#on one hand I want the rhyme items to have some sort of meaning

[paging-possum]

Debating how much pussy to put into these drawings

[braxiations]

Hylics Analysis - The Significance of Hylem and the Afterlife

Hi, and welcome to another Hylics analysis! I’m hesitant to call it a theory because I’ll spend the majority of this post going over what I believe to be the canon intent. Most of this stuff is, in my opinion, pretty grounded, but I’ve seen so little discussion about it online. I aim to unpack the ways hylem unexpectedly appears in Hylics, its importance to the overall story, and what its true source may be.

Hylethems

The first, and really only direct mention of hylem comes from some workers in the caves of New Muldul. The workers are seen cutting away at pink cave formations called hylethems. Specifically, they cut away at odd tendrils protruding from the hylethems presumably called fronds (which is what they’re called internally.) The fronds themselves writhe, indicating that they may be alive. The minecarts of the miners are full of these fronds. One of the miners describes hylethems as “hylem-rich cave formations.” Another, crucially, says the following:

“Glove lathing. Burrito synthesis. All starts with hylethems. Find a rich vein, translates to a lotta bones. Lotta bones.”

This gives us two uses for hylem or hylethem fronds. The fact that the fronds are what’s being harvested might suggest they’re the items of value, not hylem itself, but this is pretty unclear. Maybe the fronds are full of the hylem? Really, the two might as well be synonymous for our analysis today.

While we’re here, I’d like to take the time to clear up a piece of dialogue that I see confuse people, being an NPC in New Muldul that describes the town’s primary industry as “calthemite husbandry.” I’ve seen people attribute the word “calthemite” to both insects and juice beasts, but calthemites are a real thing: they’re cave formations. Given that the harvesting of hylethems is shown in New Muldul, I think it’s safe to say that’s what they’re talking about here.

Standard uses of hylem

Hylem is stated to have two uses: burrito synthesis and glove lathing, though the wording of miner’s speech suggests they might have many more. Burrito synthesis is odd but rather self-explanatory, and implies hylem might have healing properties for both flesh and will (this’ll be important later.) Glove lathing is more interesting. “Lathe” and “lathing” have multiple, kind of convoluted meanings, but its usage here suggests either coating or shaping the gloves. This could either mean the gloves are coated in hylem, likely as a liquid, or the gloves are cut out of pleather and shaped by… the fronds? It’s really unclear. 

The description of the tendril hand item is “The people of Mocetul shun lathing, and for gloves rely on other processes.” The long gloves are also described as “standard gestural combat garbs.” It seems clear that gloves are what enable the use of gestures, but whether or not lathing is responsible for this is questionable. The fact that the tendril hand was made without lathing suggests hylem isn’t critical to the use of gestures, however it might imply that it's the usual process that enables them. Regardless, lathing is clearly common and important and hylem is what allows it to happen.

What’s a Hylemxylem anyway?

Ah, the Hylemxylem, Gibby’s associated fortress. Before we discuss it, let’s take a look at its name. First is the word “hylem,” which is a term unique to Hylics (and also apparently the name of a music artist,) and “xylem.” In simplified terms, xylem is a sort of transport tissue within plants that takes in and distributes water and minerals throughout the plant. With this in mind we can basically translate the word “Hylemxylem” into “thing that takes in hylem.”

[Before we move on, I want to suggest an origin for the word “hylem.” This is largely conjecture on my part, but I believe Mason knew he wanted Gibby’s fortress to absorb a substance and wanted to use the word “xylem” in there. Needing a name for the substance and wanting it to rhyme, he added the “-lem” suffix. To complete it, he took from the game’s own title: Hylics. Why would he do this? Well, as we’ve seen glimpses of, hylem might be very, very important to the nature of this world.]

So, the Hylemxylem xylems hylem, that much seems pretty clear. With this in mind we can identify the pink goop flowing throughout the hylemxylem.

Seen throughout the hylemxylem is this strange, pink liquid, highly resembling that seen in the Afterlife. It fills many of the rooms, spews out of spouts, and appears to flow into the fortress via the tubes descending down into the waters. It’s this very liquid, described as “the terrestrial juice,” that Gibby floats in before his transformation. This, as implied by the name “Hylemxylem” itself, is hylem. But where does all this hylem come from? Of course, it’s possible that the tubes of the Hylemxylem bore into the ground, sapping hylem away from the Hylethems. However, we don’t need to speculate on this. In one of the few changes to the environment during the course of Hylics 2, we see where the tubes lead…

The Afterlife

That’s right. A detail I see often overlooked is that, after the raising of the Hylemxylem, many tubes appear in the Afterlife, each flowing with the pink substance that comprises the sea, up into the sky. These tubes only appear after the ‘Xylem is raised, implying they’re the very tubes pumping hylem into the fortress. A quick glance at the game’s internals confirms this, calling them “Afterlife Xylem Columns.” I really hope this isn’t ambiguous at this point: the pink liquid within the Hylemxylem is the same liquid that fills the Afterlife.

Thanks to Happy/S For Sprinkles for this photo! Also, it's a lot easier to see in-game that these tubes are flowing with the sea's liquid. You can pretty clearly see it flowing upwards.

Now, this leads me to two conclusions I hope you find reasonable:

Wait, we very clearly see the tubes of the ‘Xylem go into the ocean. Is the Afterlife in the ocean? Maybe in some weird bubble? That’d explain why there are fish flopping around in H1. Maybe it’s an underwater cave??

More relevantly, if the pink goo in the Hylemxylem is hylem, and the pink goo in the Hylemxylem is also the Afterlife goo, that must mean the Afterlife goo is hylem. X = Y and Z = Y. Therefore X must equal Z.

This is, to me at least, super interesting. Despite never being outright stated, it is very, VERY heavily implied that the sea of the Afterlife is hylem. This sea’s strange waters, mind you, comprises the pools and fountains we fall into to reach the Afterlife. It also comprises the sea that spits us out when we die. If it is true that X = Y = Z, then hylem is not only responsible for the burritos we eat, the gloves we use, or the seemingly the ascension of Gibby, but also for the repeated reincarnation of our party members. Remember how I earlier noted that burritos, synthesized from hylem, heal flesh and will? Well, that may be an extension of the life giving, healing properties of hylem as found in the Afterlife! That’s why, I believe, Mason named the substance of hylem after the games themselves. Without hylem, the story of the games wouldn’t be possible. It's a foundational element to the world itself.

This also explains the weird fixation the game has on hylem. While Mason might have some worldbuilding hidden in random item descriptions or one or two sets of NPC dialogue (the only piece of non-relevant worldbuilding mentioned more than once being Amulom,) hylem has 5, completely separate NPCs that talk about it upright (not even counting the other NPCs that talk about calthemites.) Hylethem fronds are even seen scattered around the places that Smuldunde visits for some strange reason. This conclusion, that hylem enables the events of the game, explains why; it isn’t irrelevant worldbuilding. Hell, you could even view the hylethems being mentioned so early on as foreshadowing for the Hylemxylem itself and Gibby’s ascension from the terrestrial juices. Like the ‘Xylem does, it seems likely that hylelthems sap hylem away from the Afterlife!

Conclusion

So, that concludes the analysis! Hylem is a powerful substance that enables the use of gloves and burritos, sustains the Hylemxylem, and allowed Gibby to ascend. Given the evidence we have, I think this is the conclusion intended by Mason himself. Perhaps we were all intended to figure this out on our own, but the abstract and indirect story-telling method of Hylics 2 obscured this. Hell, I’ve seen a ton of misconceptions about the Accretion despite things the game pretty directly shows us. Maybe I should make a post about that? Anyways, I hope you enjoyed! I might make an addendum to this post as well going over some specific ideas like how the Moon might have processed hylem and why only Gibby ascends through it. After that I’ll probably cover either the symbols used in the world of Hylics or some speculation on Viewax. I might even put up a poll on which I should cover first!

[unreadpoppy]

song as old as rhyme - chapter 11

{Beauty and the Beast AU - Raphael x OC (Elize)}

chapter 10

Read on AO3

Taglist: @littlemoondarling @desenhosdebolso @shyminnie07

After the interrogation, Elize did not see Raphael for a good period of time. She tried asking Haarlep about his whereabouts but the incubus would often change the subject. 

During that period, she had learned more about the others. Korilla had talked a bit about her sister, Hope, who used to be trapped in the House of Hope. She did not say how her sister left, however, mentioning that it was a story for some other time. 

Mol had spoken about her time in the Grove and how Big Raph had fixed her eye, thanks to their deal. Haarlep liked to talk about how bad in bed Raphael was, but Elize tried not to think about that too much. 

She had gotten used to life here, even if she had to sleep on the floor. It was during one of these days, where Elize was idly chatting with Haarlep and Mol, that Raphael had approached them. 

“Elize, follow me.” He said. She  excused herself to her friends and then got up, following the devil.

While they were walking, Raphael began to talk. “After our conversation, I have been thinking, and I believe I have made a faux pas.” He paused for a moment. “In my paranoia, I misinterpreted your actions and accused you of things you are not.”

To say Elize was baffled was an understatement. Could Raphael actually be apologizing? 

Eventually, they stopped in front of a door. “To remedy that, I’ve decided to give you this.” He opened the door, showing a large room inside. He motioned for her to enter and so she did. 

Taking a look, there was a massive bed, with red sheets. Next to it, there was a desk with a mirror on top of it and a chair. Opening one of the shelves, she noticed a few items like a hair brush and some powder and rouge. On the other side of the room, she saw a bookshelf, already filled with various books. She walked towards it, passing her hand through the spines and occasionally picking up a book. 

During that, Raphael examined her. He noticed the way her mouth hung open when seeing the bed, how her eyes lit up when seeing the books and how she carefully held anything, as if they were the most precious thing in the world. He kept wondering, did she like the room? Would she think of him differently now? And why did he feel a warmth in his chest?

Suddenly, she turned towards him, putting the book she held back on the shelf. “This is all…very nice.” She said, but there seemed to be some worry in her voice. 

Raphael raised an eyebrow, picking up on that. “Is the room not to your liking?”

“Oh, it is very much so.” She explained. “But I cannot help but feel that you want something in return. You are a devil, afterall” 

“Can I not want to reward someone for saving my life, and not expect anything in return? Must everything always be some sort of contract?” Raphael felt angry at the accusation, but a voice in the back of his mind wondered if was that how she had felt before. 

“Well, it is hard to believe that a person of your nature would do something out of the pure goodness of your heart.” Elize said, raising an eyebrow. “If you have any.” Before he could protest, she continued. “I mean, I’ve spoken with the other people around the house. Every time you give something, you get something in return. So surely, this is a reward, yes, but there must be something else”

At that point, Elize noticed how his face fell. Maybe she had overstepped. Raphael breathed deeply and walked towards the door, his back towards her. “If that is how you feel, then I shall leave you alone to your thoughts.” He opened it and glanced back at her, before walking away. 

Elize signed and sat on the bed. She did not think Raphael would be hurt by something she said, but apparently, he was. But again, why shouldn’t she suspect? Especially after he had accused her of heinous acts. 

If he truly had meant to give her this room, no strings attached to it, then what did that mean for the devil. She wondered when did he have a change of heart. 

She heard the door open and Haarlep walked in. “I must ask, what have you said to make the master have such a miserable look on his face.” They sat down next to her as she explained what happened. Once she was done, they spoke again. “Oh dear, what a situation you two have driven yourselves into.” 

Elize put her hand in her face. “He’s a bastard, Haarlep, why would he do something nice?” 

“Well, I’ll admit my own hand in this.” They said. “I did tell him to give you a reward, and about your sleeping situation, but everything else was his own idea. He spent such a long time thinking about this damned room, even I don’t understand it.”

Elize groaned. “Great, now I feel bad for hurting his supposed feelings.”  

Haarlep chuckled. “Don’t be. Raphael has bigger grievances than what you think about him.” They stopped for a moment. “But, maybe, you two should talk about it. It is clear you both keep misunderstanding each other.” 

“And what do you suggest?” 

Haarlep shrugged. “Maybe you could do something nice to him. Invite him for a conversation over food, for example.” 

Elize thought about it for a moment. Yes, maybe talking things out would help settle the matter. “Would you help me with it?” She asked the incubus. 

“Of course! What are friends for, after all?” They said and Elize smiled. Now, they had work to do.

[lonepower]

OC + Random Associations

(tagged by @cannibalisticskittles, tyvm!!!!! you didn't specify which oc but I'm assuming you mean for bg3 so you're getting the murder angel (◡ ‿ ◡ ✿))

🗡 animal - definitely an ermine. (animal predation/death cw in linked image) just because they're small and adorable doesn't mean they're not close cousins of the wolverine.

🗡 colors - grey, silver, gold, white. some red, though I try to avoid too much of it in order to maintain a contrast with orin.

🗡 month - january or february. cold, quiet, the dead of winter.

🗡 songs - well of course it's obviously the dismemberment song. (runners up are i like the way you die and kill of the night.)

🗡 number - oh fuck i have no idea lmao. 7? that's the first thing that popped into my head, but there's a nonzero possibility that that's just because it sort of vaguely rhymes

🗡 plants - angel's trumpet. one of the many, many, many effects of this plant family (which also includes sacred datura) is photophobia/photosensitivity, which I didn't know until I went to get a picture of it, but that's too perfect.

🗡 scents - jasmine and lye - too clean. the dry, antiseptic smell of a doctor's hands. a faint undercurrent of rust.

🗡 gemstone - white opal.

🗡 time of day - the first glimmer of dawn.

🗡 season - winter.

🗡 places - culverts, caverns, buried ruins, the secret compounds of cults and nobles. anywhere underground.

🗡 food - i mean. [soos voice] i ate a man alive tonight- (she does also favor white eel sashimi. it's only a little bit poisonous. don't worry about it)

🗡 drink - some kind of white wine? (i don't know anything about wine. i want to say a sweet wine, but that's just because i won't drink anything less sweet than manischewitz, which is basically grenadine left out in the sun a little too long.)

🗡 element - earth, but the kind of earth that's jagged stone and falling stalactites and bottomless caverns, not the warm alive kind of earth.

🗡 seasoning - cardamom, black pepper, ginger, ghost pepper.

🗡 sky - the weird unlight of a really snowy night.

🗡 weather - that specific kind of featureless gray day where time doesn't seem to change at all because the light never shifts.

🗡 magical power - technically she's a warlock, but I've homebrewed her into a glass cannon melee fighter and the only spell I ever actually use is misty step lol.

🗡 weapons - a cleaver in her main hand and a bonesaw in her offhand. failing that, sharpened teeth and nails.

🗡 sweets - 100% cocoa dark chocolate.

🗡 method of travel - she strikes me as a berline kind of gal. she's small, delicate, and sun-sensitive - not really meant for the sort of traipsing-around-outdoors-in-daytime adventure that gets foisted onto her! (also, sidenote: where are all the horses? shadowheart lampshades us not having any, but seriously, why are the only domestic animals we see cows/rothe, dogs, cats, and one (1) chicken (before baby boy eats it lol)? where are the rest of the livestock? where are the beasts of burden? hello?? *hammering on adam smith's window with a stick* ANSWER ME LARIAN-)

🗡 art style - francisco goya, but specifically the early 19th century/Black Paintings era. my man was going Through it

🗡 fear - pointlessness/purposelessness. she has to be what she was made for, because if she's not, what is she?

🗡 mythological creature - the bann sidhe/banshee.

🗡 stationery item - this pen set.

🗡 3 emojis - well i had already picked 🗡 as my bullet point before getting here, so: 🪚🩸🫀 (<- i was today years old when i learned there's an anatomical heart emoji now?! we live in the future)

🗡 celestial body - neutron star

aaaand I will tag @diantha with Amara, @megparsec with Ellara, @curlyparmesan with Flit, and @ballofbitter with Eos (but of course no pressure!!!!) :D

[march-harrigan]

I don't doubt you've done several of these, but I need the knowledge. Headcanons for Arkhamverse Jervis 👀🥺 please enlighten me o wise Marchie pleeaasseee and thank you 💚

OH, I CAN DO A FEW OF THESE.

So the first one isn't so much a headcanon as it is a lil' fact you'll pick up through listening to the patient interviews in Arkham City. But as much as Jervis is about having control, he himself is easily manipulated. Offer him something he wants or make him think he can trust you and he'll do just about anything you ask(at least until he starts to realize that your 'friendship' is rather one-sided). Hashtag I'm going to put Hugo Strange in the dirt! 😊

Going hand-in-hand with that(and stealing from certain comic portrayals), Jervis is somehow every bit as generous as he is selfish and loves to help people. It's proven to be an efficient way of making friends in Arkham, but has also caused a problem or two. He keeps getting in trouble for smuggling contraband items for other Rogues.

If you befriend the Hatter, you have a friend for life(so long as you don't betray him). He's nothing if not dedicated and wants desperately to hold on to what connections he has. He may even assign you a Wonderland role. Do NOT abuse this loyalty, he will be devastated and angry all at once.

He can and will infodump if you let him(mostly about Wonderland and his mind control technology), but expect him to get overexcited and talk entirely too fast to understand a word. Bonus points if he starts rhyming.

Speaking of rhyming' it's canon that the frequency of this little quirk of his is based on his current mental state, BUT. It's not just for the bad times. He'll also rhyme when overwhelmed with positive emotions. Basically, if he has a lot of feelings and doesn't know how to deal with them, good or bad, the rhymes start slipping out.

If someone rhymes back at him, it'll make his day! He enjoys talking to Eddie for this reason(listening to his riddles), but doesn't seem to have gotten the hint that Ed doesn't like talking to him. If he ever actually solved Ed's riddles, he'd realize that the answers were things along the lines of 'fuck off'.

Apparently some sort of 'friendship' has developed though as Ed has been known to defend Jervis. Sort of an "only I get to be mean to him" type of thing(maybe a little OOC, but my poor little Dork Squad heart insists).

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Moe Moe Mallekei Kyun~

In which Malleus and Cater go to a maid café, and shenanigans ensue.

... I’ve been wanting to write this for a long time.

***Warning: mild spoilers for Malleus’s PE Uniform personal story!***

Imagine this...

“Lilia-sama.”

Two bodyguards fell into line, saluting simultaneously to their vice dorm leader.

“We just finished combing through the prime gargoyle locations around campus,” Silver reported. “Unfortunately, there was no sight of Malleus-sama to be found. The accounts of the various students we interviewed also corroborate that the Young Master has not recently been spotted in the area.”

“I see. Thank you, Silver.” Lilia sighed, cupping his cheek in one hand. “Hm, this is a bit odd. Wherever could he have wandered off to this time?”

At that moment, a ping! sounded off. Lilia fished his phone out of his pocket and, with one glance at the screen, his expression softened.

“You don’t suppose some dastardly villain has… kidnapped the Young Master and is holding him for ransom, do you?!” Sebek’s eyes nearly bulged out of his skull at the thought. “If that is the case… THEN WE HAVE FAILED AS MALLEUS-SAMA’S KNIGHTS!!”

“Now, now--let’s not jump to conclusions. Even if that were true, I’m certain that Malleus would be able to easily fend off assailants on his own. Perhaps he has simply lost his way, or headed off campus to run an errand.”

“... Without warning us in advance?”

“I would have happily accompanied the Young Master wherever he went--EVEN TO THE ENDS OF TWISTED WONDERLAND ITSELF!!”

“Kufufu. Malleus is still young at heart. Let us allow him this moment of independence, just this once. He will find his way home eventually.”

“Welcome home, my masters!!”

Malleus skidded to a stop in the doorway—for beyond it laid unknown territory. The interior sported cream walls, with fairy lights, streamers, and paper flowers strung up. A number of tables and chairs, populated with people, were set against flowing white curtains.

Young ladies flitted about, balancing trays of food and drinks, cameras, and microphones. Each wore the same outfit, consisting of a frilly headdress, an apron, and a black dress with lace trim and ribbons.

And now, one of those uniformed girls extended a hand to him and a warm, welcoming smile.

Malleus frowned and turned to the orange haired young man beside him. “... Diamond. What is this strange establishment you’ve brought me to?”

“Mm? It’s a maid café,” Cater chirped, glancing up from his phone. “You said you’ve never been before, right?”

“Well, yes… However, when you invited me to join you for an outing, I did not expect this to be our destination.”

“It’ll be fine~ We’re already here, so let’s get seated!” Cater insisted cheerily, ushering the fae through the door. 

“Right this way, my masters!” The greeter giggled and led the way, eventually stopping at a vacant table set for two. As the duo slipped into their seats, she handed them menus and moistened towels. “We have a wide selection of special services and delicious dishes for your enjoyment!”

Malleus hesitantly flipped open the (very pink) menu and ran his eyes down the page of available items. Along with the expected offerings of desserts, savory foods, and beverages were odd listings: massage, ear cleaning, karaoke, game, arts and crafts, picture, spoon feeding, live song and dance...

He stared quizzically at Cater, who seemed to be taking everything in stride.

“I’ll take a plate of omurice! How about you, Malleus-kun?”

He stared back at his menu, trying to make rhyme or reason of the unique names. What in the Great Seven was a Pyon ❤ Pyon Sunshine Bar…? Or a Lucky☆Happy☆Cookie? Malleus’s brows furrowed in both concentration and confusion.

“I… I shall have the local specialty, whatever that may be,” the fae prince declared at last.

“Excellent choices! And would you like a bunny, or a kitty?”

“You hand out animals at this eating establishment? Is that not a health code violation?”

“Aaah, Malleus-kun, she doesn’t mean real rabbits and cats. Look--you’ll see when she brings them, okay?” Cater laughed awkwardly. Then, turning to the waitress, he held up his index finger. “One of each, little lady~”

“Of course!” She scribbled down a few words on her heart shaped notepad before prancing off.

“... Diamond. Are you certain this is the fabled maid café of which you spoke of?” Malleus asked, folding his arms. “I find it difficult to believe that every patron here is descended from a high class lineage. Furthermore, the servers are wearing attire entirely unlike that of a traditional household servant.”

Cater blinked once, twice—then chuckled.

“Maid cafés are like normal cafés. Anyone can go to them to play pretend and chill for a while! The difference is that the waitresses are dressed cutely and offer fun services. Singing, dancing, playing games—that kinda thing!”

“I do not understand.” Malleus swept a hand at their surroundings. “The purpose of this establishment is merely for… amusement?”

“Yup! People get tired of the daily grind sometimes, so they go to places like this to see cute stuff and just take a load off.”

“I… I see.” Malleus tucked his thumb and forefinger under his chin. “We do not have anything like your maid cafes in the Valley of Thorns.”

“You don’t? What sort of things do you do back home for fun, then?”

“I was not allowed to venture far from the palace grounds. Most of my time was spent indoors, studying spells or honing my magical abilities.”

Cater inclined his head. “Oooh, right! Because you’re a prince and all, you weren’t able to do much—but hey! Things are different now! You’ve got Cay-kun to show you a good time!”

“Ah, yes. A ‘good time’...” Malleus attempted at a smile, which came out more wary than he had intended.

“Thank you for waiting!” a girlish voice chirped—their waitress had returned, wearing a tray of food in one hand and two headbands in the other. “Here is your omurice and Nyan ✨ Nyan ✨ Kitty-chan Parfait, plus one pair of kitty ears and one pair of bunny ears!”

She handed Cater his dish—a bed of ketchup flavored fried rice, sealed by a wobbling omelet and garnished with a sprig of parsley.

“Mm! Smells delicious. Thanks a bunch~” Cater grinned, winking at his server.

The maid giggled and placed Malleus’s dessert before him, along with the headbands.

“Would you like me to draw or write something special for you on your meal, master?” she asked, gesturing to Cater’s omurice.

“Sure thing! Could you write ‘Mallekei’? Oh, and a couple of hearts would be cute, too!”

“As you wish!”

As the maid set to work, Malleus marveled at the sight of his parfait.

Colorful scoops of ice-cream, granola, and sliced fruits were layered inside of a tall glass cup. A generous crown of whipped cream and a drizzle of strawberry sauce topped it off. Sticking out from the whipped cream were two wafer triangles and dots of chocolate candies, forming a cat-like face.

How adorable.

… But not adorable enough to be spared.

“Thank you for the food.” The fae raised his spoon to demolish the poor parfait kitten—

“Stop, stop, Malleus-kun!!” Cater cried, frantically waving his arms. “N-Not yet!!”

Malleus lowered his spoon with a frown. “Food is meant to be consumed, Diamond. Is there an issue you have with my table etiquette?”

“Well—no, but…” Cater played with a lock of his orange hair and sighed. “There’s certain rituals we need to do first!”

“Rituals? Oh, my apologies. I was not aware. Please proceed with your regularly scheduled… rituals.”

“Ahaha, you’re a quick learner! First thing’s first, let’s put on our headbands!” Cater swept up the cat ears and passed them over. “Here, to match your parfait! I’ll take the rabbit.”

Malleus gingerly nestled the cat ears on his head, copying Cater’s movements. It was a bit tricky maneuvering around his horns, but somehow, he managed.

“Oh!! Those ears suit you so well!” the waitress said, glancing up from decorating the omurice. Carefully placed splotches of ketchup spelled out ‘Mallekei’, hearts and little sparkles littering the space around the boys’ combined names.

“... Do they?” Malleus doubted it.

“They do!!” Cater reassured him with a laugh. “Ne, ne, miss! Can you take our picture so my friend here can have a souvenir to take home with him?” 

“Certainly!” She replaced the bottle of ketchup and hurried off, returning shortly after with a polaroid camera. “Are you ready, my masters?”

“Ready, Malleus-kun?”

“Hmph. Of course. I will have you know that my posing abilities have improved considerably since our last encounter. Do not underestimate me.”

“Oh, that’s great! You’ve been practicing! Then… on the count of three, we nyah, okay?”

“... What is ‘nyah’?” Malleus inquired, his confidence suddenly waning.

“Eh?” A blip of surprise crossed Cater’s face. “Like, y’know… nyah!”

The influencer curled both of his hands into balls and made a pawing motion at his friend. “Now you try!”

“Like this?” Malleus mimicked him. He was more stiff—definitely not as practiced—but the general motion was still recognizable.

“Very good, master!!” the waitress gushed, raising the polaroid up. “On three?”

“1, 2, 3… Nyah!”

A flash went off, sending stars into Malleus’s vision. As he rubbed the daze out of his eyes, Cater’s voice called out to him.

“Are you okay there?”

“I am well. There is no need for your concern,” the fae insisted. “This ritual… it is more confounding that I took it to be.”

“Eeeh? It’s not meant to be hard or anything. Just relax, relax!” Cater paused before adding, “It’s part of the ritual’s requirements! You need to be nice and loose for the last step!”

“What is this last step?”

“We need to cast a magic spell to make your food taste extra tasty!” the waitress declared cheerily.

“Hoh?” A smirk found its way onto Malleus’s face. “That can easily be arranged. Allow me to do the honors.”

He put his hand before his parfait, an eerie green glow emulating from his palm. The sinister light engulfed his dish and Cater’s, sending them floating midair. Radioactive ice-cream and omurice hovered above their heads, causing both Cater and their maid to recoil in shock.

Other customers stared at the spectacle from their own tables. One man’s jaw dropped, the forkful of spaghetti bolognese in his mouth clattering onto the floor.

“You, who provides sustenance to the masses, become that which is delici—“

“H-Hold on a sec, Malleus-kun!!” Cater practically leapt over the table to seize his friend’s glowing hand. “Not that kind of spell!!”

Eyes wide with surprise, Malleus allowed his magic to settle down. The parfait and omurice gently floated back onto their table, and the maid sighed with relief.

“Is there a different spell needed for this occasion? I assure you that I am well-versed in practical magic—you need only speak its name, and I can conjure the proper…”

“No, no! It’s—“ Cater casted a look at their server and nervously chuckled. “Ne, Maid-chan~ Think you can give us a demonstration of the right spell?”

“Yes, master!” the girl, ever professional, flashed a perky grin. “Please watch carefully!!”

The maid set down her polaroid on the table. She then arched her fingers into C-like shapes, thumb extended straight. Pushing her hands together, she formed a heart and aimed it in the direction of the boy’s dishes.

“Moe moe kyuuuuuun!”

“What an odd spell. In all my years, I have never heard of such an enchantment…”

“Well, there’s a first for everything, right?” Cater flicked one of his floppy rabbit ears. “Plus, it should be no problem for the great Malleus-sama to pull off this spell, right?”

“This is child’s play,” Malleus’s laugh was like the earth itself rumbling. His lips quirked into a small smile. “You will join me in performing this sacred ritual, will you not, Diamond?”

“Of course~”

“Very well.”

They made hearts and thrust them upon their meals. And together, they uttered those three magic words.

“Moe moe kyuuuuun!!”

“Welcome back, Malleus,” Lilia greeted. The vice dorm leader nonchalantly hung from the ceiling, his raven and magenta bangs suspended midair. “Did you have fun on your outing?”

“Lilia. You knew?” Malleus slowly shut the door behind him, chasing away the cool air of the night. He spoke softly, knowing that sounds carried in the dusty hallways of Diasomnia and could disturb its residents.

“The wonders of modern technology,” Lilia trilled, expertly landing beside his young master. He brandished his phone in a gloved hand, a text message displayed on the screen.

hey hey lilia-chan! gonna steal malmal-kun for the day~ he’ll be back later, but do me a solid and keep it a secret from s&s til then, ‘kay? thnx!! (✿˶˘ ³˘)~♡

“It looks as though I have been exposed.”

“There is no shame in making new friends. In fact, I’m proud of you for expanding your horizons.” Lilia beamed. “Though what a shame it is that I was not present to grab a few pictures. Hopefully Cater fulfilled that task for me.”

The ancient fae tilted forward in his toes and peered up at his prince. “Soooo? Where did you sneak off to?”

“Fufu. Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“My. Is that any way to treat the man that kept Silver and Sebek from hunting you down?” Lilia teased, wagging a finger.

“Such loyalty,” Malleus smirked, hands on his hips, “deserves to be rewarded.”

He produced a polaroid photograph from his breast pocket and presented it with a flourish. The image, forever captured in time, was that of Malleus and Cater—the former with cat ears, the latter with bunny ears—with hands balled to resemble paws. Cater cheekily winked, while Malleus looked slightly bewildered.

The edges of the polaroid were dotted with stickers—smiley faces, flowers, and hearts. Marker had been used to scrawl on whiskers and blushes over both boys’ cheeks.

Overall, cutesy—overwhelming so.

But the Malleus and Cater in the picture were happy.

Their eyes shining like jewels.

Nyah-ing their hearts out.

[steak-n-popotoes]

FFxivWrite ‘22 - 7

Beef wandered through the open air streets and plazas of the Crystarium. A delicate mist lingered in the cool night air, proof that in but a few hours dawn would break once more. Yet lantern-light drifted and wavered in the dark as the busy residents of the settlement went about their business, invigorated by the night’s embrace.

Where most towns of the Source would begin to close shop during the late hours, the night brought with it a second wind for the First as its people could scarce believe that each night, every night, the sunless sea was their constant companion. Beef navigated its waters while he walked.

The currents eventually carried him to a stall on which were displayed a spread of merchandise that seemed to follow no rhyme or reason. The other vendors tended to represent some specialization, be it foodstuffs, armor, or other utilities. This stall, on the other hand, had all sorts: incomplete sets of armor, works of art, even extravagant articles which blurred the lines between the two.

Behind the counter was an elf with a stern yet shrewd demeanor, testing the sharpness of a pocket knife with the pad of his finger. Judging by how much pressure he was placing on it, the blade hadn’t met a whetstone in quite some time. Eventually, the elf noticed Beef’s presence and flitted a sideways glance down in his direction.

“Anything catch your interest, lad?” he asked, pretending to be focused on the knife.

Beef blinked a couple times in consideration. It seemed the store held as many utility goods as it did pretty baubles, and all were rather eye-catching to a little magpie like Beef. Eventually he pointed to a stout stringed instrument with a rounded body.

The owner followed and settled his sight on the instrument. “Aye, that’s a nice piece.” He set the knife aside and lifted the little thing in one hand, turning it round for his potential customer to have a gander. “Came into it a handful of weeks back after Holminster. Old bird came ‘round with it so she could pay the pittance for a room.”

The battered old sinner studied the instrument for a few moments. The memory of the poor woman’s misfortune simmered in his skull. “Reckon I gave her more than it was really worth. You know how to play a mandolin, lad?”

There're more such items at the Crystarium. Words echoed in Beef’s thoughts as he recalled following Kozu on a visit to the facet of Restoration. Items that serve no practical purpose, that won't help us survive... yet mean the world to someone. They wouldn't have found a place among a refugee's scant possessions otherwise.

Beef nodded and reached for his coinpurse, not sparing a thought to how light it was.

“Well, ‘fraid I can’t pawn you this one.” the broker said bluntly. He smiled mischievously as he watched Beef’s expression turn crestfallen from the corner of his crinkled eye. “...Wouldn’t be good business to drain the pockets of the Warrior of Darkness’ boy.” With another deft flip of the hands, he turned the mandolin aright and lowered it down to Beef’s reach.

However, when Beef reached again for the mandolin, the gift bobbed up and away once more.

“That bein’ said, it’s not good business to give somethin’ this nice away for free, neither.” His smile widened. “So it comes with a job, understand?” He waited for Beef to nod before continuing. “The old bird seemed down - as I said - and for good reason. I buy plenty from folk who don’t want to part with what they got left, and this one was no exception.”

The broker finally lowered the mandolin into Beef’s eager hands.

“Go track her down and learn what songs as she’s got to teach, then come share ‘em with me.” He thought on it for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah, too easy. When you go to the old bird and learn of her woes, teach her a kinder song. Something of your own that you ain’t shared with no one else. That ought to be enough.”

[ombreblossom]

speaking words unspoken

This is my gift for @bluejayblueskies for the 2021 @tma-valentines-exchange! I hope you like it!

AO3 link is located in the source :)

Summary: They're a week and some change into their stay at Daisy's safe house, and Martin is still having some trouble with the Lonely. Jon picks up on this and tries to make things better. And he does! In his way, but not before some miscommunication and exhaustion waylay his efforts (about 6.5K words)

The grocery store is awfully busy for a small town nestled in the heart of the Scottish Highlands. Residents of the village wander among a haphazard collection of shelves ranging from middling height to impossibly tall. There seems to be little rhyme or reason for where items are placed from aisle to aisle, forcing Martin to have to search around in order to find anything, increasing the number of people he inadvertently bumps into.

If Martin gave it any more than a cursory thought, he'd come to the conclusion that it's not entirely unexpected, the nearest Tesco many tens of kilometers away and only a smattering of towns in between.

Martin isn’t really in a position to have that cursory thought, though, as freshly escaped from the Lonely as he was. Nervous energy thrums along his skin, speeding his movements and making him quick to avert his eyes in the infrequent event someone meets them. Most people still easily pass their gaze over him, as if he were merely a wisp of tepid air lazily making its way across the store room—a left-over effect of his association with the One Alone. Martin doesn't mind so much the lack of attention paid to him, but he can't help but feel an uncomfortable pressure against his skin when other people are near.

He can't even be near Jon sometimes, not without the pressure overwhelming him, and doesn’t that just smart.

Martin resolved to brave the thick, after-work crowd for this, though, “this” being gathering the supplies needed for a relaxing night in Daisy’s safehouse following a rushed and terrified flight from London and everything that had happened with Peter and Eli-Jonah, Not!Sasha, and the hunters. They weren’t on holiday, Martin had to keep reminding himself. They weren’t on holiday, but he was probably the happiest he’s been in years, and he wants to celebrate that. With Jon. 

With Jon. What a concept. He was elsewhere in the store, continuing an extended effort of picking up things they'd conceivably need for the long term. Just in case. Martin’s trying to not examine his shaky optimism too closely, but he is in love, and it's impossible to not consider his current position beside Jon as anything but a miracle.

Ah, there’s finally some room in the sweets aisle. Flanked on either side by various baking paraphernalia, Martin enters the aisle and heads straight for a small section of colorfully-wrapped bar chocolate. Not that Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London likes sweet chocolate—goodness, no. Or sweets at all for that matter. At least not things he classified as “obnoxiously sweet,” an ambiguous term if Martin had ever heard one. Over time, Martin has come to understand it to mean barely sweet, like an echo of sweetness that had once been present and is no longer. He's never said as much, but Jon likes his sweets like he likes his tea: oversteeped to the point of bitterness with the barest hint of sugar and the slightest bit of added color from milk. 

And Jon does this unbearably adorable thing where he breaks the bar up into smaller pieces, not even according to the pre-set perforations, mind you, and nibbles on the thing for hours at a time, either to savor the flavor (which Martin cannot possibly fathom) or because Jon is a lying liar who lies about liking bitterness to that degree, and this is the one thing he has managed to successfully lie to anybody about.

It’s probably the former, but Martin would be delighted to find out it’s the latter.

So, he gladly picks up a couple of ninety-percent dark chocolate bars for Jon and turns them over in his hand, feeling the rough texture of the plain, if colorful, wrapping paper surrounding them. Martin does his best to dodge around other shoppers who've entered the aisle, picking up some granulated sugar, flour, baking soda and powder, and cinnamon for banana bread (his personal favorite). It stirs feelings in his chest that Jon had bought bananas several days ago with the (if not explicit, then quite obvious in hindsight) intent to let them over-ripen. Martin starts to head toward the cashier with the rest of his items when he feels a cool hand slip into his, interlacing their fingers together.

“Hey,” Jon begins, a soft warmth in his voice, “Did you get everything we needed?” Jon rubs his thumb in light, rhythmic circles onto his own, and it takes everything Martin has in him to not instinctively pull his hand out of Jon’s gentle hold. It feels nice—Jon feels nice—but it's very nearly too much right now. He hates this, hates constantly putting Jon in a position where he has to somehow intuit Martin’s feelings because not even Martin himself quite understands what exactly sets off the chain reaction of fear and pressure and too many people and the roaring—

There’s suddenly nothing but air around his hand, and Martin misses Jon’s solid presence acutely as much as he found it altogether too much. He doesn’t want to look over at Jon to see his placating smile, the one Martin imagined Jon wore as he all but dragged the both of them through King’s Cross station to barely make it on time for the soonest train to Inverness. That same smile that Martin watched Jon affect as he took on the bulk of the dusting and washing that needed to be done upon arrival at Daisy’s safe house. The same smile that Martin woke up to every morning, knowing that Jon had very likely spent several hours just sitting in their bed waiting for Martin to wake up to make sure he didn’t do so alone. 

Martin looks anyway and isn’t surprised to see the smile in question.

If Martin had to describe it, he’d say it conveyed a sense of loss, of mourning, of wanting to protect what remained of a previous whole. It’s an implicit acknowledgement of the pieces of Martin that have been irreparably warped by the Lonely and an acknowledgement that Martin had already lost much to mundane loneliness long before Peter took advantage of his grief and recruited him in waylaying the Extinction.

He never wants to see that smile again, and so he looks away.

“Is there anything else we still need to get, Martin?” Jon rephrases and, after a long beat, continues, “Why don’t I finish up here and we can meet up in a few moments at the bookshop?” The bookshop that Martin knows that Jon knows is likely deserted at this time in the late afternoon, not too long before the elderly shopkeep, Fiona, closes her doors in anticipation of beginning her own nightly rituals. “I’m almost finished with the books we brought from London, and last time we were there—”

“Jon—” Martin sighs while Jon continues.

“—you mentioned Discworld, and it occurred to me that I have somehow managed to avoid reading any Pratchett, despite reading what I can only imagine was nearly every book left at all the second-hand bookshops in and around Bournemouth. Did you know—”

Jon keeps going with tidbits of what he knows of Terry Pratchett, which is an awful lot considering he just admitted to having not read anything by the man. Martin missed this, listening to Jon talk about anything and everything. He dare not interrupt him, even with everyone walking around them. He also refuses to throw Jon’s gift of distraction back at his face.

Color rises in Jon’s cheeks and his brows furrow when he presumably realizes he’s been talking for a while. “My point is I don’t mind finishing up here. Really, I don’t.” Jon’s trying to help. He’s trying to help, damn it, he repeats to himself. Lord knows that all Jon has ever done is try to help, in his way. Martin’s the one who can’t go five seconds without his fear around other people flaring out of control. Jon shouldn’t have to go it alone to preserve his comfort.

Martin takes some deep, steadying breaths. Jon waits patiently for him, his free hand fidgeting unobtrusively. 

“No, I'm good," he asserts, threading his words with as much certainty he can manage, and decides then and there that it is so. "I have everything we need for dinner tonight here and a couple extra things, too." He waggles his eyebrows a little at this. "I assume that you're over here because you've finished getting the essentials."

Every time Jon laughs is an exercise in appreciating opposing extremes. His eyes close as if he can’t bear to look at the object of his amusement any longer, and the corners of those eyes crinkle in the prettiest way, taking the breath right out of Martin’s body when it happens. And he holds his hand in front of his mouth like his laughter is something to be smothered, never to see the light of day, the reasons for which Martin can't be certain, but he suspects he wouldn't like them. "Indeed. And a few extra indulgences," Jon teases, winking. Winking! Does Jon wink? Clearly he does, but this is new information, a treasure trove hidden among stormy seas. “I picked up some sausage; sausage always adds an extra depth of flavor to this sort of thing.”

Laughing lightly, Martin says, "Let's get going, then. We have an extremely full evening of relaxation ahead of us."

"Since when do you find cooking relaxing, Mr. Microwave Meals?"

"Since it's a safe activity that we can do together now that we're away from the Institute of Terror, Mr. Will Subsist on Granola Bars and Spite For Days at a Time If Left to His Own Devices."

Jon looks thoughtful suddenly. "Safe. Now there’s a concept," Jon says with no small amount of incredulity.

Martin pauses. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Jon?” Martin goes cold at the thought that Jon might have seen something and not told him.

“What? Oh, no. It’s just…” He trails off, his gaze drifting upward toward the ceiling. “This, being here—with you—is probably the safest I’ve felt in a long time. It-it almost doesn’t feel real. Like any little thing I do or neglect to do could potentially burst this bubble of happiness I’ve all of the sudden found myself in.” 

It’s moments like these that Martin might actually be willing to believe that Jon is in his early 40s, the age he’d be now if the ridiculous lie he told about his age when they all started in the archives had been true. The pressing weights of repeated trauma, responsibility, and regret age his features considerably, and it hurts to look at. Martin wants so badly to smooth away the lines that seem to have taken up permanent residence between Jon’s brows however he can.

Martin ventures that he’s calm enough now to at least comfort Jon, if not enough to accept any for himself. He grabs the same hand that grasped his own minutes before and just. Holds it. Jon goes taught, like a newly-strung bow, words of reassurance waiting on Jon’s lips, that no, it’s okay, Martin, you don’t have to do this.

Well, too bad. Martin wants to do this, the Lonely’s lingering influence on him be damned. Martin draws Jon’s hand up to his lips and presses a kiss onto his knuckles. Jon gasps quietly, eyes wide. His grey-streaked dark hair is slipping out of its loose braid, whether from Jon playing with it in idle moments or from the wind that is altogether too often present in the Highlands, Martin couldn’t say, but the image endears him to Martin all the same.

“Well, take it from someone who’s spent a lot of the last year feeling not-quite-real: this is real, Jon. We’re here and safe, at least for now,” Martin assures him, grinning. “Let’s go pay for this stuff, yeah? And let’s go home.” Jon, momentarily speechless, simply nods his assent.

They’re able to leave the store with their purchases eventually and decide to make their way to Fiona’s bookshop anyway, picking up a few volumes while they’re there: a collection of Robin Robertson’s poetry for Martin and a geographical history of the Scottish Highlands and Terry Pratchett’s Guards, Guards for Jon to chew through. And neither of them would dare leave without giving Maggie, the resident feline guardian, some well-earned scritches. “It takes an awful lot of energy to mind an entire bookshop, after all,” Jon says every time they visit, all the while accumulating what could only amount to an unhealthy amount of cat hair—so much so that Martin’s started to find it laying about in the safe house. Jon doesn’t seem to mind it and says it reminds him of living with The Admiral.

It’s a decent walk back to the safe house. They started late enough in the day that the sun is already beginning to sink below the horizon, so they end up leaving after giving Maggie far fewer scritches than any of them would have preferred. Jon rebuffs Martin’s offer to carry all of their purchases, stubbornly hanging onto their books and his share of the groceries. This is becoming a familiar game to them, one that tends to escalate to silly, frantic grabbing for the others’ bags and eventually devolves into giggles and light shoulder bumping. Today, Martin manages to relieve Jon of his groceries, opening up one of Jon’s hands for holding, which Martin promptly attempts to take.

Jon turns his head to him and gives him a look that practically asks in his stead, “Are you sure this is okay?” The likewise unsaid “I don’t want to hurt you” bounces back and forth between them, and Martin answers by interlacing their hands and giving Jon’s a squeeze in hopes that it will quell the worry that’s carved into the lines of Jon’s face.

It does, and the contented sigh Jon makes is one of the loveliest sounds he’s heard. They continue their trek home, the route long and winding.

Not too much later, though, Martin notices something...off about Jon. He notices in increments almost minute winces when Jon steps on the leg Prentiss' worms ravaged, more frequent bumps into him that had nothing to do with showing affection but allowing Martin to take some of his weight for a moment, and some far-away looks.

Martin doesn’t quite have the shape of it until they’re talking about something or other, something simple, easy, meaningless in the grand, cosmic scheme of things, and Jon stumbles. He tries to laugh it off, but there's something not quite right about Jon's laughter this time. The way he bounces his shoulders in suppressed mirth is subdued—sluggish, even. An increasingly concerning picture paints itself in Martin’s mind.

A long, hard look at Jon forces him to confront the deep, dark circles under his eyes set against skin uncomfortably grey, nearly all traces of flush gone from his face, a stark contrast to earlier in the day.

How had he missed this? Maybe he’s been more absent than he thought. He’ll have to keep a close eye on Jon throughout the evening, maybe shepard him to bed if he seems to get any worse.

Only a sliver of the sun remains visible above the horizon when they arrive at the safe house, casting a soft orange glow over the vast grassy spread of the Highlands. Martin pays the sight little mind, though, all of his focus intent on the man in front of him currently unlocking their front door, and he can’t not notice how long it takes for Jon to insert the key into the locking mechanism.

As they’re putting away their groceries, visions of Jon doing the very same thing by himself play in his mind’s eye. He’s only able to summon disconnected images of the first several days of their....could he call it an elopement? Their not-so-great escape from the Archives? He recalls Jon preparing meals for them, bundling up to leave the safe house for groceries, washing their clothes in a small, foot-powered washing machine and later hanging them up on a clothesline outside to dry. Martin also recalls Jon bringing him overly-steeped tea and an old crocheted blanket when all he could do was sit on Daisy’s ancient green corduroy sofa and stare into the void in front of him, the sounds of lapping waves Coming ever closer.

All the while wearing that damnable smile. Shame pools within Martin, shame that Jon had had to take up so much responsibility recently and that Martin can’t say how well Jon’s been sleeping or taking care of his own needs in the meantime. If today is anything to go on, Martin supposes the answer to both of those questions is likely “no.”

“Martin, could you turn on the lights? We’re losing daylight fast.” Jon has a balancing hand on the countertop and is putting their dry and canned food items. Martin does as he’s asked, bathing the entire kitchen and living area in warm light. Martin walks back toward the kitchen area and is greeted with a “thank you” and a kiss. He could get used to this, used to feeling loved and appreciated.

“Is something bothering you, Martin?”

He looks at Jon, concern writ large on his still ashen face and eyes boring into him. Concern has no place being there right now. If anyone has any right to be concerned at the moment, it’s Martin.

“What? No. Why do you ask?”

“You’ve just been awfully quiet since we got home, and after what happened at the store, it’s not surprising that you might still be feeling...off.”

Projection, much? Martin wants to say but has the wherewithal to hold it back. “I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking. Jon. I’m all right.”

Jon eyes him up and down, and after seemingly not finding what he’s looking for, nods once and smiles (again with the smile...) once more. “All right. You’ll tell me if something’s bothering you, though, won’t you?” 

“Yeah, Jon, of course I will.” And he intends to mean it.

“Good,” Jon says and walks over to where Daisy keeps her cooking vessels, grabs her Dutch oven, and places it on the stovetop.

“Why don’t I be your line chef today, Jon, and you work the stovetop? You’re much better at the actual cooking part than I am.” 

“Mmm. There’s a lot of prep work that goes into this and not a whole lot of actual cooking, so let me help you,” he says, shakily opening a couple drawers in search of a suitable chef’s knife. 

“You sure? You’re looking a little peaky over there,” he replies without meaning to and curses his loose tongue.

Jon pauses midway through grabbing one of Daisy’s old wooden cutting boards and blinks slowly. “Oh…. Yes, I’m sure. What do you mean, looking ‘peaky’?”

“It’s just,” Martin starts, collecting the fennel seed, basil, rosemary, and the rest of the spices they needed for their meat sauce and a bowl to mix them in. Too late to not approach the subject now. “You’re exhausted, Jon. You spent most of our walk home either tripping over air or leaning on me for support.” He had wanted to be subtle, but subtlety is no longer on the cards.

Considering this for a moment, Jon’s eyebrows scrunch up in a way that Martin finds so endearing and opens a nearby cupboard to take out a couple onions and a bulb of garlic. “Sure, I’m a little tired,” he concedes, “but we have all evening to relax. I’d like nothing more than to cook with you, Martin.”

He should’ve known Jon was a sap. The signs were all there. “Well, how could I say ‘no’ to that?” He says and means it, though worry continues to percolate in the back of his mind.

“You can’t, and you know it.” Jon teases.

They go about preparing their meat sauce, Martin double- and triple-checking each measurement before pouring the appropriate amount of each spice into the mixing bowl and Jon dicing onions. 

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?” 

“Chop onions without tearing up and cursing your hubris that ‘this time will be different’?”

Chuckling softly, Jon apparently thinks better of sliding his hand down his face before answering, pivoting to the most level deadpan Martin thinks he’s ever heard from him, “It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that I spent years perfecting my abilities. Training with the best of the best to strengthen my tears ducts to such a degree that they are, quite literally, incapable of passing tears from my lacrimal glands to my eyes.”

Martin raises a dark eyebrow, amusement in his voice as he replies, “You should probably see a doctor about that, you know.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he draws out. “The real answer, of course, is my grandmother devoted a lot of her time to making sure I could at least cook according to a recipe along with providing some general rules of thumb. I chopped many an onion in search of culinary adequacy. Never progressed much past following recipes, though. Ask me to create something from scratch, and you’ll witness a horror the likes of which has never been seen before.”

“Just out of curiosity, which fear do you think takes credit for culinary disasters?”

“Probably depends on the nature of the disaster, honestly, but…. Hmm. Maybe Corruption? Or Flesh, maybe? Either way, it doesn’t bear thinking about, especially not while we’re preparing to eat ourselves.” 

While Martin is rummaging through the fridge in search of where Jon put the ground beef and sausage, he hears a hiss coming from Jon's direction. 

Martin whips his head over to where Jon's been dicing onions and his heart clenches at the sight of deep red blossoming over the wooden cutting board.

"Jon! What happened? You're bleeding," He says, stating the obvious, feeling like his throat is closing up behind his words. "Where are you bleeding from?" Martin crosses the room in record time, places a hand in Jon's shoulder and surveys the area in front of him.

Blood leaks sluggishly from a cut on Jon's middle finger. A splatter of crimson on the knife Jon has been using clues Martin in to what happened. "Jon, just stay right there, okay? I'll go grab the first-aid kit. I’m sure there’s some kind of antiseptic or disinfectant in there. I’ll be right back!”

Jon opens his mouth to say something, but Martin’s already gone, heading for the cabinet under the bathroom sink, head abuzz with worry and heart hammering in his chest.

When Martin returns, Jon’s running his hand beneath the running tap and blood trails down into the sink in pink rivulets. Jon glances at him, the same exhaustion that stared back at him when Jon and the rest left for Great Yarmouth on his face, a combination of physical exhaustion and the culmination of several months of emotional upheaval, of bitterly contemplating his own humanity and his role in Elias’ inscrutable plans.

“There’s no need to worry about the first-aid kit, Martin. Didn’t you hear? I heal, ah, preternaturally fast these days. See?” Jon holds up his hand to Martin, and, much to Martin’s surprise, the seeping cut on Jon’s finger is completely gone, no trace even of a faint scar. 

“I...I didn’t know, Jon,” he almost whispers. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since I—since I woke up. From the coma.”

Martin mouths an “oh” and considers what this means in the context of what knows about Jon’s actions while he’d been working for Peter. It’s almost sadder that Jon ventured into Ny Alesund knowing that he couldn’t be permanently harmed—or into the coffin, for that matter. Walking into extreme danger knowing that he’d likely bring pain on himself but he’d almost certainly live despite it—”self-destructive” was even more accurate than Martin had imagined at the time Daisy said it.

Martin heaves a tension-relieving breath and hopes it doesn’t sound like a sigh. Making Jon feel guilty about something he can’t exactly help isn’t something he wants to do tonight. Or ever. “Why don’t I go put this back, then, and let’s pick up where we left off. I’ll take over the solemn duty of chopping onions if you start preparing the beef and sausage.”

“Yeah, that might be for the best,” Jon concedes too easily. 

The room is quiet after that. Not much sound ever permeates the safe house’s walls, trees and hills absorbing much of the ambient noises of the surrounding area before they even get to their cottage. And they’ve both gone silent, the only sounds filling the room the sharp thuds of a knife hitting wood and the squelching of ground meat. 

By time Martin’s done dicing one onion to replace the one Jon bled on and an extra onion that the recipe didn’t call for because “onions are flavor vehicles, Martin,” or so Jon claims, Jon’s still mixing the beef and sausage together.

“H-hey, Jon, I think you’ve mixed those pretty thoroughly, don’t you?”

“Mmm.” He stills, hands still submerged in the mixture.

“Jon?”

Jon blinks slowly, head and gaze drawing downward, like he no longer has the will or strength to work against gravity.

Martin reaches out a hand to shake him out of his stupor but thinks better of it. Has he somehow lost more color in his cheeks? “Jon, I think you should maybe go lay down or at least sit down.” Nothing. “I’d love to hear you talk about Discworld if you’re not ready to lay down yet.”

This seems to break him out of whatever daze he’d fallen into. “Oh. Ah, yes. Right. I understand. I’ll, um, just go.”

What is there to understand, Martin wonders as Jon turns back to the sink and runs water and soap along his hands, movements almost comically slow if not for how worrying they are and the frenetic energy that usually accompanies Jon completely missing.

Martin reaches out a supporting hand, intending to grasp Jon’s upper arm. “The bedroom’s awfully far away; let’s get you to the sofa, and I’ll bring over some tea and blankets, yeah?” 

With energy summoned from the aether, Jon leaps out of the way of his hand, throwing himself boldly against the lip of the countertop with a cry. “No. No. That’s all-that’s all right. I can get there by myself,” he says, chest heaving and the trembling Martin noticed more pronounced than even a moment ago.

“Jon, love, you’re not in any condition to be doing anything by yourself. In the most affectionate way possible, you look like you feel awful right now. Please let me help.” Martin’s unable to keep the pleading out of his voice.

Jon looks—Looks?—looks at him, eyes wide, almost bulging, fear and a host of other emotions dancing wildly in them. “No, n-no. You don’t have to…. Please, don’t. I didn’t want this.”

“Don’t what, Jon? What didn’t you want?”

“This. I didn’t want this.”

“Um. I don’t really understand, Jon, but let’s talk about it over on the sofa. We’ll be more comfortable there.” Martin takes a small step forward, palms of his hands facing forward in a gesture of openness and safety. This time when Jon leaps backward, he slips. Martin’s not close enough to grab onto him, and a split second later, the deafening crack of Jon’s head hitting the wood floor fills the room and clamps a vice around Martin’s heart. 

Too shaken to yell his name, he bounds over to where Jon lies still and slides into a sitting position beside him. All Martin can see for a terrifying, desolate moment is Jon in that familiar adjustable hospital bed, crisp, undisturbed white sheets carefully arranged over top of him, attached to various monitors that have been silenced to not alert staff of his absent heartbeat and non-existent oxygenation levels.

“Jon. Jon. Come on. Don’t do this to me. Jon, do something—say something if you can. Please, don’t….” Should he move Jon at this point? Martin remembers from a rudimentary first-aid class he took when his mother’s worsening condition started to accelerate that you shouldn’t move people with suspected head or neck injuries without first stabilizing them, but they had nothing like that here. And there was still some question as to how far his healing ability really extended.

He has to be okay. Without giving the action any thought, Martin gently places a hand atop Jon’s chest to check for breathing. They’re shallow breaths, but his chest does rise and sink in a slow rhythm, and Martin lets out the breath he’d been unconsciously holding.

“Love?” He near whispers, as if Jon were merely asleep. “Come back to me.” He brushes away some of the fly-away hairs that have fallen onto his face. That is when Jon begins to stir.

“Jon? Jon!” Martin exclaims. For whatever mysterious reason, Jon is trying to wriggle away from him. “Don’t try to move yet. You hit your head pretty hard, and your healing isn’t immediate, Jon. Just stay put!” Jon wasn’t listening to him, still scrambling to move out of Martin’s reach.

That’s enough of that. Martin lays himself over Jon’s chest and holds him while he waits for him to calm down.

It takes some seconds, maybe a minute or two, but Jon does calm down eventually, becoming boneless in Martin’s arms.

“Hey,” Martin starts, “you with me, Jon?” 

Jon lifts a hand slowly, making a so-so gesture.

“Okay. How’s your head?”

He winces. “Hurts.”

Martin hmms. “Do you feel dizzy?”

Jon gives a minute shake of his head.

“Okay. I’m moving us to the sofa, then. And don’t try to protest,” Martin warns.

Martin gets half-way to his feet, slips his arms until Jon’s legs and back, and proceeds to pick them both up off the floor. In the short time it takes to cross the room, Jon nuzzles his head into Martin’s chest. The frustration and concern and worry Martin’s feeling subsides somewhat in the face of overwhelming affection for this man, and he hugs him just a little bit closer.

“Stay here; I’ll be right back,” Martin says as he lays Jon down gingerly onto the sofa. He puts their dinner ingredients back into the fridge for the time being and puts some water on for chamomile tea. His thoughts drift as he waits for the water to come to a boil and some more as he waits for the tea to steep. He glances at Jon every so often, who has rolled over onto his side while Martin’s been gone.

“Hey, you,” Martin says as he sits in front of Jon at the edge of the sofa, the mug of chamomile making a soft thunk on the table.

“Why are you doing all this, Martin?” Jon murmurs into the worn fabric underneath him, and Martin can’t tell if he was supposed to hear it or not.

“I’m not sure what you mean, Jon.”

“Why are you staying so close to me, touching me? Taking care of me?”

“I would have thought the answers to those questions were pretty obvious,” Martin says mildly, carding his fingers through Jon’s hair.

Jon’s silence says everything.

Martin exhales and then steels himself for a delicate conversation. “I love you, Jon. Have done for quite a while now. If there’s anything I can do to lessen your pain and discomfort, I want to do it.”

Jon clenches a fist and refuses to look at him. “I know that, Martin, in every way possible. But...” he stops, apparently to think. He sounds wrecked. Tabling this conversation for when Jon is feeling better might be a better idea, but it’s rare that Jon gets the gumption to speak openly about the things really bothering him, so Martin’s remains quiet. “Things haven’t been easy for you since…. Christ, for a long time, I think. Since Prentiss, at least. But since leaving the Lonely, you’ve been…. You go away for long periods of time, and it seems like you can’t handle people being around you, too.”

It occurs to Martin that they’ve never actually addressed any of this together, not their individual traumas, not their shared traumas, not this thing, these feelings, between them. They’ve been testing the waters, so to speak, bit by bit. Touches and soft barbs and sweet words pass between them unacknowledged but nevertheless heartfelt. But so much else has also remained unsaid in the interim, he now realizes. 

“And I get it. No one escapes one of the fears without being marked, and you’ve been marked thoroughly by the Lonely, Martin. It’s...it makes perfect sense that these things are happening, that you feel overwhelmed when people are near.”

He stops again, and Martin gives him ample time to gather his thoughts. Martin is still running his hand through silky salt and pepper strands when Jon lifts his head and looks up at him. His complexion still carries that worrying gray tint and his eyes are and cheeks shine with moisture.

It’s the darker green spot on the sofa where Jon had had his face pressed that really does Martin in, that causes him to throw caution to the wind

“Move back a little, Jon. Just a little, okay?” He says, low and soft. Jon mutters a “yeah” and does as he’s told. “Thanks, love. Now, hold still.”

Daisy’s sofa is by no means a large sofa, and Martin is by no means a small man, but he’ll make this work. He lays himself down beside Jon and works his arms around him, tucking himself into any space he can against him, the lines of their bodies almost completely flush with one another. His back is close enough to the edge that Martin constantly feels like he’s about to fall, but it’s worth it to have Jon in his arms like this. “I’m listening, whenever you’re ready to continue.”

Jon buries himself in Martin’s chest before picking up where he left off, prompting Martin to cup the back of his head and pull him in closer.

“You’ve borne the brunt of maintaining our relationship for so long, Martin, and now it’s my turn. I can take care of you when you’re far away, when you can’t be around people. I can do the shopping, I can cook. I can do all these things.

“And I can stay away when it’s too much for you to be around me.” He clenches the fist caught between them even harder. “I don’t want to be the cause of your pain, Martin. That’s the last thing I want.”

Martin considers all this for...several moments, really, and comes to an ugly conclusion.

“Jon...is this why you didn’t let me touch you earlier?”

A muffled “yes” reaches Martin’s ears, and his heart just breaks.

“We really should have a long conversation about this in the near future—preferably when you’re feeling better—but I want to say a couple things right now, if that’s okay with you.”

“Of course, Martin. I want to hear everything you have to say.”

Martin gives a little squeeze of gratitude and then continues, “For one, you’re right. There’s leftover stuff from the Lonely I’m dealing with right now, and sometimes it’s hard to be around anyone. And I hate it so much that ‘anyone’ sometimes includes you. From here on out, I’m going to try to tell you when I’m feeling this way, so you don’t have to try to guess. And if I’m reaching out to you, please trust me that I’m okay in that moment.”

“I do trust you, Martin. I trusted you to handle Peter. I trusted you to handle the Extinction. I’ll...do my best to trust you in this, too. I...I’m just deeply afraid of ruining this, ruining us.”

“Thank you. And I understand. I worry about that, too, but please also trust me when I say there’s not much that you could do that would ruin this.”

Nodding into Martin’s chest, Jon whispers, “I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask. And second, I want you to know that, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t need to feel like you need to make up for anything.” Jon is tensing up, preparing to protest—he can feel it. “No, I mean it. Our relationship isn’t transactional. You don’t have to meet every comfort I offer you with one of your own just for the sake of reciprocation. That’s not how it works. You’ve done so much for me Jon, just by being you. That’s not even including the Lonely and everything that’s happened after, though I’m grateful for all that, too. You’re already here for me in every way that matters. You don’t need to do anything more.”

Martin places a kiss on the crown of Jon’s head, and they just lie there, soaking in each other’s presence, previous evening plans all but forgotten. Martin thinks Jon dozes a little bit, the stress of the evening finally taking consciousness away from him, but he’s proven wrong when Jon speaks up once more, muffled slightly by Martin’s jumper.

“For the record, I love you, too. In case that needed to be said.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘need,’ necessarily, but I won’t lie and say I don’t like hearing it!”

“I see,” Jon croaks. The man needs to rest. “Well, I guess if you don’t need it, then I won’t bother saying it.”

“You’re insufferable, you know that?” He laughs and feels the smile on his face widen.

“I have an idea, yes.”

“Good. Now, drink your tea.”

Martin pushes himself away from Jon to give him some room to sit up and to get a good look at this face. His face isn’t covered in tears anymore (now probably absorbed by the fibers in his knitted jumper), but he looks positively exhausted, eyes lidded and face otherwise lax in an easy smile, not at all like the one he wears with the intent to soothe. Martin places the still warm cup of chamomile in Jon’s hand.

“Still feeling up for a little dinner?” He asks.

Jon hmms and replies, “Yeah, I could eat a little. Just give me a few minutes to—”

“Absolutely not, Jon. I’m going to make dinner while you take a nap here. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay. A nap sounds wonderful.”

“Good. I’ll wake you up when everything’s finished.”

Martin starts to dislodge himself from Jon when Jon reaches up to kiss his cheek.

“Love you. And good luck.” Jon gives him possibly the most self-satisfied wink he’s seen before taking a sip of his tea.

It’s not terribly cold in the safe house with a fire going, but Martin lays Daisy’s crocheted blanket over Jon anyway, and starts taking everything back out for dinner.

It’s meat sauce—how hard could it be?

[metaphorical-love-for-a-car]

Dealing with Devils-- Damien/Darkiplier x Reader

Prompt: I was inspired to write this when I saw this comic panel on Pinterest!

Warnings: light language

Word Count; 2k

Notes; I wrote this on impulse after rewatching Who Killed Markiplier? and Damien lol (gif creds)

    You grimaced at the sunlight shining through the window. The cottage's lack of curtains only bothered you in the morning. Sure, sunrises were beautiful, but they were a pain in the ass when you desperately wanted to sleep in. A shiver ran through your body as your feet hit the cold floor. Spring was on its way. The snow was beginning to yield to grass and budding flowers, but the cold was still strong enough to seep into your bones. Wrapping a blanket around your shoulders, you shuffled over to the fireplace. You wrinkled your nose at the lack of kindling. There goes any hope of a fire this morning. Not wanting to spend another moment in the cold home, you begrudgingly pulled multiple layers of clothing out of the closet to prepare yourself for the day. You turned to the large mirror hanging on the wall, carefully observing your reflection. It was hard to see small details because of the cracks that webbed from its center. When you first moved into the cottage, Damien told you to get rid of it, but you couldn't bring yourself to do so.

    A grin found its way across your face as the memories of your move resurfaced. Damien had insisted on helping, even though you hardly had any belongings to bring into your new home. Just some clothes, toiletry items, and... the mirror. Your brows furrowed. Where did it come from, anyway? You couldn't quite remember buying the mirror, but you felt such an attachment to it. Maybe it was an heirloom? If it was, why would Damien tell you to throw it away? A strange sensation began to form in the back of your mind. It felt as if static electricity was crawling across your brain. You leaned closer to the mirror. Your reflection seemed to shift out of focus the longer you stared at it. Was it your eyes playing tricks on you? You lifted a hand, carefully reaching towards the mirror, only to freeze before you had a chance to touch it. A sharp ring ripped through your eardrums, causing you to take a step back. You looked forward and realized that your entire reflection had changed. Your skin was a muddled gray color, and your eyes were filled with a lifeless black void. Horror filled every nerve in your body. Something was terribly wrong with this place.

    A sudden commotion outside drew your attention away from your reflection. Desperate for an excuse to leave, you lunged at the door. A magpie sat on your porch, squawking up a storm. You frowned at the creature. I probably forgot to fill the bird-feeder again, you thought. Your shoulders dipped as you began to relax. Glancing over your shoulder, you surveyed the interior of your home. What were you getting so worked up about, again? Your eyes landed on the dark fireplace. Right, no kindling. You pulled the door, making sure it was secure before stepping off the porch. On your way to the shed, you checked the bird-feeder. You raised a brow. It was still full. Maybe the bird was freaking out about something else. You just hoped it would be quiet, wherever the thing went.

    You made your way to the shed. There was an overhang that allowed you to store firewood outside without you having to worry about it getting wet. You stopped a few feet away from the shed and tilted your head to the side. You could've sworn there was a big lock on the door. No, you were //sure// there used to be a lock on it. Damien locked it when he was helping you move. You were never curious about going inside. He told you there was only old, rusty tools. You had no need for them, so you never bothered to try to get in. But now? The lock just disappeared. You hesitated to step forward, realizing that Damien disappeared too. He told you... no, he promised you that he would visit sometime. He said he would come back for you when he sorted out some business. What did he mean by that? You slowly pulled the door open. Creeping inside, you realized that Damien was right. For the most part, the shed was empty, other than the dust that occupied the shelves and some old gardening equipment piled in a wheelbarrow. Something towards the back of the shed caught your eye. A large sheet, stained from who knows how many years of exposure to the elements, covered something large. Sunlight poured in from the cobweb-covered window above it. It was almost as if it had a spotlight. You reached for the sheet, only to be distracted by squawking once more. You huffed and looked out of the dirty window, surprised to see that even more magpies had gathered in your yard. Your eyes darted back and forth between each one. Seven? Shaking your head, you returned your attention to the matters at hand. You pulled back the sheet to find an ornate desk. You ran a hand across the smooth surface. Unlike anything else in the shed, it withstood the passing of time. There wasn't a speck of dust. Your brows jumped when you noticed a folded piece of paper tucked away beneath an empty inkwell. You wasted no time in unfolding it, anxious to know its contents. A poem jotted down... in your handwriting. "One for sorrow," you muttered. It was a curious little thing. You had always appreciated poetry, but why did you decide to document an unsettling nursery rhyme?

    Taking a breath, you continued to sift through the desk. The first two drawers you searched were filled with legal documents. You could recall all of them. They were milestones from your career. From your first case as a fledgling lawyer, to the most recent one from your current position as District Attorney. Your heart fluttered for a moment. Why was it, again, that you stopped working? You pursed your lips and pressed on. Your ears started ringing when you grabbed the handle of the bottom drawer. You blinked a few times in an attempt to keep focused. There weren't many papers in this drawer. You picked up the small bundle and placed them on the desk, spreading them out. A fond smile graced your features as you picked up an old photograph. It was of you and Damien, attending a ball together. You couldn't help but laugh at the memory. It was the first time he had asked you out, and to say that he was a nervous wreck is an understatement. The man was flustered beyond belief, hardly able to get a word out! He ended up shoving a bouquet of flowers in your arms and holding the ball invitation for you to read. The next photograph displayed not only you and Damien but also Mark and Celine. Double date night, something that happened often back when you and Damien were a new couple. A droplet fell onto the photograph. You gently touched your cheek. You didn't even know you had started crying. Moving on to the next item, your heart sank into the pit of your stomach. It was an invitation to a party hosted at Markiplier Mansion. Memories came flooding back. Too much champagne, a night of gambling, and enough terror to last you three lifetimes. Your wild eyes desperately searched your surroundings. Where were you? The last thing you remember before moving here was... You glanced down at the drawer once more. This time, there was a revolver sitting at the bottom. Your ears rang violently as a searing pain exploded across your abdomen. You instinctively pressed a hand to your stomach, only to snatch it away when you felt something warm and sticky. Your hand came away red. The ground swayed beneath your feet, and the atmosphere around you darkened. It was getting hard to breathe. You tried to take a step back, but your knees buckled.

    Falling. That's the last thing you remember. The sensation of your insides going somersaults as you descended. You tried to scream, but no sound came out of your mouth. At least, not that you could hear. The only thing that filled your ears was that insufferable ringing. After what seemed like an eternity, you hit the ground with a violent crack. You kept your eyes closed, certain that you just broke every bone in your body. The ringing finally subsided, and you gathered up the courage to open your eyes. At first, you saw nothing but darkness. Then they appeared out of nowhere-- the magpies. Their white coloring contrasting the void like stars in the night sky. It gave you momentary comfort.

    "Why?" You sat up with a grimace, trying your best to fight back the pain. The cracked mirror stood tall before you. This time, it didn't show your reflection. You finally made it to your feet, despite feeling as if you had been put through a meat grinder, and approached the mirror. Your eyes stung with tears. It looked like Damien, but this... this person was different. His whole being was monochrome, and the eyes you used to get lost in no longer held any warmth. They were cold and calculating your every move. "Why did you wake up?" he clarified.

    "I don't... I don't understand." The man laughed. A sinister smile remaining on his face.

    "Don't you?" The ringing rose once more. You covered your ears, clenching your eyes shut. You cried out in pain and tried to will yourself to remain standing. The memories that had been locked away came barreling into your mind. Tears were flowing freely when you looked back up at the man. Horror filled your expression, causing him to look amused.

    "Where's Damien?" you whispered. His grin left as quick as it came. His face darkened. The air around him shifted as his muddled aura lashed out violently.

    "You were a lamb to the slaughter. Don't you get it? Celine would have left your soul to rot, but he gave you mercy. He gave you a chance at peace. He saved you from damnation!" You flenched as his voice rose, and you could've sworn that you saw new cracks forming in the mirror. "But he's not here to protect you anymore. I'm in control now." His eyes had gone completely black, and his unnerving smile had returned. You glanced upward, relieved that the magpies were still there. Your brows knit together for a moment. Your eyes dashed between them, counting just as you had done moments before. Eyes widening, you remembered the last verse of the poem. Thirteen, beware, it's the devil himself.

    "Who... no, what are you?" The man tilted his head, grin widening.

    "An entity of vengeance, created by Celine and Damien. Celine had the reigns for a while, then Damien took control. But they were weak. Their need for revenge combined with the darkness that consumes the Manor grew until they were simply... no longer a factor. I run things now. I don't necessarily have a name, though, I suppose you could call me Dark. I'd say it's quite fitting. Wouldn't you agree?" You swallowed thickly, nodding.

    The entity straightened his tie. "It's nice to know that we're on the same page. I understand why Damien was fond of you. You're... amusing, to say the least." He extended a hand towards the mirror. "I'm sure you're just itching to get out of that mirror, now that your memories have fully returned. I'll help you safely return in exchange for your companionship." Almost as if your body was acting on its own accord, you reached forward to take his hand. You stopped yourself, mere inches away from the mirror. Dark barked out a laugh. "Afraid to make a deal with the devil?"

~*~*~

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[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Session 1-A

I've been playing tabletop games for TOO LONG without actually playing any D&D, and the time for that to change is now.

Zero and @eternalfarnham are Looseleaf and Saelhen du Fishercrown, a mothfolk animist and a half-elf conwoman whose travels take them to Blacksky University, where the discovery of an unknown magical artifact sets them on the path to discovering the secrets of a shattered world.

Oyashio, 親潮市, is known as the Crossroad City. It sits on the closest point between the two major continents of the world, alongside the swift currents of the fierce river-ocean that separates the two. People from all over the Jewel come here to find their fortunes.

Looseleaf is a new arrival to Blacksky University, the institution of higher learning that terrorizes the city with its warball hooligans and dangerous magical experiments. She's left her reclusive village to learn more about the cultures and peoples of the world, and has enrolled in the School of Natural Arts to pursue her dream.

The Lady Noeru de la Surplus is the down-on-her-luck scion of an elven noble family, here to complete her rite of succession and restore the good name of her clan.

Saelhen du Fishercrown is a half-elf disgrace who fled the stifling elven capital of Kanzentokai to escape its byzantine social order- and strike it rich by pretending to be the down-on-her-luck scion of an elven noble family and conning a bunch of elfaboo suckers out of their hard-earned gold. She's out to get rich and prove that elves can be assholes too, dammit!

*

Looseleaf leaves her room to discover- not her roommate, but a large half-orc woman rummaging through her oven.

She asks where Looseleaf keeps the swords.

It becomes clear that Bud Chestplate, here, is a friend of Oyobi Yamatake, Looseleaf's roommate, and Oyobi sent her to pick up some swords from the dorm. They make some small talk while searching, but Looseleaf fails her Investigation roll and can't find the swords for her. She leaves Bud to her business, since she needs to catch her meeting with the Dean.

Benedict I. (GM): So... you get to the Dean's office. It's a pretty large room- not because the Dean is particularly showoffy, but because Dean Mogher is a loxodon, and his office sort of needs to be big. Them elephant people, y'know. You've been asked to meet for an "academic consultation", and aren't sure what to expect.

Seems like Looseleaf needs to do some sort of independent study- and the Dean has something lined up for her, if she's interested. It's an artifact they recently got their hands on thanks to a rich donor, who wanted to learn more about it. It's super magic, so he had to pull some strings to keep it out of the hands of the School of Arcane Arts.

Looseleaf is excited about this!

Looseleaf: Looseleaf vibrates, shaking her wings kind of in the way that a dog might shake their body to remove dirt. This is moth body language for 'FUCK YES I AM SO READY FOR THIS I WAS BORN FOR THIS'.

Meanwhile... Saelhen has arrived in town. She's set herself up with a room in the city, made some public appearances to sell the story, and...

Saelhen has a plan. She'll pretend that this object is rightfully hers, as part of an arcane elven ritual to succeed the headship of her family- and hopefully badger the school into letting her get her hands on it.

She enters the school grounds via the student village, and meets a half-orc woman carrying a bunch of swords around for some reason- who she asks for directions. Bud obliges, despite being preoccupied.

Saelhen du Fishercrown: "Ah, I'm sorry! I didn't realize you were occupied by all those weapons." She bows at the prescribed angle for a small favor asked from a foreigner. "Your words are as 出鱈目外人向け. Thank you." Benedict I. (GM):出鱈目 is like, nonsense, bullshit, 外人 is gaijin, 向け is a suffix that means "for" bullshit for foreigners i love it

(Elven is Japanese here, for reasons.)

Saelhen follows the directions to the School of Arcane arts, and asks the receptionist- a tired-looking goblin girl named Two-Brains- where the Dean's office is.

Two-Brains directs her to the Moon Annex, a wing of the building identifiable by the river of moon symbols flowing along the floor. She reaches what is clearly the Dean's office, and hears a conversation within, that she opts to sneakily listen in on.

Benedict I. (GM): That'll do- you hear a whispered argument, fairly clearly. "...is he blackmailing you? Bribing you? This is clearly our department!" The voice is old and slightly screechy. A younger but still mature voice replies. "Please don't attack my character, Variable. Is my reasoning really that hard to understand?" "Yes," the older voice says. "It's the most magically powerful artifact that's ever come into our possession! How is this not of immediate concern to our department?" "You're failing to consider Coast's concerns, and those of our continuing research," the younger voice says. "Yes, this object is powerful- but learning its magic will scarcely tell us where it comes from. If we could find its source, we could find many more specimens of its kind for study."

It seems like Dean Variable Velocity of Arcane Arts (an elderly owl aarakocra in a wheelchair) really wanted to get her hands on the magic item, but Dean Coast Mogher of Natural Arts got this person to decide in his favor, instead.

Saelhen eventually opts to knock, and sees in the room with the Dean... an elf. Very tall, adorned in jewels, and wearing a very very large hoop dress that goes all the way down to the floor. This would be a problem for Saelhen, because actual elven nobility would see right through her disguise- but luckily, this woman- the provost of the university- is a drow, and not exactly welcome in the circles of elven high society.

The provost takes her leave, and Saelhen spins her sob story for Dean Velocity:

Saelhen du Fishercrown: "Madam Dean, I am sure that any matter requiring your attention might very well overrule my own. If your affairs require that you delay our discussion of the provenance of your college's recent acquisition, then my honor demands that I comply." Benedict I. (GM): "The provenance of our recent acquisiton?" "Wait- are you here about that thing?" "The bracer?" Saelhen du Fishercrown: "Ah, yes." Saelhen ducks her head a bit sheepishly. "I can come back." "Perhaps I have misunderstood what time I was meant to arrive." Benedict I. (GM): "No, no, come in! Come in, I'm sure we can address your concerns." "What time you were- you mentioned an appointment, who told you there was an appointment?" "Never mind, no, it's- please, come in." Saelhen du Fishercrown: "I spoke with a Madam Two-Brains? But information may have been lost in the shuffle -- I gather it was a busy day." Saelhen sits. Benedict I. (GM): "...The student receptionist? Why would- no, never mind. What's this about the bracer?" Saelhen du Fishercrown: Whoops. "I have neglected to introduce myself, and for that I apologize. I am the Lady Noeru de la Surplus, sixth of her name." Saelhen lowers her head. "Your... bracer is an item of some significance to my family." Benedict I. (GM): Her eyes light up. "Is that so?" "What significance, would you say?"

After a little more bullshitting and some great Deception rolls, she has the dean completely sold on her story. It helps that she quite badly wanted to believe it- since if it were true, her rival wouldn't have legitimate claim to it. Dean Velocity offers to help recover the item, if Lady Noeru would agree to let her study it briefly.

Meanwhile, below the School of Arcane Arts, Looseleaf is shown a special hands-free containment device for the magical item.

Benedict I. (GM): Inside the glass case hovers what looks like a stone bracer. It's inset with thirteen large sapphires, at seemingly random locations, little rhyme or reason. There's one region of the bracer that doesn't have sapphires- a flat, circular raised bit with a symbol engraved on it. It's not one you're familiar with, but matches the pattern of the emblems of the gods. Looseleaf: Is it a divine symbol? Yeeeep. Benedict I. (GM): A circle, with horizontal lines across it, growing denser towards the wearer.

Looseleaf makes some investigation and history checks to find out more about it. She observes that the sapphires are connected to one another, and that its craftsmanship doesn't match anything she's ever seen or read about. She's still taking a look at it when Saelhen and Dean Velocity show up.

Dean Velocity badgers Dean Mogher into hearing Saelhen out, and she continues to knock her deception checks out of the park. He doesn't want to give it up without a fight, but he believes her intentions are true. He proposes a compromise: Looseleaf will represent both schools (as she's taking courses in both and is undecided on a major) and accompany Saelhen on her supposed succession rite, asking lots of questions and writing a report that they might be able to publish.

This compromise is more or less amenable to all, and Saelhen is allowed to touch the bracer.

It immediately jumps onto her arm and sticks there, and projects a holographic wayfinding arrow out of one of the sapphires. The bracer begins pulling her arm in that direction. She can't get it off- and can't just run. She's forced to keep up the charade, and let Looseleaf try some magic on it.

Looseleaf is a homebrew class Zero found called the Animist, a caster themed around the idea that all things have "spirits". One of the things it can do is called Soul Glean, which basically lets you... read the mind of an inanimate object.

Lesser Soul Glean: You may peer into the things the soul of an object has witnessed. Make an int (arcana) check to determine the amount of information gleaned from the object. The more recent or emotionally volatile the event, the easier it is to glean information from, while the more distance the harder it is. Senses of emotions, vague intentions, and the sight of auras of can generally be gleaned from this reading.

And what she gets from that is...

Looseleaf:“It’s lost,” Looseleaf says. “It has a purpose and has been unable to fulfill that purpose for a very long time. It’s not epistemologically correct to assign emotions to items through divinations, I think, but if this thing had an emotion I imagine it would be sad.” ”Most importantly, it does not feel fulfilled. It is not behaving the way that objects reunited with their lost owners would be have.” “Given this, I hope you will forgive me for my indiscretion in this next act.” Looseleaf... shifts her arm, the arm touching the bracer, sliding off it and onto the elvish lady’s arm, and Lesser Soul Reads her.

Now Soul Read is for living things, and only sort of gets you mood and general intentions- for now. Saelhen, though, won't be having any of that- she passes her dex save to pull away before Looseleaf can read her. (This, of course, only makes Looseleaf more suspicious.)

Tumblr has new post restrictions that force me to keep these posts short, so here's:

[Part B]

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Will We Be Friends When We Grow Old?

A Tsugumi and Shoka fic. Oneshot. Major Neo spoilers.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33277189

More detailed plot summary: Tsugumi helps to comfort Shoka about the loss of Ayano, as they hold a memorial for her. This fic is mainly platonic. Though some slight one-sided shipping ended up in here (Tsugumi towards Shoka), but it’s blink and you miss it and you can still choose to see it as platonic. Also, RindoShoka and Neku and background someone. For me, it’s Shiki. But I didn’t specify, and you could maybe imagine it as someone else. Tsugumi’s PoV. Oneshot. Canon compliant

Tsugumi had only been in Shinjuku again for a few weeks—trying to figure out how they could bring it back from the brink, and have it be shiny and new again—when she got a call from Shoka, begging her to come back to Shibuya for a bit, because she needed someone with her who could understand the crippling loss of Ayano and be there for a memorial.

And while this was a tiny bit inconvenient—because Kaie had electronics mapped to Tsugumi’s head right now, in thinking maybe her visions of Shinjuku could help to create it, and then they could use something like a 3D printer to recreate it... after they made one that strong—Tsugumi knew that she would happily tell her friend Kaie to wait a little longer on this, so she could go comfort Shoka.

After all, how long had she been trapped in her Mr. Mew doll because of that bastard Kubo, before Shiki’s kind soul had wrestled her out of it? So, Tsugumi thought she could wait longer for her home to surface from the seas again, too.

Especially since Tsugumi knew it had to be hard for Shoka right now, without her old family. She had the Wicked Twisters... and while Tsugumi was sure they were trying their best to help soothe Shoka’s pain about Ayano’s erasure, it probably wouldn’t mean as much as someone doing the same who understood the loss themselves.

So, Tsugumi delicately removed the wires from her head, texted Shoka that she'd be there in a jiffy, and then looked to Kaie, who was definitely looking at her questioningly right now.

"Sorry, Kaie," Tsugumi reassured her dear friend, as she patted his hand. "Can this wait for a week? I want Shinjuku back as soon as you do. I swear. But Shoka needs me. It seems she's having a memorial service for Ayano, and needs the support. I'll be back in a week, okay?"

'That's fine', Kairi texted Tsugumi near instantly, once her words had seemed to reach his ears. 'Be sure to give Shoka my best.'

And Tsugumi smiled at Kaie even brighter now, because something about hearing him care about Shoka was aligning her soul, when a part of her had been afraid that her Shinjuku family would never reconnect with Shoka again. But clearly she needn't have worried. And that was a very beautiful thing, indeed.

"Don't worry!" she promised Kaie, her hand on her heart. "I will."

...

It didn't take Tsugumi too long to get back to Shibuya with her Reaper wings.

And one of the first things she saw when she arrived there, was Shoka and Rindo leaving 104... and Shoka wearing white clothes, of all things! Rindo was wearing all white, too.

And though it took Tsugumi a second to guess why, she did eventually figure out the reason. Shoka liked this one book series called "The Mortal Instruments", and in that, the characters with special powers—the Shadowhunters—wore white to funerals, instead of black. And Shoka must have been doing that here, since she usually wore black, and must have gotten Rindo to go along with that, as well... even though he usually seemed to wear a lot of white, from what Tsugumi had seen, he was wearing nothing but it now. And Tsugumi knew she would have to do the same thing.

"Shoka, it's so good to see you!" Tsugumi exclaimed as soon as she found her voice, running up to her surrogate sister and giving her a hug. "And I'm so sorry that I didn't think about that leaving you here alone, would mean leaving you to deal with the loss of Ayano alone. But I'm here now. And since here funeral is going to be ‘City of Bones’ themed... I can get the instrumental for for 'When the Darkness Comes' to sing, if you want."

"Thank you so much, Tsugumi!" Shoka cried, pulling Tsugumi only tighter into her arms. And Tsugumi was completely happy to be there, as she stroked Shoka’s hair and took in the sweet smell of Shoka’s raspberry scented perfume once again. “That sounds great. I'm so glad you're here, Tsugumi! And I'm so glad to see you again!" And Shoka kissed Tsugumi on the cheek then, leaving a stain of red lipstick there for the moment... until Tsugumi had to sort of awkwardly wipe it off (though maybe it actually wasn’t too awkward for Tsugumi at all).

And speaking of awkward, it was clear that Rindo felt that way right now. And Tsugumi wondered if he was second-guessing his place as Shoka's best friend at the moment.

But he was definitely that, Tsugumi was ashamed to say. Because the “The Mortal Instruments” was one of the few things Tsugumi knew about Shoka lately, since she'd been so focused on saving Shinjuku, she’d let her fall through the cracks. And how she desperately regretted that.

"I don't know if it's gonna be much of a funeral," Rindo explained to Tsugumi now, maybe thinking it was best that she got all the detes? "I asked Shoka if she wanted one for Ayano, and told her my mom could help pay for it and everything. But she said she'd rather just have a short vigil at Miyashita Park, where we can leave tributes to her. Though I'm sure you could sing during it, if you'd like."

"Thank you," Tsugumi told Mr. Twister, looking at him with her eyes shining. She thought it was pretty sweet, that even though the event would be short, he would make time for his former enemy to sing, if she would wish it. Tsugumi might have even started fangirling over him then, as much as she did Lord Ishimoto, if she hadn't realized then that she might be too choked up to sing. Because she was still heartbroken up about Ayano, too. And thoughts of her, often brought on thoughts of Big Su, that would really start up the waterworks in her...

"So, were we planning on going right now, then?" Tsugumi asked. But it was pretty obvious by the way that Shoka and Rindo were dressed, that that was the case. "Wow. I made it just in time, then!"

"I would have done it a second time with you, if you'd been late," Shoka assured Tsugumi, taking her hand. "And I'll do the same for Shiba, Kaie, and even Hishima, whenever they get their asses up here."

At this point, Rindo had pretty much disappeared into the scenery of 104, the poor kid—Tsugumi did feel bad about leaving him out, she wasn't trying to, but this sort of was a moment for her and Shoka right now—but thankfully, Neku, Fret... and some prissy looking kid seemed to be showing up for him, and Shoka, too, to keep him occupied.

"Kaie told me to send you his love," Tsugumi promised Shoka, squeezing her hands. "And I'm sure he'll be down right after I am. And Shiba and Hishima care, too. You know them, Shoka. They really do, deep down, as do I. And I'm so sorry if I ever made that unclear. But they might wait until Shinjuku is in some proper form again, before they stop by. But I know they will. And you could always come visit us, you know! In fact, please do, Shoka. Please?! With sugar on top!

"Anyway, let me go to 104 and buy some all-white clothes, and then we can get this solemn show on the road!"

And Tsugumi did just that.

They ended up getting forget-me-nots for Ayano, to let her know she would never be forgotten. And since, sadly, the fact she had never forgotten Shinjuku was part of the reason she could never embrace Shibuya, Shoka had let Tsugumi know. And even Blue Pepsi, since she loved the beverage and it somewhat matched her favorite shirt, and the Maximum Ride book series, since there was a character named "Iggy" in there, like her iguana.

And Shoka left her her Mr. Mew hoodie, thinking that maybe Ayano would like to have it, and might understand her love for Gatto Nero now, wherever her soul pieces were.

And Tsugumi did sing for her, though she broke key once, as the tears overwhelmed her... but Neku had chimed right in then, and had covered it up and no one had heard anything wrong. And if Neku hadn’t already been in a committed relationship, Tsugumi could have kissed him for it.

A girl named Rhyme had a few adages to say... as did Nagi say some very wise things over their gathered items.

And Fret bought a long scarf to tie off a part of Miyashita Park with all of the stuff here, so no one would mess with it for a while. Rindo had helped Fret do that (and had then gone back to holding Shoka). Rindo was also largely responsible for all of this, Tsugumi knew, so she definitely knew he was going to be on her Christmas list from now on.

Shiki had looked rather pained when Rindo and Fret had stretched the scarf so thinly, though—as if expecting it to rip right away—and had already broke out her needle and thread, and might have been creeping closer and closer to it as she eyed it...

And then Beat banged a small drum at the end of it all, to then try and make them all feel better—which was much appreciated, because Tsugumi didn't know if she liked where Joshua was so intently watching where Ayano had apparently fallen—as he told everyone that Ayano wouldn't want them to grieve... Shoka and Tsugumi, anyway.

And it was truly an event to remember. And Tsugumi knew that she would for as long as she existed in her non-life.

She even had new friends now, that she hadn't counted on at all when she'd started this venture here.

She'd thought she'd stay jealous of them and not fully understand why Shoka had left her family.

But now Tsugumi was hugging Shoka goodbye and promising she'd visit Shibuya and the Twisters again soon... though still making sure to try and needle Shoka into visiting Shinjuku, too.

"It's been great, Shoka. See you soon, dark girl," Tsugumi teased, running her hands up and down the lady's arms, as she did so.

And she could pretty much hear Shoka smirk—or perhaps purr—as she shot back with lips and teeth against Tsugumi's cheek, "And see you soon, light girl."

And then Tsugumi's visit to Shibuya turned out better than even Shiba could have guessed when he'd been the Executor.

Because by a literal miracle... spilling into Shoka's apartment, to hug them both now—as all three sobbed, and made promises to hold onto each other and never act so foolishly again—was Ayano.

Author’s Note: The ending with Ayano coming back is super cheesy, I know. And I sort of hate to write it. But when I had Joshua at the memorial too, I knew it had to happen.

This will be the one TWEWY story I write, that sort of cheapens death. The anime soften TWEWY’s blows by bringing Nao and Sota and Def March back to life (which I appreciated, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think they were brought back in the game. And I get why they weren’t: to not cheapen death). So, this will be the one where I soften Neo’s blows, I guess.

Hope you all enjoyed!

Oh, and the title is a lyric from the song “End of the Line” by Christi Mac, which is pretty good. I couldn’t think of anything else to name it, so I went with that. -shrugs-

And, yes. I do think Tsugumi ended up with one-sided feelings for Shoka in this. I didn’t intend this when I wrote it, but it just happened… which is sort of what gave birth to my theory on Tumblr, about me wondering if maybe Tsugumi was actually beta!Rindo. And I believe that now, but it’s just a game theory, as MatPat would say. But anyway, you guys can also gladly ignore those one-sided feelings that sort of crept up in here, if you want, and see this all as platonic as it was meant to be, if you want! Or not! Whatever floats your boat!

And while I wanted to write something for Shoka and Tsugumi—because the game hinted at their friendship, but then didn’t do much with it—someone on Tumblr actually responded to my post about that and gave me the idea to have Tsugumi help Shoka deal with the loss of Ayano. But now I can’t find the commenter. But shoutout to them. If it was you and you’re reading this—or anyone here knows who it was—let me know, so I can give credit where credit is due!

Shutting up now!

[red-the-dragon-writes]

the misadventures of Skironir and Rubin

crossposted from DeviantArt, written for an "ARPG" on there.

Skironir and Rubin are my ruukans, which are like weird deer moose elk... things. I don't know. They're currently on a quest to get a magical talisman of Gay(tm) from a volcano. Rubin is a directionally-challenged liar, and Skironir is, unfortunately, In Love With Him.

“And you’re sure you know where we’re going,” Skironir said.

“I wouldn’t say I was if I wasn’t,” Rubin snapped back. He was lying, incidentally. He had, like, a vague idea of where to go but… in this weather? In this visibility? The sky was choked with ash. Rubin didn’t even know where the sun was, let alone whether they were going north or south. But the last thing he needed was Skironir bugging him about it. “Why?”

“We’ve walked past that rock three times already,” Skironir said glumly.

“Which rock?”

“That one. The black one.” Skironir gestured towards a little outcropping of some kind of volcanic rock with his head.

“Uh,” said Rubin. “What if it’s just three rocks that kind of look similar?”

“It’s the same rock,” Skironir said. “Look, I told you we should’ve brought someone else along.”

“Who else? Who else would come? In case you hadn’t noticed, neither of us are really overflowing with friends.”

“Well, there’s always Rahh—”

“Friends who can find their way through massive clouds of dust, not friends who will help us steal anything that isn’t nailed down,” Rubin said dismissively.

“Hey, you never know. And besides, aren’t we trying to steal a token? An extra friend or two wouldn’t go amiss, really. This was kind of a mistake—”

“Would you shut up?” Rubin snapped. “I’m trying to figure out where we’re going.”

Skironir grumbled a bit, but obligingly stopped talking.

Rubin squinted at the sky a bit more, struggling to see to no avail.

“I mean,” Skironir said, after a few moments of just complete silence. “Listen, if we just keep going it’s not like we’ll, you know, get any more lost than we already are.”

“Are you joking?” Rubin said.

“Um.”

“You have to be joking, right? That was a joke, right?”

“No, I was serious.”

“We’re not that lost. I sort of know where we are.”

“Is this going to be like the time you got us all lost in the runewoods by accident? I don’t even know how you managed to get us there.”

“What? No. No, I’m not, that was totally different.” Well, he had been lying about knowing where they were then, too. “Probably totally different. At least a little different.”

“I swear to Freya, if you’ve led us around on a wild goose chase looking for something you don’t even know how to find I am going to ditch you here myself, Rubin.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Did you actually—are we really here without any sense of direction? Did you actually do that? Are you for real?”

“Bickering isn’t going to help us find our way any better.”

“So far all that we’ve found is, apparently, a circle to walk in while you lie to me about where we’re going. I think bickering is a better option.”

“Listen, I know where we’re going, okay? I’m serious. I do. I got directions from someone else and everything. I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”

“Yes, you would.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”

“Yes, you would. You have. More than once.”

“Well, I’m not now. Okay? I know where we’re going.”

“Where are we going, then.”

“Northeast. Like I told you. It’s somewhere at the very foot of the volcano.”

“And you’re really being serious about that.”

“I am.”

“If I find out you’re lying to me, I swear I’m just going to leave you here and go home. I mean it, I will.”

“I believe you,” Rubin said, which was a lie.

“You do, do you,” Skironir said sarcastically.

“I believe you mean it,” Rubin conceded vaguely. “Listen, let’s hunker down and wait for the sky to clear, alright? Just a bit? It shouldn’t take too long.”

“You’d know, would you? Been here before?” Skironir snipped.

“No, but how long could it last?”

It lasted a while.

The sky darkened and got light and darkened again, and the clouds of ash only got worse. It got to the point that they were both dusted gray-white with ash and coughing from whatever it was, something in the air making it heavy and acrid and hard to breathe.

“Sure we shouldn’t just start walking?” Skironir said, at the beginning of the first night.

“No,” Rubin said. “The last thing we need is to get more lost.”

And so they waited, and rested, and when the sun rose Skironir asked again.

“We’re not getting anywhere just sitting here. Are you sure we shouldn’t just pick a direction and start walking?”

“I’m still sure,” Rubin said.

“It’s getting harder to breathe,” Skironir pointed out.

“I’m still sure,” Rubin insisted. “The last thing we need is to get into a place where it’s harder to breathe and then have to stop.”

“Maybe we should give it up,” Skironir said.

“We’ve already come this far.”

“That we have,” Skironir said. “That we have.” And he dropped it, and they waited some more; and then when dusk came again and they were both coughing on the fumes, Skironir brought it up one last time.

“I really don’t think we should stay here.”

“I can’t see how getting lost will help.”

“I think we’re going to suffocate if we stay here.”

“I can’t see how getting lost will help,” Rubin repeated.

“I can’t see how sitting around like a pair of dumbstruck fools will help, either.”

And he was right, so eventually Rubin ducked his head and staggered to his feet, the motion harder than he’d expected. His body felt heavy. Must’ve been the fumes.

“Are— what are we doing now. Are we going?”

“Yeah,” Rubin said. “You’re right. Staying here isn’t doing us any good.”

“And I can’t imagine you can figure out where we need to go from here,” Skironir asked.

“No.”

“So let’s,” Skironir sniffed the air, and broke off into a set of hacking coughs. Rubin fought the urge to wince.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Skironir grimaced. “Let’s go that way.” He inclined his head away from the volcano. Or. Where Rubin thought the volcano was; away from the source of that awful sulfur breeze.

“I think that’s not—I don’t know where we need to go, but I’m pretty sure that’s directly away from it.”

“Do you want to walk into it?”

“Not particularly.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll go this way, and if we’re wrong we’re wrong.”

“I suppose,” Rubin said uncertainly. “We’ve come all this way, though. To go back empty-handed—”

“We can always try again.”

“…yeah,” Rubin said, eventually. “I just—I don’t want to lose our chance.”

“I know. Do you think I do? Obviously not. What do we have, a week left? Two?”

“Not enough.”

“But if we wind up dead, then of course we’re not going to manage it.”

“I know. But if there weren’t any risk, it wouldn’t be an issue—”

“Hanging out in toxic clouds is a little risk?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Rubin said. “Alright. Let’s—let’s get walking, see what we can find this way. You’re right.”

“Right,” Skironir said, and shook his head. “I swear, I can’t wait to get out of this cloud of smoke. I can’t wait for my eyes to stop watering.”

“I know, right,” Rubin said, and shook his legs off a bit. “Let’s head out.”

And they got up, together, out of their little shelter behind the crop of rock, and walked off into the gray haze.

...several days later...

“This is it,” Rubin said. “This has got to be it. Look, remember that whole little nonsense rhyme about the treacherous path and whatever-the-hell?”

“What if it was about something else?” Skironir said, looking dubiously at the sharp path. “I don’t think that can support our weight, if I’m going to be honest with you. Look, it’s practically crumbling.

“The lava clearly used to cover it. If it were that fragile it would’ve melted.”

“That’s even worse,” Skironir gritted his teeth. “Rubin. Do you know how hot lava is?”

“Hot.”

“Yeah. Really hot.”

“If we go across fast enough, it should be fine—”

“It’ll burn our hooves.”

“Not if we go fast enough.”

“Yes, if we go fast enough! Lava is super fucking hot, Rubin. It’s not a game.”

“Okay. Then I’ll try the passageway and you can stay here and then when I get the item you can’t have it.”

“That’s not fair,” Skironir said. “I came all this way.”

“Yeah, but now we have to keep going. And you don’t want to.”

“I just want to be sure this is safe.”

“It’s not,” Rubin said tacitly. “It’s definitely not. But the whole thing isn’t. We’re going into a volcano to get a magical item. What part of that sounds safe to you?”

Skironir sighed. “Yes, yes, I know. But there’s a difference between something dangerous but doable and just messing up out of recklessness. This is the latter, Rubin. You know it and so do I.”

Rubin sighed. Skironir had a point, loathe as he was to admit it. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine, we’ll try to test it.”

“How?”

Rubin sighed. “Uh, I don’t know. Let me just try crossing.”

“That’s… that… kind of defeats the purpose of testing it,” Skironir said.

“I’ll go slowly.”

“Still.”

Rubin snorted and turned away, looking back to the narrow rock ridge.

“Be careful,” Skironir said, evidently giving up on dissuading him.

“I will,” Rubin said.

The ridge was made of black basalt, but shards of volcanic glass poked up here and there, sharp enough to cut. Rocks littered the pathway, as though they had fallen there and gotten stuck. The whole thing was barely the width of Rubin’s shoulders, and it looked uneven. Not something Rubin would want to brave in any other circumstance, that was for sure, and that wasn’t even considering the deathly heat bubbling up from the magma deep below the cavern and running through the walls beside them. One slip would mean death, without a shadow of a doubt. And if he was wrong, and there was a channel of lava running underneath or inside that chasm, even stepping foot on it could mean death, too.

Rubin took a deep breath, shot off a desperate prayer to Loki znd to Odin, and set foot on the walkway. He half expected it to crumble under his feet.

It held. It was slippery, but it held. Rubin tested his weight, and then delicately set down his other foot. The pathway was so narrow that he had to lean his feet towards each other to avoid from setting it directly on the edge. Rocks shifted under his second hoof, and he felt around for a more stable foothold before finally setting it down and attempting to take a carful step forward.

It was slow going, finding the safe footholds, waiting to make sure they’d handle his weight. And the oppressive heat of the volcano only grew more and more intense the further over the ridge he got. Besides and below it, he could feel hot air absolutely blasting up at him, superheated from the laval below, and it was already hot enough to begin with here so close to the heart of the earth. With his luck, the earth would shake underneath him, and he’d go crashing down into that all-destroying heat—

“Please hold still, please hold still, please hold still,” Rubin murmured under his breath, feeling for a safe foothold for his next step.

“What was that?” said Skironir. “Are—are you going to fall?”

“No,” Rubin called back. “Just, uh, you know, I don’t. I think it’s fine, actually. Uh.”

“You sound nervous as hell.”

“I am! I’m walking on a tiny pathway over a whole bunch of lava! Please let me concentrate, so I don’t die.”

Skironir scoffed, but also shut up.

Rubin made it to about halfway over the ridge without issue, and then when he set down his hoof to take the next step, he felt an alarming slide start to happen, and picked his hoof up just in time for a whole section of the path to snap and go sliding down to the cavernous depths below. The path wasn’t destroyed, no, no, it was still walkable, but that was deeply concerning. Skironir hissed in a breath behind him, but Rubin couldn’t afford to focus on him, not if he wanted to avoid meeting the same fate as that cluster of rocks.

The rocks around it, Rubin probed around very carefully with one hoof, seeemed relatively stable, at least, and he kept walking.

“Rubin, I think you should come back now,” Skironir said, as soon as he started up again. Rubin slipped and hastily had to struggle to get his balance back, instinctively turning back to look at him.

“Uh, I can’t,” he said, after a second. “I can’t turn to look at you without overbalancing. I can’t walk backwards on this ledge without falling.”

“Oh, shit,” Skironir said.

“So there’s only one way to go, and that’s all the way to the end.”

“Oh, shit,” Skironir repeated. “Loki guide us.”

“I just hope he doesn’t start moving while we’re on here. The last thing we’d need, ha,” Rubin said, trying to keep his tone light, “would be an earthquake. Could you imagine that?”

“Oh, good gods. You’re going to jinx us.”

“Just… let me concentrate on getting all the way to the edge, okay?”

“We should’ve brought a rope.”

Now that was a good idea. “We should’ve. Next year.”

“Next year,” Skironir agreed.

“Please let me concentrate now.”

Skironir reluctantly fell silent. Rubin could hear him prancing nervously at the edge of the more solid ground.

For his part, Rubin managed, albeit nervously, to make it the rest of the way across the narrow ridge and onto a larger outcropping of rock. He turned, and attempted to school his body language into something a little more reassuring. “Okay, Skironir. Perfectly safe. Now it’s your turn.”

“Perfectly safe,” Skironir repeated.

“Perfectly safe.”

“If I die, I’m going to claw my way back to this earth just so I can haunt you. I can’t believe you’ve talked me into this,” Skironir groused, cautiously setting one hoof and then the other onto the path. Skironir was a shade smaller than Rubin, and he fit on the path a little more comfortably, although not by much. He picked his way across relatively quickly, compared to Rubin, but did so safely for the most part. And for his part, Rubin got to discover a fascinating little tidbit: it was actually more nerve-wracking to watch someone you cared about pick their way over a deadly flow of lava on the world’s narrowest crumbling path ever than it was to do it yourself.

But at least he was doing it safely, Rubin figured. He didn’t put his hooves down wrong once. He didn’t slip, and the rocks didn’t break out from under him. He was nearly all the way over.

Skironir set one hoof down on solid ground, and then the other, and then he put one of his hooves wrong of rthe first time and the entire path crumbled beneath him. Rubin jumped forwards, trying to catch him, and Skironir scrabbled desperately at the uneven surface of the volcanic rock. By some miracle they managed to get him up, and he didn’t fall to a terrible and painful death. Had he been half an inch further back, it most likely wouldn’t have worked.

Good gods.

“Skironir, I— are you okay?” Rubin asked, sniffing him carefully.

“Rubin, how are we going to get back?”

“What? Are—are you hurt?”

“Rubin. The path. How are we going to get out?”

Rubin blinked at the chasm, now inconveniently missing several feet of path.

Aw, shit.

[jebazzled]

Why Aren’t People Writing With Me?

Why aren't people writing with me?

Real talk: do you often find yourself waiting weeks or even months between partners replying to your posts? Do people seem to prioritize all their other threads over yours? Do people seem to be just not that jazzed about writing with you? It's the worst feeling, when you're spinning your wheels and on the outskirts, wondering why you're struggling to gain traction. Sometimes, sites just be like that - people writing with their friends, or closed groups hard for a newer member to break into, or folks writing on slow timelines, or not keeping track of how long they've kept a partner waiting. It comes with the territory. But sometimes, it might be your writing that's holding your threads back. I know what you're thinking:

But it's something everyone can genuinely stand to consider, when they're having trouble getting a thread to keep moving: how much of this is my thread partner holding me up, and how much of it is me? Is there anything I can do to keep things moving? No matter how long you've been writing or how advanced a writer you are, it can be easy to forget that writing is ultimately a game of improv, and writing well is only part of the job. Part of the job is setting your partner up for a good time, too.

This tutorial is about writing starters & replies that make your thread partner excited to write back.

We'll be covering:

Starters that stall vs. starters that enthrall (sorry! the rhyme was necessary.)

Common tactics for writing replies - and common pitfalls of them

Alternate approaches to writing replies

Hopefully, these tips and tricks will improve your rp experience - because aren't we all here for a good time?

Onward!

STARTERS

Ah, starters. The bane of every roleplayer's existence. Starters are difficult because they often require some scene-setting, leaving the writer to try to set up a premise and a vibe without powerplaying for their partner. And then, you've got to start the interaction. There's a lot to contend with, so a lot of people avoid starters at all costs.

Personally, I like starting a thread: this way, I'm not waiting on a post; I have control over when it goes up. Thread partners often appreciate you writing a starter for them, so it's an easy way to engender good will. And finally, for me, it lets me make sure the thread is off to a good, actionable start.

Starters come with pressure - the starter sets the tone for the thread. A dud starter will stump your partner on replying, and they may even grow to dread posting. Which isn't fun for either of you!

Some things to consider when crafting a starter that will get your partner excited:

PREMISE Whether you're writing an open thread or a plotted thread for a specific partner, every starter needs a premise. The premise might be simple: perhaps your character is going to pickpocket your partner's. Maybe it's two friends catching up. It could be two strangers bumping into each other in an alley. It might also be more complex: maybe you're setting up an enemies-friends-lovers-enemies-rivals-lovers-friends-enemies plot. Maybe your character is defending the teaching of evolution to schoolchildren before a jury of his peers. Maybe it's a duel.

Generally, the more specific the premise, the better. This doesn't mean you need every beat of the thread plotted out, but it is good to think about: What do we want each character to get out of the thread? 

Think of this as your overall goal for the thread. Is one character seeking reassurance or advice? Is there a business transaction being made? Have you and your partner agreed to hurt one character in a duel? If you can't think of an overall goal or point for the thread, the chances of stalling are high. This is common with "catch up" threads, especially ones in which neither character has particularly exciting updates to share. If only one character is "getting something" out of the thread, be careful in your own posts to set up plenty for your partner to respond to. Not every thread will have equal actionable payoff for both characters, which isn't inherently a bad thing. But if your posts don't give your partner much to engage with, the thread can read as selfish or one-sided - which isn't anyone's intention!

How do we want the events of this thread to impact this character, moving forward? 

Related to the above, if both characters can walk away from this thread without any change - perhaps reconsider the premise or necessity of your thread. There is no shame in not doing a thread when it wouldn't mean anything to character development or plot progression for either character! "Just because" threads are always the first that drop on thread priorities - why not save yourself the trouble, and plot something you will both be excited about?

What is the most reasonable entrypoint for this thread? 

Reality is filled with filler - moments in which nothing interesting happens, but which carry us from point A to point B. Conversation that goes nowhere and just happens for the sake of filling silence. But this isn't reality, this is fiction, which means we can cut the boring stuff and jump straight into the meat. If your premise is Character A pickpocketing Character B, don't open with Character A just wandering around the market, waiting for Character B to wander around the market, so Character A can pickpocket them: close your starter with Character A's hand around Character B's wallet. This gives your thread partner something to respond to (the theft) and in two fewer posts than it would have taken otherwise.

ACTION Dialogue is an engine for plot progression and for character development, and there is nothing quite as satisfying as strong dialogue. But questions, greetings, and other standard ways to launch an in-character conversation aren't your only options.

All a starter needs is action, and saying "hello," "what are you doing," or "hey! That's my pod racer!" are all actions. But actions can be silent, too, so long as they trigger a reaction from your writing partner. Character A pulling their hand out of the butt pocket on Character B's jeans, wallet in hand, begs Character B to react. Character C puking into the same trash can where Character D is searching for the utility bill they need for proof of address gives Character D something to dodge. Character E speedwalking through the grocery store and destroying the greeting card aisle gives Character F something to be horrified at. Even if A, C, and E all do it without saying a word. One thing you'll notice about each of the above premises is that they involve doing something - pickpocketing, puking/dumpster diving, grocery shopping. If you suspect your starters are leaving people underwhelmed, consider building your premise around action. The action doesn't need to be dramatic like the above examples. For instance, let's say that Character G is catching up with Character H after her divorce. They can do this over coffee in Character G's living room - but if they're walking their dogs while Character G's kids are with her ex-husband, you and your partner can use the dogs as emotional stand-ins:

Hannah dug her heels into the ground as Penelope started after a squirrel. Beside her, Gloria and Fifi both seemed not to see it. Hannah had never seen Gloria so out of it, so disconnected from the world around her. It frightened her. "How's Fifi holding up?" she asked, quietly, once Penelope calmed down and they kept walking. "I know Mike wasn't great to her, but - she probably misses the routine?"

Giving the characters some sort of verb to do beyond talking gives you more lenses through which to view an interaction, plus more opportunity for body language for your partner to respond to.

STARTERS: TL;DR Now that we've talked about how to start a thread on the right foot, let's quickly review our main food for thought items. Mind Snacks, if you will:

What do we want to get out of this thread?

Start on track for that result - do not lead with a detour!

Build around action - even small ones

Is the concept of this thread important or interesting? Would we be better served skipping it and writing something else?

REPLIES

Now your thread is off the ground. Excellent! It's a few posts in but your partner doesn't seem very excited - maybe they don't message you about how much they liked your reply, or how fun the thread is so far, or maybe they don't react to the tag in the server; maybe it's radio silence from them until they reply a month and a half later, when they're caught up on the threads they seem to keep shuffling ahead of yours. How do we move your thread up in the shuffle? Make it fun to reply to, and easy to reply to.

COMMON APPROACHES  An easy way to tackle a reply is by having your character react to each action and dialogue from your partner's character:

Maycey slid into the navigator's seat of the L2-47 spaceship, almost kicking over a cup of Dark Matter Decaf.

"Sorry," she said, not looking at Brooks. "Are we still checking out Planet 42601, or did General Berry have us change course?" Brooks watched Maycey enter the cockpit, snorting as she almost knocked over his coffee. Though it wouldn't be funny to see what the brew would do to the controls of the L2-47. "No problem," he said. "General Berry wants us to do a pass over 42601, but we aren't doing a full landing."

This reply covers everything Maycey did in her post, but doesn't advance the thread. What comes next? Brooks hasn't given Maycey much information to process, nothing to act on, no juicy body language to consider. Maycey's writer is fully on their own to advance the thread. To move it forward in a meaningful way, they might come up with a plot development they need to run by Brooks's writer to make sure it's not stepping on anything Brooks had planned. They may need to make up some lore. They may need to expand the premise of the thread. Brooks may or may not have helpful input, but when push comes to shove, Maycey is the one who is going to put it in their reply.

Maycey whipped her gaze to her captain, shocked. "But sir - we've come all this way to rescue 42601. Berry - sorry, General Berry wants us to abandon them? Their distress signal took three days to reach us; the atomospheric poisoning has got to be lethal by now." Her hands didn't touch the controls - she couldn't bear to take them off course to the desperate planet. "Sir, we have to do what's right." Brooks took a sip of his coffee, thinking about his own family back on Orbital Sphere 23-Y2K. They'd put out a distress signal years ago, back in his own training days. He'd seen it during radar detection class, and he'd had to ignore it. For the Good of the Galaxy. Not a day goes by that he doesn't think about the flashing signal on his screen, and about clicking the popup window. Dismiss. This, too, is for the Good of the Galaxy. He has to pretend it doesn't bother him. "The right thing is what General Berry says," he said, putting the coffee cup back in its cupholder. "For the Good of the Galaxy."

All of that work from Maycey, and Brooks only gave us one sentence to propel the plot. Yes, he had a lengthy internal monologue debating it - but that interiority means nothing to Maycey, who isn't a mind-reader. In this scenario, the focus on Brooks's tragic backstory, without giving Maycey anything actionable, sets up a very one-sided dynamic. If this happens consistently over one or many threads, the tragic backstory no longer feels tragic in a meaningful way, but just feels like a trite device to be trotted out - to tell rather than show a reader that a character has depth.

How could this post give Maycey more to work off of? Below is the same reply from Brooks, with additions made in green, rearranged wording in blue.

Brooks could feel Maycey's stare - bewildered and accusatory. He can hardly blame her, but she should know by now that this is how the Galaxy stays out of the Great Bezosian Black Hole. Sheer obedience. He avoided her eye contact, took a sip of coffee. Sheer obedience. Just like years ago - back in his own training days. He'd seen it during radar detection class, his own family's distress signal back on Orbital Sphere 23-Y2K, and he'd had to ignore it. For the Good of the Galaxy. Not a day goes by that he doesn't think about the flashing signal on his screen, and about clicking the popup window. Dismiss. This, too, is for the Good of the Galaxy. He has to pretend it doesn't bother him. "The right thing is what General Berry says," he said, putting the coffee cup back in its cupholder - his hands are shaking; it misses the rim twice, sloshes onto the knee of his parasuit. "For the Good of the Galaxy."

This version acknowledges the primary beat of Maycey's post (something we will talk about later) - that is, her accusation - and adds body language betraying his doubts. While interiority is great, externalization makes it possible for other characters to engage with your character's thoughts and motives. Brooks's new post gives Maycey more to engage with, which will better set her up to give Brooks more to engage with, and so on. When you both do the lifting, you both have a better time.

Another common method - especially in conversational threads, especially in "catching up" premises - is to lean on dialogue and, more specifically, questions. But most conversations we have in life aren't nonstop questions!

"Trudy said you got married," Annabelle said, fiddling with the edge of the linen tablecloth. "Is that true? I thought you didn't like Edgar - not like that." Sasha took an enormous bite of raw cucumber, not even bothering to slice it. "We just got engaged, we're not married yet. Don't you like Edgar?" Annabelle looked away, suddenly nervous. She didn't know why it mattered to her whether or not Sasha liked Edgar - only that it did. "He's fine, I guess. But do you like him?" "I do! I love him. Will you be my maid of honor?" Sasha grinned at her friend. She wanted nothing else in the world but for Annabelle to be part of her special day.

This series of posts involves a number of questions both stated in dialogue:

Is Sasha married?

Does Sasha like Edgar?

Does Annabelle like Edgar?

Will Annabelle be Sasha's maid of honor?

And unstated:

Why is Annabelle nervous?

Why does Annabelle care whether or not Sasha likes Edgar?

The stated questions are yes/no questions, somewhat procedural. The unstated question and its implication - that Annabelle cares about whether or not Sasha likes Edgar because she might like Sasha - is a juicier question than the minutiae of wedding planning. But Sasha's writer isn't letting Sasha notice or react to any of Annabelle's body language (her nervousness, her fiddling with the tablecloth) and focuses instead on the simple questions, which are a cover for what isn't being said. Information does not need to be voiced for it to be acted upon. Let's look at the same line of posts, with additions in green for Sasha and in pink for Annabelle.

"Trudy said you got married," Annabelle said, fiddling with the edge of the linen tablecloth. "Is that true? I thought you didn't like Edgar - not like that." Sasha had wondered when Annabelle would ask. She seems on-edge, fiddling with the tablecloth, as though they've never had a picnic outside before. She's not sure why Annabelle is out of sorts, but it's making her feel out of sorts. Sasha took an enormous bite of raw cucumber, not even bothering to slice it. "We just got engaged, we're not married yet. Don't you like Edgar?" She gently grasped Annabelle's fingers, unclenching them from the hem of the tablecloth. "Edgar thinks you're the bee's knees." Sasha's hand on hers - her stomach did a flip, palms instantly feeling clammy, like she could swoon in the summer sun. Annabelle looked away, suddenly nervous. It's worse that Edgar likes her. Makes her feel vile for resenting him like she does. She didn't know why it mattered to her whether or not Sasha liked Edgar - only that it did. "He's fine, I guess. But do you like him?" It's a silly question - of course she loves him; how could she have said yes otherwise? But Annabelle seems not to believe her. Annabelle seems to worry. Annabelle is worried so much of the time - and so much for her - she tries to be reassuring, gripping her friend by the shoulders, offering a grin. "I do! I love him. Will you be my maid of honor?" She wanted nothing else in the world but for Annabelle to be part of her special day. Annabelle is her best friend - the only person she could stand at the altar with besides Edgar.

See how much more complex the dynamic is between these two when they have things to react to other than dialogue?

REPLIES PART 1: TL;DR So now we've addressed two common approaches to replies and seen how they can fall short, and discussed tips for elevating them. Your main takeaways:

Acting is reacting - react to your partner's dialogue AND body language, and give them some to work from, too!

Dialogue is not a game of Questions Only

If you're not driving the thread forward, you're slacking - don't leave it to your partner every time!

SYNTHESIZING: YOUR NEW APPROACH TO WRITING REPLIES

Now that we've discussed the pitfalls of action-by-action responses and dialogue-only threading, let's synthesize all of the above into one methodology for writing replies. The common pitfall of action-by-action responses is that one writer ends up only ever progressing the thread one sentence at a time - thinking of a post in terms of beats helps separate what actually needs substantive response, versus what is background information to inform your response. When I write a reply, I copy and paste my partner's post into the wordcounter window where I write my posts. I read their post and identify the beats - that is, what actually happens. For example: 

Getting elected student body president was no joke. Hattie had worked for eleven long years to earn the position - bossed around her peers all the way from preschool. Back then, she'd been interested in power and prestige. But by the time she'd won the election junior year, she was exhausted. Now, on her first day of senior year, she was just excited about the choice parking spot. And yet, someone had the audacity - the nerve - to cut her off on the turn into the Keppler Family Parking Pavilion and slide right into her coveted parking spot. Crooked, so they took up the access lane to the adjoining handicapped spot. Too far forward, enough that she could see the metal RESERVED FOR STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT sign shaking on top of its pole. She threw herself out of her car, aiming the sole of her left Doc Marten into the license plate of the offender's Buick. "Hey, genius, there's no fucking run-off election this year!"

Because this is a starter, much of this is scene setting, which my partner could choose to echo, but the main things for them to react to are what my character - Hattie - offers in the moment:

dramatically throwing herself out of the car

kicking their license plate

swearing at them

Once I've distilled a post to the beats I need to respond to, I work my way through them, creating beats for my partner to respond to. With this method, a reply to the above might look like this:

Aunt Mildred's car was affectionately called The Boat for the first ten years of its life. Huge and unsinkable. That had changed when Aunt Mildred died in a boating accident over the summer, leaving Mikey the Boat's captain. Now, he just called it the Buick. And he wasn't very good at driving it - already he'd been honked at twice, overshot the turn into the parking lot, tires riding up on the curb. He pulled into the first available space. Figured he was outside the lines - but it seemed like the Buick was too wide to fit between lines anyway. And Aunt Mildred had never been one to follow rules. The terrible park job was in her memory. The sound of metal crunching at the back of the car, however, was not. If it's an accident, the Boat - the Buick - always wins, so Mikey gathered his violin case and drawstring backpack from the passenger seat, opened the driver's side door, and slowly got out of the car, turning his beanie backwards as if it mattered while he shuffled in his Adidas slides to the trunk, where a very short, very angry girl driving a Smart Car was trying to put the Boat - the Buick - in its place. "The car's not moving," he said, pulling a roll of Bubble Tape out of his backpack and taking a huge bite out of it. "But thanks for telling me my voting rights."

Mikey responds to Hattie's abuse of his car, but also gives Hattie a lot to respond to - minor dialogue, but a LOT of personal eccentricities that are bound to piss her off.

The dialogue and the action contribute to the trajectory of the thread - and giving Hattie something to play with keeps the musing about Aunt Mildred from feeling self-indulgent.

It's a small shift, going from thinking of posts as paragraphs to respond to to thinking of them as specific, small, actionable moments - but it makes a difference, especially in encouraging writers to be more thoughtful about creating opportunities for their partner to react.

REPLIES PART 2: TL;DR

beats, babey! not every sentence requires a response, but be sure to write some that do, whether it be dialogue or action.

ACTING IS REACTING!!!!!! if you don't give your partner something to react to, you are letting them down!

And that's all there is to it! Hopefully these examples are helpful as you think about ways to drive your plots and threads, and how to keep your own writing great for collaboration. The most important thing is to think of your writing partner. What do they need to be able to write back? What will make this thread exciting for them? How can you make sure this thread isn't serving you alone? Cheers, and happy writing!

[edgar-allan-possum]

What would Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien be like in fate (I'm presuming that revitalizing/inventing an entire literary genre counts for something in regards to being summoned)? What about his characters?

So, I really don’t know how to build a viable servant, so this gets kind of rambly. I’m putting it under a cut. (Also, I wish you could save asks as drafts)

John Tolkien (Caster)

“Elen sila lumenn omentielvo! I am John Tolkien, Caster-Class! Let’s go on an adventure together, Master!”

Tolkien, the great writer of the 20th Century. He has been summoned in the form of an old man in a tweed suit. While alive, he had no connection to the moonlit world of magecraft, and yet had the potential to become a great magus if he had ever studied. In a Grail War, he prefers not to fight himself, focusing instead on finding out who the other servants are and using his vast knowledge of ancient legends to manipulate events in his favor. 

I assume Tolkien is the sort of Heroic Spirit who would have a large number of Noble Phantasms, mostly relating to his works. Or, if we want to say that he discovered hidden truths about the world and wrote fictionalized accounts of them, perhaps his Noble Phantasms are gifts from Faerie.

Some of them might be (these are just ideas I’m throwing out there) :

Star of Earendil: Always in the sky above him, it is activated by reciting “Aiya Earendil elenion ancalima!” upon which it will flash, bringing fear to his enemies and hope to his allies (debuffs/buffs in game)

Athelas: A powerful healing herb (in FGO would be represented as a personal skill with a targeted heal)

Miruvor: A drink that brings warmth and restores strength (ATK buff)

Lembas: Elvish waybread that fills the stomach and restores stamina (defense buff)

The One Ring: A powerful Noble Phantasm that allows Tolkien to walk unseen and dominate the minds of mortals (not Heroic Spirits). He keeps it sealed and will not use it under any circumstances, as he considers it evil. A strong master might be able to force him under command seal to use it, but their would be consequences.

The Silmarillion: Registered as “incomplete”. When Tolkien is summoned, all of his notes come with him. If he were to finish it, then it would be registered as “complete” in the Throne of Heroes, and he would be able to use its full (as yet unkown) abilities, similar to Avicebron’s NP, Golem Keter Malthus.

In addition to his Noble Phantasms, Tolkien would, of course, have a number of Personal Skills. Here are some ideas for a few of them.

Mystic Eyes of Fairy: Tolkien could see fairies, and sometimes talked with them.

Rapid Words of the Divine (False): By speaking in Elvish, Tolkien can spellcast much faster than in English.

Inn Creation: Similar to Benienma (though she’s a Saber), Tolkien replaces the Caster-typical Territory Creation with Inn Creation, allowing him to be comfortable and safe no matter where he is, as long as he is on his own turf.

Item Creation: Tolkien’s magecraft is best at creating enchanted jewelry and weapons.

And now it’s time for how he would get along with other servants at Chaldea.

Tolkien and Nursery Rhyme get along like a house on fire, and NR now has a dog named Roverandom thanks to him. It’s a living toy dog, so there’s nothing to fear from Jack the Ripper (and Tolkien doesn’t get along with Jack very much).

He spends a lot of time with the Knights of the Round, especially Bedivere. He and Gawain signed each other’s copies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as a joke. However, he and Lancelot don’t really get along, probably because Lancelot is a French intrusion on a British story. On the other hand, Tolkien adores Mash (and who doesn’t?), and has gifted her a signed copy of Leaf, by Niggle.

When he’s had a couple of beers, he will loudly argue with Shakespeare into the small hours of the morning. He will also argue with EMIYA over what heroism is, and has been known to weigh in on Gilgamesh, Iskandar, and Artoria’s discussions on what the meaning of kingship is, which usually leads to him being chased down the hall.

What is his wish for the Holy Grail?

“I just want to finish my book! Or, perhaps...if I could see Edith again...one more time, yes. Then I would be happy.”

[wanderleave]

My contribution for @jancyweek2019, which is, fair warning: absolute nonsense. Entirely inspired by this post made by @metropoliskid, which is based on this tweet.

Once again, I know my blog text is tiny, so go find this guy on AO3 if you wish.

Nancy Wheeler was twelve years old when she started dating Jonathan Byers.

She thinks.

She isn’t sure. (Not about Jonathan Byers, she’s sure about him; she’d always found him endlessly intriguing, even in elementary school, when he sat at the picnic tables with Barb while Nancy played horses at recess, surrounded by girls who had names like hers—Stacy, Ally. Long e sounds. Names that rhymed.)

What she isn’t sure about is if they ever really started dating.

And if they did, they certainly never stopped.

If it did happen, it is, technically, the longest relationship she’s ever been in. If she’s counting.

She doesn’t know what that says about her.

She was twelve years old, sitting on a bench inside Hawkins Middle, reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn for English, waiting for her mother to pick her up and bring her to ballet. (Nancy never considered it, in her youth, how much of her mother’s life revolved around ferrying her and her siblings across Hawkins, from one activity to another. She must have been so grateful when Mike declared his independence from the automobile and insisted on riding his bike everywhere.)

She’d glanced up to see the Wheeler family station wagon coasting to a stop just outside the front doors, just as Jonathan Byers coasted to a stop in front of her.

“Nancy,” he’d said, breathless.

And that’s when it got complicated.

In the rush of juggling her school bag, her dance bag, and the blare of her mother’s horn, she didn’t quite catch the words that followed her name.

Her eyes had flicked to the car outside, then back to him. She’d thought about asking him to repeat himself, but his face had been open, expectant, nervous. Hopeful.

She couldn’t deny that face.

“Oh, um. Yes,” she’d said, in response to what she’d been pretty sure was a question.

He’d grinned at her. Held up his hand.

She’d high fived him, and rushed out to her waiting mother.

It was only as the car door slammed shut that she processed the question he’d asked her.

“Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

It’s only later—years later—that Nancy realizes that she’d have said yes even if she had heard him clearly.

As it was, she only got to enjoy their relationship—if it was a relationship (if seventh grade high fives could even be called a relationship)—for one day. Less than a day, even.

She’d glanced over at him shyly all through class, counting the minutes until lunch, when she would confirm if she’d heard him right. He’d returned her glances with equally shy smiles, putting her anxious mind slightly at ease.

And then the loudspeaker buzzed, Jonathan Byers was called to the office—and he was gone.

His whole family was.

Mike had pouted for weeks, his best friend vanished in an instant. “It’s not fair,” he’d moaned at dinner. “Why do they have to move just because of his stupid dad.”

The moaning continued over the phone, short long-distance calls that Nancy only ever worked up the nerve to intrude on once, picking up the receiver to mutter a quick “Tell-Jonathan-I-said-hi,” before hanging up with a clatter.

But the frequency of the phone calls trickled away as the school year went on, and by the time summer arrived, Mike had stopped insisting on being allowed to visit Will, and Nancy lost her only chance to confirm her relationship status.

She knows she could have called him herself. But that was, for her twelve year old self, too much to bear.

And plus, he’d never called her.

She misheard him, she told herself.

(She didn’t.)

He’d asked her another question, not girlfriend-related at all.

(He hadn’t.)

She’d told all her rhyming friends, giggles down the phone line later that night, and they’d waited alongside her with heavy anticipation for one of them to finally have a boyfriend, only to have their hopes dashed when it ended up being over before it really began. In the end she just felt foolish, for making such a thing over a boy.

“You know, you two never actually broke up,” Barb pointed out one day, once Nancy was able to think about it without wanting to bury her face in her hands, a matter of years later. As time goes on, it became almost a joke to her friends, a Schrödinger’s relationship that Nancy is both in and not in at the same time.

“Oh you can’t,” they said to James C, who asked her to prom as Nancy sat, blushing furiously, at her lunch table freshman year. “She’s dating Jonathan Byers.” (He’d been a senior, convinced she couldn’t turn him down, staggering away at Nancy’s faux-regretful confirmation of her relationship status.)

“So what’s this about you and some long distance guy?” Steve had asked, the first night she’d allowed herself to be inveigled into his back seat.

“Oh,” Nancy had said, already pulling her shirt over her head. “That’s . . . nothing. Middle school stuff.”

“Good,” Steve said, and Nancy forgot all about Jonathan Byers for the moment.

But she never truly forgets, not really.

Nancy moves to the city in one fell swoop.

She loads the U-Haul herself, only takes three wrong turns, and crams her entire life into the tiny studio that somehow costs more than the two-bedroom apartment she’d left Steve standing in, bereft.

She locates the nearest bodega, maps out her work commute on the subway, and prepares to begin her life anew.

It doesn’t quite work out like she plans.

She does manage to navigate the subway with relative ease, and she stops by the bodega almost every day, grabbing yet another item she’s realized she doesn’t own and cannot seem to live without.

The life anew part, however, eludes her.

She has a life, of course—drinks with college friends, lunches out with work colleagues. She tries new things, meets new people, goes on an endless parade of first dates. She even makes it to second and third dates for a few. But in the end, her days start to end up feeling enough like the inevitability she’d tried to escape that she wonders if it might make sense to head back to Indiana, see if Steve is still standing right where she left him.

It’s then that her thoughts turn to Jonathan.

Not in any kind of concrete sort of way—when she thinks of him it always feels hazy, somehow—but more idealistic; she imagines him living the life she wishes she could lead. He’d escaped Hawkins, in a way she somehow cannot, like the town is clinging to her, holding onto her fast even across state lines.

As a coping mechanism, it’s pretty fucked up, as Steve used to say, having the ghosts of her past haunt her present, but she’s working on it. She took the first step, at least.

She left.

“I wish you’d just come back,” her mother pleads, on the nights Nancy finds herself longing for the comforts of home, fingers grasped tight around the phone. What her mother doesn’t know is that she doesn’t call to be convinced to return.

She calls because it’s the one thing that strengthens her resolve to stay.

She only knows one person at the party.

Alice waves to her from across the apartment as Nancy navigates through the crowd, holding a six-pack in front of her like a peace offering, losing four along the way as she edges through and around clumps of people.

Nancy offers up the spare, taking the last beer for herself, and proceeds to endure the interminable agony that is entering a story halfway through and not knowing the teller well enough for them to recount the beginning. She likes Alice, she does, finding her Midwest sensibilities comfortingly refreshing after her months in the city, but theirs is a friendship of convenience, nothing deeper. Nancy wonders what Barb would say, if she were here.

Stop thinking about your dead friend and make some new ones, probably.

Nancy laughs to herself at the thought, and then starts at the unfortunate realization that someone is saying her name, and has been, for some time now.

“Sorry.” Her eyebrows raise, her eyes open wide, trying to make it seem like she was mostly listening this whole time. “I didn’t catch that.”

Alice gives her a look, but she’s smiling. “Sam was asking if you know the host.”

Sam ends up being a girl with black hair and even blacker eyeliner, who seems to be nursing Nancy’s other beer.

She shakes her head, shrugging a little. “Just Alice—”

“The only person that matters,” Alice interjects.

Nancy rolls her eyes a little. “I just moved here from Indiana,” she continues. “Alice is taking pity on me because I know no one in the city.”

Sam makes an ah yes face of benign interest, but then her eyebrows crinkle together. “Actually, my boyfriend grew up in Indiana, I think.” She turns her head, calls into the kitchen, but the actual name gets lost in the buzz of the crowd.

Sean, maybe.

Sam goes off in search of Sean (or was it John?) and Nancy takes a swig of beer as the conversation turns to the subway, as it is wont to do among people with only tenuous connections to each other but all with a singular hatred for their shared means of transportation.

Nancy’s just happy she has her own story—getting caught underground for half an hour, the windows steaming up as people shed clothes around her—and manages to coast on that contribution for the next twenty minutes, sipping the dregs of her bottle as the group grows and shrinks, and the stories go on and on.

She’s about to go in search of another drink (or if she’s being honest, maybe an Irish goodbye) when Alice begins recounting the story of her last date, a story Nancy knows from lunch last week, and realizes that she has one more story to contribute.

“—and when I told him I had to be up early the next morning, he rolls over, gives me a high five, says nothing else and strolls out the door. Haven’t seen him since.”

“I’ve got that beat,” says Nancy, and knocks back the rest of her beer. She takes a deep breath. “So I’m in seventh grade, and I’m waiting for my mom to pick me up after school. When—”

And then she sees him.

Coasting up to her just like he had eleven years ago.

“Oh my god,” she breathes.

She sees his hand reaching toward her, and for one absurd, heart-stopping moment, Nancy thinks he’s going to give her a high five. But the hand keeps going up, pulling her into a hug, and she actually cannot believe this is happening.

“Nancy Wheeler,” Jonathan Byers says, and she can feel her name vibrating through her, he’s holding her so tight. She wonders if that’s why she can’t catch her breath, but even after he releases her, she’s still got that feeling—like she’s missed a step, like the universe has been thrown out of alignment.

“Oh my god,” she says again, because that’s all she can do.

“I’m guessing you two know each other,” Alice remarks dryly.

He’s grinning, and his hair is shorter than it used to be (of course it would be, he’s not in seventh grade anymore), but he’s unmistakably Jonathan Byers, eleven years older. He spins to the side, wrapping his arm around Nancy, and she wonders if she’s dreaming, because this cannot actually be happening.

“Um, yeah,” she begins, but Jonathan cuts her off.

“Oh, we go way back,” he declares, and smiles fondly down at her. “Nancy’s my girlfriend.”

Nancy chokes on nothing, and changes her mind. She isn’t dreaming.

She has actually died.

It’s the only explanation. One last gasp of reality, chiding her for spending so much time thinking about a boy that she was never supposed to see again.

Death is cruel, though, because instead of the sweet bliss of nothingness, instead she has Jonathan Byers grinning at her, Alice looking at her, dumbstruck, and from behind her, a vaguely familiar voice saying, “I thought I was your girlfriend.”

Nancy turns to find Sam staring at her, a look of amused concern on her face.

“Um,” Nancy says.

[maikatc]

Black Sun Tale | I’ll Have My Day

hello! things are yet again calm before another storm for this chapter, i’d have to say. but there are some sections that i appreciate for just existing in this one as well.

remember that this is a first draft with only minor edits, and enjoy! comments and reception are heavily appreciated.

-

A day followed by after Ayu’s time in Fowls. Instead of the dead breeze of the forest, the morning woke him up through traffic and an early store-keeper’s yell.

Creeping awake from his freezing body, Ayu sat up from his thin blanket and shivered in his jacket. He shifted his spaced gaze to the alley’s ground. It was cold and shapeless, but the tiny cracks of grass formed a gentle frost through the night. 

Breaths formed clouds in front of him. And he buried himself in his jacket as his own frosting skin had already woken him up. 

But then, memory served his groggy mind well. 

Ayu zapped himself awake and scurried over to his ‘stuff’ pile. After digging through Oliver’s pineapples, medicine, and whatever he found in parts of the forest, he recovered his walkie-talkie after weeks of having no use.

Clicking on the connection button, the walkie hissed as he called out in excitement, “Annette, Annette, Annette-”

The call seemed endless, for Ayu made no stop of saying her name until she replied. Though, she only managed to pick up once his voice grew sore. 

“Ayu… Why are you calling me at six in the morning on a Saturday?”

“Because we’re having a meeting today,” he explained. “Go and tell Oliver to come over too.” 

The walkie’s buzz filled in the gap between Annette’s reply. “... Are you telling me to go to a meeting right now…?”

“What time is it?” He asked, as the sun had no sign of rising. 

“I already said it’s six a.m.”

“Oh.” His winter schedule had already started. “Shit.”

“Lort, I’m exhausted,” Annette commented. “It’s been a long week, Ayu, sorry-”

“No, no, it’s my fault.”

“No. I usually wake up at five. Today’s just a day off before church.”

Ayu tensed his hand at the device. “It’s okay, Annette. You can sleep some more, I’ll wait.” Before he could drop the walkie-talkie in guilt, he added the important notion again, “Just don’t forget to text Ollie for when he wakes up.”

“Gotcha’.” He heard from what he left behind him. “Thanks, Ayu.”

In the musky morning, he said to nobody, “It’s nothing.”

***

“You should have paid more attention to the time Ayu.”

“I know, Lillie, but I can’t tell.”

“Look up at the sky,” she giggled. “There isn’t even daylight.”

“I get it.” Scribbles filled Ayu’s new page while winds tried blowing the paper away. “I already said it was my fault.”

“As it is. You just disturbed a nice morning for her.”

“She- she had a busy week…”

“And you interrupted her only time of rest. Sounds rather careless.”

Ayu broke his pencil tip. “No, I-” His words would have continued if it weren’t for a figure by his entrance, not of Lillie smiling at him, but of Oliver. 

Accessorized with a pillow, blanket, his ukulele, and another bag, Oliver entered into the alley nonchalantly with all the items. However, it’d only been half an hour since his talk with Annette. 

“Why are you here this early?”

Oliver placed down the sleeping materials. “I pulled another all-nighter and my mom left for work early in the meanwhile.”

“Then why…?” He nudged at the pillow.

The boy sat down by him, nuzzling up in his extra coat. “I thought I could take a nap here. But,” he passed the bag to Ayu, “I brought leftovers from last night too. Fork included.”

A grumbling stomach left Ayu to stare blankly at the food. “Can I eat it right now?”

“Of course, you can.” The direction of Oliver’s answer faced his ukulele instead of Ayu, as he already began opening it up. 

Another morning wind blew, lunging Ayu to warm up his legs. He hissed at the weather. 

“… I should have brought you a jacket.”

“It’s fine. This isn’t the coldest it’ll be.”

Oliver huffed in the frosty air, laying down the instrument he held and grabbing the blanket. “When the meeting’s over, I can take you to my place again. For now, take the blanket.”

Hesitant, Ayu snatched the cover out of Oliver’s hands and wrapped it around himself. His cocoon welcomed him in a snug embrace, its fluffy fabric softening his dry skin. “Why’d you bring such a nice one?”

Oliver rubbed his hands off of the tail of the cocoon. “I just found it in my closet and it looked comfy.”

The child in the blanket smiled smugly at the new warmth.

“You can keep it if you want,” Oliver chortled. “You definitely look comfortable.”

Despite the satisfying bliss, a simple few facts knocked Ayu back to questioning. “Don’t you still want to sleep?”

“Yeah… I’m gonna need to eat in a few days so I’m ‘bout to be out of it soon.”

He tottered his new blanket around himself, but gently tossed it aside for the winds to meet him again. 

“Ayu-”

“I’ll eat while you sleep. Since I got some sleep.” He opened the streaming, microwaved food from the container, revealing baked ham and other goods. The scrumptious smell already distracted him. 

“But…”

“God, this looks good.”

He already began devouring the plate, too focused to listen to Oliver’s answer. “Alright…”

The seconds the small yet hefty meal remained in the bowl was minimum, as Ayu chowed down on some of the bread he had gotten the day before as an after-snack. While biting through, he marked his gaze back at Oliver, who had set up his own bed. 

Ayu’s old and withering blanket managed to be reused as a sort of bedsheet to cushion the hard floor. Oliver had neatly adjusted himself underneath the cover brought in, alongside having his head eased by his pillow and Ayu’s pillow being hugged his arms. 

“You’re fast.”

Oliver turned his way to Ayu’s eating wall. “You have a good pillow.” 

Their personalities radiated at that moment, one a mess and the other an urbane thing of exhaustion. 

There was no help but laughter.

***

With such a chilling morning, the two relaxed by each other’s side. Ayu sketched calmly next to Oliver, who seemed to bounce lots in his sleep. 

A new scene was set into fruition for the boy. Vague dreams lead his pencil to sketch out a glaring eye, then a flat chin, then a long neck. Rage was embedded in the blank stare he’d created. And a circle was the perfect touch for yelling. Such artistry in an image would make a great impact for the audience and their emotions, right?

“… Probably not.” 

“Probably what?”

Ayu jumped at his seat, whisking himself to see Oliver in his home-made bed and staring at his drawing from a distance. 

“You were awake?”

Oliver trudged his arms to hold himself up. Rubbing his eyes from the rising sun, he answered, “Yeah. It’s hard for me to sleep in general.” 

“… Do you usually stay up all night?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

It took few seconds to process how tiresome he was, but Ayu made a deep breath. He dropped his sketchbook to the side to ask questions. “What do you do all night?”

He plucked on the ukulele he left beside him. “What I do during the day: whatever. Just quietly.”

“Is it because you’re hungry?”

He stopped playing. The note that rung from the last string was choked by a tap from his hand. “Yeah, you can say that.”

Ayu stared at the abyss of his thoughts as he made questions. A memory formed for the new one, though reluctance of asking slowed his words. He looked at Oliver directly. “Can I see your arm? –“ 

He met Oliver with the sketchbook at his hands. Oliver’s eyes peered through the newest pages. By instinct, he lunged at the hand and grabbed the journal back. “Stop it!” 

Oliver held a cheeky, sluggish smile as he chuckled. “What? I just wanna see them.”

Ayu raised a brow, a smidge of a blush shined by his cheeks. Is it the wolf or something? “You didn’t ask.” 

“Well then,” he sat up with good posture, “may I see your new drawings?”

Ayu’s red tint heightened more in the realization that nobody had ever asked. He questioned why he hid them in the first place, but nonetheless, he complied. “Sure.”

Oliver held the book again and scanned through the pages. Ayu watched as he rung his fingers around his hair. New judgement was unpredictable. Except if it’s the wolf, obviously. His neutral expression forced a tense feeling inside of Ayu’s gut in the process of reading. 

“How long have you been drawing?” Oliver asked while flipping a page again. 

“Uh.” Ayu counted with his fingers. “I think six years. Someone told me I was good at it when I was six, so I just kept doing it. But I stopped when I was eight.”

Oliver hummed in response, still scanning. 

He continued, “My parents didn’t pay attention, so I never got advice except that it was good- oh yeah I stopped around the time I was eight… then Annette gave me the journal last year, so,” he counts, “I’ve been drawing for three years.”

Oliver clicked his tongue. “Well, it definitely shows.” 

The vagueness of the comment punched Ayu in the gut. But one page turn later and came a page full of bad handwriting. Ayu’s chest rose at the sight, yet Oliver stared at it for far too long. He uttered, “What’s this?”

“… Oh it’s- they’re my journal entries. Nothing really happens in them though.” 

Oliver scans through once more, while Ayu doubted he could even read them. “Have you ever tried to write something?”

“The entries have enough bad spelling.”

Oliver shook his head. “No, I mean like try and write something, like a poem.” 

“A poem…?” He may have only heard the word once in kindergarten. The lesson itself was lost in his passage of time. 

“Just write random stuff,” he said slowly, “in multiple lines, maybe rhyme it. It’s, uh, like a song if you will.” He gave the sketchbook back to him, a pencil already on his side. He gazed down at the new blank page.

When was the last time I heard a song? Oh yeah, one time during a traffic jam this one guy was blasting-

“Do you need help?”

Ayu snapped out of his thoughts. “Oh, no. I think I’m good… Do I just make a song?”

Oliver lost eye contact. “Uh, sure. You can make it short if you want too. It doesn’t have to be long.” He pulled back his hair. “Write what you want.”

The blank page dawned him far too much. Drawing never took much thinking for him –though improving always baffled him–; however, the start of a word intimidated and struck him at odds. 

Whispers of old pop songs flooded back in his mind. Those that played on the weekend at his car loudly and excitedly. He’d be cheering for the weekly trip where he finally went outside and off to Obodo. The generic lyrics bounced by his ears as the park and playground rested ahead of him. The older girl by his side sang to the music while making captions to his art on a clipboard, handwriting pretty and flowery like her name.

The summer sun beamed at his vision but reality blew at his skin again. The breeze reminded him of the page in front of him as well, to his dismay. Oliver had gone back to playing ahead of him. Ayu shivered in bitterness and began scribbling down the vocabulary he would remember. Words flowed to him simplistically and bluntly all the same. And hard pressure made the pencil squeak at movement. 

After a decent ten minutes, his thoughts were on paper, with reference to those pop songs of old. 

Cold gos by 

Throo on the nite

Snow is shy

and hideing in the sky

and I wayt

day gos away fast

dont be layt 

ill have my day soon

There… that looks okay, I think.

He called out: “Oliver I did it.”

“Really?” He turned around and put down his uke. “I thought it’d take you longer.”

He handed the text. “I just thought of pop songs.”

“Did you copy them?”

“No. Just used a line I heard a lot.” 

Oliver nodded. “Good. I used to copy rhythms of songs I thought was deep so you’re doing better than I did.” He read the lyrics. As he tilting his head, Ayu’s anticipation wracked instead of fear. Yet the time taken to read was lengthier than expected. “Okay your spelling isn’t actually that bad for what you have.”

Why is that the first thing he says, he questioned. The excitement died down to possible critique. 

“Honestly, as simple as it is, it’s a good simple.”

“And?”

“It needs a bit of tweaking, but overall there could be a good rhythm to it. Looks like a nice kids’ song to me.”

A kids’ song?

“It’s cute, I guess you could say.”

Ayu’s impatience pushed his words out. “Can you make a song out of it?”

Oliver’s eyes widened at the page. “Oh. Uh, yeah I guess I can.” 

“Right now?”

He scoffed, “No, not right now. Music takes time.”

Ayu’s curiosity got the better of him. “How long?”

“However long it needs to take. But I don’t think this’ll take that long.” He held the slip of the page itself. “Can I take this?”

“…”

“You can copy it down on another page.”

Slow at first, he nodded. “Why don’t you write it?”

Oliver’s face fell flat. “Yeah… if I read it right at least.”

“Psh, you can do it.” Ayu smiled at Oliver. The master musician would make beauty out of his work in his mind. 

Oliver rewrote on the new page with focus in his eyes. And through some squinting and pausing hands, he teared the new page off of the journal, folded the page and placed it in his pocket. “There.”

Ayu took the sketchbook back. “So, what now?”

Oliver nipped back his instrument. “Thinking of the melody. You can take the blanket back if you want.” He crawled over to the corner, huddling in his own imaginary nest as he plucked a string. “I’ve been thinking of making more suspended chords lately, so I might do that,” he murmured.

Ayu canned a chuckle, unsure of what he meant in the first place. 

***

“Is Oliver here yet?” 

Ayu turned his head from his drawing to find Annette sliding her sneakers into the alleyway. Her composure sloppy and uncoordinated. She didn’t stay up, did she? 

She whipped back the bun that flew over her head. “Oh… he is.” 

“I’ve been here,” Oliver replied. 

“Twenty minutes after you texted him actually,” Ayu added. He then shifted in his blanket cocoon. 

Staring at them both, she straightened back her posture at the harmony of the two. “Huh. Well darn.” Sitting down between the two, she made a deep breath and un-frazzled her hair. Then, like she never changed before, she perked up to start conversation. “So, do you want to start the meeting Ayu?”

He peered at her, brows weighing down his eyes in concern. Though the subject matter carried more weight for all of them. “Yeah, so- wait Oliver, you want me to tell her all of it?”

He shrugged at him. “Not the big one but most of it is fine.”

Understanding what he meant, Ayu agreed. Yet, Annette cocked her head in confusion.

“Okay so it turns out Oliver’s parents are assassins and might be involved with the entire powers thing,” he informed Annette.

“… I’m sorry, what?”

Oliver pointed his hand out to Ayu. “Did you have to say it like that?”

Ayu said back, “What other way do you think you can tell her?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, slowly? Let her process it?”

“You didn’t let me process it.”

“Okay that was by accident and shock-”

“Can you please explain?” Annette interrupted the two by whining. 

Ayu blinked, back from Oliver, then back to her. “Right. So,” he explained the situation, albeit poorly in wording. 

Annette’s mouth gaped with confusion set on her face. “I… Oliver, why didn’t you tell us earlier?”

He avoided his sights from her. “Didn’t know they existed ‘til like, two weeks ago.”

“He’s adopted like us,” Ayu remarked. 

The girl brushed through her hair. “Huh… well three’s a party, I guess.”

Ayu continued, “Yeah, so I met with this chick from his parent’s group and learned a couple of things from her. First there’s-” he paused, remembering the boy in the room. He was the one who did not know everything. “Oliver, can you not be here for right now?”

“What? Why?”

He whispered to Annette, “It’s about Akeldama.”

She eyed him, and dipped her head, telling Oliver, “It’s a personal thing.”

Somehow, the communication between the two, whether it was between her tone of words or expressional speaking, seemed to work. And Oliver stepped out for the moment in time. 

Ayu scooted his way to Annette, huddling next to her in secret conversation. “I might’ve been tricked by Akeldama.”

She cocked her head. “I thought that was obvious.”

“No, no, she told me that almost everyone in the society was tricked to join since he offered them survival and freedom,” he hesitated at the last word, “but then forced them to kill for live.”

“Then what you’re saying is… you made your wishes to live, but it’s going to screw up…?”

With doubt, he shook his head. “Maybe, but us fucking up with the monsters might also be the killing- maybe… okay that sounds dumb saying it out loud.”

Annette stopped him before he could add on. “Not really. But do you know how much the society has to kill then?

In an instant, he blinked three times. “Actually, I don’t know. Shit, I forgot to ask.”

Making her thinking face, with hands holding the chin, Annette guessed, “I wouldn’t think they’d be forced to be mass murderers.”

“I would. It’s Akeldama.”

“Yeah… right.” She hissed at his reminder. “Then, what if it isn’t the monsters then? What do you think will happen?”

“I dunno,” Ayu copied her thinking face, “I didn’t plan this far ahead for the meeting.”

“That isn’t good,” she sighed. 

Ayu slumped from his position. “Yeah… but that’s all I needed to talk with you.” He processed what came to mind next. Though another privacy error occurred. Might as well get it over with. “Can you go out and get Oliver, but you stay over there instead?”

“Did you tell him something new?”

“No, he has something I need to tell him.” Ayu’s thoughts formulated as he talked. 

“Gotcha’. I’ll go get him.”

She walked out, leaving Ayu more time to gather his words together. But in no time, Oliver entered back in. “Alright, what is it now?”

Twiddling his thumbs in his cocoon, Ayu started. “So… you know about your dad, right?”

“Forgot I had one, go on.”

He made a frantic nod. “So, I actually figured out his history yesterday.” 

“And…?”

Ayu taught him the lesson, again poorly. “But it was in the 1700s, I think.”

Oliver stared at him in suspicion. “… That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know, right?!” He blurted out.

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed calmly. “He can’t be my dad then, so who is?”

“I don’t fucking know, that’s the problem.” A strong gust of wind blew his thoughts away. “Oh shit-”

“Did Eilwen say anything else about it?”

Ayu clung to his blanket. “Not really… she wasn’t allowed to go into detail. But he doesn’t really look like you either; his hair was a lot lighter.”

“Still red?”

“Ginger.”

“Oh, god he’s a devil.”

“What?”

“It’s a joke at my school.” He snapped his fingers. “But anything else?”

“Uh… I think she said you were a wish child. Which, now thinking about it, might be a bad thing.”

“What do you mean bad thing?” Oliver asked. “Aren’t I always a bad thing?”

“No- but, I can’t think of how to explain. Wishes just feel like bad luck to me.”

Oliver placed his head on his bent knee. “Well, it’s fitting at least.”

Ayu sighed on his behalf. “I’ll try and get more out of her, the next time I see her.” 

“You’re coming with me again?”

Ayu tipped him, “Whenever she can.” He looked on over to the entrance. Conversation due at the end. “Hey, Annette! You can come back in,” he called out.

“Hm, I have an idea.” 

Bringing herself up to discussion, Ayu and Oliver shifted attention to Annette. 

“What if we’re supposed to be a part of the society, then? Since we have powers and stuff.”

Ayu’s face laid crooked, in reminder of his conversation of Annette. But, he pointed out his eye instead. “If we were, then why would we have these marks? Besides, the leader would have picked us up and have us join immediately.”

Annette gave him a knowing look left the topic. 

“If anything,” Oliver added, “I’m the most involved with them at the moment. You two still need to figure things out.”

Despite the still unknowingness up in the air, Annette smiled. “At least this is the most info we’ve gotten. And in just a month too.”

“I know, I know.” Ayu buried his face in his blanket. “Thank god Oliver’s here now.”

Oliver laughed at the comment. “Oh really?”

“You’re the only reason we got this in the first place.” He muffled his voice to him, hiding his minor embarrassment which the reason was left unknown as well. 

“Sounds like I’m just your gateway,” he quipped. 

“You know what I mean,” he huffed.

“Wait hold on…” Annette’s expression drew her brows together. “What about the monsters?”

Ayu’s own face grew stern. “That was the first thing I asked. But she couldn’t talk about it.”

Oliver kept silent. 

“Really?” She gawked her hand forward. “I thought there’d be something but… let’s just hope there is something about it soon.”

“Wait a minute,” Oliver actually spoke, “There haven’t really been any monster attacks since November started, hasn’t there?”

Annette answered. “No, aside from the forests deaths but Ayu can’t even detect those. But what about it?”

Oliver’s face cringed at the side comment, but went on, “Wouldn’t they come like every two days before? It’s almost December and they’re basically gone.”

Ayu perked his attention at Oliver’s observation. He never noticed that nothing happened, considering he did nothing regardless.

“Yeah… what did happen to them?”

***

“Don’t talk to me like that. There’s no spirits around.”

The boy in the television opened the door, revealing a jump-scare of moaning spirits, only to close it instantly. 

“Alright, so I might have been wrong. Let’s run-”

Oliver chuckled at the joke. He watched Mr. Rious causally on his seat whilst working on his new tune. On the same couch yet again was Ayu, coped up with a pillow and bowl of pasta. 

The meeting ended soon after the questioning of the monsters, as Annette received a call from her father wondering where she was at eight in the morning. Luckily, the cold was beginning to grow more intense and shelter also grew in Ayu’s yearning. Thus, her absence was a blessing for his body heat.

Chewing on his new lunch, not wanting to pay attention to the frightening ghosts, and needing to make a certain topic clear, he decided to ask Oliver again, “So you need to eat in a few days, right?”

Oliver’s reaction was neutral. “Yeah, I don’t feel terrible right now though.”

“That’s good…” He picked up another noodle with his bare hands and ate it. “But Oliver, can I see your arm please?”

The tune he was playing stopped, leaving only the T.V. to make noise. “… Sure, fine. It isn’t as bad as before.”

Ayu gulped. “That’s, better, at least.” 

Oliver pulled his left sleeve up and directed it to Ayu, revealing his marked arm. The black sun still laid peacefully, but above were all of his healed scars, including new fresh ones up top.

“Wha- they’re still there!”

“It’s less than before!” He pulled his sleeve back down. “Like you said, I’ll do it less… and if this training works, it’ll go down gradually. Like you and bread.”

Ayu raised a brow. “So, you’re saying your food is my training?”

“Essentially.” He picked up the uke again. “… Also, I think I got your song down.” 

Ears woke up at the words, and Ayu followed at the attention-grabber. “Really?”

“Yeah, I just repeated the rhythm, so it was easy.”

Ayu hopped in his seat. A grin covered his sunken cheeks. “Lemme’ hear it.”

“I knew you’d say that.” He rolled his eyes, forming his starting finger positions in the meanwhile. He reminded him, “It’s not a masterpiece, just to say.” 

And with a single breath, he began to play. 

“Cold goes by

Through the night.”

A new sound echoed from his voice, a type of singing from him that Ayu never heard prior. The voice itself was still soft, as always, forming patterns of music through is instrument and voice beautifully. 

“Snow is shy,

Hiding in the sky.”

The estrange aspect radiated with the airiness of the tone; how lightly it reached to the high notes and simmered down in gentle grace. The melody tranquilized Ayu to not even pay attention to the lyrics, or the repetitive chords and simplistic progression. 

“As I wait,

day goes away.

Don’t be late,

For I’ll have my day.

I’ll have my day.”

 He allowed the last strum to ring throughout the room, placing it down to his lap all the while.

Words had no meaning for Ayu at the moment, similar to any other time Oliver played. It managed to take all his efforts into forming two words. “It’s pretty.”

“Pretty?” He gawked. “I never thought you’d say something like that.” 

“But you’re talented.”

He corrected him, “I’m not talented. I just have too much time on my hands at night… Besides, with time and effort, any song can be good. Unless you work with modern country.”

“… You make your own songs too, don’t you?”

A nod was received, with slight reluctance at first. 

“Can you sing one?” Ayu asked genuinely.

The musician’s mouth twitched downwards. He turned back to the television. “They’re more personal. And embarrassing.” 

Ayu ate another handful of pasta before it’s warmth goes away. “So, you don’t want to share them?”

“No,” he answered, and placed his ukulele to the side. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I think your songs are nice either way.” He giggled. “How long have you been making songs?”

Oliver pulled down on his sleeves in a shift. “Three years.”

“What are they about?”

“That’s the personal part.”

A man appeared on the screen out of nowhere, wailing in agony as he melted like a candle. 

“Okay Oliver, we’re changing this!”

***

“Oh, my God, I’ve never seen this episode!” Ayu had jumped out of the couch and right up close to the T.V. His gaze fixated not on Oliver anymore but instead the theme song of his favorite hero. 

“What the fuck is this?”

“It’s Crimson!” He cheered. “I haven’t seen them in so long.”

Oliver’s tone laid bewildered at the old animation and loud brass. “I didn’t think it’d be the show from the nineties. Heard that was the trippy one.”

Crimson ran down the city as the saxophone solo drove in to Ayu’s nostalgia. “Trippy or not, it’s kickass.”

A glare set foot from Oliver from then on. “Sure, it is.” The intro continued on with its silhouetted visuals. “How come you watched this?”

“We had it on DVD and my sister would explain everything for me.”

“Your-?” Ayu’s fascination distracted him from his slip-up. Yet, Oliver never finished his question. “What would she explain?”

Ayu answered. “Stuff that happened in the episodes, and why it made Crimson cool.”

“That he’s a hero?”

“That she does what’s right and whatever to help people. No matter how crazy the stunt can be.”

Oliver stayed silent as the opening scene played. Crimson was in his everyday persona, taking all the photos for news coverage as the millionaire of the city. The glamour and pizzazz gloated by the rich fellow shined throughout the screen. “… Why’re they a bitch?”

“They’re not!”

“Well, if you flaunt money and power like that when you can, you know, save people, it’s a bit of a dick move.”

Ayu’s retort was unknown to him. Only knowing ten episodes on repeat was not of help of him in the subject matter. Instead, he grumbled and continued on watching. 

***

Crimson seemed to have gotten himself stuck in the middle of two heists. What was worse was that the two heists were of rival gangs in a competition for the same bank! And with the cops trying to catch the masked crusader yet again, how will the craziness of the night end?

Crimson was running rampant! Bandits were flying everywhere in the city after discovering she was trying to catch them all. She had lost the cops ages ago anyways, so that means that all there is to do left is-

“Vittorino, shut up.”

The immersion clicked out of Ayu’s mind as Oliver’s words blinked him out of the television screen. He had finally been silent for the past few minutes yet this comment blew him away from the scene again. 

However, the second he turned around at Oliver, a taller man was standing beside him. 

“Holy shit-” he jumped at his seat on the floor.

Oliver looked at him. “He can see you now, I’m guessing?”

“Yep.”

He sighed. “Ayu, this is Vittorino: the guy who’s been bothering me for the past two months in which I haven’t mentioned because honestly he doesn’t make that much of an importance.”

Ayu studied him in his surprised state as the name finally started to register. His dark hair being the only recognizable aspect from the past. “You’re the Vittorino Eilwen talked about?”

Oliver tilted his head. “Eilwen talked about him?”

“Of course, she did!” Vittorino tacked on a grin and walked on over to him. He spoke to him and only him. “And you better not tell anything she said about me because its unimportant.” He gritted the last words out. His lanky figure leaning over Ayu as a governing tower. 

“… right.”

“Alright then!” His tone changed completely. “I’m only here to introduce myself.” As well as his demeanor as he bowed in front of Ayu. 

Even Oliver made a face at his action. 

Ending his bow, he made a turn at both of them, waving, “It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

And he was gone as if nothing happened. 

“…What the fuck was that?”

“Don’t worry, he’s a weird fuck too.” Oliver assured. “He tells people to kill themselves yet he’s a religious saint the other half of the time.”

At first his words startled Ayu. Though majority of Oliver’s fun facts had led him to the same reaction, so might as well skip the moment. “From what Eilwen told me, that makes sense.”

“What did she say?”

“Just rumors… about-”

“Look at what I just told you a minute ago,” Vittorino appeared again. “Don’t!” And he vanished yet again. 

“… Huh.”

Oliver and Ayu looked at each other from the sudden interaction. The bewilderment of both seen in each of their expressions… Oliver cracked up first, following Ayu.

Oliver wheezed, “Okay that was definitely a first from him.” 

“It wasn’t what I thought he’d be like!”

They both laughed like the unamusing children they were.

“Wait, when did he tie up the cops?” Oliver asked Ayu as the ending of the episode played before them. 

Ayu kept his eyes glue to the screen. “We probably missed it while talking to Vittorino.”

“Why is Crimson an actual criminal?”

“Because the police sucks, and the city’s law thing in general.”

“… Okay, fair enough.”

The ending zoom-in starred the poor police officers, grumpy yet abandoned upside-down in ropes. Because Crimson had forgotten to actually free them! What a laugh! 

Ayu chuckled at the final joke but Oliver to no avail. 

The credits began to play in a slower jazz rhythm, with a female singer singing her smooth soul out.

“Oh what? This actually sounds nice,” Oliver commented. He checked the clock behind the couch. “Oh… my mom’s about to come back soon.”

Hearing the news, Ayu turned off what was playing. “So, you want me to go?”

“Are you fine with it…?”

Ayu told him. “Yeah, that blanket you gave me is gonna make tonight way better.” He got up, grabbed his sketchbook, and already walked up to the door. 

“… Right. Keep on writing. I like it.”

He smiled at his opinion. It isn’t the wolf this time. “Will do.” He opened the door and took his leave. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye…”

Slam.

-

Ten Dollars | Bread and Water | Red Eye | Crimson Capture | November 1st | A Mother | A Demon | A Child | The Wolf | Bloody Fingers | A Monochrome World | The Pocketwatch | Next >>>