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scifrey · 2 years ago

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Carpe Diem

Status: One-Shot

Series: the Hob Adherent series

Fandom: The Sandman (TV 2022) Includes some comics canon, and some cameos from the wider Gaiman-verse (including the Good Omens and Lucifer television shows), but it’s not necessary to know to enjoy the story.

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Discussions of grief and in-canon character death.

Relationships: Morpheus | Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling, Eleanor | Hob Gadling’s Wife/Hob Gadling (past)

Characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Hob Gadling, Lucifer, Patrick the Bartender, Crowley, Aziraphale, Johanna Constantine, Matthew the Raven

Summary: Hob turns six hundred and sixty-six, invites some fellow Immortals to his bar to celebrate, and receives a gift from Satan herself. Or, the Key to Hell was always going to Be a Problem(tm).

Set between the epilogue and chapter one of Cling Fast.

READ ON AO3 OR READ BELOW:

Hob tells Patrick he’s turning thirty-six.

About five minutes before the party is set to start, he takes immature delight in adding a tiny little x2 between the 3 and the 6 on the poster wishing him a happy birthday with a sharpie. Normally Hob doesn’t make much of a fuss about his birthday–it’s too easy for his fellow, aging humans to start tracking them that way–but it’s May 1st in the Year of Our Lord 2022, and Hob Gadling is turning six hundred and sixty-six years old.

He figures that deserves a party.

They close The New Inn for the private event, and Patrick, grumpy bastard that he is, refuses to hire in a catering staff so he can enjoy himself, too.

“It’s your birthday, Bob,” he says, as Hob is tying off the last of the bunting above the banquettes. “I’m not having a stranger back here screwing up your orders.”

“We do need to hire a server before the summer, though,” Hob points out, jumping down and wiping the tread-prints from his shoes off the leather seat. “And a new kid for the kitchen.”

“Well it’s not happening any time today, so just… let me celebrate you from my happy place.”

“Fine, fine,” Hob grants with a smile. Patrick is very, very good at his job. He also has an anxious fear of crowds, when there isn’t wood and fridges and pint-glass washers between him and other people. “But tell me you’ll try to relax a bit, please. It’s my party, and I want you to have fun.”

Patrick gifts him with a set of bowfingers and turns his back to resume prep. Hob wonders what the Signature Cocktail du Jour is going to be, with that many sliced limes, peaches, and strawberries.

Hob is generally very pleased with himself and the world. He’s in a university and profession he loves, he’s inspiring young minds and hearts towards kindness and generosity to their fellow humans, he’s very slowly restoring the White Horse one city council fight at a time, he is master of The New Inn and it’s domain, and he is swiftly becoming best friends with a magical talking raven.

And, of course, in the nine months since Morpheus has broken free of his prison and returned to Hob’s life, he has become a fixture of his Tuesday afternoons and no small part of his attention and affection besides. That's something worth celebrating, too. Hob's Stranger has somehow, wonderfully, become his friend. And he’s agreed to come today, which is even better. Hob has been getting better at couching his requests in dares, and highlighting his pleas with sad puppy eyes. The two things Morpheus, humanity’s facet of Dream of the Endless, seems to be weak against are a bet, and Hob showing any unhappiness or disappointment.

These facts are carefully recorded in his mental List of Things I Know About The Stranger. The list is growing longer, slowly but surely, which is thrilling in itself. Hob is starting to feel like he knows Morpheus, for a given value of ‘knowing’ when it comes to interacting with a singular facet of anthropomorphic personifications of vast universal concepts.

He’s also not above using this knowledge to his advantage, although he’s careful to deploy this hoarded wisdom to his own advantage very, very sparingly. No point in tipping his hand this early in their fragile friendship.

Hob is immortal, he’s happy, he loves his life and the people in it, and it’s his birthday.

What isn’t there to celebrate?

The first guests arrive around happy hour, and clump together on one of the banquettes. They’re his colleagues in the History department, with the addition of a PhD hopeful who’s clearly tagged along in order to get into Doctor Gadlen’s good graces before the mad race for a thesis supervisor begins in the summer. Patrick knows some of them, as Hob’s dragged them here from the university often enough, and is happy to take care of them while Hob fiddles with the music.

He's curated a playlist of his favorite songs from the last six and a half hundred years (the ones he could find recordings of, of course), and damn anyone who complains that the mix is weird.

Hob’s offering up beer and wine on the house, as well as soft drinks for those who prefer it, and platters of nibbles. Word must get back to the school because soon a second wave of professors and TAs slide through the door. The maxim is entirely true: academics are cockroaches and will pop up anywhere free food and booze are on offer. Hob’s happy to welcome them in, even if he only knows a few of them on sight, and even less by name.

A party is a party, and it fills him with joy to know they’ll be going home full and happy. Hob is High Priest of the Last Temple of Morpheus. It’s his duty to ensure everyone who comes through the doors of The New Inn leave in a state of mind and body to rest peacefully and fully.

Hob’s colleagues are joined soon enough by some of the bar regulars, folks from the social charities and organizations that Hob works with to keep the people on his little patch of city well-cared for and housed, and a few people who serve on the same Heritage Protections board as he’s a member of on behalf of the White Horse.

But there’s one particular person he keeps craning his head around to see, every time the little bell above the door jangles. The one particular person who has not yet arrived. Hob distracts himself with gracefully accepting presents he very specifically told people not to bring, offering up cheek-kisses and handshakes in return for the collection of cards, wine bottles, and novelty teacher mugs.

The sun sets, bringing along with it Johanna Constantine, and Ric the Vic, both of whom Hob knows peripherally through the Goings On (™) of London. They offer him their congratulations, and slide into one of the tables in the corner to enjoy their free libations and pretend strenuously that they’re not not planning to leave to fuck in the next few hours.

Hob had spread word through what passes for a grapevine in the sparse community of Otherfolk of the city that they, too, would be welcome at Hob’s birthday party. After all, they’re the only ones who’d understand–and enjoy the irony–of the number. He doesn’t actually expect many of them to take him up on it, but manners are manners.

All the same, he’s fairly sure he sees some of the Doors slipping in and out between his supply cupboard and the bar with a platter of pigs-in-a-blanket, and Bod Owens chatting up the PhD hopeful by the loos. The Marquis de Carabas’s coat catches his eye and Hob turns to welcome him, only to come face-to face with a very different imposing nobleman in a long distinctive coat.

“Happy Birthday , Hob Gadling ,” Morpheus greets him. He’s got the world’s tiniest potted cactus cradled in his palm, and he holds it out awkwardly to Hob. The tips of his ears, mostly hidden by the puff of his dark hair, are delicately pink. They’re the same shade of the seductive-slick curve of a conch shell, of the secret inside curve of his lips when he pouts, the tip of his tongue when he chases a stray drop of wine in a startlingly mortal gesture.

It’s adorable.

It’s not fair .

Hob really needs to get this stupid crush under control.

“Aw, is this for me?” Hob asks, delighted, as if the cactus pot wasn’t already embraced by a silky red bow.

Morpheus just raises his eyebrows, as if to say, Are you daft? so Hob takes it. He wonders if it would be too forward of him to buss a kiss off Morpehus’ cheek in thanks, as he has been doing with all of his other gift-givers this evening.

It’s a step more intimate than the hand-holding they do when one or the other of them needs comfort during a difficult confession. But Morpheus is Hob’s friend now, and it’s how he greets his other friends. Morpheus deserves no less. He decides to go for it.

The King of Nightmares takes the kiss with startled good grace, and Hob pulls back quickly so he’s not imposing on Morpheus’ personal bubble. His friend can get prickly when he feels his sovereignty threatened, or his independence violated, for very understandable and obvious reasons.

He fiddles with the cactus, turning the pot around in his fingertips and admiring the single dusty-purple bloom at its apex. He hopes it’ll get enough sunlight in here.

“Where’s Matthew?” Hob asks, to fill the awkward silence.

“Behaving extremely poorly for a denizen of his station. ”

“Come again?”

“ Out front, entertaining some of your regulars by repeating filthy words for peanuts,” Morpheus says, amusement and disdain warring in his tone. Morpheus is forever despairing over Matthew’s constant desire to be in the spotlight.

Hob laughs, delighted, and chivvies Morpheus over to the bar for a glass of his teeth-suckingly sweet wine. He directs his friend around to the empty place where the bar meets the wall beside the tiny area cleared of tables and chairs for dancing. No one has moved to that side of the pub yet, so it's empty of the press of dreamers that Morpheus sometimes finds overwhelming.

Hob slips behind the bar to pour Morpheus's libation himself, ignoring Patrick’s eye roll. He doesn’t understand why Hob wants to be the only one to touch the wine. Sure it’s expensive, but it’s not like Patrick is going to pour it wrong or something.

But for Hob, it’s a ritual. It’s a gift.

It’s an offering to his friend and god.

It means something that Hob is the one who pours, who presents, who proffers.

Morpheus takes the cup with all the dignified grace that the gesture demands, and backs into the shadows to enjoy it in peace. Hob moves the cactus to pride of place on top of the coffee machine, and goes about fetching himself his own first drink of the evening. Now that Morpheus is here, he can finally relax and indulge.

“Don’t get any ideas above your station,” someone hisses at the little plant, and Hob peers around the machine to find The Bentley Snake hunched forward on his elbows, propped up behind the hidden corner of the bar, whiskey in hand. His dark red hair is shorn short on the sides this time, a long standy-uppy flop at the top, and he’s wearing the latest in a long line of painfully slim-cut black suits.

Sometimes Hob wonders if he’s doing Immortality wrong, being the only one of the lot who seems to like wearing more than black or white.

“Please don’t threaten my new plant friend,” Hob asks him.

“Needs ssssssome threatening,” the Snake says, sunglasses trained on the cactus. “Thinks its high n’ mighty just cause it sprouted in the Dreaming.”

Hob processes this as he pulls a pint for himself. “You know about the Dreaming?”

“Sleep, don’t I?” the Snake mutters.

Hob refills the Snake’s whiskey glass, and clinks his pint off the Snake’s tumbler. “I don’t like to assume.”

“Oi, I sleep, don’t I, Lord Shaper?” the Snake says, with a jerk of his chin at where the bar meets the wall.

Morpheus is little more than a black shadow and starshine eyes. He must be feeling a bit crowded, to have retreated so thoroughly. Hob doesn’t blame him–it’s starting to get stuffy, what with all the bodies and the salt-rank whiff of booze and sweat. The music is a touch loud now that there's so many voices competing to be heard over it, and Hob is thinking that now’s a good time to open the windows, let the pre-storm breeze that’s kicking up wash the place fresh.

Though he doesn’t point it out to the man, Hob’s Stranger has been different since his return.

While before he was reserved and formal, now he’s skittish about touch, always buttoned up to the throat in whatever clothing he manifests for himself, and reluctant to allow himself to be crowded or contained. They're working on it, with long walks along the quay or visits to farmer's markets, but overcoming trauma is never a fast process. Even the occasional therapeutic hand-holding Hob imposes on him has to be well telegraphed, or Morpheus will shake him off without realizing he’s done so.

These are all very understandable and normal reactions to the torture he’d suffered at the hands of Burgess. But while Hob has done his best to comfort and guide Morpheus toward healing in his limited, mortal way, it’s not like he can he can force the God of Sleep to make an appointment with a headshrinker.

Hob flashes a glance over at Colonel Williams, by the front door, who is one of the social support folks Hob knows from helping the unhoused get back on their feet. She specializes in suppressed trauma and PTSD, and Hob wonders if there’s a way he could maneuver Morpheus into an ‘accidental’ conversation with the woman sometime tonight.

“ So deeply that I cannot oust you from my realm for decades at a time, Serpent, ” Morpheus rumbles, and right, Hob’s forgotten that he’s supposed to be mediating between two otherworldly entities. Morpheus turns his gaze to Hob. “What is he doing here?”

Morpheus sounds two thirds curious and one third jealous.

He doesn’t mean it like that , Hob tells himself. It may be my birthday–well, the date I chose to be my birthday–but I’m not going to get that lucky.

An odd tension frazzles the air, and the Snake rolls his impossible spine backwards a bit, not retreating, exactly. Just not standing so close to Hob.

Huh.

Who knew that Morpheus would be so territorial with his head priest?

Hob laughs, trying disperse the feeling that if he’s not careful, he may inadvertently start a supernatural brawl. “Come on, my friend. You think after six and a half centuries, you’re the only creepy-crawly I know?”

“I am not a creepy-crawly, Hob Gadling,” Morpheus rumbles, with all the theatrical offense of a maiden-aunt. “But I did not think you would consort with the likes of him . Not with your upbringing as it was–”

The Snake bristles. “Hey! I was invited!”

Morpheus steps out of the shadows just enough for his face and hands–and empty wine glass–to be visible in the dim pub lighting. Night has well and truly fallen outside. He sets the glass on the bar top with a challenging tink .

“ Invited ,” Morpheus repeats flatly.

“I just let it be known among the Othered set that they were welcome to drop by,” Hob hisses, low enough that Patrick won’t be able to catch it over the conversation and music around them.

“It’s a special number, you know. I felt like it should be celebrated with everyone , especially those who really know what it means.”

Morpheus inhales sharply and turns narrowed, laser-focused, glacier-blue eyes to Hob’s face. “ How did you phrase this invitation? ” he asks with no little urgency.

Hob blinks.

“Uh, something something freely welcome to partake of my hospitality, all those who know the number something something?” Hob says, nerves flooding him. He tugs on his ear. “Did I… um… say something I shouldn’t have?”

“ All those who know the number ,” Morpheus groans. “The number of the beast.”

"Six-one-six," the Snake says.

"Six- six- six," Hob corrects, "According to modern translations. Which is also the number of years I've… oh. No. No, it's my birthday ,” Hob says, sweat beading by his hairline and trickling down the back of his shirt. “That’s… that’s what I meant.”

“But that it is not what you said .”

The Snake straightens up all at once, eyes popping wide behind his glasses if the sudden height of his eyebrows are anything to go by. He slams back the rest of his whiskey and chokes: “That’s me out, then. Many happy returns, you poor doomed bastard. If you ever get any.”

“That’s not ominous at all,” Hob says, and chugs half his beer.

The Snake wends his way to the front door and is gone in a gust of chill spring breeze, and the sound of the rain just starting up outside. Hob hopes Matthew has found a good roost under one of the table umbrellas. One of these days, he's going to make good on his threat to get the raven a Service Animal vest, just so he can come inside in weather like this.

Morpheus fully manifests, posture tense, nostrils flaring. He scans the crowd. For who, Hob can guess, but he doesn’t like to think on it.

Morpheus has, after all, told him all about his trip to Hell.

And then the lights flicker.

Hob is… well, he’s almost disappointed by how dramatic the Devil’s entrance is.

In the last six hundred years, he’s come to learn that people like him tend to lay low and not bring attention to themselves. Even Morpheus, with his fine clothes and fist-sized ruby, behaved as a mortal might at their meetings–walking into the White Horse, sitting down, no excess displays of power or even wealth, really, save for the handful of dreamsand he’d blown in Lady Constantine’s face.

But Hob has to give the Devil their due. When they play, they don’t play small.

The storm that’s been brewing since sunset suddenly, and violently breaks. Rain cascades against the roof like the rush of an oncoming train. A clap of thunder loud enough to rattle the martini glasses in their hangers above the bar shakes the room, making more than one person yelp. The crack of lightning that follows flares like an atom bomb, white light blasting in through the windowpanes, casting everyone in harsh, dramatic black-and-white chiaroscuro.

Ears ringing and eyes sparking, Hob sets down his beer and scrubs at his face.

(Okay, so he’s also a little disappointed there’s no fiddle sting to accompany their appearance. But then again, the New Inn is hardly Georgia.)

When his vision has cleared, Hob whirls around to check on his friends and colleagues. There’s probably something dangerous about turning your back to Satan, but he’s got the King of Nightmares guarding it. He’s more worried for the humans than the two celestial entities that are, if he knows his friend, puffing up and posturing. Hob skims out from behind the bar, heading for Patrick, who has stopped a few steps away from the service gap.

And he's… he's just standing there.

Fear seizes Hob’s throat, and for a terrible second, he worries that the light really was an atom bomb, that everyone he’s ever known and loved in this life are nothing more than people-shaped pillars of ash, and it’s his fault. He invited them here, and then he invited the literal Devil as well, and now they're—

But no, when he reaches Patrick, his friend is alive. He breathes, he blinks, his flesh is soft and warm. But he’s frozen. Hob looks around and… yes, the humans in the room–well, the mortal ones, at least–have simply stopped moving.

“Are they…?” Hob crackles.

“ They will be fine,” Morpheus assures him. His hair is sticking straight out, like a furious cat, and he’s starting to lose coherence around the edges. His coat swirls off into shadow like heavy ink in water, his eyes are as fathomless as deep space, and his fingers elongate into razor-sharp and obsidian-tipped claws. “Time has stopped for them. When it resumes, it will be as if the lost moments never happened. ”

Not all of them, Hob thinks, seeing Johanna’s eyes darting around the room with terrified fury. He decides not to point it out, though, in case the Lightbringer decides to do something permanent and terrible about it. He just gives her a long look, and tries to put as much reassurance in his expression as he can. I’ll get us out of here safely, don’t you worry.

Johanna blinks back once, slow and squinty like a cat. Message received.

A quick glance also confirms that the rest of the Otherworld denizens have made themselves as sparse as the Snake. He doesn't blame them.

Then, finally, when he’s assured himself that everyone under his roof and thus in his care is as safe as they can be, with the literal Ruler of Hell sharing that selfsame roof, he skirts around the bar to join Morpheus on the empty dance floor. Only then does he allow all of his attention to settle on his new visitor.

They are… tall . ‘Grand’ is the adjective that comes to mind first, followed by ‘statuesque’ and ‘ literally awe-inspiring’.

That’s an angel , Hob things. Or at least, they used to be. Of course they’re so… present. So overwhelming.

It’s like having all of his senses buffeted all at once–all he can smell is the acrid tang of sulfur, all he can hear is a high-pitched screech, all he can see is an overwhelming brightness that might actually be an overwhelming darkness, and his skin feels like it’s covered with biting fire ants. He gasps, reaching out clumsily behind him to clutch at the bar, the crush of the gravitas emanating from the corner stealing the breath from his lungs.

One of Morpheus’ fingers stretches out, impossible and eerie. It taps Hob gently on the forehead, right where his third eye would be, if he was that kind of spiritual. The drowning rush of screaming discomfort snaps off, like a faucet cranked shut. Air rushes back into the room.

“Be not afraid,” my hairy arse , Hob thinks, as he coughs and scrubs his eyes again. It’s a wonder the blessed virgin didn’t shriek her head off and go running off into the night.

“I’m… I’m fine,” he reassures Morpheus, as his friend shuffles a step closer, hand resting protectively on Hob’s shoulder.

It takes him a few seconds to actually see what he’s seeing. Satan themself is presenting as a white woman, with fair, severely arranged golden curls that resemble nothing so much as a crown of thorns across their forehead. What Hob took for giant bat wings is actually a luxuriously patterned black pashmina, draped artfully over across one shoulder, over a rich white tea-length dress.

For being the ruler of Hell, Hob has to admit that they actually look… well, glamorous .

“Hello, Robert Gadling,” Lucifer Morningstar purrs from the empty stage in the corner of the pub. It’s little more than a triangular riser jammed against the wall, just big enough for a tall stool, a mic stand, and some folksy performer on Sunday afternoons. But it gives them an even greater height from which to look down their nose at him, so of course that’s where they manifested. “I am ever so grateful to be included.”

“Er, yeah,” Hob says, pushing himself upright and wiping his clammy hands on the thighs of his jeans. “Welcome, then.”

“ Hob ,” Morpheus says, scandalized. Shadows writhe anxiously in a puddle by his feet, the Nightmare side of Dream closer to the surface in his worry.

“What?” Hob says. “Doesn’t hurt anyone to be polite.” Hob steps forward and holds out his now-dry hand for the Devil to shake.

“Certainly not,” Lucifer agrees, and takes his hands between theirs. They pull him forward a few more steps, pressing his fingers between their palms as if they could taste his sins on his skin, and peers down at him with intelligent eyes the same color of the storm clouds outside. “And it’s been ever so long since I’ve been to a party .”

Hob cranes his head back to look up at them. They’re just a handspan away now, only their entwined arms between them keeping them parted, and for an absurd moment, he thinks that Lucifer is going to kiss him. Morpheus must think so too, because he lets loose a ripping growl, warning and threat in the sound to rival the thunderstorm outside.

Lucifer laughs and lets Hob go. They take a dainty step down from the stage, and sashay their way toward the bar on totteringly-high bleach-white pumps.

“I, uh, I‘ve got wine and beer,” Hob says, spinning around and scrambling to catch up with them. “Or anything harder. Or softer. Whatever you like, really. What can I pour for you?”

“Red wine, naturally,” the Devil purrs.

They stop at the bar just an arm's length from Morpheus, a clear challenge. They lean elegantly on one elbow against the padded edge, eyeing him up like they’d either like to eat him alive or gouge his eyes out. Possibly both. Hob slips between them like a fleshy immortal shield. Maybe it won’t actually keep them from lashing out at each other but, meh, he can’t die if they do.

He reaches over the bar, grabs one of the open bottles of Syrah, a glass from the rack above their heads, and pours a generous measure. He holds it out genteely to the Devil, and they accept it with good grace.

Hob then immediately refills Morpheus’ abandoned glass with his Vinsanto, and tops up his own with an awkward backwards reach for the amber tap.

“So… are you gonna release them?” Hob asks, once Lucifer has raised their glass for a clink, and he’s very cautiously obliged. It feels like bad luck to drink from it right away, though, so he turns to offer the same toast to Morpheus, who stares hard at Hob as they clink glasses, as if he’s drilling a blessing into Hob’s skull.

“No, I think not,” Lucifer says, taking their first sip, and offering Hob an appreciative eyebrow bounce at the taste. “No need to cause a panic. But don’t worry; I shan’t stay for long. I only wanted to pop in and wish my new friend many happy returns.”

“Is that what we are?” Hob asks, with a huge gulp of beer. “Friends?”

“Of course!” Lucifer says, their eyes narrowing a little, shoulders tensing up, lips slimming tightly and… “We are friends, aren’t we Robert Gadling? Why else would you have extended your invitation to all who know the true number of your years?”

Which is… a bit of an odd thing for the Lightbringer to be worried about, honestly.

Hob looks again. There’s nerves there. There’s concern. Why would…

Oh . Hob thinks. They’re lonely, too.

Hob risks a glance back at Morpheus, who is clutching the stem of his wineglass tight enough that it’s creaking. His eyes are leaking purple-black starstuff around the perimeters, which whisps away like the leading edge of a fast-moving cloud. Otherwise, he's perfectly still, posture ramrod straight.

“Yes,” Hob answers, turning back to Lucifer. “Yes, we are friends. Why not? I’ve no quarrel with you, unless you’re here to drag me to Hell?”

Whatever it was the Devil was expecting Hob to say, it wasn’t that. They look first genuinely surprised, then flattered, then secretly pleased, then distraught in such quick succession that Hob barely has time to pass each expression as they pass over their face.

“Of course not!” Lucifer says, so quickly and so completely surprised that it comes out in a rush. They sound genuinely hurt at his assumption. “My kingdom only contains those human souls who believe they should be there. They send themselves to Hell. Please. I have better manners than to drag anyone against their belief and will.” They narrow their eyes at Hob and take another sip of wine, struggling to regain their teasing nonchalance. “Why, have you done something worthy of punishment?”

Many things, Hob thinks. Terrible things. Things I just hope one day I live long enough to be able to atone for.

“Ah, well, this isn’t about my death,” Hob hedges. “Which I am still not interested in, thank you very much. This is a celebration of my life!”

“It is indeed. Happy six hundred and sixty-sixth birthday, Robert,” Lucifer says, and they clink glasses once more.

“Hob,” he offers up. “My friends in the know call me Hob.”

“ Hob, ” Morpheus hisses again. “ You are being unwise. ”

“I’m being personable ,” Hob corrects, but takes a tiny step back, closer into Morpheus’s orbit, to appease him. One of the swirling black shadows wraps around Hob’s ankle.

“Dream Lord!” Lucifer greets him, sounding as if they have just noticed him behind Hob for the first time. “What a delight to see you again so soon.”

“Lightbringer, ” Morpheus growls in return.

“And how do you know our dear little birthday boy?”

Morpheus lets out another grumbling snarl, all without changing the placidly haughty expression on his face.

“Robert Gadling is my head priest, as well you know, ” Morpheus intones, voice as deep and dangerous as the fathomless darkness at the bottom of an ocean. “ You stand in my temple uninvited. ”

“Just as you bullied your way into Hell?” Lucifer asks silkily. They sip their wine showily. “Besides, I was invited, wasn’t I?”

Both pairs of eyes fall on Hob, their weight like a physical blow, and he buys himself some time by taking a long drink of his beer. Which, of course, goes down the wrong pipe, and leaves him coughing like a complete tit in front of two of the greatest powers in the universe.

Oh yeah, that’s me. Hob “embarrassingly human” Gadling.

Morpheus sets down his wine and hastily lays a hand on Hob’s curved back. It’s probably meant to be as possessive as it is calming, but at this point, Hob doesn’t mind. It feels good to have the comfort of his friend’s proximity. And the very visible gesture of his claiming and protection.

“I see I am in danger of wearing out my welcome,” Lucifer sighs, as if put upon. They finish their wine in a serpent-like gulp, opening their jaws wider than the mouth of their human-shape ought to allow, and set the glass aside.

“Quite.”

"In which case, allow me to present me with your gift unto you now, Robert Gadling of Essex," Lucifer says.

With a flourish, they're suddenly cupping something spindly and large in both their palms. It is the ivory of old bone, gnarled and pitted, and looks nothing so much as a big, eldritch key. There’s a circle at the top, crowned with four spikes, and the teeth on the shaft look as if they may be made of actual fangs.

And, of course, much like Morpheus’ cactus, it is topped with a whimsical, cheery red bow.

Morpheus lets out a horrified gasp.

“I had intended on bestowing this differently,” Lucifer drawls, eyeing Morpheus meaningfully. “But as it is in poor form to attend a birthday party with no gift for the celebrant.”

She turns the full weight of her gravitationally heavy gaze on Hob.

“Er… thank you?” Hob asks.

“You will not, soon enough.”

Yeah, okay, that sounds like a trap , Hob thinks. But with no clue how or even why he might refuse the gift from a literal fallen angel, and what the eternal ramifications of that action might be he does, Hob reaches out to take the key.

“ Do not accept! ” Morpheus all but wails. “ If you become ruler of Hell, you will never again cross the threshold into my realm.”

That’s saying a little more than I think Morpheus means to , Hob thinks, fingers frozen in the air, hovering above the ribbon. It sounds less like “you’ll be barred from my realm” and more “I’ll never see you again.”

“Is that true?” Hob asks. "This will make me ruler of Hell ?"

Lucifer smirks triumphantly. “I have already emptied Hell of all its demons. The gates are shut. Even now, the fires ash and grow cold. I have renounced my crown. A new King is required. They who next touch this Key will become that King.”

Hob shudders, short hair springing up, skin crawling with horror. Demons. Loose on Earth. Loose everywhere . And unable to be commanded to return to Hell by exorcism or spell, for the gates would be barred to them.

He cuts a look to Johanna, who is clearly following all of this. There are tears running down her cheeks. Sweat breaks out on Hob's brow, heart pounding hard behind his ribs, dread creeping down his spine. He hasn't felt this sunk with terror since he first came face-to-face with a machine gun in a muddy trench.

He's being given a choice.

It's not much of a choice.

Hob licks his lips, hoping his voice is steadier than his trembling, hovering hands. “What happens if I don’t accept your gift?” he crackles, voice barely above a whisper.

“Then I will think that you have very poor manners indeed,” Lucifer pouts.

Hob's breath shudders out of him, leaving his skin cold and nerves on high alert. “That’s all?”

"Of course, I will then have to bestow the Key upon the next most worthy candidate,” Lucifer says, eyes slinking up to Morpheus over Hob’s shoulder like toxic honey and, ah, there it is.

There’s the trap.

If Hob accepts the Key, he will become King of Hell, and never see Morpheus again. But he could command the armies of the damned back into their pits, and possibly, like he has in his little kingdom here on Earth, find new and better ways to help those there punishing themselves.

But if Morpheus accepts the Key, then Dream of the Endless will become King of Hell, plunging every sentient being in existence into unspeakable horror every time they fall asleep.

Which makes Hob’s choice a very, very simple one.

Before Morpheus can stop him, Hob plucks the key out of Lucifer’s hand.

" Hob !" Morpheus wails.

He reels back, as if all the places he was touching Hob suddenly burn him. The floor shudders beneath their feet, the foundations rumbling without warning. Thunder? Hob guesses, then, No, earthquake!

The room shakes with the power of Morpheus' fury and agony. Hob grasps at the bar to stay upright, and wonders if now that its head priest has become overlord of another realm, the temple of the New Inn will defile and crack apart around them all.

Morpheus keens like a wounded hart, clutching at his chest. He staggers, rocked by the judder of the floor, what little color he had manufactured for this humanish form draining away entirely. Outside, Matthew is cawing furiously, battering against the window in a desperate attempt to break in.

Hob's stomach heaves, and he's not sure if it's from the shaking of the building, or the enormity of what he's just done. What he's just accepted.

“What, no kiss for my gift, your Majesty?” Lucifer laughs, shrill and triumphant.

They seize Hob's face between red-taloned hands, and press a fire-hot, acid-slick mouth against his. Hob screams , the crawling burn of his flesh melting from his lips outwards throwing his animal mind into a mindless, terrified panic. Someone's hands fist in the back of his jumper, yanking at him, but the Devil's grip has seared him down to the bone, fingers embedded in his cheeks, nails scraping against the side of his teeth and tongue. The searing agony reaches his eyes, sizzles in his tears, so all he can see is the poisonous green steam of his own eyeballs boiling in their sockets.

Glass shatters, a bird cries out, a door slams open, cracking against a wall, a sonorous voice calls his name, and Hob flails, kicks, screams, and screams, and screams and—

"Forgive me, I am a titch late. I got caught up reading and… goodness me!" a prim voice gasps. "Well, this won't do at all!"

A loud noise, like a fleshy crack, rings out.

As suddenly as a snap, the pain is gone.

Hob gargles on the tail end of a scream that aborts somewhere behind his teeth.

His nose is filled with the scent of the rain and the petrichor from the gravel drive beyond a broken window and a wide-standing door, not with the reek of burning flesh. His heart races wildly, but it is still within his body. The rigid tension of his hell-electrified muscles ceases and Hob flops backwards, dropping against Morpheus' chest. Strong arms come around his chest Morpheus tilts his pelvis to cradle Hob's sacrum, one strong thigh behind his legs to keep from folding. He plays one hand up Hob's throat, caressing, paling his face, checking for damage and soothing all at the same time.

Hob pries his aching lids open, and finds his eyes have not boiled away after all.

The New Inn is unshaken, all in one piece, save for the way the front door is hanging off its hinges, cracked straight down the middle. The person who did it is obscured by Hob's view by the coffee machine, and the little, forlorn-looking cactus.

"What did you do to him?" Matthew caws from the mic stand, puffed out to twice his size, wings spread and a murderous gleam in his eyes. "What the fuck did you do to him?"

" I will end your miserable existence! I will throw you into the sulfurous lake from which you should never have crawled, you worthless, lothesome, hateful—"

"I'm fine!" Hob chokes out, feeling like he's vomiting up half his esophagus with every syllable. "I'm fine! "

" Your dare! I will tear your atoms apart and scatter them across so many universes that you will never again—"

" — peck your fucking eyes out — "

"Oh, dear! I do apologize, I believe I broke your door in, I'm so sorry, my dear boy—

"Guys," Hob gags. "Just let me catch my breath…"

And before him, unmoving and unperturbed by the overlapping, rising threats and verbal assaults, Lucifer watches him with a knowing, miserable look on their face.

"Enough! Quiet!" Hob thrust the Key into the air, and silence drops like a guillotine. He heaves on a few more breaths, then swallows hard, licking his lips. In an agonized, throat-shredded whisper he adds, "Please."

Because it never hurts to use one's manners.

Slowly, agonizingly, with the gentle help of Morpheus, Hob gets his feet back under him. The first thing he does is reach for his half-finished pint and drain the glass. The alcohol burns its way down, and Hob tastes the faintest touch of blood. Christ's nails, how loud had he been screaming?

Feeling more settled, he turns to face Lucifer.

Whose lipstick and painted fingernails are still utterly pristine.

They… they didn't kiss him.

"You…" Hob pants. "You didn't do that?"

"No," Lucifer says softly, and folds their hands together with elegant contriteness, fingers pointed downward in a reverse prayer.

"But you," Hob starts, then has to stop to swallow the bloody spittle that his screaming has produced. "You know what just happened?"

"The Key does it," Lucifer whispers. "Changes you. Every Devil needs a Face."

"I don't want a Devil Face," Hob says stubbornly.

Lucifer smiles, but it's thin and pained. "You don't get to choose."

Hob snarls and drops the Key onto the bar top. He half expects it to be stuck to his palm, or burned into his flesh. But it falls from his grip easily and lands with an unsatisfying clack . Morpheus, still hovering at Hob's side like Peter Pan's shadow, reaches out for it.

Hob smacks his hand away. "Don't you fucking dare."

" I would not see you suffer—"

"And I would not see all of humanity suffer, so you just fucking back right up there, friend."

Morpheus lowers his arm, but utterly fails to back up. If anything he presses closer. If the skinny little fuck had any bodyheat to speak of, Hob was sure he'd be feeling it through his own clothes right now.

The man by the door steps out of Hob's blindspot behind the coffee machine, and comes around to stand a respectful distance away, and peer at the Key. It's the queer little Bookseller of Soho. Late to the party, because he got caught up in reading, and Hob couldn't be more grateful for his perpetual absentminded tardiness.

“Well!" the Bookseller exclaims. "That’s where that silly old thing has gotten to! You would not believe the fuss that has kicked up in The Silver City. If you’ll give me just a moment…” He snaps once, a downward motion, as if yanking on an old-fashioned Edwardian-era bell pull.

A golden chime rings through the air and the Bookseller nods as if he's done some sort of momentous good deed. "Help is on the way, dear boy. But, ah, I would be ever so grateful if you did not tell them it was me who alerted them? I couldn't bear the paperwork."

And with that, the Bookseller is straight back out the door, which, miraculously, isn't actually broken off its hinges like Hob had thought it was. Turns out the window isn't broken either; it must have been a glass Matthew knocked over on his desperate flight inside.

Lucifer, very graciously, and very apologetically, refills Hob's pint glass by reaching over the bar for the tap, as Hob had done. Hob takes the pint (half head and spilling over the side; Hob guesses the Devil can't be good at everything ) with a nod of thanks. His hand is shaking so badly that Morpheus has to steady his arm just so he can drink.

"Well, friend," Hob says to Lucifer, once he's had a few long pulls on the cold fizz. "That was a hell of a party trick."

Lucifer snorts extremely inelegantly. "Pun intended?"

"Entirely."

" After what you suffered, you would still call the Morningstar friend ?" Morpheus asks, horror in every syllable.

"They didn't do whatever that just was to me," Hob points out. "The Key did. In fact, if that's what it feels like to hold it, then honestly, I don't blame you for wanting rid of the literally damned thing."

Lucifer's red, red, red lips part in gentle shock. They touch one lacquered nail to their own soft, pale cheek, then brush their palm across their neck as if double checking that the flesh there is indeed intact.

"You are generous in your forgiveness, sire," Lucifer says demurely.

"No more generous than all those who punish themselves in Hell for their past deeds deserve, I think," Hob says back. Including you , he doesn't add. But he doesn't need to.

Lucifer offers Hob a grateful bow.

Matthew makes a confused sort of snorfle sound. He hops his way down and across the room to Morpheus, who stoops to allow Matthew to perch on his hand, then transfers the raven to his shoulder.

"So now what, my lords?" Matthew croaks tentatively.

"Now we wait for whatever help was supposedly—"

Another unexpected surge of light interrupts Hob, and he squints against a golden flash-bulb flare of it. When it clears, two male-presenting beings that could literally only be angels stand before them.

This corner of the pub is starting to get awfully crowded, Hob thinks with all the hysterical sarcasm his ordeal allows him to muster.

The angels are both statuesque, both blonde, both clad in raiments of glowing white, with enormous golden wings. Hob glances at Lucifer, who rolls their eyes as the pompous way the angels carry themselves.

"Dream King," one of them says in deferential greeting. Both of the angels bow low to Morpheus.

" Remiel, Archangel of Hope. Duma, Archangel of Silence. Your presence in this moment is most welcome."

Morpheus inclines his head in a shallow bow, not letting on that it was the Bookseller who called them here, as asked. Hob doesn't know much about the hierarchy of celestial beings, but if the depth of their bows and nods to one another are anything to go by, Morpheus is a lot higher on the celestial pecking order than Lucifer's address to him has made it seem.

"Thank you," the one who is clearly not the Archangel of Silence says. "And our gratitude, also, for summoning us."

As one, the two archangels turn to the fallen one.

"Lucifer," Remiel says.

"Brother dearest," Lucifer sneers.

"The Divine Creator demands that you take up the Key and return to your throne."

"It's not my throne any longer," Lucifer sneers. "It's his now."

Remiel spares a glance over his shoulder at Hob that makes it very, very clear that the imperious twat thinks Hob is not much more evolved than pond gunk. The angel turns back to Lucifer.

"A mortal cannot rule Hell."

"Not mortal," Hob speaks up, just because he does not appreciate being snubbed in his own pub. And on his own birthday, to boot.

"Still human , though," Remiel sneers, the facade of literally-holier-than-thou superiority cracking a bit.

"And what's so wrong with being hummmuph," Matthew harrumphs as Morpheus reaches up and pinches his beak shut.

"Oh, well, guilty as charged then," Hob sneers right back, shoving his hands into his pockets and slouching his shoulders in the most insolent way he knows how.

Duma strides silently to Hob's side. Gently, but inexorably, the angel takes Hob's chin between his fingers, and holds his face still for his gaze.

"Doesn't hurt any more," Hob answers the ethereal creature's silent question. "But now we've got a bit of a problem, if you say a human can't rule Hell. Because it looks like it's either me, or Morpheus, and we all know what will happen if Dream of the Endless is forced to don that crown."

Duma's gaze grows tearful and sad. He shakes his head, just once, then releases Hob. Then, with the same hand, he reaches for the Key.

"Brother!" Remiel gasps, grabbing at his draped sleeve to stop him.

Matthew shakes free of Morpheus's fingers and, in a resounding voice that is clearly not his own, booms: "Hell cannot be entrusted to other than those who serve the Name directly… I shall take over Hell." The raven shakes himself all over, blinking rapidly. "What the fuck was that, boss?" He turns his sharp beak toward Duma. "Hey, don't use me as a puppet, man, that's violating!"

"Duma, no ," Remiel protests, but halts in the face of Duma's implacable silence. Remiel curls into himself in shame. "Very well. I cannot allow my fellow to drink from a cup I have refused. I will go with you."

"Have fun, boys," Lucifer sing-songs. "Oh, and there's a bit of a trick to getting the cold water in the palace pipes. There isn't any! Ha!"

Remiel sends Lucifer the stinkiest stink-eye Hob's ever seen in six hundred and sixty-six years.

Duma reaches for the key again and Hob is struck with a sudden flash of inspiration.

“Wait!” he shouts, throwing out a hand to block the Key. He doesn't touch it again though. He's reckless, not stupid.

"Wait?" Remiel echoes, agog. " Wait ? Who are you to command the Host to—"

"I'm the King of the Hell," Hob challenges back, puffing out his chest. "At least until you touch this Key."

"You are no Demonic Monarch, you lowly—"

“Oh, stuff it,” Hob snaps at Remiel, sick to the teeth with being polite to Celestial entities to clearly don’t feel the same courtesy toward him. “Before I give you the key, I want something in return. And I'm not giving up my one and only chance to do a deal as the Devil.”

Lucifer laughs, overjoyed. Morpheus makes a worried, confused sound. In the corner, Johanna's eyes narrow in concern.

But none of that matters. Because Hob’s remembered, all of a sudden, what Matthew had gossiped about, when he was recounting the parts of Morpheus’ trip to Hell that his friend had left out.

The boss stopped at this… this window in a spire, and a woman had called out for him with a name I’d never heard before, the raven had slurred, deep in his cups one evening while Morpheus had been trapped in the Library and sent Matthew for Tuesday Hangs in his stead. She’d reached for him through the bars, tugged on his coat, sobbing. She thought he’d come to rescue her and instead he just left there, like some heartless– He’d mantled his feathers then, shaking his head in a very human gesture like trying to disperse a bad memory. I asked Lucienne about her. She was sixteen, man, she was a kid, and the boss did her pretty dirty. She was heartbroken. It’s ugly.

Remiel bristles, the small feathers along the upper curve of their glossy white wings frazzling in irritation. “You do not bargain with God,” they hiss.

“But our absentee parent not here, my sycophantic sibling,” Lucifer purrs. “And Robert Gadling has not yet abdicated. Hell is his gift to bestow. Or to hoard. Oh, do say you will hoard it instead, little man. It will vex our creator so.”

“No,” Hob says, horrified by the idea of being sole ruler of all suffering for the rest of eternity, and being barred from Dream and the Dreaming to boot.

Lucifer shrugs, like it was worth one last try.

"Very well," Remiel grits out, sounding like every word is costing them a gallon of golden ichor.

“Nada,” Hob says. "She goes free."

Morpheus clutches hard at Hob's shoulder in his shock. " How do you know her name? How—"

"Not now," Hob says gently to his oldest friend, taking his hand from his shoulder, and twining their fingers together behind his back. Then turns his best flinty, bandit's glare at the angels. "Nada is released in exchange for the Key. Those are my terms."

"We cannot simply release a soul from Hell," Remiel says slowly, as if explaining to a toddler. "Without a corporation, it will be naught but a ghost."

"Then give her a corporation," Lucifer says, studying their nails as if bored. "We both know the paperwork is not as persnickety as the Quartermasters make it out to be. There's stacks lying around, waiting to be inhabited."

"Sibling!" Remiel hisses at Lucifer in warning. The former devil just bares their teeth at him. Remiel tries a different tack: "The Dream King condemned her to Hell himself. We cannot give her leave until he recants—"

Hob steps on Morpheus's foot.

Hard.

" I recant!" Morpheus yelps, glaring daggers at Hob. Then he clears his throat and resumes his customary haughty expression. "Nada has been unjustly punished, and it has gone on far too long. I recant my oath, and rescind my ire. Nada is no longer prisoner by my will, nor my pleasure."

Remiel gawps.

"A new life for Nada," Hob repeats firmly, bringing the conversation back to its point. "Reincarnation. A chance to do it all again, without suffering, in return for the Key. Are we agreed?"

Duma looks between Remiel, Morpheus, and Hob.

" Agreed ," Matthew booms, and then squawks: "Man, fuck off!"

"It is done."

Hob removes his hand from the bar.

Duma grasps the Key.

The only indication that it is paining him, that it is burning his face off even as Hob is staring at him and nothing is happening outwardly, is a slight squinching of his features. Remiel makes a disgusted sound and gestures with his hand, and the faint echo of a newborn baby's cry vaults through the room, perfectly audible over the susurrus of the gentling thunderstorm.

New life.

And she shares Hob's birthday.

How about that.

"The bargain is fulfilled," Remiel spits with disgust. "Brother, come."

Both angels snap their wings out—one of Remiel's slapping Lucifer in the face, clearly intentionally by the snarl they let loose—and in the powerful thrust of a gong-like wingbeat, are gone. The Key is gone with them.

Hob immediately squeezes Morpheus's hand tight and turns to gauge whether he's fucked up their friendship forever.

Surely, surely, Morpheus must be furious at Hob for overstepping so completely. Nada had gone to Hell because she'd died by suicide, but she'd only killed herself because Dream of the Endless had seduced her against the rules that forbade him for lying with a mortal ( Do I count as a mortal? Hob wonders frantically, Would we be punished if—focus, Gadling! ) and her people had been slaughtered in retribution. And Morpheus, in his pride, had left her to rot there when she refused his hand in return for rescue. It had all been, quite frankly, some epically toxic masculinity bullshit , and Hob is prepared to square off with his friend about it if he has to.

He doesn't want to, of course, but for the sake of a soul left suffering through no wrong of her own, he will.

But instead, he finds Morpheus limp with shock, silently weeping.

"Hob," Morpheus gasps. " Hob, my priest, my devoted one." He surges forward, anoints Hob's forehead and palms with holy, reverent kisses. The last of the lingering pain from the Key's hold is washed away in the cool calmness of deep sleep and deeper night. It flows down his skin, making him shiver as Hob is consecrated Head Priest once more. "How beneficent your human heart is. And how shamed I am, that it took you to force me to do right by one I had scorned unjustly and unkindly."

"Yeah, well, don't you forget it," Hob says, when Morpheus pulls away. He rubs his face, weary in a way that he hasn't felt in… well, ever. "So, are we done now? Can we… can we be done now, please? I have a party to—" he looks around the room, at all the people here under his invitation, under his burden of care. "To save."

"By all means," Lucifer says. "They will awaken as soon as I go."

" Then go," Morpheus invites, with no little amount of bitchy snark.

Lucifer offers him a hard stare, but after a moment, relents without retaliation. "I shall make my farewells to you then, Robert Gadling, from one former Monarch of Hell to another."

They lean forward and buss a gentle, warm kiss off of Hob's cheek.

“Where will you go?” Hob asks, as they withdraw. “If Hell isn’t your domain any more, what are your plans?”

“Why, stay here, of course,” Lucifer says. Then they look around at the cramped room, the stuffy air, the frozen mortals. “Well, perhaps not here , here. But as I said, it’s been ever so long since I’ve been invited to a party. I’ve forgotten how fun they can be. Perhaps I will find some space to host my own sinful little celebrations.”

“Like… a nightclub?” Hob asks, wracking his brain for what they may mean.

Lucifer’s eyes spark with intrigue. “Now that is an idea,” they murmur. “A nightclub . There’s all sorts of wicked things a soul may get into there. I’ll send you an invitation to the grand opening, Hob dearest. In thanks for tonight.”

“You know what,” Hob says, finding he really means it when he says: “I look forward to it.”

The former Devil blinks, obviously not anticipating or expecting his favorable response.

“See you then, my friend,” Hob says, holding out a hand to shake.

“Is that a binding promise?” Lucifer asks slyly, reaching back.

“Absolutely not,” Hob laughs. “I know better than to make a deal with the devil. Again.” He cuts a wink at Morpheus, who wrinkles his nose petulantly. “But you tell me when and where, and I’ll try.”

“That is acceptable,” Lucifer acquiesces, and shakes his hand not to seal a deal, but in a companionable farewell.

“Oh!” Hob says, as a dark cloud of absolutely rotten-smelling smokes begins to billow around their smart white pumps. “I used to play some violin, in the 18th century. Should I bring it?”

Lucifer breaks into a wide, frankly dorky grin of sheer delight. “No, friend. I haven’t picked up a fiddle since I lost that bout. I’m more of a piano man, now.”

And before Hob can think of anything clever to say to that, the cloud envelopes the Devil, and they are gone.

“-- the hell was that! ” Patrick shouts from beside Hob, right in his ear, and Hob startles away, nearly falling on his arse in surprise.

Hob catches himself on a bar stool, heart hammering in his throat, as all around him the humans resume moving and talking as if the massive clap of thunder that had shaken the Inn had occurred just a second ago.

“Someone should go check if that hit the pub!” one of Hob’s colleagues says, and grabs an umbrella from the stand of forgotten ones by the door and ducking outside before he can see who it was. “No! All good! No fire!”

Johanna Constantine bounds across the room like she's a bolt of lightning herself. Hob braces for a punch in the nose, and gets wrapped in a tight embrace instead. "You mad bastard," Johanna hisses in his ear. "You mad, incredible, pig-shit bonkers bastard ."

"Yeah, that's me," Hob says sheepishly, squeezing her back.

"Happy birthday!" she says, smacks a ridiculous kiss off his mouth, and then crosses back across the room, grabs Ric by the sleeve, and pulls her through the kitchen and—by the sounds of the slamming door—into the back where the bins make a conveniently shadowed corner.

"Yeah, nobody go back there for a while," Hob announces to the handful of people watching what had just happened with open curiosity.

"Ew," Patrick grumps. He does a double take when he catches Morpheus and Matthew on the far side of the bar, several empty glasses before him that he obviously didn't put there.

For a moment, Hob is worried that his co-owner is going to put up a fuss about the live animal in the building, but then Patrick shrugs in the way that mortals encouraged to overlook Morpheus' oddities by the very nature of his existence do. He busses the empties, and moves on to the next customer.

Hob, not inclined at all to overlook Morpheus, leans on the bar beside him, and grins up at his oldest, and strangest friend.

" Are all your birthday celebrations this eventful, Hob Gadling? " Morpheus asks, eyebrow raised coyly, as Matthew attempts to preen the last of his wet feathers into laying right.

"Nah," Hob promises. "Just the milestones."

" Then I already dread the party you will throw to mark your first millennia."

Hob, who has just enough beer left in his glass to toast Morpheus and toss back the mouthful, does so. Then he chuckles ruefully. "I don't, my friend. Not in the least. As a former Monarch of Hell, I have a feeling my life will be even more interesting in the decades to come." He drops Morpheus a cheeky wink. "And I have so much to live for."

On the far side of the pub, someone shuts off all the lights. A spark of candlelight goes up, and, raised in chorus, everyone that Hob holds dear—in the here and now—begins to sing.

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#Cling Fast #Cling Fast adjecent #The Hob Adherent series #Losyark #Sandman #The Sandman #The sandman fanfiction #the sandman fanfic #dreamling #dreamling fanfic #dreamling fanfiction #hob gadling #lord morpheus #dream of the endless #lucifer morningstar #pre-slash #matthew the raven #morpheus needs to learn to use his words

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hnting · 3 years ago

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NAME. Jessica Ashley Black. Jessica was selected by her mother for its popularity at the time. Ashley was chosen by her father, who was hoping to name the first-born son after his father, but figured the name would do for a girl, too.

NICKNAME(S)/TITLE(S). Jess for most people. Jessie is what her grandmother called her and occasionally her parents too when she was a kid. The Master Huntress. Crazy Hunger Games wannabe.

AGE. 21-22 during game events. She was born in 1997.

SPECIES. Human, allegedly.

GENDER. (Cis) female.

ALIGNMENT. Chaotic Neutral.

INTERESTS. Archery, primarily. The great outdoors. In a better world, she takes an interest in aerodynamics. Planes, helicopters, birds, and anything that flies catch her attention and she likes watching them. She's a stone-skipping expert and undefeated champion at anything involving good aim, according to her. She used to play volleyball and basketball in school and enjoyed (and was good at) both. She would have liked traveling but never got to do much of that.

PROFESSION. Thorn in Jacob's side, canonically. She worked various low-paying jobs (cashier, dish washer, waitress, lifeguard for one summer, etc.) and hated each one of them. In a "normal" verse, she does go on to make a tidy living from competing in archery tournaments and such.

BODY TYPE. Athletic, mesomorph. Once a lanky and bony child, she’s grown into quite the imposing young woman, if only it weren’t for the slouched shoulders, ever-present dirt and grime, and the haphazardly layered clothing. She’s got long legs, her hips are on the narrow side, and her shoulders rather broad and well-muscled. Strong arms, back and core muscles from a lifetime of archery and being a very sporty, outdoorsy person in general. If you ask her, her chest is too big and only gets in the way.

EYES. In-game, a very light blue/grey, but I haven’t made up my mind about it. More on this later.

HAIR. Light brown bordering on dirty blonde, a dusty sort of shade. It’s her natural hair color, although she’s dyed her hair in the past. Not quite straight, but not exactly wavy either; somewhere in-between. Thick and surprisingly healthy, even though it’s left completely to its devices. Not prone to getting overly frizzy or split ends, either. Length-wise, it reaches just past her shoulders and Jess doesn’t let it get much longer than that. She cuts her hair herself-- and it shows. The side-swept bangs are also her own creation. It’s not soft, but it’s not very coarse either. The cleanest it’ll ever smell is after she washes it in Dutch’s bunker with whatever he’s got down there.

SKIN. Light brown with warm, olive undertones. She tans well, rarely burns, and does indeed have a tan most of the year with how much she’s outside under the sun. Her skin gets really dry and patchy at times, and her palms and feet are deeply calloused. She is covered in scars, both recent and old, and any number of other marks and bruises. Burn scars, gunshot scars, arrow scars, scars from getting stabbed and scratched and mauled. Few of those are from accidents and mishaps, most of them from peggies and wildlife. One of them is from her father.

HEIGHT. 183 cm or about 6ft. She takes after her father, but her mother wasn’t short either.

VOICE. Here.

COMPANIONS. She’s a lone wolf. Works alongside the deputy only out of necessity and extraordinary circumstances.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS. “What the fuck is a relationship? Bitch, I’ll kill you.”

ANTAGONISTS. Peggies <3

COLORS. Greens, mostly. Asparagus green, Amazon green, forest green, pine green. Chestnut, bright artery blood red, caput mortuum. Plain black, too.

FOODS. It’s either instant ramen, canned food, and energy bars or plain venison/boar/fowl/whatever else she hunts roasted over the campfire. She’s a good forager too, of course. Berries, nuts, mushrooms, etc. She eats what she can find, pretty much. Can’t afford to be pretentious about it or develop any real dislikes for particular foods. That said, she rarely eats any dairy products, homemade meals, desserts, or anything that spoils quickly / requires a fridge / is complex to prepare.

DRINKS. Water. Directly from headwaters she knows it’s safe to drink from. She rarely bothers with filtering/boiling water. Immune system of a sewer rat.

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES? Yeah, sure, she’ll take whatever you’ve got. She misses being able to get shitfaced and not having to worry about waking up in a cage, though.

SMOKES? Similarly to alcohol, she’ll smoke if someone is offering, whatever they may be offering. Not a habitual smoker.

#➵ ABOUT: and if they catch you they will kill you but first they must catch you #SHE!!!#my little beast of a gorl

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shiro-tora3 · 5 years ago

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Ok now im just getting this one dude SUPER INSISTENT that i take the apartment and seems well versed in Polite Talk but something is kinda...off?

And NS has a bad human trafficking issue which is mainly inland and for younger people but im still...idk

It just seems too good. Fully furnished (i have my own thx) EVERYTHING included. Washer dryer internet power heat A/C cable water. All for 750

Plus he wants me to sign for 9 years.

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whosxafraid · 7 years ago

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Married Life Meme: Luka and mah sistah Beth (dealers choice of verse)

Meme: Married Life Meme Status: Open

Round and round the stone is spun between fingers that can not speak its tongue. Round and round the memories turn, and one by one escape.

leaves their dirty clothes on the floor

Actions unsuited for a lady. But he hardly much remembers how it is a human Lady should act. And there is nothing at all amiss to him about picking up the soiled garments, one by one. Laid over the chair by the fire. One he moves to stoke and encourage into something that will keep her warm til dawn.

His charge is to protect not to smother. And perhaps he enjoyed the afternoon with her, on the edge of the forest, far more than anyone can know. Because she is a Lady and he but a servant in two realms. And he tells himself it is duty that ensures she’s tucked in snugly, before slipping out her door. To run the green and wild lands until the morning comes.

forgets to run the dish washer

They won’t let him in. She is ill and unfit for company they say. So he sits and he paces and he waits. The stone before her door nearly etched with the strides of his feet. And with every come and go of her caretakers he tries to catch sight of her through the door, but the old women are skilled and quick for their age. Shoving trenchers into his hands, and soiled clothes. Demanding more water and clean linens.

And he goes for what else can he do? Returning from the kitchens with what was asked. And the pacing begins a new. A scowl kept to himself with the coming and going of the crowned prince. For who would dare tell the future king no? Who would dare bar his way? Not a soul–though one might beg it to be done.

pumps gas for the car

She wishes to ride today, and he will see it done. Rising earlier than really needed to ensure the beast bred to bare her was well fed and brushed and tacted. In good health and mood when she appears in the courtyard. Shining and bright. A red ribbon in her hair that stands stark against dark tresses. Her maids fussing after her that it is hardly a Lady’s place to be galavanting off on horse back to who knows where, when she should be spending the day at court.

drives when they’re going somewhere

But she comes. Radiant and unhindered despite the basket clutched in hand. One that he takes, ties upon the horses back for her, before helping her to mount. And he leads her and her favored friend away from the prattling woman. To the northern fields where they can both take heart, that not a soul shall see them. And for a few hours, at the least, they may be themselves without judgement.

rearranges the furniture

“I would not see you sleep in such discomfort a night more!”

And that had been the end of it. For who was he to argue with a princess? And the highest Princess at that? Though he had to get used to the humanness of it all. The sleeping within walls of stone, and doors barred by iron. Had to learn to ignore the sounds that echoed through the hollow halls and the stillness of the air. Learned again the usefulness of blankets and the luxury of a pillow.

Never mind at all that his feet stuck off the end. Never mind the room beside her own felt enclosed like a cage. He was near her here, and that meant he was able to do as he’d sworn more easily. And never could it be said that even a mouse or moth passed by her door, without the wolf’s consent.

falls asleep with the TV on

Tell me a tale. You must know of at least one.

Moments tick by in the quiet. One pair of eyes transfixed upon the heavens while the other sees nothing but her. And he thinks…oh how he thinks. A thousand stories across a hundred handfuls of years–she wishes for a tale. And it must be something grand. Something worthy of her ears and her time.

“D’ere were o’farmer d’at were blessed wi’d d’ress sons. An’ when d’ey be grown an’ were toi’me fer d’em ta be foi’ndin’ o’lass ta marry he be callin’ d’em together…”

By the time the little princess mouse had run her bell thrice and made her way along the road to meet the farmer with her sweetheart by her side—his little princess had long fallen into dream. Tucked against his arm with his shoulder for a pillow. And perhaps the wolf remained as he was for hours more, until the cool of the evening woke his wisdom to move her to her bed.

gets to use the bathroom first

A beast in part he may be but that does not at all mean he must smell like one. But bathes are drawn for kings and queens. For their children and for lords and ladies. Not for those that serve. So he is left with but one option. To find a river near the royal encampment, after the evening extravagance.

Shrouded by the dark and given sight by a waning moon. But skin as pale as his own stands stark against the blackness of the water. Reflects the circle fires and the starlight. And perhaps he knows not that a Princess watches through the pulled too curtains of her tent. Perhaps he knows not of the heat that it brings to her cheeks, and what it stirs in her.

Or perhaps he does, and he lingers in his washing longer than necessary.

decides the temperature for the ac/heater

“Be ye troi’yin’ ta catch ye dea’d?”

A stride or three carries him to the fire. Stoking and adding fuel to the embers. Forcing it back into a roaring dance, whose heat bleeds into the room far to slow for his liking. And a fur is fetched from the chest near by. Laid about her shoulders and wrapped around her tightly. Hands doing what they can to rub her frame. To bring heat back into limbs. Only to stop with her words.

He knows. My brother. He knows. And I fear he means you harm.

A flicker of light that has no source amid green and yellow. And it takes but a moment for hands shift. For fingers to catch beneath her chin and lift her face to his.

“He can troi’y, Réiltín. He may even suceed. Bu’ d’harm he do will be upon himself in d’en’. Me duty be ta ye. An’ oi’ no’ abandon me pos’. No’ matter wha’ da prince moi’ght do. Oi’no’ will leave ye. Ye, believe d’at….aye?”

A forward motion, a collapse and there they remain. Tangled in each other by her hearth. For he meant what he said. He would not leave her. Not for anything. In this realm or the other.

sets up holiday decorations

Picketing tents and unloading tables from wagons. It is not easy work but he sees it done all the same. For tonight the castle will be alive both within and without. A festival to honor the harvest and a new cycle of seasons. Celebrations that will ring across both realms. And there is a joy in him that perhaps some do not understand.

So when she comes flitting to his side. A crown of flowers set gingerly upon his head. There is a smile that escapes. One that settles deeply into his bones. And the crown is left where it is. For when a princess offers you good tidings and a gift—you keep it. And you honor it for as long as the flowers hold their color.

leaves the lights on

But it will go out without tending.

“D’en oi’will tend i’.”

All night?

“Aye, Réiltín. All noi’ght.”

A promise that he keeps. For she does not abide the dark well. Afraid of the things within it. Afraid of the spirits and their tricks. So he tends the light. Keeps it burning bright and warm. Because he can not tell her there is nothing to fear. He can not tell her the darkness would not dare. For even the dark must live by rules. Rules that were written far before either of them were every thoughts. Rules that his Lady was there to help write.

uses the bathroom with the door open

It isn’t his fault though perhaps his luck, that the foolish boy had left the prince’s best saddle to the elements. Draped over the wall meant to mark the grounds of the cattle fields. Maybe he should have left it be, but how can he? Sitting there as it had been, just begging to be stolen. Or worse yet ruined.

And it’s all fun and games is it not? For the faire folk are like the wind. They blow both ways. And one ill turn deserves another. So the saddle is taken. The leather used to alleviate the itch in his teeth. The detailed stitch torn bit by bit by bit and scattered across the dewy grass. And eventually….stained with liquids never meant to be applied.

And there he leaves it to be found upon the morrow. Another casualty of the monster the prince has yet to capture.

fixes the plumbing (or calls the plumber)

Drip. Drip. Drip.

It seems to grow louder with each occurrence. The rain that pours down in sheets, has found it’s way into the thatching and through the stone. He’s not the tools to mend and fix and he must wait for the morning.

Morning that can not come fast enough. Morning that he meets with little rest and lagging feet. Both of which she notices. As well as the dampness of his boots. For he had not else to catch the invading rain in but them, and not the time nor tools to dry them before he was expected at her door.

I will have the holes addressed before the day is out.

“Aye, as ye wish.”

#[this took 68 years and its not with them married but they never got to get married and just.....here have a thing lol]#[thank u this was fun to work out honestly!!]#tabbyrp #brooklynislandgirl #réiltín || beth riley #Cause In A Sky Full Of Stars He Thinks He Saw Her || Beth and Luka #return to sender || answered asks #[long post]

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john-carter-was-here · 7 years ago

Text

Excerpts from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Stolen from: Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein

Always store beer in a dark place.

By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man – man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has no enemy to help him.

Men are more sentimental than women. It blurs their thinking.

Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you; if you don’t bet, you can’t win.

Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.

Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.

Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.

There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know. So why fret about it?

If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.

It has been long known that one horse can run faster than another–but which one? Differences are crucial.

A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.

Delusions are often functional. A mother’s opinions about her children’s beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.

Most “scientists” are bottle washers and button sorters.

A “pacifist male” is a contradiction in terms. Most self- described “pacifists” are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger.

Nursing does not diminish the beauty of a woman’s breasts; it enhances their charm by making them looked lived in and happy.

A generation which ignores history has no past–and no future.

A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.

What a wonderful world it is that has girls in it!

Small change can often be found under seat cushions.

History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.

It’s amazing how much “mature wisdom” resembles being too tired.

If you don’t like yourself, you can’t like other people.

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate–and quickly.

A motion to adjourn is always in order.

No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and, in the long run, no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons: “Come back with your shield, or on it.” Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome.

Of all the strange “crimes” that human beings have legislated out of nothing, “blasphemy” is the most amazing – with “obscenity” and “indecent exposure” fighting it out for second and third place.

Cheops Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

It is better to copulate than never.

All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can–and must–be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a “perfect society” on any foundation other than “Women and children first!” is not only witless it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly–and no doubt will keep on trying.

All men are created unequal.

Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well.

A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.

There is only one way to console a widow. But remember the risk.

When the need arises–and it does–you must be able to shoot your own dog. Don’t farm it out–that doesn’t make it nicer; it makes it worse.

Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.

One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.

Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it’s more sanitary.

Men rarely(if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

Never appeal to a man’s “better nature.” He may not have one. Invoking self-interest gives you more leverage.

Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse.

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.

Avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry. N.B.: Circumstances can force your hand. So think ahead!

Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded–here and there, now and then– are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”

In a mature society, “civil servant” is semantically equal to “civil master.”

When a place gets crowded enough to required ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.

A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.

The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war a very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race’s most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must–never for sport.

A zygote is a gamete’s way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe.

There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled ‘Nature.’” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that man and his artifacts are not part of “Nature”–but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purpose of men) the “Naturist” reveals his hatred of his own race –i.e. his own self-hatred. In the case of “Naturists” such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate. As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me I like being part of a race made of men women –it strikes me as a fine arrangement and perfectly “natural.” Believe it or not, there were “Naturists” who opposed the first flight to old Earth’s Moon as being “unnatural” and a “despoiling of Nature.”

“No man is an island–” Much as we may feel and act as individuals, our race is a single organism, always growing and branching– which must be pruned regularly to be healthy. This necessity need not be argued; anyone with eyes can see that any organism which grows without limit always dies in its own poisons. The only rational question is whether pruning is best done before or after birth. Being an incurable sentimentalist I favor the former of these methods – killing makes me queasy, even when it’s a case of “He’s dead and I’m alive and that’s the way I wanted it to be.” But this may be a mater of taste. Some shaman think that it is better to be in a war, or to die in childbirth, or to starve in misery, than never to have lived at all. They may be right. But I don’t have to like it – and I don’t.

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something.

Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let’s play that over again too. Who decides?

Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure “good” government; it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare – most people want to run things but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the “backseat-driver syndrome.”

What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what the “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent – it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these diving attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.

Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.)

The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of “loyalty” and “duty.” Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute– get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed.

People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy by half a slug who must tighten his belt.

The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathes, and not make messes in the house.

Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest.” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, built a wall, set a bon, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

The more you love, the more you can love – the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.

Masturbation is cheap, clean, convient, and free of any possibility of wrongdoing–and you don’t have to go home in the cold. But it’s lonely.

Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.

If tempted by something that feels “altruistic,” examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then if you still want to do it, wallow in it!

The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expense of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.

The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of – but do it in private and was your hands afterwards.

$100 placed at 7 percent interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase to more that $100,000,000 – by which time it will be worth nothing.

Dear, don’t bore him with trivia or burden him with your past mistakes. The happiest way to deal with a man is never to tell him anything he does not need to know.

Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your person requires.

Everybody lies about sex.

If men were the automatons that behaviorists claim they are, the behaviorist psychologists could not have invented the amazing nonsense called “behaviorist psychology.” So they are wrong from scratch – as clever and as wrong as phlogiston chemists.

The shamans are forever yacking about their snake-oil “miracles.” I prefer the Real McCoy – a pregnant woman.

If the universe has any purpose more important than topping a woman you love and making a baby with her hearty help, I’ve never heard of it.

Thou shalt remember the Eleventh Commandment and keep it Wholly.

A touchstone to determing the actual worth of an “intellectual” – find out how he feels about astrology.

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.

There is no such thing as “social gambling.” Either you are there to cut the other bloke’s heart out and eat it – or you’re a sucker. If you don’t like this choice – don’t gamble.

When the ship lifts, all bills are paid. No regrets.

The first time I was a drill instructor I was too inexperienced for the job – the things I taught those lads must have got some of them killed. War is too serious a matter to be taught by the inexperienced.

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealous in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.

Money is the sincerest of all flatter. Women love to be flattered. So do men.

You live and learn. Or you don’t live long.

Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They should never settle merely for equality. For women, “equality” is a disaster.

Peace is an extension of war by political means. Plenty of elbowroom is pleasanter – and much safer.

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.

The phrase “we (I) (you) simply must –” designates something that need not be done. “That goes without saying ” is a read warning. “Of Course” means you had best check it yourself. These small-change cliches and others like them, when read correctly, are reliable channel markers.

Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.

Rub her feet.

If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do. Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.

Never crowd youngsters about their private affairs – sex especially. When they are growing up, they are never ends all over, and resent (quite properly) any invasion of their privacy. Oh, sure, they’ll make mistakes – but that’s their business, not yours. (You made your own mistakes, did you not ?)

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

More from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Always tell her she is beautiful, especially if she is not.

If you are part of a society that votes, the do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.

Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriages: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity.

Those who refuse to support and defend a state have no claim to protection by that state. Killing an anarchist or a pacifist should not be defined as “murder” in a legalistic sense. The offense against the state, if any, should be “Using deadly weapons inside city limits,” or “Creating a traffic hazard,” or “Endangering bystanders,” or other misdemeanor. However, the state may reasonably place a closed season on these exotic asocial animals whenever they are in danger of becoming extinct. An authentic buck pacifist has rarely been seen off Earth, and it is doubtful that any have survived the trouble there . . regrettable, as they had the biggest mouths and smallest brains of any of the primates. The small-mouthed variety of anarchist has spread through the Galaxy at the very wave front of the Diaspora; there is no need to protect them. But they often shoot back.

Another ingredient for a happy marriage: Budget the luxuries first!

And still another– See to it that she has her own desk – then keep your hands off it!

And another– In a family argument, if it turns out you are right – apologize at once!

"God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends.“ This may not be true, but it sounds good – and is no sillier than any other theology.

To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.

Does history record any case in which the majority was right?

When the fox gnaws – smile!

A "critic” is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased – he hates all creative people equally.

Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash.

Never frighten a little man. He’ll kill you.

Only a sadistic scoundrel – or a fool – tells the bald truth on social occasions.

This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his mother’s side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply.

In handling a stinging insect, move very slowly.

To be “matter of fact” about the world is to blunder into fantasy – and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange

and wonderful.

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while the other subjects merely require scholarship.

Copulation is spiritual in essence – or it is merely friendly exercise. On second thought, strike out “merely.” Copulation is not “merely” – even when it is just a happy pastime for two strangers. But copulation at its spiritual best is so much more than physical coupling that it is different in kind as well as in degree. The saddest feature of homosexuality is not that is “wrong” or “sinful” or even that it can’t lead to progeny – but that it is more difficult to reach through it this spiritual union. Not impossible – but the cars are stacked against it. But – most sorrowfully – many people never achieve spiritual sharing even with the help of male-female advantage; they are condemned to wander through life alone.

Touch is the most fundamental sense. A baby experiences it, all over, before he is born and long before he learns to use sight, hearing, or taste, and no human ever ceases to need it. Keep your children short on pocket money – but long on hugs.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors – and miss.

The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it’s lovely work if you can stomach it.

A whore should be judged by the same criteria as other professionals offering services for pay – such as dentists, lawyers, hairdressers, physicians, plumbers, etc. Is she professionally competent? Does she give good measure? Is she honest with her clients? It is possible that the percentage of honest and competent whores is higher than that of plumbers and much higher than that of lawyers. And enormously higher than that of professors.

Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime – and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows.

Have you noticed how much they look like orchids? Lovely!

Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.

Never try to outstubborn a cat.

Tilting at windmills hurts you more than the windmills.

Yield to temptation; it may not pass your way again.

Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.

“Go to hell!” or other insult direct is all the answer a snoopy questions rates.

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts :“Of course it is none of my business but –” is to place a period after the word “but.” Don’t use excessive force in supplying such moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.

A man does not insist on physical beauty in a woman who builds up his morale. After a while he realizes that she is beautiful – he just hadn’t noticed it at first.

A skunk is better company than a person who prides himself on being “frank.”

“All’s fair in love and war ” – what a contemptible lie!

Beware of the “Black Swan” fallacy. Deductive logic is tautological; there is no way to get a new truth out of it, and it manipulates false statements as readily as true ones. If you fail to remember this, it can trip you – with perfect logic. The designers of the earliest computers called this the “Gigo Law”; i.e., “Garbage in, garbage out.”

Inductive logic is much more difficult – but can produce new truths.

A “practical joker” deserves applause for his wit according to his quality. Bastinado is about right. For exceptional wit one might grant keelhauling. But staking him out on an anthill should be reserved for the very wittiest.

Natural laws have no pity.

On the planet Tranquille around KM849(G-O) lives a little animal known as a “knafn.” It is herbivorous and has no natural enemies and is easily approached and may be petted – sort of a six-legged puppy with scales. Stroking it is very pleasant; it wiggles its pleasure and broadcast euphoria in some band that humans can detect. It’s worth the trip. Someday some bright boy will figure out how to record this broadcast, then some smart boy will see commercial angles – and not longer after that it will be regulated and taxed. In the meantime I have faked that name and catalog number; it is several thousand light-years off in another direction. Selfish of me –

Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite.

Take car of the cojones and the frijoles will take car of themselves. Try to have getaway money – but don’t be fanatic about it.

If “everybody knows” such-and-such, then it ain’t so, by at least ten thousand to one.

Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth – are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from the highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

All cats are not gray after midnight. Endless variety–

Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other “sins” are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful – just stupid.)

Being generous is inborn; being altruistic is a learned perversity. No resemblance –

It is impossible for a man to love his wife wholeheartedly without loving all women somewhat. I suppose that the converse must be true of women.

You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting.

Formal courtesy between a husband and wife is even more important than it is between strangers.

Anything free is worth what you pay for it.

Don’t store garlic near other victuals.

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament – it is possible to be both. How? By never taking an unnecessary chance and by minimizing risks you can’t avoid. This permits you to play out the game happily, untroubled by the certainty of the outcome.

Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants “just a few minutes of your time, please – this won’t take long.” Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time – and squawk for more! So learn to say No – and to be read about it when necessary.

Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for live and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you. (This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don’t do it because it is “expected” of you.)

"I came, I saw, she conquered.“ (The original Latin seems to have been garbled.)

A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.

Animals can be driven crazy by place too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animals that voluntarily does this to himself.

Don’t try to have the last word. You might get it.

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nuttywizardtale · 4 years ago

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Timestamp Safari For Mac

I can very easily see timestamps for texts (SMS) and messages (wifi? Not really sure what this is) on iOS messenger by swiping to the left. However, in the Messenger app on OSX (10.11.6 El Capitan), I cannot for the life of my get these timestamps to appear (swiping, right-clicking a message, app options and context menus, etc.). I noticed some very odd behaviour in macOS High Sierra's (10.13.1) Finder. For filenames that contain timestamps Finder changes the timestamp format, the two screenshots below illustrate the issue.

15 septiembre, 2020

Drew Reece If you have Private Browsing enabled the Safari toolbar is black, when you turn on private browsing it will not save your history.

iOS 9.3.5 sonshine1972 All modern versions of Safari in iOS have searchable history, here’s how it works:If you tap on any searched history result, the page or site will immediately open in Safari.In the example above, I searched for “Charlie Rose” to track down an old interview I had watched on YouTube, and the video I was searching for was found immediately.You can search through any search history on Safari on the iOS device, even history that is quite a bit older, as long as you (or the user) has not Note that if you use Safari and iCloud on an iPhone or iPad as well as another device, you will have other devices history to search through as well – even if it was not searched for on the current device.

User profile for user: how can i tell what time a website was browsed on ipad, ipad browsing history date and time, ipad history timestamp, ipad safari history date and time, ipad safari history time, ipad safari history timestamp, safari history time, safari history time stamp, safari history timestamp, safari history timestamp ipad

With the excellent Safari History search feature you can easily retrieve and find previously visited sites, webpages, and videos, whether from earlier in the day or even well over a year ago – assuming the searchable Safari history has not been removed anyway. How to See History in Safari. If you have multiple iOS devices such as an iPhone and an iPad, syncing Safari tabs allows you to see...Get monthly tips delivered directly to your Inbox.We don't like spam any more than you. 2.

User profile for user: Apple provides the Safari app for browsing the Internet. Safari stores a log of websites you visit along with other related components, such as the cache and cookies.

How it stores the browsing history using times such as This Morning, Afternoon, Evening when you view history in safari from an iPad. Did you know you can search through web browsing history in Safari on an iPhone or iPad?

Reproduction without explicit permission is prohibited.This website and third-party tools use cookies for functional, analytical, and advertising purposes. Thank you. However, once a tab is closed, the browsing history for that tab is deleted.If you have multiple devices such as an iPhone and an iPad, you can view the browsing history from one device while using the other device. Hi. User profile for user: All Rights Reserved.

In response to lesterfamily3705 Is there a way that I can get a record of the time during which a website was searched the browser history? Use iPhone backup Extractor to export the Safari data to a folder. Tapping the Back button will take you to the last website that was viewed. I'm curious as to what the windows of times are used to differentiate between morning, afternoon, evening, when you are viewing a website. Maybe someone still has no idea how to see the Safari history on iPad.

IPad 2 Deletes Browsing History From Safari By Itself Jul 29, 2012. lesterfamily3705 I don't know a way to get iOS Safari history timestamp. Then you can view safari history. Posted on This is not a built in feature as far as I can tell. Simply select the website you want from the list and it will reload in Safari.If you have several different tabs open in Safari, the browsing history is saved independently for each tab. However, you may want to delete your browsing history and the accompanying data for privacy reasons. In response to sonshine1972 How to View the Browsing History in Safari on the iPhone or iPad By iAnswerGuy / March 5, 2016 March 5, 2018 Apple provides the Safari app for browsing the Internet.

Safari uses iCloud to keep your browsing history the same on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac computers that have Safari turned on in iCloud preferences.However, your Mac can keep your browsing history for as long as a year, while some iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models keep browsing history for a … However, once a tab is closed, the browsing history for that tab is deleted.

Timestamp Safari For Macbook

For the most part, it is convenient and easy to use. It is shaped like an open book. User profile for user: In this situation, tap the Bookmark icon located in the same row of icons as the Back button.

Tap that to turn Private Browsing off. The browsing history for each tab is not deleted when you exit Safari. Sep 19, 2014 2:36 PM in response to lesterfamily3705 Reviewing your iPad browser history is a straightforward process. Tap History to check the URLs list. How to See History in Safari. dominic23 Safari in iOS can contain a significant time of browsing cache, depending on those circumstances and perhaps others too.Searching safari history on my iPhone… how far back will the history go? I need two months at least.You need to mention the search history section does not display unless you pull down on the list. Step 1. I was more asking about within safari specifically. Tap History to check the URLs list. You can try the following assuming you sync the device to iTunes with unencrypted backups… (I'm also assuming you are on a Mac).Sync the device with iTunes to create a new backup.Use iPhone backup Extractor to export the Safari data to a folder. Thank you!!! I am developing a tool to extract people's web visits on Mac and Windows (history on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari).

iOS 7.1.2 May 18, 2017 11:12 AM Scroll down the list and click open the “Metadata” folder. My iPad 2 tend to delete browsing history from Safari by itself without any prompt. dominic23 Posted on Oct 5, 2013 6:31 AM. Then you can view safari history. iPad 2 Wi-Fi, User profile for user: What could be the reason behind this issue and how can I solve it?

Thank you for your reply. More Less. Did you know you can search through web browsing history in Safari on an iPhone or iPad?

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Timestamp Safari For Mac Os

Timestamp Safari For Mac Mojave

Do you mean time expressed in hours : minutes : seconds? Unfortunately Safari doesn't show the time. The entire browsing history available in History -> Show All History menu shows only the date.

The history is saved in a database file named History.db located in Safari folder inside your Library. If you're familiar with SQL you can copy that database file somewhere, open it with the app DB Browser for SQLite, choose Browse Data and select under the Table dropdown menu history_visits. You can sort the data selecting the visit_time column.

The problem is that the timestamp in that column is expressed in Core Data timestamp format which is not human readable. You can convert it here: https://www.epochconverter.com/coredata

Timestamp Safari For Mac Shortcut

If you need to check only a specific visit it's doable otherwise you'd need to convert someway the entire column (I guess exporting the table in CSV and managing the conversion with another app).

Jul 22, 2019 4:27 AM

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gduncan969 · 5 years ago

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Enjoying Your Sabbath Rest

Hebrews 4: 9 - 11: “There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.”

The Old Testament Sabbath I was asked recently to explain what the word “Sabbath” meant to me and my immediate response was, of course, “a day of rest”. The fourth commandment (Exodus 20:8) tells us “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” and to make sure we understood what that means, the next three verses spell it out in detail: “Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” All of us older folks can remember the days when Sunday was a different day from all others; the stores were closed, the streets were empty and church bells could be heard summoning the faithful to church. In my native Scotland, the bars and movie theatres were closed, the soccer stadiums were deserted and even the children’s play-parks were all locked up, all to keep us obedient to the fourth commandment so that (it seemed to me) God’s wrath would not fall down upon us. My wife tells me that after church on Sunday her family would go to grandma’s house where the only activity she was allowed was to braid her spinster aunt’s hair! In those bygone days, Presbyterian Scotland was very obedient to the fourth commandment and it reminds me of a wonderful scene in the 1981 movie “Chariots of Fire” where Eric Liddle, the Scottish 1924 Olympic gold medalist, as he’s leaving the church a soccer ball comes bouncing up the walkway followed by a little boy in hot pursuit. Liddle catches the ball and turns to the young lad and says, “D’ye no’ ken what day this is?” “Aye, sir, it’s Sunday”. “And should you be playin’ fitba on the Sabbath?” “No, sir”, he replies and Liddle hands him the ball with a smile and sends him on his way. That typified the thinking among us children of what the Sabbath day was all about—what you couldn’t do and if you did, God would be angry! The Sabbath was to be endured, not enjoyed and It left many of us with a very negative view of who God is and looking back on it now, I realise we were far more instructed in God’s laws than God’s love. How things have changed, but not necessarily for the better. I would never have believed in a month of Sundays that a virus would cause the world to shut down so abruptly and so completely but having now spent two months of “Sundays” in quarantine (minus the family visits), I am reminded of what’s been missing in the hustle and bustle of our pre-Covid days—we need a day of rest! Several years ago I discovered a new law of human behaviour which goes like this: “The volume of work I need to do increases directly in proportion to the number of labour-saving devices I employ to do it.” How many of us remember the early days of computers when we were told paperwork would become a thing of the past? What a lie that was! We have all kinds of “labour-saving devices” from computers to dish-washers but we are busier than ever keeping them all going, often at the same time.

So what does “Sabbath” mean to you? Is it something we are commanded to do or something we get to enjoy? How you answer that question will show you whether you are under God’s Law or God’s grace? “TGIF” (thank goodness it’s Friday) is the happy comment of many a worker but I’ve never heard anyone use the term “TGIS”. In my blog of May 1st I described how as Christians we are no longer under Law but under Grace so we are free from having to obey God’s Law because Christ has freed us from the demands of the law and that includes the fourth commandment. We are free to walk in the “glorious liberty of the children of God” and we are not subject to any laws save to love God and our neighbours but that comes with a warning (Galatians 5:13) not to abuse our liberty: “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.” Our liberty is not a licence to follow our fleshy desires but to follow Him. The object of the fourth commandment was to keep the Sabbath holy which means to set it apart to the Lord, to enjoy Him through worship and praise, leaving most of the demands of earthly life aside as we do so. The problem is that many still understand this as a Law to be obeyed rather than a freedom to be enjoyed and so they legislate some activities as admissible while others are forbidden like swinging on a swing on a Sunday.

The New Testament Sabbath The Old Testament Sabbath held on the seventh day of the week (and on other “special Sabbaths”) was only a precursor to the eternal Sabbath which God has already entered having “ceased from His own labours” and into which He brings us as we commit our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what Hebrews 4:9 - 11 is referring to when it describes a “rest for the people of God”, a rest where we have given up and ceased from our own strivings for success through our own efforts and are trusting fully in Him. This is not an easy thing to do and I like how the old King James version puts verse 11: “Let us labour therefore to enter that rest..” That phrase could easily be paraphrased as: “work hard at not working”. One of the great challenges in being obedient to the Holy Spirit within us is to do our utmost to REST in Him. The reason it is so hard for us is that we are so success-driven in our flesh (the natural man) that we find it very difficult to believe that God has already done it all and has quit from His labours. We see only needs when God sees only supply. This is what Annie Flynt wrote in her timeless hymn “He Giveth More Grace..”

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater, He sendeth more strength when the labours increase; To added afflictions He addeth His mercy, To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace. When we have exhausted our store of endurance, When our strength has failed ere the day is half done, When we reach the end of our hoarded resources Our Father’s full giving is only begun.

Hebrews 4:9 tells us, “There remains therefore a rest to the people of God” and our challenge is figuring out how to enter into it. If we fail to enter in we will have no rest, only striving and struggling. Entering in is a process of learning to lean on Jesus, trusting him, submitting to him and following him. For Christians the Sabbath is not a day but a lifetime, not a rule but a rest.

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chainsxwsmile · 8 years ago

Note

🎐 💎 🕹 🏚

Unusual questions for your muse

🎐- Does your muse like to collect/hoard anything?

In canon and Cetus verse, Bruce is fairly non-materialistic and has no need for items. After all, it’d be fairly hard to carry them everywhere he went! In turned-human verse, however, Bruce sometimes collects odd items off the ground like washers or nails/screws or rhinestones or any sort of item that catches his attention.

💎- Is your muse drawn to things that sparkle?

In canon and Cetus verse, he only investigates ‘sparkly’ things because they usually end up being fish (hence why- if you’re gonna avoid a harmful shark encounter- it’s best not to wear jewelry in the ocean, guys!) In turned-human verse, the habit sticks, though he’s having a hard time shaking it off.

🕹- What does your muse do to occupy themselves when bored?

Bruce tends to wander; pick a direction and see where it takes him. Apart from exploring, outside of FEA life, Bruce tends to patrol around the reef to keep his friends safe from traveling predators or make an attempt to recruit new members into the FEA.

🏚- Does your muse like to explore dangerous places?

Bruce is a bit of a thrill seeker! It goes without saying that only such a person- or shark- would make their meeting place in a live minefield especially when Bruce indicates that he clearly knows what those mines can do!

#about Bruce #spiritsandscales

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detailingsyndicate · 7 years ago

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Auto Detailing Vs Car Wash, New Haven – CT

The word ‘detail’ in auto detailing is an apt description of the service, as the use of professionals ensures that nothing is overlooked when cleaning your vehicle. We have all been strapped for cash or short on time, so a simple car wash has its place, however if you are looking for results that are unrivaled, experts in this field are equipped to produce spectacular finishes over and over.

“What really separates auto detailing from car washes of your doing, or machine units you drive through, is that professionals bring out the best of whatever you are driving”

A Personal Touch

One of the several reasons having auto detailers handle your car vs. a car wash is the human aspect. Because real people are putting their blood, sweat and tears into the appearance of your vehicle, you have multiple sets of eyes able to spot potential problems or areas that need more improvement. Going through a car wash, either automatic or one you do yourself, may be a speedy exercise, but one that will not deliver quality and assurance your ride is fully cleaned. Even if you are handling the power washer with your own two hands, auto detailers are well versed in spaces on each vehicle that need additional attention and care. Moreover, they have access to the best cleaners on the market.

Car Washes Are Imperfect

Automatic car washes are as expensive as they have ever been, but are you really getting an upgrade from past iterations of the process? When you go through a rinse, even when paying upwards of $20, streaks and soap lines are evident for days after the fact. Auto detailers use a system to limit excess water and detergents from accumulating on your automobile. Car washes are almost counter-intuitive in the way they clear a surface, only to replace it with streaks that require your vehicle to get washed again. In addition, frequently hand washes done by owners themselves use so much water fading and eventual rust are inevitable.

Quality Is Better Than Convenience

What really separates auto detailing from car washes of your doing, or machine units you drive through, is that professionals bring out the best of whatever you are driving. Most of us take pride in our vehicle, and having one that sparkles and shines from intense cleaning is very rewarding. Auto detailing can make a claim that few car washes can: that upon leaving the service your automobile will look better than when you came in. Keep in mind, even ‘deluxe’ washes with waxes and finishes will never be as effective as an experienced detailer polishing and restoring your car by hand.

Conclusion

The reason the resources provided by auto detailers are invaluable is because they have the ability to deliver show-quality cleanliness and finish that simply cannot be achieved through a standard car wash. If you routinely have experts (like ours for example) detail your car, its retail value will increase dramatically as a result. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that regularly having your vehicle serviced better protects it from the elements, as the detergents and polishes detailers use deliver added coats of protection in addition to their beautiful shine.

from The Detailing Syndicate https://detailingsyndicate.com/auto-detailing-vs-car-wash/

#The Detailing Syndicate

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furilia · 7 years ago

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FORGIVE ME, WHOEVER I ANGERED.

New Post has been published on https://www.furilia.com/forgive-me-whoever-i-angered/

FORGIVE ME, WHOEVER I ANGERED.

So yesterday I insisted that I could hear rain but no one else did and turns out the upstairs sink was overflowing and there was water pouring out of the ceiling of my office BUT AT LEAST I WAS RIGHT HAHAHA ::quiet sobbing::

The bathroom cabinets are fairly destroyed but it could be worse, and turns out it is worse because a few hours later when we were washing all the towels we’d used to soak up the water there were suddenly gallons of sudsy water pouring down the stairs of the laundry room BECAUSE OF COURSE THERE WAS.

And all of the towels were already in the washer so we had to use beach towels and paper towels to stop the deluge and I can’t use the washer to clean any of the towels for fear of it happening again and I yelled, “WHAT TERRIBLE WATER SPRITE HAVE I OFFENDED AND HOW CAN I MAKE IT STOP?” and twitter said that I was going to need a young priest and an old priest and some holy water and I was like “NO MORE WATER, Y’ALL.”

But twitter said I maybe needed to have my pipes snaked(?) which sounds very porny –

– but Victor said I was reading too much into it and he called Roto-Rooter but when the guy got here this morning he was like, “Your pipes are totally clean. Clearly you have some sort of water demon infestation.” He didn’t say the last part out loud but you could feel it. He said he’d have another guy come today to make sure we didn’t have water behind the walls from the leaks and that guy just arrived a few minutes ago and Victor was on a conference call so I showed the guy around but he didn’t know anything about testing for water behind the walls and was just doing the same thing the first guy did so I went downstairs to get Victor and he was like, “”Why would Roto-Rooter be here again? They just left. WHO THE HELL DID YOU LET IN THE HOUSE?”

And that’s when I realized that the Roto-Rooter guy was probably the evil water phantom and I’d just invited him in the house so now we were totally fucked. Victor said I was confusing vampires and phantoms and I was certain we’d go upstairs and he’d just be a demon shaped puddled of toilet water that would drown me.

But he was still there and human and seemed to doubt we’d had someone there already that day because according to dispatch no one else had been there but him and he said that the roto-rooter man we’d met had been dead for 20 years. He didn’t actually say that last part but again, it was implied.

But then he called dispatch again and turns out the girl in charge was new and had no idea what she was doing so it was probably just a mistake. Or possibly that’s just a trick water demons use to lull you into a false sense of security. I don’t know. Frankly I’m much more versed in vampires.

But on the bright side we realized that the washing machine was incredibly old and probably just busted so I just bought a new one for my birthday tomorrow but it won’t be delivered until next week so it’ll be a late birthday present. So basically I can’t do laundry until next year because of demons. Which is not a terrible birthday present all things considered.

PS. I just realized that they’re going to bring the new washer and take away the broken one on New Years Day and isn’t that bad luck? Something about not removing anything from your house on New Years Day? Is there an exemption if you’re removing broken things that might be haunted by demons?

PPS. My laundry room isn’t upstairs. Our house is built on a steep hill so there are two stories but there are 5 sets of stairs because every room on the ground floor is about 3 feet shorter than the one before it. It’s like MC Escher built a house and then filled it with water demons and cats.

PPPS. There is a Kristen Bell gif for everything. That woman is a national treasure.

PPPPS. The water mitigation people just came and they’re going to have to tear out a bunch of the upstairs bathroom and my office and our insurance deductible is almost as much as I paid for college.

Going to just cry for awhile now. Fucking water demons.

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originaldetectivesheep · 8 years ago

Text

The Thirty and One Nights' Momentary Diversion - The Curse of the Unblessed Dead

Tonight's story leans hard on hot buttons: life and death and the truth of religion. And if that's not bad enough, with this subject matter, how in the heck is this supposed to be a bedtime story?

The Curse of the Unblessed Dead

Elliot raised an eyebrow as he came through the open door of the Pond Street Laundry & Apartments, lifting his laundry basket up onto his shoulder to step sideways around where Anita was taping the sign into the side-street window: #BringBackFatherPat – No to Reassignments! He nodded an acknowledgment to Officer Curry, leaning against the reception counter with his coffee in hand, and shook his head. "Man, now I have seen it all," he said, nodding back at the sign. "A yard sign Twitter campaign to un-reassign a neighborhood parish priest? What's next – the pope sliding into your snaps with a blessing?" The police officer rumpled his brow, nettled, and Anita pushed back from the window with a sigh.

"Elliot, I know you're not a believer, and I'm not telling you you've got to come to Jesus, but I do have to keep telling you not to mess with other people when you come in here. Faith helps people – even those Scientologists who have to take down their posters when you write on them, their faith probably helps them."

"It's not me who wrote 'XENU' all over those Scientology antivax flyers," Elliot said, sorting his laundry out into a pair of washers. "If Amir didn't live here, I'd ask him – maybe he's got a girlfriend or boyfriend who comes over to do their wash and took the huff. And I've got no problem with people believing, if they need it to get through. But faith, it works for the person who has it; it doesn't change anything around them – not enough that you got to spend money printing lawn signs with your hashtag on it to get it just right. And they'll get over it, when the bishop doesn't follow the tag and everybody forgets – a priest is just a priest, everybody on that Vatican line, and they'll get used to the new guy like the old one was never gone."

"No, I don't think so," Ofc. Curry said, setting his cup down in the saucer; Elliot stood up, detergent bottle frozen in his hand. This cop came in, every now and again, walking his beat or checking in on tenants and prospective renters, but he barely ever talked to anyone but Anita. "Faith is a powerful thing – very powerful, if you have a lot of it. And even for priests all following the Vatican line, the right priest can make a world of difference." He picked up his coffee again, looking past Elliot at the wall like he was thinking deeply, remembering something distant and intense and even traumatic.

Elliot sat the bottle down on the washer lid, folding his arms. "That sounds like you've got personal experience with it – do you want to talk about it? If you're called to witness, then if it's that powerful, it might be worth witnessing to even me, and if not, I can feel like it'll help you – have someone you can tell about it, whatever happened." He looked Curry in the eyes, honest, unjudging.

The cop took a deep breath, and a deep swallow of his coffee. Whatever it was, it was taking a lot out of him just to talk about it again. Behind him, Anita settled back into her chair behind the desk, as he eventually gathered himself, fully, and began his story.

The Lord said, once, to His disciples, that with faith the size of a mustard seed they might move mountains – that with the charge He gave them, that the powers of Hell would not prevail against them. That what they bound, in His name, would be bound; what they released, would be released. I learned those verses in Sunday school, like anyone did, but I'm not sure how deeply I ever really believed; if I did, then probably I believed that like prophecy and revelation and speaking in tongues, these were powers that had been granted in the age of the apostles, when the Church was new, but didn't have anything to do with the Church of today.

Anne, though, I think that she must have believed with all her heart in those verses – those verses, like all the other verses. When we first met I was mostly attracted to her physically, like anyone else, but as we dated I was more and more struck by her faith, an endless ocean where I was carrying a coffee cup. By the time we got married I was as much in love with her soul as anything else; I'd changed, or she'd changed me, or we'd just grown that way together. It happens, that you change for each other as a relationship goes on, and Anne's whole life was built out around the Church, so I couldn't help my own relationship with the Church getting stronger again, as a grown man after I'd mostly ignored it in the ten years since I got confirmed.

If I'd changed more, gotten absorbed by the Church the way she was, dropped more of my secular friends, then maybe it would never have happened. But I didn't – I have friends I've known since high school, and though we've gone our separate ways, a long ways on, we still keep in touch, we still see each other in real life and not just on the internet. If it was the boys from the force, then it probably wouldn't've happened – but there's limits on how much you can hang out with the people you work with. I had to have my own friends, who weren't just also Anne's friends from Sodaility or the parish council, and some of them, I had to be able to go to when I wanted to get away from work, to not have to be a cop, not have to be Officer Curry, and I could just be Herbert from back at school.

We were at a barbecue at one of their places a while back – just Anne and me, the kids were at her brother's because she wasn't sure about them being at a party where nearly all of the adults would be drinking – and while everyone, mostly, was perfectly nice, I could tell that there were problems brewing; cop's instinct. You have to – to step into a room and feel right off where the rough edges are, who's got to be separated from who so that everyone's statements are complete and coherent. And here, the rough edge was going to be between Anne and everybody else. My friends from high school, mostly they turned out real liberal – they went to college in science and they've been posted up everywhere in the world, they speak three languages apiece, go to Italy like it's nothing, and they think they know better than everyone. They were patient, and calm, and deflecting, but Anne didn't notice – she was talking like she was with the old ladies from church, like everyone around her also had the Catholic radio on in the car all the time, like what she was saying was just natural and the way things were. It was – for us it was – but I couldn't figure out how to tell her that saying it around these people, who they were, like that was just spoiling for a fight; not without dragging everything out into the open and starting that fight that was going to hurt everybody, blow up some of my oldest friendships.

I can remember it as clear as day – the last thing Anne said that set her off, that started the whole avalanche of it falling. "No," Anne said, shaking her head firmly, "I can't agree with it – I can't agree with letting the clerk at a CVS sell murder pills over the counter. That's what it is: the embryo that this 'morning after pill' stops from implanting is a human being – a child. It's an abortion – it's killing children, it's making them fall away and die before they have a chance at life."

"That's… that's not actually how Plan B works," said Dorothy, Ollie's wife, and if she had gotten a chance to continue – she works in drug discovery, so she should know – maybe it would have just been a bitter political thing, but before she or Anne could say anything, Therese sat up, leaning in.

"Anne," she said, "you have four children, don't you?"

She was kind of confused by the rapid change of topic, not sure where Therese was going. "Yes; we –"

"Or, more accurately, four surviving children, isn't it? Isn't that more correct?"

Anne blanched. "I – I did have a miscarriage between Erin and George, but I don't –"

Therese's eyebrows were up trying to push her sunglasses up over the top of her head. "Another! So that counts five then – five. Five more children, the way you'd count them – gone, nameless, dead, forgotten."

Anne's mouth was already hanging open, speechless. "Five – but – what –"

"Anne, only about one in every two fertilized eggs ever implants," Therese said, sounding like a professor talking down to a dumb student. "You can look it up – it's science. So for every actual child you have, and for that one miscarriage that you know about, there is very likely another 'child', the way you think of them, a fully fledged human being, who was rejected by your body and died without a whisper, unknown. Five children – your own children – and you rejected them. You rejected them, Anne, your own flesh and blood – you rejected them and let them perish in the darkness, flushed down a sewer or thrown away in a clot. You murderess, you ogress, you monster – you gave them life, and then you let them die."

"Therese, that was over the line," Dorothy said, tugging her back, before I blew up because it looked like Anne was about to collapse. "I'm sorry, Anne; Therese, you've had too much to drink. You really need to apologize."

"I'm sorry if anyone was offended," Therese said, offhand, annoyed, gesturing with her wine glass as she slumped back into her lawn chair. "Isn't that what your kind say whenever someone steps in it and says something godawful? I'm sorry, but it's still true; if you don't like it, maybe don't think that way then." The rest of them turned on her, trying to get her to admit being wrong, to at least try and be civil. So the rest of them, at least, had some shame; it would be awkward the next time, but it wasn't like this was the end. It was the end for today, though; with the conversation dead, I excused Anne and myself and accepted Ollie's regrets and his apology on our way back to the car.

Anne was silent the whole ride back; picking up the kids from Kyle's, and then all the way back home. She seemed distracted; she doted on them like any other day over dinner, and then putting them to bed, but quietly, more subdued than normal, like she was constantly thinking about something else. Therese's words had really gotten to her; she really believed, really and truly, that every conception began a human life, that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father knowing. When we went to bed, she lay facing away from me, staring at the windows; I lay down next to her, a hand on her shoulder, not knowing what to do or say to help – just that I had to be there, that I had to do that much. I didn't fall asleep easily that night – and I didn't, until I passed out, notice Anne's breathing even up and level out like it did when she fell asleep, not at all.

I was dreaming – some dream of this curling black, misty, mass all around me with all the important parts forgotten in a flash as I woke up – some kind of rough, nervous dream when I woke up; why, how, I didn't know – not until she screamed again. Anne – she was awake, and she was standing in the doorway to our bedroom, looking down the hall, and she was screaming in absolute nightmare terror. I grabbed my service pistol from the nightstand drawer and rolled across the bed to her, standing behind her to see if I could see what she was screaming at: a burglar or a kidnapper attacking a cop's house, or something with one of the children, or – somehow – something worse.

There was nothing in the hall, nothing down the open hall to the bathroom. "Honey – honey –what is it? What's wrong? Did you see something?" I put an arm around her, keeping the gun safe and low but there if I needed it, desperate to know what was wrong, what I had to do.

Anne raised an arm, pointing down the hall with a shivering, trembling finger. "They – they're coming back – they – darling – the children – they came back –" and I could feel that she was about to let out another scream, a scream at nothing, an empty hallway half-shadowed by the nightlight, the same hallway as it ever was, with nothing, nothing there. I wrapped my arms tight around her, holding her close, hoping to calm her fears, putting my head on her shoulder next to hers, to tell her it would all be all right, that it was nothing more than a bad dream – but perhaps because I was this close to her now, within the greater light of her soul, then, I saw them.

Indistinct – half there, half invisible. I couldn't tell, honestly, that I wasn't also still dreaming, that this wasn't some kind of hallucination. But I saw them – blobs, monsters, life-blots grown wild and strange abandoned to a death unchristened and unblessed, not even suggesting human children, human fetuses, even, except in the placement of those dark floating eyes, the bulbous hanging foreheads. They were crawling like smoke out of the bathroom – how many forms? Four, more than four, to be sure – and if it was five –

I squeezed Anne tight; we couldn't both panic like this, not with our four real, living children stirring in their rooms, behind the doors on the corridor leading down to that nightmare gate, about to wake up and come out to see what Mommy was screaming for. "Be strong – Anne, be strong. God will protect us. I'll get the children – I'll bring them in here, and we'll pray the Rosary, and we'll be safe." She nodded, gulping back tears, and I let go, tucking the gun in the back of my waistband as I ran down the corridor to gather up our babies.

Morris and James were already kneeling with Anne at the foot of the bed as I came back in with George in my arms, leading Erin by the hand. I closed the door and locked it, leaning against it to hold it shut – if somehow that figment of fog on the floor was somehow as real, as physical, as it was terrible and horrifying. Anne was leading the children in their prayers, and I mouthed along: Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death. Hail Mary, full of grace – and on, around, past count without the beads in my hand, until, Anne still reciting, the first rays of dawn came in through the blinds.

Elliot's washers had long since juddered to a stop, and Anita's coffee was going cold in the untouched cup in front of her. "And?" Elliot said, hands spreading out. "And? What happened? What was it? Ghosts? Limbonic demons? What'd you do? Get an old priest and a young priest?"

Curry shifted uncomfortably. "I was getting to that. I called the rectory that morning – Anne wanted to be sure to have the house blessed, to make sure nothing came back, and they sent an exorcist up from Brighton. A young priest – he looked like that Bill Goodrem who lives here; I could almost swear his ears were pierced. He looked around the house, and then had me come walk out in the garden with him – to tell him everything that had happened.

"I did, and what he told me, but didn't tell Anne – and I never will – was that she had called them back – or called them up. Those things weren't real – she'd created them, out of the belief that she'd done something horribly, horribly wrong, and that there was a price that had to be paid. Her faith, her misapplied faith and all that guilt had moved mountains – had half-brought into reality horrors that never existed, that never could and would have existed. They had appeared because she believed in them – and if that belief was gone, they'd never return."

Elliot raised an eyebrow. "And how is that going to work? A Catholic church lady – the one thing you'll never get them off is that life starts at conception. Or did the pope have a new revelation this week against it, like the Mormons did when they were all, 'oops, guess black people have to be human, or BYU's never winning another football game'."

Curry shifted again. "Like I said, this young priest was from Brighton – from the seminary there. He led her through it after he said the blessing – explained how she'd gotten it wrong. He started with evolution, how we don't believe that God snapped His fingers and made the world in seven days just so like the Protestants do, how the story of Adam and Eve is about the creation of the soul in whatever Neanderthals it was back then; that science can show the limits of the story in the Bible where it had to be written for Bronze Age people who didn't know anything, but can never contradict the truth of salvation. And then he showed from the Old Testament, the ritual of the bitter water: something like that couldn't be done if it involved the murder of a child. Only God knows when the soul enters – when an embryo becomes a person. It's because we don't know that we have to protect life from conception – but what may be isn't what is. It was hard, I think, for Anne to understand at first, but she took it in and accepted it; she could accept it, and believe that it was true, and that she was still a good person and a good mother: that she hadn't rejected those embryos that never implanted. They didn't implant and become a child because their souls never entered them; they never became a person, a human being, and they never gained any more of the life of Christ than a mole or a scab. And what never lived can't come back to curse you from the other side of death. Sometimes, I get the creepy-crawlies, going to the bathroom at night, even still, but Anne always sleeps sound."

Elliot shivered. "Sure – sure, she sleeps sound. And do you sleep sound, sleeping next to your wife who can dream up Lovecraft monsters out of nothing? What about that? What about the next thing she gulls herself into believing in?" He shook, and Curry looked nervously away, and behind him, Anita pushed herself up, to yell at Elliot again for creeping out the other patrons.

#fiction #30and1nights

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