#it was green and gold with pink lightning

[ed13d1]

I see the future repeat the past

photo by greg johnson

[eowynstwin]

Blackbird, Fly - Two

Cowboy Gaz x mail order bride—only, not his. After exchanging letters for half a year with ranching man Hans König, you finally travel out west to marry him. It becomes clear to you that something is bothering him—perhaps it has something to do with you. previous masterlist ao3 next

Kyle Garrick—who instructs you to call him Gaz, explaining it as a nickname—drives you out of town in a two-horse wagon. The countryside is dyed in pastels by the softening light of a just-setting sun, every bit as beautiful as Hans had written when he told you about it.

Like a painting, he said. Everywhere you look could be framed in gold. I wake up every day in this land and thank God I have the fortune to live in it.

Here now, as the wagon rattles down the wheel-carved trail, you understand his words. You feel that if you brushed your fingers against the sky overhead, towering with lavender-bottomed clouds as thick and soft as cotton on the stem, that they might come away smeared in blue and pink and violet. The surrounding landscape is a cornucopia of vibrant greens, rich browns of trees and soil, and clusters of orange, yellow, and white wildflowers.

You keep looking all around you to take it in, jostling your driver beside you, but Gaz seems not to mind. At least, he doesn’t say anything.

You’ve been trying not to feel so aware of his presence, but the endeavor is impossible. He is a solid weight beside you on the driver’s seat, exuding warmth where your shoulders brush against each other, and the earthy, masculine scent of him is inescapable. Every time his elbow or knee or thigh nudges yours during the natural sway and jostle of the wagon ride, you have to keep yourself from leaping out of your skin. Ever since you stepped foot off the train, you’ve felt like a lightning rod set out in anticipation of a storm.

You ascribe it to displaced longing for your husband-to-be. You’d spent the whole journey west imagining how you’d meet, longing for the moment he took you into his arms for the first time. Gaz is a handsome man—it’s only natural that your unfulfilled anticipation would transfer onto him. Especially considering he said you were perfect.

But then said very little after that. He’d seemed—well, not friendly, but at least amicable on the train platform, so you wonder if your manners have offended somehow. He’s spent most of the drive now with his eyes ahead, partly obscured by the brim of his hat. Occasionally he glances at the letters in your hand, but otherwise does not acknowledge you.

After one such glance, your discomfort with the silence becomes too much to bear.

“I read my favorites every night,” you tell him.

If Gaz is surprised when you break the silence, he doesn’t show it. “That so,” he murmurs.

All you have is his profile, very handsome in the light. The line of his mouth is taut.

“I know it’s silly,” you continue nervously—you have a bad habit of rambling when you’re uncomfortable. Adjusting your carpetbag in your lap, you go on, “but you must understand, this is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. I never expected to marry, you see.”

He grunts.

“Much less to be a mail order bride,” you say. “I always thought I would be an old maid, for lack of available suitors if nothing else. Mama and Daddy thought I ought to learn to read and write, to improve my prospects, but most folks where I’m from don’t care much about all that.”

“I see,” replies Gaz. He still does not look at you.

“Sometimes I think it even made them like me less, like I was putting on airs, being smarter than them.” You realize immediately how arrogant you must sound. “Oh, but I don’t mean any offense! I don’t mean to suggest I have ideas above my station. It’s only just that, I wondered for years and years why no one offered for me, and it was the only thing I could think of. Why would a farmer’s daughter need to read and write? And why would a wife need to, if her duty is to tend to her children and her home? So that must be why no man has ever been very interested in me.”

You realize with horror that words are pouring out of you faster than you can keep up with them. And your driver’s attention has not shifted; his eyes remain on the road.

You look at your lap, face burning. “I’m sorry, I’m just annoying you, Mr. Gaz. I’m sorry.”

Shame grips you, tight and awkward. If you’d wanted to endear yourself to this cowboy at all, you’ve already failed.

But Gaz finally says, “Most men are idiots.” You look at him; he does not look at you. “I’ve only just met you, and I like you fine.”

He says it matter-of-factly, as if no more need saying on the subject. Simple and to the point; an economy of feeling you imagine must be characteristic of men in this part of the country.

Hans was like that too, in his letters. Communicating feeling without dancing around it, with a bluntness that ends up soft in its honesty.

It eases the tension frothing poisonous in your belly. “Thank you,” you say.

You ride in silence for a stretch. A cool breeze catches the free-floating ends of your hair, rustles along in the tall grass by the wayside. The steady thump thump thump of the horse’s hooves, and the creak of tackle and leather, are the only sounds populating the air.

Home was quiet like this, too; the fields stretching endless and green beneath the sky, the silence there so blank and open that birdcall traveled for miles, and the lowing of the family milk cow sounded sometimes like the trumpet of God.

You peek again at Kyle Garrick. There’s a furrow to his brow, the kind a man gets when he’s in a mood and won’t admit it if asked.

“I’m sorry,” you say again, quietly, because he made you feel better about things, and you’ve done little more than whine.

He finally looks at you, the edges of his face lined and glowing in the evening light. Studies you, for a moment. The furrow eases.

“No,” he says, “I’m sorry, Miss. I don’t mean to be short with you. I’m afraid manners are secondary on a ranch, without a good woman nearby to remind about ‘em.”

You give him a small smile. “Have you worked for Hans very long?”

He turns his gaze back to the road. “Six or seven years, now.”

You toy with the clasp of your bag; you’re brimming with questions. “Is he really all that tall?”

“Oh, yes,” Gaz says. “Like a giant.”

“What’s he like?”

Gaz gives a great breath through pursed, full lips. “Fair, I guess. Asks a lot of us—but then most bosses out here will. Worked for his father for a few years before him, too.”

“You must be a good hand then,” you say.

“I work hard,” says Gaz. “That’s all that matters.”

“I’m sure Hans is grateful,” you reply. “He must trust you very much, to send you for me.”

The furrow returns. “He must.”

It becomes clear to you that something is bothering him, and it’s nothing you will resolve between now and when you make it to the ranch. Perhaps it has something to do with you—a new face, an unknown quantity that threatens to knock the balance of his livelihood askew.

You sigh a little. Of course, you should have expected to have to win Hans’ people over. Their loyalty to the late Mrs. König will inevitably be challenged by your arrival.

Neither of you speak again—you decide not to push what little grace Kyle Garrick has given you, and he does not volunteer any more conversation. The rest of the ride is unremarkable, leaving room for anticipation to grow in your stomach; soon the wagon crests the slope of a hill, and your destination comes into view.

Long Mask Ranch sits at the base of a range of mountain foothills, fed and watered emerald green by spring runoff. You’ve been on Hans’ land for a while now; opening up before you is the ranch proper. A collection of buildings form a semicircle around a large corral in the valley: stables, a barn, some cabins, and a large two-story gabled manor, painted white.

The sun sinks further toward the horizon as you approach, painting the world in liquid orange. Figures resolve themselves, people moving tables and chairs around, and on the manor’s front porch, observing the proceedings, stands a tall man in a rancher’s coat and hat.

Lightning suddenly bolts through you. You sit very, very still as Gaz pulls the wagon through a cast iron archway adorned with LMR at the apogee. Your heart thrums in your throat like a picked guitar string. When you finally come to a stop, the man’s head turns to toward you.

At the worst possible moment, shyness grips you. You look around, at anywhere but him, at the house, the corral, the cowboy beside you.

You startle to meet Gaz’s eyes. The expression he wears is a mask of seriousness.

“This is it,” he says.

Your voice leaves your chest trembling. “Thank you, Mr. Gaz.”

“Just Gaz is fine, Miss.”

“I couldn’t possibly,” you reply. Propriety feels like the only solid thing to cling to just now.

He looks away. The line of his mouth tightens. “Of course,” he says.

He dismounts the wagon in one smooth motion, boots hitting the packed earth hard. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the tall man start his way over to you. Gaz rounds the back of the wagon, and you give your bag to him once he’s at your side. He offers his hand to help you down.

You’re dazed as you take it, lightheaded as suddenly the present moment becomes very, very real. It’s warm, his hand; rough in all the places you expect a cowboy’s hand to be. Yet there’s something soft in the way your palms meet, how the dips and contours align with each other and fit together. You’re shaking very hard as you ease your way from the seat, gripping him tightly until your feet meet the ground, and his grip circles yours with a solidness to it in a way unlike any man has ever held you.

You meet his eyes again when he hands you your bag. Gaz gives your hand a squeeze, averts his gaze, and lets you go.

“There she is!” an accented voice announces.

You pull your gaze from Kyle Garrick and the mystery of his tension with you, and turn to face your intended husband.

Hans König has loomed large in your imagination for half a year. He’d described to you what he looked like, of course, as best he could, but you find as you look upon his face that no written word can convey what it means to meet for the first time the man you will marry. You’d fallen in love with someone formless, absent, but inscribed in other ways with enough distinction to nurture your tender feelings.

Looking upon him now, though…his appearance offers nothing to that distinction. He’s neither ugly nor handsome. As he comes to stand before you, you think he rather looks like every other middle-aged man you’ve met in your short life, although certainly much taller. You meet his eyes—pale blue, as he’d related—and the rush of love you’d expected to feel, once you knew who he was, simply does not come.

This man is a stranger to you.

You reprimand yourself immediately. He isn’t a stranger. You’ve known him for six months. His face is simply not one you have attached any love to yet; the measure of his character is contained in the stack of paper in your hands. In the promises he made to you to make your quietest dreams come true.

So you smile the way you’d dreamed you would—like watching the sun crest the horizon after a long night of darkness, seeing the bounty of the near future coming toward you. Summoning joy by making room for it to exist.

“Hello, Hans,” you say, “it’s me.”

Hans König steps forward. He looms over you truly, now, eclipsing your vision. “It is you, indeed.”

Without another word, right there in front of Gaz, Hans grips your shoulders, bends down, and kisses you on the mouth.

Your brows shoot upward. It’s the first time anyone has ever kissed you. His lips are…hard, and motionless against yours. Almost perfunctory. You are so shocked he’s done it that you don’t think to respond, and then as suddenly as it happened, it’s over. He pulls away, pats your shoulders with a little smile, and then looks at Gaz.

“Get that wagon put away and then go help the others,” says Hans to the cowboy, slinging one arm around your shoulder.

Your brows lift further. Is that all he has to say to him, for delivering you safe and sound?

Gaz doesn’t seem to share your feelings. “Yes, sir,” is all he says, even and toneless.

But he looks between you and his employer for more than just the span of a heartbeat. Eyes going from him, to you, to the arm around your shoulders. Then he meets your gaze, expression stony.

If Gaz is wary of your presence here—if you’re going to win him over—the best time to start is now. “Thank you very much for seeing me here safely,” you say. “I was so glad of your company, Mr. Gaz.”

To your dismay, his expression only tightens. Gaz looks at Hans again, then back at you.

“You’re welcome, Miss,” he says.

Then he climbs back into the wagon, gives the reins a snap, and drives away.

-

a/n: fun fact, the ranch and neighboring town are based off Valentine and Emerald Ranch from rdr2 :) the ranch layout is more like Pronghorn Ranch however.

[almostfoxglove]

I'LL CARRY YOU: part II

YOU CARRY IT

RATING: Explicit (18+) PAIRING: Javier Peña x f!Reader WORD COUNT: 7.7k CW: Smut (piv, characters are drunk but sound of mind and consenting), drinking, and a lethal amount of yearning.

SUMMARY: Four years after he disappeared from your bed in the early morning, Javier returns to Laredo once more—exhuming a lifetime of memories.

part I | series masterlist | series on ao3 | almostfoxglove masterlist

dividers by @saradika-graphics & insp for one moment from this post (wink)

ELEVEN

You don’t know you love him, but you do. Grass-stained and grubby, dirt beneath your fingernails, digging for jewels in the front yard that yields nothing but squirming things. Earthworms, pillbugs, a slug. Beside you, Javier is on all fours, scanning the lawn through squinted eyes, his head haloed by the sun as he blocks the light. “Don’t see nothin’,” he groans, elbows bent as he dips his face close to the ground. So earnest in his hunt for something that’ll delight you—buried treasure.

You grin, watching him, knowing in your heart there isn’t anything good buried in the square of grass outside your house, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is this: the afternoon spent in the company of the lanky kid whose arrival has punched your whole life out of orbit, rewriting all that is possible for you. Reimagining. 

With a huff, Javier sits back on his heels, his t-shirt stained with soil. His mom’s gonna whack the back of his head when he gets home—lightly, lovingly—for ruining another set of clothes, but he’ll never learn his lesson. “Sorry,” he mumbles, meeting your gaze with round, warm apologies swimming in the earth of his eyes. “Can’t see anything good.”

It’s obvious he means it, obvious he’s disappointed in himself for not accomplishing the impossible. Fulfilling some childhood fantasy you’re well aware will never be real. For Javier, it’s not enough to see you dreaming; he wants to make it come true.

Small smile on your lips, you reach out to nudge his skinny arm. “I forgive you,” you tease, and he blinks once before he catches the joke in your tone and a grin grabs hold of his face, briefly creasing his cheek.

Just then the wind chime sings from your porch and both of you turn to see the sea glass shiver prettily in the breeze. In a moment that feels beyond time, you and Javier sit transfixed by its gentle magic—the sparkling tune of blue-green glass chiming in the wind. The moment ends only when Javier slumps down to lie in the grass, dropping his head into your lap. School’s only been in session for three weeks—which means you’ve known him a grand total of twenty-one days—but somehow, though he’s never done this before, his touch feels to you as natural as breathing.

Javier sighs. At eleven, he’s already burdened by the weight of the whole world, and you don’t know why.

Shy, your hand hovers over his head, stilled by hesitation. Then he wiggles a little, adjusting himself to lie with one cheek pressed to your thighs and the other turned up to you, and your hand falls softly against his temple, brushing an unruly lock away from his eyes. He makes a soft sound sort of like a hum as if you’ve done what he wanted, and pride surges in your chest—a sudden tide. Dark lashes fluttering, his eyes close. His cheek pink and gold beneath the carpet of sun.

“Sad?” you ask him softly, carding your fingers through his hair, unfazed by the sweat that wets the curls at the nape of his neck. You don’t find him gross, not for a second, but you don’t know yet what that means.

His shoulder bobs with a tired shrug. “Wanted to find you somethin’ good,” Javier mumbles.

“That’s okay. The fun part is looking.”

“Still wanted to,” he sighs.

And you know, sudden as a lightning strike, that this boy’s your best friend in the world. Doesn’t matter that you don’t know his middle name yet, or all his secrets, the feeling thrown down at you from above hits you without any warning, rearranging your cells—you love him all at once. That’s all it takes. You’d do anything for him.

EIGHTEEN

You love him, but so does everyone here—Javier Peña is an incredible drunk. Three red solo cups deep and barely eighteen, he doesn’t dance through the packed dormitory lounge, he swims. Graceful and lithe, though the occasional splash of shitty beer gulps golden from his cup, splattering on the floor. But Javier dances with his whole body, especially when he’s drunk, outweighing any mess with his charm: head thrown back and eyes closed as he sings along to whatever record someone’s put on, hips balletic, boneless, fluid. He focuses on someone for a song or two like they’re the only person in the room, then moves right along to find someone new. 

The girl he’s dancing with now is licking his neck.

You think you’re ready to go home.

When the next song ends, he comes down panting from his lyric high and his head sways in your direction: perched on the back of the couch with your feet on the cushions in the corner of the room, worrying the slit that’s cracked in the plastic rim of your cup with your thumbnail. You’re not sure how many drinks you’ve had, only that two of them were jello shots that went down like slugs and made your mouth taste like a rancid ice pop. Still does, unfortunately. No quantity of beer seems capable of rinsing it out.

Javier bends down to whisper something in the girl’s ear and she removes her lips from the column of his throat, slinking off to be swallowed by the dance floor with a smirk on her face. And that’s it: the magic of his attention—hardly anyone seems mad when he moves on. There are, from what you can see in the dark, no jealous glares or bitter remarks spat from anyone. 

Perhaps Javier gives his lust freely, fleetingly, but it is always earnest. 

Now he’s headed straight for you.

The minute he reaches you with that lazy grin, you’re cured. Happy again, drunk on the dazzle of the black lights someone tacked up on the walls with duct tape. The writhing mass of limbs and hips made neon in the dark—shocks of ultraviolet and blue raspberry and the brightest white ricocheting from painted bodies. Biceps and back pockets and necks branded with electric green acrylic. Beaming in his white button up, the top three buttons undone and collar open loose around his throat, Javier is a dream. Luminous and stained by a slender handprint low on his shirt like whoever left it had grabbed his hip.

“Why aren’t you dancing?” he asks, frowning. He blinks up at you, his gaze narrowed and face shadowed in the dark, and drops onto the couch to settle between your legs. 

You’d be surprised if you were sober, but you’re not, so you think nothing of it—though he’s never touched you like this before, in front of so many eyes.

“Too clumsy,” you reply.

Sitting above him, you’ve got the perfect view of the crown of his head. Dark curls dislodged by dancing and beer and the way he keeps running his hand through it, fingers carding between sweaty locks. When he bumps his head against the inside of your knee, you know what he wants. He never asks because he doesn’t have to. You know him. He knows you.

“Should dance with me,” he says as your hand slips mindlessly into his hair, scratching in the way that takes him apart. “I’ll let you step on my feet.”

“I’d have to get in line,” you tease, scratching harder for a second so his gaze lifts to the center of the dorm-turned-dance-floor where three girls are watching Javier as they roll their hips—three, and you don’t even have a full view of the crowd from where you’re sitting—and though his head points in exactly their direction, what you can glimpse of the expression on Javier’s face is what you’d expect to see if he were looking at a wall. Not callous, just vacant. Like there isn’t anything to see or form an opinion about.

You feel pleasure fill you in great, crashing waves—grateful for these moments when all he cares about is you.

He shrugs, tilts his head up again, and shakes his head to tell you he’s noticed you’ve stopped scratching. When your fingers move again, he hmphs, settles back against your knee. All senior year you’d wondered if he’d bore of you in college. You waited for it, figured he’d get on with new friends and stop needing you. Course Javier’s made friends, and while crossing campus together between lectures you’ve more than once witnessed girls approach him alone or in packs, and he always knows them by name. It’s not a secret that he’s fucked two girls since the semester started. Nothing is a secret between you.

And yet, here he is: tucked between your legs on this nasty couch like there ain’t a soul for miles but the two of you. Not a single thought about outgrowing you in his gaze at all.

Glaringly upset that you aren’t enjoying yourself like he thinks you ought to, too.

“Dance with me, cariño,” Javier insists—and your stomach yelps, sudden and breathless. He’s never called you this before, but he grins the moment it falls out of his mouth, so you must be smiling.

You shake your head, summoning his pout. Bottom lip jutted, licked, and glossy under elemental light. The girls who want him haven’t broken their gaze, despite your hand in his hair and his ignoring them. 

“Don’t have to be embarrassed,” he says. “Ever’one’s drunk.”

“You’re drunk,” you tease.

Javier cuts his eyes. “You’re drunk,” he grumbles, and as if on cue you hiccup once, yanking up the corner of his mouth. You stop scratching to sweep a curl off his damp forehead, charmed by the way he leans willingly into your hand. 

“Let’s go home,” he mumbles. 

You don’t question it; you take his hand without knowing whose dorm he means.

Turns out he means yours—bronze in penny-dark light at the edge of residence, a whole four blocks further from the party than his, but you’re not complaining. He has terrible pillows, a roommate. You’ve got a cozy shoebox with memory foam all to yourself.

At the front door, you drop your keys trying to fish them out of your bra, and Javier kneels to snatch them from the pavement. A single coin of light shines down outside the entrance in which he is now brightened, eyes glassy, head loosely attached. He sways, crouched still at your feet as he gazes up at you, not quite kneeling, not quite praying—but close, you think. This feels close.

“Smooth,” he chides softly, and offers you your keys. 

“Not m’fault,” you grumble as you take them. “Dress doesn’t have pockets.”

A grin. The magic of his face when he smiles properly, if only for a moment. With the light how it is, harsh and clear, all it touches is pristine. The flat of his jaw, the freckles between his collar bones, on the tanned triangle of his chest. You wonder about them, suddenly. How it might feel to make a constellation of him with your fingertips. 

“Pretty though,” Javier says.

How it would feel to make a constellation of him with your tongue.

You take the keys, face shied from illumination as if he might read the thought from your face—he probably could. A blessing and a curse, to be known by someone this well. Then the moment slips gone, gone, gone, and you and Javier walk hand in hand inside. Up three flights of stairs, down the echo chamber of your silent dorm, your hallway. He never once lets go. Long past quiet hours, now. No one awake, it sounds like, to make a peep but the two of you.

You only get one short, tremored jab of the key—it misses, then Javier whirls you around. Your spine meets your door and his eyes have never quite been this color, you think. Never quite this vibrant, this wanting, this terrified. Never quite this close to yours.

Warmth holds your face. His hands. 

“Javi?” you whisper, as he draws closer and your fool of heart skids rampant in your chest, smashing into your ribs.

He exhales sharply, fogging your face with the heat of his lungs, and you can smell the beer on him, his sweat and aftershave. You’re certain, too, that every time you’ve ever seen him nervous before now doesn’t hold a candle to the tremors you feel in him as he presses his chest gently against yours, pressing you cautiously against your door. 

Javier shakes his head, scoffs mirthfully, and licks his bottom lip. You watch his mouth—transfixed by the muscle of his tongue—and he watches yours. 

He’s going to kiss you, you realize. It looks like he’s going to—

“Porfa,” he whispers. “Una vez.”

One time.

Then you’re nodding before you can fear what nodding means, and Javier casts his shadow over all the world, disappearing everything that isn’t him, the careful press of his lips, and the way his shaking doesn’t stop until your arms have slid around his neck. He makes a small, needy sound passed from his tongue to yours as he sinks against you, whole and heavy. The sort of weight you’d carry as far as he needed, as far as you could take. 

His hands make a map of you, skimming places they’ve never ventured: high on your ribs, low on your stomach, the back of your neck, just under your chest, just over your ass. 

It’s a little clumsy—often your teeth bump in your enthusiasm and you part briefly to laugh—but it doesn’t feel wrong in the slightest. Every time Javier dips back in to kiss you again, you want more. When you slip one hand to his chest, the gold vee bared between open buttons, the slick of his skin rips a soft moan from you and Javier’s chest stutters beneath your touch. 

“Is this—” he whispers, pausing to catch your bottom lip between his again. “Is this okay?”

Giggling, though you don’t mean to—Javier draws back to look you in the eye and his are black: a body possessed. Helplessly searching for a sign you want him to stop or go on. You shake and shake your head, lay your fingertips over his soft lips, and Javier’s eyebrows dent low over his eyes, utterly lost and confused. His hands stop their trail to rest on your hips. 

To you, it’s hilarious that he could possibly wonder when it’s so obvious that this is what you should’ve been doing all this time. Now you can’t imagine how you ever avoided it before. Smiling, you feel him breathe on your hand as he scans your face for a clue before you finally get out, “Mhm,” and then, quieter, “Don’t stop.”

“Thank fuck,” Javier mutters, before crashing back into you—with meaning this time, lips needy, hands heavy in their roam, not pinching but squeezing, pulling, holding you hot against the lean of his body, those fluid hips. 

His lips, emboldened. Trailing now to your jaw, finding a spot beneath its hinge that makes you mewl and tonguing it sweetly until you wiggle him off you to kiss him properly again. 

You manage to stumble inside, eventually, Javier’s shirt shedding before the door has closed. He scoops you into his arms the moment it’s off—your feet leave the floor, lose one shoe, and he trips over it and you yelp, accidentally biting his tongue as he catches himself against your shitty dresser. It creaks beneath his hand. 

“Gonna hurt ourselves,” he grumbles into your mouth, a little frustrated, his broad hand palming your ass to grind your hips against his.

“Worth it,” you grin.

You’re young, in love with him without rank or title or practice. Still mostly a child, all wonder and cravings that haven’t yet solidified into their final form—so it’s impossible to get this right the first time. You’ve had sex just once before for a grand total of eight minutes, and though Javier’s had a few more tries he hasn’t cracked it. Doesn’t help that you’ve got just the twin bed, and he’s all limbs. Has only his concentration to give you, his gravity, his ardent hunger. 

The way you feel all night that he wants you in his new, thrilling way. Always mumbling hotly into the curl of your ear.

Fuck, you feel—feel so good.

Pretty like this, so pretty like this.

And worst, maybe, which is to say best—want you, baby—wanted you so fuckin’ bad.

Despite the champagne grape color of his blush when he loses it halfway through, you think this is the closest you’ve ever come to transcendence. Every star aligned in perfect syzygy—at last, one piece of fate has clicked into its rightful place.

“Shit,” Javier mutters as he pulls out, soft and ashamed, but you just shake your head, tugging him back to you by the nape of his neck.

“Don’t care,” you insist. “Just wanna touch you.”

You mean it; you don’t care, but Javier still looks down at you with those round eyes guileless in his shame, open as any book. Fine, you’ll prove it. Tongue wet and doting, you lick between his freckles, kiss over his collarbone, across his chest, up his neck—an act of sincerity in which you make him the sky, a chain of constellations joined by your mouth. 

Then he’s hard again, hips canting against yours, and you resume.

It’s a kind of fullness that belongs not just to the body, not purely physical—but you dismiss this as nothing more than some nonsense, drunken thought.

In his fervor, your skull bumps against the wall and he gasps a sudden apology, one hand moving to cradle the crown of your head as he rocks into the cradle of your hips. Then your sudden laughter makes Javier’s whole body freeze suddenly, ceasing all rhythm. His hands pinch warningly at your waist.

“Gotta stop—shit, nena—quit laughin’,” he rasps, breathless, desperate. 

His sudden seriousness has you lost to besotted amusement, unable to keep your laughter from bubbling out.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” Javier pants, with his eyes squeezed shut as he fails to concentrate. “Gonna make me—fuck.” 

Then he’s undone, his sweaty forehead dropped to your chest as he comes down, disappointed, from his high.

“S’okay,” you whisper, hands slinking through his hair which now is beyond salvation. A hopeless, shaggy cause so sweet between your fingers. In an instant he’s melted, body leaden on top of yours, squishing you to the mattress, safe, secure.

For a while you stay like this, both catching your breath. His forehead pressed to the skin between your breasts. Then Javier fetches a t-shirt from your dresser and helps you clean the mess of your stomach, both of you snickering, in awe of how strange and ridiculous this all is. Shirt tossed from his hand, it jellyfishes in the air, falls deflated to the floor like a gunned down hot air balloon and Javier crawls over you, stripes your cheek with his tongue just to get you to gasp, clumsy hands shoving him off you with a gross, Javi, while he sits back on his heels. He shrugs, dark eyes drifting to your lips. 

He doesn’t have to say what he’s thinking; you just roll your eyes.

“Shut up,” you tell him, blushing as you tug on clean underwear. “S’not the same.” 

When a sleep shirt comes next he grunts in disapproval, earning a soft shove to his arm.

He drags his pants back on but the paint-stained shirt stays off, his body all cricket at the foot of your bed: leaning back on one hand, legs bent at the knee. Lean muscle and sudden joints. His smooth, tanned chest. Beautiful, same as he’s always been, and somehow entirely new. He cracks your sorry excuse for a window, asks if you mind if he smokes.

Your eyebrows rise. “That’s a disgusting habit,” you scold, all smirk as you extend your arm expectantly. “You absolutely cannot smoke in my room, alone.”

With a smirk, he lifts his hips to pull a carton from the back pocket of his jeans—one of many pairs that make a meal of his thighs. Filter pinched between his teeth, brings the cup of one hand to the end as he flicks his lighter, birthing no flame.

“Drunker than I thought,” he mumbles to himself, defeated as you sigh.

Your hand, still open and waiting, folds twice. Give it to me, you mean, and he does; you thumb it a few times before tossing it back. “Just empty,” you say. 

The hem of your shirt slips up over your ass as you stretch for your desk drawer, and Javier—not yet broken from the spell of your entanglement—makes a low sound not unlike a growl that has you grinning. You produce a matchstick like a promise, bite it between your teeth, and hold his gaze as you draw it quickly from your mouth.

The red tip sparkles, flames.

“The hell d’you learn to do that?” he asks, crawling over once more to hold his cigarette to the small fire in your hand before it dies. Lit, he sucks once before handing the cigarette to you.

You shrug coolly. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” you smirk, drinking tobacco like it’s water until your lungs too protest and hack. As you cough, Javier lights a second from the match in the last moment before it snuffs, and leans back against the windowsill to take a drag that hollows his cheeks.

He knocks his foot against your bare knee with a pointed stare. “Teach me,” he says. So you do.

TWENTY-ONE

You love him. All night, he buys everything you drink. Twenty-one at last, you’re crowded against the sticky bar of The Last Man Standing amidst the Saturday high, bodies hot and impatient in every direction. So many adults who seem so much older than you. You think you spot your old algebra teacher smoking in a corner booth with a woman who is not his wife. Javier sweeps you against his barstool with a scowl when a man twice your size elbows you out of the way to order. 

“Here,” he grunts, and smacks his thigh twice with meaning, so you climb onto his lap, pleased that his arm hooks around the small of your back to steady you against his chest. 

Tipsy, that’s what he is. What you are. 

You lie to yourself. To the version of your heart that never got older than eleven, enraptured as you were the moment he walked into that classroom and hijacked your life. A bedtime story blooms in your head: you get him, somehow, over everybody else.

Call it a birthday wish.

“Such a gentleman,” you tease. 

“Just take your shot,” Javier grumps, dark eyes rolling in that way that means he’s fighting off a grin. Stashing his cigarette between his teeth, he nudges the shot glass toward you and you watch a lick of tequila spill onto the bar before you grasp it.

Together, you swipe your tongues across the back of your hands: you his, and he yours, before Javier showers salt from little paper packets he stole from a stranger’s basket of fries. He winks as the salt clings to your skin, folding the packets neatly to stash in his back pocket. Then you clink your glasses, hook arms, lap the salt, and swallow.

Tequila stripes hot down your throat, hits the churn of your stomach, and you grin as you set down your empty glass next to his on the bartop. Tipsy in the dreamy way that can put you to sleep if you don’t drink on, your head tips onto his shoulder to rest a while and Javier, without you having to ask, tightens his hold around your waist like he knows you want him to. 

“Don’t fall asleep,” he says, before his eyes flicker to the ceiling. “Got traditions to uphold.”

Above you, bras in every color known to man hang from the rafters and ceiling fans. Lacy things, plain things, hideous things—all polluted with a sheet of charcoal dust. You stab your elbow into his ribs, but Javier only holds you tighter, keeping your body in the cage of his.

“C’mon, baby,” he says. Eyes round and dark and twinkling with mischief. He clicks his tongue—daring you though he doesn’t have to. The heat of his proximity alone would do you in. That clumsy meeting of your bodies freshman year has not returned and you don’t think it ever will. He’s got Lorraine now, but the nicknames have stuck around. It’s normal, mundane, the way you call each other baby, cariño. Endearments felt with the whole heart but not the whole body.

Nena, however, was uttered by his plush lips just that once. Out of his mind on the precipice of release, probably doesn’t remember he said it. Probably didn’t realize even at the time. 

You try not to wonder if he calls Lorraine nena now, but he probably does. Definitely does. He loves her.

“Rules are rules,” Javier presses, eyebrows flicking up.

Rolling your eyes, you wrestle your arms behind your back to unclasp your bra through your shirt. His eyes hold yours as you drag the straps down your arms—left, then right—and you’d swear desire flares briefly in his eyes as you drag your bra from the sleeve of your shirt without having to undress. Must be the alcohol. Must just be him teasing you. 

Still, your cheeks burn. 

It’s not a nice bra, not one you’d show anyone, but Javier looks down as you hold it and moves below you, repositioning how you’re sitting on his lap. 

“C’mon then,” he urges you, patting the small of your back with his broad hand. 

You toss, someone across the bar lets out a masterful whistle, and your bra catches on the blade of the ceiling fan overhead perfectly. First try. Straps swinging, scalloped from the band. You beam—delighted by the applause that roars from the patrons nearest you—and the bartender slides down the line to offer another round on the house. 

Smug, Javier leans forward to take one while you grab the other. Righteous in his posture: chest broad and upright, pressed against you. Shirt unbuttoned at the top like some swash-buckling pirate you’d swoon over in a movie. Seems it doesn’t matter how much you try to forget what it felt like to be wanted by him, you just can’t. In some other version of your lives, he might not have met Lorraine. Or he met her but didn’t want her, because he already had you.

But he has you now, anyway. Javier gets it both ways. A girlfriend—blonde, pretty, wry—and a best friend who love him in the same way, while he only has to return that affection to one.

One week from now, his mother will give you her rosary when you visit her hospital room. Green beads polished to pearls by her prayers. 

Two weeks from now, she will die. The chemo has failed, unbeknown to the two of you. 

You’ll watch Javier shoulder her casket from church to grave with Chucho, his uncle and cousins, in a suit that’s too snug across the breadth of his shoulders and the tie she bought him for prom. You’ll watch Lorraine hold his hand the whole ceremony, the whole wake, and afterwards he’ll spend a week in your bed, unable to sleep without your arms, ignoring Lorraine’s calls and chain-smoking like a man who wants to die. If he cries, he won’t let you see it. But he’ll lie with you in the burrow of your duvet, his face planted in the bowl of your neck, sometimes kissing there. Tiny, needy grazes you’ll wordlessly allow. Kissing in return the top of his head, his forehead, his cheeks and knuckles. Never his lips. 

The ashtray you set on the nightstand for him will never move. It’ll stay there, unused, for years. When you move, it will move with you, set out on new nightstand, waiting for his return.

But you know nothing of that now. Today is all tequila and the glory of his attention, and everyone you love is alive.

“I hate you,” you grump as your glasses clink again.  

Javier hmphs, feigns impatience as he squeezes your hip. He does love you. You know that—you tell yourself so all the time. He loves you, just not in the right way.

“Drink, cariño,” he says. “Before we’re twenty-two.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

You love him, so you’d wait all night. Twenty minutes ain’t that late. Try telling that to your sputtering heart, but it’s fine. It’s just twenty minutes, and the look of this place. Just the glooms of shadow between each red-clothed table and cosmos of chandeliers that willow whenever someone opens the door and lets in a draft. 

It’s just that, now that you’re here, you have no idea why he picked this place. You’ve never been, and sat at a small table by the windows, it’s obvious why. This place, with its jazz band testing sound levels on the sunken stage, with its waitresses who are all, somehow, the most beautiful women you’ve ever seen—the kind of gorgeous so grand you can’t even hate them, can’t envy them, you can only sit in awe—this place is romantic. Unbelonging to you. 

This is the sort of restaurant you take someone when you ask them to marry you.

Which—given the last two weeks—is sort of hilarious. You’re inclined to believe Javier chose this place for dinner as a joke. Planned for the two of you to sit here, stuff yourselves stupid and tipsy and quip under your breath all night at the expense of the other patrons who all appear to be having a lovely night.

Except the joke’s not so funny when no one’s here to make it. 

Your watch spins its hands, laughing at you, making you the joke.

Thirty minutes late. 

You already have a feeling he isn’t gonna show—which is to say, you know for sure. Heavy and anchoring. Disappointment can center you, plant you where you sit. Sure, it’s not the first time Javier has flaked; his own head can often get the best of him when he’s restless or spent. But it’s different, knowing the depth of his heartache. Sensing it even when he isn’t in the room and isn’t anywhere nearby, like somehow your bodies can speak to each other at any distance. 

It’s not just your hurt you carry, but his shattering. The death of all his life was about to be that he ran like hell from.

When the waitress swings by, you accept a top-up on your wine. Might as well.

Soon the jazz band is playing, piano swooping acrobatic through the air, trumpet singing, sax crooning. As the sun drops low in the sky, flirting with rooftops, the chandeliers inside the restaurant dim. Then it’s alchemy, the aura of the room. Straight out of some movie that’d break your heart half as much as you fear it breaking any second now. 

You wish you knew why he asked you to meet him here.

You wish you knew why he told you to dress up—just a little, Christ, cool it, baby.

You wish you knew why he hasn’t come.

Not that this day on your calendar hasn’t been circling around in your head like water in a tub that won’t fully drain. There isn’t anything good to tell someone who just left their fiancée at the altar, even if he is your best friend—Javier knows this. 

Maybe that’s why he still hasn’t shown. 

Seems cruel to ask you here, gussied up for nothing in the dress he ten years ago peeled off you—reverent in his gaze and fixation, alight with obvious pleasure—when he must have known he wasn’t going to come.

Might have jinxed it when you hauled it out from the grave of your closet this afternoon. Feels pathetic, now, that you put this thing back on. Desperate.

You drain your wine, let it fill you, bitter and bloody and absent of any enjoyment. 

He isn’t coming.

Still, you wait, praying you’re wrong.

As the band’s first set comes to a roaring end, the whole place alive with praise, air filled by cheers and clapping hands. Even the waitresses halt where they stand to clap, poised in their practiced intermission, perfect as marble deities each kissed with red lips. The bartender, too, in his stupid bowtie and perfectly gelled hair. Everyone here is having the time of their lives but you, who can’t shake the feeling that you’ve never wanted to be anywhere less than you want to be here right now, alone.

One glance at the menu and all you see are the dollar signs that’d gut your bank account, send you back into the overdraft you’ve just paid off. 

You sigh, try to make a game of silver linings. 

At least you won’t have to pay for some stuffy meal.

At least you won’t have to watch the waitress fall in love with Javier the second he sits down.

At least you won’t have to call a cab because you’re too buzzed to drive.

At least you won’t be up late enough to be fucked tomorrow at work.

At least you don’t have to wear these stupid, pointy shoes until the little hours.

Needless to say, you lose the game. No amount of silver brightens the rift widening to a chasm through your chest. Hollowing you out. Splitting you in two.

One more glass, then the next time the waitress swings by, you wave the white flag and she hastily brings your receipt. Obscene, for three glasses of wine and an hour and a half spent watching pleasure flame in strangers’ eyes, but you pay for it. You take the loss and its drowning weight. You carry it.

“Do you have a—” you start to ask, as the waitress takes your bills, but she cuts you off, already nodding.

“Course, sugar,” she says, and points one lacquered nail in the direction of the bar. As if rehearsed, the bartender swipes his crisp white towel along the right wing of the polished bartop, revealing a phone on the wall behind him. You nod, thank her, and are so grateful that the bartender ducks into the back as if he just now has remembered something urgent in the other room that you consider crying. 

Chucho always picks up on the third ring. Reliable, steady. Like you.

“It’s me,” you say, when he’s on the line.

“Oh honey,” he replies.

Behind you: clapping again, except this time the band’s taking five. When you turn, the plastic phone pressed clammy to your cheek, someone’s down on one knee beside their table with a ring.

You close your eyes.

“Just—tell me he’s not in a ditch somewhere,” you say to Chucho. “Just need to know he’s, I don’t know, accounted for.”

Not dead, is what you mean. Not passed out, drunk, in a ditch, is what you mean. Not blackout somewhere without you to catch him when he leaps. Without you to carry him home.

There stretches—beneath the drone of jubilation marking the best day of someone else’s life—the long, brooding quiet in which Chucho remains silent on the other line. When he speaks next, it’s in the middle of a sudden piano solo. Celebration, or their next set, doesn’t matter. You don’t hear shit. Have to plug your open ear with your hand.

“Sorry, once more?”

Crackling static. A slow, apologetic breath.

“Told him to tell you, sweetheart,” he repeats. “Would’a called if I knew he hadn’t and saved you the trip.”

Not dead. The first real silver lining. You don’t so much breathe as you deflate.

“Kid took that job,” Chucho sighs. “He flew down this morning.”

THIRTY-SIX

You love him, and when you wake in the warm arms of morning he’s long, long gone. Already a thousand miles skyward, Colombia-bound, returning once more to the jaws of something that wants him buried and dead.

There’s no note, but you knew there wouldn’t be. Javier never writes anything down, never leaves you any proof. Last photo of you together must be from college, early on. Any presence he’s had in your life since then is smoke—it dissipates with the wave of his smooth, freckled hand. Gone, like he was never here at all.

Gone, like he never kissed you.

Gone, like he never picked you.

Gone, like he’ll never come back again.

FORTY

You love him, but it’s been four years. Nothing’s the same; it can’t be.

Except for you. Not just in your love, but in your being. A lighthouse for better and worse: beacon in any storm, buried on land. Immovable. Still living thirty minutes from the house of your girlhood, ever accessible, predictable, and lodged in the filth of all that has birthed and broken you. Entirely, utterly, incapable of leaving. Trapped in the case of your unshed skin.

Today is the equinox for the red and dying. Autumn at last unfurling its cool tendrils, usurping the summer’s reign. Air sweet and temperate, tinged with the promise of showers. You—running late, neck sore, caffeine-deficient—hustle the gravel tongue of Chucho’s drive, arms heavy with a batch of groceries. An old habit you never kicked—his hip’s been fine eight months now but you still come around every other Sunday with groceries to save him the trouble, craving his company. His calloused hand soothing your back in small circles, telling you everything’s gonna be fine without uttering a word. 

You dig out the key you’ve had since sixth grade from the void of your pocket. Not graceful, but you don’t drop it. The key wasn’t Javier’s idea, but his mother’s—a woman who took one look at you and felt exactly what you did. Eternal. Took the key off her own ring and handed it over, said she’d make herself another copy. 

“Anytime.” That’s what she’d said to you, eleven and heart scared as a rabbit’s by how much more the Peña house felt like home than your own. Her key, passed to your palm, was warm from her hand. 

Now in your own it’s warm again. Like a piece of her still lives in there, same as the rosary in your car. 

“Chucho,” you call into the house, when you’ve let yourself in. Late morning light bars the old wood floors. A gem, this house. Worn as it is welcoming. All broken in leather that’s butter to the touch and floorboards that croak like frogs. As you toe out of your shoes, you huff, your shoulders already easing into their right positions just by walking in the door. 

No sign of him yet, but that isn’t strange. Could be outside already, sleeves rolled to his elbows and hat low over his eyes. Still, as you haul the groceries down the hall, you call out again. 

“I’ve had the second worst morning of my life. Come take your food, viejo.”

While you wait, you set the bags in the kitchen, plastic crinkling, the burnt roast of coffee still rich in the air. The smell of cut grass weaves through the vented window. Rosy, this room, at this time of day. Blushed by the old lace curtains that have colored with age. There’s a kind of charm to a house like this—lived in, loved in—that you’ve never felt anywhere you’ve lived. 

You’re tucking eggs into the fridge when the floor ribbits upstairs, dragging a grin across your face. Coming home. That’s what this place feels like, when you come to visit Chucho and he insists on making you tea even though by the time he gets to you, you’re usually pouring him a mug of his own. 

There he comes now, you think, as you smile into the fridge. A man who ought to get some of the credit for raising you. You listen to him descend the creaking stairs one slow foot at a time as you toss old food from the forgotten corners of his refrigerator, replacing it with what’s vibrant, green, and new.

But you aren’t really listening. Not all the way. 

If you were, you’d know the second those feet hit the ground floor that they aren’t the footsteps of Chucho at all. Wrong Peña.

“Second worst?”

Then a long whistle. You turn.

Javier, not Chucho, stands at the foot of the stairs. Four years older than last you saw him, sober and smiling, brown eyes glinting shyly. Beautiful, same as always, but what did you expect. Wearing a white button up with long sleeves rolled just like his dad, though decidedly more unbuttoned—if he were closer, you’d see the freckles on his chest, his neck. The spots you once connected like knowing him was a game. 

Are those the same jeans he was wearing, that night in your bed? Better not to linger, wonder. Wondering is a terrible thing.

Whatever’s on your face melts Javier’s smile clean off. 

He’s put it together, then. He knows what the worst morning was.

You’ve gone eight years apart, but these last four feel like decades. There’s a wisp of silver at his temples that wasn’t there before.

“You’re home,” you hear yourself say.

He clenches one hand, fidgeting fingers. Guilty, then. Sad, then. Nervous, then.

You wonder if he’s reading you the same. If you still live side by side, on the same page.

“Yeah,” Javier says, hardly louder than a breath.

And you are running, rushing. Already against him, arms thrown, anger slinking back to the bottom of its well. For the first time in your lives, Javier doesn’t immediately return your touch. He stands for two long seconds like a statue in your arms as his heart smacks against his chest and into yours. 

You hold him tighter. Four years collapse like a stack of playing cards. He feels exactly the same, like he belongs in your arms. 

When he comes to himself, your feet lift until only your toes brush against the floor—that’s how tightly he grabs you, how wholly. You hang, held in his arms as he presses his face into your neck. 

“Smell good,” he mumbles after a while, lips brushing your neck in a way that could be accidental or entirely on purpose—either way, you don’t care.

You wind one hand into his hair. It’s shorter now, just a little off the back. The next breath that leaves you is sharp, almost a laugh. 

“You smell different,” you say, and pull your head off his shoulder to get a look at him properly. 

Javier keeps you where you are, not quite on the floor, held tight to his chest. Grinning in that boyish way. You press your thumb to his dimple and gasp—having figured it out.

“You quit,” you say, eyes wide. 

His are so close. Deep, rich, inevitable—flickering between yours. He rolls them, caught by you so easily, and rocks his jaw, smacking his gum as he sets you down to shrug. Rearranging his face to appear indifferent, but you see right through it anyway.

“Tryin’ it out,” he admits.

Neither of you let go, not yet. His thumbs stroking your waist where his hands have settled; yours moving to his temples to rake through the soft of his curls, introducing yourself to the newfound grays you don’t recognize.

“Gettin’ old, Javi,” you tease.

Then his hands rise to cover yours and a moment before they do—mere atoms away from touch—you think he looks how he did in your hallway freshman year, right before he kissed you. But his hands envelop yours and you watch his mouth twitch. Not up, not to the side. Down. His brows dipping for a millisecond as he puts it together.

You’ve forgotten. You forget all the time—hardly feel it anymore after six months of wearing the ring. Used to drive you crazy, always spinning the wrong way around, but it’s become just a part of your hand.

When you try to draw away Javier’s grip locks them in a vice, pulling them from his face to look down at your fingers where, on your left hand, sits a gold band. Two tiny diamonds bracketing a sapphire—not an heirloom, but it’s pretty. Beautiful, even. You’ve come to love it.

“Shit,” Javier mumbles, his brows high and chin hung down as he ghosts his fingers over the gem in disbelief. “Look at you.”

You hardly hear it. What you really hear is a reverie, a ghost. A ship that passed too far from your harbor, scared off by the beacon of you. Warned of your lethal shores. Pensé que me casaría contigo. Rambled when he was drunk and hollow and out of his mind. A whispered confession spoken in those tiny hours he spent in your bed in which nothing beyond the mattress existed but the two of you, intertwined.

I thought I’d marry you.

But he didn’t. Javier left without the grace of a goodbye. Now he stands with your hands in his, thumbing the sapphire of a ring someone else put on your hand while he was gone. Four years in which you had no idea if he’d come back, or when, or for how long. No idea if he’d ever want to see or speak to you again. 

Your mouth, dry, deserted. Your hands shaking in his—you have to ask. Break this moment in which he seems unable to take his eyes off the stony, cobalt blue.

“How long are you back?” you ask softly.

Javier lets go of your hands to rub the back of his neck and takes a tiny step away from you. 

You know the answer the moment he moves, but you let him say it anyway. You let him cut that tiny hole in your chest that’ll bleed dry your heart.

His smile is mirthless, doomed. Like he’s putting it all together in his head.

“For good,” Javier says, staring at the floor, then the window beyond your shoulder, into the yard. Anywhere but at you. “For good, this time.”

tag list & some mutuals:

@thethirstwivesclub @la-vie-est-une-fleur29 @hediondoamor-blog @tuquoquebrute @thundermartini

@jessthebaker @pastelpinkflowerlife @ak-vintage @rav3n-pascal22 @sixhours

@spacelatinos4life @sweetpascal @leslie-lyman @biggetywitch @jeewrites

@burntheedges @studioghibelli @la-eterna-enamorada29 @goodgirlwannabe @janaispunk

@littlemisspascal @luxurychristmaspudding @tonysopranosrobe @undercoverpena @pedritosgfreal

[themodernwitchsguide]

altars for greek gods (pt.2)

this post includes zeus, hera, poseidon, hestia, hephaestus, dionysus, ares, demeter, and athena. for part 1 including hades, persephone, artemis, apollo, aphrodite, hermes, and hekate click here, for the titans and protogenoi click here.

keep in mind that typical offerings to any god includes meat, wine, grain (usually barley), honey, and incense (myrrh and frankincense would be period appropriate), but i'm listing some specific offerings that can be given if you'd like

colors can be used for candles, banners, decor, whatever you want

ZEUS

Colors: white, blue, and grey for association with the heavens, yellow and black for association with storms. gold because he's the King of the Gods

Offerings: rain water, oak, olives/olive branches/olive leaves, vervain, cinnamon, laurel. images of himself or lightning bolts are particularly recommended for Zeus

Crystals: diamonds, gold (i think pyrite, aka fool's gold, would be offensive), turquoise, lapis lazuli, celestite, iron/steel, any quartz

Animals: eagle, bull

POSEIDON

Colors: blue and white for association with the seas, gray for association with storms, brown for association with the earth/earthquakes

Offerings: coffee, mint, ocean water, salt, seashells

Crystals: coral, petoskey stone, abalone, opal (especially water opal), blue calcite, aquamarine

Animals: horse, bull, dolphin, hippocampus

HERA

Colors: red, pink and white for association with love and marriage. gold because she's the Queen of the Gods.

Offerings: iris, rose, patchouli, coconut, cypress, maple, peacock feathers, pomegranate

Crystals: pearls, garnet, citrine, diamonds, lapis lazuli, topaz, opal, moonstone, rose quartz

Animals: peacock, cuckoo, cow

HESTIA

Colors: red, orange, and yellow for association with fire, brown or white for the hearth/home.

Offerings: tea/coffee (especially if you drink it with her), pine, bread, cider, apples, anything on fire, cinnamon

Crystals: amber, jade, garnet, ruby, carnelian, sunstone, amethyst, honey calcite

Animals: donkey, pig, crane

HEPHAESTUS

Colors: red, orange, and yellow for association with fire, metallics for association with metalworking.

Offerings: spicy things, hot beverages, handmade things, dragon's blood incense, seashells, anything on fire

Crystals: metals, fire opal, honey calcite, obsidian, hematite, carnelian

Animals: donkey, dog, crane

DIONYSUS

Colors: purple and green for association with grapes/wine, leopard/tiger print for his holy animals

Offerings: grapes (or any derivative), alcohol, cinnamon, ivy, pinecones. there's a particular emphasis on non-physical offerings with dionysus, like playing music, partying or sex/masturbation

Crystals: grape agate, leopard jasper, crazy lace agate, tiger's eye, garnet, rose or rutilated quartz, amethyst, jade

Animals: panther/leopard, tiger, bull, serpent, dolphin

ARES

Colors: red and purple for association with war

Offerings: spicy things, yarrow, chocolate, basil, cinnamon

Crystals: bloodstone, garnet, red jasper, smokey quartz, black tourmaline, hematite, metals, obsidian, carnelian

Animals: eagle owl, barn owl, poisonous snakes, boar, vulture

DEMETER

Colors: green, brown, and yellow for association with the earth/harvest. black for her ruthlessness

Offerings: oats and grain, anything baked, flowers, spices (like cinnamon or cloves, allspice is good too), leaves that have begun to change colors for fall, mint, poppy

Crystals: jade, tree/moss agate, carnelian, amber, aventurine, rutilated quartz

Animals: serpent, farm animals (especially pig), gecko, turtle-dove

ATHENA

Colors: white and grey/silver for association with wisdom. red for association with war

Offerings: anything handmade, olives/olive oil/olive branches/olive leaves, snake shed, cedar, cypress, cinnamon

Crystals: metals, celestite, fluorite, lapis lazuli, bloodstone, obsidian, iolite

Animals: snakes and owls

[squiddy-god]

Ode to a prideful knight

(Sebek zigvolt x reader)

Re-upload, anyways, this is done in a similar style to "captured" and "confessions to a Fae" this is like Knight! Sebek x noble! Reader. Reader is human sebek is down bad.

CW : simp, knight! Sebek, human reader, fem! Reader I think, fluff

2.8k

Tall was the knight who adorned himself in the crest of his king, whose blade forged of steel was an extension of his will and pride. Boastful was the knight whose old gold eyes sparkled with green as if moss on the forest floor. Noble was the night who stood back straight as the arrow that never misses, whose brow forever was set firm in a scowl.

Uncharacteristically austere was the knight for one born half to the blood of those who dance in circles under moonlight and sing with trills of trickery, the prideful, nobal, frigid knight stood at post by his king. 

Leafs and ferns lined the ground his boots touched as he marched through the forest. Fauna grew in spectacular color and mystic hues, even the cynical man knew not why his libs carried him through the trees as deep as he could venture and further still. It was as if a spell took hold and beckoned him to this place, ruins of mortal men swallowed by the weald that he grew in, statues grown with vines and tarnished with broken limbs. Crashing in his chest like thunder and beating like lightning his heart pulled him with a string towards flowers of thistle purple and coral pink. Soft petals that drape down and dance with the breath of the spring air.

They brushed against his soft locks of nyanza green and left cornsilk petals in their wake. Tranquility was steeped in the soft glow of sunlight that brushed so delicately acros his pale skin, but as if a stone was skipped in a calm pond the moment was broken when slitted pupils caught sight of such an enchanting image as your skin aglow with life. Sat atop that tall wall like a callow youth was the one that had so captured his gaze, burning intensely as the knight looked on but walked no further, not to the shallow pond that housed few rocks and the thick roots of a tree that grew from under the wall. 

“But what's the harm if I explore! The woods are safe, are they not m'lady?” you spoke, words like sweet morning dew, the woman you talked with sighed “it may be safe for now but you know of the unease that festers between those who live behind the thorns! So please i beg you come down” exasperated the woman pleaded with you and the knight cursed the fate so cruel to trap his heart in this meadow only to pluck his favorite flower. Yet you seemed to relent a final glance towards the forest and only a glimpse of his figure that you thought nothing of before you were gone. 

His breath fluttered in his lungs, had you spotted him? His unbecoming staring had the image of you seared into his blinking eyes, light of the spring sun giving warmth to your features. Old legends say that even those born to cynicism and stony resentment could become enraptured by bliss in but a glance. 

The beauty you held was unlike else he'd seen, a beauty so unique to the golden green eyes of the fae that- for a moment- he wondered if even you saw it in yourself as he did, but thoughts like this he pushed from his mind, his awestruck gaze returning to but a crocodile scowl as the knight himself returned to the wild thicket. But his love was fated to grow next to those violet roses that crawled up your tall stone wall. 

Fate was not in good spirits or clever humor he thought, how it brought his mind to you, a sight he could neither forget nor bring himself to accept. What dastardly spell had you cast with a glance?  The incantation you must have muttered when he layed eyes on you that spring day? A week had passed and here he was, the snap of twigs and the crunching of pine under his heel as he marched with renewed vigor to those hanging branches of pastel flora. 

Slitted pupils grew slim against the vibrant backing of his iris, rapidly he breathed, quickly he ran and even quicker he unsheathed his sword when the source of that scream was within his sight, a nor huntsman or wanderer was the man whose blade was taken up against you. “YOU THERE! DO YOU DARE TO DRAW YOUR WEAPON AGAINST THEM” what was he saying? He couldn't hear as blood rushed past his ears, a burning rage not concealed within pools of gold now bubbling and boiling over. Even as the rays of light hit his steel sword the unknown man cowered at a booming voice the tore baited silence. The knight had not raised his sword nor made any move to attack but the coward scampered off hurriedly threw filtered light and thick overgrowth.

“Thank you sir-” “YOU FOOLISH HUMAN” his voice boomed more light with annoyance than the rage which seemed quelled. “Tch what foolishness were you up to that elicited such a scream” he was worried, a thought he'd never truly admit. Your face held neither guilt nor shame, but was indeed painted with gratitude and security. “You have my thanks, sir knight, i simply wished to explore but found myself in errr…quite the predicament” brows creased and tension seemed to stiffen his broad shoulders. “I don't know who i can repay you”

There was no need. “Allow me to escort you home” your smile was enough repayment, allas those were words he could not utter to you. 

He came often after that, skipping the stone in the pond by the wall as he extended a hand to yours, asking your accompaniment as you swept flower petals from his hair. Would he confess that his body felt alight with glee at your touch, at the almost loving way your fingers gathered petals from his shoulders? The words sat uncomfortably in his mouth, jaw clenched and lips pressed to a thin line when you drew near, he truly was a crocodile. 

“Oh knight~” your voice sang as you leaned over the stone wall just out of his grasp as always. And just as always he stepped without hesitation or pause, onto the engorged branches of the old tree that grew and whose roots sprawled into the meadow beyond the wall. You yourself stood on the plank of an old swing made when you were young, the shift of weight and unstable footing causing you to seek stability against the wall, and letting you reach over to greet your knight. 

Routine it had become to brush the petals from his hair and shoulders, and routine it had become to smile at the sight of such an uptight man covered in both the attire of a knight and the petals from soft flowers. “Have you heard the talk, sir knight?” he sighed “do not attempt to play coy with me, what are you getting at human” you feigned hurt, but as you leaned back into your dramatics your footing almost slipped. Your hands flew to the wall for stability but were caught but the knight, one hand holding you as the other firmly grasped your shoulder, the leather of his gloves where soft you thought, and the world seemed calm again. Soft trills of singing birds and the creekinging of roots were only marginally louder than the quiet breaths. 

“Foolish human, what am I to do with you? Come on now, over the wall” and you climbed the wall, not released from his grasp for long as he lifted you safely to solid ground.

His arms where strong as they seemed to hold you a moment in the warm sun, as if unable to move from the light, as if you where the sun itself the knight stood a moment longer before allowing you to nestle yourself on the grass between spiraling twisting roots and shaded by foliage of the same weeping willow tree. You sat and he stood, arms folded behind his back and feet together as if on guard for danger. “You were saying something?” he inquired. “Well, I wondered if you had heard of the competition in a week's time, for knights of fighters- heh really anyone who fancies themselves good with a sword.” glancing up at him his expression was not the soft one from a moment ago, but the one he always had. “I have no interest in the affairs of humans” you frowned and twiddled with a small blue hued flower by your side. “Really? It's a great chance to prove your skill or represent your lord, aaannnddd the prize is a kiss from someone of your choice-” his eyes perked up and it excited you “perhaps i could impress my lord!” oh how his heart boomed.could you hear it? The way it shaked and rattled in his ribs at the thought of your kiss, but he would take this to the grave with him, to let this human know of his affections was…no he couldn't, he would pretend that his spine did not shudder at the thought, that his palms did not grow moist with sweat as he felt himself wanting that prize. His pride, that damned pride of the knight would not allow him to fall, to fall so desperately in love with this human, but his pride would not let him lose, he would win this competition for the honor of his love and for the touch of your lips. “Oh, yes i'm sure he'd be very impressed if you won” 

Bright were the blinding rays that illuminated the dirt paths and vibrant colors of the cloth colored stands, strewn with the patterns of this kingdom in reds and greens and blues cheering crowds hollered at knights who prepared to fight. Up in high stands sat the king next to his own king malleus, standing alongside the king was his advisor and alongside malleus was lilia as expected. Next to the highest stands were slightly lowered stands where noble women sat and gawked in frilly petticoats and ruffles in spring hues, although like a blak sheep you stood out, sitting amongst them in simple clothing and a shifting uncomfortable glance around. He was curious as to why you sat with them out of place. 

He began to prepare, putting on the thick padded clothing and the cadmium green fabric over his head, the panels of fabric covering his back and front adorned with the crest he wore as a knight as well as the crest of his family. He fastened his belt around his waist loose and checked his sword, a blade without an edge as to not cause impairment

The haughty voice of the king flooded the open air, a man devoid of dignity and a fool of a king. True, tension and unease was rampant between the kingdoms since the time of the old queen and the king philip. “As you all have gathered here, your gratuitous and splendid king, me, hosts this tournament between knights and those who take up the sword! Besides the price of honor and gold, the champion shall also receive a blessing and kiss from the one of their choice” the fool of a king gestured towards the stands that you sat in with the noble women, “eligible noble women and the kingdoms beloved (y/n)” he laughed to himself as if this was a brilliant idea. “Have you anything to say to the competing knights and fighters?” the king asked. You glanced around the field as though your eyes were searching in vain for something you could not find, until with joy they landed on the figure close to the stands.

“Yes m’lord i do have something to say!” all eyes watched you as your figure leaned over the edge of the stands just far enough to almost reach the knight with tresses of feldgrau and nyanza green. He reached a hand up to yours, hardly bowed as to your outstretched one, but they were held together. “i already give my blessing to sir zigvolt!” you stated matter of factly, voice heard by all as whispers and murmurs sprouted like blackberry seeds. His face bloomed scarlet like spring carnations, the tips of his ears burning brighter in hue than even his pale skin. A prideful smile crept its way onto his face, chest inflating with confidence as he shot you a smug toothy gin. “I will win, with your blessing I will be victorious” as he turned away he paid no mind to the scowls and glares that followed the path he walked and saturated the air he breathed so thickly. 

Settled now from the shock of your statement the stands where envied with new life, howling and whistling cheers rang in the spring air and filled the ears of over confident knights and fighters.

Carried by wisps of wind, sand and dirt shifted and settled like dancing plumes of smoke around the footing of those who fought in the dirt flores arena. The world mattered not for the knight who stood tall and unflinching in the face of a steel blade thrust towards him. It was mocking really, the way he rolled his sinewy shoulders as if warming up, the lightning step of his feet that kicked up dirt and how the pommel of his sword struck his opponents center back. He was showing off, proving his capability in hope his love would praise his skill, and call him their knight. 

Another one defeated, dules passing by quickly as the knight's gaze became more intense, predatory as light cast the hard shadows of his strong features soft. To take up a sword seemed to come as naturally to the fae knight you watched as breathing, as being the same passionate yet sullen man you admired in your own secrecy just as he did. Even as he mounted a horse, confidence rolling off him in waves and floating like clouds to dampen the opponent in cowardice, he held an almost tangible pride, one that he wore on his shoulder and carried in his crest. 

You sat enraptured at the edge of your seat, palms flexing against the wood as your breath caught in your throat. Birds flap their bright wings within your stomach and you refused yourself to blink for the anticipation was too much. 

The lines of his head were creased in concentration, the long ple spiraling in green and white readied at his side, the way his jaw held firm and his lips pressed to a fine line, the way the cheers of the crowd faded to nothing more than a dull ringing in your ears as a grin split the heavens of your face and the knight opposite to the one you fancied was knocked off his horse. The hardened gaze that met yours held much more than pride and jovial victory, that old golden gaze held for only you a love that the fae had not harbored for another. 

You raised from your seat as soon as the cheers of victory brought you back from his gase, and you traversed down to the pit where your prideful knight dropped to his knee, gloved hands folded over his knee and head lowered to a bow.  

Gentle hands like flowerpetles cupped his face, and tilted it to meet your eyes. “Congratulations my valiant knight” you teased, yet with a touch soft as morning dew your lips fell to his hairline where nyanza green hair was slicked back, and there that touch of your lips lingered, and would continue to linger until he felt it again.

For love struck was the knight who kneeled to two, and prideful was the knight who held that image of you in his mind. Sturdy was the knight who held you in his arms when you fell not only for him but from that wall. Foolish was the knight, truly foolish was the knight who thought love would escape him, that it would not encroach on him like winding vines in such a fleeting moment. But even old legends tell tales of those mystic beings who dance in night time meadows and drink sweet cream and talk of magic amongst themselves, and who find love at a glance no matter how fleeting it may seem to those not blessed with the eyes to witness it. Yes prideful and foolish, and hopelessly in love was the knight who was blessed with those golden eyes laden with moss green. Blessed was he to have seen you sit on that tall wall, to watch violet roses bloom before him and foster those feelings of love. 

Blessed was that prideful knight to see the beauty you held, and blessed was he to love it, for he would always love what even you could not see. 

[green-with-envy-phandom-event]

The Final Scores are in!

(lines by @ovytia-art, @jamiethebeeart, @maebird-melody, @hannahmanderr, @dashing-through-ecto, @minnowmarsh, @dashing-through-ecto)

Congratulations Red Team for filling some very big shoes and taking home the gold!

We did it, Guys~! Green With Envy 2024 is now officially over! Thank you so much to everyone who participated!

@echo-does-art, @half-deadmagicperson, @goodfish-bowl, @ectoblastfromthepast, @furiarossa, @fuyuthefoxwriter, @brothebro, amazing work!

You managed to submit 219 colors in one month!

Pre-Bonus Points Scores

Red - 1832 Blue - 1409 Yellow - 1524 Brown - 703 Green - 109 Purple - 307 Pink - 304

Orange - 347 Black - 297 White - 191

Post-Bonus Points Scores

Red - 2507 Blue - 1920 Yellow - 2145 Brown - 830 Green - 154 Purple - 444 Pink - 434 Orange - 457 Black - 387 White - 256

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If anyone wants to color line art from the 2024 event, these lines are now open for anyone to color, just make sure to read the notes the line artists left you and credit them when you post a color! Last year's (2023's) stuff can also be found here.

MVP’s for Bonus Points Across All Teams Under the Cut!

The top 3 bonus point earners overall were:

@jamiethebeeart from yellow team with 230 points

@ecto-stone from blue team with 194 points

@half-deadmagicperson from red team with 164 points

Here's how well colorists scored with the Mods for slower, but more detailed colors! Each color of this type that we could spot earned that participant 5 additional points!

These people all did Palette Challenges, earning them 3 additional points per entry!

@lavendarlily x9, @craftybookworms x6, and @half-deadmagicperson x1

These people colored in bulk, with every 25 pieces netting them an additional 10 points!

@nanaarchy x2, @fuyuthefoxwriter x2, @half-deadmagicperson x2, @reading-wanderer x2, @jamiethebeeart x2, @balshumetsbaragouin x1, @echo-does-art x1, @furiarossa x1, @ecto-stone x1, @marzfartz x1, @moonfoxgazer x1, @audaciousanonj x1, and @sherry-a-h x1

These 11 people successfully poached points!

Yellow Team @reading-wanderer got x4, @moonfoxgazer got x2, and @marzfartz got x2 For a total of 8 Poaches and 160 points Red Team @half-deadmagicperson got x3, @goodfish-bowl got x1, @echo-does-art got x1, and @brothebro got x1 For a total of 6 Poaches and 120 points Blue Team @ecto-stone got x2, and @sherry-a-h got x1 For a total of 3 Poaches and 60 points Brown Team @audaciousanonj got x1 For 20 points Orange Team @craftybookworms got x1 For 20 points

These people had some extra creative colors, which each earned 5 additional points!

@lavendarlily for their animated lightning @craftybookworms for their creative use of the empty countertop @minnowmarsh for their 3D papercraft @raaorqtpbpdy for spending a very long time adding in sheen effects and using multiple types of coloring tools @raaorqtpbpdy for their elaborate mixed media background with the main art as a 3d floating element @echo-does-art drew and colored all the additional knives @brothebro for their creative punchline to the meme @ecto-stone for trying the hidden transparency trick for first time @ecto-stone for another transparency trick @ecto-stone for this lovely gif worm @moonfoxgazer for the outrageously cursed and elaborate OC Slackjaw born of Susi's lines @moonfoxgazer for their creative punchline to the meme @furiarossa for the above and beyond body and fur texture added to Susi's lines, paired with an amazing background @furiarossa for coloring the lines to look like a statue, and adding a ficlet inspired by the color @ventisettestars for this time intensive Hades coloring style @dreamwraith's VERY time-intensive traditional oil painting @marzfartz for their traditional watercolor with a really nice background @marzfartz for another lovely watercolor @ectoblastfromthepast for their super nice digital piece that took them 3 days of intense focus @summerssixecho for their scanned magazine digital collage @jamiethebeeart for this stunning digital piece that has such a lovely added background @jamiethebeeart for adding basically a whole story to the background of their color @jamiethebeeart for adding a background that just really fit the vibes of the line art perfectly @jamiethebeeart for their portal accident animation @pokerust for their papercraft @goodfish-bowl for their amazing paint pour background @sherry-a-h for their diamond painted furby

Thanks so much everyone for all your hard work to make this such a successful event and we hope to see you again next year~!

Looking for the 2024 Masterpost? Looking for links to last year's stuff? 2023 Free-To-Color Line Art 2023 Event Decal 2023 Masterpost

[codgod]

y’know generally i try to limit colour palettes to as few colours as possible to make things more cohesive but despite my best efforts only jay ended up being able to stick to that </3

ANYWAYS here’s the as-of-right-now fully updated designs for these dickheads. these will no doubt undergo even more tweaking as i draw them more but this is a start i guess. also pls open the pictures to look at them properly i worked so hard LOL

some random notes under the cut yaaaay

chip —

he jingles when he walks. somehow he’s still stealthy. i do not know how

kept the platinum ring that bonded him to gillion in the block! because hey he doesn’t really have a reason to take it off (and it’s a nice reminder of how much gill cares about him, and how far their friendship has come since that ice arena)

his tattoos shift and flicker like actual flames, and sometimes (harmless, purely aesthetic) sparks fly off them when he’s excited

i just think smoke coming out of his mouth when he’s angry would be cool :]

chipped teeth from biting rocks and coins all the time :/

he has scars from the red lightning, they’re just mostly contained to his back and shoulders. they’re a similar red to his coat even once they’ve healed

gillion —

the tail sleeve thing is so he can rest it on the ground without damaging his scales, he doesn’t usually wear it when he’s just on the ship because the wood is soft enough that it’s usually fine + it can hinder swimming a bit. it’s mostly meant for places where there’s cobblestone or gravel streets and such. i think his armour would probably have a version that looks similar but covers the whole tail minus the fins, maybe with some armour plating of its own. i didn’t draw it because there wasn’t any room lol

his scars from the lightning are pink mostly because red stood out too much tbh. they softly glow in the dark the same as his coral and the pink parts of his fins

also kept his ring! his hands aren’t really made for jewellery, though, because the webbing means it won’t sit very secure on his finger. so he keeps it on the same chain as the necklace he got from aslana to keep it safe

tried to make him look a bit bulkier and more his age than in my original design? i feel like i was leaning too much into the naivety and. shortness. originally lol. he also has thicker eyebrows now and i’m still trying to decide how i feel about them but i think? i like it? i don’t tend to give many character thin eyebrows so it could’ve been a unique thing for him but alas

i think i made the sword too small but like ignore that

also forgor to include pretzel </3 that’s okay though she can get her own design sheet later. she’s special like that

jay —

i believe in tall jay supremacy

blue magic! i was considering gold but that’d look a bit more like a canary than i wanted for her wings so. blue jay :]

her hair is supposed to look kinda like fire to mimic her dad ! kinda showing that even if she runs from her family and the navy they’ll always be a part of her. and also i just like drawing messy hair

i gave her sturdier gloves just because i feel like it fits her better. also changed up the shirt to more of a button up solely because i don’t like tank tops very much LOL

i did WANT to make her outfit a bit flashier to match the boys better but i couldn’t quite figure out where to Put the flash. maybe that’ll come later, the way the story’s going i might get to design some cool prosthetics for her or something

overall —

because there’s just so many fucking colours i triiied to add at least one or two colours from each of them into the others designs. jay has her necklace with each of their main colours on it, her wings are the same blue as gillions eyes, her jacket and right eye are the same dark blue as destiny’s blade, her hair is the same orange as the lighter part of chips tattoos. chip has a dark green sash under all the belts, the same as the hilt of destiny’s blade. they all use the same shades of black, gold, and brown

the only real exception is gillion doesn’t have anything from the other two because he has Such a specific colour palette and he already had so much going on as-is orz jay was obviously the easiest to do this with because she has both warm and cool colours in her palette by default lol (and i did her design last, so that helps)

[wjbs-bonkle-au]

Secondary-element palettes!

Please note that these are more to show the variance that can be achieved within the canon palette limitations (kinda, but also I added a third set of colours for each)

The first two sets of colours for each element are based on the canon colours, while the third is a bonus tertiary colour and the final single-row one is eyes. Left are sampled from Studio's colour-icons while right are sampled from a render of some 1x2 tiles in those colours (which means they might not be accurate to how they'd look on a more complex build).

List of all Studio colours below, with ones from custom packs (specifically the 8/10 Colourpack) in italics and metallic/pearl colours in bold.

Sonics:

Set 1 (light grey)

Very Light Grey

Light Grey

True Grey

Set 2 (dark grey/black)

Dark Grey

Black

True Black

Set 3 (blue/medium grey)

Smooth Metal Blue

Smooth Flat Silver

Bionicle Silver

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Water Blue

Gravity:

Set 1 (purple)

Magenta

Lilac

Dark Purple

Set 2 (black)

Black

True Black

Metallic Black

Set 3 (blue)

Medium Violet

Blue

Blue-Violet

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Purple

Plasma:

Set 1 (white)

White

Very Light Grey

True White

Set 2 (orange)

Orange

Neon Orange

Reddish Orange

Set 3 (pink)

Light Purple

Flamingo Pink

Coral

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Dark Pink

Magnetism:

Set 1 (Jovan's colour-scheme except with no white)

Black

Dark Blue

Smooth Titanium

Set 2 (white/light grey)

Light Grey

White

True White

Set 3 (lime-green)

Light Lime

Lime

Medium Lime

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Yellowish-Green

Plantlife:

Set 1 (green)

Dark Green

Bright Green

Olive Green

Set 2 (blue)

Dark Blue

Dark Azure

Sky Blue

Set 3 (brown)

Dark Brown

Medium Brown

Medium Nougat

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Bluish-Green

Lightning:

Set 1 (blue)

Medium Azure

True Cyan

Blue

Set 2 (white)

White

True White

SK-White

Set 3 (yellow)

True Yellow

Light Yellow

Yellow

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Yellow

Iron:

Set 1 (orange)

Reddish Orange

Dark Orange

Fabuland Red

Set 2 (metals)

Smooth Titanium

Metallic Gold

Metallic Copper

Set 3 (dark grey)

Dark Grey

Dark Bluish Grey

SK-Dark Grey

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Reddish-Orange

Psionics:

Set 1 (blue)

Dark Blue

Blue-Violet

Violet

Set 2 (gold)

Metallic Gold

Smooth Pearl Gold

Smooth Refined Dark Gold

Set 3 (purple)

Lilac

Dark Purple

Sand Purple

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Medium Blue

[cosmic-ghost-hermit]

Past Life Reading

Hey fellas! Please please please donate to my CashApp or interact with my post so I can do this full time! If you can't donate please interact with this post. We made it to 200 followers and I can't thank you all enough. Also if y'all wanna suggest readings go ahead and dump those recommendations in my ask box!

⚡Donate to my CashApp☀️

Decks used are the Archetype Oracle, the Anime Tarot, and the Starseed Oracle.

This reading will go over one of your Past Lives and how it affects your current incarnation. Remember reincarnation isn't linear and there are other planets with life on them. HAPPY FULL MOON IN CAPRICORN!! Take what resonates and leave the rest behind but always be open to new experiences!

______________________________________________________________

PILE ONE

Astrology: Taurus, Cancer, Scorpio

Past Life Song: Pale Blue Dot by TWRP

Current Life Song: 3 Strange Days by School Of Fish

Vibes: Black, white, ocean blue, pearl, moldavite, coral reef, seagulls, gold rings, gray hair, globe, strong aura, childlike wonder, peanuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, Zues, Posideon

Cards: The Fool, The Hierophant, Queen of Cups, Justice, The One, The Seed, Perspective, Child of the Cosmos

Welcome, pile one! I am feeling some kind of royalty from this previous life. I think you were a spiritual leader in this life too or you were very involved with spirituality. I think you were probably really superstitious and trusted the divine more than you trusted humans. You had a strong faith in tradition and routine. I see this is a huge contrast to your current life. In this previous life, you were very connected with your guides. I see you could probably communicate with them easily and often. You have many sea spirits that look after you that you connected to in this past life. They followed you because of how much spiritual work you did in this past life. I see in this life you were guided by your living ancestors into the role you took. You had to learn that walking a path for the sake of the collective is a high honor and it is not a role for the weak. You had to give up a lot of opportunities that would have been for selfish gain for the sake of others. You have lots of built-up anger from this past life of sacrifice. You were extremely noble in this past life. In your current life, this behavior still pops up from time to time. You are learning how to serve yourself over serving others. I see you have some people-pleaser tendencies that leak into this life. You are still meant to be spiritual but you are also meant to learn about your own opinions/morals and hold them above the beliefs of the many. I see in this life you are finding your own moral compass. I see you have been betrayed by mentors you thought you could trust with everything. They withheld information that would have been extremely helpful if you had known ahead of time. I see that your parents were not kind to you. Despite these hardships' you still have a pure heart. Except now you are more capable of ruthlessness. Be ruthless in your morals. Serve justice out on a silver plater so your enemies look at their reflection while they face your wrath. In this life, you will release the anger you held from the last. You must be selfish. You must harness your wrath. Seek truth. Do not follow without knowing why you follow.

______________________________________________________________

PILE TWO

Astrology: Libra, Aquarius, Leo

Past Life Song: Run Boy Run by Woodkid

Current Life Song: Being Real is the New Fake by Toni Jones

Vibes: Mint green, lavender, pink, gold, painting, flower crown, lightning, Celtic knots, ribbon, modesty, alchemy, museums, strawberry, smoking, drinking, dive bars, Hermes, Persephone

Cards: The Empress, The World, Death, 2 of Swords, The Creator, The Riddle, You're Not Alone, Cracked Open

Hello, pile two! I see you were a traveler in this specific past life. I see you traveled in style and luxury. You didn't start in luxury though. You earned it. You worked hard for the opportunities you gained. I see you had to jump many obstacles that didn't make much sense, in the moment. Some of them were difficult for you to pass but others were a breeze. I think you were a pilot for the military. You earned many awards while in service. You saw the most beautiful sights in situations that didn't allow you to appreciate them. You lost so many friends to a nasty war. This made you feel really alone. After you finished serving in the military, I think you became an airline pilot. This allowed you to be in the sky and make more friends along the way. I see you enjoying tourism and seeing the sights. You got to experience so many different cultures and learned to love every part of the planet for its different aspects. I see you took many lovers in your travels but never settled down. You picked up a creative hobby in your travels. I see maybe a martial art also became a hobby of yours in this life. You learned in that life that humans can be scary and life can be hell but you also learned that humans are wonderfully creative and life can be heaven. You had the pleasure of seeing every part of what it is like to be alive. The good and the bad. In your current life, I see you still are quite creative. You pull a lot of inspiration from other cultures. I feel you miss the sky a lot. You might create lots of art relating to the sky. In this life, you are learning how to connect with your fellow humans. You traveled so much in your past life, this definitely made it hard to make permanent connections. Now you must adjust to stay grounded and learn to live in mostly one spot. Don't fret though. You will still travel spiritually. Your soul is a free one and needs to see the stars once more.

______________________________________________________________

PILE THREE

Astrology: Sagittarius, Virgo, Pisces

Past Life Song: Sunday Candy by Nico Segal

Current Life Song: Live Your Life by MIKA

Vibes: Cyan, periwinkle, peach, orange, butterflies, Jupiter, Saturn, tigers-eye, winter, sports, yen coins, peregrine falcon, feminity, Hestia, Hera

Cards: Page of Wands, 10 of Cups, 5 of Pentacles, 4 of Swords, Agape, Gnosis, You're Not For Everyone, The Void

Hey there, pile three! Welcome to your reading. I see in this past life you were a romantic. You were perhaps a mother in this life or you took the role of one to your community. You had an abundance of love that you handed out like candy. I see you were very spiritual and read many religious texts in your spare time but this wasn't something you shared like your love. You supported many youngins in their dreams but never got to fulfill your own. You were too busy making food for your children and community. You were planning events and hosting parties for your family reunions. You were the glue that held together your loved ones. I see you went under-appreciated a lot of the time but you were immensely respected by everyone you knew. Even when you grew old you still had the heart of a spry little one. It surprised everyone how active of a person you were. I see you lived a loooooong life. You learned how to lead and how to see the love everywhere you went. In this life, you are meant to fulfill the dreams you couldn't in the last one. I see you seeking knowledge. Maybe you are a student. I see you putting aside your studies to help teach others. Old habits die hard I guess. Make sure you are spending your current life on yourself. Your community was assisted enough in your previous life. You definitely reincarnated into the same family. I see you have both a grand trine or a grand square in your astral chart. Allow yourself to learn for the sake of you. Learn that selfishness isn't as evil as people say it is. I hope you find the information you are looking for in this life. Your soul is determined to gain knowledge so allow it to learn. Allow yourself to be an oddity. Allow yourself to be the black sheep that isn't understood. You don't have to take the same role you took in your last life. You can serve yourself. You should be your priority.

______________________________________________________________

PILE FOUR

Astrology: Capricorn, Aries, Gemini

Past Life Song: Discovery Album by Daft Punk (yes the whole album)

Current Life Song: Me@U by Middle Milk

Vibes: Soft pink, rainbows, yellow, owl, pyramid, egg, horns, mountains, quartz, karma, star clusters, long hair, short bangs, malachite, copper, Sirius, mental health issues, Iris, Apollo

Cards: The Devil, Queen of Swords, Ace of Pentacles, 8 of Wands, The Vision, The Starborn, Messenger, Star Ancestors

Hey there, pile four. Welcome to your past life reading! You had it pretty rough in your past life. You spent a lot of it seeing weird visions and remembering other worlds. I see you could have been suffering from intense mental health issues. You were most likely hospitalized for a lot of your previous life. Your body was chained to earth but your mind was elsewhere. Your soul was being pulled into the astral realm by your guides and ancestors. Meanwhile, your body was facing incarceration. You could have other past lives on other planets and your last life consisted mostly of your soul adjusting to Earth's energy. Your soul is not new at all but it is semi-new to Earth. You were learning how wild Earth can be. You had to acclimate to the lower vibrations. There is nothing wrong with low vibrations by the way. They were just different than what you were used to. I see in this life you still have crazy dreams and visions. You are really attuned to the spirit realm. You are just now experiencing Earth for the first time consciously. You are meant to be a seer on earth while simultaneously learning all you can about what it is like to be human. You serve as a messenger for those who don't have the skill to hear the spirit realm as well as you do. You are learning very fast that it is rough out here. You are just starting to feel the weight of karmic connections. You will be learning a lot here but your main mission is to bring as much harmony and balance as possible to Earth. You understand how sick Earth is right now and it hurts you to think about but you have the wisdom to help her feel better. You have the wisdom to assist humans. It is hidden in your soul, friend. This is an opportunity to heal her and her citizens. I know it is tough out here and I'm really sorry that it is. I wish you could have had a warmer welcome but this is a fantastic opportunity.

[milomilesmib]

Since I have been feeling a particularly strong attachment to my comfort item lately here are what I think PJO character's comfort items would be (short answers in bold text for those who want a quick read):

Percy: a blue stuffie from his childhood. He doesn't often have it with him but he always feels safer when he is with it. And yes, he probably calls the stuffie "he" because I said so

Grover: a little mushroom pendant from Juniper. He never puts it on anything, just keeps it in his pocket and takes it out to fidget with when he's stressed. It has a really smooth surface and pretty colours so it's a good sensory thing for him.

Annabeth: her camp necklace. She always has it and when she doesn't she feels bare. Every time she's stressed she looks at a bead and thinks of a good memory from that year.

Thalia: a shirt she particularly favours because she wore it a lot when on the run with Luke and Annabeth. Any time she's in a bad mood she wears it and it makes her feel a bit better.

Nico: canonically, it's his skull ring, but I also feel like he'd have a childhood blanket that he's really attached to. It's a really soft fabric and so he always uses it when he's feeling overstimulated or understimulated cause it works for both

Rachel: a scrunchie with a fall leaf pattern on it from Percy. It was the first birthday present he gave her. It was all he could find and afford to get her that he thought she might like and he was scared she'd be underwhelmed but she really appreciated that he went through the effort and now she always has it on her.

Leo: a rock he found on a beach field trip with Piper back at the Wilderness school. It's pink and translucent, so when he holds it up to the sun it lights up a bit. It reminds him that he's cared about and loved when he has an existential crisis about being the 7th wheel.

Piper: a rock matching Leo's, found on the same trip. It's grey and smooth with streaks of white and green. It was a big source of comfort for her when mourning Jason, and she was able to remind herself that there was someone out there who shared her pain.

Jason: a silver bracelet Thalia gave him with a lightning bolt charm. It's the only jewelry he wears and he always has it with him, even when he dies.

Hazel: a small keychain from Frank. It's a little bear holding a plastic gemstone heart. She always brings it with her on quests and outings, making sure never to lose it.

Frank: a purple and gold friendship bracelet Hazel made him when he became praetor. He always treasured it because it made him feel like he'd made someone proud, despite the fact he'd already made so many people proud.

Reyna: her praetor's cloak. She didn't think she'd form an attachment to it, but she really liked the fabric and it made her feel important and safe. After she gave it up, Thalia noticed her seeming sad without it and got her a new one, but silver and gold embroidered with the symbol of Bellona.

Will: a pressed flower from Nico. Nico started picking flowers to press when he was unhappy as a way to learn how to keep his powers under control when his emotions are strong. He gave Will the first one and Will was so honoured he decided to carry it everywhere with him.

Apollo/Lester: a new ukulele Will got him after he lost his old one. Like Percy, he doesn't usually have it, but playing it always calms him down and reminds him of the people he loves.

Meg: a chip of a terracotta pot from her childhood home (I forget what it's called). She found it before she and her dad left and decided to keep it as a keepsake.

Lavinia: her star of David pendant, canonically, but I'd imagine she also has a music box with a little ballerina that reminds her of childhood and makes her feel safe.

Feel free to add on with any characters I missed :)

[peachtinzz]

very brief dnd au musings because the rot consumes and all that

elaboration below the cut!

i thought gerry as an unaware sorcerer could be neat, only fully coming into his power after the eye “recognizes” him as an avatar. the draconic bloodline sorcerer typing is because im kind of in love with the idea of the fears as dragons …. perhaps not on an entirely physical level but i like the idea of them presenting as dragons at least. also eric is the tiefling and mary is the elf!

i also think gerry would lean away from tapping into that bloodline magic as much as possible, preferring to use his skills as a rogue and learned arcane trickster magic since it’s something he himself earned and doesn’t require the use of the eye’s power. though that bloodline magic would for sure bleed into his arcane trickster abilities. some kind of visual signifier for that would be neat but im not entirely sure what it would be yet (probably eye tattoos lighting up or smthn, but i also think those as a general arcane focus could be cool also). his cantrips would be mage hand, lightning lure, minor illusion, and green flame blade (lvl 10+)!

i initially struggled with michael’s race and class but eventually decided on him being a firbolg for the giant ancestry (tall freaking guy) and motm describing firbolg magic as “the obscuring sort”, which reminded me of how people usually see michael as marked by the lonely! he also just has inherent fey vibes to me. not entirely sold on scribes wizard for him but it seemed the most fitting class/subclass for him. i had initially thought about him being a cleric, but he doesn’t have enough religious boy vibes for me personally to make him one (though if he were to be one i think he’d be a peace domain cleric). scribes felt fitting enough for the institute, and none of the wizard schools felt like vibes enough for him either. overall though i think he’d be a support based caster with the message, prestidigitation, light, gust (lvl 5+), and toll the dead (lvl 13+) cantrips

the magic colors/smells are just a personal thing for me! i love it when magic is sensory. to be specific, i think gerry would have a deeper olivey green pre eye avatar recognition that turns classic magnus green afterwards. michael would have a coral pink sort of color that glitters gold!

may or may not make full designs for them at some point or designs for other characters, who knows

[the-kr8tor]

Scarlet Leaves

Pairing: Fae! Hobie Brown x Fem! Reader

Word count: 9.6k

Tags: Use of Y/N sparsely, No specific physical description of the reader, Smut implied, CW food mention, CW spiders, TW arachnophobia, CW vomiting, CW religious images, CW death, TW violence, TW blood, CW gore, CW injury, TW animal injury/harm, CW body horror, TW Suicide.

This chapter tackles dark themes, read at your own discretion.

A/N: if there's any warnings I forgot to add, please tell me so I could add it in. Endings are linked below, same warnings apply.

Navigation

The Fall Masterlist

PART III <<<

You open your eyes to the colour green, the grass under you grazes your legs, a delicate emerald fabric over your palms. Your skirt the same shade as the grass below you, camouflaging your form, not knowing where you or the ground starts or ends.

You're drowning in green, but you don't mind as the wind blows cool air behind you, a breath of reprieve from the searing heat of summer. Your fingers expertly fill in a tattered hole in the fabric, dainty daisies littered all over the cloth, all lovingly interwoven within the sea of green.

Pink dahlias accompany your side as your previous companion is nowhere to be seen. Too busy with your needlework, you haven't noticed where he went. Wondering where he went, you Look up from your handiwork, gold fills your vision, brilliant brown dotting around it, rescuing you from all the viridescent.

“Where did you go?” The voice is your own yet foreign in your ears. Tone soft and gentle like the air gliding behind you. You can't control your own body, like an audience watching a scene unfold.

“Out” He leans back, lips in a sly smile, eyes crinkling in the corners. His hands hide behind him, vines dance under his skin.

“We are out, web weaver.” You gesture around the hill, the tall oak standing proudly next to you in a protective stance. “Were you scaring the villagers again?”

“Only the hunters, love” he kneels before you, taking his hand out, laying a lily right behind your ear. The heart under your ribcage beats rapidly. “And the occasional children, someone needs to teach them not to wander off.”

He beams at your bewildered face, heat rising to your cheeks. “Where did your tongue go?” Ramping up his teasing, he plops his head over your lap, crushing his cloak under him. “I think I am quite fond of the view from down here”

You stifle from rolling your eyes, scoffing, you feign anger. “You just ruined my work!” Trying to pull the fabric from underneath him, he laughs loudly at your predicament. “You are an absolute menace, web weaver”

He smiles up at you like you've held up the moon just for him. You'd be lying if you weren't looking down at him all the same. Silence fills the area, the wind carries the sound of birds chirping as he holds up his knuckles to your cheek, wiping at the sweat clinging to your skin. Like muscle memory, you lean towards his touch. Closing your eyes, you savour it, akin to a man dying of thirst finding an oasis in the middle of the desert.

Humming happily, he retracts his hand back only for him to slide it down towards your hip, a provocative action but you don't protest or even move. Instead, you let him rest his large palm over the cotton of your blouse, quietly wishing there isn't any barrier between him and your skin. He feels it too, the lightning passing through your body to his immortal coil. Exhaling, he straightens himself out, expelling any compromising thoughts.

In your disappointment, he lifts his hand off your form. But he couldn't completely part away from the contact, he opts to hold you by the hem of your blouse, mindlessly playing with the cloth. You're completely enamored by him, and he too is the same for you.

A question appears in your mind, judging from the current state of your relationship with the being before you, you're sure he would answer.

“Why do you call yourself ‘web weaver?’ Did someone name you that?”

“Why? Do you not like it?” he dodges the question.

“Just curious” there's disappointment hidden in your voice. “It is a long title, you need a nickname or something similar or one that fits you”

“So, you do not like it? I am willing to take other names, if you have other suggestions”

“Quite the opposite, I am partial to ‘web weaver’ and I do have some ideas”

He leans to his left, face dangerously close to your stomach. You smile shyly, lifting your hands to bravely hold his jaw, gently scratching his nape with your nails. Surprisingly enough, he doesn't fret.

“Tell me” purring, voice tantalizingly sweet. He sighs in content.

“Hobart”

He cracks his eye open a smidge, bright eyes peeking through. “Hobart?” Testing the name on his tongue, he repeats it once again.

“Hobie for short, I have always liked that name. Sounds…modern”

“Is that the only reason?” His arm loops around your waist whilst you continue to cup his face affectionately. A breeze passes by, carrying a dandelion flying freely.

If someone would come across the scene, they would've thought a pair of lovers are enjoying the sun together; not an otherworldly being and a regular human who has found herself uncharacteristically attached to the living myth before her.

“It is a strong contender, the same goes with the name ‘Gabriel’ I suppose”

He scrunches his nose, an act so human you forgot for a second what he really is. “I prefer the former. You have thought it through, clever.”

“It has been eating at me, I cannot keep calling you web weaver or my tongue will get tied”

“Hobie it is then” his thumb presses softly on your skin.

You grin, sunshine making your eyes sparkle in delight. “That was easy”

“You thought I would put up a fight?”

“Yes, because you always do. It took me days just to convince you to let me mend your cloak”

“Yet, I still said yes” Hobie reaches up to cradle your face, swiping at the sweat stuck to your eyebrow, he slowly pulls you down towards him.

Your breath gets stuck in your throat, frozen in elation. “You said yes” you said against his lips, yours only grazing his, the friction enough to spread goosebumps all over your arms. “Hobie–I”

He hums, eyes flickering down to the plush of your lips.

“I might love you, and I do not think I can manage it”

He meets your glimmering eyes full of love, “I will, if you cannot, I will manage for the both of us”

Hobie meets with your lips in a chaste manner, you swear your heart stopped beating. He pulls away for a second “Because it is you, and only you, my–”

You wake up covered in sweat, blades of grass right under your healing palms. His cloak protects you from getting poked by the grass. Your eyes look up at the mysterious light floating above Hobie’s abode, providing an eternal morning.

“You're awake”

Sitting up by your elbows, you look at him sitting a few feet away from you, legs crossed over the other, hands occupied with cutting a blood red apple.

“I didn't notice that I fell asleep” the cloak feels soft under your touch, reminiscent of the dream you had. Wind rustles past softly. You narrow your eyes suspiciously, “you didn't have anything to do with that, right?”

“Do you think of me so cruel?” Hobie points at the ground next to you with his knife. “You tired yourself out from making those” The wooden handle looks old and worn out, but the steel still has its shine, a sharpness that could cut bone.

Looking down, you see a pile of crowns made from daisies. All woven by your hand, judging by how your palms smell of flowers. There's one that's not yet completed, the circle broken, edges unconnected.

Picking it up, you rattle your sleep deprived brain on why you started making a bunch of them. You don't even know how to make daisy crowns in the first place.

“How–? Did I make these?”

“Mm-hmm” he replies, mouth full with an apple slice.

“Huh?” you lay back down, admiring your handiwork under the light.

“Hungry?” Hobie tosses an apple at you without warning.

The fruit bounces and slides before it reaches your waist. You look at him with a knowing look.

“Right,” you roll it away, back towards Hobie. “I'm good.”

“It's literally just an apple, no tricks” with a flick of his hand, the apple rolls back to you.

“Sure,” sarcasm rolls off your tongue. You play a game of catch with him.

“I can't lie, remember?” The apple rolls back and forth.

“No,” you emphasize the word with a roll of your eyes.

“You trust me enough for you to sleep here but you can't trust me with a single apple?” He rolls the fruit in between his palms. Brown eyes stare at you teasingly. “You have a weird way of measuring faith in people”

“Accidentally sleeping here doesn't condemn me to a life here. An apple does”

“Because you know the stories so well with your offerings of honey and milk” his smirk grows wider with each banter.

“It was outdated information”

“Thought you humans have a way of accessing infinite knowledge” he lays down, the light shines on his perfect skin. Facing you with a soft smile, his hand still on the apple that's held to his bare chest.

“We do, but that doesn't mean the information is still accurate after centuries. Some things change”

“Not all” He looks away from you, eyes fixated on the sky above.

After a beat of silence, the name still rattles around in your mind's eye. The dream seems so vivid you could still taste his lips on yours. You chance it, hoping he doesn't slice you to bits with the knife near him.

“Speaking of” you nervously lean to the side, facing the being in front of you. With an apprehensive exhale, you bravely ask him. “I've read a book in the manor’s library. A book about the fae” you lie once again.

“I'm guessing a story book then?”

“No, it looks…old and less storybookie”

Hobie raises a confused eyebrow. “Storybookie?”

“Y’know, it doesn't look like it was written for children. No pictures, just a bunch of words.”

“Words too big for you?” He chuckles at his own joke. Still avoiding your face.

You ignore his comment with a silent scoff. In your quest to get answers for your so-called dreams, you place a lilt in your voice, hoping it gets his attention.

“Hobie”

His face slowly turns back to you, big brown eyes staring at you intently. Lips slightly parted, he awaits for your next words, hanging onto every breath.

“There's a name there, it's only mentioned once so it's intrigued me”

“What name?” The space between you gets smaller and smaller with every second that passes.

“Web Weaver. Do you know what it means or who held it”

“Why do you think I would know?”

“Because,” you gaze at his eyes, there's anger pooling in them. Yet you continue on, your heart rattles loudly under your rib cage. “I just know”

The fierceness fades in his eyes, replaced with yearning. “It was my name”

“Was?” You breathe a sigh of relief, relieved that you didn't anger an ancient being. “Why web weaver?”

“How does it feel to be human?” He questions back, you're enamored by his gaze on you and you only.

“Don't dodge the question” The gap between your bodies is now an inch away, so close you could see the vines under his skin, blue flowers blooming among the thorns.

“I fear you won't comprehend the answer to your question” his old world vocabulary peeks out. Hobie whispers to you so you're the only one in the world that could hear his voice.

“And you won't understand mine. Guess we're even.”

There's a shakiness in your voice. Not from fear, but from realization. Talking to him gives you warmth, warmth to bask in, to comfort your soul, to love till your dying breath. You've never been more besotted in your entire life and you've only known him for a few weeks, weeks that feel like years to you.

There's excitement blooming in your chest even though your gut tells you there's danger ahead. Perhaps that's the reason why you're excited— the danger thrills you down to your bones.

Goosebumps appear on your arms despite the heat, Hobie leans over you, blocking the light, engulfing him in a halo. You're seeing God peer down on you.

He gently caresses your arm, laying your goosebumps back down and you keep forgetting to wear the necklace around him.

Your fingers twitch, itching to dance along his skin. There's a raw emotion behind his eyes, one that you can't decipher. Hobie pulls away, standing up, reaching down to you. Your hand connects to his, and you swear you hear tiny bells chime from somewhere.

“Why do you let me hang around you so much?” you stand toe to toe with Hobie, hand still in yours.

“You're in a questioning mood. It's the same reason why you keep coming back here”

Heat rises in your cheeks, you don't even know why. “It’s just—most people would have left by now”

“Not a regular person, remember?” He squeezes your hand just before he releases it. Turning away from you, Hobie addresses you over his shoulder. “Or have you forgotten already?”

You don't answer, not knowing what to say. Sometimes he makes you forget that he's a being beyond comprehension, a man more human than anybody you've come across. Then you get reminded he's not, that he's unfathomable to someone like you.

—

Exiting his domain, the fresh crisp autumn air greets you back. There's patches of ice left on the soft grass from when it rained last night. The sun slowly sets in the west, orange and pinks swirl in the sky. Leaves crunch under your trainers as you trudge the thicket. You've acclimated yourself with the woods, but it's still unfamiliar, your red ribbons tied around the trees help you in finding your way out.

You look up with a fond smile on your lips, watching how the sunlight peek through the leaves, letting the cool air kiss your cheeks. There's scurrying under the grass, birds chirp their night song. Your hands glide along the tree trunks and the silky ribbons, using it to guide your way. Your vision is suddenly cleared from treetops, the heavens in full display just for you.

You find yourself on the foot of a hill, one that looks so familiar yet strange. Not remembering this hill as part of your usual trek out, your mind is confused on how you got there in the first place. Trudging up the incline, you grab a long stick to help prop you up.

“Wow”

Breathing out, reaching the top, you watch the sunset bathe the hill in its heavenly glow. You chuckle softly to yourself, you can't remember ever seeing a magnificent sight like this in the crowded city.

“Pretty” you spot a large oak standing tall and forlorn just along the edges. Its tree trunk is dark with no leaves growing along its branch. It looms overhead, ancient and alone.

You expect its leaves to rustle when a wind passes, you're mesmerized by how grim yet beautiful the tree is. It’s alone and sickly, but it stands tall despite the elements and time ravaging its wood.

You decide to continue walking back to the manor now that the sun is merely minutes away from saying goodbye. Soon it'll be dark, soon there will be no light to guide you.

Carefully walking, you feel gravel under your feet, craning your neck down, you see no grass or any greenery. Just a circular patch of death, the soil is black, a deep contrast from the viridescent and orange around you. It matches the oak tree in a poetic eerie way.

You step away from it, the scorched earth sends shivers down your spine just from standing over it. The smell of burning wood hits your nose abruptly. A sense of dread and fear around it, turning your stomach inside out.

“There's something wrong here” You whisper above the wind. Promptly hasting your steps back towards the manor without looking back, afraid something else might gaze back.

—

As the weather grows colder your relationship with Hobie has gotten warmer. The dreams get more vivid, images of fireflies flying in the dark, bumblebees buzzing in your ears, Hobie’s sweet caresses and alluring voice makes it more enticing for you to stay asleep and forever live in the dream. Thanks to Nellie’s morning wake up call, you wake in time.

The strong feelings towards him all feels weird at first, there's always a push towards him, controlling you to call his name and yearn for his searing gaze. There's a mysterious longing, an affection that's completely unfounded. Perhaps the dreams helped you in realizing your emotions towards Hobie. Whatever it is, it has you in an iron grip, refusing to let go. It seems it has the same effect on Hobie too, there's always an immediate response the second you call out to him in the thick woods. His eyes never leave yours, how his touch would linger everytime your skin connects.

There's that electricity flowing between you both, something that makes sparks appear when he holds you. With every tentative touch there's affection behind it, soft smiles bring a promise. You want him to make a home inside your heart, stay there until he's molded himself in your arteries, until your veins run with him.

It's not all desire though, there's a profound need to be near him, to talk well into the night, share stories from almost forgotten memories. Conversing with him until your voice is hoarse from all the talking and laughter. You could just start talking about the surrounding woods and the next thing you know you're well off chattering about your deepest emotions like you're chatting with an old friend you haven't seen in years. You find making him laugh is the best part of your day.

You've grown to look forward to the banter every time you've finished your daily work. Dare you say the favourite part of your day is entering the woods. At first you would only go whenever you're bored or needed company from the isolation. Nellie’s the best at not making you feel so alone, but you still need someone who answers back. The once a week visit turned into twice a week, then to every other day, until you arrange your so-called meetings with him every single day.

It's basically routine now, but you don't always come to him, even though your soul screams to be by his side. That's why you're out in the woods with a basket of autumn flowers and berries you've foraged, it's the closest thing to being with him, to silence the raw hunger without indulging yourself by calling his name.

You have to slowly acclimate yourself by spending the entire day without ever seeing him. You've found him addicting, from his voice to his very presence.

And you're in withdrawal.

You dread being alone again when your contract ends. You'll find it hard to live day to day, still too used to your routine at Mudwood manor. So you're back in the thicket, so close yet so far from him with an excuse to go out and forage for… you don't even know, you just needed an excuse.

The wicker basket grows heavier in your arms the more you forage further into the woods. Which might not have been your best idea, especially when more eerie sounds enter the thick brush, eyes seem to wander around your form, watching, learning your movements. But you wanted to get out of the manor at the same time to be close to Hobie, and escape from the stifling stares of the paintings.

You could go to the small village, but you don't feel comfortable roaming even though you've been in the estate for almost five months. The villagers’ whispers and narrowed stares just get to you, even if you try not to.

You wanted to still be close to home.

But the grounds around the estate feels empty too, with crumbling foundations from ancient buildings that haven't been maintained and exposed to the elements, its brick and wood façade crumbling with just a gust of strong wind. The only building still standing inside the estate's land is the mausoleum, and you're not too keen to hang around the dead quite yet.

The place that you've found yourself most free in, a place where you feel safe in— the woods. You have A sense of belonging within the grove. Especially knowing that Hobie is one call away just in case something much worse decides to come after you.

You know he'll be there.

Rolling around the black cherry like berry in between your fingers, you keep finding your train of thought always leading towards him. Just the mere idea of him seems to relax you, bringing you a sense of peace that you've only felt while with him. You know it's wrong, wrong to feel this way towards the fae. A being that with one twitch of his finger could strike you dead, or make you fall to your knees. Which he hasn't done, not yet anyway.

You don't feel alone in the world anymore. With his company and Nellie's, you haven't smiled this much in a long time. The job was supposed to be isolating, unforgiving to the human need to socialize. With them in mind, it doesn't seem so bad, you should thank them both before you leave and end your contract with O’Hara, which is coming up sooner rather than later.

Taking a handful of berries, you stuff them inside the basket, the juice rubbing off on your palms. Bringing it closer to your mouth, tongue sticking out to taste it. A hand stops you from tasting the sweet nectar, webs wrap around his wrists, crawling towards your hand.

“Don't” you look at with questioning eyes, Hobie’s voice stern and commanding.

“Hello to you too”

“D’you want to kill yourself?” Hobie lets go of your hand, grabbing his cloak to use it in wiping your hand clean.

“No?” you watch closely as he gently cleans your hand free of juice.

“No? You're not sure?” He quirks a brow, still wiping every crevice of your palm.

“It was a question because I wasn't trying to kill myself.” You savour the skin on skin contact.

“Good, you're just stupid then.” You glare at him. “The plant's called ‘Belladonna’ or ‘deadly nightshade’ if you're more familiar with that name”

“Oh” you look down at your basket full of what you've thought to be blackberries. “Shit, I didn't know. Maybe I should've brought that book with me from the library”

“You should've.” Hobie finally lets go of your hand, already languishing the lack of contact. “What're you doin' here? Haven't I warned you enough about the things roaming around here?”

“What are you doing here? I didn't know you could even leave your abode”

“I can, only briefly” He leaves out the part where he feels a stinging sensation whenever he's outside, it's annoying at best, still, it pains his bones just to step outside.

“Are you okay?” You notice the sweat glistening on his forehead and how his eyebrows are subtly knitted together. “You look…” human? Sick? “Tired”

He tilts his head slightly. “You worried ‘bout me?”

Rolling your eyes, you decide to quip back. “Nope, you just look extremely ugly right now” a massive lie on your end. He could be wearing a trash bag and he would still be inhumanly handsome.

“I didn't know I had a mirror for a face” Hobie takes you by the sleeve of your coat whilst you gape at his roast. He chuckles softly at your reaction, brown eyes crinkling in happiness.

Entering his abode, more flowers have sprouted since you've met him. Flowers that don't usually grow in this weather: dandelions, daisies and watercolor roses sway in the wind. The willow tree stands greener and stronger than before. The table still sits in the middle of the glade, food from his realm lay forgotten, swept to a corner of the table. The food you've left for him is the centerpiece. Bread you've made from ingredients you've found in the pantry, fruits cut in misshapen pieces, butter from the fridge and an empty thermos of tea. The place looks and feels more homely. More human.

You drop the basket of poison right near where the ‘other’ food lay discarded.

Flopping down on a chair right next to his, you breathe in the warmer air, eyes closed, basking in the otherworldly warmth. Your skin glimmers in the light, a soft smile on your lips, head hanging over to the side of the marble chair; your neck in full display.

Hobie stares, swallowing the lump in his throat, knuckles tight. His instincts, his innate desire to defile you, to sink his teeth in your skin, biting, taking. Instead, he doesn't, you deserve so much more than that, deserving of affection and care that borderlines on love. Love that exceeds expectations, love that transcends through time. You're more than his desire.

You're sacred in his eyes.

The chair to your left scrapes along the grass, he sits next to you, he hasn't sat on the head of the table since you've decided it was alright for you to sit on a chair instead of just standing around.

You lean your head towards him, eyes cracking open, your smile growing wider.

“Hello there” you whisper the words to him like a secret only to be kept between you two.

Hobie blinks slowly, smile slowly spreading, he finds yours infectious. “Hello yourself, making yourself at home?”

“Mm-hmm, I want to savour it”

“Savour it? You can always come back here whenever you want”

“I know that, Hobie. My contract’s up.” You sharpen the knife. “I only have a week left here” then you stab him right through his heart.

He inhales sharply, sitting up right. The wind stops breezing past, stilling. Light slowly fading.

“Alright, this is goodbye then?”

“Of course not, I can always visit. Sure the drive is far and long and I'll technically be trespassing. But I can always visit”

“Don't come back” he says it softly, pleading almost. “It's better if you don't visit” Hobie stabs you with the same knife.

You try to find the humour in his voice, finding none but a straight faced Hobie, none of the life you're used to. “Why?”

“Because it's better”

You sit up, anger and confusion mixing together. A foul concoction. “Better for whom exactly?”

“For the both of us” He speaks monotonously. The knife twists in your gut.

“You know it's not, we both know it's not” you scoff. Shaking your head, hiding the tears collecting in your eyes.

“It is and I know”

“Yes, because you're all knowing and better than me” You spread your anger before him.

“I am” His eyes swirl into gold, no colour brown that you fell for.

You shake your head, standing up quickly, the chair falls, cracking the marble. “Okay then” masking the shaking of your voice with a clear of your throat. “Goodbye Hobie, it was… nice, yeah nice”

Not bothering to look back, you cross his threshold, leaving his abode. He gazes at his feet, forlorn yet there's no regret in his heart.

“it’s better for you” he tries to convince himself.

—

You stomp angrily inside the manor, the door bangs loudly as you close it with much frustration. Silent tears flow out, you sniff, rubbing it off with your sleeves. “He doesn't deserve my tears” you mumble.

The ringing sound from the living room makes you jump, “fuck!” The landline rings excessively, annoying your already angry state. You walk over to it, “I'm coming, christ”

“Hello?!” You answer the phone with hostility.

“Hello? Y/N?” Miguel's voice replies back, you regret your angry tone immediately.

You compose yourself. “Hi, Mr. O’hara. Sorry about that, I keep getting prank calls” A half lie, the phone rings in the dead of night every other day, good thing you're a night owl and you answer the empty calls. You're almost always reading through the night or annoying Nellie. Still, you find it weird that no one answers back.

“Are you okay?” Miguel sighs. There's a loud screeching sound in the background.

“Yes, are you okay? There's a weird sound on your end”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” There's shuffling in the background. “There, I'm in a quieter place. Is everything alright with Nellie and the house?”

“Yes, everything’s in tip top shape” you cringe at yourself.

He sighs, “Alright, good. Something came up and I gotta stay here a couple more weeks. Are you okay with that? Of course I'll add it to your salary, if not then it's okay.” There's a muffled clanking sound behind him.

“Yes, of course that's alright. I can't leave Nellie yet anyway” The said dog perks up from her sleeping position on the leather settee, wagging her tail, fluffy ears down.

“Thank you, Y/N. I'm off, thank you again”

“Of course, Mr. O’Hara” you click the phone down. Sighing, lumbering your way towards Nellie.

You lay over her dramatically, face full of her fur, hands mindlessly petting her, she huffs in return, letting air out her nostrils.

“Oh, Nellie, it's just us now, old girl”

She barks timidly in return.

“Yeah, yeah, I know it's my fault. Shouldn't have been there in the first place” you cuddle closer to her, she doesn't protest, wagging her tail from under you. “I'd be lying if I don't miss him” murmuring the words, your eyes start growing glassy once again.

“Fucking asshole”

—

It's been a week since you've seen him. Everytime you walk along the edge of the woods with Nellie by your side, you can't help but yearn for his presence. Purposely stopping by, a chance to see him again, even just a simple sign that he wants to see you again. Alas you don't get a trace of him, the woods are eerily quiet in your absence, there's a darkness permeating inside, spreading, echoing, longing.

Nellie tugs you away by her leash, with a bark she guides you back towards the manor. You look over your shoulder, a sudden scent of death whizzes behind you. Goosebumps rise on your skin, a shiver down your spine, perhaps it's a good idea to stay away for a while.

You sleep restlessly, waking up in intervals. Nellie helps though, she now sleeps on the foot of your bed. Her soft snores lull you to a rare dreamless sleep.

“Wake up”

Your ears perk up at the sound of a chair moving across hardwood floors, then almost immediately the scraping stops. Alarm bells start to ring out in your head. The first thing you grab is the nearest and sharpest thing inside the room, silently uncapping the fountain pen, the sharp tip glistens in the moonlight. You tiptoe over to your bedroom door.

Slowly opening it enough to peek through, your heart sinks down to your stomach at the sight of torch lights moving around the ancient walls of the manor.

Hushed whispers can be heard from downstairs, they creep and snicker, tamping down any loud noise whenever they bump into furniture. But you heard them, holding the fountain pen with an iron grip, you close the door as quietly as you can, locking it right after.

“Why are you shushing me? There's no one here” a gruff voice yells out. Making you stop in your tracks, Nellie fully wakes up, alert, wide eyes staring at the door then back to you.

“Still, shut the fuck up!” Another man whisper yells, “this place is old, we might wake up the dead”

“Idiot, you still believe that? What are you five?” A male unfamiliar voice chides in.

There's three of them. Your lips wobble in fear, knees threatening to give out from under you. Your room is on the third floor, too high up to jump down, if you decide to risk it, you would most definitely break your legs or worse. And how would Nellie get out if you survive the fall? An older dog like herself wouldn't make it if she fell that high up.

So you decide on a split second decision, it's either the bathroom or the wardrobe. You surmise that if they would get inside, they would check the bathroom first; giving you ample time to run downstairs and get to your car. So you make time to grab your key inside the drawer, pocketing it inside your sweatpants.

You make your way towards Nellie, grabbing her by the collar, there's no time to be polite but you still guide her as gently as you can– taking her towards the large wardrobe. She doesn't protest, letting you lead her inside. Sitting down next to her, closing the double doors– its hinges creek, you cringe at the sound, loud enough for them to hear the squeak. Once closed, you move the coats back in its place on the rack, acting as another barrier between you and the doors.

You hope it's enough to protect you and Nellie.

She sits down obediently, eyes trained outside. Your hands ache from how hard you're gripping onto the pen.

“Nellie” you whisper, “stay quiet, please.” With shaking hands, you pet her by the ear. “They might not even check here” you reassure yourself. Nellie stares you down, a face you've never seen her make before.

She scooches closer to you, protecting your body from the outsiders. Her fur warms you, calming you a little. Nellie huffs once footsteps walk up the stairs, every step acting like a death knell, counting down to the inevitable.

You pray to every deity there is, your mind wishes that Hobie’s with you, he would know what to do. You desperately need a bright idea for an escape, anything will do in hopes of ever seeing him again, to live through this nightmare.

There's footsteps in the doorway.

“It's locked” the doorknob rattles, tears start forming in your eyes, blurring your much needed vision.

“Move, I'll open it” voice muffled nonetheless frightening you with how close the sound is.

Covering your mouth, body trembling in fear, silent tears flow freely. Your hands tremble, the pen leaving indents on your palm, angry marks sears into your newly healed wound, opening it once again, your life flowing out of you.

Bang!

The sound makes you flinch, whimpering as Nellie looks on. The door is in danger of opening from the harsh kick.

“Christ! You're being too loud”

“We're in the middle bumfuck nowhere, no one's gonna hear”

Bang!

Metal hinges fall on the hardwood floors, scraping towards your hiding place.

“One more, hurry up! The good stuff must be inside”

“You wanna fucking do it yourself? Get off my back”

Bang!

You tamp down a scream when the large door bursts open, falling harshly on the floor, Nellie covers your entire body with hers, stance at the ready. A bundle of nerves sit on the bottom of your stomach, clinging, waiting with baited breath.

One whistles out, “Big fucking room, search the place, the safe must be in here”

“You fuckin' search it, you're not the boss” he seethes, voice fading towards somewhere. “I'll look through the other rooms, you stay here”

The other intruder clicks his tongue in annoyance. “Look who's acting like a boss. Asshole”

Heavy footfalls march towards the bathroom, you shiver, heart thundering inside your chest. Your soul is familiar with the feeling, anticipating your fate.

The doors to the bathroom creek open, you hide your frightened face on Nellie's shoulders like a child hiding behind their mother's skirt. Soft fur tickles your cheeks, you hold onto her, anchoring yourself.

“Goddamn, these faucets must've cost a fortune.” Judging from his footsteps, he seems to leave the bathroom “I don't have time to dismantle those. Now, where in the world is that safe” you hear boots thump on wooden floors, getting closer and closer towards the wardrobe.

Clutching the sharp pen, you wipe your eyes free of tears with your sleeve, brows furrowed in anger, lips trembling.

Right before the wardrobe doors split open, Nellie lunges, growling like a woman scorned. Her large canines bare at the man clad in black. With a quick movement, she aims for the jugular.

Blood gushes out, spraying your face with hot crimson. Nellie's snout covered in the same shade, her mismatched eyes wild with anger. Her body growing larger by the second, paws as big as your head, claws digging into the man's torso–shredding his skin down to his bone.

You hear a woman whisper “Run!” In your ears.

With a pained yelp, the man gurgles, slowly drowning in his own blood, Nellie's fangs still buried in his neck— a sea of red coating the polished floors.

Sparing Nellie one last look, she devours the man, sounds of tearing flesh playing over and over in your mind. A knife glistens in the moonlight, stabbing your protector in her stomach, a last ditch effort to escape.

Running away, pen still in your grip, you run into another man, crashing your body into his.

“What—?” He holds you by your shaking shoulder, dark eyes full of bad intention.

You don't waste time in lifting the pen, stabbing him in between his ribs. Blood leaks out, dripping into the carpet. He staggers back in surprise, still holding onto you, his back hits the bannister in a second, losing his balance.

He takes you down with him.

Air escapes your lungs as you plummet down to the foyer, closing your eyes, you brace for impact. A vision fills your mind, a memory perhaps, a memory that's definitely not your own. Or maybe one that you don't remember.

You fall simultaneously with your other self, the smell of salt and sea fills your nostrils. With your hands tied behind your back, the large stone weighing you down, helping you sink further and further into the deep. Bubbles float above you as darkness swallows you whole. Lungs filled with saltwater. You don't fight the current because it wouldn't have mattered.

It would always end like this.

You hit the ground in an ugly crunch of bones and skin, groaning, gore staining your head. Iron wafts your nostrils. The once clean home is now dirtied with crimson and shattered wood. There's ringing in your ears, hands and back filled with shards of glass from the vase that used to decorate the foyer. Chrysanthemums litter the floors, petals crushed– bloodied and broken.

You spot the open door, cold entering inside, the full moon beckons you over. Crawling to it, glass pricks your forearms, staining the antique carpets. Legs pulsing in pain. With one eye open, ichor gushing out from your forehead– you have one place in mind to seek sanctuary. Someone to help you in your injured state.

“Please” you can barely recognize your own voice, begging to get to safety, pleading to whoever is watching over you to let you live.

Just this one time.

“Liam!” A woman yells from the second floor, fast footsteps echo out in the estate. She grabs you by the foot, dragging you back inside, away from escape.

“You fucking bitch!” her shrill voice dampens your screams of protest.

You try kicking her with the last of your strength, but to no avail. Her razor-edged nails dig into your skin, your palm slides over to a sharp shard of glass, you immediately bend at the waist, stabbing it into her hand.

She yells, letting your foot go. The woman slowly took the shard out of her hand. Flesh opens up, muscle peeking through the wound. Heaving, she has ember in her eyes, you have fire in yours.

As you stand up on your feet, glass and splinters leaving jagged edges over the soles of your bare feet. Lips parted, your eyes catch a glimpse of the man you stabbed taking slow strides in front of you. Bloodied hand now holding on to the weapon you used. Scarlet flowing freely over his mad eyes.

He spits out blood, platinum hair covered in his own gore, teeth stained with crimson. “You weren't supposed to be here”

“You should've left while you had the chance, girl” the woman holds her own hand, trying to stop the bleeding. “or at least not cause problems for us. You had to be a hero, huh? No matter, we can handle you” she brandishes a knife big enough to butcher you.

The man beside her snickers, “And to think I was about to help you, I was the nice one y’know” he drops your bloodied pen, replacing it with rope from his belt.

“Fuck you” gritting your teeth, you curse at them with calmness you never thought you still had.

“Feisty, oh we'll have our fun with you!” She hits you with the butt of her knife, you flinch back, enough to lessen the impact, but the pain still leaves you blind for a second.

Doubling over in pain, she takes the chance to kick your stomach. Bile rises up in your throat, acid comes out of your battered mouth, smearing the floors. Now on your knees, the man tries to kick your spine but you're not going down without a fight. You take his leg just before it collides with your back, holding it, twisting it down with your whole body until he falls flat on his face.

“Bitch!” Knuckles hit your cheek, your nose cracking under the pressure.

You lay in a fetal position, shielding your head with your stained arms, ichor spread around you, seeping out of you, covering you. They kick and hit as a punishment, numerous voices laugh in your ears. The soft soil on your back, staining your clothes, tire tracks left on your skin, lower body nowhere to be seen. The blood stained tracks on concrete, your vision disappearing.

With your last strength, you time the kicks where they stop for a brief second near your face, grabbing her ankle, you bite a chunk of her Achilles heel. She falls on her back unceremoniously, screaming and cussing.

You spit out her flesh, showing off your bloodstained teeth with a cold smile at her partner.

“Fucker–!” He lifts up his boot, ready to strike you down.

A flash of black and white and then he no longer stands before you. His body flinged away, Nellie biting his head off in one feral bite. Head rolling to the soles of the woman.

“What the fuck!” The lone woman yells, a grave mistake she would soon learn.

Nellie sharply turns her head, fangs in full display, claws tapping on the floor, stalking her prey. Her once soft fur is all sharp and upright in fury. She pounces on the intruder, her entire body hiding the deed from you. You could only hear her screams and skin tearing into a bloody mess. Blood flies out of her like leaves blown away by the wind.

With one last squelch of skin and blood, Nellie stops growling, silence envelopes the entire manor.

“Nellie?” You breathe out, throat scratching like nails on a chalkboard.

She looks over her massive shoulder, fur covered in shredded clothes and guts. Her eyes are the only indication that she's the same dog you used to walk around the manor, the same one who sleeps by your bed since you got her back. The same Nellie you've grown to care for.

“Come here” you reach out to her with your shaking hand, she taps it with her snout, warmth

coating your palm. “You saved me, good girl” she nuzzles her head, huffing out in content, tail wagging in delight.

Bang!

A gun goes off, Nellie whines, dropping her dead weight right in front of you. Her essence flows out of her like a rushing river. She shrinks back to her normal form, an old border collie lay before you, whimpering in pain, eyes pleading for help.

“No!” Your voice breaks, hands searching her fur for the wound. Tears slide down your cheeks, leaving a trail of skin free of blood.

Looking behind you, another man stares at the sight in horror, intestines decorate the ancient walls, stray teeth litter around the floors like petals. Blood paints the halls of the great manor. His companions lay dead, bodies growing cold.

“You!” his voice shakes, the barrel of the gun pointed over your temple. He slaps you with the butt of his gun, you fall back down on the gore filled floor.

Everything hurts, your head pounding like a drum, arms stinging, nose aching, your lungs fight to inhale air. The beautiful chandelier you admired is your only audience to the grim scene that unfolded. And the only witness to your impending demise. You try to reach for the keys inside your pocket, resulting in the man stomping hard on your fingers, your bones crack under the pressure.

The man spits maliciously at your pain enveloped form, with a blink an older woman does the same.

“Witch!” She points her crooked finger at your tied form. The spectators scream in agreement. Faceless crowd jeering for your demise.

Snow covers the hill you were once safe in, snowflakes stick to your wet lashes, wood and timber at your feet, the thin white shift you wore doesn't shield you from the cold; in spite of the weather, you're warm. The searing heat burns your skin. Flames rising up, melting the ice underneath. The smoke burns your lungs, coughing, eyes stinging from all the tears you've shed.

“I am innocent, please!” You plead to deaf ears. “Spare me!”

One throws a rock at your shaking form, it hits your bare shoulder, the fire grows closer, it licks up your feet, scorching, burning. You screech in agony, calling his name, hoping he appears despite knowing he won't, can't.

“Hobie!” You feel yourself turning into ash. The growing life inside of you savagely ends abruptly.

“Hobie” clinging to life, your lips forming his name, instinctively calling for him. A whisper, a prayer just for him.

Furious wind rushes inside, the burglar shields his face with his arms, his face mask falling off his face. You crumple further into yourself, whimpering from all the searing pain.

Suddenly, the air stills, the sound of splitting logs, creaking and lumbering, you can smell morning dew through your broken nose. Spiders skitter onwards, black and red dots crawling all over the man. He screams in fear, trying to shake them off as the arachnids march on. Numerous more enter, engulfing his entire body. He hits the walls in an attempt to kill them off, they scatter away like dust, running away when the sound of nails scraping on wood can be heard.

He looks relieved for only a brief moment, then despair fills his entire being. Fear clutches your heart, eyes glued to the sound. There's a lull in the chaotic moment, silent as a monastery.

Lithe fingers slowly furling over the door frame, nails as dark as death itself emerge. Bones creaking, trees cracking, breaking apart at its roots. Your soul sings whilst you feel your heart stop, green whizzes past in a flash.

He stands there, an enormous stature, cloak draped behind him, an ocean of green, a flash of red in his eyes— his hand wrapped around the man's throat, nails digging and drawing pinpricks of scarlet. The pistol falls on the ground, metal striking the wood. He gasps in terror as you watch on with wide eyes.

You witness a myth come true right in front of you.

Spider legs unfold behind him, ripping his cloak, it twitches, the sharp ends poking and prodding at his victim. With a quick movement, Hobie impales the man with his eight legs, right through his torso, neck, legs, groin and eyes.

A life ends once more, a waterfall of warm ichor flowing down, spreading across the hardwood, staining your already blood-soaked clothes.

Hobie lets the corpse go, falling loudly and mercilessly. The corpse's dead eyes stare upon yours. The image would forever stay with you.

He kneels before you, spider legs retracting into his back; fury subsiding in his golden eyes, brown mixing in. Humanity seeping through him like the blood coating his hands. You observe through half lidded eyes, his scent masks the death around you.

Hobie hovers his knuckles over your ruined skin, he avoids the angry gashes of broken skin.

“Clover, what are you– what have they done to you?” For the first time since he saw you last, He feels helpless, a childlike fear under his otherworldly eyes. “I'm so sorry”

You wheeze out a reply. Crimson coated hand reaching out for him. He cups it gently, gore blending together. A vision of him holding you amidst the dark, flushed skin upon bare flesh, fluttering body under his, lips over your neck, nipping and kissing, passion rolling out in waves, love hanging in the air. Desire fulfilled.

“Hobie–” a raspy breath escapes, you don't recognize your own voice anymore.

“Don't talk, I've got you” carefully and effortlessly, he carries you.

You yelp, everything burns, your joints, your skin, your eyes brimming with unshed tears. Yet, his searing warmth comforts you, the familiarity brings a small smile onto your lips.

“I’m right here” his voice wavers, each step heavier than the other.

In that moment, you know everything will be alright.

Holding on, you paint his chest with blood that might be yours. The cold hits you, consciousness fading.

“Well? Your name?” He asks pensively.

“Rose”

“Poppy–”

Snowflakes drop to your eyelashes, melting over your skin.

“Dahlia–”

“Violet–”

The stabbing pain in the back of your skull persits, your life dripping onto fresh snow. Dirtying the earth.

“Iris”

“Fern”

You feel your legs go numb, Hobie's eyes forlorn, his bones ache, yet his grip stays strong.

“Lily–”

“Daisy, my name is Daisy”

He smiles, eyes twinkling with mirth. “Clever one, I welcome you, my name is–”

“I know you” whispering your words, Hobie stops in his tracks. Flicking his eyes down, he sees a sight that breaks what is left of his heart.

“I-I know you” you repeat it for yourself, trying to comprehend it all. Tears unknowingly let out, broken fingers brushing across his jaw.

“You do”

Swallowing a lump of blood stuck in your throat, you mumble out, trying your best to speak. “How–?”

“That's not important, you need to get better or–” he releases a sharp breath, “the food inside the abode can heal you, but it has consequences.” Hobie pleads with you with just a single look. “Do you understand what it means?”

You nod weakly. “Nellie, she's—”

“She'll be alright, that dog has gone through worse.”

You believe him, hoping that she's alright, wishing that she'll be back on her feet and waiting for you back at the manor. There's only hope now for you as the light behind your eyes dim.

You now enter the woods, your limbs grow weaker with every step. Hobie’s searing heat is the only thing keeping you awake. Your blood stains his torso red, the once green colour of his cloak now dirtied with coagulating blood. His own agony makes it harder for him to walk, stabbing his muscles, arms shaking under your weight.

“I’ve got you, I've got you” He repeats it like a mantra. “Stay awake for me, please” Hobie peers down, observing how your blood doesn't stop from gushing out, how your lungs fight to exhale air.

You have questions rushing through your mind, the answers will bring light to your very existence. You don't even know who you are right now but the pains and ache makes your thoughts foggy. At this rate you'll die before you get the answers you need.

Hobie stops abruptly, a snap of a twig from behind makes him whirl towards the sound. Then you smell it, flesh decaying, the smell of burning hair. There's something or someone shambling behind the trees, the rattling sound of chains being dragged along the path turns the blood inside your veins into ice.

Panic settles in Hobie’s stomach. He's frozen under the eyeless gaze of the entity.

He suddenly becomes the prey.

Its skeletal figure continuously drips thick dark blood onto the grass below, its bones chatter in the wind, long fingers pointing at you, bringing the large chains strapped on its wrist above, weighing its lithe arm down.

You were never welcomed here.

An image of a tall man converges with the ugly thing, suddenly, Hobie's right next to him. His entire body covered and trapped by thorny vines, pricking his skin, drops of ichor fall like dew drops on the soil.

The other being turns his head towards Hobie who struggles against the binds. The deer skull hides the fae’s face from view, his dark hair cascading around his bare shoulders. Tiny bells ring on his staff as he grabs Hobie by his jaw, sharp nails digging into his flesh.

“You bare the greatest sin” his voice a mere whisper yet as loud as an ocean wave crashing along the shores. “for what? A pet?” He turns towards you, dark eyes flicking down to your stomach. “An abomination, an affront, a mistake” the being spits venom.

“Now, she must be punished as do you” he turns his neck with a snake-like movement back to Hobie. “You've cursed her, Web weaver. Only by her own hand can cut the ties. Then and only then, she may be free from the binds you have put her in”

Hobie’s eyes are laden with fear and anger, his mouth covered by the same vines, unable to speak. His panicked eyes meet yours, tears freely flow from the brown you love.

You bravely stare at the fae next to him, fury settling in your soul, horror hidden behind the fire in your veins. He tilts his head, a sinister smile on his thin lips. There's flowers in your lungs. With a small wave of his fingers, you get flinged back.

Condemned to a deathless death.

Its jaws unhinge, a guttural high pitch sound blows your eardrums. Hobie kneels, letting you down on the moist soil just before the monster lunges for you.

Blades of grass stab your injuries. You stare up at the familiar ball of light, your fingers clutch the grass when a wave of pain hits your skull.

“Hobie?” Sobbing, you don't see him next to you. “Hobie?!” in your desperation, you yell for him.

There's an ache behind your sockets, memories flash by, once your own, centuries of despair, death and yearning. And you've lived through every single one. You feel remorse for all the lives you've lived, all the hatred and confusion that stems from the first life, from simply loving someone out of reach.

Crawling on the earth, if you bring your ears to the ground, you hear his shouts and struggle against the creature. Your soul begs for you to help him, but how could you do anything in your state? You barely feel your legs now, your right eye shut completely closed from the injury.

With your one good eye, you see your trembling broken fingers ahead of you, desperately clawing at the grass.

Finally reaching the table, you grab its leg. The table shakes briefly, a berry falls, bouncing in front of your eyes. A loaf of bread follows it on the grass.

You have a choice layed out in front of you.

You want to correct everything that your past selves couldn't. But will you be brave enough to do it? Or will you stutter like the others?

Your mind struggles to choose, taking a handful of nightshade would break the curse that's befell you all those years ago. No more struggling, no more pain and death for the next you to bear.

The cycle could finally end with you.

Or you take a piece of bread from his table and continue to live on. Who wouldn't want to live? Your body dies but your soul lives on in a different variant of you. After eating it would bind you to Hobie, you could love him till your time ends and another begins.

Why is it your problem to break the curse? Why not the next one or the one after that? Is it your responsibility to break the wheel?

Is it bad to want to live with the love of your life?

With one bite and you'll stay in this realm, even if the curse looms over your head, forever waiting for your death, whether by time's hand or another vile thing that plucks you from the garden of life. But you get to stay with him, experience what your former selves have.

Then the cycle would continue on unbroken.

Hobie will win against the creature, you're sure of it. And he'll be back here to pick up the pieces of you. You're alone in this choice.

Which one will you choose?

>>> Nightshade

>>> Bread

[thesilliestrovingalive]

Updated: September 23, 2024

Reworked Character #3: Eri Kasamoto

POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING: Viewer discretion is advised due to references to abandonment, abuse, underage drinking, crime, an unhealthy romance, death, and SA.

Real name: Chizuko Kawaguchi

Alias: Memphis Bomb Princess

Occupation: Staff Sergeant of the S.P.A.R.R.O.W.S., Ptolemaios’ second-in-command (formerly), and the leader of a street gang (formerly)

Retirement plans: Open up an inclusive orphanage in Hiroshima

Special skills: Orchestrating stealth missions and suppression operations, proficiency in explosives, survival techniques, lock picking, and seduction

Hobbies: Swimming, kickboxing, building explosive gadgets, thinking about her past mistakes and what she could’ve done better during her solitary nature walks, and playing card games with her friends that include some sort of money-related bet

Likes: Fio, pyrotechnics, aimless walks, vintage religious memorabilia, and a keychain that was gifted to her by Emily

Dislikes: Blissful ignorance, overly mischievous, lazy, and hot-headed people, riding in vehicles she isn’t able to drive, being touched without permission, and cults

Favourite drink: Vodka

Sexuality: Homoflexible sapiosexual

Gender: Female

Age: 16 (in 2022), 22 (in 2028), 24 (in 2030), 26 (in 2032), 28 (in 2034), 35 (in 2041), 37 (in 2043), 38 (in 2044), and 41 (in 2047)

Blood type: B-

Weight: 126 lbs. (57 kg)

Design: She’s a 5’ 6” (167.64 cm) Japanese ectomorph with an athletic, sylph-like build, broad shoulders, sand-hued skin, a black mole under her right eye, and top scars. She has dark brown eyes with visible bags beneath them and fingernails that are painted a metallic green. She has jet black hair with choppy bangs that has been bleached dirty blonde and is styled in a mid-back shaggy wolf cut, often worn up in a ponytail. Eri has a jarring diagonal scar that runs from the left side of her temple, across the bridge of her nose, to her right levator scapulae muscle. She also has stab scars on the palm of her right hand, cut marks on her right forearm, the skin on her arms and shoulders have been picked at, and her legs are riddled with scrapes. She lost her left forearm in a traumatic incident, later receiving a metallic silver prosthetic replacement from Ptolemaios during her training. She dons green gold snake bite and silver jestrum piercings, and her makeup features a glittery artichoke green smoky eyeliner, light brown mascara, and coral pink lips.

Eri’s military gear consists of an olive green bandana on her head, a metal dog tag necklace with her name, and a black headset for communication with her snipers. She wears a black bra, myrtle-hued sleeveless button midriff, and a satin crimson sash. She wears a purplish-grey unbuttoned coat with ripped sleeves, four pockets, and a hidden strap compartment that holds her electrical baton. On the back of her jacket is the logo of the S.P.A.R.R.O.W.S., which Fio kindly embroidered for her. Her purplish-grey army cargo pants were tucked into black combat boots and held up by a silver-buckled dark teal belt around her waist. She has a sheath for her combat knife and a drop leg holster for her handgun with a silencer.

She wears a black gas mask with red-tinted lenses, olive green gloves, black knee and elbow pads, and sage-streaked silver tassel earrings. She wears a keychain necklace, a gift from her late girlfriend Emily, featuring a fiery comet encircling a reddish-purple amethyst stone carved into the shape of a human heart. Eri is adorned with two black steel armlets, one on each arm: the right armlet has a circular green crystal at its centre, while the left armlet has a red one. The green crystal grants her the power to unleash grey lightning, while the red crystal, forged from a fragment of Sol Dae Rokker, can summon deadly, wolf-shaped spirits that dive-bomb enemies.

Over her midriff, she dons a Soldier Plate Carrier System (SPCS) with a MultiCam pattern, which carries around her walkie-talkie and ammo for other firearms. She carries around a sage green load-bearing backpack that contains camping equipment, grenades, fire bombs, mines, hand-crafted explosive gadgets, portable ammo boxes, a canteen full of water, three canisters of gasoline, a rocket launcher, and a bottle of vodka. Her olive green waist pack, secured at the back of her belt, holds a silvery flask of vodka, a matchbox, and a compact makeup kit containing her eyeliner, mascara, and lip gloss. The pockets of her coat contain a pack of fruity bubblegum, a navy blue lighter, a rainbow-coloured bouncy ball, a deck of playing cards, and her lucky gold Kaiki Shoho coin. Meanwhile, her cargo pants hold lockpicking tools and three boxes of cigarettes. She has worn gauze wrapped around her right forearm, a gun holster for her handgun, and a sheath for her machete. She's still in possession of a Ptolemaic Army-commissioned scoped bolt-action rifle, which is often draped over her left shoulder.

Personality: She's a vengeful, sarcastic, cynical, and tomboyish leader who will stop at nothing to brutally hurt anyone she perceives as a threat to her comrades and friends or have caused them genuine harm. She has a sadistic streak, evident in her peculiar habit of smearing her enemies' blood on herself to intimidate others. When focused on her military duties and protecting those she respects and cares about, she tends to neglect her own needs. Eri's outspoken and crass demeanour shows no fear in speaking her mind, telling others off, and using profanities. As a self-reliant and lonesome individual, she’s bitter and aloof towards those she dislikes and strangers. She has a tendency to engage in dishonest behaviour and manipulate situations to her advantage. When confronted about these actions, she often responds with aggressive language and contradictory arguments. She holds immense respect for the deities, particularly Sol Dae Rokker, and will go to great lengths to worship and make sacrifices to them, often ritually sacrificing the remains of her enemies and indulging in orgies with her team of Ptolemaic rebels.

She fearlessly rebels against anything she deems morally wrong or a life-threatening risk. She shows no mercy towards her enemies, and her military missions showcase her exceptional resourcefulness, cunning, and tactical prowess. She's capable of sympathy and offering wise advice, but her willingness to do so greatly depends on the situation and her personal connection with the individual. She has immense compassion for those who endured a difficult childhood and does her best to offer comfort and support.

Eri regards her team of Ptolemaic deserters, Fio of the S.P.A.R.R.O.W.S., Marco and Trevor of the P.F. Squad, Ralf and Clark, the top dogs of the Ikari Warriors, Tequila, Red Eye, and Hyakutaro, Tyra, and Walter of Division 6 as family. She’s overprotective of Fio, whom she regards with sisterly affection, and Marco, whom she views as a courageous leader who deserves comfort and sympathy. She harbours significant animosity towards Tarma, seeing him as a hot-headed idiot who only causes trouble and can't take things seriously. Despite her best efforts to tolerate him, she can't help but snap at him when his silly antics go too far, he inadvertently ruins a plan or he gets too flirtatious and physically close to Fio.

She lives with claustrophobia, mild social anxiety, insomnia, atypical depression, and borderline personality disorder. To cope with her mental health struggles, she often presents herself as highly intelligent, serious-minded, and seductive. However, when anger takes hold, her emotions can be difficult to contain, although she strives to maintain some self-control. Notably, Eri prefers not to be called by her old name as it evokes memories of her past trauma, which she’s trying to desperately forget. She's a hardened pessimist, often appearing mentally exhausted and emotionally unfazed, yet she consistently demonstrates resilience and stubborn determination. She can't help but feel jealous towards those who have loving parents and weren't abandoned by them. When she's had too much to drink, she becomes prone to argumentativeness, physical aggression, and melancholy, and often sleepwalks.

She has a deep-seated distrust of Christianity, believing that many people hypocritically exploit God and Jesus' teachings to conceal their true intentions. She also thinks that certain Christian teachings clash with the harsh realities of life. Furthermore, she believes that God seems apathetic to humanity's well-being, watching them suffer endlessly, letting evil to continuously flourish, and restricting the potential for salvation. She holds that morality is culturally relative, and therefore, there are no universal moral laws, making it challenging to distinguish right from wrong.

In her view, human societies construct their values based on their distinct beliefs, customs, and practices, which are also influenced by social and emotional pressures. She believes that individuals have a moral obligation to protect innocent lives and uphold the goodness inherent in justice. Regarding war, she thinks it can be justified if it meets certain criteria: it’s openly declared by a governing authority, has a just cause, and aims to establish a lasting peace. She acknowledges the coexistence of life and death but does not see a clear connection between the two.

Backstory: Chizuko Kawaguchi was born on June 6, 2006 in Hiroshima, Japan. She was abandoned as an infant at the entrance of a Christian church by her parents, who had wanted a son instead of a baby girl. Her name was discovered on a piece of paper tucked inside her baby carriage. She was raised by the Christian church where she was sent to live, an institution with a strict religious environment. There, children who misbehaved were subjected to psychological reprimands. During Chizuko’s younger years, she acted out as an attention-seeking troublemaker, but was frequently punished through humiliation and isolation in a dark closet.

She would be frequently bullied by children who were considered to be well-behaved and good in the eyes of the church staff. They targeted her for her perceived sinfulness by spreading false rumours about her, belittling her, and vandalising her toys. She endured occasional physical abuse and emotional manipulation by the church orphanage staff who used the threat of eternal damnation to control her behaviour. This treatment had a profound effect on her, making her quiet, nervous, and obedient. As a result, she grew to resent the church, finding its teachings to be at odds with the harsh realities of her own life. She eventually lost faith in God, feeling that He seemed indifferent to human suffering, allowing it to persist without genuine intervention or care.

At the age of 6, Chizuko met Tarma and quickly befriended him after building a sandcastle and searching for worms under a heavy rock. This chance encounter taught her that there were kind people outside of her church community, and she had opportunities to form new connections and discover herself. She met up with Tarma a few more times until he stopped visiting Hiroshima, leaving her feeling alone and sorrowful.

Once she figured out the ways of the world, she escaped from the sanctuary of the church at the age of 12, alongside a small group of friends, eager to taste the forbidden fruit of the world. Seeking vengeance, she and her friends burned down the church orphanage in retaliation for the abuse they had endured. Most of her early life remains private. However, her invigorating and tomboyish nature lended her as a capable leader, founding a gang of street kids. They engaged in criminal activities, primarily petty theft, drug sales, weapon trafficking, and murder.

Details about this period are scarce, but it's known that Chizuko developed a fondness for vodka during this time. She narrowly escaped being taken into custody by the police through financial bribes, avoiding a potential juvenile detention. She would also go through a couple of romantic relationships with girls. Her first relationship was short-lived after she quickly discovered that her girlfriend was using her for financial gain. Her second relationship seemed to be going well, but it ended when her girlfriend's parents found out about her being a delinquent and forbade their daughter from seeing her again.

At 15, she reunited with Tarma after he ran away from home, inviting him to hang out and drink beer and vodka. As they caught up on each other's lives, she began to flirt and get physically close, seeing him as someone she could trust. However, Chizuko’s desire to escape the past and run away from her problems clouded her judgement. They spent many nights together, engaging in erotic activities, and she even convinced him to participate in a few crimes. But everything changed when Tarma abruptly ended things and returned home to Hokkaido. Devastated, she felt betrayed, despite having used him to fulfill her own desires and advance her gang interests. This experience explains her lingering animosity towards Tarma.

Her leadership skills and her gang had continued to grow successfully, but that success was short-lived. Two months before she turned 18, Hiroshima was suddenly attacked by multiple bombings from a mysterious group, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives, including her entire gang—her first true friends. This incident sent the Japanese populace into a deep state of panic and uncertainty. In the chaos, she also suffered a devastating injury, losing her left forearm. With quick thinking, she managed to improvise a tourniquet by tearing the sleeves of her medium-sleeved shirt and stemming the bleeding.

While treating her injury, she was approached by a brown-haired, grey-eyed woman wearing the attire of a Ptolemaic guerilla. This guerrilla fighter didn't want to leave Chizuko behind, knowing she would feel terrible if left alone. So, she convinced Chizuko to come with her to meet up with Ptolemaios. Chizuko was hesitant at first, but with no other options, she took the opportunity. The guerrilla introduced herself as Emily Kuznetsova, and Chizuko decided to adopt a new name: Eri Kasamoto.

Unbeknownst to her, Ptolemaios had been observing Eri for some time, recognizing her potential as a valuable asset for his army. She was first showered with excessive attention and affection by Ptolemaios' most devoted followers. Afterwards, they subjected her to an initiation ritual where she was forced to consume the heart of a deceased baby goat in the name of the Dark Lord and drink Ptolemaios' blood. He took steps to provide her with specialised training to enhance her skills in espionage and further develop her militant abilities. Once she received a sufficient amount of training, he wasn't hesitant to make her his second-in-command, which stirred some jealousy amongst the commanding officers of the Ptolemaic Army. On his behalf, she was responsible for multiple stealth missions to further the technological advancement and tactical plans of the Ptolemaic Army.

During this time, Emily's compassionate and courageous nature won Eri over, and she developed a strong romantic attraction towards her, which would eventually blossom into a full-blown relationship. Ptolemaios viewed Emily as a potential obstacle to his objectives and sought to eliminate her, motivated in part by his suppressed and secret sexual attraction to Eri. Emily's death was staged to appear as a suicide, with the circumstances surrounding it unclear. Eri was even sexually assaulted by a few commanding officers as Ptolemaios hoped that this would instill more fear in her and deter her from leaving.

However, these two events had a profound impact on Eri, leading to feelings of grief and anger, and prompting her to re-evaluate her involvement with the Ptolemaic Army. She assembled a group of individuals who shared her desire to challenge Ptolemaios' authority. The group consisted of six guerrilla troops: Mikuláš, Ji-Yeong, Konrad, Dezső, Sipho, and Harvie; four snipers: Amilcare, Diomedes, Souma, and Manouel; and eight special forces operatives: Kemalettin, Jaroslavas, Dermot, Agenor, Shelomit, Franjo, Prabhakar, and Radovan.

During their fight against the Ptolemaic Army, they caused major setbacks and killed off many soldiers and cultists. As Eri fought against Ptolemaios, she learned that he was responsible for conducting the terrorist bombings in Hiroshima. She tried to end his life, but felt a malevolent presence stopping her from doing so, forcing her and her rebel Ptolemaic soldiers out of Ptolemaios' compound in Osaka, Japan. Shortly after this time, she ripped off the sleeves of her purplish-grey coat to use as tourniquets for a couple of her men. She also chose to acquire her top scars, her way of trying to forget the past, reject social norms placed on women and girls, and embrace her true identity.

At the age of 20, she and her team decided to apply for military service, working under the Intelligence Agency as a formidable group of agents. Eri made a name for herself in numerous missions, earning a reputation as a vengeful leader amongst the Regular Army. She was known for eliminating numerous individuals, including treacherous soldiers and corrupt politicians with some of her most notable assignments involving strategic seduction that lured her targets into vulnerable positions. However, she began to feel increasingly disillusioned by the constant assassinations and conspiracies that weighed on her conscience, reminding her of her time with the Ptolemaic Army. She applied for a transfer to S.P.A.R.R.O.W.S., which was specially approved due to her exceptional record, indispensable skills, and intimate knowledge of the Ptolemaic Army's inner workings.

As the demolition and stealth expert of S.P.A.R.R.O.W.S., Eri led her rebel Ptolemaic soldiers with immense success. She befriended Fio and felt an instant, deep connection after a few interactions, viewing Fio as the younger sister she never had and vowing to protect her at all costs. She played a crucial role in the Great Morden War by providing Marco's team with explosives, emergency rations, and valuable intel on Rebel Army positions through stealthy infiltration. Eri showcased her advanced combat and leadership skills by helping to thwart Morden's second coup, which was aided by her team, Fio, Tarma, and Marco.

[teratocrat]

A single yellow dwarf, unremarkable, of about 1.0218 solar masses. And in its corona, dancing aurora-dragons, ribbons and feathers of nine-colored light, singing and reciting poetry to each other and hitching freezing rides on the asteroids and comets that swing close enough to the star to leap out onto.

One small, dense planet, frosted over with incandescent stormclouds that snow lead flakes onto the slopes of volcanoes whose calderas are choked with galena coral reefs, the bones of colonies of radiation-tolerant extremophilic microorganisms, and where sulfur-swamps coat the lazy tideless beaches of the planet's only ocean, stirred and tilled by people like lanky bundles of black ironstraw, who heap their storehouses high with xanthous dried fusegrass.

One larger, much cooler planet, the calcite gleam of its moon hidden from the surface much of the time by cloudcover. warm, shallow, mildly acidic seas of lavender mucous, tentative marshes of weeping fuschia ferns, translucent lapine blobs with probing antennae that could be eyes or ears or questing tongues, and in the middle of the deepest ocean, a massive gelatinous thing, a superorganism like a rose with its stem plunging down into the volcanic baths of an oceanic rift, a mind from whom all other minds on this planet came and to which they occasionally return, eager to share their stories.

One rocky planet, bitterly cold and with the merest wisps of atmosphere clinging to it. Lifeless, all its water burned off it by baleful solar glare, the vast horizon-spanning saltpan seafloors bone-bare under the violet sky, and its moon hanging above like a clenched fist of black basalt.

An asteroid belt, scattered diamond motes of ice and stone and clay and metals, with three dwarf planets in its embrace, and the largest of them bearing a banner of silver and midnight, a unicorn guarding some alien tree.

A planet one might almost mistake for Earth, for all its snake-necked tortoise-camels and gold-feathered tigermen, for all its gleaming pentagonal ziggurats of diamond and steel, its three space elevators anchored in the emerald forests that girdle the equator, the capital of an interplanetary empire founded at the mouth of an immense river lazily piling hundreds of tons of silt a year into delta marshes, its vast ports berthing wide, flat-bottomed barges hauling iron and salt and sand and cinnabar, barrels of fish and wine and oil and perfumes, tigerman janissaries and scholars and poets and wizards, all tallied and accounted for in the lightning thoughts of supercomputers domesticated by bureaucracy. spaceplanes like silver songbirds or leaping fish ferrying the nobility (who disdain regular shuttle flights from the tips of the space elevators as base transportation for commoners) from the surface of the planet to its moon above, or to any number of gleaming stations in high orbit.

A gas giant, pale as pearl streaked with delicate pink and green pastels, skirted by dozens of captured child-moons, many of them bearing the same unicorn banner, some of them mined for this or that rare earth element, cities buried under the shielding crust of a scant handful, and two of them habitiformed enough to support imperial hunting grounds - managed grasslands or forests full of imported game - and hunting lodges of squat domes and towering spires, mirrored labyrinthine greenhouse-gardens and treasure-vaults of platinum jewelry set with nebula-gems snatched from their condensation-nests in the gas giant's depths.

Another gas giant, the blues and purples of a ripe plum blushing from clouds of midnight-black marbled with gold, icy rings slicing through swirling lunar orbits, merchants and mercenaries and privateers gliding from port to port in their sapphire-hulled ships, out where the empire scrabbles to find purchase. hollowed-out asteroids house cylindrical farms or monasteries of fatalistic leonine faiths or the huddled bodies of wound-down murine clockwork eunuchs, commissioned to advise and amuse some tiger-empress whose phoenix standard had long since faded into obscurity by the time the founder of the unicorn-banner dynasty first rallied soldiers to his cause.

An Earth-sized ball of grey-green ice, glassy smooth surfaces broken up by cryovolcanoes pumping volatiles up from a sooty core to rain down again in miserable pattering drizzles of methane through ammonia blizzards.

An ice giant, the immense azure sphere its inward neighbor might have been were it not for the vagaries of fate as involved in early star system formation, accompanied by seventeen bitterly cold moons whose tides have woven something enormous and ponderous of thought out of the inner sea of supercritical fluids.

a dozen or more dwarf planets of packed stone and ice, swinging through the outer black clouds on vastly elliptical orbits, witnesses to tumbling nickel-iron visitors and alien probes relaying streams of blurry photography and other observations back to some unknown homeworld as they fall endlessly through interstellar space.

[harveybwabbit92]

[Hikari and Mother of Ultra have Akari hooked up to some kind of giant light bulb looking contraption, apparently they heard about her gaining certain mutations from eating kaiju meat like, fire resistance, poison immunity etc, etc... Their testing the effects from her eating Elecking meat Zero and Seven were there to observe and though neither were keen on the idea of experimenting on Akari but they had to make sure there were no negative effects from her dietary habits.]

Mother: Now dear, we're doing a electricity test today.

Hikari: You just need to eat some Elecking meat and we're going to monitor any changes in you body or energy levels.

Akari: Okay, but I should warn you beforehand don't touch my ax unless you wanna get shocked!

{A few minutes of Akari eating the meat there wasn't really any change until they heard a loud pop they looked over at Akari's ax and could see it was letting off electrical discharges as the slugger's blade turned teal green and it's shape morphed into a more jagged or zigzag appearance; almost resembling a lightning bolt.

They looked back at Akari and saw the three nondetachable sluggers on her head had also taken a similar shape, the color of her body had also changed; now silver it bore some semblance to her brother's Shining form, however it had teal and yellow Lichtenberg figure designs going down her body and the energy coming off her was caused the light bulb to shine brightly before overloading then the bulb blew out.]

Hikari: Fascinating, Let's do a combat test.

Seven: Right now? She's barely been on the planet a week!

Hikari: It's better to do this now, then sit on it later.

Zero: You'll be using drones, right?

Mother: Of course we're using drones, You don't need to worry about your sister's safety.

[Zero winces]

Seven: It's not Akari's safety we're worried about...

{Hikari and Mother didn't understand until after the combat simulation was over, When they witnessed Akari's electrical attacks had fried the drones and the systems of the training room they were using to a crisp; which would take days to repair! both Mother and Hikari were both stunned in amazement and terror at the sheer power the teen could put out, Mother was suggesting that Seven enroll Akari into the more advance combat classes as she'd be too much for the beginner and mid class students to handle, Seven reluctantly agreed.]

--------------------

{Akari doesn't actually have to consume Kaiju meat to achieve her power up forms, she can turn at will or from absorbing large amounts of electricity (for her electric form anyway), Eating kaiju meat just gives her a little boost to speed things up.

In her poison form Akari's body turns purple and black and her eyes turn pink; she can't use her ax due to the oily poison secreting from her hands, she can however elongate her nails into claws that can be used in devastating slash attacks, in this form Akari's touch is not deadly by any means but it can paralyze her foes, put them to sleep, hypnotize or cause them to hallucinate.

in her fire form Akari looks the same except for her all her silver markings turn gold and she emits a blazing aura that's hot enough to glass sand and melt steel, and since she lives in a heavily forested area, Akari tries not to use that form at all so not to burn her home down.]

[theocannibalistic]

Aaaand NPC gala fits part 2!

ID: five digital drawings of original characters, described top to bottom and left to right. 1. Bluebell, a lanky firbolg woman with freckled pale blue furry skin, cow hooves and a cow tail, fluffy ears, brown eyes and long dark red hair in a braid crown at her hairline. She is wearing a cream gown embroidered with pink, lavender and white flowers and pale green vines. The dress has a plunging neckline that shows a white patch of fur on her chest. She also has pale green vine earrings and bracelets and flowers in her hair that match the dress. 2. Agnazar, an older elven person with black hair pulled into a bun with two long white strands that hang past her ears and end in lightning shapes. She is wearing big star earrings, purple goggles pushed up to her forehead, black boots and gloves, and an indigo coat with white buttons and trimming. She is holding a dark brown cane with a purple orb grip in her right hand. 3. Moxie, a broad tiefling orc with freckled seafoam green skin that blushes purple, asymmetrical upright horns, a long tail with a curly blond tip, brown eyes and fluffy pale blond hair shaved light brown at the sides of his head. He is wearing red dragon earrings, gold bracelets and gold rings on his horns, a red cape in the shape of dragon wings, a layered terra-cotta scale skirt, a purple tabard with a black dragon embroidered on it and dark teal leggings and brown boots. 4. Juniper, a wood elf woman with tan freckled skin that blushes green, dark forest green hair with braids and wrapped sections and brown eyes. She is wearing a green gown with three-quarters sleeves, a square neckline split at the center and bright green and blue botanical pattern on the skirt and sleeve hems. She also has a gold crown with five blunt spikes decorated with circular gems and a necklace with multi-colored beads and a stone pendant. 5. Sirocco, a young summer eladrin girl with a warm skintone, frilled pointed ears, orange yellow and red eyes reminiscent of targets and long pale blond hair with straight-across bangs. She is wearing a red gown with puff sleeves, a curlicue pattern and white gem at the heart-shaped neckline, full skirts and a pink tabard with white and yellow accents.

Player Characters NPCs Part 1 NPCs Part 2 (you are here)