#pleas... my crops are dying...

[gammaraydeath]

"make the content you want to see" ok but i want to see someone else do it better. give me 1 million dollars to commission people with

[javiimartinez]

no but seriously why is javi the one i think about the most he had so little screentime and yet im hyperfocused on him. he haunts me. never getting over it. poor baby sacrificial lamb. cain and abel. he was only 12 wth

sigh I completely understand you. having a special interest of a character with such little screentime is horribleee. he’s always on my mind anyways. poor baby who unknowingly sacrificed himself the moment he got close to natalie. who’s dying words were pleas of help. who ultimately saved his brother.

ugh and the cain and abel of it all, javi, who misses his father so very much, who never understood why travis hated him. and travis, who never got to see his father love him the way he seemed to love javi.

“The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.”

so he forces javi to spit his gum out, it’s what he has to do, it’s what their father would do for him. and then he carries so much guilt he attempts to dig up their father’s corpse just to get a ring.

“Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”.”

and then losing javi after doomcoming, getting his little brother back, his sweet baby brother who likes to feed stray cats and watch animal documentaries, only for him to be mute, messed up. if he had just kept looking, none of this would have happened. he was right there.

and then losing him all over again. seeing his baby tied up like an animal. cradling him in his arm until eventually he’s not even allowed to have that either.

The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curseand driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.” Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

he loves him so, so much. so he bites into his raw heart, now he’d always have a part of him. the others could chew and tear apart his flesh all they wanted, but they’d never have javi the way travis did.

Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

[kiss-theggoat]

The Ghost with the Most

The Ghost (Mitch) x Reader (Haunt 2019)

Word count: 1.6k

Summary: You and your friends decide on an “extreme” haunted house, and you’re not excited, until you meet a certain charming Ghost.

Warnings: Porn with the tiniest little bit of plot, quickie, you get fucked while your friends are dying, Mitch has a dirty mouth,

“Bailey calm down… Angela got the bleeding to stop and I’m going to go get someone to let us out okay?” You soothed Bailey, who had three sizable slices up her wrist. She was pale, sweaty, and leaning against the wall, tears rolling down her cheek every once and a while. Angela had ripped part of her costume off, wrapping it right around the wounds to slow the breathing.

Evan turned to you quickly, “You’re leaving?”

“Well what else are we supposed to do Evan? Stay here until she bleeds out?” You started looking for a way out, wondering what was behind the fence and curtains. The door you had come through was closed, but another had opened in its absence. “There has to be another actor up ahead…wait here.”

You walked through the doorway, despite the pleas that you stay. Bailey’s injury has everyone on edge, but you don’t understand the issue…accidents happen, even at haunted houses.

“Hello?” You called out, finally turning into another room. The room had an ominous blue tint, sheet covered mannequins covering every square inch. You yelped as fog sprayed up towards you through a grate in the floor, but then you laughed, thinking how stupid you must’ve looked getting scared by fog.

“Hello? Is there someone here? Our friend…she got hurt back there, she’s bleeding, we need out.” You announced. A loud bang sounded from the hallway you’d come from, followed by a scream, causing you to turn your entire body towards the door. This had you alarmed, even though you were sure it was just a planned scare, because your friends weren’t having fun anymore.

“You said someone’s hurt?”

You whipped around to the source of the smooth voice. A ghost, shrouded in what looked like pounds of fabric. “Yes, I’m sorry. She’s cut, she’s bleeding.”

“Hold on..” he said, beginning to walk to the door behind him.

“I uhm…I told them I’d go back with help…” you said meekly, still feeling sort of bad for interrupting the whole show. His body froze, then turned slowly to face you.

He nodded a little, “Let me get something…”

You stared at the ghostly figure, thinking that he must be handsome beneath his mask. His voice was so smooth and silky, and he was tall. Maybe the fabric was adding to the bulk, but he seemed much bigger than you. Masks have usually been your thing, maybe that was it. Keys jangled on his belt as gloved hands grabbed and pushed his drapery away from his waist, revealing a trim waistline and nice legs.

You took a deep breath and walked forward towards him. “Uhm…what are you grabbing…exactly…?”

His hands froze on the doorknob and the hollow eyes of his mask bore into your soul. “My other set of keys… I only have the keys to this half of the maze on me.”

You nodded, staring down at his key ring. Your eyes must’ve lingered for too long on his lower body because he cleared his throat, still facing you. He dropped the key in his hand, letting it jangle back down to his hip. “What’s your name?” He asked softly.

Nervously, you told him your name. You didn’t know why he was asking, but you damn sure weren’t going to not answer the hot masked stranger. He took a step closer, engulfing you completely in the white fabric of his cloak and the musky smell of his cologne, which had a slight undertone of something unpleasant, but you didn’t mind.

He said your name, as if testing how it sounded in his mouth. He reached forward, grabbing with a large gloved hand the bottom of the cropped shirt of your Halloween getup. “I like your costume…”

He tugged at the shirt a little, before flattening his palm on the skin of your hip. You felt yourself turn red, but decided that this was your chance. Every other thing you needed to worry about right now just evaporated into thin air. You took a small step forward as well, putting your hand on top of his.

In a blur, his right hand was tangled in the roots of your hair, tugging hard to spin you around, left hand right on your hip, holding you flush against him.

A surprised squeak left your lips at the sudden and confident action. One of his hands was still yanking on your hair, making your head fall back to expose your neck, the other hand moving from your hip to the center of your pelvis.

The force he spun you with surprised you, and before you knew it you were sandwiched between his ghostly figure and the wall. The fog from the grate hissed again, surrounding you both in a baleful cloud. Even through his shroud, you could feel how hard he was pushing his hips against yours, making your hips jut painfully into the cold metal wall.

“Such a slut.” He growled, hands fumbling with the button to your shorts. “Waltzing in here dressed like this…coming onto me…all while your friends are still waiting for you…”

A pang of guilt tore through your stomach. Your friends were currently scared, injured, and waiting for you to bring some sort of assistance, and you were too distracted by the Ghost that you completely abandoned them.

He yanked your shorts and underwear down hard, but only about to your mid thigh. The feeling of his gloves against your skin as he pulled up your shirt to run his hands over your exposed chest made you shiver and groan.

“Or maybe that’s what you want…huh? You want them to walk in on you getting fucking railed by some dude you just met.” The shroud he wore tickled your back as he hiked it up over you, finally giving you contact with something other than the strange fabric. You felt his jeans against your bare thighs, belt buckle pressing uncomfortably between his leg and the back of your knee.

Desperation overwhelmed your senses and you nodded for him, even though you didn’t want your friends to know what you were up to. He didn’t warn you, but with a loud groan, he slides inside of you. You barely need any adjusting, immediately you could feel the low simmer of pleasure in your belly.

Nothing could phase you. The feeling of the Ghost, a man who you’d just met, never seen his face, didn’t even know his damn name, fucking you up against a wall, erased every other thought in your mind. The feeling of him pressed against you, thrusting into you hard and needy, was almost too much to handle. You reached back and grabbed onto his hands, which were holding on for dear life at your hips.

“Holy shit…if I knew…sluts that come through this place felt like this…I’da fucked ‘em a lot sooner…” He groaned. The thought of him making this a thing excited you. Maybe you’d come back next year to see him again.

You moaned, loudly, surely loud enough for everyone to hear you, but you’d stopped caring.

“Mitch.” He moaned.

You craned your neck, confused. “What?”

His eyes were glued to where you were connected. “My name is Mitch. Say it.”

You followed orders, letting his name roll off your tongue in a pleasure-drunken stupor. You could feel yourself tightening around him, nails scraping at the wall you were squished against.

“Mitch…” you whimpered, “I…I’m gonna cum..”

“Awe already? I was having so much fun…” he leaned his head back, fully enjoying the sensation of you losing it on his cock. You came hard with him buried inside you, jaw dropping and eyes rolling back, legs struggling to hold you up.

“So fucking tight…” he grabbed your hair again, pulling your head back so he could say directly in your ear, “I’m gonna cum inside you, whether you want me to or not.”

You swore he was trying to kill you. You felt him push against you hard, forcing your cheek painfully against the wall. The sensation of warmth spilling inside you was enough to make you cum a second time, loud wails escaping your throat as you twitched and convulsed from the overwhelming pleasure. You both stood there panting, you were laying against the wall and Mitch was laying against you. The fact that your legs were trembling and about to give out any second didn’t help.

A few minutes later, you realized…you’d abandoned an injured, bleeding person in order to have sex with a complete stranger. You felt like the worst person in the world at this moment, and as guilt overtook you, you slowly pushed back against him to get your distance. “I…I really should…uhm….get back to my friends, I’m sure they’re worried sick…”

What you didn’t see was that in the other rooms of the haunted maze, two of your friends lay dead and bloodied, the rest sure to meet the same fate within the hour. But Mitch wasn’t about to let you go that easy…he thinks, no, he knows, you’d fit in wonderfully at this attraction.

Mitch whispered, “I’m sure they don’t know a thing…”

A/N: Haunt is criminally underrated, please give it a watch and understand my obsession for this ghost man

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter Eight

She prowled onto the lecture stage like a mountain cat and I could only stare.

Aralia Cordivar was young—later I would learn that she was the youngest person ever admitted to Harmine, and the youngest person to become head of Laboratories for Special Research, and the first woman. A Imperial-grade savant. She was actually only a year or two older than me, and yet she seemed so fully realized, so powerful, so confident. Her dark hair was close-cropped, her lips full, her golden-orbed gaze intent as it swept the rows. She waited for the lecture hall to hush, and as it filled with silence, it seemed to fill also with her presence.

“I am here because Master Yvell has asked me to introduce a new field of alchemical study, based on my team’s groundbreaking new work in the Special Research division. This past year, Harmine researchers have isolated the very alchemical Principles of Manhood. We have succeeded in inducing, regulating, revising, and precluding the reproductive traits and sex characteristics of the flesh. This has given us the ability to corral and unmake certain Unhygienic Degeneracies and to accelerate and amplify Hygienic Virtues, with rapidly increasing precision. Very soon, the announcements of our historic findings will herald brand new directions for Imperial Social Hygiene policy in every institution and at every level of society.”

A murmur and rustle of excitement had been building. She waited for it to peak and recede.

“Provisionally, we have been calling this new field Apomasaics. Beginning next term, I will be teaching the first ever introductory course. The expansion of research into this new field has been given high priority by the Imperial Social Hygiene Review Board. Upon completion of the course, students will become eligible to propose their own research topics and design their own experiments. I should not need to tell you that research that helps lay the groundwork for new Imperial policy will be prioritized. There will be two hundred spots available in the course. My team will screen applicants based on merit, and merit alone. Report to Special Research by the fifteenth for instructions. I regret that I will not be taking questions.”

She swept off the lecture stage to a storm of applause, pleas, demands and shouted questions. I watched the hubbub for a minute, stunned, then I gathered my things. I left the alchemy halls and took a shortcut through another maze-like building of empty classrooms and then a botany greenhouse, through a courtyard, to the entrance hall of the massive library.

The Harmine Archives were a wonder of the world. As big as several granaries stacked together above ground, it was also a chambered nautilus shell spiraling deep belowground—a single vast ramp unfurling and gradually narrowing, with wings extending off of it. I had been in such awe of this place when I first arrived. Right now, I couldn’t seem to pay much attention to my surroundings.

I passed the front desk and wandered downwards on a richly dyed red carpet, passing endless recessed terraces of long wooden bookshelves, my mind spinning. Eventually, I chose a terrace and turned to follow it, walking the narrow way between two tall bookshelves. After a while, one of the bookshelves parted to make way for a doorway. Past it, there was a sunken alcove with a few desks and armchairs in it. An alchemical lamp gave off a steady golden glow. I descended into the cozy space and slumped onto a couch, my arm draped over my eyes.

I remembered when Gresha told me she could prepare me to take the merit exams, and I imagined taking them as akin to getting on a ship to a distant realm. The same feeling was in me now. That tiny circle of light had opened in my belly, a dark yet clear lantern of desire—where to go towards, what I needed, how to choose. Already a wild idea—not yet a plan—was taking shape in the deepest part of me.

I sat up. If I did this...

This time there would be no mentor to guide me. I was, in fact, staggeringly alone. And yet, I could not believe how lucky, how well-positioned I was. It seemed like pure magic that I was, of all possible places, here, and of all possible times, now. Every vagary and nuance of circumstance in the world and in history had evidently, and yet impossibly, placed me in this privileged position of opportunity. The opportunity to actually—

I flinched from naming it clearly in the front of my mind. The blockades of silence I had laid around my un-admittable desire were so strong. My whole body itched with heat as unbearable shame clutched and tore at my insides. The memory of Carame looking at me, unreadable face cast in deep shadow by the white chemical light. Kisma looking at me, stricken. The jeering voices of the town children—perverts—kuffa—degenerates.

I jumped up and began to pace. Was this a huge mistake? What a few moments before seemed like divine providence suddenly sounded harebrained, far too risky. I would be certainly be inquisitioned if I were caught, perhaps sent for reconditioning, disappeared, even executed. Actually going through with this idea felt akin to stepping off a cliff into thin air and expecting to walk straight out over nothingness. My marrow itself crawled with the terror of falling and breaking on the rocks. Better to stay perfectly still, not draw any attention, and remain undetectable. Hide inside my own skin. I knew that was the sound strategy. I knew it worked. I was, after, all, unutterably alone.

Oh, I missed—I missed Heather. If she were here, she would grab me and stop me from pacing, lead me to the couch, sit me down. She would talk to me in her firm, trustworthy voice, and get me to stop breathing so fast. I slumped back onto the couch.

If Gresha were here, she wouldn’t think much of me for spinning around in a thought-circle until I tripped over myself and fell over. Gresha was a chemist at heart. She would grunt one word at me and that word would be ‘titration’. She would probably even make me recite a definition of titration, to calm me down.

Titration is the chemist’s strategy for combining volatile reagents. Any mixing of substances that causes a reaction—such as an explosion— can be prevented from causing that reaction by mixing the substances more slowly and in smaller amounts. I remembered Gresha positioning me over a beaker in the Foundry with a dropper, pointing at the gear-clock on the wall. “Every four hundred seconds, add another drop,” she husked, before stalking away to work on something else.

Right now, I was the volatile reaction. My panic, my shame, my overwhelm. So what were the over-mixed substances? This wild plan was definitely one of them, and the other was...perhaps the consequences of its failure? Well, I had no control over the second element. It was so much larger than me. But the first I could approach more slowly, in smaller pieces. It was clearly too soon to consider the whole thing right now, anyway. I could go about setting the preliminary elements into motion without committing to anything. I was nowhere near the precipice yet—the threshold of true embarkation, beyond which there was no retreat back to safety.

All I had to do now was focus on the next part, then the next part, then the part after that. Slower and smaller bites. That was all. I sagged into the couch.

This had been a long, hard day already, and it was barely noon. All I wanted to do was go find a book to curl up with and turn off my brain. Which was too bad, because it was probably time to eat lunch and go to my next class.

~ ~ ~

The next day I presented myself at the Special Research laboratories. A clerk pulled my file and flipped through it, stopping a few times to copy information over to another form. I craned my neck and he noticed.

“Your merit exam scores,” he said, by way of explanation.

He flipped through a few more pages.

“No hygienic infractions on record, no foreign implications or correspondences...you appear to be a good candidate.”

He slapped the file closed lightly. “You should hear back from us by the start of next term.”

I was turning to leave when he placed his right hand over his heart in the loyalty salute and recited, “Honor, Pride, Duty.”

He looked at me expectantly with sharp, pale eyes. My file was still in front of him. Frozen in place, I mumbled the words back to him. He nodded at me. I fled self-consciously.

~ ~ ~

The last weeks of my first term passed in blur of late fall weather. I spent most of my time in the alchemy labs, trying to establish a presence with the various lab assistants and Factors as a familiar and helpful face. I ran messages, helped wash and sort glassware, delivered packages, ran errands and otherwise tried to make myself indispensable, while dropping shameless hints that I was looking for a job. Not all my motivations were even ulterior.

I did need to start drawing a wage soon. The private Imperial bond that came with my merit exam results, to pay for travel costs and initial school supplies, was almost used up. Most other students here came from merchant families or were noble-born, with lands, estates, and sorcery talent. Even most of the other merit students were probably not without some family support.

Me though? The idea of writing to my mother for pocket change was laughable—dearest Ma, I know that as you get one of my sisters to read this you are probably hassling my other siblings for your drinking money, but please, can you send me some?

I knew Gresha and Heather would help me if I needed it, probably Kisma, too, but I was determined that bothering them for their hard-earned wages would be my last resort.

So if I wanted to buy razors and soap and ink and paper and a better coat for the winter, I needed some way to earn money, and the alchemy labs were my surest option. The standard avenues for securing such a position—bribery and nepotism—were closed to me. I wasn’t delusional enough to rely on my nonexistent charisma to attract an actual faculty mentor or ally among the staff. I just had to hope that persistence would work. I knew it wasn’t a very good strategy, but I didn’t really know how else to go about it. Exams were coming up and if I didn’t get hired soon, I would have to break off from all the volunteering I was doing in the labs and pivot my time and attention into studying.

A week before exams, though, I got lucky. It was the fourth time in as many days that I brought the matter of a job up to one of the lab Factors, a tidy young man with premature gray hair at his temples and a strained look, whose name was Krema. I had just returned from crawling under an autoclave to reattach some plumbing and I was dripping on his office rug.

He threw up his hands.“All right! For grief’s sake. I’ll put you on the schedule, you know where it’s posted. Take this note,” he began scrawling, “down to the bursars office and get a punch card. You’ll start at five shillings a shift, like every other assistant. Payday is every fortnight. Now get out of my office before you ruin the floor.”

The next few days, I spent every spare minute in the Archives, studying. These were to be my first set of Harmine exams and I wasn’t sure how difficult they would be. I tried to over-prepare, and fell into bed every night eye-sore and ink-stained.

The exams turned out to be...difficult. I guessed that I had done fair-to-middling and was glad for how seriously I’d taken them. After finishing with the last of them, I got back to Oakridge House and shuffled up to my room, with no thought in my mind but to sleep until I couldn’t.

Alexi was out. And—there was an envelope on my bunk, addressed to me. From Special Research. I dropped my bookbag and tore it open, tiredness forgotten. I scanned the first few lines and a smile cracked my face—stiff muscles long out of practice.

I was in!

I flopped into bed and tried to savor the glow of accomplishment, but in ten breaths I was asleep.

I woke from a familiar nightmare of hiding and fleeing through cold, cobbled streets. It was morning. I clambered down from my bunk and hobbled to the washroom on unsteady feet. When I re-entered the room again, it was full of boys. I froze.

It was Alexi, riffling through his desk drawers for something, and several of his tall, rich friends, laughing at some joke. They all turned to look at me, and I saw them immediately filter my existence out of their worldviews and turn away again. Perfect. I clambered blearily back into my bunk and tunneled back under my blankets, trying to tune out their banter. I was mostly unsuccessful.

“—that fiddler girl who plays at the Silver Pony! Artur says he tupped her, and if she’s that easy—”

“Don’t bother trying to tempt him, Lindon, this dolt’s still hung up on that man-eating cunt Aralia Cordivar.”

There was a peal of rough laughter.

“Shut your trap, I am not!”

“Oh no? ‘Miss Cordivar, m-may I go take a piss?’ That wasn’t you, eh? A shame to manly dignity itself, Wendell, that’s what—”

Alexi interjected, “Oh lay off him, Cresswell. We’ll to the Pony tonight, all agreed?”

“To the Pony!”

“The Pony!”

I shuddered. Boys. Scary. Gross. Dumb. Annoying. It seemed like every day I was finding another reason to not be one anymore. The thought sailed clear through my groggy morning consciousness before I realized it. Alexi found whatever he was looking for and I heard them all leave noisily—without closing the door. Fucking fuck.

~ ~ ~

Second term began on a gray week of slashing rain and wind. I arrived early to Aralia Cordivar’s introductory Apomasaics class, and climbed the amphitheater rows to a seat in the back of the lecture hall to watch the other students filter in. Overall, they looked older and more senior than me, though I recognized one or two from Yvell’s class. Gradually, the seats below me filled. I spun my quill nervously. It seemed I had barely made the cut. Would I be able to keep up, let alone strike off on my own well enough to—

I stiffened, eyes widening. A student, a dark-haired girl with nut-brown skin, had just entered the hall, her head lowered—but then she raised it and her vernal eyes flashed as she scanned the rows of seats. As she did, I dropped my quill and buried my gaze in my lap, my face heating in recognition. It was her.

Of course it was her. She would be an alchemist. Otherwise this could have been too easy. I took a deep breath and shook myself a little. Realistically, I had nothing to fear from her. She could not possibly know anything about me, let alone reveal it. We were in a class together. So what? There were almost two hundred other students. All I had to do was pretend not to notice her, and we would both get through this. No more penetrating, intimate eye contact or lingering, dangerous gazes, thank you very much.

There was only one teeny problem. For some reason, I was feeling extremely...drawn to her? I kept sneaking glimpses in her direction. She was beautiful, of course, but also...I groaned quietly and cursed myself for a fool. No. No, this was not the time to fixate creepily on a girl who’d met my eyes once, by chance or accident. I imagined Kisma’s disapproving expression, floating in front of my mind’s eye.

Resolved, I focused studiously on the lecture stage. After some uncomfortable minutes of forcing myself to stare straight ahead, Aralia Cordivar entered, and staring ahead immediately became much less of a chore.

Have you ever been utterly taken by someone and, at the same time, terrified of them? She was so young, only a couple years older than me, and yet she seemed to reign here, in an absolute way that had nothing to do with her actual age.

I was on the edge of my seat for the entire lesson, and every lesson after. She taught with the energy of a cyclone, a caged tiger, snapping questions, pointing vigorously at raised hands, covering the sliding blackboard in crisp, tight equations, then heaving it aside to get at the fresh surface underneath. She paced the room, a captain in total command of her ship. I scribbled furious notes with one hand, my mind desperately leaping to catch the next twist and the next in the trail of meanings and inferences she was blazing. When she paused to rake the assembled students with her proud, golden hawk-eyes, I froze in place lest I catch her attention by moving an inch, and yet some part of me exhilarated at the thought. Then the bell would ring and she would dust off her hands and exit the room with the profound disregard of someone who had better places to be, leaving her assistants to take questions, collect, assign and otherwise administrate.

And the laboratory days…

Aralia never came. Instead she left her Special Research team assistants to run the lab components in her stead, but still...it was alchemy like I had never seen it before, like I had never been able to imagine. They showed us how to write equations to derive tables upon tables of data for modeling sublimation and avoiding reagent contraindication, something I hadn’t known was even possible. These data projections combined with yet more equations to yield ingredient ratios, precursor metabolites, even reactant unlikelyhoods. They showed us advanced factoring that allowed the distillation of a draught that could awaken certain principles of the flesh (which they termed manly) while subduing others (take a wild, eye-rolling guess at what these ones were called). They showed us a multitude of alchemical pathways for sterilization and for fertility, for accelerating puberty and for delaying it, for reversing it and for revising it. And though they did not know it, they were showing me how I might transform.

While Aralia only ever taught the technical material of Apomasaics, her team members often paused in between teaching units to make lofty remarks that sounded somewhat scripted. Actually, there was much that reminded me of listening to someone drone aloud from a Ministry of Social Hygiene booklet back home in Stuhkrad.

I knew all that rubbish by heart and had developed an automatic habit at a young age of filtering propaganda from useful information. It helped me retain very little of what was said in between learning techniques. Besides, almost all I could think of was how I could bend what they were teaching to my own purpose. I often zoned out during these stretches to think about how I would reverse-engineer the very technique they had just demonstrated so it would yield the opposite effect. It was simple. I blanked out my face and nodded every so often. Internally, I was already celebrating what I was about to get away with under their very noses.

I was actually dumbfounded at how swimmingly everything was going so far. On top of classes, I was also working several shifts a week, so I was in the labs all the time. I prepped for classes and cleaned up after them. I helped weigh out materials and distribute equipment. Much of my time was spent with a glorified industrial-scale sterile dishwasher. I had keys, I had a cover story, I had large windows of time with unsupervised access to a world-class alchemy set-up and a vast selection of medicinal-grade precursors. On top of this, there were lots of students pursuing their own private projects in the labs at odd hours. I would be one among many. And one other crucial advantage had fallen right into my lap.

A month into second term, Krema had thrust an inventory ledger into my hands and shown me how to fill out requisition forms for ordering new materials when they ran low. I had realized, all of a sudden, that all someone would need to do, if they saw me synthesizing something and wanted to find out what, would be to crack a ledger and peruse my withdrawals.

All lab assistants had access to raw materials, because regular students relied on us to fetch the precursors they needed, both in classes and out of them. When we measured out a dozen drams of sulfate, we marked it in the ledgers, along with the name of the requesting student and the date. At first I’d felt sheepish about my oversight. Then, I realized what a gift Krema had given me and I started grinning, and couldn’t stop. Now that I’d been trained on inventory, I could make the ledgers tell whatever tale I wanted.

Now, I could steal raw materials and hide the accounting inconsistencies. I could conceal my entire project. I would be invisible to any scrutiny beside a massively detailed audit. I was basically home free. Despite the bone-crushing horror-dread of being caught, I didn’t see how I could be caught. And more and more, I found myself looking forward to the thrill of getting away with it.

But the thing that really brought me to the precipice of beginning was an awareness that grew gradually, like an underground fungi, and then fruited above ground all at once, seemingly overnight. My bleak and narrow dreams of winter-dark, cobbled streets. That familiar pressed-in feeling I remembered from Stuhkrad before Gresha gave me a portal out.

Harmine was that portal—a gateway leading to a thousand possible worlds; options and possibilities no matter where I went; comfort and money all but guaranteed. This trapped feeling should never have followed me here. It was impossible.

And yet, it was back. I felt buried alive. I felt compressed beneath a mountain avalanche. The realization that I had felt like this for as long as I could remember haunted me. I marveled at the numbness I had cultivated to it, the numbness that was only just starting to slip. When I thought of a future beyond the next five years, when I thought of living past the age of, say, twenty-five, there was an endless nothing—that same absolute flatness, that same tasteless, weightless, odorless, invisible despair. And I began to realize it would keep coming back, no matter what heights and opportunities I drove myself at to avoid it.

About halfway through the term, I began to consciously feel myself being shaped around an acknowledgment—almost a surrender—that there were no other options, a kind of relieved resignation that there was really only one choice left to me.

I began to factor the schema for the substance myself, in a secret notebook that I kept tucked close against my skin, and only took out when I was sure I was alone. I labored over it, painstakingly, for a whole week, though most of that time was spent checking, double-checking, triple-checking my factoring. I checked my factoring so many times, in fact, that I could recite it in my sleep, and I was more than a little worried that I did.

As the term neared its final quarter, I fairly vibrated with the energy of my readiness. This direction I was set on felt as hard and clear and resolute as a diamond. It was yearning to be born, kicking inside of me. I needed to get it out of me and into the world. My hesitation began to chaff at me, to weigh on me like a stone hanging around my neck, growing slowly heavier every day that I did not begin.

So, I began.

At least, I tried. Gresha’s titration advice had worked a little too well on me. I had kept my gaze pointed fastidiously at only the next step, and the next, and when the precipice yawned before me suddenly, I froze. The realization slammed me in the stomach that if I had been looking at this horizon line from the beginning, I would have turned back long ago.

How do you normally change your life in this big of a way? Is there a normal way to transform completely, to pull off something as huge as—as becoming a girl? I had no idea. It was absolutely too big to think about—in order to do it all, I had to not think about it.

I went to the labs several days in a row, saying to myself that I would begin, and turning aside at the last moment. I turned left to leave the building instead of right down the corridor to the materials stockroom. Tomorrow—I’ll try tomorrow, I said to myself. Then I made it as far as the door handle to the stockroom. The next day I made it all the way to the enanthate barrel. In the end it took me over a dozen attempts before I finally worked up the courage to complete the first batch.

[nanjokei]

my plea to vocaloid producers: if youre uploading your ancient songs to youtube finally, PLEASE upload the original versions, not the inferior versions with a new mix or even entirely new vocals. my crops are dying!!!

you can upload the remastered versions!! theyre usually album versions, so just put the albums up on streaming!! that way it will be on YT music so itll be on youtube anyway. come ON!!!

[seungmic]

anyone have an extra seungmin photocard they wanna give me 👉👈 ill pay u in art,,,

[meteor752]

Logbook

Based on these posts, specifically this one, where the kids all survive but are left on the server

Tw: Death, Abandonment, Description of corpses, killing of dogs, depression, grief, starvation, dying of thirst, suicide (But like a mild way), insomnia, hallucinations, probably something else that I forgot but like this is not a happy story at all

Logbook day 1: Mom and Dad died a week ago now. We buried them by the ravine where dad’s bleeding heart used to be. There wasn’t much to bury though, the dogs had gotten to the majority of what was left of them. For any normal person it would be freaky, but it just felt fitting to have dad look like a maimed corpse just like mom and I always look.

I’ve started writing these just to have something to pass the time. We’re stuck here, so it’s not like I have anything else to do

I’ll keep you updated

Logbook day 3: Wes has finally finished the shelter he’s been working on. Since the majority of our homes were either blown up or burnt down, we decided to just make new ones. Novo and Gertrude are staying together, as are Jassy and Liana. Johnny still hasn’t left the ranch. I see him there sometimes, by his parents graves, either sleeping sobbing or staring into the abyss. I think I’m gonna go check on him

Logbook day 8: The last one of Pearl’s dogs has been killed now. Jassy and Novo have been doing that for a few days. It was Novo’s idea.

Wes talks in his sleep. He’s always done that, but before it was just incoherent mumbling. Now it’s pleas and cries for his fathers. I usually wake him up when it happens, but sometimes I just let him sleep. People like him need their sleep

Logbook day 24: Liana has spent the last few hours trying to fly. I don’t know why she’s doing it, she’s known since she was a kid that she can’t fly, but she’s not stopping. I think she’s just trying to find something to do

Logbook day 88: Jassy and I spent the day raiding the pillager tower. We got some good exorcise out of it, but little progress was done as they just kept on respawning. I only died five times, and Jassy three.

Logbook day 147: I saw a goat today. Hasn’t seen one of those in a while. I went to show Johnny, but he still hasn’t left their grave. There’s vines and moss growing on him now. I left him be

Logbook day 233: My cloak got torn to pieces by a spider earlier. I didn’t care enough to stop it. It’s weird not covering my hair, but I don’t mind it as much anymore

Logbook day 454: Novo and Gertrude had an argument, so Gertrude is staying with us for a few days. She snores, but I don’t mind it. It makes the nights less lonely

Logbook day 896: Saw a frog today. I petted it and it hopped away

Logbook day 1233: Novo has decided to stop sleeping. I don’t know what his reasoning for it is, though to be honest I never know what’s going on with him. Jassy and Gertrude are both joining him, and technically so am I. It would’ve impossible for me not to join

Let’s see how long they last

Logbook day 1246: The sleep strike is over. Novo’s visions got worse and he eventually killed himself. Gertrude said that when he respawned, he fell right to sleep and hasn’t woken up yet. I knew it was a stupid idea

Logbook day 2456: Something strange happened yesterday after I finished the log. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky. It’s been up there for longer than it should’ve, and I would know considering our house is decked with clocks. Gertrude also informed us that the animals don’t breed like they used to, and that the crops don’t seem to grow. I don’t know what’s going on but I don’t like it

Logbook day 2463: It’s official, the world has stopped moving. None of us know why

Logbook day 2657: We ran out of food today. Starving is a painful way to die

Logbook day 3121: I was tasked with getting Johnny away from his dads grave again. He looks more like a zombie than I do nowadays

Logbook day 4555: It’s getting harder to keep track of the days. I’m just guessing at this point

Logbook day 5367: Liana and Jassy married each other today. None of us can legally officiate, but as the child of the winners Novo took it upon himself to do so. We managed to get Johnny to show up, though he didn’t look present at all

Logbook day 8965: Novo has been repeatedly slamming himself into the border, hoping to somehow escape it. It’s tempting to see all the cows and pigs move about outside, when we can’t reach it

Logbook day ????: I don’t know what day it is anymore. I don’t know a lot actually.

Final logbook: We were exploring the undercity for the hundredth time earlier, when we found a rift. It looks like a Nether portal, but bigger, and grander, and just…different. There’s nothing left for us here, hasn’t been for a while, so we’re gathering our few essentials and leaving. I’m not gonna bring this book with me, so this will be the last you hear of me.

Jekiv out

[salvadoerena]

tbqh my most successful posts are almost always me talking about d.gray-man and that makes me so happy that so many people are still super into it and also We Are All Miranda Lotto Defense Squad

[bylertruther]

please for the love of wiII byers can you guys put me out of my misery and give me moodboard prompts . my stranger things board has so so so many images and i am so impressionable i go on pinterest.com and get lost in all of the colors and forget everything including my own name please help me my children are starving my crops are dying idk what pairings or characters or aus to do first i set out to do a will moodboard of maximum 9 pictures the other day and ended up downloading 65 and making another folder for mike and el and and and pleas e. on my hands and knees girl HELP wht board should i do first? 😭

[dualim]

  do you like dragons? do you like harpies? do you like accurate portrayals of over stigmatized mental illnesses? then boy do i have a pair of ocs for you! lorelai and harpy are silly best friends who share a body and get on each other’s nerves. while harpy holds down the fort in a coffee shop in the day, lorelai hunts ghosts for a living at night (and falls in love with the cute ones). they’re both disasters but they’re loyal as shit, and i love them. thanks. (warnings for mature themes).

[tarabyte3]

🍁🕯️🎃 Happy Halfoween! 🎃🕯️🍁

To celebrate it being both halfway to my favorite day of the year AND National Poetry Month, here is my last poetry post: Horror Edition!

(Please mind the content warning tags! Also there are more collages below the cut to really get you in the mood)

The Harvest

When the night falls

and the harvest comes

we huddle in our beds,

covers pulled tight

to our trembling chins,

and wait. Every creak

or moan of wood

catches our breath.

A struggle for silence. A hope

our blood-soaked offerings

and fires were enough

to satiate their endless

ancient hunger.

Our rituals used to be joyous

occasions of mead and meat

and congregation,

before the things came

and then by morning light

we found splintered doors,

gore splattered beds,

and trails of ichor

winding into the forest.

In those first few years

we dared not look out

our curtains for fear

of catching their eye,

but some saw upright shadows

pass their windows

with a shambling gait

and spindly limbs.

Not beasts, but worse

than men. No weapons,

no charm or barricade,

no prayers to God

could save our souls,

and we dreaded the dying

light—their coming.

We left the pigs out first,

tied to posts in the town square,

huddled and confused.

It helped. Lessened the hunt,

but didn't end it.

Not by half.

Then we tried the cows

as well, and still we heard

the screams and pleas

and grinding growls.

We had no choice

except to choose.

The harvesters were coming

and it was better to prepare,

to know how the night

would go than to leave

our loved to slaughter. A mercy

to die by the blade

before the tearing started.

Our rituals now are solemn,

lotteries and funerals,

towering pyres, sacrifice

and chanting to appease

these old gods of the long dark

and death. We are our own

shepherds and farmers,

our own flock and crops,

and so we must tend our own.

Every night I awaken—

before dawn with the notion

that I am not alone.

There is a shadow with me.

Its eyes peek from

a dark corner crack,

beckoning with a wispy

curl of a finger.

Yet it is not temptation

I feel, but terror,

bone itching

and bile roiling

with a ringing in my ears

like the scream

of a tea kettle

This blackness creeps

ever closer.

Yesterday it brushed

the fringe of my rug.

Tonight it's reached

my curtains.

I know it hunts me,

ever patient,

to blanket me in nothing.

I would run,

you see,

If I didn't know

this shroud is a distraction.

A dare to rouse me

to my feet.

For in my full length mirror

by the hall door,

fading in the moonlight,

I see the face under my bed

and how it smiles.

Not a Tree

There is a branch outside

my window where no tree

grows. Yet its twig fingers

scrape and probe the screen

for a weakness,

an opening

to pry ajar

like an oyster.

Inside I am meat.

I am prey

to this ash, this bark

crusted limb

that covets skin—

seeks to know

my bare limbed flesh

and crush my bones.

It creaks. It yearns, aches,

to slip its muddied roots

throughout my ribcage,

twine its way between

my fingers and toes.

To feel how I writhe

beneath it as my

sinews decompose.

It cannot help

but consume me

to feel alive and grow

from my absence.

It must be a tree

that knocks, that sways

palm shaped shadows

upon my bedroom wall.

What else can reach

a second story window?

That is not the question

that lashes through my mind,

but rather: did I remember

to turn the lock?

[yourheartonfire]

The protagonist was grimly determined not to kneel, and briefly they succeeded. When the guards dragged them to the command tent and shoved them down, the protagonist hit their knees and kept going, landing face first on the carpets spread over the muddy ground. It felt kind of nice, to rest their aching head a few seconds on something soft.

Above them there was silence, and then a heavy sigh. "When I said, 'patch them up and then bring them to me,'" said the oh-so-familiar tones of their old playmate, "I thought it was clear that the 'then' in that sentence meant when they were no longer dying."

"The, ah, prisoner is weak from loss of blood and general trauma," said a medic nervously from somewhere near the tent's door. "But their wounds have been tended and they are stable, your highness."

"Your highness?" the protagonist mumbled into the carpet threads. "Coming up the world, huh?"

The medic cleared their throat again. "They're also on a great deal of painkillers. But they will live to see tomorrow."

"That remains to be seen," said that exquisitely cold voice and an ugly laugh ran through the tent.

There must have been a signal because hands gripped the protagonist's bound arms, hauling them up to their knees before their old friend.

 The antagonist was a black hole in the center of the protagonist's spinning vision. They lounged across their seat, wineglass dangling from their fingers, in a way that made the simple camp chair look luxurious. They were flanked by some very angry looking generals, nobles, the normal assortment of court flunkies. The protagonist saw a few familiar faces, but no friends. Not in this tent. 

"[Protagonist]," the antagonist said with that too-calm, too-bland court voice that boded violence for someone later. "You are under arrest for high treason. You will be brought before my father, the Emperor himself, for judgement. I don't expect it to go well for you. Have you anything to say for yourself?"

The protagonist bared their teeth in a bloody smile for the room, ignoring the twinge of pain from their split lip. "It's a long journey from here to the capital."

The antagonist conceded the point with a tip of their glass. "I am considering breaking both your legs."

"Wow, you are really leaning into the whole dark lord aesthetic," the protagonist drawled, fighting to form the words. God they were tired. And it wasn't just the morphine. "Is that red wine? You hate red wine."

The antagonist gave them a too-tight smile. "If you don't like it," they said, each syllable crisp and sharp enough to cut steel, "perhaps you shouldn't have had the prior occupant of my position killed."

There were any number of responses to that. The costs of war. People that the protagonist had lost too to far worse fates. But the former crown prince had been a fixture of the protagonist's childhood too. For once, the protagonist bit back their snappy response.

The antagonist's eyes narrowed. They put down their glass and stood.

The guards' grip tightened as the antagonist approached. The protagonist braced for the strike; a punch, a kick, maybe even a knife to the gut. But the antagonist did something worse; threading those fingers heavy with rings, through the protagonist's roughly cropped hair. The protagonist bit the inside of their cheek, hard, to resist leaning into that caress. But they couldn't help the shudder that went through them as the antagonist's touch lingered on the swollen, tender bruise at the protagonist's temple.

"Oh darling," the antagonist said softly. "All this chaos and death, just to scratch this rebellious itch of yours. Was it worth it?" The protagonist tried to jerk away but the antagonist tightened their grip, forcing the protagonist's head back to face them. "All this blood just to wind up back where you belong. On your knees in front of me. "

The protagonist swallowed, feeling their throat bob against the antagonist's hand. They could see it in the antagonist's bleak gaze; the old mute plea under the regal bluster, asking the protagonist for a laugh, for a lie, for the love and attention everyone else was too busy to give the second royal child.

It would be so very easy to step back into that old role. Give them what they wanted. The apology. The repentance. But there was a limit to the protagonist's sympathy.

The protagonist raised their chin higher. "Why do you care? You've got the prize, the crown, the throne." They lowered their voice, going for straight for the heart. "Don't you like having everything you've ever want-?"

The antagonist's hand, heavy with jewels and gold, whipped out with a crack. Everything went black and twinkling for a second. The protagonist came back to themselves hanging in the guards' grip, their cheek a livid, wet wound.

"Very well. Let's do this properly," came the antagonist's voice from overhead. "Clean that up, sedate them..." The antagonist's hand stroked across the protagonist's newly aching face. They flinched. "And put them in my tent. We'll continue this conversation in private, darling."

There was another ugly laugh from the room as the guards hauled the protagonist away. The protagonist didn't bother trying to get their legs under them. They had to conserve their strength if they were going to escape.

The antagonist wasn't a kid anymore. But then again, neither was the protagonist.

[ithinkthiswasabadidea]

Adding to the lore of Aleuthera -

The Creation of Vin,

God of the Wilderness

.

.

In the very early decades of Aleuthera's birth, her people and creatures began to multiply, forging new paths and settlements for themselves, exploring their continent. Not every environment they tried to claim would be so easy to traverse to find a home.

🌿 I was borne out of desperation, out of despair and distress.

Foolhardy mortals, trying to cross the great desert Rohael, dying upon its unforgiving sands.

As the sun set, their bodies unable to move any longer, a prayer, a plea was sent out to whomever was able to listen. I still remember those first words.

"Please. Give us shelter so that we may rest in the shade, give us fruit so we may be sustained, give us water so we may quench our thirst."

I think I was a seed, in the very beginning.

Laying dormant, deep below the sands for centuries unknown. Yet I heard their cry, and I grew. When those who survived the night awoke, my boughs sheltered them, my branches bore them fruits, my leaves held dew drops from the cold silence of night.

I gave them everything. It was I who grew them an oasis, protecting them from the sun, giving them the fruit of my own body. My roots drawing water from the deep earth, forming trickles in the sand, and when that wasn't enough, my tears for these fragile mortals turned the trickles into deep pools.

When Skella was too far away to hear their pleas for water, and Asphodelius unwilling to provide them sustenance when they had not called upon his name, I brought salvation and protection. 🌿

Those mortals were the first followers of Vin, devoted to he who gave them protection in an uncaring wilderness. They coaxed the fledgling god into a form to face them, praising their saviour. Vin, seeing their faces and bodies full of adoration, moulded his bark, branches and leaves after them. The travellers built the Arbor amongst the lush depths of the desert oasis, cultivating and caring for his birth place, a singular beacon on Aleuthera to their deity.

And yet.

Time, and the progression of civilisation was not kind to Vin. His followers dwindled, his wilderness claimed by those who cared not for him or his stewards.

🌿 And now? What have they done for me?

They cut down my forests, they force my court out of their homes. They awaken the wrath of my protectors. They poison my fens and marshes with their rotting bodies. They ruin my fields and prairies with crop and livestock. My wilderness, no longer my own. My thanks, nowhere to be seen.

Am I not permitted my anger? What else would you expect of me?

Out of desperation I was borne, and in desperation will you beg of me to save you again. 🌿

[theskywaslookingback]

[AO3] - [read the rest of the series here]

Martin has the TV set to a low murmur, letting Bake Off reruns play in the background as he combs his fingers through Gerry’s hair. It’s warm in the flat, the summer worming its way in through the cracks of the place and turning everything hot and tight. The fan is louder than the TV, oscillating back and forth between the two bodies slumped on the sofa and the one on the chair.

Jon grumbles as the movement rustles his papers, his glasses low on his nose and gaze intent on the paper he’s reading.

“You know,” Gerry says from his comfortable position on Martin’s lap, “if you didn’t assign so much work, you wouldn’t have so much to grade.”

Martin pinches Gerry’s ear in admonishment as Jon makes a noise of protest from his comfortable perch on the arm chair. Gerry yelps and then laughs, swatting at Martin’s hand.

“I’m just saying, you do this to yourself.”

“Hush,” Martin says, tugging gently on a lock of black hair, “It’s too hot to deal with you.”

Gerry hums, picking his head up enough to wink at Jon who just sighs in reply. Gerry settles back in and Martin resumes his petting. It’s nice, despite the heat, one of the very few days they have to spend together. Jon had offered to help out with a summer class at the university that had been overbooked and Gerry had recently been promoted to manager at the bar he’d been working for, which was all phenomenal and Martin was so proud of them both, but it left them all with shockingly little time together.

Martin’s thumb strokes down Gerry’s neck, rubbing over an old tattoo of an eye, pressing down slightly at the pupil. Gerry huffs a breath into his lap and turns just enough to look at him. “Hi,” Martin says.

“Hey.” Comes the soft reply, warm and fond.

Martin would very much like to kiss him, but that would require a level of flexibility he’s never possessed, so he settles for bringing his own hand up to his palm and kissing the center of it before setting it back down lightly over Gerry’s mouth. He can feel the smile tugging at Gerry’s lips before his palm is being kissed in return and Martin brings it back up to his mouth. “Tea?” He asks after finishing the ritual.

“Christ,” Jon says, letting his papers and pen fall onto the small table at his side. The pen jumps at the small shock and rolls off onto the floor. “Please? If I don’t take a break I may actually start pulling my hair out.”

“Well we wouldn’t want that.” Martin says.

“Mmm, I don’t know.” Gerry says, tapping his finger to his chin as if in indecision, “Bald can be sexy. I seem to recall a time when you shaved your head and it didn’t look that bad.”

“Oh?” Delight suffuses through Martin like honeyed sunshine, “Now that’s something I would have loved to have seen.”

Gerry’s face lights up and he sits bolt upright. “Wait here a second,” he says before hopping off the couch and bounding toward the bedroom. There’s a loud crack, like the door has banged off a wall, and then the sound of things hitting the floor in a hurry.

Martin looks over at Jon, bewildered, but Jon just gives a helpless shrug, looking just as lost as he feels. He’s about to get up and go see just what the hell Gerry is doing when he comes tearing back into the room, clutching something in his hands.

“Look!” He crows, clearly pleased with himself, and hands out a book to Martin.

It’s not very large, about the size of a standard journal, and bound in worn, brown leather. The front of it is scuffed, the top corner bent inward like it’d been stepped on or stuffed somewhere and left like that for a long time, forgotten. “What is-“

From the chair he hears Jon say, “Is that-“

But Gerry drowns them both out with his plea of, “Open it!”

So Martin does.

Inside the front cover is a mess of pen drawings and doodles. A stylized eye, a moth, an anarchy symbol, a middle finger, half of them overlapping and the lines blurring. There’s a burst of black in the top right, a dark blot like a burst pen. In the center of the mess are big blocky letters, all caps.

PROPERTY OF GERRY KEAY

Below that, in a much smaller font that Martin can only decipher from years of recognition and practice.

and Jon Sims.

Martin looks up at Gerry who just grins and flops back down on the couch next to him, pressing hard up against his side like he’s eager to watch. Martin flips to the next page.

There’s a polaroid taped to the center, two young boys staring up at him with twin grins of mischief and joy. The boy on the left has chestnut brown hair cropped short. His mouth and hands look sticky and stained a bright red, the likely cause of which being the ice lolly stick still clutched in his right hand. The boy on the right is much smaller, with unruly black hair and red stains on his button down shirt and a matching red mouth. At the bottom someone had written in a tight, cursive script ‘Gerard and Jonathan, August 1999.’ Someone had drawn an ice cream van on the bottom of the page. At the top, in Gerry’s capital letter font, were the words PARTNERS IN CRIME.

The following pages are similar, photos taped onto the pages, sometimes overlapping each other. Some were clearly taken by Jon’s grandmother - the two of them dressed in suits for some function, the two of them sitting at a table and studying, the two of them asleep in the backyard. Others were clearly taken by the two themselves - Gerry smoking a cigarette and flipping off the camera, Jon holding a bottle of beer, Jon reaching for the camera and looking angry, Gerry riding a skateboard, Gerry on the ground with his skateboard upside down next to him. Some of them held commentary - WE LOOKED LIKE TWATS we were eleven!, Gerry has never once landed a kick flip HEY!!!!, we stayed up waiting for the meteor shower, BEST MATES FOR LIFE. Even more held doodles - ocean waves crashing against a rock, a pair of doves, zig zag mazes and tic tac toe, a lit cigarette and a bottle of beer.

“Ah-ha!” Gerry exclaims when Martin is more than halfway through the book, jamming his finger down at the picture taped there.

Martin jumps and looks at him.

“I knew it was in here,” Gerry says smugly.

By this point it looked as if Gerry had already started dying his hair black and growing it long, almost past his shoulders. His eyes were rimmed in black eyeliner and he had at least two piercings that Martin knew hadn’t come with parental permission. Next to him was Jon, hair buzzed down to his scalp and scowling impressively at the camera, wearing a too large leather jacket and a t-shirt for a band Martin had never heard of.

“Oh!” Martin says, grinning, “It looks so good!” He looks up to gauge Jon’s reaction, maybe even tease him a bit, but the words die quickly in his throat.

Jon’s looking right at Gerry, his face a mass of emotions that Martin is at a loss to try and describe. His eyes look wet.

“Jon?” Martin asks, concern tugging away his amusement and leaving it raw.

Gerry’s head snaps up, his own smile rapidly disappearing in the weight of Jon’s gaze.

There’s a long moment where none of them say anything and the room is stifling from the heat and tension. Martin looks between the two of them, trying to piece together what on earth could possibly be wrong, but he’s coming up short on pieces to work with.

It seems like forever before Jon finally says, “You kept it?” The tone of his voice is raw and brittle.

Martin very gently closes the book and sets in down on the coffee table.

Gerry’s mouth opens and closes a couple of times, confused noises eeking out like the squeaking of a rusted hinge. He seems almost as lost as Martin is. Finally his words take shape and land on, “Yes? Yeah, of course I did. Why wouldn’t I have?”

Jon’s eyes flicker away, to the oscillating fan and then to the TV kindly asking if they were still watching. He picks at a loose thread on the chair, fingers working anxiously. “I thought…after your mother- after you left- I thought that…”

Gerry’s eyebrows pull together, his lips tipping down into a frown. “What? Did you think I’d thrown it away?”

Jon shrugs, first one shoulder and then the other, like the collapse of a building. “Just kind of...assumed.” His hands were wringing together now, picking at the skin gently and scratching at his wrist. “After the...after the funeral we weren’t really talking, and then you were just...gone. Thought maybe…” Jon shrugs again, this time lower, hunching himself down smaller, “maybe you didn’t want to remember.”

Oh, Martin thought distantly. Gerry’s mother, Mary, had died when he was only 16, apparently by suicide. It had been a sudden, violent thing that had sent Gerry’s childhood spiraling in a direction he couldn’t control. Less than a week from the time his mother had died, Gerry had been uprooted from the home in Bournemouth he’d always lived in and made to move in with a distant relative named Gertrude up in London. He’d barely had time to process any of it, let alone let Jon know what was happening. It was over ten years before they’d seen each other again, and the gap had always been a sore spot for both Jon and Gerry.

Gerry makes a choked noise and crosses the room in quick strides to kneel in front of the chair. He gathers Jon’s hands in his own, cradling them together. “No,” he says, so softly Martin can barely hear him, “Not you.” He brings their hands up so he can kiss the backs of Jon’s hands, brush his lips over the knuckles. “I never wanted to forget you.”

Jon’s breath hitches.

Martin watches Gerry hold Jon’s hands to his face and mumble something that he can’t make out. Jon’s fingers twitch in response and he huffs out a breath. After a moment he gets up and goes into the kitchen to make them all some tea, flicking the switch on the electric kettle and rummaging through the pantry to find the container of lemongrass tea that he knows Jon likes and the mint tea that Gerry prefers. It doesn’t take long, but he likes the ritual of it anyway. He gathers their two mugs in one hand, and his own mug of a spicy black tea in the other and heads back into the sitting room.

Jon has moved over to the couch, tucked under Gerry’s arm with the book in his lap.

Martin smiles and sets their tea down.

When Jon looks up, Martin bends down and kisses his forehead and then grins wider when Jon’s nose and forehead scrunch up.

“Okay?” Martin asks.

Jon waves at him dismissively but makes a grab for his shirt when Martin turns like he’s going to take the chair. “Yes,” he says, exasperated, “come here, please.”

Gerry squishes himself into the corner and pulls Jon closer to make room, so Martin sighs and fits himself in next to them on the sofa. It’s a cramped fit, but ultimately worth it for the way Jon relaxes against him, flipping absently through the book of memories on his lap.

“Gerry had a point, at least.” Martin says.

“Hm?”

“You looked good with a shaved head,” Martin says too lightly, “might be a good summer to try it again.”

Jon’s protests are drowned out by Gerry’s instant and joyous peal of laughter.

Jon says something about ‘nothing being sacred’, the tips of his ears burning, while Martin tries to hide his grin in his cup of tea. He almost succeeds.

[inkformyblood]

stay interested (in what comes back)

Day 01 Clan of Three for @dincobbweek Summary: Cobb never expected to hear from the Mandalorian after he leaves, but then the first letter arrives... The first letter arrives a few days after Mando and the kid leaves, and it sits unopened on Cobb’s shelf for several days before he can bring himself to open it. 

The courier — a young woman named Tai with a constellation of freckles across her cheeks and forehead and close-cropped black hair — presses it into his hands with a knowing grin. Her clothes are worn from the speeder ride around Tatooine, sand clinging to them so that she appears to be part of the desert made flesh. 

“If you want to send anything back,” she says, pausing in her swaying walk back to her bike, turning to look over her shoulder towards him. “Just leave it in the usual box. I’ll be back round in two weeks.” 

She grins and Cobb catches sight of a new banner tied around her waist: a striped cloth in browns and golds and undeniably Tusken, but it tears the breath from his lungs before he can respond. She hops back onto her bike and is gone.

Everywhere he turns, he is reminded of Mando and the kid, and just when he had pushed the other man from his mind with practised unnerving ease, the letter arrived.

The material is well-made, smooth to the touch except for the small crumpled swell in the centre, and the seal is neat but plain. Cobb brushes his fingers over the markings — a smaller line that flares out into a small peak with a notched end next to a hooked line — and places the letter down, willing his thoughts to turn away from it.

But it remains like a stone digging into the soft skin in the arch of his foot or a shard caught in his teeth.

So Cobb opens it, after one trip too many past it, his gaze locking onto it and the burning curiosity courses through him again.

A crumpled picture on pale brown paper spills out, the edges ragged and torn, and Cobb recognises it as the unmarked side of a help wanted notice. They are common enough in Tatooine that Cobb flips it to the other side to inspect the details before allowing himself to take in the hand-drawn picture.

It was one of theirs, he realises, smoothing out the creases that distort Mos Pelgo’s desperate plea for help. Why had he chosen this? Cobb was well versed in backhanded insults and thinly veiled threats. He had learned to be. The scars that span his back and thighs still ache with the memory of the burning whip and each one is a testament to what he survived.

Mando didn’t strike him as that sort of man. Cobb had seen the way he had curved towards the kid, always half stretched out to brush fingertips across his skull as if he was caught in orbit. Cobb liked to think he was a good judge of character and even when Mando had bared his metaphorical teeth at him, Cobb knew he was a good man.

So, he reasons that the paper was likely convenient rather than a reminder of a debt owed, and flips it back over. A huge white shape dominates the right-hand side of the page broken up by the jagged edges of what Cobb realises are teeth. Next to it are two crudely drawn stick figures, one broader and grey but clearly wearing a helmet with a T shaped visor and the other taller and shakily drawn, featureless except for a red triangle at its throat. Next to the two is a smaller circle in green with two triangles for ears inside a floating grey circle.

It’s the three of them, and a Kraft dragon.

Cobb smooths it out as best he can, his heart twisting and constricting in his chest, threatening to choke him. The other item in the letter is smaller. It rolls when Cobb fumbles while drawing it from the envelope, slipping through his fingers and clattering onto the floor. He drops to his knees, cursing his own uncooperative hands and the protest of his knees, the sharp flare of pain dulling to an ache that would haunt him for a few days.

The ring is cool to the touch and is perfectly sized for his thumb. Cobb doesn’t let his thoughts linger on that, focusing on the careful engraving of segmented bone upon bone instead of the remembered press of Mando’s hand in his, surprisingly warm given the chill of the night air, the slight hesitancy as if expecting Cobb to pull away from him.

He slips it onto his thumb, tacks the picture up on the main wall in his section of the house, and returns to work. A letter detailing their efforts and professing his thanks, along with all the unmarked scrap paper he can find and pencils scavenged from the passing traders that the school doesn't need anymore finds its way into the courier dropbox and is away before Cobb can talk himself out of it.

He just hopes he has made the right choice. 

The arrival of a second picture — the same lopsided circle-shaped child drawn in greens and browns and two stick figures, one grey and one brown with red at its throat beneath a sky that burst with all the colours of a fistfight — confirms he was right. The note that comes with it is brief but Cobb traces his fingers over the hesitant letters. Thank you. 

⁂

The shadow at the end of Cobb’s hallway shifts as he steps closer, his blaster held ready by his side. “Wasn’t sure you’d be coming here, Mando. Glad to see I was wrong.”

Mando’s laugh sounds wrong, too sharp at the edges and echoing slightly. Cobb takes another step closer, his gaze dropping to search the lighter shadows by the other man’s feet, looking for the huddle of fabric and large eyes of the kid. 

“He had to go back to his people.” Mando sounds broken, his voice flat, and Cobb knows that feeling only too well. It draws you down, down into its depths, until you can’t remember what it felt like to believe in something or to care about another person. He steps closer despite himself, one hand stretching out to try and offer what comfort he could when he stops. 

Dark curls, close cropped and unevenly cut, greet Cobb’s gaze, brushing against the edge of Mando’s beskar, his helmet held loosely in one hand. His heart lodges in his throat, remembering the way Mando had recoiled when Cobb had taken off the helmet of the borrowed armour, his hope dying in an instant. 

“I’m guessing a lot has happened since your last letter.” Cobb doesn’t look at Mando further, navigating with the edges of his vision, sliding his feet across the floor as he hooks his arm around Mando’s waist. The man freezes before curling into him with a wounded noise ripping from his throat. “Come on and sleep. We can talk in the morning.”

“Didn’t know where else to go.” Mando sighs, his feet leaden, but he goes where Cobb leads. His skin was as cold as his beskar, gritty with sand that rasped against Cobb’s palm. “Knew it would be safe here.”

“Ain’t that a good endorsement,” Cobb murmurs, trying to ignore the swell of emotion the words created in his chest. The gap in letters had troubled him more than he wanted to admit and Tai had taken to stopping by his house first on her rounds so he wouldn’t waste more time waiting for her, only to be disappointed once again.

“It’s true.” Mando turns to watch him, and Cobb keeps his gaze fixed forward. The other man is shorter than him, folding into the curve of his chest as if he had been made to fit there, and he catches a glimpse of dark eyes before they move into his bedroom and Mando’s gaze snaps to the wall. “Oh.”

He sways, no longer leaning on Cobb for support, but clinging to him like a lifeline, and Cobb chances smoothing a hand along the curve of his hip, leaning down to blindly knock his temple to the other man’s. “You will see your kid again, Mando. He loves you.”

“He talked about you too.” Mando’s words rumble through him, his voice cracking and breaking. “Always drawing you. We were going to come back before— before—”

“He’s a sweet kid. Takes after his daddy, I reckon.”

Mando laughs at that, a helpless exhalation, and Cobb chuckles along with him. 

“Now, go to sleep. I’ll be here in the morning,” Cobb continues, nudging Mando towards the bed. It is unmade, the blankets twisted too high, exposing the pale sheet beneath, but he doesn’t have time to reconsider it as Mando falls onto it as if his strings were cut. 

“Skywalker took my child,” Mando mutters into the sheets and Cobb freezes, old familiarity washing over him, his thoughts turning towards an old datapad stored in a small chest in the corner and the contact details hidden within. 

“Sleep, Mando. It’ll do you some good.” Cobb waits until the man’s breath levels out, falling into the deep easy rhythm of sleep before turning to inspect the wall. The most recent picture from the child catches his eye — the figure of Cobb and Mando on either side of the kid, their hands overlapping, beneath Tatooine's twin suns — and his hands curl into fitsts. He knows what he has to do. 

The datapad hums as it turns on, the screen cracked and blurred, but Cobb navigates through it easily, old memories coming back to him. 

‘Skywalker? Been a while, but did you just pick up a Mandalorian’s kid and not leave any contact details?’

The reply is quick, and Cobb squints at the screen, his mouth moving soundlessly as he reads through the misspellings and laughs to himself when he finishes. Three days travel away, and Mando would see his son again. Three days of Cobb living with the man he was hopelessly in love with as he helped him restore the balance to his family. This was going to be difficult, but, hopefully, easier than killing the dragon. 

[lordeasriel]

ATTWN: A Look at Miss Brent

I keep circling around the idea of writing And Then There Were None meta, like a full, proper analysis of the novel, but I just can't settle down on how to do it, cause I do have many thoughts, but I can't seem to organise them in a way it will make sense. But-

I was thinking about Miss Brent today, and she's not exactly a character I have that many thoughts compared to Vera or Armstrong, but she certainly has my interest. What strikes me stronger about her is her complacency, in a way.

Let's look at the novel first: here's this sixty-something woman, a spinster who takes on girls from local charities/orphanages to train them into proper maids or whatever. It's not an unusual thing for that time based on the rest of Christie's novels, it seemed like a common occurrence for the period. At any rate, she's very righteous, uptight, her belief is almost borderline fanatical, she never hesitates over her "innocence" in front of the accusations, and the thing is: she doesn't deny shunning the girl away.

Unlike the others, who remain resilient on their innocence (Lombard the exception cause he literally confessed right away), Miss Brent never denies that she did refuse to help Beatrice. In her own mind, she didn't do anything wrong - and if we're going there, in its fucked up way, she technically didn't do anything wrong. She had no familial attachment to the girl, she didn't have to do anything for her legally speaking; morally, of course, she should have but we don't arrest people for being morally corrupt lmao Let alone death sentence them. *coughs*

But what gets me it's her complacency. You know, I'm blaming this on the windy day, but thinking about her, sitting by herself almost all the time (including when she died), she never does anything. Unlike the others, Vera included considering how Christie often writes the women isolated, Miss Brent never gets involved in either investigating or helping them to find a way out; she just sits and knits and eventually bosses Vera around or say some mean stuff to someone. She doesn't act, which is odd for us as a reader; I mean, if I was in her spot I would have already made a signal for help, even with the bad weather lmao This book heavily traumatised me anyway--

Miss Brent doesn't act, that's my main point. In her head, I suppose she expects some sort of divine intervention, in its way; not a miracle, but you know, she expected her righteousness guaranteed her safety. She sees the other deaths as punishment, she thinks them all guilty, perhaps not the General or Wargrave, but I've no doubt she considers the rest of them wicked and deserving of the punishment, but never herself. She didn't do anything wrong, she has got nothing to feel sorry for. There is a whole section, where Vera asks Miss Brent if she is not afraid or if she simply doesn't mind dying. To which she reacts exactly like I said before, like she was above them all, like death wouldn't come for her.

Now, I will just vaguely go over the show because I think their choice of handling her was an interesting one. I like most of the choices made by show, except the ending which I'll save for another day of ranting, but Miss Brent in the show behaves similarly, but her background gets deeper. For one there was two key things - I say two because I've seen two different interpretations of this - and they were 1) repressed lesbian and 2) predator. Now, these two could coexist with each other, she could have been taking in girls to take advantage of them, but I don't know, I think it would be hard for her to do that always, so I like to think if repressed lesbian was it, then it makes more sense for her crime and her reaction. It would be related to a feeling of betrayal - "I've given you a home, a job, affection and you still went behind my back to be a whore" - and it's something Miss Brent would probably not acknowledge. She was always too religious, too righteous, so Beatrice probably haunted her more in death than she did in life: no one would believe this ragged girl over any accusations - even if there was consent on her part. But that's just beside the point.

What I mean for the show is, they go in a different direction. Miss Brent's reactions over the murders are a little more in line with her religious dynamic for the show: when Tony dies, she makes a little prayer, she worries about Mrs. Rogers state when she sees her passed out (despite the fact she humiliated her earlier over being meek and weak and so on), she has a judgemental attitude towards Vera, but even that comes from a place of almost understanding? She still judges them harshly, but she is a lot less harsh to the ones she consider less harmful (aka she is absolutely distasteful about Lombard, whose crime is easily the worst crime in the show and she thinks so).

Of course, all of her views and beliefs and behaviours are based on her own lifestyle, so she is a bit blind and biased - when Lombard points out about the missionaries crimes in Africa, after she calls him out; or when she states she couldn't imagine crossing paths with a man like him, despite the fact she knows well enough they're all there because they're guilty - so she is bound to hypocrisy every now and again. But her fanaticism from the book is turned into a proper, religious attitude; she does abide by the Bible, she condemns very little her other companions (I mean, she still judges Vera over her youth and her inertia, she judges Armstrong's lack of calm, she judges Lombard because well, because of his Existence™ lmao) She is, of course, judgmental and vain and arrogant, but this is less cartoony and more realistic. More importantly, because her beliefs are much more ingrained in her life, she is afraid. She is genuinely afraid and that is an important, key change that I genuinely like.

Miss Brent has faith, at first, that they will leave the Island, so she stills acts very coldly at first and of course, she still denies her guilt, she still claims she did the right thing and Beatrice caused her own undoing. But, the show pursues the idea that Miss Brent, upon being reminded of the event, starts to feel guilt: when she is praying she hallucinates Beatrice (hallucionation was a choice they did to convey these feelings, but you could just claim that's a memory in her head); and more importantly, before her death - which happens the day after she hallucinates - her demeanor changes entirely. She goes from trying to stay calm and resolute before the tide, to feeling weary. That's important because unlike Book! Emily, she is fully aware she has committed a sin, and now whether that is her neglect of Beatrice's pleas or her own feelings for her, that's beside the point. The point is this woman realises she is very close to meet her maker and the burden of having sinned wears her down.

Miss Brent also adds "It's only wool" when Vera is pouring her coffee (which I had to crop cause Gif size), which is her redirecting her distress to something mundane (in another scene later, Vera mentions how doing the dishes is a mundane task, which she finds soothing. In fact, seeking a sense of normalcy is a recurring theme for the show, but also for the book) and ordinary. Vera, of course, notices her distress over being hunted; she shares the feeling, and I don't want to focus too much on Vera because I'll talk about her eventually later, but this shows how Miss Brent changes drastically.

On their first conversation after the dinner, Vera's impression of Miss Brent is of an uptight, self-righteous, straight-up cruel woman and she avoids her if she can help it, and truth be told, Miss Brent does act very badly and says bad things, Vera is not being touchy about it. So when Vera lays the coffee tray, she is ready to walk away before Miss Brent addresses her (she even makes a dry remark on "There is no milk, I'm afraid", which is meant to spite Miss Brent's earlier attitude over asking for perfect eggs after Mrs Rogers died and so on), and Miss Brent talks so unlike herself, a weariness that makes Vera reconsider and come back, to pour her coffee. She feels sorry for Miss Brent, because she finally cracked like the others; Miss Brent knows now that no amount of faith might defend her from this killer, because this killer has got nothing to do with a justice kill.

She stays seated, knitting again, but when she reaches for the coffee she hesitates. She realises Vera could have poisoned it (before entering the room, since she watches Vera pouring the coffee), and then she puts it down. There is a sense of danger in her, and she has no desire to die, unlike in the book where she so casually just stays behind, unafraid in her own attitude of superiority. I like this change a lot; I think showing her fear before her God enhances her religious mania a lot more, because she truly fears Divine Judgement, because she understands, deep down, that she did a bad thing; maybe not murder - I mean, it wasn't murder after all - but she still did a morally bad thing. If there is a Heaven, it won't be for her.