#hopefully she is not getting sick

[kelpiemomma]

god damn, the last... five days? friday, saturday, sunday, yesterday, today.... idk, four and a half days? have reminded me of why i try my best to NOT make plans lmaooo

Thursday I logged off of tumblr on my mobile

Friday i played halo with my dad all day and he said “you have to go upstairs and play a word game. also will you go to utah with your mom to pick up a package since I’m sick and I can’t go.” so I said yes. The word game? Picking “Kasper” or “Kyzer”. Asked my mom why there were names on the fridge and she said “it’s a social experiment >:/” and we went to Utah that night. Didn’t get in until 1 am. Side note: planes are a testament to man’s hubris and I HATE them. I am so scared of flying y’all. I’ll do it, I am ceaselessly terrified when I am on them. I have been flying since I was WEE LITTLE and I still hate them.

Saturday mom and I both got about 2 hours of sleep between the horrible hotel pillows, people making noise all night, and I... caught up on a manga when I should’ve been sleeping :,) ate breakfast, checked out of the hotel, got our rental car, and started an all-day journey. Turns out- I was right! We were picking up a 4 and a half month old puppy due to a family being unable to keep him. Genuinely no fault of their own, they were not a bad home for him at all- as my dad said in a facebook reply to someone, they WERE the greater home for him but due to certain circumstances (that I don’t need to share here lmao) he needed to find a new home. His former owner and her oldest son cried when we put him in the rental- it was very sad. He was their first dog. We promised to give them lots of updates on him and said they’re free to drop by our place if they’re ever near us. And then we drove home. We were in the rental from 8 am mountain time until 11 pm mountain time. I napped somehow- normally I can’t sleep for shit in cars. I drove the last four hours home, mom drove the rest of the time, and it was rainy as fuck.

Sunday we tried to recover. Dad’s sick, mom is getting sick - she had major congestion in Utah - the new puppy is getting used to his new home, a friend brought his kids over and got lunch with dad. We went out and saw Dani and gave each other the “big yikes” eyes because there has been no progress at the trainer’s place in regards to arenas, stalls, or shade structures. The horses had empty bags in their stalls. All the buckets were half full at MOST. We dropped off one bale of hay, said we’d be picking Dani up the next weekend, and left. I had a bad feeling about it so I said I’d go back out tomorrow (Monday) and check on things.

Yesterday, I stop by the pharmacy to update my insurance and get my prescription called in as well as schedule a vaccine. Stopped and had lunch, went back home to get my car charger (thank god i did) and then drove out to see Dani. No horses had been fed, it was 2 pm, a certain and cow had NO water, most of the horses were nearly OUT of water (and they were ALL dirty as fuck), and several stalls were severely fucked up. One horse had a cut on its chest that had unfortunately already dried but definitely should’ve been stitched, none of the stalls were cleaned... I ended up cleaning and filling waters for an hour and a half (after taking a video of what I’d arrived to), my parents came out to pick up Dani, they’re BOTH sick as fuck, they’ve got the two younger dogs with them so those two had to be tied to a trailer because we ended up FEEDING the trainer’s horses since she’s on vacation. A pair of people who were supposed to be feeding and whatnot arrived and the older of the pair assumed I was the other person who was supposed to be feeding, watering, and cleaning- she did not ask who I was, she just introduced herself (I already knew her so I didn’t bother introducing myself in turn, plus I was dehydrating, in the sun, and pissed off about the condition I’d found the horses in- I was drinking well water the entire time I was there because I hadn’t expected to be doing chores) and asked if I’d given Dani grain. Because I’d given my horse hay she’d assumed I would be feeding all the horses- without knowing who I was, thinking I was the other girl, apparently I “looked young” (the excuse she gave the trainer later on) not that she really got close enough to look at me. -Anyway, my sick parents ended up hauling 12 horses and 1 cow 50lb bags of cubes for them to eat in weather that was 100 degrees and better, we’re all sweating, I’m trying to talk to the trainer- it was a hot fucking mess. We got everything taken care of, moved a horse in a stall that was pretty much about to fall, and went home with Dani in the trailer at like. 5, 5:30. Pretty sure my frustration came out when I was talking to the trainer, because she told me that the woman who’d come out with her daughter claimed to have given Dani a supplement bag “yesterday evening before a barrel race” and I was like. Nope. No the fuck she didn’t. Because there were eight full bags when I left yesterday at 2 in the afternoon, and when I arrived today at 2 in the afternoon there were still 8 full bags and her hay bale hadn’t been touched. This is shit I pay attention to- it doesn’t matter how much I trust someone, I am absolutely anal about their feed. I don’t give a shit if they eat at 5 am and 10 pm, as long as they’re getting FED. Pretty sure between 2pm Sunday and 2pm Monday, Dani wasn’t fed.

Today, Dad is even worse than before. I went with mom to pick up the car from the body shop, she took dad to urgent care (no covid, no flu, possible bronchitis or pneumonia), then she got home, took a shower, and immediately had to grab my brother so they could go to small claims court over the accident that someone’s child caused several months back (in april) and they didn’t try to file for damage to their vehicle until last month (july) because they lied about the accident, said my bother caused it (literally impossible in the way they described- if you know the area and think for two seconds about how the cars were damaged, there’s no way their story could’ve happened), and my mother refuses to file a claim against our own insurance for something we didn’t do. When she gets home we have to run the truck to the dealership because apparently it’s now having issues, and then she has to go back to work tomorrow after running around the last three days when she should’ve been resting.

So. A nice reminder of why I don’t make my own plans. Something always comes up and I am a sucker for helping out. Seeing all of the trainer’s horses pisses me off though- she has more than she can afford and she’s on vacation. Ugh. She’s taken more vacations in the last year than I have in the last 4.

Anyway. That’s that. I’ve made the decision to no longer use tumblr on my phone, I need to have time away from it. I’m going to try not to be on it as much anyway until I finish Arms Outstretched and Jumping the Rail- I’d like to get them done or at least updated before September comes and I lose all my time to work. Not much else going on except the xbox is running and I can finally play my comfort games again ♥

[queenlucythevaliant]

Clad in Justice and Worth

Written for the Inklings Challenge 2023 (@inklings-challenge). Inspired by the lives of Jeanne d'Albret and Marguerite de Navarre, although numerous liberties have been taken with the history in the name of introducing fantastical elements and telling a good story. The anglicization of names (Jeanne to Joan and Marguerite to Margaret) is meant to reflect the fictionalization of these figures.

The heat was unbearable, and it would grow only hotter as they descended into the lowlands. It was fortunate, Joan decided, that Navarre was a mountain country. It was temperate, even cold there in September. It would be sweltering by the sea.

The greater issue ought to have been the presence of Monluc, who would cut Joan’s party off at the Garonne River most like. The soldiers with whom she traveled were fierce, but Monluc had an entire division at the Garrone. Joan would be a prisoner of war if Providence did not see her through. Henry, perhaps, might suffer worse. He might be married to a Catholic princess.

Yet Joan was accustomed to peril. She had cut her teeth on it. Her first act as queen, some twenty years ago, had been to orchestrate the defense of her kingdom, and she was accustomed to slipping through nets and past assassins. The same could not be said of the infernal heat, which assaulted her without respite. Joan wore sensible travel clothing, but the layers of her skirts were always heavy with sweat. A perpetual tightness sat in her chest, the remnant of an old bout with consumption, and however much she coughed it would not leave.

All the same, it would not do to seem less than strong, so she hid the coughing whenever she could. The hovering of her aides was an irritant and she often wished she could just dismiss them all.

“How fare you in the heat, Majesty?”

“I have war in my gut, Clemont,” Joan snapped. “Worry not for me. If you must pester someone, pester Henry.”

He nodded, chastened. “A messenger is here from Navarre. Sent, I suspect, to induce you to return hence.”

“I would not listen to his birdcalls.”

“Young Henry said much the same.”

Joan stuffed down her irritation that Clemont had gone to Henry before he’d come to her. She was still queen, even if her son was rapidly nearing his majority. “Tell him that if the Huguenot leaders are to be plucked, I think it better that we all go together. Tell him that I would rather my son and I stand with our brothers than await soldiers and assassins in our little kingdom.”

Her aide gave a stiff nod. “At once, your Majesty.”

She would breathe easier when they reached the host at La Rochelle. Yet then, there would be more and greater work to do. There would be war, and Joan would be at the head of it.

*

When she awoke in the night, Joan knew at once that something was awry. It was cool. Gone was the blistering heat that had plagued them all day. Perhaps one of the kidnapping plots had finally succeeded.

Certainly, it seemed that way. She was in a cell, cool and dank and no more than six paces square. And yet—how strange! —the door was open.

Rising unsteadily to her feet, Joan crept towards the shaft of moonlight that fell through it. She glanced about for guards, but saw only a single prisoner in dirty clothes standing just beyond the threshold. He was blinking rapidly, as though the very existence of light bewildered him. Then, as Joan watched, he crept forward towards the gate of the jailhouse and out into the free air beyond. Joan listened for a long moment, trying to hear if there was any commotion at the prisoner’s emergence. When she could perceive none, she followed him out into the cool night air.

A lantern blazed. “Come quickly,” a voice hissed. “Our friend the Princess is waiting.”

The prisoner answered in a voice too quiet for Joan to hear. Then, quite suddenly, she heard his companion say, “Who is it that there behind you?”

The prisoner turned round, and Joan’s fingers itched towards her hidden knife. But much to her astonishment, he exclaimed, “Why, it is the lady herself! Margaret!”

But Joan had no opportunity to reply. Voices sounded outside her pavilion and she awoke to the oppressive heat of the day before. Coughing hard, Joan rolled ungracefully from her bed and tried to put away the grasping tendrils of her dream.

“The river is dry, Majesty” her attendant informed her as soon as she emerged from her pavilion, arrayed once again in sensible riding clothes. “The heat has devoured it. We can bypass Monluc without trouble, I deem.”

“Well then,” Joan replied, stifling another cough. “Glory to God for the heat.”

*

They did indeed pass Monluc the next day, within three fingers of his nose. Joan celebrated with Henry and the rest, yet all the while her mind was half taken up with her dream from the night before. Never, in all her life, had her mind conjured so vivid a sensory illusion. It had really felt cool in that jail cell, and the moonlight beyond it had been silver and true. Stranger still, the prisoner and his accomplice had called Joan by her mother’s name.

Joan had known her mother only a little. At the age of five, she had been detained at the French court while her mother returned to Navarre. This was largely on account of her mother’s religious convictions. Margaret of Angoulême had meddled too closely with Protestantism, so her brother the king had seen fit to deprive her of her daughter and raise her a Catholic princess.

His successor had likewise stolen Henry from Joan, for despite the king’s best efforts she was as Protestant as her mother. Yet unlike Margaret, Joan had gone back for her child. Two years ago, she had secretly swept Henry away from Paris on horseback. She’d galloped the horses nearly to death, but she’d gotten him to the armed force waiting at the border, and then at last home to Navarre. Sometimes, Joan wondered why her own mother had not gone to such lengths to rescue her. But Margaret’s best weapons had been tears, it was said, and tears could not do the work of sharp swords.

The Navarre party arrived at La Rochelle just before dusk on the twenty-eighth of September. The heat had faltered a little, to everyone’s great relief, but the air by the sea was still heavy with moisture. The tightness in Joan’s chest persisted.

“There will be much celebration now that you have come, Your Majesty,” said the boy seeing to her accommodations. “There’s talk of giving you the key to the city, and more besides.”

Sure enough, Joan was greeted with applause when she entered the Huguenot council. “I and my son are here to promote the success of our great cause or to share in its disaster,” she said when the council quieted. “I have been reproached for leaving my lands open to invasion by Spain, but I put my confidence in God who will not suffer a hair of our heads to perish. How could I stay while my fellow believers were being massacred? To let a man drown is to commit murder.”

*

Sometimes it seemed that the men only played at war. The Duke of Conde, who led the Huguenot forces, treated it as a game of chivalry between gentlemen. Others, like Monluc, regarded it as a business; the mercenaries he hired robbed and raped and brutalized, and though be bemoaned the cruelty he did nothing to curtail it.

There were sixty-thousand refugees pouring into the city. Joan was not playing at war. When she rose in the mornings, she put poultices on her chest, then went to her office after breaking her fast. There was much to do. She administered the city, attended councils of war, and advised the synod. In addition, she was still queen of Navarre, and was required to govern her own kingdom from afar.

In the afternoons, she often met with Beza to discuss matters of the church, or else with Conde, to discuss military matters. Joan worked on the city’s fortifications, and in the evenings she would ride out to observe them. Henry often joined her on these rides; he was learning the art of war, and he seemed to have a knack for it.

“A knack is not sufficient,” Joan told him. “Anyone can learn to fortify a port. I have learned, and I am a woman.”

“I know it is not sufficient,” the boy replied. “I must commit myself entirely to the cause of our people, and of Our Lord. Is that not what you were going to tell me?”   

“Ah, Henry, you know me too well. I am glad of it. I am glad to see you bear with strength the great and terrible charge which sits upon your shoulders.”

“How can I help being strong? I have you for a mother.”

At night, Joan fell into bed too exhausted for dreams.

*

Yet one night, she woke once again to find her chest loose and her breathing comfortable. She stood in a hallway which she recognized at once. She was at the Château de Fontainebleau, the place of her birth, just beyond the door to the king’s private chambers.

“Oh please, Francis, please. You cannot really mean to send him to the stake!” The voice on the other side of the door was female, and it did not belong to the queen.

A heavy sigh answered it. “I mean to do just that, ma mignonne. He is a damned heretic, and a rabble-rouser besides. Now, sister, don’t cry. If there’s one thing I cannot bear, it is your weeping.”

At those words, a surge of giddiness, like lightning, came over Joan’s whole body. It was her own mother speaking to the king. She was but a few steps away and they were separated only by a single wooden door.

“He is my friend, Francis. Do you say I should not weep for my friends?”

A loud harumph. “A strange thing, Margaret. Your own companions told me that you have never met the man.”

“Does such a triviality preclude friendship? He is my brother in Our Lord.”  

“And I am your true brother, and your king besides.”

“And as you are my brother—” here, Margaret’s voice cracked with overburdening emotion. She was crying again, Joan was certain. “As you are my brother, you must grant me this boon. Do not harm those I love, Francis.”

The king did not respond, so Joan drew nearer to the door. A minute later, she leapt backwards when it opened. There stood her mother, not old and sick as Joan had last seen her twenty years before, but younger even than Joan herself.

“If you’ve time to stand about listening at doors, then you are not otherwise employed,” Margaret said, wiping her tears from her face with the back of her hand. “I am going to visit a friend. You shall accompany me.”

Looking down at herself, Joan realized that her mother must have mistaken her for one of Fountainbleu’s many ladies-in-waiting. She was in her night clothes, which was really a simple day dress such as a woman might wear to a provincial market. Joan did not sleep in anything which would hinder her from acting immediately, should the city be attacked in the middle of the night. 

“As you wish, Majesty,” Joan replied with a curtsey. Margaret raised an eyebrow, and instantly Joan corrected herself: “Your Highness.”

Margaret stopped at her own rooms to wrap herself in a plain, hooded cloak. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Joan, your Highness.”

“Well, Joan. As penance for eavesdropping, you shall keep your own counsel with regards to our errand. Is that clear?”

“Yes, your Highness,” Joan replied stiffly. Any fool could see what friend Margaret intended to visit, and Joan wished she could think of a way to cut through the pretense.

When Margaret arrived at the jail with Joan in tow, the warden greeted her almost like a friend. “You are here to see the heretic, Princess? Shall I fetch you a chair?”

“Yes, Phillip. And a lantern, if you would.”

The cell was nearly identical to the one which Joan had dreamed on the road to La Rochelle. Inside sat a man with sparse gray hair covering his chin. Margaret’s chair was placed just outside the cell, but she brushed past it. She handed the lantern to Joan and knelt down in the cell beside the prisoner.

“I was told that I had a secret friend in the court,” he said. “I see now that she is an angel.”

“No angel, monsieur Faber. I am Margaret, and this is my lady, Joan. I have come to see to your welfare, as best I am able.”

Now, Margaret’s hood fell back, and all at once she looked every inch the Princess of France. Yet her voice was small and choked when she said, “Will you do me the honor of praying with me?”

Margaret was already on her knees, but she lowered herself further. She rested one hand lightly on Faber’s knee, and after a moment, he took it. Her eyes fluttered closed. In the dim light, Joan thought she saw tears starting down her mother’s cheek.

When she woke in the morning, Joan could still remember her mother’s face. There were tears in her hazelnut eyes, and a weeping quiver in her voice.

*

Winter came, and Joan’s coughing grew worse. There was blood in it now, and occasionally bits of feathery flesh that got caught in her throat and made her gag. She hid it in her handkerchief.

“Winter battles are ugly,” Conde remarked one morning as Christmas was drawing near. “If the enemy is anything like gentlemen, they will not attack until spring. And yet, I think, we must stand at readiness.”

“By all means,” Joan replied. “Anything less than readiness would be negligence.”

Conde chuckled, not unkindly. “For all your strength and skill, madame, it is obvious that you were not bred for command. No force can be always at readiness. It would kill the men as surely as the sword. ‘Tis not negligence to celebrate the birth of Our Lord, for instance.”

Joan nodded curtly, but did not reply.

As the new year began, the city was increasingly on edge. There was frequent unrest among the refugees, and the soldiers Joan met when she rode the fortifications nearly always remarked that an attack would come soon.

Then, as February melted into March, word came from Admiral Coligny that his position along the Guirlande Stream had been compromised. The Catholic vanguard was swift approaching, and more Huguenot forces were needed. By the time word reached Joan in the form of a breathless young page outside her office, Conde was already assembling the cavalry. Joan made for the Navarre quarter at once, as fast as her lungs and her skirts would let her.

The battle was an unmitigated disaster. The Huguenots arrived late, and in insufficient numbers. Their horses were scattered and their infantry routed, and the bulk of their force was forced back to Cognac to regroup. As wounded came pouring in, Joan went to the surgical tents to make herself useful.

The commander La Noue’s left arm had been shattered and required amputation. Steeling herself, Joan thought of Margaret’s tearstained cheeks as she knelt beside Faber. “Commander La Noue,” she murmured, “Would it comfort you if I held your other hand?”

“That it would, Your Majesty,” the commander replied. So, as the surgeon brandished his saw, Joan gripped the commander’s hand tight and began to pray. She let go only once, to cover her mouth as she hacked blood into her palm. It blended in easily with the carnage of the field hospital.

Yet it was not till after the battle was over that Joan learned the worst of it. “His Grace, General Conde is dead,” her captain told her in her tent that evening. “He was unseated in the battle. They took him captive, and then they shot him. Unarmed and under guard! Why, as I speak these words, they are parading his corpse through the streets of Jarnac.”

“So much for chivalry,” murmured Joan, trying to ignore the memories of Conde’s pleasant face chuckling, calling her skilled and strong.

“We will need to find another Prince of the Blood to champion our cause,” her captain continued. “Else the army will crumble. If there’s to be any hope for Protestantism in France, we had better produce one with haste. Admiral Coligny will not serve. He’s tried to rally the men, to no avail. In fact, he has bid me request that you make an attempt on the morn.”

“Henry will lead.”

“Henry? Why, he’s only a boy!”

Joan shook her head. “He is nearly a man, Captain, and he’s a keen knack for military matters. He trained with Conde himself, and he saw to the fortification of La Rochelle at my side. He is strong, which matters most of all. If it’s a Prince of the Blood the army requires, Henry will serve.”

“As you say, Majesty,” said her captain with a bow. “But it’s not me you will have to convince.”

*

Joan settled in for a sleepless night. Her captain was correct that she would need to persuade the Huguenot forces well, if they were to swear themselves to Henry. So, she would speak. Joan would rally their courage, and then she would present them with her son and see if they would follow him.

Page after page she wrote, none of it any good. Eloquence alone would not suffice; Joan’s words had to burn in men’s chests. She needed such words as she had never spoken before, and she needed them by morning.  

By three o’clock, Joan’s pages were painted with blood. Her lungs were tearing themselves to shreds in her chest, and the proof was there on the paper beside all her insufficient words. She almost hated herself then. Now, when circumstance required of her greater strength than ever before, all Joan’s frame was weakness and frailty.

An hour later, she fell asleep.

When Joan’s eyes fluttered open, she knew at once where she was. Why, these were her own rooms at home in Navarre! Sunlight flooded through her own open windows and drew ladders of light across Joan’s very own floor. Her bed sat in the corner, curtains open. Her dressing room and closet were just there, and her own writing desk—

There was a figure at Joan’s writing desk. Margaret. She looked up.

“My Joan,” she said. It started as a sigh, but it turned into a sob by the end. “My very own Joan, all grown up. How tired you look.” 

The words seemed larger than themselves somehow. They were Truth and Beauty in capital letters, illuminated red and gold. Something in Joan’s chest seized; something other than her lungs. 

“How do you know me, mother?”

“How could I not? I have been parted from you of late, yet your face is more precious to me than all the kingdoms of the earth.”

“Oh.” And then, because she could not think of anything else to say, Joan asked, “What were you writing, before I came in?”’

“Poetry.” Joan made a noise in her throat. “You disapprove?” asked her mother.

“No, not at all. Would that I had time for such sweet pursuits. I have worn myself out this night writing a war speech. It cannot be poetry, mother. It must be wine. It must–” then, without preamble, Joan collapsed into a fit of coughing. At once, her mother was on her feet, handkerchief in hand. She pressed it to Joan’s mouth, all the while rubbing circles on her back as she coughed and gagged. When the handkerchief came away at last, it was stained red.

“What a courageous woman you are,” Margaret whispered into her hair. “Words like wine for the soldiers, and yourself spitting blood. Will you wear pearls or armor when you address them?”

“I will address them on horseback in the field,” answered Joan with a rasp. “I would have them see my strength.”

Her mother’s dark eyes flickered then. Margaret looked at her daughter, come miraculously home to her against the will of the king and the very flow of time itself. She was not a large woman, but she held herself well. She stood brave and tall, though no one had asked it of her. 

Her own dear daughter did not have time for poetry. Margaret regretted that small fact so much that it came welling up in her eyes.  “And what of your weakness, child? Will you let anyone see that?”

Joan reached out and caught her mother’s tears. Her fingertips were harder than Margaret’s were. They scratched across the sensitive skin below her eyes.

“Did I not meet you like this once before? You are the same Joan who came with me to the jail in Paris once. I did not know you then. I had not yet borne you.”

“Yes, the very same. We visited a Monsieur Faber, I believe. What became of that poor man?”

Margaret sighed. She crossed back over to the desk to fall back into her seat, and in a smaller voice she said, “My brother released him, for a time. And then, when I was next absent from Paris, he was arrested again and sent to the stake before I could return.”

“I saw you save another man, once. I do not know his name. How many prisoners did you save, mother?”

“Many. Not near enough. Not as many as those with whom I wept by lantern light.”

“Did the weeping do any good, I wonder.”

“Those who lived were saved by weeping. Those who died may have been comforted by it. It was the only thing I could give them, and so I must believe that Our Lord made good use of it.”

Joan shook her head. She almost wanted to cry too, then. The feeling surprised her. Joan detested crying.

“All those men freed from prison, yet you never came for me. Why?”

“Francis was determined. A choice between following Christ and keeping you near was no choice at all, though it broke my heart to make it.” 

If Joan shut her eyes, she could still remember the terror of the night she had rescued Henry. “You could have come with soldiers. You could have stolen me away in the night.” 

Margaret did not answer. The tears came faster now and her fair, queenly skin blossomed red. So many years would pass between the dear little girl she’d left in Paris and the stalwart woman now before her. She did not have time for poetry, but if Margaret had been allowed to keep her that would have been different. Joan should have had every poem under the sun. 

“Will you read it?” she asked, taking the parchment from her desk and pressing it into her daughter’s hands. “Will you grant me that boon?”

Slowly, almost numbly, Joan nodded. To Margaret’s surprise, she read aloud. 

“God has predestined His own

That they should be sons and heirs.

Drawn by gentle constraint

A zeal consuming is theirs.

They shall inherit the earth

Clad in justice and worth.”

“Clad in justice and worth,” she repeated, handing back the parchment. “It’s a good poem.”

“It isn’t finished,” replied her mother.

Joan laughed. “Neither is my speech. It must be almost morning now.”

As loving arms closed around her again, Joan wished to God that she could remain in Navarre with her mother. She knew that she and Margaret did not share a heart: her mother was tender like Joan could never be. Yet all the same, she wanted to believe that they had been forged by the same Christian hope and conviction. She wanted to believe that she, Joan, could free the prisoners too. 

She shut her eyes against her mother’s shoulder. When she opened them, she was back in her tent, with morning sun streaming in. 

*

She came before the army mounted on a horse with Henry beside her. Her words were like wine when she spoke. 

“When I, the queen, hope still, is it for you to fear? Because Conde is dead, is all therefore lost? Does our cause cease to be just and holy? No; God, who has already rescued you from perils innumerable, has raised up brothers-in-arms to succeed Conde.

Soldiers, I offer you everything in my power to bestow–my dominions, my treasures, my life, and that which is dearer to me than all, my son. I make here a solemn oath before you all, and you know me too well to doubt my word: I swear to defend to my last sigh the holy cause which now unites us, which is that of honor and truth.”

When she finished speaking, Joan coughed red into her hands. There was quiet for a long moment, and then a loud hurrah! went up along the lines. Joan looked out at the soldiers, and from the front she saw her mother standing there, with tears in her eyes. 

[shkika]

Do moon and pebbles ever refer to each other as siblings in the game? I remember pebbs mostly calls her his friend or neighbor, but I can't remember if Moon calls pebbs her brother, honestly it would be kinda sad if Moon saw him as a brother but pebbs only saw her as his neighbor, but maybe he is just formal and doesn't want to admit that he thinks of her like a big sister to the slugcats.

Oh absolutely the fact they are siblings isn't headcanons.

Though you'd be right. Pebbles has never referred to Moon as his sister in game. Only as his neighbor or senior... :) wowee how interesting hmm...

HOWEVER Moon does think of Pebbles as her little brother to the point where her public name is..

"Big Sis Moon"

She is referred to as his sister by NSH in his conversation with Suns.

Not only that, but other iterators literally use Moon as a reminder to who he is.

"The one near Looks To The Moon" wow ouch.

She very clearly considers him her brother, that's why people know her as "Big Sis Moon" aside being a mentor figure, of course.

If you want dialogue where she directly says it here you go!

Look no further than the dialogue that ruined me for days. As if Moon wasn't my favorite character already. Anyway.

It could be possible that he simply didn't want to talk about her as his sister, because he's more formal/ because he's talking to rats.

I like to think that the language he uses reflects on how intricate and even troubled their relationship was though! He just.. had very complicated feelings about it. Being constantly associated with her no matter what, it probably felt suffocating. We know from Suns he really wanted to be his own person and sought independence/ distance. Can't blame him for that.

[earthssprout]

guess who's sick again ! 😊🌼if nothing else, the experience has inspired the following thoughts ...

ahem 🐌

ari washes her hands & covers her mouth when she coughs or sneezes & never puts boogers or spit on anything & cleans up her messes & stays ' home ' when she's sick--

[balkanradfem]

Took a lovely evening walk yesterday, and I came upon a neighbourly cat. Knowing she's friendly and likes to be pet, I crouched down and made a little 'mrrp' so she would come to me. She did!

The cat snuggled around me and purred, and eventually she jumped into my lap, pushing her little cat face into my shirt and sinking her claws into my legs. I had forgotten how much cats love to claw while kneading, and how runny this cat's nose is. Still I hugged her and tried to made little injured noises whenever she actually hurt me, and a few times pried her claws out of my leg, in hope she'd figure out I dislike it. After letting her use me as her claw receptacle and her handkerchief for a bit, I snuggled her one last time and let her off my lap, intent on moving on.

However, this cat had other ideas. As soon as I started walking away, she meowed at me loudly, and then started running in front of me and cutting my way! Every few steps she'd out-run me and then stand in my way, demanding I go back to petting her. This didn't stop for a whole block, and I resorted to running. And the cat ran after me. I actually got chased by a cat down the street.

The little me would have been so proud at the change of the roles. Never thought that would happen to me.

[autistic-katara]

facing the consequences of my actions rn :((

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[descendantofthesparrow]

oh how wonderful, my dad caught covid and now i may have it-right when i get my wisdom teeth done :D

[farewell-in-veil]

hey ava fans anyone know hearts and heroes

reblogs appreciated !

original under cut so u can see how lazy i got in some places

[coquelicoq]

just got a biopsy to see if my [checks notes] 15-week period is because of cancer. however then my friends drove me to get chocolate and the new martha wells novel so, you know, there are pros and cons here.

[woundedheartwithin]

Life is strange, man. Just bought two peeps from a former classmate (two grades above me) who lives like four miles from me lmao

[guinevereslancelot]

had to take a sick day in my first week of my new job 😬

[sanctfy]

i think i'll have to call out from work sometime this week to take my cat to the vet

[wherela]

they should invent a friend for me who doesn't randomly stop talking to me for no reason

[fruifruit]

you ever watch a video summarizing a show youve never seen and start thinking about your ocs

[sennikold]

i don’t want to sound dramatic, but buying a kindle has been the best thing i’ve done in a while.