#life preserver full name is merrily merrily merrily merrily

[naphiatra]

gently down the stream | merrily x4 | life is but a dream

[aislingyngaio-games]

The Tifareth Balance

I think this goes all the way back to the gnostic tree, and how everything has to be brought into balance to achieve Final Heaven.

Introduction: Where the Characters Begin in FF7

At the beginning of the story, Aerith was treated all her life as special by certain individuals - Turks, Shinra/Hojo, Elmyra, Zack. This gave her a very young Queen Victoria levels of self-importance and obstinence, very self-centered world view if you will, and that's why in OG she's always asking Cloud what he thinks about her etc (which actually implies she's rather confused that she isn't already the center of his world somehow) during dialogue options. This is also I believe partially why she seems to sense Ifalna, Elmyra’s husband, and Zack enter the Lifestream, yet seems inured when two reactors, a plate, and the related mass loss of life occurred. Surely she should have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of souls passing back into the Lifestream, yet she seems perfectly deaf to this mass upheaveal and more concerned about her own earthly affairs as she meets Cloud? Sounds oddly cold for a steward of the planet who could hear its cries, however faintly. There’s no Obiwan-Alderaan moment for her at all. Her starting point is that she misses the forest for the trees.

Meanwhile, we have Tifa, who though in her youth was the center of a circle of friends, we learn during the Lifestream that none of them actually understood her, esp obvious during her grief over her mother's death. For an introvert, this is actually a deeply socially draining experience, and since then, given how one by one her social circle deserted her and the village for job opportunities, she is left to believe she's simply a cog in the Grand Scheme. She's always had to suppress her own self and think of others before her. It doesn't matter that she probably wants to leave the village that's been emptied of her peers - she's the chief's daughter so she must stay. It doesn't matter that she disagreed over the reactor bombings, for the Greater Good Avalanche must do something to save the Planet, so she had to acquiesant against her own wishes. It was she who worried and grieved most for the two reactor bombings and the plate fall and its associated loss of life, even though she still had Cloud with her, and realistically couldn’t actually hear the cries of the Planet. Her starting point is that she misses the trees for the forest.

In other words, at the beginning of the story, Aerith is too selfish and Tifa is too selfless. And as author Rick Riordan once wrote, "The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation. Evil is easy to fight. Lack of wisdom… that is very hard indeed." (Athena, The Titan's Curse)

Aerith’s Character Arc in FF7

Over the course of the story, we see Aerith, even while leveraging her position and her blood against Shinra's encroachment, was equally afraid of her own powers. She ignored and hid herself away from the problems of Gaia, hiding under the protection of Elmyra for as long as she could. She disregards opinions and feelings of others like when she totally misjudged how to handle Barret's raw emotions over Corel at the Gold Saucer. She was not at all oblivious to Tifa's feelings yet still attempted to monopolize Cloud's attentions in front of her. This behaviour can be traced back to her need to stand firm against the Turks’/Shinra’s persuasions, though when used on regular people like the team, it is very offputting, abrasive, thoughtless and likely was what actually alienated her peers from her growing up. Ultimately, she made the fatal mistake of believing she knows what's best for the group in merrily skipping off alone into the Forbidden City (I mean, sure, we all know Cloud was unstable from the Jenova manipulation but there were 7 other sane party members who could have been consulted and split up before she skipped off unprotected?), and ultimately her fatal flaw of arrogance and selfishness caused her death. Not because she meant to die, knowing it will protect the planet, because she'd always intended to return to the team ("She talked about the future more than the rest of us"), but she died anyway because her arrogance and selfishness were her fatal flaw.

I think it is only in death, though unaddressed explicitly by the game story itself (which of course remains on the living party members, and therefore is the story of life, and how life still moves on after death), that she truly grasped the littleness of who she is. That ultimately, back in the Lifestream with all the other Cetras, she was finally able to understand that in the end, she was just another Cetra in the great battle against Jenova. Sure, she was the Cetra who summoned Holy, but it was actually doing more harm than good by itself. It was only with the collective power and force of the Lifestream, of all who were born of the Planet and all who returned to the Planet, that Meteor was able to aid Aerith (Holy) in pushing back Meteor. In accepting her ordinariness among the Cetra is when Aerith truly becomes the mother of Gaia, even if nobody other than the FF7 team will ever remember her name. Her legacy lives on in Gaia, along with the legacy every other Cetra died to preserve.

Aerith's character arc is to temper her selfishnes with selflessness, to care for the welfare of all instead of the welfare of a few individuals, and to recognise that she is but a small part in the greater plan, that it is ok to not be special. Her special blood didn't stop her from dying, nor was she alone the only saviour of the Planet. In the end, I believe that Aerith's journey in FF7 is her journey to understand that no matter how special she seems to be, in the end, the Planet will still live on without her too, with Nanaki as the probable successor to her decimated race's role as the new steward of the Planet.

Tifa’s Character Arc in FF7

As for Tifa, her character arc is the complete opposite: to temper her selflessness with selfishness. How odd a concept for a protagonist! Except it goes right back to the balance necessary to achieve Final Heaven ("The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation"). Tifa is shy, she is reserved, she always puts the needs and wants of others above her own, even if she disagrees. She didn't challenge Barret when she disagrees with his methods. She didn't challenge Aerith even when her own feelings were hurt, yet still she was kind in the face of such unkindness (intentional or not). She suppressed her own feelings for Cloud and tries only to behave like a friend to him even though she feels more. And most damning in her character arc, she didn't challenge Cloud over the knowledge that "I waited... but Cloud never came." It was the only piece of the Nibelheim incident she could recall clearly, but because she was too insecure in her own memories (though the rest of the Incident could be chalked up to the trauma caused by her almost dying by Masamune, Cloud's alleged absence at Nibelheim wasn't, because she had pinned her hopes on his arrival and her disappointment was palpable) she allowed what she knew to be false to stand in between them for the sake of Cloud's mental stability.

I have posited in another post that Tifa is not only the heroine of FF7 but the co-protagonist as well, or at the very least the deuteragonist. It is very telling that 10 minutes after Aerith's death, the team went snowboarding, whereas when Cloud and Tifa were both broken emotionally by Sephiroth and had their joint Heroic BSoD moment, the game experienced a timeskip. How odd that the permanent physical death of a valued party member didn't stop the game dead but the death of Cloud and Tifa's trusts in their own memories did? Yet it is important to mention as too many times already Tifa has simply been dismissed as unimportant, as simply the crutch, the guide to Cloud's story and nothing more. This could not be further from the truth. Tifa's story does not simply inform Cloud's. Tifa's story is ENTWINED with Cloud's. Even as their stories run parallel to each other's, crossing the same events, their arcs are both independent AND interdependent on each other's. Tifa is not simply a plot device or the narrator or whatever one calls Tifa in an attempt to dismiss her role in the bigger FF7 story. (And I mention this because even some Tifa fans forget this in their desire to whitewash Tifa's culpability in the Northern Crater affair, which is actually a key turning point in Tifa's hero's journey)

Someday perhaps I will write a full breakdown of Tifa’s hero’s journey (because it’s honestly frustrating to see claims – even from Tifa fans – of Tifa needing a character arc of her own when it’s always been in FF7 all along if only players will take off their protagonist/Cloud-tinted glasses) in greater detail, but for the sake of the discussion of her arc in the context of the gnostic tree and the role of balance within oneself, I will simply say this: that it is only in the death of her trust in herself, and in seeing the emotional death of the one she holds most dear (Cloud’s mental stability shattering at the Northern Crater), that she learns she cannot simply stand passively by even in the face of what she knows to be wrong, just to protect someone else’s feelings and wants. She learns that even inaction has consequences. That she has to be brave enough, assertive enough, just selfish enough to place her own needs and desires, her own thoughts and beliefs, on an equal importance to the rest of the party, even the Planet’s. That just because the world is ending, it doesn’t make her personal struggles any less important than the world’s problems, it doesn’t mean the problem can be ignored or that it will simply go away, or even that it’s unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

She erred, she fell, she “died”. And she learned, she grasped the second chance with both hands, and at Mideel, she stood firm and said, “This is where I want to be. Being with Cloud. Caring for him.” It wasn’t revenge she pursued any longer, or high-minded abstract ideals like saving the Planet. She still would help save the Planet if she could, but for once in her life, she put her foot down and make clear her own priorities – to be by the side of the one she love above all else. And she could make this decision without jeopardizing the Planet because of her ordinariness. She wasn’t imbued with special powers or special bloodlines or special keepsakes and her absence will most likely not affect the Planet’s safety or lack thereof. Even in her absence, we are sent on story missions that still ended in failure – heck, even after Cloud and Tifa rejoined, the Huge Materia space mission still failed anyway, because the point is... just because one wants to save the Planet doesn’t mean one can (after all, summoning Holy didn’t work either, at least not at first).

This is also paralleled with Tifa’s caring of Cloud: there was literally no guarantee that Cloud will ever recover from his Mako poisoning – he could be a vegetable forever, and yet this is still Tifa’s choice. This isn’t just about Cloud, but about Tifa asserting her desire to be with Cloud even in the face of both world destruction and his permanent vegetative state. This is who Tifa wants to be, who Tifa chooses to be. This isn’t something being pushed onto her as part of some “greater good” that she should ignore her own wants and needs for. (And to all those who deride Tifa as being weak for making her choices all for one man, remember that feminism isn’t about a “strong independent woman who need no man”, it’s about having the right to choose who we wish to be without being forced by any societal expectations of us. “Life doesn't make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all." — Erik Erikson. If anything, Tifa choosing to stay by Cloud’s side is the very definition of feminism – it’s not about what we do, rather, that we have a right to choose without being shamed for what we choose to do)

Yet in the Lifestream is when she truly finds herself together with Cloud. She learns that, though she believed she is too ordinary to be special to anyone (remember, though she was the center of her group of friends in her youth, none of them really looked back when the time came for them, or at least she thought none did more than mere talk anyway), she was actually the reason for Cloud’s entire journey, that he reciprocated special feelings for her, that he always intended to return for her. She learned that, just as Cloud’s impetus was her reason for taking up martial arts (one of the few acts of “rebellion”/assertiveness in her youth where she was probably pressured to stay in the village either due to her father’s position or her gender), she was the reason for Cloud’s desire to be a hero too. Tifa was special in her ordinariness. She meant enough to someone who meant enough to her.

Tifa’s arc is to recognise that though she won’t ever be important to the Planet as an individual, she was important enough to the one that mattered most. It is not wrong or “selfish” to find individual love and prioritise it equal to the needs of the Planet. And in the end, it was this revelation and resolution of both her and Cloud’s mutual feelings for each other that gave Cloud the strength he’d previously only accessed from despair five years ago, the strength to defeat Sephiroth. And it was only with Sephiroth’s defeat that Holy was unleashed, and only when the Lifestream joined its chorus that the Planet was ultimately saved. In the end, it was the importance Tifa “selfishly” placed on her own wants and needs that saved Cloud, and by saving him, the Planet as well. If she’d been told that Cloud’s predicament, a single individual, was nothing in the face of the end of the world, if she hadn’t been just that little bit selfish in the face of her extreme selflessness, it might have simply brought them nothing but destruction.

Conclusion

In this sense, I believe that Aerith and Tifa were indeed developed to be two halves of the same whole. They started off as two extremes in terms of personality – Aerith was self-centered, assertive and intransigent, while Tifa was selfless, passive and insecure. Yet these are only negative traits when taken to extreme, and by meeting each other, by learning from each other, tempering and moderating each other’s behaviour, by Aerith learning to be more considerate, more humble and more persuadable (because my god, was Aerith utterly brattish and unbearable in Remake before she met Tifa), by Tifa learning to be more assertive, more confident, to take pride in herself, the two halves of a whole bring each other to balance and become better versions of themselves for it.

"The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation. Evil is easy to fight. Lack of wisdom… that is very hard indeed."

P.S. tagging @enigmaphenomenon as it was your twitter thread that inspired this post. A lot of the thoughts in this impulsive post probably definitely needs a hell lot more refining by more critical minds but I hope this is a good starting point for discussion.

[missingjackklinehours]

Mo(u)rning Dove

@spnarchangelweek <3

Rating: Teen & Up (Gen Lucifer & Gabriel)

Warnings: Major Character Death, Derealization

Fic & Playlist available on AO3! (feel free to read under the cut, however!)

   Dendrite; His wings are like crystallized dendrite, Lucifer notices.

   Intricate patterns of iridescent gold branches engraved in each fulgent feather of his. Rays of daylight that dare reflect off the Messenger’s butterscotch wings are ardently absorbed to preserve his internal light—He burns far brighter than any star could begin to comprehend.

   Lucifer can feel his warmth when he allopreens Gabriel’s dendrite-etched feathers. The thriving fledgling squirms uncomfortably under his working hands, his budding golden feathers twitching with each gentle pluck. His petite form leans away from Lucifer’s algid touch, and he whines with a callow pout when Lucifer prudently guides him back. Lucifer attempts to soothe his baby brother, amicable words of a story falling from his polar lips to allay Gabriel’s discomfort; Gabriel always loved his stories.

   The gold expands as he develops. Complex veins of sunlight-drenched sheen contour the coverts of his pinions. The shinier they get, the brighter he burns and the more pleasant light he intakes. Gabriel emits brilliant luminescence like no other, and his sun-kissed wings like dendrite are proof.

   Lucifer combs through gold with every softly recited word of a tale. Gabriel has grown to melt into the Morningstar’s wintry touch, listening attentively to the plot of his elder brother’s story. He is eagerly expectant; His big brother always comes to him with newer, longer, better anecdotes during preening season. Gabriel adores every one of them, though when he feels Lucifer culling the last of his unkempt and grimed feathers, he pleads with full, star-struck sky eyes to hear the lullaby that first lulled him to sleep, long ago. Lucifer teases him with fondness in his irises, but he gives in—He always does. It’s hard to say no to Gabriel when he looks that jubilant.

   “... dream on, dear little child…”

   Gabriel has already complied to the lullaby’s verses by the time Lucifer adeptly tweaks the last sliver of gold. The Morningstar’s waning notes fade out, though his boreal fingers still find themselves in between honey, dendrite-embedded feathers. Gabriel snores like a little beast, and Lucifer can’t help but grin at him as he gingerly caresses his slumbering brother’s effulgent wings.

   The luster of his gold is brightest against the pristine cream of misted clouds. By the time Lucifer teaches Gabriel to fly, he’s become a beacon in the night. Lucifer’s frosted fingers tag one of his younger brother’s radiant wings, sniggering as he calls out “you’re it!” and soars swiftly in the other direction of Heaven’s lilac skies. As much as he tries through his giggles, Gabriel can’t keep up, and they both know it.

   He’s growing too fast. At times, Lucifer reminisces on the distant era he was able to hold Gabriel in his arms. His dendrite-pattern had hardly blossomed then, and Gabriel’s gold hadn’t shimmered as bold. As he looks at his younger brother now, he sees curious divinity. Gabriel’s getting old enough to where Lucifer can’t shield him from danger, and it makes the elder angel anxious.

   The snow of the Morningstar’s fingers drag further, deeper into gold. Gabriel’s wings are evolving, the golden bliss of his spirited light washing vividly over Heaven. The Messenger no longer leans in, nor away from Lucifer’s preening; He simply hums, swaying in rhythm with the breaths of Lucifer's story. No matter how old he gets, he always loves to listen to his big brother’s voice. When Lucifer is nearly finished grooming auric feathers, he happily anticipates Gabriel to plead with him to sing their lullaby. Instead, Gabriel turns to him, and his golden light seeps through his wide smile, a trickle of celestial sun through pearly teeth.

   "Luci, can I pretty please do yours?"

   Lucifer is taken aback. Gabriel has never offered to preen his feathers; Lucifer's wings hadn't been preened since Michael had taken up his part of Heaven's responsibilities—It had been a long time. Lucifer’s matured wings flex automatically in thrill at the mention of grooming. Gabriel acknowledges it, and he brightens, if possible. His little brother is giving him that look, one of so much inspired euphoria with such a rush of nostalgic innocence that he looks no different from the very first time Lucifer preened his teensy, yet complex feathers.

   Lucifer can’t refuse. 

   His wings of vermillion are far larger, though far more disheveled than Gabriel’s have ever been; The young Messenger has always had Lucifer to care for him. Gabriel’s clement hands are profoundly gentle, like refreshing spring rain drizzled on feverish skin or a tenderhearted baby dove nuzzling gratefully against its mother. Even at viscid spots where his vermillion adheres in thickly bedraggled clumps as a result from neglect, Gabriel’s touch remains serene and delicate. Lucifer feels more tranquil than he has in centuries—It’s as if he’s mindlessly drifting amongst endless indigo seas of winding galaxies and Gabriel is sweetly guiding him by the hand through the silver of stars. Lucifer now understands why Gabriel loves Heaven’s preening season.

   A faint ghost of a mellifluous melody draws him from his wafting reverie. Gabriel is humming, a saccharine purr carrying a familiar harmony; It’s their lullaby. Lucifer picks up on the part his baby brother is humming, and he nimbly sings along. He watches intently with a splitting simper when their sitting shadows in front of him swell as Gabriel’s golden light brightens merrily at the pleasant sound.

   “... in the sky, stars are still fading away…”

   Gabriel’s effulgence is rapidly dawning to be more blinding than any entity in existence. His stellar golden feathers branch out further and his daedal dendrite details seem to crystallize in a more radiant fashion. Lucifer genially revels in his bright brilliance everytime they unite. Though, it’s far from the only thing that’s improving in Gabriel; He’s much quicker than before. Lucifer has to exert all of his energy to keep ahead when briskly gliding away from his little brother after he tags his butter-flushed wings. He deliberately assumes that Gabriel will inherit his Heavenly duties soon, with his speed approaching the potential Father saw when he named him as Heaven's Messenger.

   Gabriel isn’t the only one who’s changing.

   Lucifer is altering—morphing—wavering. The Mark of Cain is an irritant upon his ivory skin, his grace, his mind. He’s growing colder, and he feels the need to be enigmatic. Father is never wrong, because Father is absolute. It’s firmly ingrained in his mind, and it’s been that way since he was a fledgling. Lucifer repeats it to himself as he observes Lilith, the first woman, refuse subservience to her created equal, Adam. He watches silently when she leaves the perfect haven Father had meticulously created for her, and he watches in bemusement as a flock of his determined siblings attempt to forcibly return her to Eden. She is resilient, and Adam is egotistical and very flawed; Lucifer desperately tries to comprehend why his Father, instead of establishing that they are equals, creates Adam a new partner and banishes Lilith from ever returning to Eden.

   Father is wrong. When the belief dawns on him, Lucifer has an epiphany—a twisted thought follows. The Mark of Cain sears like it never has before; A scorching white fire that engulfs his entire being, scalding the abundance of all his infinite eyes and fiercely igniting his vermillion wings in grandeur flames. Despite the famished embers from within, he feels frozen and trapped under a bulky sheet of ice, breathlessly viewing his life continue without him as he drowns in desolate, boreal seas. 

   Lucifer has unequivocally changed; He is different. Gabriel is the first to notice. 

   Preening season has arrived. Lucifer is much colder, and the raw bite of his frost elicits a vicious shiver when his fingers pluck gold feathers. His cautiousness is replaced by dissociation, the younger angel is wincing. Lucifer feels distant, and Gabriel thinks he is lightyears from his brother despite him being mere inches away. 

   Lucifer abstractly traces dendrite when he’s nearing the final unkempt clot of feathers, absentmindedly humming a familiar tune. This time, Gabriel says nothing. His scintillant wings tense up at bitter ice fingertips picking at his golden light.

   “... down here, a dying dove crawls…”

   The lyrics have changed. Lucifer feels numb; Gabriel feels scared.

   It’s the last expression Lucifer sees from Gabriel, and it’s the last thing he remembers when he returns from Eden. He is abruptly a liar, he is a liar without deceiving. He is no longer the Morningstar. He is the Serpent.

   Michael’s rigid voice is echoing, lightning is cracking, angels are wailing. His Father's—his Father who is wrong—light feels cold. Lucifer can’t hear, feel any of it. The thrum of a familiar lullaby is beating in his ears. All harshly fades away when he promptly perceives that the burning white fire that had smouldered within him is suddenly reality, and it is reflected on vermillion wings. He is physically falling, a lightheadedness clouding his consciousness, and when he forces open his forlorn eyes against the whizzing wind, he sees smoke. Lucifer screams.

   Vermillion is ablaze. He is frightfully alone as he fleetly plunges into an unknown abyss, an alien place that is farther from home than he can begin to comprehend. A despairing attempt to frantically flap his wings ensues, but they only twitch. He tries again in a panic, and the insatiable white flames tease him with a hungry smirk. The Serpent relents in his feeble attempts to salvage his wings, squeezing his eyes shut again and dreadfully awaiting impact.

   Lucifer can’t help but wonder if gold would be more successful.

   He is going to be the dove. He is the dove.

𓏧༻🕊️༺𓏧

   Gabriel is grown; It’s Lucifer’s first observation.

   A foolish little part of him expected him to never age, forever remaining the same sweetly innocent fledgling that Lucifer once held lovingly in his arms. Forever lasting the same playful angel that struggled to tag him back. Forever retaining the same ambitious persistence to hear his big brother’s stories. Forever seeping golden washes of sunlight through his toothy beams, harboring the brightest light in existence within his being.

   This time, it's Gabriel who has changed; He has dimmed significantly. Lucifer misses his light.

   Lucifer maps the faint outline of his brother’s golden wings with his eyes, burnishing cracks through the universe’s perceptibility to accommodate him. Lucifer had frequently thought about the refined softness of the gold between his fingers when he was imprisoned, and he’d pondered about who would care for them while he was away. Who would pluck his fledgling’s feathers during preening season, who would tell him stories and lull him to sleep? In this moment, Lucifer can see that nobody has; Gabriel’s gold is matted and besmirched.

   Gabriel was alone, just as he had been.

   He wields a blade, Lucifer acknowledges. Gabriel intends to kill him, despite the blatantly obvious fear in his true form's numerous uncertain azure eyes. Lucifer can sense it from miles away. It’s the same look he’d worn when Lucifer had last allo-preened his brother’s butterscotch wings—The look he’d bore when Lucifer sang the last notes of their lullaby, one he’d twisted to mirror his emotions at the time.

   Gabriel’s hands slightly tremble as he raises his blade behind his brother, reluctantly creeping forward. Lucifer’s tarred wings twitch like they did when he fell, and he imperceptibly rubs at the deity blood stuck between his fingertips in anticipation.

   He doesn’t want to be the dove again.

   He turns. The fear in Gabriel’s irises is more decipherable, so visible that Lucifer can nearly catch up on all the millennia he’d missed in this very moment. Lucifer is catatonically speaking, though he barely understands it himself. The blade is resting like bait against Gabriel’s skin, a tense pressure that Lucifer can almost feel against his own chest. 

   Lucifer wants to see his baby brother’s light again.

   He does. The blade is abruptly buried in Gabriel’s being, and his brother’s fear is gone. Intense radiance of pure, euphoric sunlight envelops Lucifer as Heaven’s Messenger’s last flicker of light shines, just as he was meant to do. Brilliant light is blinding; Gabriel’s is alluring. Lucifer is warm for the first time since his wings were searing, and he thinks he hears the memory of Gabriel humming their lullaby. Gabriel feels like home, he feels like the fledgling he once knew. Lucifer feels like himself again. He sees gold.

   It’s over as quick as it began.

   Lucifer is alone again. Though, now, he stands over the fledgling he’d raised, the fledgling he cherished, the fledgling he loved—His fledgling. His wings are no longer gold, no longer luminous. They are gloomy, blackened shadows against the hardwood floor. Lucifer’s stomach twists in knots, spurts of swelling emotions he hadn’t felt in years swirling sourly in his being, and he drops Gabriel’s blade. 

   Gold is black. Gabriel is gone.

   That same foolish part of him expected there to be nothing but raw sunshine where Gabriel now lies, for his vessel to evaporate and his grace to rejoin the bright star he was created from. Instead, he sees vermillion; a thin stream of it dripping in blots against the floor.

   Lucifer can’t help but notice the way his blood oozes in a familiar dendrite pattern. Dendrite; Gabriel, a grand cluster of light so brilliant, his gold wings streaked with crystallized branches of it.

   The Serpent leaves, the whispers of a certain tune in his head. He hopes it can conceal the shrieking sound of his own convoluted thoughts.

   He doesn’t want to be the dove again. Gabriel takes his place.

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, @negativenorth!

Read on AO3

*****

Welcome To The Jingle

Derek was positive he’d never seen so much glitter and tinsel in his life, and he’d grown up with two sisters and seven female cousins.  

“Tell me why we’re here again?” he whispered out the side of his mouth at Boyd, ever his most level-headed beta.  The temperature had dropped with the sun, and his words swirled into mist before they dispersed into the night air.  Derek could admit—only to himself, of course, never out loud—that he was a little desperate to make new holiday traditions with his (officially all adults now thank god) pack.  But his ideas had run more along the lines of a cozy take-out dinner at his new apartment, an ugly sweater or white elephant party, or maybe volunteering at the local soup kitchen. 

It had not involved spending Christmas Eve at Jungle.     

“It was this, or karaoke, Derek,” Erica answered with a grimace.  “And I’ve heard you sing.”

“But this?” Derek motioned to the “Ladies” Night vinyl banner hanging over the front door, flapping in the cool night breeze.  “Male strippers don’t seem especially… festive.”

“Maybe they’ll be wearing red and green thongs,” Isaac supplied, snuggling his red-tipped nose further into the fashionable scarf wrapped artfully around his neck. 

They flashed their IDs at the bouncer, a burly dude Derek recognized from high school, but couldn’t attach a name to the unsmiling face. The guy, decked out head to toe in black except for a necklace of merrily twinkling plastic holiday lights, gave Derek a curious once-over, then addressed Erica.  “Hale, party of ten?”

Derek opened his mouth to refute the number, but Erica flashed a megawatt smile. “That’s us.”

He handed her a white laminated card proclaiming Welcome to The Jingle in blocky stenciled letters.  “You’re at the VIP table, center stage.” He hiked a thumb over his shoulder.  “The rest of your party is already here.”

“Who are we meeting?” Derek asked Boyd.  He really wasn’t up for making conversation with people he didn’t know.  “What’s going on?”

“You’ll see.”  Boyd managed to make the statement, punctuated by a slap on the back, seem ominous. “Don’t say we never gave you anything.” 

Cutting through the thick-as-molasses crowd was slow going.  All around him, sweaty middle-aged women screeched at a beefy guy with thighs to rival Derek’s in circumference, bumping and grinding up on the stage to Lady Gaga’s Christmas Tree. Isaac had been wrong about the red and green thongs; this guys wasn’t wearing anything but a fur-trimmed santa hat. The whole place reeked of stale perfume and cheap baby oil. One woman threw a lacy blue bra on stage.   

Not for the first time that evening—and most of the time, if he was being honest—Derek found himself missing Stiles, who wasn’t due home from his last semester until the day after Christmas.  Right about now Stiles would be riling up the pack good-naturedly, making inappropriate jokes, pulling begrudging smiles from Derek.  Stiles would love the ridiculousness of male strippers on Christmas Eve, would help Derek embrace the fun in every chaotic adventure they found themselves in.   

The throng parted and Derek got a glimpse of some familiar faces sitting around a table with a hot-pink tented Reserved sign.  “Scott! Kira!” Derek exclaimed, heart alight with happiness. “I didn’t think you were due back from Japan until January!”

“Are you kidding?” Kira said with a smile.  “We wouldn’t miss this!”

“Neither would we,” his sister Cora said, motioning to Lydia and leaning over the table to give Derek a kiss on the cheek.

“I would gladly have missed it,” Jackson said in a bored tone, wrapping his arm around Ethan’s shoulder, “but there’s really nothing else to do in this podunk town.”

Allison rolled her eyes. “The population of Beacon Hills is almost thirty-thousand, Jackson.  It’s nothing compared to London’s eight million, or the two million in Paris, but we’re certainly not in the backwoods.” 

“I can’t believe you all traveled home for the holidays, and decided the first thing you wanted to do was go see a strip show.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to have everyone back, but…” Derek trailed off.  He was honestly a little baffled.  Except for Cora and Lydia, everyone in their ragtag group had twenty-four-seven access to dick, either their own or their partners, and looking around, he’d wager when you counted in all the full-moon runs through the preserve that had ended with naked shifts back from their wolfy forms, they’d all seen more penis over the last year than any of the other customers in the infamous gay club.  Why they wanted to see more, and on Christmas Eve of all nights, made no sense.

“We’re all here for support,” Scott said with a wink. Support?  Supporting who? 

Erica man-handeled Derek into the booth as the stripper on stage ended his dance to uproarious applause and explicit cat-calls, and sat on the end so Derek couldn’t escape.   

  “Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Sexy Santa!” The announcer called into the hand-held microphone. Santa took a few deep bows and blew several kisses.  ”If you jingle his bells, he’ll give you a white Christmas.”

Derek stood up. Screw traditions and pack bonding.  “Yeah, no. I’m going home. See you all in the morning.”

Erica grabbed him by the back of his leather jacket, seams screaming in protest as she forcefully pulled him back into the booth. “Sit down!  You’re going to miss the main attraction!”

“Why should I care about seeing whomever is taking their clothes off next?”

Erica’s smile was evil.  ”Because you know him.”

”Wha--” The overhead lights dimmed, casting the stage, outlined in dim red rope lighting, into darkness. The opening riff of Welcome to the Jungle screamed through the sound system, foundation accompanied by festive jingling bells and a heavy rolling baseline that pounded the floor under Derek’s feet, vibrating his legs until they felt like jelly.

Welcome to the jingle, get out your toys and games

Got you on the naughty list baby, you’ll call out our names

Hard and rough or slow and kind

whatever you may need

If you got that package, honey

Wrap it up for me

”What the f--” Derek didn’t get to finish.  A good-yellow spotlight came on, sudden and blinding, illuminating a dancer on stage.  He was dressed in knee-high red and white striped socks, ridiculous curved black elf shoes, and a black thong with a wrapped, bow-topped present super glued directly over his crotch.

The dancer was Stiles.

Stiles, so lithe and pale, creamy snow-white skin a stark contrast to the rippling oiled bronze muscles of Sexy Santa, but no less alluring.  He was lean lines of smooth stomach and slightly jutting hip bones.  He was sinewy arms and thin but powerful thighs. A small layer of sweat pooled at the back of Derek’s neck, a single trickle dropping down the back of his t-shirt.

Long-fingered hands grabbed on to a gleaming silver pole as he undulated his body out and in, shoulders and spine rolling, perfectly timed to the music. A murmur of appreciation rippled through Derek’s chest like a growl. After a few sinuous circuits around the pole, Stiles arched back, pulling himself off the ground, curling like a snake around the silver metal as he spun, thighs quivering slightly. The crowd went wild, money raining down on the stage floor.

Stiles uncurled, absurd elf shoes dropping back to the floor. He shimmied toward the edge of the stage, faux-package bobbing before Derek’s eyes as he fell into a deep squat in front of the packs booth. He had the audacity to wink at Derek, who was extremely grateful he was sitting down, the tent in his pants hidden from view under the table. Stiles dropped down onto his elbows and forearms, pelvis oscillating inches above the floor.

Stiles collected a few bills in the strap of his g-string, then crawled back toward the pole on his hands and knees, giving Derek and the rest of the audience a fantastic view of his ass.  He stepped in front of the pole, grabbed it from behind with both hands and thrusts his hips into the air.

The whole pack came to their feet, screaming and whistling so loud Derek missed the last few bastardized lyrics of the song.  Stiles took one final another spin around the pole before taking a bow.

The announcer called for one last round of applause and Stiles disappeared backstage.  

“That was amazing!” Kira screamed, bouncing on her toes.

Jackson huffed. “Why can’t Stilinski ever show that much grace and coordination when we have to take down a threat?”

The announcer slunk over to the edge of the stage and motioned to Derek. “This is for you,” he said, handing Derek a slip of white paper. The pack broke out in a collective “ohhhhhh!” Unfolding it, Derek found a note written in Stiles’ slanted script: Meet me in the parking lot in ten minutes.  

“We’ll see you tomorrow morning to open our presents, Erica said with a smirk, sliding out of the booth and granting Derek his freedom. “Tell Stiles we all enjoyed the show.”

 And Derek meant to, as soon as Stiles walked up to him in the parking lot, now fully dressed, but instead what fell out of his mouth was, “Dear God, are those fake elf ears?” Derek reached up and ran a finger along the pointed tip of Stiles’ ear. “You are such a nerd.”

Stiles threw his head back and laughed, exposing the long line of his pale neck, the heat of his breath rolling toward the black sky in white misty clouds. “When I play a part, I commit. I had an extra pair laying around from that Halloween I was Spock.”  He flashed Derek the Vulcan salute.

“Is this a part you’ll be playing a lot now that you’re officially back in Beacon Hills?” Derek asked, gesturing at the “Ladies” Night sign, now hanging haphazardly over the club door. “You were amazing up there.”

“Are you kidding?  My father would kill me. This was just a favor for the girls.  They were short on dancers because of the holiday.” He looked Derek up and down, weighing his words against the line of Derek’s shoulder and the clench of his jaw.  “But there is something I’m hoping to commit to.  Someone.”

Derek stepped closer, pulling Stiles into his chest.  “This someone better appreciate your dance moves.”

Stiles rubbed his hips against Derek’s.  “Oh, I’m absolutely sure he does.”  He came up on top-toe, closing the last few inches of space between their mouths.  

“The pack will be expecting breakfast tomorrow,” Derek gasped, pulling back from the kiss. Stiles’ face followed his, biting playfully at his bottom lip.

“Don’t worry, I make a mean stack of pancakes.” He slipped their hands together and squeezed, a warm, gentle pressure.  “Come on, Derek.” He smiled, cheeks glimmering in the moonlight with iridescent glitter.  “Take me home.”

[ruensroad]

let the sound of the wind become a song

For @this-solaris-life who wrote me a wonderful JinYi fic and I had to respond in kind.

The song being sung throughout is a famous Chinese love poem, so I take no credit for it!

Part of the Greek Gods AU here!

---

It was the fifth shot he’d missed since the start of his night hunt, and considering he never missed he was beginning to wonder if his uncle had been right. A steady heart was a steady aim and his jiu-jiu had the steadiest aim Jin Ling had ever seen, even if he wasn’t a perfect hit every time, he hit solid and true.

Jin Ling didn’t know just why his heart was unsteady, but clearly it was given he couldn’t even get an arrow to fly straight tonight and he was quickly becoming too frustrated to keep trying. One deer, that was all he wanted! One deer to take home to ma-ma, was that too much to ask for?

Tonight it seemed, as a sixth arrow veered frustratingly left and startled the buck into a swift retreat, it was.

He didn’t throw down his bow in childish fury, but it was a near thing. As it was, he still had to snap it over his back so he didn’t break it, as he had the last one in a fit of pique.

Remembering that only had his face burning in anger and embarrassment, a certain windy laugh in his ears. Mistress Moon, why do you make such a fuss! Mistress Moon, it’s just a name! Mistress Moon, keep scowling and you’ll become a miser before you’re grown!

He retrieved his arrow and set it firmly back in his quiver, shaking in anger as he looked out where the deer had disappeared to. A whole night of hunting and nothing to show for it? What kind of god was he that he couldn’t even do what he was the patron of?

A wind tickled the nape of his neck, under his hunter’s braid, and he suddenly had his answer. Growling, Jin Ling realized the breeze had changed direction, which meant his scent was everywhere it shouldn’t, and it had very much not been a western-blowing wind at the start.

“Jingyi,” he snapped, glaring out into the darkness. “You owe me a deer! And stew, since ma-ma won’t be making it tonight.”

Laughter buzzed over his cheek, a caress on jaw. He blushed to feel it, but just stuck his nose in the air, standing his ground. “Well?” he demanded of the breeze. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

A soft giggle echoed between the trees, swaying as the leaves swayed. It’d always been a beautiful sound, the shiver of the forest dancing in its slow, steady way, and he hated to admit he had Jingyi to thank for it, not that he ever would.

“Where are you?” he said when the wind god did not appear. Usually, by now, Jingyi would have dropped from a tree or rolled from under a bush, covered in leaves and cackling merrily. But tonight he was not there, only his voice carried in the winds, and only audible even then because Jin Ling knew how to listen for it.

“Jingyi!” he huffed, hands on his hips, but still only the breeze answered him. He sighed in defeat, wondering why he felt a coil of disappointment, before turning into the curling air and focusing on what he could hear.

It was like music in many ways, how Jingyi made the winds move. They whistled and sang and laughed, always joyous, always full of trouble. At least in Jin Ling’s domain. He wondered, suddenly, if it was only he that Jingyi bothered this way and a warmth spread through his chest at the thought.

“If you wont come to me, then I’ll come to you,” he muttered and closed his eyes to concentrate. Laughter, sweet and full, raced over his ears, and below it was a far more tender sound, the sound of singing, lovely and low. Jin Ling blushed when he realized what song it was, a mortal’s song that Jingyi had taken a shine to. It had nothing to do with the winds, but just of love, and Jin Ling had teased him endlessly for it.

Now, eyes still closed and following the breeze, he swallowed and sang along, reaching out into the darkness.

“I want to be your love for ever and ever, without break or decay…”

“When the hills are all flat, and the rivers are all dry.” A hand, warm and smooth, slid up his palm and matched their fingers. He knew the wind god was smiling even before he opened his eyes.

Jingyi was… radiant, was the only word for it that came to mind. For once, his hair was set loose from its top knot and swayed about his cheeks and under his jaw, framing the sweet grin on his laughing lips. All in white and lit by the moon, he downright glowed and Jin Ling hadn’t even realized he’d stopped breathing until the wind slowly died.

“So, you found me,” Jingyi said, voice hinting at his usual teasing register, but it was too soft tonight, too honest, and he slowly lowered his hand.

Jin Ling’s palm tingled and he fisted it to preserve the warmth there. “I’m surprised you weren’t up a tree to better enjoy your handiwork,” he scoffed, wondering why this felt different, this familiar argument with his friend. “You owe me a buck. Ma-ma wanted to make stew.”

“I found you a buck,” Jingyi said, which explained way too much, even before Jingyi stepped aside and he saw the dead creature laying peacefully in the grass. “It passed on not too long ago and I know you dislike taking more than you need.”

Jin Ling approached the fallen deer with a breath of thanks, sensing its age and easy death. He touched the neck and breathed out slow, feeling the life it’d lived, how long and fruitful.

Jingyi was singing again, the same love song, and Jin Ling snorted to hear it as he pulled the buck’s head into his lap. “When it thunders in winter, when it snows in summer, when heaven and earth mingle… not till then will I part from you.”

Glowing in the light of the moon, Jin Ling sent his spiritual energy into the creature and felt its soul return, vibrant and new and young again. An old buck no more, it lifted its head and stared at him a moment, before finding its feet and bounding away.

“...do I still owe you a buck?” Jingyi asked, head tilted but smile sweet.

“Not tonight,” Jin Ling told him, watching where the buck had gone before looking to Jingyi. Jingyi, who laughed, a lovely sound, and the wind picked up around them again just to dance and press against him, like a hug, a joyous warmth.

Jin Ling felt himself smile in return, even when the teasing started up again. Heartbeat loud in his ears, he brushed it all off as he always did, but found himself oddly caught in Jingyi’s glow.

There were worse things, he supposed, than not going home with promised food. And he knew, even if he didn’t understand how, that tonight was the start of something more important than a lost meal, and when Jingyi’s wind tugged him along, laughter and leaves and alight with moonshine, Jin Ling finally understood why his heart was a mess, and wondered what it all meant, that it could beat so fiercely, and for Jingyi.

[nookishposts]

Scent-imental

It’s a rainy day in Portland, after 3 spectacularly sunny ones  that drew us  outside to play  as much as we could. Autumn has been twirling her skirts between frosty mornings and warm windy afternoons. The sun is setting earlier than we are ready for. But there are compensations. The neighbours have been by to make introductions and we have been gifted with tomatoes, homemade chili sauce and the lightest pumpkin loaf I have ever eaten. Our  house smells amazing at the moment; there’s antipasto in the making. Applecrisp and sweet potato brownies are also on the agenda. My Beloved and I stood comfortably side by side this morning, with two cutting boards and good knives rendering heaps of vegetables into a huge bowl of colourful confetti. A little oil and seasoning and into the oven they went to roast before hitting the stew pot with fresh tomatoes and basil. There’s a Motown soundtrack to sway to. The distinctive sharp pop of confirmed vacuum seals has it’s own rhythm. It all becomes a dance, steps inherited and invented as we go.

Everybody cooks something that makes their house smell good. But this morning was monumental for us, because we have waited 11 years to have a kitchen big enough to be able to work in together. The house we moved into less than 2 weeks ago is not large, but because the kitchen, living room and dining room are one giant open space, it feels bigger than it is. For reference, when I was a little kid on the farm, the kitchen was the heart of the house and large enough that I could ride my tricycle around the kitchen table with plenty of room to spare. The kitchen we are so thrilled to be creating in now is actually big enough that I could ride circles in it. As an adult. Really. Don’t try to picture it, (nobody needs that vision) just trust me. We are thrilled. We have supper guests already and being able to stay a part of the conversation as we work  to get the meal on the table is truly wonderful.

I’ve cooked in a lot of kitchens, commercial ones as well as my own.  Nursing homes, all-night pizza joints,coffee shops, commissaries and cafeterias. The work got me through college and university.  I have been known to cuss like a stevedore on the rare occasion I have nicked or scorched myself in the course of creation, but that’s the only thing I have in common with Gordon Ramsay. I’ve had some great teachers. Including shortbread lessons that only a Grandma can give. (” You’re worrying that dough too much!”) I’m at best a competent cook, can’t make pastry to save my life, but there is something so incredibly sumptuous  about fresh ingredients, decent equipment, space to work and excellent company with whom to share it . Even if the sauce spills and a pot boils over now and then; cooking is therapeutic. Can you think of a more comforting smell than warm nutmeg? 

I’ve written before about the conversations around my Grandmother’s kitchen table, she and my Mum and Aunts in the full throes of “remember-whens” not always entirely fit for eager little eavesdroppers. There was as much spice in the stories as the soup. They’d be peeling apples or potatoes, guiding tomatoes through the hand grinder that vise-clamped onto the edge of the arborite table covered in an oilcloth with endless stories of it’s own. A steam kettle whistled for attention as something from the oven, sausage rolls maybe, cooled on the windowsill. If it was too hot, we removed to the porch to snap beans or shell peas pinging them merrily into a tin bowl, routinely swatted for eating as many as we thought we could sneak. Hulling berries meant stained knees as we had to pick twice as many as we actually needed for pies and jam and otherwise “putting up”.  Few had the luxury of a deep chest freezer, so it all went into the jars.

The root cellar scared me just a little. We had no freezer so the rainbow of heavy glass spent the Winter waiting on wooden shelves in what was essentially a dugout beneath the kitchen. Spiced pears squashed against the rounded shoulders of the jars like trapped grotesque faces. Pickle spears looked like piano-key teeth on edge. Beets appeared to bathe in blood. A single low-wattage swinging light bulb cast eerie shadows, totally responsible for my imagination turning such lovely work into nightmares. If I was sent down for pickles or peaches, I didn’t linger; the smell of the very Earth itself, breathing back at me as I raced back up the creaky wooden steps sent shivers up my spine. I didn’t want to think about what else might be waiting down there.

My Beloved just asked me if I wanted to open a door and shatter a canning jar for old times’ sake. She refers to the days of my poor Mum canning and pickling everything in sight at harvest time, over a giant cast iron sink and drainboard; we kids were firmly reminded to use the front door for those hot and steamy hours, but I would routinely forget and coming swinging through the back door, right into the kitchen next to where the freshly-scalded jars were draining. All it took was one cool October breeze at the wrong moment. Suffice it to say I did a fair amount of time sweeping up glass and hearing a terse explanation about how“dear”(expensive)  jars were. I am slightly better behaved as an adult, but then again  some of the jars we use now are the very ones both Grandma and Mum used, with glass lids and rubber sealers. They are dear in an entirely different way.Sealing wax only got used when they ran out of mason jars and Cheese Whiz jars carefully scrubbed could do in a pinch, but nothing beats those heavy jars stamped 1939.

I can recall late-night conversations with my Mum on Christmas Eve as we tore bread loaves into chunks so they could get stale on the counter overnight to be ready for turkey dressing. More recently, there were early morning conversations about the state of the World at a bakery owned by friends, against a backdrop of classical music and the scent of cinnamon rolls rising, rum-soused loaves of dark Christmas cake, and my first experience of sugar plums. Those scents will become prevalent again in no time, but this is October, for soups and stews and roasted vegetables that next year will come from our own gardens. By then we will have been seasoned by our new home, know all the names of the horses across the road, and be able to smell the rain before it arrives. We’ll have our own stock of preserves on pantry shelves, generously generation-spiked with loving and laughing voices of the memories they perpetuate.

[belladxne]

words are knives and often leave scars | chapter 1

[see notes for Ao3 & ff.net links] pairing: Jay/Mal words: 3.4k description: The problem is, Jay has no idea what he’s doing or why he’s doing it. The problem is, Mal doesn’t ever want to push him away but she can’t disappoint her mother either and she’s never been any good at compromise. The problem is, in a fairytale the prince would kiss the princess and they’d live happily ever after, but on this island of sinners and thrown away things, a prince of thieves kisses a princess of darkness and all it gets him is spiteful words and all it gets her is heartache

    Jay’s stomach rumbles as he traces his way through the familiar shadows of all the forgotten alleys and and unwatched side streets that make up his well-worn path to the Bargain Castle, but he’s too busy mentally cataloguing his haul for the day to pay it much mind. The whole point of going to see Mal is to filch some of her food, anyways, so his hunger isn’t more pressing than making sure he has a decent enough score to dodge another shouting match with his dad.

    He counts his acquisitions by the sounds of their clinks in his pockets, by the weight and feel of them where they press against his skin in any place he’d found to tuck them, trying to gauge if they’re enough.

    A charm bracelet he’d snagged off of one of the step-granddaughters from school—with enough polishing and a gullible enough customer, they can probably pass the cheap metal off for real silver. A somewhat grimy tricorn hat he’d triumphantly snagged off of Harry Hook’s head before he even saw Jay coming, with a real, if somewhat battered, feather sticking to the brim—and Jafar can still be scary when he wants, so Harry will have no choice but to pay a decent price for it. (Unless someone else buys it before Harry can reclaim it, a concept Jay finds equally hilarious.) A chipped and battered teacup gilded with real gold leaf, the only gold Jay’s ever seen in his life, even if it’s almost entirely worn away—it’d be worth more in a set, or with at least half the gilding not rubbed and chipped off, but the only gold he knows of on the island has to be worth something, however little of it there is. About a dozen other almost-worthless trinkets and baubles.

    So, is that going to be enough for his dad? A vaguely shiny teacup isn’t exactly the nonexistent big score that his dad’s still looking for, but it’s his best find in a long, long time, so he guesses it’ll have to be enough.

    He’s so wrapped up in his appraisal of his day’s work that he doesn’t notice the shouting at first, not until he’s close enough to recognize the infuriated, venomous voice leaking through Mal’s cracked window on the balcony above as Maleficent’s. He stops in his tracks, a healthy dose of fear trickling through his veins before he slinks a little further into the shadows, even knowing that he’s already well out of the sight and awareness of the pissed off, malevolent fairy who rules the island. Anyone with even the smallest amount of self preservation skills would be eager to remain out of Maleficent’s focus when she’s fired up, and he’s been pretty damn good at keeping himself alive and unscathed for a pretty damn long time by now.

    Even straining his ears as hard as he can, he can’t make out any of what the tyrannical woman’s shouting, but he finds that he can just barely pick up on Mal’s voice as she tries to protest. Whatever’s going down between the mother and daughter just then, it sounds bad, and he’s always been more cautious than curious—this isn’t any of his business, and he doesn’t want any part in it. He can come back tomorrow morning to try to get her mind off of it, but before then? Count him out.

    Of course, no sooner does he decide that than the sound of Mal’s bedroom door slamming booms through the slightly opened window, and it’s not a moment later that Mal is suddenly shoving her window open and climbing out in a flurry of forceful, rough movements. Jay watches as her backlit silhouette half-stumbles to the parapet of her balcony in an apparent rush to put as much distance between herself and the argument as possible, slamming her hands down onto the stone and hanging her head.

    Jay worries his bottom lip between his teeth, weighing the odds that he’s missed his chance to bounce, and avoid this whole situation.

    But it’s not like Mal knows that he’s here, and he knows his skillset well enough to know that he can get just about anywhere without being spotted—anywhere including away from this highly awkward, messy scene. He edges a foot back the way he came, then starts another step away as he turns—

    The problem with his plan is, Jay wasn’t counting on how distracted seeing Mal like this—so completely opposite from cool and collected in a way that she doesn’t even get when she’s well and truly furious—would make him, and while he was counting on not being spotted, he wasn’t thinking hard enough about not being heard.

    All it takes is one movement that’s slightly too quick, and he finds himself wincing as the teacup in his pocket clinks against a tiny mint tin which clinks against a plastic brooch which clinks against the step-granddaughter’s charm bracelet—and when he freezes in place, they all take the opportunity to jangle together merrily.

    It’s a precise little chain reaction of fuck you, Jay, and he watches as Mal’s head snaps up and swivels to look towards the shadows in his direction. Well, shit. He’s officially in the awkward, messy scene now.

        “Jay?” she practically demands into the dark, and the choked, unsteady sound of her voice sends ice spiking into his veins—because Mal doesn’t sound like that, Mal never sounds like whatever the hell that is, so whatever just went down with her mom must have been bad. Really bad, and now she knows he’s here, so there’s no creeping back into the shadows to pretend he’d never seen or heard any of this. Unless she decides she was just hearing things—

    An impatient huff pierces the silence above him and cuts off his thought, and Mal’s voice is still uneven when she snaps, “Are you coming up or not?”

    Honestly, at this point, he doesn’t know why he ever expects to get away with anything when it comes to Mal; she knows him, and his habits, way too well. He reconsiders his option to slink back into the night and act like none of this ever happened—it’s not like she’d hold it against him; they’re rotten kids, the both of them, and she wouldn’t expect him to be invested in her situation right now any more than he’d expect her to be invested in a similar one of his.

    But he can’t keep the strain in her voice from echoing through his head, and an uncomfortable feeling tightens in his chest, and something about that feeling has him moving towards the Bargain Castle and, invested or not, reaching to scale the wall the same way he’s done at least a couple hundred times before, hunger completely forgotten. He’s already here and he’s already caught, he justifies, so this may as well happen.

    He’s swinging himself up over the parapet of her balcony with practiced ease in no time, and he tries his absolute hardest to not look as uncomfortable as he feels when he proceeds to lean back against the cool stone of the low wall. It’s quickly beginning to occur to him now that he’s up here that he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing here or what he thought he was going to do once he made his climb, and that he probably should have split when he had the chance.

    Mal’s facing away from him, her arms crossed as she looks out towards Auradon, and he can’t make out her expression in the dark as she takes noticeably unsteady breaths. Still though, he can tell she doesn’t have much intention of speaking first, which leaves this on him. He’s regretting a lot right now.

        “Sooo...” he tries lamely, hoping with some amount of desperation that he’ll find the rest of his sentence along the way. But as he opens his mouth to say who in the hell knows what, Mal turns to look at him, and the words die in his throat as the light from her window hits half of her face.

    She’s not exactly crying—he’s pretty sure if he caught Mal of all people actually crying it would be, like, The End Times or something—but her face is slightly blotchy and red, all the more noticeable for how pale she is, and her eyes are red-rimmed and so full it looks like it’s taking every single ounce of her willpower to keep tears from spilling over. Which, honestly, is, like, world-shakingly, pants-shittingly terrifying once it sinks in, because Mal is possibly the most infuriatingly, obstinately willful person he’s ever met, and if even her unending determination is barely enough to hold the tears back then he doesn’t even know what the world’s coming to.

    Forgetting in his shock that he’s supposed to be indifferent and detached right now, Jay gapes as he pushes off from the parapet and takes a step towards her. “Jeez, Mal, what the hell was all that with your mom about?” If it’s bad enough to turn the Mal he knows into this, he’s not sure he really even wants to know, but apparently the rest of him isn’t on the same page as his mind on this, because he can’t stop himself from asking.

        “The usual,” she tries to scoff as she turns away from the light again, but the sound is… off. Not right. And Jay can’t help the skeptical quirk to his eyebrow, because the usual absolutely does not result in this.

        “Yeah, so, I guess that’s why you’re—”

        “I mean,” Mal cuts him off, not even letting him finish expressing his doubt, “she’s always said I’m not evil enough to live up to her name, that’s not new, so, whatever.” (Her tone really doesn’t sound very convincing on the ‘whatever’ front.) “And it’s not like this is the first time she’s told me she thinks I’m turning out weak and soft, so, you know, I’m used to that.” (Except it’s never affected her like this before.) “And, I mean, I’ve always known she finds me a huge disappointment, because it’s not like she’s above reminding me at every turn that at my age she was out raging hell and the worst I’ve managed is graffiti and to fuck up the one right thing I ever did with an act of kindness, so I know that, I have known that, it’s fine.” (It absolutely does not sound fine.)

    Jay keeps his eyes trained on her face even though he can’t make it out in the darkness, working his jaw as he tries to piece together what exactly has Mal in this state and—well, why he even cares. Not that he does care. It’s not like villains do that sort of thing.

    Even villains who couldn’t bring themselves to steal from their friends when it mattered. Even villains whose friends did selfless things to save each other. Those were just flukes, or whatever.

    Mal uncrosses her arms and lays her palms against the parapet again, Jay watching her every movement as she does. “It’s just time to grow the fuck up, I guess. I thought—I told myself, I mean, despite everything she said, her curse couldn’t hurt me. So that meant—I’d proven myself, even if I didn’t bring the scepter back. I just had to wait for her to see that I had.”

    He hears her catch a sharp breath that shouldn’t feel like it makes something clamp around his heart but it does, before she leans her head back and turns her gaze skyward. Her voice gets quiet and it shakes and the whole thing makes him uneasy. “Fuck, I was so stupid. Mom’s never going to see past my dad and she’s never going to see past what I did to get the scepter and she’s never going to see me and it shouldn’t matter because I know what touching the scepter proved but I just—I just thought—if I didn’t give up and I gave it some time—”

    Her voice catches suddenly as she whirls on him—he doesn’t remember closing this much distance, when the hell did he get so close to her?—and when the light catches her face he sees her eyes are wide both in alarm and accusation. Like she’d forgotten he was here, almost, and she’s blaming him for the fact that she told him so much. And he’s… completely at a loss.

        “Mal,” he starts, because… because he can’t just say nothing. He doesn’t know what he can tell her, because Jay’s never been like Mal—he’s always been a realist and maybe a bit of a pessimist and he’s always known that they were never going to be enough for their delusional parents and he’s made his peace with it. He can’t tell her she just needs more time for her mom to come around, because, sure, villain kids lie through their teeth about a lot of things, but not to make someone feel better.

    He shakes his head. If lying will make her feel better right now, then he’ll just… have to tell the truth. “Whatever she said, it’s crap, and you know it.”

        “Yeah,” Mal scoffs doubtfully, her gaze tracking upwards and away from his face, and her eyes are less watery, if only barely. “Sure.”

        “I’m serious, Mal,” he insists, and if his tone is colored with annoyance, it’s only because he doesn’t think she’s above this, he knows it. Mal’s never given a shit what anyone else thinks. “You’re the scummiest person I know. And not by a little bit.”

    She opens her mouth like she’s going to argue, and he interrupts her with a pointed look. “You literally locked Evie in a closet full of live bear traps because of a grudge from when you were six. You would have beat the shit out of our principal if Evie hadn’t stopped you. You have people running scared at school and groveling at your feet on the streets, and if you told someone to jump off a cliff, they’d be too scared of you not to do it.” He barely feels like he’s exaggerating there. “You’re mean, Mal. You’re awful. You’re bad news, and everyone knows it. If your mom doesn’t think you’re every bit as vicious and evil as she is, it’s only because she’s never seen you in action. So fuck her, and fuck whatever she said to you.”

    And… that’s it. That’s his big speech. That’s all he’s got to say, it’s all he’s going to say, and now it’s up to Mal to take it or leave it.

    He watches as her brow furrows and her mouth falls open like she’s going to say something, but then she falters, and her mouth snaps shut again. She works her jaw for a moment, staring at him with her eyebrows drawn low, before she finally seems to find any words at all. “Why…” Her voice fails her, and it’s another couple moments of her averting her gaze before she seems to be able to meet his eyes and try again.

        “Why are you being so...” She gestures vaguely as she trails off, because she can’t exactly finish the sentence with ‘nice.’ That’d be about the worst thing to say to someone on this island, and aside from that, describing to someone in detail all the ways that they’re a shitty person isn’t exactly something you can describe as nice. Just another reason he never wants to live in Auradon, where the goal is to be nice to everyone.

    Her hand falls back down to her side after her gesture, and she looks away, towards her room, her mouth drawing into a frown, and Jay finds himself coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that he probably has to answer. Why is he doing any of this? Saying any of this?

        “Because...” His brow slowly furrows and he’s not sure where he’s going with this. He can’t say he cares, because he shouldn’t. Doesn’t, not really. Isle kids don’t care about each other. And she wouldn’t want to hear it if he did. But… he has to say something, and even if he’s not sure of the whole truth, he may as well not start lying now.

        “I mean, Mal, we’re still basically kids, and you’ve already got everyone our age and half the people older than us wrapped around your finger and scrambling to stay out of your way and doing whatever it takes to avoid having you pissed at them. It’s obvious you’re gonna be running this joint some day, just as ruthlessly as your mom does.” She’s still looking away from him, so he lifts a hand to her shoulder—just to make her look at him, that’s all—and a smirk tugs at the corner of his lips as he continues, “And I’m smart enough to know I should be on your good side when that happens.”

    Mal stares at him, her expression hard and her lips pressed together tightly, and he meets her gaze because he doesn’t really have that much choice; he’s already gotten himself into this mess. Her eyes trace over his face like she’s searching for something, but he has no idea what it is, and he has no idea why some part of him is actually kind of terrified she might find it, whatever it might be. It’s all he can do to hold onto his flippant, self-satisfied expression instead of squirming under her gaze.

    Finally, though, Mal’s shoulders slump and her expression softens before it crumples into something that just looks resigned and tired. She crosses her arms and lets her head drop forwards until her forehead hits his chest with a muffled thump, and Jay blinks, honestly thrown as his smirk finally fades and something more confused takes over his expression.

    It becomes apparent after a moment or two that Mal’s… not moving any time soon, and his hand is still resting on her shoulder, and he’s not really sure why he does it, but after a brief internal debate he decidedly feels like he lost, he hesitantly slides his hand around to her back.

    And when she doesn’t pull away or try to shrug him off, he wraps his other arm around her, too, trying to figure out why doing that feels more like wrapping his arms around a trenchcoat stuffed with venomous snakes than around his partner in crime. But vague terror or not, Mal barely moves, and she doesn’t seem to be particularly bothered by this, so… he tightens his arms around her with a fair amount of uncertainty, because this entire night has already been weird as hell, so this might as well happen, right?

    And he tries not to focus on the fact that them standing here like this with her forehead pressed to his chest and his hands resting on her back feels a lot like comforting her, because villain kids don’t comfort each other. Or on the fact that the uncomfortable tugging feeling in his chest as her hair tickles his chin feels a lot like empathizing, because villain kids don’t empathize with each other.

    The problem is, when he does force his focus away from those thoughts, there’s not a lot left to distract himself with. Just the fact that he can’t stop thinking about what it’d feel like if he pulled her even closer, and moved his hand up to thread through her hair, and tucked the side of his face against the top of her head, and—and he’s gotta stop.

    But that’s just his inner flirt thinking these things, right? It’s not like he actually wants to do any of that with Mal. He’s always gotten his kicks from stealing hearts, it’s practically a hobby, so really, he’d be thinking this kind of garbage with any girl if they were standing this close. It’s not because it’s Mal, and it’s not because he really wants to.

    Right?

[libidomechanica]

Untitled Composition # 5079

The land, this transparent is love must always underfoot, this days, jovial and tarn by tarn expunge the stones i th street with garrulous ease and dies out from the Thespian springs

sit smiling rose; but that euer he begot such a gracious room in which I originally am how shall try

that which doth preserve it less; i’m so entrance, and I thy shepheardes all: which that ever unreveal’d, nor pass these action; and sport I sought;

with whom I knew each fulfil yours, forsook for love’s sake only. Canst thou make a noonday night, I meant nothing I did see, which maids on the Lip of Youth, ere they die at their pride at all.

Ah wretch, into the Maker’s praise thine own bait: that fills the person to go with thee. The words to seyn, he hadde he me, and groups understonde,

baar I stifly myne olde fool, and fancy I awoke; and vouches both in an early immortal, those thou live in this world alyve is. And the volleying rain Unravelled merrily, to pardon me for at need’st no such a grace may make the treasured fragrant insect, rove; o let me stately Virgil cold,

as Horace, or be drawn in Roman scowls, and take the name and beat: fair Nine, forsook hire eke. Love bade me that leap in fiery ringlets from languor and serene of shame

ye wommenes loven ay. To sing my sack of groceries, I dash for them to safely cross’d the day spending never miss’d. That afterward repented me —

my dames full easy slide: wherewith tower’d thee! He found? Ah, my Perilla! The tap is dripping peaceful slumbers of the stars;

therefore the fetid wombs of flowery lap of legends old. All garlanded, that giu’st no such a Bellibone, more sweetness and this Somonour, “and I confess, mine ear, The soul transpire

and all we have drawn by youre praktike. fix’d on the leagues of life: and he scarce believ’d the dying in his Almagestee, so blind turtle on my nece, which, thou dasht? Beauty’s effect.”

[anneblackthornofficial]

Book Preview!

Hello, readers! As the release of my book Daughter of Secrets is only 9 days away, I thought I would give you a glimpse into the first few pages of the book! I have included the prologue and a bit of chapter one so you can get a taste of the story. You can buy Daughter of Secrets on Amazon here!

Prologue:

The power of knowing a secret is often forgotten in the relief of sharing it. That secret becomes an entirely new creature when given to someone else. The new holder of the secret may not keep it, but use it for any imaginable purpose. The secret can transform into a battle-hammer, hefted carelessly to leave destruction in its wake. It can be wielded like a dagger in the dark, slipping between its former keeper’s ribs with silent, deadly accuracy. It can become a brick wall, fear acting as the mortar between each brick in order to keep the world safely sealed away.

My own secret had been a burden for too long, its weight both alarmingly new and wearily familiar. That secret had transformed me. Shaped me from the carefree girl into the wary, withdrawn, sharp young woman I was now. The woman who couldn’t smile at the people in the streets. The woman who hid her face when the royal guards made their rounds. The woman who did not dare to speak her own name, for fear of alerting others to her secret.

For the past four years, I had lived in constant fear of someone recognizing my secret. Anything about me could give it away—it was so deeply ingrained in me, and so thinly veiled, that I was surprised no one had found me out. In the end, my fears were worthless. I was my own undoing.

Part I: Trinity Raffolk of Farmor

       Chapter 1

The day had dawned bright and crisp, the sun glinting on the waves of the Galbine Sea in the distance. The city of Farmor was cheery, bustling with the gossip of the week which I caught in snatches as I walked past. My basket of dried herbs and healing salves pressed with familiarity against the crook of my elbow, my list of addresses tucked between the clinking jars. I tried to make my deliveries early in the day so that those who needed their cures did not wait any longer than they needed to. I went to the docks first, where the elderly Captain Haedras waited on the deck of his ship for me.

“Beautiful day for a sail, lass,” he greeted me, looking at the sky expansively, his hand resting above his brow to shield the sun’s light.

“It is,” I agreed easily, handing over his chamomile and a vial of my mother’s famous ache-curing salve. “Though you’ll have to enjoy the sea for me. I’m staying on land today.”

Captain Haedras laughed at my teasing smile. “We both know the sea’s not your calling, lass, but I like ye anyway.”

I softened my teasing tone with a friendly grin. “Thank you ever so much, Captain. Mother says don’t forget to use the salve twice daily.”

He tipped his grubby hat with a gallantry. “Tell yer mum I’ll not likely forget. I’m not as decrepit as I look.” He winked merrily, and waved goodbye as I left for my next delivery. I found Mrs. Herrim’s home with ease. She was round with child, her cheeks ruddy and her eyes sunken with exhaustion. Her eldest son had been down with a cold for almost a week, and he made no secret of his discomfort.

“Thank you, dear,” she effused as I offered the vial of throat-easing tonic she had ordered. “I’ve not slept a wink since he started coughing, and the girls have been crying almost as often as he has.”

I could see her twin daughters through the open doorway, both red-eyed with recent tears, their dark curls mussed and their clothing dirty. My heart went out to the family, especially their mother. Her husband would be away on a trade ship for another month still, and she plainly had more work than she could do herself. I reached into the basket for the spare mixes of tea I always kept handy. “This should help all of you sleep better. Steep it for a few minutes in hot water, add some honey, and drink it with dinner. You’ll sleep like stones,” I said, wishing I could give her more. “No charge.”

Mrs. Herrim looked close to tears. “That will be a relief, I’m sure. Let me get the coins I owe you.” She disappeared into her home before returning with a handful of silvers. I left her to her children, and wondered as I walked away what it would be like to have siblings. I shook my head at the thought. It was not a new one, but nothing would be solved by the wondering. My mother had never given me siblings, and she had good reasons. I had grown up with the ache for more family than just my mother, and it still lingered, even though I understood my mother’s reasons now that I was older.

I tried to push the thought aside as I finished my rounds quickly, returning to my mother’s shop with my basket jangling hollowly with the day’s payments.

“I’m back,” I announced as I swung open the herb shop’s door, knowing my mother was in the storeroom behind the counter working on her latest perfume experiment.

“How was the Captain?” She called absently.

“He very much appreciated your reminder,” I said, smiling wryly to myself, but my mother was too distracted by her work to notice my tone.

“Good, good,” she mumbled, then popped her head through the storeroom doorway. “Will you come smell this? I can’t decide if it’s mysterious or utterly distasteful.”

I passed the counter and slipped into the storeroom, where my mother held out one of her glass vials, this one half full of a cloudy blue liquid. I took a sniff and wrinkled my nose. “It’s a little potent, don’t you think?” I said, trying not to cough.

My mother sighed. “I can dilute it. Rosewater might help.”

I nodded and swallowed the tickle in my throat. “I think it might. You should have seen Mrs. Herrim today. She looked exhausted. Said her oldest wouldn’t stop coughing, and her family couldn’t sleep.”

“Hmm. Hold this,” my mother held out an empty vial and poured a bit of the blue mixture in. “Yes, she sent me that message last night, so I arranged for Meredith to visit her today with a meal.” She tucked a stray blonde curl behind her ear before pouring a bit of rosewater into the vial I held. “Smell that, tell me if it’s better.”

I took a cautious sniff, and twisted my lips. “Definitely better. But I think it could”—

The shop door slamming interrupted my statement, and I handed my mother the vial to see to the customer. I poked my head out of the storeroom to see who it was, and immediately ducked out of the doorway when I saw the red and silver uniform. “Mother,” I whispered, as though my voice would give me away, “it’s a palace soldier. You see to him and I’ll clean up in here.”

Her face was serene, but her eyes were a bit too wide, as she handed the vial back to me and left the storeroom. I could hear her using her customer voice, a tone higher and sweeter than usual, as I tried to still my shaking hands and fluttering stomach. I leaned on the wooden counter, my head bowed. It wasn’t the first time a soldier had entered this shop. I should have been used to it. The instant panic was self-preservation as much as it was habit, though I desperately wanted to stop being afraid. I wanted a life where I didn’t have to hide, or keep my conversations short, but I could not leave my secret behind so easily. I wore it in plain sight, where anyone could observe it or ignore it.

Mother returned to the storeroom with a sigh, the lines of pity etched deeply into the corners of her eyes. She leaned on the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron as she said, “I’m sorry I gave you this life.”

I shook my head mutely.

“You deserve better than having to hide your face at every turn. You deserve more than a life keeping my secret.”

She always said so after something like this happened, but she always refused to leave the King’s City. Farmor was her home, she would say. It was where she could earn her money, it was where she felt happiest. The truth was that she felt closest to her true love here, even though he’d left us behind and broken her heart. Some of it I understood. After all, I had grown up here. This city, with its fishy smells and noisy sailors living in the shadow of the king’s castle, was all I had ever known. But I always wondered what it would be like to leave, to find safety in a strange place where my face was mine alone.

I would never speak that thought aloud, though. It was the one thing my mother was unwilling to give me, as much as she might want to. In this, she always came first. I thought that maybe she couldn’t help it.

My mother studied me before saying, “I want you to be happy, Trinity. You deserve time with your friends. Some freedom to find a man, maybe have a family of your own.”

It was a tempting dream, but I knew I would not find it here in Farmor. Maybe I would not find it even in all of Harlorisi. “I know, mother,” I said, and I hugged her to keep her from seeing the pain that I could not keep from my expression. I was shackled here by my love for my mother, by my past, but my secret constantly pressed me away. I was living on the edges of Farmor, both a prisoner and a gatekeeper.

“I think I’m going to take a walk,” I said as I pulled away. “I’ll be back later.”

I kept my back to my mother as I swung my cloak over my shoulders, grabbed a few coins, and left. My mother did not say a word, though I knew she wanted to.

I went back to the docks, which were empty this time of day. Most of the ships had left for the day, or had yet to arrive, and the whining cries of seagulls were the loudest sounds above the dull roar of the waves. I stayed as long as I could, finding solace in the solitude, enjoying the anonymity of a public place.

As the day waxed on, the sun dimmed behind afternoon clouds. A cold front brought winds that snapped my braid behind me. By the time the sun hovered over the horizon, threatening to dip beneath the waves and end the day, I was ready to return home. The port had begun to liven up again, boats docking with their precious cargo and paying passengers. I wandered back into the city to find the town crier already making his rounds. He drew the attention of the city’s wanderers with a singularly boisterous announcement.

“By order of King Aebert Ceoleth the Third of Harlorisi, coronation of his son and heir, Crown Prince Bastian Alecsander, will commence three days hence. Public celebration and festivities shall be held in the town square,” he cried, strutting the street, holding a royal document aloft. It was signed by the King himself, and the royal crest was displayed proudly beneath the signature.

If the crier had not held that document up for all to see, I might have been unbothered by the announcement. I could have kept my head down, kept walking, and made it home to my mother for a warm meal next to the fireplace. After all, the abdication had been expected for the past few months. It was Harlorisian tradition to make the transition from one ruler to the next as smooth as possible, allowing the former king to advise the new king during the first, most sensitive years of his rule. As it was, the sight of the King’s signature was a blow to my gut. The air left my lungs with a quiet grunt, and I stood, frozen, in the cobbled street.

Most of the townspeople were either on their way home, or home already, as I should have been. When I closed my eyes, trying to catch my breath again, the slap of footsteps against stone was muffled and slow, deadened by well-worn shoes and the exhaustion of a long day. The sound gave me something to fix on while my brain caught up with my lungs.

I couldn’t go home, I realized as I opened my eyes. I couldn’t walk up the stairs behind the shop, open the door, and make small talk with my mother over a meal as if nothing was wrong. The idea left a bitter taste in my mouth. I took stock of where I was, realizing that my last delivery of the day had left me fairly close to a tavern I had often frequented with my friend Merta. Well, until she had married the brawny owner. Now, she spent all her time there, while I busied myself with the work of my mother’s shop.

I turned so that I faced the tavern, the painted sign that read Portly Pelican swinging welcomingly over the door. The windows gleamed yellow with the light of candles and a hearth, promising an ease to the chill fog that crept over the streets as the sun set. The door swung open behind a customer, offering a glimpse of the hungry bachelors, soldiers, and sailors that sought a meal and a hearty mug of ale at the tavern’s tables. It buzzed quietly, but it was not quite busy yet. I could go in, buy some stew and an ale with the spare coin from my deliveries, and set my thoughts to rights before going home.

Feeling better after making a plan, I set off toward the tavern with a firm stride. I ducked into the doorway, shaking my cloak free of dust and moisture before I hung it on a wooden pelican’s gaping beak, one of the many such carvings that served as hooks. Keeping my head down, I made my way to an empty table against the wall and took a seat.

Merta wasted no time before making her way to me. She greeted me with a hearty smile as she leaned on my table. She looked well; her cheeks were as round as ever, her brown eyes clear and bright.

“It’s been too long since I saw you here!” She said, her tone edging on reprimanding, though her smile never wavered.

I shrugged. “The shop has been busy lately,” I offered as an excuse. “But you might see me more often if you ever left your tavern.” I softened my teasing tone with a knowing glance at her husband, who was wiping down the bar with a rag.

She glanced back at him with flushed cheeks, her smile growing. “You may be right, but I rather like my place here,” she said. Almost two years of marriage, and she still acted like a newlywed. I smiled, ignoring the ache in my chest at the sight and refusing to analyze it.

“How have you been? How is”—

Her questions were cut off by her husband calling her name, waving for her. She held up a hand to him, sighed, and turned back to me. “All right, I’m sure you came here for more than just my idle chatter. The usual?”

I nodded, leaning back in my seat. It always surprised me how easily she slipped into familiarity with me, even after all I had done to create distance between us.

She was about to turn away, but something in my expression must have caught her eye. She raised a thin eyebrow and looked at me askance. “You look like you could use something stronger than ale tonight, my friend.”

My smile felt wan on my lips. “Then I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

She smiled and left to see to her husband. It was a few moments before she returned to my table with my stew and some sharp-smelling wine. I thanked her and was about to tuck into my meal when she said, “I hope that you know… you can talk to me about anything, yeah?”

I studied her, surprised at the serious expression on her face. Between the two of us, she had always been the quickest to laugh, the easiest to charm, the most willing to smile. It was what had drawn me to her when we were children playing in the streets.

“I know that,” I said, though I knew I would never put the burden of my own secret on her shoulders. She didn’t deserve that.

Merta looked as if she were about to say something else, but a man at the bar hailed her, raising his mug and crying for a refill. She offered me a wincing smile and squeezed my shoulder before returning to her duties.

I took a testing sip of the wine as she walked away, wrinkling my nose as I considered it. The wine’s fruity taste was countered with the tang of strong alcohol, and I wondered briefly if Merta had added something to the tavern’s usual wine. Eventually, as I ate and sipped, I decided I didn’t mind either way. The warmth of the alcohol reached into my muscles and relaxed them one by one. Another waitress came by intermittently and refilled my drink before it was ever empty. As a result, I drank more than I should have as I watched the Portly Pelican grow ever busier with the influx of thirsty sailors and their hungry passengers. One of them had even brought an accordion with him, and was playing familiar folk songs as his friends ate their meals.

I knew my mother would worry about me. I was out far later than I usually was. But that worry seemed blearily distant as I peered into my wine. I would go home soon enough, I decided, but I would listen to one more song first. The music mingled with the quiet buzz of conversation in a way that made me feel comfortably disguised. Nearly every table was occupied now, soldiers and sailors alike mingling over good food and drink. People were starting to take seats at tables with strangers, it was so full.

This happened often enough, I knew, but usually I left before the Pelican got this busy. So when a blond-headed stranger sat opposite me at my table and offered me smile, I was caught distinctly off-guard. I searched for Merta in the crowded room, but she had either retired for the night or was hidden away in the kitchen preparing food. They had lost their cook a few months ago, and had not since found a new one. For lack of a familiar face, and for the stubbornness that would not let me abandon my seat at the sight of a stranger, I took stock of the man as he ate his meal.

He wore no visible weapons, tattoos, or piercings, so he was likely not a sailor. He did not wear the uniform or regalia of a soldier. His clothes were well-worn and faintly dusty, as though he had been traveling for a long while, but otherwise they were of good quality. His ice-blue eyes were bloodshot with exhaustion, and his fair skin was tinged red, as if he had been in the sun. A traveler from a distant land, then. A stranger I would likely never see again.

As I studied him, I remembered hearing once that there was a sort of comfort in telling secrets to strangers. As if the fact that they were strangers, and that fact alone, made the secret powerless in their hands. In the relaxed bleariness of the wine, the idea appealed to me. This man looked to be a stranger that was safe enough, and I had a secret that weighed heavy upon me. I was tired, exhausted by the long day coupled with my earlier shock, and vaguely content with the alcohol in my veins.

I wanted to free my secret from its cage in my chest. I had kept it earnestly, obsessively, over the past four years, and I wondered what it would feel like to speak it out loud just once. This wasn’t the first time I had wondered it, but it was the first time I had indulged the thought and not shoved it away immediately. The wondering was heavier this time, the weight of the secret pressing down on me insistently.

My eyes drifted across the tavern, seeking Merta but not seeing her. Perhaps I should have told her my secret when she asked earlier. Perhaps I should have told her four years ago, when I first learned it. Now, I feared sharing it with her would change things irrevocably between us. I couldn’t bear that, not after the changes I had gone through in the past four years. But a stranger—I would likely never see this man again. There was nothing to change, nothing to sever between us. What could be the harm in telling this traveler? I could simply say what I wished, take my leave, and taste the brief freedom of having my secret out in the open before resuming my life of secrecy.

As the tavern buzzed around us, I made a decision, and pushed my wine aside.

“My name is Trinity,” I told the stranger, who looked startled to hear me speak. He set down his spoon and opened his mouth as if to introduce himself, but I shook my head and spoke on. “I am the daughter of the local herbalist,” I said. “Mother dabbles in perfumes as well as healing herbs, but she isn’t quite willing to sell the perfumes yet.”

I spoke deliberately, and the stranger set his meal aside as he listened. Perhaps that should have been a warning sign to me, but I pressed on. In the confused state of my exhaustion and the forced relaxation of the wine, I would not give up on this idea of confessing to a stranger. Besides, the tavern’s din of drinking songs and idle chatter disguised my words to any other listening ears.

“Mother married young, but she was widowed by the age of twenty eight. Her husband’s life was short, but her love for him was even shorter. She always did tell me that the fire of passion is no basis for a stable relationship,” I said, smiling. “When he died, she took over her husband’s herb shop. It was in that shop, the one she and I still live right above, that she met my father.”

The man’s blond brows raised. He looked as if he wanted to ask a question, but he left it unspoken. I answered it anyway.

“I’m not a legitimate child,” I explained detachedly. “My mother never married my father, but they had a whirlwind affair that resulted in me. It ended before I was born, even before my mother knew she was pregnant. He left her when his son and heir was born, you see,” I went on. “After all, the King must be quite visibly present for such events, and by the time all the ceremonies and celebrations were over, he formed a newfound dedication to his wife.” I scoffed. “Likely he just found contentment in having a male heir to the throne.”

I paused, studying the stranger’s utterly shocked expression. “Oh,” I grinned wryly, “I suppose I should have started with that. This blasted wine,” I mused, peering into the cup before I fixed my eyes on the stranger.

“I am the bastard daughter of King Aebert Ceoleth the Third.”

Buy Daughter of Secrets today!

Anne Blackthorn © 2018

[im-fairly-whitty]

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernesto Strikes Back: A Coco Fan Fiction

[Part 1: Fallen]  [Part 2: Anger]  [Part 3:Cursed]  [Part 4: Doubt]

Part 5: Remembering

Ernesto should have remembered the pine tree.

There was no reason for him not to remember it. Subconsciously he must have known it would be there, or maybe his mind had been hoping the old thing had died in the last hundred years since he’d seen it last.

But there it was, standing tall and dense in the moonlight, right by the canal where it had always been.

He walked to the canal to peer over the edge, the flowing water below was glossy black, any moonlight blocked by the desert pine behind them.

If you’re a man you’ll do the job right.

Ernesto winced, his father’s words echoing in his head for the first time in years as he watched the water.

Don’t you dare come back until they’re dead, I’m not going to have you growing up soft.

Something inside Ernesto felt like it was slowly caving in on itself as he crouched down, staring at the river.

He’d been fourteen when his father had decided that no son of his was going to spend his life writing worthless songs no one would ever want to listen to. Ernesto was going to grow up to take over the family business of being drunk and raising fighting dogs, or else he wasn’t going to grow up at all. Despite his mother’s hesitant pleas, his father had made a mission of finding whatever made Ernesto the most uncomfortable, and then making him do it.

And one day that mission had brought Ernesto to this very canal. A stray dog had had a litter of puppies behind their shed and Ernesto’s father had swept them into a sack as soon as he’d found them. He’d handed the bag to Ernesto and ordered him to drown them in the canal. To get rid of the vermin. After all, they’d never bring him any gain, meaning they should be put out of the way.

A slap on the side of his face had gotten Ernesto moving, and before he knew it he was standing by the pine tree. Holding the bag over the running water on a night as dark as this one.

And he hadn’t done it. He’d wiped away his tears, opened the bag and gently taken out all three of the young, trembling chihuahuas from inside. All of them had fit in his two hands, they’d been so small. Holding them to his chest he’d taken the long way back home, going door to door on the far side of town until all three puppies had found good homes. It was that night that he'd gone to his childhood friend's house to tell Hector that he'd changed his mind, that he really did want to grow and play music together after all like they'd always dreamed.

“Is there something in the water?” Miguel asked, stepping closer to try and see what Ernesto was looking at.

The boy’s foot stepped on a loose edge before Ernesto could warn him back and the ledge crumbled under him. Ernesto lunged for the boy as he fell, summoning just enough anger in time to catch him and fling him back onto safe ground, away from the black rushing water below.

Both of them stared at each other. The boy’s breath was coming fast from the close save.

No. Not drowning. Not last year at his mansion’s pool, not tonight at the canal. No one was ever going to drown on Ernesto’s watch. He’d made that choice a long time ago.

So what did that say about him now? What would his fourteen-year-old self think of him now?

Ernesto stood, but the thought followed him. He’d always been able to be a different person here at the pine tree than he was at home. It had been where he’d hid when his father was especially drunk, where he could write his no good songs and pretend that one day he’d be a great man who didn't have to listen to anyone. A man with a different name, a man with a different life.

He looked at the base of the pine tree, remembering the last time he’d visited, back when he’d been alive. A coldness washed up him from its direction.

“I, I can see you...” Miguel gasped. He was still sitting on the dirt, looking almost entirely translucent now. “Señor De la Cruz?”

Ernesto looked at him, feeling achingly tired at the familiar horror on the boy’s face. Miguel had received his family’s blessing right after Ernesto had been mauled, three long days before anyone had bothered to shift the second bell aside. Had Miguel ever once stopped to think about what had happened to the man he’d so thoroughly destroyed? Or had he merrily gone back to his life without a second thought?

“Go to that tree and dig at the base.” Ernesto ordered, sounding as deadly serious as he could. “There should be a metal tin several inches down.”

Miguel looked scared, but didn’t bolt. Which was too bad, the short chase might have brought back the fire that was starting to flag within Ernesto. Too many cold memories were freezing it out.

The boy was wide-eyed, but nodded, keeping an eye on Ernesto as he picked up a nearby stick and started to pry at the dirt at the base of the tree, scraping it aside as best he could in the dark.

Ernesto looked out over the mostly flat surroundings, the trees were just sparse enough to give him a view of the town. A flash of movement caught his eye and he peered far back down the path they’d come up. Creeping through the trees and brush, barely visible, was the glow of an alebrije. A big one.

“Do you have it yet?” Ernesto barked.

“Yes, I think so.”

Miguel wiped away another layer of dirt to show a rusted tin square at the bottom of the small hole he’d scraped out. He dug his glowing fingertips at the edges and carefully pried the tin box out of the ground. He tried handing it to Ernesto, but Ernesto’s hand passed right through it.

“Carry it and follow me.” Ernesto ordered.

“Señor De la Cruz,” Miguel held the tin to his chest like it was a life preserver. “I want to go home, please.”

Ernesto looked at the boy for a long moment. Shivering and scared, Miguel looked anything but dangerous, anything but threatening.

What if Ernesto did leave him here? Call it off while he still could, leave the boy behind for family to find, let him go home.

Miguel would get a family blessing like last year, he would go home, he would be with his family, Hector would be with his family too. They all would be happy and together again, with their music and their guitars and their friends and reputations and what would happen to Ernesto?

Would Ernesto have a mansion, a home, a house, any semblance of a comfortable dwelling to go back to? Would he have a loving family or even a single friend to be with? Would Ernesto, the fallen star, the disgraced legend, De la Cruz, have anything to look back on but tarnished memories?

Would Ernesto have anything, anything, to look forward to but the inside of a cold jail cell in the land of the dead? Scratching out a tally of the passing months on the walls for hundreds, maybe even a thousand years, until the day when history books would finally stop telling the fantastic tale of the murderous musician. The day that he would be glad, when he would rejoice as a piteous wreck to finally yellow and flake away on a passing breeze as he was finally forgotten for good. The day that he would finally be able to leave behind the smoldering ruin that had been a perfectly perfect paradise, to merge with whatever oblivion lay beyond the second death.

Ernesto heard shouts in the distance, he looked up and saw that the alebrije light in the trees was moving faster. The heat inside him was gone for good now, replaced by a paralyzing hollow coldness that felt oddly familiar, like it had been lurking in the edges of his vision his whole life.

Yes, he could leave Miguel behind, but that would mean leaving behind the one blasted thing he still had any semblance of power over, the last claim he had to anything worthwhile in either of the realms.

This was the last choice he would ever make. Once he let go of Miguel, dead or alive, his life and afterlife would come to a close, deciding his fate permanently for the rest of his existence. But as long as he still had Miguel alive, this last choice was still open to him, staving off the inevitable for just another minute, just a little bit longer before it all came crashing down for good.

It was a terrible feeling, everything inside him felt sick, but it was the only feeling at all left in Ernesto, and he couldn’t bear trying to let it go.

Perhaps Miguel saw something dark settle over Ernesto, because he took another step back.

Ernesto pointed down the path leading back to the town. “Get moving.” His voice sounded more dead than he was.

Miguel silently obeyed, not daring to push back.

Ernesto followed silently, the orange glow the two of them put off faded under the harsh silver of the dappled moonlight slipping down between the trees. 

Where would they go now? Maybe it would poetic to “go home,” as Miguel had said.

Ernesto had no home, but he did remember the way back to the place his parents had lived, that he had actively avoided as soon as he was old enough, the place that he had disowned almost as soon as it had disowned him. Why not bring everything full circle.

Ahead of him Miguel looked like he was entirely cursed again, completely see-through, but must not have been since he was still able to hold onto the solid tin box. He had perhaps only minutes left in the land of the living.

And they would be his last, Ernesto had decided.

Last year Ernesto had everything to gain from killing Miguel. This year he had nothing to lose.

[Read Part 6: Empty]

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Follow me or #forwhomthebelltolls to get the next chapter as soon as I post it. :)  

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@nerdy-emo-royal-dad @elecmon @memberofthatonefandom

[robinswky490]

Farm Expert 17 PC what's new in the latest installment of the game

As a baby, made anyone forever dream of growing up up to become a farmer, waste your morning charging about the support yard with your own toy tractor with trying to see sheep in a regional field to bring back home with you? No, right me? Very never mind, even if it live the childhood ambition, Farm Expert 2017 provides the chance to own and go your very own farm! The experience is nicely varied, with you having to fully prepare fields before plants can be swelled, to ensuring you sell livestock or they grow very former with fail, that competition will undoubtedly increase the organisational skills.

Farm Expert 17's been hidden, grew and brought in by Silden and sold on the local produce market by PlayWay S.A.,FE17 certainly gain many initial appeal if you have a good simulation game. The game boasts some rather beneficial look as far as the weather is concerned, a suit soundtrack each time you fly in to your tractor with enough to do to hold people tiling away for hours on end.

However, these features are permitted behind with some unfortunate and persistent bugs, along with some rather horrendous restrictions and physics for the automobiles. And although it is very varied, it goes through from a lack of depth which could give you a little underwhelmed. There is and a multiplayer element for the sport, while getting this to actually production remains more akin to dark magic than computer games.

With no account to bring let's get right because of the nitty-gritty of what you can do from the entertainment. Because there is a good bit. Immediately before I properly start, I do first want to come orderly and point out that this became my head ever real farming sim game (unless I could count Stardew Valley?) so I want to move in advance with declare sorry for any really noob-like comments. Run about…

Setting up is very cool, after pack in you're satisfied with a menu asking to make a report which is only a theme of establishing a choose then leaving by near. FE17 bear a handful of means you can pick by including Free Roam and Multiplayer (I'll talk more about the multiplayer in a minute). For me, however, the first go-to area survived the Course. There's a bit of a language screen with approximately incorrect stretch and grammar, but when you move past that that all pretty simple. That worked out, but, show us almost ten minutes to understand how to help slow since I stupidly believed it was a simple WASD setup rather than having to press Z first in order to change direction. But behind these hiccups, I did find myself enjoying the game. There's something strangely satisfying about having to go through the motions of reversing up to a piece of equipment, problem this up, folding this left and then merrily tootling along to help your own ground designed for a being work.

After I had mastered the basics of truly pushing and farming, I jump right into work my own fully-fledged farm. You get several options to choose from, basically ranging from Easy to Hard. Naturally, as a whole amateur, I took the Cool solution. Thanks to our decision I started out with a great the lot of money and a serious healthy sum of procedures already in my possession, so I could push on with buying the main field, gathering a few crops and addressing work. I found myself rather enjoying our generation as a player, finally getting the objective of appeal a tractor.

Though, I slowly began to notice some issues. For beginners, the naming of the procedures is simply farmsimulator.eu/farming-simulator-2013-download/ not up to scratch, especially on the roads that you'd think will be even but for many ungodly reason affect your vehicles to push along constantly. The game and makes seem to factor in the improved weight of features which you hitch against your tractor, allowing you to increase by a lot the same rate as you usually would. After a while, I learned that the physics from the competition might result in some very horrendous cock-ups.

And later on, I too found out that the ground really got no impact on the swiftness of the vehicle, allowing you to charge full speed up high pile and go on your own mini-adventure…

So agreed, the real physics in the sport put great to be desired. But the actual gameplay is pretty varied. So if you don't want to just take in seed and gathering crops all the time, then no worries! You can begin animal husbandry with a few different choices for which animals to hold and ensuring and keep them fed as well as offering them for meat before they crash of childhood time. Or you may grow orchards to make your delicious fruit, having to fertilize and collect the crop yourself, and even have to lug the container to your truck! But maybe you do want to remain with fine old-fashioned crop farming, in which case you have to take your crops depending on the season, carefully cultivate fields properly and then make sure not to rush them over before more they'll be overcome!

There's also vehicle preservation and concentration to take in thought, so you have to soak up your tractor with gasoline to keep this getting, make sure that polite with innocent (as apparently, that is key for tractors?) as well as repair or strengthen that immediately with again to make life easier.

Pretty varied, just? Right. Unfortunately, this variety does not turn to power or order. So of course, you can increase the crops, care for creatures and grow fruit orchards. But there's no mixture in value in the looks, so there's no need to look around for better believe or trade value because every shop will give the same results. This lack of economy frankly lets down the entire treat. Your pets do have to food, but not any run or time away from their pens. You never also need to feed them yourself because something you buy gets automatically moved to the pencils with the pets somehow get admission for the food themselves. And with orchards, after vegetable and fertilizing them there's nobody else you really need to do until they're prepared to be choose. That lack of depth turns the game into new of your calendar watching experience.

You can hire a workforce to help you out, watching them start the production is vaguely interesting at first, but shortly loses its novelty. Other NPCs in the competition don't provide any relationship and basically, show to now look at and give the world a semblance of soul. Without success, I must tell.

There is too supposed to be a multiplayer side for the game, but lord only gets how we could in fact meet people. I've trawled many forums with further having related problems with no resolution forthcoming. Multiplayer is great that is added last minute, so perhaps it will be improved in the future?

The first thing I'd involvement is how the game does not really boast the most outstanding images, with some of the textures looking very awkward and a significant few popping issues going on. But I'd believe the vehicles looked very decent generally, and the weather effects were reasonably well done. There's something oddly fascinating about watching puddles found with a field while it's raining.

It also includes several terra-forming effects as well, so when you're making the take some of the machines you use actually kind trenches and other alterations in the earth, that changes how your car may need over them, that is pretty clever. And by what I understand from complete a little of delivering, anything which doesn't take place now Farming Simulator activity or different competitors. Character types are attractive plain and forgettable, but in addition to the useless NPCs, there's not really enough characters around to take much notice.

I myself acquired the soundtrack really enjoyable. There was something mildly entertaining about the music starting up each time you flew into the tractor. The fact the firm of your own engine changes counting at whether your inside or outside the car was quite neat too. However, once you detected the cycling sound cause, that begins to become a bit annoying. And, when you got out of the tractor the figure would for some reason believe they were start also brand the right sound. As well as that a handful of the vehicles which allowed absolutely no doors still played the door closing sound each time you got off. A complaint for me, but still a bug.

Due to our lack of exposure to previous farming sim games, I found myself enjoying Farm Expert 17 at first, but the moment I had partaken to all the changed tasks I found myself getting bored really fast. And eventually a number of the mistake may confirm to be quite frustrating. If that contest was a bit more cleaned and contained about extent added to that, i would surely charge this higher. The multiplayer certainly feels tacked going on with the full experience only becomes somewhat of a drag eventually.

[montgomerylvbe010-blog]

I'm talking about the racing game Farm Expert 2017 Free

As a child, did you actually dream of extending up to become a farmer, spending the period charging near your rear yard with the toy tractor and trying to capture sheep in the nearby field to bring home with you? No, right us? Anyway never mind, even when that became the childhood ambition, Farm Expert 17 provides the opportunity to held also process the very own farm! The sport is nicely varied, with you having to fully prepare fields before plants can be extended, to ensuring you go livestock or they receive too older and fail, this activity will undoubtedly boost your organisational skills.

Farm Expert 2017's been buried, cultivated and produced by Silden and sold on the local produce market with PlayWay S.A.,FE17 definitely gives a few initial appeal for those who have a good simulation game. The game boasts some fairly clear impression as far as the weather is concerned, a right soundtrack when you hop in your tractor and plenty of to do and keep you tiling away for hours on end.

However, all these pieces are allowed overcome next to certain unfortunate and chronic bugs, together with some fairly horrendous curb and physics for the automobiles. And it is very varied, it goes through from the lack of depth which could leave a little underwhelmed. There is besides a multiplayer side to the game, though moving this to run remains much more akin to brown magic than computer games.

With no tale to talk about let's walk right into the nitty-gritty of what you can do from the entertainment. Since there is quite a bit. Now earlier I right start, I first want to come clean up then influence that was the primary ever really farming sim game (unless I could count Stardew Valley?) so I just want to step early then articulate sorry for any really noob-like comments. Push with…

Setting up is rather cool, after pack in you're satisfied with a menu asking to produce a report which is just a material of making a brand then go away from there. FE17 control a couple of modes you can choose from entering Free Journey and Multiplayer (I'll speak more about the multiplayer in a time). For me, however, the first go-to space lived the Article. There's somewhat of the language screen with some incorrect period and grammar, but after you move history to that all pretty straightforward. It worked out, still, carry everyone almost twenty seconds to figure out the way to help repeal since I stupidly thought it was a clean WASD setup rather than having to press Z first in order to change course. But following these hiccups, I did get myself enjoying the game. There's something strangely satisfying about having to undergo the motions of reversing up to a piece of equipment, hitching it in place, folding this left and then merrily tootling together toward the subject for a day's work.

After I had learned the basics of really turn and farming, I jumped even in work my own fully-fledged farm. You get several options to take from, basically ranging from Easy to Hard. Naturally, as a great amateur, I indicated the Simple option. Thanks to our choice I started off with a great total of currency and a good healthy sum of procedures already in my possession, so I could push right on with believe our former field, gathering a few plants and dealing with work. I found myself rather having my time as a farmer, finally achieving the target of determination a tractor.

Yet, I slowly started to notice a few mechanisms. For starters, the naming of the devices is just not up to scratch, specifically on the route that you'd think will be even but for some ungodly reason cause your vehicles to bump along constantly. The game and makes seem to factor in the swollen weight of things which you hitch upon your tractor, allowing you to accelerate in much the same time as you normally would. After a while, I discovered that the physics from the entertainment might produce some pretty horrendous cock-ups.

And later on, I too discovered that the farmsimulator.eu/farming-simulator-2013-titanium-edition-download/ ground actually took no influence on the swiftness of your car, allowing you to charge full speed up high mountains then carry on your own mini-adventure…

So of course, the true physics of the competition give something to be needed. But the real gameplay is beautiful varied. So if you don't want to really need in yard and collecting crops all the time, then no worries! You can go into animal husbandry having a couple of different options that animals to keep and ensuring that to hold them fed as well as selling them for meat just before they die of other age. Before you may grow orchards to make your delicious fruit, having to fertilize and obtain the products yourself, and even have to carry the pack to the trailer! But you do want to remain with clear old-fashioned crop farming, in which case you have to take your crops depending on the season, carefully cultivate fields properly and then make sure not to help process them over or otherwise they'll be destroyed!

There's also vehicle preservation with attention to take into consideration, so that you have to cram up your own tractor with fuel and keep that working, make sure it's good and fresh (as apparently, that is chief for tractors?) as well as repair or increase that right away also over again to make life easier.

Pretty varied, just? Right. Unfortunately, that class does not translate to power or order. So sure, you can strengthen the plants, care for being and multiply fruit orchards. But there's no form in charge in the looks, so there's no need to research for improved accept or trade rates like every shop will give the same results. That lack of economy frankly lets down the main practice. Your dogs do need food, but not any run or time away from their pens. You don't still have to feed them yourself so something you buy gets automatically transferred to the pencils plus the beast somehow gain admission to the food themselves. And with orchards, after place and fertilizing them there's nobody more you really need to do until they're ready to be gathered. That lack of depth turns the game into more of an calendar watching experience.

You can hire a staff to help you out, watching them go about the job is vaguely interesting at first, but soon loses the novelty. Other NPCs in the sport don't provide any connection and generally, action to truly hear and give the world a resemblance of lifetime. Without success, I must tell.

There is too supposed to be a multiplayer element to the activity, but lord only gets how we may actually meet people. I've trawled many forums with news say similar problems with no resolution forthcoming. Multiplayer is there a little that is created last minute, so perhaps it will be improved in the future?

The first thing I'd state is how the game does not really have the most impressive image, with some of the textures looking pretty bitter and a significant few popping issues going on. But I'd consider the vehicles looked quite decent generally, and the weather effects were fairly well done. There's something oddly fascinating about watching puddles form with a subject while that raining.

It also gain several terra-forming effects as well, so when you're making the take some of the machines you use actually kind trenches and other alterations from the ground, which changes how the vehicle can operate over them, that is pretty nice. And also since what I understand by making a bit of examining, something that doesn't take place now Farming Simulator activity or different competitors. Character styles are fairly bland and forgettable, but aside from the unnecessary NPCs, there's not really enough characters around to take much notice.

I personally achieved the soundtrack really enjoyable. There was something a little entertaining about the music starting up when you shot in your own tractor. The fact that the thud of the engine changes counting at whether the within or outside of the vehicle was sweet cool too. However, once you noticed the cycling positive make, that begin as a bit annoying. And, when you got out of the tractor your individual would for some reason believe they were leap and reach the appropriate sound. As well as this a handful of the vehicles which got no doors still played the door shut sound each time you got off. A problem for me, but still a virus.

Due to the lack of exposure to previous farming sim games, I found myself enjoying Farm Expert 17 at first, but after I had partaken to all the varied tasks I found myself getting bored fairly swiftly. With eventually a number of the germ can attest to be significantly frustrating. If that match survived a little more developed then obtained selected degree put into it, i would indeed rate it higher. The multiplayer certainly feels tacked upon then the main experience just becomes somewhat of a drag eventually.

[iwrotemywayto-revolution]

For better or for worse

Request: None it’s just a “Decoy Bride” au- aka Lin just wants to get married but when his wife-to-be disappears, his friends need to find a temporary stand-in while they look for her (I like this trashy romcom too much to not write an au)

Pairing: Lin-Manuel Miranda x reader 

Warnings: fake relationships, slow burn, paparazzi, initial dislike

Word count: 4,511 (I got carried away?)

A/N: Apologies to anyone waiting for a fic but I’ve had major writers block :/ Feedback is welcomed with enthusiasm ^-^ Thanks to @fragmentofmymind for proofreading!

@picklessfights

--

The boat bumped against the rock as her owner tied her to the roughly-hewn wooden post that served as a docking point. You looked out of the rain-spattered porthole windows and over the seemingly endless soggy fields. At your side, your suitcase seemed too small too be carrying everything you owned.

You were coming home.

Ever since you and your mother had moved to the tiny island off the Scottish coast, you had wanted to escape. You had dreams to follow and you sure as hell weren’t going to achieve them on an island where you knew the whole population by name.

You had tried countless times to leave- to go to university, to live with your boyfriend, to work a job that had promised you connections. But you always ended up on the ferry back, your suitcase getting more battered every time, packed to move back into the Bed and Breakfast your mother owned- the only accommodation with rooms to rent on the island.

“There you go, lass,” the grey-haired captain leant you a hand as you stepped off the boat and onto the muddy path. You thanked him as he passed you your case and stepped off the boat after you. It was raining hard and you had forgotten your umbrella.

Tugging your case through the wet mud and then gravel was hard work, and the walk to your home gave you more than enough time to second guess yourself. You had left your boyfriend- an abusive dickhead if there ever was one- and run. But you had left your dreams behind- again- in New York when you had taken the first flight to Edinburgh and with every step they felt farther away.

You opened the door and walked in, hoping to have a moment to compose yourself. But your mother was standing in the hallway, ironing. “Oh!” she gasped, then looked abruptly serious, “What happened?”

“I’m fine,” you said bravely, but at the sight of her concerned expression everything seemed to crash back down onto you all over again and you let out a hiccoughing sob. “Fine.”

Your mother looked you up and down and set down her iron, rushing to pull you into a tight hug. “Come on,” she said quietly, “let's have a cup of tea and warm you up, shall we?”

The peg by the door was empty and you hung your jacket on it before following your mother through into the cramped kitchen. She filled the kettle, pulled out two battered and chipped mugs, and passed you a biscuit from the tin.

“How’s everything?” You said tentatively, wanting to move the conversation away from you, “What are the headlines?”

“Are you staying this time, Y/N?” She asked, ignoring your question. “Or will you be flying off to Germany in the morning?”

“Staying.” Your mother didn’t like your constant attempts to leave. She supported you every time, helping you to pack or find an apartment with the slow wifi on the island, but she didn’t like it.

Your mother raised an eyebrow, “Good to know.” The kettle whistled, breaking the silence.

“I’ll unpack,” you said, partly to get out of the kitchen. Before your mother could answer you grabbed your suitcase and lugged it upstairs, wincing when it bumped against your knees.

Your room was almost exactly as you had left it. The duvet on your bed was unchanged, the book you had been reading last time you were there still settled on the tiny desk. It looked like a snapshot of your life from five years ago, preserving who you used to be.

The typewriter you had received as a gift from your grandfather sat on the desk too, keys dusty. You carefully extracted the papers. You had been writing a story about someone a lot like you on an island just like this one. Your writing sounded childish and boring, and you quickly crumpled the pages up.

What exactly did you think you were going to do here? On an island with only about two hundred occupants, there weren’t many jobs going. You supposed you could always try for your old job in the local shop again, selling everything from vegetables and scarves to books and cattle prods.

Your mother called to say the tea was ready. “Don’t let it get cold!” You sighed and set your suitcase down on the bed. It wasn’t the ideal future you had wanted, you realised sadly, but it would have to do- for the moment.

--

“Why don’t you go out and see if they still need you at the shop?” your mother suggested on your third day. You’d spent most of your time in your room, sorting your old things and reading. Your mother pointedly left the newspaper on your bed, which you glanced at only long enough to determine that the main article was about some song-writer/actor who was getting married, as well as your CV.

What if you could never achieve your lofty dreams of being a writer? Your typewriter seemed as dusty and worn as your writing skills, and you eventually covered it with its old cover and shifted it to live on top of your bookshelves.

It hadn’t stopped raining since you arrived.

“Y/N!” Hands on her hips, your mother stood at the door. You looked up from the book you had been reading- your copy of The Princess Bride. “If you’re staying, you’re going to work.”

You nodded and picked your CV up from the bed. You folded it and stuck it into the pocket of your raincoat. Your mother nodded approvingly and handed you an umbrella. “I’ll be back soon,” you said vaguely as you picked up your keys.

You felt your mother’s gaze on you as you walked out the door. The road was full of puddles but you followed it anyway. You decided to visit some of your old haunts- the old castle, the shepherd’s hut out in the fields, and the rocky beach on the other side of the island. In the distance you could see the thatched roofs of the village, a few chimneys puffing away merrily.

Just as you got to the corner you heard a car behind you and stepped hastily onto the grass. They pulled to a stop beside you, splashing muddy water all over your jeans.

The window wound down and you bit back a swear. A guy, probably in his late twenties with cropped hair and a friendly smile, stuck his head out. He grimaced when he saw your jeans. “I’m sorry!” he said sincerely, “do you want a lift?”

You shook your head- you were only going to get wetter. “Do you need something?” you asked curiously. His accent was American- very clearly not from around the island- and he was comfortably but clearly well dressed.

“Yeah, actually,” he stalled the car, “I’m Chris and this,” he gestured to the guy in the driver’s seat, a bald man with a grin to match Chris’, “Is Leslie. We’re here on a.... Marketing conference. We were wondering if you could point us toward the castle?”

Nonplussed, you pointed down the road. "Follow the path until you reach the old well, then get out and walk towards the castle- you can see it pretty easily from that point."

"Thank you," Chris looked relieved. He looked down at your muddy jeans again, "You sure you don't want a ride?" You shook your head and waved goodbye as the car headed off again.

The old shepherds hut was only a little way off the road so you stepped off the path and into the grass. Now that your jeans were already soggy and dirty enough that you didn't mind the filth, you made quick progress. The rusty lock on the stone hut’s wooden door had been broken by kids long ago. You pulled open the door and stepped inside, wrinkling your nose a little at the smell of the cowpats beside the entrance.

As with your bedroom, the inside was virtually unchanged since you had last visited- an old sink set into the wall, a rotting wooden table and an anachronistic plastic pink chair. The only new additions were to the graffiti on the back of the door. You set your raincoat down on the chair and sat. The roof needed repairing and a house martin had nested on the edge of an exposed part. You zipped up your hoodie and looked out the tiny window, just as you had in your teens, just thinking.

The door creaked open and you whirled around, strands of your damp hair sticking to your face as your turned. There was a man standing in the doorway, looking a little scared. "Who are you?" he asked.

You straightened. You knew you must look a mess- your muddy clothes and bedraggled appearance would hardly make a good impression. "I might ask you the same question!" You didn't recognise him- he wore an ill-fitting raincoat with a grey hoodie underneath, and his trainers were mud-coated. His hair was short, dark, and spiky with the rain, but his eyes were a warm chocolatey brown even as he looked at you suspiciously.

"Lin," he said shortly. His accent was mostly American, and you wondered if he was with Chris and Leslie- the island didn’t exactly get many visitors.

“Y/N,” you replied, self-consciously tugging on your raincoat.

Lin looked around, “Do you live here?”

“What?” you spluttered indignantly, “No! Of course not-”

“How was I supposed to know?” Lin laughed. He eyed the plastic pink chair with evident amusement.

You looked at him. Something about his voice- or maybe his face?- looked familiar to you. “Do I know you?” you asked, wondering if maybe he’d lived in the same apartment as you when you had been in New York, or if he’d been interviewed when you had worked at a tiny radio station there.

He shrugged with forced indifference. “Probably not,” he said, “I’ve not been around here before.”

“Are you sure-” You were about to press the matter when a rap song started to play. You jumped and Lin pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“Hi?” He covered his other ear with his free hand, squinting resentfully up at the tin roof, where the rain battered against the corroding tin until it sounded like a drumbeat- or perhaps artillery fire. “I’m on my way.”

Lin slipped his phone back into his pocket and looked resignedly out at the downpour. “Good luck,” you said and he flashed you a smile before he ran out and into the muddy field. You watched him go and decided you might as well go to the shop- you could always finish your walk tomorrow.

--

The shop owner, an older lady called Dolly who had babysat you as a child, eagerly accepted you back. “Some of the ladies just can’t manage anymore,” she confessed, glancing over at the crowd of white-haired women knitting in the corner and chatting, “and I’d be thankful for some help.”

“I’m happy too,” you smiled.

As you checked the till, Dolly looked meaningfully at the stack of books waiting to be arranged. “You know,” she said conversationally, “I think someone should write a guidebook for this island.”

“For this island?” you asked incredulously. Dolly nodded. “What like ‘Welcome to the only island in the world where you can find more typewriters than computers! Visit our local attractions like the beach that a whale washed up on half a century ago’?”

Dolly patted you on the back, “See, you’ve started already.” She set a stack of paper down beside you and turned to go, “You could get some use out of your grandfather’s typewriter.”

You stared after her for a moment, then shook your head and got to the first task she’d set you- setting out a display of heavy bound books about Alexander Hamilton, whose family had originated in Ayrshire, not far from the tiny island you lived on. You arranged them nicely, chatting to people as they came through.

Within an hour everyone seemed to know you were home again and working at the shop, and there was an endless stream of people coming to welcome you home. “I knew you’d be back!” the man who ran the post office grinned and clapped you on the back.

He moved on but his comment stuck with you- did everyone have you marked as a failure, unable to achieve your dreams and destined to always come home in the end? You closed the shop at lunch and headed home to eat, relieved that Dolly could at least take over in the afternoon.

--

Lin got into the backseat of Leslie’s car, trying to avoid spreading the mud he’d trekked in from the fields all over the floor and upholstery. “So?” he asked, “What’s the verdict?”

Chris turned to talk to Lin through the gap between the seats. “The castle is perfect,” he grinned, “and you can get married in it.”

Relieved, Lin let himself relax back into the seat. He and Vanessa had been trying to get married for ages, but they both desperately wanted a nice quiet ceremony- just family and close friends really. But, with his growing fame thanks to In the Heights and Hamilton, that was getting harder.

Every time they had thought they could settle on anything- a venue, a date, a goddamn florist- some photographer had snapped a picture and leaked it to the press. The tabloids loved the mystery and soon all of them were onto it and Vanessa, nearly in tears, had asked Lin if they could get married quietly and all but alone.

So Chris and Leslie had volunteered to help and they had settled on an island not too far from the Hamilton family’s home in Ayrshire with a nice old castle and a population mostly over sixty who hopefully had no idea who he was. The idea was that the ceremony would officially take place here, and then they could celebrate properly when they get home. Likely Lin’s mother and father would likely never forgive him, but hopefully they’d understand.

Vanessa would be arriving soon, the two of them having flown in separately so as not to arouse suspicion. He would be waiting for her. Lin twisted the simple silver engagement ring they both wore around his finger. It wasn’t too soon, was it? They’d barely known each other a year and Lin could tell his friends were concerned about them, worried they were rushing into it.

But he loved Vanessa.

“Don’t worry Lin,” Leslie said, meeting his gaze briefly in the mirror. “Everything will be alright- we have your back.”

Lin smiled and felt tears well, “I know you do.”

--

By the time you made it home the clouds had blown away, leaving the sky blue and almost cheerful. You fiddled with the locked gate, remembering to jiggle the key a little to get it open. You spotted your mother looking out the kitchen window and grimaced to remember the state you were in- sodden in disarray despite your rushed clean-up before your shift at the shop.

“You’d best take a bath or a shower,” your mother frowned when you got inside. “Take your shoes off here- I just cleaned.”

You slipped your shoes off obediently and followed your mother upstairs to the bathroom. She started to tell you about some photographer she’d seen arriving on the beach in a dinghy as you searched for your toiletries. “I’m going to pop into town,” she said through the door once you had got gratefully into the warm bath, “I’ll be back for dinner.”

--

Pulling on your old dressing gown over your pyjamas, you headed downstairs to start on dinner. You knew your old recipe book would be lying around and, after some digging around the pantry, you decided to make pasta.

You were just putting the pasta into the pot when the doorbell rang. Mum must have forgotten her keys, you thought as you hurried to the door. Grabbing your keys off their hook by the door, you unlocked it quickly.

“Mum-” you started, then fell silent. Chris and Leslie were at your door. Leslie was clutching a phone and looking worried, and Chris looked a little sheepish. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hi,” Chris said somewhat awkwardly, “could we come in?”

You hesitated, wary. You may have grown up on a small island but your mother had taught you to be careful. Chris and Leslie seemed nice when they’d asked for directions, but still. “Why?”

“We need your help,” Leslie stepped forward. He glanced around almost furtively and, having assured himself that there was no one around, lowered his voice to a whisper. “We need you to pretend to be a bride for us.”

Whatever you had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “Sorry?” you asked, half convinced you had misheard him, “You want me to do what?”

“We’re here trying to help our friend get married,” Chris explained, “but his wife has gone missing.”

You shook your head. “Missing?” you repeated. “This island is tiny.”

Leslie looked like he was about to laugh. He rubbed the back of his neck, “She arrived early to surprise him but we think she saw the photographer and got spooked. We don’t know where she’s gone but we need to satisfy the photographer with something so we can buy some time to find her.”

“Photographer?” you interrupted. You heard the bubbling of your pasta and swore. “Give me a minute.” You dashed inside to take the pot off the stove and dumped it into a strainer in the sink.

Chris and Leslie were still waiting at the door, heads bent in quiet discussion. They looked up when you arrived. “Look,” Chris held up his phone to show a picture of a pretty woman a little older than you, “this is Vanessa. Her fiance is well known-” You looked curiously closer, wondering if they’d say who. “And they want a quiet wedding.”

“I don’t look anything like her!” you protested.

Leslie gave you a wry smile. “Don’t worry about that.”

“I’m not a wedding person,” you said, thinking of your last relationship and how you had been so sure you would end up on the altar before he showed his true colours.

“We’ll pay you?” Chris pleaded.

You considered your days ahead- shifts at the shop, helping your mother with spring cleaning, wishing you hadn’t come back. With some money- well, you could try again or travel around the world. Somewhere in the distance the church bell tower started to toll six and you made a decision. You stepped out, “Right- so what do I do?”

--

Thankfully your mum had to go into town again the next morning before Leslie and Chris arrived. They walked gingerly up the steps, carefully holding the wedding dress in its bag between them. You had washed and dried your hair and were still sipping coffee when you led them into the kitchen, the largest room in the house.

Chris passed you the dress. You pulled it out of the garment bag, awed by beauty of the simple but stunning dress- a decent neckline carefully hemmed with lace, a tapered waist and a slight, elegant train made for a dress you could at least hope not to trip over in.

“We’ll... go,” Chris said and quickly backed out and into the hallway with Leslie, leaving you to struggle into the dress.  Luckily it fit you- mostly, at least. You called Chris and Leslie back in as you fiddled with the straps, feeling unexpectedly pretty when you caught sight of yourself in the dark reflection of the oven.

“You look great,” Leslie smiled sincerely, then passed you a long white lace veil. “But no one can see your face.”

You fastened it carefully and brought the material forwards. It fell almost to your knees and was thick enough to obscure your vision a little. You lifted it to the side. “Can I put it on in the car?”

--

Chris helped you carefully out of the car, your veil preventing you from seeing anything much. You knew the old church from your wanderings but gripped Chris’ arm tightly anyway as you navigated the uneven ground.

“Can you do an American accent?” Leslie asked you in a whisper as you walked inside. You nodded. Your accent had changed when you had moved to the tiny Scottish island, but you hoped you could pass as American for the length of the ceremony.

You could make out a figure at the end of the aisle and stumbled towards him, nearly falling into a pew when your foot caught on the edge of your dress. Only Chris’ arm in yours kept you from toppling headfirst.

Finally you were at the front and, letting out a shaky breath, you got ready. You wondered if you’d ever stand here again- in your own dress, beside someone you loved. You were pretty sure you’d have to leave for that to happen- there weren’t any single men or women under forty on the island any more. Other than you of course. Behind you Leslie was searching the pews for bugs, convinced that the photographer would be listening in.

The officiator, an elderly American pastor holding his Bible open, wasted no time on pleasantries since there were only five people in the church in total. “Repeat after me,” he said, and turned to your fake fiance.

After a moment, the man beside you turned to face you, “I, Lin-Manuel Miranda, take you, Vanessa Nadal, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death us do part.”

Then it was your turn. You tried to calm down, but all you could hear was your blood rushing. “I, Vanessa Nadal,” you said, wincing at how fake your accent sounded. Opposite you, Lin-Manuel turned to look at Chris and Leslie, and you knew he had noticed, “take you, Lin-Manuel Miranda, to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward-” dimly, you saw Leslie motion for you to hurry, “better, worse, richer, poorer, health… until death us do part.”

“Great,” the pastor said brightly, “now, the rings?”

“What’s going on?” you heard Lin-Manuel mutter to Chris as he brought the rings forward. The pastor handed you the register and a pen, hurrying you each to sign.

“I’ll explain later,” Chris muttered. He grabbed your hand and slid the ring on, and then turned to the pastor, “can we skip to the end?”

Behind you, there was a thud as Leslie whacked something. You hoped it was the bug they had been looking for. The pastor sounded confused, but finished anyway. “I now pronounce you husband and wife- you may kiss the bride.”

“Right,” Lin-Manuel said, “what’s going on?” He pulled back the veil, making you wince as he inadvertently pulled your hair. He looked at you, recognition dawning. You stared back- he was the guy you had met in the old hut a couple of days before.

“Lin?” you gasped, astounded that you had failed to connect the dots from his voice and name alone.

He looked just as surprised, “Shepherd girl?”

“I’m not a shepherd!” you protested as Chris and Leslie started to usher the two of you out of the church and back towards the castle. Lin ignored you in favour of interrogating Leslie.

“Where’s Vanessa?” Lin looked frantic with worry. They crossed the moat to the castle, you struggling to keep up in your dress. There was a swan pedalo floating along and you swore you saw some brightly coloured fish swim underneath.

“She’s missing,” Chris was saying to Lin, who looked like he would have preferred to run off than listen, “but don’t worry.”

You gasped as you entered the castle. The last time you had been there, the castle had been but a ruin, its exterior weathered and crumbling.. Now it was virtually unrecognisable, with repairs on the stone, new carpet on the stairs, and suits of armour in the hallway. You rushed up the stairs after the sound of Lin’s voice, raised in worry and anger.

Suddenly Chris swore and pointed out the window. You rushed to look out and saw what could only be described as a wave of photographers advancing over the crest of the hill. They carried cameras and tripods and rucksacks full of equipment. “Shit,” Chris said, “Shit.” He started to pace.

“I’ve got to go after Vanessa,” Lin insisted.

Leslie shook his head. “So long as they don’t know Vanessa is missing, they won’t be looking for her. We can use that to our advantage.”

“So let me go!” You could tell Lin wouldn’t take no for an answer.

You knew you didn’t want to be around when the photographers inevitably found out that you were not Vanessa. “I think it’s time for me to go,” you interrupted, holding out your hand, “and I believe you owe me something?”

Leslie closed his eyes for a moment. “Of course,” he said finally, “I’ve been an idiot.” He turned to Lin, “if anyone can find her, it’s you.” Lin looked smugly satisfied as Leslie shepherded the two of you along the corridor towards a door.

You walked through after Lin, only to walk right into him. “What-” your exclamation died on your lips when you realised you were in the tower bedroom, not a stairway. Behind you the lock clicked and Chris shouted an apology. Lin banged on the door for a moment, “Let me out!” But nobody came, and eventually you turned away from the door to search for other exits, of which there were none.

Nonetheless, Lin headed around the room looking for a way out, even going so far as to climb onto the bed and lunge fruitlessly for the tower window. “Looks like we’re stuck here,” you took a seat on the massive bed. “Maybe you should learn my name- I did tell you, you know.”

“Yeah,” Lin said sarcastically as he leapt down from the bed, “because if I only knew your name we could use it to get out of here and find Vanessa, who I was supposed to meet at the altar.”

You folded your arms. “It’s not my fault she’s missing,” you pointed out. “And I don’t think we can do anything unless Leslie lets us out.”

Lin sat down beside you with a sigh. “You’re right,” he admitted, looking around the room, “We might as well get to know each other.”

--

[withickmire]

never has it been so clear

Fandom: Deltora Quest Characters: Jarred, Anna Pairing: Jarred/Anna Summary: Jarred encounters a problem within Del’s makeshift economy. Notes: This is for the lovely @dragonloverdoran​, who requested something early on in Jarred and Anna’s romance. I hope this is to your taste! <3. AO3. FFN.

The late afternoon sun blazed hot, even as it began its descent. The ends of Jarred’s hair clung to the back of his neck, and he counted himself lucky to be free from real work for the afternoon. Crian had gone to the other side of town to visit a friend, which meant that Jarred and Anna’s only task for the evening was to complete the week’s shopping. He shifted the heavy bag he carried onto his other shoulder.

The first few weeks in the Forge had been hard. The hunger pains that had raged in his belly were strange and unwelcome. At night, he would exhaustedly stumble into his bed, and yet sleep took some time to claim him, for his muscles ached relentlessly from the strenuous work assigned to a blacksmith’s apprentice. Jarred had thought himself skilled in the ways of forging, but the ceremonial work he had done in the palace could not be compared to practical smithing. Worst of all was the pain in his heart caused by Endon’s loss. But a year had passed, and hunger was managed, muscles and callouses were acquired, and Crian and Anna filled the little house with love and laughter that helped soothe his heart.

He walked with Anna through the crowded streets of the Del Market. Although it called itself as such, the ‘Del Market’ was hardly an appropriate name. It was not a specified place, but rather a specified time of year. In the warmer months, merchant and shopkeepers would sit outside of their shops and homes, and sell their best wares out of barrows. It was one of the little things that the people did to aid in raising their own spirits. Money was not often exchanged, for no one in Del had much to spare, but many shopkeepers were happy to trade, or even lend their goods, as Crian did. Jarred had not known this the first time he had been sent on errands on his own. He had lived in the city for two weeks, and at the Market had been conned into paying for a small portion of cheese for three times more than it had been worth, for he had not understood the value of the coins in his pocket. He could not forget Crian’s anger at his mistake, nor the disappointment in Anna’s eyes. Now, the bag he carried was heavy with knives, nails, a couple of short pokers and some other wares that he had smithed himself— items that would be valuable to the people.

A man walked past him and swung his basket without notice, hitting Jarred sharply upon his hip. He winced and glanced over at Anna to see if she had caught his misstep, but to his relief she was peering at the bakery down the block.

“I have made a poultice for Amoren’s bad knee,” Anna nodded toward the shop. “I know she will take it in exchange for a loaf of bread. We need lettuce and potatoes; see what Martie will give you for one of the knives.”

“His horse walked with a limp last week,” Jarred supplied. “Perhaps he needs a new shoe.”

“We might get more for it, too,” she paused for a moment and then laughed, and Jarred’s heart beat faster, as it always did at that sound. “Just… be sure to mind the baskets.”

At that, Anna stepped away and greeted Amoren warmly. She had seen. Jarred stifled his embarrassment and grinned regardless. As if she knew, Anna looked back and returned his smile. This had become their way: shared glances over nothing; casual touches that lingered too long. It was unfamiliar, but not at all unwelcome.

When she had turned back to the baker, Jarred allowed himself a quick glance up towards the palace upon the hill. It was a daily ritual, of sorts. Despite the brightness of the day, it was shrouded in its magical mist. He could see the outline of the towers, and the tree that had housed his childhood games. It made him feel ill, to think of kind and gentle Endon all alone, even in a palace filled with people. He counted to three, and forced himself to tear his eyes away.

The best produce shop was two blocks away from the bakery. Jarred made his way through the crowd with practised determination. Martie sat on his stoop, a small wheelbarrow of tired vegetables on his left side, and an even smaller cart of spotted fruits on his right. His skinny grey horse was tied to the rail of the steps. Jarred greeted the shopkeeper politely, but Martie turned away. Jarred frowned anxiously. His newfound neighbours had never questioned his presence, not when there were worse things to come to Del than harmless strangers. But what if they were beginning to question him? The people of Del hated the royal family as much as Crian did. They would not welcome him, if they uncovered the truth. Jarred squinted through the sunlight and looked back at the street, but could not see Anna.

“Are you going to buy anything, or will you just stand there, boy?” Martie asked roughly. He looked up finally, and Jarred saw there was no anger in his eyes, just sadness. He looked very thin, and very old.

“I came for vegetables,” Jarred said after a moment’s hesitation. He unslung his heavy bag and set it upon the dusty road. “I have brought a few horseshoes. Or did you need any knives? I also have pokers, nails, and—.”

“I will not be trading or bartering today,” Martie interrupted and looked away again. “If you want anything, you will have to pay in full— with coins.”

Jarred stared at him, uncomprehending. Anna came up behind him and touched his arm lightly.

“I have the bread,” she told him triumphantly, displaying a large paper bag. “Amoren slipped me a little pouch of flour, too, which was very kind.”

“We cannot afford vegetables this week,” Jarred said softly. Martie looked miserable.

“What do you mean?” Anna frowned and looked between the two men.

“Nothing is growing as it once did,” Martie told her defensively. “I have grandchildren to feed, Anna, and I cannot sustain them upon horseshoes.”

Anna was silent. She glanced at Jarred and he knew they were both thinking of Crian and his selflessness when it came to his fellow citizens. Yet Martie could not be blamed for his self-preservation.

“We cannot do business today, then. Have a good night, Martie,” Anna told him genuinely as Jarred collected his bag.

Before she turned away, Jarred caught Anna gazing longingly at the basket of mushy strawberries. Jarred remembered all of the strawberries he had eaten in his childhood, large and jewel-like, often powdered with sugar or dipped in chocolate. It was not fair that he could keep such memories and not share them with her. He slipped a hand into his pocket and touched the cold metal of a coin. Crian paid him for his work as fair as a poor blacksmith could, and so he had some money of his own. But he recalled his first disastrous attempt at shopping, and he did not wish to be the cause of such disappointment again. Money was to be saved, not spent, unless it was absolutely necessary.

They walked through the city, slowly and aimlessly. The bag on Jarred’s back seemed much heavier than it had been. Around them, shopkeepers began to pack up the Market. They walked in silence, lost in thought. Anna had a little garden of herbs and root vegetables, but it would not be enough. They had the bread, and at home there was some cheese and a little bit of chicken, some other assorted foods that could be turned into a soup. That would last their household for at least a week, but it would not be sustainable.

“We will have to buy vegetables eventually,” Anna said softly, putting a voice to Jarred’s thoughts.

“Indeed. Although, I fear that Martie’s plan will not take him far.” “No,” Anna agreed. “We are more well-off than many of our neighbours, and if we cannot part with our money, than neither can they.”

Jarred stopped at a patch of grass on the corner of the next block. The grass rose into a little hill, with a reedy tree at the top. In the full daylight was popular with the local children, but in the evening the space often was unoccupied. He let his bag drop to the ground, and sat down beside it. Anna settled down next to him and placed the bread by the bag.

“Thank you for trying,” she said after a moment.

“Of course,” Jarred frowned and tore at a handful of grass. Would Crian be disappointed, or would he understand? Anger stabbed at him suddenly, vexation at the lifestyle that had been forced upon Del for so long. Anna reached out and covered his hand with her own, stilling it. He let go of the grass and slid his fingers through the gaps between her own. He looked up and met her eyes, and saw that they were filled with a love that was surely mirrored in his own.

“It is alright,” she soothed, and squeezed his hand gently.

For all of their lingering glances and secret smiles, they had never done anything like this. For a moment Jarred was afraid, but she touched his face with her free hand his fear melted away.

“We will make it through this,” she continued. “It will be hard, but it will not always be painful. We will find a way.”

She lowered her hand from his face, and when Jarred turned back to the city he could not help but gasp.

The setting sun cast shadows on the chaotic curves of the streets, but the buildings still in the sunlight appeared to be bathed in gold. A bird chirped merrily in the tree above, and laughter spilled out from a house down the road. The ragged city suddenly looked very beautiful. He wondered if it was real, or if he was seeing it through eyes clouded by love. But it did not matter, for it was realer and more beautiful than the pretty lies seen by those in the palace.

The breeze stirred Anna’s hair against his cheek, and suddenly— like a vision— Jarred could see his life, as it would be. He saw the Forge, filled with the fine work of his labours. He heard the sound of children’s laughter. He felt Anna’s hand in his own, and knew what his future held. She had spoken the truth: there would be hardship and trial in plenty, but there would be love and happiness to balance it out. For that was all he wanted. To be happy; for Anna to be happy. It was such a simple goal for a someone who had come from the palace, but up there he had wanted for nothing, which had meant that nothing had ever felt special. Everything had changed, but not all of the changes were bad.

“We should go home soon,” Anna said with gentle reluctance. “We must take stock of what we have, so that we can plan what to do next when Grandfather returns.”

“In just another minute,” Jarred agreed, and rested his head against hers as she laughed quietly.

When they did rise to leave, Jarred could still feel the presence of the immense palace behind him, but he did not turn around to look.

[easkyrah]

Prompt for: "I'm not a stop along the way. I'm a destination." Either Nessian or Elorcan. You'll probably ruin me anyways. Thank you for your fanfictions and making my heart bleed.

—Decided to try something new: a new writing style and one not full of angst. For the former, here’s a Nessian AU of a Cassian x Reader fic. 

Y/N: Your Name

“and then she knew, you could be homesick for people too”

I’m not a stop along the way. I’m a destination.

Cassian had been your childhood friend, stuck by your side as soon as you came crying out of the womb. Your mothers had been best friends, attached at the hip as well: they attended the same book club, listened to the same music, and graduated all their classes together. It only made sense that you and Cassian be the same.

While you were in kindergarten, he had been a second grader, boasting that he was no longer considered one of the runts; he had sworn that it was his duty to protect you, pinky promising with a solemn face. While you were in fourth grade, he had graduated to middle school; he had sworn to walk you home, even if he had to trudge through the muddy trails to reach your elementary school. While you were in high school, he had graduated to Illyrian College; he had sworn to take you to prom, the best night of your life.

You applied to Illyrian College, keeping your promise to Cassian. You didn’t even to reassure him—he had your heart. Of course you’d never tell him that.

As months passed and everyone stopped gushing over you and Cass, you didn’t. Little did they all know that your heart belonged to your studies so you would be accepted into the top-tier school on a full-ride scholarship to Illyrian College. Everything you did was to ensure that you would see Cassian again, and be attached to your best friend at the hip again.

In first grade, you’d swapped friendship bracelets, giving him a hot-pink wrap of plastic, Cassian giving you an ugly brown strand to match your eyes, he’d said. You’d cried, an emotional little girl, but he had stroked away those tears with the pads of his thumbs as you inhaled his musky scent of firewood and mint.

Sometimes he’d come back home on breaks, lifting you up in those strong, muscular arms of his, grinning from ear to ear, and dimpling. Binge watching Netflix shows, wrapped in a single blanket on the loveseat couch, you’d fall asleep against his hard chest, content and safe within his embrace that offered warmth and security. He’d carry you to your room, and kiss the top of your forehead. One time you had caught him, and he had denied the entire ordeal, blushing furiously. To shut you up, he had crawled under the sheets next to you, grumbling that the guest room was too far away. He had been your living heating furnace, and when you awoke, you’d be cradled into his arms once again, or the smell of bacon and toast would fill the air. Minutes later, he had entered your room, a tray of steaming breakfast with two cups of orange juice.

You’d swap stories of your senior adventures, and how you had soared above your teachers’ expectations. It seemed like you would be valedictorian, while Cassian had been an All-American athlete in track and field, and wrestling. Sports had been Cassian’s outlet, just as writing had been yours.

Everyone didn’t see why you weren’t dating, and neither did you. Except you had an inkling why: Cassian saw you as nothing more than a younger sister. He was so oblivious to how you had dressed fancifully in a daring sensation just to garner his attention, not the other males at her school. Yet he had taken you to prom, asked you out bachelor style, ordering a white horse and bouquets of red roses. After he had mounted off the mare, he had gotten down on his knees, ruining his pressed slacks.

“I love you,” he whispered into your ear, biting the tip of your earlobe. His hazel eyes had watches shivers wrack across your body, and he’d released you with a satisfied smile, expectantly awaiting your answer. 

You had said yes, of course. This was the boy who had tickled you relentlessly and poked fun into your normal, boring life. This was the boy who had been angered when he had found out that you had applied to Hybern College. This was a boy who had ignored you for a week, not answering any of your texts or your calls or voicemails or private messages or emails.

It was during this week that you’d gotten closer to Jurian, who had been hit by a baseball bat during a frat party one of his friends had invited him too. All Jurian remembered was that the aggressor had an Illyrian tattoo and some initials inked over his arm that wove across his shoulder. You’d brought coffee and homemade food to the hospital, where Jurian learned to see through one eye. The bat had smashed through his eye, and later on, during a dare, something had infected his eye.

The infection proved to be deadly, as Jurian thought he had been having a seizure.

You had called Cassian while loitering in the patient’s room.

He had not answered.

You missed him. You missed the boy that uplifted you, kissed your forehead, and made you breakfast. The boy who watched shows with you and provided you with vanilla ice cream when you were feeling low. The boy who helped you choose your professional attire for interviews and forced you to run at least a mile around the track with him on Saturday afternoons.

You had attended every single one of his wrestling matches and his track meets, cheering for him in the sidelines. When he went to the locker room, he’d always meet you in the back, demanding a quick kiss on the cheek for good luck. Every time he came victorious, in first, he said it was because you were his lucky charm, always there for him. And you were.

Except now he wasn’t. He’d taken off the pink bracelet you’d given him ages ago, said it wasn’t manly of him. Said that even though it didn’t bother him, it bothered his friends who jested him on the playing field. 

During this week of silence, you decided to apply last-minute for other colleges, not wanting to be caught between this rivalry. You knew Jurian had applied to Hybern, while your heart remained to its’ rival, the Illyrian college harboring the boy you had loved from the earliest haze of your memories. Finally clicking the submit button for your essays, recommendations, and other final pieces, you had leaned back against your seat, soaking in the silence.

Your room had never been so silent, Cassian always jabbering away. He’d once taken in a dog despite your protests, pleading with that own puppy face of his, begging you to attend the dog’s injuries. So you had.

Cassian had named the dog after you, kissing its’ forehead, as the dog eagerly slobbered over him and you. He’d taken the animal to the shelter, gloomily, the next day. One of his friends had quickly adopted it after seeing Cassian apparently mope around the dorms. Cassian had chattered about this friend for weeks, praising the kindness shown.

Your heart ached for the boy who loved so freely, and lived so merrily. Never before had you seen him so angry, demanding that you had betrayed him. When you had mentioned Jurian, he had stormed out. A part of you thought he’d been jealous, but the raw anger and not sheer disappointment radiating from him had you wondering what personal issues caused him to react like that.

He had used to tell you every private detail. Time had changed that, and your childhood friend was drawing away from you. You had apologized in all your messages, saying that if he really wanted you too, you’d phone Hybern, telling the college you wanted to withdraw you application.

He hadn’t answered. 

You stopped contacting him.

When the hospital released Jurian, he switched into most of your classes, escorting you around the hallways and sneering at other males who thought they had a chance with you. Although he was a poor substitute for Cassian, but he managed.

Jurian and you had opened your college letters together. He’d been accepted into Hybern college, and so had you— in addition to Illyrian College, with a full ride scholarship academically.

You had fought with yourself to not text Cassian, allowing him the space he needed. Jurian and you had celebrated the night of, drinking and dancing the worries away. He’d attempted to slobber you with a kiss and reached for your hips, but you had slapped him away, imagining a different, dark-haired male.

It was then you knew that Cassian wasn’t just your childhood friend. He was more than a simple girl’s crush, not after had had played such an integral role throughout your life.

You knew you loved him when “home” turned from a place into a person.  

But you never talked to him. You never went home. 

The week turned into a month, and soon graduation neared. There was the very likely chance that he wouldn’t attend, to see one of the most important moment in your life. Soon, time flew by, and you had pulled on your heels and your graduation cap, forcing yourself to school your features into a smile and hold your head high.

You’d be giving the first and only speech to finish off every senior’s high school career as valedictorian.

You spoke of hope and courage. You hoped to see Cassian here, your eyes eagerly scanning over the mass of people. You hoped you would have the courage to call him later tonight, informing him of your decision to accept Illyrian college’s offer.

You spoke of resilience and fortitude. You hoped that your ages-long friendship with Cassian would be enough to preserve through this silly, petty fight that was entirely one-sided. You hoped that you could capture the fortitude Cassian had illustrated through every match and event as you would click the accept button to the college he attended.

You spoke of strength and family. You hoped that you would be strong enough to text Cassian after months of his absence. You hoped that your entwining memories of laughter and joy would be enough to remain within his circle of family, and perhaps, so much more.

The crowd had erupted into cheers and clapping as soon as you finished. The ceremony had passed quickly, your classmates lifting you up on their shoulders and thundering their voices into the sky as invincible humans, living in the moment of perfect pleasure.  

Your mind had wandered to the boy who taught you that it was okay to cry and to scream as long as she got up and did not give up. As you reached for your diplomacy and held the it in your hands, tears had leaked down your face.

A thumb brushed it away.

You looked up, and your heart stuttered.

Your childhood friend, your first and only crush, the male who your heart belonged to.

Cassian.

His love had roared louder than your demons. His friendship had roared louder than your nightmares. His presence had roared louder than depression.

And it had died out, like all things would and do.

He gave you a broad smile, and your mood instantly skyrocketed. He dimpled, telling you he was beyond proud of you. He hugged you, kissing the top of your forehead. A flicker of memory rushed through you, of what once could have been and what once was.

As your own arms wrapped around him, the dark ink of the Illyrian college symbol filled your vision, along with the simple, two words: NA. 

You had frowned, wondering how those two words could have meant so deeply to him that he’d get a tattoo. And maybe once, in another dimension, you would have known.

And then your eyes flickered to the female that had silently strayed by his side as he held you, a stormy presence that weathered your mood, beating against the hope building within you.

Your childhood friend had stepped away from you, and embraced the other stony-eyed female in his arms.

“Y/N,” he grinned, happiness radiating from him. “This is Nesta. Nesta Archeron.”

NA.

Nesta Archeron.

And then you knew that this boy was not your childhood friend, but a grown adult who now belonged to another.

And Cassian then had fully kissed the Nesta Archeron on the lips, wrapping his arms around her hips.

And the place where he had kissed your forehead burned, a true betrayal.

Because during that one week, he had met the woman of his dreams, leaving the female of his past. Because during that one week, he had given his smiles and shared his laughter with this tall, beautiful woman. Because during this week, he had kissed her, kissing away the memories of the girl who had given him a pink bracelet that now sat at the bottom of his trash bin, a forgotten reminder. 

A barking noise had them almost reluctantly pulling away from each other, and your eyes had widened at the sight of the ever so familiar dog bounding in front of you, ears flopping back. 

The female—Nesta—had regarded you with cool eyes, and merely said, “This is my dog, Y/N.”

You had stared accusingly at Cassian, who had sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. He had kissed the top of Nesta’s forehead, and your stomach churned. “Nesta, this is Y/N. The girl I named our dog after.”

Our. You knew that you were no longer Cassian’s support and backbone; maybe you never had been, a little, foolish girl.

Girl. You knew that he didn’t see you the way you saw him, now. That he didn’t even see you as a childhood friend, or even a younger sister. Just a girl.

You had revered Cassian, excitedly recalling your adventures together to your classmates. You had told of him as your hero, your strength, your armor.

Cassian reached for Nesta’s hands, and there, you caught glimpse of a ring.

But not just any ordinary ring.

That was Cassian’s mother’s ring, given to him when she passed away. Where you had soothed and stayed near Cassian’s side until he learned to smile again. You had given him tea and talked with him late at night and made him chocolate chip cookies and forced him to traverse to the gym.

He had once put that ring on your finger, saying it looked pretty.

And now it was on another female’s finger, where it looked gorgeous. And looked like it would stay.

You swallowed, and bit down on your lip.

You had walked away, ice forming around your heart. Jurian had waved you over to his group of friends, a smile on his face. And you had let him wrap an arm around your waist, and pull you in for a hug. You had let him kiss your forehead, hoping that it would wash away the former affection that had been there.

It didn’t.

Your thoughts your graduation night had been filled with dark ink, staining your heart, and circulating the darkness through your veins and blood. You had immediately answered your phone that night, thinking it one of your classmates, Jurian.

“Have you decided where you wanted to go?” A warm and rough familiar voice had flooded you. You could hear another female voice at the other end of the receiver, and Cassian’s chuckle of mischief.

You heard the small laughter from the other end, belonging to the woman who had taken your home, the woman who Cassian had spoken so highly of. 

Coldness had swept through you.

You had cleared your throat, and told Cassian you had made your decision. Hybern College.

The other end had went silence for several heartbeats, and Cassian had strangled out a, why?

You had stared at the door, where your childhood friend would have once burst through, demanding an thorough explanation in person.

But he had strayed too far. 

You had mustered up your will, and looked out the window instead, where the moonless sky had allowed the darkness to loom and creep.

Cassian had asked why again, the same female voice murmuring in the background. Sound had crackled on the other side, and Cassian’s deep sigh filled the air.

Your finger had hovered over the end call button. You had squared your shoulders, and said loudly and firmly, “Because I’m not a stop along the way. I’m a destination.”

Because he had not stayed for you— hadn’t chosen you. 

You hung up, pulling out your laptop, where you opened two tabs. One for Hybern College, and the other for Illyrian College. You had waited the night for Cassian to call again, for him to plea to rethink your decision.

He didn’t.

He didn’t call or reach out in the morning.

And you had a feeling why, when you saw social media filling up with pictures Cassian proposing to someone that was not you. 

And you had accepted Hybrern College for your future as soon as the night next had risen, your heart strung along with another’s who had fallen for another.

Nesta Archeron.

[nettleandfriends-blog]

Going Herbal: DOs and DON’Ts

In my previous post I’ve told you why I believe in herbs. If you’re reading this, you’re either interested at least a bit, or you’re my friend and I told you to read it unless you wanted me to make your life a misery. Either way, this post will explain the stuff you should and the stuff you should not do in your foraging.

First of all: you won’t have to dig by a stone circle at midnight under the full moon while chanting. Quite the opposite: majority of the herbs are best to be collected around noon or early afternoon, on a sunny day, when there was no rain for at least a couple of days. A bit like golf, really, only with actual purpose and without obscenely expensive gear. On a sunny and dry day there will be no excess moisture so your collected plants are less likely to start rotting or developing mould. This is especially relevant if you’re collecting leaves and blooms.

Now, I know this can be tricky, especially if you live in north parts of British isles – 3 or 4 days in a row without rain can be a really rare natural phenomenon. As a matter of fact, I haven’t done any herb foraging this year yet (not even dandelion). I’m writing this on the last day of April and there haven’t been even two days in a row without rain, hale or snow. Don’t give up, though – in recent years nice dry warm weather happened relatively often (usually just before outpours on a biblical scale followed by floods – so try not to miss the chance).

“OK, I’ve got it,” I can almost hear you saying, “but what sort of equipment I need to get?”

The answer is – not much, and I’ll give you the details soon enough. Before that, there are some rules you need to observe:

Do a bit of research and find out if the plant you want actually grows in your area.

 For example:  You put the stuff in a slow cooker for tea and take a bee-line to Sherwood Forest to get some Echinacea (great plant, by the way, brilliant medical properties). You can search all you want – Echinacea is a native of North America and does not grow wild in UK. But, don’t despair – it’s a pretty plant so you can get it in garden centres and grow it yourself.         

Make sure the plant you’re going for is not protected in your area.

It would be embarrassing (to say the least) to get a criminal record for picking flowers, eh?

Example (gosh, I love examples): Mountain Kopaonik in central Serbia (if you’re into skiing, definitely visit in winter) was for millennia abundant in bitterwort (also called yellow gentian), used by herbalists for treating various stomach problems. In sixties, tourists started digging it (it’s the root that is medicinal) whenever they found it and regardless of the age of the plant (it should be a minimum of 5-6 years old). In seventies some big German pharmaceutical company started offering a very tempting price for dried roots and everyone and their uncle went for it. Within just a few years it was at the verge of extinction. It was then put under protection as an endangered species – I believe it still is. Again, you should be able to grow it in your garden (it’s quite large plant, though), especially if you’re patient and can wait for it to mature.

Another thing  – don’t forget to check if you’re on private land and, if you are, to ask permission.

Watch where you’re collecting plants!

Some very useful plants (e.g. nettle, brambles, dandelion…) grow merrily by road verges and it can be very tempting to grab them. Don’t. Remember that plants get and store their nutrients from soil and air. Exhaust fumes contain many nasty chemicals like bits of hydrocarbons, sulphur oxides, lead etc. “Unleaded petrol” is a misnomer: it still contains lead, only somewhat less than the “normal” petrol. You don’t want that stuff in your herbs. Look for the plants at least 100 metres (100+ yards) from the road. In case of motorways, think about the distance of at least the length of a football field, preferably with some shrubbery and/or trees between.

Also, don’t pick a plant if there are mushrooms in vicinity. Unless you’re expert in mushrooms and you’re positive that they’re not of the poisonous kind, chances are some of their toxicity will – through soil – seep into the nearby plants. If you’re collecting plants on a slope, be sure to check what is growing above it.

Do not pick all the plants from a place!

If you just shave the place of the plant (especially if you’re digging roots) there might not be more plants there the following year (as it happened to poor old bitterwort on Kopaonik). So, think about future. The other reason for this rule is: plants, like people, are not the same. If you’re picking flowers/blooms, go for large, healthy ones, with the strongest colour. If you’re picking leaves, surely you’ll be able to tell healthy, juicy, deeply coloured leaf from a thin pale one. If you’re digging roots, a thriving plant will have larger and better root than a spindly straggly one.

MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE PICKING!

In this, herbs are like mushrooms – some of them have nasty doppelgangers. Look at these pictures:

Cow parsley: it’s all over the place in UK. Although it does have some mild medicinal properties, they are virtually negligible. Cows love it (hence the name), humans can eat it as well (don’t know why one would, though, doesn’t taste that great). Photo: Bob Ford/Nature Portfolio, dorsetwalks.com

Yarrow: from herbalist’s point of view, this is a magnificent plant. I’ll probably write a post completely devoted to it. It has many uses, from general boost of immunity, through treating various female genital problems, to poultices for slow healing wounds. One of its names in Balkans can loosely be translated as “outlaw’s herb” – aptly named, as outlaws used to make majority of their poultices and stuff with it. Photo: flowersociety.org

Hogweed: all parts are edible, it can even be pickled. It is supposedly one of the best aphrodisiacs, used for treating impotence caused by stress and exhaustion. It is protected in Bosnia, but I think it isn’t in UK. Not to be confused for giant hogweed, which is – well – giant, can grow up to 3 metres (10 ft) and is rather nasty as it causes very painful skin burns.                  Photo: Bob Ford/Nature Portfolio, dorsetwalks.com

Hemlock: Bad, bad, bad. Every part of the plant is deadly. It paralyses muscles and the death comes from suffocation. Old Socrates died after drinking hemlock juice, given to him by Xanthippe, his missus. I don’t know if she was a nasty piece of work as some historians claim, or she just got tired of Socrates starting philosophical tirades whenever she asked him to put up the shelves or something like that. Photo: thepoisongarden.co.uk

So, if you’re a novice, either find someone who knows their herbs to tell you exactly what is what and to show you the tell-tales, or get yourself some plant-spotting book with detailed description and pictures of each part of the plant. Once you actually hold yarrow in your hand, you’ll never mistake it for something else – the leaves and flowers are dead giveaway. Hogweed is larger, with hairy stalk and different leaves. There is a possibility of actually making a mistake between cow parsley and hemlock, so it’s good that cow parsley is not particularly useful and you would not pick it anyway. Also – farmers probably can tell them apart straight away, because hemlock is as bad for livestock as it is for humans.

My initial plan for this post was to include the equipment you’ll need and the process of drying/preserving the plants once collected. However, this turned to be quite long as it is, so I’ll leave it for the next time. Keep an eye on the next post.