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iatethepomegranate · 3 years

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We are not alone in the dark with our demons, Chapter 17

In which Caleb buys a house in Rexxentrum with Beau and Yasha, becomes a professor, learns to be a person separate from the trauma that shaped his life for so long, and begins the arduous process of preventing what happened to him from happening to anyone else. It gets far more personal than even he could have anticipated.

Content warnings: Caleb's backstory (especially references to abuse and grooming), referenced deaths of family members, near-dissociation, near-panic attacks

Chapter summary: Caleb tries to make some positive decisions for himself and reaches out to Felix to teach him a spell (and help him cope).

Chapter notes: Chapter title is from Silhouette by Sleeping At Last

*****

Chapter 17: It must be so hard, in the mess you’re always cleaning up, to believe in the ghost of unbroken love.

Caleb and Essek dropped Caduceus at the Grove after breakfast the next morning. They would be picking him up again the day after next, along with the rest of the Nein, but any time he could spend with his family was to be treasured.

They then teleported into Beau and Yasha’s side of the house in Rexxentrum. Caleb had begun the process of putting a new teleportation circle in his laboratory, but it would take time, even with Essek’s help.

Yasha peered out from the kitchen. “Hello! You just missed Beau.” She looked at Caleb, who had slept poorly until he had given in and polymorphed himself into a cat, and swept both him and Essek into a tight hug. He liked this side of her, less concerned about making a social fuckup and just doing what felt right.

Essek awkwardly patted her back. “Hello, Yasha.”

She let them go. “Oh, Caleb! I’ll get the note. Give me a moment.” She ran upstairs, thundering around the upper floor.

Essek set a pouch of Xhorhassian spices and fried bugs from the region on the kitchen table; he had gotten lucky at the market yesterday. The peaceful conclusion of the war had freed up trade, allowing a better variety of goods to be found, especially in port cities such as Nicodranas. This also meant Essek had been able to stock up on a few hair and skincare products that were hard to find outside Rosohna. He had insisted on picking up a few products for Caleb as well. Caleb was still a little unused to being clean, let alone having a skincare routine.

Yasha pelted back downstairs and passed Caleb a little scrap of paper. “Here.”

“Danke.” Feeling the high quality of the paper between his fingers, Caleb suspected Nico had torn this piece from his own spellbook. Caleb made plans to leave some paper and ink lying around downstairs in case Nico came again while everyone was out. For now, he committed Nico’s handwriting to memory and stashed the note between the pages of his new journal. Then, he reached into his pocket and handed Yasha its twin. “For you. I thought… maybe it was time we collect happier memories.”

Yasha accepted the leather-bound journal, slightly smaller than her old one so she could keep it on her person with ease. His was identical. “Thank you, Caleb. This is a lovely gift.” She held the leather to her nose and inhaled deeply. She chuckled. “It smells like the ocean.”

“Ja, for now.” He hadn’t told the Nein what his old journal had held. But, if nothing else, the soft look on Yasha’s face confirmed she understood it was tied to his past, much like hers had been. He wasn’t sure he would ever tell the Nein, aside from Essek, what he had truly planned with the letters and the T-Dock. He was sure Beauregard suspected, and possibly Veth, and he was certain the rest, especially Caduceus, had caught on that he was headed down a self-destructive path. But Caleb had made the decision not to pursue it. Unveiling that now would upset them, and he had upset them enough. And Caleb preferred to keep that chapter of his life shut, lest he fall into temptation again.

It was time to look forward, as much as he was capable. As much as the current circumstances would allow him. The past would always have a hold on him, but he could choose to let it guide him towards making things better instead of breaking the world to undo what had already been done.

On that front, he had promised to pay Felix a visit, and Essek had burned his teleportation spells so Caleb still had his free for the day.

***

Caleb landed alone in Blumenthal. His breath still seized in his chest at the sight. He pressed a hand to his sternum and gulped down air until the world stopped spinning. He wondered, a little frantically, whether this would ever get easier. And then the panic passed, and he could breathe again.

He checked in with the gravekeeper, who confirmed they were holding off on the Baumanns’ funeral for a few more days in case Nico was willing and able to attend. He passed on the news that Nico had made a small amount of contact, and Caleb willed himself to exude what quiet optimism he could manage.

The gravekeeper was an elderly widow who had been tending the Blumenthal graves for as long as Caleb could remember. She knew him, of course, and that was unnerving as always. But he was trying to stay calm about the people of Blumenthal knowing the professor visiting Felix had once been Bren, son of Una and Leofric Ermundrud. It was hard, though, knowing there were at least a few neighbourhoods who could make the connection between what happened to the Baumanns, and what happened to the Ermendruds. They had not stated outright at any point that Nico had killed his parents, but the more people who knew about what happened, the more people were likely to suspect the truth. And, of course, the Schneiders knew. Caleb didn’t want the townspeople to think of Nico that way; he was going through enough. Caleb wasn’t sure how he felt about himself, only that there was a weight in his guts that intensified whenever he thought about it too much.

Caleb made one last stop before meeting Felix. He was here anyway, and he had not visited his parents since he had buried the letters with them. So he picked his way through the winding cemetery. It was easy to find his parents again, now that he had been here once.

“Hallo,” he said quietly, kneeling in the grass before their paired gravestones. His last visit hadn’t been that long ago, really, but he had been so swaddled in his grief that it had been hard to think straight. He pulled out the new book and rested it on his knee. “A lot has happened since I last came. I have a house now, in Rexxentrum, and a job teaching at Soltryce Academy. I’m going to stop what happened to me, and the both of you, from happening to anyone else. Best I can, anyway. Mixed success so far.” An inappropriate chuckle escaped him. “It’s… strange. Seeing these young boys, Felix and Nico, who had been set on the same path I had walked. We stopped Felix before he could… but I wasn’t fast enough to save Nico’s parents. I am… doing what I can now. They are both so young. Children, really. And, well, you know children that age rarely feel like children. I didn’t. I think Trent exploited that.”

He let the quiet wash over him. A light, fresh breeze played against his face. Most residents of Blumenthal were probably hard at work right now. This was a farming town, after all.

He remembered the journal on his knee. “Oh, and I have a new book now. This one is for happy memories. Nico left me a thank you note; I suppose that’s the first one. He’s not… he needs time. But I am starting to believe we can help him. I’m… I think that scares me. I understand what he’s going through better than most, but… this is a huge responsibility. I hope I don’t fuck it up. Sorry, mother. I would blame my new friends, but, in truth, I’ve always had a mouth on me. My friends are very cool, though. I think you would have liked them. Well, jury’s out on Beauregard, but she grows on you. Maybe I’ll tell you about our adventures next time I visit. Well, some of them. From Trostenwald, to Xhorhas, to a floating flesh city, to a Rexxentrum courtroom... we had a big year. And it’s because of them that I can bear talking to you like this.”

A tiny thought, right at the back of Caleb’s head, suggested he should bring the Nein next time. Or maybe one or two of them. Nine people clustered around a pair of graves sounded like a lot.

Caleb wanted to stay longer, but he had to check on Felix. He sighed, and pushed himself to his feet. “I will return, I promise. I will not leave you for as long as I did the first time. I love you both.”

He stepped away while he still had the will to do so. The grief was there, but he felt in control of it. For now, at least. And there was a family that needed him.

***

Louise Schneider was tending the vegetable patch in front of the house, while Friedrich knelt by a wooden cart, replacing a damaged wheel. Caleb fought off nausea at the sight of the cart; it looked just like the one his parents had owned. That… was fine. He was fine. Blumenthal-standard cart. The things were everywhere.

Louse set her trowel aside, sitting back on her heels. “Hallo… Caleb?” She was, evidently, struggling a bit to figure out what she was supposed to call him.

“Ja, hallo.” His voice was a little rough, but steady.

“Felix is in his room.” Louise wiped her brow with the back of her glove. “He’s been a little… reclusive.”

Sensing this conversation was going to take more than a few seconds, Caleb sat in the grass with her. “Okay, talk to me. How is he? And how are the two of you?”

Louise huffed a short, rueful laugh. “It is hard to tell how your child is feeling when he barely talks to you.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” Caleb said, as gently as he sensed she would tolerate. “My situation was not like Felix’s, but I can understand a little. It’s… not a comfortable feeling to know that all the love in the world is not enough to… to…” He breathed. “All I know is that I have grappled with the guilt of my actions for a long time, and the fact we were able to get to him before it went that far… it does not erase the shame. It is an ugly thing, to face yourself, to face the person you have become, even if you were manipulated and abused and brainwashed to become that person.”

“What the fuck are we supposed to do?” she whispered.

“Love him. Show him you are there for him, in whatever way he can bear.”

Louise gazed back at the house. “But if love wasn’t enough…”

“It takes time,” Caleb told her. “You can’t measure it, or count it. Time looks different for all of us. But with your support, it will be easier for him to come to terms with what happened to him, and to understand he is not a bad person for the things he was persuaded to do, and almost did… easier than it is for me. You have to remember, Frau Schneider, that those of us in the Volstrucker program thought we were serving our country, and we were honoured to do it.”

“We thought the same,” Louise murmured. “When Felix was chosen for the program…” She sighed. “I told Master Ikithon to do whatever it took to help him be what the Empire needed.”

The ground was unsteady beneath Caleb, and he was relieved to be sitting down. “My mother and father felt the same, if Ikithon spoke true. He usually does.” A wave of pettiness overcame him, and he chuckled. “Did. That is why it is so difficult to process. He rarely lied to us outright. And we thought we had a choice. We did, to a degree. We chose to serve, and we thought we had to endure what he put us through and what he asked us to do… so we could serve our country.”

“What do you now believe?”

“I believe there are good people in the Empire,” said Caleb. “There are things worth preserving. The child abuse and murder of innocent Empire citizens are not among of them.” He was getting distracted, so he steered his thoughts back in their original direction. “Now is the time Felix needs you most. The biggest thing that has helped me is knowing there are people who care about me and value me, even when I don’t care about myself.”

“We’re trying,” said Louise. “Thank you. He should be in his room, if you’d like to talk to him.”

“Ja, I will. He has been working on a Transmutation spell, which happens to be my specialty.” Caleb pushed himself to his feet, straightening his coat. “And, Louise?”

“Ja?”

“We were children a long time ago,” he said. “And my memories of Blumenthal are too… complicated to linger on, but I remember your kindness. And I have seen your love for your son. You are a good mother. Remember that, and extend that same kindness to yourself, ja?”

Louise picked up her trowel, her movements slow as if through water. “Danke.”

Caleb moved towards the house, exchanging a wave with Friedrich. The front door was open, so he stepped through. The house only had one storey, so he moved past the living area to a short, thin hallway. One door was open, revealing a wide bed for two people. He knocked on the other door.

“What?” said Felix, voice tinged with adolescent irritation that brought back a fuckton of memories for Caleb, of studying in his bedroom until his mother interrupted to coax him down for a meal. It ached, but bearably so.

“It’s Caleb. May I come in?”

“Ja, I guess.”

Caleb turned the knob and slowly pushed, poking his head through first. Felix was sitting on the wooden floor, beside a low bed made from a rough timber frame. His spellbook lay on the floor in front of him, but it was seemingly open to a random page, and Felix’s hair was mussed as if he had just been lying down. On the floor, if Caleb were to guess.

“Would you like some good news?” Caleb said, stepping inside. He shut the door, leaning against it while he awaited Felix’s response.

“That would make a nice change,” Felix said flatly.

Caleb sat on the floor in front of him and pulled out his new book, removing Nico’s note and handing it to Felix. “Nico visited my home while it was empty the other day. He left this.”

Felix scanned the note with careful, controlled slowness. He passed it back, staring sightlessly at the pages of his book.

“He also responded to a Sending,” Caleb continued. “Only to tell me he did not wish to talk, but that is progress. Has he spoken to you?”

“Nein,” Felix said quietly. There was a heaviness to his posture, and he seemed to lack the energy to express himself with his face or voice. Aside from that singular spike of irritation when Caleb had knocked.

“Well, it appears he is listening. If you can bear it, I would suggest you keep talking to him.”

“Ja, okay.” The Felix in front of him was a far cry from the Felix in his messages. Exhausted, flattened… defeated, in some ways. Beaten down and ready to give up. Caleb knew the feeling well. It was why he had been messaging Felix so frequently, knowing that he had no one else who could understand what he had been through. What he had almost done.

It would have been easy enough to talk about the Fly spell and let him have a distraction, but they had things to discuss first. It was better to end their meeting today on a positive note, rather than give him a reprieve now and drag him back to earth later.

“I spoke to your mother,” Caleb said, sitting with the guilt of not giving Felix the distraction he sorely needed. Not yet.

Felix huffed quietly. “Was it a useful conversation? Mine haven’t been.”

“I have the luxury of not being family,” Caleb replied. “I can tell her things that you never would.”

Felix snorted. “Right.”

“She says you’re becoming a recluse.”

Felix shrugged.

“Why is that?”

“What am I supposed to say?” Felix muttered, and Caleb got the sense he probably would have snapped at him, had he the energy. “I know they’re afraid of me.”

“I don’t think they are, Felix.”

“Doesn’t matter. I was going to kill them, and I would’ve succeeded. I know that. They know that.”

“I don’t think they’re worried about that right now.”

“Then they’re stupid.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say about your parents, Felix.”

“Murder also isn’t nice, but I was going to do that anyway.” Felix flipped through the pages of his spellbook until he landed on one Caleb recognised: the formula for Fireball. “Push the cart in front of the door, throw one of these fuckers into the house, or maybe a Lightning Bolt would’ve looked like a freak accident.” Having not expected this, Caleb had to fight a wave of nausea and grasp tightly to the present, and hoped it didn’t show on his face; this wasn’t about him or his bullshit. “Hadn’t decided. Whatever. If I aimed right, it would be over quickly. If not… it would be over eventually. Nico had similar plans, which apparently worked.” Felix’s fingers spasmed on the page, as if resisting the urge to tear it. “If my mother and father do not fear me, they have deluded themselves into thinking I’m innocent. Makes a certain kind of sense, I suppose. I never could tell them what Trent had us do. I have nothing to say to them. I see no point trying to comfort them when they should be afraid of me. They should not want me here.”

Felix was spiralling. Badly. Caleb was out of his depth, and his brain was not turning as efficiently as it usually did, on a knife’s edge of whether to stay present or dissociate entirely. But he had to do something.

“Would you like to guess where I have been today?” Caleb asked. “It’s here in Blumenthal.”

Felix shrugged. “I hate guessing games.”

“I visited my mother and father. Spoke to them for a while.”

Confusion furrowed Felix’s brow for a moment, before he looked up, understanding. “Can’t imagine they were very talkative.”

Caleb’s laugh surprised both of them. “You’re not wrong. Rather one-sided. But maybe they can hear me.”

Felix continued to take the bait. “Fine. I’ll bite. What did you talk about?”

“Life updates. I have only visited once before, a few months ago, and that was more… intense. And, well, since then, I’ve hit several personal milestones I wanted to tell them about.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I am about to guilt-trip you into speaking to your living parents.”

“Oh, fuck you.” There was no aggression behind it, merely exhausted resignation, as if Felix already knew Caleb had the upper hand.

“I am not expecting you to bare your soul to them,” Caleb said. “I understand the impulse to hold back and I do not wish to deny you your privacy. But, it is very easy for people like us to get caught in our heads, and it can be difficult to pull ourselves out of it without help.”

“And if I don’t want to have to look at them and remember I was going to fucking kill them?”

“You seem to remember that well enough without seeing their faces.”

Felix shoved his face into his hands, sighing loudly. “I don’t know what I would even talk about. We have nothing in common anymore.”

“I’ve always found admitting I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing is very helpful.”

Felix snorted.

“And I do not agree that you have nothing in common.” Caleb didn’t try to make Felix look at him. If this were one of the Nein, he probably would have gotten obnoxiously in the way until they couldn’t ignore him, like Jester, Veth and even sometimes Essek had been known to do for him. But, with Felix, his words would have to be enough. “You have told me you love them, and they clearly love you. There is a lot of common ground there.”

“What common ground?” Felix curled more deeply inward with the gravity of defeat. “I cared more about some bullshit Trent put in my head than how much I love my parents.”

This was far more familiar territory to Caleb. “You are not alone in that, Felix. I loved my mother and father. And I killed them just the same. Trent exploited our patriotism to isolate us from our families and tie our worth to serving the empire, to serving him. And by having us kill our families based on a lie, one of the only lies he ever told us, he could ensure we had no one else to support us. That we would not believe we deserved better, even if we learned he had modified our memories. He wanted us to have nothing else but him. Did he pull that ‘we are family’ bullshit with you?”

Felix dropped his hands, snickering bitterly. “Ja. All the time.”

“Creepy, ja?”

Felix kept laughing quietly.

“He invited me to a ‘family reunion’ with him, Astrid and Eadwulf a few months ago,” said Caleb. “My friends came with me. Do you remember Caduceus?” Felix nodded. “He told Trent he was a fool, and that no one loves him.”

Felix scoffed. “You’re lying.”

“I am paraphrasing. He did call Trent a fool, but what he said about love was… wait, let me quote this exactly. I have this burned into my memory forever.” Caleb cleared his throat, and did not attempt to mimic Caduceus’s voice because he was awful at accents, but he quoted: “He said, ‘I think it has been a long time since anyone has pointed out to you that you're a fool. Pain doesn't make people, it's love that makes people. The pain is inconsequential. It's love that saves them. And you would know that, but you have none around you. You said so yourself, you surround yourself with lies and deceptions. And I wish for you, in the future, to find someone who will mourn you when you are gone. Respectfully.’ And then Trent left.”

“Okay, two things,” said Felix. “First of all, Caduceus is cooler than you. Second, your memory is terrifying and I am rethinking every word I have ever said to you.”

“Caduceus is very cool, ja. And the memory is a blessing and a curse for me and everyone around me. I also have a very good sense of time, and I have used it to annoy the shit out of my friends.”

“Nerd.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Fuck off.”

Caleb chuckled. “Back to my original point. Trent is a piece of shit. He wanted us to believe we chose to follow him, ja, but the choice was false. He wanted us to believe we did not deserve better. Even now that we are free from him, it is not easy to break that conditioning. Our minds are more fragile than we like to think, ja?”

“Ja, I guess.” The momentary brightness faded from Felix’s expression, and the heaviness returned.

“And an important step in countering that is to reach out to the people who care about you.”

Felix slammed his spellbook shut, hiding the Fireball spell from view. “And if I don’t want to?”

“Let me ask a question in return. What do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you so sure you do not want to repair your relationship with your parents?”

Felix groaned softly. “Did you have to word it like that? Of course I…” His voice dropped to a murmur. “Arschloch.”

“Then, is the problem less about what you want, or don’t want, and more about what you think you deserve?” Caleb had far too much experience in feeling that way.

“Fuck you, Caleb.” Felix scrambled to his feet, hugging the spellbook to his chest. “Are you going to teach me this spell, or did you just plan on lecturing me all day?”

Ah. There was the limit. “All right, I’ve said my piece.” Caleb got up. “You said you’ve transcribed the spell?”

“Ja. I just… it’s not an easy spell to practice.”

“I know. Shall we go outside? We will need space for this.”

#shadowgast #caleb widogast #critical role #cr2 #fanfiction #my fics #the pomegranate's professor widogast fic

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write4tomorrow · 4 years

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Husband and Wife (Part 2)

Word Count: 2562

Pairing: Poe Dameron x Reader

Summary: About a year after The Rise of Skywalker, peace in the galaxy is fragile. The Resistance is faced with new diplomatic problems as they try to maintain the peace. Trade routes are especially tricky and has forced Y/N to test her abilities as a negotiator. Due to tirelessly, negotiating with different planets and systems, Y/N has become the new face of peace and hope. Does this make General Poe Dameron jealous?

Genre: Adventure / Fluff / Angst

Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Epilogue (Complete)

Nix Altross needed more time. The Rebellion needed peace to prevail. You needed this trade deal to go well. Yet, nothing seemed to be going your way. The brief meeting with the farmers on Coruscant revealed that they already made up their minds: they were not interested in trading with other systems.

“They were ready to sign a deal,” General Dameron was furious, “why are they suddenly uninterested?” He was pacing in the small rooms where you two would be spending the night. It had a small square dining area and a large window that looked over the city. You sat at the table, rubbing a small piece of paper between your gloved fingers. Distractedly, you watched General Dameron talk. He paced between his small bedroom and the shared living space and you were thankful that Connix had found a space that had separate sleeping quarters. On either end of the living space were the two small bedrooms, one for you to the right and one for the General to the left. BB8 came whirling out of General Dameron’s room.

“I know!” General Dameron kicked the chair opposite you. BB8 rolled back defensively which did not go unnoticed by the General. He crouched down and gave his droid an apologetic pat. You knew the fury hadn’t left him. You could see that he was beginning to channel it elsewhere - a feeling you knew too well.

“What do you have to say about all this?” General Dameron sat down on the floor next to his droid. For the first time since the meeting, he talked to you instead of at you. “You haven’t spoken since the meeting,” he said slowly. He was starting to realize that you the beginnings of a plan forming in your mind.

“Read this,” you handed the slip of paper to the General, glad that he seemed more rational now. You watched him read the note and noticed every twitch in his brow and the way his mouth creased at the corners.

“Where did you get this?” Poe read and reread the note. One of the farmers, the unofficial spokesperson for the group, had slipped you the note when he shook your hand goodbye. He was apologetic, but insisted that there be no more meetings. However, he palmed you the note and gave you a hopeful wink as he departed. Even with the gesture, you could sense the fear in the group. There was something wrong here.

“The farmer gave it to me when he shook my hand,” you explained, “we should go.” The note was a brief apology and a location for a meeting place. The rendezvous was set for a few hours from now.

“I’ll get my blaster and we’ll-” The General ready for action, almost itching for it. You silenced him with a wave of your hand. You were ready to do something too, but you knew what happened to people who rushed into things. This needed to be thought out.

“We need to inform the Generals about what happened. At the very least, Nix needs to know that he doesn’t have much time to broker a deal with the outer rim bounty hunters.” You watch as General Dameron nods and pulls out his com. You do the same and the two of you set them flat against the table, sitting opposite of one another.

Small, blue holograms of each of the generals flickered to life as they each picked up the signal. You noticed that Nix was the last to answer, but first to speak.

“I guess you’re not calling with good news,” Nix’s voice crackled over the com speaker. General Dameron shook his head.

“The farmers are refusing to negotiate. They gave y/n a note, though-” Dameron explained. He held up the note so everyone could read it. Nix became eerily still.

“They’re scared of something,” you said after a moment, “we need to go to this meeting, but we cannot go as General Dameron and Y/F/N Y/L/N of the Resistance. We would draw too much attention with the extra security and off world clothes. We need to go undercover.” You kept your eyes on Nix, but you could tell General Dameron was watching you.

“Y/N is right,” General Calrissian agreed, “I have a contact on Coruscant that can get you some clothes. Maybe this meeting can buy you some time for Altross. I don’t like that you have to go to this meeting with no security detail. You’ll have nothing but each other to watch your backs.”

“We’ll be find.” You and General Dameron say in unison. Nix almost flinched at that.

“You two need to think of a cover,” Connix explained. Again, you and Dameron speak at once.

“Husband and Wife,” General Dameron says with a smile.

“Siblings.” You demand at the same time. Finn lets out a small laugh as your cheeks become warm.

“I’m no spy,” Finn continues, “but when I was with the First Order, I know that intelligence considered people by themselves to be the most dangerous. People in pairs were also very suspicious unless, they were a couple. Especially a couple with children.”

“Husband and wife, then!” General Dameron says all too happily. You knew that couples were less suspicious than siblings but you were hoping to avoid stepping into that role.

“They have no kids.” Nix seemed just as opposed to the idea as you felt. Still, you knew that this job required stealth and caution and your comfort level wasn’t going to get in the way of security.

“I’m going to be his very pregnant wife,” you say with a sigh. A mischievous twinkle glistens in Dameron’s eye and both Connix and Finn laugh at the thought you pregnant with Dameron’s child. Even Calrissian seemed to be amused by the idea. The only face on the coms that was not amused was Nix. His usually charming smile was as cold as ice and his glare was for you alone.

“It’s settled then,” General Calrissian said, “I’ll have things delivered to you shortly.” All of the generals hung up their coms with a quick word of good luck. Nix was the last to hang up and spoke to General Dameron before leaving.

“You take care of her,” Nix nearly growled. You were about to interject but General Dameron nodded, respectfully.

“She’s in great hands, Altross. BB8 won’t let anything happen to her,” General Dameron hung up before Nix could say anything else. The General turned his attention to you.

“Well, dear wife,” The General asked slowly, “what is the name of our first born?” You swatted at him and tried to hide your flustered smile.

The next few hours were spent alone in your room. After hashing out some small details of your cover with the General, you decided to try napping. Really, you just wanted to be alone. Your com kept buzzing with messages from Nix. You ignored all of them but you felt guilty that Nix was worried about you. Instead of answering his messages, you turn on the tracking option on your com. This way, Nix will be able to see where you are and will know that you aren’t in trouble. It wasn’t as good as answering his messages but you decided to just lie down until you had to leave for the meeting.

The only time you were disturbed was when the clothes arrived. They were simple farmers clothes. You wore a loose maternity dress and found that your outfit came complete with a swollen, stuffed belly. Wearing it, you felt ridiculous. As you tried waddling around the room, you made yourself smile. Even the General couldn’t hide his grin when he first saw you.

“You’re leaving the gloves on?” Dameron asked as he strapped his blaster discreetly under his shirt. You had two strapped to either thigh and felt a little more secure.

“Just the one blaster?” You chided. Dameron looked you over, as if searching for where you might hide your own weapons.

“You think we’ll run into trouble, my dear?” Dameron asked. He was far too ready to play husband and wife. You wondered why he might be so comfortable with the role.

“I have some informants on Coruscant,” you explained as you took a seat. The false belly was heavier than you expected. “There have been whispers the new weapons that are developed on this planet. There are corners of this galaxy that are weaponizing faster than the Resistance realizes. Just the other day Nix was telling me about an interrogation technique that involved making the victim believe they were losing their five senses. It’s incredibly painful to experience but leaves no scars behind. There is also a new machine that can erase someone’s memory. It’s also incredibly painful and slow. Most test subjects that live through it have some form of brain damage for the rest of their life. There is also-”

“I get it,” Dameron cuts you off, “I’ll go grab another blaster.” When he comes back he hands a scarf to you.

“Thanks to all the negotiating you’ve been doing, your face is one of the most recognizable in the galaxy,” Dameron explains before you can ask, “wear this around the bottom half of your face and try to avoid eye contact with people.” Was he really giving you lessons on how to blend in? You are one of the best spies in the galaxy. Still, he takes the scarf and begins to tie it around you. His chest is almost touching your back and you can smell him as he moves behind you. Like the sound of his voice, Dameron smells warm. It makes you think of honey and pine and somewhere safe. Lost in the smell, you lean back into him. He paused for a moment.

“Tired, y/n?” Dameron moved around to face you. He seems concerned and you were glad that he could not see your blush under the scarf.

“I’m ready,” you answered simply. Dameron took your arm and began to escort you to the door. BB8 followed the two of you out with a strange chirp that maked Dameron smile.

Walking through the lower markets of Coruscant with Dameron wasn’t as taxing as you thought it would be. He was actually very charming. Along the way, he kept his arm intertwined with yours and pointed to different types of spice and local goods. He seemed to know everything about everything. Dameron even made up stories for some of the vendors as you walked past.

“He’s actually a secret prince from two plannets over who was banished by his sister,” Dameron said as he pointed to an elderly vendor.

“Why was he banished?” You had to speak louder than usual to be heard through the scarf and over the ruckus of the market. Still, you enjoyed playing along in Dameron’s game.

“You can’t tell? He slept with his sister’s husband. It’s written all over his face!” You laugh and cling to Dameron a little tighter. He had managed to wring more laughter from your lips in the past hour than anyone had in the past few months. His laughter seemed to come easily too. He laughed when you laughed and, in some instances, seemed to laugh only because he had made you laugh. Being with Dameron was easy and you suddenly found that you were thankful that he was here with you. However, you had to keep reminding yourself that you were in the middle of your job; you couldn’t be too comfortable.

“I’ve heard rumors about your gloves,” Dameron finally says slowly, “I hear you keep every secret you’ve ever stolen in those gloves.” You smile and hope that he didn’t notice your hands tense around his arm.

“That’s ridiculous, Poe,” you keep your eyes forward.

“Just a style choice, then?” Dameron asked, but you knew he didn’t believe that. You glanced up at him and saw the gentle curiosity in his expression. Something about this General was welcoming. The little voice in your ear kept telling you, trust this one.

“I’m not the best spy in the galaxy because I’ve never been caught,” you begin to explain, “during the war, the First Order found me. I was kept for weeks in captivity. At first, there was no physical torture. They kept me in a room that overloaded my senses: bright lights, loud and erratic noises, almost no food and freezing temperature. Then, when it was convenient for him, Kylo Ren came to interrogate me himself. With his lightsaber,” you gingerly slip one of your gloves off to reveal your hand, “Ren carved my arm until it was almost unusable. What good is a spy if they cannot pick pockets or write down secrets?” General Dameron took your exposed, scarred arm in his and stared at it. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, looking for words.

“I was rescued,” you continued, “I gave up the name of an empty base which distracted Ren enough to leave me alone. The Resistance came for me. I spent months trying to relearn how to use my hands. I still cannot write like I used to. Because of this, I rely on my memory and what I hear. For the most part I’ve put the incident behind me, I’ve even forgiven Ben. I heard about his stand against Palpatine. I just… I can’t stand the sight of my arms.” You were surprised by how your voice sounded by the end of your explanation. It was soft and fragile, not the voice of a skilled negotiator or a confidant diplomat. You were even more surprised when Dameron brought your hand to his lips and silently slid your glove back on.

“Will you wait right here for a minute?” Dameron asked with a small grin. Without waiting for you to answer he said, “There’s a small vendor we past that has the best molten cakes. I’m going to get a couple for us later.” You watched as Dameron quickly went back the way you came. His dark head of curly hair seemed to weave and bob elegantly through the crowd, it was entrancing. So much so, you didn’t notice the shadows moving behind you.

“I’ve never heard that story before,” you turn around to find Nix standing in the shadows. He gives you a grin but the usual charm is replaced by a wolfish quality that leaves you unnerved.

“You’re here,” you stammer, “did things on the outer rim…” you trail off as Nix levels a small blaster at your chest. He seems almost apologetic when you look back up at him... almost. He weaves his arm through yours like Dameron had done just moments ago. Only this time, you found no comfort from the touch. You didn’t understand and you looked over your shoulder for Dameron. Where was he?

Nix tisked as he began to pull you away from the crowded street. He lead you into a dark alley with the blaster tucked against your ribs. Neither of you said a word. Suddenly, Nix pushed you in front of him.

“Don’t worry, hon,” Nix said with a sympathetic look, “It’s just set to stun.”

As Nix pulled the trigger, the last thing you thought you heard was Dameron’s voice calling for you from somewhere far, far away.

Part 3

A/N: Part two, done! Thank you for reading part two!! This project has obviously turned into a chapter story and I am so excited to get the next three chapters out. Please let me know what you think!

#poe dameron #poe DAMNeron #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron x oc #Poe Damn son #star wars x reader #star wars #star wars: the rise of skywalker #star wars imagine #oscar isaac #reader insert

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wrongfullythinking · 3 years

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Twitter and the “Public Forum”

There is a very large looming legal question about whether or not social media sites, such as Twitter, are “Public Forums.” Most would agree that they are not... at least... not yet. But the question is... should they be?

First, a look into why it matters.

In a public forum, all First Amendment protections apply. So you can say any number of very objectionable things (https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12634874511090553174) and be protected. In a private forum, this is not so. I can kick you out of my house for wearing an Abercrombie shirt, and you have no Free Speech/Expression reason to contest my staggeringly good decision-making.

Second, the public forum cannot be policed for any content that may be stated. This is why if you go to reserve time at a public park, you don’t have to tell the Parks and Rec department what your event is for. Just things like how many people, how long the event will last, etc. This is well-established and well-backed by many years of precedent.

Finally, there is the very serious matter of personal liability. In certain circumstances, officials can be held personally liable if their policies deliberately and knowingly infringe upon Bill of Rights protections (most often First Amendment protections). This means that you could literally sue for the property and assets of a person. (Also, this is why those of us who own either physical property [like a house] or intellectual property [like a book] buy “Umbrella Coverage” from insurances... I recommend State Farm, but that’s totally irrelevant and I’m not getting any kickbacks for that shill =P.)

But hang on... so if the government owns a billboard and rents it out to whomever can pay, can I rent it and post a naked lady?

You could try, and you might win! What you can’t do is post something obscene. And yes, whether or not a naked person is obscene is staggeringly controversial. There’s a 3-part test from the Burger court, a host of vague terms like “average person” and “contemporary community standards,” and “lacks serious artistic/literary/political/scientific value.” And then there are protections for children, a whole separate piece, as well as child pornography, which is always classified as obscene... except when it is not, like in the cases of naked cherubs in church windows. So, confused yet? We’re off topic, but I make this point to explain that even in public forums, where First Amendment rights are fiercely protected, there are still outstanding issues of content censorship.

So, is Twitter / Facebook / Tumblr a public forum?

At this point, the answer is no. They are privately controlled by companies, not owned by the feds or states or local municipalities, and thus can make almost any policy they want. The idea here is that the free market dictates the life or death of these platforms... and that idea tends to hold true! Tumblr itself is a good case-in-point, because it has lost millions of dollars in value due to bad leadership decisions, and at least partially because of censorship. There are countless examples of others... I remember when Yahoo! was the primary search engine of the internet and Xanga was the biggest blogging platform. While you can still Yahoo, I’m not sure there are more than a few hundred people on Xanga, if it still exists in any useful format. So, since places like this are subject to the free market, and thus can die... they should be allowed to make all the good or bad decisions they want about their content. Or at least, that is how the theory runs.

But really... ARE they subject to the market? Now we’re getting into the really interesting territory. If Facebook shut down tomorrow, would it be a problem? Maybe, but life would continue. But if Google shut down tomorrow? Well, millions of schoolchildren are in GoogleClassrooms right now, so that would certainly be a problem. It would at least cause massive disruption... and Facebook shutting down would cause some disruption. Likewise, Twitter controls so much speech that instead of publishing headlines from Newspapers, newspapers publish headlines from Twitter! The 14-year-old looks at that line like “well, duh” and the 44-year old reads that line like “wow, we’ve come a long way,” and the 84-year-old reads that line with just a sad headshake.

So, now we’ve joined one of the most controversial points of the last 20 years... the Fannie Mae “Too Big to Fail” problem. Basically, a set of banks and big mortgage companies (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) made a bunch of bad decisions in about 1995 - 2008. [As an aside, whether or not Fannie Mae {technically, the “Federal National Mortgage Association”} is actually a company comes up as an issue... it originated as a government program, but is today a publicly-traded company and has been since the late 60s, though it was delisted from NYSE and is only traded off-exchange]. And the government had to step in. You can read all about that issue at another time, the bottom line is that actually Fannie Mae has paid back more than it borrowed, but there was a ballooning of the debt ceiling by over 800 billion. Some people care about the national debt, some don’t, and again, not the subject of this commentary. The point is that it set a very odd precedent, whereas a company could make extremely bad decisions and then the burden would be placed on the taxpayers to fix their decision, because the company itself was a part of so many people’s lives. Would social media fall under this guidance? Unlikely, and I think we would all run from state-sponsored social media... but hey, what do I know.

So... get to the point. Should they be public forums, or not?

My two cents always comes down against censorship, especially censorship by entities that don’t have my best interests at heart... so basically, everybody else. I think that it is so easy to self-censor the internet at the personal end (for example, by installing filters and blocking services for objectionable content), that companies should not be unilaterally making these decisions, especially if those companies want to be venues for mass public communication.

Let’s go with another example... let’s say you wanted to call up your buddy and have a nice long phonesex session. Good for you. Or just chat with them about the latest Dr. Doe video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXgT8WXaPUY), because enthusiasm is important. Would you be okay with Verizon telling a robot to monitor your call, and then automatically hang up if you said “penis” too much? Or “Trump”? Or “Black Lives Matter?” What about “Nazi,” “Rohypnol,” “Mary Jane,” “negritos” [I’ve got your back, Mr. Cavani], “snowbunny,” or “Insane Clown Posse”? I think most people would be upset about any of those, and they would rightfully tell Verizon that they will find another provider. So Verizon doesn’t do that, although it could. But Twitter does do that. And the availability of another Twitter is in question. Will something succeed Twitter? Absolutely. But right now, Twitter is under no market pressure, so it is succeeding at taking off its platform any number of conversations that it probably should not be policing.

There’s also a social-justice side of this. So, let’s say that we all decide Twitter is a bad platform and move to something else. And that something else costs us 10$ a month. I wouldn’t notice this fee. Others would. So that’s an access issue. Or, let’s say that some people start migrating to a new platform, and they only tell their friends about it. That’s okay, right? Absolutely... but imagine that college student who is trapped at home in a pandemic right now who cannot get any viewpoints outside of what her parents approved of, and previously used Twitter to explore and challenge her upbringing. If she doesn’t get an invite to the new platform, is she just lost?

And that brings up the Pandemic. Many, many common public forums have been shut down due to the pandemic. This alone has caused serious controversy (see: BLM protests on crowded streets where state governors participated, while those same governors implemented executive orders enforcing 6-foot distancing in churches and stores), so the argument for Twitter censorship “but you have many other public forums!” is tough to substantiate during the COVID-era. And this is a HUGE problem. Historically, taking away public forums is always an early move of totalitarian regimes. Taking away rights to assembly and speech follows soon after. We’re now in Phase 2 there... and our governors keep assuring us it is temporary... while at the same time, encouraging Twitter to take off any viewpoints they don’t like, under the guise of “false or misleading information.” Soon, they start moving into the schools, and that leads to...

SCIENCE!!!

So, to talk about what rigorous debate means, we need to understand a bit about Science. And specifically, the philosophy of science, what scientific discourse looks like, and why review and critique are parts of the scientific process.

Point 1: “Scientific consensus” is hogwash. Yes, we all agree that the Earth orbits the Sun, and the Sun itself moves, but beyond that, there isn’t much scientific consensus. If you see an article that starts with the phrase “Expert say,” you can go ahead and close your browser window right there. The rest is bull****.

Point 2: The limits of science are boundless. Any specific scientific paper is, by necessity and the peer review process, very strictly bounded. “Whether or not a vaccine is efficient” is an entirely different paper than one titled “Whether or not 80-year-olds with lung cancer should get the vaccine,” and both of those are different than “How the US should achieve herd immunity, and if it is even possible for COVID-19 before significant mutations cause current immunizations to be ineffective,” and all three of those are different from “Do we need to vaccinate our cats from COVID in order to reach herd immunity?”

Point 3: There is no “finalized” science. The answers are never finished. What is “cutting edge” science today is out-of-date tomorrow, barbaric and backwards by the end of the year, and grounds for an abuse lawsuit by the end of the decade. The best examples of this are from Psych treatments.

Point 4: I get very worried when anybody starts to censor scientific content... especially those without any qualifications. Okay, so this one is a personal sentence (note the “I”), but I’m going to go ahead and guess that Twitter robots and interns flagging posts don’t have any idea the difference between sensitivity and specificity, the background as to why the FDA has never approved an mRNA vaccine previously, the difference between statistical and clinical significance, and how to read a limitations section. The people who are qualified to do so are peer reviewers... and in the case where those fail (which happens!), the rest of the writer’s peers. And we do that. Anything published is open to critique, which leads to the final point, that...

Point 5: Critique and Review are THE MOST IMPORTANT PARTS of scientific publishing. If a piece is published without review, it is called an “opinion” and not science. Even more worrisome than the censoring of unpopular papers is the censoring of the opinions of scientists on the papers of their peers. Should someone publish a paper where I believe they overstretched their claims, it is a HUGE part of my job to call that out. For an agency like Twitter to be able to say “you don’t have the right to say that they overstated their claim, because expressing a concern about a vaccine is against our Terms of Use” is a very big problem for science.

The flipside is that you get into the part where now a company can, through its policy, dictate what science gets done. For example, lets say I wanted to examine an unpopular question... and I’m a social scientist, so there are plenty of those, but say I wanted to do something semi-controversial but apolitical. I’ll say my research question is “How do the happiness of those in committed multi-year polyamorous relationships compare to the happiness of people in similar economic and social situations but in closed marriages where additional intimate partnerships would be viewed as grounds for relationship termination?” There are plenty of ways I could conduct this study and I’ll spare you my methodological musings, but safe to say there are platforms who would not want me to publish my results. And that’s fine.

But let’s say that I did publish my results, and a commenter took to Twitter. And their response was “I read your paper, and I see your conclusion that those in committed multi-year polyamorous relationships score no differently on a happiness scale than those in the closed marriages. However, I disagree with your use of this scale, because it was tested on populations of retirees, and most of the people in your sample are in their late 20s or early 30s.”

That is an EXCELLENT and VALID critique. And let’s say that Twitter was heavily into the social justice and had a policy that said “you can’t say negative things about polyamory.” And they deleted this person’s comment. Now, Twitter has interfered with the scientific process. That comment IS PART of the dialogue and that dialogue is part of Science. Yes, there are other places that those comments could be made, and not be censored... but we should not be encouraging that censorship ANYWHERE. And Twitter has vastly overstepped the line on this point. Random Twitter employees have no business removing professional critiques about a study, even if there are other platforms for those critiques.

Other Thoughts

1) Generally, you can’t prohibit meetings in a public forum based on prior behavior. Thus, “X group was violent in the past” is not a reason to prohibit X group from accessing a public forum for speech. So there’s no saying “Proud Boys were violent once, so no Proud Boys on Twitter” if it were to be declared a public forum.

2) I’m really not aware of any large precedents for taking a private company and declaring it a public forum. That may seem redundant (obviously, if there was precedent, this wouldn’t be such a hot-button issue), but it bears specific mention.

#twitter #public forum #legal #science

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mysterious-prophetess · 4 years

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Top Five Academic and Publishing Scandals of the last Decade

So, I’ve seen people do stuff like this, a round up of sorts and the 2010′s were an insane decade to be alive.

So, I thought I’d compile my personal favorite publishing and academic scandals

Note: This will concern only things that were actually published or a scandal to do with Academia. The Rose Christo incident with the infamous fanfic didn’t have the biography make it to print so it’s right here as a Dishonorable Mention. No sources, because this was a home-grown tumblr disaster (much like Dashcon).

So,

#5 That Book that Used Scammy Tactics to Become a Best Seller Before Anyone Ever Even Read It.

Remember that time when Handbook for Mortals used shady tactics to make it look like it was selling better in pre-sales than it actually was? I barely remembered it, but then as I was adding in our Dishonorable Mention, I suddenly had the thought of “remember that...” so here it is at #5 since this book was actually published, and it was allegedly terrible. It has 3 stars on Amazon, but with its past, I can’t even trust that.

I didn’t read it. I had, and still have, better things to do than to read subpar fantasy that tried to be the next Hunger Games/Harry Potter/Divergent.

It turns out, if you have wealthy enough collaborators, or people who know how to game the system by which the NYT Bestsellers’ List operates, you too can buy and cheat your way onto that list with a terribly written book like these guys.

What’s even more ridiculous was there were already talks of a movie version and this unknown writer turned out to be, surprise, an actress too! And guess who’d be playing her own main character in the movie? The author! So, once this was unraveled as being a bulk-book-buying-cheat-tactic-to-get-on-the-NY Times-Bestseller-List, they lost their rank and were completely off the list. The movie is also toast, I think, since it would have come out in 2018. We’re now in 2020.

(x) (xx) (xxx) (xxxx)

#4: That time Bethesda Plagiarized Dungeons and Dragons.

That’s right folks. Bethesda, who cannot catch a break after their hilariously disastrous launch of their ongoing garbage fire, Fallout 76, were in trouble whenever they released a TTRPG module for an Elder Scrolls game that was suspiciously like a previously released Dungeons and Dragons adventure...because it was very much ripped off from the D&D book.

There were articles highlighting just how they did this and how blatant it was.

Some articles would do a side-by-side of huge chunks of the text and, yikes, that’s some obvious copy-pasting.

Suffice to say, they yanked this e-book down ASAP. (x) (xx) (xxx) (xxxx)

#3 That Time a Youtuber Turned Professional Games Media Editor Plagiarized for Most of His Career and Only Got Caught After He Plagiarized the Wrong Person on a Very Public Platform

So, yeah. There was a review last year for a game called Dead Cells (published by Motion Twin). On July 24, 2018 a smaller Youtube channel called Boomstick gaming would upload their review to the game. Then August 6th, IGN’s Nintendo editor would post “his” review up and Deadite from Boomstick Gaming, who was actually a fan of IGN, noticed a lot of eerie similarities between the reviews. He did a side-by-side video comparison (here) and it looks like a case of barely even changing the words around after copying someone else’s homework. As an English major, this is a clear-cut case of plagiarism. IGN agreed too, as did most of the internet. This reviewer had fans who still believe in him even after he’s been proven a plagiarist but, no accounting for taste am I right? And this would have been the end of it....had he just accepted his fate and just slunk off into the dark recesses of the internet.

But, then he had to provoke both Jason Schrier of Kotaku AND the Internet in a now deleted non-apology video to “looking as hard as you’re able, you won’t find anything.”

Yeah. That didn’t end well for him. So, people went digging and found a shitton of evidence he was a serial plagiarist. No shock to me, because plagiarism is never something a plagiarist ever does just “once.” He’d ripped off his fellow IGN reviewers as well as forum posts and articles from other publications. He also plagiarized a resume template. Now, when you use one of those, you’re SUPPOSED to mimic the style, put place your own information, right? Well, he didn’t even do that.

Link to YongYea, a youtuber who covered the topic in depth. He has his videos on the topic in a playlist. (x)

#2 The Professor Who P-Hacked His Results to Pieces

Now if you don’t know or remember who Professor Brian Wansink is, he’s a former faculty member at Cornell who rose to fame with his papers on nutrition and people’s eating habits. I’m still not entirely sure how a guy whose degrees were not in nutrition OR psychology ended up being the face of this field that seemed to have a lot more to do with nutrition and psychology, but here we are. His degrees were, in fact, a B.S. in business administration from Wayne State College, an M.A. in journalism and mass communication from Drake University, and a PhD in Marketing-Consumer behavior- from Stanford. In a move that one might call pure hubris or just complete and total social ignorance, he made a blog post that started to bring eyes on his work. Thanks to the efforts of other scientists (Like the Skeptical Scientist) and Heathers and Brown as well as the computer programs GRIM and GRIMMER, it was found the man who was cited over 200,000 times was a fraud. As of now 17 papers have been retracted and 15 have been corrected. He is no longer employed at all by Cornell, resigning a disgrace to his field and his former place of work.

The only reason he managed to get so big was he was able to make his so-called science digestible for the masses and able to give his works palatable titles. Ok, I’m done with the food puns. He was a superstar (even worked with the previous first lady on her health initiatives), which is why his fall is also meteoric. This is why you don’t torture your data into false positives, folks. Also, he’d target science journals that weren’t as prestigious and therefore wouldn’t have as rigorous a peer-editing process, allegedly.

His actions have brought thousands of papers into jeopardy and destabilized his whole entire field because nothing he did was reproducible and that’s already a huge problem in science.

(x) (xx) (xxx) (xxxx) (X) (XX)

And.... now for the worst Academic Scandal of the 2010′s....

#1 The College Admission’s Scandal

Because despite Wasink’s damage to his field (because now there are literally thousands of papers who cited him in jeopardy), and two separate cases of Plagiarists on this list, I really can’t help but feel this has to be one of the biggest College/Academia scandals of ALL TIME. Sure, it’s old news now but I’m recapping it because that’s what this list is for. So, A bunch of wealthy people who wanted their children to go to prestigious universities wanted a guarantee that just buying a new wing for the library/science buildings/etc wouldn’t get them. You know, the normal way the super rich buy their children’s ways into schools. Instead, they went to this guy Singer whose group masqueraded as a charity (and that’s what got their asses nailed) and facilitated bribery, cheating, and deception. They caught one of these parents who’d gotten their children in with Singer’s plans for a different crime, and he offered to squeal on Singer and his plot for leniency with his other charges.

Singer’s plan usually involved bribing coaches to get these undeserving students recruited for sports teams (and therefore displacing an actual athlete who should have gotten their spot) as well as having people alter SAT scores and other deceptive actions.

It’s unknown if, at this time, any of these children of the 34 charged parents, actually managed to graduate with degrees from any of these institutions. However, those that had any of these students have to now decide what to do with them since these admissions are now verifiably fraudulent. Some are going to whole-sale kick them out or “cancel their admission” and others aren’t speaking up, and one has already decided the student gets to stay. Because they might not have known what their parents did, and its possible for the ones whose parents DIDN’T have them fake athleticism to not know what their mom and dad did. Hell, even most of the fake athletes might not have known thanks to reports of photo shopping their faces onto uniformed bodies. I do not know if any of these children were in on what their parents did, thought I suspect some might have been, but that’s merely speculation on my part. At the end of the day, it’s up to each affected university to carry out what they wish to do next.

The fact they made donations to a fake charity (and therefore skirted the tax man) are the reason they’re REALLY in deep shit. You don’t deny the IRS its money or the IRS will come for your blood. Just ask the ghost of Al Capone.

(x) (xx) (xxx)

So those are my top 5 Publishing and Academic Scandals of the past Decade.

#long #top five publishing and academic scandals of the past decade #2010s

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zuzia-suchorska · 4 years

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Thea Ballard interviews Andrea Zittel

BlouinArtinfo. Newsmaker: Andrea Zittel BY THEA BALLARD, MODERN PAINTERS | JANUARY 06, 2016

Interview excerpt:

‘Since the early 1990s, Andrea Zittel has merged an insistent sense of functionality with a flair for the imaginary: the chicken-and quail-breeding units, minimalist uniforms intended to be worn for six months straight, compact living units, and floor-bound “furniture” comprising different-size swaths of carpet that characterized her early career conjured an elsewhere through their odd—but always intentional—reorganization of day-to-day norms. Following a relocation from New York to California’s Mojave Desert in 2000, she opened A-Z West in Joshua Tree, a studio compound where visitors can stay in encampments of Zittel’s own creation and otherwise engage with the artist’s designs. Recent works move between abstraction and utility, adopting, too, a dusty desert palette; an exhibition of new works at Sprüth Magers in Berlin is on view until January 18, and another solo opens in September at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York. Modern Painters senior editor Thea Ballard spoke to Zittel about living outside the art world and negotiating function within a gallery space.

Thea Ballard: What are you working on for your two latest shows?

Andrea Zittel: I’ve been making works based on the simple format of a plane or a panel. These planar elements actually go all the way back to some of my early pieces from the ’90s, with projects like the A-Z Cover (a blanket that can have any function) and A-Z Personal Panels (garments made entirely out of rectangles). The idea of a plane or a panel bridges so many different classifications and ways of perceiving things—both in terms of function and social roles. It’s also interesting that on some base level, anything that is flat and has straight edges is man-made. So the rectangular form speaks to a certain kind of human production; it allows you to take on the entire built world through a single elemental shape.

TB: Tell me about some of the applications you see for the panel. AZ: An example that’s in front of me right now is a sheet of plywood. A table is also an example of a planar element that has been given a function, or a bench or a sheet of printer paper. One of the things I’ve been interested in is how these panels can also represent different realities. A game board is an example of that—most game boards are flat and rectangular and roughly the same size. But the rules are totally different, depending on the particular game’s “reality field.”

TB: Do you find that there’s an architectural element to how you’re using it? AZ: It has allowed me to go back to working on a more architectural scale, which has been one of my core interests since the early ’90s. I’m working on plans for a new large-scale sculpture out here in the desert. The work will eventually consist of concrete wall sections scattered over about 25 acres of A-Z West. The part of the desert where I live is a weird place, and everything is in a state of transition right now. Parts of it are completely wild and natural, but there are also a lot of houses and developments moving in. I’m interested in making structures that, when you’re inside them, shift or alter your perception of the surrounding landscape. TB: What materials are you using? AZ: For the outdoor architectural works, I use materials that will hold up, such as steel, concrete, and wood. I’m also working on pieces for interior domestic spaces that are made from textiles. As panels, these handwoven pieces are inherently two-dimensional, but if you fold or drape or use them in any way, they transcend two dimensions to become three-dimensional.

TB: Tell me about living in Joshua Tree. AZ: It’s such an interesting and complicated place. I originally moved here because I wanted to be in a community that was, for the most part, separate from the art world. My mother’s side of the family is from the desert, so I’m also sort of hard-wired for this environment. I’ve heard people talk about the desert using these romanticized terms, like landscape, isolation, or nature. But it’s also a very politicized landscape. Right now there is a massive rush to use our area for large solar and wind farm developments. I can see the largest Marine base in the country from my studio—when they run their artillery target practice it shakes the entire house, sometimes for days on end. And then on the other side of A-Z West is an incredibly beautiful national park.

TB: Have you seen significant changes to the landscape you’re living in? AZ: It has changed a lot in the time that I’ve been living here. I find myself getting very emotional, wanting to fight for a certain way that I believe people should live and respect land, but at the same time, in order not to go completely crazy, you have to learn to accept the inevitability of change. I’m at a point in my life where I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea of change and be OK with it, so it’s feeling like a very existential moment.

TB: How is that sense of change emerging specifically in your art practice? AZ: There’s part of me that believes there’s a right way to do everything, a right way to live. And then, following this impulse, my next realization is that each person’s right way is different. These are ideas that I try to address in my works as well. My early work in the 1990s really confused people, because I would embody a position completely, and I would treat these positions as moral truths. For instance, I believe that you need to have only one garment per season, and you don’t need any dishes other than bowls, and a 30-inch-wide bed is the perfect width—anything more just takes up room and is unnecessary. People would get upset because they couldn’t tell if I was being critical or not. But I was fascinated by ideology and wanted to explore how it felt to be unquestioningly immersed in a position. At this point in my life, though, it’s impossible for me to believe in anything so fully anymore. My work has gotten a lot more philosophical as a result: Instead of making idealized products to live with, I’m making more abstract and open-ended living environments, though these are still things people can use in day-to-day living.

TB: How does an object express this philosophical quality? AZ: Lately I’ve been thinking about the notion of living in abstraction. An example of this would be a piece of furniture to which you can’t assign any single role. Essentially, we live on all these different horizontal surfaces (chairs, tables, beds, counters, desks), and the materials from which they’re made—or things like height or other subtle material clues—generally indicate their function. A philosophical object disorients you, but in a subtle way. I’m not interested in deconstructing function so much as disrupting some of the quick assumptions that we make when we assign roles to things that we think we may already know well.

TB: How do you feel your objects operate in a gallery space? AZ: Oh, man. The gallery has been one of the most challenging spaces for my work. I’m so much more interested in making things that function in daily life or in the larger world. I’m not opposed to the gallery as a site of exchange or commerce, since this is how all products enter the world. And I support my larger endeavor and noncommercial projects by selling works through galleries. But I have struggled with the context of the gallery for years. A lot of my earlier works, such as the Living Units, really felt like caricatures of themselves when I saw them in gallery spaces. This is a big part of the reason that I wanted to make spaces like A-Z West in the California desert, or A-Z East in Brooklyn.

TB: Have you been wrestling with that context recently as you prepare for these two shows? AZ: This morning I oriented a new group of residents who will be staying in our Wagon Station Encampment here at A-Z West for the next several weeks. After we finished talking about the structure of the camp, we spent an hour shoveling and moving dirt (our morning “power hour” is one of the criteria for being allowed to stay here). Half of my practice takes place totally outside the market and gallery system, and involves active, lived experiences. The other part of my practice is becoming increasingly object oriented and contemplative. I wonder if I should have a problem with this split, if I should attempt to make these two parts align. But I feel that the duality is working for me right now—it allows two opposites to create a larger whole in which each side accomplishes something that the other can’t.

TB: The work that can live in a gallery, that’s a form of multifunctionality, too. AZ: Yes, though it’s funny that the works that are clearly functional and meant to be lived with actually feel the most commercial in a gallery, because there, you’re made aware of the fact that you can’t actually use them unless you buy them. But the works that are maybe a little more theoretical or cerebral, they work for everyone—you don’t have to own them to get something from them.

TB: Do you think your project and your living situation are part of your attempt to create a different economy? AZ: I’ve thought about different economies a lot over the years, and running A-Z West takes this thinking to a whole new level, because it’s expensive to maintain and to make available to people. Right now the project is funded entirely by my commercial practice, and I’m so lucky I can do that, but I worry about what will happen if I’m not here someday. It needs to become financially self-sustaining. Figuring this out will allow me to focus on projects that aren’t always linked to a need to generate income. I think that right now, finding other economic models is probably more important than finding other formal models. That will open things up for artists more than anything.’

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themsgdiaries · 4 years

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How I feel about the current health crisis is constantly changing from time to time. While I am bottling my security from the word of God, the situation also revealed to me some behaviors which slipped in. The reality is when I haven't felt the impact it can affect on the grounds I am at, maybe I care lesser than any person I know--I was less worried than them. Oblivious of its damage, I was the one behind my computer screen wondering about the crash of my little shares in stock market debating if I will still hold or sell. Glutton and heedless as I can be, I bought a few more shares.

When news ringed to my ears about the outbreak, I was that one grabbing newspapers in the public places and the newspaper shelves at Ocean campus. I was that one stealing hours from my study time to research what is happening in China. I was that instead of maybe folding my hands together.

My Chinese friends experienced discrimination and racism along with the public's fear, so I want to understand things how it shifted from the midst of chaos, people turned to blame and hate. However, I became distant from the news due to the volumes of readings my major classes demand from me because of the coming midterm examinations. The next time I get a sense of what is really happening is from text messages from my family & friends around the globe, but my concerns swell knowing how it has already affected what I have always treated home, The Philippines. That was only the time the lever was pulled and the alarm starts ringing. IT IS HERE. Numbers of cases raise day to day. Then, the impact goes closer under my bootsoles. In the beginning of March, cities & counties around SF were declaring their cases. Trying to be careful between unreliable and reliable news, I became exposed to a plethora of theories, claims, hearsay, and pieces of information. Early March, SF declared its state of emergency not because we have a case but as a preparation to open facilities. Some people did not understand what it means. Other than that, with the muti-cultural and the rich diversity we are in, everyone just became fearful each day. They were all panic buying. Supermarkets and wholesale groceries including Costco were left with empty shelves. Some were fighting over tissue papers and water bottles. Some people who are greedy bought packages of personal hygiene products which they are now selling online tripled its original price.

Is there a coming famine in the land?

The group of friends I am with continually prayed over our lunch at the cafeteria. Some shared how traumatic it is for families living separately in geographic locations, and I know that first hand. Some shared how most people talked with them about the trauma they are experiencing as an international student hearing what is happening in their hometown. Some locked themselves in their rooms. Some called in sick to avoid the outside world. Some relied on and continually meet virtually. Due to this, it encouraged us to seek God more and deeply pray for his loving hands to help us and comfort those people.

I had talked with a coworker about a month ago. I asked her how is she feeling. Instead of telling me how she is feeling, she shared with me what is happening around her and about the news bombarding her. I listened to her interpreting she had these all filled up in her head and claimed this now as her feelings. I asked another coworker and he said if only one of us gets the virus, we will all be infected. But an older coworker answered me differently when I asked her the same question. She told me, "I am not afraid of the virus. If I will get it, God allowed it. If I will die, God knows it". I am not saying her answer is the only correct answer compared to the two, but it conforted me that what she is feeling is mutual as mine, and I think how we look deep down within us is really important even if it screams fear for what or security from who?

Although I am concern, I am not afraid. I know God is bigger than anything in this world and He is always in control . I can always Trust him like how the people of faith from the old and new testament tasted the fulfillment of His promises.

Eventhough, I feel sad about the changes and the news around. I have not buy a can good to stock in my pantry yet. I turned to be this person looking around how most people forget WHO we needed. While some I know figured it out in their lives, most people around were lost, and they are being eaten alive with worries and fear--- and I still give them credit for that. But I just want to say that I hope everyone of us remain calm and cooperate to what authorities are are asking us to do, and if you believe in God, rest in his protection and know that He is almighty! In situations like this, it is easier to see the damages it caused and focus on our own security, let us mourn with those who lost their love ones, and if we can turn it around, let us see that we are so much stronger when we face this all together with the help of our loving and merciful Heavenly Father! Along with that, I made a short list of things we can do to for ourselves while helping the people we love dearly and those around us. (It is on the photos below. 🏞🌅)

As for me, I am continually practicing healthy precautions and I am still trying to inform the public as a student leader. Also, it made me realized how many hours I have for myself right now because of changes, but I am grateful knowing that I can spend those hours nurturing my spiritual needs along with my body and mind, so I had developed my plans already.

Last night at my church, my pastor who is also a full-time registered nurse shared how things are going on in his workplace. While many of them were courageous enough to be at their work, most of these medical staff were driven with fear to be exposed thinking of their families at home; just like many we know. Some of them forget their disaster badges, so they call in sick to not do the work. Thankfully, some of them encouraged one another that this is the time they are truly needed: Compassion, service, and kindness. If only one can speak positivity and hope even though it will not change the situation in a second, we can lighten the burden instantly.

Earlier that night, I meet with a group of Christian leaders and staff with my sister. We talked about how most people in this health crisis, and how we can still continue our ministry. Name & Name developed this article of ideas on how we can still communicate with people we love and how we can still meet them virtually. Ideas on how to still play with your friends. How to make them know you care, and many different things! Feel free to benefit from this. (🔗 is on the comment)

Right now, I am experiencing the transitions and changes the Covid-19 is making in my surroundings' life and in my life. My classes were modified and transitioned online. In short, I will unlikely get the most of this sem. To others, science labs, art classes, and music classes will have to find a way they can do to continue instruction refraining from face-to-face meetings. Most of the faculty & students' plan for the upcoming Spring break was now affected because our Spring break was moved earlier. I know a bunch of people who canceled their trip due to many reasons. However, I do think I needed this break to reflect in life. In a crisis like this, were social distancing is adviced. Ironically, this is also the time where I get to spend (more) time with my family. It made us closer together and apprecaite that families matters for all of us. Moreover, this testing we are facing makes me se how communities come along together in unity, and how peoplw pray for all the world. We will be resilient. We will be prayerful. We can conquer this in God's time and for God's glory.

On the otherside of how I see the silverlining of this crisis, when I received the emails regarding our campus closure and switching into online learning because of the Covid-19 cases happening around us from school to school. I realized how severely critical it is. IT IS HERE. Although there is no case yet at my college, the community is facing it already closer in my proximity. Still, I will chooses to be Calm. Trusting in the plan of the Lord!

This story I am writing is my experience, but it doesn't have to be me or about me. This can be one of the voices of many, this can be one of the feelings of a person in a crowd. This can be a perspective resonating with more than one person in the room, or this can be the realization of "where do I stand" and "what can I do because there is a plague in the land?" or it could be the time where it reveals something important to you when you ask "what do I treasure?", "what am I afraid of?" or a bold statement of "I know God will rescue us."

While I may not be the first one to kneel down and pray in my personal prayer--which I must have done first rather than being concern on my profits and shares-- for the current crisis we are facing, I am so thankful that God warned me the potential of being sef- centered, and he changed me to be compassionate and pray for the world. I am further grateful too because this made me closer to God and realize the potential ministry which can root up from this and how I can develop more into maturity and love for one another. From my experience, I realized a fact that what we are facing right now reveals people's heart's content. It stirred it up and filled it more in so many different ways. That is why I want to pray along with you right now.

Heavenly Father,

There are those families who are worried right now of their family members in their houses and in far places. I pray Lord that you help them not to worry but to understand certain health precautions they needed to do. I pray Lord that you take away the worries in their hearts and that you mercifully replace it with peace that is coming from you. Please grant them security and protection as they do their daily chores and may they always come to you in this time of need.

We also pray for those people who are suffering from the co-vid19 right now; People of different races, rich and poor, young and old. This just shows to as that no one is above any one of us and that we are all equal. Whether we live in the upstate or down in the slums we are out of control in what is happening around us, and we know Lord that you are the only one who is in control of our situation. You alone are above our situation and your name is above this virus. Father, we pray that let everything happen according to your will. May this be an awakening to us to call upon your name and seek your loving hands to guide us on what to do. Also, not only to look back and reflect on how we treated other people or what things we have so far accomplished, but look forward instead for the afterlife we will face most especially after our death. We pray Lord that may this be a turning point to people who haven't know you yet, and may this be an opportunity for your people to give comfort to those who are suffering and ill. May we shed light to those who are in the darkness, confused, and isolated. Use us, Lord, to be a blessing and encouragement to everyone. Give us hands that are helpful and a heart that listens and understands.

We also pray for the families who are bereaved, and for those people who are still in medication. We express our condolences and sympathy to them, and may those people in medication be comforted in their pains. Lord, we ask for your healing hands to grant them the recovery they needed.

We thank you, Lord, for the medical staff, the doctors, the nurses, the aids, and the first responders we have. Thank you, Lord, for their time and the talents and skills you have given them. I pray Lord that you continually give them a strong immune system as they treat and care for patients. Take care of their families, their little ones, their partners, their children as they leave their houses to go into their workplace and give the need of the people infected by the virus. Lord, continually create a compassionate heart like yours to willingly serve along with their disaster badges. Give them strength, wisdom, and understanding as they tend to the needs of everyone. As they look left and right seeing discouraging situations of the reality that we are in a health crisis and they are in a chaotic workplace right now, may they find peace in you Lord. Take away their fears and worries. Grant them security and rest that is coming from you. We thank you for them.

Father, we pray for everyone who is fearful right now. We pray for those people who are transitioning in these changes happening around us. We pray that we become more understanding on the decisions of authorities. Grant us the craft to be creative and find a solution in the changes in our routines. Help us to use our time wisely and productively. Father, we pray for those who are upset for their plans were not able to manifest due to restrictions. For the people who want to meet their families, grant them peace in their hearts so they will not worry as they care for their family. We pray father that you grant disciple and understanding for students who will face a challenging semester of class suspensions and online learning. We pray that you send help for elderly students who will find it difficult to access technology. We also pray for working students and all employees around the world that you would please provide all their needs as they rely on you despite the cuts in their hours at work or the WFH. We pray that you encourage those who are graduating this year and may they realize that their success is important, but it is not everything that matters. Grant them patience Lord and let them be cheerful in their success. I pray for the parents, Lord. Let their big heart trust in you, oh Lord. Grant them strength and let them know that you are taking care of them and it concerns you whatever their concerns are.

We pray for the church, Lord. Help us to be more prayerful and sensitive to the things we can do to help. Grant us Lord peace that is coming from you which surpasses all understanding. Grant us faith to continually minister to the needs of the people. Strengthen us, Lord, and bless us.

Lord, we declare your lordship above us. We rest in your plans and in your will knowing that you are in control of everything. We know Lord that you are a Big God. We believe in you and we ask that you help us have victory over this virus. As you heal the people and the land which are both sick right now, we ask Lord for forgiveness of our sins and that you cleanse us with the holy blood of the sacrificial lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ. Send healing not only in our physiscal body, but in our spiritual life as well that you might be glorified forever.

Thank you, Lord for our security and our faith to trust in you. Thank you for your love and your grace. May you be lifted high as always. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

Wishing you good health, safe travels, and may peace be with you,

The Msg Diaries

*Due to many responsibilities on school, work, and private meetings The Msg Diaries has to face. This article did not undergo proofreading, so please please forgive and bear with it. Thank you so much!

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komorebirei · 5 years

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The Water Was Never Afraid - Chapter 7: Branch

Chat Noir ran along the rooftops on all fours, using his staff only to vault from one building to the next. He didn’t know or care where he was going—Paris’ visible landmarks were enough to orient himself once he was ready to go back.

It was almost nine in the evening, and the sun was slanting, but the city was still suffused in golden light. Passing the restaurant where he and Kagami had eaten just a couple hours ago, he spied the same waitress who had served them still on her shift, taking an order from an outdoor table. She looked tired and a bit frazzled.

Seeing the opportunity to improve someone’s day, Chat Noir swiped a peony from a random window’s flower box and hopped to the ground. As the waitress pocketed her tiny pad of paper and turned to go back inside, he caught up to her and presented the peony.

She looked shocked and starstruck, turning to search her surroundings for the reason Chat Noir was paying her a visit.

“This is for you, mademoiselle. I’ve been to this restaurant before, and I recognized you,” Chat Noir confessed honestly. “Thank you for making dinner worthwhile for my girlfriend and me.”

He threw in the last detail so she wouldn’t think he was hitting on her.

Her face brightened as she took the flower from his claws.

“Ah, there it is,” Chat Noir grinned cheerfully, twirling his staff in one hand. “I was hoping to see that smile bloom on your face.”

The girl giggled and tucked the peony’s stem into her apron. “Thank you. That’s very sweet of you.”

He leaned into her ear to whisper. “Oh, and I trust you to keep it a secret that Chat Noir is seeing someone. Keep smiling, mademoiselle!” Waving goodbye, Chat Noir went on his way, smirking at the dumbstruck expressions of the restaurant’s patrons.

Hanging a left at the Arc du Triomphe, he followed the broad avenue of the Champs Élysées in the general direction of Collège Françoise Dupont.

Even though it felt good to be out and about, and to see Parisians milling from place to place, wrapping up the loose ends of their days, Chat Noir couldn’t help but feel lonely.

He couldn’t seem to escape this situation—the mask, the façade. No matter where he went or what he did, the curtain separating him from the world seemed to follow him around.

None of these people knew anything about him, and it was difficult to engage people in conversation when they were too blinded by his mask not to act like fools basking in the glamour of being noticed by a superhero of modern legend. Not much different from being Adrien, just a lot more fun when he could do parkour all over the city.

Still, it was nice to make people smile, so there was that.

Landing on a spire of Notre Dame, Cat Noir took a moment to scan the city. He’d made it quite some distance from his neighborhood in the 8th arrondissement, by the Parc Monceau. The lazy crawl of his eyes across the surroundings came to a halt when he saw a sight that made his chest warm.

He couldn’t be sure it was her. She was like a speck across the narrow channel of Seine separating the two islands, on the neighboring Île Saint-Louis, but that loose white blouse with oversized black-inked polka dots, paired with persimmon-colored straight-leg pants that contrasted sharply with the neutral colors and green of the balcony garden, looked strikingly familiar. He could have sworn he’d seen her wear that outfit to the office.

He extended his staff into the water and used it to pole vault across to the other island, landing in a tree near the balcony.

Now that he had a clear view, his suspicions were confirmed. It was indeed her. Her shoulder-length hair had been swept into a loose bun that was already starting to fall out of the claw clip. One knee pulled to her chest, she leaned over a round wooden table, cutting magazine clippings, blissfully unaware that she was being watched.

One sturdy branch of the tree he was sitting in extended toward her balcony, so he slunk across it on all fours, feeling his perch sway in the wind.

“I’m surprised to see the princess in a different tower,” Chat Noir called out softly, trying not to startle her.

It didn’t work. Marinette screeched and hurled the scissors at him, which he thankfully caught deftly between thumb and forefinger. He tutted as he used the branch as a bridge to Marinette’s balcony. “Trying to put my eye out, Princess? How can I protect Paris blind?”

“Chat Noir!” Looking horrified, Marinette leaned over the balcony rail toward him. The sudden movement had made her precariously lodged claw clip fall out, and her loose hair brushed her shoulders, slightly wavy from the previous style. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No,” he reassured. “Care for some company?”

Marinette moved aside, making space for him to land, and he leapt the short distance between the branch and her balcony.

“Did you pick this apartment in hopes of welcoming me someday?” he joked.

“Keep on dreaming, Minou. My balcony was my thinking place, growing up, and I got used to having one to retreat to when I was feeling introspective. So a cute balcony was an important condition when I was looking for my own place.”

It was refreshing the way Marinette talked to him like a normal person, not like she was speaking with a celebrity and watching every word that came out of her mouth. He had occasionally interacted with her or pulled her out of danger during an akuma fight, but nothing more than he had done to countless other citizens in the past. Judging from the way she easily spoke with Jagged Stone and even his father, Chat Noir supposed Marinette was just tough to intimidate. A woman with nerves of steel.

He picked up her claw clip, which had fallen to the ground, and handed it to her. Their fingers brushed, and he saw that her hands were smudged with colored ink, unadorned with nail polish. Honest, laboring hands.

“This one’s an upgrade. I like what you’ve done with it,” he praised, looking around. The balcony was larger than the one over her parents’ bakery, extending out from the relatively spacious wedge by the French doors that led into the apartment, in a narrow bridge-like protrusion. She had lined the perimeter with a variety of plants, mostly low flower beds and greens that came up to the level of the rail, but the vines and small trees next to the building’s exterior had begun to grow up the walls. She had strung lights from the roof of the building down to the balcony rails, and the golden glow blended with the violet hues of impending dusk. The overall effect looked inviting, comfortable and fresh, and gave her balcony an intimate feel.

“Thanks.” Marinette went back to her table, which, on closer inspection, Chat Noir realized was varnished bamboo.

“What are you doing with all of that, Princess?” he asked, peering at the clippings that littered the table, held down by several smooth, grey rocks. A few pens and alcohol markers lay in a messy pile near her elbow.

Marinette held up her sketchbook, into which she had already taped several clippings. Beside them were a few sketched mannequins in outfits that pulled from the color palette. “Just working on my inspiration book.”

Chat Noir snorted. “Like The Collector.”

Marinette gasped in mock offense. “You’re comparing me to an akuma?”

“You remember that?” Chat Noir was surprised she understood the reference.

“Well, of course! Gabriel Agreste was my idol, so I paid attention to him.” She broke off another piece of tape and fastened another clipping to the page.

Chat Noir marveled at how immaculate the layout looked, combining the magazine clippings with her fluid sketches and tiny, font-like handwriting. “You know, Princess, you could publish this sketchbook exactly as it is and people would buy it.”

“As if I’d do that,” Marinette retorted quickly. “This is a closely guarded book of Marinette Dupain-Cheng secrets. You better not leak my designs, Chat Noir. I fully intend on these designs hitting the market. Some of them, anyway.”

Chat Noir fought a huge grin that threatened to overtake his face. He was delighted that she was making it in their industry. He wondered if he’d get to wear any of her designs—but he couldn’t be vocal about his excitement yet.

“I guess you don’t have these layouts on Instagram somewhere then, do you?”

“Not these, but I do have an Instagram,” she admitted. “Not gonna tell you my handle, though. I challenge you to find it.”

“Challenge accepted.” He winked.

“So, Chat Noir,” Marinette looked up. “Are you just dropping by to say hello, or…?”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, standing awkwardly by the table, suddenly feeling like he was intruding on Marinette’s alone-time. His father hated having someone hover over his shoulder as he designed. Maybe he was bothering Marinette. “It was just nice to see a familiar face, but I can get going if you’re busy.”

Marinette shrugged, an easy smile tugging at her lips. “I’m not really busy, just passing time. I can get a little obsessive when it comes to designing, so a distraction is always welcome if you wanted to stay a while.”

Since Hawkmoth wasn’t active and today wasn’t their day to meet, Marinette knew Chat Noir had no practical reason to be in the suit, so his presence on her balcony right now probably meant he was lonely.

Chat Noir nodded. “Thanks, Princess.”

“I can’t believe you’re still calling me that,” Marinette said, pushing one of the chairs out for him with her foot.

He took a seat, laying one arm over the other on the table, careful not to disturb her clippings. “We always seem to meet on a balcony. Should I call you Juliet instead?”

This time, she kicked his boot lightly. “Too far, Chat.”

He picked up one of the alcohol markers. “Why do you artists like these so much? What’s so special about them?”

Marinette ripped out a page of her sketchbook. He flinched and started to protest, but she waved off his concern and dropped the sheet in front of him. “The ink mixes together really well—give it a try. And I’m a designer, not an artist.”

“What’s the difference?” Chat Noir uncapped a light green slab marker and drew a thick line a couple inches long.

“Artists create to express themselves. Designers create for others.”

“Isn’t there some art in design, too?” He drew another line beside the first in a dark, forest green, and watched as the ink bled between the two strips of color in a gradient effect. “Wow, that’s really cool.”

“Isn’t it? It’s kind of like watercolor painting!” Marinette’s eyes twinkled with enthusiasm. “And yeah, you’re right. There’s overlap, of course, kind of like a yin-yang. But I don’t consider myself to be an artist. I want people to wear and use what I design. It’s not just to get some idea into the world, which I think is where a lot of people fall short in the fashion industry. Too conceptual.”

Chat Noir nodded. “I get what you mean.” A lot of the outfits he saw on the runway were just plain ridiculous, as if the designers were trying to push the line of how ugly you could make something and still call it fashion.

He wished he could tell her about the line he’d seen leaked photos of just last week from another fashion house, which literally made the models look like hunchbacks. He didn’t think he’d seen anything more hideous in his life. If he told her, though, she’d know that he had some connection to the fashion world.

Would that be okay, maybe? Hawkmoth already knew his identity, so what was there to hide?

“Marinette,” he said slowly, letting up on his Chat Noir swagger. A thrill ran through him when she looked up with searching eyes, probably catching on to his change of tone. “What if I were someone you actually knew? Would this be weird? Us hanging out like this, I mean?”

Marinette raised an eyebrow and turned her head to give him a sidelong glance. “Uh… no, not really? I understand the whole secret identity thing. Hawkmoth is still at large…” she trailed off, short of asking the unspoken question.

He could see the cogs turning in her brain—trying to figure out why he was asking. ‘Be careful, Chat Noir,’ was written in her expression.

He could tell her. She would keep his secret. It didn’t really matter as much now, anyway, and he knew he could trust her. She was a loyal friend. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one person in the world know his secret?

But then, he remembered the way she had backed off him when she remembered him dating Kagami, and the way she kept her guard up around him, since he was her boss’s son. The way they were now was good. Two friends hanging out, doing nothing, expecting nothing.

No, he couldn’t tell her. Let Chat Noir remain his sanctuary. Chat Noir wasn’t Adrien. He wasn’t anyone.

“Ah, don’t worry, Princess!” He waved both hands in an attempt to allay the worry and suspicion that was etched into her face. “It’s just, there’s someone I know in real life that I tend to see a lot as Chat Noir, and I, uh, just wondered if it was weird of me not to tell her. I certainly feel like a creep sometimes, since she doesn’t know it’s me.”

“Oh, I see.” Marinette cocked her head, looking more curious now than troubled. “She should understand you have to keep your identity under wraps. Any Parisian would.”

“I guess you’re right!” Chat Noir laughed, even though part of him throbbed with a deep, dull ache as he put on another mask over his mask. He returned the two markers he’d used to the pile and stood. “Well, Princess, I think I’ve overstayed my welcome for tonight. It was fun.” He winked and gave her a comically deep bow. “I bid you adieu, Princess.”

“Good night.” She brushed her bangs aside and waved, the golden fairy lights accentuating the curve of her cheek as she smiled. As Chat Noir leapt onto the branch that caught him with a deep swing, she called out, “You know where I live now, so feel free to come by when you’re lonely.”

He caught her eye—she was looking at him softly, with a patient expression, calm like water. She knew he was lonely.

“Good night, Princess.”

Feeling shaken from the adrenaline of almost spilling the secret he’d kept for eight years, he ran across Paris and transformed in an alley before reentering his flat.

He checked his phone reflexively as Plagg broke out of his pocket and made a beeline for the cheese cabinet. There were a few messages from board members, one from Celeste. He didn’t open them—didn’t feel like thinking about work at the moment.

Nothing from Kagami. That wasn’t too surprising. When they weren’t together, she was immersed in her activities and only texted him to make plans. He didn’t expect her to be the mushy girlfriend type with whom he’d have to argue about who should hang up first.

After a quick shower and microwaved meal, he went over the next day’s plans and puttered around the internet watching random videos until the hour grew late enough to sleep.

As he crawled into bed, he checked again for messages from Kagami, but nothing. He contemplated texting her to ask what she was doing, or say goodnight, but decided against looking needy and weak.

He lay in bed, feeling inexplicably restless.

A strange dissatisfaction gnawed at him, though he couldn’t find anything in his life to complain about.

It was at least another hour before he finally drifted off to sleep.

#Miraculous Ladybug #MiraculousLadybug #Miraculous Ladybug Fanfiction #MiraculousLadybugFanfiction #Marichat #Adrigami #The Water Was Never Afraid

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holland-ish · 6 years

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Against the Odds | Prologue

The Hunger Games AU // Tom Holland x Reader

Summary: In a world of limited resources, the government run by the Capitol keeps its citizens in line by separating them into Districts and reinforcing oppressive class separations. But their strongest tool to promote disunion and to discourage rebellion is the Hunger Games: a yearly event where two tributes from each district are pitted against each other in a fight to the death for the entire country to watch on television.

Warnings: Mentions of death, kinda crappy writing, also a lack of Tom

Word Count: 3, 161

Disclaimer: This story is inspired by the Hunger Games, written by Suzanne Collins. The basic outline of this plot and some characters belong to her.

A/N: This didn’t turn out how I wanted it to but after rewriting it like 234506 times, I figured that I should probably post it up if I’ve written it. Please leave feedback! I always appreciate it and I love to know what you guys are thinking!

Masterlist

You glanced at your father as he placed a kiss on your mother's head, his eyes flickering to yours when he felt your gaze. A sigh fell from his lips as he ran a hand down her back, stepping away from the woman with her eyebrows furrowed in a worried frown. He placed a hand on either side of your neck, his eyes filled with a sorrow that you had learned only ever made an appearance once a year.

“We’ll be alright,” he said, placing a short kiss on your head. His voice was strong despite the shaking of his hands and the broken shine in his eyes. “The odds will be in our favour, I know it.”

You shook your head, leaning into your father’s loving touch and bit your lip. How would the odds be in your favour? The fear that had settled in the pit of your stomach barely faded away when you saw the reassuring look in his eyes. “My name is in the reaping twenty times.”

“As selfish as it may sound, there must be girls who have their name in the reaping more than you,” he mumbled, wrapping his arms around your shoulders and pulling you into his embrace. “We just have to have hope. That’s all the power we have.”

You wanted to scream. How could you rely on something as simple as hope to get you through the reaping? It wasn’t fair and it didn’t make sense but if your father believed in it then, for his sake, so would you. There was a heavy weight on your chest whenever you thought about the name that would be written on the slip of paper that Effie Trinket would pull from the bowl.

“I love you,” you sniffled, annoyed at yourself for tearing up already. “I love you and if I-”

Your mother stood from where she was sitting before, running a hand through your hair and letting out a long breath. She spoke before you could even finish your sentence. “Nothing will happen. It’s your last year and once we get through today, we’ll be perfectly fine.”

“She’s right,” your dad nodded, pushing you away by your shoulders and smiling down at you. “And we love you too, beautiful. Now, if you’re both finished getting ready, it’s time for us to leave.”

“I don’t want to go.” You could feel the look that your dad sent your mom but didn’t bother to think anything of it. “I just want to stay. I don’t feel good.”

Your mother stepped forward after reaching for your jacket, holding it towards you while your father lets go of your shoulders. “You know that we don’t have a choice. Come on, put this on and let’s go.”

Nodding your head, you swiped the back of your hand across your eyes to dry away from any tears that may have formed. You shrugged the jacket on, clearing your throat as you bent down to tighten the shoelaces on the boots you had chosen to wear instead of the sandals your mother told you to wear. She knew you hated the reaping with whatever negativity you had in yourself so she had taken it upon herself to make sure that you at least dressed for the cameras that would be there, broadcasting the event live to all of Panem.

The walk to the Hall of Justice from the Seam felt as if it were hours long. It was only a five-minute walk and despite your nerves, you took the time to convince yourself that things would be okay. That the odds may be in your favour once again.

You hated the Hunger Games. You hated the Capitol. You hated the whole country.

And walking through the Seam, which was the poorer section of District 12 where mostly the coal-miners and their families lived, was something you were unhappy to say that you had grown used to. Your father was a coal-miner, spending the majority of his days working strenuous hours in the mines while you and your mother ran a stall in the Hob, selling medicinal supplies below the floor-price (or trading them in for food) for those who couldn’t afford to buy them from the apothecaries.

As you walked past the Hob, you could see that the stalls were left unusually empty. The Hob was the local black market, an illegal shopping centre that had been spared by the peacekeepers who were assigned to District 12. In fact, many of them would spend their free hours trading for supplies and food from the Hob themselves. You could see your own stall from the hole-in-the-wall windows.

You kept your eyes peeled for Harrison, the boy who had been your closest friend since you were children. Harrison was the same age as you, his name in the reaping the same amount of times as yours was. But you couldn’t see him anywhere and assumed he had already arrived at the Hall of Justice with his own family. You were worried for him and worried for his sister, you weren’t sure how you’d be able to cope if either of their names were called.

The courtyard outside the Hall of Justice was livelier than what was the norm for District 12. A district that usually consisted of dreary greys or blacks that were a result of the soot and coal carried around from the mines was now littered with clean whites and pale blues. It was still a dreary sight for foreign eyes, poverty and famine causing a visible mess to any visitors. The sun was almost always hidden behind clouds, which meant that there was a dull aura to the whole district.

You grimaced as you left your parents to sign in, waiting half-patiently in the clump of a queue, the loud sound of chatter causing you to feel the start of a headache in the back of your head. It was almost painful for you to look at the younger children, knowing that the innocent look in the eyes of a twelve-year-old will only bring tears to your own eyes. They had no place in the Hunger Games, no place in the violence and gore that the games brought. Knowing that it was very possible that it could be one of them (or even two of them) whose names could be called caused a lump in your throat. You closed your eyes for a moment, opening them when you knew that you were finally at the front of the queue.

“Next please,” the lady, dressed in official uniform held her gloved hand out. You placed your hand on hers, wincing as she pricked your finger and pressed it to the sheet in front of her, staining a spot of the white paper red with your blood. She scanned it with an unfamiliar device that bleeped just before it flashed with your name and age before she dismissed you.

Your eyes met your father’s as you walked past him and your mother, appreciating the reassurance in their forced smiles. Within the next few minutes, you were standing among the crowd of girls who were the same age as you, all wearing the same fearful expression as you. You scanned over the large courtyard, slightly nervous about the large number of people who were here. It was mandatory for every citizen in the districts to attend, otherwise facing the penalty of imprisonment.

The Mayor stepped forwards, giving a speech that was obviously forced and written with disinterest. His eyes sorrowfully landed on each of the eligible, a silent apology that nobody paid any attention to. There was a silence that was broken with hushed whispers as he turned and took his seat at the back of the stage.

Your stomach dropped when Effie Trinket walked on stage, the tapping of her heels echoing louder than they should have as she walked up to the microphone, lifting her hands to adjust her faded pink wig. It sat above her head in a bundle of curls, resembling a tower of roses that was just barely larger than her head itself. She fixed the positioning of the net hat that sat on top of it before she tapped on the microphone twice. There was a collective wince at the resulting noise.

“Welcome, welcome,” she chimed, in her rich Capitol accent. “Happy Hunger Games! And, may the odds be ever in your favour.”

You saw the girl beside you roll her eyes. It brought a small smile to your face and you knew that she was aware you had caught it, a small smirk falling onto her face as she tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. She turned her head, latching eyes with one of the boys.

“Of course,” she continued, her enthusiasm making your stomach churn with annoyance. Effie’s pursed smile never left her face as she spoke. “We have a very special film brought to you all the way from the Capitol!” Effie turned, motioning towards one of the large projector screens that were temporarily built there specifically for the duration of the Hunger Games. The film was a piece of Capitol propaganda that you’d listened to and seen more times than you could count.

“War, terrible war,” President Snow’s voice spoke darkly over the distressing clips that began to play on the screen. The instrumental anthem of Panem played in the background. “Widows, orphans, a motherless child. This was the uprising that rocked our land.” His voice was a sound that used to scare you, a deep and shadowy tone. But you had grown used to it. “Thirteen districts rebelled against the country that fed them, loved them, protected them. Brother turned on brother until nothing remained.” The crowd was silent, their focus trained on the film that was presented every year. “And then came the peace, hard-fought, sorely won. A people rose up from the ashes and a new era was born. But freedom has a cost. And the traitors were defeated. We swore as a nation that we would never know this treason again.”

There was something so upsetting to you about this film. It was as if the Capitol was convincing the citizens of all the Districts that the Hunger Games were to be admired. That it was a reminder of the so-called peace that they were living in and that the games were something to be proud of. The thought made you sick to your stomach.

“And so it was decreed that each year the various districts of Panem,” President Snow’s voice was booming over the loudspeakers. “Would offer up, in tribute, one young man and woman to fight to the death in a pageant of honour, courage and sacrifice. The lone victor, bathed in riches, would serve as a reminder of our generosity and our forgiveness. This is how we remember our past. This is how we safeguard our future.”

Panem, ever since the uprising, was a country that was not to be envied. The nation of Panem was separated into a total of thirteen nation-states known as districts, twelve of which are operational. Each district is responsible for producing, procuring, or refining goods in specific industries as dictated by the Capitol. Each and every one of the districts has been subject to the unrelenting will of the shining Capitol that they surround. The higher districts, Districts 1, 2 and 3 were always favoured by the Capitol as they specialised in luxury, masonry and technology. Of course, they were Capitol favourites.

They had it lucky. Poverty was barely existent in their districts despite the fact that they weren’t nearly as rich and brilliant as the Capitol.

“Oh, how wonderful!” Effie exclaimed, flashing her annoyingly bright smile at the crowd who stared blankly back at her. The bright pink of her outfit stood out like a sore thumb in district 12 but she couldn’t have cared less. “Now, the time has come for us to select one courageous young man and woman for the honour of representing District 12 in the 74th annual Hunger Games. As usual, ladies first.”

It was sickening, how she was so nonchalant towards the Hunger Games. People were dying, forced to murder and be murdered all for the entertainment of the Capitol.

You would have scoffed if it weren’t for the pit of fear and dread that settled in your stomach as she waddled over to the bowl filled with small sheets of white paper, folded neatly and taped shut. She slowly let her hand enter the bowl, flicking the papers around inside the large bowl before she finally managed to pick one out.

The whole crowd held their breath. You felt as if you would throw up. And you almost did when she read out the name that was scribbled onto the chit of paper.

“Y/N Y/L/N.”

It was quiet. So quiet that you were afraid everyone within ten miles of you would be able to hear the thumping of your heart in your chest. The weight that you had previously felt pushing down on your chest had suddenly lifted, only to swing back around and knock every last breath out of you. You could feel the eyes of every other person in the vicinity planted on you to gauge your reaction and send you looks of pity.

“Well,” Effie encouraged, pulling glares from some of the people who were spectating. “Come on up, my dear.”

You swallowed thickly, trying your hardest to stop your lip from quivering as you stepped out of the girls’ section of the crowd and towards the stage. In the heat of the moment, your eyes found your father’s and then your mother’s in a panicked daze, unable to register the broken expressions that had fallen across their faces. A white noise surrounded you as made your way up the stairs and stared out at the crowd of familiar and unfamiliar faces.

Effie’s words flew right over your head as the ringing died down. By the time she had finished talking, you were completely unaware of anything she had just said, prompting a response from the crowd only to be met with none.

People knew who you were. You and your mother had provided almost every family in District 12 with free medical help for however long you could remember, always saving lives and never taking them. Because your family knew what it was like to be unable to afford medical health. They were thankful and they were well aware of your caring and loving nature. If there was anyone in this district who didn’t deserve to be entered into the Hunger Games, it was you.

Far too many people in the crowd owed their lives to you. And although nobody of the eligible age was selfless enough to volunteer and take your place, they all ached for you.

You could see your mother and father, your friends from school and the friends you’d made from working in the Hob and in peoples homes. You could see your teachers and your neighbours. You could see your best friend, Harrison. And it began to slowly settle in. This was very likely to be your last time ever seeing any of them. It made you sick to your stomach and you resisted the urge to lose whatever small lunch you had eaten.

Shakily, you took in a deep breath, finally noticing the couple of stray tears that had fallen from your eyes.

Effie frowned at your silence, clearing her throat after she had spoken. You snapped yourself out of your daze when she had already returned to the microphone with the paper in her hand. “And now, for the boys.”

You hoped, with the little hope that was left for you, that you wouldn’t know the boy whose name would be called. You hoped that he wouldn’t be anyone you cared about deeply and you hoped it wasn’t Harrison.

“James-”

“I volunteer!” You gasped at the familiar sound of Harrison’s voice, calling over Effie’s, his eyes locked onto yours. “I volunteer as tribute!”

What the hell was he doing? You could hear the screams of his sister, the yells of distaste that came from his family. He was out of his mind.

“Oh,” Effie stammered. “Oh, I’m sure we have some other procedures we must-” she cut herself off, shaking her head and muttering to herself under her breath. “Alright, come on up and introduce yourself.”

Harrison was by your side in a matter of seconds, his arms wrapping around you with no care for who was watching. He couldn’t lose you to the games and he couldn’t let you go in there alone. You were family and Harrison would be damned if he’d let you enter the arena alone.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Harrison muttered into your hair, ignoring your protests and the curses that you were sending him for being so damn stupid. “I know what I’m doing.”

“You’re stupid,” you held back a sob, your voice muffled by his shirt. “My god, Harrison, you are so stupid. What have you done?”

Harrison didn’t reply, only squeezing you against him tighter before reluctantly letting go.

Effie cleared her throat as Harrison pulled away from you. “What’s your name, dear?”

“Harrison Osterfield,” he said, stepping into the microphone with a nervous look in his eyes. Harrison was scared, just as scared as you were and you could tell just by the shaking of his hands.

“And I take it that Y/N here is your friend?” Effie placed a hand on his back. “Is that why you volunteered?”

“Yes,” Harrison almost whispered but thanks to the microphone, it was clearly heard by everyone. “I couldn’t-I can’t let her go in there alone.”

Effie forced a smile, looking back at the crowd and holding a hand on Harrison’s shoulder. “Let’s have a big hand for District 12’s very first volunteer, Harrison Osterfield!”

Nobody clapped. You could hear the short breaths that left you and maybe if you strained your ears you would be able to hear Harrison’s too. Instead, you watched as your father pressed three fingers on his left hand to his lips and then raised it shakily, his face stained with tears. It was a sign used only by the districts that meant peace. And love and hope, the only things left that the people who lived their lives slaving for the Capitol had left to rely on.

Slowly, every other member of the crowd followed his actions silently. Harrison’s lip quivered and shakily, you stepped forward and grabbed his hand.

You’re chest constricted when a broken sob left his lips, accompanied by one of your own before Effie had hurriedly rushed you off of the stage after one final sentence addressed to whoever would be watching. “Happy Hunger Games. And may the odds be ever in your favour!”

Tagging: @wtfholland @saracastickid @cutehollands @hollandroos @cosmetologynerd @leni-lion-luke-larb-logic @joetasker @nonewmessage @amagicalpieceofshit @spiderboytotherescue @kaciidubs @chingonaconcha @lionheo04 @sherlockstolemyname @enthusiastic-babe @lemirabitur @sholla4-314 @ashesandfire @alylanaeblack @your-1up-girl @fuckyou-imspiderman @shuriismyqueen @im-fandom-trash @rude-much @kayaaaa @justabitoverobsessed @i-luv-doggos @bluparis @isisqueenoffandoms @triedstudent @curly-haired-holland @wubbawubwub04 @voidjillybean @ambrosmarbackupp @1999yanira @jessiedaeum @acciomarvel @sugar-spice--everything-not-nice @seafrost-fangirl @teen2walker @whyistomholland @mxlti-vxrse @vivaciousflamingo @dobby-is-a-fr33-elff @smexylemony @thepenisparker @parkeret @intoxicatingloki @obsessedmaggiemay @bluelalal @my-babies-are-ash @elianas-book-blog @bloodysleepy @iaiabear @im-fandom-trash @just-my-put-together-thoughts

I’m sorry if Tumblr didn’t let me tag you/if the tag didn’t work!

#tom holland x reader #tom holland au #tom holland x you #tom holland imagine #tom holland imagines #tom holland #tom holland fanfic #tom holland fic #mcu #marvel

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codezeta-liveblog-blog · 5 years

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Damages 2.1 - Council of Future Plotpoints

Damages huh. To what or to who? Probably to everyone, to the balance itself. If Blake is to continue being the protagonist, he has to get some yet to be seen advantage over everyone else. Which no one expects. Which will probably fuck everyone up. Cant wait, lets go.

> The pen scribbled across the paper. > > Weapons. A knife, a larger weapon if I could manage it. A gun would be ideal but hard to find. Different Others had different drawbacks and weaknesses. Ideally I’d be able to pick up an assortment of weapons in a variety of materials. The problem was, I wasn’t sure where I could get those things. > > That raised several more questions. I needed a better way to get information. Internet. I needed a way to buy supplies, if my cash reserve ran out. Money. > > I switched to another piece of paper, this one headed with the word ‘Needs’. Beneath clothes and a brief shopping list of food staples that would last me a while, I added the two new points about internet access and needing to contact the lawyers. I hesitated, then added other points. Joel’s car and keys, which I had borrowed, needed to be returned, if they weren’t already. Rose needed assistance. I needed allies. > > The council meeting was this afternoon. Three hours before sunset and three hours after, I would be free from interference. I needed a way to get some control over this situation. Enemies at the gates, I’d phrased it.

Man, its freaking today. Here I thought he still had more time. Yeah he cant be harmed, but this has been building up and itll probably be an opportunity for everyone to throw around their threats. Very smart to think of buying the mundane stuff in the meantime. Makes me think, how does a practitioner meeting in the market generally goes?

> I tried to write down everything I could possibly need or need to do. Stumped, stalled, I put the pen down and stood from the couch, stretching my back where I’d been hunched over the coffee table. > > The mirror beside me was empty. My reflection was absent, as was Rose’s. I saw only a living room where the books weren’t quite so scattered, where the shelves were full and no cardboard boxes sat beneath. There wasn’t a pile of dishes in the corner where I’d left them on my side of things. Oatmeal, again. If I didn’t manage a good shopping run, I’d be moving on to wild rice and cans of black beans.

Quick question. Do americans and canadians get black beans that arent canned? Like the ones you actually boil and make the beans yourself? I never hear of it. Me and over half the brazillian population eat rice and beans that way everyday in every major meal, but I have yet to see in any american or english media any of you ever actually boiling bean seeds and preparing them to, you know, actually add flavor and stuff with your own condiments and spices.

> The house felt a little more claustrophobic than it had, before. As large as the house was, it was old fashioned with a very closed concept, every room separated from other rooms by walls and doors. Were it the furniture and furniture alone, I wouldn’t have a problem. But Molly had made a long series of messes in packing up grandmother’s things, leaving the job half done, and her things were still here, untouched. Navigating between furniture and over the boxes and piles of books made me constantly aware of the space around me.

I can definitely see how that doesnt exactly make you paranoid, but rather self conscious about how paranoid you must look.

> When I had some time, I could do some tidying up. For the time being, though, I had too much to do. I settled for a breather. > > I stood in the window, my back against the windowframe, helping to hold the curtains and sheers out of the way. > > With my newly acquired second sight, I could make out the spirits that infused everything. Just as I might focus my eyes, I could focus this sight. I could train it. According to Essentials, some practitioners would train their sight to focus on things better suited to their talents. Imagery would take hold. > > Spirits were the most basic and oldest option when it came to manipulating the physical world through the esoteric. One object as simple as a pencil could have a host of spirits inside it, representations of the purposes the object had, its nature, its elemental makeup, ownership, and many, many other qualities. > > Shamans, then, were practitioners who worked more or less exclusively with spirits. They would be able to find and interact with more powerful spirits. Not simply the spirit of one particular stone, but the spirit of all stones for an area. > > I was thinking along those lines because I couldn’t help but wonder if what I saw was one of those shamans at work.

So shamans are more of controllers of the elements in a way. But also of their surroundings as in the objects around them.

> A boiling cloud of what might have been vapor, a haze, sat over the city. It was as though stormclouds were rolling in, and they were doing it at ground level. At times there was a fluidity to it, as though the nearby lake had swelled and swamped the area, waves rising and falling, only periodically allowing buildings to be seen, where they dipped low enough. > > This wasn’t water or water vapor. It was spirits. > > I shut off the sight. > > The scene I saw without magical aid was an ordinary one, a simple snowfall, with clouds in the proper places. My view of the buildings was still limited, periodically obscured, but only by snow. > > There were things outside, as there had been last night. Daylight wasn’t safety. It only meant that the Others without human forms had to stay out of the public eye. > > I sighed. I wasn’t big on plans. I wasn’t the type to use lists or keep to them. It helped to frame what I was doing in my head, but it wasn’t me. > > Better if I figured out the high points I needed to hit and then winged it. I’d figure out what I needed to shop for when the time came. > > I sat down with what I saw as the little black book. I filled myself in on the local practitioners. > > When I got to the Others, however, I found the entries got a little more complicated and short form. Latin classifications, short form that necessitated I look it up, measures and linking to reference material instead of explaining them outright. > > Grandmother, it seemed, was more interested in Others than people.

After the diary we now know how she hated having to read to whole books to get to the point, how it was hard to look for information for her at a younger age, so sit makes sense that she would just hyperlink everything, make it as simple and to the point as possible, organize things alphabetically and just... easy to get into all of this, or at least as easy as it gets with no one to teach you.

> “Rose!” I called out. > > There was no reply. > > I made my way through the house, searching each of the mirrors. I found her in the library. > > “Rose,” I said. > > She sat on the floor. Her hair had pulled free of the brooch, and she was surrounded by books. Damn, she looked worn out. Not tired, per se, but like she’d been through the wringer. > > “What do you want, Blake?” > > “First of all, I want to make sure you’re okay.” > > “Let’s say I’m not,” she said. She carefully set books aside and climbed to her feet. She didn’t seem willing to meet my eyes, biting her lip, thoughts clearly elsewhere. > > “What can I do?” > > It wasn’t a hard question, but it seemed to bother her. “Survive the meeting? We survive, there’s always room for things to get better.” > > “I’m on board with that,” I said. > > Why did it look like I was upsetting her more? > > “Listen,” I said. “I’ve done the reading. The sections on the Others in the little black book are kind of dense, but I got the gist of it, and I think I can put names to most of the important faces. I know the practitioners I’m up against.” > > “That’s good,” she said. “I read through all of that too.” > > “I’ve also memorized a few of the basic sigils. Driving people away, like Laird Behaim did in the coffee shop, moving things like I did with the mug, and protecting objects. I’ve got salt and chalk if I need it.” > > “I wouldn’t rely on that, if I was in your shoes,” she said. > > I frowned, “Why?” > > “The books say that generally, spirits aren’t that smart. They’re more like small animals, in terms of their capacity to understand things. Like animals, you can train or bait them. In an area trafficked by people who use spirits a great deal, you can trust they’re going to listen.” > > “This is that type of area.” > > “But who are they listening to? Remember how Laird said the spirits of community listen to him because of his role? Out there, they aren’t just listening to you. Their loyalties are divided.”

Ironic that I kept wishing for Rose to get attention and get better and she just kinda... broke after the ritual. She is looking and acting like she is quite done.

> “I think I follow,” I said. “What’s the end result? What happens if they aren’t all in the same camp?” > > “I think it’ll be slower, or fuzzier. You might get nothing, or it might backfire.” > > That took some of the wind out of my sails. “I’m still powerless?” > > “Powerless until you get enough clout to bully them or convince them to play along. It might be that grandmother’s name gives you some of the oomph you need. But if you reach for their help in a bind,” Rose said, “It’s going to be-” > > “-a crapshoot,” I said, in the same instant Rose did. > > I smiled a bit, but Rose didn’t. Her eyes dropped to the ground. > > I sighed. I could hardly blame her for not being in a smiling mood. Rose had her own concerns. Ones I couldn’t even wrap my head around. We didn’t have enough information on what she was or why grandmother had gone to the trouble of creating her. > > Problem was, I didn’t know how to fix this. When in doubt, the strategy was to empathize. As a rule, people wanted their feelings recognized more than they wanted fixes. > > “I can’t imagine how you feel,” I said. It was the truth. “You’ve been put in a horrible situation, with-” > > “Don’t do that,” she said. “Not if you’re using it like they taught it to you.” > > “Huh?” > > “Dad taught us that. How to get on people’s good side. Which may be something he picked up from grandmother.” > > “Grandfather,” I said. “It fits what we know of him.” > > “Don’t manipulate me, Blake. Don’t use strategies to deal with me. I was raised the same way you were, up to a point, I know the tricks.” > > “I do care, Rose. I want to help you. If I’m drawing from what I know to try-” > > “Blake,” Rose said. “It’s fine. It’s done, you’re in charge, I’m the backup. You want me to keep the criticisms to the most vital points? Fine. You want me to do the research and supplement what you’re doing, fine. You win.”

Nooo Rose dont you do the you win thing. Its more frustrating than anything.

t. abusive relationships involving me or people around me. The “you win” phrase still strikes some chords inside me when it comes up in a conversation or discussion or anything really.

> “I don’t want to win. I want us to be on the same page.” > > “The same page? You got the power, I got… this. How do you have a partnership if things are this unequal? Let’s face it. Look at what happened to Molly. Grandmother is willing to use us as expendable assets. I’m nothing more than a piece in a greater puzzle. I’ll serve my role, and the road ends there. I’m the most expendable one of us.” > > “I don’t think she made you as some expendable asset,” I said. > > “I’ve been reading. Everything referencing diabolists says they’re dangerous lunatics, except for the stuff that was written by grandmother and other diabolists. The temptation to offer pieces of yourself for obvious gains sucks all of them in eventually. The guys who unleash some of the worst stuff out there? The guys who meet the worst ends? They’re in the same category as her. Our grandmother. Over and over, they become monsters. Literally, or generally monstrous people that might use their kids or grandkids as sacrificial pawns to get what they need.”

I dont exactly see what Grandmother would have to gain from creating an entirely new person as Rose. Only if the plan was to in some way reincarnate in the mirror body. It would make sense with what we know of Grandma, but we dont exactly know of magics and spells to dismiss this point as impossible.

> “I don’t deny that they’re fucked up. But grandmother lived. She hit the ripe old age of eighty-five, and I doubt you do that while messing with stuff like this if you’re dumb. Besides, dumb people aren’t the type to spend the kind of power it takes to make a sapient being, only to throw it away like you’re talking about.” > > That actually seemed to help. Not that she looked happy, but maybe the way didn’t look so dark. > > “There isn’t a book we can read to figure out why I was created,” Rose said. Her eyes were still downcast. “I looked at the earliest diary entries, and the most recent.”

Ah, so maybe the pages we read were some that Rose perused.

> “Anything useful in the most recent?” I asked. > > She shook her head. “No. Nothing. The early ones… I sort of skipped past the earliest diaries, because a child’s writing is hard to read in big doses. Some stuff on the relationships between the different groups here. But if you’re looking for tips on where to focus our studies, we may have to look a bit further.” > > “Relationships,” I said. > > “It wasn’t all friendly or peaceful, though it sounds like there was more of an equilibrium a while back.” > > “Like Laird said,” I thought aloud, “It’s starting to change. If the house sells, Jacob’s Bell grows past a threshold. It’s thrown things a bit out of balance.” > > “You’ve got the two big circles joining in marriage, maybe rebuilding that balance.” > > “Status quo for the Duchamp family, it sounds like,” I said. Which was a reminder of the matter at hand. “Listen, The council meeting starts in three and a half hours. I wanted to check you were up for it.” > > “I’m up for it,” she said. She met my eyes, but that only made it clearer how worn out she was. > > “Be careful,” I said. “If you lie-” > > “I know,” she said. Nervously, she started fiddling with her hair, trying to get it sorted out. “I might lose my powers, or be forsworn. And I don’t want to lose any protections I might have, if things like Padraic can reach in here to get me. Not that I have much else to lose.” > > I nodded. > > “Don’t worry about me if you’re not going to worry about yourself,” Rose said. “You look as tired as I feel, and since you’re the one making the big decisions, like when to go out and-” > > “Woah,” I said. “Woah, woah. You’re talking about this?” > > “About going out with Laird.” > > “I thought we weren’t fighting.” > > I could see her expression change. Barely restrained frustration, slowly but surely being covered up, hidden behind a mask. “We’re not. Nevermind. I got carried away. I’ll meet you downstairs in a bit, and then we’ll go?” > > A big part of me wanted to argue. To press the issue. To air grievances and get things on a more even keel. To convince her that I didn’t want her as a slave or a servant.

But if you press the issue you will be yet agains forcing her to do something, in this case, discuss the issue.

> Except we had more pressing matters. Better to find a way to show it to her rather than tell her. > > “Sure,” I said. > > ■ > > The spirits parted. I knew when it was time, because of the way the surroundings changed. A moment of rest, where the snow wasn’t so hard, the spirits were settled, and an entire area was almost clear, in magical terms. In regular terms, the snowstorm let up a touch. It was dark, but that was more to do with cloud cover than time of day. > > I was on the move the moment the coast was clear, but I didn’t go to the meeting. > > I headed for the downtown area, backpack empty, pockets full. Everything I could think I might need on hand. > > Fireplaces and stoves. No. Dollar store? No. An old-school ice-cream shop complete with the benches and the tall glasses for fondues and ice cream floats. > > I settled on a general mens store. > > Knives were on sale, but I didn’t like the idea of using them. Too short a reach, against the sorts of things I would be fighting. > > I did like the look of the ice picks and hatchets. Prices on the picks hit the hundreds, while I could manage a hatchet for as little as forty. > > Wooden baseball bat, a touch less expensive. > > I added the weight of a loop of chain to the cart as well. > > Then I stepped into the corner of the shop where they handled bicycle stuff. > > Cheap side-mirrors were about four dollars for a pair, round mirrors about six inches across. I checked that I could see Rose inside and grabbed twenty. > > I think she might have actually smiled, when I glimpsed her. > > I did another circuit of the store. There were rifles and guns, but those started at a hundred and fifty dollars, and I had little doubt they’d stop working in a pinch. Many Others would be immune or too hard to kill with a regular gun. In terms of cost benefit, I’d rather have more mirrors. > > If I couldn’t get a gun at this point, the bow and arrow set stood out as a tempting alternative. It helped that there were Others who were vulnerable to wood and not metal. There were problems in terms of cost, though. At ninety dollars minimum, it was just outside of the range I was willing to pay. > > And, when I thought about it, it would be hell to practice if my movements were limited to the interior of Hillsglade House. It would take too long to learn. > > I had basic weapons for self defense, plus a few tools, which would have to tide me over until I got further in my studies over the magic stuff. > > When I approached the counter to pay, I got stares. It made me wonder if the process of awakening had changed anything about me. Or if they were enemies.

I dont doubt Blake's enemies would be slightly amused about him making an attempt to protect himself.

> I made my way to the next store. A general catch-all bargain shop, a little better than the dollar store I had passed. Expanding beyond the one pair of jeans would go a long way for my sanity. So would having decent soap and shampoo. Even different laundry detergent would help. I grabbed all of the toiletries, a few spare t-shirts, a sweatshirt and added a thirty dollar pair of jeans, just so I had something besides underwear to wear in a pinch. > > It made me feel better, knowing I had the stuff, feeling the weight of it in the shopping basket. It left me roughly twenty bucks to get food, but I could stretch a little money a long way on that front. I was happier having permanent things, new things. Even if they were cheap shirts for 75% off. If I had more money in general, I would be a shopaholic or a hoarder.

Makes sense, him having a homeless background and all that

> When I headed to the front of the store, a young boy got in my way. Just past the brink of entering adolescence, pale and brown haired. > > My first thought was Other. The memories of the things that had attacked the fake delivery man were fresh in my mind. It wasn’t. Very much human. > > “You’re Blake, aren’t you?” > > I nodded. > > “Do you recognize me?” > > I nodded again. Molly’s younger brother.

Oh-oh? What are you doing in town?

> When he didn’t say anything, giving me a death glare, I said, “Christoff. Hey, listen. I’m sorry about your sister.” > > “Why are you sorry?” he asked. “Did you do it?” > > God damn, the way he could say it as if I had… with a hardness in his voice? That had to have been something that the family had imbued in him over the years of fighting. Something he would have picked up. It was the kind of accusation that had enough weight to it that even an innocent target could be put off balance and made to consider the question. > > “No, Christoff. The police already cleared me.” > > “That doesn’t mean anything. Did you kill my sister?” > > “No,” I said. Not unless murder by omission is possible. “I didn’t.” > > I could see Callan approaching, giving me a bit of a wary look. His mother wasn’t far behind.

Shut up Callan.

> Callan was almost thirty. His mother was forty and looked ten years older, by the condition of her skin and hair, her arms full with a bundle of shirts with superheroes on them. I couldn’t help but see Aunt Irene as the type of person who had faced hardships every day and had emerged just a fraction weaker from each crisis. Worrying about money and work and all of that tended to eat you up inside. I knew, even if I had lived it for only a short time, what that was like. > > All that said, it didn’t mean I was a fan of her as a person. > > Callan frowned as stopped behind Christoff, putting his hands on his little brother’s shoulders. > > “I was just saying to Christoff,” I said, “I’m sorry about Molly. You have my condolences.” > > “But you still didn’t waste any time in taking the house,” Callan said. His glare matched those of Christoff and my aunt. > > “Ah, someone told you?” > > “It’s in the papers,” he said. “Every day, talking about Molly, talking about you. Who’s the new heir, that sort of thing.” > > “I didn’t have much of a choice in any of it,” I said. “I don’t want the house or the baggage that comes with it. At this point, I’d be pretty happy give up all the money and walk away from all of this… without anyone getting hurt.” > > “But you’re living there,” Callan said. “So you must want some part of it.” > > “It’s complicated,” I said. > > “Your parents said you were homeless. I bet you fucked up, and this is the only place you have to live. Squatting in my sister’s house before her body’s even cold.”

Oh SHUT the fuck up Callan.

> I expected his mother to rebuke him, to respond to the callous comment about Molly. > > She was cold before she died, I thought. > > What I said was, “She was one of the very few family members I ever liked, honestly. She was a friend to me. I meant it when I said I’m sorry.” > > “She wasn’t your friend,” Aunt Irene said, and her voice had that accusatory hardness that Christoff had picked up. Her eyes narrowed, an expression to match her tone, “Every other second I look at you, I wonder how you’re responsible.” > > How, not if. > > “You keep saying you’re sorry, and I believe it a little less each time,” Callan said. “Tell you what. Go. Don’t ever fucking talk about my sister again, just go, and we won’t have a problem.” > > I didn’t say anything, out of concern it would be taken as binding. Instead, I circled around to walk past him. > > He took a step to the side, getting in my way. “I didn’t say pay and leave. I said leave.” > > “You said go,” I said. “I’m going.” > > “Not this way,” he said. “Not with this shit you need to keep squatting in my sister’s house.” > > Heads were turning. We had the attention of every shopper and employee in the store, now. > > I thought of Rose’s recent surrender. I didn’t agree with it. It wasn’t what I wanted… but I didn’t want an issue here, either. > > “Fine,” I said. “Let me give the basket to the cashier-” > > “Don’t be an asshole,” Callan said. “Go put it all back on the shelves and racks.” > > I dropped the basket. “No. But I’ll leave, without buying, without incident. You win, Callan.” > > He smirked, but when I turned to go around him, he reached out and put his hand on my shoulder, maybe to slow me down so he could get in my way again. > > I shoved him, hard enough he stumbled three steps back. > > Before anything further could happen, I headed for the doors. More for his sake than mine. I wasn’t forgetting the consequences of missing the council meeting, as I thought that. I was- > > The sound of running footsteps made me stop. The expressions of the cashiers to my right clued me in. > > I reacted, half-turning, bringing my arm up. The arm wasn’t in position to deflect the worst of the hit, but I was more or less ready as Callan did his damndest to sucker-punch me. It hurt, but it was only pain. No disorientation, no loss of consciousness. > > My retaliation was automatic. I hit him, fist to face. He reeled, bending over to the point that I thought he was going to do a somersault. But I was already swinging the follow-up strike, waist-level. > > He hit the ground, rolled onto his back, and he didn’t get up. His mouth was open, lip split, and he stared, blinking hard, looking in a different direction each time he opened his eyes. > > Fuck, my hands hurt like a bitch. > > Employees came running, as well as one or two male customers. I backed away, hands raised. > > But when they reached us, two employees dropped to their knees beside Callan, and the rest of the intervening bystanders put themselves between us, forming a protective half-circle around Callan. Six of them, and another fourteen or so bystanders. > > “He hit me first,” I said. > > “You shoved him,” a man said. He looked fifty or so, but had a walker, oddly out of tune with his age. > > “That’s not how it happened and you know it,” I said. > > The man said, “I know you’re that guy in the Hillsglade place right now. You selling it anytime soon?” > > “No, the contract-” > > “Then I think I know what we’re telling the police,” he said. He looked around, and slowly, each other member of the small crowd started nodding in agreement.

I do not have words to how angry this is making me. And it is reflecting in the liveblog.

> Too coincidental. Too much fuckery, for this to happen now. I switched to my other way of seeing. > > Nothing stood out, no strange glows or images that weren’t supposed to be here. No Others were in the area. > > When I turned to more basic elements, I could see how active the spirits were. Nothing too unusual, though this was my first opportunity seeing how the spirits traveled back and forth between people, maintaining relationships. If I unfocused a bit, they almost looked like ribbons or cords, connecting people throughout the area. > > Three of the ribbons stood out from the rest. Too straight, too narrow. They were like spears that had penetrated Callan, Aunt Irene and Christoff and plunged into me. > > Forced connections between us. Too direct to be natural. Someone had aimed them at me. > > Fuckery. > > There were rules, though. No interfering with or attacking anyone else in the time leading up to, during, or after the meeting. > > Had this been done beforehand? Had things been set up so that they’d get in my way at the first available opportunity? > > Or had someone found a loophole? > > I wasn’t sure I had a chance to debate it. A cashier was dialing on the phone, her eyes on me. > > In that moment, I saw Laird enter the store, not in uniform, but wearing a long coat, cheeks red from the cold. He surveyed the situation. > > “Mr. Thorburn,” he said. > > “Officer,” I said. “Pretty prompt response to a call that hasn’t been made yet.” > > “Are you getting smart with me?” he asked. > > I shook my head. “Only stating the truth.” > > He gave me an appraising look. “Yes. I imagine you are. Katie, you can put the phone down. He’s right, there isn’t a point.” > > “He had a few harsh words for the fellow there,” the guy with the walker said, “Then shoved him, they exchanged blows.” > > “That so?” Laird asked. He surveyed the room very slowly. His eyes settled on Katie. “I’m asking. Is it, Katie?” > > She looked at the crowd. > > “Katie?” > > “No, sir.” > > “No. I didn’t think so. I’ll tell you what. You guys go on about your business, and I’ll see that Mr. Thorburn gets to his destination. Deal?” > > “Yes sir,” a few nearby people mumbled. > > “Mr. Thorburn?” he asked, giving me a sharp look. > > “Sounds good,” I said. > > “I don’t think I heard that clearly enough,” he said. His stare was a level one. > > Right. He wanted to play this game. > > I wouldn’t be buying clothes, toiletries or groceries, it seemed.

Wait, weren't the things from different stores? Nice touch on the possibility of loopholes already in the safety guaranteed thing, but then that is fishy as fuck. How can you meddle with someone in such a way and it not count as... ah well, w/e. I’m not going to lie and pretend I remember the exact wording that goes for the Meeting Truce.

> “I’ll go with you,” I said. > > “Good,” he responded, smiling. > > We went on our way. I hadn’t turned off my second sight, and I saw how the spirits were shifting. People were milling around the area, which was more like an extended strip mall than a true downtown, but the spirits diverted them from taking one side street. > > We turned down that street, and were soon joined by Andy and Eva. The witch hunters. > > “I assume they aren’t bound by any neutrality rules,” I said. > > “No,” Laird said. “But if they wanted to kill you, they could enter your home and murder you in their sleep.” > > The girl smiled, giving me a look. Confident, brash, if I remembered right from the vision. Her brother kept his eyes straight forward, watching the ground for slick patches and lumps of snow he might stumble on. He was burdened down with bags of stuff, while she strutted. > > I’d read up on the locals. What had the little black book said? They were witch hunters in service to Jacob’s Bell. Killing or punishing any Other or practitioner who strayed too far from the rules and made life inconvenient. Half of their payment came in the form of hard cash. Half was in either trinkets they could use on their job or knowledge. > > We approached a church. The area was desolate. > > I saw the woman with a blur for a face pause outside, waiting for a man to hold the door open. She was the one who’d molded the other who’d pretended to be a delivery driver. I saw her deliberately put the little ever-lit cigarette out before entering. > > A church wasn’t my first guess for a meeting place. > > Inside, Laird walked me to the front, where his family sat in the front row of pews. He paused, bending down to talk to his wife, and I walked on, my eyes taking it in. > > All eyes were on me, in turn. It made for a kind of pressure. Like all of the bad parts of public speaking without the ability to say something and give off a better impression.

Finally time for the meeting with everyone. Finding out our enemies, the who's who of the town.

> Behaim Circle, chronomancers. Demesnes situated in scattered residences across the city. I was familiar enough with them. > > Sitting in the aisles opposite the Behaims was the Duchamp Coven. According to the little black book, their line was purely female, and their craft was taught to women only. Easy enough, when any Duchamp woman would give birth girls only. A large family with strong ties to many of the surrounding areas, the family had earned a measure of prestige and power by marrying off their daughters and cousins to others in Ontario, Quebec, and the Northeastern States. Enchantresses. > > What were enchantresses? Essentials had filled me in on the basics. They would be focused on altering relationships. Influencing people, influencing things. An object could have its owner reassigned, so it might find its way into someone else’s hands, or be tethered to a location, so it would continually end up there. On the higher end of things, people could be altered, with an enchantress literally stealing someone’s love. On the veryhigh end of things, familiars could be claimed by an enchantress that didn’t already have one, among other general bends and twists in more fundamental rules. > > In short, they were the most likely culprits for sending Aunt Irene’s family my way.

Or maybe sending a group of girls, their own daughters mayhaps, to beat up Rose when she was small, even before they were turned practitioners.

> A middle-aged aboriginal woman sat alone, and nobody sat near her. Mara Angnakak. She straddled the line between practitioner and Other. When Jacob’s Bell was first settled by colonists, she was already here. The notes had marked that she was very reserved, but she harbored a horrendous amount of hatred for the rest of us. Grandmother had written out suspicions that she was illiterate; arguing it would explain why her talents seem to be limited to what she could teach herself. Centuries of such teaching and experimentation, but limited nonetheless. > > Being a practitioner inevitably meant losing a bit of your humanity and becoming a bit more Other. My new eyesight was a part of that, one step along what could be a long journey. Mara Angnakak had nearly finished that journey before stopping. Or she had to have, if she was that old. > > She was here before Europeans came to Canada and chances were good that she intended to be here well after we were gone.

Protecting her land in a way probably. Taking care of old beings that dont even hold an identity any more. I'd put money on her having access to things like Barba-whatsis, as in, unknown beings that have lost meaning to most.

> A girl slouched in a seat. Her familiar wasn’t in its mortal form, but was ethereal, with all of the mass of a grizzly on the front end, and a tail end that looked like that of a fish, the features an incoherent blend of different animals and plants, different features being emphasized as I looked longer. Her stick tapped the floor with no rhythm at all. She’d seated herself nearer the Others at the back than the two big families. I recognized her as the one who’d been shouting at the rabbit. > > She would be the Briar Girl. No other name. A recent addition to the local population, as of six years ago. She apparently lived full-time in the woods and marshes behind Hillsglade House. Grandmother’s suspicion? She had contracted with a familiar too powerful for her to handle, creating something that was less a partnership than a practitioner dominated by the spirit. The bear-thing would be the familiar, the stick her implement.

I'm going to bet it is something like that, but missing some keypoint. Like maybe she took the spirit as a familiar willing to be controlled. A stick for implement, so maybe guidance, strenght in many? Balance, equilibrium, reach, stability. Safety? Halted Growth? I really think something mutual is going on with them both.

> Johannes, the sorcerer from the north end, was already sitting, but he’d chosen to sit among the Others, near the back, rather than anywhere near the two families. His dog sat beside him, a breed that could easily look silly, given the chance, but it managed to look noble. > > It helped that the lights behind the dog seemed somehow brighter, the rest of the room darker by contrast. > > Others continued to appear, and it seemed as though they had been arriving for a while. They avoided the pews and stood around the edges. Where they clustered, their bodies blocked the wall-mounted lights behind them, and the room darkened. > > I found an empty row and sat. I put the backpack down on the pew beside me and fished out a pair of bike mirrors. I adjusted the zipper, and zipped up around the prong where the mirror was supposed to fit into the bike handle. It stuck up, facing forward. > > Easily an hour passed before the influx of Others started to taper off. My mouth was dry, my heart pounding, my face hurt where I’d been hit, and my hands hurt more. > > Above all else, I was realizing what I was up against. These weren’t pages in the little black book. They were enemies of mine. Virtually all of them. > > A lot of them would kill me. > > A good few would probably do worse things than kill me.

Like press their hands against your skin and tie pieces of you together in a nice little bow.

> This wasn’t quite what I had expected. I’d expected a few practitioners. Not everyone. > > “Blake,” Rose whispered. > > “What?” I asked, leaning closer. > > “Don’t tell anyone that I did the ritual,” she said. > > I nodded. > > Keep cards up our sleeves. That was how we needed to think.

I still dont understand if her doing the ritual put them in a disadvantage or no. We'll have to wait and see.

> But we couldn’t be wilting flowers, bowing over if someone so much as looked at us the wrong way. I could do that for Callan, but not here. > > A woman from the Duchamp family was talking to Laird, off to the side. She might have been the one who was talking in the vision I’d had. Not the oldest Duchamp woman here, but she had a kind of presence. They both cast glances my way as they talked, making me the obvious topic of conversation. > > I went out of my way to look like I wasn’t terrified. > > All of these people were my enemies. > > “Beautiful Rose,” Padraic purred. “Both of them, here. A good night, I’m sure.” > > He’d entered alongside his two regular companions, two other companions of similar attractiveness, and Maggie Holt, the girl with the checkered scarf. She was a teenager, making her slightly younger than the Briar Girl, and her eyebrows made her look perpetually angry, helped by a swift, graceless manner of walking. > > She sat to my right, across the aisle. Padraic and his group sat around her, instantly and automatically settling into comfortable seating positions that could have doubled for poses. > > “Padraic, as usual, is the last to enter,” Laird said. “We can begin a little early tonight. Please, Mr. Thorburn. You’re at the center of attention. Would you please step up to the front and introduce yourself?” > > Every set of eyes in the room > > “Say no,” Rose said. > > “I said I’d run impulsive plans by you, right?” I asked. > > “Blake?” > > “Mr. Thorburn?” Laird asked, his voice ringing down the length of the church. > > “If I had a way to divert our enemies from us and to each other?” I asked. “Yes or no?” > > “Blake, you can’t expect me to-”

What the fuck is the plan. I'm expecting it to be in the cliffhanger.

> “Blake Thorburn, grandson of Mrs. Rose D. Thorburn, Diabolist of Hillsglade House,” Laird said. “I would like a response.” > > Making someone repeat themselves, in some cases, would make them look weaker. Laird was getting more intimidating each time he spoke. > > “Yes,” she said. > > I stood. > > There was no murmur of conversation as I walked down the aisle. There were hundredshere, but most were Others, and they were all exceptionally good at being quiet. Goblins, disgusting to look at, as though they were distilled versions of human ugliness, squat and all of them armed with weapons forged together from scrap. Ghosts, etheral and exaggerated in appearance, forever marked with their causes of death, twisted by an imperfect recollection of what they looked like and who they were, before. Faerie, in myriad shapes and forms, and spirits. The other half of the Others were impossible to identify. > > Funny, how many others with the appearances of children were around Johannes. > > Andy and Eva sat on the stairs to the right of the stage, facing down everyone. Like bailiffs or guards, a reminder to keep the peace. The other set of stairs was blocked by the crowd. I stood at the very end of the aisle, and gripped the railing. > > In the midst of the faces, of the twenty or so members of the Duchamp coven and thirty-ish members of Laird’s family, all of the Others, I had to search to find the tiny round mirror that Rose would be peering out of. > > “I’m Blake Thorburn,” I said. “I doubt you really care about that, or about who I am. I imagine Molly Walker did her own speech here. I can’t even guess how she handled it, or what she said. I’m an obstacle for you to remove, to get power. I know this. I know you might see me as one number on a countdown clock, with prosperity waiting when there’s nothing left. When there are no successors. But you need to know, that thing so many of you are terrified of? That I might learn enough to summon something problematic? It’s already summoned.” > > I could see Laird react to that. A shift in the crowd. Some of the kids went pale, in the Duchamp family. > > Johannes smiled. Mara the immortal, for her part, didn’t say or do anything. Most Others didn’t seem to care one way or another.

Johannes probably already knows what is up, and I somehow doubt he is expecting more power. He strikes me as someone who already has what he wants. But I also barely know anything about him.

> “Not my choice. I also didn’t choose the arrangements my grandmother put in place,” I said. > > I was thinking of Rose, but I didn’t need to elaborate on that. > > “Some of you have been baiting me, trying to get me to retaliate. I don’t know why, but I imagine there’s something at play. I’m not going to do what they want. I’m going to make you guys a deal. I’ll make three deals. If you approach me and offer a ceasefire, an agreement you won’t attack me or help anyone who might, if you make a good offer, I’ll take the demon off the table for you and yours.” > > I could see people exchanging glances. > > That was a maxim, right? A rule of war? > > Divide and conquer.

I didnt get the feeling Barbatholomeus was the sole reason peole were worried, but if that is enough to get people to get paranoid, then I'm happy. I'm binging a lot of chapters right now, so I'll dive right into the next one. With this in the ending, I'm heavily leaning towards someone bringing a major point against Blake. Let's a go.

2019 Addendum: Next liveblog on Friday!

#CodeZeta liveblogs #pact #PactArc2 #Pact2.1

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king-lobo · 5 years

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Not normally the kind of thing I do on my blog, but since a very large portion of the States (and some of Canada) are going to be headed straight for another ice age soon, I’m going to impart some knowledge upon you about keeping your vehicle alive and in one piece. Cars are expensive to buy and maintain, so keeping it safe during the coming cold is extremely important. Sources: one, two, three, four 1. 4 wheel drive doesn’t mean 4 wheel stop. Don’t drive like a dumbass. Your ‘Super Duty Hemi V8 Monster 4X4 Rancho King Semi’ Truck is equally at risk of sliding or rolling. Just because you have a big beefy 4WD vehicle doesn’t mean that you’re invincible. Driving like you are is not only putting yourself at risk, but it’s putting everyone else on the road around you at risk.

2. GOOD. WINTER. TIRES. If you can afford the expense, invest in a set of winter tires, and they will be marketed as such (and get them studded if you can!). Winter tires have a different rubber compound and different tread patterns to make them handle a little better on snow and ice. Your all-seasons aren’t gonna cut it in negative degree ice and snow. Also, instead of having your current set of tires on your car removed from the wheels, just find a second set of wheels that fit your vehicle (junkyards or someone parting out their car) and have the new tires mounted on that set. It’s MUCH easier to swap wheels than it is to swap tires. When winter is through, you can swap out the wheels again and store your winter set for next year. (ALSO: Do NOT forget to check your spare tire. The time you forget is going to be the time that you need it most.) 3. Make sure everything is functioning properly. If your windshield is chipped or cracked, get it repaired or replaced. The cold will more than likely make it worse. Have someone help you make sure all of your lights are working properly and if not, replace them. (ALWAYS replace headlights in pairs, regardless of if one still works) Check your regular headlights, high beams, turn signals front and back, brake lights, fog lights if you have them, etc. If it’s been a year or more since you last replaced your windshield wipers, replace them. Have your battery tested - cold temperatures are harder on the cells and cause it to decrease in capacity. If it’s not at peak performance, replace it with a brand new one. 4. Preventative Maintenance. If you’re due for an oil change, go get ALL of the fluids checked and changed if necessary - oil, transmission fluid, antifreeze, brake fluid, power steering fluid (if you have it), etc. Have your brakes checked and replaced if necessary, get your car aligned, have your suspension components checked out, make sure your tires are inflated to the correct psi, keep your gas tank at least half full at all times to prevent your fuel lines from freezing and in case you become stranded. If something is making a weird noise, have your mechanic take a look. Preventative maintenance is something you need to do all year round to keep your car in tip top shape - but it’s especially important in extreme weather. 5. Don’t Let Your Car Idle. It’s fine if you start your car a couple minutes before you leave, but it doesn’t help to let it sit for 10-15 minutes or longer - it can actually cause premature wear to your engine. Letting it idle for at least 1-2 minutes is ideal, but your car will warm up faster when you start out driving at slow speeds. If you can avoid it, don’t accelerate hard right away - let your car get up to operating temp first. 6. PACK AN EMERGENCY KIT. Even if you think you won’t need one, do it anyways. A good emergency kit should consist of the following:

A set of jumper cables (extra long cables if you can find them - or invest in one of these) If you already have cables, inspect them thoroughly before adding them to your kit. Are the wires exposed? The clamps corroded? If they’re damaged in any way, replace them with a new set.

Flares and/or triangle reflectors

At least 1 quart or more of motor oil, at least 1 gallon of coolant, and extra serpentine belts. (these are all vehicle specific, make sure you get the correct type for your vehicle)

First-aid kit (look here for a comprehensive guide to first aid)

Normal blankets AND Mylar blankets (mylar blankets are the best at reducing heat loss in emergencies. you most often see them used with people who may be suffering hypothermia, as they reduce heat loss by up to 90%)

Flashlights with extra batteries, or a hand-crank flashlight

Small toolkit with screwdrivers, pliers, adjustable wrench, and pocket knife

Paper towels

Spray bottle with 2/3 rubbing alcohol and 1/3 water (rubbing alcohol has a freezing temperature of -128.2 °F/ -89°C) Rubbing alcohol can damage your paint, so don’t spray it directly onto your cars finish - only on the glass

Reusable heat packs (yes there are reusable ones out there)

TWO ice scrapers

Pencils and paper

High protein snacks

Bottled water

Extra clothes - socks, hats, coats, pants, shirts, etc.

Sand bags or cat litter (when you get stuck, sprinkle it around all four wheels to help you get better traction)

7. How to Properly Jumpstart a Car. Icemageddon or not, this is something you need to know how to do properly or you could actually cause your battery to explode. NOTE: If your car has an electronic ignition system (push to start) or is an alternatively fueled vehicle, jump starting it is not recommended, as it could damage it.

Red = Positive Black = Negative Dead Car = The car that has a dead battery Live Car = The car you are using to jump the dead car

Locate the batteries on the dead vehicle and the vehicle that is going to be giving you a jump - park them close enough that the cables will be able to reach the battery on both vehicles.

Make sure both vehicles are turned to the OFF position, remove the keys from the ignitions. DO NOT turn them on.

Every set of jumper cables will have four clamps - two for each car. Positive will always be red, negative will always be black. If that is not the case, there should be a symbol somewhere identifying which is which.

From this point on, keep the clamps separated AT ALL TIMES, and keep them up away from the vehicle until you are ready to connect them.

Connect one of the Positive(red) clamps directly to the dead cars POSITIVE (red) terminal. If they’re not color coded, look on the battery for the symbols indicating which terminal is positive and which is negative.

Connect the other positive(red) clamp to the live cars positive(red) terminal.

Connect the Negative(black) clamp to the LIVE cars negative(black) terminal.

Before connecting the second negative clamp, look for a piece of bare (unpainted) metal on the dead car that is away from the battery, and not connected to any important mechanical or electrical components. Some cars will have dedicated locations where you can place the negative clamp - there will either be a sticker under the hood or it will be listed in your owners manual. Do not connect the second negative clamp directly to the battery as it could create sparks. Car batteries contain hydrogen gas which could ignite and cause the battery to explode.

Get in and attempt to start the dead car. If it doesn’t work, check the negative(black) clamp on the dead car and make sure it has a good connection. If it doesn’t start a second time, start the live car and let it run for at least 2 minutes before trying to start the dead car again.

If the dead car starts, disconnect the cables in exactly the opposite way as how you connected them: Remove the negative(black) clamp from the dead car first, then the negative(black) clamp from the live car, then the positive(red) clamp from the live car, and finally remove the positive(red) clamp from the dead car.

Alternatively, if the dead car doesn’t start after two or three attempts, remove the cables and do not try again. Cranking the engine repeatedly can cause damage, such as prematurely wearing out the starter.

#not whales #emergency preparedness #2019 polar vortex #polar vortex #car maintenence

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mealsforsquares · 6 years

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Pork Tenderloin

It has certainly been a meat-intensive week, and it shows no signs of stopping. I always think it’s a little weird when this happens, but it’s also kind of a feature of cooking after a workday, which I’ve started doing more of.

In this case, however, I bought a package of frozen pork tenderloin. They come usually two to a package, hugging each other in a sort of yin-yang arrangement that makes them look like a log of pork for the cooking. The trick to cooking them is to not allow them to be two separate pieces, and instead let the single-log approach insulate the meat somewhat.

In this case I cooked them in the sous-vide machine again, which is a real lifesaver under the circumstances. I threw them in at 140 for three and a half hours, and let that be that.

It’s brussels sprout season*, so I can’t get out of the farmer’s market without buying a couple of stalks of them. The stalks themselves are sturdy pieces of wood that I think would make for great games of brussels sprout baseball - a couple of the larger sprouts as balls, the impossibly-dense stalk as a bat, and you’re in business. Anyway, I didn’t want to spend tonnes of time on it, since the sous-vide machine did most of the time-consuming work, and the goal was to get everyone fed before too long. So I heated up some oil in the dutch oven on the stove in advance of deep frying them. I sliced each of them in half and dried them off to avoid overspill from the water evaporating into the oil. When the oil got good and hot** I dropped the brussels sprouts in, frying them in batches until they were brown and crispy, then draining them into paper towels before transferring them to a sheet pan and sprinkling them with a bunch of salt.

The brussels sprouts were going to be doing a lot of the flavor work, since the pork wasn’t marinated or anything, just salted and peppered before it would go in the pan***, so I made them into a salad. I chopped an apple into slices, then added a handful of raisins (homemade - we had a lot of grapes this year, and I have a food dehydrator), and a generous sprinkle of parmesan. I thought that it would go well with some onions, so I sliced a couple of heirloom red onions very thin in preparation for frying them, which I did after all of the sprouts had come out of the oil.

I made a dressing of honey, dijon mustard, sherry vinegar and some olive oil, and that did it for the brussels sprouts.

Thinking that it would be nice to have something with a little more body, I decided carrots would work out. I started some salted water boiling**** and threw a bay leaf in there. I peeled and sliced the carrots into half-moons, and then dumped them into the water. While they were boiling, I sliced up a large number of onions and plopped them into some butter in a pan. I cooked them very slowly until they were brown all over. In the mortar and pestle I combined some coriander, cumin, cinnamon, paprika, and cayenne, and then dropped that into the onions and let it bloom for awhile. I also minced up a couple of fresh cayenne peppers, and dropped them in as well, for long enough to sort of steam-soften, but not enough for them to react and release terrible corrosive fumes into the air. When the flavors were all friendly, I drained the carrots out of the water they were boiling in and stirred them into the onion spice mixture. I let them get covered in the spices and onions, and brown up a little bit, and then lowered the heat.

When the carrots were done, I minced a half dozen or so green onions up (I like onions, there were a lot of onions here), and stirred them in, followed by a couple of dollops of ricotta, followed by a generous glug of sherry vinegar.

Because I left the pork stuck together as one unit, when I sliced it I got not medallions, but many lopsided, salty, well-crusted chunks, that melded really well with the soft, spicy carrots and the bitter, crispy brussels sprouts. Even R, who is not wild about vinegar or onions, ate everything on the plate. After a series of near-miss almost-failure dinners, it was nice to put a solid, inarguable W.

*brussel sprout season? I have no idea how plural the brussel needs to be.

** I don’t always use a thermometer, especially not for stuff like this, instead relying on the end of a wooden spoon, and the violence of the bubbles that it emits, to figure out when the time is right.

*** it’s coming in the future.

**** these are achronolgical, and this was actually basically the first thing I did.

#pork #carrots #brussels sprouts #brussel sprouts #sous vide #immersion circulator #so many pans were harmed in the making of this meal

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betweensceneswriter · 6 years

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Island Hopper-Chapter 5 : Telephone

Jamie does a science project with his students

Click Here to Hop to the Table of Contents Or Read the Entire Work on Archive of Our Own

Previously on Island Hopper: Chapter 4 : Skinny Dipping Exactly what it sounds like. . .

“Save that can, will ye, Claire?” Jamie called from the table where he was, again, grading papers. I was beginning to see a trend of what the life as the wife of a teacher would entail.

“What for?” I asked, deferentially cutting off the label and rinsing the can out before setting it on the counter, instead of mashing it and tossing it in the trashcan.

“I’m teaching the fourth through sixth graders about waves in Science class,” Jamie said, “And we’re going to make tin can telephones. With that one, I think I’ll have 12. Not enough for everyone, but I dinna have enough string, anyway.”

“Tin can telephones?” I asked, incredulously. “We really have stepped back in time!”

“It’s a fun way to teach them about sound waves,” Jamie said. He furrowed his brow. “You wouldna be available to help in my classroom for a few hours tomorrow, would you?”

“Sure,” I responded. “Clinic is never that busy, and I can leave a note on the whiteboard.”

Jamie sighed in relief. “That’s the one awful thing about active projects. They can be fun, but trying to help the kids, when they all have questions at once, can be really overwhelming.”

The next day, I strolled down to the school to arrive there at 10 o’clock. Jamie was perched on the edge of his desk at the front of his classroom. Unlike the last time when his back had been turned and I snuck into the room, this time he looked up and smiled as I entered. “Ah, here’s Miss Peach.” It amused me that everyone still called me by their version of my maiden name, but it sounded especially funny coming out of Jamie’s mouth.

“Iiokwe, Miss Peach,” the happy faces chorused as all the kids turned to me.

“Okay,” he said. “Patrick, will you take one end of this Slinky™?” Patrick responded obediently, and I peered at him, wondering why his Marshallese parents had decided to give him such an Irish name! After Jamie had another student on the other end (I think his name was Telnan, which sounded like Telling-on), Jamie had the boys take turn shaking their end of the Slinky™ to see if they could get a wave to travel to the other end of the metal spiral. I loved the adorable peals of giggles as the kids watched.

Jamie had several pairs of students rotate through, getting a chance to hold an end of the Slinky™ and both beginning and receiving waves started by others.

After all who wanted to had a chance, Jamie got the students corralled in their seats again.

“So, wee ones,” he said. “We’ve been talking about waves. Can any of ye raise your hands and tell me an example of a kind of wave?”

Lots of arms waved furiously in the air, and Jamie heard from several in succession. “Ocean waves!” “Sound waves!” “Seismic Waves!” “Light waves!” “Radio waves!”

“And then,” Jamie asked. He was totally adorable, I thought, wondering why I didn’t watch him in action more often. Teacher Jamie was mesmerizing, with his copper waves falling over his forehead, his expressive face engaging with the kids and showing pleasure when they got an answer correct. I would have had such a crush on him as a student, I decided.

“What are some of the things we have here on Arno that use waves?” Jamie asked, accepting a number of answers. “Ocean waves? Of course. Short wave radios? Satellite phones? Have any of you even seen or held a cell phone?”

“Yes,” Hemity Ogawa, the store-owner’s daughter responded first. “My cousin Ruben in Majuro has his own cell phone.”

“Do ye think that a good thing or a bad thing?” Jamie asked.

“Well, emmon and enana,” Hemity responded. “It’s good and bad. It’s good because he can call his auntie who lives in Hawaii and talk to her. It’s bad because sometimes he just wants to play games on his phone, and he doesn’t play outside with us. He’s getting really pig.”

It made me smile to hear Hemity’s pronunciation of “big.” Sometimes I would forget that the Marshallese pronounce b’s and v’s and f’s all with the same sound.

Hemity liked the response of her classmates, who had giggled at “pig.” “Ayet,” she continued. “He’s lukuun kilep. Very fat!” All the kids giggled.

One little guy had been raising his hand for a long time.

“What are you wondering, Carlson?” Jamie asked.

“In Amedka, they have many phones, don’t they?”

At Jamie’s glance in my direction, the kids all turned to look at me. “Um, yes,” I responded. “Almost everyone had their own cell phone that they carry around.”

“Ri-pālle are bery rich,” one child remarked.

“Oh, is that why Amedkins get so fat ?” One little girl asked, earning a response of giggles across the classroom, but lowered eyebrows and a head shake from Teacher Jamie.

Carlson had his hand up again.

“You weren’t finished, Carlson?” asked Jamie.

“No,” he responded. “If all of those waves are traveling everywhere in Amedka, isn’t that a dangerous thing?

Jamie nodded thoughtfully. “Well, we dinna ken for sure. But I think it’s healthier in many ways to not have phones.” He grinned over their heads at me.

With that, Jamie went through a quick demonstration of what we were going to be doing. Each student would work in a group of three. Two of the group members were to come up and get a tin can. The third group member was to grab a string or a piece of wire and a nail. Jamie showed an example of two tin cans with a small hole in the bottom, and the string threaded through and knotted.

Jamie quickly realized it would take forever to pass the hammer between the groups of students, and that it was quickly going to get too loud in the classroom.

“Meester Shamie,” Riti said. “If we go outside, it willna be so noisy, and we can use rocks as hammers.”

Was that really possible? I wondered with a grin. She had totally just done a Scottish shortened verb. I was curious how many Marshallese students were running around the island telling people they “dinna ken” things and that they “didna” “couldna” “wouldna” or “shouldna” do that!

Once the students had gotten their supplies, we headed out to the grassy play area, where the groups spread out. They needed less help than Jamie had imagined they would, but he and I meandered from group to group, offering assistance as needed.

Within ten minutes, all of the student groups had spread even further apart, and were happily putting their ears or mouths to the cans and trying to send and decipher messages. True to what Jamie had said, the groups didn’t stay separate for long. They traded telephones, trying out the sets with different lengths of string or with wire, and experimenting with different tightnesses of line between the cans.

When we were done, Jamie could tell the kids were a bit excited, so he had them set the telephones down a play a round of soccer before returning to the classroom to debrief.

I found the din of excited voices overwhelming, and it was interesting to hear the mix of Marshallese and English during the discussion. Even Riti seemed to fall into Marshallese when she was trying to describe her response to the experience. In times of emotion and excitement, it did seem like it would be natural to return to your native language.

With a grin and a wave, I tiptoed to the door, but Jamie made sure to stop his students in time to have them call out, “Thank you, Miss Peachay!” as I left the room.

That afternoon when Jamie got home, he seemed rushed and breathless.

“Meto is taking his fish to Majuro to sell,” Jamie panted. “He’s leaving from the dock in a half hour, but he’ll be coming back early tomorrow morning, so we wouldna miss any work or school. Do you think we can make it in time?”

“Why do we need to go to Majuro just for a night?” I questioned, though the idea of an adventure appealed to me.

“Dinna we need to buy plane tickets to Guam for Christmas? Ye can talk to yer family. And I really need to call my sister, Jenny.”

I didn’t have much time to consider it, but Jamie’s reasons were good enough. However, at the thought of a boat ride, I instantly went to the clinic to grab a package of motion sickness pills and quickly administered the maximum dosage for Jamie. Within ten minutes, we’d thrown some clothes and simple toiletries into Jamie’s backpack, along with my cell phone and charger, and we were jogging down the road toward the oceanside dock in Ine.

Although Jamie still did get a little bit queasy from the fishy smell of Meto’s boat, generally the motion sickness pills did their job. Jamie and I sat together on a stack of pallets during the 90 minute boat trip, and for a part of the time, at least when Meto wasn’t watching, Jamie lay with his head on my lap. When he had his eyes closed he could ignore some of the movement of the boat, he told me, and I enjoyed the comfortable monotony of running my fingers through his curls.

The island of Majuro came into our sights quite quickly, but in order to dock Meto’s boat, we had to travel around the south side of the atoll, pass under a bridge, and then travel north to the Shoreline boat dock, which was right next to the MIMRA Outer Islands Fish Market. Meto told us that he would sell his fish and spend the night with his brother’s family, who lived on the island. We would need to meet at four the next morning at the boat dock to head back to Arno.

And with that, Meto headed off toward the fish market, leaving Jamie and me standing on the dock.

“Shall I call a taxi?” I asked.

“I dinna want to ride in anything else,” Jamie responded. “Anyway, the hotel is just about a quarter of a mile from here.” He gestured down the road to the left.

“Hotel?” I asked. “You don’t want to call Dougal and see if we can stay on their couch?” I had turned away from him while talking, so when I turned back to him I could still see the slight look of confusion on Jamie’s face as he thought through the logistics of staying on his uncle’s couch as a married couple. When he saw my teasing expression, he narrowed his eyes as me jokingly.

“You’re a cheeky one,” he said to me, drawing me to him with his arm around my neck, pulling my ear close to his lips. “Ye ken verrry well exactly why I dinna want to sleep on my uncle’s couch tonight, Ripālle. Ye arna very good at keeping your noises in check, wee one. And I mean to make ye squeal tonight, that I can tell ye.”

Then Jamie looked away from me, but not before I could see the smirk on his face as he recognized my visceral response to his words.

“We’re such newlyweds,” I scoffed, shaking my head.

“Well, it’ll only have been three weeks tomorrow,” Jamie said.

“You’re kidding,” I responded skeptically. “I could swear it’s been a year.”

“No. Just three weeks ago,” Jamie assured me, as he started walking in the direction he had indicated, reaching back for my hand. Instinctively I almost pulled away, then realized we weren’t on Arno anymore. “Anyway, I thought it would be good to check in at the hotel first. I was thinking we could drop our clothes there and take just the backpack to do some shopping. There are plenty of stores right here—a hardware store, a supermarket, and if we want to go to a Taiwanese restaurant for dinner, we can stop in at the Office Mart store, which is also in that direction, to pick up paper and pencils, things I need for school.”

It had already been a long day, and the thought of shopping, at real stores, was almost overwhelming to me. “But I thought you wanted to call Jenny,” I said.

“It’s only 5 am in Scotland, so I shouldna call Jenny right now. No if I want to catch her in a good mood, anyway,” he said, a hint of some emotion in his voice. I could tell something was going on; what, I wasn’t sure.

In a few minutes we had arrived at RRE Hotel and restaurant. By States’ standards it was quite a plain building; in comparison with Arno, it seemed a palace with electric lights, and even a little air conditioning in the lobby. When Jamie and I stood at the counter waiting for assistance, I looked over at him. He had a very thinly-veiled look of excitement on his face. At the question in my eyes he leaned over to whisper. “It’s my first time. At a hotel. Wi’ a woman.”

We decided to stick with a basic room instead of a beachside bungalow. I had an idea that flying to Guam wouldn’t be cheap, and simple was quite sufficient for a single night stay. After retrieving our keys from the desk, we headed to our room to drop off our clothes. Realizing that they provided free internet, I also thought I might try to make our reservations for flights to Guam at Christmas.

“D’ye mind if I take a real shower, Ripālle?” Jamie asked. “It’s been a long day and it’s been several weeks since we were at Dougal’s house.”

“No worries,” I said, from my spot at the desk where I was charging my phone and signing into wifi. “It’ll give me time to figure out flights for Christmas.”

It was good that Jamie was enjoying his shower and took a long one, because it gave me a chance to recover from sticker shock. The per person price for the “Island Hopper” to Guam was $1056 per person. I knew, from my dad’s experience going on a diving expedition, that the Island hopper was called that because it landed on Kwajelein atoll, Kosrae, and then Pohnpei (Ponape) in between Majuro and Guam. With short stops at each island to refuel and for passengers to get off and new passengers to get on, the travel time was just over 8 hours. I could only imagine how green Jamie would be after four take-offs and four landings.

Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to make payments if I used my credit cards, I had set up an automatic payment to come from my checking account. I’d left several thousand in there when I left home, but thanks to online banking, I was able to transfer the amount from savings into checking, and charged both tickets by the time Jamie got out of the shower.

He walked out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his hips, drying his hair with a second towel, and came to stand behind me at the desk.

“Holy Hell!” he exclaimed, when he saw the price on the phone. “A thousand dollars for the two of us?”

“Um, no,” I replied. “That’s a thousand dollars for one person.”

“We canna do it, then, can we, Ripālle?” he said. “I guess I can just have you go to Guam for Christmas.”

“Too late,” I said, switching off my phone. “Already purchased both of them.”

I turned and smiled up at him, but was surprised to see that he looked irritated. I was taken aback at the flash in his eyes. I knew he had red hair, but there hadn’t been many flares of temper in our short marriage.

“Are you kidding me, Ripālle?” Jamie asked, in a low, intense voice. “You spent two thousand dollars while I was in the shower?”

On to Chapter 6 : Siblings Between money and marriage, there’s plenty to argue about.

Chapter Notes: It was quite fun to research the stores and hotels, look up the menu, and find pictures and descriptions. I didn’t spend much time on Majuro when I was there, but it was definitely way less primitive than Arno. The thing I liked more than anything was that the fishing dock turned out to be within walking distance of pretty much anything Claire and Jamie needed.

And the other research was the cost of flight. Yeah, it costs $1065 to fly to Guam. The cost to go to Scotland is over $3000 per person. I really want Claire and Jamie to visit his family, but logistically, I think they need to win the lottery...

#Jimjeran #Marshall Islands #BetweenSceneswriter #jamie x claire #outlander fanfic #alternate universe #CANON DIVERGENCE

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