am the Hydraean of the Seas, not the Draconian of unbending Steel and Prophecies. They will be free to come and go from my currents as they please, so long as they keep the knowledge of how to truly traverse my waves. Well, Mother of the Chosen? Do we have an accord?”

Regina filled her lungs with salty air, felt the humming Blessings of Shiva and Ifrit and Bahamut —though the latter only through inheritance— already under her skin. Then bared her teeth in a smile every bit as wild and vicious as Leviathan’s, “Yes. I accept your terms.”

Leviathan laughed, deep and old and terrible and Regina forced herself to stay standing through the pain of another Blessing sinking into her blood and bones and soul, “I look forward to seeing what chaos you will sow as you break the Draconian’s Prophecy, Child. Do not forget your promise.”

“Don’t forget yours, Grandmother Hydraean.”

“Brat.” Snorted the Astral Tide-Mother in return as she plunged back beneath the waves, still laughing all the while. Just as the last of her scales disappeared beneath the water, Regina almost thought she caught a glimpse of a beautiful woman in the finest of sea-colored silks and coral jewelry rather than endless scales and serpentine features. The woman smiled and the expression was almost, but not quite human. Regina smiled back, just as fae and wild, and the vision faded as the Leviathan returned to her slumbers beneath the tides.

#Secret Engima Rambles #Melodies and Manuscripts #Forged in Fury verse #Regina Lucis Caelum #Leviathan (ffxv)

149 notes · View notes

lighteyed · 6 years ago

Text

once upon a dream ❦ peter parker au

summary: sleeping beauty au but peter is aurora and reader is prince phillip

word count: 8.8k so hold onto ur hats

author’s note: if u would like to give feedback that would be REALLY NICE ok akkfasjlakfjljdf thank you i love you

It starts once upon a dream, with a boy who had rose petals for a mouth and honey for eyes, a boy born of the King and Queen, the kindest and gentlest soul to ever grace the grounds of the kingdom, as was apparent from the moment he blessed the lives of those around him. Good-natured and sweet, even as an infant, he smiled and laughed rather than cried, and he was the King and Queen's greatest joy. His name was Peter, for it meant stone, and they dreamt of their precious boy who filled their lives with the brightest of sunshine one day growing strong enough to rule over them with his benevolent hand. A celebration was proclaimed to pay homage to the newborn prince, and the entirety of the kingdom was beckoned forth to the castle to take part in the grandest of holidays.

From the neighboring kingdom came the King and Queen’s dearest friend, another King who brought with him you, his darling daughter only a few months old, his gift to his lifelong allies, as they had long and fondly dreamt to unite their two kingdoms through the marriage of a son and a daughter. Your sleepy, infant eyes hardly glanced at the other baby being presented to you, the boy you’d one day adore, the boy whose presence was to incur the wrath of the most vicious fairy in the land.

Though, of course, not all of the fae were vicious. In fluttered three kindly fairies, the announcer proclaiming, “The most honored and exalted excellencies, the three good fairies. Mistress Flora, Mistress Fauna, and Mistress Merryweather.”

They appeared at his cradle, cooing at him profusely as the guests of the celebration, delighted, waited for them to bestow their gifts upon the child. Each was allowed only one.

The first smiled down upon him and decreed that her gift shall be the gift of beauty of the rarest kind, the warmth of springtime in his every step and loveliness beyond compare.

The second smiled down upon him and decreed that her gift shall be the gift of song, his precious life filled with joyful melody, his heart filled with the croon of a nightingale.

The third smiled down upon him, but before her gift could be given, all the light in the room winked out of existence, the candles blown out by the abrupt gusts of wind rattling the chandeliers, the doors to the room thrown abruptly open. The gathering of villagers and nobility alike parted for her, for Maleficent.

Any semblance of good residing in Maleficent had left her long ago, and the flair with which she had entered the room, to join the party she hadn’t been given an invitation to, foretold that the fairy was not here to join in on the revelry of the day. The smirk adorning her red lips, as her patronizing gaze fell on the King and Queen, was indicative enough of her intentions. “Well, well,” her tone is velvet, falsely sweet, and she ascends the stairs to where baby Peter lies in his bassinet. “What a glittering assemblage, King Richard… royalty, nobility, and, how quaint, even the rabble.” Her leer turned on the trio of fairies surrounding the child’s cradle before it went back to the King, and she let out a mocking sigh. “I must say, I really felt quite distressed of not receiving an invitation.” She paused to allow room for an apology.

King Richard, making a show at being brave, said, “You’re not welcome here.”

Maleficent, in turn, made a show at being hurt, but it does not last. She lifted her head and laughed at him. “Oh, dear. What an awkward situation.” She turned, seemingly to make her leave.

The Queen, however, asked quickly, for reassurance, “You’re not offended?”

The fairy’s strange eyes fixed upon the Queen, a shudder creeping up her back. “Why, no, your majesty. And to show I bear no ill will, I, too, shall bestow a gift upon the child.” She ignored the protests of the King and swept the meddlesome fairies aside with one wave of her hand. She glared down at the tiny prince, who stared back up at her with innocent, doe-like eyes. Her hand hovered over him and her sinister voice, the falsetto of sweetness gone, echoed through the throne room. “Listen well, all of you. The prince shall indeed grow in grace and beauty, beloved by all who meet him, but,” she leaned back from the child, raising her arms, “before the sun sets on his sixteenth birthday, he shall prick his finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die.”

The Queen rushed forward for her child as her husband called for Maleficent to be seized, but the only thing left of her when the guards lunged forward was her maniacal laughter ringing in their ears; just a flash of green lightning and black smoke and she was gone.

The curse itself could not be undone, for Maleficent’s magic was so mighty, all other magic-wielders lacked the power to reverse it. The third fairy, Merryweather, having been unable to present Peter with her gift before, smiled down at him, and gently decreed that if he should prick his finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, he would descend not into death but a deep slumber, and there he would remain until true love’s kiss is bestowed upon him to break the fateful spell.

Such was a temporary alleviation to the nerves unsettled by Maleficent’s curse; it was not a good enough antidote to the fears of King Richard, who then and there commanded every spinning wheel in the kingdom to be burnt forthwith, and so it was done. However, the safety of the kingdom’s most precious possession remained uncertain, and it was henceforth decided that, for the young prince’s safety, he was to be sent off to live with the three kind fairies and that night, the King and Queen watched, hearts heavy, their only son be carried away from them.

For sixteen years, the location of the prince remained a mystery to all, but there he lived deep in the woods with the three fairies who had raised him as their own, disguised as three mortal women with hair of red, brown, and gold. They bustled around the tiny cottage, a flurry with preparations for his birthday party, mumbling amongst each other about how to get the boy out of the house.

Peter, lacking in his former title of prince, appeared down the stairs of the cottage, and it is evident that the years were kind. Beauty of the rarest kind indeed; something sunshine-filled about each move he made, his soft smile and sparkling, joyous eyes the sweetest gift, given to him to bless the rest of the world. He tilted his head curiously at the trio. “What are you three up to?” He asked, their suspicious stances poised over the kitchen table piquing his interest.

They stumble over an answer in unison before the golden-haired woman stated, “We want you to go out and pick some berries!” in a hurried, panicked tone.

His brow furrowed, Peter replied, “But I picked berries yesterday.”

The red-haired one sternly said, “We need more.”

The brunette places a hand on his shoulder, pushing him out of the house, “Lots more!” She chimed. “Don’t hurry back, but don’t go far, and don’t speak to strangers!” And with rushed goodbyes, they ushered him out of the little house. He didn’t question their mischievous behavior, it was hardly in his nature to question the women who had raised him. They watch him retreat good-naturedly, recalling the day they brought him there, a tiny thing swaddled in a blanket sleeping soundly as if not a thing in the world could possibly harm him, and it was a beautiful thing to behold: the innocence of an infant. Soon, he’d be theirs no longer, once the curse came to pass and he could return to the castle that would one day be his.

Peter hummed a tune as he journeyed through the forest, and it’s almost as if the creatures hum it right back alongside him. Birds, rabbits, chipmunks, they follow his quiet, honeyed voice as it picks up, no longer a hum but a song, though he keeps it low as to remain as inconspicuous as possible. His guardians had always emphasized the importance of a discreet existence, one where he kept to himself, ran his errands for them if need be, then returned quickly without much talking to anyone. He never really minded. It was all he’d ever known, so what was there to mind?

Elsewhere, you lifted your head, surveying the woods. The pretty voice seemed to ride in on the warm spring breeze, drifting through the canopy of trees overhead. “Come,” you pat your horse lightly, “we’ve been needing an adventure.” You start toward the melody, now a saddened sort of tune.

The animals watch Peter as he sings and picks the berries. When he speaks, more to himself than them, they answer regardless, in their way. “They treat me like a child,” he grumbled, pushing a curl off his forehead as the owl answered who? He sighed, placing a few more berries into the basket. “Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather. They never want me to meet anyone, and I’m always alone.” He paused, then smiled, for all was not lost. There was one thing he held on to, night after night, dream after dream. “I have met someone, though, sort of.” He amended the statement. It was not a formal meeting, but all in his head. Another chorus of who? comes in from the owl, prompting him to say more. “A princess. A beautiful, darling one, kind and intelligent and caring toward everyone, yes, even you,” Peter taps a finger on the nose of an inquisitive rabbit. “It was brilliant, we would talk for hours upon hours, and before we say goodbye, I take her into my arms, and then, of course, I wake.” He shook his head. “Yes, only in my dreams. However, they say if you dream a thing more than once, it’s sure to come true, and I see her each night, so I can only have hope that she’ll reveal herself to me one day when it is time.”

You, hidden behind a tree out of his sight, glow with adoration at his pronouncement. It was quite a sweet declaration, paired with his charming voice, a voice you’re sure you’ve heard a thousand times in your dreams, a lullaby that helps you drift back off when you’ve risen only briefly, you’re sure of it. You long to step out from the shadows and greet him; his apparent shyness, indicated by those eyes he casts around wearily and the softened, almost inaudible pitch of singing, while endearing as anything, made you hesitate from such actions. You decide to leave him be, but before you can climb soundlessly back onto your horse, you step on a twig, the resounding snap of the branch echoing unmistakably. You winced.

Peter nearly dropped his basket and the woodland animals scurried off in fear. He’s never had to deal with people before, let alone people sneaking up on him in the woods, so his fear is heightened extraordinarily at that very moment. Nevertheless, he lingered, waiting for the creator of the noise to reveal itself. Perhaps it was simply another animal being a troublesome little thing, as some were prone to be. However, when what steps out from behind the throng of trees is a girl, pretty and smiling nervously and taking a tentative step forward, he realizes he’s even more unprepared than he had initially thought. You’re awfully familiar to him. He feels it like a punch to the throat, leaves him breathless and utterly incoherent. He knows you without knowing you, impossibly so.

“My apologies,” your face feels warm in a bashful sort of way, and you’re not accustomed to feeling bashful. You pride yourself on the confidence you possess (you’ve hardly had much reason to doubt yourself, an advantage of being royalty), but it all seems for naught in the presence of this boy, the glowing, springtime-eyed boy gazing at you, stunned. “I, um, I didn’t mean to frighten you…” Your hands find your dress and clutch at it tightly to have something to focus on rather than the boy with his mouth agape.

He shut it abruptly as if finally noticing his impropriety. “Oh, oh, no, it- it wasn’t- you didn’t- you’re just…” he took a deep breath to settle his nerves, acutely aware of his cheeks aflame and shaky hands. “A stranger.”

“I gathered as much,” you replied, remaining at a distance as to refrain from frightening him further. “I- I- well, I wanted to tell you that, that your voice is very pretty. I am sorry if I startled you, I’ll be on my way-”

“You heard me?” He squeaked out, the pink of his cheeks darkening like mad. “Singing and talking? You heard me?”

“Indeed,” you school your features into an ambiguous expression, afraid the pleased smile you bite furiously back might be misinterpreted. “You sounded quite nice. I thought maybe it was the fae playing tricks on me, they do that often, but no, just you. A welcome surprise.” The twinkle in your eye makes Peter’s heart flutter rapidly against his ribs. “I do think I’ve heard your voice before.”

“Have you? Where?”

“Why you said it yourself, did you not? Once upon a dream,” you murmured to yourself before glancing back at him, a prominent grin adorning your face. “That’s where we met, of course. That’s where I’ve heard you. Assuming it is me you’ve been meeting in that head of yours.”

“It is, indeed,” he echoed your previous words. “You remember my voice, but I remember you. You are not easily forgotten.”

“Oh, please,” you waved a hand at him. “Your voice is far lovelier than my face could ever manage to be.”

“I must disagree with you there, my dreams did you an injustice compared to the loveliness I see now.” He’s unsure of where this self-assurance has risen from and he does not waste time on thinking too much into it. He must say it whilst he still can, lest you vanish before his very eyes as you do each night as he awakens from his slumber.

“You flatter me, truly,” you smoothed out your dress, stained from traipsing through the forest all day. “Though I must know your name, after meeting you in my dreams and such, it would only be right.”

He hesitated. “I- I’m not supposed to give it out, ‘m very sorry, I would if I could, but you must stay at least a while longer until I’ve finished collecting these,” he held up the basket clutched in his hand.

“Very well, then I won’t tell you mine, either.” You take your horse by the leash loosely tied around its neck and follow the boy into the forest.

His walk gave a vague, pleasant impression of poetry. Loping grace, calculated strides, like a doe in its natural habitat. It wasn’t just his walk that was poetry, it was entirely him. Every blush of his cheek, each blink of his eyes, the radiating (if not teasing) smile he sent your way when you cursed underneath your breath about the bugs nipping at your ankles exposed by your dress. He could tell, easily, that you were unaccustomed to the throes of the deep woods, despite your most valiant efforts to hide it save for the string of profanities you uttered every time you felt another bug bite into you.

“If I had to guess, I would say you were a princess,” Peter cracked another grin as you slapped a mosquito away from your arm, its body leaving a bloody splotch there on your skin in its death.

“What gave you that impression?” You flipped your hair away from your eyes.

A lot of things, he supposed. Perhaps he could simply say it was your unfamiliarity with your current surroundings, as if you’d never been in the presence of a tree that wasn’t perfectly cut and shaped courtesy of some royal gardener or whatever they called it. That wasn’t, of course, the only reasoning behind his assumption. It was the way you carried yourself. The regality of it. An air of confidence you gave off, the formality with which you spoke. You, simply put, looked like a princess, an ethereal being. His first thought upon meeting you was that you mustn't be real. No, impossible. You were a fairy creature; you should have wings like a butterfly’s sprouting from your shoulder blades, flowers wreathed among the strands of your hair, your voice like a wind chime and your laugh like a bell. You were spun from his fantasy-filled sleep, all terribly pretty with those dreamy eyes. He knew you, as you said you knew him, but he had been woefully unprepared to encounter you in the real world. Oh, he could hardly bear it. Just shyly observing you, as you did him, made him flush from his neck to his ears, across his lightly freckled cheeks and nose until he had to refrain from looking at anything other than the ground to prevent further embarrassment.

It was perfectly reasonable for him to say that you, simply put, looked like a princess, but instead he just said, “The way you have no idea how to deal with being outside in nature.”

“I appreciate nature a great deal, I’ll have you know, however, I am, unfortunately, not wearing proper hiking attire, nor was I expecting such an adventure today with a boy so accustomed to these woods in a way I neglect to be.” You huffed in faux-annoyance. He was clearly jesting. You were in no position to argue too vehemently, lest you blow your cover. “I can assure you, I’m no princess. I just tend to stick to my little garden in the back of my home rather than the dark woods.”

“Your ornate dress would also give the impression of royalty, but if you insist you’re of humble birth I am inclined to believe you, as per our agreement to secrecy.” He wished he was able to tell you his name… well, he could, if he desperately desired it so… but, no, he respected his guardians far too much to disobey them to such an extent, and there was no harm in spending these hours with you as long as he didn’t reveal his name. No harm whatsoever. Though he did not always understand their rules, he abided by them out of his goodness and his inherent loyalty.

“Who’s to say I am not a thief and this dress is stolen?”

“You don’t strike me as a thief,” Peter continued pulling off the berries from bushes he knew were safe for eating.

“And why is that?”

He paused. Does he dare? “Too pretty.” He did dare.

You fought off the look of surprise threatening to break open your face. Composure was your finest, most practiced quality. “Too pretty to be a thief? Thieves aren’t allowed to be pretty, then?”

“They can,” he decided, then said, “Your prettiness just looks like it stems from goodness. That’s all.”

“Thieves can steal for good reasons.” You avert your eyes from him, examining a tree with brilliantly bright flowers hanging low from its branches. Easier than looking at him was looking at flowers, but what was the difference, really? Both were beautiful.

“You just don’t look the type.” He said after a while. He came to where he had wanted to take you since the minute you’d chosen to keep him company. “Close your eyes for a second.”

You turned back toward him once you had secured your horse to the tree, arms folded across your chest. “Presumptuous of you.” He shakes his head at you, the florid hue of his complexion quickly becoming a permanent fixture of his face. “Fine, as you wish.” You held your hands together as you shut your eyes. He shuffled closer toward you, grass ruffling underneath his light footstep.

“Open them.”

You did, and clasped in his grip was a dainty rose, held out for you. You feel a swarm start inside your stomach, butterflies fighting to be free of their cage. They did not appreciate the proximity between you and Peter, they begged closer closer closer, they pleaded kiss him kiss him kiss him, they cried indignantly when you did not. Your breath seemed nonexistent when standing so close to him, so close each fleck in his brown eyes stood out against the gold and pink of the blooming sunset. Composure no longer existed. Before you could say a word to him (though you were unsure how you were going to do so without sounding like a complete and utter fool), he said, “I have more for you, but… well, may I?” You nodded, and he slipped it through your hair, careful to mind the thorns. “There, now you look like you belong among the briar patch, a wild rose.”

“You’re a sweetheart,” you said while his fingers were still twined in your hair, lingering on the soft curve of your cheek. He couldn’t match your gaze for long, the intensity made his skin warm all over, if it were even possible to blush that hard, and he was afraid he’d do the impulsive thing in the rush of heat and kiss you full on the mouth. Oh, it did cross his mind, but he was not an impulsive boy, and he pulled back the littlest amount to restrain himself. He tried to feel the wind whip across his face, to cool him down. Passion, apparently, was going to make an idiot of him, and he’d only just met you. He couldn’t allow himself to be an idiot in front of you, yet. “Thank you, truly. I don’t get out much, or talk to people much, and this has been a lovely day.”

“Neither do I,” he admitted. “Hardly at all.”

“When might I see you again?” Earnest in your question, you reached for his hand. You liked his hands, nervous and all over yours, a perfect fit. “Or, better yet, when might I learn your name?”

Maybe making such hasty promises was the wrong move, but regardless he said, “Tomorrow, at the cottage by the glen,” and walked you back toward whence you came, the rose in your hair and a quickly made bouquet in your hands. He watched you mount your horse, basking in the feel of your lips delicate on his cheek from when you had bid him goodbye. You departed from him in the grip of some bright, beautiful, bold dream, lighter than life or air.

Peter headed back to his home, humming happily to himself. A raven is perched atop the tiny cottage’s roof, but Peter paid it no mind. He was held aloft in the clouds, in the radiance of the sunset, in the hands of another. When he entered the cottage to see the slightly lopsided cake that Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather had made for him, his happy mood increased tenfold. Their cries of happy birthday helped a smile light up his face. “Oh, thank you! You’ve made today even better than it already was!” His sincerity is touching, but the three women pause.

“What else happened today?” Fauna asked, taking the basket out of his hand and noticing a stray rose left inside.

“I met someone,” he informed them, and he’s glowing as he says it, glimmering with happiness and hope and dreams. “A beautiful someone. The most beautiful someone the world has ever seen.”

They cast quick looks among one another. This just wouldn’t do. “You’ve met some stranger!” Flora exclaimed. “After all we’ve taught you?”

“She’s not a stranger, though, I’ve met her before, once upon a dream,” he laughed at his loophole to their rule, and he began humming dreamily again as he helped himself to some of the cake on the table.

“He’s in love!” Fauna felt his forehead for the unmistakable flush of first love, and there she found it.

“Oh no!” Merryweather sat down in a chair, fanning herself dramatically.

“This is terrible!” Flora took the cake out of his hands and started eating the rest herself.

Startled, Peter wiped the frosting off his lips and stared around at the trio of women, pale and acting more melodramatic than ever. “What is the problem? I would say I’m old enough for love. I am sixteen now, after all.”

Flora sighed. “It isn’t that, dear.” She glanced at her sisters for help.

“You’re already betrothed.” Fauna explained, wringing her hands. Perhaps they should have told him sooner, rather than later. It was just that, well, if the curse were to come true it would be today, on his sixteenth birthday, and it only felt right to wait until today, up until this very moment, of course, watching his previous elation fade into dejection and hurt. “To Princess Y/N, of the neighboring kingdom. She’s lovely, as well-”

“But that’s impossible because for me to marry a princess I would have to be a-a-a-”

“A prince, dear, yes,” Merryweather reached over to him to pet his hair gently. He backed up toward the kitchen window before she could touch him.

“You’re Prince Peter, son of King Richard and Queen Mary, who we are to take you back to tonight.” Flora tried to place a motherly hand over his, and again he jerked back from touch. He felt completely and utterly betrayed. Outside, a raven caws at the sky and flies off, an omen or a metaphor.

“I-I-I can’t go there, she’s coming here tomorrow, and I promised to meet her!” It’s the only thing his mind can focus on, out of the billions of thoughts swarming around up there right now. Her. You. The impossibility of having to marry anyone other than you. It was incomprehensible.

“I’m sorry, dearest, but you can never see that girl again.”

Peter said nothing. He stormed out of the room, the rose you’d placed in his basket when he wasn’t looking to make him think of you later in the evening between his fingers. Tears well up in his eyes, burning against his shut lids. He settled himself down on his bed once the door was safely closed and bolted, placing the rose on his pillow and letting the tears spill out. The three fairies huddle around his door, listening to his muffled, shallow breaths. They thought he’d be so happy with the news.

Far away, in your own kingdom, you were just entering the castle, singing softly to yourself and spinning throughout the halls, your heart rosy with joy. You were hoping to slip quietly into your room and send one of the maids for a vase to put your new bouquet into. Then, you wanted to sleep immediately after a bath, to fast forward time in your own way and get to tomorrow quicker. You could hardly wait.

You were, however, stopped in the hallway by your father. He had a bemused expression on his face. He’d been watching your twirls of delight for a few moments now and, as endearing as it was, had business to attend to with you. “What has you in such a mood, my girl?”

“Oh, father! I had the most lovely day! Enchanting, really, so splendid I can hardly believe it was real!” You grabbed his hands excitedly, bouncing on your toes.

“What happened? Not talking to strangers, I hope?”

“I met someone, a most handsome someone, father, he was kind and funny and romantic, gave me this rose and a dozen other flowers to keep with me until I see him again tomorrow! You can meet him, too, of course, that’s a given!” You added the last part upon seeing the surprised knit of his brow. “I’ve met him before, once upon a dream, so he’s not a stranger, I’m sure you’ll like him as I do. You mustn't look so worried!” You patted his shoulder.

“It’s not that I’m worried my dear, it’s- well, I’m sorry, child, I should’ve told you sooner…” he trailed off, wiping the sweat off his brow. You take a step back, a feeling of dread creeping up your neck. You wanted to clap your hands over your ears to avoid hearing the next words to come out of his mouth. You almost did. “You’re betrothed. To the lost prince Peter. We’re to meet him and his father King Richard there tonight, at their castle, when the prince comes home. You’ll be married soon enough, and I already have a castle ready for the two of you. Nothing elaborate, forty bedrooms and a dining hall, room for the children, naturally-”

“That is absurd!” You cried, eyes alight. “Married? Children? To a stranger? This is- this is absurd, absurd and impossible and ludicrous and all other synonyms for the damn word! Prince Peter? He doesn’t even exist to me! I don’t even know what he looks like!”

“He was blessed by the fairies to be quite handsome, and kind, too, he’ll make a suitable match for you, Y/N-”

“Enough of this! I’m to meet the other boy tomorrow, not marry some random prince tonight! I don’t want it, I renounce my title, I reject the crown, I will not go with you anywhere tonight or tomorrow or any day after!” You stomped your foot, childish as it may be, and ran off in the other direction to the stairs, to the safety of your bedroom, as your father yelled after you that you would do as you were told. “You’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming there!”

“I command you to come to your senses! No daughter of mine will marry a peasant boy!” And he would drag you kicking and screaming if he had to, mark his words. If he could get to you before you escaped, that is.

Spoiler: he doesn’t. That, however, comes later.

In the woods, the fairies and Peter walked cautiously down the path leading to the castle, the greatness of it looming overhead. Begrudgingly, Peter had gone with them. He would explain, he had decided, to his parents that it would be impossible for him to marry just anyone, and he would tell them about the girl he’d met, and implore them to meet her instead of marrying him off so soon. It had to work, or at least sway them in his favor.

Unnoticed, they reach the castle and head into an unoccupied room with a fire burning in the fireplace, ushering him inside and locking the door. Fauna pulled the drapes closed, shutting out the light from the sunset completely. He sat down, and Flora nestled a crown atop his curls, his final gift from them as a symbol of his regained royalty. Peter then let out a distinct sniffle and hastened to wipe his eyes. Everything in his life had been upheaved in a mere moment and it frightened him, made him anxious and frustrated, made him want to run, hide, never look back. He was eager to meet his parents—well, more curious than eager— but a royal life was too much of a shock, coupled with a predetermined marriage plan and he was about ready to collapse. Happy birthday to me, he thought glumly.

They all flutter around him as he made his misery apparent, awkward pats on the back were distributed, and they soon bowed out of the room to alone him a few minutes to himself. He held his head in his hands, breathing deeply to calm himself.

The fire goes out suddenly when he lifts his head. He’s in pitch-black darkness, save for a small sphere of green light winking at him from the other corner of the room. His eyes go glassy, unfocused, as he stares at it, entranced. There’s no looking away from the little ball of light, and Peter resolved that he needed to be closer to it, needed to touch it, so he got up from his seat and started toward it. It floated beyond the fireplace, where a wall suddenly opened up. He continued walking. He had to. His only thought was the mysterious ball of light, there was no other option but to follow it.

Outside, the fairies discuss their boy’s sadness, worried for him. “Do you think his plan to tell the king will work?”

“I do hope so,” Merryweather leaned against the door. “I don’t see why he must marry any old princess, anyway.”

“That’s not for us to decide, dear,” Fauna answered, though if it were she certainly would give him the choice of his happiness. It gave her, and all the fairies, the greatest satisfaction to see the boy’s happiness. He was such a sweet boy, he deserved endless happiness and smiles and love. They hadn’t meant to make him this unhappy. “We shall see what the king makes of it- what was that?” They halted their discussion, ears pressed against the wooden door, and all collectively gasped. There was a distinctive giggle ringing in the room. “Maleficent!” They chorused, barging into the room, cursing their decision to leave him alone. They watched him vanish behind the reappearing wall, unable to hear their cries for him. They try to push the wall back open, and when that didn’t work, they had one thing left to use: their magic. But even as they found the passageway, there were multiple ways going off the fireplace, and they couldn’t find the right way at once.

He continued slowly up a staircase, following the light. He followed it into another dark room in the tower, where it floats into a corner and transforms into a spinning wheel. He reached toward it, a hand outstretched. There’s the voice of the fairies far away behind him, telling him not to touch anything, and another soft voice, invisible, crooning in his ear when he holds back, “Touch the spindle, Peter.” A command if he ever heard one, and Peter was nothing if not eager to please.

The rays of the sun are a scarlet red as he pricked his finger sharply, like droplets of his blood had escaped and found their way into the sky.

The fairies entered the doorway a minute too late, horror in their gaping mouths and wide eyes as Maleficent cackled. “Fools, the lot of you, for thinking you could defeat me, me!” Another wicked laugh curls from her lips. “Here’s your precious prince!” She kicked Peter’s crumpled body lightly. When she disappears, she leaves nothing behind but that cruel laugh and her cruel curse.

Peter was face down on the floor, curled in on himself, the blood spooling from his finger making a tiny puddle on the wooden floor. The fairies gathered around his motionless body, crying, blaming themselves.

The entire kingdom has already filed into the castle to celebrate their beloved prince’s triumphant return to his royal roots. The sun had set, and he was supposed to be entering now, cheered for by all, embraced by his parents. The fanfare outside is indicative enough of the momentum of the celebration, but if that weren’t enough, fireworks were beginning to sound off.

Fauna began to wail, “Poor King Richard and Queen Mary, they’ll be devastated when they find out!”

“Heartbroken,” Merryweather agreed, blotting her eyes.

Resolutely, Flora said, “They’re not going to.” Her sisters looked to her curiously. “Everyone in the kingdom is here, at the castle, so we’ll put everyone to sleep until Peter awakens. No one gets hurt.” First, they conjured a bed to situate him on, and then, in his hands, place the single red rose you had left him. “Now, let’s get to work.”

They flew around the castle, putting everyone to sleep swiftly and efficiently. Flora settles down to put the spell on the other king, who is lying next to King Richard, already asleep. While drifting off to sleep, this king mumbled, thinking he is still speaking to King Richard, “I’m sorry, but my daughter has run off, seems she’s fallen in love with a peasant boy…” his eyes fluttered briefly shut but Flora shook him back awake, alarmed by his statement.

“Peasant boy? Who is he? Where did she meet him?”

“Just some peasant boy she’s met.”

“Yes, but where?” She pressed, shaking his shoulder again.

“She said once upon a dream,” he slumped over, finally asleep.

Flora’s eyes widened drastically as she scrambled up from the floor, calling for her sisters. Oh, this was glorious. Peter would have no reason to be sad once he awakened, for his betrothed was already the object of his affections. They just had to find her.

You hadn’t given your father a chance to drag you out of your castle kicking and screaming; you had already left. You had propped open a window when the maid had gone to draw your bath, found your footing on a sturdy vine, and cascaded to the castle grounds with only minor cuts, scrapes, and assaults to your dress. You would’ve worn more suitable clothing, but you had none, therefore you made do and accepted the dress’ fate.

You ran toward the stables just as the maid was discovering your absence, readied your horse with a gentle coaxing of a shiny apple, and escaped faster than your father could call the guards to find you. You felt like you were flying, freedom settling on your shoulders as you ride your way to the cottage in the glen. You had to see him and tell him of the atrocity your father was planning to force you into.

You dismounted from the horse as soon as you see it, the only cottage for miles. You tie the horse to the tree, giving her another apple and a pat on the head. You knocked on the flower-covered door, smiling to yourself.

“Come in!” Called a voice from within. You entered and immediately got the feeling that something was off. It was too dark in the cottage, unnaturally black, and you couldn’t even attempt to turn back and hurry away because you were seized at the arms by two strange yet strong creatures.

“Get off me!” You struggled against them to no avail. You were soon tied up, though you had spat on them and kicked them enough to wound their pride at least. “Do you know who I am? Release me this instant!”

A candle lights up your face, illuminating your angry eyes and snarl. A ferocious look for a princess, Maleficent noted. Deeply satisfied with her catch of the day, she said to you, “Look at this,” she runs a hand over her raven’s head, “I set my trap for a peasant girl and I catch a princess. How darling.” You sneered at her, craning away from her icy gaze. “Well, away with him, my pets, but do be gentle. I have such plans for our royal guest.”

The fairies arrived again a beat too late, finding their door propped wide open. When they enter the cottage, they find your red rose on the floor, strands of hair entwined from where it’d been yanked out.

“She’s taken the princess!” Merryweather picked the rose up from the floor.

“To the forbidden mountain,” Flora gritted her teeth. It was a horrid place, the stuff of nightmares and evil. Darkness bloomed there, ceaseless. “We must.”

“We can’t!” Fauna moaned. “It is forbidden for a reason!”

“We can and we must! For Peter and for Princess Y/N, so that they may know each other truly! And for the whole kingdom, so that they may know peace!”

Merryweather and Fauna can hardly argue with a sentiment such as that. They reluctantly journey forth with their sister to the forbidden mountain, a twisted castle shrouded in black and green smoke, its towers like jagged spikes.

Shrunk down to microscopic size, the fairies approach the castle. The guards do not detect their presence and they passed the gates unseen. They shimmied through a window to a room where Maleficent and her little pets are feasting and dancing around a fire. “What a pity Princess Y/N can’t be here to enjoy our celebration! Come, we must go to the dungeon and cheer her up,” she said to her pet raven, perched on her shoulder as always. She departed the feast, her raven and the fairies following her.

They held in their gasps when they saw you, chained to the wall with a cut across your cheek and your head down so you didn’t have to look Maleficent in the face.

Maleficent cooed to you, “Oh, come now, Princess, why so melancholy? A wondrous future lies ahead of you, the destined heroine of a charming fairy tale come true.” She made images dance before your eyes to depict a story. “Behold, King Richard’s castle, and in yonder topmost tower, dreaming of his true love, your betrothed, Prince Peter. Behold the gracious whim of fate, ‘tis the same peasant boy who won the heart of you, most beautiful Princess Y/N, only hours ago. He is indeed a sight to look upon. Beauty of the rarest kind, yes? In ageless sleep, you’ll find. The years roll by, but a hundred years to a steadfast heart as his are but a day. And now, the gates of the dungeon part, and the princess is free to go on her way. Off she rides on her noble steed…” Maleficent’s voice dripped with sarcasm as she continued on, smug and sly. “A valiant, radiant, beautiful figure. Regal.” The image of you she showed was that of a shaking old woman, hunched over and sad. “Off to wake her love with true love’s kiss,” she mocked the phrase with a high-pitched tone, “to prove that true love conquers all.” You growled at her, struggling against your chains, trying to rip them off the wall and get your hands around her throat. The cruelty of it all. To make you a prisoner here while your prince was alone and ageless, to release you once you were too feeble to give him any sort of life together or even entertain the thought. The most brutal punishment of all, to give you to him, at last a savior, except like that. And she loved every second of it, basking in her triumph and laughing back up to her feast. “A most gratifying day,” she had smiled as she locked the dungeon door.

After she is gone, the fairies appear, approaching you. “No time to explain,” Flora hushed you, opening your chains with her magic.

“Who are you?” You asked, rubbing at your bruised wrists and standing up on weak legs.

“Peter’s guardians, fairies, and we have heard so much about you, Princess Y/N,” Flora said. Merryweather produced the rose from her pocket and placed it back in your hair. “You must save him, you’re the only one who can!”

“I’ll do whatever it takes to save him, and to stop Maleficent,” you added, scraping dried blood off your cheek from where she had cut you. “Tell me what I must do, what I must face, and I will face it gladly.”

The set of your jaw and the determined stance of your shoulders ease the fairies’ worries. They’d thought that perhaps you’d be too scared to fight. Flora conjured two weapons with her magic, presenting them to you. “The road to true love may be buried still with more dangers, which you alone will have to face. Arm thyself with this enchanted shield of virtue and this mighty sword of truth, for these weapons of righteousness will triumph over evil.” You suit up, ruined dress and all. The fairy halted from opening the door. “Do you, ahem, know how to use these weapons, Princess?”

You unsheathed the sword, chin raised. “ I shall learn.”

The door swung upon, and you and your new companions flood out, the raven shrieking for its mistress. You and the fairies start up the stairs and Maleficent’s servants come streaming down toward you. You narrowed your eyes, raising the sword and beginning to fight. It was a heavy thing, nearly impossible to hold upright without the proper training, but you managed to fight back effectively before they jump right out the window. They began a counterattack of throwing rocks, which Flaura turned to bubbles, and shooting arrows, which Flora turned into flying daisies. If you had more time, you’d marvel at the wonders of her magic.

Merryweather freed your horse outside, waiting for you. You hopped on, riding off determinedly to the gate. You would not be deterred, even when hot oil came pouring toward you (which Flora turned to a rainbow). Merryweather followed the raven as it tried to wake a slumbering Maleficent, and she turned him into a stone raven outside the dark fairy’s door, but not before he succeeded in waking his mistress. Maleficent screamed, “No!” when she saw her beloved pet turned to stone, then again, a panicked “No!” when she noticed you making your daring escape. She raised a hand, and the drawbridge, too, started to raise.

“Watch out, Y/N!” Flora called, and you tightened the reins on your horse, ground your jaw, and launched over the gap just barely. “Hurry, hurry!” She called again. Your grip is so tight you can feel your fingernails against your palms. It feels like flying again, you’re going so fast through the dark forest you have no time to think or plan your next move. All that matters is going as fast as you can and getting away from Maleficent. To Peter. Your Peter. To know his name brought you strength.

Maleficent raised her arms, casting a spell. “A forest of thorns shall be her tomb, born through the skies on a fog of doom, now go with the curse and serve me well, round Richard’s castle cast my spell!” Bolts of lightning strike the darkening castle, causing a wild growth of thick and thorny bushes, seemingly impenetrable. Maleficent breathed loudly through her nose. She had foiled your daring rescue. “Finally, for the first time in sixteen years, I shall sleep well.”

Or so she thought. You hesitated only for a moment. Then, hauling the heavy sword back up, you fought your way through the thorns, because they reminded you of the rose in your hair, and the rose reminded you of Peter. This was for him. You continued cutting your way through until you were free on the other side.

Maleficent gaped. “No! It cannot be!” Enough was enough. She appeared in front of you suddenly, and you stepped back out of habit. “Now, you shall deal with me, dear princess, and all the powers of hell!”

A tad dramatic, you thought, or maybe not, you thought after she transformed herself into a monstrous dragon in front of you. Your breath caught in your throat, and not in the happy, love-filled way from before. No, this was much different. Still, you squared your shoulders, making a courageous step toward her despite there being absolutely no chance of your victory. She spewed fire, and your fight with her was short-lived. You raised your shield against her, but you knew that would only last so long. She was too much. She was blazing fire and snapping jaws. You retreated, backed up against a wall, shakingly holding the sword high. If you were to die, you would go down fighting, with that stupidly heavy sword in your first and a scowl on your face. That’s how you would want to be remembered. Cowering in fear did not exist to you. Composure was your strong suit.

“Up here!” Flora said from above you, and you climbed up to where she was, only to find yourself trapped on a cliff. Fire blazes all around you and one meticulously aimed ball of it destroys your shield into a pile of ash.

Maleficent’s laugh at your loss ignited a rage in you, and you raise the sword again, staring her in her strange eyes, as the fairies chant, “Now sword of truth fly swift and sure, that evil die and good endure!” It feels lighter in your hands somehow, and when you throw it in a spiraling arc at the dragon, you know your aim was true. It struck her right in the heart, and she goes down off the cliff in an eruption of flames. You peered over the side of the cliff, blowing a strand of hair out of your face, dusted with char. She was reduced to a pile of nothing, the sword sticking out of the ground.

The horse and the fairies came to your side, and you made your way to the castle. You let them lead you to Peter, nearly tripping over yourself to scramble up those stairs in an effort to get to him faster.

He lay there on the bed, serene-looking in his sleep. Even when you look away, you’re still looking. His face had been burned into your memory; that beautiful, sweet face. And here he was. Your Prince Peter. The boy from your dreams, the boy of your dreams. The rose clutched in his hand and tied in your hair, binding the two of you together. You know what is meant to happen next, yet you hesitate.

“What is wrong, Princess?” Flora asked, fluttering around you with her sisters. “Is it your attire? You are looking a little worse for wear, but we can fix that up.” They wave their wands and clear the ash from your face, fix your knotted hair, patch your dress good as new. “A new color dress for the occasion, I think, as well.” She makes it pink.

Merryweather wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Blue.” She turned your dress blue.

“Pink!” Flora commanded, making it pink again. Merryweather raised her wand again, but you wave your hands wildly about to capture their attention.

“Can’t you just make it both?” You said, exasperated. Flora shrugged, doing as you asked. “Anyway, that’s not what I was going to say. Must I really, um, kiss him?” You stared down at the boy in front of you, placing a hand on his.

“Why? Is that a problem?” They cocked their heads in confusion.

“Well, it just feels a bit intrusive, he’s not awake to say it’s okay for me to kiss him, and I don’t want to make assumptions on his behalf but I know it’s the only way to wake him up so I’m not really sure what-” The fairies all stare at you blankly, so you halt the confused monologue.

Swallowing your nerves, you lean down and press a gentle kiss to his cheek. It was what felt right in the moment, and so you did it, and the world tilted on its axis. His brown eyes opened slowly, catch yours, and he beamed.

“It’s you,” he said as he sat up, cupping your cheek. “You’re…”

“A princess, it would seem, betrothed to a Prince Peter. You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you? I’ve been waiting to meet him, though I hear he gets himself into all sorts of trouble. I’ll have to deem him worthy of my time.” He crinkled his face up in that boyish, shy manner of his, just the most darling thing you’ve ever seen. “I’m very glad it’s you.”

“As am I,” he said sweetly, face leaning up toward yours.

“I was thinking I might kiss you now if that’s alright,” you played with the collar of his shirt apprehensively. He nodded a yes, a please kiss me, and so you did, and he tasted of fairytales.

Inside the throne room, as the people begin to awaken, your father is attempting to explain to Peter’s that his daughter has decided to marry a peasant boy, mumbling something along the lines of it being the fourteenth century and a perfectly acceptable thing, but King Richard is hardly listening. He stood up, eyes bright, as his child and the princess descend the stairs and come into the throne room together, hand in hand, a rose in the button of Peter’s shirt and a rose in your hair.

You kneeled together in front of the throne, and Peter embraced his mother and father tightly. Your own father stands there stuttering like a loon, and you send him a wink.

You and Peter danced together, alive with love and joy, the whole night spent in the company of one another’s arms. You resolved to never let him go, and he resolved to keep you in his heart for the rest of his life. Fauna dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, and, when asked what was wrong, said softly, “I just love happy endings.”

THE END.

#peter parker imagine #peter parker #peter parker x reader

387 notes · View notes

savannahawthorne · 5 years ago

Photo

LIA HAVELOCK | THE DAY OF THE VICTORY TOUR

Back before the modern days, there lived a time even before the ‘once upon a times’ present in our lore. It was a time of glory, wisdom, and a time of much adventure. It was a time when the peril was real as well as the ethereal glory of the celestial crown upon the Earth’s head. This was the time that the maiden, one who was as fair as the morning dew and as lovely as the springtime blooms, dwelled and lived…

Slowly, the sky overhead lit with the fiery red paint strokes of the dying day gave to the subtle tones of purple and inkinesss that would accompany the darkness of a moonless night. After all, District Four was a dark place when the moon did not shine and these days, the pale ribbon of moonlight was long sought after as the moon ventured on it’s trip away from the Earth. Still, there was a steady scratch of the pen long into the darkness with only the small lit orb of the flashlight (a haunting gift from a gleaming Capitol City) to accompany it.

For this maiden was a wondrous sight to behold; her golden hair was made of the purest sunbeams for it gave off the warming glow in which the blooms sprang into being. In her eyes, eyes that were so cerulean even the sky was jealous, you might have expected to see puffs of cumulus clouds frolick. So special was this maiden, when she pranced around flowers bloomed in her wake as a humble offering from the Earth in celebration of her glory and virtuous nature inherited from her mother; Mother Earth.

One fair day, forest breeze flowing through her hair tangling it gentle knots and the sweet aroma of petals kissing the air, that Persephone wandered lost as a gentle fawn guided her way. A fawn whose spots had begun to fade in favor of the tiny velvet horns erupting from it’s head as the creature made its way into adulthood.

How Persephone favored this creature as she followed it blindly, because it knew the way. The creature was her own sun and guiding star separate from the ones her father had created in the starry heavens above, to guide the mortals trapped in the mortal realm.

“Oh!” Persephone called out as the ground gave way below her feet. What was this horror that had come to encompass her world of flowers, greenery, and frolicking? This new world was dark, jagged marble that glittered in the darkness, fed by the River Styx which flowed through it.

Still she was not afraid, for her fawn had leaped down the hole in the Earth as a newly appointed soldier at her side. Looking at the creature, now stalwart and calm, Persephone christened it Virgil, a pure soul destined to guide her journey.

Lia stopped for a moment, tears now wetting the pages in her hands as the tide lapped at her toes buried in the cool sand. Over her shoulder her constant companions, pale and transparent, watched silently as they urged her to continue her tale.

Somewhere in the darkness of this grand city, the City of the Underworld, her imprisoner waited with bated breath. For it was his darkest ambition for the fairest maiden to arrive in his city and be his own treasure to claim. It did not matter that her father, the mightest of the Gods, had denied his request. He was the mightiest of all, for Hades, ruled the land in which none could escape. After all, he was the light that cared for the souls of the land providing them with nourishment and a place to rest their immortal souls once the short flesh of mortality had been shed. No, it was Hades that should be worshiped above all.

Seeing the path behind them was blocked by stone as immovable as the past bricks molded by the sands of times, Persephone knew the way forward was their only option. “Come Virgil, we shall go forth and join this panem et circeneses.” Surely if they were victorious they would be allowed to return home to the forest of their youth and free to rejoice in the sun once more.

Pausing, Lia chewed her lip, her hand weary from a day’s work, but she knew the time was running out as the stars shifted across the sky. In the morning the time would come, a time when the light would be forced to rise until it surrendered to the darkness. It was with urgency that she went back to the task at hand and Persephone’s siren call.

Back on earth, the sun had slowly dipped in the sky and Mother Earth, Demeter, called her only child back from the forest. “Come my child, come and be well for we will dine on the harvest feast as we always do.” Only the sun slowly vanished behind the horizon and Demeter’s table remained empty. There would be no feast tonight or for many fortnight’s to come.

With lamenting tears, Demeter called out to her husband, the King of the Gods. ‘Oh where has our child gone? Our maiden of the springtime and the flowers?” She asked as she surveyed the area around them. Already the flowers had begun to wilt and give into the heat of the sun, baking the Earth in the glorious worth of summer.

Without the reassurances of her husband, who hadn’t a clue, Demeter called out again to the all-knowing God of the Sun, Helios. “Oh! My wisest friend, tell me where my daughter has perished because my heart aches with incurable sadness.”

Slowly, Helios paused his chariot in the sky hearing the desperate pleas of Mother Earth, causing an endless stream of sunbeams to shine down on the Earth. For this was not part of his journey, but he could not leave Demeter in such anguish.

“Sister Demeter, your child is not lost.” His voice called down laden with sorrow and regret. “She has been claimed by Hades, God of the Underworld, and shall not return to this land ever again as pentenace for your Husband’s wilful denial of his request for her hand in marriage.”

Demeter cried out in desperation for the words of the Sun God could not be true. Her child would one day return to her as it is a mother’s will to be with their children. Her daughter, Persephone, was far too fair and good to be damned to the pits of Hell. She would see to it that all should be set right again in the world…

Heavily, Lia sighed as she looked up, her blue eyes finding the first light of the day breaking on the horizon. In another time, this would have been her most cherished moment of the day. The moments in which a new beginning was born into life and when it was as if the world took a breath and began again, but the world had died months ago.

Yet, Persephone persisted in the dark despair of that grand city below having made her way to the gleaming City of the Damned. There her and her fawn, Virgil, who had now grown, were imprisoned in a palace that would even shame her father’s. Daily she was showered in expectations, but also gifts Hades believed her heart would desire.

With persistent tears, Persephone continued to bath the Underworld with her misery no gifts could cure. Gifts could not quell her longing to return to her mother and the green earth above, for she was not meant to be of this world. The glamour and glitz held no appeal to her as did her would-be-lover's pleas. Trials and tribulations were not her way, though, if she must, she swore up and down she would do as needed. For surely successful completion meant returning to the warmth of Demeter’s embrace.

Hastily, Lia finished the last pages of her writing and slammed the book shut with a resounding thud. The call of obligation rang out with the incoming tide and she knew she could not resist it’s call any longer. Life was like the tides after all, they came and went, and you were powerless to fight them. A lesson she had learned all too well in the days that had passed since the ‘fated’ one that hung still above her head like a guillotine.

Even as she stepped foot on the train, Persephone’s tale remained with her. A whisper under the blankets kind of tale that you could not help but pass along, even to a now phantom chaperone.

Back on Earth, Demeter mourned her child and swore there would be no warmth until all was set right. So, the Earth fell into a fitful slumber. Gone were the warm winds and sunbeams of the glory days. Her fits of rage had long banished Helios from the sky and a white blanket of snow, ice, and silence enveloped all the lands. It was then the cries of Zesus’ beloved mortals joined in the chorus of Mother Earth begging for Zeus to bring them relief.

Try as he might, Zeus could not convince Demeter to permit Helios to continue his journey across the sky. For what did it matter? The Earth would not bloom again in greenery and flowers until the Maiden of the Springtime returned, or was he so callous he had forgotten his daughter already?

“Hades!” Zeus called out in a fit of anger summoning his brother to his side. “I order you to return back what you have stolen.”

Haughty and with a laugh full of zeal, the God of the Underworld laughed at the request bequeathed to him. “Now brother, you have thrice denied my request for the hand of the fairest maiden, and now she is mine. All is as it should be.” Hades reasoned.

“This is my wish!” Zeus cried out in anger as he stomped his foot and pointed a thunderbolt at the God of the Underworld.

“No, this is the wish of your wife.” Hades pointed out. It had been longed known that Zeus, God of the Gods, long favored his daughter Athena above all others. “I have promised to bath Persephone in the finest riches of the Earth and care for her all the days of eternity.” He continued despite the anger resonating from his brother. “I can make her a queen, now that she has passed my trials and tribulations, and the souls of the Underworld will worship her as their own. Tell me, how is this not desirable?”

Frustration furrowed Zeus’ brow as he listened to the words of his brother. “You shall return the maiden to her mother before fortnight’s end.” He demanded as he settled into his lofty Olympus throne knowing the mortals would perish if Demeter’s anguish was not abated. “In return, I shall promise her to you for six months of the year as to permit you both what your hearts desire. I rule this as her father and as the Gods of All Gods on Olympus. This is final.”

The words swirled in Lia’s head as she embarked, tired and frazzled from her own fortnight’s journey. Ahead of her laid the gleaming city of marble and stone, but would forever be cloaked in darkness and misery. Here the wail of the Lost was the strongest and frequented her without relenting. Here the call of what might have been and could have been blurred until she could no longer untangle the ball of string they had become and set the world right.

If she turned her head to the right, Lia could almost hear the whispers of the fawn now grown in the wind urging her to keep going. The next part of the story playing on repeat was his favorite. His voice was soft and eager, much like it had been when they were children hushed by the silence of the night and the fear of being overheard and whisked back to bed without the story’s ending.

Eyes choked with tears, Lia had no other option than to allow the movie in her head to come to fruition.

And so it was deemed that Perseophone should be returned to her mother Detemer. With a fit of joy and happiness, the maiden burst forth from the ground. In her wake, the flowers bloomed and the verdant grasses sprung up in a happy celebration of the return of the Springtime Maiden, easing away the cold light of winter.

Overjoyed, Demeter called out permission to Helios to continue his chariot ride across the sky and return the sun to the Earth. In all the days that followed, warmth and joy filled the earth and blossomed in their fields. Once again there was peace and prosperity until the fateful day Persephone would return to the under dwellings of the Earth and Demeter’s sadness would again envelope the Earth robbing it of its riches.

“Do not fear mother,” Persephone assured her mother as she gently wiped her tears from her cheeks with her thumb. “For I will be back before you know it. Until then, I shall do my best to comfort the souls of the departed. To brighten their world with the mercy you have shown me, your daughter. I shall bring forth the flowers and the bounty your love has bestowed upon me and bestow it upon them. I can be a wondrous Queen because I was created in your image and have grown in your love.” Persephone quietly told her mother hoping to alleviate her worries.

“Rest easy and take solace in the fact that we will meet again soon,” Persephone assured seeing the tears of Demeter had not slowed. “For the circle has no end and comes around again and again. As we are blood we are of one circle we cannot be truly parted, only temporarily parted and rejoined again and again.”

Knowing the final sand grain of her time had come close to slipping through the hourglass, Persephone slipped a golden halo of olive leaves onto her mother’s head. “May this continuous crown of golden leaves remind you of our circle and of my never ending love for you, my mother, my blood. Soon we will meet again and bask in the glory of our love for each other.”

Nodding, Demeter wiped the tears from her eyes and smiled softly. “And as my tribute to you, my only daughter, forsaken by her father, I shall weave golden circle crowns for all the Gods and they will wear them for all eternity as a symbol of your glory and sacrifice. When one thinks of golden crowns, they will know not only the strength needed to wear such a token but of the sacrifice it demands as you have demonstrated so grandly.”

With that proclamation, Demeter gifted morals the golden crown to wear upon the heads of those deemed worthy or to the children that frolic in the meadows or by the seaside dreaming the wild unkempt dreams of childhood.

With a snap Lia closed the book, the one embossed with the fallen golden crown resting upon a duo of silver coins, and slid it upon the shelf made of the finest mahogany. Staring back at her was the fine golden print adorning the side of the spine that simply said, “The Forgotten Lore of District Four” penned by Lia Havelock.

And while her book would no doubt be an unprecedented success, Lia knew the words were just that, words. Tales that were meant to be shared in times of joy, strength to draw from in times of hardship, and most importantly, to be acted out on the beach by children envisioning a future of bliss and growth.

Lia would also tell you there were no words more important than those simply stated on the first page of her book:

For Fenn and Atalanta, Our circle is not broken.

#Lia Havelock #One last story #The unbroken circle

2 notes · View notes

chilly-territory · 6 years ago

Text

Uchouten Kazoku 2, chapter 1 (part 1 out of 3)

And this is the more interesting thing I mentioned.

The Eccentric Family: The Nidaime's Homecoming (Uchouten Kazoku: Nidaime no Kichou) by Morimi Tomihiko

Chapter 1 (part 1/3, pages 7-29) The Nidaime's Homecoming

There is nothing to do except to live an amusing life.

First, how about setting to do just that.

I'm what you would call a tanuki living in modern Kyoto, but too proud to be a mere tanuki, I admire tengu from afar and love imitating humans. There is no doubt this trouble-inviting disposition is something that has been passed down from our distant ancestors through generations, and my late father referred to it as our 'idiot blood'.

My father, Shimogamo Souichirou, was known far and wide in the city of Kyoto and its surroundings as the Nise-emon [*1], that is, the head of Kyoto's tanuki society, and even tengu respected him. If Souichirou had been a tanuki possessing just a little more good sense, he wouldn't have ended up in humans' tanuki hot pot as a result of picking a fight with the Kurama tengu. However, he was able to leave numerous legends behind precisely because he was a phenomenal idiot who danced on the brink of a pot.

"My idiot blood's doing," he used to say.

I came into this world as the third son of said Nise-emon, Shimogamo Souichorou, in the Tadasu forest.

A genius shows from childhood, they say, and I showed myself as a perfectly healthy and furry problem child of the tanuki world even before being able to stand steadily on my four paws. Starting with my attempt to smoke out Hesoishi-sama[*2] of Rokkakudou with pine needles, I bizarrely changed into anything and everything, from a bottle opener to mounted peacekeepers[*3], and meddled in tengu and humans' affairs alike, having bought a lot of displeasure as Yasaburou the reckless lad. However, as a tanuki in whose veins the idiot blood inherited from my father flows, how else could I live? There is no path for me other than that of a fool.

In other words, an amusing thing is a good thing.

And thus, I begin this furry tale that started on a certain day in May when spring was in full bloom in Kyoto, spreading fresh smiling greenery to all the 36 peaks of the Higashiyama mountains where I, a tanuki, lived an amusing life, as always.

〇

Ever since being a baby tanuki, I'd always loved May that never failed to get my idiot blood bubbling with excitement.

The forest puffing out with vibrant new leaves resembles a tanuki, don't you think?

On that day, I exited the Tadasu forest, humming to myself as I walked along the riverside of the Kamogawa river with the spring breeze streaming around me. Having shapeshifted into a gorgeous woman with blond hair and blue eyes, I took no small pride in my skin-deep beauty, parading myself along the Kamogawa river and bewitching the living daylights out of some idiot students passing by.

My destination was a certain apartment in the apartment building Masugata just behind the Demachi shopping district.

Despite the refreshing spring breeze sweeping through every back alley and street of Kyoto, that shabby apartment stayed gloomy like a stale permanently laid-out bedding never left out to air.

In that apartment lived a life of alternating lulls and explosions of rage Akadama-sensei, an elderly semi-retired tengu. Having an imposing name of Nyoigadake Yakushibou[*4], he used to be a great tengu ruling over the whole Mt.Nyoigadake in the past. However, having suffered defeat in the turf war against the Kurama tengu, he was exiled to behind the Demachi shopping arcade, becoming a shadow of his former self, his dignity as a tengu vanishing like mist.

"Hello, hello, sensei, it is I, Yasaburou, and I humbly came to call on you."

When I called out to the back of the four and a half tatami mat room, "Oh, it's you, Yasaburou," came an answer in a displeased voice.

"Oh, sensei, are you in ill humor today, again?" "I never once have been in good humor since taking my first bath as a baby." "Here you go again saying such things... better take a look here: a beautiful girl is here for you. Please behold this hair, golden like the finest Miwa soumen[*5]." "Don't flaunt your cheap shapeshifting tricks before me, they make me sick!!

Leaving the foodstuff in the kitchen, I entered the four-and-a-half-tatami mat room and found sensei sitting cross-legged on the laid-out futon in stains from Akadama port wine and scowling at a stone on a zabuton of gold brocade. It was a pebble about as big as a human’s clenched fist, gray and completely ordinary.

"Ohh, if it isn’t the keystone of the tengu hot pot!" I said. "As long as they have this, even a complete fool like you can make a hot pot." "...What a mean thing to say."

To make a tengu hot pot you fill a pot with water, add tofu, kujo green onions, Chinese cabbage and some chicken meat, then throw in that stone that sensei had and let it all boil. It's delicious if you eat it with seasoned ponzu, but without the keystone, you won't get the flavor of the authentic tengu hot pot even if you use the same ingredients. That keystone was truly a priced possession and a seasoned veteran that had been wandering from one hot pot to another in Japanese cuisine restaurants of Kyoto for a long time, and each time it was thrown into a hot pot, it would ooze the umami of countless hot pots. Another stone was entrusted to a traditional Japanese restaurant near Koudaiji temple and was currently in the process of ripening.

Although, in Akadama-sensei's opinion, since the tengu hot pot was a recipe that implied cooking in deep mountain valleys, making the authentic tengu hot pot without letting the clear air of mountains dissolve in it was impossible in the first place. Making it in this apartment where the only things that could dissolve in it were dust and tanuki hair would only result in a poor imitation no matter what you did. Though if served said result, sensei would still eat it with appetite - tengu were really troublesome creatures like that.

"I humbly thank you," I said, accepting the keystone with appropriate reverence and heading to the kitchen to start preparations for a hot pot. "Yasaburou, tell me, are you still into hunting the likes of tsuchinoko?" "Would you like to come along, too, sensei? I plan to head to Nyoigadake tomorrow."

When I suggested that, sensei only snorted from his small four-and-a-half-tatami mat room, "What foolishness. You take after Souichirou in all the silly ways."

〇

By the time we'd almost finished eating the hot pot, the sun outside had already set.

I patted my full tummy, while Akadama-sensei puffed on his tengu tobacco, looking quite satisfied. The ascending trail of purple smoke drifted around the conical shade of the lamp like a tiny dragon.

"Days sure have gotten longer, wouldn't you say, sir?" "Another tedious day I've lived through." "By the way, sir, have you received any letters from Benten-sama?" I asked, and sensei threw a suspicious sidelong glance my way. "And why would you want to know that?" "Why won't you tell me, sir?" "What a persistent little scrub. How is my correspondence with Benten any business of yours?"

Benten was Akadama-sensei's beloved disciple whom he had educated in the ways of tengu with utmost care.

With her tengu-like raw power Benten overwhelmed authentic tengu, with her beautiful face she bewitched humans, and with her repulsive habit of eating tanuki hot pots she made Kyoto's tanuki shudder in fear of her. Who could have imagined back when Akadama-sensei had abducted her as she trotted along the bank of Lake Biwa that she would come to the fore so rapidly?

The one who incited me to help her trap Akadama-sensei and subsequently made him fall, ultimately causing his ruin, was also Benten. And not only that: she also made my father into a tanuki hot pot and ate him, and she never left attempts to do the same to me at every opportunity. Despite all of that, she was my first love, so it was complicated. "Is it that bad that I'm a tanuki?" I asked her. "Of course. I am a human, after all," she replied. Every time I recalled that conversation, the fur on my butt felt itchy.

It was dazzling April when Benten declared that she would cross the ocean.

I heard of that on one early morning when I was taking a stroll along the Kamogawa riverside together with Benten who leaped from one sakura tree in full bloom on the bank to another, indulging in a cruel game of shaking off all the petals from them without leaving a single one. "Why? What brought this on so suddenly?" I asked as I chased her in the storm of sakura petals. Seated on the top branch of a sakura tree that was left completely naked, she gazed with amusement at the petals dancing in the air and falling to the bank. "Well, I'm bored," was all she said.

"Yasaburou, make sure you take care of sensei for me. I might write a letter if I feel like it."

After spectacularly scattering sakura petals in Kyoto, she proceeded to use her charm on a tycoon in the port of Kobe to board a luxury liner, embarking on a round-the-world cruise. Akadama-sensei was only informed of Benten's departure after the ship had already set sail and when it was already too late to chase after her even if he tried.

Since having departed on her voyage impressively without any money she had yet to come back.

Occasional letters from Benten were the only consolation to sensei's heart. The fact that Benten, of all people, took troubles to write letters already being a reason enough for deep gratitude notwithstanding, those letters clearly lacked in effort so much that it was plain to see coldheartedness oozing from between their lines: even if she wrote something, it was but a couple of lines at best and simply the symbols of 〇 or X at worst. Despite that, Akadama-sensei, always sincerely looking forward to such letters, would read the few lines with meticulous attention, as if licking each of them, then carefully store the letter in a Chinese jewel-box and cherish it as if it were an imperial treasure from the Shousouin treasure house[*6]. One of the reasons why I made a habit of duly visiting sensei's apartment on a regular basis was because I hoped to snatch an opportunity when sensei would be drunk off his gourd to read Benten's letters.

Staring into the now empty pot, Akadama-sensei groaned, "Benten, plague take her, appears to be in England at the moment. Curse her for going to such a remote place."

Sensei fished out the Earth's globe out of a pile of junk, spun it and found England. "What, it's this tiny little thing?" he commented. "To hell with this world pleasure tour, she's just wasting her talent, much to my chagrin! Even though what she should be doing is devoting all her energy to walking the path of sorcery and someday succeeding her mighty master, that is I." "I wonder what she is doing there right about now." "Hmph. Probably eating some English tanuki, I would bet. Wouldn't you?"

When asked that, I recalled the words of my lovely natural enemy, 'Because I love you so much that I would eat you.' My idiot blood that made me look forward to the return of my natural enemy who betrayed her teacher, devoured my father and tried to eat me was frankly too much of a nuisance even to myself.

"You look lonely, Yasaburou." Sensei stared intensely at me. "All because Benten's not around. Bull's eye, right?" "Ahaha. I have no idea what you are talking about, sir." "You never learn your place, do you. Don't think she'd show any mercy to the likes of tanuki," sensei said, plucking his nose hair. "...But if you want to jump into a pot of your own volition, I won't stop you."

〇

That spring, I was obsessed with hunting tsuchinoko.

In the world of humans, there is a saying 'An idle brain of a small man is the devil's workshop'. It means that if a fool has more time on his hands than he knows what to do with, nothing good will come out of it. In the world of tanuki, there is a similar proverb, 'An idle brain of a small tanuki is the devil's workshop'. So let's just say that according to worldly wisdom, even the world itself would be better off if I searched for tsuchinoko rather than cooked up the devil's work for him. Initially, I started my tsuchinoko hunt because of my late father's influence, but there is no doubt that said father of mine was so in frenzy to search for tsuchinoko in his youth because he had trouble finding outlets for his buzzing idiot blood.

The term 'tsuchinoko' refers to a strange very short but wide type of serpent, a UMA with an ancient origin that was featured in the Illustrated Sino-Japanese Encyclopedia[*7] under the name of 'Nozuchi snake'. Even long before I was born, the fever of trying to find this cryptid had invaded the tanuki world. The rumor has it that in the times of my father's Sturm und Drang youth, 80% of his ventures was spent on tsuchinoko-related adventuring. The root of that passion for the romanticized dream was, without a doubt, the idiot blood flowing in our veins, and there were even tanuki in our family who ruined themselves over tsuchinoko.

However, my mother couldn't be farther from understanding the appeal of the nigh unattainable dream that tsuchinoko represented.

"That tsuchinoko of yours, is it anything like takenoko[*8]?" she asked. "Not in the least, mother." "But it's edible, at least?"

When I showed her a drawing of how tsuchinoko was supposed to look, "Oh, so it's just a weird little snake. I bet its meat is all tough," she declared. My mother was insistent on seeing tsuchinoko only as food. "Not tasty. Not tasty at all!" "I keep telling you I'm not going to eat it." "If you're not going to eat it, then why search for it?" "I guess the romance of hunting for a dream goes beyond your understanding, mother." "Come to think of it, I seem to remember that Sou-san also searched for that thing when he was young. It's so exasperating, really. Weird little tanuki do get fixated on weird little things!"

With that, my mother shapeshifted into a handsome young man and headed off to the Takarazuka Revue[*9].

As to me, I tried inviting my second elder brother dwelling on the bottom of a water well in Rokudo-chinouji temple to join my tsuchinoko hunt. But my brother said, "Even supposing we did find tsuchinoko, I'd wind up getting swallowed whole. Because, you know, it's a snake, and I'm a frog." I couldn't argue with that.

At the time, my eldest brother was very busy, often going to Nanzenji temple. All because he was moving behind the scene to revive the Nanzenji Temple Tanuki Shogi Tournament that the previous head of the temple and our father had collaborated to hold in the past. Shogi was our father's hobby, but then again, so was tsuchinoko. My eldest brother, however, had a tendency to place more cultural importance on shogi than on tsuchinoko hunting. "Stop chasing around something as dubious as tsuchinoko," he started lecturing, which made inviting him out of question.

In the end, I organized the Tsuchinoko Expedition Team with my not exactly eager younger brother Yashirou as its other member. The founding leader was our father, I was the second generation leader, and team member number 1 became my younger brother. We were on the lookout for a team member number 2 in and around the city of Kyoto.

〇

The next day after my paying a visit to Akadama-sensei, our Tsuchinoko Expedition Team set out, infiltrating the forest from the Shishigatani valley and proceeding to wander around the foot of Mt.Nyoigadake. The forest wearing fresh green swelled like a sponge that absorbed clear water, with the wind, nice and cool at its core, rustling between the numerous pillars of light shining through new leaves.

"Nii-chan, it smells like spring, right?" "Hey, keep your eyes peeled. We have no idea where it might be hiding." "But, nii-chan, I have to wonder if tsuchinoko really exists." "It's precisely because we don't know for sure if it exists or not that it makes this dream-hunting worthwhile."

Since tsuchinoko is a UMA steeped in mysteries, for its capture one must employ equally mysterious techniques, or so my pet theory went. Going about it the normal way wouldn't work, as there could be no doubt that all the obvious methods had already been tried by someone. The approach that looked to me like it could be useful was summed up by 'If you do this, what would happen?' So we set a trap of a gourd filled with cheap sake and a hard-boiled egg sprinkled with some Ajinomoto salt[*10] in the shade of a tree. We also documented in a field notebook any suspicious traces we had found in the forest.

Although I hatched a plan to teach my younger brother the beauty of tsuchinoko hunting and eventually raise him into a proper member of my team, all he did was going on and on on the bothersome subject of electromagnetism, not showing the least bit of interest in the dream adventure that tsuchinoko represented and that was happening right at the moment. As the last straw, he finally took out a reference book from his clasp-adorned pouch-shaped backpack and started reading it while walking, like a veritable Ninomiya Sontoku[*11] for all the world. If only he spared just one percent of that enthusiasm and directed it toward tsuchinoko hunting... Seemingly completely oblivious to that earnest wish of mine, my kid brother, "Nii-chan, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration," had the gull to throw Edison's famous quote at me.

"That's wrong, Yashirou. Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% foolishness." "Then when do you work hard?" "...You just wait for your destiny." "But, nii-chan, I don't think that's the way to live." "You cheeky little Edison!" I started teasing, when the forest's trees suddenly stirred, as if jolted by an invisible giant.

And then, the whooshing sound as if the very air was being rent asunder started getting closer.

"Something's flying our way, it's dangerous!"

The moment I hugged my brother's head and bent over, covering him, something came flying in from the sky, tearing through the canopy of fresh leaves and crossing over above us. Sunlight filtering through the trees swayed furiously, and torn off leaves rained all around us. Then, with a sharp thud reverberating in the pit of my stomach, everything went quiet.

We cautiously lifted our heads.

Right above us, in the top branches of a large tree covered with new green, there was stuck a velvet-covered chaise. Its red velvet sparked most bewitchingly in the light streaming through the leaves.

"Nii-chan, could it be a tengu stone?" my little brother murmured.

〇

Tanuki called the phenomenon of unlikely things falling from the sky 'tengu throwing stones'.

Be it tengu's prank or simply them accidentally dropping their possessions, among all kinds of things that rained from the sky in the past were, for example, fuda talismans, small gold koban coins, wine casks and colored carps. My mother said that when she was still little, cotton candy fell from the sky near Sajoukobashi bridge, and near Mt.Funaokayama there resided a tanuki collector of tengu stones who even eventually opened a private museum for exhibiting them. Back when Akadama-sensei was still active and flying through the sky, there was a time when he rounded up all of his tanuki apprentices and sent them on a search for something he had dropped.

Since a few days ago, the topic of some modern-looking tengu stones falling from the sky became a hotly discussed subject, and I was aware of it.

Said stones were all diverse and truly gorgeous articles, like silver tableware polished to a shine, a seasoned violin fit for a maestro musician, a bathtub with metal legs and Persian carpets that looked ready to fly through the sky, among others. A custom tracing back to the Edo period stated that so long as tengu didn't come out and claim ownership, a tengu stone would come in possession of the one who picked it up, so you could see why Kyoto's tanuki were so excited about the recent fallings.

In accordance with tanuki's finders keepers rule, this velvet chaise was to become the Shimogamo family's possession.

My brother and I went through quite a bit of trouble getting said chaise off the tree.

When I experimentally sat down on its red velvet, my behind experienced such fluffiness that I had this majestic feeling as if I was a guest of honor in an ancient and honorable Western-style house. Even the faint moldy waft in the air smelled classy to me. That was enough to make even us sons of a distinguished family ourselves let loose a sigh of admiration.

"The level of comfort is too high, so high, in fact, that it feels like my butt's disappeared on me," opined my little brother with seriousness. "This is amazing. It's probably what antique is." "Mother will be pleased if we bring this home." "Very well. Starting now, the Tsuchinoko Expedition Team will proceed to carry this chaise home. Team member number 1, take the chaise by the rear end at once." "Roger!"

We lined on the both sides of the chaise with it held between us and, with a great deal of effort, proceeded along the foot of Nyoigadake. The grand chaise clearly boasting historical weight was just as grandly weighty physically, proving to be a heavy load for the slender arms of modern tanuki kids lacking in strength. "Nii-chan, my arms are all tingling," voiced a feeble complaint my kid brother. "They're tingling because this is a tingling mountain," said I. "That's lies, this is Mt.Nyoigadake," he rebuked, and I laughed.

After a while, my brother murmured uneasily, "Nii-chan, won't we get yelled at for coming all the way here to search for tsuchinoko?" "And who's gonna yell at us?" "Isn't this the Kurama tengu-samas's turf?" "As if we could search for tsuchinoko if we were worried about some guys like the Kurama tengu! Besides, the whole area around Mt.Nyoigadake is our Akadama-sensei's turf to begin with. Although he was ousted from here in a tengu turf war, sensei's still greater than the Kurama lot. Those Kurama tengu are just small timers compared to Akadama-sensei." "'Small timers', huh?"

All of a sudden, the chaise got heavier, unbearably so. It didn't so much as budge when I pulled. "Yashirou, are you holding it up properly on your end?" I asked and when I tried to take a look over my shoulder, a voice resembling an owl's hooting at night said near my ear, "Hoou hou". The moment a cold breath trickling against the side of my head sent a chill down my spine, I got seized by the neck.

"You've got quite the mouth on you, little punk. What parts are you tanuki from?"

A man in a blackish business suit swooped down on the chaise's armrest and grabbed me by the neck.

I ducked my head before saying, "Oh my, oh my, if it isn't a Kurama tengu-sama. How are you doing this fine day?"

〇

I and my little brother were escorted by that Kurama tengu to the site of bonfire lighting taking place during the Daimonji festival[*12]. The transformation of my brother whose balls shrunk up literally and figuratively came undone, and he reverted back to his tanuki form, then got seized by the scruff like a cat.

Back when Akadama-sensei ruled over Nyoigadake and its surroundings like he owned them, he used to parade his tanuki apprentices around calling it 'practical drills'. Sometimes he took us as far as Mt.Iwayasan or Lake Takaragaike, but generally we would wander around Nyoigadake that was sensei's own backyard. On this site of Daimonju bonfire lighting, the tanuki would shapeshift into the Genji and Heike clans and wage an imitation Genpei war [*13], so it brought back memories.

"This way, follow me."

Like the Kurama tengu arrogantly ordered, I began climbing the slop dotted with fire pits for lighting the bonfires that formed the 大 'dai' character.

Looking back as I trod on the young green grass, I saw the brightly-colored townscape of the Kyoto city expanding below against the backdrop of the mist-covered sky. This canvas was truly a sight worthy of a tengu to behold.

On the slope halfway up the mountain, there stood a red and white stripped parasol like what you'd find at an ice-cream stand by the poolside, and under it 4 Kurama tengu, encircling a round table, were engrossed in playing hanafuda [*14]. Among them were those who wore a business suit complete with a tie in a proper and neat fashion, as well as those who popped a vein in their temples and rolled up their sleeves. Every time they threw the cards on the table, a jingling sound could be heard as if small coins were being scattered. After all, tengu were hot-tempered creatures, and when they got into a game too much, they would end up tearing or biting hanafuda more often than not. For that reason, the tengu hanafuda cards were made of steel.

The tengu that brought us called out to one of his companions, "Hoou hou, Reizanbou."

The one to answer him was a tengu in a white dress shirt and sunglasses.

"Hoou hou, Tamonbou. Why did you bring the likes of tanuki here?" "They were saying insulting things about us, and I thought it can't be allowed to pass." "I see. Indeed, it's our job to educate tanuki, after all. So, what kind of insults were they throwing?" "'The Kurama tengu are just small timers', according to them."

The Kurama tengu, seated at the round table, burst out laughing, still clutching the hanafuda in hand. That tengu laughter massed together like an ominous dark cloud and took flight, riding the wind blowing across the slope.

These Kurama tengu were the same ones who once upon a time ousted Akadama-sensei and occupied Nyoigadake, that is, five out of the ten retainers under direct command of Kuramayama Soujoubou. They were Reizanbou, Tamonbou, Teikinbou, Getsurinbou and Nichirinbou [*15], but they all were so alike like acorns from the same tree that it was impossible to tell which was which by looking. It was no wonder that during the meetings on Mt.Atagoyama, Akadama-sensei never passed up an opportunity to ridicule them by saying 'Look at 'em mountain acorns putting on airs'.

Groveling on the firebed as the spring breeze swept over me, I said, "I humbly stand before you sirs as the third son of Shimogamo Souichirou, Yasaburou. And this is my little brother Yashirou." "Famous! Famous!" the Kurama tengu cheered, their hanafuda jingling.

"So you're Yasaburou, of the Shimogamos, huh!" "He's Benten-san's favorite, apparently," "Wait, wait, wasn't there a fool of a tanuki by the name Souichirou who fell into a pot?" "Oh, I remember that tanuki!" "He was a tanuki who never knew his place. All because Yakushibou spoiled him rotten," "That senile old fool was always like that. All pleased and self-satisfied with being worshiped by the likes of tanuki," the Kurama tengu were saying audaciously one over another.

The sunglasses guy, Reizanbou, bit on his paper-roll cigarette and sneered, "Yakushibou sure is a lucky fool. No matter how low he falls, tanuki still keep taking care of him. We'll look after Nyoigadake and the area around it, so tell him to bite the dust with an easy heart for me."

"With all due respect, please allow me to humbly explain."

With this, I got up and started spouting sophistry in a rapid fire torrent.

"I will not deny that I called the Kurama tengu-samas 'small timers'. But it seems the Kurama tengu-samas, living the lofty life of rightful kings of the skies, are not aware of the finer nuances of lowly tanuki's speech. The thing is, our tanuki language tends to adapt to keep up with the times and words change their meanings accordingly. So the term 'small timer', formerly one of slight used to refer to someone unimportant or petty and small like an acorn, nowadays means pretty much the opposite, that is, 'great', 'mature in style' and 'gentlemanly', thus having turned into a wonderful compliment. So as you see by no means tanuki mock you sirs esteemed Kurama tengu-samas."

The Kurama tengu kept their silence, too dumbfounded for words, only their hanafuda jiggled quietly. When Reizanbou pulled down his sunglasses, his upturned eyes were laughing.

"I see, that's one curious tanuki all right." "A too damn talkative tanuki, for sure, never knowing when to shut up, and I don't like that," said Tamonbou, grabbed my furry little brother by the neck and hoisted him up high in the air. "Well then, well then, I wonder just how far will this one fly if we throw him?"

Suddenly, the Kurama tengu looked energetic and pumped up, the hanafuda plinking and chinking.

"Let's make bets on whether he'll make it over the Kamogawa river or not!" "This is much more fun than playing hanafuda!" "What should we bet? A mountain? A valley?"

In the past, my father, Nise-emon Shimogamo Shoichirou, shapeshifted into Mt.Nyoigadake itself and gave the Kurama tengu, who were picking on our master, the scare of their lives. It became known as the scandal of fake Nyoigadake - a glorious example of recklessness deserving place not only in the chronicles of the Shimogamo family but also in history of the whole tanuki world. However, what was a historic triumph for our household, to the Kurama tengu was none other than a historic stain on their name, and it was partly for defying Kurama that my father ended up falling into the Friday Fellows Club's pot.

A wise tanuki would learn from this anecdotal story and get through their skull that defying tengu would bring nothing but harm upon them. After all, tengu were made to bully tanuki. And bullying was what made them tengu.

"What's the matter, Yasaburou?" asked Reizanbou. "Got anything to say?" "With all due respect, sir, when my kid brother is bullied, my seizures start acting up..." "Seizures? What are seizures?" "Uuugh, it's no use. Kurama tengu-sama, please watch out!"

I got on all fours, groaning all the while, and inflated my body. Tightening your butthole and psyching yourself up was the secret to shapeshifting into something big. In the blink of an eye, my four feet became massive like the columns of the Parthenon, and my swelling back turned white as if smeared with mortar coating. My nose grew in length, rapidly extending toward the blue sky above. I had shapeshifted into a white elephant.

The Kurama tengu had to have some bitter memories about white elephants after being chased about by one in the past when my father tempted them into coming to Nyoigadake. While their attention was distracted by the resurfacing humiliating memories, my kid brother took advantage of their momentary confusion and, by twisting and turning, slipped out of Tamonbou's hold, then proceeded to make his escape by rolling down the slope like a true tsuchinoko.

"Stop it, stop it, Yasaburou. What foolishness." Reizanbou grimaced in displeasure. "We're not fond of elephants. Return to your former form at once. Or else..."

It was at that moment that a travel suitcase that came flying in at a terrifying speed from the direction of the far away western sky crashed right into Reizanbou's face. Truly a blow from Heaven. As if dragged along by Reizanbou who got knocked over without another word, the rest of the Kurama tengu fell to the ground one after another, their parasol blown away, hanafuda jingling uselessly.

"Baon baon, what happened?"

Raising my long trunk, I gazed toward the western sky.

The one who came flying down as if smoothly gliding from the spring sky was an English gentleman.

T/N:

[*1] Nise-emon (偽右衛門): the 2nd season subs translated the title as the Trick Magister. 'Nise' means imitation, fake, phony, in other words has to do with tricking people which is what tanuki are good at. [*2] Hesoishi of Rokkakudou (六角堂のへそ石): the 2st season subs translated Hesoishi (lit. Bellybutton Stone) as the Center Stone because that hexagonal stone is supposed to represent the very center of Kyoto and the temple where it's located is called the Chouhouji or Rokkakudou (lit. Hexagonal temple) [*3] Mounted peacekeepers (平安騎馬隊): a mounted unit of Kyoto Prefectural Police that was established in 1994 to commemorate 1200 years since the relocation of the capital (jp wiki) [*4] Nyoigadake Yakushibou (如意ヶ嶽薬師坊): Nyoigadake (alternative reading is Nyoigatake, but the novel specifically gives the reading 'Nyoigadake') is a mountain that's part of the Higashiyama mountain range. Mt.Daimonji (that's part of the Gozan no Okuribi festival shown in the anime) is part of Nyoigadake. Yakushibou is a given name ('yakushi' is archaic 'doctor' and -bou you'd be seeing again as it's a suffix for male tengu names) [*5] Miwa soumen (三輪素麺): fine white noodles, a local specialty produced in the Miwa region, said to be the birthplace of soumen noodles, of Nara prefecture with the center in the Sakurai city. (jp wiki) [*6] Imperial treasures of the Shousouin (正倉院御物): wiki [*7] Illustrated Sino-Japanese Encyclopedia aka Wakan Sansai Zue (和漢三才図会): is the first Japanese illustrated encyclopedia published in 1712 in Edo (wiki) [*8] Tsuchiko and takenoko (bamboo shot) share the same word-building pattern, namely take-no-ko (lit.a child of bamboo) and tsuchi-no-ko (lit.a child of soil) [*9] Takarazuka Revue (宝塚歌劇団): a theater troupe based near Kyoto and famous for women playing all roles, including male ones, and flamboyant costumes and such (wiki) We saw Tousen imitate them as the 'Prince in Black' in the 1st season. [*10] Ajinomoto (味の素): a food corporation most famous for its so-called Chinese salt (wiki) [*11] Ninomiya Sontoku (二宮尊徳): a 19th century reformer and economic thinker who is typically depicted as a boy walking with a bundle of firewood on his back while reading a book. You can frequently find his statues at Japanese elementary schools as an exemplar of diligence and studiousness. [*12] Daimonji festival (大文字) or Gozan no Okuribi (五山送り火): depicted twice in the anime (wiki) [*13] Genpei War (源平合戦): a 12th century national civil war (wiki) [*14] Hanafuda (花札): lit. 'flower cards' (wiki) [*15] Reizanbou, Tamonbou, Teikinbou, Getsurinbou, Nichirinbou (霊山坊、多聞坊、帝金坊、月輪坊、日輪坊): -bou is a tengu male name suffix and the rest of their names mean literally 'spiritual or sacred mountain', 'all hearing', 'imperial gold', 'round moon' and 'round sun' respectively.

#uchouten kazoku 2 #uchouten kazoku nidaime no kichou

10 notes · View notes

orthodoxydaily · 6 years ago

Text

Sermon of the Transfiguration

By archpriest Basil Rhodes

Blessing of the first harvest...during the transfiguration feast...

Last night at Vigil, the first Old Testament reading from Exodus began with these words: “The Lord said to Moses, 'Come up to Me on the mountain and BE there' (Exodus 24:12). In the second reading, also from Exodus, we hear Moses saying to the Lord, “Show me Thy glory.” And the Lord said to Moses, I will go before you with My glory.” In the third reading, from the 3rd Book of Kings we heard the word of the Lord that came to Elijah. The Lord said to him, “You shall go forth and stand on the mountain before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountain, and broke in pieces the rock before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a voice of a gentle breeze, and the Lord WAS there. And it came to pass when Elijah heard it, he covered his face with his mantle and went out and stood in front of the cave.”

These readings are wonderful and they are prophetic. They point to that future day when God would reveal Himself to His people personally, intimately, face to face. He would no longer have to hide. They would no longer have to hide. He would no longer have to restrict Himself to share only a tiny, passing fragment of His glory with them. He could reveal the fullness of the uncreated light, the fullness of His glory.

Come! Climb the mountain, He says. Let each one find his or her own Mount Tabor. Ascend, step by step, by the acquisition of the virtues, and I will reveal Myself and My glory, more and more – as much as you can bear. Once you join Me on the mountain top, you'll never want to leave, you'll want to stay here with Me forever.

St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite wrote: “On Mount Tabor St. Peter was illumined, mind and body, by the brightest rays of the divine light, and his heart was deeply moved by that sweetest and extraordinary vision of the more-than-beauty beauty of the divinity of the transfigured Jesus. Because of this, he did not want to be removed from this most delightful vision. Enthusiastically and ecstatically he said: 'Lord, it is good that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths [tabernacles] here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah'” (Matthew 17:4).

Makarios of Philadelphia, interpreting this passage in his homily on the Transfiguration, said this:

“What is more beautiful than to be with Christ? What is more desirable than His divine glory? Nothing is sweeter than that light which illumines the entire order of men and angels. Nothing is more beloved than that life of God in which we all 'live, and move, and have our being' (Acts 17:28). There is nothing sweeter than ever-living beauty; nothing more pleasant than unceasing gladness. There is nothing more desirable than eternal joy and blessedness, about which no word can suffice to explain, or thought to comprehend its sublimity and infinity. For how indeed can one speak about what is essentially an inexpressible beauty? Or how can one measure and describe what is essentially indescribable? This is the supreme object of hope and the revelry of desire.This is also the end and the zenith of all the blessings and promises and gifts of God, bestowed upon us supernaturally. It is the enjoyment of a Christ-like blessedness. It is the election of seeing, in a pure vision, the theophany of the Lord. It is the fulfillment of His revelation in a pouring-out of His light in bright, flashing rays. It is the imposition of those supernatural rays of divine light. It is participation in divine brightness... When St. Peter was made worthy to look upon this most-glorious end, he did not want – even for an instant – to be separated from it. For he had tasted the delight of the future age, and had immediately removed from his soul everything for the sake of that delight and joy which had entered into his being with that vision of the divine light of the transfigured Christ.”

Why would we want to be anywhere else other than on the mountaintop with Jesus? It is here that we begin to experience what it truly means to be a human being. To be without this divine light, and to be far away from Christ's glory is to be a creature lowly and bound to the corrupt and fallen earth which shall pass away. David prophesies about just such a condition when he says: “I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people” (Psalm 22:6). In Isaiah 41:14 God says: “Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I am the one who helps you, declares the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.” But what is a true human being? Isaiah says: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!"(Isaiah 52:7). Again Isaiah says: “Those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:31). The true human being is the one who climbs, the one who ascends, the one who soars upward to be closer to God. Again I'll remind you of one of my favorite verses in Scripture, which we heard last night at Vigil and again this morning at the third antiphon: “Who shall ascend the mountain of the LORD? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not received his soul in vain, nor sworn deceitfully” (Psalm 23/24: 3-4).

If the fallen and corrupt nature of unredeemed humanity is wormlike, and the redeemed are likened to those who ascend to the mountain top or soar on the wings of eagles, I can't help but end with this little reflection. The original Greek word for this event and this feast is what? “Metamorphosis.” How did most of us learn about “metamorphosis” when we were in school? Caterpillar to butterfly right? What do I want to be? Do I want to remain a lowly, worm-like creature that crawls on its belly and is despised? Or is it my desire to become a spiritual butterfly – filled with brilliant colors and gorgeous light, soaring upward? Mostly, I just want to be near Jesus today. I want to be surrounded and filled with divine light. I want that light to transfigure me too. Amen.

#orthodoxy #orthodox #ancientchristianity #ancientfaith #jesuschrist #spirituality #mystical

7 notes · View notes

aleksdenser · 5 months ago

Text

A broken board and the call of the ancients

In a lush park, bathed in the golden rays of a gentle sun, a lone figure sat on a weathered bench, staring at a splintered tree, a once beloved skateboard. a once-favorite skateboard. Meet Max, a young boy with unkept curls and eyes that held a thousand sadnesses in which a thousand sorrows lurked. A warm breeze whispered in the crowns of the trees. trees, bringing the laughter of children playing nearby, which contrasted sharply with the the melancholy that had taken hold of Max.

The skateboard, a colorful symbol of freedom and adventure, now lay in pieces, its once smooth surface cracked and chipped. Max ran his fingers along the jagged edges. The intricate pattern of fire and lightning faded and faded. It was been his faithful companion, the one that had helped him through countless adventures in this very park Park. But today, fate seemed to have other plans.

As he sat there, immersed in his sorrows, his attention was attracted by a rustle in the nearest bushes, and his attention. A small, furry creature emerged from them, its fur was of mixed earthy colors and it blended easily with the forest floor. It was a sprite, a creature from of the ancient forest, rarely seen by humans. Its large, curious eyes studied Max with an unusual intensity.

Sprite: “Young man, I feel a heart burdened with sorrow. The broken board is but a small tragedy in the great tapestry of magic that surrounds us.”

Max, startled by the sprite's voice and at the same time fascinated by his otherworldly and at the same time fascinated by his otherworldly presence, uttered with a dose of skepticism.

Max: “Sprite, am I right? I've heard of your kind from my grandmother's stories. From my grandmother's stories. But magic. it's just fiction, isn't it?”

Sprite chuckled playfully, his voice like the tinkling of distant of distant bells.

Sprite: “Made up, you say? Oh, young Max, your journey has just “has just begun. Magic pulses beneath the surface of this realm, waiting to be awakened. Your skateboard, an extension of your spirit, wasn't just broken by by accident. It is a sign, a call to embark on a path yet to be traveled.”

Intrigued and confused at the same time, Max's curiosity took over.

Max: “A call? What do you mean? And how can a broken skateboard be a sign of anything other than bad luck?”

Sprite hopped onto the bench, his tiny paws proving to be surprisingly graceful. He began drawing intricate patterns in the air, and as he did so, glowing runes appeared, Each symbol pulsed with a unique energy.

Sprite: “Behold the ancient art of reading signs and omens. “This is no “an ordinary breakage. See, the crack forms the shape of an ancient rune, “Awakening.” It signifies an invocation, beckoning to the path of magic. И And here, the broken edge reflects the Path of the Elements. Your path, young Max, is intertwined with the very essence of the power of nature.”

As the sprite spoke, Max felt a tingling sensation in his fingertips, as if the very air around him was charged. As if the very air around him was charged with an invisible energy.

Sprite: “The elemental forces are calling out to you. “They sense the potential “within, waiting to be unlocked. But this path is not without its challenges and “and dangers. You must turn to the Council of the Elements, an ancient order of wise beings. who guard the secrets of magic and ensure its harmonious use.”

Max's eyes widened, his heart racing with excitement and and awe.

A council of the elements? But where do I start? And why me?”

The sprite's eyes sparkled with otherworldly wisdom.

Sprite: “Your skateboard is merely the catalyst, the impetus to awaken your “to awaken your latent abilities. As for why, the mysteries of fate are often inscrutable. You must travel to the ancient ruins of Eldor, hidden deep in the Whispering Woods. There you will find the first key to unlocking your true potential.”

#text post #my post #vent post

0 notes

justjen523 · 8 years ago

Text

The Gods Children Series

Prologue

(Series Rating M)

Let us begin the journey of welcoming a brand new generation of gods.

It was a cool and brisk evening late in the Fall when the moment they had all been fearing finally came to pass. Gathered on the mansion’s rooftop under the vast array of stars brought her the greatest comfort as it had always had. Twelve forlorn faces gazed down at her frail form held protectively and comfortably in place by Leon’s strong arms. There was no sadness in her eyes as she slowly looked upon each face that had contributed to a lifetime full of precious memories.

“Such sad faces tonight. Come now, where are the smiles I have come to cherish so deeply?” Her strained smile brought tears to the eyes of gods, not a feat so easily accomplished even by other divine beings. Yet this one tiny, frail little old woman had won the hearts of all of them.

“Foolish. Even now you still think only of us and not yourself.” She laughed as best as she could at the comment, her eyes wrinkling further at the corners as she stared at all of them with everlasting affection.

“We all knew this day had to come and now that it has I can tell all of you in perfect honesty that I have no regrets. Not one.” Leon’s big hand held hers tenderly and lightly closed around her frailness a little tighter upon hearing her confession.

“Well, maybe one. I wish I could have spared all of your hearts the pain of having to say goodbye to me.” Her form was visibly growing weaker before their eyes turning a dull ache into a bittersweet desperation.

“Typical goldfish.” Leon cradled her fading life force against his warm chest bringing her some comfort against the cool night air.

“It is time. Please never….never forget that I have and will always love each and every one of you. Forever.” Her voice sounded raspy and strained. She looked upon their faces one last time and smiled that same smile she always had. “My….friends from the stars. My Ikky. Teo. Dui. Aigo. Lou. Partheno. Krioff. Karno. Scorpio. Zyglavis. Hue. Leon.” The eleven other gods knelt around her and all layed a hand upon her so she could feel the warmth from every single one of them as she forever left this world. Her eyes slowly closed and a faint smile appeared on her lips.

“L-Leon?” Her voice barely audible now called out softly.

“I’m here goldfish.”

“W-Will you g-g-grant m-me…one….last….”

“Anything your heart desires.” Eyes still closed her smile widens.

“M-Make s-something t-t-truly….wonderful….c-come…from…m-my….”

“………..”

“Goldfish?” He already knew. He simply tightened his hold around her frail and lifeless body. All twelve gods were shedding tears for the one simple human life that forever left this world and them behind.

“My Precious Children. It is a sad day indeed to lose our beloved former goddess. I cannot pretend not to know what comes next for her as though she was indeed born human her soul remains that of a goddess. Her precious soul however shall not return to the Heaven’s nor shall it be reborn.”

“Why the hell not?! Don’t gimme any of yer entertainment crap either!”

“Scorpio! Control yourself you are speaking to the King!”

“You seriously okay with him pulln any of his typical shit when it comes to that stupid woman Zig?!”

“I cannot allow her to be reborn simply because that was her wish.”

“Pffft, even you wouldn’t go that low just for a good laugh trickster.” Leon looked less than amused. Despite the King’s usual antics Leon knew better. The King would never play with a souls existence simply for entertainment.

“You are correct. Her last wish to you was to make her death into something wonderful for all of you. A soul so pure and selfless made a wish so strong that it reached even me.”

The gods were all stunned into silence. That had rarely ever happened and even then it had never been a wish made by a mere human.

“For this reason I myself shall grant her last wish and give you all the gift she so greatly desired for each and every one of you deep within her heart. A truly “something wonderful” to honor the memory of a mere human that moved the hearts of gods. Rise and bear witness to a divine miracle my children.”

The twelve gods rose to their feet, Leon still holding her in his arms. Her body began to glow a brilliant white light before disappearing only to reveal something that resembled a star shinning so brightly it was nearly blinding even to the gods. As they squinted, desperate to see what would come of her pure soul, they found themselves awestruck as the star shaped light began to split and multiply. When finished, thirteen smaller but equally bright and equally beautiful stars took it’s place.

“Behold, her final gift to all of you my sons. Nothing could ever be more precious.”

A radiant light far brighter than any of them could withstand surrounded them and filled them with indescribable warmth. When the light finally faded away and the King and former goddess were gone, the twelve gods held in their arms the gifts she had given her soul for.

“W-W-WHAT?!”

“Woah, is this for reeeeal?!”

“Hey how come Dui has two?!” Thirteen babies were now nestled in their fathers arms leaving the new parents mostly speechless with the exception of the usual few. “

“Her gifts were….babies?” Teorus still holding the squirming new little life peered down at a face that looked unmistakably like his. Glancing around it seemed the same held true for the others as well.

“Not just babies. It would seem her soul was divided and reshaped to create these new lives designed specifically for each of us.” Hue stared down at the content creature staring back at him with all too familiar eyes.

“Awww….nooooo fair! Seriously why does Dui get two?!”

“Geeze Ikky, quit it already this isn’t a pet or something! Plus look how stressed he looks! Cut him some slack already.”

“Hey, why does everyone have different colored blankets?” Krioff noticing the difference points it out suspiciously. Upon looking closer Zyglavis turns a bright shade of pink before answering matter-of-factly.

“It would appear the color of the blanket indicates the sex of the child.” All of their eyes go wide immediately taking stock of their own situation.

“Sweeeeeet! I have a son! Do you KNOW what this means Teo?! I sooooo have a partner in crime! We are gonna be UNSTOPPABLE!”

“Ichthys you will do nothing of the sort. I forbid it. Do not underestimate me as I will confiscate said child should you fail to properly care for it.”

“Geeeze Zig, relaaaaaax! You make it sound like I’m not going to be a good dad! Besides, what do yoooou have there?” Almost as if shielding her protectively his embrace swallows her from view.

“Pffft, what’s the matter ponytail? Afraid your problem child’s kid might shack up with yours at some point?” Leon snickered as the Minister of Punishments blushed profusely staring incredulously at Ichthys playing with his little one.

“As if I would ever allow such a thing! Besides, what about you Arrogant Lion? I wonder what everyone will think about the daughter of the Department of Wishes. If she’s anything like her Father the number of suitors lining up for her attention will be endless.” Leon’s face instantly turns sour at the thought. Meanwhile the others are all handling their new situations differently.

“Heh! It seems this little fella inherited his father’s good looks.” Tauxolouve smiled slyly at the absurdly gorgeous baby in his arms.

“How bout you Aigo?” Aigonorous looks up sleepily.

“She’s so soft and comfy.”

“Pffft, she’s not a pillow Aigo.”

“I know that, but look, even she knows how great sleep is.”

“Hey Partheno, you haven’t said much. Everything okay?” When the god of Virgo looks up his eyes are heavy with tears.

“She saved me. I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for her, and now she gifted me this tiny precious miracle. I….I’m not sure I’m even worthy of such a gift.”

“Partheno. If there was ever someone worthy it’s you man.” Lou rested his free hand on Partheno’s shoulder, the two of them sharing a silence as they remembered their departed former goddess.

In their own little worlds Krioff and Karno soothed and rocked the girls that would become the most precious women in their lives making for a beautiful scene. After lulling his precious baby girl to sleep Zyglavis approached an unusually silent Scorpio looking bewildered and in shock as he stared at his son’s smiling cherubic face.

“Hey bud, everything okay?” A few moments passed before he finally answered.

“It’s too soon for this shit.” His voice was harsh and riddled with anger but his expression showed nothing but loss and pain.

“I ain’t got any business raising some brat.”

“Scorpio.” Zyglavis’ voice wasn’t chastising or severe as his brow furrowed at the evident discomfort on his Vice Minister’s face.

“I mean it Zig. This kid….deserves a real father. Someone who knows ‘the fuck what to do. I ain’t cut out for this shit.”

“That is not true in the slightest.”

“I don’t need anyone else fuckn’ up my heart. It was hard enough watchn’ her…..Tch. I….I didn’t even like that stupid woman.” Upon hearing that Zyglavis couldn’t hide his smile and took the opportunity to sit down next to Scorpio.

“That’s the biggest load of horseshit I have ever heard come out of your mouth.” Not used to hearing such things from his boss Scorpio’s head snaps up to see the god of Libra smiling at him warmly. His cheeks turn slightly pink a moment as he scowls further trying to cover up his embarrassment.

“Err…you know wat I mean.” Zyglavis leans in and speaks quietly enough so only the two can hear.

“You loved her. Probably more so than anyone else here because she saw who you were truly meant to be. Something you don’t show to anyone except the few you trust wholeheartedly.”

“Yeah? The fuck good it did me. We all lost her in the end anyway.”

“Not true.” Scorpio’s head snaps back up staring at his boss incredulously.

“Look at the perfect tiny little life in your hands. He is a piece of her and was her final wish for your happiness. He was a gift born from the love she carried in her heart for you. Do not diminish her memory with such self deprivation. You forget who it is that you are speaking to.” Though he sounds severe his face shows nothing but gentle kindness as he comforts his mourning friend.

“I don’t know the first thing bout raisn’ some kid.”

“Pffft, and you think that I do?” Caught off guard by his statement Scorpio stares at Zyglavis a moment before the two burst into laughter.

“It does not matter what we do or do not know as we will learn like any parent when raising a child and we can do so leaning on each other. Okay?”

“Zig.” The two share a smile further strengthening their bond as friends.

“S’up with Dui? Poor kid looks lost.”

“I must admit I have never seen him in such a state. I am not sure what the King or former goddess were thinking when they gifted Dui twins.”

“Yeah, and not just any twins either. Fuckn’ girls. You know how creepy that shit is? I heard the stories, they like read each others minds or whatever.”

“Shh, don’t let him hear you say such nonsense.”

“Nonsense? You DO realize these are Dui’s kids right?”

“Pffft, seems you’re back to your old self already. I should probably speak with him, excuse me.” After excusing himself he approached an exasperated looking Dui holding two tiny baby girls, one in each arm.

“Dui, are you alright? You have not spoken a word.” Finally seeming to snap out of it he looks up to find Zyglavis staring at him with concern.

“I-I’m okay. I think. I AM happy about having these two beautiful little girls but, at the same time…”

“You are not alone Dui. We all miss her terribly. As I also told Scorpio, view them as an extension of her. They were crafted for you from her very soul with the intention and desire to bring you eternal happiness.”

“You’re right. I didn’t even think of it that way to be honest. I was so caught up in watching her life….end, everything else just kinda felt like it wasn’t real you know?”

“I do. Fear not, we are all in the same boat for better or worse. Besides, it would appear it is time to introduce the Heaven’s to the new generation born of a miracle here tonight.”

-TBC-

#star crossed myth #scm #scm leon #scm teorus #scm huedhaut #scm aigonorus #scm tauxolouve #scm karno #scm zyglavis #scm scorpio #scm dui #scm ichthys #scm krioff #scm partheno #the gods children series

136 notes · View notes