#i could go live with him in a yurt and never bathe him again and he would be perfectly fine

[3liza]

Out of over 100 responses, most groomers expressed frustration.

“We cannot take any more. I groom four to six per day. They take hours just to bathe and dry. They take the slot of two or three small dog appointments. They are not cost–effective or smart for business owners to take, even in good condition, because their hair is so dense and hard to maintain.”

Another groomer said, “I have multiple calls a day for new doodle customers, and 85% of my current customers are already doodles. There are too many to accommodate.”

Finally, one quipped, “I drink more after work since the doodle craze.”

Many groomers simply refuse to groom any of the poodle mix breeds.

“I stopped accepting new doodle clients of any kind this past winter. I make more money grooming small dogs, and it’s easier on my body,” one groomer said.

In addition, several groomers stated that they had instituted a weight limit (usually 40–50 pounds and under) to eliminate all of the larger poodle mix varieties.

More than one echoed, “I’m at my breaking point and will no longer groom any of them.”

[kickingitwithkirk]

Greetings from Austin pt. III

Pairing: Alpha!Jensen Ackles x Alpha!Jared Padalecki x Omega!OFC

Summary: Jensen and Jared are at odds over a monumental decision that changes their lives in a way they couldn’t have envisioned.  

WC: 3825

Warnings: a/b/o, bisexuality, biphobia, homophobia, angst, cursing, self doubt, depression/anxiety, married life/disagreements, medical stuff, sexual dysfunction, infertility/surrogacy

*flirting, m/m oral sex, Jensen’s insecurities are coming out, Jared gets arrested, both get counseling

A/N: This part consists of several time jumps over four month period.

A/N II: Hey, sorry took me a way longer to get done than planned, rewrote Oct 23 a dozen times alone and hoping makes sense, trying to flesh out characters more and has some stuff that plays into story line in later parts.

Part II

Masterlist

@winchesterandbeyondbingo​​​​​​ square filled-Jensen Ackles

*Series Inspired by this art.

*no beta-all mistakes are mine

September 8th

7:30 am

Jensen was sitting in the makeup chair clenching his extra strong coffee container to help warm his hands. He’d spent a second, uncomfortable night in his trailer on location as Vancouver was having an unusual cold snap this time of year and with the covid restrictions the director decided that everyone needed to stay on site.

While he wasn’t happy about the weather, missing his own personal heater but at the same time grateful for a brief break from Jared now that they were heading towards the next phase of starting their family.

Jensen jokingly said they needed a code name since they were planning on keeping their plans a secret, even from their families, until the pups were born, playfully suggesting a cartoon from their childhoods.

Of course with Jared’s weird sense of humor, he loved it and started throwing ideas like operation: pound puppies.

“Penny for your thoughts.” Frieda said as she applied a concealer under his eyes to hide the dark smudges from not sleeping well.

“Huh?”

“You asked about my new job and haven’t heard anything I’ve said, wanna talk about it?”

“Sorry, not focusing very well today.”

“Yeah, we’re all feeling out of sorts with this being the last couple days.”

Jensen couldn’t believe he was down to his last two days of filming.

“Too bad this virus messed everything up, it would’ve been a hell of a send off if everybody could have been here.”

Alex and Misha had left right after they’d finished but Jim Beaver was back for the ending. It was only right for Bobby Singer to be there at the end, having been such a pivotal character in the brothers lives.

Frieda continues chatting about random things while finishing his makeup. A PA stuck his head in calling Jensen to the set. He stepped out of the trailer and smiled seeing his Baby sitting near the building being used as the exterior of Harvelle's Roadhouse.

***

September 12th

“Jen, I’m taking out the bags,” Jared calls out seconds before the apartment's front door shut.

Jensen was doing one last check around the place for any forgotten anything. Satisfied, he walked into the living room containing neatly marked boxes ready to be shipped back to Texas, relieved they had downsized from the big house Jared had years ago.

He stopped to gaze out the picture window when a pair of strong arms wrapped around his waist, molding his back to the muscular chest of his mate, who rested his chin on his shoulder quietly saying, “I’m gonna miss this view.” Jensen hummed in agreement tipping his head back as Jared nuzzled his neck.

“We need to get going if we’re gonna make Seattle by seven,” Jared softly muttered as they’d stood there for a few heartbeats longer before releasing him. They walked to the door and Jensen turned once more to gaze out the window at the view of Vancouver.

***

September 21st

“This has been a great trip but man, I’ll be glad to be in our own bed tonight.” Jared remarks as they drive past a green highway sign saying Austin 312.

“Can’t wait,” Jensen drowsily says having not slept much the last couple days. They had decided to road trip it back to Texas, stopping at a few places they had wanted to visit for awhile.

Jared somehow managed to finagal, okay so his mind numbing blow job combined with those lethal long fingers that always makes Jensen agree to anything got him a couple extra days in southern Colorado.

Jensen enjoyed the beautiful scenery and hiking in the mountains but hated camping out. Well, it wasn’t technically roughing it the way Jared liked but still.. a frigging yurt in late September?

Oy vay, what he did for love.

The sound of Jared singing along to some classic country song on the radio as he drove finally put Jensen completely out.

***

October 23rd

Turning from the open fridge with a puzzled expression on his face, Jared senses the same vague something he’s felt God knows how many times in the last couple months.

Shutting the door he walked over to the island counter where his husband was seated pushing his unfinished dinner around on his plate.

“Jen, what’s going on? Are you worried about the implantation? Dr. Rodgers said the embryos were healthy and optimistic the surrogate took this first try.”

What Jensen wants to ask, the question that’s plagued him since that day in August choosing their Omega surrogate...how the hell does he phrase it without upsetting Jared?

“Did you choose her because you knew she’d be the one I’d pick?”

Jensen slapped his hand over his mouth, eyes wide, disbelieving he blurted it out.

Jared worked to find a response squeaking an actual squeak before he could get control over his vocals, “That’s what I’ve been sensing!” Gripping the edge of the counter with his big hands, “Are you seriously going there again? I was honest about our interactions when I realized she was the one I knocked down at the clinic and FYI, you weren’t exactly in full control either Alpha!”

Jensen clenched his teeth at being reminded his inner need to be in control at all times slipped.

“I’ve racked my brains trying to figure it out how to ask something like that without upsetting you!” Jensen yells getting up and pacing around the kitchen.

Jared huffed, “So all this time instead of talking to me, you’ve conjured up some..”

“For the last two years I’ve gotten the sense you feel somethings missing, kept telling myself it’s your unfulfilled biology. But ever since you meet that Omega you’ve been.. I can’t explain it and now I’m second guessing our marriage Ja....” his rant abruptly cut off.

Jared’s eyes were glowing red, pinning him with an eerie wolf expression, the intensity disconcerting him. “I chose you, my husband, my soulmate, my everything!“ The words should have been reassuring but Jared’s voice was pitiless, something Jensen's never heard pass from his lips before.

Jared took a deep breath and with normalcy returning said, “I love you Jensen and I thought you understood, for me, in my mind, both of us having pups with the same donor means my offspring won’t be seen as just step relations but will grow up having strong familial ties with JJ, Arrow and Zeppelin.”

Jensen started to speak when a low, reverberating growl from Jared warning him not to interrupt.

“I consciously listened to my inner wolf when it came to choosing the person who is biologically the Om of our children and I,” Jared emphasizes tapping his chest with his long index finger, ”have no regrets but apparently you do.” Taking a deep breath Jared drops a non sequitur, ”The dogs need to be fed,” and walks away.

At the sound of Jared’s SUV leaving Jensen’s legs gave out and he drops to the floor curling up in a fetal position wrapping his arms over his head. Arlo and Koda laid down, one on each side, cocooning him between them.

***

Thanksgiving

“The kids are in a tryptophan coma,” Jensen announces as he walks in through the kitchen's back door. He had followed Danneel home afterwards helping get JJ and the twins cleaned up and put to bed, “they’ll be out till Monday.”

“Good, cause I’m dead on my feet,” Jared replies yawning while loading the dishwasher. It had been their turn to host the holiday with Danneel, the kids, Clif, Jared’s siblings and their broods.

“I told you to wait and I’d help finish the cleanup when I got back.” Jensen said as Jared started the machine.

“I figured you’d wanna stay awhile and be too tired and I didn’t want to deal with it tomorrow. All that’s left is to put the trash and recycling out, could you grab it?”

“On it,” Jensen picked up the bags walking around the side of the house dropping them into their designated receptacles.

When he came back in Jared was switching off the lights downstairs. They made their way up to the bedroom taking turns in the bath getting ready for bed.

Jensen was sitting with his back against the headboard checking his messages when Jared drops heavily next to him, “I plan on sleeping for the next three days.” He mutters resting his head against Jensen’s shoulder.

“Sounds good to me babe, I’m glad we didn’t schedule anything extra this weekend, be nice to spend some time alone.” He finishes wiggling his eyebrows.

“Hmm, do you remember last year's Thanksgiving?”

Jared closed the kitchen pantries door, pushing Jensen against it seductively lowering his fox slanted eyes huskily whispering, “I’m so fucking horny I need my dick you now.”

“Dude, we’re re in my sisters...“

“..you’ll have to be quiet,” Jared dove in for a deep, dirty kiss, grinding against Jensen until he was begging to be fucked.

“You’re the one who got us busted..oh fuck Jensen..so fucking tight..fuck..not gonna last..then later I get Mac saying it sounded like your dick...”

“Okay..buuut,” Jared tilts his head slowly running his tongue up the column of Jensen’s neck, “you gotta admit,” hand slipping under his sleep shirt, “our sex life,” long fingers tip toe up the smooth, freckled chest, pads teasing his left nipple as Jared nibbles on his earlobe, ”is never boring.”

Jensen groans, dropping his arm, still clinching the phone, tipping his head to expose more of his neck to Jared’s wondrous lips, enjoying the scratch of his short beard.

“I thought you were sleeping the next three days.”

Jared answers by removing his hand and straddling his husband's thick thighs taken the phone placing it on the nightstand and starts nibbling along the other side of Jensen’s sensitive neck, working his way to his slightly raised claim mark flattening his tongue licking the ultra sensitive spot that always drives his Alpha wild.

Jensen slides his hands up Jared’s back finding a grip in his shortened hair, unhappy about how much he’s cut off for Walker, unable to tangle his thick fingers into the soft tresses like he used to.

Finding a purchase he pulls hard making Jared groan at the pleasurable sensation tips his head back till it’s the perfect angle for Jensen to run his tongue across those candy pink lips, teasing them open to grant him access, continues teasing, alternating between caressing Jared’s tongue with his and sucking on his lips.

Moaning, Jared rocks his hips seeking friction, breaks their kissing long enough to work Jensen's sleep shirt off. They end up wrestling a few moments before Jared tosses it as Jensen’s lips attack his more desperately.

Tapping Jared’s thigh, Jensen rolls them kneeling between sleep pant clad legs watching as Jared reaches up gripping the strategically placed bar in their custom made headboard with both hands, his pecs flexing in anticipation of what’s to come.

Not breaking eye contact Jensen bends forward, his lips a hair's breadth from Jared’s, slowly slides backwards hovering, caressing the acres of golden skin beneath him with only his warm breath, pausing to hook his fingers in the pants waistband and pulling them with him as he continues journeying south.

Slowly making his way back north he leaves wet, open mouth kisses along the now naked, extra long, muscular legs he loves, sucking on the insides of both thighs, nipping hard enough to leave marks before arriving at his designated stop.

He hasn’t even touched Jared’s beautiful cock yet it’s fully engorged, resting against his flat stomach vigorously leaking precome. Jensen dips his tongue into his bellybutton lapping up the liquid collecting in it, cause fuck, he’s loves how more sweet than salty Jared’s always tasted.

Hips rolling Jared rubs his cockhead against Jensen’s tongue and he kitten licks the dribbling slit before resting his head on Jared’s lower stomach and wrapping his lips around the velvety head.

Shifting his grip on the bar Jared’s makes nonsensical noises, toes curling at the mixed sensations of his mates silky beard tickling his lower regions while sucking on his cockhead, alternates swirling his tongue over the nerves underneath and teasing his slit sending spikes of pleasure radiating through him.

After all these years Jared’s still amazed at Jensen’s knowledge of his body, his ability to keep him on the edge of not enough for however long he’s in the mood to play.

“..pleease...need to cum...got to..so fucking..uhh..Alpha!”

Raising up on a forearm Jensen starts bobbing up and down his shaft, pausing briefly on each downward pass, working his throat open to take Jared further in until he’s nose deep in dark, trimmed pubic hair. Holding his mate's substantial cock in his throat swallows around him as Jared’s knot inflates, pushing his jaws apart till it’s too much.

Letting the knot slip out from between his plump lips Jensen wraps a hand firmly around it and starts vigorously bobbing drawing out a litany of obscene noises, feels Jared’s balls drawing up and backs off swallowing the warm, thick, spurting liquid.

Leisurely licking until Jared hissed, too sensitive for anymore kisses the tip one last time crawls back up the bed searching for his pillow and face plants on it.

“Dude, you’ve finally sucked out my last brain cell.”

Purring deep in his chest, Jensen gives Jared a self satisfied smirk, who mutters, “wasn’t trying to give you a bigger head.”

Rolling onto his side Jensen displays his turgid cock needing attention, “okay, he’s the bigger head,” Jared concedes reaching down running his fingers over the weeping tip, wetting them with precome spreads it over the shaft firmly fisting Jensen’s pulsing thickness, moving his hand up and down excruciatingly slowly.

“So,” his honeyed voice lowers an octave watching Jensen dissolving into a breathy mess, “how does he want me?”

Jensen opens his mouth to answer when a phone rings. Glaring over his shoulder, “not mine,” he growls. Still stroking him Jared stretches for his, “it’s the clinic..hello? Dr. Rodgers, hey, how are you sir?” He lets go sitting up against the headboard.

Why’s the doctor calling them at such an odd time, on a holiday no less?

Jared's brow wrinkles before he turns to Jensen, eyes sparkling breaks out his wondrous smile making his dimples pop.

“Jensen, she’s pregnant!”

Jared's practically bouncing on their bed like he’s on a massive sugar high discussing what comes next with the doctor. Jensen feels his erection rapidly diminishing, gets up heading into the bath and turns on the shower.

Climbing in he crosses his arms against the far wall, resting his forehead against them closing his eyes as hot water bounces across his broad shoulders.

Jensen knows he should be elated. Jared’s getting the pup (or pups) he’s desired for years and the possibility of being a father himself again. Instead, his heart seized up in conflict.

***

After that god awful argument in October he ended up at Josh’s, who confessed his mate and him were seeing a counselor because they were having marital issues too. Spending the night drinking and reflecting Jensen came home the next morning to a still angry Jared cause he didn’t know where the fuck his husband was all night.

Filling him in about his talk with Josh, Jared seemed somewhat mollified but a few nights later...

Walker star Jared Padalecki arrested near the one year anniversary of Stereotype bar altercation.

· Jared Padalecki was arrested once again in Austin, Texas, early Sunday morning on one count of public intoxication…

When he got released Jared sat Jensen down pleading with him to sit in on his next therapy session, saying they couldn’t keep going on like this, it was tearing him apart.

He wants..no..needs Jensen to completely open up, stop trying to protect him and discuss what’s going on in his head, what he’s really feeling.

Jared’s therapist started off informing both of them he wasn’t a marriage counselor but after a brief conversation with Jared knew the situation was having a detrimental impact on his mental health.

He listened to them separately, then together, about their observations and thoughts on each other’s behaviors came up with a hypothesis:

Since Jared’s last depressive episode, his random thoughts/emotions were feeding more into Jensen’s deep seated insecurities over his mate’s open, flirtatious personality and how he perceives others attraction/interactions to him.

And now Jared’s inner wolf is demonstrating an intense attraction to an Omega, something never encountered before with past preferences in Beta females, with this new dynamic Jensen didn’t know how to handle it.

Jensen opened and closed his mouth several times sputtering before saying this was complete bullshit and stormed out.

***

Lost in thought Jensen didn’t notice his husband stepping into the open shower stall until his considerable frame was blocking the water, Jared’s voice drew him out of his musings.

“I can hear you thinking clear in the other room.”

Cupped Jensen’s face between his large hands he gazed into those spring colored eyes that captured his heart the moment he looked into them years ago, “Hey, no matter what happens next, we’re good.”

***

December 16th

Jared was sitting in his chair chatting with Lindsey and Keegan while the crew was finishing setting up for the next scene when his phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number but excuses himself, stepping away for some privacy answering.

“Hey, everything okay?” Lindsay asked after he hung up, concerned by the visible tension rolling off the big Alpha.

“Umm..I don’t know, I need to make another call...” Jared said, waving the phone, “yeah, let us know if you need anything.” Keegan says and Jared nodded his thanks.

The phone rang three times, “Hey Clif, I need a favor.”

***

December 19th

Clif pulled the SUV into the parking lot, “Are you sure this is the right place?” Jared inquires looking around taking in the old motel located in a very questionable area of Austin.

“This is the name the guy mentioned.” Clif replied, getting out heading for the office. Couple minutes later he climbed back in, “the manager said the laundry out back.” He started the vehicle and drove to the rear of the property.

Clif got out again and knocked on the building's door. An older Hispanic woman answered engaging him in a brief conversation before stepping back inside.

Clif nodded to Jared and as he got out of the vehicle that piquant scent hit him seconds before the door reopened. The person he’d spent days searching for froze in the doorway upon seeing him.

***

December 22nd

Jensen, claiming out of the Uber, grabbed his bag thanking the driver, walked up the front stone pathway relieved to be home from L. A. after a hopefully final costume fitting for his new role as Soldier Boy, this flying back and forth every week for the last couple months had gotten old real quick and he was looking forward to enjoying the holidays at home.

Jared’s parents were coming tomorrow and staying for a few days as was Danneel and their pups. Josh said he was still planning on dropping by a few hours Christmas Day since he and Mac were scheduled to spend most of the holiday with their parents.

Jensen felt that mixture of anger and sadness he got thinking about his parents. He was raised in their church and though he never believed in it, respected their choice.

Too bad they couldn’t reciprocate.

***

Alan and Donna belonged to an ultra conservative church. The foundations of child rearing was to be found in the good book and in the Ackles household-spare the rod, spoil the child-was gospel.

When they were growing up neither parent was the physically or emotionally demonstrative type, only showing their offspring a reserved affection, especially in public.

The saving grace was their Beta nanny who gave them unconditional love, especially Jensen, who was shy as a child already knowing he was different from his siblings. She instilled the confidence in them to discover who they truly were inside and encouraged Jensen to come out before moving to California.

Shortly after graduating he told his family about his bisexuality and his boyfriend was moving to L.A. with him.

Alan and Donna tried to stop him. He was to go to their pastor and confess his transgressions, beg forgiveness for his sins against the church and its teachings, threatening to pull the agreed upon six month financial support while he auditioned for parts before going to college if it didn’t work out.

Jensen refused, packed up, took his boyfriend and left. He got his first break shortly after and quickly learned Hollywood didn’t care what his sexual orientation was as long as he kept it behind closed doors.

His management agency decided early on to promote Jensen as the good guy/boyfriend type. They also set him up on dates to events with many up and coming female artists of the time. He had no problem playing along when he wasn’t actually dating a woman.

His big break came on the CW. After co-starring in a couple series for the network he was offered the chance to be a lead in a new series created by Eric Kripke.

At the audition he met former Gilmore Girls heartthrob, Jared Padalecki, flashing his infectious smile, dimples for days and the most beautiful, incredible color shifting eyes Jensen’s ever seen, he was done for.

Jensen might not have his biological parents in his life anymore but his now in-laws, the complete opposite of the Ackles, helped fill that hole.

It’s easy to see where Jared’s personality comes from. His Om, Sherrie, is overly affectionate, excessively physical and verbal with everyone she considers family, biological or not.

The first time he accompanied Jared home on a holiday break Jensen was literally bowled over by the five foot nothing Omega and instantly became part of her brood.

***

Barley getting the front door open Jensen is hit with the piquant scent of orange blossoms and spices he couldn’t quite place.

Dropping his carry-on bag in the foyer he followed the scent further into the house. Arlo sat up near the large picture windows facing the backyard where he and Koda are napping and gets up coming over to greet him.

“Hey big guy, where’s daddy at?” Jensen asked rubbing around his ears like he liked having thought Jared would still be on set before the holiday break.

He heads towards the kitchen where the scent seems to be coming from, “Babe is that coffee shop back open, what’s it called, has those sweet rolls you're obsessed with..” he abruptly stopped and blinks not believing what was in front of him.

More accurately who was in front of him.

“Babe is in his office and dinner will be ready in twenty.”

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

***

tbc

GFA: @babypink224221 @waywardjoy​ @let-me-luve-you​ @all-4-wincest

SPN: @donnaintx​ @lyarr24

Sam/Jared @idreamofplaid​

Dean/Jensen: @flamencodiva​

[awesomerextyphoon]

Charred Briar Roses - 4

Meet the Family 

Paring: Orc!Bucky x Black!Reader, Orc!Steve x Black!OFC, Orc!Sam x Black!OFC

Rating: 18+/Explicit

Word Count: 3,500

Summary: The girls get to meet the family.

Warnings: Smut and Mentions of Death

A/N: I’m sorry that this took so long to publish. I had a major writer’s block. Also, the smut is not as good as I wanted so bear with me. Enjoy!

Back to Masterlist

It took five days to reach the group to reach the Orc Settlement. Most of the journey consisted of Fumnanya giggling at Sam’s (not so great, but whatever) jokes while sneaking in a kiss or two, Ghada acting like she’s above the romance then getting caught making out with Steve (she seriously likes it), and you giving Bucky the cold shoulder. You saw the regret in his eyes, but you were too stubborn to give him a chance.

The Orc Settlement was located in the lowlands of the Anchoria Steppes not far from the Tsurchack Forest with its center nestled between a segmented river and a good sized lake to its right. It consisted of a few hundred dwellings that seemed to be a nice cross between a yurt and a longhouse (**think Viking Longhouse**) built with reusable timber, metal, and stone. A couple of the dwellings near the edges were sectioned off into what looked to be farms of six to ten families. There were training areas and market places interspersed throughout the settlement. In the middle, there was a large arena like structure near the center next to what had to be the Elder’s Residence with more town like structures around them. Surrounding the whole settlement was a wall of stone, packed earth, and iron about 12ft high with sensors (probably a force field) sticking on top of it every five feet or so.

It looked beautiful, so different from your former home of extreme decadence.

“Welcome to our home. I know it’s not as-” Steve started.

“It’s beautiful!” Ghada exclaimed while turning her head to smile at him, “We don’t care where you live. We’re just glad you agreed to take us with you.” Steve responded with a low hum and gave her a kiss.

It would’ve been more, but Bucky cleared his throat, “We need to report to the elders as soon as possible.” It was followed by, “And not have you suck your match’s face.” Thankfully neither of the two lovebirds heard him.

Some of the children in front of the gates ran up to the group with bright eyes and smiles wondering if they brought back sweets and toys.

Steve smiled and responded with a ‘You’ll see’ and motioned to the elder’s residence.

Once you passed the front gates, you and your sisters were greeted with reactions ranging from awe to outright contempt. You wondered if they knew of your identities, but Bucky assured you that it was because his people are a bit weary of outsiders. He decided not to tell you about how some of Sophronius’ forces had the almost the exact same hair color and types of clothes, but that was for another time. Right now, he needed to get the elders to let you three stay.

––––––––––––––––––––––––

When they reached the Elder’s Residence – a large longhouse consisting of wood, stone, metal and sturdy fabrics at the top – you stopped yourself from taking another step passed the threshold. What if they didn’t accept you? What if the elders or other members ratted you out to Sophronius? Or will they just have you exiled once they get the riches you and your sisters brought?

Bucky sensed your trepidation and put an enormous hand on your right shoulder, “It’s okay. You’ve got this.” With that your group entered the building.

The elders sat on a raised rectangular dais in the middle of the room with two guards on either end. There was a chandelier and torches all around the main room. Various statues and artifacts of elders passed are placed/hung around the room.

It was intimidating to say the least.

“Welcome back, warriors! Were you successful in your mission?” One of the elders,  Argusa, inquired in Orcish.

“We ran into an old woman who directed us to the lost capital of the Nephrashim.” Steve explained.

“That is nothing but myth, Rogers! If you found nothing than just say so. Honestly, one would think that the halflings would be better at excuses than this.” One of the guards, Figrel, scoffed. He later raised his hands in surrender when Bucky moved in to pummel him.

“Enough, Figrel! Please continue Steve.” Cladista, another elder, gently urged.

“We found the capital to be deserted...except for the princesses. They were at the palace. They agreed to come back with us and we were able to procure valuable medical supplies, building materials, and treasure that we might use for trade.” Steve reported as the elders fixed their gazes onto you and your sisters.

The staring went on for three minutes. No one made a sound as the elders were casting their initial judgement upon you.

With a loud sigh, Argusa spoke in Common Tongue, “We will hear their case. Tell us, why should we let you stay with us?”

Ghada took a cautious step forward, “My sisters and I can offer our services. Fumnanya is a skilled medic and scholar, Y/N is an amazing inventor and metalworker, and I am trained in trade deals and negotiations. Furthermore, all three of us are pretty well versed in combat and culinary arts.” She appealed while searching for any sign of approval from the elders.

“We can attest to their skills if it’s of any consequence.” Sam piped up when it got eerily quit again.

“Interesting. What do you think, Zadia? You’ve been awfully quiet.” Argusa inquired as she turned to the last elder.

“Hmm. They can stay with Bucky’s sisters and stepmother for now. We shall see about their services another time. Enjoy your stay, girls.” Zadia decided while motioning the group to leave.

The short excursion to Bucky’s family’s place was nice. More people warmed up to you (and by that I mean no one gave the three of you blatant glares of contempt), some even walked up and asked questions about you.

It was nice, but all that didn’t matter if Bucky’s family didn’t like you.

You kept telling yourself that you didn’t care what they thought of you, but you knew that was a lie. It angered you that you cared so much. He was the one that said no! Then why did it hurt so much?

Bucky’s sisters and stepmother lived on a farm near the outskirts of the settlement. It comprised of one large dwelling with four smaller ones surrounding it in a circular fashion. Outside of the dwelling circle were smaller cabins and huts for storing food, livestock, hunting tools and combat weapons, and stables for their dire wolves and eagle horses.

It was nice getting to know Bucky’s family. He had three younger sisters – Rebecca (Becca/Becky), Isolde, and Melisende (Meli) – along with Aspasia, his stepmother, a brother-in-law and three nieces and one nephew. They joked and laughed with you three about embarrassing hijinks the guys performed during their youth. You shared some of the your stories about Nephrashim and your former lives. They quickly accepted the three of you as family.

Furthermore, it was nice not having to worry about princess duties and royal decorum. All of you helped around the farm doing several chores for the first time; you didn’t have any hiccups besides Fumnanya freaking out over one of the eagle horses, but Sam handled it.

The only thing that could be better is the treatment you got from the rest of the settlement. Most of the inhabitants either scowled or just pretended that you three didn’t exist. Becca explained that it was because almost none of them had seen clothes and features (hair/eyes) like yours before, but you knew better. It was because they knew you were from Nephrashim. Bucky’s family never breathed a word about it outside the farm’s borders and you doubted the elders would say anything.

Well, you hoped that it would get better. And it did.

An outbreak of Sxtatzia (a cross between Smallpox and Influenza but for orcs) swept through the settlement. Most of the inhabitants who were infected got better except for Zadia.

Just about everyone had lost hope when Sam and Bucky marched in with Fumnanya and Meli in tow (Fumnanya had been teaching Meli some basic medical procedures and best practices). Fumnanya was able to work her magic after Sam threat-, ahem, insisted the guards let her look at the elder. It took the team four hours to create a viable and effective cure.

The day after Zadia was shown to be steadily getting better, the elders put the former princesses to work. Ghada assisted the traders in negotiations, trade deals and some body language/social cues that surprisingly holds up. Fumnanya taught the medics the different practices, poultices, and minor surgical procedures she knew. You taught the metal artisans what you knew about engineering and metalworking techniques.

The warriors couldn’t be happier with this new development. Well, maybe they missed having the three of you near them most of the time, especially Bucky.

––––––––––––––––––––

It had been three weeks and you still hadn’t talked to him besides an occasional sentence and he was getting pissed. Everyone else tip-toed around the subject of you two and it didn’t help that Steve and Sam were getting closer with their matches. Bucky had to go on hunting trips on his own if only to have a respite from the non-stop lovey-dovey chatter about their matches.

He finally got his chance when he was walking (lurking) around the blacksmiths/artisan section where you had your workshop set up. You were giving a welding demonstration when a little shit, Figrel’s younger brother, attempted to grab your ass.

Bucky strode right into the workshop, punched the little shit, threw you over his shoulder, and went on his merry way back to his dwelling on his family’s farm.

“What the fuck was that?!” you shouted as he plopped you onto a nest of cushions.

“I can’t let you go back there. All those eyes leering at you.”

“What do you care? You were the one who said no at the baths!” You countered as you stood up to take your leave.

You didn’t even make it past him because he growled in frustration and spun you around to face him.

He inwardly smirked at your whimpering, loving the way your lower lip quivered.  

“Because you’re MINE!” Bucky bellowed.

You gazed up at him with coy smile, “Prove it,” and he smashed his lips against yours and pushed you onto his bed.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Bucky may have had plenty of sexual partners, but he never kissed anyone...until you. Now he could see what all the fuss was about.

He pried open your mouth with his tongue and groaned when you accepted him while wrapping your arms around his thick neck. He loved the way your tongue danced with his and ended with your graceful but fierce submission.

Once he finally broke for air, Bucky moved to your jaw and neck gently nipping your skin with his tusks. He peppered you with kisses causing small moans to escape your desperate lips.

“Bucky please!” You pleaded as he sent waves of heat to your core.

Bucky stopped his touches, looked you right in the eye, and responded with, “Not yet,” and continued undoing you.

He ripped off your vest and worker blouse and hummed at the sight of your chest. Seeing you now, panting with a ‘giddy fucked’ face, looking at him with half-lidded eyes, made almost all the blood in his face go straight to his cock.

He dove into your chest, licking and gently sucking your breasts while you grabbed his soft dark brown (almost black) hair moaning his name. He worked your breasts so well that you came for the first time in your life within minutes.

“Bet you’ve never had one of your human boys do this to you, woman?” Bucky remarked with a smirk as he ripped off the rest of your clothing like it was tissue paper.

You could only gasp out a ‘No’ before Bucky sprinkled your midsection and hips with sloppy, desperate kisses (he used a lot of tongue) which again caused you moan. You wondered how much more you could take.

The Fae’s training never prepared you for this!

When he finally got to your thighs, Bucky hummed as he took in the sweet smell of your arousal. He faintly kissed and nipped at your inner thighs causing you to cry out in euphoria and impatience. He ignored your cries and gave your slit one long, slow lick.

You hissed at the sensation both from how amazing it felt and frustration from both Bucky and yourself for denying it from happening sooner.

Bucky’s enormous tongue attacked you pussy alternating between your clit and your folds. He soon added a thick finger to the mix causing to edge again and again until you beseeched him to let you come.

“You’re MINE princess! SAY IT!!”

You whimpered at his demand and Bucky stopped moving altogether.

“SAY IT!!”

You mewled, “I’m yours! I’m your bitch!”, you answered remembering what Becca said male Orcs loved to hear their women say.

Bucky chuckled and got up to remove his clothes and decided to make a show of it.

You were sober enough to gaze lustfully at his sleek, muscular, ruggedly handsome frame. You heard the women in the settlement gossip about how they thought the likes of Bucky is wasted on a ‘stupid trollop’ like you.

Checkmate bitches!

He removed his loincloth, his last bit of clothing, to reveal a behemoth of a cock.

You almost gulped at the size. You and your sisters have heard about cocks from gossiping maids and servants before the curse. Those ones sounded like they were a good size, but Bucky’s was on a much higher level.

Bucky, the lovable but cocky bastard, smirked, “Never seen one this big, huh?”

You bit your lip and looked down in shame, “I haven’t seen one at all.”

“And it’ll be the last one you’ll see, sweetheart.”

You let out an uncharacteristic giggle as Bucky parted your legs and lined his cock at your entrance.

He went in slowly as to not hurt you, but you still hissed at the size of him. You’ve never felt so full in your life.

“You’re doing so well for me,” Bucky grunted, “So tight!”

He filled you to the hilt and stayed there for a few minutes while he helped you get your breathing under control.

He started with slow strokes, savoring the way your pussy squeezed him, like you were made for him. He tried to keep it slow out of respect since it was for first time, but you felt so good so he picked up his pace.

The earlier feeling of discomfort at his size soon faded into euphoria. You never dreamt of pleasure like this. Now you understood what your and Bucky’s sisters were going on about. You mewled when Bucky hit your G-Post just right.

It wasn’t long before your first orgasm hit you like a tsunami and you convulsed around him a wave after wave of carnality washed over you. Soon Bucky came with a roar, shooting long thick ropes of his cum into you to the point of creating a bulge in your midsection and you passed out.

When you awoke, you felt a strong arm wrapped around you and a hand gently stroking your hair and back.

“I know you’re awake, sweetheart.”

You open your eyes and looked up to see love (actual love, not lust) and understanding etched in Bucky’’s features. You never knew you needed it, for someone to actually see you for yourself, not what you could give them.

He exhaled, “I’m sorry for the baths. It’s just that I didn’t want to have sex and then you’d leave me. I know it selfish, but-”

You stopped him with a soft kiss on the lips, “Why would I leave you? You actually see me for myself and not for my former station or as an annoyance. Okay, minus your sisters, stepmother, nieces and nephew because they are awesome.”

Bucky chuckled as his some of his long hair fell in front of his face, “I’ll be sure to tell them that, but not Becca. She has a big ego as it is.”

You giggled in response,”That’s fair,” you bit your lip and shot Bucky a coy look, “Do you want to go again?”

You didn’t need to ask him twice.

You two were at it for the rest of the day. The sounds of your lovemaking evident to the rest of the farm’s inhabitants.

“Finally!” Becca exclaimed as she and Ghada were sewing new clothes for the orclings.

Isolde chose that moment to walk into the common room, “Yes! I get my room back!”

The princesses and their matches were in bliss. Everything was right with the world...until it wasn’t.

––––––––––––––––––

It was two months after you and Bucky officially got together. The whole settlement had gotten into an easy rhythm of things when one of scout’s warning horns went off.

“It’s the Horde!”

Everyone who was not fighting was running to the shelters. Bucky had asked you to stay with Becca’s children and mother. You wanted to get angry, but you knew it was because he  wanted someone he trusted and loved to have his stepmother’s back. So you grabbed Waning Swan and ran to the shelters.

The battle lasted until morning and the settlement won, but at a price. Casualties came in at  80 dead and 200 wounded. The scariest thing wasn’t the gore or the corpses, it was the words, “He Knows”, scorched into the ground in front of the arena, or the Assembly Place.

Later that day, everyone who was able crowded into Assembly. Everyone’s eyes were boring into you. Fumnanya kept her head to Sam’s chest, but it wasn’t working.

“I knew those harlots were trouble the moment they strode into our settlement!” A woman who lost her mate to the battle shouted. A chorus of shouts of agreement followed.

Ghada was getting nervous as evident by her squeezing both yours and Steve’s hand. Luckily someone stood up for the group.

“I understand that you’ve suffered, Brida. I lost a son to the Horde, but we can’t blame it all on them. Sophronius has been after us for years. Be reasonable.” Agi stated while the guys gave him a nod of appreciation.

“Fuck that! You’re only saying that because you were they’re mates instructor and your nephew married one those mongrel bitches!” Baldo, another older warrior, exclaimed.

Big mistake.

It would take ten years to ascertain what really happened in the five minutes that followed. Baldo was thrown out of the Assembly, Brida was nursing a broken jaw, Becca had a wound on her left forearm from a sword, and Bucky had to be kept from attacking an idiot by Sam, Steve, Agi, and five other orcs. Everyone else was in an uproar and honestly, a full on fight was going to break out.

“SILENCE!” Argusa roared.

“We need to rebuild. Callisa, can we get a status report by the end of the day?”

Callisa was about to answer when someone demanded that they should do something about the Horde.

Steve gave everyone in your group a knowing and somewhat crestfallen look, “We’ll go to the Resistance and see if they can help.”

It took some minutes before Argusa gave the group an answer. The settlement tried to stay away from Sophronius and the war, but one could say their chickens have come home to roost.

“Alright then, you three take the girls and go first thing tomorrow.” Argusa decided.

“It’s not fair! You just got ‘ere, Auntie! Ingunn cried as she hugged Ghada. All of the orclings were crying and it was breaking your and your sister’s hearts. They’ve made such an impact in your lives that it hurt to leave them now.

“I’m sorry, love, but we have to leave. We’ll be back before you know it.” Ghada reassured her, but you had a feeling it would be a while before your group would return.

With one final hug and a pat, you said your goodbyes to the orclings. Meli, Isolde, Aspasia, Becca, and her mate, Gernot were waiting for you all at the gate.

“I know you’re sad about leaving us, but we will meet again my dears.” Aspasia uttered as she gave each of you a hug.

“Take care and keep these knuckleheads in line.” Becca joked while she gave Bucky a playful punch to the shoulder.

So with a heavy heart, you left the place that felt more like home in many ways than the place you were born.

The group headed southwest to the coordinates a trader said that he saw some Resistance Members. You were crossing a valley when an unscented flash landmine went off and everything went blinding white then black.

Next thing you knew, your group was in chains surrounded by a group protected by shadow...except for five individuals wearing necklaces and a medallion that belonged to…

“Mother!”

Taglist:

@lookiamtrying​ @chris-evans-indian-fanfic​ @retroxvailles​ @imdarkinme​ @dahkness​ @pseudonymphet​ @giorno-plays-piano​ @mcudarklibrary​ @anyatheladyclown​ @saiyanprincessswanie​ @macheregrace​ @hurricanerin​ @navegandoaciegas​ @stargazingfangirl18​ @sapphirescrolls​

[dunmerofskyrim]

18

Strange. I don’t think there was one mer among us not scared half to death and nerves shot to shaking by what we faced at the gatehouse. Neither those on the walls and able to fight, nor those yet to climb them, helpless outside.

The Morrowind natives among us in particular faced something awful. These corpsewalkers had no necromancy behind them. Nothing to hate except that they made us fear them. Only something gone wrong in the nature of things. The souls of those who ought to’ve been ancestors to someone, caught instead in their bodies, with parch and rot both fighting to claim them. Patrolling their old watches, mindless. Lying dormant til something came near — life to envy, interruptions to rage at, who can say?

As individuals we each had the salt shocked out of us. But as a group our survival emboldened us. A sigh of relief through us all, soundless but sole in its meaning: still alive, still alive. Tammunei did that. As they did back in Bodram, so they’d done now.

The air reeked of burning. Cloth and hair and bone. Smoldering paper. Preserved by the souls inside them but otherwise gone to husks, the flesh of these things had ceased to be flesh. A small mercy. None of the usual meat and fat stench as they burnt.

Bones and weeds in the courtyard. Mushrooms trod under our feet as we regrouped.

A second turret of bitter smoke poured up from the tower staircase I’d set ablaze. With shaking hands I searched my satchels and came out with a scrap of dried root. Pale pink guljana – manpaw, creeproot – to still the spent ache in my belly. I slipped it into my mouth and began to chew. First the tannic taste of overbrewed tea. Next would come a heaviness in my limbs, something between wading in water, or trying to run from a nightmare. But it would stem the sick hollow feeling of drawing on my body’s magicka deeper than I ought to have. I had no better recourse.

I was bruised and battered. Something had scratched me close to my temple. A line of blood had gone to crust, drying down the side of my face. The first corpse I fought had got its claws into my side, tearing tattered a patch of my aketon, but sparing the shirts and skin beneath. And that was another larger mercy all its own. Any fleshwound got from those things’ teeth or claws would go sour, sure as anything.

“Thank you…” I croaked, voice scorched and coming out black. “Thank you.” My feet began to pace.

All around me a chaos of voices, murmuring. Who was hurt? Take this, here, take it, it’ll help. My brother, have you seen my brother, blue eyed, can’t miss him, have you seen—? Someone was crying. A high thin ceaseless sound like a baby’s wail in a full-grown throat, no regard for breath except when a new sob tried to start but pulled on empty lungs.

No warriors, these, I reminded myself. It couldn’t be helped. And this had been both kinder and crueler than any skirmish against the living.

Spent but restless, I paced. My eyes veered, fixed on one soot-stained grubby nerve-drawn face, then the next, and then the next. It might’ve looked like concern. Some might’ve expected that of me as Tammunei’s second. The one with a mind to keeping us fed, watered, safe. Whose thoughts were on every banal and needful thing that would keep the lot of us living. Tammunei’s mind was ever a day ahead of us, always in Vvardenfell, pressing on and onward. Live too much in the future, or dwell too much in the past, your thoughts cease to think, and turn instead to dreams.

One face I saw had blue eyes. Strange in a Dunmer. That was a third mercy. Somehow it made things better.

“Your brother!” I called out, raising my voice as best I could. “Here, your brother!”

The bathwater was warm. Its surface shone in slicks and whorls and its steam rose nut-like sweet with apricot oil.

He’d seen the trees as the sun set last night. They were everywhere in Oudabridge, anywhere they could force roots into the dust. At least he’d assumed they were apricot trees. It was almost Winter and their limbs held no fruit. But the cornerclub itself had three such trees in its narrow walled grove of a garden. No fruit perhaps, but the oil from their kernels went in most everything they cooked. Why shouldn’t it be in their bathwater too?

Simra leaned backwards, sinking himself to the tip of his chin and curling his legs and back to fit the short oval tub. Scent and heat, the smooth and soothing slickness of the oil as it soaked into his skin. It had all been pleasant for the time it took to blink twice, but quick enough it had turned to guilt, and guilt turned all the rest with it. What was it the Nords said about bad apples and barrels? One tainted with rot will sour the whole lot.

His skin prickled now, thick and gelid, like his bones had gone soft while his muscles stayed tense. A glowering pain nestled at the front of his head, between and just above his brows. A hangover that felt like a third eye opening, just as in the old Sixth House stories. Simra grimaced, disappointed. He’d not been drunk, not by a long way. If he’d known he’d wake up feeling this way, he’d have gone the whole distance and earnt it.

“And how much more’d that cost you, hm?” His breath troubled the water’s surface as he muttered. “Four shils more? Five?” Simra kissed his teeth. “Done enough damage already. To yourself and your purse.”

He’d wanted comfort. A change from the plains, the yurt, the hard ground beneath its floorcloth and his bundled up mantle for a pillow. Not luxury, just a chance to stop feeling like an animal. It wasn’t excess. In the greater scheme of things it didn’t come close. But sixteen shils, a redware yera, a piece each of Imperial copper and silver, spent in a night and morning on nothing that would last — it felt like excess all the same.

“Feel better if you’d got something solid, would you? Real and needful and lasting? Fuck off.”

Sword, boots, a new bag or book, a coat for the cold — Simra knew it would make no difference if he’d spent the same on them. It would still set his upbringing a-clamour inside him. A sick and stomach-fallen feeling that had made his bed seem rough and hard, and this bath feel like being a piece of hardybread soaked to soften in broth.

The numbers moved and changed in his head, unwanted and unprompted. Coins flowing in and out of Imperial, never staying long, but always passing through. Three drakes to the shil and seven drakes on the penny. Two shils on the penny with some sliver of loss meant twenty-four to the shilling, but not if you counted those slivers, like you always ought if you’re clever… Thirty-two shils, then, to a shilling, on a good day, in a fair exchange.

For two weeks a shilling could feed a family of four and leave scraps still for rainy days. All the more scraps for a family of three. That was his mother’s reckoning. The first part came of shrewdness and thrift, the second part from pain. If he had it figured right, he’d spent a third again more than that. Not luxury, he’d told himself, but now it came as a question. Not luxury? Back home it would be. Back home it was good food, meat, a ways towards rent for the month or stores for the Winter.

The sound he made was part sigh but the rest was a growl of disgust. Up from the water, Simra heaved himself dripping, both arms braced to the sides of the tub. He grimaced as his bruises complained. Newer knocks and pains. The old aches spoke up too, down his back and across his shoulders: a tightness that only came open by tearing. The scars at least were silent, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

Cold the stone floor under his feet, even through the rushes. He soaked them as he stepped from the bath. The lingering bitter-white scent of leech-lily soap. Together with the cornerclub’s apricot oil, the distant rainstorm smell of boiled riverwater, they filled the small room to its rough-plastered walls.

Steam fogged the tiny diamond of polished steel that Simra had set on the nightstand. Better that way for now, he reckoned, and pushed back the dripping white weight of his hair. Clothed to the collarbones – or in a mirror the size of his hand – he was marked enough already.

The deep scar through his lips, from nose to chin. The tear straight down through his right ear’s lobe, ragged and stupid. The shallow horizontal on the left side of his throat, too, if he wore no scarf. The twinned stars on either side of the muscle between neck and shoulder, one where the arrow went in and another where Kjeld had pushed it out.

But naked, bared down to bones and dove-grey skin, there was no escaping the rest. Arms and shoulders, forearms, ribs. One wide stripe on the side of his thigh, like the growth-marks on Gitur’s hips…

“Ghosts and bones,” Simra muttered, swearing as his body remembered back to Windhelm, the parlour under the Grey Quarter, the bedding-down musk of soft pelts. A testing flex of feeling, as mixed as every scar. But better he dwelt on that than the torn ear…

Simra dried himself with a sheet of kreshcloth, folded beside the tub. He mussed his hair from soaked to simple damp. Wrapped his loins and feet, then stepped and struggled into his leggings. Again his shoulders complained. No quiet tightness now, but a sharp insist of pain. Lips gone into a crooked snarl, teeth all grit together, Simra let go a hiss.

He sat down hard on the bed, hating that he had to. Old, he thought. That was how it felt. Old already. It hurt to reach out to the nightstand. Hurt worse to turn his head and see. He shuffled at the hips instead, to look and grope for his bandages.

Without them, bare, his right hand was a mess. He looked down, grim-curious, to watch as its fingers flexed. Index and thumb as normal, but the outer three were pale and bloodless, skin cured tight. Ropes of scar knotted round their knuckles, ugly back and ugly palm. The tendons stood out rigid in a squall of silver seams that spread like lightning along the heel of his hand and towards the wrist. A whole hand, true, but it didn’t feel his own. Something stolen instead — broken, then borrowed back.

Simra wrapped it, covered it, everything up to the second knuckles of his corpse-pale fingers and the nails on them that never grew. It was awkward, clumsy left handed, but he was well practiced by now. Well-used to that, as much as to the looks of confusion, the quick glance down, that came with the name he’d made for himself, then half-glad left behind.

“Seven-Fingers…” He snorted. Another thing he’d traded in, all part of the price he’d paid. Another reputation gone all but cold and a new one in need of making.

Shirts, jacket, bags. Simra finished dressing. With kohl-lined eyes and goatskin mantle tossed back over one shoulder like a dandy’s cape, he stepped into the cornerclub’s courtyard, sack on his back and satchel at his side.

A triangle of paving slabs surrounded another of dirt. Bare-armed apricot shrubs, and a spray-limbed pomegranate tree, limbs weighted and red with fruit against the drab white sky.

[mitsunari]

this time it’s otabek exposition. just kinda figuring his character out for part 2 of this. originally i had him go in the morning on horseback cause he’d never ride in the dark, but i had yuuri request to see otabek that night so i cut the morning scene. didn’t have otabek reunite with yuuri just yet. the morning scene will have phichit! :D but otabek can’t be away from his house for longer than a day because of his animals. lonely bachelor otabek.... he needs a familiar or the kazakh equivalent of a brownie

still rated G!

if you have questions about the Kazakh places, let me know! be very impressed by Otabek’s homeland LOL

__________________________________________________

In his motherland, the sun lingered behind her mountains longest at dawn. Otabek Altin rose early every morning to lips of sunlight waiting to kiss the peaks. If he was able, he’d watch, but the Kazakh had his routines to see to first, much as it is the sun’s duty to warm the earth.

He recited his prayers. He saw to his animals’ feed and watering. The goat was milked, then he hacked out his mare in the surrounding Kazakh wilderness. He no longer lived in the southern “capital”, his hometown of Almaty, but rather the mountains to the south, their sprawling alpine pastures woven on steppes and spruces. The heart of Kazakhstan’s hero laid in these peaks of Ile Alatauy. Here, Otabek was surrounded by their silence, their wisdom, and their snowfall.

Morning rides with his black mare Karazhal involved thoroughly patrolling their living space. Otabek made sure fences were secure and his private drive down the mountain was clear. If there were tracks, droppings, or animal sightings, he’d remember it for later. By profession, the man was not a park ranger. His life and duty belonged to the land. Otabek took nature’s well-being quite seriously, but the most important duty also lay with Karazhal. He was responsible for her, though she’d been trained by somebody before Otabek got her. Her legs knew the earth as well as he. Plus she rarely fought the saddle. After returning home to the little stable, he’d rub her sweat away with a towel before putting her to pasture.

After that, he bathed and shaved, then made breakfast. Otabek led a simple life. Simple, rural, but by no means easy. Between driving around and riding on Karazhal’s back, he surveyed thousands of kilometers of land. He made maps to replace the old Soviet ones in Cyrillic but without flying like the falcons, updating a map took months, even years. Not only were they made with pencil on paper, but also needlework and paint on canvas. He had not yet started on the ultimate map: one woven in a kilim. Otabek kept a loom in his tiny stone house. He’d made all the kilim coverings and hangings in the yurt outside, but bought the rugs from Almaty weavers. He was determined to flatweave a map in this lifetime!

But when he wasn’t making maps, or doing routine, Otabek liked to relax with a different kind of painting. Maps were easy to paint. He wasn’t painting a picture, but just following the topographical lines or imitating the color scheme in the World Atlas. In truth, painting for art rather than purpose was Otabek’s weakness.

In the evenings, when the sunshine spilled over the mountain’s teeth in the west over Almaty, Otabek began a practice regimen with old paints. The art supplies he used for his maps were expensive and required him to drive down the mountain to Almaty to get more. So, he decided to just start with the old ones or colors that weren’t used as much. In front of him, an empty burlap corn sack lay stretched over a frame. It was angled against a table cleared of its terracotta pots on the right half.  He sat in a wicker chair covered in furs. Frowning at his painting canvas, Otabek tilted his head, looking at his subject--landscape--and back down at his canvas.

Swishing his paintbrush in the small capsule of muddy yellowish-brown paint, Otabek removed it and painted a tree trunk first, then arching the branches away from the main body. He also used the brown to color the sunset’s claim over the mountains. The lines were mathematic with little flow. Curling his nose at it, Otabek drifted to the trees again, putting another stripe here and there.

The bristles of Otabek’s paintbrush created divisions in each stroke. The old horse hair was as stiff looking as the painter. When he finished, he stared at it for minutes without saying anything, then put the frame aside to dry. Frames were always reused; the different types of canvas were pulled off it and hung up somewhere in the cottage.

Otabek sighed. After glancing at his brush, hoping for some kind of inspiration, he cleaned it in the pail to get the paint off. He thought of Mr. Katsuki’s visit earlier that day. The reveal of a new star had made the astronomer nervous, apparently because he’d been waiting for Otabek to prophesize the end of the world or something. In truth, Otabek did not yet know the meaning of this star. All things in life had meaning. Whether they revealed themselves to man was another story entirely, even to Otabek, who’d been chosen by the spirits. He was not the sort to worry unnecessarily. For now, he enjoyed the nebula’s gift and looked forward to seeing the young star himself.

Was the star telling him to draw it? Maybe if he took all of his paints with him and drove to Alma Arasan or one of the ravines, he would find inspiration. Otabek had never thought to take his art supplies with him on Karazhal’s patrols. Usually there was no room; the black horse suffered his weight, weapons, and sometimes other animals, like food for the day or an injured one in Otabek’s care.

He leaned back in his seat with a little nod to himself. It was decided: he’d take a few days’ rest from the usual routine to journey across the mountainside for a better perspective. He knew of the perfect place, one he already had an invitation for. Inside Ile Alatauy, near Big Almaty Lake was the Tien Shan Astronomical Observatory. The staff were scientists that Otabek held in esteem. They too resided in the Alatau and spent weeks monitoring the heavens. He was familiar with two observatory astronomers in particular, Katsuki Yuuri and Phichit Chulanont, but their paths had only crossed five times in ten years. It surprised Otabek to see Mr. Katsuki--no, Yuuri--at his door. Otabek had not grown up all his life as the Hero of Kazakhstan; he’d been raised modern, in Almaty, and wasn’t as traditionally bound as his morning guest seemed to think he was. Just because he was a shaman didn’t mean he shoved aside all science. He supposed it surprised him because he didn’t think Katsuki, a scientist, would have taken Otabek’s request so seriously. Otabek normally read the stars and moon with the naked eye, but with the Observatory’s help, he could see more, even farther than he could imagine except in his dreams. It was the realm of gods and spirits. He did not expect scientists to understand, but when he’d offered alliance to Yuuri, Yuuri had accepted everything that came with that, including the knowledge of Otabek being a spiritual conduit.

It was at age fourteen when he’d gotten his first spirit dream. He’d talked to a constellation then woke up kilometers away from his own bed, laying in a bed of flowers and apples. The spirits had presented him with a deeper connection to his motherland than he could’ve imagined. His fingers tingled now at the memory. Otabek looked up at the sky, knowing it wasn’t the correct seasons for his that constellation to appear but thinking about the stars even still. Would they send him another waking dream?

Otabek pushed speculation aside. If it came, it came. He gathered up his supplies and took them inside, noting everything that needed to be secured before he left in his truck for the two-hour drive to the observatory. Otabek mucked and cleaned up around the cottage. Karazhal and the goats went into their stalls lest the snow leopards find easy prey. He didn’t douse the fire once dinnertime finished, but rather let the coals gleam and faintly warm the house. Finally, at 6 PM, Otabek slid into the cloak of the bear hood, pulling the brown head over his own as he closed his door. Hot breath steamed out of his mouth in the darkness of winter.

With a squeal, his truck started in the cold, getting no FM signal in the mountains but Otabek sang without music anyway, humming ditties about it being cold as shit and the beauty of ice on his eagle feathers outside. Almaty was a welcome sight for the twenty minutes he was in it before he was up a different mountain road this time. He ducked his head down to peer up at the bird’s road stretching far with many starry wings, cloudless, timeless. Otabek smiled to himself, focusing on the road again. He could not wait to see Yuuri’s new star for himself.

[nailtravels]

The gypsy girl said it herself, the cards looked good. But what did that really mean? And good for whom? There was lots going on here. Were we now putting our faith entirely in the hands of the unknown, like buffalo teeth and painted chicken’s feet? When you believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer superstition. Methinks this does not bode well.

Mercury was supposedly in retrograde, whatever the great Gravy Crockett that meant. And this was somehow supposed to translate into everything coming up wine and roses? With hindsight being twenty-twenty, the lens of wisdom would surely suggest nades. F’sho, no. Who could know that the red haired gypsy girl’s words would herald both delicious ecstasy and unimaginable peril? Such is the way here in the proverbial pocket of things. Welcome to the Mother Land. This is the briar patch and you, little mister, have enlisted in the Army of Northern Virginia. Don’t worry. We won’t have you hiking through the brambles. This is Thomas Jackson country and The Low-Brow Summer Tour 2018 has come to a close with the nailtravels team mounting a guerrilla offensive on Lockn’ Festival. Mission accomplished, it’s Lockn’ 2018: The Lowest Brow.

Ambassadors extraordinaire, Lockn’ 2018

Lockn’ Festival, formerly known as Interlocken Music Festival, is an annual four-day music festival held at Oak Ridge Farm in Arrington, Virginia. It is a headier-than-thou, jam-band, wavy gravy, funk heavy camping/music experience in the gentle hills of southern Virginia. It gets it’s name from the rotating stage that showcases performers as the end of one act overlaps the beginning of the next. Bands like Lettuce and Umphrie’s Magee played to and with each other as the musical transition took place to the seamless delight of thousands.

Past artists include Gov’y Mule, String Cheese, moe, John Fogerty, Greensky Bluegrass, The Avett Brothers, Ween, Phish, Twiddle, My Morning Jacket, John Butler, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Little Feat, Robert Plant, Jefferson Airplane, Carlos Santana, Tom Petty, The Wood Brothers, Willie Nelson, Hot Tuna, Zac Brown, Jimmy Cliff, Col. Bruce Hampton and who cares? That’s plenty.

Main stage, LOCKN’ Sat. night: photo by Jessica Brightsen.

For once, Baitbucket felt reasonably healthy. The yellow foam had stopped seeping from the corner of his right eye and his back felt strangely quiet. The knees and ankles were holding together and, barring an unforeseen incident, he might be able to run the gauntlet. A gauntlet to be sure. infinity Downs Farm is a gigantic property littered with rvs, tents and ez-ups. Laid out over miles of hippies and clay trails, every exploratory adventure covers several square miles of travel. And that doesn’t include the multiple unexpected detours that seem to be popping up all the time. Jubba jubba.

Bobby

New friends.

Dead & Co. LOCKN’ 2018: photo by Kevin Crowley

Johnny and Bobby, LOCKN” 2018

The fam. LOCKN’ 2018

Dead & Co. with Branford Marsalis, LOCKN’ 2018: photo by Neal Hart

Sugarplum and Huckleberry get hitched at Church, LOCKN’ 2018.

Argentina, John and Sugarplum, LOCKN” 2018: photo by Liz Riddick

Scott and Joe solving the mysteries of the universe, LOCKN’ 2018.

And another thing, LOCKN’ 2018

Jaime and Argentina, LOCKN’ 2018

So pretty, LOCKN’ 2018

  Lockn’ 2018 Breakdown:

Wednesday: Welcome to the Leaning Tower of the Yoga Machine. Broken beads, broken backs, cool nights and warm days are the order. For festival fun, it doesn’t get any better. It’s way too early to be having this much fun and besides, the cards wouldn’t lie. Please be sure to check your gluten at the flap. The yurt was set up in High Field RV with three recreational vehicles, three tents, three awnings, two ez-ups. It’s true, the Huckleberries and the Baitbuckets of the world can come together and let PBR and Natty Light fans play together as one single neck of color. It’s a fact, some people should not be in charge of putting up the yurt. Namaste.

Thursday:  By Thursday evening, cat head mushroom chocolates had turned many of the festivarians into silly puddles of unraveled string. There were even reports of dead people. Go figure. Imagine live Lettuce into Umphrey’s into Lettuce with the funk and back into Umphrey’s. Some of the Umphrey’s show was, as usual, hard to wrap the head around. Kind of like Chinese math. In the words of Lord Buckley, “They stomped on the terra.” Joe Russo’s Almost Dead closed out the night with a set that included an Easy Wind and Row Jimmy. Thank you Sarah and Steve for the late night fellowship at the Jerry Garcia Forest. It’s better when we camp together.

  Late night on the mountain, the light fog blurred the edges of the rising moon. By Sunday Funday, it would be full and the patients would surely be running the asylum.

Friday:  Umphrey’s Mcgee did what they do again, and along with Jason Bonham and Derek Trucks, they shredded the Zeppelin cover, “Whole Lotta Love”.  After a complete afternoon of funk it would be up to WSMFP and the Spreadnecks to deliver the big punch Friday night and, as always, they were up for the challenge. Clayopheus III the Destroyer showed up toward the end of their set and things would never be the same. Late night on the way to the Jerry Garcia Forest heralded the arrival of a new, bright green planet in our own solar system. Imagine the surprise.

JRAD Friday Midnight Setlist

Tell Me, Momma Viola Lee Blues St. Stephen The Eleven St. Stephen reprise Ophelia Atlantic City Viola Lee Blues jam China Cat Sunflower I Know You Rider Feel Like a Stranger Shakedown Street

The Friday night party ended up at the Jerry Garcia Forest for a night of Jerry bluegrass and dancing in the street. Baitbucket couldn’t yet locate the Michiganders, so he found his way back to J’s Dablature Experiment for late night cordials and low-temperature silliness. He was last seen, walking around in small circles looking for his campsite until the wee hours of the early morning. Worm hole Watusi of the first order, to be sure.

Saturday (SNUCKN’): The Lowest Brow–Stonewall’s festival experience had found the perfect rhythm. He’d ingested a virtual cornucopia of unknown chemicalia into his blood stream and his head was all right. He’d lined himself with such a bouquet of uppers and downers, just to let them fight it out, leaving him somewhere close to level. The Mafioso had come bearing enough gifts, like Shawsville strawberry moonshine and recreational bath salts, to weaken a large pack animal, and throughout the tents and shade canopies that lined the festival fields,  candy was being tossed around like Mardi Gras Tuesday. It was around four in the afternoon and the day had left him careless and fancy free. He was heading in to see Pigeons Playing PIng Pong thinking about E A Sy. For a gangster, he loved that band and never missed a chance to see them. It would be cooler if he was here packing a vat of his crotch whiskey. Not a single care in the world. Walking through the security checkpoint, he broke the fourth rule of adult caution and forgot about the container of contraband in the lower pocket of his cargo shorts. Oopsie…Upon detection, Stonewall made a confused mumbling sound and turned to walk away in a reserved and patient manner. In retrospect, he might should have hauled some serious ass, but he liked to think that the days of barefootly climbing chain link fences were behind him. For some reason that can’t be explained here, the security volunteer alerted the legitimate gestapo and they lit out in pursuit of the unsuspecting perp, faster than a West Texas jackrabbit. What was happening? In one nanosecond, he was back in the clutches of the pigs and they were already predictably obstinate. Things had turned due south and this was certainly not one of those “good choices” that Sunshine had suggested, in some other place and some other time. As he strode away from the security guard he removed the small vial from his pocket and began dumping out it’s contents into the Virginia brush, until a police officer donned in a black golf shirt, rudely snatched it from his hands. He pushed into Stonewall’s face and shouted, “Why did you try and dump it out?” “I figured if I dropped the whole thing it would be conspicuous,” forgetting, yet again, that honesty is never the best policy when dealing with law dogs of any kind.` With the click of the handcuffs, he accepted the fact that this was definitely on and he had finally managed to reach the lowest brow. Having penned the term, Darth Waffle would be pleased. Things were finally getting colorful. He was tossed into a cop golf cart and taken to a cop single wide modular home where his fate lay in the hands of cops on computer monitors. Visions of Spring Reunion began flashing in his mind’s eye. Never tie a pit bull to a wheel barrow.

Seated in the well-lit room next to a gaggle of child cops, the next immediate goal was to hold it together and not appear too faded. Apparently, it can be a crime. Who can imagine how his outward appearance physically looked under a careful and prolonged examination by these trained Nazis? In a well-lit room, it seemed like a real long shot. If these Virginia puerco even suspected what drugs he’d ingested, he’d be on his way to the hospital for a good old fashioned stomach pumpin’. Hell, he couldn’t even remember what he’d taken during the first half of this day, which seemed so far away. The walkabout had lasted most of the morning, visiting the headiest folk around the site and ingesting God only knows what. Here in the mid-afternoon, his innards could only be characterized as a chemical toilet. Mission accomplished yo.

As the interrogation lingered, his mouth began to fill up with what he imagined creosote would taste like and the sweat, once again, began to foam and burble. There was still the business card of acid in his wallet and a couple ten strips already cut. Hopefully he wasn’t sweating so much as to render it useless. When the pigs looked closer, and they surely would, they’d find it and ship him off to Red Onion State Prison for the rest of his days. Finally, the silly dream of freedom would be, once and for all, put down like a rabid cur. As he spoke with the local magistrate via skype, things continued to get increasingly foggy. There were so many questions. The whole thing seemed to be going to hell as he began to turn into warm mush right in front of the magistrate. “Did you get a DUI in Colorado?” “Nope. Detained but no charges.” Complete lies. “Are you sick?,  Do you have any needles in your pocket?” Stonewall replied, “Not sick and no idea what’s in my pocket.” The next few minutes blurred into each other and accurate reporting was impossible. The magistrate switched off and he asked the young cop a questions. “Can you please let me know when this process has moved upstairs, past your influence, so I’ll know when to stop worrying?” “We’re going to need to go to your campsite and go through your tent to check it for contraband,” they mused. Stonewall’s face hardened as he considered the idea of sheriffs loaded up in golf carts assaulting the camp site of his new friends. “That’s gonna have to be a no,” he finally said. “It would not be classy to pull up, in front of the campsite, with a bunch of unshaven gestapo. Besides, I don’t even know what’s in the tent.”

“Why are you saying that you don’t know what’s in the tent?” “It’s not my tent. Those thugs are from North Carolina. Who knows what kind of contraband they’re hauling around. Just leave me out of it.” For some reason, this seemed to placate the law dogs and they forgot about raiding the campsite.  All good news, but they weren’t handing over the keys to the city just yet. A cop sat next to him, while they waited for the magistrate’s decision and struck up a little small talk. “Thanks for being cool about everything. We appreciate your cooperation. We had another guy come through here and shit everywhere. The walls. The chair you’re sitting in. Everything. He sprayed his filth all over the place before we got him out of here.” Stonewall considered the raw nature of man and the unfiltered savagery that might reveal itself as the cold gates of the underground begin to seal itself. The possibilities were endless. Stonewall looked over at the cop, “I have to admit, I considered it. If you knew you were going to jail, it might be a pretty funny way to go out.” The cop smiled, “Plenty of people think that. It’s not funny.”

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” Good news from the magistrate. This was just one spun hippy and these nice folks had bigger fish to fry. There would be free air to breathe for one more day. Park employees, however, were waiting with scissors in hand. “If you are found on the property you will be arrested” the supervisor grumbled. He was given one more free golf cart ride, past the cars and tents, by the front gate and all the way to the Thomas Nelson Highway. It was a dark time but it was better than jail. This whole trip was had cost a pretty penny and now he was going to spend Saturday night in a local saloon. Weak.

Heading west on  highway 29, he walked against the traffic on the gravel shoulder and considered his options. He could continue this way until he found a gas station. That would supply him with enough cigarettes and beer to make it to a hotel or a bar. He still had his phone and wallet, even if the rest of his paltry possessions were still at the yoga machine. It would all be fine. He would find a hole in the wall bar and drink scotch until he felt better. Then, he would take his first shower in days and sleep in a freezing hotel room. Not too bad for a plan B.

The whole idea made him absolutely sick.

He knew the people he was leaving behind and the fun they were going to be having together. He was reminding of Thatcher at Spring Reunion and how the family suffered after Live Oak law dogs took him away in chains. The party goes on, but profoundly suffers for the lost soldier. He would also be spending somewhere in the neighborhood of two-thousand dollars before this exercise was finally concluded, and that was worthy of a most serious effort.

Maybe there was another idea.

As he walked toward the interstate, he surveyed the layout of the surrounding fields and thicket. It was dense forest patches separated by farm fields and a few houses. For about a mile, he studied the lay of the land and began to consider the possibility of sneaking back into the festival without a bracelet. It would be straight out of Vinny’s  book. Or Scotteesha. Or even Thatcher. Heckfire, this was out of Thomas Jackson’s book. Just down the street from Danville and Apomattox, welcome to the Army of Norther Virginia. Wearing flip flops, he was going to hump four square miles through country forest and sneak back in like a damn hippy. Cheyenne was right. He was the wook his parents had always warned him about. He turned off the road into the treeline, ate a five strip of acid and headed south. He would stay in the shade until he was off the main road, then all he had to do was follow the music, all the way home. For the moment, things were looking up,

As he hiked through the Virginia underbrush, sunset brought out the woodland critters. Deer and owls joined him in his hunt for the back door. Day turned to night and he took his time through the brush. He figured being impatient would lead to injury or cause him to be discovered traipsing through the brambles. Flip flops seemed like a silly way to navigate the streams and fields, but at least he wasn’t barefoot. The briars and thorny vines clung to his arms and legs as he lumbered through the dense thicket. The moon was going to be a waxing gibbous, which would surely assist with navigation and each time he drifted too far south, the sing-song voice of Susan Tedeschi guiding him back through the Virginia woods. The distant rumble of such tunes as Statesboro Blues, Alabama, by Neil Young and Mahjoun with Brandford Marsalis, kept him on the right trail. Behind Tye River Elementary School, back into the brush and then to cross Diggs Mountain Road. He was guided by the Aretha Franklin cover, “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Loved You)”, “Bound For Glory” with Ivan Neville, “A Song For You” by Leon Russell. into “Little Martha” and “Whipping Post”. Thanks for the breadcrumbs, lady. After walking for a couple of hours, he came across some tents in the woods. This would be Forest Tent Camping, which happened to be directly across the street from High Field RV and his campsite. Things were beginning to look up. It was time to change the shirt and hat and sit down for a cold brew. The party would just be getting started.

He wasn’t entirely ready to give up on the music. He came to this festival to see Dead & Co. and that still needed to happen. Stonewall poked around the VIP area and behind the stage, looking for a chink in the armor, some place he could slip in. He spied an opening in the fence and started up a conversation with the nearby security guard. The guard lamented over the piece of broken wooden fence. “These hippies try to sneak in here, legs all slashed up and with no bracelet. They even broke my fence.”

Stonewall’s brain lit up with a new idea. “It’s real interesting that you should say that, because that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I need you to let me get through that opening in the fence.”

He asked, “Do you have a bracelet?”

“Nope. They cut it off when they threw me out. But it would be real cool to get back in and rejoin my people before Dead & Co. kick off.”

The security guard began looking over his shoulder at the other gates and leaned in. “There’s folks working inside that fence and if they see you, they’re going to say something, so here’s what we’re gonna do. I’ll take you by the shirt like you’re in trouble. We’ll walk right by everyone and when we get out of sight, I”ll lose you.”

“That sounds perfect.”

Dead & Co.: Back into venue just in time for Oteil’s birthday. Both the rail and field were thick with the best vibe ever. Something about the good ol’ Grateful Dead. They just make everything so much fun. It was a night for adventurous lurking. The first set brought out a Ramble On Rose-Alabama Getaway-Cassidy. The second set blew up an, Oteil-led Fire On the Mountain into a celebratory China Cat Sunflower. Two hours earlier he’d been alone, hiking through the back field of Ol’ Virginny, now he was sitting on a blanket, surrounded by the most beautiful people ever.                                              Colorful.

Highlight of the festival: Saturday night’s midnight set included Lettuce with Eric Krasno Celebrating JGB, joined by Bob Weir, John Mayer and Oteil Burbridge in a set that tore up the mountain and set the beat for the rest of the night.

Finders Keepers I Second That Emotion Stop That Train (Oteil Sings) After Midnight ( John in for the jj cale spectacular) Sugaree (let Bobby sing) Tangled Up In Blue (that makes sense) That’s What Love Will Make You Do (it’s too serious to be funny) How Sweet It Is to Be Loved by You (the alpha and the omega) Cats Under the Stars (second one of the weekend) They Love Each Other (holy moly)

Lettuce called it a celebration of the Jerry Garcia Band after it was all said and done, a celebration is exactly what it felt like.

Dead & Co. Another Saturday Night, LOCKN’ 2018: photo by Karley Bear

Sunday Spunday: All hail a festival that uses it’s Sunday for a good cause. Bloody Mary brunch was served at Chris’ Opium Den near the Jerry Garcia Forest. Thank you SolarWolf and LunarWolf for the most seriously fun time ever. Thank you El Capitano for physically removing all the love governors. You’re headier than thy? The party got riled up when Cheyenne began lopping off her dreadlocks to trade for hugs. Fortunately, she was sedated before she could do too much damage. God willin’ and the Creek don’t rise. Check out the new Google map application that allows you to easily search for “tweakers near me”. Congratulations to Sugarplum and Huckleberry for getting hitched at Keller Williams and Grateful Gospel during Eyes of the World. These folks met at the same show, at the same spot three years earlier. It certainly is the dismal tides when Cook County trash can come down south and pilfer our own belles. It has been a proven formula for the ages, church is a great place to meet girls. Go Cubs.

Dead & Co.: And things were going so well for Stonewall. Left by Clayopheus, his recently acquired Staff bracelet was no more than a tattered chicken bone of a thing, held on by other bracelets and falling off every few steps. It was so frayed and torn, it looked as if he’d eaten if off of his wrist. Even the beer girl noticed when he wasn’t wearing one, and beyond the recognition, said nothing. All in all, he was back into the venue, this time enjoying the entire Tedesci-Trucks show into the night’s Dead. Then it happened… “I take a little powder, take a little salt, put it in my shotgun, I go walkin’ out…” Oh lordy, not this. The first set smattering Grateful ettoufee spun into a Mr. Charlie→Tennessee Jed→Althea that tripped every breaker on the mountain. The second set showed an Eyes of the World and Morning Dew with Branford Marsalis that left tears staining the front of tie dyes everywhere. Wolly bully. Mr. Charlie told me so.

Sugarplum and Huckleberry, Sunday at Tedesci-Trucks Band, LOCKN’ 2018.

  Bob, John and Oteil join Lettuce and Eric Krasno for the JGB tribute Sat. night, LOCKN’ 2018.

Be sure to check out Roadtripmojo for more LOCKN’ gibberish and follow their social media channels on Facebook and Instagram.

Headed back to South Florida, for days the toenails would still be dyed with Virginia red clay. Charlotte storms postponed our flight and the guitar was destroyed by baggage carriers. That’s three guitars since Hulaween. This lifestyle is getting expensive.

“Does this mean I can use your ticket for Floydfest?”

Visit the Lockn’ website and follow their social media channels on Facebook and Instagram.

For our first Lockn’, it really had a little of everything you look for in a festival. Deer, dead people, research-grade narcotics, moonshine and spilled wine. Everyone brought their best effort and after it was all said and done, very little was left on the vine. Old friends came together with new ones and alliances were formed that would last a lifetime. We are on the lookout for Brian at Live Oak and his Mr. Clinkies. October is one of the best times for festivals at the Spirit of Suwannee Music Park in North Florida. Get ready for Suwannee Roots Revival and Hulaween coming up fast. See you under the Thunder Chicken.

LOCKN’ 2018: The Lowest Brow The gypsy girl said it herself, the cards looked good. But what did that really mean? And good for whom?

[kidsviral-blog]

Are Tiny-House Villages The Solution To Homelessness?

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/are-tiny-house-villages-the-solution-to-homelessness/

Are Tiny-House Villages The Solution To Homelessness?

In the Pacific Northwest, people with nowhere else to go are forming micro-communities with communal kitchens and toilets but teeny, individual sleeping units. Could tiny homes, once the provenance of design blogs, help curb homelessness nationwide?

A steady rain beat down outside, but in the small, cluttered stand-alone structure that serves as the administrative office for Dignity Village — a 14-year-old tent city turned semipermanent experimental housing community on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon — Mitch Grubic was snug and dry, albeit a bit chilly.

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Mitch Grubic Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

He fingered an unlit cigarette he’d just pawned from his girlfriend, Debbie, with whom he shares one of 43 roughly 10-by-12-foot “tiny homes” at Dignity. Grubic, a handsome, ruddy-faced 51-year-old, was recounting how he went from being a California carpenter doing high-end residential work to living in his Ford Bronco with his two dogs and $1,400 to his name, desperately seeking pickup work along the Oregon coast.

Turns out, how Grubic got from that particular A to B wasn’t too different from how many of his Dignity neighbors got there: After Grubic’s dad died in 2007, Grubic remodeled his dad’s Northern California house and sold it, buying his own place nearby. But then the 2008 recession hit, his work dried up, and he had to let go of his new house. He built himself a low-cost hunting lodge but ran afoul of local authorities regarding permits. So he sold most of his tools and drove north, into Oregon.

“I went begging for work,” he recalled. Finally, in Seaside, he found it — as a glazier, making $12 an hour. He’d park his truck in Fort Stevens State Park, showering there and sleeping in yurts. But come fall, his work vanished, and the area had scant services for homeless people, so he drove to Portland. “I was parking and sleeping on the city streets,” he said, hitting the employment office or the library during the day to look for work.

Eventually, by 2010, he found an isolated, mostly industrial part of town out near the airport to park and sleep at night. Little did he know that he was not far from Dignity Village, where homeless people and their supporters had started building cottages three years before.

“I asked a food bank in Portland if I could park my truck there,” recalled Grubic. “They said no, but to go check out Dignity Village.” Lo and behold, he said, he realized he’d been sleeping nearby for months. (It’s funny he never once glimpsed the village’s cluster of cottages, fenced into the city’s former leaf composting yard.) So Grubic got on Dignity’s waiting list and started putting in volunteer hours there toward his residence.

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Dignity Village Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

“People were mean at first,” said Grubic, who has a gruff but warm demeanor. “They said, ‘You’re not village material.’” But he stuck it out, going to pick up donated pizza for the other villagers, gardening, and using his expertise to trim out unfinished windows. “I started to see the eclectic beauty of it all.���

He also started to see, as he put it, “the vision that Dignity stood for — of a place with open arms where people could get clean [from drugs or alcohol], get a change of socks, get warm in winter, get water.” He added, “I needed water.”

That was 2011. In 2013, Grubic served as Dignity’s CEO for a year, and, last year, he was vice chair. Now he’s the security coordinator. He’s overseen work parties to get most of the cottages insulated and Sheetrocked, via various grants. And he’s grateful. “This place helped me create a home base to go out and find work again,” he said.

Currently, he does construction five days a week, making $100 a day and, per Dignity rules, putting $25 a month toward the village’s operating expenses. He and Debbie are on a list to get into permanent affordable housing, as everyone at Dignity must be.

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Mitch and Debbie with their dogs. Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

But he didn’t think he’d put the Dignity experience entirely behind him. “I’d like to become an advocate for the tiny-house village movement,” he said, showing off the little structure — complete with front porch — where he and Debbie live with his two dogs: Juneau, a corgi, and Zooey, a Baja terrier. He says that life at Dignity is far from ideal, but he’s still proud of what it represents. For other cities looking for examples of this approach as a way to alleviate homelessness, “We’ve become the go-to place,” he said.

And not only that. Dignity and other such villages raise compelling questions that may direct the future of this nascent movement: Should these communities be low-budget affairs largely built through philanthropy and run by residents, as is Dignity, or are they better off as professional, high-budget projects overseen by an outside corporation or nonprofit? Or, as Grubic put it, “Is this a place for the homeless to govern themselves or a business venture?”

Visiting three villages in the rainy Pacific Northwest last fall, I saw how each offered a different pathway, representing our deepest attitudes about the homeless, property, and how we think people should live.

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Opportunity Village Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

Grubic is right that Dignity has set a precedent. There were few examples of sanctioned homeless villages before Dignity — Dome Village, a cluster of geodesic domes, existed in Downtown L.A. from 1993 to 2006. But since Dignity transformed in the mid-2000s, with city and community support, from a tent community to one with wooden structures heated with small propane tanks, the idea of a village for homeless people made up of a cluster of “tiny homes” with larger structures for shared baths, kitchen, and lounging has taken hold. (Dignity even has the odd distinction of seemingly having been replicated in the video game Grand Theft Auto V.)

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A dome structure in downtown Los Angeles. Oscar Hidalgo / AP Photo

There’s Village of Hope in Fresno, California (established 2004); River Haven in Ventura, California (2004); Opportunity Village in Eugene, Oregon, and Quixote Village in Olympia, Washington (both 2013). In the works or early phases are OM Village in Madison, Wisconsin; Second Wind Cottages in upstate New York; Community First in Austin, Texas; and Emerald Village in Eugene.

These villages tend to be a hybrid of two trends. One is the tent city, a kind of homeless encampment that goes back at least as far as the Depression and that received revived attention from the media once the recession hit, then again in 2011 when several emerged amid the Occupy Wall Street movement. Tent cities crop up in unused city lots, under bridges, in forests, or by riverbanks; usually go unsanctioned by urban governments; and may or may not have some kind of self-governance. (A massive one, in fact, was just shut down in San Jose, where the tech boom has pushed the average monthly rent up to nearly $3,000 — and has pushed many into homelessness.) They usually do not have plumbing, electrical wiring, or heating.

The other trend is the tiny-home movement, which has become increasingly chic in recent years as Americans look for ways to reduce their carbon footprint and to live more economically. The movement has been popularized by such websites as The Tiny House Blog, books including Lloyd Kahn’s Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter and Jay Shafer’s The Small House Book, and a documentary, all of which feature adorable, dollhouse-like homes of about 500 square feet or less that people have built and live in for dramatically lower costs than the average new American home.

Tiny-home villages for the homeless have retained the idea of everyone having their own tiny structure to sleep and find privacy in, but have, for the most part, consolidated bathroom, kitchen, and recreational space into one or two communal buildings with some combination of plumbing, electricity, and heat. In many ways, they are a multi-roof version of the old-fashioned urban SRO (single-room occupancy) hotel or boarding house, with separate bedrooms but shared baths and kitchen, that provided the working and nonworking poor with affordable living options in so many cities before gentrification turned those properties into boutique hotels or market-rate apartments.

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Andrew Heben Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

“We’ve lost the SRO and only build to middle-class standards now,” said Andrew Heben, a young urban planner in Eugene who played a role in the building of Opportunity Village and writes a blog on the topic called Tent City Urbanism and has a new book out by the same name. Heben is a sandy-haired, mild-mannered 27-year-old Ohio native who did his senior thesis at the University of Cincinnati on the upside of homeless tent cities — for example, they foster organic systems of self-governance and mutual aid. He travels frequently to make presentations in small and midsize Western cities that are interested in creating tiny-home villages for their own homeless populations.

Heben called today’s tiny-home villages “an early example of something that’s coming,” as both environmental concerns and income inequality put pressure on low- and middle-income Americans to find ways to live more cheaply. “People see that a lot of us will be living like this in the future.”

In this regard, they may be solutions that not only alleviate homelessness, but also prevent it by creating more affordable housing. They provide an option below the lowest rungs of market rent, which in cities such as Portland and Eugene can start around $700. In the gap between such rents and low-income units (such as those subsidized by the federal Section 8 program), for which there are often long waits, homeless people often have no options except for shelters — which afford no privacy and, more vexingly, usually kick people out between early morning and late afternoon — or the streets.

To that end, Heben is helping to develop Eugene’s Emerald Village, a larger model where more sophisticated cottages will cost between $10,000 and $15,000 apiece to build and residents will have to put in up to $200 monthly but will also accrue equity in their cottages. At Opportunity, teams spent about four hours building each cottage. “It’s just putting jigsaw puzzle pieces together,” Heben said. An Emerald cottage’s shell alone will take about a day, with further construction needed to finish it out, and each one will be pre-insulated and hooked up with water and electricity.

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A simple structure at Opportunity Village. Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

They may sound prefab, but tiny-home villages, governed and operated at least in part by the villagers themselves, offer a modicum of safety, stability, warmth, cleanliness, autonomy, and privacy. The feds “have very high standards for [traditional] affordable housing and it’s quite expensive,” said Kitty Piercy, Eugene’s mayor, “so Opportunity and Emerald are ways for us to be able to help some people at a much-reduced cost.”

Add to that reduced fear and stress on the part of residents. “I don’t wanna live here forever,” I was told on a visit to Opportunity Village by a wiry, sweet-natured, 42-year-old recovering alcoholic who goes by the name Johnny Awesome. He was building a small greenhouse onto the front of his cheerful blue cottage, festooned with colored flags and a small disco ball. “This isn’t the top rung of society,” he said. “And the weather dictates a typical day here too much.” Sunny days found residents outside, gardening and building; rainy and cold ones found them holed up in their cottages or congregating in the 30-foot-diameter communal yurt containing computers with Wi-Fi, a large-screen TV, and a pantry.

“But it’s safe here,” he said. It was a far cry better than a few years ago, when he was living in his car. Having a home base, he told me, was allowing him to pursue his career goal of becoming a trauma counselor.

But of course, the tiny-home village can’t flourish everywhere, especially large, densely populated cities with astronomical land values. So far, they seem to be occurring in and around mid- and small-size Western cities whose cultures have some mix of permissive, progressive politics and a certain pioneer DIY spirit. That could also describe Silicon Valley, at least as it sees itself; the irony is that the pioneering spirit of one world (tech) is, in the American West, creating the very kind of extreme income inequality and gouged realty markets that contribute to homelessness. Perhaps no wonder, then, that tiny homes for homeless people are among the housing options that local officials began exploring last year; Leslye Corsiglia, San Jose’s recently departed housing director, said the city’s new mayor likes the idea, “so I think there will be some movement [on such a project] in the not-too-distant future.”

However, Ray Bramson, San Jose’s homelessness response manager, said in an e-mail that “while the tiny homes model does offer some benefit in terms of initially low capital/construction costs, the overall high cost of land combined with the lack of available space and the numerous regulatory barriers makes the approach difficult to advance in San Jose.” Bramson said the city would likely go with a temporary trailer-home model, but at the moment no such funding exists for the project.

“These villages might fill a small niche but I don’t see them as a major solution to the problem of homelessness,” said Alex Schwartz, a professor of urban policy at the New School in New York, a city that is trying to solve its own considerable homelessness problem both by reinstating rental subsidies to poor families that were cut back in the era of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and by aiming to build 200,000 new units of affordable housing. Previously, Bloomberg also announced plans to build apartments in the form of “microunits” ranging from 250 to 375 square feet, which are slated to open this summer.

“Not to say [such villages] are absolutely impossible” in a city like New York, said Schwartz, “but commercially zoned land is at a premium. Multi-unit solutions [under one roof] make a lot more sense.”

Mary Cunningham, who studies homelessness and housing at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank The Urban Institute, agreed. Government housing vouchers and more public housing are the way to go, she told me. “But,” she conceded, “there’s just not enough to go around, and funding programs get cut every year. Meanwhile, we have more people every year who are paying too much rent and struggling to hold on to their housing.”

If, amid this climate of scarcity, tent cities crop up out of sheer necessity in more and more cities, it’s not unimaginable that more cities may take their cue from those in the Pacific Northwest, which stopped seeing such encampments as a scourge and started wondering how they might be upgraded to something safer, cleaner, semipermanent — and even pleasant.

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Quixote Village Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

It’s hard not to be charmed by Quixote Village in Olympia, Washington, or the story behind it. In 2007, when police broke up a homeless camp in a parking lot in funky downtown Olympia — the state’s capital, famous for being, among other things, the onetime home of Kurt Cobain — faith leaders in this progressive college town banded together to allow the residents to camp out in various church parking lots for three to six months at a time.

Eventually, the leaders formed a nonprofit custody group for the residents called Panza, which, over time, successfully lobbied the city, county, and state governments to not only lease to the residents (at $1 yearly for 41 years) a 2.2-acre plot of land in an industrial zone about a 10-minute drive from downtown, but to pony up more than $2.3 million to build a professionally designed village with thirty 144-square-foot cottages and a community building with a “shared kitchen, dining area, living room, showers, laundry, and office and meeting space.”

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Jill Severn Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

Another $215,000 came from community groups and individuals moved by the story of the ever-roaming village, named, of course, for the peripatetic fictional Don Quixote. (Panza is named after his faithful servant). As money was raised, “hundreds of middle-class people got to know people who were homeless, which was transformative,” said Jill Severn, a cheerful former political speechwriter and Panza board member. Severn has become a regular volunteer presence at Quixote, sitting in on all sorts of meetings and occasionally whipping up a Saturday breakfast for the residents.

The first residents of Quixote, long used to sleeping in tents, moved into their new cottages, complete with heat, toilets, sinks, and electricity, on Dec. 24, 2013. “It was a little strange not knowing anyone, but I must have flushed my toilet about 10 times,” said a 60-year-old resident who goes by the name Stormie Knight, who moved in after a stint camping in the woods to escape both an abusive husband and a history of crack use. “I thought I’d be an embarrassment to my daughter if I died in the forest.”

The afternoon before Halloween during my visit, she spent time in the common room helping other residents prepare to hang up crepe-paper black spiders and orange jack-o’-lanterns, decorations for a party that night that would include a horror movie marathon. She said that she occasionally missed the DIY rigors of camping life, not to mention living amid nature. “I sleep with my windows open here,” she said. “But I like the camaraderie. And I don’t miss the hardship or the lack of safety or the stigma of being homeless.”

Frankly speaking, Quixote Village is a delight to middle-class eyes. It is well-designed and clean and as cute as can be. The earth-tone, board-and-batten identical cottages sit all in a row, each with its own tiny front porch and front yard, where some residents have planted bushes and flowers. Curving paved pathways link everything together. The three retention ponds that sit between the two rows of cottages — a necessary evil because the area’s water table is so shallow — have even attracted a few ducks.

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Quixote Village Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

It’s easy to forget the industrial drabness, including a trucking company, that lies beyond the village’s gates. The building that houses the shared facilities has a modern-rustic wood façade and is bright, airy, and clean, with comfy new sofas and lamp fixtures and a spacious, well-equipped kitchen. And given that the cost of a traditional studio in the area is around $200,000, Quixote’s cottages were a bargain at $19,000 each — or $88,000 each if you factor in the cost of site preparation and the common building.

But compared to Dignity and Opportunity Villages, Quixote also feels a bit institutional, as if it’s run by a nonprofit — which it is. It has two paid staffers and its own van to take residents to and from town, and though residents play an advisory role in who gets in or is kicked out, Panza has the final say. The village urine-tests residents suspected of not complying with a ban on alcohol use, which residents voted to instate only recently. (Drug use had been banned from the get-go.)

Prior to that, “All our troubles here were alcohol-based,” said resident Byron Thorpe, 55, who said he had kicked meth since moving in. “This place has been a blessing,” he said. “It got me clean.” (The village has a support group for residents with mental health or substance histories.) Pot, however, is allowed at Quixote. Now legal in Washington state, it’s often bought by residents at the nearby 420 Carpenter, the county’s first legal weed store.

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Eric Estabrooks Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

That same pre-Halloween afternoon, Eric Estabrooks, a scruffy blond 29-year-old resident in a ball cap and hoodie, showed off the cottage where he kept a small playpen and loads of kids’ DVDs for his little daughter and son, who stayed with him frequently. (Overnight guests are allowed up to three nights a month and after they pass a background check, which is waived for children.) Estabrooks was sleeping in the doorway of an Olympia church until he found his way to Quixote.

“You like my pumpkins?” he asked, proudly pointing out the pumpkin patch he’d cultivated with his bit of front yard.

Estabrooks puts 30% of whatever monthly income he gets from odd jobs and public benefits toward the village, as do the other residents. All Quixotians are free to stay as long as they want, but must declare goals they are working toward, whether they involve education and career or simply seeking steady care for their physical and mental health.

In the common room, Stormie Knight worked alongside Theresa Bitner, 26, and Brie Wellman, 21, two cheerful young women who’ve been a couple since their high school days and found themselves occasionally homeless due to both familial poverty and familial tensions.

Bitner now has a job as a line chef at a senior living facility; in their downtime, the young women, who are one of two couples at Quixote, love to cuddle with their cats. Prior to Quixote, they lived for a stint, as did almost half the residents, at Olympia’s Salvation Army shelter, which everyone simply calls “Sally.” It wasn’t easy.

“You can be by yourself here,” said Bitner. “And you can take a shower whenever you want.” (The common building is open 24/7.)

Later that afternoon, Severn hosted a visit from Jill Detwiler, a staffer in the office of the mayor of Portland, Oregon, which is scouting sites to build homeless villages like Quixote. Detwiler commented on how far Quixote felt from downtown Olympia. (That concern had previously been voiced to me by Karen Chapple, a UC Berkeley urban planning professor — who, as it happens, rents out a tiny home in the backyard of her real home. “Is it so inaccessible that residents will never be able to get back into the mainstream economy?” she asked. “You’re perpetuating the isolation of the homeless by keeping them on these sites, [though they’re] low cost and more viable.”)

Addressing Detwiler, Severn noted that getting from Quixote to downtown Olympia was a doable bike or bus ride, plus the village’s van made daily trips.

“Besides,” she added, “how much longer could people go on living in tents?”

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Opportunity Village Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

About 225 miles south, Opportunity Village, in an outlying industrial zone of Eugene, presents a very different picture from Quixote. Its 29 tiny homes, though built on a prefab model like Quixote’s, are roughly half the size (8-by-8) and have been far more customized, inside and out, by residents, giving this residential cluster a colorful, ramshackle, more hippie-ish feel, enhanced by the ragtag raised-box garden plots and the piles of old bikes and scrap materials residents tend to hoard outside their cottages.

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An Opportunity resident adjusts some exterior decor on her home. Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

The drizzly, chilly day that I visited, some of the 35 residents were in the communal yurt (heated by a woodstove), tapping away at laptops, holding small organizational meetings, or watching TV, while others built interior or exterior additions to their cottages. Yet others came and went, off to downtown Eugene to work day or odd jobs, access social services, or buy groceries.

Heben, the young urban planner and tiny-home evangelist who lives nearby, showed me around, explaining that Opportunity — which grew out of an Occupy camp, with the support of Eugene’s mayor — was built with $100,000 in donated funds plus roughly another $100,000 worth of donated material. Cottages cost a max of $2,000 apiece to build. Residents chip in $30 a month for the shared utilities.

Life at Opportunity does not feel as tidy as at Quixote. With no proper indoor kitchen, residents cook on grills or with a variety of toaster ovens in an outdoor area. The cottages are not heated, and on really cold nights, everyone sleeps in the yurt.

“There’s lots of sickness and colds,” said Tom, who looked a bit like an older Matthew McConaughey with his blue eyes and long blond hair under a Hard Rock Cafe cap. A former Ohio trucker who lost work during the recession, he now collects cans around town so he can make up to $20 a day in refunds. He likes to buy steak with his food stamps.

When I asked him the best thing about life at Opportunity, he said, “There’s no best thing.” Then he softened. “It’s better than the Mission,” he said, referring to the main (Christian) Eugene shelter from which half of Opportunity’s residents came. Like most shelters nationally, the Mission demands that everyone leave in the afternoon and check back in in the early evening.

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Opportunity’s communal yurt Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

“You can come and go as you please here,” said Tom. “And it’s way better to have my own space,” he added, pointing to his cottage, painted a dark green. “Also, we have a real address here. If you put down on applications that you’re at the Mission, people won’t hire you.” He said he was looking forward to the village Halloween party in the yurt, which would also serve as a one-year anniversary party for one of the resident couples, who met at the village.

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Opportunity’s community rules Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

Unlike Quixote Village, Opportunity doesn’t require that residents be clean and sober, but it doesn’t allow drinking or using on or near the premises and insists that anyone coming back to the village drunk or high go directly to their cottage. Ed, 52, who wore a skull-print bandana and puffed on a cigarette with a hand missing the top of a thumb — he lost that in a 1992 carpentry accident — admitted he found the no-using ban annoying, as he occasionally liked to consume mind-altering substances.

But since leaving the Mission, he’s proudly earned up to $2,000 a month working for Backyard Bungalows, the small company that helped build Opportunity’s cottages, and said he wanted to get his own place at Emerald Village.

Again and again at Opportunity and elsewhere, I was reminded just how quickly people without means could fall into homelessness. Inside the village’s front-gate welcoming cottage, where all residents must volunteer weekly hours, Rhonda, a recovering heroin addict in glasses and a hoodie with a sweetly embarrassed demeanor, told me how she and her husband Juan lost their housing when the elderly man they worked for as live-in caretakers died.

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Front desk at Opportunity Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

“We pitched a tent by the river and lived there on and off for two years, sleeping on people’s couches or floors sometimes, or in motels when we could afford it,” she said. She called the past year at Opportunity, which she’d read about in the paper and then rushed to apply to, “wonderful, just being off the street.”

The best part of Opportunity was the friends they’d made, she said. The worst? “No electricity in the cottages. We have a rechargeable lantern and a portable DVD player.”

Just outside the welcoming tent, skull-bandana’d Ed sat on white plastic chairs with a woman who asked that I call her Ann, cuddling with her little white terrier, Kaczynski (named after Ted, the Unabomber). She and her husband, who both have severe arthritis, had sold their car in Oklahoma to raise money to move to Oregon, which has better health benefits.

Ann’s story underscored the plight of Americans without independent income who, because of physical or mental illness, struggle to hold down a job. “I’d babysit or do office work,” she said, “but I’d always be fired for crying at work.” She’d not left her cottage that day until 1:30 p.m. (Her husband was off doing janitorial work.)

Living at Opportunity, at least, was giving her a base from which to figure out the rest of her life. (She’d briefly lived in Oklahoma with family, but “that didn’t work out so well” — a common story among homeless people.) “Should I get a job now or start classes at community college?” she mused aloud. “These days, where is college going to get us?” But she was equally ambivalent about taking minimum-wage work. “I don’t wanna do a shit job,” she said. “It makes my pain so bad.”

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Interior of an Opportunity cottage Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

She was quiet, petting Kaczynski. “I’d rather make art and have it take off,” she finally said. She’d made some decorative tiles for the backsplash of the sink in the yurt, and was looking to sell more of them at a local holiday fair. “Maybe I could be known in places I’ve never been to.”

For the meantime, she had a safe home. That, Mayor Piercy told me, was a key benefit of Opportunity. “I’ve talked to women there,” she said, “and they expressed that they now felt safe whereas before they hadn’t, which is exactly how Opportunity was meant to function.” Residents at the village take turns manning the front gate to track everyone’s comings and goings. The police would be called if a major problem erupted. “But there have been no law enforcement issues there,” said the mayor, “which is why we just renewed their contract for another year.”

That’s not to say that Opportunity hasn’t seen its share of troublemakers. Eleven people had been kicked out for bad behavior, Heben told me, including one the very first night the village opened. “At first there was a two-week probationary period imposed [after someone misbehaved],” he told me. “But we got rid of it.”

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Mitch Grubic Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

Back at Dignity Village in Portland, Mitch Grubic told me how Opportunity actually took a lesson from Dignity in what not to do — specifically in allowing the creation of an outside board to oversee the village and provide a final say on key decisions, such as who stays and who goes. Dignity elects resident leaders year to year, with no permanent leadership.

“Our attempt here at self-government has not worked,” he said. Other residents echoed this, saying that resentment routinely built up toward villagers with elected titles who held all the decision-making power in the community for periods of at least a year. “You need a village where everyone looks at each other as a peer, not as rulers,” Grubic said. “And you need outside oversight. It’s hard to make a decision on someone you consider family whom you live with.”

Plus, he said, Dignity’s lack of an outside nonprofit board had kept the community from doing more robust fundraising. “We’ve lost momentum here and we could bring in all kinds of money if we went with a board model.”

But ultimately, he said, he agreed with Heben that a self-built village was a better model than one in which the government paid professionals to build to traditional code. He asked of Quixote, “Did the developer walk away with a profit?” (Quixote’s architect took half his usual fee, and the developer, the nonprofit Community Frameworks, was paid “a fraction of the cost of construction, which is a standard way to pay a developer,” Severn said.)

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Map of Dignity Village Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

Whichever governing model becomes the more prevalent one, it appears that the tiny-home village as part of a solution to homelessness — and, more broadly, the dire need for more affordable housing — is likely to grow in the years ahead, particularly in areas whose realty markets, zoning flexibility, and political temperament allow for it. “We’ve demonstrated that this model is feasible,” said Ginger Segel, Community Frameworks’ senior housing developer, who was visiting Quixote the same day as me to discuss building more such villages in the area. “This is permanent housing,” she said. “Not a tent city. And other communities will replicate this.”

That is not to say that such projects won’t meet opposition and bias, even in the fairly progressive Pacific Northwest, as the ones thus far have along the way to gaining city approval. (In fact, the villages might never have happened at all if they hadn’t ultimately been located far afield of any residential zones. One of Quixote’s neighbors, a trucking company, initially voiced opposition to the site; now, said Severn, the company brings the village large food donations.) One look at the comments in a 2013 story on Dignity Village makes clear that local sentiment isn’t all entirely welcome.

“If Portland and the state of Oregon wasn’t a haven for homeless, illegals and entitlement lovers,” read one of many such posts, “these same freeloaders would move to warmer climates and with any luck let Portland be something other than a joke to the rest of the country. ‘Give us your lazy, your freeloaders, your drug addicts, your prostitutes, and your corrupt public officials’ should be on all the signs welcoming people to Oregon.”

And to be truthful, not everyone living in these tiny-home villages — individuals whose lives have often been scarred by mental illness, severe disability, trauma, addiction, and old age — seems as though they’re on a straight path to mainstream employment, housing, and middle-class American stability. To varying degrees, the villages aim to help residents connect to services for health, employment, and future housing — Quixote, for example, has a full-time social worker who is starting an in-house program to deal with chemical dependency — but both Heben and Severn admitted that, with lack of alternatives, some folks at Opportunity and Quixote might be there for the rest of their lives. Yet as middle-class stability increasingly becomes less reachable, or regainable, for a large percentage of the American population, tiny villages are modeling a solution that falls somewhere between the three-bedroom, two-car-garage status quo and the streets.

Or, as Rhonda back at Opportunity Village put it: “I know there’s something better out there. But at least for now, I have a place to call home.”

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Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed

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Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/timmurphywriter/tiny-homes

[junker-town]

'The Bachelor' episode 10 recap: Raven ostensibly has an orgasm, Rachel finally goes home, the women tell all

We are one episode away from finding out who Nick’s true love is.

‘Sup, Sports Bachelor Nation. If you’re anything like me, you’re firmly planted on your couch surrounded by pieces of kettle corn that didn’t make it to your mouth as you wait for this endless episode to begin. Not only do we have the rest of the Fantasy Suite dates to make it through tonight, we also have to stay alive for “The Women Tell All,” which is when all the scorned lovers of this season assemble on a stage, laugh at Chris “White Strips” Harrison’s charming jokes, and verbally berate each other and Nick “Handsome Software Salesman” Viall.

So I won’t waste any more of your precious time than I need to. Let’s get down and dirty.

THE REST OF RAVEN’S FANTASY SUITE DATE, ALSO KNOWN AS “THE ONE WHERE WE FIND OUT WHETHER RAVEN FINALLY HAD AN ORGASM OR NOT”

At the end of last episode, Raven dropped a bomb on the American people when she revealed the GOP’s new plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. Hah, kidding, she just told us she had never had an orgasm. She also told Nick this.

Now, I’m not a man, but I can imagine that if you are a man, and a woman you’re about to have sex with tells you she’s never climaxed before, you might feel, oh, I don’t know, an insane amount of pressure to deliver. Men should, of course, feel that pressure all the time, but The Patriarchy is a hell of a drug, so they often don’t.

I had this theory for a while that Nick was really bad at sex because he kept getting dumped right after he “had intercourse” (to quote Corinne) with women on The Bachelorette. But I may be wrong, because if Raven is telling the truth, she appears to have finally had an orgasm thanks to Nick. At least that’s what I’m guessing the montage of her running through the streets of Inissdlggaardddslgaaaad, Finland, is supposed to represent.

"Nick is really good at what he does, so I'm pretty satisfied today." - Raven#TheBachelor http://pic.twitter.com/4q0emrB4IB

— The Bachelor (@BachelorABC) March 7, 2017

I could write a thousand words on this montage alone, because I’m pretty sure it’s the greatest moment in television history: Raven skips in front of a rainbow wall, makes snow angels, high-fives strangers on the street, pats a Finnish dog, and kisses a stuffed reindeer on the nose.

This is also highly relatable content, because every woman I know runs through the streets grinning after she has great sex with a man wearing a very thick turtleneck.

RACHEL’S FANTASY SUITE DATE

Rachel’s date with Nick is honestly pretty boring. There’s some yadda yadda yadda-ing about whether she’s been open enough with Nick. It all feels very forced.

Which leads me to my conspiracy theory: I think Rachel and Nick knew, at this point, that Rachel was going to be the next Bachelorette. They seem very familiar with each other, and like they genuinely care about each other, but they don’t seem ... like they can’t keep their hands off each other. There’s something that feels a little manufactured about their interaction, and I wonder whether they didn’t, like, strike a deal by this point. Or have some brilliant producer strike it for them.

"It is so magical and beautiful out here. It's like being in Narnia!" - Rachel ❄️ #TheBachelor http://pic.twitter.com/9prrw5DXCR

— The Bachelor (@BachelorABC) March 7, 2017

Nick makes fun of Rachel for “losing her mind” after the volleyball date, and I can’t remember that at all, because this show is a marathon, not a sprint, and the miles have all started to run together. But I don’t *think* Rachel lost her mind, so I’m a little bit peeved at Nick for telling a woman she was being crazy for having emotions.

Rachel then says something like, “You’re refreshing,” or “You’re not like other guys,” and Nick delivers the worst line of the night:

“I might be white, but I’m still a minority.”

Winky face.

Ugh.

SEXY TIME WITH RACHEL

Nick gives Rachel the envelope with the Sexy Time key in it. The Sexy Time key opens the door to the Fantasy Suite, which is just a hotel room filled with candles and roses in which the two parties in question can finally bang. Each Bachelor is allowed to bang the three final contestants.

Now is a good time to tell you that I moved to Brooklyn from Washington D.C. over the weekend (this anecdote doesn’t have to do with Sexy Time, don’t worry). I found this great apartment with these two very nice people who for some reason agreed to let me live with them, despite the bad jokes I tell, and the fact that I eat the cookie dough pieces out of cookie dough ice cream and then put the pint back in the fridge.

I’m telling you this because one of my new roommates has never seen The Bachelor before, but he’s watching it with me after I explained to him that viewing this show is actually my job. When Nick hands Rachel the Sexy Time key, my roommate goes, “Wait, so, does every one get the Fantasy Suite key?”

“Yeah, if Nick decides he wants to give it to them,” I say.

“So he’s literally offering them the key ... which is his penis,” says my roommate.

“Yeah,” I say.

“For the first time I can say I’m not in my head any more. I’m all in my heart. I feel good. I feel confident. I feel loved.” –Rachel http://pic.twitter.com/klJakSP5Ix

— The Bachelor (@BachelorABC) March 7, 2017

NICK DEFINITELY HAS A NAME FOR HIS PENIS

This is not a segment of the show, it’s just a belief I hold and feel like should be written in bold and all caps.

THE MORNING AFTER WITH RACHEL

Rachel and Nick do the deed, ostensibly, and wake up in the morning, as couples who’ve just had sex are wont to do. Nick makes Rachel breakfast, and she’s wearing a fleece onesie with penguins on it that was definitely chosen so that people would tweet about it. So I tweet about it.

VANESSA AND NICK AND THE ICE BATH OF DEATH

Vanessa’s hometown date was basically a disaster. Her family decided they low-key hate Nick (my words, not theirs, but that was the vibe). For his Sexy Time date with Vanessa, Nick takes her to a Finnish spa where they don matching blue bathing suits and jump in and out of a very cold pool and then go into a very hot steam room.

Listen, as someone who grew up in New England jumping into super cold water in the winter just for the hell of it, I just want to go on record saying that they’re babies for not dunking their heads.

A winter Finland ice bath actually seems like the worst thing. @BachelorABC #TheBachelor http://pic.twitter.com/PhlrFvx7OI

— Good Morning America (@GMA) March 7, 2017

Things then get heavy, which is par for the course for Vanessa and Nick. Vanessa is like, “Hey man, there are some things I’m not willing to compromise on.” And Nick is like, “Like what?” And Vanessa is basically like, “My family.” And Nick tells her that one of his first serious girlfriend’s families was way too involved in their relationship, so he’s spooked by that, and that Vanessa’s family seems too traditional. Which he eventually boils down to his feeling that having to go to lunch at her mom’s house every Sunday would be a real burden.

And I’m like — listen, dude. When I lived near my family, I’d have dinner every Sunday with my parents, my aunt and uncle, and my cousins. We had a blast. If some guy had been like, “It’s too much that you have dinner with your family once a week, I’m out,” I’d have been like, “Yes, you are out, and please never come back, because you’re actually kind of a controlling dick.”

Now, I understand that Vanessa has seemed especially close to her family, and they did kind of hate Nick, and she does seem reluctant to move away from Canada. So the fact that he’s a little concerned about how her attachment would affect them as a couple is somewhat valid. But Nick doesn’t really seem to be considering Vanessa at all here, especially when he says he is a “proud American” and therefore doesn’t want to move to Canada.

This is funny, because I know a lot of Americans right now who would give their left foot for Canadian citizenship. But maybe Nick is just waiting for America to be great again. Maybe he really wants to see how that whole plan pans out.

“This is a pretty awful date,” says my roommate, and I agree.

SEXY TIME WITH VANESSA

The evening date is so dumb, because they’re hanging out in this dope yurt in the Arctic Circle under the northern lights, but all they can do is spew word salad about their feelings at each other. This is what their conversation sounds like:

Vanessa tells Nick she loves him and then they retire to another yurt to bang.

ROSE CEREMONY

I guess we’re just cutting right to the chase, because we’re at the rose ceremony now. The women are wearing stunning dresses and we all know Rachel is going home — even though she is definitely the coolest one in the lineup — because she has to be the next Bachelorette.

Chris Harrison shows up for his requisite 27 seconds of screen time.

“It’s gonna be a difficult day,” he says to Nick.

“Not easy,” says Nick.

“You ready?” Chris Harrison asks.

“Yeah,” Nick says.

I want Chris Harrison’s job.

GETTING RID OF RACHEL

Nick is crying a lot as he gives Rachel the boot.

“I thought we had a really, really good thing,” she says, and while she’s sad, she’s not angry enough to convince me that I’m wrong about there being some sneaky deal to make her the next Bachelorette.

Especially since Nick doesn’t give any good reason for getting rid of her. And, no offense to Raven and Vanessa, I just can’t see a world in which you get rid of Rachel, the smart, funny, kind, gorgeous lawyer, over either of the remaining two women.

She’s crying in the limo, but I’m still skeptical.

THE WOMEN TELL ALL

So somehow we have two hours of the women telling all, and only one hour of the actual show. I’d be super pissed about this had my new roommate not just brought down bowls of ice cream.

My other roommate comes home and watches for a few minutes before wisely going into his room and closing the door.

THIS TOTALLY BLOWS

I’m not going to take you through everything that the women tell because, frankly, it’s the most painful thing I’ve watched since I saw Falcons fans crying after the Super Bowl at NRG Stadium in Houston.

Seriously. It’s just a bunch of women screaming at each other, interspersed with pseudo-inspirational moments when they say shit like, “You are judged by who you are, not by what you do.” I’m like, listen, my friends, if that were true, all the kind-hearted murderers in the world would be free and every cheating spouse would still be happily married.

This segment is somewhat triggering for me, because I went to an all-girls prep school for a few years. I made some of my best friends in the world there, but let me tell you: You don’t know true cruelty until you’ve witnessed females in seventh grade gang up on one another and take certain people’s sides to gain social capital. That’s a lot like what this feels like.

"So, no, I don't apologize... sorry." - Corinne @BachelorABC #TheBachelor #WomenTellAll http://pic.twitter.com/KjqWCuojJK

— Good Morning America (@GMA) March 7, 2017

My IQ is plummeting as I listen to Corinne and Taylor yell at each other about who took more naps. I like Corinne less and less as she talks. She says that she calls Raquel her “nanny” because “cleaning lady” belittles what Raquel actually is to Corinne, which is more of a second mother.

And I’m like ... I’m not sure nanny is actually that much more respectful? I don’t know, I already felt gross about how they made Raquel — who is a real, living, breathing human — into a punchline on this television show, and this just reinforces that feeling.

Liz then says, kind of apropos of nothing, “As women, we should be building each other up, not tearing each other down.” It reminds me of when Taylor Swift told Nicki Minaj that it wasn’t like her to “pit women against each other.” It’s just a bullshit way for one woman to get out of dealing with something real and critical another woman says about her. I’m here for women, I will ride for women, but I’m not going to support a woman I disagree with just because she’s also a woman. That’s not feminism, that’s stupidity.

#TheBachelorette and #TheBachelor! http://pic.twitter.com/hz1DknnrIp

— The Bachelor (@BachelorABC) March 7, 2017

Then they show a bunch of bloopers, which are better than the actual show and make me wonder why they don't just make the whole show the bloopers. It would be way funnier.

Anyway, see you guys next week for the final episode. I’m really sad, but also really ready for America to get over Nick so we can move on to Rachel.