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queenxxxsupreme · 4 years

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Wounded

A/N: I really feel like this was not good the :/ but I sort of like it🤷‍♀️ buuut this is my first Eskel x reader so maybe that’s why

Warnings: mentions of past trauma, people being dicks and bullies,

Word Count: 4.0k

Summary: A certain witcher saves you from a mob.

You moved through the market, guiding your cremello stallion, Ghost, through the crowd. Heads turned as you passed, quiet whispers lost in the steady sound of the busy street. You kept your gaze ahead, not bothering to give anyone your attention.

You knew why they stared at you like you were an outcast. They whispered to each other, gossiping to their neighbors and friends about the scarred whore from Vizima. You were an outsider, a lone woman who left her home of Vizima to settle in the quiet little village outside of Flotsam. They knew nothing of your past but rumors spread quicker than the plague. Soon, the townspeople drew up stories of how you were a whore at a brothel and one of your customers had attacked you. You shook the stories away and didn’t bother to correct them. They were close minded folk.

You tied Ghost to a wooden stake outside of a little shop and patted his shoulder before going inside. Once inside, you pushed the hood of your cloak off of your head and looked around, surveying your surroundings.

Curious heads turned in the direction of the shop door opening and a few gasps could be heard.

You offered the owner of the shop a gentle smile and nod before moving to get what you needed for your home.

As you looked over the baskets of fruit and vegetables, you could see another customer staring at you, not making any attempts to be discreet. You knew what she was looking at.

The scars that pulled at the skin on your neck and left arm were difficult to miss, and so was the thick and jagged scar that crossed through your left eye. The injury you sustained to that eye had left it completely white and useless.

“How much for a sack of horse feed?” You asked the shop owner. He looked at you for a few moments, almost like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer you.

“27 ducats.”

“I’ll take three please.” You reached into the satchel across your shoulders and began to fish around for the coin.

“Didn’t know we had a freak show in town.” Another man, a customer, looked at the shop owner then to you.

“I beg your pardon?” You drew your brows together.

“Best not stir up trouble with this one, Arvid.” The owner shook his head. “Might cast a spell on ya.”

The few customers in the store broke out into laughter.

You locked your jaw for a moment, taking a steady deep breath through your nose. Biting back the tears was difficult but not impossible.

The door to the shop opened and a man walked in. You only briefly saw him in the reflective glass behind the shop owner’s counter. You saw a flash of chestnut hair before you tore your gaze away from him.

“We’re just messin with ya, lass.” The man, Arvid, spoke, leaning against the counter further down from you. “What is your name anyways?”

“Fuck off. I didn’t come here to chat with you.” You spat, sending him a sharp glare.

“Good! Didn’t want to talk to you anyways, ya miserable whore.” He muttered before storming out of the shop.

“Here is your coin, good sir.” You passed the shop owner the total you owed him for the horse feed.

You didn’t even think about which hand you used. It happened to be your left one, the one with mangled skin and shaky fingers. He didn’t reach his hand out to take it from you. Your chest tightened and there was a sting in your ribs.

“Would you prefer that I set it down for you?” You asked quietly, shame heating up your face. He nodded his head.

You placed the money down on the counter in front of him.

“Would it be too much to ask for some assistance in putting the feed on to my horse?” You asked.

“I’ll fetch someone to help you.”

“Thank you.” You watched the owner slip into a room at the back of the shop.

You continued to look over the produce, picking a dozen or so apples and putting them into your cloth bag. You added a few bundles of strawberries and then picked up a bushel of fresh rosemary.

Out of the corner of your eye, you could see the man who had just entered lingering by the counter. He was waiting for the shop owner.

“I will be out of your way in just a moment, good sir.” You told him, not meeting his gaze as you started to dig for more coin in your bag.

“I’m in no rush, my lady. Take your time.” His voice was deep but quiet.

When the shop owner returned to his counter, you went to pay him for the produce.

“Got a man right now puttin the feed on your horse. The white one, right?”

You didn’t like how easy it was for the man to point out your horse. But then again, Ghost was white and your scarred features weren’t easy to forget.

“Yes.” You nodded softly.

When you finished paying, you went out to Ghost. Around him stood a group of men. One was holding Ghost’s halter. When they saw you approaching them, the man let your horse go.

“Is there something I can help you gentlemen with?” You asked, moving to Ghost. His ears perked up at the sight of you. You rubbed his nose but kept your eyes on those surrounding him.

“Just taking a look at your stallion. How much?”

“I’m afraid he’s not for sale.” You began to untie the reins from the post.

“Damn shame to have such a handsome horse go to waste. I could use him for my mare. They’d-,”

“I’m not interested, good sir.” You told him firmly.

“She’s a stupid whore, Cadoc.” The man from earlier, Arvid, said. He stood towards the back of the group. “Won’t listen to a damn thing you say.”

“Come on, Ghost.” You clicked your tongue, urging him to follow you. “Let’s go home.”

“You know, lass, there’s a witcher in town!” One of the man spoke, raising his voice so you could hear him as you walked away. “Bet if I paid the right coin and told him of the witch in the woods, he’d come after ya!”

You stopped in your tracks and turned to look at him, brows drawing together.

“I’ve done nothing to harm you or anyone else in this miserable town. Nor am I a witch.”

“Might be true, but we don’t much care for beasts lurking in the woods.”

The men behind him cackled.

Your chest tightened a little and your heart raced.

You pulled the hood up over your head and continued guiding Ghost out of the village.

***

The sun was going down when you arrived home and a storm had followed you in, brewing angrily in the clouds above.

Once you took the feed off of Ghost and took his saddle off, you put him into his stall in the little barn you had. With your bag containing produce over your shoulder, you made your way to your house. You slipped inside just as sheets of rain began to come down from the angry clouds.

You weren’t hungry, too worried and caught up in the thought of those men in the village. What if they did send the witcher after you? What if they decided to come after you? They could burn down your home or the barn with your precious Ghost inside.

Knowing you’d get no sleep, you started a fire in the hearth and sat on a stool near it to use its light to read.

You were halfway through your book when you heard something outside. It sounded like a horse.

Slowly, you stood to your feet, listening carefully for anything. The heavy rain made it difficult to hear anything but the rain. You were just about to retrieve your cloak from your room so you could check on your horse when there was a knock on the front door.

You slapped your hand over your mouth, nearly letting out a shrill scream in fright.

A few heavy heartbeats passed and you thought that maybe whoever it was had left. You slipped into your room and put your cloak on, bringing the hood up over your head.

The knock came again as you were approaching the front door. You stopped in your tracks, gripping the material of your cloak tightly in your hands.

“Who’s there?” You called loud enough so they could hear you over the sound of the rain.

“My lady, you’re in danger. Those men from the village, the ones taunting you, they are coming for you.”

There was a pressure in your chest that quickly formed.

How did you know that this man was telling the truth? He could be some sort of trap those men were setting in an attempt to get you out of the safety of your home.

“My lady, you don’t have much time.”

“How do I know that you aren’t lying to me? That you aren’t one of them?”

“You ave no reason to believe me, but if you stay here, you will surely die.”

You swallowed the lump in your throat, closing your eyes as you rested your forehead against the wooden door.

“I’ve nowhere else to go, good sir.” You spoke quietly, thinking he couldn’t hear you. “If it is my destiny to die here, then so be it. At least I will be somewhere familiar.”

“My lady, I really don’t think that’s a wise choice.”

With a deep breath, you pulled the door open, ready to find out if this was indeed a trap.

A man stood before you with a dark cloak on and a hood shielding much of his face. What you could see was the glowing yellow orbs that gazed down at you.

Your lips parted and you inhaled rather sharply. They indeed had sent a witcher after you.

You stepped away from him, not bothering to close the door.

“Did-Did they send you after me?” Your voice was weak and timid. “Did they tell you of the-of the beast in the woods?”

“My lady, they did not send me for you.” He shook his head. “But I overheard the men speaking of coming here tonight to….” He trailed off.

Your gaze dropped to the floor.

“And you’ve come to warn me?”

“Yes.” He nodded once. You lifted your gaze to him, meeting his. Though the hood of his cloak casted a shadow over his face, you could see markings on the right side of his face. These were scars.

“What is your name, master witcher?”

“Eskel.”

You repeated the name in your head, knowing you had heard that name somewhere. Your brows drew together as you gazed at him.

“Would you happen to know Geralt of Rivia?”

“I do.” He glanced over his shoulder, hearing the pounding of hooves against the dirt road that led to your house. “I’m afraid now isn’t the time for talking. They are here.”

“I can’t leave my home, Eskel.” You shook your head stubbornly. “If I leave here, I’ll have nowhere to go.”

He stood there for a moment, gazing down at you. In the poor lighting, you couldn’t read his expression.

“Close the door, put the fire out, and stay somewhere where there are no windows.” He drew a sword from his back and moved away from the door to your home.

“Where are you going?” You asked but would receive no answer. He was already gone into the darkness of the night.

***

You sat on the bed in your guest room, nervously gripping the material of your skirts as you watched the door to the room. You’d locked it and propped a chair beneath the handle so no one could push it open.

You weren’t sure how much time had passed but it felt like hours.

The rain had stopped some time ago. You could no longer hear it on the roof or hitting the side of the cottage.

There was a knock on the front door, muffled by the closed door to the room you were in. You stood up and left the bedroom. You pulled the door open to find Eskel soaking wet. His hood no longer hid his face from you and the moon provided a beautiful lighting.

“I will be back by in the morning to clean the mess out back.” He told you, sheathing his sword on his back. “I’d advise you not to go out there tonight.”

You nodded softly but as he turned to leave, you stopped him.

“Master witcher, please stay. I’d like to thank you for saving my life.”

“Don’t worry about it, my lady.” He turned away again but this time, you caught sight of a wound on his shoulder. The material of his cloak was sliced and he was bleeding.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help, Eskel?” You drew your brows together. “I’d really feel better if you’d just let me take a look-,”

“I’m fine. Really.” He assured you, not turning his head to look in your direction.

“You’re wounded. At least let me help you patch it up.”

“I don’t want to burden you, my lady.”

“Y/N.” You corrected him softly. “My name is Y/N.”

He kept his back to you, lifting his head just a little at the sound of your name.

“You’re not just bleeding a little, Eskel.” You didn’t want to bother the poor witcher but the thought of leaving him without an extra set of eyes or hands to see the extent of the damage made you nauseous. What if he wasn’t okay? “Eskel, please.” You put your hand on his arm to turn him back around to you. He stopped suddenly, jerking his arm from your hold. You retraced your hand, cradling it to your chest.

You instantly regretted your actions, fearing you’d crossed a line and upset him. You had, after all, used your left hand to touch him.

“I-I’m sorry, Eskel.” Your voice weakened. “I didn’t-The scars are just….” You couldn’t think of the right words to say.

He glanced at you from the corner of his eyes. You held your left hand close to your chest, a look of fear in your eyes. He could see the scars across your skin, mangling the back of your hand.

You saw him looking and dropped your gaze to your hand.

“It was…. It was a wyvern.” You quietly said, thinking you had to explain yourself to him. “Geralt of Rivia saved my life.”

Eskel felt guilty that he made you think your scarred hand was the reason he pulled away almost violently.

“I, uh, I suppose I could use some help.” His voice was timid and not as confident as he had been moments ago.

“I have a spare bedroom you can stay in for the night.” You motioned for him to enter your home. “It’s the only room on the left. I’ll be a moment.. I have to gather what is needed.”

You retrieved a bowl of water and a clean cloth. After starting a fire in the hearth and warming the water in the bowl up, you took the items to the bedroom. As he was slowly pulling off his shirt, you wrung the cloth out. You turned your head to look at Eskel. He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees and his head hanging.

You couldn’t think of something to say, something to ease the tension in the air.

Hearing you approach him, Eskel stiffened up. You pulled your skirts up with one hand so you could climb on to the bed and rest just behind him on your knees.

“Is this okay?” You asked quietly, wanting to ensure you weren’t making him uncomfortable.

He nodded in reply, fearing his voice would be too shaky.

Your eyes were immediately pulled down to the deep gash that cut across his alabaster skin below his shoulder blade.

You could see scars scattered here and there all over his back, but you paid no mind to them. You went to work on carefully cleaning the wound, gentle with each and every stroke of the cloth.

You wanted to say something to maybe make him feel more comfortable. It was clear he didn’t like being shirtless in front of you.

“You, uh, you mentioned you know Geralt?” He spoke. You were thankful that he did so.

You smiled a little at the sound of his voice.

“Yes. We met years ago and ran into each other here and there. He’s mentioned you a handful of times.”

“He has?”

“He’s proud to call you his brother.” Your eyes flickered up to the back of his head, gauging his reaction. His breathing slowed for a moment. “If you ask me, I’d say with the way he speaks about you, he looks up to you.”

Once the wound was clean, you excused yourself from the bed and went to get the proper supplies to patch him up. You returned to your place on your knees behind him.

“Lift your arm just a little, please.” You murmured, worried that if you spoke too loud that maybe it would scare the already timid man.

He did as you requested and this gave you the opportunity to wrap a bandage around his shoulder and chest, covering the wound on his back. Your fingers, warm and soft, brushed over his collarbone as you were straightening the bandage. He flinched at the contact. Your heart broke at the thought of all the cruel hands that must’ve laid themselves upon his skin making him fearful of yours.

“I…. I want you to know that I am thankful that you saved my life.” You told him, looking up through your lashes to see if you could see his reaction. His head was turned away from you.

“Just my job.” His voice was quiet and soft.

“Doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a proper thank you.” You slowed your movements, not wanting to leave him so quickly.

“Earlier…. Earlier you put your hand on my arm.” He started. “I pulled away not because of your…. because of the….”

“Because of my scars.” You finished. He was too kind, too much of a gentleman to mention them.

“I pulled away because of me.” His voice lowered.

“You don’t have to explain yourself.

“But I just…. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable about…. them. The feeling of someone pulling away, being disgusted with the scars….” He trailed off again.

“I know how you feel, Eskel.” You told him, moving to sit next to him on the bed. You wanted to see his sunflower eyes. “I understand.”

He looked at you out of the corner of his eyes, not buying your words entirely.

“When I was recovering from the wyvern attack, my mother…. Her fear wasn’t that I may slip away and die from my injuries or some infection.” You shook your head, dropping your gaze to your hands. Your fingertips brushed over the back of your left hand, tracing the ridges and valleys left in your skin by the wyvern. “Her fear was that I’d never find a husband. No man would ever want a woman whose complexion is scarred forever, whose hand trembles because the nerves and muscles were so damaged….” You trailed off, shaking your head and biting back tears.

Eskel listened to you carefully, empathetic and sad.

“And then I lost the use of my eye.” You smiled a little. “I realized that if I couldn’t find a man who would love me for me, then I need no man.”

You met his gaze. He quickly looked away.

“You’re a kind man, Eskel. You deserve more than you’ve been given.” You gave him a little smile though he didn’t see it and moved to leave the room. Just as you were stepping away from the bed, his large hand clasped around your wrist.

“Stay, please.” He whispered, yellow eyes finally meeting yours.

You nodded your head and returned to sitting next to him. He pulled on a thin gray shirt, leaving the laces at the top undone.

“Scars like ours…. They prove that you’ve survived what should have killed you.”

Ours. Eske repeated what you said in his head, over and over. There was something about the way you said ours, like you considered him more human, like you counted him as an equal.

You looked down at his hand which he kept on his knee. Without much thinking, you took his hand and laced your fingers with his.

“My grandmother always said that someone with no scars never truly took risks. They’ve never lived. She said that if you preferred a dull and boring life, find someone with no scars. But if you wish to have a life full of wonders and excitement, find someone with scars.”

“Your grandmother sounds like a wise woman.”

“She was.” You smiled sadly. “She passed away just before I lost the use of my eye. My grandfather carried scars all over. He was a Clan an Craite. My mother always said that my stubbornness came from him. He had one hand and still he could beat any man in a sword fight. Or a fist fight for that matter. My grandmother loved him dearly. After he passed, she was never quite the same.”

Your chest tightened and ached.

“I could only dream to have a love as grand and fearless as theirs.” You brushed your fingertips over his knuckles, admiring the stark contrast of your touch and his scarred knuckles. “But I think everyone deserves happiness. Don’t you?”

You turned your head to look at him.

“I…. I can’t say that I do.” He admitted.

You pressed your lips together in a line to keep yourself from saying the first thing that came to mind. Instead, you thought about your answer for a moment, wanting to be gentle and cautious with how you spoke to him.

“Do you believe that you deserve happiness?”

He said nothing, keeping his eyes on the floor in front of him.

You placed your hand on his right cheek, turning his head so that he faced you. His lips parted when you made contact with the scarred side of his face. His breathing hitched and his heart began to beat rather frantically. But you were tender with him, fingers just barely ghosting over the divots and raised lines of scar tissue.

You brushed your thumb over the corner of his lips, your eyes following the scar that gnarled the right corner of his lips.

Tears had come to your eyes, threatening to blur your vision of the man before you. You blinked them away and they slid freely down your cheeks.

You could see it in his eyes, the way he was hesitant to completely meet your gaze. He was timid and frightened even, which was odd because he was a witcher. Surely something must’ve happened to him to make him so skittish and afraid.

“You pulled away because you’ve never known a gentle hand.” Your voice cracked. You swallowed the lump in your throat, urging yourself to calm down.

“Don’t-Please don’t cry.” He murmured, placing his hand on your wrist to pull your hand away from his face. “I don’t want to make you cry.”

“You aren’t making me cry.” You laughed softly, wiping the tears from your cheeks. “I just…. I can’t imagine what the world must’ve done to you.”

You didn’t know how to say what you were thinking. The world had made him broken and distrustful.

“I pity those who never have taken the time to get to know you.”

“You don’t even know me.” He told you.

You nodded softly, looking away from him for a moment. Your eyes wandered around the room for a moment.

“But I would like to.” Your gaze flickered to him. “If you’d allow me.”

His eyes widened just a little in surprise. You wanted to get to know him. You - a beautiful and kind woman - wanted to get to know him - a damaged witcher.

You opened your mouth to speak, wanting to fix anything wrong that you might’ve said. You feared that his silence was a sign that you’d crossed a line.

But before you could get anything out, Eskel was leaning over to kiss your cheek.

Your skin flushed. You smiled shyly, bowing your head for a moment before you looked up at him through your lashes.

“I’m assuming I can take that as a yes?”

He nodded his head, squeezing your hand gently.

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#the witcher #tw3 wild hunt #eskel witcher #eskel x reader #eskel oneshot

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creativetomato · 4 years

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Platonia

Chapter 2

toska – n. a dull ache of the soul, a sick pining, a spiritual anguish

Weronika Anastazja Kucharska was rather pleasent company he had to admit. She seemed submissive enough, listened to him, followed his advice like a lost puppy would, and when she didn’t know something and had questions she came to him. She was depended on him. Which only played right to his hands.

Tom saw her as a little toy, a pretty doll with big eyes and silky hair, he could use and play with. But he didn’t use her and kept from playing useless mind games with her. In all of her submissiveness, in all her politeness and calmness, there was barely any honesty in her. It was as if she had no real personality of her own. Not really. As if she was afraid of showing who she was. Was it fear? ...or rather, she was hiding her true self, her true intentions which made him more wary of her than he’d like to admit. She was a mystery to him, a girl full of contradictions, a person he wasn’t able to read, an enigma. And he hated that. When he had tried out his Occlumency skills on her there had been no reaction, no thoughts he could read or memories he could see. Just blank nothingness. By lack of her reaction he guessed she hadn’t even realized he had tried to read her mind, so, it was only natural he didn’t leave her out of his sight. Because something he didn’t know or couldn’t control was something that could stand in his way of reaching greatness. With these revelations Tom started to observere her every movement, like a hawk watching its clueless prey. Because Weronika Kucharska was not a normal teenage girl. There was something wrong with her, something he couldn’t grasp and when he reached with his magic he could feel her own sizzling like hot water dropping onto ice. Her magic was chaotic and restless, constantly in movement. Usually restless magic was seen in magical children, not in taught girls that had wands and used magic. There was something hidden in her magic, something far-off, and he fully intended to find out what it was. Because someone who had no control of their magic could be dangerous. Not only to his plans but to students and teacher, to Hogwarts, as well. With these thoughts he had started to keep her near him and when he had explained the classes to her, showed her homework she could start to work on as well during the holidyas, he was disappointed to realize there was no genius behind her, just average intellect at best. Yes, in some classes she was better than others. She excelled in Anicent Runes. Her knowledge on runes and languages was marvelous, but when it came to Herbiology she was just mundane. Everything they had to write down, theory and essays, she was simply average. She really only exceeded in Ancient Runes, and to his surprise in potions. At least that was what he could tell as lessons hadn’t even started yet. Students would return in the upcoming days though, as classes would start next week again.

„How do you know so much about runes?“, he asked her one day after New Years eve, after his birthday, sitting with her in the Slytherin common room and working on school work. At that she looked up from her essay, her bright eyes looking into his dark ones. He wasn’t used to people looking into his eyes so directly. She didn’t even flinch. She truly was an enigma.

„It… It was an important subject at my old school.“, she told him and dropped her gaze quickly. Too quickly. Tom had observed how she tried to avert topics that had to do with runes and he wondered why. His fingers twitched with burning curiosity, wanting to dissect her like a toad. Because she wasn’t telling him everything and it irked him to no end not being able to read her mind. So he had to ask her: „Your old school?“

Weronika didn‘t look up this time and simply nodded: „I went to Czocha College of Wizardry. It’s a rather small school. I should have gone to Durmstrang, but they don’t take muggleborns. And the one school in Russia… I can’t speak Russian. But I can speak German and Polish, so I was send to Czocha. It’s near the border to Germany.“

Tom started to get intruiged by that school he had never really heard anything about. She must have seen, or rather felt, his disbelief, as small as it was. She could also be used having to explain where she came from, probably having explained to teachers which school she had gone to.

„It’s really small. Only around two hundred students. Most of them muggleborn because of Durmstrang… over there I learned English too, just in case…“, she finally looked up at him and he obersved her face, every twitch and every emotion that crossed her features. Now he was even more curious: „Tell me more.“ He hated not knowing something and in his mind there was nothing more powerful than knowlegde. Surprised by the demand in his voice she looked up to him before she slowly nodded: „Alright… so… there are five houses. I was in Faust, the house of knowledge and power.“ She scratched her neck in thought and put down her quill she had written with on her paper: „Every house is based on one culture and Faust is based on German culture. We learn Alchemy, Runic Magic, Arithmancy, Herbology and… erm… let me think. Ritual magic…“ She started to count the number of lessons with her fingers. She really was a forgetful person, something he had been able to observe as well: „Beastology, Magical Defence and Theory, and… Mind Magic. Sorry, can’t remember the rest. It’s been a while since I left and so many things had happened.“ An apologetic smile graced her pale features and Tom smiled as well: „It’s quite alright. Still, the things you were thaught seem different than here at Hogwarts.“ At that Weronika nodded: „That’s true. But I’m fine. I mean… Alchemy and Potions is basically the same. Runic magic always fascinated me the most. Together with…. Well, really everything that has to do with magic. I’m only not that good at theory. I am more the type of person who just… does things. And I don’t like thinking too much about them, which also, you know… depends on the situation, and sometimtes I do think too much. But, still… I’d much rather just act.“

„How… un-Slytherin.“, he chuckled at her and that was something she had not expected. Not at all. His chuckle sounded deep, and a little breathless, but he was just a teenage boy and she knew his voice would change and mature, become deeper with age. She felt a blush creeping up her neck as emberrassment rushed through her: „Oh, stop it. There is much more to being ambitious or cunning… And I’m actually a pretty good liar.“

„A good liar? Do you think all the Slytherins are liars?“, he mocked her and her blush deepend: „I- I didn’t mean… stop putting words into my mouth.“ Again he chuckled amused: „I apologize. Although, with what you’ve told me… rather wanting to act… you would fit much better into Gryffindor than into Slytherin, I think.“

„No, not really.“, she shrugged her shoulders, „Because… I don’t just act. I… plan. I decide. Or I just… I think about decisions and try to find out what outcomes they have and… yeah, I’d rather act, that’s true, but not before planning it. And I am ambitious about the things I want. Buuut…“

„…but?“

„Sometimes I have reaaaally bad impulse control.“, at that she laughed for a moment and he smiled with a nod: „I see. But I am still not convinced if you really fit into the House of snakes, Weronika.“

„Niki.“

„What?“

„Why aren’t you calling me Niki?“

„Because Weronika is your name and I like it better. I barely use nicknames.“, he simply explained and resumed working. A few seconds later he felt her gaze leaving his form and she followed him, the only thing being heard the scraping of quill on parchment as she still felt the burn in her cheeks.

Somehow, without realzing it, he had started to feel comfortable around her. She was just there with him, spending time together. Him reading, and her doing the same or writing or sketching something into her notebook. It looked well-used and reminded him of his own diary. He didn’t like it; didn’t like how well she fit into his life, how she had just made herself comfortable around him, sitting with him at the table, eating and him helping chosing the right food to not over extert her stomach. She was never too loud but talkative, never overbearing but ever present. Sometimes she would leave, probably exploring the castle or talking to the teachers, and going to the Hospital Wing to get checked as she still hadn’t fully recovered from her escape to the British Isles. At one point she had taken her bag and wore thick clothing and told him she would go to Hogsmade. She had Albus Dumbledores permission.

„And what do you want there?“, he had asked her and she had just shrugged: „I want to take a walk on the fresh air. I rather enjoy the snow, you know? And see what I can find in Hogsmade. See what kind of stores there are…“

„Shall I accompany you, then?“, he had asked her after that, which had not only surprised her, but him as well. Because he truly wanted to go with her, spend time with her. Because he didn’t want her to go alone into the cold. She had a reather weak constitution and he would feel much better if he knew she would have someone with her. Yes, that was the reason why he didn’t want her to go alone; because she was his responsibilty, nothing more, nothing less. It didn’t matter how only a few days had passed since she had been here, with him, a calming presence beside him, always there. He didn’t like that. Not at all. He drew his eyebrows together but she was distracted by looking and rummaging through her worn out leather bag, smiling: „No, it’s fine, really. I want to go alone, think about things and… well.“ Weronika shrugged at her own words before shouldering her bag again when she was sure she had everything she needed. With that she looked up and smiled at him, her eyes twinkling: „See ya, later, Tom.“

So, she turned around and left the Slytherin common room, leaving him standing there, not liking how this new girl still intrigued him and somehow wasn’t what she seemed. She wasn’t normal. She was like him. Yes, Tom realized, she was just like him in the way he was special. Because she was special, uniqe. He just had to find out what made her so special.

A few hours passed and when she came back Tom was sitting in one of the couches, surrounded by books, one in his lap. As soon as she came in he closed the heavy book to turn his attention to her. Her cheeks were glowing, her nose even redder from the cold winter outside. There were snow flakes already melting on her thick clothing and her hat, melting on her glasses as the snow flakes turned into little water droplets. She pulled the hat down and her messy hair was electrified and simply put a mess.

„Whew, let me tell you, it’s pretty cold outside.“, she sniffeled a little and he slowly got up from his sitting position to make his way towards her. He noticed how there were no gloves on her hands and unhappy with this new revelation he clipped his tongue. At that she looked up at him before he took both of her hands. They were ice cold. He didn’t like that. She could get sick and she still needed some time until she was fully recovered. He knew that from experience.

„When you came here you were already in bad health. You really shouldn’t have left while it was snowing this hard outside.“, he chastised her with a scowl he hadn’t realised he was wearing. He didn’t even look at her face as all his attention was on the hands he was holding and rubbing inside his own, trying to warm the cold skin.

„Tom, it’s… it’s fine, really.“, there was awe in her voice and only then did he stop. What was he doing? What was he doing? Acting like a fool, caring about her and her stupid cold hands. Yes, she was mysterious and he wanted to know everything about her, wanted to know why he wasn’t able to read her mind, but it didn’t mean he wanted to be close or intimate with her. The relationship he was building with her was just a means to an end. However, as soon as she stepped into the room he had been concerned with her wellbeing, remembering what she had looked like that first day; broken and weary, twitching at every sound and restless in a way that was too farmiliar to him. It had been over a week since then, and again, did he think about how she had carved a place beside him. No, Tom didn’t like that. Not one bit.

He dropped her hands as if he had burned his skin on her own.

Quickly he straigthened his shoulders and there was a command in his tone he usually only used with his knights: „Go, take a shower or a bath, and warm yourself up. I’ll wait for you, so we can go to dinner together.“ After his order he turned briskly around and went book to the place where his books waited for him. The silence that followed was heavy and filled with uncertainty but he didn’t care. He did not care. He shouldn’t care about other people. He should only care about himself.

Tom didn’t look up when he heard her steps leaving the room to get to her dorm room. The only reason he should keep her so close was to find out her true intentions and why she was able to shield her mind so well.

When Weronika had left she had still been in awe. Back in the common room she had been surprised and even weirded out and somehow out of touch with reality. She could only stare at her now warmed hands he had held so lovingly. Because Tom had cared. He had cared about her and her well being, to the extent of even being worried. He had wanted to come with her, too. She looked down at her own hands and remembered the warmth of his skin. She never would have thought he would be this warm. And she should be mad too, with how he had ordered her to get warmed up, but she had been too awestruck. He had seemed like such a cold person from the beginning, and he just seemed like this unapproachable character; or maybe she just wasn’t used to such kindness anymore. And after spending this much time with him she had realized what a genius he was, how much he knew, and God, how good he was at teaching. Usually, when someone had tried to explain something to her she had not understood, people had grown impatiend, but not Tom. He stayed calm, answered all her questions as best as he could, was patient with her and wasn’t even angry when her mind started to wander again. And when he realised how restless she became, with her leg twitching uncontrollably, he would stop with homework or with whatever lesson they were doing, because before she knew it, he knew she needed a break. No one had ever been this patient with her. Not her friends, and not her family. She wasn’t used to someone caring about her like this.

Weronika took a deep breath and closed her eyes, her hands still in front of her as she had looked at them. Slowly her hands turned into soft fists. She shouldn’t get distracted by Tom. He was charming and good looking and his voice could do things she should hate. But she didn’t hate it. Far from it. Her body reacted in ways she had no control over and if there is one thing they had in common it was the love for control. Alright, she had to admit, she wasn’t that good at it, but still, she loved knowing everything about everybody, not because she wanted to blackmail or something, but because… just because. There was no real reason, really, only the traumatic experiences of her past that made her wary of others, and knowing everything about everyone made her feel safer. More prepared. Yes, it was all about being prepared in case someone had the ill intent of wanting to hurt her. Because she had been hurt enough in her life. By family, by friends, by enemies, by her own hands. And it was no surprise that she had no healthy coping mechanism when it came to her traumatic experiences and anxiety. To cope with her emotional anguish she liked to hurt herself, and she was good at hiding it. She opened her eyes and looked again at her hands. It wasn’t that she was cutting herself. Nothing like that. It was just that sometimes when things got too much, she couldn’t stop herself from harming herself until she bled in ways that wouldn’t leave scars.

Again she took a deep breath before going to her bed. Her thoughts returned to Tom and while she started to underss to get under the shower as he had instruced she wondered if he would still act the same when the other students returned from the holidays.

When she was finished with her shower she dressed into one of the uniforms she had gotten. Stockings and the green pleated skirt went to her knees, the design high waist as was appropriate for the decade she was in. She stuffed her blouse into the skirt and put on the beige soft cardigan that warmed her enough. Then came her brown leather boots she had came to Hogwarts in. They weren’t thick and not appropriate for snow, but good enough for Hogwarts halls. When she was finished she put her hair into a messy bun. She shouldered her bag that she had filled with schoolwork and her sketchbook before she decided to return to Tom. Dinner was waiting for them.

There were no words exchanged as they had gotten on the way to the Great Hall. They were pretty much the only students in all of Hogwarts, as all the students had left to their families to make sure they were safe from the raging war and danger that were both Hitler and Grindelwald. Tom had no family to return to and Weronika? Weronika had lost her family. With a gulp and a heavy heart she remembered her mother, her step father and her brothers, and how it gnawed at her heart that she didn’t miss them as much as a daugther and sister should. There were no friends to miss either; except the selected few.

When they arrived at the Great Hall they sat opposite of each other like they had the days before. She was still trying to eat slowly and to not over eat as he had warned her several times. At the memory on their first dinner together she looked up at him. Since she had returned from her short shower he hadn’t said a thing. He seemed to be colder than usual, withdrawn and she felt as if she had done something wrong. Nibbling on her lower lip she ignored the food before her as she thought of anything she might have done to anger him. But no. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Had she? Then why was she getting the silent treatment? The cold shoulder? Maybe she had overstepped her boundaries? She did that sometimes. Her mother had always warned her to not step out of line, to be the perfect church going daughter, so she always tried to be good, always tried to do nothing wrong. It didn’t always work; being good and sweet.

„…Tom?“, she saw the tensing of his shoulders and suddenly she felt her anxiety build up inside her chest into a tight knot. „Tom.“, she tried to sound more sure of herself, more secure, and was glad when she did a somewhat good job, „Are you alright? You… you seem different than usual… erm, have I done something… wrong?“

When he looked up from his meal he realized she hadn’t taken one bite and he also realized that she was worried. Worried that she had done something wrong. And her worry was honest. Through her glasses he could see the worry in her blue eyes. Tom had to admit he was angry. Not at her, although she was the reason for his anger. No, he was angry at himself, because he had gotten too attached to her. Yes, attached. To another person. In a matter of days. But it didn’t matter. Soon enough his knights would return and with that his attention would be drawn to things that had nothing to do with her. Simply put they probably had spend too much time with each other as she was the first person he had over concentrated on this much. Not even his knights enjoyed the amount of attention she received.

So, he smiled a reassuring smile: „No, don’t worry. I was just… thinking. In a matter of days the other students are going to return and with that my obligations. I won’t be able to spend as much time with you anymore. Also, in the next few days I’ll have to prepare myself, too, so… I hope you will be able to study on your own.“

„Oh…“, that… that was not what she had expected. Not at all. Because they had become somewhat friendly with each other, too, which was… strange for her, to say the least. Having some kind of companion was strange and she simply wasn’t used to befriending people. Never was.

At his look she quickly tried to find the words for a better answer: „Ah, yeah, it’s fine.“ She smiled nervously at him: „Really, I get it. I just thought… well, nevermind. But I do hope you won’t forget me in all your obligations.“ Her answer made him smile a disarming smile and she blushed at that. Dinner turned peaceful and so were the next few days. And true to his words Tom had less time to spare for her. Which was fine, really. He had been nice and charming and forthcoming and he was just acting like a gentleman. Which only angered her. Was she really so easily swayed? On the other hand she had been exhausted, emotionally and physically, and she had needed a few days to recover. In her weakened state her concsiousness had wanted to lean on to someone and with Tom being so forthcoming it was no wonder she had chosen him. Truth to be told she still needed time to recover, wanted even to depend on him, but time was limited, at least for now, so it was only good Tom had put some distance between them as it cleared her mind.

She was here to change things that should never be changed, nontheless she wanted to try it. It was too late to stop now and she had already lost a part of herself during the process. The things she had done to be safe in an unkown future could be called immoral, but she didn’t have the privilege to be morally good. A long time ago she had realized that being ethical was just a cage people liked to build around themselves. It condemend them to untruths and comfortabilty and only allowed change to a certain point. Morals were things people hid behind like a warm cloak during a storm and after realizing that she had put away her morals to do whatever she could to protect those she had learned to love. Slytherins were loyal to a fault and she was no exception. With shame and new determination she tried to ignore her hurt feelings because she had no time for friendships, no time nor energy for useless comardrie that would only drag her further into a pit of anguish and torture. She had to figure things out, had to get healthy and well again and before she could do anything about her life in Hogwarts she had to think about repaying her debt. Because without him she never would have made it to Hogwarts.

Tom only distracted her and she had gotten too attached too fast to him. The reason for that were not unkown to her. She was a touch starved being – ironically hating to be touched by other people – and starved when it came to love and affection. Toms patience and gentleness, how fake it may be, was something she could fall into, a warmth she had missed her whole life, a carressing hand that should have been her mothers. She sighed; and ultimatly held Toms attention again. He seemed to misunderstand her sigh as he straightened himself before leaning forward towards her.

„Look, Weronika…“, he started quietly and she looked up at him, „I… enjoyed our time together. I really did.“ Why he told her that she wasn’t sure of, but every of his words could be a lie, even if they didn’t feel like lies. She lost her trust in people a long time ago.

„But I am Prefect and I tutor a few students. Also, I am part of the Quidditch team, and there are many other things I do in my free time.“, he explained to her and she wanted to tell him that it was fine, that he didn’t have to explain himself, and somehow she couldn’t. She just stared at him, touched at his attempt to make her feel better. Had she looked that saddened by the fact he would have less time for her?

„…it’s fine.“, she said and her quiet voice sounded uncertain and a little embarrassed, „You don’t have to explain yourself to me. We… We aren’t dating or anything like that… it was just… I think going through the things I went through… I think I just started to depend on you because I… I didn’t have anyone for a long time. It’s… It’s hard to explain but… gosh… Ich fühle mich so dumm… dumm, dumm…“ She shook her head, murmuring the last words to herself and he looked at her with a expression she couldn’t quite read. So, she smiled: „Sorry. It’s just…“ And before she knew it tears started to swell in her eyes. A break down? Now? Gosh, how pathethic.

Her fork fell onto her dinner as she started to wipe her tears from under the glasses. From out of nowhere he had conjured a handkerchief and held it out to her and she took it with mumbled thanks. As she started to wipe her tears away he took one of her hands in a comforting touch, his thumb stroking the soft warm skin of the limb. More tears started to wreck her body, accompanied by silent sobs that shook her into the depths of her soul. She wanted to explain herself to him, wanted to tell him it wasn’t because of him she was acting this way, but she couldn’t find the words, only holding on to his hand as if he was her lifeline. She didn’t know how much time had passed until she was somewhat calm, his handkerchief wet with her snot and her tears. She laughed then, a humourless sound: „Sorry. I just…“Then she shrugged and he nodded as if he understood. But Weronika knew he didn’t understand. No one understood. People may have went through traumas, but everyone was different, everyone percieved things differently, and no one would ever understand the pain she was going through. She was selfish in that regard and holding on to her pain and being afraid of losing all the other things she was still able to feel. Happiness had left her to die on a bed of tragedy a long time ago and now she had cloaked herself in the blood of her tears and forged a weapon with her pain, striking everyone who would dare to stop her from her goals, the only thing giving her the power to do so being hope.

„Ya‘ know…“, she started, sounding strange because of her stuffed nose, cheeks hot and eyes burning, „I used to dance ballet.“

At that a stunned look crossed his features but he kept silent and let her talk: „I started when I was really young. Maybe… four or something? Before I even knew magic existed. My family was poor but my mother wanted me to have a good life – a life she never had. So… so she send me to tutors for ballet and piano.“ She shrugged at that and tried not to look at him. Strangely he had not let go of her hand and had not stopped carressing her warm skin with his thumb. He had beautiful long fingers and big hands, a little rough from playing Quidditch. Hands worthy of a piano player. She liked the image of it.

„But at some point… only weeks before I got my letter for Czocha… we changed shoes.“, Weronika sniffeled and knew she needed to explain this, because she couldn’t imagine him knowing about the footwear of ballet, „At first I learned dancing in… in comfortable shoes. Made out of leather and silk, and… then… when I was good enough we changed to… to pointe shoes. They… They are very uncomfortable and… well, uncomfortable isn’t right.“ She laughed at that and wiped her nose with the handkerchief he had given her, the food now untouched and ignored by both of them, ignoring any curious glances thrown their way: „They are fucking painful. After training for the first time with them I wasn’t able to walk the next day. They… They are hard on the inside at the front, so-so that dancers may stand on their tip toes, and… and… God, it just hurt so much. So… So I stopped. My mother didn’t like that, of course, but then came the letter and… and it was blessing in disguise, really. And… And I hated pain, I still do, but... when I was still just eleven years old I thought that would be it. But by now I have went through so much pain, I just…“ Her breath hitched and she had somehow lost herself in her words, forgot what she had wanted to tell him with the little part of her life she just shared with him. So, she shook her head, before she tried to find the meaning behind her words: „What… What I want to say is… is… I… after all this pain I have went through… I guess I just sucked in the attention you have given me. So, it’s alright if you don’t want to be friends or anything like that. That... That’s all I wanted you to know, I guess. That I’m just this weird foreign girl sucking in any affection like a sponge.“ Her pointed look at his hand holding her made him realize what she meant, so he nodded. But he didn’t let go.

„I see… and I am sorry you have went through so much pain.“, he told her, his voice quiet but his gaze never leaving her, his eyes burning into her soul, „And I wouldn’t mind being friends with you.“ A slow smile twitched at the corners of his mouth and before she knew it she gave him a watery smile as well. Squeezing his hand thankfully for understanding her she finally pulled back her hand.

„And now I’m not hungry anymore.“, she laughed as if to say how silly of me when in reality she only wanted to change the topic. Tom humored her although he wanted to press her for more answer. Had she been anyone else he would have already used Legilimency on her; he would have unwrapped every single one of her secrets and read her like an open book. Instead he had to rely on her words and expressions, the way she cried and smiled and moved.

Hours later, when he was lying in his bed and thinking back to their conversation he mulled over her words; over and over again, analyzing them. From what she had shared with him pain had became a part of her life at some point. There was also a desire to be accepted and loved, to be held and embraced. When he had been a small child he had held the same desire, but now he scoffed at these romantic notions. He was a powerful wizard, he only needed himself. Affection wouldn’t help him achieve his goals, but girls like Weronika were dependend on them. With her tale she had shared the way he would be able to control and manipulate her. He smiply had to become the person she would confide in the most, the person she could lean to and trust. If she truly was as touch starved as she thought it would be easy, really, to get on her good side. He could whipser sweet meaningless nothings into her ear, make her blush, hug her and coddle her like a babe. It was a small price to pay if it meant he would be able to gather all her secrets like the collector he was.

A smile grew on his lips as he slowly drifted to sleep. Yes, it would be easy to turn her into his submissive little pet.

#Harry Potter #Harry Potter fanfiction #Tom Riddle #Tom Marvolo Riddle #Tom Riddle fanfiction #Tom Riddle/OC #Tom/OC #Hogwarts #Hogwarts houses #Slytherin #Original Character #Harry Potter OC #Original Harry Potter Character #fanfiction #fanfictions #1940s #Hogwarts 1940s #Platonia #Platonia fanfiction

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roman-writing · 5 years

Text

two, across (1/?)

Fandom: Fire Emblem Three Houses

Pairing: Hilda Valentine Goneril / Lysithea von Ordelia

Rating: T

Wordcount: 6,428

Summary: Lysithea can barely keep afloat under the workload of giving undergrad lectures and finishing off her PhD thesis. Meanwhile Dr. Hilda V. Goneril is somehow both the laziest person as well as the most successful young professor she has ever known. It's absolutely aggravating.

Read it here on AO3 or read it below the cut

“Homes are a crossword puzzle I can’t solve.”

-Maria Tsvetaeva “Moscow in the Plague Year” (trans. Christopher Whyte)

Lysithea stares down at the newspaper. The world is falling apart, political crises cropping up everywhere, precarious markets teetering on the edge of another GFC, and worst of all: someone else has already done the crossword.

Even worse still, whoever has done the crossword puzzle has done so absolutely flawlessly. In pen. With no mistakes. She picks up the newspaper, incredulous, to inspect the crossword more closely, but sure enough -- perfectly executed in ballpoint.

Her hand clenches into a fist, crumpling the thin pages. Breathing deeply, Lysithea smooths the page out again. In her other hand she holds a travel mug filled with a mocha and extra marshmallows. It's 6:46am and the offices of the biosciences department are empty but for her. Or at least she had assumed that the offices of the biosciences department were empty, but clearly that is not the case. Not unless someone waltzed in and stole the free department newspaper before 6am, which was ludicrous.

Nobody but her bothered to come in this early. Who could have possibly ruined her routine? It's the beginning of the first term of her last year of her PhD thesis, and if there's one thing Lysithea hates more than the thought of having to actually submit her thesis, it's a break in routine.

With a huff, Lysithea takes a sip of her coffee, then starts on a hunt through the offices in search of the culprit. Most of the offices are dark, their doors locked. Her own office is little more than a dingy storage closet that was converted into spare workspace for the youngest of the departmental doctoral students. But when the university allowed her to teach undergraduate courses, they had to clear out an office as well. It came with the territory.

Directly across from her own door is an office that she rarely saw open throughout all two of her years at Garreg Mach University. The nameplate on the door sports the letters: DR. HILDA V. GONERIL. Lysithea's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. The door to Hilda’s office is open a sliver, showing a slit of light from within. Stomping forward, wielding her newspaper and coffee like relics in some holy war, Lysithea barges in without knocking.

Hilda is not -- as Lysithea had expected -- working. The back of her office chair has been loosened so that it leans precariously back, and one of Hilda's bare feet is propped atop the desk. She is hunched over her foot, wielding a tiny paintbrush and bottle of pink nailpolish that matches the colour of her hair.

Hilda only glances up in bored disinterest from where she’s painting her toenails, before returning her attention to her present task. “Oh, hey! Lysithea, right? What’s up!”

Instead of answer, Lysithea holds up the newspaper as though it’s a piece of labelled evidence in a murder case. “Did you do this?”

“Sure did. Hey, do you want me to paint your nails, too? Pink would look great with your complexion.”

“What? No.” Lysithea scrunches up her nose. “Why are you even here this early? I’ve never seen you here before noon.”

In truth, Lysithea has rarely seen her around the office at all. They had been introduced a year ago, when Hilda had been hired as the department’s newest Associate Professor, but as far as Lysithea could tell, the woman might as well have worked on another campus. She could count on one hand the number of times they had exchanged words, none of them particularly memorable.

Hilda rolls her eyes. “Ugh! I know, right? I drew the short straw, and got the 7am undergrad OChem courses this term. Can you believe it? Being the most junior professor in a department is the worst.” She puts the finishing touches on her foot, and drawls, “Buuut it does mean I get to leave early most days. Tit for tat.”

Hilda puffs up her cheeks and blows on the wet nailpolish.

Angry words gather on the tip of Lysithea's tongue. She has to take a deep breath to quell them. "Dr. Goneril -" she begins.

Hilda makes a face. "Ew. What are you? My student? Don't call me that."

Lysithea grits her teeth. "Hilda," she begins again, trying to sweeten her words as much as she possibly can. "I would really appreciate it if you didn't do the crossword in the staff newspaper. Could you maybe get a different paper on your way to work, if you're going to be coming in so early every day this term?"

At that, Hilda lets out a snort of amusement. She puts her foot down on the ground, spreading her legs out so that she's sprawled in her seat. The toes of both feet, Lysithea notices, are perfectly manicured and painted. She must have been here for a while now, if she managed to get the crossword out and do her nails before a lecture.

"No way, short stack. You know how boring it is here without anyone else around? I need to do something with my hands, or I go, like, crazy." Even as Hilda says it, her fingers are fiddling with the armrests of her office chair, drumming a syncopated rhythm.

Lysithea frowns, remembers she is trying to be charming -- which she has never been very good at, to be perfectly honest -- and puts on a plasticky smile. "Well, maybe we can work out some sort of deal."

Hilda remains slouched in her seat. "Like what?"

"We’ll trade. You leave me the crossword on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I leave you the crossword on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and the weekends. How about that?"

"Hmm." Hilda taps her ankles together, like a child who can't keep herself still for longer than two seconds. Then she announces gleefully, "Nope!"

"Great! We can -" Lysithea blinks. "Wait. What?"

"No deal!" Hilda says, as cheerfully as before. Her cellphone rings on her desk, and a calendar notification pops up on the screen. "Shit! I'm late."

Rather than stand up immediately and bolt for the door however, Hilda leans her head back and sighs to the ceiling.

Lysithea stares at her, then at the phone, which is still chirping away. "Aren't you going to go to class?"

"With wet nail polish? Are you kidding?" Hilda waves her hand in the vague direction of the exit, where the elevators are around the corner. "The little goblins can wait."

"It's the earliest class! You'll be lucky if half of them show up, let alone wait five minutes before bailing."

Hilda yawns. "Good. Maybe then I can just go home and get some more sleep."

"At least turn off your phone," Lysithea snaps. The mechanical chirping is really starting to grate on her nerves. It's way too early for this.

"You know, you're pretty bossy for a PhD student." There is no malice in her tone, and even as she says it, Hilda reaches over and presses a button on her phone so that the alarm stops.

"So I've been told." Lysithea shifts the newspaper so that it rests in the crook of her elbow. When Hilda doesn't look the least bit concerned that Lysithea is still standing in her office, Lysithea sighs, "Listen. I need this, alright?"

Hilda shoots her an incredulous glance. She has begun to swing her chair around so that she slowly twirls in place, her legs outstretched so as not to hit any of the clutter that’s scattered everywhere. Somehow through the full arc she manages to maintain eye contact the whole way. "You need...a crossword puzzle?"

"It's -" Lysithea can feel her cheeks burn. "It's just a part of my routine! I don't like having my routine interrupted! It ruins my whole day."

Hilda continues to twirl in her office chair. Her long pink hair, tied back in twin tails, dangles over the back of the chair, stirring lightly as she turns. Lysithea secretly wonders how on earth someone manages to pull off that hairstyle without appearing completely juvenile. If she wore her hair that way herself, she would look like she was fifteen, but when Hilda does it, she just seems like a free-spirited adult.

Hilda makes a noise between a sigh and blowing a raspberry. Then, all of a sudden, she stops her chair. She bends over double and tests her toenails, deems them suitably dry, and pulls on her socks and shoes -- a pair of black boots that reach just past her ankle. When she stands abruptly, Lysithea has to resist the urge to take a step back.

She had forgotten that Hilda was so tall and broad-shouldered; Hilda dressed in such a way to make her seem as delicate as possible, but there was no mistaking the flex of muscle beneath her clothes. Most people were tall when standing next to Lysithea, but Hilda had a presence that seemed to extend beyond her, making her appear larger than she actually was.

Hilda picks up her phone and begins tapping away at the screen to unlock it. Then, she sticks the phone in her bag -- black and trendy, to match the rest of what she wore -- and slings the bag over her shoulder.

"I really gotta go now. So..." Hilda walks towards Lysithea, making a shooing motion as if trying to herd a cat. "Chop chop! Let's go! Out of my office!"

"Hang on -! Hey! Just -! Can't we talk about this?"

Lysithea is shuffled out the door, and Hilda flicks the light off, shutting her office behind them and locking it.

"We did talk." Hilda tosses her keys into her bag, where they clank against her phone and whatever other objects are kept all in a jumble in there. "And I liked it! Surprisingly. We should definitely do it again! You’re here tomorrow, yeah?"

“What do you mean ‘surprisingly’?” Lysithea says, indignant.

But Hilda only pats her on the shoulder and strides off towards the elevators. For a moment, Lysithea stares after her, then gives chase. She catches up when Hilda rounds the corner.

"Just leave me the crossword," she says as Hilda is pressing the button to call the elevator. "You can do the sudoku!"

Hilda wrinkles her nose as though she had been offered garbage from behind the cafeteria. "Boring!" she says in a singsong voice.

The light for the elevator flickers through the various levels to reach theirs on the fifth floor. When the elevator doors slide open, and Hilda steps forward, Lysithea panics and says the only thing she can think of: “Please.”

At that, Hilda pauses. Her hand lingers against one of the doors, keeping the elevator open. Her fingernails are painted the same colour as her toes, the same colour as her hair, and her knuckles sparkle with various gold and coral rings.

She turns around, and holds out her hand. “Give me your coffee.”

“My -?” Lysithea looks from Hilda, to her mocha, then back to Hilda again. “You want my coffee?”

Hilda makes a grabby motion with her hand. “Time’s a-ticking. Bring me a coffee every morning, and I’ll let you do the crossword. Deal or no deal?”

To accentuate her point, she lets the elevator doors begin to shut, enclosing her within. Quick as a flash, Lysithea thrusts her hand forward, so that the elevator doors bounce back against her wrist. She holds out the travel mug -- all whites and pastel purples and cartoon kittens -- and announces, “Deal! It’s a deal!”

With a beaming smile, Hilda takes the mug. Their fingers brush. Hilda’s skin is warm, but calloused. When Hilda takes a sip, her face scrunches up in disgust. “Ugh. Way too sweet, even for me. Make it a cappuccino next time. Double-shot.”

“You annoying -!” Lysithea starts to swear, but the elevator doors are sliding shut, and Hilda is waggling her fingers in a little wave of goodbye. “- asshole!”

The rest of the day goes poorly. Lysithea is convinced it is all because the beginning of her routine was disrupted, and that it only spells misfortune for the rest of the term. It's completely nonsensical, but she can't shake the feeling nonetheless. To top it all off, she only manages to write a hundred words of her thesis, which sets her a hundred words behind her carefully laid plans for the year. Tomorrow, she'll have to write an extra hundred to compensate. Every word feels like pulling teeth.

Instead of reading articles and writing, as she should be doing, she finds herself clicking through the university faculty website. She has bought herself a hot chocolate from the groundfloor cafe, just to make herself feel better about life in general, and takes a sip as she clicks on the link to 'DR. HILDA V. GONERIL.'

She nearly chokes on the hot chocolate, when the page loads.

With only a year and a half as a professor after completing her PhD in molecular biophysics at an outstandingly good overseas university, Dr. Goneril had already published eight articles in her academic career. Lysithea reads through the bibliography list, gobsmacked. It certainly explains why the university wanted her on their staff so badly; any university would salivate over a promising young professor with a matrix like that.

Four articles a year? Plus teaching two classes a term? That's impossible. There's no way a woman that lazy could have achieved that. Not unless the laziness was an act, and she never slept. Ever.

Four academic articles a year. And here Lysithea sits, struggling to type out two hundred words on an open word document.

Furiously clicking out of Hilda’s profile, Lysithea opens another tab to the university library database and begins searching for more articles to read for her own research.

"Where's my mug?" Lysithea asks the next morning.

It's 6:17am, and Hilda is cradling the takeaway cup Lysithea had ordered at the cafe down the street, because the cafe on the groundfloor doesn't open until 7am. Hilda yawns. "I left it at home."

"Well, bring it tomorrow. I want it back." Lysithea snatches up the newspaper from where it had been deposited on the floor earlier that morning.

"Sure. Whatever," is Hilda's non committal answer.

Lysithea doesn't believe for a moment that Hilda ever intends to give the mug back, but she'll be damned if she lets it go without a fight. Edelgard had given her that cup as a gift last year, which meant that it was no doubt expensive as anything.

Starting off down the hallway to her office, Lysithea can already feel the spring in her step at the thought of everything returning to normal. She has a mocha in hand -- extra marshmallows, as usual -- and a fresh newspaper in the other. It's incidental that Hilda is trailing after her; their offices are directly opposite one another, after all.

She doesn't pay it much heed as she unlocks her door, and steps inside. A flick of the lights. Her bag tossed onto the spare chair, where visiting undergrad students usually sit. And Lysithea drops into her seat, already flipping to the page with the crossword. She folds up the newspaper just the way she likes it, so that the pages have enough grit to not let her feel the scratch of the table beneath her pen, and feels a wave of relief wash over her. She sips at her coffee with one hand, and holds a pen in the other.

The first few clues come easily. Lysithea scrawls in three of the answers that immediately pop out to her, and it doesn’t register right away that she has not heard Hilda opening her own office door. Lysithea is tapping the tip of her ballpoint pen against the margins of the newspaper. She scowls down at the next clue, and chews her lower lip.

A shadow falls over the table from someone approaching behind her, and a hand reaches over her shoulder to point at the crossword with one perfectly manicured pink nail. "OBDURATE."

With a start, Lysithea nearly spills her mocha. Hilda is standing behind her, takeaway coffee cup in hand. She is close enough that her arm brushes against Lysithea's shoulder. Lysithea can feel the warmth of skin through her cardigan.

Scowling, Lysithea leans away in her seat to aim a glare at Hilda. "Excuse me?"

"Five down. The answer is 'OBDURATE.'" Rather than get the hint and move away, Hilda sets down her cup on the table so she can use her other hand to grasp the back of Lysithea's chair and lean against it while she studies the newspaper.

"Thanks," Lysithea grumbles. She adds the answer, and is annoyed when it fits perfectly.

Hilda points to six down. "Ohh! 'Ermine in summer' is 'STOAT'. And seven down is 'TRIPLETHREAT'."

A muscle in Lysithea's cheek jumps in irritation. She writes the words, then grumbles, “This was not a part of the deal.”

“The deal was: I would let you do the crossword. I never said that I wouldn’t do the crossword with you. Duh!”

Lysithea tosses down the pen atop the newspaper. “That completely defeats the purpose!”

“CHUTZPAH!” Hilda announces, and grabs the pen from the desk to begin writing it into the boxes.

“Hey!”

Lysithea has to wrestle the pen from Hilda’s grasp, but not before Hilda manages to write in another answer. Even then, it galls her to know that Hilda let her have the pen back, and could have easily kept it for herself.

Lysithea brandishes the pen under Hilda’s nose like a sword. “Quit it! Leave some for me!”

“You know, you could just get one of those free apps that has, like, a squillion crosswords, right?”

Glowering, Lysithea turns back to the newspaper. “I like this one.”

Hilda drops the matter, but only because she is now pointing to another clue with the answer on her lips. Lysithea smacks Hilda’s finger with the pen.

"Geesh. Okay! Okay!" Hilda grabs her cup, but when she straightens she says quickly, "And nine down is 'ABLOOM' okay bye!!"

Lysithea crumples up a spare piece of paper on the desk and lobs it after her, purely out of spite.

Lysithea doesn’t know exactly when it happens, only that it does. Suddenly, horribly, Hilda is part of the routine.

The realisation dawns on Lysithea during the third week. Every morning Hilda is waiting for her by the elevators on the ground floor. Her smile is brighter than the dawn creeping through the windows. She takes the coffee Lysithea hands her, and immediately launches into loud and colourful conversation about her previous evening, about her students, about her cute neighbor and her cute neighbor’s cat, while Lysithea nods -- groggy, and still half asleep herself -- and mumbles appropriate responses.

They ride the elevator together. They do the crossword in Lysithea’s office, because even though Hilda’s office is bigger it’s always cluttered to the point that Lysithea can barely stand to be in there for longer than a few minutes at a time. The spare seat in Lysithea’s office has become Hilda’s designated seat, which she hauls over to the desk so they can sit, side-by side. Their elbows press together. They drink their coffee, and bicker over crossword clues, and the fact that Hilda has forgotten -- again! -- to bring back Lysithea’s mug.

Lysithea has even taken to complaining about Hilda in her texts to Edelgard. Her childhood friend lives two timezones away however, and can only do so much via text when she's busy inheriting her family's multi-million dollar mega-corporation.

The fact remains that on the Thursday of the third week, Lysithea arrives at the elevators on the ground floor at her usual 6:14am, and is surprised to feel utter disappointment that Hilda is not there.

She peers around the corner for any sign of her. She waits. She taps her foot on the ground, and checks her wristwatch, which means she nearly spills Hilda’s cappuccino when turning her wrist over. Finally, at 6:32 she gives up and rides the elevator alone. She watches the floors tick away in bright numbers over the doors, and even though she is rising it feels like her gut is falling.

She places Hilda's coffee cup on the desk, and does the crossword by herself. She should feel relieved. This is what she wanted. The newspaper all to herself. Nobody bothering her. No annoying chatter in her ear. Nobody taking away the satisfaction of figuring out the clues for herself.

Instead, she keeps shooting glances at the coffee cup as if it might suddenly turn into a rambunctious conversationalist and fill the gap.

Eventually, with the crossword puzzle only three-quarters of the way finished, other faculty members start to stream into the offices. Lysithea gives up and throws Hilda's coffee into the rubbish bin; it has gone cold. She folds the newspaper back to its original state -- painstakingly ensuring that each crease is exactly as it should be -- and places it on a corner of her desk. She pulls her laptop towards her, and opens up her latest thesis draft document with a beleaguered groan.

For the first time in three weeks, she doesn't get the full two hundred daily word goal that she set for herself. It irritates her to no end.

She considers going to have a chat with her counsellor, Mercedes, but decides to just text Edelgard instead. She gets back a reply almost immediately, reminding her to eat something that day, which she has predictably forgotten to do. In response, Lysithea types back a message telling El to get some sleep. The phone goes quiet for a minute, then another text pings back from Edelgard with a series of 'zzz's that makes Lysithea roll her eyes.

A knock at the door behind her, and Lysithea whirls around in her seat. It's not Hilda. Her stomach twists unpleasantly at the realisation.

Lysithea puts her phone down. "Hi, Professor Hanneman. Do you need something?"

Hanneman hovers politely in her doorway until she greets him, at which point he pushes the door fully open and steps inside. "Good afternoon, Lysithea." He nods towards the newspaper. "Are you finished with that?"

She isn't. The crossword is nowhere near finished. Lysithea's mouth slants to one side, but she sighs and hands the newspaper over regardless. "Here. It's all yours."

He takes it with a gentle smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes behind his round spectacles. "Thank you."

"You haven't heard anything from Tomas, have you?" Lysithea asks. "It's just -- I sent him the last draft of my thesis a month ago, and he still hasn't gotten back to me.”

At that, he grimaces in sympathy. "I'm sorry, but no. I haven't heard anything. You know how busy he is.”

Crestfallen, Lysithea mumbles, “Yeah.”

“I’ll follow up with him again,” Hanneman assures her, but they both know there’s not much he can do. Tomas is her main thesis supervisor, while Hanneman was only an adjutant brought into the process earlier last year. At the beginning of this whole thesis ordeal, she had thought Tomas would be a great supervisor -- he shared her Alma Mater, and other family connections -- but so far he had been nothing but chilly and unhelpful throughout the process.

“Thanks. I would appreciate if you did.”

He nods. He’s about to leave, when she blinks. “Hanneman?”

“Hmm?” He turns back in the doorway to face her.

Tugging at her lower lip with her teeth, Lysithea asks, “You don’t happen to have Dr. Goneril’s cellphone number, do you?”

After her own lecture later that afternoon, Lysithea stands in her empty classroom and worries her lower lip between her teeth. Her phone is in her hands. A contact is open on the screen with the name 'HILDA' beside the call button.

Lysithea takes a deep breath. She taps the icon, then raises the phone to her ear. It rings for a long enough time, that she is led to believe Hilda won't pick up, when the dial tone stops.

There's a rustling sound on the other line, followed by a raspy, "Hello?"

"Hi!" Lysithea says. "It's me."

A pause.

"Who?"

"Lysithea."

More rustling. The distinct noise of the phone being dropped, and then muted swearing, as Hilda fumbles for it.

"Oh. Yeah. Hey," Hilda says when she's picked up the phone again. She doesn’t sound thrilled, but she doesn’t sound mad either. "What's up?"

"Nothing! I just -" Lysithea has to put her free hand down when she realises she has lifted it to her mouth so she can chew on her fingernails. “I was just wondering if everything was alright. You weren’t here today, but if you’re just playing hooky, then -”

She is interrupted by a series of coughing. Lysithea holds the phone away from her ear until Hilda is finished.

“I mean -” Hilda rasps, “Normally you would be totally on the money, but not this time.”

For some inexplicable reason, that makes Lysithea feel unfathomably guilty, even though she knows that her initial assumption was on the mark.

“Do you - Do you need me to get you anything?” Lysithea can’t believe that those words just came out of her mouth, but it’s too late to take them back now.

Silence. Then -

“Schweppes Sparkling Lemonade.”

Lysithea’s brows furrow in confusion. “What?”

“I said: Schweppes Sparkling Lemonade. I’ll text you my address.”

And then Hilda hangs up. True to her word, a text appears almost instantaneously on the screen while Lysithea is still blinking down at her phone in befuddlement. It’s only at that moment that Lysithea remembers she doesn’t own a car, and will need to take public transportation to get out to -- oh, wait, that’s not that far. She could walk, if she had the stamina for it.

Twenty minutes later, Lysithea is standing outside a two-story, brick-faced apartment complex that looks like it had been built thirty years ago and never renovated. So, basically, like any poor grad student accommodation on the planet. She approaches a door with the chipped brass-plated number ‘2-A.’

In one hand she holds a grocery bag, and in the other she triple-checks her phone to make sure this is the right place. Stuffing her phone into her pocket, Lysithea knocks.

Hilda answers the door draped in a blanket like a maudlin empress surveying her fallen nation. Her normally immaculate appearance has been tossed out with the bathwater. There are dark circles beneath her eyes, and her hair is a mess. The apartment beyond is cast all in shadow. The curtains are drawn, and Lysithea can't make out anything beyond Hilda except clutter and darkness.

“Hey,” Hilda croaks, trying to add a bit of her usual sing-song emphasis but instead dissolving into a fit of coughing.

Lysithea thinks of a dozen lies and platitudes she should say, but what comes out is: “You look terrible.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” Hilda chuckles, and leans in the doorway. “Do you got the goods, dealer?”

Lysithea holds up the grocery bag filled with two large plastic bottles of sparkling lemonade. “Only the finest.”

“You’re a saint,” Hilda mumbles as she takes the grocery bag and peers inside. “I could seriously kiss you right now.”

At that, Lysithea takes a step back. “No, thank you. Keep your nasty virus to yourself.”

“Guess that means you don’t want to come in, then.”

Lysithea is surprised when she hears herself say, “Next time.”

Even Hilda looks a bit shocked, though it’s difficult to tell. Normally she’s more expressive than this. She mustn’t have the energy to emote, when sick.

Still, she gamely cracks a smile, and waves Lysithea away. “Next time, then. Go on, now. Shoo. Before you get my nasty virus.”

“Will I see you tomorrow?” Lysithea asks as she steps away.

“I’ll be lecturing in the morning, and then coming back to bed,” Hilda says, though she sounds like she should be organising her casket arrangements rather than teach right now.

“Oh,” Lysithea says. She tries not to let the disappointment show, and she thinks she does a decent job of hiding that sort of thing. At least, she should be, given her history.

“But you can buy me a hot drink before I go home.” Hilda offers that like it’s some sort of prize to be won.

Lysithea frowns. “Is my offering of soda inadequate for Her Highness?”

“We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” Hilda winks and shuts the door.

Lysithea brings the newspaper, but not the coffee. It’s 7:04am, and the students of Organic Chemistry II have let themselves into the lecture theatre six minutes ago. Lysithea sits in the back corner, trying to get as much distance as possible between herself and any undergrads who might mistake her for one of their flock. None of them seem to pay her any mind. It’s too early for anything but using their bags as pillows and trying to sneak in an extra few minutes of sleep before their professor arrives.

Exactly nine minutes after the class was meant to start, the double doors to the lecture theatre swing open, and Hilda walks inside. Her heeled boots clack with every step, announcing her presence.

"Sorry I'm late." Hilda drops into the chair at the head of the classroom beside the podium. "I didn't want to come."

She is wearing enormous heart-shaped sunglasses that shield her eyes from view. A dark-washed scarf is wrapped around her neck and shoulders like a shawl, and the total effect makes her look like a celebrity trying to escape the paparazzi. She props her feet atop the table, and waves to the classroom at large without actually looking at anyone. “Pop quiz.”

The class gives out a collective groan of despair.

Hilda ignores them. She pulls out her cellphone. For a brief moment, Lysithea thinks that Hilda is just going text through the entire lecture, but then the projector screen descends from the ceiling behind her, and the projector itself flickers to life.

Hilda gives her phone a few idle taps, and a slideshow quiz appears on the screen. “You have twenty minutes.” She tosses her phone to the table. “Go.”

The students are scrambling for spare paper from their notebooks. Some of them exchange blank pages in a flurry of movement, before they are all hunched over their desks, silent but for the scratch of pens against paper.

Lysithea reads the list of questions on the screen. They are hard, but not impossible. In their shoes, Lysithea would have aced the quiz. Then again, Lysithea had been a model student that two universities had fought over for the grant money that came tethered to her thesis project. It takes these students the full twenty minutes, and even then a few of them are scrambling for answers and scratching their heads.

Hilda’s phone alarm chirps, and all of the students put their pens down like well-trained Pavlovian subjects. On the other hand, Hilda does not move at all. Her arms are crossed, and most of her face is either hidden by scarf or sunglasses.

She is, Lysithea realises, fast asleep.

“Professor Goneril?” one of the students in the front row hazards. Lysithea recognises the student from her own class, a quiet girl by the name of Flayn, related to Seteth, the university’s chaplain.

At the sound of her title, Hilda’s head jerks. She lowers her feet to the ground, and sits upright. She pushes her sunglasses partially up her face so that she can rub at her eyes with the heel of her palm. From here, Lysithea can see that while Hilda looks far better than their last encounter at her apartment, she still looks like death warmed over.

Hilda cranes her neck to peer at the clock on the wall, and says, “Turn ‘em in. And if you cheated, I’ll know.”

All of the students exchange glances, then stand to approach her table and deposit their sheets of paper at her feet.

One of the students lowers his head to whisper to his neighbor. “Do you think she has the place bugged?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” his friend replies under his breath.

Lysithea rolls her eyes, and says, “No. It’s because I’m here, and I would tell her.”

The two nearly jump out of their skin. One of them squints at her. “Aren’t you a student from Mathematical Methods for Physical Sciences?”

Lysithea gives him her very best glower. “I’m the professor of that course.”

Both their eyes widen, and they shuffle away towards the front of the classroom.

The lecture as a whole is supposed to last two hours. Hilda only takes an hour and a half, and lets everyone go early. Throughout the entire thing, Lysithea chips away at the crossword to very little effect, and grinds her teeth at the back of the class.

She herself has to prepare pages and pages of carefully labelled and researched notes every week for her own lectures, and even then she always feels like she is scrambling to use up her total time. If she lets the students out five minutes early, it’s like she’s failed in her duty. Hilda on the other hand breezes through the course content like she wrote the fucking book.

And she definitely didn’t write the book. Lysithea checked.

To add insult to injury, Hilda’s slides have an unparalleled clarity that make Lysithea green with envy. The students nod their heads, and type up notes on their laptops. When they raise their hands with questions, Hilda answers breezily and efficiently from her seat despite her lingering cold, checking her fingernails and sometimes even tapping her phone to another pre-prepared slide as though she had expected just that question to pop up during the lecture.

Whenever Lysithea got a question from her students, she would need to work off the spike of adrenaline by drawing out the answer too small on the whiteboard.

By the end, Lysithea is fuming. She hasn’t finished the crossword, and she is feeling thoroughly outclassed.

It’s 8:31, and the students are packing up their bags to leave. Some of them are brave enough to approach Hilda like their approaching a lazy queen sprawled upon her sumptuous plastic throne. Flayn is among them. Lysithea hovers near the exit, clutching her newspaper, while Hilda holds court, waiting. Flayn is the last student to leave, waving at Lysithea, who returns the gesture with a forced grimace.

Hilda is slinging her designer black bag over her shoulder as she walks towards Lysithea. “Hi! Miss me much?”

Hilda smiles at her, and all of those ugly feelings melt away like a snowbank in late spring.

“As if,” Lysithea says, already turning to walk towards the nearby cafe down the hall and to the right.

She orders their usual, but Hilda interrupts to get a lemon honey and ginger tea for herself instead. They sit near the windows, and Lysithea tosses down the newspaper with a scowl.

Hilda sips at her tea. “Someone’s feeling grumpy this morning. What’s wrong? Couldn’t finish the crossword without me?”

“No! I mean -- that’s besides the point!” Lysithea lifts her chin and says, indignant, “One of your students mistook me for an undergrad.”

Rather than laugh, Hilda sticks out her tongue as though at a bad taste. “If that happened to me, I would literally die.”

Lysithea nods. This is the reaction she had been expecting at so grave a transgression.

And then, Hilda asks the worst possible question. “How old are you anyway?”

“Twenty-four.”

Hilda splutters, and has to put down her tea in order to cough into the crook of her elbow. Lysithea can feel her face heating up while Hilda collects herself.

"Oh my god." Hilda’s face is painted with horror, "Twenty-four? When did you start undergrad? As a foetus?"

Lysithea straightens in her seat, and answers primly, "I was sixteen, thank you very much."

"Twenty-four." Hilda repeats with a shudder. "No wonder. I have students that age. Gross."

Lysithea bristles. "Excuse me?"

"Oh, I didn’t mean you. I just had an intrusive thought about dating a student, and had the instinctive urge to dry-heave." Hilda flutters her hand at the base of her throat as if she’s going to be sick.

"I’m not one of your students!"

"Thank god," Hilda mutters.

"I may not have my PhD yet, but we are still colleagues! And I'll have you know that I am very dateable!"

At that, Hilda’s eyebrows launch themselves over the rims of her sunglasses. "I never thought you weren't."

"Well - good!” Lysithea crosses her arms with a huff, and leans back in her chair. “Because I am! I’m great at -” she struggles for what exactly to say, but is too obstinate to give up, and ends up with, “- being available! For dating!”

Hilda is biting her lower lip as if she’s desperately trying not to laugh. Lysithea wishes she could see her eyes; it would be much easier to tell what kind of expression Hilda was wearing if she could see her eyes. It certainly doesn’t help that her own face is aflame; she just knows that her pale complexion will have gone ruddy with embarrassment.

“Glad to hear it,” Hilda drawls, before tilting her head back to drain what remains of her tea. Meanwhile Lysithea clears her throat, and takes an extra large gulp of her hot chocolate.

Dropping her now empty takeaway cup onto the table, Hilda pushes her chair back. “Thanks for the tea. I’m off to bed to show this virus who’s boss.”

“Yeah. Sure. No problem.”

Lysithea can still feel the flush in her cheeks. It doesn’t get any better when Hilda lowers her sunglasses just enough to peer over them at Lysithea and flash her a smile.

“See you Monday,” Hilda says, and it’s not a question. She pushes her sunglasses back into place, and swings her bag over her shoulder.

Then, she pauses. She reaches out, and Lysithea leans back slightly in her seat, but not before Hilda has tapped the tip of her nose.

“You’ve got cocoa on your nose.” Hilda shows Lysithea her finger, which does indeed have a smidge of cocoa powder from the hot chocolate. With a smile, Hilda turns and strides away with far more flounce in her step than a sick woman should be able to achieve.

Lysithea sits, frozen in place. Then, realising she is staring, she swipes furiously at her face for any residual cocoa powder. When she’s finished, Hilda is long gone.

#lysithea von ordelia #hilda valentine goneril #lysithea/hilda #fire emblem three houses #fe:3h #roman writes #this is one of the most self-indulgent things I've written this year and that's saying A LOT

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vore-scientist · 5 years

Text

I, Spy [In Which There Are Thieves]

[G/t M/multiple gender ambiguous prey, safe soft vore, mild stuffing, fear.play]

A MINI Tale of the Mystic Woods

Summary: The evil half-giant wizard Yonah gets a little carried away catching a team of thieves. But his aching stomach is the least of his worries.

Warnings: A lot of teasing. As usual super duper unwilling prey, Yonah acts as if he is going to kill his prey, and he is very convincing.

Story features Yonah’s ward the Princess Sophia, and Yonah’s wizard friends Avshi and Eli.

------ Three thieves today, and Yonah had it handled. Too handled. The Princess Sophia could tell when he was getting carried away and even though he hadn’t even caught them all yet, she knew tonight was one of those nights. He was so in character she even worried that once he ate the last thief he would try to stuff her into his belly with them! Of course once he did eat all three he was bound to start complaining. As if he didn’t do it to himself! The glutton! He could barely eat two humans and yet she’d seen him make the mistake of three on two previous occasions.

What makes this time different? Well. This time she figured it out early. And ran straight for the mirror, whispering for it to call Yonah’s friends, any it could reach. Please! It will be so embarrassing! The mirror obliged without needing a rhyme, finding two, Avshi And Elisheva. Sophia angled the mirror so they could see what was going on but held a finger to her mouth. an instant later they were in the tower, Sophia dragging them behind the mirror.

“Thieves!?” Eli whispered, Sophia nodded.

Yonah was being careful as he prowled his study, he had one human already tucked under his arm. He was grinning from ear to ear, showing off his uncannily large canines, and with each hungry growl he exhaled steam. Each footstep shook the room.

He reached at his bookshelf full of his notes and tossed them aside, revealing the second human who joined their friend in Yonah’s elbow.

“Thought you might want to watch. He’s gonna do something stupid.” She saw their eyes sparkle with mischief. “Just stay hidden.”

“He’s gonna know we’re here, he always does!” Eli pointed out.

“Not this time. Trust me,” Sophia insisted.

As they watched Yonah catch the second thief and without loosing steam, chasing the last around the room, his hair smoking, eyes glowing, they realized she was right. But just in case they both encircled themselves with invisibility.

“What are you going to do?” Sophia hear Avshi from her left side.

“I’m part of the show!” She ran to the edge of the desk. Kneeling she shouted down as Yonah reached behind a shelf.

“Hey Jack! Yoo hoo!!” She whistled at the thief who had crawled out from under the shelf and was stealthily making a beeline for the window.

“Huh!?” They looked up to find the source of the mysterious human woman’s voice.

“HA!” Yonah caught them easily. “Thanks Sophia!” He stood up and held his catches proudly.

“What a bounty!” He declared, a happy kid returning from a sweetshop. Sitting at his desk he pressed his face into them and breathing in through his nose as he growled, lower now, “I cannot wait to get you all in my belly!”

They squealed and redoubled their efforts to get free but to no avail. He chose one of them at random.

“So I’m not going to wait. This was a delightful diversion, but fun time is over. For you at least. ” And he opened his mouth wide, forcing the torso of the humans into it and to the back, as he tipped his head up and swallowed.

Sophia could swear she heard gasps from somewhere behind her, but Yonah didn’t seem to notice as the thieves in his arms screeched. Their friend’s kicking legs were pulled down with each powerful swallow, until the giant could close his mouth and the distensión in his throat receded with a heavy, satisfied sigh, and a hiccup.

“Oof, went a little too fast there!” He informed his victims, hiccuping again, “I should have savored them more, they were scrumptious! No matter, I have two more to go!”

Sophia was so tempted to point out that he was already full. She could see his stomach already pressing against his vest ever so slightly.

He raised up the next human who was shaking as he lowered them feet first into his mouth. Steam rose around them and they tried to hold onto his teeth as he swallowed them, tried to pull themselves back out but he flicked his tongue up and downed the rest of them in a few gulps, uttering hungry growls as he did.

Now he was visibly full. He actually had to unbutton his vest, lest the buttons rip apart. This is why he preferred the traditional robes… but he looked so dapper!!! Ah well, he had a nice shirt on underneath! It wasn’t as stiff as the vest but his stomach still pushed against it.

“Mmmmm even more delicious than the first!” He informed the third thief. And he looked to Sophia. “This one has a lot to live up to, or die for, in this case” he laughed a grand belly laugh, feeling the humans inside him tumble a bit.

“Buuut… I’m pretty full after two,” he said, licking his fingers, the human was still trapped in his arm, pressed against his side. “Maybe I should save this one for desert? Or just let them go?”

“LET ME GO! PLEASE!” they pushed themselves away as best they could. This was their last chance, hoping against hope the giant wasn’t just fucking with them. They could feel their friends dying beneath the skin and fat and muscle. It was too late for them!

“Depends,” Sophia put a hand to her chin, mocking stroking a beard, “Just

how tasty were the first two?”

She had to keep her cool, if Yonah came to his senses it would all be ruined! He was running on adrenaline and wasn’t yet feeling the pain from stuffing himself. Three would tip that over the edge.

Yonah leaned back in his chair and stroked his stomach with his free hand, drumming it with his fingers. It trembled beneath his touch as his captives thrashed about.

“Some of the best I’ve ever eaten! I couldn’t possibly wait for dessert!”

Yes!!! Sophia cheered to herself as Yonah licked the final thief bodily, Making happy noises, not thinking about anything but how good this one tasted, and how wonderful an addition to his current, but very temporary, collection they would be.

“Awwww, hear that?” He rubbed his stomach with two fingers “You’re friends miss you dearly!” He pressed the thief to his tongue and drew them into his mouth. And leaned back to swallow this one, much slower than the last.

“A happy reunion” he pronounced and affectionaly pat his now obviously stuffed-full-of living-smallfolk stomach

Then he sat up and Sophia saw his expression instantly change to painful regret as he held his middle.

“Oh dear, that was… way too many…*hic” a bit of drool fell from his mouth and onto his slightly stretched shirt. “Owwww. Stop moving so much,” he poked his stomach which protested loudly with the screams of the thieves and he groaned.

He looked at Sophia with puppy dog eyes. A puppy who broke into the food stores.

“They never listen,” he said deeply unhappy, eyelids drooping. It might be painful but Yonah was still a giant, and such a full stomach made him a bit loopy and sleepy. Only he was in such pain he couldn’t sleep. The only good news for the thieves.

“You did this to yourself, dumbass,” Sophia had no sympathy for him or the thieves, though she smiled in amusement at their collective distress.

clap

Yonah looked up and tried to find the source of the noise but his brain wasn’t his friend right now.

“Yipe!” Sophia jumped as the two wizards stopped being invisible on either side of her. Still clapping.

“Good show Yonah!” Avshi looked into the eyes of a very confused and startled half-giant.

“Terrific!” Eli added, “And I mean that in the original sense!”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in such glorious form!” Avshi said, “You never worked up such a fearsome demeanor playing with us!

“Uhhhhh,” the last thing Yonah had expected as his friends to show up. No. Not show up. They had been WATCHING! SPECTATING!

“FUCK!” He stood up and took a step back, still clutching his swollen middle. “What are you two doing here!”

The pair grinned. “We heard you were catching thieves and wanted to see The Great And Terrible Yonah HaEsh at work!” Eli supplied.

“But I- how,” his slow brain finally catching on, “SOPHIA!”

The princess stood proudly but sheepishly as Yonah had to regain his balance. The thieves in his stomach screaming as he nearly fell on his ass. His face was turning a fascinating shade of scarlet.

“How could you! They’ve never seen me like, *hup* this!”

“Like what? Exactly?” Sophia sat on the edge of the desk, feet dangling, head in her hands.

“Like- oo*HIC* a-“ he couldn’t say it.

“Monster?” Avshalom sat next to Sophia and looked kindly at their suffering friend.

“A stupid monster?” Elisheva improved, sitting on Sophia’s other side.

Yonah nodded dumbly. Returning to his seat to massage his aching belly. From the shock his wits were back enough to see his friends glance worried at his stomach full of squirming humans

“He’s gonna let them out,” Sophia told them, and they relaxed considerably. But Yonah narrowed his eyes.

“Oh? I was gonna but I’m having second thoughts,” he crossed his arms over his stomach, pressing down on his still very much alive morsels.

“Yonah!” Sophia snapped at him.

“What! You came here to see a man-eating monster didn’t you! Well that’s what you’re gonna get,” he hiccuped again and his stomach gurgled with agreement. Or was it in opposition? Yonah looked at tad woozy.

“You’re gonna kill them to spite us!?” Sophia crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

Yonah pouted for a few seconds. Looking rather silly. His friends didn’t seem phased by his decision, probably because he wasn’t very convincing at this point. Even with a belly full of screaming humans and his apathy fueled by a horrible bloated pain and drowsiness.

“No,” he admitted, but he wasn’t happy about it. He still couldn’t bring himself to kill three random people on a whim. That wasn’t him.

“But don’t think any of you are off the hook! I’m going to be hungry when I spit these fools up”

Great. He said it, and now the three inside him went positively bananas. Confused? Elated?

“Yeah you heard me, you’re getting out alive! Aren’t you lucky! So how about you stop moving so much” They were cheering even though he hadn’t actually spit them up yet. Ugh.. it hurt.

“/Urrg/ I need to lie down for a minute,” he gingerly got out of his chair and lay on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. So cool. It drained the heat of embarrassment from his body. And his stomach relaxed too. Much better. Seemed like they were listening to him too and weren’t squirming, but adjusting.

OOF he let out a yell as did the humans in his stomach as something landed on them! He craned his neck to see the princess sitting atop his sore stomach gleefully rubbing it. Glancing to the side he saw Eli and Avshi leaning against him too.

“How are they doing in there?” Eli asked, pressing a hand to his stomach. Retracting it when she felt one of them move. Hmm she didn’t like that. It was fine when it was one of them in there… this was different.

“They’re- hic- fine. Just very very cramped,” he let his friends continue to massage his belly. Except for Eli. A bit too uncomfortable. She preferred to stay by his face, which he turned to look at her with a pathetic little smile.

“How you can do this I don’t understand it,” she stroked his nose and he closed his eyes.

“Because you’re not a giant,” he said, sticking his tongue out to lick at her, “nor are you evil.”

“Oh yessss the very evil Yonah, who eats folks but won’t kill them,” she kicked at his tongue. He could get a taste AFTER he spit up the thieves.

“Hey! I’m very terrifying! You said so!”

“Terrifying? Yes!” She pet his forehead. “Monstrous? Absolutely! That was quite a performance. But Evil? I’m not so sure,” she explained as she moved on to ruffling his hair. It was so fluffy.

“Hey guys, do you think I’m evil?” He wasn’t asking Sophia or Avshi, but the three thieves, he poked his stomach to make sure they knew.

“YES!” They cried in unison. Then one continued “FOR THE SAKE OF THE GODS LET US OUT!”

Yonah rolled onto his side and Sophia fell off. “It’s about that time, but I’d rather not throw up on my nice clean Workshop floor.”

He picked up his friends and went downstairs to the kitchen to spit up in the sink, which was filling with water. Painfully aware of his two wizard buddies watching with fascination, he quickly regurgitated three thieves. Too quickly! Coughing and panting he slumped over, leaning against the cabinets.

“I never fucking learn,” he said more to himself than anyone else. “Three humans is too many.”

But he had to recover as the thieves cleaned up fast and as Yonah’s friends and Sophia were on the floor with him, they were making their way towards the door.

“Oh no you don’t!” He stood up and snatched the thieves into his arms once again. The blood rushes to his head and his vision blurred with grey and tan fractals. The thieves screamed as he squished them to his chest so he wouldn’t drop them.

“Calm the fuck down I’m not gonna eat you again!”

He noticed that his friends and Sophia had managed to climb up the embroidery of his robes while his head cleared. Sophia and Avshi on the right shoulder and Eli on the left. He proceeded back upstairs to release the thieves onto the windowsill.

They didn’t need any prompting to skedaddle the moment the wizard stepped back. The three wizards and one princess watched them disappear into the woods. Before Yonah also climbed out of the window and dropped into his garden with a earth shaking THUD!

“Hey! Warning next time!” Eli was gripping his collar with white knuckles.

“And why are we outside?” Sophia asked.

“It’s a nice day!” Yonah walked over to his favorite apple tree (the one big enough for him to lean against) and he sat down in the shade. He plucked his friends from his shoulders to cradle them in his arms.

“What am I to do with you three?” He smiled.

Eli crossed her arms “I have no idea what you mean!”

“I think you do,” he brought her to his face, “it was very rude to spy on me!”

“We didn’t want to throw you off your game!” Avshi said. “It’s not like we can plan ahead of time for thieves!”

“I suppose not,” he looked up at the leaves, apple blossoms peppering the branches. “But it still deserves punishment!”

He licked Eli who was expecting it and had put her hands in front of her face.

“You can’t eat us! We don’t have the supplies for the spell!” She protested being actually shoved into his mouth.

“I can too!”

Eli looked shocked. Would he really risk it!?

“But I’ve had my fill for today.”

She relaxed. Not completely because he basically stated he didn’t have a problem eating them without protection. Avshi pouted, “I’d be willing to get eaten” they said under their breath.

“Yonah HaEsh has had his full? I don’t believe it!” Sophia wrestled herself free of his embrace to lay in the crook of his elbow.

“Ehhh,” he half rolled his eyes, “I don’t feel like swallowing and so quickly spitting up anymore people.” He paused. Eli had lowered her guard and he quickly flicked his tongue at her face and she squealed in frustration. She had washed her hair this morning. All glossy and straight but curled at the ends into sharp points! and now it was ruined!!!

Graciously he put her down in his lap. “Takes a lot out of me, and I did it three times today!”

“Now that I believe,” she smiled and then opened her eyes again “Wait that means you’re gonna eat me!”

With her curse lasting FOUR hours which could be reset while inside him… eating her didn’t have come with the downside of quick regurgitation.

“You’re the one who called Avshi and Eli here,” he pointed out.

“Great,” she didn’t feel like being eaten today but she couldn’t really stop him, and she had thoroughly embarrassed him. It wasn’t like she didn’t expect this. She had hoped he would have been satisfied with the thieves. She should have known better.

“not now!” He grinned from ear to ear. “I think I shall have you for dessert!”

Oh. So he planned to sleep with her in his stomach! Fine. So she wouldn’t have to subject herself to the ordeal for a good many hours. It was only midday.

“Hey! I said I would be fine being eaten!” Avshi said a little louder, standing up unbalanced, hands on their hips.

“Sorry Avshi! Im too tired,” Yonah lifted them to his face, licking his lips, “so it’s just licks.”

“Eli was wrong, you are evil,” they didn’t resist as Yonah shoved them into his mouth but didn’t make any indication of swallowing them.

Eli sat down and closed her eyes. Sitting on Yonah while he… enjoyed a human snack… wasn’t the most pleasant activity, but at least he wasn’t tasting her anymore! She made use of his robe as a hammock and lay down, ignoring the noises from above. Yonah’s gleeful giggles and Avshi’s muffled exclamations were a bit distracting.

Eventually Yonah slid Avshi from His mouth and made sure they cleaned up before joining Eli in his lap.

“How about lunch, in an hour?” He suggested as his friends settled down, yawning as he did. He re-adjusted his position against the tree to be more congruent for proper relaxation.

They all agreed. A nap before lunch was just what they all needed.

And it was a very nice day.

[FIN]

[Thanks for reading! please reblog! for more mystic woods go to vore-scientist.tumblr.com/tagged/mystic+woods+story or search ‘mystic woods story’ on my blog! For thief stories only search “MW Thieves”]

#safe vore #soft vore #g/t vore #g/t writing #giant/tiny #gianttiny #nonfatal vore #sfw vore

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saizoswifey · 5 years

Text

As Time Goes By

{KanetsuguxReader}

Genre: Fluff, Smut Word Count: 3,489 A/N: I’ve had this sitting among other works collecting dust for months now. And truthfully I had never intended to release it, lol. Buuut with the latest surge of people upset at the wait for Kanetsugu content, and after thinking on it for two days, I just figured oh well who cares just post it. Plus I’ve been slacking on posting writing lately so hopefully, this makes up for that a bit! Anyway, here is some Kanetsugu fic~

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The flame was dying. Kanetsugu turned a page, yellowed and brittle and worn from the years its seen. It was an old collection of strategies and formations, and for a moment he tried to recall just exactly where he had acquired it from, and when. He’d had it so long now the memory escaped him entirely, like they did for a great number of things that surrounded his tidy room.

The flame was dying. And as the last bits of life flickered from it, so did their eyes take turns glancing at one another in a rather knowing way. He looked with wonder at where she sat, legs tucked underneath her and the curve of her spine as she leaned over her book so picturesque. He was a man, and a strong and capable one at that. This all felt so juvenile; the rapidity of his heart and the stolen glances and the warmth radiating on his cheeks. And yet…at the same time, it was fresh and exciting.

Despite being several feet apart, he swore he could smell the fresh florals in her hair and feel her breath caressing against his skin in slow measured beats. He felt his pulse quicken when her thick lashes dragged up from her own text, giving way to her gaze which washed over him from across the floor. And for a moment he wondered what it was that she saw. What could she possibly see in him? If he’d asked, she would tell him.

She’d say that for all of his severe looks, he had a rather wistful and playful air about him. That she adored his oval face, the youthfulness of his features that shined through the cracks of his battle-hardened facade. Especially when he rolled up his nose in displeasure, a sure sign of an incoming lecture. That, despite the days when the lines of unrest drew long and deep in his skin, and his mouth was pressed into that immutable thin line—the days when his age and hardships he’s witnessed was very much apparent; he was still so vibrant to her. So effortlessly handsome.

“More tea?” she slips with a rather mischievous air.

He’d better not, he thought, giving her a pointed look that said he knew precisely what she was inferring. Another cup would mean prolonging her stay into the evening. It was already against his better judgment to keep her sole company in his room after dusk. He was currently in the habit of doubling the retainers workloads in order to distract them from stumbling upon…well, whatever this situation was. When had they begun spending time this way?

She had been cleaning his quarters one afternoon, several weeks ago, now that he thought about it. He had been writing a letter as she dusted, not a sound save for the occasional shuffling of her feet and the movement of the brush across the page.

“Oh!” she exclaimed.

The sudden jolt of excitement made him jump, and his brush inked a jagged path downwards across the letter, effectively ruining the entire thing. His eyes went wide and he turned, as quickly as any person would when they sense danger, expecting to find her in some sort of peril. Instead, she was casually pulling a book from his shelves and eyeing it with mouth agape.

“I loved this book as a little girl,” she said, nostalgic and not even bothering to glance his way.

He looked down at his ruined letter, then back at her, saving his sigh when he saw her slender fingers stroke the binding, swallowing any sort of scolding he was about to give her for startling him so. It was just a letter, after all. Perhaps the greatest gift his Lord had given him was his immeasurable wealth of patience.

Kanetsugu’s face softened when he noticed which book she was flipping through. “Ah, yes. That one is Ai’s favorite as well.” He didn’t bother to hide the fondness in his tone, the memories of holding Ai in his lap and reading from those exact pages warmed his heart. How she went from falling asleep before he even reached the middle to then asking for another book when he had finished. Now she was getting so big, it was a rare occasion she asked for him to read to her at all.

“You are welcome to borrow it, if you’d like.”

“Truly? You wouldn’t mind?” She beamed.

And there it was, this contracted fluttering in his chest that he worked to brush away as quickly as possible. The feelings he would pinpoint and eliminate. Like catching a rabbit in your vegetable garden. Shoo, don’t ruin what I’ve worked so hard to cultivate.

“Not at all. Some of these haven’t been cracked open in quite some time. It would be nice to know they were getting some use for once.”

“Alright, then… Thank you. I’ll come by to fetch it after dinner?”

“Surely,” he smiled.

And when the sun was setting she announced herself at the door before entering with a tray of sweets and warm tea.

“What’s this?” Kanetsugu asked in astonishment when she placed it at the corner of his desk, careful not to disturb his work.

“To thank you for the book, of course. Just a small token.”

“That’s not necessary,” he cast his eyes to the side briefly, fixing his posture once more when she grabbed the book. He looked at the intricately designed tray and the delicate desserts sitting prettily atop it, then to her, not sure why his body was compelled to move without a thought in advance. His rush to catch her before she left had him speaking without thinking. “At least stay a moment and share some of this with me?”

“I couldn’t possibly…”

“I insist,” he gestured to a spot near him, eyes full of kindness. “I’m sure you’re tired from the days work, something sweet is always good for perking up.” He talked to her a bit like he talked to Ai, and some small speck of a voice inside his gut was cursing him for it. Rusty. How does one properly speak to a woman?

“Well…just for a short while, then.”

Just for a short while. Yes.

However, she kept coming back. Not just to borrow books, sometimes she’d bring him new sweets to try. Other times she’d ask for his help with a particular text; those were his favorite evenings. She looked up to him eagerly when he waxed on, and every now and again their knees might brush or their hands collide on the page. She smelled pleasant.

He had asked her one evening, in the middle of their quiet page turning. He set down his brush with all seriousness, but his voice remained padded with formal kindness. “In case you were not aware, the price of borrowing a book from me is not your freedom. I promise I would not be offended if you chose less boring surroundings to spend what little free time you have.”

“I like it here, it’s peaceful,” she smiled. A beautiful and brilliant smile. “But if I’m a bother in any way…”

Kanetsugu shook his head. “Not at all. I was simply giving you an out, as it were.”

“Oh, I see. Well then, I’d prefer to stay if it’s all the same.”

She shuffled closer to the lamplight, reminding Kanetsugu just how beautiful she looked washed in its glow, and just how late it was getting. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat near a woman at a teahouse, let alone entertain one in his room so late into the evening.

He cleared his throat. “Very well,” he mumbled, faux nonchalant. In a desperate attempt to hide his blush, he buried his face back into the document he had been marking.

It seemed each night she stayed later and later. And in turn, he found himself finishing war councils as quickly as possible in order to see her. Even Kenshin had begun to take notice.

“My, Kanetsugu, I think that’s the quickest briefing you’ve ever given!” Kenshin had looked down at him with wonder-wide eyes. The statement was laced with a mischievous glittering not lost on Kanetsugu. Instead, like a butterfly, he snatched it from the air between them and crushed it in his fist, all while smiling.

“And I am quite certain I made it clear we were not to hear a peep out of a certain Lord until his mountain of paperwork was taken care of. Surely someone crushed under the weight of his own cunctation has not the time for himself, let alone to be keeping it for others.”

He knew something. Despite all his other hangups, Kenshin was much too clever for his own good at times. Even so, day after day Kanetsugu couldn’t bring himself to turn her away each time her light steps brought her to his door. Once, she had even fallen asleep. It had been curiously quiet, and when he looked up from his desk he saw her there—splayed out on the floor, eyes closed and breathing steadily with sleep.

His first instinct should have been to wake her, ask her to go back to her own room. Instead, he let her rest there for a while. When he finished his work he watched her sleep peacefully, the sight bringing a smile to his face. He gazed upon her in a way he couldn’t possibly when she was awake or working in the castle. He loved the way her lashes rested against her cheek and the curve of her lips. Her hands were still clutching the book she had been reading.

“Which one is your favorite?” She had asked him not long before that, standing shoulder to shoulder with him and peering up at his bookshelf.

“My favorite? I’m not sure I could choose just one. However, I find this one to be rather enjoyable,” he said, plucking a thick text from the tidy row.

“I’d like to read it, then!”

“I’m not sure if you would find it to your liking…” he replied sheepishly, but she had already stolen the book from his grasp and sat down in her usual spot.

She simply replied, “If it’s one you like, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.”

What did you mean by that, he had asked her later, while she slept there on his floor. And when she said nothing in response he tucked her hair behind her ear and removed the book from her hands. It would be the first time he secretly wished she could remain in his room.

Yes, even after that night, he continued to go against all better judgment by allowing himself time with her. He decided he might only feel guilty because he enjoyed it so much.

The flame was dying.

A sign of their time together drawing to a close, she would soon retreat back to her own quarters. Kanetsugu tried to pay attention to anything and everything else. The sound of his fingers leafing through a stack of letters, the last drops of tea in his lacquered cup, the splotch of black ink on his finger— wait, when did that happen? He was normally very tidy, even when scribing. He scowled a bit at the evidence of his carelessness then rubbed at his hand for a moment to dispel the smear, but it proved to be a temporary distraction at best. As soon as he looked up, his eyes were drawn right back to her.

Her profile was more lovely than he could ever describe. The lines of her face and the orange glow of the faint flickering flame reflected in her eyes when she looked back at him. Even in silence, her company was an utter delight. It was easy to see why a man could fall for her. But when had he started to see her in this way?

“One more cup of tea won’t do any harm,” she says, choosing to ignore his earlier disapproval of the idea.

Cheeky.

The flame is dead.

Before she can make a move for more tea, before he can politely decline, the tiny fire flickers its last, jolting to the left and then disappearing entirely. A thin string of smoke snaking up the cold moonlight in its wake.

“Oh!” She starts.

“I’ll get it,” he says.

In the darkness, they both reach for the lamp but find each other instead. She’s holding on to his hand? She’s holding on to his hand. She feels so warm. His heart leaps into his throat, and he’s sure his eyes are wide as the bowls in which she serves them rice.

He can just make out her features by the light of the moon. She’s so close, not more than a heartbeat away, and their noses almost touch. They’re both frozen in darkness, exchanging a million words and emotions in their silent admiration. She’s breathing a bit faster, and maybe he is too.

“Kanetsugu…” She whispers, and her warm breath tickles his skin.

His name from her lips twirls between them in the darkness. His name… It rolls over his body with all the pleasant tingling of a thousand tiny feathers, sending a shiver of electricity up his spine. He moves his face forward, gently, slowly pressing his lips to hers in a soft and mature kiss. How long he’s wanted to do this. It’s quick, and he thinks that even had the sensation lasted a lifetime it would still be over too soon. However, he pulls away, despite every inch of him crying desperately to scoop her in his arms and hold her tight.

“It’s late,” he says quietly. An excuse for his actions. Leave, he thinks, hoping she will take the hint and retreat back to her room. He should say sorry, but he isn’t. Not one bit.

“Not so late.”

Was she moving closer?

“You should be off to bed.”

“I’m not tired,” she murmurs into his lips.

And this time, it is she who kisses him. Those soft sweet lips send burst of white light against the back of his eyelids. She tugs at his sleeve, her tiny fist clutching the fabric like a lifeline when his tongue caresses her own. He sweeps his arm against the small of her back, pressing her to him and lowering her to the ground.

His emotions and desire overwhelm and consume him. He wants to be free of these ropes that tether him to responsibility and cordial politeness and duty. He shrugs them off, shedding each one like winter fur. But that doesn’t mean—

“Is this alright?” He pauses and asks. A little late, he scolds himself, he already has a handful of her breast.

“Yes,” she laughs, and oh how he loves the sound. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t come here for the books in quite some time.”

His cheeks flush rose, but he doubts she would have caught it. Still, as an act of want and an effort to hide his flustered expression, he buries his face in her neck and worships the skin with his lips and teeth and tongue. Suckling tenderly. He wants so many things at once, his brain is working him dizzy. Or perhaps it’s finally being so intimate with that familiar scent of hers that's making his world spin. He breathes in against her hairline, drunk with want.

Mentally, he shakes some sense into himself. He was not this man, swept up by his own emotions and selfish desires. Taking his pleasures from his partner with wild abandon. No. He looked down at her beneath him, taking in the sight of her ruffled kimono and her hair splayed about her head on the tatami; as beautiful a haloed crown as the golden glowing ring that dons the horizon at daybreak. She was much too precious to rush.

His brows furrow, lips pressed into a serious thin line. “I’m embarrassed to admit, but I am not very practiced in matters of…intimacy. Consequently, I-“ he clears his throat, feeling the rising heat in his face. He brushes the backs of his fingers along the soft skin of her jaw, “-I am not sure what you are willing to receive just yet.”

She takes hold of his hand, the caress nurturing in nature. Even now, her kindness seeps through him and wraps his very soul in a warm love. Slowly, ever so slowly, she moves him down between her legs, never breaking their mutual gaze.

“I know…but please, touch me,” she begs. “It’s okay.”

He nods, lets himself wander and slips inside of her warmth. The gasp she makes will never leave his memory, he’s sure of it. She’s so wet and slick on his fingertips it's heavenly. Her legs twitch at the sensation of knowing his touch for the first time. He feels his own self twitch, but he is not so easily swayed to seek release. This moment belonged to her, there would be time enough yet to know her in that way, and many others.

Drowning in the pleasures of his curling fingers, she pulls him to her warm bare chest. He brushes the curves with his face, planting sweet kisses here and there as he does so. And when she finally lets out a moan, the sound pulls his heart like a ripcord, sending it spiraling and knocking against his lungs and ribcage.

“More…I want to hear more of that voice,” he admits against the skin of her breast.

“Ahh, I’m—“

You’re what?

The rest is lost in her deep panting. Something inside tells him to increase the speed of his fingers, and so he does. Her body is pressed tightly against him as she bucks into his palm. The flesh he tastes and nibbles in his mouth is more delectable than any dessert she’s ever presented him. In time, he moves up her throat to capture her kiss.

“Are you feeling good?” He asks.

Her head is tipped back, eyes shut tightly as the strangled whimpers of her climax wind up her graceful neck. “Incredible,” she manages.

“My darling.” He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but he isn’t embarrassed. Perhaps some part of him had been dying to say it for quite some time. The words escape him in a heated pant against the corner of her mouth and she laces her fingers in his hair.

“I’ve loved you for so long.” She seals the admission with a kiss.

It’s more than he can bear; her words and the taste of her tongue and the feel of her pleasure rattling against his fingers inside of her. He whispers that he loves her too; and he does. He knows it now. He wants to hold her in his arms night after night, he wants to fuck her senseless and leave his name on her lips, he wants to be the one to protect her, he wants to see her in the kitchen and hear her sweet hums and how she mumbles ingredients to herself when she thinks no one is around. He wants her for himself.

“Please…Don’t hold back, I-” I want to hear you come. The thought surprises him, and he can’t bring himself to speak it though it’s true. He’s never been so turned on.

Her face is erotic and intoxicating when she finally releases, and he can’t bring himself to look at anything else. More than just his newfound dirty thoughts, he’s surprised by how apt he is with his hands. And despite his lack of experience, how efficiently and quickly he brings her pleasure. Even as he feels her thighs shake and clutch around him, he continues his ministrations until she is limp.

There’s a lot he wants to say—a lot that needed to be said, but he was pragmatic. Conversation can wait. He pulls her into his arms protectively and together they lay in comfortable silence. There, on the floor between the lamp and the book, he was happy to simply bask in the warmth of his most precious lover.

______

In the early morning hours, familiar footsteps tread lightly in the castle garden, leaving a trail of sandalwood in their wake. Everything was as usual. The fish in the pond, all accounted for. The birds' songs in the trees, hidden by swaying branches full of flower buds ready to burst. Everything was as it should be, except…

Kenshin sighed, who knew peace could be so boring? Right about now, Kanetsugu would usually appear out of nowhere like a demon from the shadows, pulling his collar and dragging him back to his work. But it seemed as if his adventure would go on today without an adversary.

Looking back at Kanetsugu’s room, a knowing smile pulls at Kenshin’s lips. Disappointing but…sometimes, a little change could be good.

#slbp #samurai love ballad party #slbp kanetsugu #Naoe Kanetsugu #slbp fic #kanetsugu fic #my writing #n//sfw

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lilium-tenebris · 4 years

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💗

In Every Fading Memory | Accepting

💗- A memory about a good deed they did

Cut for length. Buuut, it contains the origin story for how Lillian and Gabriel became friends, if that’s something you’re interested in.

“Do you think that’s funny?”

Lillian rarely came to the upper floor of the dormitory, in fact being of relatively common blood she had no place there. It was just after midnight, she knew they’d show up again, a bunch of cowards.

She hated them.

There they stood with a bit of adhesive and a few slips of parchment no doubt with terrible demeaning things about the boy who lived there scrawled on them. She didn’t know him, but, she knew he was a noble from Faerghus with Duscur lineage in his bloodline. She knew that was why, why these children were here, she had found them holed up in a corner of the library earlier that day scribbling horrible things about someone she’d never met laughing all the while.

Well not exactly ever met, she had seen Gabriel Donatello Verona, as she had most students. She’d seen him wander about, go to class, heard him sing, and more importantly she’d seen the way he smiled at people. It was warm, when he really smiled it was genuine, like when he smiled at her after knocking the books out of her hands and handed them back to her. He was a nice person.

She couldn’t explain it, she was just very sure of this fact. Which was what brought her here, what had her following these rude little degenerates to his door int he middle of the night.

“Mind your own business witch girl!” that wasn’t a new insult, but, it was good to know they knew. She’d heard worse, and that wasn’t why she was here.

“I asked you if you thought it was funny, but, I’ll just tell you it’s not. Take your mean little notes and go somewhere else.” the truth was she was terrified, she couldn’t fight these people they were bigger than her, stronger, and could fight with weapons if she cast a spell at a student she’d wind up in the dungeon. But, she couldn't’ just do nothing, this was what people did to her they hid behind her back, whispered cruel things, and looked at her like she was a monster and what had she done to them? Nothing.

“Leave him alone. He hasn’t done anything to you.”

“They killed our king! Just because his father is a nobleman doesn’t mean he’s not a beast like the rest of them! He deserves a lot worse…and if you’re going to stand with an animal then I guess you’re one too-!”

Lillian didn’t have enough reaction time he grabbed her by her hair one of the small high ponytails she usually kept part of her hair in and yanked her by it, it wasn't’ hard to get the small girl off her feet. She felt one of their boots dig into her stomach, that hurt but she was silent, she was used to fighting not to give people the satisfaction. yet, she couldn’t stop the tears in her eyes from the pain, the girl was accustomed to mental agony but physical suffering was a little farther from her realm of understanding.

She could hear them still going on but, in trying to keep any noise form leaving her throat she only heard pieces. ‘Animals’, ‘Monsters’, crimes of kingdoms and then words pertaining to her words she’d heard. ‘Weird’, ‘Creepy’, ‘Evil’, and on and on about how the fact that the church sanctioning her presence here was an insult to the goddess. She warned to throw up, and not just because she’d at this point been kicked in the stomach a few times. No she felt nothing, she had known this to be a bad idea and done it anyways. Because her heart couldn’t accept just letting them do what they were about to do with no resistance.

However, a spike of an emotion, of FEAR ran through her when one of them drew a blade from their side. She tried to move but found she couldn’t as the metal glinted and flashed in the light she covered her head, yet the still foreign sting of a blade did not meet her that night instead she heard a door swing and a sudden clash of metal, there he was, Gabriel.

“If you clear off right now I may be able to forget by the time I see Seteth again that I saw you all here.” the boy held a rapier in his hand, it was what had stopped the other student’s blade. And for some reason that Lillian would only later understand, while they had no qualms with assaulting her, or leaving vicious mockery behind the young Noble’s back, seeing him face to face, well they turned tail and ran like the cowards they were dropping one of their papers. Gabriel lifted it in his hand read it and rolled his eyes crumpling the parchment and tossing it behind him into his room before setting his weapon aside as well.

“I’m sorry I’ll go I did not mean to wake you please don’t tell Seteth you saw me here please I-” she began stammering in fear a cold feeling entering her body at mention of one of the main church officials. Strangely he said nothing to her at first simply kneeling down one hand glowing he placed it on her skin she winced expecting it to burn instead, it soothed the aches of the new bruises on her body.

After that he stood back up and offered her a hand.

“What in the world would I call Seteth on you for? I confess I only heard parts of it as it woke me but, did you really come all the way here…just because you knew they were going to put those awful things on my door again?”

“Well I- they- yes…I just hate when people are like that…when they treat people however they want for some half-baked reason that isn’t even relevant.”

“Haha, well welcome to Faerghus my dear…but, really that was very sweet of you though I promise unnecessary they do such things all the time. Here, give me your hand.” after a moment of pause she let the boy help her up she felt unsteady on her feet for a moment but then slowly she came around to it. “My name is Gabriel, if you didn’t know, I know we bumped into each toner but I never caught yours.”

“Oh I ah, I’m Lillian.” she didn’t know what to say to him, she had expected anger when she woke him and yet she found nothing of the sort. She wasn’t sure what to do yet, the desire to run she’d had earlier had vanished.

“Lillian? How lovely. Well my dear, you look shaken why don’t you come in for a cup of tea to warm yourself up and we’ll get you sorted and back safely on your way to bed.”

“Oh ah- you don’t have to do that I”m fine see totally fine really-”

“No no-” the boy threw an arm around her shoulders pulling her gently towards the door. “I insist, you went out of your way to help a stranger the LEAST I can do is get you warmed up and in the right head space before you walk back. Besides, you may want to wait a minute to make sure that lot isn’t near the bottom of the stairs waiting to cause more trouble.”

“Oh you have a point…I guess it couldn’t hurt…”

#jasperlion #❀ Stories are Often Forgotten {Drabble}#❀ Spun on Silver Stars {Gabriel}#tw bullying #tw racism #{I am aware this ask is ancient but yes I am still accepting the meme I tend to hoard this kind of thing until I think of something good}

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moodybluthcomic · 4 years

Text

From Thumbnails to Comic Page

This is the second in my series of Behind-The-Scenes posts about Moody Bluth: Anti-Neoliberal Sleuth. Next full page is scheduled to go up December 30th- I will let you know if that changes, which it might since December is a busy time of year! For this post I wanted to run through the process of deciding what goes on a comic page. I presume that are much- much- better and more controlled ways of doing this that what I’ve done. Personally, for other comic projects after this, I would do way less scripting and thumbnailing and save those for later in the project, starting instead by just laying out how many pages each major plot point should take up, and which actions should happen on each page. Then I would make looser scripts and thumbnails for guide, to give myself more flexibility in changing the script later, and to keep the page count from getting too big.

Buuut. I didn’t do that here. I did something miles more convoluted and indecipherable. So here I’m going to run through page 21 (read the finished page here) from my first scripts to the full page. I thought this would be a good example page to use since it barely even existed in the first iterations of the script and has changed a lot since then.

I wrote the initial script for Liptstick Don’t Lie in summer 2018. I kind of knew what all the central plot points would be (or so I thought) but not having drawn a lot of comics before, I had no idea how much action/dialogue I was going to be able to fit on a page and have it be readable. I went about figuring this out the most time consuming way possible: by starting at the beginning and working my way through the story making full-size stick-figure sketches of each page and hand-writing in the dialogue. I knew I wanted the comic to be printable on 8.5x11 paper so I just took 8.5x11 note paper and drew two pages per side. This was a slow process, often interrupted when I would turn to a fresh page to start drawing only to realize that I’d left myself an awkward amount of action or dialogue for the next page and I had to go back and re-sketch pages. I would stop and make quicker, smaller thumbnails for the next several pages, and then thumbnail in those pages larger, and then still find myself going backto revise the whole thing. I would scan those in, type out the script above, send it to Margo (my research supervisor and editor, god bless her soul), and then go back and revise the whole thing again. I don’t remember the details of this process, but I know there was a lot of change, hashing and re-hashing of just what the plot points and dialogue would be.

{Image Description: Two numbered images:

1. A scanned script document containing a 4-quadrant chart. The top two quadrants contain scripted dialogue for two pages in which Moody wanders lost around the Disability Services Centre saying things like, “Am I imagining things? It’s like I’m walking in circles,” and, “Celebrated Youth Sleuth Can’t Even Find Way Out Of Administrative Building.” The bottom quadrants of the chart contain scanned illegible thumbnail drawings of layouts for the above pages, with Moody wandering through empty hallways. The gist of it is that these scripts and pages hardly resemble the finished page at all. There are also a number of sketches of Moody’s face, eyes, and facial expressions in the margins that don’t look much like current Moody.

2. A pencil sketch of a page layout done on lined paper. This page has Moody standing in an empty hallway with a chair and two doors, looking down the hallway purposefully with their hands on their hips, walking around a corner, and then standing with their hands in the air in front of a wide open space full of trees and obstacle course equipment.} _____

Parts of the initial script have stayed the same from the very beginning, but parts of it are unrecognizable. Page 21, the one in question, didn’t even exist there in its current form. In fact, most of the second half of the comic didn’t really exist. Initally I had Moody simply getting lost in a maze of unending hallways in the Disability Services Centre. "Remember the scene from I Heart Huckabees where he’s running through this white hallway and there just keeps being hallway and he keeps running and it keeps being white and it there just keeps being hallway?” I asked everybody who read the draft script. I wanted it to be like that. (Nobody remembered.)

The closest thing I can find in that initial script to the current page 21 is Figure 1, above. Some of the dialogue that happened on those two page now happens on page 21. Some of it happens other places. Some of it I’m pretty sure no longer exists. Those two pages had Moody essentially wandering through the hallways of the disability services, becoming more and more lost, and beginning to feel desperate. That script was a whole was a bit longer than I had hope, but still comfy at 28 pages - the two pages pictured were pages 15-16. Now, the action and dialogue of those two pages is interspersed with other things across many many more pages in the final comic, from page 18-ish or so to page [SPOILERS REDACTED]. But that didn’t happen until later.

First, the initial, white-hallways-only version of the script went through many edits and revisions. Margo and I sent it to friends and family members for feedback and sensitivity reading and suggestions on how to make the disability theory and anti-neoliberalism read clearly. We finalized the script- there were a few sticking points (I can’t remember what they were) but we seemed almost ready to move on.

And then, in early August or so, at a meeting about one of those final revisions, I had my Great Big Terrible Horrible Very Good Idea. What if, instead of hallways, I had Moody wandering through impossible, magical rooms: like the fairground, the obstacle course, and [SPOILERS REDACTED]. This seemed like such a better choice metaphorically and artistically and theoretically that I knew instantly it was now the only option. Not wanting to add too many pages or revisions, I frantically took the already finished and proofread script and tried to fit the existing dialogue to new thumbnails- which became Image 2. above.

You can see in Figure 2 above, we have something at least with the same basic premise as the current page 21. Moody is in a hallway that looks just like every other hallway, they turn a corner, and then find themselves in the forest with the obstacle course. This version only has 4 short dialogue lines for the page: “Wasn’t I just here,” “I must’ve gone the wrong way,” “what?” and, “Where the heck am I?” In that version of the script this was page 17, but I had managed to move and condense things to keep the script still at around 28 pages. I scribbled those revised pages in the back of a notebook and then left them there. “That will be good enough,” I thought, “I’ll worry about that later.” It was the end of the summer, Margo and I were no longer having regular meetings, I wanted to start drawing. I pushed the later pages to the back of my mind and started at the beginning. I designed the characters, I figured out fonts and line weights and style guides. And then finally I started drawing.

{Image Description: Four numbered images: 1. Two stickynotes showing tiny sketches of a revised page 20-21, labelled Autumn 2018. 2. More stickynotes showing a revised pages 20-25, labelled Feb 20, 2019} 3. My big wall of stickynotes containing the whole comic laid out in 2-page spreads. 4. Stickynotes with a once more revised pages 20-23, labelled present (Nov 2019)}

_____

I drew. I moved across the country. I drew. I, unbelievably, began preparing to move houses a second time. I kept drawing. And then, sometime between moves, around October 2018- Panic! I realized that somewhere in the kerfuffle of moving, I had ended up referencing a wrong, older version of thumbnails. At this point I had completely finished drawing 8 pages, and at least a couple of them had mostly-correct-but-just-wrong-enough-to-be-a-problem layouts. With comics, it is important to maintain rhythm: for example, a big surprise reveal will feel wrong in the middle of a page- it should come at the bottom of a page, or at the top of a new one. And in the careful dance of condensing pages without messing up those rhythms, my little errors was going to throw off the entire rest of the story. I stayed up that night with a pack of stickynotes, moving around pages until I got something that worked. It was, if I remember correctly, around 34 pages or so long. It was going to take me a month or two longer to draw, I was tired, but this was fine. It was fine. That reshuffle was where page 17 became page 21 (Figure 1). At this point, this page has moody tumble through the door from the fairground, and dust themself off, and then much like the previous thumbnail sketch the script is: “Wasn’t I just here?” “What?” and, “Where the heck am I?” as they presumably move around the hallway and then enter the forest.

I kept on working and thinking and over time and a number of minor changes and re-shufflings ensued. I have a bunch of scanned images saved in my computer of stickynotes dated to February 20th, 2019 that include more re-working this section, moving around panels and dialogue (Figure 2 above). They are pretty sparse to look at, but I could remember what they meant. (Or so I thought.) These stickynotes have the action of what is now page 21 spread across 3 pages: 21-23. Since I always wanted the comic to be printed as a booklet, from the very beginning I was always planning all the pages in facing 2-page spreads. And in this case, I thought it was important that the big reveal of the massive forest view come either at the top or bottom of a new spread, not in the middle of a page somewhere. I guess that moving around panels on the pages before this must have pushed this action forward into it’s own spread, which explains why this version has “Where the heck am I?” on it’s own page- so that a big, full-page climactic view of the forest could close out those two facing pages. Interestingly, in these layouts, the line “Celebrated Youth Sleuth Can’t Even Find Way Out Of Administrative Building” was still on page 25, somehow. I can’t remember if this iteration of edits made the page count longer or shorter. I think around here was when it reached it’s longest- a devastating 36 pages.

There were more shiftings and shufflings and the final page count is back down currently to 31(ish) pages as per the massive pile of stickynotes currently sitting on the wall above my desk (Figure 3, above). Somehow, even my most current stickynote iteration (Figure 4) doesn’t have page 21 correct, with “Where the heck am I” still a line, and it’s accompanying reveal of the forest still taking up most of page 22 as opposed to it’s final place on page 21.

{Image Description: Two numbered images: 1. A digital sketch laying out the panels and action for page 21 in transparent blue. 2. The final completed page 21 as it appears online.}

_____

So when I finally sat down to draw this page a couple months ago, I was faced with, mostly just a bunch of illegible stickynotes and an inaccurate script from over a year ago. You can see I relied heavily on going back to those lined-paper sketches from last summer, although I added several more panels to make the layout more dynamic and accurately convey the space within the hallways that Moody is walking through. I knew I wanted them to be able to be walking to the right so it would look like they were venturing forward down the hallway and into the forest space. But I also knew I wanted them, when faced with an identical hallway from last time, to try walking in the opposite direction. (You’ll notice on page 19 they walk to the right of the chair to get to the double doors that open to the fairground, so this time I needed them to walk to the left. But walking left on a comics page reads a lot like moving backwards. You can make it work, but in this case I thought it would disrupt the forward-motion that makes this page feel adventurous and like you are moving energetically through the space.)

Dusting off the cobwebs from the only thing I learned in that one film class I took in school in like 2014, I knew I didn’t want to jump too quickly from left-facing to right-facing because that could be visually disorientating. Instead I added two new extra panels to give the framing a camera-panning-like quality. We see Moody from the front, then they turn to look down the hallway as the camera pans around and above, and then down behind them, following them around the corner until ultimately we see them from right side of their body, so that we can still see them walking to the right of the page in a way that reads as going forward, while knowing that they actually walked in a different direction than before.

When I did the final layout sketches for this page (figure 1 above), I actually also did the layout sketches for the following 2-page spread as well. That’s not my typical workflow- I usually try to work one spread at a time, otherwise it gets hard to post new pages on a regular schedule- but at this point it felt necessary to understand how Moody was going to move through the forest and obstacle course on the following pages, before I could know what it looked like and thus be able to draw it from above. It ended up being simpler than I thought, since the part of the obstacle course that Moody climbs through in page 22 didn’t really end up being visible from here, but I still was glad I planned it out.

Working on that blue layout sketch is where the dialogue got finalized for this page. The text layers are turned off in this screengrab, but I actually laid the whole text out here so I could make sure it fit and plan the drawings around it. I also had to come up with more dialogue to fill this page and make sense with the action, since the 4 sad lines of dialogue I’d been moving around on sticky notes weren’t really cutting it for me any more. I went back to that original script from last summer to check if anything important was missing, and decided to add the line “What’s wrong with me?” back in from the original script. I think that was when “Youth Sleuth Can’t Even Find Own Way Out Of Administrative Building” finally made its way to its rightful place on the page as well. I’m pretty sure I came up with the lines “Nancy Drew on a sweet blue roadster-- what is going on here??” on the fly as I was laying out the panels for this page. In the back of my head I had always known “Where the heck am I?” was a placeholder line because, since Moody doesn’t say any real-word curse words in the comic, I knew that at some point I was going to have to come up with something else clever. Some other time, I’ll do a post about going from a layout sketch like this one to a finished an inked page. But for now this has gone on way way long enough. ANYWAYS. This is a very long post. If you read this far, I hope you gained some understanding of the the convoluted decisions that get made while working on a comic over time. And also a good idea of some things to absolutely not do (Spend too much time on the initial script and thumbnails, leave yourself indecipherable notes, move across the country and then move again two months later...)

As I’ve worked on this comic, these kinds of edits and changes have become a necessary part of the process. Not only am I working from scripts and thumbnails that might as well be inscrutable runes, I’ve also had new ideas, made interesting mistakes that need to be fixed, and learned new drawing skills that have changed what I can and want to do. As I’m writing this blog post (in mid-November- a bit ahead of time), I’ve just had to recently re-organize, re-thumbnail, and re-work dialogue for most of the next five pages of story, just because of accumulated errors and changes from previous pages (ie: some of the dialogue I was planning on using for a page I accidentally used elsewehere...) or changes in what I can do (ie: wanting to fit more action on a page now that I have better drawing skills). That’s a part of why I’m sharing these behind the scenes posts- to buy myself some time to reorganize and get these next pages right! As always, thanks so much for reading and supporting Mood Bluth! Talk to you soon :)

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mlpdestinyverse · 5 years

Text

Destinyverse Q&A

I asked my watchers on Deviantart to send me questions, related to me or Destinyverse, for me to compile and answer for a Q&A! Below the cut is the full Q&A and I hope it’ll be informative about me, my characters, or the Destinyverse universe! c:

Mysticalite:

1. Do any of your characters have any disabilities (I haven’t read all the bios so I might have missed something) if so, who and what do they have?

When it comes to physical, no! Though Destinyverse!Daring Do does have a permanent wing injury that gets in the way of taking off and flying normally (her wing can lock up and impair movement in the air). When it comes to mental (which I think mental illnesses count?); There's Eventide Twister with her general and social anxiety, and Skychaser has his bouts of depression. Then there's one other character who has dealt with clinical depression, and may still have its effects, but well...this isn't the right time to out them. ______________________________________________

2. Does the pony world in your universe have more relation with the human world? Like do more humans come over to the pony world and vice versa? With all video game stuff that involve Nova Spark, it made me wonder, do the humans share their technology with the ponies?

(Note that my answer is based off of Destinyverse headcanons!) There have been fun, silly stories passed around Canterlot City about magic and monsters and highschool students transforming into magical girl human-pony hybrids. But nowadays, people have waved off such stories as one huge school-wide prank or just exaggerated rumors to give Canterlot High and the city an interesting reputation. After graduating Canterlot High, and after magic disappeared (for the most part) from the human world, both Sunset Shimmer and Princess Twilight Sparkle agreed it'd be best to keep the existence of the magic portal on the down low. Not that normal humans who have never come in contact with equestrian magic or have never been pulled in at least once can cross it, but...better safe than sorry. A lot of back and forth communication and monitoring of the area around the portal is needed for Sunset or Astral to pass through unseen. Only those with Princess Twilight's permission are permitted to use the portal to cross back and forth.

As for technology! With all Sunset Shimmer has seen and gathered from the human world, the mare has used that knowledge over the years as inspiration to help advance Equestrian technology! Twilight puts her at the head of planning such projects, though they naturally need blueprints and research notes to be approved by Princess Celestia herself before they can start a project and have it produced for Equestria! ___________________________________________________

Craneswoop

3. What kind of technology is available to the ponies from the human world?

Similar to question 2, all advancements to technology in Equestria are human-inspired, but Equestrian-made! And I think it's safe to say magic has been added to the equation to create a unique magi-technology only Equestria would possess (think of how the helicopter blades on Tank's flight gear are run via an enchantment!)

One of the first things Sunset helped introduce were computers and monitors. Naturally an evolution in the gaming industry followed with the creation of consoles and computer games. We also have the creation of CDs and the development of portable music players, which improved the music industry.

There are some ideas still in the works for the topic of technology. For one, what about a development in animation and even TV shows? For some reason I feel like live TV wouldn't be a thing in present-day Equestria (whether because it's still being worked on or...Sunset wants to settle on live radio news broadcasts). Secondly, it'd be nice for there to be a communication device similar to a telephone, but not the complex cellphones/smartphones that humans have. That's an idea being smoothed out!

But one thing's for certain. The human's expansive "world wide web" does not exist in Equestria. Sure, computers - including desktop computers - exist. They're helpful with creating and storing documents and files, digital art, reading discs for computer games, etc. Buuut...Sunset has a new mantra, thanks to her past regrets. ”Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. I'm sorry if this came up before, but if Dream's parents were both Earth ponies, where did her unicorn traits come from?

It hasn't! I believe one of Dreamaria's grandparents on her father's side is a unicorn! I have a feeling her father grew apart from his own parents for one reason or another, hence why the thought of going to them for unicorn-advice wasn't an option he considered. Dream has no connections to them.

_______________________________________________________

Jackii-in-the-Box

5. Your characters are beautifully made, but I wonder: Are your characters’ personality and background based on your life, people around you, or both? Or is it just to discover topics through fictional characters?

Thank you so much! And ah geez, this is going to be a long one, I apologize ahead of time. <xD There are a good chunk of characters in Destinyverse that I've handed aspects of my own experiences to. These characters would be Eventide Twister, Monochrome, Dreamaria Flow, Skychaser, and Summer Rush.

Dream, Sky, and Summer have the most subtle connections, don't worry! It ties into the aggressive behavior they've faced in their lives, but to keep it from getting too personal, I'll end that thought there. <:3

Monochrome only has one aspect in particular that I gave them because it's something I struggle with and needed to give form. The chapter "Gallery of Infamy" alone embodies it: a desire to share the things that are important to you with others, especially those that matter most. But when you can't, you're often left with a sense of loneliness. Being able to explore that feeling through Monochrome was pretty freeing. ;w;/

Then there's Eventide Twister, who in all honesty embodies the most aspects in her own way. Specifically, her struggle with anxiety and her plotline with Heather. That's something I don't mind sharing: My ex-friend wasn't Heather. In fact, I've shaped Heather in a way that's made her completely different from the friend I knew. But she was my best friend for many years, whose toxic behavior shaped my anxiety into what it still is today. The chapter "Honesty", while the event that forever damaged me and my friendship didn't play out quite like that, holds heavy references to that event and embodies the emotions I was left with that day. Emotions I had to struggle with for years. But I've gotten better with my anxiety and can function better than I could years ago. I continue to handle my anxiety the best that I can! And everything I've ever learned from my experience, I'm handing over to Eventide. Because even when you're left damaged, without a single bit of closure in sight, you can still heal. You can still overcome your hurdles and build yourself up again. That's what Eventide's character arc is about. And I look forward to sharing what I have planned for her. <X3

There's something almost therapeutic about expressing these internalized experiences and feelings through a medium like this. It gives those things form and provides a way of reaching out and communicating them to others! It's incredible how much reception Eventide's arc received, and seeing others be able to connect and relate to her and share their own personal stories is something I find so, so meaningful. I can only ever hope that being able to see these characters have similar experiences or struggles helps people feel heard or a little less alone...! _______________________________________________________

KannaYui

6. What ships in your NG are endgame? Like, which ones are gonna be official? Like Skychaser and Evergreen

While I can't give a direct answer to that, this question allows me to provide a bit of insight, since I'm sure others have wondered this too!

The reason EverSky is so openly canon is because 1. Skychaser, before he was fully developed, was originally created specifically to be Evergreen's boyfriend. xDD Not that he wasn't going to have more to him, but! That's what motivated me to make him! Now he's developed a solid story role! And 2. I drew tons of EverSky before I even started working on Destinyverse, sO, it's out there in the open. xD

For the other endgame ships? I want to avoid outright confirming certain ships for reasons, and then there are others who I'm just not 100% certain with yet (like the idea of Summer Rush and Jonagold!). Just know that while certain things may be perceived as either romantic or platonic (platonic physical affection after all!!), I'm also...not the most subtle when it comes to hinting or enjoying my own ships. <xDD That's your clue! But I have at least established that ChromeTwister isn't endgame, and I confirmed that because hellevenIenjoyit but I don't want people getting upset thinking that's being set up when it's actually not and Monochrome's crush is a thing of the past. ;w; Feel free to ship what you want though!! As long as it's harmless and everyone's respectful of one another's ships (as well as the canon ships), it's all good. <xD _______________________________________________________

Anthony158

7. When we will see Evergreen past arc?

AH, surprised someone's asking for Evergreen! He indeed has his own past arc, and well...I want to say he'll most likely be the last character to get his revealed, BUT it also completely depends on which arcs I feel like working on as time passes. <xD I already feel like I'm jumping around and unable to settle on one character. But admittedly some things still need to be sorted out for Ever's, so! We'll see! _______________________________________________________

Lack-Rat

8. I've got a question/story idea for you. Are enchanted comics that pull you into the story an established form of entertainment in your world or was that one spike got one of a kind?

I had to look back at the episode in question, but it turns out Spike got that comic from a shop called "The House of Enchanted Comics", so apparently there are multiple! I'm sure that it's somepony's unique talent, since I imagine that kind of spell would be a rather complex one for just any unicorn to perform (and it's a rather specific creative approach)! And because it's unique, I don't think it's a form of entertainment everywhere! Since Spike's comic disappeared at the very end of the episode, I almost think these enchanted comics only have a single copy that can be borrowed before they teleport back to its creator! So there's just one very specific shop in Canterlot that provides such magical comics. c: Hope that creator has their form of comic-enchantment trademarked. u m u

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9. On a related note, do you think Nova would ever invent a game console that magically sucks it's players in, either intentionally or accidentally? Given that he's Twilight's son I wouldn't be surprised if he could.

HAH, the thought never occurred to me, but hey! He probably could. uwu As a whole new generation of gaming~ Though it'd have to be intentional and consensual. xD And it'd be way down the line! His present goal is to just create immersive story-driven games. _______________________________________________________

MadnessOfTheMind

10. This may be considered a spoiler but I still gotta ask- Are Pinkie and Sugarsocks gonna have any kids in ur storyline or are they just a little side idea?

For some reason my mind tells me that those two don't feel a need to have any kiddos! >:0 They're just livin the best life with their business and parties~ Caramello from the Cake family is kind of the closest thing they have to a kiddo they can love and spoil. uwu

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11. Also are we gonna get more Everchaser/Skygreen (Evergreen and Skychaser) panic gay horse content in the future or no? Cuz lemme tell ya I do love my chaotic gay flirt horses lol

YOU HECKIN BET YOU WILL, THERE'S S O MUCH I STILL GOTTA DRAW xD I haven't even introduced their future daughter yet. I'll end up drawing stuff about her eventually. ;w; And I personally call their ship EverSky! Makes me think of a beautiful endless expanse of sky.

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12. Also, what was the first nextgen you came up with an idea for, or what triggered you to start developing a nextgen story on Deviantart? I'm curious owo

I was inspired by Lopoddity's next gen artwork!! I was particularly enamored by her royal next gens and basically went "I...want to design...a kiddo for Luna", AND BOOM, WE GOT PRINCE AMADEUS, my first next gen! Princess Lumina followed after. c: From there I already had Dream Flow and Eventide Twister as characters (Eve was an undeveloped OC at the time), my friend had her character Star Chime, and the existence of my royal next gens started forming a story! A cover (now taken down unfortunately) of the song "Ballad of the Crystal Empire" kick-started ideas for an arc of the present-day story. And as more characters joined the cast, my brain exploded with ideas from there. <xD The realization that I could present this story via illustrated stories and art dumps was the final push I needed to start working on it!

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13. I know abt PTX, but are any other characters inspired by celebs or media figures you like?

Nope! In reality I don't actually keep up with a lot of celebs and media figures. <xD Aside from youtubers maybe, but still.

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14. What do you, Mia, personally like music-wise? What are a few of your favorite bands?

I always have a hard time naming genres because I kind of just like whatever songs sound good to me. <xDD But I think a common pattern is that I really enjoy emotionally-charged songs. Probably why I tend to enjoy songs from musicals (Dear Evan Hansen is perfection, fight me)! I also like things with a good beat, piano, strings, and a combination of all those things is mMMMMgoodshit.

For some bands! And singers! I enjoy Halsey, Panic! At The Disco, PVRIS, Rachel Platten, Paramore, and Marianas Trench!

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UsaHunnyBunny

15. Were you nervous about sharing you Pony next gen stuff?

Nah! I was already posting art and stories for other fandoms in the past, so posting for a new fandom wasn't bad! But most of all, I had a powerful desire to get out of my own way and get my stories out there. I have a hard time communicating my thoughts and ideas with people - or finding a place where I can do that - and it was wearing me down, internalizing my own ideas and passions. SO, sharing my stories became my way of communicating these thoughts and feelings and connecting with others!

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16. Out of all your ships, which is your favorite? Parents of next gen/next gen or otherwise!

For canon characters; TwiTempest is my absolute jam. They're so freaking cute; perfectionistic and panicky princess and her cool-headed and secretly soft guard captain. HM. Runner up would be DaringDash. I never actually shipped them until after I paired them together to create Monochrome. Only then did I realize how cute of a couple they could make. Stubborn, blushy fools.

For my next gens: EverSky was my everything for the longest time, but then came another ship. I won't name the ship, partially because of my whole "no confirming" thing, but also because it's a ship that I don't think anyone will be able to fully appreciate or understand until you see it unfold for yourselves. ;w; It'll become obvious with time~

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17. What advice you'd give someone who wants to share their own fun pony stories/ideas themselves?

WELL! SCREW CRINGE CULTURE FOR ONE. As long as you're not copying or using harmful ideas, HAVE FUN AND BE INSPIRED!! Your ideas deserve to be out there! Not receiving much attention at first can admittedly be disheartening, but please don't give up! Keep believing in your passion, keep expressing it and having fun, and people in time will be able to see and appreciate those things! Also remember that it's okay to retcon if you end up finding ideas that work better. c: And one of the best things is that there's no pressure in posting stories 100% in order. You could jump around from character to character, from present day to the past to an event in the future, etc. In the end, just make sure you're having fun. ;w;/

Also, always have something with you to record new ideas! Your phone, a google doc, a notepad, whatever you need to jot ideas down new ideas as they come! From experience, you might think "oh this is an interesting idea, I can remember it for later". NO. DON'T TRUST THAT MY DUDE. YOU WILL LIKELY FORGET AND THEN HAVE REGRETS AS YOU TRY TO CALL FORTH THAT ONE SCENE CONCEPT OR THAT PERFECT LINE OF DIALOGUE but can't. So just be safe and jot down every idea you like, even if you end up tossing it out in the end. ;w;

ANYWAY! It all starts with you, so please, make that move and share your work~ Who knows who you'll end up reaching with your stories!

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18. Are you aware of how wonderfully talented and adorable you are?

*SQUINTS* I'm only including this cause you legit submitted it, but how dare Myansweristhanksbuthush _______________________________________________________

PurplePenumbra

19. Regarding Dream, has she ever met any other unicorn with the same kind of magic as her? Would she like to? And if so, would she be happy to meet them?

She hasn't! Then again, other than the few times Uncle Serein would take her out of town for an outing or for visits to her grandparents, Dream didn't get out of her town much. Not until she moved to Ponyville! Whether she'd like to meet a similar unicorn is a little MMM complicated. I think meeting another pony with her abilities would at least be a good opportunity to see if she understands the full extent and workings of her magic. >:0 _______________________________________________________

ANONS! 20. Since the last ask reminded me of your mystery dungeon kids: if Eventide, Skychaser, and Dream were a mystery dungeon team, which Pokemon would each of them be and what kind of roles would they take? (tank, ranged, etc)

Dream Flow would be a shiny Ralts (emotion-abilities and psychic-type after all!) She'd be a ranged battler and healer!

Skychaser would be a Dartrix (no reason other than flying type + the hairstyle, and the hood for Decidueye. Besides, grass type boi would work well with grass type - possibly Roserade - Evergreen Glade~) And Sky would be a mixed fighter! Also have...have you guys looked up birds in hoodies. Please do.

Evie would be an Eevee~ Not only cause name play, but! Eventide's a char of possibilities. Darling's gotta find herself. ;w; While a reluctant fighter, if it means aiding her friends, Eve will do her best to fulfil her role as a close-ranged fighter (with Skychaser staying close to help out when needed). She'd also carry a wing-shaped backpack for the team's items! Evolution-wise? Even with no flying type Eeveelution, I think the most perfect evolution for her would have to be Sylveon~ You can piece together why. <X3 _______________________________________________________

21. Which characters were fun to develop and had the toughest backstory to plan?

Fun to develop? Oh Nova Spark all the way. A character who was originally created for fun and to serve the role of Prince Amadeus's best friend has developed into such a major character and I love him. It's probably why he has the longest past arc out of anyone, and also why I'm really excited to work on it BUT WELL I'm worried about leaving everyone else on the backburner. <xD

Hardest backstory to plan? Dream Flow. I've been developing her for over four years now and I'm still trying to sort her out. Heck I was figuring certain things out for her AS I was writing "Impasse". BUT HEY, I think I've settled on a good amount of Dream's story now! I'm sure I'll be editing some things as I go, but I've got a basic idea for what I want! _______________________________________________________

22. You've shown off kids for a lot of the MLP main cast, and they're all great! But one I've never seen mentioned and it has me curious. Does Starlight Glimmer have any kids? Will they be showing up even as a cameo/background pony?

Thanks! So this answer applies to all next gens, but for me to make a next gen, I need either 1. A ship I'm genuinely interested in! or 2. A character concept I want to design, thus I'll figure out parents that could fit the concept best. Examples would be Nova Spark (TwiTempest) and Beat Mania (VinylOctavia) for #1, and Monochrome and Skychaser for #2.

While a Starlight kid sounds nice, I just don't have a Starlight ship that's won me over. <xD Nor do I have any interesting char concepts I could use for a Starlight kid idea; BUT, the thing about that is that I'm not actively trying to create new character concepts. You see, I seem to have a hard time creating background next gen ponies because my mind likes to go off with ideas for almost every character I create. And with the amount of characters I already have, I really don't think I can balance any more characters in the cast without feeling a need to have them play a role in a main plot or another character's plot. And things are complicated as they are. <xDD SO you won't be seeing any new next gen designs unless I find a new MLP ship I REALLY like, or I think up an idea I really want to pursue! ;w;/ _______________________________________________________

23. Do any of the Destinyverse characters have friends that aren't ponies? Some of them did go to the school of friendship after all. Will we ever see them or have them mentioned?

Yep~! But see, those who have attended Friendship Elementary/the School of Friendship (Nova Spark, Eventide Twister, Astral Dusk and Monochrome) ironically are also the characters who have problems with friendship. <xD So none of them have non-pony friends presently.

As for those who do! Evergreen Glade actually has a Kirin friend who is very important to him. You'll meet him in Evergreen's past arc!

Summer Rush is very personable and probably has made friends with both ponies and non-ponies. ;w; None of them have been planned past being minor background characters, though. Maybe they'll have brief mentions! We'll see!

Princess Lumina has made friends with tons of royals/chiefs from other species! Comes with visiting or receiving visits from representatives/leaders/heirs of the other kingdoms within or outside of Equestria!

And finally Terra Rosa....may or may not have a friend who's not 100% human. Without realizing it. _______________________________________________________

24. They all seem to be around the same age, but who's the oldest/youngest of the Destinyverse crew?/How old is everyone supposed to be in Destinyverse?

Keep in mind these are approximate ages, from oldest to youngest! Princess Lumina is the oldest at 27. Then comes (big bro) Skychaser at 26. Summer Rush, Astral Dusk, and Prince Amadeus are around 23. Monochrome (and maybe Evergreen Glade) is 22. Eventide Twister, Nova Spark, and Dream Flow are around 20. And finally, Venture Gale is the youngest at about 14! _______________________________________________________

25. Will we ever be seeing more of Lumina or Amadeus? Will they have a part in this story?

Certainly! The only reason we haven't seen much of them is because we haven't explored the right characters that are connected to them! c: Which would be Prince Nova Spark and Star Chime (again, a friend's character!)! _______________________________________________________

26. Does Venture Gale read his mom's books? How does he react to them if so? Excited, embarrassed, or something else?

Absolutely~! He's a HUGE fan of his own mom's books! He gets so engrossed reading them, getting to re-experience his adventures in such an awesome light. It's exciting seeing himself as a character! Though he does get embarrassed when his mom adds extra narrative commentary, such as writing that Valor Wind is a fast-thinker, intelligent mind, a brave and honest soul, etc. His embarrassment is also fed by people who are die-hard fans of his character (Not that anyone knows he's Valor Wind or that the stories are real. But anyway, he's also incredibly flattered~)). Surprisingly, unlike Rainbow Dash who gets a HUGE ego boost out of their fans, Ven is a rather humble kiddo. But that's to be expected from the boy who becomes a red-faced bean over the slightest compliment. _______________________________________________________

27. Without spoilers, which Destinyverse character would you say has the biggest regrets about their past? Either in a single event or a long time thing?

Astral Dusk. It never occured to me until I read this question, but regret is a leading theme in present-day Astral's character conflict. _______________________________________________________

28. Who is your least to most fav character to draw in Destinyverse? Why?

Favorite character to draw? Nova Spark I think! I love coloring his gradient hair. Much simpler than hair streaks, and it's very pretty <xDD From there, everyone else so far has been on pretty neutral ground.

Now when I say "least favorite", in this case I mean the char that gives me the hardest time. And that'd be Skychaser, only because of his dang hair. <xD Getting the right curls and shape is WEIRDLY hard, but hey that's the price to pay for luscious hair. _______________________________________________________

29. What's Nova and Monochrome's relationship like?

Hehe~ It's a healthy one, built on trust and a sense of understanding they don't really share with anyone else in their lives. They often find themselves on the same wavelength and constantly have one another's back. If I can choose one word that embodies their relationship, I would choose...loyalty.

#mia post #destinyverse

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