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infinitevariety · 4 years

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May Your Days Be Merry

Having never been able to celebrate previously, Aziraphale and Crowley decide to embrace the festive season and make the most of their first December together since the world didn’t end.

Chapter Eight: O Christmas Tree (AO3)

Buying a Christmas tree is a long and arduous process for Crowley, but only because Aziraphale has such exacting standards.

This morning, Crowley is outside the bookshop much earlier than usual. At Aziraphale’s request he walks through the door bang on 11:00am, green scarf secure around his neck and fleece-lined gloves keeping his fingers toasty.

Aziraphale is waiting to greet him, similarly wrapped up, but with the addition of a Santa hat on his head.

“Good morning!” exclaims Aziraphale, beaming smiling in place. “Are you ready to go?”

“You’re going to wear that?” Crowley points up at the Santa hat.

“Why?” Aziraphale raises a hand and fingers the edge of the hat self-consciously. “Is it too much? I thought everyone would be festive at the woodland and, well, you got this hat for me yesterday. But if it’s too much…” Aziraphale trails off, reaching high to pull at the top of the hat.

“No!” cries Crowley quickly, stepping forwards and holding out his hands to forestall Aziraphale removing the hat. “It’s not too much. Not at all. I just thought…” Crowley quickly tries to find a substantive way back out of this hole, but only sees one option. “I just thought that if you’re going to wear that, I should really where my reindeer antlers.”

“Really?” Aziraphale’s bright delight is back.

“Really,” assures Crowley, quickly coming to the realisation that he’ll gladly look like a fool in public if it makes Aziraphale this happy. “Did I leave them here last night?”

“Yes! Here they are!” Aziraphale whips them out, seemingly from nowhere, and hands them to Crowley.

“Thanks, angel,” he says as he shoves them on his head and eyes Aziraphale suspiciously.

Aziraphale simply continues to smile, radiating innocence.

Headgear sorted, they go outside and climb into the Bentley. Crowley drives the two hours to Wilderness Woods in 45 minutes, and wonders if they really had to leave so early.

Climbing back out of the car they both take long deep breaths of the fresh, countryside air. There is a strong smell of pine, and it only gets stronger as they walk further into the woodland. At the hub of the site are several huts. One selling food, one selling trinkets and ornaments, and one where you purchase your tree.

It hits Crowley then. They are buying a Christmas tree. The centrepiece of a traditional, commercial, British Christmas.

There are hundreds of trees, all set out for people to look at and choose, before buying, taking home, and decorating. They are organised by size, type, price… Crowley’s not sure where they should start.

“Do you know what variety and size tree you want, angel?”

“Norwegian Spruce. Most definitely. The taller the better. They carry the best scent and I want the bookshop to smell like Christmas for as long as possible. They loose their needles like nobody’s business, but that’s nothing a quick miracle won’t sort out.”

Aziraphale wanders off towards the trees, eyes alight with excitement. And suddenly Crowley doesn’t care about how commercial Christmas has become, how cliché and tacky. Let them get a Christmas tree and indulge in the traditional celebrations. Anything for that wide-eyed, wonderful look on Aziraphale’s face.

The feeling doesn’t last.

“Crowley!” calls Aziraphale. “Crowley, will you come and hold this tree so I can see what it looks like?” There’s a brief pause as Crowley makes his way over. “Oh! And this one—it’s taller, but I’m not sure if it’s as bushy.”

This goes on for at least an hour. Crowley hauls out tree, after tree, after tree. At Aziraphale instruction, he holds them upright and spins them around for inspection. Each and every one is then rejected, and a new tree from the seemingly never ending batch of them is chosen for Crowley to pull out and display.

After an hour and a half Crowley has even forgotten to be embarrassed by the antlers still perched on his head. He has all but zoned out, so he almost misses the hum of approval Aziraphale makes about the tree he’s currently holding.

“This one?” says Crowley, the note of desperation clear in his voice. “You want this one?”

“It’s a gorgeous colour, has a beautiful even spread, and is good and bushy…”

“This one!”

“It’s just not quite tall enough.”

“Aziraphale, this tree is at least eight feet. If anything it’s too tall.”

“No, no, I want one as tall as possible, it’ll look absolutely magnificent under the domed skylight in the shop.”

“Not if you never pick one, it won’t,” Crowley mumbles under his breath.

Aziraphale hums again, and Crowley jumps to convince him that this is the tree.

“What’s taller if the tree isn’t as lush and green and beautiful? And remember, you’ve got to decorate the tree, angel. The taller it is, the more effort that will take. Hanging the ornaments, stringing the lights, tying the bows. It could take you hours.”

Much to Crowley’s surprise, Aziraphale laughs.

“Let’s not be coy, Crowley. I won’t decorate the tree. I will throw the baubles and lights and tins—”

“NO tinsel!”

“...and garlands on the tree, then you will do the real decorating.”

They stare at each other, obviously both recalling how well the decorating of the shop went a few days prior. Eventually, Crowley caves.

“Fine, but this is the tree and we’re not having an angel on top.”

“Deal,” Aziraphale is quick to agree.

They net the tree up for the journey home and pay for the thing. Then Aziraphale spends another half an hour picking out decorations for it from the cutesy little hut full of trinkets. And of course they visit the food hut, for Aziraphale to purchase a little snack. He apparently worked up quite the appetite after all the hard work he made Crowley do.

The argument they end up having about needing to miraculously install a roof rack on the Bentley sees them through the entire journey home.

#good omens #good omens fic #ineffable husbands #ineffable husbands fic #ace ineffable husbands #ineffably festive #fic: may your days be merry #2020 advent ficlet challenge #i wrote this

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kiwibes · 4 years

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This is absolutely the first time I ever read the term ´plant blindness´ and now I am obsessed by it.

"Most of our friends —at least the friends worth keeping— can tell a rose from a tulip. But ask these same friends what kind of tree they bought for Christmas and you will draw a blank stare. A pine, a fir, a Norwegian spruce? Picea sitchensis? Abies grandis?"

"Notice the immense rectangular lawn planted with young maple trees as you come near the town. A politician in Tervuren has decided that wildflowers cannot and should not grow there, and this is a shame for the thousands of people who drive through that part of the N3 every morning. And an even bigger shame for the hundreds of thousands of pollinators that would make a home there if only there were wildflowers to pollinate. But who notices these things in a world afflicted with plant blindness?"

#hey politician drop your name and location #i just wanna talk #i swear #naturecore #garden #nature #gardencore #flowers #belgium #politics #plantblr #permaculture #save the bees #plant blindness

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athgalla-arts · 4 years

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I got tagged by @rottenprincessshura100

Thank you!!

Name: Bran

Nickname: Depends on who you ask. Bran also counts.

Zodiac sign: Scorpio

Height: 5 feet eheh

Language: English is my first language. I'm okay with basic Norwegian, German, and Spanish.

Nationality: American

Favourite Flower: Marigolds and moonflowers

Favourite Season: Winter

Favourite Scent: Spruce, pine, juniper, other conifers. Also the ocean, hay, petrichor, and wood.

Favourite Colour(s): Kind of a cobalt and aqua blue. Deep greens are also gorgeous and I'm fond of rich purples.

Favourite Animal(s): Hmmm... probably Eurasian lynx and common ravens.

Favourite fictional characters: Yuri Egin from Blue Exorcist (Shiemi, Shiro, and Mephisto are also up there), Pavel Chekov from Star Trek TOS, Toki Wartooth from Metalocalypse, Stanford Pines and Fiddleford McGucket from Gravity Falls, Inuyasha and Sango from Inuyasha, Winry Rockbell from Fullmetal Alchemist, Undertaker and Sieglinde Sullivan from Kuroshitsuji, Feathertail and Mothwing from Warriors, Rodion Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, Franken Stein from Soul Eater, Katara from ATLA, Robert and Rosalind Lutece from Bioshock Infinite, Tails and Shadow from Sonic, Brigitte and Mei from Overwatch, aaand with that I'm gonna shush before I ramble too long. It's already so hard to pick faves when I love so many chars! ;___;

Coffee: Black

Number of blankets on my bed: Like a bajillion. Actually, just a handful but maximum cozy is necessary (honestly I just kinda use them to augment my pillows because I'm fussy about how my head and neck are supported)

Blog made: 2018 I think but ultimately I've been around since like 2012ish?

Number of followers: I think 140 or so?

Random fact: Long tailed ducks will use their wings to aid them when diving underwater!

Tagging @thebeingofeverything @satellitesnotstars @bluestuffeh @dizzy-oke @scarsoftheshatteredsky @apineappleheart and anyone else who'd like to do this! (likewise, don't feel obligated if I tagged you and you don't feel like it :3)

#tag thingy #athbabble

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norweiganwitch · 4 years

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This is the result of yesterday’s walk, i hope it works! And for those wondering, it’s a tiny bit of pine together with Norwegian spruce

#baby witch #witchcraft #pagan #wicca #smoke cleansing #cleansing #witchblr #candles #alter

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thewomanwhowatchedchristmas · 5 years

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Home for Christmas 1:4 "Party Flirting" (2019)

It's Christmas party time! Johanne (Ida Elise Broch) is ready to party. She goes with the other nurses in her ward and Dr. Henrik (Oddgeir Thune). I think for like half a second that she's gonna go for Henrik, but then she starts flirting with this other guy who keeps smiling at her. Come to find out, he doesn't speak Norwegian, and it's the magician who cheers up patients at the hospital. How embarrassing.

Also at this club is the psycho dude from the escape room because the plumbers union is also having their Christmas party. And texting Johanne is super-sporty Stein (Mads Sjøgård Pettersen), who shows up when she can't hear him on the phone. Because that's not insane. A fight ensues, which prompts a drunk Johanne to call out the men on all their bullshit.

The next day, things at work are a little awkward with a female coworker that Johanne almost hooked up with last night. Johanne has a "come to Jesus" talk with Sebastian (Arthur Hakalahti), who is complaining that his girlfriend wants him to get help for his herione problem. After work, Johanne goes Christmas tree shopping with her family. There's a whole spruce vs pine debate (I've always had pre lit) and she sees her ex of three years. Her family goes on about how great he is and why would you guys split up, and she finally admits that she doesn't know why. He just dumped her.

Overall, I give this one 4 stars. It was a ride, y'all.

#christmas #christmas show #netflix #2019 #review #home for christmas #norway #party flirting #ida elise broch #arthur hakalahti #mads sjøgård pettersen #oddgeir thune

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nowitsdarkfic · 5 years

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a quiet place // a joey one shot

Now, here’s a one shot for you guys. I’m also putting this on AO3 because he needs more love there 💜

Totally fiction but loosely inspired by things that actually happened to me with an old classmate of mine... as well as the Seinfeld episode “The Tape.”

February, 1985.

“Every piece of art you see here is from me.”

It was such a stepping stone for me to have my own art show here in New York City. Me, the little art student who stood on the outside looking in with her peers and the vagabond, now twenty-four and talking to people from the New York Times about her craft: I never would have guessed I made it this far in my career.

It was only two years ago when I had woken up feeling like my life was over. That old job drained me dry even if it brought home the bacon to myself and my parents. Art was in my soul, and it ached to flood right out of me, ever since I was a toddler.

My parents and I relocated out here to the East Coast from the southeastern side of Los Angeles because my mom’s job was transferred to the city of Rochester. They decided on Oswego to live at given the commute was a quick seventy-five minutes, and thus I called the region home. But there have been many times where I was asked why no accent and my response of “California baby, New York kid” never flew too well with everyone. It was particularly isolating at school when I watched the kids on the playground and I was relegated to the swing set or bunking myself up in the library with a book to read or a picture to draw.

It wasn’t until I met Joe in the beginning of the second grade when I began to feel more at ease with my peers.

I still remember sitting down at the table in the library, right across from him. He wore a bright red hockey jersey under a big black windbreaker and he didn’t look very comfortable there: he had this stern, serious expression plastered on his face, too serious for a little boy so I knew right away he was bit of an outcast himself. I asked him if I could sit with him and he raised these big brown eyes up at me from the book he was reading, and nodded.

I remember examining the nappy black hair all around his head and how it dangled down onto his shoulders, almost like a stuffed animal. His skin was light brown and smooth, and with his brown eyes, I realized I was sitting with a little Indian boy. He kind of resembled me because I had the same complexion and type of hair: I thought our eyes looked similar. At one point, he squirmed in his seat and whispered, “could you not stare at me, please?”

“Oh my goodness, I’m sorry,” I whispered back to him, shaking my head and directing my attention to the drawing in the sketchbook resting on my lap. Every so often, I took a glimpse up at him to see if he was still there. He never left until the bell rang and we all returned to class for the rest of the day.

I often saw him walking the halls of the school with his dark hair covering part of his face and his little body wrapped up in heavy sweaters and baggy clothes. He never talked to anyone, even when we shared music class together at one point during the year. I was in the choir section while he tucked himself behind the tiny drum kit in the corner.

It was the middle of November when I caught him on the walk home after school. Both my parents worked so I had to walk with the other latchkey kids, but I never saw him with the group. The afternoon felt cold and crisp with incoming lake effect snow and our leader told us to hustle: I watched him catch up with us for a moment before he hung back on the curb near a vast grassy area lined with tall spruce trees. I watched him stand there for a moment before he crossed the street. I was curious about him and I wanted him to join us.

Once all eyes were off of us and fixed on the street ahead of them I followed him across the street to the park. I reached the sidewalk on the other side once the latchkey group had turned the corner. I returned to him right as he began to walk faster. I trotted after him; once I came closer to him, he peered over his shoulder at me before breaking into a run. Up ahead stood a tall chain link fence around a low bright blue wall surrounded by thick evergreen bushes. To our right was more grass, a side street, and then, beyond another tree line loomed a sliver of Lake Ontario.

I picked up the pace to catch up with him.

“Leave me alone—“ he pleaded to me.

“But why?” I blurted out.

“Leave me alone, please!” He ran away towards the bushes near the hockey rink, but I followed him. He was a fast runner, his legs pumping so much harder than mine. But I lurked back a bit to watch him duck behind the biggest one near the door of the rink. Panting, I spotted his nappy hair from behind the top side of the pine needles. I rounded the edge of the bush closest to me to find he had taken a seat against the bare branches; right before him, and right next to me stood the bright blue wall of the rink.

He bowed his head into his arms, which he folded over his knees, like he was trying to hide from me.

“Hey—are you okay?” I choked out, slipping in between the bush and the wall.

“Don’t look at me,” he begged from his folded arms. I took a knee next to him.

“Hey—Hey, it’s okay,” I assured him, kneeling closer to him.

“No, it’s not,” he snapped back. I pushed a branch out of the way to come closer to him.

“What happened?” I asked, setting a hand on the base of the branch behind me.

“Nothing.”

“I think something happened,” I pointed out. He sniffled, and then he lifted his head to look at me with those big brown eyes.

“Do you promise not to tell?”

“Pinky promise.” I stuck out my right pinky finger for him. He swallowed before hooking his right pinky around it.

“Okay,” he finally said, letting go of my finger, “I’m ugly.”

I was stunned.

“You’re ugly? Who said that?”

“Everyone. When you’re half Injun, people will look at you and you wonder why and ask yourself if you can do anything.”

“Half what?”

“Injun,” he repeated, sniffling again. He paused for a second. “That’s a word my grandma taught me when I was little. She said that’s a word white people like to use to put Indians down.”

“Why are you using it then?” I asked, shifting my weight to better feel comfortable against the branches.

“She said if we use it, it loses its venom.”

“You think I could use it?” I suggested.

“Are you Indian?”

“Yeah. My grandpa is Blackfoot.”

“My mom, and my grandma and grandpa are all Iroquois. I don’t know about your tribe but you know, I do—I do feel better talking about it, though. I don’t feel so all alone.” He cleared his throat and hunched his shoulders to keep the warmth in his little body.

“I’m also Italian from my dad’s side,” he added, shivering.

“I’m German, Norwegian, and African,” I told him. “So don’t worry about feeling ugly. I’m a mess.”

I nestled even closer to him, so close in fact I put my arm around him. I could feel the wind picking up from behind the bushes and over the top of my head.

“I’m Hannah,” I told him. “What’s your name?”

“Joe. But everyone calls me Joey.”

He glanced around the nook in the bushes, the tops of which protected us from the outside world. It was quiet here with just the two of us.

“Let’s make this our safe spot,” he told me. “We can come here when we both feel alone.”

“It’s a quiet place here,” I added.

We often came back to that little spot, all throughout the second grade and the rest of elementary school. He told me he missed me after a good snow because we couldn’t meet up there, but always did during the spring and summer. The two of us walked home after school together and then strode across the grass, and hung out there for a while until we had to get our butts back home because of homework. We talked about our day, like something that happened at recess or at lunch or during class. He always made me laugh with his little off-the-cuff quips and his spicy sense of humor; I often made him laugh when I learned sarcasm and my humor grew sharper. Nothing fancy, just two kids hanging out together.

We returned to it as we grew older and Joey found interest in hockey and then music. Every single time we took the exact same seating with our backs to the grass and our feet pointed to the outside wall. I always put my arm around him whenever he felt too cold; sometimes he did the same with me, too. At school, I almost never saw him because our classes were down the hall from each other, and so seeing him was the best part of the school day.

Meanwhile, I watched his hair grow longer and thicker and darker to where it was solid black. We listened to our voices change, his squeaky little boy voice breaking and falling lower, and mine growing more womanly.

We even watched our hips grow fuller—it was more so the case with me, but his developed a gentle curve, all while he grew lankier: he gained all of his weight in the form of slender but strong muscles. The first time I knew he was going to be a tall man was in the middle of sixth grade, and one of the last times I saw him. When he stretched out his legs towards the wall, his jeans legs receded back up enough to reveal the very tops of his black Chuck Taylors.

The last time we saw each other was the last day of the summer before seventh grade, and I had received a letter in the mail telling me I had been accepted into a brand new art school over in Rochester, which meant my parents and I would have to move over there.

“It’s the seventh through the ninth grades only, though,” I assured him. “So I could come back by the time regular high school starts up.”

“But that’s three years without you, though,” he remarked. “Who am I going to hang out with until then?” I could never answer that question.

And before we returned home, and we stood to our feet, and strode over to the curb and stopped before crossing. I put my arms around him to feel him one last time: even though he had grown slim and toned with time, he had this nice soft feeling to him. He held me in his slender arms against his deepening chest and I never wanted to let go of him, not just from the fact I was saying goodbye to my best friend but from the fact I always wanted to stay with his softness and his gentleness.

He never saw me grow heavier with everything ballooning: indeed, by the time I started ninth grade and my technical freshman year of high school, I was five foot seven and a hundred sixty pounds. Another fifteen on me and I’d be considered fat. My parents worked long days so I often spent my time alone.

The blessing, however, was art: I managed to make art so well that I was at the top of my class by the end of the ninth grade. The other blessing was having found a tape recorder to record my thoughts. Since I was alone, I could speak my thoughts aloud and I felt better doing it like that instead of putting them in writing.

But I wasn’t returning to Oswego upon graduation. I kept going in the arts all through my high school years, and yet not one time did I hear a word from Joey. I hoped he could find me as I started losing weight and looking forward to being a part of something greater than myself. It didn’t help matters I was surrounded by fears of an economic downturn, even though by my eighteenth birthday in the middle of April I landed a factory job: it couldn’t come at a better time as my dad was laid off from his job and my mom worried about being the sole breadwinner. I stayed there for a year and a half until the place closed down. I was forced into a job at Xerox, which I liked at first because I was bringing home money to help my parents as much as myself.

But over time I hated it there. The hours were ridiculous so I couldn’t see my parents that often, or make art so much. There came a point before my twentieth birthday I had gone so far to writing a suicide note and a plan on how to kill myself, including finding a way back to Joey so I could tell him goodbye for the last time. I would then drive into Oswego and scout out a drug dealer and overdose on heroin right there at home.

But it was the thought of him, that belief that he and I would reunite in the future, that saved me from my own demise. I finally said enough with the job, but I had faith in my art.

It took me a full year before I made my first commission and it was modest. I worried about my parents and I being evicted and thus I poured my all, all of my yearning to return to the quiet place and to Joey, into every single piece. We were given two days to leave our condo when I had one of my drawings posted in a gallery in the heart of the city and I was invited to share more with them.

The commissions I made saved my parents’ condo and even though I was a ways off, I began scouting out for a place of my own. I started gaining weight again but I knew it was for the best.

Over the next two years I had more and more art shows with galleries in Rochester and then that past autumn in 1983, I received a letter from that gallery that saved us, telling me they wanted to sponsor me in my own show in New York City. My own art show! In the city!

I had my parents put in first class with me as we rode the rails from Rochester to the outskirts of the Big Apple in Yonkers, right near the Hudson River. This place was exactly how I would imagine an art gallery in New York would look like with its shiny wooden floors so clean I could eat off of them and all of my art treated like they were worth millions.

I was so eager about the whole thing that I made an auditory diary in the back room right before showtime. That little recording became my sole moment alone for hours on end as I answered interview questions, made even more commissions, and even sold a few drawings. I was on top of the world for once, caught up in a state of euphoria.

By eleven thirty at night, the owner announced five minutes before closing time, but I still had a couple of stragglers from the New York Times in conversation with me for at least another ten minutes. Once they node me good night, I breathed a sigh of both relief and elation.

Day one was done: time to grab my things and head back to my hotel room next door to my parents’ room. I scooped up my purse and my tape recorder before heading out to my rental car. Once I sank into the driver’s seat, I rewound the tape to a clean strip.

Nothing. It was full. Strange, it couldn’t have been, as I had plenty of space left.

I played the spot where I had left off before to make sure it wasn’t a mistake.

I gasped.

At the end of the tape, I brought a hand to my mouth in shock. I blushed, but I didn’t know if I wanted to puke or scream.

There was a lot of people in there, and they were all getting to know me, so I don’t know who would know me that well enough to leave an absolutely filthy message on my verbal diary. I stuck the recorder in the panel on the inside of the door as I drove back to the hotel a couple of blocks away.

I let out a long low whistle once I found a spot near the door and killed the engine. I decided to take the tape recorder into my room with me because I could probably figure who was the creep who left that message. But at the same time a part of me felt flattered that a guy went out of his way to do this for me and on something I kept with me on my person whenever I needed it.

I entered the lobby of the hotel and I spotted the tall, slender man at the ice machine on the side of the room. I recognized his jet black kinky hair, now quite the mess on top and grown halfway down his back in the most flyaway fashion, and most of all, that lovely curvature to his hips and thighs.

“Joey?” I called to him once I came within earshot. He turned to face me: he never lost that solemn expression and his eyes were as rich brown as ever, but in spite of his thin body his face was rounder, such that his cheekbones filled out with a sweet little smile at me.

“Hey, I know you,” he greeted me. My heart skipped several beats as I approached him with my arms wide open. As soft as ever.

“Oh my God—“ I almost choked up holding him and then peering right up into his face.

“Long time no see, right?”

“Right?” I let go of him to stick the recorder in my purse, out of sight, out of mind. “Oh my God. What are you doing here?”

“I’m in a band now. We’re recording a new album. We met with our producers today and they said it should be out in October just in time for my birthday. And our manager scrounged to get me and our guitarist both a room here because we’re both from outside the city. I was literally right down the street at a bar and I was just getting ready to go to bed.”

“And then I showed up.”

“Right. But shit, Hannah, how’ve you been, though? You look fantastic. I always thought you’d look good with a little weight.”

“Oh, you should’ve seen me after I moved out to Rochester. I was like... almost fat. But I’m an artist now. I just had my own show down the block.”

“I was wondering what was going on down there at that little gallery. The bar I was at was right across the street and I kept seeing all these people walking around, and I kept thinking ‘what’s going on?’ But I’m pretty beat, though.”

“Oh, I hear you. It’s been a big, long day for me. But... you wanna talk more over breakfast?”

“I’d love to. Here, I assume?”

“Of course. Hey, free breakfast is free breakfast.”

“True. Gimme another hug—“ He put his arms around me and I lay my head against his chest, and I closed my eyes. Even if it was for a minute, it felt sweet to be with Joey again. He let go of me and one final stroke of my back before returning back down the corridor to his room with his bucket of ice. I watched him slip inside before I returned to own room down the hall to my right.

I set my purse down on the table to take the tape recorder out and give that voice another listen. The second time around felt a little better. Maybe this guy was just trying to mess with me, or maybe he did want me from all the desires he expressed to me. They all felt so pure and from a different place. Maybe he just wanted attention. But I needed to find him, especially after my breakfast with Joey.

*****************************

“So tell me more about your band.”

It was a blustery day near the heart of New York City, and neither of us felt to be in the mood to go out anywhere no matter what happened. Joey had put on a baggy black button up shirt and fitted black jeans, and those black Chucks I remember from when we hung out at the quiet place.

“I love this ghoulish look on you,” I remarked to him when he sat down across from me with a paper cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin.

“Pretty rock n’ roll, isn’t it?” he replied, giving me a playful little smile.

“Definitely.” I eyed the muffin, which just appeared to be larger than his own hand. “Ever since we were little,” I noted, gesturing at the top.

“Hey, sometimes that’s all you need, especially when you’re a little boy and it’s all you can find for yourself. So anyway, my band—well, that’s not really correct. It’s not technically my band, they just brought me in because I can sing. They’re called Anthrax after... some kind of disease.”

“That sounds attractive,” I said, nonplussed.

“Well, we’re heavy metal and our other guitarist Scott was the guy who came up with the name after reading about it in a biology textbook. He said the name just sounded sinister, like perfect for a heavy metal band. But yeah, it’s me on vocals, Scott and a guy named Dan on guitars, and uncle and nephew Charlie and Frankie on drums and bass respectively.”

“Uncle and nephew?”

“Yeah, it threw me, too, because they’re like three years apart, but yeah—they’re uncle and nephew.” He took a sip from his cup before speaking again.

“And like I said last night, Dan and I are kind of the odd ones, more so me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Scott’s from Queens, Frankie and Charlie are from right down the block in the Bronx. Dan’s from Rockland, almost in Jersey.”

“But they’re all from the city, though,” I pointed out.

“Right.”

“How’d they find you, though?”

He chewed on his bottom lip before replying to that.

“I have my ways.”

“You have your ways?” That beckoned a chuckle from me.

“Of course. After you left, I kinda learned how to risk things and go forth by my own whims. Well, and it was the pressure of growing up, too. Growing up a half-breed Injun boy in upstate New York is quite the experience.”

He took a bite from his muffin and another sip from his cup.

“Did you go back to the quiet place?” I asked him in a low voice as he set down his cup and showed me a thoughtful look.

“Once in a while. I had to stop in seventh grade because it got—kind of depressing.”

“You were missing me.”

“Totally. You know I made new friends after a while but I missed that—that—I wanna say ‘feminine principle’. Just being there in the bushes behind the hockey rink away from the world was something I needed to feel comfortable about myself and it was something I missed.” He showed me a solemn little smile before taking another bite of muffin. And then I remembered the message on my tape recorder.

“Oh! You’re not gonna believe this,” I started.

“What’s up?” he asked with his mouth full.

“Last night after the show, I checked my tape recorder—I’ve kept a spoken word diary since high school just because I, too, was alone with no one to talk to and I needed to vent somehow—“

“Mm-hmm...”

“—so anyway I checked the tape after the show, you know for a new entry—and at some point or another, some guy left this—very interesting message on there.”

“Interesting?” he echoed, his mouth full of muffin. “How so?”

“Filthy. Absolutely filthy and naughty.”

“Like... sexual?” He raised his eyebrows at me.

“Very. It weirded me out at first but I gave it another listen and I found it kinda flattering to be honest.”

“Like some dude walked in and he didn’t wanna bug you so he told you how he feels about you, though.”

“I guess so. You know I’m not such a mess after all.”

That coaxed a chuckle out of him. He took another bite of muffin before glancing down at his wristwatch.

“Oh shit, I gotta go! I think Danny already left, though—I haven’t seen him.”

“I’ll take you,” I offered him.

“Oh, thank you!”

We stood to our feet and hurried down the corridor to his room, and then my room to fetch the keys. He kept his arm around me as we rushed out to the cold and the rental car; he left his hair disheveled when I shut the passenger side door next to him.

“So where we headed?” I asked him, tugging the seat belt over my chest.

“Uh... just a few blocks away over in the Bronx. I’ll show it to you—“

I started up the car and we headed on over to the recording studio in question. He showed me the way, past some bits of traffic, and into the heart of the Bronx.

“I hope you can find that guy, though,” he declared at the last stoplight beforehand.

“I hope so, too,” I admitted. “I mean, this guy—Joe, I’m not even kidding when I say this—this guy said the filthiest things I’ve ever heard in my life. Like... I almost don’t know how to react to it.”

He cleared his throat before he turned his head to me.

“What did his voice sound like?” he asked me. “Could you describe it?”

“It was like—throaty and husky. There were some points where he lowered it to a whisper and—it was kind of hot, to be honest. You know, sexy.”

The light turned green and we rolled forward towards the low brick building three doors down from the crosswalk. I pulled up to the curb, and he unbuckled his seat belt right before I pulled the parking brake. He cleared his throat again.

“Was it something like—“ He cleared his throat a third time and leaned into my face, his eyes hooded and his expression in a state of euphoria.

“—Hannah... I want you,” he breathed out in that exact same whispery voice as on the tape, “to go down on me with your tongue all along the side of my dick.” He let a soft airy moan out from the back of his throat and ran his tongue along the rim of his mouth, and the result was my toes curling right into the inside of my socks. I gaped at him right as his expression changed into a devilish grin.

“That... was you?” I sputtered.

“Shhh!” he hissed, bringing a finger to his lips even though the windows were rolled up.

“That was you?” I demanded in a hushed voice.

“That was all me.”

“Joey—“ I was rendered speechless.

“No! No! Please don’t tell anyone.” He sighed through his parted lips. “Okay. When I was across the street, you know—I saw all those people walking around and I wanted to check it out. So I took a quick walk over to the gallery and I saw you in there talking to some people—like I recognized you almost immediately. I knew I couldn’t get in so I went around back and when the coast was clear, I ducked in and saw the tape recorder on the table in there. I assumed it was yours because I didn’t think some girl would just leave her purse lying around like that unless she was protected. I just... went for it and filled up the rest of the tape and got out of there before anyone saw me. I really hope it didn’t perturb you too much—I only did it to be kinda—you know, sassy. That being our thing and everything.”

I closed my lips a bit when he shrugged. I didn’t know what to say right then.

“Anyways, I gotta go. I’ll ask Danny for a ride back so don’t sweat it.” He ducked out of the car and into the cold morning.

“Yeah, yeah—“

Once he closed the door, I lingered there for a moment before rolling forward to the next stoplight in hopes of turning around and heading back to the hotel.

I gave the recording another listen. I sat there on my bed with my mouth agape.

“Wow,” I breathed out when I reached the end. It made sense. He and I had known each other for years and the adolescence was the last time we saw each other. He was alone, and he missed me. But at the same time, this was an interesting, rather jarring side to him. I had always known him as that little Indian boy with no one to talk to; I thought I had known him but this was something else.

I kept the whole thing tucked in the back of my mind for the entirety of the second day of my art show. I watched my parents speak to some people on the other side of the room. What would they think?

It was the same shtick that night as the one before, and this time I really went back to my room with some big fat checks in my pocket. I strode into the lobby once again to find him walking towards the ice machine. He nodded at me and I decided to run over to him.

“What’s up?” he greeted me.

“Can I talk to you about something?” I asked him in a hushed voice.

“Yeah, of course. In my room or in yours?”

“Mine.”

“Okay—“

I led him down the corridor to my little room, right next door to where my parents were staying for one more night. He shut the door behind him and set the ice bucket on the table next to the TV, and fixed the lapels of his shirt.

“This is about that message, isn’t it,” he guessed, rubbing his hands together.

“Yeah.”

“Look... like I said, I only did that to just play with you. I didn’t mean to like... creep you out or anything.”

“No, no... you didn’t,” I promised him. “But I brought you in here because—I wanted to tell you that I didn’t realize you were so... sexual.”

“Well...” he began reluctantly, “let’s just say I missed you, especially right around that time when—things happen.” He spoke with that same husky, breathy voice like on the tape. He parted his lips and unfastened the top button on his shirt to show off more of his chest. I wanted to touch him.

I lunged for him with my arms wide open.

“Oh—Oh, Joey—“ I breathed out before locking my lips with his. So soft. The only boy who could feel so soft and so like home to me.

He put his hands on my back before he tugged me towards the bed. I could feel him taking off my blouse and then unhooking my bra. I tossed the bra to the side and unfastened my jeans, but I decided to keep them on for a moment more. I unbuttoned his shirt to feel his chest and his stomach. His skin felt smooth and warm like melted butter underneath my lips. I undid his jeans and kissed him all the way down his happy trail, and that stripe of warm, utterly gorgeous skin. I could feel myself growing moist with every caress of his skin. So soft, and also... sexy.

“Okay, this is hot,” his voice broke as I inched closer to his genitals. I peeled back his jeans to better reach for his length. So big and full; makes sense with those thick thighs and those gorgeous hips; I could see he was erecting. I knew he wanted it, just like he said.

I put my lips around it first before running my tongue along the side. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed his eyes snapped shut and his lips pouted. He was surrendering to the feeling. I curled my tongue around the shaft like I was licking a popsicle. I put my lips around it again when I tasted something salty. He came right in my mouth. He let out a gentle but broken moan when I swallowed it down.

I let go because I could feel him tapping on my arms. I crawled over him when he reached down my jeans and into my panties. His fingers wriggled right into me.

“Wet as the streets outside,” he groaned out. I never realized how good that felt, with his fingers twitching and rubbing against that little spot. I stared right into his face as I could feel myself rising higher and higher. It was like a runner’s high, feeling my heart pound faster and my lungs scarcely fill with air but all I had with me was him, was Joey.

“Oh fuck, I’m coming—!” I sputtered into his face.

“That’s it!” he grunted, and he let go of me. I lay down on his chest which brought out a groan from him. We both panted from the intensity, but then he started laughing.

“Wha—?” I could hardly breathe.

“That’s my girl,” he said in a broken voice. I lifted myself off of him so he could take off his shirt and his jeans. I could taste him all on the inside of my mouth, but I could care less. I crossed a new threshold with my best friend, and I felt closer to him. Once he returned out of the bathroom, he invited me into the bed. He lay down on his side first and, once I switched off the lamp, I nestled in before him. I lay my head against his chest as he wrapped his arms around me.

“Mmm, oh, Joey—that was wonderful,” I whispered to him.

“That was everything I could’ve ever asked for from you, Hannah, baby doll.” His fingers stroked up my back and into my hair.

“But let’s keep this a secret, though, okay?” he suggested. I took a glimpse up at his lovely dark face staring back at me.

“Yeah, of course,” I promised him. “This here is our safe spot.”

“It’s our safe spot,” he echoed, showing me that little smile again through the darkness. “It’s a quiet place.”

I put my arms around his slim waist only to find he was still soft, still holding that sweet softness I had been longing for these past eleven years. I had been wanting to feel him again, in the deepest way possible, and in what better setting than in a quiet place.

#joey belladonna #anthrax #80s #fanfic #fanfiction #heavy metal fanfiction #smut and angst #lemontober2019 #lemon #oneshot #scott ian #dan spitz #frank bello #charlie benante #long post #text #SHOW THIS BOI SOME LOVE OR I WILL THROW GOOD & PLENTIES AT YOU #so hot omg

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isitgintimeyet · 5 years

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The Ties That Bind

AO3

Thanks for reading so far. Hope you enjoy this chapter.

Thanks to @mo-nighean-rouge for the beta and support.

The first part of this chapter was written in a spirit of lighthearted frustration, in the run up to Christmas, as I marvelled at my husband’s (and many other men’s) ability to take no responsibility for family gift buying at Christmas, devolving it to his long suffering spouse (i.e.me “But you’re so much better at it than me!”). As my daughter says, it’s fun to see the look of surprise on her dad’s face as she opens her presents from ‘mum and dad’.

Chapter 26: A Grinchless Christmas

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more! ― Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Three days before Christmas Day and Claire had officially started her holiday. Much to the amazement of many of her colleagues who couldn’t quite believe that this year, there would be no Miss Beauchamp to cover gaps in the rota or deal with unscheduled emergencies. She had made it clear that she would be absolutely unreachable.

Claire filled two mugs with fresh coffee and placed them next to two of Mrs. Crook’s homemade mince pies on the serving tray. She hesitated before adding a third pie and went to join Jamie in the conservatory.

Snuggling next to Jamie, Claire sipped her coffee and gazed out of the wall of glass. The garden was blanketed with a heavy frost, glittering in the winter sun. Snow hadn’t reached this far south yet, but they had been assured, or warned, depending on one’s viewpoint, that there was already “a wee smatterin’” on the hills around Lallybroch.

Claire stretched contentedly. Ahead of her laid two whole weeks, the longest break she’d ever taken from the hospital. Her Christmas shopping was complete, her clothes sorted for the festive season at Lallybroch. All she had to do one pick up one present for Jamie and she was done.

The chirp of Jamie’s phone announced a text. He finished chewing his second mince pie as he read.

“Christ. Season of goodwill and all that but I could do wi’out this.”

“Is there a problem?” Claire asked, worried.

“Nah, just the usual. Geneva wants tae pop round, her words no’ mine, this evening tae give me ma present. Ye’ll be here, won’t ye, Sassenach?”

“If you want me to, of course. Have you got her a present?”

“God, no. Didna think it would be a good idea. I have some boxes of biscuits left over from work. I can give her one of them.”

“James Fraser, we may not be fond of the woman, but she is the mother of your child. You can’t give her biscuits. That’s for work colleagues and elderly neighbours. Besides, I don’t think she’d even touch them unless they were Fortnum and Mason’s at the very least!” Claire playfully punched Jamie’s shoulder

With quick reflexes, Jamie grabbed Claire’s fist and brought it to his lips.

“Sassenach?” He whispered.

Claire sighed and waited. She knew exactly where this conversation was going.

Encouraged by her silence, Jamie continued. “Ye’re headin’ intae the shops this morning, are ye no’? D’ye think ye could buy something… er… suitable for her?”

“Suitable? And what do you think is suitable for a woman who’s been trying to steal you away from me for months? I know what I’d like to give her…”

“Please, Sassenach. Just dinna get her anything too personal, no smelly stuff, nothing like that.” Jamie made pleading, puppy dog eyes at Claire. “Ye’ll ken what tae get her. Ye’re much better than me. Look at all the lovely stuff ye’ve bought Maggie. I couldna have chosen any of that…”

“Enough.” Claire cut his pleading short. “Spare me the helpless man routine. I’ll do it. But only because I love you.”

Jamie smiled and, rising, pulled Claire to her feet. He kissed her soundly on the lips while fondling her bottom. “Alright, so, d’ ye want me tae drop ye off at the shops on ma way tae the gym?”

************

The initial agreement, made several weeks before, had been not to bother with Christmas decorations at either Jamie’s house or Claire’s flat, since they would be spending a lot of the holiday season at Lallybroch. They both confirmed this was a logical decision, as there would be plenty of time in the future for all that.

First it was a pair of candle holders, that Claire noticed during her shopping. Clear glass beakers with frosted pine trees etched all around. Subtle, they agreed, but with scented candles would provide enough Christmas ambience for the house. Next it was a wicker reindeer that Jamie spotted on his way to a meeting. Then quickly followed the baskets of pine cones, wreaths of holly and berries and a carved wooden nativity scene. By the time Jamie arrived home with a large Norwegian spruce tied to the roof of his car, they both realised that they should give in and fully embrace the Christmas decorations. So, they spent the next weekend wandering the Christmas markets, drinking too much mulled wine and buying ornaments and lights for the tree.

And now, as Claire looked round the living room, she was thankful that they had ignored logic and dived right into Christmas. Feeling nicely full from Mrs. Crook’s beef stew, all she wanted to do was snuggle on the sofa with Jamie, watch a bit of festive television and maybe have a whisky mac or two. As it was she was sitting literally on the edge of her seat, listening out for the doorbell and Geneva.

Finally, the doorbell rang. Her stomach filled with butterflies as she heard Jamie’s footsteps in the hall and the door open.

Geneva strode into the room. Now in her seventh month of pregnancy, she still managed to exude an air of glamour, dressed in a simple black tube dress with a scarf draped across her shoulders and, as Claire had suspected, a very neat baby bump.

She seemed momentarily surprised by the sight of Claire, but quickly recovered. “Claire,” she drawled. “How lovely to see you.”

The look in her eyes said just the opposite.

Jamie hovered in the doorway unsure what to do before realising his duties as host. “Geneva, would ye like a drink? We have some soft drinks if ye’re interested.”

“No, thanks. I can’t stop.” She eyed Claire coldly. “Just wanted to give you your present and see what you were doing for the holidays. I suppose it’s a busy time of year for you, Claire, at the hospital. Too much alcohol and icy pavements will keep you occupied, I’m sure.”

Jamie moved to Claire’s side. She felt his reassuring warmth next to her. “Actually, Geneva, Claire’s no’ at the hospital fer two weeks. We’re headin’ up tae Lallybroch fer Christmas and Hogmanay.”

“Oh, well that answers my next question. I’m off to Mummy’s for Christmas, but was planning on having a New Year’s Eve party up here. Wondered if you wanted to come… er... both of you?”

Despite the invitation being extended to both of them, Claire recognised that in Geneva’s eyes, she was the unwelcome and unnecessary tag along. She smiled sweetly, her smile as insincere as Geneva’s words.

“Sorry Geneva, we canna come. Thanks for the offer, though… anyway, how are ye, and the bairn?”

“Yes, we’re fine… Merry Christmas, Jamie.” She handed him a large gift bag.

“Thanks. And jes’ a wee gift from us.” Jamie picked up the beautifully store-wrapped picture frame Claire had bought earlier and passed it to Geneva.

“Jamie, would you mind opening it now, please? Just need to check something.”

Jamie shrugged and dived into the bag, his hands delving through layers of tissue paper, and pulled out a midnight blue linen shirt.

“Ach, ‘tis verra fine. Thank ye.”

“No, hold it up against you. I need to see if I have the right size. It’s been a while…”

Reluctantly, Jamie unfolded the shirt and held it against his chest. “Aye, it fits fine.”

Geneva reached out to try to smooth a crease against Jamie's chest as he quickly folded the shirt roughly and dropped it on the coffee table. Claire openly looked at Geneva in amazement. There was no point in faking sincerity or subtlety. Geneva was being as subtle as a sledgehammer, and was now seemingly oblivious to Claire’s presence.

It was as if, Claire thought, Geneva viewed this as a competition with Jamie as the prize. Well, Claire was not going to compete. She knew it was Jamie's decision and he had made it.

Suddenly, Geneva winced, placing her hand on her belly. She reached over to try to take Jamie’s hand. Claire felt her stomach lurch, seeds of self-doubt beginning to spring up in her mind. Jamie moved his hand abruptly away from Geneva’s and looked across at Claire. Geneva, ignoring Jamie’s snub, rubbed her bump.

Still trying to remain polite, Jamie edged towards the door. “Weel, er… Merry Christmas tae ye, Geneva.”

“Yes, Merry Christmas to you too, Jamie.” Geneva smiled warmly at Jamie, the smile cooling considerably as she turned to Claire.“... … Claire.”

Message apparently received, Geneva made her farewells and left. Claire settled on the sofa as Jamie pottered in the kitchen, returning with two Whisky Macs and a dish of peanuts.

He handed her a glass. “Reckon ye could do wi’ one, Sassenach. Ye’re thinkin’ sae hard I could hear ye in the kitchen. Talk tae me.”

“That shirt, Jamie, the one that’s currently in a heap on the table. That’s Turnbull and Asser… linen… that could easily have cost a couple of hundred pounds.”

“Am I no’ worth it? Is that what ye’re sayin’?” Jamie joked.

“I thought Geneva was treating this as a competition.” Claire ignored his interruption and continued. “Her against me with you as the prize. But then I just realised, that’s not her plan. She’s not trying to get you to leave me. I think it was me she was targeting tonight. She wants me to leave you. If she makes it as uncomfortable as possible for me in this relationship, she thinks I will go. And then perhaps you’ll fall into her comforting arms and that’s her goal. But she underestimates me.”

Claire paused and sipped her drink. “Now, I know there are uncomfortable bits in this relationship and things we need to adapt and get used to. But I’m not going anywhere, James Fraser!”

“And Sassenach, neither am I.”

Claire relaxed against Jamie, her head nestled against his chest. Kissing the top of her head, Jamie picked up the tv remote control and began to flick through the channels

“Enough tension tonight. Let’s have some Christmas entertainment and no’ think about that woman any more… Ah, Love Actually...”

“I love this film. But, I’m warning you, it makes me cry. I mean real, ugly cry.”

Jamie turned Claire’s face to his. “‘Then ‘tis jes’ as well I’m no’ wearing that fancy, expensive shirt, with all the snot there may be around.”

His lips lightly kissed her forehead and nose before reaching her lips. Gently, his index finger traced the same path. Suddenly serious, he continued “Claire, I ken, these last few months with me have no’ been the easiest fer ye and I’ve given ye cause to shed a fair few tears. And fer that I am truly sorry. I dinna ever want ever tae make ye cry… but I do. I love ye and I sometimes wonder how ye've stuck by me through all this. Ye're a rare woman… I’m no’ sure what I've done tae deserve ye.”

“Or,” he added with a wry smile. “What ye’ve done tae deserve me.”

Claire returned his smile. “I ask myself that all the time. My plans for a fling with no complications didn’t exactly work out, did they?”

She rested her head on his chest, listening to the steady pounding of his heart. Her fingers worked their way between his shirt buttons and idly played with the copper hairs. She thought for a moment, before speaking. “Honestly, sometimes, you’re right it’s not easy. When I see the way she looks at you, or rubs her bump, it hurts. I don’t like to admit that, but it does... But that feeling, that hurt, isn’t there all the time, it passes. The feeling that stays with me all the time is how you make me feel. And I don’t want to not have that in my life. I know, even with all these complications, I would still make the same choice. And, I remind myself, it’s Geneva who looks at you that way, not you looking at Geneva… and it’s Geneva who, despite all her trying and games, still goes home alone... Just, please, no more complications.”

Jamie kissed the top of her head. “Aye, Sassenach, I promise. And now, let’s watch the film, and ye can ugly cry tae yer heart’s content.”

#outlander fanfic #outlander fan fiction #the ties that bind #Jamie Fraser #claire beauchamp #chapter 26

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bfire92 · 6 years

Photo

Welcome back, Thalia. Did you have a relaxing holiday?

Time for the nature guide to give you guys some biology fun facts! In case you are not familiar with botany, Tilia is the latin name of linden trees. If you mention the name Thalia to a botanist, they will immideately think about the thale cress plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The A. thaliana is one of the most important plants in genomic botany, being a model organism.

AND for me as a Norwegian, American names for trees are confusing. You say Thalia was a pine tree, and I think of Pinus, for example scots pine. It is my favourite tree, BTW. Yet, most times in American animated media, you draw them looking like spruce, Picea. I chose to draw it like a scots pine, with beautiful reddish bark and loads of dead branches at the bottom of the trunk.

I tried to use as little lineart as possible. This is a first for me. I had so much fun drawing the Calypso piece without lineart, and I wanted to do something similar.

I was thinking I would finish all characters I have combined with lyrics from The Phoenix, so that I could put them all together. But I am not sure how much I’ll be drawing in the coming months. I’ll be focusing more on my writing.

Here’s other Riordan characters and (mostly Fall Out Boy) lyrics: Masterpost

#pjo #percy jackson #thalia grace #thalia #heroes of olympus #hunters of artemis #artemis #zeus #rick riordan #the golden fleeze #the titans curse #fall out boy #the phoenix #demidorks #bfire92

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duohtadavvin · 6 years

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Luondus - In Nature

Northern Sámi vocabulary for the natural world

An enormously long vocabulary list, from this page, translated from Norwegian to English.

albmi (s) sky allat (adj) high almmiguovlu (s) cardinal direction arvedálki (s) rainy weather arvedávgi (s) rainbow arveoakti (s) rainshower arvi (s) rain arvit (v) to rain áhpi (s) ocean áibmu (s) air bajándálki (s) thunderstorm baldu (s) ice floe (as in the thing that polar bears like to hitch a ride on; free floating ice) balva (s) cloud báhkka (s) heat báitit (s) to shine bákti (s) steep mountain often with little vegetation beahci (s) pine beaivi (s) day, sun beaivvádat (s) sunshine beaivváš (s) sun (the sun specifically) bealdu (s) field beassi (s) nest beavža (s) east wind biedju (s) den biegga (s) wind bieggat (v) to blow (of wind) bievla (s) bare ground bivaldit (v) to become milder (of weather) bivdit (v) to hunt bivval (adj) mild boađđu (s) skerry, small rocky outcroppings in the water borga (s) blowing/drifting snow bossut (v) to blow bovdna (s) tussock/mound buolaš (adj) cold ceakkus (adj) steep coagis (adj) shallow cuoŋu (s) crust (on snow) čáhppesmuorji (s) blackberry čáppadálki (s) nice weather čielgi (s) ridge (means back, as in “my back hurts” and there inlies a tale, or several. Involving giants.) čierastallat (v) to slide multiple times čierastit (v) to slide once čieŋal (adj) deep čoaggit (v) to pick čoaskkis (adj) cool čoaskut (v) to cool čuoigalit (v) to ski away čuoigat (v) to ski čuoiggadit (v) to ski čuoiggahit (v) to pursue on skies čuorpmastit (v) to hail (as in balls of ice are falling out of the sky, not some Theoden-of-the-Riddermark shit) čuvggodit (v) to lighten dálki (s) weather dárra (s) kelp deappu (s) kelp dolastaddat (v) to have a fire dolastallat (v) to have a fire dolla (s) fire duolbbas (adj) flat duottar (s) tundra, plateau eana (s) land, the Earth… our mother. eananmuorji (s) strawberry eatnu (s) big river fielbmá (s) small slow river fiertu (s) dry/stable/sunny weather fiervá (s) low tide firtet (v) to become dry/stable/sunny weather galmmas (adj) cold gaskaijabeaivváš (s) midnight sun (maybe not so common - idjábeaivváš might be a better term) gaskkas (s) juniper gáddi (s) beach gáisi (s) peak in nature gáisá (s) peak in nature gálašit (v) to wade gárgu (s) rocky river bank gárži (adj) tight geađgi (s) stone gieddi (s) meadow goalki (adj) windless/calm goardit (v) to fry, to roast, to heat or warm (as in sun or fire) gohpi (s) pit gohppi (s) bay goikemuorra (s) dry wood goikkis (adj) dry golgat (adj) to flow (also: hanging with friends, going to different places) golli (s) gold gordni (s) grain (as in bread) gorsa (s) large gorge/deep cleft/narrow valley gorži (s) waterfall govdat (adj) wide guohtun (s) pasture guoldu (s) cold snow guoppar (s) mushroom guossa (s) spruce guovssahasat (s) the Northern Lights gurra (s) cleft, small mountain gap hieibma (s) breeze idjábeaivváš (s) midnight sun jalŋŋis (s) tree stump jaskat (adj) quiet jávregáddi (s) lakefront jávri (s) lake jeaggi (s) marsh/swamp jeagil (s) reindeer moss jiehkki (s) glacier jiekŋa (s) ice jiella (s) weak air current, draft jieret (s) wild currants jogaš (s) small river johka (s) river johkagáddi (s) river bank jokŋa (s) lingonberry juovva (s) scree lasta (s) leaf láttat (s) cloudberry láttu (s) puddle leahki (s) river valley liekkas (adj) warm lieđđi (s) flower lubmet (v) to pick cloudberries luohkká (s) hill luokta (s) bay luomi (s) cloudberry luondu (s) nature luoppal (s) lake-like widening of a river mánnu (s) moon mánoheahpi (s) moonshine meahcci (s) woods mearra (s) sea mearragáddi (s) coast mielli (s) steep river shore mierká (s) fog mohkki (s) turn muohta (s) snow muohtti (s) snow weather muohttit (v) to snow muorji (s) berry muorra (s) tree muotki (s) isthmus murjet (v) to pick berries murret (v) cut/chop wood násti (s) star neavri (adj) awful nisogordni (s) wheat njalkkas (adj) slippery njavvi (s) small rapids njárga (s) headland njuoskkas (adj) wet nuorri (s) strait oaggut (v) to fish with line oaksi (s) branch obbadálki (s) cloudy weather rássi (s) grass/herb/flower reatká (s) juniper rišša (s) splash (or sulfur?) rudni (s) hole in the ice runiidit (v) to turn green ruovdi (s) iron sarrit (s) blueberry savvon (s) pool sáttu (s) sand sevnnjodit (v) to darken siilosuoidni (s) hay siivu (s) lead silba (s) silver soahki (s) birch stoarbma (s) storm suddat (v) to melt sugadit (v) to row suhkat (v) to row suoidni (s) grass suolu (s) island suovva (s) smoke šealgat (s) shinny šlahttit (v) to sleet vággi (s) valley váran (s) raspberry várri (s) mountain viiddis (adj) broad vuotna (s) fjord vuovdi (s) forest

#vocab #Northern Sámi #Davvisámegiella #nature #luondu

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ccohanlon · 3 years

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It is not down in any map; true places never are. Herman Melville, from Moby-Dick

Muckle Flugga: 60° 51.3’N, 00° 53’W Sunset in summer, in the high latitudes of the Shetland Isles, is an uncertain hour the locals call simmer dim. The sun touches the horizon at around 11pm, and as its lower edge is drawn into the bleak, gunmetal oiliness of the North Atlantic swell, the pale umber cast across the high seaward cliffs begins to recede into shadow.

The light dims, but if the moon is full, the stubborn gloaming refuses to surrender to darkness. A couple of hours later, the sun will rise again, although on many days it will creep above the horizon unseen, shrouded by leaden stratus clouds that descend with the deep depressions that track north-eastwards across the Atlantic to rile the fast, south-going current of the North Atlantic Drift.

We had set off three days earlier from Castle Bay, on Eilean Barraigh (Barra Island), in the Scottish Western Isles — my friend, Michael Moulin, and I, aboard a fragile 7.5-metre yacht more suited to inshore day sailing than the long sea passages that were necessary to get as far as the Western Isles, let alone the Shetlands. We had weighed anchor at dusk and drifted from the lee of the high stone walls of Caisteal Chiosmuil (Kisimul Castle), the 600-year-old water-bound redoubt of the Clan MacNeill that rises from a reef in the middle of the bay. Then we reached under full sail through the narrow, rock-strewn channel between Barraigh and the southern island of Vatersay to the white-capped swells of the Atlantic, before bearing away north-west towards St Kilda, the grim shark tooth of barren, uninhabited peaks and rocky skerries that forms the westernmost island group of Britain.

Our course was plotted in the wake of Viking longships that made their escape through these waters from raiding parties to Ireland and the west coasts of England, Wales and Scotland a thousand years ago. They ran for the safety of the open sea on homeward voyages that would take them either north-east to the wide channel between the Orkneys and Sheltands then east to the Jutland Peninsula and the Baltic Sea or, like us, even further north, past the small, rugged islands of Sula Sgeir and Rona – more isolated even than St. Kilda — to a landfall on Unst, the most northern of the Shetland Isles, before rounding an outcrop called the Outer Stacks and laying a course to the fractured coast north-west of modern-day Stavanger, in Norway, where long, witch-finger fjords had been cleaved between high, sheer walls of rock by the stormy Norwegian Sea. Sailing deep within them, across sheltered waters as still and dark as molasses, the Norsemen would at last reach home — small, fortified settlements built close by the shore on rich grasslands coloured with star hyacinth and purple heather and backed by sloping stands of pine, spruce and juniper.

We had made our landfall off Gloup Holm, a small island off the north-west corner of Yell, one of the larger Shetland Isles. We had drifted a little further eastwards than we had planned. Two nights before, we had been forced to reef — and later, to hand — our sails in a rising south-westerly wind that veered westerly as we rounded St Kilda and became a severe gale. The steep following seas gained height and power as they rolled in without obstruction from the Atlantic and crossed the continental shelf. Solid water tumbled over the yacht’s transom into the open cockpit, sweeping us from our seats. Steering by hand became too dangerous. We lashed the tiller to leeward and let the boat drift a-hull as we took refuge in the cabin. More than once, a breaking crest tipped the yacht onto its gunwales, laying its mast in the water. We held our breaths as the hull shuddered, then plunged, as if in slow motion, down four storeys through the wave’s foam-streaked, perpendicular face. Only in the eerie, momentary windlessness of the trough did the righting moment of the vessel’s lead keel assert itself to lever the rigging from the sea.

Now the wind had dropped. The grim scud had dissipated and the swell, tinged a muddy brown by the churned-up detritus of the sea bottom and run-off from the shore, was a long, gently undulating lope. In a dying breeze, we closed the cliffs of Herma Ness to round the rocky outcrops of Muckle Flugga and the Outer Stacks. Atlantic puffins, clown-like birds with unlikely white and black heads, orange and black striped beaks and squat, rotund black bodies that even penguins would find ungainly, bobbed at the edge of deeply serrated skerries atop which other puffins protected their nests from predatory gannets and guillemots, each nest containing just one precious egg.

Sixty metres above the rookeries, on a lump of black rock too small to be called an island, loomed the Muckle Flugga lighthouse – a whitewashed stone tower, the only man-made structure on that line of longitude between the top of the British Isles and the North Pole. It was built in 1858 by David Stevenson and his brother, Thomas, father of the writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, who visited the light with his father and later, it is said, used a map of the tree-less island of Unst, off which Muckle Flugga lies, as inspiration for his novel, Treasure Island.

Lymington Quay: 50° 45.2’N, 1° 31.7’W Every summer, in every boatyard along the south coast of England, there was at least one crew preparing a yacht for a trans-Atlantic crossing. Most wouldn’t be ready in time — some never would be — but those who managed to work through their endless lists of yardwork, everything from replacing running rigging and reinforcing sails to checking rudder posts, pintles and gudgeons and antifouling the hulls, might finally cast off in early autumn and make for the warm waters below the 35th parallel.

The usual track was south-west, passing well offshore of the fearsome reefs and tidal races around Ile D’Ouessant, at the south-western corner of the English Channel, to cross the unpredictable maw of the Bay of Biscay to Cape Finisterre (in English, ‘the end of the world’). From there, they would make either for Gibraltar, at the entrance to the Mediterranean, or, more likely, the volcanic Canary Islands, off the coast of southern Morocco, where, like Christopher Columbus’s exploratory fleet 500 years before them, they would rest, make repairs and reprovision while they waited for the North Atlantic hurricane season to abate. Sometime in November, they would set off south-west again towards the Cap Verde Islands, standing well off the African coast.

After drifting through the humid calms and sudden rain squalls of the Horse Latitudes (a region between the 35th and 30th parallels dominated by a sub-tropical high and so named because, according to tradition, ships often lay becalmed for weeks there and their crews, fearful of running out of water and victuals and, worse, becoming afflicted by scurvy, threw cargoes of hungry horses and cattle overboard) they would pick up the north-easterly trade winds and, at last, alter course westwards, freeing their sails. A relentless wind off the starboard quarter and an easy following sea would carry them on an even keel all the way across the Atlantic to whatever islands in the Caribbean they might be bound.

I had lived and worked on the sea for half a decade. I had crossed the Atlantic twice, both times from west to east on a northerly route that took advantage of the Gulf Stream and the prevailing westerlies but was always hard, cold sailing, and never without a gale springing up within one of the low-pressure systems that followed one after the other with tedious frequency across the Atlantic’s higher latitudes. Once, during a leaden English winter, while I was helping a friend rebuild a 50-year-old Hillyard cutter in a cluttered boatyard on the Lymington River, relaying and caulking its timber decks in the few hours of rain-less daylight, I thought about sailing with him on the long, warm-water voyage to the southern Caribbean that he had planned for the following autumn.

And yet I knew somehow that I wouldn’t. There were no clear skies, fair winds or landfalls on palm-fringed cays in the voyages I made in my imagination; instead, the coasts were tree-less, steep and rock-strewn, beset by fast-running tidal streams and angry seas the same colour as the slate-grey skies. I daydreamed of high latitudes, of retracing routes once sailed by Norse longships, Phoenician and Celtic traders (the Veneti, a Celtic maritime tribe, ferried tin mined in Cornwall to the Gallic mainland), imperial Roman battle fleets and even the leather-hulled curraghs of fifth-century Christian monks. A trade-wind passage was dull compared with the demands of navigating the treacherous jigsaw of reefs, skerries and precipitous islands and the constantly changing weather conditions to the west and north of Wales, Ireland and Scotland, where tidal races tripped over jagged shoals faster than a small yacht could sail.

But there was more. In the north, every headland, channel, loch and narrows was haunted by legends — and a few, by dark superstition.

“Maybe one day you’ll fetch up in Ultima Thule,” my father would tell me. It was he who first told me about Pytheas of Massalia, a Greek who, in 330BC, set out from what is today the Mediterranean coast of France on one of the first recorded voyages to the far north Atlantic. In his book, About the Ocean, which has been lost for more than a millennium but is quoted in other ancient texts, Pytheas described landfalls on the British Isles and possibly Ireland, after which he voyaged northwards for six days to Ultima Thule, which he described as being at the edge of the known world — just a day’s sail from what he called the Cronian (or frozen) Sea — where the nights were very short and in the gelid mists, the earth, sea and air became indistinguishable from each other. The exact position of Thule was lost with Pytheas’s work and although, over the centuries, famed explorers such as Columbus, Sir Richard Francis Burton and Fridtjof Nansen claimed to have found it on coasts as distant as north-west Norway, Iceland and the Shetland Isles, it’s unlikely any of them did. As the contemporary author and Thule researcher, Joanna Kavenna, has written: “Ultima Thule was a land beyond the reach of humans, a place entwined with the outlandish — unipeds, the seven sleepers, a great whirlpool at the Pole, the ocean’s navel.”

Still, the iron-bound coasts and windswept seas that had to be negotiated even to have a chance of reaching it were the birthplace of many of our best-remembered legends, first told in millennia-old languages that still endure.

Barmouth Harbour: 52° 48.3’N, 4°44.4’W Whoever spends a night on Cader Idris will wake up either a madman or a poet — or so it’s said. Given what’s known of modern Welsh poets, how does anyone tell the difference?

Legends swathe the Cader (which means ‘the seat’) as densely as the fog that often obscures Pen Y Gadair, its 893-metre peak. Depending on whom you ask, the southernmost mountain of North Wales’s Snowdonia range is named after either a giant, who kicked three enormous boulders down its slopes, or King Arthur, who is said to have founded his kingdom there, overlooking the black waters of Llyn Cau, a bottomless lake.

For us, the mountain was nothing more than a good landmark for a compass bearing as we fixed our position in Cardigan Bay. We had sailed out with the first of the ebb from the tidal harbour of Barmouth, at the mouth of the Mawddach River in the east of the bay, with the intention of making north-north-westwards across St Patrick’s Causeway, a shallow reef of sand, rock and scree that extends nine nautical miles into the bay, before steering north-west by west towards Bardsey Sound between a long island, Ynys Enlli – first named Bardsey, the island of the bards, by Vikings who associated it with Christian mysticism – and the Lleyn Peninsula. There wasn’t much time. The spring tide was ebbing, the wind was freshening from the south-west and we wanted to clear the causeway’s dangerous shallows while there was still enough water over them.

Like the Cader, the causeway is the subject of disparate myths. For Christians with a fondness for the miraculous, it was the pathway St Patrick walked to Ireland, 85 miles to the west. To the pagan Welsh, it was the remnants of an ancient low-lying kingdom, Cantre’r Gwaelod, ruled by a Celtic king, Gwyddno Garanhir, which was flooded and submerged when a watchman failed to notice that one of its dykes had been breached. All its inhabitants, except a commoner and a young princess, were lost. The locals swear that when the sea is calm, you can still hear the watchtower bells ringing underwater.

The sea is rarely calm along this coast. Unprotected from Atlantic depressions that slow and deepen as they encounter the Snowdonia mountains, the weather can be windy, cold and wet even in summer. Worse, the water is littered with shoals and bars that combine with an unusual tidal range — over four metres difference between mean high and low water during springs — and fast-moving tidal streams to create some of the most hazardous pilotage in Europe. The locals give the worst stretches colourful names, like The Tripods, an area of seething overfalls off the north-east corner of Ynys Enlli — confused, breaking seas caused by a rush of tide over irregular soundings, like the standing waves that churn over large rocks in river rapids. Close by is an open bay named Hell’s Mouth.

We almost lost the boat in The Tripods. We carried a fair wind into Bardsey Sound where bravado tempted me to skirt too close to the overfalls. The wind died. Foaming white claws grabbed at the hull and began dragging it towards the lee shore. I pushed the helm a-lee in the hope of turning the boat seaward and filling the sails with three or four knots of breeze as the tidal stream swept the boat sideways. It wouldn’t respond. Spiralling eddies tugged at the rudder, and short, slab-faced waves broke over the decks, filling the cockpit faster than its drains could empty it. What little breeze the sails managed to catch was shaken from them by the hull’s violent pitching and rolling. The low, grey-green cliffs loomed close above like stone-faced thugs.

Then a stray gust filled the flogging mainsail. The sheets cracked in their blocks as they took the strain. The boat dug its gunwales into the sea and it began to gather way, burying the slender foredeck under green water as it ploughed through the breaking waves. It was only when we were less than a mile from the edge of the overfalls, running north in clear wind towards Caeranrvon, with Ynys Enlli falling astern, did I realise that I still holding my breath. The hand with which I clutched the tiller had cramped with fear.

“Ah, Myrddin’s curse,” an old fisherman I met the next morning on the Caernarvon town quay said when I had told him about our misadventure.

“Who?”

“The English call him Merlin. Legend has it that he’s buried on the island in a castle of glass, along with King Arthur, whose body the old prophet brought there after he was killed at the battle of Camlann. To those who believe it, Ynys Enlli is the Isle of Avalon.”

“Not of the Twenty Thousand Saints?” I asked him. The Welsh monk St Cadfan founded a monastery on Ynys Enlli in AD546 and its renown as a place of pilgrimage in the Dark Ages – Welsh bards referred to it as, “the holy place of burial for all the bravest and best in the land” – drew so many pilgrims, many of whom died there, that it became known as the Island of Twenty Thousand Saints.

The old fisherman shrugged and smiled. “Ah well, it’s like Merlin and Arthur, I suppose. The saints’ remains have never been found either.”

Caernarvon: 53° 08’N, 04° 16’W In the dead of night, it was hard to make out the blinking lights of navigational buoys marking the serpentine channel through the sandbar at the mouth of the Menai Straits. Off the starboard bow, there was the mainland, and the fizz of neon shop signs, halogen street lamps glowing orange, and headlights rising and dipping as cars wound along the main coastal road; there were also the bright spotlights illuminating the crumbling walls of Caernarvon Castle. Off the port bow, on the low shores of the Isle of Anglesey, were more streetlamps and a checkerboard of lighted house windows. There was nothing to do but trust the flooding tide to lift our keel over the shifting sands and carry us into the deeper water within the straits.

We avoided grounding and eventually anchored off a timber public jetty not far past the town. We had intended to sail all the way through the straits on the last few hours of the flood but that would have meant negotiating the reefs in the unlit narrows beyond the Menai Bridge in the dark, a manoeuvre that requires keeping within an oar-length of the eastern shore and regaining the buoyed main channel to Bangor just before the tide begins to ebb. However, piloting the uncertain channel through the Caernarvon bar ‘by touch’ at night, on top of nearly losing my boat in The Tripods in daylight, had sapped whatever nerve I had left.

On the shore opposite where we lay at anchor was the Anglesey village of Tal-y-Foel. From Tal-y-Foel northwards along the same shore to Mol-y-Don, close by the improbably named village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (it means, “The church of St Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St Tysilio’s of the red cave”), the inexorable drive westwards of the Roman invasion of the British Isles during the first century AD was almost held to a stand-off by local warriors. In AD61, Gaius Suetonius Paullinus, the brutal Roman commander who would later defeat the famed Celtic queen Boadicea, had decided to eradicate the Druids by overrunning their spiritual home, Insulis Mona — the Roman name for the Island of Anglesey (first named, again, by the Vikings) — and so undermine the resistance of the last undefeated Celtic tribes. At the same time, he could seize control of valuable grain stores to victual his army and of copper mines that would provide the raw material for new armaments.

It was never going to be an easy task. Even Rome’s ingenious military engineers could not bridge the fast-flowing tidal waters between the mainland and the island, and the Celts had proven themselves to be skilled if undisciplined guerilla fighters. Led by Druid priests, who invoked dark, animistic forces to come to their aid, as thousands of Celtic warriors arrayed themselves along the Anglesey shore. Naked, their skin dyed blue from woad, they screamed taunts at the Roman legions across the straits and beat their swords and spears against wooden shields. Their women danced between them, lighting bonfires from burning torches that they waved like battle standards.

If the intention was to strike fear into the enemy, it worked – for a short while. The Roman line was gripped by a wave of panic and, perhaps for the first time in the Empire’s history, an entire legion flinched. But Paullinus rode among them, rousing them to the fight, and as the tide slackened, his infantry crossed the water in boats — his cavalry swam with their horses — under cover of a barrage of fireballs, iron ingots and rocks catapulted onto the opposition from huge ballistae, the Romans’ deadly prototype of field artillery. The battle-hardened centurions slaughtered the Celtic warriors, then took to massacring their families. The Druids and their acolytes were burned alive in their sacred oak groves.

Undaunted, the Anglesey Druids, the last remaining in Britain, along with the Celtic tribesmen who venerated them, rose again 17 years later. This time they faced legions led by Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who had been among Paullinus’s officers. Agricola resolved to eradicate the troublesome Druids once and for all and to subjugate this last pocket of Celtic resistance. His men, like Paullinus’s, crossed the straits by boat and staged a bloody rampage that finally wiped out the Druidic priesthood forever and broke the back of the Celtic resistance.

We set sail from Caernarvon early the next morning. The waters, stained a coppery brown by tannin, were mirror-like and still, and reflected the shadowy boughs of gnarled old oaks that overhung the shore. Drifting northwards on the flood tide to the Menai Bridge, I sat cross-legged on the cabin-top and tried to identify the few, stark memorials of the Druids’ last stand on a 1950s Ordnance Survey map: a rise called Bryn-y-Beddau, the Hill of Graves, where the Celts buried their dead, ‘the Field of The Long Battle’ and ‘the Field of Bitter Lamentation’ outside the village of Llanidan, and finally Plas Goch, ‘the Red place’. In the windless silence, it was easy to imagine it as an island of restless ghosts.

The Skelligs: 51° 4’'N, 10° 3’’W We plotted a course north from the Skellig Islands, seven nautical miles off the coast of County Kerry, to Achill Head, the westernmost island extremity of County Mayo. It spanned more than 140 nautical miles of open ocean across the wide gulf of the Irish west coast. Off Achill Head, we would alter course again and with luck, carry the prevailing south-westerly wind all the way to Eilean Barraigh, in the Western Isles of Scotland, the so-called Outer Hebrides.

Skellig Michael, or Great Skellig (from the Gaelic sceilig or sea rock), the largest of the two Skellig Islands, is a forbidding spire of slate-grey rock that thrusts 215 metres straight out of the Atlantic. It looked like the peak of an underwater alp, materialising out of a grey sea mist to loom less than a mile ahead of us as we headed a south-going tidal stream in a light breeze. As we closed it cautiously, we could just make out some of the 670 steps carved into its face to form what the writer Geoffrey Moorhouse once described as “a stairway to heaven”. The steps actually lead to the remains of an abbey established in AD560 by St Fionan, a follower of St Brendan, with whom, legend has it, Fionan sailed from the Aran Islands, further north, all the way across the North Atlantic to Nova Scotia in an open, leather-hulled curragh. It was on the peak of Skellig Michael where, a reference from the third century recalls, Daire Domhain, the legendary ‘King of the World’, rested before an epic battle of a year and a day against the giant, Finn McCool (Fionn mac Cumhal), and the Fianna, a band of noble, bardic warriors. It was here too that St Patrick, aided by an apparition of the archangel St Michael, banished the last venomous snakes from Ireland for all time.

Skellig Michael’s desolate grey slopes are pocked with crude, igloo-like hovels — the rough-hewn stone walls are nearly a metre thick — and small cells carved into almost sheer rock faces. There, for 600 years, hermitic monks managed to eke out a hard-scrabble existence comprising prayer, scholarship and the routine chores of survival.

We ghosted between the ragged peaks of Great and Small Skellig, stood out to sea. Another few hours brought the coast of County Galway abeam, a green-black smear low on the eastern horizon. Here, with a simple running fix plotted on a chart in pencil, I closed the circle of a voyage that had began in the 1850s, when both my paternal great-great-grandparents and their families sailed from these shores to Portland in Victoria, Australia. None was a seafarer, and the long voyages they made aboard three-masted sailing ships, south through the Atlantic and east about the Cape of Good, Hope to run hard before the relentless gales and high seas of the Roaring Forties, were likely the first time any of them had ever ventured on the ocean. Up to their eyes in debt as tenants on small, rural lease holdings, near inland villages where their descendants still live today, they must have clung to the hope that their new lives as free settlers — as goldminers, farmers, graziers and policemen — in what was, not long before, just a far-flung English penal colony, would be better than the ones they had left behind.

My reasons for returning — and for sailing even further northwards, to islands long abandoned by whole communities that, after several generations, were finally defeated by the isolation and hardship of these unsheltered, gale-lashed shores — were less clear. My voyage was a voyage of hope and discovery, not to new lands, but to lands so old that it was as if there was never a time in which they had been unknown, unexplored. And somewhere between one distant landfall and the next, there was a vague chance the past might help me to decipher an incomprehensible present.

First published, with the title In Ancient Wakes, in Griffith Review, Australia, 2005, and selected by Robert Dessaix (editor) for Best Australia Essays 2005, published by Black Inc.

#england #wales #scotland #ireland #atlanticocean #sea #sailing #kingarthur #merlin #myths #history #memoir #voyage #celts #romans

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