#em writes stuff

[chiropteracupola]

"Sleepers in the Peat," 2022.

two years ago I wrote a short story. finally got around to posting it.

The water was bitter here.  Beneath thick layers of branching sphagnum moss, it rose from the earth in drips and drenches, pooling in little reed-ringed ponds and lying smooth as glass.  A faint curtain of mist drifted across the bogland, obscuring the far-off tree-line and rendering the world somewhat distant from the clear light of the morning.  

It was beside one of these little wells of peaty water that she crouched, clipboard and pencil in hand, the raincoat drawn over her broad shoulders a green only a shade less saturated than the moss.  Her name, scribed in graphite across the top of her sheet of notes, was Theo-short-for-Theodora, a fact that she had had to explain nearly every time she introduced herself.  She had shaped it better to fit herself, although out in the silence of the marshes, there was very little need for such a thing as a name.

Kneeling now, Theo dipped a gloved hand into the water, pressed the acid-tangy water to her lips.  She breathed in, and breathed in bitterness.  Fibers of moss crept into her nostrils, taking root in her lungs like branching alveoli.  This, then, was the culmination of all her work, all her study, the taste of it at last on her tongue.

The faces of the ancient dead had always fascinated her.  Their empty eyes, skin smoothed by ice or desert to touch the contours of the skull, lips drawn back from ground-down teeth.  It was not the frozen explorers with their eyes still wide and dove-blue that captivated her, nor the ancient kings with their desiccated, dead-lizard hands, nor yet the strange distorted faces of those preserved beneath honey until even their bones took on a sweetness.  Theo, young, had traced the crisply-printed pictures set on slick photo-paper in the centers of her books, memorizing the images of those gone down and buried in the peat.  She became something of an expert in names that her schoolmates did not recognize, Tollund and Lindow, Windeby and Old-Croghan.   They lay still in black-and-white against their backgrounds of sand, so unlike the living people that walked just beyond her windows, and Theo, in her way, preferred that stillness.

Still, she watched the living move all the same.  There was a casual grace to them that fascinated Theo, the way in which hips shifted as the feet fell one in front of the other, how hands settled in close at the waist.  She herself stood with her hands apart, her thumbs tucked into the loops of a belt.  

Just as other children had run in gleeful circles on the blacktop while she stayed inside, book in hand, they kissed and laughed now in dizzy blue-dawn hours.  Theo preferred to sleep instead, lazing curled in bed while the world spun by outdoors.  Dressed in pajama trousers with torn-out knees and rolled-up hems, she drew layer after layer of blanket over herself, sinking deeper into the quiet dark.  In those solitary nights, though, she sought nonetheless, and dreamed of moss beneath her fingers, of the strange faces of the mire-mummified dead.  She would see them sure and true one day, Theo knew, and know the taste of the same tannin that so preserved them.

The North, that was where they were to be found, where ancient peat tracked patchily across Europe and left the dead preserved in its wake.  Her grandmother had called that place homeland, and Theo had scoffed behind her hand.  What connection had she, really, to that place?  Without invitation, she could not walk on that soil with the sort of fierce pride that her grandmother held onto so tightly.

“You’ll see one day, Theodora,” her grandmother said, and nudged back the crooked postcards of green, green hills that had slipped slightly from their places on the refrigerator.  The words sat sourly around Theo’s shoulders, and with time, refused to rot away.  

They clung, sticky and leaden, and Theo would have liked to scream at the feeling of them.  What did her grandmother know, she with her good marriage to her good man, her ticking, soap-sweet house, her fine bed in the back bedroom where she slept as contentedly as a cat?  Her grandmother’s hair was short in the fashion of old women, cut so that it hid how pale and thin it had become.  Theo’s own hair was just as short, cropped by hand in a dim mirror with a sort of ferocity intended to put the viewer in mind of steel-toed boots and hard-wearing canvas.  No use putting them back to back and calling them the same.  And so, Theo shut her mouth, dragged her hand down the side of her face as if to tie shut her jaw.  For all that she railed against those words, the postcards pinned against the refrigerator door were green, green, green.

Try as she might, Theo never slept well in her grandmother’s house.  The air was hot and resolutely mint-sweet, the blankets thin against the heaviness of summer.  Time was just as heavy there, a clock always ticking away beside the cabinets in the kitchen, machinery humming uselessly within the walls.  

Theo crept from the house and settled in the still-warm chair on her grandmother’s far-too-neat lawn.  It had been cut to within an inch of its life just that morning, the first of those two precise twice-a-week rounds of mower and rake and clippers that kept the street-facing yard perfect.  All the same, in the warm night, Theo’s skin stuck, sweaty, to the plastic slats of the chair, and the heat of it felt far too alive for her liking.  She peeled her arms away from it, drew her knees to her chest, sat folded up in herself like an Andean king of old.  Behind her eyes, all was green, the green of hollow hills and deep water.  

So she thought on it, and so she laid her plans.  She did her work with a tired slowness, her motions static and mechanical even as the tasks, somehow, managed to get done.  The grinding stasis of daily life dragged forward, every sample of moss and spreadsheet of data creeping closer to the proper work in the field she sought.  And then, all in a maze of mist, there she was in the North of the world, the treads of her boots sinking into wet sedge as the fog drew itself in close around her.

There were other sorts of bogs than the sort that made a face into such a bitter ambrotype as those that so fascinated her.  Theo had seen the ones where cranberries were grown before, red as all love in the dark water, crisscrossed with boards to serve as footpaths.  This was not such a bog, and made no such deceptions about its helpfulness or its safety.  This was peat all the way down, heavy and wet and certain.  In another thousand thousands of years, pressure would render that peat down to coal, and in another circling of time, perhaps diamond.  All carbon, just as she was, and no light.  Cool, static, stable, deep, the water still as it filtered slow and soft through the moss.  Not so kind, no, but all the same it might hold her gently in the wide green palm of its hand.  

So she knelt down into it, uncaring of the stains it would leave on the knees of her trousers, twined her fingers in among the curls of sphagnum.  Pulling it away in fraying chunks, as perhaps the ancestors her grandmother had spoken of had done, Theo dug, watching water rise, grey and changeable as the sky, to fill the opening she had made in the peat.  Down below, she knew she would find what she had searched for for so long.  And oh — her hand met slick solidity, not peat at all.

The girl in the bog was unchangeable, frozen in amber.  She was no body behind museum-glass, lying in state as if to be awoken by a kiss, but sleeping fast in untouchable earth.  Her face, leathery and smooth, was unwrinkled despite the years.  She could have been born the very same day as Theo, for all that the centuries showed upon her skin.  Her hair, falling wispy about her face, had been reddened by hundreds of years of tannins.  The sun caught upon it and turned it to the gold of autumn-dried acorns, sharp as straw.  There would be grit in her mouth, dust from the rough millstone that had ground down grain, hardly noticeable behind the rich green smell of the bog.

Gloved hands scraped away wet threads of moss, smoothing over skin with as light a touch as Theo could manage.  Under her fingers, the girl shifted, drawing up her shoulders as she yawned.  Her eyes stayed closed, but all the same, Theo felt that she was seen.  

The girl raised herself up languidly on one elbow, water sloughing off in trickles and streams from every seam and crevice of her body.  Her ribs stood out in perfect parallel, still wrapped tightly by the skin of her sides.

“Hello,” said Theo, not knowing what else to say.  The girl in the bog smiled at her with crooked, blackened teeth, and reached out to her.  Her hands were small, round, doll-like, but still soft as burnished leather, the fingernails as neatly trimmed as if she had cut them the day before the peat closed over her.  

She stroked the buzzed-short ends of the hair at the back of Theo’s neck as she leant closer, drifts of wet soil sloughing from her skin, and frowned.

“Why did they cut your hair?”

“I cut it myself.  I liked it better that way — it felt right to do it before I came here.”  Then, pausing, seeing the wind flick at her rust-red, blunt-hacked locks, “Did you—“

“They cut it before they sent me here.  But it fits, doesn’t it?  It was you that made yourself ready for me.”

“I suppose it was,” said Theo, and meant it.  There was a rightness to it, a reason that she had not put words to before.

“Come down with me,” she said, and Theo could not help but follow.  Half-laughing, she thought of the promises of the red-haired rusalki she’d read of in her books of tales.  To walk down into the sweet water and meet a maiden there, and hear her speak words just as sweet of eternal youth in her kingdom down beneath the riverbed, was an old story, and one that she might find herself believing now.  But the water of a peat bog is bitter, as are all things that keep memories safe, and it wasn’t youth, but eternity only, that the girl in the bog had promised her.

To be preserved, young arms entwined with ones that centuries ago were young, was all that she’d receive.  But what more had she desired to begin with?  The choice had been made long before she had ever set foot there.  Theo extended a hand, stripped off its pale blue latex glove like a snake shedding its skin.  Placing it atop her clipboard, she set aside the plastic barrier as if laying out an altar’s worth of grave-goods.  She shucked the green raincoat and heavy backpack from her shoulders — she’d have another coat of that same verdant color where she was going, once the moss had closed over the both of them.  Then, lowering herself feet-first into the open space amid the moss, Theo leaned down and met the girl’s mouth with her own.

The kiss was thick with pollen, and Theo inhaled it without any of the fear she had previously associated with such things.  There was a sweetness to it, a choking flavor of juniper and sap as it poured like sand into her throat.  Theo wondered, a little, that she could breathe through it, but it was no longer a time for wondering.  Instead, her eyes slid softly shut, and the cool, deep darkness was all that remained.  It was not the iron-red dark of closed eyes in sunlight, but a bitter and at the same time refreshing green-dark, a soft sort of shadow that spoke of nothing at all but the faintest edges of dreams.

Drawing the peat back over them, the girl curled herself fast around Theo’s back, cradling her in earth as if in the palm of a hand.  Twining together beneath the moss, the water crept up over them both one more.  As Theo sank, her eyelids slipped closed, and her head drifted downwards all the while.  It twisted sideways on Theo’s neck, slipping bonelessly forwards, and down with it she went into dreamless sleep, bog water growing ever sweeter in her mouth.

[em-writes-stuff]

presumed dead

day 23 of @febuwhump

supervillain, hero, villain, and medic

1887 words

warnings: captivity, cursing, stress positions, implied past torture/abuse

~

Supervillain leans against the wall, arms crossed in front of her chest. She rolls her eyes and kicks off the wall, walking toward Hero. 

His head hangs low to his chest, if not for the rope tied around his stomach, he would be slumped over. His legs and arms are bound to the chair, keeping him from moving. 

Supervillain grabs a fistful of his hair and pulls his head back, forcing him to look up at her. His eyes open and he yelps in pain. 

“What the hell?” He shouts, trying to free himself from his bindings. Supervillain pulls down harder on his hair, pulling his attention to her. He stills and smiles, “Oh, it’s just you.” 

She lets go of his hair and takes a step back. “You know why you’re here.” 

“Oh, I thought you’d gotten over him!” Hero says, slouching forward slightly. “Tell me it’s not about Villain.” 

“You need to pay for what you did to him,” she says, anger dripping like venom from her voice. 

Hero chuckles and looks at her, his head tilted. “Don’t you mean what I’ve been doing to him?” 

Supervillain’s face falls, she takes a step back and shakes her head. “What are you talking about?” 

“Oh my god, you didn’t know.” Hero says. “How could you have known? I mean, I told you I was going to kill him. I told you I had killed him. I even sent you a fucking finger in the mail. But I thought somehow you knew.” 

He laughs and runs his tongue along his teeth. Supervillain shakes her head, “You-” she exhales sharply. “What? You didn’t-” 

Hero cuts her off, throwing his head back laughing. “I didn’t kill him!” he extends his neck as far as it goes and whispers. “He’s been with me the whole fucking time. And boy, can he scream.” 

Supervillain sniffs and swallows the sobs swelling in her throat. “Where is he?” 

“There’s an abandoned building…just off the highway about a mile and a half from here,” Hero says with a smile. “If you hurry, you might make it before…well, you’ll see.” 

Supervillain runs out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She looks at the map tacked up on the wall and finds the building Hero was talking about. 

She runs to the kitchen and grabs the first-aid kit out from under the sink and runs outside. She dials a number on her phone as she turns the key in her car. 

“Hello?” the voice on the other end says. 

“Medic?” she asks, voice shaking. She pulls out of the driveway and turns onto the highway. 

“Supervillain?” 

“I need you. Um…Villain needs you.” 

There’s a moment of silence and Medic shuffles around, sending static through the line. “Villain’s dead, Supervillain. Remember?” 

She shakes her head, “No, he’s not. I thought- I thought he was but…just. Please meet me at my place. Please. I- this is important to me.” 

She waits, silently begging them to say something. 

Medic takes a deep breath, exhaling heavily. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” 

“Please hurry.” she begs, hanging up and stepping out of her car. 

The warehouse stands in front of her, boarded up. She runs around to the back of the building and peels a board off from the siding. She ducks inside and bites her bottom lip. 

The air is musty with a tinge of iron floating around. Light filters in through holes in the roof, illuminating the dust in the air. A gas mask sits on a table, mostly clear of dust. 

It catches Supervillain’s eye and she walks up to it, covering her mouth with the collar of her shirt. Behind the table, there are dozens of pictures tacked up on the wall. 

They’re all of Villain in different positions, each more painful looking than the last. 

In each picture, his body is contorted, ropes tied around his legs and arms, holding them in impossible positions. Bile rises in her throat. 

She holds a fist to her mouth and swallows thickly, turning from the pictures. 

In one corner of the building, she sees a lumpy mattress. She hurries over to it and sees Villain’s hair poking out from under a blanket. It’s longer, matted, and caked in blood and dirt, but it’s Villain’s hair. 

She looks up and blinks, trying to fight the tears threatening to run down her cheeks. 

A whimper pulls her attention and she drops to her knees. “Villain?” 

She takes the blanket off of him and gasps. 

His right leg is tied to itself, calf flush with his hamstring. His left foot is tied to his right thigh and his knee is secured against his chest with a bow, making it so that he’s lying with his back curled. His right arm is locked under the bend in his right leg, wrist tied to a rope around his neck. His left arm is tucked under his back, knuckles against his spine. 

“Villain, it’s me, it’s Supervillain. I’m gonna get you untied.” 

“No,” he shakes his head weakly and points at something with his right hand. “Loo…”

She searches for what he’s pointing at and freezes when she sees it. 

A bag of sand is spilling onto the ground, slowly loosening a rope tied to another bag, significantly lighter than the emptying bag. If the smaller bag falls onto the pressure plate underneath it, it’ll trigger a gun trained on Villain. 

Supervillain stands up and grabs the rope right above the small bag of sand. She cuts the rope with her dagger and sets it on the ground. She turns the gun away from Villain and goes back over to him. 

“Ok, I took care of it, let’s get you out of here, yeah?” she nods to herself and falls to her knees, unsure of where to start. 

Villain makes a pained sound, “Left arm. Start…with my left.” 

She nods and gently coaxes his arm out from under him. The blood rushes back into his arm, turning it pink. Villain mutters and sucks air in through his teeth. 

“What next?” she asks. 

“Other arm,” he says, gasping. 

She cuts the rope connecting his arm to the rope around his neck and sets it on the mattress at his side. She works her dagger blade under the rope around his neck and starts to saw away at it, forcing herself to ignore the bruises along his neck and collarbones. She unties the bow keeping his knee against his chest. 

He falls back, head hitting a thinner spot in the mattress. He moans in pain and turns his head away from Supervillain. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I should’ve-”

“I’m fine,” he interrupts. “Just get me out of here.” 

She cuts the rope keeping his foot flat against his right thigh and his leg flops onto the mattress, blood flooding to the areas that the rope was. 

Finally, she cuts the rope binding his right leg together. Villain breathes sharply and shakes his head, trying to keep the leg from moving. 

“What are you doing?” 

All he can manage is, “Hurts.” 

“We have to go, Villain. Sidekick has to know Hero’s missing by now." She pulls him up and he tries to stand next to her, but collapses. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, tears welling in his eyes. “I- I can’t stand.” 

She shakes her head and loops an arm around his waist. “Totally fine, I’ll help you.” 

He whimpers and tries to stand up, but as soon as he puts weight on his foot, he falls again. 

“Ok,” Supervillain says, thinking. “I’ll just carry you.” 

He nods and she puts an arm at the middle of his back and the back of his knees. She lifts him and carries him to where she came in at. 

She looks at the hole she made, then at Villain, and back at the hole. “Any ideas?” 

Villain nods and squeezes his eyes shut. “Put me down…” he exhales shakily and opens his eyes. “Then go through, and drag me out.” 

“Right.” Supervillain says. She nods once and…does nothing. 

“Supervillain.” Villain says. “Hurry please.” 

“Right.” she says again. 

This time, she squats and puts Villain on the ground close to the exit. She ducks through the hole and reaches for Villain’s hands. He flinches and pulls his hands away from her. 

“Sorry.” He rushes. He puts his hands back where they were and lets her grab his wrists. 

She drags him through the hole and picks him back up, holding him close against her. He curls against her, face buried against her shirt. 

“Ok,” she says, stopping. “I’m going to put you in the backseat and drive home. Alright?” 

All he can manage is a nod. 

On the ride back to Supervillain’s house, Villain slowly stretches his arms and legs, letting the muscles get used to moving again. His eyes stay closed, the bright light of the sun unfamiliar to him after the months he’d spent in the warehouse. 

The familiar bumps in Supervillain’s driveway alert him that they’re almost done driving and he sits up slowly. Supervillain opens his car door and holds her hand out to him. He takes it and she pulls him out of the car, looping her arm around his waist to keep him upright. Medic’s car is in the driveway, door open. 

They jump up from their spot on the porch and rush over to Villain’s side. They fuss over him, checking him over for any serious wounds before pulling away. 

Supervillain unlocks the door and pushes inside, forgetting about her guest. 

Hero cranes his neck to look at who’s at the door. He smiles when he hears three sets of shoes. 

“Aren’t you going to check on me?” He asks, voice booming through the house. “I assume you haven’t forgotten about me.” 

Villain freezes, recognizing the voice instantly. His entire body tenses and he shakes his head. “No.” he stumbles back and his back hits the door. “No, what-what’s he doing here?” 

Supervillain urges him forward, “You don’t have to worry about him, he’s tied up in the hallway. Just…get to the couch so Medic can look over you and I’ll deal with him.” 

She drags him to the couch and sits him down, “I’ll be right back.” 

Villain breathes rapidly, barely keeping upright. “Don’t- don’t let him…”

“I won’t. I promise.” Supervillain interrupts. She disappears into the hallway. 

Medic kneels in front of Villain, unzipping their go-bag on the floor next to them. 

“Hey,” they say, tapping his knee. “Deep breaths. Calm down, you need to trust Supervillain.” 

Villain inhales shakily and nods, he exhales and pulls his legs to his chest. Medic does a quick once-over of him and wraps a blanket around his shoulders. 

“You’re going to be alright, but it’ll take time. Your muscles are…” 

“I’ve been tied up for five months, I’ve known they’re atrophied. As long as I’ll get better.” he says, pulling the blanket tighter around himself. 

They nod, “You’ll have to work hard, and may never get back how you were before, but you’ll be alright.” 

Villain sniffles and tears fall down his cheeks. He wipes them away with the blanket and curls more into himself. Medic zips their bag back up and sits next to him, arm slung over his shoulders. 

[miss-bibbles]

7 “Everyone keeps telling me you’re the bad guy.” 😊😊😊

7. everyone keeps telling me you're the bad guy

“Everyone keeps telling me you’re the bad guy,” Lily breathed, her face inches from her own. It took all of Pandora’s self control to focus on the words tumbling out of her soft lips.

“Is that a deal breaker?” Pandora said lazily, leaning in closer. The space between them felt unbearable, unnatural even. Lily’s eyes searched her face for a moment and Pandora held her gaze with the same earnest intensity.

Before Pandora could even register it, Lily grabbed her hips and pushed her up against the wall, crashing her lips onto her’s. Her skin burned where Lily’s cold hands touched her, her lips devouring her mouth. Neither entertained the idea of coming up for air as Pandora wrapped her legs around her waist, deepening the kiss.

Lily finally broke away, curling the corner of her lips. “Good thing I’m into that, darling.”

[theonlythingimfuckingisstupid]

Lumity or Amity/Luz/Willow if you’re taking non-canon ships

warnings: none

characters: luz, amity (and a teeny bit of king)

322 words

a/n: i tried to write it with willow a few times but i don't think i have her voice down enough to post any writing of her yet

---

Amity walks into the owl house and calls out, “Hey! Is anybody home?” 

King sits up from his spot on the couch and points up the stairs, “Luz is up there. Um. She’s still working on the portal, so be ready for anything.” 

Amity nods and goes up the stairs. She knocks on the door and pushes it open. Popping her head past the doorframe, she says, “Luz? You ready for our date?” 

Luz looks up from her book and stares at Amity like a deer into headlights. “Is that today?” 

Amity purses her lips. “Yeah. We can do this instead though. Looks like you’re making some progress.” 

She looks at the pages strewn through the room. Some were scribbled on, some were crumpled and most were pinned to the wall. 

Luz nods, “I saw something earlier and it got me thinking about something else I’d seen in one of Eda’s books. But…I couldn't find it. So I took all the books and moved them in here. Figured out a spell that copies pages; so that’s come in handy. Found out a bunch about portals and I think as soon as we get a griffin’s armpit feather we can make one. We might also need a seasnake’s-”

“Luz,” Amity interrupts. “When was the last time you slept?” 

“I don’t know why people keep asking me that,” Luz says. “That’s not something I keep track of anymore.” 

Amity laughs half-heartedly, “So it’s been at least a day?” 

“Oh, easily.” 

“Right.” she pulls Luz away from a book and sits on the floor, head leaning against a dresser. “If you won’t sleep, then at least sit down? I can get anything you need for a bit.” 

“Ok,” Luz sighs. She sits down next to Amity and leans her head against her shoulder. “But just for a bit.” 

Amity agrees softly and scrolls through Penstagram as Luz tiredly flips through the pages in her book. 

[dapper-lil-arts]

Deleted scenes from the fanfic im writing

assorted unrelated Sunset Shimmer misadventures lmao. i'll put the context on the ending author's note part of the fic -v-

[robinfollies]

KEEP THE DANGER OUT // KEEP THE DANGER IN

[em-writes-stuff-sometimes]

terms of endearment │ Part I: The Princess and the Rogue

See the Series Masterlist for the correct order!

“The marriage between the second daughter of King Viserys I and his own brother, Prince Daemon, raised eyebrows upon its first announcement. Many assumed the match would echo the Rogue Prince’s unfortunate first union with the late Lady Rhea, despite his wish for a Valyrian bride being, finally, fulfilled. It surprised all who took witness to see the intensity of Daemon’s devotion to his second wife, a regard that would persist through a long and happy union between uncle and niece.”

- ‘Fire & Blood, Being a History of the Targaryen Kings of Westeros’ by Archmaester Gyldayn

The story of Prince Daemon Targaryen and his brother’s second-born daughter, as told through the many terms of endearment he calls her by.

Thank you to @my-justreblog​ for the header art!

Queen Aemma brings a new child into the world—you. As the second daughter of King Viserys I, you experience firsthand what it means to belong to the House of the Dragon.

Chapter 1 │Chapter 2 │Chapter 3 │Chapter 4 │Chapter 5 │Chapter 6 │Chapter 7 │Chapter 8 (COMPLETE!)

Daemon returns to King’s Landing after ten years in exile, intent on rekindling his affair with Rhaenyra. He wasn’t expecting you—the revelation changes everything.

Chapter 1 │Chapter 2 │Chapter 3 │Chapter 4 │Chapter 5 │Chapter 6 │Chapter 7 │Chapter 8 │Chapter 9 │Chapter 10 (COMPLETE!)

As the second-born daughter of Aemma and Viserys, you never expected to be married off to your uncle Daemon. The wedding is here—and the wedding night.

Chapter 1 │Chapter 2 │Chapter 3 │Chapter 4 │Chapter 5 │Chapter 6 │Chapter 7 │Chapter 8 │Chapter 9 │Chapter 10 │Chapter 11 │Chapter 12 (COMPLETE!)

Scenes from a marriage—you receive an education from your Uncle Daemon. Lucky for you, he is all too happy to teach you.

Chapter 1 │Chapter 2 │Chapter 3 │Chapter 4 │Chapter 5 │Chapter 6 │Chapter 7 │Chapter 8 │Chapter 9 │Chapter 10 (COMPLETE!)

Childbirth is the duty and dismay of all highborn women. Together, you and Daemon experience the trials, tribulations and triumphs of expectant parenthood.

Chapter 1 │Chapter 2 │Chapter 3 │Chapter 4 │Chapter 5 │Chapter 6 │Chapter 7 │Chapter 8 │Chapter 9 │Chapter 10 │Chapter 11 │Chapter 12 (COMPLETE!)

[maelstrom-of-emotions]

I love all your comments, no matter how short or long they are. They never fail to make my day, so never apologize for it, and I know other authors feel the same way, too.

[akuma-tenshi]

what's up lucanort nation how're we feelin

[luck-of-the-drawings]

my TWO FAVORITE THINGS IN THE WORLD, VAMPIRES N COWBOYS... deacon keller is SUCH a fun character, hes charming and funny but ALSO formidable and STRONG when he feels he needsta be. i hope him and arthur can get a chance to talk more and be better friends. l ike really good friend s. . like. like really good f. hangon i gotta go i think i hauve rabies.

[pespillo]

belos redemption fics

[chiropteracupola]

it's the time of year again for another original spooky story... and thus we present to you:

"THE RAT PIPER"

“…..Now, all you who’re here, what story would you hear? Shall I tell you the tale of the boy who taught himself to speak to bees? The story of the sailor who won a mermaid’s heart? The story of the old inn and the ghostly hand?” The storyteller looked down at the children surrounding them and watched as they clamored, each cheering for a different old favorite out of all her tales. She smiled, teeth still bright in a worn, warm, age-freckled face.

“Oh, but those are far too often told, I think. I’ve another story, just right for a winter night like this one…”

“A new story?” asked one of the children, his eyes wide with hope.

“In that you have not yet heard it told, it’s new. But I shall begin first off by telling you just how old this story is.” The storyteller nodded to the boy, and began her tale….

——

Listen. There was, and there wasn’t, and there was a girl called Tamsen, and she was a child of only a few more years than you back when your grandfathers were young. She was a piper’s daughter, and went with him when he traveled to play the flute and the fife at betrothals and weddings and dances and sometimes funerals, for some people like that sort of music for a dirge. When her father was not piping away at music that would make trees shake their leaves just as you nod your head and clap your hands, Tamsen played the flutes as well, and even what she piped on an old tin whistle felt like a song that might make a forest lift up its roots and dance.

But Tamsen was a hungry-hearted girl, as many children are, and the space between her father’s notes never seemed enough to please her. So off into the woods she went, when the work of the day was done, and on the battered whistle her father had used as a boy, she played his songs and her own for no one but the forest. Or, so she thought.

The woods have a way of knowing when someone is wanting, and cascading through the branches above and the roots below and in every network of the forest, the song of such a hungry heart traveled far and wide. And something that had been waiting a terribly long time for such a tune to be played heard, and oh, how quickly he came skittering.

In that clearing in the forest where Tamsen went to whistle, a stump of an ancient tree served well enough to stand on. It was cracked across in places, all hollow beneath where its roots once had fed deeply from the earth of those woods. And up from one of the cracks came clambering a man barely the height of Tamsen’s two hands put together. He scrambled to stand a little in front of her on the stump, expression sour as he dusted splinters of wood from his fox-red hair and long blue coat.

Tamsen looked down at him with more curiosity than apprehension at first, cataloguing him as if she could manage to fit him into any notions she’d had before of the sort of creatures that might dwell someplace underneath a tree stump. The little man had a sharp face like a weasel’s and a pointed beard, and bright, clever eyes like a pair of polished silver buttons, which looked back at Tamsen with just as little worry as she’d felt. Tamsen, being a rather over-bold girl at the best of times, reached out and grabbed at the back of his coat, hoisting him up to her eye level.

“What the hell are you?” said Tamsen, holding out the little man in front of her at arms’ length.

“Do you kiss your grandmother with that mouth, tall girl?” said he, smiling like a knife blade.

“My grandmother lives two villages past the edge of the forest, and I only see her when my father is there to pipe at a betrothal or a wedding or a dance or a funeral, for some people like that sort of music for a dirge, and even then, I don’t kiss her at all, with this mouth or any other. What’s more, I don’t see what you mean, talking of grandmothers when I asked a question of you.”

The little man crossed his arms and pouted, kicking his feet in the air as if to emphasize his point.

“If we’re aiming for politeness now, one ought not to shake their acquaintances about like sacks of potatoes!”

“Oh. My name is Tamsen. How do you do?” she asked, and as she made her clumsy, father-taught bow, she made the mistake you must never make if you happen to be a character in a story. She gave her name to a creature of a sort she did not know, and so swung open a door to a place she had never intended to visit.

“Gannet will do for now, if you must call me something,” said the little man. That was not his name, of course — the sort of thing that he was did not have names as we know them to be, but we shall call him that as we tell the story. We are not that sort of thing, and we are fond of names. Now, we shall go on with exactly what he was doing, and the sort of power he liked to offer.

Gannet held up an ivory whistle, as long as he was tall, and Tamsen took it. It was carved all over with animals, long and twisting and tangling tails and legs together in a marvelous woven pattern.

“Now, tall girl, that’s no flute for betrothals and weddings and dances and funerals, even though it can play the right sort of music for a dirge. Play it just right, and you can pipe down a thunderstorm that will rain so long and hard that the mountains themselves will be washed away.”

Tamsen raised the whistle to her lips and blew, a note as sweet as coming inside from the cold, as sharp as an autumn wind all braided with dry leaves.

“Why did you give this to me, just like that? I haven’t got any money, I can’t give you anything in trade for it.”

“The whistle must be played, tall girl! And I cannot do it myself,” said the little man, pointing out his height with a sweeping gesture of one hand. “You’ve got the music to play it properly, so play it you must! Now, a tune, if you would, and we shall see who comes to dance.”

She played again, a song quick and merry as any young person running to visit their lover, and the wind came up and sang along with a voice all its own. The little man shivered within his coat, for the day was cold, and with a rush of wings, a thousand birds slalomed through the trees and spiraled around them. Tamsen gasped, nearly dropping the whistle, and the whirlwind of wings slowed.

“Tall girl, it’s you who’s called them up! Play on, they want their dance!”

Tamsen, you know, had a piper’s soul, and all the cleverness in her little finger that most have in all their body. So up she stepped, and making the same bow and scrape that her father made before he played, whistled up a song for the birds to dance to.

Scarlet and ash, black and white, a swirl of feathers patterned out a dance Tamsen knew. This song was a courting song, the sort played when the young folk just grown-up enough to be thinking of sweethearts would be dancing the night away. Tamsen had often stayed up to see them, and now, found the beating of wings and the fluff of feathers just as marvelous as the tapping of boots and the swish of skirts as the couples joined and turned and parted. For as long as she played, the birds danced for the two watchers in the clearing, and just as the song ended and Tamsen lowered the whistle from her lips, they were gone again in a flurry of color. She stared after them, breathless with awe, the surging pride at what she’d wrought filling her from the soles of her boots to the tip of her nose.

“With a talent like yours, no doubt you’ll find fortune in no time!” said the little man, bright and self-assured. Tamsen considered for a moment. She was the sort to like being petted and praised a good deal, and she got little enough of that as it was.

“How exactly might one go about doing that?”

“Well, say you were to set out on your own, see a little of the world, have a try at finding out just what that whistle there can do. And I’d come along of you, of course, for on one hand I should very much like to see you try your paces and on the other I have rather an interest in finding out some fortune for myself as well.” Now, to Tamsen’s mind, that sounded just the sort of thing she should like to do, and her hungry heart, which had begun rather to gnaw at the inside of her ribcage, bit a little harder in her chest as if to say “yes, yes!” But a bit of her father’s instruction beyond the methods of the music had worn on her, though not enough to keep her home.

“I’ll get my coat, then, for I’m not supposed to go far off without it. And then we shall go a-fortune-seeking!” And off she ran back to the little house where her father the piper dwelt, slamming into the front-room as brisk as the autumn wind. Tamsen took her coat from the hook by the door, put a loaf of bread in its pocket, and laced her boots up tight once more, for one bootlace had come a little loose in running.

“Pa, I’m leaving to seek my fortune!” she called, for her father was beside the hearth in his usual chair, not quite expecting her to be home or to be away.

“You’re doing what now, Tam?”

“Leaving to seek my fortune! Tell Grandma I love her! Bye!” And with that, she stepped out the door and back into the wind.

“What took you so long?” said the little man, who had been waiting at the hollow tree until she returned.

“I was hardly five minutes.”

“Well, everything’s slower when you’re small. Slower to get from place to place, slower to get attention…”

“What if I carried you, then? If we’re traveling together, it would be better if you could keep up.”

The little man paced back and forth, considering.

“Fine, then, but carry me careful. I am more fragile than you think.” Tamsen snatched him up by the collar and set him on her shoulder. “Not so rough, tall girl!” He wavered, wobbling, for a moment, then got a hand around the shoulder seam of her coat and held on tight.

“Onward!” said Tamsen, and off she went, running along the path with the wind at her back and the little man clinging to her shoulder like a rat to a railing. After a few minutes, she paused and turned to him. “Where exactly are we going?”

“Over the edge of the world and back again, even to the deep waters below where Chance and Luck swim like fish in a fishbowl. But you know the stories well, tall girl! Bold knights and brave ladies must quest first before they find where Fortune dwells.”

“That’s all?” said Tamsen, and gave a little hop and skip that made the man squeak with surprise.

“Of course not! We shall meet with adventure and you shall play the whistle for a betrothal and a wedding and a dance and a funeral, and you shall play the whistle for Fortune itself and see what comes of it!” And so they went, and the sun turned about the sky as it spun hand in hand with the moon, and the road passed beneath Tamsen’s feet as easily as the notes of the tune she played as she walked.

But before too long had passed, she came to a fork of the path, and what had been the road that led from the wood now was two, one that led down to the water and the other to the town. Down the road that led to the town, the miller’s daughter and the smith’s daughter were walking arm in arm, the smith’s daughter smart in her blue Sunday coat and fine silk cravat, and the miller’s daughter with her white petticoat all showing where the hems of her faded skirts came short. They saw Tamsen as soon as Tamsen saw them, though Gannet had seen them earlier and yet said nothing.

“Where are you going, little girl?” said the miller’s daughter, looking down the length of her nose at Tamsen.

“I’m not a little girl, I’m a piper!” said Tamsen in return, with a sharpness she regretted.

“She’s the piper’s daughter, that she is,” said the smith’s daughter, “and I’m sure she is as good a piper as ever her father has been. He played at my father’s marriage, you know."

“I’m a better piper than ever my father will be,” said Tamsen, sour and eager to defend herself, and behind her braid, Gannet laughed a little laugh to himself. “I can whistle down the birds from the trees and the rain from the mountains, so I can!” And she spun the ivory whistle between her fingers as her father had taught her, and made it shine so that every carved creature all down the length of it seemed to twist and dance in the last of the sunset’s light.

“Sing me a dress, then, Tamsen?” asked the miller’s daughter, then, with a little hope behind her haughtiness, and smoothed down the faded front of her skirts where water and wear had half washed the print from the calico.

“Well, it may not keep you warm, but I shall see what I can whistle up for you.” Tamsen blew the whistle, and remembered a song that her father had played at a dance, years and years before. It was a rollicking, rambling song, and her fingers flickered up and down the flute and made the tune ring out, just as bright as ever it had been. The wind came up, and whirled a gown of fallen red maple leaves, weaving stems and vines into a trim bodice and a wide skirt.

“Tall girl, don’t dawdle! Fortune’s waiting, come along!” Gannet tugged on one of her braids, and Tamsen turned and put away the whistle.

“Won’t you come with us instead and go dancing?” asked the miller’s daughter, plucking at her crackling-bright hems, her smile shy but just as bright.

“Let her go her own way, my apple,” said the smith’s daughter, and took her by the hand.

“I’m going to find my Fortune,” said Tamsen, “and perhaps I’ll come back some other day when I’ve got it in my hand.”

“You can’t just go around saying such things out loud!” said Gannet, half-offended, into her ear. His breath was very cold, and Tamsen shivered as though the wind had crept in and laid its cold fingers all along the edge of her cap. But she ignored him, and, standing up on her tiptoes, tucked a last bright leaf into the smith’s daughter’s buttonhole.

“There. Now you match, and may be on your way, and we will be on ours.” The smith’s daughter grinned and bowed, and the miller’s daughter curtsied, and Tamsen made her bow in return before they parted ways. Down the road to the river they went, Tamsen with her heart light and Gannet’s fingers clutching at her collar, and the whistle at her mouth all the way. As it had not been a long way from home to the turning of the road, it was not far to go to reach the water, and Tamsen was glad of it, for she had begun to tire of running, for all that the road to the place where Fortune dwelt seemed to be a smooth one indeed.

“This way, tall girl!” said Gannet, all sprightly and sharp, and pointed down the hill and out toward the broad horizon. The water lay out before them both, wide and dark and as smooth as the road had been, but Tamsen could not run down the current of it as she had run down the road, and beneath her coat, a shiver stroked her spine at the sight of it.

“I haven’t money for the ferry,” said Tamsen, in an attempt at practicality, and Gannet scoffed.

“Show them what you can do, and there’ll be reward in it for the both of us!” So down to the docks Tamsen skipped, and halted just before the ferry.

“I can play for my passage,” said Tamsen, drawing herself up as tall as she could. Gannet made a fierce face. The boatman smiled slow, and the boy perched near the prow put out a tar-smudged hand and hauled the two of them over the side.

“Would you whistle us a wind, lass?” asked the boatman, pointing to the whistle in her hand. Tamsen nodded, and played a shanty that spun up the waves to whiteness and sounded like a seagull’s call.

“I know this one!” said the boy, grabbing at Tamsen’s sleeve. “Do you know the words to it, miss?”

“No,” said Tamsen, setting down the whistle as the wind went on. “My father taught me the tune of it, but I’ve never heard it sung. Has it got a story to it?”

“It ends unhappy,” said the boy.

“Lots of songs do,” said Gannet, smiling sharp as ferrets’ teeth.

“Aye, but some don’t. Why don’t you play a happy song, the kind where everyone ends up all right at the end and they have a feast?”

“Feasts are a tricky thing too, lad. Oh, when you’re serving up and it comes time to carve in, you never do know just what’s on your plate. Meat’s messy, and it goes rotten quick as false-told tales. Better dry bones for me, strong and simple just as songs are.” Gannet snapped his teeth and smirked, and the boy shivered away and didn’t speak to them again, although Tamsen could always see him just at the edge of her vision, keeping a fixed look on Gannet out of the corner of his eye.

The boy did not speak to Tamsen or Gannet again, and his father did no more than smile softly as Tamsen played the last sweet chorus of the song, but sang the verse that told of sorrowful shipwreck, and the king’s fair bride dead before she ever was married, and all the captain’s bravery come to nothing. But though the shanty that Tamsen had chosen was no story of a smooth sail, they came to the other side of the water in good time, and the boatman wished them well as they went on their way, but the boy said nothing, and Tamsen clambered down alone.

And now that the further shore of the water lay before them, there was nothing else for Tamsen to do but to walk, and to play the whistle, and to walk again. To another town they came, larger than any one that Tamsen had ever seen, and so it was nervously that she passed the slow-swinging gates and into the empty avenues within.

“Where is everyone?” she wondered, but there seemed to be no one else but Gannet to hear her, and no sound but the padding of her own footsteps. That, and something more. A rustling, a skittering, a scratch-of-nails-on-slate sound, coming from everywhere at once. Tamsen spun, and saw a crooked shutter swing out on its half-rusted hinge, the wind picking at paint gone cracked and peeling with heat and sun and the fingernails of time. Her feet felt unsteady on the cobblestones, and scraps of paper and sackcloth blew about before her.

Tamsen knelt, plucking a bit of paper from the ground, the back of it dark and yellowed where glue had gone long dry. It was a label, but the writing of it was a mystery to her, for the paper seemed to have been chewed half out of existence by a myriad of tiny pointed teeth.

“Gannet, do you—“ she asked, the wind clawing at her coat and rolling dust over the toes of her boots, but before she could finish, Gannet shrieked “Tall girl, here!” and she snapped upright as if tugged by a marionette-string. Now the cobbles were all too solid, though Tamsen wished that they were not, for down through the windows and out through holes in the plasterwork and from every crevice of those long-left houses came a flood of rats, skittering and scuttling so that the streets rang with the sound of their claws all a-scrape against stone. Rustle and scratch and down came rats from roofs of moldering thatch, creak and squeak and clatter and out came rats from the cracks between boarded-over doors. Tails twined together in a wriggling mass of scaled skin, mangy fur showing through the spaces in between.

Tamsen put the whistle to her mouth, the instinct to do so as quick as a lightning-bolt and just as snapping-bright, but her fingers were frozen, and everywhere around them the rats were running. Gannet got a foothold in her braid, and climbed atop her cap, his sharp little fingers digging into her scalp, and Tamsen nearly shouted with the start of it, for his hands were clay-cold in the sun of that town that had been left to the rats.

“I don’t know what song to play!”

“Whistle, tall girl! You’ll know!” And so Tamsen placed her fingers on the whistle and played, and the rats rose like a river. They flowed up out of gutters and drains, poured out of windows and doors, scampered in a tidal wave of skittering feet and piebald fur. Gannet slipped down, but clung to Tamsen’s coat collar, pressing himself up against her neck with all his strength. All around Tamsen’s feet, the rats swirled and spiraled, dancing to her tune. She breathed in, and played faster and louder than before, and stepped up, up onto the backs of the rats, dancing with them light as leaves.

“Tall girl, have you lost your mind?” Gannet grabbed hold of her hair with sharp little fingers, but Tamsen only laughed into the whistle and played on.

“They’ll take us to find Fortune!” And the rats did, cascading along under Tamsen’s feet as she strolled along their backs. Rats can run a long time, if they’re caught up in such a thing as music. And human children can run a good long while, just the same. They’re not so fragile as one might think, both children and rats, though their bones are more brittle and their bodies smaller.

And so the day turned to night, and to day again, and the rats ran on, and Tamsen played the ivory whistle far past the point where she’d have gasped for breath before. But something new and wild had come up like the wind now, in her lungs and in her mouth, and over and over she played that song that told of lost loves and the fading ends of summertimes and bright beauties faded.

At last the rats slowed, for the town was long gone by, and the forest had faded first into chaparral, and then to plain, and then to nothing but sheer white stone, marked with deep and gaping cracks. Just as quick as they had come up from the houses and the holes, the rats scuttled down between the stones, and hardly before she knew it, Tamsen was all but alone again. The last notes of the song rang hollow on the empty air, and she looked to Gannet, questioning.

“What am I to do now?”

“Why, play on, tall girl! What else?”

“And Fortune?”

“The whistle must be played, the year must spin! With summer’s end, the piper calls the harvest in! There are to be dances, and betrothals, and weddings, but in the autumn must the funerals be held.”

“What—“

“You’ve had your betrothal and your wedding and your dance and your funeral, and now it’s time to play your dirge. Party’s over, tall girl.” The man crossed his arms, his face skeletal, his teeth sharp. There was an odd light to his eyes, once which Tamsen had rarely seen before. He clawed his way back to her shoulder, and though she tried to shake him free, he only dug his sharp fingers the more fiercely into her coat-sleeve. As he spoke again, he was right against her ear, shrill and demanding.

“Now, play the whistle, play it well! Pipe me one last tune!”

And Tamsen put the whistle to her lips and played a song her father had played after nearly every funeral. Not mournful, and something you danced to, to be certain, but slower, softer, the song the coffin-bearers might walk in step with as to the grave they went. The last song of all.

The wind came up, and the ground shook beneath her feet. Tamsen nearly lost her balance, and felt Gannet’s sharp hands grab at the back of her neck as he slipped off her shoulder.

The stones cracked and split, heaving up to reveal deep chasms beneath. Tamsen clambered to perch atop a spar of rock, missing a few notes as she played one-handed. And up out of the earth came the dead, dressed in bones clean and clattering, and danced. First a cascade of birds, somehow still flying despite their wing feathers having long rotted away, then people, of all ages, bones rattling as they stepped from foot to skeletal foot. Tamsen noticed one skeleton missing a leg, others with cracked-in skulls or fractured rib-cages, though it seemed not to impair them as they dipped and turned. Watching the dead in their dance from her place atop the jutting stone, she began to recognize familiar movements, familiar steps, though all danced to the same tune. Some made the box-step of a hornpipe, while others twirled their partners back and forth, skeleton after skeleton rising up to join the swirling rings of dancers.

Then, last of all, a new tide of bones, smaller than the rest, shook from the earth and solidified, scampering underfoot. A hundred million skeletons of rats, their bones bleached and shined, their tiny toe-bones skittering and clicking on the stone.

“You made this place.” The certainty settled on Tamsen’s shoulders like a pall, heavier yet than Gannet’s weight on her shoulder. “You’re not Fortune, are you.”

“Oh, but I am, tall girl! Fortune’s as much me as it is anything else, you see. There’s a fortune that’s your luck, and a fortune that’s your fate, and a fortune last of all, that is your death. The world turns, tall girl, and Fortune turns it, but my hands are small, small! I cannot gnaw through the threads of life all on my lane!”

“And exactly what is it you do, then?” Tamsen’s sharpness served her well, even as Gannet preened and smirked so near to her ear.

“Every year I take one, a clever tall girl or a bright tall laddie, no matter who so long as they can play. And every year they play the flute, and down at Fortune’s hands they go to clay.”

“It’s them, isn’t it?” Tamsen asked, but the certainty of the truth was already on her lips. Gannet only smiled, and she played on. The music came harder and faster and sputtered and crackled in her lungs, and her fingers moved so that she feared they might slip from their sockets entirely. If she did as Gannet asked of her, she’d die here too, and the next year, her skeleton would be among the dancers. But the music had her in its grip, Fortune had its hand wrapped tight around her shoulders and— and she was the piper. She called the dance with her tune, left right left right, hop and step and cross and back with every note. And just as she had begun it, Tamsen could end it.

She took a deep breath. Then Tamsen dropped the whistle from her mouth. The dance went on without her playing, the rattle and clatter of the skeletons keeping time in perfect morbid percussion. Tamsen watched for a moment, ignoring Gannet as he tugged at her hair and shouted at her to keep playing. She got a hold on either end of the whistle, then, and brought it down on her knee. It snapped in two with a crack, and every empty-eyed skull out of all the dancing dead turned to look at her.

The house of Fortune went silent. Not a clatter or a creak of bones, just a thousand empty sockets pointed like eyes, and Tamsen, her face set, staring back. Gannet, still clinging to her coat, shrieked, more shrill and piercing than the whistle had ever been. The world seemed to shiver under the weight of such a sound as that.

Tamsen reached up and caught him by the coat collar, and ripped him from her shoulder. He dangled from her hand, limp, eyes shut tight. Then he opened his eyes, steely-silver, and then, as if he had opened another set of eyes, somewhere else, he was gone, and Tamsen’s hands were empty. She let out a long breath that she hardly realized that she had been holding, and the silence broke, too, as she dropped the shards of the whistle to the ground. A clatter and a crack, and all the twisting and twining of the carved ivory creatures was no more movement than the wind blowing low over the drought-cracked ground.

The wind came up, catching at her coat-sleeves and her braids, and the skeletons turned to one another, looking lost. Tamsen watched them stumble about, then put her hands to her mouth and shouted.

“Go home!” The skeletons turned to face her again. “You found your fortune, all of you, didn’t you? Your families are waiting for you back in the world — go there! I think…” and at that, her confidence slipped a little, her voice half a whisper. “I think they miss you.”

Then, gaining confidence again— “What are you waiting for! Go!” Tamsen stared, standing, panting, and a hundred pairs of empty eye sockets stared back. The foremost of the skeletons cocked its head to one side, as if in confusion, and turned to its fellows, gesturing wordlessly. There were a few sharper cracks amid the general clatter, as of bones being hastily snapped, and when the spokesman turned back to Tamsen, it had in its hand a long leg-bone, all drilled with holes to make a flute.

“Oh,” said Tamsen, all the air knocked from her lungs. “Oh.” She took the flute carefully from the bony hand that held it — bowed over that hand as best she could as she did so. The skeleton, though it always had shown its teeth, seemed to grin at the prospect.

“…I’ll give you a dance for the way home, if you’ll have me.” Tamsen said the words very quietly, but the skeleton appeared to hear her, and curtsied, knee-bones clattering. And so she placed the flute of bone to her lips and blew, and the wind stayed where it was, but Tamsen was a piper down to the hungry heart of her, and all the wind she needed to dance the rest of the way was the breath curling in her lungs.

——

“And what happened to Tamsen afterwards?”

“Well, friends, this story is over, you see. The tale is done, the mouse has run, and whoever catches it shall make themself a fur hat out of it. That is the way of the world. But perhaps, if you are good and quiet, I’ll spin another story and show you the weaving of it.”

[em-writes-stuff]

came back wrong

day 16 of @febuwhump

hero, villain, medic, and sidekick

746 words

warnings: captivity, successful CPR, strangulation, cursing

~

“Come on, Hero,” Sidekick mutters. “You can’t leave us now.” 

Medic straddles her, hands on her chest doing CPR. She counts with every beat, arms getting weaker by the second. 

“Medic, let me take over. You’re exhausted.” Sidekick says, nudging her with his toe. 

He shakes his head, “I’m fine.” 

Villain chuckles darkly from the back of the room. “You won’t be able to bring her back. There’s a reason I called you here after all these months I’ve had her. I would never let her leave here.” 

Sidekick’s face turns red and he storms over to him. “Shut up.” 

“Why should I? You’re already planning on killing me, nothing I do is going to change it. Might as well speak my mind.” he does his best to shrug in his restraints and he pouts his lip. “Oh, am I making you sad? Telling you that your hero isn’t going to make it?” 

“Sidekick,” Medic says before he can retort. “Come over here.” 

He runs over and kneels in front of Hero. “What’s happening?” 

“I’ve got a pulse.” Medic says, breathless. “She’s alive.”

“What?” Villain snaps from the other side of the room. “No, that’s…that’s impossible. She’s not-you’re lying!” 

They both ignore him. 

Hero’s eyes open and she stares at Medic, who clears her throat uncomfortably and crawls off of her. “Sorry.” 

Hero stands up, ignoring Sidekick and Medic and walking straight over to Villain. 

He cowers, shrinking into the corner of the room. 

“Oh,” she says, squatting in front of him. “You’re scared of me now? What changed? Is it because I’m untied? No…it’s because you know what you deserve.” 

Sidekick and Medic look at each other, unsure of what to do. 

Villain whimpers and shakes his head, “You’re not supposed to kill me. You’re supposed to turn me in and send me to jail. Remember, you said that you-”

“Shut up!” she shouts. She stands up and grabs a fist full of his hair. “Nothing from before matters because you…ruined me. And when you realized that you went too far you tried to kill me, but you fucked that up too. And now…I’m going to kill you. The right way.” 

She kicks him in the side and he falls, his head slamming against the floor. 

“Hero…” Sidekick says, inching closer to her. She stops him with one look. 

She kneels in front of Villain and wraps her hands around his throat, “Take a biiiiig breath for me?” 

He shakes his head, “Please don’t.” 

“Villain…” she warns. “Take a big breath.” 

He inhales deeply and she clamps down on his neck, knuckles turning white. He struggles underneath her, writhing in an attempt to break free from her. His eyes start to unfocus and his struggling gets weaker. Hero smiles and releases him. 

He sucks in a breath and his chest heaves. Hero tilts her head and almost laughs. “It’s so silly. You know you’re going to die, there’s no way you think you’ll be getting out of this. But you still try to fight me. There’s something in you that tries to fight. Let’s go again, no fighting this time, yeah?” 

“No,” Villain mutters, rolling over and facing the wall. “No, please. I…I’m sorry for what I did. I…shouldn’t have. Please…” 

Hero rolls her eyes and pulls him onto her lap, her arm wrapped around his neck. “Shhhh,” she says, mouth right next to his ear. “No talking. Now, big breath for me?” 

He shakes his head. 

“Now you’re just pissing me off.” she growls. She lifts her leg and slams her heel into his stomach, making him yowl in pain. He curls into himself and takes a deep breath in to refill his lungs from the scream. Before he can exhale, she clamps down on him with one arm and uses the other to lock it in place. 

Again, Villain fights against her and again, he gets weaker. His chest heaves, trying desperately to get oxygen into his lungs, but Hero doesn’t let up this time. 

Even after he stops struggling, after his eyes close and she can’t feel a pulse, she keeps her arm clamped down on his throat. It’s not until she looks up and sees Sidekick and Medic’s horrified faces that she lets him go. 

Medic starts to walk towards them, but she stops when Hero glares at her. 

“Don’t.” Hero whispers. She pushes Villain off of her and stands up, not looking back at him. “He deserved so much worse.”

[extrashortshorts]

thank you for answering.. i wanna talk wani for a bit more if thats alright, heres some wani traits i think would be interesting for a watermelon gator;

•watermelogators are one of the largest species of gators, but theyre also peculiar in that theyre very shy. so its rare to ever come across one.. if you do, you're blessed to have a amazing summer for you, or your business

•they have a little vine growing on their heads that get longer and longer with age, the small flowers growing from it are sprouted during mating season- the males whip eachother with the vine and tangle it together (like tug of war) and whoevers vine breaks off first loses

•their babies are all black and theyre at their fiestiest at this age, which makes it harder for the mothermelogators because they have to be kept properly moisturized at all times until they shed into their new skins. so, the mamamelogators keep them in their mouths frequently and constantly move to find water nearby.. if shes angry, she can spit them out rapidly at attackers and easily kill them

•they have large round bumps on their backs, that store fat and water just like camels do. they can spit it up like a fountain to bathe themselves..

•they have rounder features but longer snouts, likely to fit more babies in as they do have large broods

•a group is called a patch

•their meat is red and speckled with black dots, the textures been described as, "melt in your mouth, like marbled steak thats also light and refreshing" so they're sought after quite often

•since they have the appearance of a very popular fruit, theyre also beloved and considered the best kind of wani, the cutest as well

•they may live for hundreds of years, but before they die they're brown and bloated, and leak blood continuously as they rot

.. id love to hear more about your ideas!! sorry this was so much i hope 9 bullets isnt overdoing it 😭

t...they NEED to be massive, i NEED them to be massive and tasty and nice and refreshing in the summer 😤

All of these headcanons are so good!!!💚💚💚

[xiao-kisserr]

"how do you get your lips so nice looking all the time? especially during the winter" they asked, eyes curiously dancing from your lips to the rest of your face. 'how do you get them so kissable looking'

you smiled and took out a small vaseline container and showed it to them. "it helps so much, especially during winter!" you explained, putting some of the cream on your lips.

once done, you began to open your bag so you could put the container back but you caught them staring at it with wide eyes, "wanna.. try it?"

they looked at you with a look of surprise as they hesitated with their answer. "sure"

you were about to hand the container to them but they leaned in and kissed you. it was a short kiss, lasting no more than a second or two but still your face felt warm, despite the winter air. you were blushing lightly as they pulled away from your lips in an almost hurried way, as if they didn't want to get too addicted. you could feel their warm breath hit your face as they stayed close to your lips.

"strawberry flavoured?" they asked, breaking the silence that hung in the air.

"maybe you should kiss me again to see"

Childe, Kaiser, Kazuha, Scaramouche, Reo, Nagi, Kaveh, Cyno

[lyney-s-bitch]

lyric prompt drabble || Itoshi Sae (angst; sfw)

"And if you’re under him, you ain’t gettin‘ over him" - Dua Lipa (New Rules)

—————

It was around midnight when the knock on your front door startled you, interrupting your nightly binge watching session of whatever show you had recently gotten obsessed with.

There was only one person you could think of that would A) knock on your door instead of ringing the doorbell and B) show up at your apartment unannounced at this hour: your ex, Itoshi Sae.

Despite your relationship officially ending about a month ago, he would still drop by every now and then, not even giving you an explanation or anything the like.

He was just there, letting himself in as soon as you would open the door. He would sit down on the couch and make himself at home, resting his feet on the small table next to it as he glanced over at you with his usual, seemingly bored expression. You knew him well enough to not ask too many questions, being fully aware that they would more likely than not go unanswered anyway.

These nights usually all played out the same way.

It was gnawing away at you: the repeated process of waking up next to him, thinking for a blissful, sleep-dazed moment that everything was okay, until reality clawed its way back into your consciousness and you were brutally reminded of the fact that you weren’t actually with him anymore.

It was as though neither of you really wanted to accept that fact and face reality.

~~~

Sighing, you sat down next to him, picking up the bag of chips that you had opened only minutes prior, earning a sharp "Tsk." from the athlete.

"You know those aren’t good for you." he simply stated, matter-of-factly. You rolled your eyes, defiantly taking a handful of potato chips and munching on them out of spite. "And? Neither are you, but at least the chips make me happy."

"Hah." Sae let out an unamused laugh, seemingly unfazed by your snappy comment as he kept his eyes trained on the TV, before grabbing the remote to change the program.

"What do you think you’re doing? I’m watching that." "Not anymore." A slight smirk tugged at the corners of his lips as he reclined and manspread on the couch with the TV remote still in hand. You groaned in frustration, but didn’t move from your spot, deeming it below you to fight him for your remote. You knew better.

At least this time you did.

You were not going to play the usual kind of game with him anymore, one where he purposely pissed you off one way or another, and that often started with him asking something along the lines of "What’re you gonna do about it?".

The change in his expression was barely noticeable, but you had all his moods down to the t by now. He was mildly disappointed in the lack of reaction from you.

"Is that all, kitten?", he inquired, his head tilted to the side while he looked at you with those unfairly hypnotic eyes of his.

A shudder came over you at the sound of that all-too-familiar pet name.

"Sae", you called, your tone and expression uncharacteristically serious as you straightened your back and faced him. "You can’t do this anymore. We can’t."

His interest was piqued, he turned to the side to face you, resting his head in his palm. "Are you that upset about me interrupting your little show?", he mocked, raising his brows in disbelief.

"You know that’s not what I meant. You can’t come here anymore." It took every ounce of strength you had left to utter those words, keeping eye contact with him during made it even harder. The moment of silence ensuing was almost unbearable.

"What." Sae deadpanned, it didn’t sound like a question, more like an odd kind of statement.

You sighed, deciding to elaborate on your words despite knowing he knew what you were referring to just as well as you did. "We broke up over a month ago. We broke up because you weren’t willing to change, and I wasn’t willing to just accept that. I am also not willing to have you keep using me for your convenience, nor as your occasional booty call."

He scoffed in response, his eyes narrowing at you. He was never one to actually argue, he was one to say his piece and be done with it.

But in this case, Itoshi Sae no longer even had a piece to say.

He had known that it would only be a matter of time until you would kick him out for good, but that didn’t stop the pro player from overstaying his welcome over and over again for the duration of the past month.

"I know", Sae muttered, quiet but still audible. He got up from your couch and sauntered over to the front door, his posture visibly tense. You got up as well, accompanying him to the door to see him out.

When he turned to look at you, something inside of you squirmed and cried in pain. It was the same part of you that had forced you to go along with his whims up until now, letting him use you as he pleases only so you wouldn’t have to let him go.

You had never wanted to let him go, but there was no longer any room for arguments, the time of discussions and pleas from your side had ended long ago. You loved him, and you knew he loved you as well, but you also knew it wasn’t enough. And now, you were finally done pretending it was.

"Thank you" was the last thing you managed to get out, barely more than a broken whisper, as you opened the door, a cool night breeze sneaking past you. Sae only nodded in response before averting his gaze, stepping out into the night.

This time, you closed and locked the door behind him.

—————

a/n: I rarely ever write actual angst, or I at least give it a happy ending, but I guess not this time lMAO