Delissandro learns that he loves Colin. Deli also learns he loves Karna. These loves, he learns, are different but no less impactful. Both he also learns, more than a little painfully, a little too late.
His love for Colin is tinged with boyhood and want. He wants to be known. He wants the meatlands to be free. He wants to aid in the war and play the political games that his mother refuses to do so. He wants and he’s willing. If he believed in The Bulb, he’d might even say it’s his destiny.
So he names Colin his Skald. His trustworthy advisor. He wants Colin. He doesn’t know in what way yet. The man ten years (at least) his senior. He’s but a boy. He has no idea what up or down is. How to quantify his want, how to understand his want. He wants. So he must have. This is something he is unwilling to compromise on.
Colin is his Skald. He is close to him, always. That makes Deli happy. His Skald is never apart from him. They are always close, always talking. Two years is more than enough time to form a bond forged in fire. So he thinks.
Deli wants Colin with him. Colin, however, does not want to be apart of Deli’s plans. Not anymore. A bond forged in fire, he thinks, too bad the welding was thin.
His love for Karna is a slow thing. Anything else, and it would be weird, anything more...he wishes that there was more. He doesn’t notice it at first. Of course he doesn’t. Each time he sees her it’s hard to reconcile the person she’s become in the years they have been away from the person she was before. She is a 14 year old girl, and then suddenly she is 16, and then suddenly it’s been five years and she’s nearing 21. Each visage is different from the last. Hungry, rotting. Hungry and lanky. Hungry and beautiful.
He calls her Skald, but inside she is just Karna. Her name ricochet's around his brain every time he lays down. Every time they win a battle together. Every time. It circles. It crescendo’s. Karna, Karna, Karna.
Deli knows about want. He’s never been good at figuring out what it means for him. It tangles with his missing limb, his old want for his Skald Colin, when he was but a boy. It changes and morphs. But there is war.
Ultimately, he wants to be slammed down big style. This he thinks, is the crux of the problem. He’s never been slammed down big style. That is what he truly wants.
With Karna.
Not Skald Karna. Just Karna. Karna who always comes when he calls. Karna who gave him her eye. Karna, Karna, Karna, Karna.
Within the same moment he realizes that he wants Karna she is gone.
Deli loves his Skald. Deli loves Karna. These both are the same type of love. But, as he watches the sun rise over the horizon of the meatlands, he comes to both these realizations much too late.
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it is healing to come onto this blog and see basic respect for diasbility after being in other corners of the fandom and reading the words “snowkit could never be a warrior because he wouldnt know what anything is. he wouldnt even know what a clan is because nobody could explain it to him” said in full seriousness
Im..... That statement is so ableist I cannot even imagine the worldview you'd need to have in order to come up with that.
They really think the only way anyone learns anything is through verbal-speaking-words-noises? No one has ever observed something before? Not even once?
This is beyond touching grass, this person just fell out of the fucking Jurassic Period when all they had was ferns and stegosaurs.
I just...
OH YES. I remember my first day of Society Lessons as a hearing person, where the everything was explained to me. Via Audiobook. FIRST they spoke and said, "you are standing on the ground." It was a life changing revelation, and the world began to spin.
But it did not stop.
THEN they said, "there are fingers on your hands." The sensation of flesh and bone crackling into existence is indescribable, but I did not yet know pain, until they told me, "that hurts." I began screaming immediately.
And yet... it continued.
They explained so much. Chairs. Tables. Walls. The sky. Frogs. Ionizing radiation. Breathing. I was told all of it, in one sitting, and only then did I understand. Only when my ears were bursting with normal hearing knowledges, did they begin... my final test.
A strange wall-chair-finger emerged from the sky-of-the-wall, stood on the ground several times, until it was in front of me. A second one came behind it, this one slimmer. The audiobook gave these things names;
Human. Father. Mother. Door. Walking. It was completely impossible to know what these things were until that very moment.
I watch a human dip a hook into water and produce a fish, and I recall my Society Lessons where they called that "fishing." I am decked in the face by a nefarious hooligan, and I have only the audiobook to thank when I know I have been "punched" by a "bad guy." It was only the magic of verbal-speaking-words-noise that made me understand that there are "other people" and that they "do stuff."
Sometimes, even, in "groups."
Before the Society Lessons Audiobook, I knew nothing. I was pure, innocent, uncorrupted by concepts such as "parents" and "door." I am grateful every day that there is no such concept as "being shown things" or "simple logical reasoning" or "looking."
Blessed be those amongst us who escape the horrors of the Society Lessons Audiobook. I pray that you never learn what anything is. Be free! Free as a bird, which also knows nothing and famously cannot learn. 🤗
DEAF/HOH FOLLOWERS I'm losing my mind do you want me to bump a 'Hearing Disabilities Herb Guide' to the top of my priorities? Something you can use to bludgeon whackadoodles like that. This is ridiculous
Obviously not a MEDICINE guide but like; common causes of hearing disability in clan cats. Accommodations for hearing loss vs congenital deafness. Actual difficulties of not having that sense Clan-by-Clan. Debunking of misconceptions like... not being able to learn APPARENTLY.
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Some quotes from the commentators that made me burst into tears:
"That was wonderful stuff from Fernando Alonso, and you thought, once Perez gets by, "Goodnight." Perez waited, deployed it well. The problem was you're talking about one of the Greats in Formula 1 history. "Two-time champion" doesn't begin to tell you how good Fernando Alonso is...Brilliant stuff, really great work from Fernando Alonso, holding on in what definitely, undoubtedly, is the inferior car.
"It [DOTD] should've been Alonso, shouldn't it?"
"Fernando Alonso, it doesn't matter how many days old, years old, he is, the amount of Grand Prix he's run, he is so crafty, he is so wily. He is such a good wheel-to-wheel racer. To hold out with the inferior car against that kind of pressure for so long? Absolutely incredible.
"You might get past Fernando Alonso, but you might not stay ahead."
"Fernando Alonso fought like a lion out there!
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They won't sleep tonight.
They couldn't even if they wanted. Not after everything, standing before nothing, their sides digged up and empty and lost and all that remains close being each other, crumbled and less than half of themselves, trying to form something less than a whole.
But Jaskier insisted, faint as it sounded, because she was stumbling on her feet and her shoulders were dragged by the earth and her eyes hadn't gone a second without flooding throughout the day. So much that he knew he had to save some of his tears to give her, in case hers ever dried up. Not letting her hurt bereft of tears, at least he could give her that.
The bed is fit for two whole people. Broken, hidden from her, a smile.
They won't sleep tonight.
They will say it's only for a few moments of rest, if rest could ever be so agonizing. They will say it's no use to roam the continent now, in the dark of the night, holding themselves from collapsing onto each other only for the sake of the names constantly hanging from their lips, now by so weak a string they almost let them drop. They will say it's only for rest.
And this is what it is.
This, and also the way he takes off his coat and his vest and suddenly his shoulders appear so shrunk under the worn-out shirt that she rests her hands on them without thinking, because they look like hurting. She caresses more than rubs them, and hopes it's enough. It's love, she won't say. It should be enough.
This, and also his hands coming up to unlace her shirt and help her peel it off her body, and then her skirt, and then, she stands still in her undergarment, and waits for him to also strip to his shirt. And then they face each other, hands on their sides, tired and empty, and they stare.
He affords a smile, faint. She smiles back. It's all they can afford.
This, as they slip under the thin blanket and they haven't done it for quite a while, but it feels so familiar now, like slipping back into their older broken molds, only they don't fit quite right anymore. This is a different kind of broken.
How gentle, then, how kind, to crumble again together.
His arms are open, forever open and waiting, and she thinks none of it as she crawls inside and wraps her body around his, clings tight and brusing. He happily welcomes the bruising. It's proof she's still here.
Her nose nuzzles into his shoulder and he buries his face in her hair, and breathes in the ashes and the exhaustion and the pain and the lilac and everything that makes her. Deep breaths, nonstopping. So that he memorizes the scent.
He only pulls back just a little, just to take a look at her eyes. Swollen and cut and bloodshot, and he suspects his are not much different as they're mirrored. But there's comfort, too. There, pooling between the crinkles along with the tears, carved between her eyebrows.
At least, at least.
He knows he's not much. At least, just enough. Enough to find the faint wave of hope between the flood of her eyes. Enough to mold a little dimple on her cheek where his thumb strokes, and make her eyes flutter close.
Less than whole. But holding her, just enough.
They will not sleep tonight.
Only, in a moment of despair, similar to so many other moments, she will kiss his lips. And he, he will kiss her too. Softly, barely there, for reassurance. He will kiss her lips, and then he will kiss the side of her neck. And then her shoulder, bare and slumped, and she will cling tighter on him because she has to cling somewhere, even just for a little bit. Just for tonight.
Only, in a moment of love, similar to so many other moments, she will bare her lungs in sighs and he will find shelter there, inside her as though to replace the lost warmth, or try to.
Alright, everything will be alright. I love you, everything will be alright.
Just for tonight, just for their lips to whisper each other's names too, the ones they so discreetly cover up in daylight. As though they could ever hide.
They will not sleep.
Not tonight, not for many other nights afterwards.
Instead, he will place one last kiss on her lips, and then rest into the crook of her neck, as she rests into his chest, and the gaping holes by their sides may prevent it from being whole, but for now, it's just enough.
It could never be more than that, anyway.
And if the lullaby he mutters and the soft vibration of his chest makes her eyes droop after a while, she will never admit it. If her lips tremble on his skin moments before her lashes do, to slowly fade his voice in a dreamless sleep, later, he will speak none of it.
Later, they will say they did not sleep that night.
It's love, they won't say. It's just enough.
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Thinks about how. Gloreth only starts looking at Nimona differently/strangely when her parents call her a "monster". Just throws that label with such a negative connotation on her. Gloreth fucking fights for Nimona immediately in the beginning saying that she's her friend and never once looks at her with ridicule until her mom just holds her by the shoulders and tells her she's a monster, straight in the eye, straight in the face. And just the word is enough to cause the change.
Nimona's getting fucking attacked and prodded and Gloreth doesn't even feel sorry for her just because she's now re-contextualizing everything around her but with that word. I'm so sick. She looks not in hesitance but at disbelief before she runs away. She sees Nimona trying to defend herself from literal Danger in any way she can (she's just a kid and she's fighting with people who won't listen, never will, people that she can't get through) but just sees that as more proof of her being violent, monstrous. She sees her friend all alone, with the odds and the world stacked against her despite them being. so similar but just tells her to go back to the shadows.
And like. Of course she believes those words calling Nimona a monster and takes them to heart. Her parents, the ones she would probably trust most are the ones that told her that. And she's young, she doesn't know much about the world or much better. And of course, her parents and the whole village don't know any better. They didn't see what she saw. They don't know or feel the need to know much more than the definition of the word "monster". But it hurts. God it hurts. It's wrong. It's not fair. It's really not fair.
And it causes this whole legend that will stay with Nimona to ridicule her for generations and generations and birth this system that she's trapped by and causes everyone to be so brainwashed. The one that makes people scared and build walls. That births unecessary distrust.
God. Even in the scroll illustrating Nimona and Gloreth, Nimona is portrayed as such a bigger and scarier threat than she ever could be or would be, until Nimona internalized and gave into those images and despair of course. It's not fucking fair.
Thinking about how when the villagers saw Nimona as a "normal" person they were happy for her just living her life and playing with her friend, she was just another kid being happy like she and every ("normal", apparently) person deserves to be, and they were allowing her to be happy then when they find out what she really is they hate her. They call her a monster and drive her out immediately. They don't look into the details that contradict the stigma, they just feel betrayal when they weren't even the ones who were betrayed (Nimona couldn't fucking help being who or what she was. And she was her own person. She was still. A someone. Why do things have to be different now?). I'm so sickkk.
Thinks about how Nimona feels so hopeless as to just. Accept and yield to that label. That label that was passed down to Gloreth. To the whole world. Such simple but awful words. Aughhhhhhhhhhh
Another post I saw talks about how this is a movie about how hate is taught. And oh my god it is. Hate it taught. It's done so simply yet so, painfully effectively. So devastatingly. And that hate teaches people to hate the world back. God I fucking loooove this movie
Also Nimona's such a Creature /pos /affectionate she's so relatable I fucking love her and I'm insane okay that's the post bye
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