#courage dear heart

[orthodoxsoul]

"But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again" C.S. Lewis

[audreythevaliant]

I have a sneaking suspicion that’s growing stronger all the time: I am coming to believe that everything is going to be alright in the end.

[callmewinged]

"I wish that I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being." ~ Hafiz

[destiny-islanders]

In one of your comics, G'raha uses "dearheart" as a term of endearment, and I've seen it used in other fanworks by miqo'te as well, is it a common Seeker phrase or something?

I don't think it's a Seeker thing, no...

I'm not sure about the other fan miqos out there, but iirc I first read "dearheart" in a CS Lewis book once and I just really like how it sounds :')

[lilacsofthedead]

Hey there folks! It's been a while, but anyone interested in a star wars/Trekkie/Mass Effect type OC scifi setting? 

The edges still need smoothing out - I adore being ask questions, it really helps me worldbuild, and I'm not great at the minutae of galactic politics even though I can spin out characters like a mfer. I also have a list of characters (by no way definitive, I'm always happy to make yet more) and a handful of loose plot ideas and tropes I like.

I'd prefer you to be playing a human OC, mostly because I love interspecies friendships and romances, and it would be nice for such a pair to get along. I'm not particularly against nfsw scenes, but unless we immediately click really really well, I like to go for slow burn going into anything like that. 

Htmu for current OCs and their associated species

Some plot ideas (with the species most suited): 

First contact at school - early contact on earth, the Womperjess send many of their adolescents and juveniles to earth schools and colleges to learn alongside human youths. Maybe be someone helping them settle in? 

Mixed species pan-planetary university, settling into dorms and making friends (Doll!Azurite, Womperjess, Karsp) 

Fresh off the dirt - Adventures of the JIS Calliope, cargo hauler and occasional asteroid miner. (See OC list for Jute and Falcia crew members, other species besides human welcome.) 

Escaping the past (Helping Callah, raptori former slave, flee from his former owners) 

Black ops and dirty deals (Karsp and Ostrom, as well as Ajax the Jute) - hiring dangerous people for dangerous work or working with them. They probably need a good medic, in their line of work. 

Corporate intrigue - famous Javeen heiress seeks encouraging, plain-speaking friend and/or private investigator to help reconnect with her estranged, prideful, brilliant cousin. (Other species besides human welcome.) 

I'm a MASSIVE sucker for hurt/comfort heavy on the comfort end - I really like fixing up hurt characters, but I haven't the stomach for a lot of detailed whump like some of y'all. Mostly I just like people getting along and fighting together against the odds. 

As to myself, I'm a bisexual 34 year old transman (you anti-queer, don't look here) living in the UK, and you can call me Mal. I prefer to RP via email (bastloki@gmail.com) or gdocs, but I will attempt Discord only on the promise that no posts will be deleted without warning, except for those misposted or misclicked, if that makes sense. I've had some bad experiences. 

Don't hesitate to hit me up and I hope we have fun! 

[quickienewyork]

Good morning!

I'm having a little bit of a slow start today. We walked Zelda, made the bed and put it up, and I brewed some coffee. But once I sat down at the old laptop, it's been a touch less productive.

On Thursday, Piper and I are getting a plane for a short vacation of which I know almost nothing about. She's planned everything and we are both very excited for a weekend away.

Which is to say, I'm a little pre-occupied with day-dreaming and less inclined to dig into all the marketing, sales, and other crap I do as a writer to try and earn a living from all this typing I do.

But it's getting warm outside and I saw beautiful friends this weekend. Zelda is curled up next to me on the couch, and my plants are looking green and lush.

So maybe being productive isn't the important thing today.

I hope you're doing well, taking deep breaths, and remembering how amazing you are.

-guy

[ypoc]

Courage, dear heart by Erik Seiler

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

i found this playlist in the first few weeks after it happened, during the long dark nights after everyone had gone home. i listened to it a lot over the next month, as i sat up and sipped the caramel tea she had left behind--told me i should try it, once, it was special--and waited for the sun to come up.

it's coming up on the time of year to listen to it again. sharing it this time in case it brings you what it brought me; whether for her, or for your own who will never wake up again.

[milushkamila]

Courage dear heart mug, Narnia wardrobe door mug, Aslan quote mug, Narnia miniature sculpted cup, ceramic art by Milushka

[pariyonkaraag]

Everything life offers to me is from Grace. I accept everything and everyone as they are, including myself.

I accept myself so deeply, that I am now fully and completely my truest self, always learning, always empowering, and always radiant.

[elisaenglish]

I’ve Always Understood the Assignment

“There is a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours, especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness and what we feel we are worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides, I remember an old man who walked every morning on the grey stones to the shore of baying seals, who would press his hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the water,

and I think of the story of the storm and everyone waking and seeing the distant yet familiar figure far across the water calling to them

and how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking, and that calling, and that moment we have to say yes, except it will not come so grandly so Biblically but more subtly and intimately in the face of the one you know you have to love

so that when we finally step out of the boat toward them, we find everything holds us, and everything confirms our courage, and if you wanted to drown you could, but you don’t because finally after all this struggle and all these years you simply don’t want to any more you’ve simply had enough of drowning and you want to live and you want to love and you will walk across any territory and any darkness however fluid and however dangerous to take the one hand you know belongs in yours.”

-David Whyte, The Truelove-

It’s our fear, isn’t it? Me, us, and far beyond our romantic dyad, that we’re never quite enough. Still, contemplative practice suggests that we must surrender to the unknown, embrace that which unseats us deep, let desire be so bold and find permission in ourselves to inhabit what we want.

This, we know. As for me? I do—want. The burn, the twist, the longevity. My all, your only. Fidelity do us part. Heart by mind, for always.

[existential-celestial]

Louise Gluck, Mary Oliver, Jack Gilbert, Denise Levertov, Ocean Vuong, Ilya Kaminsky, Mahmoud Darwish, Christian Wiman, j.p.berame (@existential-celestial)

—

praise to our endurance 🌱✨

[itspileofgoodthings]

With your profile pic change (beautiful - as always), all I keep wanting to say is, "Courage, dear heart."

Hope your day gets better!

I always need to hear it so thank you!!!!

💚💚💚💛💛💛

[queenlucythevaliant]

Professor Kirke remained at the small dining table after the last of the dishes had been cleared away, puffing clouds on his pipe. It was strange, thought Lucy: he had a faraway look in his eyes, as though some tiny aspect of his reality had shifted over dinner and he was struggling to accommodate it.

“I wonder what he’s thinking about,” murmured Lucy to the others. Edmund shrugged and Eustace (who had only met the professor that night) said nothing, but Peter chuckled merrily and patted Lucy on the arm.  

“You’ll find out soon enough, that’s certain. He got that look in his eye when you were talking about the Island of Dreams, Lu. No doubt he’ll call you into his study for a lesson later on.”

It was a little more than a week later that Peter’s prediction came true. Professor Kirke seated himself across his desk from Lucy with an enormous tome of poetry spread out before him. “Have you heard The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?” he inquired.

Lucy shook her head. Yet rather than muttering about the state of the schools as she had expected, Professor Kirke simply smiled beneath his whiskers and began to declaim:

“It is an ancient Mariner /And he stoppeth one of three —"

Lucy leaned back in her seat and fixed her attention on the words as best she could. Once, she’d spoken in such a register as queen of Narnia, but now she was only a girl of ten and unaccustomed to the flowery language of Romantic poetry.

“At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came—”

“Oh!” cried Lucy. “Is that why you wanted me to hear this poem?”

“Just so,” the professor replied. “Your account of the Island where Dreams Come True bears a marked resemblance to The Rime, beginning with the presence of the albatross. In this poem, the albatross bears a symbolic connection to Jesus Christ himself.”

“How peculiar!”

“I thought so too. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote this poem in 1797, in a time when sea voyages to the polar regions were very much like your own voyage to the end of the world. The albatross had only lately been described in writing, but he wrote it coming out of the desolate fog to guide sailors to safety. And Coleridge was a neo-Platonist! Fog and ice are very much like darkness, the way he uses them here.”

“A neo-Platonist?” Lucy asked, wrinkling her nose.

And now came the Professor’s customary muttering. “Yes. What do they teach in these schools? You may read darkness and fog both in Coleridge as something between ignorance and innocence, with the Sun as a symbol of Reason. Does that make sense?”

“A little,” said Lucy, who privately didn’t think it made much sense at all but was eager for the professor to continue the poem.

“It ate the food it ne'er had eat,

And round and round it flew.

The ice did split with a thunder-fit;

The helmsman steered us through!”

Lucy hadn’t meant to interrupt again so soon, but the words were out of her mouth before she was really aware that she’d spoken them. “So it really is just like in Narnia! It guides the ship out of the ice like my Albatross guided us out of the darkness.”

“Yes.” Professor Kirke was entirely unperturbed by the interruption. “Precisely.”

“How lovely. Isn’t it interesting how you just know when birds are trustworthy?”

The professor chuckled. “You may change your mind in a few stanzas. Shall I go on?”

“Please.”

Lucy returned to her concentration as the mariner recounted how a good wind had sprung up after the Albatross and how it had stayed with the ship and perched on the mast sometimes for evening prayers. Yet the mariner must have looked unhappy, for the groom interrupted to ask him why.

“With my cross-bow/ I shot the albatross.” Professor Kirke paused here in his telling and looked very hard at Lucy.

It took her a long moment to understand. “The albatross isn’t dead, is he?”

“He is.”

“I thought you said he was like Aslan.”

“And didn’t you see Aslan die?”

Lucy opened her mouth, but closed it a moment later. Open again, “But why did the mariner kill him? Doesn’t he give any reason? The witch killed Aslan because she was evil and trying to conquer Narnia. Why would the mariner kill the albatross when it’s done nothing but help him?”

“Perhaps,” the professor replied, “the Gospels are a simpler comparison here. ‘I shot the albatross’ has the same kind of blunt irrefutability as ‘And they crucified him.’ There isn’t any excuse, which I think makes the confession all the more powerful.”

Lucy sighed. It was exhausting trying to keep this all straight. “I suppose that makes a kind of sense. But then we’re trying to think on three different levels of parallel—the poem, the Bible and Narnia—which isn’t very pleasant.”

“And yet, it’s necessary if one wishes to understand deeper meanings. We can pause for tea, if you’d like?”

“No, that’s alright. I think I’m keeping track well enough for now. I say though, is this what you do with Peter all day?”

The question seemed to catch Professor Kirke off guard, for he let out a sudden, loud burst of laughter as soon as Lucy asked it. “Yes, after a manner of speaking. Shall we go on?”

“Ah! well a-day! what evil looks

Had I from old and young!

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About my neck was hung.”

It was a difficult thing to imagine and Lucy wondered if Aslan’s albatross was unusually large. Aslan was always bigger than she expected him to be, so it would not be strange if he took the form of an unusually large albatross. Yet the more Lucy considered, the more sense the image made.

“It must have been at least three meters,” said Lucy. “The albatross, I mean. Mine was more like four, from wingtip to wingtip. It would be a dreadful weight, but I suppose that’s the point. The mariner can’t carry it, can he?”

“I think you’re right,” said Professor Kirke.

A smile tugged at Lucy’s cheeks. It was lovely to hear the professor give such an unequivocal endorsement of her analysis. Galvanized by the success, she continued, “I thought of a cross when my albatross appeared out of the darkness. There’s something in the proportion of the body to the wings, and in its stillness of it as it glides through the air. My albatross tore away the darkness. But here—it’s like the mariner carries his albatross like he thinks that act can save him from what he’s done.”

There was a glittering in the old professor’s eyes then, and suddenly Lucy realized that she wasn’t struggling with the poem’s language anymore. Maybe it was because she’d been listening to it for the better part of ten minutes, but privately she wondered if Narnia’s magic might be working on her somehow. Perhaps this poem contained some quality of the rich Narnian air.

“I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;

But or ever a prayer had gusht,

A wicked whisper came, and made

My heart as dry as dust.”

Lucy shut her eyes and remembered the fighting-top of the Dawn Treader. The night-mare life-in-death was a black abyss, and all her own nightmares had been there in it. There had been monsters, of course, and the idea that even if she ran down to stand beside Edmund he might become a monster himself. But somewhere in all that dark, there was a Lucy who never spoke to Aslan again. She’d imagined herself in Lord Rhoop’s place, trapped forever in a state of endless fear-without-courage, because she could not call him.

“That was my night-mare too,” she whispered. “Not being able to pray.”

She saw the professor’s lips thin beneath his whiskers and wondered at it. “You’re wiser than you have any right to be,” he murmured. “Ten years old and your greatest nightmare is alienation from God. What a marvel you’ll be when you’re grown.”

Well then. Lucy didn’t have any notion what to say to that. She half expected that if she tried to reply, she might start crying.

“Might I ask—what did you do then? Until the albatross arrived, once you realized that you couldn’t pray. How did you react?”

And that was a question she could answer.

“But I could pray! I did. I whispered, ‘Aslan, if you ever loved us at all, send us help now.’ And that was when the albatross came. I didn’t talk about it after—it was too much my own for me to share it, really—Edmund knows—but well…”

The professor made a sort of choked noise in his throat. “Perhaps it was the only nightmare that the island couldn’t bring true.”

“But there have been times,” continued Lucy, “when my heart was too dry to speak with Aslan. There were whole years when I was queen that he didn’t come at all.”

It was with a much softer voice that Professor Kirke resumed his reading.

“A spring of love gushed from my heart,

And I blessed them unaware:

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

And I blessed them unaware.

 The self-same moment I could pray;

And from my neck so free

The Albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea.”

Here, the professor lapsed into silence. Lucy thought that the poem might be over, but when she peered across the desk at the page there were columns of stanzas still left.

“Even after all these years,” he whispered, “some things still remind me of my own days in Narnia.”

He’d told the children his story before, of course: beginning with how he met Aunt Polly and concluding with the origins of the wardrobe. Aslan had not condemned him for bringing the White Witch to Narnia. Instead, he’d had loved Digory enough to shed tears and sent him home with an apple so beautiful that it healed his dying mother.

“Grace,” Lucy whispered into the hush. “Of course. Maybe this is the moment where Aslan leads the mariner out of the darkness.”

Professor Kirke exhaled heavily. The faraway look in his eye lessened a little bit, and at length he read on.

“The spirit slid: and it was he

That made the ship to go.”

Never had Lucy felt Aslan’s presence more keenly in his absence than during those last days as the Dawn Treader had sailed over the still, clear waters at world’s end; like Aslan himself had been drawing them towards himself by some great, invisible rope.

The closer they’d come to his country, the more tangible his spirit had been. When at last she glimpsed those green mountains beyond the waves, Lucy’s very bones understood that Aslan had made the still seas bring them there.

A voice spoke out of the air concerning the mariner, and Lucy remembered the piercing silence of the Last Sea. Of the voice, the mariner said, “He loved the bird that loved the man/ Who shot him with his bow.”

Not for the first time, Lucy wondered about Aslan’s father, the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. What did he say to Aslan when he left that land of high mountains to return to Narnia and die at the Witch’s hand? What did he think when Aslan went flying across the lily-covered seas on feathered wings to rescue their little ship? If Lucy had crossed that final threshold with Reepicheep, would she have met the Emperor there?

“The voice is his father,” Lucy said, voice brimming with certainty. “The albatross’s father, I mean. The Emperor-beyond-the-Sea.”

“I know,” the professor replied. “And beyond the sea is just where our mariner meets him.”

“Do you think the mariner knew that the albatross loved him?”

The professor stroked his chin again, and a ghost of a smile played across his features. “If the mariner didn’t know it when he shot him, he certainly knows now. But come, we’re nearly at the end of the poem.

“Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,

Yet she sailed softly too:

Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze—

On me alone it blew.

Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed

The light-house top I see?”

“There’s one more thing I haven’t told you,” Lucy said. “Something so bright and mysterious that I’ve not even told Edmund. When the albatross came, it—it spoke to me. And I wasn’t afraid anymore.”

Professor Kirke leaned forward, but his words were, “You needn’t tell me what he said if you’d prefer not to.”

Lucy nodded slowly. Somehow, she knew that if she tried to describe “Courage, dear heart,” she would fail. There was nothing, no word or image or music or poetry in this world or any other that could convey what that moment had been. To speak of it at all would be like dancing about architecture.

“I was the only one who heard him,” Lucy whispered. “It was my prayer, and he spoke to me. I wonder how this poet knows what it was like?”

“I think he knows the same way I do, in my own way. Coleridge lived a difficult life. He was a laudanum addict when he wrote this, for one thing. When the Divine voice speaks into our darkness and we feel his breath on our faces, it binds us together with every other person who has ever been rescued by an albatross that loved us. We don’t know what he says to other people, but we know how the breeze feels.”

The professor returned to his reading and concluded the poem while Lucy sat in astonishment and let the strangeness of the last hour wash over her.

“…A sadder and a wiser man/ He rose the morrow morn,” and with those words Professor Kirke shut the book. The heavy pages fell with a thud, and with bright eyes he looked at Lucy. “What do you think of it?”

“I think,” said Lucy slowly, “that it was a beautiful story. The very best kind.”

What she did not say, but what she was thinking, was that it reminded her of the story she’d read in the Magician’s book: the one about the cup, the sword, the tree, and the green hill. The two tales had no common points of reference, but they left her with much the same feeling.

“But why do you think Aslan came to me as an albatross?”

Professor Kirke harrumphed. “I have been asking myself that same question ever since you spoke of it. Why indeed? I wonder whether perhaps in part he appeared that way so that you would come back here and read ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ and come to know him better by it. If nothing else, I do not think it was a coincidence.”

Yes, perhaps, but the answer still felt incomplete. “Maybe it’s a stone in the bridge he talked about,” Lucy said. “Maybe he only wanted to show me—to show us—that he’s here too. In this world, in this time, and in all others. Maybe it’s like you said, and there’s an albatross for every person who’s ever been rescued from the darkness.”

[mozart-the-meerkitten]

Hey! Just wanted to say that I LOVE your blog title-- that's one of my favorite scenes from the TV show so far, it made me feel a lot of things

Aww, thank you! It's one of my favorite scenes from the show as well. :D <3

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

god it was a good idea to restock myself on this high-caf tea. it is a godsend to have a proper source of caffeine that doesn't make me jittery, nor would i have to drink two or three times as much for my proper dose, nor is it a roll of the dice whether it'll make me gag so hard i have to add ice cream and tons of creamer to cover up the taste.

finally having some disposable fuckin income to last me a while has been one of the few bright spots in this awful, awful goddamn year, and it legit makes me emotional to be able to afford--and stock up on--some things that are a bit on the expensive side but will improve my quality of life immensely.

[parent death talk under the cut cw]

it especially makes me emotional because i first discovered this tea when i was out of caffeine supplies in the weeks after my mom's death, living alone in the house where it happened--a few dozen yards from the room itself at most, 95% of the time, and that far only when holed up in my room. i get the impression it was a treat she had stashed away and never got the chance to have most of; and it made me feel closer to her to have it as medicine and comfort on those long, dark nights with my sleep schedule turned around and the footsteps of ghosts in my house, with jenny nicholson videos running in the background through to the sunrise.

among the many deep, dark lows of this year, those weeks were one of the worst and best parts of it, all at the same time, and it's a relief to be able to have this again. it makes me feel that little bit better about... everything. it's what she would have wanted.