#oc: hecate

[reborrowing]

So the monster has decided to use you as a teddy bear.

[re-whump]

Glass Eden - Entertainment

your pet lady-snake can have a little borrower, as a treat contains: giant/tiny (size difference), non-human whumpee (borrower and lamia/naga, both tiny), captivity, pet trope, dehumanization, forced to fight, communication barrier note: this is the same the piece posted on my other blog as "Snake Tank", but I'm moving the story over to this blog so I don't have to worry about """crossing a line"""" or whatever taglist @whumpsday

Poe

I threw myself against the glass one last, futile time as I heard the door on the far side of the study creak open. My fingers nearly brushed the lip of the prison I’d been placed in, nearly caught onto that ledge that might let me pry open the lid and make an escape. I was still in the air when I felt his eyes land on me. My fur stiffened as his heavy footsteps approached. His towering form blocked out what sunlight had filtered through the closed window as he sat at his desk.

“You quit that, now. You know you aren’t getting out. Unless you’d like to try speaking with me again?”

I turned to face him rather than wait for him to spin the jar I was sitting in. I slunk to the floor, drawing up my knees as if they could shield me from his . He looked annoyed this time, rather than intrigued. I shook my head and stared at my hands. It wasn’t as if I would want him to dump me into his cold hands even if he wasn’t upset. I was bruised enough.

“I don’t have anything else to say. Sir,” I said.

He rolled his eyes.

“There's no one else!" I insisted. “It’s just me, the others ran away months ago, I’m the only one left.”

It wasn’t the truth, though by now it was close. The Copper family had moved out after Mellie reported that the master of the house was now collecting dangerous, exotic pets in his showroom. It was just the most stubborn of us left, or the most foolish.

“What to do with you, then?” the master of the house hummed.

He tapped a finger on the glass thoughtfully, right behind my head, in case I needed the reminder that my skull was no larger than the tip of his finger. I grimaced and looked back up at his face, where his wide lips twisted into a grotesque smirk. I closed my eyes as they curled back and revealed his teeth. My stomach twisted as he kept talking.

“My …friends tell me your kind is more trouble than you’re worth, more often than not. But perhaps I could get some entertainment out of you?”

“Let me go, please. I’ll leave. I won’t bother you again,” I begged.

“Oh, but I do believe you owe me, little thief. How long have you been squatting here, hm?”

I slumped and curled in on myself. I had thought maybe, just maybe, if this guy cared for a zoo of strange animals, he might have a thread of compassion hiding in his oversized heartstrings. I’d—god, I had bet my life on it, hadn’t I? And now I was going to pay up.

Entertainment.

~~~

Hecate

A hand lifted away the log that I’d been curled up under.

I flinched awkwardly at the sudden light, then rolled to face the front of my enclosure. The man liked it when I “looked” at him. I couldn’t tell if he knew I was blind or not. All my eyes told me was that there was a large, blurry shadow standing over the tank. It could’ve been a tree, for all my eyes could understand.

I knew it was him though. I could sense his blazing warmth through other means. More importantly, I could smell him.

Then, the hands. The nice hands. The man. Hugh Morton.

I smelled something else, too, something new. Another person, maybe? I listened intently for another heartbeat, another guest. I didn’t want to be shown off right now. I wanted to go back to sleep.

His hand reached back down to ruffle my hair, then run a rough finger across my scales. He rumbled something about feeding and I slumped back down to crawl back to bed. I wasn't hungry enough to want to fight and for all the good these hands did, they never killed my meals for me like the last ones did.

"Don't be so fussy, Hecate, I’m giving you a treat,” he chided. The ground shook as he flicked a finger against the glass wall. “You must get bored lying around in there all night.”

I huffed and and backed into a better position, against the side of one of my ceramic caves. I was still nursing a bite on my flank from my last meal. 

I licked the air and frowned as Hugh slid open one half of the wall. This prey was not a creature I knew. Hugh’s hands dangled a warm shadow by a long tail, then flicked it into the soil and the prey squeaked as it landed. It didn’t smell like a rat or any other rodent I’d encountered before.

It did smell afraid.

It already understood it was being hunted. I didn’t like that. Scared meals fought back. I had scars to prove it.

Hugh scoffed in annoyance as the creature scrambled towards the opening in the glass. He knocked it back into the enclosure several times while I waited for a chance to strike.

“Don't make me break your legs," Hugh sighed.

The creature stopped moving. Strange. Its little heart was hot and hammering. Was it trained? Why would anyone take the time to train food? Maybe it was simply afraid of Hugh’s voice. 

I took advantage of its stillness and lunged. It turned to run in the split-second before we collided. It slammed into one of my open arms. I fumbled as it flailed, then got myself curled around it anyway.

It felt strange against my scales. Not furry. Not naked. Synthetic. Was it wrapped? Humans wrapped their food, but not mine. They used those crinkling papers. This was wrapped in something soft.

Was it clothed?

I hesitated in my confusion and the prey bit back. Something long and sharp stabbed in between two ventral scales. I flinched, hissing, and the prey slipped away. It left the sharp thing behind, but it didn’t bleed. I put a hand on the sharp thing and realized it wasn’t a tooth. It had some kind of handle. Plastic. The point was metal. Some kind of tiny knife? I swayed uncertainly and let the little creature run.

What was he feeding me?

~

Poe

It had never occurred to me that there might be peoples other than humans and my own kind living in this world. I wished I had the time to find out more about her.

The caged creature I had been placed with was, as most things were, comparatively massive. Its front was that of a vaguely humanoid woman, small, but still more than twice the size of my own top half. Her eyes were vacant and unfocussed. She was pale, fat, and lined with scars that told me she had much more experience than myself in fighting. 

The bulk of her body was what truly scared me. She was a python that trailed lazily across the near half of the terrarium. She was coiled, so I could only guess at her true length, but her girth was easy to make out. I regularly crawled through tunnels narrower than this snake, making it all too easy to understand what would happen to me. That the master of the house had returned my thumbtack seemed like a joke. I had no prayer here. This would be a cruel combination of all the worst deaths I'd been taught to fear—caught, crushed, and consumed.

As entertainment!

I wanted to refuse him the satisfaction. I let myself lie down and cry as the master of the house threw me back into the dirt with an unambiguous threat. I might as well. No one else would know to mourn me for weeks, even months.

It would turn out that my inborn will to survive was stronger than my desire to spite the host I'd lived under for so many years. I rolled out of the way, only a split second two late, as the snake woman pounced. She caught me in the crook of her elbow then shoved me into a wall of scaled muscle. The python whipped around me before I could take a breath. I barely had the space to think, never mind resist. It was sheer luck that wedged my thumbtack between two plates of her underbelly.

And it was enough. She spasmed and let go of me.

I fell forward into the dirt, coughing to refill my aching lungs. I don’t think she had left any part of me unbruised, though didn’t waste time taking inventory of my injuries.

“Hey, don’t let it get away now, girl, get up!"

I scowled up at the master of the house as I pushed onto my feet. There was nowhere for me to get away to, not while he was leering over the open door.

I didn't understand him.

I didn't understand how a thinking creature such as himself, with all his power and all his resources, would resort to blood sport for entertainment. The study I'd spent my life beneath had a beautiful library. Page after page told of the world's endless mysteries, of beauty and majesty and life for him to go out and pursue. And he would choose to spend his time watching some monster eat me alive.

I saw the snake-woman moving out of the corner of my eye. My stomach twisted at the utter silence of her movement over the dirt even before she started sliding towards me, and then it was like a switch went off in my head. Gone was higher thought, blown away by the sheer force of the ancient instinct to run.

The terrarium was full and well-decorated, with plenty of greenery both faux and alive as well as several dark spaces to hide. I doubted any would shelter me, this place had been built for her. 

I had nowhere to go and I ran and I ran and I hit the glass and I ran and there was a branch so I climbed it and I reached the ceiling and there was more glass and I turned around and there she was crawling after me and I jumped and her hand brushed my leg and I kicked and she fell  around me like an avalanche and it was over.

Her long body surrounded me and as soon as I moved, she struck. Walls of scales encased me again and this time, no tack would save me. Everything went dark.

Several seconds passed. She loosed her grip. I heard the master’s muffled voice droning through her flank. I took a breath and shuddered. Long minutes of silence passed and the knot she’d wrapped me in fell away. 

I admit I didn’t know much about snakes, but she didn’t seem to be very good at this.

I sprung to my feet, desperate to get at least a few inches between us again, but her hand wrapped around my face. She grabbed the back of my shirt’s neckline with her other hand and I thrashed as she pulled me off the ground.

Slowly, her palm pulled away from my face. She rubbed two fingers over my eyes, traced the curve of my nose, and drew a thumb across my lips. I bit down as hard as I could. She barely flinched, just wiped a little blood off on the side of my face.

“Beb?” she croaked.

Her blank eyes narrowed in concentration as her tongue flicked out of her mouth and brushed against my nose. Tasting me. Her lips twitched. I felt cold.

“No, please! Please, please, please, kill me first, please,” I cried.

She tilted her head to the side. Her tongue flickered twice more and both times I flinched. She babbled something in a tortured voice. 

“Please,” I begged. “If you can even understand me, please, just kill me before you eat me. I don’t want to suffer.” 

She frowned and hissed several times. My blood trembled through my veins. She slowly shaped her tongue around some word I did not know. She patted my head and sighed, then set me gently on the dirt beside her and slithered away.

~

Hecate

The prey had the face of a person.

The little thing was clever enough to talk, but not smart enough to understand me. They were small like a hatchling. They ran on legs like a bird. 

They screamed and cried so once Hugh gave up on watching me eat, I let the little one have some space, whatever they were.

I hoped they would come back to me. They were very warm. Like the sun, but in a person. Like food. Like Hugh.

Like this lovely little cave in the back of the tank. I curled up and burrowed into myself for a cozy rest.

I hoped they wouldn’t try to kill me while I slept.

[hecate-valentine]

Sephiroth: Make her pussy wet not her eyes. Genesis: Make his dick hard not his life. Cloud: Break her bed not her heart. Zack: Play with her boobs not her feelings. Hecate: Get on his dick not his nerves. Angeal: Always salt your pasta while boiling it.

[insomniac-jay]

Redesigned my YGO girls

From top left to the bottom: Sera, Hecate, and Gyuri.

@shinkai14 @ygoc-week

[simplecatgirl]

"Upon the town, upon the most inmate creaks of the outskirt, from the deepest in the forest, Cory led me to his home, a place I believe-honestly-didn't used to exist. Cory was always moody when I skimmed past him from the games played with the other kids. He was picked last in the fun; I thought that was why he was so tense with everyone.

But, once the largest and greenest tree I have ever seen appeared before me, a spacious house craved into the tree, wrapping around it like it was vines. I was dumbfounded. Despite my face, Cory holds my hand and strides forward confidently with that smile on his face.

Maybe Cory I used to know, was so moody because the province never tried to be his home. "

--Section from A Girl with An Arcane Legacy (WIP)

[acidangeis]

﹒✸﹕DEAR DIARY ... word has begun to spread around camp: my mother, hecate, is a coward and traitor. she has joined the forces of kronos and luke castellan even after being visited by mr. d himself. we already lost alabaster torrington to the same forces just a few months ago and everyone looks at lou ellen, zeke, and i like we are the next to betray the olympians. now with hecate joining them, the stares are only getting worse and the rest of the hermes cabin have turned their backs on us. chiron says there is nothing to worry about because he trusts us to remain on their side. i hope he is right. i can't handle anymore betrayal. — mirabel kwon.

MIRABEL KWON'S STORY — ICARIAN ... COMING SOON!

[korizzybee]

Heidi McKenna

Daughter of Hecate

Her name is “Heidi” means “noble one”

Her surname “McKenna” means “born of fire”

She’s 15 years old and stands at 5’3, her birthday is October 31st

Heidi was brought to Camp Half-Blood 2 years after Percy, they are actually childhood friends and have a sister-brother relationship

Heidi wasn’t claimed until the end of the Second Titan War though

Her favorite color is purple, any type of purple

She has a 7ft black pet wolf named Ezra, given to her by Hecate as a present

Heidi is from Louisiana, like Hazel, and can also speak Cajun French

For Percy’s 18th birthday, she gave him a painting of Blackjack that she made herself

She has a purple and black bracelet that can turn into both a bow and a sword

She’s one of the best bow users at camp (behind the Apollo kids)

If Heidi were to date someone, it would Reyna (secret feelings for her)

Heidi is really close friends with Nico, Reyna, and Coach Hedge after helping them transport the Athena Parthenos to CHB, she’s also close with Connor Stoll

She prefers horror, fantasy, and adventure books

Her favorite animals are cats

Her Satyr protector was also Grover, he was posing as her babysitter before he brought her to camp

Heidi is a rich kid, her father is both a model and a song artist, he makes both R&B and pop music

Before coming to camp, Heidi was a ballet dancer and a gymnast

She’s one of the smaller portions of kids at camp who don’t have dyslexia

At camp you can either find her in her cabin, on the training grounds with Clarisse, or with Percy

Speaking of Clarisse, they are always on the same team for capture the flag

Heidi and Reyna actually send each other letters all the time

Heidi really loves Apollo kids, mainly Will Solace, he always gives her snacks

She gets distracted really easily and can zone out for a long time if she wanted too

Her fatal flaw is selfishness, she’ll put her safety above everyone else’s and won’t hesitate to leave someone behind if it will allow her to live another day, though she has gotten better with it over time with Percy’s help

Her father and Sally Jackson met in high school and became close friends, they were lovers at one point in college but broke it off mutually and stayed close friends

She doesn’t like eating chocolate unless it’s a desert like cake or cupcakes

Her and Percy made a YouTube channel together when he was 10 and she was 7

She and Percy have matching bracelets

Idea credits - @tinkerbellsgf

[lunaressomni]

☆ SB: 40 $ ☆ MI: 1 $ ☆ AB: 100 $

Toyhouse

Auction ends 24 hours after last bid DM me if interested! Reblogs are highly appreciated

☆ Rules: ☆ Payment via PayPal only ☆ Payment must be made within 24 hours after contact (if there is no payment after this time, the adopt will be sold to the person who made the penultimate bid) ☆ Empty accounts not allowed to claim ☆ After the auction ended and payment, the owner will receive a fullsize PNG files with the image without watermark "adopt" ☆ You can redesign/modify this character (just remember to credit me as the original creator of the adopt) ☆ You can resell this adopt, but maximum for the price you bought it ☆ You can trade this adopt ☆ Commercial use of my work — 200% of the base price of art ☆ Please, bid only if you are ready to pay ☆ No refunds

Detailed Terms of use

[namarikonda]

🪦 — Hekate, Saviour (Έκάτη Σωτήρία) 🫀 — lady of salvation and deliverance

[i-am-traveling-the-multifandom]

My head canons about Drew Tanaka:

1. Her father is a child of Dionysius. I mean she does give the vibes of the wine aunt.

2. She has siblings. And not like other children of Aphrodite. Her father has other children.

3. Her father was an actor when he met Aphrodite and fell in love with her and had Drew. When he found out that she was a goddess and just disappeared into thin air he was furious.

4. He wanted revenge and that attracted Nemesis. And thus her 1st brother was born. (in my AU his name is Ethan, I love this name) He made him even more angry and he was petty as hell.

5. He decided to practice magic to get his revenge and this attracted *drum role* Hecate. And thus her 2nd brother was born.(in my AU his name is Albastor, I love this name as well) After this her father gave up and just tried to raise them as a single parent.

6. Drew is allergic to like everything. Trying to buy her something is very hard. Like chocolates, can't have pistachios or almonds in them. Clothes, don't you dare give her silk she will kill you and then die. Flowers, well you get it.

7. She is bisexual and falls in love with every single person she meets. Never in a serious way but she gets bi panic all the time.

8. The 1st time she broke someone's heart, it was a mortal boy and she felt horrible for it.

9. She dated Nyssa (from Hepheastus cabin) secretly for 3 months and then went public. She is in a serious relationship with her and is absolutely smitten.

10. She was very close to Selina. Her betrayal was a big blow to her. I don't think she hated Selina for betraying camp but rather because she left her. I think she probably felt as if Selina chose her love for Charles over her.

11. She can use a gun. Seriously I imagine that the camp is under attack and everyone is fighting. And then Drew *I don't fight* Tanaka will pull out a gun and start shooting every monster in range with perfect accuracy.

12. She is friends with the Stoll twins, Malcolm pace, Nyssa, and Katie. And she high key ships Travis and Katie.

[pjo-trashnheadcanons]

Can’t believe it took me a freaking year to do this, anyways. Here’s more about Vega!

Vega has been in camp since she was 10. She hadn’t been claimed until the second titan war and she’s great controlling the mist. Her weapons are a pair of deerhorn knives that transform into bracelets, a gift from Artemis after completing a quest for her

As usual asks are open if you wanna know more!

[reborrowing]

snake tank (part one maybe?)

little snake lady can have a borrower. as a treat. ~2100 words cw: captivity, dehumanization, neglect, cruelty, violence, fear, pet…treatment? - I don’t want to call it pet trope because that implies sentient pets are normalized and this is weird and awful in-universe as well. not actually vore! idc if you interact from that side of tumblr, but you'll be disappointed if that's what you're hoping for

Poe

I threw myself against the glass one last, futile time as I heard the door on the far side of the study creak open. My fingers nearly brushed the lip of the prison I’d been placed in, nearly caught onto that ledge that might let me pry open the lid and make an escape. I was still in the air when I felt his eyes land on me. My fur stiffened as his heavy footsteps approached. His towering form blocked out what sunlight had filtered through the closed window as he sat at his desk.

“You quit that, now. You know you aren’t getting out. Unless you’d like to try speaking with me again?”

I turned to face him rather than wait for him to spin the jar I was sitting in. I slunk to the floor, drawing up my knees as if they could shield me from his . He looked annoyed this time, rather than intrigued. I shook my head and stared at my hands. It wasn’t as if I would want him to dump me into his cold hands even if he wasn’t upset. I was bruised enough.

“I don’t have anything else to say. Sir,” I said.

He rolled his eyes.

“There's no one else!" I insisted. “It’s just me, the others ran away months ago, I’m the only one left.”

It wasn’t the truth, though by now it was close. The Copper family had moved out after Mellie reported that the master of the house was now collecting dangerous, exotic pets in his showroom. It was just the most stubborn of us left, or the most foolish.

“What to do with you, then?” the master of the house hummed.

He tapped a finger on the glass thoughtfully, right behind my head, in case I needed the reminder that my skull was no larger than the tip of his finger. I grimaced and looked back up at his face, where his wide lips twisted into a grotesque smirk. I closed my eyes as they curled back and revealed his teeth. My stomach twisted as he kept talking.

“My …friends tell me your kind is more trouble than you’re worth. But perhaps I could get some entertainment out of you?”

“Let me go, please. I’ll leave. I won’t bother you again,” I begged.

“Oh, but I do believe you owe me, little thief. How long have you been squatting here, hm?”

I slumped and curled in on myself. I had thought maybe, just maybe, if this guy cared for a zoo of strange animals, he might have a thread of compassion hiding in his oversized heartstrings. I’d—god, I had bet my life on it, hadn’t I? And now I was going to pay up.

Entertainment.

~

Hecate

A hand lifted away the log that I’d been curled up under.

I flinched awkwardly at the sudden light, then rolled to face the front of my enclosure. The man liked it when I “looked” at him. I couldn’t tell if he knew I was blind or not. All my eyes told me was that there was a large, blurry shadow standing over the tank. It could’ve been a tree, for all my eyes could understand.

I knew it was him though. I could sense his blazing warmth through other means. More importantly, I could smell him.

The hands. The nice hands. The man. Hugh Morton.

I smelled something else, too, something new. Another person, maybe? I listened intently for another heartbeat, another guest. I didn’t want to be shown off right now. I wanted to go back to sleep.

His hand reached back down to ruffle my hair, then run a rough finger across my scales. He rumbled something about feeding and I slumped back down to crawl back to bed. I wasn't hungry enough to want to fight and for all the good these hands did, they never killed my meals for me like the last ones did.

"Don't be so fussy, Hecate, I’m giving you a treat,” he chided. The ground shook as he flicked a finger against the glass wall. “You must get bored lying around in there all night.”

I huffed and and backed into a better position, against the side of one of my ceramic caves. I was still nursing a bite on my flank from my last dinner. 

I licked the air as Hugh slid open one half of the wall. I frowned. The prey was not a creature I knew. Hugh’s hands dangled a warm shadow by a long tail, then flicked it into the soil and the prey squeaked as it landed. It didn’t smell like a rat or any other rodent I’d encountered before. It did smell afraid.

It already understood it was being hunted. I didn’t like that. Scared meals fought back. I had scars to prove it.

Hugh scoffed in annoyance as the creature scrambled towards the opening in the glass. He knocked it back into the enclosure several times while I waited for a chance to strike.

“Don't make me break your legs," Hugh sighed.

The creature stopped moving. Strange. Its little heart was hot and hammering. Was it trained? Why would anyone take the time to train food?

Maybe it was afraid of Hugh’s voice. 

I took advantage of its stillness and lunged. It turned to run in the split-second before we collided. It slammed into one of my open arms. I fumbled as it flailed, then got myself curled around it anyway.

It felt strange against my scales. Not furry. Not naked. Synthetic. Was it wrapped? Humans wrapped their food, but not mine. They used those crinkling papers. This was wrapped in something soft.

Was it clothed?

I hesitated in my confusion and the prey bit back. Something long and sharp stabbed in between two ventral scales. I flinched, hissing, and the prey slipped away. It left the sharp thing behind, but it didn’t bleed. I put a hand on the sharp thing and realized it wasn’t a tooth. It had some kind of handle. Plastic. The point was metal. Some kind of tiny knife? I swayed uncertainly and let the little creature run.

What was he feeding me?

~

Poe

It had never occurred to me that there might be peoples other than humans and my own kind living in this world. I wish I had the time to found out.

The caged creature I had been placed with was, as most things were, comparatively massive. Its front was that of a vaguely humanoid woman, small, but still at least twice the size of my own top half. Her eyes were vacant and unfocussed. She was pale, fat, and lined with scars that told me she had much more experience than myself in fighting. 

The bulk of her body was what truly scared me. She was a python that trailed lazily across the near half of the terrarium. She was coiled, so I could only guess at her true length, but her girth was easy to make out. I regularly crawled through tunnels narrower than this snake, making it all too easy to understand what would happen to me. That the master of the house had returned my thumbtack seemed like a joke. I had no prayer here. This would be a cruel combination of all the worst deaths I'd been taught to fear—caught, crushed, and consumed.

Entertainment!

I wanted to refuse him the satisfaction. I let myself lie down and cry as the master of the house threw me back into the dirt with an unambiguous threat. I might as well. No one else would know to mourn me for weeks, even months.

It would turn out that my inborn will to survive was stronger than my desire to spite the host I'd lived under for so many years. I rolled out of the way, only a split second two late, as the snake woman pounced. She caught me in the crook of her elbow then shoved me into a wall of scaled muscle. The python whipped around me before I could take a breath. I barely had the space to think, never mind resist. It was sheer luck that wedged my thumbtack between two plates of her underbelly.

And it was enough. She spasmed and let go of me.

I fell forward into the dirt, coughing to refill my aching lungs. I don’t think she had left any part of me unbruised, though didn’t waste time taking inventory of my injuries.

“Hey, don’t let it get away now, girl, get up!"

I scowled up at the master of the house as I pushed onto my feet. There was nowhere for me to get away to, not while he was leering over the open door.

I didn't understand him.

I didn't understand how a thinking creature such as himself, with all his power and all his resources, would resort to blood sport for entertainment. The study I'd spent my life beneath had a beautiful library. Page after page told of the world's endless mysteries, of beauty and majesty and life for him to go out and pursue. And he would choose to spend his time watching some monster eat me alive.

I saw the snake-woman moving out of the corner of my eye. My stomach twisted at the utter silence of her movement over the dirt even before she started sliding towards me, and then it was like a switch went off in my head. Gone was higher thought, blown away by the sheer force of the ancient instinct to run.

The terrarium was full and well-decorated, with plenty of greenery both faux and alive as well as several dark spaces to hide. I doubted any would shelter me, this place had been built for her. 

I had nowhere to go and I ran and I ran and I hit the glass and I ran and there was a branch so I climbed it and I reached the ceiling and there was more glass and I turned around and there she was crawling after me and I jumped and her hand brushed my leg and I kicked and she fell  around me like an avalanche and it was over.

Her long body surrounded me and as soon as I moved, she struck. Walls of scales encased me again and this time, no tack would save me. Everything went dark.

Several seconds passed. She loosed her grip. I heard the master’s muffled voice droning through her flank. I took a breath and shuddered. Long minutes of silence passed and the knot she’d wrapped me in fell away. 

I admit I didn’t know much about snakes, but she didn’t seem to be very good at this.

I sprung to my feet, desperate to get at least a few inches between us again, but her hand wrapped around my face. She grabbed the back of my shirt’s neckline with her other hand and I thrashed as she pulled me off the ground.

Slowly, her palm pulled away from my face. She rubbed two fingers over my eyes, traced the curve of my nose, and drew a thumb across my lips. I bit down as hard as I could. She barely flinched, just wiped a little blood off on the side of my face.

“Beb?” she croaked.

Her blank eyes narrowed in concentration as her tongue flicked out of her mouth and brushed against my nose. Tasting me. Her lips twitched. I felt cold.

“No, please! Please, please, please, kill me first, please,” I cried.

She tilted her head to the side. Her tongue flickered twice more and both times I flinched. She babbled something in a tortured voice. 

“Please,” I begged. “If you can even understand me, please, just kill me before you eat me. I don’t want to suffer.” 

She frowned and hissed several times. My blood trembled through my veins. She slowly shaped her tongue around some word I did not know. She patted my head and sighed, then set me gently on the dirt beside her and slithered away.

~

Hecate

The prey had the face of a person.

The little thing was clever enough to talk, but not smart enough to understand me. They were small like a hatchling. They ran on legs like a bird. 

They screamed and cried so I let the little one have some space, whatever they were.

I hoped they would come back to me. They were very warm. Like the sun, but in a person. Like food. Like Hugh.

Like this lovely little cave in the back of the tank. I curled up and burrowed into myself for a cozy rest.

I hoped they wouldn’t try to kill me.

[re-whump]

Glass Eden - Enclosure

prev congrats on not being eaten, but you're still trapped with the snake contains: non-human whumpee (borrower and lamia/naga, both tiny), captivity, pet trope, neglect, dehumanization, communication barrier, conditioned whumpee, concussion, (mild) emeto

Poe

It had to be a game of some sort, yes?

She had few ways to truly lose and I even fewer to win, but it must be a game.

The master of the house had thrown me in here for entertainment, after all. I had assumed it would be his entertainment, but apparently I wasn’t even worth that.  

I couldn’t know if I’d been spared out of mercy or boredom or merely saved for later. I wasn’t even sure she was intelligent enough to have had a reason, that my survival wasn’t mere whim. The master of the house kept her like a pet, so it was possible her relatable visage was mere coincidence. Then again, it had seemed like she had been trying to speak with me, and the master of the house was hardly a compassionate figure. He threw me in here for sport, he may as well be keeping a person in a cage.

I think he knew that she wouldn’t finish me off. He left before she had released me. But I also recognized the silver box on the other side of the glass and its ominous black eye. He was still watching, or at least recording to watch later. He would be able to entertain himself with my inevitable death, over and over again. He would watch her feed on me and be able to share it with however many of his awful kin as he liked, just as soon as she changed her mind and attacked me again. Nightmare after never ending nightmare. 

For now she seemed content to remain in the stone-looking cave on the far side of the terrarium. One bend of her pale, looping tail squeezed out the entrance, so I could even look over and be sure she stayed put. But my tail continued to quiver at her perfect silence. She could come for me at any moment and if I wasn’t looking at her, I wouldn’t know.

I needed to hide. I could feel the instinct pushing up beneath the rest of my thoughts to demand attention. Anger, self-pity, despair…none of them quite held up to the desperate urging to escape back into the shadows. I had been raised to believe—to know—that being seen by the monsters that owned the house was one of the worst things that could happen to me, and I couldn’t just push the feeling aside now that I’d been caught. The glass walls and open air were torturous.I would worry about survival later. I would worry about water and food and self-defense and how to get out of here later. First, I was going to carve a hiding space into the bark lining the cage, tucking in between the glass and some large stone. My crushed ribs burned as I pushed myself beneath the surface. 

When that was done, I curled up to cry.

When that was done, I was still trapped. 

~

Hecate

I had pleasant dreams about a patch of sun and another body lying curled up alongside my own. 

I played them over in my head for awhile, lazily enjoying the empty schedule ahead of me. Hugh only ever expected me to perform when he had guests, not like the last hands. And he liked me to look like me, not dolled up and polished. 

I scratched an itch along the thin scales on my hips and decided I could do with a wash anyway. That wasn’t polish, that was hygiene. I had a rash or something on my side there that never seemed to heal. I couldn’t do as good a job as the hands, but a long soak in even the tepid water on the cool side of the tank would feel refreshing enough.

I slid towards the sound of gently running water. There was a short waterfall on one end of the shallow pool that provided an endless supply of clean water. I’m not sure where exactly it came from, but there were a lot of things I didn’t understand. I only ever got to take short excursions beyond my glass walls and hardly anyone had ever thought I might like an explanation. It wasn’t like I could ask for clarifications. Mostly, I was thankful that this enclosure was at least full of interesting plants and clean bedding and even some clay I could sculpt with.

The water stole away that wonderful heat reserve I’d built up sleeping over the hot floor, but it was worth it. The sharp pinches that dotted the line between scale and skin fell away too, although the burning lower down on my belly lingered. I twisted around to check on what that might be, then tensed as I remembered how I’d hurt myself. Or, not myself, how I’d gotten…bit? Scratched? Hurt, somehow, by the…thing. The little prey-person-thing. The maybe-child. 

Were they still here? Or had Hugh come back to collect them?

I whistled as I drew myself out of the water. Their scent was faint, but in a space that usually only housed myself, it was more than enough to trace them. They were wedged between a stone hide and the wall, lying still. As I got closer, they made a muffled squeak, not unlike a rat’s.

I slowed, continuing to sing. It was an old song, a gentle one, one I’ve known since I was just a hatchling. I used to know words to it, something about the sun, but it had been so long and become so meaningless that now all I knew was the tune. The words were in the language I had used with my clutchmates anyway, one without all those tricky human noises. I doubt the prey-person-thing would have understood it. 

The substrate lurched as they clawed their way to the surface. I leaned back to keep the spray of bark out of my face. The glass pinged as they backed themself into the wall. 

“Hey, hey, shhh,” I whispered. 

“No, no, stop! Please! I’ve done nothing to deserve this!” they cried.

“Shh,” I repeated.

There wasn’t much else I could say. I couldn’t speak, not like they did. I had the wrong mouth for it. My tongue was meant for sneaking tastes of the air, not dancing between t and k and th and r and all the rest. 

“You-you aren’t attacking me?” 

I shook my head. I hoped they could see, even if I couldn’t. It seemed like it. They took a sharp breath like they were reacting to something. 

“You understand me? You are intelligent, then? Can you talk?”

“I…mm.”

I pushed off the ground, head cocked. I could hardly answer three questions at once. I motioned with my hands for them to go slower, but it must have looked like something else from where they were standing. They were still sweating fear. 

“J-just stay away from me! Please!” they whimpered.

I wanted to hold the poor thing to reassure them, but I wasn't dumb enough to think it would work. I just did my best to show him I meant no harm. 

--

Poe

The python-woman stared for several excruciating seconds.

She sighed and looked as if she might cry, then lowered herself back down against the ground again. I wanted to believe it was some kind of submissive gesture, but I was loathe to get too optimistic with my life on the line.

I wished she would blink. 

I didn’t move. I was too afraid it was some sort of trap about to spring. I watched a cat catch a mouse like that once, on a trip out into the garden. It had hunkered down and just stared for nearly a full minute. And that minute must have felt like an eternity for the mouse as it waited for that inevitable pounce. The cat had let it go again and again and again until the poor girl was too bloody and tired to try and run.

Eternity dragged on. 

I waited and waited and waited until the creature finally grew bored of waiting. She backed away and silently drifted back to the other side of the cage. 

I had to get out of here.

I crept around the perimeter looking for some way out. The only breaks in the glass were along the front, where the human had first thrown me in. The glass fit together so tightly, I couldn’t even wedge my fingers between the two panes, never mind try to pry them further apart. The mechanisms to lock the door in place were too far overhead for me to even examine. I turned to glare at the camera still gawking at me from the other side of the glass. 

I could weave something out of the foliage, perhaps, or turn my little dagger into something more useful. Assuming I had the time.

I kept my distance from her as I explored and only partially for that most obvious reason of avoiding her. The far end of the tank where she seemed to prefer to rest was significantly hotter than the other, and the whole place was uncomfortably humid. I assume it all suited her but it was making me sweat on top of everything else.

I thought about taking off the wool I had wrapped around my shoulders, but it was also the closest thing to armor that I had. I was dressed to survive the cold floor of the underused study, not monster attacks. I retreated back towards where I had heard water on the cooler half of the enclosure. My aching ribs demanded a rest anyways.

The water was…not clean, to say the least. A small waterfall churned the pool, likely intended to keep the water from growing too stagnant, but it was clearly not up to the task. I knelt down and grimaced at the pool. It was clear enough, but a layer of dirt and dead bugs littered the bottom. I drank anyway; it wasn’t as if it was the most questionable thing I’d ever ingested. It was refreshing enough.

After a short break I thought about what to do for shelter while I was trapped in here. I probably couldn’t make anything truly safe, but I could at least gather up a decent bed to rest in. Something more comfortable for my sore ribs. As for food…I would have to hope some of these plants might be edible. I didn’t know them. I chose a spot to set up distance from the water, assuming she’d come back here to drink again before long.

A distant creaking caught my attention, and it was not the snake. The housemaster was back. I ducked as deep into the shadows as I could, as much habit as anything.

He moved slowly, spending a few minutes walking around and admiring various displays around the room. It was too far for me to make out the details, but I assume he was looking at other pets. I didn’t want to know anything more. 

He turned to this prison before too long. The snake emerged from her cave to whistle and wave at him. He greeted her with a smile and oh-so-easily opened up the doors, nearly removing the entire front wall.

And his attention was fixed on the snake, not me. 

I warily crept towards the open doors. I waited until he had his hands full with the snake-woman and I launched towards my freedom. 

It was a hopeless endeavor. The movement caught his eye and he released the snake to take a clumsy swipe at me. Of course, a man twenty times my size didn’t need to be too precise to ruin me and these were hardly ideal conditions for me. His massive forearm slammed into me like a wall, knocking my breath away. I went skidding off the edge of the shelf before I could catch my balance. 

“Shit!” the master hissed. “Didn’t realize you were still in there.”

I landed in a heap at his feet. At some point, either during the fall or the landing, my head cracked against something hard. My eyes watered as I tried to pull myself back together, back into a coherent train of thought, so I could get up and—

“No, no, you’re not getting out of here. I’m not letting some thieving vermin run wild in my home,” the master said. 

A flat weight collapsed on top of me as I tried to crawl away. Shoe, I registered dimly. Very bad place to be. Very messy death. I wondered how much of it I would feel. He pressed down, just hard enough that I might burst if I tried to move, and dragged me towards the rest of him. He leaned down. My head swelled full of pain and panic. 

I heard someone scream. I wondered if it might be me, even if screaming wasn’t a behavior borrowers were naturally inclined to perform. I closed my mouth with a groan and the sound kept coming. I pressed my ears back. It hurt. My head hurt so bad and the noise made it worse. 

“Hey! Hey, my! My!” the scream shrieked. 

Something struck the glass overhead and the weight crushing my chest pulled away. I threw myself forward to escape at the same moment the master bent down over me and all that motion all at once set my head spinning and stomach heaving.

“Mm? You do want it, then, girl? You were just saving it for later?”

I may have taken an entire two steps before collapsing back onto my knees to vomit up the meager contents of my stomach. I was still retching, unable to move, as the housemaster’s hand fell over me and pinched the back of my shirt. Vomit ran down my chin as I was lifted so quickly into the air that the world turned into a blur. 

“No, don’t,” I croaked, several seconds after he tossed me back in the bark. 

The snake woman reached for me. I kicked at her. She sputtered, but only because the housemaster pulled her away. 

“Ah-ah, Hecate. I’ll let you have the little pest, but for now you’re coming out with me. Come along. It won’t go anywhere,” Hugh said.

The glass slid closed. The lock clicked. The towering shadow disappeared down the hallway. I stopped fighting to keep my eyes open.

I might as well finish dying before she came back to finish her game.

[hecate-valentine]

no think. just silver haired war criminal with mommy issues.

[trulyatessfan]

I will continue the mini series after, but today is an important day for me, because it is the 10th anniversary of Ashes to Ashes, my favorite case and the reason why I continued Criminal Case in 2014,,, So to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Ashes to Ashes, I made this piece <3

Also Kelly was in Ashes to Ashes this entire time, what do you mean- (Kelly is my OC if people doesn't know, they are my non-binary detective)

[mlady-magnolia]

@i-am-a-fan and I stayed up too late and were being stupid about PJO and this is the result <3

Introducing Ophelia Pham, the daughter of Hecate, and avid supporter of the second amendment (/lh)