#from what i have been told my mother was a voracious gardener

[ilaliya]

i suppose, in a way, books made me feel closer to my father when i was living apart from him for the first time.

some of my earliest memories are of me running about my father's library, selecting books at random, and having him read to me.

[carriagelamp]

April l was apparently the month for me to revisit some children’s authors who are steeped in controversy at the moment. So here’s my hot (well, lukewarm) takes on issues that absolutely do not need a single other person talking about them. Also some actual good books that I read this month!

Badger in the Basement

The Animal Ark books are a childhood classic — though I recently found out that apparently there’s a difference between American and British publications, and the American versions didn’t include a lot of actual COOL animals which is… bizarre. As a Canadian stuck in the middle of this, this nonsense drives me nuts. This one was about the main character, the daughter of pair of vets, trying to protect a local badger sett from men wanting to participate in badger digging and baiting. These books are always feel-good, and it was a nice single-day-read while I waited for a library book to come in.

Chi’s Sweet Home

The cutest manga series about the misadventures of a little kitten, Chi, who has been adopted by a loving family. I’ve never bothered to read them in order, but apparently this time I stumbled across the last in the series -- whoops! Still, stood on it’s own pretty easily, and it was a fun read! Things get tense when the family realize that they may have found Chi’s original home… and may have to give up Chi forever.

Earth Before Us: Dinosaur Empire!

This was an odd graphic novel, I feel like I’m not sure who the target audience was exactly. It was a nonfiction comic done in a Magic School Bus style, with the purpose of teaching current, up-to-date facts about the animals that lived in the Mesozoic Era. If you’re into dinosaurs, you’ll probably enjoy this! The art is absolutely adorable, I love the dinosaur illustrations, and I learnt some really neat facts. That being said, the pages are really dense, and there’s a lot of info crammed in… some of it will probably go way over a child’s head without specific additional teaching or a very strong personal interest. But that being said, a dinosaur obsessed kid is still probably going to really dig this… as would a dinosaur obsessed adult. It wasn’t my cup of tea exactly but I’m sure it is someone’s.

assorted Dr Seuss Books

I love these types of controversies because it means getting to listen to every moron who has never had an opinion on Dr Seuss ever start generating a mile of them out of the aether. So many people are so mad about the six books that are getting retired and I bet most of them haven’t even read them. These are not the friggin Cat In The Hat or The Lorax or even the likes of Yertle The Turtle. I was raised by a grade one teacher, was a voracious reader who loved Dr Seuss, and wrote my university thesis on children’s literature, and I still only knew two of the six books on that list. So by all means, if you want to write an essay explaining why those specific books are worth clinging to, feel free, but if you haven’t even heard of them maybe it’s not a big deal. *grumble*

Anyway, my grousing aside, it gave me the urge to reread a bunch of Seuss books, including the two retiring books I personally knew: McElligot’s Pool and To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. I do still enjoy both, especially McElligot’s Pool which always sparked my imagination, but it’s obvious why they’re being retired and I personally think it’s the right choice. There’s so much good kidlit out there, we can survive without these.

Goodbye, My Rose Garden

A f/f romance manga, fairly standard fair though cute if you’re looking for some historical angst, pretty dresses, and mutual pining. A young Japanese woman moves to England in the hopes of meeting a writer (Mr Frank) who she has long admired. Along the way she is employed by an enigmatic woman with plenty of money, rumours, and melancholy following her. I’ll be honest, uncut romance isn’t really my genre, but I’ll probably still try to the second book to see if the story picks up.

From The Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes: The Autobiography of Robert Clary

It’s no secret that I’ve been on a Hogan’s Heroes kick. This is the autobiography of Roberty Clary, who plays my favourite character in the show, Louis Lebeau. And holy shit what a life this man has had. He was a Jew growing up in France before the start of the war, and who was one of many children taken away from his family and sent off to the concentration camps in Germany. This was an amazing, intense, inspiring, and heartbreaking read… it has Clary’s voice all over it, and it tells everything from the charming childhood he had, to the horrors of the concentration camps, the brutality of survival, and then about his exciting journey into the entertainment industry afterwards. It’s an experience, would recommend if you’re a fan of the show.

The Ickabog

The second controversial author I read this month. Originally I was going to give Rowling’s new book a miss, given everything that’s been going on over the past few years, but in the end my curiosity got the better of me. Politics aside, it was a fun read! Not groundbreaking, but enjoyable enough and written in an interesting style. It didn’t read the same as a lot of modern kidlit, it felt more like a cross between a classic fairytale and a Dahl book. Perhaps a bit like Despereaux. It tells the tale of how an idyllic country gradually falls into ruin through the ignorance, inaction, and greed, and how a supposedly fictional monster hides the very real, human monsters at the heart of the country. It was cute and pleasant and I’m glad I decided to get it from the library, though for anyone who is choosing not to engage for political reasons: you aren’t missing anything major.

Franklin In The Dark

A Canadian classic. I don’t think there’s a single person my age who hasn’t read or been read a pile of these books, and the nostalgia is so comforting. I found this on Youtube and listened to someone read it to me, and honestly 10/10 would recommend for a calm evening.

The big reason I decided to seek this one out though, was because I finally got to the M*A*S*H episode that inspired this entire series! In the episode C*A*V*E, in which Hawkeye is freaking out over his claustrophia while the camp is forced to take shelter in a nearby cave during some intense shelling, he mentions that if he had been born a turtle he would have been afraid of his own shell, and that the other turtles would make fun of him cause he’d be forced to walk around in his underwear. And so this first story about a young turtle who’s afraid to sleep in his own shell and drags it around behind him. So if you were ever curious, Franklin the Turtle is in fact named after Dr Benjamin Franklin Pierce. (this is also why the French version is named Benjamin!)

Wolves of the Beyond: Lone Wolf

I loved the Guardians of Ga’Hoole books as a kid but I never read the Wolves of the Beyond series. This first book was an interesting read, Lasky does a great job creating worlds and societies for the animals that inhabit them. Lone Wolf is about a deformed wolf cub who was abandoned in the wilderness to die. And he would have, if a desperate mother bear, who had recently had her only cub killed, hadn’t stumbled across him and saved him, vowing to raise him as her own...

Petals

A “silent” graphic novel. It has beautiful artwork and is told entirely through pictures, no text at all. It’s loves and heart-wrenching, though it left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied… I felt like there should have been more. Still, a neat story.

The Southern Book Club‘s Guide To Slaying Vampires

What a banger of a novel!! I can’t recommend this one enough. It’s about a group of suburban mothers in the ‘80s who form a book club out of a shared need for community and a love of grisly true crime novels. But when a strange drifter appears in town and starts setting down roots… and when children begin disappearing… these women need to band together to confront the horrors that have invaded their neighbourhood, and face down not only a terrifying monster among them but the patriarchal system that allows it to flourish. To quote the preface:

“Because vampires are the original serial killers, stripped of everything that makes us human — they have no friends, no family, no roots, no children. All they have is hunger. They eat and eat but they’re never full. With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom.    As you’ll see, it’s not a fair fight.“

The Weirn Books: Be Wary of the Silent Woods

I love Chmakova’s graphic novels, though I’ve only ever read her slice-of-life middle grade series before. This one is pure fantasy and very fun. It’s about two cousin “weirns” — witches with demon familiars — who attend the local night school. Things get strange though when an ominous figure appears outside the old, abandoned school house deep in the Silent Woods, and begins tempting children down its path…

I’m very much looking forward to word of a second book and was honestly kind of surprised that I haven’t heard more about this book given how popular her other series is. This has all the same charm and quirks but for those of us who prefer stories based in fantasy rather than reality.

And A Bonus...

For some masochistic reason I got a Garfield book out of the library. Jeez, if I didn’t love these as a kid, I found them absolutely laugh out loud hilarious, and now I just don’t see it anymore. But here I will share the one strip in the book that actually made me laugh

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, leninille!

For @leninille. These are the first three chapters and a complete story within a new storyline I've got several chapter outlines for. All of this came up during development of this Secret Santa Exchange gift, and as more familiar faces are revealed, the tags will be updated accordingly.

Read On AO3

*****

Health Tonics and Love Gardens

Chapter 1 - The Stiles In The Garden

Stiles has been working on this garden for months. It is colorful now, with tiny bushes he'd groomed into shape and the better airflow they get without the other plants strangling the light and air from the garden. He's been restoring this garden to what it might have once been, and tried to keep remembering what his mom told him about the garden back home.

"These flowers may look nice, but they can also cause healing or harm." He thought in his mother's voice.

This specific phrase stuck with him, and usually when he's daydreaming and not paying attention to what he's saying, he'll speak the words and try to recall the exact details of the garden as it was when his mom was caring for it.

"Why?" he again remembers asking, and he says the same thing aloud every time this happens.

The details of the answer vary, probably because his child mind wasn't really any better at staying on target for even half the time his adult brain can do now. That means that his mom's voice answers the questing with different words, and the theme generally was: "Sometimes a little of a plant can help a person heal from an injury. Give them too much, and they will suffer, may come to harm, and could die."

It's the stinging nettle that his mother is indicating to him today. He looks at the plant in the present and gives it side-eye.

"A good cook can turn this nettle into a healthful tea."

Little Stiles can feel himself interrupt her. "I've made tea, mom. It's easy!" He used to be so excited about stuff. He was what... maybe eight years old when this happened?

He favors his mother's memory by having her always say something that humors the younger him.

"Yes! You can make very good tea. And thank you for doing it! But some teas we can make require very good care. A good cook like me knows how to prepare the stems, or the flowers, or pieces of the root all cut up into tiny pieces of any of these plants." She makes tickling fingers at him and he smiles at the recollection.

"What if the cook uses the wrong pieces?"

"Then instead of healing, maybe nothing will happen. But with some plants, you can make someone worse. They can be hurt forever, and might even die."

Little Stiles did not want to make that kind of tea, and he considered not ever being near tea again.

"Promise me, Stiles, that you will not try to make tea from anything that comes from this garden."

That was an easy promise to keep. The Stiles in his 20s, having these memories, appreciates how well his mother understood how he thought. Under her brief guidance, Stiles cultivated a voracious curiosity and analytical mind. He got over the worries about tea, eventually, but it wasn't until after this gardening thing started that he want and tried to learn more about exactly what were these plants in the plot and what kinds of tea could be made with them.

As he found out later, after many hours and days of looking through cookbooks and materials online, he started to feel like this was a medicinal garden instead of an herb garden for actual cooking.

"And never make tea with anything outside the garden without talking to me first, okay?"

Little Stiles nods again. At that age he loved strawberries, and he thought he might not worry so much about tea if he had some of the best tea with his mom right now. "I want to make the strawberry tea!"

"Oh! That sounds good."

Little Stiles helped Claudia put the tools away and gather the strawberries and lemon and sugar from their places in the kitchen. They talked about his day at school, and the memory always fades from there.

It is well more than ten years since that day and it's one of his favorite memories of his mother. Many memories stick because they sucked, or because he thinks about them so much he can't tell if they're real or if he made them up.

He does think it's odd that every week, at least once a week, Stiles is at this old burned house in the Beacon Hills Preserve, working on this garden, talking to himself to review what he's learned about these different plants, and making threats at the plants who he still can't identify or which are giving him troubles that day. He's still just as wary of the nettle, but they've got a grudging agreement not to bother each other. For the rest? He'll unlock their secrets soon enough.

It's fair to say that he lets his guard down at this point. Nobody's ever been around here. He expected there would be graffiti on the house or whatever, but no, it's just been the house and this garden, and Stiles taking care of the latter.

He clips a sprig of lavender and adds it to his bag with the rosemary, adds some heather blossoms, and mutters "Calluna" as he snaps them. It's their genus, and they're in the same family as rhododendrons. There are two of those in the yard, not close to the house.

His thought withers as he turns to the house and takes it in with a slow breath. It always seems like the house is watching him, but not seeing him. It's never felt threatening, just... omnipresent, he thinks.

This house was full of the potential of these many lives. The family suffered, and in his investigation into public records and police records ("Heya, daddio... Can I ask you a question?" being only the most direct route to the files, and not the only one he took), he had learned that the family's absence left some big holes in the town at the time.

Curiously, it was hard to find photos of any of the family members. Even social media didn't have much. The kids weren't in school yearbooks he could get hold of, and he's gone through everything he could find in the school archive, even the old student newsletters.

He had found a photo of Talia Hale. She was the mother and as far as he could tell, the kind of person everyone in town seemed to know and most respected. He had no idea that Talia's spouse looked like, having seen only the name "Blake Hale" and having no idea who that was.

The dusty family obituary Stiles found in the paper printed after the fire listed several dead. But the count doesn't match what the police logged, and that doesn't match the fire inspector's. The insurance company itself gave a third number in a quote taken by a reporter.

The situation didn't make sense to him, and it bothered him that nobody seemed to know what really happened here. How many Hales were impacted by the fire? Did any escape? The body counts ranged from fewer than ten to the low 20s. Nobody knew if there was a party that night because despite all the fresh vehicle tracks at the scene, there were very few vehicles in the driveway. So where did those other visitors go? The firefighters' work destroyed the scene and they couldn't find any tire tracks that might lead them in a useful direction.

And weirdest of all: He's still not found anything that even hints that his mother and the Hales were affiliated. So this garden and the exact matching one at home, which Stiles and his dad have somewhat neglected after many years of close attention, Stiles still doesn't know why he cares so much about this plot at the Hale house.

He'd explored the ruins many times in his months of gardening. The house sits still and aging, creaking wearily in the winds as it always does. The only trespassers seem to be him and the squirrels.

He tugs a threatening vine away from the garden and trims it back. It's probably a volunteer left by some bird.

On his first day here he didn't go in the house, but walked slowly around it, walking his blue bike as he walked the perimeter. It was coming around the back of the house when he caught the scent of a familiar combination of herbs and he discovered his garden out here in the woods.

It is exactly the same layout as at the Stilinski house, but these plants were overgrown and struggling, and the vines were getting close. As he got on his knees and started his first concerted effort at gardening the plot, he started trying to find answers to these two questions: "Why does this garden layout look identical to ours at home?" and, given that the garden does exist in both places, "How did the Hales know his mother?"

Derek doesn't know how to respond. He had never been an alpha, and would never be, so he'd mostly ignored those lessons when his mom and Laura talked about them. His alpha and sister in one being swore to him years ago that no matter how much they'd already lost, they'll always be near each other.

"Are you alright? Did you hear me?" she glances at him and pokes him. She feels the sensation of being mentally stunned, then gives him an annoyed look. "Why is this weird for you?"

He blinked at her. "You don't think it's weird that for years we've not even talked once about Beacon Hills and now you say that you've spent weeks fighting an unidentified and suspicious pull to return home for a few weeks?"

"No, I said a few months. Three or four, maybe. Who cares? It's still a calling."

Derek looked at her and asked the obvious. "Couldn't this be hunters?"

She shook her head. This wasn't aggressive magic, and she wasn't sure how she knew that. It was more than intuition, though... it was certainty. Werewolves are often sensitive to many kinds of magical activities that may happen around them or to them, and her enhanced abilities told her that this just wasn't like any of that. She considered an odd possibility.

"Maybe it's my wolf?"

Derek rolls his eyes. "We are werewolves, Laura. It's a gift of a greater life, not a spiritual possession."

"Hey, I know that there's no separate little spooky spirit inside any of us beyond what most people seem to think they have. But this is like..." She searches the room until her eyes land in the opposite corner. She points at the TV and clarifies, "It's like I'm getting a new channel, and it's focused on the wolfish instincts, not the human side. Can't you feel it, too?"

He shakes his head. There has been zero sensation of compulsion in Derek to return to Beacon Hills. He would be happy to never return. It was once a beautiful place, but that's lost with everything else and he doesn't want to find any of it again.

"Can you check the pack bond and tell me what you see?"

He glares at her, already tired of this conversation. The alpha sees different things in pack bonds than each member sees. Laura likes to learn what Derek sees, and tells herself that it'll come in handy when she's got a bigger pack. They haven't even tried to connect with any werewolves despite there being many free-roaming supernatural family hanging around. The Hales are a duo that nobody can mess with.

She's persistent, so he focuses and listens with his inner senses and finds the same pack bond with her that he's seen for years. It's identical to how it was before. Nothing new, nothing seeming magical beyond the usual. It's hard to believe her about this when he's got no evidence it's happening.

"Damn. I hate this. I wish I had an emissary to ask."

Derek doesn't know what to think about emissaries, and leans toward not-in-favor since theirs failed to protect them from the hunter assault that lead to his family's near-annihilation. This emissary was newer, replacing their former emissary who had died of a normal, terrible cause like brain cancer. Derek met the new guy once and hated how he smelled of animals and cleaning supplies. The man's day job was as head veterinarian at the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic.

Last time they talked about him, Laura recalled that he was mostly a quiet man, didn't like giving full answers, and Talia mostly found him annoying, though useful at times.

Derek stewed on the fresh thoughts of the vet being partly responsible for what happened. Now he's feeling some kind of pull to return, to demand answers, at the very least.

Magic, as far as Derek was concerned, has been far more bother than it's worth.

"I never liked Deaton, but he's all I know." Laura suggested.

"Oh, then all of this was your fault," Derek said in an attempt to lighten the mood. It took a second to realize that he just accused the emissary of letting the family come to harm because he and Laura didn't get along.

"No emissary and no wolf was responsible for what happened, Derek." That left only the implication of the hunter woman he'd let get too close.

With regard to that person, Derek only ever harbors stabbingly angry thoughts about what should happen to her. She'd lied, she'd taken advantage of his life inexperience, and in the end of it all, she failed to murder him with everyone else, and he simmered deep inside from a wound that hadn't healed. His eyes flash.

Laura doesn't look away. He's upset, and he's not great with expressing himself on the best of day. She doesn't flash her eyes back at him. She's not angry, she's sad that he keeps blaming himself.

Derek reads this on her face and understands. "Fuck!" he mumbles a disappointed apology. "It wasn't your fault." He punctuates the air more softly with a mumbled repeat of the exclamation.

"Derek." She has come to a conclusion and in that tone she's warning him to prepare himself for something he is going to dislike. "I think we need to go back. We'll be careful," she says as he gives her an irritated and skeptical. "We'll stay in another town, sneak in as wolves and investigate the Preserve and the house. Maybe check out Beacon Hills and," she said, conspiratorially, "get some donuts before we leave."

"Leave?"

"We don't have to stay. I just need answers."

He considers this. It's not a demand or a request, it's just what she's going to do and she knows he's coming with her. But the confectionary he'd not thought about in years comes back to him. "I forgot about the donuts! And because of you," he glares at her, "now I have to have one."

"Perfect!" she says. He makes a good show at faking indignation, but he's heading into his room and looking around. They weren't likely to come back, so he shoots a message to his boss about a family emergency and he starts packing.

She's looking from the main room at his back as he starts sorting things out. He's always the scaredywolf, and she starts to pull snacks together that they'll want for the long drive.

Chapter 2 - These Wolves Are Here To Play

"Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii've been working on the raaaaaaaaaaailroad!" the man shouts. "All the live-long daaaaaaaaayGAACK!" Choking sputters and spitting follows the interruption. The approaching wolves still and listen.

"What the crap?! I'm working on your stupid habitat here!" A triple spitting sound. "Leave me alone you big dumb m-moth!"

The wolves glance at each other and share a look that says, "This guy's got worse problems than his big, stupid voice."

Laura steps ahead, leading them closer, keeping the shrubs and other undergrowth between them and the person in the distance. This guy doesn't scream "Threat!" to anyone but himself, but even well-meaning people can lead to tragedy. It would be best, of course, if the guy happened to take off before they got near him.

But if he did, she warns herself, that could mean he knows they're coming. That would make him either a super or a magic user. If he stays for too long, they'll need to scare him out of there so they can take a look around.

Derek made a subvocal growl. He's always preferred the hostile approach to any conflict and she nudges him with a low-pitched growl of denial.

Derek huffs. He actually huffs at her.

What a whiny puppy.

"Rodzina," Stiles says to the wolf the second he realizes he's not alone.

And then he slaps his hand over his mouth, uncertain why he's speaking Polish. The wolf regards him, unflinching. "It's Polish for family." This creature is huge! Larger than any dog he's ever met, and it's broad and got a defined mane around its neck. It's a really beautiful and terrifying wolf. Oh, oh god. It's a freaking wolf.

The wolf glances at his chest and tilts its head at him. She seemed to know that word, somehow. How could that even happen? Well, he's happy she hasn't been all growly and dipping her head down and being mean.

"I'm sorry, but there's no food here, and I can't take you home and get you any." With real sorrow, since having a wolf pet would be totally awesome, but a really bad idea, he adds, "You're beautiful, but I can't can't have a pet."

The wolf chuffs at him.

What? A chuff! That's practically falling over with laughter in wolf terms, as far as Stiles is concerned.

"Hey! Don't chuff at me!" He's wiggling a finger at her. It's 10% aggression and 90% cowardice. He focuses on forgetting everything except that 10%. He nervously walks through his thoughts aloud because he can't help his mouth moving of its own accord at this moment.

"Okay, so fine, let's see... I'm gardening here, that's legitimately all I'm doing. No looking for secret treasure at the house or anything. You're coming here passing through or whatever, even though there haven't been wolves in this part of California in decades. I know you understand me, and you're pretending not to. But why don't you talk back?"

He is looking directly into her eyes before consciously realizing he's taking her measure. This is a specific thing he definitely remembers promising himself he'd never do if he were being challenged by a large predator in the wilderness. And yet, he's challenging this alpha wolf—

"You're an alpha wolf? How can there be alpha wolves when the whole scientific hypothesis was proven to be wrong?" He wants to ramble the name of the research article on the subject, and about the way the article was written, but manages to catch hold of his thought trains and redirect. "That's not important right now. It's crazy enough that I somehow know you can understand me clearly."

She's a smart wolf. Human-equivalent intelligence, for sure. She tries not to tilt her head in an approximation of doggy confusion, but it's a projection. Odd how that he's here gardening and along comes this alph—

"WEREWOLF?! You're a werewolf?!"

Stiles describes this later to his father as, "when all hell breaks loose."

The alpha wolf lifts her lips and growls at Stiles, who is immediately cowed. She's joined half a second later by another large wolf, slightly smaller than her as he is a beta, but he's also got very long and sharp and they're massive and this is a very bad place for him to be right now!

"Shit! I'm not delicious! Don't eat me!"

The alpha stops growling again, and seems to be shaking. The other wolf snarls at her. She snarls back.

Of fucking course! "You're siblings?" Okay, that's it, you need to tell me who you are. Between cautiouswolf and hyperprotective wolf," indicating the alpha and the beta in order, "who the hell are you?"

The beta keeps growling but defers reluctantly to the alpha. She studies Stiles, looking at him and not laughing wolfishly anymore. There's no hint of threatening demise, just curiosity.

It would be too far to say it's quite trust, but it's the recognition that the confusion is mutual and that there is no threat.

Stiles also looks at this as another opportunity to try to talk himself out of the situation. He gives explaining himself another try.

"I was here by accident the first time, and then I found the garden," he waves over to it, easily seen from where all three wolves stood. The beta wolf didn't take his eyes off Stiles, but the alpha regarded his handiwork without apparent comment and resumed studying Stiles.

"Keep talking," was the obvious implication. Order. It was definitely an order, and Stiles agreed that he should continue.

"My mom planted a garden exactly like this one at home. So finding such a unique one out here, at the site of," he looks at the house and murmurs, "really bad stuff is just weird." He feels his cheeks tighten and get heavy and a tear slips down his cheeks. "She died before she told me what all the plants are for. As far as I know she didn't even know the family." He turns around, letting embarrassment at his own emotions put his unguarded back at risk of wolfish sneak-attack.

There's a shuffling noise behind him that tugs his attention back and he wipes his face. It's blotchy, and gross, he's sure, but he's looking at the wolves.

Something quiet happened here while he was turned around. The male wolf is looking almost... ashamed in some way, and the alpha turns back to Stiles after a staredown with the beta and seats herself a step closer to Stiles.

He decides not to mention that moving closer is just as terrifying than all of the other scary things they've done because the seated pose is probably just a ruse to get him when he's vulnerable, but...

Thump.

That was a tail. He looks around her sitting form as if trying to find her tail. Her expression reads as, most likely, "You seriously need to chill." Off to the side, the beta just looks mean as ever and ready to chew on his soft and fleshy neck.

He pulls his phone out and texts his dad. He holds up a finger to the wolf who'd risen to her feet again.

"No, just a minute. My dad's expecting me and I need to let him know that I'll be a little late. I'm not telling him about our little one-sided conversation, which you really should join, by the way." The wolves seemed mollified, if not satisfied with the answer. Neither rises to the bait and starts speaking, so the beta keeps his ears rotating around, listening for danger, and the alpha's ears are firmly oriented in his direction.

"Do you know this place?" The ear flick of the alpha and the glance at the house let him connect some dots. "The Hale family lived here and you knew them."

For the next several minutes, Stiles explains what he has learned of the Hales from his look into the school archives, the police and fire reports, the insurance report he'd acquired through a friend of a friend who shall all remain nameless. He tells of the obituary and the news stories and the details that don't make sense.

He's speculating and journeying down educational, if difficult to follow sidetracks, and mentions one detail that catches the wolves' complete attentions. It was about the catatonic John Doe found a few days later a short walk from the highway.

"Oh? Uhh, I just think maybe there's a connection between that John Doe and the Hale fire. There's too many weird details, things that haven't happened at any other time in this town or probably any town. It's tidy and messy at the same time. I don't trust that."

He's been looking at things on his phone that are pictures or notes or scans of things he's found and looks for the rest of what he discovered about that John Doe.

"Look," he says as he flips the phone toward them. "I found evidence that— Oh, I don't know if you even see in color, or if you can read this in your current shape. Hopefully you're better than other canines about that but you're not answering questions right now, so we'll park that for later.

He reviews the notes and continues.

"I snuck into the hospital and I think this guy really could have been a family member or friend of the Hales. He was scarred badly, as if from a fire, and though he wasn't near the Hale house, the paramedics estimated he'd already suffered two days in the cool air in probably this very state."

The sad whine of them both went unnoticed through the racing thoughts of the human.

"I still think he looks like an age-progressed version of the Beacon Hills basketball team player I found in this picture."

He makes the face as large as he can. It's just a face, and it's blurry.

The first wolf shifts back to human. She says, "Who is this?"

Stiles gasps and then tries to pretend a wolf didn't just shift in front of him to human form and start asking him questions.

"This is a picture of Peter Hale."

She turns to the other wolf. "Derek!" and she motions at him to stand up, but the wolf Derek declines. It wasn't an order, but a move of cautious excitement. Derek's keeping a wary eye in the human's direction even as his sister looms closer to the phone and examines the picture.

"I'm sorry, madam alpha, or whatever is the right title, but you appear to have no clothes on and I am not prepared to um... talk with you in this manner at this time. And stuff."

She looks at him, and then herself, and shakes her head. "When it comes to werewolves, clothing is as optional as it gets."

"Oh, your kind can't transform your clothing when you shift?" Something subconscious snags his attention. "Are you sure about that?"

She looks at him. Her hair is a little wild, and she's strong even in this form. "I know more about werewolves than you do."

He tucks his phone in his pocket.

"Okay, look, fine, you want to talk in the nude. You do you, but I really am just going to need to leave right now and clear my head and then I can... I can come back tomorrow, yeah?" He's not sure why he's excited to return. They did nearly eat him several times in this conversation, based on the number of flashes of teeth he caught in the last several minutes.

"Fine, come back tomorrow, but do not tell anyone we were here."

Stiles nods, distracted, and takes a few tries before he gets all his gardening things stuffed back into his bag and gets himself situated for the ride out of the preserve.

"I'll be here just after five tomorrow, alright? I've got work, but I'll be here, and I'll bring some stuff you can look at. Please try to get some clothes or this is going to be awkward and I am really out of awkward for the day.

"You're really not," the alpha says. Stiles sputters.

"Hey!"

"Hey, family man," she says, referring to his Polish of earlier. "I'm Laura. Who are you?"

"I'm Stiles Stilinski."

The other wolf looks at him and hruffs, almost laughing.

Cripes, these siblings are already annoying him.

"Hey, asshole, it's my name. You'd break yourself trying to pronounce my first name, so be thankful for my gracious manner."

Stiles leaves slowly, trying to go faster, but it takes a while to get his body to let go of the anxiety enough to punish his legs on the pedals and fly as fast as he can without crashing.

Kind of a tall order, some days.

"I cannot believe I just promised I'd come back to chat with those man-eaters!" He gripes at himself. "Do they eat people? How do you even ask someone if they eat people? Especially if they can change shapes and have fangs and sharp pointy parts?" He listens to his intuition. Of course they're not cannibals. Or maybe they are if they're not considered humans. "UGH! They are gonna answer so many questions tomorrow or else!"

Derek has followed him silently for maybe half a mile, listening to the bewildering blitz of self-talk ranging from werewolves to garlic naan bread and Derek just gives up and heads toward the house, where Laura is waiting for him.

Chapter 3 - The Interposing

The sun is low now, shining bright fingers through the shattered window frames and vacant doorways of the shell of this old house. By coincidence of timing and place, Laura stands in a sunny shape on the decrepit porch. Derek listens to her adjusting her stance and watches as her fingers push through a beam of sunlight and trace the crackled texture of the carbonized door frame.

"You didn't stop him and make him tell us where Peter is."

She catches his meaning immediately. "Yeah, there's something at work here keeping me from chasing him away."

"You failed," he says, gesturing broadly at her exposed form. "He can't handle this much woman."

"Well, Derek, I've got the supernatural hookup. We all do. He's going to have to get used to all this." She looks at the smudges on her fingers. "But why didn't you stop him?"

"I don't know. And I only just realized it when I said it." Now Derek looks as confused as she had been. He wasn't even feeling hostile toward the Stiles, and that is the most irritating thing about this.

She shifts her hand through beta shift and to full wolf, then back again. It's a difficult transition, but since she could just focus and do it, Derek just observed as she shifted from human form through partial beta and partial full forms, and then back to full human.

Derek was curious what she was doing, and noticed her smile as he held her fingers up.

Every finger still had dirt.

"I've never thought about how we take dirt and things with us through the shift, but not our clothes."

"Are you suggesting that he can teach us to take clothing or tools into our shift?"

She shrugged her shoulders and grinned. The pack bond resonated with satisfaction, and he rolled his eyes.

"We don't know anything about him."

"I know, but if you could feel it, you'd know that this place needs us, Derek." She looks into the house from across the threshold. "And gardener Stiles is part of whatever is going on here." They were all called here. It's magic that bound them, brought them together, and seems to be managing their introduction.

"Is he the magic user?"

"There is ample potential. Surely you could feel that by the time he left."

"I hate magic," Derek grumbles as he thinks about it. Yes, he could tell Stiles was ignorant of his own potential and that worried Derek more than the fact that this stranger happened to suddenly be part of their lives in a way that captivates his alpha.

Laura snaps her fingers. "Yo, how could you not have heard me?"

Derek raises an eyebrow in defiance. Not his best move, but now it's her turn to roll her eyes and she repeats herself.

"Let's go find Deaton. If he's around, maybe he can help us figure out who this is and what kind of magic is being worked here."

"Can we pass the hospital, too? I'd like to see if we might find uncle Peter."

She nods. That matters a lot to both of them, too. She resolves that before 5pm tomorrow, they'll have gotten at least one answer to the question of what's going on. She leans into a full shift and Derek follows, chasing her as they race into the forest for the long route to the vet's office.

"My dad is going to kill me when he finds out I was talking with werewolves at the Hale house." He nearly skids to a stop and releases his clenched brake. He isn't a Hollywood stunts expert and he would not have recovered well from a solo crash on the pavement. His ego would be only one of his many bruised parts.

He considers 14 different stories that seem plausible enough, dismissed half of them outright as abominations, and spend the next minutes thinking up some 40 more before settling on the best candidate.

He parked his bike along the side of the house and walked quickly to the front, nearly crashing into his patient and curious father on the porch.

"Hello Stiles. You didn't say why you'd be late, but—"

"I was watching the sunset!" he interjected. Dad glances toward the sun now, indicating that the sunset isn't done yet.

"Nope, you weren't. Do you want to tell me what really happened?"

"Yes!" he squeaks, and then rushes his dad inside with a glance over his shoulder that lacks any essence of subtlety. He's checking the few houses in view to see if anyone in a homes or yard or car or suspicious van might be spying on them. He closes the door quietly and pointedly locks it.

"Are you sure this is necessary, Stiles?"

"Dad, my world has been supernaturally rocked tonight, and what I'm about to tell you will do the same for you."

[writings-of-dumpy]

A Cinderella Story - III

Tags: @mindingmyownbusiness��

Stiles was bored. He had met more women tonight than he thought possible for anyone to meet in one night, and none of them held a candle to the woman he had met a few days prior.

“Don’t give up hope, Stiles. The night is still young,” Scott said with a smile.

Stiles nodded and thanked him. Suddenly, a figure at the entrance caught his eye. Stiles’ heart jumped and he wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw the woman he’d met in the village. She lifted her mask to adjust it and he saw her whole face and by god it was her.

“Holy shit, Scotty, look! It’s her! Quick, switch masks with me,” Stiles asked his friend.

“What? Why? Just go talk to her,” Scott protested.

“Dude, I’m the prince and you know how people can get. All night these girls have done nothing but kiss up to me, and I want to actually know this one. Please?” Stiles pleaded.

Scott furrowed his brows. “Girls kissing up to you is a problem for you?”

Stiles flattened his mouth and took his mask and crown off, then placed the crown on Scott’s head. Stiles pulled the mask from Scott’s eyes and replaced it with Stiles’ royal one.

“There you go, now you’re the prince. Meet a bunch of girls, okay? Oh, and try to remember their names,” Stiles said sarcastically.

Scott shook his head and sighed, taking off the crown and mask, “The things I do for you…”

Stiles rushed over to where the woman was entering and spoke up. She looked over at him and smiled once their eyes connected and she recognized him.

“You look absolutely beautiful tonight,” Stiles said with a smile.

She blushed. “Thank you… You look very handsome.”

Stiles felt his cheeks heat up at her compliment. When the orchestra played the waltz and the lights dimmed, he knew Scott had notified his parents of the mystery girl’s arrival. He offered his arm to her.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked with a shy smile. Stiles saw her cheeks flush pink and she nodded.

“I’m afraid I won’t be much good, but I would like to try,” she told him. Stiles chuckled and took his position with his hand on her back and their other hands together. They glided around the dance floor with ease and Stiles had figured that even though his mask and crown were different, the crowd had found out that he was the prince and allowed him to dance with his chosen partner.

“What’s your name?” Stiles asked her. “I didn’t get it before.”

She smiled. “It’s Ella.”

Stiles smiled widely. “That’s a beautiful name. It suits you.”

She giggled and Stiles led them past a curtain and noticed Scott close off the area to allow Stiles and Ella to have some privacy. The pair danced without music for a little while longer, but eventually found themselves caught up in conversation and walking through the gardens.

“It sounds like your friend is very loyal,” Ella commented when Stiles told her about how he had skipped what he called work to be in the village and Scott had covered for him.

“He really is,” Stiles agreed. “Do you have any friends?”

Ella smiled and nodded. “A few pixies come to visit me. They’re the closest thing I have to family.”

Stiles’ brow furrowed. “Oh?”

Ella shrugged. “My mother died when I was born, and my father died when I was six. But he married my stepmother before that, so, I guess I have her and my stepsisters…”

“You seem to not believe that,” Stiles observed her tone.

“Well… Let’s just say that I wouldn’t treat my stepdaughter the way I’m treated now. But I’m sure she has her reasons,” Ella said and looked down at her hands. Stiles wasn’t sure of her exact situation, but he could tell it must be hard for her and his heart broke and it angered him to think that she was being mistreated.

“Anything can be a reason for something, but there’s no excuse for treating another human being poorly, even if they make you mad,” Stiles said. “You don’t deserve to be treated badly, Ella.”

Ella looked up at him and Stiles felt himself falling for those beautiful eyes. His heart pounded rapidly whenever she would brush against him and when they danced, he felt like he was floating and nothing but her mattered.

“Thank you… You sound as wise and kind as a king,” Ella joked, and Stiles blushed.

“I wouldn’t know,” he lied.

“Well, in any case. I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to. I thought about it, but… I have nowhere else to go and having a home is better than not, right?” Ella said, and Stiles felt she was half talking to him and half to herself. Stiles wanted nothing more than to whisk her away and treat her the way she deserved to be treated—like a princess. He didn’t want to scare her away, so he simply placed a comforting hand on her back.

“What about your family?” Ella asked with genuine interest.

Stiles chuckled. He wasn’t ready to reveal to her his royal standing because he wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t treat him differently, so he was just vague enough to not raise suspicion. “Well… It’s just me, my mom and my dad. We’re pretty normal, I suppose. I’m blessed that way.”

They talked more and traveled all around the castle until they finally made it full circle back to where they had first begun their time alone and sat on a nearby bench across from the grand clock. Stiles held her hand in his until they were both seated, then he pulled her close to his chest. His heart was beating loudly as he contemplated telling her who he was. He heard the clock gong fifteen minutes to midnight and felt Ella rush from her seat.

“Oh, no… I have to go! I’m so sorry, but I really have to leave,” she said and began to run toward the ballroom.

“Wait, but why?!” Stiles called after her and gripped her hand. “I’ll go with you!”

“Uh, um.. no, I.. I have to meet the prince still! I’ve never met him or even seen him, so I should probably do that given that it’s his birthday and all,” Ella reasoned and pulled away from Stiles.

“Ella, I’m…” Stiles started, but she was gone before he could say goodbye to her. “I’m the prince.”

Before he walked back into the ballroom, he saw a sparkling item on the stairs where she had been. He picked it up and recognized it to be her slipper. His heart raced and he knew that he had to give it back to her, and then probably ask her to marry him.

~

Ella made it home just in time for her magnificent dress to disappear into nothing around her and everything return to how it was before Lydia had shown up. Ella felt like she had just awoken from a beautiful dream. She sighed sadly and gazed at the castle in the short distance. She remembered everything she could about Stiles and this magical night and locked it away in her mind.

“You’re back! How was it?!” Jasmine asked voraciously.

Ella smiled. “It was incredible. Truly a dream come true.”

“Ella, look!” Snow said and pointed to Ella’s feet. She looked down and saw that one diamond slipper remained intact on her foot. She gently took it off and held it close.

“Lydia, wherever you are… thank you…”

After a few hours and some clever furniture placement, Ella managed to completely hide the slipper from this wonderful night from her stepfamily. She then heard her stepsisters and stepmother arrive back at the house and put on a brave face—she had to pretend nothing happened tonight. She greeted them at the door with a kind smile and took their shawls as they entered.

“How was your night?” Ella asked them.

“A finer night has never been had,” Winifred said and sat in the foyer’s chair.

Allison and Malia looked at Ella and smiled sadly.

“It was wonderful. You would have loved it,” Malia said.

“Except for the part where the prince vanished with some girl,” Winifred scoffed. “And our chances at royalty are dashed.”

“She had to have been a princess or something. She showed up late and left early, and the whole time she totally hogged Prince Mieczyslaw!” Allison whined.

Ella’s heart started beating quicker, but she knew she couldn’t raise suspicion, so she asked, “How do you know she was a princess?”

“She was wearing a super sparkly dress and some people were saying that she left in a GOLD carriage!” Malia said. Ella’s heart nearly stopped when she realized that she had been the one that they were talking about.

“I’d never seen her before, so she must be from somewhere else,” Allison added.

“Did you see her shoes? They looked like diamond!” Malia said to her sister.

Ella bit back her shock. She didn’t think she had looked that unrecognizable, but perhaps she had. Stiles recognized her at the very least, and Ella felt foolish for being so open and not realizing that she had danced and spoken to the prince all night. She felt even more foolish for maybe even falling in love with the man.

“Yes. Well, now it’s over. Off to bed with you all,” Winifred shooed and the house retired for the night.

[hisgirlwonder]

House of Wolves - Part Three

Length: 3.5K words Warning: Implied smut – sex and oral, hateful angst Synopsis: You’ve been offered an apprenticeship at Kineros Robotics and you couldn’t say no; you’ve been dreaming about working in the field for as long as you can remember. Will it be everything you’ve been building up in your mind, or will it all come crashing down around you? Notes: Elizabeth Johnson in this story, if you don’t know, is the human name of The Countess. She’s going to make an appearance in another part which I will get to soon enough (and maybe she will be more than just a brief mention?????) so keep an eye out!

That morning was relatively busy but you enjoyed it all the same - between organising all of the various meetings, conferences, and dinners, there wasn’t much room to breathe sometimes. The thought of “when do I get to work with Jeff and Mutt?” constantly pricked its way into your thoughts; this was superseded time and time again by an overwhelming desire to help Michael. You didn’t dare breathe a word to anyone about how you thought you’d been sent there for more than just an apprenticeship.

*

“Thanks, Pierre. I’ll be in touch before next Friday if there are any further changes but for right now I think we have enough,” you confirm to the person on the other end of the line – you’d been put in charge of organising an event for prospective investors in Kineros Robotics. The second after you told Michael that Elizabeth Johnson, the heiress of an elite hotel chain, was in town he immediately jumped at the chance to schmooze her. He’d been a fan of her late husband’s work and figured there would be a way the two of them would be able to work together.

A familiar voice sings out your name; it was Michael and the way he said it you knew he wanted something. It was similar to a child asking its mother for sweets from the supermarket even though they’ve been naughty. You break eye contact from the screen to see that he’s peeking around the corner, hands around the doorframe.

“I know you’re probably busy right now…” he trails off, knowing the amount of work you had to do for this event. If the Elizabeth Johnson was going to show up then you knew you had to use every ounce of energy inside your body to make this something to remember.

“Yes, Michael?”

“Is there any way you’re able to proof the file I have open on my computer? I left it to the last minute and foolishly wrote it late last night. I’m going to rip apart my pride for a moment and say that it needs your touch.”

“Did you really do that after what happened last time?”

“I know, I know,” he rolls his eyes, “I’m so stupid. Can you do it? I’ll do anything.”

“Anything, hmm?”

“Y/N, please?”

“For you? Of course, Michael.”

He mouths thank you with his hands in a position of prayer – as if to say I’m more grateful than you’ll ever know then disappears into his office and you look back at what you were doing; clicking your way to compose a reminder e-mail to yourself. Moments later Michael reappears with bag in hand and you can’t help but grin when you see it - You’d specifically told him to go one to make things easier and he did. Granted, it probably cost more than your wages in a month but it looked good on him. He informs you he’ll be back around lunchtime and, like always, don’t take any shit from her.

The way Michael pronounces the word her when referring to Venable always made you laugh. Speaking those three syllables left a bad taste in his mouth so he opts for a three letter word instead. He didn’t believe she was deserving of wasting more than a small breath. The event you were organising was equally as important because Michael wanted to open up the new branch so he could finally send his least favourite person away, sooner rather than later.

“Yes, daddy,” you bring your hand up to your forehead and salute him, “No shit taken from the Queen. Got it.”

Even with your spine now strengthened from confidence at the development of your close professional (yet somewhat personal) relationship with Michael, you were too naïve to see that he retreated a little because of his enjoyment at your use of that word. His actions secretly backed by the fact that he’d fantasised night after night about you wrapping yourself around him, flesh against flesh, and purring that word in his ear like it was his birthright to be called it. For you, the naivety sprung from your air of innocence and the thought that a man such as himself wouldn’t be interested in a child. To you, Michael would be better off with a woman like Elizabeth Johnson than someone who was barely an adult.

Warm, heartfelt smiles are exchanged and then a moment later he’s gone. You always hated seeing him leave.

*

Upon sitting you notice Michael’s seat is still slightly warm and you’re comforted by the feeling against your skin paired with the scent of his cologne swimming in your nostrils. Your eyelids fall and you melt away into your own fantasy – he’s freshly showered and standing in front of the bedroom mirror, towel barely holding itself up around his hips, the sight of hair from his belly button to his pelvic area leaving saliva pooling in your mouth, and his hand gripped around a bottle of cologne that he’s spritzing all over himself. You, in this fantasy, up behind Michael and one of your soft, delicate hands grace over a bicep. You rest your chin on his shoulder and now run both manicured hands over his strong, sculpted body.

You force yourself to snap out of the dream and back into what you were doing.

Oh, this is what he’s writing about?

You read over the document four or five times (the technical jargon in parts was a bit too much for your tired brain) and decide that, besides a few grammatical errors, it was perfect.

You hadn’t noticed it earlier but he has another file open. You drag the mouse over it, hovering over the icon on the taskbar, weighing up whether or not you should open it. The title was a bunch of random letters which made absolutely no sense; mostly in lowercase but a few uppercase. Unbeknown to you, you’d click what it meant after you maximised the mystery file he’d been working on.

The strength of your will is weak when it comes to Michael which means you give in to the curiosity and bring it up – you immediately notice that it’s over 10,000 words long and this doesn’t surprise you but the first few sentences do. You try hard to avoid making any kind of assumptions but the two characters had been written with very similar names to yours and Michaels which only meant one thing.

It was almost as if Michael had invented the English language the way he crafted those sentences laid out before your very eyes; as if he was Michelangelo creating a written version of the Statue of David. It was decadent, and beautiful, but also very sinful. For example, he wrote of how the man was starving for the peach hidden between her thighs and you gasp with the realisation he’s talking about her cunt.

Your mouth waters because even if you lacked sexual experience you still understand how sweet a peach tastes; how it melts the moment your teeth sink in and drips its juices over your fingers and lips. You imagine this is what it’s like to have a man between your legs – once his mouth is on your folds, your body secretes your own nectar from the arousal. Heat swirls between your legs and beckons you to keep reading; leaving you helpless and causing you to lose the fight against the lust gnawing inside.

Every composed thought becomes drowned in the wish, the want, the need to be this girl that Michael has brought to life. The semblance between you and her was unsurprising and anyone within a five-mile radius knew that but you shrug it off as you get sink deeper into the depths of his words.

What started off as actions akin to that of the picking of a flower out of your grandmother’s garden, soft and sweet, become more voracious over time. This man becomes so driven with lust for the girl that even smelling something resembling her perfume made him have to leave a room and take care of himself; spilling his seed messily in hiding like an addict. One day she walks in on him and he’s so loud he doesn’t hear footsteps but she notices him, in his office, with a video of her in front of him on his tablet. He’d gotten so drunk from want that all other sounds were drowned out by the moans of pleasure.

She interrupts him but he doesn’t stop which makes her stutters and stammer because after all she’s a virgin who has never been around a naked man before but she’s pined for him for so long. There’s no denying that they both want it and something draws her to him, like a magnetic, unable to resist and finally opening up herself and her legs like a flower blooming in Spring.

That girl, that lucky girl, is devoured by him on his desk – first with his lips and then with the aching swollen member he had previously held loosely inside his right hand as his other holds his weight up on the desk. He knew without a doubt that there’s no way a girl like her was on birth control so he had to finish in a condom but it was safe to say that being inside her with a condom on was better than going raw inside anyone else.

The story ends like the movies do in the way that the two of them continue this only for him to realise he’s fallen in love with her and vice versa. The sappy ending did nothing to dampen the fire that spread from your groin throughout your body.

You’re treated to a rude awakening when Michael appears before you and he’s waving a hand in front of your face. He’d come back and now you were like that male character in the story; too distracted in your own fervour to hear anything or anyone else.

“I got you a hot chocolate with three pink marshmallows inside; your favourite.”

 The slack jaw is replaced with a meek smile and accompanied by cheeks tinged with pink. You were blushing because Michael had caught you and you didn’t know if he could see, or smell, the after effect of those grossly inappropriate thoughts or from the deception that dwelled within. You attempt to fan away the heat and embarrassment away with a weak hand to no avail.

“Are you okay, Y/N?”

“I’m uh, fine, I think? I think I just need to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

“Whatever you need. Take your time, okay?”

*

How you managed to get to the bathroom safely you’ll never know. Every limb ached and felt hollow, your knees especially wanting to buckle at any moment. You turn on the cold tap and run your hands through the water to dropping them a good 10 to 15 degrees before resting them on the back of your neck in an attempt to cool down. You catch your reflection in the mirror and while you are somewhat pink, you’re mostly pale. Then a thought hits you like a ton of bricks.

Did I minimise the story? Is he going to see it up on his screen? Oh, fuck.

Before you can think, you run fast back to the office and nearly collapse into the doorframe. The sting of breathlessness felt like it was ripping apart your lungs and you were trying to gain your breath back but bit of oxygen also choked you. Michael sounds and looks more worried than before; his eyes shot a look of concern at the girl standing before him struggling to breathe.

You nod, holding yourself up by hands on your thighs. You manage to catch your breath enough to say, “I’m better.”

“Well, in that case, can you come here?”

Guilt and shame wash over you like you’d killed someone as you’re travelling over to his desk. Your eyes glance down and see that you didn’t leave his dirty novel open up and that he was merely asking for advice on flowers to pick.

“Which one screams ‘I think you’re amazing’?”

This was it. The moment your mother had warned you about. He wasn’t the man in the story because he didn’t outwardly lust over you. You, being the nineteen-year-old you are, didn’t think for one minute there was another explanation besides he’s finally found a woman. Pangs of jealousy stab into your gut and you bend over, wincing in pain.

“M-M-Michael? I’m going to go home, okay? I really don’t feel well.”

You think that the stomach grab and wincing must have looked pretty bad because the sadness on Michael’s face is evident; that mouth, usually grinning at the sight of you, has fallen into a pout and his eyes showed he felt some kind of pain as well.

As you turn the handle to open the door, Michael asks you to let him know how you are later. You answer with of course I will and a piss poor attempt at smiling; sadness is brewing in your gut and you don’t know how long you can hold it down for.

For fucks sake, really?

Venable is on her way into Michael’s office and you two meet in the entrance. You had grown used to her cold, callous demeanour and what once seemed to scare you now just annoyed you. She’s trying to restrain a smirk and pretends to feel bad but you can practically feel her thoughts as if she was saying them out loud to you.

You rush past and throw open the front door to the building when you arrive to it. Had it not been for the adrenaline from the anger she made you feel you probably would have collapsed before you arrived at your car but, luckily, you make it there in one piece. Your hands are unsteady and you almost smack your door in frustration but know this won’t help and instead pull the keys out of your bag and attempt to unlock your vehicle - the first few tries fall flat when you can’t get the key in and then drop them on the ground. You take a deep breath in and exhale slowly, trying to steady yourself and do it again. It works.

Once you’re finally sitting back in your seat, you drape your hands freely over the steering wheel. An eruption of rage comes suddenly pouring out and causes you to yell out fuuuuuuuck while hitting your hands against the steering wheel multiple times before collapsing into your arms.

**

I forgot to ask Y/N if much needed to be changed but as far as I’m aware this is great. I really hope she’s okay.

Michael scrolls down to the next page to begin reading but is interrupted by an unnerving voice - Venable. He already knew she had no qualms about destroying someone else but her words, had anyone else heard them and didn’t know her, would make them aware of just how awful she is. She taunts Michael and tells him just how hurt Y/N was when she left. She left in quite a state, what did you do to her, lover boy?

He explains that she’s gone home because she wasn’t feeling well. Venable stays quiet as she tiptoes to the front of the desk where Michael is. She reaches out and grabs the bottom of his Gucci tie to inspect it and with a frigid yet sinister tongue continues to taunt him, “Yeah, like she’d seen the face of her worst nightmare meeting her.”

Venable was talking about Michael – knowing exactly what Y/Ns parents had told her about Michael Langdon when they found out their precious daughter got the job. Venable also wasn’t stupid and knew Y/N had gone home because of Michael but it was as if he was the last one to click on. She throws the tie down and leans onto the table, staring directly into Michael’s eyes.

“You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Maybe you were born yesterday but I wasn’t.” She growls and pushes herself off the desk to stand up straight. “Yeah, we both know why she’s not feeling well. I’m sure that meek little girl you call your assistant has something wrong with her. She’s probably only twelve years old mentally. Her attachment to you is sad.” Venable pauses and points a finger at Michael, resuming the abuse, “And yours? Yours, however, is pathetic.”

Michael is holding back his desire to break off her hand right at this moment. Her bullshit was enough to deal with without her waving herself around him like she was the boss. Venable can sense how pissed off he is but she won’t stop in her tirade. Michael decides he’s had enough, rising to stand and fume at her, “Why do you insist on speaking to me like this? I’m your superior.”

A heartless glare followed by a taunting eye roll is shot at him before cold-blooded Venable makes a beeline for the door to escape. She’s reaching out to get a grip on the door handle to pull it open but Michael slams his hand on it, holding it shut. It was glass, yes, but reinforced so it didn’t break easily. The hit was a bit too hard but Michael was fuelled with so much animosity over the insults towards Y/N that he didn’t notice the pain beginning to sear through his extremity.

She spins around on her heels and looks Michael dead in the eyes, pretending to yawn, claiming she’s tired of him. Venable knows she shouldn’t call him it but she says Michael in the most condescending tone you can think of.

He doesn’t take too kindly to this, jumping down her throat about if he ever gave her permission. Venable makes it known that Michael isn’t the only one who can raise his voice when she barks back, yelling louder than him, “When did I ever give a shit about what you thought? Your little fantasy comes waltzing in and all she has to do is smile in your direction and you’re like a weak puppy dog. Yes, Y/N. No, Y/N. You can call me Michael, Y/N.”

“Get out of here before I make you regret it.”

The feisty faux redhead inches closer to Michael, slathering her pigheadedness in his face when she pushes back on his threat. “Or what, huh? Or you’ll write some bad words and tell everyone how mean I am?”

The two bodies now practically face to face, noses almost touching, Michael throw his hands against her chest and shoves her away with a bit of force so she staggers around from the impact.

“Everyone knows how mean you are, you prudish cunt.”

She mocks Michael, bringing a hand to her chest and opening her mouth in a display of fake shock, “You called me a bad word? Oh no, I better run home and tell my mommy. Oh, wait, that’s what little girls do. I bet your little lamb is crying on her bed and her mother is trying to comfort her. Oh honey, what’s wrong? Did you have a bad day? Yeah mom, I did, Michael is not a very good man.”

“I swear to God if you don’t get out of my fucking office right now-”

“Don’t worry, I’m going. I’m going home and don’t you dare think about stopping me.”

She throws open the door and storms out of the room. Michael's voice becomes louder when he begins bellowing at her, “You’re a stupid bitch for even thinking that because I won’t. You’re lucky I haven’t already fired you. I only keep you around because I feel sorry for you since nobody else would put up with your shit.”

Venable doesn’t bother to look at him and instead throws a middle finger up as she’s leaving the building while she screams how Michael better have fun without her tomorrow because she wouldn’t be in.

Michael’s chest is full of agitation and he sharply exhales some of it out. There was no way to know exactly why Venable hated Y/N so much but he was determined to find out. His temples throbbed from the rush of blood and jump in his blood pressure from her insolence. Without thinking twice, Michael decides to escape before his meeting for a drink to calm down and not let a tyrannical monster like her ruin the rest of his day.

Taglist: @avesatanormalpeoplescareme @sensitivethot @sacredlangdon @sammythankyou @langdonsdemon @taintedaffairs @queencocoakimmie @violett124 @1-800-imagines @1-800-bitchcraft (If you’ve asked to be added to my list and I can’t tag you then I can’t add you in :( )

[pinkletterday]

westallen + 'break me'

The Words We Never Said

Pairing: Barry Allen/Iris West

Rating: Teen/Mature

Warnings: heavy, heavy angst, relationship dysfunction, season 3 tw

Status: WiP

Summary: S3 AU. Navigating a new relationship is hard enough without the grim spectre of impending disaster hanging over their heads.

Savitar doesn’t help either.

A/N: *crashes in* I CAN EXPLAIN!

So this was supposed to be a drabble. And it was sorta. I brushed off the end bit and wrote it out nicely. But then thought why not post the whole shebang? Cause it would be a shame to waste a permanent WiP and the prompt did say “break me”. And I hope you really meant that cause this one was saved under a folder named “Westallen trauma submarine”. As in I see your angst sandwich and raise you:

It should have been the happiest time of his life. After years and years of secretly hoping, wishing, fantasizing, Iris was finally with him, sharing a bed with him. He was finally allowed to drown in her lips, sink deep inside her body and whisper his unbearable love while looking into her eyes, as though it was a breath trapped inside him for half a lifetime releasing. He had made a home for them both, a place where he could keep her safe beside him and surround her in all the riches of his love he had had to keep restrained and unspoken till now.

Sitting across the room from her now, watching the streetlight outside spill amber over her sleeping shoulder, Barry had never been more miserable.

She’s going to die because of you, his mind whispered. You killed your mother and your father and you nearly got Patty killed. You let her go to keep her safe but you were too selfish to do the same for Iris. Because she was your dream.

In many ways she still felt like a dream. A lifetime of friendship and sharing a home and secrets and embarrassments and fights and the fact that she was his lover now seemed surreal. Best-Friend-Iris seemed somehow like a similar but wholly different creature to Girlfriend-Iris. The former had manhandled, kicked, elbowed, flopped on and cuddled him with impunity. The latter still touched him deliberately, almost tentative and hyper-aware, as though he was someone almost unfamiliar.

“Babe?” Iris’s voice was rough with sleep in the dark. “What are you doing?”

He slid off the chair and back into the bed before she could sit up. “Nothing, go back to sleep.”

Strong fingers wrapped around his biceps and tugged him insistently toward her. He crawled over her, bracketing her sleep-soft body beneath his. She stroked his face, blinking drowsily at him.

“Is this normal for you?” she rasped. “I get that you have speedster metabolism but I didn’t realize you only needed…what. An hour or two of sleep a night?”

He needed more but didn’t want to tell her that. Or lie to her. He shrugged non-committally.

“Go back to sleep,” he said, kissing her forehead. “You need way more than me and we fell asleep late.”

Iris chuckled throatily. “Mmm. And whose fault was that, huh?”

It’s supposed to be sexy, he knew. This dimension of their relationship was very new but even so he’s been a voracious lover, taking her almost every night she’d have him. She seemed to have no complaints and obviously she is that intoxicating to him but also…

She did not know of the sword hanging over her head. Did not know he had put it there and he couldn’t tell her. Couldn’t bear to see that innocent happiness and love twist into fear and disbelief. He could only mutely press his desperation into her skin and try to drown his guilt inside her.

This is your fault.

“Barry?” her eyes were alert now, searching his face in concern.

Barry made himself smile reassuringly. “I’m good, sweetheart,” the endearment still felt like something stolen on his tongue. He kissed her eyelids closed, careful to keep his weight off her, “we’ll talk about my metabolism in the morning.”

He could feel her gaze slitted upon his face for a long while after he feigned sleep.

***

She should be with Eddie, not you. He deserved her and she knew it.

They were having coffee at Jitters with Cisco and Wally. He had long since zoned out the engineering discussion happening between them, although Iris was gamely trying to follow along. “If I’m going to contribute something to the science fiction movie that is our lives then I better at least learn to understand nerdspeak, Barry.”

“I’ve been talking nerdy at you for years. You mean you haven’t been listening all this time?”

“I was mostly paying attention to how cute you were.”

Then why hadn’t she ever said anything. Why let him ache and doubt and hang on tenterhooks for a smile or a word or look that she might feel the same and then choose Eddie if she had felt anything for him?

Because he was the better man, idiot. His mind answered. He didn’t dither about asking her out for fourteen years, then lie to her, get her fiancé killed and the city blown up. He didn’t let his own selfishness hand her a death sentence.

It is not a death sentence! He snarled back at himself. He would split himself into atoms and cast every one of them into the universe before he saw Iris too, stabbed through the heart in front of him -

“Barry?”

He snapped back into awareness to see the other three staring at him.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Where’d you go, man?” said Cisco, eyeing him. “You totally zoned out.”

“Yeah, sorry, I’m just -,” he caught Iris’s eye. Ah shit. She’d know if he tried to fib. “A little out of it, this morning.”

“I knew you needed more than two hours a night,” said Iris, concerned.

“Two hours?” Cisco looked between them in bemusement. “He needs more than that. Why are you getting only two hours? What are you even doing?” He swivelled his head to fully face Barry.

“I’m fine, guys,” he shrugged nonchalantly.

“You can’t be fine, Barry, you’ve been having trouble sleeping since we moved in,” Iris protested. “Did anything happen with a meta or at work or -”

“I said I’m fine!” He snapped. The table fell silent, startled. Shit shit shit. He had not meant to do that at all. He saw Wally’s face clouding in anger and Iris’ looking shocked. God damn it.He couldn’t remember the last time he’d snapped at Iris like that.

“Sorry,” he said contritely, feeling like a shitheel. You don’t deserve her. “I…just. I’ve been a little out of sorts. I guess just…dealing with everything that’s been happening, you know.”

He caught Cisco’s eye in trying to avoid Iris’s and felt another dull stab in his chest. They were slowly healing their friendship but it would never be the same. Some days he would look at the man who had been his alter ego’s life raft since the beginning and not recognize him at all. He wondered if Cisco felt the same about him.

“I have to get back to the station,” he said brightly, jumping up. The others simply looked more nonplussed.

“On…Saturday?” said Cisco looking even more like he was questioning Barry’s sanity.

“Yeah, I have a…big backlog of reports,” Barry fumbled, keenly aware that he was exhibiting every liar’s tell he had and wholly unable to stop himself. “I’ll see you guys later -” and all but flashed off, as if this was remotely a way to part with your live-in girlfriend.

***

He got takeout from her favourite Chinese place for dinner and a bouquet of orchids as a peace offering that evening, to find her on the floor painstakingly unpacking their boxes.

“Hi,” he said tentatively, unloading his parcels onto the kitchen counter.

She didn’t look up. “Hi.” Her tone was absent rather than curt. Barry decided this was a good sign.

“You should just leave those, Iris,” he said helpfully. “I can unpack everything in two minutes.”

Iris paused unwrapping a photo frame and tilted her head questioningly at the wall without looking around. “You want to use super-speed to unpack our apartment?”

“Why not?” He again experienced that feeling of being about to make a step that would end in a grim squelch. “Have it, might as well use it, right?”

Iris’s shoulders slumped as she dropped the frame back into the box, the line of her back making her seem small and tired. Squelch. Oh no.

You don’t deserve her. “Or, if it’s important to you we can do it together, no rush,” he offered hurriedly.

This did not seem to make anything better. “Important to me,” she repeated dully. “Uh no. It’s. You go ahead.” She got up, dusted her knees off and headed to the bedroom without looking around.

“Hey, where you going?” called Barry, “I got you fried rice from the Lotus Garden that you like -”

“Not hungry,” she called back from the bedroom.

He grabbed the orchids and hurried forward. “Um, I also got you -”

The bedroom door shut. Barry stood rather foolishly with the flowers in his arms, adrift in a sea of wadded packing paper and boxes.

***

The nightmares seemed to escalate after that. It wasn't just seeing Savitar run his horrible talon straight through her breast like he was skewering a rag doll. He dreamed of her floating away from him into the Speed Force, expression blank and indifferent, as he cried out and entreated her to take his hand. Eddie and Leonard Snart sneered at him from the shadows, deriding him for his moral failures. Eobard smirked malevolently and told him he would never truly be happy.

When he woke up, Iris didn’t stir. He was never quite sure whether she really hadnt woken up or simply pretended to sleep on. Either way, the sight of her face, somehow sad even in rest, made him feel as hollow as if he was watching her float away from him again.

A week later, Iris bled out in his arms for the twenty-fifth time. He was practiced enough now at stealth that his scream was strangled in his throat before he was even fully awake.

He spasmed like a fish flopped out of the water for a minute, trying to force breath into his burning lungs as quietly as possible, and turned to find her gazing at him.

They looked at each other for a moment.

“Are you ever going to tell me?” her dark eyes were so sad and resigned. As though something had been lost to her before she ever had a chance to know it. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

Panic seized him. “Tell you what?”

She merely kept looking at him until sheer sorrow seemed to weigh her eyelids closed, the furrow in her brow deepening to a hurt. Barry could feel her slipping away from him, blank, cold and indifferent.

In the morning, he could almost tell himself it was another dream.

***

(more scenes where Iris is told about Savitar and an explosive things-come-to-a-head fight later)

***

Outwardly she was as still and cold as the crisp spring night, shoulders drawn tightly into herself. But Barry saw the storm in the lines of her silhouette as she sat on the stoop of the house they had grown up in, the streetlight that had haloed their kiss in gold now turned harsh and glaring.

She resumed the conversation as though they had just paused it to venture outside, rather than having spent the day barely able to stay in the same room as him.

“Am I supposed to be ashamed of having loved him?”

“No!,” he exclaimed, gut twisting. It wasn’t her fault that Eddie had been better for her in every way than he, Barry, had ever been. “Of course you loved him, Eddie was a great guy -”

“I did not love Eddie just because he was a great guy,” she gritted. ”I loved him because when you were comatose, my Dad was half-checked out and I had no one, he was there! He took care of me. He was kind to me. I don’t fall in love by comparing people’s greatness!”

“I didn’t mean -,”

“You have no idea what it was like!,” she threw the words at him, like she was ripping out something that had been too painful to dislodge till now. “No one knew what was wrong with you. Dad barely ate or slept. We could only sit there and watch you die over and over again. Every single time it was like I was dying with you.”

“I went to church. I went to a fucking faith healer. I’d make stupid bargains every day with - I dont even know. Like if you went the whole day without a seizure I’d never eat another chocolate muffin. And if you made any voluntary movement I’d give away my favourite sweater. The day STAR Labs finally stabilized you I donated my grandmother’s earrings to a widow’s fund. It was like I was holding my breath, walking a tightrope every day and there was no one to catch me - until Eddie.”

She swallowed convulsively. “I loved him because when I had no one, he saw me. He was there. And he didn’t ask for anything in return.”

His chest hollowed out deeper. “Iris, I’m so -,”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. I don’t care. I just want you to see me!” she finally whirled around to face him and her expression was a fist to his face.

“I do see you!,” he said desperately. You’re all I can see. “I see you, Iris!”

She began to laugh, derisive, with an edge of hysteria. “Do you, Barry? Is it really me you see? Or do you see some fantastic, too-good-for-you girl you can idealize at a safe distance?,” tears choked her laughter, glimmering golden in her eyes. “When did I stop being your best friend? Am I even real to you anymore?”

***

“I chose Eddie because he was the only choice I had.”

Again she broke the silence, this time ín the darkness of their bedroom. It had persisted all the way to the loft, while they had wordlessly showered in the same bathroom and changed for bed.

He breathed out carefully. “What do you mean?”

She was sat up next to him against the headboard, profile outlined in the molten glow seeping through the curtains.

“You were going to go into the past and save your mother. The best case scenario would have been that our whole lives, every choice I’d made in this life since we were eleven, would be erased, and I would wake up as maybe your wife, none the wiser. The worst was that you’d disappear into history forever and live out an alternate timeline while in this one we carried on without you.”

“Actually, who’s to say that hasnt happened to some version of me?” she mused, head slightly cocked in abstract curiosity, “Maybe there’s a me that’s still waiting for you on our porch steps.”

“That’s not how it works, Iris.” He really, really hoped it wasn’t.

“That you know of,” she dismissed. “I saw a version of you become vaporized in front of me. He was real. He was you and existed beside you. He died alone to save us and we didn’t even mourn him. Do you ever think about that?”

“Yes. A lot.”

He had surprised her, finally. She turned to look at him.

“That could be me one day. I could be the one that dies. And you would go on to live out your lives with the one that gets to stay.”

It was one of those things he tried not to think about during his waking hours, dogged as it was by gut-churning terror and a strange sense of grief.

“I know,” she whispered.>

He ignored the echo of his own fear in her voice to follow the self-punishing compulsion to see this through. “You told Eddie you’d marry him because I might not have come back?”

“No. The third option was that it wouldn’t work and you would come back,” her voice grew hard. “And if that happened I wanted you to know that I’d chosen the man who hadn’t lied to me.”

It was a dull blow to the gut, richly deserved. “Iris.”

“I was so angry,” she continued. “So trapped. Everyone telling me who I was going to be and what I really felt while hiding and manipulating and dictating my life. Even you. My best friend. The one person I trusted more than anyone betrayed me,” the bleak bitterness in her voice stabbed deep, “And I didnt get to feel mad about any of it because I was just trying to catch up, wrap my head around it all and falling to pieces over first Eddie and then you…there was never any room to breathe”

“Eddie was the one who had never wanted to lie to me. He stood up to my father to propose to me, to date me. He was the only one who had chosen me, thought of what I wanted, what I deserved.”

“So yeah, he was the only real choice I had left,” she let out a shaking breath, “It was never because I Ioved him more. It was about trying not to drown, Barry.”

The tight lines of her face dissolved into an empty sadness he could feel even in shadow. “But if you really want to know, I can’t imagine a world where I loved only one of you.”

***

“I lied.”

Another day of false leads and desperation, trying not to look at the hours slowly, inexorably slipping away one by one like mourners at a funeral. The anxiety was coalescing into terror now, a not-so-distant wolf howl nipping at their heels.

Iris was wrapped in her bathrobe, staring at the flames dancing in the fireplace. Drifting.

“About what?”

“I lied. I told you I didn’t love either of you more.”

His stomach dropped into a deep pit, dragging his heart with it. “…you don’t have to -”

“When we heard the gunshot, for one awful moment I thought it had been you,” she continued, and blood bloomed on white again between them. “And I thought I was going to die. Then I saw Eddie fall, and the first thing I thought was “Barry’s safe.”

The world went very still. “Iris -,”

“I chose you the moment he turned his gun on himself so he could be my hero,” her eyes burned in her face, staring steadily into the blinding heart of the flames. “And I. Hate. Myself. For it.”

Be careful what you wish for, Barry thought distantly with an absurd desire to laugh. You just might get it.

“Maybe it’s the reason why all of this is happening. I lied to and I betrayed both of you because I was angry.”

“No! That could never…none of this was your fault, Iris,” I was the one who betrayed you. I was the one who cursed you. “Savitar has nothing to do with anything you did.”

Her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “I wish I knew whether that makes it better or worse. Maybe I just want something, anything I did to have mattered.”

///

[lizzybeth1986]

Do you have any HCs about Liam’s mother? What do you think she was like?

Ooh this would be fun!

For a very long time I hesitated making any firm HCs about Liam’s mother because I was obviously expecting to learn more about her. But I do have a few HCs that are largely from the things we’d been told in the books.

For the purposes of this HC I’m naming Liam’s mother Rose and Leo’s mother Agnes.

1. My Liam is the Asian one (and my faceclaim is Korean-American), so I HC’d Rose as coming from Korea.

2. It’s established that she was both a commoner and a foreigner, so I would see her experience as having at least a few very basic similarities with the MC. Not exactly similar, but the parallel is clearly there if the MC is marrying Liam.

3. I used to assume that Constantine choose all three of his brides during social seasons, but Book 3 proved that wasn’t the case. So I could maybe see Constantine meeting Rose while she was travelling to/visiting Cordonia.

4. I HC that while it was love at first sight, Constantine especially had his reservations because he’d been abandoned by his first wife. He tried very hard to ignore the way he felt for her. This puzzled and distressed Rose for a while, but they grew closer despite Constantine’s reservations.

5. It probably took them some incredible effort to ensure she was accepted once they DID decide to make it official.

6. The first few years were hard. Even after they were married and Rose was officially accepted into court she knew she had to double down, work harder, be better and she couldn’t afford missteps in between. For one she was “different”, and for another the shadow of what Leo’s mother Agnes had done would always follow her. People were always doubting her ability to handle court. Liam would grow up understanding this and trying instinctively to make himself more aware, more competent, more everything because he was aware all eyes were on him as well, in a way that they wouldn’t entirely be on Leo.

7. Leo was a little wary of her initially, but he was also quite young and needed a mother figure who would be there for him (in a way Agnes couldn’t in her final months/year in the palace) and it took a year for Rose and Leo to fully bond. In fact, one of the reasons he couldn’t bond with Regina was because he’d already lost two mother figures by his teens and he couldn’t bear having to build a relationship like that again (and also, let’s be honest, Regina and Leo don’t exactly like each other either).

8. Rose was quite artistic: in canon it is said the renovation of the gardens were a part of her own vision, that she used to play the guitar at family picnics. She was also a voracious reader and often took her son to the public library when they were in Applewood. She viewed literature and art both as personal escapes from court life for herself, and as essential for cultural enhancement. Constantine’s and Rose’s views on what would be good for the kingdom were as similar as chalk and cheese. I would imagine that had Constantine not been distant with Hakim, they would have definitely got along with Rose because her vision for Cordonia was very similar to theirs.

9. I HC’d that she also liked theatre. At least a few times a year she would take her sons along to watch a play. In the final years of her life, Liam noticed that watching Macbeth would leave her completely in tears.

10. She didn’t exactly know she was going to die, but the last years of her life were spent in fear. She did have an inkling that it would happen, and it made her final years very unhappy, very frightful ones.

11. Before the truth of the Nevrakis family had come out in the books, I’d HC’d that they sponsored Rose, and were quite supportive and protective of her. Obviously that doesn’t apply anymore.

12. I’d say that Constantine was probably ruthless as a King before, but it took on some new extremes when Rose died.

13. The night before she died, Rose read to Liam the story of the Forgotten Falls lovers (well, a kid friendly bedtime story version).

14. Liam would always draw a blank about the days following Rose’s death. How she looked, what his family said, what he did, nothing. To this day if you’d asked him he wouldn’t be able to tell you.

15. Liam still dreams about her some days. He hadn’t known her for very long, but they were extremely close, and in some ways she still lives on as his conscience.

[castellankurze]

ASW 9, Rymmwaen Iyrnwyrnwyn

CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP NOT SURE HOW TO STOP (WHY STOP)

The news of Eureka had brought her, like so many others, out to a remote island in the distant ocean.  Not merely to help a friend, or for promises of treasure, but for the assurance that the distant and mysteriously land was rife with savage beasts, deadly wilds teeming with ferocious and aggressive fauna and flora the like of which would set any hunter’s heart to hammering in her chest.

So she had set aside the great claymore - scant need for a tool of justice amidst the savage lands - and taken up her axe once more, and Rymmwaen Iyrnwyrnwyn had gone unto Eureka to set loose her own inner beast, to fight with no higher purpose than for the sheer joy of it.  And the land Eureka had offered up a bounty beyond her wildest expectations.

But she hadn’t expected freaking voidkin.

[music]

He came forth in a great storm of violence, heralded by winds that tore the dirt loose from the rock and thunder and lightning that split the sky.  There had been word; rumors of his presence in the cave system at the far side of the Anemos region, but now he showed himself openly, four golden wings stretched forth despite the pouring rain - the demon Pazuzu.  And he was relentless as he drove towards the port wherein the expedition had made its shelter, its foothold.  To lose that would be to abandon the effort to tame the wilderness, to solve the mystery of the place, and such a thing could not be countenanced.

Rymmwaen was, naturally, amongst those who moved to stop him.  Adventurers from Aldenard, Vylbrand, Doma, and Hingashi alike joined forces, and in the midst of the unraveling storm the battle was joined.

Lightning flashed from her silver armor as the sea wolf’s axe rang against the demon’s armor, steel screeching as she scored the metal.  He retaliated with strikes from his claws that drove her back, her boots tearing ruts through the mud with the force of the voidkin’s blows.  All around her, adventurers grappled with the demon’s spells as they called forth more of the tearing winds, along with plagues of locusts that filled the air with their droning.

And yet, somehow, when he spoke, she heard his voice.

You will not carry this day so long as you fight with but a quarter of your strength.

Rymmwaen blinked rain from her eyelids and shook her head as she looked up at the creature that hovered over her.  The voidkin’s golden eyes were locked to hers, and it lifted a hand to point at her with an arm that looked a mile long.

‘Warrior.’  You claim to embrace your inner beast and yet you shrink from the true face of your own nature.  Your soul will never find peace so long as you deny the true longing that howls in your blood.

“My...blood?” the sea wolf snarled.  “Ye want my blood, ye great winged bastard?  Ye can have this on my account,” she said, turning her head to spit a bit of said blood out on to the dirt before she readied her axe once more.

Fool.  Have you forgotten the face of your mother?

Rymmwaen’s heart skipped a beat.  “M-me mother?”

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

“Momma?” the little girl called.  There was a crack in her voice.

Styrmbryda turned and blinked her eyes to see the child standing at the door, rubbing an eye with one small fist.  She’d been in another fight, as sure as rainfall.  Her clothes were smudged and her knuckles were slightly cracked.

“Yes, darling?” she asked, turning from her herbs.

“What’s a faerie child?”

Stymbryda’s eyes widened slightly, and she left her gardening to move to the door and kneel before her daughter.  “Who said this?”

“One of the other kids,” Rymmwaen replied, looking suddenly defensive.

Styrmbryda sighed and reached out to take her daughter’s hand, mending some of the damage.  “It’s an old legend, of babies taken in the night to be replaced, or else the birth of children not of flesh and blood, but aether and wild magic.  In some legends they would grow up to destroy the families who took them in; not all of them, but some.  Sometimes the would grow up to be great warriors or witches.  Anyone deemed strange...fey or odd could be accused.”  Styrmbryda pressed her lips together as words passed unspoken between them - that with her hair white as sea-salt and lightning-fast temper, Rymmwaen was a prime target for such accusations.

“So...am I a faerie child?” the girl asked, looking up at her mother, her blue eyes more intense than a heaving sea.

Styrmbryda chewed at her lips for a moment.  “Do you want to know the truth?”  Rymmwaen nodded and the woman placed her hand on ehr daughter’s shoulder, tapping her nose with a figner tip as she smiled and winked.  “You are a faerie child,” she whispered.

Rymmwaen’s face brightened.  “I told ‘em!  I told ‘em not t’mess with a faerie child!”  With a burst of energy she hugged her mother and then tore off down the path, no doubt to renew the latest fight.

Styrmbryda smirked to watch her go, lowering her hands into her lap, briefly pressing one to her stomach where, beneath the dress she wore, a scar indented the left side of her lower belly.

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

Rymmwaen bared her teeth.  “What d’ye know about me mother, demon?” she roared, her blue eyes slowly turning crimson as the beast within her fought for control.  “I ought ta rip yer tongue out fer darin’ t’speak of her!”

Demon?  What say you of a creature that runs from battle to battle to exalt in the lifesblood of its foe?  What say you of a creature whose very soul cries out in hunger for violence; for vengeance?  Pazuzu smiled down at her.  Look deep within; listen to the blood that pounds in your ears, and call me the demon.  Or do you fear the truth?

There was another crack, as if of thunder, coming not from the sky but from the roe herself, her silvered armor splitting as she clutched her axe, the muscle of her arms tearing through the steel and sending it sliding from her shoulders as it broke apart, veins standing out from her arms as he dark skin shone wetly in the driving rain, her eyes now fully crimson.

“I don’t fear ye,” she growled, her shoulders heaving.  “I’m Fear Itself.  I am the Leviathan!”

The roegadyn bellowed a full-throated wyrm’s roar and tore forward through te mud and the rain, her hand flashing out to grab a fallen axe left behind by a fallen fellow adventurer.  A weapon in each hand, she tore through the confused scrum and launched herself in the air towards the voidkin.

Amidst the rain, there was the impression of a colossal sea serpent, its jaws bared in voracious need, enormous teeth framing the fenzied warrior.

Magnificent, Pazuzu mused.

[sending-the-message]

I murdered my daughter's imaginary friend by TheRobertFall

Time went by but the profound remorse remained. It’s still smouldering as my heart is beating. I can’t remember the last time I slumbered in peace after that night. I have been told to exteriorize these feelings, to free them from my inner cage.

Five years ago, Holly, my only daughter turned six. Time is fragile, it fades with each clickety-clack of the clock. However—call it a blessing or a curse—the worthy memories remain, vivid as if living them today.

Her sixth birthday earned its eternal place in the burrows of my mind. Not due to her joyous smile, nor due to the love brimming in the atmosphere of our garden. It earned its place because, that night, she met her imaginary friend, Darren.

Let’s talk about Holly, she was my treasure, the one I would forever cherish, love and protect with my very life and soul. She glowed, she just did, there’s no other way around it. She was polite, witty for her age, charming and affective. The concepts of lie and pride never made their way into her being, she never hesitated to say: “I love you” or “I hate you.” She only knew truth and innocence.

Words of a father, you might be thinking, and you are right. I did know pride, thanks to her.

Our whole family gathered for her sixth birthday, it was a crowded event to say the least. Fortunately, it went swimmingly. Cake on the table, Holly eager to extinguish the candles’ fiery flames as we all sang happy birthday. “Don’t forget your wishes darling,” said my mother with a broad smile.

Holly clapped to the beat, her features expressed sheer happiness, that same magical feeling we felt on christmas night when we were children. When our imagination convinced us of the existence of a fat, white-bearded man clad in a red suit climbing down our chimneys to leave us presents. We didn’t know what the world was capable of, we didn’t care.

Holly was no different, the idea of an imaginary friend made sense.

The next morning she came to the table, gave me and her mother, a good morning kiss and joined us in our delicious task to devour a pile of hot cakes. “Mom, I want to eat veggies today at lunch,” she said.

Both my wife and I gazed at each other with a frown filled with confusion, she hated veggies. “Sure sweetie, anything for my precious princess,” my wife said, pinching Holly’s cheeks.

“I told you they were tasty!” I said and smiled at her. Strangely, she turned her eyes away from me and stared downward. “Holly?”

She shut her eyes tight—she believed that when she closed her eyes she disappeared briefly—and wouldn’t open them.

“Holly, what are you hiding?” I asked, worried, this was not a normal behaviour of hers. She only did it when she made a mistake.

Her eyes opened and she sighed audibly, as if defeated, “I didn’t taste any veggie,” she confessed, “Darren told me I had to be a good girl and eat them. Otherwise, Santa would bring me coal and ash instead of a puppy this Christmas.”

“Come again, who is Darren?” I asked and leaned forward, making sure I didn’t miss a single word.

She covered her eyes with her palms.

“Holly, I can see you, who is this Darren?”

At this point, my wife grabbed my forearm and signaled for me to be calm down by pushing both her hands in a downward motion, as if pushing the air.

Holly gave up, “yesterday I wished for a new friend and my wish was granted. Darren lives in my wardrobe, he visited me last night,” she said and found refuge in a big hot cake bite.

An imaginary friend, I had them too, I thought to myself, and switched the conversation to another topic. At least he seems to give her good advice.

How wrong I was.

The next couple of days everything went fine, nothing out of the ordinary. We grew accustomed to hearing her talk by herself late at night. Out of curiosity, I have examined the wardrobe and found nothing. Holly did try veggies and fell in love with spinach. Naturally, I showed her Popeye, one of my favourites cartoons.

There’s an inflexion point to everything.

It had been six days since she confessed Darren’s existence. That morning, the joy of her smile turned into pouting lips, downcast eyes and despondent gait. She didn’t even kiss us good morning.

“Holly, what’s wrong princess?” Her mother asked, caressing her arm.

Holly shut her eyes and refused to open them, longer than ever before. Ten minutes had gone by and we didn’t know what to do.

“Holly, we are not playing anymore, we can see you. Did Darren upset you?” I asked, on the verge of losing my temper.

Tears streamed down her cheeks but at least, she nodded.

“Good, I will go to have a talk with Darren right now and fix this,” I said and pretended to stand.

“No!” she screamed, eyes wide opened. “You can’t talk to him.”

I frowned, “why is that?”

“He-he is in a bad mood lately. He says that you are both stupid adults and that I shouldn’t believe you.” Tears intensified.

I stood and cradled her, she wasn’t a baby anymore but I my instinct guided me, “listen to me princess, if he treats you bad, you come to our bedroom okay? I will have a talk with him while you’re in school.”

She nodded and finished her breakfast, Claudia and I left her on school and then went to our respective jobs. We both agreed that if Darren didn’t disappear, a psychologist would be a must.

I asked my boss for a day off under the excuse that I was feeling feverish. He told me to take as many days as needed, we have known each other for a long time and had a great relationship.

I came back home early, I felt the need to research about these imaginary friends. How did you handle such an intangible subject that affected the mood of your kid? May this be an early sign of a mental sickness? Doubts flooded my mind. I had to arm myself with knowledge to protect my daughter.

A cold gust of wind blew my notes away, Damn, I forgot to shut the window this morning, I thought and kept reading. After a while, I needed fuel so I went to the kitchen, in the way I found a pink crayon on the floor. *Hiring a cleaning lady might be a good idea.”

I researched a lot throughout the day, most papers said the same thing, imaginary friends are normal, part of their lives, yet when they impulsed your child to misbehave it was a good idea to seek for therapy as early as possible. They also suggested to try and hear a conversation and try to analyze the current of thought of your child.

And that’s what I did.

The night fell, dinner filled my stomach, I talked with my wife about my plan, she agreed under the terms to not wake her up. I hid in the bathroom, it was next to Holly’s bedroom and pressed my ear against the wall to hear as much as I could.

That’s a bad idea Darren.

…

I won’t do that Darren, it’s dangerous my father will scold me!

...

I will do it if you promise to talk instead of write for once.

...

My heart sunk. The window, the crayon. Holly tiptoed towards the kitchen, she didn’t notice me in the shadows. Could it be? Is my imagination tricking me?

A few seconds later, Holly tiptoed back to her bedroom, she held something behind her back. Her gait was careful, soundless. She crossed the bathroom door and I peeked to see what she hid.

A knife.

Before she reached her bedroom, I grabbed her and covered her mouth, suppressing the scream. Sheer fear imbued her eyes, I beckoned for her to go with her mother and took the knife from her hands.

She nodded and I gingerly placed her back onto the ground. I pressed my index finger against my lips, signaling her to remain silent. She tiptoed to our bedroom.

With the knife tightly clasped on my hand and my jaw clenched I walked towards Holly’s room. I didn’t feel fear, the deep hatred of someone perturbing my daughter drowned it. The adrenaline swarmed my veins, heart pummeling. A triangle of light escaped towards the hall, the door was upholstered.

I pushed the door.

Sitting, with a red crayon on his hand, was a shirtless, anorexic man. Bones visible through his paper-like skin. I shuddered at the fragility of his being, the shaft of his extremities narrower than Holly’s. He turned to me, I had never seen eyes as dead as his, expressionless, bloodshot and unreadable. He stared deep into my pupils, unblinking as he wrote. The fear grew and crippled my body. What is this monster.

He raised the paper and smiled exaggeratedly, displaying no teeth nor tongue.

Her core, a sweet fruit.

I let the knife fall, I wouldn’t need it. I surged towards him and kicked his face. He didn’t flinch nor did he resist, he fell limp onto the floor, bleeding. I kneeled over him, snatched his neck, eyes inhumanly wide, hatred defeated fear and rushed towards my fists. The crack of his windpipe soothed my existence. He was dead but I wouldn't stop, not until I disfigured that fucking smile out of his cadaverous face. The warm blood bathed my fists and stained the floor.

“What did you do to her, motherfucker? What did you do to her!” I yelped, as I massacred him.

“Robert!” My wife screamed from afar.

I bolted towards our bedroom, Holly stood in the doorframe, motionless staring at our bed. It might have been the adrenaline shock but I missed the details as I ran. I missed the dripping knife on Holly’s hand, I missed the trail of blood meandering through the carpet, staining her tiny feet, I missed the stranger seeding ideas into my daughter’s brain, I missed the second knife on Holly’s pocket; but I didn’t miss my wife’s corpse, slain at the throat, yugular blasting voraciously, feeding the pungent crimson river; nor did I miss Holly’s reassuring smile as she grabbed my hand.

“Don’t worry daddy, Darren told me he would heal her."

[theoddcatlady]

Phases

Eleven AM.

Eleven AM and he hasn’t even come down for breakfast.

It’s tough being a single mom of a teenage boy. I don’t complain, hell no, I love my son. Jamie’s done nothing but make my life better for the most part. As a little one, he was always so quiet, loving storytime and reading books. He had always a higher reading level than most kids his age, something which I always encouraged. We made weekly trips to the library where he’d bolt to look at the books, not even pausing to look at the movie section.

As he became older he started coming out of his shell, making friends, but he was still my sweet boy. He always did the dishes without being prompted, was always home at a good time, and always told me what was going on in his life. When he told me his friend was considering suicide we worked together to help that friend out.

A few months ago everything changed.

I don’t know what triggered the change, but it was a day and night change. I could normally go to work and trust Jamie to be out of bed, ready to go. He loved school and was excited he was finally a sophomore.

It was almost time for me to go to work and he hadn’t so much as opened his bedroom door. I was naturally concerned. I thought he was sick. I hurried up to his bedroom and knocked a few times, asking if he was okay. His response shocked me.

“Fuck school, I’m tired.”

First off, Jamie wasn’t the type to use harsh language around me. I don’t care what he said around his friends, just watch his mouth with his mother. I knocked harsher before opening the door.

Jamie wasn’t sick. He was twisted up in his blankets, only his mop of hair and the top of his face sticking out the top. He glared at me.

“Go away.”

Jamie might’ve grown taller than me over these past few years, but I was no pushover. I ended up pulling him out of bed by his blanket. It took a bit of pushing but he did end up marching into the bathroom to get dressed and showered.

I figured it was one of those teenage things. A phase, mood swing, whatever. Jamie had gone through a few phases as a child, one where he refused to sleep anywhere but my bed, the monster under his bed was going to get him, and don’t get me started on his cowboy phase. It was months before he stopped wearing those stupid boots.

But this… this was different. This was rebellion.

The next day I was already running late to work, so I didn’t check to see if Jamie had gotten out of bed. I was on my lunch break when I got a text from Jamie’s girlfriend Marissa.

‘Hey Ms Hensley, how’s Jamie doing?’

Confused, I texted back and asked what she meant. Her reply sent my blood pressure through the roof.

‘He’s sick today right? That’s why he’s not in school?’

I used the rest of my lunch break to go home and sure enough, Jamie hadn’t gotten out of bed. Still twisted up in blankets, although he wasn’t asleep, he was playing some sort of game on his phone.

Busted.

I marched him to school after giving him time to shower and dress, telling him how I was disappointed in his actions and if something was wrong he could talk it over with me. In response, I got an eye roll and an excuse about ‘being tired’.

For the first time in my life I had no idea what was going on in Jamie’s head.

Everything’s just gone downhill since then. Library trips stopped happening, it was a miracle to get him out to do anything but eat on the weekends. And my god, did he eat. I set aside a foot long sub for my dinner in the fridge and went out to water the garden. By the time I was back, the sub was gone, along with a family sized bag of potato chips and a two liter of Pepsi. The latter two were his, so that was none of my business, but the sandwich was mine. Jamie had never taken my food before. I was hurt.

His appetite became voracious over the weeks. On days I knew he went to school, he would pack his own lunch but eat whatever the cafeteria had as well, and judging by the payments the school gave me, he was eating everything he could fit on those plastic trays. He obviously gained weight, and although he was never a skinny kid, he’s now so large he’s having a bit of trouble buckling himself in when he’s in the car.

What’s worse is how he’s shut me off. We were so close for so long. We hid nothing from each other. He told me about his crushes on girls or when he was feeling depressed, I told him whenever I had a bad day at work or when I met a nice guy on a dating website.

Last night was one of the worst of my life. He came home with the cops.

I had no idea he was gone, I was frosting the cake for his birthday when I saw the blue and red flashing lights in the driveway. For several achingly long moments, I thought my son was dead.

Then the door opened and Jamie came out, the cop walking him to the house. I ran to the front door, dropping the chocolate frosting bag in my rush. I opened the door and pulled Jamie into a hug so tight I probably could’ve snapped him in two. The hug was not returned.

“Ma’am, can we step inside and have a talk?”

The cop adjusted his belt and looked stern. Of course I let him in, Jamie sat beside me as the cop explained what happened.

Jamie had been hanging out with a few ‘sketchy’ individuals. They had trespassed into a condemned building and started being a general nuisance, throwing things around, playing loud music. Jamie was the only one that didn’t get away, the other hoodlums were too quick. Jamie was getting off with a warning… this time.

When the police left and it was just me and Jamie, I broke down. I sobbed, begged to know why, just why was he doing this? I wanted my boy back. I wanted to go to the library with him again, read his favorite books, laugh like old times.

I think my tears got to him. I saw a bit of the old Jamie in his face as he rested his hand on my shoulder.

“… I’m sorry, mom… I…” He looked in the kitchen. “… How about we have some cake and… just hang out, okay?” He smiled.

We ended up polishing off the cake together. We didn’t talk about anything serious. Just something Jamie had watched on TV he thought was a hoot. It was, really, I laughed until my sides hurt. I worried about him, but for a brief hour, I thought that maybe he was back to normal.

It’s almost twelve now. He hasn’t even stirred, I haven’t heard him walk around. I got up and headed upstairs. I wanted to talk about his behavior. I wanted to know what the hell was going on. I knocked on his door.

“Jamie? Are you awake?”

No response. I frowned and knocked again. “Jamie? I hope you’re decent…” I slowly opened the door.

The blanket lay on the floor, shredded and covered in a thin layer of a shiny ooze. I looked at the bed and shrieked.

Jamie was nowhere to be seen. Instead there was this… bubble. That’s the best way to put it. A murky, reddish brown bubble. I ran up to it and now up close, I could tell where Jamie was.

Inside.

He was curled up like a fetus, his eyes were closed and he was completely naked. I couldn’t tell if he was even breathing. I screamed and started to claw at the bubble’s wall, desperate to get him out. It was an impossible task, the bubble’s surface was thick and wouldn’t give.

As I watched, helpless, I saw the skin on Jamie’s back start to peel off. Layer by layer, I saw skin, muscle, bone. He was melting. I screeched and pounded harder against the bubble, screaming Jamie’s name as he liquefied in front of my eyes. His gut practically exploded with fat, which succeeded in further clouding my view of him.

Before his head was consumed, his eyes opened. He looked… at peace. No more pain. No more exhaustion. He smiled before the flesh on his face was consumed, leaving behind a grinning skull that too vanished

I sunk to the slime covered floor, my shaking legs unable to support me any longer. My son. My son was changing.

After several moments, I rested my hand on the shell of his cocoon, and strangely smiled as well.

Just a phase, people say. This would be just a phase as well.

[wendynerdwrites]

Sapphires and Salt --- A Salty Teens Fic

Sansa:

A sudden rush of light and fresh air jolts her from her troubled sleep. She tries to bury her face in her pillows, only to have her bedclothes ripped off of her violently.

“Up,” Aunt Lyanna says, sitting atop Sansa’s bedside and brushing a curtain of greasy red hair from her face, “You’ve been in bed a week, and court convenes in three hours.”

“So?” Sansa asks, scoffing, “Why should that matter to me? It’s not as if I have a place there anymore.”

“Don’t be absurd,” the queen replies, “Remember who you are. You’re Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell, daughter of the Lord of the North, Granddaughter of the Lord of the Riverlands, Niece to the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and the Lord of the Vale--”

“-The jilted cast-offs of the prince of Dragonstone-”

The queen looks as if she’s about to say something, but appears to think better of it.

“Niece, I am ordering you, as your queen, to get out of bed. You are going to get up, bathe, dress, and walk into the throne room with the pride of a Stark, understand? Show that brat Aegon every inch of what he’s missed out on.”

Sansa feels bile rush to her throat. “Aegon? Aegon is going to be there?”

“Aye,” Lyanna says, getting to her feet and striding to Sansa’s dressing table, “We dragged that spoiled shit and that common slut back to court. And I can assure you, the king is none too pleased with either.”

Two of the five maids Lyanna brought with her help Sansa out of bed and into a tub of steaming water scented with the aroma of almonds and roses. Lady pads over to the side of the tub and nuzzles the hand Sansa hangs over the edge. Sansa strokes her wolf’s ears affectionately. Lady has barely moved from her bedside all week.

Sansa watches her aunt suspiciously as Lyanna goes through her jewel-chest. Her aunt has always been a bit of a mystery to her. To everyone, really. To this day, no one aside from the king and his wife seem to be sure what occurred between them that led to the Rebellion and their marriage. Some claimed Lyanna was abducted and raped, others insisted she ran off with the king in a swirl of rebellion and romance. After four years at court observing the royal couple, Sansa’s been inclined to think it was somewhere in the middle. The two seemed to love one another, but her aunt always seemed rather unsatisfied and melancholy.

Aunt Lyanna was never unkind to Sansa, but their relationship has always been a bit strained. Lyanna had more in common with Sansa’s wild younger sister, Arya, and it was clear before long that the queen would have preferred a girl of Arya’s inclinations to join her at court than Sansa. Queen Lyanna is a wild woman herself, a voracious huntress and rider who adored besting men with a blade. Far, far more than she enjoyed holding court, that was certain. Queen Lyanna had no patience for pomp, pageantry, or the feminine arts, often eschewing gowns for breeches and leaving her ladies to ride out to the kingswood with her two eldest daughters, Visenya and Lyarra, who had similar dispositions.

When Sansa came to court, it was clear that Lyanna expected her to be similar: to look and act like a Northern girl in full. Indeed, apparently she’d gotten the descriptions of her two nieces from her brother’s letters mixed up, and had expected the scabby-kneed tom-boy, not the perfect lady.

Upon discovering the mistake, the queen encouraged Sansa to be more like her ideal: to ride, learn to fight, to hunt like mad. She pushed her niece to pursue every activity designated as more “masculine”, to unexpected results. Aside from taking up the bow and falconry as regular hobbies, Sansa ended up resisting all of her aunt’s martial inclinations. Instead she took the opportunity of the “freedom” her aunt offered her to read everything her Septa back in Winterfell deemed “unfit” for a lady, and became even more engrossed in reading than she’d been prior. She took up statecraft, trade, astronomy, art, and music over swords and lances. And even when hawking, she had a habit of releasing her game that drove her aunt mad.

Ironically, Sansa ended up becoming closer to the king than the Stark queen, something Sansa sensed bothered her aunt as well.

“If you’re going to be a queen and survive a marriage to my spoiled step-son,” Lyanna had told her, “You have to be strong.”

Another thing Lyanna couldn’t stand: the fact that her niece worshipped the ground Aegon walked.

It was no secret that the relationship between the Crown Prince and his Stark step-mother was strained. That was partly why the betrothal was crafted in the first place. Princess Elia, Aegon’s mother and Rhaegar’s first wife, died during Robert’s Rebellion. Rhaegar had left Elia (and their two children) to run off with Aunt Lyanna, sparking the war. Rhaegar won the war, of course, making Lyanna his queen, something that infuriated Houses Martell and Stark. But a betrothal between Prince Viserys and Princess Arianne, the heir to Dorne, and the fact that Elia’s son remained heir to the Iron Throne managed to placate the Martells. House Stark, however, was another story. They feared for Aunt Lyanna’s safety, and that only got worse as Prince Aegon grew up resenting his step-mother, viewing her as a whore who humiliated, killed, and supplanted his mother. The fact that King Rhaegar had sent his son with Lyanna, Prince Jon, off to foster in the Reach at a young age as well didn’t help.

So, to try and bridge the gap and promote a reconciliation between the half-Martell Crown Prince and the House Stark, the betrothal was arranged.

Sansa left her home in the North at age eleven to come to King’s Landing to get to know her future husband. And she thought she had. Aegon, despite his resentment towards her Aunt Lyanna, was always kind, gallant, and lovely to her. He was everything a prince should be: tall, strong, handsome, well-mannered. And Sansa thought he’d come to love her. Despite the fact that their betrothal was set in stone before they’d even met, he’d courted her upon her arrival to the Red Keep, writing her poems and songs, giving her gifts, escorting her to events, and calling her his lady love. As she grew older, he began stealing kisses and even touched her a few times in a way that gave her shivers and even… Well, he did some wicked things to her that often left her dizzy and boneless. Wicked, wicked things he assured her weren’t worth confessing or atoning for, as they were his sins. And not once did he ever let her reciprocate.

Her prince, with his amethyst eyes and mischievous smile, made her life seem like a dream. How many favors had she made him, ones he’s pressed to his lips and proudly worn? How many times had she sworn her love to him, only to have him swear it right back?

She did everything she could to be his ideal bride-to-be. She worshipped him.

Sansa still remembers the last time she saw him. He’d taken off for Dragonstone to prepare it for their use. On their wedding day, Aegon would formally be granted the ancestral seat of the heir to the Iron Throne, and their wedding wasn’t too far off. Before stepping onto the ship, he’d donned the new cloak she’d made him and kissed her fingertips formally. Then as if he couldn’t contain his passion, he grabbed her before all the court and all of Blackwater Bay and kissed her lips deep. Highly improper, but oh-so-thrilling. And then he’d sprinted toward the ship, grinning.

It had left her so dazed that it wasn’t until later that she thought to blush over so many lords and ladies witnessing that kiss.

Aegon wrote to her to say he felt that Dragonstone would require far more modifications than expected for it to be worthy of her. And so he’d requested more funds from the treasury, and sated her with daily letters assuring her of his love. He told her of the things he was building for her, things based on what she missed from Winterfell: a lemon tree orchard, glass gardens, a fancy bathing chamber with a tub that would be as big as the Hot Spring baths from back home, but twice as fine.

And then…

Lyanna’s warnings, always taken with a grain of salt, turned true. Word came from Dragonstone. Aegon had eloped with Daena Valeryon, daughter of the Lord of Driftmark, a “dragonseed”, and declared her his princess.

His letter to his father (he didn’t write to Sansa), declared his bride to be of “proper and worthy Valyrian blood, a descendent of our own royal bloodline, with the silver-gold hair and amethyst eyes to prove it. A proper vessel to purify our bloodline and preserve the traits of Old Valyria.”

That wasn’t enough, however. Despite not sending Sansa an explanation, it was clear he intended to send her a message. The date Aegon gave for his clandestine wedding was the same date as Sansa’s fifteenth Name Day, and he’d sent her letters--- lying letters--- assuring her of his love following that date.

Lyanna was right. Lyanna was right all along.

Not that Sansa felt particularly inclined to turn to her aunt now. Lyanna hadn’t exactly offered Sansa a shoulder to cry on when the news came, preferring instead to devote her time to arguing with her husband and his council. When she did come to visit Sansa before, her manner was patronizing and cloying.

For years, Lyanna warned Sansa not to trust anyone in King’s Landing. Sansa’s all too ready to take that advice now.

Brokenhearted she may be, but Sansa isn’t stupid. There have been rumors for years about how Queen Lyanna desires to see her own son, Prince Jon, supplant his elder half-brother, and that it was partly why King Rhaegar sent Jon to foster in the Reach when he was eight. Sansa’s only ever exchanged light correspondence with her cousin, and though he’s always been kind and courteous in his letters, she always got the odd feeling that she was being condescended to.

Everyone knows the story of Duncan, the Prince of the Dragonflies, who gave up his crown to marry Jenny of the Oldstones. But that was different. Jenny was a common girl with no name or title behind her. Lady Daena is of one of the chief Houses of the Crownlands, a family that has married into House Targaryen multiple times, who shared Valyrian ancestry with the royal family.

If not for the betrothal, she’d probably be considered a fine match for Prince Aegon. And he wouldn’t be the first king of Westeros to have broken a betrothal in his youth--- just look at Jaehaerys II.

Not to mention, there’s the precedent set by Rhaegar himself. How could the king justify disinheriting his son for defying his designated match to wed another when… Well...

Everyone in King’s Landing plays a game, Sansa knows that. Even before Aegon jilted her, she knew that. But she’d always thought his game was to raise up his Martell cousins when he took the throne. She never imagined this.

Lyanna is no different.

As Sansa is helped out of the tub, the doors open, and Visenya, her looks as Targaryen as her name, marches in carrying a velvet-wrapped parcel. “It’s ready,” she tells her mother.

Lyanna rises from Sansa’s dressing table, leaving an array of carefully-arranged pieces laying out on the surface. Sansa takes her aunt’s place, watching her royal aunt and cousin unwrap the parcel through the mirror as the maids dry and comb her hair.

Yards of shimmering, silvery-white damask and myrish lace spill out of the velvet, and Sansa’s heart stops. It’s her wedding gown, completed, with a chain of pearls studding the trim.

Lyanna and Visenya smirk at her.

“You’re going to dazzle the room,” Lyanna says, “You’ll look every inch a queen.”

Sansa gazes longingly at the exquisite brocade, then glances back at the surface of the dressing table. Sapphires Aegon gifted her gleam up at her.

She clenches her teeth, furious, and shoves the gems off the table. She stands and turns, glaring at Lyanna and Visenya.

“I will not…” She snaps. Her aunt groans.

“Sansa, you’re a direwolf. You’re a Stark. You must be fierce and strong. I will not let you hide yourself away like--”

“---No!” Sansa shouts again. The whole chamber falls silent. Never once has she raised her voice to anyone, let alone the queen. “I am a wolf! But I am not some doll for you to dress up and parade out. I will not wear the gown of a wedding that shall not be, I will not wear his sapphires. Send my regular maids in and get out.”

Lyanna stares at her, alarmed. “Niece…”

“---I assure you, Aunt Lyanna, you will see me at court, and I will appear every inch a Stark. Now leave.”

~_~_~_~_~_~

She has the gown, the sapphires, and every other bauble Aegon ever gifted her sent to his new bride. When she enters the throne room, she does not need to glitter. She wears an ivory silk with grey velvet trim, with a posey of blue winter roses pinned to her bodice. They match the crown of blossoms atop her head. Yet more of the flowers are pinned to Lady’s collar. She dons no jewels. What need does she have for them when she is literally leading a wolf the size of a horse? The gown is simple, but it shows off her figure better than anything else in her wardrobe, and she never fails to make heads turn when she wears it.

Sansa meets every pitying eye with a smile, and she climbs the dais to take her usual place with her cousins, Visenya and Lyarra. She is still the queen’s niece and lady-in-waiting. The place is still hers.

The king, however, has other plans. He gazes at her appraisingly, and gestures for her to come over to him. Sansa stands before the Iron Throne and curtseys. King Rhaegar surprises her by taking her hands in his. Their eyes meet. His are kind.

“My Sweet Niece, you are very brave. My most profound apologies.”

“You are too kind, Your Grace,” Sansa replies modestly.

Before he can say another word, however, one of the heralds announces the Prince and Princess of Dragonstone, and Sansa hurries to her place.

Aegon and his new bride are escorted by guards. Princess Daena wears the very costume Lyanna intended for Sansa: the gown, the sapphires. Both of them look thoroughly pleased with themselves.

Sansa doesn’t hesitate to meet Aegon’s violet eyes. She does not flinch, though she wishes to. Just seeing him is painful. Seeing the obvious glee with which he presents his new bride is worse. What had Sansa done to make him want to hurt her so?

The two of them kneel before the throne, and for once, King Rhaegar doesn’t immediately gesture for them to rise. Instead, he looks down at his son and new good-daughter with a sad resignation.

“Aegon of House Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone and Lady Daena Valeryon of Driftmark, you are found guilty of entering into an unlawful union, of a violation of sacred vows made before Gods and Men, and endangering the succession, security, and stability of the Iron Throne. Your elopement has not only violated the orders of your king, but done grievous insult to our allies and dishonored a good lady of high birth and morals. In so doing, you have endangered the very peace that the Seven Kingdoms have worked so hard to achieve and severely undermined our most holy relationship with our good vassals. You’ve dishonored your position, you’ve dishonored our people, you’ve dishonored your suitors, you’ve dishonored your Houses, and you’ve dishonored yourselves. Tell me, what do you have to say for yourself, my son?”

Aegon looks up at his father and smiles. “I only followed precedent, Your Grace.”

King Rhaegar rises, incensed. “A precedent of reigniting a war that nearly destroyed our dynasty? A precedent of dishonor?”

“If that is how you see it, Father. I bow to your judgment.”

The throne room erupts in whispers. This is dangerous. Aegon has only managed to place his father’s hypocrisy front and center. He’s trapped the king.

Rhaegar looks at his eldest son sadly and walks down from the dais. He stands over his kneeling son and raises him up. “You’re right, my son. For too long, I have placed the burden of my mistakes on you. I did everything I accuse you of to your mother and her House, and more. And in my efforts to rectify my mistakes, I forced you into my atonement. You don’t deserve that. I violated custom and honor to do as I wished, and the consequences should be mine to shoulder alone. Though I maintain that my queen is blameless in all of this, Elia’s memory deserves better than to have the same injustice done her be rewarded and to have her son forced to bear the responsibility for it. You deserve the same freedom she did, my son. And even though you’ve chosen to emulate the crime I did your mother, you still don’t deserve to endure the consequences of them. I’m sorry, Aegon. All I ask, however, is that you show remorse to the one you did harm.”

Aegon smiles, nods, and turns toward the dais, looking right at Sansa. “My dear Lady of House Stark, I cannot begin to rectify the harm I’ve done you. If there was any way I might spare your heart, I would. You are a lady of the finest qualities, as gracious as you are beautiful, and any man would be lucky to have you. Please know, it was not any failing of yours that prompted my actions, but my own weakness and the fact that I lost my heart to another. I am unworthy of you, My Lady. I know it. I dare not assume your forgiveness, but I humbly beg for it nonetheless.”

He smirks throughout this little speech. Every smug word is yet another blow, another confirmation that he never loved her, that he’d fooled her.

But what does it truly matter? The king has forgiven him. And she’ll never truly escape this humiliation. She will spend the rest of her life the jilted, unwanted woman, expected to serve Prince Aegon and Princess Daena, and later King Aegon and Queen Daena. This will follow her forever.

She’ll still make an excellent match, of course. Her family will have to be appeased, and part of that will be ensuring she have a bright future. But she’ll still always be the subject of the man who purposely broke her heart. But she’s not going to wilt away. She’s not going to give Aegon the reaction he’s clearly looking for.

Sansa forces a smile to her face, eliciting gasps from the court. “Prince Aegon, I wish you and your new princess every happiness.”

She alights from the dais, moving towards the newlywed, leading Lady to walk beside her. Aegon’s smile falls from his lips, and both he and his new bride look frightened. The throne room rumbles with shock and speculation.

Daena does indeed have purple eyes and silver-gold hair, but her looks end there. She’s got a plain, spotted face. Sansa can’t tell if that makes this better or worse.

Sansa moves before them, stops, and curtseys. She even kisses Princess Daena’s new sapphire ring, and smiles up at her replacement.

“You’ll have to get your royal husband to replace the stones with amethysts to better match your eyes, My Princess,” Sansa says sweetly, “And hopefully you’ll be able to alter the gown to better suit your own origins.”

Both Aegon and Daena go stony-faced. The jewels are sapphires, a precious stone, to match Sansa’s eyes. And the gown Daena wears is basically a giant Stark tapestry. They’d presented themselves to the court draped in a giant tribute to the House Aegon meant to insult, and brought attention to the fact that his new princess would have to downgrade to semi-precious stones in order to free herself of Sansa’s cast-offs and achieve the same personal touch the gift originally had.

King Rhaegar shocks Sansa by taking her hand. “It seems Lyanna’s niece takes after the best parts of Elia more than her own son. Now, Aegon, as I promised, you’ve made amends. And thus, I free you to live the life you want.”

The wildly speculating hall comes to a sudden silence. Sansa’s heart freezes.

“F-Father?”

“Aegon of House Targaryen,” Rhaegar announces, “I hereby release you from the seat of Dragonstone, the inheritance of the Iron Throne, and all other burdens of leadership and rule of our family name. You are freed from the line of succession and all pertaining duties and responsibilities, as are your future heirs, and you shall henceforth be known as Lord Aegon, Prince of the Blood, with an honored place at court and a fair income to accompany your new rank. You are free to do as you wish with your life.”

The color drains from Aegon’s handsome face. “You… You can’t do this… House Martell…”

“House Martell are still our kin,” Rhaegar replies, “Bonds which are compounded by the union between our brother Viserys and their Princess Arianne. Meanwhile, the Houses Stark, Tully, and Arryn require appeasement. Your brother fills the Stark role, but the ties to the Tullys and Arryns are not guaranteed. At least, not until the proper blood ties are secured.”

“You… You can’t….”

“Yes, Aegon, I can. Don’t worry, you will always have a place at court, if you wish. You and your new bride are of course expected to remain here until Jon arrives and you’ve sworn the proper vows to him. And I will expect you to attend the wedding, as well, and show Lady Sansa the same honor she’s shown you. But after that… Whatever you wish… The world is your oyster. You’re a free man.”

Sansa absorbs the full impact of these words, and everything they mean. She tries not to shake.

Aegon and his new wife begin to howl and curse, but Sansa takes no satisfaction in their fury. Rhaegar orders court done with, and has his son and new good-daughter escorted out. The lords and ladies file out, and Rhaegar turns to Sansa with a sad smile. Aunt Lyanna, grinning from ear to ear, joins them at once.

“You’re to be our daughter after all, Lady Sansa,” King Rhaegar says with a strained, affected warmth. He grips her hand tightly.

Sansa swallows. “Please, Your Graces, I am flattered, but there’s no need for you to do such things on my account.”

“Come now, my lady,” Rhaegar tells her, “I thought you always wanted to be queen.”

The combination of Aegon’s betrayal and observing her aunt for nearly half a decade have made her reconsider. “It isn’t about that, I---”

She just wants to be free of this place, the halls in which Aegon kissed her lips, made her a thousand promises, and broke her heart. The walls built on deceit. She wants to go home, to people who truly loved her.

“---You’ll make a wonderful queen. Probably a far better one than myself,” Lyanna says, letting out a bark of laughter, “You’re made to be one. The perfect lady since age three, as your parents always said.”

“And after all these years, I can hardly let you go, can I? Who will I play duets with?” Rhaegar asks.

“My son isn’t like Aegon, Sansa,” Lyanna tells her, “He’s honest, honorable, and dutiful. He’s like your father. He even looks a bit like Ned.”

Sansa doesn’t want someone like her father, she wants her father.

“Jonny’s a sweetheart!”

Sansa nearly jumps at the sound of Lyarra’s voice. She looks behind her. Both princesses stand there, smiling eagerly. When did they get there?

She feels sick, oh so sick. She hasn’t seen Jon face to face since she was three.

But that’s never mattered, has it? She’s allowed her feelings for Aegon to keep her oblivious all this time. Sansa was never here as family. She’s a hostage. She’s always been a hostage. She was sent here to marry Rhaegar’s heir and secure the loyalties of all of her kin. And she’s going to do that, whether she wants to or not. The political capital she comes with is more important than anything to them. It’s what keeps them in power. And Rhaegar is willing to disown his own son for it.

“I… I suppose I could meet my cousin.”

Her aunt and uncle lean back, pleased.

“We’ve already summoned Jon back to court. He’s due to arrive in three short weeks,” Lyanna says, “In the meantime, though, why don’t we order you a new trousseau?”

~_~_~_~_~_~_~

Jon:

“She’s very beautiful,” Sam remarks.

Jon looks at his foster brother, incredulous. He and the ill-favored Tarly son recline in the sumptuous chambers Lord Varner gave the prince. When they arrived at the Roseroad Keep that afternoon, the lord presented Jon with a package from the Red Keep along with the accommodations. It turned out to be a miniature of his new bride-to-be, his cousin, Sansa Stark.

Jon can’t help but wonder, looking down at painted ivory, if this bauble belonged to Aegon a few weeks ago. How many more of his hand-me-downs should he expect? Jon’s already been granted his title, his inheritance, his bride…

The portrait does indeed depict a stunning young woman, with flowing auburn hair, big, blue eyes, creamy skin, high cheekbones, and bow-shaped lips. But Jon has rarely come across a portrait of a highborn maiden that doesn’t possess these same attributes, even if the supposed subject had spots and a lazy eye. That Lady Sansa is pretty, Jon doesn’t doubt, his mother has been saying as much in her letters for years. But he doubts his cousin in the porcelain-doll-goddess this miniature promises.

Not that he cares too much about that. Mother also said Lady Sansa is frivolous, a “perfect lady”, who didn’t care to take advantage of the freedoms offered to her and learn to fight. Mother complained often that Lady Sansa was content to adhere to the rigid, dull lifestyle of a highborn maid, more interested in fashion than adventure. That she fell madly in love with Aegon, and ignored all of his mother’s warnings about him. That she loved silk dresses, handsome knights, songs of romance, and shiny baubles, and that she loathed the sight of blood.

Of course, the moment Aegon threw his birthright aside like a bag of dung, the queen’s descriptions of Lady Sansa became more favorable. Her beauty and virtue were stressed, and Mother assured Jon that the lady “learned her lesson” after being jilted. That she enjoys hawking and has a lovely voice, that she’s “an ideal queen.”

Jon, the unwanted prince, has never desired an “ideal queen” and he’s not sure he wants one now. He’s always preferred girls like his mother and sisters: athletic, unconventional, ready to ride and joust and spar with him.

His cousin is a sweet, if spoiled girl, and he knows she’s blameless in all of this, but not only is she by all accounts a ninny, but even in their scant correspondence over the years he’s detected a certain reticence from her.

Of course, that hardly makes her any different from almost everyone else. Until a few weeks ago, Jon was the family embarrassment, the prince that the king would rather everyone forget. The product of the king’s insults to House Martell, the ashes of Robert’s Rebellion. Too male to be as unthreatening as his sisters, too questionable to be a valuable bargaining chip. Even his legitimacy was questioned. Father had shipped him off to Horn Hill when he was eight, and mostly ignored him since.

Jon is hardly pleased to suddenly find himself the favored son and heir. Sam has always been more a brother to him than Aegon ever was, and Jon made peace with his status a while back. He’d learned not to pin his self-worth on a father and kingdom that didn’t want him and embrace the freedom that being the second son afforded him. Besides, court was a cesspool of deceit and corruption. Why should Jon want any part of that when he could gain his knighthood and use his name and income to forge his own path?

Until, of course, Aegon went and ruined everything.

Now Aegon has the freedom (not that the spoiled tit probably appreciated it), and Jon is saddled with all the responsibility, dragged back to the court of the father that never wanted him, to marry a stranger who will spend the rest of her life comparing him to his fancy, handsome half-brother.

Sure, his mother might be thrilled with this development, but for Jon, it means a life of being the second choice.

Jon holds the miniature down to the eye-level of Ghost, his direwolf. “What do you think, Old Friend?” He asks, “Do we like her?”

The direwolf wags his massive tail in reply.

“Is that for her, or your littermate?” The image depicted Lady Sansa sitting beside her own direwolf, from the same litter Ghost came from. At least that will be interesting. Though the fact that Sansa named her wolf “Lady” is worthy of an eyeroll.

Ghost cocks his head, which could mean anything.

“You should send her something,” Sam suggests.

“There’s no time to have my portrait done,” Jon responds, taking a sip from his tankard of ale.

“Obviously. But you said she like pretty things, right? Send her a piece of jewelry. A necklace or bracelet or something. Maybe something with sapphires, to match her eyes.”

“How am I supposed to get sapphires?” Jon asks.

“You were saving up your pocket money for a new set of blades, remember? But your parents already sent you all the new things you could want. So why don’t you use the money?”

Jon frowns. A good point. Jon had worked hard to earn and save up that gold, only for all of his new princely trappings to arrive just as he was about to reach his goal, rendering the two-year-effort more or less pointless. Something must be done with the gold, he supposes.

“Sapphires?” Jon asks. Sam nods.

“Like her eyes. In all the best romantic stories and poems, a lady’s eyes are mentioned. You can have it sent ahead. It may break the ice. And she did send you something…”

“Fine. We’ll head down to the market tomorrow before we leave.”

Sam helps him select two sapphire cuffs the next morning. “You should write a note.”

Jon isn’t much of a writer. And he’s not sure what to say. But he does it.

These sapphires are the exact color of your eyes.

Jon can barely remember the layout of the Red Keep, it’s been so long. Ten years, more than half his life. His mother’s letters tell him what to expect. Aegon will be there, probably plotting to poison him, because Father insists that the old crown prince pay homage to the new one. To make sure the whole thing is as awkward as possible, Aegon’s new wife will be there as well.

The Dornish courtiers are none too pleased, but Mother says that they blame Aegon as much as they do the Starks, and that many lords and ladies from the Northern Alliance Kingdoms--- the North, Vale, and Riverlands-- will be there to support them. He’ll be allowed to keep Ghost close by most of the time, since Sansa was permitted to keep Lady. As long as he made sure the wolf behaved, he’d be fine.

He’ll be watched and judged constantly, even by the Stark faction, who will want to make sure their lady is happy following her humiliation. Thousands of eyes will look to find fault with him and declare him an unfit prince.

No pressure, really. With every step closer to King’s Landing, Jon feels the apprehension grow heavier. He doesn’t want this. They don’t want him. So why, why is this happening?

I’ll be keeping Mother safe, he reminds himself. Lyanna Stark was never going to flourish under Aegon VI. But with her son as king, her future is assured. So there’s that.

When they’re at the City Border, his retinue is stopped, and servants swarm around him, pushing him into a tent and the bathtub within said tent, coming at him with scissors and razors and perfumes and silks. Before Jon is fully aware of what has occurred, he’s sitting atop his horse again in black and scarlet brocade, his beard trimmed and perfumed, his normally-unruly curls cut and slicked back, a ruby-studded chain dangling across his chest, and shod in boots shiny enough to render his reflection from the stirrups. Even Ghost has acquired a new collar and a very confused expression.

He looks down at Madrick, his Master of the Guard. “I suppose I’m finally fit to be seen?”

“Indeed,” Madrick confirms before calling for the gates to be opened. He hands Jon a sack of coins.

“What are these for?”

“The beggars.”

Jon isn’t prepared for the roar that erupts from the crowded streets when he rides in. He’s not prepared to hear his name being called, or for anyone to appear happy to see him. He’s not prepared for the children on their father’s shoulders, reaching their chubby arms out to him. He’s not prepared for the thin, hungry-looking men, women, and urchins to run into his path. Sam has to elbow him in the stomach for him to remember to throw the coins. He’s not prepared to see grey and white direwolf banners amidst the Targaryen flags, or for children to point to Ghost in delight rather than terror. He’s not prepared for the pretty maidens who blush when he looks their way.

The tidal wave of adulation follows him the closer he gets to the Red Keep. By the time those gates open, he’s almost forgotten a lifetime of being the unwanted prince.

The court is assembled on a marble dais, his family at the very front. His sisters and Aunt Daenerys wave at the sight of him, delighted. But it’s his mother’s eyes he finds first: the Stark-grey irises. She grins at him, and he can see the pride there. It warms his heart even more than the crowds.

But then, of course, there’s the King.

My father, Jon reminds himself. He has to do that sometimes. Rhaegar Targaryen has always seemed more his mother’s husband and his king than his father. Even when Jon lived with his family, the king had little time for him. The only remotely father-like warmth Jon ever received was from Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Jon looks for the old knight among the crowd, and both men smile upon catching one another’s eyes.

Then, of course, there’s Aegon. Jon feels his older brother’s eyes on him well before he meets that purple gaze. Jon’s hands ball into fists when he beholds his brother. You did this, Jon wants to shout at him, You did this, so don’t you dare hate me for it.

Jon glances at the silver-haired young woman at Aegon’s side. She wears a matching look of loathing, but it’s easily the most remarkable thing about her face. He scans the lines for a sign of his new betrothed, but finds nothing.

Jon dismounts and approaches his family carefully. He has to get this just right.

He walks up the steps, and drops into a kneel seven steps down from his father’s feet.

“My King,” he recites, “It is my honor to come before you.”

All of a sudden, there is a gloved hand under his chin, pushing his gaze upward into a pair of affectionate violet eyes.

“My son!” Rhaegar cries in a tone that makes Jon wonder who he’s speaking to. “My Jon!”

Now he’s being embraced, pulled to his father’s broad, silk-clad chest. Thoroughly confused, the young prince looks into the king’s eyes, half expecting the man to shed tears.

Rhaegar releases him and scans his from head to toe. “You’ve become a fine man, my son,” the king declares, “I couldn’t be prouder.”

“Neither can I. Now, may I please also embrace our son?” Lyanna Stark snipes, though with a smiles on her face and tears glistening at the corners of her eyes. Her hug is warmer and tighter than Rhaegar’s, and Jon returns it gratefully.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispers to her.

“I’ve missed you,” she replies.

Jon embraces his sisters and aunt affectionately, truly thrilled to see them. His Aunt Daenerys is more beautiful than ever, Visenya looks like she could take on an army, and Lyarra is his mother in miniature.

When Aegon comes to shake his hand, the two brothers end up battling for control, trying desperately to make the other give in. It’s not until Lady Daena clears her throat that Aegon lets go and introduces his new wife. Jon kisses her cheek and greets her as ‘Sister.’

She has no chance to reply when the king steps forward and clears his throat. There’s suddenly a cloaked, hooded figure on his arm.

“And now, my son, the person that perhaps, you’ve been most eager to meet,” Rhaegar declares pompously as he reaches for the hood, “Allow me to present the Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell.”

The hood falls and Jon finds himself speechless.

She’s not as pretty as the miniature. She’s prettier. She’s utterly stunning. Up until now, the most beautiful woman Jon has ever seen is Margaery Tyrell, the doe-eyed daughter of the Lord of Highgarden. But even Lady Margaery pales in comparison to the woman before him.

The deep blue of her eyes are like an ocean, and Jon almost feels like he’s drowning in them. Her creamy skin makes his fingers shake with the urge to stroke it. Her hair is a river of silken fire. Strawberry-colored lips frame a dazzling smile.

She drifts into a curtsey dainty and graceful enough to set his teeth on edge. He expects a high-pitched, girlish voice. But when she greets him, it’s with a low, husky, velvet-like tone.

Jon swallows heavily. He can’t tell which is worse: the lump in his throat, or the one stirring in his pants.

She’s for him?

He looks her up and down, amazed, absolutely undone---

---Until his eyes find her wrists.

Her bare wrists. Elegant, slender, and uncovered by the cuffs he spent two years of pocket money on.

Indignation takes over. This is the first time they’ve met. He’d sent her the product of two years of squiring for Randyll fucking Tarly, and she couldn’t even be bothered to wear them?

He observes her perfect smile again. It’s too perfect. It’s fixed. And he realizes that those blue eyes of hers don’t sparkle with a matching joy. She’s not happy to meet him, she’s playing a part.

If anything, now that he observes her more carefully, she looks like she’s been frozen in place, and is in pain, almost.

Jon tries to calm himself. Perhaps the package simply didn’t arrive. He’s jumping to conclusions. He takes a deep breath and presses her knuckles to his lips.

“Sweet Cousin, it is my honor to meet you. I’d been told to expect a beauty, but nothing could have prepared me for this.”

“You are much too kind, My Prince,” she says quietly, “You’re even more handsome than I’d been told.”

There’s something to her tone, and undercurrent, that sets Jon on edge. If he didn’t know any better, he’d guess she was mocking him somehow.

“But not as handsome as some, I suppose,” he replies, watching her carefully.

“As handsome as I could have hoped.”

That was definitely a charged remark. And Jon sees it, clear as day. I didn’t want you.

I didn’t want you, either, he thinks, And neither did he. Everyone files into the palace, and Jon takes the opportunity to quietly inquire to his betrothed if she received his gift.

“I did,” she replies, “Thank you. It was very kind.”

“I wasn’t sure,” he stresses as they follow his parents through the entry hall, “When I saw your wrists, I feared their delivery had been delayed. It would be a great shame, as I had very much hoped to see the sapphires, considering the expense.”

Her nose actually wrinkles. “Perhaps you’d rather see me wearing a necklace made of coins, if expense is so important to you.”

“Not everyone can drop a pound of gold to buy a lady jewels,” Jon says, “I know things are different at court, but generally, people have to work for their money.”

“Hardly something you’ll have to worry about, I think,” Sansa responds, “You’re clearly happy to try and buy your way into anything that isn’t handed to you.”

Randyll Tarly is a hard-nosed, thin-lipped, cruel, miserly son of a bitch. Ever since Jon set foot at Horn Hill, Lord Tarly made it clear how much of a burden it was to take in “the half-bastard”.  Nothing Jon did was ever good enough for the man, especially after Jon dared to befriend and defend Lord Tarly loathed older son, Sam. Jon’s adolescence had been characterized by his guardian’s determination to teach him “humility” and to be a “real soldier.” The man hadn’t even granted Jon his knighthood, despite the years of service and skill Jon had displayed. No, that came from Garlan Tyrell. And even after that, the man had Jon, an anointed knight, mucking the stables and polishing his boots like a lowly squire, all to be paid an absolute pittance.

It took two years for Jon to save up his “wages” (which, given they came from the royal treasury anyways, were more rightfully his now that he’d reached manhood than they were Lord Randyll’s) to acquire gold that most squires were paid in a year. He’d spent that two years all to buy her those bracelets, as it turned out, rather than the blade set he’d wanted. Two years of serving a man who only seemed to find joy in flogging his servants for sneezing in his presence.

He’d practically had to pry every copper penny out of Tarly’s fists.

“Handed to him”, indeed.

“I’m sorry for thinking of you,” he retorts, furious, “I had hoped you’d like them. Perhaps you prefer diamonds. But I thought sapphires might---”

“---Match my eyes?” She interrupts, “Next time, save your gold. I have an entire lockbox of sapphires, courtesy of my last intended. Sure, none of them resemble literal shackles, but it’s a bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

Jon gapes at her, utterly floored by this pronouncement of spoiled entitlement. “May I remind you,” he hisses, “That I am to be your husband and your king.”

“I don’t need to be reminded of that, I assure you. I know my place.”

“Do you?” He asks, baffled. Mother always said that despite everything, Sansa was sweet. This girl is a monster.

“Oh, yes. My place is wherever I’m put. I’m a good little pawn. I’m just not half as stupid as you all hoped.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t even worry about it,” she replies, pausing to greet a courtier and smile her courtly smile, “I’ll spread my legs, give you sons, manage your court, and charm your vassals. I won’t trouble you or get in the way of your dalliances as long as you show some discretion. I’ll be the perfect queen. I believe in doing my duty. It’s what’s best for Westeros. I’d just prefer it if you don’t assume that I don’t know what this is. I’m to be your queen, not your fool.”

Seven Hells. “No wonder---”

But he stops himself before he says the rest. Not that it matters, he can tell by the look in her eyes that she knows exactly what he almost said.

She says nothing, merely greets and charms the lords and ladies around them until at long last, they’re free to settle in. Before she departs, however, she hisses through clenched teeth. “I’ll never forget.”

~_~_~_~_~_~

His first morning in the Red Keep, he is woken by a delivery. Two guards carry a steel-bound lockbox into his solar and open it before him. Jon is nearly blinded by the cerulean glare of its contents.

There’s a note is curly, angelic script.

This should prove more than enough to compensate for the expense of my new shackles. To ensure that you receive a fair price, I’ve enclosed certificates of appraisal for each piece and a list of merchants who will not cheat you. This should be enough to swell your coffers admirably.

Well- “Earned”,

Lady Sansa Stark.

It’s an absurd amount of sapphires. Apparently, Aegon isn’t too imaginative.

Jon instructs his men to pawn them at once, finding it uncomfortable to look upon the small fortune his betrothed sent a moment longer. He ends up using portions of the revenue to send her gifts. She returns them.

He soon learns that his bride hosts sewing circles and small banquets in the Maidenvault. She avoids him, and show little concern as to whether or not he notices. He does.

So does his mother, who is none too pleased.

“If you don’t make her happy, you’re going to spend the entirety of your reign with half the Lords Paramount breathing down your neck,” his mother informs him, “And I can only buy you so much confidence from the Northern faction. The Tullys and Arryns aren’t going to be happy if their lady is miserable. The last time a royal bride was miserable, there was a rebellion. House Targaryen was nearly toppled. And trust me, the Martells are desperate for means to undermine you. You want to sit the Iron Throne with the Seven Kingdoms united behind you, or you’ll end up like your father, basing every decision on pleasing his unruly vassals.”

“How can I make her happy when nothing pleases her?” Jon asks. “I’ve sent her flowers, jewelry, fabric, all the things you said she likes.”

“Jon,” his mother cups his cheek, “Aegon showered her with gifts, too. You’re a good man, give her that instead of things.”

He invites her to take lunch with him. She reschedules four times until finally giving in. He makes sure all her favorites await her on his balcony, and tries to look handsome for her.

She arrives wearing green silk and that fixed smile of hers. Jon sends the servants away and serves her himself.

The direwolves, at least, get along, tails wagging madly as they rush to greet each other.

Jon swallows. “I hear you’ve practically founded your own little court within the Maidenvault.”

“I felt it kind to offer a place for the ladies of the court who prefer silk and songs to sweat and saddle-sores,” she replies, playing with her food, “I hesitated to organize things before, as I didn’t want to presume or step on Her Grace’s toes, so to speak.”

“But now…?”

She actually snorts. “Now? What does it matter, now? I’m not going anywhere, and your mother is going to have everything she wants, so I may as well.”

Jon’s eyes narrow. The tone with which she speaks of his mother irritates him, but something holds him back to full-blown fury. There’s a resignation to the way she speaks that is so, so sad.

“I know Her Grace and you have your differences.”

“She thinks I’m a useless, frivolous fool, and always has. She wishes I were my sister, Arya. A proper Northern lass. I’ve been a disappointment to her ever since I arrived,” Sansa interrupts, “I’m sure she’s recounted what a weak, love-struck ninny I am several times. I ignored the warnings of my own blood to fall for a duplicitous prat because he was supposed to be the prince from my dreams. I’ve learned my lesson, better than she expected. But it doesn’t matter now. Her son will be king, her position is secure, and she doesn’t have to worry. I’m still here to secure your family’s position, and I’ll cover all the duties she’s always hated as well. Despite her frustrations with me, Jon, she’s better off with me than with Arya, I assure you.”

Jon stares, eyes wide. He had no idea. “She’s… She’s a good woman.”

“In her own way, yes. She was just a girl when your father stole her heart and won a war for her. She loves him and you madly. But she’s not a girl anymore. And as much as she loves your father, she hates being queen. She’s stuck. And for the last eighteen years she’s carried the guilt of the war, of Elia and Brandon and our grandfather. And she’ll do anything to make sure she’s not the undoing of the man she loves. All the while, being terrified of the man she helped raise, the living reminder of all her youthful impulses wrought. But now her son will be king, and the Seven Kingdoms will stay intact. I’m here, silly, stupid, and weak, maybe, but with all the right connections to bind the rupture her love story caused. Here I am, the daughter of enough fallen enemies, to be married off and save her from all the consequences, heartbroken or not, I’m here. I always will be.”

Jon feels bile rise from his stomach. It terrifies him. Sansa isn’t stupid. Sansa isn’t stupid at all.

He wants to defend his mother, but he has no argument. “I’m sure she cares for you---”

“---I don’t think she’s heartless. I’m sure she pities me. And it’s not her fault that I let Aegon break my heart. She tried to warn me. But I’m still a worthy sacrifice. And your mother has at least been more honest with me than the rest. Everyone, even my parents, were happy to let me believe the lie. I told you, Jon. I know my place. Your family taught it to me. I came here thinking I was the heroine of a song. But I’m a hostage. I’m a literal peace offering.”

“So am I,” Jon replies bitterly.

There’s an awkward pause.

“It’s not the same,” she states, finally.

“No,” he admits, “It isn’t.”

He feels unclean, as if he’s just committed some sort of crime, and he’s staring into the eyes of his victim. But he’s not sure how to apologize or fix it, because he can’t identify exactly what crime he’s committed. He just knows he’s party to this, whether he wishes to be or not.

“You’re going to treat me well, Jon. Because I’m the key to half of Westeros. I know my place. Every bit of it. You need me to keep my family in check. It’ll only become more important with each passing year. So you’re going to give me a place at the table. You’ll be discreet with any infidelities. You won’t keep my children from me. You won’t hurt me, or force yourself on me, or be cruel. You will show me every inch of honor, respect, and credit I am due. I will have a say in every major decision made. I will do my duty and show you respect, honor, and give you my full support. I will bear your children. I will not bear any other man’s bastards. I will charm your vassals and placate my kin. I will reach out to the Martells. I will mend your clothes and your wounds. I will aid you in matters of state. After I’ve born you an heir and a suitable amount of spares, I will be discreet in any liaisons and keep myself from conceiving another man’s child. I will devote myself to the success of your reign and the preservation of our family. And we will both be honest with one another. Is that fair?”

He doesn’t like the bit about the other men. Not one bit.

“No,” he says, fists clenched, “That isn’t fair at all. It’s not fair to you, or to me. It’s not fair to anyone. Why should I have to go looking to other women to find happiness? Why should you have to sacrifice your body to a man you barely know, then restrict yourself? Why should either of us have to build our life together through leverage and threats? Use our families, who, let’s face it, don’t care a wit about us, or at least not as much as they should, to control each other?”

“Because there isn’t an alternative. These are the roles we were born into. And the people of this country need us to fill those roles.”

“No.” Jon shakes his head. “They don’t need that. Jaehaerys the Wise and Good Queen Alysanne loved each other…”

“You can run off and marry for love if you like, Jon. But they’ll just pass the crown to Viserys, and the realm will suffer for it. Your uncle is an utter shit, but at least his marriage secures Dorne.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Jon snaps, rising to his feet and beginning to pace. “I’m marrying you, that’s set in stone. But why should we go into this merely tolerating each other?”

“Because your brother left me broken, Jon. I don’t have a proper heart to give anymore.”

He stops short. “No, I don’t accept that. Aegon is a dog turd. He’s not capable of such a thing. He hurt you, but he couldn’t possibly ruin you. You’re a… You’re you, and he’s just something you stepped in.”

She actually giggles at that. “You think that, maybe, but he… I loved him, Jon.”

“You loved what you thought he was. Because everyone wanted you to feel that way. You were a child when you met him, like my mother was. But you’re not a child anymore. You see so much else, Sansa. Surely you see that.” He walks over to her and kneels by her side, looking into her eyes. “See me. I’m not Aegon. I don’t want to use you, or hurt you, or lie to you. I don’t give a shit about the Iron Throne, or your family. I’d happily see that stupid metal chair melted down and run away to the East. I’d run away with you, if you like. They are trying to force us into things we don’t want. But one thing I think I want is you, if you’ll have me. I’ll take you, and leave everything else.”

“Why, though?” She asks. “Why do you want me?”

“Because you’re beautiful, clever, and just as angry as I am. And you care, Sansa. You are ready to resign yourself to bondage because you want to help others. That’s… That’s incredible.”

“I’m not clever, I’m frivolous and weak. Your mother--”

“You’re just as defiant in your frivolity as my mother is in her armor. If she can’t see that, it’s her loss,” he grins, “If you were really as weak as she claims, you’d have dropped everything and done whatever you can to please her. Instead, you started your own court. That’s inspiring. I didn’t want to be king, but if you wish, I’d like to be king to a queen like that.”

His stomach sinks a bit. He feels like an idiot, and he isn’t even sure what he’s saying, though he means every word. But Sansa’s given no indication that she wants him.

He supposes that’s not too surprising. She’s beautiful. He’s the second choice.

Jon pulls away, embarrassed. He’s made a fool of himself. She’ll never respect him. Maybe if he’s lucky, she’ll pity him.

“You’re sweet,” she says, “A good man.”

Jon cringes. Sweet. That’s something women say about puppies and babies.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “About the bracelets. I just felt so trapped and I was so angry with myself for letting him charm me. And I felt like everyone thought I was stupid enough to fall for it all again… I didn’t want to be bought or tricked. I didn’t want them to be right about me. I was scared.”

“I did it because a friend suggested it,” Jon confesses, “I just looked for whatever had the biggest stones. It didn’t occur to me that they looked like shackles. But I didn’t care. I sent them because I thought you’d be charmed by something shiny. So you weren’t entirely wrong. I got so angry because I’d been saving up before… well… Father sent for me. And I spent the savings on them. But it’s stupid, because as much as I cared, I didn’t care to spend it on something I cared about. It’s… It’s strange, really. I worked so hard, and cared so much about the work I did, then dropped all that work on something I didn’t care to even think about.”

She sighs. “I know what you mean. I spent months working on my wedding dress. But when it was finished, I sent it off to Daena. Can you believe that?”

Sansa utters a bitter laugh. She closes her eyes and leans back in her chair. “I’m not going to run away with you, Jon. There are a lot of people who would suffer if Westeros falls apart, people who are blameless in all this. Our families think we belong to them, but we don’t. We belong to the people that depend on their lords to do their duty. And honestly… I’ve spent my whole life preparing to be queen. It’s all I know. And frankly, I barely know you.”

He turns away, stomach sinking. She’s right, of course. They’re stuck.

“...But I’m willing to stay with you…”

He turns around, heart rising. She smiles at him.

“I know this isn’t the life you expected,” she says gently, “But I’m willing to help you through it. I’m willing to try. Maybe we could fall in love. I’d like to.”

[cowgirlontheloose]

Faulkner Makes Me Miss My Brother

I am finally reading William Faulkner, now that I am old.

I hover these days in a ground floor apartment that streams with light, in an affluent small Ontario town where everything looks pretty well perfect. At least on the surface. Stately homes. Leafy parks. A gurgling river winding through one of them. 

Faulkner’s Mississippi is a long, long way from tourist destination small town Ontario with its heritage this and heritage that. Yet through Faulkner’s words I stand right there beside Cash while he saws planks for his dying mother’s coffin. He saws again, his elbow flashing slowly, a thin thread of fire running along the edge of the saw, lost and recovered at the top and bottom of each stroke, in unbroken elongation, so that the saw appears to be six feet long, into and out of Pa’s shabby and aimless character. 

But most of all, Faulkner makes me miss my brother, Derek. If he were alive I would phone him this instant and say “Guess what! I’m finally reading Faulkner!” and he would get what I meant.

Good literature was one of the topics that kept the sibling flame flickering between my younger brother and me. That, and the loving, imperfect parents we shared and the elegant house we grew up in and climbing the weeping willows in our backyard and also our mother correcting us with a ‘tch!’: For goodness sake, say garden, not yard!

It has taken me a lot of living to get to Faulkner, so I am more than grateful to be still here so I can experience his brilliance. His novel, As I Lay Dying, unfolds in the poor folk countryside of Mississippi during the 1920s. When he was asked about the title, Faulkner quotes thusly from Homer’s Odyssey, (which I have yet to read): As I lay dying the woman with the dog’s eyes would not close my eyes for me as I descended into Hades. 

When Faulkner writes sentences like: When we came up the cat leaped down from it and flicked away with silver claw and silver eye, in the shadow, I want to read them in my heart again and again.

Faulkner’s characters say things like: I mislike indecision as much as ere a man, and other things such as: For 15 years I aint had a tooth in my head. God knows it. He knows in 15 years I aint et the victuals He aimed for man to eat to keep his strength up, and me saving a nickel here and a nickel there so my family wouldn’t suffer it, to buy them teeth so I could eat God’s appointed food. 

My brother, Ian, phoned me a year ago on a hot summer day and, choking, told me our brother had died in his sleep and no one had a clue why.

It was nigh to midnight and it had set in to rain when he woke us. It had been a misdoubtful night, with the storm making; a night when a fellow looks for most anything to happen before he can get the stock fed and himself to the house and supper et and in bed with the rain starting, and when Peabody’s team come up, lathered, with the broke harness dragging and the neck-yoke betwixt the off critter’s legs, Cora says ‘It’s Addie Bundren. She’s gone at last.’

I’m not trying to draw comparisons between my brother and Addie Bundren’s death although somehow I am. They are mixed together -- just don’t ask me how. I’m mostly trying to say that there is not one other being on this earth who I yearn to phone right now and say “Guess what? I’m finally reading Faulkner!” Except my brother Derek.

Many of my friends, like me, read voraciously. Often we share good reads. Perhaps some of them have read William Faulkner, although no-one has ever said so. But the fact still remains, not one of my friends ever clutched me in bed after lights out, trembling to the creepy sounds of Suspense Theater -- “Tales Well Calculated to Drive You Mad!” When each episode ended, my little brother and I were too frightened to reach from beneath the blankets to click the radio off. 

“You do it!” I would whisper. 

“Noooo you -- you’re bigger than me!”

And so we fell asleep, still clasping each other, the radio now off the air, hissing into the night.

The way I’ve come to understand things, everyone’s life is truly a tour-de-force, no matter who you are. Faulkner declared he deliberately set out to write a tour-de-force with As I Lay Dying. Before I began I said, I am going to write a book by which at a pinch, I can stand or fall if I never touch ink again. 

Not everyone is a Faulkner. But the way I’ve come to understand things, everyone’s life is a tour-de-force, no question about it.

Pa said to his sons of his dead wife, mumbling his toothless mouth: You all don't know. The somebody you was young with and you growed old in her and she growed old in you, seeing the old coming on and it was the one somebody you could hear say it dont matter and know it was the truth outen the hard world and all a man’s grief and trials. You all dont know. 

If only I could phone my brother and tell him that I am finally reading Faulkner. I would also offer him Faulkner’s words: How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home. 

Oh if only I could, I know my brother would get it. 

[emryse]

A promising season:

My dog and I walk purposefully around the parking lot at the back of the apartment complex; blackberry season started yesterday, probably—yesterday was the first day I noticed color among the bushes, even though I had been looking.

I try to only reach for the berries I know I can grasp, but I find myself stranded, too-optimistic on my tippiest toes more than once. I think that I could buy a stepstool. I think that might be cheating. I only take the fruit that yields easily; if it doesn’t want to leave with my fingers immediately, I leave it.

I think maybe only the patches with heavy afternoon sun yield plump fruit. I idly try to craft a metaphor for effort and blessings, or a simile about expectantness and womanhood (that it still feels thrust upon me and yet still out of reach; that last night I told him that having one less child most significantly reduces a lifetime’s carbon footprint, and that I couldn’t want that but that I’m supposed to but that I can’t not; that how do we choose who is allowed to bloom into posterity?) It takes me ten minutes and thirty berries to realize that only the furthest berry in each cluster on each branch is ripe—the one furthest from the root and the one closest to the sun, mostly, but sometimes, the one closest to the dirt. I do not know the taxonomy of blackberry blooms, so I decide to call it the fore-berry. I think how much fuller my colander will be in the weeks when all the sibling berries on the clusters blush into maturity. I wonder if I will still have access to the harvest then: will the complex run collections for collecting the season’s offerings, or will my neighbors catch my idea and beat me to the late produce?

My family never went picking this early, always a late-summer distraction, a whole afternoon down by the quiet, muddy Nisqually. We would take five-gallon buckets and swimsuits and my mother would bring all her pairs of gardening gloves but only she would wear them, and only I would forget to wear shoes with closed toes. We would pick for hours and I would suck blood and blackberry juice off my fingers every time the bushes fought back. When we were too stabbed and too sticky, my brother and I would swim to wash off the sweat and the brown moltings of the berries’ blooms, and catch the nameless invertebrates in the shallows to raise in paper cups on our windowsills.

I only lose three—the first when my hungry hands try to grab too many jeweled fruits at once, the second I throw back seeing it mold in old age despite its sisters’ nascence, and the third I offer to my dog, but she lets it fall to the ground. She protests the lack of vigor in this sweaty activity quietly, sits vigilant, facing away from the brambles, more interested in taking off for deep forest and the squirrels hidden therein than for the fruit right in front of her.

What I mean to say is that, for the longest time, writing was the only way I knew to blood-let the sadness, back when it was a nuisance and not a malice, but each summer and I find myself sitting heavier yet not ripe in my living room, growing roots but refusing to bloom. I haven’t written anything in months, the poetry makes it worse, I think, but a friend said to write even if, and today I read about Madeline L’Engle and her voracious faith and her unshakeable science and that both her father and her son died of alcoholism. I try not to think of how she must’ve felt that tesseract in her own life—a wrinkle in time that used her past to cut down her future—and I don’t want to think of the darkness reaching for me out of my mother’s blood, so I grab my largest colander and my dog and we go. I breathe the sultry scent of blackberry bushes, and I try to suck the name of this summer misanthropy out of my teeth like a blackberry seed. I wonder if this is a penance. I count blackberries like rosary beads, and wonder if they each count as a Hail Mary, Our Father, Glory Be.

This sadness sits in me like a bowl of blackberries—beautiful, and many-eyed, and bleeding. I think how in a few weeks, the softer fruit will leave my fingers stained through a shower. I think about blood and how it carries poison even as it tries to cleanse itself, about how we only consider blood clean when we want to bind ourselves to something, about how blood really doesn’t look anything at all like blackberry juice.

I take my half pound and 193 blackberries and my sweat and my sadness and my dog and we go home. I empty an entire ice tray in her water bowl as an apology and a thank you, and I don’t pour myself a glass of water until I wash all the berries in the sink with the softest hands I know how.

[thelastofi-blog]

???

I draw.  I can draw. A little, yes but I can. I’m not bad at it. I’m getting better. What would things be like if I never picked up on it?

I’ve always been discouraged from drawing. My parents believed that anything creative was nonsensical, immoral, and they frowned upon it. Heavily. I wasn’t allowed to read fictional stories so I had to smuggle books home from school and read them in the van to and from school. A shaky, wobbly ride meant nothing as long as I could read, read, read. If my father found out, there would be repercussions. I’ve had countless books snatched, slapped across my face and over my head, and shredded to bits beyond recovery. I needed an escape. I always did. I found it in books. They took it away. Then I realised that I could draw. I could just...draw. They couldn’t say anything, could they? Not if I drew on my art book? It’d just merge seamlessly with the boring sunsets and inane ‘My Garden’ bullshit wouldn’t it?  It did, for a short time. My art teacher complained to my mum at a PTA meeting. She showed her my secret sketches of people, my loose papers full of scribbles and doodles.  They tried to beat it out of me. Confiscated my colours. My extra pens and pencils. My tools for escape. I was devastated, but what to do? In 4th grade, my English teacher saw my greed for all things creative and she introduced me to Roald Dahl.  ‘I have a nice book for you,’ she said. ‘It has some lovely pictures as well.’ Thus, I was introduced to his humorous and sardonic style of writing. Full of irony, sarcasm, full of life. I loved it. I LOVED it. I wanted more. More. More. More. But it wasn’t just the writing, it was the pictures. Those illustrations ignited a strange sort of desire, a need to draw. They were imperfectly perfect, bursting with activity and just so perfectly complemented his writing style. If his words were pictures, they would be Quentin’s. I began to perceive things differently, I saw things that needed a second look to spot. I looked past the loud stuff and saw quiet details hidden and waiting to be discovered. I was fascinated. I was hooked. Through the years, through countless physical interventions, abuse, finished pieces destroyed before my eyes, harsh words, discouragement, having my self esteem bashed and crippled, I drew.  I took all my tears, my quivering, my anxiety, my terror, my paranoia, my anger and I turned it into art. I could use these tools to break through. I knew that. I refused to let them take this away from me. I knew I had something I could nurture and foster until it grew and grew, past the zenith of possibility. Tearing its way through, not fazed by any obstacle in its path. So I kept at it. 

***

The final stone, hit much later. I was 16. I had drawn and drawn until my lines were refined. My figures were brilliant and my hands were as steady as a cliff in a storm. I could draw on and on, until, my body gave up out of exhaustion and I would fall asleep at dawn. I knew I was good. Better than most people I knew, anyway. My mother saw me drawing at the table. She was a lot more relaxed than my father about this stuff, but she was still disapproving. ‘Here, you need to stop. You can’t draw, man. There are so many other artists better than you. You’re just wasting your time.’ What made such an impact was the very very strong tone she used. As if she was a God-kissed Messiah declaring holy truths. There was no vindictiveness in her tone, no anger. Just plain, factual and true. I couldn’t cry. This wasn’t a sad moment for me. It was a very, very, very alarming, terrifying almost emotionally fatal moment. Have I really wasted my time? Can I really not draw? I gave up. I put the pencil down and focused on a plethora of petty hobbies to while my time away. I tried gardening, cooking, craftwork, embroidery, cross-stitch etc. I spent my time on the internet, looking at beautiful illustrations and imperfect doodles and thinking ‘I can do better,’ or ‘I can do something like that,’ but never doing anything at all. During my short stint at AOD, my lecturer Liz played music in the classroom so we could enjoy ourselves while drawing. She was walking around, complimenting everyone, telling us how well we were doing. I was waiting for her to saunter up towards me and tell me how good my picture was. I couldn’t hide my excitement as she walked up to my table. ‘Look at this one. She’s drawing. This one is drawing.’  I felt something strange, something I’d buried somewhere amidst the clutter in my mind.  Encouragement. She didn’t compliment my picture. She didn’t have to. She told me exactly what I wanted to hear but it was much, much better.  I was drawing. Not drawing, no. Drawing. I had it in me. It was my special little skill, just like how some people figured out how to work an equation without knowing what the method was. How some people could pick up an instrument and play it without a guide. How some people can brew the perfect cup of coffee with the same ingredients as anyone else. I just could.

How stupid I felt, for giving up! How angry I was!  ‘I’m an idiot. I don’t deserve this,’ I would say.  And then, it began. Day after day I’d draw, to make up for lost time. Voraciously spitting whatever I could conjure onto the paper. It was almost as if I was preserving parts of my soul and the papers were horcruxes of sorts.  I never stopped.

Of course I was still discouraged. They tried, but this time it was strong. It wasn’t easy. I had to climb mountains with my crippled self-esteem, constantly questioning my abilities. I had to keep at it when I couldn’t. I had to. 

************************************************************************************************* 

I’m still drawing. I’ve met people along the way who’ve encouraged me with kind words, who have told me to ‘keep at it,’ and to never give up. I’ve made friends who I can turn to, should I feel incompetent again. This new intent is forged from fire and sealed with graphite. I will keep drawing, until I bleed ink and my nails turn to lead. Until my last draw is nothing but a feeble gasp for breath and all that is left are pages fluttering in the wind.

[helpfulmum]

Since I started my blog, I have been lucky enough to experience some incredible things. But from a personal fan-girl point of view, getting to interview Celeste Ng (pronounced ing) is definitely one of my favourite experiences. Celeste is the author of two novels, Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere. Celeste grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio. She is a mother to one son. Having read both of her novels this year, I was incredibly excited to be able to interview her for my blog. In fact, it took me absolutely ages to decide on my questions because I was really nervous as to what she would think of them! I absolutely loved her responses, and she's still making me question who I am through her writing! I found that Little Fires Everywhere is the kind of book that when you're not reading it, you're thinking about it, and I even dreamed about it! How intense is it for you when you are writing the book for a long time, having to live and breathe the characters? For me, story always grows out of the characters, so I spend a lot of time thinking about their lives, who they are, how they’d react to different situations. What their formative memories are, what they’re afraid of, what embarrasses them. It’s a little bit like being a method actor: I look around and try and see the world through their eyes. I often have insomnia, so when I’m awake in the small hours of the morning, I’m usually thinking about one character or another and imagining what it’s like to be them. There’s always at least a part of my mind that’s in the book, even when I’m doing other things. I questioned the kind of person I think I am, and really looked deeper within myself after reading the book. Is it a conscious decision of yours when writing to encourage the reader to question their own cultural biases? Absolutely. As a writer, I believe my job is not to provide answers, but to ask questions. One of the great things that fiction can do is to show how things are more complicated than they might seem at first, to hold open a space for nuance. When I write, I’m always writing about something that puzzles me, and writing towards a place of understanding. I’m writing to figure out why a character does something—so I need to know more about them at the end than I do at the beginning; I need to see them more fully at the end, as more complicated people. So does the reader, or I haven’t done my job. In my review of Little Fires Everywhere on my YouTube channel, I described the book as "all-consuming" because I simply had to keep reading to know what was going to happen next. Is it ever frustrating as an author that you spend such a long time writing a book only for someone to greedily read it in less than two days? Never—I take that as a huge compliment! I want the reader to be drawn into my books, to feel like they can’t wait to find out the entire story. When I’m reading, I like to be carried away myself. We often use the phrase “page-turner” as a slight, but I don’t think that a book that reads fast, or that is gripping, has to have less substance. I care less about how long it takes a reader to finish the book and more about whether a reader keeps thinking about the characters after the book is done. As a mother, I relate to the sacrifices that both Elena and Mia have made because of their children. Did you set out to portray this realistic version of motherhood? I’ve always been interested in questions of motherhood, partly because I’m both a mother and a daughter myself. It can be such an intense relationship, in both positive and negative ways, and yet it’s very different for everyone. I wanted to look at some of the ways that relationship might play out. The transracial custody battle within the book eloquently depicts the rift between social class and privilege. It is uncomfortable to read, especially the attempts made by the McCulloughs to ensure the child is connected to their birth culture. Was the court case based on any specific historical case, or was it there to ensure the reader further questions their concept of privilege? I looked at two real-life cases here in the US for inspiration: the “Baby M” case, in which a surrogate mother changed her mind about giving up her baby and kidnapped her baby back; and the “Baby Jessica” case, in which an affluent couple adopted a poor single mother’s baby, and then the baby’s biological father came back into the picture and sued to get custody of the baby. I drew on those cases but added the element of race, to complicate them further, and to ask the reader to consider whether (and how) ethnicity factors into all of this. But I hope that when readers read that courtroom scene, they see that the McCulloughs are indeed trying—even though the cultural resources available to them are limited—and that they truly love the baby they wish to adopt. I wanted the case to be complicated and for the reader to be torn: there���s no easy answer here, and I didn’t want there to be. Your characters are perfectly imperfect, and wonderfully relevant in society now. I thought there was a subtle political undercurrent throughout the book. Do you find that your writing gives you a platform to magnify current political issues? I never thought of myself as a political writer, but in the past year and a half, I’ve come to accept that my very existence is politicized, whether I like it or not. I’m a child of immigrants, a woman, a person of color, a mother of a biracial child, the sister of a person with a physical disability—there’s really no aspect of my life that isn’t politicized in some way by our current cultural discourse. I’m still adjusting to the idea that anyone cares what I have to say, but if I have a platform, I want to use it to talk about things that are important to me. In my writing, I never come to the page planning to make statements, but the issues that I think about and the world I live in inevitably work their way into my fiction. Off the page, on Twitter and elsewhere, I’m more deliberate in trying to use my microphone to call attention to issues that we need to address, and I’m grateful to have that opportunity. Growing up, I was obsessed with reading Enid Blyton, but my favourite book was One Hundred and One Dalmatians, which I have read countless times. What was your favourite childhood book? Ah, I love Enid Blyton and I loved One Hundred and One Dalmatians, too! I was a voracious reader as a kid, so I can’t narrow to just one: I loved everything by Roald Dahl, especially Matilda; the Little House in the Big Woods series by Laura Ingalls Wilder; the Wizard of Oz series by L. Frank Baum; The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett; and the Edward Eager books, among many others. I still have my childhood copies and am starting to read them with my son. Who inspired you when you were younger? My mother was very into biographies of famous people, especially women, so my inspirations were rather lofty: Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Marie Curie, Louis Pasteur. My mother and sister were big inspirations to me as well, as both of them were women in male-dominated fields (chemistry and engineering) and set me a wonderful example of doing what moves you, regardless of obstacles. What advice would you give to children who would aspire to be an author when they are older? Read a lot—reading is fuel for writing. Read whatever you like, but also try things you’re not sure you’ll like, just to see. Think of it as tasting a new food: you don’t need to finish the whole thing, but at least take a bite. You might be surprised. And write a lot, because writing is a skill like playing piano or playing a sport, and it takes practice. Thank you so much to Celeste for taking the time to answer my questions, it has been a huge honour. I think that she really made me realise that as bloggers or influencers, we really should use our platforms to promote social change where possible. An example of this would be that although I have mentioned on my blog and vlogs about my sister and her disabilities, I should be championing change that would make her life better. Thank you Celeste for helping me to see that, and I hope you all found this interview as inspiring as I did! (function() { var li = document.createElement('script'); li.type = 'text/javascript'; li.async = true; li.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https:' : 'http:') + '//platform.stumbleupon.com/1/widgets.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(li, s); })(); HelpfulMum

http://www.helpfulmum.com/2018/05/an-interview-with-celeste-ng.html

[suburbiakrp-blog]

WELCOME TO JUKJEON, JANG KYUNGCHUL !

your place at dasol apartments 5B is all ready for you, we hope you enjoy your stay. citizens, let’s welcome our new neighborhood freelance architect !

HOW HAS JUKJEON BEEN TREATING YOU THE PAST 6 MONTHS ?

The closest he’s gotten to living away from the city was when he would spend the holidays with his grandmother in Jejudo. The house she inherited was closer to the mountains than the city, yet her living room was always full with people. 

He’s never entertained the thought of getting to know his neighbors before moving to Jukjeon. He’s used to congested subways and the uncomfortable smell of nicotine during morning traffic. It’s harder to keep track of time, he finds. Days drag on slowly. It’s comfortable. When his mother asks how he’s been, he doesn’t know what to tell her.

Jukjeon reminds him of his grandmother. He hasn’t yet decided whether it’s a good thing or not

TELL US MORE ABOUT YOURSELF !

GOOGLE < JANG DONG WOOK < WIKIPEDIA: JANG DONG…

Dong Wook Jang (born 30 March 1947, in Busan) is a South Korean historian, cultural theorist, and professor at Seoul National University. He is also the co-founder of the Naksungdae Institute of Economic Research. [1][2] He is the representative director of the New Right Foundation. [3] His research focuses on economic history during the Korea under Japanese rule.

GOOGLE < JANG IN SOOK < WIKIPEDIA: JANG IN SO…

In Sook Jang (born 12 January 1950, in Seoul) is a South Korean best-seller author, poet and philosopher. She has won a wide variety of literary prizes including the Today’s Young Artist Award from the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Hankook Ilbo Literature Prize, Hyundae Literature Award, Manhae Literature Prize, Dong-in Literary Award, Yi Sang Literary Award, and the Oh Young-su Literature Prize. [1]

Before he puts his apartment up for sale, he leaves an even number of voicemails behind. They always start the same, “I just need to talk to someone. You know I’m difficult.” In retrospect, he thinks it was the cold-shouldering lurch of coming up empty handed that made it easier. The voicemails would accumulate and fizzle out, eventually. An undercurrent of words, lost. Decisive exit wounds that no one would have to stitch closed. At the first taste of syrupy film on his tongue, he reminds himself to real sugar.

His social circle used to be comprised of upperclass nouveau riche brats that never quite outgrew the pull of money. He didn’t exactly fit in, but he had the financial resources to keep up. They overdrew credit cards and spent weeks away on yachts in Saint-Tropez and occupied two story suites in Prague. He held onto the belief that he’d made himself a way to stop time. That the more he indulged himself, the more he was compressing, undoing. The mornings were difficult to undo, but back then 30mg before breakfast and toast had him powering through until lunch. He is raised in London, suburbs of Beijing, a pent-house with an impeccable view of New York’s swollen belly, trains rattling louder than the rifles in the war documentaries his father forces him to watch, airports drowning, blotted. He is expected to solve mathematical equations discussed in college at seven, write essays about politics at eleven, discuss metaphysics at thirteen to entertain his father’s friends. His inferiority complex precedes the suicide notes, the blind complicity he partakes in of his own pre-mature death. The expectations never lessen, just pull tighter, slick taut around his neck.

The first time he’s rushed into the ER, he’s eighteen. He’s twenty when his mother gives up. And he’s twenty-two when he’s checked into rehab.

The body he survives serves as a reminder.

He recalls how difficult therapy had been. He is strangely conscious of what he’s reduced himself to, yet unable to pick himself up. In between sessions and pep talks he’s told that recovery is hard work. “We all need help to be better. No one can be strong all the time.” His father would have disagreed.

He remembers mustard fields, heavy smell of freshly washed laundry. Then, a countervailing depression that never lets go, plucked ginkgo connecting childhood traumas. That was what it came down to: Trying to make the memories swell and bloat and drip until there was nothing left to exhaust. A strange lull of miscommunications between his wants and needs. He spends his early twenties making amends, desperately trying to forget. What exactly, he isn’t sure. Some days he convinced himself that it was his parents he was hurting. Every needle to the arm was just a means to the end. And it worked, for a while. The thing about highs is that they are temporary. Every fix precedes the ineluctable low. There was unsubstantial economy to it, and it hiked at a steady pace. Sometimes he imagined himself a purpose.

For an hour, life was alright.

(He had good days. Running until his throat caved in, music drowning out the buzz and scream of his muscles protesting 60 watt bulbs springing out of sockets. Didn’t allow himself time to think.)

This might not be a real memory: He’s making amends. Slowly growing solid. Manifesting in overlaps. Withdrawal is forceful, voraciously brutal. He hollows, scrubs himself raw. Half drowning under the shower head until the relapse hurls for his throat. The problem, and he’s beginning to realize it, was never the analgesic enormity of his dependency.

His best friend was cremated five years ago. It was an open casket funeral. The black bedrock of faces in a nondescript garden somewhere in Guri seem to haunt his bedroom. He watches, and doesn’t know what else to do.

This is Sangwoo, you know what to do – “Hey, you never pick up, but I’m leaving next week. Finally becoming the architect my dad never wanted… Let me know if you’re alright, okay?”