#my grandma got me the first two books for christmas nearly a decade ago

[drakaina-posts]

Today, nearly a decade after I first started reading the series... I have finally finished League of Dragons, and the Temeraire series as a whole.

[yeojaa]

( TEASER / holidating. )

In life, there are certain things that go together, two parts that make up a whole.  The sun in the sky, grandmothers and cheek kisses, chocolate when you’re sad—and you and Jeon Jungkook.  Best friends since childhood, there’s never been one without the other.  You’ve always existed this way, caught in each other’s orbit.  Parallel lines that run side by side. 

But what happens when those lines finally collide?

(or:  how to lose a best friend in ten days.)

pairing.   best friend!jjk x f!reader.

genre + rating.  this teaser is general but the full fic won’t be (wink wink). entirely made up of cracky, silly, and somewhat infuriating fluff.

tags / warnings.  idiot best friends being idiots and a dumb amount of cuteness.  the final will have further tags added.

wc.  0.9k for this teaser. undetermined full story.

beta reader(s).  @hobi-gif because she be my gurl.

author note.  this is part of the rockin’ around the christmas tropes collab with the most wonderful group of women @underthejoon @ladyartemesia @ppersonna​ @untaemedqueen​ @xjoonchildx​ and @snackhobi​.  i am so excited for you guys to read the amazing works that are going to be coming out.  please support these lovelies!  ✨💗

— coming 23/12/20 !

Jeon Jungkook is four bites into his steak when he almost chokes, the half-chewed slice getting caught somewhere in the back of his throat, threatening to send him to a far too early grave.  He’s three delirious gulps of water deep when he asks you to repeat what you’ve just said, staring at you with the biggest roundest eyes anyone’s ever seen, shining like a beacon in the night, a solar flare that eclipses everything else around it.  He’s silent for a total of five seconds - or so he thinks - before he’s laughing, scoffing so loudly it disrupts Eevee, your lazy Maine Coon, and sends her bolting from her spot by his feet.  

“You’re kidding me.”  Because he can’t even begin to fathom what you’ve said, make sense of the ludicrous suggestion you’ve made.  

This, coming from the guy who has been your best friend for the last seventeen years.  Who has known you for almost two decades and who, by sheer idiot osmosis, has been privy to every harebrained scheme you’ve even come up.  Who has, often against his will, suffered through all your crazy 4 a.m. suggestions, nodded along half-asleep as you’d prattled on and on about things that hardly made sense in the light of day but fared even worse beneath a blanket of sleep.

(And you’d had a lot of bad ideas.  From your absurd fried chicken restaurant - where you’d use vacuum tubes to send food to people’s tables - to your non-whiteboard whiteboard desk - made for the everyday office person - he’d seen it all.  Talked you off ledges and rebuked your half-hearted request for him to be your angel investor.

“Isn’t this what friends do?”  You’d said, implored, just two weeks ago over another dinner, with that same absurd stare of yours, the one that Jungkook’s known for most of his life, that makes everything just a little harder to say no to.

“Invest in shitty ideas?”  So maybe some of your ideas aren’t that bad.  Maybe, just maybe, they’re actually sort of inventive.  Out there, certainly, but innovative, plucked from the mind of you and only you.  

Still, he likes giving you a hard time.  It’s sort of his thing.

“Definitely not.”

You’d kicked him under the table, pouted at him and then continued your rambling, completely unfazed by the fact that he was not, in fact, going to shell out a part of his trust fund to bring your whacky idea to life.)

Because you know him so well - could read him like a book, recognise his voice in a crowd of thousands, find his smile like a star in the night sky - you take his disbelief in stride.  Treat it like it’s nothing you’re not used to which, well, you aren’t.  Continue to stack French fries onto the tines of your fork, twirling the utensil before depositing the too-big bite into your mouth.

“What’s to kid about?  It’s a good idea.”

Whether it is or isn’t is up for Jungkook to decide.  He can’t entertain it at all, just the mere thought of it existing too far out of the realm of possibility.  “We’re not— What’d you call it?”

“Holidating,”  you state, so matter of fact he wants to roll his eyes.  Actually does when you set your fork down, lay it neatly beside your plate and level him with that stare.  The one that reads like a big red warning sign, that might as well have neon lighting it up by how he shrinks away.  He knows that look.  He knows you’re not backing down, somehow fired up and ready to go in the minute that’s passed.

Still, he’ll try.  Play off your suggestion and scoff just that much harder.  “We’re not holidating, ____.”  

“Why not?”  You’re exasperated, two hands landing on the countertop with gusto.  It’s as endearing as it is childish, making him laugh again, roll his eyes until the sclera is all you can see.  (You’d told him once that his eyes would get stuck like that if he did it too much. Cue the prank when he’d worn white contacts and nearly given you a heart attack at the tender age of thirteen.)

“Because I don’t have time for dating, let alone—”  Jungkook feels idiotic when he says the words, wrapping them in airquotes that have you glowering.  “‘Holidating’ or whatever.”

“That’s the point!”  You’re waving those same two hands - you’ve always talked with them, emotive and dramatic like in a soap opera star - as if that might lend some validity to your statement.  “You don’t have time to date.  I just got out of a relationship.”  Sure, they’re facts but they mean nothing to him as you continue to ramble on.  “Neither of us can or even want to put in the effort for a relationship but like, who wants to spend the holidays alone?”

(You have a point.  There’s nothing quite like attending his extended family’s annual Christmas dinner by himself.  It garners too many of the same questions, offered by distant relatives that mean well but otherwise drive him insane.)

(He’s not about to tell you that, though.  Hard time, and all that.)

“It’s not that bad,”  he says, lying through those slightly too-big, slightly buck-toothed teeth of his.  Why he bothers, he isn’t sure.  You catch him immediately, a loud a-ha! snapping past your lips when he glances to the side, completely unconsciously.

(You’ve known his tell since he was in high school.  Since that first time you’d caught on when he’d borrowed - and subsequently broken - your camera, you’ve known.  You call him out on it too.  Every. single. time.)

“You’re telling me you want to have your grandma ask you when you’re going to give her grandkids for the umpteenth time?  Seriously?”  

“It’s not that bad,”  he repeats, a broken record that can’t be fixed, whose cat-scratched eeeeeee gives him away.

He’s bluffing.  He knows it.  You know it.

Looks like you’re holidating. 

tag list.  @neverthefirstchoice @youwannabelostandnotbefound @codeinebelle @jeonmisha 

[purplesurveys]

1065

survey by pinkchocolate

Who were you with at midnight on January 1, 2021? I was with my family - my dad, mom, siblings, grandma, aunt, and two cousins. Kimi and Cooper were troopers who slept through the fireworks the entire time, though it probably helped a lot that my dad kept music playing in the living room, where they stayed, to drown out the loud sounds.

What was the last thing you drank? Was it in a glass, mug, can, or bottle? I’m currently drinking out of the glass mug that Angela got me for Christmas. It’s clear and she had it customized with my name, but the letters are in the style of the Friends logo :)

Who was the last person to send you a message on social media? I’m not sure; it was either Andi or Jez but I haven’t opened either.

^ What qualities does this person have, that you appreciate? I appreciate Andi’s loyalty and the fact that I can rely on them about anything and everything. They’re also a fantastic older sibling, honest, witty, strong-willed, supportive, and insanely talented. 

Jez and I were part of the same high school group but we actually do not talk much; for the most part, we only interact twice a year, when we greet each other during our birthdays. But he reached out to me because I had written a year-end essay on Facebook where I reflected on my 2020, and he messaged to tell me it was a good read and that he was able to relate a lot. Anyway, I love that he’s a low-maintenance friend. We were never the closest and I haven’t properly hung out with him in five years, but we have always silently supported each other and I appreciate people who can keep friendships like that.

Look around the room and find any red object. What is it? The handles on my embroidery scissors are red.

Do you enjoy any films with Dan Stevens in them? I’m afraid the name is unfamiliar, actually.

Is there anything in the room that has your handwriting on it? Yeah I have several notebooks here in my room, most of which I’ve written on.

Can you name 3 items you own that are pink? My wallet, my keyboard cover, and my note-taking notebook from college. I was definitely crazier over pink in college and at one point I had a pink pencilcase, highlighters, phone case, handbag, and backpack.

Are there any foods that often give you heartburn or indigestion? I will get indigestion randomly, and the only time I’ve gotten heartburn is the time I got a Double Down from KFC a couple of years ago hahahaha.

What are the initials of the last person you saw naked? Does it have to be someone I know? I watched Midsommar last Christmas and there was lots of nudity in it... the last irl person was still my ex.

^ How did you meet that person? If we’re taking the latter answer, I met her in school.

What was the last thing someone said to you, that sounded like an innuendo? I can’t remember the exact sentence anymore but my mom was talking about nuts in a way that I was easily able to turn it into something a little more inappropriate. My cousin and I also joked about WAP last night, lmao.

Is there something you intend to buy in the near future? Nothing cemented yet. I have things I want to buy, but they’re all luxuries that I have to think hard about. For now, I’d love to be able to keep saving especially after not exactly being able to do so during the holidays. I will say that one big pro of becoming single is no longer having to spend so much for relationship things like dates or gifts or gas to drive around, haha.

What was the last thing that caused you to scowl, or frown? My shoulder blades have been in a lot of pain over the last few days.

Is anyone in your family artistically talented? What about musically? We have members who fall under either. My dad, Nina, my cousin Maggie, and I believe even my grandpa, can all draw. On the other side, my cousin Gage can play the flute and the guitar; a lot of people on my maternal grandpa’s side can play the piano; and one of my mom’s cousins on my maternal grandma’s side is a singer. Of course, I got neither of these lmao

Have you smiled at any point during the last hour? For sure. I’m on a 2 Days 1 Night marathon, which always makes me crack up.

^ What was your reason for doing so? Already mentioned it. I’ve also come across some funny shitposts on Facebook in the last hour.

Can you name 3 foods you like, that are yellow? Cheese, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes.

What was the last thing you consulted Google for? Yellow foods...HAHA

Look around the room - can you see anything that has stripes on it? A paper bag I received from Christmas has stripes as part of its design.

When was the last time you read a non-fiction book? What was it about? I’d say it was a few months back. I believe it was AJ’s memoir.

So, did anyone send you a "Happy New Year" message when midnight hit? A lot of people did, which I appreciate.

Is your television on right now? What are you watching? I don’t have a TV in my room, but I have a YouTube video paused. It’s a segment from 2D1N.

Can you recall the last time you sighed? What was the reason? Maybe last midnight watching the fireworks? It was my first New Year in nearly a decade that I did not greet Gabie. It felt strange, bittersweet, but also peaceful. The mix of emotions made me sigh in contentment.

What cute behaviours or characteristics does/do your pet(s) have? Cooper mostly won’t do tricks just because he’s asked to. You have to hold up a fist (because it looks like you have food hidden in it), for him to respond. We’ve done experiments where we asked him to do tricks with and without a fist, and he only ever responds if you have one up, and it’s priceless every time. Kimi’s nearly 13 but still runs, jumps, and stands up like he’s 2 when he hears us preparing his bowl for meals.

Have you rolled your eyes at anyone/anything lately? My mom was being pretty annoying last night, so yup.

What's the screensaver on your computer? I don’t have one. It just goes black after 15 minutes.

[kowsdontski1]

Too many years ago I wrote an essay. I wasn’t really doing it just for fun, but I can honestly say it was the most rewarding essay I’ve ever written (for school, that is). That essay, titled Untold Stories, won second place in a department contest and put me on a journey of discovery that led me to create this blog. Written for one of my many English classes (Do you think I majored in English?), it was a comparison of Cemeteries; one in Prague, the capitol city of the Czech Republic, and the other in Plain City, Utah. I was required to write eight to twelve pages. I can’t remember how many pages it actually ended up being, but I feel that is just too long for a blog post, so in the spirit of Cemetery Month and reviving this blog, I’ve decided to share a new abridged version.

UNTOLD STORIES

by Marianne Kwiatkowski

(re-named A Tale of Two Cemeteries, revised, and abridged 2018)

I  begin with lines borrowed from Walt Whitman’s poem, Song of Myself. Although the title leads the reader to believe that Whitman is about to embark on a narcissistic journey of self-love (he begins with, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself”), the reader quickly discovers that he is attempting to show us how we share qualities as members of the human race, making us more like him than not. It was the following lines, though, that got me thinking of the many stories that we bury with our dead:

–I guess the grass is itself a child . . . the produced babe of the Vegetation– –now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them; It may be you are from old people and from women and from offspring taken soon out of their mother’s laps, And here you are the mother’s laps.– –O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues! And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children?

 As I stoop to read weather-beaten, time-worn headstones, I wonder as Whitman must have;  If I had known them, would I have loved them? I wonder about the loved ones that were left behind.  What kind of anguish was suffered at the untimely death of children?  What kind of heartbreak occurred at the death of a beloved spouse?  Was it a relief to know that long-term suffering had ended?  What about the families of strong young men who left brave-hearted, and never returned from war?  What kind of reunion took place between the spirits of those who quietly slipped away to join their loved ones beyond the veil? These stories hang in the air at every grave site I visit.

Seventeen years ago, I visited Europe.  While I was there, I explored the Jewish cemetery in Prague.  Located in the Jewish sector of the old town, the Prague cemetery is the second oldest Jewish cemetery to survive the Holocaust.  Back home in Utah, I explored another cemetery in the small town of Plain City.  It holds the remains of some of the original Mormon pioneers.

I wanted to visit the old Jewish cemetery in Prague because my Americanized grandmother was raised Jewish in that part of the world.  Many of her family members disappeared during World War II.  Visiting the cemetery in Prague was a way to connect with my ancestral past. The stories of the Jews are just as intriguing, and far more lamentable than the Mormon pioneer stories.  It was so difficult for my grandmother to tell her own history that she refused to talk about it.  My mother tells me that she often heard my grandmother sobbing late in the night when she thought her family was sleeping. The Holocaust was so hard on her, but we’ll never know the details of her despair.  Like so many of the inhabitants of these cemeteries , Grandma’s story died with her.

I went to Prague just once, but I took many pictures.  I used to live in Plain City and have visited the cemetery there many times and taken a few pictures relevant to my story.  I liked to visit at dusk in the summertime, as the activities of the day were quieting down, and the people of the town began to prepare for a night’s rest.  One visit in particular occurred on a frosty November morning.  This time I went with the purpose of finding a story.  I was not disappointed.

The graveyard in Plain City has many graves of Mormon pioneers who crossed the plains by wagon or handcart.  These are the stories that interest me.  Stories of faith and courage.  Stories that ended in triumph as families settled into their new homes after surviving the long arduous pilgrimage across the plains. Many of these stories have been told somewhere in the annals of the family histories in Utah.  I have no such pioneer heritage, so the stories and faith of those pioneer people are unknown and yet intriguing to me, just as the untold stories of family members who were separated by the Holocaust intrigue me.

William Skeen family memorial

Utah pioneer grave marker courtesy of Sons of Utah Pioneers

  Memorials to so many children are located in the older end of the Plain City cemetery.  I spent nearly an hour hovering around one large needle shaped memorial.  At first I was intrigued about the family who had buried each of their children together.  As I walked around the four sides of the stone though, an intensely tragic story began to unfold, and I discovered the preface to an unwritten book, one that I desperately wanted to read.  Nine small stones lie neatly in two rows next to the memorial.  Each stone says simply, “Skeen.”  These little graves tell the beginning of a sorrowful journey for their saddened parents.

Apparently the story began in the fall of 1870 when one by one, each of the Skeen’s seven children began to fall ill.  Whatever the epidemic was, the household must have been quarantined, because I was only able to find the grave of one other Plain City child who had died during these two months.  It must have been six year-old Jane who brought the illness into the household.  On November twenty-third, the little girl succumbed to the illness and left this earthly life, leaving behind at least six siblings, a pregnant mother, and a worried father.

Less than three weeks later, Caroline Skeen gave birth to a baby who died the same day it was born.  One more spirit to keep little Jane company.  Two days later, the ten year old namesake of Caroline died.  Maybe for a while it looked like the worst might be over, but after what must have been a very sad Christmas, two more children joined their siblings in death.  Four year-old Benjamin and five-year old Elisha died on January third of the new year.  By this time, the epidemic was raging throughout the Skeen household and nothing would stop it.  Five days later, two year-old Thomas died, followed by seven year-old Amanda on January tenth.

I wondered about the oldest child, William, who was thirteen when he died on January fifteenth.  Was he hanging on in an attempt to care for his brothers and sisters?  How the parents must have mourned as each of their children went to the grave, one after another, in such a short time.

The Skeen’s tragic story doesn’t end here, though. Several years after my discovery of the Skeen tragedy, I returned to take another look at the tombstone. On the opposite side of the tombstone where the names of Caroline and William were inscribed, are the names of a second wife, Mary Davis Skeen, and three children who died within five days of each other.  Polygamy was not uncommon in Utah Territory in those days, specifically among devout Mormon families.  Three decades after the tragedy, polygamy was officially denounced and the church abstained from further plural unions. I decided that I could not pronounce any condemnation upon the heads of William, Caroline, or Mary, though. For all I know, both marriages were solid, amicable, and willingly entered into by all parties.  In fact, I am well aware that many polygamous families have laid claim to happy unions and cordial friendships among wives and children.

One more child was born to the Skeen family nineteen months after the tragedy.  Unfortunately, this little girl also joined her brothers and sisters in death just six years later.  This is just the beginning of the untold story of the Skeen family.  I wonder what their lives must have been like before and after the deaths of their children?  Which children belonged to which wife? Did they live together in the same house or even on the same street? Did they have any other children who survived?

Less than a century after the Skeen tragedy occurred, a new devastation began to unfold in the Old World.  As the Holocaust swept over Europe, it wreaked larger destruction upon the inhabitants of the European continent than even the Skeen family could imagine.  After those black days, one Jewish cemetery in Prague stood as a testament against Nazi snipers.  The small plot in Prague escaped destruction, but as Longfellow penned in his poem, The Jewish Cemetery at Newport, “The dead nations never rise again.”  Like the graves in Plain City, each cemetery has its own tale of sorrow.  Prague is no different.

I couldn’t read the headstones at the cemetery in Prague.  Most of the markers were inscribed in “the mystic volume” of Hebrew, and other markers were in Slavic languages.  Even so, the majority of the headstones were weathered to the point that they would have been nearly impossible to read in any language.  I didn’t need to read them. The town’s history and the condition of the graveyard told its own intriguing story of heartache and struggle.  Longfellow thought the Jewish cemetery in Maine to be strange.  To me, it wasn’t strange or gratifying; it was sad and unjustified.  Then again, the very existence of the cemetery tells a tale of triumph over  bigotry and hatred.

The casual observer in the old Jewish sector would find “narrow streets and lanes obscure” just as Longfellow described, but the cemetery is hidden from casual view. It is located on a small hill completely enclosed by a stone fence. I don’t think that the hill occurs naturally. After 700 years of burials on such a paltry lot of land, it became necessary for the Hebrew community to bring in more soil to bury their dead.

Less than an acre of land. Seven hundred years of death. Men, women, children. Old and young. All of their dead went there. As the years went on, bodies were uncovered, lifted up and reburied with new companions. People who were total strangers, never met, and lived hundreds of years apart became roommates in death. Strange bedfellows.

Entering the cemetery from a busy street, one is met with an eerie silence. Brownish tombstones, large and small, rest grotesquely upon one another. Most of the stones are so old that the writing has been erased through years of wind and rain. The newer stones are written in Hebrew and couldn’t be read anyway (by me, at least). A pencil-thin pathway winds forlornly through the piles of hand-hewn rock. Above in the trees that serve to hide the sepulchral plot from mortal view, big black birds caw solitarily to one another, adding to the unearthly atmosphere. The calls reminded me of Edgar Allen Poe’s plea; “Is there–is there balm in Gilead? –tell me–tell me, I implore!” I almost expected to hear the raven’s plaintive cry of “Nevermore!”

Death is always sad for the living. Billions of tears were shed worldwide for the loss of over six million lives of the Holocaust. I am sure that the Plain City community mourned in a similar fashion for the loss of the Skeen children at what should have been a joyous time of the year. They were the tears of loss. Those who died may have been lucky, as Whitman put it, but those who were left behind lost a piece of their own lives as they put their loved ones into the ground. Often the only solace for the living is knowing that one day they will join their cherished families in death. If there is indeed life beyond the grave, then death cannot part loved ones, it only separates them for a while.

As for the rest of this world, people come and go from this life daily. Some leave histories.  Most don’t.  Their voices are silent.  Their stories die with them.  My interest is to find tales worth telling and uncover their secrets.  There are some things that will never be known to the living, but the mysteries make great stories.

  A Tale of Two Cemeteries Too many years ago I wrote an essay. I wasn't really doing it just for fun, but I can honestly say it was the most rewarding essay I've ever written (for school, that is).