#but there is ritual in the first bead a child forms themselves

[oneoftheprettynerds]

Welcome To The Darkside: Dark!Steve x Reader (Mob AU)

Chapter 1 in the Lipstick and Crayons Series

A/N: I just posted a story I know but I’m in love with this idea right now and this is my favourite fic right now. It’s going to be a three or four part fic I think and your support in any form: like, comment or reblog is appreciated greatly. Here is a piece of my heart right here.

Warning: Eventual Non-Con, Sickening Threats, Mob Themes, Violence, Death, Manipulation, sort of Blood Kink I think, Cheap Tricks later.

Genres + Characters: Mob AU, Single Parents AU, Steve Rogers x Reader.

Summary: Steve can't ever repay you for what you did. After meeting you, Steve believes his broken family is the missing piece in the puzzle of your own wrecked one. Indebting the crime lord to you has been the biggest mistake of your life, cause now you can't get rid of him, no matter what. Loyalty and favours go a long way in the mob.

Chapter 1 : Welcome to The Darkside

The gunshots around you frightened you more than anything in your life ever had. The merry, joyful ambience of the carnival was ruined in an instant. Screams around you provoked your panic-stricken form to gather your wits and run or hide. It wasn’t just you caught up in this dreadful situation, there was also someone you’d protect at any cost.

Picking your daughter up and setting her on your hip, you looked around for the way out. Who would have thought that open grounds were hard to get out of? Another wave of terror ran through you when the gunshots audibly neared and the crowd ran in random directions.

You decided to go along the way you recognised the games and shops at. You ran as fast as you could, checking on Grace in between to find her looking curiously all around but still more intent on eating her cotton candy than inspecting. You couldn’t be more thankful for kids' oblivion than at that moment in time.

A bomb explosion up ahead in your path made you halt in your tracks because you knew some of the attackers were scouting there. Turning back wasn’t an option, neither was crying and you were sure you closer to the exit this way. Another blast behind you took away the option of you retracing your path. You weren’t considering it but it gave you little comfort to have your options open.

As the shrieks and screeches grew tenfold, your best bet was to hide, the assaulters had already surrounded the field, the chaos around you informed you. Jumping through innumerable dead bodies, of kids and adults that ached your heart, and dodging bullets while laying low, you went inside a photo booth to hide.

This will not be in vain; you’d protect Grace no matter what.

The curtain to the photo booth provided cover from predatory eyes while the rest of the metal booth was quite safe against bullets you concluded hopefully.

You were just looking for a weapon to prepare for any adversity that might come your way, when the sound of crunching of pebbles made their way to your ears.

Failing to find a weapon in few seconds you opted to attack the intruder yourself when a voice reached your ears, “Mama?”

You puzzled your eyebrows and lowered your defences by just a bit when a toddler stumbled inside the booth, blonde haired and blue eyed. You were definitely not this girl’s mama but you grabbed the kid’s forearm and pulled her inside, shushing her gently and seating her beside Grace on the sitting bench inside. You were thankful Grace entertained her by offering her the pink cloud of sweetness.

You peeked outside but failed to find anyone else in 20 metre radii of you, nobody resembling the wandering kid nor looking for one. You did not know what you would do with another kid in your hands in this dire situation nor was it a wise decision to bring her inside and take her under your wing but you did not have it in you to leave an unsuspecting child, a mere four or three-year-old at that, during a calamity so extreme.

Your maternal instincts governed your thought process, imagining Grace to be in her shoes, all alone and discarded while a possible terrorist attack was happening. The kids’ corpses lying outside gave you no doubt that these children’s fate would be the same if found by the attackers.

A small tug in your dress made you look back and you found the azure eyed kid at your feet, offering you the street food you bought earlier while hugging your leg and observing you. Grace munched in the back silently, still happily eating and unaware.

You kneeled and whispered, “What’s your name, honey?” Maybe the girl understood the urgency, maybe she was just mimicking you but even she murmured in a low voice, “Sarah.”

You nodded, “Sweetie, I need you to sit there quietly and make no sounds, okay? We are playing a staying quiet game.” That was a stupid thing to ask of a kid but you hoped, you really, really hoped she would comply.

Her eyes widened in recognition of something as she eagerly asked, still in a hushed mumble, “Like I does for Dada in meekings?”

“Yes, you smart kiddo. Exactly that.” You replied with what you hoped was a convincing smile and ruffled her hair while nudging her towards her former seat. With kids, you knew a little encouragement went a long way to get them to do things. She whispered an ‘okay Mama’ and went about and sat.

You didn’t get to enjoy her obedience as the thud of pebbles crunching met your ears again. Your breath hitched; your intuition told you that this was not another kid confusing you for its parent.

Your eyes found a discarded piece of metal rod from the booth’s wrecked framework. You grabbed and hoped for the best, to save both the kids at your ability’s mercy.

Steve only saw red. The moment the first shot sounded in the air, he knew whom the assailants were, whom they were coming for. Going out tonight was a bad idea, a really reckless one indeed but when his daughter started bawling seeing the carnival’s lights from the car and wanted to get up and close, he couldn’t say no. He really tried to though, he really did.

It hadn’t been even a year since his wife died, but the father-daughter duo was getting by. He knew his wife took his daughter to the carnival and bought her things, toys and teddies, on every birthday of her own. It was a ritual his wife started, spending her birthday with her little offspring during the daylight and going out for a romantic dinner at the end of the day with her dear spouse. If only things could still be that way, could still stay the same.

When his wife turned out to be an elaborate spy all along, he was baffled. His professional side was, dare he say, impressed by the commitment to character but his personal side was beyond disappointed, disheartened in the worst way because his daughter was his most precious asset in this cruel world and that gift was given by such a treacherous person.

She begged and pled for mercy, to let Sarah have her mother and swore on her life that she quit her espionage journey when she actually fell in love but Steve didn’t trust a single syllable out of her filthy, deceiving mouth, not anymore.

He didn’t kill her though, because Sarah was his first priority no matter what. Her assassination was the work of his rival mob, ‘The Vice Kings’ led by the bastard Rumlow. It was an open invitation for war in the city, for them money came first and useless people had to die. They killed two birds with a single stone, git rid of a useless former member and successfully made a statement.

Then began the still happening rivalry between those Vices and his mob, ‘The Avenging Cartel’. The wound from his wife’s assassination was still fresh, he didn’t miss her as much as he had taken the hit to his pride. There had been a peaceful agreement until the brutal maiming of his spouse and now he was working more than ever, barely able to make time for his princess and that was his only regret, missing her childhood.

And now he felt more futile, his palette of emotions ranging from hues of ire to shades of dread. He couldn’t believe his entourage of trained professionals failed to monitor a two-year-old. He had just stepped aside to take a call, leaving her with his latest driver and three bodyguards. How could he be that clueless to not realise the imposters infiltrating his ranks, standing right there and selling away his location?

As soon as the sound of the first firearm shooting reached his ears, he leapt towards his daughter only to find her missing. His little minx thankfully escaped for one of her little adventures and successfully evaded these cheats, whom he shot right in the middle of the eyes when he glanced at the grenades packing in the coats’ undersides.

His moment of gratitude evaporated in mere seconds as he realised that the Vices now surrounded the entire area, their mission being his daughter’s abduction. If they wanted to kill both of them, they would have already, considering Steve’s distraction gave them quite too many openings. They wanted him to surrender, because mobs worked that way; only when one leader signed off his territories did it become the other party’s possession. If they just cut one head, another would grow in its place, a new leader would succeed the predecessor.

He sent emergency signals to both Barnes and Wilson, the only ones he could trust right now, summoning them with back-ups. The screams of the crowd did not ease him at all, piling on his burden and stress as he prayed for the first time ever, that by some miracle he would reach his daughter first in this field and she would safely be in his arms by the end of the night, not become a victim to what his enemies were planning.

He did have a tracker in her pendant but this realisation hit him later than he’d like to admit, the frustration clawing away his wits. The ground was now quite empty, piles of bodies scattered across the field abruptly where people became victims to the grenades, any person who failed to protect themselves, died. As he was pulling his phone out again, his eyes caught sight a flower bead. The same bead he and his daughter used to make a bracelet a month ago. She wore that everywhere, to day-care, while bathing, to birthdays.

The bracelet was obviously broken now but it was almost like a trail that led to his treasure, like in the Hansel and Gretel’s fairy-tale that Sarah loved. He followed with quiet steps, the beads far apart and some resting under the debris but they sure did lead him somewhere, and when he found the even the pendant in his path, he knew he had only the few beads to rely on.

Some thumps and crashes made him alert, his pistol ready, and when he neared carefully to a distorted metal framework of sorts, his eyes widened.

A young woman had a body in front of her lying on the ground. In a pool of scarlet it rested, still and unmoving while her breathing quickened, her eyes shining with tears that she tried too damn hard to confine to her eyes. He knew how hard the first kill always was, but one grows numb with increase in body count.

Brave women were his type and he would have been turned on by her courage, her hands stained red with whatever weapon she attacked with. Her soft facial features and her curves in the dress she wore were a show stopper for sure, and he would’ve been flirting with her if it was not for the brutal severity of the situation, his daughter missing and in possible danger.

His vigilant senses, courtesy of the epinephrin, picked up two things; the butterfly bead that rested in the door of the booth the woman stood at and the creep shadowing her from behind, ready to attack with a baseball bat he might have found in one of the other game shops.

Steve used his position behind the neighbouring booth to make a bull’s eye shot, the bullet going just an inch above the female’s shoulder and going across the creep’s head. The logo on the corpse’s leather jacket showed Steve he picked the right side to defend.

The sheer suddenness of the move caught the woman off guard as she dropped her weapon and twisted back to find the soulless eyes of her possible attacker staring at her. She quickly armed herself with her attacking rod once again and tried to trace the bullet back from its shooter, her eyes wide and calculating.

Steve decided it was time to interrogate, to find Sarah.

The graze of the bullet above your shoulder alarmed you and you stood dumbfounded only for an instant though. You were sure the bullet was meant for you but the thud of a body behind you, seemingly preparing to attack you proved you wrong.

Calming yourself, you still stood on the ball, because someone killing your attacker didn’t necessarily mean you were safe. With just a pull of the trigger, your fate could very easily be the same. You had to play this smart.

“Lower your weapon. I won’t repeat myself.” A husky voice called out, laced with seriousness which left no room for argument.

You did as he said, knowing that shabby rod was no match against the gun. He stepped out from his hiding position and gave away his location, steps slightly treading towards you. Your hands trembled, heart thumping a bit too loud while blood and sweat coated your frame.

When moonlight lightened his face, you saw his blonde luscious locks, slightly overgrown, a neatly trimmed beard darker than his hair and the cerulean blue eyes that were clear as crystal but shadowed with proficiency.

“Good, now did you see a kid around here? Blonde and blue eyes?”

His question didn’t surprise you, the gun barrel trained on you did. The previous man you had killed, that laid dead ahead of you had asked the same question. You did not know why they were after the toddler nor did you have the time to dwell on it. Time was of the essence now and he was expecting an answer.

The fact that he saved an unsuspecting lady was a plus point, but you also had to consider that he was threatening you all the same. But if that was his kid, it was understood, the resemblance between them was uncanny but that wasn’t enough proof. However, as your flickered to the man you killed, you noticed the logo on his jacket was the same as the one on your possible murderer’s jacket. It still wasn’t enough evidence but you had no choice, the man had a gun and you had two kids relying on you. At least he wasn’t on the bombing side.

“Yes, what is she to you?” You tried to be brave but you were sure he saw right through you.

“You don’t ask the questions here but this one I’ll answer. She is my daughter. Now, where is she?”  

“How do I know you’re not lying? I can’t just and her over to you!”

“Her name is Sarah; she is my carbon copy. She is wearing a pink dress with white flowers; pink crocs and her hair is in a ponytail with a white scrunchy. She had two white clips in her hair beside the ponytail. Enough proof?”

No, you could be a creepy paedophile for all I know.

You were still contemplating when he spoke again, “She’s my daughter and I know she’s in that booth beside you. I appreciate you trying to protect her I think but she’ll respond to me calling her. Sarah?”

The little toddler poked her head out, her eyes brightening in recognition and you heaved a sigh of relief involuntarily. Your maternal instinct made you anxious for kids you barely even knew. She ran towards her father shouting ‘Dada’ and jumped into his arms while he hid his gun. You almost snorted at that, tons of dead bodies surrounding you and he was worried about the gun?

He propped her up, hugging her tightly, and with what you knew now, he was scared to death and rightfully so.

Grace poked her head out and ran towards you now, hugging you from behind your legs and silently peeking at the mysterious human. You held Grace’s hand now, intertwining your fingers and felt relief after long. Even though there was no knowing that the man would help you two but you gave yourself comfort you weren’t alone here, not anymore.

Sarah turned and met your eyes again and whispered lowly, “Oops Mama, I think the games over! Sowwy!”

Steve’s eyes widened at that and you laughed at her innocence, feeling light. You played along with the kid, “It’s alright.” You didn’t want to play ‘Mommy’ anymore after that thinking it would offend her father but even, he chuckled, his laugh beautiful and boisterous.

Suddenly men dressed in black and armed with weapons ran about, skidding and crossing you to survey the area out. You shielded Grace once again but the father ahead of you didn’t even flinch. Noticing your unease, he came closer and put a hand on you arm, “I’m Steve and don’t worry, these are my men, the good guys.”

You nodded, not agreeing with his idea of good and bad but since you hoped he did acknowledge that he owed you one, you hoped none of these men would attack you. You introduced yourself and he nodded.

With Sarah on his hip, he started following one of his men and you followed along hoping to get to the exit. He even asked to drop you home but you refused, just wanting to get to the parking and put all these guns out of your kid’s sight. He tsked over his shoulder and you knew he would insist again later but for now he listened intently to the man he addressed as Buck.  

This Buck eyed you several times, not so discreetly, while Steve renounced the whole incident of some spies and whatnot. You closed your eyes, not wanting to eavesdrop and just wanting to relax but you could do neither right now. They were after Sarah; you had presumed right.

Sarah made grabby hands from over Steve’s shoulder while Grace slept soundly in your arms, maybe jealous of her. She pouted and then slowly began her lower lip began to tremble. A whine escaped her mouth as she started bawling. Steve stopped to shush her but she continued screeching, “I miss Mama!” and tried to get away from Steve and jump into your arms. Buck looked surprised while Steve’s eyes pleaded yours and you nodded and gave Grace to her and took Sarah in your arms, gently shushing her and patting her back. She drooled in the crook of your neck but that was nothing new and quietened down. You didn’t want to give Grace away but you couldn’t see another child so miserable, not when you had one of your own.

Steve and ‘Buck’ observed you, not saying anything so you broke the silence. “I’m sorry she confuses me with her mother, I hope she doesn’t get offended by this.”

“She’s no more.” Steve looked down and you cursed yourself for breaking the silence, make the situation more awkward and unbearable.

“I’m sorry.” Well that was better than joking about how Grace didn’t have a father either.

“Don’t be, she deserved what she got.” Steve mumbled and continued walking with ‘Buck’, lightly patting Grace and kissing her forehead.

The peck should have bothered you but you were too engrossed by his words to eavesdrop further or check on Grace. What did he mean she deserved it? You didn’t even want to think of the probability of him killing her. With all the soldiers that surrounded you, you suddenly realised he was capable of more than you thought and you felt stupid for feeling safe with him when you did. He was a leader of sorts, a person with unimaginable power and you had dived headfirst in the kind of things you should avoid at all costs. Even though you hadn't crossed him or weren't on his bad side, getting involved was a mistake.

You learnt this lesson the hard way soon enough.

[lovecinnatwist]

Hope u stay safe and healthy! Abo with omega dick and alpha Jay, fluff if possible? Thanks :)

Hi Anon! I am in fact safe and healthy! Have a nice little ficlet of Alpha!Jason and Omega!Dick being very glad that their little pup is also safe, healthy and coming home.

Where the heart is - JayDick Omegaverse

Tags: Kid Fic, Omegaverse, Alpha Jason, Omega Dick, surrogate parent/adoption, lactating/milking Helena Wayne is Helena Mary Grayson Todd

Sometimes Dick Grayson forgets that his mate is an alpha.

It’s easy to do when Jason’s so sweet in a way that’s distinctively omegan. Perhaps it’s the influence of the mother who left him or remnants from the tender affection B only had for his second pup. It’s something soft and tender and so uniquely him that makes Dick love him more and more everyday.

Jason curls around him effortlessly. Warm muscles squeeze tight enough to be pleasant, but not chafing.

Dick has always been a runner. Jason understands that and leaves a clear exit open at all times. A difficult obstacle for traditional courting rituals. Not that the alpha had any challenge clearing hurdle after hurdle. Jason is anything but traditional as well.

So is their current situation.

A large warm hand rests on his shoulder. The heat bleeding out is more than soothing to his already twitching instincts. There’s no reason to be nervous. After all this is a natural occurrence. The pup with latch, Dick knows it will but still his heart flutters with nervousness.

Jason’s rumble soothes the eagerness away. It quells the barrage of emotions ready to burst.

“ Mr and Ms Grayson - Todd? “

The agent from CPS is wonderfully nice, light brown eyes glittering with excitement. The delightful purr of her tone of voice betrays her enthusiasm. Just as Jason’s rise in happy-hopeful-ready betrays his. Dick’s been dreaming of this day for a long time. Long before the aspiration had been stolen from him by a knife. Then again by age and a barely functioning body strung out by high stress.

It’s Jason’s strength that helps him stand.

The sleepy scent of milk and pup adorn the air like perfume. Even before Dick spots his- no their- daughter, every part of his instincts sing. His breast began to ache immediately. The grueling weeks of hormone treatments and supplements are finally worth it.

Worth it as Doctor Leslie gives him tiny, little Helena.

Dick thinks he’s been in love with her since the moment he saw her behind glass. From the moment his breast began to ache when they gave him a few of her blankets to add to his nest. From the very moment Jason told him he could have her.

She’s heavy in a way Dick doesn’t expect. The weight is foreign yet so comfortable to bear. The alpha does not press to see her, or to touch her. Dick gets a few precious moments to marvel at the prettiest pup he’s ever seen.

Gorgeous green eyes open up in seemingly joyful curiosity. Though potentially, it might just be his hopeful outlook that makes it appear that way. Dick wants so badly for her to love him. To love them- to belong to their little broken family. To an omega who is half of what they should be and an alpha who is dysphoric instead of dominating.

The scent of milk is strong enough to draw the pup to root amongst the fabric covering his breast. It’s a gentle motion, one made precious by the very soft sounds of pup calling for pack. Dick’s throat is tight from emotion. Luckily his partner wastes no time in letting out a soothing rumble. The vibrations of the action shakes against his back.

Hot tears sting two different sets of blue eyes.

“She should be quite hungry. It’s time for her lunch time feeding. I’m sure she would greatly appreciate milk from her mommy. “

The word mommy devastates him. It washes his soul out to sea, and wraps him in a whirlpool of bliss. It’s too much and not enough at the same. This child- this pup is going to see him as her dame. She will spend the rest of her life in a warm safe nest never knowing anything but love and affection. Dick hopes that she will love him despite not being apart of her DNA. For not being able to give birth to her himself.

Jason’s touch breaks the track of that train of thought.

It’s a dance to bring a beading nipple to her hungry little mouth. Jason, who is leagues more natural, helps Dick undress and get both him and the pup comfortable. If Dick is lost to the tides, the alpha is a wreckage on the bluff. The chair is big enough for both soon to be parents.

Jason’s warmth is ever present and grounding.

The massive fingers that trail down Helena’s face makes her look so tiny. Like a delicate little thing that could be broken by too fast a movement. Not that Jason has the capacity to be anything but gentle. His heart bleeds for people. It bleeds out until the entirety of Gotham is red with his protection.

It takes both of them together to get Helena to Dick’s leaking breast. The pup whines as she struggles to get the nipple in her mouth. She’s more familiar with the bottle they had told him. That it would take time but eventually she would suckle. There’s no inhale or exhale as the pup attempts to nurse.

Then like magic she latches.

The tears refuse to be held back. Dick’s heart alarmingly full as Helena feeds forcefully but eagerly. The moment she gets a mouth full she’s quick to take more. Her hungry little mouth makes loud sounds and she feeds. Jason purrs in encouragement. His hand lightly tickles her wispy black curls.

She’s perfect. She’s perfect wonderful and Dick won’t know what to do if they can’t take her home today.

Luckily they don’t have to find out. Both breast get equal attention as the infant switches from one to another. It’s so natural and easy Dick doesn’t know why he had let himself worry to begin with. They pass with flying colors. After the feeding and burping both he and Jason get a neat stack of forms that require their signatures.

Then she’s free to leave with them.

Jason holds Helena as Dick takes his turn to sign. The alpha looks so at ease with their baby girl in his arms. His muscular frame dwarfing her’s. Dick hopes that the pup knows there is no place safer than in her father’s arms. Even if she seems grumpy as he harrasses her in her drowsy state.

Dick has to steal her back when the alpha kisses her nose, drawing a very upset puppy whine from her still developing vocal chords. Jason is absolutely heartbroken to let her go. At some point when Leslie goes to process the paperwork they get to be alone with their daughter.

Helena Mary Grayson-Todd.

Jason takes to sating his instincts by smothering Dick instead of their very sleepy pup.

“She’s so beautiful. “He murmurs, voice low enough not to set her off again. The thickness of the words would be impossible not to recognize. Though he’s doing a good job holding it together, Dick can tell the alpha is close to tears. The gravity of the situation finally sinks in.

“ You were perfect Dickie. “

The nickname melts down his spine, deep and warm like something butter. Typically that tone would make his eyes flutter shut. His body going loose and lax against his mate. Not now however. Now while his eyes are so busy trying to memorize everything about their pup.

The process had been grueling. They had to get Jason legal, find a reputable company, pick a donor, try on each of her ovulations, suffer when it didn’t take, then try again, then the paper work, the fees, the complications, the waiting- Oh God the waiting.

It had been the worst, most agonizing part. Right after the premature birth, and watching their little one breathe in a little shallow tank, kept warm by heat lamps.

How Dick wishes he could have just taken her home that very first day.

Not that it matters anymore. Not when she’s theirs now. Not when she get’s to come home today and be put in their nest where she belongs. Right in-between her two parents.

God Dick doesn’t know how he’ll manage to share her. The perfect pup in his arms is just so wonderful. It’s been such a long agonizing journey, he barely wants to hand her over to her sire.

He laughs, wetly, trying not to wake Helena from her nap.

“ If I can’t share you with Daddy how will I give you to your aunties and uncles huh? “

Jason’s laugh is close to his ear, sweet and silent to the point where it barely breathes. The soft sound makes his toes curl in his shoes. The searing comfort of love and happiness runs through his body as happy chills.

It’s something to get familiar with. The quiet laugh of a father trying not to wake their pup.

He looks at those watery blue-green eyes and Dick is falling in love all over again.

God who knew they could end up here? The two of them- finally starting a family together. That they could walk away from a life of pain and agony, to gift themselves something so beautiful.

For the first time in months, giving up the moniker doesn’t feel so suffocating.

When Jason laces their fingers together over their pup he knows his husband, his mate, the half of his heart agrees.

All while the new half lays in their arms, peaceful, healthy and forever loved.

[scarletarosa]

Dionysus

Greek god of madness, wine, vegetation, fruitfulness, virility, pleasure, festivity, frenzy, and theatre

Dionysus (also known as Bacchus and Liber) is the chaotic god who roams the wilds and indulges in the sensations which life has to offer. He is the inventor of wine and the one who inspires others to free themselves from their chains; leading them away into ecstatic freedom. Dionysus' sacred animals are the leopard, panther, bull, and serpent. Leopards/panthers were sacred to Dionysus due to their wild and often chaotic natures whereas bulls and serpents were sacred due to them representing male fertility. The god was said to ride on the back of a panther or drive a chariot drawn by a pair of them. His sacred plants are the grapevine, ivy, bindweed (prickly ivy) and pine tree. Devotees of the god wore wreaths of ivy and carried pine-cone tipped staffs.

Epithets: Ælefthæréfs (the liberator), Ærívromos (loud-roaring), Agnós (holy and pure), Ágrios (wild/savage), Ánax (lord; king), Aigovólos (goat-slayer), Anthéfs (blooming; crowned with flowers), Áreios (war-like), Chrysopes (golden faced), Corniger (the horned one), Dasýllios (wanderer of the woods), Dændrítis (lord of trees), Diphÿís (of dual nature), Ebon (youthful), Efkarpos (the fruitful), Efklayes (glorious), Elelikhthon (earth-shaking), Ephaptor (the caresser), Erivremetes (loud-thundering), Eucheus (pouring freely [of wine]), Evantís (decked with flowers), Evvouléfs (of good counsel), Hyes (lord of fertilizing moisture), Igiates (the healer), Kharidóhtis (joy-giver), Kissós (of ivy), Krýphios (the hidden one).

Dionysus was usually depicted as a handsome, long-haired young man who was usually clothed in a long robe (chiton) and cloak (himation) and crowned with a wreath of ivy-leaves. In some depictions, the god is shown with bull horns on his head. His attributes included the thyrsos (a pine-cone tipped staff), a drinking cup, and a crown of ivy. He was usually accompanied by a troop of Satyrs (goat-men of virility) and Maenades (wild female devotees). During his festivals, Dionysus was said to rush through the woods with the Maenads and tear apart wild animals with frenzic glee while also having drunken orgies with each other. He is also called both by Greeks and Romans as Bacchus (Bakchos), that is, the noisy or riotous god, which was originally a mere epithet of Dionysus. 

As far as the nature and origin of the god Dionysus is concerned, he appears in all traditions as the embodiment of chaotic power in nature, whereas Apollo is mainly a refined deity. Dionysus is the productive, overflowing, and intoxicating power of nature, which carries humans away from their usual quiet and sober mode of living. Wine is the most natural and appropriate symbol of that power, and it is therefore called "the fruit of Dionysus". Dionysus is, therefore, the god of wine; the inventor and teacher of its cultivation, the giver of joy, and the disperser of grief and sorrow. Though he also represents both effects of wine- the ecstatic blissful side, as well as the violent, maddening side. He is of the bright, joyous Sun as well as the maddening and unknowable Moon.  

Mythology: In myth, Dionysus was said to be the son of Zeus and the princess Semele of Thebes. During the course of her pregnancy, Zeus’ wife, Hera, tricked Semele into asking Zeus to appear before her in his full glory. Bound by oath, the god was forced to comply and she was consumed by the heat of his lightning-bolts. Zeus recovered their unborn child from her body, sewed him up in his own thigh, and carried him to term. After Dionysus’ birth from the thigh of Zeus, Dionysus was first entrusted to the care of Seilenos (Silenus) and the nymphs of Mount Nysa, and later to his aunt Ino, Semele's sister, and her husband Athamas. Some versions say Zeus instead entrusted him to Hermes, or to Persephone or Rhea. Hera was now urged on by her jealousy to throw Ino and Athamas into a state of madness, who then killed both of their children and themselves. Zeus, in order to save his child, changed him into a ram, and carried him to the nymphs of mount Nysa, who brought him up in a cave, and were afterwards rewarded for it by Zeus, by being placed as Hyades among the stars.  

During Dionysus’ young adulthood, he traveled the lands- teaching people of wine and of his divinity. The Thrakian king Lykourgos attacked Dionysus and his companions as they were travelling through his land and drove them into the sea. As punishment, the god inflicted him with madness causing him to murder his wife and son and then mutilate himself with an axe. King Pentheus of Thebes refused to accept the god's divinity and tried to apprehend him. Dionysus retaliated by driving the king's daughters into a crazed frenzy and they tore him apart limb from limb. As Dionysus was travelling through the islands of the Aegean Sea, he was captured by a band of Tyrrhenian pirates who planned to sell him into slavery. The god, however, could not be shackled or tied down; the bindings slipped away from him each time as Dionysus simply smiled. He then changed the mast and oars into serpents, and himself into a panther; he filled the vessel with creeping vines of ivy and the sound of flutes, so that the pirates, who were seized with madness, leaped into the sea, where they were transformed into dolphins. 

Appearance: Dionysus is a tall, attractive man in his late 30’s with long, wavy brown hair, brown eyes, strong facial features, and fair skin. He typically wears a white Greek robe with sandals and adorns his hair with ivy. He tends to be rather alluring in his appearance and basically looks how an ancient Greek male model would appear.  

Personality: In my experiences with Dionysus, he is very outgoing, charming, creative, flirtatious, laid-back, and can be impulsive. He loves all forms of pleasure, especially wine and sex. Dionysus has stated that he usually likes to go around seducing women, but also likes to seduce effeminate men since he enjoys dominating them. In his good-natured mood, Dionysus is friendly, jovial, and charismatic; welcoming others to join him in the enjoyable experiences of life. He says that he does not require his followers to partake in drinking alcohol or having sex, but simply seeks those who wish to feel free and unhindered by the constraints of society. Thus is the reason for his worship often taking place out in the wilds. In Dionysus’ darker side however, he can be extremely destructive and terrifying.  

He typically hates overly serious people, being too organized, strictness, and those who harm innocent creatures for no reason. When a person harms an innocent, Dionysus’ mood takes a drastic change and his form changes into something horrifying. His eyes become blood-red and his mouth deforms into a large serpent-like mouth with enormous fangs, then he attacks the person in a wild frenzy. His terror can cause petrification and madness in those who see him and they rapidly get torn apart. When angered, Dionysus becomes the Devourer of Flesh and either consumes his enemies or causes disturbing hallucinations and intense horror. Yet with most people, Dionysus is very entertaining to be around and often likes to make sexual jokes or tease, but he can become a bit serious when the need arises. He is very up-lifting and likes to teach people how to have fun with their lives and become less emotionally burdened by the demands of society. He loves things such as racing (especially horse racing) gambling, orgies, forest groves, and just enjoying himself in general.  

Dionysus has explained himself to be an aspect (shard) of the elder deity of virility, Set, who had also produced other aspects of himself such as Cernunnos, Pan, and Bes. The aspects are all One deity in essence, but due to free-will, they are independent from one another which allows them to have separate (yet very similar) personalities and desires. 

Offerings: wine, sparkling wine, white wine with pine resin (retsina), figs, grapes, pomegranates, apricots, potatoes, cauliflowers, eggplants, broccoli, horseradish, beetroot, parsnips, spring onions, strawberries, watermelon, peaches, cheese, lamb, goat, veal, chicken, cheeseburgers, ravioli with minced beef, chicken korma, lamb’s tongue, cow liver, chicken hearts, ram brains, coconuts, coconut oil, kumquat, ivy, pinecones, pinecone cores, chestnuts, walnuts, raisins, ritual goblets, tambourines, honey-coloured beads, tigers eye, watermelon tourmaline, chrysoberyl, amethyst, bull’s eye stone, dildos, various sex toys, canes, cum, bull figurines, leopard or panther figurines, incense of poppy, opium, or pine resin

[tomboyjessie13-artblog]

Reposting this again due to an edit I made. The reason for that is because it turns out their previous outfit(hakama and arrow kimono) they wore in the BOTW era was from the Taisho Period, not Meiji like I originally believed, so I changed the outfit to a furisode kimono, I kept the boots and glasses though.

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This is the first base drawing I did using Paint.Net, I wanted to try something with the app so I used a chibi base(because chibis are easier), it took a bit due to some issues(as well as finding PNG logos for the games) but I took care of it.

Outfits/Forms

Pilgrim wear - The second reason why I wanted to do this drawing, I learned that the Ichimegasa(that veil hat) that I have to Majora is also from the Japanese Heian period, it’s just mostly reserved for noblewomen pilgrims. I’d imagine that this is what they would wear whenever they travel outside the Demon Realm or Palace because it involves travelling. They’re also childhood friends with Bellum and has a very nasty beef with Malladus. Court witch - The outfit that they’re best known for at the palace, again they’re wearing something that’s from the Japanese Heian Period, I know Majora’s meant to be somewhat female coded but I gave them a man’s Kariginu instead of a woman’s Junihitoe because I wanted to change things up a little(that and I imagined that walking around in 12 layers of Kimono robes would be difficult). The buddhist/shinto beads around their neck references Majora’s eventual mask form and the 5 regions of Termina. Majora’s Mask(feat. Skull Kid) - Self explanatory but I’ll explain anyways, they entered Termina gravely injured because of the Demon Realm falling apart and became the way they’re known for due to the “Song of Healing” played by the man that saved them, but then the man died and an ancient tribe found Majora and began to use them for their hexing rituals, turning them insane overtime until they eventually snapped. They began reign of terror on all of humanity as a result of it, even going as far as to possess a young child, aka Skull Kid. Lost soul - A bit of a twist ending to “Majora’s Mask”, instead of being killed off, they instead got themselves banished from their mask body the moment the Fierce Deity laid the final blow, as well as losing all of their magic. Becoming a lost and restless soul, they spent most of their time wondering around multiple realms and countries mindlessly as well as harassing Time!Link’s descendants from both “Twilight Princess” and “Four Swords Adventures” out of pure spite and hatred towards the Hero that defeated them. “Villager” wear - This is what Majora would wear during the first half of “Hyrule Warriors”* after Veran makes them a new body made of mud, they were first founded and recruited by Zant, and because they didn’t have their magic back yet, they acted as his personal informant by pretending to be a innocent village girl named “Selene”** who acted as a victim, and baited Warriors!Link out of all the information he knows regarding his search for Zelda and the time portals…Also this outfit is very unoriginal, it’s based off of Hatsune Miku’s Avant-garde outfit. I should’ve used it for Margarita’s mage outfit remake but it’s one of my favorite Project Diva outfits and I just can’t help drawing them in it, let me have this. Fighter wear - The FIRST reason why I did this drawing in the first place. This is what they would wear during the second half of “Hyrule Warriors” and onward, they needed a proper outfit for combat as well as looking fabulous, I kinda designed it with some references to “Senbonzakura” but I also modeled it more towards Sheikah apparel in mind. After faking their death to get away from Warriors!Link, they’re now allowed to do whatever they want as well as try restoring their lost magic, going under the name of “Hecate”*** to avoid suspicion, but they were reprimanded by Beelzebub and Lucifer shortly after. They would wear this later on centuries later. Post-Calamity Termina - They would wear this while settling down in Ikana Valley’s Hill Town, under the name of “Tsuki”, and pretends to be some clumsy witch to make themselves look innocent and to avoid suspicions, during this time they lost their leg to a rampaging guardian and finally regain the magic they have lost(but not enough to end the world). Their outfit was popular during Japan’s Late-Edo and Early-Meiji Period and it’s meant to reflect Termina becoming more modern in a short period of time, I also gave them glasses to give them that innocent nerdy look(or mad scientist?), I also replaced the star symbol on their hakama with a Stone Tower emblem to make it seem like they’re from Ikana. Modern Hyrule - Everyone knows this, but this is what they wear onwards during ORAS and Modern Day Hyrule, the overalls are meant to make Majora look very childish despite being full grown. During this time, traveled back to the Demon Realm with Beelzebub and Lucifer to restore it to it’s former glory. During the Modern Times, they still continue to cause trouble for all the humans(especially Link), even getting arrested on several occasions for multiple counts of domestic terrorism, disturbing the peace, and illegal usage of moon magic. They’re also seen lurking around the Twilight Realm. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *Yes, Hyrule Warrior is part of Zelda canon in this universe, fucking fight me ** Selene is the Greek goddess of the moon *** Hecate is the Greak goddess of magic, witchcraft, moon, the night, ghosts and necromancy Human and Demon design belongs to me Base belongs to Vonibuu Blank base here: https://www.deviantart.com/vonibuu/art/F2U-chibi-base-502327388

[weheirsofdurin]

Dwarven Hair: Courtship Bead

The bead itself is one that the dwarves do not get until they have reached at least forty. They are to make it themselves (extenuating circumstances means other may help) and its one of their first tasks as an adult. They must melt the metals down, turn them into beads, and carve them themselves. The entire process can take years to do because imperfection is not accepted into the making of the bead.

Most dwarves do not have their bead completed until they closer to fifty, some even after that. The bead is important within their culture and one may not court with intent to marry until both dwarrows have their beads. 

The importance of doing a bead ones self and making sure it’s perfect is that they believe their soul is tied into this specific bead. As they work over it, pouring blood, sweat, tears, years of their lives, into the perfecting of this small metal bead they put a part of themselves into it too. This bead is irreplaceable as it’s name in Khuzdul is Marbur‘Afhu; Bead of Soul (Containing a spirit; Soul and Bead of [Absolute State] are the contracted words separated).

When a Dwarrow choses another they start courting by gifting over a Stone {See; Runic Stones} and if accepted they will then begin the process of properly courting. {See; Courtship} In the Process of courting they would braid a part of their S.O.’s hair and place the bead there for safe keeping. It would not be placed in the usual place of a courtship braid (as the hair there is shaved for courting and would be moved there only after the hair has regrown. {See; Hair HC})

The bead as it’s associated with containing a dwarf’s soul means that upon passing they will be unable to go through Mandos’ halls until their missing part of their soul is returned to them. So upon dying they are cursed to Limbo until their One dies and returns to their side with the bead. The dwarves that have lost their beads (most times in battle or are stolen when captured) are cursed to an eternity of Limbo. Their souls will decay and lose form until they become wraiths. They will never pass into Mandos’ halls nor will they ever be reunited with those dead and those loved.

If after marriage the bead is removed by the one wearing it, it’s seen as shunning the other. If person A removed the bead from person B, it is to be assumed B committed an unforgivable sin against A (romancing another without A’s consent, rape, child abuse, etc.) The only way B has of saving any honor is forfeiting their own life. If they do not no matter future deeds or any apology given or forgiveness sought, they will never be accepted in the halls. 

If the braid comes lose A is not allowed to fix it. The best they can do is wear the bead on a necklace until B can re-braid the hair (it’s part of the ritual itself so fixing the hair is seen as hiding a sin committed against B without their knowledge). If B has passed there is one person designated by B to do this dead in their stead, C. It’s seen as high honors for C. Most time C is a child from the marriage or a trusted younger sibling. Someone thought to outlive B in the case of natural death.

The exchanging of beads is seen for the dwarves like that of the elves binding their souls to their loved one. (Though the elves bind their literal souls and not exchange their souls like the dwarves with beads.) 

If a Dwarf gives an elf their bead, they do it knowing they will never cross into the Halls of Mandos. They accept that their soul will be destroyed and they will become a wraith (unless the elf perishes before then at which point they would both be accepted and the elf would not be reborn). One of the main reasons Dwarves and Elves do not mix is because of this. 

[hedonisthierophant]

Aching abyss

Aching abyss

The doctors proclaimed that he was alive, crowed over their victory, their triumph in snatching his fragile form from the jaws of death and conspiracy. Clay wasn’t so sure that he believed them. Oh he knew intellectually that he lived. His eyes beheld what unfolded before them, he was aware of various scents perfuming the air, he heard the constant drone of life around him, he was able to process the flavors of his food, his body was warm, his lungs filled and emptied themselves of air in a regular fashion, his bones muscles ligaments and tendons obeyed his commands, he felt sensation against his skin, and most importantly, his heart beat. This could be objectively verified, all he had to do was press a hand against it and feel its steady rhythm. Yet, despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary Clay felt that he had died during the faithful procedure and what the doctors had so pridefully revived was merely an empty shell, a purposeless, empty husk of a man.

Before the operation Clayton had always looked forward to it as the door through which he would step into his new lease on life. Now he looked back on it ruefully as a pyrrhic victory. The result of a twisted covenant with some deity who was spiteful at worst and apathetic at best, they had given him a new life and in exchange taken away Clay’s sense of being alive. Yes his body was here, but was Clay here? That was a more complicated question altogether.

Clay tried first to explain his situation to his physicians, they assured him that these sorts of feelings were par for the course in transplant patients and would pass in time. Clay next set up a meeting with a therapist, discreetly and through a series of intermediaries. He didn’t have the courage to go on any websites or call any numbers for himself. Instead he delegated what he assumed was the more burdensome task to an assistant, he was certain he’d known her name at one point but since the transplant everyone who worked with him seemed to lose their individuality in a sea of faceless underlings, drones whose existence was based around snapping to his soft commands. His sleek black town car pulled up to an equally sleek glass skyscraper. The glass had been tinted green and was interspersed with frames of obsidian. He mumbled the name of his destination to a security guard in the lobby.

He was directed to the 151st floor, some hopeful, grateful voice buried in the back of his mind spoke with an abrasive cheer and reminded him that he’d never have been able to walk up 151 flights of stairs before the operation, maybe he should just to say that he had, after all he had plenty of time before his appointment. A petulant, bitter, far louder voice simpered in return that perhaps he should and his unfeeling misery and run up all 151 flights until his new heart gave out and he ended up in the ground where he belonged. The loudest most omnipresent voice spoke next, it commanded him to simply ride the elevator instead, this voice was the herald the emptiness inside him, a mouth that spoke for the vast abyss where his feelings had once been. He rode the elevator, contemplating whether this parody of life was the price for cheating death? He had been so afraid of the silence and stillness of the grave he’d never considered the idea that they could be draped over him like a burial shroud before he passed away. As he strode down the hall he was steeling himself for some unimaginable and invasive horror. The things his mother would say if she knew that he was seeing shrink. A much younger Clayton had actually mistaken the word “shrink” for a slur such was the venom with which he heard it passed his mother’s lips. He’d used it as a weapon hoping to strike back at a girlhood called him to fragile to play and had been met with laughter that was cruel and worse yet laced with pity.

He entered an upscale reception area suffused with an aura of enforced calm. Diffused light came from a few lamps that had been covered in simple cloths in addition to their shades. Some well concealed noise machine was causing an approximation of the sounds of the surf to bleed through the space, the floor was covered by an enormous, lush, pale green carpet. A portly woman with mousy hair and oversized spectacles handed him the intake forms. He stared at them, his brain lazily processing words like “health conditions, medications, prior diagnoses, history of treatment, presenting issue, drug use, alcohol use, suicide attempts and ideation,” he stared numbly at the forms wondering what the correct pattern of checkboxes was that could possibly communicate what was wrong with him. After several idle minutes the receptionist looked over “don’t worry about it dear many people find it difficult to put in writing, you just have a talk with our provider and she’ll fill one out for you afterwards, it’s no trouble at all.” His mother was laughing at him berating him for his inability to fill out a simple form, his dawdling would make this person’s job that much harder, he was already inconveniencing them and he hadn’t even met them, he was overwhelmed by the feeling that his mirror presence here was a bother.

This entire endeavor was a mistake. For once his body reacted, his pulse hammered, beads of sweat carved frosty path down his brow, he couldn’t get enough oxygen, he was dizzy, his deal with death had only bought him a minor reprieve apparently, he’d come here to discover how to feel alive again and instead he was going to die in this waiting room. Distantly, some part of him wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. The rushing of his blood and the incessant pain in his head brought back memories of the table and what was left of his composure shattered as it was assaulted by those recollections. He heard a faint whirring, it grew louder as though some angry machine were approaching him. His beleaguered mind wandered if perhaps the Grim Reaper rode a scooter? A powerful voice broke through the chaos within him. He was commanded to raise his head, instinctively he did so.

A woman sat in front of him he thought but he couldn’t be sure, his vision swam, threatening to blur into unconsciousness. “Mr. Beresford?” Hearing his father’s name brought a fresh wave of turmoil it felt as though his throat completely closed, in a few moments it was possible that he might be face to face with his father and bare the full brunt of his ridicule for this display of frailty, for the disappointment he caused his father, for the failure of a son that he was. “Clayton?...Clay?” Someone was calling him, it’d be rude not to respond, he couldn’t be rude he would be punished. Reflexively he fought to bring the image before him into focus. He failed, but he was able to force us stammered “Yes?” past his tremulous lips. His effort was immediately rewarded, “Clay I’m Dr Mensah. If you would like I can lead you in a breathing exercise that may provide you with some relief. Would you like me to do that? If not I would like you to know that panic attacks pass and I will stay here with you until this one does.” Her voice was infused with an iron certainty. Clay gave her a weak nod of his head that was almost perceptible amidst his twitching and hyperventilation. She spoke in a calm voice , “I would like you to inhale whilst I count to four, then hold your breath whilst I count to four again then I would like you to exhale whilst I count to four, and hold your breath a second time whilst I count to four final time. We will repeat the process if necessary. She began to count in a determined rhythm. One… Two… Three… Four. As though he was experiencing this from far-flung distant place he was aware of the ritualized pace of his lungs filling, waiting and then emptying. The chaos that gripped him receded ever so slightly. They completed the exercise twice more.

Clay was finally able to open his eyes and properly take in his rescuer. But he had some difficulty parsing the vision that greeted him. Her voice filled his ears again almost hypnotic in its steadiness and placidity. “I imagine that was quite a difficult experience. Would you like to talk about what you are feeling or would you prefer to rest? Perhaps some water? Clay nodded mutely. She turned away from him and the whirring returned, she made her way over to a low table he had noticed before that had the trappings of a miniaturized café. She retrieved a recycled paper cup from a pile and extracted a glistening portion of water from an expensive looking machine. She crossed the space between them accompanied only by the sound of whirring. She offered the cup to Clay. He reached out and nearly splattered it over the both of them. His hands and started to shake just as he may contact with the edge of the cup. He was already prepared with a thousand apologies ready on his tongue, already hearing a lecture from his mother about making a full of himself. But the woman’s grip was steely and sure. The cup hardly moved despite Clay’s embarrassing flailing. Her expression remained unchanged “may I assist you?” Clay’s face was burning with shame that all he could do was nod unwilling to risk another bout of tremors. With one hand she brought the cup to his lips and placed the other at the back of his neck as a sort of support as she tipped the cup up and he drank in the cool liquid. Clay should’ve been humiliated, should’ve been outraged should’ve been indignant. Yes he given his permission but how dare this woman presume to help him in this way as though he were an invalid or worse yet, a child. He was about to make her regret her trespass with some scathing remark but he was consumed by the thought that this woman was the first person to touch him in months since his mother died. He looked down at her and realized for the first time that the source of the whirring had been the wheelchair that she was occupying. “Would you like to accompany me to my office?” All Clay could do was nod, he rose, his limbs being more cooperative than he anticipated. The sound of Clay’s shoes against the carpet was all but inaudible so close to the whir.

  He followed Dr. Mensah into a lushly appointed space. Gently lit by fairy lights with a single enormous couch arrayed against one back wall. Round the space there were several chairs pointed in the general direction of the couch. The wall was painted a pale green broken up by paintings of forests, mountains, and oceans.” Please sit wherever you’d like, or stand if you prefer. Make yourself comfortable.” Clay obediently perched on the edge of the couch fighting the natural instinct let himself sink into it his mother had disapproved horribly of anything that ruined his posture. The woman parks her wheelchair directly across from the couch, and waits. They sit in silence for about a moment before Clay blurts out the first thing on his mind. “I don’t like doctors.” “Perhaps it would be better for you to think of me simply as Beatrice then?” Again the only tool in his repertoire was to nod . “I would like you to tell me about what brings you in today if you feel so inclined, I got a glimpse of the distress you experience but I’d like more information so that I may place it within the proper context.” Years of being and vandalized and thought of week have left Clay with a bit of a sore spot around being anything less than perfect in the view of other people. He makes an effort to straighten his back even further and speaks in the distant tone his mother had employed when dismissing other people’s preposterous ideas as she so often did. “Distress? You must be mistaken ma’am. I’m fine.” He stares at her impassive face. The woman before him is perched in what Clayton assumes is an extremely high-end model of wheelchair looking for all the world as if she were in a throne and questioning an errant peasant. Her body framed by black leather and paint of the same color. Her right leg sits crossed over her left, giving Clay the impression that he is but a subject addressing a monarch, he hasn’t felt that way since his mother died. She is dressed for all the world as though she is one of the many high-stakes powerbrokers that have surrounded Clay’s entire life. Cream colored pants and a cream-colored blazer adorn her form, Clay’s first impression of her would have been that she was distant and inaccessible, unconcerned with those beneath her but this train of thought was derailed by the decidedly more human touches that graced her ensemble. Bangles that would’ve been out of place in Wall Street office, a tribal necklace, nails done to perfection but not merely buffed and coated in clear polish as was the habit of ladies on Wall Street face painted with only the lightest coding of makeup, a subtle red to her lips and black around her eyes.. Her nails glimmered a soft lavender color and several rings adorned her fingers. Her hair was in locks and gathered into a regal looking knot atop her head, secured by a lavender colored cloth. As they stared at each other Clay felt that he was being examined by some class of being several orders of magnitude beyond his comprehension. Finally she spoke, her voice bathed in a quiet authority, “people who are fine do not often experience panic attacks in our waiting room, Clay.” With that simple sentence it’s as though she’s drained all of Clay’s reserves of hostility. She continues, “I would imagine that this was the first time you’ve experienced something like that, perhaps your standard experience is more that of numbness?”

The floodgates open and Clay imparts to her all the apathy that has infused his existence since it was restarted that day on the table. She listens as he describes feeling like a windup doll merely going through a set of preprogrammed motions, acting alive but not feeling it. He describes the profound disconnect between himself and his emotions. The well of nothingness that has consumed him. She listens without interruption and when Clay can no longer think of anything to say they are enshrouded in silence. Clay can’t bear silence, it was quiet times like this that he hated the most before the transplant. When there were no distractions around and he could hear his own heartbeat. He’d made a macabre game of counting the beats wondering how many he had left before he hit zero. The average person’s heart beat 3,195,648,000 during their lifetime Clay had been obsessed with cardiology as a child after learning about the ticking time bomb inside his chest. He been able to recite all sorts of minutia related to the organ and its functioning, of course a particular attention was paid to transplants and the various gruesome fates that could await poor souls who had no choice but to undergo them or worse yet be denied the opportunity to do even that. Clay had always known with certainty of the doomed that he would experience but the smallest fraction of that instead. People were supposed to live to around 80 and yet it was a miracle that he made it to 22.

Clay imparts all this to Beatrice in the same unfeeling monotone because the crushing silence summons the screaming voice of his mother commanding him to take control of the situation, do something say something, be the performer that she had raised and not the useless lout. It is with a serene tone that Beatrice tells him that all his feelings are be expected from someone who’d been living on borrowed time, with one parent absent in the other abusive, suffered a near-death experience brought on by betrayal, followed by the trauma of a string of losses. Her words were cloaked in validation and understanding, enshrouded in a sincere seeming empathy. Hearing her speak made Clay want to cry but he knew he would be unable to. The session lit a tiny spark of feeling within him for the first time since his rebirth. Clay instantly became an addict, he booked a session next week and mustering what dignity he could left the office bed goodbye to the receptionist and descended back to the mass of scurrying mortals living their lives far below the glittering towers that had made up Clay’s. His town car was waiting at the entrance to the building, piloted to perfection by Mercy. Mercy was his chauffeur, assistant, bodyguard, confidant, and the closest thing he had left to a friend. She wore a simple black chauffeur’s uniform and, her face bare of any makeup, red hair concealed. Since his death he found it hard to trust people, to let them near him either emotionally or physically. Mercy had impeccable references, a degree in management from Harvard. She was proficient in three forms of martial arts and possessed a frightening level of accuracy when wielding firearms. She was the only one allowed anywhere near Clayton, any requests from his father’s company all were filtered through her, she ran his calendar, made all the arrangements for every facet of his day, and so shepherded him through his life. These two women were the light houses in Clayton’s so-called life. Mercy roused him each day, presented him with decisions that needed to be made, drove him aimlessly through the city, provided his meals, kept up with his medication, she was an almost invisible, almost silent, benevolent guardian. Beatrice in their weekly sessions helped Clayton begin to assess the level of damage that had been done to him long before you died. She helped to foster that flicker of life within him. Until he confronted her with a dilemma that he was certain would cause her to leave him.

Clayton tried his best to bask in the pleasures of life, to rekindle the flame of actually living life. The finest food tasted like bitter ash, and had to be forced down his throat. He walked the galleries and viewed great works of art, pieces that had once stirred his soul. Before he died he could’ve stared at those paintings for hours and been absolutely captivated, now they did no more for him than a child’s fumbling scribble. He visited the Opera and bought expensive equipment with which to listen to his favorite music, everything sounded as though he were hearing it from underwater, dull, distant, and boring. Films that he loved as a child played before him on the vast expanse of his home theater screen, he couldn’t bring himself to connect with a single scene, to feel anything whatsoever. This is where Clayton ran into trouble, he was forbidden from doing anything strenuous, for anyone else that might be fine. However, when you lived in the condition that Clay did nearly any activity that could bring the faintest spark of enjoyment was considered strenuous. No more gentle laps in the pool, no more mild jogs in the park, no more calm morning workouts, anything like skiing or basketball was completely out of the question. So yes, Clayton lived but he wasn’t alive. He took his questions to the Internet he figured what he needed was some shot of dopamine or else a blast of adrenaline but every activity suggested by the thrill junkies in their wild and free death-defying corners of cyberspace was well beyond Clay’s current ability. He was not permitted to travel by plane as the elevation might put stress on his heart, so visions of some faraway location where he could simply bask in the beauty of nature or a new culture would have to remain so. What drove at Clay the deepest however was the physical manifestation of his loneliness, there were days when his limbs failed him and Mercy efficiently helped him dress, her steady hands doing work that his had been ,capable of since he was a mere child. Fastening buttons here, tying laces there. The experience would leave him burning with shame every time despite the fact that he had no pretenses at an invalid such as himself ever being afforded much modesty, let alone dignity. Worse than the shame though was the ache that burrowed deep within him, the lightest touch of her fingers against his flesh soothed the hollow throb within him reducing all-consuming agony to the slightest aching twinge for an exquisite instant. Vicious vultures circled constantly in his mind filling his thoughts with wicked whispers imparting upon him the knowledge that he may as well already be dead, that this wasn’t a life worth living. He laid all of these burdens at Beatrice’s feet, she sent him to a psychiatrist who prescribed first this antidepressant, and then that, the happy pills gave him energy, but no purpose or drive, he was merely a remote control toy whose batteries had been supercharged. He no longer slept until two in the afternoon and the vultures screeching had been reduced to near silence but the absence of that cacophony and the less time he spent in blissful unconsciousness, unburdened by his reality for precious hours he wished he could stretch into eternity, the more he was enveloped in emptiness. When you were always drowning in pain its briefest absence induced an incredible sense of euphoria, there was no pleasurable feeling but the sheer existence of even a single iota of life, of a moment free of agony became a dangerously addictive high, the sort of sheer bliss that all hedonists would trade their souls for. Clay’s realization came through his dreams. The nocturnal adventures that his subconscious conjured for him were often replete with reminders of his suffering. His father’s abuse and death, his mother’s disappointment, Sam’s betrayal and Jack’s complicity, his mother’s death. It was as though his psyche was daring him to find even the single weakest reason to go on, as though some demon, livid that it had been cheated when he escaped death, embarked on a quest to torture Clay night after night, to remind him of all his pain and loss until he saw the price he paid for the cursed gift that was his second chance and chose to reject it, this malignant creature would use his own mind to rake him over the coals, to turn his only sanctuary into a place of torment until he gave in and died, probably by his own hand, then the demon would be satisfied and absconded with his prize back to hell, satisfied in having righted this imbalance of the cosmic scales that had allowed Clay, however transiently to escape his fate.

Having survived the table and experiencing the visions or astral projection or whatever type of hallucination he had during the process had left Clay with at least some ability to command his mind to come to his aid. Like a mantra he hurt himself repeat over and over, “show me something nice, make me feel alive.” Once, twice, thrice, upon the fourth repetition there was a change. It was early morning and the once brilliant light of dawn that would’ve drawn a smile from Clay no matter what his mood had saturated every inch of his apartment. Clay was lounging in his favorite chair, luxuriating in the feel of the plush cushions conforming to his body, Mercy stood over him gently carting her fingers through his hair draining his worries away and causing the slightest flicker to spark in the candle that had come to represent Clay’s joie de vivre…for the first time since his death he awoke hard.

Clay was groggy at first and then conscious of the delicious friction of his cock rubbing against his underwear, the ghosts of dream-Mercy’s hands still gliding over his scalp. He reached down to cup himself astounded at the arousal he felt, it had been so long, since the morning before his death that his body had given him even a phantom help that he might be able to indulge one of his most base urges. He’d miserably resigned himself to subsisting on half memories of his last morning with Sam before he discovered her betrayal, the colors bled from those images and he hated himself. Distantly he wondered if he’d given himself the opportunity to seek other inspiration some thought not tainted with her memory to make him hard if it would’ve worked, but his body was so thoroughly uninterested in the possibility of ever feeling pleasure again right up until this morning. A happy sigh escaped his lips as he teased himself through the fabric of his silk pajama bottoms. In his nascent pleasure his eyes open sleepily and he realized that Mercy was due to enter his room in a matter of minutes to wake him and begin their daily routine. His arm darted out with the speed and urgency he had not felt since that day and he fired off a terse message to her informing her that he intended to sleep in for at least another half an hour. Predictably, Mercy responded with a simple affirmative nearly the instant after his finger pressed the send key.

 Without her Clay was free to bask in the return of at least a fragment of what it felt like to be human. Sure, it was the most primitive and unworthy fragment but it was something. He slid his clothes off with trembling h hands gasping at the feel of smooth fabric rubbing over the most sensitive parts of his body. He shivered and his nipples became rock hard as he was exposed to the chill air. The illicitness of the situation alone was enough to have him leaking, he brought a shaking index finger to slit and sent it on a slow journey back to his mouth. The taste of himself sent a spasm of shocked pleasure through his whole body. He had worried somewhere distant in the far dark reaches of his mind that he forgotten this. But resonance of recollections guided his movements and he moaned in quiet pleasure as his hands trailed up and down his body causing every hair to stand on end. He circled the shaft with his right hand and gave it the gentlest squeeze, a spurt of precum issued from the head and he laughed in boyish delight, delirious in the joy of rediscovering the art of self-love. Clayton spat into his hand and returned it to his twitching cock. Under normal circumstances he’d of turned his nose up at the idea of using saliva as lubricant but desperate times called for desperate measures and he was willing to abandon some of his principles for the chance to make this feel even the slightest bit better. He tweaked one nipple and almost embarrassed himself with the keening sound that it tore from his lips, rather he would be embarrassed if enough of his mind was not submerged in an ocean of want and could muster enough conscious thought to care. He brought his hand up to the other nipple and began playing with them in unison delicious shivers and twitches racing up his spine crossing him to cross and uncrossed his legs curl and uncurl his toes throw his head back and moaned as he wallowed in wildly wanton madness, mesmerized by the long forgotten pleasure he was capable of bringing himself. For the stolen half an hour he wasn’t Clayton Beresford Jr, the poor fragile billionaire, he was Clay, a horny 22-year-old like any other across the world who had the strength to do something about it. Delirious laughter escaped his lips as he began to massage his balls rolling them between his fingers gently tugging on the sensitive skin as it sent breathy gasps and moans up his throat. His head thrashed this way and then that in response to his ministrations his body giving a rapturous response to its own performance. Some faraway part of him was aware of the sweat that was beginning to soak his skin and distantly ever so faintly as though he were listening to the memory of the shadow of an echo from deep beneath the surface of water he heard his heartbeat. Clay let out a joyous little whoop as he brought himself closer and closer to that elusive peak of pleasure that he was chasing. His body on fire from the delicious torture, screaming at him that it wanted this, no that, that if Clay failed on this quest to satisfy himself that his very form would punish his loss by severing the single gossamer thread that allowed him to remain tethered to this mortal plane. Retribution for teasing himself and failing to deliver on the ultimate few instance of pleasure that would silence all the noise in his head and the complaints of his overtaxed body would be death, brutal in its suddenness. He felt as though he was quite literally, jerking off for his life. If he didn’t ascend to the peak of ecstasy the fire would reach his heart and it would stop once and for all and there would be no one to sacrifice themselves this time for the sake of him getting his rocks off. The train of thought made him laugh deliriously, winds and moans escaped his lips as reedy, needy breaths were all his lungs were capable of producing. He felt absolutely soaked with pre-come, a glance downward confirmed that there was so much of it that it spilled over his significant shaft and coded the light dusting of pubic hair and had spread to drip off his hips on both sides. He rutted mindlessly against his own hand for a few minutes more chasing ever ascending bubbles of bliss. His jaw hung open, his hair and body covered in sweat, heat rolling off him as though he were running a fever  yet still he could not reach his peak, his moans turned to sobs of anguish as he pursued a climax that was constantly just out of reach. His muscle contracted, his heart beat like a machine gun, his cock twitched and spasmed, all to no avail. No! No! No! He wanted to scream with every fiber of his being to roar out his anger and sadness at the uncaring gods who cursed him to live this way, tears streaked down his face as he felt the waves of pleasure begin to crash further and further away from him, for the storm that had gotten him this far to subside. Part of his body began to relax, this was for the best he was pushing himself too hard, this was his new normal and he was condemned to adjust to it. Was he to be denied final satisfaction even after all this momentum had been built up? He snarled in rage, no he looked down at himself and saw that his cock had turned a pained shade of purple and was gushing precum with anticipation, he was so close just a few more strokes, just a bit of a tighter grip, and he would come, come like people all over the world did every day and, he would spend a precious few seconds gliding on a cloud of euphoria. He would be alive again. Clays hips jerked and bucked wildly as, his stomach clenched and his toes curled in anticipation of Nirvana. He let out a guttural, wanton moan, half pleading with his body and have commanding it to finish this, to let his live for just a few seconds, to let him feel. Tears streamed down his face as the pleasure turned to pain and his body refused. Clayton’s desperate wail of sorrow was cut off by a sharp pain in his chest. Agony brought him back to himself and through eyes that could see all too clearly he heard an alarm shrieking on his phone and Mercy burst through the door, her fingers keying in 911 and bringing it halfway to her ear before she got a good look at her employer. The shame roasted Clay alive.

 An hour later after a litany of apologies and offers to find her better employment elsewhere and incoherent sobs, he whispered a stuttered explanation of his situation to Beatrice through the phone that Mercy held to his shaking body. His salvation arrived an hour after that. Mercy opened the door to his sprawling penthouse apartment and brought him a simple black blindfold which she affixed for him with customary professionalism. Clayton’s world was reduced to sounds than, he heard the enticing click of high heels on tile as a third person entered his bedroom. “Hello Clayton, I am Madame Olivia, I am a professional intimacy expert, a sexual surrogate, I’ve been informed of your difficulties and asked by Dr. Mensah to lend my talents to provide you with some relief and sense of normalcy. The blindfold was my suggestion as I worried that seeing my face might cause you to feel a sense of shame or unworthiness.” Do I have your consent to proceed?” Clay nods, her voice rings out, gentle yet firm, “Speak when spoken to Clay.” He shudders as a breathless Yes” escapes him. I am going to start out with small but intimate touches and we shall go from there until you give me a safe word.” Clay, what shall be your safeword?” she asked in a tone that spoke in equal measures of clinical competence and indulgent care. With absolute certainty Clay spoke the word “awake.” “And what shall be your return signal if you wish to resume our activities after you’ve used your safeword?” “Starving,” he says with an unfiltered honesty that surprises him.” “Very well.” Her voice is like warm honey, enticing and comforting all at once, but she speaks no more she advances upon him.

Clay has started to drip with anticipation again as he hears the click of her heels signal her approach. Each sharp, sure step a herald of his impending salvation. He whimpers as delicate, elegant fingers encircle his own, he’s only able to stand the rush of emotion and Ron need it comes from the simple pleasure of holding her hand for a pair of minutes before tears prick his eyes and he’s reminded of how pathetic he is before he gasps out his safeword. Instantly the hand is gone from his, as if by magic. If her touch had lit him aflame, her absence had frozen him he’s only able to bear one minute of wintry isolation and a fear of never having this opportunity again before he gasps out the return signal. They spend hours like that in a tortuously slow dance of advance and retreat, her hand moves from his to his forearm to his shoulder to his neck. He can only stand a few minutes of each touch at a time but even sooner he’s calling out for her again. She gently massages his neck and he mewls with pleasure. Only stopping her because he feels as though he could come from this alone. After his retreat is canceled and she moves forward once more her enchanted, soft hands caress his hair and rub gently against his scalp. He’s floating on waves of satisfaction. Eventually her fingers brushed delicately over the blindfold and he imagines that he can feel them running ever so gently over his eyelids themselves. Over the course of another few minutes she makes her way down to his nipples and begins to work them so much more softly than he had, he cries from the pleasure. She trails her hand over his abdominal muscles rubbing gentle circles into the quivering flesh. When he thinks that she’ll at last reaches caulk she takes a detour and skips over entirely and begins rubbing gently at his feet, massaging them with oil, that warm and has him twitching and gasping from the sensation of pleasure it’s causing to run through his body. They have to take five separate breaks before she is able to complete her work with his feet. Satisfied, she runs her hands back up his body and gently encircles his drenched caulk in her hand, his fluids mixed with the oil on her hands and create a divine sliding sensation free of all but the barest trace of friction behind the blindfold his eyes rolled back in his head. It feels so different from when he had done it in that ill advised session earlier, her hand is much smaller and more delicate than his own, the feel it creates is velvety. It smelled different the first time too, his fumbling attempts had filled the room with the smell of sex, sweat, and desperation combined with the odor of sadness. Now his senses are filled with the gentle floral notes of her perfume, some spice that seems to be emanating from the oil she uses, the faintest trace of his own arousal. The sounds are different as well, before they had been wild and desperate now his soft sighs, whimpers, groans, and moans, along with murmured pleas gently collide with the otherwise quiet air around them. She fondles his balls and works his shaft, tweaking and pulling just so. They are however engaged in a delicate balancing act, her mission is to help them achieve orgasm without putting too much strain on his body. It would be easy this would be over in a matter of minutes instead of the hours it’s taken so far if he could handle even the slightest bit of rougher or more frantic treatment. But the flame of pleasure inside him needs to be gently stoked and built up over time so that it does not burn him again. Eventually her hands wander back up and down his body in soothing patterns that he is not quite aware of. She returns and applies a helping of oil here and there massaging his chest tweaking his nipples in a heavenly rhythm and allowing his cock to relax and soften again before making another attempt. The edges of anger and desperation well up inside Clay and he begs her to be just a bit rougher with him let her nails dig into his skin to get this over with so that he no longer has to be spread out and vulnerable before her so that he can get off just like any other god damn young man in the city. She gives no verbal response instead she merely places her hand against his throat and squeezes gently, the most gentle of threats. His mouth goes dry as she massages his Adam’s apple and he murmurs an apology even as he can feel himself spilling a bit of pre-come at this change in dynamic.

There’s one part of his body that she’s avoided so far the garishly ugly scar that came with his new hollow existence. Clay can even bring himself to look upon it in the mirror. Eventually she slowly let her fingers trace it and he gasps as the sensitive scar tissue reacts to attach and waves of pleasure rolled down his body. He wants to stop her he wants to beg her not to do that not to remind him what he is not here in this safe place where it’s just the two of them under Mercy’s watchful eye. In response to his mumbled protests she merely presses harder against scar rubbing soft little circles into it that have him making a high keening sound somewhere between distress and pleasure. Tears fall freely from his eyes and soak the blindfold as he shakes his head vigorously but he cannot bring himself to use the safeword. She must sense that he’s conflicted about this because she redoubles her efforts rubbing it gently and stoking the flame of pleasure that she spent hours coaxing to life and to reaching new heights safely. Clayton can feel himself dripping, that’s not new he’s been absolutely soaked and alternating between rock hard and soft but hypersensitive in this slow burn arousal he’s been feeling for what feels like an eternity now. “Let go,” she commands. Clayton can only desperately shake his head filled with the new fear that if he does come that the fire will burn him again and stop his heart and he’ll die right here right now, he doesn’t like the way he’s living but he doesn’t want to die he’s terrified suddenly petrified of what the end of this night of pleasure will mean. “You’re safe, I’ve got you,” let go she impresses upon him yet again. Clayton is openly sobbing now. He knows he could use the safeword and bring this to an end but he’s trapped between death by fire and death by ice because he knows that stopping her before she’s done will kill him just as surely as allowing her to finish. “Let go,” Her words are infused with an unshakable authority as though she’s an angel giving a pronouncement from on high. Faced with that command, Clayton begins to relax, plenty of people say they want to die during sex. If this is how his life is going to end it’s not such a bad way to spend his final few moments he thinks, wryly. She leads him right up to the edge. No longer fighting his resisting body he allows himself to get closer and closer to oblivion pre-come pouring from his cock and his entire body shuddering, loud noises of pleasure leaving his mouth, but he’s unable to take that final step, to allow himself to plummet into a free fall of pleasure, until she presses a lingering kiss to the scar adorning his chest and says “Good boy.” Clayton’s world explodes. He hadn’t ever realized what the slow journey up the hill of pleasure could feel like, always concerned with raising up the mountain. It’s as though he’s burning but not with heat, as though he swallowed liquid sunlight all his nerve endings dance in pleasure, as electricity travels up and down his spine, his muscles clench for all their worth one final time and for the moment right before release he suspended in beautiful agony before his muscles relax and a euphoric moan leaves him as his cock spurts wave after wave of cum in the air, painting his stomach, torso, lashes and brows in his own seed. Tears, sweat and cum stain him and blend together as he collapses back onto his pillow and falls asleep, a beatific smile, his first since he died, adorning his angelic face He’s finally alive again.

[sithsecrets]

Empress ⁂ Part 4

Engaged by her father to Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, a princess navigates the dynamics of her new marriage while discovering her own power as a member of the Order.

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2.3k words

Mentions: murder, blood, swearing

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4.

Getting dressed before conducting diplomatic work has always been a sort of ritual for you, and readying yourself to receive the Valderan ambassadors this morning is no different.

A woman, Alda, comes to dress your hair as you requested, weaving and twisting your it into an ornate style from your home planet. She helps you dress as well, steadying you as you step into your gown and working intently behind you to fasten the stays after you’ve slipped it on. It’s one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever worn, a gown made of thick, rich velvet as black as space itself, dotted with subtle beading and cut to fit you perfectly. The overall design is modest, but the dress’s long train and form-fitting silhouette make you look like a woman who cannot be ignored. You have no intention to bend these men to your will with a trick as cheap as seduction, but given their chauvinism, you think that feminine attire is your best move. Besides, you are the Empress of the First Order— you need to look the part.

“That necklace is quite beautiful, Empress.” Alda stands behind you, adjusting your hair, putting in a few extra pins to hold everything in place now that you’re dressed. She’s referencing the string of gems fixed around your neck, no doubt attracted as you are to how they glint so prettily in the light.

“Thank you,” you say to idly, fingering the stones as you think back to when the jewelry was given to you just the night before. “My husband gave them to me.”

Kylo had seemed nervous as he watched you opened your present, and even as you preened and insisted that you had to try on the necklace and earrings right away, he asked no less than twice if you liked them. You could have kissed him then, should have, but you didn’t want to startle him. You need him in the right headspace for today, can’t have him being timid and unsure of himself with you.

You send Alda away when she announces that your hair is finished, desiring solitude as you apply your makeup. It’s always been a sacred thing for you, painting your face, and this won’t be the first time you’ve cleared your mind before a meeting in front of your vanity.

As you line your eyes and rouge your cheeks, you start preparing yourself for the task of handling these ambassadors, these children in men’s clothing. You settle your expression into cold indifference, harden your gaze in the mirror as you finish up your face. Satisfied with your appearance, you straighten your back and set your shoulders, staring yourself down for a moment.

A smirk graces your mouth as you stand to leave.

----

It is cold in the ships landing area, but you do not allow yourself to shiver as you watch the ambassadors and their party disembark from their ship. You are flanked by stormtroopers, surrounded by guards of the highest order, all at Kylo’s request. At first, you’d thought him ridiculous, insisting that you needed protection to receive two rather non-threatening men, but now you’re grateful. As they approach, one of the two ambassadors, the skinny one with the dark hair, seems to be nervous at the sight of all of the firepower strapped to your crew.

“Gentlemen,” you say coolly, smiling just the slightest bit at the two men before you. They make no move to bow, display no sign of respect, and you file that away in your head for later use.

“Empress,” chorus the two men, returning your greeting. They, too, have a group of people with them, albeit a small one. Two men stand behind the ambassadors, both wearing rather coarse, simple clothing. Loaded down with a couple of bags each, they stand silently, eyes downcast even as you look their way. You spot a bruise on one man’s chin, and a few scars on the face of the other. It dawns on you then that these people look a little thin as well, like they aren’t taken care of properly. You knew the ambassadors would bring slaves onboard with them, but they don’t need to know that.

“Who are these men?” you say sharply, cutting your eyes to the thinner of the two ambassadors, a man named Havner, the one who already seems nervous at the sight of the stormtroopers and the guards.

“One is my attendant, and the other is Ambassador Ruther’s attendant, Empress.” Havner answers your question as if it should be obvious, though he is still making an attempt at respect. You turn your hard gaze on Ruther, and already, you hate his smirk, hate the way he looks at you. He is the ambassador who married a virtual child, and you cannot wait for Kylo to wipe that look off his face.

“The Order inquired after the number of people who would be joining you on the ship, and you spoke nothing of having attendants. There are no rooms prepared for them.” You have all the air of a mother firmly reprimanding two children, and the scowl on Ruther’s face deepen. Havner, easy target that he is, looks as if he’s about to shit himself.

“They’re slaves, Empress,” he says quickly, “they don’t need their own rooms.”

“Nor do they deserve them,” Ruther adds, and stars, do you want to inflict pain on this man.

Voice dripping venom as you glare at Havner and Ruther, you ask, “How dare you tell me what two guests of the First Order do or do not deserve?” You turn your attention to the two slaves standing behind the ambassadors, softening your expression, now completely pleasant. “The Order welcomes you, and I sincerely apologize for not having your quarters ready upon your arrival. What are your names?”

The two men looked absolutely stunned, almost as if they’re waiting for someone to tell them that this is all a joke. After a moment, though, they both offer you their names, Peter and Zarrak, and then proceed to thank you for welcoming them. The look in their eyes makes you wonder if they’ve ever been addressed kindly by someone of your station before in their lives, and you decide then that the ambassadors shall not know peace from this moment on.

Turning on your heel without a word, you begin walking briskly back into the main halls of the ship. As they were instructed to earlier, two stormtroopers take the ambassadors’ things from Peter and Zarrak’s hands, asking them kindly to split off from the group so that they can be shown to the part of the ship reserved for guests. There, they’ll wait for their rooms to “be made ready” (you knew they were coming, of course you already have quarters prepared for them), and you hope that they enjoy the food and drinks that they’ll be served as you terrorize the two assholes you currently have in tow.

----

Kylo is already in the throne room when your party arrives.

You enter first, of course, with your head held high and your shoulders set. Kylo’s eyes linger on you for a moment as you walk in, and though he doesn’t let his expression reflect it, there’s a softness in his eyes. But then he cuts his gaze towards the ambassadors, steeling himself, and in that moment, even you are slightly intimidated by him.

“Darling,” you say, voice sweet and almost sultry as you approach the steps that lead up to your respective thrones. There’s a platform underneath them, of course, to raise the both of you to a higher elevation than anyone else in the room. Kylo stands as you walk up, meets you halfway down the stairs, takes your hand and helps you sit down before returning to his own throne.

As you settle yourself, you see that the two ambassadors have not moved to show any sort of deference to your husband, just as you suspected they would.

“You do not kneel your Supreme Leader?” you snap, laying on your sharp tone extra thick now. Havner jumps at the sound of your voice, dropping down onto one knee quickly, and Ruther follows him slowly, reluctantly.

What did you do to them? Kylo’s voice is clear in your mind, and the sensation of him penetrating your thoughts still feels like a caress on your face as it did the other night.

Embarrassed the skinny one, knocked the bigger one down a couple of pegs, you reply, referencing Havner and Ruther in turn.

Kylo signals for both men to stand, and you can see the two of them looking for a place to sit down while the lot of you speak. By design, there is no seating for them anywhere.

“Slavery will be ending on Valdera,” Kylo states, skipping formalities and pleasantries as he so often does when he’s acting as the Supreme Leader.

Ruther scoffs openly, and you cannot believe the audacity of this man, cannot believe how stupid he is. Does he not know who he’s addressing? “Says who?”

“Myself and the Emperss,” Kylo retorts, and while his voice doesn’t change much, something in his tone implies that he does not like the way Ruther’s speaking to him. “I’ve already spoken to your president, and he says that the planet of Valdera would be happy to comply with this request in exchange for the Order’s protection.”

That shuts Ruther’s trap for a moment. Obviously, he was unaware that yourself, Kylo, and Valdera’s president have been in talks with each other for days.

“Parliament will never allow it,” chimes Havner, being rather bold. But then you turn your eyes on him, gaze cold.

“Parliament will cooperate if they know what’s good for them,” you say evenly, and Havner visibly swallows, averts his eyes from you.

“Or, if they’re adamant, Valdera will not receive the Order’s protection.” Kylo’s voice reverberates around the room, and though he does not say so, it’s apparent that there’s a second part to this statement: planets that do not cooperate with the Order make themselves enemies of the Order.

Havner seems to know this, for you can see sweat beading on his brow as his eyes widen. But Ruther is bold, arrogant.

Stupid.

“It’s rich of you to suggest that Valderans should give up their slaves when so many stand before you now.” And he really does think that he’s gotten the both of you, gesturing to the guards stationed around the room, glancing at the stormtroopers that hover near the door.

You can sense Kylo growing angry, can see his grip on the armrest of his throne tightening, but you move quickly to soothe him. Calm down, you tell him gently, speaking to him with your thoughts. Get them with your words, don’t become violent. Not yet.

Kylo breathes, loosens his grip slightly, and then, “When I assumed the throne, I did away with Supreme Leader Snoke’s methods of staffing the Order. Children are no longer taken to be trained as stormtroopers, and all personnel present on this ship and any other possessed by the Order are paid fair, livable wages. No one you see before you is a slave, and they are free to leave their post at any time.”

Ruther realizes his mistake before Kylo is even done talking, and you cannot help but marvel at his outright idiocy. He comes to do business with the First Order, and yet he does no research first? Unbelievable.

“If you’ve spoken to President Ulrich already, why are we even here?” Ruther snaps. Havner grabs the man’s arm, begins to tell him to be quiet, but Ruther shakes his colleague off violently. Never have you seen such pride, such self-importance. His willingness to act this way in front of you and the Supreme Leader borders on insanity.

Be calm, you think, as much for yourself as for Kylo to hear.

“You were brought here to send a message to your friends in Parliament,” you tell this obnoxious little man. “Tell them that slavery will be ending on Valdera, and that women will also be given the right to vote, effective immediately.” And you can’t help yourself, smirking as you watch rage flood into Ruther’s body upon hearing the latter half of your statement.

“You may be Kylo Ren’s whore, but that gives you no right to dictate-“

It’s incredible, how fast Kylo moves. You barely have time to register him getting up, do not even see him as he practically flies down the stairs. There’s the quick patter of his footsteps across the floor, the sound of him engaging his lightsaber, and then Ruther is bleeding, a gaping wound in his abdomen weeping blood onto the floor. The man gurgles, eyes wide as his life trickles away, almost as if he hasn’t had time to process what happened either.

Kylo stands over this dying man, breathing heavily. His stare is blank, cold. As you watch him look down at Ruther’s body, you can sense that he feels nothing for this man, no remorse or regret over stabbing him— all because he dared to call you a name.

You wonder idly if it’s wrong that the smell of blood turns you on.

“Do you think my wife is a whore?” Kylo asks, so serious and calm as he turns to look at Ambassador Havner. Havner drops to his knees before Kylo, eyes transfixed on the lightsaber that still crackles at your husband’s side.

“No,” the man says, and he’s trying not to look at the corpse beside him, trying not to be sick, you think.

“Get out of my sight.”

Havner is all too happy to be dismissed, running from the room in a frenzy. Kylo watches him for a moment and then turns back to you, clicking his lightsaber off. The two of you stare at each other for the longest time, you on your throne and Kylo standing next to the man he just murdered.

You should be shocked, horrified. You should be running from the room just as the ambassador did, so afraid of you Kylo Ren just as everyone else is. But you know that you don’t have to be. Kylo nearly cut this man in half for hurling an insult at you, killed him for his insolence. You don’t have to fear your husband; you know he would never harm you. He cares for you, you can see it in his eyes, in the way he’s looking for your approval now.

And besides— you aren’t stupid.

“You have blood on your face,” you announce, rising from your throne. Descending the stairs, you cross the room slowly, coming to stand before Kylo. He looks at you with uncertainty, but then you swipe your finger across his cheek, drawing a drop of blood onto the pad of your thumb. Your hand hovers in front of Kylo’s mouth, and he sucks the spot of crimson right off your skin, has you shuddering at the feeling of his tongue on your flesh.

“Collect the corpse,” you call to no one, addressing the guards in the room at large. You brush past Kylo, careful not to bloody the hem of your dress as you leave the room.

Your husband follows you with haste.

----

tag list: @oopsiedoopsie23 @dark-night-sky-99 @obsessionprofessional

[luna-redamancy]

A Writers Guide to Elvish Courting

Elves are noble, proud, highly intelligent, as well as caring. However, they are very distant creatures. They love strong, yet their love is hard to earn. So if you catch yourself gaining the affection of an elf, know it is very difficult for them to open up, for their race doesn’t show emotion so easily beside the polite ‘happy’ conversations at meetings or parties.

To initiate the courtship, the male elf must invite the other to a night of craft. This is the night where the male tries its best to impress the other, showing off what they do best. Painting? They will fill the hall with their work and possibly ask to paint a portrait of you to show off their skill. Baking? They will have tables of their best creations lined up alongside your favorites.

This shows the love that you’re capable of, to show the courtee how you can love them just like how you love your art form. The courted will let the male know their affection right away, for all elves know this as a symbol of beginning courtship. If the relationship is between two males or two females, then the courtship is simply done by the elder of the two. Even if the age difference is two days, it counts. Cross-raced relationships are considered rare in the elven community, so the first thing in that courtship is to explain each side of the courtship rituals to understand what the other may be doing as a sign of affection and want.

At this point, the courtship hasn’t officially started, but it has been initiated. To officially begin the courtship, the two must go to the courtee’s parents. The older of the two, or the male, shall go to the other’s parents and request permission for the two to court. While elvish couples are said to be one per lifetime, like soulmates, it isn’t uncommon for parents to disapprove and to request the courtship to be ended. This won’t be out of politics or hatred, the parents act out of protectiveness of the child. Elves are very protective beings. If the parents agree, the couple will be sent to a house separate from all influence. This can be in the woodland, a cabin in the mountains, or even as far away as the Shire. This is the trust establishment phase.

Elves can be extremely distant, no one truly knows each other unless they’ve been friends since birth. Because of this, this is a time for both participants to get to know each other with no influences of parents or political standing. The couple can spend however long they need to get to know each other, however, the typical stay is around two months. This is a perfect amount of time for the couple to get used to living with each other and to get used to being open with each other for a long time.

This is where courtship truly comes into play. During the time the couple is alone, they will present each other with a plant. Nature is especially important to elves, it shows how you can care for your partner. By the end of the two months, both of the plants should be alive and healthy. This symbolizes the care and importance that the elf will have for you. If the plant is dead or sick by the end of the typical two month period, it shows negatively to the other that you won’t take the courtship and their love seriously.

When the couple has been together long enough, the courtee will decide if they would like to marry. Elves believe marriage is eternal, as they are (traditionally) immortal, your love should last as long as their life. So, if the courtee decides that the pairing isn’t fit for a lifetime, the courtship is cut off and the two shall go their separate ways. This is decided by the younger of the two or the female in the relationship. If the courtee agrees to marriage, the male or the oldest will craft a braid clasps out of pure moonstone. Similar to the dwarves and their courting beads, this will too hold a wedding braid in place.

This stone represents wholeness to the elves, being a healing gem and a symbol of the stars they so love. Each clasp or braid decoration will be different. The crafter will make it out of pure love and care, spending sometimes years on creating the perfect clasp. It is also crafted to be strong, because of their long lifespans, the clasp cannot break or else it will be strongly frowned upon. This is like a wedding ring for the elves so it is held with high importance.

Once it is crafted, the clasp is immediately presented. The couple now moves into the marriage phase. The two will spend one day together to confirm that they still want to be married and that love is still strong between the two. After that day, the couple separates while the parents begin the wedding planning. The wedding is prepared within two weeks, and tradition doesn’t allow the two to see each other until they meet for the ceremony.

No matter what political position or ‘class’ standing you are, all marriages happen in the throne room with the King holding the ceremony. Only the couple and the king are present unless requested otherwise, for this is a very sacred moment that is only shared between the two and the king. The King makes the couple swear an oath to always be loyal to each other and to forever cherish their bond as a married couple.

There is no need for a long lengthy vow because of how long they’ve been courting, most of it would’ve been already established in their relationship. Unlike human marriages, elven marriages are strictly out of love and care. It is extremely frowned upon to force marriage onto a couple. (In an example, this is why Arwen wasn’t forced to marry even though she was over the age of marriage, while in human tradition she would’ve been married off to another royal’s son or daughter)

Sexually, elves remain abstinent until marriage, to save themselves for their one and only. While they can have multiple courtships and relationships, they do believe you only marry your true beloved once in your life. However, while extremely rare, divorce is allowed with elves, for if you feel so unhappy in your relationship, the king will announce your marriage to be ended immediately. The king is the only one who can marry and divorce couples. If the king himself is getting married, he can grant the power of marriage and divorce to his advisor, so the couple can have a traditional ceremony.

Elves do believe there is only one person for them, a soulmate, so if they try to court you, you are a very lucky person indeed.

Forever Tag:

@lady-of-lies @all-things-fandomstuck @xxno-wayxx @fizzyxcustard @izzydaelleth @aquaangel18

Note: I will be updating all guides if there is anything I didn’t talk about that people would like to know!

[sartorialadventure]

1. Akha hilltribe girl, Chiang Mai flower festival, Thailand by Steve Vidler 2. Pamee Akha woman with traditional headdress with silver coins, Thailand by Jim Goodman 3. Akha woman of Laos 4. Tachilek Akha 5. Akha girl in Laos 6. Akha woman and child, Thailand 7.  That Xieng Tung Festival, Muang Sing, Laos. Akha young girls in the welcoming committee. On their arrival, visitors will have a color ribbon pinned to their blouse in exchange for a donation.

The Akha are an indigenous hill tribe who live in small villages at higher elevations in the mountains of Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Yunnan Province in China. They made their way from China into Southeast Asia during the early 20th century. Civil war in Burma and Laos resulted in an increased flow of Akha immigrants and there are now some 80,000 living in Thailand's northern provinces of Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, where they constitute one of the largest of the hill tribes. Many of their villages can be visited by tourists on trekking tours from either of these cities.

Due to rapid social and economic changes in the regions the Akha inhabit, particularly the introduction of Western modes of capitalism, attempts to continue many of the traditional aspects of Akha life are increasingly difficult. Despite these challenges, Akha people practice many elements of their traditional culture with much success.

The Akha people are often noted for their very recognizable sartorial practices. Akha women spin cotton into thread with a hand spindle and weave it on a foot-treadle loom. The cloth is hand dyed with indigo. Women wear broad leggings, a short black skirt with a white beaded sporran, a loose fitting black jacket with heavily embroidered cuffs and lapels. Akha women are known for their embroidery skills. While traditional clothes are typically worn for special ceremonies, one is more likely to see Akha villagers in full traditional garb in areas that have heavy volumes of tourists, particularly in Thailand.

The headdresses worn by the women are perhaps the most spectacular and elaborate items of Akha dress. Akha women define their age or marital status with the style of headdress worn. At roughly age 12, the Akha female exchanges her child's cap for that of a girl. A few years later she will begin to don the jejaw, the beaded sash that hangs down the front of her skirt and keeps it from flying up in the breeze. During mid-adolescence she will start wearing the adult woman's headdress. Headdresses are decorated by their owner and each is unique. Silver coins, monkey fur, and dyed chicken feathers are just a few of the things that might decorate the headdress. The headdresses differ by subgroup.

According to an article about the variations in Akha headdress, "High Fashion, Hill Style", the

"Ulo Akha headdress consists of a bamboo cone, covered in beads, silver studs and seeds, edged in coins (silver rupees for the rich, baht for the poor) topped by several dangling chicken feather tassels and maybe a woolen pom-pom. The Pamee Akha wear a trapezoidal colt cap covered in silver studs with coins on the beaded side flaps and long chains of linked silver rings hanging down each side. The Lomi Akha wear a round cap covered in silver studs and framed by silver balls, coins and pendants and the married women attach a trapezoidal inscribed plate at the back."

^Myanmar (Her teeth have been intentionally dyed black, a relatively common practice in parts of east and southeast Asia. The lacquer used prevents tooth decay.)

^Laos

^Laos

^Thailand

^Thailand

^ Ban Mae Chan Tai, Chiang Rai Province, Thailand

Akha society lacks a strict system of social class and is considered egalitarian. Respect is typically accorded with age and experience. Ties of patrilineal kinship and marriage alliance bind the Akha within and between communities. Village structures may vary widely from the strictly traditional to Westernized, depending on their proximity to modern towns. Like many of the hill tribes, the Akha build their villages at higher elevations in the mountains.

Akha dwellings are traditionally constructed of logs, bamboo, and thatch and are of two types: "low houses", built on the ground, and "high houses", built on stilts. The semi-nomadic Akha, at least those who have not been moved to permanent village sites, typically do not build their houses as permanent residences and will often move their villages. Some say that this gives the dwellings a deceptively fragile and flimsy appearance, although they are quite well-built as proved over generations.

Entrances to all Akha villages are fitted with a wooden gate adorned with elaborate carvings on both sides depicting imagery of men and women. It is known as a "spirit gate". It marks the division between the inside of the village, the domain of man and domesticated animals, and the outside, the realm of spirits and wildlife. The gates function to ward off evil spirits and to entice favorable ones. Carvings can be seen on the roofs of the villager's houses as a second measure to control the flow of spirits.

The traditional form of subsistence for the Akha people has been, and remains, agriculture. The Akha grow a variety of crops including soybeans and vegetables. Rice is the most significant crop and is prominent in much of Akha culture and ritual. Most Akha plant dry-land rice, which depends solely on rainfall for moisture, but in some villages irrigation has been built to water paddy fields. Historically, some Akha villages cultivated opium, but production diminished after the Thai government banned its cultivation.

The Akha have traditionally employed slash and burn agriculture, in which new fields are cleared by burning or cutting down forests and woodlands. In such a system, there is usually no market for land. Rights to land are considered traditional and established over many generations. This type of agriculture has contributed to the Akha's semi-nomadic status as villages move to clear new farmland with each successive burn cycle. The Thai government has forbidden this practice, citing its detrimental effects on the environment. The Akha have adapted to new types of subsistence farming, but the quality of their land has suffered as they are no longer allowed to expand onto new plots. In many cases, chemical fertilizers are the only option for re-fertilizing the land.

Akha religion — zahv — is often described as a mixture of animism and ancestor worship that emphasizes the Akha connection with the land and their place in the natural world and cycles. Although Akha beliefs and rituals involve all of these elements, the Akha often reject the casual categorization of their practices as such saying it simplifies and reduces its meaning. The Akha way emphasizes rituals in everyday life and stresses strong family ties. Akha ethnicity is closely tied to the Akha religion. It might be said that to be considered an Akha ethnically by other Akhas is to practice the Akha religion.

The Akha put a heavy emphasis on genealogy. An important tradition involves the recounting by Akha males of their patrilineal genealogy. During the most important ceremonies the list is recited in its entirety back over 50 generations to the first Akha, Sm Mi O. It is said that all Akha males should be able to do so. The recounting of this lineage plays a role in the incest taboo: If a male and female Akha find a common male ancestor within their last six generations, they are not allowed to marry.

Rights, issues, and activism

Being an ethnic minority with little easily accessible legal recourse, Akha everywhere have long been subject to rights abuses.

Perhaps the most important issue facing the Akha pertains to their land. The Akha relationship to land is vitally connected to the continuation of the Akha culture, but they rarely have "official" or state-sanctioned land rights or claims to their land as land rights are considered traditional. These conceptions of land are at odds with those held by the nation states whose land the Akha now occupy. Most Akha are not full-fledged citizens of the country they inhabit and are thus not allowed to legally purchase land, although most Akha villagers are too poor to even consider purchasing land.

It has been reported by rights groups that several land seizures of Akha land have been undertaken in the name of the Queen of Thailand. Originally a semi-nomadic people, the Akha are often relocated by the presiding national government to permanent villages, after which the government allegedly sells to logging companies and other private corporations access to lands formerly occupied by the Akha. The land onto which the Akha are displaced is almost always less fertile than their previous plots. On their new lands, the Akha can rarely produce enough food to sustain themselves and are often forced to leave and seek employment outside the villages, thus disrupting their traditional culture and economy.

In Thailand, laws have been passed that curb people's rights to the forest, including the 2007 Community Forest Act. According to the network of indigenous peoples in Thailand,

"These laws and resolutions have had severe impacts on indigenous peoples' rights to residence and land. Under these laws and resolutions millions of hectares of land have been declared as reserved and conservation forests, or protected areas. Today, 28.78% of Thailand is categorized as protected areas. As a result, thousands of farmers previously living in the forest or relying on the forest for their livelihood have been arrested and imprisoned and their lands seized. Cases have been filed against them for the so-called encroachment on government land."

Despite having signed and ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Thai government has not changed laws to adhere to those recommendations emphasizing respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and their full and effective participation in protected areas management and policy-making.

The reasons given for Akha relocations vary, but a common response on the part of the Thai government is to cite a concern for the preservation of forests and the promotion of more sustainable agricultural techniques than the slash and burn agriculture traditionally used by the Akha.

Despite their numbers, the Akha are the poorest of all the hill tribes. As roads bring accessibility and tourists, they provide relief from the poverty of village life, especially for the younger generations who increasingly find themselves engaged in labor outside the villages. Many villages report a population decrease as many leave to find work in the cities, often for very long periods. Many Akha complain that the younger generations are becoming increasingly less interested in traditional culture and ways and more and more susceptible to outside, mainstream, cultural influences. According to one author, where the village squares were once "filled with the sounds of courtship songs", radios are now more likely to play pop hits.

As it becomes increasingly difficult to remain self-sufficient through agriculture, and as roads open up the villages to the cities, the Akha must contend with the sometimes corrosive effects of the tourist industry. Not all Akha are happy to let tourists come in and observe village life.

Many Akha complain of the missionaries that come to the villages to convert them, sometimes forcibly, to Christianity. Many Akha feel that the missionaries generalize about, or in this particular case, "paganize" the Akha traditional belief system, demeaning their longstanding beliefs. Some of the claims made against missionaries include the kidnapping of Akha children into orphanages and forced labor, the sterilization of Akha women and the forced or underpaid labor of Akha on farms. Many rights groups make the claim that the money spent by missionaries on building churches and furthering Christian education could be better spent on helping the Akha with medical and sanitation improvements that are greatly needed in most villages.

[please-do-your-research]

Deus Timens Et Liberi Ignem Faciunt (God feared, as the children lit a fire)

So again, instead of doing Honors work, I’ve been writing about my Necromancer!Nyx AU. Finally got a title too, which is sorta taken from lyrics from the Sommus song on the soundtrack. The OC I’ve used is one of the names I always use in online games, including FFXIV. Her name is a mix of Quel (which means High in Thalassian, the language of the Blood Elves in WoW) + Laine, which means wave in Finish (apparently), hence High Wave.

this starting part isn’t finished, I still have a section on how demons work (or more importantly, not work) in Galahd, and i will post that sometime later. I actually have to do this work, not procrastinate. Anyhoo, here’s the start of this ‘Verse.

Deus Timens Et Liberi Ignem Faciunt (God feared, as the children lit a fire)

There’s a reason Galahd never had issues with demons.

(salt and sea, hear my plea, guide us to our storm swept land, and let us hear what Etro sang)

One of Nyx’s earliest memory was of a pale grey shade singing a lullaby to his newborn sister, the twisting lilt of the language he would not learn for several years sliding in one ear and out the other.

“She looks so much like your father when I watched him come into this world,’ Grandmother said, wisps of hair that escaped her braids shifting slowly in a breeze only she could feel. ‘but then again, all babies look the same at this age. Even you, my little coeurl king.”

Nyx stared up at her from where he lay on the bed next to his mother and sister, with all the strange solemnity that only a 3-year-old could hold, the end of his first braid caught in his teeth, bead tapping his lips.

Grandmother reached out to tug the braid from his lips, smoothing the ends down.

“Our family’s gift is rare, little one, and you are even more strong and precious for it. You have to look after your sister with all you are.” She tapped him twice on the nose with the bead and Nyx scrunched it at the chill, eyes crossing as he focused on her fingers, “We guard these lands, with the blessings of storm, stone and sea. Etro guides us, as we guide Galahd. You have to guide and guard your sister too little Nyx.”

Nyx nodded, not quite understanding what she meant, but knowing that his little sister was important. The braid and bead migrated back to his mouth. His mother shifting in her sleep, the birth having been long and arduous. She pulled his sister closer to her chest and Nyx awkwardly patted the blanket back down around his mother’s limbs.

Grandmother smiled at him, her pale eyes crinkling at the corners. Beyond the room, he could hear tinkling laughter and quiet murmurs of his family waking up, getting ready to face the day. The pulse of his mothers and sisters’ souls shone bright in his mind, his grandmother’s presence a faded but steady beat. Outside, Nyx could feel the flickering lights of the village pulsate in the ever-growing strength of his power.

“I will be here if you need me, for as long as there are stars in the sky, your family will protect and guide you. Soon you will learn to call on us, and we will answer you, as we did your mother, her father, and his mother all the way back to time immemorial, and just as we will answer your sister when she grows up, and you will answer when your time comes.” She passed her hand over his mother’s brow, then his sisters, murmuring in that same lilting language as before. White light trailed after her hand, pulsing with the words before shattering like star dust. Nyx could feel the magic of the blessing hanging in the air, even if he did not know what it was, and moved closer to his mother to bathe in the lingering warmth. His eyes slipped shut and he reached out to touch one of his sisters’ tiny feet, body shifting slowly towards sleep.

Grandmother smiled down at him again, briefly touching the obsidian bead at the end of his small braid, with its inlays of bloodstone and opal. So strong for one so young.

“Oh you will be the best of us, my little dark godling, and you will command the stars.”

 -----

(storm and stone, help guard this land, shield us carefully with Etro’s hand)

“We are lucky you know.”

The one known in the village as the Artisan said, as he continued to spin the pottery wheel and manipulate the pale red clay that shimmered the more he worked it. Around his feet sat a gaggle of children, their parents gifted beads clattering slightly as they moved. Blessings held in hands pressed carefully to hair, love and shelter kissed into foreheads.

“Storm-father blessed us when we came to these lands and allowed us to live here peacefully, to live as one with the earth and sky and all between.” The wheel spun on as his hands moved up the pile of clay, small lumps beginning to form on the surface before sinking back into the mass. A potter from the mainland would have scrapped it as soon as the slag began to show, crying over impure quality clay and failed preparation methods. The Artisan knew better. Soon these children would hold their own blessings moulded from clay, to press stones crafted from their souls into growing hair. One day they would take their first step upon the Walk and receive the blessings of the Fulgurian, but for now, they would learn to give form to their own.

The artisan leaned forward and blew carefully on the clay.

“For this, we give thanks to the Old Man.” The children let out quite sounds of awe as the clay began to shift its colour once again, the shimmer locked in the red clay blooming out and turning the spinning mass silver. Blood and Bone, Sea, Storm and Stone, soon the beads would properly form. From the front of the small crowd, the Artisan could see Nyx and his hearth brother Libertus leaned forward to look at the wheel closer. The usually exuberant children were quiet, Libertus with an almost frustrated crease in his forehead, trying to see exactly what the Artisan was doing. Nyx was a different case, his habitual braid caught in his lips, the Lady’s obsidian, bloodstone and opal bead flashing in the workshops light. The Artisan could see the beginning of understanding in those teenage eyes, eyes that flickered around the Artisans hands as they moulded the clay, watching the play of power as it shifted in the air and was absorbed into the forming beads. He would have made a great crafter, the Artisan thinks, with that power. His beads would have been things of beauty, but alas, he answered to a different calling.

“We are lucky because despite our distance, Stone-father cares for us and gifts us that with what we need to protect ourselves.”

At these words, the Artisan pressed the clay into the shape of a low bowl and reached into the forge beside him with a bare hand, pulling out a well-worn crucible that glowed a bright white yet gave off no heat. Inside, magma bubbled, the black crust bursting and melting back into the red in an ever-rotating cycle. Carefully, with an air of mysticism and the flare of a master at work, the Artisan tipped the crucible above the mass, continuing to push the foot peddle that spun the potter’s wheel as the magma began to pour over the edge.

“For this, we take what we are gifted by the Stone Speaker, and turn it into something useful.”

The magma hit the well, pouring and soaking into the spinning clay. Not a single drop splashed or splattered the hand still moulding the mass which began to shift its colour again. The children let out shocked sounds as silver turned suddenly turned to black, before pulling inwards and leaching the dark colour out of the clay. Inside the suddenly clearing clay, small ovals of darkness shifted around, pulling more and more of the power that the ritual has created into the small beads. The Artisan placed the crucible back in the forge and slowed the spinning of the wheel as he pulled back his other hand from the now clear sphere. Slowly the wheel span to a stop and inside the sphere, black beads shone in the light.

The Artisan carefully plucked the sphere from the wheel and stood up, bones and beads creaking with age. The children backed away from the man as he walked around to the centre of the room. He turned sharply to the closest child, a young girl near 8 years old, limbs slowly shedding baby fat, and handed the sphere to her. She stared up at him, before reaching for it at his nod with trembling hands and wide eyes, barely understanding what was being handed to her.

“Call it, little one. Call it from blood and bone, sea, storm and stone. Call your bead.”

The girl stared at the sphere, eyes flickering between the Artisan, the sphere and the children around her. The Artisan stared calmly back. He could not offer any words of wisdom here; this was her move and her will and her soul that must be ready. Some years, every child called their first bead. But sometimes, there were children who struggled to know themselves, trapped in the circumstances of their birth and early life, holding their hearts back, or shifted like the wind of their patron, not knowing what they could or would do. His mother spoken often of a young man who did not receive his first soul bead until he was in his 20s, well after his first Walk, for his heart was not settled and demanded his feet roamed Eos first. Only the girl could call her beads, no one else. Only the girl would know if she was ready. There was no censure in being unsure, no punishment for not being ready; better to known oneself properly than to believe in lies of the heart.

The girl continued to flick her eyes around, panic forming at the edges and her hands trembled even more. Shudders began to form in her limbs as she clutched the sphere, her fear of failure pushing through the aura of calm that covered the workshop.

A thin hand touched her shoulder and she jumped, holding the sphere tightly to her chest as she turned to the child beside her.

Nyx grinned at her, all of 10 with coltish limbs and an unending open heart.

“you can do it Quel,” he said, gripping her shoulder.

The girl, Quelaine, blinked at him. For a second she could see a Lady in black standing just behind Nyx, a small smile on pale lips just below the opaque veil that covered her face the only thing that could be seen. Quelaine couldn’t see her eyes but she could tell the Lady was looking at her, the smile widening just a bit. She blinked again and the being was gone. Before her was only Nyx, tilting his head like a curious coeurl.

“come on, you know you can call it.”

Her eyes flickered one last time between Nyx, the empty space behind him, the sphere and the Artisan, who stared calmly back, waiting for her patiently. Slowly, resolve formed on the young girl’s face, before she pulled the sphere and its locked beads closer to her chest and closed her eyes.

Seconds passed, then minutes and still nothing happened. The children began to shift and mutter, yet both the Artisan and Nyx watched calmly as the girl’s lips moved in silence.

Silence. Then.

A gasp.

Quelaine’s eyes flew open as the sphere shimmered slightly, spilling silver light into the air before going dormant again. Slowly she pulled her right hand away from the sphere and stared, stunned, at the small form that lay in it.

“Aquamarine,” the Artisan spoke quietly as he took the sphere from her lax grip. “Onyx and tiger’s eye, for one who will overcome her fears and gain courage and perseverance in the face of the unknown. You are strong little Quelaine, to receive a bead like that from your soul.”

Quelaine raised her eyes from her hand where the black bead shone with stripes of golden brown and blue and resonated with her and glanced at the Artisan. He smiled at her, a small quirk of the lips, before nodding to her blonde hair.

“You are ready to wear it.”

She looked back down at her bead, shining proof she knew herself. Strong, the Artisan said, strong enough to face her fears. She reached slowly for the plaited hair that was prepared for the bead and raised it to the end before freezing.

In her mind, she could hear the whispering words of her auntie, spinning her a story as she curled up in bed.

‘No tree is a forest all on their own darling, no wave a sea, no breeze a storm. You can be strong and steadfast by yourself, but only when you let those around you help, do you become who you are meant to be.’

Quelaine lowered hand, a questioning noise coming from Nyx beside her. The Artisan’s eyes showed understanding and at the slow nod he gave her, she turned to Nyx and held the bead out to him.

“Will you place it for me?” she asked him, hand unwavering, fear gone in the face of her people beside her.

Behind the shocked boy stood the Lady again, veil shifting in an unfelt breeze. Lips turned up, the being nodded at Quelaine as Nyx raised the bead to her hair and threaded the plait through the hole.

At the close of the braids clasp, a voice echoed through her mind.

“well chosen High Wave. You will be strong.”

[thesunlounge]

Reviews 295: Masahiro Sugaya

Even though the work of Masahiro Sugaya is mostly unknown outside of Japan, it spans decades and is guided by artistic vision as multi-varied, far-reaching, and adventurous as any other practitioner of environmental sound design, taking in stage production, TV scores, modern classical guitar compositions, and longform sonic installations commissioned by the likes of GRM. And through a multi-volume reissue campaign, the first of which is titled Horizon, Empire of Signs seek to shine a light on Sugaya’s archives, with a special focus on his compositions subsidized within the 80s Japan bubble economy and made in connection with avant-garde theatre troupes. Two essays comprise the liner notes for the release, with one from Empire of Signs’ Specer Doran and Maxwell August Croy and another from Sugaya himself, each of which does its part to contextualize his work and trace his artistic development, from earlier influences such as Toru Takemitsu and Yuji Takahashi through to formative assistantships with Joji Yuasa and Teiizo Matsumura. As well, the writings discuss the influence of Art Vivant and it’s presence as a cultural hub, helping to further establish a narrative begun in Kankyō Ongaku of this independent yet interconnected group of artists…people such as Ashikawa, Sugaya, Yoshio Ojima, and Hiroshi Yoshimura…who were all exploring the possibilities of synthesis, computer composition, and sampling to realize visionary productions while also experimenting with the interactions of sound and environment.

Reading the liner notes, I get the sense that there were two key moments in the progression of Sugaya’s artistic vision: meeting generative composer and computer music master Yoshio Ojima via Ashikawa and Art Vivant and joining the ranks of Tokyo’s experimental theater group Pappa Tarahumura. Having finished his studies in composition, Sugaya was working on scores for musicals written by the actor Ako Nakamura, first using whatever instruments were available in tandem with a simple four-track cassette recorder. But his ambitions soon outstripped his monetary resources, and though despairing at his inability to, for example, score for and record an orchestra, a chance meeting and eventual friendship with Ojima provided the answer in the form of computer generation and the developing art of sampling. And after late-night flights on a loaned Fairlight and the eventual acquirement of an Ensoniq Mirage and a Yamaha Yis503 II computer, all barriers were torn down and Sugaya was finally able to realize the music of his dreams. As for Pappa Tarahumura, Sugaya was connected to the troupe’s leader Hiroshi Koike through working with Nakamura, and after seeing an early performance by the group called Monk, Sugaya was convinced he must become the in-house composer for the collective. Having achieved this goal, he then spent years working with the troupe, letting the performances inform the music and vice versa, all the while studying and mastering the technique of using sound as a foundation for physical space.

Masahiro Sugaya - Horizon, Vol. 1 (Empire of Signs, 2019) “Horizon (Intro)” constructs bubble formations from sampled woodwinds and sets them percolating through mechanized repetitions, with touches of birdsong entering as the notes climb high. Following this brief experiment, we flow into the virtual harp arpeggiations and lullaby melodics of “Future Green,” with everything swimming through layers of reversing abstraction. Crystallized tones and metallic pings pan across the stereo field, feedback hazes billow backwards, and pillowy bass pulses add touches of warmth while minimal drums crash through spectrum, all disjointed kicks smashing slowly and clacking tones decaying through gaseous reverb. Zipping tracers move backwards in time before popping into focus like some strange quantum particle while metallic breaths and clouds of ice swirl deep in the background. There are fractalized electronics and dripping future liquid presaging Doran’s work in Visible Cloaks and at some points, the plucked harp tones recede, leaving behind abstracted stretches of swelling sound, with gong strokes and temple bells reversing amidst a pointillist sci-fi landscape. Eventually the heavenly arps return along with the strangely spacious rhythms, which, in close focus, hardly seem like a rhythm at all…so spread apart and cavernous are the drum strokes that you lose sight of any groove. But zooming out, there is a meditative ritualism at pay…a sort of swaying slow motion dance alight with ambient romance, wherein everything loops and cycles accord to Sugaya’s singular dream logic. And throughout the track, cooing electro-whispers and music box melodics are broken down and reconstructed via computer automation, creating a supportive tapestry alight with feedback spirals, outer-dimensional sparkles, and reverberating tones of processed metal and manipulated stone.

In “Afternoon of the Appearing Fish,” pianos smear through the mix, their lush resonances and gaseous decay trails overlapping as a computer generates joyous ivory dances. There’s a touch of ambient dream jazz, with heavenly fantasias and breathtaking progressions that fully showcase Sugaya’s skills of programming and arrangement. It all seems so natural…like a bebop piano jazzman given a moment to find inner peace, with gentle chord riffs supporting smooth and soulful leads. At some point, rapidly bowed cellos flutter in the background, their pulses repeating at rhythmic intervals and thus helping along the narcotic piano chord groove. And the song is very well named, as one can imagine sitting by some deep blue pond amidst an infinite field of flowers, watching colorful fish move lazily in the water as sunlight reflects off of the rippling surface. Later in the track, knocking sounds move strangely through the background and slightly disturb the bucolic sway…at first not rising above a percussive whisper but progressively beating harder while being accompanied by subsonics that blow puffs of shadow through the mix. Dissonant melodies begin flying overhead…the sounds string-like and reed-like at once…but also alien and spilling into feedback shimmer. And the more layers that are added, the more drunken and delirious the groove feels. “Grain of Sand by the Sea” is of a pair with Sugaya’s “Umi No Sunatsubu,” which appeared on Kankyō Ongaku. It features a similar tapestry of pianos drifting almost at random, perhaps meant to evoke the titular grain of sand as it’s tossed by the motions of the sea. But here the vibe is much more frenetic, with the ivory layers evoking the rattle of crystals and the sounds of cavern liquids dripping…as if each bead is hitting some glowing rock that resonates into the emptiness.

Chimes stretch through space in “Straight Line Floating in the Sky,” with Sugaya progressively creating a world of ringing bells that seems submerged within a deep sea hallucination. Looping minimalist atmospheres are buried within watery oscillations and at certain moments, woodwind tones move in counterpoint. Starlight sequencing fades in from nothingness…like kosmische music given over to child-like innocence while simultaneously morphing and modulating through delirium layers. The sequential electronics move between fantasy dances and mechanized ascents towards the celestial sphere, with everything transmuting through delays that are constantly spilling into self-oscillation. Sometimes the mix reduces to just single strands of arpeggiated silver drifting alone while at other times, multitudinous patterns intertwining, bring touches of Terry Riley amidst the vibes of lullaby fantasy and interstellar wonderment. Vapor trails snap into and out of existence, xylophones bend through otherworldly motions, bubbling melodies swim through a dense seascape, and pianos splash through tide pools filled with starlight, with multiple melodic progressions refusing to interact and progressing unbothered in their own singular universes. After these preceding stretches of beautiful, yet often alien sonics, the acoustic guitars and vague Flamenco shades of “Wind Conversations” are arresting, all the more so knowing the sounds are computer programmed. It’s cinematic folk awash in seaside melancholia and accompanied by virtually sourced fretless bass, which slips and slides through hyperactive fusion movements. The vibe is both organic and machine-like, and I can imagine some futuristic dystopia (or paradise?) where this song represents an attempt by robots to score a Café del Mar sunset.

“Until the End of the World” features cyborg arps dancing and effected so strangely, with almost every sound completely unrecognizable…as if sizzling spaceage static and plucked tones of phasing rubber have been repurposed into a cyborg dream tapestry. New age piano explorations float in the depths and more of those sampled and programmed guitars work into the mix, perhaps forming the source of the dancing arps, revealing themselves only when the spectral fx layers recede. A heady pause leads to a delirious rush, with the mix now featuring bass notes holding down a sensual groove while guitars and plucked synths swim together through sunset motions…reminding me of the balearic classics of Penguin Cafe Orchestra as well as the film scores of Michael Cimino, with everything radiating a touch of Mediterranean magic. Dueling melodies ascend with an anthemic flare while being surrounded by twilight hazes and beneath it all, alien synth tropicalisms continue their drunken sequencing. There’s another moment where it all stops and a prayer bowl rings out to signify the beginning or ending of some unknown ritual, and as the arps return, things are further mutated and ever stranger, creating a mesmerizing backdrop through which Sugaya’s hyper-real guitar samples dance in some strange computer approximation of seaside fusion. “Horizon (Outro),” like the corresponding intro, sets the spirit afloat amidst looping woodwind bubbles, crystalline birdsong mutations, and elven computer minimalism, though there is more symphonic power and zany bombast here…as if the birds and flutes from the first track are now intoxicated, ecstatic, and barely holding to their patterns.

(images from my personal copy)

[miccatepoztli]

Annoyingly Long and Obnoxious Meta On Ximena’s Magic Aura. 

No editing, we die like men.

To begin, we are going to assume some things.

First: let’s assume that a person’s aura is real and connected to both their personality and heritage. When I say heritage, I don’t just necessarily mean where a person comes from. I mean their parents. Their ancestors. The things that they did and accomplished. Because in my little fantasy headspace, physical blood is important.

Second: let’s assume that this aura can be sensed the same way we sense food, cloth, music, etc. Some people can see auras, some can smell them (like Ximena can), and some can taste them or hear them or physically touch them. Maybe you can even do more than one, but I expect that would be a lot of overstimulation.

Third: let’s assume that if auras are real, and they can be sensed, that they may also be hidden or amplified. A private person or someone who does not want to be noticed (like Ximena) may, in theory, cloak/conceal/hide away their aura from others. If in a situation that requires a certain level of passion (say, intimidating someone during a battle, comforting a loved one, or grieving), one can indeed do the opposite of hide and show others that aura. You can show your enemy the dangerous avalanche of your emotions. You can let your loved one feel protection and warmth. You can have your aura play the sad sounds of your mourning. 

All of these displays of auras is completely abstract, of course, I imagine it’s similar to synesthesia.

Now, let’s get a little more exciting and add magic into the mix.

For this idea, let’s use my general interpretation of what magic is and how it works (because if there’s a solid explanation, then it stops being magic and starts being science fiction): all living things, and even some non-living things that are natural (ex. rocks, dead flowers, sea shells) exude/produce magic. There are magic reservoirs and special areas of the world where magic is stronger. Some places where it is weaker. Magic moves like wind. Like currants. Magic is hella alive. It probably has a conscience.  It is one being and several beings at once.

Certain magic sticks to certain people. It creates somewhat of a symbiotic relationship. Give and take. The magic effects the person, and the person effects the magic. Certain things will come easily to the person because of the type of magic that has attached themselves to them/the type of magic that bends to their will. People who have never broken a dropped phone. People who never forget a birthday. People who have never gotten in an accident. People who always win bingo. People who always have the attention of the people in a room the moment they walk into it. People who always get the last slice of pizza. These are little magicks.

But! Living things includes, of course, humans. Humans can produce magic, but not at the same high rates as other creatures, such as goblins, fae, hulders, mermaids, what-have-you. For most humans, this magic is very difficult to unlock, and most never do it in their lifetimes, instead letting it build up until their deaths when it goes back out into the world (in a Harry Potter or FFVIII verse, the humans who are able to unlock it, are wizards/sorceresses).

So then, a review: Auras are real. They can be sensed. They can be manipulated. Magic is real. It is alive and everywhere. It sticks to certain people. They have strong influences on each other. Humans produce magic too, but it is very small, and hard to unlock. If you can unlock it, you’re Special.

Now, magic becomes physical when a spell is cast. When a potion is brewed. When a sigil is drawn. Turning water into wine, making a sleeping draught, carving runes...You’re bending magic into a shape/form. Creating a purpose. It can also become physical once it blends in with a person’s aura.

It takes time, I think. At first, maybe in infancy (or perhaps even in the womb?), the magic mixes with the aura like oil and water. You can shake them up (lol) for a temporary mix, but they will separate naturally. As time goes on, and the person grows and develops their personality, that same symbiosis relationship takes place with the aura and the magic until they are close to one and the same. The more blended they are, the easier it is for people to control their magic/have it do what they want it to do.

It also means that magic can be physically manifested when blended far enough with an aura. It can be sensed.

It is incredibly difficult to physically manifest your magic. To have it actually physically affect the world around you. It’s even more difficult to control it like this. It’s basically RAW ORGANIC MAGICKS™, and that shit is dangerous when it’s not filtered through spells or potions or any other form of performing magic.

It is also much much easier to sense a person’s magic than just a regular aura.

A person’s magic in physical form can be a lot of things. Fire, electricity, clouds, petals...Honestly this is the part where you should just let your imagination run wild because A) who cares, world building is fun, and B) every person with magic is different. As said before, the aura of a person depends on their personality and heritage. And magic affects the person binded to it and the aura of that person.

So, let’s get to Ximena. Spoilers! For her past, if that matters to you (I’d appreciate it if your muse didn’t automatically know these things unless we discuss them first):

Ximena was born in a cenote through ritual/magical means. From TripSavy: “A cenote is a deep, water-filled sinkhole in limestone that is created when the roof of an underground cavern collapses. This creates a natural pool which is then filled by rain and water flowing from underground rivers. The word cenote comes from the Mayan word dzonot, which means "well."” Ximena was also visited and drowned as a young child by La Llorona in a river after a flood when she went in deep to collect water, as the well she would have gone to was destroyed.

Water is the element of change, of which Ximena knows much about. It is why her magic is very water like. Cool and running/flowing. Dark. If you were able to touch/brush against Ximena’s magic, it would feel like your hand was submerged in running water. Cold. Soothing. But despite the gentleness of the current, it is very unyielding. It’s strong. Persistent.

Her magic feels old and ancient, as many cenotes are. It is also because of her particular family curse, of which includes (among other things) involuntary and often painful immortality. The magic that attaches itself to her has flowed through the veins of her father. Her grandmother. Her great-grandmother. Her great-great-grandmother. And the rest...

It is also old magic because of the (unknown to her for the longest time) powerful protective magicks on her beaded azebache bracelet (a bracelet meant to protect against the Evil Eye/evil intentions), crafted by and given to her by her father as a means of tricking the curse on their family. It feeds her magic.

The magic on this bracelet is much more powerful than hers, and if someone can naturally sense magic auras, they would be able to read the bracelet’s instead of hers. A means of diversion. Protection. Let’s hope she doesn’t loose it. The details of the magic of this bracelet are for another day, another post.

The color of Ximena’s magic is a lovely deep forest green. Healing and natural. Like the earth. A cenote is both earth and water, and this is where they meet. It’s an elegant color that brings about images of comfort and sturdiness. As she grows older and a bit more open/coy, blue will trace slowly into the edges. But only just.

As a result of Ximena’s spirit line, her magic also has an element of lightning. Her family, much more outspoken and spitfire than she, lingers in her aura and magic. When you dip your hand out of the water, it lingers like electricity in your fingers. Tingles playfully. It is also because Ximena is made up of contradictory things. Bold and meek. Just and selfish. Playful and studious. Water and electricity. 

Now the smell: Ximena’s usual scent is just clean laundry. The girl’s hygiene is impecable. She’s a breath of fresh air. Her own musk/sweat/natural scent is mild with strong wood/earth undertones. Her magic smells like citrus and mint. Both plants. Sharp and fruitful. Cool and smooth. Oranges are, naturally, Ximena’s favorite fruit, and one must wonder which affected the other first...Mint is a dangerous plant, as it consumes and grows rapidly over any other living thing in your garden if you’re not careful. It must be contained.

Taste is a little strange, because what person would go into a person’s personal bubble with their tongue out? (insert dirty joke here, lmao, I’m as mature as a 13 year old boy) But in the same way you can probably taste the scent of a steak cooking or taste the after-taste of an iced tea you drank a minute ago, you can taste magic. And Ximena’s magic is tangy. Like ginger beer. In fact, because I’m a bartender, I can tell you exactly what to mix in order to get a good approximation. 1oz Grand Marnier Orange Liqueur, 1-2 lemon wedges, 2 dashes agnostura bitters, shake lightly with ice, pour over ice in rocks glass, top off with half ginger beer, half Prosecco, garnish with mint and orange rind. If you’re not old enough to drink, replace Grand Marnier with freshly squeezed orange juice and the Prosecco with grapefruit soda.

The sound of Ximena’s magic is bells. Her themesong? Classic Mexican folksong: El Cascabel. The url for this blog? It’s the Nahuatl word for bells, literally meaning death metal, because whenever the church bells would ring, it would be for the death of someone. The ultimate goal of Ximena’s family? To be able to one day reach the afterlife, breaking this shit curse. 

Without her magic, Ximena’s aura would probably just be blue. Cobalt blue blending into cornflower blue. It would still feel like water, but less like a river, and more like gentle rain pricking at skin. It would taste like hard candy, similar to a lemon cough drop. It would smell like petrichor. It would still sound like bells.

If you’ve made this this far, I thank you. This will be all for tonight.

[sacriilegious]

Alexandra Wallace Smith's Idea of Privacy

My sister is placing. All the ladies in our circle of relatives are. My Aunt Magdalene turned into noticeably beautiful too. They have spitfire personalities. Daddy, you already know, you of all recognize my hurried notes, the journals that I have kept from childhood persisted to beyond, the journal, the rejected novel, the reckoning, the poems that I've scribbled, misplaced, that time and electricity and ego forgot. Then there are the black Croxley notebooks. I am determined to keep that far from you, and from the relaxation of the arena for appropriate  Custom Made Jewellery Muirhead wounded me. I reflect onconsideration on all his ladies within the workplace space in Johannesburg earlier than I came domestic to my youth home in Port Elizabeth frightened to demise of falling pregnant. Having a child out of wedlock. Becoming a single figure and raising a child by myself with very little money. I infrequently made any money or had an earnings to aid a child. How they included him, laughed at his jokes, how they positioned him on a pedestal, how they worshiped him, how they sat contrary him in fancy Johannesburg eating places consuming their cabernet or merlot. Thinking girls, beautiful women, ladies with teenagers, naivety and sexual inexperience (even though the sexual impulse, the sexual force changed into there) on their side. How he winded hem up as though they're electric dolls. I heated up the livers, mushrooms and bacon, the leftovers, scrambled the eggs and listened to the morning information at the radio. The bus coming in from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg had flipped into the air off the highway. There have been no fatalities. The plums had been juicy and candy. I would shop them for lunch. I sat on the kitchen table, buttered my toast, drank my lukewarm coffee, crossed my legs, scratched my knee absentmindedly and stared out of the window. The breakfast's grease became caught to the pan. I should overlook about it. And the more conscious I have become of the sky, the surroundings, the internal, the extra conscious I became of who created the invention, vision, dream, purpose, and quit of this line of sky, of blue, of this creator, this tortured poet, this chook?

I felt his hand intimately as if it became a dream and then nothing. I felt ashamed.

The dream girl after leaving Johannesburg become a female. She returned to the coast, to her father's residence, her mother's kitchen, her mother's know-how and the thrones of her childhood continued, to the art of a coronary heart undone. She again to the coast wherein water could be discovered in wild locations, where tides were problem to change, to the area in which she spent astounding blue hours staring up on the sky. She had her books. Her index finger would linger on the spine in her father's grand have a look at, his library, and his 'London revel in'. The house was dilapidated. It become in a terrible manner. The tiles were falling off the wall in the kitchen. The partitions wished a lick of paint. The interiors were in need of restore. The entire residence had to be renovated. The dream woman had again. The dream girl changed into additionally decided to exchange. She additionally desired to be heroic, angelic and magical.

Writing approximately grief is one of the maximum difficult things I have ever had to do. Nerves I may want to fathom as I stood in the front of them however what I definitely wanted to do was break out. Everybody constantly speaks about the miracle of lifestyles at a funeral. When dying will pay a go to there's no apprehension about discussing what tune to play when the coffin is diminished, what hymns could be played, what verse might be read out of the bible, and who will make the potato salad.

Ocean of beads. Not supposed to remaining lengthy on this lifetime or the following. The human beings of South Africa are like that. My metropolis is a dignified city packed with church humans. In Central you will locate the excellent ladies within the international. They will detach themselves from feminism, and the tigers that come at night, their rivals in a finite time and place. They are moneyed. Drugs have destroyed the very artwork of their soul. Every gram of their spirits have wasted away. Muirhead. Flesh have come earlier than you and after. The most tremendous elements of you portioned off like booths in an office area. Tell me everything you want me to be I would have said in my twenties. This doesn't must be the cease of it but it is. It is. And still I say let it now not be so. So comedian. So tragic. I stand on this ice house. In this residence from hell. Pale. The origins of smoke and mirrors, the cosmic bloodlines of my imagination, can be visible thru the embodiment and timeline of my flesh.

Paper skinny skating on ice is what I've yearned for my whole existence. Not to fail, no longer to discriminate, however to create artwork in the panorama of suicidal despair and infection. All poetry and poetic justice seems to ask folks is to have a determined lust for lifestyles. I still need to familiarise myself with rituals that I determined so comforting in formative years. Norma Jean in which are you, where do you discover your self now, who're you and what's that golden mirrored image staring lower back at you? Is there something extra seductive than madness, than being blonde and being desired via the world at massive, to be quiet approximately your philosophy on life, your starving ambitions to be a creator and a poet? To triumph like you've got triumphed Norma Jean is to laugh inside the face of ladies and men, of presidents, of feminists, to snicker inside the face of the adversity that they've confronted. No remember how short, how solitary ecstasy is one cannot get away its urgency, its survival guide, that stain of love no matter how effective and fresh it might be, how dwindled it would make you experience ultimately, you may discover that that enjoy was worth it. I left the madness and the warmth of the city in the back of me in my early twenties. It will leave you beautifully grown now.

The universe is sweeter, purer, more honourable and I am much less haunted, less ghostlike, much less obvious, baffled by using denial. I can't erase the precious of existence anymore and the fragility of it. How overwhelmed and petrified my spirit once become. Am I, changed into I ever without a doubt cherished? The women round me in life, inside the place of job, in the sphere of instant circle of relatives have been introspective cohorts. I am exhausted of writing about preference and this is the reality of the problem because in a few manner it's miles invincible like scrapbooking on something at the inked tattooed patchwork planet that you stay in. I've become a primitive lady in green areas, green feasts of them, and foundations of winter bushes of them. I've end up an invention of a current girl. The invention of the width of the thread of the other girl in a land that point forgot. What are the lyrics once more to that track? What are the traces that time forgot in that magazine on the ones cold, harsh blue, blue traces? I am bored with feeding the beasts galore however mustn't angels usually be defended? Who or what in essence defines an angel? An angel is the unseen, the invisible proper and nobody can hardwire your brain like God can.

And what's desire clearly? Smoke and honey inside the dance of anger, intimacy, duplicity and deception and the eternal obsession of all the ones things. It is supposed for the gamine, the ethereal, and the otherworldly, the magical female. The adolescent. Children are intended for women and what occurs whilst you like writing approximately demise. For me I fee remarks on demise, on eternity, on the paradise of heaven, the recognition-thinking in wishful wondering, the curious creatures that volcano human beings are and the numerous faces of saints. I've constantly believed in angels. The living preserve on living even as the useless flip to dust. There's a dismal aching, a canvas on which to play on, the haunting ache in my brother's soul is the equal ache which I actually have in my own. There's a ghost country in my head. The colleges, the rooms, and all the white walled interiors of my creativeness. And if I close my eyes I can believe all of our contours and the blue sharp light poured into the cages of the heavenly sky. The lover and the mother and the drowning blossom that turned into me. Dirt swimming-swimming in a watery spool gene pool of garbage. The death of a pet and a poet painting this elusive international with lucid notion styles.

Does decay, blood and the dark every get lonely and the groom with the unspoken passion he has for his bride? The bride in her wedded bliss. In her not possible excessive-heeled shoes. So I turned into there in spirit. If fish kissed oxygen they would surely die. Their pomegranate gills snuffed out of lifestyles. What are the grains of poverty? Where do they lay? Are they sequestered? Their souls lie in South Africa, possibly even take root there. Roots tapping into the existence of the soil, the way of life of the earth, tapping into the weight of water, or squalor (whichever it reaches first underneath the instances), preserving the fragility of phones as lifestyles buoys, unspecified social media is the new attractive, tapping into non secular poverty, the cemeteries of poverty, of the bone-worn-out. What sweetness! The unknown comes with anticipation. The anticipation of the awareness of wonder and the prying eyes of society. Where does my soul lie? It lay with you for a while I bet. Sated bride, uninvolved girl, splendor assembly the beautiful middle of a masculine identity, and the physical frame of a mysterious wellspring of the intelligence of the other of sexuality.

Alone, given way to spiritual abandonment, inhibitory nostalgia and the holiest of holies privacy, and with the solitude status that comes with intimacy I think about you. You burnt via. You not anything but a burnt and melted fragment but nonetheless dispelling radiance. You just like the crested burnt end of a matchstick. Sooty cinders inside the fireplace. Cinders from the coal. Cinders and smoke out of your freshly lit cigarette. Give me mouth to mouth resuscitation so I can be brought lower back to lifestyles, your life. I assume that the only thing that genuinely mattered in the long run, and that was product of a substance that would be harvested from the cells of a everyday reality turned into in the steps of Jean Rhys's haunting vulnerability. The haunting vulnerability of all ladies. I can see it in their eyes, their manner they hold themselves responsible to shielding themselves from being placed on show if it isn't always on their phrases, the long road of their guarded pilgrimage into humanity, spirituality. Gods to be made from their reflections inner of the searching glass. I marvel the way to prevent stammering. How to break out into letter-writing. If I can not get away into love, its poetic grace, mercy and use.

Into wincing at its threshold of pain and yet comprehending it on the identical time. Comprehending the solar, moon and superstar cloth, the summer season's son and his empire. And so starts offevolved the letter to a brother in rehabilitation. Brother and anchor. The 'filthy distinct' ceramic little Buddha pottering around. You have been the anchor that cemented me, my symphony, my instrument, my not unusual intention, my oracle, my passion. You have been my one direction to observe homeward bound. What is living inside the heart is this. The partitions of a garden made of brick and mortar, stone and everything this is recovery. Winter bushes and Whitman. It is time for the display, finding Isaiah within the gritty switch of the loophole. Why didn't you come once? Why did not you write once wholesome specimen of possession, what's the tragedy of all of it but are you glad, refreshed by using all of the seeds, roots, flora and stems? I stared and stared on the picture of him and questioned on the tragedy of it all. Speechless earlier than the image evaporates completely something takes location and shortly the whole thing unearths its vicinity on neutral floor, in gravity, on earth or in soil. There is not any promise within the death of the solar most effective the angelic, the whispers underfoot.

There is new life in flowers, in love, in empathy and the passion that humanity has for empathy. Everything frail earlier than it's far misplaced. Lost to the darkish. What is black and what is darkish? Is it one and the equal? The odor of cinnamon and bark. Salt and light. The coloration of the day, dawn breaking into fragments. The stillness of the air. What are you made from Mr. Muirhead? Skin and bone, flesh and tissue, a succession of the bodily melting away round you for your immediately surroundings? The noise for your head, in that rush, can you experience it to your blood, that instance of possession. Where to from right here from following a street map into the complicated intrigue of a sheltered youth endured, and there I discovered love. In the behaviour of an artist at work, the supply of communique, the self-portrait of human capital, the whole lot heightened when it is illuminated as an example visions of the cosmos disintegrating, collapsing beneath meteors on film. Drawings of earth's destruction, the bride of technological advancements, the use of the psychological framework of what came before the humanity as we knew it as children and as we get older, come to be human beings with our very own ideas to again up our values we trade, and we trade the arena around us. We have Sci-fi to thank for that, Kubrick and Spielberg.

'Do not lecture me. You do not know something approximately my scars.' My brother tells me. He says it together with his eyes too and I see a wild blue sky. Its adventure is electrical in which its routes have emerge as as critical as the locations of a diamond inside the hard. Through the searching glass's façade comes the primary harm, the poetry of my early twenties. Every circle of relatives is dysfunctional in their own manner. We stay in a traumatic society. I appear to had been born with this intuition to be considerate and sensitive, know-how and being concerned to others who seem to be in a less privileged role than I am but it has include a rate. My brother with his cigarettes, stale smoke and moustache and the younger woman on his arm who herself is a fragile beauty. They are each stuck up in contemplative noise. They have discovered themselves best to fall among the celebrities. So I am left in mourning for what has been misplaced for both of them. A adolescence.

[chimchimssenpai-blog]

Alexandra Wallace Smith's Idea of Privacy

My sister is striking. All the ladies in our own family are. My Aunt Magdalene was notably stunning too. They have spitfire personalities. Daddy, you know, you of all understand my moved quickly notes, the journals that I even have kept from youth continued to beyond, the magazine, the rejected novel, the reckoning, the poems that I've scribbled, misplaced, that point and electricity and ego forgot. Then there are the black Croxley notebooks. I am decided to keep that away from you, and from the relaxation of the world for good.

Muirhead wounded me Loose Diamonds. I consider all his ladies inside the workplace area in Johannesburg earlier than I got here home to my formative years home in Port Elizabeth anxious to death of falling pregnant. Having a child out of wedlock. Becoming a unmarried parent and raising a child on my own with little or no cash. I rarely made any money or had an income to aid a child. How they included him, laughed at his jokes, how they positioned him on a pedestal, how they worshiped him, how they sat opposite him in fancy Johannesburg restaurants ingesting their cabernet or merlot. Thinking ladies, stunning ladies, women with youngsters, naivety and sexual inexperience (although the sexual impulse, the sexual power become there) on their aspect. How he winded hem up as if they may be electric powered dolls. I heated up the livers, mushrooms and bacon, the leftovers, scrambled the eggs and listened to the morning information on the radio. The bus coming in from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg had flipped into the air off the highway. There have been no fatalities. The plums have been juicy and sweet. I might store them for lunch. I sat at the kitchen desk, buttered my toast, drank my lukewarm coffee, crossed my legs, scratched my knee absentmindedly and stared out of the window. The breakfast's grease turned into stuck to the pan. I should forget about about it. And the extra aware I became of the sky, the environment, the internal, the more conscious I have become of who created the invention, vision, dream, aim, and stop of this line of sky, of blue, of this author, this tortured poet, this fowl?

I felt his hand intimately as if it become a dream and then not anything. I felt ashamed.

The dream girl after leaving Johannesburg turned into a lady. She again to the coast, to her father's house, her mother's kitchen, her mom's expertise and the thrones of her early life persevered, to the artwork of a coronary heart undone. She again to the coast in which water may be discovered in wild places, where tides had been difficulty to trade, to the location where she spent magnificent blue hours staring up on the sky. She had her books. Her index finger could linger on the backbone in her father's grand observe, his library, and his 'London enjoy'. The residence changed into dilapidated. It changed into in a awful way. The tiles had been falling off the wall in the kitchen. The partitions needed a lick of paint. The interiors had been in need of restore. The whole house needed to be renovated. The dream woman had back. The dream female become also decided to alternate. She also desired to be heroic, angelic and magical.

Writing approximately grief is one of the maximum hard matters I have ever needed to do. Nerves I could fathom as I stood in front of them however what I without a doubt desired to do became break out. Everybody constantly speaks approximately the miracle of existence at a funeral. When death can pay a visit there's no apprehension about discussing what track to play while the coffin is decreased, what hymns might be played, what verse will be examine out of the bible, and who will make the potato salad.

Ocean of beads. Not intended to last long on this lifetime or the next. The people of South Africa are like that. My city is a dignified town filled with church human beings. In Central you'll locate the fine women within the international. They will detach themselves from feminism, and the tigers that come at night time, their competitors in a finite time and location. They are moneyed. Drugs have destroyed the very art in their soul. Every gram in their spirits have wasted away. Muirhead. Flesh have come earlier than you and after. The most exquisite elements of you portioned off like cubicles in an office space. Tell me the whole lot you need me to be I could have stated in my twenties. This doesn't need to be the give up of it however it's far. It is. And still I say allow it not be so. So comic. So tragic. I stand on this ice residence. In this residence from hell. Pale. The origins of smoke and mirrors, the cosmic bloodlines of my creativeness, may be seen thru the embodiment and timeline of my flesh.

Paper thin skating on ice is what I've yearned for my complete existence. Not to fail, no longer to discriminate, but to create art within the landscape of suicidal depression and contamination. All poetry and poetic justice seems to ask of us is to have a decided lust for lifestyles. I nonetheless need to familiarise myself with rituals that I found so comforting in childhood. Norma Jean where are you, where do you discover yourself now, who are you and what's that golden mirrored image staring lower back at you? Is there whatever more seductive than insanity, than being blonde and being favored via the world at big, to be quiet approximately your philosophy on existence, your starving targets to be a author and a poet? To triumph like you've got triumphed Norma Jean is to chortle within the face of men and women, of presidents, of feminists, to snigger in the face of the adversity that they have got confronted. No remember how quick, how solitary ecstasy is one can't get away its urgency, its survival manual, that stain of love no matter how powerful and sparkling it is probably, how dwindled it'd make you experience in the long run, you may discover that that revel in turned into worth it. I left the insanity and the heat of the city in the back of me in my early twenties. It will go away you superbly grown now.

The universe is sweeter, purer, greater honourable and I am less haunted, less ghostlike, much less transparent, baffled via denial. I cannot erase the treasured of life anymore and the fragility of it. How crushed and petrified my spirit once changed into. Am I, become I ever simply loved? The women round me in life, in the place of business, within the sphere of immediate own family were introspective cohorts. I am exhausted of writing about preference and that is the reality of the problem due to the fact in some manner it is invincible like scrapbooking on whatever at the inked tattooed patchwork planet that you stay in. I've end up a primitive girl in green spaces, inexperienced feasts of them, and foundations of iciness timber of them. I've grow to be an invention of a modern lady. The invention of the width of the thread of the other girl in a land that time forgot. What are the lyrics once more to that music? What are the lines that point forgot in that journal on the ones cold, harsh blue, blue traces? I am bored with feeding the beasts galore but should not angels usually be defended? Who or what in essence defines an angel? An angel is the unseen, the invisible correct and no person can hardwire your mind like God can.

And what's choice truly? Smoke and honey within the dance of anger, intimacy, duplicity and deception and the everlasting obsession of all those matters. It is meant for the gamine, the airy, and the otherworldly, the mystical woman. The adolescent. Children are intended for women and what takes place when you want writing about loss of life. For me I value feedback on dying, on eternity, at the paradise of heaven, the recognition-thinking in wishful questioning, the curious creatures that volcano human beings are and the many faces of saints. I've usually believed in angels. The dwelling keep on living whilst the dead turn to dirt. There's a dark aching, a canvas on which to play on, the haunting ache in my brother's soul is the identical ache which I actually have in my very own. There's a ghost state in my head. The faculties, the rooms, and all the white walled interiors of my imagination. And if I near my eyes I can consider all of our contours and the blue sharp mild poured into the cages of the heavenly sky. The lover and the mother and the drowning blossom that become me. Dirt swimming-swimming in a watery spool gene pool of garbage. The dying of a pet and a poet portray this elusive world with lucid thought styles.

Does decay, blood and the darkish each get lonely and the groom with the unspoken ardour he has for his bride? The bride in her wedded bliss. In her impossible high-heeled footwear. So I turned into there in spirit. If fish kissed oxygen they might surely die. Their pomegranate gills snuffed out of lifestyles. What are the grains of poverty? Where do they lay? Are they sequestered? Their souls lie in South Africa, perhaps even take root there. Roots tapping into the lifestyles of the soil, the subculture of the earth, tapping into the burden of water, or squalor (whichever it reaches first beneath the situations), keeping the fragility of phones as existence buoys, unspecified social media is the new sexy, tapping into religious poverty, the cemeteries of poverty, of the bone-tired. What sweetness! The unknown comes with anticipation. The anticipation of the attention of marvel and the prying eyes of society. Where does my soul lie? It lay with you for a while I bet. Sated bride, uninvolved girl, splendor meeting the stunning middle of a masculine identification, and the physical frame of a mysterious wellspring of the intelligence of the alternative of sexuality.

Alone, given way to non secular abandonment, inhibitory nostalgia and the holiest of holies privacy, and with the solitude status that includes intimacy I consider you. You burnt via. You not anything however a burnt and melted fragment yet still dispelling radiance. You like the crested burnt cease of a matchstick. Sooty cinders within the fire. Cinders from the coal. Cinders and smoke from your freshly lit cigarette. Give me mouth to mouth resuscitation so I can be brought back to life, your existence. I assume that the only aspect that genuinely mattered in the long run, and that was product of a substance that might be harvested from the cells of a everyday fact turned into inside the steps of Jean Rhys's haunting vulnerability. The haunting vulnerability of all ladies. I can see it in their eyes, their manner they keep themselves responsible to shielding themselves from being put on show if it is not on their phrases, the lengthy street in their guarded pilgrimage into humanity, spirituality. Gods to be made from their reflections interior of the looking glass. I marvel the way to prevent stammering. How to break out into letter-writing. If I cannot get away into love, its poetic grace, mercy and use.

Into wincing at its threshold of pain and but comprehending it at the equal time. Comprehending the sun, moon and big name fabric, the summer season's son and his empire. And so begins the letter to a brother in rehabilitation. Brother and anchor. The 'filthy special' ceramic little Buddha pottering around. You had been the anchor that cemented me, my symphony, my tool, my common aim, my oracle, my ardour. You had been my one direction to comply with homeward sure. What is living in the coronary heart is this. The walls of a garden manufactured from brick and mortar, stone and the whole thing this is recuperation. Winter timber and Whitman. It is time for the display, finding Isaiah within the gritty switch of the loophole. Why did not you come back once? Why did not you write as soon as healthy specimen of ownership, what's the tragedy of all of it however are you satisfied, refreshed by way of all the seeds, roots, vegetation and stems? I stared and stared at the photograph of him and questioned on the tragedy of all of it. Speechless earlier than the photo evaporates completely something takes location and soon the whole lot unearths its area on impartial ground, in gravity, in the world or in soil. There is no promise in the dying of the solar handiest the angelic, the whispers underfoot.

There is new life in vegetation, in love, in empathy and the ardour that humanity has for empathy. Everything frail earlier than it's far misplaced. Lost to the dark. What is black and what is darkish? Is it one and the same? The smell of cinnamon and bark. Salt and light. The colour of the day, dawn breaking into fragments. The stillness of the air. What are you manufactured from Mr. Muirhead? Skin and bone, flesh and tissue, a succession of the physical melting away around you to your immediate surroundings? The noise to your head, in that rush, are you able to feel it on your blood, that instance of possession. Where to from right here from following a street map into the complex intrigue of a sheltered formative years endured, and there I observed love. In the behaviour of an artist at paintings, the supply of verbal exchange, the self-portrait of human capital, the entirety heightened whilst it's illuminated as an instance visions of the cosmos disintegrating, collapsing below meteors on film. Drawings of earth's destruction, the bride of technological improvements, the use of the psychological framework of what got here before the humanity as we knew it as youngsters and as we get older, end up human beings with our very own thoughts to returned up our values we alternate, and we alternate the sector around us. We have Sci-fi to thank for that, Kubrick and Spielberg.

'Do no longer lecture me. You do not know anything about my scars.' My brother tells me. He says it together with his eyes too and I see a wild blue sky. Its journey is electrical in which its routes have become as important as the destinations of a diamond in the tough. Through the looking glass's façade comes the first harm, the poetry of my early twenties. Every family is dysfunctional of their personal manner. We live in a stressful society. I seem to have been born with this intuition to be considerate and touchy, knowledge and caring to others who appear to be in a less privileged role than I am but it has include a rate. My brother along with his cigarettes, stale smoke and moustache and the younger woman on his arm who herself is a fragile beauty. They are both stuck up in contemplative noise. They have discovered themselves only to fall amongst the stars. So I am left in mourning for what has been misplaced for each of them. A formative years.

'But I love you. Please don't do that.' I say in return and I see a revolution taking location inside him, the insufferable heaviness, and the uncivilised not anything of an echo vibrating like a shell casing. Something is let loose and communicated to me. Something bittersweet and sour.

And so I go back to love, loss and the elated appreciate I actually have of both of them. There is something inside each the innerness of the equipment for eternity (there is no bodily frame required for eternity, handiest the spirit, the soul, and kindred). There's an equilibrium inside the territory of the vacancy every so often determined in a human vessel after the sexual transaction and a symphony. Rhys's transactions and now I even have turn out to be really like her. I think that I have misplaced myself inside the very last analysis the preference to emerge as desirable. What would Moses do? I wouldn't be able to pick up the smartphone and speak to him up. He might pray in the desert history he found himself in. There become not anything else he may want to do inside the occasions he found himself in. He had a flame within himself that burned bright. Romance well what can I say except what a harsh experience that was. It become hellish. Love is a posed interlude, a pause among  acts, oh the way it modifications the entirety approximately a bleak international enjoy, materialism, values, poverty, and that high commodity of spirituality. You could be as lovely to me now as you'll be in old age. I will do not forget you, wish for you, and that this romance will move ahead and go on and on however my soul lies in South Africa in which the ache of the mind may be greater devastating, felt greater acutely than the pain of the body. What taints the ache of a toddler feeling that another sibling has taken her region, overshadowed her. Let me now look at that distillate.

[forestcrack83-blog]

Interview: How Ritual's Katerina Schneider Brings Transparency To The Women's Multivitamin - PSFK

The founder of the cult direct-to-consumer brand tells PSFK how she builds credibility and trust with consumers by offering a product previously unavailable among women's supplements, focusing on quality and transparency of ingredients reflected in the clear pills themselves

The vitamin and supplement industry is notoriously opaque. Free of many of the regulations subject to the food and pharmaceutical industries, manufacturers have little legal responsibility to prove and report the efficacy of their products. Ritual founder Katerina Schneider decided to create a better, more transparent product for women, helping to usher the direct-to-consumer movement into a previously unsexy category limited to drug store shelves.

Ritual launched with just one product, a Women’s Essential multivitamin. With its design-led packaging, subscription model and accessible price point, the buzzy brand has become one of the most visible among new products catered to (largely millennial) women. In October, Ritual announced the release of a new Essential Prenatal formula, solving for another important stage in many women’s lives. PSFK spoke to Schneider about her goal to ultimately create products for women at all ages and life stages, developed in direct conversation with her dedicated consumers via social media.

PSFK: Could you speak about the broader trends that you’re seeing impacting retail today, and any trends that you’re leveraging in your work?

Katerina Schneider: There are a couple of interesting trends that are impacting retail. One is companies are able to build really high‑quality products by going direct to consumer, and really bypassing middlemen.

One of the interesting things that we’ve been able to do as a company is source the high‑quality ingredients from all over the world, and offer them up to women at a really accessible price, which I think is having an impact on retail at large. For us, it’s really great because our mission is to give women the best there is, and create products that are accessible.

Another trend that’s impacting retail currently is our company’s abilities to interact directly with customers on the fly. We’re really excited, because at Ritual, we have this direct relationship with our customers. We literally respond to every single Instagram post, every ad.

By leveraging our team of in‑house scientists, our team of customer experience executives, together we can thoughtfully and concisely answer a lot of our customers’ questions and build trust.

Platforms like Instagram, Facebook have allowed us to build really loyal and almost cultish followings of women who are committed to doing better things for their bodies. That is definitely having an impact on retail as well.

Could you talk a little bit about how consumer perception of wellness has changed and why it’s become more important?

We all want to do what’s best for our bodies and want to take care of them. I know that when I was four months pregnant, I cared more than ever what I was putting in and on my body. I was a healthy person before that but took it to the extreme even more because it was my responsibility, not just for myself, but for the child that I was carrying.

At that time I really dove deep into wellness and got rid of products that I really couldn’t get behind in my house: deodorants, toothpaste, sunscreens, cleaning supplies. When I took a look at the vitamins that I had been taking every single day for my health, I was pretty shocked to find what’s inside.

That’s why I started Ritual. All women deserve to know what they’re putting into their bodies and why. That’s where this idea was born. When you think about what’s going on in wellness today, which is very a plethora of brands or a plethora of companies trying to get women’s attention.

It’s important to pause and understand what we actually need and what we’re missing from our diets and dive into the science and research, which is exactly what we did. We spent years just researching women’s diets to identify what nutrients were missing today not 50 years ago. That’s how the idea of Essential for Women was born.

We like to distance ourselves from [industry trends] and have created products that are really around health and foundational health, and less around unproven trendy ingredients. For us things like folate, for iron, for magnesium are really essential and important.

Could you talk a little bit about how you discovered which nutrients were essential and which ones were just unnecessary?

We define an essential nutrient as something that is absolutely critical to a woman’s life and to her health. We identified nine essential nutrients during her life that are really key and we looked at 12,000 studies, government data, everything that was available to us.

We identified the nutrients that were really essential: folate, K2, MK7, magnesium, vitamin D3, boron and iron. What was interesting in one of the things we found that it wasn’t even just the ingredients, but it was the ingredient forms that really mattered.

For instance, over a third of women have a gene variation where they can’t properly utilize synthetic folic acid, which is very common in most vitamins. We identified methylated folate that we source from Italy. It’s a fourth-generation folate that bypassed gene variations and got in readily.

It sounds like you’ve done a tremendous amount of research. You have all of the science backing your products. How are you communicating this to your consumers?

We’ve definitely done the research. I’m personally on a mission to redefine what it means to be a health company in this day and age. I really believe that it starts with evolving the conversation on transparency. With our products you can see where every ingredient comes from in the world and why it’s there.

Being an online direct brand, you can go on our site, go on the Ingredients tab and literary see where everything comes from and why it’s there. We even have interviews with every single manufacturer and supplier as well as some of the key studies that we reference when making our decisions. It’s not as if transparency was something we thought would be nice to market.

It was something that we really believed in because as we started digging through the forms of ingredients out there and the ones that we decided to put into our product, we got so excited that we couldn’t help ourselves. We wanted to share that information.

We wanted to share why we have D3 from wild harvested lichen, why we have omega‑3s coming from EPA and DHA, from algae, why we have a methylated folate from Italy and K2, MK7 from Norway. We are so obsessed with our ingredients that we’ve evolved the conversation on transparency into almost traceability and really created a first of its kind traceable product. We want that to be the norm. Not just for our industry, but for other industries as well.

We go above and beyond to make sure that women are informed because knowledge is obviously power. That’s something we’re really proud of.

Could you talk a little bit about how you’ve tried to reimagine the multivitamin and turn it into something positive?

When I started the company I was skeptical of vitamins as a whole, but I did my research. I hired some of the leading scientists in the industry. Our scientific team is lead by a Harvard‑trained physiologist as well as one of the leaders in the nutraceutical industries, who has over 30 years of industry experience and a PhD in biomedical sciences. We hired this really credible in‑house team to build a product that we could really get behind and identify that we really do need vitamins.

Let’s start from the ground up, starting with understanding if we need vitamins in the first place. It turns out we actually do. Most of us are lacking in the same nutrients, which was fundamentally shocking.

We don’t believe that women should be taking five, six, seven different pills to reach optimal health. We surveyed hundreds of women and identified that most women did not want to take more than two capsules a day.

We created this bead‑in‑oil encapsulation for Essential for Women, which has the dry ingredients separate from the oil ingredients. All the ingredients are layered on top of each other preventing interaction. Then there’s a delayed release capsule that has a no nausea design, bypassing the stomach and getting released in the small intestine for tolerability. It’s also beautiful. That actually happened to be a byproduct of doing the right thing.

We wanted to celebrate that and put it in clear bottles, so that when women who’ve been to their medicine cabinet they didn’t have a stock of different bottles hanging out there. They had one single vitamin that they were really excited to take. Then finally we wanted the aroma to be pleasant.

We wanted it to be something that you looked forward to. We sourced fresh peppermint oil for Essential for Women from Yakima, Washington and put it in an empty tab in the bottle. That’s something that really pleasantly delights our customers.

Then for the prenatal we used lemon oil. Women commonly crave citrus during pregnancy. We thought that would be an interesting thoughtful touch as well.

Your branding is so simple and almost gender-neutral even though this is a vitamin designed for women. Was that a deliberate choice or were you trying to attract a certain type of consumer? 

One of the things when we looked at design that was really important to us was simplicity in an industry where things are incredibly complex, and you have so many choices, and you have to sift through so much information. Design allows us to surface the most important things by showing people and not just telling them.

The big question is how do you show trust? We believe that great simple design can do that because it’s thoughtful. We put so much care, effort and thoughtfulness, almost obsession into design as the way that we do with research in our ingredients.

I believe that great branding has allowed us to build out trust with our customer. It is incredibly gender-neutral, but I’m not sure anymore what the opposite would be. As someone who appreciates great design, this is the design that speaks to me as a woman.

One of the interesting challenges we had as well was launching the prenatal and how do we speak to women visually that are thinking or trying to conceive? Women typically are served up advertising that is flowery and pink. Not that there is a problem with pink, but I prefer yellow. Women don’t often look empowered in a lot of the current advertising especially if it’s geared towards millennial women we expect something different. Other brands, other categories or brands are marketing to us in a different way.

With our prenatal campaign we really tried to show empowered women. We only showed a few women that were actually pregnant, because the campaign was around pre‑pregnancy.

Your product offering is tightly curated, with just the Essential for Women and now the new Essential Prenatal. Why did you decide to launch with just one essential multivitamin instead of offering a broader range?

When it comes to our product philosophy and when it comes to vitamins and supplements, we believe in what you need versus what you want. When it comes to vitamins as a whole, our vision is to have one single vitamin forever and ever that really just evolves as a woman’s life stages change. What she needs today can change if she’s thinking about getting pregnant. It can change after she’s given birth and can change after she’s gone through menopause.

The vision all along and since the beginning is one single ritual, which is one single vitamin that fits into her life as seamlessly as brushing her teeth. We want to elevate vitamin‑taking to that level.

Essential Prenatal is like Essential for Women’s sister in a way. Instead of nine essential nutrients, there are 12. One of the really exciting things about the Prenatal and the Prenatal campaign that we recently did was opening up the conversation around getting women ready for pregnancy versus before, most companies were advertising to women when they were already pregnant.

That’s a really huge shift because it turns out that a study referenced by the CDC as a national study, close to 45% of pregnancies are unplanned and yet the first 28 days of pregnancy are when the neural tube forms. It’s really critical that women have their nutritional status optimized when they’re thinking or trying to get pregnant. This campaign was a huge movement for us to not just educate women about Essential Prenatal but starting to get women to think about their nutrition beforehand.

You mentioned that you envisioned Ritual as this companion that consumers can have. Do you have any other future offerings planned?

We really see ourselves as not just a vitamin company but a habit company. That means that we want to change the way that a woman interacts with the products that she uses every day and the experiences around them. In the future, we’re rethinking a lot of things.

We’re really shifting behaviors and we’d hope to do that around other products as well. What’s important to us first is to finish what we started in the vitamin category, which is really putting a stake in the ground when it comes to women’s health, women’s health research, identifying her needs, what she really needs, and what her body needs at different life stages.

You mentioned before that you and your team reply to every single comment on social media, which is amazing. Could you talk a little bit more about how you’re trying to build community with your brand?

Answering comments and being conversational on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, has allowed us to form really a community online that is responsive and thoughtful.

One of the things that we’re really excited about is that we’re skeptics building a brand for other skeptics. We want our customers to be label‑readers, we want her to be a cross‑examiner and to question things. We want to do that together. One of the things that platforms like Instagram have allowed us to do is go a little deeper through content and storytelling both visual and conversational every single day.

Instagram stories have allowed us to do that as well as even content on our own site and developing our own content hub which we lead our customers from social platforms to content, to articles on our site to go deeper if they want.

You mentioned you’re talking with consumers when you’re developing your products. Could you talk a little bit about how you incorporate consumers’ feedback into your research and development process?

As far as the products go themselves and the vitamins and the nutrients, that is solely based on research and studies. Those are developed with our in‑house scientific team. As I mentioned before, our chief scientist is a Harvard‑trained physiologist. Our VP of R&D has PhD in biomedical sciences. Together, our scientific team has come through thousands of studies to identify women’s needs and what they need today based on the latest research.

As far as R&D goes, it’s very much an in‑house thing. We want to be an authority on that as much as we love customers’ feedback and direction. When it comes to the experience of taking the vitamins, when it comes to packaging, when it comes to collateral, when it comes to what they’d like to see more or less of as far as content, all of that, for us, is crowdsourced.

One of the most exciting examples for us has been our omega‑3 story. We were excited to be using omega‑3s from algae that had both EPA and DHA in Essential for Women. Algae is the food of fish. It has a pretty pungent smell overall, just like fish oil does. We did not want to budge on the quality or the type of omega‑3s we wanted to use.

We quickly surfaced that. Our community and our customers wanted an option to pleasantly take their vitamins. They’ve been frustrated in the past by omega‑3s not smelling great in that experience, but they knew they needed them. We created this Minty Tab by feedback from our customers. It became a huge product innovation for us. That was interesting.

Could you talk a little bit about how you’re using a DTC subscription strategy to make the experience more seamless for consumers?

We are leveraging direct‑to‑consumer in several ways to thoughtfully make a better experience for our customers. The first is price. When creating Essential for Women with our scientists and talking to our manufacturer, they were shocked that my goal was to try to get it to under $30 because they knew how expensive some of our ingredients were. Through the direct‑to‑consumer model and bypassing the middlemen, we’re able to offer a $200 product at a $30 price point.

If you were to go to Amazon and you were to cobble together our Essential for Women formulation, everything from our omega‑3s with EPA, DHA to our ferrous bisglycinate iron to our K2 MK7 coming from Norway—it’s a pure crystal—to our D3 from wild‑harvested lichen, it would cost you over $200. It would take you a lot of time.

We wanted to create a really accessible product at an accessible price point. Going direct is interesting because we’re able to have more predictive models in trying to understand our customer. If they’re going to stick around, we know that we can have a certain cost of goods that maybe other companies can’t that are in retail. Some of our customers, we feel like our life‑long customers. That’s good for us. It’s good for them. That’s one of the things that’s really exciting.

The second is going deeper in the customer journey. If you were to buy a multivitamin off the shelf, you might not really know what it’s for. You might think it’s to grow your hair or to make your skin nice, whatever that may be. That is not what we’re about as a company. Our whole thing is building a foundation. Some of the best benefits are the ones you can’t see. It’s things that impact your long‑term health like your organs, or your blood, or your brain.

Something we’re really excited about is going deeper on that foundational health journey. I think the third thing is that we all forget to take our vitamins sometimes. I know I do even though I’m the CEO of this company. Even if we have really good habits, and we’ve built them in for whatever reason, there’s days we forget.

We are committed to building the most seamless, incredible experience for women knowing that they have those days. We all do. Things like snooze, things like allowing women to pause their subscription, when they need to for whatever that may be, are things that we’ve built into the experience. We also allow women to cancel at any time. These days, I think you have to be competing with Amazon for a level of service and the seamlessness of service.

I’m really proud of what we’re building because it not only allows women the convenience of their vitamins coming to them when they need, it allows them the convenience of going deeper and the storytelling that we provide. It allows them to ingest that over time.

Ritual

Ritual is driving value by fostering transparency and quality while prioritizing its customers’ needs. For more examples of similar inspiring retailers, see PSFK’s  reports and newsletters.

Source: https://www.psfk.com/2018/12/interview-ritual-katerina-schneider-transparency-womens-multivitamin.html

[raptorfiction]

Losing Sight

(TRIGGER WARNING: TORTURE)

Night blanketed the terrain like black velvet, the only sources of light coming from the moons and stars above and the campfires in the distance. Though laden with heavy plating, Nyreen moved silently through the tall grass, the glint of the moon reflecting off of her the only indication that she was moving at all. Perhaps it was due to her surreal aptitude for stealth that her newest trainee nearly collided with her when she halted abruptly at the very edge of the encampment she had been sent to scout out.

An audible squeak of surprise came from the young man and without a moment’s hesitation, Nyrene grabbed him by the shoulder and tossed him to the ground, throwing herself down besides him. Though the chances that they had been heard were slim, it was always better to be certain. Once satisfied that they were clear of any imminent threats, Nyreen took up a low crouch, her ice coloured orbs rising just above the edge of the long grass. Passively observing, she grit her teeth when her understudy began to grumble and rustle about trying to dust himself off.

“Be quiet, you fool.” She hissed, head snapping to look at the wiry youth, eyes narrowed in irritation. “If you make any more noise, the whole of Cyrodiil will have heard you. You are supposed to be a scout, you must move silent as a thought lest you alert the opposing forces to your position and believe me, you don’t want that.”

“You get taken hostage, yeah?” The tone in the boy’s voice was unmistakably fearful and so Nyrene decided to drive a point home.

“They’ll take us, kill us, use us and stick our heads on spikes. And if we’re very lucky, it will happen in that exact order.” A loud gulp told her she had made her point. “No one likes spies boy, so remember that and keep yourself as silent as possible.”

Her eyes once again turned towards the camp where figures now clearly stalked about the controlled blazes they had set. Hagravens and their doting servants moved in a set rhythmic pattern, chanting eerily, though the words couldn’t quite be made out. Reports had come in a fortnight ago about villagers going missing from a small town and at first, the authorities hadn’t given it much thought. Children, adolescents--they had chalked it up to unhappy youngsters running away from home or leaving to start new lives. That was until the investigating Imperial Watch and entire organised search party all disappeared together.

Fearing that the town’s established guard forces couldn’t protect them, families of the missing had sent a petition to the Legion requesting assistance and protection. With no further option and for the safety of the Empire’s citizens, a small force of volunteer Legionaries was gathered and sent to investigate.

As Nyrene had continued to watch, a sickening realisation had come over her and she silently cursed herself for not having seen it before. Off to the side, the Hagraven matriarch stood at a table, handing off platters and bowls to her servants. Platters and bowls filled with human and elven body parts and entrails as much as she could gather, considering what was laying upon the table. With her blood now boiling, Nyrene whipped her gaze to her understudy again, fire ablaze in her icy hues.

“Back to camp. We need to make our report.” Though she kept herself hushed, there could be no mistaking the cold anger in her tone. But despite her order, the young man beside her stood stone still, eyes widened in shock and terror. When finally he did speak, it was a broken, barely audible whisper.

“S-sir… that’s my niece…” It was as if he had to fight to even utter the words and quickly, Nyrene flipped her gaze back to the scene below.

Being marched towards the central bonfire was a young girl, not yet mature, arms bound behind her back. All dancing had ceased as the haggard witches lined up in a row on either side of their sacrifice. Silence had fallen during the procession, only to be replaced by a slowly crescendoing chant as the tribute and the matriarch came to a halt only mere steps from the edge of the blaze.

A sudden shuffle from beside her tore Nyrene’s attention away from the grotesque display, towards her companion who had thrown all caution to the wind and began to charge towards the coven. Heart stopping for a moment, quickly Nyrene recovered and charged after her ward, tackling him to the ground before he managed to get too far. Pinning the man to the ground, she wrestled against his struggling as she snarled at him.

“You idiot! What are you thinking?! If you go down there, you’ll die, she’ll die, I’ll die and our mission will fail. More innocent lives will be lost!” It was a struggle to keep herself hushed as she spewed her rage at the still struggling boy.

“I don’t care! She’s my niece! She’s my family!”

“Shut up! They’ll hear us!” Quickly she clapped a hand over the man’s mouth and looked over her shoulder to see whether the monstrous half-women and their human pets had heard them. A few heads had turned their direction, but there wasn’t any cause for extreme alarm just yet.

That was until a free fist swung upwards and clocked Nyrene square in the side of her head. Dazed from the blow, her captive managed to free himself and continue his course towards the ritualists, screaming in fury the entire way. Cursing, Nyrene shook the stars from her eyes and sprinted after her ward, blades drawn.

It was an automatic transition from scout to combatant, one that she didn’t even need to think about and even as her apprentice clashed with the first of the sorceresses, Nyrene’s blades bit deeply into one of the unsuspecting hagravens, snuffing out its life. Whirling around she threw her offhand weapon at the nearest target, burying the blade deep within its chest. Mind never straying from the goal, she danced her dance of death towards the young woman who was about to be sacrificed and freed her from her rope bonds.

Grabbing her roughly by the arm, Nyrene dragged the maiden towards her uncle who had felled a fair few of the cultists. Thrusting the child towards him, she shouted in anger as she cut down a charging hagraven.

“Get out of here! Now! Take her to the camp and make your report!”

“Sir! What about you?!”

“It’s too late to worry about that! GO!” And with a mighty thrust of her arms, she shoved the pair towards the grass from which they had been spying. “GO!”

There wasn’t any time for her to see whether they had managed to flee or not as her vision suddenly filled with flames that had seemingly erupted from nowhere. Spinning on her heel, her gaze locked on to the source of the conjuration.

“Witches…” A curse uttered with vehemence as she rolled out of the way of a fireball. Regaining her footing, Nyrene charged straight for the offending caster, determined to end her threat. Sidestepping another blast, she found herself knocked off balance by another caster. Cursing again, she fumbled to find her footing only to find herself being assaulted by yet another witch. Unable to find solid balance or footing, Nyrene’s assault had been effectively ended, a conclusion made solid as a conjured servant hoisted her into the air.

Weaponless, she could do nothing but stare helplessly as the Hagraven Matriarch slowly approached, pure malice in her gaze. Were her hands not locked to her sides by the giant elemental’s grasp, she’d have found a way to gouge those eyes from the wicked half being. Perhaps the beast knew this as a jagged sneer formed on its cracked lips, revealing a full set of pointed, knife-like teeth.

“You… you have killed my coven, my sssservantssss hissss… and you have ssssstolen my ssssacrifice.” Even as it hissed out its words, it seemed quite unconcerned at the damage that had been done. Cackling dryly, a taloned appendage reached out and punctured the skin on Nyrene’s face. “Oh yesss… we’ll have to find another way to appease the gods hiss… TAKE HER AWAY!”

With a flick of her wrist, a deep gouge was sliced into Nyrene’s cheek, though she remained stoic through the pain. She knew there was worse to come and if she succumbed to that, then she knew she’d not survive what they were planning for her. As she was carried away, she stole glances at the men and women who would defend such beastly abominations, for certainly no sane mortal would do such.

Dressed in tribal garb with weapons roughly comprised of wood and bone, there was no mistaking who these people were. Reachmen. There were stories of the savage tribals who aligned themselves with the Hagravens, protecting them and revering them, but she hadn’t expected to find them here in Cyrodiil. Worshippers of the dark arts, the purpose of the ritual she had interrupted became clear to Nyrene. They were sacrificing people so that willing women could become new hagravens. Her stomach churned as she was bound to a cross shaped stake.

That people were willing to become those abominations sickened her, but that they sacrificed innocent people to do so made her nearly physically ill. However, there was no time to dwell on such matters as her head was jerked upwards roughly by one of the savages.

“You. Watch.”

It wasn’t as though she was given much choice as she was pointedly faced towards the central bonfire. The ritual had begun again and she was forced to watch in horror and revulsion as sacrifice after sacrifice was shoved into the fire pit in tribute and new hagravens were created. When the ritual came to completion, the Matriarch’s pitch black beads focused themselves on Nyrene with just as much malice as she had shown earlier.

“Bring the captive!” She snarled and Nyrene felt the stake she was bound to quake. Lifted well above the ground, she was carried with no measure of urgency towards the fire, coming to a halt mere feet away.

If their tactic was fear, they’d receive none from her. As a Legionary, it was accepted that one would likely meet their end early and at the hands of their foe. Stoically she stared into the crimson blaze before her, content with the way things had played out. Though she hadn’t been able to save all of the villagers, she rescued her ward’s niece and secured their escape so that the coven would eventually meet their demise and her own death would be avenged.

“Hiss… now for your punishhhhment… for interrupting our ritual…hiss.” Something about the crone’s tone broke Nyrene’s stoicism, replacing it with a feeling of great unease.

As her stake was jabbed into the ground, she let out a grunt of discomfort as her shoulders and wrists were jarred violently. Nearby, a Reachman offered an empty, rough hewn bowl of wood to the hag who gripped it in her talons as she turned once again to face her victim. Jaw set, fists clenched, Nyrene prepared herself for whatever abuse awaited her. A wicked cackle came from the abomination, a cackle echoed throughout her coven before turning to one of the newly turned.

“You. Do the honours…hiss.”

With a bow and a wicked sneer, the bowl was handed off to the all too eager witch who now turned her eyes on to Nyrene. Stepping forward, she traced a talon down the side of Nyrene’s face and then back up as if caressing a lover. The blood in her veins began to run ice cold with anxiety and finally fear as the talons suddenly stopped. The feeling of pressure began to well up around her left eye before a sudden pop and searing, agonising pain shot through to the very centre of her skull.

Nyrene let out a blood curdling screech as the pain intensified. Whatever she had prepared herself for, this was not it. The pain radiated to every part of her body, her hands, her core, her toes. So intense was the pain that her sight was struck from the left side of her body, her right eye blurred from tears. She couldn’t hear the cackling of the crows anymore, though she knew they were still laughing, couldn’t make out what it was the hag in front of her was clutching in her talons before turning and tossing it into the flames, lifting her winged arms to the heavens.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the pain subsided enough that the vision in her right eye became clear again, though it had not returned to her left. Blinking, so that she might fix whatever had blocked her vision on that side, her eyelid flapped uselessly a few times before the realisation hit her. It wasn’t that something was blocking her vision, it was that there was no vision at all, the object the crone had tossed into the fire was nothing less than her own eye. The discovery made her ill and she couldn’t hold back the bile that burst forth from her this time.

Turning to face her captive, the Matriarch sneered and cackled again making her way towards the bleeding woman. Lifting Nyrene’s face so that they were eye to eye, she hissed her venomous words at the Imperial again.

“Hiss… that hurt, yessss? We aren’t done with you yet hiss… Oh no.” The talons that rest just below Nyrene’s chin scraped downwards, over her chestplate. With a sickening screech, they raked over the steel plating before puncturing the metal and tearing it away.

The motion jerked Nyrene’s whole body, shoulders and wrists throbbing in pain, her skull screaming in exquisite agony as she shut her eye from the pain. As she let out a pained yelp, the harpy cackled again as she began to force her talon into the flesh over Nyrene’s heart. Once it was fully embedded, slowly the wretch dragged it downwards, tearing a gash in the otherwise pristine flesh.

Nyrene just wanted it to be over. She couldn’t take anymore. The sheer agony she was experiencing was more than she could bare, her Imperial pride now nearly gone. As much as she wanted to give up, quit fighting, she couldn’t bring herself to beg for mercy, to beg for death though every fibre of her being wanted to. It seemed like she had been here for ages, that the haggard, twisted figure before her had been searing that line in her flesh for eternity, when it finally came to an end.

Blood filled tears ran down the woman’s face, she had no other way to express her pain. Never had she endured torture before and no matter what she told herself or prepared herself for, nothing could prepare her for what was happening. She didn’t know what more they could do to her, what more they could put her through before she gave out and she didn’t want to know. But soon the all too familiar feeling of talon rending flesh began again near the freshly opened and still bleeding wound. No words could describe it and she was certain all of Cyrodiil could hear her shrieks while the savage witch worshippers cackled at her misery.

Her vision began to blur again as the crone began to pry apart the flesh she had cut into, the pain so unbearable that Nyrene finally gave in, she could stand no more. As her vision began to fade, the pain suddenly subsided and with a small smile on her lips, she whispered out her good byes to the world, certain that she had come to the end of her run.

But even as she shut her eyes, a horde of Legionaries and villagers rushed the coven, putting down the wretched abominations and scattering the Reachmen that managed to escape the blade. She neither saw nor felt the hands of her brothers and sisters in arms as they gently lowered her from her stake and onto a makeshift cot, nor did she feel the healing touch of the mender as he weaved her wounds shut. Though in time she would awaken from her ordeal, there were many wounds that could not be healed with a mender’s touch and many scars that would endure with her.