#javelin world title

[don-lichterman]

World Athletics Championships 2022, Kelsey-Lee Barber wins women’s javelin title, news, video, results, Mackenzie Little

World Athletics Championships 2022, Kelsey-Lee Barber wins women’s javelin title, news, video, results, Mackenzie Little

Australia’s Kelsey-Lee Barber has become the first woman to defend a world title in javelin, securing a momentous victory at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon, USA, today. Barber threw 66.91 metres on her third attempt, nearly three metres better than second-placed American Kara Winger’s 64.05m. Barber’s effort – the best in the world this season – was short of her personal best of…

[bijoumikhawal]

More Bajoran Headcanons

Archery and charioteering are traditional Bajoran sports associated with women

The preferred animal for chariot racing is the fabor, an animal with green horns. The lopp requires a specialized harness due to their neck spines, and verdanises are generally considered to have too delicate a constitution to pull most chariots (though they are ridden in races by single riders). Fabor also tend to be more fierce than both, making handling them during a race a greater act of skill.

Pre-Interplanetary travel Bajoran architecture had round foundations that gradually faded out of use for many, except in particularly windy locales where they ate still standard

Fasting is believed by some to have a magical/spiritual power, in that fasting against or in favor of an individual can curse or bless/sanctify them, respectively. Folkloric tales abound of a person refusing to eat in grief, and causing whoever aggreived them to fall ill, face misfortunes, or die.

The purpose of the death chant, and reason for it's lack resulting in a ghost, is that not performing grief would be considered a curse stating in its silence that the person did not live well, and is not worthy to enter the Temple.

Bajoran meditation, while not done solely for this purpose, is also said to potentially have magical/spiritual power. In stories it is portrayed that sufficient concentration generates heat, with heroes meditating in snow or icy waters and making them melt, warm, or even boil.

[thefirstempress]

Warrior Princess in Exile

Link: https://www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D46566089/

As mentioned a while back, I'm planning a spin-off of sorts to The First Empress, starring Viarra's mom, the Warrior-Princess Lutaxa of the Andegamni tribe. Lutaxa's people are based on the ancient Celtic tribes, and in particular the Pre-Roman Gauls. My working title for the story is Warrior Princess in Exile, though I'm open to other names. I finished the first full scene earlier and thought I'd share it here. As always, feedback and comments are welcome!

“Though she was mother of one of the most powerful women in the world, Lutaxa of the Andegamni was never crowned queen of anywhere. Technically she was princess-consort of Kel Fimmaril when she gave birth to the future Empress Viarraluca and her brothers. Meanwhile, she was more of a warlord or war-chief to the Andegamni tribe than queen. As Iron-Age Gannic tribes rarely kept a calendar, we can’t know for sure when she was born, though sometime in late 55 or early 54 BE seems most probable. While Empress Viarra was famous for her gargantuan height, we know that Princess Lutaxa was slightly taller, and like her daughter was also famous for her bright copper hair. She was reputed to have a will like iron and an edge like obsidian. And although she wasn’t present for Viarra’s famous usurpation of the Hegemony of Andivel that began the great empress’s rise to power, we know from accounts by Viarra and her colleagues that Lutaxa was a mighty warrior-princess in her own right and bequeathed both her martial prowess and political savvy to her Titan of a daughter.” —from Empress Viarraluca: Life of a Titan, by Zahnia, the Chronicler

35 BE, Early Summer

Part of her wishing she didn’t have to wear this bronze helmet and scale-armor on the most humid day of the summer so far, Princess Lutaxa of the Andegamni tribe took a swig from her water-skin as she watched the approaching scout riders. She wiped sweat from her eyes, trying not to smear her blue and black war-paint more than it already was. The weather wasn’t even particularly warm, but the inescapable moisture in the air bordered on oppressive.

“What d’ye report?” she demanded as the scouts rejoined the rest of the four-hundred-warrior war-band.

“Is like ye grandfather predicted,” a tall, shirtless spear-warrior named Velitax reported from his horse. “The traitor Cenali and their allies send another war-band tae attack our fortifications from behind.”

“Up the old wagon road?” Chief Adgenix—Lutaxa’s second-cousin and Grandfather’s master-of-horse—asked as he trotted up beside her.

“Aye,” a brigandine-clad shield-maiden named Cavarixa confirmed, nudging her horse closer. “We think seven-hundred strong.”

“From clothes and the crimson war-paint, I recognized their guides from the Iatta tribe,” Velitax added.

“So much for the Iatta’s claims of neutrality,” Adgenix groused behind his long, droopy brown mustache.

“Or maybe they have traitors of their own,” Lutaxa offered. “Grandfather, Father, and the others can piece that together when the Cenali and their allies are defeated. For now, let’s deal wi’ these foes so we can get back tae Grandfather and the rest of the army!”

“Aye, Princess,” Adgenix nodded, grinning and thumping his fist against his bronze breastplate.

“I’ll take the shield-warriors and hunters and hit their vanguard’s flank, while ye take ye horse-warriors and hit their rear as hard as ye can,” Lutaxa ordered. “Let’s see if we cannae smash the rest of their war-band between us and drive them back intae the forest.”

“Aye!” Adgenix grinned again. The scouts rode off with him to rejoin the rest of his seventy-odd cavalry-warriors.

Hefting her shield and spear in her left hand and two javelins in her right with her broadsword dangling from her hip, Lutaxa gave a quick, sharp whistle to signal the rest of her warriors to move out. Her copper hair was twisted up into a topknot and tucked under her conical bronze helmet. The helmet included hinged cheek-flaps to protect her face and a short, angled brim to deflect arrows away from her head. Painted dark blue with wolf-like devices, her wooden shield was tall and oval-shaped, held behind a central bronze boss. Under her scale armor, Lutaxa wore a maroon-dyed, long-sleeved wool shirt with crimson, navy, and pine-colored checkered pants. Lastly, she wore soft-leather ankle-boots to partly muffle her steps.

The wealthier warriors and shield-maids in her band were armed and dressed similarly, some with leather brigandine or bronze plate instead of scales or with tall, hexagonal shields instead of oval. Most of these warriors were either nobles who could afford to buy armor and spend most of their time training or were veterans who’d used spoils from past victories to buy armor and better weapons.

Most of her warriors, however, were conscripted farmers and tradespeople who wore little if any armor and carried either tall oval shields or more often simple round-shields. These warriors usually carried a single spear and a few javelins with maybe a dagger, hatchet, or cudgel as a sidearm. Hunters and huntresses conscripted into Grandfather’s army served as ranged support and typically carried either a longbow or shield and sling with sidearms similar to the poorer warriors. Though the conscripts’ training ranged from rudimentary to nonexistent, the Gannic tribes were a naturally strong and hardy people made mightier by harsh northern winters.

All shades of brown, black, blonde, red, or copper could be found among Gannic hair colors. Northern Gan tended to wear their hair long and wild, twisting it into topknots before going into battle. Though younger men sometimes grew short beards and older men often grew long beards, the more common facial hair was beardless with long, drooping mustaches. And while it varied from tribe to tribe, many men and women also plucked or shaved their body hair during the spring and summer.

Most Gannic shield-warriors and shield-maidens wore war-paint and dyed wool garments plain or with striped, checkered, tartan, diamond, or herring-bone patterns—though fighters who went shirtless were not uncommon. Zealots of warlike gods such as Vindicatus or Atepu were known to fight with only their weapons and war-paint. As in, no clothes: just spears, swords, and shields, with scrotums or snatches bared to all.

While Lutaxa could appreciate the courage it took to charge into battle stark-naked as well as the harrowing effect that screaming, painted nudists could have on enemy morale, such zealots tended to fight bravely and die quickly.

Admittedly, her war-band was a far cry from the disciplined, semi-professional Venarri armies and mercenary Tollesian phalanxes she’d encountered during the two years she’d spent fighting as a mercenary for the Venarri kingdoms and city-states to the south. The Tollesian hoplite sell-spears had been particularly impressive, with their tall spears and bronze or linothorax armor, and Lutaxa remembered being relieved her warriors were fighting beside them instead of against them.

Uncle and Grandfather had used the pay and spoils their tribe acquired from those campaigns to fund this war against the treacherous Cenali. After two years of campaigning, Grandfather—the great War-Chief Camulatix—had forced their foes into a grand showdown at the fortified village of Carix. Expecting the Cenali to send a flanking force around the nearby mountain to attack the village from the west while the main Cenali horde attacked the eastern and southeastern fortifications, Grandfather had assigned Lutaxa’s war-band to locate and ambush this force.

Creeping amid the trees a quarter-mile south of Carix’s stone- and palisade walls, Lutaxa located the wagon-road that she knew the Cenali would be using. Crouching with her warriors amid the tall grass, brush, pines, and other foliage, she readied her javelins and war-horn for the enemy’s arrival. Minutes later, she could hear the tramping of horses’ hooves amid the muttering and footfalls of leather-booted or barefoot warriors.

Crouching nearby, a stark-naked shield-maid named Saglia made a low growling noise as the first invaders came into view. Daughters of Atepu—followers and priestesses of the divine patroness of women warriors, huntresses, and jilted brides—were known to be particularly fearsome, painting their bodies in garish designs and bleaching their hair with lime. Saglia muttered a war-chant to herself, wearing only her blue-and-crimson war-paint, her bleached hair twisted into a topknot that dangled above her right ear.

Armed, clad, and painted similarly to Lutaxa’s war-band, the Cenali vanguard consisted of a few dozen mounted warriors mixed with shield-warriors and hunters. The Gan tending to be a fairly tall people with a lengthy stride, these warriors maintained a steady, mile-eating pace in order to reach their destination quickly and still have enough stamina to fight.

Once the enemy war-band came parallel to her group, Lutaxa raised her war-horn to her lips and blasted out the attack signal. All at once, her band let out their savage battle-cry and loosed their javelins, arrows, and sling-stones into the enemy’s unshielded right flank. Throwing both javelins before charging in, Lutaxa grinned as the first javelin took a rider from his horse while the second tore into a spear-warrior’s leg. The melee warriors led the charge, screaming and shouting as they engaged the startled invaders.

Using the slope to her advantage, Lutaxa screeched a battle-cry her mother taught her and rushed down upon a cavalry-warrior who was trying to get his frightened horse under control. Not giving him the chance, she shoved her spear deep into his kidney. The warrior screamed and fell from his horse, bleeding heavily. The horse responded by freaking out and charging off into the pines.

Lutaxa turned just in time to deflect a spear-thrust with her tall shield. The unarmored spear-maid facing against her managed to block Lutaxa’s return attack but found herself forced to back off as another of Lutaxa’s warriors attacked her unshielded side. Unable to handle the press of the Andegamni warriors, the young spear-maid tripped backward over one of her fallen comrades.

The spear-maid had beautiful golden hair, Lutaxa decided, and could potentially be a valuable battle-captive. Instead of stabbing her to finish her off, Lutaxa flipped her spear around to smack the woman in the temple to knock her out.

As the shield-warriors assailed the vanguard, the hunters, slingers, and javelin-warriors still amid the trees turned their missiles toward the middle of the enemy column, not yet engaged. Lutaxa smirked as two enemy warriors dropped their weapons and ran into the pines on the other side of the wagon-road.

Using her height and the leverage it gave her, Lutaxa punched her shield downward against an enemy shield, staggering the shirtless warrior backward. As the warrior stumbled, she used the opening she’d created to stab her spear deep into his chest.

Around her, the enemy vanguard crumbled at her warriors’ assault, more and more survivors fleeing into the trees. Screaming out another battle-cry, Lutaxa stepped over her fallen enemy to engage a grizzled warrior in what looked like an older bronze breastplate looted from a Venarri foe. The enemy warrior snarled and threw a javelin from less than ten feet away before drawing his broadsword and charging. Lutaxa knocked the javelin aside with her shield before side-stepping his charge and stabbing out with her spear. The spear struck less than an inch too low to catch the warrior’s unprotected armpit, instead deflecting off his bronze cuirass.

As the warrior turned to face Lutaxa, however, the shield-maiden Saglia shrieked out a war-cry and threw her spear into the side of the bronze-clad warrior’s head. Though the spear wasn’t balanced for throwing and the older warrior’s helmet deflected the attack, it knocked him off balance enough that Lutaxa could shove her spear deep into the bastard’s neck.

Lutaxa decided to include seducing Saglia as part of her victory celebration. Meanwhile, Saglia drew her broadsword and raced forward to pounce shield-first on another enemy warrior, tackling him to the ground and stabbing him repeatedly as she frothed at the mouth.

As Lutaxa’s war-band continued to cut their way through the enemy warriors and hunters, a cry came from the back of the enemy mob that they were under attack from both sides.

“Horse-warriors!” an enemy shouted. “We’re attacked from behind!”

Tall enough to easily look over the heads of the struggling Cenali warriors, Lutaxa smirked at the sight of Adgenix’s cavalry scattering the enemy rear-guard. Beset from two sides, the Cenali and their allies stood less than a minute before their horde broke. Lutaxa stabbed through a javelin-hunter’s defenses, her steel spear cutting deep through his chest and pinning the bastard to the ground as he fell. Drawing her broadsword, Lutaxa looked about to see the enemy scattering.

“Chase the fockers tae the river!” Lutaxa screamed to her warriors, a victory cheer going up from their ranks.

In a victorious frenzy, her war-band charged headlong after their routing foes, cavalry taking the lead and trampling deep into the disintegrating enemy war-band. Lutaxa and her shield-warriors chased down and cut down or captured every fleeing Cenali they could catch while her hunters and javelin-warriors lobbed their projectiles at retreating backs.

A deep river flowed less than a quarter-mile to the south of the wagon-road. Venarri merchants she’d met had a name for the river, but Lutaxa couldn’t recall it. Swift and bloated from the spring melt-off, the river was over an eighth of a mile across and was unfordable this time of year. Nevertheless, many Cenali warriors threw down their arms as well as armor if they wore it, leaping into the swift waters to escape the Andegamni warriors’ retribution. Many others threw down their weapons and surrendered.

Lutaxa estimated perhaps two hundred enemies struggling in the swift current. A few hunters lobbed arrows or sling stones after the escaping swimmers. At least one enemy warrior screamed as an arrow stuck deep in his back. The poor bastard screamed and thrashed, bleeding heavily as the current carried him off.

“Save ye arrows!” Lutaxa ordered, sheathing her sword and breathing hard from the battle adrenaline. “Any fockers can make it across deserve tae escape. Ye,” she continued, turning to a surrendering enemy spear-maid in leather brigandine and a bronze-rimmed leather cap. “Who’s in charge of ye war-band?”

“Fock if I ken,” the red-haired, freckled warrior admitted as one of Lutaxa’s warriors took her sword and dagger and another bound the woman’s hands. “I watched ye slay Chief Vocorix with ye own spear. I dinnae ken who’s left in charge after him.” She titled her head. “Ye are Princess Lutaxa, aye?”

“Aye,” Lutaxa confirmed. So the grizzled warrior that Saglia helped her slay must have been their war-chief.

“Ye reputation precedes ye,” the spear-maid nodded. “I suppose Chief Vocorix dinnae expect ye Chief Camulatix tae send his mightiest grandchild tae fight us.”

“Flattery will get ye everywhere,” Lutaxa smirked, raising the woman’s chin with two fingers. The spear-maid was handsome and brawny, probably in her thirties and looked like an experienced fock. Maybe Saglia would like tae share a battle-captive tonight, she mused to herself.

“Secure the prisoners and round up our wounded and theirs!” she barked to her war-band. “Adgenix,” she added, addressing him and handing the captive spear-maid off to her warriors. “Have ye horse-warriors stay alert in case any Cenali who escaped try anything. Once we’ve secured the captives and wounded, ride ye horse-fockers back tae Grandfather’s horde, see if ye cannae help the battle there. We’ll catch up tae ye.”

“Aye,” Chief Adgenix smirked before turning his mount to gather his horse-warriors.

When she was around fourteen winters old, Lutaxa rode her first battles with Adgenix’s cavalry—back when she was still small enough and light enough to ride in combat. While still a proficient horsewoman, her size and weight tended to reduce her mounts’ speed and stamina significantly, especially when riding with full armor and kit. As such, she tended to prefer to lead the charge beside the shield-and-spear warriors.

“Make any looting quick, loves!” Lutaxa added, watching a young spear-warrior conscript trying on a bronze helmet from a dead Cenali warrior. “If needed, we can loot them more thoroughly when we come back tomorrow tae gather our dead.”

A few nearby warriors grumbled, but not loudly.

“Saglia!” Lutaxa announced upon spotting her new favorite Daughter of Atepu. “Thank ye for ye help fighting they war-chief, love!”

“Aye, ye are most welcome, ye highness!” Saglia laughed, stripping a bronze dagger with an antennae-style crossguard and pommel from a dead warrior. From another corpse she took a leather bag full of what sounded like knucklebones. She scrounged a leather cord to tie both, since being naked she didn’t even have a belt to tuck them into.

“As thanks, would ye care tae celebrate by sharing a battle-captive or two with me tonight?” Lutaxa asked, kneeling to help up an allied warrior with a leg-wound.

“That sounds fun!” Saglia agreed, moving to support the warrior’s other side. “I will warn ye,” she added, “I have focked three men tae death, so dinnae bring any captives ye want tae keep alive.”

“I cannae tell if ye are serious,” Lutaxa observed, looking over the wounded warrior’s head at her.

“Aye, she’s serious,” the injured spearman nodded, limping between them. “One of them was my poor, stupid cousin who heard she focked two men tae death and decided tae try her anyway. Dumb bastard died from a broken pelvis.”

“Aye, two men died from broken pelvises, the other from a ruptured bladder,” Saglia added. “Several others were injured for weeks.”

“I killed a man in bed, but he was an assassin sent by the Cenali,” Lutaxa admitted. “He disguised himself as a bed-slave tae get close tae me. I was a bit surprised when he drew a knife, but he was even more surprised when I swatted his knife away with one hand and broke his neck with the other before he could react,” she added, flexing her huge left hand. “Any of ye injured partners women?” she asked next.

“Nae sae much,” Saglia shook her head. “Focking a lass needs a different technique and motions, aye? Lads get hurt, but lasses just cannae walk straight for days.”

“I think ye and I will get on great,” Lutaxa laughed.

[fantasyinvader]

I think one of the interesting things is that while Thales is the big bad, Edelgard is the bigger threat.

Think about it, despite their technological advantage TWSITD needed to manipulate her and the Empire into starting the war to serve their purposes. That despite the Javelins of Light, biological warfare, better weapons, crest-beasts, assassinations and the mini-mecha they employ, it would not be enough for them to wage war on their own. They needed an army for their plans to come to fruition, and they have positioned the Empire Rhea helped found to kill her for them.

But then, play Flower. The game does portray Edelgard as a liar in this route. The route starts with her taking credit for Byleth's leadership in order to bolster her own image, and the route ends with her telling Rhea she be spared if she surrenders in public while saying that Rhea needs to be obliterated in private. It really comes to a head, however, a couple levels before that. The Chapter Lady of Deceit begins with Edelgard giving her army a false target so that she can take Arianrhod unaware, it ends with Edelgard lying to her army about the Javelin's of light with the final explore chapter having characters mention that Edelgard knows more than she's letting on, and that some are concerned with how she keeps her army in the dark. The Japanese version of the chapter also has Cornelia's death quote saying that while TWSITD thought they were manipulating Edelgard, Edelgard was really the one manipulating them. In the final chapter, this goes as far as having Edelgard say she will continue to work with Thales until things calm down after the war, but Hubert made it very clear that once the war was over he was going after TWSITD. It's said to be a long and terrifying war while the Imperial army is marching on foreign nations according vb that she's walked the path of supremacy, or hadou, which has horrible implications relating to her abusing her power. But think about the usage of Apex of the World here, it's Edelgard's boss theme whether or not she is in the Hegemon Husk form. Is there really a difference between who she is between the two routes?

Hell, the game invoking the Mandate of Heaven seems to confirm this. Edelgard says her rule has followed the path of supremacy, hadou, in her Japnanese S support and while she says this is no longer the case the devs confirmed that her path does lead to hadou. As such, with the Japanese name of the Sword of the Creator being the Sword of the Emperor of Heaven it's Byleth's responsibility to reject Edelgard's rule and remove her from power, failing to do so takes away Byleth's power and ability to use the sword. Claude says to Hubert he will put an end of Edelgard's path of supremacy in Verdant Wind, which the translators changed to military rule still indicating that Edelgard is a dictator, while Dimitri's rule is supposed to represent the antithesis of hadou, oudou or the King's path, marking him as a benevolent ruler. Moon also refers to Edelgard as a hegemon through her final evolution, one that is supposed to represent the ideals she's started a war to serve, while Byleth's ending title in Flower is Wings of the Hegemon, treating them as nothing more than an extension of Edelgard.

Hadou has negative connotations, it's not meant to be a good thing and Edelgard's relationship with it is meant to be present in all four routes. People are going to suffer under Edelgard's rule, that is what the game is telling us. It doesn't matter if she turns around and takes TWSITD out after the war, unlike the other routes the people are going to suffer and not just in Fodlan as the Japanese text does indicate that she begins sending the Imperial army into other countries where they are “often out of control.”

The devs called Edelgard a villain, and she wins in Flower. It's a route where Fodlan is now under the control of a villain. The fact that TWSITD are said in Wind to have manipulated Edelgard and the Empire, pushed her down the path towards this war, doesn't erase that fact as her own route confirms she's turned it around and manipulates them. Villain Group A manipulates Villain B into doing what they want her to do only for Villain B, in pursuit of her ideals (which were informed by Villain Group A's manipulation of her), to succeed in manipulating Villain Group A before taking them out when they no longer benefit her. Edelgard will still be talking about ruling the world when TWSITD's nigh-immortal leadership is wiped out, and Hopes shows she'll still start her war even when parting ways with them and realizing how much influence they had in the Empire.

And, hell, considering the ending of Wind where Edelgard is defeated but the Imperial army doesn't respect the Alliance enough to accept their defeat, leading to TWSITD leading them to nearly conquering Fodlan with only Claude showing up with the Almyran army stopping them. On the one hand, it shows the strength of the Imperial army even after the loses they suffered at Gronder where TWSITD could do this easily and on the other, it shows just how shitty Edelgard and Leopold are when it comes to effectively commanding an army. That with the army after losing Thales, Nemesis and their hidden base they were almost able to pull of the win showing just how much of a threat the Imperial Army is when properly led.

And again, it's the Imperial army that would go around marching on other countries if Edelgard wins, with Caspar's endings saying they were successful despite his leadership resulting in them being “often out of control” in the Japanese text. The Empire under Edelgard, in essence, serves as a threat to the entire world. TWSITD might have turned her into their weapon initially, but it's clear they can't actually control her and as a result she's not just a threat to the heroes and Fodlan but to them as well.

Edelgard is the bigger threat of the two.

[mdhwrites]

Why the Name Belos?

So this isn’t entirely criticism with some research and more of a showers thought sort of thing but it started with me realizing that Belos could have foreshadowed something... And didn’t. I’ll reveal it after getting into what his name actually means.

So Philip genuinely is just a basic bitch, English name. It means Friend of Horses which we never see anything of. Wittebane is actually obvious if you think about it as yes, it does in fact translate either to ‘White Tormentor” or to “Witch tormentor” if the Wiki is right at least. That’s pretty standard and the like so *shrug*.

But then there’s Belos. The name he gave himself. Now there are three ways to interpret it. One that theoretically takes into account his background, one that fits the same way Wittebane does and one that I think fits both and is a lot more sly. First: Belos is from the New Testament to mean “Javelin, Dart, Arrow, a missile”. This is why it’s more just “This does fit for his background as a religious extremist but not really for deeper meaning.” He isn’t very direct or targeted in his methods after all. This meaning would be a lot better if he were a specter, assassin, or just did a lot more of his dirty work himself to reflect the single purpose and single target drive of the items it correlates to. One could claim he has the singular purpose but even that isn’t just about murdering witches as he does reveal his goal is as much about titles and fame that it will gain him back home or else he wouldn’t care when Luz gets the title wrong. Also he’s just really bad at his goal so that also hurts the case.

The one the wiki states and that a name definer relates it to is an Ancient Greek term for Lord or Ruler. It’s like when Toriyama named the god of his world Kami. It does work, even if bluntly (though I’ve used the same sort of trick to inspire names I’ve used before) and it is imposing and it fits his egotism. Kind of my only real issue is that while he does become the emperor... His goal isn’t conquest. It’s murder. Worse yet, it’s not like the people of the Isles would know what it meant so it means nothing to them and doesn’t have a double meaning except for making title “Lord Lord” and Belos doesn’t seem like the one to want his name to be a literal joke. Why not make it a sly warning then? Have the people call him what would eventually doom them all?

So here’s the third way: Phonetically what it sounds like. Belos is pronounced effectively the same way as Bellows. You know, those things you use to strengthen and stoke a fire in a furnace. Or a pyre perhaps? And this was the shower thought: Why wasn’t Belos’ big final move fire? It is his backstory that he is a WITCH HUNTER. Witches weren’t just shot or the like on the spot. They were burned. Or stoned admittedly I believe but famously they were mostly burned.

Why not burn away the Isles, with his power, influence, etc. like that as the bellows that helped stoke the fire that saw it all burn away? If you want to go more metaphorically, why not fuel the flames of rebellion? He clearly didn’t have the most amount of control over his lands despite being a tyrant, or told to us to be one since his actions don’t actually correlate with one, so he could have been trying to make a rebellion happen. Killing Eda, the most famous wild witch, and petrifying her could do both. Solidify the terror in believer’s hearts while also enraging those who believed this was too far.

Of course that would have required everyone rallying to Eda to actually make... sense at the end of S1? Like this isn’t a desire that’s unfounded due to S1′s finale very much so feeling like it’s setting up for the entirety of the Isles to rebel against Belos when that never happens. Of course, the claims even in the show are pretty fucking weak. Like for this crime to be unjust, Eda would have to not be a know, actual criminal who did do more, at least supposedly, than just being a wild witch. She would have actually had to have had allies and friends and not been a complete bitch to literally everyone she met, including Luz and King for the first half of the season, for the entirety of S1.

Again, as far as the name goes, it’s fine. Belos works as just being a cheeky reference to him being the Lord of the Isles and it fits the general naming scheme of TOH. King is literally a King of sorts. Luz was at the beginning the light of the show and looked like she was meant to bring light to a dark place which... Yeah, that’s a different blog. Amity is amicable (as well as maybe Amityville?) very quickly and that closeness feeds into her being the love interest. Even Willow is named after a tree that is known to look sad and pathetic while being actually really strong.

It’s just interesting to me that a witch hunter’s name coincidentally also sounds like something that helps fuel fires. You’d think that’d be on purpose or someone might have noticed, though admittedly I didn’t until today so *shrug*. Again, not the biggest deal in the world, just kind of started making my brain buzz a bit.

=========

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

[cheddar-baby]

New years chart 🥰 (titles under cut)

Jeff Rosenstock - HELLMODE Yoni Mayraz - Dybbuk Tse! TEKE::TEKE - Hagata Magdalena Bay - Mercurial World Sufjan Stevens - Javelin Dorian Electra - Fanfare Sampha - Lahai Magdalena Bay - mini mix vol. 3 Magdalena Bay - A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair Yoni Mayraz - Rough Cuts Tears for Fears - The Hurting Kate Bush - Never for Ever (2018 Remaster) Magdalena Bay - mini mix vol. 2 CMAT - Crazymad, For Me Doja Cat - Scarlet JPEGMAFIA - SCARING THE HOES Rina Sawayama - SAWAYAMA Chloe x Halle - Ungodly Hour Comanavago - Heart Failure George Clanton - Ooh Rap I Ya Jacaszek - KWIATY Wilma Archer - A Western Circular Andy Shauf - Norm Feist - Multitudes Matthew Halsall - An Ever Changing View Billy Woods - Maps Chini.png - El día libre de Polux death's dynamic shroud - After Angel Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia Jessie Ware - That! Feels Good! Klô Pelgag - Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs Le Cri du Caire - Le Cri du Caire Liv.e - Girl In The Half Pearl Madeline Kenney - Night Night At The First Landing SLAUSON MALONE 1 - EXCELSIOR Speakers Corner Quartet - Further Out Than The Edge yeule - softscars Allie X - Cape God Armand Hammer - We Buy Diabetic Test Strips

[goneahead]

so **shuffles feet** @cowandcalf and @stephmcx tagged me way back when Tarquinus was still king. In my defense, it was summer and I was summering. (estivation really should be a hobby. just saying)

Five fic recs of my own personal fics (under the cut ‘cuz I got long-winded)

note 1: All of my fic is on Dreamwidth, some of it has been cross-posted to A03.

Click for lists-> Masterpost of A03 fics Masterpost of all my fic

note 2: My dreamwidth account is friend-locked, but you can drop me a DM if you need an invite.

note 3: fic titles are clickable links. The USDA recommends consuming a minimum three fanfics a day in order to stay properly hydrated.

O-Ate-Four

Addams Family and Avengers 530 words

pairing: none, gen

Why I wrote It: Because my muse is a seductive temptress. And also because I’m convinced the Addams family has to exist in the same world where **checks notes** people fight aliens with pointy sticks.

Why you should read it: Natasha, Wednesday, French cemetery. Come on, what else do you need for a perfect Halloween fic?

Talking about pointy sticks, I may have written an entire fic where Hawkeye renovates a cabin. My ability to write truly riveting plots is… questionable😜

Operation: Cupcakes 1,427 words

pairing: Steve McGarrett/Danny Williams but gen

Why I wrote it: Because the only thing better than writing about cupcakes is writing about red velvet cupcakes. No really, thats the plot. Did I mention my riveting plots?😆

Why you should read it: Because there is a serious dearth of McDanno baking fics. And because there are red velvet cupcakes.

Beam Me Up, Danno

Hawaii Five-0 42,995 (including sequel)

Why I wrote it: Either this was a whumptober fic that got out of hand—or my muse tied me up and threatened to put a Ceti eel in my ear if I didn’t write it. Take your pick.

Why you should read it: Because the world needs a Hawaii Five-0 Star Trek AU? Also, there is Cardassian poetry, diplomatic javelining, and aliens that love butter pecan ice cream.

Yes, this is my second ‘Hawaii Five-0 in space’ AU, and I’m totally done writing about aliens. **hides my Hawaii Five-0 MIB wip behind my back**

Care and Feeding of a Super Seal

Hawaii Five-0 59,934 words

pairing: Steve McGarrett/Danny Williams

Why I wrote it: This is my coda for the Hawaii Five 0 finale and all @cowandcalf’s fault. My muse agreed with all her points in this meta she wrote and… stuff happened. Also, I was obsessing thinking in a very normal fashion about how the ohana deserved better, too.

Why you should read it: I did my best to explain the ending, various plot holes the size of an spider crab, and a few other things that have bugged fans over the years. There’s also Steve!whump, some badass!Danny, and a generous sprinkling of ohana. Most importantly, the boys talk about diving, and get their happy ever after.

Beasts and Outlaws note: this fic is only on dreamwidth

Supernatural 145, 622 words

pairing: Dean Winchester/OMC

Why I wrote it: I’ve always wanted a paranormal fic that felt like it was set in the southwest, so I decided to write one cleverly disguised as a Supernatural AU.

Why you should read it: Where else are you going to get a fic with nagueles, rain gods, and the FBI? Also, Old Man Coyote makes a random appearance and Dean’s in love with a were-cougar.

And yes, I wrote a Hawaii Five-0 AU where I turned Chin into a were-leopard but its totally not the same thing😂

tagging: @itwoodbeprefect @simplyn2deep and @herveiwfromthefloor

[tessathegamefreak]

Cassidy is the designated photographer in the game ”name placeholder”, as the title suggests it's about javelin throwing, the better the attempt the better the score.

Despite having been plugged in just yesterday she became fast friends with Turbo, the ever egocentric individual. With her happy go lucky attitude and his confedens they made for a good team, to the dismay of the twins and everyone around them. They became so close that people couldn't tell if they were dating or not. One minute there cuddling the next there wrestling (it's called play fighting, look it up loser).

Cassidy once told Turbo that she would follow him to the ends of the digital world, and she had her statement tested once Turbo robbed himself of his own home. She hid him in her own house until the eventful day when her game got unplugged due to a break in. It happened overnight, no one was prepared for the tragedy, when the man missed his target he sent his crowbar flying straight into the cabinet's glass, shattering it and activating the building's alarm. Only Cassidy and Turbo made it out of there alive, unbeknown to the public, who thought they were both deceased. Now homeless and presumed dead, Cassidy had nowhere to go but to follow her friend, and she followed him right into Sugar Rush, questionable morals arc baby let's go.

She changed her name from Cassidy to Carmilla Kernel Pop, complementing the snack she's based on, caramel popcorn. Her outfit has elements of a popcorn maker, specifically the colors. Red, gold, white, even black. Another thing about her name is that ehhh… Carmilla, carnival, what do you get at carnivals? Popcorn! also the last 4 letters of carnival kinda sounds like evil, so there's that, i like names with layers.

In Sugar Rush she chose the job of journalist, because she was like “aww, in my game i was just the photographer, but i didn't even take the picture, the game did it, i just stood there and looked pretty”. So she gave herself some authority, her stories often make it to the front page of the newspaper. Giving King Candy another means to spread his anti Vanellope propaganda.

Tu- i mean King Candy and Carmilla are still close friends but aren't as physical as they used to be, mostly to sell the image of their identities. But you can still hear it in the way they talk to each other that they're close. The most he will do in front of others is to give her a playful little side hug or a pat on the back. The only person to witness the true extent of their playfulness is Sour Bill. He will never get the image of Carmilla biting King Candy's check out of his head, ever. And it haunts him to this day.

Ah, interesting! A character from when the arcade was first opened! Generally, she seems like a fun character.

I also like the details of her Sugar Rush identity. I myself put layers behind every single OCs name, so names with layers are my favorite, too.

And poor Sour Bill-

[ravingard]

@nerimoi asked meta + choice of weapon / weapon preferance

wyll prefers to fight without shields, preferring “freedom of movement” the same reason he never really built up the strength to wear heavier armor, he considers it too constricting and if someone happens to land a blow, well lessons can be learned with pain, stories can be told with scars. he prefers the dance, the fluidity of good footwork.

he can fight with a small variety of weapons if he must, anything will do in a pinch, he has minimal training with shortswords, and history fighting with javelins and spears, these are all more circumstantial than anything, ( heat metal is a quick way to lose a weapon, and improvising is a skill that will do you good when staring down the face of a minotaur )

if he is given the choice he will always choose a blade. there are many layers to what wyll might consider a blade of preference ( they will always be blades, how could he keep his title if he were running around wielding crossbows ? )

when he was little, around his fifth birthday, his father gifted him with a wooden sword, elvish script carved into the little polished blade. he hardly remembers it now, but that feeling is one not easily forgotten, the swell of pride, the knowledge that such a gift means something. the whole world boiled down to a single moment, where it all comes together. this is it.

ulder taught wyll with a rapier, as it was light enough the young boy didn't have much of a problem wielding it ( though still heavier than a young wyll had expected. ) so the weight of a thinner blade has always been more comfortable, the flourish of a rapier has always felt like home.

[optimistpax]

[ID: a reply from @pluralsword​​ saying “Please. Books are fine too. Doesn’t have to be transformers but hopefully something queer and/or robots. Arcee, Anode, Lug. If you want to, Greenlight, Lander, Aileron, Windblade, Nautica, Chromia, Velocity, Guage, and Sideswipe (the younger, you know the one that came out of a Trypticon hot spot) but the first three we named are the ones we’d be most curious about/most wanting to read something that appeals to them (we’re plural) end ID]

hmm I’m not sure I’m familiar with the Trypticon Sideswipe and I have to admit I don’t remember Lancer from idw2 (I started writing recs for her before realizing I’d confused her with Javelin), but I’m happy to give the rest of them a go! I love oversharing about book recommendations haha

gonna throw them under the cut bc there are SO MANY

For Arcee

I think Arcee would vibe with the Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo! The Worldbuilding and intrigue and characters are all SO interesting. I don’t have words for how very cool it is.

For You

hmmmm I think this rec might depend a little more on which version(s) of Arcee are your favourite and why, but I think Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag is always a solid choice to recommend! It’s a really fun fantasy/mystery that is very affirming and gender

For Anode

I will take any excuse to recommend Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey. It’s a post-apoc western about queer librarians. It’s a fun time. Very good read for an adventurous soul.

For You

If you’re a fan of Anode, I think you’ll like The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson! I don’t want to say too much bc I don’t want to spoil it, but I absolutely stayed up till 3am to finish this book in one sitting bc I couldn’t put it down. Really cool concept, excellent execution and commentary, fantastic characters. GOOD BOOK.

For Lug

Ok so this isn’t technically queer or have robots, but it’s still firmly cemented in scifi and I can’t NOT recommend for the geologist character a book I recommended to a real life geologist who is dear to me. So! For Lug I recommend Red Shirts by John Scalzi. It’s a GREAT time tbh. It’s a parody of shows like star trek where the “red shirt” character becomes genre aware and attempts to escape his (and his friends) fate. It’s very well written and I was especially tickled by the three epilogues (first person, second person, and third person) each following a different character with loose ends.... and written in the pov of the epilogue title.

For You

Hmmmmmm if I hadn’t already recommended across a field of starlight I would recommend that one here... but since I have, I will instead recommend Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune. Also queer, also deals with death, and I cried through the entire thing (in a good way.)

For Greenlight

I think she’d like The Tea Dragon Society by K. O’neill. Very chill comics exploring different kinds of dragons has gotta be a little like xenobiology, right???

For You

Rock and Riot by Chelsea Furedi! I feel like some parallels could be found between some of the relationships in Rock and Riot and Arcee and Greenlight, and since Greenlight is rarely found without her partner it makes for good reading for a fan of her!

For Aileron

Ok so again this isn’t a queer/robot book, but oh MAN is it gorgeous. Human Target by Tom King and Greg Smallwood is a noir style mystery with gorgeous art and really excellent lettering. Aileron (in idw2 at least) to me feels like the kind of person that would vibe with a good mystery book (with all the mystery in her FICTION where it BELONGS instead of in her LIFE where it does NOT)

For You

Hmm Perhaps try Rockstar and Softboy by Sina Grace! Aileron seems like the level headed one of this group of wreckers and Softboy is a little like that as well... but even when your friends cause problems with their good intentions at the end of the day you still gotta love em.

For Nautica

I can’t not recommend The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells for Nautica. It’s got weird science and weird alien planets and murder mysteries, what’s not to love for a nerd like her?

For You

Hmmmm if you’re a fan of Nautica you may like The Last Human by Zack Jordan. It’s a lot of fun, but the second half of the book does get a little weird in a “you’ll love it or you’ll hate it” sort of way. But honestly with some books that’s part of the fun! Especially when you share them with friends :)

For Chromia

Another book that does not hit the “queer or robots” requirement, but Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido absolutely seems like a book that Chromia would like. A noir comic about anthropomorphic animals with absolutely stunning art. The details in the backgrounds and scenery are especially well thought out, you could look at them and find new things for days, which is smth I think she’d appreciate.

For You

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey. This book just about single-handedly got me out of a uhhhhhh seven year reading slump so I cannot actually tell you if it was good but I can tell you I had an absolute blast reading it. Very noir detective mystery... but modern day with a fantastical twist. I could see where the mystery was going, but honestly that just made me enjoy it more because I love seeing the inner workings of how fiction is set up so yes. Fun Book. Chromia fans check it out.

For Velocity

I think that Velocity would like Boys Run the Riot by Keito Gaku! The characters are high school students struggling to break into fashion after being told repeatedly that it’s not something they can achieve. I think that she could relate to that with her own struggle with getting into the medical field.

For You

hmm I think fans of Velocity would also Like Snapdragon by Kat Leyh! Another story about an underdog with stunning visuals and snappy writing.

For Guage

I think Guage would really like Sleepless Domain by Mary Cagle! It’s a cute magical girl comic about finding your footing and your people after the rug has been pulled out from under you.

For You

Deviating from the goal topics one more time bc I can’t not recommend Talking to Strangers: a Memoir of My Escape from a Cult by Marianne Boucher for fans of Guage. It’s what it says on the tin: a memoir of escaping a cult.

[baejax-the-great]

I have genuinely spent countless hours with nothing but All That Glitters on the brain since like mid December. As it comes to a close I just wanted to thank you for your writing. I’ve gotten so much happiness from it. (And also sadness but in a good, escapism-y way). I don’t think i’ve ever been so attached to a fic before. So sad to see this story end but grateful to have been blessed with ever encountering it in the first place. ❤️❤️

🎽👟🥇🐕

Thank you for this lovely message, Nonnie. I'm going to use it as an excuse to ramble way too long instead of writing the epilogue.

When I wrote even if it's a lie, I played around with a lot of tragic backstories for Achilles, though mostly non-seriously. I didn't really plan on including it--his relationship with Pat was basically comic relief. I wasn't even going to have it in eiial other than allusions to his fame and his clear fall from whatever fame that was, but a couple people asked, so I decided to have him give the abridged version to Zag.

Someone said they would read it if I ever elaborated on that story, and I remember thinking, lol I'm never writing that. Partly because at the time I assumed that painting Achilles in such a negative light just wouldn't go over well. But I also didn't really have an angle for how I wanted to tell that story, so it didn't interest me.

I don't totally remember how/when I came up with the plot for Gold, but I know @johaerys-writes was the one who really encouraged me to write it and I think @juliafied helped me with it a lot. I believe I posted the first chapter the day before I went out of town on what would be the first of many trips this autumn/winter. It's one of very few fics I wrote on google docs, mostly on my ipad because I don't own a laptop.

I think I was only a chapter or two into Gold when I started writing what is still titled in my docs as "Post-Gold." This fic ended up being such an interesting challenge because I had written what happens before and what happens after, and now I had over 20 years to cover to explain it all.

Here's what I knew at the start.

1. Patroclus got thrown out of his house the minute he got home from Seoul.

2. Achilles sets his own life on fire and Patroclus takes the blame for it, resulting in Achilles moving to Tartarus in shame and not returning until 2022 with Zagreus.

3. Because I'd already written it in eiial, the first time Patroclus sees Achilles in years, the first thing he does is make out with him. (I regretted this one a lot, but hopefully I made it work 🤣)

4. A 39yo got a silver medal in the javelin at the 2020 Olympics. As a result, one of the first lines I wrote was "Take me to Paris, Achilles." That entire scene changed, but I kept the line.

So then it was a game of filling in what actually happened (so much math to figure out the years and their ages lmao), and figuring out how to show the journey of two men growing up, growing apart, and then putting their lives back together. All the years were written out of order, which is why the different sections start the way they do-- originally it was just a system to help me keep track of what year it was and make sure I covered each one.

And with all of that, I thought this fic was going to be shorter than Gold. I figured each year would just be a snapshot--maybe 500-800 words to get a sense of it. Short and sweet.

I'm an idiot, of course. Just the reconciliation that took all of three sentences in eiial required over 15k words for this fic, and it could have been longer.

It was so fun to imagine all these eras of their life. I went from writing about guys who were much younger than me to men who were older than me. The way the world has changed between the year 2000 and the year 2022 is kind of astounding. Someone asked me why the boys couldn't just text each other in Gold and it's because it hadn't really been invented yet. We barely had wifi. They would have had an answering machine at their first apartment they shared with a goofy message recorded together.

To make a long, unnecessary essay short, this fic went from something I had no enthusiasm for and was certain I wouldn't write, to something I'm really proud of. I'm going to miss it.

I was talking recently with someone about this fic from Achilles' perspective-- over the 22 years, which moments would he pick as important in their lives for better or worse, and how many of them would match up with Pat's. I have no intention of writing that story, but it certainly would be a way to sit in this universe a little longer.

[heroineimages]

Old new research

So I recently stumbled back across an older resource that I used in my early research for The First Empress but forgot about at some point. It’s the units page for the Europa Barbarorum mod for the original Rome: Total War. I like that the page lists the unit types under their ancient titles. This being said, and given that I opted to use classical-era Hellenic military titles for my officers, would it be similarly useful to incorporate the ancient names for unit types into the story?

For example, I use the term peltastai for the heavy javelin infantry, rather than skirmishers because it refers to a specific type of skirmisher, equipped in a specific manner. Do my readers think it would it be beneficial to use classical Greek titles and call regular javelin skirmishers akontistai or archers toxotai or slingers sphendonetai? Would that kind of terminology help with the ancient-world authenticity and help with readers’ immersion, or is it more likely to create an alphabet soup that would be confusing or off-putting to most readers?

I mean, naturally I’d be sure to define the terms in the text, glossary, and footnotes, but I can visualize readers struggling to keep up. Thoughts, @jeanjauthor​, @wewererogue​, @warriorskaldkorica​, @aniketos28, and anyone else who’s chimed in or wants to chime in?

[books-of-the-great-leviathan]

Chapter 22- Ziva

***

Not for hundreds of years, since before the Sundered Empire, had the title of Witchhunter been literal. Not until now, at night's edge, upon this storm-lashed crag of the world. But these were the days of legends, and monsters returning. Where there were monsters, there would always be those who came to hunt them.

Ziva's body burned with furious energy as she shouted orders. The crew hauled the chest of nets up the mountainside, their prisoner leashed between them by his chains, his bare blue feet slipping on the rain-soaked steps. The steps continued past the cave, up the summit of the highest peak and to this place, open to the wind and the storm, no higher point but the sky.

Lightning cracked, a scar of blue-white across the clouds.

The steps ended at a flat expanse of rock, far end falling in a sheer cliff. Nothing was there to stop a fall, nothing but mist and empty air all the way down, hundreds of feet to crashing waves. Standing stones towered, three of them arranged in a triangle some twenty yards across. The stones were monolithic, sentinels facing the storm, their surfaces cracked and smoothed by millennia of  driving rain.

"This the place, sir?" she asked Azare. He nodded, wordless, his eyes set on the gathering clouds overhead.

The crew prepared, anchoring chains around the bases of the standing stones. From these were coiled cables, long hooked javelins spliced onto their ends and loaded into waiting ballistae. Not the king's spellfire javelins, but these were deadly enough. Ziva tested their points, their heft. She examined the chains link by link. The stones were ancient, roots wound deep into the mountain beneath. They'd been here for countless centuries, and would weather the storms of countless more. Ziva cast them a critical look, hoping they'd hold past tonight.

"Think they'll work, Lieutenant?" a Witchhunter asked her.

"I don't know. But they're the best we have." She gave the chain a last tug. It would be enough. It would have to be.

She would not fail tonight.

In the center point between the standing stones, a shallow bowl was formed in the ground, a basin collecting rainwater. A ritual place. It was here the prisoner was pushed. His eyes were closed tight, his head lowered. His shoulders shook inside his prison uniform. Ziva heard his muttered prayers. Little good they'd do him now.

"Put him on his knees," Ziva ordered. Azare stood at the cliff's edge, staring out across the sky. Ziva glanced at him, then turned back to the prisoner. "Now."

With a kick the prisoner went down, palms slapping the wet rock. Chains rattled as a gust of wind rushed past, stronger than before, blasting Ziva's hair from her face. This storm, it was a monster, a living force. Ziva saw the full brunt of it coming, its hanging curtains of rain, and felt a throb of dread in her heart. The forces at work here were far greater than any she'd seen before, older and stronger than her, older and stronger even than Estara.

For an instant she wavered- tiny things, all of them, standing on a knuckle of rock on the surface of the world's skin, and beneath them the great and unsounded-

She steeled herself, straightened her spine. The resolve rushed back in. This was no place to lose her nerve. All the same her fingertips tapped at her knife hilt, its worn bone pommel dimpled with decades of her fear. A knife's like a will, her father had whispered, his voice nearly eaten by the disease, the whites of his eyes turned black and wet. Even the smallest one's enough to dig with, enough to hunt with, enough to kill with, if that's what you really need it to do.

How strengthless his hands had been as he'd pressed the knife into her grip. It was that will he'd spoken of, and in no small part the plain knife, that had brought Ziva here, to world and belief's edge.

Could be my grave, pa. Just as you got yours.

"They're coming," Azare said.

He turned, facing her. Lightning struck again, and in its flood of brilliance Ziva saw his face, his narrowed eyes, the hard mask of resolve he wore whenever he fought. His hair was bright as blood, the only color in all the world. The bone knife he'd brought from the cave was in his hand, a long pale shard, rainwater trickling from its tip.

"Nets?" he called. "Artillery?"

Another Witchhunter answered. "Ready, sir!"

"Then we begin." He paced toward the prisoner. A third lightning strike split the sky, and thunder purled, shaking the stone under Ziva's feet. Her heartbeat was in her mouth. Her hands ached to be filled with blades.

Azare wound his hand deep in the prisoner's hair and yanked his head back, exposing his throat to the storm. The prisoner still prayed. Ziva saw his lips flutter.

"Brace yourselves!" Azare cried, and slashed the knife across the man's throat.

Red spurted, brilliant and arterial, spattering the stones. Azare let the prisoner go, and he slumped forward into the basin of rainwater. Coils of blood unspooled into the water, dyeing the basin a deep red. Ziva smelled the pall of blood hanging amidst the stones.

Pulse.

Ziva stiffened. The others must have felt it, too: a ripple through the island like a skipped heartbeat, a single hard throb in the pit of her guts.

Gazes shifted toward the sky, away from the dead man and the stones and toward the storm. A keen echoed over the wind, an eerie cry like some great hawk's. Ziva's hands flexed. Her heart raced, her eyes wide, not wanting to look away, searching the skies for the first sign of movement.

Shadow rippled:

Something massive, mere meters overhead.

Another cry. Not a hawk's; this belonged to something bigger, much bigger. Another pulse came, a spike of pressure in Ziva's ears. She winced at the pain. Not magic, not this time.

Wingbeats.

Shadow rippled again, wheeling round. Ziva caught a glimpse of pinion feathers, spread wings. It was riding the storm. Impossible- those winds would rip an ordinary bird apart.

This is no ordinary bird, she thought.

It angled its wings, its shadow made diffuse by churning clouds. Impossible, impossible- the word echoed through Ziva like a prayer, but it couldn't cancel out what she was seeing. It was a bird, a vast black raptor shape, circling them. Flickers of lightning trailed from its wings. She had never seen anything so huge take to the air, never before. Those wings would drown the Mistfox in shadow.

The monster circled them again, whipping the clouds into a funnel, and that time Ziva caught a glimpse of its flexed talons, each one hooked like a scimitar.

"It's close, sir," she called out, whirling once more toward the standing stones, toward Azare, bloody knife still in hand.

"Ready the javelins!" he cried. "On my signal!"

Another shriek echoed down, and the wind responded, a blast to sweep them from the mountain and send them spinning to the waves.

Azare's command cut through the storm.

"Fire!"

A volley of sharp, metallic twangs sounded; javelins shot toward the core of the dark mass as it circled, vanishing into the clouds. Cables unspooled from their tails, fast as whiplash. For a moment of dread Ziva thought they'd missed, and then she heard the scream. No longer eerie, no longer weaving through the storm like some weird music, but a howling shriek of pain.

Of rage.

The cables snapped taut. The clouds thrashed, wingbeats arrhythmic as the witch struggled to stay aloft.

"Bring it in." Azare's voice was raw, burning. He strode forward, standing over the prisoner's corpse, the lines of his body tense as the javelin cables. Waiting. Waiting. Ziva's heart blazed; it hurt to look at him, it hurt because he was so beautiful, and so far away, and maybe there was no reaching him, not in this world, not in any.

Cables strained, metallic crackles echoing through the ritual ground. The dark shape circled, and Ziva heard the wingbeats stutter, falter, stop.

She backed away.

"Captain," she warned. The mass hurtled closer, huge as a falling moon. Black liquid spattered Ziva's face from above, hot against her numb skin. The monster's blood. It was wounded. More than wounded, it was plummeting from the damned sky.

"Azare!"

He stood in its path, head still tilted back, his hair plastered to his skull. Witchhunters shouted warnings to Ziva, to get back, to get out of the way, but she ignored them. She sprang forward. Rain raked at her face like grasping fingers. Lightning crackled: she glimpsed outspread wings, heard the monster's scream like blades driven through her head.

She lunged for Azare. All her weight was in it, and she took him down, hard. They crashed to the ground, tangled limbs and hammering hearts, an instant before the witch hit the mountain.

It slid past them, close enough to brush Ziva's cheek with one outstretched wing, to suck her hair and release it in the backdraft of its wake. Impact jarred Ziva to the teeth, a boom like the reverberation of cannon fire. Wings thrashed, flinging arcs of lightning and rainwater. Ziva heard stone crack, one of the standing stones uprooted, listing to the side with the grind of rock against rock.  Her mouth tasted of metal. She'd bitten her tongue.

"Nets!" she screamed- "Nets! Now!" -and was rewarded with the sound of cables slicing through the wind. Nets blossomed, spinning toward the vast bird like the mantle of some strange deep-sea squid. Weights whirred and clattered, fringing the edges of the nets. As the witch reared its head the nets engulfed it, weights driving the monster down to the wet stone.

Azare stared up at Ziva, and she met his eyes, white-ringed and so dark she could not differentiate iris from pupil.

"Sir-" she gasped.

He pushed her off. "Up, Lapin. This is no place to fall."

She scrambled to her feet as Azare stood and strode toward the downed monster, his sodden mantle flaring behind him. The witch hunched, weighted down and entrapped by the web of cables. Even in such a state it was magnificent. Ripples of lightning coursed across its feathers. The ritual ground echoed with the blade snick of its great curved beak as it snapped and twisted at its bindings. Its wings were still half-furled, enormous black sails against the sky. The wind fluted past them, lifting them, as if its command over the storm might prove enough to break it free.

It was not so like an eagle, Ziva saw that now; those wings swept backward in points, its neck an elegant s-curve, its head long and narrow. Its jaws were lined with double-rows of jagged black teeth, visible each time it snapped at the cables. Keens shuddered from its throat, its golden eyes lucent, pupils shrunk to pinpricks. Blood matted the feathers behind one wing-joint, where the last few feet of the javelin jutted from the witch's side.

She approached, a pace behind Azare, her hand on her sword hilt. If the monster made a move for him she'd put her blade through one great golden eye.

The witch twisted as Azare drew near, neck arching. A crest fanned out behind its head. Cable scraped cable; wind howled, enough for the monster to catch underwing and rear back with a shriek. Pressure flexed. Talons flashed. Ziva's scream was lodged in her throat, horror pulsing behind her eyes, but Azare had not stopped, not even as his own blood spattered the stone at his feet. His blade was out in a hish of steel. Ripples of blue, reflections of the witch's lightning, fanned down its length as he pressed its point to the monster's keelbone. One forward thrust and he'd have its heart.

Ziva's hands trembled. Too close. Inches closer to his neck and Azare would be the one bleeding out on the ritual ground.

"Enough," Azare snarled. The wound bled freely, a gash across his chest and left shoulder, parting the fabric of his uniform. He twisted the swordpoint deeper. "I bind you in blood and in iron. I caught you, fair and true, and now you are mine."

Nictitating membranes flickered across the witch's eyes. Its body shuddered, feathers shivering; it pulled in on itself, folding, compacting; down drifted in the wind, fine and black as ash. The monster bird was gone. In its place knelt a boy. The javelin was still buried in his side, just under one arm. Black blood trickled down his skin. His hair was dark as the feathers of his bird form and falling in tangles to his shoulders. He was all ribs and sharp elbows, his nails stained black like he'd dipped his fingertips in shadow.

He lifted his head. His features were narrow, pointed, his tilted eyes vivid gold. A dart of cold passed through Ziva's heart.

"What..." the witch panted. "What do you...want?"

"You," Azare said.

He flicked the sword point under the witch-boy's chin, forcing his head up. "I am Captain Severin Azare, Royal Witchhunter of Estara. You know my kind as well as I know yours."

"Witchhunter." The witch shuddered again, hands curling into claws on the stone. "Curse you, curse your blade and your traps-"

"No curses, witch, and no games, either. I come on a king's word. I seek the Great Leviathan. And you can lead me to it."

The witch's eyes widened. "You heard it, too."

"Heard what?"

"So long I rode the winds, so long I waited far beyond safe waters." A pained smile drifted over the witch's face. "But I heard its heartbeat, and knew it wouldn't leave forever. And then it sang, and it was like a call heard through sea and star and sky. A call must be answered."

"I heard nothing but my king's command," Azare said.

The witch straightened with pained effort. Blood welled from his wound in heartbeat pulses. Ziva didn't know how he was still alive, much less conscious. This was old power, god-power. Whale-magic, like the turn of the stars, the rise and fall of the sea.

"No one's apart from the Leviathan," the witch said. "No one. Not even you."

Ziva drew her gun and pressed its muzzle to the back of the witch's head. She cocked it: a clean, sharp snap.

"Mind your manners," she said. "You're in Estaran company now."

His eyes flicked to her, gold bright as coins, as if lit from within. "You hear it too. All of you. No matter how you might deny it. All life flowed from its blood. Your sort is no different."

"And nor is yours," Azare said.

He lowered his sword from the witch's throat. Ziva looked at him, alarmed, but he didn't turn his gaze from the boy.

"Find us the Leviathan," Azare said, "lead us to it, and I'll give you your freedom again."

The witch bared his teeth in a dry grin. "You, who stole it?"

Azare stared for a heartbeat, then straightened and sheathed his sword.

"Sir," Ziva said, but Azare didn't indicate he'd heard her. He unfastened his fur mantle and held it out to the witch. The witch's eyes flicked to it, then to Azare's face, black brows drawn together.

"To sow death and give life in turn," Azare said. "Isn't that the way of the Leviathan? It can be my way, too. If you help us. If you bring us to it. If we win what we left Estara for."

Slowly, the witch reached out. He tugged the mantle from Azare's grip and slung it around his own shoulders, then stood. The net cables dragged and screeched at the ground, a tapestry of tangled, glinting steel. Bloody water streamed down the witch, pooling at his feet. The wind keened, then died, storm lifting as quickly as it had come.

"Promise me," the witch said. He really was no more than a boy, much the age Ziva had been the first time she'd tasted another's blood on her lips. The dust, the stinging sand. The way the sun had struck her knife, red as Estara's flag. A child, some might have said, who deserved a child's mercy. It was folly. No one was too young to die. "Promise me, Captain Azare."

"I promise," Azare said, lowering his head, and Ziva wondered how many times he'd promised impossible things, and how much of himself he'd lost to keep those promises.

"Then it's done," the witch said. His eyes pressed shut, face braced for pain. He wound his black-stained fingers around the javelin shaft and wrenched it out. His breathing became ragged, but he stayed upright, tossing the javelin away. It clattered across the stone. "Done, and done, and done."

Not yet, witch, Ziva thought.

Far away, thunder rolled, echoing across the sea.

***

Wounds always looked worse in lanternlight. Night had come, the clouds clearing from a northern sky the deep blue-black of tomb enamel and scattered with stars. No glorious Estaran firmament, this, with constellations so vivid Ziva felt their light trickling over her like honey. These stars were cold and distant. Under them, Azare's blood looked black. It had crusted down his chest and dried on Ziva's hands, coating them to the wrists like gloves.

"Far too close, sir," she murmured. Shouts and orders echoed from the surf as the skiff pushed off, half their men and the chests of nets and javelins loaded onboard. Running lights threw chips of gold across the waves. They were taking two trips, back and forth: equipment first, then a second for Ziva and Azare, and for the witch. The prisoner's body was absent. His corpse been burned where it fell, a bonfire lit atop the ritual ground, in the shadow of the fallen sentinel stone. A molten orange glow still smoldered atop the highest peak. "If its talon had gone any deeper-"

"I know, Lapin." Azare's voice was rough, his head bowed. He sat on a rock at the tidemark, one of many small boulders tossed to the base of the cliffs. Beach grass rustled in the breeze, the same dark gray as the stones.

Ziva knelt alongside him in the pool of lanternlight, cleaning his wound with quick, deft movements. Azare's skin was cold, but he gave little indication of feeling it, just faint shudders under Ziva's fingertips each time she touched him. It was hardly the first time he'd tasted pain. His body was all lean muscle and scar, slashes latticing his back and his sides, one pectoral nearly obliterated by what looked like a decades-old burn. Ziva had not been present for that one, but the rest she could name like old friends. This one, training, that one a duke's would-be assassin, a trio of bullet divots from the Three-Day War- all were familiar to her, as familiar as Azare's eyes or the sound of his voice. This new scar would fit right in.

Brushing her bloody fingers over the cleaned wound, Ziva let out her breath. "You should be more careful."

"All went according to plan."

"According to plan," Ziva scoffed.

"We captured the witch-"

"I saw you, sir," Ziva said. "After the cave. In the stone circle. You would have let yourself be crushed if I hadn't got better ideas."

His knuckles blanched. He still held the bone ritual knife, a trace of blood rusted on its edge. The surf whispered across the beach, withdrawing, leaving the sand a glistening ribbon of black. Ziva watched the skiff buoyed into the shallows, running lights giving it form as it glided away. The witch was silent in his cage, a small curled shape bound in yards of chains, such that would sink him to the seabed if he chanced to fall overboard. He had not spoken again. He crouched, dressed in too-big shirt and trousers, a barefoot urchin boy if not for those ghostlight eyes.

"My father would have had all kinds of stories about a night like this," Ziva said, after a long pause. She reached in the box of medical supplies for a phial of disinfectant spirit, a fresh needle, and a spool of sapsilk thread. "He said his gran would tell him things around the fire. About the world we live in just being a narrow strip of air to breathe, and there's another kind of sea up in the heavens, too, and we're looking up at it. The stars are fishes, far, far away. And the moons are the eyes of some vast monster, looking down at us hungry, waiting for the day the sky falls into the sea and it can open its maw to swallow us whole."

"And your father believed that?"

"Oh, he lit candles for Bellana, like we all do. The mine overseers wouldn't tolerate much pagan whispering. But he believed. In star-fishes, and orkwives, and the Deepmother, and the drowned cities. And that the Leviathan would come to deliver us from disease, and hunger, and nights of shivering in the dark."

Her voice grew soft. She sounded like she used to, a girl with blisters on her hands and unending aches who'd nevertheless sat with her father and sisters, her little brother balanced between her knees, to stare at the stars and listen to stories. She'd believed them too, each one. A naive child, stars in her eyes, dust in the lines of her hands.

She smiled tightly. "Him and his peasant superstitions."

"Sounds like your father was a poet."

Ziva yanked the thread through the needle's eye. The needle was curved like the witch's talon that had nearly ended Azare's life. "Nothing but poetry spouting from his lips, up until he died spouting fountains of black blood instead."

Azare didn't flinch as she began to stitch his wound. He stared out across the water, toward the breakers thundering against cliffs offshore.

"He sounds like a good man, too," he said.

Ziva snorted. "He spent all our money on drink, and gambled away the rest. Nearly drove my mother mad. Maybe it did, in the end. She was the first to die. Her, and then all the rest of us, night by night until there was nothing alive but me."

She lowered her head, concentrating on her stitches, on Azare's split flesh, anywhere but the haunted look in his eyes. He'd had that look ever since he'd stumbled from the cave, like he'd walked some faraway place Ziva wished she could follow. She hated it, hated his silence, hated how it all seemed like a punishment: not upon her, but upon himself, the kind of penitence she knew only a man as honorable as him could inflict.

"But yes," she continued, after a moment, her voice quiet. "In his way, he was kind."

"My father was many things, but kind was never one of them. My mother died giving birth to me, so I had to make up for all the sons I'd deprived him of. I was ever his soldier, his scholar, the vehicle of his vengeance. I think he hated Lapide even more than you do, Lapin."

She heard the hint of a smile in his voice. Somehow that unsettled her more than this unexpected candor, like in wounding him the witch had nicked some artery of memories, spilling them now onto the black sand. She knew of his father, General Jasque Azare, and of his legendary campaigns in the name of the old Belmont king, and of his legendary cruelty, too. She knew of his mother's early death, and had overheard plenty of rumors about its precise circumstances, but had never learned specifics.

Nothing that hinted of anguish, of a child forced to grow up too early. A life devoted to Estara, because what else was there but to fall, to lie down and die like the rest.

Stars and stories, fishes and dead fathers. A hallway, a laugh, murmured words whispered two decades past, and at once her silence was a dangerous thing. It all made a mad tangle from which there was little chance of escape.

Ziva had nearly reached the end of her stitching. She finished and cut her thread. Her stitches were regular, as always, but she still found herself feeling a prickle of dissatisfaction.

"When you left the cave," she said as she bandaged his chest and shoulder, "I saw your face."

She lifted her eyes and met his. Mirror black, like some bird's. She caught the faint reflected glimmer of starlight in them.

"What happened to you?" Ziva pressed. "What did you see?"

"Nothing that needs concern you-"

"I am your lieutenant," Ziva said. "Damn you, Azare, I am your friend, if you have such a thing in your miserable life."

She caught him, her palm cupping his face, fingertips pressed to the ridge of his cheekbone. She felt him stiffen, heard the faint catch of his breath. She was sure he felt through her hand the quickening of her heartbeat, but she was past caring. Let him feel. Let him know. "I can't serve you if you keep so many secrets from me."

"Serve me. Like a trained fox? Like a butler bringing me tea?" His tone was bitter, his voice a tired rasp. She looked at him, all of him, his untidy hair, the dark circles under his eyes growing darker day by day, his signs of aging- lines forming where there had not been lines before, a new sharpness of jaw, a new gauntness. How sleek and fine she'd thought he'd looked the first time she saw him, how beautiful and deadly, like some new-forged blade hot from the fire. The Royal Witchhunter of Estara. She'd thought he was a god. Now he was just a man, and a weary one at that. "You deserve more. You deserve-"

"-Evasions? Lies?"

"I would never lie to you."

"But you would keep secrets from me," Ziva said. "You would sooner die, crushed under a monster, than trust me with those secrets. Tell me how that's different than lying to me."

His eyes slid shut.

"If you knew me," he said, "if you knew all of me, these years we've served together would no longer matter. All we've done in the past, all we'll do in the coming days, will mean...dust. Worlds away from what we set out to uphold. Like your star sea."

"I want to be the judge of that."

"We all want, Lapin," Azare said, and that coldness was back, the mask returning. "There's a reason we don't always get what we want."

He pulled away. Ziva's hand slipped from his face, leaving smears of blood on his skin. His blood, his wound, the ache in Ziva's heart, like she was bleeding from the inside- it was all too much. Azare stood from the rock and shrugged on his shirt again, shaking the sand from his uniform and slinging it round his shoulders. Within seconds he'd gone from a weary, wounded man to the Royal Witchhunter again. Like he'd said: he stood worlds away, like the sea of stars, across an abyss. Never to be reached, not until the death of all things, not until the end of the world.

"Sir," Ziva said, her voice low, but he strode away with a snap of his cloak, headed for the surf. Ziva clenched her teeth and let out her breath, then gathered her medical supplies, stacking them in their case. Her eyes were dry, but her throat was tight. She wanted to punch something, maybe Azare, break his damn face open. He could hit her back, so she'd have something righteous to be angry about.

She heard the rustle of the witch in his cage. She cast a sharp look in his direction. How much had the monster heard? Everything, she had little doubt. Damn him. Damn Azare. And damn her, too, the way she let Azare slip his blade into her heart.

"There's a ghost riding on his back, you know."

The voice was little more than a whisper and the hiss of chain on chain. The witch's, though now it only sounded like a boy's. Please, whispered the dying boy in Ziva's memory, sunstruck blades and blood on the sand. No mercy for that one, either.

"What in all hells does that mean?" she said. "What ghost?"

"A terrible thing," the witch whispered. "Struggling to breathe. Its claws are so deep in his heart."

Ziva looked away. I know, she thought.

"Lapin."

She looked up. Azare stood some yards off. His expression was taut, inscrutable.

"We don't always get what we want," he said again, haltingly. "No matter how much we might want it."

He turned and walked away. Ziva watched him go, then let out her breath, tipped back her head, and stared up.

Maybe she'd been wrong. The stars did have a special kind of look to them tonight.

[187days]

Day One Hundred Sixty-Seven

Today was more dramatic than I was expecting it to be.

I mean, I knew World was going to be dramatic because we were talking about big, serious things. We recapped last week’s work first, and then I asked students to take a crack at connecting the current world issues they’d studied to other things they knew about (ie- the violence of the drug war fuels illegal immigration, the Uighur Genocide in China is related to their Belt and Road Initiative ambitions). Once we’d done that for a bit, I threw another issue into the mix: the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. I started by showing the video of Shireen Abu Aqleh’s funeral procession, which some of my students had seen on the news or on social media, and then went back to the origins of the conflict. Students read an article about the history of violence between the two sides, the Oslo Accords and their failure, the rise of Hamas in Gaza, etc... More tomorrow. 

Big moment of triumph: a student in my Block 2 class, who’s had issues with truancy and refused to complete most of his classwork in every class this semester, chimed in at one point while we were discussing al-Qaeda, and offered some information about Osama bin Laden that no one else in class knew. It might be the only moment of success I ever have with this student (not for lack of trying), or it might be the start of something new. Either way, I’ll take it.

My APUSGOV students met their Democratic state reps last week, today they met their lone Republican one. She asked them about their future plans, encouraged them to be involved in state and local politics where ever they end up, and talked about her own political experience. When she took questions, one was about her support of a controversial bill regarding education. And that opened quite a conversation. My students were polite, but concerned about the bill’s implications for their LGBTQ classmates (because it would require teachers to out them), and wanted her to explain her support for it. She said it was other provisions in the bill that she supported, but declined to specify which ones. 

My students have been following this bill for a bit. It went to a committee of conference and almost died there, but it got revived, and goes back to the House and Senate for an up-down vote on Thursday (the governor’s said he’ll veto it if it does get to him, but who knows). Some of them spoke about their own experiences and their friends’ experiences, and urged this rep not to continue to support the bill’s passage, and she said she’d take what they’d told her into consideration. I didn’t say a word because it isn’t my show, and I let my students speak about anything as long as they do it respectfully. I was proud of them, though, because they were respectful and mature. 

At track practice, we celebrated the girls’ 2nd place finish at the conference meet, and the various individual titles, and then it was time for one of our most fun team traditions: the obstacle course. It involves hurdles, bleachers, swiveling through a maze of javelins, army crawling under a truck, and so much more. Coach K still sets up this crazy thing, even though he’s retired, and gives a prize to the male and female athletes who complete it the fastest. And it’s legendary. All of the team’s rookies were either looking forward to today or dreading it slightly.

Of course, everyone had fun. Coach T was on the mic, hyping everyone up as they raced through it, and two of the team captains went and got pizza and water/gatorade for everyone to have afterwards. So we ended the day sprawled on the high jump apron, enjoying some food, some sunlight, and a nice breeze. There was a ton of banter, too, between the seniors and the coaches, between Coach T and I... At one point, some of the seniors tried to dump the water from the cooler we’d kept the drinks in on Coach T- I even helped by grabbing him when he tried to run- but he got his arms free and tipped it back on them. It was funny, though. 

It’s getting towards that point in the year when it’s hard to stay focused- for students and for us- because it’s almost over, but today was good. It’s one for the memories, for sure.

[wanjikusblog]

No country for heroes.

Yego's throw of 92.72m wins him the world title (Beijing, 2015).

As Kenya's only javelin thrower to have featured at an Olympic final, or to have won World Championship gold, and as newly crowned African silver medallist who's returning to form after injuries, self-taught Yego is the last Kenyan athlete who should be appealing for funds in order to make an Olympic appearance at Paris 2024.

But here we are. Mind you, it's a reasonable assumption that for as long as an athlete is flying their nation's flag high, they shouldn't have to pay their own way to the Olympics or even to the World Championships.

Still, Yego's travails aren't particularly surprising. This is after all a country whose sports ministry has been known to prioritise moochers, rather than ferry actual athletes to the World Championships as happened in the case of Eugene Oregon 2022 for instance.

[cheddar-baby]

Titles under the read more

Jeff Rosenstock - HELLMODE Dorian Electra - Fanfare Kali Uchis - orquídeas underscores - Wallsocket Kali Uchis - Red Moon in Venus Tobacco - ULTIMA II MASSAGE Fleet Foxes - Shore Sufjan Stevens - Javelin Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit - Weathervanes SLAUSON MALONE 1 - EXCELSIOR Maruja - Knocknarea Brandee Younger - Brand New Life Jacaszek - Music for Film Oneohtrix Point Never - Again Remi Wolf - Juno (Deluxe) Tim Hecker - No Highs Yves Tumor - Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) Aurora - The Gods We Can Touch Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues Genesis Owusu - Smiling with No Teeth Liv.e - Girl In The Half Pearl Nilüfer Yanya - PAINLESS Oneohtrix Point Never - Magic Oneohtrix Point Never Susanne Sundfør - Blómi Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair Tears for Fears - The Hurting Ballaké Sissoko - Les Égarés (with Ballaké Sissoko, Vincent Segal, Emile Parisien & Vincent Peirani) Big Thief - Two Hands Bohren & der Club of Gore - Patchouli Blue Bonny Light Horseman - Rolling Golden Holy Carly Rae Jepsen - The Loneliest Time Doja Cat - Scarlet EABS - In Search of a Better Tomorrow feeble little horse - Girl With Fish Flume - Palaces Genesis Owusu - STRUGGLER Matthew Halsall - An Ever Changing View Mette Henriette - Drifting