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It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 17-18

CHAPTER XVII

LIKE beefsteak and potatoes stick to your ribs even if you're working your head off, so the words of the Good Book stick by you in perplexity and tribulation. If I ever held a high position over my people, I hope that my ministers would be quoting, from II Kings, 18; 31 & 32: "Come out to me, and then eat ye every man of his own vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his cistern, until I come and take you away to a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive oil and honey, that ye may live and not die."

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip.

DESPITE the claims of Montpelier, the former capital of Vermont, and of Burlington, largest town in the state, Captain Shad Ledue fixed on Fort Beulah as executive center of County B, which was made out of nine former counties of northern Vermont. Doremus never decided whether this was, as Lorinda Pike asserted, because Shad was in partnership with Banker R. C. Crowley in the profits derived from the purchase of quite useless old dwellings as part of his headquarters, or for the even sounder purpose of showing himself off, in battalion leader's uniform with the letters "C.C." beneath the five-pointed star on his collar, to the pals with whom he had once played pool and drunk applejack, and to the "snobs" whose lawns he once had mowed.

Besides the condemned dwellings, Shad took over all of the former Scotland County courthouse and established his private office in the judge's chambers, merely chucking out the law books and replacing them with piles of magazines devoted to the movies and the detection of crime, hanging up portraits of Windrip, Sarason, Haik, and Reek, installing two deep chairs upholstered in poison-green plush (ordered from the store of the loyal Charley Betts but, to Betts's fury, charged to the government, to be paid for if and when) and doubling the number of judicial cuspidors.

In the top center drawer of his desk Shad kept a photograph from a nudist camp, a flask of Benedictine, a .44 revolver, and a dog whip.

County commissioners were allowed from one to a dozen assistant commissioners, depending on the population. Doremus Jessup was alarmed when he discovered that Shad had had the shrewdness to choose as assistants men of some education and pretense to manners, with "Professor" Emil Staubmeyer as Assistant County Commissioner in charge of the Township of Beulah, which included the villages of Fort Beulah, West and North Beulah, Beulah Center, Trianon, Hosea, and Keezmet.

As Shad had, without benefit of bayonets, become a captain, so Mr. Staubmeyer (author of Hitler and Other Poems of Passion— unpublished) automatically became a doctor.

Perhaps, thought Doremus, he would understand Windrip & Co. better through seeing them faintly reflected in Shad and Staubmeyer than he would have in the confusing glare of Washington; and understand thus that a Buzz Windrip—a Bismarck—a Cæsar—a Pericles was like all the rest of itching, indigesting, aspiring humanity except that each of these heroes had a higher degree of ambition and more willingness to kill.

By June, the enrollment of the Minute Men had increased to 562,000, and the force was now able to accept as new members only such trusty patriots and pugilists as it preferred. The War Department was frankly allowing them not just "expense money" but payment ranging from ten dollars a week for "inspectors" with a few hours of weekly duty in drilling, to $9700 a year for "brigadiers" on full time, and $16,000 for the High Marshal, Lee Sarason... fortunately without interfering with the salaries from his other onerous duties.

The M.M. ranks were: inspector, more or less corresponding to private; squad leader, or corporal; cornet, or sergeant; ensign, or lieutenant; battalion leader, a combination of captain, major, and lieutenant colonel; commander, or colonel; brigadier, or general; high marshal, or commanding general. Cynics suggested that these honorable titles derived more from the Salvation Army than the fighting forces, but be that cheap sneer justified or no, the fact remains that an M.M. helot had ever so much more pride in being called an "inspector," an awing designation in all police circles, than in being a "private."

Since all members of the National Guard were not only allowed but encouraged to become members of the Minute Men also, since all veterans of the Great War were given special privileges, and since "Colonel" Osceola Luthorne, the Secretary of War, was generous about lending regular army officers to Secretary of State Sarason for use as drill masters in the M.M.'s, there was a surprising proportion of trained men for so newly born an army.

Lee Sarason had proven to President Windrip by statistics from the Great War that college education, and even the study of the horrors of other conflicts, did not weaken the masculinity of the students, but actually made them more patriotic, flag-waving, and skillful in the direction of slaughter than the average youth, and nearly every college in the country was to have, this coming autumn, its own battalion of M.M.'s, with drill counting as credit toward graduation. The collegians were to be schooled as officers. Another splendid source of M.M. officers were the gymnasiums and the classes in Business Administration of the Y.M.C.A.

Most of the rank and file, however, were young farmers delighted by the chance to go to town and to drive automobiles as fast as they wanted to; young factory employees who preferred uniforms and the authority to kick elderly citizens above overalls and stooping over machines; and rather a large number of former criminals, ex-bootleggers, ex-burglars, ex-labor racketeers, who, for their skill with guns and leather life-preservers, and for their assurances that the majesty of the Five-Pointed Star had completely reformed them, were forgiven their earlier blunders in ethics and were warmly accepted in the M.M. Storm Troops.

It was said that one of the least of these erring children was the first patriot to name President Windrip "the Chief," meaning Führer, or Imperial Wizard of the K.K.K., or Il Duce, or Imperial Potentate of the Mystic Shrine, or Commodore, or University Coach, or anything else supremely noble and good-hearted. So, on the glorious anniversary of July 4, 1937, more than five hundred thousand young uniformed vigilantes, scattered in towns from Guam to Bar Harbor, from Point Barrow to Key West, stood at parade rest and sang, like the choiring seraphim:

"Buzz and buzz and hail the Chief, And his five-pointed sta-ar, The U.S. ne'er can come to grief With us prepared for wa-ar."

Certain critical spirits felt that this version of the chorus of "Buzz and Buzz," now the official M.M. anthem, showed, in a certain roughness, the lack of Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch's fastidious hand. But nothing could be done about it. She was said to be in China, organizing chain letters. And even while that uneasiness was over the M.M., upon the very next day came the blow.

Someone on High Marshal Sarason's staff noticed that the U.S.S.R.'s emblem was not a six-pointed star, but a five-pointed one, even like America's, so that we were not insulting the Soviets at all.

Consternation was universal. From Sarason's office came sulphurous rebuke to the unknown idiot who had first made the mistake (generally he was believed to be Lee Sarason) and the command that a new emblem be suggested by every member of the M.M. Day and night for three days, M.M. barracks were hectic with telegrams, telephone calls, letters, placards, and thousands of young men sat with pencils and rulers earnestly drawing tens of thousands of substitutes for the five-pointed star: circles in triangles, triangles in circles, pentagons, hexagons, alphas and omegas, eagles, aeroplanes, arrows, bombs bursting in air, bombs bursting in bushes, billy-goats, rhinoceri, and the Yosemite Valley. It was circulated that a young ensign on High Marshal Sarason's staff had, in agony over the error, committed suicide. Everybody thought that this hara-kiri was a fine idea and showed sensibility on the part of the better M.M.'s; and they went on thinking so even after it proved that the Ensign had merely got drunk at the Buzz Backgammon Club and talked about suicide.

In the end, despite his uncounted competitors, it was the great mystic, Lee Sarason himself, who found the perfect new emblem—a ship's steering wheel.

It symbolized, he pointed out, not only the Ship of State but also the wheels of American industry, the wheels and the steering wheel of motorcars, the wheel diagram which Father Coughlin had suggested two years before as symbolizing the program of the National Union for Social Justice, and, particularly, the wheel emblem of the Rotary Club.

Sarason's proclamation also pointed out that it would not be too far-fetched to declare that, with a little drafting treatment, the arms of the Swastika could be seen as unquestionably related to the circle, and how about the K.K.K. of the Kuklux Klan? Three K's made a triangle, didn't they? and everybody knew that a triangle was related to a circle.

So it was that in September, at the demonstrations on Loyalty Day (which replaced Labor Day), the same wide-flung seraphim sang:

"Buzz and buzz and hail the Chief, And th' mystic steering whee-el, The U.S. ne'er can come to grief While we defend its we-al."

In mid-August, President Windrip announced that, since all its aims were being accomplished, the League of Forgotten Men (founded by one Rev. Mr. Prang, who was mentioned in the proclamation only as a person in past history) was now terminated. So were all the older parties, Democratic, Republican, Farmer-Labor, or what not. There was to be only one: The American Corporate State and Patriotic Party—no! added the President, with something of his former good-humor: "there are two parties, the Corporate and those who don't belong to any party at all, and so, to use a common phrase, are just out of luck!"

The idea of the Corporate or Corporative State, Secretary Sarason had more or less taken from Italy. All occupations were divided into six classes: agriculture, industry, commerce, transportation and communication, banking and insurance and investment, and a grab-bag class including the arts, sciences, and teaching. The American Federation of Labor, the Railway Brotherhoods, and all other labor organizations, along with the Federal Department of Labor, were supplanted by local Syndicates composed of individual workers, above which were Provincial Confederations, all under governmental guidance. Parallel to them in each occupation were Syndicates and Confederations of employers. Finally, the six Confederations of workers and the six Confederations of employers were combined in six joint federal Corporations, which elected the twenty-four members of the National Council of Corporations, which initiated or supervised all legislation relating to labor or business.

There was a permanent chairman of this National Council, with a deciding vote and the power of regulating all debate as he saw fit, but he was not elected—he was appointed by the President; and the first to hold the office (without interfering with his other duties) was Secretary of State Lee Sarason. Just to safeguard the liberties of Labor, this chairman had the right to dismiss any unreasonable member of the National Council.

All strikes and lockouts were forbidden under federal penalties, so that workmen listened to reasonable government representatives and not to unscrupulous agitators.

Windrip's partisans called themselves the Corporatists, or, familiarly, the "Corpos," which nickname was generally used.

By ill-natured people the Corpos were called "the Corpses." But they were not at all corpse-like. That description would more correctly, and increasingly, have applied to their enemies.

Though the Corpos continued to promise a gift of at least $5000 to every family, "as soon as funding of the required bond issue shall be completed," the actual management of the poor, particularly of the more surly and dissatisfied poor, was undertaken by the Minute Men.

It could now be published to the world, and decidedly it was published, that unemployment had, under the benign reign of President Berzelius Windrip, almost disappeared. Almost all workless men were assembled in enormous labor camps, under M.M. officers. Their wives and children accompanied them and took care of the cooking, cleaning, and repair of clothes. The men did not merely work on state projects; they were also hired out at the reasonable rate of one dollar a day to private employers. Of course, so selfish is human nature even in Utopia, this did cause most employers to discharge the men to whom they had been paying more than a dollar a day, but that took care of itself, because these overpaid malcontents in their turn were forced into the labor camps.

Out of their dollar a day, the workers in the camps had to pay from seventy to ninety cents a day for board and lodging.

There was a certain discontentment among people who had once owned motorcars and bathrooms and eaten meat twice daily, at having to walk ten or twenty miles a day, bathe once a week, along with fifty others, in a long trough, get meat only twice a week—when they got it—and sleep in bunks, a hundred in a room. Yet there was less rebellion than a mere rationalist like Walt Trowbridge, Windrip's ludicrously defeated rival, would have expected, for every evening the loudspeaker brought to the workers the precious voices of Windrip and Sarason, Vice-President Beecroft, Secretary of War Luthorne, Secretary of Education and Propaganda Macgoblin, General Coon, or some other genius, and these Olympians, talking to the dirtiest and tiredest mudsills as warm friend to friend, told them that they were the honored foundation stones of a New Civilization, the advance guards of the conquest of the whole world.

They took it, too, like Napoleon's soldiers. And they had the Jews and the Negroes to look down on, more and more. The M.M.'s saw to that. Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.

Each week the government said less about the findings of the board of inquiry which was to decide how the $5000 per person could be wangled. It became easier to answer malcontents with a cuff from a Minute Man than by repetitious statements from Washington.

But most of the planks in Windrip's platform really were carried out—according to a sane interpretation of them. For example, inflation.

In America of this period, inflation did not even compare with the German inflation of the 1920's, but it was sufficient. The wage in the labor camps had to be raised from a dollar a day to three, with which the workers were receiving an equivalent of sixty cents a day in 1914 values. Everybody delightfully profited, except the very poor, the common workmen, the skilled workmen, the small business men, the professional men, and old couples living on annuities or their savings—these last did really suffer a little, as their incomes were cut in three. The workers, with apparently tripled wages, saw the cost of everything in the shops much more than triple.

Agriculture, which was most of all to have profited from inflation, on the theory that the mercurial crop-prices would rise faster than anything else, actually suffered the most of all, because, after a first flurry of foreign buying, importers of American products found it impossible to deal in so skittish a market, and American food exports—such of them as were left—ceased completely.

It was Big Business, that ancient dragon which Bishop Prang and Senator Windrip had gone forth to slay, that had the interesting time.

With the value of the dollar changing daily, the elaborate systems of cost-marking and credit of Big Business were so confused that presidents and sales-managers sat in their offices after midnight, with wet towels. But they got some comfort, because with the depreciated dollar they were able to recall all bonded indebtedness and, paying it off at the old face values, get rid of it at thirty cents on the hundred. With this, and the currency so wavering that employees did not know just what they ought to get in wages, and labor unions eliminated, the larger industrialists came through the inflation with perhaps double the wealth, in real values, that they had had in 1936.

And two other planks in Windrip's encyclical vigorously respected were those eliminating the Negroes and patronizing the Jews.

The former race took it the less agreeably. There were horrible instances in which whole Southern counties with a majority of Negro population were overrun by the blacks and all property seized. True, their leaders alleged that this followed massacres of Negroes by Minute Men. But as Dr. Macgoblin, Secretary of Culture, so well said, this whole subject was unpleasant and therefore not helpful to discuss.

All over the country, the true spirit of Windrip's Plank Nine, regarding the Jews, was faithfully carried out. It was understood that the Jews were no longer to be barred from fashionable hotels, as in the hideous earlier day of race prejudice, but merely to be charged double rates. It was understood that Jews were never to be discouraged from trading but were merely to pay higher graft to commissioners and inspectors and to accept without debate all regulations, wage rates, and price lists decided upon by the stainless Anglo-Saxons of the various merchants' associations. And that all Jews of all conditions were frequently to sound their ecstasy in having found in America a sanctuary, after their deplorable experiences among the prejudices of Europe.

In Fort Beulah, Louis Rotenstern, since he had always been the first to stand up for the older official national anthems, "The Star-Spangled Banner" or "Dixie," and now for "Buzz and Buzz," since he had of old been considered almost an authentic friend by Francis Tasbrough and R. C. Crowley, and since he had often good-naturedly pressed the unrecognized Shad Ledue's Sunday pants without charge, was permitted to retain his tailor shop, though it was understood that he was to charge members of the M.M. prices that were only nominal, or quarter nominal.

But one Harry Kindermann, a Jew who had profiteered enough as agent for maple-sugar and dairy machinery so that in 1936 he had been paying the last installment on his new bungalow and on his Buick, had always been what Shad Ledue called "a fresh Kike." He had laughed at the flag, the Church, and even Rotary. Now he found the manufacturers canceling his agencies, without explanation.

By the middle of 1937 he was selling frankfurters by the road, and his wife, who had been so proud of the piano and the old American pine cupboard in their bungalow, was dead, from pneumonia caught in the one-room tar-paper shack into which they had moved.

At the time of Windrip's election, there had been more than 80,000 relief administrators employed by the federal and local governments in America. With the labor camps absorbing most people on relief, this army of social workers, both amateurs and long-trained professional uplifters, was stranded.

The Minute Men controlling the labor camps were generous: they offered the charitarians the same dollar a day that the proletarians received, with special low rates for board and lodging. But the cleverer social workers received a much better offer: to help list every family and every unmarried person in the country, with his or her finances, professional ability, military training and, most important and most tactfully to be ascertained, his or her secret opinion of the M.M.'s and of the Corpos in general.

A good many of the social workers indignantly said that this was asking them to be spies, stool pigeons for the American Oh Gay Pay Oo. These were, on various unimportant charges, sent to jail or, later, to concentration camps—which were also jails, but the private jails of the M.M.'s, unshackled by any old-fashioned, nonsensical prison regulations.

In the confusion of the summer and early autumn of 1937, local M.M. officers had a splendid time making their own laws, and such congenital traitors and bellyachers as Jewish doctors, Jewish musicians, Negro journalists, socialistic college professors, young men who preferred reading or chemical research to manly service with the M.M.'s, women who complained when their men had been taken away by the M.M.'s and had disappeared, were increasingly beaten in the streets, or arrested on charges that would not have been very familiar to pre-Corpo jurists.

And, increasingly, the bourgeois counter revolutionists began to escape to Canada; just as once, by the "underground railroad" the Negro slaves had escaped into that free Northern air.

In Canada, as well as in Mexico, Bermuda, Jamaica, Cuba, and Europe, these lying Red propagandists began to publish the vilest little magazines, accusing the Corpos of murderous terrorism— allegations that a band of six M.M.'s had beaten an aged rabbi and robbed him; that the editor of a small labor paper in Paterson had been tied to his printing press and left there while the M.M.'s burned the plant; that the pretty daughter of an ex-Farmer-Labor politician in Iowa had been raped by giggling young men in masks.

To end this cowardly flight of the lying counter revolutionists (many of whom, once accepted as reputable preachers and lawyers and doctors and writers and ex-congressmen and ex-army officers, were able to give a wickedly false impression of Corpoism and the M.M.'s to the world outside America) the government quadrupled the guards who were halting suspects at every harbor and at even the minutest trails crossing the border; and in one quick raid, it poured M.M. storm troopers into all airports, private or public, and all aeroplane factories, and thus, they hoped, closed the air lanes to skulking traitors.

As one of the most poisonous counter revolutionists in the country, Ex-Senator Walt Trowbridge, Windrip's rival in the election of 1936, was watched night and day by a rotation of twelve M.M. guards. But there seemed to be small danger that this opponent, who, after all, was a crank but not an intransigent maniac, would make himself ridiculous by fighting against the great Power which (per Bishop Prang) Heaven had been pleased to send for the healing of distressed America.

Trowbridge remained prosaically on a ranch he owned in South Dakota, and the government agent commanding the M.M.'s (a skilled man, trained in breaking strikes) reported that on his tapped telephone wire and in his steamed-open letters, Trowbridge communicated nothing more seditious than reports on growing alfalfa. He had with him no one but ranch hands and, in the house, an innocent aged couple.

Washington hoped that Trowbridge was beginning to see the light. Maybe they would make him Ambassador to Britain, vice Sinclair.

On the Fourth of July, when the M.M's gave their glorious but unfortunate tribute to the Chief and the Five-pointed Star, Trowbridge gratified his cow-punchers by holding an unusually pyrotechnic celebration. All evening skyrockets flared up, and round the home pasture glowed pots of Roman fire. Far from cold-shouldering the M.M. guards, Trowbridge warmly invited them to help set off rockets and join the gang in beer and sausages. The lonely soldier boys off there on the prairie—they were so happy shooting rockets!

An aeroplane with a Canadian license, a large plane, flying without lights, sped toward the rocket-lighted area and, with engine shut off, so that the guards could not tell whether it had flown on, circled the pasture outlined by the Roman fire and swiftly landed.

The guards had felt sleepy after the last bottle of beer. Three of them were napping on the short, rough grass.

They were rather disconcertingly surrounded by men in masking flying-helmets, men carrying automatic pistols, who handcuffed the guards that were still awake, picked up the others, and stored all twelve of them in the barred baggage compartment of the plane.

The raiders' leader, a military-looking man, said to Walt Trowbridge, "Ready, sir?"

"Yep. Just take those four boxes, will you, please, Colonel?"

The boxes contained photostats of letters and documents.

Unregally clad in overalls and a huge straw hat, Senator Trowbridge entered the pilots' compartment. High and swift and alone, the plane flew toward the premature Northern Lights.

Next morning, still in overalls, Trowbridge breakfasted at the Fort Garry Hotel with the Mayor of Winnipeg.

A fortnight later, in Toronto, he began the republication of his weekly, A Lance for Democracy, and on the cover of the first number were reproductions of four letters indicating that before he became President, Berzelius Windrip had profited through personal gifts from financiers to an amount of over $1,000,000. To Doremus Jessup, to some thousands of Doremus Jessups, were smuggled copies of the Lance, though possession of it was punishable (perhaps not legally, but certainly effectively) by death.

But it was not till the winter, so carefully did his secret agents have to work in America, that Trowbridge had in full operation the organization called by its operatives the "New Underground," the "N.U.," which aided thousands of counter revolutionists to escape into Canada.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN the little towns, ah, there is the abiding peace that I love, and that can never be disturbed by even the noisiest Smart Alecks from these haughty megalopolises like Washington, New York, & etc.

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip.

DOREMUS'S policy of "wait and see," like most Fabian policies, had grown shaky. It seemed particularly shaky in June, 1937, when he drove to North Beulah for the fortieth graduation anniversary of his class in Isaiah College.

As the custom was, the returned alumni wore comic costumes. His class had sailor suits, but they walked about, bald-headed and lugubrious, in these well-meant garments of joy, and there was a look of instability even in the eyes of the three members who were ardent Corpos (being local Corpo commissioners).

After the first hour Doremus saw little of his classmates. He had looked up his familiar correspondent, Victor Loveland, teacher in the classical department who, a year ago, had informed him of President Owen J. Peaseley's ban on criticism of military training.

At its best, Loveland's jerry-built imitation of an Anne Hathaway cottage had been no palace—Isaiah assistant professors did not customarily rent palaces. Now, with the pretentiously smart living room heaped with burlap-covered chairs and rolled rugs and boxes of books, it looked like a junkshop. Amid the wreckage sat Loveland, his wife, his three children, and one Dr. Arnold King, experimenter in chemistry.

"What's all this?" said Doremus.

"I've been fired. As too 'radical,'" growled Loveland.

"Yes! And his most vicious attack has been on Glicknow's treatment of the use of the aorist in Hesiod!" wailed his wife.

"Well, I deserve it—for not having been vicious about anything since A.D. 300! Only thing I'm ashamed of is that they're not firing me for having taught my students that the Corpos have taken most of their ideas from Tiberius, or maybe for having decently tried to assassinate District Commissioner Reek!" said Loveland.

"Where you going?" inquired Doremus.

"That's just it! We don't know! Oh, first to my dad's house— which is a six-room packing-box in Burlington—Dad's got diabetes. But teaching—President Peaseley kept putting off signing my new contract and just informed me ten days ago that I'm through—much too late to get a job for next year. Myself, I don't care a damn! Really I don't! I'm glad to have been made to admit that as a college prof I haven't been, as I so liked to convince myself, any Erasmus Junior, inspiring noble young souls to dream of chaste classic beauty—save the mark!—but just a plain hired man, another counter-jumper in the Marked-down Classics Goods Department, with students for bored customers, and as subject to being hired and fired as any janitor. Do you remember that in Imperial Rome, the teachers, even the tutors of the nobility, were slaves—allowed a lot of leeway, I suppose, in their theories about the anthropology of Crete, but just as likely to be strangled as the other slaves! I'm not kicking—"

Dr. King, the chemist, interrupted with a whoop: "Sure you're kicking! Why the hell not? With three kids? Why not kick! Now me, I'm lucky! I'm half Jew—one of these sneaking, cunning Jews that Buzz Windrip and his boyfriend Hitler tell you about; so cunning I suspected what was going on months ago and so—I've also just been fired, Mr. Jessup—I arranged for a job with the Universal Electric Corporation.... They don't mind Jews there, as long as they sing at their work and find boondoggles worth a million a year to the company—at thirty-five hundred a year salary! A fond farewell to all my grubby studes! Though—" and Doremus thought he was, at heart, sadder than Loveland—"I do kind of hate to give up my research. Oh, hell with 'em!"

The version of Owen J. Peaseley, M.A. (Oberlin), LL.D. (Conn. State), president of Isaiah College, was quite different.

"Why no, Mr. Jessup! We believe absolutely in freedom of speech and thought, here at old Isaiah. The fact is that we are letting Loveland go only because the Classics Department is overstaffed—so little demand for Greek and Sanskrit and so on, you know, with all this modern interest in quantitative bio-physics and aeroplane-repairing and so on. But as to Dr. King—um—I'm afraid we did a little feel that he was riding for a fall, boasting about being a Jew and all, you know, and—But can't we talk of pleasanter subjects? You have probably learned that Secretary of Culture Macgoblin has now completed his plan for the appointment of a director of education in each province and district?—and that Professor Almeric Trout of Aumbry University is slated for Director in our Northeastern Province? Well, I have something very gratifying to add. Dr. Trout—and what a profound scholar, what an eloquent orator he is!—did you know that in Teutonic 'Almeric' means 'noble prince'?—and he's been so kind as to designate me as Director of Education for the Vermont-New Hampshire District! Isn't that thrilling! I wanted you to be one of the first to hear it, Mr. Jessup, because of course one of the chief jobs of the Director will be to work with and through the newspaper editors in the great task of spreading correct Corporate ideals and combating false theories—yes, oh yes."

It seemed as though a large number of people were zealous to work with and through the editors these days, thought Doremus.

He noticed that President Peaseley resembled a dummy made of faded gray flannel of a quality intended for petticoats in an orphan asylum.

The Minute Men's organization was less favored in the staid villages than in the industrial centers, but all through the summer it was known that a company of M.M.'s had been formed in Fort Beulah and were drilling in the Armory under National Guard officers and County Commissioner Ledue, who was seen sitting up nights in his luxurious new room in Mrs. Ingot's boarding-house, reading a manual of arms. But Doremus declined to go look at them, and when his rustic but ambitious reporter, "Doc" (otherwise Otis) Itchitt, came in throbbing about the M.M.'s and wanted to run an illustrated account in the Saturday Informer, Doremus sniffed.

It was not till their first public parade, in August, that Doremus saw them, and not gladly.

The whole countryside had turned out; he could hear them laughing and shuffling beneath his office window; but he stubbornly stuck to editing an article on fertilizers for cherry orchards. (And he loved parades, childishly!) Not even the sound of a band pounding out "Boola, Boola" drew him to the window. Then he was plucked up by Dan Wilgus, the veteran job compositor and head of the Informer chapel, a man tall as a house and possessed of such a sweeping black mustache as had not otherwise been seen since the passing of the old-time bartender. "You got to take a look, Boss; great show!" implored Dan.

Through the Chester-Arthur, red-brick prissiness of President Street, Doremus saw marching a surprisingly well-drilled company of young men in the uniforms of Civil War cavalrymen, and just as they were opposite the Informer office, the town band rollicked into "Marching through Georgia." The young men smiled, they stepped more quickly, and held up their banner with the steering wheel and M.M. upon it.

When he was ten, Doremus had seen in this self-same street a Memorial Day parade of the G.A.R. The veterans were an average of under fifty then, and some of them only thirty-five; they had swung ahead lightly and gayly—and to the tune of "Marching through Georgia." So now in 1937 he was looking down again on the veterans of Gettysburg and Missionary Ridge. Oh—he could see them all— Uncle Tom Veeder, who had made him the willow whistles; old Mr. Crowley with his cornflower eyes; Jack Greenhill who played leapfrog with the kids and who was to die in Ethan Creek—They found him with thick hair dripping. Doremus thrilled to the M.M. flags, the music, the valiant young men, even while he hated all they marched for, and hated the Shad Ledue whom he incredulously recognized in the brawny horseman at the head of the procession.

He understood now why the young men marched to war. But "Oh yeh— you think so!" he could hear Shad sneering through the music.

The unwieldy humor characteristic of American politicians persisted even through the eruption. Doremus read about and sardonically "played up" in the Informer a minstrel show given at the National Convention of Boosters' Clubs at Atlantic City, late in August. As end-men and interlocutor appeared no less distinguished persons than Secretary of the Treasury Webster R. Skittle, Secretary of War Luthorne, and Secretary of Education and Public Relations, Dr. Macgoblin. It was good, old-time Elks Club humor, uncorroded by any of the notions of dignity and of international obligations which, despite his great services, that queer stick Lee Sarason was suspected of trying to introduce. Why (marveled the Boosters) the Big Boys were so democratic that they even kidded themselves and the Corpos, that's how unassuming they were!

"Who was this lady I seen you going down the street with?" demanded the plump Mr. Secretary Skittle (disguised as a colored wench in polka-dotted cotton) of Mr. Secretary Luthorne (in black-face and large red gloves).

"That wasn't no lady, that was Walt Trowbridge's paper."

"Ah don't think Ah cognosticates youse, Mist' Bones."

"Why—you know—'A Nance for Plutocracy.'"

Clean fun, not too confusingly subtle, drawing the people (several millions listened on the radio to the Boosters' Club show) closer to their great-hearted masters.

But the high point of the show was Dr. Macgoblin's daring to tease his own faction by singing:

Buzz and booze and biz, what fun! This job gets drearier and drearier, When I get out of Washington, I'm going to Siberia!

It seemed to Doremus that he was hearing a great deal about the Secretary of Education. Then, in late September, he heard something not quite pleasant about Dr. Macgoblin. The story, as he got it, ran thus:

Hector Macgoblin, that great surgeon-boxer-poet-sailor, had always contrived to have plenty of enemies, but after the beginning of his investigation of schools, to purge them of any teachers he did not happen to like, he made so unusually many that he was accompanied by bodyguards. At this time in September, he was in New York, finding quantities of "subversive elements" in Columbia University— against the protests of President Nicholas Murray Butler, who insisted that he had already cleaned out all willful and dangerous thinkers, especially the pacifists in the medical school—and Macgoblin's bodyguards were two former instructors in philosophy who in their respective universities had been admired even by their deans for everything except the fact that they would get drunk and quarrelsome. One of them, in that state, always took off one shoe and hit people over the head with the heel, if they argued in defense of Jung.

With these two in uniforms as M.M. battalion leaders—his own was that of a brigadier—after a day usefully spent in kicking out of Columbia all teachers who had voted for Trowbridge, Dr. Macgoblin started off with his brace of bodyguards to try out a wager that he could take a drink at every bar on Fifty-second Street and still not pass out.

He had done well when, at ten-thirty, being then affectionate and philanthropic, he decided that it would be a splendid idea to telephone his revered former teacher in Leland Stanford, the biologist Dr. Willy Schmidt, once of Vienna, now in Rockefeller Institute. Macgoblin was indignant when someone at Dr. Schmidt's apartment informed him that the doctor was out. Furiously: "Out? Out? What d'you mean he's out? Old goat like that got no right to be out! At midnight! Where is he? This is the Police Department speaking! Where is he?"

Dr. Schmidt was spending the evening with that gentle scholar, Rabbi Dr. Vincent de Verez.

Macgoblin and his learned gorillas went to call on De Verez. On the way nothing of note happened except that when Macgoblin discussed the fare with the taxi-driver, he felt impelled to knock him out. The three, and they were in the happiest, most boyish of spirits, burst joyfully into Dr. de Verez's primeval house in the Sixties. The entrance hall was shabby enough, with a humble show of the good rabbi's umbrellas and storm rubbers, and had the invaders seen the bedrooms they would have found them Trappist cells. But the long living room, front-and back-parlor thrown together, was half museum, half lounge. Just because he himself liked such things and resented a stranger's possessing them, Macgoblin looked sniffily at a Beluchi prayer rug, a Jacobean court cupboard, a small case of incunabula and of Arabic manuscripts in silver upon scarlet parchment.

"Swell joint! Hello, Doc! How's the Dutchman? How's the antibody research going? These are Doc Nemo and Doc, uh, Doc Whoozis, the famous glue lifters. Great frenzh mine. Introduce us to your Jew friend."

Now it is more than possible that Rabbi de Verez had never heard of Secretary of Education Macgoblin.

The houseman who had let in the intruders and who nervously hovered at the living-room door—he is the sole authority for most of the story—said that Macgoblin staggered, slid on a rug, almost fell, then giggled foolishly as he sat down, waving his plug-ugly friends to chairs and demanding, "Hey, Rabbi, how about some whisky? Lil Scotch and soda. I know you Geonim never lap up anything but snow-cooled nectar handed out by a maiden with a dulcimer, singing of Mount Abora, or maybe just a little shot of Christian children's sacrificial blood—ha, ha, just a joke, Rabbi; I know these 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' are all the bunk, but awful handy in propaganda, just the same and—But I mean, for plain Goyim like us, a little real hootch! Hear me?"

Dr. Schmidt started to protest. The Rabbi, who had been carding his white beard, silenced him and, with a wave of his fragile old hand, signaled the waiting houseman, who reluctantly brought in whisky and siphons.

The three coordinators of culture almost filled their glasses before they poured in the soda.

"Look here, De Verez, why don't you kikes take a tumble to yourselves and get out, beat it, exeunt bearing corpses, and start a real Zion, say in South America?"

The Rabbi looked bewildered at the attack. Dr. Schmidt snorted, "Dr. Macgoblin—once a promising pupil of mine—is Secretary of Education and a lot of t'ings—I don't know vot!—at Washington. Corpo!"

"Oh!" The Rabbi sighed. "I have heard of that cult, but my people have learned to ignore persecution. We have been so impudent as to adopt the tactics of your Early Christian Martyrs! Even if we were invited to your Corporate feast—which, I understand, we most warmly are not!—I am afraid we should not be able to attend. You see, we believe in only one Dictator, God, and I am afraid we cannot see Mr. Windrip as a rival to Jehovah!"

"Aah, that's all baloney!" murmured one of the learned gunmen, and Macgoblin shouted, "Oh, can the two-dollar words! There's just one thing where we agree with the dirty, Kike-loving Communists—that's in chucking the whole bunch of divinities, Jehovah and all the rest of 'em, that've been on relief so long!"

The Rabbi was unable even to answer, but little Dr. Schmidt (he had a doughnut mustache, a beer belly, and black button boots with soles half-an-inch thick) said, "Macgoblin, I suppose I may talk frank wit' an old student, there not being any reporters or loutspeakers arount. Do you know why you are drinking like a pig? Because you are ashamt! Ashamt that you, once a promising researcher, should have solt out to freebooters with brains like decayed liver and—"

"That'll do from you, Prof!"

"Say, we oughtta tie those seditious sons of hounds up and beat the daylight out of 'em!" whimpered one of the watchdogs.

Macgoblin shrieked, "You highbrows—you stinking intellectuals! You, you Kike, with your lush-luzurious library, while Common People been starving—would be now if the Chief hadn't saved 'em! Your c'lection books—stolen from the pennies of your poor, dumb, foot-kissing congregation of pushcart peddlers!"

The Rabbi sat bespelled, fingering his beard, but Dr. Schmidt leaped up, crying, "You three scoundrels were not invited here! You pushed your way in! Get out! Go! Get out!"

One of the accompanying dogs demanded of Macgoblin, "Going to stand for these two Yiddles insulting us—insulting the whole by God Corpo state and the M.M. uniform? Kill 'em!"

Now, to his already abundant priming, Macgoblin had added two huge whiskies since he had come. He yanked out his automatic pistol, fired twice. Dr. Schmidt toppled. Rabbi De Verez slid down in his chair, his temple throbbing out blood. The houseman trembled at the door, and one of the guards shot at him, then chased him down the street, firing, and whooping with the humor of the joke. This learned guard was killed instantly, at a street crossing, by a traffic policeman.

Macgoblin and the other guard were arrested and brought before the Commissioner of the Metropolitan District, the great Corpo viceroy, whose power was that of three or four state governors put together.

Dr. de Verez, though he was not yet dead, was too sunken to testify. But the Commissioner thought that in a case so closely touching the federal government, it would not be seemly to postpone the trial.

Against the terrified evidence of the Rabbi's Russian-Polish houseman were the earnest (and by now sober) accounts of the federal Secretary of Education, and of his surviving aide, formerly Assistant Professor of Philosophy in Pelouse University. It was proven that not only De Verez but also Dr. Schmidt was a Jew— which, incidentally, he 100 per cent was not. It was almost proven that this sinister pair had been coaxing innocent Corpos into De Verez's house and performing upon them what a scared little Jewish stool pigeon called "ritual murders." Macgoblin and friend were acquitted on grounds of self-defense and handsomely complimented by the Commissioner—and later in telegrams from President Windrip and Secretary of State Sarason—for having defended the Commonwealth against human vampires and one of the most horrifying plots known in history.

The policeman who had shot the other guard wasn't, so scrupulous was Corpo justice, heavily punished—merely sent out to a dreary beat in the Bronx. So everybody was happy.

But Doremus Jessup, on receiving a letter from a New York reporter who had talked privately with the surviving guard, was not so happy. He was not in a very gracious temper, anyway. County Commissioner Shad Ledue, on grounds of humanitarianism, had made him discharge his delivery boys and employ M.M.'s to distribute (or cheerfully chuck into the river) the Informer.

"Last straw—plenty last," he raged.

He had read about Rabbi de Verez and seen pictures of him. He had once heard Dr. Willy Schmidt speak, when the State Medical Association had met at Fort Beulah, and afterward had sat near him at dinner. If they were murderous Jews, then he was a murderous Jew too, he swore, and it was time to do something for His Own People.

That evening—it was late in September, 1937—he did not go home to dinner at all but, with a paper container of coffee and a slab of pie untouched before him, he stooped at his desk in the Informer office, writing an editorial which, when he had finished it, he marked: "Must. 12-pt bold face—box top front p."

The beginning of the editorial, to appear the following morning was:

Believing that the inefficiency and crimes of the Corpo administration were due to the difficulties attending a new form of government, we have waited patiently for their end. We apologize to our readers for that patience.

It is easy to see now, in the revolting crime of a drunken cabinet member against two innocent and valuable old men like Dr. Schmidt and the Rev. Dr. de Verez, that we may expect nothing but murderous extirpation of all honest opponents of the tyranny of Windrip and his Corpo gang.

Not that all of them are as vicious as Macgoblin. Some are merely incompetent—like our friends Ledue, Reek, and Haik. But their ludicrous incapability permits the homicidal cruelty of their chieftains to go on without check.

Buzzard Windrip, the "Chief," and his pirate gang—

A smallish, neat, gray-bearded man, furiously rattling an aged typewriter, typing with his two forefingers.

Dan Wilgus, head of the composing room, looked and barked like an old sergeant and, like an old sergeant, was only theoretically meek to his superior officer. He was shaking when he brought in this copy and, almost rubbing Doremus's nose in it, protested, "Say, boss, you don't honest t' God think we're going to set this up, do you?"

"I certainly do!"

"Well, I don't! Rattlesnake poison! It's all right your getting thrown in the hoosegow and probably shot at dawn, if you like that kind of sport, but we've held a meeting of the chapel, and we all say, damned if we'll risk our necks too!"

"All right, you yellow pup! All right, Dan, I'll set it myself!"

"Aw, don't! Gosh, I don't want to have to go to your funeral after the M.M.'s get through with you, and say, 'Don't he look unnatural!'"

"After working for me for twenty years, Dan! Traitor!"

"Look here! I'm no Enoch Arden or—oh, what the hell was his name?—Ethan Frome or Benedict Arnold or whatever it was!—and more 'n once I've licked some galoot that was standing around a saloon telling the world you were the lousiest highbrow editor in Vermont, and at that, I guess maybe he was telling the truth, but same time—" Dan's effort to be humorous and coaxing broke, and he wailed, "God, boss, please don't!"

"I know, Dan. Prob'ly our friend Shad Ledue will be annoyed. But I can't go on standing things like slaughtering old De Verez any more and—Here! Gimme that copy!"

While compositors, pressmen, and the young devil stood alternately fretting and snickering at his clumsiness, Doremus ranged up before a type case, in his left hand the first composing-stick he had held in ten years, and looked doubtfully at the case. It was like a labyrinth to him. "Forgot how it's arranged. Can't find anything except the e-box!" he complained.

"Hell! I'll do it! All you pussyfooters get the hell out of this! You don't know one doggone thing about who set this up!" Dan Wilgus roared, and the other printers vanished!—as far as the toilet door.

In the editorial office, Doremus showed proofs of his indiscretion to Doc Itchitt, that enterprising though awkward reporter, and to Julian Falck, who was off now to Amherst but who had been working for the Informer all summer, combining unprintable articles on Adam Smith with extremely printable accounts of golf and dances at the country club.

"Gee, I hope you will have the nerve to go on and print it—and same time, I hope you don't! They'll get you!" worried Julian.

"Naw! Gwan and print it! They won't dare to do a thing! They may get funny in New York and Washington, but you're too strong in the Beulah Valley for Ledue and Staubmeyer to dare lift a hand!" brayed Doc Itchitt, while Doremus considered, "I wonder if this smart young journalistic Judas wouldn't like to see me in trouble and get hold of the Informer and turn it Corpo?"

He did not stay at the office till the paper with his editorial had gone to press. He went home early, and showed the proof to Emma and Sissy. While they were reading it, with yelps of disapproval, Julian Falck slipped in.

Emma protested, "Oh, you can't—you mustn't do it! What will become of us all? Honestly, Dormouse, I'm not scared for myself, but what would I do if they beat you or put you in prison or something? It would just break my heart to think of you in a cell! And without any clean underclothes! It isn't too late to stop it, is it?"

"No. As a matter of fact the paper doesn't go to bed till eleven.... Sissy, what do you think?"

"I don't know what to think! Oh damn!"

"Why Sis-sy," from Emma, quite mechanically.

"It used to be, you did what was right and got a nice stick of candy for it," said Sissy. "Now, it seems as if whatever's right is wrong. Julian—funny-face—what do you think of Pop's kicking Shad in his sweet hairy ears?"

"Why, Sis—"

Julian blurted, "I think it'd be fierce if somebody didn't try to stop these fellows. I wish I could do it. But how could I?"

"You've probably answered the whole business," said Doremus. "If a man is going to assume the right to tell several thousand readers what's what—most agreeable, hitherto—he's got a kind of you might say priestly obligation to tell the truth. 'O cursed spite.' Well! I think I'll drop into the office again. Home about midnight. Don't sit up, anybody—and Sissy, and you, Julian, that particularly goes for you two night prowlers! As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord—and in Vermont, that means going to bed."

"And alone!" murmured Sissy.

"Why—Cecilia—Jes-sup!"

As Doremus trotted out, Foolish, who had sat adoring him, jumped up, hoping for a run.

Somehow, more than all of Emma's imploring, the dog's familiar devotion made Doremus feel what it might be to go to prison.

He had lied. He did not return to the office. He drove up the valley to the Tavern and to Lorinda Pike.

But on the way he stopped in at the home of his son-in-law, bustling young Dr. Fowler Greenhill; not to show him the proof but to have—perhaps in prison?—another memory of the domestic life in which he had been rich. He stepped quietly into the front hall of the Greenhill house—a jaunty imitation of Mount Vernon; very prosperous and secure, gay with the brass-knobbed walnut furniture and painted Russian boxes which Mary Greenhill affected. Doremus could hear David (but surely it was past his bedtime?—what time did nine-year-old kids go to bed these degenerate days?) excitedly chattering with his father, and his father's partner, old Dr. Marcus Olmsted, who was almost retired but who kept up the obstetrics and eye-and-ear work for the firm.

Doremus peeped into the living room, with its bright curtains of yellow linen. David's mother was writing letters, a crisp, fashionable figure at a maple desk complete with yellow quill pen, engraved notepaper, and silver-backed blotter. Fowler and David were lounging on the two wide arms of Dr. Olmsted's chair.

"So you don't think you'll be a doctor, like your dad and me?" Dr. Olmsted was quizzing.

David's soft hair fluttered as he bobbed his head in the agitation of being taken seriously by grown-ups.

"Oh—oh—oh yes, I would like to. Oh, I think it'd be slick to be a doctor. But I want to be a newspaper, like Granddad. That'd be a wow! You said it!"

("Da-vid! Where you ever pick up such language!")

"You see, Uncle-Doctor, a doctor, oh gee, he has to stay up all night, but an editor, he just sits in his office and takes it easy and never has to worry about nothing!"

That moment, Fowler Greenhill saw his father-in-law making monkey faces at him from the door and admonished David, "Now, not always! Editors have to work pretty hard sometimes—just think of when there's train wrecks and floods and everything! I'll tell you. Did you know I have magic power?"

"What's 'magic power,' Daddy?"

"I'll show you. I'll summon your granddad here from misty deeps—"

("But will he come?" grunted Dr. Olmsted.)

"—and have him tell you all the troubles an editor has. Just make him come flying through the air!"

"Aw, gee, you couldn't do that, Dad!"

"Oh, can't I!" Fowler stood solemnly, the overhead lights making soft his harsh red hair, and he windmilled his arms, hooting, "Presto—vesto—adsit—Granddad Jes-sup—voilà!"

And there, coming through the doorway, sure enough was Granddad Jessup!

Doremus remained only ten minutes, saying to himself, "Anyway, nothing bad can happen here, in this solid household." When Fowler saw him to the door, Doremus sighed to him, "Wish Davy were right— just had to sit in the office and not worry. But I suppose some day I'll have a run-in with the Corpos."

"I hope not. Nasty bunch. What do you think, Dad? That swine Shad Ledue told me yesterday they wanted me to join the M.M.'s as medical officer. Fat chance! I told him so."

"Watch out for Shad, Fowler. He's vindictive. Made us rewire our whole building."

"I'm not scared of Captain General Ledue or fifty like him! Hope he calls me in for a bellyache some day! I'll give him a good sedative—potassium of cyanide. Maybe I'll some day have the pleasure of seeing that gent in his coffin. That's the advantage the doctor has, you know! G'-night, Dad! Sleep tight!"

A good many tourists were still coming up from New York to view the colored autumn of Vermont, and when Doremus arrived at the Beulah Valley Tavern he had irritably to wait while Lorinda dug out extra towels and looked up tram schedules and was polite to old ladies who complained that there was too much—or not enough—sound from the Beulah River Falls at night. He could not talk to her apart until after ten. There was, meanwhile, a curious exalted luxury in watching each lost minute threaten him with the approach of the final press time, as he sat in the tea room, imperturbably scratching through the leaves of the latest Fortune.

Lorinda led him, at ten-fifteen, into her little office—just a roll-top desk, a desk chair, one straight chair, and a table piled with heaps of defunct hotel-magazines. It was spinsterishly neat yet smelled still of the cigar smoke and old letter files of proprietors long since gone.

"Let's hurry, Dor. I'm having a little dust-up with that snipe Nipper." She plumped down at the desk.

"Linda, read this proof. For tomorrow's paper.... No. Wait. Stand up."

"Eh?"

He himself took the desk chair and pulled her down on his knees. "Oh, you!" she snorted, but she nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder and murmured contentedly.

"Read this, Linda. For tomorrow's paper. I think I'm going to publish it, all right—got to decide finally before eleven—but ought I to? I was sure when I left the office, but Emma was scared—"

"Oh, Emma! Sit still. Let me see it." She read quickly. She always did. At the end she said emotionlessly, "Yes. You must run it. Doremus! They've actually come to us here—the Corpos—it's like reading about typhus in China and suddenly finding it in your own house!"

She rubbed his shoulder with her cheek again, and raged, "Think of it! That Shad Ledue—and I taught him for a year in district school, though I was only two years older than he was—and what a nasty bully he was, too! He came to me a few days ago, and he had the nerve to propose that if I would give lower rates to the M.M.'s—he sort of hinted it would be nice of me to serve M.M. officers free—they would close their eyes to my selling liquor here, without a license or anything! Why, he had the inconceivable nerve to tell me, and condescendingly! my dear—that he and his fine friends would be willing to hang out here a lot! Even Staubmeyer—oh, our 'professor' is blossoming out as quite a sporting character! And when I chased Ledue out, with a flea in his ear—Well, just this morning I got a notice that I have to appear in the county court tomorrow—some complaint from my endearing partner, Mr. Nipper—seems he isn't satisfied with the division of our work here—and honestly, my darling, he never does one blame thing but sit around and bore my best customers to death by telling what a swell hotel he used to have in Florida. And Nipper has taken his things out of here and moved into town. I'm afraid I'll have an unpleasant time, trying to keep from telling him what I think of him, in court."

"Good Lord! Look, sweet, have you got a lawyer for it?"

"Lawyer? Heavens no! Just a misunderstanding—on little Nipper's part."

"You'd better. The Corpos are using the courts for all sorts of graft and for accusations of sedition. Get Mungo Kitterick, my lawyer."

"He's dumb. Ice water in his veins."

"I know, but he's a tidier-up, like so many lawyers. Likes to see everything all neat in pigeonholes. He may not care a damn for justice, but he'll be awfully pained by any irregularities. Please get him, Lindy, because they've got Effingham Swan presiding at court tomorrow."

"Who?"

"Swan—the Military Judge for District Three—that's a new Corpo office. Kind of circuit judge with court-martial powers. This Effingham Swan—I had Doc Itchitt interview him today, when he arrived—he's the perfect gentleman-Fascist—Oswald Mosley style. Good family—whatever that means. Harvard graduate. Columbia Law School, year at Oxford. But went into finance in Boston. Investment banker. Major or something during the war. Plays polo and sailed in a yacht race to Bermuda. Itchitt says he's a big brute, with manners smoother than a butterscotch sundae and more language than a bishop."

"But I'll be glad to have a gentleman to explain things to, instead of Shad."

"A gentleman's blackjack hurts just as much as a mucker's!"

"Oh, you!" with irritated tenderness, running her forefinger along the line of his jaw.

Outside, a footstep.

She sprang up, sat down primly in the straight chair. The footsteps went by. She mused:

"All this trouble and the Corpos—They're going to do something to you and me. We'll become so roused up that—either we'll be desperate and really cling to each other and everybody else in the world can go to the devil or, what I'm afraid is more likely, we'll get so deep into rebellion against Windrip, we'll feel so terribly that we're standing for something, that we'll want to give up everything else for it, even give up you and me. So that no one can ever find out and criticize. We'll have to be beyond criticism."

"No! I won't listen. We will fight, but how can we ever get so involved—detached people like us—"

"You are going to publish that editorial tomorrow?"

"Yes."

"It's not too late to kill it?"

He looked at the clock over her desk—so ludicrously like a grade- school clock that it ought to have been flanked with portraits of George and Martha. "Well, yes, it is too late—almost eleven. Couldn't get to the office till 'way past."

"You're sure you won't worry about it when you go to bed tonight? Dear, I so don't want you to worry! You're sure you don't want to telephone and kill the editorial?"

"Sure. Absolute!"

"I'm glad! Me, I'd rather be shot than go sneaking around, crippled with fear. Bless you!"

She kissed him and hurried off to another hour or two of work, while he drove home, whistling vaingloriously.

But he did not sleep well, in his big black-walnut bed. He startled to the night noises of an old frame house—the easing walls, the step of bodiless assassins creeping across the wooden floors all night long.

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xtruss · 1 year

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Environment: Death Cap Mushrooms are Extremely Deadly—and They’re Spreading

The Invasive Death Cap Mushroom is thriving in North America. While it can be difficult to distinguish from an edible one, make no mistake: It can do a number on you.

— By Emily Martin | August 31, 2023

The Death Cap is the World's Deadliest Fungus, responsible for 90 percent of the World's Mushroom-related Poisonings every year. Native to Europe, Death Caps have spread around the World over the past Century. Photograph By Yves Lanceau/Nature Picture Library

The name itself is both alarming and self-explanatory: the death cap mushroom.

Scientifically known as Amanita phalloides, death caps are responsible for 90 percent of the mushroom-related fatalities that occur every year, making them the world’s most lethal mushroom. The infamous fungus was recently in the news after three people in Australia died after ingesting what investigators suspect were death caps.

The mushroom originates from the U.K. and parts of Ireland, but over the past century, it has hijacked trips around the world, spreading to Australia and North America.

Since arriving on the West Coast, the invasive mushroom has spread rapidly throughout California and has even appeared as far north as British Columbia, but much about its arrival remains a mystery. Why the mushroom spread so quickly, when exactly it arrived, and how it will impact the environment it grows in are the topics of ongoing research.

Here’s what you need to know about this deadly mushroom—and how to spot one—in case it emerges in a forest near you.

How The Mushroom Earned Its Name

The unassuming mushroom can grow up to six inches tall with a similarly sized domed cap, sometimes tinged yellow or green. Under its cap are white gills and an off-white stem—characteristics that make it difficult to distinguish from an edible mushroom.

Yet unlike an edible mushroom, it can cause extreme damage to the liver and kidneys, or in some cases, death.

That’s because the mushrooms contain a unique set of toxins, says U.S. Department of Agriculture plant pathologist Milton Drott. Though it is safe to the touch, a death cap contains amatoxins, which prevent cells from creating proteins, ultimately causing cell death and organ failure.

Drott notes that these toxins may have allowed the populations spreading through the U.S. to thrive, serving up a defense against any new predators the fungus encounters in its environment.

But studying the death cap mushroom can be difficult. It’s challenging to replicate ideal environmental conditions for a mushroom in a lab, and studying plucked mushrooms requires complex DNA sequencing.

Some fungi can damage the environment, like the fungus that wiped out American Chestnut trees, but so far, there’s no strong evidence that death caps are a threat to their new environments. In fact, trees and other plants benefit from their presence.

Death caps are a mycorrhizal fungi, which means they form a relationship with plants that’s mutually beneficial for both plant and fungus. The plant receives nutrients from the soil that the fungus extracts, while the fungus receives sugars from the plant.

A Mysterious Move Around The World

It’s nearly impossible to pinpoint the actual moment the deadly mushroom made its way to the western U.S. and why exactly it’s continued to spread since then, says Anne Pringle, a mycologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a leading expert on death caps.

The earliest record of the mushroom in California is from the 1930s. Some researchers theorize that death caps immigrated in the soil of a cork tree transported from Europe to California to make corks for a then burgeoning wine industry. Others say the mushroom may have hitched a ride on a mystery plant imported to beautify college campuses.

Regardless, both Pringle and Drott say the only thing they’re certain of is that the fungus was likely dormant—and thus hidden from human eyes—in an imported plant’s soil.

Scientifically known as Amanita Phalliodes—Death Caps were first spotted in California in the 1930s. Some scientists think they were imported in the soil of cork trees, used to make corks for California's wine makers.

“When they planted that tree in the ground, they also effectively planted the fungus. So, what exactly is the smoking gun, who did it, and when—that's the thing I think we'll never truly know,” Pringle says.

Pringle can’t say for sure what makes the state such a friendly habitat for the invasive species, but she does note that the fungus can tolerate different environments throughout Europe, growing as far north as Sweden and as far south as southern France.

Since arriving, Pringle says its geographic extent has grown larger and spread to other States; most recently it appeared in Idaho.

Retracing Their Steps

When scientists first spotted death caps in the U.S., they thought they may be native to the region because of how widespread they are.

In 2009, Pringle was the first to label the population in California as invasive, a discovery she made by inspecting the mushrooms’ DNA.

“When they planted that tree in the ground, they also effectively planted the fungus. So what exactly is the smoking gun, who did it and when, that's the thing I think we'll never truly know.”

— Anne Pringle

And when scientists did realize the death cap had newly spread into the U.S., there wasn’t any preexisting data to provide clues about where exactly it entered North America and how quickly it multiplied.

“There's so many ideas to test, it’s hard to even know where to get started,” Pringle says.

Research on invasive fungi in the environment is quite new, Pringle says, so answers to questions of why death caps are spreading and its impact on local ecosystems may still be years away.

Drott thinks the mushroom may be proliferating because it thrives in its new soil and with its adoptive plants, or there may be a lack of predators in these new habitats to keep death cap populations in check.

His research has revealed at least one clue: the genes responsible for producing toxins in American death caps are extremely unique, distinct from their genetic cousins in Europe, and may be the key to understanding how the invasive plant has thrived in North America.

Earlier this year, scientists published preliminary research suggesting the death cap can reproduce both with and without a mate, and that a single fungus can live a long, reproductive life.

Encountering A Death Cap

Spotting a death cap requires vigilance.

“It’s scary that these [pass for] delicious mushrooms,” Drott says.

He adds that, in addition to an unalarming physical appearance, the death caps’ toxins don’t smell or provide any other obvious giveaways. Its toxins are also extremely stable when heated and don’t break down when cooked, unlike other edible fungi that are only dangerous to eat raw.

That’s why scientists suggest erring on the side of caution and steering clear of foraging mushrooms. Pringle also emphasizes the importance of learning the plants in your local environment.

“If you can tell the difference between Swiss chard and spinach, you can learn difference between edible and poisonous mushrooms,” Pringle says, emphasizing the small but recognizable differences between the two greens. “People want a magic rule, but there’s nothing I can hand you in a sentence or paragraph."

Rather, she says identifying physical differences between death caps and a safe mushroom can become easier with exposure.

Spreading Awareness

Many death caps have been found in National Parks, including Point Reyes National Seashore in California, where Pringle assisted with a study on the invasion in 2010.

National Park Service (NPS) science advisor Ben Becker notes that parks are constantly seeing new invasive species with the frequent movement of people and equipment, and the death cap is a good example of how humans can transport tiny fungal invaders around the world.

Becker says NPS works with local mushroom science groups like the Bay Area Mycological Society to spread public awareness about the dangers of foraging mushrooms.

If you’re concerned about something you have eaten, go to the emergency room and if possible, take pieces of the mushroom you ate for identification.

And as many foragers and scientists say, don’t munch on a hunch.

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thecandywrites · 1 year

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Monster March 2023 Day 31- Satyr- Part 2

Spunky Punk

As always thanks to @borealwrites for their Monster March 2023 prompt list. It took me six months to write all 31 prompts. But I got them done. Finally. Three months late, but better late than never.

Part 2

Spunky Punk

After that, Skip and Ashely encouraged Trip to go to the feed store and at least pay for Marie’s next round of feed she would buy while Ashely did more digging into Marie on Social Media and lowkey told the whole family that Trip’s self imposed celibacy was about to be broken by the perfect woman who just happened to be newly moved to the area.

And soon, it seemed Marie and Trip ran into each other, everywhere they went, often hitting up the same places, in particular a wing place in “town” on a Friday night, where they sat beside each other and ended up eating their takeout right there at the bar instead of taking it home.

“So how’s Spunky?” Trip asked between wings.

“I’ve started calling her Punk Spunk. Because she’s turning out to be a little spitfire. She’s finding she’s still small enough to get out of things the bigger ones can’t. And she uses it to her advantage. Thanks again for helping me get her out of bloat after she ate too much grain by the way.” Marie offered.

“It’s ok. It’s worse for horses, who usually eat way too much too fast before you can catch them. At least she paused to chew her cud in between gorging herself.” Trip offered.

“Well, don’t we all?” Marie chuckled before the waitress came back.

“Another hard cider?” She asked.

“Yes please! This pineapple hard cider is the best.” Marie readily answered before she looked to Trip.

“Another one Trip?” She asked as she nodded to his pint glass that was getting low.

“Sure, thanks.” He nodded before she smiled and came back a few moments later with the drinks in question.

“Do you just really like hard cider?” He asked her as he watched her drink her old one down in a few long chugs.

“I do. Because it’s the only thing I can drink and can enjoy. I can’t usually go much harder than this.” She admitted.

“Really? Just don’t like to drink or…?” He gently prodded.

“My liver doesn’t make the enzyme to break down alcohol. It’s called ADH which stands for alcohol dehydrogenase which turns ethanol into acetaldehyde.”

“Was that English?” He gently teased which got her to giggle but roll her eyes and subtly shake her head.

“It was, oldest version of the English there is- Latin.” She tossed back which got him to bark a laugh and nearly snort his beer.

“Touche.” He grinned.

“Well, it just means that I go from tipsy to blood alcohol poisoning in one sip. So hard cider, wine coolers. That’s my speed. Plus, they’re sweet and delicious. And honestly, I think it’s fitting and fair that I’m practically allergic to the stuff.” Marie hinted.

“Why?” He asked.

“My great grandmother was an alcoholic. She was…a very mean, vicious woman who never should have been a mother. And I think it’s just fitting that it’s all the way down into my DNA that the world went- ‘one of you being an alcoholic is enough, you’re done’ and did so with my whole family. All of my siblings have it to some degree or another. I have one sister who can digest wine better, and I have another who digests beer better, and another who only can break down hard alcohol. But it’s me, the former bartender who can’t handle any but the lightest of light stuff.” She admitted.

“You were a bar tender?” He asked with a tilt of his head.

“Yup. Went to school for it and everything. But I got sick of being hit on all the time and stalkers and all that so I quit it and got out. And thankfully no one has been able to track me down. But the pub I worked at worked with a lot of farmers who brought in a lot of local produce and that’s how I got into farming and now instead of being a bartender. I get paid to supply the same pub with my produce. And, the butcher who buys your sheep? He supplies the pub with all their meat products. So it’s worked out to be a small world.”

“I didn’t realize you knew Bob.” Trip blinked.

“No, not Bob- Grant. Bob runs the butcher shop, but it’s Grant, Bob’s brother- who makes most of the deliveries. I even dated him for a hot minute. Learned how to pick out good meat, but caught him cheating with one of the other barmaids. But Bob is nice. Very sweet. His wife Matilda is awesome. She’s the one who introduced me to Emelia who had the goats. Where I got Snicker and Doodle from.” Marie specified.

“Oh, then if you knew grant, then you’ve met my brother Allen.” Trip realized.

“I did. He tried really hard to get me to rebound with him, but I was far from interested. So if your brother Allen ever sees me again, he’ll know me as Bella’s Bar Basketcase.” Marie insisted.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” He apologized.

“Why are you apologizing for him? It’s not like it was Allen that took my heart and threw it into a blender.Grant did that. And Grant paid dearly for it. Bella made him give her half off their order because the moment I discovered he was cheating on me and cheating her on the prices, she threatened to cancel the contract with Bob and got the discount and a whole free order when I quit the bar over it. All Allen ever did was try to offer to bang the sadness out of me. Which, honestly, looking back, was awfully sweet of him to offer because he just saw a girl bawling her eyes out by the dumpster. But I’m just not that kind of girl who needed or wanted that kind of thing. His intentions were good though, because he ended up gifting a steak and a twice baked potato to me to eat in the booth. So he ended up just buying me dinner instead. Which was nice. Haven’t run into him since though. Hope he’s ok.” Marie shrugged off before she got to her new bottle of pineapple flavored hard apple cider and took a swing before she finished that wing and went for a pretzel bite and dipped it into the pretzel cheese.

“Yeah, don’t worry about him. You know that old saying that a sailor has a girl in every port and every girl has a guy on every ship? He’s the living embodiment of that. Bob needs to charge for Allen fucking his way through all the better restaurants to get them to pay the premium prices for their premium beef.” Trip offered which got Marie to giggle.

“Well ok then. Thanks for that. Good to know. Good to know. Is that why you’re single? Learning from your brother’s behavior?” She asked.

“Yes.” He nodded.

“That and most people think I’m one of my brothers and assume I’m just like them.” He added.

“Nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, you are sweet and you have really good and pure intentions. But you’re a very careful, deliberate and thoughtful person, but the biggest difference is that you’re genuine. With Allen, he was only trying to help me feel better because my distress was distressing him because he’s incredibly empathic. So if anything he was only trying to help himself. You genuinely want to help others without any thought or notion of being paid back or helped in turn. It’s what makes you the best friend I’ve made yet.” Marie smiled fondly as Trip blushed even harder and had to hide his face.

“Trip?!” Allen asked as he spotted his brother from across the bar.

“Speak of the Devil.” Trip muttered as Marie snickered a laugh and nearly spit out her hard cider.

“Hey Allen.” Trip greeted with a sigh of defeat.

“Are you on a date?” Allen asked as Marie inhaled to answer but Trip beat her to it.

“Nope. Just talking with the woman who bought Spunky.” Trip shook his head no, not catching Marie’s silent exhale as she simply put on a polite smile for Allen and the young woman beside him.

“Hi Allen.” Marie greeted.

“Wait, I know you…but this isn’t your usual place…” Allen said as he looked at Marie and tried to remember how he knew her.

“Bella’s Basketcase?” Marie offered.

“Oh, nice. Well you can’t find a better person to get sheep from in the state. Seeing as how Trip is 10 time state champion and four time national champion.” Allen praised with a pat to Trip’s shoulder.

“Oh! Hi! Oh it’s been a while. How are you?” He asked.

“Better. I bought Spunky off of Trip to be a glorified lawnmower. We were just catching up about her.” Marie excused as she gestured between herself and Trip.

“Oh, I didn’t know that. Congratulations on that.” Marie blinked in pleasant surprise.

“Yep, and if you got a sheep named Spunky, you’re gonna be in for a treat, Trip doesn’t take naming his favorites lightly. He’s practically worked his way through every baby name book in every library in the county. Most probably think he has a thousand kids for checking out so many library books, but alas, it’s not for the kids most people think they are.” Allen teased as Trip just blushed harder.

“Well it’s obvious he cares about each one as if it is. Which is a great thing. It means that they’re all well cared for instead of just a number and a price tag the way most livestock farmers view, which is very refreshing these days.” Marie nodded.

“Are you single? Because if you are, let me just say, Trip is very shy and if you’re single, you’re just the girl he’s been looking for all his life, and if this isn’t a date, it should be. Because if that’s the way you feel, you’ve just found Mr. Right in Trip here.” Allen began as Trip looked mortified as Marie’s eyebrows went up slightly but her smile grew.

“Ok, well I’m sure we can cross that bridge when we get there. We’re both happy being friends at the moment. And we did just meet. So let’s see how being friends works out first.” Marie carefully but politely responded.

“Ok, you’re just wasting time then.” Allen offered as he put his hands up in surrender.

“Well, speaking of time, I’m sure she would like to spend more of it one on one with you Allen.” Marie noted as she gestured to the young lady standing there, rather impatiently too.

“Yes, well it’s great to see you again Spunky Mommy.” He fingered gun with a click of his teeth before he took his “date” elsewhere for the evening, preferably somewhere a bit more private.

“Sorry about that.” Trip offered as he rubbed at the back of his neck.

“It’s ok. At least you didn’t go ‘Yes we’re dating, in fact, we’re engaged!’ Had a guy do that to me before on a first date when his parents caught us on said date. That was incredibly awkward and practically painful. I’m all for helping friends who need a plus one to a sibling’s wedding, but that was a bit too far.” Marie tried to smooth over.

“Well, I better get going home to Spunky anyway. Miss? Can I get my check please?” Marie asked.

“No, I got it. It’s the least I can do for…well, Allen being Allen.” Trip insisted as he pulled his card out of his wallet and handed it to the bartender.

“No it’s ok, you don’t have to…” Marie tried to argue.

“Yes I do. You saved Spunky remember? It’s the least I can do.” He offered.

“Well, in that case, thank you.” Marie caved.

“And speaking of lambs. When is your next batch due?” Marie asked.

“In only about four days. Which means they could start anywhere from tonight to a week from now.” He answered.

“Could I help?” Marie asked.

“You sure? It’s really long days in the barn and it’s non stop chaos sometimes.” He asked.

“Yeah. I know others start between four and five in the morning.” Marie offered.

“Oh, I don’t get out there until about 5.” He answered.

“Awesome. I’ll see you then- then.” She giggled when she had to repeat that word twice for the sentence to make sense before she wiped her hands off on the wet nap and got her purse and waived her goodbyes before she left.

“Ok. I’ll be there. Four days right? How about I come day after tomorrow, just in case some decide to come a day early.” She offered.

“Well, I’m not gonna turn you down.” Trip answered.

“Really?! You’re just gonna let Miss Perfect slip through your fingers like that?” Allen chided as he seemed to reappear out of nowhere and scared Trip half to death.

“Asshole! You put her on the spot and embarrassed her.” Trip shoved his brother’s shoulder.

“No, I put you on the spot and embarrassed you because you’re too chicken. That’s why you’re angry. She was downright disappointed it wasn’t a date. She deserves a great guy like you. She dated Grant for crying out loud and he did her dirty. Like really dirty. You’re letting your own shyness and your own issues with self worth and your own guilt over our brothers and their reputation get in the way of you really living your life and getting with Miss Sweetheart. There is more to life than your sheep and that far. I know you know that. Plus, if she already bought a sheep from you, means she’s into farming. What more could you ask for?” Allen asked.

“She’s too good and probably too young for the likes of me.” He tried to excuse.

“You’re not that old. You’re younger than me. And if I can still pull in any girl I want, you should be able to too. Or do you just not like her?” Allen reminded him.

“No, I do, I just..I get around her and I get all panicky and cotton mouthed and sweaty and tongue tied and the less I can say the better because I’m not good with women. Our family has too much of a reputation as it is.” Trip practically pouted.

“Trip. I’ve been watching you come in here for a decade. The girl is into you. It’s not too late, you still have plenty of opportunities to try again.” The waitress insisted as she handed him his card and receipt back.

“You sure?” Trip asked.

“Yes! Make her some of your mother’s best home made dishes she taught you when she was still alive. It’s not just men who have ways to their hearts through their stomachs ok. You make her your grandma’s biscuits and gravy? Or anything else from her recipe box. You’ll get her coming back for more than just the food.” She predicted.

#Monster March #Monster March 2023 #Monster March 2023 Day 31- Satyr #Monster March 2023 Day 31 Part 2

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kingtwolf-fang · 2 years

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Jezebel

Everyone has kept the company of a Jezebel spirited woman in their life. May it have been a lover, a sister, a friend etc. What is a Jezebel spirit you ask? Or who is Jezabel? Webster dictionary says

noun

Also Douay Bible, Jez·a·bel . the wife of Ahab, king of Israel. 1 Kings 16:31.

(often lowercase) a wicked, shameless woman.

I had a Jezabel spirit in my life for the past 9 years. I didn't discover she was a Jezabel until the past two years. Her shameless treatment toward me, or what she has become shamelessness about her actions. However the Jezabel spirit has inspired me to write before. Back in 2015 I wrote a song titled Jezabel however I've given it some re-workings especially now that I have matured in my music and literary writing.

Living in lust betraying the men and women's company you kept trust. A shameless wicked woman casting her spells. May God deal with you accordingly and cast you into deepest part of hell.

Your Jezabel spirit a charade to any mortal man

A siren singing her hypnotizing song with a caressing hand

Shameless diverting in adulterous affairs

A irresistible spirit a man to fight it one would not dare

The Gemini spirit a mistress Jekyll a woman's version of a Dr. Hyde

Tortured souls finally free the day your spirit is crucified

Your sins will be a art gallery all over town

Accompanied with my uneasiness of you playing me like a clown

My tribe and I are ready for your vanquish

Causing my thoughts to be full of anguish

Pre-Chorus (chanting)

Aywa aywa aywa oooooooooo ya (eagle screech sound)

Ja-ja-ja-jayuwa ja-ja-ja-jayuwa

Chorus

Jezabel, jezabel, jezabel

aywa aywa, aywa

The tribe has spoken Jezabel this is your fate

Our ancestors fiery flames await

Na-lusa-chi the great shadow to eat your soul

A memory that will haunt me in my nights sleep

Something any mortal man would not wish to keep

Verse 2

Memories of you fill me with rage. The only cleanse smudging of the red man's sage.

You were cruel watching my spirit burn from the flames of hell.

Your face filled with maniacal emotion knowing these tribulations apart of your spell.

The soul's you've tormented collectively gather a congregation.

Luring good natured men to ruin with a subtle invitation.

Leaving them lay awake at night.

While you are out dancing past the stroke of midnight.

Fraternizing and fornicating with the Afro-Italian like two animals in the wild.

Gate keeping new of your enceinte, you suddenly vanish and hide his child.

Repeat Chorus

Verse 3

Even God doesn't know what to do with you.

His own creation lacks any empathy and virtue.

Behind the concealer, and eye shadow your a fury a dog faced woman from hell.

I have only myself to blame for 10 years of you playing me like a puppet on a string.

Your company is a streak of Friday the 13th with no good fortune to bring.

ELO once said there's an open road that leads no where.

So just make some miles between you and there.

Poisonous red wine you poured it fucked me up.

The tables have turned it's your turn to drink it all up.

Bridge

Remember Lady Karma never loses a address.

When she arrives she will hold up a mirror of all that you refuse to confess.

While you are dancing at the Roosevelt Room.

Lady Karma in her five inch red heels coming to serve you deserved doom.

Me necromanced from the dead thanks to the hands of father time.

Cheating Jezebel's antics a protection spell and it's perfected rhymes.

(Instrumentals for 2 min, and pre-chorus line.)

(Yi-yi-yi-ay-ye- heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

King Ahab your equal as a scorned lover

The holy book kept score of your sins things that can't be kept under cover.

A unsub missive succubus on a full moon sizzling night of summer the jasmines in bloom.

(A evil woman laugh inserted)

Not a nice lady (In a mocking dramatic tone)

#evil woman #jezebel #hell #cursed #sucubbus #songwriter #songwriting #emotions

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dietmumrepeat · 2 years

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𝘿𝘼𝙔 31 So I’ve done a whole month of the ‘new me’ and this isn’t just ‘being on a diet’ It’s been trying to change my whole lifestyle to be a better, healthier, happier version of me ♥️ I’ve been doing my daily walks, drinking (𝙖𝙡𝙤𝙩) of water, having my @one2onediet products, earlier nights and aiming for 8 hours sleep (𝙖𝙡𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙣 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙙 𝙬𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙨 𝙢𝙚 𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙤𝙛 𝙙𝙖𝙬𝙣!) cutting down on caffeine, and my cutting out my main vice in life - 𝙒𝙄𝙉𝙀 As most of you know, I absolutely love wine and it’s my ‘thing’ in the evening to unwind daily 𝘽𝙐𝙏 wine does not love me, and it’s been a long time since I’ve gone even a night without the vino (unless I’m on a nightshift at work) and you don’t know what…. Wine is 𝙉𝙊𝙏 𝙜𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪! You can do all the right things- use amazing skin care products/ work out/ eat amazingly healthy foods/ drink litres of water- but if you are having wine or any alcohol at night it’s takes all that goodness away and as harsh as it sounds- putting poison into your body… (I know it sounds dramatic but it’s so true) I’ve been doing a lot of reading/ listening to podcasts and following people that inspire and motivate me, and I’m honestly so proud of myself. I’ve lost exactly 1 stone in weight which I’m so pleased with as my weight misery I think plays a part in why I drink (feeling rubbish about myself so drinking wine to make me feel better) which doesn’t as I wake at 3am daily with that awful guilt and disappointment in myself which I haven’t had now for a 𝙬𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙚 𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙝! It hasn’t been easy and some nights I’ve gone to bed with the right ump and moody, but I’ve not had one morning where I’ve woken up feeling elated that I’ve ticked off another day. Here’s to the next 31 days ♥️ And if anyone else resonates with me, and struggles with this grey area of drinking please reach out and I would be happy to chat to you… 𝒜𝓂𝓎 𝓍𝓍 (at 𝖣𝖨𝖤𝖳 𝖬𝖴𝖬 𝖱𝖤𝖯𝖤𝖠𝖳) https://www.instagram.com/p/CkfSciRtrYp/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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hela-avenger · 4 years

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poison & wine- part 31

Author: hela-avenger

Word Count: 1394

Summary: Prince Loki of Asgard is in need of a date to take back home. That’s where you come in with a task of your own to make the whole trip with an insufferable prince worth it. Too bad that things don’t always go as planned and you end up giving more than you can take. Fake-Dating AU.

A/N: And so it begins again! GAH, another cliffhanger and another... well, I guess you’ll have to read to find out. Be nice to me in the comments pls. I was the one who had to write this!

poison & wine masterlist

Loki stops before you’re able to reach the royal hall. You refrain from asking him why as you catch the serious look on his face. It was enough to tell you that he was worried about what you two were about to walk into.

“This the point of no return,” Loki whispers. “No going back the moment we step inside that room.”

“If you’re trying to ask me if I’m having second thoughts, I’m not,” you assure him. “So tell me, what exactly am I walking into?”

“As usual, we will be the center of attention,” Loki answers. “There will be food, wine, and more, but essentially we will be the idol of affection of the people of Asgard. They will be fawning over us with well wishes and gifts.”

“I like gifts.”

“Of course you do,” Loki chuckles. “Sadly the gifts will have to be turned into the royal treasury but if you see something you like I’m sure I could find a way for you to keep it.”

“I don’t think any gift can compare to the one you already gave me,” you tell him. “My father’s office… I didn’t even realize how close he was all this time.”

“Took me some time to find it,” Loki answers. “Your father stayed in the palace in between his travels, but the office held all of his personal belongings. Everything inside it is yours and you may come visit it anytime you’ll like.”

“I will take you up on that offer as long as you’re coming with me.”

You smile up at him hoping for him to continue the banter along but he’s silently staring at you. There was a softness to it and you wonder how long he’s been looking at you like this and you’ve been missing it.

“Loki, I…”

...love you.

You find yourself stopping knowing this wasn’t the time nor the place to be confessing your feelings to him. You were about to walk into the most stressful and trying times of your lives and you couldn’t put it on the line now.

“...I’m ready, if you are.”

Loki nods and offers his arm for you to take. You nestle closer to him as he escorts you down to the royal hall. The guards are quick to open the doors for you announcing your presence for all the court to hear.

“Prince Loki of Asgard and his fiancee Lady Y/N of Midgard.”

You’re met with loud cheers and applause as Loki leads you to the thrones that were set front and center in the room. King Odin and Frigga were seated nearby with their own matching thrones.

“You’re late,” Frigga whispers to Loki with a playful glare.

Loki simply smiles in response and shrugs, unable to offer her more as the first royal family comes to greet them.

You hadn’t realized how many royal families were involved in the hierarchy of Asgard but you had met and received so many that it was hard to keep track on who was who. Luckily for you, you were once again allowed to drink wine which made the whole event tolerable, but with the side effect of allowing your mind to stray away easier. Hence, your immense focus on the prince seated next to you.

Loki was doing all of this with such ease. He knew all of their names before they were announced and he always managed to thank each and every one of them in unique and specific ways. It was mesmerizing to watch and you couldn’t comprehend how his own father could overlook the great work he was showing.

You took a hold of his free hand squeezing it gently earning you a brief moment of his attention in which he smiles fondly at you.

“You’re doing great,” you whisper to him.

Loki’s smile grows even brighter than before.

“So are you,” he whispers in return. “They love you.”

You find that hard to believe but take the compliment anyway.

The next royal family makes their way up to you taking his focus away from you. You didn’t mind enjoying the way he returned to his regal self. It was nice to know that his rare softness was reserved only for you.

Another round of blessings is heard with chests of gold and ornate jewels to further compensate the message.

Loki’s hand was still in yours and he squeezed it every few minutes. You chuckled every time he did it which made you believe that was the reason he was doing it in the first place.

Things finally start to slow down and you look over at Loki to find that he’s already staring at you. You smile at him unable to do much else.

“All rise for the Allfather, Ruler of the Nine Realms, King Odin.”

You’re surprised at the announcement and so is Loki as his grip tightens in your hold.

“I never thought I would see the day when my son, Loki, would find his match,” Odin begins to announce earning a laugh from the crowd. “It has certainly been a blessing for our family to be graced with Lady Y/N’s presence. She has shown pure courage in the face of adversity and has handled herself with care and grace.”

As if on cue, the room erupts in applause eating up his words. You were unsure if he was being honest or not, but it didn’t really matter. His opinion wasn’t something you depended on but you knew it meant the world to Loki.

“I would like to be the first to welcome Y/N into our family,” Odin continues before he waves towards a servant. “And in doing so, bestow her this rare and unique gift that is rightfully hers to begin with.”

The servant appears once more, bringing a small case towards you. You let go of Loki’s hand in order to receive the offered gift.

With all eyes on you, you have no other choice but to open it and amongst the gold tinsel, a small red apple was cushioned in the middle. You pull it out of the case confused at the simple gift until the whole room erupts in loud gasps and murmured talk.

“The Apple of Idunn.”

The smile you had been wearing instantly disappears and you turn to Loki to find him in the same shocked state that you were.

“This is… why would you…?”

You feel a tightening in your chest, a pure wave of panic and pain, knowing that you were holding the reason your father had not come back for you and your mother in your hand. The real reason he was dead.

“Your father wished this for you,” Odin answers simply. “And I would like nothing more for my son to have you for more than a handful of centuries.”

You look down at the apple in your hand having a hard time believing that such a small little thing could have caused such chaos. Even now, it was causing disruption as everyone watched you awaiting your next move.

“No.”

“No?” Odin asks in surprise.

“No,” Loki repeats as he rises from his seat.

The whole hall falls into a silence at the sudden response. You’re quick to place the apple back inside the case unsure of what else to do. Loki had made the decision for you and you didn’t know how to take it.

“Loki…” you call out to him. “What are you doing?”

Loki looks down at you, his mask gone, revealing remorse for you.

“You should go,” he answers. “You shouldn’t have to be here for this.”

It’s not that hard to figure out what Loki intends to do. He was about to confess to it all and all because he wanted to save you from a life of eternity.

“Loki, you can’t…”

“Just leave.”

“What?”

Loki turns back to look at you but the man you knew and loved was gone. A different mask was being worn, one that you hadn’t expected to see on him again.

“Go,” Loki snarls with a scowl. “Just go!”

You hand over the case to Loki unsure of what else to do with it. You tried to ignore the burning humiliation and collective pitying stare directed to you. Grabbing the silk of your skirt, you run out of the hall without looking back.

poison & wine tag: @damalseer @just-the-hiddles @jessiejunebug @nonsensicalobsessions @smollest-soybean @assassinoftheworld @readerbandit @doyoufeelikeayounggod @strangemcuvlogs @ha-tep @i-dont-know-eiither @gene-king @day-dreaming-fox @bn-studies @is-it-madness @devilbat @victor-criss-bish @skinny-macncheese @musicconversedance @baby-bunnyxn @fandoms-allovertheplace @marvelloonie @jinxjinxednova @queenmuahaha @accio-boys @eternalqueensworld @umlvk @roger-the-reindeer @punkrockhufflefluff @your-local-abyss @horsesandwolvesaremyanimals @rogerrhqpsody @imsad420@pandacookieowo @justnerdystuffs @hanoi15 @oneprolificqueen @nikki-who-likes-coffee @fandomrelative @nikki419ninja @onedollarduck @help-i-need-a-social-life @ephemeraljade @catsladen @amwolowicz @captainmarvelnerd @thegirlbeyondtheuniverse

Loki Tag: @unicorniorosacomefrutillas @thesilentbluesparrow @oddly-drawn-muse @josiehosiedaninja @hp-hogwartsexpress @sadwaywardkid @wolf-lover74 @sizzlingbarbarianglitter @sigyn-njorddottir @aoirohi @defunctcherrybomb

All Works Tag: @jmb959 @astudyoftimeywimeystuff @hellocookiecutter @steve-rogers-personal-hell @buckybarnesyard @not-zari-tak @strangersstranger @thefridgeismybestie @moonlightprime

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bizarrequazar · 2 years

Text

I’m procrastinating work, so here’s a non-exhaustive list of some Really Gay details and bts-leaks in Word of Honor that newer fans might not be aware of 🌈🌈🌈 Some footage is not linked because they’re leaks that the ops asked to not be reposted and/or the footage has been taken down (or I’ve just lost it), but I promise all of these are confirmed.

The poetry Wen Kexing recites as Zhou Zishu rides away on the boat in ep.2 was written by a man about his favourite courtesan

The slutty little hand caress when Zhou Zishu takes the wine from Wen Kexing in ep.3 was Zhang Zhehan’s suggestion

Wen Kexing’s original line when he was telling Zhou Zishu what the Drunk Like a Dream made him see was that he had seen himself and “the person in his heart” having sex on their wedding night. Also Wen Kexing leaning in and covering them with the fan while saying this was Zhang Zhehan’s suggestion

The full cut of the poison-sucking scene includes lips touching skin

The original script included Wen Kexing trying to get Zhou Zishu to admit he’s attractive

A scene was filmed where Wen Kexing sings the “只愿君心似我心，定不负相思意” (“As long as your heart is as mine is, these feelings will not be in vain”) line from the novel to Zhou Zishu

In ep.18, Wen Kexing calls Zhou Zishu “Husband Zhou”. What’s more, the full quote is from a very erotic classic novel where it then leads into a sex scene

Many people have commented that the rolling-in-the-grass scene in ep.18 can be read as a sex allegory. Note that this is also the scene where Zhou Zishu cuts Wen Kexing’s sleeve 😏

The hug scene in ep.20 also included Zhou Zishu pressing their foreheads together (we’ve had like five different leaks of this by now lol)

The original take of the “live or die together” scene (I hope everyone knows this one by now)

Ever notice the very sudden cut in ep.31? It seems the director called cut because it looked like Zhang Zhehan was about to go in for a kiss.

The full cut of the scene where Wen Kexing falls off the cliffs had Zhou Zishu smile before jumping after him

The original cut of the “there’s a light on you” scene had Zhou Zishu catch Wen Kexing’s hand

Some of the “random” seal script characters floating around during the dual cultivation scene are “cauldron” (used in some danmei wuxia as an allegory for bottoming, interchangable with furnace) and “birth”. Make of that what you will.

Wen Kexing mouths “爱你” to Zhou Zishu during the dual cultivation scene

The final scene in ep.36 was completely changed in the dubbing. The real dialogue (figured out through lipreading) had Chengling say that when two people “who fully recognize each other as zhiji and who truly love each other” practice the Combined Six Cultivations Art, they’ll be able to hold each other in balance and support each other through the hardest parts (aka how Wen Kexing survived)

A “bad end” version of the epilogue was filmed. It’s a bit devastating.

Bonus non-wenzhou one: Xie’er’s original line (figured out through lipreading) after he kills the disciple in the bamboo forest is “The one at his [Zhao Jing’s] pillow will be me.”

#This is me telling new fans to watch the bts if you haven't #Word of Honor #woh bts #my woh tag

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hekateanwitchcraft · 4 years

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An Introduction to Worshipping Medeia

As a Hellenic witch, the worship of Medeia is an important part of my practice. She was a witch and priestess of Hekate, possessing nearly unparalleled knowledge of magic and poisons. I wanted to write this post to give some background on who Medeia is, her role as a witch and a priestess, and how I have come to honor her in my practice.

Who is Medeia?

Parentage

Medeia (Μήδεια) is given mainly two parentages, either Aeetes, son of Helios, and Eidyia, daughter of Oceanus, or Hekate and Aeetes. Hesiod offers us a description of the first, writing:

“To the tireless Sun the renowned Oceanid Perseïs bore Circe and King Aeetes. Aeetes, son of the Sun who makes light for mortals, married by the gods’ design another daughter of Oceanus the unending river, fair-cheeked Idyia; and she bore him the trim-ankled Medea, surrendering in intimacy through golden Aphrodite” (Hesiod 31)

Alternatively, Diodorus names Hekate and Aeetes as her parents, explaining:

“Perses had a daughter, Hecate, and she excelled her father in her brazen lawlessness...She was a keen contriver of mixtures of deadly drugs [pharmaka], and she discovered the so-called aconite. She tested the powers of each drug by mixing it into the food given to strangers...After this she married Aeetes and gave birth to two daughters, Circe and Medea, and also a son Aigialeus” (qtd. in Ogden 78)

Either of these parentages could make sense, but I personally observe the first.

(Art: Medea by Frederick Sandys)

Medeia as the Witch Priestess of Hekate

One of Medeia’s most important roles in literature and myth is that she is a priestess of Hekate and a witch, being called “Medea of the many spells” (Apollonius of Rhodes 109). In most literature there is no way to separate these roles.

She was extremely devoted to Hekate, Apollonius of Rhodes stating that “as a rule she did not spend her time at home, but was busy all day in the temple of Hecate, of whom she was priestess” (116). Euripides also writes that Medea says “I swear it by her, my mistress, whom most I honor and have chosen as partner, Hecate, who dwells in the recesses of my hearth” (Euripides 13). Clearly, the relationship between her and Hekate was very close, and it was said on occasion that she even learned magic from Hekate, Herself. Apollonius of Rhodes writes that “[t]here is a girl living in Aeetes’ palace whom the goddess Hecate has taught to handle with extraordinary skill all the magic herbs that grow on dry land or in running water” (123). Diodorus also claims this, but adds an interesting addendum that attributes to the character of Medeia:

“They report that Medea learned all the powers of drugs from her mother [Hekate] and her sister [Kirke], but her own inclination was the opposite. For she continually saved the strangers that put in from dangers” (qtd. in Ogden 79)

(Art: Medea the Sorceress by Valentine Cameron Prinsep)

Regardless of the origins of her powers, they were no doubt incredible. Apollonius of Rhodes explains that “she can put out a raging fire, she can stop rivers as they roar in spate, arrest a star, and check the movement of the sacred moon” (123). In one instance Apollonius states that “the beautiful Medea spell through the palace, and for her the very doors responding to her hasty incantations swung open of their own accord...From there she meant to reach the temple. She knew the road well enough, having often roamed in that direction searching for corpses and noxious roots, as witches do” (148). This is clearly an indicator that her powers are incredible, but what is even more awe-inspiring is what Apollonius says happens next:

“Rising from the distant east, the Lady Moon [Selene], Titanian goddess, saw the girl wandering distraught, and in wicked glee said to herself: ’So I am not the only one to go astray for love, I that burn for beautiful Endymion and seek him in the Latmian cave. How many times, when I was bent on love, have you disorbed me with your incantations, making the night moonless so that you may practice your beloved witchcraft undisturbed!” (148).

Medeia is said to be able to actually banish the moon Herself from the sky, an unimaginable feat. This is indicative of the degree of power she possesses, having sway over nature itself.

She is most known to have used her knowledge and powers repeatedly to help Jason, her husband, on his quest for the Golden Fleece. The first instance of this was that she made Jason an ointment which would make him invincible. Apollonius describes this in length, writing that:

“She had twelve maids, young as herself and all unmarried...She called them now and told them to yoke the mules to her carriage at once, as she wished them to drive to the spending Temple of Hecate; and while they were getting the carriage ready she took a magic ointment form her box. This salve was named after Prometheus. A man had only to smear it on his body, after procreating the only-begotten Maiden [Hekate] with a midnight offering, to become invulnerable by sword or fire” (131-2)

He continues, detailing the ritual of how she obtained the plant she used to make this ointment:

“Medea, clothed in black, in the gloom of night, had drawn off this juice in a Caspian shell after bathing in seven perennial streams and calling seven times on Brimo, nurse of youth, Brimo, night-wanderer of the underworld, Queen of the dead. The dark earth shook and rumbled underneath the Titan root when it was cute, and Prometheus himself groaned in the anguish of his soul” (132).

Here we see a process that is depicted often, the bathing of Medeia and her ritualistic harvesting of herbs. We also see her here call on Brimo (Βριμω), an epithet of Hekate, in Her role as nurse of the young (Kourotrophos/Κουροτρόφος), night-wanderer (Νυκτιπολος/Nyktipolos), of the Underworld (Χθονιη/Kthonia), and Queen of the Dead (Ανασσα ενεροι/Anassa Eneroi), indicating the importance of Hekate to her witchcraft.

(Art: Jason and Medea by John William Waterhouse)

A similar harvesting of herbs and roots is seen in fragments of Sophocles’ play The Root-Cutters. What we have of the play states that “She [Medea] covers her eyes with her hand and collects up the white-clouded juice that drips from the cut in bronze jars...the covered chests conceal the roots, which this woman reaped, naked, with bronze sickles, while crying out and howling” (qtd. in Ogden 83). Hekate is then said to be “crowned with oak branches and snakes” (qtd. in Ogden 83). Then the women chant “Lord of the sun and holy fire [Helios], sword of Hecate of the roads, which she carries over Olympus as she attends and as she traverses the sacred crossroads of the land, crowned with oak and the woven coils of snakes, falling on her shoulders” (qtd. in Ogden 83). In this short but incredible fragment we see that Medeia calls on both Hekate and Helios, her grandfather, to bless their ritual. We also see a repeat of incantations to harvest magical herbs, and an introduction of her association with bronze.

Another one of Medea’s feats was charming the snake that guarded the Golden Fleece into a slumber. In the Argonautica, Apollonius of Rhodes writes:

“The monster in his sheath of horny scares rolled forward his interminable coils, like the eddies of black smoke that spring from smoldering logs...But as he writhed he saw the maiden take her stand, and heard her in sweet voices invoking Sleep [Hypnos], the conqueror of the gods, to charm him. She also called on the night-wandering queen of the world below [Hekate] to countenance her efforts...the giant snake, enchanted by her song, was soon relaxing the whole length of his serrated spine and smoothing out his multitudinous undulations...Yet his grim head still hovered over them and the cruel jaws threatened to snap them up. But Medea, chanting a spell, dipped a fresh sprig of juniper in her brew and sprinkled his eyes with her most potent drugs and as the all-pervading magic scent spread around his head, sleep fell on him.” (150-1).

(Medea and the Dragon by Maxwell Ashby Armfield)

She was also said to have killed the giant Talos, a gift given to Zeus from Hephaistos, with her witchcraft, specifically the Evil Eye. In this more horrifying passage, it is said that:

“[W]ith incantations, she invoked the Sprits of Death [Keres], the swift hounds of Hades who feed on souls and haunt the lower air to pounce on living men. She sank to her knees and called upon them three times in song, three times with spoken prayers. She steeled herself with their malignity and bewitched the eyes of Talos with the evil in her own. She flung at him the full force of her malevolence, and in an ecstasy of rage she plied him with images of death” (Apollonius of Rhodes 192).

In this passage, she calls on the Keres, and with them is able to use the evil eye to bring immediate death to a direct creation of the gods. This is a horrifying feat, not only for the power it must require, but for her ability to kill in an instant.

Finally, she also is said to have rejuvenated Jason’s father Aeson. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Jason pleads with Medea to take years of his own life to give more to his father, but she rejects him saying that Hekate will not allow such a thing to take place. Instead, she offers that through her witchcraft, instead, if Hekate is willing to help her, she may rejuvenate him. Under the full moon, Medeia performs the ritual. She calls on Hekate, Night, the Moon, and Helios to aid her in her task (126-7). A chariot drawn by dragons appears to her and she takes it to gather herbs harvested with her bronze scythe. After nine days and nights, she returns to Jason to perform the ritual. The ritual is extensive and is essentially repeated in full. She builds two altars, one to Hecate and one to Hebe. She also digs two ditches on sacrifices a black sheep into the ditches, also pouring wine and milk into them. She also calls on the “deities of the earth” which may mean deities of the land or chthonic deities, and Hades. Once she appeases these gods and goddesses, she spells Aeson to sleep on a bed of herbs and tells Jason to leave her to perform her magic. She then dips sticks into pools of blood and lights them with the flames on the altars, then purifying the man once with fire, three times with water, and three times with sulfur.

She then adds many herbs, roots, and flowers to her bronze cauldron as well as “hoar frost gathered under the full moon, the wings of the uncanny screech owl with the flesh as well, and the entrails of a werewolf which has the power of changing its wild-beast features into a man’s. There also in the pot is the scaly skin of a slender Cinyphian water-snake, the liver of a long-lived stag, to which she also adds eggs and the head of a crow nine generations old” (Ovid 129). Then, she slits the throat of Aeson and replaced his blood with her potion, finally rejuvenating him.

There is more descriptions of Medeia’s magical feats throughout literature, but these are simply some of the most detailed and famous. She is clearly a very powerful witch and a significant figure within the history of Hekate worship. With her bronze cauldron and chariot of dragons, she is quite awe-inspiring.

(Art: The Sorceress by R. Willis Maddox)

Medeia’s Character

One of the issues we run into with Medeia’s mythos is her defamation and portrayal as a child-murdering and vengeful woman. She is indeed vengeful against Jason, and rightfully so, for he bade her to leave her homeland, murder her brother, and constantly had her aid him with her witchcraft, only to abandon her for another. However, Euripides’ tale of her brutally murdering her children has some criticisms from scholars who note that there are other versions of the tale.

One such tale is that from Apollodorus who writes that “Another tradition is that on her flight she left behind her children, who were still infants, setting them as suppliants on the altar of Hera of the Height; but the Corinthians removed them and wounded them to death” (1.9.28). In the modern era, a scholar named Sarah Illes Johnston, author of Restless Dead and Hekate Soteira, also writes that Medea prays to Hera Akraia to make her children immortal, and Hera either declines or breaks her promise to fulfill this task, leaving the children to die (62-3). Johnston denies the implication of Medea in her children’s death, instead attributing it to circumstances outside her control or by the hand of another.

These different tellings of Medeia’s story fits with the Colchian princess who aids Jason in a much more believable way than the suddenly spiteful women who murders her children. This variation is less popular, the other being popularized perhaps to demonize magic and women of power.

(Art: Medea by Eve De Morgan)

Worshipping Medeia

Now that Medeia’s character and mythological status has been discussed, I think it’s important to talk about how I actually go about worshipping Medeia. I worship Medeia in both divine and ancestral ways, which I suppose could be attributed to methods of hero worship in Ancient Greece. Worshipping Medeia can be done alongside Hekate and/or Helios, as well as alongside Kirke. If you observe the Mighty Dead or Witch Ancestors, she could also be worshipped alongside them.

Offerings

Offerings for Medeia can include wine, frankincense, milk, honey, food, poisons, sacred plants, bronze artifacts, candles, snake parts or figurines and dragon figurines, artifacts of witchcraft, and even Hekate iconography. One could also offer her blood, but that is up to your personal discretion.

Names and Epithets

Names/epithets I call Medeia include ‘Of the Many Spells,’ ‘Vengeful Maiden,’ ‘Witch Priestess of Hekate,’ ‘Medea of Poisons,’ ’She Who Knows All Herbs,’ ‘Giant-Slayer,’ one that could also be said of Hekate, ‘Princess of Colchis,’ ‘Granddaughter of Helios,’ ’Daughter of Sun and Moon,’ one I use to indicate her relationship to Helios and her devotion to Hekate, and Medea Pharmakeia, or Medeia of Witchcraft/Magic.

Sacred Objects

Sacred plants of Medeia could include any poisons, juniper, olive, and aconite specifically. Sacred animals include dragons and snakes. Bronze is also sacred to Medea, as are cauldrons of any kind.

Specializations

Medeia can be called upon for justice and vengeance, especially for spells of justice and vengeance, witchcraft of any kind, to bless herbs, for gardening, for aid in Hekate worship, for the downfall of your enemies, for protection from harm, for protection from snakes, and for guidance in magic.

Prayers to Medeia

Prayer for Medea’s Aid in Witchcraft

Prayer to Medea for Vengeance

Conclusion

In conclusion, while Medeia may not be a part of the usual canon of hero worship, or worship in general, if you are a devotee of Hekate or Helios, worshipping Medeia might be right for you. Likewise, any witch who observes the Hellenic pantheon should give serious thought to venerating Medeia in their practice.

Works Cited:

Medea by Euripides

Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds by Daniel Ogden

The Voyage of Argo by Apollonius of Rhodes

Theogony by Hesiod

The Library by Apollodorus

The Metamorphoses by Ovid

“Corinthian Medea and the Cult of Hera Akraia” by Sarah Illes Johnston

(Art: Medea Casting Spells by Henry Ferguson)

#Medea #Medea worship #hellenic polytheism #hero worship #witchcraft #witch #paganism #Hekate #hecate #hellenic witchcraft #hellenic heroes

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alwaysthehbp · 3 years

Note

Great Big List of Possible Muggle Hobbies for Snape (with some explanations):

1) Calligraphy/Lettering - he was trying to improve his penmanship, but he just likes being able to do multiple different styles

2) Geocaching - he found a box while foraging the nearest park and went looking for more

3) Ceramics or glass blowing - he can make himself special vials/jars

4) Piano - he's got the hands for it and can sort of meditate on pieces he knows; he doesn't own one, so he has to go somewhere that has one

5) Collecting Vinyls - Lily's gifted him some as a teen; he likes looking at the cover art more than listening to them (Lily liked to listen more than he did)

6) Wine n' Cheese Tasting - let this man have some wine and fancy cheeses

7) Home Brewing - it's not that far off from potions and he could sell home-brews; he gets to experiment

8) Chess - Lucius gifted him a chess set

9) Constructed languages - for secret messages with Lily before the fallout

10) Meditation - part of Occlumency

11) Going to the Theater (plays) - it's just nice to go see the arts sometimes

12) Improv or Acting - it sharpens the mind and helps him think on his feet while talking and controlling his body movements/reactions

13) Trivia - gets to show off knowing things

14) Puzzles - mind work-out

15) Read and/or Book club - we always tie books to Snape; he gets to argue about books with people who want to argue about books

16) Science Experiments - it's very close to potions; how can Snape not enjoy some chemistry?

17) Soap-making - saves money if it's cheap soap, but also he can make it scented a certain way and probably put potions in it

18) Candle-making - saves money on electricity if it's cheap candles, but also atmosphere and (again) can probably put potions in it

19) Sowing - for repairing clothes when you can't use magic

20) Urban foraging - picked this up as a kid

21) Antiquing/Thrift-shopping - this is just from being pragmatic with his savings

22) Urban gardening - food and potion ingredients

23) Billiards or Darts - picked this up at a summer job

24) Poker - also picked this up at a summer job; very good at Poker

25) Slight of Hand Tricks - I just feel like he'd enjoy it and it'd be good for spy tasks

26) Wood carving - sometimes he just wants to meditate and have a temporary rune to show for it, but also we know how good Snape is with knives

27) Mixology - there is a pattern of picking things up at summer jobs

28) Survivalist prepping (not Doomsday Prepping) - picked this up from plans of running away from home that never came to fruition; just useful as a spy

29) Home Cigarette rolling - for those of us that like to have Snape smoke; he understands Herbology for potions, so he could make his own cigarette blends

30) Visiting Botanical Gardens - lets him look at plants; I feel like he'd like that Poison Garden in the UK

31) Nature Still Life Sketching - from drawing potion ingredients

32) Star-gazing - he used to do it during Astronomy once he finished his work, but also it's helps with de-compressing after stress

33) Flower-pressing - part of the wandering around in the forest looking for potion ingredients

34) Writing - specifically writing letters to Editors

these are all SO great, anon!!! thank you for sharing!

#‘he gets to argue about books with people who want to argue about books’ 😂#totally a puzzle guy!!#improv and acting ooooh it would def help sharpen his senses #snape gets cast as judge turpin in hogwarts sweeney todd performance #lmao #i LOVE the vinyls headcanon #he def has piano hands

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misplacedgamer · 3 years

Text

Goretober Day 1-Plague

Fandom: Bloodborne

Part 1 of 31

Read on AO3 here

"This town is cursed...Whatever can be gained from this place, it will do more harm than good."

-Gilbert

---------------

It started slowly, as plagues often did.

It hadn’t been surprising when the illness began to crop up in Yharnam. The city being so renowned for healing meant that all manner of the sick had migrated inside, and sickness cannot help but spread. Gates had been installed throughout the city to help quarantine illnesses, but even still it was not uncommon for whole wards of the city to be closed off. Despite it all Yharnam endured-no sickness would make it crumble. The Healing Church-the pillar on which the city stood-doled out a seemingly endless supply of curative blood to keep the population healthy and satiated.

So when this new illness started, everyone assumed it would go the same way. The coughing and fever were expected, nothing to be worried over. Even the blood the patients expelled like saliva was not an uncommon sight, given the severity of illness the city had seen in the past. It would soon pass, just like every other plague that threatened to take root in Yharnam. Their blood had never failed them before, and it wouldn’t fail them now.

But whatever blood the patients secreted seemed to shine with an unknown oil, and any doctors that touched it suffered from some kind of poisonous effect. As the days went on, the patients’ minds seemed to deteriorate as well, reverting to a crazed, almost predatory state. And no matter how much blood the Church’s blood saints administered, the patients’ conditions refused to improve.

What’s worse, the infection seemed to thrive on the blood; with every vial consumed they grew more rabid, more beastial. The population was growing uneasy, refusing to believe that Yharnam was facing a sickness the Church could not cure. There was little else to do but isolate the victims with their doctors, continue treatment, and hope for the best.

They were not ready for the plague to get even worse.

The infected, bodies twisted into malformed beasts, could no longer be contained. They slaughtered their doctors, their caretakers, and any other patients unfortunate enough to be locked in the same rooms with them. Yharnam was set upon by these creatures, and the disease along with them. Countrymen were forced to take up arms against their fellow man, their friends, even their families, but it still wasn’t enough. With no other options left, the citizens turned to their Church, who designed a plan to save their precious city.

All the infected were lured to one corner of the city, and the ward was set ablaze. Old Yharnam was burnt to the ground, a small sacrifice if it meant their city could keep standing. If the disease couldn’t be purged through blood, it would be purged with fire.

The citizens leftover began to dose themselves on the blood of the Healing Church, hoping to prevent the sickness from once again taking root. The Church itself were all too happy to oblige, doling out blood like communion wine. As the people kept drinking, the hunters kept hunting, seeking out any dregs of plague that managed to escape Old Yharnam.

When the infection took hold again, the people retreated even further into their bloodlust. The Church sent casks of blood into the city as the citizens tried desperately to stave off infection, blood flowing into their mouths as the blood of beasts ran in the streets. They gained an almost manic look in their eyes as they drank, almost matching the bestial frenzy outside.

Nothing could touch them, not even this plague. They had their blood and their Church. Yharnam would not fall.

#goretober #goretober 2021 #misplacedgore 2021 #bloodborne #soulsborne #plague #bloodborne beasts #the healing church #old yharnam #horror #horror writing #horror fanfic #here we fucking go people

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yellowbadgergirl · 3 years

Text

I posted 1.686 times in 2021

81 posts created (5%)

1605 posts reblogged (95%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 19.8 posts.

I added 869 tags in 2021

#spn - 189 posts

#spn fic - 144 posts

#mcu - 107 posts

#incorrect quotes - 106 posts

#dw - 67 posts

#dean winchester x reader - 62 posts

#tvd - 55 posts

#about me - 54 posts

#hp - 51 posts

#whouffle - 34 posts

Longest Tag: 124 characters

#while a girl just killed herself because she was raped and abused by group of teens that filmed it and were blackmailing her

My Top Posts in 2021

KALIJAH; Elijah Mikaelson & Katherine Pierce

say something // poison and wine // under // stay

21 notes • Posted 2021-03-07 23:34:36 GMT

Fan: What was your favorite part in Captain America?

Sebastian: I really liked the...

Audiance: ...

Sebastian: You know where we meet the Doctor Who girl.

22 notes • Posted 2021-04-15 23:39:07 GMT

10 Fandoms, 10 Ships, 10 Tags

I saw this & I wanna do this!

Supernatural - suby (Sam&Ruby)

The vampire diaries - kalijah (Katherine&Elijah)

Glee - finchel (Finn&Rachel)

Doctor who - whouffle (11th doctor&Clara)

Harry Potter - remadora (Remus&Tonks)

Twilight - blackwater (Jacob&Leah)

X-men - beastique (Hank&Raven)

Avengers - staron (Steve&Sharon)

One tree hill - leyton (Lucas&Peyton)

Avatar: the last airbender - sukka (Sukki&Sokka)

I tag @freedom @mizutoyama @ancient-ideas @ladyelise01 @marzipan-albatross @gasstationangel @s-ammie @spnxreaderx @fanfictalk @a-veryshort-longbottom

23 notes • Posted 2021-03-10 03:54:37 GMT

10 Fandoms, 10 Characters, 10 Tags

I saw this and I wanna do it!

Harry Potter - Nymphadora Tonks

Doctor Who - Clara Oswald

Glee - Santana Lopez

The Vampire Diaries - Katherine Pierce

Avengers - Black Widow

Twilight - Leah Cleatwater

Supernatural - Sam Winchester

X-men - Mystique

Avatar: the last airbender - Sokka

Youtube - ThatcherJoe

I tag @mizutoyama @lunalovegood2 @ancient-ideas @freedom @s-ammie @comfortcharacterlove @queenofdreamland @witchygagirl @darkangel-painter @sweetxthing

39 notes • Posted 2021-03-05 20:16:58 GMT

4 song tag game

Tagged by @mizutoyama

Four songs I’ve been listening to today (not in any particular order):

taken - 1D

1985 - Bowling For Soup

dragosati din tei - Dan Balan & Katerina Begu

six - Six the musical

I tag @2020rose @katlyc @lunalovegood2 @im-a-cutie-patootie @blogsamgirlforlife @s-ammie @freedom @agent-up @number-1-deaf-clint-barton-stan @ancient-ideas & everyone who wants to do this!

144 notes • Posted 2021-03-05 09:31:32 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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baoshan-sanren · 4 years

Text

Chapter 33

of the wwx emperor au I’m thinking of calling “Wei Ying, you’re so stupid”

HuaiSang is angry.

Wei Ying passes him the jar as often as possible, hoping that the wine may mellow him out. Three jars later however, Jiang Cheng is leaning slightly sideways even while sitting down, Wei Ying is beginning to see two of everything, but HuaiSang’s anger is still present, an unpleasant fourth addition to their drinking circle.

The fire had been put out; the stench of burning lays heavy over the majority of the Immortal Mountain City, and although Wei Ying had washed up and changed his robes twice, it seems to linger at the back of his throat, bitterly mixing with the sweetness of the wine.

Lan QiRen is unharmed. No one else has been hurt. All in all, for an incident that could have claimed dozens of lives, a small palace burned to the ground is the best possible outcome they could have hoped for.

A-Sang swears. Explicitly.

Wei Ying does not think that fucking the arsonist’s ancestors to the eighteenth generation will do anyone any good, but he keeps his mouth shut.

“I should have doubled his guard,” A-Sang says.

Wei Ying says nothing to this either.

Two separate traps had been set. They had required time, and planning, and full cooperation by the people in the Immortal Mountain that A-Sang actually trusts. Unfortunately, the number of people A-Sang trusts is limited, and nearly half of them had been to sent to YiLing.

They had given the assassin three targets. Two in the Immortal Mountain, and the Emperor himself, seemingly alone and unprotected in YiLing. The assassin had chosen a fourth target, something that no one could have predicted.

Except that A-Sang believes he should have predicted it, and is furious to have been outmaneuvered.

“Let us sum up what we know,” Wei Ying says.

Jiang Cheng groans, “Not again.”

“Yes, again,” A-Sang says, snatching the jar out of his hands, “We should go over the information we have as many times as necessary. We are obviously missing something.”

Jiang Cheng groans again, and keels over, sprawling on the floor. Unlike Wei Ying, he has not had a chance to wash up or change before being pulled into A-Sang’s chambers. Earlier in the day, A-Sang had stuffed him in the Emperor’s robes to play the bait, but now the robes are singed and filthy, and will likely need to be thrown away.

Wei Ying wonders if this is where the lingering scent of stale smoke is coming from.

“Do we agree that nothing suspicious occurred before the Lan Sect arrived?” A-Sang says.

They have gone over this already, but Wei Ying forces himself to think about it again.

“There was nothing,” Jiang Cheng mutters from the floor.

“Nothing,” Wei Ying agrees firmly, “nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Good,” A-Sang says, “then we start at the beginning. The Lan Sect arrives the night before the first day of the festival. They are escorted into the Immortal Mountain by da-ge. They settle into the Peach Blossom Pavilion. Wei Ying goes to liberate the Six Fans Pavilion of its hidden stash of the Emperor’s Smile. Lan WangJi sees him running across the rooftops, and tries to stab him. A decision I still respect, by the way.”

Jiang Cheng snorts.

“Day one,” A-Sang goes on, “the Greeting Ceremony, during which Wei Ying blatantly ogles Lan WangJi--“

“Hey!” Wei Ying exclaims.

“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng says, invisible on the other side of the table, “You did do that.”

“--then the Sect Leader meeting, during which Wei Ying displays obvious favoritism toward the Lan Sect, ensuring that even those sect leaders who had been ambivalent before, now have an entirely new set of reasons to despise them,” A-Sang says.

Wei Ying buries his head in his hands.

“Then the banquet, where Wei Ying singles out Lan WangJi again.”

“I just wanted to talk to him,” Wei Ying groans through his fingers.

“Do not forget the part where Wei WuXian drinks so much that he tries to piss into a potted plant,” Jiang Cheng adds.

Wei Ying snatches the jar out of A-Sang’s hands, “I thought we were talking about suspicious events.”

“He is right,” A-Sang nudges Jiang Cheng with his foot, “the Emperor getting stumbling drunk and trying to piss in inappropriate places is hardly out of the ordinary.”

A snort drifts up from the floor.

Wei Ying hates them both.

“Day two,” A-Sang goes on, “The picnic. Someone tries to poison Lan WangJi. The Jin Sect tries to pin the poisoning on Lan XiChen. Two servants are killed, their bodies stuffed in the stairway of the old north-west watchtower. No poison is found in their quarters. The sword fighting competition is postponed. Day three. The Immortal Mountain is searched top to bottom. All the servants are questioned. All the sects willingly submit to the search. Nothing suspicious is found. The Council decides it is safe to resume the competition the following day. The Emperor goes pining across the rooftops until Lan WangJi pays attention to him. He tells Lan WangJi that he means to enter the competition in secret. Lan WangJi tells his uncle and brother. The only other people aware of the ruse are A-Cheng, shijie, Wen Qing, and myself.”

“I did not pine,” Wei Ying grumbles.

“Day four,” A-Sang says, ignoring him, “Every sect and clan is present at the competition. The Lan Sect arrives on time, and is placed at the Nie Sect table. Lan XiChen fights da-ge and wins. The Emperor almost gets himself killed because he is too distracted by Lan WangJi to compete properly. An arrow from the West watchtower nearly costs the Empire its most valued subject. The Jin Sect tries to pin the assassination on the Lan Sect, again.”

“That is hardly suspicious,” Jiang Cheng says, hand reaching up to grab the wine jar, “the Jin Sect is terrible by rule.”

“Wait,” Wei Ying says, “wait. While I was competing in the West Gate courtyard I spoke to the little demon from the Nie Sect, Nie XuanYu. He said that only three of the Jin Sect disciples had signed up to compete with the rest of them, but that none had actually shown up.”

Jiang Cheng sits up suddenly, then sways.

“Gossip,” he says, then thinks for a moment, as if gathering his drunken thoughts, “There was gossip among the smaller sects about the Jin being too proud to compete in the bottom four tiers. Yao MingYu was told by one of the Jin disciples that the Jin Sect does not produce below average cultivators.”

Wei Ying snorts, “Bold of them to say that, when Fan XiaoHu keeps wiping the floor with Jin ZiXuan.”

“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng grumbles, “that girl is a menace.”

Wei Ying bites his tongue so he would not laugh. He had forgotten that Fan XiaoHu had wiped the floor with Jiang Cheng a few times too.

A-Sang taps the table with his fan, “Focus! Who has the list? A record must be kept of those who signed up to compete, whether they ended up participating or not.”

“Uncle Jiang should have it,” Wei Ying says, his heart immediately sinking.

He still needs to have a very unpleasant conversation with his High Councilor, one he is definitely not looking forward to having.

“Good,” A-Sang says, “We must get our hands on this list. See? We are making progress. Where are we now? Ah, yes. Day four. The day I was almost killed.”

Wei Ying is pretty sure that he is managing to look sufficiently contrite. Jiang Cheng only looks drunk and disgruntled.

“The Jin Sect tries to blame the assassination attempt on the Lan Sect. Lan QiRen reveals a note warning him to remove the Young Masters from the Immortal Mountain. A note that was placed in the Peach Blossom Pavilion before their arrival. Wei Ying cannot seem to keep away from Lan WangJi, even at the cost of ruining his virtue and good name--“ A-Sang points his fan at Wei Ying’s half-opened mouth, “and I am specifically speaking of Lan WangJi’s virtue and good name, because Heavens know you have none.”

Jiang Cheng chokes on the wine, adding more stains to the already ruined Imperial robes.

“Anyway,” A-Sang says, snatching the jar back, “this brings us to day five. Which is today.”

Jiang Cheng drops his forehead onto the table, “These have been the longest five days of my life.”

“Hey,” A-Sang snaps, whacking him on the back of the head with his fan, “Has anyone tried to kill you? No? Then stop complaining.”

Jiang Cheng half-heartedly pushes the fan away, but does not lift his head.

“Day five,” A-Sang repeats, “This faithful subject bears the agony of a deadly, grievous wound, obtained in the service to the Emperor, to take control of the situation. Two traps are set in motion. The first is set in the Imperial Gardens, the second in the North Watchtower. If the assassin has connections among the major sects, he should have fallen into the first trap. If he has connections among the smaller sects, he should have fallen into the second. If he has eyes and ears among those we explicitly trust, he should have gone after Wei Ying. But instead, the assassin opts to kill Lan QiRen.”

“So the assassin does not belong to any of the sects,” Wei Ying says, “otherwise, he would have walked into one of the traps.”

“Not true,” A-Sang says, his voice hardening, “it is also possible that the assassin saw three targets as clearly as we had presented them, and having no way to discern which one was real, had simply decided on the fourth. We also now know where his priorities lie. I no longer believe that the purpose of the second assassination attempt was to kill the Emperor. I think it was only meant to frame the Lan Sect for his murder, which would have been a death sentence in itself.”

Jiang Cheng lifts his head, “You think all of this is just-- to kill the Lan Sect? Why? Why would someone go through so much trouble to kill them?”

A-Sang does not have an answer to that.

“Any words from the Wen Sect?” he asks instead, and Wei Ying shakes his head.

His own message had gone out to Wen RuoHan only a day ago; it is much too soon for a response.

He takes the jar back from A-Sang, but finds it empty, and fumbles around for the last full one, still stashed underneath the table.

“Lan QiRen probably hates me even more now,” he grumbles, “I will be lucky if he still allows Lan Zhan to marry me after this debacle.”

The wine tastes less bitter now. He cannot tell if the stench of burning has grown less, or if he is finally too drunk to notice. He offers Jiang Cheng the jar, only to find Jiang Cheng staring at him with a wide, incredulous gaze, devoid of the earlier drunkenness.

“What?” Wei Ying says.

“Repeat what you just said,” A-Sang says slowly, his voice careful.

Wei Ying blinks at him and thinks back. His head is swimming a little bit, but he is not yet so drunk that he should be speaking nonsense.

“What?”

“Before that,” A-Sang says.

“Lan QiRen hates me? He will probably refuse to--“ Wei Ying chokes slightly, “--Oh. Erm. I-- we did not speak of this yet, have we?”

“You intending to marry?” A-Sang says sweetly, snapping his fan open, “No. It seems you had forgotten to mention that little detail. To me. Your Royal Companion.”

“Or me,” Jiang Cheng growls.

“Uh, this--” Wei Ying fumbles, “there were-- other things? You were nearly killed! I was-- uh-- distracted?”

“But not too distracted to decide to marry.”

“You have known him for five days!” Jiang Cheng bursts out.

“Hey!” Wei Ying snaps back, “These have been-- very long five days! You said so yourself!”

“Who else knows?” A-Sang asks.

Wei Ying wishes that A-Sang would yell at him. At least then, this may actually be a little less awkward, and he may feel a little less guilty.

“No one,” he says quickly, “only Lan QiRen.”

“Lan WangJi does not know? You have not asked him?”

“No, I-- I thought I should speak to his uncle first. It is the proper thing to do.”

“The proper thing to do,” A-Sang repeats.

“Yes,” Wei Ying says, feeling defensive, “Lan Zhan loves his uncle. If Lan QiRen disapproved, Lan Zhan would never agree.”

“You cannot just-- go around asking people to marry you!” Jiang Cheng exclaims, “You idiot! There are rules! Traditions! People who must be informed ahead of time! The Council--!“

“I am not going to ask the Council for an approval to marry,” Wei Ying snaps, indignant, “Lan Zan is the Second Young Master of the Gusu Lan Sect, not some farmer I picked up in YiLing.”

“He is the Second Young Master of the Gusu Lan Sect!” Jiang Cheng shouts loud enough to make A-Sang flinch, “The Lan Sect! Do not play stupid about this!”

“I am the Emperor!” Wei Ying thunders, “I make the rules and the traditions! The Council exists because I allow it to exist!”

The empty wine jar flies across the room and shatters on the door frame, making them both flinch.

A-Sang closes his fan.

“Are you both done?” he asks.

Jiang Cheng opens his mouth, but closes it when A-Sang turns to him with raised eyebrows.

Wei Ying, who knows better, remains quiet.

There is a short, uncomfortable silence, interrupted only by A-Sang’s fan tapping on the table. Finally he sighs.

“We have leverage to use against the Council. Admittedly, I never thought to use it in this way, but it will certainly not be a waste if you are determined to marry him.”

“I am,” Wei Ying says immediately.

Jiang Cheng opens his mouth again, but A-Sang smacks his knuckles with the fan, silencing him, “Shut up. Use your head. If the Emperor marries a Second Young Master of a traitor sect, this sets a precedent. One that you, in particular, might find useful.”

Jiang Cheng splutters, his face turning red.

“Can this wait until we have caught the assassin?” A-Sang asks.

Wei Ying squirms, “I did try to speak to him in YiLing, but I may not have made myself as clear as I should have, so-- if I do not ask him to marry me, he is likely to assume that I do not have honorable intentions. Towards him. In the future.”

“You are so stupid,” Jiang Cheng mutters, squeezing his eyes shut.

“A-Cheng is right,” A-Sang says, “You have been very stupid about this. You should have come to me first, before talking to Lan QiRen.”

“In my defense,” Wei Ying says, “I did not plan to speak to Lan QiRen when I did, it just-- happened.”

Jiang Cheng groans, turning to A-Sang, “How is he the Emperor? How?”

“The Heavens watch out for the idiots, because the rest of us can watch out for ourselves,” A-Sang says promptly.

“Okay,” Wei Ying says, “Okay. Can we, just-- move past this?”

“No,” A-Sang says, “I am fairly certain that we will speak of nothing else but your stupidity for the remainder of the night.”

“Fine,” Wei Ying says, getting up, “I am going to find Lan Zhan. You know, the man I am going to marry. Who does not think I am stupid.”

“Would you like to place a wager on that?” Jiang Cheng mutters, and A-Sang smacks his knuckles again.

“I want the list of the Jin Sect disciples first thing in the morning,” A-Sang reminds him.

Wei Ying flaps his hand in acknowledgment. He is a little unsteady, but manages to find the door without too much fumbling.

Jiang Cheng’s voice follows him out, “Try and not piss in any flower pots!”

#the untamed #cql #mdzs #ficlet #m #wwx emperor au #long chapter in which nothing much happens #except that wei ying is stupid #this chapter is clumsy af #but if i keep rewriting it it'll never get posted #and we gotta move on #anyway #thank you for all the nice messages and tags and comments #ily chickens

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