#is it pareidolia if I put the eyes there

[monotonetim]

Newest lab member.

[mins-fins]

PAREIDOLIA (D.SC)

SUMMARY . . . history just simply always manages to repeat itself, the artist and their tired university student roommate who just can't help but admire them in ways friends don't look at each other..

PAIRING . . . dong sicheng x male!reader

GENRE . . . insanely fluffy

WARNINGS . . . none!

WORD COUNT . . . 1.8k

NOTES . . . why is winwin so majestic tf 🙁 my wayv bias is yangyang i have NO IDEA what you're talking about, im so mortifyingly in love with winwin but not in a "i want to kiss him" way in a "i wanna bake him cookies and run my fingers through his hair" way and that's basically the same thing

sicheng has become long used to coming home and seeing y/n in the middle of another artistic project. it's usually a painting, because that's the easiest thing to do in their small apartment, one the two of them fought tooth and nail to be able to afford. on some days he'll be creating costumes out of construction paper, or he'll be sewing, or he'll just be sketching on the couch. 

it's become somewhat of a staple of comfort to him, maybe it's because of how recognizable it is to come home and see y/n, eyebrows furrowed, head tilted, the slightest smudge of paint on his face as his eyes are completely focused on the canvas before him. there's always a small smile that comes to his face whenever he hears the door open, sicheng only catches it on the most certain of days, though.

and maybe it's weird that sicheng remembers every single detail of what happens after he comes home from exhausting classes where all his professor does is talk about is nonsense, this is kind of like the only silver lining to his day after hours of just nothing but life draining lectures.

and no it's definitely not because y/n is just the best serotonin every single feeling sicheng has for him is completely platonic and platonic only!

it's as he's untying his shoes, that he realizes today something is different. y/n is humming, to a song the two of them hear their neighbors blast through the walls every now and then, he assumes the tune got stuck in his head, and he just can't help but now him it to himself.

sicheng puts his shoes away, he glances up for a moment, and pauses, waiting. he then smiles to himself as he watches y/n smile himself, finally acknowledging his presence. "i didn't even hear you, the door closed so quietly".

y/n's comment makes him snicker, but his eyes still don't leave the canvas, so focused on what he's painting in fact that he doesn't register the paint on his cheek. sicheng, like he does on most days, walks up towards y/n and quickly wipes off the paint with his thumb.

y/n makes a small noise, but he ultimately doesn't shy away from sicheng's hand, almost leaning into the touch if sicheng thinks about it. "how do you never notice when you have paint on your face?" sicheng asks, going over to the sink to wash the paint off his thumb.

"an artist never strays away from their artistic craft" y/n comments mindlessly, and sicheng's eyebrows furrow just for a mere moment before he looks back to his roommate, still focused on the random color he's spreading across the canvas.

"did you just make that up, or..?" at the question, y/n finally turns around after what seemed like hours of standing in the same spot, and he snickers at the way sicheng asks it.

"yep, made it up just now".

the response makes sicheng snort, because he knows that's absolutely true considering the kind of person y/n is. "you.. your something alright" sicheng doesn't know why those words are the ones that come out of his mouth, but they make y/n laugh.

"ah thanks, you make me feel so smart, chengie" y/n looks back to the painting, stepping back just a little bit to admire it. he removes his gloves and tosses them away, yawning lightly. "does it look nice?"

sicheng blinks, glancing over at y/n, who is patiently waiting for his answer. he mindlessly stares at the painting of a snowy mountaintop as he tries to think of a compliment he hasn't said thousands of times already. "it's marvelous" y/n gives him a look of confusion, and sicheng just snickers as he does those jazz hands.

"you couldn't at least be a little bit more creative with your compliment?" y/n's face scrunches a little bet, and sicheng just shrugs, rubbing his eyes.

"i'm tired i don't have time for creativity" sicheng yawns, and y/n gives him another judgmental look. "ask me when i'm more awake" he shouts as he walks towards his room, leaving y/n to admire his painting all alone.

y/n snickers, shaking his head.

what a character you are, dong sicheng..

"do you assume van gogh was a weird guy?"

sicheng barely registers the question, because the only sound he's heard for the past twenty minutes is the horribly loud clicking of y/n's pen as he brainstorms ideas for upcoming projects, assignments, and all that other stuff. he narrows his eyes at his laptop screen before looking up at y/n, who was finally done clicking his pen and began sketching.

"what?" is his immediate response, probably because he didn't have enough time to properly assess or process that question. the other thing that being y/n's roommate comes with is having to hear the most random and weird questions. "i'm sorry?"

"van gogh" y/n says again, smiling innocently. "you know, the painter gu—"

"i know who van gogh is y/n" sicheng clarifies, sighing. "i just— what do you think i know about the personality of a famous artist who died over a hundred years ago?" he raises an eyebrow, momentarily glancing back down at his computer screen as he hears y/n's loud sigh.

"i'm researching about him for this project i'm doing".

"you did a project about van gogh already.." sicheng mutters in confusion, and he hears y/n's pen click once again, then the slam of his sketchbook. "didn't you?"

"oh this isn't for school!" y/n exclaims. "i'm just doing it for fun!"

"what kind of psycho does a project for fun?" at the words, y/n snorts, and sicheng can't help but gaze at him. yeah, it's stupid, but he's just so cute, and sicheng has no idea why he's staring this long at him.

fuck, i probably look crazy. i'm literally zoning out on his face, what kind of moron does that?

at least he's self aware.

"nothing?"

"what?"

"on van gogh?" y/n clarifies, and sicheng blinks like an idiot, because what else would y/n be talking about? he shakes his head, and y/n pouts in an unserious manner.

"at least your here to humor me" y/n says, picking his sketchbook back up as he begins flipping through it, he pauses at a certain page and smiles brightly at what's sketched on it.

sicheng doesn't really know what y/n draws in his sketchbook. y/n is pretty big on privacy, so sicheng never made it his thing to figure out what's in y/n's sketchbook because he doesn't want him to.

though, the way y/n's smiling at his sketchbook gets him curious.

"are the sketches causing you that much joy?"

y/n snaps up, his face going embarrassingly red as he closes his sketchbook once again. he smiles, then awkwardly laughs as he looks away, lightly scratching his arm. "yeah, um.. i just really like the sketches i made".

sicheng laughs, glancing back at his computer screen. it's so hard not to constantly stare at you when your.. well— you.

but they're just friends, nothing more.

"when i was younger i always wanted a garden of strawberries" y/n states as he paints said garden of strawberries on the canvas in front of him.

y/n is always the most busy on weekends with his artistic projects. he'll legitimately spend half of his day painting, another half making a halloween costume even though halloween won't come for the next seven months, and the other half sewing a sweater he's going to wear once every few months. sicheng has seen it all, and he's gotten used to the normalization of y/n just doing another artistic craft everyday, still being able to rest a whole eight hours.

he admires his way of just being such.. what is the phrase, a hard worker, he could say. y/n was just always up, doing something, he was never bored or not doing something, he was very much just an always working person.

"strawberries? out of everything?" sicheng asks, stirring the spoon in his cup of coffee mindlessly, he's too busy staring at y/n to pay attention to his now cooling cup of coffee. y/n gives him one of the most judgmental looks ever.

"what do you mean? out of everything? strawberries are amazing!" y/n counters, and sicheng laughs at his tone of voice. "they're one of the best things mankind has ever actually made".

"okay but why a garden of them?"

"so i can make strawberry flavored things everyday, duh" y/n dismisses the amount of red coloring on his apron, and his gloves, too busy trying to figure out how to finish his painting of his dream garden of strawberries.

y/n narrows his eyes at the painting, studying it for a moment, like he was trying to figure out if the painting was talking to him or not. "is this ugly?"

"what?"

"the painting? is it ugly?"

sicheng furrows his eyebrows, staring at y/n like he just asked the stupidest question in the world. y/n usually doesn't care about his opinion when it comes to paintings, because sicheng isn't an artist like he is, so sicheng has no idea why he would suddenly ask him about what he thought about his painting so suddenly.

"no? your paintings are never ugly.. why would you ask that?"

sicheng's question-answer makes y/n narrow his eyes at him. sicheng assumes he wasn't expecting that answer that then turned into a question, with the way he goes silent, and with the way his face flushes so much more obviously than it usually does.

sicheng doesn't get why he notices that the most, y/n is pretty unpredictable, he gets flustered at some of the most random times, and it's only at certain moments that sicheng notices how red his face is.

it's hot in the room, that's it, that's why, there is absolutely no other reason his face is so red right now.

he's just thinking of excuses.

"thank you" he whispers, turning back to his painting as he removes his paint splattered gloves. "it's a new day, i just wanted your opinion".

"that's strange".

"well if i'm not strange then i'm not interesting" y/n hums as he puts the finishing touches on his painting, and with his back turned, sicheng can admire him fully, without worrying about him getting caught and then having to explain why he was staring for so long.

sicheng is so busy admiring him, he doesn't even notice that he hasn't taken a sip of his coffee yet.

[ominous-feychild]

✦ Musical OC Tag ✦

Following this open tag from @mysticstarlightduck!

Rules: Share 1-3 songs you feel best embody a character from your WIP/s, either in general or at this moment in the plot.

Characters from Sun and Shadow: Crow and Freya

Using generalized songs! Though some of them are definitely better placed at various points in the characters' lives, but... oh, well!

CROW

1. Bring Me Down - B3LLA, CHENDA

Can't get my feet off the ground It's harder to fight now Things are different than before Can't find myself anymore I'm in a dark place lately Why do I feel so crazy? It's almost like I'm sinking deeper, deeper It's like I keep trying to be hurt, be hurt You're always in my head Reminding me of what can come next Lately I don't feel so bright I just wanna run away and go hide But you are always right by my side Telling me to go left when I should go right I feel like my hands are tied so tight I feel like I'm going to lose my mind But I can no longer justify My actions 'Cause you're always gunna bring me down

2. Mr. Capgras (etc) - WWatT

Damn, I thought you're not your imposter You're so sure you're not gonna get caught Dead in your own skin But you didn't choose what you were born in And add another man in your repertoire Ready in your head and fed upon your memoirs Still the same rules apply From the birthday to the mourning What you feel and what you do, are those things really you? And if not, then what is? (Never, never, never) So, my God, what's wrong with you? And I'm still asking who that is

3. Stop - Grace Blue

Don't try to make me feel worthless Trust me, you ain't the first to pull this Staring outside from my little cage May have built for myself, but I had help And now I can't, I can't, I can't break through it I can't, I can't, these walls are rooted I can't, I can't, I can't So stop, open your eyes for once Can't you see, we're wasting all we got Stop, our brain keeps tricking us We gotta fight, fight, fight 'til we get what's ours All this fake love that we've gotten used to No one to trust or share all the good news You liked me better when I'm in my cage Just so you can feel good about yourself

FREYA

1. Mad - Echos

Used to care if I hurt you But holding all this pain hurts me more All the things you put me through Yeah, I'm still fucking mad at you You love to say I can't feel this way, oh I'm so close to breaking down My head is spinning, I think I'm losing my control My body's shaking, can't take it (I'm fucking mad) My mind is blanking, don't tell me I should let it go I'm a time bomb, put it off for too long Watch me explode

2. DEBBIE DOWNER - Neoni

I wanna toss my social currency Pack up my shit get up and leave Reckless abandon everything And move where no would ever think To check Cause I tried my best Think it's time to eject I don't think I'm suited For society My anxiety Is certifiably Gonna be the death of me

3. Sick - Echos

Do you feel pleasure, when I feel pain? 'Cause people like you never seem to change Does it feel good when you take The glory for my bleedin'? So fuck you for leavin' You made me believe it I never want you back Don't make me say it So fuck you for leavin' You made me believe it I never want you back You've got me singin'

I had fun with this (and definitely didn't already have playlists half-built to make a longer version of this for several of my MCs--) so I'm working on another for the tAR main cast!

Tagging (gently!): @honeybewrites @the-golden-comet @the-letterbox-archives @yourpenpaldee @darkandstormydolls + open tags!

Divider by @cafekitsune

[siennasfix]

Pareidolia

Chapter 4 "Uneven pressure"

*****

<<<Chapter 3 Chapter 5>>>

Trigger warnings: 1. Child torture 2. Child experimentation 3. Strangling 4. Bullying

The demigods watched and listened intently as Y/n, nervous under their scrutiny, stuttered her way through sentences. Even Yeonjun, who seldom missed out on an opportunity to put her in her place, kept his mouth shut and leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed against his chest. Somehow it made her even more anxious to speak. As if their silence was but the calm before the storm of insults and accusations.

When she trailed off in the middle of the sentence, Minho leaned forward to get her attention. “Did she tell you what the nightmare was about? Other than Juliana and Ruth being butchered.”

Y/n nodded and Beomgyu immediately asked, “Did she recognize the culprit?”

This time, she shook her head and Minho spoke again. “Don’t you think they would’ve reported it if they knew? If she’d told Y/n?”

“Hard to say.” Beomgyu shrugged. “She’s an old blood.”

The delivery was so matter-of-fact that it had her looking up from her empty bowl, frowning. Their tendency to assume the worst of her character and abilities when they hadn’t even exchanged a word before she started living with them pissed her off beyond belief. It distressed her to know that Minho’s only objective was to extract a confession out of her. All the while, Hwang and Yeonjun spectated with looks carved from a rock.

“So what?” Beomgyu’s face remained inexpressive, neither taunting nor defensive, as she spewed out the words. “You think we want you dead or something?”

Beomgyu shrugged that off as well. Whatever Y/n said in her defense could only be taken as pitiful excuses to save herself. Her ill reputation preceded her.

From the corner of her eye, she spied Hwang planting his elbows on the table.

“She doesn’t know what the culprit looks like. And you’re right.” He looked straight at her, unflinching, “She wouldn’t have reported it.”

Again, Y/n felt that she must try to change their opinion of her. “You can’t know that.”

“I know you’re afraid.” He stated and the surety of his tone caused her to cringe in shame. He allowed her a few seconds to wallow in it, less as an act of mercy than an opportunity to pick her apart a vulture did with carrion, before continuing, “But there’s something else you’re not telling us.”

Looking down into her bowl again, Y/n swallowed. “No, there’s nothing else.”

It was the wrong thing to say apparently. Or maybe it was the way she was so intent on avoiding his gaze that gave her away. Either way, Hwang didn’t believe a word she said, and neither did the rest of them, Minho included.

Like a lake frozen from the surface to the bed, his voice bore no ripples as he warned, “I will get it out of you regardless.”

Y/n almost shot up from her seat, ready to scurry into the nearest corner.

��You can’t torture me.”

Hwang titled his head. “Oh, really?”

“If you could, you would have already.” Y/n pushed on defiantly, pain webbing throughout her hand from where her fingers dug into her thighs. “You wouldn’t have waited for me to tell you all this.”

At that, he hummed and then shrugged. “Maybe I’ve been feeling generous.”

She tried to stare back at him, to defy him in some small measure, but Hwang, Y/n realized, had been moulded for a world that wasn’t for her eyes to perceive, and should she dare to try, she would have to lose an eye. That was how it felt to challenge him; like having your eyes gauged out for the audacity. She wondered if he kept the memories of other people’s submission with him as a good luck charm.

“It has nothing to do with Juliana and Ruth.” She said in a gasping attempt to dissuade him from pressing the matter. Might as well have tried convincing ice to not be water.

The legs of a chair screeched against the floor. Minho, the only one who mothered to use persuasive means, now sat closer.

“Tell us.” He urged her. “No matter how irrelevant you think it is.”

Something about how Minho said it, the permission to carry on with what others would consider absolute rubbish, chipped away at her reluctance. She could be sure that at the very least he would refrain from painting her as a dimwitted creature.

She’d seen him interact with other people, playing pranks on them, lampooning them when he thought their actions rash, never hesitating to clap back when it was called for, but toward her, Minho was nothing if not patient and forgiving. Perhaps it was her ignorance of the world’s treasures such as delicious food, the internet, slang, jokes, trends, items of various kinds, and the list went on. Maybe he simply considered her not to be worth more of his energy than he was obliged to expend by the authorities. What she knew for certain was that he placed duty to his people high on his list of priorities and being tolerant of her ignorance was the way to fulfill it.

“There was a man.” Though she was no longer reluctant to divulge, her voice still maintained that rickety quality. It couldn’t improve her credibility. “When I went into the forest searching for Luna, I found her by a stream with a man. He gave her a flower and when I thanked him for looking after her he said it was me he’d been waiting to talk to. He said,” She shut her eyes, trying to relay the man’s message verbatim, “He said to tell the wretched vermin not to be so awfully stingy.”

Only once she was done, did Y/n realize she’d been facing Minho the entire time, even before she’d begun her rant. So, when she opened her eyes, it was his she was staring into, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She never could tell what others were thinking, save for when their revulsion was so visceral it showed in the lines of their face like carvings on an ancient tomb. Right now, Y/n wished she could understand him better, that Minho would reassure her in some way, however small.

A scoff of irritation quickly caught her attention.

“You were right,” Yeonjun said. “That is irrelevant to the main issue.”

The blood rushed to her face. “Well, you wanted to know.”

“And he wanted to speak with you specifically.” He mocked her tone while making a face. “Don’t you find that odd?”

Beomgyu, whose plate was now cleared of its contents, surprised her by cutting in impatiently.

“Was it someone you’d seen before?” Curiosity sparkled in his eyes. “Someone you know?”

“I don’t think that was a someone… rather a something.” A sense of unease crawled into her and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “His clothes were too pristine for the environment, and he spoke as if he knew me; as if he’d known I’d be coming to him. It was like he looked down on everything here.”

“Could it be he lives in the forest?” Minho asked but even though his body was facing hers the question wasn’t aimed solely at her. He was asking everyone at the table to complete the puzzle.

Feeling cornered once again, Y/n glanced back and forth between him and the rest. “I don’t think so. He vanished right after he told me to relay that message.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.” Hwang asserted. “The forest spans for miles. He could’ve just teleported into another area.”

Beomgyu, ever so eager to get to the bottom of this, looked at the others with an almost pleading look. “Do you think it’s worth taking a look?”

Unsurprisingly, Yeonjun’s face crumpled in distaste at the prospect of having to fight his way through the accursed forest while Minho tipped his chin at Hwang and the latter shrugged as he rose from his seat and took his plate to the sink.

Minho wasn’t on dish duty tonight so she wasn’t sure if they’d like her to help. Before everyone could carry on with their evening activities Y/n plucked up the courage to ask if she could go with them.

The glare Yeonjun shot her as he buttoned up his jacket was nothing if not acidic. Maybe he thought it would cleanse him of the filth that was the sight of her before him.

“To do what?” He jeered. “Be a deadweight?”

Y/n pointed her index at him. “Do you know what he looks like? Can you be sure you’d recognize him if you saw him? He could be a shapeshifter for all we know.”

“In that case, you’d be just as useless as the rest of us, stupid.”

“I can understand the shadows.” She argued her point, hoping to at least convince Beomgyu who was lounging on the sofa playing games on his phone, and Hwang who considered her a liability in terms of combat skills. If she succeeded, it would be the two of them against Yeonjun. “They might be able to pick up on his energy or presence or whatever better than all of us combined.”

“Y/n, you can’t go with them.”

Just like that, her attempt to sway them was in vain. Minho didn’t mince his words when it came to the guidelines of his part in this process, one of them being that she was to abstain from roaming the fields, visiting the altars, catacombs, wandering inside the forest; basically any other place considered to boast profound cultural significance aside from Olympia University. Even that small mercy was more for Minho’s sake than concern for her education or wellbeing.

Desperation nibbled at her patience. “But if I can’t do anything and they can’t either then what use was it talking to you about it?”

Minho approached her and, placing his hand between her shoulder blades, led her upstairs.

“It’s worth it because now we have an alibi of sorts.” He turned on the light in her bedroom. “Luna was with you, and she couldn’t have killed Juliana or Ruth. And if that’s not an alibi, then at least it’s a confession.” He paused, searching for something in her gaze. Perhaps a hint that she understood what he was getting at. “You have a chance to see Luna again.”

Y/n lowered her gaze to the blue rug past the threshold and turned her back to him. All she mumbled in response was a resigned ‘okay’, and a few seconds later the door clicked shut.

******************************************************************************************

The first rays of dawn barely just cracked the night when Minho had turned on the light without so much as a good morning to tell her that she was to partake in the collective training for second and third years. With eyelids weighed down by lack of sleep and exhaustion, it was all Y/n could do to pretend that she was at least a bit excited to stand alongside her peers here at the foot of the Berkley Hills. It was to be her first time after all.

First-years were granted the small mercy of being trained and evaluated separately. On the other hand, the fourth and fifth years were subjected to rigorous training in preparation for the Argenti Legio, commonly referred to as the ARL, the final exam that determined their rank in the legion before they were eventually elevated to the AUL, Aureus Legio. She’d heard it was grueling and the written records detailed that ever since the treaty between Camp Half-blood and Jupiter had been signed more than three centuries prior the deceased demigods numbered in the thousands, with a yearly mortality rate of approximately 37%. Small wonder the instructors were ruthless in their approach.

Yet, as she stood there, barely able to contain her shivers, Y/n wondered why she had to become part of this. Why now that she was to be locked up for good? What was the point in keeping up the pretense of being part of the collective when she wouldn’t even get the chance to compete in the ARL? She really would rather have stayed in her bedroom, just as immersed in the third part of the book Professor Hajjar had gifted her as she had been way into the early hours of the morning. Granted, it wasn’t a solution. It did nothing but facilitate her escape from reality. Still, Y/n preferred it.

She was further convinced of it when a silhouette identical to all the rest thanks to the standard black uniform waded through the crowd to stand before her, sinewy and dignified.

Shin Ryujin, commander of the Rubeus Squadron, regarded her as one would a misplaced sock. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Y/n kicked at a small rock. “I don’t want to be here.”

“You won’t last five minutes.”

Was that necessary? Sure, Y/n stuck out like a sore thumb with her emaciated frame and lack of training. But it wasn’t as if she enjoyed freezing her ass off here with the only prospect being of embarrassing herself in front of people whom she knew to be incredibly eager to see her fail. Surrounded by the rest of her peers, Y/n felt humbled.

It took everything for Y/n to look Shin Ryujin in the eye and not pounce on her like a feral animal. For the past two weeks, whenever her thoughts would stray to her, all Y/n could see was an executioner.

“I guess you’ll just have to carry me out of here when I pass out.”

The young commander didn’t find that funny, her expression a replica of her mother’s. “Optimistic enough to think anyone will bother.”

Y/n didn’t find this unwanted exchange all that amusing either.

“Leave me here to rot then.” She said, meeting each word tit for tat.

If it weren’t for the fingers curling around the dagger, Y/n would have thought Shin Ryujin unaffected. The latter, catching on the fact that she’d noticed, strode the way she’d come from.

Not five seconds later, Minho joined her with a bottle of water in hand, leaning against the marble pillar just a few shades lighter than his sweatpants as he watched her find comfort in the engravings on the ceiling. The enormous structure was a marvel. Especially since she’d never been permitted access to these grounds before.

Minho removed the cap and handed her the bottle. “Can’t imagine she was anything but condescending?”

“You know her personally?” Y/n asked and took a sip of water.  

“Not quite.” He loosened the zipper of his black jersey. “She’s three years my junior and a daughter of a war goddess of Rome, one that doesn’t often mingle with humans. That comes with a certain status, especially when you’re as skilled as she is.” A pensive frown. “But I never imagined she’d go as far as to interact with you outside of her duties as a leader of the Third Cohort and commander.”

Y/n swiped her knuckles across her mouth, wiping off excess water. “Neither did I.”

A bellowing sound reverberated throughout the grounds. It left her stomach feeling hollow as if her breakfast had been swallowed by whatever instrument had produced it. Y/n held onto Minho’s sleeve and in return, he helped her straighten up; she hadn’t noticed she’d been slouching and bending her knees as if to brace herself for a fall.

“I’d tell you not to try too hard but-

“I know. Professor Hajjar says it is imperative that I try to blend in.” It was embarrassing to hear the anxiety in her voice as well as the desperation and resentment that lingered once the phrase was uttered. “I just wish I could speak with him. Why won’t he just-

Minho cut her off by placing his hands on her shoulders and steering her down the steps. “There’s no time for that right now. They’re lining up. Go stand next to Hyunjin.”

“You’re not staying?”

It was even more embarrassing to hear the need for reassurance. She was certain so could Minho. She’d hoped that his guard duty would somehow oblige him to join her, forgetting that Hwang could effectively take over in his stead.

He peered down at her through long lashes before patting her on the shoulder. “Try your best.”

Y/n looked at where Hwang and Beomgyu stood, the former glancing their way as the latter yapped on, and asked him him to help her secure the bottle on her thigh, using the straps that came with the uniform. She bid him goodbye and joined Hwang and Beomgyu, situating herself between the two per Minho’s instructions. She must have looked so pathetic; a bony young woman and two male demigods who’d spent years breaking and restoring their bodies for combat. Hwang had put up his hair in his usual half-up-half-down style while Beomgyu had let his loose. Just like her, they had water bottles strapped to their thighs.

Hwang spared her a glance. “Keep up.”

“She’s going to die,” Beomgyu blurted out behind her.

Y/n glared at him from the corner of her eye. “I won’t.”

Beomgyu’s laugh wasn’t even derisive, just so fucking annoying.

“You look dead already.”

Y/n decided to ignore him. Nothing good could come out of giving Beomgyu a reaction. Also, there was no time for a back-and-forth as the four instructors took their place on the platform and delivered short speeches, which were just a listing of the rules, scoring system, and safety measures.

The rules would have been easy enough to follow if they didn’t include the part about surrender being forbidden. Participants had to see this through no matter the cost. It meant Y/n would receive the lowest score in decades, if not in all of demigod history.

The scoring system was divided into four parts, as was the training on the whole; strength (25 points), flexibility (25 points), balance (25 points), and endurance (25 points). The only phase of the training she might not absolutely fail at was flexibility; she had made it a rule to stretch in the morning and before bed. Strength was out of the question and so were balance and endurance. She simply didn’t have the adequate muscle mass to perform all the intricate tasks adequately. There was also the matter of the tracker injection. It felt weird to have something pistoned in instead of it being siphoned out.

As for the safety measures, Minho had already seen to it that she was provided with knee and elbow braces, a water bottle, a packet of sterile gauze, and a flat tiny bottle of antiseptic solution that he’d stuffed in one of her thigh pockets in case something happened. Something was bound to happen.

The trials began and they were excruciating. Strength was the worst of them as Y/n just was no match for Hwang Yeji, the demigod she was pitted against. Hammer throwing was impossible; it didn’t budge no matter how much energy she exerted. The following tasks⸺ rope and net climbing, pull-ups, etc⸺  in this phase were just as much a breeding ground for humiliation. Nothing changed when it came to flexibility and balance. She was tossed around, plummeted from not being able to adjust her footing on the ropes, and might have pulled a muscle overdoing it during the acrobatics part.

She should have just accepted a score of zero instead of standing there absorbing the shame each time Hwang helped her to her feet.

After a particularly nasty fall, he looked down at her. His words from the training session came to mind then; pitiful, weak, not worthy of being considered prey. Y/n knew she’d have to finish the last phase of the trials on her own, without him there to act as her disgruntled coach, rolling his eyes whenever she failed pathetically. He didn’t have to say out loud for her to understand that much. Also, she hadn’t the energy to beg him to be there for her, as desperate as she was.

As soon as one of the instructors blew the horn, the endurance trials commenced. It consisted of running through the woods to reach an area similar to this one. The instructors informed them of the distance (25 miles uphill north) and that the trackers in their bodies would monitor their heart rate, speed, body composition, and levels of cortisol among other things. Heart rate and body composition didn’t affect the score but speed and cortisol levels did. Y/n knew she was doomed to receive a pathetic score either way.

Something was wrong from the very beginning. An acidic substance bubbled up to her throat. It had her coughing and her fingers itched to rub it off from the inside. In a matter of minutes, the sons and daughters of Hermes and Mercury put miles of distance between them and the rest despite the terrain being slippery from the days of incessant downpour.

All of the students would have to scrub their bodies raw, especially the ones who tumbled face-first into the mud. Y/n managed to grab onto a branch to prevent that. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t looking downright filthy. Her hands, legs, and elbows were caked with mud and leaves. But that wasn’t her greatest concern. The burning itch in her throat persisted until it eventually turned into nausea and stomach pain. Her vision turned foggy and she could no longer tell if she was looking at demigods stumbling uphill or weirdly-shaped logs.

When she’d finally shed every ounce of energy and the pangs of pain became unbearable she decided to search around for a trunk to lie against. She thought she’d found her temporary sanctuary but was just a trick her impaired vision had played on her. Y/n sucked in a breath as the thorns of the brown bush dug into her flesh.

There isn’t much to tell about what happened after that. She slipped and tumbled down a hill. Sludge and needles painted her into a creature from beyond the grave. Similar to that day in the forest, she couldn’t tell right from left, south from north, or east from west. The only thing Y/n could make out was the belching sounds as she threw up and the dust of sunlight filtered through the cloud of green above. The curtains fell shut.

It wasn’t yet noon when she gained consciousness. Her forehead and back of her head throbbed, her skin stung, her neck ached, and her eyelids felt heavy with both mud and exhaustion. Through the haze of her senses, she could tell two people were speaking. None of the words made sense. Maybe they weren’t human. Maybe, she’d finally kicked the bucket and was on her journey across the Styx on Charon’s boat, soul ready for dismemberment.

“… unconscious.”

Fingers rubbed against her cheeks.

“… in vomit.” This voice came from her right instead of above her. “Minho… grill you.”

That name. She knew that name. Lee Minho. Lee Minho. Son of… his hair was a dark brown. Round eyes? Lee Minho. Help. Minho. The name and the cold fingers at her neck, checking her pulse, shocked Y/n into opening her eyes. She looked up then to her left.

“She’s waking up,” Her neck felt bare when the beautiful, long-haired man removed his fingers. She could see the other drawing closer. “Can you hear me?”

As if on cue, she started hyperventilating. It didn’t make sense. Where was Luna? Why was her head on this man’s lap? Had she never left the forest? Had they caught her? Had they gotten their hands on Luna? Why did the man cup her mouth in his palm? Was he trying to suffocate her? Why was the world growing dim when the sun had barely reached its peak? The lights were out once more.

The second time Y/n awoke was in her bedroom. The predominantly blue hues created a soothing ambiance. It also helped that someone had lit up incense sticks and the whole room smelled like lavender and chamomile. As she struggled to get her bearings, rubbing as if to cleanse her vision of filth, a hand pressed against her forehead. That, apparently, was all it took for her to straighten up and take in her surroundings fully.

Minho, who sat at the edge of the bed, removed his hand and watched as she sat up, restless. The memories of today’s events hit her all at once and she was left internally writhing with humiliation, something she tried to cover up by rubbing her hands along her arms, face, and torso.

Minho poured her a glass of water. “I cleaned you up before tucking you in.”

Y/n drained the glass in two seconds.

“Did you bring me here?” She asked, hoping he’d say ‘no’.

He shook his head as she handed him back the glass. “Hyunjin and Beomgyu did.”

That was it. That sent her over the edge. The mere mention of their names amplified the humiliation she had been feeling since the beginning of the trials. Tears came pouring down her cheeks that were so hot it felt as though some of the humiliation had seeped into them, inflicting physical on top of the emotional pain. She couldn’t see Minho as he fished out a packet of napkins from the drawer and handed it to her. Sobbing, Y/n blew into it.

“I told you I wasn’t ready, but you wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t listen.” She whimpered, resenting Minho and Professor Hajjar a little more with each passing second. “Now your friends are going to mock me forever, tell everybody how fucking filthy I am. No one will ever want me near.”

When she started hiccupping Minho poured her another glass of water.

“No one else saw you, and they won’t tell anyone.” He said as she drank it. Then, he set the glass on the nightstand. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Covering her ears, Y/n shook her head so violently that the pain intensified. “But they’ll remind me of it like Yeonjun always does.”

“Yeonjun.”

“He’s always wrinkling his nose, sneering, and telling me how stupid and filthy I am from the very first day. I don’t want to see him or talk to him or do anything in front of him. Every time I say something he makes me regret it.” A smidge of the built-up bile spilled. “I hate it. I hate it so much. And now the other two will act the same.”

Understanding that there was no improving her mood with words alone, Minho decided to change subjects in hopes of redirecting the conversation.

“While I was cleaning you up, I noticed you had little to no hair in your pubic area.” When Minho mentioned he’d cleaned her up, she’d thought more along the lines of him wiping off the vomit. But it made sense that more had to be done, considering she’d been lying in filth for hours before his friends had found her. It didn’t make it any less embarrassing though. “I thought that maybe it was because you just have very thin hair, but your hair is naturally dark and coarse so that’s unlikely.” Minho seemed to be uncomfortable as he asked, “Y/n, do you menstruate?”

Napkin still her hand, Y/n tugged the soft blanket closer to her chest. “You’ll make fun of me.”

“That would be cruel.” Minho chased her fleeting gaze when she looked out the window. “Do you think me cruel, Y/n?”

She flicked her index back and forth, toying with the seam of the blanket. “No, more like a trickster.”

“Courtesy of my heritage.” He remarked jokingly before his tone turned thoughtful. “I won’t pretend that you not menstruating isn’t alarming. You might be sterile. You might not. It’s not like your fertility is for public record. What I do know for sure is that you’re starved.”

This conversation had taken a turn she hadn’t anticipated. Over the years, ever since she’d learned what it meant for a woman to be fertile, there had been times when she’d sat in deep thought. What did it mean to be a mother? What kind of mother would she be if someone desired her enough to procreate with her? Would her existence be accepted if she were to procreate with someone pure? Or would her children inherit the curse of her womb? No old blood had lived long enough to answer any of these questions.

“It doesn’t matter.” She sniffled. “I’m never having children.”

“Doctors might say it matters because your hormones are catastrophically dysregulated. Your body-” He sighed in frustration. “This is why we need Professor Hajjar, why you need to follow the training regimen. Nutritious meals and training will help you gain the weight you need to get your period.”

 “I tried. I tried to keep up with the rest of them but they were so much faster, stronger, and resilient.” Y/n fisted the blanket. “Everyone is just better.”

She couldn’t presume to know what Minho was thinking but even he couldn’t counter that. It was a fact that everyone was better than her. They were stronger, had been trained in every discipline there was, and were primed for the battlefield. But it wasn’t just that. By default, their existence was pure and holy. By virtue of not being her, they were loved.

“Let’s have dinner downstairs.” Minho stood and watched her expectantly when she made no effort to follow suit. “We can get ready after. There’s someone waiting to see you.”

Y/n had never stood up faster. She almost passed out.

After they had an early dinner, which Minho insisted was to be consumed slowly so as not to trigger heartburn, he drove them to the CIIL (Criminal Investigation Institute of Learning). It was only 5 miles north of the headquarters, built strategically close to Mount Diablo as it was a sparsely populated region of Camp Jupiter. That wasn’t to say that the drive was over in a matter of minutes. It took them a solid hour and a half to get there, and not a minute passed that Y/n wasn’t chewing on her lower lip, causing the flesh to tear. Minho handed her a napkin when he pulled over at a gas station.

When they finally arrived, Y/n could only wonder at the nature of the research they could be conducting past the gargantuan charcoal grey walls that rose before them. The gates, made of celestial bronze enforced with steel, bore the symbol of Olympus and reached up to the parapets of the wall where sentries took turns on patrol. The grimness of the place seeped everywhere, down to the grass that had taken on a dull shade of brown.

After a back and forth with one of the guards, Minho forced them to call over the Head of Security at the institute who initially wasn’t much help either.

He barely considered her presence as he Minho showed him the permission signed by Professor Laqueus and Professor Hajjar.

“Only the subject’s sister is permitted entry into the chamber.” He stated curtly.

Minho kept his cool, or at least pretended that was the case. Y/n herself was too anxious to tell.

“As her guard, I have been tasked with accompanying her everywhere.” Minho stood his ground, fishing his ID and another circular object out of the inner pocket of his jacket. “Even in high-security settings.”

The Head glanced back and forth from the documents to Minho’s face and from the latter to Y/n, whom he had barely acknowledged up until that point. She doubted the sight of her was what forced the man to relent. What mattered was that the gates groaned loudly as they opened inch by inch, revealing what she could only describe as a civilization within its right. Structures that far surpassed the university were commonplace it appeared. She imagined this was where most of the science-obsessed graduates of Olympia chose to spend the rest of their demigod lives. Whereas the subjects dreaded seeing the dawn of another day, the researchers bathed in the glory of its promises.

Minho and Y/n were escorted through a white-light mazelike path under the most sterile building she’d ever had the privilege to exist in, and when they stepped foot in the maddeningly white chamber where Luna was being held, she could tell their escort would be keeping guard as well as the time. Y/n had to make every minute out of all 30, count.

She practically bounded towards Luna’s bed, where she was strapped down and connected to tubes and machines that she couldn’t make sense of. Unable to bear the sight of her sister confined to her bed like an animal, Y/n began undoing all the buttons and knots, freeing the little girl’s frame of its constraints. Her eyes welled with tears as she took Luna in from head to toe. How sickly pale her sister looked, how emaciated.

For a minute or two, Y/n simply sat at the edge of the bed, holding the girl’s cold hand. She wanted to wake her up and let her know her big sister was there.

“Luna? Hey, little bug.” She spoke to her softly, brushing her dark hair aside when those eyes fluttered open the tiniest bit. “Did you have a nice dream?”

“She can’t hear you,” Minho muttered.

Nodding, Y/n tried to wipe away the unshed tears discreetly and pointed at the tubes. “What’s in them?”

At her question, he drew closer, lightly feeling the length of the transparent tubes as he inspected the fluid they transported from the cylinder at the top and into Luna’s circulatory system. 

“Diazepam by the looks of it. For seizures most likely.” He let the tube go as he let the state of her sister soak in. “Whatever it is, it’s best not to pull out the needles.”

“I know. They’d just shove them back in the second we’re gone.”

“She’s in pain. Help her sit up. That’s right. Hold her still.” Y/n held Luna close to her chest while Minho unbuttoned her hospital gown and inspected her spine. He pressed his thumbs gently into the flesh, what little remained of it, anyway. “They’ve been siphoning out her marrow. Look at all the purple patches all over her back. She must have been screaming in pain so they put her to sleep.”

Y/n cupped the back of Luna’s neck, securing her head against her chest, and felt the little girl’s breathing quicken as she stirred awake.

“Y/n…

The big sister rubbed her hand over the bony little arms while Minho buttoned up her hospital gown.

“Hey, bug-bug,” Y/n murmured and Luna moaned in pain as they helped her lie down, “I’m here.”

Luna’s eyes, though barely open, welled with tears of fatigue.

“Will you take me home?” She pleaded.

Glancing at Minho, Y/n shook her head softly. “I can’t-

“Please, take me with you.” Luna’s frail grip could easily be shaken off, but Y/n could never do that to her. “I want to come with you. Please-

Y/n responded by tightening her hold, just enough to not cause her pain. “I will get you out of here. Soon. I’ll get you out of here and then we’ll go back home. I promise you.”

“It hurts.” Luna sobbed.

“I’m sorry.”

“They came back.” Y/n could feel Minho, who had been beside her the whole time, lean forward with renewed interest. “The voices. They came back and I can’t sleep. Please, please, make them go away, please.”

At that moment, it didn’t matter whether Luna’s confession could be used against them should Minho decide to report it to Professor Hajjar and Laqueus. The tremors in Luna’s hand matched the shuddering of the rest of her body. She needed sustenance and reassurance. The latter, Y/n could provide.

“I promise.” She spoke it like a litany, “I promise. I promise. I promise.”

From next to her, she felt something shift. Minho stepped closer and muttered something she could barely hear, lips almost pressed against the object in his hand. When he unfurled his fist she saw the same object on his palm that he’d produced from his jacket back in her cell. Only, this time what sprung from it was not a blanket to trap in the body heat and multiply it until the optimal body temperature was achieved. It was… a bar of chocolate, caramel-flavored. He opened it, broke it into smaller pieces, and offered one to Luna.

When she shrunk away from him, he only said, “Your sister says you like caramel.”

Luna glanced at her and only accepted the offering when Y/n gave her a nod of reassurance. That was how they spent the remaining minutes, feeding her chocolate, helping to clean her teeth however they could, asking her what else hurt, informing her about the hearing that was to take place, and simply brushing her hair with a small comb Minho kept in his inner pocket. Y/n was glad to hear Luna sigh in contentment, eyes lighting up at the tricks Minho played with the plastic wrapper. It was not enough to make her forget about the white, sterile prison she was in. 

Near the end, Minho placed his hand on her shoulder. “It’s time, Y/n.” 

Y/n didn’t look at him, only at Luna.

“I’ll be back, okay?” The promise rang with uncertainty.

Pouting, Luna nodded and looked up at Minho.

“Can you bring chocolate again?” She asked him in a voice riddled with shame.

Minho smiled. “Of course, we will. Strawberry-flavored. Orange. Cherry. Peach. Coconut. Whatever you want.”

“Thank you,” Luna murmured.

The hug was too short to count as a proper goodbye. Y/n felt like this prison was siphoning her blood out and away from her. It left her fatigued, regretful about not having said something more, confused, and angry.

“Why would they do that to Luna?” She voiced the question once they were back in their car. It had been burning and writhing in her mind for the entire duration of their visitation. “I get that she’s being held in custody. But there’s no need to drain her marrow to prove whatever they think there is to prove.”

Minho put his seatbelt on and stared ahead. “That’s sketchy for sure.”

“Sketchy?” She couldn’t understand the need for that understatement. “It’s cruel. She didn’t-

“They think otherwise.”

“They’re wrong.”

“Not to them.” He violently rammed in his car keys and Y/n stilled. “To them, she’s an old blood who ran away while an investigation was being conducted and whose sister stormed into a forest crawling with monsters so they wouldn’t get to her first.” He sighed, head on the headrest. “I get why you went after her. I do. But it was the wrong choice to make.”

Angry hot tears pooled in her eyes so she looked out of the window instead, hoping the searingly bright light from the lamppost would vaporize them. She felt like such a weakling at that moment.

“So, you would have left her alone?” Y/n tried to keep her voice from shaking. “Knowing she might get mauled by some monster. Knowing she might die thinking no one cared enough to search for her.”

His reflection in the window gazed back at her and, before she could look away, he turned the key. Y/n barely made out his words over the sound of the engine roaring to life.

“It doesn’t matter what I would have done.” He said as he drove out of the parking lot.

Halfway home, Minho handed her a napkin.

******************************************************************************************

Safe to say, Y/n got absolutely no sleep last night. She stormed up the stairs, ignoring Yeonjun’s biting comments, Beomgyu’s persistent inquiries, and Hwang’s stalking gaze as they paused the game they were playing. She didn’t care to see anything other than the pages of Professor Hajjar’s book or to hear anything other than the voice in her head reciting fact after fact on the river Styx and the goddess after which it was named. Everything else⸺ the motorcycles speeding down the road, the bustling nightlife of New Rome, and the birds pecking her windowsill (where she’d placed some seeds after asking Minho if she could)⸺ was nothing but background noise. It worked. She memorized everything to a T.

From the dawn of the Golden Age, it had been the custom of legendary heroes of old to pledge oaths in the name of the stream of hatred, the current of gloom and abhorrence, for it was that of the Goddess whom Zeus, sovereign of Olympus, considered an ally to be revered. Oaths in her name were to be kept; be it during the valor of life or the torment of death. Oaths in her name are impossible to elude.

Attempting to rid herself of the guilt, Y/n memorized the entire 3rd chapter. She labored to stave off her sleep by drinking water and going to pee at least three times, but eventually, sleep claimed her like a relentless, lurking beast that wouldn’t take no for an answer. Even then, the guilt plagued her dreams, for it was she who followed Luna into that forest. In her nightmare, the man stood behind her sister, staring at Y/n as both he and Luna plunged into the gaping abyss. She knelt at the precipice, reaching inside the pit, but an invisible force would not allow her to chase after Luna.

Her screams rang in her ears from the moment she awoke screeching and sweating, up until now, as she and Minho sat on the bench and sipped from their thermoses. She’d been unable to learn much of what he’d been trying to teach her, his words going in from one ear and out of the other. There was just… so much noise.

She heard him say they were heading out loud and clear though.

“Why are we leaving so early?” Y/n asked him.

Minho wiped at his brow with a towel. “Professor Hajjar has called me into his office to discuss the details of your confession. And you’re coming with me.”

That was certainly new.

“Really?” She said, cautious. “I thought you’d… you know, have Hwang teach me. Like last time.”

Minho tossed the towel in his sports bag and zipped it up. “Look around.”

She did as he said but… there were no signs of Yeonjun’s insufferable expressions, Beomgyu’s insupportable teasing, or Hwang’s arrogant stance.

She looked back at Minho. “Where have they gone?”

“Come on.” He slung the strap across his shoulders, clearly intending to drop the subject entirely. “Professor Hajjar dislikes tardiness.”

Neither did Minho apparently, for he ushered them out of the building, back to campus, and up to Professor Hajjar’s office. Before bringing his hand up to knock, he looked at her to assess whether she was ready. Y/n nodded at him and he rapped his knuckles against the wooden surface. They waited for Professor Hajjar to call from the other side and then crossed the threshold.

Y/n didn’t think it was possible for Minho to straighten his posture even more, but he did.

“Good afternoon, professor.” He greeted, nodding.

Professor Hajjar looked up from his book and offered a greeting in return. She almost didn’t notice his eyes flit between the two students before him thanks to the sunlight being reflected from the shelves on his glasses.

The professor angled his way so he might get a better look. “I see you’ve brought Miss. L/n along.”

Minho’s thoughtful gaze settled on her as he seemingly pondered how to answer the unspoken question. Eventually, he stared ahead.

“There was no one available who could stand guard.”

Professor Hajjar fixed him with a skeptical look, one that would have had Y/n stuttering or running away for fear of feeling exposed. But with Minho refusing to divulge further details on his friends’ whereabouts, the professor had to redirect the conversation, albeit reluctantly. Y/n was certain he would get to the bottom of this one way or another. It was in the nature of the children of Athena and Minerva.

“You did well bringing her here.” Professor Hajjar bookmarked the page and shut the book. “What we are to discuss involves both her and her sister, and now that we have a confession of sorts we can work on an alibi. Although,” He paused, gesturing for the two of them to take a seat. “I don’t presume you will listen unless I’ve answered your questions first.”

He had read her like an open book, but just this once Y/n did not mind. He wanted her to see her desperation, to feel the maggots of rage buried in her flesh each time she thought of her little sister. Perhaps then he would be inclined to do more.

“What are they doing to Luna?” She asked, hands placed on each thigh. “There were tubes and-

“A research is being conducted that demands the extraction of her marrow.”

The immediacy of his answer and the purely analytical nature of Professor Hajjar’s gaze stupefied her. She looked to Minho for help… anything.

“What kind of research?” He prodded, letting the bag rest on the carpeted floor.

“You know I am not allowed to speak further.” He stated. At that, even Minho deflated, almost shrinking back from the thought of pressing the matter. Professor Hajjar turned his attention fully on her. “Let me be clear. You have no alibi.”

Y/n leaned forward. “But-

The professor raised his hand, effectively silencing her. “You cannot prove intent and, considering the fact that you and your sister are old bloods, I would consider it ill-advised to attempt it. That would open a can of worms neither you nor I can contain.”

Minho tried to speak when Y/n couldn’t. “Is there anything we can do, professor?”

“To the Council, Luna Weisfeld’s culpability is a foregone conclusion. No amount of begging or thorough investigation can convince them otherwise, and even if they were somehow persuaded of her innocence, there is the matter of the population. The masses would never accept it as the truth.”

She could not accept this whole farce as the end, her sister’s end. Luna’s life had barely just begun. There was so much food for her to try, so many games for her to play, and so many books for her to read, should she wish to. But, to let them tear the choice from her for the sake of some old men’s bureaucratic, fanatic nonsense was inconceivable. It was just… just…

“So, this is it?” Her lips trembled. “My sister dies and the world lives on?”

It was just so unfair. She knew the whole sentence was carved on her expression. Anyone could taste the anger in her blooming tears but none would care to try. Before, she had wanted him to witness her anguish. Now, she stared down at her fists. She focused on the nails that had just started to grow back and the flesh that itched furiously.

“As you may know,” Professor Hajjar continued, “though rarely so, there have been cases when one person has taken the fall for another, volunteering to be executed in someone else’s stead. But considering you are old bloods,” He looked at her with some discomfort, “And yours is the blood that sustains the populace, there might be a way to keep the both of you alive while satisfying both the Council’s need for maintaining the status quo and the people’s calls for retribution.”

She grasped the true meaning of his words. It was unfair for Luna to rot without even getting the chance to bloom. But Y/n was… she was older. Luna could still have a family, people who would care for her. All Y/n had to do was decay. When she spoke, it was in resignation.

“I will take her place.”

Minho jumped from his seat. “Wait, hold on, Y/n-

“I will volunteer to be experimented on in her place.” Once again, only the voice in her head mattered. Everything else was just background noise, Minho’s voice included. “They can take my blood too. That way she can be free until the day I die.”

Professor Hajjar approached her, his hand resting on her head. It reminded her of when Chiron would feed her hot soup in winter. Only at night though. The gods of Mount Olympus couldn’t know he would sit next to her and let her fall asleep on his stomach. Y/n resisted the urge to flinch from it; the memory and the touch.

The professor removed his hand and walked them to the door. “Someone will be assigned as her caretaker.”

Y/n was at a loss for what to say. She was a dead woman walking, every step that of a phantom. It was Minho who thanked him, and then they went on their silent way home.

At precisely 10:37 PM, while Minho was teaching her to type out her assignments on his laptop, the sound of the security code being punched into the keypad outside announced the other boys’ arrival. Y/n prayed that the shower and the soothing creams Minho had applied to her face had lifted some of the redness around her eyes. If not, Yeonjun, who was currently stomping toward the living room, would comment on it. Beomgyu would snicker. Hwang would give her those conceited smirks of his. They irked her so badly.

“That forest is the gate to fucking Tartarus, I’m telling you.” The son of Cupid was practically seething as he unzipped the outer layer of the fitted black leather attire. His flaming eyes bore into Y/n’s, and her fingers froze on the keyboard. “How did you manage to survive that shithole?”

She felt someone tug lightly at her hair before sitting down across from her, kicking his feet up on the table. Minho shoved them off.

“The shadows speak to her,” Beomgyu repeated her words from before.

Yeonjun muttered under his breath. “Fucking freak.”

Minho, who had now forgotten about teaching her, cut in before things could escalate.

“Did you find anything?” He asked.

“Nothing useful that’s for sure.” Yeonjun chuckled bitterly as he removed all the celestial bronze daggers strapped to his thighs and slammed them on the table. Y/n flinched. “Leaves and branches and shit and filthy monsters. That whole place should be torched. Fuck! I smell like shit!”

Yeonjun was always a little pissed off. It was like he was born with a permanent distaste for anything unflattering and the mere sight of such a thing⸺ specks of dirt on the floor, dishes that had not been properly washed, or the smallest stain on a shirt⸺ drove him mad to the extent that the air around him would all but swim in heat. She’d seen it happen the day before at the Training Center when Beomgyu had tried his luck and gotten an ass-whooping for it. An angry Yeonjun couldn’t be a good omen.

It was Beomgyu who answered Minho’s question in full.  

“We found the stream and searched it for footprints, hair, and other things we could use to track its energetic blueprint.” He made a zero with his fingers. “Nothing. Whatever she saw was good at covering its tracks.”

“Or maybe it has faded.” Suggested Minho.

“That could be it.”

She expected Minho to continue the dialogue but, instead, he turned to her. “What do you think?”

Their undivided attention only made her more nervous. She would rather chew her lips raw than contribute to the discussion⸺ any discussion⸺ at the moment. It didn’t help that she felt a prickling sort of heat at the back of her head like a hot rod was being rammed into her skull.

“What if it was a portal?” She proposed, reluctant.“What if that thing disappeared through some sort of portal?”

Behind her, Hwang pointed out, “Portal energy is detectable.”

It made Y/n feel so small, knowing that any mistake could cause her to be perceived as a dumb monkey who hadn’t evolved to understand common speech.

“It could have been a different one.” She chose her words carefully and buried her hands under her thighs. “Some kind of nullifier.”

Yeonjun scoffed, leveling her with a look of undiluted repulsion. “Are you an expert on that now?”

“That’s enough.” Minho intervened, forcing her attention back on him. Yeonjun could seethe for as long as he wanted but there was a job to be done first. “What makes you think it was a nullifier?”

The truth would make her sound like a pathetic eavesdropping creep, which hadn’t been her intention at all, but for the truth to come to light Y/n needed to lay all her cards out in the open. Minho was there, which meant none of the others would try to step out of line. Yeonjun didn’t seem to give a shit about Minho’s reprimands though, still looking at her like one would at a pile of dog shit on the sidewalk. But Beomgyu didn’t care to mess with her much, and to Hwang, she was no more than a weak little pest. So, really, could telling the truth be as detrimental as her nerves led her to believe?

“I heard the four of them talk at breakfast. Felix and Lia said there was no DNA, no trace of the perpetrator. I just thought this might be similar. Some kind of nullifier.” She lowered her eyes to the laptop. “Not for the DNA but the energetic trail. I don’t know. It was just a thought.”

Minho patted her on the shoulder. “It’s a possibility.”

“It’s even more plausible when you consider he was waiting to speak with you specifically.”

Hwang’s voice and the way his knees brushed against her back sent chills down her spine. It was like being doused with ice-cold water.

Y/n twisted around and looked up at him. “What does that mean?”

Yeonjun scoffed for the umpteenth time that evening.

“It means that no matter what you do or how hard you try you cannot escape the reality of being involved in this shit.”

She frowned. “I don’t even know him.”

“Doesn’t matter much when he knows you,” Yeonjun enunciated, rising to his feet.

The sight of him towering over her made her want to claw her way out of the penthouse with her barely-grown nails.

“I didn’t do anything.” She tried to keep her voice steady, but every anxious vein in her body bled into it, staining her delivery with guilt for something she hadn’t done. “He was asking Luna if she liked flowers, made grass into one, and then told us to go back.”

Yeonjun squinted. “So your sister could kill more of us?”

She shook her head, covering her ears like she did when the outside world inundated her senses.

“I didn’t know what to do.” Minho tried to touch her but she flinched away. “Luna was so scared and I just wanted to keep her safe.”

“Old bloods are ever so susceptible to suggestions from the Pit,” Hwang stated as Minho went to the kitchen. When he came back it was with a glass of water in his hand and a warning glint in his eyes. “She could easily be a conduit.”

The water felt dry as it passed through her esophagus, leaving behind a sense of dehydration more scratching than before. Their assertion of her 9-year-old sister’s guilt could not be shaken. It compelled her to her feet.

“She didn’t do anything,” She uselessly defended once again, trying to appear more threatening than she could ever hope to be as she glared at Hwang and Yeonjun. It sounded closer to a plea, further emphasized by what she said next, “Why don’t you believe me?”

She’d just spoken, and once again, her words were met with nothing but silence, minutes pelting atop her chest, crushing her ribs. None of them, not even Yeonjun who never missed out on an opportunity to spite her, uttered a word. Thinking back on her question, Y/n realized how obvious the answer was. Silence weighed all the more for it.

Usually, she would find comfort in the expanse of the sky, lit by stars or lightning, but tonight, neither the moon nor the glittery tapestry could cradle her, embrace her into a sense of comfort.

“We could try to trace the energy in the flower.”

Once again, Minho intervened by redirecting the flow of the conversation. Children of Hermes and Mercury were pros at conflict de-escalation just as they endlessly racked their brains to bring into the world. That was another gift from his father to Minho, who sat on the sofa with Y/n lodged between him and Hwang. The latter stared at her without a care in the world that the rest were there. She focused on the feeling of the cool glass against her skin and the conversation taking place.

From the other sofa, Beomgyu asked a valid question. “Didn’t they confiscate it?”

Hope bloomed in her chest, though it still did not manage to alleviate her anxiety. In her chest, her heart kept thundering, threatening to all but wrestle its way out of her ribcage.

“It could be in the same lab they’re keeping Luna in.” She suggested.

Hand on her shoulder, Minho looked at Hwang. “Do we have anyone on the inside?”

Despite wanting to, Y/n held back from looking to her right, fearing that Hwang would only refuse to help upon catching the desperation in her expression. Somehow, she could feel his breaths against her neck, his flesh melting into hers even without touching. Disconcerting. Blood-chilling. Constrictive.

It was a moment before he shifted in his place.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Hwang responded.

Y/n bit back a cry of gratitude and resolved to only look up at Minho with a small smile. It didn’t reach her eyes, somehow her smiles never did. But she hoped he understood.

He patted her on the shoulder and urged her to go to bed. Content that they had worked something out, however futile it might be, Enid could now go to sleep feeling somewhat accomplished. Yet, despite everything said, Yeonjun had to open a new can of worms.

“Why the fuck are we trying so hard?” When Y/n turned to face him, he wasn’t even looking at her. To him, she’d already vanished and all that remained was to cement her guilt in the minds of others. But then he pointed an accusing finger at her. “She probably lied to us about seeing that thing in the forest yet here we are running around like imbeciles, putting our lives at risk to save that of her sister. Why? She’s not our friend. Prisoners locked up for rape have more human rights than her. She’s a nobody.”

“She deserves a fair trial though.”

Y/n had never imagined Beomgyu would speak in her favor. He was too nosy and insensitive in his approach to topics that demanded caution. Yet, as he sat there, glancing back and forth between his friend and her, Y/n wondered if that was merely a mask.

Yeonjun had an answer to that it seemed.

“Is that you or your mother speaking?” He bit out.

Minho, who had been on his way to the kitchen, glass in hand, slammed the glass on the counter. “You’re overstepping.”

Yeonjun’s eyes narrowed. “Everything bad that has happened so far has been because of her despicable kind.”

It was nothing new. From the first day, Yeonjun had made it clear that her presence repulsed him, a sentiment his friends hadn’t been shy about sharing. Minho was the sole reason they hadn’t made it impossible for her to survive, and even he had a job to do. A job that did not involve babying her, comforting her, wiping the snot from her nose or the drool from her chin. She knew that.

She clutched her book tighter.

“You might be right.” The blood roaring through her system made it so she could hardly hear herself speak. But she could still see, and there the four of them were, staring at her in varying degrees of confusion. “Maybe every word that comes out of your mouth is not yours but your parents’. Maybe that’s why you’re cruel to those you don’t want to have sex with.”

Though briefly, she caught the spiteful curl of Yeonjun’s lips.

“Look at you.” He looked her up and down, drawing closer. Each step he took forward meant one step backward for her. “No one would bother being kind to you, sex or not. You’re barely human.”

“So are you, asshole.”

He reached her in such a short time that she couldn’t make out the shape of him. Perhaps he’d been close the whole time. Her heart almost burst out of her chest, and if it weren’t for Minho inserting himself between the two of them and Beomgyu holding Yeonjun back by the torso, having the heavy book knocked out of her hands wouldn’t have marked the end of it.

“Don’t fucking compare yourself to me,” Yeonjun snarled at her, his sclera glowing a sickly red. “Filthy fucking blood pig.”

“I said,” Minho extended his arm behind him protectively, and repeated, “You’re overstepping.”

Slowly loosening his hold, Beomgyu muttered, “Come on, man,”

“Get your hands off of me.” Yeonjun shoved him off completely and the younger demigod raised his hands defensively, “Don’t fucking touch me right now.”

Before stomping up the stairs, he flexed his jaw and shot them a glare. Beomgyu's face was moulded into one of guilt like he was sorry to have kept Yeonjun from inflicting harm upon her. Minho pushed Y/n further behind him until she was almost out of sight. Hwang… she wasn’t exactly certain how to interpret his expression at the moment. There wasn’t anything particularly expressive about his face right then, to begin with. It puzzled her.

Upon hearing the door to Yeonjun’s bedroom slam shut, Minho accompanied her to quarters. He advised her to lock the door and only open it if he should be the one asking to be let in.

“What if I need to get something from the fridge?” Y/n asked.

He made a gesture with his fingers. “I suggest you lock it, yeah?”

After Minho left, she didn’t bother switching on the light. It always felt so jarring to her vision. Besides, she could always use the bedside lamp to read without being forced to endure her reflection on the vanity mirror. She really didn’t wish to see her tears as she read about the Underworld.

She got under the blanket, setting her throbbing foot gently on the bed. What bad luck it had been for the corner to dig on the bridge of her foot. It would bruise and ache for days.

Still, she didn’t wish to see herself sob. In due time, eternity would be at her disposal. What remained of her could weep in the abyss, where nothing could ever see or be seen.

At 1:35 AM, Y/n plucked up the courage to tread out of her room, sticking to the darkest side of the corridor until she was finally in the kitchen. No lights were turned on, so she assumed everyone had already hit the sack for the night. She felt safe to drink without the fear of choking.

“Thirsty again.” A voice drifted from the balcony after she all but inhaled the glass of water.

She turned to the living room and indeed, the door to the balcony was wide open, the curtains billowing inside before deflating with the withdrawal of the wind. They were a sheer sort of blue, almost silver, Y/n realized. Had they changed them while she was up in her room? At so late an hour? Or was this her first time noticing?

She didn’t need to squint in the darkness to make out his silhouette. Of course, he would be awake at this hour, haunting the halls like a bewitching wraith, forever watchful, always on the prowl. He always made her feel cornered in an open space. His presence⸺ the skill, prestige, and beauty⸺ hammered her down like a nail into its rightful place. Y/n could only nod and hope that he deemed the debacle from a few hours ago beneath his consideration; unworthy of his mockery.

Afraid of pissing him off, she didn’t mean to stay. But when he drove holes into her skin, any thought she might have had of scurrying up the stairs was wrenched from her mind. Her feet moved on their own, and the outline of his figure became clearer as he leaned back with his elbows on the railing. Sweat glistened in the moonlight, gluing the dark runaway strands to his skin despite it being in his usual half-up half-down style. She also noticed he was in a similar gear from before, only made of lighter material. Ideal for late-night training.

Her lips had a mind of their own. “Why do you train at night?”

For a few seconds, all he did was look at her, head tilted.

“It’s quiet.” He answered, shrugging.

“But how do you see?” The words escaped her before she could think them through. To make matters worse, Hwang pointed op at the bulbs installed into the balcony’s ceiling. Feeling stupid, Y/n looked down at her feet. “Oh, right. Forgot.”

“You’re never going to see the outside world again,” The abrupt turn of the conversation gave her whiplash. She looked at him, wide-eyed, but he looked the epitome of nonchalance. “You know that, right.”

Y/n leaned forward, elbows on the railing. “Luna will be free to enjoy her life like a normal child.”

“Will she now?” She nodded and felt him draw closer. “Who will care for her if you don’t?”

Hwang was treating her like she was a stupid mongrel. She’d had worse epithets pinned to her name, but for some reason, him thinking of her as this unevolved ape who knew nothing of the world’s cruelty got on her damn nerves. Keeping herself from side-eyeing him was tough.

“I know people won’t jump at the opportunity to shelter and provide for her. It’s expected. Who would want to care for creatures like the two of us?” She tried to be as eloquent in her response as she could. “But she’ll have proper meals, dress for the weather, and be looked after by someone who knows what they’re doing even if they’re being mandated to do it. She will never be cold again.” She looked down at her reflection in the glass of water. “After graduation, she can choose to leave or stay until the day I die. So long as she has a choice, her decision doesn’t matter.”

Her left side itched under Hwang’s gaze.

“You’re so delusional.” He said. “It’s a bit cute.”

Reluctantly, Y/n lifted her eyes to meet his.

“Why do you say that?” She asked in a small voice.

“The bargain ends once you volunteer to take her place. After that, you get locked up in the lab and she’s delivered to a stranger’s doorstep. The guardians could be child beaters, rapists, or even decent people.” He paused only to level her with an unsympathetic look. “But don’t think, not even for a second, that they’ll do anything for her that goes beyond what is demanded from them.”

Her fingers tightened around the glass.

“You tell me how to fix this then.” Y/n retorted.

“Why would I?” He rejoined, shifting to face her with only one elbow to support him against the railing. “I don’t care what happens to the two of you.”

Her lips parted. Not in shock. No… that wasn’t it. She knew everyone wanted her locked away so they wouldn’t have to stare at her. That was repulsion. Yeonjun showed it. Beomgyu supported it. But it was there. Hwang simply didn’t give a single damn. He neither loathed her nor cared for her. To quote his friend, she was a nobody. These past few days she’d forgotten her place.

“Would you care if I told them you were there?”

He stood silent. Good. For once, she wanted to be the one to render him speechless.

“I was, wasn’t I?” He said, taking one step closer.

“They never did find her phone.” Y/n raised her chin, drunk on some illusion of invulnerability. “Who knows? You could have done something to it. What would they think then? What would you-

In a heartbeat, his slender fingers were wrapped around her neck. Wide-eyed, Y/n fought to escape his vicious grip but that only encouraged him to add more pressure on her jugular.

His features were set in a permanent barrenness. “I wasn’t lying when I said I was feeling generous.”

The more she struggled the more he tightened his grip, forcing her flush against the glass panes. She searched the surface for something to use against him but came up empty. There was nothing. There was no way for her to fight but by thrashing and kicking him anywhere she could reach.

“Go on. Tell me more, doll.” He seized her wrists when she tried to scratch at him. Pressing her harder against the glass, he whispered. “Tell me about how they’d believe a single word coming out of your mouth. Come on.” She tried but every time she opened her mouth, no words could climb up her throat. She heard him sigh, pleased. “There it is. I like it better when you squirm and look away like a skittish animal.”

As a last resort. She tried to kick him between his legs but by the time she raised her knee, he’d already seen through her futile attempt.

Her vision blurred as his grip tightened. Her chest burned for air that she couldn’t supply. Everything from her brain to her lungs was slowly shutting down, succumbing to his strength. Though her body pleaded for her surrender, she gasped, eyes bulging and turning pink as he lifted her with little effort. She was forced to stand on her toes, which made it harder to focus on kicking him. Not that he’d ever allow for that to happen.

In the haze of her vision, she searched for his eyes and gasped out, “I- please… can’t-

His face was close. She could feel it even if her senses were in disarray, abandoning their mission in alarm.

“What is it? You can’t breathe?” His thumb dug into the flesh in response to the choking sound that followed. “Call out to him, doll. Call out to Minho. Maybe he’ll come to the aid of his pathetic little pet.”

As if from far away, as though observing rain trickling down a window, she felt the snot and tears slide into her mouth.

“-jin… please.”

Just as unconsciousness reached to claim her, Hwang released her, and she dropped to her knees coughing, choking, and wheezing. She clutched at her throat as if to trap the oxygen inside her lungs. That way, she thought in her alarmed state, it wouldn’t leave.

Y/n was still wheezing when he crouched before her, lifting her chin. “Is there something you want to say to me?”

Paralyzed by terror, she didn’t even flinch from his touch.

“I’m sorry.” She choked out through quivering lips.

He dragged his thumb across her lower lip, her drool clinging to his skin. But it was neither his icy touch nor the nasty curl of his mouth that wrenched the pathetic sobs from her heaving chest. It wasn’t even the wetness running down her legs or the pajamas clinging to her skin.

“Of course you are.” He said, cupping her jaw.

It was the knowledge that she stood at his mercy. Who knew if he would bother with what Minho had asked of him? Not her, that was for certain. Not when she’d gone and foolishly tried to gain the upper hand by blackmailing him. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! So fucking stupid!

As if to add to her humiliation, Hwang yanked her by the back of her t-shirt, practically dragging her to her bedroom, and bid her good night before sauntering toward his.

In the otherwise orderly space, she felt filthy and disassembled; like prey that had been shat out. But that was just the thing. She wasn’t prey. She wasn’t a threat. In a world of things both meaningful and meaningless, she was nothing.

As Y/n gazed emptily at her reflection⸺ the bruises, her swollen, bloodshot eyes, and the mixture of snot and saliva drying on her skin⸺ she traced the truth engraved into it.

[technetiumai]

Oh, goodness! It’s 11:24?!?! Okay, hold up, I have something. Hold up. Hold Up. HOLD UP....

Okay, I can’t find what I wrote this week, it must be in my notes app.

Here’s something else I wrote a while back for Atomic Son, which I haven’t posted yet. At least I don’t think so. I guess I could have deleted it. I wish I wouldn’t do that 😆.

“Yes, but now I’m going to die alone. There’s only one reasonably intelligent boy left in this school, and he---” she puts her hands under her chin and flutters her eyelashes dramatically, “only has eyes for Simon Snow.”

“Well, when we’re both older, after Simon Snow has inevitably broken my heart, and when you have officially resigned yourself to a life of spinsterhood, we can get married.”

“And why would we do that?”

“Companionship and children, just like everyone else.”

“We’re going to have sex?”

“Magic, no. We’ll use a turkey baster or something.” 

“How romantic.”

I’ve been working on valentines, and--- are you ever drawing something and, despite it seeming to look to you like whatever you were intending, for some reason you’re fully convinced that if someone else looks at it they’ll just see like... visual gibberish? Or is my brain just broken? I keep thinking, ‘Surely this doesn’t actually look like anything...’ and having moments where I’m hyperaware that all visual arts are basically just us taking advantage of our own pareidolia, and none of it’s real. But is anything real? 

I’m not feeling great; I’ve been doing better with migraines lately, but today was pretty bad, and after a couple of triptans, I still feel super weird. And now my husband’s watching David Lynch, which is absolutely never helpful.

I can’t remember anyone’s name! And now it’s 11:57!?!?

@fatalfangirl​ (thank you for tagging me!) @cutestkilla, @onepintobean @captain-aralias @raenestee @ivelovedhimthroughworse

I know for sure there are other people I’m able to tag, but I have no brain. I blame David Lynch.

[singularsaurus]

For decades NASA and other space agencies have been sending probes to the planet Mars. One image of the Martian surface, a region called Cydonia, showed a monumental form that resembled a face. It was casually dismissed as pareidolia.

It's easy to dismiss this as pareidolia, until you realize it's right near a monumental skull, and a five sided pyramid, among other interesting forms.

In 1998 the European Space Agency captured a superior image of the area making use of some heat sensing technology to produce an image without shadows. The face appears to have been damaged, probably by an attempt to do away with it. Hiding these types of things has always been very important to somebody.

If you download Google Earth there is a little orange Saturn Icon at the top where you can switch over to Google Mars. If you try to look at this spot called Cydonia (coordinates in above image) you will notice a suspiciously convenient blurry smear over the Skull, and a dumb icon over the face. The pyramid was left alone, probably because it's not as obvious since it is partially buried.

Here is the censored skull closer with the partially buried five sided pyramid.

Looking at this skull below it may first remind you of a human skull. However, notice that the eye sockets are perfectly circular, whereas ours are kind of rounded squares. There is one of their skulls jutting up from the Martian dirt in this image taken by a NASA rover. Their noses are small and they have wide mouths.

On this stone carving below, you can see they must have had enough nose flesh to sport a nose ring. Also note the wide blunt toothed mouth.

Enhanced image of the carved stone head.

The image of the stone carving came from Jet Propulsion Laboratory's own website. I used to have the exact URL but I don't know what I did with it. If you root around you might be able to find some of this stuff yourself. Below is something that might be a helmet, or a damaged skull perhaps.

Below is an object that looks like it could not occur naturally.

Mars has two moons that look like asteroids. They are called Phobos and Deimos (Panic and Fear, Ares's sons) If they were passing asteroids that were captured by Mars's gravity, they would have long elliptical orbits, but instead they have circular ones. The European Space Agency determined in about 2008-2010 that Phobos is 25 to 33 percent hollow. I suspect it is an asteroid that was brought near Mars to be mined.

Phobos

In the 1980s the Soviet Union sent a space probe to Phobos, and it was abruptly disabled, or possibly destroyed by something as it neared Phobos. Russia tried to send a rover to Phobos in the 2010s. It was called, Phobos Grunt, meaning Phobos Ground, but it was disabled by a meddlesome device from some mysterious country and got stuck orbiting Earth until it's fuel supply was exhausted.

Also important to note, is that Mars has extensive subterranean tubes running all over the place. Portions of the tubes are exposed in some areas. Were they made by some tunnel boring machine? I've heard it said they are big enough to drive SUVs through.

Here is an image I put together to show the difference in Human skulls compared to Martian skulls, also with the object I think is a helmet, and the carved stone head.

Why is it so important to someone to keep all these types of things unkown to people? Could it be, because the faction who ruled Mars when it was destroyed are active here on Earth right now? Them being the same faction that has reverence for pentagons and five pointed stars? Maybe, they don't want it known that their activities are already responsible for the total decimation of at least one living world. How many other tomb worlds might be orbiting around other stars because of them?

I suspect the species that the carved stone head depicts still exists in abundance in our galaxy. Mars's destruction as a living world was the result of a massive attack utilizing super weapons deployed from spacecraft, not a natural cataclysm. This occurred a very long time ago (pre-dating Earth's dinosaurs), but that same conflict is ongoing. I speculate time travel may be a factor in the activities of this species, because half a billion years seems too long for any conflict to drag on no matter what technology is being used. All of the Mars and Phobos images I used here are from old NASA and ESA missions that pre-date artificial intelligence generated images.

Sources: "Death on Mars" by John Brandenburg "After the Martian Apocalypse" by Mac Tonnies

Image Sources: NASA European Space Agency

[priestessofspiders]

The Intruder

I know how it sounds. Believe me, I do. When I tell you that there is someone else living inside my home, who only I am able to see, your first conclusion is probably that I'm suffering from hallucinations. That's what I initially believed as well.

I think the first sign of my unwanted guest was a couple weeks ago. I was putting in a load of laundry, only to notice that the back door was slightly ajar. Seeing the darkness outside contrasting with the light of the laundry room filled me with an odd sort of dread. My husband and I lived in a fairly safe neighborhood, so I shouldn't have been too worried about the possibility of someone sneaking in, but it still felt like someone had trodden on my grave nonetheless.

Pulling myself together, I closed the door, locked it, and got back to work with the laundry, trying to put what I thought was simple paranoia out of my mind. As I clicked the lock shut, I swore I heard something like a faint breath right behind me, but when I turned my head there was nothing there. Feeling a bit spooked, I headed back to the living room, gently reminding my husband not to leave the back door unlocked.

I didn't actually see anything for a while, but I frequently felt like I was being observed. I'd be at home alone, watching TV, cleaning, or doing some other mundane task, when I would suddenly feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I'd turn around and there wouldn't be anyone there.

I would sometimes hear faint breathing too, under the bed, from the closet, on the other side of the shower curtains while I was brushing my teeth. Whenever I'd check though, I would be greeted with nothing. Just empty space, though occasionally I could detect a faint, musty odor.

This continued for about week, and I was beginning to get quite jumpy. I started regularly checking the house from top to bottom, every day, just making sure there wasn't any possibility of someone being there. I'd even look in the crawlspace under the house with a flashlight. I never saw anything that even suggested there might have been an intruder. But the tension, the paranoia, it didn't go away.

Then, finally, I saw him. It was late at night, and I was up getting a glass of water. I was about to take a sip, when I saw something reflected in the shiny black surface of the fridge.

It was a pale face, grinning at me from the shadows.

Instantly I wheeled around, dropping my glass in the process, causing it to shatter into a hundred pieces upon the tile floor. I hardly noticed though, because the face was still there. It hadn't just been a trick of the light, or a brief moment of pareidolia, there was actually a man peering at me from the shadows of the dining room.

He was tall, but not unusually so, perhaps slightly shy of 6 feet at the most. His face was stretched into a smug, close-lipped grin, with half-open eyes giving an impression of sleepy contentment. He was nude, and entirely hairless, including on the top of his head.

I screamed in horror and grabbed a cleaver from the knife rack, in case I needed to defend myself. Moments later, I heard my husband come rushing down the hallway, asking what was wrong. As I watched, the naked intruder put a finger to his lips and shook his head.

At this point my husband burst into the room, clutching a baseball bat. "What happened? What's wrong?" he asked, audibly panicked.

Unable to speak, I pointed towards the strange man, hand shaking. My husband looked into the dark, visibly straining his eyes. He moved closer to the intruder, who was still standing there, smiling smugly and staring at me with those half lidded eyes. My husband turned on the light switch, fully illuminating the stranger, but still didn't seem to notice him.

"What's wrong honey,?I don't see anything" my husband asked, standing less than a foot away from the intruder.

I swallowed, trying as hard as I could not to look at the naked man in my dining room, his smile widening ever so slightly. It didn't help, I couldn't stop staring at him. I've never suffered from delusions, hallucinations, anxiety, or any other symptoms of mental illness, but at that moment I thought I was going crazy.

"Oh i-it's nothing dear. I t-thought I saw someone at the window, but", I paused for a moment, staring at the nude man, who was subtly nodding his head, "it was just a trick of the light. I'm sorry for waking you up honey."

My husband set down the baseball bat and moved in for a hug, offering words of comfort as he wrapped his arms around me. I didn't hear any of them though, I was still focused on the intruder. No matter how hard I tried to will him to disappear, he refused to cease existing. As I watched, the man winked at me, and took a seat at the table.

My husband led me back to bed, but even as I followed him, our hands intertwined, I couldn't help but look back at the naked man in my dining room, waving farewell at me slowly. His half-closed eyes reflected the faint light of the moon through the uncovered window with sickening malice.

I didn't sleep at all that night. How could I? At that time, I was convinced something inside of me had snapped, but for the life of me I couldn't think of anything that would have caused it. I'm a stay-at-home spouse, so it wasn't work that could be causing it, and I'd had ample opportunities for social interaction, so clearly I wasn't losing my mind due to isolation. As far as I knew my family never had any especial predilection towards mental illness.

My thoughts raced through my mind like rats in a maze until the sun's rays poured through the bedroom window. I waited until my husband awoke before I felt comfortable leaving bed, I didn't much relish the thought of being the only one awake, in case our unwanted guest was still here.

When my husband finally got up, late in the morning, I accompanied him out to have breakfast. To my horror, the intruder was still there, still sitting at the table. I processed for the first time that he was sitting at my usual spot.

After my husband and I prepared a breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausages, we made our way to the table. The intruder sat there, unmoving, his half-closed eyes fixed on me. His smug smile seemed to dare me to try and sit down on his lap.

I sat on the opposite side of the table as normal, next to my husband. I noticed him raise an eyebrow, but he didn't say anything, so I didn't explain myself. Throughout breakfast my husband tried to make conversation, but I only answered with monosyllabic responses and grunts. It was hard to focus with the naked man staring at me. I finished breakfast quickly, and then got up to go take a shower. I pretended not to notice as the intruder licked my plate clean.

I triple checked that the bathroom door was locked, and then took my time trying my best to relax in the hot water. I knew that I'd regret taking such a long shower when my water bill would come in, but I tried not to focus on that. Instead I just tried to calm myself down. It almost worked, until I heard the dreadful squeaking of skin on glass.

I pulled aside the curtain and screamed. Standing in front of the sink, head turned to look back at me, stood the intruder, smirking. On the mirror, drawn with a finger on the fogged up surface, was a smiley face.

Once again, my husband ran into the room at the sound of my cry, the door seemingly unlocked.

"Are you okay?" he asked, concern on his face. He still didn't seem to notice the nude man.

"I'm fine", I lied, "I j-just slipped, I'm alright. Um, honey, d-did you draw that on the mirror?" I pointed to the smiley face on the glass. I knew sometimes that things drawn in the condensation on mirrors could reappear once exposed to more steam, and I hoped to God that my husband had just idly doodled it.

"What, the smiley face? No, I don't think so. Why? Are you sure you're okay?" he asked, visibly confused. The grin of the intruder who only I could see grew slightly wider.

I mumbled out that I was fine and stepped out of the shower, putting on a bathrobe and trying as hard as I could not to accidentally brush against the stranger. I felt his stare bore into the back of my skull as I left the bathroom to go get dressed.

The next couple days passed fairly similarly. No matter how hard I tried to will the intruder to vanish, he still remained. If I was watching TV with my husband, he would lie curled up under the coffee table, smirking at me. At dinner he would sit down in my regular chair, never breaking eye contact. He even started standing at the foot of my bed at night.

I almost got used to it, that's the worst part. I just began to accept that I had gone crazy, that this hallucinatory nudist was going to follow me around for the rest of my life. Then he started escalating things.

I once woke up earlier than my husband and went out into the kitchen. I paused in front of the refrigerator and gasped in horror and disgust as I saw what was attached to it.

Affixed to the fridge door with a cheap magnet was a sheet of printer paper covered in the most vile obscenities I had ever read. Slurs directed against my husband, crude drawings of swastikas and racist caricatures, allegations that I was cheating on him with his best friend, etc. I glanced over to the dining room and saw my guest grinning, half-closed eyes full of sadistic glee.

I tore the sheet of paper into little pieces and tossed them in the recycling bin, refusing to acknowledge the intruder's presence. The rest of the day passed fairly normally, though every time I looked over at the nude stranger I felt my stomach lurch.

Things escalated quickly after the note on the fridge. I found rusted nails left outside the bedroom door. A condom (opened, but thankfully unused) was left on my husband's desk. One day when I went to go make some oatmeal raisin cookies, I opened up the jar of raisins only to find hundreds of dead flies, their wings meticulously plucked off. Every time, I would look over at the intruder, and he would make eye contact with me, as if daring me to speak out. And every time, I would say nothing and just clean up the mess.

You have to understand, I was convinced that I was just doing these things on my own, as if I was in some sort of trance. I considered putting up security cameras to catch myself in the act, but I was horrified by the possibility that I might see something else.

There was one thing that put doubt in my mind, however, something that made me feel that the intruder might be something real. Our cat, Horace, could see him too.

Whenever the stranger was near him, Horace would hiss and his tail would puff up. On one occasion, he even swiped at him, drawing blood. The intruder leapt backwards, and for the first time I saw his half-closed eyes open fully, his smug grin turning into an open-toothed grimace of rage and pain.

As the cat ran off to hide in the bedroom, my husband laughed and remarked "Silly critter isn't he? I wonder what's gotten him so worked up."

Two days ago came the final blow which both proved the intruder's reality and destroyed my marriage.

I had gone out for a walk, to try and clear my head a bit, while my husband was at work. I decided to go on a fairly long hike through the nearby forest, and as a result, when I got back it was nearly 5:30. When I stepped through my front door the first thing I noticed was the smell, a metallic tang like rust or ozone. It was so alien to my home that it took me a few moments before my brain processed the scent of blood.

Grabbing my walking stick like a club and fearing the worst, I crept towards the smell, which seemed to be emanating from the kitchen. As I rounded the corner, I tried my best not to vomit.

The tile floor, cabinets, and fridge were splattered with blood. Nailed to one of the higher cabinets, viscera dangling out like party streamers, was the mangled, flayed corpse of Horace. Scraps of fur and skin were strewn about the floor in disgusting heaps. In the corner, covered in blood and scratches, sat the cross-legged form of the intruder, grinning with infinite, repulsive smugness. Written on the wall in still-wet cat blood were the words "More than one way" with a smiley face underneath.

I readied myself to attack the stranger, to bash his brains in with my improvised club, but it was at that instant that my husband came home.

I don't want to relive that moment. The things that he said to me. My sobbing insistence that I didn't do this. The disbelief on my husband's face as I finally told him about the intruder. The disgusting, perverse delight in the stranger's smile as I pointed towards him. Finally, I once again gripped the walking stick and moved to kill the intruder, confident that maybe in death he would become visible.

It didn't work. Whenever I moved to attack the intruder, he would simply leap out of the way, causing my strike to hit the floor, or the counter. I only stopped when the walking stick finally broke, and I fell down sobbing on to the bloodstained floor.

My husband left in a hurry, yelling something about divorce. I half-hoped that he would just call 911, that I'd be dragged off to a psychiatric institution and pumped full of drugs until I couldn't feel anything anymore. But no, he just ran off, slamming the door on the way out.

I've been alone in the house with the intruder for over a day now. With my husband gone, he's only gotten worse. He's smashed all the easily breakable objects in the house, torn up all the pillows and blankets, and broke the TV with one of my husband's golf clubs. I tried to stop him at first, but no matter what I did, he always managed to evade my grasp. Eventually I just gave up.

I don't know what the intruder is, or why he has done any of this. I know I didn't kill Horace, I know that I physically couldn't have, given that I was out hiking at the time. I don't understand why only I can see him.

I'm so tired. I haven't slept in over 24 hours. Whenever I try to leave the house, the stranger blocks my way, and I am far too afraid to test the limits of his strength. I can't sleep, I am horrified of what he might do now that there are no witnesses.

I don't know what to do. Please help me.

[contactjust]

Badlands guardian image

Badlands guardian image series#

However you can see the general contours that made up the facial features in the original image. As you can see on the web page, the Cydonia "face" turns out to be merely an unremarkable hill, with plenty of natural random variations on its surface, and no longer looks anything remotely like a face or any other kind of carving. The Badlands Guardian, complete with iPod courtesy of an oil well and service roadĪs the decades wore on, better cameras took better images, finally culminating in the 2001 image taken by the Mars Global Surveyor, with a super high resolution of about six feet per pixel. The Cydonia Mensae region (Hoagland's "ruins of an ancient civilization"). The original photograph of the Cydonia Face on MarsĬurrent high resolution image of the faceģD image incorporating elevation data. Before long, to the dismay of astronomers worldwide, there was a firmly established pop-culture belief that there was a real gigantic human face on Mars, carved in perfect detail by aliens. One of it most important distinguishing features, a nostril, was only one of many black dots that actually represent missing data in the image. But what they hadn't anticipated was that some in the public thought it was actually an artificially carved human face, despite the accompanying explanation that it was just a hill that happened to have this funny resemblance to a face when the light was at a certain angle. It was a clear rendering of a human face! NASA engineers loved it they passed it around, put it out for publication, and had all sorts of fun with it. Among a number of similar hillocks and mesas in a region of Mars called Cydonia Mensae, one feature stood out. It was 1976, and Viking I was sending its latest images.

Badlands guardian image series#

There, in yet another series of photographs from Mars, is a distinct human face. But then, as it finishes printing the second page, your eye catches that long sheet of perforated printer paper folding into a pile on the floor, and you see something unbelievable. You've heard this all before and seen a million badly printed images. You're startled, but annoyed and as it starts hammering out its latest data, you try to go back to sleep. You start to drowse off in your chair, when suddenly the teletype jumps to life with a loud mechanical bang. The coffee's cold and, outside, the rain drums steadily against the window. Imagine yourself in a NASA control room, late at night. of-alberta.html# The post BADLANDS GUARDIAN, ALBERTA CANADA appeared first on Mysterious Topics. The image that Lynn Hickox found can be viewed at Google Earth by entering the title into the search function. Some have speculated that the Badlands Guardian image might have been sculpted by the Blackfoot, but it also might have been a naturally formed image. Many of us have looked at cloud formations and have "seen" animals, human faces, and other recognizable images. Skeptics claim that pareidolia is the explanation for the supposed faces found on Earth as well as the perceived image of the famous "Face on Mars". Wikipedia states that pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a stimulus (an image or a sound) wherein the mind perceives a familiar pattern of something where none actually exists. Her name is Lynn Hickox, but she has been given the title of "Super Granny". That technique is how the image of a human head wearing what appears to be a headdress was detected by a woman from a Canadian town. Many users have created a hobby for themselves that involves scanning the images of Google Earth to search for what might appear to be significant formations. Google Earth is the tool that has allowed users to view Earth in a way not possible until the recent past. The name was given to what appears to be an image of a human head that is visible from above. The Badlands Guardian is located in southeast Alberta, Canada near Medicine Hat.

[divinegrey]

THE VANISHER SERIES PLAYLIST

the sum of all my songs that i've put on my playlist for the vanisher series, organized in no relevant order other than alphabetical, followed by the lyric that made me associate it with the vanisher series (minus one that doesn't have any lyrics). enjoy.

AFTER THE STORM // mumford & sons ~love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears

AS THE WORLD CAVES IN // matt maltese ~ oh, girl, it’s you that i lie with, as the atom bomb locks in

CONTROL (LIVE FROM WEBSTER HALL) // halsey ~i’m meaner than my demons, i’m bigger than these bones

CONTROL // zoe wees ~i don’t wanna lose control, nothing i can do anymore

DEMONS // hayley kiyoko ~ please forgive me i’ve got demons in my head, tryna eat me tryna feed me lies until i’m dead

DEVIL IN ME // halsey ~i don’t wanna wake it up, the devil in me

ENEMY // imagine dragons ft. jid ~tell you you’re the greatest, but once you turn they hate us

HAUNTING // halsey ~i’m begging you to keep on haunting me

JONESTOWN (INTERLUDE) // post malone ~it happens every time, it sounds like suicide

LIKE REAL PEOPLE DO // hozier ~honey just put your sweet lips on my lips, we should just kiss like real people do

OCEAN EYES // billie eilish ~burning cities and napalm skies, fifteen flares inside those ocean eyes

PARADISE // coldplay ~so she ran away in her sleep, dreamed of paradise

PAREIDOLIA // tsuki & first person ~sometimes i see you in the streets, or at least i think i do

RUN (BONUS TRACK) // hozier ~beneath her sky, her punishing cold, to slowly learn of her ancient misery

SUN GOES DOWN // lil nas x ~it’s hard for you when you’re fighting, and nobody knows it when you’re silent

TALES OF DOMINICA // lil nas x ~hope my little bit of hope don’t fade away

UNSTEADY // x ambassadors ~but if you love me, don’t let go

WE'RE GOING TO GET THIS FIGURED OUT // tsuki

WORK SONG // hozier ~no grave can hold my body down, i’ll crawl home to her

[izakayawadoko]

The Pi Spiral

Happy Pi Day.

This is the Pi Spiral:

(Picture: A representation of Pi, 816 of its decimals wrapped around itself on a hexagonal grid.)

I'd like to explain what it is, in length. I feel like I need to, since this thing's been haunting me for literal years. I hope that this post is an exorcism.

I will write not only of Pi, quantum mechanics and the Simulation Argument, but also of obsession and desperation. I will lay out an elaborate construct with an outlandish premise, I will concede its bewildering nature and yet, still, ask for your attention and honest consideration, as they are essential if I'm going to conquer this opponent I've created. I ask you to read on...

(TW: There will be mentions of mental health issues.)

I came up with the Pi Spiral in 2017, though my fascination with similar pseudo-scientific concepts had began years earlier.

I'm not okay in the head, never have been. The slew of abbreviations I'm afflicted with is extensive, but they're the kind that people tend to easily dismiss, if it doesn't affect ones productivity. They had started to affect mine and I lost my value to society. It seemed, as a worthless human being, that I was a ghost, an apparition, something that seemed to exist only to haunt people. I tried to live with it, with the loneliness of being unwanted. Even when I had loved ones around me, the sickness of this age had so molded me that it didn't matter. If I weren't exceptional, truly, profoundly, historically exceptional, it would be a crime for me to wish eye-contact, let alone a smile, from another person ever again.

So I just had to find something exceptional. I obsessed countless hours on the nature of black holes and dark matter. I have digital and actual folders full of papers and scribbles, ideas that only made sense in the late hours of night. My actual scientific education is a bunch of middling grades during the worst time of my life. That didn't stop me. After all, this was all just about a choice. If I chose to apply myself, I could achieve anything. Stopping or taking a break was a choice to die alone, to be a worthless sack of shit. This was what I was taught and on that, I had been a good student. In my desperation, I finally convinced myself that I'd found something.

The Pi Spiral is a mental construct, built on a belief that the decimals of Pi contain a pattern or a message, intentionally put there to be found. This idea came from Carl Sagan's book Contact, in which the aliens, presumably the ones who had created the universe, had hidden a perfect circle in the digits of pi. This idea was so attractive to me that I started to look for a similar, hidden message in Pi.

I learned of a concept called Ulams Spiral, where prime numbers are coiled around a center. I learned of the Feynman point, a set of six nines (999999), starting at the 762nd decimal point of Pi, which is notable because a set like that "shouldn't" appear in Pi so "early" (a chance of 0.0686%), if we consider it like we would consider a string of random numbers in succession. Before the Feynman point, there's also a set of three ones (111), a set of three fives (555) and a set of three zeroes (000). I fixated on these, coiled the decimals of Pi around itself on a hexagonal grid and started to look for patterns.

I'm going to post the picture of the spiral again, along with other pictures to help explain it. For a moment, I'm going to go into excruciating detail on what the details are that, in my mind, made this a discovery worthy of attention, instead of a probable case of number pareidolia from a desperate mind.

I hope you will forgive me this, since, ultimately this is the exorcism I'm here to do. This mental construct still holds power over me and it is telling me that it is important, that if I just present it to the world, as clearly and completely as I can, someone who matters will notice it and understand its meaning.

(Picture: A representation of Pi, 816 of its decimals wrapped around itself on a hexagonal grid.)

(Picture: A representation of the Pi, tilted on its axis, 1386 of its decimals wrapped around itself on a hexagonal grid. The actual decimals of Pi in this picture, excepting the highlighted sets, have been replaced with running numbers.)

(Picture: A closeup of the legend that clarifies the ring numbers, half rings and hex counts.)

The premise is that when Pi is presented in this manner, a pattern of coincidences emerge and make it statistically impossible that they're only coincidences. When we count the rings "highlighted" by the previously mentioned sets, their distance from the center and amount of hexes they hold, we notice that numbers 1, 5, 0 and 9 shown by the sets correlate with the data (distance from the center and amount of hexes), which should be almost impossible considering the odds of random numbers "just" forming sets on a string of digits.

These are some of the points of interest:

The ring highlighted by Feynman Point (a set of six 9's) contains 96 hexes.

The rings highlighted by the sets represent two “boxes”, the "inner box" (on the 7th and 8th rings) marked by the 111 and 555 sets and the "outer box" (on the 14th and the 16th rings), marked by the 000 set and the Feynman point set.

The ring enveloped by the "outer box" has 90 hexes and is the 15th ring from the center, which is identical to the combined data of the "inner box" (90 hexes, ring number of 15).

Doubling the data from the "inner box" produces identical data with the "outer box" and halving the data from the "outer box" produces identical data with the "inner box": in other words, the "outer box" is twice the "size" of the "inner box" and the "inner box" is half the "size" of the "outer box".

The sets of 000 and 111 align perfectly with the axis formed by the center (3 or the 0th running number) and the first decimal – that is to say, they "landed" in a very precise place in correlation to each other and the grid.

All the hexes of every ring highlighted by both "boxes" and the 15th ring total 360, all hexes before the “999999” ring total 720: the numbers for one and two full circles seem oddly specific considering this is borne of Pi.

A line drawn between the sets, from the lowest to highest (000-111-555-999999), follows the same clockwise direction as the spiral of the Pi does.

This is most of the "raw data" that makes up the Pi Spiral, the "excruciating detail" I warned you about. It was the driest bulk of the content I was determined to expunge. It is difficult to me to represent in writing, why the pattern I'm seeing is, to me, so profound, striking and anomalous, that it warranted this obsession I have with it. The feeling is, as already mentioned, probably rooted in my issues.

I'm still determined to share the wildest, most outlandish idea of my entire construct: if we accept that this is message, the what is the message?

Albert Einstein's birthday was on Pi Day, which already is a coincidence. His initials are A and E, the 1st and the 5th letter of the alphabet. One of his Annus Mirabilis papers, published 9th of June (the 6th month), 1905 detailed the concept of energy consisting of discrete packets called quanta, which were important to figuring out wave-particle duality and the concept of quantum mechanics. This was a big influence on the entire Pi Spiral: the concepts of hexes and the rings consisting of them is similar to the idea of light as particles and waves.

To me, it's not just coincidence that these are the same numbers so visibly highlighted by the sets detailed earlier. I think it's something far more bewildering.

I believe that we live in a simulation.

I believe that the creators of this simulation put the initials of Albert Einstein and the date of his famous paper in the center of the Pi and highlighted it with astronomical "coincidences" so we'd see it. I believe they did it so we'd become aware of our digital existence.

Nick Bostroms Simulation Argument states, roughly, that either no intelligence ever can or will simulate the universe or that it has already happened. I think it has already happened.

In the future, it will be more efficient to create intelligent life in some digital form rather than biological. More intelligent beings is always better for more “processing power” for life and the pursuit of happiness. But you can't really just come up with human beings, they are grown from hardship and perseverance. Even if the end destination for every thinking being would be a digital utopia, we need to be grown in an simulation of life before a technological singularity. We need to be put through the hell of living, or else we just won't be human. However necessary, it's also cruel.

So they left a message for us to find.

They put it in Pi, so anyone could see and verify it.

It's in Pi, because Pi has been around longer than any of us, so none of us can be said to have forged it.

The message can only be understood after Albert Einstein has published his papers, so we'd know that the creators knew how our history has gone or will go up to a certain point.

The message is not overly complicated, so you don't need to be an expert to see it, but it does require that you are able to look really, really outside the box.

Most importantly, the message gives us hope, not certainty. A definite, booming voice from the sky would crush some of us under the perceived oppression of the gamekeepers of our digital sanctuary. The message needed to be ambiguous enough that it would only be hope for the hopeless. A lighthouse guiding towards science, purposefully built from the mortar of magical thinking, to which I was so drawn to. I used it for many years, to survive a deep depression which almost cost me my life. Even when it was a victory over a battle and not the entire war, it was still a victory I desperately needed.

I admit that despite my beliefs, I'm not certain if the Pi Spiral is real, in the sense that it proves we all have a digital afterlife to look forward to. This might be a delusion.

Be that as it may, the nights on which I came up with this elaborate construct were devoid of the anxiety and darkness I normally felt. This message of love and compassion across space-time, capable of reaching even a worthless person like me, was too attractive to turn away from during my time of need. Not only that, but the sheer magnitude of the work I did made me feel like I was worth something, like being alive mattered. This is why it still feels important, even after it came to haunt me so much that I was forced to undertake this writing project just to leave it behind.

Thank you for reading.

I've succeeded in what I set out to achieve: I've released the Pi Spiral in to the wild. Even though it will always be with me in some way, the burden of carrying it is now, with these words I've written, lighter.

(Sources: Wikipedia)

[five-rivers]

Questions (Not Answered)

@amabsis  MERRY CHRISTMAS FEATURING CRYTIC DANNY AND HIS SPACE FRECKLES (and one other prompt you sent me, but that one’s a mystery).

.

.

.

Bare feet on ice. Breathe, he reminded himself.  He was human, for now, and he wasn’t supposed to be here.

Ice.  Thin ice.  

He was human, for now, but he didn’t have the weight of it.

In slow motion, he saw the much, much heavier man—Boy, really, he hadn’t graduated that long ago—step out on the ice, brow furrowed. A kind of rage lit him up, a paper lantern that burns itself, like the last time Danny had seen him, a frustration born of not being believed and—

The ice gave way.  

It took him a moment to remember to fall.  

.

Beeping.  White. It took him a moment to remember and remember he had been human.  At least then.  At least now. Something like a fever danced over his skin.  Pinpricks. A heated blanket.  Whiteness he has come to associate with a threat.  

He—

This is a hospital.  

He breathes.  He remembers. He wasn’t supposed to be there, but even less is he supposed to be here.  

There will be questions.  

It isn’t his fault, he reassures himself.  No way he could have been anywhere else, done anything else, except by the actions of others.  Not with safety.  Not with grace.  Not with morals.  

He can smell the other person in the room.  Their sweat.  The fabric softener their suit had been laundered in.  

“You should be dead,” said the man.  Accused the man.  

“Well,” croaked Danny, “clearly not.”

“We didn’t pull you out until after Agent W.”

Couldn’t they use the guy’s real name?  Agent W.  Too many syllables.  Too long to say in the heat of battle, or to keep him from running out and nearly drowning in a half-frozen lake.  

“You’re not dead until you’re warm and dead,” said Danny. “Heard it in a documentary.  Mom and Dad say it’s why you don’t see too many ghosts who died that way.  That and the hallucinations.”

His parents don’t think happy people leave ghosts.  They’re wrong.  In that and many other things.  

He does not look at the man.  The line on the heart monitor goes up and down, dead steady. He did not think of the ghosts he left behind him.  Of the battle and journey that left him on the ice, surrounded by white.

“I think we both know that isn’t true,” said the man with an edge of a growl.  His shadow fell on the edge of the bed.  “We’ve had our specialists look into you, you know.  With your parents’ blessing.”

Blessing.  What a strange way to say permission.  Danny has received blessings.  True blessings.  One is not the same as the other.  He remembers them, towering, like storm clouds, like mountains, like the forest, like the moon, the sun, the stars.  He remembers the lights overhead, circling, and himself, looking up, beneath it all.  He remembers the well, the fountain, the door, the path.

He remembers.  

And he has none of that right now.  No lightning but what he was born with.  No ice but what the doctors chased away, if there were doctors, and not simply more men like the one at his bedside.  No knife or poison but the words on his tongue.  No shield but his disregard.

Human.  

Yes.  

“We even ran you through some of our pattern recognition programs.  Do you know what we found?”

“Enlighten me,” said Danny, dryly.  His voice cracked again, painfully.  

His effort was rewarded with a finger shoved harshly against his cheek.  He winced at the sharpness of the nail and looked directly at the man for the first time since he woke up.  He was reflected twice in the man’s sunglasses, and a third time on the warped silver casing of his overlarge earpiece.  

“Your freckles,” said the man.

“What, did your program decide I had skin cancer or something? Forgive me if I decide I want a second opinion.”

“Constellations,” hissed the man.  “You have constellations in your freckles.  The same as the ghost boy.”

Danny endeavored to raise his eyebrows as far as they could go. “I’m pretty sure that whatever Phantom has on his face aren’t freckles.  Freckles don’t glow.”

“Don’t play games with me,” said the man.  “We aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed.  We aren’t the only ones who’ve put two and two together.”

“To me, it sounds like all you’ve done is give a computer pareidolia, but whatever floats your boat.”

“What is your connection to Phantom?”

“You’ve been listening to Wes,” said Danny.  If his voice wasn’t wrecked, his words would have been dripping with disdain thick enough to drown the man.  Twice.

“Agent W is not the only one to make note of your behavior,” said the man.  “Paulina Sanchez, for example.”

“Paulina,” repeated Danny.  “You mean the girl who has used every available opportunity to tear me down and mock me since I asked her out in freshman year?  You think she wouldn’t lie to your clown squad?”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what everyone calls you,” said Danny.  “Also, you shouldn’t be interrogating a minor without their guardian present.”

“How convenient, that you know that.  Reading up on the legal system?”

“My sister had a Law and Order phase.  Speaking of, I want a lawyer.”

“You aren’t under arrest,” clearly disgusted.

“Great.  So, can you tell the doctor I’m awake?  Thanks.”

“We aren’t done here.”

“I am,” said Danny.  He closed his eyes.  “If you don’t tell the doctor I’m awake, I might as well go back to sleep.”  He faked a yawn.  Then yawned for real because yawns were like that.

Then the GIW representative shook him by the shoulders.

He shouldn’t have done that.  For a number of reasons.  Not the least of which being that if Danny was connected to ghostly happenings, he could most likely kill the man with his bare hands.  

This is not what occurred.  

Monitors need leads, need sensors.  Disconnected, they scream.  Much like anything else.

In a hospital, such screaming attracts doctors.  

How nice to know that they were in a hospital.  

.

Snow underfoot.  Booted foot, incidentally.  His parents had brought his boots when they came to pick him up, along with other winter clothes.  The snow crunched and squeaked, declining to melt when he stepped on it.  Which.  Rude.  

The trip to the car was silent and sulky.  Or possibly accusatory.  Or morose.  The nuances of the emotions escaped him.  

“Danny,” said his mother.  “Why were you out on the lake last night?”

Danny had been dreading this.  Anticipating it as one would the end of a fall.  Except he hadn’t hit the ground yet, only the branch of a tree that had the misfortune to get in the way.  

He didn’t have a good answer.  

“There was something I had to do,” said Danny.  Which was both true and vague.  

“In your pajamas?”

Danny winced.  That hadn’t been his fault.  

“We don’t know why you keep sneaking out,” said his father. “But it has to stop.  You can’t do this anymore, Danny-boy.  Especially not if it’s going to end up with you in the hospital.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” protested Danny.  “It isn’t like I lured Wes out.  He went out all by himself!”

“Danny,” said his mother.  “You almost died.  And now the GIW is telling us that your freckles are in the same pattern as Phantom’s ecto-luminescence!”  She visibly worried at her lower lip.  “What happened?”

“And what did you go out for?”  added his father.  

Danny shrugged.  

“Were you trying to help Phantom?”

“No,” said Danny.  

“We know how you and Jazz feel about him, but, Danny, this is dangerous.  That ghost is dangerous.”

Danny looked away.  

“You’re grounded,” said his mother.  

Danny whipped around to face her again.  “What!”

“What else can we do?” asked his mother.  “What else do you expect us to do?  You won’t tell us anything!”

“It was just—” spluttered Danny.  He pressed his lips together, considering.  “I did not go out to meet Phantom,” he said.  Again, it was true.  “I went out because one of my classmates said they were being haunted, and I wanted to help.”  Also true.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked his father.  “It’s our job to deal with ghosts.”

“Yes,” said his mother.  “In fact, I thought you wanted nothing to do with ghosts.”

“I don’t know,” said Danny.  “Sometimes—” He winced, knowing what he was about to say would hurt. “You aren’t very good at catching ghosts.  And the part I want to have nothing to do with is the one where you cut ghosts up into pieces.”  He paused. “And I don’t know what happened after I got there.”  He did not specify where there was.  “I think the GIW had some kind of weapon?  I didn’t expect them there.  Anyway, there was a bright light, and the next thing I know, I’m out on the water.”

Alright.  He was leaving a bunch out, but the rest was still true.

“You’re still grounded.”

.

He felt heavy.  Whatever had kept him from making footprints on the ice had left him entirely. Or reversed itself.  Either way, stairs, such as the ones he had to climb to reach his room, felt like an imposition.  Nonetheless, he persevered.  

Right up until he collapsed on his bed, overcome with the unfairness of it all.  

“Hey,” whispered the monster that had taken up residence underneath his bed.  “Can I come out, now?”

“You’re clear,” mumbled Danny.

The monster, Phantom, phased up through the bed to lie on it next to Danny.  

“Where did they even get the Ghost Catcher?” he asked, aggrieved.  

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out!” replied Danny. “It doesn’t make any sense, and I can’t very well ask Mom and Dad about it.”

“Ugh.  We’re grounded, aren’t we?”

“I am.  You aren’t.” Danny pulled a face he hoped his other half would recognize from the outside.  “Be careful, though.  Your escape route is gone.”

“I will.  You need to find out how to get us back together.”

“I will,” said Danny.  “By the way, just after it happened, I think I still had access to some ghost powers.  I think I’m still a little, you know.  Not quite right.  It might be the other way around for you.”

“I’ll try and keep an eye on that,” said Phantom.  “It might be important.”

“Yeah,” agreed Danny.  “You should go, for now.  I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad are going to be checking on me all night, and if they see you…”

“Yeah.  I get it.”

“Sorry.”

Phantom bumped his head lightly against Danny’s.  “Nothing to be sorry about.  We both know what they’re like.  I’m going to patrol a bit, then I’ll probably go over to Sam or Tucker’s. In case you need me.”

“Sounds good,” said Danny.  “I’ll just… stay here.  Try to make the Ghost Catcher from scratch.”

“We have homework, too, while you’re at it,” said Phantom, halfway through the wall.  

Danny groaned and rolled over.  He would have to be careful about getting into the lab while he was grounded, and his parents were on high alert.  Perhaps he could convince his sister to cause a distraction?

[elsanna-shenanigans]

April Contest Submission #8: River Rockman

Words: ca. 2,000 Setting: canon Lemon: no CW: none

River Rockman The sound of a river stream echoed through the trees and the golden leaves. Autumn meant it was cold, but not cold enough to freeze the shallow stream of clean running water. Maybe at different times of the year that whole area could be a river, Anna would never know. She was too young to even know for sure where this memory was. She knows her age and has a vague idea it couldn’t be in their kingdom because it was the only time the whole family exited Arendelle. Nowadays Anna would guess her father was on a diplomatic trip, but with all the other details fuzzy she can’t find out. She only knows how old she was, because… A platinum white braid swayed behind a young girl as she held the hem of her skirt to avoid getting it wet. Black polished shoes hopped on stones, crossing the water.

Yes, Anna couldn’t be older than five if Elsa was there. Elsa started tossing stones to try and make them skip on the water like they sometimes would on the fjord. The water was too shallow for that, but neither girl knew that back then. They spoke something about needing to find a perfect stone and that would make it work. Anna was more than eager to join, to help, to participate and follow her bright sister’s ideas. Elsa seemed so big and wise. Three years older feels like a decade when you’re five. The little red haired princess searched with fervor… for half a minute. She ended up distracted by the movement of minuscule fishes –were they even fishes?– when she heard Elsa squeak. It wasn’t a bad squeak, it was a good squeak. Her tiny legs barely had enough coordination to keep her from falling into the waster as she rushed to Elsa’s side. What did her sister see? She wanted to know right that second. She didn’t want to be left out. “Anna, look!” Anna remembers when Elsa opened her palms and the gasp that escaped her own lips. “It’s a snowman!” Saying it looked like a statue would be a stretch, but for a five and a seven year old the pareidolia bordered perfection. All the main elements were there; three connected spheres –not quite– of diminishing sizes and some bumps and crevices that made a decent impersonation of a snowman face and nose. All it missed was the arms. The girls squealed with delight. Finding a naturally made snowman before winter felt like finding a treasure. Nowadays, knowing that gemstones and precious metals can be found in rivers, Anna would compare their joy with the one of a lucky miner. Anna is sure what she remembers is not exactly what happened, for a long time she wished she didn’t, so perhaps she simply doesn’t. Her own feelings got muddled then as she saw the precious find in Elsa’s hands. Her sister held it with the same poise she would anything else, her slender fingers delicately scanning the stone surface, still discovering its secrets. Elsa’s fascination made Anna feel odd. During her childhood Anna lacked the tools to understand the context of the memory; her memory had been robbed and never returned, but now thanks to her new knowledge, a knowledge she had back then, it made all sense. Elsa had found in nature what she herself could create. It must have felt like finding a piece of yourself, carved and left for you to find by fate. “We should give him a name,” Elsa said almost to the air instead of at Anna. Good and bad emotions warred inside the little princess. She wanted the prize for herself, but it was Elsa’s discovery, so it was hers. Anna wished she found it first so she could have been the one to show it to Elsa and cause that face of wonder, that calm contentment. She wanted to be the reason Elsa was happy. Her chubby hands shook as all her preferred scenarios crossed her mind. She just had to choose what mattered the most. Anna was taken by surprise in her focus when Elsa held her hands and pushed the stone into her distracted palms. “Here.” Anna blinked, astonished. Was Elsa giving the treasure to her? What would make Elsa do that? She wanted to accept it, but what would she do with it? Everything seemed ruined now because she couldn’t simply give it back after taking it. Her possessive feelings clashed with her desire to see Elsa happy with a thoughtful gift from her younger sister. “No!” Anna tried to push the snowman back into Elsa’s hands. Elsa was confused, and while back then it didn’t make sense, now it is crystal clear. Elsa saw Anna’s frustration and figured it was because her sibling wanted it for herself, which was partially true. Anna’s refusal probably looked like stubbornness, reluctance or even petty jealousy. Anna wished that at five years old she had been wise enough to know that nobody was to blame for what would happen next. The sisters firmly pushed the proffered snowman back and forth between themselves, both reluctant to keep it and be the cause of the other’s unhappiness. “No, it’s yours! You found it!” “It’s a gift! You want it. It’s yours!” Thanks to their most selfless selfish argument –Anna is sure it was her fault because Elsa was too coordinated to be blamed– the precious snowman slipped from their grasp and fell into the water with a terrible cracking noise. Elsa covered her gasp with her hand and Anna let out a mute shriek. The younger princess quickly retrieved the snowman from the water, as if she was fast enough she could undo the damage. Tears welled in two sets of eyes as they each saw the new fissure in the stone. The damage hadn’t been strong enough to break the snowman completely, but the face was now scarred by a diagonal gash that crossed the whole body vertically. Their treasure hadn’t lasted five minutes before Anna had destroyed it due to her petulance. It wasn’t truly broken, but she ruined it all the same. She marred it with a scar not unlike the one she would someday have herself. Anna doesn’t remember what happened next. Did they argue? Did Elsa cry? Did she cry? Maybe they both cried? She does remember getting back into the carriage and how Elsa silently held the wounded snowman all the way home. - “Hi.” In the present Anna leans on the wall in the study, watching Elsa get lost in the details of their once precious treasure as she cradled it in her hand. “Hi. I was just searching for a letter opener…” Elsa trailed off. She doesn’t move her gaze from the little snowman. Anna smiles as she watches Elsa. The snowman doesn’t look like what it was when they found it (or broke it). The entire body is now covered in an uneven coat of white paint and it now has a red scarf around its neck with delicate branches glued to its sides, mimicking arms. Elsa’s slender fingers explore it delicately like they did so many years ago and Anna knows Elsa is lost in her own memories now. “Good memories?” “I tried hard to fix it,” Elsa says, putting it back inside the drawer where she found it. “I didn’t know you kept it. It wasn’t in the box along with the other Olafs.” “Well…” Anna approaches Elsa, taking it out from the drawer again. “This is the first Olaf isn’t it.” Anna smiles as she caresses it. It feels much smaller now in her hands. The paint is dirty or cracked at some places, revealing the stone beneath. “So you noticed,” Elsa mentions quietly. “It had the same shape! I remember back when you first introduced Olaf to me. You made it move with your arms and said in a pathetic gruff voice that he liked warm hugs.” “And you loved him.” “And I loved him.” Both sisters chuckle and a comfortable silence falls between them. “I thought you didn’t want to play with me anymore because I broke it,” Anna starts then pauses. “At least I did until it showed up one day in the middle of the clean laundry.” “Oh, Anna.” Elsa takes Anna’s free hand in hers and squeezes it. “I didn’t know… I thought fixing it for you would make you happier, but…” Elsa grimaces. “Looking at it now I did a really bad job fixing it.” Anna can’t help but laugh. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s fine work for a seven year old.” “I could have done a better job,” Elsa insists looking at it. “I could have made him a little top hat. And not have borrowed the scarf from Sir Jorgenbjorgen. And I could have asked to buy real paint instead of…” Elsa trails off. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that last part,” Anna tries to say evenly. “It’s nothing.” Anna can feel the unspoken words trapped in Elsa’s head from the way her sister looks to the side. Elsa tries hard to mute her body language, being the Queen. But when they’re in private or when Elsa is comfortable… She just slips and Anna loves pushing her sister’s reactions. “Ohhhh.” Anna purrs like a happy cat. “Is that a secret I smell.” She nudges Elsa.Elsa winces. “Don’t make me say it out loud.” Anna nudges her, knowing her sister is not really distressed. “Come on, big sis. Confess.” She knows Elsa will spill it out. They always share embarrassing childhood tales. Elsa makes an indignant noise. “I could not haven stolen the paints from the royal painter. He was doing that portrait of Father and… I just didn’t want to admit what I truly wanted the paint for and I didn’t want to lie.” Anna can’t help but chuckle at Elsa’s expense. “Are you telling me Prim and Proper Elsa committed a crime to avoid committing a crime? I. Am. Shocked.” Anna feigned her best appalled expression. Elsa swatted Anna’s arm, who kept laughing to herself. “I don’t know why I thought it looked good. You can even see the crack.” “About that…” Anna stopped laughing and fidgeted with the figure in her hands. “I kind of broke it again.” She was barely audible. “Hmmm, what was that? I didn’t quite hear you,” Elsa grins. “Fine!” Anna is as red as a tomato now. “I broke it again as soon as I got it back! But it wasn’t bad, look.” Elsa watches as Anna removes scarf from around the snowman with care and places it back inside the drawer… only to unceremoniously split their treasure in half. Elsa’s jaw drops open and her brows knit together in worry as she tries to make sense of what’s happening. Anna hands her one half and she understands after careful examination. Inside both halves of the snowman were covered in crystals as blue as a clear sky and between those and the outer shell of rock was a layer of smaller white crystals. The overall effect reminded Elsa of- “It reminded me of you,” Anna commented, looking at her own half. “I couldn’t remember why- I didn’t know why snow and ice crystals reminded me of you… But looking at it made me really happy. I was less lonely.” Elsa didn’t know what to say. Her mouth ran dry. “Is it celestite?” she tries instead, feeling the spiky crystals, rough to the touch. “Yes! Who knew our snowman was a geode all that time right? It is funny how-” “How some things only are revealed after they break.” “Yeah…” Their eyes connected and they silently gazed at each other for a long time. It was a comfortable silence filled with words unsaid. That is, until… “Oh my. Was that me?” Anna blushes and removes her hand from Elsa’s palm to cradle her stomach, and hopefully quell it from making another embarrassing noise. Elsa chuckles and takes Anna’s hand again. “Let’s get you something to eat before we uncover the monster that lies beneath.” “Meanie.” They place the two halves together again on top of Anna’s desk as they leave for dinner. A perfect fit with no missing parts along the crack. Aside from a scar, the halves fit like they were never broken.

[trashahime]

OMG I love your tumblr. I spent the last hour reading the whole thing. How do you find all these clues? I never see any. And when I read your post about Bixia, I remembered you said Sunrise would put the mother's face in the clouds. I bet they will!

Thank you!

I looked back and I did say that as joke. LOL, I have the feeling I am going to develop a severe case of pareidolia. From the way they been hiding clues, I wouldn't put it past them.

As to how I find the clues, Sunrise said in a interview that there were no pointless portrayals and every detail matters. So I watched the show with that in mind. Intially, I went down a lot of roads that lead nowhere but not all of them. And I began to notice a pattern in those clues that panned out. It also really helped that I noticed a connection to Buddhism early on and read up on it. So I was able to notice the clues involving it.

Sunrise seems to be employing a couple of tricks when presenting a clue:

They have characters repeat things. Or put a little too much emphasis on a statement or conversation that doesn't need it.

They make a really obvious reference while simultaneously making a subtle more important reference that is related. Like the hooligans Towa fights in the modern day were obviously characters from another one of RT's works. The location of that fight was also from a different RT work, Firetripper. Another example is making it obvious Takechiyo is a Zashiki-warashi because Riku is one too but they are being sly about.

Characters will make odd, random seeming references in the middle of a conversation. Like Moroha mentioning Monkey commanders and Konton asking the girls to dance.

They repeat imagery. Every episode with Jyūbei shows us a wide shot of his corpse shop because I think there will be a flood and the rising water will be most obvious there.

They get really fancy with the animation or it's degraded a little bit.

I can not stress enough that the website profile pictures are a fount of hidden clues. Most of them have some funkiness going on.

The preview pics and ones used in the episode summaries are more significant than people realize. Sometimed they use them so that people will make comparisons. For example, the latest set included these two pics

It got many people talking about why Moroha has claws and the twins don't. I think the issue will come up in the show.

I noticed that Sunrise really loves to show us facial close ups pictures of Towa using her sword. They are different but very similar. Seemed like an overkill until I noticed that her other eye is sometimes lit up as blue, possibly a reference to my Five phases theory and she needs the blue pearl to be "complete".

But I noticed it's also when her eyes are "angry" and to me this is when she looks the most like Kagura. Especially since her left eye is pupiless at this time. The last set of pics included this image:

The framing of the photo puts all the emphasis on her eyes and face, and damn if that isn't Kagura's face. Ive seen SR refute the idea and that's it's a reference to Sesshomaru. But they usually use Setsuna to make Sesshomaru parallels. Plus Towa's expression exactly matches one of the most popular images of Kagura that floats around the internet.

To me the callout is obvious.

Determining why a preview picture is important is sometimes difficult, especially when they use them for foreshadowing. I just keep a folder of them and wait to see if some element of the picture is addressed again or can be connected to another clue. I also noticed Sunrise will release slightly different pictures of the same scene and that usually means there's something in there important.

Anyway, I hope this helps. I could go on but don't want to make this overly long. Please let me know if anything needs clarification.

[hessparosyes]

Apophenia, The tendency to see patterns where there appears to be no connection.

Pareidolia, to perceive a meaningful image in a random pattern.

Human imagination is one of it's many strengths and greatest betrayers. Some times it can put the pieces to a puzzle that doesn't exist together to form a cohesive picture of a truth.

Other times it just farts around in a puddle of mud and make the dreamer king of the scummy waters with worms for brains.

So how much more fucked is the fallen who was built to read these points of nothing as it's only purpose and have that ripped from their hands as so much air.

At one time sleep and dreams where some of Hessperos' fondest moments. They could hear, see, taste and be a part of the grand design as it wove it's way around all creation. Hess could get lost in it for what seemed to be life times, and it was good.

Now the darkness was a mocking void of lies, decay, and emptiness. What once was full of color and life that would wrap around them like a blanket had turned into a stifling claustrophobic knot of chains that could never be cast off because even in it's stifling closeness the void was vast and impossible to feel.

Hessperos tried to scream but without form what noise would come forth? they tried to claw and kick and fight, to find a hold, but nothing was there.

Nothing was always there and the Nothing began to weave its cruel visions and whispers into it's captive plaything.

Bits of light, a sent. possibly a sound? Just enough little things to give a frightened mind enough to play with to connect the dots and rip it away just as fast.

A silence so loud it would deafen mountains only to become a noise so faint ears would burst trying to catch it.

A lack of feeling so strong it felt like a fire lapping at every nerve and at the same time a sense of self so strong you could feel every bit of existence splitting into little nothings with a buzzing static

Hessperos didn't know how they got back here. the existence that haunted their every sleepless night in the cramped existence that was the human Juilianna.

Juilianna?

For a moment a burst of clarity seemed to strike out of this wretched darkness.

Of course she, they, We had escaped this madness once and where living again! a moment of hope!

flashes of recent events of faces seemed to zoom by and then shattered into nothing as the last few moments gripped Hessperos gut and seemed to knock out all non-existing wind of them.

Failure. Bethany was in danger.

Failure. We, I had been sent back.

Failure. I, we had been found out and returned to our prison of unending madness.

Failure.

Failure.

The moment of light seemed to pull-away as if once again was too ashamed to shine down on us, me again

Frantic I, we tried to claw after it screaming in rage born of fear

the darkness cold and biter crashed us, me as if a cold ocean was dragging me, us down.

I, we chocked and continued to claw for a way out when a familiar voice broke through our minds.

"Woh hey, you're safe calm down"

We blinked, with our eyes now blurry from the ice water dripping around our face.

"Rhys?" we croak out in our now existing mouth.

A sinking feeling wash over Juilianna and with a panicked voice "Where is Bethany?"

Rhys "shes fi.." He paused for a brief moment, "She's here"

Julianna sank back down letting out the breath they had been holding and a wash of pain rushed over them as they said "good"

And it was good in a way.

but the fear was still there gnawing from within and with each throbbing drum beat in their head,

"Failure"

"Failure"

"Failure."

[hollyhockash]

Your Bane/Curse: a preview

I'm working on a lifepath for Glitch, because Nobilis 3rd edition and Diary of Deceivers contain lifepaths, but Glitch does not. Here's the bit about how to pick a Bane/Curse (though I haven't put the flower keys in because I haven't finalized them yet).

Your Bane/Curse

Something is killing you. Something about Creation Glitched and threw you out of the normal world, and the raw edges left by this scrape and tear at you. This is the thing that sucks your life away: this is your Bane.

The nature of your Bane

A High Concept You're dying of something abstract, philosophical, or perceptual, like Solidity, Identity, or Subjectivity.

Something All Too Mundane You're dying of something that anyone else might interact with in their normal daily lives, like Subscriptions, Erasers, or Light.

Self-Evident What kills you is something that, you know, kills people. Like Bombs, Car Crashes, or Poison.

Seemingly Nonsensical You are dying of a non sequitur that is honestly rather ridiculous: something like Blood Vessels, Examples, or Class Action Lawsuits.

(open the readmore for two more of these lists)

The conceptual color of your Bane

Too Much Of A Good Thing You're being killed by something that few people would consider an affliction. Something like Laughter, Hope, or Beauty.

Something Genuinely Bad You're being killed by something that most normal people would agree with you is a bad thing: along the lines of Stalkers, Dementia, or Despair.

Broken For You, Personally You're being killed by something that could, I suppose, be argued to be good or bad by someone else, but that definitely has it out for you in particular. For example, Cars, Locks, or Eye Contact.

No Obvious Moral Valence You're being killed by something that has no clear relationship to morality, like Smells, Ice, or Spherical Things.

Your Curse

How, precisely, does your Bane kill you?

Directly Sometimes it's blindingly obvious how your Bane kills you. You're dying of trains, so you get hit by trains. You're dying of crowds, so you get trampled. You're dying of bees, so you are regularly stung by bees and it sends you into anaphylactic shock.

With Logical Sequelae This one's a bit more glancing: the thing that kills you is not your Bane itself, but what it does to you. You're dying of sound, so the sensory overload makes you helpless. You're dying of chocolate, so you end up eating yourself. You're dying of cats, so they sit on and in everything, depriving you of chairs, beds, food, and transportation.

With A Metaphor Especially with a really abstract Bane, you might end up reifying a metaphor. You're dying of paranoia, so the cops you imagine show up to arrest you. You're dying of pareidolia, so the faces you keep seeing into things come alive and taunt you until you break. You're dying of dilemmas, so every time you face a decision it turns into a pickle (literally).

Self-Inflicted Like the animal that mutilates itself to escape a trap, the real damage isn't done by your Bane: it's the way that you are forced to respond to your Bane that eats you alive. You instinctively erase your memories so as not to remember your mistakes. When faced with the fact that people will disagree with each other, you stop being able to comprehend language.

Seemingly Unrelated Your Curse appears to be totally unrelated to your Bane. You're dying of hope, which manifests as spontaneous combustion. You're dying of being seen, which means you are speared through by shattered glass.

[palettes-and-prompts]

Prompts Based on the Song Mr. Capgras Encounters a Secondhand Vanity: Tulpamancer's Prosopagnosia / Pareidolia (As Direct Result of Trauma to Fusiform Gyrus) by Will Wood & The Tapeworms

Dialogue Prompts

1) "Where'd you learn to dance?" "My grandmother. Where'd you learn to steal?" "My grandmother." 2) "They're trying to catch us and if we hadn't been the way we are they would have caught us." "Pieces of shit." "You know what this means right?" "We take them for every fucking thing they own." "Goddamn right we do." 3) "You know, you've got the smile of a devil." "And you've got the eyes of an angel." 4) "Well, you found me." "I did." "Are you going to steal the money?" "I am." "And what about me? Are you going to let me go?" "No. I think I'll steal you as well." "Are you sure? I'm quite worthless." "No, baby, you're priceless. If anything, you're the only thing in this vault worth stealing." "Then what are you waiting for? Steal me." 5) "Why would you want to leave with them?" "You don't understand. Person A and I don't even need words. We just look at each other and know exactly what the other is thinking. It feels like they're the one." "Them? You barely know them!" "I know what I feel! And it's more powerful than anything I've ever felt in my life. Like the piece that's always been missing is just right." 6) "You've got one bullet in that gun. You'd better hit me with it because if you don't I'll snap that pretty neck." "You wouldn't hurt me." "And you wouldn't shoot me. So put the gun down, baby, let's talk about this." 7) "We gotta run, babydoll, it's not safe here." "What about Paris? You said we could go." "Then Paris is where we'll go. But first...how do you feel about dyeing your hair blond?" 8) "You think you can catch me? I'm a demon, you couldn't catch me if you tried." 9) "Did you find Person A?" "Yeah, it took 15 officers to get A into the car because they kept fighting them and complaining that they'd never let themselves be taken alive to prison." "Yeah...you definitely found A alright." 10) "You need to run, I'll hold them off. You escape." "What? No." "You've got more charge, they'll kill you if you don't run. At most I'll get life, maybe less." "I should stay." "Go. Go catch the train and when it's safe-" "I'll come back for you, bust you out." "You're brilliant, love." "I love you." "I love you too. Now go!"

Regular Prompts

1) A is a traveler who goes from city to city stealing from the rich and only taking care of them self. But when they see Person B who's rich and incredibly good looking they decide they're the treasure in the city they want to take for themselves. They get dressed up and go to a ball posing as a rich person and spend the whole night dancing with Person A. None of that slow dancing like everyone else tries with B at the party. They pay the band to play something jazzy and swing dance with them most of the night giving B the time of their life and when the night's over the two haven't said a single word but they're absolutely in love and their hearts are pounding. B's fiance/fiancee is incredibly pissed but B's ready to throw it all away the second A asks if they wanna get out of there. The two then become notorious for traveling from city to city dancing in ball rooms and stealing from the rich all for themselves. When they finally have too much they decide to open a dance academy with a special class for the children who are incredibly good at dancing. They end up adopting some kids and training them to dance and steal. One big wholesome crime family. 2) A and B are two rival thieves competing to be the most well known thief and gain a reputation so others will want to hire them for bigger jobs. When they end up getting stuck in a room the day before the heist they both figure out that the police already know about the heist because the whole thing is a setup to catch A and B. The two are furious and decide to work together to take them for everything they've got before the heist. When they get away with everything and split it 50/50 they decide they're actually a pretty good team and have a few things they could teach each other. They decide to be partners and from that point on only do bigger jobs with people they know and have worked for. (Could be romantic between the two but doesn't have to be.) 3) It's around 1920 and A is a gangster on the run who robs the rich and is known for giving back to the communities in each new city or town they go to. They're part of a group who is known for robbing banks and burning mortgage notes freeing people from their debt. They're constantly on the edge of being caught but no one will come forward as a witness because they see Person A as a person for the people. Person B is a cop who is constantly chasing them. The two never admit it but they enjoy their chases and it gets their blood pumping. Eventually Person A and Person B share a phone call without anyone being able to trace them and Person B admits they admire them and never really wanted to bring them in, they just wanted to see if they could catch them. Person A tells them they're the only one who ever came close. B tells them they're quitting the police force and deciding to work in a bank dealing with numbers since they're better at Math than most people. A's laughs and B asks if they should worry about their money being taken and A admits that B should worry about being stolen since they're the most valuable thing in the place. 4) A is someone who used to have magic but no longer has it anymore trapped in a small cell for years. Person B ends up getting lost and finds them, asking what happened and A takes a chance and tells B about their magic and that if they free them they'll help them achieve their dream. B's dream is to not feel so alone. A agrees to create friends for them, ones who will know everything they need to to be a good friend to them. They also say they'll help B get the person of their dreams to like them. B's happy and helps A get out, only to find that A was trapped because they were dangerous. B expects A to kill them or leave but A decides to take B along with them as their apprentice and teaches them magic telling them they'll wreak havoc across the land. They make potions to turn people into into animals and cast spells to make people just forget how to understand the language they were born speaking to inconvenience everyone. B ends up having a lot of fun and tells A they could do this for the rest of their life. A offers them immortality and a life with them. B's surprised but takes the offer and decides to form a relationship with A (romantic or not) and live with them forever. 5) A is a demon who causes trouble all over town and can't be caught because they've got the ability to disappear. When B gets blamed for all of A's actions they're pissed and decide to figure out A's weaknesses and catch them and make them unable to run invisible. B reads books and decides that the only way to beat A is to become a demon. B ends up becoming a demon in exchange for giving their humanity to Person A. Person A is immediately jailed and B then begins causing trouble all over the place, leading people to believe it's all A. A becomes a demon again through a witch deal and when they're a demon they chase after B to make them pay for everything. The two begin a chase around the world only they can win and soon grow fond of the chase and insist on doing one every few weeks when they can't shake the energy they get. Eventually they become close either romantically or platonically and they respect each other more.