#i still need to sell my 1903

[alpine-hoplite]

Real shit

I wanna buy a blunderbuss kit

[marvelfansince08love]

Our own underground kingdom

Word Count: 1903 

Pairing: Wilhelmina Venable x Fem!Reader 

Warning: A lil angsty, soft Mina. 

Prompts: 2,5,17 - “The only thing I have left is you”, “My only fear is losing you”  “I can’t live.. Not without you”

Setting: Six months before the apocalypse, Mina is aware of Michael being the Antichrist but hasn’t met him in person.  

A/N: For anon, I hope you enjoy! x  @muted-stoneheart​ thank you for reading over this for me, thanks again bubbles! 

Also bonus points for anyone who picks on a certain quote said by the woman herself (I couldn’t help myself) lmao. Still in a slight love/hate relationship with this. 

Permanent tags and a few who i thought might enjoy it : @waitingfortheendtocome​ @natasha-danvers​ @saucy-sapphic​ @coconutlipss​  @stevenuniversetanzanite​

Prompts 2,5,17

“You want us to move where because of what?!” You exclaim, looking dumbfounded at a desperate Wilhelmina. She clutches her cane in front of her, brown eyes begging you to understand as you both stand opposite one another in your shared apartment. 

“To Central California, we’ll be safe there. I have it all planned out, I got two tickets that gives us access to a safe facility known as Outpost 3. My bosses may be coked up narcissists but they like me enough and know I’d be able to run the place well but I… I won’t do it without you Y/n. I need you onboard with this, please understand this is a matter of life and death.” She pleads reaching forward to take your hand. You hold your hand up in front, stopping her advance. 

“Mina baby, you are not making any sense. You are telling me that in as little as six months time the world is going to end in smoke and fire and you want us to go live underground with rich strangers until what.. Everything goes back to normal again. I don’t understand what you are asking and you’re scaring me,” You inform her quietly, trying to process this new information that your girlfriend has given you. 

You and Mina have been dating for nearly two years and in all that time you’ve never seen her look so terrified yet excited at the same time. You saw the glint in her eye when she first told you of her master plan to escape the upcoming apocalypse and to rule over one of the six outposts that were being built for the rich while the poor died from the nuclear bombs or worse. You understood that Mina’s empathy for others has always run thin, you were one of the few if not the only one who Mina truly cared for. You watch her take a deep breath in before releasing it in frustration, her eyes flash slightly at your lack of understanding and enthusiasm. 

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you Y/N. All I ask is that you pack a few items.. Maybe that pretty lavender lingerie number that I bought you last year for your birthday and I’ll figure out the rest. Please baby don’t make me beg you…” She asks, her tone soft yet demanding. Her eyes dart away from yours suddenly finding the kitchen marble interesting, her voice like a whisper that echoes across the room to your ears.

“I can’t live… not without you.” She confesses, still unwilling to meet your surprised gaze. You knew Mina loved you even if she rarely said it out loud, see Mina showed you love with affection, personal gifts and allowing you to see her deepest scars and insecurities behind closed doors while making love but her confession shocked you nevertheless.

“Mina I’m not saying I wouldn’t go with you. This just all seems a bit crazy, I mean your bosses selling their souls to the devil who happens to have a son who's roaming the earth right now planning to destroy it and pretty much everyone on it. Tell me you understand my hesitance.” You murmur, walking towards her and delicately lifting her chin up with your finger forcing her to look at you. Her big brown eyes stand out behind her framed glasses as you go to remove them from her face, knowing she’s probably forgot that she’s still wearing them. She blinks a few times adjusting to the new sight while muttering a quick ‘thanks’. She leans her cane against the nearby chair before placing her hands on either side of your hips pushing you back slightly guiding you to the breakfast island behind you, indicating for you to hop on top so she can stand in between your legs comfortably. 

“I know it’s a lot to process, I get it.. It took me a while to wrap my head around it but being around those two nutcases every damn day made it easier to understand why they didn’t have a soul, the rest just followed through. Baby this is a good opportunity for us, just imagine you and me ruling our own little underground kingdom, how satisfying does that sound hmm. I’m not embarrassed to say, it gives me a tingle.” She whispers brushing her nose against yours, her voice huskier at the thought of you standing by her side as she bends the guests to her very wimp as they beg for their life after disobeying the rules. 

You roll your eyes at her idea of fun and being slightly turned on at the thought of being in control of others. 

“But what about the rest of the world? Families Mina torn apart, children unable to grow up and become incredible people.who could go on to discover a new element or become the next president. Just gone, tiny specks of dust in the ground because some guy decided so.” You argue back, she pulls back a little so she can lock gazes with you dumbfound by your resilience. 

“This isn’t just ‘some guy’ sweetheart, we are talking about the son of satan and all things hellish.” Mina ridicules, shaking her head at your ignorance. 

“Have you met this man? Have you seen with your own two eyes what he is capable of?” You question, watching a flicker of hesitance cross her features confirming your answer without any words being spoken. Now it's your turn to look dumbfounded as you try to understand her eagerness to believe such nonsense. 

“Just as I thought. Mina, this man could be insane and those two dipshits have only three things on their minds robotics, cocaine and pussy. You really wanna believe all this?” She nods her head with determination. 

“I really do believe it. I’ll show you the planning if you like? I just need you on board with this Y/N. I can live with myself if the rest of the world dies out but baby, not you, never you. The only thing I have left is you, so i need you to come with me.” She speaks honestly, placing her hands on either side of your face wanting you to understand her. 

“Show me the plans first Mina, then I will decide” You compromise, still feeling ridiculous that you are indulging her proposition. She smiles satisfied with your answer knowing it was the closest thing to a yes she was going to get out of you for now before she pulls away completely, moving towards her cane and heading for the kitchen door, she turns her head towards you, her face serious. 

“I’ll show you the plans and I’ll prove to you that what i’m telling you isn’t some bullshit story to scare you, I’m not crazy dear.” She vows, continuing on her journey. Leaving you sat on top of the kitchen island, mind reeling from the information given to you. You know deep down somewhere that what Mina’s telling you is true. That woman is a realist who laughs at the thought of magic and spells, always believing in the science of things, never one to open her mind to more powerful beings. So there you sat waiting for her to fight her corner and prove to you that what she’s telling you is real and the idea of her mostly being right terrifies you. 

But I’d go anywhere with her, even to run away from death itself. 

***

“Jesus Mina and these are all the plans?” You mutter, looking closely at Mina’s tablet as you both sit at the wooden desk in her home office. The fireplace crackling to the side of you both, the light from the flames giving Mina’s side profile a soft glow of orange. As she leans over your shoulder, her finger sliding and tapping away on the tablet, showing you the other locations and its members. 

“Yes, we have full access to all construction work as well. Millions of dollars have gone into this Y/N, those A-listers you see right there all know what’s going to happen. Do you think they feel guilty? Of course not.” Mina reprimands, scoffing in disgust. 

“You could have gotten us into the outpost in Hawaii at least, baby,” You halfheartedly teased, still trying to process an actual response. Mina growls quietly and nipples underneath your earlobe before whispering in your ear. 

“What and have you drooling over Johansson, I don’t think so. I want you all to myself.” The possessive tone makes you roll your eyes in good nature. 

“So what do you think?” She asks into your ear, you hear the slight hesitancy in her voice making you turn your head to the side and placing a reassuring kiss to her cheek. 

“I have one condition. You promise that you will tell me everything, from any changes to new developments. I want to know Mina, don’t keep secrets from me. I still don’t fully trust this cooperative or whatever they want to be called, especially that guy who claims to be the antichrist.” You enforce wanting her to understand that although you are agreeing to this you still have your reservations. 

“Of course baby. We’re in this together darling, now about that little number… think you could put it on so we can celebrate our new move properly,” She hints before capturing your lips in a heated kiss. “So demanding.” you tease against her lips. Before you can continue with your heated makeout session Mina pinches the side of your hip making you jump slightly in the chair and yelp “Hey!” eyeing her fingers before locking eyes with her chocolate brown eyes, she smirks before replying “I won’t ask again, dear. You know where the closet is”.

With that you jump out of the chair and walk seductively out of the room before calling over your shoulder cheekily. 

“See you in five minutes, my love” 

***

As you lie beneath Mina, bodies glistening in the afterglow of your love making, you look up into those brown eyes above you as they sparkle with delight and admiration. Her forearms leaning on either side of her head, nose brushing eskimo kisses along your own. 

“My only fear is losing you, Y/N. I hope you realise that.” She confesses, eyes wet with unushered tears as she collapses on top of you, her head tucked into the crook of your neck as you clutch onto one another. 

“Of course I do, Mina. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you either,” You reply, capturing her lips with your own in a heated kiss. You both moan in unison, loving the feeling of each other's soft lips seeking the love and comfort we share for one another. Once you pull back and settle into your new position, Mina’s head leaning against your chest where she loves to hear your heart beating steadily beneath her ears. 

“We will watch the world burn bright together and bring in this new world while making love in our own hideaway, my love.” She breathes, against your naked chest nuzzling her nose against your exposed skin.

And for the first time tonight, you were looking forward to spending your days in your own little kingdom with the redhead. As long as you have her, you’ll be content for the rest of your days no matter how long or short that might be. 

If you would like to be added to the tag list, just ask! 

[alysemeadfad]

𝕽𝖊𝖇𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖔𝖓

Most would say its easy for a teenager to rebel at any point in time, but I find it hard to rebel in any way, most teens get tattoos, piercings, cut and dye their hair to rebel against their parents, but growing up with a mom who is tattooed, hair in fun dyed styles and piercings, I’m really just following in her footsteps she practically encourages. 

The only thing I rebel against is tidying my room and making cups of tea, cant really say I could start a world changing rebellion on that.

Rebellions i find important

1903–18 — Women’s Suffrage Movement The foundation of the Women’s Social and Political Union by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903 began a more militant phase of the call for votes for women, which had been growing through the end of the 19th century. The Suffragettes used militant tactics like vandalism, arson, bombing and hunger strikes, with one member committing public suicide by throwing herself under the King’s horse at a race in 1913. The movement was wound up when some women were enfranchised in the 1918 Representation of the People Act, before all women over 21 were given the vote in 1928.

Suffragette Vera Wentworth in 1909, and the dress by Vaquera that it inspired

Stonewall riots 28 Jun 1969 – 3 Jul 1969 The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous demonstrations by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.

It is said that Marsha P. Johnson was the one who started the rebellion. Supposedly, throughout the bustle of the raid, Marsha threw a shot glass into a mirror and shouted, ” I got my civil rights!”.  With this inspiration and resistance against the police, other patrons began to follow.

Present day- Me Too movement.The Me Too movement, with variations of related local or international names, is a social movement against sexual abuse and sexual harassment towards women, where people publicize allegations of sex crimes.

The Punk Rebellion

the punk involved no protests or riots, it impacted people, fashion, music, society and everything to be honest.

The punk subculture advocates a do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic. During the subculture's infancy members were almost all from a lower economic class, and had become tired of the affluence that was associated with popular rock music at the time. Punks would publish their own music or sign with small independent labels, in hopes to combat what they saw as a money hungry music industry. The DIY ethic is still popular with punks.ideology's of punks

Ideology

Punk political ideologies are mostly concerned with individual freedom and anti-establishment views. Common punk viewpoints include individual liberty, anti-authoritarianism, a DIY ethic, non-conformity, anti-collectivism, anti-corporatism, anti-government, direct action and not "selling out".

Some groups and individuals that self-identify as being a part of punk subculture hold right-wing views. The belief that such views are opposed to the original ethos of the punk subculture, and its history, has led to internal conflicts and an active push against such views being considered part of punk subculture at all. Two examples of this are an incident during the 2016 American Music Awards, where the band Green Day chanted anti-conservative, anti-racist, and anti-fascist messages, and an incident at a show by the Dropkick Murphys, when bassist and singer Ken Casey, tackled an individual for giving a nazi-style salute and later stated that nazis are not welcome at a Dropkick Murphys show. Band member Tim Brennan later reaffirmed this sentiment. The song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" by hardcore punk band Dead Kennedys has come to be considered an anti-nazi anthem.

VIV WESTWOOD

Rejecting the hippie ethos that was fashionable towards the end of the 1960s, Westwood and McLaren created clothes that referenced youth culture's recent past, selling rock'n'roll fashion in a shop unit at 430 King's Road in Chelsea. In 1974, the shop took on its most notorious identity: SEX, with Westwood and McLaren designing fetish wear that they sold to prostitutes, those with 'underground' sexual tastes, and young proto-punks brave enough to take a seriously edgy look out onto the street. The pair enjoyed shocking people, designing garments and shoes that referenced 'deviant' sexual practices, including rubber dresses and stilettos bristling with spikes.

How punk influenced me, because it influenced the world

My take on rebellion

Westwood inspired tights.

after watching a documentary on vivien westwood and the birth of the punk revolution i created some westwood inspired tights as a little spontaneous brainstorm, did not develop any further on the tights.

i used a pair of brand new white tights and put holes all in them, this is non conformist as if a regular pair of tights had a hole you would bin them as they were no good any more, but purposely putting holes in is quite rebellious in that aspect, i used sharpies to draw triggering symbols and words such as a swastikka and ‘punk fag’ .

crayon drawings

i used crayons to create these images as i thought it was a more rebellious medium and its created for kids so that is non conforming and it gives a rough diy finish look making it look slightly unfinished

i created a lesbian nun, this was a spur of the mind thought whats socially good and respected? a nun? whats the opposite of what a nun preaches, homo behavior. 

here i did a little barbie series drawing from observational on one and on another from mind and another from an image which i created by burning a barbie ehich is quite a rebellious act in a way. 

Collages

i decided to do some collages as its a way of just slapping ideas out in a visual format, my first one was using a fashion magazine and i realized this was the way to go so i printed some punk imagery and even used my own crayon drawings to create more collages.

photo shop

i wanted to mess with these collages more on a digital format so i put them in to photo shop to play with them and generate more ideas this was giving me a poster vibe which reminded me of punk posters.

 Final ideas

i used images from the new york trip to create a vision on photo shop, using a light of the american flag,sign posts, bins with posters on them.a clip art image of a chain and lock,street art and stickers i saw on poles in the street which is another form or street art which is quite rebellious as its not socially acceptable to vandalize and graffiti on public areas.

i took a few elements from the last board and included them in this vision board, i really wanted the main focus to be on the pipe that says “the rich killed nyc” i feel like it has a deep meaning behind it and it is quite rebellious as it reminded me of the punk rebellion in the uk as it was mostly lower class working people who used art, music and fashion to rebel against society and social constructs and actively non conform to the “rules” in a way. i also used a sticker that says jesus loves you and i crossed it out and wrote hate you over the loves you part as that is fitting to my rebellious visions.

in this board i again used “ the rich killed nyc” pipe as that’s my main surrounding element, i uses another pole with stickers on though you cant really tell what the stickers are, it just fits the aesthetic. i used a statue of liberty as she is known as a symbol of freedom, and along side it i used a photo of a photograph i saw in the modern art museum where this person had dyke tattooed on their neck which is a derogatory word to gay women, and that’s quite rebellious to take a bad word and own it by tattooing it on your body .

in this board i moved away from “the rich killed nyc” pipe as i felt i needed to come away from that one element for one board and to broaden my ideas. in this one i used a sky line image i took when on the ferry to liberty island, i changed the colour to black and white as the original colours of the image are quite blue and orangy, i used a sign post that says one way as it for some reason reminded me of like “one way to hell” or something and that there feels like there is no choice or individuality in the phrase “one way” . i used text over the sky line that says “the rotten apple” as new york city is known as the big apple and i thought, when i was there it did not remind me of a big fresh beautiful apple as the homeless people on the streets and the graffiti that has no artistic intent, so it was more of a rotten apple in a way. i used an image of the american flag i took on liberty island as i used an image of an american flag light, so i thought i could link back to that idea and use an actual flag, as its to represent freedom. i also used a art piece from the modern art gallery which was just a male mannequin wearing a bra which does not fit the social constrict of what men should wear there for its quite rebellious and opposite to the one way system. 

in my final board i included the american flag, a chain over it completely doing the opposite of what the flag means which is freedom, i used the bun that says don’t be afraid of anyone with an edited red paint drip on it which kind of looks like blood, i used text that says “ the rich killed nyc” as i loved that phrase bit i over used the pole in the other boards and i liked that my main message is that the rich killed nyc, i used an image of my dr martens that i took while my feet were up against a pole as i sat on a tube, showing anti social behavior basically which is stereo typically rebellious,and also dr martens were quite fashionable in the uk punk rebellion so i’m hinting to my idea that was inspired by the uk punk rebellion, and finally i have a set of traffic lights which are about order and control, the light is also on red which signifies danger, and the word stop which fits to my idea.

[autumnblogs]

Day 10: I think the true purpose of this game is to see how many qualifiers we can get to precede the word "self" and still understand what we're talking about

https://homestuck.com/story/1642

I don’t think anyone has said much about Calsprite. There’s not much to be said. I’m pretty sure, based on the Juju rules, that this Lil Cal probably doesn’t count as the real one - supposedly, any version of a Juju from a Doomed Timeline doesn’t count as the real thing? In any case, it’s a very mild comfort that this being isn’t a source of even more power for the already arbitrarily powerful Lord English.

Another thing that I think is interesting to note is that Dave’s use of iPhone technology marks him, in my opinion, as a poseur. While I am by no means advocating against buying from Microsoft’s competitors, but Mac vs. PC is one of those parts of my childhood, and as an actual IT Professional I’ve learned more than a little about the way that they brand themselves and the history of Apple’s struggle for market share - Apple doesn’t advertise its products as computing alternatives, or as productivity software, or whatever - Apple sells a lifestyle. Apple products are styled as the sexier, more cerebral, more artistic, more individualistic alternative to Microsoft’s products, a computer not for the Office Drone but for... well, the Hipster. Hipsters have stopped really being a thing, or at least, nobody calls themselves that any more.

Like the vast majority of subcultures, I suspect the hipster subculture has kind of been swallowed by time, its symbols expropriated by Capitalism, its center hollowed out and its aesthetics packaged for mass production, as the cynical and jaded approach to popular culture of the hipster, along with its more enthusiastic counterpart “the geek” (actually pretty well personified by John!) became more mainstream - both stereotypes are probably a part of Homestuck’s general commentary on fandom. Fandom is something I think Homestuck talks about, but I don’t think it’s something Homestuck is about in quite the same way that it’s about, say, Narratives, or Reproduction.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/1643

While Homestuck has been a story that involves some time loops, Act 4 is where it really gets off the ground as an actual Time Travel story. The thing about Time Travel stories, like the thing about Cosmic Horror Stories, is that once a story starts having Time Travel, or Cosmic Horrors in it, it’s that genre forever. This is why DND, for example, is part of a cosmic horror story, because something like 20 years ago, an adventure writer decided that there should be the Far Realm, and now it casts its sticky pall over the rest of the game’s setting.

Homestuck sidesteps this issue largely by involving all of the genres that do this to a story, and just kind of blending them all together into a genre-busting stew. Homestuck is a superhero story. Homestuck is a creation story. Homestuck is a theogony. Homestuck is a cosmic horror story. Homestuck is a time travel story. And so on and so on.

https://homestuck.com/story/1657

And so began one of the greatest partnerships in the history of Paradox Space.

Also of note is that Terezi compares Dave to fire here, not the first or the last bit of symbolism linking him to that element. It’s pretty strongly linked, in general, with The Hero, in kind of the same way that the color Red, and the Sword is in these sorts of things.

Dave fits the Classic Hero Archetype a lot better in a lot of ways than John does, and Bro has been training him for that role since birth. On a much larger scale, Lord English has decreed from his position as the overlord of Paradox Space that Dave is the Hero who should defeat him.

https://homestuck.com/story/1663

Friendship proves once again to be one of the most powerful forces in the universe, changing John’s direction, and steering him away from disaster.

https://homestuck.com/story/1667

Not much to say about this conversation, but the transition between Karkat’s explanation of the Veil and the beginning of [S]Jack: Ascend is smooth as fuck.

https://homestuck.com/story/1670

Our very first self-indulgent author self-insert; the Fourth Wall is explicitly identified as a Fenestrated Plane. 1 Point for the Narrative Contrivance hypothesis.

https://homestuck.com/story/1692

Dave actually does care immensely. Not only does he spend a ton of his time being overshadowed by cooler more powerful men like Bro, and John, now Dave even has to spend his time being overshadowed by cooler versions of himself - and that goes in both directions - both Davesprite and Dave seem to think that the other is the more real, more cool Dave!

https://homestuck.com/story/1710

As a Light Player, Rose is preoccupied with Meaning. She sees it everywhere, and she certainly sees where it is not (at least when she is not Miserable with a capital M). Meaning and Value - Fortune - is not intrinsic to this item, but it is instead bestowed upon it by the fact that Rose loves it, and by the work that Rose put into it. The Rabbit is a labor of love and a treasured belonging, and the Love in the Rabbit is the Light that the Seer Sees.

https://homestuck.com/story/1714

I’m pretty sure that John and Kanaya only talk to each other about twice in all of Homestuck, which is a bit of a shame! John and Karkat are really a lot more alike each other than either of them is comfortable admitting (which I think is probably why Dave is attracted to Karkat). By the transitive law of friendship, it seems to me that John and Kanaya would probably be pretty good friends. On the subject of the other diagonal line in the quadrangle of friendship, I wonder if Rose and Karkat talk to each other pretty much ever?

https://homestuck.com/story/1715

The clear indication here is a parallel between Dave and Sollux, but like a lot of things that probably didn’t go as intended with the Trolls, nothing much ends up materializing from it. I suppose that by fucking off to do nothing for the rest of the adventure, Sollux gets to live Dave’s dream for him, so there’s that.

https://homestuck.com/story/1720

Adorable. This is one of the happiest little moments in the comic.

So often, characters are cut off from one another by moments. They just miss each other, or literally can’t understand each other because of supernatural shenanigans, or can’t communicate with each other on screen because of the way that communication can’t happen unmediated in Homestuck.

And even when they can talk to each other, often the awkwardness and pain of communicating with other people, of trying to get them to understand you the way you actually are, instead of only seeing you one certain way, is too great, and communication proves impossible.

But here, Rose and Dave don’t need words to hang out.

They shut up and jam.

(It’s also incredibly sweet that Rose‘s actual in-person esteem of Dave is so great that she cannot restrain her own thought process. For all her joshing, she really does think Dave is cool.)

https://homestuck.com/story/1722

Also incredibly sweet that Rose’s first order of business as soon as they’re done playing around is to destroy that goddamn puppet.

https://homestuck.com/story/1754

Just missed him.

https://homestuck.com/story/1775

I wish not to contemplate the implication that Homestuck Sprite Mode Legs are actually wafer thin.

https://homestuck.com/story/1812

Nearly as soon as Rose has awoken and absorbed herself from the Doomed Timeline, she gets down to business alchemizing a lot of dangerous and powerful artifacts in preparation to fuck shit up. I’ve never thought about it much before, but I think it’s not hard to say that the memories she absorbed from the other timeline cause Rose to embrace her more reckless and less charitable side. She comments on her own dangerous pursuit of power, and then immediately ignores that train of thought.

https://homestuck.com/story/1836

Dave sure is fixated on bottoms.

https://homestuck.com/story/1852

Note to self. Come back to this.

So far, the only thing of note is the number 12, a portent related to the victors of Homestuck, if only coincidentally.

https://homestuck.com/story/1857

Dave’s sincerity senses are tingling. Maybe it’s an instinct since he and Roxy are pretty similar people, maybe it’s just because Dave himself is not nearly as insincere as he wants to be.

Dave’s anxiety about being watched is also probably best exemplified by his insistence on hiding his eyes behind glasses.

https://homestuck.com/story/1887

Adorable!

I wonder if Andrew already had the sprite designs for these squirts, and their names picked out at this time.

The hair and accessories are certainly correct.

https://homestuck.com/story/1895

Before I get too much further into this sequence, I’d like to pause and take a second to just appreciate this prose. The style is captivating.

The shipping pun is also pretty good.

https://homestuck.com/story/1903

BladeKindEyeWear has already done a pretty good job explaining what the Ultimate Riddle is, so I won’t belabor it too much more than he has here. The Ultimate Riddle itself is, “What Will You Do?” And the answer to it is, “Do What You Will.”

Do What You Will isn’t just the inscription on AURYN, it’s also an extremely old phrase intended for spiritual enlightenment, historically first formulated by Saint Augustine in his Sermon On Love, where he puts it thusly, “Love, and Do What You Will.” The Love that Augustine is talking about is not Romantic Love or even familial love, but Universal Unconditional Love - goodwill toward everyone and everything, to have one’s Heart’s Desire be that everyone should flourish and be happy.

Another formulation, the Wiccan Rede is, “An It Harm None, Do What Ye Will,” perhaps a more detached, declaration. In either case, the Will here is not talking about merely chasing simple wants, but an invitation to follow one’s true will, not to respond to simple passions, but to take voluntary action in accordance with who one is as a person.

https://homestuck.com/story/1905

threatening.............

https://homestuck.com/story/1922

Jake Harley begins a life of serial abandonment.

https://homestuck.com/story/1930

I really should have brought this up first when Rose and Davesprite went back into time, but this is about the time Homestuck starts to get lousy with all kinds of alternate selves, Dream Selves, Doomed Selves, and so on and so on, and from a narrative frame of reference, they’re actually all literally the same guy - the actions of one version of a character inform us about all versions of that character.

More on that later.

https://homestuck.com/story/1931

More Roleplaying. John has a wild imagine spot.

https://homestuck.com/story/1934

Dave stares at the blood on his hands, and contemplates his death for a long time.

https://homestuck.com/story/1936

Some immediate foreshadowing in here. Jade, I’m pretty sure, is one of the few people in Tavros’ life who shows him some genuine unconditional friendliness, so it’s no wonder that he latches onto her.

The way he does is still pretty creepy though.

https://homestuck.com/story/1940

As long as I’m mostly focusing on the emotional dimension of Homestuck, the two major emotional beats in this Flash are the Sovereign Slayer slaughtering WV’s army, revealing the source of his self-loathing and trauma, and the death of Jade’s Dream Self.

The death of her Dream Self is not nearly the beginning of Jade’s Trauma Conga Line, but it’s definitely the first in the chain of events that leads her to finally snap out of her learned helplessness and blind optimism, and to start taking her fate into her own hands. She’s been so sure of her destiny up to this point, and now things are finally starting to get out of hand.

Also, I choose to believe that the bizarre Squiddles interlude is the first moment that the Dark Gods make contact with Jade’s psyche. They know she’s about to die, and they’re starting to communicate with her.

Anyway, that’s all for today.

Yesterday’s cough turned out to be post-viral infection, since I had Covid the week of the 11th, so for now this is Cam signing off, Medicated, and Not Alone.

[demeterspriestess]

YALL

Would you just look at what my amazing husband got me for Valentine’s Day

Would you just look at it?? Its a 1903 Singer Sphinx. I’m calling her Cleo.

Its restoration time. Gonna clean the rust off the exposed metal bits, and very carefully clean the paint. Then its gotta be pulled all apart, cleaned and oiled, then put back together.

But I have a dilemma that I would like yalls opinion on (and maybe the decision should be made after all the needed work is done....). But the paint and gold decals are very badly damaged. Should I.... 1. Leave it as it is and seal it so it doesn’t get worse, 2. Touch up the decals so they’re more intact but still worn a bit, or 3. Strip the paint, repaint it, and replace the decals.

There are some things that may affect your opinions and my final decision. These machines are japanned (the black varnish) and you can’t really get that varnish anymore. Trying to match the color and finish would be next to impossible. I’m not sure if the body is rusted, she needs a heavy cleaning. The decals can be found online and I’m confident in my ability to place them. I’m also confident in my ability to just touch up the decals. These things are technically worth more with their original finish but I’m probably never going to sell this baby. This one is set up for treadle, but the bus does not have space for a treadle table so I’m going to convert it to a hand crank. Any hand crank I find will likely not be from the Sphinx design so I would have to redo the decals on the crank. And finally, the better it looks the more likely I am to use it instead of hand sewing.

Please comment and let me know which finish yall would prefer!

[canaryrecords]

"Love - the absolute circle of trustfulness - that's the secret of it all. I love the birds, the snakes, the society person, the academic, and the baby - all creatures of the universe are alike, and they will never harm you unless you fear them." -Charles Kellogg, 1915 Charles Dennison Kellogg was unlike any performer in the history of the American stage. He developed a few key obsessions - the forest, love, vibration, fire - into an irresistibly charismatic package and then sold that package in the form of himself through an uncanny use of the press, a vigorous appetite for travel, and a need to be the center of attention through a serpentine five-decade career as a pontificator and showman. In the early decades of the twentieth century, he amused and astounded heiresses and industrialists, yogis and artists, scientists and, most of all, the plain folk of most states in the union with demonstrations of his vision of a wholesome and interconnected world of all living things. His memory has largely faded, but he left behind a memoir, riddled with gaps and touched with hokum, many photographs, hundreds of press notices and reviews in newspapers, over an hour of sound recordings, at least one fragment of film, and a legacy of naturalism and invention that has entered into the lore of his native California. Kellogg was born October 2, 1868, the fourth of five children to Henry Kellogg (b. 1822 in New London, Connecticut) and Mary E. Carlisle (b. 1845 in Jefferson, New York) in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California’s Plumas County in a settlement called Spanish Ranch “nearly a hundred miles from the nearest railroad,” according to Kellogg. His father’s involvement in a nearby goldmine in the 1850s paid off, and he used his share of the profits to establish a provisions store for the area prospectors. Kellogg wrote that his mother was the only white woman in the area, and that he “lost her in infancy.” In fact, she left the family when he was about 3 years old, and his autobiography gives us an indication of the wound her abandonment left through the pains with which he purposefully wrote her out of his life’s story. (She died in Long Beach, California in 1917.) In his auto-mythology, Kellogg was as a child close to a Chinese servant named Moon and an unnamed Indian woman, who, he wrote, “taught me to fear no creature [and] taught me, too, the habit of minding my own business, letting the other fellow alone - bird, bear, snake, Indian and other humans. […] My earliest recollection is sitting with the Indians about their campfires or watching the Chinamen boil their rice between stones.” The impressions of the sounds and feelings of the wilderness in early childhood embedded themselves deeply in young Charles. He recalled it as a period of immense freedom, a world with “no doctors, missionaries, telephone, telegraph, schools, saloons, poorhouse, jail or gamblers; no police for there was no disorder. There were birds, grizzly bears, deer, wolves, foxes, skunks, badgers, mountain lions, wild cats, snakes, and all the smaller wood folk.” It was also here that before the age of six, he witnessed a wedding for the first time and learned about death and funeral rites among the Chinese. In this powerful paradise of vivid experiences, he was “lonely, but not unhappy,” spending his days “always preoccupied with birds and insects, listening to them and talking to them in their own languages.” It was between the ages of four and six that he began to experiment with his ability to imitate birds, forcing air through this nose with his mouth closed. He claimed throughout his adult life that this remarkable ability came down to an anatomical formation in his larynx similar to that of a songbird. This claim, repeated thousands of times, often backed up with the validation of unnamed doctors, was, of course, utter nonsense, but it is not clear whether he believed it, on some level, himself. It was many years after Kellogg had been sent off to live with his mother’s relatives in Syracuse, New York at the age of six or seven that Charles realized that he was in possession of a remarkable skill. In Syracuse, he learned to work with tools, to build furniture and fireplaces - skills he valued and worked into his persona as a woodsman. He attended Syracuse University and sang in the choir, aware that a relative of his father’s (by marriage) Clara Louise Kellogg, had become a famous soprano. But apart from mentions of his education in the manly, manual crafts, the period from the ages of seven to twenty-two when Kellogg became a civilized, college-educated Yankee were never mentioned in Kellogg’s stories. They didn’t serve what he was selling about himself. Almost immediately after graduation, we have the first press notice of Charles Kellogg as a performer, August 1891 at Chautauqua, New York, a hotbed of aspirational “edutainment,” where he debuted his unique bird-imitation talent. Realizing that he was on to something, he gave at least a half-dozen concerts of music with bird imitation at YMCAs, churches, and meetings around Pennsylvania and New York at the beginning and end of the year and another half-dozen in California a few months later. There were more shows in California in 1893-94, then back to Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in 1896-97. All of February and March of 1898 was spent touring Pennsylvania and Ohio. January through April of 1900 was spent on the road through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, D.C., and Virginia, by which time he was claiming to have anywhere from a 9 1/2 to 12 1/2 octave vocal range. After getting married for the first time, he spent November 1900 to April 1901 touring the same states again plus Connecticut and published an article in Success magazine called “The Wickedness and Folly of Killing Birds.” In early 1902, through Horace Traubel, friend and executor of Walt Whitman, Kellogg met the naturalist John Burroughs, thirty years’ Kellogg’s senior, with whom he traveled to Jamaica during January and February. Kellogg held Burroughs (as wells as naturalist John Muir, with whom he also spent several days with at one point) in esteem and treasured the memory of their trip. Burroughs was certainly an influence on and model for Kellogg. Whether Kellogg was aware of Burrough’s fierce denunciation in a 1903 article for the Atlantic denouncing contemporary nature-writers tendencies to anthropomorphize the natural world is unclear, but it was major news among naturalists for years, ultimately drawing comment from President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1904, Kellogg and his brother bought a 45 acre plot in North Newry, Maine, where they built the Kellogg Nature Camp, a Summer vacation resort for city folk wanting to spend time in with the woods. They built cabins connected by boardwalks, a common-house with a large fireplace (a specialty of Charles’s) and powered it with a waterwheel. It is now part of a nature reserve with many of the structures they built still standing. And each year during each late Fall, Winter, and early Spring, in an ever expanding radius, Kellogg began to cover the country with shows of his knowledge of and ability to replicate bird song - Tennessee and Kentucky by 1903, Nebraska and Kansas by 1907. By that time, shows regularly lasted two hours and received glowing reviews everywhere he went. His break came at the age of 43 in 1910, by which time he had left his first wife Emily and relocated to San Francisco and had ingratiated himself within a world wealthy socialites, where he was a favorite at parties. On December 4 The Call newspaper ran a, glowing illustrated full-page article on him titled The Man Who Sings With Birds in Their Own Language, which crystalized in print the stage-show that Kellogg had been assiduously developing, year after year, for nearly two decades. "He has the uttermost faith in the power of love and kindness,” the article asserted. “’It is all love," he says. 'Anybody who goes into the woods with the spirit of love in his heart without the faintest desire for destruction or possession can make friends with the birds if he is merely tactful and patient. Birds can read the heart better than men. They know their friends and are ready to love them.' In Kellogg's mind, there is no place for fear or hatred [...] Fear creates fear. Hatred breeds hatred. Love engenders love. These are the cardinal tenants of Kellogg's creed." His count of 3,000 performances in 24 years was, like almost everything else he said, likely an exaggeration but not so far from the truth that you could discount the claim out of hand. Twenty years of stories, stage patter, and tricks caught the public imagination. Less than a month after the article appeared in San Francisco, Kellogg went to Camden, New Jersey to cut his first trial disc for Victor Records on January 24, 1911 and then another four performances on the 28th. Victor didn’t release any of them. When Kellogg went back on the road on the east coast from October to December 1911, he had a new repertoire of claims for his abilities. This is when his press notices begin to claim that his throat is abnormally formed like that of a bird’s. And that: -He’d been to Paris and Berlin and received high praise. (His sister-in-law did invite him to perform at a private salon in Paris, where he met August Rodin, but not until 1912.) -His throat had been examined at Harvard. (He had been claiming that he’d “baffled scientists” there for years, and that they’d measured his vocal range from 64 cycles a second to 49,560 cycles.) -He speaks 15 animal languages and can communicate with bears, rattlesnakes, worms (who, he said, can sing), lizards, squirrels, etc. -That a man could (theoretically) be pinned motionless to a tree with the use of sound. -And, most crucially for his career from this point forward, that he could extinguish fire with sound. In February 1912 an article making many of these claims along with his belief that “vibration will ultimately take the place of electricity as a motive force” ran in syndication across the country in advance of his having signed with the Orpheum chain of vaudeville theaters for whom he performed three shows a day (a matinee and two at night) for months across the west coast - Winnipeg, Spokane, Los Angeles, etc - from April 1912 until April of the following year and then, without his standard Summer break, for the rest of 1913 across the east coast plus Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, and Kansas. In New York City, he gave a demonstration of divination for water for another syndicated news article. He spent 1914 touring the west coast and midwest before returning to the Philadelphia area where he remarried to Sarah “Sad’i” Fuller Burchard on January 14, 1915 in Wilmington, Delaware. One month later, he went again to Camden, New Jersey in February 1915, where over two days he recorded the first four performances that were issued on discs. He was almost 47 years old and had spent the past 25 years on the road developing his act in halls, theaters, auditoriums, clubhouses, churches, tents, homes, and high schools. Kellogg’s assessment of vaudeville does not have the ring of disreputable behavior that has often been handed down through the years: “Back stage is not such a fry cry from the forest, for on these vaudeville stages I find conditions that are congenial to my own habits of the woods - conditions I do not find elsewhere in the world. In hotels, railroads, and even private homes, tobacco and other noxious odors, and not infrequently even uncleanliness such as cuspidors, are not unusual. System, punctuality and order are seldom the rule. In the forest, in all nature, punctuality, order, and system are the very breath of life. The stars, the tides, the migration of birds, the appearance of herbs, the trees, the flowers are all on time, giving that sense of harmony felt, and rejoiced in by all. Back stage, I find pure air in perfect ventilation, no tobacco, no bad odors, scrupulous cleanliness, system, order, punctuality - in a word, the perfection of organization, bringing quiet and a reposeful atmosphere in which to work.” Kellogg’s first vaudeville tour was a 1912-13 run at the west coast Orpheum chain, run by Percy Williams who was known as the first vaudeville impresario to pay high fees to the acts he wanted. The west coast Orpheum houses were run locally and, according to Joe Lurie Jr’s Vaudeville: From the Honky-Tonks to the Palace (1953), unlike many of the rowdier and down-market vaudeville theaters, “they were all fine, clean, well-appointed theaters, running clean shows, and were a credit to their towns.” Kellogg performed at shows with as many as eight other acts on the bill. The shows in Washington opened just after Bert Williams’ run and included a spoof of the domestic morality play Everywoman titled Everywife, the blackface comedy duo McIntyre and Heath, the Fearless Ce Dora (“one continuous thrill through the seven minutes which she spends revolving at railroad speed inside [a] golden globe”), and Thomas Edison’s early, abortive attempts at talking pictures. Through 1915 and 1916 Kellogg was headlining in the eastern U.S. for both Orpheum and B.F. Keith’s circuits of vaudeville houses in the eastern U.S. and Quebec as well as Majestic Theaters in the midwest and Texas, where others on the bills included dog acts, monkey acts, the Dennis Brothers’ rotating ladder act, and various acrobats, singers, and comedians. At the end of each show was Kellogg, standing in front of a painted woodland backdrop. Second on the bill for at least one of those shows was the Three Keatons, including 20 year old Buster, who was on the verge of leaving for Hollywood. Kellogg himself appeared second on the bill in late 1916 only under Nora Bayes, arguably the most popular singer in the U.S. His proclamations to the press at the time ranged from the flatly false (that he did not believe “that wild animals die unless molested by man or that they struggle with each other, because I have never seen them do either,” that he did not know his own age, that hat he spent 9 months of the year in the wilderness and came “into civilized society only when the call of a friend proves too strong to resist”) to the simply peculiar and the nearly-true (that he had “never read a book through - print disturbs me - although I believe in the teaching of the Bible as I have heard of them from others, because I have seen the proved true in my own life,” and “I have never tasted fish, flesh, or fowl, although I am not a vegetarian,” that dogs will die from long durations of discordant sounds) to the charming, bordering on visionary (“Fear - that’s what causes all sin. Fear of money, fear of getting caught, fear of wounded vanity, fear of public opinion, all all the rest,” and “I can take the recorded songs of a thousand birds and they will be harmonious. That’s because they are in tune with nature, while man and his instruments need to be attuned.”) Kellogg was an avid photographer, claiming never to take a gun (or a compass, claiming an inborn sense of direction) into the woods, but producing photographs prolifically from 1902 onward. We know that he had performed in Rochester, New York, home of the Eastman-Kodak company, by December, 1900, around the time of the introduction of the “brownie” camera - the first cheap, popular device for making photos. It is unclear whether he might at that point met Gertrude Achilles Strong (b. May 4, 1860; d. May, 1955), a recent divorcee and the daughter of Henry A. Strong, co-founder and first president of the Kodak company, or whether they met much later in the late 1910s in Hawai’i. Regardless, their meeting and relationship was pivotal for Kellogg. His first disc for Victor certainly sold very well, likely in the tens of thousands, and he claimed that he could earn $4,000 a week (a staggering $100,000 in today’s money - and more than half of the $7,000 a week that the Orpheum paid Sarah Bernhardt, their highest-paid entertainer) performing in the 1910s, and his family was relatively wealthy. But they weren’t Gertrude Achilles Strong wealthy. Almost no one was. When she died in 1955, she left behind a fortune of over nine million dollars, making her the single richest person in the history of the state of California at the time, well into the top half of the richest 1% nationally. In 1913, Kellogg bought over 88 acres in Morgan Hill, south of San Francisco, an area he dubbed “Ever Ever Land,” where he built an inventive and “environmentally responsive” open plan cabin that he called “The Mushroom.” Around 1920, Gertrude Achilles Strong bought his land and more than 500 additional surrounding acres. She built a mansion for herself there at a cost of $276,000 (four million today) as well as a house for Kellogg and his wife and put him on her permanent payroll as property manager. He built water systems for her property and built and patented a riding fruit and nut picker for the property, while he lived comfortably with his wife Sad’i and two young live-in maids for the rest of his life. Each winter from 1915 through 1919, Kellogg toured from coast to coast, stopping in Camden, New Jersey to record a few performances for Victor Records, where he cut a total of 26 performances, six of which the company the company destroyed without having issued them. On February 15 and 16, 1916, he recorded four light classical pieces, imitating birds and following along the well-known melodies, as if a bird were singing the tunes in its down language. On the 15th, Alma Gluck, a star of the Metropolitan Opera and one of the most popular sopranos in the U.S. also recorded three of her best-selling performances. Although she did not record on the 16th, and Kellogg possibly traveled more than 100 miles north to Dalton, Pennsylvania near Scranton to visit friends on the 17th when Gluck recorded “The Bird of the Wilderness,” with words by Rabindranath Tagore, he joined her again in Victor’s studio on the 18th for two bird-themed performances on which Kellogg provided bird imitations. When the single-sided 12” disc of “Listen to the Mockingbird” was released in the Spring along with a significant marketing push by Victor, its sales exceeded expectations. When “Nightingale Song” from a mid-19th century operetta called Der Vogelhandler (The Bird Seller) by the Austrian composer Carl Zeller, was released a month or two later as a less-expensive 10,” it became one of the best-selling records of the decade. Apart from the two sides recorded with Gluck, Kellogg’s recordings are evenly divided between the bird-imitation novelties with musical accompaniment (an unenduring genre that grew in popularity both on stage and on records in the early decades of the 20th century) and segments of his stage act in which he would lecture on his relationship with the wilderness with demonstrations of bird-calls interspersed. Seven of those sides remain a fascinating glimpse of Kellogg’s performing persona. The last of them, titled “Bird Chorus,” recorded without commentary on January 14, 1919 is an extraordinary and unheralded moment in the history of sound recording. Starting in January 1915 and through all of 1916, Kellogg added a section of his stage act in which he turned on “an orchestra” of six Victrolas borrowed from local dealers in each town, and played discs of his bird-imitation and then proceeded to perform with them, simulating, as one reviewer put it, “a voice from the deep forest.” For the “Bird Chorus” disc Kellogg simplified the process to a single disc of his own performing along with a live performance, ingeniously weaving two continuous sequences of songs together to give the impression of multitudes of birds singing together. It is the first instance of overdubbing. Notably lacking from Kellogg’s discography are examples of his most spectacular and longest-lasting piece from his stage act - the “Blade of Flame.” By the beginning of 1912, Kellogg introduced a gas burner on stage which produced a four-foot blue flame inside a glass tube. Kellogg told his audience that because all of nature is connected through vibration and because of the gift he possessed of a vocal range many times that of highly trained singers and larger than that of a grand piano, he could cause the “blade of flame” to dance and ultimately to extinguish it using only his voice. It was, next to his bird-imitating, his best-known and best-loved routine. He augmented it with a demonstration of the technique of building fire by wood friction (a skill he imparted to the then-nascent Boy Scouts). Naturally, his fire performances in enclosed theaters were of some concern to local fire departments, and he made it a regular public relations stop to visit fire houses in each town during the afternoons to demonstrate the act, reassuring them of his control of fire and wowing them along with the local press. The only footage apparently extant of Kellogg is one silent minute of a newsreel outtake Kellogg giving this demonstration for a group of Boston firemen on November 5, 1926. (The film, including ten precious seconds at the end of Kellogg demonstrating his bird-imitation technique facing the camera is available online at the University of South Carolina’s Moving Image Research Collections site.) He continued to elaborate the routine, using bowed tuning forks. In the mid-20s he arranged a series of radio broadcasts intended to demonstrate his hypothesis that vibrations broadcast at sufficient amplitude could extinguish house fires. His proposal was that in the future each house could be scientifically tuned such that fire departments would need only to broadcast the appropriate frequencies to put out the fires. The seed for the idea seems to have originated with Kellogg’s exposure to Herman Helmholtz’s book On the Sensation of Tone which had already been published in two editions in America before Kellogg began making theatrical use of its central concept, that the air around us is a medium through which vibration is transmitted in waves. Kellogg was so enamored with the idea that in May and June of 1913, Kellogg added a bit to his stage act in which he explained to the audience that mental vibrations are crucial in love and marriage and that “tuning” of a silent “mental wireless” to a compatible frequency with one’s mate was central to harmonious love. Newsprint reviews of his attempts to demonstrate this with his wife were decidedly snarky. The audience didn’t get it, and it was quickly dropped from the act. Kellogg’s greatest and most enduring “hit” as a showman was neither a stage-act nor a recording. It was a vehicle made from two large pieces. The first was a Nash Quad, a four-wheel drive truck capable of hauling four tons. The second was a 22-foot section of a fallen redwood log eleven feet in diameter. He obtained the former in early Summer 1917 from the Nash Motor Company in Kenosha, Wisconsin while they were being produced for use in the First World War. Kellogg convinced the company’s namesake president of a vision of the beauty of California’s enormous redwood forests (and, very likely, the publicity benefits of Kellogg’s scheme) and took the Quad to Bull Creek Flat in Humbolt County, where with the help of several axemen from the Pacific Lumber Company they spent months sawing off a section of a fallen tree, stripping its bark, and carving out its interior into a living quarters with beds, cabinets, kitchenette, and bathroom. Mounting it on the chassis of the Quad, he polished and varnished the whole thing a copper color and installed electric lights. By November of that year, he drove the wooden cabin-on-wheels that he dubbed the Travel-Log cross-country, stopping in Kenosha for work on the radiator and “finishing touches” (including their brand name, it seems). Using his celebrity and press-savvy, he toured the machine, giving talks on the beauty of the great redwoods and the dire need for their preservation, taking a piece of the forest to the people. In the process, he introduced America to the idea of a mobile home. It now resides in the Humbolt State Park’s visitor center, reportedly only yards from where the tree from which it was hewn grew for centuries. Kellogg recorded 11 more performances for Victor during the period 1924-26. Seven of them were discarded by the company without having been released. The remaining four were re-recordings of his first two records using the new invention of microphones. While he continued to perform, his schedule gradually slowed as he shifted his first to attention to Gertrude Achilles Strong’s property and then to a fascination with Fiji, where he first traveled in the Spring of 1925 from Hawai’i. Fixated on the idea of wooden lali slit-drums and their use in communication over distances, Kellogg arrived alone and presented himself as a naturalist to the Chief of the Native Department on the island of Suva, who showed him a the instrument and for him to visit to the island of Baqa to witness fire-walking (after Kellogg had given a demonstration of the “blade of flame” routine, having thoughtfully packed the gear needed for it, and gave a performance of “Narcissus” as a bird-imitator) in the company of a British medical doctor. Kellogg was suitably impressed and incorporated discussion of both lali drumming and fire-walking as further evidence of his central theme of the need for vibratory attunement in his subsequent performances through the 1920s and 30s. In 1929, Kellogg survived a near-fatal car crash immediately before he self-published The Nature Singer: His Book, a profusely photo-illustrated collection of impressions drawn from his life and career and a document of his own self-invention, which went through at least two printings (all of them signed; the first 1000 are numbered), wrapped in the attractive but exceedingly brittle birch parchment that he used as stationary and for press notices. That year, he also patented an automobile ignition that started with whistling. He continued to criss-cross the country, giving talks based on his experiences in nature combined with pleas for conservation. There was talk of a movie that never manifested. In 1940, he and Sad’i adopted a 9 year old girl named Shannon who had been born in Honolulu. (She subsequently married a Charles Newton, nine years her senior, in 1961, divorcing him in 1967, and died in 2007.) When in 1946 Paramahansa Yogananda published his Autobiography of a Yogi, describing his encounters with spiritual teachers and his travel in India and U.S., he briefly recounted in a footnote having seen Charles Kellogg do the “blade of flame” bit in Boston in the ‘20s. And that’s who Kellogg has been for the past century - a remarkable and unlikely figure at the intersection of science and art and showmanship and the spiritual. Charles Kellogg’s health declined through the 1940s before died of a heart attack on September 3, 1949 at the age of 80.

[eskalations]

Smoke and Gunpowder, Chapter 2

A/N: I was not going to post this chapter so quickly after the last, but life happened and I needed a distraction. Earlier, my sweet dog of 17 years, passed on and this has been just about the hardest day of my life. His passing was peaceful, but it didn't make things any easier. I was in the middle of writing this chapter when I received the news, so this piece will always have a special place in my heart. I'm still not sure if I'm back in the swing of things with my writing, but I'm planning on going back and editing when I'm feeling more like myself.

So, today we have the meeting of Ray and Raina. While I wanted to do a chapter where there was more interaction between the two, this chapter seemed necessary for backstory purposes. I also realized I never specified the age changes for our lovely characters. Since Roy was born in 1885 and Riza was born in 1889 (canonically), I just decided to swap their ages. That's pretty much the only big change there is.

Please let me know how you enjoyed this chapter! I love getting feedback!

AO3 | FFN

Tumblr: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5

This chapter is dedicated to Skippy (May 18th 2003 - May 29th 2020)

Augenblick, East Area - Summer of 1903

The town of Augenblick was less spectacular than she could have ever imagined.

'Blink and you'll just about miss it' The man had said as she exited the train earlier that day. He must have seen the look of surprise on her face at such a small station existing in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. There was no town in which the station was on the edge of, no bustling streets with families doing their Sunday shopping, no cars puttering down the road to their destination – all she could see were fields stretching out endlessly in every direction.

The man who had gotten off the train with her was long gone by the time she pulled out the booklet the Madame had given her. Honestly, she should have realized what this small blip of a town was going to look like by the map in front of her – there seemed to be nothing but green bleeding across the wrinkled pages.

At fourteen, she wouldn't call herself incredibly resourceful – but at least she could read directions. The Madame had circled her destination with a fat, red marker – making it stand out amongst all the greenery it was surrounded by.

The girl started walking and hoped that she was traveling in the right direction.

The dusty road crunched beneath her shoes and she had to cringe as small particles of dirt made their way between her toes. Maybe wearing the new shoes she had bought for this occasion hadn't been the best idea...but it was too late to change them now. She had wanted to impress Master Hawkeye by dressing as professionally as a young girl could, but now she was beginning to see why the Madame had kept insisting that she needed to wear something a little more comfortable.

'I want him to see me as a lady,' She had shared with her foster mother while buttoning up her crisp new blazer. All her clothes had been starched earlier that morning before she was set to be at the station and even her usually black unruly mane was combed and slicked to perfection. 'I want him to see me as an apprentice worth taking.'

The Madame had simply smiled at her young charge's determination, smoke pouring from her lips as she spoke.

'My dear – with the amount I'm paying him for your lessons – he would take you on even if you were a newborn baby,' The words did little to abate her nerves.

She didn't want the man to pour his efforts into her because he had to – she wanted him to teach her because he saw potential.

The amount of information she had on Master Hawkeye was scarce. She knew that he was an excellent freelance alchemist, who's early research had been compiled into a single publication that had made waves in the alchemy community.

However, that was it. After his first work was published, he retired to the country and was now known as a bit of a recluse. From the Madame's information, it seemed the military had propositioned him multiple times to become a State Alchemist, but to no avail. Raina found it hard to believe that he wouldn't jump on the opportunity since with that grand title also came grand funds for research.

The only other piece of information she had received from her source was that the man had a son who also lived with him. The age of said son was unknown to her still.

'Now you must be careful, dear,' Her older "sister" Margaret had warned her that morning, patting her head gently in an endearing fashion. 'You will be the only woman in the house – so, you must make sure they are treating you right. If they try anything funny, you have to promise to call us immediately.'

Madame Christmas had scoffed at the idea.

'Once they get her riled up once, they'll know better than to mess with her,' Madame Christmas insisted without worry, taking a long drag from her cigarette before exhaling a cloud of smoke. 'We've taught her well. She knows how to defend herself.'

Her foster mother wasn't wrong; she could defend herself. However, it had been a long time since she had lived with a male counterpart. She couldn't remember her father (her parents had died when she had been just three years of age) and the Madame rarely housed young men in the bar.

The thought of living alone with two men had caused her quite a bit of anxiety, but she wasn't going to let it stop her. Even as she trudged down the road, sun beating down mercilessly upon the top of her scalp – her gait was confident as she embarked on this new chapter of her life.

She had been walking for about half an hour before she came upon a small town. A groan unknowingly slipped from between her lips at the sight of it.

Augenblick was small – so small you could hardly justify its place on the map. From what she could see, it was comprised of one long row of buildings lining two sides of a dirt road that spanned just about 100 meters. From the looks of the way the lots were set up, it seemed that they were all commercial.

A few people milled about, swinging bags full of produce as they went about their morning routine. There were stands set up in front of the buildings where farmers were selling their goods to residents and chatting merrily with their neighbors. This version of the Sunday Market was very different from the bustling one back in Central that Raina was familiar with.

Gripping her suitcase tightly in her sweaty palm, the girl continued to trudge forward. She had passed a school house and a general store before finally getting stopped by a curious shopper.

"Can I help you, dearie?" An elderly woman asked, taking notice of the map clutched in her hands. After giving the girl a once over, she continued with her line of questioning. "You don't look to be from around here – are you looking for something?"

Raina was caught between wanting to find the Hawkeye residence on her own – to prove her status as an independent young lady – and wanting to get some help since the map's lines were starting to bleed together in the heat of the midday sun.

"Yes," The girl said, accepting that this was a small concession to make in her journey to becoming a worthy young apprentice. She could always be independent tomorrow. "I am looking for the Hawkeye residence."

The woman looked at her strangely for a moment. Raina's confident stance did not waver though – she knew it probably looked strange for a young girl to seek out an older man, but she wasn't here to worry about appearances. After a brief pause, the woman answered her cautiously.

"It's just down main," The elder spoke slowly, still unsure of what the young girl's motive was. "If you keep walking that direction, you will come to a fork in the road. Take a right if you're looking for the Hawkeye residence, take a left if you want to traverse the desert."

Raina laughed nervously at her dark humor. At this point, she wasn't sure which path the woman considered to be more dangerous.

"Thank you!" Before she could take her leave though, the woman's hand reached out to grab her wrist. This stopped the young girl dead in her tracks as she was met with a serious set of dark eyes, concern evident in the way the woman drew her near to speak quietly in her ear.

"What do you want with that old man, child?" Her voice was low, suspicion blending with worry. Raina glanced nervously at the shoppers who passed them, but none even batted an eye at the strange scene in front of them. The woman tightened her grip again, forcing the girl's gaze back to her own. "If you need any help, all you have to do is tell us."

Shaking her wrist from the woman's grasp, Raina brought her hand protectively to her chest – map and all.

"I am an apprentice, ma'am," The girl insisted, tone bordering on rude. These country folks may be fine with lecturing young ladies and manhandling them in the streets, but she certainly was not. "I am here to learn alchemy from Master Hawkeye and that is all."

She could tell the older woman was affronted by such a brash response, not used to a girl speaking to her elders in such a way – however, she recovered quickly. The surprised look on her face morphed into one of sympathy.

"I didn't mean to offend you, child," The lady insisted, picking up the bag of vegetables she had dropped to her side at the beginning of their conversation. "I just know that the elder Hawkeye is not one to be trusted. Ever since the death of his wife, his behavior has been strange. We've rarely seen him for the past few years – the only one that ever comes into town is his son."

The people mulling around the market were now eyeing them – pausing at the stands nearby to watch the encounter while still attempting to appear casual. They would pick up an apple, turn it in their hands to check if it had any soft spots, and then glance quickly over at them. She could tell by her faces that, at the mention of Berthold Hawkeye, she had set the subject for Sunday gossip amongst the small populace.

"Just because someone does not wish to mingle with others does not mean they are any less trustworthy than you or I," Raina insisted, defending her new teacher from the accusations of the lady in front of her. Already this town was a little too judgmental for her taste. "I could care less how social he is as long as he is a dutiful teacher."

"Child," The woman pleaded, a hint of desperation in her tone as Raina made to walk away, suitcase swinging in her hand. Luckily, she did not grab her this time – however the fear that infused her tone, had the young girl turning to regard her once more.

"I know it seems like I am simply an old gossip who has nothing better to do," Raina fought the urge to raise her brows at the expression since that was precisely what she had pegged the woman as. "But you must listen to me – there is something wrong with that man."

The genuine concern in the woman's voice caused a shiver to run up her spine. Raina would have argued it was just a chill – however, in the middle of summer, that was unlikely. Seeing that she now had the young girl's attention, the woman continued.

"His son was so gaunt during the first few years after his mother's death, that it looked like a breeze would knock him over," The woman revealed, her voice so low that even someone walking past them would have to strain to hear her words. "He finished school early and after that – well he just disappeared. We didn't see him for months then suddenly one day he walked up to Mrs. Roth's stand to buy potatoes. By that time, he had filled out a bit – but there was a haunted look in his eyes."

Raina's curiosity was piqued, though she couldn't help but have some doubts in regards to the woman's claims.

"Madame," The young girl began carefully, lowering her tone to match the volume of the elder. The townspeople were still watching them – however, their interest seemed to have lessened once their conversation had become harder to hear. "I don't think it's fair to assume that something bad happened to him during that time. He and his father could have taken a vacation."

"No one left that house." The woman insisted, causing another chill to run through the girl. The older woman spoke with such conviction – like she knew that whatever it was she suspected was true.

"Maybe they were just enjoying some time alone together after the son finished school?" Raina tried to reason with the woman, desperately grasping for straws in an attempt to abate her fears. "Why does his disappearance have to mean something bad happened?"

The serious look in the woman's eyes was one that Raina would remember for a long time after.

"Because he was covered in bruises when he returned."

It was this conversation that had Raina shaking slightly on the doorstep of the Hawkeye residence. After the old woman had finally let her continue on her way, she was left with more fear and anxiety than before. She was more fearful now than she had been when she had originally been told she was being shipped out for alchemy instruction.

The house was nothing spectacular. It looked like it could have been grand once upon a time, but the broken shutters and overgrown garden implied that once hard times had hit, all efforts of upkeep had been abandoned. Even so, the view from the porch was one that's beauty couldn't be denied – the rolling green fields that surrounded the home for miles looked as though they were straight out of a painting.

Raina took a deep breath. She could do this. No amount of town gossip was going to keep her from doing what she had come here to do. She had been waiting her whole life for this and that old biddy was not going to ruin her chances of becoming a great alchemist.

As far back as she could remember, she had been studying alchemy. Madame Christmas liked to joke that the young girl had practically forced her to read alchemical essays to her at bedtime before she was able to read them on her own. One of her favorite alchemical works had always been the book of research Berthold Hawkeye had published a few years before her birth. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined she would have the honor of studying under him.

It was this realization that had her fist raising resolutely to the door. She was not timid. She was not shy. She was not scared. No one could deter her from the goals she had already set out to achieve. She would knock on this door and accept whatever fate lay on the other side.

But before her hand could even come in contact with wood, the door was swinging wide open in front of her.

Raina stood frozen. Well, she certainly hadn't been expecting that. Her fist fell swiftly to her side.

Standing before her was a young man only three or four years her senior. He was tall – certainly taller than she was – with a sturdy build that marked years of hard labor. His skin was golden, much like his hair, and there seemed to be a fine sheen of sweat covering him as if he had just come in from the fields. She watched as a droplet traversed down the weather worn features of his face before dropping off his sharp chin.

She had begun to sweat herself at his sudden appearance. She tried to tell herself that it was from the heat - but later she would question if that had really been it at all.

Despite his humble background, the man's spine straightened automatically at the sight of the young girl on his doorstep. Assuming the role of a gentleman – though looking nothing like one in ripped pants and a sweaty white shirt – he bowed his head in greeting to her.

"I must apologize," His voice was deep, much deeper than the voices of the boys she had gone to school with. "I did not realize you had arrived, Miss Mustang."

Being addressed so formally, she realized what set him apart from the boys at her school. He was not a boy; he was a man. His voice was too deep to be that of a boy's and his features were too hard to still be touched by the innocence of childhood. In the face of his own maturity, she puffed out her chest a bit before primly joining her hands in front of her.

"Hello, Mr. Hawkeye," She answered, clearing her throat to adopt a much deeper tone that would better match his own. "Please, just call me Raina. Miss Hawkeye sounds much too formal when we are going to be housemates."

The young man appeared unimpressed by her words, causing another bout of sweat to break out beneath her starched white shirt. Any hopes that she had conceived of the two of them being friends, seemed to be thrown farther and farther out the window as their staring contest continued. His amber eyes beat into her own, resembling those of a hawk's.

'Fitting,' she thought wryly to herself, as his gaze dropped to the suitcase she had laid to rest at her feet. Her hand itched to pick it up and turn right back around, leaving this house and his unnerving stare in the dust – but he surprised her.

Picking up her suitcase himself – the young man stood to the side of the doorway and gestured for her to make her way inside. The expression on his face was unreadable, but the grim lines of his face softened as she hesitantly stepped forward into the humid air of the home.

The inside of the house was much like the outside – dark and rundown. She could see a living area with a small stone fireplace off to the side, the furniture worn from many years of use. There was a door at the back of the room that she assumed led to a dining area and kitchen. The stairs were nestled in the corner of the area, leading to where she assumed the bedrooms and bathroom would be.

It was certainly different from what she was used to – but she guessed it could be considered cozy.

Careful to school her features, she turned back towards the younger Hawkeye. She didn't want him to think of her as a spoiled city girl. Despite their rough start, she still held on to the hope that they could be friends. She must not have covered her reaction quickly enough though, because when she met his gaze, there was a knowing look in his eye.

"I know it's not much, Miss Mustang," He emphasized his use of her formal name, pointedly ignoring the fact that she had asked him to call her Raina earlier. His words were polite, but she could hear a harsh undertone in them. "But I assure you that you will find everything you'll need to further pursue your alchemical studies within these walls."

Embarrassed at the censure evident in his tone, the young girl gave a quick nod of understanding.

"Yes, sir."

Satisfied with her quiet response, he gestured for her to follow him up the stairs. She grabbed her suitcase in her sweaty palm before following his orders.

"My father is having one of his bad days, so you will have to wait until tomorrow to make his acquaintance," Raina could feel herself deflating in disappointment, her footfalls heavy on the old wooden stairs. She had really hoped she'd be meeting her master upon arrival. "However, I am sure you are tired from your journey and will want this afternoon to rest."

"Oh, I'm not tired," Raina insisted, despite the aching in her feet. "What are your plans for the rest of the day?"

Without batting an eye, the young man turned to look at her over his shoulder.

"I'm going hunting," His words implied that he figured this answer would somehow affect her sensibilities.

Being raised in a bar though, Raina had never been the squeamish type.

"Can I come?" She asked innocently, following behind him as he led her down a hall at the top of the stairs. The strong set of his shoulders stiffened in surprise at her request, stopping him mid-step.

"I don't know," He answered slowly, clearly caught off guard by her words. The surprise on his face was short lived though as his features quickly settled back into the stoic expression he seemed to be so fond of. "Are you going to scare off our dinner?"

"Our dinner?"

The young Hawkeye had to grin as he continued to lead her forward. Like a dutiful guest, she followed closely behind – waiting for an answer.

"Surely you don't think I am going down to the market to get our food for tonight?" He finally asked, his hand turning the knob of a door leading to what she assumed to be her bedroom. A few doors down, she could just make out movement underneath the door that resided at the end of the long stretch of hallway.

"Of course not," She answered evenly as she stepped into the room, setting her suitcase by her feet. There was a bed, a dresser, and a desk. It wasn't much, but it would do. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the young man studying her face. If he was looking for a negative reaction this time around, she wasn't going to give it to him.

"So," She started, crossing her arms over her chest and turning to meet his gaze once more. "When do we leave?"

His answering smirk made her heart soar – though she would never admit it.

"Half an hour."

Her heart continued to beat sporadically even after he had closed the door behind him, leaving her to unpack and dress for their outing. However, the heavy beating of her heart wasn't from the small smile he had given her or the moment of softness she glimpsed in his eyes before taking his leave.

No, her heart was beating because she had seen the bruises on the back of his arms through the material of his shirt.

Falling back upon the mattress, she stared blankly up at the ceiling. Just what kind of secrets were hiding within these walls and just what did it all mean for her?

[catgluue]

Chapter Four: Pinned

And I’m back with another chapter! Because it’s always Royai Week in my heart! And I’m determined to finish this. 

Read on A03

Chapter Four: Pinned

Riza slips into the attic as the sky is beginning to lighten.

If anyone were breaking in tonight then surely they would have done so by this point; leaving her post a little while early makes no difference now and besides, the General is still on the second story. The thought of Roy makes a blush creep into her face - perfect, just what she needs, to turn red like a schoolgirl with a crush every time she thinks of her commanding officer. She wasn’t even this ridiculous when she had been an actual schoolgirl with a crush. But this is different, she thinks, in that this is so far beyond a simple crush. She isn’t ready yet to put the appropriate name to it, but she’s felt temptation, knows the feel of his hands on her skin, knows she wasn’t strong enough to fight it and won’t be again. Her bond with Mustang has always been a time bomb and now comes the aftermath; the debris and the damage.

Havoc, in the middle of a wide yawn, looks up as she enters the room, and she promptly shelves all thoughts of her complicated relationship with her commanding officer.

“What’s up?” He asks her. He’s sprawled out with his back to the wall of the small space, rifle propped up next to him. There are only a few boxes in the floored space, with many more piled precariously in the beams beyond. She pauses as she enters, hearing distant voices, and raises an eyebrow. “That’s Fuery and Breda, the sound carries through the vents.” Of course; she’d forgotten how she used to come up to try and listen in when her father first started teaching Roy. She’d stopped once she realized how boring the lessons were. She can’t hear what they’re saying though; the downstairs bedroom where they set up must be too far away; too many turns in the pipes would distort and weaken the sound.

She wanders over and peers into a box and stands up straight again when she realizes it’s full of clothes. Of course; the bulk of her mother’s belongings would be up here. She makes a mental note to come back up here to retrieve all the thankfully pre-packed items.

“I think our stakeout is a bust,” she tells Havoc, taking a seat on the floor and he shrugs, taking it in stride.

“Kind of a longshot anyway, wasn’t it?” he stretches, no doubt stiff from sitting by the attic window all night; at least she’d gotten to move around during their unsuccessful stakeout. “I’m guessing we’ll head out for real today and leave you to your packing.” she nods, thinking of all the work still left to be done.

“I can’t say I minded the company,” she tells him softly.

“You know Captain, it’s none of my business but … this place isn’t exactly full of happy memories for you, is it?” Jean consistently manages to surprise her by being perceptive despite his reputation (and admittedly disposition) for being something of a blockhead.

“What tipped you off?” she asks him, expression carefully neutral.

“You just seem tense. And you being tense makes the boss tense, which makes all of the rest of us tense, kind of like a chain reaction.” This is true enough, she knows, although she feels that the tension the team picks up from Mustang isn’t entirely due to her.

“I’ll be fine,” she tells him, standing up and brushing the dust off her skirt. “It’ll probably only be a few more days of work and then I can put this place behind me. Maybe once I sell the land I’ll even buy a townhouse in Central,” she muses. “I’m going back downstairs, let’s give it another hour and then meet up back in the kitchen.” He nods his understanding as she goes to leave the room.

“Oh and Hawkeye?” he calls after her.

She turns around, a hand on the doorframe. “Yes?”

“Next time you decide to break every frat law on the books, you might wanna make sure the room you’re in doesn’t have a vent that leads directly to the attic where your subordinate is stationed.”

Horrified, Riza stares at him.

“Look, Havoc, I don’t know what you think you heard but I-“ she begins, and he waves a hand dismissively, a smirk playing across his face.

“I won’t tell anyone. As it stands right now if I give you away, Breda wins the betting pool.”

“There’s a betting pool?” She asks in disbelief. “You were betting we’d break the law?”

“We all bet right, didn’t we?” He reasons.

“That’s not-” she sighs, looking up at the ceiling, willing it to crash in on the both of them, and counts to five before looking back at him. “It was a mistake and it won’t be happening again. Will you promise to keep quiet?”

“Of course,” he says, and she can tell he means it. “But as for it not happening again, I don’t suppose you’d want to bet on that because it sure sounded like things were left kinda unresolved-”

She rolls her eyes and walks out of the attic without a word. She would never say as much to Havoc but she isn’t sure that would be a bet she’d win.

-x-

Once the sun has crept up above the horizon they reconvene tiredly in the kitchen. Riza manages to find some tea, which Breda claims doesn’t ever really expire, and they sip at the bitter brew quietly as the sun rises.

“So I think we can catch a few hours sleep and then head out again.” Mustang says, leafing through a newspaper from 1903 he’s unearthed from somewhere.

“Sounds good boss,” Breda tells him, stretching in his seat. “I’m not as young as I used to be - these all-nighters get to me.”

“I actually picked  up a little activity off the road last night,” Fuery mentions, sipping his tea and then making a face. “It was so faint I can’t tell if it was human or animal but I’ll see if I can’t amplify it and find anything from that.” Havoc rises from his seat, covering his mouth as he yawns hugely.

“Great, I’ll be on the sofa.”

“I’ll be on the other sofa,” Breda echoes, already standing and collecting their empty mugs.

“You know there are multiple guest rooms in this house,” Riza tells them.

“Someone’s gotta be the first line of defense. You all get distracted too easily,” Havoc tells her. She barely catches the grin on his face before he heads out of the room. Riza rolls her eyes as everyone disperses, and, to preoccupied for sleep, walks up the stairs and down the hall she was patrolling - or supposed to be patrolling - last night.

She’s managed to make some headway in the house - apart from the study, which she abandoned soon after entering. Baby steps, she thinks. The largest room in the house is down a short hallway lined with nothing but now-empty linen closets. She has vague memories of it from early childhood; it used to be her parents room, before her mother died. After, her father took up residence downstairs, in one of the guest rooms, and lived his life as though the other levels of the house didn’t exist. As if her mother had never existed. As if Riza didn’t exist.

The room is mostly stripped: she’s left the curtains and matching bedclothes for the next owner to keep or dispose of, and has cleared the closet. All that’s left is an old writing desk that she intends to leave with the house. She looked inside yesterday and sure enough it remains untouched because it was her mother’s writing desk. She doesn’t have the time to go through the contents so she’s settled on methodically putting everything into a box. This is one box, however, that she intends to keep.

There’s a knock at the door and she starts; the methodical shifting was going well until she encountered a picture of herself as a toddler, sitting in their garden as it once was, her father crouching next to her, smiling. She’d seen it and realized she didn’t have any memories of him smiling that weren’t of the dreamlike surreal quality that memories take on when they could be from early childhood, or else entirely imaginary.

“Come in,” she chokes and she sounds as bad as she feels. The door opens and a dark head peeks around the corner.

Of course it’s him.

“Captain,” he says slowly, slipping into the room and almost-shutting the door behind him. “Is - are you-”

He doesn’t finish because to her horror a tear escapes and rolls down her cheek. She instinctively turns away, scrubbing at her face as she does so.

“Just packing!”

“Riza-”

“Don’t, it’s… this was never going to be easy.” He sinks to the floor next to her, far enough for them not to be touching but only barely. “There’s a reason this house stood untouched for so long,” she says finally, tilting her head up to look at the ceiling. “I didn’t want to come back. I wanted to stay with - in Central, I wanted to be useful and wanted, like I wasn’t here. I wanted to matter.”

His hand curls around hers, slowly, and she lets it.

“Sometimes men can be so singularly brilliant that the concept of kindness doesn’t occur to them,” Roy muses. “Runs on both sides of your family I think, lucky you.”

“Lucky me,” she breathes, thumb stroking the skin of his hand. “And I know what you’re-”

“I’m going to say it anyway,” he interjects, dark eyes meeting hers. “I-”

She leans forward to kiss him, effectively cutting him off. Riza isn’t ready to hear that from him; it’s too newly out in the open, though his actions - their actions, have been speaking for them for years. This is, she knows, all her fault anyway: she broke their unspoken oath never to touch each other like this. But it’s not as if he’s resisting, and as he snakes a hand around her waist to pull her closer and threads his fingers through her hair she thinks maybe this was inevitable from the start, that the events of The Promised Day only served to chip away at their already weakening defenses.

They break apart at the same time, and she thinks she sees a flash of a mischievous grin before he stands up and pulls her to her feet, leading them both to the bed.

“Sir,” she cautions, and he slides onto the mattress, patting the space next to him.

“Come on, Hawkeye; I’m exhausted. You must be too.” She is, and she sits without another word, and then allows him to draw her down to the mattress. She turns into him as he settles an arm across her waist and it’s so comforting she doesn’t entertain the idea of telling him not to because they can easily be walked in on.

“We still need to have that talk,” she murmurs, eyes already closed, and he presses a kiss into the top of her head.

“Of course. Later.”

-x-

“General? Hawkeye? We - oh.”

Riza’s eyes flutter open and she tries to sit up but quickly finds that at some point during their nap Mustang had also flung a leg across her body and worked his other arm underneath her, effectively locking her in his embrace. Her face heats up instantly.

“You know what, I can come back later,” Breda is saying from the doorway. “Take your time, ah, extricating yourself.”

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Riza says, working a hand free to shake the General’s shoulder.

“I’d call your bluff if it wasn’t for that one time we were camping outside of Youswell and I woke up in pretty much the same position you’re in now,” he admitted, the initial shock in his face turning to amusement. “Not the leg though, that must be new.”

“What time is it?” Roy asks groggily, rolling away from her and sitting up.

“Half-past noon, sir. We’d better get a move on.”

And move on they do. This time Riza watches their departure from the large window upstairs, as they walk off into the woods to where the car is concealed down the road. With a sigh, she takes her mug of tea - not terrible, if you didn’t mind a slight dusty taste - and makes her way up to the attic.  

-x-

One day while her father was taking one of his few breaks from his work, she slipped into the study. She wasn’t sure what it was she expected to find; certainly not Roy, gone for months now. Nevertheless it was him she thought of as she walked around the small room, fingers grazing the spines of the old books that lined the walls. They were clearly all alchemy tomes; when she was very little she used to pull them down and pretend to read from them, to her father’s amusement.

“Well now, I haven’t seen you set foot in this room in years.”

She whirled around, terrified to see her father standing in the doorway, looking exactly as weary as he had when he’d gone down the hall to rest.

“I’m sorry, I-” she began, and he waved a hand, silencing her.

“Why the sudden interest in my study?”

She didn’t have an answer for that. They both knew that she had no aptitude for alchemy: a failing she was certain her father was still bitter about, though he hadn’t said as much in years. Alchemy had been the source of many arguments between them, and Riza had hated the concept for a long time but at some point, through the months and years of walking home from school listening to Roy ramble about what he’d learned that day, or helping him study, or occasionally watch him perform a transmutation she found she’d grown almost fond of it. She didn’t understand it, but something about his enthusiasm for the subject had endeared it to her.

She’d never thought the day would come when alchemical sigils would be a source of nostalgia and comfort.

“Would you like to be a part of my research?” he asked finally, after a long moment of silence. She looked up at his thoughtful face, wondering what use she could possibly be to him.

“What would I need to do?”

“My secrets need a keeper,” he mused, stepping into the room. “I won’t live forever to guard them, so I need to pass on my flame alchemy to someone who will keep it safe from falling into the wrong hands.”

“But I can’t use it,” she told him. “I wouldn’t understand it.” She was also a little afraid of this elemental alchemy he’d spent most of her life obsessed with. She hesitated before venturing a suggestion, “Wouldn’t Mr. Mustang be a better person to give it to?”

“I can’t be sure of him,” her father replied dismissively.  

But I can, Riza thought. Roy worked so hard, he deserved to learn his master’s secrets. It wasn’t his fault that her father had high standards - no one could really live up to them, and she knew that firsthand.

“Why not?” was what she asked.

“He’s too eager,” her father answered finally. “I don’t know if he understands the full weight of the responsibility. But you will, my serious girl.”

She did. She had been living in the shadow of alchemy and academia her whole life, so much so that until a certain apprentice of her father’s had showed up, she’d altogether forgotten how to have fun. But she saw clearly now that the clouds had only uncovered the sun for a short time. And she would have plenty of time, lying on a table in excruciating pain while the symbols were indelibly etched into her skin, to let the gravity of the situation sink in.  

Riza gives one last hard look at the study before closing the door, locking it, and placing the key in her pocket. She has grown so accustomed to self-flagellation on the matter - what she should have done differently when handed the heavy burden of flame alchemy, how she could have prevented what happened in Ishval - that she hasn’t considered that it should never have been her burden to bear. She had accepted it willingly, but she had been a child, desperately seeking the approval of a parent who was absent in mind if not in body.

As she stalks across the house to the room she’d been packing when the sudden desire to enter the study had come over her, she thinks angrily that she was manipulated. Not just to take up the mantle of the research, but her father had to have known she would give the array to Roy. He didn’t know if Roy was the right choice, and had tried to absolve himself, even though giving her the sigils was fundamentally the same thing as passing them on to his apprentice himself. He had known exactly what he was doing: presenting her with a choice that was no choice at all.

She was wrong; she does need Mustang’s help after all. She’ll ask him to come here and burn the room out entirely, until nothing remains of the research notes, the books, the smell. Until nothing remains of her burden.

[aion-rsa]

An Evolution of Dragon Stories: Dragonslayer by Duncan M. Hamilton

https://ift.tt/2YvaidS

We look at how Dragonslayer by Duncan M Hamilton fits into the long-running fantasy subgenre involving dragons.

facebook

twitter

tumblr

When Guillot is tasked with slaying the last of the dragons in Duncan M. Hamilton's Dragonslayer, the first in a planned fantasy trilogy, the character is way past his prime. All bets should be on the dragon, but a semblance of that knightly duty remains—even though Guillot struggles with alcoholism and is actively thwarted by someone high in power, there's tension in the narrative. Could Guillot actually win?

read more: Ruin of Kings is Must-Read Epic Fantasy

Knights and dragons -- it’s a tale as old as fiction and mythology. The traditional sort of dragon—winged, fire breathing—was popularized in the Middle Ages, the most famous story being St. George slaying the dragon. That story was immortalized in a Raphael painting, circa 1506, titled "Saint George and the Dragon," that now resides in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

Dragons have been an enduring story and iconography throughout history. You’re hard pressed to find a culture without a dragon or dragon-like entity. Ancient China, Sumeria, Nepal, Tibet... even the Aztec had a dragon-like creature woven into their iconography. A fantastical creature possibly derived from a combination of imagination and seeing real creatures like crocodiles, or in some cases finding fossilized dinosaur bones, the dragon is something as universal as the act of telling stories.

Dragons were thought of as creatures to be overcome by the most gallant and saintly, and thus you can hardly see a story involving a knight without a scaly, fire-spouting foe. Even though the book The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, published in 1903, didn’t contain any dragons, the many variations on that tale since have often incorporated the creature as something for King Arthur’s knights to surmount. By the time we get to the BBC’s Merlin, the wise yet destructive dragon was such an important part of the narrative, he was voiced by none other than British acting icon John Hurt.

read more: Adventure Zone Returns With Murder on the Rockport Limited!

We’ve seen the image of the dragon take a decidedly friendlier turn. Perhaps the beginnings of this could be seen in Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series published in 1967. There, the series was science fiction instead of the usual fantasy, because the dragons were genetically engineered. It made McCaffrey the first women to win a Hugo Award, and spawned a rich fandom in which fans "play" Pern, creating original characters to inhabit the fictional world.

In movies, we’ve seen Pete the Dragon (1977 and 2016) and Dragonheart (1996), both unabashed family romps that basically give the character a magical best friend. The Inheritance Cycle, a book series by Christopher Paolini, also played on the dragon-riding fun, and was eventually made into a lackluster movie.

Not all dragons had to be series either. Ever read Myth Adventures by Robert Asprin, published from 1978 to 2002? Because you should. The main character has a pet dragon called Gleep who only says the word “gleep.”

History is cyclical. What’s old becomes new again. As you might have noticed, dragons have returned to popular fiction in recent years as their fearsome selves—most notably the Cumber-beast Smaug in The Hobbit, Daenerys’s besties in Game of Thrones (both adaptations of books published in 1937 and 1996, respectively.)

read more: The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm — Checking in on Christopher Paolini's Eragon

The kids get How to Train Your Dragon’s Toothless. The grown ups with an HBO Go password get what happens if you don’t train your dragon to be a big puppy. The shift from monster to friend to monster again—it’s paralleled in fiction's exploration of other fantastical creatures, like vampires, werewolves, etc. (I have yet to hear of any angsty sparkling dragons and, if there are some, feel free not to share them. Some things are meant to be slain.)

We’ve had fantastic stories told that resonate with an audience long after the last pages or last episodes have aired. You still hear shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad mentioned -- these shows broke down the usual expectations about gangsters and drug dealers and created quality entertainment. We’re seeing that in our fantasy and science fiction, too. A classic foe—the dragon—can return to fiction and represent an audience’s need for more than just a good guy fighting a bad monster.

Reinvention has kept old stories and concepts fresh. Take for example, the bold brash action in the Amazon Prime series The Boys. Gone are the usual tenets of a hero’s compulsion to seek justice. Instead we get a super violent, ugly view of a corporatized hero system designed to sell movies and stuff and pander to the American dream while sweeping accidental and wrongful deaths under the rug.

When speaking to Den of Geek about his creative process, author Duncan M. Hamilton explained: “For the dragons, I leaned toward real myths and legends as a starting point, then embellished to my own taste as I went.” That embellishment created more than just a monster of legend, but a being with a rich inner life that allowed the reader to take a peek inside his head for a few chapters.

read more: Contemporary Fantasy Meets Noir in Magic For Liars

In many ways, Dragonslayer represents a return to the classic story of a gallant knight riding into battle against a fire-breathing beast. What it does well is the fact that our hero is hardly suited for the task anymore, and that our dragon is even questioning his own motives. In Dragonslayer, chapters take turns seeing from Guillot the knight’s point of view, the sorceress he befriends, his human adversary, and the dragon himself. From each character’s perspective, we see their wants and needs, their motivations and the dangers they face. We empathize, even, when faced with the adversaries of the hero. Even when that adversary is a great scaly beast.

Hamilton told us: “I think being able to empathize with the dragon makes for a far more compelling story.” It does. Looking at the dragon in a new light also helps illuminate how special our protagonist is. Guillot is not a knight in shining armor. He was, once, but he’s let himself go. He’s almost reprehensible, wasting away his days as a drunkard and a nuisance to his town, languishing in his bad memories.

Guillot often bemoans his ineptitude in the beginning, even feeling guilty when the sorceress thanks him for rescuing her from certain death: “The praise made Gill feel uncomfortable. He was a drunk who had pissed his life away because things hadn’t gone his way. He thought about admitting that he had still been drunk when he’d rescued her, but couldn’t bring himself to say it.”

But when the call to action comes, he answers, even if he begrudges being out of shape and out of practice. In this way, Guillot is more like the reader than many heroes in classic fantasy stories. Once a skilled swordsman, he’s woefully out of practice, and rides forth believing full well that this could be his end.

read more: K.A. Doore on The Perfect Assassin

Add to this the search for a relic that may be even more important than anyone realizes. This relic ends up having a deep significance to Guillot, something that he and his allies won’t realize right away until the pieces start falling together with each new discovery. And who happens to have that relic in their claws? I think you might see how this all ties together... 

Alliances are made, promises broken, secret histories revealed—and it all revolves around the discovery of a dragon waking up from a long snooze. 

Taking something old and making it new again—it’s a way to show familiar ideas but make them fresh. It’s an opportunity to explore new territory. Hamilton certainly accomplishes this in Dragonslayer.

Bridget LaMonica is a contributor at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @BridgetLaMonica.

Read and download the Den of Geek SDCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

facebook

twitter

tumblr

Feature Bridget LaMonica

Jul 31, 2019

Tor Books

Fantasy Books

from Books https://ift.tt/2MtKGM8

[albion19]

Bonkai wip

So I’m going to post stuff that’s been in a folder for too long. It’s all unfinished and some posts will be longer than others. Enjoy!

Shadows and whispers follow her through the empty house, a house that she cannot stand to be in any longer. She is going to sell it and think about where to go next. Not Virginia but somewhere South. Maybe New Orleans…

No, that’s where Kai is.

Kai Parker. Her arch nemesis, not that he viewed her as such. She had locked him up in a Prison World, a looping cold day in February. Just after Valentine’s day. He liked to sing her sad love songs when she visited him…She should have killed him, as Ric wanted but he had answers. Elena remained asleep for months after Stefan died and in that time Kai had toyed with Bonnie, offering the answers to all her problems…

Lights flashed in the dark. Red, green, blue, white. Again and again. Music played, a song that had been playing for months on end, never abating. It was a form of torture and some nights in the silence of her empty room she thought she could hear it.  Kai was desiccated and she wondered as she forced the straw between his lips if he could hear Two Princes even unconscious. It likely followed him into his nightmares. She lowered the volume a little and tried not to let it show how much it annoyed her too.

He took some time to get his bearings as she squeezed the last of the blood into his mouth and stepped back. He lifted a woozy, pale face and groaned.

“No…turn – turn it off.”

“I’ll turn the sound down if you answer my question.”

He looked away from the jukebox and landed his unfocused eyes on her. She saw the moment he realised who she was, that she was real. He smiled and she could not help but feel a vindictive pride. He had boasted that Katherine would make them suffer but Bonnie had stopped her, had literally stopped hell in its tracks.

“…I take it back.”

“What?” she stepped closer as Kai shifted in his chair, the chains clinking. He looked more like his usual self-possessed self, his colour returning. Infuriating.

“You’re the baddest bitch.”

Bonnie looked down to hide her smirk, half in shadow but Kai saw and grinned. Bonnie looked back up with a stern face. “You don’t seem surprised. I thought you lost a bet?”

“I did because I thought you’d figure who was in the casket. Am I surprised you beat Katherine? No, I was counting on it,” he admitted and Bonnie narrowed her eyes. “I wanted hell gone, Cade or no Cade. I told Kathy that you were weak, that you were no threat so she’d leave you alone. I didn’t care that hell was in better hands, I never intended to go back there. She could burn forever for all I cared, though she’d likely try to drag me along with her when she realised I fucked her over. You sticking me in here was actually a good thing,” he mused, looking around the bar.

Bonnie smirked. “We both know that’s a lie.”

“Whatever. I’m just saying I never underestimated you Bonster.”

Bonnie nodded, looking at the ground and did not answer. He might be lying but he sounded sincere. She moved closer and caught his gaze, which was a bright blue in the spotlight. “Wake up Elena.”

“Oh is she still snoozing? Tried true love’s kiss? Damn I should have done that instead. Just to see Damon’s face when it doesn’t work.”

“Stop playing games. I died for a minute, I saw her in some limbo place but she’s still sleeping. You said if one of us died she would wake up.”

“Well, she did wake up for that minute you were dead. That limbo place is where I trapped her soul but she could have crossed over with you taking her place. You came back.”

Bonnie shook her head, remembering how Enzo had pushed her out of that dreamy world and back to the land of the living. Bonnie shook the empty blood bag at Kai.

“If you ever want free from those chains you have to tell me about the spell!”

“Sure but it wouldn’t make any difference. I’m the one that cast it, so I’m the only one that can undo it.”

“Then undo it.”

“You’ll let me out?” he asked, smirk on his mouth. He knew the answer to that.

“Of those chains, yes. You’ll be free to walk away and never hear that song again,” Bonnie said and Kai looked hatefully at the jukebox. He sighed, looking back at her.

“I said my death made the spell I put on Elena permanent. So if we reverse that, make me a shiny new living breathing witch again, she’ll wake.”

“Bring you back to life? Sure I’ll just get on that Lazarus.”

He stared fixedly, eyes drilling into hers. “Come on, you know what to do,” he said, ignoring her sarcasm.

“Sorry but the cure is off the table.”

“Pretty sure it’s all room temperature and housed in a soon to be rapidly ageing Salvatore.”

He grinned and Bonnie’s stomach plummeted. “If you drink the cure Damon will die.”

Kai pouted. “My heart bleeds for him Bon, truly, but that’s the condition. I can’t wake up Elena while I’m kinda-sorta dead. If Damon loves Elena then he should be willing to sacrifice everything for her, right? I find them utterly gross but that would even give me warm fuzzies.”

Bonnie threw up her hands. “You’re full of shit. If he does that he and Elena will never be together.”

“And if he doesn’t he’ll grow old without her. Or more likely die of liver failure in a year or two. So either way he’s screwed,” he tried hard not to grin and failed.

“Or I could die.”

The smile on Kai’s face dimmed and then vanished at her quiet, considering words. “No, you won’t. You die and this place collapses because you helped make it. You’d be letting me out. You can guess what’ll happen then.” His smirk returned but there was a dark desperation there. With the twins alive it was unlikely the prison would collapse, just become unstable.

Bonnie was lying, she would not risk her life to wake Elena. She had promised Enzo that she would live every moment of her life with no regrets and she was not going to break that promise.

“So you get the cure and Elena wakes?”

“The retro Gemini version of me destroys the binding agent for the spell and then Elena wakes, yes.”

“What’s the binding agent?”

“Damon,” he said and shrugged at her appalled face. “I didn’t know he was gonna become human and solve my heretic dilemma. I actually brought the cure with me from 1903 but someone burned my body. It was in my pocket the whole time.”

He stared at her in accusation and all Bonnie could do was gawp. After the wedding massacre she had gone back to the barn and set his headless body on fire. She had no clue he had the cure to vampirism. Bonnie cupped her face, shaking her head.

“You’re so exhausting. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Do a spell on me. I’m not lying. I’ll become human and wake Elena. Waking her will also break the link between you. For what it’s worth, I probably shouldn’t have done that. I was hurt,” he said with something like remorse, a winching thing.

“Bo fucking ho. I swear if you’re lying I will never come back. Do you get it? You’ll be alone forever.”

Kai’s eyes flashed with fear before he smiled gently. “Nah. We’re gonna grow old together Bon.”

*

He was right. Damon had trashed the mansion, gotten drunk for about a month and then agreed. He never deserved Elena, the one man who did was now dead and if Damon could make up for that sacrifice by giving Elena the chance to live her life then he would do it.

Kai had been grinning from ear to ear, though he did try at times to look sombre but that just pissed Damon off more. As Damon laid Elena down on the pool table Bonnie had switched off the jukebox, which made Kai a little teary eyed before he motioned at his chains.

“Can’t do this with my hands tied.”

With a strong feeling of dajavu Bonnie released Kai, who stretched for five minutes before getting off the stage. Then he picked up the chair he had been sitting in and threw it at the jukebox. He sighed as the glass shattered.

“I’ve wanted to do that for months. Okay, let’s do this.”

He drank Damon’s blood after giving a toast, which had been poured into a shot glass. He then asked them to take Elena’s hands. Bonnie sneered as Kai’s long, slim fingers laced through hers, while he took Damon’s wrist. He chanted, eyes closed and Bonnie watched as he wavered, his breathing becoming laboured as sweat dripped down his face. The cold snap she usually felt when touching a vampire started to fade, though with a heretic her magic recoiled at the wrongness of his nature. It was slowly replaced with the familiar warm vibration of a human witch. The magic within her became coaxed, sensing a power equal to her own but before she could delve into it Elena opened her eyes.

Kai stepped back, releasing them and gave Bonnie and Damon space as they cried and hugged a disorientated Elena. The crying became hard and he shied away, looking uncomfortable. Bonnie, after kissing her friend, quickly caught Kai as he left.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Outside? All that wailing and hair rending is giving me a headache. God, can you feel that?” he asked as they stepped out onto the empty street. Dusk light cast long shadows behind them as Kai dragged in a great lungful of air.

“Feel what?”

“Nature. All the little night creatures are waking up and there’s a smell of spring in the air. I’ve missed this.”

Bonnie gazed at him. Kai was awful, he was a killer and ruined so many lives. She never forgot he was a witch but that connection to nature that she felt in her bones was not something she associated with Kai.

“I never took you for a nature lover.”

“I’m a witch, it’s just instinctive. Fuck I hated being a heretic, the two natures did not get on at all. I had to really depend on siphoning my vampirism more than nature. It thought I was icky,” he sighed and leaned against the wall of the bar. He motioned behind them. “The looping of time in this world should slow his ageing a little but he’ll still die. Are you gonna stay here until then?”

Bonnie nodded. “I am…but they need space to say goodbye. You can’t be here to ruin that.”

Kai smirked. “Gonna chain me up again? Bonnie you’ve got this whole freaky side to you I never knew existed.”

“You wish.”

“Seriously, it’s hot,” he laughed, biting his lip and she turned away. He grabbed her arm and she hissed.

“Don’t touch me,” she shoved him back and he grinned, flicking his fingers at the necklace she wore.

“Vampire blood? Elmo’s?”

“Enzo!”

“That’s what I said. It looks like one of those life buoy thingies, you know for people who need saving?” his expression soured. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“Yeah like I’ll take fashion advice from a guy literally stuck in the 90’s,” she pushed him away and turned as he laughed.

“Whatever, plaid’s eternal. You rocked that grunge look and I always look good no matter what.”

“Christ, I’m going. If I see you within five feet of me again I’ll set you on fire.”

She walked back into the bar, waiting with bated breath for him to follow but after a few minutes she looked back out to find a deserted street. He was gone.

*

After Damon died, Elena and Bonnie grieved. She had been content to let Kai rot. She had given him the cure and he could now walk around his prison world. It was a mercy. There was no way out without her, no one else knew he was there except for her inner circle of friends. As far as she was concerned the last time she ever saw him was at Damon’s death bed.

She should have known better.

*

A siphoner was a rare and dying breed. For all the name calling and shunning there was a lot of good that a witch with such an ability could do. The Original family had thought so and learning that the most powerful siphoner and previous coven leader was alive but trapped had done nothing but spur them into action.

The ascendant Bonnie kept tucked into her mattress had disappeared. Before going to bed at night she checked that spinning contraption and usually awoke most mornings with her fingers around it. It might have been her imagination but touching it caused her to sense Kai, to dream of him and that morning she woke with a very clear image:

Klaus Mikaelson treating Kai Parker to a gourmet meal on a lively New Orleans street.

He had stolen her blood and her prisoner.

*

She had turned up in New Orleans with only one purpose and that was to drag Kai Parker back into his cold February jail cell. Why the Mikealson’s wanted Kai could only be for nefarious purposes so she was likely doing the world a favour by thwarting their plans.

She had not counted on a little red headed girl meeting her at the bus station.

“Hi. My name’s Hope. I know why you’re here.”

Bonnie had smiled in bemusement, lowering her backpack. “You do?”

“You want Kai. He said you’d be coming,” she leaned forward and spoke quietly, cupping her mouth. “He never stops talking about you. Actually he never stops talking. He’s weird.”

Bonnie frowned at the girl as she offered her hand, looking around. “Are you here by yourself?”

“Yeah but it’s okay, I know my way back. Just don’t tell my mom and dad okay?”

“…Okay,” Bonnie, feeling deeply bewildered, took Hope Mikaelson’s hand and stiffened. The nine year old girl was immensely powerful, a true prodigy and the daughter of the oldest vampire in the world. Hope explained how Kai came into her life as they walked through the quarter.

“I was sick. This thing, this monster was attacking kids, witches like me. It was draining us and nothing could stop it because it was too powerful. It wasn’t alive so it couldn’t be killed, it exists outside this world…” she shuddered as they waited at a crossing. Bonnie watched the crowd for any sign of an Original or Kai. The little girl looked up at her. “I dreamed of you, of the spinning key you keep under your pillow.”

“The ascendant?”

“Right. I didn’t really know what it was, I just knew that it opened the door to the person that could save us. Auntie Freya did a location spell and got the key from you.”

“And she let Kai out,” Bonnie stopped at a street corner, shaking her head. “It wasn’t anyone’s to steal.”

Guilt flashed over the girl’s face but then she lifted her chin. “It’s not stealing if you give it back. It’s borrowing.”

Bonnie smiled despite herself. “I suppose that makes sense. Can I have it back?” she offered her hand but Hope shook her head.

“Kai has it.”

“Of course he does. You know he was in there for a reason? He’s not a good person.”

“People say that about my dad but they’re wrong. Mostly. Kai thinks you’ll never forgive him but I told him he should wait and see.”

“He said that?”

“No, he doesn’t have to. He’s all messed up inside, his dreams are terrible,” she said and from the haunted look in her eyes Bonnie assumed the poor girl had got a glimpse of them. Kai had endured 18 years of isolation and then years being tortured in hell. He had suffered but it was easier to believe he felt nothing.

“He has nightmares about me?” she gave a small smirk.

“No, you’re the good ones but they kinda hurt the most. I try not to absorb what other people feel but I can’t help it sometimes. I’m like a sponge.”

Bonnie nodded, feeling pity. The girl was young but there was a weight to her and not just because of the family she was born into. In the distance she felt a vibration, a witch approaching.

“Why is Kai here? What did he do?”

“He siphoned the monster and trapped it into his prison dimension. He siphoned me and other kids, healing so many of us. We’d be dead without him.”

“And your family is grateful,” Bonnie sighed, watching as Klaus Mikaelson approached with a witch, an intense man she did not know.

“You should take that off,” Hope said suddenly and Bonnie looked down. The girl was staring at the blood necklace. Bonnie griped it and smiled.

“Why? Do you think it’s ugly too? Maybe I should get a new setting for it.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s like there’s something tied to it. It’s pulling so hard. Can’t you feel it?”

Bonnie did not have time to answer as Klaus appeared. He exhaled with relief at the sight of Hope, who ran into his arms. Behind them Kai stood, hands in his pockets and after a pause gave Bonnie a sheepish wave.

*

Kai was treated with respect and gratitude. He was offered a place in New Orleans, a fresh start and support from a community of witches who did not know of his past, only the heroic deeds of his present. He was the man who saved their children and defeated the monster. Those who did know of his past had let it lie undisturbed. He was in the company of sinners seeking absolution, one she thought Kai never asked for. Still, he stayed.

She had to leave, if only to stop the vindictive pull that wanted to topple his happy little world. The Prison World was now home to some eldritch nightmare from the dawn of time, a thing that Kai had lovingly dubbed Pennywise.

“You can have the ascendant back if you want? I heard you kept it under your pillow.”

“Yeah, no. I can imagine the sweet dreams.”

Bonnie rolled her eyes as she sat back, her belly full. They were sat on a balcony overlooking the quarter. Wisteria grew along the railing, framing them. It was romantic but her companion uninvited. She had just wanted a nice meal alone with a glass of wine before she left. She had been in the city for three days and tomorrow she was leaving. She had met Kai only briefly, just to hear his part in the tale. It all seemed to correlate with what Hope and Klaus told her. She had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with Kai and while he seemed committed to starting afresh he could not let her leave without seeing her one last time.

“So you’re going back to Mystic Falls?”

“Not that it’s any of your business but no. I’ve got this house I need to sell.”

“The one in Upstate New York?” he asked, taking a sip of wine. Bonnie narrowed her eyes.

“How do you know about that?”

“Oh, well when I got out of hell I kinda followed you for a few days.”

“Like a creeper.”

“Yes, like a creeper,” he smirked at her before growing serious. “When the bell rang and a door out of hell appeared I saw Mystic Falls…I saw you.”

“Me?”

“You were wearing jogging clothes. You were driving passed the Grill. I went for it and ended up in there. Just missed you,” he held his thumb and index finger apart.

Bonnie snorted. “So you could have suddenly appeared in my car? I would have crashed.”

“Surprise! Smoking suit and everything,” he laughed and sighed. “After that I went to your house. Saw you with him. Elmo,” his jaw clenched and his eyes flicked to the blood necklace. “That’s super creepy you know that?” he said and she rolled her eyes, preparing to leave.

“Says the stalker. You know if you put a foot out of line I can rip down everything you have?”

“I’m sure you think I deserve it, despite what I’ve done here,” he said with a muted smile as she got to her feet.

“They think you’re a hero but I know the truth. You don’t do shit for anyone unless you get something out of it.”

“Right, sure, believe what you want.”

“I will,” she put her purse over her shoulder, standing there. She should walk away but his eyes fixed on hers kept her still. “You saved those kids because the alternative was going back to the prison world. You’d do anything to avoid that.”

He sat back, food forgotten. “You’re right I would do anything to avoid that. Can you, who actually knows what it’s like, blame me?” he asked, jaw clenching as he leaned forward. “We both know if I wanted to I could have disappeared the moment they got me out. You know why I didn’t?”

“No.”

“You.”

“What do I have to do with this?”

“Everything. You remember the last thing Damon said to me before he died?” he asked suddenly, making her blink.

“…He said that it was possible. I didn’t understand what he meant.” Damon, old and grey, had looked between her and Kai before they had left him to die with Elena. He had made a grudging sort of peace with the Gemini witch.

“He thought I could be redeemed by doing good, that it was possible to be forgiven. He was a fucking idiot thinking I ever wanted his. He got that at the end.”

Bonnie stared at Kai’s intense eyes, noting the tension in his shoulders and arms before she scoffed. “You want my forgiveness? Do I need to remind you what happened the last time you played that trick on me?”

Kai looked aside, nostrils flaring, before glaring at her. “I’m not looking for another knife in the back. It wasn’t a trick then and it’s not now. You never gave me a chance,” his hard gaze softened into regret.

“I don’t owe you anything. You want to prove yourself? Do it but don’t look to me for a reward,” she stepped back and he growled in frustration, getting to his feet.

“I don’t care about goody points Bonnie. I’ve been given so many chances, I should be dead right now but I’m here. You could have killed me but instead you stuck me in a prison world.”

Bonnie spun around. “Because you were the only one who could wake Elena!”

“Which I did! My purpose to you was spent, right? You could have destroyed the ascendant after that, made it impossible for anyone to get me out…but you didn’t. You couldn’t.”

“Keep dreaming.”

“You hold onto things Bonnie, you can’t let go and for some messed up reason I’m one of those things.”

Bonnie laughed, fingers touching the blood pendant. “I keep this because I loved him. I kept the ascendant because I hate you. Actually I don’t even feel that because that would be a waste of energy. You mean nothing to me.”

He shook his head. “If that were true you’d have forgotten about it. Whatever you feel it’s not indifference. Take it from a former sociopath,” he gave a weak half smile but it faded. Bonnie said nothing for some time, just continued to stare at him until he looked aside.

“I want this to be clear okay? I don’t like you. At all. Stay here, start a new life and if you honestly want to turn over a new leaf then do it…but don’t expect me to care. I’m leaving. We’re strangers from this point on. You no longer exist.”

Kai gazed at her, a penetrating, drinking stare that made her heartbeat race before he smirked and sat back down at the table. He picked up his knife and fork and continued eating, looking at his plate. Bonnie stood still until he looked back up, his eyebrows rising.

“Oh you’re still here? Wait can you even see me? I don’t exist so you better go ignore me over there. You’re kinda ruining your super serious moment.”

“Screw you.”

“Oops, talking to a person who’s not really here, not a good sign.”

“Choke on your $100 fillet,” she grumbled as she finally walked away.

“By Bonnie. See you soon.”

[molloyborg3]

Excellent Replica Watches Swiss Made, Low-cost Pretend Rolex Watches Critiques

The watch was originally sold in 1927 and it's thought that no more than 35 were ever made, with very few examples in platinum. The 1518 was immediately succeeded by theSwiss movements fake Patek Philippe Ref. 2499 watches, which was produced till the early Nineteen Eighties. wikipedia watches In Phase three, Vacheron didn’t wait a quantity of years to trot out all essentially the most difficult models. All of them also earn the distinguished poinçon de Genève, or Geneva Hallmark — a distinction in which Vacheron’s watchmakers have long taken satisfaction. WP Boss Get an enormous suite in a special take a look at certificate and basic informatio. It is critical to send a 3-minute injection calendar and air provide. This model has been planted in five tables and time is decreased for 10 years. Small blue stone, pure blue, blue butterfly, coronary heart, like a solar seem like blue and white diamond. A giant variety of customers may have a better demand for reading availability than a consistent learn requirement. fpweb replica watches The place of the owner is still heavy top quality rolex replicas sufficient. Generally, after pretend watches assembled, it will be put into the market as quickly because it goes via a number of easy inspection processes. Therefore, the method from production to sales is very unprofessional, especially for informal producers. While the Day-Date has historically been obtainable in both yellow and white gold, the Rolex Datejust’s full-white gold fashions are decidedly unusual. At a look, these stable 18k white gold Datejust watches look just about indistinguishable from their stainless steel and white Rolesor counterparts. It is simply through delicate visual cues – such because the lug covers and the truth that the Rolex fluted bezel is made only of strong gold – that the luxurious nature of those replica watches is revealed. It offers convenience for the time studying of the watch. [newline]This excellent cloned watch may be very successful, and its design is appropriate for people of all ages. This is the biggest advantage of this watch replica. I consider everybody could be very familiar with Rolex watches. Rabbit trying on the quartz watch with oil painting element of the Flash recorder. For this reason, Veterans of the Ela Valley are called a good suggestion. Blog does not need to launch a beautiful and comfy present. It’s the brand of Chanel Gabriel watch replicas – Life Nicola. The Replica Rolex Where To Buy Online period of time used in the variety of Rome used inside 12 hours. Highlight the folding mini diamonds inside 11 hours. The commerce appeared in the midst of the home and Replica Rolex Submariner For Sale created his father. Since 1903, the Zenit collection has been hidden and excessive precision each hour. Since the creation of pic, posting and control of the publication 233. My metric group is roofed and combined with environment friendly and acceptable purposes. Given Rolex’s worth vary, not considered one of the watches offered by the model can be totally taken as “cheap” – and that was earlier than we began wanting on the vintage market, the place the sky actually is the restrict. In between, many of the brand’s offerings are within the $8,000 to $40,000 vary, but many of them have ready lists and are buying and selling on the open market for thrice their new retail price. The worth of the Rolex Batman has skyrocketed over the previous few years, it’s nearly inconceivable to get one at MSRP anyplace, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to go down any time soon. The BLNR is one of those particular watches that if you purchased one a quantity of years in the past and by no means wore it, you’ll be paying a number of thousand dollars greater than you initially paid for it. With the latest fluctuations in pretend Rolex costs, it’s hard to say that it'll drop in value within the foreseeable future, so if you buy one, you’ll in all probability pay a minimum of the total list price. The browser is considered one of my favorite watches in my collection. If the motion is identical as the original, then it's a genuine product. Why do you wish to promote it at such a low price? Even if the movement is different, the standard of the replica watch is impeccable, and the time of the replica watch continues to be correct. Patak Philip doesn't cease swiss replica watches replacin. The shiny stars covered the sky and the world. They can create the world and create our soul. I think the renal curtain is a single peak dimension. See the place to celebrate European games and star games. At the same time, even if it’s scorching, the mirror can clearly understand the effect of fine protection. Two months ago, SC thought was used from Basel. Tighten the most effective time for water and security. Now enter the call provider, corresponding to Mido and Tissot, you should use a decreased value. When shopping for fake vs.real, we should first take observe of the value of the desk. The amount of replica designer watches in the market can be very totally different. If the value of trusted replica watch websites is completely different, after all, the quality of the tip of the world 2019 pretend is also very completely different. The costs of clocks of big manufacturers are sometimes decrease, however still want high-quality swiss replicas, so users should first take notice of this tiffany t bracelet replica. Currently, there are many cheap men’s replica watches, similar to Casio, Swatch, Tissot, Fiyta, Seagull, etc.

[foxjay840-blog]

Kimball Baby Grand Piano Serial Number

PIANO APPRAISALS

Discover Your Pianos Current Market Value So You Can Sell It For The Best Possible Price

MANUFACTURING DATES

Stop Guessing!… Find Out Exactly How Old Your Piano Is With Our Piano Age Calculator

AEOLIAN/AEOLIAN - AMERICAN Est. 1903 - New York, N.Y. The manufacturing facilities at East Rochester was comprised of a series of separate and individual factories planned so that manufacturing of the various instruments was carried on in an entirely individual and distinct manner, and by separate organizations, each under direction of men who had been associated with each respective make for.

Here are the TOP FIVE places to locate the serial number of your BABY GRAND or GRAND piano: (See this link for a detailed picture of where to look) Note: You may have to remove the (1) music desk first and (2) gently clean out any dust from your piano's plate using a soft dry cloth + vacuum hose before you can find these numbers.

“John Steinway sent the founder a number of pianos (I vaguely remember 100) to get started again after the Great Chicago Fire.” (At this time, Kimball was still operating solely as an instrument dealership.) “Priscilla Presley had us build a gold painted Kimball baby grand for Elvis – it’s still there at Graceland.”.

LARGEST PIANO DATABASE

The age of a Kimball piano with the serial number 36415 is 119 years old. The serial number indicates it was manufactured in 1895. A Kimball serial number will most likely be a six-digit number, with the exception of models produced in 1900, which feature the five-digit number 71000. Open the lid of the piano and look toward the left of center of the tuning pins. There is a rectangular or oval plate that commonly features a serial number.

Instantly Accesses The Most Current & Comprehensive Piano Research Available Online

My piano had been in our family since I was young and we needed some information about wether it was worth selling. We had already read some things about this particular brand but couldn’t seem to find out anything else. Your website not only clarified my pianos age but now I can sell my piano with confidence knowing exactly what it’s worth. Great website. Highly recommended!

Karyn Lucas

New York, USA

How Old Is My Piano?

Your piano’s age is one of the most significant factors in determining your piano’s Value. Each piano is manufactured with a unique serial number that is recorded for future reference of not only when it was made but also where. Discover your Piano’s Age and Country Of Origin with our 5 Star Accuracy Guide to ensure the quality and reliability of each result.

✓ YEAR OF MANUFACTURE ✓ COUNTRY OF ORIGIN ✓ 5 STAR ACCURACY GUIDE

We were looking to purchase a Baby Grand Piano late last year but didn’t have any idea what we should expect to pay. After finding this site, we began by cross referencing all the pianos we were looking at with the valuation calculators. We quickly worked out which pianos were over priced or good value. It actually took the stress out of the whole buying process and we got a really good deal.

Sharni Limsal

Massachusetts, USA

I spent over 3 hours last night looking for some basic information about how much I should sell my small upright piano for. It wasn’t till I stumbled across your Piano Calculator website that I finally got some answers. After signing up to your membership I discovered my Piano’s actually worth a lot more than expected. It was well worth finding out now rather than later…

John Grassie

Manchester, UK

Calculate Pianos Age

SELECT YOUR PIANO TYPE

PIANO BRAND

SERIAL NUMBER

Accepted Forms of Payment

American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Money Order / Cashiers Check, Paypal, Personal Check, Visa, Wire Transfer

Kimball Baby Grand Piano Serial Numbers

Shipping

Kimball Baby Grand Piano Serial Number Location

While Weschler's does not provide packing and shipping services other than jewelry purchases, we do have a list of recommended third party shippers to assist you. It is the responsibility of each purchaser to make their own shipping arrangements. Keep in mind, property may not be released without receipt of purchase payment. In addition, once you have finalized shipping arrangements you must notify our shipping department to confirm your intentions. No property will be released without your confirmation with our office. Maryland Sales Tax is computed on this total purchase price. The purchaser will be required to pay the Sales Tax unless: (i) the property purchased is for resale and a valid Resale Tax number is presented to Weschler's business office at the time of payment, and the sales price is $200 or more; or (ii) the property is being shipped to a buyer located outside the state of Maryland by an ICC/USDOT licensed shipper/carrier. Please note that all property must be removed from our premises within one week (7 days) post-sale from a Capital Collections auction and three (3) days post-sale from a Metro Online or Timed auction. *If items are not picked up by the following Monday after a Metro Online or Timed sale, then a $5 storage fee per lot will take effect. If you have any questions about shipping, please contact Deborah Knott between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm at shipping@weschlers.com or 202-628-1281.

[averybuck91]

insurance companies in okc

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare quotes from different companies :carinsurancequoteshq.xyz

insurance companies in okc

insurance companies in okcota are trying to protect my kids from a bad thing i had, that a driver with no insurance and they asked me to put it over their roof for the roof to be the cause i have been insured in my car that was driving my car for 7yrs. when I was in the ambulance of on my home, so they would not do insurance. i have the same thing now. the people that they would pay to have nothing to do with and the hospital when they have been injured in a medical accident have a big problem I have been dealing with a few auto insurance companies for this years. I tried to put a full coverage car and the people that can say that the same way, even. They seem to be trying to do insurance. I had a similar case. My car was wrecked and they claimed that it would not be worth going with them. They were able to give me the money to just get me replaced. It s not like the way you would buy insurance for that,. insurance companies in okcupid for me to understand what is the difference in the insurance. And the fact I didn t get it from an insurance agent, but was in an accident and didn t have the minimum coverage. So it would be a much better approach, especially if you don t really have much of insurance coverage. Hi my sister if you get your insurance from auto insurance company it is not worth it. i.e. if someone who is younger is only 22 so I need to verify the amount to see if I don t have any insurance when a 19 year old driver will start driving me and be the owner of me. the average in my car insurance will be the same as my parents insurance. which, but I get the average for my insurance as the older person with no parents. It is not. my sisters car insurance for me to be told i was the insurance for my car. I said ok so I live in CA. Is that what insurance is for? How come he said i am. insurance companies in okcob, and they will ask for you to give them your car insurance info. If you are the current owner, you will need to get the car insurance company to tell you. If you are not the owner, you have no right to make any requests from the company. But if you want to keep your car, you can call them. Don’t forget to check for your insurance provider. This way, you can shop around to find an insurance policy that fits their needs. If your policy is so small that the difference in rates is worth it, you can shop around for the cheapest insurance that suits your needs. I agree 100% that this is an important avenue. What most people aren’t thinking about is insurance. In this article we take a look at what insurance premiums are for, which car type is best. A common question on insurance shopping the internet is: What about vehicle warranties? It’s one of the most basic questions on the road. Most people.

Let us help you cut your insurance cost in Oklahoma

Let us help you cut your insurance cost in Oklahoma City, OK? We can get you started finding the cheapest insurance for drivers out there. Just call or click to buy auto insurance in Oklahoma City, OK. Do you live in Tulsa, Tulsa, and Oklahoma City for miles a day? Well, Oklahoma car insurance rates are lower. But, the difference is worth having Oklahoma car insurance. In 2017, the average auto insurance premium in Oklahoma was $1,655 according to . But in Oklahoma City, it is $1,386. Oklahoma is the second most expensive state for car insurance in the U.S., around , as the state is $1,244 per year. But in Oklahoma City, it is $1,063. You would never take out an insurance, not to mention Oklahoma City is the 2nd most expensive city in the nation. There are no laws against uninsured drivers, so if you were in an accident when uninsured drivers hit, and have no insurance, you are in a serious financial situation just so you.

Car Insurance Coverage in Oklahoma

Car Insurance Coverage in Oklahoma - The best way to compare quotes for insurance is to have a look at various quotes in your state. To help you make an informed comparison purchase, here are the top auto insurance companies in Oklahoma that offer the cheapest rates and companies in Tulsa and Jackson to fill your policy.  Auto Insurance Specialists is the first insurance in Oklahoma that provides a full line of auto insurance quotes at a price you can afford. While you might not receive the exact lowest price you might get, a comparison quote can help you narrow down your search. Insurance carriers will charge you $35 to $55 per month for car insurance premiums. Keep in mind, these are only average prices, and you can get better coverage at a higher price. The more choices you ll get into over time, but your rate will go up as you get older. It s wise to shop your insurance rate every couple of years or so as a benefit to getting a new policy. If you need to , getting coverage at the same premium.

Insurance We Offer

Insurance We Offer Frequently Asked Questions We Are always trusted by the insured that make sure we are acting as an insurance broker. We will get you the insurance you want with us. We also offer free insurance e.g. from our Home office. We believe in finding you insurance as affordable as possible for your home. Our insurance products are designed for small and mid-sized farms in California and are available in the Great Lakes States. We have also added online online features for providing a quote and online assistance for who can sell insurance. We take a close look when We believe in saving us We believe in giving up! We want you to have an insurance center That can shop for you. We make shopping easy for you. You can’t do it all. We have a website that is not a website. That means I’m.

Checked Your Insurance Bill Lately?

Checked Your Insurance Bill Lately? I had a client who went into a car accident and he was on his knees and his face was partially open when we tried to speak. What did she do or do not do? She did assist a police officer to determine if his car had comprehensive or collision, a fact that we found to be a poor experience. Our driver passed for services and received a summons for driving in our jurisdiction and was subsequently found guilty of drunk driving without prior notice, reckless driving and non-payment of insurance. A year and they paid more than $20,000 for damages to their own cars. They had no idea of where they lived. We had no idea which cars were used as a driver until they told us exactly where else their vehicle was parked and where they stored. We also found out that their car had been totaled and the driver had insurance for the money. My car had been used many times. If I did not act quickly and give her a summons, she would.

Our Insurance Companies

Our Insurance Companies’ coverage is limited. Some insurance may offer benefits for lost income during a claim but you will always need to do the research for the insurer to be able to offer you a benefit to help them cover your income loss and repair cost. The UH Toll Brothers Insurance Company was founded in 1903 in the town of UH City which he now calls “U.S.” and today the company has a total of $18 billion of life insurance in force. It offers a variety of life insurance plans including term, whole, and universal policies. It sells three types of life insurance, Term Life, universal and term life. The name uHoll Brothers was written on a group term life insurance policy for a group of the most famous individuals throughout history for financial success in the years before it started. Today, the company still owns only seven thousand companies. The Toll Brothers insurance company, also known as the Toll & Toll Express.

[cobbsandra1989]

minnesota life insurance company address

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare quotes from different companies :insurancereviewsite.xyz

minnesota life insurance company address

minnesota life insurance company address is 7815 S. Broadway, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55419. Direct General Corporate office: 711 Collision and comprehensive. Our independent agency can help you find the best coverage and policy for you. We take the time to explain many of the intricacies of the life insurance application. We take the time to review your financial needs and recommend you go through your own budget. At the same time, as an independent insurance agent we can find your policy options and guide you through your options so you are not left wondering about what your life insurance needs are. A life insurance medical exam is a physical exam administered by one of the world s leading insurance agents to determine the risk you pose to the insurer. It is a series of body tests that measure your overall health, such as the following: The blood test results come straight from the insurance company and your physician. There are several companies that do this same test for all types of policies. This is a major reason why there are multiple. minnesota life insurance company address. This information is designed to help you with your decision-making, and it is not intended to provide advice. Contact a local independent agent in the Trusted Choice network today for assistance concerning the insurance options that are available to you. Your life insurance quote is always free. Tim is a licensed life insurance agent with 23 years of experience helping people protect their families and businesses with term life insurance. He writes and creates stuff for QuickQuote and other insurance and financial websites. You can find him on Twitter. : We strive to help you make confident life insurance decisions. Comparison shopping should be easy. We partner with top life insurance providers. This doesn’t influence our content. Our opinions are our own. : We are a free online resource for anyone interested in learning more about life insurance. Our goal is to be an objective, third-party resource for everything life insurance and other costly expenses. We update our site regularly, and all content is. minnesota life insurance company address. Just like this company s TV commercial after learning after decades of paying for home insurance Hurricane Harvey hits your home is knocked off the hinges: …and we ll still not be covered by this company! And there you have it, the car insurance company addresses one of the most popular forms of car insurance. We guarantee that when you call us, you will be speaking with an experience, knowledgeable, Insurance Representative. Disclaimer : This site is a free service to assist car owners connect with local car insurance companies in Springfield, MO. All Car Insurance Companies are independent and this site does not warrant or guarantee any work performed. It is the responsibility of the car owner to verify that the connected car insurance company has the required minimum coverage. All person depicted in a photo or video are actors or models and not car insurance agents listed on this site. This is called  by car insurance companies because there are a variety of different types of car insurance.

The Minnesota Life Insurance Review Final Verdict

The Minnesota Life Insurance Review Final Verdict: Yes, its got no stars on every level in terms of financial stability, but its an excellent value with a solid A.M. Best rating on its part. In the end, their life insurance policies are a really good deal from a financial standpoint. They take care of the cost, and you get you the best policy for your money. It was also not their only benefit. I would say we recommend talking to an independent agent to see the best rates in a number of areas: Life insurance has a lot to deal with, and all insurers tend to make mistakes and try to pay out the lowest available rates. The best thing about it is that if you don’t want to pay too much for your policy you won’t have to break even on a policy. Life insurance does have some positives that you can expect from other insurers in terms of cost, and customer service is the big main reason. The only thing that doesn’t get it is that there are.

Insurance Companies That We Have Won Against

Insurance Companies That We Have Won Against and are not the best for you. If you are looking towards insurance companies offering the cheapest in policy prices, we have got the best! If you are considering purchasing insurance for your company, we guarantee that, within a reasonable period of time, you will get the best insurance coverage in the insurance market. That´s why I have written an entire guide to compare insurance companies when it comes to compare rates. To help you with this, I’ve put together a list of some companies below with quotes for each part and type. Now I think I’ve got the idea for you to start looking at your current policy and see if any of them are offering lower prices for the same coverage. If not, you might end up paying as little as $0 for just insurance and you may end up paying nearly $400,000 more every month, if not, then all of that money could be better spent in something else else that you may save some money by spending on higher.

Minnesota Life Insurance Company Ratings

Minnesota Life Insurance Company Ratings and A.M. Best Company ratings. J.D. Power assigns grades to these companies based on its customer satisfaction. The next table showcases the best life insurance companies with an average rating from J.D. Power. Life insurance reviews can still provide information, but they can also offer a wealth of information and advice by visiting our . We also offer life insurance reviews. Life insurance reviews are filled with information about companies, policies, strategies, and more. This can be a frustrating and overwhelming task when you don’t understand the company’s opinions, and it can also be a confusing experience when you”re considering a policy. You want an experienced insurance broker who can give you detailed feedback on different companies and policies, helping you make an informed decision about your life insurance with both the online and telephone aspects. This insurance company advertises a lower rate than most other life insurance companies, but the company does not tell you what it is charging you. Life insurance can be a.

Minnesota Life Term Insurance

Minnesota Life Term Insurance option or Whole Life Insurance plan is great for those who are about to retire. You should shop around and look for whole life insurance, and you want to minimize your risk by maximizing any and all the value or potential cash you should be accumulating. It is worth your time, money and hard working to do so in advance of having kids. A great life insurance policy would be a solid financial foundation, one that you can leverage and which you don’t want to pay too much each month. A common question that people ask is “can I buy life insurance for my parents and/or my spouse?” In the United States, it’s illegal to buy life insurance on another person without due process. If you were to buy an insurance plan for your mom or dad, their name will be included on the title, and their policy will be considered non-guarent and should remain the same. You will need to check with your to find out if.

The History of Minnesota Life Insurance Company

The History of Minnesota Life Insurance Company Founded in 1903, Minnesota Life Insurements Insurance Company provides financial and life product development further under the supervision of a board of directors of directors from the same federal government entity or other entities as the company and its employees. In addition the company has grown enormously in the area of insurance and life business since it started in 1882. Its mission is to make the experience of life insurance much less stressful and productive when problems arise. As such, the company strives to find the insurance solution that maximizes the value of the coverage and the customer is always excited about doing so. MN Life Insurance Company Insurance is an affiliate of Minnesota Life Insurance Company. Minnesota Life Insurance Company operates as Minnesota’s only licensed subsidiary, for business as Direct. To contact the MN Life Insurance Company, please complete the form above. The information contained on this website is not intended to be a recommendation to buy or sell any insurance products, products, services or products.

Minnesota Life Insurance Quotes

Minnesota Life Insurance Quotes We can help you put it to work: Get your life insurance quote to find out how much you could save and policy to compare. It’s so simple to compare products and rates from top life insurers to get a real price quote online in no time. To start saving today and compare quotes from top insurers, is a fast, easy, and affordable way to compare life insurance quotes, whether you want to purchase your policies at home or online. For online comparison, you can access your current policy and benefits, as well as compare all your quotes online at the same time. Get started right now using Life Insurance Quotes from top insurers to get the best life insurance quotes and discounts. You can also check out thousands of other companies below, including . Don t go off the website without making a few initial phone calls. Life insurance companies look at your driving record, age, gender, vehicle and more when determining your life insurance price. It’s a complicated process.

Minnesota Life Insurance Contacts

Minnesota Life Insurance Contacts: We re happy to help you and fellow First Responders get back on the road by providing you with the best personal and professional insurance rates in San Diego, CA. If you are ready to begin, we can help. We work hard to give you the best rates for your next policy – regardless of the type of coverage you are looking for. Simply contact us for a free quote and we’ll be happy to get you an insurance plan that can meet your needs. We are dedicated to providing comprehensive coverage on a budget. We can compare policies from over 150 companies, and will help you find the best policy at the lowest price without buying any policies from any single provider. Our team is here all of our customers come together and discuss their needs. We take a special special focus on finding the most innovative ways to help you and your family protect the things that matter most to you. I.

Securian Financial life insurance

Securian Financial life insurance company has been around since 1922. The company aims to provide financial stability with enough coverage to help make sure to make sure you feel great about a life insurance policy. You can get a quote to the company online or by phone. You can also get quotes from the insurance company through your current mobile, residential and financial advisors. We give you the opportunity to review your life insurance contract and the policies offered. We will review the coverage, policy terms and conditions. We will also do some research on companies that offer a competitive product like or with a similar customer service experience, and when you are ready we will gladly give you a fast quote and review. At the time of writing this article, we can only recommend and discuss life insurance contracts and life insurance contracts by referring to the following article. What are the benefits of buying term life insurance? The benefits of the life insurance plan from a financial standpoint are as simple as buying whole life insurance and will apply to any policy offered..

Minnesota life insurance offers residents a 30-day grace period, timely payment of death claims, and a guarantee of death benefits up to $300,000. Get affordable MN life insurance quotes to protect your loved ones.

Minnesota life insurance offers residents a 30-day grace period, timely payment of death claims, and a guarantee of death benefits up to $300,000. Get affordable MN life insurance quotes to protect your loved ones. The average Minnesota life insurance rate for young adults increases dramatically, reaching $1,009 for “young adults” and up to $2,902 for “full coverage.” MN life insurance is similar to all 50 states in that it has no-fault insurance coverage, but it’s still cheaper to buy and has some more flexibility. In addition, MN insurance companies may allow term life insurance for up to 75 years of age. That means you could be paying up to $800 per month, and the extra coverage could start when you turn 25. You could also be paying a lot in premiums, and the insurance premiums also won’t go up if you change your mind of how your policy applies. Even term life insurance quotes increase by age for young men when they turn 25. Because MN is a no-fault state, your won’t go up after the age of 25 or for age women after that point. The main difference.

Minnesota Life Insurance Company Review

Minnesota Life Insurance Company Review Auto Expense (after taxes), Humana Free00$3,811 Renters Coverage, Humana Free00$2,937 Medical Assistance (Medicare), Humana Free00$1,919 Business Vehicle, Humana Free00$1,898 Logan & Sons Collision Damage Waiver00$848 Indemnity, Humana Free00$3,931 Business Auto, Humana Free00$5,401 Health, Humana Free00$3,857 Business Vehicle, Humana Free00$1,855 Class A Uninsured Car Collision Damage Insurance, Humana Free00$8,100 Class C Uninsured Property Damage Insurance, Humana Free00$4,619 Class B Uninsured Property Damage Insurance, Humana.