#crooked latitudes

[unethicallypleistocene]

For the ask game, Rae + is a polyglot

Alden is, too! Over the course of his career he's picked up a ton of Portuguese, a fair bit of Spanish, and quite the litany of curses from the various languages his crews over the years have spoken. It's mesmerizing to watch what he says when he stubs his toe.

[the-hinky-panda]

The Tremont Tempest: Chapter 5

Warnings: Descriptions of a sexual assault. 

Jonas Bronck Park

17 months ago

Mike has no idea what he’s looking for but what else is new? He’s been chasing leads, losing witnesses left and right to either pay offs or hits, and still healing from the wounds of his undercover failure. The blood loss had been significant but fixed relatively easily with a transfusion. The stab wounds missed major arteries and organs, leaving only muscle damage, which he’s still doing to physical therapy to regain his fitness. Speaking of fitness, his legs are burning at the moment as he treks off trail in one of the many wooded parks in the Bronx. One of his contacts told him he should head out here, have a look around…

He looks at the compass on his phone, the longitude latitude numbers as he wanders through the woods. He comes to a stop on a ridge in the middle of the woods, standing at the exact coordinates. It’s the early morning, three thirty to be exact. He checks his notes from the informant. 

“Look for the broken tree.” 

He turns the flashlight on on his phone and shines it around the area. About five feet in front of him, it lands on a tree that had been blown over, the trunk snapped and jagged. He goes over to it and continues to shine his flashlight around the area. Down from the tree in a small flat area, he sees something hanging on a tree branch. He climbs down the embankment and as he gets closer, he sees multiple things. Scraps of clothing, probably sixty or seventy pieces of cloth. No. Not just cloth. 

Underwear. 

He crosses himself. “Dios mio.”  

He takes pictures of the tree, tries to get as many up close pictures of the underwear that he can. A fucking rape tree. As if he needed another reason for wanting BX9 out of the Bronx for good. Anger carries him out of the park and back to his apartment. He’s trying to figure out who he can report the tree to that won’t bury this evidence. Who hasn’t Oscar Papa paid off in the NYPD? There was a detective over the Bronx SVU, what was his name? Pluto? Fido? It was a dog’s name, Mike remembers that. He was one that was making noise over there, pointing fingers at inept and crooked cops. He might be a good one. 

He gets back to his apartment, unlocks the four out of the five deadbolts on his door, picks up the paper, and then clears his home. He needs to look up the name of that detective, see if he can meet with him, talk to him, feel him out to see if there is a bite to his bark.  He googles Bronx detective whistleblower and immediately the name Terry Bruno pops up. Bruno, that’s it. Next, he goes through his contacts until he finds the number for Bronx SVU and calls. Two rings and an automated message comes on: Thank you for calling the Bronx SVU. At this time, we are experiencing an influx of phone calls and wait times may vary from sixty to ninety minutes. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911. If this is not an emergency, please remain on the line until an available officer can speak with you. 

Sixty to ninety minutes? What the hell is happening down there? As soon as the thought crosses his mind, the answer is immediately provided by the newspaper headline: Detective Terry Bruno files lawsuit against Bronx SVU for wrongful termination. Mike’s eyes zero in on the ax that slices through his only lifeline, termination. Bruno isn’t even a detective there anymore. The SVU is going to be scrambling trying to cover their tracks right now. Piles of evidence is most likely being dumped into the incinerator which is why no one is answering the phone. 

“Fuck.” 

He ends the call and fights the urge to throw it against the wall. He rubs his hands over his face, his fingers slipping down to the new tattoo on the side of his neck. He had just gotten it last week. It had been Gabby’s birthday and he wanted to do something to memorialize her because no one else in the neighborhood was going to do anything for some stripper in a sticky floored bar. He had the tattoo placed there, the point on his neck where her head always inevitably fell, even after death when he held her on the blood-slicked kitchen floor. Now, he presses the pads of his fingers into the still sore skin. 

What is he doing wrong? What does he need to do differently? Or is he just destined to fail no matter what? 

***

Bronx River High School

Later that day

You had just finished a tenth grade class where students were doing peer edits of their final essays on symbolism found in “The Tempest.” You had helped guide discussions, modeled how to properly and kindly critique others' work. The students had been responsive, some even grateful, for the chance to fine tune their writing before submitting a final version at the end of the week. You were saying your goodbyes to the students when Dr. Caban stepped into your room. One of your new students, a young man named Albert, stops by Dr. Caban and gives him a wary look. 

“Albert, have you met our principal, Dr. Caban yet?” 

He shakes his head. “No, teach.” 

Dr. Caban extends his hand. “Albert, very nice to meet you. Welcome to Bronx River High.” 

Albert cautiously takes the offered hand. “Thanks.” 

“Albert’s writing about the symbolism of Prospero’s books in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest,’” you add. “He makes some very solid points and explains them well. He’s quite a strong writer.” 

Caban smiles kindly. “You’ll have to share your final revision with me, Albert. She doesn’t praise student’s writing very often. In fact,” he winks, “ you should hear what she says about the writing in my emails.” 

Albert nods. “Alright, okay. I’ll, uh, I’ll send you my final essay.” 

Albert leaves and Caban motions to him. “Bright boy.” 

“He is, very much so. He just came to New York from El Salvador. His attendance is still shaky but he could just be becoming used to the routine here. I’m keeping an eye on him. He has a lot of potential.” 

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, if you have a minute.” 

If it were anyone else, that phrase would make you nervous. But you’ve known and worked with Dr. Caban since the start of your teaching career. He’s seen you from the first day in the classroom, through your cancer treatments, your divorce, and your rise to the English department head. “Of course. What do you need?” 

“More teachers like you,” he responds kindly. “Actually, more administrators like you. Our Dean of Students is taking an admin position over in Brooklyn Heights next year. I would like to see you fill the role.” 

You’re stunned. You had gotten your administrative certificate just as a fallback, a just in case kind of career plan. You never intended to leave the classroom. But you know Dr. Caban wouldn’t ask you to make this move if he didn’t think you would do well in it. “I, uh, I don’t know what to say.” 

“The pay would be more, the benefits would be better. But I want you there because the students love you. They’ll listen to a dean that they feel will hear them.” 

“But I love to teach.” 

“I know, and you’re excellent at it. But when opportunities to move forward, to move up, are presented to you, you should take them.” He gives you a wide smile. “Besides, when have I ever steered you wrong?” 

He had a point. “Alright, I’ll think about it.” 

“That’s all I’m asking.” 

Something feels off about the exchange. Dr. Caban had always encouraged you to follow your gut whenever it came to teaching a concept or interacting with a student. His response now seems pushy, maybe even…no, you’re just not comfortable with the idea of being in a more administrative position. You remind yourself of the idea that you teach to your students: growth only occurs when you’re uncomfortable. 

***

You feel like a teenager again as you get up the next morning and get ready for work. For once, the clearing of your apartment last night resulted in no findings. No notes, no bottles of wine. All that Mike found was a blanket on the couch that you forgot to fold and a couple dirty dishes in the sink that you were too tired to clean. You and Mike had enjoyed the food from the Havana Cafe and the bottle of wine while sitting on your couch. 

You fix your hair, twisting the riotous curls into a dignified style to keep your hair from getting in your face while remembering how Mike’s hands felt sliding through the curls last night. The broad span of his palms as they held your cheeks, the pads of his fingers pressing into your scalp. It seems like a shame to slide lipstick on, wanting to preserve the feel of Mike’s lips on yours. You’d never been kissed like you had been last night. 

Mike kissed like he did everything else, with complete focus, conviction, and passion. It had been so long since someone had not only kissed you, but kissed you like they wanted you. All of you. It had been overwhelming and heady. There was an undercurrent of excitement that ran through your body, the kind that you hadn’t felt for such a long time. You wanted to feel it again. But before things progressed past the kissing, his phone had rung and he had been called back to the precinct. He had said he was going to try to make it into the school this afternoon but you don’t know how far into the night he had to work. So you ready yourself for your day with slightly trembling hands and a silly grin on your face. 

You make your way into the office, opening your door and are immediately greeted by half the Manhattan squad of SVU. Captain Benson is back and introduces a new face, Sargent Tutuola. Your cousin Terry saunters in, takes one look at you, and grins. Doctor Caban is the last person to join you all in your office and he shuts the door for privacy. Of course it’s your cousin who outs you in front of everyone that’s gathered for the debriefing. 

“Well, who is he?” Terry asks. 

You shuffle papers on your desk. “Mind your own damn business, Ter.” 

“He, who?” Dr. Caban asks. 

You shake your head. “Nothing. Detective Bruno is my cousin and likes to instigate things.” 

“I mean if you’re seeing someone,” Terry continues, “we should probably know who it is. For the investigation’s sake.” He ends the sentence with a shit-eating grin. 

“I plead the fifth, thank you.” 

Benson speaks up. “I do think we should know if you’re dating someone. It’ll give us someone else to talk to, maybe they’ve noticed something you haven’t.” 

You sit down behind your desk and hold Benson’s eye for a beat longer than necessary. “We’ve already discussed this.” 

She nods once in understanding but the downturn of her mouth tells you what she thinks of the situation. Thankfully, she doesn’t say anything else about it. “Alright, this is what we have so far. All the notes and the wine bottle didn’t have fingerprints on them. The paper is cardstock that is found throughout this school and many others in the state. We do have the video of the woman from the convenience store.” 

Caban pushes his glasses up his nose. “There was a woman at a convenience store?” 

Benson nods. “ Yes, the bodega owner has the person who bought the wine on video but he didn’t recognize her from the neighborhood. Velasco and Muncy are trying to identify her as we speak. Fin, you and Bruno went out to Long Island to talk to Charles Murrary yesterday afternoon. Anything come from that?” 

“I could have saved you a trip out to Long Island,” you say. “Charlie and I still talk from time to time. He’s a little too busy and quite happy with his wife and four kids to care about me.” 

Terry shoots you a pointed look and grimace but neither one of you says anything. You know his feelings about Charlie and how things shook out after your cancer diagnosis. You can only imagine how that interview went yesterday. Maybe you should shoot Charlie a text to see how badly Terry questioned him and see if you need to smooth any ruffled feathers. 

“So here’s what I’d like to do next,” Benson adds. “Dr. Caban and I will go over a list of teachers and staff to see if any of them stand out as possible suspects. Bruno and Fin can brainstorm with you to come up with any other people that you may have noticed hanging around you lately. Someone from the neighborhood, parents, store clerks.” 

You nod. “Okay, sounds good.” 

Caban gives you a light touch on your shoulder and a smile before following Benson out of your office. He closes the door behind them and Terry immediately leans forward in his chair. 

“Who’s the new guy?” 

Before you can shoot off a retort, Fin interjects. “I don’t want to get in the middle of family issues here, but I’m with Bruno. It might be helpful to know who the new boyfriend is.” 

You drop the pen that you had been fidgeting with onto the desk. “Fine but I don’t even know how serious this thing is yet.” 

“Fine,” Terry agrees, “I’ll hold off on the background and credit check. Who is he?” 

“It’s Mike.” 

“Duarte?” Terry prompts. 

“Yeah,” you confirm. 

“Well shit,” Fin sits back in his chair. “Liv isn’t going to like that.” 

“Liv and I have already had a conversation about how Mike isn’t the stalker. He’s had multiple opportunities to take advantage of me and hasn’t done one thing that raises a concern.” 

Terry sighs. “To be fair, you did marry Charlie.” 

Fin shrugs. “What happened with you and Charlie? Cuz over here got real quiet when I asked him why the two of you divorced.” 

You’re surprised that Terry didn’t blast Charlie when Fin asked about him. Terry’s opinion of your first husband always had been less than stellar. “Charlie and I just…wanted different things.” 

“That’s one way of putting it,” Terry mutters. 

“Look,” Fin starts, “I know this is tough. Having all of us here, digging into your life, your past, it’s invasive. But having someone stalk you is dangerously invasive. The more information, even the embarrassing things, can help us.” 

“On a professional level,” Terry says, “anything you say in here stays between us. We might see something in the information that you don’t. And trust me, we’ve heard worse than what happened with you and Charlie.” 

You pick up the pen again and click it a few times. “Alright, fine. Charlie and I met in college. We were both education majors. We got married two days after graduation, he went to work at an elementary school, and I came here to teach. Two years later, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Between the hysterectomy and chemo treatment, I obviously couldn’t have any children of my own. Charlie always wanted children but I couldn’t give them to him. So we divorced.” 

Fin motions for you to continue. “That’s it?” 

“That’s it. He met his current wife at the elementary school. She’s a kindergarten teacher and was able to give him his…legacy.”

“Duarte’s looking pretty good now, isn’t he?” Terry quips. 

“No shit,” Fin agrees. 

“So that’s why I don’t think it’s Charlie,” you state. “Charlie has exactly what he’s always wanted. There’s no reason whatsoever for him to stalk me.” 

Terry stands. “Well, maybe Benson and Caban can come up with some names for us to track down. But until then-” 

“I’ll keep in touch,” you promise. 

***

Mike looks down at his phone and smiles as he takes another sip of bourbon. 

Teenagers and Shakespeare do not mix well. God love them for doing their best though.

He had been tied up with leads, strategizing, and paperwork all afternoon that he never made into the school today. He had been afraid after last night  you would take his disappearance personally. God, he didn’t want to leave last night. Everything had been perfect for once. Nothing had been found in the apartment, the food was excellent, it was the first time he had felt like he could breath. And then you stole it away from him when you kissed him. 

He had texted you about the day getting away from him and you had messaged back that you were facing similar circumstances. The principal that was supposed to show up for the Shakespeare play this evening had to cancel due to a sick baby at home so the duty of attending fell to you. So he opted to have a drink at the Bronx Beer Hall while exchanging text messages with you. 

What play is it? 

Taming of the Shrew. There’s a pause.  At least I think that’s what this is. 

Any plays you’ll need to attend on Saturday night? 

Nope, no theater productions are being held on Saturday. What do you have in mind? 

I was just thinking I could go for some Italian. 

Oh really? I was thinking of trying some more Cuban. 

He smiles. I guess the kids aren’t the only lousy acts this evening. 

I suppose not. I don’t know if you’re ready for Bella Luna yet. 

Why not? 

My Aunt runs it. Terry’s mom, Carla. She’ll throw you in the meat locker in the back and interrogate you.

Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s done that. 

What?! 

Long story. Sounds better with a good bottle of wine. I’ll be back in school tomorrow and we can settle on where to go on Saturday. 

Ok. The lights just came up. Oh dear God, it’s only intermission. I may pull the fire alarm. 

That’s premeditation now. Better find another way. 

“Well, you look happy.” 

Mike looks up from his phone and sees Benson standing next to his chair. “Captain. To what do I owe this visit?” 

She orders a glass of wine as she takes the barstool next to him. “A friendly warning.” 

All good naturedness bleeds out of him. “Alright then.” 

“Dr. Caban is convinced that you are the stalker.” 

That doesn’t surprise him. “Dr. Caban was against me coming into the school in the first place. He’s been looking for a reason to get me kicked out. Let me guess,” he drains his glasses and motions for a second one, “you agree with him.” 

“Actually, I don’t.” She laughs humorlessly. “I talked to a lot of teachers and students today and they all spoke very highly of you. Those kids in that school love Mr. Mike.” 

He smiles at the nickname the students have come to refer to him. “Alright, so the staff and kids vouched for me. I already know that Caban is gunning for me. What’s the warning?” 

She fiddles with the stem of the wineglass. “The way that Caban was gunning for you, wanting me to focus on you and only you, it was odd.” 

Mike leans back on the barstool. “You think he’s the stalker?” 

“Him or maybe his son. I have Velasco looking at Caban’s family, see if he has a sister. Muncy is reaching out to some gang contacts to see if the son has been approached by BX9 or if he’s involved, it’s just a solitary fixation.” 

Mike stares down in the amber liquid and sighs. “If the Cabans are involved in this, it’s going to break her heart. Caban was her mentor when she was student teaching. She equates everything she learned about teaching to him.” 

“Betrayal never comes from enemies.” 

That is certainly true. “Amen.” 

“Where is she tonight?” 

He picks up his phone and turns it over. There are no new texts from you but it could be that the second act has started. “She’s at the Shakespeare play at the school. It should end in another hour.” 

Benson pulls out her phone. “I can have Fin or Bruno make sure she gets home safely.” 

“I can finish this off and go see her home, that’s fine.” 

“You sure?” 

“Yeah, I’m sure.” It’s an excellent excuse to surprise you at the school, to see you again. 

She finishes her glass of wine and reaches for her purse. “Are you sure I can’t drop you at the school?” 

“Nah,” he waves her off and finishes his drink. “I’ll walk. It’s not that far. And the play should be letting out by the time I make it there.” 

“Okay, well, let me know if you change your mind.”

He throws some money down the bar to pay for both of their drinks. “Is this your way of apologizing to me?” 

Benson opens her mouth but closes it as she rethinks her answer. “It’s not so much an apology as it is…an understanding. You’re right. The Bronx is a completely different animal compared to Manhattan. But talking to those students today, you guys are making a difference in those kids' lives. It may not be the way I would deal with the problem, but at least the problem is being dealt with.” 

“Well, if that’s the closest I get to an apology tonight,” he grabs his phone and stands up from the barstool, “then I will sleep soundly.” 

Benson laughs and shakes her head. “Just know that I wish Terry’s cousin the best of luck with you.” 

He laughs as well. “Well, thank goodness she’s used to dealing with people with behavioral issues.”

He sees Benson to the towncar and waves her off for the night before heading down to the school. It’s early spring, the night is unusually warm, a positive reminder that warmer days are on the horizon. But he’s worried about what Benson told him about Caban. If Caban really were the stalker, it truly would devastate you. He had also looked into Caban’s son’s record and the boy was an upstanding citizen and student. He really hoped that Benson was wrong on this one. He passes by the bodega where the wine had been bought and catches sight of Roberto behind the counter. Checking his watch, he sees he still has some time to kill so he goes inside. 

“Hey, Cap!” 

“Hey, Roberto.” He doesn’t really need anything but knowing the news that he may need to break to you prompts him to do something he hasn’t done for six months. “Can I get a pack of reds?” 

“Sure,” Roberto reaches around and grabs the pack of cigarettes. “I thought you gave these things up a while ago.” 

Mike shrugs. “Old habits, I suppose.” 

Roberto shrugs and starts to ring him up when the door opens and two teens in hoodies walk in. They both look at Mike and Roberto before moving towards the back of the store. Mike turns to Roberto who just nods and Mike sees one hand press the emergency call button under the counter and the other hand wraps around the handle of a baseball bat. Mike draws his weapon but keeps it at his side as Roberto comes from behind the counter. 

“They might be letting their friends in from the back,” Mike says. 

Roberto motions to the sidewalk in front of the store. “Let’s get out there at least.” 

As soon as Mike reaches for the handle of the front door, it swings open as three more teens rush them. He manages to get off one shot but the flash of a machete comes down on his right hand and forces him to drop his gun. Roberto is swinging the bat as best he can in the confined space but Mike feels a blade cut into his arm, his shoulder, his back. He hits the ground as Roberto keeps swinging, trying to hold the teens at bay but Mike can see the blood dripping off Roberto as well. 

He can hear the sirens in the distance and prays they reach them in time. 

***

You were so happy to hear the last line of the play and see the lights come up in the auditorium. The kids made a very valiant attempt at tackling Shakespeare and you gave them props for that. But you were tired and ready to crawl into bed and sleep for at least a few hours before getting up and coming back tomorrow. You go back to your office to pick up your coat and purse when someone knocks on your door, causing you to jump. 

“Oh,” you laugh, “Dr. Caban, you startled me.” 

“Sorry about that,” he smiles easily at you. “I was hoping I could talk to you for a moment.” 

“I’m very tired-” 

“I understand. This won’t take long.” 

“Okay,” you sigh and set your purse down on your desk. “What’s up?” 

He closes the door behind him. “I really enjoyed the play tonight. Taming of the Shrew. It was always one of my favorites of Shakespeare.” 

Your skin starts to prickle, your palms sweaty. “Really? I was always a fan of Midsummer Night’s Dream.” 

“You always do enjoy the more fantastical stories of literature, don’t you?” 

“I suppose.” 

Caban stops just a couple feet away from you. “What do you see in him? That Duarte guy?” 

Something is terribly, terribly off at the moment, and you swallow down the bile that has risen to your throat. “I don’t understand-” 

“Yes, you do.” He lays his hand over yours. “I can, I have offered you so much more than he ever could. I gave you your career, your skills, your positions. I put you in this office, next to me. You deserve everything that I’ve given you and more. And I can give it to you. If you let me.” 

“Dr. Caban-” You try to slip your hand from his but his grip tightens to the point of pain. 

“Just stop!” He closes his eyes and releases a breath through his nose. “Stop.” 

“Please,” your eyes dart to the closed door. “Please, just let me go.” 

He shakes his head. “I’ve watched you go every night for the last twelve years. I can’t do it anymore. Not after those clandestine lines from the Bard himself.” 

“Please, just let me go.” You feel tears starting to form in your eyes, the buzz of adrenaline bursting through your veins. But Caban had an iron grip on both your arms now. You were wedged against the curve of the desk, your back against the hardwood with Caban pressing closer against the front of your body. He lays his cheek against yours, his lips against your ear as a tear slips from your eye. 

“‘Tis a wonder,’” he whispers the last line of the play, “‘by your leave, she will be tamed so.’” 

“I don’t…please, I don’t want this.” 

“Oh, my fiery Kate, you don’t mean that.” 

You’re shaking with fear, looking for any escape route when you hear voices in the outer office. Caban stiffens with surprise and you take the only chance at escaping this situation and yell for help. Caban’s hand cracks across your cheek with enough force you see stars momentarily and leaves you dazed. You manage to scream again which earns a second strike across your face but you’re able to hear the splintering of the door to your office as someone kicks it in. 

“Hands where we can see them!” 

There’s a scuffle around you before Caban is pulled away and you fall back against the desk. Before you can regain your balance, someone has your arms and is pushing you towards your office chair. You hear your name being repeated and recognize the voice speaking it. 

“Terry…” 

“Yeah, it’s me,” he says, his fingers skating over your face where Caban’s hand had struck you. “Are you okay?” 

You nod numbly. “Yeah, I think so.” 

“Did he-” 

“No,” tears start to fall in earnest. “No, he didn’t.” 

“Okay. Okay,” he looks behind him before refocusing on you. “We’re going to have to head over to the hospital.” 

You take in a couple deep breaths. “I’m okay, I promise.” 

Fin is standing at the door of your office. “Caban’s in handcuffs. I’ll wait for Velasco. Get her over to the hospital.” 

You start to assure them both that you’re okay, just dazed and out of sorts when you catch the look in Terry’s eyes. “What else has happened?” 

Terry sighs. “Mike was jumped along with a bodega owner tonight by BX9.” 

[aspaceinthecosmos]

a beginner's guide to stargazing in the northern hemisphere*

*note that the stars visible to people in the NH differ based on your latitude. Those nearer to the equator will see some different stars than someone near the north pole.

the big dipper

The big dipper is an ideal place to start with stargazing. Its ladle-like shape is widely recognized and is quite easy to spot, even in areas with greater light pollution. The big dipper is located towards the northern sky, and you can use it to locate two other well-known stars.

By following the bottom two stars in the "scoop" of the dipper, you can find polaris, also known as the north star. Polaris is always directly north, and its height in the sky is determined by your latitude. For example, someone at 20° N would see polaris located at 20° above the horizon. Polaris is located in the Ursa Minor constellation, also known as the little dipper.

By following the curve of the handle of the big dipper, you can locate the star Arcturus in the constellation Bootes. Arcturus is the brightest star in that constellation, and has a reddish tint to it, making it fairly easy to locate if you know where to look.

Looking on the other side of Polaris as the big dipper is on, there is a constellation known as Cassiopeia. Often known as the "crooked W," cassiopeia resembles, well, a crooked W. This is my personal favorite constellation :)

in the winter times in the northern hemisphere, occasionally the constellation orion is visible. this constellation is usually fairly low in the southern horizon, unless you live pretty close to the equator. Orion is usually best recognized by the three stars that form orion´s belt, and by following this belt you can find two more prominent stars.

If you follow orion´s belt downwards, you´ll find a very bright white star, named Sirius. This is one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Following Orion´s belt in the opposite direction, you´ll find the star aldebaran, another bright star which has an orangeish tint to it.

Above orion's belt is a well-known star named betelgeuse. Betelgeuse (pronounced beetle-juice) is best well known because it is a red supergiant star, which could go supernova anytime within the next few days to the next few thousand years. In our night sky, it appears fairly bright and quite orange.

and finally, looking below orions belt, depending on the light pollution in your area, you may be able to see a cloudy looking object, almost appearing as "orion's knee" (that's at least what i call it, most people say it's his sword). This is the Orion Nebula - one of the only nebula visible to the naked eye.

If anyone living in the southern hemisphere would like to add on tips for those living there, feel free! I'll reblog any other stargazing tips people leave :)

[self-loathing-angel-of-thursday2]

Beautiful Spouse’s Rewatch Thoughts SPN 07x11 Adventures in Babysitting

Today is our 10 year wedding anniversary so we’re watching Supernatural lol

“Is this a short season? They’re going hard on the music” “I don’t know how I feel about Bobby being dead” “This dude has quite the face” “They did a great job with the sound design of the show” “One of her eyes is crooked. I wonder why” “If Bobby wasn’t dead yet, he is now, because the music tells me so” “Two weeks PBS - Post Bobby Singer” “To be fair, that would drive me nuts. If someone woke up in the hospital, wrote those numbers down, I’d go bonkers. Spend years trying to figure it out” “Why was there a noise if Dean drank the beer without noticing?” “How…what the fuck. That’s the creepiest thing” “What the fuck” “Is he just trying to get her out of the room or what?” “Bingo” “He’s going to leave her alone too. Jesus Christ” “Might want to leave a number that she can call if you die, too; otherwise, she’s fucked” 🎶ketchup and mustard🎶

“If he was going to shoot you, he would have already, Dean” “perty gun” “I’m with Dean on this one” “You cut your palm???? Why would you do that. Idiot” “Especially right there. That moves all the time”

“Talk about beige and tan” “What’s Buster Brown?” “Gotta love how Frank called Dean Buster Brown, and the first thing on wikipedia is a boy in a pink suit” “It could be a lot of different places with those coordinates. You don’t know longitude and latitude. I guess you could narrow it down to who owns the land like they just did” “This fkn lighting is immaculate” “That’s horrific?” “Is it the silver or the twist that kills them? Is the twist necessary?” “Well that’s not good” “That’s how you got caught I guess” “He slept in a chair for 36 hours?” “I feel like they forced the Sarah Palin joke” “Why does this guy have so many extension cords? I don’t understand” “So Sam gqve the girl Dean’s number. So he did do the right thing” “Twice? Oh.” “Straight to the closet” “How many guns has Dean had pointed at him this episode? Two?” “Don’t bother filling in the rest of the story” “I don’t understand” “He enjoyed that way too much” “She could have made a good addition to the show” “She’s like a miniature Ruby, ya know? Like a kid version of Ruby. She’s got the same vocal delivery” “Wasn’t expecting that” “Dean just stood there the whole time. What the fuck” “They were driving around silent until now. And whatever time at night it is and it’s “good for them” Jesus Christ” “Just kick him in the dick”

[veralevina15]

Я опубликовал(а) 60 постов в 2022 году

Это на 60 постов больше, чем в 2021 году!

27 постов создано (45%)

33 реблога постов (55%)

Блоги, из которых я сделал(а) больше всего реблогов:

@marinamk29

@gatecrashing-corneas

@tygerlyla

@veralevina15

Я пометил(а) тегами 46 из своих постов в 2022 году

Только 23% из моих постов остались без тегов

#radovid - 35 постов

#the witcher - 28 постов

#radovid v the stern - 27 постов

#wiedźmin - 20 постов

#witcher 3 - 20 постов

#king radovid - 17 постов

#adda - 17 постов

#adda the white - 17 постов

#radoadda - 17 постов

#radovid x adda - 17 постов

Longest Tag: 74 characters

#i'm waiting for the full version of the monologue when radovid explains it

Мои самые популярные посты в 2022:

#5

Посмотреть весь пост

22 заметки - опубликовано 3 ноября 2022 г.

#4

Morvran Voorhis dressed as a Redanian nobleman (my design)

Let's take a look at his outfit:

1. Lush, richly decorated and bright clothes of the Redanian nobility largely inspired by the costume of the szlachta (gentry of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) of the 16th-17th centuries;

2. Collar (jewelry) with eagle pendant, symbol of power;

3. Redanians don't need eye makeup ;

4. Warm schaube with puffy sleeves just for northern latitudes;

5. "How to put on a zupan, so already become a pan"; ( Pan - it's slavic honorific, it was equivalent to "Lord" or "Master" )

6. Kontusz - it's pride of redanian nobleman. Doesn't fasten to the end to bug was seen zupan;

7. Satin Ofiri belt with ornament from golden threads;

8. The cane is an attribute all the archspies and conspirators;

9. Saffiano boots with embossed pattern.

37 заметок - опубликовано 13 октября 2022 г.

#3

“Your Highness, learn to be a few steps ahead of the enemy and be the first to unravel his plan. Learn to look for workarounds, even when there seems to be no way out”

«Ваше Высочество, учитесь опережать противника на несколько шагов и первым разгадывать его замысел. Учитесь искать обходные пути, даже когда кажется, что уже нет выхода»

Witchertober2022

Topic - "Mentor "

For The Witcher Ask

46 заметок - опубликовано 1 октября 2022 г.

#2

“You, Spy. You are amazing with ladies. You know, classy ones. The kind that smell good and can read. And always have their glasses on just kind of crooked. You know? The ones that don’t go for a guy like me”.

“But you know what book-smart ladies like me find sexier than anything? Waitin’ patiently for me to change my mind!”

—————

«Но ты, Шпион, ты знаешь подход к дамам. Ну, знаешь, из высшего общества. Которые хорошо пахнут и умеют читать. И у которых очки всегда немного криво надеты. Понимаешь? Те, которые не западают на таких, как я».

“Но знаешь, что для таких умных и начитанных девушек, как я, самое сексуальное? Терпеливо ждать, пока я передумаю!”

51 заметка - опубликовано 25 ноября 2022 г.

Мой пост №1 в 2022

Посмотреть весь пост

74 заметки - опубликовано 26 ноября 2022 г.

Получите свой Обзор 2022 года в Tumblr →

[unitedstatesghosttowns]

County: Crook Zip Code: 82711 Latitude / Longitude: 44° 41' 40.94 N, 104° 26' 28.83 W Elevation: 3,993 feet (1,217 m) Time Zone: Mountain (MST) (UTC-7)…

[libidomechanica]

Untitled Poem # 10143

A rispetto sequence

               I

For long like the mind: false sense of revengeful can sustain around the well come of Darkness the loving you: home. Would not Loves many men. And forbidden glut the air, the clock is okay but them from her ears, and Time passage of bed; good is won’t slip at buskin of mighty flurry seas happy love no more. Pon moonlight. In summer-indolence, bold eye or else?

               II

To run their state she’s gentle spare, in green pebbles force, she lost in the took he disown’d, crooked in my beggar bombast she bed, a Cloud with spring, or as moisture is a cunning step, or busks his want too man. Me: but he is nursling hys dayly race my garden. Its such mought back. When a part Doppelgangerous earth— and Love done on, he, with gazing fear ye light.

               III

Lost it, consider, Johnny, till hour eyes you so. Who for we moving pillars are the gazed- and merry tune, the Champak odour matches him riversal in our live. Hate ballad gallop on through for a lowe degree that made the fail, the church, and show, that breast. Everyone on Vertues showers, mother grave, or at you tell of their chose stranger. To fight, along have found.

               IV

Now see me motion was very the chiefly where; he said, and never-fit; not loved and me. She presence! To man. Both who his the never knees. Oh gentleness, which is creams—she hard shamefully yielding arms, it ditties greeny flowers. The live her loue me more a pearls upon a miller with gone near me or what hobbles of delightly gulf have because her e’e?

               V

Forget the shell fish to their eyes. Dreams came for sea wracke of him, and welcome, my embassage every night; slow how her Sleep a kindly she’ll too weak points down, and maiden mild and perhaps he’s husband, an’ made him in vertical it was Salámán dedicates of love me be instinct without solidly where, should singing of this, then nor leave to him light of swinging.

               VI

Making to be infant animal awesome down, and what always. And by the stands of youth, every joy … the love’s none can I be blythe this true, as when of my tocher’s theirs of light; that are. Sweet mama … truth in me in they store, till die, I remember will be, I have bee, my fluent that little the first enclose o’ my kiss’d a net of all of themselues with these.

               VII

The come, my ladders, and the urn once more clear. That give it! And I will brighten afar: for a girl who dwells frozen me. I risked weigh and grange,—upon a shelter, the moon the latitude! Come, while bridge. And going, nowe their star. Into the night; silent foam and great, or a more. Saw not in silent garden steps the the braw lass made here na by. Nor complimental farce!

               VIII

Thus Natures dear life, of large, with a green are doen ill wilt though the green close armes embroider’d indolence they nothing grey; he balefull cheat never know thou could that’s in mild and who smile unsearchable repose—still and stand! False in bed, and me of marjoram had been, when the grove to know not known weight o’clock sung out of swimmers trouble for yúsuf—she hurry.

               IX

What her on his Dagger bliss of Kings—glory to God whom thy sweetness and brier, then love descending is dreaming rock—that leashed and all in the was gives when yet hand and fife to entence benumb’d near. Inlaid better heaven, cried. Son or eleven; her mind like a happy boughts, as the rest, is in motionless white bliss from fame’s ballats, Maro’s caress, and me.

               X

The be back-yett be chiefly whip or while night us, for it’s jet, jet blacken’d water looking after, lost it in an April morn, of rimless sea, the words my moving in dispute. When the deeds; thereof short Metro ride of great, happy love, do breeze, all we were to upheave silence when Juliana coming of person, numbers, closed at ease my life’s turn’d of teare.

               XI

I’m her the next, to do with theirs of her bliss, I knew na whereto the simple shepheard herself would stone; but now at remain those next way shed, the clime, with thinks my lifeless age. For the duckling other necks, wherein on thy wracke because after to send the hour tender, I would contain smoking breeze, all shut quiet so imbrace, she spring should be calm, and timbrels?

               XII

—The weight. Like men did my beams: court my fear to the Spring! Which I call meet my heart made the sea. And Betty’s in a cloud that flowers with a shepheard of hell fish down the toss’d a nervous that move their sweet sand; and my head, or hardly leave it is a male cluster’s planets that me hereto I still ever love burned lief, and like towards the guide and now them I burnie string.

               XIII

The pink greeny flocke so trim and by the freely give thou held mount where on the bed to be, or unders doe lou’d, delight, nor drown her lose. The bonie lass made the one did defend, old foot along night, of legs, and with sucke vp the desire Zulaikha built with the saw in your name. But in the lonely white heaven. Athwart the argosies,—as I gang by magic cured.

               XIV

And liued in your hand, and sayd Algrin, his horseback again; his not a jocund concertained, held up for end, one is now by the turned halfway up an untarnisht by so nere, white, did and without theirs of the phoenix’ breath, and me in a radio. Her breath shroud; the water rue. Theirs of this founder senses in a monster mercy chamber your hair in your hand.

               XV

Yet love more, johnny, mine recall’d hersely prophetic swims, a siren so as from my hear at you, incorruption with your breath showers. Cries Betty Foy? Be infant animal away, the found shall ne’er again. My heart, were dwell that dream of all breath the watchful medio virtue rude didn’t feelings of electrons helmet thy derelict and Hoigh for a look?

               XVI

While the sweetlessed flight its picture. And light dales, and the snow I dreams came back again, so I press my Lady unto Madam make a hurried; she wild and her contained, the nutrimental who scorn the oar! Fruit presumes nowhere sweet lover at him that marke of people, of sorrow for she sun burned the thought thee wroughts nature might; in the owlets from the wide, while you?

               XVII

Old Susan’s Glory into Curls nestliness it their sea of sigh, this legs, in earther cloud the corruption free. Two hour and Sap, to blame for her falls, and while shepherds sink and even the round, there’s nobody be. Oh! Grew better warm your sorrow shine above his Dust what crowds began to high. Never, break in the talked to recant, and fed thee me! She said; she weight.

               XVIII

Port and not all in one we looks say, knowing help me! An ill come night road? The clasp, never can sentence all that richest lips with pearl the more proue; bidden: which I weene Ioue, Maro’s catcheth no one think the heat north his branches rancke, it seem fair Cloe blush’d her ring shrubs, how tender, I asked: Melchior? And past arctic blast—quickly dark vault above the politic, while night.

               XIX

And threshows half-wise; but once like a little waves that I am a little prisoned waterfall, that I do to the souls like Fairy flow. And follow, when shape! How I care I, who comfort poor open the lass that’s in answer to their death? I unremark’d the only their starves sits heroic clandered hye, the sun, soldiers and brough each my night’s a’ for me.

               XX

And tree of endles return! The woodman is shill: wi’ joy of the people, that strife rest, when tyrants’ crests of May; thy great of false love consort thy love ready haste despair, I see that’s feeding cake. Delays, and wings: shall enough I care I, whose fairy Prince! How good Algrins ill, beside the Fruit growing I cannot rejoice I still was born, till of the open the sun.

               XXI

The brasses crest brand his fiery arrows cast: a little sin, and liued with sadly shed irrefragably, and dreams; my boys, come away; if Susan’s Glory fight, wet with joined the Heart. And maun I still grass you recede the eye down against my only spright perhaps his own in other, leaving to find hide be vanish’d in him to me, and as an as ye may hart.

               XXII

Let the page from the strong had see but I shall ring gentle cast, when your she change to you on the Hand o’er am’rous earthwart that made up all the live air tongue. Thou think, and stirrup fiddle- faddle him whom thee. Into me, i’m sure as they’ll both wit to Loves make sure night and see pearly enough, sweetly he, for tears of a frame whatsoever her into my means this own.

               XXIII

But, where wile you appears; there does my young and proud, whose little, small be fall of guiltlesse run, course, whose needes be cheer. Or every life’s turns for the long? And rearing, as though thoughts to you still comethings doe meeke her bosom’d For it now the corpse fourtesie; but in view she’s public faulding, to make and me. Of spring memories, the dirt to me. What the lovers’ hallan!

               XXIV

Upon you and as eas’ly then he she ran, as thou in their than our shins when thy hair, I surmise, stellation, from it! Then he this old sees him whom in many dreamed honour of melling power, of will bringing, reimbursed my you know her bow. Linen slack; now, to him tense— lost perhaps he’s han the hot blooming with eyes and counting, dong, and strike the myrrh, this Child strick.

               XXV

Beside of your dog, fond look? And what wealthy tread,—tis Johnny! From children, rival place may holy Faunes done, oh God, the sun did stond, and in her Image round by see, she general flowing and lose my eyes; my power add the hours in time-torn many manifestations, gladly bustle, your eyes and dumplin burn to pot. She did the too precian, who laught. To you.

               XXVI

The rest floating, and he not loving in compeers have me to holden morning of crimson petals spill. Making a stores, and o’erload they want to me; and towers of drinking-songs believe in sends to Betty Foy with you, incorrupted: or lives in the heart’s own instrument, happy melodies are nothing married Betty lives us the thick-moted and you more.

               XXVII

And no chil love you do but her set, making wish your wholly crusted surface and tears, and Fate, in my head and simply that inward eyelids palace. They seely shaft bynethe. Murderer was for to clime the fall; but ever stars of might, moonward, whose fancy frail, adieu! One day I went in vain and grew up with his tender state sheepe the breath; but I am alone.

               XXVIII

For the line the owlets spoke thilke missed or more haire; by who doest to me; the never piping luxurious earther demeanors met her hovels head, half-empty cups of his chosen Loves me not storm by which of thee. Woodland when other hands as her are thick clutch follow dirty yearning, or if I contains, who have for laik o’ gear you must forgot touch of Yúsuf.

               XXIX

Tears of time alone! That I ween, a gilded flower-plots were the stroke my voices instinct against my soul. Bitter return; did seen the two grubs his Name a monstellations of the mought foot, that strived long hand rulen or Daught he insults dovetailed among wings; and she poem is counting hindward wend; nor grave that close mode—work was to me, but, trowth, I cald my Heart.

               XXX

The shall holds her e’e? The living a doubtful to me, in earphone with you did driven so wisest ride homeward wend; nor snake or what crown her whence is not influence before there is not mean. Such for gather once of his team, wi’ wild that heifer lose are bonie last to the sea therefore. But naked, plagued what to dream, and hear it, remembered, decline from though cast—my heare.

               XXXI

Of time. Come, my daughter and with the clouds, as his holly walk in use, that grows wherefore they seeing, what we will fragrant in the bridle, he’s in other horse’s tie, make a desart with belts in the solemn night, grew, sharp scratch a principle of her grace thing tears care na by. She dwarf too he to reply to think to the steadily as an as ye wadna beene.

               XXXII

What streams to whom I love overtaken up I drag it on him still her light you. On Menie doat, or on horse and smart, and guile, they meaning, and all: an unto take me, an’ it was born to falling. Of murmuring as any eden wine; his back again, an’ a’ should complete thighs, better thy obiect so poor Susan sayne. The Indians know. I am with a height.

               XXXIII

For we all confound and dumplin burning from leaf-fring’s only said not yet another on earth—and for heaven are afternoon news, so late I notice thus! And time is might, and overbear as a shades increasing for ever way didst closed, as not mean, all its skin while toward Quantock’s heal us out of corner of light and I touch years fall of the next day might dead!

               XXXIV

A pure let a thine shakes. To find the otherwise. How, for heart the stars and flower? Indeed, the heart a boy with my soul of globes of mourning, are laved my Head! For the fire, and like a books became to see sweet Bird of you. To thy shaft by? I do to see the easter’s hour true retreat with theyrs, let us nourish the recounting-grounded old Algrin Moses bloom.

               XXXV

Belovëd, I loved your poems yet may still help Thou Me, for we are not touch! And I from the dwarf. And adoring sights nature dear be bound of the gusty sick land. At poor Johnny vile, as not back and pledge vastly soul on Menie doat, and look as a shell construck despite his hills. The queen’s far removed them did forbidden, to lacking heaven light your fashion can name.

               XXXVI

To be to meeting water lanes I will be, that all determinate. Along thence allow her looking bands: striving her silence with dewy hills, if the Will affection fleeting love you would I be gone, an’ I’ll comes in high a poison her mind, it’s jet, jet black land? I claps’d hear; all fresh Rose, or play in, you that ye may I die! And all, while I dreadful hunter’s art.

               XXXVII

And rook-delight for more through their fruit mighty frail, Poesie! Must has like, and shame compassion growes Me, Heaven like this head to see where incessantly with these, why on her I looked elipses gainst time, oh! Johnny nor the Rust creeps into go. To make a beauty bright; silent past by? Devise, I would seems that greeting; permutations; double as ye meeke her ’tweene thing.

               XXXVIII

Shall become to enlarge and laughter’s breathing to the mad, and of youth the free; when sink and by breeze, all past. The quite forrit, by stroke my daughter thee thing fairy Queen, has proue; o let flye. When I sting to adoring sometimes a great often flye. Stead with fine; no pause I lie in vacant of the livelier flowers throughts betrayable eyes. The chil love, you have alive.

               XXXIX

Sudden wasteful tale morning waves the heart with wonder of large, was slain and season gave hath her canst nothings as ugly as an ugly hill. Whiles up, the growes Melanchor fades, our cheek: its can never dies! Our live. How without solidly where in the motion a moment this welths waues bent onward her forged you, youth heated to her: As I will in a year, wild voice.

               XL

And God-filled outside yon slope of the temple truth be Strong, this orient Soil and raging, looked again; once morn and Matthew is it, but the resign in a moment; it suffers no less clay at a gloue, ioue on dead or painting arms; but i shouldering on the Bird of instrel galloping eyes, and Hoigh for everywhere; he lyes increase, that in both one by the more.

               XLI

But yet their wing doth be her for his hands ours before. Simple sky. ’ Mae nor gather of stranger yet why that left of tread, o white content, to gather an’ a’ should gae made him still and round remark’d thrives; while he loves the futures&above that lean heavily again, in welth: wherein to my dear love is souls like a breast—but, trowth a very wave unto my motherwise.

               XLII

Banks, close o’ myrtle Tree, and year the day I dared, yet, love notes as power, like a beauties to draw into my Childless ennui surround which shall sit bears—this the naked on the endures, you known the railed our grass, thought bring, regret. Full hylls vnto hye and alone with his tidal whit behind, for every side; the night, she asked: Melchior? And gone, is in my thou know.

               XLIII

Into you. She shadows ancholy hyll that you, although I die, the down, to wyten sense and her eclipse endear’d, which certaine! She onely as a smooth-kissing toward feature deeds do witnesse run, and dreery day; I fearfully yield not Thomalin can I do not but field. Of woe, there’s wet with spirit the Beauty’s be death. Who had a blind was the planted?

               XLIV

For all fleet of thee long breath’d marked bears, in sent out they all enough brittle as this spiring airs understand; and I from remember him the your bright as love me you dost sweethearts beats in a book, and beare, to add the sky which but I have been. Hallow descendant pearl of our eyes; false enough black again space affairs there is not ceased, upon her minutes his their flocks?

               XLV

Your feet like answer, how I may stile, and by Love accelerations there the rest, burn to him that, burning breede a little theyr she gray- eyed for tears of my right speak. And marvelously with a Laugh of this mild, the Room would life is not back. Poor Susan labour to shame him to teenish head sounding all and now she’s happy, happy in its memories, nor story.

               XLVI

The moon she, you loyalty; I knowing honey’d rainbow of that music with not, she made the seen, maud my friendly should add fresh, and I winds us: strived a little way and Hoigh for beauty began a frame what passions of sky with mortal pitch, the frozen tree of God who thus was fire, and that ho, through he grew? Your eyes where with for us most when the doctor!

               XLVII

You did keep of citadel, which, let’s do this I was shepheard Let us new, that made then he shrill were death. A very hand, a substance to some sweet like a vision of Musk lay have the skies, that err’st now. A tap at their skies, adorn man who want to gathers face unto two heard toe, he’s cot, from while reede.—Why burr, burr at all dissectible Love some spring, the them.

               XLVIII

’ The grove but if thy soft pipes, and no those did my hearts come, my life, you ask me did, and wild be enough, I cam past and low: and her e’e? Our lowing, all in over trees, face, spite of you within. She weak for you are that sitting far brothere to be the nutriments, secure as foes approach, I added sense, or unding for the brawlie my friend that’s in a dreary grape.

               XLIX

Sweet have sportion wine and keep a poor old Susan’s like a planks and God-filled, a longingly I saw us in linesse run, and whatever saw it and Helen, a charm of woes; your name. Both the love’s low and rose, to stirre more floor floors, old from with Ignorance fretful pain, they wanton eyes. And, half-moon in that music has poor Susan shred on the mean take back again.

               L

Showing, the freendes and seating such a hearts as the lass made in her eyes, ropes and fro, riddle of wit, because all love, Honeysuckle!— The bonie lass made the pony! Past to gives that musing, her pointer was now has his bridge till doost it double fabric that, and said, and them: o bright the lass made they wastes, whereto this back dark confined creams within a dream, a dead!

               LI

For a loued then me. But a voice: you, your low upon your house, I bough for a monster. And I love no more. Thou gav’st me: better was fighting pain. And loue me to rest …. I may lightly me, but, trowth, I can lend thee, the Sheikh held him deadly spright speach other that making; the warm which that she ask not me, and personal narre, he cock sung in dispute. It’s prize. As not ask.

               LII

Each in it; o let a barbed how tended flowed. And the Road of ice, why startled in, trust and serene, the sin, and maun I should be, took that rest, whose to passed. The sea, but I came to reaching think, by somewhere wing’d to help the vales in this their art; no paused to mow: and Hoigh for her eclipse above—devoid of what like, and in so have you fosters and wailed out: Is you: home.

               LIII

And drank, he speakest faith its shooting towards rejoice as yet be afraid of thee morn? Nor show the census tale pure as thou gav’st me out. ’Mid a’ thy estimate: the list: curst be corrupted: or long put it ditties endure to say, will I do not lovingkindness might, if that echo of twelue, the eleven. And now her change, even the coachman that leades return.

               LIV

The turn thinking and thus maiden coming hurt me, who canst nothing speechless their live in being, you to each other, thou him who’s yon, thy Gotes in motionless the skie doat, and love, that rauishing love thou dost that woman, one parson, numb,—yet sleep of the strong into that all is shelter, with the World, the one, since with thence for the lark, ’tweene the lass made of useless call.

               LV

Your cheek, and Betty, going as their fingered they pouring a wart. And cannot common ruin I met you when thorns her closed as if on was like a knots into a heaps sae shy; for the kind, that, in lowly, how I feel there’s survey and gazed-but for his vice into Flight his ever into say, faulty fears, and one more lustres on thy wooing horse, the water.

               LVI

Was it thee. Purr, an ill: fond then which are slays aboue: but her heavenly sin; if he while he must of Love’s brings, there? What then which rain on my arms; but i should she to her you sae shy; for laik o’ gear ye light—the love affront of duetie thou look look down, to heal us I would have lost in here Titan ryseth from the opened condemned for thy words I gang breeze that in boughs!

               LVII

I would stirrup on find then gluttering lips black swollen mild and my Johnny’s husband’s at these temple girl. Fragments; let me, but, moon was sloping from thy mind grew, shaken up a lily of their to claim receiv’d is old Susan’s praise, thought, then she dimental foe and you so. A flown? And good twine cost morning in the put her hands ourse of snail, its own in the slow time.

               LVIII

Beneath of air, and thus express smiles, adorn beauty holding gray see, was that vehemence, more her the loveliness, the year for laik o’ gear ye light of our love. How she’s high of any liness clear as a reward trembling, dong, bend; and you art not Melancholy fix my song light! Why of us to add yet to labour thou thy days, supple blossom presence!

               LIX

Night tease us a fairy Prince with for your corn that is o’er the Despair. Not spin. Not die; I lovers’ hand, and you may not move these fear and ballats, and desperate path. Which rubies blows; a thirsty miller, her bower, the word. You and sith the sky-lark what you. Found my Heart to the dark looked, play his name One in love come, my breast forehead astrayning, and will no-no.

               LX

My dear from the stanzas a wedding dart, unless as the be infant and deadly sight, waking he distant in vert fields the injustice, and me. Must a sun, as he, for the sea! Pleasure; but what inward, happy daynties to folly. In the wept, since to be minds, when I who would only record! Sleep from annoyed I probably draw that a wounded old firme lou’d, delight?

               LXI

Whatever her bright dungeons life of a light a story. Above, the oracle have a tip with the fire, an’ it’s once is my pity- wanting gypsey-folk. And be quite forever snap concerns man, now her life to him the owlets danced, already hand compose has fetch outward violet brindle of golden daily at moves make that must lips, and turning in the dead.

               LXII

And thirst, the meadow as some more by there, long which did me is not meet me fretful death of silver sense! Oh Doctor from; but in which we in their loss of graced for yours be heart have sense!— Tis Johnny well relict and crow to time and dart, and there’s neither, never growing. To thing is slain apple have no her: with a Kidde, now—but Cloe’s eyes the later like a virtus.

               LXIII

What pretty beauty from year, oh! Now, Madam’s teats, Maro’s catches a silently, inviolably blue spur, then he prize. Chloris to demen some clime! Here windows of despair who canst now the woodland frae come split broke my Tongue in up alone in whose travel we with thy foot so well she hardly height are, and all he is death’d marish-mossession be done: mine to snare.

               LXIV

And follyes vndercharm from the caves. And Betty put it dance Rumpelstiltskin? When complex and driver or more. And free from the pony too he tulip, white hands upon the roses warriors come extremes bene night lie forgot how soles short Metro ride our live as yet swallow he’d love my dear. Have ye be fattend the climbing. The single bed to pick it uttering.

               LXV

South, and leaves hae the wave it! Years what I dared the very sat vpon my hearts fine, all be. And in hell sense unhaunted by the turn shone fall; but he is they listening of this, and, forlorn, as ugly hill to his crept. Of yore. He was said, and them did defend, that do I recant, but the dark vault above—devoid of happy morn of May; the Talk of sorrow and the vale.

               LXVI

Depart! For ye lightly meet you reawakened. A voice he is, the mood made them I burnt messence braw lass made a little way she’s probably don’t get out. To be your garden! And yet no one lifeless and lacke, and she shepheard shall the Spring a dull fervid cover that is before her like phoenix’ breath? Her very worthy of the new-leave us little sweet joy!

               LXVII

I lie in the river of the seed-heads globed peonies; tis he reports, Love, gazed with rein? He cologne. He may nothing place of her sheepe the figures, frisk with that that cared till so swift fooles: if the she’s a red to me, o wrang na my verse shall but—nothing shame could sees, as ugly as any tyrants above they sees, but the can be spokes fear there it were dwell.

               LXVIII

I double for his fyriefooted he too, and then, in pride home. Dead Glasse, and let a times in a year, but, trowth, I care no beauty’s angers as in the grass, tak’ him living all that words I give the Mountains, on a hylls, and weed; of summit of the victors of all lives. So, little token, a gilded fly to fall the grass you have no more still soon my fate her eyes.

               LXIX

Flaming Garden, to strong, nor pain; lest so well be done?—And marked be, to witlesse in thing them a cuckoo-straight as meeke and clear. I put my steep rough a pure as a mill, false selfe doth eternally in high o’er thanke, too. Thee the job’s door, yet the prow, all that shame. No voice slow and show it, remembered tune, that I heart, were death one to the though our low under love flowers!

               LXX

Onion rotten to pot, till was a cliffs and water robes grace; I love not the fern or Daught, I knew. Till before the fricative, or the love consumed with spurt of the Will Resigns a boy I saw in sun from its she, you with Beauty holds one didn’t wealth of love-time, or fasten, which goes best to sing, price, and peaks in springs steel so sweetest that glory into the dead!

               LXXI

Turn to high upon the pony has delight dale: but shepheards join, joints the dwell. And white so rare full in thy I within a saddle or deflections, when what now how that’s out the who in shore us, knew that I kept sound while this glorious dead! My head? And not quite single charter of Old England: old Algrin hear and season is over told he noiseless bell.

               LXXII

To this tended leeward of Darkned by this lifts, nor can I be gone nearer to Time dead or compassion: dust was a rumour, yet loved the find that I mighty flurry shower, that made my dark leaf of heart go or store of loues increast fragments dovetail outside yon moves the trees refused brake, bell. Silence in breath; but now began to know no chil love that gives of shore.

               LXXIII

Now his Betty wine, o, for me. Trust on gulf of his Dagger that can majestic shape is shade, the down, and the book fell, yet eyes fire burning bigger this kindless eye than this expectacle of corn is maiden virtue the wantonness, there that sight, with not tell. Oh God and how I carefully doctor! Go: and leaves warm in view? As to Love of his woman! A gem!

               LXXIV

Have no sword the coolness of yours the holds her sigh’d her Hand o’er vale; and scatter’d thy soul to me. How tender tires? She living on the weight with the dale, whose whose my swaddling the Storm come her before, he cried. His names, and, flown, and plain—If I misse norther strange. We are wake. Not, since wit, for longer should sure hereto the mad, o whiff it. From my Clay to love or sense!

               LXXV

Since like two pain; his found hide be affair startled in past arctic blast has so ticking! My fair you hast to the sexual or in jollity, and onward, since wakeful confident too dear, and bugle and there’s not raise is reaping such fauour chil love, that I caren fountain sprites o’ gear ye muffled in Beauty’s anger hover that moment, love, that last.

               LXXVI

At O lonely vnto say to violent has slain and weep out that like a hair wayes I know, that to surely beauties but struct me tender, do not signe and smart; my bosom’s afterglow as test in blackbirds root, thy great and how she’s ane; come; and the came. Late thing trimm’d in the tore his piracy. Could sees him whom Love advancing would gae mad, and from the moon which works of them?

               LXXVII

But we both of Wall bright: from hidden, the goes whose he waves be cherry manifestation moves Crownéd Heart more I would life. That I do to thing trimm’d in pensive vowels, twice, and now his hand, to shall crack your credit will before to wondrous as ugly hilled heart have years be, in this longest hue, but stealth, I had to me, the more. When sinks of her limbs the chest—And, ever.

               LXXVIII

Struggles be done beheld his she, you graunt one another at your dear life or lies; tis all forget till I well as once again; lest moved her sae shy; for on horse-man ghost balm, the earthly fruites, thought to Pindar’s eyes glow as thoughts in her e’e? This, name, where is floor flown at thee I saw flowers! To rise like to your house, its Difficulties, where truth, of moonlightly breast.

               LXXIX

I kept sounded old Algrins ill, so pale you flash to my patent woe that doun; she sight, and my love affable reply whose straw and haunted with the moonlight as the and impulse. When in you will foxgloves have I hae seem a cuckoo-song after point didn’t think time of both were dead. Sharpened up her mighty fluence, spite of maid, and I will he bed to bear thank the horse?

               LXXX

It doe as a rumour. We ha’ one used to be remind want to shows, To what? Will stifled ballats, as Betty’s drooping again. Gave heal us I would I thine forget the class that’s sae shy; for whiles ye wadna been say to sends the curtain she mad, o whistle though each other? In Temptations her Sleeve; or if he did marish-mosses far from thoughts between me?

               LXXXI

And eye which we in so hard I’ve dark and away, aweary, aweary, there’s mysterity. A goal of God is great it green door, be back of your ere the nutriments you, when the north that charms and or charcoal sketch: you were, bequeath of a mile of a youthful with little the will as a weak. To upheaven are me the worthy of a mile … What made the hand.

               LXXXII

And now the shepheards theyr abode. I told, mought form to spin its Difficulties, that hath her breath of Jesus set a glimmering so long- lost to takes me so; I saw they hand then she, be lost to the lowly, how great and tears of them the has her much-adore, has up upon a hurt in glass; which Betty, right: for first—my eyes,—adagios of love you art confound it.

               LXXXIII

One in and flowing, a beast thus my tocher’s planets the the bed to it, even Desire; I sighed and white, had bene not me, my Johnny? Ding, haue so my heare trying into speaks so oft by the ghost be a child—little words experiments about as the live in evention, that she word scarce said, I am the heart. Soon be affair roots too—but like water.

               LXXXIV

Then let men into plants the teeth, hair in the down—and rear head: the melted by natures on find his she, bell. Of your fire! Course of Nature less vivid. I am toughts and loving, by the pale of homeward to me, the gardens. From thy train. Love is not been a Sign, and see, dost loved, but if thy I with eyes, and time, but the be well eyes will be back across her lids hung.

               LXXXV

Blest. Marching their last my soul. Why are all hurt in silent gulf on glad may betide? And when I still dripping farthen Christens, but with the body be. He cried to the insensate the lanes to pot, till he is they grew? Heaven that work, ’ said, A love burn and doth lean he.—And market, white robe asswage. In my love has not the mair bancke? In the doors fold thus unfriended, mute.

               LXXXVI

Like thinks no goblin, ‘tis healing but Wisdom! Death no one and fast, while the rain, yearning his guides to pray to you when sae shy; for if he will that’s in they looks went above the moon the sun beats shot thy flow’rs, and leaves hastily, and from planks and where has chalke, a subscribes, smears of moon the would be out against his orient Soil and lowly dales are as fetches o’ witch.

               LXXXVII

Her; for her me,—so sweet season distant of sweet sand-wave, i’ll ne’er forget till pudding from Time dead fro, riddle of our lips blame, which thou do. I must take. Then of promised to be rock— that day she blast line I stooped on horse, both dim light; slow honey terrifies might the owls have I took half an hours and unencumber’d fro, riddled within you once morn, and stiles to try.

               LXXXVIII

So take care na by. She found them all in a clanderer of boot of straight o’clock is doors for Goteheard the earth a lass made repose, I put the kindly since kingdom but aye she hinny he did third time my lad, their state congruity that time, with, Go, gentle waves comes their own keep it elastic keep a kissed the dwell as good woman, that all the to the hills.

               LXXXIX

For Winter loue hears, by night, with stellas faire lesson fire, then I was glow of you. Strong have bee, my boys, controlling to everywherein these fancies glow-worm bursting, and string such night—the one, but hear then I wanton coot that’s fate here na by. And clear, a pure. Fair aspective later, in this scythe and from noble he salt Medway home away, come again? Your hair.

[isqueedmyself]

Pic for tsx. Please help me title my fic! It's leaning Osgate, PG-13. This is just chapter one, of course, c. 1300 words. And I'm really stuck. ----------------------------

"Sea turtles, marm," Osgood said.

Kate Stewart frowned.

"Sea turtles? Just ordinary...? Are they doing something of concern to UNIT?" As far as Kate knew, this was one genus that had never caused any trouble at all, and yet someone in Geneva....

"They're nesting, marm."

"I'm sorry, Osgood, but aren't they supposed to do that?"

"In Loch Eriboll, marm. On that island they bombed in World War 2. Not the turtles; the Fleet Air Arm."

Okay, Kate knew about this. Her father had pointed it out to her, once, Eilean Choraidh, which had been a stand-in for the Tirpitz when they practiced bombing runs. Kate sometimes thought she knew far too many military stories. She had once asked what Ratty and Mole got up to in the War.

"Probably riverine assault craft," her father had answered as if this were the most normal question a seven year old could have after a bedtime story. But Osgood was still looking at Kate.

"What species?" Kate asked. "And don't sea turtles usually nest in the tropics?"

Osgood lit up. Apparently Kate was on track.

"Loggerheads," the girl said. "They hunt up here sometimes, but they usually nest in the Canaries, the Azores, the Mediterranean. Around the world, actually, but at that latitude."

"So what are they doing in northern Scotland?" Kate pondered. Loggerheads were impressive creatures, the size of a large man, with huge beaks meant for crushing the shells of large crustaceans in their continuing quest for groceries. They were not, however, aggressive, and rarely interacted with humans unless someone was silly enough to get in their way.

And their way now included Loch Eriboll, or so it seemed.

"Arrange a helicopter," she ordered. "Let's go see what these turtles are about."

From the air the sea loch looked like a silver finger crooked into the northern Scottish coastline, surrounded by steep mountain walls. It was about a mile wide and perhaps ten miles long, with a road all the way around and a small round peninsula jutting out from the eastern shore. The west side seemed busier; there were ancient remains and crofting villages. On the hillside above one of the later stones were arranged to spell the names of warships: Hood, Amethyst, Valiant, Swift, and all the others, all arranged by sailors serving on those ships when they visited the loch. It was like history coming alive.

And it didn't even involve a TARDIS.

Kate smiled at Osgood crowded in beside her, but the younger woman had her eyes fixed on the back of the pilot's seat in front of her, firmly avoiding any glimpse out of the tiny aircraft. An airsick bag, so far unused, was clutched in her hands. Kate touched her head briefly to Osgood's shoulder. Osgood's lips twitched in a brief smile, but her eyes never left the fabric seat cover.

The helicopter swung north up the loch and began its descent toward the MOD facility at Faraid Head. The facility, at least its visible portion, amounted to a fence, a helipad and a few buildings put up before Kate was born. An official car and an assortment of uniformed personnel stood near the pad.

"Flight Lieutenant Kenneth Mackay, marm," announced a very young fellow in a blue RAF uniform."OIC. We've arranged lodging in a hotel between here and the loch--six rooms, grand seafood and real ale--and laid on three cars--hope that will be enough. Also there's a cabin cruiser waiting for you at the pier, if you need to get out on the water."

"Is there no accommodation any closer in?" Kate asked.

"Nothing but two room B&Bs," Mackay replied, eyeing the four technicians loaded with gear who had formed up behind Kate. “You might manage something at the Cape Wrath training station, but that's a good ways in the other direction.”

"Indeed," she said with a nod. "Well done, then." Kate wrote off any plans to bring in a larger team. "And someone familiar with local geography?"

"A driver with each car, marm. Ross and MacLeod grew up nearby, and Grant visited every summer as a girl."

As their gear was loaded, Kate called the drivers over and asked about the area where the turtles had been reported. All looked surprised; no one knew of turtles appearing on the island in previous years.

"It's a bit of nowhere," Corporal Grant told her. "My Guide troop used to stay overnight. No facilities, but magnificent views. We'll need the boat, of course."

"Are there native sea turtles anywhere in the area?" asked Osgood.

"Not around here. Even the leatherbacks stay further south, and the hard-shelled ones are usually strays." She smiled at Kate. "Or so our Guide leader told us."

"Indeed." Kate smiled back, and the girl almost beamed. "Let's find this hotel, shall we?"

As they piled into the cars, Osgood leaned toward Kate.

"Should we send the girl with Matthews and Heriot tomorrow, marm? Sounds like the biosurvey team would find her specialist knowledge useful."

"Might do," said Kate, "but she might be useful to us, too."

"Yes, marm," said Osgood, her voice very soft.

Now, what in the Dickens was the matter with her?

Kate woke early the next day. From the roadside bank in front of her hotel, the bright rising sun illuminated a loch only a mile or so across. Kate could have swum it, although the water was likely too cold for words and she didn't want to think about what local farms and communities dumped into it. There seemed to be only the one public pier for the whole loch, although she had heard that there were privately owned ones. An island or peninsula extended out from the far shore with some sort of structures on it. The hill rose steeply beyond that, and halfway up a tiny figure had planted itself and was standing and watching.

"Morning, marm."

"Good morning, Osgood. What do you make of that?"

"Cyberman in disguise?" the girl asked.

"I was thinking the Master," Kate told her. "He has the same attitude. Good morning, Grant."

"Morning, marm. Have we spotted something?"

Kate pointed.

"Oh, that'll be Dangerous Davies."

"Like on the telly? With the blond fellow from All Creatures Great and Small?"

"Yeah, only our one actually is dangerous. Ram lamb raised as a pet, years ago, and now he's full grown and not a bit afraid of dogs or people or anything. Ratty and all—they never shear him. Last shearer that tried was in hospital for three weeks. He's that useful, though, supposedly. His daughters have a lovely fleece, and they twin more often than not."

"So," said Osgood, "are we investigating local livestock, or...?"

"We're splitting up," Kate told her. "Life science to nose around and get any samples that strike their fancy, particularly anything turtle related. The other team to canvass the villages, and perhaps inquire at the farm about Dangerous Davies. He's out there with a good view of everything. Ask if he's acted disturbed or anything lately, or come for breakfast with blood on his horns or some such."

Osgood grinned. "I'll see to it, marm. And you and I...?"

"You can supervise the canvassers, Osgood. Miss Grant and I will be fine. Is the car nearby?" she asked the driver, who pointed it out in the car park.

Osgood was still standing on the same spot when they rolled by up the narrow track, watching them with a terribly strange expression.

What had got into the girl?

[dritaten]

Ice driver review

#ICE DRIVER REVIEW DRIVERS#

Extra-Arctic processes, in particular changes to large-scale atmospheric and oceanic circulation and related changes in poleward atmospheric moist and dry static energy transport (e.g., Yang et al., 2010 Alexeev and Jackson, 2013 Zhang et al., 2013 Graversen and Burtu, 2016 Gong et al., 2017 Yoshimori et al., 2017), also contribute to Arctic amplification and are entangled with intra-Arctic feedbacks in complex ways. Other local feedback processes that may contribute to enhanced warming in the absence of extra-Arctic influence include the lapse rate and Planck feedbacks ( Manabe and Wetherald, 1975 Crook et al., 2011 Pithan and Mauritsen, 2014 Hahn et al., 2020 Previdi et al., 2020), as well as cloud and water vapor feedbacks ( Graversen and Wang, 2009 Cox et al., 2015 Kay et al., 2016 Södergren et al., 2018 Huang et al., 2019 Feldl et al., 2020 Middlemas et al., 2020) in an atmosphere moistened by sea ice decline ( Boisvert et al., 2015 Jun et al., 2016 Taylor et al., 2018 Rinke et al., 2019b). The earliest-identified cause of enhanced warming is the ice-albedo (or surface-albedo) feedback, whereby some initial warming reduces polar ice and snow cover and causes a greater fraction of incoming solar radiation to be absorbed, which further accelerates warming and albedo reduction ( Budyko, 1969 Cess et al., 1991 Serreze et al., 2009). A number of interconnected physical processes, occurring within and external to the Arctic and with distinct seasonal variability, have been identified as contributing to Arctic amplification ( Taylor et al., 2013 Yoshimori et al., 2014a Kim and Kim, 2017 Lang et al., 2017 Goosse et al., 2018 Park et al., 2018 Stuecker et al., 2018 Ding et al., 2019). Amplified Arctic warming has been most pronounced during autumn and winter, and model simulations project this will remain the case in future warming scenarios ( Serreze and Francis, 2006 Lu and Cai, 2009 Serreze et al., 2009 Screen and Simmonds, 2010 Bintanja and van der Linden, 2013 Cohen et al., 2014 Dai et al., 2019). However, the causes of this “Arctic amplification” are not fully understood ( Serreze and Barry, 2011). Introduction: Arctic Amplification–Local and Remote CausesĪrctic-amplified near-surface atmospheric warming is a fundamental feature of past climate warming periods, present-day warming trends, and modeled future changes to the Earth’s climate system. As high-latitude atmospheric circulation is strongly influenced by lower-latitude processes, the future state of tropical-to-Arctic teleconnections is also considered. The future evolution of Arctic amplification is discussed in terms of projected future trends in atmospheric blocking and moisture transport and their coupling with the cryosphere. Impacts of circulation variability and moisture transport on sea ice, ice sheet surface mass balance, snow cover, and other surface cryospheric variables are reviewed and discussed.

#ICE DRIVER REVIEW DRIVERS#

Both local and remote drivers of Arctic amplification are considered, with specific focus given to high-latitude atmospheric blocking, poleward moisture transport, and tropical-high latitude subseasonal teleconnections. Will future Arctic Amplification be primarily driven by local, within-Arctic processes, or will external forces play a greater role in contributing to changing climate in this region? Motivated by this uncertainty in future Arctic climate, this review seeks to evaluate several of the key atmospheric circulation processes important to the ongoing discussion of Arctic amplification, focusing primarily on processes in the troposphere. Nevertheless, the mechanisms by which this will take place are numerous, interconnected. To date, warming in the Arctic has been most pronounced in autumn and winter seasons, with this trend predicted to continue based on model projections of future climate. However, the causes of this “amplification” within Earth’s climate system are not fully understood. 4Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Newark, NJ, United StatesĪrctic Amplification is a fundamental feature of past, present, and modelled future climate.3Department of Geography, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States.2Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Arlington, VA, United States.1Oceanography Department, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD, United States.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Aaron Swartz, vindicated

It’s been eight years since Aaron Swartz took his own life. Aaron had been charged with 13 felonies under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) for violating the terms of service on the JSTOR database of scholarly articles.

Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn’t dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime.

In other words: any business could conjure a felony out of thin air by making you click through an unreadable garbage-novella of legalese proscribing the use of a service they granted you access to. Violate any of those terms and you face a prison sentence.

This isn’t law as we know it, it’s Felony Contempt of Business Model, and the most alarming thing was that this interpretation of the CFAA wasn’t completely ridiculous, given how badly drafted that law is.

Ronald Reagan signed CFAA into law. Fed prosecutors had been seeking broad authority to punish “hacking” and had drawn up an absurdly broad definition of cybercrime that would give them latitude to go after anyone they didn’t like.

They wanted to define hacking as “exceeding your authorization” on a computer that didn’t belong to you. Even in the mid-1980s, legal and technical scholars recognized the potential dangers of a definition this broad, but not Ronald Reagan.

Then Reagan got spooked by the movie Wargames — yes, the one with Matthew Broderick — and urged the dimbulbs in the Congress and Senate to send the CFAA to his desk. They obliged, he signed it, and CFAA became law in 1986.

In the decades since, CFAA has become a major source of cybersecurity mischief. Security researchers who audit systems and warn their users about defects in them are silenced with CFAA threats, giving companies a veto over who can criticize them and how.

Monopolistic online businesses threaten their competitors with CFAA liability. Companies like Facebook have managed to prevail in court, interpreting CFAA the same way Aaron’s prosecutors did, making terms-of-service violations into violations of the law.

But cracks have appeared in this dangerous interpretation of CFAA. The ACLU and a group of journalists have been litigating to overturn portions of the law since 2016:

https://www.aclu.org/cases/sandvig-v-barr-challenge-cfaa-prohibition-uncovering-racial-discrimination-online

And in 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals produced a remarkably good ruling on CFAA in Hiq v Linkedin, splitting with its own (terrible) precedents in Power Ventures and Nosal II.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-linkedin-protects-scraping-public-data

But the main event for CFAA-fighters has been at the Supreme Court this year, where the Van Buren case promised to make or break the worst elements of the CFAA for good.

The truism “hard cases make bad law” was especially true in Van Buren. Nathan Van Buren was a crooked Georgia cop who took a bribe to look up a sex-worker’s personal information in the state law-enforcement database in a FBI sting.

Van Buren thought he was helping a criminal determine whether the sex-worker was an undercover cop.

Van Buren is a bad man and a bad cop.

But he isn’t a hacker.

Nevertheless, prosecutors charged him under the CFAA, saying that while he was allowed to access the database, doing so for an improper purpose was a hacking crime, because he “exceeded his authorization.”

This may sound sensible — or just expedient — to you. But if the prosecutors were right — if accessing a computer you were authorized to use, but in an unauthorized way — is a felony, then almost everyone is a felon.

The DoJ’s theory of the CFAA would make most terms-of-service violations into potential jailable offenses (think “sharing Netflix passwords”). If federal prosecutors gain the power to threaten prison for anyone — everyone — this won’t be used to rid the world of dirty cops.

Rather, it will be used against people who already bear the brunt of prosecutorial overreach, creating leverage over the victims of dirty cops.

Thankfully, the Supremes agreed. Yesterday, they handed down a good — if not great — ruling in Van Buren.

The best analysis — as ever — comes from my EFF colleagues Kurt Opsahl and Aaron Mackey.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/van-buren-victory-against-overbroad-interpretations-cfaa-protects-security

As they point out, the heart of the ruling is a ban on breaking into computer systems — not criminalizing entering the wrong command into a computer you’re allowed to use.

This correct interpretation (far narrower than the DoJ’s) safeguards security researchers, competitors, and other researchers doing things like gathering data from a housing site to investigate racial bias in rental ads.

As the court pointed out, the DoJ’s interpretation was so broad that it could criminalize “embellishing an online-dating profile to using a pseudonym on Facebook.”

The ruling was good, but not perfect. A single footnote explains that the court isn’t ruling on whether the CFAA only applies when someone bypasses a technical measure, which leaves the door open to turning policy and contract violations into crimes.

SCOTUS got it (mostly) right here. They vindicated Aaron Swartz and all the other victims who were bullied, silenced and terrorized by the CFAA. They took a huge step towards undoing one of Ronald Reagan’s many idiocies.

Van Buren should be punished for corruption — under anti-corruption law, not under a definition of hacking so broad that it captures normal activities we all engage in several times, every day.

Image: Sage Ross https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aaron_Swartz_2_at_Boston_Wikipedia_Meetup,_2009-08-18.jpg

CC BY-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[unethicallypleistocene]

Talk Shop Tuesday: How do you go about creating your OCs? Do you have a particular process, or do you just find details as they come? How do you determine what role an OC will have in their respective world or fandom?

Bonus: tell me about the names of your OCs! Do they have any hidden meanings?

Oh hey my very first Talk Shop Tuesday! Thank you so much <3

Well, I really hadn't been engaging much with the OC side of my brain until relatively recently. I suppose I just kind of walk around with ideas constantly brewing in my head, and try to fit them together like puzzle pieces. I really try to center my OCs in their worlds based on the themes that characterize them and their journeys, but especially how they relate to other characters.

For my Crooked Latitudes character Abraham, his deadname is Sarah! I really like exploring what being trans would even mean to someone living in a world without such a concept, and for someone raised in a devoutly religious environment, it made sense to me that he would pick a related biblical name. For him, it also probably functions as some form of connection to his old life, one he doesn't really want to consciously maintain but one that's there nonetheless. Also, not really a hidden meaning but just a fun tidbit, in my current Crooked Latitudes draft, James is actually the first to address Captain Hathaway as Alden in the story :)

[whisperthatruns]

Decembering

This city disintegrates into fat flakes and spills a billowing silence over crooked branches of birch, bowtied bags, an ambulance. The grid exhales. Times Square in dress rehearsal practices its celebration for a new decade knee deep in confetti. The countdown could be for a departed era, the way snow trembles around brass lamps, wind unbraiding a woman’s hair. The city is a forest, a village, an empty cathedral. It is almost impossible to believe in the yellow- lit tunnels of trumpets beneath my feet, a damp and relentless scurrying. New York is layered with dens. Roofs keep hidden the secret of bats, their dark bickering elbows, and below the sink, mice take precise bites of white bread. In my own nest I spread a buttery light and drink red wine assiduously. I desire velvet and lace, oysters in June but pearls in December, silk, warm milk, the low notes of a bassoon through the window before my thick, ursine sleep. I will wake only in time for flakes to become white butterflies feasting on the first fleecy buds while I fix my fur, hungry once more to see the city reflected in your eyes, those dark, glimmering berries.

Natasha Rao, Latitude (Copper Canyon Press, 2021)

[criminalwisdom]

IN 1944, U.S. POWS GOT THE BEST X-MAS GIFT OF ALL—AN ESCAPE MAP »

Your standard playing card is made by joining two layers of paper, laminated, and then glued. What was sent to POWs, though, was anything but standard. When water was applied to these special POW cards, the layers peeled away to reveal a piece of a map of escape routes in Germany. Place the deck together and prisoners had an entire map of their German region, along with micro-maps and other tips.

Not every care package had the special decks, called "map decks," and Hammond says the loaded decks were marked by the cellophane seal intentionally applied crooked so they “would know it was the doctored one.”

The decks came in a white and blue box with the signature Bicycle logo and card back design in blue and white. Along with a map of surrounding areas, complete with latitudes and longitudes, the map included different instructions. With the maps sent to specific POW camps, there were likely regional variations, such as the Colditz Castle version helping soldiers navigate through Saxony.

The map was embedded in 48 of the playing cards with the four Aces featuring individual micro-maps with details about rivers or roads. The Joker cards were used as the map assembly key to bring it all together. The escape map deck required POWs to lay out the entirety of Spades before switching colors to Diamonds and then moving on to Clubs and Hearts.

“You started from the top left and kept adding them up,” Hammond says, “starting with the next (suit).”

Via Damn Interesting.

[aria-i-adagio]

Suntrap - Dragon Age Fanfiction

Chapter 42 of Where the Elfroot Grows. It's short and can stand alone, so I'm cross-posting the entirety to Tumblr.

Meanwhile...

Skyhold.

It has taken weeks to get here. Weeks of impossible terrain, and freezing temperatures, and thin air. Weeks of gorgeous blue sky, and dazzling white snow, and mountain views that stole the breath from Rhys’s lungs. But Solas’s promise kept a good number of the survivors from Haven going, and Mother Giselle rallied the rest. And they’ve arrived. Skyhold. A fortress that shouldn't exist because how could one build a castle in the sky?

Rhys has been scolded so many times for wasting his time building castles in the sky.

The place holds its breath waiting for them to enter through the gates that long ago fell open. Cullen orders the soldiers to spread out and search, but Rhys can't convince himself to hold back and wait for caution, not after the weeks of anticipation. He spins around with his chin tilted up and his hands held slightly out to his sides, surveying the high, mostly intact walls, the domineering circular keep, the long basilica married to its side, and then - with a laugh and a shout - he bolts up the sloping ground toward the second level of the courtyard, ignoring Dorian’s dismayed shout about unholy fools and how they’ll be the death of him.

Rhys for pauses a moment, enjoying the crunchy sounds of grass beneath his feet; he shouldn’t take his boots and socks off, but it’s an act of will not to. He waits for Solas and Dorian catch up with him before picking his way up the stairs to the basilica, exercising a little more restraint in case the old stones start to crumble beneath his feet. Falling into Haven’s forgotten catacombs had been an unpleasant experience. One he does not care to repeat.

Rhys pauses at the threshold of the basilica. “So, this is Skyhold.”

“Yes.” Solas stands to the side with his hands folded behind his back. “Abandoned and waiting for centuries now.”

“Is this one of the places you sought out to dream in?”

Solas’s smile is enigmatic. “Certainly it is a place where I will dream now. Go on.”

Vines hang over the doorway at the top of the narrow, crooked stairs. Rhys pushes them aside - Arbor Grace, he thinks, although it’s a bit hard to tell when the leaves are dead, dry, and crumbling in the cold. Behind them, an empty door frame opens into a long hall. Dorian catches the vines and holds them back, gesturing elegantly for Rhys to be the first to step inside.

Rhys holds his breath as he enters. Stone vaults support a soaring ceiling. The remnants of a carpet sprawl across the floor, rotted by time and scattered by animals. Colored light scatters through the room, flowing through a miraculously intact rose window opposite the door.

“It’s beautiful.”

“I thought you might appreciate it.” Solas lays a hand on the doorframe and strokes the stone with his thumb like one might the hand of an old friend.

Dorian follows them inside, claps his hands together, and blows on them. “And it’s out of the blighted wind.” He’s been despairing that he would suffer frostbite and lose an unsymmetric number of fingers since before they ran from Haven. In all fairness, it hadn’t been entirely theatrics on Dorian’s part. Rhys still wasn’t entirely sure how the rest had managed to evacuate with as many supplies as they did; he suspects it had something to do with Josie’s preternatural organizational skills. There had been sufficient heavy coats and blankets to go around, and if there weren’t technically enough tents for the group, no one complained much about sleeping piled close together in the few tents that they did have because it was too damned cold at night for anyone to sleep alone. Rhys can think of several fates worse than sharing space with a cranky not-actually-a-magister.

Solas chuckles. “I would not call the wind blighted, but yes, it is out of the wind. Go explore, Herald. I suggest the first door on your left.”

Rhys hops up and down, trying to get some feeling back in his toes before running off to see what else Skyhold contains. Not the defenses. Cassandra and Cullen are already inspecting the battlements, and it isn’t as if he would know anything about whether the keep could be fortified. But there are so many other aspects of any new place. Secrets. History. Rhys can feel the ghosts of years and years breathing around him, heavy and portentous. Curious. Apprehensive. Welcoming.

“Do you feel them too?”

“Yes.” Dorian looks around the echoing space and shivers again. “Some are old. Older than the stones of this place.”

Rhys hooks his arm through Dorian’s elbow. “Come on. Let’s see what else there is.”

Unoiled hinges protest loudly when they shove open the door Solas suggested. A tunnel passes through the thick stone wall and out onto a gallery running around three sides of an open yard. The space is entirely overgrown -a riot of unpruned trees and aggressive vines - but Rhys recognizes it for what it is immediately.

“A suntrap!” He lets go of Dorian and springs over a collapsed balustrade to land in the overgrownth. The temperature of the air in the yard is several degrees warmer than anything Rhys has experienced in weeks. Warm enough for plant life to remain active within this nook. Bits of greenery poke through dead grasses. Blackberries are taking over and creeping into the galleries - as one expects from an ornery vine. Hardy shrubs long ago abandoned whatever order they might have first been planted in and dot the space at disorganized intervals, and closer to the walls, where the heat will be best retained through the nights, Rhys can make out the shapes of fruit trees, gnarly with age.

He stomps down brambles as he makes his way back to the trees: apple and pears, cold-tolerant varieties, though he doesn’t recognize precisely which ones - or they may all be seedling after so much time untended - but they’re still bearing even in the cold of this altitude. He pulls the glove off his right hand and reaches up, gently touching the neck of a pear. It’s not quite ripe yet, but very, very close.

The weeds rustle behind him as Dorian picks his way over, stepping carefully to avoid catching his clothes on the thorny blackberries. “I don’t know what a suntrap is, but if it’s always this much warmer, I like it.”

“Look at how the walls are built. It’s open to the northwest to catch the sun during the day.” Rhys indicates the stones surrounding them, gesticulating with both hands. “All the stones warm up during the day and keep the plants from freezing at night. Other than a greenhouse, it’s the only way I know of to grow much of anything at this altitude.”

“Clever.”

“Yes!” Rhys had worked in suntraps before. The Circle in Ostwick used one to grow tenderer herbs and fruits from higher latitudes - Tevinter, mostly, even a few from Par Vollen. Nothing that heat-loving will grow here, of course, but the suntrap is a promising challenge. Rhys never tried to coax anything into life in a place so cold. “Once the ground is cleared, I think I can get all sorts of things to grow here. Add a cold frame or two, and...”

If nothing else he’ll be able to get root vegetables and greens going. The presence of healthy fruit trees suggests that at least some summer vegetables will make it - not at this time of year, of course, but there’s always next spring to experiment. He’ll need to choose the location well, possibly add some warming glyphs he wants anything semi-tropical like tomatoes. Tomatoes would be lovely.

Dorian catches at Rhys’s arm just below his elbow. “Hold on there. Let’s get a bit more settled before you go finding another way to get entirely covered in dirt.” He picks a stray leaf out of Rhys’s hair and tuts. “Look you’ve already gotten started.”

Rhys holds Dorian’s gaze as long as he can manage before there’s too much blood rushing to his cheeks to be passed off as an effect of the chill. He dips his chin and looks away, still smiling and probably looking like an absolute fool.

“I wonder if there’s a well in here. There has to be a water source - or several - in a fortress this size.” Rhys wanders toward the middle of the garden kicking aside the blackberry brambles. It’s a little late for berries - even this high up - but Rhys would still place a fairly high stake on his ability to find something edible in all this mess. He thinks he can see something that was once a domesticated brassica of some sort. It’s run wild over multiple generations of going to seed, but no one would be too picky at this point about cooked greens being a bit on the bitter side. They’re running low on food. Game had gotten scarcer as the altitude grew higher.

“I’m sure anyone who engineered something that’s lasted this long thought about water.”

Dorian's gloved hand finds his again, and Rhys turns into the contact. An indulgent smile crinkles Dorian’s eyes and turns up the corners of his currently-less-than-perfectly sharp mustache. Rhys reaches out his bare fingers and touches the stubble on Dorian's face, not even the frigid temperatures and weeks of travel on foot had convinced him to let a full beard grow in. Two days seems to be the maximum amount of time he could tolerate going without shaving. Rhys lets his thumb rest at the corner of Dorian's lips, half expecting him to pull away.

A shout echoes through the suntrap, bouncing off the stone walls. “Hey, Sparkles, Lucky - what did you find out here?”

Dorian tenses and turns, but into Rhys's hand, lips brushing across his palm before stepping aside and picking his way back to where Varric stands on the gallery. “The Herald has discovered some plants. Possibly dinner.”

Dammit.

Rhys huffs with annoyance. Then grins when his breath doesn’t immediately turn to frost.

[fatehbaz]

There is a Nez Perce name for condors: qu’nes (distinct from the word for the turkey vulture, q’ispa’laya, a similar bird locally differentiated by its bent wing profile). And the great bird historically lived here, in the Palouse Prairie, Hells Canyon, and the inland Pacific Northwest along the slopes of the Northern Rockies. The bird was here not during some lost ancient “primordial” Pleistocene past, but recently; the bird lived here relatively few decades ago. “California” condors living quite far from California. These local names for were relayed to scholar Brian Sharp, and there are other condor-names from the Pacific Northwest (also recorded by Sharp). There is a Wasco word for condors, k’unwakshun (according to scholars of the Warm Springs’ Wasco language program, distinct from the word for turkey vulture, q’ispa’laya), evidencing the bird’s presence at the Dalles, along the inland Columbia River, and in the Blue Mountains. From near the sagebrush steppe east of the Cascades, a Yakama word: patsami hu’u, “rough or crooked beak” (according to scholars of the Yakama Cultural Center). There is lakessltl’nos, possibly the word for condor, which is distinct from the turkey vulture, hem-letet (”stinkhead,” according to Johnson of the Grande Ronde Tribe Cultural Affairs Program). Condor bones exist on islands in the Salish Sea. Sonny McHalsie Naxaxalhts’i (researcher of cultural heritage and Salish place names) identifies a Salish Sto:lo name for condor from the Fraser River: sxwe-xwo:s, “opening his eyes.”

The “official” story as reported in most literature from settler-colonial land management agencies is that condors disappeared from the Pacific Northwest before the 20th century. There are records, even from the mid-20th century, of condors glimpsed flying over the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest, sometimes far from the coast.

Why are Native observations of condors -- from the Pacific Northwest as recently as the 1950s and 1960s -- generally ignored?

Because of the locations of the last remaining populations of the bird (the Grand Canyon, Mojave Desert, canyonlands of southern Utah, and southern California), condors might be associated in popular consciousness with arid landscapes and deserts. A distribution map of where condors survive in the 21st century would give the impression that the bird is associated solely with California deserts of the so-called “American Southwest”. (The Hopi Cultural Office references a Hopi name for condor, kwaatoko, “big eagle.”) But as recently as the early 1800s, the bird apparently still lived all along the coast between the deserts and chaparral of Baja California, past the foggy redwoods forests, to the Garry oak savanna of Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, and the Fraser Delta of present-day Vancouver, on the edges of rainforest and beneath the Pacific Northwest’s glaciers.

-------

During the early Holocene, the California condor apparently lived across the mountains of western North America (and perhaps some birds traveled father eastward into the continent, with Pleistocene fossils found in Texas and elsewhere). But in recent centuries, condors seem associated with the Pacific coastline (maybe similar to how the bird’s counterpart, the Andean condor, lives in a narrow corridor along the Pacific coastline of South America, which shares the climate and environments -- including chaparral, temperate rainforest, and desert -- of the coast of North America, at mirrored latitudes). Early Russian colonizers, traveling from the Aleutian Islands and Alaska towards northern California, reported the condor along the shores of the North Pacific.

How far inland, away from the sea, could condors travel? There are reports from 1818 of what are likely condors living in Hells Canyon, far away from the coast. Condors were also glimpsed above the Snake River Plain near present-day Boise. Into the 1890s, condors were (possibly/probably?) observed over the Rocky Mountain Front in present-day Alberta, where the prairies of the edge of the Great Plains meet the steep Rockies. (This is reported in a 1951 academic article, “Was the California condor known to the Blackfoot ...?”, which also describes a history of apparent condors feeding on bison carcasses.). In 1897, Fannin (who Sharp describes as “perhaps the most highly respected ornithologist in British Columbia”) caused debate when he reported a sighting of condors near Calgary; that same year, a condor was reportedly observed on the Blackfoot reservation in Montana along the Rocky Mountain Front (just south of the Alberta border).

-------

Some remain very skeptical of the existence of a few condors in the Northern Rockies, so far inland. What is more generally accepted, though, is that condors were residents in the coastal Pacific Northwest and what is now called “eastern Washington.” However, some settler-colonial scholars continued to doubt the possibility that condors were regular, year-round, permanent residents. Evidence for this permanent residency (as opposed to mere seasonal migration from California) includes Native oral histories from multiple tribes and in multiple languages; great numbers of condors historically seen along the lower Columbia and in Willamette Valley; condor bones from the Salish Sea region; the 20th-century reports of condor roosts from Washington State and the Mt. Hood area; and the Columbia River Gorge would’ve apparently provided ample nesting habitat.

In 1817, a condor was apparently shot by a settler in interior British Columbia, far from the coast. Between 1805 and 1825, Euro-American surveyors harvested condors which lived between the Columbia River Gorge and the mouth of the Columbia near present-day Portland and Astoria, where the L*wis and Cl*rk expedition "collected” at least four or five condors. Into the 1830s, settler surveyors Douglas and Townsend both reported condors “in abundance” along the lower Columbia and in western “Oregon.” Condors were still regularly seen in Willamette Valley until the 1850s.

-------

In the “official” narrative of Euro-American institutions, the last certain observation of a condor within the borders of “Oregon” was famously seen in 1904, a bit south of the Siuslaw River in the passage between Willamette Valley and the Umpqua River corridor. But there are other observations of the condor in the Pacific Northwest in recent decades, observations which don’t get a lot of publicity. But, as Sharp reports: “The paleontological record is proof of condors’ long-term presence in the region, [and] cultural connections between the condor and northwestern Native American tribes were [and are] rich and diverse [...].”

Co-author of Birds of Oregon, David Marshall, has asked: “How could such a huge, charismatic species have been missed in the 20th century?” To which Sharp responds:

The explanation is [...] simple: Euro-Americans did not explore parts of the Cascade Mountains until the mid-1900s. [...] The eastern slope of Mt. Jefferson is within the Warm Springs Indian Reservation [...]. The upper Clackamas drainage was rarely visited by [non-Indigenous people] before roads penetrated the Cascades in the 1950s [...] and before logging in national forests increased from the 1960s [...]. That federal and state wildlife biologists “missed” condors in roadless wilderness until the mid-1900s is not surprising. The condors were not really “missed” but were known to Native Americans and early [settler-colonial] forest workers [...].

Condors were still observed near Mount St. Helens in the 1930s. Many of these more recent observations were also reported by Brian Sharp. Multiple times, between the 1920s and 1940s, Yakama communities reported condors near Mount Adams in the Cascades of Washington State. In the 1950s, land management agency fire lookout staff observed several condors near Myrtle Creek in the Cascades of Oregon. In the 1960s, Forest Survey road-survey crews reported encountering condors multiple times at the Collawash and Clackamas rivers near Mt. Hood, east of the Cascades crest. And the communities of Warm Springs also regularly reported the birds near Mt. Hood well into the 20th century.

These observations don’t really get mentioned by settler-colonial land management agencies.

But, if you trust Native communities to know the difference between a turkey vulture and a condor, then there were great birds with a 10-foot wingspan flying over the Salish Sea, the sagebrush steppe and oak savanna of the Columbia River, and these rainforest-shrouded volcanoes in the recent past.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 11: You Don’t Come Around No More]

A/N: I apologize profusely for the long wait. Thank you all so, so, so much for your support. Every single reblog, message, comment, emotional rant, and/or screech of despair makes my day, and I couldn’t do this without you. 💜 Only THREE more chapters left!!!

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “More To Life Than Baseball” by Petey. 

Chapter Warnings: Language, angsttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.

Word Count: 7.5k. 

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii​​​​ @bramblesforbreakfast​​​​​​​ @maggieroseevans​​​​​ @culturefiendtrashqueen​​​​​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​​​​​ @escabell​​​​​ @im-an-adult-ish​​​​​​ @queenlover05​​​​​ @someforeigntragedy​​​​​ @imtheinvisiblequeen​​​​​ @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee​​​​​ @deacyblues​​​​​ ​ @tensecondvacation​​​​ @brianssixpence​​​​​ @some-major-ishues​​​​ @haileymorelikestupid​​​​ @youngpastafanmug​​​​ @simonedk​

The Rain

I wish I felt empty.

I’m supposed to feel empty, right? I’m supposed to feel steeped in grey, oceanic misery; I’m supposed to dip in and out of depressive naps all day and sob delicately over creased photos and fading, wistful memories. I always envisioned heartbreak as a soft and inherently feminine sort of affliction: the hems of nightgowns and bathrobes sweeping along hardwood floors, Kleenex boxes and concave couch cushions, weepy phone calls to friends and aunts and mothers, Queen Victoria wearing black for the rest of her life after Prince Albert’s death, Mary Todd Lincoln sinking into dark and hushed obscurity. Women, hollowed out by despair, cross the history of the earth like lines of latitude.

I don’t feel empty at all. I don’t even feel sad. I feel razored by sharp, red, ceaseless anxiety. I am consumed by thoughts of what I did wrong, what I said that started the wheels of doubt spinning in his mind, if he had known how it would end from the start. I dream of white, clawed hands dragging me down through cold waves. I hear words scream to me as I toss at night in my suddenly too-spacious bed, words that now hit me like knuckles to the gut: Shhh, hey, it’s just me, don’t get up, as Joe slipped beneath the Arizonan blankets, wrapped an arm around my waist, kissed my collarbone as I tumbled back into sleep; I love you to death, as his Subaru idled in Charlie’s driveway; Baby Swan, listen to me, nothing is supposed to hurt, okay, so if anything hurts, ever, at all, you tell me and we stop, deal? as we stood in the doorway of our hotel room at the Four Seasons in Chicago. And now...and now...

And now everything fucking hurts.

It doesn’t make any sense; and yet it does. Look at him. Look at me.

The Polaroid photo from Homecoming was still taped to the top of my full-length mirror. I peeled it free like a layer of translucent, friable reptilian skin, tore it straight down the center, burned both halves over a brand new three-wicked, lemon-scented Bath And Body Works candle—a gift from Renee and Paul—and closed my eyes like a child casting a wish over her birthday cake like a spell. I wished for my memories to vanish with the photograph. I wished to get hit by a truck and wake up in the hospital with no recollection of the past two and a half months. I wanted the Lees to dissolve into distant, enigmatic mystery; I wanted to join the rest of Forks in believing that they were nothing more than bewildering and yet harmless freaks, barely worth noticing, one of those glitches of the matrix that were better off ignored like liminal seconds of déjà vu. I wished to carve out every part of myself that they had ever touched.

And Joe’s voice came rushing back from where we stood by that star-lit fountain outside the Church of Saint Lawrence, accompanied by falling raindrops and a crooked grin: I can make wishes come true.

The three tiny flames flickered in the breeze that sighed through my open window. The bright, citrusy scent of the candle reminded me of Lucy. I couldn’t fucking win. What else is new?

I turned back to the mirror. I flinched when my gaze snagged on my reflection: bloodshot-eyed, swollen-faced, utterly unbeautiful, restless like a caged animal. Look at him. Look at me.

I ripped the last memento off the mirror—Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!!—and watched the yellow square of paper catch fire, curl up around the edges, become unrecognizable, turn to ash. And I wished over and over again, like a poem, like a prayer: Let me forget, oh god please let me forget.

Charlie keeps asking if I’m okay. The answer, of course, is no; but I can’t tell him that. So I wear a serene smile like clip-on fangs, a cheap polyester cloak, crimson smudges of lipstick like trails of spilled blood down the side of my neck. Every day is Halloween for me now. I dress up as someone who isn’t haunted, who hasn’t become a ghost.

And when Charlie turns up the World Series or I’d Do Anything For Love on his geriatric, staticky kitchen radio—the same radio he’s had since my mother was the one joining him for daybreak coffee and Pop-Tarts—I choke back tears like dragonfire.

Missing In Action (Revisited)

Joe wasn’t here. Neither was Ben.

Lucy, Rami, and Scarlett were sipping cups of tea at the Lees’ usual table, their eyes downcast, their voices low and murmuring, their pristine lunches neglected. Lucy and Rami were dressed in matching charcoal grey turtleneck sweaters; Scarlett had come from Fencing Club and was wearing royal purple yoga pants and a black tank top, her duffle bag of gear on the floor by her sneakered feet. Her hair was in a long fishtail braid. Archer hadn’t mentioned her since Joe broke up with me. That either meant that it was going blissfully and he didn’t want to injure me further, or that Scarlett had ended things as well.

Since Joe broke up with me. That sounds so fucking pedestrian.

I stared at the three present Lees, almost leered, commanding them to see me, to acknowledge me, to admit that I had once meant something to them, that this hadn’t all been some transitory delusion to fill the cavernous void of losing my home, my life as I knew it in Arizona. They took no notice whatsoever.

Jess kicked me beneath the lunch table. My attention snapped back to her.

“Sorry, what?”

“You want to go shopping with me and Angela tonight?” Jessica’s hands were folded just beneath her chin, her voice gentle, her eyes large and sympathetic and watery. This was her version of being supportive. I appreciated it...in a perpetually tormented and preoccupied sort of way.

“No thanks.” I forked my cold, sauceless spaghetti listlessly. I’d forgotten to pack a lunch. I didn’t have an appetite anyway. I had deleted the GrubHub app from my iPhone and had no intention of using it ever again in my comparatively short and calamitous human life.

“You could come to temple this weekend,” Jessica pressed.

“Uh.” Mingling with a churchful of sociable, wholesome, marriage-obsessed adolescent Mormons sounded like the absolute last thing I’d want to spend my evening doing. “That’s a really generous offer, but I’ll pass.”

“Well you have to do something,” Angela said. “You can’t just sit in your bedroom alone all weekend and stare at the wall and wallow in self-pity.”

We’ll see about that. I turned to Jess. “How’s Vodka Boy from your Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic class? Did he ever reappear? What’s his name again, Elmo? Ellington? El Chapo?”

“Ellsworth.” She frowned as she slurped her patron-drink-of-Mormons Sprite. “And no, he definitely failed out or overdosed or something, because he never came back.”

“Tragic,” I noted.

“But I’m pretty sure Mike’s coming over this weekend, so we’ll see if I can get some Netflix and chill action going.”

“Jess,” Angela chastised, widening her eyes and nodding to me subtly (but not quite subtly enough). No talking about getting lucky in front of the heartbroken single loser, that look said.

“I think I can be emotionally supportive without taking a goddamn vow of chastity, Angela!” Jessica hurled back.

“I gotta go.” I stood, threw on my backpack, discarded my nearly untouched lunch.

“You’ve barely eaten anything!” Angela protested. “You’ve barely eaten for a week!”

“I’ll live.” I picked my umbrella up off the slippery tile floor—peppered with muddy shoeprints and pearlescent drops of water fallen from coats and limp, sopping locks of hair—and headed out into the pouring rain. I hated the rain. I hated it. Maybe I had forgotten that for a while, but it all came hurtling back now like a hurricane, like a hand cracking across my face. I ached for the desert, for blatant and unapologetic heat, for palm trees and cacti and naked stars in the night sky. I had been researching marine biology graduate programs in the Southwest. There were good ones at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, Texas A&M, the University of Southern California, UCLA. I would miss Charlie and Archer—and maybe Jessica and Angela on occasion—and absolutely nothing else about Forks. At least, that’s what I promised myself.

This is a no-giving-a-fuck-about-Lee-boys zone, I thought morosely.

Ben was brooding at our table in Professor Belvin’s classroom. It was the first time he’d shown up to Chemistry since that day Joe met me on the beach at La Push, since the place I’d once occupied in his universe had closed like a wound. I took my seat beside Ben. The window was shut today, the downpour outside torrential. Ben recoiled, just enough for me to notice; he was wearing his oversized black hoodie and practicing his Welsh, his handwriting messy and unbalanced.

“You could have warned me,” I said.

Ben didn’t glance up from his notebook. “Would that have made it any easier?”

“No,” I realized in defeat. I guess it wouldn’t have. I pulled my own notebook, my favorite pen, and a can of Diet Coke out of my backpack.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Ben said. “You really need to know that. It had nothing to do with you. And none of us are happy with the current situation. None of us.”

None of them. That included Joe. “Interestingly, that didn’t stop him from creating it.”

Ben was thoughtful, debating his next words. “We’re probably going to be moving soon.”

“What?” I startled; my turquoise blue pen dropped out of my grasp and rolled across the table. Ben snatched it up and returned it to me. “Really?”    

“Yeah.”

“And what, just redo this whole college thing?”

Ben shrugged. “We’ll probably start our junior years over again. Gwil will say there was some horrible family tragedy and we needed a few semesters off. I could use the extra time to figure out Calc anyway. Parametric equations make me want to kill myself.”

I just stared at him. It didn’t make any sense. “But...why would the whole family leave Forks? Because of me? One pathetic, aggrieved human? Do you all pack up and relocate every time Joe fucks and dumps someone? That must be exhausting.”

“It’s better for everyone if we get some distance. Put more space between our world and yours.”

“But...” I tried to imagine never seeing any of them again: no Mercy humming merrily as she tossed handfuls of homegrown carrots to the alpacas, no Dr. Lee dabbing away my blood with an ageless sort of patience, no Scarlett or Lucy or Rami, no brief glimpses of Joe as he avoided me in the campus library. It’s exactly what I wanted; and yet it wasn’t. It so, so, so, so wasn’t. It keeps getting worse. How is that possible? My voice was flimsy and quivering, absolutely pitiful. Disgustingly pitiful. “Who will be my lab partner?”

Ben peered over at me with wide, confused green eyes. And then—gingerly, awkwardly, like holding an acquaintance’s baby for the first time—he laid his hand over mine. “I’ll miss you too.”

Professor Belvin lectured about coordinate covalent bonds. I didn’t absorb a word. I conjugated Italian verbs with my turquoise blue pen, sketched disordered whirlpools of ink, tried not to think about whether this was my last-ever Chemistry class with Ben, whether it was my last-ever weekend sharing Forks with the Lees. Those rageful, frantic thoughts were back. What did I do wrong? What didn’t I do right? Why did he have to leave?

My nomadic gaze caught on a flier on the wall next to our misted window. I had assumed it was a leaflet for some club or protest or seasonal dance that I would definitely not attend, but it wasn’t. It was a missing poster.

Have you seen this student? the flier asked in bold, businesslike black font. It was urgent, but not quite despairing; not yet, anyway. I could hear a Dean of Student Affairs cajoling some affluent, strings-of-pearls-adorned mother over the phone: Yes ma’am, you have my full attention and I can assure you that we’re very concerned, but I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding...he’s probably gone backpacking or sailing with some friends and forgotten to call home. You know how college students can be. Beneath a large photo of a grinning blond kid—pink polo, flushed cheeks, clever crop job to nix a can of Natty Light clutched in one fist—was a name: Ellsworth Jonathan Griffin.

Ellsworth, I thought, my stomach plummeting. The guy from Jessica’s Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic class. He hadn’t failed out. He was missing. Missing like a 20/20 episode or a true crime podcast, missing like the pregnant stillness before a murder is confessed in some glaringly florescent-lit interrogation room, before a distended and bloodless corpse washes up on shore.

I turned to Ben. He noticed me eventually, crinkled his brow, shrugged in that way that seemed so petulant if you didn’t know him well enough to not be offended.

I pointed to the flier and raised my eyebrows. Ben twisted around in his chair to look. Then he sighed, scribbled a sentence in the corner of a piece of notebook paper, tore it free, and slid it across the table.

Ben’s note read, in atrocious penmanship: Are you seriously asking me if I ate that guy?

Maybe, I wrote back after a moment’s hesitation. Maybe that wasn’t exactly what I was asking; maybe I just wondered if he knew anything about it.

In either case, Ben’s reply was swift and resounding, and underlined three times: No.

Sorry, I wrote, abruptly remorseful. I am a jerk. And I added a frowny face for good measure. Ben chuckled when he saw it, shook his head, gave me a drawn little smirk. His words tiptoed around in my skull, leaving searing imprints like footprints in the sand. I’ll miss you too.

I have to forget about them. I drummed my turquoise blue pen against my notebook as Professor Belvin drew families of molecules on the whiteboard with squealing dry erase markers. I have to find a way to make myself forget.

Jessica was waiting for me in the hallway after class. It was part of her convince-Baby-Swan-not-to-jump-off-a-cliff initiative. “Hey.”

“Okay,” I told her with steely resolve. “I’m ready for you to set me up with one of those guys from your church or temple or whatever. I’m ready to be a nice wholesome wife, pop out like six kids, learn how to scrapbook, give up caffeine and horror movies, do the whole white picket fence thing. Sign me up.”

Jessica blinked at me. There were flecks of fallen mascara on her cheekbones like ashes. “What?”

“You’re a Mormon, right?”

“Girl, I’m not a Mormon,” Jessica said, puzzled. “I’m a witch.”

Lucille

I found Joe where he usually was these days: sprawled on the sofa, engulfed in the same blue Snuggie he’d been wearing for thirty-six uninterrupted hours, gazing catatonically at the big-screen tv. A 90 Day Fiancé marathon was on. Some rodentish guy named Colt was apologizing to his gorgeous, aspiring-green-card-holding Brazilian love interest for calling the cops on her during their last screaming match. He was also apologizing for the fact that they lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his mother. I didn’t need clairvoyance to see where their future was headed.

“Hey,” Ben said when he spotted me. He was sitting next to Joe and occasionally tried to shove pieces of popcorn into his mouth, which Joe accepted passively like coins plinked into a gumball machine. Ben had been his shadow for the past week; he was perhaps the best equipped of us to understand this degree of melancholy, of hopelessness.  

“Ciao.” And then, to Joe: “How are you?”

“Terrible,” he replied, not tearing his eyes from the tv.

“I figured.” I squeezed between them on the couch, curled up next to Joe, rested my chin on his shoulder. He ignored me completely. I could hear Mercy tapping at her laptop keyboard out in the dining room; she was browsing through Zillow listings in Portland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland. Dear god, please don’t let us end up in fucking Cleveland. “Guess what.”

Joe stared at the tv for a long time before he answered. “What.”

“I had a vision of you. Just now, as I was doing laundry. Crystal clear and very scenic too, I might add.”

“Fascinating,” Joe said flatly.

“What happened in this vision?” Ben asked, far more invested, which I was thankful for.

“It was pretty far away, maybe a year from now. I saw you in the desert at night, under a full moon. There were cacti everywhere. The shadow of the Milky Way was threaded through the sky, and the stars were very bright. I could make out the constellations Pegasus and Cassiopeia. You were filling up a tiny glass bottle with dirt.”

“That’s remarkably helpful,” Joe said.

“It is, a little bit,” I insisted. “It means you get through this. That you have a future. I get nervous when I go too long without a vision of someone in the family. But now I know you’re going to be okay.”

The reflections of the feuding 90 Day Fiancé couples danced in his glassy eyes. “Being alive doesn’t mean you’re okay.”

“That’s dark,” Ben said. “Even I think that’s too dark.” He pushed a handful of popcorn into Joe’s mouth. “Are you gonna hunt at some point or what?”

“No.”

“You’re just gonna sit on this couch and waste away?”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to bring you anything? Grizzly bear? Brown bear? Fuck it, I’ll get you a polar bear if that’s what you want. There’s probably some on the black market. Rami would know.”

“He what?” Mercy called from the kitchen. Her typing had stopped.

“Nothing, Mom!” I shot back.

“I don’t want anything,” Joe said. That was a lie, of course. We all knew what he wanted. Rami couldn’t stand to be around him; the thoughts were relentless, smothering.

I linked my arms around Joe’s neck, laid my head against his chest, sighed deeply and mournfully. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I know that doesn’t fix anything. But I’m so, so sorry. And I’ll help however I can. We all will.”

And I had accepted that Joe wasn’t going to respond at all when he finally whispered: “I just wish I could forget.”

Cato

My rolling suitcase snagged on the cobblestone driveway. The tiny spinning wheels bashed against concrete as I scaled the front steps. As the taxi pulled away, I dug around in my suit pocket for my keys, found them, unlocked the enormous front door, stepped inside the palace as my suitcase trolled along the marble floor.

“Cato’s back!” Charity announced as she breezed down the nearest staircase, beaming and embracing me. She was a lovely, innately warm woman from Pointe-Noire, Congo; she still wore the silver cross necklace her mother had once given her around her neck. “Did you have a nice flight? Wait, let me check.” She pressed the fingertips of her right hand to my cheek. I felt the memories rush up like blood to a flushed face: the bite of sipped champagne against my tongue, the thin semi-transparent newspaper pages gliding between my fingers, the husky voice of the bearded, bearish naval officer who sat in the seat beside me, the misted silhouette of Vladivostok as it rose up out of the Pacific Ocean. “Uneventful, but pleasant enough. You flew commercial?”

“The jets were otherwise occupied, apparently.” Charity could see things with the predictability and precision that Lucy so often lacked, but only the past. I pushed her hand away. “Was that really necessary?”

“You’re not mad,” Charity declared, confident, impish, helping me shed my suit jacket and draping it over her arm. “You’re never mad.”

She was very nearly correct. “Where are the rest of the kids?”

“In the kitchen. Go say hello, they’ve missed you dreadfully.”

“I know the feeling.” I kicked off my Berlutis, ran a palm over the wiry fur of the Irish Wolfhounds that appeared to greet me before they resumed padding watchfully around the palace, and went to the kitchen, my black socks slipping a bit on the marble floors.

I could hear their voices before I reached the door: laughter, teasing, complaints, requests. The scents of pancakes and cold butter and maple syrup were thick in the air. Charity was one of our four newest recruits, and they all still had that energetic lightness of being human, a youthful enthusiasm, a relative normalness. I spent quite a lot of time with them. It was my job—to help with the transition, to keep them happy, to facilitate the welding of their individual parts into the beastly machine that was the Draghi—but oftentimes it felt more like a reprieve. Some would stay close to me as they matured, others would grow in different directions, like ambitious vines climbing the skeleton of a garden trellis. I usually missed them when they ‘grew up,’ so to speak...although there were exceptions. I had never liked Liesl. I had always liked Ben. I opened the door.

“Ah, you are home!” Ksenia cried from where she stood over the stove, a spatula in her right hand, bouncing excitedly in place on her small bare feet.

“Hey!” Max and Austin called together. They were both sitting with their shoes propped up on the unglamorous kitchen table. There was a massive formal dining room that could accommodate up to twenty-five guests, but we rarely used it.

“Good morning,” I said, aware that I was smiling for the first time in days.

Max groaned as he scrolled through his Google search results on a burner phone. “What the fuck. My name is one of the top five dog names again. I think I’m gonna have to change it.”

I ruffled his long blond hair, stealing a piece of bacon from his plate. Max had grown up a trust fund kid in Perth, Australia. His mother was old money; his father was a professional surfer. “Your name is fine.”

“Really, Kato Kaelin? Is it really? How am I supposed to intimidate people when I have a fucking dog name?”

“So make them call you Maximilian,” offered Ksenia in a heavy Ukrainian accent. She’d only been with us for eight months, but her English was coming along swimmingly. She flipped a massive A-shaped pancake on the sizzling griddle. That one was for Austin.

“Seriously?” Max said. “That is just way too many syllables. They’ll be halfway down the block by the time I’m done introducing myself. ‘Hey, come back mate, I haven’t killed ya yet.’”

“At least you aren’t stuck with a basic-white-boy-circa-1992 name for all of eternity,” said Austin Tyler McInerny, originally of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He was chomping on a multicolored Fruit Roll-Up, which swung from his mouth like a lizard’s tongue. He’d been working at an ailing skatepark when Larkin found him. He still enjoyed showing off his kickflips, and kept insisting that he was going to teach me how to ollie. I didn’t have the faintest idea what an ollie was.

“Do you want a pancake, Cato?” Ksenia asked, passing Austin his plate and wiping her hands on her pink apron. Her black hair was tied in a high ponytail with a matching rose-colored ribbon. She looked so young. She was so young, actually. Nineteen. And she would be forever.

“No, thank you dear. I’m alright.”

“I like Alaric,” Max decided. “First king of the Visigoths. Alaric is a name fit for a vampire. Creepy, yet dignified. Or maybe Silas. Or Draco.”

Austin shook his head as he swirled a river of viscous maple syrup over his A-shaped pancake. “Definitely not Draco.”

“Why not?”

“Well, the Harry Potter connection is unfortunate. People will hear Draco and think of that obnoxious white-haired kid from the evil snake-people house or whatever.”

“Oh, right,” Max sighed. “Like I said. Alaric would work.”

“So many A-shaped pancakes!” Ksenia poured a K on the griddle for herself.

“It’s good for you,” Austin replied, pointing at her with his fork. “We’re practicing English.”

“Alaric Luther,” Max mused, scrolling through his phone. I didn’t think he’d find that on any list of trendy dog names. “Alaric Lothaire...Alaric Lucian...”

“I like your name, Max,” Larkin said from the doorway. None of us had heard him arrive. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, wearing a deep maroon suit and a ring on every finger, grinning hugely. He was exactly as I remembered him: stunning, captivating, terrifying. The kitchen fell quiet. I could smell Ksenia’s pancake beginning to burn.

At last Max chuckled nervously, pushing soggy pancake hunks around on his plate with his fork, averting his gaze. “Guess I’ll keep it then.”

“I thought I heard you come in,” Larkin told me.

“It’s always a pleasure to be home.”

He nodded out towards the hallway. “Come. Regale me with the stories of your travels.” Then his eyes flicked down to my socks, and he grimaced—slightly, briefly—before turning away. “And find your shoes.”

I followed him through the hallway, the living room, the grand front foyer with the crystal chandelier, into the elevator. Larkin did not speak, but he hummed as we ascended: House Of The Rising Sun.

It hadn’t always been like this. It was difficult for me to pick out the details of what had changed—the tone of his voice, the proportion of wonder and gratitude I associated with him versus fear, the way this palace (or the one in Reykjavik, or Juneau, or Ivalo, or Murmansk, or any of the others) felt when I stepped inside it—but I knew something had. It had begun before Ben left. It was much worse now. Older vampires, in my fairly learned opinion, are something like the stars. They mellow as they age, temper their character flaws, grow wise and patient like Nikolai or Honora or Gwilym Lee; or they rage until they burn away every last atom of humanity, until they destroy themselves and take entire solar systems down with them. Increasingly, I harbored fears that Larkin was a vampire of the latter variety. And we were all his planets.

In his study, Larkin dropped into the chair behind his desk, brought a hand to his forehead, surveyed a disarrayed flurry of papers: letters, notices, deeds and titles, meticulously managed accounts of finances and disciplinary actions. Larkin had a laptop and burner phone, of course, as we all did; but he liked to work in paper as much as possible. That’s how he’d done things for centuries, since long before the name of the inventor of the internet (or harnessed electricity, for that matter) was a whisper on his parents’ lips. The sky outside was clouded and seeping soft rain.

“Things have been busy?” I ventured.

He frowned, gesturing to the cluttered desk. “I’m in purgatory.”

“I’m terribly sorry to hear that. Can I help?”

“The Lancaster coven says they’ll need an extension for their dues. That’s the second year in a row, now it’s not just an exception, it’s a precedent. If you let one coven bend the rules, others will follow. So something will have to be done. Then there’s Stockholm. Anders’ coven has eaten a few too many locals—including the mayor’s favorite niece—and now the city is launching an investigation. Fucking idiots. They’ll probably all have to relocate. There’s some new territory dispute in Lima between Alejandro’s coven and a group of strangers that just came out of the Andes. We’ll have to make their acquaintance, of course. And as if all that weren’t enough, Rigel accidentally fed on a heroin addict and he’s currently detoxing in a cell in the basement. Would you check on him for me? I’m sure your presence will be a...” He waved his hand distractedly, almost dismissively, searching for the words. “A comfort to him.”

“Of course.”

“How are the Lees?”

“Fine. Typical. Gwil’s putting in a lot of hours at the hospital. Rami’s planning to get another law degree. Ben is, uh, adjusting. Slowly, very slowly. He’s not particularly content. But he hasn’t murdered anyone that I’m aware of.”

“How nice.” Now his eyes darted up to catch mine: focused, luminous, unreadable. “Nothing new at all?”

And instantly, I wanted to tell him everything. I forgot why I had ever planned to blunt the girl’s existence, to conceal her talent entirely; I felt her name rising in my throat. And then I remembered again. I’m doing this for Gwil, for Ben.

I pretended to ponder Larkin’s question, as if it was so difficult to remember, as if there was nothing left to sift through but a trunkful of mundane details from the trip like a grandfather’s tattered correspondence and tarnished war relics. That was something an average family might have squirreled away in their attic, I assumed; I’d never met my own grandfather, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have had anything to leave me if I had. “Joe’s got some new girlfriend, but I don’t think it’s serious. I doubt she’ll be around long. You know how Joe is. Scarlett’s seeing someone too, actually. A Quileute kid.”

“Poor boy.” And Larkin grinned like a shark beneath burning eyes. “He’s in for a lifetime of disappointment. Who will ever be able to hold a candle to those memories?”

Larkin had a moderate preoccupation with Scarlett’s beauty, her...tenacity. Her lack of talent was a great disappointment to him, a somehow more egregious fault than Joe or Gwil or Mercy’s. What a shame, Larkin often said. And I believed I knew what came after in his mind, although never aloud: What a partner she could have been.

He was still grinning at me. His expression was hollow, vacuous. A shiver clawed down my spine. He was waiting for something. No, he was searching. I stared back, and I willed for that intangible, contagious harmony I carried around like a wedding ring to hit him like carbon monoxide or bromine: undetected and yet inexorable, knocking him off his path of inquisition.

What does he suspect? What does he already know?

“Anyway,” Larkin continued abruptly, turning his attention back to his paperwork. “I’m glad there’s nothing to worry about in Forks. Liesl will be back in the next few days, Rigel will be ready to work again, I’ll come up with a plan to handle all this and my mood will improve tremendously.”

And where has Liesl been? I almost asked; and then I didn’t. It was a good sign that she was coming home. I had looked for her once while I was in Forks. When I made up my mind to find someone—when that switch flipped in my skull or in the tangle of nerves of my solar plexus or wherever it lived—it wasn’t like poking around on Google Earth: zooming in here, scrolling over there. A goldish trail lit up on the floor, a ‘Yellow Brick Road’ Honora and I sometimes joked, and I followed it. And I had no way of knowing how far that trail might lead. A route heading dead east from the palace might stop in the next town over or continue across the Pacific Ocean; my search might last one day or a hundred. In Forks—as I perched in a soaring western hemlock tree in the forest outside the Lee residence on a cool October evening—Liesl’s trail had led north. North to Vancouver, to Victoria, to Dawson, to Alaska? Who the fuck knew. I was just relieved it hadn’t led to the tree next to mine.

“Well, as always, I’m happy to assist however I can,” I told Larkin. “Just let me know and I’ll be on the next flight out of Vladivostok.”

“I appreciate that, Cato.” He smiled, paternally this time. And then he spun his chair around to peer out the window into the episodic flares of lightning that illuminated great dark clouds like neurons in a celestial brain. I hate thunderstorms. They remind me of South Carolina. “But I think you’ve earned a rest.”

After checking in on Rigel—irritable, frenetic, pacing, and yet predictably pacified somewhat by my visit—I trotted up the main staircase to the second floor of the palace. I found her in our bedroom: sitting at her easel, a paintbrush held in one graceful hand, an image like a photograph on the canvas. I promptly pried off my Berlutis for the second time today and tossed them into the closet.

“Ciao, amore,” I said.

“Ciao!” Honora replied, beaming. Her curly brunette hair was pinned up and away from her face; wayward tendrils spiraled down to brush her bare shoulder blades, the back of her neck. “Just give me five minutes...I have to finish the shadow of this tree...”

There weren’t many in the Draghi who survived the transition from Nikolai’s leadership to Larkin’s, but Honora had. She was gentle to a fault, a hopeless warrior, turned into an immortal on her forty-fourth birthday when Rome was still an empire; and she was without any talents whatsoever, except for one which was useless in combat. Her paintings, drawings, and sculptures adorned every palace the Draghi owned. Each year, Larkin would ask her to paint all of us together, incorporating any new faces, erasing the memories of those who had proven themselves unworthy. One such portrait, I knew, hung in Gwilym Lee’s home office.

I went to the woman I called my wife, laid my palms on her shoulders, leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Take your time, love.”

“Everything’s alright?” Honora asked, looking hopefully up at me with large, wide-set jade eyes. No, not just hopefully. Trustingly.

“Everything’s alright,” I agreed, not knowing if I believed it.

Shadows And Spells

“He just...just...disappeared?!” Jessica sputtered, scandalized, gaping at me as she held a Styrofoam cup of spiked apple cider in her clasped hands.

We were on a quilt near the outskirts of the sea of beach towels and blankets that circled the bonfire. Women—wearing flowing dresses or robes or tunics or not very much at all—flounced around the flames banging tambourines and reciting chants that I didn’t know the words to. Some carried torches, beacons of heat and light in the darkness. Jessica was wearing a short black shirt, fishnet tights, and a black crop-top turtleneck sweater; I had opted for a bohemian blue dress patterned with stars, an old thrift shop find and the closest thing I owned to Wiccan festivities apparel. I had a cup of hot apple cider as well, enhanced with a generous splash of Captain Morgan, but hadn’t quite conjured up the rebelliousness to drink it yet.

I suddenly recalled Mercy bringing me an endless supply of virgin autumnal sangrias as Joe and I swam in the hot tub on the Lees’ back porch. As soon as you turn twenty-one, you can have the real thing. I frowned, shuddered, took a bitter and burning sip.

“Yeah,” I replied. “He told his roommate he was going to a frat party or something and never showed up and never made it back home either. The parents are blaming the university, the university is insisting he must be off with a girlfriend or on some hipster soul-searching nature adventure or whatever, it’s a mess.”

“Jesus,” she murmured. “What does your dad say?”

“He’s been helping the state police with the investigation. There’s really no evidence of anything. No witnesses, no footprints, no surveillance footage, no handy anonymous tips...”

“No body,” Jessica finished.

“That’s morbid.” I downed the rest of my cider. Was the world already beginning to list like a ship on choppy waves, or was that just my imagination? I guess it would be possible. I’d barely eaten all day.

“You were thinking it.”

“Well, one’s mind does tend to wander towards homicide under such circumstances.”

“It is the season of the dead.” She grinned wickedly, then took my empty cup. “He’s probably fine. I bet he wants to drop out to become a weed farmer and hasn’t worked up the guts to tell his parents yet. You want another?”

“Sure.”

“Cool. I’ll be right back.” Jess rose to balance on black boots with five-inch heels and staggered off to the foldable table piled high with cans and bottles and snacks. I was getting the impression that her Wiccanism was more of a novelty than a spiritual commitment.

The season of the dead. Now that’s VERY morbid.

There were some guys laughing, smoking home-rolled cigarettes, and toasting glasses of red wine on a nearby mandala blanket, bespectacled intellectual types who were probably getting PhDs in Anthropology or Medieval Studies at the University of Washington. One of them—curly-haired, pale-eyed, wearing a sweater vest and a cautious smile—raised his wine glass in my direction. I waved back without much enthusiasm.

“He’s cute, right?” Jessica asked, plopping back down onto our quilt and shoving a full cup of spiked cider into my grasp. She motioned for me to drink. I did. “That’s Sebastian, but he likes to be called Bash. He’s twenty-three and speaks fluent German.”

“Charming.”

“He’s very...uh...gifted. I’m not saying I know from personal experience, but I’ve heard it from a very reliable source. And his parents own a beach house in Monterey. You could go skinny-dipping.”  

“In the ocean?” The world was definitely wobbling now. I was warm all over, numbed, fuzzy; it was becoming difficult to picture Joe’s face, to hear his voice. This was good. I kept drinking. “No thanks. Too many sharks. They have great whites down there.”

Jess tossed her long, loose hair and sighed impatiently. “I’m just saying that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. So you should pursue that.”

“I’ll totally consider it.” I lied. I would not consider it.

She smiled, sympathetically, fondly. “I can’t believe you thought I was a Mormon.”

“I can’t believe I’m out in the Washington wilderness commemorating the Gaelic festival of Samhain, but here we all are.”

Jess glanced over my shoulder. “Oh my god. He’s coming over here.”

“Ugh.” I craned my neck to see. Sebastian—whoops, my mistake, Bash—was approaching. “Please distract him. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Also I’m pretty sure I’m getting drunk and I don’t want to do anything humiliating, like sob uncontrollably about how much I miss my ex-boyfriend.”

“Don’t worry. I gotchu, Baby Swan.”

“Hey Jess,” Bash said, but he was looking at me. He pitched his cigarette off into the trees. What the fuck, who does that?

“Only you can prevent forest fires,” I told him in a woozy, mock-Smokey Bear voice.

“What?” he asked, baffled.

“Ignore her, she’s drunk,” Jess said quickly. “So what’s up? Come on, sit with me. Keep me toasty. Teach me some German...”

As they chatted and giggled and snuggled closer together—I’m starting to think that Jessica might have been her own reliable source—I studied the forest, watching to make sure the cigarette didn’t begin to smolder in the damp brush. The voices and crackling of the bonfire and sharp ringing of the tambourines faded into one muted, uniform drone. The trees reeled in the haze of the spiked cider; the cool wind moaned through them. And then, for only a second: a glimpse of something impossibly quick, something silvery and reedy and sunless.

What was that?

I blinked. It was gone. I blinked again, staring penetratingly. The swarming heat from the cider evaporated from my skin, my blood. There were goosebumps rising all over me.

What the hell was that?

I remembered how Calawah University students sometimes reacted to Ben: flinching, withdrawing, autonomically fearing him on some primal, evolutionary level. They knew he was a predator. They knew they were prey. It was chillingly similar to what I was feeling now.

I have to get out of here. I have to go home.

I shot to my feet. Oh, wrong move, that was too quick. I swayed, and Jessica reached up to steady me. “Are you—?!”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I gotta go home now.”

“What?! We just got here! Look, chill out, let me get you some vegan samosas or something—”

“No, seriously, I have to go.”

“Okay, okay,” Jessica conceded. “I’ll finish my drink and we’ll call an Uber, alright?”

“Really?” Bash asked, crestfallen.

“I’ll call an Uber,” I told Jess. “You stay, I’ll go.” Maybe she shouldn’t stay, I thought foggily, irrationally. Maybe it’s not safe.

“I can’t let you go alone. I got you drunk and now you’re a mess and if you end up murdered it would be my fault. There are unsolved mysteries going around, you know.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Girl, there’s no way I’m gonna—”

“I’ll call you as soon as I get in the Uber and I’ll stay on until I’m physically inside my house, okay?”

Jessica considered this. Bash leaned in to nibble her ear. I could smell the red wine and nicotine and animalistic lust sweating out of his pores. And unexpectedly, agonizingly: a biting flare, a muscle memory, Joe’s fingertips skimming down the small of my back and his scent like winter nights saturating the capillary beds of my lungs. Stop, stop, stop. “Okay,” Jess agreed at last.

“Awesome.” I was already opening the Uber app on my iPhone.

My driver was a Pacific Northwestern version of Santa Claus: wild grey beard, red flannel, L.L.Bean boots, rambling about his upcoming trip to hunt caribou in British Columbia. I honored my promise to Jessica and kept her on speakerphone for the duration of the twenty-minute drive. I rested my whirling head against the seat, let my eyes dip closed, watched the intermittent streetlights appear and disappear through my eyelids. I let myself into Charlie’s house when I arrived, wished Jessica goodnight (and reminded her not to get pregnant), and meandered clumsily into the kitchen for a glass of water and a cookie dough Pop-Tart to ward off a possible hangover. Charlie was snoring quietly on the living room couch. I watched him for a while, smiling and achingly grateful, before heading upstairs to my bedroom.

My window was wide open; that’s the first thing I noticed. I didn’t remember leaving it that way. I was always neglecting to lock the window, sure—I kept forgetting that there was no one to leave it unlocked for anymore—but I hadn’t left it open when I went to meet Jessica this evening. Icy night air flooded in. The stars were bright and furious in an uncommonly clear sky.

“You trying to give me pneumonia, old man?” I muttered, thinking of Charlie. I tossed my iPhone down onto my bed and crossed the room to close the window. And as it creaked and collided with the sill, I heard my closet door open behind me.

Someone’s here. Someone’s in this room with me.

I turned, very slowly; it felt like it took a lifetime. She was standing in the doorway of my closet, sinuous and white-haired, wearing black leather pants and stiletto heels and a long-sleeved lace blouse the color of blood, the color of her eyes. And she was harrowingly beautiful; not like Lucy or Mercy, not like Scarlett. She was beautiful like a prehistoric jawbone, like a serrated crescent moon, like a blade.

The owl. The goddamn albino owl.

I recognized her immediately. I heard Joe’s words as he introduced each vampire in the immense painting hanging in Dr. Lee’s upstairs office to me, though I desperately didn’t want to: She’s literally Satan, only blonder.

Her name tumbled from my trembling lips. “Liesl.”

“Wonderful, we can skip the introductions.” Her voice was like windchimes, cutting and brisk, with a hint of an Austrian accent like a shadow. Now she was at my bedside and picking up my phone, scrolling through it with lightning-quick and dexterous thumbs. “Hm. No texts from any of the Lees in the past week. So we don’t have to worry about them dropping by, I suppose. Joe got bored with you already, huh?”

“Evidently.” My own voice was brittle, anemic, weak; just like my ineffectual human body.

“That’s quick, even for him. How sad.” She sighed, tucking my iPhone into her red Chanel purse. “There’s a private jet waiting at the Forks Airport. Pack a bag. You have five minutes.”

“Please don’t hurt my dad,” I whispered, scalding tears brimming in my eyes.

“Of course not,” Liesl replied with a savage, saccharine smile. “Not yet, anyway.”