#moon goddess market

[thegothicalice]

Not feeling the best, lazy outfit ☠️

[moongoddessmarket]

New sticker drop! 🖤 Thanks for supporting local art!

[devonellington]

Tues. Feb. 7, 2023: Variety as Spice and Obstacle

image courtesy of Reimund Bertrams via pixabay.com Tuesday, February 7, 2023 Last Day of Full Moon Sunny and cold Well, that was quite the weekend. Let’s sit down and have a catch-up, shall we? Friday, I did the blogging. I drafted two episodes of Legerdemain. That felt good, and the arcs I have intersecting and weaving in this second big arc are coming together. I’ve adjusted the outline…

[chosocutegf]

husband!Miguel O’Hara x fem!reader

cw: smut

husband!Miguel who rents a whole private beach and a beachfront villa just for you two to finally have your well deserved vacation. He makes sure you have all the comforts you might need, and that the whole thing matches your tastes.

husband!Miguel who doesn’t even give you the time to put down your luggages that he immediately picks you up and takes you to first flat surface so he can make love to you. He is so pent up from work that he can’t help the desire surging through his veins, especially when he sees you in that little sundress.

husband!Miguel who goes around wearing short sleeved shirts and shorts. Most of the times he doesn’t even button up his shirts, letting you see his toned abs under it, and the happy trail that disappears in his pants. He enjoys catching you staring at him and making you blush.

husband!Miguel who made sure to buy you all sort of bikinis before leaving so that he could admire you with them on. However, he wasn’t really expecting his cock to be hard all the time at the sight of the little straps clinging to your body, the material barely covering your nipples and cunt, leaving the rest of your skin exposed to his hungry eyes.

husband!Miguel who sulks and follows you around like a puppy when you forbid him to touch you, because for the first days you didn’t even had the time to step on the beach that he was already pouncing on you.

“Por favor, mi amor,” (please, my love) he murmurs, wrapping his arms around your middle from behind and brushing his nose against your neck before leaving a kiss there. You ignore him as you continue to apply sunscreen on your arms, “Lo siento, cariño, but you look so good in your bikinis… you can’t blame a husband who is madly in love with his wife, can you?” (i’m sorry, sweetheart..)

husband!Miguel who is quick to scoop you up in his arms the moment you give up, slap your ass and fuck you nice and slow. He just loves you so much and you make him feel like a horny teenager every time he sees you walking around in those flimsy clothes.

husband!Miguel who takes you snorkeling because he wants to see the beauty of the ocean with you. And he makes it difficult for you when he comes out wearing one of those tight black dry suits, accentuating every muscle of his body and making his broad shoulders and tiny waist stand out more. You gasp when he turns around and you see how good his butt looks in it.

husband!Miguel who holds your hand, everywhere and anywhere. He wants to feel you close, especially when you two go around to explore the local markets, or attend traditional dance performances. If he doesn’t have a hand holding yours, he has an arm wrapped around your shoulders or waist, but rest assured that he is always touching you.

husband!Miguel who wants to take walks on the shore with you, holding you close. He likes them even more when the sun is down, the stars and moon are shining over your heads, and you two talk softly to each other. Those are the moments when Miguel is most vulnerable with you. He loves to see how the moonlight shines over your features, making you look like a goddess and he can’t help but wonder how he got so lucky to have found you.

husband!Miguel that one day decides to rent a boat to take you around. The sun shone on his tanned skin, making him look like a greek god. He was wearing his sunglasses, his wet hair were slicked back as he stood there, driving and looking sexy. You couldn’t help but snap a few pictures of him looking like that.

husband!Miguel who on the other hand, had difficulty looking away from you lying on the bow of the boat. Your wet skin glistening under the sun, and your little bikini doing nothing to cover your plump curves. He could see your perked nipples poking under the thin material, and it was making his cock throb in his swimsuit.

“Okay, now jump,” Miguel tells you, looking at you with a little grin while you stand at the edge of the boat, looking down at the clear waters. You glance back at him with a pout before resting your hands on your hips, “no, you go first,” you mumble.

Miguel’s rich and low laugh rings in your ears before you feel the boat slightly swaying to one side and the other as he approaches you. He brought the two of you in the middle of ocean, away from the shore, and as you looked down at the deep waters, you couldn’t help being a little nervous. “Vale, mamí,” (all right) he says, kissing your forehead and swatting your ass before jumping with his arms straight over his head.

You cringe as the boat sways and you observe Miguel resurfacing above the waters. He shakes the water from his hair, before looking up at you with a grin, “c’mon, cariño, you can do it”. Soon after, you find yourself gripping him tightly in the waters, looking at him and chuckling as he stays afloat and holds you above him.

husband!Miguel who buys you as many piña colada as you want when you go to a local bar. He makes sure to hold you close to him while you dance around him, drink in hand, and smiling widely. He is fascinated by you until you decide to grind your ass against his middle, your short dress really making it hard for him to resist you. When he can’t hold back anymore, he takes you back to the villa and makes sure to fuck the brattiness out of you.

husband!Miguel who wakes up one day and you aren’t in bed. He can’t help the panic that surges in him, and he is quick to stand up to search around the house while calling out your name. However, his nerves immediately relax when he looks out the wide window facing the beach and he sees you sunbathing at the shore.

He makes his way out of the villa, his eyes widening when he sees you sunbathing. Naked. The waves gently hit your body, making you look like an ocean nymph. He groans and reaches down to adjust his cock in his boxers, feeling himself already getting hard. “Mamí,” he calls you, stopping when he is close enough to let his eyes roam down your body, “¿Que haces?” (what are you doing?). You pry your eyes open under your sunglasses, smiling when you see your husband towering over you, “sunbathing,” you tell him.

He kneels down next to you, his finger tracing down your stomach and making you shiver while his gaze is fixed on your perky nipples, “you had me worried when I didn’t see you in bed…,” he murmurs, and you notice how his voice deepens and his eyes look down your body, “sorry, Mig, didn’t want to”.

He clicks his tongue and doesn’t say anything as he pries your legs open, swearing under his breath when he sees your glistening cunt, and positions himself between your legs. He is quick to dive in your pretty pussy, not caring about the waves hitting his back. He stays there until he is sure you’re properly satisfied.

husband!Miguel who starts to hide your bikinis from that moment on. If you have to swim, you’ll do it naked, so that he can catch a glimpse of your little cunt when you dive in the ocean. He will start to swim naked too after you complain that you don’t want to be the only one naked.

husband!Miguel who loves to make you angry when you are laying down on a towel, and he crawls on top of you, water dripping down his body and hair, wetting you. You scream at him and try to push him away but he is stronger and starts to pepper kisses all over your face, pressing his body down against yours. Then he makes love to you because he can’t hold back when his wife is laying under him so prettily.

I love Miguel so much, IT HURTS

probably gonna write more about this, let me know your thoughts (*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ꕤ*.ﾟ

(m.list)

[yinyuedijun]

NIGHT FLOWER: part i

Your place in the world was one of a tool. This was true of every slave: you were all things to be used. Kakavasha understood this about you, and he understood this about himself. It was how he survived all those years ago, and it’s how he survives now. And so, when Aventurine goes into his first heat in years and decides to suffer it alone, you can only think of one way to get him to accept your help: You offer to let him use you.

written for @/lorelune's spring fever collab & @ficsforgaza

13.5k words of omegaverse, mutual pining, hurt/comfort, angst with an eventual happy ending. gn alpha reader + omega aventurine (they each have both amab and afab genitalia). explicit piv sex, reader bottoms, the sex is consensual but emotionally complicated and deeply sad. cw slavery, racism, gendered violence, including very brief and non-graphic (but direct) references to sexual abuse during slavery. the sa and slavery are not eroticized. dead dove do not eat, mdni.

thank you to @acerathia, @minnaci, @owlespresso for all your help with beta reading and to @kosmiccarma for brainstorming omega aventurine hcs!

“I’ve alw███ l█ved ███, Ka██v█s███”

You knew it from the moment you met him.

Gaunt, pallid, weighed down by heavy chains. Irises that glowed like the auroras back in your world. Delicate features that made every passerby in the market stop to read the description on the placard. (Sigonian, it said, although you couldn’t read at the time. Avgin. Male. Omega. Sixteen years old. Sixty Tanba, no tax.) He had an all-consuming scent that was impossible to ignore—one that possessed you, made your heels dig into the dirt, every atom in your body resisting the impatient jerk of the chains at your wrist. Even through your muzzle, through the perpetual stench of carbon-steel and blood, you could smell it: honey and wildflowers. A fragrance that settled deep within you, flooded you with a warmth that felt like home.

Aventurine is not a spiritual person. He once told you this, his smile cold in the glow of an artificial moon. He'd been deeply religious as a child, but hasn’t since cared for fairy tales about fortune and fate, three-eyed goddesses or merciful rainfalls. Hasn't thought about anything like a destined love. He thinks the idea of a true mate is laughable, that no such bond could ever be forged between an omega and an alpha. That nothing so unconditional could ever exist.

You know differently, of course. You've known it from the moment you met him, from the second you laid eyes on him and thought, I need to help you, and I need to protect you, and I need you to be safe, and you’d never once heard the word ‘love’ in your life—slaves are never loved by their masters, after all, and you'd always been nothing but a slave—but every atom of your being knew that you loved him, that you'd always love him.

And when your master cradled your face that night and crooned that he owned you, that you'd always be his obedient, alpha pet—for the first time in your life, you knew that he was wrong.

You didn't belong to your slaver.

You belonged to him.

To Kakavasha.

These days, Aventurine does not smell like honey, and your jaw is not restrained.

Your muzzle was one of the first things that Aventurine threw away when he bought your freedom. According to the Amber Era system, it had been several months since the murder of your shared master. Ninety-five Star Calendar days after the Interastral Peace Corps had arrested Kakavasha. An entire rotation around the black hole at the centre of your wretched galaxy, all of which had been spent in the captivity of some new mistress. She picked you out because she liked your calming scent and the look of your face, but mostly she used you for the fighting pits just like your old master.

Aventurine had been sitting in the audience of your final match, then bought you out right after you won. “I’m in need of a fighter,” he’d said, smiling in his thick furs and jewels. He played the part of a slavemaster perfectly, his gloved hands wandering the span of your aching shoulders, touching the bloodied maw of your mask. “And I’d be willing to pay top credit for yours.”

She protested. You were her most prized possession, one of her greatest investments. Slaves from your planet were hard enough to come by—alphas capable of reproduction, nearly impossible. And you were so well-behaved, so poised, so endearing in a way that was rare for alphas. She was fond of you. Her omega slaves were fond of you too. They would be distraught if you left, and that would complicate her household affairs—and surely Aventurine, as a respectable owner of human capital like herself, could understand how inconvenient that would be?

Aventurine bared his teeth in a gracious smile. (You’d never seen Kakavasha make such an expression before—so disarming, so cunning, a crescent moon beneath snake eyes. He’d never smelt like this either, like an expensive cologne layered with bleach, and it left you feeling nauseous, wondering if he was ill.) He flirted his way into her good graces, made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and then he brought you into the first-class ship on which he’d arrived. You were so stunned by its luxury—the handwoven carpets, the crushed velvet seats, the imported tea from several galaxies away and the custom-ordered outfit he had bought for you—that you nearly missed the tremble in his hands as he punched numbers into the remote control lock for your chains.

He had regained his composure by the time he pulled away your muzzle, though. He threw it carelessly to the ground—your titanium chains, too. Then kicked both away with his shined leather shoes.

“There,” Aventurine said, smiling cheerfully. “Much better, don’t you think?”

“Vasha—” you started, voice thick with wasted grief, and all you wanted to was reach for him, to double check that he was real, but he placed a finger to your lips and stopped you. You stiffened at the satin touch, but he seemed unbothered.

“‘Aventurine’,” he corrected.

You stared blankly. “What?”

“‘Aventurine’. Like the gemstone. That’s my name now.”

“You—” Your voice caught in your throat. You realized that you’d been holding your breath. You always had the habit of holding your breath in the luxurious, private rooms of very rich men, because you never liked what happened in them. Forcing yourself to breathe, you asked, “You gave yourself a new name?”

“No. The IPC gave me a new name. They gave me a job, too.”

“A job?” you asked, voice faint. Now that you were breathing again, you were noticing once more just how bizarre he smelled. Sterile and expensive and completely foreign. “You’re free now?”

“Well, I’m a freedman, but I don’t know if I’d call myself free. I’m a bit… indebted to the IPC, let’s say. But that’s fine. I can’t complain. I mean—look around. This beats the fighting pits, doesn’t it?” He gestured lazily at your surroundings, and you nodded.

“It’s nice here,” you replied, feeling absurd but not knowing what else to say. Once Kakavasha got talking, it was impossible to get a word in edgewise.

“You like it here? Good. This room’s yours. Mine is the next one over. You’ll live and work here, with me. I’ll make sure you’re paid well. Full benefits, vacation, salary, and overtime. The standard pay for your role is seventy-thousand credits per month, but I’ll see if I can get you more. HR is pretty strict about their hiring policies, but—”

“You’re hiring me?”

Aventurine went very still, his smile tightly controlled. His eyes remained fixed on you, but they seemed less snake-like, now. They looked more familiar. More afraid.

“I’m offering, yes,” he said neatly. “You’ll be part of my personal security detail. I don’t have the contract for you to review yet, unfortunately. I didn’t arrange one ahead of time because, well”—he laughed, as if this were polite conversation and he were making a joke about the weather—“I didn’t know if I’d find you alive. But things worked out in my favour. They always work out in my favour. I’ll make sure they’ll work out in your favour too, so long as you’re with me. So you’ll consider it, won’t you? Staying with—working for me, I mean.”

Your eyes went soft. Beneath the artificial fragrance, you finally caught a hint of his familiar scent—more wildflower than honey at that moment, the way it always is when he’s scared.

“Kakavasha—”

“Name your price,” he said loudly, “and I’ll match it.”

You sighed. “Vasha,” you said more gently, and his shoulders relaxed at the subvocal shift in your timbre, at the famed alpha Voice that necessitated your muzzle, “I don’t care about the money. Of course I’ll stay here. But—what happened? Why did you kill him yourself? Why didn't you let me do it? That was the plan. It was always supposed to be me.”

It was my job, you thought then, just as you had thought to yourself every night, curled up in your bed and trying to recall the scent of fresh honey, to keep you safe.

He shrugged and said, “It would have been too risky to involve you.”

“You were caught and sentenced to death. The risk was already too high.”

“But the stakes weren’t,” he replied simply, and before you could ask what he meant by that, he continued, “and it worked out, didn’t it? I work for the IPC. You work for me. We’re freedmen now. Whatever I've lost, it doesn't matter. Our gains far outweigh it.”

“And what have you lost, Vasha?”

He smiled at you, charming and distracting. A crescent moon beneath snake eyes. “Nothing of value,” he reassured you, and even though you could feel the calm of an omega’s voice washing over you, even though it released all the tension in your body, all you could smell was cologne and wildflowers, and you knew that he was lying.

Vasha once told you, curled up and quiet on the basement floor, that he despised his eyes. They were supposed to be a sign of blessing from Gaiathra Triclops, but they'd never brought him anything but trouble. They were the first thing that the slavers always noticed about him, the feature that made him such an alluring commodity. Their aurora glow, their strange beauty, their promise of a rare opportunity: a chance at owning a specimen of an exotic, endangered species, possibly the last of its kind. These are all things that you've heard in the parlour of your master’s house as he entertained rich company, the crowd of them gawking at his human curios.

Avgin are said to make the most beautiful slaves, he'd often say. And Avgin omegas are said to be the most beautiful among them. What do you all think? They'd all hum, peering closely at Kakavasha’s features, and inevitably someone would joke, I think I'd like to borrow him sometime, and then they would all laugh while your pulse ticked up and you imagined tearing at their throats. Vasha would search for your gaze in these moments, giving you a long, pointed look: Don't do anything stupid.

He’d always been so blasé about it, the way people fixated on his Avgin blood. You'll never understand how. He didn't react to any of the comments, the groping, the innuendos. He was, however, distinctly unimpressed at the way that your master liked to play him up as a rare and expensive acquisition, as a sign of his own status. It's embarrassing to watch, Kakavasha had remarked. Everyone knows that Sigonian slaves are uncommon but cheap—people always think we’ll bring them more trouble than our worth. This was how Kakavasha had ended up in the market in the first place: because his last master had been robbed, and he'd been wrongly blamed for it.

The blame, to this day, has never stopped. People—powerful people, politicians, businessmen, socialites—look at Aventurine’s eyes and immediately reach for their pockets. You've seen it for yourself, these spineless despots and scammers feeling for their wallets. Sigonian, you know they're thinking. Liar, cheat, thief, whore, worthless, worthless, worthless. Your hands tighten around your blade each time, a loaded gun with a finger on the trigger.

Alphas are said to be violent by nature. Aventurine has often called you the one exception to this rule: the most docile, good-hearted alpha he's ever met. But this is a lie. You do have a predator instinct, and it comes out in full-force whenever you’re around these particular types of men. These types who notice Aventurine’s eyes and see a thief; these monsters who see his irises and imagine what it would be like to bed him. You’d kill them if you could. It would be so easy, especially now that you are an IPC dog. The Company is already such a violent force; what would be one more murder?

But Aventurine has never ordered you to punish anyone. (Don't do anything stupid, he always tells you with a glance, smiling through every humiliation.) Nor has he ever seemed bothered enough by these meetings to try concealing his heritage.

A fellow Asset Liquidation Specialist once asked why he didn't just hide his eye colour—it would likely be better for fostering relationships, negotiating deals—but Aventurine had shrugged it off. I'm a gambler working with the IPC, he'd said. Do you really think a pair of coloured contacts would make anyone trust me? He'd laughed, and his voice had carried a threatening edge, and his coworker had shifted visibly at it. Being an Avgin is the least threatening thing about me, wouldn't you say?

You think that Aventurine likes being seen as a threat. Sometimes you wonder if this is why he doesn't mind wearing his eyes so much, but abhors keeping his scent. He washes his clothes until they're free of his disarming sweetness and then masks himself with an unsettling blend of ambergris, jasmine, and wood. And he is on suppressants all the time—hasn’t had a single heat since the day he killed his master. Hasn't smelled like himself, either.

At the end of the day, it’s manageable being an Avgin in this business, he often comments, spraying half a bottle of masking cologne on himself, but you can't be an Avgin and an omega. Wouldn’t you agree?

You'd know better than me, you reply, noncommittally—and truthfully.

But you're an alpha, he observes. Don't you have an opinion?

You don't pay me to have opinions, you always remind him, stone-faced. You pay me to stand here and look scary. And Aventurine always laughs at this, and he always wires you money and calls it a bonus as he pesters you for an answer, and he always gets distracted and starts scrolling through all his shopping wishlists instead. I saw this thing the other day and thought of you. And this too. Would you like either of them? Would you like them both? I’m a very generous manager, you know. I'll buy you anything you like.

But even though he always gets distracted, Aventurine never forgets. Sooner or later, he inevitably circles back to these questions—these anxieties about his scent, about his eyes, about his blood. He never cares for anyone else’s opinions, but he's always been curious about yours. Even when he was Vasha, he wanted to know what you thought.

He’d been sixteen years old and delirious with heat the first time he asked you, face wrinkling with pain as he spilled his thoughts. It was so incoherent, so sad, you thought it must have been about a fever dream. Mama Fenge, he kept saying. Mama Fenge blessed me, She blessed me, I'm blessed, it rained when I was born—did you know that? My luck, I was lucky. The Katicans, they never caught me. They got everyone else, but not me. I was blessed by Her. I'm going to save my people. I will. I'll save my sister. My eyes are proof. My mistress liked them. Said they're beautiful. Worth sixty whole coppers. A blessing. He pulled you close, pressed his scalding face to your scent gland, and his whole body shuddered with relief. This was the first and only time he'd allowed you to hold him, and it was only out of desperation, out of his mind. Do you like them, alpha? Do you like my eyes? Why? Is it because they're beautiful? Because they're from Gaiathra?

“I like them because they're yours,” you'd replied, and Kakavasha had laughed deliriously.

This is when he told you he hated them: I'd close them forever, if I could.

When you were younger—dumber—you had a habit of squirrelling away every spare coin you came across. You collected them in a little purse that one of the omega slaves had sewn for you—a thank-you for always keeping the other alphas away from her—and you hid it underneath a loose floorboard. By the time that Kakavasha was arrested, you'd saved up twenty-nine Tanba. You’d wanted enough to buy Kakavasha’s freedom and then to set him up for a comfortable life.

It had been a stupid plan. An embarrassing one. If you ever confessed it to Aventurine, he'd laugh at you. Slaves can't buy other slaves, he'd say. Leave the schemes to me next time. You’re too good-hearted for it.

You’d already known that, of course. You knew that you didn't have the status to buy him or mate him or even just provide for him, but you wanted to. God, did you want to—you spent every waking moment thinking about it, every sleeping moment dreaming of it. It wasn't even that you desired him, though he was beautiful and fragrant and more delicate than anything that had ever touched you in your life, which was only your master’s hands and your muzzle and your chains. Aventurine would feel so soft in comparison, you’d always figured. It made your heart ache, thinking about getting to hold something so lovely.

But really—that desire came second. What came first was how mated omegas feel safe around their alphas, and you so desperately wanted him to be safe. Kakavasha had looked so frail, so grim, as your master took his chains and led him home from the market, and you could smell the fear coming off him in waves. And you could do nothing to stop it. You had nothing you could use to stop it—nothing other than your hands that could kill for him and your pheromones that could soothe him and your useless heart that wanted to collect sixty Tanba for him. That was all you had.

So you failed in the end. Of course you did. You didn't have the status to buy him or mate him or even just provide for him. You couldn't even do for him the one thing you could have done—which was to kill. And Kakavasha suffered for your incompetence. He had to dirty his hands with blood and gamble his way into wealth and then suddenly he was freeing you, not the other way around.

And now you are comfortable. You'll lead an easy life from now, Aventurine reassured you when he brought you onto his ship all those years ago, and he's kept that promise. What about you? you'd asked him then. Will you lead an easy life with me, if you're working for the IPC? And he had smiled and lied to you: Yes.

It had been a painfully obvious lie. If you were a smarter person, you'd have never believed it in the first place. Aventurine has no interest in leading an easy life, because an easy life would be less profitable, and less profit would mean less safety. And he is always, always worried about being unsafe. It is indiscernible to everyone but you—an alpha (his alpha, always his, even if he doesn't want you) who has watched over him for so long that you can detect every shift in his scent. No matter how much cologne he drowns himself in and no matter how strong his suppressants are, you know when he is afraid.

And here is the bitter truth, the ultimate proof of your shortcomings:

Aventurine is always afraid.

It is a beautiful day on Agnisahr, and you can tell that Aventurine is about to throw up from worry.

You're sitting in the middle of stunning wealth—Aventurine in his feathers and jewellery, you in your tailored jacket—in a lobby made from marble and pale sandstone, with a view of palm trees and rolling, scarlet sand dunes beyond the window. The waitstaff addresses him as Honoured Guest and they keep his crystal chalice filled constantly with water—one of the most expensive commodities on the planet. Aventurine has been drinking from it religiously, which is strange as he typically has the habit of forgetting to hydrate. A faint wildflower scent is drifting from his slender form. These are the only giveaway to his mood: he's otherwise as pokerfaced as ever, smiling calmly as he discusses his plans to sabotage the local government and acquire the planet for the IPC.

“This is a very dangerous mission,” you state flatly.

“All my missions are dangerous.” He takes a sip, one pinky up. “The IPC pays me well for a reason. As they say—”

“‘High risk, high reward.’ I know.” You try not to sound bitter, though you allow yourself to sound tired. “I still do not think the risk is worth the reward in this case.”

“I think over 5.6 million in credits is a great reward, actually. We could do a lot with that kind of money.”

You raise a brow. “What could an extra 5.6 million get you that you can't already buy?” It is—as Topaz would say—‘chump change’ in comparison to his current wealth, which sums to a number so vast that you can't wrap your head around it.

Aventurine pretends to miss the point. “Tons! We could buy a new spacecraft. Get another mansion. Or—we could take a vacation to Penacony. I hear it's quite nice there.” A playful smile. “I could get us a penthouse unit. With a featherbed.”

You frown. Sometimes Aventurine likes to flirt when you're being stubborn—not out of interest, but as a ploy to distract you. He’d developed the habit after he joined the IPC. It used to fluster you, but now it only makes you cross your arms.

“You could die,” you point out.

“You'll protect me.”

“No, I won't. You always find a way to get rid of me when things are most dangerous.” You give him an accusatory stare. “You never let me do my job.”

He's too shameless to deny it. “And it's worked out fine, hasn't it? I haven't died so far.”

“Yes. Just by dumb luck.”

“I beg to differ. My luck is quite reliable.” He sets down his glass. Glances back outside. A microexpression, brows knotting for the briefest second as he studies the sky. “I'm not worried.”

“You're a shit liar.”

That gets him to look at you, letting a small frown pass over his face. “No, I'm actually a great liar. You're just too good at reading me. It's very inconvenient, you know.”

“I can't help it.” You lean toward him, making a show of it as you sniff. An orchid-like scent—faint but unmistakable—has seeped into artificial ambergris and wood. “It's hard to ignore.”

He hums. He isn't frowning anymore—but doesn't look happy, either. “I should change suppressants.” He taps the side of his empty glass, fidgeting. Aventurine never fidgets: it's an amateur giveaway. “These ones clearly don't work well enough.”

“That won't help. I know you too well.” Your eyes soften. He's looking outside again, the blues of his irises distant. “You're worried, Aventurine. More than usual. Let’s back out of this—let Jade handle it.”

“The mission isn't what's bothering me,” he says patiently. “I just don't like this planet.”

“Because you can tell it's dangerous.”

“No. Well—it is, but nothing I can't handle.” He leans back. “I just dislike the weather here.”

You arch a brow. “...the weather?”

“Yes,” he says neatly, “it's too dry here. I'll break out.”

You open your mouth. Close it. It is possibly the most absurd thing you've ever heard, and certainly the worst lie that's ever come from him. For as long as you've known him, Aventurine has had flawless skin, marble-smooth, and ever since being freed, he’s never really cared much for looking handsome so much as looking rich. But he maintains his serious expression: all-in on the farce. “Did you know that outside the capital, this planet hasn't had any natural rain in a quarter of an Amber Era? And the stellar winds are terrible. I don't know how people live on a planet like this.” His eyes narrow at the cloudless sky. “The IPC is going to need to do a lot of terraforming if they want to make this into a merchant hub.”

“Aventurine.”

“It'll be a pain crossing the desert—the elements will ruin my clothes, you know,” he continues. “It won't be so bad while we're on the ships, but we’ve got to go outside from time to time. Can't make any friends otherwise.”

“Aventurine.”

“And there's nothing to do for fun when we’re not working.” He sighs dramatically. “I can't wait to get our 5.6 billion and leave for someplace else. I'm being serious about Penacony, by the way—”

“Aventurine.”

“—though not about the featherbed. I'll get you your own room, obviously. And I'll buy whatever dream experience you’d like. What kind would you want?”

Finally allowed a chance to speak, you say, “One where you retire.”

“Retire? Why would I ever do that?”

“I don't know. Maybe you decide you've made enough money.”

“No such thing.”

“Then you can settle down with someone.”

That makes him smile. It feels mocking. “Me? Settling down? With who?”

“Who knows. Someone who will treat you better than the IPC, I hope.”

“Anyone that nice would run in the other direction. But never mind me. This would be your dream experience. What happens to you in it?”

“I stop chasing after you and get to live out the rest of my days in peace,” you say dryly, and Aventurine blinks. “Please stop deflecting. The IPC gave you a suicide mission. We will both die if we stay here.”

He looks serious now. “I wouldn't let you die.”

“You can't know that.”

“Well, I do. And I've got decent chances at surviving too—at least one in ten.”

You feel like sighing—a deep, aggravated noise is heavy in your throat—but Aventurine doesn't enjoy it when you show anger around him. It's the one omega instinct that he can't ignore, you suppose: unease around an aggressive alpha. Voice tightly controlled, you say, “You’re going to bet your life on one in ten?”

  “Sure. My chances were worse on the last planet, and things worked out great. It'll be the same on Agnisahr.” Aventurine raises a hand, calls for the bill. The conversation is over. You lean back in your seat, watching sourly as he pays tens of thousands of credits just for water.

“You know, they say the royal family is backed by an Aeon,” you can't help but point out, once the waiter is gone. A last-ditch effort. Aventurine smiles at it, amused. Like you're a child.

“So what?” He glances outside, at the desolate landscape beyond the oasis—nothing but red sand, a blue, rainless sky, and two radiant suns shining above it all. “The protection of a god is nothing compared to the schemes of human beings. And gods abandon their people all the time, anyway.”

During your tenth day on Agnisahr, you realise that something is deeply wrong.

It takes you some time to understand what’s happening. At first you think that whatever political danger you’ve intuited is much worse than you thought, and that’s why Aventurine has been so pale, so discomforted, so exhausted. Then his scent starts changing—he switches clothes two, three times a day (because of all this heat during Agnisahran days, he tells his new business associates) and spritzes his nape with his cologne almost religiously—and you wonder if he is sick with something. If the food in this planet has something that disagrees with his Sigonian biology, or if he has picked up one of the local filoviruses, or if someone’s poisoned one of his meals because they’ve correctly identified him as a threat. Aventurine dismisses every single one of these theories when you bring it up, and—as if in denial—only attributes it to the weather. (I’ve never done well in deserts, he tells you, his eyes on his phone screen. I'm not used to them. It is above 300 Kelvin, and you do not see a single bead of sweat on his neck, and his cheeks are not even a little flushed.)

You only figure it out when he is too ill to get out of bed one morning and forbids all the IPC staff from coming near his hotel room. It sets off alarms immediately—Aventurine, no matter how sick, will work and see through meetings as long as he is mentally capable of it—and so you naturally ignore his orders and check on him, using the spare key to his sleeping quarters that you're given as a policy. And as soon as the door cracks open—as soon as you step inside only to be hit with a violent, cloying sweetness—you realise what’s happening and slam the door shut behind you.

“You’re in heat,” you blurt out, and Aventurine—a shivering, panting mess on the bed—groans in response.

“Why are you here?” He turns toward you, still lucid enough to glare at you through the tangled mess of his hair. His voice is weak, but no less self-possessed: “I was very clear—no company today.”

“I am your personal bodyguard,” you remind him mildly. Your voice is calm—both non-threatening and non-condescending. “Those orders don’t apply to me. If things feel suspicious, I look into it. And they felt very suspicious.” Your brow knits as you study his clothes. Mulberry silk clings to his form, soaked through with sweat. Thin, eucalyptus sheets are tangled up around him. There are only two pillows. No water bottles. No knotting toys.

Nothing.

“You didn't know you'd be in heat,” you realise. “What happened to your suppressants?”

“I don't know.” There’s a quiet, frustrated edge to his voice. Vulnerable too. It makes you think of when you were both still slaves, and Aventurine was confined to the basement of the manor—the one that all omega slaves were made to ride out their heats in. Either they would do it alone or were ordered to spend it with some alpha, usually either a friend of the master or an alpha slave he wished to reward. That's when they're most pliable, he'd tell his guests, or sometimes even you. They get so desperate they'll present themselves to anyone. Then amused laughter from the other party—How obscene!—as you looked away, blood hammering in your ears.

You had been your master’s favourite. His most obedient, most profitable pet—striking enough for his guests to admire, deadly enough for his audiences to bet on, docile enough for him to enjoy. Good enough for him to reward, and he often rewarded you with his most beautiful slave: his Avgin omega. Just don't mark him, he’d said, fastening the muzzle around your mouth. It'll ruin his market value. Who knows if someday he'd sell Kakavasha off to some alpha master who wished to claim him, he said. Though I don't think there's anyone in this star system who'd want a Sigonian for a mate, let alone a Sigonian slave. Then he’d paused, eyes scanning over you. As if contemplating. But maybe they'd try to get Avgin whelps out of him, he added, and you felt like throwing up.

You'd never mate him in those moments, your muzzle always prevented you from saying. You didn't even want to think about touching him, and he didn't want to think about it either. Even in the cruel grip of his heats, with nothing but the thin mat beneath him and his slave’s rags around him, Kakavasha hadn't wanted any kind of contact from you, rejecting any chance of solace. Don't, don't—not again, not again, he'd begged. Then as the nights marched on and his mind grew hazier, he’d start whimpering too: It hurts, alpha. It hurts. Help me. It hurts. Don't touch me. Not again. It hurts. It hurts. Stop it, please stop it.

It gutted you.

It went against every instinct, not to touch him. To let him lie there, in scorching, lonely pain, when all you wanted to do was to dispel it. It would be so easy to press yourself against him and let his skin cool against yours, do the one thing that your body was good at other than killing. But not again, not again, I can't anymore, I don't want it, I never wanted it, and all you could do was sit there, unmoving. Watch as the most delicate, precious thing you had in your life shatter.

And standing here now, watching Aventurine shatter before you once more—it is unbearable. He needs a nest, you keep thinking. He needs a nest and some water and some kind of touch, some kind of relief, but not again, not again, and you’re still a slave, still a worthless and stupid slave, and Kakavasha is still crying on a basement floor and you can't do anything for him.

“You need help, Aventurine,” you say, voice soft, and his whole body tenses. His scent dips, and the scent of florals overwhelms you.

“No,” he breathes, “I don't.”

“You do. You're sick.” You bite your lip. Your heart splits as you suggest it, but you say, “I can call a professional.”

“No,” he spits. The facade is gone. The poker face has cracked. The anger and the pain and the fear are all on full display, and his voice sharpens: “No strangers.”

No foreign scents, you realise he's demanding. A new scent would probably make him feel unsafe.

Then let me help you, you think of pleading, but not again, not again, and you're filled with so much shame at the thought that all you can do is look away.

“Then—can I do anything?” He goes still. “Not—not that, but something to make you more comfortable. I can build you a nest, at least—”

“No.” He takes a deep, shaking breath. “No nests. I don't need one—”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don't,” he says. His voice is wavering now, on the verge of crumbling with fever and pain. “I've never—I’ve never needed a nest, I don't—I don't want to—” He presses his face into his pillow. “I need—I need to be alone, fuck—”

He doesn't mean to whine. The cry for distress is instinct, something that all omegas are programmed to do in heat. You’ve heard that they’ve evolved to make this noise as a way of appealing to nearby alphas for help, but you think this must be a lie as you never once saw your alpha master giving mercy to any of his omega slaves. Still, whether it is your biology or not—the noise that Aventurine makes has your heart aching so much you can't help but step forward. But he shakes his head and inches away, shuddering violently, and then his voice echoes again in that cold basement—not again, not again, and don't touch it anymore, don't use it anymore, don't use me anymore, not again, and it's all you can do to back away until your spine is pressed against the door.

“I'm sorry, Vasha,” you say, strained. “I’m sorry. I'll leave you now.”

As the door shuts behind you, you catch a final glimpse him—face pressed into the pillows, shivering.

If you didn't know better, you'd think he was crying.

When you were both slaves, Aventurine hated seeing you during his heats.

Kakavasha was normally calm around you. Most of the time, he was even friendly (he was friendly to everyone whom he thought could be useful), but he was different during his heats. Sometimes he was vicious; mostly he was withdrawn. Nearly always, he wanted to be left alone. In those moments, all he could register was your alpha scent and his memories of what other people had done to him during his heats. And while you'd have hated to leave him, despised the idea of him being offered to another alpha—even more than that, you hated violating this boundary of his. Hated that you were allowed to do whatever you wanted to him. Hated being the reason he felt so unsafe.

Hated being an alpha.

Now that you no longer have the orders of your slavemaster hanging over you, it is the least you can do to respect Aventurine’s wish of being left alone. He has every right to privacy, and you have every obligation to give it to him. But instead you have been standing here, outside his door, for a full system-hour.

Every time you try to leave, your body is wracked with anxiety. The thought of other people—other alphas—coming near him in this state makes you seethe, your hands flexing at your side. The predator instinct comes out, and the people around you notice it. Every person unlucky enough to walk down this hall scurries away under your glare, even the other IPC staff wandering about to look for Aventurine: Must be their mate on the other side, they remark to one another, and then they're gone.

It is a hard thing to hear. You are not his mate. You are not even a heat partner. If you were, then he wouldn't be in so much pain. Not now, and not back then.

Aventurine has never had easy heats. You keep replaying your memories of all his past ones, each one a wound in your heart: the aching sweetness of nectar and honey; his withering body as he clutched his abdomen and curled up; the tears and sweat staining the mat beneath him. And above all: the fear. The scent of it, the sight of it, the sound of it in his voice. Stronger today than any other day.

By instinct, you know that he cannot persist like this. That this time is somehow worse than all those other times, and that he will become seriously ill if left alone.

After nearly an hour and a half, you finally open the door, fearing the worst.

“Aventurine?” you say quietly, but there's no response, and your stomach drops as you see him.

His body is pale, listless. If it weren't for the fragrance washing over you or the sweat on his temple, you'd worry that he was dead.

Tentatively, you reach out. Rest a hand on his forehead, and it scorches you. He stirs at the touch, doesn't open his eyes—but the quiet sigh of relief is unmistakable. His fingers twitch, as if wanting to reach for you.

“Aventurine,” you say gently. “Aventurine, I'm going to take care of you. Is that alright?”

He doesn't respond. You grimace, pulling away to fetch things for him: several spare pillows from the closet, an extra blanket too. From his suitcase, you grab a few of his sweaters, all thick cotton and fleece. He’d had a sense that Agnisahr would be cold at night. Deserts always get cold after sundown, since sand doesn’t retain heat, he'd told you while he was packing. Or I think so, anyway. Don't know why. Must have read it somewhere. Then he’d given you a long, unreadable look before saying, Make sure to bring a jacket. The warmest one you have. The elements on a planet like Agnisahr can kill a person—even a person like you.

I’m sure I’ll be fine, you’d dismissed him. I can survive anything. Any kind of weather, any kind of illness, any kind of pain: these are all things your species is known for being able to endure, the trait that made you such a prized slave in your master’s eyes, such a useful agent at the IPC. You hadn’t given Aventurine’s warning any thought and hardly paid attention to what you’d thrown into your own suitcase.

It surprises you, then, that you find one of your sweaters in his luggage. Made from Sedanian cashmere and heat tech designed by the Intelligentsia Guild. Cloud-soft and warm to the touch. Aventurine had bought it for you before you were deployed to Jarilo-IV to collect intelligence for Topaz. Warmest thing in the known universe, he’d commented. One of a kind, too. Remember to wear it, alright? Don't let my money go to waste, now.

You stare at it, kneading the fleece between your fingers. You hadn’t mentioned wanting to bring this sweater. You’d lost it in your closet some months ago and forgot about it. Aventurine must have remembered and gone looking for it, because—why? You aren't sure. Probably because it’s warmer and softer than anything he owns, you guess. Of course he’d want to wear it.

You throw it into the pile of things you’ve collected for him.

You take it all to his bed, the mattress dipping as you sit next to Aventurine. One by one, you scent each item with your wrist, watching him carefully the whole time. You’re quiet as you lay them out around him, leaving him undisturbed as you build a nest. You order water and electrolyte drinks too, and you’re quick about going to the door when you hear room service knocking—with how feverish he is, he probably badly needs it.

Aventurine is awake when you come back. His breathing is still laboured, pained—but calm.

“I said I didn’t need a nest,” Aventurine says, though he doesn’t sound angry. You wonder if he’s too weak to be. His voice is faint, and his eyes are barely open—focused on the pile of blankets and clothing around him.

“You’re welcome.” You open a bottle of water, hold it out to him. “Drink.”

Aventurine pauses, stares at the offering like it's some kind of foreign object. But he accepts it eventually, sitting up and taking it from you. He winces with the movement, which he tries to hide. He ignores your frown as he drinks, and he doesn't stop until the bottle is empty.

“There are more,” you say, pointing at the several additional bottles on the nightstand. “And some food and some painkillers. I don't know how well they’ll work. This isn't a normal heat. If you're alright with it, I'll call a doctor and—”

“Everything smells like you,” he says quietly, and you stop.

“...yes. Unless they’re mated, nests usually feel most comforting to an omega when they smell like an alpha.” You swallow, looking away. “...you don't have a mate, and you didn't want a professional, so this was the only option I could think of. I'm sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says. He picks out one of the sweaters that have made its way into the nest, the Sedanian one. “I don't mind it.”

“Oh.” You let out a breath. “Then—can I call a doctor?”

His grip on the sweater tightens. “No.”

You frown. “Aventurine—”

“I’ve never needed a doctor before,” he says. He sounds unbothered, but he's fidgeting with the sweater now. “I don't need one now.”

A lie. He almost certainly needed a doctor in some of his prior heats, but you don't push the matter. “Maybe you don't need one,” you say instead, “but it would help.”

“I don't need help,” he says, and you look at him in disbelief. He catches your expression, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “Not more than you've already done, I mean.”

“I’ve barely—”

“Contact Topaz. Tell her I'm incapacitated. Tell her…” He hums. “Tell her I have food poisoning. The personnel too. It's not time-sensitive, our business on Agnisahr, so it shouldn't matter if I need a few days off.”

“You really need—”

“Give my regrets to our Agnisahran friends. Deliver it in person. They see you as my right hand, so they’ll most appreciate it coming from you. Topaz can help you with the verbiage. And—try to socialise with them a little, won't you? I think that little omega princess of theirs likes you. Some of the courtesans too, and they have surprising influence.”

“I do not want to be around any omega other than you right now,” you say before you can stop yourself, and Aventurine stops, blinking. His expression is blank, if perhaps a little curious—but his scent shifts. You can't identify how. You add quickly, “I’m not leaving you alone when you’re this sick.”

“Ah. Right.” Aventurine looks away. His voice sounds strange, and his heat must be getting to him again, because it carries a hint of pain. “But you have to. The IPC’s goals take priority.”

You frown. “Your life is more important than the IPC,” you say, and he laughs. Loudly.

“What? This is just a heat. I’m not going to die.”

“You don’t know that without seeing a doctor.”

“I do. I’m willing to bet money that I won’t die.” He cuts you off before you can reply: yes, you're always willing to bet on your life. “And even if I do, that would still be less important than Agnisahr. Do you know how many resources are on this lifeless rock?” His mouth slants. “If we mess up here, I’m dead anyway.”

“I wouldn’t let them touch you.”

“Yes, you would—because they would kill you too.” Aventurine sighs. His eyes close, and his brow creases—a sign that whatever reprieve he was lucky enough to get is about to end. “Go do what I asked. Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll… see a doctor if you do.”

You stand immediately. “Alright. I’ll be back to check on you.”

“I know.”

You stop at the door, giving him a long look. Seeing him like this—lying on a proper bed, cradled in a warm nest, with water and food and medicine nearby—you feel a little better. This is leagues beyond what he’d been afforded in his days as a slave, at the very least. Even if he isn’t free, at least he isn’t trapped.

But it still doesn’t feel good, having to step away. The last thing you want to do is talk to other people, pretend to have interest in other omegas. There are an astonishing number of them who are interested in you on this planet—that princess, and some baron’s son, and one of the prince’s favourite paramours—but you can’t bring yourself to care even for business purposes when Aventurine is like this. You can't act as if you are enjoying yourself when you know he is in pain.

You wonder about telling Topaz the truth. You wonder if she’d be worried enough about Aventurine to let you neglect this mission and cover for you instead, without letting Jade or Diamond or anyone else dangerous know. Not that you think that anyone at the Company particularly cares about Kakavasha—it’s only that he’s valuable. Aventurine of Stratagems is valuable. How many worlds have fallen because of him?

But he seemed unwilling to bet on his worth to them. Which is startling, given how often he's bet on it in the past.

“What’s so important about this planet,” you can’t help but ask, “that the IPC would rather you die than lose it?”

He’s silent for a long moment. His eyes are closed—hidden—but you can see his knuckles whiten as he clutches the Sedanian sweater.

“Copper,” he says. “They want it for the copper.”

When Kakavasha first suggested a friendship to you, it had felt like something in between a proposition and a threat:

Go ahead, he'd said. Use me as you wish. You can even stab me in the back if you want. Just be mindful of this: I don't make deals that don't pay off.

It might have been a strange way of making friends in any other circumstance, but in a house of slaves, it was a natural one. You had not been a clever person—still aren't—but you understood that your place in the world was one of a tool. This was the place of all slaves: you were all things to be used. Your body was a thing to be used. It was valuable for its strength, for its hardiness, for its threat in the arena and for its convenience in your master’s bed (or in a dark basement, or within a heat house, or inside whichever omega your mistress ordered you to calm down). It did not surprise you that Kakavasha wanted to use it as well. It did not surprise you that Kakavasha expected you to use him in return.

You never would have, of course. Kakavasha was not a thing to be used—he had always been a mate. Though you were happy to let him use you, because all you were was a tool anyway, so it was really all you could offer him: to be used.

None of this has changed for you. You don't think any of this has changed for Aventurine, either. With each new friendship he makes, he repeats those familiar words: Use me as you wish. And with each person who accepts, this is exactly what they do: they use him, and they use him, and they use him until suddenly they notice he's tricked them and they've got the losing hand.

You damned gambler, they always spit. You Sigonian wretch. All you know is how to manipulate people. Thief, liar, cheat, whore. Despite all these insults, Aventurine always smiles at them. Cry as they might, he’s won his bet and has their world in his palms.

Winner takes all, he sometimes gloats.

Winning and losing. Using and being used. Exploitation and treachery. This is all Aventurine knows; these are his great guiding principles in life. (He's told you this point blank, stacking up chips in his favourite gambling dens with a self-satisfied grin.) You often find yourself coming back to these conversations, particularly when you need to convince him of something.

And right now, you very badly need to convince him of something.

Aventurine is ignoring his doctor’s advice. His suppressants are unstable in extreme temperatures, he's been told. During travel on Agnisahr, they'd degraded, and now he’s experiencing his first heat in several years. Of course it's going to be painful, his doctor had said. I can prescribe you some medication to ease the symptoms, but really—nothing will work better than a heat partner. It doesn't need to be a mate. Any alpha will do.

The doctor had been an alpha. You had asked for a beta or omega, but alphas tend to dominate in Interastral Medical Schools, so they're in short supply. Aventurine had been still the whole time, face unreadable, but you could tell he wanted to throw up at the stench of an unfamiliar alpha. You had stepped between the two of them, not bothering to hide the animosity in your voice. We’ll take the medication, you had said, and the doctor had sniffed the air and nodded at you in approval.

Probably won't need it. An alpha like you could sort him out with just a few rounds, he told you, and both of you stayed quiet as he left.

You still aren't talking, or even looking at each other. Aventurine has lay down in his nest again, closing his eyes, while you stand as far away as physically possible—at the door where you'd just shown the doctor out. With the room shut off again, windows closed and door locked, Aventurine’s scent is starting to flood your senses once more. Out of the corner of your eye, you catch him shivering.

“What do you want to do?” you ask.

“Nothing.” He swallows. “I'll be fine.”

He's afraid. You can tell he's afraid. And you can tell he’ll be more afraid if you take even a single step closer to him, so you nod and say, “I'll go pick up your medication, then,” and Aventurine doesn't stop you. You can see him curling up in his nest, face pressed into the cashmere sweater.

But he still doesn't stop you.

After a few more days, Aventurine finally breaks.

There is a rare sag to his shoulders when he calls you to the room, along with a taste of dread in the air. You haven't seen him so vulnerable in years. Aventurine is not an open person, so cunning and self-possessed in his wealth—but Kakavasha was more brittle, more powerless, flayed raw and open even though he didn't often get the whip. (It would ruin his value if he ever scarred—his looks were his greatest selling point, your master said.) He was especially defeated when forced to spend his heats with an alpha he didn't want. You wonder, a vice grip of pain around your heart, whether this entire situation is simply an extension of that. Whether he is calling you here against his will, this time compelled by his pain, rather than his master. Whether this luxury suite feels like that wretched basement to him.

He doesn't look at you when he talks, nor does he sit up. He remains curled in his nest, nearly clinging onto the blankets and clothes.

“That stupid medication,” he pants out, sharp even in his heat, “isn't working.”

“I can tell.” Your brow knots. He’s in so much pain, it is palpable. “I”—you hesitate, voice dropping. “Can I help you?”

He goes quiet. As both Aventurine and Kakavasha, he has always been disinclined to accept help from other people. There is no such thing as unconditional help in his mind—only leverage and weakness. He hates it when people have leverage over him, and he hates being weak. Both are things that can be exploited, and Aventurine always needs to be the one doing the exploiting. He always needs to be in control.

Even like this, the last threads of his sanity about to snap, with every circuit of his omega biology trying to drag him into insensible lust, he fights viciously to be in control.

Winning and losing. Using and being used. Exploitation and treachery. Control and being controlled. This is how he's always lived. This is how he's always survived.

This is the only way to let him maintain control when he is most afraid of losing it.

“I don't mind,” you say quietly, “if you use me.”

Even through the haze of heat, Aventurine’s eyes sharpen. “What?”

“I don't mind if you use me,” you repeat, voice neutral. Unfeeling. The proposal might sound cruel to someone else, but not you. After all—your place in the world is one of a tool, and this is what you've always done as an alpha and a slave: sleeping with people to take care of their needs, or sometimes just their desires. It did always make you feel strangely hollow, but you think it will feel just fine with Aventurine. All you've ever wanted to do is keep him safe, and surely, this will do that, but—

“I'll only help if you want. I don't want to force it.” You lower your eyes. “But if you do want it, I'll be careful with you. You can lead. I promise.”

“...I know.” Aventurine’s voice is weak, cracks with pain, but you can tell he's speaking with clarity. “I know you will be.”

You look up. “Then you'll let me help?”

Aventurine looks away—a sign that he cannot adopt his usual smile. He’s clutching that sweater again, pressed close to his chest.

“Just your wrist,” he says quietly.

You listen carefully. “What?”

“I just—I just want your wrist.” He looks away. “Your—your scent gland. Only that.”

“Okay.”

You get up, then falter. When it was your job to comfort your mistress’ omega slaves, you were told to enter their nests—no permission needed from them, no permission needed from you, because only her permission ever mattered for anything. The omegas were usually too delirious to care, often had even begged for it with the state of mind that they were in. But Aventurine is different. He's not like you, and he's not like them. He's never bent to any of his masters’ wills. And even if he did, you wouldn't want to have him bend to yours.

Instead of climbing into his nest, you ask, “Can I sit on the bed?” He doesn't answer. “Just the edge of it,” you add, and you hear him exhale.

“Fine,” he says, breathing measured.

“Thank you,” you say, and he gives you a confused look. But then you're reaching out with a hand, offering it, and he is quickly distracted.

Aventurine drops the sweater, grabs your hand almost immediately. He turns over your palms, fingers tracing your heartlines—as if testing you, as if mapping out territory. He runs his thumbs along the veins of your wrists, too, right over your scent gland, and you have to force yourself not to shudder at the feeling. You only stay still, letting him explore the contours of your hands, letting him acclimate to the feeling of your skin. He laces his fingers with your own, a latticework trap, and he finally drags his wrist along yours.

Both of you inhale sharply.

You can't react. You know it'll scare him if you do, but it's hard to keep still. The way his scent blossoms, the way it mingles with yours, the way it all washes over you—what you're doing can hardly be called touching, but you feel like you're going mad. Especially when he flushes like that, his vibrant eyes fluttering shut. Especially when the sweetness of honey overtakes your senses. Especially when you can smell the way his body is reacting, all that wetness and heat and slick dripping between his legs. You don't miss the way his thighs rub together, nor the hard outline of his cock straining against his pants.

Aventurine shudders. He brings your hand up to his face, rests his cheek in your palm. His skin is flushed and burning with fever, and it's no wonder that he's sighing with relief at your touch. You try not to stare at the way his mouth falls open. He looks at you for a moment, his gaze a hazy violet and blue—before he closes his eyes again and presses his lips into your wrist.

Fuck.

“Aventurine—” You have to stop, voice strangled, when you feel the full softness of his lips working against your skin. He’s panting now, laboured breaths sweeping over your veins. Then you feel his teeth catch, a gentle nip on your flesh, and when he groans into your racing pulse—deep, relieved, desperate, a noise that makes your gut flare with heat—you realise you can't do this.

You pull back your hand, and Aventurine startles.

“Aventurine,” you say, voice strained. Maybe we should stop, you want to say, but he cuts you off.

“I need”—a shaky breath—“I need more.”

You watch Aventurine carefully. His pupils are dilated, blue irises nearly eclipsed. His cheeks are rosy, and he can't stop panting. You can fully smell his arousal now, even through his silk clothes. He's desperate, needing to be filled.

But he also looks torn. His brows are knotted, and you can taste a faint hint of fear in the air now. His knuckles clutch at the sheets, almost white, and he stares at them. He can't look up. He can't look at you. His whole body is tense, like he wants to bolt—and if he weren't so weak, you think he might actually.

“Are you sure?” you ask.

He doesn't nod. He also doesn't shake his head. His arms clutch at his midsection as he winces. He doesn't look like Aventurine. He looks like Kakavasha. It makes your heart ache as you watch him give into his body’s demands, wearing the same expression he did on the day your master bought him.

“...don't use your Voice on me,” Aventurine—Kakavasha—says quietly.

It takes you a moment to realise what he's asking. “I won't.”

“And”—his eyes somehow grow even more evasive, hidden by his long lashes— “don’t touch my commodity code.”

His commodity code. His commodity code that is seared into his scent gland. His code that, if you kiss, will ease his agony instantly. His code that, if you bite—will chain him to you irreversibly.

“Of course I won't,” you say instantly.

He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath.

“And—” Aventurine looks away, jaw tight. His voice is quiet but wrought with tension: “—I don't like when people put things inside me.”

Something claws the walls of your heart.

“That's fine too,” you reply. “I don't mind doing it the other way.”

Aventurine’s sigh is nearly inaudible, but unmistakable. His scent shifts a little bit, the wildflower fragrance fading ever so slightly. But he doesn't come to you. He merely sits there—waiting. Expecting. Maybe dreading. Even in the senseless daze of heat, he’s too anxious to move.

You approach slowly. Though you're overwhelmed by the bouquet of his scent, though you feel a curl of heat in your belly in response to it—you are slow. Alphas are supposedly victims of insatiable lust whenever around an omega in heat, absolved of every action they take, but you are convinced this is a lie. You have never once wanted to handle Aventurine with such cruelty. You think that inflicting violence on him, more than anything else, would go against your biology. Every molecule in your body would reject putting him in such pain or inciting such fear. So you are careful when you approach him, slow as you inch up to him—but you do not think it helps.

Aventurine lies down, his face turned away from yours. His eyes squeeze shut, like he's expecting this to hurt. Uncertainty gnaws at your gut as you lean over him, draping your body over his—the only position you've ever taken an omega in, other than mounting them from behind.

(You do not want to mount Aventurine. You never have. It is an impersonal position, a position that omega biology supposedly would force him to enjoy, a position that alphas have likely dictated him to enjoy. You think there is nothing you would hate more. In your weakest, most selfish moments, in your worst ruts, when you’ve allowed yourself to fantasise about mating Kakavasha—you are always facing each other, and he is always looking at you with his eyes you've always loved, and it always feels intimate. Never impersonal. Never dictated. Never forced.)

Aventurine is so honeysweet beneath you. More fragrant than any omega you’ve ever been with. You glance at his commodity code, trying to ignore the scent of his branded skin, then lean down to press your face against the other side of his neck, where a faint scar mars the otherwise flawless slope of his nape. Like every other omega slave you've ever slept with, the scent gland there has been excised: a precautionary measure to reduce the risk of an unwanted mating bite.

(Not unwanted by them—the wants of a slave never matter—but unwanted by their owners. A mating bite would ruin the code seared into their neck, claim an omega more deeply and permanently than any titanium collar or carbon steel chain. It would hurt their resale value. Only owners are allowed to claim slaves in such a permanent way—and the wants of a slave have no relevance there, either.)

It's a funny thing, this surgical scar. Even with their gland missing, you've noticed that most omegas like having their neck scented by you anyway, probably from some vestigial instinct. You guess that Aventurine won't be any different, that maybe it will comfort him. But when your lips skim the scar left on him by his owner, his entire body stiffens beneath you. His fragrance cuts into your lungs, sharp.

You recoil, as if burned by the touch of him.

“Sorry,” Aventurine is quick to say. He tries to glance at you, but his diamond pupils quickly avoid you again. “Don’t worry about me. Just do whatever you need to do.”

“But you're scared,” you point out, and you see his brow twitch. “You’re scared when I touch you.”

“Not scared,” he lies. “Just…”

When his eyes finally look at you—land on your lips—you understand.

A bite would claim an omega more deeply and permanently than any titanium collar or carbon steel chain. If you lost your mind—give into the insatiable lust of an alpha whenever around an omega in heat—you might bite him, and then you would own Aventurine.

And Aventurine would rather die than be owned by anyone again.

He doesn't need to finish his sentence. You already know what you need to do.

“It's okay,” you say gently, and his brow knots. “I have an idea.”

Aventurine is always afraid.

This is a fact that has haunted you since the day you met him. You've wondered about how to fix it—the bare minimum as his mate (always his, even if he doesn't want you)—and you’ve never quite pinned down how. Because when someone has spent their life in perpetual fear, how do you make them feel safe? When their life is constantly at risk, how do you ever make them feel calm?

You still aren't sure of the answer. But after seeing Kakavasha become Aventurine, you now have a good guess.

It is clear from his scent that Aventurine does not feel remotely safe right now. Not when you leave to fetch something from your own room, and not when you return. The anxiety thickens when he sees, in your hands, a very familiar muzzle.

Aventurine stares. He is not smiling, but he also does not reveal his discomfort on his face, even as beads of sweat line his temple. But his voice is too controlled, too calm, when he asks, “You kept the mask.”

You nod.

“I told you to throw it out,” he points out, “when I freed you.”

“I know. Sorry. I don't know why I kept it.” You remember how tightly you clutched it before the incinerator, thinking about how strange it would feel, discarding something that you'd worn everyday since you presented—but you don't tell him this. Instead, you say, “But it’s convenient.”

Before Aventurine can say anything, you toss him the remote.

“You’re afraid of my bite and my Voice, but you don't have to be with this,” you explain. Your tone is gentle, soothing. Probably disarming coming from an alpha, with how he is in heat. Perhaps that's why he’s studying the remote rather than chucking it away. “You'll be in full control if I wear this.”

Control. Mere seconds after you say it, you can smell his fragrance change again, mellowing. It's only a brief moment of calm that fades when you latch the mask onto your face, but he doesn't smell as nearly as stressed before.

Aventurine watches you carefully as the carbon steel swallows your maw, its old and familiar edges biting into you. For the first time in years, you cannot tell what he is thinking—truly poker-faced even to you.

“You aren't bothered by wearing that thing while we do this,” he says—asks?—and you shake your head. The muzzle was part of you for years. You were wearing it when you killed someone for the first time. You were wearing it when you went into rut for the first time. You were wearing it when your master had sex with you for the first time. It doesn't bother you that you’ll wear it when you have sex with Aventurine.

If you could speak, you would ask him, Why do you think it would bother me? But all you do is gesture for him to sit up. To switch places with you. You lie down—something you've never done with an omega—and wait for him to get on top.

Aventurine stares at you for a long, quiet moment. It's followed by a sigh of relief. Disarmed, he—for the first time in any heat you've witnessed—finally relaxes. His scent wafts over you as he climbs between your legs, and you can feel the heat radiating from his hands as he parts your thighs, almost scalding.

He doesn't bother getting you ready, too needy to think rationally, but he doesn't have to anyway. You've been wet ever since you felt his mouth touch your wrist, hard ever since you heard him groan into it. You're equally desperate to get some relief as you feel his cockhead sliding against your opening, leaking all over your entrance as his slick drips onto your thighs. His breath shakes as he enters you, and he can't hear it with how you're muzzled—but you groan just as deeply as him at the tight stretch.

You hear him swear when you clench around him, watch him lean over you. His arms shake as he supports himself, refusing to succumb to his heat even as he chases his relief. You seek out his gaze (just as in your dreams, facing each other, intimate), and his neon eyes catch on your eyes for a brief, breathtaking second—

—before he looks away.

There's a flash of—you don't know what, maybe pain? Or fear?—in his irises as he does. A twitch of the brow, a tell he'd normally rather die than let slip. You have the realisation, as Aventurine moves inside you, that even while you're muzzled, even while he has complete control over you—he still can't stand having sex with you. Probably because he can't stand being in heat in general, you tell yourself. Don't touch me, don't touch me, don't use it anymore, don't use me anymore. He'd have this reaction to anyone.

Still—you didn't expect him to have this reaction to you.

Your hands twitch, possessed by an old instinct to cover your eyes. But you'd probably scare Aventurine if you moved your arms, so all you do is dig your fingers into the sheets and squeeze them shut. You tell yourself again and again that he'd hate having sex with anyone in these circumstances—not just you. And then you tell yourself, as a desperate, broken moan leaves his branded throat, that he would also come inside anyone in these circumstances, caught within the cruel grip of his heat.

Aventurine stills inside you as he finishes. He pants, sweat dripping down his temple as he shudders in his ecstasy, his spend hot and thick inside you. You can feel his fever break as he comes down from his high, the heat coming off his body easing into a manageable warmth.

Do you feel better, you try to say, but you can't move your mouth while your mask is on. So you wait patiently for Aventurine to come back to himself, watching him carefully as he pulls out and rolls onto the mattress beside you. He finally glances at you then. His eyes narrow once they land on you, confusion flicking through them. Then displeasure. He reaches for the remote.

To your surprise, he immediately punches in the code to unlock your muzzle. Aventurine has apparently remembered the numbers after all these years, as if the moment he freed you has been since seared into his memory.

“Are you okay?” is the first thing you say, and Aventurine gives you a confused look. He’s still panting, dazed, so you ask, “Can I check your temperature?” And when he nods, you confirm your suspicion: he's still much too warm.

There is an ache between your legs and a strange hollow in your gut (because you aren't very experienced with receiving, you think—your body likely just isn't used to the feeling of it), but you quickly forget them. All you can think of is Aventurine, and how he’s still unwell, and how you need to comfort him. The instinct is so strong that you don't even say anything as you get up, straightening out your clothes.

“Are you leaving?” Aventurine asks. His voice is neutral, completely unbothered, but the thought is so horrific to you that you turn back to him with wide eyes.

“Of course not. I'm going to get you water and medicine.” A beat. You stare at Aventurine’s eyes, then think about how he hid them from you during sex. The hollow feeling comes back, but it's mostly eclipsed by your anxiety at the next thought: “...do you want me to leave?”

“Do you want to?”

“I—” I'd rather die, you think. Being forced to leave him right now would feel like tearing out a piece of yourself. You don't know if there's an alpha in this world who could leave their mate in the middle of a heat. And even if he is unmarked, unattached to you—you still think of yourself as his mate. (His, always his, even if he doesn't want you.) “I would prefer not to. I am your heat partner. I'm supposed to take care of you.”

You hear a quiet breath. “Right. Of course. You're always so conscientious.” Aventurine nods, as if convincing himself of something. “Try not to take too long.”

“I’ll come back soon,” you promise, and the air sweetens. Encouraged, you add, voice gentle: “I’ll bring that medication, and then we can have sex as many times as you need after I come back. I'll make sure you're not in any pain anymore.” You pause, studying him. “Is there anything else you need to feel better?”

His fragrance changes once more, this time in a way you don't totally recognize. “No.” His voice sounds strange. His scent is still foreign, fluctuating, possibly hinting at some kind of pain. The heat must be getting to him again—and of course it wasn't enough, what you just did, what you can provide. He likely needs to be filled to get any kind of lasting relief, but you left him empty. “No, that's all I want.”

You nod, forcing yourself to look calm. Ignoring the emptiness in your gut. It didn't feel bad, but you hope it'll feel better next time you have sex. You think it will. Alphas are supposed to be filled with an insatiable lust near omegas in heat, after all. And even though you’ve never felt that before—never felt anything sleeping with all those omegas in your mistress’ house—you are sure you'll eventually feel it around Aventurine.

But the feeling never comes. Even though you can tell that his heat has returned by the time you're back—sweat beading his temples, laboured breaths at his lips, his bottoms now discarded, with full evidence of arousal between his legs—you don't feel much of anything as you reach for your mask again.

“Don't,” Aventurine says, before it can clasp around your face. You give him a curious look. He explains, “Don't. I don't want to have sex again. Not yet.”

You stare at him, shifting. Uncomfortable. Uncertain. Not knowing how he wants to use you. “What can I do?”

He gives you a long look. “Come here. I… I want your scent gland.”

It's a sensible request. If there's a way to seek relief without fucking someone—without fucking you, which he clearly hated doing—you're sure Aventurine would prefer it. So you climb into his nest, holding your wrist out for him, and—

“No.” His voice is quiet. “I want the one on your neck.”

“...oh.”

You stand there, not sure where to move. If he wants you in his nest again, or if he’d rather do this standing. You’re relieved when he demands, “Lie down.”

You expect him to get on top of you when you do. Assume that he wants complete control—but he instead lies down beside you. Presses his body into yours, and then his face into your neck. His nose and lips brush against your scent gland, a full-body shudder running through him, and—

—and now you know for a fact that it is a lie that alphas want nothing other than to fuck an omega when they're in heat. Because even like this, with his lips sweet on your neck, with the sheets soaked with his slick, with his spend leaking out of you—you do not want to have sex with Aventurine. You only want to hold him. You only want him to keep scenting you. You only want to scent him back.

You only want him to feel safe.

You breathe in deeply, lungs flooded by honey. You think of what it felt like to hold him in that cold basement, when he was delirious with fever and pain, and you think about how different his scent is now. How much sweeter it is. How much calmer he feels.

“Do you feel better?” you ask, and he doesn't respond, but you know the answer. His hands come up to dig into your shirt, and he presses into you like you're a sweater in his nest. Silence blankets over you both, calm and warm. His laboured breath starts to improve.

He does eventually speak.

“Has anyone ever told you,” he says, “what you smell like?”

You stare at him. Your master used to say that you smelled good, but he'd never elaborated, and you hadn't wanted him to. “No.”

Aventurine breathes in.

“You smell like—” A little sigh, shaking and feverish, leaves him. “You smell like rain.”

Your eyebrows tick up. “Rain?”

“Yes. Or not just rain, but”—he pauses, next words quiet—“more Iike after it rains. You smell like the desert after a rainfall.”

“Oh.” You don't know what to say to that. Feeling distinctly like it's a silly question, you ask, “Is that a good scent?”

“Some would think so. Especially to people from the desert. You probably smell like a blessing to them. Although…”

Aventurine goes quiet again. You stare at the chandelier above you, all crystal and white gold, and wait.

“Although?” you prompt.

“...although I wouldn't really know,” he says. “It’s just a hunch. I bet it's why so many omegas on this planet like you.”

You couldn't care less about those other omegas. All you care about is Aventurine. “And?” you say. “Do you like my scent?”

His reply never comes. He just breathes deeply again, seeking relief from your neck—not intimacy. Any alpha’s scent would work; that doctor told you so. Any alpha’s touch would work, too. There are no special feelings involved here. Your place in the world is one of a tool, and tools are never especially liked nor disliked. Their value exists only in how they can be used.

You don't know why you even bothered to ask the question.

But then something strange happens: Aventurine curls against you, pressing even further into you. His lashes flutter against your pulse again; it ticks up in response, beating fast against his lips.

“I do,” he says quietly. “I do like it.”

You swallow. “But I guess that's because you're in heat. Any alpha would smell good to you, wouldn’t they?”

“No.” His fingers dig into the fabric of your shirt. “No, I like it because it's yours.”

You know better than to read too much into his response. Aventurine had already said it earlier: No foreign scents. He's only tolerating this whole arrangement because you don't smell unfamiliar to him. Only able to use you because you are the least threatening option.

But the words break something in you—break the thing that made you unable to throw out that little pouch of copper coins that you were saving up for Kakavasha’s freedom, the part of you that made you wear that carbon-steel mask for him. It is this part of you that has your eyes squeezing shut and your arms wrapping around him. You know he’ll recoil, reject you, but just this once—you need to try.

Aventurine doesn't push you away.

He melts into you instead, inhaling deeply. Your scent gland tingles with the warmth of his breath, the feeling of his lips. He seems—comfortable.

You can't fathom why he’s staying in your arms. Perhaps he's simply desperate for some kind of relief from his heat, just like when you held him in the basement while he was delirious from pain. But Aventurine had spoken to you with clarity just now, and his skin doesn't feel scalding so much as warm, and his scent is so different than from that moment. So sweet and so gentle, without a trace of fear. It makes your heart squeeze. As much as you've always wanted Aventurine to feel safe, you'd never imagined that his scent would be so beautiful when he is.

It makes your heart ache. You've never held anything so lovely before, and you’ve never felt so warm before, and it all makes up for how badly it hurt to let Aventurine inside you. How hollow it made you feel to let him use you. How none of that matters as long as you can keep him safe like this, because you belong to Kakavasha. You'll always belong to Kakavasha, in a fate that was chosen for you on the day you met him.

You're his, always his—even if he’ll never want you.

end part i

thank you so much to lore for hosting a fantastic collab and to my sponsors who funded this fic and got it over the finish line! please go check out @ficsforgaza to find other amazing hsr writers you can sponsor in order to help fundraise! here is my own wip list, if you are interested in seeing more from me!

and thank you most of all to YOU! I appreciate you so much for reading this chapter. thank you so much for sticking it through.

additional end notes

[13lunarstar]

Purva Ashadha

The twentieth nakshatra

Degrees: 13°20' to 26°40' of Sagittarius Zodiac

The ruler of the Nakshatra: Venus (sansk. Shukra)

Deity: Apas - the goddess of water. Water's power is often seen in how it can both nourish and destroy. The influence of Apas gives individuals a strong sense of purification and transformation.

Nakshatra's guna: rajas (human)

Purva Ashadha's keywords: victory, invincibility, ambition, strength, idealism, optimism, creativity, inner transformation

Symbol: winnowing basket or a fan (sometimes also elephant tusk), signifying the process of filtering out the essential from the unnecessary, as well as renewal and purification. The fan also represents the power to bring calmness and rejuvenation, symbolizing vitality and refreshment.

Career options: politics, law, marketing, public relations, and the arts (Venusian traits). Leading roles: good managers and leaders.

Nakshstra's strengths: persuasiveness, ambitions, optimism, creativity

Nakshatra's weaknesses: pride, over-idealism, restlessness

Lagna (ASC) in Purva Ashadha: individuals with Purva Ashadha Nakshatra in Lagna are ambitious, charismatic, and driven by a strong sense of purpose and idealism. They possess leadership qualities and are determined to achieve long-term goals, often inspiring others with their confidence and optimism. These natives are naturally competitive, seeking victory and recognition in their pursuits. With Venus as the ruling planet, they tend to be attractive, graceful, and drawn to creative or artistic fields. They may also experience spiritual growth and personal transformation throughout life. However, they can be prone to pride, over-idealism, and restlessness, especially when things don't meet their high expectations. Despite challenges, they exhibit resilience and are well-suited for roles that involve leadership, communication, or creativity

Sun in Purva Ashadha gives individuals a strong sense of ambition, confidence, and leadership. They are highly driven to achieve success and recognition, often striving for positions of power and authority. Beyond external achievements, they seek inner refinement and personal growth. The Sun's energy fuels their need to stand out, lead, and make a meaningful impact, with idealism guiding their goals. This sense of purpose makes them determined and resilient in the face of challenges. The influence of Venus, the ruling planet, adds charm, creativity, and a love for beauty. However, they may struggle with pride or an inflated ego and need to balance their desire for success with humility and patience.

Moon in Purva Ashadha: gives emotional intensity, idealism, and passion, with their feelings deeply connected to their ambitions and purpose. They tend to set high expectations for themselves and others, which can sometimes lead to emotional fluctuations when reality doesn't match their ideals. The influence of Venus, the ruling planet, enhances their creativity, charm, and love for beauty, drawing them toward artistic or aesthetic pursuits. These individuals are charismatic and attract others easily, but their idealism can make them prone to emotional highs and lows. They are resilient, often recovering from setbacks with determination. In relationships, they seek deep emotional connections and partners who share their values. However, they may struggle with emotional intensity or pride and need to cultivate patience and balance in their emotional responses.

Mercury in Purva Ashadha: brings sharp communication skills, persuasive abilities, and a strategic mindset. These individuals are idealistic in their thinking and often focus on larger goals rather than getting caught up in minor details. This placement enhances creativity and intellectual expression, making these people drawn to activities involving writing, teaching, public speaking, or other forms of communication. With Venus as the Nakshatra's ruling planet, there is often a refined and artistic approach to individuals' ideas, presenting them with charm and grace. They are skilled at influencing others and can excel in roles that require negotiation or leadership through communication. However, their idealism can sometimes lead to over-optimism or frustration when reality doesn’t align with their vision. They need to balance their lofty aspirations with practicality to avoid disappointment.

Mars in Purva Ashadha: exhibits strong drive, ambition, and determination. People with this placement are fiercely, goal-oriented and have a competitive spirit, always striving to achieve success and recognition in their endeavours. Mars' energy in this Nakshatra gives them a bold and courageous approach to challenges, often making them fearless in the pursuit of their goals. The influence of Venus, the ruling planet of Purva Ashadha, tempers Mars' aggression with creativity and refinement, often helping these individuals channel their assertiveness into artistic or diplomatic pursuits. These people are natural leaders with a passion for initiating projects and taking decisive action. However, their intense desire for victory may lead to impatience or frustration if the results are not immediate. They may also struggle with pride or stubbornness, especially if their ideals are challenged. In order to succeed, they should balance their fierce determination with patience and emotional control.

Jupiter in Purva Ashadha: brings strong ideals, wisdom, and a desire for growth. These individuals possess a deep sense of purpose and are often driven by a higher philosophical or spiritual calling. Jupiter's expansive energy blends with Purva Ashadha's ambitious nature, making these individuals focused on achieving success while adhering to their principles and values. They are naturally inclined towards teaching, mentoring, or guiding others, often sharing their wisdom and experiences. The influence of Venus, the Nakshatra’s ruler, adds a touch of grace and creativity, making them drawn to refined pursuits such as art, music, and literature. They also seek beauty and harmony in their beliefs and knowledge. However, their strong idealism can sometimes lead to over-optimism or unrealistic expectations. They may need to manage tendencies toward pride or being too rigid in their beliefs. By balancing their ideals with practicality, they can manifest their ideas effectively and inspire others on their path.

Venus in Purva Ashadha: bestows individuals with a highly creative, charming, and passionate nature, and a deep appreciation for beauty, art, and relationships. Venus, being the ruler of this nakshatra, amplifies its qualities, making these individuals naturally inclined toward artistic and aesthetic pursuits. They have a refined sense of taste and often excel in fields like art, music, fashion, and design. In relationships, they seek emotional depth and idealism, striving for meaningful connections. Their charm and grace make them attractive to others, and they often have a magnetic presence in social settings. The combination of Venus and Purva Ashadha's ambitious nature also gives them a strong desire for success, particularly in creative fields where they can express their talents. However, they may sometimes struggle with over-idealizing relationships or becoming too attached to their desires for beauty and pleasure. Balancing their need for refinement with a practical approach to relationships and success is key to their fulfilment.

Saturn in Purva Ashadha: Saturn's influence brings a grounded approach to the nakshatra's inherent ambition, making these individuals highly focused on long-term goals. They are patient and willing to work hard for success, often enduring challenges and delays with resilience. Their strong work ethic is balanced by the influence of Venus, the nakshatra's ruling planet, which adds a touch of refinement and creativity to their efforts. This combination can make them excel in structured environments where they can apply their discipline toward artistic, intellectual, or leadership roles. However, they may face challenges related to their sense of idealism. Saturn's restrictive nature can create frustration when their high aspirations aren't met quickly, leading to feelings of being burdened by responsibilities. Learning to balance their ambitions with patience and a steady, realistic approach helps them achieve their goals while avoiding burnout or disappointment.

Rahu in Purva Ashadha: exhibits a strong drive for success, power, and recognition, often pursuing goals through unconventional or innovative means. Rahu's influence amplifies Purva Ashadha's ambitious nature, making these individuals highly motivated and sometimes relentless in their pursuit of achievement. They are attracted to exploring new and bold ideas, and their path to success can be filled with sudden or unexpected changes. The influence of Venus brings creativity and a desire for luxury, making them drawn to material pleasures, beauty, and artistic endeavours. Rahu’s presence often pushes them toward exploring fame or wealth in creative or influential fields. At the same time, this placement sometimes leads to an obsession with success, power, or status, potentially causing taking risks or pursuing shortcuts. These people may also struggle with over-idealizing their goals or becoming dissatisfied when their desires aren't fulfilled quickly. To achieve lasting success, these individuals need to balance their ambitions with ethics and avoid falling into the traps of illusion or material overindulgence.

Ketu in Purva Ashadha: Ketu, being the planet of separation and liberation, combines with Purva Ashadha’s ambition to direct the person’s focus away from material success and toward self-realization and deeper truths. These individuals often have a natural disinterest in worldly pursuits like fame and power, seeking instead to understand higher ideals and spiritual wisdom. They may express their spirituality through art, music, or other aesthetic pursuits, finding beauty in inner growth rather than external achievements. This placement can also bring about an intense desire for self-purification, often through challenges that lead to personal evolution. However, Ketu’s influence can sometimes create confusion or dissatisfaction with material life, leading to a sense of restlessness or disillusionment with worldly matters. They may struggle with balancing their spiritual ideals with the practical demands of life. By embracing both spiritual and material aspects, they can find a harmonious path that allows for both inner fulfilment and outer

[just-some-trans-nobody]

December Christmas Monster stories

December 7.) Female Yautja at Christmas party

Summery: you take your alien wife to a Christmas work party. A coworker upsets you and that pisses you off. Reader if only refured to as "you" no pronouns used

Warnings: unwanted flirting, gift that crosses over boundary's, animal pelt, pissed off alien, yautja being possesive

Minors don't interact!

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“Love, are you ready?” You called putting the finishing touches on your wrapped gift for the secret santa. The company you worked for was having a Christmas party, spouses were invited. Your goddess of a wife agreed to come though she didn't understand human celebrations. They didn't have anything to do with hunting, not any more at the least. But you were excited and asked so nicely, there was no way she was going to say no. 

Stepping out the bedroom door she ran her hands over the tight red fabric smoothing it out. The sight of her in a floor length dress with a slit on both thighs took your breath away. You weren't sure it was an appropriate dress for a business party but by the gods did she look divine in it. Draped on her shoulders was the pelt from some animal she had killed with her own bare hands on some other planet. You weren't sure of the name of the animal, it didn't matter now as it was an accessory showing off her beauty and strength. Like all her other clothes this dress had no sleeves, she hated them she rather have her arms free for fighting. What you couldn't see was the dress was backless. The pelt covered that fact out for the most part. 

Your eyes refused to stay still looking over every part of her absolutely stunned by her looks. The gold jewelry just adding to her beauty. It was a celebration, she wanted to look her best. Gulping you tried to calm your nerves, you weren't sure you could make it through the party without melting from her amazing looks.

She could read you so so well. This was planned, she knew wearing this dress would make you go feral. It was going to be a fun night messing with you. “I'm ready my moon hunter.” She purred walking up to you. Leaning down she paused for a second giving you a view of her chest for a moment before gently rubbing her mandibles against your cheek. Kisses were a bit of a difficult matter with the difference of months between the two species. Hard to kiss when you don't have lips. Leaning back she raised her mandibles up in a smirk. Holding her large hand out for you to take she watched amused as you scrambled to grab the gift and her hand. “Which ooman are you giving that to?” She questioned pointing to the gift in your hand. “Oh? Janet from marketing. I don't really know her so I hope she likes the mittens. I overheard her talking about how she really needed new mittens.” You said looking at the wrapped gift hoping it didn't scream I don't know what you like so here. “She better like it.” Your wife said, holding up a fist. “Down girl.” You joked kissing the back of her hand drawing a purr from her.

Janet loved the mittens, luck for you they were her favorite color too. The person who got you as secret santa turned out to be Susan from the accounting department. Her gift to you were fuzzy handcuffs. This made you greatly uncomfortable getting them from a coworker you knew even less than Janet. She seemed to know that as she had given you your gift the second your wife had stepped away to get the both of you a drink. “It's to use on me later.” She said winking at you. Looking at her with disgust you pushed the box back into her hands and walked away. 

“I don't want to be here any more.” You told your wife when you had found her. She immediately noticed the look on your face, your body language, she didn't know what happened but she was pissed. “Who upset you, my moon hunter?” She asked flaring her mandibles. You didn't say anything, just glancing over to Susan. Following your gaze she spotted the fuming woman upset about your rejection. 

Stomping her way the party quieted down, the sight of an eight foot pissed alien would stop most parties. Standing in front of Susan your wife glared down at her. If she could kill with just her eyes Susan would be long dead. Being so livid your wife angrily clicked at her being so worked up to speak in english. She was livid that Susan had upset her, if she knew the cowering woman before her had attempted to steal her spouse she would have ripped her to pieces, literally. You knew you were going to have to send management an email explaining what happened later. 

After a few minutes your wife stopped clicking at her and was just growling. She was definitely holding back. If Susan was a yautja your wife would have picked her up and thrown her out the window. Turning your wife stormed back over to you, picked you up and stormed out the door. 

Back at home she cooed and clicked at you while you sat in her lap. You were fine now but she wouldn't stop with the cooeing and clicking. After a while you figured it was because she was the one needing the attention to calm down. Turing in her lap you gently cupped her face as you leaned in to pepper her in kisses. The moment your lips were on her she was purring. 

Closing her eyes she relaxed into your touch as her arms snaked around your waist holding you close, locking you in. “I love you so so much. Nothing will ever take me away from you.” She didn't know why you worded it like that but it was a comfort, she often worried about losing you. 

It was decided between the two of you Christmas work parties weren't worth the stress, next year you were going to skip it and just cuddle your wife instead, maybe spend it on her home planet instead.

[rems-writing]

An encounter with a Moon Knight

Pairing: Apollo!Hongjoong × MoonKnight!reader (platonic)

Warning(s): It starts out so well and then it gets depressing at the end

Genre: Fluff with an angsty ending

Nets: @blossomnet @mirohs-aurora-society

Context: Apollo is the god of music and the sun. He has a twin sister named Artemis, who is the goddess of the hunt and the moon.

Side note: ok originally I was gonna put the reader as a demigod. However, due to the fact that I didn't finish the PJO series on Disney Plus, I had to improvise

Once I catch up on the PJO series, maybe I'll write this trope again. But we'll see! Anyways

Includes: Yunho as Thor, Yeosang as Ptah, San as Hercules, Wooyoung as Loki, and Jongho as Sekhmet. There will be a tiny mention of Seonghwa as Anubis, but other than that, the ancient Egyptian god of the dead is completely gone. In addition, Mingi will not be in this as well. If you want to know where Seonghwa and Mingi have gone, you may read this so you can find them.

Thank you to @bunnliix for helping me decide the order of the fics I should write and post

In Greece's city square, people all around are doing the most normal things. From buying food/groceries at market stands to walking and chatting amongst themselves about whatever is going on in their lives, it seems like life is easy going, especially for the young god of music and the sun.

The Olympians know him as Apollo, but the mortals know him as Hongjoong.

Hongjoong was at a small cafe drinking coffee and munching on a sandwich slowly as he writes notes on empty staff paper, occasionally dipping his quill into an inkpot if he ran out of ink. He hums softly to himself whilst notating the melody at the same time. It was just another average day for him and he couldn't have been happier.

Until he heard a commotion from outside.

Snapping his head up, he looked out the window to see people gathering around or running towards the crowd to gather around. Looking at his surroundings, he waited until the coast was clear before snapping his fingers. The materials on the table disappeared, except for his coffee and sandwich. He packed up it and stood up from his table before bidding goodbye to the cafe's owner and exiting the small coffee shop so he could join the crowd.

He approached the crowd and squeezed through carefully to see what was going on. He asked one of the people for context on what was happening and that person simply pointed out something that was laying on the ground. Hongjoong turned his head slowly and his face paled.

That wasn't something.

It was someone.

As he got closer, his godly senses were on high alert. It didn't help that the crowd closed in on him now while he crouched down to see who this person was. A silent gasp escaped his lips as he saw the face of the person that was laying on the ground unconscious.

It was one of Khonshu's Moon Knights.

More specifically, it was the Moon Knight that Seonghwa Anubis explicitly told his godly brethren to not go near at all costs.

Y/N.

As the Spector twin laid unconscious, Hongjoong breathed in deeply before standing up to address the crowd.

"GUYS, IF YOU COULD PLEASE TAKE A STEP BACK AND ALLOW A BIT OF BREATHING ROOM FOR OUR GUEST! I'LL TAKE CARE OF THEM!"

His voice rang out throughout the city square and the people, albeit still concerned or curious, obeyed his command and stepped back as much as possible so he could pick up the unconscious twin and carry them to safety.

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

You didn't know how you ended up in Greece, yet you did either way.

One minute, you were with Marc in some random town to try and complete this fuckass mission Khonshu sent you guys on. The next minute, the both of you were thrown out of said town and went flying across the globe. You had no idea where your brother was and you were panicking. You felt a hand on your shoulder and you instantly knew that there was a godly presence behind you. Frozen in your place, you slowly looked up to see a kind man looking down at you with concern.

And he was pretty.

Soft lips, pretty nose, high cheekbones, brown eyes that were comforting, and an even prettier smile. His body was clad in an off-white t-shirt with some logo on it and a pair of black gym shorts.

What caught your attention the most was the tattoo peeking out of his sleeve. You tilted your head to the side to try and read it.

"No1LikeMe"

Even though your voice was hoarse, Hongjoong's smile grew bigger as you read the words on his tattoo out loud. You seemed calmer now, which was exactly what he wanted. He sat down next to you on the bed and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear.

"Are you ok?"

His voice was soft and a bit high pitched yet it carried a light feeling as he spoke. You nodded and stretched a bit before sighing and looking at him.

"Thanks for rescuing me. Um... weird question, but which god are you? I sensed a powerful aura when you approached me."

"Ahh. That's fine. My human name is Kim Hongjoong, but in this city's mythology, I'm known as Apollo."

You nodded in acknowledgement to his answer. You studied up on a bit of Greek mythology when you were younger so to have the god of music sitting right next to you was a bit overwhelming but in a good way.

"How long was I out?"

"For about three days."

THREE DAYS?!

WELL SHIT

You laughed awkwardly and were prepared to apologize when you felt his hand grab yours gently. You noticed that he had his pinky finger painted in an olive-green nail polish. You thought that was unique.

"Don't apologize, Y/N. I assumed you were on a mission and somehow, it went sideways and you ended up crash landing here."

Seeing the apprehension on your face due to him knowing your name without you telling him, Hongjoong quickly clarified.

"Before you ask, Anubis told us about you. How he let you go since he would feel even worse if he took you to the Field of Reeds at such a young age after dying underneath the statue of Khonshu."

Upon hearing the old bird's name, you cringed.

"Speaking of that fuckass pigeon, we were on a mission for him. The enemy was strong and we got defeated easily. Hence, how I landed here."

Hongjoong nodded in acknowledgement as you clarified your unannounced presence.

"Ahh. I see. If I may ask, are you in a rush to get back on that mission? If not, I can ask my sister to fend off Khonshu whilst you recover and find a way to contact Marc."

Upon hearing Artemis's name, you nodded eagerly. She was your favorite moon deity and Olympian goddess so you took Hongjoong's offer up quickly.

"Will I have to do anything for her in return?"

"Other than maybe hunt some things for her, not really. Just recover. I'll help you find a way to get in touch with Marc."

"Thank you, Apollo."

"Just call me Hongjoong. Hearing my official name makes our friendship too formal."

You blushed out of awkwardness and Hongjoong patted your head before snapping his fingers. A record player appeared and his music was playing in the background. The soft melody made you relax and forget about everything as you laid down and fell back asleep.

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

That encounter happened three months ago. Ever since then, Hongjoong has been keeping up with updates about you through Artemis. As he sat in the same spot in the cafe and composed more music, his mind was completely in the zone.

Until Artemis sprinted into the cafe in her own human disguise and haphazardly sat across from him.

Startled by her sudden appearance, Hongjoong flinched and looked up. Usually, Artemis was calm and neutral so seeing her all frazzled and bewildered was unsettling.

"What's wrong, dear sister?"

"I've been given a message from Taweret. She said that you need to meet up with your friends for a meeting. With the urgency in her voice, I fear it's something bad."

Hongjoong nodded firmly and packed up everything before snapping his fingers and transporting himself from the cafe to the usual meet up place.

A secret room within The Colosseum.

He was soon met with the faces of his beloved friends.

Jeong Yunho, aka Thor Odinson

Kang Yeosang, aka Ptah

Choi San, aka Hercules

Jung Wooyoung, aka Loki Laufeyson

And Choi Jongho, aka Sekhmet

He saw a curly haired woman sitting in Seonghwa's Anubis's place and he instantly recognized who she was.

Layla El-Faouly, the wife of Marc Spector.

She served as Taweret's temporary avatar before so Hongjoong assumed that the hippo goddess asked permission to take over Layla once again since she can't leave the Duat.

"Hello, Layla. It's nice to meet you." Hongjoong politely said and Layla shyly waved. San raked over her awkward form and he was about to say something when Wooyoung whacked him over the head.

"San! She's married! And she's only here for a short time. So stop it!" Wooyoung hissed.

Ever since the Norse god of mischief started dating that Avenger in his timeline, Hongjoong noticed an air of maturity surrounding him. He was still playful and silly, but this time, he actually took things seriously.

Hongjoong noticed Layla stand straight momentarily before going back to normal. However, instead of the French accent she spoke with, a British accent came out of her mouth.

Taweret was here.

As the hippo goddess wrung her hands nervously, she looked to the rest of the gods, who were watching her intently.

"Um... so. I have an announcement for you all."

She breathed in and out shakily before continuing to speak.

"A lot of you are wondering why Anubis isn't here. Well... there is a reason. But at the end of the day, I am just the messenger."

She held out her hand and a scarab appeared. As it flew in her hand, its bioluminescent wings shone brightly to make a screen appear.

In the screen was Seonghwa, aka Anubis

"Hi, everyone. If you're seeing this message, then that means... I'm truly gone."

Everyone gasped, including Hongjoong. Only Yeosang and Jongho were the only ones that weren't as shocked with this revelation.

They knew.

"I'm not really dead per say, but... I've decided to join the mortal world. My memories as the ancient Egyptian god of the dead have been left behind in the Duat. I am a new man in a new body with a clear mind and an open clean heart. You may be wondering to yourselves now. Why would I do this?"

Hongjoong had a feeling but he decided to let his friend say it.

"As all of you were aware, Y/N was in the Duat momentarily when that follower of Ammit shot my beloved twice and left them to die."

Everyone cringed at Ammit's name, including Yunho. And he was usually the brightest god in their friend group.

"I took care of them and made sure they went back with Taweret to the land of the living so they could stop Ammit's wrath. However, in the process... my heart was broken once more."

A quiet sniffle from the god made Hongjoong's heart lurch in pain.

"I wanted to be selfish. I wanted to keep them to myself. However, if I did, then Ammit would've taken over the world. And I couldn't have that. I expressed my frustration with Taweret. She told me that I could be reunited with Y/N... for a small price."

A lone tear ran down the god's face.

"Did I pay it? Yes. Was it worth it...?"

The god smiled sadly yet it was bright and full of love.

"Yes. It was. By the time this message ends, I will most likely be in a new body with a new name. Do not search for me. Rather... remember me and make sure my old name lives on. Goodbye, my dear friends. May we reunite again someday."

The message soon ends and Taweret made the scarab disappear before comforting a crying Yunho. Wooyoung was comforting San while Hongjoong exchanged a knowing look with Yeosang and Jongho.

The three of them knew that this day would come. And yet...

They can't help the small grins on their faces. After all...

Their friend deserved to be happy.

[multific]

Someone to Love

Hvitserk x Reader

Summary: Hvitserk as many others, always had a dream.

All he ever wanted to was someone to love. It is all he could dream about.

And one dream seemed very real.

Maybe too real.

In his dream, he could see himself. As if he watched from someone else's eyes.

He saw himself walking the streets of Kattegat. Heading to a house. A house he had never seen before.

Hvitserk followed himself into the house.

"Love?" he heard his own voice, so clear. 

"Here." a female voice came from the bed, Hvitserk watched as he headed over to the bed. 

"How are you feeling? Should I call the healer?"

"No. I'm only tired. Grab her please, I fed her not long ago, just..."

"Okay, you sleep, I will grab her." Hvitserk watched the woman on the bed. He had never seen her, but she looked like a Goddess. A tired-looking Goddess. And soon, he found out why when he heard the cries of a young child. 

Soon, his dream self stood up with a bundle in his arms, smiling at the little one as he watched himself walk away from the bed.

He rushed after the man who looked exactly like him.

Seeing him holding a young little girl a smile on his own face.

"Let's not cry now, Hellena. Your mother is tired she needs to sleep."

Hvitserk was struck, at least he felt like lightning just struck him.

He nearly fell as he felt the tears in his eyes. 

He looked so calm and happy, holding his own daughter.

This is everything he ever wanted.

And here in his dream, he had it.

A family. A wife and a beautiful daughter. Hvitserk never wanted to wake up. But of course, he had to.

And when he did, he wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep.

For the upcoming moon, he had a different dream about his family. 

Many dreams including the woman, his wife, and him. A happy life with a daughter.

Something his mind made up. 

Yet it looked way too real.

He felt as if the Gods were playing a cruel play with him, making him see all these beautiful dreams only to wake up alone.

Hvitserk had been through a lot. He lost his brothers, he wandered the streets and yet, his dream never changed. 

He just wanted someone to love and someone to love him.

He wasn't even supposed to be there, he was travelling from village to village when he ran into a market. He was meant to go around it, avoid the crowd but something pulled him in.

And soon, he locked eyes with her.

The beautiful woman from his dreams, she was looking at different coats and dresses when he looked up and made eye contact with Hvitserk for even just a moment.

And that moment was enough for him. 

He felt as if lightning struck him.

He knew better than to scare her, so he took is slow. Even if all he wanted was to marry her on the spot.

And his opportunity arrived not long after when an old drunk man went up to her and started to touch her. 

Didn't even take Hvitserk a second, he rushed to your side and defended you from the old man.

"Thank you." you said to the handsome stranger.

And it was only the beginning.

---

As you found out Hvitserk was a very stubborn man.

Stubborn and charming. 

"I feel like I'm already in love with you." he said upon meeting you only for the third time. He kept surprising you.

"All Vikings are like you?"

"No, I'm only special." he said smirking.

There was something about him, something that just kept you on the edge but you also found it comfortable.

You felt like you were also in love with him.

And when he kissed you for the first time, it was as if everything fell into place, as if everything just made sense.

The way he kissed you, the way he held you close, you felt as if this was your true calling. To be his.

It didn't take long for you two to get married.

As he placed the ring onto your finger, he looked into your eyes.

"All I ever wanted was to love and be loved. You are my destiny, I love you, Y/N."

After meeting you, Hvitserk stopped having dreams about you. He was now living his dream.

And soon, much like in his dream, a child was born.

You gave him a son. 

"He looks just like you." you said as he entered the room, trying to process what just happened when the nurse finally let him in to see you. He held his son for the first time. "I was thinking, we can name him Ivar after your brother."

Hvitserk couldn't stop the tears from falling as he held his son.

He felt his heart as if it could burst at any moment. 

The little boy looked at his father as Hvitserk sat down on the bed beside you.

He finally had his dream, a beautiful wife and his own little Ivar.

"I love you Hvitserk."

"Thank you." he said as he kept on repeating, knowing his past, you weren't surprised nor did you ask, you just watched him holding your son as you drifted off to sleep. 

Taglist: @fleursirvart​ @greenarrowhead​ @thisismysecrethappyplace​ @sincerelyfan​ @theoneanna​ @aestheticsandmarvel​ @rororo06​ @castellandiangelo​ @destynelseclipsa​ @spilledinkindumpster​ @capsiclesdoll​ @puknow​ @alwayshave-faith​ @alex12948​ @lxdyred​  @imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl​ @anonymoussherlockandmarvelgeek​ @praline357​ @trshngyn​ @avengers-r-us​ @violet-19999​ @top1bbgloak​   @manduse​   @jacalineiscomingforyou​  @mandoloriancookie​ @noname2246​

~Masterlist~

ˇAO3ˇ

DO NOT STEAL, REPOST OR TRANSLATE ANY OF MY WORKS  

[thegothicalice]

🖤☠️🤍

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🌈 Queer Books Coming Out in June 2024 🌈

🌈 Good morning, my bookish bats, and happy Pride Month!! Struggling to keep up with all the amazing queer books coming out this month? Here are a FEW of the stunning, diverse queer books you can add to your TBR before the year is over. Remember to #readqueerallyear! Happy reading!

[ Release dates may have changed. ]

❤️ The Shadow of Summer - Marlon Yelich 🧡 Of Stardust - (ed) Avrah C. Baren 💛 The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye - Briony Cameron 💚 Triple Sec - T.J. Alexander 💙 Same Difference - E.J. Copperman 💜 The Pull of the Tide - Various ❤️ The Misadventures of Getting Lainey a Date - Eija Jimenez 🧡 Surface Pressure - Adrian J. Smith & Neen Cohen 💛 Mirrored Heavens - Rebecca Roanhorse 💙 The Fire Within Them - Matthew Ward 💜 One and Done - Frederick Smith 🌈 Digging for Destiny - Jenna Jarvis

❤️ She Who Brought the Storm - Vaela Denarr & Micah Iannandrea 🧡 Tristan and Lancelot: A Tale of Two Knights - James Persichetti & L.S. Biehler 💛 London on My Mind - Clara Alves (translated by Nina Perrotta) 💚 The Deep Dark - Molly Knox Ostertag 💙 Furious - Jamie Pacton & Rebecca Podos 💜 Gay the Pray Away - Natalie Naudus ❤️ Such A Small World - Jordan Clayden-Lewis 🧡 Make It Count: My Fight to Become the First Transgender Olympic Runner - CeCé Telfer 💛 Cicada Summer - Erica McKeen 💙 We Used to Live Here - Marcus Kliewer 💜 Dandelion - Merlina Garance 🌈 The Curse of the Goddess - C.C. González

❤️ The Schoolmaster - Jessica Tvordi 🧡 Cigarette Lemonade - Connor de Bruler 💛 Coil of Boughs - Penny Moss 💚 Ballad for Jasmine Town - Molly Ringle 💙 Asking for a Friend - Ronnie Riley 💜 Pleasure Principle - Madeleine Cravens ❤️ Perfect Revenge - Jessica Burkhart 🧡 Lockjaw - Matteo L. Cerilli 💛 Markless - C.G. Malburi 💙 Queer Art - Gemma Rolls-Bentley 💜 Morally Straight - Mike De Socio 🌈 Our Bodies Electric - Zackary Vernon

❤️ Love Is All - Various 🧡 Becoming Ted - Matt Cain 💛 Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet - Molly Morris 💚 Dear Cisgender People: A Guide to Trans Allyship and Empathy - Kenny Ethan Jones 💙 Pole Position - Rebecca J. Caffery 💜 Something to be Proud Of - Anna Zoe Quirke ❤️ Hot Hires - Nan Campbell, Alaina Erdell, Jesse J. Thoma 🧡 Lord of the Empty Isles - Jules Arbeaux 💛 Kissing Girls on Shabbat - Sara Glass 💙 When You Smile - Melissa Brayden 💜 We Could Be Heroes - Philip Ellis 🌈 But How Are You, Really - Ella Dawson

❤️ A Bluestocking's Guide to Decadence - Jess Everlee 🧡 Take All of Us - Natalie Leif 💛 One Killer Problem - Justine Pucella Winans 💚 Why Are People Into That? - Tina Horn 💙 Free to Be: Understanding Kids & Gender Identity - Jack Turban 💜 Lady Eve's Last Con - Rebecca Fraimow ❤️ Sea of Broken Glass - Jenna Pine 🧡 Rapunzella, Or, Don't Touch My Hair - Ella McLeod 💛 Wolfpitch - Balazs Lorinczi 💙 Looking for a Sign - Susie Dumond 💜 Director's Cut - Carlyn Greenwald 🌈 Wish You Weren't Here - Erin Baldwin

❤️ Act Two - Rochelle Wolf 🧡 Unexploded Remnants - Elaine Gallagher 💛 The Stars Want Blood - Morgan Lawson 💚 Shadows Dark and Deadly - Andrea Marie Johnson 💙 Design of Darkness - R.D. Pires 💜 Two Sides to Every Murder - Danielle Valentine ❤️ Meet Me in the Sky - Jeffrey K. Davenport 🧡 A Shore Thing - Joanna Lowell 💛 The Lions' Den - Iris Mwanza 💙 Under the Dragon Moon - Mawce Hanlin 💜 A Sea of Wolves - Sarah Street 🌈 Saints of Storm and Sorrow - Gabriella Buba

❤️ Private Rites - Julia Armfield 🧡 Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous - Mae Marvel 💛 The Stars Too Fondly - Emily Hamilton 💚 Keeping Carmen Ruiz - Alyson Root 💙 Cuckoo - Gretchen Felker-Martin 💜 Heartwaves - Anita Kelly ❤️ Bound to the Wild Fae - Tavia Lark 🧡 Four Squares - Bobby Finger 💛 The Ghost of Us - James L. Sutter 💙 Poison in Their Hearts - Laura Sebastian 💜 Puppy Love - Elle Sprinkle 🌈 Hot Summer - Elle Everhart

❤️ Liddy-Jean Marketing Queen and the Matchmaking Scheme - Mari SanGiovanni 🧡 All Friends Are Necessary - Tomas Moniz 💛 Six of Sorrow - Amanda Linsmeier 💚 Shanghai Murder - Jessie Chandler 💙 PROUD - Anthology 💜 Little Rot - Akwaeke Emezi ❤️ Fling - Deja Elise 🧡 Too Many Stars to Count - Frances M. Thompson 💛 Rakesfall - Vajra Chandrasekera 💙 The Unrelenting Earth - Kritika H. Rao 💜 Freakslaw - Jane Flett 🌈 Please Stop Trying to Leave Me - Alana Saab

❤️ A Sense of Shifting - Coco Romack, Yael Malka 🧡 Moonstorm - Yoon Ha Lee 💛 Now, Conjurers - Freddie Kölsch 💚 Hide No More - Rita Potter 💙 Running Close to the Wind - Alexandra Rowland 💜 The Afterlife of Mal Caldera - Nadi Reed Perez ❤️ Her, Him & I - Christian Weissmann 🧡 The Sons of El Rey - Alex Espinoza 💛 Show Me Your Teeth - Amy Marsden 💙 Defeating Demons and Breaking Up With My Boyfriend - Dylan James 💜 For Real - Alexis Hall 🌈 The Clarity of Light - Jade Church

[tryingtobegoodwitch]

I made a last minute decision to visit a night market yesterday. How amazing it was to be walking up to a stall with a sign saying:

“Triple Moon Emporium”

😳

Me: *purchases some magnets from the stall*

Me: hi!!! Are you interested in the triple moon goddess?

Stall lady: very much. Our inspiration for our shop.

You already know I was so fucking excited.

she was very introverted, however she is going to put me into contact with other Hekate devotees who can guide me 🥀🫶🏼🥀

[mypromptlair]

TCF Prompt 27

TBOAH AU - OG Cale and OG Archie

Cale Henituse died by the hands of the WS. In one universe he made a deal and exchanged souls with one Kim Rok Soo. In this one, instead of making a deal, GoD sends him to another timeline to be able to rest and not have to worry about anything ARM or WS related. In this world, he regressed to when he was 16(and was in the process of escaping the Empire. Perhaps he had been kidnapped? Was his family ok and why did he have ancient powers, including his moms??).

Somewhere along the way, he ends up running into Archie, who also like him, was on the run and had his soul sent to this world after he was killed(and oh, it was a horrifying death. turning blood into pure mana burning him from the inside out. Who knew a specific weapon was made just to take him down. Witira fully snapped after witnessing her last family members/commanders death/. She was so scary, that even the WS didn't enter those waters for a couple years).

Eventually, they learn that they had been considered missing(and MIA in Archie's case). Both had been captured 2 years prior and experimented on at some point during that time(Archie had terrible scars on his back, along with part of his phin missing in his whale form he had also had patches that showed some of his hide had been taken at some point. Just wait until Cale found out who on the black market bought whale hide...if Shickler didn't get to them first anyway. Cale had Ancient Powers forced upon his very thin plate. Luckily he and Archie had come across a water power that settled his plate, but he was will very weak. Both their immune systems were gone too.)

A couple months later, they run into the Molans. And all hell breaks loose.

----

Overprotective Henituse's/allies/Molans

Overprotective Whales

Archie and Cale whump

No Raon and kids(they either don't exist in this universe or live happily with their families)

Cale had acted as trash, but him getting captured and missing at 14 caused everyone to find out the truth, Cale is disappointed(Archie finds it hilarious)

Archie went missing on a mission(which was later found out caused by a mole/traitor). The whale's missed their chaotic commander. Especially his two childhood friends the royals Witira and Paseton.(Shickler sees him as his bratty kid too)

In tboah timeline, Cale and Archie teamed up on certain missions and to cause chaos. They got along surprisingly well after their first meeting, drove the heroes*cough Choi Han cough* mad.

In this AU, Cale and Rosaly are cousins. Choi Han is a knight protecting Crown Prince Alberu. They all become allies/friends eventually.

Archie became friends with Witira and Paseton when they were kids. Archie is a orphan, and does not get along with the other killer whales(some of the Whales are divided up into different tribes, the killer whales are not loyal to Shickler and do not get along with most other whales. They discarded and harmed Archie when he formed a friendship and later loyalty with Shickler's kids, His parents are unknown, but there are rumors his mother is a Lunar Whale and he is a half blood like Paseton..and that was why he was captured/betrayed in the first place).

The Lunar Whales were said to be able to swim amongst the stars. Blessed by the goddess of the moon, they are strong in mana, and were thought to be the best healers in the world, even more than those chosen by the sun god. None have been seen is so long they are thought to be nothing but a fairy tale. but perhaps it isn't?

The Molan family was never attacked and are still going strong. They and the Thames family have worked together for centuries, and Jour asked them to look after her son after she she passed away. They failed when he was captured, but Ron has made it his duty to insure he and his family never fail Cale again.

The Empire is the main 'enemy' but fighting is not the main plot. it's mostly just Cale and Archie learning to heal and rest, etc.

Cale and Archie still cause too much chaos tho. And lots of misunderstandings!

no romance, just lots of family feels, healing and shenanigan's.

[veggie9961]

The Third House

The third house is a place of action. 3 is an active number. It is often associated with activity, manifestation, connection and creativity.

When it comes to the zodiac signs, number 3 is Gemini, which can be associated with the ideas of connection and activity. We can learn a lot about the third house, the house of activity, from analyzing Gemini, the sign of activity.

Gemini is the immediate Air sign, and it's mutable. It operates on the immediate, flexible capacity of its logic and perception. It represents agility, calculation, imitation, and adaptation. This gives the third house its rulership over the mind, memory, and expression.

Ultimately, Gemini is an Air sign that wants to externalize its overthinking to be at ease with itself and with around it. The third house is how we seek ease. It operates on externalizing responses and connections. As such, it represents trains of thought, words, reading, talking, gossip, conversation.

Gemini also famously represents twins or fraternity. This symbolism illuminates the third house's connection to siblings, cousins, next-door neighbors, best friends or childhood friends, lovers, community members and comrades. These are people with whom we can find ease and escape our insecurities.

Finally, Gemini loves information. Smart, sharp, and cynical, this Mercury-ruled sign associates the third house with learning. The third house represents receiving an elementary education. All early or foundational learning experiences are here: K-12 education, training workshops, summer classes, living-learning communities and lower-division education.

Beyond the associations of Gemini, we can understand the third house by taking a look at the ancient scheme of houses.

In the ancient scheme, we are born under the earth. The fourth house represents birth or conception, home, parents, and family. It represents the comfortable, protected world of our most trusted family. Since this scheme is analyzed clockwise, the next house after the fourth house is the third house, which is quite interestingly named Goddess.

We have already discussed the third house's connections to communication, expression, intellect, and learning. The ancient scheme introduces a sense of local community. The child is born inside the safe and comfortable fourth house; her parents send her outside to play in the local community---school, friends, neighborhood. In the community, she makes friends, interacts with neighbors, and embarks and learns about the world and finds her core memories. The third house represents a child's learning about the world. Walking, eating, breathing---life's simple things. Simple activities, along with exploring the community, can make up our entire world during childhood.

But community exploration can be an adult thing too. Let's focus on the name of the third house---Goddess. Why would the Goddess (the Moon) choose this house as her temple? Well, there is naturally a divine magic to learning and information, and to the childlike experience of the world, but beyond that, there is a sense of comfort in the community which I feel appeals to the Goddess.

In the third house, there is a sense of ritual. A bus route you take every Tuesday. Walking by that bench and crossing this street to get to the bookstore. Commute and transportation on schedule. A daily scone that you grab on the way to work. Ritual in this sense, and perhaps in general, is comforting. At the weekly farmers market, people mingle at ease with the same friends and neighbors from the locality. Local vendors go about their small businesses mindlessly. People run their errands, children doodle in the grass and fly kites, queers flirt and frolic, friends grab a bite, elders walk, teens gossip. There's something really nostalgic about it all.

This idea of memory and comfort and familiarity in the community feels almost Cancerian. This is why the Moon rejoices in the third house, in the traditional scheme of planetary joys (see the diagram above). This is part of why the third house is so important. A lot of comfort can be found in a healthy locality. Recent feminist scholars in the field of urban studies have advocated for the replacement of our patriarchal view of the city with a matriarchal view. Today's cities are not loving or nurturing, they place cold, alienating, isolating, exploitative and White cis-heteropatriarchal expectations on people, upholding the system of industrial global neoliberalism. Cities need to be more localized, affordable, inclusive and comfortable for the unhoused, for the working class, and for women, queer people and racial minorities. The Moon rejoices in the local, inclusive, comforting space envisioned by the third house. Urban planners should take inspiration from that. Providing protective comfort and care along with a healthy democracy for natives, immigrants and marginalized groups (and for the environment) should be the central purpose of a city, not profit. Sorry I'm an urban planning major and I'm super passionate about this.

To sum it all up, here's a list of the indications of the third house.

action, the mind, memory, expression, thought, words, reading, talking, conversation, eating, walking, breathing, childhood, siblings, cousins, neighbors, best friends, childhood friends, community members, comrades, learning, receiving an elementary education, local community, neighborhood, sense of comfort in the community, ritual, commute, transportation, small businesses, people

At this point, I'm gonna shift over to discuss placements in the third house. Please take what resonates!

Gemini risings / Sun in the third house

you feel proud about your intellect and conversational skills

your ego is in your mind

you holistically identify with your mind and your mindset

you had a lot of fun in the early part of your life, and you continue to have the most fun with those friends or in a small circle or community

you think and speak in a way that garners you attention and validation; you are popular

Taurus risings / Moon in the third house

you're great at verbalizing or acting out your emotions; this makes you a comforting person to be around, but you can be manipulative

you feel safe equipping yourself with different perspectives--you want to see all sides of a situation intuitively

you feel comforted by small errands, commute, and activity

some of your childhood memories are comforting and deeply important to you; you continue to feel like you belong most in a smaller social circle or in a local community

you crave validation for your manner of thinking

Aries and Cancer risings / Mercury in the third house

you're a sharp thinker, a fast, dynamic conversationalist, and you learn quickly because your logic is sharp and precise

you're very present and detail-oriented in your mindset and skillset, which makes you smart and crafty, but can cause you to spiral into depression or anxiety

you were a smart student in school, and you continue to tap into your intelligence in small circles, community spaces, or with siblings and close friends

you keep your intellect and thinking to yourself, perhaps due to anxiety, but you have an affinity for expressing yourself through words

Pisces and Leo risings / Venus in the third house

you're great at balancing several different perspectives, but your mindset can uphold conventional values or standards

you think and express yourself with others in mind, with caution

you experienced luxury in your schooling, childhood, social circles, and there were expectations that came with it

you're a calm, elegant, adaptable communicator, well-received in social circles and in the community

Aquarius and Virgo risings / Mars in the third house

you strongly identify with how you instinctively learn and think; you have learned to be defensive of your thinking

your mind is raw, destructive, and powerful; it's an angry force that can feel dominating, but causes others to re-evaluate their mindsets

you are known for your fierce individuality and raw honesty within the local community or in small circles

you are fiercely loyal and protective over close friends and siblings, over your view of your childhood memories, and the community

Capricorn and Libra risings / Jupiter in the third house

you are a deep, philosophical, and wise thinker who collects information with awareness of the bigger picture

you may rely on intuition rather than acute logic when it comes to daily speaking, activity, errands

you see broadly and often have higher ideals in mind when making decisions

you were mature and expansive at a young age, and you are a figure that people know in the community or in social circles

you may present as unintelligent or dissociated at first, but people find that your mind is always expanding

Sagittarius and Scorpio risings / Saturn in the third house

you are a disciplined and innovative thinker who has the capacity to gain a unique control over your mind

you submit to your own awareness and what you carefully derive

you feel comfortable doing things on terms that you define

you may speak in a way that is unique and different in an either alluring or isolating way

you might have felt restricted, anxious, awkward, or repressed in your childhood, and you can continue to feel that way inside, with siblings, in school or community settings, or in conversation

you are highly aware of the objective truth of the things you say, or the deep ideals of obligation underlying your actions

Sagittarius risings / Uranus in the third house

your mindset, thoughts, word choices and interests are often out-of-the-box or unconventional; you might be a geek or a nerd

you were a visionary, idealist child who knew that the world could be changed, but you might feel disconnected because you've always thought differently

you have a revolutionary mindset which you can share with the community to inspire the change you want to see

Capricorn risings / Neptune in the third house

you were a mystical child, drawn to the arts, mysticism, spirituality

your thinking is deeply intuitive and actively connected to your subconscious; you struggle with feeling present and using logic when thinking, speaking, learning or doing

you reveal an intuitive, kind side of yourself with siblings, close friends, within small circles, or in the local community

Virgo risings / Pluto in the third house

you change people with your words; you invoke ideological upheaval and transformation within yourself and within others by confronting the reality of the facts

your words are deep-cutting and powerful, which gives you the control; you feel powerful inside

though you might have felt more actively in touch with your change and power during your childhood, your expression still has a quality which demands submission, especially within your closest circles

your childhood was full of massive power struggle and upheaval

as you make mistakes and learn, even if you leave destruction in your wake

Cancer risings / Chiron in the third house

you are giving with your mind and actions because of the emotional wounds you received in your childhood

you might have had traumatic incidents very early in your childhood, which caused you take on the role of a healer

you are destined to discover healing in your life through your mindset and actions, with your closest friends and siblings, and by serving your community

Virgo risings / Lilith in the third house

you engage petty fighting, manipulation, lying, twisting your words, or bullying, especially to fulfill your desires, assert your power, or get to know someone deeper

you might have had a sibling, cousin, or close friend who you were unfairly compared to in your childhood, which introduced jealousy

you have a gift for communication; your uncontrolled expression is one of your most attractive qualities, people find it very alluring

[xenonmoon]

I accidentally stumbled upon some Spider-man 2099 comics and since I can't watch across the spiderverse in theatres (photosensitivity sucks) and Miguel O'Hara has become a constant presence on my dash/home in almost literally every social I have I decided to give it a go and see who this guy is and why is the internet so obsessed with him all of a sudden I wrote down some notes while I was reading so here we go. Xenon reacts to Spider-man 2099

It's giving me a loooot of cyberpunk and blade runner vibes from here and ngl I dig it

I already notice the suit is a little different but not too much? The spikes in the forearms here are less noticeable at least. And I didn't remember ever seeing the webbing

I love this pose

Oh my god this is so me fr fr

PFFTDHFS I MADE A LOUD SNORT ok I like this guy

He seems like that type of 90s savage-edgy-I-hate-everyone guy, so far considering the context he's kinda funny

I don't know how much they've changed about his backstory in atsv so I'm writing it all down as it's told in the comics

So his father was a scientist working for this Alchemax and the corporation kinda groomed both since they were children to become their top tier geneticists and work for them. They've invested a lot on Miguel and they use it to have a hold on him, since he's the only guy not addicted to the Rapture which is a very nasty and genetically bound (?) drug only Alchemax is allowed to distribute.

The corporations is running genetic experiments to enhance human abilities and all of that using animals as source, the latest project was an attempt to replicate what happened to Spider-Man in ma marketable way

Except they've become pretty savage with it and started doing experiments on humans (starting with criminals) BEFORE it's confirmed to be safe. And the last one miserably failed (or grandiosely succeeded, depending on the point of view - the guy actually came back with super strength and all of that but he was a heavily disfigured mutant who tired to strangle O'Hara and died short after).

So Miguel said fuck this shit I'm out

(cw: drugs from there on)

... Except they poisoned his drink with a dose of Rapture and how he's screwed. "oh no worries Miguel we're not forcing you to stay" my ass.

fucking bastardssssssssss

FUCKING BASTARDSSSS

honestly though "rapture" as a name choice is sooooo 90s. I remember reading Infinity Crusade (1993) a few months ago and there too they made a big deal about something they called "the rapture". And goddess and holiness and penitence and sinners and REPENTTTT and other overly Christian stuff like demons that was littering everything I've read from that time (which is just all the Moon Knight stuff that got out in that period but-)

the satanic panic hit hard huh

So anyway if Miguel doesn't do anything to fight this rapture thing he's royally screwed and forced to keep working on them

So he remembers that for lab tests he was using his own genetic material so he's got a full backup of it pre-rapture and he's planning to use the machines at the lab to overwrite the changes the drug made

sound good to me, quite a solid plan

Except this guy, who Miguel insults regularly on daily basis, decides to take his petty vengeance switching the "clean" O'Hara backup with the one they're experimenting with for the spider project.

Well this is fine

AND ON TOP OF THAT HE'S TRYING TO SHIFT THE BLAME ON HIM

also naked Miguel O'Hara gents, you're welcome

Uh-oh

IT'S MORBING TIME

honestly I know vampires were massively popular in the 90s and it's kinda obvious they wanted to ride that wave and use the aesthetics to appeal to vampire fans and-

works for me

also how do those claws work? It feels a bit weird to see both nails AND claws, sort of like when you realise centaurs have 2 ribcages. Bit more redundant though, would've made more sense if he'd lost his original nails. Oh well.

He's me when I'm at my parents' house and my mother throws me out of my bed on Sunday morning at 8ish because THE EARLY BIRD CATCHES THE WORM DON'T YOU THINK YOU'VE SLEPT ENOUGH and I'm just left there confused af trying to figure out where I am, when I am, what day and year this is and what's exactly happening in my life

MOOD

big eh for the sexualised hologram house assistant, ok it's the 90s and it's a thing of the genre and all of that but I've read too many papers about sociological consequences of female-coded robots or assistants (in short: encourages closely associating the slave/servant role to women and it ends up affecting real women too. it's bad bad) to not be judging this very hard

His first thoughts about them claws was going to the bathroom and picking his nose, so valid of him

honest to god if I had claws I'd be constantly fidgeting with them pressing the fingertip to make them come out like you do with cats.

That's it for part 1, I will probably make a part 2 when I continue reading them

Honestly they suffer a bit from being born in the 90s but I'm enjoying them so far and I like the character. If he hasn't changed too much in the movie then ok I get it now

[dreadfutures]

100 Serault Prompts

Inspired by the atmospheric and enigmatic game, Dragon Age: The Last Court, here are some prompts for art or writing. Don't forget to send the prompt along with the number to help your creator out!

Utterly indebted to the #SaveSerault preservation project, and @silvanils Plot Guide here.

The black ocean of trees seethes under a fretful night-wind.

Nightmares breed like maggots in meat.

Wolves howling in council, or prayer, or song.

Gnomic messages scratched into fragments of bark with a knife-point.

Beware of crows.

Painted Masked Goddess in the bluebelled glade.

An inquisitive wind stirs in the woods.

Questing roots crawling over a secret, locking it away against the centuries.

The forest returns to its sleep and its long, green dreams.

Streams suddenly freezing despite the sun.

A laughing wolf.

A pensive bear.

A spider the size of a carthorse.

There are stranger directions than ‘North’ and ‘South’.

Power is a difficult steed to ride. Not everyone can stay in the saddle.

Today's answer could be tomorrow's treason.

A Baker’s Breeze, early in the morning. Upon it, the scent of bread rising in the ovens.

A coy breeze carries the sounds and smells of the market.

Spice. Lies. Laughter. The play of coin.

A grey wind drones in the fireplace.

A slow rain drones on the windows.

A hard wind blows from the east, carrying fat, gloating ravens.

A song of old Serault: the Stag and the Rose.

A star-wind, high and swift, pushes silver clouds to and fro beneath the moon.

The lap of the river upon the castle’s stone feet.

The scent of leaves and nodding barley.

White feathers drift like snow.

Eels in the dark rivers.

The Applewoods are dappled with shadow and filled with succulent midnights. Come closer.

The Biting Wind that Masked Andraste keeps leashed like a dog.

The sun swarms the river.

The Chateau’s four cats stretch out on the roof-tiles.

The wind eddies in corners, making dancing columns of dust. It comes from nowhere, goes nowhere. A Fade-wind, the Dowager calls it.

The Chateau’s pennants crack like whips.

“Payment in Glass” is the Serault motto.

Dappled in gemmy light.

The Green Chapel in the Deepwoods, where wolves go to pray.

A line of grey in the dark; fighting, failing, dying.

A sound like tearing silk.

Burning blue with rage.

Sun as warm as the touch of a hand.

A garland of aster and cuckoo-flowers.

The Masked Andraste isn’t as keen on chastity as her moon-faced sister.

A mage must be a poet, a philosopher, and a butcher.

To see behind the world.

To hold fire by the throat.

Familiar territory, but never quite safe.

Serault’s pride is like her forests: root-deep, thick-skinned, hard-won from the world’s edge.

A bereskarn.

Rune-strewn bones of a fell beast.

A forest victim: flowers sprouting from their eyes.

Hands burned to the blackened bone.

The Tower of Lights, as it never was: scraping the sky, mantled in light.

Weep tears of silver.

Smashing a horned mask of glass and gemstones.

Your true face: a horned mask of glass and gemstones.

The Glassworkers' Guildmaster elections.

This is the Grand Game. Play or drown.

A glass Guildmaster's sword, the hilt spinning fractures of light across the floor.

Freedoms for the Glassworkers: to leave, and leave to marry.

If it doesn't fight back, you drink it.

Secret liaisons with the Lover: Candlelit meetings. Fingers tangling briefly in the corridors. The door to your chambers creaking softly open when the guards change their watch. Stifled giggles as a servant passes.

A change of lovers, and the fallout.

An old tome. Dense, inseparable uncials cram the book. The ink fades. Mold speckles the flimsy pages.

A pig farmer advises the Marquis.

A grin as tight as a gallows noose.

A mosaic floor.

Honor is a game that others play.

Your Chevalier Commander, and her loyalty.

Serault Town: Gold stone, red roofs.

The Horned Knight's hold: a round tower, jagged as a chipped tooth, its floors all collapsed in on one another. A great tree grows within it, spreading a canopy of burgundy leaves where the roof once was.

Grass sparkling with shards of an old, shattered mirror.

Fat partridge, simmering in a pot with sweet onions and pale beans, then a plate of round cakes, peppered with poppyseed and laced with honey.

The mother has eyes of fire; the daughter, a heart of it.

Twilit riverbanks untrod by mortal feet, and rings of tall blue stones that were not raised by human hands…

A hall where the trees walk and the stones speak.

The Horned Knight: clad in armor of forest green, with an ivy cloak that hisses along the flagstones.

Hounds in the kennels, baying for the hunt.

The effects of High Twilight.

The effects of High Peril.

The effects of Rumors of Revolution.

The Dignity of the Huntress, Glass Rose of Serault: deadly, beautiful, adored, dreaded.

The Freedom of the Scholar, who might be the one to bring change to Serault for the good of the common folk.

The apples have interesting properties: astringent... intoxicating.

The Chateau stands on an island in mid-river.

The Acerbic Dowager (Counselor)

The Cheery Baron (Counselor)

The Dashing Outlaw (Accomplice or Bodyguard)

The Elegant Abbess (Counselor or Lover)

The Kindly Knight (Counselor)

The Muttering Banker

The Purveyor of Teas (Accomplice)

The Seneschal (Counselor)

The Silent Hunter (Bodyguard)

The Smiling Guildmistress (Counselor)

The Wayward Bard (Lover)

The Well-Read Pig-Farmer (Accomplice)

His Dour Lordship (Counselor)

The Scornful Sorceress

The Anchoress.