#jeremiah would love Jane

[jeremiahsfashionsense]

This reminds me of when I watched breaking bad for the first time and saw Walt in that STUPID FUCKING HAT the embarrassment I felt was unreal

[manilafm]

Most wanted characters from Degrassi: The Next Generation?

We don't have any taken characters from Degrassi: The Next Generation at this time, but our members of this RPG would especially love to see Manuella 'Manny' Santos, Esme Song, Lola Pacini, Principal Archie 'Snake' Simpson, Grace Cardinal, Maya Matlin, Zoë Rivas, Francesca 'Frankie' Hollingsworth, Zigmund 'Zig' Novak, Emma Nelson, Jimmy Brooks, Terri MacGregor, Ashley Kerwin, Liberty Van Zandt, Gavin 'Spinner' Mason, Paige Michalchuk, Sean Cameron, Craig Manning, Hazel Aden, Marco Del Rossi, Ellie Nash, Caitlin Ryan, Darcy Edwards, Mia Jones, Holly J. Sinclair, Jane Vaughn, Anya MacPherson, Sav Bhandari, Clare Edwards, Chantay Black, K.C. Guthrie, Alli Bhandari, Fiona Coyne, Jenna Middleton, Declan Coyne, Eli Goldsworthy, Adam Torres, Bianca DeSousa, Drew Torres, Marisol Lewis, Imogen Moreno, Katie Matlin, Angela Jeremiah, Tori Santamaria, Campbell Saunders, and Becky Baker from Degrassi: The Next Generation !!

[lindacelestemonroe]

connor creekians and their hatchetfield saga best friends

- agnes & charlotte knit and talk cats together in rocking chairs :) they also kiss

- aubrey & bill go out occasionally, sometimes to the library just to sit quietly and read together. they hang out with ags and char pretty frequently as well

- jewel & ethan started out at odds with each other, but eventually grew on each other and became attached at the hip

- donny & deb are both in art club and sometimes alice tags along when they go places

- silas & sam watch sports and do straight guy things

- rita & emma discuss botany... and so on

- mary jo & ellis & linda just coexist perfectly and talk shit about everyone they possibly can

- sybilus & paul & paul are all friends because paul matthews and sybilus really hit it off and then paul schue-horyn just had to get in on the paul action too!

- madison & becky feels self explanatory but i think they would absolutely go for walks in the park together

- desmond & tom are completely oblivious to the fact that they look alike

- truman & frank are besties but out of spite

- prism & hannah met by chance and hannah just became immediately attached and prism loves her like a mother

- artemis & miss holloway. enough said

- cliff & rocky & tony love their kids a whole bunch so they wanted to meet their kid’s best friend’s parents but then also very much enjoyed their company anyway!

- ryan & jane because they’re both very passionate about doing the right thing

- vern & mr. davidson are both into some very weird shit

- olivia & riley & melissa run a lesbians rise club

- quinn & jonathan because they’re both very proper and particular about what they like and don’t like

- jeremiah & lucy because she’s actually willing to listen to him and he, in turn, is more than willing to listen to her

- odie doty & crispin & gary have identical yet opposite energies which works perfectly in friendship

- dr. henry & duke make sure that the other works enough but not too much

- helen & doug are both law enforcement officers that have a better sense of justice than their peers

- barney & hidgens because they would both just talk at each other nonstop except to listen to the other

- wallis & gps & gerald are always forgotten so they just hang out together

bonus: the mayor & peanuts because diane and jonathan are just that iconic

[suckitsurveys]

J

The J Survey by joybucket

What’s your favorite jungle animal? Do Pandas count? Which name do you like better: Jessica or Jennifer? Jennifer. Do you know how to juggle? Nope. Do you prefer to wear jeans or jeggings? Jeans. Do you love Jesus? No.

Do you know anyone named…. Jessica? Jennifer? Jamie? Justin? Jeremiah? Justus? Jedidiah? Jasper? Jade? Jayden? Julie? Julia? Juliet? Jared? Jason? Jaxon? Jackson? Jacob? Jeremy? Jillian? Jayce? Jacinda? Jericho? Jane? Jameson? Jordan? Jenna? Jaycee? Jana? Janet? Janice? Jimena? Juniper? Have you ever been to… Jamaica? Johannesburg? any town named Jackson? Jordan? Japan? jail? Jade Garden? a jewelry store? Trader Joe’s? Jack in the Box? a job fair? Have you ever… pet a jellyfish? met someone named Jewel? played a song on a jukebox? wondered what a jasper stone looked like? heard Jasper as a boy’s name and thought it would make a good girl’s name, too? wondered how many people in the world are named Jade Green? owned the Brats doll Jade? known someone named Jamin? thought Jericho was a cool name? done jumping jacks? played jump rope with a bunch of other kids at recess? eaten jelly beans? made homemade jam? laughed at a joke no one else found funny? slept in leggings? owned a juicer? watched JJ the Jet Plane? written in a journal? danced to Jailhouse Rock? listened to Jpop? More Q’s What’s your opinion on Japanese food? I love sushi. What was your first job? Barista. Do you like fruit juice? Some. How many of these words do you know the meaning of: jubilee, jovial, juxtapose, jacaranda, jade? All of them. Also: A HURRICANE OF JACARANDAS! STRANGLING FIGS! HANGING VINES! PALMA DE CERA FILLS THE AIR AS I CLIMB AND I PUSH THROUGH! WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?????????? What is your favorite flavor Jolly Rancher? Watermelon. Name three things you like about the month of June. I like that it is in the summer. Name someone you know who was born in July. My sister. Name someone you know whose middle name is Joy. Omg I know there is someone but I cannot freaking remember...

Have you ever met anyone named Joy? Yes. Do you own a varsity jacket? Yes, but it’s covered in sequins. List ten words that rhyme with “June.” Dune, prune, rune, tune, cocoon, maroon, moon, balloon, spoon, cartoon. Do you know a female named Jo? Yes. What color are you favorite pair of jeggings? Denim. Would you say you are… joyful? a jerk? jolly? a joker? able to juggle many things at once? jovial? a jewelry lover? Jewish? a Jesus lover? Final Q’s What was your favorite flavor of juice as a kid? Apple. Have you ever had jury duty? I’ve had to go twice but wasn’t picked for the actual jury either time. What colors of jeans/jeggings do you own? I have black jeans and darker colored jeans. Do you like finger jello? Finger jello? I have no idea what that is. That’s all for now. Have a jolly, joyous, jovial day! :)

[lovemesomesurveys]

The J Survey by joybucket 

What's your favorite jungle animal? Giraffes. Which name do you like better: Jessica or Jennifer? Jessica. Do you know how to juggle? Nope. Do you prefer to wear jeans or jeggings? Jeggings. Do you love Jesus? Yes.

Do you know anyone named.... Jessica? Jennifer? Jamie? Justin? Jeremiah? Justus? Jedidiah? Jasper? Jade? Jayden? Julie? Julia? Juliet? Jared? Jason? Jaxon? Jackson? Jacob? Jeremy? Jillian? Jayce? Jacinda? Jericho? Jane? Jameson? Jordan? Jenna? Jaycee? Jana? Janet? Janice? Jimena? Juniper? Have you ever been to... Jamaica? Johannesburg? any town named Jackson? Jordan? Japan? jail? Jade Garden? a jewelry store? Trader Joe's? Jack in the Box? a job fair? Have you ever... pet a jellyfish? met someone named Jewel? played a song on a jukebox? wondered what a jasper stone looked like? heard Jasper as a boy's name and thought it would make a good girl's name, too? wondered how many people in the world are named Jade Green? owned the Brats doll Jade? known someone named Jamin? thought Jericho was a cool name? done jumping jacks? played jump rope with a bunch of other kids at recess? eaten jelly beans? made homemade jam? laughed at a joke no one else found funny? slept in leggings? owned a juicer? watched JJ the Jet Plane? written in a journal? danced to Jailhouse Rock? listened to Jpop? More Q's What's your opinion on Japanese food? I like some of it. What was your first job? I haven’t had one. Do you like fruit juice? No. How many of these words do you know the meaning of: jubilee, jovial, juxtapose, jacaranda, jade? All but jacaranda. What is your favorite flavor Jolly Rancher? I liked the watermelon one. Name three things you like about the month of June. June is in the summer and I am not a fan of summertime. Name someone you know who was born in July. Me. And a couple of my uncles. Name someone you know whose middle name is Joy. I don’t know.  

Have you ever met anyone named Joy? Yes. Do you own a varsity jacket? No. List ten words that rhyme with "June." Dune, prune, rune, tune, cocoon, maroon, moon, balloon, spoon, cartoon. Do you know a female named Jo? I know a Joanna.  What color are you favorite pair of jeggings? All of my leggings are my favorite. I live in leggings. Would you say you are... joyful? a jerk? jolly? a joker? able to juggle many things at once? jovial? a jewelry lover? Jewish? a Jesus lover? Final Q's What was your favorite flavor of juice as a kid? I’ve never been a juice fan. The only “juice” I liked was like, Sunny D, Kool-Aid, Capri-Suns, and Squeez-Its lol. Have you ever had jury duty? I’ve received the jury duty thing in the mail a few times, but I haven’t actually had to ever do it. What colors of jeans/jeggings do you own? I like dark wash jeans and my leggings are mainly just black and gray. I only have a few colored pairs. Do you like finger jello? Finger jello? I have no idea what that is. That's all for now. Have a jolly, joyous, jovial day! :)

[stillgeekingout]

thoughts on reputation by lex croucher

first my non-spoilery thoughts (mostly non-spoilery. light spoilers for tone and general content): this book was so good and also SO STRESSFUL. haha. if you’re going into it expecting a light read, this isn’t it, but it’s incredibly funny (like seriously so so funny, there was probably at least one phrase or sentence on every page that gave me a little chuckle inside) and has a lot of really important things to say. and the stress does pay off for a very cathartic ending. you’re gonna suffer, but you’re gonna be happy about it etc.

honestly the two things I care the most about in books these days are if they’re funny and if they have characters that I care about. this supremely delivered on both counts. I really loved every single one of the characters (I mean, except the ones you’re supposed to hate, obviously. it does a very good job making you hate them). the third thing I care about is friendship narratives and hoo boy was there a lot of that too.

it gets compared to bridgerton a lot and I haven’t seen bridgerton, so I can’t speak to that, but I don’t think I would like bridgerton based on what I’ve heard of it and I really liked this. make of that what you will, I guess. it also gets compared to mean girls a lot and I think that’s very accurate, if mean girls as a narrative was kinder to its characters (including the plastics) and actually let characters be gay in a nuanced way. and if mean girls did a better job developing the love interest so we care about him and the romance part of the plot. similar to mean girls, if you’re going to be really bothered by secondhand embarrassment, this might not be the book for you. it’s not quite as pronounced but it is there, and I did squirm through a few scenes. this didn’t subtract from my enjoyment but it might for some people. The other content warnings are here for anyone who wants to know what I mean by heavy material: https://www.lexcroucher.co.uk/reputation-cw

Now time for my spoiler-filled thoughts under the cut!!

So I knew going into this that it would be too much drugs and alcohol content for me, a known prude, but that being said I thought it was handled really well and I liked that the narrative had things to say about doing things in excess / requiring that stuff to be able to have fun. and thomas’s whole thing was really thoughtfully handled.

Georgiana cracked me up the whole time with her naivety. I do think part of the embarrassment of this book for me was how much she reminded me of my younger clueless self, being inexperienced in everything and scandalized by everything. I also reeeeally related to the whole “this person is friend-shaped, be my friend be my friend be my friend”-ness of her. And I’m always a sucker for a “female character is very flawed and honestly kinda shitty to her friends but learns to be a better person over the course of the narrative” story.

I LOVE BETTY. I call being #1 betty walters fan. I get crazy when I latch onto a character, all I do is wait for them to make a next appearance and scream about it when they do. But anyway I just want to say that I loved betty from her first scene and I’m so glad george finally caught on. I was initially scared that it was going to go more the route of like, george is mean to betty in the climax and then realizes she has to apologize because she feels bad for her, but the fact that they became actual genuine close friends on top of that made me very very happy. No matter what else I say please know betty was my absoluuute favorite character, I’m obsessed with her, I would die for her, etc.

This book honestly just kept subverting what I thought was going to happen. I did not see the end coming at all, particularly with the way the jeremiah plot went. It reminded me a lot of Oklahoma (the musical) and a lot of… real life lol. but yeah it was v good and I’m proud of george.

I really did not expect to get very attached to thomas. Usually when a book is a friendship book with romance also in there, I get very very wrapped up in the friendship parts and then only sort of care about the romantic lead. And it did start that way when george was initially obsessing over him, I kept just kind of being like “ok he’s here, sure”. But lex gave us a kindhearted emotions boy, which is honestly the best kind of boy, and he plays piano and his dad is nice and he keeps george in check about being a kind friend? Heck yeah. The LETTERS?? YES. listen my favorite book is ella enchanted and ever since then, any romance that involves witty written correspondence is automatically in my good books. also he has the benedick energy of like, unquestionably supporting women over his sketchy friends and that’s Always good.

I loved each of the friends in different ways, and I am a little sad that we didn’t get much closure on Cecily and Jonathan in particular, but I do understand why it ended the way that it did and I appreciate Georgiana realizing that these were never really going to be her People. That’s a really cool thing that I don’t see a lot in stories. Usually either they make friends for life, or it turns out that the group were Bad People and that’s why they go their separate ways. So the fact that it was like “no, I think they are good people and I care for them deeply, but our ways of life are just never going to be compatible in the long run so I’m just going to appreciate them in my periphery from now on” was a really nuanced take and something that I think is truer to reality.

Let’s Talk About Frances. Frances intrigued the hell out of me because I never knew what the heck she was going to do next. I do always love a bitchy woman with secret emotions and after the first vulnerable sleepover scene, in my mind I already felt like I knew where frances’s arc might be going. But lord I did NOT! It’s really really interesting to have a book that follows so many tropes of other stories but at the same time goes in completely different directions. I would’ve read a whole bunch more about frances and her emotions and her parents and her trauma, and I really hope jane is helping her heal from all that and also be less of a jerk to everyone, and if anyone is writing the “jane and frances heal from trauma and become better people together” fic I am soooo there. I’m glad we at least got the confirmation that she believes george, that she got the satisfaction of telling off jeremiah, that she’s living with jane, and that her parents have separated at least for the time being. But yeah I think in a lesser book, frances would’ve been reduced to like “the regina george” and not necessarily given all the nuances that she had, and I really appreciated how much she felt like a rounded-out person with a lot of her own shit going on. I am sad that she and george had to end the way they did, but again, it makes sense for the narrative and I’m glad they’re at least on good enough terms that she’s going to go to the wedding.

I do think there were some things that were left loose (george bringing up donating to the poor was never addressed again, frances’s parents are barely addressed again which surprised me after the mrs. walters bit, etc) but now that I’m finished with it and not waiting for certain loose ends to be tied, I think that’s kind of the point. that sometimes things just end without closure. sometimes you just move on from people and you don’t get to change them in the way you wanted to.

I probably have a bunch more to say but the main thing is that every single character in this book felt extremely three dimensional to me, and that is a Really hard thing to pull off and it has made me even more excited to read all of lex’s future books. Came for the humor, stayed for the insanely well-developed characters.

[willow-salix]

For the TAG asks - Questions 2, 18 and 20 with Alan & Gordon please 😊

Ok, lets do this.

2: Favourite minor character would have to be Conrad, I adore that baby so much, I just want to squish him and love him and feed him and tell him he's doing SUCH A GOOD JOB. He's smart, he's brave and he's just precious and gahhhh cinnamon roll.

18: I did watch TOS, soooo much. Things I wish they had kept in... hummm (my kid says John's bathrobe and Scott's bedhead but I say nope to that one). Ok, lets be serious for a moment.

- I would have liked to have seen Kayo have a slightly more Tin-Tin role in the engineering way. Purely because I love how they showed her as having brains as well as being pretty. I feel they might have gone a tiny bit the other direction with Kayo and made her so kickass and awesome in her own way, but I would have liked to have seen her show her intelligence in other ways than things related to flying etc.

- I wanted Penelope to have a more defined role outside of IR. In TOS they really played up her secret agent spy side but in TAG I felt they did too little with her. She tended to play more to the socialite side of things and I would have liked to have seen her doing more away from IR and the GDF. I'd have liked to have seen her with some more alter egos like Wanda Lamour and Gayle Williams.

- I would have liked to have seen more spy stuff, period. I love The Man From MI5 and 30 Minutes After Noon and their spy guys and would have loved to have seen an episode where Penelope and IR had to save a spy and the thing he was guarding or whatever.

- I'd also have liked to have seen more agents in it, like Jeremiah Tuttle and Sir Jeremy Hodge. Even if they had just been mentioned in passing.

20:

-Most afraid of the dark: Neither really, space is made of dark, as is the depths of the ocean. I'm sure both boys are fine with it, though I do headcanon that baby Alan didn't like it or storms.

- Putting off homework: Gordon, definitely Gordon. Alan is a good boy and while he sometimes wanted to ditch schoolwork for IR work he was still a good student, and damned clever with it.

- Going off grid for fun: Gordon. He'd want to go all woodsman or deserted island dweller. Alan couldn't bare to leave his games and live streams at home.

Reading Jane Austen in their spare time: Gordon. He knows that Penny used to love them when she was younger and that she still reads them at least once a year as a kind of comfort book. So he's reading them so he has a clue what she's blushing about when she talks about Mr Darcy...

Going to move off Tracy Island first: Alan, to go to college for at least a semester or two like a real teenager.

Secretly replacing Grandma's cooking: Both, one is look out and distractor extraordinaire , the other is the one actioning the old switcheroo. Scott was in on it too, he got the take out.

Taking all the family photographs: Gordon, but they are never the ones that Grandma would like to put in the albums. He takes the embarrassing ones, the ones with someone sneezing on their birthday cake or falling down a hill while on a family hike, the one that gets stuck in the slide at the waterpark, all those moments that they would probably love to forget, Gordon captured them all.

Planning a picnic for a sunny day: Gordon again. He likes to be outside and will happily take a picnic off down to the rock pools and spend all day down there helping out the creatures that wash up there and keeping an eye on their little ecosystems.

These were fun, thanks for the asks xx

[boyneriver-fraser]

A Tale of Four Bookends: Love & Loyalty in The Fiery Cross, Violence & Vileness in Between Two Fires

I will never joke about tarring and feathering again.

The Angel of Migraine is rapping* at my window, begging to be granted entrance, and weakening my grasp on S5E2 Between Two Fires, despite the episode’s obvious plot movement and character development – not to mention its showing off some of Claire’s and Jamie’s beautiful new clothes. (Trish Biggar has already made a big impact on Season 5 and I can’t wait to see what else she has hanging in her New Country closet.) I do know the episode’s overall mood is certainly dimmer than last week’s.

Random Thoughts & Observations

Jamie rides a white horse. Lt. Knox rides a black one. Light and dark. Hero and villain. And Jamie is able to see both sides of the Crown-Regulator argument. A couple of times Knox seemed capable of empathizing with the other side, but he never quite got there. He is the King’s man.

Once their initial shock dissipated, their reactions to Mr. Farrish’s autopsy clearly showed which of Marsali and Brianna is surgery lieutenant material. I really like this elevation of Marsali’s role in the story. Lauren Lyle is so good, and Marsali is as funny as she is intelligent.

Do you suppose the same butcher that coached Sam in S3E2 Surrender coached Lauren?

We now know which tongue-twisting wedding guest is Ronnie Sinclair: the man who delivered the news about the Hillsborough unrest to Jamie and Lt. Knox.

I realize Jamie is walking a tightrope between two fires in his effort to appear loyal to the Crown, but his covering for Lt. Knox after Knox killed Ethan Mackinnon made my skin crawl.

Tufty Fluffytail: Only you can prevent crosswalk collisions.

Jemmy has hair ticks! We’re growing in numbers.

Despite her gut reaction, pun intended, to Mr. Farrish’s autopsy, you could see Marsali’s growing interest in Claire’s work, both in her face and in her slowly walking closer to the body while Claire delivered her sales pitch. Marsali’s being sold on, “Stitch him up? Like a seamstress?” reminded me of Father Gow’s being sold on his church’s receiving new windows in S1E7 The Wedding.

It breaks my heart to see Highlanders’ regarding Jamie as the enemy.

And the dichotomy of diction of Highlanders’ speech amuses me. Sometimes they enunciate each syllable so precisely, words sound like they’re coming from a metronome. Sometimes they string together a series of missed vowels and rolled Rs so quickly, words sound like they’re delivered by a growling dog.

Sigh… the king was being poisoned, and learned physician Dr. Miller is a quack.

I don’t know if Claire’s sitting at the table, separated from the other women, was because her task, or if it was designed to show Claire as Herself and the other women as tenants, but… I wonder if Claire’s fine-healer knowledge and advice would be better received if she were standing or sitting among the other women?

Maybe not, but I remember how she sat with the women at the outdoor table in S1E12 Lallybroch, swapping recipes, and how the Lady seemed more relatable to those women. Chatting vs. lecturing. “Dr. Rawlings’ Recommendations” was a great save, though.

I really like how the show is maintaining the books’ Claire-Roger relationship. They have been confidantes since Reverend Wakefield’s death, and I don’t perceive any ick factor like some readers do. Roger definitely admires Claire’s intelligence and appreciates her beauty, but on the romance front he is 100% Team Brianna. He was so young when he lost his own mother. Mrs. Graham helped to raise him, bless her, but she was no Claire Fraser. Claire is both trusted friend and surrogate mother. (Spoiler alert: James Fraser might be Roger’s colonel today, but he becomes the father Roger will dearly miss someday, albeit temporarily. Whew!)

Speaking of relationships, in last week’s episode Roger called Jocasta “Brianna’s” aunt, and in this episode he laments Reverend Wakefield’s being the last of his family. Wake up and smell the bloodline, Thrush! It’s true your “some times great-grandparents” Claire mentions are somewhere in America, but… Jocasta is your aunt. Jamie and Brianna are your cousins. You’re surrounded by family. Don’t forget, you’re a direct descendent of war chief Dougal MacKenzie.

In case you missed it, the Regulators’ watchword is Clan Fraser’s war cry: Caisteal Dhuni.

The Quakers of The Revolution are herrrrrrrre. I got concerned about “Mr. Hunter’s” being with Hermon Husband at Murtagh’s camp, mistaking him for Dr. Denzell, and thinking his presence does not make sense, but that Hunter is James. Carry on.

I admit my brain is strained right now and I’m not doing my best thinking, but how does this make sense? Claire: “Jamie, even though he’s not a time traveller, his very presence here has affected the future of a lot of people who are not breathing anymore.” O… kay…

Spirituality aside, what kind of future do people who are not breathing anymore have?

Is this an awkwardly expressed statement? Has Claire over imbibed? Do I need to medicate and/or lie down? What am I missing?

Joy to the World. Mary-Jane, Andrea, and I could have used Roger’s guitar accompaniment when we performed a wee Jeremiah-was-a-bullfrog song and dance number at our Grade 6 class Christmas party. I remember Glen got my name and gave me a box of Black Magic chocolates. But I digress…

Brianna’s first word was “dog.” Is Jemmy’s “hey?” So cute!

I know something very barbaric happened after Bonnet felled his duel opponent, but I might never see it if I manage to avert my eyes each time that part of the episode arrives. Two viewings, two misses, so far...

He’s a father now? F*&k you, Bonnet.  To quote your purported son,

“I want to see the wallygator eat the pirate.”

*noise, not music

__________

Photo: Starz Gifs: @whiteraven-s​ @stewartandclarke​ @scotsmanandsassenach​  @tzaharasykes​

#Outlander #Personal #Review #Written while stunned #The Fiery Cross #S5E2 Between Two Fires #Claire Fraser #Jamie Fraser #Murtagh FitzGibbons Fraser ⚔️ #Brianna MacKenzie #Roger MacKenzie #Jemmy MacKenzie #Marsali Fraser #Isaiah Morton #Ronnie Sinclair #Lieutenant Hamilton Knox #Hermon Husband #James Hunter #191 #022420

[gothamcitystories]

Submitted by Al Reinman;

Transcribed by Carter Albrecht

Like most GC natives, I hate this damned place in a special way only a Gothamite can. I grew up here. It’s gross, smells like a tire fire, the rich live in their high towers looking down on us all, I can’t walk to the corner to pickup a pack of smokes after dark, unless I’m packing at least my mag light(we’ll get to that), and we’ve got a new freakshow causing chaos every week. Don’t even get me started on the public transportation.

That being said, Gotham is MY town, y’know? Some out-of-towner says any of what I just said, I’m as likely as any Gothamite to knock their teeth in. See, I love this town as much as I hate it, in that special way only a Gothamite can. It’s hard to explain that to someone who isn’t from here.

So anyways, I work in sanitation. It’s not bad work, all thing considered. I do third shift tunnel walking. It’s a newer thing. See, after that Rat-King business, when that guy was kidnapped homeless people and forcing them to build something or other in the sewers, few years back, the city assigned Sani workers to do regular patrols to make sure nothing hinky is going on, y’know, like wannabe gangsters or shit like that.

Most of the guys hate tunnel walks. And I mean, that’s fair, there’s more of a chance to run into that big ass crocodile guy, or any of the other bozo’s Arkham can’t seem to keep ahold of. Of course I never saw the guy. Never saw much of anything, except a few teenagers playing thug. So I volunteer to do most of the walks. Got me one of those big metal flashlights, my mag, because you can bust a skull with those things, if you need to. I also have a piece, but we’re not supposed to carry while we’re on the job, so I usually don’t, unless one of the loonies is loose. This wasn’t one of those time, just so you know.

It was this past Halloween. I was kinda pissed because one of my buds was playing a show at The Hole, that dive over on Park. Well, I clocked in, and my super asked if anyone wanted to take the Walks tonight. I figured eight hours strolling was as good as I was going to get. My hand shot up, and into the tunnels I went. We’re not supposed to, but I like listening to podcasts while I walk. Vicki Vale’s Gotham Report is a favorite of mine. So I pop a headphone in, only one, I’m not stupid, and I start off into the dark.

Tons of concrete and steel kills any kind of cell signal, so I download my podcasts before I head down. This episode was an exciting one for me, because she was talking about an old Gotham legend. So if you grew up in GC, you were probably raised on stories about Solomon Grundy, who would emerge from the swamps to the north to gobble up kids who misbehave. Well, if you’re old enough. I hear kids nowadays are treated to threats of the Batman coming through their windows. Not sure which is a worse prospect.

Anyways Vale goes into the founding of Gotham, and the Five Families. Every kid learns about them in grade school, Alan Wayne, Theodore Cobblepot, Edward Elliot, Jeremiah Arkham, and Ezekiel Kane.

So story goes that the founders had contracted a cousin of Wayne, a guy by the name of Cyrus Gold. Gold was a merchant of some influence. The stories vary on the why, and the how, but some how, Gold was murdered, and his body dumped in that section of marshlands to the north, Slaughter Swamp.

So according to Vale, Theodore Cobblepot was into shady stuff way back when, and he had his eyes on Gold’s businesses. Old Theo was a cold dude from reports. His daughter, Millie Jane, she was fond of nursery rhymes, so old Theo would make men who crossed him recite them from memory before he wacked them. So Gold gets walked out to Slaughter Swamp. He’s blindfolded, and he’s reciting that old one, Solomon Grundy. Y’know, born on a Monday, etcetera etcetera. Theo pops him, plants him, absorbs his business.

Jump forward. The urban legend starts up, based on that version of the story. Kids say that if you say the rhyme in Slaughter Swamp on Halloween night, he’ll rise from the swamp and get you. You know how all those old stories, they never say what the ghosty or ghouly is gonna do, just that he’ll get you. I remember taking my first girlfriend out to Slaughter Swamp to summon Solomon Grundy. Lots of teens did it when I was in school, but no one I knew ever saw him.

Anyways, the route I took that night had an old disused outfall into Slaughter Swamp. Bruce had it redirected when he took over Wayne Enterprises a few years back, but the outfall is still open, and it’s a good spot to stop and have a smoke, about halfway through the route, so when I got there, I stepped out and had me a smoke.

I was on the phone with this girl I’d been chatting with, she does maintenance on the electricals running under the city, so we see each other at work sometimes. Anyways, I made this joke about being in Slaughter, and trying to summon Grundy. Just being funny, y’know. She’s loving it. She’s a Gotham Girl herself, but she never got taken out to Slaughter, but she’s egging me on, so I go for it.

It’s a simple rhyme:

“Solomon Grundy,

Born on a Monday,

Christened on Tuesday,

Married on Wednesday,

Took ill on Thursday,

Grew worse on Friday,

Died on Saturday,

Buried on Sunday,

That was the end,

Of Solomon Grundy.”

I wait. I say nothing, she says nothing. I’m hoping to build the tension and scream, give her a scare, y’know? Only, about the time I’m planning on screaming, my mag goes dead, so does my phone. Now the phone doesn’t surprise me. I carry a portable power bank for that, but with the concrete, you don’t get a lot of signal, so it doesn’t do much good, so I hadn’t hooked it up to charge. But the mag? Those batteries were brand new at the start of the shift. I always change my batteries before I go into the tunnels. Anyone who works underground will tell you there’s nothing more important than your light, y’know? And I always carry plenty of spares. Nobody wants to be down there in the dark. I always, ALWAYS put new batteries in before I start my shift.

There on the outfall, you get a bit of moonlight. More than in the tunnels. I’ll admit, I was spooked a bit, I should’ve had more than a few hours left on those batteries. So I was kinda rushing to get the old ones out and a spare pare in, and yeah, I let the old ones roll off into the swamp. I mean yeah, I was jumpy, but I wasn’t jumping at shadows, y’know? I’m a GC native. We’re tough stock, and hard to actually scare. Like really scare, y’know?

So the batteries roll off the concrete block in front of the outfall. Plop plop, into the swamp. Suddenly it gets real quiet. I mean dead quit. The owls, y’know, the ones on that preserve out there? Quiet. Bugs and night birds? Quiet. Hell, I don’t think I was even breathing, y’know? Just felt real tense. Your eyes play tricks on you at night. In the dark, you see things different, and out by the outfall it’s real dark, forest dark, y’know? Even with the super moon we had on Halloween this year, it was stupid, mind tricking dark out there. But I swear to you, there was fog rising from the swamp. And it wasn’t there before my light went out. Thick shit too.

Then I heard the splash. Like something big coming out of the water. I’ll admit that I was spooked. But I didn’t run or nothing. My eyes were adjusting to the dark, enough to make out the big shape moving towards me. I managed to fumble the new batteries into the mag about the time I asked:

“Who’s there?”

Thinking I’d stumbled on some teens playing a prank, y’know.

I got my light on right before the thing responded. Damn thing must have been nine foot tall, and wide as a truck. Dressed in the ragged, rotten remains of a suit. Sonovabitch looked like a jacked albino Frankenstein, like all rotted, deep sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, lumbering like it had a bad leg, skin and hair were bleach white, and the fingernails and teeth were all yellow and sick looking. And it spoke. Sounded about like rocks rubbing together. The thing lumbered towards me, hands outstretched, reaching as if to grab me, it rasped:

“Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday.”

I booked. I mean, I think it took me fifteen minutes to reach city limits? And I didn’t go back underground for months. It took me awhile to work up the nerve, y’know? But I’ve been thinking about it, and all the stories say Grundy only comes out on Halloween, right? So I should be fine as long as I’m not down there by Slaughter Swamp on Halloween, right? I should be fine.

Right?

[therichantsim]

Snowy Escape

I am looking forward to this pack. I may explore it with my AU Vanilla Black save.

In my legacy story save Let It Burn. It’ll be a minute since it’s heavily written out but there is some room for a little spontaneity.  How my OC’s would feel about Mt. Komorebi as follows...

Isaiah would go because he will see it as a business opportunity but would take Lady O and the twins because he knows how much she loves experiencing new food and cultures which in turn inspires her. 

Quinton has been many places in his military past and would love to go with his wife Bailey Kay and try to master a new skill ie. mountain climbing or skiing. 

Trinity would just love any excuse to buy and model the latest in ski resort fashion, pose for the gram on the ski lift and woohoo in the hot springs. 

Mama B only loves Paris and Greece. Those are the only places she’s willing to sit on a long flight to visit. Her husband Grant would go for sure, without her and she would welcome it. 

Big Daddy and Ms. Pat only go places they can get to by car or a two hour fight. They think all them “fancy” places are for rich folk.

Jane is international. She’s everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  

London and Jeremiah are both fluent in 8 different languages between the two of them and true wanderlust at heart. As well as rest of “The Ladies”  they are all very cultured so it goes without saying.

[nancypullen]

Kilt-y as Charged

My family has always been able to trace my mother’s lineage to Denmark and Germany as far back as the 1400′s.  It wasn’t hard, my great-grandmother Emelia arrived in New York harbor on the passenger ship Washington in 1873, fresh from Denmark with her mother and siblings.  They proceeded from there out to the Nebraska plains where her father, Christen Rasmussen had already started plowing and creating a homestead.  She married into the Link family, and all you have to do is google John Jacob Link to find the long and interesting story of my ancestors in Germany.  Though the Links of Grossgartach, Germany did quite well,  John Jacob (Hans Jacob Linckh)  crossed oceans at the ripe old age of 50 because he’d decided he was tired of almost constant warfare, taxes that were only used to fill palaces, and the never-ending battle between Catholics and protestants. At least that’s how the story goes.  The Rasmussens and Links prospered in America (google Dr. Harvey Link of Nebraska, physician, innovator, and state representative - that’s my great-great-grandfather) and eventually a Link married a Holtz (another German) and my mother was born.  We have my Danish and German side all wrapped up. Recently sheer boredom drove me to try and untangle the mystery of my paternal line.  It’s not that there were secrets, it’s just that my maiden name is McGlaughn and when trying to track documents that include land deeds, immigration records, death certificates, etc I’ve found some very creative spellings of the name.  I descend from McGlaughon, McGlaun, McGlon, McGlauhon, and I even found a record where it was spelled Meglehon. These are all children from the same parents, check out the various spellings of the last name.

That’s what I’ve been up against. BUT...and you knew there was a but..I did it!  By working backwards and only adding a name to the tree once I’d verified the correct dates, places, relatives, and so on, I found the first McGlaughn relative to step foot in America. His name was Jeremiah McGlaughon, born in Scotland in 1695 to John McGlaughon and his wife, Jane O’Cane.  I haven’t yet found the year that he arrived in America, but he died in 1740 in Bertie County, North Carolina leaving behind land, cattle, hogs, sheep, horses, and a family whose records pop up from Valley Forge to the present.  I found a handful of Revolutionary War soldiers, and as many from the wrong side of the Civil War. Here’s an inventory of Jeremiah’s spread in 1740, pretty sure this was for his will.

I know you can’t see much from this photo.  When I was reading it I had to zoom in and go line by line.  Can we just appreciate the beautiful handwriting? What a lost art. I can’t tell you how happy I was to see books listed in his inventory.

Anywho, after digging and digging and a long conversation with my sister googling on the other end - I’m pretty sure that Jeremiah came from Lanarkshire, Scotland.  I think his wife, Jane Howell (married in Bertie,NC) came from Wiltshire, England.  I haven’t verified this yet, but I *think* this is her baptismal record from 1700.

We’re so fortunate that millions of documents have been scanned and uploaded so that people can search archives from all over the world.  I have found draft cards, land deeds, wills, marriage licenses, and immigration records.  It will probably take months to wade through everything and assign each document to the right person, but I love solving puzzles.  Look at these gems.

Here’s the record of Caroline Rasmussen arriving in America with her children in tow.

Caroline - age 33 - woman Hans - male child -11 Rasmus -male child- 6 Anine - female child - age 9 Mathilde -female child- age 4 (That’s my great-grandmother, Mathilde Emilia!) Laurentina - female child - 11 months Can you even imagine? A young mother and five children, one of them not yet a year old, leaving everything familiar and crossing the ocean?    It looks like she traveled with other Rasmussen relatives, so that had to be a comfort. I was really excited when I uncovered the baptismal record for Caroline and then the record of her marriage to Christen.  Then I remembered that I don’t read Danish.

Oops. You can still get helpful info - when I found Christen Rasmussen’s confirmation in church records it provided his birthplace.  I’m sure we already have that tidbit filed away somewhere, but if you’re just beginning a search those are the tasty clues that move you forward. 

I won’t bore you with more details of a family that you don’t know or care about.  Besides, I have to get back to my search and keep fleshing out my McGlaughn/McGlaughon/McGlaun/McGlon/McGlahon/Meglohon line. So far I know that: John McGlaughon & Jane O’Cane of Lanarkshire,Scotland begat Jeremiah and his brothers Malachi and James. Jeremiah McGlaughon & Jane Howell begat Edmond and siblings Edmond McGlauhon & Angelica Jane Butler begat William and siblings William McGlahon & Ann Gaskin  begat Jeremiah and siblings Jeremiah McGlauhon had FOUR wives - Elizabeth Capeheart (also spelled Kapott in some records), Nancy Baker, Matilda Webb Fogerty, and Nancy Parker As you can imagine, there was a litter of kids, but my ancestor came from his union with Nancy Baker. So, Jeremiah & Nancy #1 begat James Jackson McGlaughn. James Jackson “Jack” McGlaughn  married Mary Loretta Eady who is listed as “Cherokee Indian”. They had a few kids and because life was harder on women back then, Mary died.  Jack then married Nancy Jane Noble, and together they made my great-grandfather John Pinkston McGlaughn. John Pinkston McGlaughn married Lavada Sanders, had some babies, and Lavada (you guessed it) died.  Along came Lela Fields Carter with her daughter Alice and married John and had a few more kids.  My grandfather was from the first union with Lavada.  He was a horrible, awful, disgusting, sorry excuse for a human being and his name was William Jasper McGlaughn. William Jasper McGlaughn married Jessie Bell Lett and produced six offspring, one of them was my father, John Paskle McGlaughn.  He met and married an Idaho beauty, Marilyn Holtz, and all because those brave ancestors stepped onto boats and decided to give America a try, here I am.  It’s both humbling and fascinating to see documents with the beautiful, swirling signatures of some of those who came before me.  I don’t know all of their stories, I only have names and dates right now. But if not for them I wouldn’t be sitting in my warm, cozy home in Tennessee, searching the internet for what they left behind.  My life has undoubtedly been far easier than theirs, don’t we all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and benefit from their courage and hard work?  Of course, we also sometimes have to recover from the poor decisions and cruelty of unsavory characters in our family trees.  We’re all threads in a tapestry. That being said, my DNA swab continues to be refined and as it turns out, I’m exactly what family lore has said I would be.  I’m a big ol’ hodge podge of European ancestors like most Americans.

Northwestern Europe - Germany and Denmark, check. Scotland and England - check. Various sprinklings for flavor - check. I’m happy like the Danish and frugal like the Scots. German stereotypes are hardworking, efficient, and disciplined.  I totally missed that boat. Can’t win ‘em all. Okay, I’ll wrap this up.  If you stuck it out to the end pleas reward yourself.  This whole post was just me thinking out loud and making my case for a trip to Scotland.  Pretty sure the motherland is calling me home.

I mean, the place is full of these adorable Highland Cows!  I could bring one home as a souvenir!

I’m afraid if I go I’ll never come home, Jeremiah’s journey would all be for naught. So that’s it. I really am wrapping this up.

I swear, I’m done. Stay safe and stay well, ya wee smasher!

Done. XOXO - Nancy

[suethor]

what would tommy and trixie's wedding look like? also what are their favorite things to do together? (ok im done . hope u have a nice day/night 😁)

thank you love i hope you are also having a nice day/night!!

tommy and trixie’s wedding takes place in two parts, both in birmingham.  the ceremony is at st. catherine’s, and jeremiah is the priest.  lizzie, esme, anna, and ada are bridesmaids, polly walks trixie down the aisle, and obviously john, finn, michael, and arthur are groomsmen.  karl’s the ring bearer and one of john’s daughters is the flower girl.

i had planned on having grace finish her arc and exit at the end of season 2, but she may come back for it because she and trixie work together and become actual friends over the course of the second season, but i’m not sure if it’s better to close that door and leave it shut, or keep it going.  

i borrowed this from jane the virgin, but i think trixie and tommy stick to the traditional catholic vows for the ceremony and then read private vows to each other that night.  

after the ceremony, they have their reception at the garrison, because where else?  tommy offered a big, lavish affair but trixie knew she’d just be uncomfortable with it and wanted to feel like it wasn’t all ceremony.  there’s drinks and dancing and trixie and tommy mean to drive back to enjoy their wedding night but they’re so tired, they just go back to the old house and spend the night there talking and then falling asleep.  

the honeymoon’s in paris, and probably the most consecutive sleep tommy’s gotten in a decade, and i think for once they’re really really happy 

as for their favorite things to do together, they do enjoy work—trixie likes her job, and tommy’s ambition has no limits, but beyond that, they’re kind of domestic.  she likes to lay across his lap and read while he works out his plans, and then they share what they’ve come up with over dinner.  during the week, they spend most of their time apart running different legs of the business, but at nights when they’re apart they always talk on the phone for hours, or when they’re together they talk over dinner and then before they fall asleep.  they definitely tell each other everything.  over weekends, trixie likes to watch tommy with the horses even if she hates riding them herself.  she likes to watch him teach their daughter when she gets older, and makes him sit down with little sybil when the she wants to have a tea party.  

specific headcanons i have are: trixie reads out loud in bed so that tommy can fall asleep without feeling alone/drifting back into worse memories; whenever tommy travels he brings her back mystery novels (eventually her favorite genre); when he’s busy, she drops off lunch for him at his office; the two of them go to museums often even though tommy doesn’t find them interesting; he often goes on long drives to think and trixie will accompany him and just watch the trees to by in the passenger seat; whenever trixie reads a book and hates it, he hollows it out and hides a gun in it; they take sybil to the zoo and she begs for a cat for weeks, so tommy comes home with one one day and she names it “bug”; tommy and trixie come up with stories to tell sybil before sleep; and tommy is obsessed with calling her mrs. shelby once they’re married.....literally obsessed

[ancientphantom]

BUT WE’RE NOT THROUGH YET

A Promise Kept by D.C. Renee is a 2018 contemporary romance novel about an asshole dude who appears to be intentionally torturing the object of his affections because he thinks she’s not a good person and he wants her to know how HE, a scarred man who has suffered and must wear a mask, feels. He’s gonna force her to marry him specifically so she can suffer with being unhappy forever. Apparently this becomes a romance at some point, so... hopefully he gets better?

Opera Macabre by Michelle Rodriguez is a 2015 vampire romance involving two vampires harassing the same opera singer, who is probably going to get murdered and turned into one of them when they get done fighting over who gets her first. You’d think I’d have caught this one, considering that Rodriguez is a mainstay of regular Phantom publications, but it’s here now!

Guardian Angel by Anne Rouen is the fourth in Rouen’s Master of Illusion series, and I SOMEHOW managed to miss it in spite of knowing about the first three. It’s a World War II historical romance involving the struggles between France and Germany and a young singer who has to become a soldier hunted by Nazis while struggling to remain in contact with his true love. There is apparently also a supernatural element involved?

The Phantom of the Opera: The Jeremiah Story by Jeremiah Semien is an extremely short 2010 story about a girl moving into an apartment and encountering the Phantom and his opera house. There is also something about the opera house maybe burning down? It looks like there might be a language barrier involved here.

Death is the Cool Night by Libby Sternberg is a 2013 psychological mystery set in the 1940s involving a tortured composer who has blackouts and isn’t sure if he has committed rumors or if the beautiful soprano he worships did it, and of course we’ve got love triangles and destroyed careers due to tragic injuries and opera productions plagued by deadly mishaps.

Only the Dead Know Burbank by Bradford Tatum is a 2016 novel about a girl who may or may not be a zombie deciding to go to Hollywood in the wake of the world wars and become the secret behind-the-scenes genius who creates the classic horror films The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, and Frankenstein, complete with Lon Chaney as a character but our zombie protagonist, of course, the true Phantom. There is almost certainly a layer of satire involved.

Gabriella’s Voice by Michael J. Vaughn is the 2000 contemporary story of a rich dude who travels the country seeking out new young opera singers with potential and giving them large sums of money to start their careers, fueled by the SORROWS of his mysterious yet angsty past. He of course runs into a singer who is so amazing that he can’t just leave, though, and gets entwined in her career. We have both a non-traditional romance (the book suggests it hardly qualifies as romance at all) and a large age gap here, things that we often don’t get in these retellings.

The Opera Singer by P.J. Werner is a 2015 retelling of the story transplanted to Victorian England, where an orphaned opera singer comes within reach of her dream of being a prima donna only to be torn between her love for a childhood friend and a mysterious, grumpy stranger who may or may not have committed some murders possibly.

Fractured Light by Ashley Jane Wigfield is a 2011 suspense romance involving a young girl who is swept away to the Paris opera to attempt to achieve her dreams of becoming a star, only to discover that he might actually be kind of dangerous and involved in some bad shit, and also her childhood friend has just returned and really likes her and would kind of like to rescue her from said bad shit, once he figures it out. There appear to be secret societies involved in addition to your general murders and secrets.

I hope everyone involved this brief journey into Phantom Literature I Failed to Round Up. This is an ever-evolving project and I love all of you for caring about it and also sometimes sending me emails that try very politely to tell me I forgot about something important.

[dreamychick]

Still have Gotham feelings. Some are probably unpopular/nitpicky but they're how I feel. Spoilers for Gotham Series.

The evolution of Edward Nygma into the Riddler is the absolute best thing about Gotham and no, you can't change my mind.

The relationship between Alfred and Bruce is the Second best thing.

The costumes and make up of the villians are all fucking awesome.

I like how they gave Harvey more depth.

I really. Really. Really. Really. REALLY. Hate Jim Gordan. He's obnoxious. Judges everyone to his standards but never holds his own self accountable. He can make mistakes. But they can't.

They introduced the Joker way to early and gave way to much of his backstory.

Cameron does a fucking phenomenal job of both Jerome and Jeremiah. Perfect face. Perfect voice. Perfect mannerisms. Just a perfect cast.

I don't like that the Joker knows who Bruce Wayne is since a main part of his character is supposed to be that he doesn't care WHO Batman is, he only cares about the cat and mouse chase.

I think the 2nd to last episode should have been the finale. It would have been perfect. Everything set up and all of the characters looking to the future. Everyone knowing what's to come but uncertainty still there.

Having the last episode be 10 years later is stupid. Nygma and Oswald were jailed for 10 fucking years? Really? And then they reduce them to comical idiots. Like in the comics I get making them more humerous. But after proving for 5 seasons they're both smart. This shit is just demeaning. Gordon is trying to retire only to...not when Batman comes back. The only reason they even introduced the retirement thing was soley for him to have something to do. We see Selina all grown up but never see Bruce. Bruce becomes Batman, who cares it's not really a well earned reveal. Barbara gets completely absolved of her past because.....baby? How many people has she killed? But she got a pass.

Jeremiah gets hit in the face with a spray and gets the crazy forced on him. And I know, he says it didn't have an effect it just turned him grey, but that's not true. Because his motivation is still to be obsessed with Bruce. Just like Jerome. He states he's sane but then still goes along with Jerome's after death plan. Jerimiah wasn't doing crazy shit before and now all of a sudden he is. Just seems stupid. If you wanted him to be crazy just like Jerome maybe explain more how he was just as crazy as Jerome as kids. Or show him being crazy before he gets caught by Jerome.

The freaking league of shadows is killed so damn easy multiple times. How did any of them get into the league if they were gonna be so easy to kill?

Why did Bruce Wayne Billionaire not have a better security system? He gets kidnapped and broken into way to many times. And having characters, Selina, point it out doesn't change that it's stupid.

Jonothan Crane didn't get enough time. (I just love him and wanted more)

Bane kind of comes in and becomes the shows plot lord the last minute.

I hate Jim Gordon. Pretends to be such a damn boyscout.

The fact that most of the show is more about a gangster turf war is a different take on the story and I love it.

I'm torn between liking that they showed lesser known characters, like Jane Doe, and being upset that it was more as an easter egg since they're not very developed.

Why can Victor Zsas not hit a damn thing when he's shooting?

I like how they show all of the different kinds of mental illness that runs rampant in this city.

The science of many of the villians is well explained. Even if it's not realistic.

Hugo Strange is never given a real reason why he's such a sadistic fuck. I love that shit.

Lucius is smart as hell and comes in with fun toys whenever you see him.

Did I mention that I hate Jim Gordan?

Selina and Bruce's relationship is awesome.

Gotham was such a good show. I really enjoyed it as a character study show. Watching the characters grow and become what they've turned into and why is so good.

Having the show circle around Gordan makes sense but does not make it any easier to watch the parts that focus only on him.

There's alot I could say about this show. Probably could talk for hours about it honestly. Cuz I have lots of feelings. About wasted oppurtunities. Shit that was amazing. Shit that was complex. Too simplistic. My opinions about what I like or hate just because it doesn't suit me. No valid reasons at all, just because.

Really liked Gotham. And honestly. I'm going to pretend that the show ends with Ed and Oswald looking to the future of rebuilding their gangs, Bruce goes off to learn how to be Batman, Alfred is rebuilding the Manor, Gordan is working to make Gotham a safe place for his new baby, Barbara looks toward changing into being a mom toward Barbara, Joker is "Brain Dead" and Selina is left alone to figure out wherr her future is headed. Everyone is looking toward their respective futures. We don't have to be told what happens. You don't have to show us. People who read the comics already know what's coming. And people who haven't....well it doesn't explain anything anyway, just introduces new ideas and then leaves it. It's all tacked on for no reason.

Leave us looking toward the future. Our imaginations will take care of the rest.

[anuschkalova]

I got tagged by @gothamgeek-86 and @1-gotham to answer 17 questions about myself. Thank you! 💖 So, since I’ve never done one of these, let’s give it a go:

1. Nickname: I’m half German and half Russian. So in German my nickname is Anni, while my parents call me Anuschka, which is the Russian version of my name (so ‚Ava‘ is not my real name).

2. Zodiac: Scorpio.

3. Height: 170 cm or 5’7“.

4. Dream Job: I’m a Visual Merchandiser with main focus on visual design, but I would love to work in the film industry. 

5. Top 5 Favorite Shows: Mr. Robot, Gotham, Bates Motel, AHS, Chosen (there are way more…I’m watching Downton Abby atm).

6. Hobbies: Writing, drawing, dancing and spending too much time overthinking stuff.

7. Favorite Drink: Either Caramel Macchiato or a nice homemade Hot Cocoa. I use hazelnut milk, cocoa powder, brown sugar and vanilla - and depending on my cravings - vegan marshmallows and a pint of cinnamon on top.

8. Bad Habits: I tend to bottle up my emotions.  

9. Likes: TV-Series, rain, spending time with friends, laughing, train-rides, sunsets, the smell of autumn, cinemas.

10. Top Ten Favorite Characters: Will Graham, Norman Bates, Elliot Alderson, Scarlett O’Hara, Newt Scamander, The Joker (TDK), Jerome/Jeremiah Valeska, Roman Godfrey, Kevin W. Crumb, James P. March.

11. Tattoos: No.

12. Five Emojis To Describe Me: 🤔✍️☕️ 💃🍂

13. One Thing I Hate: Judgment. Just let people live their lives.

14. Quotes: “If you can dream it, you can do it.“

15. Hair color: Brown.

16. Favorite color: Grey, Lilac and Mustard.

17. Random facts: Let’s see… I have a resting bitch face, my all-time favorite band is Muse and I have a weird habit of copying the emotions of characters I write about, e.g. when someone is angry then I’m furrowing my brows and when the person’s happy, I’ll smile. Oh, and I’m a vegetarian. 

Okay, I tag these wonderful people: @the-little-warbler @riddlersriddlet @selmeuuh @nikkipaigesalinas @raineejfa @kathryn-jane @marvelmayo @psychobitchtess

[faveficarchive]

Coup de Grace: Part 1

The Last of the International Dilettantes

By Vivian Darkbloom

Pairing: Mel/Janice

Rating: Mature

Synopsis: From the Author:

The fabulously ill-tempered archaeologist Janice Covington and Southern-Belle-in-Exile Melinda Pappas gradually discover the real truth at the heart of the Xena Scrolls, in a story that darkly plays with time and memory, loss and desire, and the nature of what is real and what is not.

The stars all seem motionless, embedded in the eternal vault; yet they must all

be in constant motion, since they rise and traverse the heavens with their

luminous bodies till they return to the far-off scene of their setting.

—Lucretius

1. Still Life with Assistant Professor

Cambridge, 1948

At precisely 12:19 p.m. on Saturday, June 11, 1948, after sitting on the back porch and consuming two meatloaf sandwiches, drinking half a beer, pondering the uneven lawn begging to be mowed as well as the rutted wood rot in the roof beams of the porch, thinking that she didn't want to go to Venice to some damned boring conference anyway, then wondering why she didn't want to go anywhere and would rather stay and home and paint the kitchen ceiling and pull weeds out of the garden and just watch her lover fall asleep in the sun, after all this fermentation of thought aided by the American institutions of beef and beer, Dr. Janice Covington, the restless, relentless archaeologist and world explorer, fully realized that she had been domesticated.

She exhaled, as if some intangible pseudo-virility within her had been deflated.

Then she burped, and this small, crude action comforted her.

Janice laid back on the porch, head pillowed on a forearm, ignoring the empty, yawning lawn chair—she could not tolerate being civilized any further. Smoke from her cigarette drifted up into the rafters of the back porch. Out, damned rot! she thought, scowling at the poor old beams. She had warned Mel about this, when they bought the house—that it was less sturdy than it looked. But its shabby genteel, struggling-academics-meet-haunted-house ambiance possessed great appeal to the Southerner, who reveled in a very regional penchant for the Gothic. Not to mention that the house, drafty in the winter, also possessed incessantly creaking floorboards and a regularly flooding basement. Nonetheless, Janice reluctantly admitted to herself that she liked the house. Oh, hell, I love it. It's ours. She sat up abruptly, as if the happy thought would strip it all away. I've been waiting for two years for the other shoe to drop. 

She continually expected to wake up some morning in a leaky tent somewhere in the middle of nowhere: alone, on a site...lucid and miserable and no longer part of this living dream. Or she would wake to find a "Dear Jane" kinda letter propped against the sugar bowl (no, Mel would take grandma's sugar bowl with her. Against the toaster, maybe?) on the kitchen table : Dear Janice, I cannot go on any longer loving someone as short as you. I'm going back home to my fiancé, who was 6'4" in his stocking feet. You can keep the car. Love, Mel. Never mind the fact that the fiancé was now, most definitely, a former fiancé and married to another woman, and who kept sending Mel annoying photos of his newborn son, who had a strangely large head, like a mutant turnip....now there's someone who desperately needed the Pappas gene pool. But so far, practically every day, she woke to the smell of coffee, to Mel in the kitchen, loose hair spilling over a bathrobe, frowning over the newspaper. This world, I swear, she would drawl.

This world. When Janice was younger she kept a journal, in which she wrote about the things she was learning from her father. When she was 19 she finished one particular notebook with a litany of names—all the places she'd seen thus far. Under the dark canopy of night and tent, everything seethed with possibility, and she would recite the list in her mind: Hierakonpolis. Athens. Syria. Alexandria.

The litany kept her company, and for a long time it felt like her only friend. Through the holes in the old tent she would see stars.

Cairo. Rome. Istanbul. Thessalonika.

It had not occurred to her then to wonder if she was happy. Because everything had seemed possible. She looked around the yard. And the amazing thing was, it still felt that way. 

Add Cambridge to the list.

*****

"Ah, my little Mad Dog. My poor, little, housebroken Mad Dog."

Upon murmuring this benediction, Paul Rosenberg leaned back into the soft leather chair at the study's desk, and put his feet up on it, ignoring Covington's entreaties about doing so. Janice was always so nervous in the study—which she considered Mel's room—as if she were in the tomb of Tutankhamen himself and fearing some ancient Carolinian curse, should objects be tampered with. Carefully, he stretched his long legs over the desk, avoiding the thick, vellum-paged notebook, covered with lines of Greek, and an English which, to him, was as indecipherable as the ancient language, given the florid, tangled serifs of the bold hand. He knew instantly it wasn't Janice's handwriting, having encountered her painstakingly neat printing while they worked at Neuschwanstein. The chair carried a faint whiff of Mel's perfume. He smiled and closed his eyes for a minute. 

His brief, fluttery daydream of a certain leggy, blue-eyed brunette was disrupted by the disgruntled tones of a certain small blonde: "Hey, asshole." 

Janice had lured him from his penniless life in New York to an equally penniless one in Boston, with the promise of a teaching post for him at the college. When this drunken promise failed to materialize (I would've known she was drunk on the phone if I hadn't been drinking myself!), he found music gigs in town, tutored here and there, and acted as Janice's Boy Friday, a position that dictated nothing much more than picking up her dry cleaning (skirts being an unfortunate fact of life for a female professor, even one as lowly as she) and trying to discern the fate of the scroll she viewed at Neuschwanstein at the end of the war. You've still got the military contacts, buddy boy, she had said to him. Paul opened his eyes and smiled broadly at Janice, a toothy grin crowding his ten o'clock shadow, his open madras shirt flapping in the breeze from the window, revealing a slightly yellowing white v-neck undershirt. "Yes, my little Mad Dog?"

"Stop calling me that," she snapped. He had been relentless about the nickname, ever since hearing Mel employ it in an equally teasing fashion one day, as she shipped Janice off to work: Mad Dog honey, y'all sure are pretty in that dress! Now she stood before him, scowling, hands settled along her hips, in blue jeans and a dirty white t-shirt. He suddenly wondered if she had seen A Streetcar Named Desire recently, or if Marlon Brando had taken butch lessons from her. "Whaddya got for me? You call that number down in Washington?" 

"Ah. Well, I got stonewalled. That's what I got." He sighed, and toyed with a fountain pen from the desk. "I can't get the file. Sorry."

"You're kidding me. They won't even let you see a file?"

He shook his head. "I tell ya, I really ran up my phone bill trying to track it down. All I found out was that the scroll had been returned to the family of the owner before the war. Presumably the family that the lovely Fraulein Stoller bought it from. They live in Venice."

"Venice," Janice repeated dully. 

"That mean something to you?"

"There's an international archaeology conference there next month." Then, to herself: "Damnit, I need a name, at least." He murmured, "That's a coincidence."

"I hate coincidences, Paul." She paced in front of him. "Who's the bigwig in charge of all this?" She felt a familiar burn in her gut: the excitement of the chase. Is it happening again? I've still got it, then?

"Some general named Fenton, in Washington. I spoke to a flunky in his office. We got to bullshitting about the war, and he was the one who told me the scroll is in Venice. But that's all he would tell me."

Janice stopped pacing. She stared at him. Another coincidence. "The general is Jeremiah Winston Fenton?" "None other." Paul glanced at her uneasily. "Why?" "I'll be damned. Mel knows him. He was an old friend of her father's."

"Old Dr. Pappas knew everyone, it seems."

"Comes in handy."

"I see. So...you think Melinda could sweet-talk him? Is that your plan?"

"No." Janice sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. "She hates him. Said he's a creepy old bastard."

"Somehow I can't hear her saying that," Paul noted wryly. 

"Her exact words were, 'He's quite a terrible old man.' " She mimicked Mel's accent to perfection.

"That's pretty good, sweetheart. You sound just like her," he said admiringly.

"I get a lot of practice. But let me translate it into our lingo: He's a bastard. He put the moves on her, not long after her father died."

Paul shrugged. "Surely she's used to beating them off with a stick," he said, with forced carefulness. You don't want to be on that list of terrible men, do you, buddy? He was content just to be in Mel's orbit. Or so he believed. Given the strength of the relationship he witnessed between the two women, he knew he had very little choice in the matter.

"We're talking hours after Dr. Pappas's funeral," she snorted.

"Oh." He winced. "Lovely."

"Yeah. I don't want to put her through talkin' to that asshole again." Additionally, she was wary of using Mel's charms in this way, given the near disastrous results with Catherine Stoller. Near disaster? Okay, definite disaster. She was quiet for moment, but Paul didn't like the strange glint in her eye.

"Get the phone, will ya?"

*****

Paul's hand grew sweaty as he gripped the phone, and the business-like woman answered. "Melinda Pappas calling for General Fenton!" he barked into the receiver. Janice gave him a thumb's-up sign. He nodded, then handed her the phone. She made a great show of wiping her hand after touching the slimy receiver, but no sooner than she did, Paul could hear, from his close proximity, a deep male voice on the line.

"Why, General Fenton, is that you?" she began. Eerily, her voice had taken on the accent and cadences of her lover's. "Yes, it's me, Melinda. I know, it has been simply too long. Yes, yes, that is too true! So! How was your war?"

Paul rolled his eyes.

"Oh yes, I was abroad for a while, in England. I did so want to help the cause, and I was kept out of the WACs 'cause of my terrible nearsightedness." Janice giggled like a demented schoolgirl. "General, stop! Y'all are too much! My eyes do not look like sapphires! Well, maybe just a teeny bit, I suppose. You're so sweet. A summer sky? No, no one's ever told me that before! Well, now, I did have a purpose in callin' you…I've been so desperate for help. Yes, I am positively desperate!" Janice sat up straight, breathless as a Gene Tierney heroine. "You see, I have been continuin' the work of my Daddy—God rest his soul—and durin' the war I was fortunate enough to view a certain scroll at this lovely little castle in Germany—Neuschwanstein, yes. Now I'm sure you know, given how eee-fficient the military is, that it has been returned to its original owner, but I would so love to have a look at it again, so I need to contact the individual who is in possession of it. I had one of my manservants call your office earlier, to see if they would provide any information of their own free will—but I'll be darned if your Yankee bureaucracy didn't have me hog-tied! Yes sir, I bet you could just picture that: me, all tied up! What a sight! I was madder than a hornet's nest." A pause. More male rumbling. "Oh my, yes, you better believe it, sir! I do have a terrible temper. Why, just the other day I found one of the servants spit-polishing my silver! Usin' his disgusting saliva on the tea service that my great-grandaddy fought and died for, defendin' it from Sherman's fiends! I was so furious I could've cut off his balls and fed them to the hounds…" Janice's voice dropped menacingly. "They do so love the smell of blood, it arouses them for the hunt."

Paul conveyed a frantic plea to stay in character via a well-placed kick to the shin.

Janice grimaced, then cleared her throat. "Er, as I was saying, I would so love it if perhaps you could intervene…" Another pause. A bright smile lit up the archaeologist's face. "Oh General," she cooed seductively, "you are wonderful. I am entirely indebted to you. Uh-huh..." Janice picked up a fountain pen and scribbled down some information in the notebook in front of her. "Yes indeedy, I will call that lieutenant...and I certainly hope you read him the riot act!" Another pause. "No, I'm not living in South Carolina, or even in North Carolina anymore..." An unfortunate inspiration occurred. "Why, I'm livin' in New Orleans now! You sound as excited as I did when I moved here! Ah got together with a bunch of my old sorority sisters from Vanderbilt, and we all chipped in and bought a lovely old house down in the French Quarter. We call it the Rising Sun."

He buried his head in his hands.

"If you're ever down that way, well, you just try lookin' me up." Another peal of feminine tittering. "Oh, you're just awful! Uh-huh. Really? Well, red is my favorite color, you know…mmm-hmmmm. I would love to talk longer, General, but my manservant just brought in my mint julep and reminded me about gin rummy with the girls this afternoon. Why, yes…" she grinned at Paul. "He is a big strapping man, how did you know?"

Paul heard a loud click at the other end of the line. Janice looked at the phone in surprise. "Got him all worked up," she muttered.

He shook his head in pure disbelief. "You are out of your damn mind, Janice."

"That ain't no way to talk to a lady, mister."

"You're no lady, even when you're pretending to be one. And I tell you, if she ever finds out—"

Janice jammed a finger in his face. "She's not gonna find out unless you tell her, and if you do, I'll feed your balls to the hounds—"

"I'd like to see you try, butchling, 'cause we might as well face facts here—"

She grabbed his shirt, yanking him up out of the chair, knocking over the notebook.

"—you're pussywhipped!" he shouted gleefully.

Both parties felt a breeze from the study door, now opened by the woman who, indeed, without a single doubt, had them both pussywhipped. Mel stood in the doorway, her face slightly flushed from her brisk walk from the campus in the midday sun, carrying the leather satchel that once belonged to her father on her shoulder, and with a needless cardigan sweater draped over one forearm, poised like a waiter with a towel. Her pale, well-formed arms were bare in the summer dress she wore. Judging from the slightly dazed expression on her face, she either heard Paul's exclamation or was suffering a mild form of heat stroke.

"Hi," Mel greeted timidly, feeling as if she had interrupted some intimate scenario in a house that was not her own.

Both Paul and Janice mumbled hellos.

"Um..." Mel began, as she deposited both satchel and sweater on the study's couch. 

Paul straightened his abused shirt. "Hey, didn't you tell me you guys got meatloaf?" Before Mel could affirm, he darted past and down the hallway into the kitchen.

Janice remained sitting, now cross-legged, on the desk, prompting a scowl of disapproval from her companion. The archaeologist jumped off the desk immediately, sending loose papers scattering in her wake, and inadvertently wounding the fountain pen, which proceeded to bleed blue ink all over the desk's blotter. 

Mel sighed deeply.

"Sorry."

"This word—" Mel tried again. A parade of nervous tics commenced. First she nudged her glasses with a knuckle. Beneath the becoming blush, Janice could see the little linguistic wheels spinning in her lover's mind: Pussywhipped. Transitive verb. Pussy. Slang, obscene.... Then she scratched her cheek and tugged nervously on her ear.

The bullshit generator kicked in. "It's all part of the Mad Dog legend, baby. You know lots of things are said about me, and ah, this is one of those rumors...that, ah, I liked to abuse cats."

"I see," Mel responded, drawing an imaginary line in the carpet with the tip of her shoe, perhaps indicating a rapidly lowering threshold of nonsense. She took a step toward Janice. Who retreated with a much larger step of her own. "You know...dogs don't...like...cats..."

"If that is the case, then, wouldn't it have made more sense for Paul to call you a pussywhipper?" Mel said the word cautiously, as if afraid of mispronouncing it.

Oh, to hear that word rolling off that tongue. Language covered in honey. "Now Mel," Janice muttered, taking another backstep and colliding with a chair, "you know the intricacies of American slang cannot be easily dissected and understood fully without further research. There is also an arbitrary element at work, which we must take into account—"

"Good Lord, you are becoming an academic."

Janice gaped at her, hurt. "That was low!"

"My apologies, Assistant Professor Covington." Mel grinned at her; then, gradually, both the smile and the warm blush faded. "Did you sleep at all this morning?"

"Huh?" The archaeologist feigned ignorance. "Sure, once you were gone. You take up a lot of space." As do the nightmares in my head. "And you snore like an old man," she added softly.

The smile returned to Mel's face. "No one says you have to sleep with me."

"Actually, it's in the 'Rules for Pussywhippers' handbook. I must suffer for love."

"Perhaps," Mel suggested, "I should just ask Paul about this word. Hmmm?" She turned on her heel for the door. The little blonde panicked; she knew Paul would crack as soon as Mel took the meatloaf away from him. With a running leap, Janice jumped her, piggybacking effortlessly onto Mel's back. The Southerner oofed in surprise, then giggled, but bore the weight effortlessly, instinctively grabbing the legs that locked around her waist, and opting not to think about the dirty heels digging into her clothes. "Is this pussywhipping?" she asked in mock innocence. "Or a prelude to, perhaps?"

Janice laughed. "Will you stop for a minute?" She tightened her arms slightly around Mel's neck and shoulders. 

"I will find out what that word means," the translator proclaimed.

"Of that I have no doubt. You're the most stubborn woman I ever did meet."

"You bring it out in me," accused Mel.

No snappy retorts came to Janice's mind. She was too close to the nape of Mel's neck, and inhaled her scent with the ferocity of a junkie. The roller coaster rush through her blood left her dazed and senseless, and resistant to sequential thought. "How's your Italian?" she mumbled into Mel's ear.

"What? Oh, just fine. It's sittin' in the back of my brain, with my French and my Latin, playin' backgammon. Why?"

"That's a surreal answer."

"Such a non-sequitur deserves it."

Janice kissed her cheek. Several times.

"Hmm. That's a better non-sequitur."

"Baby," the archaeologist purred, "we're going to Venice."

Mel craned her neck to look at Janice in surprise. "You changed your mind?" In previous discussions concerning the conference, Mel had taken Janice's lack of interest as a sign they would not be going. She had been surprisingly disappointed, wondering, with some amusement, if she herself were the one growing restless.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Good question, wondered Janice. I just got caught up in the chase again. Figures as soon as I accept settling down, it starts up again. "Tell ya later," she replied as Paul stomped back into the room.

"Hey, you guys are out of—" he stopped, blinking in surprise at this playfulness. Simple horseplay, or Lesbian foreplay? I don't want to know, do I? Whatever it was, the obvious love made him feel about a dozen kinds of ambivalence.

But that happy look in Mel's eyes, and her big grin, seemed to override everything for him at that moment. "We're goin' to Venice," she blurted, like a kid, breathless, as she lugged Covington toward the door.

Paul managed a small, wry smile. "Send me a postcard," he said wistfully.

2. The Spell, Unbroken

Venice, 1948

For Jennifer Halliwell Davies, another trip to Venice was…another trip to Venice. The city was like a drowning woman, a dying dowager thrown on a reef: It was alive, though just barely, and as such did not interest her. She could not even remember how many times she had been in the city, let alone this particular palazzo, one of many built during the Renaissance by the powerful Cornaro family.

But there was one thing in Venice that interested her: a certain woman, who stood in the crowd milling in the courtyard below.

She'd had a premonition—well, not exactly that. She'd met a fellow in the hotel bar the night before, some poor anthropology professor from Harvard, who hit her up for as many vodkas as she was willing to buy. And when she discovered that the chap knew Janice Covington and had said that the esteemed archaeologist was attending the conference as well, Jenny would have stormed Moscow itself and raided Stalin's liquor cabinet just to keep him talking.

And there she was.

Jenny hid herself, allowing a large vase to provide her cover, as she stared at Janice through her fashionable turista binoculars.

Upon closer inspection through the looking glass, she noted that Janice wore a man's white oxford shirt, bright against her tanned arms, and it looked clean. Must've been laundry day yesterday. The pants were khaki, as they usually were, and the wild strawberry blonde tresses were twined carelessly into a messy braid. The only things missing were the leather jacket and the foul fedora, older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Perhaps the abomination passing as a millinery item had finally faced its overdue demise. Nonetheless, the good doctor looked quite prepared to lead an impromptu expedition into the most appalling of canals.

Despite the never-changing attire, she thought Janice looked different somehow. The small article she encountered almost a year ago in Archaeology magazine, about the so-called Xena Scrolls and Dr. Covington's role in their recovery, mentioned that she had served in the war—was that why Janice looked more mature?

The archaeologist was nodding politely at the older woman who had engaged her in conversation—whom Jenny recognized as a White Russian expatriate, just another international dilettante like herself. Her brows knitted in curiosity as she realized what was different: There was no impatient, angry scowl on Janice's face.

Jenny felt Linus's presence before he said anything—or, more accurately, she felt his mustache tickle her ear. "You were right," he burred.

She frowned, then lowered the binoculars. "Not totally useless, you know."

Linus smiled. "Never said you were, darling." His arm drew around her waist in an affectionate squeeze. "Aren't you going to go say hello to her?"

"Should I?" She tapped the lens of the binoculars irritably, then pushed away a loose strand of her blonde hair. "I suppose it's tempting."

"I'll leave it to you." Linus touched the knot of his green silk tie for the umpteenth time. Then he slicked back his dark brown hair with the damp palm of his hand, twitched his mustache to make sure it was in place, and allowed his hand wander back to the tie.

"If you don't stop fussing with that, I'm going to hang you with it," his wife hissed. "You're worse than a woman."

He raised a thick eyebrow. "I always thought you liked that about me," he parried pleasantly.

She smiled at the familiar retort. After almost ten years of marriage, the minutiae of their lives—the jokes, the jaunts, and the lovers, shared and not shared—flimsy on their own accord and meaningless when dissected, held them together more than any illusion of love or fidelity.

"You haven't seen her in over five years," her husband reminded her. "The spell is broken, is it not?"

She said nothing.

"You know what she's like." Linus prodded with the delicacy of a ham-handed surgeon. "Girl in every port...."

...and I was just lucky Alexandria was a stop on her itinerary.

"I would be surprised if she's here alone. And," he added, ignoring her homicidal glare, "Covington is an awful lot of bother. She breathes trouble like air."

Jenny turned her gray eyes to her husband. "That was part of her appeal, you idiot," she growled.

Linus rolled his eyes, unable to comprehend this. "Oh, righto. Forgot that bit. As I said, I'll leave it all to you, dear. If I should run into her first, I'll just tell her you're at Baden Baden with the masseuse again and you can remain up here, hiding."

He succeeded in making her laugh. His lines around his eyes crinkled as he grinned, and then softened as he grew serious.

"What?" she prompted.

"Don't get hurt, hmm?" He kissed her cheek, trotted down the stone steps leading into the garden, and she turned her attention, once again, to the woman in her sights. "And Jenny?" he called, turning around suddenly to face her again.

"What?" she shouted irritably.

"Don't give her any money!"

Oh, you cheap bastard. "Fine!" she retorted, as he melded into the crowd. With another sigh she put the small binoculars back in her purse, snapping the bag shut. I think I need another drink first. She lost herself for a few minutes, staring into the crowd. Linus wants to see her again. Wants her to come to Alexandria. What about what I want?

Jenny had to admit that she didn't have a clue about that.

Italian purring emanated from just beyond the open doors of the palazzo. She knew, even with her back to them, that it was Vittorio Frascati, who owned the palazzo. She did not know him well—she vaguely recalled being introduced to him once before the war—but the old man, scion of a prominent Venetian family and descendent of a doge, was high profile among the wealthy international set. And now he was oozing his lecherous charm on some hapless female. "Is it not the finest Cornaro in Venice?" he was murmuring.

Jenny turned around, just for a peek. She expected to see some tittering blonde barely out of university, but this one made her raise an eyebrow appreciatively; Vittorio did have taste after all, she marveled. The small, dapper man had linked arms with a tall, bespectacled black-haired beauty, who smiled at him graciously. Jenny wondered if the woman was the wife or mistress of a famous man, or even, perhaps, famous herself. Her clothes were impeccable: a silk blouse of deep blue, a darker matching skirt, both items flattering and elegant.

The woman nodded at the old man. "Grazi, Vittorio," the woman replied, honoring him in his native language. "You have been very generous with your time. And very helpful."

"And you have been generous to humor a babbling old man, Melinda." He squeezed her arm affectionately, then disengaged from her. "I hope you find what you are looking for." He kissed her hand, smiled, and returned indoors to maintain his Gatsby-like aloofness from his own party.

Jenny found herself alone—and exchanging smiles—with the beautiful woman, who looked faintly embarrassed to have been fawning, however subtly, over a wealthy and powerful man.

"He's quite a charmer," Jenny said to the woman.

"That he is," the woman agreed. Her low, indolent drawl was from the American South. She came closer to Jenny, and that was when the Englishwoman noticed that the stranger was about half a foot taller than she, almost as tall as her husband. "If I wanted to marry for money, he'd be the one," the Southerner added.

Jenny tried to stifle a grin. "You seem the type who would marry for love instead."

The woman smiled mysteriously and said nothing, but absently touched a ring on the smallest finger of her left hand. It was a silver ring, a nice complement to the expensive watch (Cartier) and the pearl earrings (real).

"I'm Jennifer Davies," she said, offering a hand.

The tall woman enfolded it in one of her own. "Melinda Pappas."

"Let me guess..."

"Hmmm?" Mel mused, raising an eyebrow.

"You're from Virginia!"

It was the "Guess the Accent" game. Mel was well acquainted with it; it had made the first few months of living in New England sheer hell. "Er, no, I'm afraid not."

"Tennessee?"

"No."

"Kentucky?"

"No."

"Definitely not Texas."

"Certainly not," Mel affirmed, a touch haughty.

"I'm afraid I've run out of Southern states," Jenny said, almost apologetic.

"South Carolina," Mel provided, the syllables languishing in her speech like Janice Covington on the sofa after one bourbon too many.

"Good heavens." Jenny paused. "Does each compass point have a Carolina?"

Mel laughed. "No. Just North and South."

"And what brings you to this party, this conference?"

"I'm a translator," Mel supplied succinctly.

"How fascinating. I barely stumble through English, let alone any other language. What have you been working on?"

"Well, it's a bit of an ongoing project. I'm translating a series of ancient writings, known as the Xena Scrolls."

For once Jenny was glad she wasn't drinking, for if she were, she would have choked. Then providence, divine and sadistic, threw a sunbeam down to highlight the silver ring on Mel's finger. Oh bloody hell.

"So," Jenny enunciated carefully, "you must know Dr. Covington."

***** Janice frowned in the general direction of the palazzo's great doors, wondering where Mel was. She scowled into the dregs of her wineglass, then returned her gaze to the house. Venetian architecture failed to impress her, and she had opted not to go on the impromptu house tour that Count Frascati offered to them. But she knew Mel's motivations were more than a desire to see the palazzo; the Southerner had hoped that the Count would know something about the Falconettos, the elusive, aristocratic family that had owned at least one scroll authored by Gabrielle of Poteidaia. So far all they knew of the family was that the patriarch had died at the end of the war and his son, his heir, could not be found.

The old maze of the city, though, intimidated her, and she frequently found herself getting lost whenever she was alone, tooling around the city with the ridiculous—and essentially useless—hand-drawn map that Mel had given her. "Don't get lost," Mel always said to her. And the archaeologist always scoffed at this: Lost? She, who could navigate all five boroughs of New York (even Staten Island!) with ease, who knew Alexandria and Cairo like the back of her hand, who, as an ambulance driver during the war, had the smallest streets of London and Paris committed to memory?

"Venice is a tricky city," Mel had said. "It's a changeling." She had paused dramatically, and if you aren't any kind of goddamn warrior you sure did inherit a sense of drama from that damn woman, Janice had thought to herself. "Kind of like the South," Mel then added, both wistful and mysterious.

This was typical. Whenever Mel liked anything, it reminded her of the South.

This is what I get for taking her up North, thought Janice, with a trickle of guilt. Endless nostalgia and romanticism.

Janice deposited the empty glass on a tray that sailed by, piloted by an overworked waiter. No sooner was it out of her hand than a fresh drink was thrust into her hand. "Hey!" she exclaimed, half-turning to berate the waiter.

Who was already gone. Standing in his place was Jennifer Davies.

Oh shit. Janice's sudden desire for Mel to be there was not because she wanted her lover to witness what could be a potentially ugly encounter, but because she knew that the ever-responsible Mel would, if nothing else, ensure a safe return to the hotel after Jenny had beaten her to a pulpy state of unconsciousness.

"Janice," she purred.

"Jesus," blurted the archaeologist.

"Not quite, love." The Englishwoman sipped at a glass of pinot grigio. "Almost didn't recognize you without the hat. And the jacket. You seem almost naked."

Janice rolled her shoulders nervously, then squared them, both gestures dying for the roguish finishing touch of a leather jacket. She studied Jenny. The Englishwoman was still lovely, with her mess of dark golden curls now tamed into a respectable looking bun, her gray eyes, usually mischievous, still possessing a lively glint. But what that glint meant now, Janice was not sure. All she felt was gratitude that Jenny was not enamored of firearms. "Good to see ya," Janice mumbled. Goddamnit, Mel, where are you?

"It's surprising to see you." Jenny swallowed. "I thought, for a while, you might be dead."

Is her hand shaking? "What?"

"Not long after the war I ran into Andrew Curran. He said he saw you in London, in '44. And they were sending you to the continent, right into the heart of it."

Janice remembered that. She also remembered he borrowed ten quid and never paid her back. Andrew was a writer, an old friend and ex-lover of Jenny's, and a RAF pilot during the war. "I'm glad Andrew made it."

Jenny ignored this. "I've spent five years wondering what's become of you."

Shit oh shit. Somehow an I’m sorry seemed pointless in the face of this weighty fact. "Guess I shoulda sent word."

"Perhaps. But eventually I knew you were all right: Your scrolls are making you well known." Jenny sipped the wine. "You have them all now?"

A tiny frown, and the familiar furrowing of her brow. "Not all of them. There are more."

"Really, Janice? Your translator thinks you're wrong." Jenny smiled, relishing the stunned look on her former lover's face, and tilted her head. Janice followed the direction of the motion. They were not difficult to spot, because they were both two of the tallest people at the party: Linus and Mel, together, talking.

Shit oh shit oh shit. "You've met Mel." Janice was, initially, too surprised to ignore the implications of what Jenny claimed Mel had said about the Scrolls. "Quite by accident. We started talking, and found out we had a mutual acquaintance in you, my pet. Then I introduced her to my charming husband, and they've been blathering about Mayan architecture for the past twenty minutes. Terribly dull. Oh Janice, don't glare at me like that. I'm not saying your little concubine is a bore. Actually, she's not so little, is she?"

"No, she's not," snapped the archaeologist.

Rather defensive, thought Jenny. "Not that it's a bad thing," she amended.

"It's not. I never have to worry about changing light bulbs or gettin' things from the top shelf in the pantry."

Always ready with the wisecrack, Janice. That hasn't changed. "At any rate, she's lovely, and very smart. Don't worry. I said nothing to her of our—shared past, and I'm sure Linus won't either."

"I'm not worried about that."

But Jenny could tell from the nervous clenching of the archaeologist's jaw, that this wasn't quite the given that it was declared to be. "To be frank, dear, I didn't think she was your type."

"If that's your polite way of sayin' she's out of my league, I know that." Janice glared at her.

"She's out of everybody's league, darling." Jenny said it lightly, but felt it deeply, miserably, in her bones. She would have been prepared to compete with a woman—or even a man—for Janice's affections, but not an Amazonian demigoddess. "They look good together," Jenny observed, as they both watched Linus and Mel. "My husband and your lover. Both so tall. Like some Nazi-Nietzschean super breeding couple." As she'd hoped, Janice did chuckle at that. Nice to see I can still make you laugh, if nothing else.

"And I thought I was pissed off about being short."

"I'm pissed off about a lot of things, love."

"Even after five years, baby?" Janice raised an eyebrow.

Jenny resisted the diminutive and what it stood for: an obvious attempt at being charmed. Unfortunately, as she stared into the green eyes and ached to kiss the lips, she realized it was working. "She wears a ring."

"Yeah," Janice grunted. "Is that a crime or something?"

"No. But it's the ultimate symbol of marriage, of commitment. Isn't it?"

The infamous Covington sneer of defiance made an appearance. "So suddenly you're an expert, since you're married yourself? You might as well wipe your ass with that piece of paper."

Ah, Janice, I have missed you. I needed to feel something, and you're it. Who else would talk to me like this, who would let the truth fly like that? She wanted to take Janice in her arms, and forgive her, and make all the promises that she knew she couldn't keep. Our mutual marriages appear to be in the way of that. Mine has always been flexible. But yours? She watched Janice watch Mel. This was also something new, this naked look, a vulnerability slowly crossing Covington's face, like a blind man negotiating an intersection.

"Just admit it. You're in love with her. And it's something bigger than anything you ever felt for me."

Janice closed her eyes. "Jenny, don't do this. Don't start." A little too late for that, big mouth, she chastised herself.

"I'm not starting anything. I'm finishing it." Jenny glared into her wine, watching the surface of the liquid spin like a hula hoop. "You left it a bit sloppy, a bit unfinished in Alexandria. Didn't you?"

Alexandria. It was the last time they had been together. Janice remembered little of it: Hazy golden blurs of fucking, of drinking. Of the haunting urge that built in her head to see Mel again, until it became so strong and desperate that she sold her mother's wedding ring just to get enough money to buy a plane ticket home. She had left Jenny without saying goodbye. She remembered sitting on the edge of the bed, money in her hand, watching Jenny sleep. And then moving, as if in a dream, for the door. "I guess I did," Janice replied softly. "I regret that." The musing tone gave to the words all the weight and substance of a feather. But it felt, to Janice, as if she were now a different person, someone not capable of that behavior. For she could never see herself doing that to Mel, ever again. Especially since I gave you a ring and I said I didn't need a ceremony or a church or a God. I don't need anything except you.

Jenny, of course, knew none of this, and even if she did, would have remained as  impassively impressed as she was now. "A hell of an apology."

Okay, I tried noble, now I'm back to the bitch. "Well, what the fuck do you want from me?" snapped Janice.

She wanted to slap Janice hard—very, very hard. But instead, she opted for the humiliation of throwing wine in her face. The sudden violence of the gesture possessed the emotional impact she wanted, as she watched the archaeologist flinch, if only ever so slightly.

"Try to explain that to your dashing Southern belle," she said quietly.

*****

Inevitably, at any type of social gathering, Mel eventually reverted to wallflower status; she felt most happy quietly observing other guests.

Especially Janice. At the moment, however, the archaeologist was not visible from where she sat, on a stone bench, at the periphery of the crowd. But then Janice was walking quickly toward her, whistling tunelessly and betraying her nervous restlessness by tapping a clenched fist against her thigh.

Mel straightened in distress when she noticed the dampness of Janice's cheeks. Crying? she wondered. But once the small blonde sat down next to her she realized it was not the tracks of tears, but a sheen of white wine. Luminous clear drops were falling happily, willingly, into her cleavage.

"Oh, dear. And we were proceeding so nicely, without incident." Mel murmured. She handed her companion a clean yet wrinkled napkin.

Janice blotted her face dry.

"Could have been worse, I suppose," she added, discreetly checking for bloodstains or bruises.

"I suppose," echoed Janice with a sigh. "But white wine does possess a certain sting."

"Would you care to tell me what happened between you and Mrs. Davies?"

"Mrs. Davies?"

"She was the last person I saw you talking with. Did she do this?" Mel gestured at her lover's face.

"Ah, dear Mrs. Davies."

"Yes. What of Mrs. Davies?"

"This conversation is beginning to remind me of that crazy book you were trying to make me read."

The "crazy book" was by Gertrude Stein. What Mel found to be a fascinating exercise in the modern use of language had sent Janice scurrying for the comfort of her old friends Raymond Chandler and Dash Hammett.

"Don't change the subject, darling. Especially when it's about a woman who still seems to be in love with you."

"So you figured that out, huh?"

"Yes. I'm pretty good at decoding the obvious. You should have seen me when the Hindenburg blew up."

Mel had hoped to bring a smile to the that lovely face, but instead Janice frowned, wrapping the napkin around her fist, the white contrasting with her tanned hand, like a bandage. Like the gauze and cloth slapped on her during the war, like the handkerchief Harry gave her when she scraped her knuckles on rocks during an excavation in Macedonia. Four days later he was dead and all she had was his handkerchief, covered with her own blood, and his dreams, and his debts.

"I didn't know she'd be here," Janice admitted quietly.

"Of course not. But when...when were you with her?"

Janice continued to stare at her hand, watching the white cotton flutter as she wiggled her fingers within it. "Last time I saw her was in '43. It was one of those on again, off again things. I met both of them…" she exhaled, scowled in thought. "….oh, I think it was 1940. Harry called their set 'the international dilettantes.' They threw parties, they traveled, they nosed around on digs, acting all curious and trying to buy anything that struck their fancy. No one took them seriously. They were kind of on the fringe of things. In a way, so was I, but no one could say that I didn't do my time in the field, and that I wasn't serious about what I was doin'." She shot Mel a wry look. "I thought you were one of them, one of those types, when I first met you."

Mel shrugged. "Well, I guess I am.”

"No," teased Janice, "you're a debutante, not a dilettante, honey."

"Gosh, I do get those words mixed up in my pretty little head!" Mel drawled.

Janice laughed. "There's a lot in that pretty little head, I know. In fact, I've always thought you should be the one teaching, not me. I'm just a digger at heart. Anyway," Janice continued with a sigh, "we kept running into Jenny and Linus—Athens, Cairo, Syria, you name it. They were always around. Eventually we all became friends...and, with Jenny, more than that."

"And Linus? Did he know? Does he know?"

Janice snorted derisively. "Oh yeah. He knew all right. In fact, he gave me money for a couple of my digs. 'Cause I was fucking his wife and keeping her happy."

"This made him happy?" Mel frowned, confused.

"Linus and Jenny have what you might call a marriage in name only. He's nouveau riche, Canadian. His family was looking to make themselves classy by marrying off their dissolute son to a woman with background. Jenny's got the lineage, her father is a squire or something stupid like that...they have this big country house...but no cash flow. It's a perfect set-up. They're fond of each other, and for all I know they may actually fornicate with each other every once in a while, but usually they go their separate ways when it comes to companionship of that kind."

"Oh." Mel blinked, pondered something meaningful to say. "At least she's not a Nazi."

Janice laughed in amazement. "No, she's not. She's worse." Morosely she stared at the ground, then scrutinized Mel. "You're taking this awfully well," she accused.

"I don't see the point of getting upset over something that's already happened." Mel chewed her lip. How to convey reassurance, with an innocuous touch, what inept words cannot…whoever thought that language would fail me, of all people? Even now there were moments when she could not trust her body, her movements, as if any casual sign of affection would tell the world what she was, and what she felt. Her fingers twitched, she steadied her hand, and plucked at the khaki pant leg, gently, teasingly.

Janice looked at her.

"I don't care about that."

"Jesus, I do not deserve you. Damn this stupid thing. Why did we come to this party anyway?"

"It was your idea," Mel reminded her.

Janice made a pretense at scanning the crowd. "I thought we should get out. Some people might think fucking in a hotel room for a whole day is unhealthy."

"I wouldn’t take you to be one of those types, Janice."

"And I never thought you'd turn out to be a sex fiend with unlimited energy." Janice reached out and took the wineglass from the large hand, permitting her fingers a brief electric entanglement with Mel's own. "But you are, aren't you?"

Mel thought, for a moment, that Venice had just sunk another inch.

The archaeologist drained the glass. She swallowed. Her lips glittered, wet.

"Do you want to go back to the room?" Janice asked. She pressed the empty glass into Mel's hand. Her palm brushed along the knuckles curled loosely around the expensive Venetian stemware.

She took the soft smash of Vittorio's fine wineglass as a yes.

*****

In the sanctuary of their rooms at the Hotel Danieli, Jenny lit up a cigar in honor of Covington. She puffed furiously. Like to see that Southern ninny try to smoke one of these. The spiteful thought came too soon, as the smoke strangled her and she proceeded to hack violently. It's like tasting death.

Linus emerged from the large bathroom while unknotting his tie to find his wife sprawled, unladylike, on the couch, her skirt hitched up to dangerous heights and a cigar in her mouth. "You know," he began, "Byron called Venice 'Sodom on the Sea.' " He sat down next to her, draping a large hand on her bare thigh, not in the least tempted by the smooth skin. "So one would think, whatever your misfortunes with the lovely doctor, you would find a bit of...entertainment elsewhere." He squeezed her leg with gentle affection. "The night is still young."

She unfurled smoke at him in lieu of a response.

He coughed loudly. "Darling, put that foul thing out before we all go up in flames."

She dropped it in the half-empty champagne glass. It fizzled, just like all those hopes I had of being back in your bed, Janice.

Linus took her hand. "Look, I know it bloody hurts, but she's happy. Can't you tell?"

"Yes." She flopped against him and pressed her face in the dark soft night of his black jacket. No crying. Not yet. Not now. She took a deep breath, its jagged rhythm suggesting the inhalation of broken glass. It fucking feels like that, anyway. "She'll be coming to Alexandria?" The tiny pleading voice was almost lost against the breadth of his jacket.

He shrugged. "The invitation was proffered to both of them. You can lead a horse to water…."

"…but she'll end up drinking bourbon anyway." Jenny sighed and sat up. She stared at the ceiling, then at her husband. Time to ask the tricky question. "Lye, this really has nothing to do with me, does it?"

His standard trick, in attempting to look innocent, was widening his dark eyes.

"Why do you want Janice in Alexandria?" she asked slowly, knowing she would get the answer he always gave, the answer that, in his so-called line of work, he couldn't help but give her.

He smiled. "You know what I'm going to say…"

"Say it anyway."

He rubbed his chin. "I need to keep an eye on her."

*****

Mel had decided that they should never leave the hotel room. Because she was both deliciously happy, yet deeply mortified. What kind of looks might they get when they dared to leave the sanctuary of the room again? If this were a room in the Bible Belt, we might get away with saying we were holding a small revivalist meeting or something. I could even throw in a hallelujah. For, if the proverbial fly on the wall were, say, a blind nun, this creature would have been most impressed by the Christian devotion of Dr. Covington, as she chanted "Jesus" over and over again, so lovingly, so frequently, so breathlessly. The repetition had indeed made Mel downright nervous, triggering dormant Methodist tendencies, and distracting from the extremely pleasant task of servicing the good doctor. Blasphemy upon blasphemy. I really am going to hell...if I still believe in that. Her quasi-theological ruminations derailed as Janice climaxed, blonde head slamming back into a soft, fat pillow, with one final cry for Christ. Her mouth glistened, as if she had swallowed stars, and her eyes were dazed, unfocused, and happy.

Mel decided that hell was worth this.

"Keeps getting better and better," mumbled Janice, before rolling on her stomach and falling into a light slumber. Mel indulged a bad habit and sprawled practically on top of her, cheek against shoulder blade, hips to butt. She was on the precipice of sleep herself when the soft growl of Janice's voice reverberated against her.

"I was a shit." The words were almost smothered by the pillow to which they were addressed.

Mel could not see her face. "What?"

"With Jenny. I was a shit."

Her hand swept down and felt the scars along Janice's thigh, then the resultant shudder that the touch brought, one of desire or remembrance, she did not know. She wondered if Janice herself knew. "I don't care." The words tumbled out of her mouth. It was true. It also appeared cruel somehow. She wondered, ever so briefly, why she didn't. Love, the great blind spot.

"You should."

"Why?"

"The last time I was with her…I could think of nothing but you." Janice whispered this, sighed, then stretched, the action rippling her body.

Mel rode the current of flesh. "Am I too heavy for you?"

"No. Don't move." And she added, almost shyly, "I like it."

Some emotion caught Mel by desperate surprise, a nameless, rootless anxiety, and she knew now Janice's own fear of having it all taken away, of the dream dissolved. She thought of the other woman who, in this city, at this moment, also loved Janice Covington. If fate were crueler, she wouldn't be here now. Usually, Mel possessed a powerful ability to find common ground with others; empathy had caught up with her at last.

"I love you anyway," she said.

3. Lucky

Cambridge, 1949

Dr. James Snyder sat at his desk, focusing a passionate amount of attention on his pen. He twirled it in his fingers, aligned it with the stack of papers in front of him, picked it up again. "You don't think she'll bring a gun, do you?" he muttered, half-joking.

The Dean, sitting on a worn leather couch near his desk, only smiled.

"Of course, you've heard the rumors…."

"Hmm," was the Dean’s noncommittal reply.

"…she killed an entire Nazi patrol single-handedly. Didn't she get some sort of commendation? And I have a colleague at the University of Texas who said that she pistol-whipped him."

The Dean pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Oh, dear." This response did little to assuage Snyder. "I'm relatively certain that Dr. Covington is capable of behaving herself, Snyder. We've had no incidents in the two years she's been on staff." Just a rash of infatuated coeds, he thought.

Nonetheless, when the door opened and the small woman, wearing dark trousers and a rumpled khaki shirt, strode into his office without being formally invited, Snyder felt his palms go clammy and every muscle in his back knot itself. He was not comforted either by the tall woman who lingered shyly near the door. Great, she's brought a second. He only knew of Melinda Pappas via her rising professional reputation, but wrongly assumed that the translator was as ill-tempered as her companion.

"Hiya, Snyder," Janice said as she flopped in the chair facing his desk. She nodded at the Dean, who sat at her left. “Old man."

The Dean grinned, amused. "Hello, Janice."

The archaeologist craned her neck to gaze back at Mel. "Join the party, Stretch."

Mel rolled her eyes, and reluctantly approached. She was not faculty and enjoyed no special status, despite tutoring and being a regular denizen of the library, and thus felt uncomfortable at being privy to matters among the staff. Even if it they were about the Scrolls. But Janice had insisted that she attend the meeting. You're my partner, Janice had said. And, she thought as she took the seat next to Covington, I really like the sound of that.

"Hullo, Miss Pappas," Snyder said.

"Hello, Dr. Snyder. How are you?"

"Oh, just fine." He smiled at the polite, blue-eyed beauty. "Stretch, huh?"

"Mmm."

"Didn't know folks call you that."

"They don't," Mel replied firmly. She flicked a sidelong glare at Janice, who shrugged.

Snyder blinked. "Oh."

A stake was now driven through the heart of casual conversation.

Janice cleared her throat. "Why are we here, Snyder? I assume it has to do with the dating of the Scrolls."

"Correct, Dr. Covington. Er, the results of the carbon dating are in."

"And?" Janice prodded impatiently.

"Well, it is a little later than you initially thought."

The archaeologist shrugged. "They were damn difficult to date. That's why I was so broad on time period."

"I quite understand. In general, that's the safest, most practical route. But now with the advent of radiocarbon dating, we can be much more accurate. Statistical probability is the basis in calculating the half-life of C-14, but no one can really predict the rate of decay, and a standard deviation exists in every case, which is—"

"Snyder, I don't need a goddamn lecture on the process, okay? Just tell me what you found."

The befuddled and frightened academic mumbled something which sounded like "churlish beans in sentry." In fact, this was precisely what he said. For within the great roaming recesses of his mind he thought that perhaps Covington would be satisfied with this response, would smile, shake his hand, declare him a genius, perhaps even buy him a drink.

Instead, her gaze cut him like a diamond on glass. She straightened from her lounging, relaxed position. He saw her flex her hands and became utterly convinced that even her fingernails possessed muscles. "Come again?" she requested smoothly.

Snyder swallowed, thought a quick prayer and a farewell to his wife. "The early sixteenth century."

Another silence dropped, like a theater curtain after a botched performance.

Until it was broken by Janice. "Are you shitting me?"

"Calm down, Janice," the Dean urged.

The only thing that kept Janice from jumping up was the sudden warm hand that, mindless of their location and the parties present, gave her leg a comforting squeeze. She looked quickly at Mel, whose stunned expression nonetheless betrayed the assurance of the gesture. "There has got to be a mistake," Janice snapped. Mel nodded numbly. "This is still a very new procedure. Someone made a mistake."

It was now Snyder's turn to be riled. "No mistakes can be made in this process. I checked the results several times. I dated several pieces of parchment."

Janice stood up and began pacing. "But the typology of the instruments—the scroll casing, the stiles—it all fit in with the time period."

"The stratigraphy confirmed this?" asked the Dean.

"Yes! Do you know how far down I had to go? They were in a tomb, for Christ's sake!"

"Those artifacts—the scroll case and the writing tools—did date well within the time frame you assigned," Snyder agreed. "As did some of the pottery you brought from the same location. But it's the actual scrolls themselves that do not: the paper."

"So this was all a ruse. They're fakes." Helpless, inconsolable for the moment, Janice leaned against the windowsill. It was the only thing that kept her standing.

"Or very cunning duplicates of the originals," Mel added softly.

The Dean smiled. He didn't know Covington's partner well, but what he knew, he liked.

But before he could pursue this line of thought, Snyder threw in, "Oh, who cares how real they are!" The women and the Dean stared at him. "They're a fascinating discovery! Somebody was clever enough to write in ancient Greek, use the proper materials to make them look like ancient scrolls, found a case somewhere, then buried them for posterity, thinking they played a massive joke on the world. You know, like that MacPherson fellow, who invented Ossian."

"Or they are copies of the original scrolls, which are still missing, as Miss Pappas proposed," the Dean added. "What do you think, Dr. Covington?"

Janice's fury was spent for the time being, otherwise the hand pressed against the cool windowpane of Snyder's office would've been bloodied by shattered glass. "I don't know what to think," she whispered.

"I know what I think," the Dean retorted. "I think you're lucky."

Janice shot him a curious yet homicidal glance.

"Your father spent his entire professional life looking for those scrolls. Yet you, barely thirty, made this discovery, and in a war zone, no less. They may not be the real thing. But they're a damned sight closer—and more interesting—than anything Harry Covington found."

"Watch what you say about my father, old man," Janice grunted.

"Janice." Mel sounded the warning.

"My father laid the foundation for me to find what I did. He did thirty goddamn years of legwork chasing after these. If he hadn't died when he did, he would've found them." She drew a breath to refuel her fury. "If you want me off the faculty now, fine. I don't give a damn. I didn't have much of a reputation before I came here. It doesn't matter to me. So I'll resign."

Alarmed, Mel stood up. "No. Wait a minute—" She exchanged a look with her lover. 

How much of the bravado was shock, and wounded pride? Janice's desire for legitimacy—for someone to take her work seriously—was very much a part of why she accepted the position at the university. It complemented her wish, however seemingly tenuous at times, for a stable life.

"That isn't what I want," the Dean replied quietly. "I want you to find the real scrolls."

"You believe they exist," Janice stated warily.

"I believe that if they do exist, you'll find them. And if this is, as Snyder suggests, some kind of fantastic fraud, you'll find that out as well."

"All for the greater glory of the old alma mater, eh?"

Once again, the Dean proffered his smug smile. "Anything you uncover would benefit the university, as long as you are under its auspices. And as far as I'm concerned, you are." The older man stood up. "Let's give you a year to come up with something. I know that doesn't seem like much time, but if, at the end of that year, you give me enough reason to continue the search, I'll extend the expedition. After you spend a semester in the classroom, of course."

The Dean extended his hand for Janice to shake. She stared at him suspiciously.

"Don't be a bad sport, Covington. I'm giving you an opportunity to do what you do best. And you're damned good at it, I know that. Have a proposal on my desk in six weeks."

Her hands remained idly on her hips.

He chuckled and withdrew his hand. "I look forward to seeing what you'll do." He winked and picked up his walking stick, and a hat. "I'll get my money's worth out of you, my girl." He nodded at Snyder and Mel. "Dr. Snyder, Miss Pappas, good day."

Janice was staring into space. "Money's worth?" she mumbled. Her gaze snapped to the doorway where the Dean had departed. She stomped over to the door, flung it open, and shouted down the hallway at his retreating form: "You already get your money's worth out of me, you old sonofabitch! Do you know how goddamn low my salary is? You're wringing me dry, you cheap bastard!" She drew in another breath with which to launch another tirade, relented, growled, and stormed down the hallway after slamming the door.

Mel yanked her glasses off her face with a groan and massaged her temples.

Snyder gave her a timid look. "She really doesn't want tenure, does she?"

*****

The odd, arrhythmic typing of Mildred, the department secretary, was punctuated by the strange thwaps emerging from one of the offices nearby. She paused in her task, wondering when the noise would cease, and if the perpetuator would notice that her typing had stopped, but the angry sounds continued. She sighed, and took a cigarette out of the pack she kept in her top desk drawer. She was halfway through the cigarette, and pecking halfheartedly at the letter in the typewriter, when Mel arrived.

The stout middle-aged woman exchanged a look with the Southerner. "You want the bourbon?" Mildred asked. She hadn't the chance to ask Janice if the professor wanted the emergency bottle of hooch—the little archaeologist had barreled past her with such speed and anger.

Mel shook her head. "I don't think letting her drink will help in this instance."

"Actually, I meant for you."

The translator laughed so faintly that it was barely an exhale of breath. "Ah, no, I don't think so." A finger stemmed the tide of her eyeglasses, sliding down her nose.

"If I hear screams I'll call the police," Mildred remarked as Mel entered the sanctum sanctorum.

The lack of time spent in the office was reflected in its bare décor; the assistant professor was rarely in it except to brood and meet the occasional student. Pieces of wood—representing two and a half years' worth of grading midterms, finals, papers, and resisting the advances of romantically deluded students—were scattered on the floor, along with the woman responsible for them and the large, cracked dent in the side of the desk. Janice smoked a cigarette and regarded the pile of tinder, as if a merry little act of arson would cap her day.

"Paul Bunyan," Mel said. She half-leaned, half-sat along the desk.

"Get me an ax, then, so I can destroy it properly." A baseball bat, which lay beside her, worked well when she grew tired of kicking the desk, but a sharp object would be ever so more pleasing.

"You're very lucky the dean likes you, honey."

"Lucky!" Janice exploded. "You're as bad as he is." She pushed at the woodpile with the toe of her boot. "I should have let Kleinman keep them," she said softly.

"No, you shouldn't have," Mel countered. "They may not be the Scrolls, but they are still Gabrielle's words. And as such they are sacred."

Janice ignored this. "Why does it seem impossible to get to point B from point A?" she mused. "I thought I was already there. Thought I had them." Thought I had it all. She looked at Mel, who had her arms crossed and was staring into space, thoughtfully. I am incomplete without you, but I'm incomplete without them as well.

"Zeno," Mel muttered absently.

"Huh?"

"One of his paradoxes—about how all motion is impossible. You recall—?"

"Oh. Yeah." Janice, in reality, had totally forgotten anything to do with Zeno, or much of anything she was forced to read as an undergraduate. "Is there really a Gabrielle or a Xena? Are we so sure that these just weren't stories our fathers created? They fed us these legends, these make-believe stories. We ate it all up. We were kids. And then it seeped into our subconscious, these myths. They're universal. A shared hallucination."

"I never suspected you were a Jungian, Janice."

"Are we descendants of heroes and bards, or forgers and pranksters?"

Mel's lips tightened, set in their familiar stubborn grimace. "You deny what you know to be true."

"Do I?"

"You have the dreams."

Janice said nothing. How long did you think she would say nothing, would wordlessly hold you after you wake up screaming? How long would she politely ask you how you've been sleeping, and settle for your half-hearted lies?

"Will you sit there and tell me that those nightmares you have…that they're just about the war? Can you tell me that?"

The dreams were about the war, at the very least. What her mind refused during the day, what it would not acknowledge, her body whispered in the ragged gossamer of scars: This happened to you. And then the brain would finally rebel, subconsciously. 

More recently, they were tenacious—and they went further than ever, extending into a darker past: Lying in snow, stomach bathed in blood, daylight faltering around her, in the blue glow of a winter world devoid of sun. She looks at her hand, watches it fall...onto a plank of wood, where it is bound by a Roman soldier. And what was too horrible to contemplate, too awful to bear, was that she doesn’t die alone. There is a broken body next to hers.

Yet you managed to smile for me. I still remember the first time you smiled at me—really, truly smiled. It was hesitant, shy, belying the reputation of the warrior and the coldness of your eyes. This piece of you—so fallible, so human, you gave to me. The stupid, stubborn farm girl who followed you.

"Hey." It was Mel's soft drawl, snapping the spell. The chill she experienced every time after the dream was aroused once again, and the hairs on her arms stood, stiff in fright. Until Mel smoothed them, rubbing warmth with her palms.

Janice swallowed, stood up. She simmered, paced. Mel sighed inwardly, and waited for the inevitable.

"Goddammit!" she screamed, and kicked the desk once again. More chips of wood spiraled from the desk, like gymnasts executing backflips.

Mildred is calling the police.

A finger, not as callused as it was once when they first met, was thrust at the translator. "It may be all fine and well for you to hear fucking little voices inside your head, but not me, baby! Not me!"

Or maybe she is finishing off the last of that bourbon.

"I thought that I really accomplished something: I found the Xena Scrolls. They were real—or so I believed. And then, I thought, just maybe, I could have a simple life. Where I could just be myself. Not the descendent of some naïve brat who changed personal philosophies like underwear. Not the daughter of some obsessed grave-robbing bastard carrying on the crazy family legacy. I wanted it all normal." She regarded Mel thoughtfully. "You made me want that. Just a house. A steady job. And a girl who loves me."

“I know,” Mel said softly. “I’ve wanted the same thing.” She paused. “Come here.” Janice hesitated in the face of the gentle order, remembering the same words in different circumstances: The first time they made love, when she had stood, fixed in the doorway, neither resisting nor giving in, afraid to take the leap into the bedroom, until Mel, sitting on the bed, had uttered those two words. She had felt as if she were opening up Pandora's box, propelled by an unknown energy and motion, by fatal curiosity. And she felt that way again, now. Afraid of what you'll find.

She permitted herself to be held, to let Mel prop her chin upon her head. And afraid of what you’ll lose. She had lost Harry to this search—even before he died.

The blue of the dream was the abyss and the salvation at once, beribboned together.

Mel pulled back and looked at her. And the blue of these eyes? "Weeks ago you were excited at the prospect that there were still scrolls out there to be found."

"That was when I thought they were real."

"They are real."

Janice said nothing, frowned, let Mel's thumb press a temporary cleft in her chin.

"It'll be you and me, under the stars," she said.

As it has been always been.

"How bad can that be?"

Janice did not know. They hugged again, she placed her head against Mel's shoulder, and for the moment she could ignore the chill of the dream and could draw upon the strength of Mel's words. She loved the certain, the tangible, the sure thing. Now she gave herself over to words not written down, belief neither felt nor seen, and a love that, more often than not, she did not understand, nor felt she deserved.