#poor cedar just wanted some trees | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wytfut · 2 years

Text

Acreage Living

Had always imagined that I’d live on an acreage as a young adult. And by acreage, anything over 1 acre... maybe close to 10-20.

Now I’ve lived on one since, 1988 (2.25 acres)..... kinda wish I hadn’t gone for more than 1. Even at 1, they can keep you pretty busy, depending on what you do on it.

For everything I have going on my acreage, I’d make a terrible neighbor in town. A home owners association would have a tizzy....

I usually have at least one junk parts vehicle (currently), and in the past I had a small junk yard happening. 2 or 3 1957 series ford pickups (folks found out that we liked them, and it was like they were breeding out back) [just recently learned that this series ford truck are called “refrigerators”], with a few years 1953 Mercury .... thru the years quite an assortment of others.

When we first moved out here, the house (the original homestead house, not the current house), had a fairly new remodel. Brand new 2 stall garage, with an attached enclosed shop. A steel 2 stall (former gas company maintenance shed), and I’d guess an old wash house.

Things did change thru the years. House burnt down Xmas 93. And around 2000 I moved an old 5 stall horse barn out back.

We didn’t know when we moved in we were about 150′ from a 30″ transportation natural gas line.... that ran parallel to our property, directly thru our neighbors property (His house sat 20′ from that line). And thats how that steel shed came into play onto our property. We new when we got the house it had Natural Gas, but didn’t realize that it had a “farm tap” on that main. Theres a lot of stories dealing with that gas line, I’ll tell in another episode...

When we moved out here the yard proper around the house was very nice. The rest of the property, including what we could see out the front window, was overgrown with piss elms, Marijuana and iron junk.

I spent a lot of time the first 2 years clearing out all of that and a couple of buildings that had fallen in.

A neighboring farmer was a pack rat (depression kid), and had a lot of junk piled up in our direct line of site of our living room. I had talked to him to see if I could clean it all up and haul all the junk off, plant some cedars... with a view to the Interstate.

Initially he was very good about the whole thing.... A couple of years into it, I noticed some of his junk was reappearing again in our view. I knew I was interrupting his thought train, but he DID say he’d be fine with it.

One day he pulled this old very tired sprayer attachment (hoses all rotted off, flat tires, rusty hydraulics, fiber glass tank all sun baked and cracked, etc...poor shape) back out to under the trees right in the middle of the view. I know, its his junk not mine, and its his property.... but he said he was fine with it... I went out and asked about what was going on... “ You just can’t throw this away, this is good stuff!!!” ... please remember my description above. Then he said “ I can’t let you plant cedars here either, as what if I decide to farm that?.... I’d have to get some equipment to remove them”...

Ok ok.... For what ever reason he never mentioned the footings right in the middle of everything, that he’d also have to remove and the big ass Elms growing everywhere ... all to make it a field. Turns out, he just didn’t want his junk thrown away. So we lived with it for quite a while. One day just out of the blue, he showed up with a tractor and left with the sprayer... didn’t say anything. it never came back.

In this pack rats assortment, I hauled into my ever growing brush/junk pile/hole.... over 5 pickup loads of hand coils of barbed wire. Thats right 5 truck loads. They were not stacked neatly in one place.... they were buried under tall grass and I’d find them anywhere when I was getting tired and ready to quit for the day. .... oh lordie what a bunch of wire. Those hand coils were 5′ in diameter.... lots of barbed wire.

My brush/junk pile which I still have (currently HUGE,.... been a bad couple of years for wind storms), I then made into a shooting back stop. I had a bunch of heavy rail road ties I stacked/wired up and down as the front. Worked very well until the last 10 years when I started getting neighbors. ... It wasn’t used a lot, but when we wanted to shoot, it worked great.

Kids had a good time out here growing up. Do about anything, without disturbing anyone. We had fields on 3 sides. Yet we were within walking distance of town (driveway isn’t a quarter mile long, and then its Waverly, at that time). Bring their buddies out. Camp out, have a camp fire, shoot, etc. ... maybe a motorcycle or 2. Race around in a truck or car. good times....

Once the kids got out of the house, I considered seriously about moving out. Kids heard about it..... so I’m still here.

Threw the years we’ve had a lot of different wild life trot thru. Deer many many times. Ground hogs, coyotes, foxes, Opossum, coons, snakes, Turkeys, Red tail hawks, rabbits, Owls, and bats. Current residents are coyote and fox. Everything else seem to appear/disappear in some odd pattern. No bats for years. Would really like to get some bats back.

As the field to the north of us traded hands for development, the city of Waverly’s city limit move to our north property line. Before the subdivision was built, the city of Waverly had “jurisdiction” over all property within 3 miles of town.

Which basically means, if I build any structures on the property, or make improvements I have to have a building permit from the City of Waverly. Which is interesting here in Lancaster county Nebraski...

If the city of Waverly were not to approve of my build.... I could apply to the county (they’d pass anything), and it’d be a done deal that the city really couldn’t say anything about it. The City has had their fair share of hair pulling with all levels of government and their 3 mile jurisdiction. Battling NRD, State, and county.

First time we shot guns out here, a deputy showed up, on a fire works complaint. Once he saw we were shooting, “I’m not going to get into this, as it too much of a gray area for me to try and make a point...” and he left. After that, we’d shoot, and no big deal and no law enforcement.

Not so long ago I was thinking of building new house on the back portion of the property.

I had found a floor plan that Patti and I both liked (its a miracle). I submitted it to the City of Waverly.... and they immediately rejected it. Said it wouldn’t meet the covenant.

Covenant? what covenant. I’m not in a neighborhood.... I’m an acreage, with no HOA.... odd conversation. Didn’t I just write that this is an acreage outside of town?

My thoughts were, well then I’ll just go to the county with this. But stopped, as the county will not let you break up property less than 20 acres. I only have over 2, and I had thought once the new home was built, I’d sell off the front one. ...

Being I wasn’t real serious about this idea,.... I just dropped it.

Oh yeah.... why wouldn’t they pass my floor plan? .... it was a steel structure. Steel siding, steel roof..... Said if I put common siding on it, and a regular roof on it, they’d pass it... SMH!! lol, steel building with asphalt shingles and vinyl siding, makes me giggle. Yeah, I know, steel buildings life span on average is around 20 years.

I now have neighbors (5 houses) all along the north side of the property. Houses less than 100′ from our house. So we don’t shoot any more. I try to minimalize junk to their view. Been some really good neighbors.... One neighbor told me to go ahead and shoot, no big deal... I replied, “with little kids playing around” ... not gonna do it.

As my boys are gone from here since around 2000, and I maintain this 2.25 acres, keeping it respectable.... I’ve opened up the property to all of my neighbors, for their kids to use at their whim. ATV’s, Motorcycles, what ever.... Its silly of me to mow all of this, and not ever ever be used by someone... just silly expense of gasoline and time.

Have had folks try and talk me out of this, as “its a huge liability risk” ... well I suppose someone really could get hurt. But kids/people get hurt, its a part of life. My kids did... I don’t want anyone to die back there and I’d feel horrible, if it were to happen. But people die and get hurt...

Only restriction I’ve put on my open invitation.... they have to wear a helmet. And only the kids and their friends that live against my property. Had a few strays for a bit, but they left after a short period. I also know, if someone were to sue me... what are they gonna get? I don’t really have nothing of value.... not of suing value anyways.

When they were digging the basement of one of the houses on the north side of my place.... I noticed a puddle of fluid oozing up under the track loader... No it wasn’t a muddy property, or had it rained recently. That track loader was pushing up goo....

It dawned on me..... I had no idea where my septic legs ran. Neither did the city or the county. So before they started framing it in I got a mini excavator here, and dug all over the north edge of my property... Found the septic leg and blocked it off with quick mix cement.

Now I did that not knowing where else that leg ran. But guessing there were more legs than what appeared.

3 Summers later I dug in another 100′ of legs to solve my septic tank puking almost daily. That leg that was bleeding in my new neighbors yard, was the only leg my house had.... problem solved.

When it was a farm to my north, there were trees planted on the north side of “my” property. Once the subdivision was built, I lost all ownership to those trees. Really not a big deal but was surprised none the less. I told all of my new neighbors that the trees were theirs to do with what they wanted. Surprisingly they left the trees.... except for one. And it was no big deal.... just cedars.

3 summers ago had a terrific wind storm here. Worst I had ever seen on my property. It really looked like a war zone... amazing. My back was really giving me a fit at that time, but I knew I could get it done, but it was going to take at least a week.

As I was out scanning the property, one of my new neighbors came out.... and offered to help. This really hurt my pride, but then again my back was a mess. I accepted.

Started around 8 the next morning (note it was a weekday) and by the time 9;30 rolled around, I had 5 neighbors out helping me out. Chain saws, ATV, my tractor, my pick up... the mess was done by mid afternoon. I was shocked, and humbled once again in my life....

I still don’t like the demands of an acreage. But now with “youthful” neighbors, who will speak to you when you go outside..... that’s kind of cool... I also get a grin every time I see the kids out fooling around out back, enjoying the property.

Having neighborly neighbors in this day and age, is becoming more and more rare. Lots of folks (really noted here in Waverlyville), don’t want nothing to do with their neighbors, and never speak.

I have the need to know and trust my neighbors... good folks so far.

1 note · View note

wernevergrowingup · 8 years

Photo

Day 19 - Movies

Cedar agreed to watch Nightmare on Elm Street with Cerise because she thought it was about Elm trees. Poor girl. Oh well. Cerise doesn’t seem to mind.;)

#ever after high #femslashfeb2017 #femslash february #cerise hood #cedar wood #i mean obv cerise would love horror movies #poor cedar just wanted some trees #cedarise #cedar x cerise #cerise x cedar #fan art #my art #nightmare on elm street #horror movies #wernevergrowingup #cedrise

31 notes · View notes

mcmansionhell · 4 years

Text

Underground, Part 1

[Author’s Note: A year ago, when waiting for the DC Metro, I came up with an idea for a short story involving two realtors and the infamous Las Vegas Underground House, typed up an outline, and shoved it away in my documents where it sat neglected until this month. The house recently resurfaced on Twitter, and combined with almost a year of quarantine, the story quickly materialized. Though I rarely write fiction, I decided I’d give it a shot as a kind of novelty McMansion Hell post. I’ve peppered the story with photos from the house to break up the walls of text. Hopefully you find it entertaining. I look forward to returning next month with the second installment of this as well as our regularly scheduled McMansion content. Happy New Year!

Warning: there’s lots of swearing in this.]

Underground

Back in 1997, Mathieu Rino, the son of two Finnish mechanical engineers who may or may not have worked intimately with the US State Department, changed his name to Jay Renault in order to sell more houses. It worked wonders.

He gets out of the car, shuts the door harder than he should. Renault wrinkles his nose. It’s a miserable Las Vegas afternoon - a sizzling, dry heat pools in ripples above the asphalt. The desert is a place that is full of interesting and diverse forms of life, but Jay’s the kind of American who sees it all as empty square-footage. He frowns at the dirt dusting up his alligator-skin loafers but then remembers that every lot, after all, has potential. Renault wipes the sweat from his leathery face, slicks back his stringy blond hair and adjusts the aviators on the bridge of his nose. The Breitling diving watch crowding his wrist looks especially big in the afternoon glare. He glances at it.

“Shit,” he says. The door on the other side of the car closes, as though in response.

If Jay Renault is the consummate rich, out-of-touch Gen-Xer trying to sell houses to other rich, out-of-touch Gen-Xers, then Robert Little is his millennial counterpart. Both are very good at their jobs. Robert adjusts his tie in the reflection of the Porsche window, purses his lips. He’s Vegas-showman attractive, with dark hair, a decent tan, and a too-bright smile - the kind of attractive that ruins marriages but makes for an excellent divorcee. Mildly sleazy.

“Help me with these platters, will you?” Renault gestures, popping the trunk. Robert does not want to sweat too much before an open house, but he obliges anyway. They’re both wearing suits. The heat is unbearable. A spread of charcuterie in one hand, Jay double-checks his pockets for the house keys, presses the button that locks his car.

Both men sigh, and their eyes slowly trail up to the little stucco house sitting smack dab in the center of an enormous lot, a sea of gravel punctuated by a few sickly palms. The house has the distinct appearance of being made of cardboard, ticky-tacky, a show prop. Burnt orange awnings don its narrow windows, which somehow makes it look even more fake.

“Here we go again,” Jay mutters, fishing the keys out of his pocket. He jiggles them until the splintered plywood door opens with a croak, revealing a dark and drab interior – dusty, even though the cleaners were here yesterday. Robert kicks the door shut with his foot behind him.

“Christ,” he swears, eyes trailing over the terrible ecru sponge paint adorning the walls. “This shit is so bleak.”

The surface-level house is mostly empty. There’s nothing for them to see or attend to there, and so the men step through a narrow hallway at the end of which is an elevator. They could take the stairs, but don’t want to risk it with the platters. After all, they were quite expensive. Renault elbows the button and the doors part.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he says as they step inside. The fluorescent lights above them buzz something awful. A cheery metal sign welcomes them to “Tex’s Hideaway.” Beneath it is an eldritch image of a cave, foreboding. Robert’s stomach’s in knots. Ever since the company assigned him to this property, he’s been terrified of it. He tells himself that the house is, in fact, creepy, that it is completely normal for him to be ill at ease. The elevator’s ding is harsh and mechanical. They step out. Jay flips a switch and the basement is flooded with eerie light.

It’s famous, this house - The Las Vegas Underground House. The two realtors refer to it simply as “the bunker.” Built by an eccentric millionaire at the height of Cold War hysteria, it’s six-thousand square feet of paranoid, aspirational fantasy. The first thing anyone notices is the carpet – too-green, meant to resemble grass, sprawling out lawn-like, bookmarked by fake trees, each a front for a steel beam. Nothing can grow here. It imitates life, unable to sustain it. The leaves of the ficuses seem particularly plastic.

Bistro sets scatter the ‘yard’ (if one can call it that), and there’s plenty of outdoor activities – a parquet dance floor complete with pole and disco ball, a putt putt course, an outdoor grill made to look like it’s nestled in a rock, but in reality better resembles a baked potato. The pool and hot tub, both sculpted in concrete and fiberglass mimicking a natural rock formation, are less Playboy grotto and more Fred Flintstone. It’s a very seventies idea of fun.

Then, of course, there’s the house. That fucking house.

A house built underground in 1978 was always meant to be a mansard – the mansard roof was a historical inevitability. The only other option was International Style modernism, but the millionaire and his wife were red-blooded anti-Communists. Hence, the mansard. Robert thinks the house looks like a fast-food restaurant. Jay thinks it looks like a lawn and tennis club he once attended as a child where he took badminton lessons from a swarthy Czech man named Jan. It’s drab and squat, made more open by big floor-to-ceiling windows nestled under fresh-looking cedar shingles. There’s no weather down here to shrivel them up.

“Shall we?” Jay drawls. The two make their way into the kitchen and set the platters down on the white tile countertop. Robert leans up against the island, careful of the oversized hood looming over the electric stovetop. He eyes the white cabinets, accented with Barbie pink trim. The matching linoleum floor squeaks under his Italian loafers.

“I don’t understand why we bother doing this,” Robert complains. “Nobody’s seriously going to buy this shit, and the company’s out a hundred bucks for party platters.”

“It’s the same every time,” Renault agrees. “The only people who show up are Instagram kids and the crazies - you know, the same kind of freaks who’d pay money to see Chernobyl.”

“Dark tourism, they call it.”

Jay checks his watch again. Being in here makes him nervous.

“Still an hour until open house,” he mutters. “I wish we could get drunk.”

Robert exhales deeply. He also wishes he could get drunk, but still, a job’s a job.

“I guess we should check to see if everything’s good to go.”

The men head into the living room. The beamed, slanted ceiling gives it a mid-century vibe, but the staging muddles the aura. Jay remembers making the call to the staging company. “Give us your spares,” he told them, “Whatever it is you’re not gonna miss. Nobody’ll ever buy this house anyway.”

The result is eclectic – a mix of office furniture, neo-Tuscan McMansion garb, and stuffy waiting-room lamps, all scattered atop popcorn-butter shag carpeting. Hideous, Robert thinks. Then there’s the ‘entertaining’ room, which is a particular pain in the ass to them, because the carpet was so disgusting, they had to replace it with that fake wood floor just to be able to stand being in there for more than five minutes. There’s a heady stone fireplace on one wall, the kind they don’t make anymore, a hearth. Next to it, equally hedonistic, a full bar. Through some doors, a red-painted room with a pool table and paintings of girls in fedoras on the wall. It’s all so cheap, really. Jay pulls out a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket along with a pen. He ticks some boxes and moves on.

The dining room’s the worst to Robert. Somehow the ugly floral pattern on the curtains stretches up in bloomer-like into a frilly cornice, carried through to the wallpaper and the ceiling, inescapable, suffocating. It smells like mothballs and old fabric. The whole house smells like that.

The master bedroom’s the most normal – if anything in this house could be called normal. Mismatched art and staging furniture crowd blank walls. When someone comes into a house, Jay told Robert all those years ago, they should be able to picture themselves living in it. That’s the goal of staging.

There’s two more bedrooms. The men go through them quickly. The first isn’t so bad – claustrophobic, but acceptable – but the saccharine pink tuille wallpaper of the second gives Renault a sympathetic toothache. The pair return to the kitchen to wait.

Both men are itching to check their phones, but there’s no point – there’s no signal in here, none whatsoever. Renault, cynical to the core, thinks about marketing the house to the anti-5G people. It’s unsettlingly quiet. The two men have no choice but to entertain themselves the old-fashioned way, through small talk.

“It’s really fucked up, when you think about it,” Renault muses.

“What is?”

“The house, Bob.”

Robert hates being called Bob. He’s told Jay that hundreds of times, and yet…

“Yeah,” Robert mutters, annoyed.

“No, really. Like, imagine. You’re rich, you founded a major multinational company marketing hairbrushes to stay-at-home moms, and what do you decide to do with your money? Move to Vegas and build a fucking bunker. Like, imagine thinking the end of the world is just around the corner, forcing your poor wife to live there for ten, fifteen years, and then dying, a paranoid old man.” Renault finds the whole thing rather poetic.

“The Russkies really got to poor ol’ Henderson, didn’t they?” Robert snickers.

“The wife’s more tragic if you ask me,” Renault drawls. “The second that batshit old coot died, she called a guy to build a front house on top of this one, since she already owned the lot. Poor woman probably hadn’t seen sunlight in God knows how long.”

“Surely they had to get groceries.”

Jay frowns. Robert has no sense of drama, he thinks. Bad trait for a realtor.

“Still,” he murmurs. “It’s sad.”

“I would have gotten a divorce, if I were her,” the younger man says, as though it were obvious. It’s Jay’s turn to laugh.

“I’ve had three of those, and trust me, it’s not as easy as you think.”

“You’re seeing some new girl now, aren’t you?” Robert doesn’t really care, he just knows Jay likes to talk about himself, and talking fills the time.

“Yeah. Casino girl. Twenty-six.”

“And how old are you again?”

“None of your business.”

“Did you see the renderings I emailed to you?” Robert asks briskly, not wanting to discuss Jay’s sex life any further.

“What renderings?”

“Of this house, what it could look like.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Jay has not seen the renderings.

“If it were rezoned,” Robert continues, feeling very smart, “It could be a tourist attraction - put a nice visitor’s center on the lot, make it sleek and modern. Sell trinkets. It’s a nice parcel, close to the Strip - some clever investor could make it into a Museum of Ice Cream-type thing, you know?”

“Museum of Ice Cream?”

“In New York. It’s, not, like, educational or anything. Really, it’s just a bunch of colorful rooms where kids come to take pictures of themselves.”

“Instagram,” Jay mutters. “You know, I just sold a penthouse the other week to an Instagram influencer. Takes pictures of herself on the beach to sell face cream or some shit. Eight-point-two million dollars.”

“Jesus,” Robert whistles. “Fat commission.”

“You’re telling me. My oldest daughter turns sixteen this year. She’s getting a Mazda for Christmas.”

“You ever see that show, My Super Sweet Sixteen? On MTV? Where rich kids got, like, rappers to perform at their birthday parties? Every time at the end, some guy would pull up in, like, an Escalade with a big pink bow on it and all the kids would scream.”

“Sounds stupid,” Jay says.

“It was stupid.”

It’s Robert’s turn to check his watch, a dainty gold Rolex.

“Fuck, still thirty minutes.”

“Time really does stand still in here, doesn’t it?” Jay remarks.

“We should have left the office a little later,” Robert complains. “The charcuterie is going to get –“

A deafening sound roars through the house and a violent, explosive tremor throws both men on the ground, shakes the walls and everything between them. The power’s out for a few seconds before there’s a flicker, and light fills the room again. Two backup generators, reads Jay’s description in the listing - an appeal to the prepper demographic, which trends higher in income than non-preppers. For a moment, the only things either are conscious of are the harsh flourescent lighting and the ringing in their ears. Time slows, everything seems muted and too bright. Robert rubs the side of his face, pulls back his hand and sees blood.

“Christ,” he chokes out. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” Jay breathes, looking at his hands, trying to determine if he’s got a concussion. The results are inconclusive – everything’s slow and fuzzy, but after a moment, he thinks it might just be shock.

“It sounded like a fucking 747 just nosedived on top of us.”

“Yeah, Jesus.” Jay’s still staring at his fingers in a daze. “You okay?”

“I think so,” Robert grumbles. Jay gives him a cursory examination.

“Nothing that needs stitches,” he reports bluntly. Robert’s relieved. His face sells a lot of houses to a lot of lonely women and a few lonely men. There’s a muffled whine, which the two men soon recognize as a throng of sirens. Both of them try to calm the panic rising in their chests, to no avail.

“Whatever the fuck happened,” Jay says, trying to make light of the situation, “At least we’re in here. The bunker.”

Fear forms in the whites of Robert’s eyes.

“What if we’re stuck in here,” he whispers, afraid to speak such a thing into the world. The fear spreads to his companion.

“Try the elevator,” Jay urges, and Robert gets up, wobbles a little as his head sorts itself out, and leaves. A moment later, Jay hears him swear a blue streak, and from the kitchen window, sees him standing before the closed metal doors, staring at his feet. His pulse racing, Renault jogs out to see for himself.

“It’s dead,” Robert murmurs.

“Whatever happened,” Jay says cautiously, rubbing the back of his still-sore neck, “It must have been pretty bad. Like, I don’t think we should go up yet. Besides, surely the office knows we’re still down here.”

“Right, right,” the younger man breathes, trying to reassure himself.

“Let’s just wait it out. I’m sure everything’s fine.” The way Jay says it does not make Robert feel any better.

“Okay,” the younger man grumbles. “I’m getting a fucking drink, though.”

“Yeah, Jesus. That’s the best idea you’ve had all day.” Renault shoves his hands in his suit pocket to keep them from trembling.

If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon!

There is a whole new slate of Patreon rewards, including: good house of the month, an exclusive Discord server, weekly drawings, monthly livestreams, a reading group, free merch at certain tiers and more!

Not into recurring donations but still want to show support? Consider the tip jar!

Or, Check out the McMansion Hell Store! Proceeds from the store help protect great buildings from the wrecking ball.

#architecture #design #fiction #las vegas #underground house

1K notes · View notes

warmblanketwhump · 3 years

Note

Idk if its too late to send this in but if it isn't, how about ⬤ and ✿?

✿: feeling so out of it, they need constant attention

⬤: being called soft things like baby, sweetheart or honey

(note: this MIGHT be cheating but my poor brain was stuck on ideas SO this is a part two to this prompt fill! would recommend reading that first for context, but pretty sure you can enjoy them independently :)

To any other person, the remote cabin would have looked like any old shack – slightly dilapidated, covered in moss, nested away among the trees. But to a lost, soaked, chilled-to-the-bone A, the cabin looks like a warm little slice of heaven, and it takes all they have not to run up the stairs. Instead, they slide an injured B off of their back and help them hobble to the small porch.

The pair limp across the threshold of the cabin and leave the pattering rain behind them, entering a small, spotlessly clean living room that smells of cedar and pine. A large, squashy-looking couch faces a dark fireplace with a tall stack of split logs nearby, and to the right of the doorway is a small kitchen. In the back, A spots a darkened bedroom, a tiny bathroom, and a linen closet. The cabin's rustic, so there's no electricity or hot water - just a single spigot and a gas stove for cooking.

They set a trembling B on the couch, pushing away the guilt of yelling at them earlier, of making them come out here in the first place.

“I’ll find us some towels and blankets. Can you start getting your wet clothes off?” Amid their violent shivers, B nods and starts shedding A’s raincoat and their own denim jacket with pruned, fumbling fingers. The sight nearly crushes A, but they know someone has to go find blankets to help them both get warm.

A pushes into the bathroom and locates several clean, threadbare towels, then heads to the linen closet. They nearly burst into happy tears when they see the large bundle of hideous plaid blankets and a couple piles of flannel and thermal clothing stacked neatly in the corner (forgotten by whoever rented it last, they guessed) and grab as much as their numb fingers can hold.

When they return to the couch, they find B in nearly the exact spot they left them - denim jacket off one arm, on the other, rain jacket fallen to the floor. They're hunched over, stiff with cold, arms crossed tightly.

“Oh sweetheart.…” A sighs, dropping the blankets on the couch and rushing to them.

“T-tried to ch-change. F-fingers won't-t work-k. I’m s-sorry-”

“B, you have nothing to be sorry about. I should’ve helped you in the first place.” A unthreads the soaked clothing from B’s shaking frame, gently patting their wet skin dry and lightly squeezing the water droplets out of their hair with a towel.

B’s eyes are bleary and unfocused, but they respond to A’s simple commands as they dress them in a pair of warm red flannel pants and a grey thermal long-sleeve. A casts a glance towards B's swollen ankle - it's not the worst injury they've ever seen, but it's definitely got to hurt. They dart back to the bathroom and locate a small first aid kit with a cloth bandage, and tenderly wrap up the sore ankle to immobilize it.

When they’re finished, they wrap B in two blankets: one around their legs and elevated ankle, and the other over their wet head and trembling shoulders. B sneezes, cinches the blanket tighter and groans.

“Look-k like a Russian p-peasant woman.” B grumbles, and A can’t help but let a chuckle escape. They really do look like a grandma, with only their face sticking out of the blanket cape.

“Alright, then, babushka. Let me get a fire started, and I’ll join you in a minute.”

Mercifully, it only takes a few minutes for A to get a roaring fire going. A drapes another blanket around B's shoulders and gives them a quick, reassuring rub.

“I’m gonna change, okay? You just worry about warming up.” B moans weakly and pulls the blanket over their nose, edging closer to the flame’s heat.

A peels off their wet clothing in the drafty bedroom, hurriedly drying their own cold skin and pulling on their own warm clothes - a cream thermal and blue flannel pants. The brief exposure makes them shiver, and they chafe their arms and legs to rub away the goosebumps and the damp chill that sinks into their marrow. For just a moment, they acknowledge how cold they are, too. God, they wish this place had hot water.

The adrenaline of the moment begins to fade, and several facts strike them at once. They were freezing. They were stuck in a remote cabin with no electricity for the weekend. This whole weekend was their idea - and all their fault. And they felt guilty as hell about it.

Squeezing their wet hair, they shove the intrusive thoughts from their mind and grab a blanket from the bed to wrap tightly around their own shoulders, along with a couple pillows from the bed for B.

On returning to the living room, they see B managed to hop on their one good leg over to the fire, leaving a trail of two of their other blankets behind. They’re huddled as close as possible to the warm glow, head resting on the hearth. A drops the pillows on the couch and kneels down, running their fingers through B’s damp hair, now exposed by the fallen blanket.

“Feeling any better, love?”

B gives a small, wan smile that fails to light up their peaked face and shakes their head, turning to cough. When they’ve finished, they shudder weakly, pulling the blanket tighter.

“Can’t shake the chill in my bones.” B coughs again. A can see them rubbing their arms under the blankets. “Heat’s bouncing right off me. And I ache all over, not just my ankle.” Another chill rattles their teeth, and they pull the blanket up to their chin. “I just can’t warm up at all.”

A pulls a shivery B into a hug, rubbing their shoulders and trying to share the little body heat they’ve created - unlike B, the fire’s warmth is beginning to thaw them out. In the dim firelight, A can see a sheen of sweat on B’s forehead, and alarm bells go off. Instinctively, A reaches out to press their cold hand to it. It’s warm now. Too warm for someone who just spent two hours trekking through the cold rain.

"Sweetheart, you're feverish. That’s why you’re achy and chilled.”

“S’pose it makes sense. I’m just freezing.” A gust of wind rattles the cabin, and a draft snakes its way into the living room, making B shudder and curl up even closer to A. “I’d kill for a hot shower right now.”

“Don’t go all ‘The Shining’ on me yet - we just got here.” A grabs a towel to try and further dry B’s damp hair. It was probably an old wives’ tale, but they didn’t have many options to keep a sick person comfortable out here, and wet hair couldn’t feel good.

B had complained about feeling a cold coming on a couple days ago, and mentioned that they might not want to go this weekend. A had made fun of them for it, joking about how someone like B never let a little cold get them down. And now, thanks to them, B was even sicker. They really were the worst friend in history.

“Do you think you could manage some tea?" A asks quietly. B closes their eyes and nods, laying their head back on the hearth.

 It takes a few minutes, but A manages to light the gas stove and locate a kettle, along with a dusty box of herbal tea tucked away in a cupboard. Whoever they had rented from had stocked it high with all kinds of canned soups and dry goods, so at least they’d be prepared for the long haul.

A sudden glance out the window reveals that the rain has turned into fat, white snowflakes, whirling in the sky and dusting the porch. A rubs their hands together, holding their chilled fingers as close to the stove flame as possible. The kettle whistles and A pours two cups, reveling in the warm steam that tickles their nose.

Once the tea is brewed, they make their way back to the fireplace. B's too weak to lift their own head, so A sits behind them and props them up, holding the teacup and helping them take small sips of the warm liquid. Once the cup is empty, A helps B lay their head back on the hearth before adding a few more logs to the fire and starting on their own tea.

Despite the warm fire, A can feel the ambient temperature of the room dropping. There's no way B's going to stay warm enough in the bedroom, so they’ll just have to make do out here for now.

After pushing the couch until it's just inches in front of the fire, A sweeps B into their arms and helps them back to the couch, easing them gently onto the pillows they've laid and tucking a blanket back around them. Even this close to the fire, the brief movement had set off another round of bone-shaking chills in B, and they grip their blanket so hard A’s afraid they’ll tear it.

“A?" B's voice is weak.

“I’m right here.”

“A, can you hold me? Please?” The desperation is palpable. B’s breathing is hoarse and they're close to tears, arms wrapped tightly around themselves. “Shivering hurts, but I can’t stop. I know you probably don’t want to get sick from me-”

A’s heart breaks. “Don’t be silly. Of course I’ll keep you warm.” They slide onto the couch and wrap their own blanket around the both of them, pulling B’s fevered body to their chest. B clings to their body, and A can feel the shakes that ripple through them. A gently massages their arms and back in slow circles and B presses closer, the vulnerability almost too much to bear.

Finally, A says what’s been eating away at them for hours. “B, I’m so sorry for what I said on the trail. I shouldn’t have said it, and I didn’t mean it. I do want you here. And now we’re here, and you're sick and hurt and it’s my fault, and I’m sorry for that too.” The apology comes out in such a rush, and B is quiet for so long in their arms that they doubt B even heard it.

But then they feel B’s trembling arms squeezing their waist. “Nature’s not your fault, A. Besides, if being taken care of is a part of your apology, it's warm and I'll take it."

A grips B even tighter, fighting back tears. “Whatever happens this weekend, I’ve got you. You know that, right?”

“‘Course I do. You always have,” B mumbles as they slip into a restless sleep. In front of the warm fire, A reasons that the drafty bedroom was probably too cold for anyone to sleep in. No, they were perfectly content to stay right here with B - and not even the promise of a warm shower could lure them away.

#this is a damn novel but whatev #I loved it too much to stop #sickfic #sickfic prompt #whump prompt #cold whump #cabin whump #shivering #flu #fever #blankets #hurt comfort #lost in the woods #this was so fun to write #literally sat on this the entire holiday weekend #edited this SO MANY TIMES #this is what happens when you adore a trope #my writing

169 notes · View notes

love-toxin · 3 years

Note

THAT BNHA AU PRDRABBLE was vv delicious!!!!!! i would love to see more from you but only if u want to!

"So you're gonna be a fucking prude now, huh?"

Shut up, shut up, shut up--that mantra repeated in your head over and over again, the threat of eyes being drawn towards you because of the scene Touya was making causing your chest to tighten. He was a fucking liar. Just one time, he said, and he'd let you go about your business--so you hadn't expected to bump into him outside your hero studies lecture, knowing from the second you saw him that it was anything but a coincidence. Touya barely went to class in the first place, much less hung around the freshman block of the hero course building.

"Didn't you say you loved me?"

Heads turned in your direction. Everybody who was anybody had an idea of who Touya was, whether it was because of who his father was or because his foul reputation preceded him in all aspects, but either way you dreaded the idea of being associated with him in any way. With a hand already on the door since you had tried to leave before he accosted you, you pushed it open and slipped out into the courtyard to escape as many judging stares as you could before people started to talk.

You half-expected him to give up there and let you slither away for the moment, satisfied with making you squirm. You weren't anticipating how hard he was going to grab you as he wrenched you off the path and dragged you across the quieter part of campus, where fewer people would mill around within earshot.

"Get off me, Touya!"

You struggled, but he was much bigger than you, and strong even though his lanky frame said otherwise. One yank of your arm back and he ripped it forwards, forcing you face-first into the spot where his v-neck dipped below his collarbone, skin warm to the touch. Touya's laugh reverberated through your lips and you groaned against his strength, wishing you had enough to push off of him and break through the tight hold he had around your head, to the point that he was nearly suffocating you in his chest.

"Bite me if you want. Won't change the fact that you were bouncing on my dick just a few hours ago."

He squeezed you even tighter, and that was when you realized that was exactly what he was doing. You couldn't scream for help like this--especially not when Touya was so easily coerced into bringing out his flames for everyone to back away from. You struggled even to take a breath, your senses filled with nothing but the overwhelming scent of cedar and ashy smoke, along with the stink of cigarettes and weed….but just as you were imagining your death via suffocation, Touya jerked forward and his grip loosened enough for you to stumble away from the panic-inducing murder hug.

"Huh?"

Already a few inches out of Touya's reach, you clutched at your bag strap as you took a glance at what stood just behind your attacker with his hand on his shoulder. Shoto, too, seemed to be processing the whole situation, his mismatched eyes focused solely on you before he turned them up to his brother.

"Touya, Professor Aizawa needs to speak with you."

And just like that, you were thrown a lifeline. Touya's brow barely began to furrow before he broke his attention away from you and strolled off, masking his frustration behind a seething aura that disappeared once he headed out of sight towards the administrative hall. That may have been one of the only things that would have gotten you out of his clutches, and yet you didn't feel any more at ease now that you stood at odds with the younger Todoroki, his eyes clear but curious as he watched you with cloudy intent.

"...You're in my hero studies class, aren't you?"

He slipped a hand into the pocket of his jeans, mindlessly fiddling with something within it. For some unspoken reason Shoto suddenly found it impossible to look you in the eyes, and instead he averted his gaze until you nodded and said you were, just as eager to forget what he just witnessed as he was. But as awkward as he could often be, it wasn't above you to admit that Shoto was rather cute, and you had wondered whether it was worth it to try and maneuver the shaky ground of asking him if he'd like to go on a date sometime. You doubted he would ever say yes, he was much more popular and sought-after than you (and not to mention your complicated relationship with his older brother) but it was a fantasy that often lived in your mind nonetheless.

"We should study together sometime. I'm a little behind."

You were a little confused at that--Shoto was well-known for his high grades and enviable quirk, so you couldn't imagine what he would need a study buddy for, much less that he was behind in anything but picking up social cues. But as briefly as a warm breeze through the trees lining the campus walkways, your meeting came to an end and he stalked by you with a "goodbye" so soft on his lips you barely heard it, the scent of his sandalwood cologne blowing past you just as quickly. He didn't head towards the building where his brother's beloved frat was, but instead in the direction of the library where you sometimes caught sight of him studying quietly by himself. You followed his lead as well, hurrying to get off campus and back towards your dorm, hopefully to escape both Touya and any of his other fratmates that would sometimes come knocking on the door of the cute little freshman they were so enamoured with. Your only goal right now was not to fail your classes, and to avoid those men like the plague until they eventually moved on and found some other poor soul to torture.

Oh, how you wished that was how this would all work out. You had no idea who would be waiting for you once you headed out to your class tomorrow morning, ready to snatch up his precious little prize.

#a little introductory snippet.....#sorry for the format i havent used my pc in awhile #frat au #touya todoroki #shoto todoroki #university au #bnha #anonymous

71 notes · View notes

books-of-the-great-leviathan · 2 years

Text

Chapter 5- Luca

***

"Triune's tits," Luca whispered. "I don't believe it."

He lifted his head, squinting through the shaft of muggy sunlight. It swirled with small insects, gossamer things that had risen in clouds from the needle litter as he'd knelt. A myriad of their bites already pricked at his sweaty skin, but he didn't care. He'd suffer a thousand bites in every unmentionable cranny for this.

"Pazzo!" he yelled. "Giulia! Over here!"

He heard their voices, the crash of their footsteps through the dense underbrush, and turned back toward the plant cupped in his hands. It was a mere sprig weighted down by dangling, bell-shaped white flowers. They glimmered like trapped moonslight, casting iridescent reflections over his palms.

"Oh!" Pazzo's voice tightened to a squeak as he saw the plant. "Is that-"

"Starbell," Giulia whispered. She knelt at Luca's side, her dark eyes shining. "I didn't think a strain grew in these mountains anymore."

"Apparently," Luca said. "It does. Clippers."

Giulia thrust them into his hand. "Are we taking the whole thing?"

"No, no. It won't have a chance of growing in Valeris. Altitude's too low. Poor thing won't abide the salt." Luca eased the points of the clippers around a single dangling flower, and, neatly, clipped it free. It dropped into his palm. "Just a bloom. I want to save the seed. There it is, see?"

Pazzo and Giulia leaned in as he teased the petals back, revealing the delicate throat of the flower and the cluster of black seeds nestled inside. "According to old dead Magister Yuliza and her deliciously-written journals, I can steep these and add the tea to grayamber, conjuring from it bizarre and ghastly illusory manifestations. Of course, she also thought her rivals were poisoning her daily helping of gruel and spent her days in monastic solitude, so...one may doubt her theories."

"Grayamber?" Pazzo asked. "For weapons?"

Luca felt his smile tighten. "I'd rather not start with weapons."

The students exchanged a glance. Luca understood their assumptions. Both had families decimated by war, robbed of mothers, fathers, elder siblings. All of them, so he gathered, had been drowned or devoured by spellfire or put to some Estaran blade. So many in Lapide told the same tale, had endured the same loss. The waters of Bellana's Arm, the span of ocean between Lapide's southernmost point and Estara's northern coasts, were as much graveyard as sea.

Both of the students were fifteen, a pair of Academy newbloods, and this was their first foray into the mountains that cupped Valeris like a pair of hands. From the high pale crag looming above the canopy Luca would be able to see down the lush sweep of the mountainside, where forest transitioned to farmland and fishing villages dotted coastlines, all the way to the sunstruck spires of Valeris. From here he could only see the mountaintop itself, bare of vegetation and inhabited by vast hornwings, ornery birds with wingspans like sails who built their nests on its crags.

He straightened, holding the precious flower gently in one hand. The forest around them was in full summer flush. Cedars towered, deepwoods behemoths, their red bark thick as warship armor and scented sap-sweet. Birds flashed and flickered through the canopy, and carnivorous flowers, red and fleshy, grew in abundance, the damp air full of the bittersweet tang of resin.

The ancient forests of Lapide had been felled to build warships, and nearer to Valeris bare expanses of clear cuts striped the hills. Here, though, the trees had not been touched since before Queen Valeria first stepped onto Lapidaean sand. Up here, amongst them, Luca could almost forget. He could pretend the Lapidaean fleet was absent from its harbor, pretend the columns of factory smoke were clouds of morning mist not yet burnt away by the sun.

Luca clambered over the enormous roots of the nearest cedar, the Academy students at his heels. They both wore white uniforms, and the climb up the mountainside and the various pollens and juices of the deepwoods covered them in streaks and daubs of color. They'd begun their ascent well before dawn.

"Grand Magister Tosca will make a pair of scholars out of you after this, I'll wager," Luca called back to them. "No more schooling. Straight to the halls of high thinking for you two."

"My grades might have something to say about that," Giulia groused, but Pazzo was scrambling for the collecting-jar in his elk's saddlebag. Several jars clinked in his satchel, most already full of samples from lower on the mountain. He presented the jar as Luca joined him. Luca dropped the flower inside, gave the jar a shake, and held it in a shaft of sunlight. The starbell blossom glowed, sunstruck radiant.

Delight sharpened to guilt. Back to your songs, your stories? Isabella might have spat. They won't be what saves us. They won't be what wins this war. She was right, damn her. He should be in Valeris with his mother and sisters, standing at their side as they tossed their princess to the fellfox's jaws. Instead he was here, searching for reagents. But he had to do something, something, more than endless bowing and shaking hands with those who'd been killing his countrymen for the past decade. Each smile felt like a piece of himself cut away and handed to Daval Belmont.

Luca let out his breath and lowered the jar. "Pazzo," he said, handing it over. "Make sure this and the other samples are secure."

"Yes, Prince Luca."

"It's just Luca up here." He grinned. "The Magisters will be so proud of you both- where's Giulia?"

The girl wasn't there. Pazzo's eyes sprang wide as he whirled, scanning the forest. Insects moved in the sunlight; above, a starmouse called, its bright trill drifting down from the canopy. Quiet. Very quiet, Luca considered, shifting his weight. There was a pistol strapped to his saddle, but he hardly thought he'd need it. Fellfoxes didn't range this high, not in summer, when prey was abundant in the lower forest basins.

"Luca!" Her voice cracked the hush. Luca sprang after it, round, short-legged Pazzo several steps behind him. They ducked through a thicket of thorns and into a small clearing between two massive, humped cedar roots, each higher than Luca was tall.

Luca scraped a few blond hairs back from his forehead with the side of his wrist, breathing hard the putrid air. Giulia pressed against the roots, staring at the dead animal. It lay sprawled amidst the needle litter, spindly legs splayed: a duskdeer, its mottled gray pelt spackled with gore. Massive gashes rent one foreleg nearly off its body. Its eyes were wide, their jelly already pocked by feeding insects. It was fresh, but in this soupy air decay had set in fast.

Fresh. Luca's pulse ticked in his throat. The sky was clear, but the hard, bright blue seemed at once sinister.

"I...I didn't mean to wander off..." Giulia stammered. "I saw blood, I thought-"

"Are you all right?"

She nodded.

Luca glanced toward the sky again, then took her arm. "Come on, both of you. We need to get out of here fast."

"Why? What-"

A trumpeting screech rent the air, echoing off the distant mountaintop. Birds burst from their hiding places: a sudden, violent upheaval, shredding leaves. Pazzo ducked away, and Giulia jerked back as another screech sounded. Vast wings boomed, and a gigantic shape erupted from the heights of a nearby cedar. Pressure spiked in Luca's ears. He winced, clenching his teeth, shadow rippling across the clearing as the creature launched itself from the tree. Wind rolled across him, blasting his sweaty hair back from his face.

Beautiful, he thought, his eyes wide. No mere bird, but a bull hornwing, the biggest he'd ever seen. Its wingspan had to be fifteen feet or more, jet-black banded with flashes of white, talons spread. Its head reared back on a serpentine neck, hooked beak agape, its magnificent red and orange crest sweeping back from its eye ridges in fantastical tufts and barbs.

"Down!" Luca cried as it angled its wings, swooping round the clearing and toward them. Those vast talons opened like cages. He threw himself and the students to the side as a blast of wind coursed through the foliage. A crack of red jarred through his body as his shoulder struck a root. Force passed by him, so close he braced for the agony of talons entering his flesh, that razor beak shearing him in two.

It never came. He opened his eyes in time to see the hornwing's talons close around the duskdeer's corpse and wrench it into the air. A spray of blood spattered Luca's face, and then, in a boom of wind, both bird and prey were gone. Luca scrambled to his knees, a mad grin on his face as he watched the hornwing wheel toward the peak. Within seconds it was leagues off, its distant shadow rippling across the mountainside.

"Amazing," he said. "Amazing!"

He turned to the students, who were slowly collecting themselves. Giulia straightened a strand of hair that had escaped her braids, while Pazzo looked pale, spots of red burning on his cheeks. "Did you see that?"

"I did," said a voice. "I've seen bigger."

Luca pressed his eyes shut, let out his breath, and looked up. He hadn't heard the riders' approach, but there they were, a half-dozen of them mounted on elk. Each rider wore the blue uniform of the royal Falcii, but the man leading them had a silver hawk badge on his tasseled bandoleer. Enzo Acier, captain of the royal Falcii, and the crown princess Isabella's personal friend.

Isabella, Luca thought. His sister Isabella, who would be queen someday. Who, if she'd sent Captain Acier to fetch him, must be annoyed indeed.

"Captain," Luca said, lightly. He got to his feet, wincing as his shoulder gave off a crunch of pain. He helped Pazzo and Giulia up; they hurried to brush leaves and dirt off their uniforms. "How was your ride up the mountain? Uneventful, I hope?"

"Nothing to haunt me but the breeze," Enzo said, with a shrug. "Besides, Lapide looks her best in summer."

He was some years older than Luca, broad-shouldered and handsome, with a crop of wavy dark hair and sharp hazel eyes. His smile was sharp, too, as he looked Luca over. For good reason- Luca knew he must look less than princely in his sweat-stained riding clothes.

But Enzo grinned, and Luca grinned in return. "I could tell her I found you knee-deep in important matters of state," Enzo said. "Would that do?"

"Might as well make it entertaining. Tell her you found me juggling the lost sapphires of Queen Avira and singing a sea-shanty to a crowd of adoring peasants in various states of undress," Luca said. "She'd sniff out the truth either way."

"She's a canny one, our Bell."

"Cannier than I care for."

"Watch it, Valere. Those are treasonous words," Enzo said, mock-serious. He nodded toward the pack beasts. "Now, then. On your elk. The queen has requested you return to Valeris."

The air was humid, the sun breathing fire, but all at once Luca was cold. He straightened. "Are they here?"

"First report of Estaran ships on the horizon." Acier's face was grim. "Prince Alois will make landfall by afternoon."

***

Down the pale stone plunge of the curtain wall, past the spear-points of statues guarding the promenade, the Estaran entourage was a river of gilt and flashing silver and soldiers in crimson, as if they'd dyed their uniforms in the spilled blood of slaughtered Lapidaeans.

The day was a clear one, the early summer sky a hard, pale blue strewn with the snapping ribbons of flags. Valeris was in a nationalistic mood, and for good reason- Estaran ships in the harbor were no cause for celebration, much less King Daval Belmont's own schooner and an entourage of a half-dozen warships.

Today, however, sword and pistol had been lain aside. The prince wasn't here for a fight, and Luca's mother, Queen Sofia Valere, had forbade violent action against any member of the Estaran entourage.

“Look at them,” Luca said. “They're acting like they own the damn place. Inconsiderate, if you ask me.”

By his side, Cereza smiled and leaned out across the parapet, her palms braced on its white stone. The breeze picked up strands of her loose fair hair. Below stretched the red rooftops of Valeris, terraces of streets and spires, canals strewn with punts and gondolas, all the way to the distant curve of the bay. The many harbors were thick with clusters of masts and the high crows' nests of freighters drawn to berth. Valeris. The city Luca had been born in, the heart of Lapide.

“If they owned the place," Cereza said, "would they come in full armor?”

Luca glanced at his sister. “You can't say you want this.”

“It's what's best.”

“You scarcely know him-”

“He's not so bad, I hear.”

“He's the son of the king who's been blasting our soldiers out of the water for the past ten years. Remember, I'm going to have to exchange courtly niceties with him over dinner.”

“You've never had trouble with courtly niceties.”

“Who knows,” Luca said with a shrug. “He may prove my undoing.”

Cereza frowned. “Don't be rude to him. Please, Luca."

He faced her. She stared at him. Her eyes were wide and gray, so like his own. She hadn't dressed in her elaborate overgown yet- an embroidered robe was tied loosely around her sapsilk slip, her hair spilling unbound over her shoulders. Luca had seen the gown being prepared in her dressing room, maids running soft brushes over the thick blue brocade of the skirts. A gorgeous thing, silk and sea-foam and spangles bright as eel-scale. Its neck and long oversleeves frothed with silver lace. Cereza and her ladies had embroidered the fabric with the Valere hawk, its talons entwined with lillem blooms and heartlain.

It wasn't formally a wedding-gown, but it might as well be. With a union between Cereza and Prince Alois ensuring peace, an end to the bloodshed, an end to red oceans and spellfire smoke rolling off the sea like mist, an end to a decade-long war Luca could little remember a world free of, neither could refuse.

Luca let out his breath. "Of course I won't, Cee."

Her expression softened. "Thank you."

"I may insult his hair."

"Oh, not that. That would mean a decade more war."

"Is hair so important as that in Estara?"

"Very," Cereza said, mock-serious. "Sometimes, if a single hair is lost from a proud man's head, he'll throw himself off a cliff rather than face the shame."

"Is Alois a proud sort?"

"Prince Alois. And I can't say I know."

"Well, let me know when you do. I'm sure I can arrange something."

Cereza shoved him, digging her elbow into his ribs. Luca stumbled back, laughing. Color fluttered against the sky as a fluting cry rang across Valeris. Luca straightened, then held out his arm and whistled. The flutter drew nearer, consolidating into a familiar shape.

"Nagi," Luca called. "To me!"

He hardly had to command her. Nagi's talons bit into his leather gauntlet, her huge wings flaring, the backdraft flattening Luca's hair against his head. Her feathers were brilliant blue to match the sky, but as she settled her wings their color shifted, sinuously becoming vivid egg yolk-yellow.

Luca tossed her a shard of dried fish from his pocket. Nagi's neck snaked, her long, hooked beak snapping as she caught it in midair.

"Did you miss me on the mountain?" he asked her. At sixteen, Luca had found her egg in a bazaar by the docks, sold as a cure for Black Lung. He'd bought her from the trader, kept her warm in an incubator of his own design, fed her by hand until she could fly.

"Good Nagi," Cereza said, stroking her beak. She trilled. "I'll miss you."

Nagi hopped from Luca's arm to his shoulder, her customary place. Below, Luca caught a glimpse of the Belmont coach, drawn by a pair of elk harnessed in bells and black leather, their elegant backswept horns gleaming like polished obsidian. The spike atop the coach caught a flash of sunlight. Guards in white armor flanked the procession, fending off the crowds in the streets below pressing in to get a good look.

Luca could imagine the talk; he'd heard it enough in cantinas and fryhouses: I heard Estarans file their teeth to points. Well, I heard they learned to work the way witches do, only they need to drink blood to do it. Fresh blood? Oh, the freshest, they lop off children's heads and drink the spray straight from the stump.

He'd been close enough to Estarans to know they didn't file their teeth into any shape, much less points. As for the blood-drinking, he couldn't attest.

Cereza was right. Today needed to go well. It needed to go well more than anything ever had. He'd seen the front lines. He'd ridden the decks of warships, had seen the graveyards of broken masts and sulfurous smoke, corpses drifting like bloated deep-sea fish on the surface of the waves. He'd tasted the mist of blood in the air left behind after an alchemic attack. Bolts burst into alchemic flame where they landed, blooms of blue fire devouring all it touched: ships, sailors, soldiers, the sea itself turned to a bath of flame.

He was a useless soldier, but he'd seen war nevertheless. He might not like Cereza's decision, might resent his mother and King Daval and the whole damned world for conspiring it, but he would support it if that was what it took.

"I'll miss you, too," Luca said. Cereza's gray eyes met his, and she smiled. She was eighteen, short and round with a soft, sweet face and a curling fringe and ears that stuck out more than she preferred. Despite all her sweetness, dark circles persisted under her eyes. More of her life had passed in war than out.

They watched the procession for a few moments more. Summer was high, the streets below shimmering with heat. Lapide was shaking off the chains of war, or trying to, anyhow. These past weeks resurrection fetes and masques had begun, fireworks spattering the night sky with brilliant color, the stink of saltpeter washing away the ever-present specter of death.

"We have to go change," Cereza said at last. "Imagine turning up like this."

"What a scandal." He glanced down at his waistcoat and sweaty shirt, both streaked with the detritus of the forest. "They'd throw us out."

"Make arrangements without our interference." Cereza paused. "You'll visit me in Estara," she added. "Won't you?"

"Of course. I'll bring you moon cakes."

"Sugared ones?"

"With ginger."

A gleam returned to her eyes. "Well, then. I mustn't wait around much longer, if there are ginger moon cakes in the bargain."

With a cry, Nagi launched herself into the air. She spiraled away, jesses trailing from an ankle. Luca held out his arm, and Cereza folded herself against him, head leaned on his shoulder.

"I had the dream again," Cereza said softly. "Last night. It was so strong. It hasn't been like that for years."

Wind gusted, colder than before. Above, a flag snapped, straining at the pole.

"The same?" Luca asked.

"It's always the same. The stars are in the water. It's there. It sees me. Its eyes are just below the surface. I feel like it's looking into my heart." She sighed. "I wish I could see it, Luca. Really see it. Just once."

He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. "Me, too."

Luca left his sister to her preparations and took the tight corkscrew staircase down. This was a back way, humble and dim. The steps led to an arched wooden door, spilling him into a far corner of the Royal Library. Books were hell to keep in Valeris's damp, salty climate, where even on the calmest day sea-wind spread green patinas on its domes. All the same, the Library was the Palace's beating heart, the soul it had kept close throughout the war, and long before too.

As always, Luca felt a sense of calm settle over him once he'd stepped into the stacks. This way wasn't the fastest one back to his rooms, but it was by far his favorite. Shelves towered around him, limits lost in gloom, lamplight playing over brass and burnished leather. Glass cases winked, cabinets filled with older, more fragile manuscripts. Stranger objects too: the fangs of a lamia set in gold, taxidermied birds fantastically-crested and plumed in iridescent blue, ork-tusk scrimshaw and witch's knuckles and sarkyvor skulls with jaws agape, a shred of Valeria's own sword and gemstones from the Sunken Ruins of Rashavir.

The air tasted of dust, of age, old skins and older words, languages from archipelagos lost to monster waves. Luca couldn't claim to know them all, but he, unsuited as he was to swordplay, knew more than many. Languages were his favorite, the words and understandings of the living and the long-dead. He'd spent so much time here as a child his mother had let him set up a cot amidst the stacks, a small boy bent over books larger than he was, unable to look away, drinking it all in.

"I can't fight like Isabella," he'd told his mother, when at last she protested. "I can barely hold a sword without dropping it."

"You just have to practice."

"So what? So I can command a ship someday and have someone else stab all the pirates for me? She'll be queen. I'm not going to rule. If I'm to be useless, let me enjoy my uselessness."

This room, with its high painted ceiling showing the firmament, was one of many, vault after vault spanning an entire wing of the Palace. Treasures waited throughout, enough for ten dynasties, but Luca didn't have time to linger today. He steered himself toward the vast double doors leading to the rest of the Palace.

Cold steel stung the back of his neck.

Luca stopped, tensing, then dropped his shoulders. "If you're going to do something dramatic," he said, "warn me first so I can get a good seat."

"You would be dead if I wanted to do something really dramatic."

Luca batted away Isabella's sword point, a grin at the ready. She spun the sword in her hand and sheathed it in one fluid movement. She was nearly Luca's height, straight-backed, shoulders square under her blue frock coat. Her blonde hair was cut to her shoulders in a straight, shining fall, her honey-brown skin a match to Luca's. They had the same sharp jaw, too, and aquiline nose, but while their eyes were in all technical terms the same shade of gray, no one could have mistaken one for the other. Isabella looked at people like a hawk looked at small mammals.

"Captain Acier told me you were nearly eaten by a hornwing," she said.

"Captain Acier likes to exaggerate. I saw a hornwing, that's true. A bull hornwing, Bell. It was incredible. Even you'd have liked it."

"Hm. I hope you're on your way to change," she said, flicking her eyes over Luca's clothes.

"I was, before you interrupted me. I had to see Cereza."

"You didn't try to talk her out of anything, did you?"

"Now that would be monumentally stupid."

"Monumentally stupid indeed." She paused. "Luca."

"Isabella."

"Listen to me for once. This is the way."

He sighed. "I know. I only wish it wasn't."

"You don't have to like it," Isabella said, her voice hard. "You just have to do it."

Luca watched her as she paced away. The frustration returned, boiling to the surface. "She dreamed again," he called.

"Of the Great Leviathan? The beast's dead."

"You don't know that."

"I know enough," Isabella said, turning on her heel so she faced him once more. The lamplight struck steel off her eyes. "Do you think I want our sister to marry the Bloodmonger's whelp? Do you think I want her leagues away, in the court of the monsters who killed our father? No."

She strode off. After a moment, Luca followed. He knew where Isabella was going, what she was doing, and hated that she was doing it. The shelves opened into a rotunda, its central dais made of the same pale stone as the rest of the Palace, lit by the shafts of sun hanging through a stained glass skylight high above. Isabella drew to a halt, Luca alongside her, both of them silent before the Library's greatest treasure.

On the dais was mounted a harpoon, some seven feet long and made of wood rubbed a faded black. The shaft was pitted with divots that must have been made by fingertips, worn into place by frequent, deadly use. It was the point that always drew Luca's eye. It was made of dented, rusted metal, its upper edge barbed, its lower a sleek, back-facing hook sharpening to a point. It had lived two hundred years in the Library, and looked every minute of its age. Its only grace was a faint trace of crystalline substance clinging to that cruel lower edge, dried in the blood fuller.

Whaleglass, whalestone, godsglass, starstuff- there were as many names as there were alchemists to coin them, and all of them meant the same thing. Once, the Great Leviathan was seen by many, had roamed the waters of the Inner Sea, bringing with it stories of awe, shedding monsters, ushering in great blooms of plankton or waters teeming with fish or ship-shattering storms. It sowed life, but it took it away, too, and none could say why or how it chose as much as they could say how the sea rose and fell beneath the moons.

Once, ships chased it, tracking its trail of light for miles over the open ocean. Once, brave folk had thrown harpoons like this one, hoping to catch flesh and bleed their god out into the water. That blood crystallized when it dried, and became more precious than gold, more precious than rain on the sea, more precious than breath to the drowning.

Only a trace remained of the god's blood on this harpoon, not lost or broken, but saved, traveling through hands and over oceans all the way to the court of the Valere queen, Luca's great-grandmother. There was not enough whaleglass on it to work miracles, just enough to inspire memories of them.

Once, the Leviathan would have come. Luca knew it. He knew it like he knew anything. Once, the Leviathan would have ended their war in one slow blink of its vast eye. But the Leviathan had not come.

Would never come, Luca told himself, again and again.

"Maybe it was a god," Isabella said. "I know I used to believe. We all did when we were children, sure that if we prayed and hoped and dreamed it would return to us. But I know we can't put stock in dreams. We can't trust them. They aren't real, Luca. " She stabbed her finger into the palm of her hand. "This is."

"At such a cost?"'

"We must all pay a cost," Isabella said. "I hope you don't pay too steep of one for your faith."

She left him. The silence rang in her wake. Slowly Luca unclenched his hands, letting his breath out through his teeth. Damn her, Isabella was right. She usually was. But hope lingered like a poison, hope for a miracle.

Maybe that was naivety talking.

Luca stared at the harpoon. Once, its wielder, some long-dead sailor who'd worn those divots into its shaft, had thrown it strong and sure. Once, that barbed point had caught gods' flesh. He could see it in his mind: the shuddering song of the Leviathan, huge as the world. White spume and pounding heart, wind like knives, the arc of the spearpoint, blood blue as summer spiraling through the waves, raw with the power to make, to unmake, to build a world anew.

Once, once, once. It was like one of his dead languages: fading, forgotten, no right place for it in this new world.

#original fiction #fantasy fiction #tales of the great leviathan #togl #chapter 5 #serialfiction #serial novel

3 notes · View notes

foragingincanadamb · 2 years

Text

(Don't eat them raw ever even after being dried)

If you see this post please get your own information.Don't want anyone getting sick! or worse!

Inky caps

Find:grows in tight clusters in grass or on wood debris.

Time:summer and fall

Description:cap is up to 8 cm broad, light gray or gray-brown with furrow-lines radiating to the edges.gills are nearly free from the stem and white/grey when young.the flesh and gills of older specimens liquefies into a black inky mass when old.partial veil leaves an inferior, fibrous ring on the white stem.tip collect younger specimens and/or remove blackening areas which have a more bitter taste.tip: cooking with water shortly after collecting helps to prevent the dish from turning into a black inky mess.warning: causes a reaction of hot flushing and nausea if consumed with or followed by alcohol. Do not consume this mushroom unless abstaining from alcohol.

Look alikes: Shaggy Mane and Mica Cap(see below)

Jelly ears

Find:growing on dead deciduous trees almost always elder,but also other hardwoods.

Time:All year, especially autumn

Description:They are brown to almost black and develop on wood decay.Cup-shaped, becoming irregularly lobed and often ear shaped. Up to 7cm diameter, but usually smaller.Jelly ear naturally de- (and re-) hydrates in the wild, often looking like shrivelled, hard dark knobs, a fraction of their hydrated size and easy to miss, in warm dry weather. It can be picked in this state and rehydrated.Anyone on blood pressure medicine or expecting a surgery should not consume the mushrooms!

Look alikes:most similar looking species you are likely to encounter is Tremella foliacea, which is also translucent, medium brown to black, gelatinous and grows in overlapping flaps on decaying wood. Tremella foliacea has a lot more water in it, so its "squishier" , aka much easier to compress.this is an edible but very poor fungus, but being insubstantial it has no culinary value.

King Bolete Cep

Find:under beech, birch, scots pine, spruce; solitary or in clusters.

Time: spring,summer and autumn.

Description:partial veil is absent.firm young ceps are one of the tastiest wild foods, and extremely versatile. Older specimens are best dried, after which their flavour intensifies.Key identification features are the light to chestnut brown smooth cap with a white rim and often a hazy pale ‘bloom’. Ensure the stipe is pale with a slightly raised white net pattern (reticulum) on the top third. As a member of the bolete group of mushrooms, ceps have pores under the cap rather than gills. These start off pale grey, becoming yellow and eventually olive green in past-their-best specimens. Flesh should be unchangingly white throughout apart from a narrow claret-coloured line just under the skin of the cap.Ceps grow quickly and come in a wide and quirky range of shapes and sizes, and are often semi-decomposed before they reach maturity.

Look alikes: not edible Boletus huronensis (“False King Bolete”)Exceptionally dense. Found in hemlock. Pale yellow pores slowly bruise green-blue, resolving toward brown. Often has a “tide mark” on the stem. Netting is rare. Often tastes sweet.Sometimes has a disagreeable garlic or skunky odor.May have an unusual lack of bug holes.This is the only mushroom in North America that can have non-bluing yellow pores and also be a sick-maker.listed in many old books as edible, huronensis has been blamed for some notorious, multi-day, projectile food poisonings.

Lobster Mushroom

Find:conifer forests. They can be found under cedars and Douglas firs, growing from under loose forest floor material.

Time:spring,summer and fall.

Description:not a mushroom, but a parasitic fungus that grows on mushrooms.the fungus turns the host mushroom a bright reddish orange.the fungus deforms the surface of the host mushroom to be coarse, cracked, and dotted with tiny white pimples.the fungus eventually twists the mushroom into an irregular shape, making the host unidentifiable.has a seafood-like flavor that is highly variable.has a firm, dense texture.fresh specimens have a white interior.appears in summer and fall following rainy weather.They" have confirmed that none of the Hypomyces lactifluorum hosts are toxic.

Look alikes:There are no mushrooms that look like lobster mushrooms. As such, there are no poisonous lookalikes for lobster mushrooms.

Meadow Mushroom

Find:grows in grassy areas, meadows and fields, often in a ring.

Time:spring, summer, or fall.

Description:cap is up to 10 cm broad, convex, white to creamy, dry, smooth.older specimens have a nearly flat cap.flesh is white, firm.gills are crowded, free from the stem, progressing from bubble-gum pink to chocolate brown with age.stem is smooth, white.partial veil is smooth, white, and leaves a single, thin ring on the stem.stem does not have a bulbous base.flesh slowly bruises off-white, to dingy brown, NOT staining yellow, orange or red.warning: discard specimens that do not have the bubblegum-pink pink gills or who's flesh stains yellow, orange, or red. these can be poisonous look-alikes.less regular shape of the cap.

Look alikes:Destroying angel there's no antidote and 60-80% of people don't survive.Caps of the Destroying Angel are 5 to 10cm in diameter, pure white, and without any marginal striations. The cap is initially egg-shaped and then campanulate (bell shaped) or occasionally almost flat but with a broad umbo, and is often tilted on the stipe.Although some young caps carry white remains of the universal veil, they soon wash off in wet weather and are rarely seen on mature caps.Amanita virosa gills are white, free and crowded.Stems of Destroying Angels are 9 to 15cm tall, 0.6 to 2cm in diameter, and often slightly curved; pure white and fibrous with an ungrooved, fragile ring high up on the stipe. The large, sack-like volva is usually buried deep in the soil.Mature specimens have a faint sickly and unpleasant odour.Often found at the edge of deciduous or mixed woodland.

Mica Cap

Find:They tend to favour stumps, logs, and buried wood. Most of the time, the mushrooms grow on wood or right next to wood. Sometimes they are at the bases of trees, even when the trees seem healthy.

Time:spring, summer, and fall.

Description:The Mica Cap is not very picky about the type of wood it decomposes.feature brown caps coated with a distinctive dusting of salt-like or mica-like granules. The unique combination of size, habitat, and salt-like granules makes mica caps instantly recognizable. Caps are reddish-brown to tawny to ochre-brown, becoming grayish particularly near the margin. The surface is covered by listening granules that are soon lost. The cap is radially lined almost to the centre. The mushrooms grow larger than many inky caps, cap size reaches sizes of 2 to 6cm wide.Attached to the stem or free from it; when young, gills are pale, becoming brown, then black; deliquescing (turning to black "ink") but usually not completely. Gills grow close together or crowded.You should collect only specimens that have not yet begun to liquefy. Mica caps must be cooked and eaten almost immediately after collecting as they will begin to deliquesce or dissolve into an inky black spore filled liquid within 1 to 3 hours.

Look alikes:edible Inky cap is up to 8 cm broad, light gray or gray-brown with furrow-lines radiating to the edges.gills are nearly free from the stem and white/grey when young.the flesh and gills of older specimens liquefies into a black inky mass when old.partial veil leaves an inferior, fibrous ring on the white stem.tip: collect younger specimens and/or remove blackening areas which have a more bitter taste.tip: cooking with water shortly after collecting helps to prevent the dish from turning into a black inky mess.warning: causes a reaction of hot flushing and nausea if consumed with or followed by alcohol.Do not consume this mushroom unless abstaining from alcohol.

Shaggy Mane

Find:grow in disturbed grounds, grass, wood chips, or hard-packed soil. They often appear shortly after a good rainfall.

Time:summer and autumn.

Description:they're only edible in their early stages.The shaggy mane has very distinguishing features. Its cap typically measures 5 to 14 cm tall, and is 2.5 to 4.5 cm across. It is columnar, becoming bell-shaped. The surface is dry, white with a brown central disc, breaking into coarse, white and brown recurved scales.Height: The stalks generally reach 15cm tall and are 1 to 2 cm thick. Stems are hollow, with a string-like strand of fibers hanging inside.Gills are white, adnexed to free (close together), free gills that eventually become black and inky.

Look alikes:edible Inky cap is up to 8 cm broad, light gray or gray-brown with furrow-lines radiating to the edges.gills are nearly free from the stem and white/grey when young.the flesh and gills of older specimens liquefies into a black inky mass when old.partial veil leaves an inferior, fibrous ring on the white stem.tip: collect younger specimens and/or remove blackening areas which have a more bitter taste.tip: cooking with water shortly after collecting helps to prevent the dish from turning into a black inky mess.warning: causes a reaction of hot flushing and nausea if consumed with or followed by alcohol. Do not consume this mushroom unless abstaining from alcohol.

#inky caps #jelly ears #king Bolete cep #lobster mushroom #meadow mushroom #mica cap #shaggy Mane #foraging #mushrooms #fungus #fungi #edible #dehydration

6 notes · View notes

cerastes · 4 years

Text

E2 artworks are for the most part delightful, but today, I would like us to pay particular attention to certain characters’ Elite 2 artwork: Nightingale, Cuora, and Specter.

The three of them have two things in common: The first is that they are all amnesiac (or, in the case of Nightingale, partially amnesiac, but amnesiac nonetheless), the second is that they are all drawn by Skade. I think the Hypergryph writers just have an Amnesiac Hotline for whenever they conceive another amnesiac character and it connects directly to Skade’s temporal lobe, where all information about the new character is immediately uploaded to and then he just starts furiously drawing.

But let’s focus on the fact that they are amnesiac in this post, and how this is reflected in their E2 art in a way I found clever. Let’s begin with our favorite fashionable demon, Nightingale.

Nightingale’s name is a two-fold allusion: The most evident one is being an homage to Florence Nightingale, the mother of modern nursing. The other, perhaps least apparent but of equal importance, is to the Greek aesop “The Laborer & The Nightingale”, which tells the tale of a poor laborer who, enthralled with the beautiful song of a nightingale that sang every day atop a tall cedar tree, grew selfish and built a cage of iron and twigs to capture the nightingale to make its songs his and only his. Her lines make several allusions to cages and empty rooms,

and of only being let out of her ‘cage’ when someone needed her healing powers, her “song”, if you will (especially relevant when you consider how song and Arts seem to be related in Terra). Her E2 art, thus, represents her bursting out of her cage or iron and twigs. Unlike other Sarkaz Operators, her E2 is not a shape or a representation of a Demon, it is, instead, a representation of her inner Demon, the cage of her head, which contains all of her memories and emotions locked tight within in. She’s not there yet, but she’s making progress. It is worthy of note that Shining also doesn’t depict a Demon in her E2 art, her artwork instead centering on her shield, but while Shining’s E2 art is an allusion of her deep, deep shame of being a Sarkaz and the things she’s done as a Sarkaz (or, in other words, denouncing her own identity to focus on what she truly wants to do from here on, which is to protect others), Nightingale’s E2 artwork instead depicts her destroying part of the cage that holds her back: She’s not fully out yet, but now, it is only a matter of time.

Then, what about Cuora?

Some Operators show a manifestation of their identifying animal that might not be entirely physical but it’s clear, with hard colors and textures. Other Operators show their animal very clearly, as if it was truly there, like Perfumer and Siege, and in some cases, it REALLY is there, as with Eyjafjalla (who directly addresses them in a voice line), and this seems to be matter of artistic preference, but whereas Skade normally draws E2 manifestations with solid colors, in the case of Cuora and Specter, he chooses to make them almost phantasmal, with soft colors and an ephemeral feel to them instead. In fact, the turtle you can see above is as generic as can be, it doesn’t seem to be identifying of any particular turtle species, and all we know about it is that it is “a turtle”. This is deliberate, meant to represent Cuora’s amnesia: Her race, Petram, is not unknown, but she doesn’t remember what specific kind of Petram she is. There’s a lot of turtle species, so which one is she? We have no idea. We know Blue Poison is a Poison Dart Frog, we know Nearl is a Pegasus, so when it comes to species either real or fantastic, we usually have an accurate account of which each Operator is supposed to represent, but not with Cuora, because she’s amnesiac. Whatever specific kind of Petram she is, we’ll never know unless someone that can properly identify her or that knew her from before the amnesia can divulge that information. To represent this, thus, her animal manifestation is ephemeral, phantasmal, ambiguous: It shows us exactly as much as we know of it, that is, that she’s a turtle, nothing less, nothing more.

So where does this leave Specter?

Nightingale has partial amnesia, Cuora is amnesiac but her Oripathy was caught in time and she’s been stabilized, but Specter’s nervous system has been ravaged, and not only is she amnesiac, she’s also prone to bouts of insanity and of sometimes saying some rather concerning things, such as wanting to take Doctor to the “place where secrets are imparted” or how “some people were never ever meant to be one, so it is her duty to cut them into many”.

Nightingale’s art, if you look above, is ‘solid’, bereft of particles or separated parts: It’s an iron cage, the twigs, and herself. Cuora’s art is somewhat more ‘loose’, with some weaving loose lines on the lower part of the drawing to presumably represent low tide, where you would normally find small turtles, as well as to represent her somewhat deteriorated but overall well-preserved psyche. Specter’s art, in contrast, is very loose: There’s an emphasis on aquatic trails all over the composition, representing the deep sea, as well as her flowing cloak, hair, and habit flaps. There’s many loose ‘particles’, like smudges of splattered ink, representative of her shattered psyche, and, most importantly, there’s not one but two sharks of different species as her animal representation. I believe they are representative of how she’s currently ‘two’ people: The somewhat manic but otherwise harmless Specter that can be found roaming the halls of Rhodes Islands’ dorms, and the completely silent fighting machine named Specter that can be found roaming the battlefield like a vengeful ghoul, following orders to the letter, her own safety be damned.

But there’s another meaning, I believe: Cuora at least has one turtle in her art, which can at least let us approximate which species it could possibly be (likely a freshwater turtle judging from comparative size and shell shape, bigger than tortoises, smaller than sea turtles), but Specter has two sharks, which means properly approximating her exact species becomes a lot harder. Skadi and Deepcolor, fellow AEgirians, make it very clear which animals they are supposed to be (Orca and Dumbo Squid, respectively), which further proves that this is a Specter-specific conundrum and not a Deep Sea trait. Likewise, her outfit has several allusions to the overall shape of a shark, but not to any specific shark.

If we want to dig deeper, and boy howdy I bet we do, we can take a look at the Chinese Hanzi that composes her name:

“幽灵鲨”, or “Yōulíng shā”, which translates literally to “Ghost Shark” from Chinese to English. Fitting that her codename is given as Specter. So, what’s a “Ghost Shark”, exactly? Aside, from, you know,

a really bad B-Movie.

Sounds like it’s just a cool poetic name for someone who is but a specter: a fleeting existence, with no memories, only a shadow of her former self, no?

Well, that works out, to be frank, but it turns out, Ghost Sharks are a real species. This is the Bahamas Ghost Shark:

And this is the Australian Ghost Shark:

They belong to a species of fish known as Chimaeras, and they live in temperate ocean floors down to 2,600 m (8,500 ft) deep and are some of the oldest fish alive, they share plenty of characteristics with their prehistoric ancestors (or, to translate this to Arknights terms: keep in mind how Specter looks just like a regular human). These are deep sea fish, with only a couple of them coming close to the surface rarely, and it fits with what we know of Specter, what with her background of fighting giant Deep Sea monsters as an Abyssal Hunter. Of course, whether she is supposed to be a Chimaera of any sort remains to be seen, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she was, given the thematic similarities.

I found all of these little nudges and nods to be plenty fascinating. Am I perhaps reading too deep into this? Always within the realm of possibility! Are Skade and Hypergryph planting seeds of lore that will bloom much later, making every piece of evidence given until that point suddenly make cohesive sense? Wouldn’t put it past them! So analyze, analyze, and analyze, because even if it takes you nowhere, lord knows it’s fun to do so.

#arknights #long post #specter #cuora #nightingale

361 notes · View notes

yeehawetc · 4 years

Text

Title: Bachelor’s Grove

Pairing: none

Summary: It’s Christmas 1885. Dutch is talking to anarchists, Hosea’s trying to scam an old man out of his house, and Arthur’s trying to figure out the very weird kid they just picked up. Nobody knows if they’re going to keep him, and John doesn’t want to go back.

Warnings: some gory imagery; almost-kind-of-you-decide-whether-it’s-magical-realism?

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28368408

@wolfmeat, I was your secret santa! (I bet you never guessed. Love you)

The sun glancing off the frosted windows of the station house blinds Arthur temporarily as he slips off Boadicea. He tugs off his heavy mittens to tie her to the hitching post, then stuffs his chapped hands quickly back into his coat pockets. There was an inch of ice on the water bucket this morning in camp. Arthur wishes Dutch had chosen a warmer morning to get caught with a known anarchist distributing anti-government literature.

He steps inside, and again can’t fucking see for a minute. The station’s dark even in daylight, old wood lit by dusty kerosene lamps that stink louder than the general musk of a constant cycle of drunks’ piss and tobacco spit. Arthur stops for a minute inside the door to let his eyes adjust, and the officer at the desk barks at him.

“What you want, son?”

“Payin’ a social call,” Arthur says, and takes the wad of bills Hosea counted out for him and tosses it onto the desk. The fella’s eyebrows hop nearly off his face, and Arthur scans the cells while he counts the money. It doesn’t take him long to pick him out. There’s not many people in the 18th district jailhouse wearing black silk and sitting on the cot like it’s a goddamn throne.

Dutch stands to meet him when Arthur approaches the cell, straightening his vest and checking the time on his pocket watch. As if Arthur were here picking him up from a social function, as if he didn’t have a huge purple bruise over one cheekbone.

“Good morning, Arthur,” he says, spreading his arms wide.

“Hosea’s gonna have your hide,” Arthur tells him. Dutch waves that away blithely, picking up his coat. He limps elegantly to the door of the cell and extends a broad hand to the jailkeeper, who doesn’t take it.

“A merry Christmas to you and your family,” Dutch says, beaming. Arthur can tell he’d like to knock the man’s teeth out. “Very sorry to insult your hospitality this way, but I’m afraid I ain’t inclined to spend another night in the company of the state.”

The guard isn’t impressed. “Go on,” he says, “before I change my mind.”

Dutch, Arthur notes with some dismay, is clearly in a good mood. For the first fifteen minutes of the ride back to camp, Dutch expounds on the uselessness of the state and the pathetic bankruptcy of soul that must lead a man like that wretch back at the jailhouse to feed his family off the profits of a government that’s nothing more than a tradition, and a cruel and foolish one at that, and Arthur picks at the loose wool on his mittens and watches his breath steam in the air.

“The true place for a just man, Arthur, is a prison,” Dutch shouts to him through the blistering chill as they wind south towards Bachelor’s Grove.

“True place for a man who can’t run on a sprained ankle, more like,” Arthur says, and Dutch throws his head back and laughs so loud a crow gets startled off the fence they’re passing by, and Arthur can’t help himself, he’s grinning.

“We’re onto something good here, Arthur,” Dutch says as they pass into the woods. “Silas tells me that Leslie Ashville—that haggard old maggot who owns the steel works where Silas’s poor cousin lost his hand last month—is losing his mind.”

“This the same Silas who got you arrested last night?” Arthur asks.

Dutch ignores him. “Old Ashville’s cracking, Arthur. Talking to folks as ain’t there and forgetting his own name. They say he ain’t gonna see the year of our Lord 1886, and it don’t seem right to me to let that fine gentleman die alone, with no one but his vampire of a nephew to carry on his legacy.”

“So,” Arthur says, starting to see where this is going, “you’re goin’ to apologize to Hosea for getting yourself arrested by inviting him to con a dyin’ man out of his money?”

“A dyin’ industrialist,” Dutch confirms brightly.

The camp’s a cluster of tents and wagons in a stand of oaks just south of the quarry pond, a respectful distance from the scattered headstones of Bachelor’s Grove cemetery. As they ride in, Arthur can see Hosea and Miss Grimshaw hurrying between the tents, ducking to look under the wagons and talking hotly. He catches Miss Grimshaw’s last sentence on the wind as he and Dutch ride closer: “...can’t have gone far in this cold.”

“What’s happening?” Dutch inquires as he slips down from the Count, favoring his hurt ankle just a little.

“The boy’s disappeared,” Hosea says, and Arthur doesn’t miss the relief that settles over Dutch’s features when he realizes this latest catastrophe is going to postpone a conversation with Hosea about his own sins.

“Go on, Arthur,” he says, “you look up thataways, and pray he ain’t fallen down that quarry. I’ll look off to the west, and Hosea, you and Miss Grimshaw stay here in case he comes back on his own.”

Arthur sets out grudgingly on foot. This ain’t the first time the kid’s given them trouble. In fact, Arthur reflects, he’s been more trouble than anything else since the moment Dutch caught sight of that rabble of homesteaders tying a noose to a walnut tree and decided to investigate. When they got closer and it turned out the fearful criminal due for a lynching that day was a twelve-year-old kid with an armful of onions and a crazy look in his eye, Arthur was the one who picked the kid up and carried him to safety while Dutch and Hosea argued with the would-be executioners. And then, Arthur was the one who got onion juice spit in his eye for his troubles and a nice set of bite marks on his neck.

The kid’s calmed down in the weeks since, or at least been effectively convinced Arthur isn’t trying to kidnap him, but he still bites. And apparently that ain’t all. Once they got him back to camp and a bowl of stew in front of him, he told Dutch his name’s John, his folks are dead, and he knows how to kill a man. Those facts, in that order, and if they didn’t light Dutch’s face up. Dutch likes the odd ones. Arthur tries not to think too deeply about how that reflects on him.

John’s odd, all right. He talks to himself all day; talks to animals too, and rocks and trees. And, strange enough, he’s a hell of a shot—hit every one of the cans Dutch lined up for him a week after he joined the camp, “just to see what he can do.” But he’s young, younger even than Arthur was when Dutch found him, and that’s a problem. Dutch said he’s safer here than on his own, Miss Grimshaw said a child his age got no business running with outlaws, Hosea said he ought to go to an orphanage, and John started hollering so loud nobody could finish the argument, and in the month since the question of what’s to be done with John has stood open. For now, it seems, he’s with them, but one of these days somebody’s gonna have to make a decision.

But maybe John’s made a decision of his own, now. This isn’t the first time he’s run off—he seems to have a special talent for that—but the longer Arthur trudges through the snow, the more it seems John might have made a real shot at it this time.

Arthur skirts the mouth of the quarry pond, looking reluctantly for any sign of a little body floating in the glassy dark water ringed all around with ice, and ascertains to his satisfaction and relief that John hasn’t drowned. He’d be sure to, if he had fallen, based on the almighty fuss he put up the first time Miss Grimshaw tried to get him to wash himself, shrieking that she was trying to drown him. Dutch finally intervened, grabbing John by his collar and belt and tossing him bodily into the creek, where it immediately became clear John’s never been in water deeper than his big toe. Arthur grins to himself as he picks around the clumps of buckthorn skirting the edge of the pond, remembering the look of dumb outrage on the kid’s spluttering face when he resurfaced and realized he was only knee-deep.

Arthur turns away from the quarry and up the snowy path towards the cemetery gates, squinting at the beaten stones that line the ground on either side. He can’t make out the names, but Hosea told him it’s mainly railway workers and homesteaders buried here, Russians and Germans and Irish. Folks who came from worlds away to get run over by wagons, or catch the grippe, or just to blow their own brains out when the crops failed and the government turned a blind eye. Ma’s buried in a place that looks like this. Pa too, maybe, only Arthur didn’t stay to see.

He watches a red-bellied woodpecker hammer busily at someone’s gravestone, and wonders if he should start to worry.

Then he turns onto the path leading up to the cemetery gate, a rickety wrought-iron arch planted between two spreading white cedars, and sees the kid. He’s sitting in the snow next to a tall granite monument, arms clasped around his legs and his head ducked down onto his knees, drowning in Hosea’s spare coat and Miss Grimshaw’s old scarf. His hair, as usual, hangs down over his pinched face like he’s trying to hide it.

“Hey,” Arthur calls out, and watches as John’s head snaps up like a spooked deer. But he stays where he is, body held tense and unmoving, as Arthur jogs forward through the icy cover of snow.

Up close, Arthur can see the kid’s been crying: his eyes are red, his cheeks are wet and chapped, and there’s a goddamn river of snot traveling down his chin. Still, when Arthur asks if he’s all right, he snaps, “A-course” and glares as if Arthur accused him of some grave offense.

“You scared folks, runnin’ off like that,” Arthur tells him, nudging John’s leg with the toe of his boot.

John shakes his head. “I ain’t scary.”

“Never said you was.” Arthur holds out a hand to pull the kid up. John doesn’t take it. “Come on now.”

John shakes his head, straggly hair flying side to side with the vehemence of his refusal. Stubborn as a horse’s ass is one thing they’ve already learned about John, and it ain’t Arthur’s favorite quality.

“What happened this time?” he sighs, settling himself against a gravestone opposite John. “Hosea said you just up and disappeared.”

John shrugs. “I ain’t talkin’ to you.” He’s picking at a loose thread on the sleeve of the coat, frowning furiously at it.

“What, did Grimshaw try to make you wash again? Because you know you stink.”

“Don’t neither.”

“You do,” Arthur assures him.

John sniffs, pulling his sleeve over his face and smearing snot even further across his cheek. “I ain’t goin’ back,” he says.

“Suit yourself,” Arthur says, shrugging broadly. “You wanna run off on your own, get yourself strung up by another pack of tetchy farmers, I guess that ain’t no business of mine.”

“No it ain’t,” John snaps, nodding in satisfaction.

“Awfully cold, though,” Arthur remarks, pulling his coat a little closer and squinting up at the sky. “I do believe that’s a storm comin’ in off to the east there.” John pokes his head up from the depths of Hosea’s coat to swivel his skinny neck around. “Still,” Arthur goes on, “you’ve obviously made up your mind, so I ain’t gonna try to talk you out of it.” He stands up, brushing snow off his coat. “Shame about them pies, though.”

John squints at him. “What pies?”

“Pies?” Arthur says. “Oh, the pies—oh, that ain’t nothin’. Only, I know Miss Grimshaw was plannin’ a heap of pie for Christmas. Mince pie, she said. Maybe apple. And Hosea, he’s made friends with a fella down at the slaughterhouse, figures he’ll get us a pig to roast.”

John stares. “I never seen a pig roast.”

“Well,” Arthur says, “I guess you ain’t gonna see one this year. Seein’ as you’re goin’ it alone now.” John squirms irritably in his snowy seat, frowning at Arthur. Arthur waits, listening to crows scream in the cedars.

“They was fixin’ to take me back to the nuns,” John says finally, in an unusually soft little voice. Not looking at Arthur.

“What,” Arthur says, startled, “Hosea and Grimshaw?”

John nods. “I heard ‘em. I was diggin’ in the dirt by that big ol’ stump an’ I was eatin’ some cheese an’ then I heard the lady say ‘this ain’t no place for a child, I heard him cough’ only I wasn’t coughin’, I just had some crumbs in my throat, an’ then Hosea said ‘he ain’t settlin’ in so good an’ I think we oughta see if them nuns’ll take him,’ an’ Dutch weren’t there and now he’s gone they’re gonna take me back there an’ so I got my coat an’ I snuck off ‘fore they could catch me an’ I ain’t goin’ back, if you take me back they’re just gonna make me go back to the nuns an’ they’ll cook me an’ eat me an’ then I ran an’ I ran an’ I heard someone comin’ so I hid behind the graves only then I thought maybe it was dead folks so I waited an’ then I heard someone else comin’ but it was you an’ I ain’t goin’ back, I ain’t gonna let ‘em do it.” He breaks off, breathing hard. His cheeks are red.

Arthur, a little dizzy trying to parse out that garbled spew of words, thinks he can see tears gathering in the corners of the kid’s eyes. Passing over, for the moment, the idea of cannibal nuns, he sighs and says, “Look, kid, ain’t nobody gonna send you anywhere without Dutch’s say-so, and Dutch ain’t decided yet.”

John frowns. “But he went to jail.”

“Yeah, dumbass, and I went and got him out,” Arthur says. “He’s out lookin’ for you right now.”

The kid’s eyes get wide at that. Arthur sees him take a shaky little breath and whisper something to himself that Arthur can’t catch.

“Come on,” he says, “I’m freezin’ my nuts off, and you ain’t gettin’ cooked alive by nobody this Christmas. Come on back, and I’ll tell Grimshaw an’ Hosea to lay off talkin’ about nuns.” He holds out his hand again.

This time, after a little consideration, John takes it, tugging hard as he struggles up to his feet. Arthur’s astonished at how light he is; the kid weighs nearly nothing. He sets himself on his feet, pulls Grimshaw’s scarf over his grimy face, and looks up to Arthur.

“An’ we’ll have pie?” he asks, hopefully.

“Sure,” Arthur nods. “Pie and pig.”

“I ain’t never had a Christmas dinner,” John tells him as they head back towards camp.

“What, never?”

John shrugs. He’s playing with the loose ends of his scarf, tossing them back and forth on his palms. “I heard about it, but I never had one. Me an’ pa, one time we stole a whole duck an’ he said that’s Christmas dinner, but it gave me the trots an’ I shit till I yelled.”

“Thank you for that,” Arthur says.

John nods, clambers over a wooden fence, and drops down the other side in a little flurry of snow. “What’s it like?” he asks, and the question’s so dumb and so oddly sweet that Arthur feels a little twinge in his chest.

“I dunno,” he says. “Like a party, I guess. Folks make good food and talk and sing, and go to church I suppose, only I ain’t been since I was a little, little kid, littler than you.”

“I ain’t little,” John interjects, scrambling over a rock.

“Well, I was,” Arthur says. “But my ma used to make supper, and we’d have turkey and fish and ham and potatoes and beans, and after she’d play on her organ.”

“What’s a organ,” John asks.

“A kinda musical instrument,” Arthur tells him. He hasn’t thought about this in years, can only vaguely picture the boxy little organ in the corner, Mama’s pale hands on the keys. The melody’s long gone. “Sorta like a piano, I figure, only it’s got pipes and pedals. My ma had one from a catalogue, and she said it kept her company out there in the country.” He remembers that: the way she’d sit at the organ in the evenings, not even playing some nights, just sitting. The way she cried when they came back from town and the organ was gone, sold to a man Pa found looking to pay good money for a secondhand Beckwith for his wife. Arthur remembers that, all right.

“So,” John says, “ya play music and ya eat?”

“More or less,” Arthur says. “S’posed to be some kinda holy day, but mostly folks just like to eat.”

They’re nearing camp, now, and Arthur can see the defensive curl in John’s shoulders. When he sees Dutch sitting at the camp table, though, he breaks away from Arthur’s side and dashes over, planting himself next to Dutch, arms crossed stubbornly over his chest.

“So you found him, Arthur,” Dutch greets him as Arthur approaches the table.

“Out hidin’ in the graveyard,” Arthur says. “I guess he prefers the company of dead folks to ours.” Dutch laughs, and John scowls.

“I weren’t hidin’,” he says. “And I didn’t see no dead folks.”

Arthur leaves him with Dutch, leaning intently over Evelyn Miller’s America and shooting Dutch shy reverential looks, and goes to find Hosea. He’s by the fire, poking at the dull coals, and he raises a hand as Arthur approaches.

“Found him all right?”

Arthur hums his yes, settling himself on the log Dutch dragged out of the woods as a seat. “Told ‘im we’d have pie for Christmas,” he tells Hosea. “He liked that.”

Hosea laughs. “Our little associate seems mightily driven by food,” he remarks drily.

“Like a damn pig,” Arthur agrees. Hosea chuckles, stretching his legs out and lighting a cigarette.

“I take it Dutch filled you in on his latest scheme,” he remarks, and Arthur can tell from the crinkle at the corner of his eye that excitement’s overtaken his annoyance at Dutch.

“The Ashville thing? He mentioned it,” Arthur says. “Somethin’ about stealin’ the fella’s legacy, or something.”

“Legacy, Arthur, is another word for a fat bank account,” Hosea says. “Besides, if we can play this thing right, there’s a roof over our heads in January. That boy’s already got a cough, and I for one would prefer not to spend the winter thawing out my backside every time I need to shit. I’ll need your help with the paperwork for this one, though.”

Arthur nods, rubbing his hands together in the growing warmth from the fire, and feels odd. Doesn’t know why he feels, suddenly, choked. He feels the way he did when Hosea and Dutch first picked him up, as though any wrong word would have him out on his ear or worse. Like all his words were caught in his throat, because he couldn’t pick the ones that were right.

Hosea, naturally, doesn’t miss a thing. “What’s on your mind?”

Arthur hesitates, chewing his lip, thinking about John’s blank, tearful face; about Mama crying the night the Beckwith disappeared; about old Leslie Ashville alone in his house on Cherry Street, talking to people who aren’t there. About the look on John’s face, hope and wonderment, when Arthur said Dutch was looking. For him.

“He’s scared of us,” he says finally. “Scared of you. And Grimshaw, but that’s—I mean, she scares everyone.”

Hosea snorts gently, but all he says is, “Give him time.”

“How much time?” Arthur says. “Dutch ain’t said if he’s staying with us.”

“Dutch’ll decide when the time’s right,” Hosea says, as if that settles it. As if Arthur hasn’t heard John whimpering in his sleep every damn night since they picked him up. Arthur turns to look at him and Dutch—two dark heads matched at the table—and hopes the right time’s soon.

ii.

The house on Cherry Street is three dusty stories of Italianate brick, lit from within by a dozen candles. From the street, it looks warm, even festive—someone’s hung a grand ring of pine and holly on the heavy oak door—but as soon as Hosea steps inside, he feels the chill. It’s different from the brisk winter evening outside: a dry, sickly cold that seeps through Hosea’s coat and settles along the joints of his bones.

Someone’s dying in this house. Hosea’s felt that cold before.

He follows the maid down the hallway to the parlor, past the cavernous recesses of unlit rooms. Behind the false front of lamps, this house is dark and silent, save the single corridor of light that traces a line down its center. Hosea watches a chandelier of thick, ugly crystals sway mutely above his head as he passes beneath, and fixes his mind on his story.

It’s his second visit to the Ashville mansion. On the first, he introduced himself as William Ashville, the long-lost offspring of the affair a group of Ashville Steel workers told Hosea about over bad whiskey at the Red Hen. It seems the story’s well known among Ashville’s discontented employees: the lady’s name was Eleanor, and Ashville promised her marriage, then left her at the altar and came west instead to make his fortune off the work of honest men. Nobody’s been able to give Hosea an exact date, but one fellow, with a rough white beard and teeth so sparse and loose Hosea suspects he lost one in his beer over the course of the conversation, remembered the year Ashville turned up in Chicago as 1856, so Hosea’s dated the affair to about thirty years ago. He considered, briefly, having Dutch step in as the prodigal bastard, but this part requires a delicacy that Dutch, for all his charms, lacks. Besides, Hosea flatters himself that he can still play thirty. He borrowed a bit of Dutch’s pomade for the occasion, and a little of Susan’s face powder—and besides, old Ashville’s eyesight isn’t that good.

All in all, Ashville took the news of his unwitting fatherhood surprisingly well. Hosea, who after thirty-odd years of disregard for the fairer sex unexpectedly became surrogate parent to an unwashed teenage criminal, can attest to the shock that comes with that sort of arrival. True, there was a moment of initial skepticism from Ashville, but the family bible Hosea produced (purchased from a bookseller in the Levee, embellished by Arthur with the names of a whole fictitious lineage for poor forgotten William Ashville) seemed to turn the tide of his disbelief, and the love letter Hosea wrote after making a study of Ashville’s handwriting clinched the story. Today, Hosea’s back, in character as young William, with two missions: to lend cheer to his aging father’s lonely indisposition, and to lift a copy of the old man’s will.

He hears Ashville’s voice before they reach the parlor: halting, guttural, like water through a clogged pipe. He’s murmuring about the newspaper, about catching a train. The maid leads Hosea into the room, where an unfed fire lights a frail circle around Ashville’s chair and casts long shadows across the rich Turkish carpet, and Hosea can see that it’s empty; that Ashville’s talking to no one.

“Sir?” the maid says, leaning down to the high upholstered chair by the hearth. “Young Mr. William here to see you.”

Mr. Leslie Ashville, sole owner and proprietor of the Ashville Steel Works, looks molded of lean clay. He’s wrapped in a brocade robe that looks like it hasn’t been washed since the early ‘70s, his head bare save the airy thatch of white hair shrouding the glare of his scalp. Hosea finds him fascinatingly grotesque.

“Good evening, father,” he says, settling in the chair across from Ashville, who acknowledges his presence with a faint hum that turns into a cough.

“Is that you, William?” he croaks, finally, and Hosea leans closer to take his hand.

“I’m here.”

“Thought I saw your mother last night,” Ashville rasps. “Thought I heard her, in the walls.”

“Perhaps it was her spirit,” Hosea offers. “I do believe she’s glad to see us reunited.” There’s a bulk of shadow off behind Ashville’s right shoulder in the general shape of a writing desk. Hosea makes a note, and refocuses his attention on Ashville.

“She was beautiful, your mother,” the old man says, and then he’s off chasing the thread of that long-forgotten memory, a thread that seems to unravel every time he reaches another knot. Hosea plays the dream-weaver, dropping a hint or a suggestion every time he hears the man’s voice falter. It’s fragments he offers the old man, things that could have belonged in any lifetime, things easily forgotten and more easily misremembered: the color of a dress, the fate of an old school friend, the name of a parson or a shopkeeper; always just enough to get Ashville’s feet back under him and send him off along another strand of reminiscence. Together, between Ashville’s dying memory and Hosea’s healthy imagination, the two of them write Leslie and Eleanor’s love story by the light of the fading fire as the evening deepens into night.

The bells of St. Clement’s are chiming ten when it finally happens: Ashville stammers, trails off, and doesn’t look to Hosea for the next line of his memory-fantasy. Instead, his ancient head droops and lolls magnificently, and after a moment’s pause Hosea hears a loud, guttering snore. Ashville’s asleep.

Finally.

Easing himself off the slick horsehair of his seat, Hosea crosses to the shadowy desk he noticed earlier in the evening. It’s a heavy thing, made of rich cherrywood and full of drawers and cracks and pigeonholes. Hosea returns to the center of the parlor for a candle, and sets to work searching the desk, an ear out for the maid’s footstep or a shift in Ashville’s steady, ugly breath.

An hour later, he’s slipping out the front door into the midnight chill, bidding the maid a happy Christmas, with the thin pages of Leslie Ashville’s will flat against his side under his heavy coat. He found the lockbox easily enough, stowed in a deep drawer under a sheaf of old bills and past due correspondence, and five minutes was all it took to break the lock while Ashville snored in his seat ten paces away. The will itself is simple: all Ashville’s wealth and property deeded to his nephew Fred Ashville, the current junior proprietor of Ashville Steel and the devil himself as far as most of the working population of the west side’s concerned. Hosea thinks, as he makes his way down Cherry Street under a soft flurry of snow, that they’ll be doing mankind two services this December: keeping Leslie Ashville company on his trip towards the undiscovered country, and seeing to it that Fred Ashville never prospers again.

The campfire’s burning unusually bright when Hosea makes his way through the last bent hickories of Bachelor’s Grove. At first, Hosea thinks it must be Dutch who’s up, caught in one of those odd brain fevers where he can’t sleep till he’s filled fifty pages with words about God and death and man’s perverse indifference to nature—but when he gets closer he sees that it isn’t Dutch at all. It’s John, hunched gracelessly on one of the logs like a disgruntled little bullfrog, tossing little twigs and dead leaves into the flames to watch them sizzle and smoke. His lips are moving, but from his distance Hosea can’t tell what he’s saying. It occurs to Hosea that he’s spent quite a lot of his time lately in the company of people who talk to the air around them.

That’s the thing that worries Hosea. It’s not the taking him in—they’ve done as much before, and not only with Arthur. Hosea knows what it’s like to be ten and cold and empty as a tomb on Judgment Day, and he’s not about to turn away hungry mouths when there’s room at the fire and enough in the pot to go round. Besides, he’s never regretted letting Arthur stay. But Arthur was fourteen, not twelve, and Arthur didn’t talk to people who aren’t there. Arthur was just a kid whose father hit him too much, and a damn good thief. John’s something else, and after weeks Hosea still isn’t sure exactly what.

Hosea approaches the fire, and John starts, shoving his hands under his armpits as though Hosea just caught him doing something bad.

“It’s late,” Hosea observes.

John shrugs. “I’m not tired.” His eyes are huge in the firelight, and Hosea has the feeling he often gets when John looks at him—that the kid is sizing him up, calculating where to strike if trouble starts.

“I can see that,” Hosea says.

“Is he dead?” John asks. Arthur’s been telling him about the scheme, then. Hosea makes no pretense of sensitivity when it comes to death, but having spent a full evening playing the loving son to Ashville, Sr., he feels a mite put off by the ghoulishness of the question.

“Old Ashville? Not yet,” he says. “Go to bed.”

John doesn’t go to bed. He leans back, firelight catching the ragged ends of his hair, and says, “I seen a fella die once.”

“So have I,” Hosea tells him.

“He was coughin’,” John goes on, undeterred. “Blood was comin’ out of his mouth, an’ out of his nose, an’ all down his shirt an’ then—” he pauses dramatically, gathering a handful of rotting leaves into his grubby hand, “—then he shit in his pants, an’ a whole lot of blood came out his mouth, an’ the lady said he’s really dead now.” He tosses the bundle of leaves into the fire, which sends up a small gasp of muddy smoke. Hosea wonders who the lady was. Wonders where this child’s been, to tell that kind of story.

He doesn’t ask. “You’ve been dreaming,” he says, and it’s less a guess than most of what he spun for Ashville earlier tonight. He’s seen that spooked look before—seen it in Arthur’s eyes when he was barely older than John and still fighting his father off in his sleep; seen it in his cousin’s eyes when he came back from Sharpsburg a leg light and ten times heavier for it; seen it in Dutch, sometimes, too. Hosea knows too well what nightmares look like.

John scrubs at the snot trailing from his nose and shrugs. “I seen it,” is all he says. But he shudders, and his skinny shoulders hunch smaller against the night.

He’s clearly not going to go back to bed, and in a way, Hosea can’t see why he should have to. It’s well past midnight now, but Hosea isn’t tired either. The moon’s high, the air’s quiet, and he’s got a job to do. He might as well have some company while he does it.

“Come on,” he says, waving towards the table. John follows him over, and Hosea draws Leslie Ashville’s will from under his coat and spreads the pages across the pocked wood. John, who can’t read and tried to bite Dutch when he offered a lesson, peers at the frail sheets with the curiosity of a spider inspecting a particularly fearsome fly.

“Now,” Hosea begins, “what we’ve got to do is this.”

iii.

On Christmas Eve, something happens.

John isn’t sure at first what’s happened, only that folks are talking real loud and nobody’s telling him anything, but that’s not new. He goes into the trees and finds a big old stick and hits a stump till it falls into soft, stinking rubble, and stamps in the snow till there’s a flat circle all around. There’s a fat squirrel running around the base of a tree a ways off, and it stops for a minute and sniffs in John’s direction.

“I ain’t smelly,” he tells the squirrel. “An’ I ain’t stupid.”

The squirrel twitches and scoots away, tiny claws on the snow.

“John!” Arthur calls, and John kicks bits of rotten wood across the ground until Arthur comes through the trees. “Get your coat on,” he says, nodding back towards camp; “we’re goin’ into town.”

“Why,” John asks. He thinks about a wagon full of kids, rolling through the iron gates of the orphanage. He thinks he could kill Arthur, if he tried to put him in there. Kick his nuts, put his thumbs in his eyes and squeeze the jelly out, like that fella did to Pa in the bar, get his gun off him and point it to his heart.

If he had to do it, he thinks he could. He’d be sad about it after, though. He likes Arthur.

“Ashville’s dead,” Arthur’s saying. His face is split with a grin; John’s never seen him smile much. “We’re gonna be rich. We’re gettin’ the house.”

“Oh,” John says. He can see the old man in his head, wrinkled and tiny in a house like a tomb, the way Hosea told him the night he came back with that secret pack of papers. Worms in his nose. Gobs of blood pouring, pouring out of his slack, black mouth. “Really?”

“Really.”

It’s a cold ride into town, perched on the back of Arthur’s horse with his arms tight around Arthur’s middle. John can hear Dutch talking up ahead, but the wind’s too quick to hear the words. John probably wouldn’t understand it anyway. He can’t understand half what Dutch says. He’s never met anyone as smart as that. He wonders when Dutch is going to find out that John’s dumb as a rock. Dumb as a rock and the devil in him, that’s what people say. Dutch don’t seem to mind the devil so much, though. John doesn’t know what to think about that.

How exactly they got this house, John still doesn’t understand. Hosea took that dead man’s sheaf of papers, and said we’ll write these out again, and he and Arthur sat at the table for hours inking and scratching till Hosea said it was all perfect, and then there was some meetings with lawyers and magistrates and aldermen, and then it was all done, only the old man weren’t dead. John asked if Dutch was going to kill him, but Dutch just laughed and said I ain’t a murderer, I’m a philanthropist, and Hosea said that’s my old dad you’re talking about, and now John isn’t sure. But Arthur said it’s like a game, don’t you worry, and when the old man dies we’ll take his house, and now he’s dead. John squeezes a little tighter around Arthur’s middle, and tugs himself closer in the saddle.

They’re riding through the grand part of town now, the part where every house has three floors and curly carvings on the windowsills and a pretty little tree out front all its own. John remembers sleeping here one night last summer, after Pa died, in a little stand of apple trees behind one of the mansions. He ate the hard little apples off the ground till his stomach hurt, and fell asleep in a shed, and in the morning an old African man came along and told him to run or he’d be in a pile of trouble, so John ran. He’s scanning the houses as they pass, trying to remember which one it was with the apples and the old man who said to run.

The house where Ashville died is cold, and it smells like dust. John watches Arthur and Dutch and Hosea and Miss Grimshaw striding through the halls, crowing and laughing and saying Shakespeare, and looks to see if he can spot the place where the old man died. But there’s no blood on the floors or the furniture, just warm leather and shiny velvet and wood that gleams like gold when Dutch pulls back the heavy curtains and lets the winter sun spill over the room.

“Merry Christmas,” Dutch booms, and Hosea says “hear, hear,” and John wonders if the ghosts can hear them too.

Arthur takes him upstairs. Upstairs is a row of rooms, each the size of a house, each full of cobwebs and dead beetles and beds with heavy ceilings. Arthur tugs the curtains aside in each room while John sneezes in the bright dust and pokes at the silky wallpaper.

Then Miss Grimshaw comes up the winding staircase and sets them to work, hauling carpetbags up the stairs and beating dust out of the duvets with an old broom from the kitchen. She snaps orders like a policeman and drags John by her iron knuckles to a room at the end of the musty hall and tells him it’s his. John suspects a trap, but Arthur laughs and says I ain’t bunkin’ with you no more, and John understands. After supper that night, when Dutch and Hosea pop open a bottle of wine they found in the cellar and Arthur starts singing and Hosea says John can’t have any wine and Dutch says it’s all right and Grimshaw says it ain’t, John sneaks upstairs to the Room That’s His, and wonders when they’ll drop him at the orphanage.

He’s lying in the dust, watching moonlight crawl over the tall windows, when he hears the voice. It doesn’t sound like Dutch or Hosea or Arthur, but it’s a man, and it’s saying his name.

John.

John stands up. The door to the hallway opens, opens without him touching it, and on the other side’s a man who looks familiar. He’s not tall and he’s not short, with a little mustache and a fancy suit, and his hat reaches towards the ceiling and his eyes are fixed on John’s heart and not his face.

“John,” he says, “I’ve missed you.”

Then his face swells and melts. His eyes are hot black hollows, crawling with white worms, blood pouring out his mouth. John watches the river of black gore, swimming down his front, running over the rich, dusty carpet, the smell of shit rising thick and hot around him, and the man twitches and moans and heaves. Blood pouring out his mouth. John tries to scream and he can’t scream, he can’t breathe, and the smell of blood and shit makes him gag and retch, and the blood keeps coming, a black waterfall streaming from the strange man’s face as he sways and leers and shimmers in the dark.

“John!”

Someone’s holding his shoulders, shaking him. There’s carpet under his feet, warm and soft, and he gags, and hears Arthur say shit.

He opens his eyes. He’s in the dark, in the hallway, and Arthur’s here in a big white shirt with his hair mussed up from sleep. He’s got John by the shoulders, and he’s got an odd look on his face, like something bad is happening, and John wonders if it’s happening to him.

He looks worried, John realizes with a muffled shock.

“You okay?” he’s asking, and John shakes his head before he can think about it. His heart’s beating like an army drum. He thinks he can feel it shaking his whole body. He steps from foot to foot on the swampy carpet, and realizes his pants are wet. “What happened,” Arthur asks.

John’s stomach jerks and twists inside of him. If he tells Arthur the truth, he’ll be gone by morning.

Arthur’s hand’s at the back of his head, in his hair, steady and warm.

“Come on, kid.”

John sucks in air.

“It was him,” he whispers. “It was the devil.”

Blood pouring out his mouth.

Arthur sighs, a little sound that’s almost a laugh, and says, “There ain’t no devil here. You had a dream.” He leans in, smelling like wine and horse, and pats John on the back, one arm around him pressing close, his scratchy chin brushing against John’s forehead. John thinks it’s a hug. He doesn’t know what that means.

“I ain’t good,” John starts to tell him—heart in his stomach, stomach in his throat. “I’m crazy an’ I’m bad an’ I got the devil in me an’ he follows me an’ last year he made me shoot a man till his brains came out through his nose an’ the nuns’ll give me back to him,” but Arthur stops him, hand on his cheek, shaking his head and saying no, no, forget all that, you’re dreamin’, there ain’t no devil and there ain’t no nuns here. You’re home now, John. Forget that.

In the end, Arthur picks John up like he’s a kid, and John’s too tired to complain. He wraps his arms around Arthur’s neck and lets him carry him down the hall, away from the room with the devil’s blood soaking into the floor and into Arthur’s room, where there’s a heap of orange coals in the hearth and a wooly blanket that Arthur wraps him in once his sodden pants are gone. They sit by the fire, John a mute cocoon and Arthur more than half asleep, and Arthur pulls out his notebook and shows John a funny drawing of a man with an apple for a head.

John thinks about home.

“You’re a good kid,” Arthur says, his voice soft and silly. He’s drunk. “Dutch ain’t gonna send you back, y’know.”

John’s throat aches like there’s someone punching it. His cheeks are hot, lit up by the fire and the tears spilling up and over his eyelids. He can’t answer back. He thinks about a flat plain, gray grass wrinkled by the wind, and a heap of rocks at the edge of a hill. He can’t get the picture out of his head. Can’t get the devil’s voice out of his throat.

“You’re home,” Arthur says, and the warmth of the fire swallows him up, and he sobs into Arthur’s side for a long time.

Down the hallway, in the darkness, the door swings silently open and shut.

#rdr secret santa 2020 #rdr2 #john marston #arthur morgan #rdr2 fic #we got some christmas here and we got some wild handwaving towards the background plot i had in mind but didnt have the energy to write #this really might not make sense but it is gifted with love to my perfect wife

23 notes · View notes

bugmangaka · 3 years

Text

Character of the Day #0 (Intro)

Here are the Main Characters for Mae and the Kingdoms of Seasons!

Mae, the Titular Character

Mae is a young adult who struggles with severe anxiety. Because of her anxiety, she is selectively mute, and she can sign. She is adopted, and therefore is an only child which is unusual for Seiki. She has two moms, and is bisexual herself! Her best friend is Dolly, her mentor is Noble, and her partner is Joel.

Asha

Asha is a Seiki from the past era who had a fierce spirit. She swears the most out of any character and doesn't act very "lady-like," which she learned from her strong mother. Sexism was rampant at that time so her disposition was seen as inappropriate for a girl. However, her outgoing personality made her extremely popular with her peers. She took shit from nobody, and wasn't afraid to speak her mind. When she met Thatcher, he sadly took those qualities out of her. She spent the entirety of her afterlife following her family tree down and searching for a way to make up her past mistakes. She passed down a letter explaining what really happened to Ruben, but nobody in her family took it seriously... until Mae.

Ruben

Ruben was a bright-eyed student who really loved learning. He was an only child just like Mae, except for him it was because his family was extremely poor and the rest of his parents' eggs didn't make it. He's neurodivergent and struggles in social situations, but he just really really wants friends. He's picked on a lot but doesn't often realize that he is, he'll talk to anybody to try and befriend them. He'll often brag about his good grades and intellect as a way to impress people and make them like him, but others usually find him annoying. He wanted to grow up to do something so great that everybody would love him. He's overwhelmed by his own feelings, feeling too happy or too sad burns him out and causes him to shut down. When he starts to feel 'too much' he'll hide his face in his scarf. he studied with the human because he thought it was a great idea and that he was going to help everybody. He never intended things to go so south.. and even when he was reformed he never intended to hurt anybody.

Joel

Joel is Mae's partner, and one of her closet friends! He is pansexual, and completely mute because he was born without vocal chords. He learned how to sign when he was in elementary school thanks to his twin brother, Jeremiah. He grew up in a horribly abusive household, his mother thought that the Gods were punishing her for giving her a mute child. She tried to get him to talk by hurting him, and disapproved of him signing. He has a scar under his headband from his mom, from when she pulled so hard on his antennae that one split open. She would verbally and physically abuse both of her kids as 'punishment' for being 'such a burden to her,' and her husband just went along with it not bothering to stop her. One night, when he was 12, she was so mad that she kicked him out of the house. He only was able to take one of his journals with him and some food scraps and spent a while wandering around the kingdom homeless. Eventually, he stumbled upon an old man who helped him build a small shack to live in. He then found Mae's middle school, and watched the kids go in and out for a few days until a teacher noticed him and brought him in as part of the class. He met Mae when she walked past his house one day, and when he signed to her she signed back. He had never met another person besides his brother that could sign before and he instantly started crushing on her. The two became close friends in high school, and Joel was pining for her hard the entire time. Mae returned his feelings, but they didn't get together until during her big journey. Joel is a writer! He's mainly a poet, but he's been writing ever since he was little and is what he does for his job. He wrote the book "Tales of Kingdoms Past," which was about the other three kingdoms and what they did during the 200 year gap in communication. Joel has serious trauma from his past but denies it. He just wants his mom to love him and believes it's because he wasn't good enough, and was his fault.

Dolly

Dolly is Mae's best friend! They've been super close since they met in kindergarten. Dolly comes from a wealthy, higher-class family that has 5 daughters, her being the oldest in the litter. She's super upbeat and easily excitable, and loves getting to know knew people. She's very popular in her school and is invited to a lot of things, but she always makes sure to spend time with Mae and stick by her side. Dolly's parents are neglectful despite their family's "perfect" appearance. Her dad wanted a son, so he doesn't give them the time of day, and her mother doesn't bother to get to know them and is always away. Her parents usually leave her money and then leave for a couple days. Dolly and her sisters constantly want their mom's attention, but because Dolly was born looking the most like her mom, she's the only one that gets the sliver of attention. This affection is superficial and meaningless, and leaves her feeling empty, but it causes intense jealously between her and her sisters, they don't get along well at all. Her mother always advised her daughters to marry someone rich like she did (which is an indicator of what her parents' relationship is like), and to always appear submissive and weak because guys are 'turned away from powerful women.' Because of this, Dolly always dated higher-class boys her weren't the nicest. Several of them would try to take advantage of her because they knew that her dad didn't care enough to go after them. She'd always break up with them within a few weeks or so, they weren't her type at all but she was only following her mom's advice. Dolly is a very talented seamstress and sketcher, and wanted to own her own boutique one day. However she never thought she could because her mother would tell her women shouldn't work. When she graduated she met Anthony and started dating him, and she was able to be herself around him. The two got married very quickly on a whim, and then immediately after accidentally made a litter of 7 babies.

Anthony

Anthony is Dolly's husband! He's very timid and has a slight stutter. He comes from a notoriously wealthy family that is known for their extremely successful sons. Their family consists of two litters, the first being of 4 boys, Noble being the oldest of them. These are the 4 sons that are so famous. The second litters is of all girls except for Anthony. His sisters are very successful too, but outsiders always forget about Anthony and don't recognize him. He's very smart and loves math, and studied outside of school to become a tax collector for the queen (in this kingdom, taxes are only for the rich). He loves his wife and kids very much, and loves making horrible math puns.

Noble

Noble is the Captain of the Royal Guard! He is also Mae's mentor, and is gay and autistic. He is close friends with Queen Dahlia. He's the strong quiet type, a man of few words. He's strict and knows how to command his men, not somebody you'd want to mess with, He's well respected for his skill and leadership. He was a prodigy, and started learning how to use a sword when he was three. He was mentored by the previous captain of the guard himself, September. When he was in middle school, he was allowed into the guard program early. He lived away from home in the guards quarters from then on. While he was growing up there he figured out he was gay, but the royal guard is generally full of unaccepting people. He worked hard and was chosen to become September's successor, being the kingdom's youngest captain. He values his reputation a lot, and is terrified of people finding out his sexuality. He eventually gets together with Jeremiah, and is outted to the guard by somebody.

Jeremiah

Jeremiah is Joel's older twin! He's quite poor, and lives in a worn down one-room house where he runs his business, "Jeremiah's Shipping and Deliveries." He delivers tools and building materials to those who request it. Jeremiah was the one that was left behind with his mom after Joel left. Growing up, he always tried to act as the tough one and would stand up for his little brother when he was picked on. He's also queer, liking both girls and boys, but heavily denied it. He always picked fights with others that he couldn't win, and was used to getting beat up. When Joel was gone, he became very lonely and even more self-destructive. He became more violent and did horribly in school, he became friends with his pervious bullies and got into a lot of trouble with them. When he was a sophomore his dad left, and he had to deal with his mother by himself. He inherited bipolar disorder from his mother but he doesn't know that. When it came time to graduate he left home and never looked back. He's an alcoholic, he drinks to numb his feelings. He sleeps around with girls all the time, only to feel loved for one night. All these things just leave him feeling worthless and empty. Eventually, he reunited with Joel after seeing the book his brother published. He loves Joel and Mae so much, and is afraid of messing up his relationship with them. He has horrible self-esteem and constantly worries that he only has a bad impact on others. Eventually he meets Noble, who helps him accept himself and starts dating him.

Dahlia

Dahlia is the current reigning queen of the Seiki Kingdom. She's close friends with Noble. It was her controversial decision to send Mae out on her journey, but she was pressured into making a hasty choice by her brother and royal advisor, Cedar. Dahlia is quiet and regal, and tries to keep her emotions to herself. The entire purpose of her birth was to become the next queen, so she never had the chance to be a child. From day one she was taken and raised to be the perfect ruler. She's constantly under the pressure of Cedar, who is mean to her behind closed doors. Later on, Cedar pressures her to make an heir with somebody since she's getting older. She chooses Vincent for that job, but the two actually fall in love and she appoints him as her and her newborns' official doctor so that she gets to see him again.

Thatcher

Thatcher..... is basically the worst person. He is one of the worst villains in this universe. He was Asha's husband in the past era. He's a sociopath and a misogynist, and very rich. He's albino, which makes many see him as unique and attractive. Thatcher is incredibly clever, and nows how to manipulate everyone around him into thinking he's great and can do no harm. In reality, he has a violent mind with dark desires. He's the kinda guy to fantasize about keeping a girl in his basement. He owns an expensive store that sells jewels and holiday items. He met Asha when she was about to leave on her holiday trip. He noticed how loud and outgoing she was, and he thought that it'd be fun to "break/tame" her and force her into the role that he thought a woman should have. He flirted with her that day, but she rejected him. He saw this as part of the fun and proceeded to stalk her for the rest of the day. The entire time she was gone, he never stopped thinking about her and what he wanted to do to her. When she came back in tears after Ruben was "killed," he used that chance to act as her shoulder to cry on and worm his way into her life. They started dating, even though she wasn't very into it. Her mother and her friends encouraged her to marry him because of his status within their community. She did, but once they were married shit hit the fan fast. Thatcher was abusive to her, he'd slowly add onto what he could get away with. He'd pressure her into intimacy, and eventually would force himself onto her. He wanted kids, so he forced her to have his. She tried avoiding it for a while by using contraception without his knowledge, but when he found out he started getting physically abusive. Eventually, Asha became a shell of who she once was. Thatcher succeeded in breaking her, her fighting spirit was gone and she was quiet and numb. When their kids were four, Asha took her own life. Thatcher had pushed her too far. The loss of his wife was Thatcher's biggest regret, he couldn't take that back. But to him it wasn't the loss of his love, it was the loss of his favorite toy. He tried to regain his pride by manipulating his kids into believing that their mother passed because she didn't love them.

Verity

Verity is the current reigning queen of the Kitsuga kingdom! She was a strong warrior and leader, but her life was changed forever when the plague attacked. When Ruben's plague got to her kingdom, it killed many of the Kitsuga warriors, including her husband and the king, Clay. Her two kids Sato and Mana managed to hide, but many other Kitsuga were injured. Her son, Sato, decided to cocoon early to get his wings and encouraged many of his young peers to do so as well so that they could be more useful to the kingdom when they emerge. Verity is not silent most of the time, and just stands watching the kingdom from her den. She's still grieving the loss of her husband. She treated Mae like her own daughter, and was the one that taught her Mae's signature dive-bomb technique.

Marvin

Marvin is a Hachitsu, he's an inventor! He's autistic, asexual, and aromantic. He loves loves tinkering with machinery, coming up with ideas, and making friends. He's super passionate about his work and showing people what he does, but he sometimes is oblivious to social cues and accidentally oversteps some boundaries. He's broke, and can just barely afford the rent on the garage he lives in. He bakes in his free time and sells his pastries to get a smidge of income. His sister, Pamela, is the only sibling that visits him regularly and makes sure he's taking care of himself. He's the only one in his family without a "real job," so his siblings and parents think that he's a disappointment. He met Mae when she came to the kingdom and was wandering around lost, unsure why people were ignoring her/acting rude (she was flying, and since the Hachitsu can't fly its considered rude to fly in their kingdom instead of using the stairs and pulleys). He saw this as an opportunity to finally make some money and made her pay for him to show her around. He ended up giving her her money back after she saved him when the plague attacked the Hachitsu, and the two became close friends. The two remain pen pals! Marvin's dream was to create an invention that would finally allow the Hachitsu to fly, he spent months trying to get the design right, and he just finally succeeded in creating a glider.

Charlotte

Charlotte is the current President of the Hachitsu kingdom, and she has been since she was 14 (Hachistu can run as many times as they like). She is the daughter of the previous president, who passed away when she was 14. Her mother encouraged her to become the next leader in her place. Her mother was killed by wasps, which gave Charlotte an intense fear of wasps ever since. She really loves bees! Bees are like dogs to them, they're dangerous to all other forest spirit species except for the Hachitsu, their bee-like colors and pheromones let them exist harmoniously with wild bees. Domestic bees are nice to everybody, regardless of species. She had several guard bees that she loved dearly, when the plague came, infected wasps came after her. Her bees gave their lives to protect her by fighting them off, but became part of the plague themselves. Charlotte is bisexual, but not very interested in dating. She's outspoken and very confident in herself, she's been runnin' this job for a long time and she believes she knows what she's doing.

Bel

Bel is an elderly Kameshi. He's the first and only Kameshi Mae ever met during her journey, although she does meet more later on in life. During the 200 year gap, the Kameshi kingdom had a civil way that led to its destruction. Now, the kingdom is just ruins, and Kameshi live on their own scattered across the forest. He lives in a cave near the remains of the cabin, and often goes through it to find human items. He's a collector of human things, and his cave is littered with various human objects. His scarf is made of a green cloth and thread that he found in the dirt near the cabin, and is actually where Mae's needle came from! When Mae found her needle it was attached to a green thread, it was the very same one. Bel approached Mae because he noticed the needle on her back, and he wanted to get a better look. Bel is everyone's grandpa, he ofc treats Mae like his own granddaughter and is protective of her. He was the one that encouraged her to look inside the cabin to help with her journey. Mae came to visit him over a year later with Joel, and Bel didn't like Joel much sbhjdshsdshd simply because he was "dating" Mae (they were already married at that point lmao). He had also adopted an orphaned 5-year old Kameshi girl who he named Scamp. He gets his own arc later on in the series when he finds a hidden village of Kameshi, and he reunites with his past love, Tuft.

#OC #Mae and the Kingdoms of Seasons #Character of the Day #tw abuse #tw self harm #tw suicide #Mae #Ruben #Asha #Dolly #Joel #Jeremiah #Noble #Dahlia #Bel #Verity #Marvin #Charlotte #thatcher

5 notes · View notes

ivegotbreadinmypants · 4 years

Note

16 normal witcher au , 1 , 34

Geralt/Jaskier—Angst

Prompt list post—

AU: 16 - Supernatural AU

Trope: 1 - Friends to Lovers

Prompt: 34 - “I don’t even know why we’re doing this.”

A/N: Oh lord, this ended up being so long lmao. I got pretty damn inspired by this prompt and my brain got carried away. But I swear, not every prompt is going to be as long or angsty as this one. This one—oof

Word Count: 3317

Warning: Angst, light self-loathing on Geralt’s side.

By the time they leave the tavern, the village has been swallowed by darkness, the sky an inky black. The innkeeper who gave them their contract didn’t spare details, possibly the result of the air of fear emanating from everyone in the village.

People wander into the woods in the middle of the night, usually after days of complaining of horrific dreams; it’s brought everyone on edge, eyes full of distrusting hope when they see the Witcher and the bard enter the tavern.

They’ve crossed the blood-stained meadows and are already skirting the edge of the forest when Jaskier asks, “What is it? The creature?”

The poor bard nearly slips on an unseen rock, giving a startled yelp that disturbs the rows of crows resting on branches above them. Geralt turns around, a nasty glare in his glowing amber eyes. Jaskier used to think they were beautiful.

“Shut up,” the Witcher grits out, continuing down the path without waiting for the bard. A deep frown covers Jaskier’s face, eyes dull, but only for a second, because he doesn’t want—

Jaskier straightens up and forges on, ignoring the hollow beating of his heart.

When Geralt approached him two months ago—a full year after it—Jaskier had thought things would change, that everything would be different and being with Geralt doesn’t have to mean having his heart squeezed and broken as if it were a nailed to a wheel—the cycle repeating over and over.

He thought everything would go back to the way it was, but better, after the Witcher had willingly apologised—after the man had opened his heart and let every hurt pour out in full view for the bard. He’d been wrong.

Geralt is still as well-guarded as he was, even after they shared a painfully tender moment when he gave his apology. It’s like Geralt wants to erase the memory of that having happened.

At first, Jaskier thought it was down to Geralt still not used to being generally open with his feelings—that the man needs a little more time to adjust to their slightly different dynamic. But as time passed, as the scathing remarks and dry barks from the White Wolf never once relented, Jaskier had a slow dreadful realization. Geralt isn’t going to change.

And it’s only a matter of time before it—Jaskier’s heart skips a tormenting beat—happens again.

Jaskier doesn’t want to be here when his whole world inevitably burns down to ashes again.

He trails after Geralt a little ways, giving them both space—space that Jaskier despises now because he knows no matter how much land there is between the two of them, Jaskier will always feel like there’s galaxies of space separating them.

He feels like a husk, an empty shell of who he used to be, and it’s getting worse the longer he lingers and waits for his heart to be shattered in the hands of the man he used to trust with his life.

He has to leave. It’s hurting him in ways he can’t even see, can’t even fathom. He can’t see the extent of his grisly scars because they’ve been woven into his skin for so long he’s forgotten.

Twenty-two years and counting.

Jaskier bites on his lip, pressing hard until it tears through. Copper tinges his tongue and he wonders how much longer will he not feel the pain. Everything is so numb it hurts.

Geralt stops, sniffs the air.

The bard inwardly sighs, an ire-stricken face of one Witcher popping into his head. He doesn’t have to meet Geralt’s eyes to feel the vexation.

“Jaskier, what the fuck?”

This time, Jaskier sighs out loud, “What, Geralt? It’s nothing.”

Geralt spins on his heel, a twitch in his eyebrow when he notices the space between the two of them, and crosses the threshold to enter Jaskier’s space.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. Just bit my lip on accident,” Jaskier mutters, quiet and meek and nothing like him.

Geralt doesn’t need Witcher senses to know something is wrong, because even he cocks his head a little to the side, a curious look to his otherwise irritated gaze.

Jaskier looks up, drawing his eyes to meet amber ones. He’s struck with the thought this may be the last time he’ll ever see them.

His voice is soft. “I don’t even know why we’re doing this.”

Geralt’s brows furrow, some of the hated ire vanishing. “To finish the contract. The alp.”

Jaskier’s lips stretch into half a smile, but it’s hollow and dimmed. His words are defeated, softer now. “That’s not what I mean, Geralt.”

The Witcher loses some of his confused fog, something acute and sharp in his eyes replacing it.

“Jaskier,” there’s the smallest pressing tone in his voice. The bard only breathes out, a cheap imitation of a chuckle, a little too quick for it to be a normal conversation; even then, it sounds flat.

There isn’t even a shadow of anger in Jaskier’s body, all of the fiery feelings snuffed out over hours, days and months of waiting for Geralt to change. But there’s a deep sadness painted on every surface within, delicate and unwavering, never leaving.

Jaskier’s blue eyes bore into Geralt’s, words easing out of his mouth. “I can’t keep doing this.”

The sharpness in golden honey hardens, the gruffness accentuated, “Jaskier.”

Jaskier takes a step back—avoiding his touch—when the Witcher reaches out, as if he wanted to shake sense into the bard. For the first time in a long time, Jaskier sees something in Geralt crack.

The poet—but is he one anymore? He hasn’t written anything in so long—shakes his head, standing taller. “I’m leaving, Geralt.”

There’s a sharp inhale, the leather of his armor creaking when he reels back, the line of Geralt’s jaw hardening under the moonlight, as if he was struck.

Jaskier dimly realizes this may actually hurt Geralt.

But he forges on, blue eyes unrelenting in the darkness, “I’m leaving.”

“No,” Geralt bites out, his upper lip curling.

Something in Jaskier sparks, blazing hot for a split second. “What do you want? C’mon Geralt, what do you really want? You tell me to go away and when I do, you come running back. Then when I say I’m leaving, you don’t allow me to.”

His words aren’t as cutting as he wants them to be, but it gets the point across.

Geralt stares, the Adam’s apple of his throat bobbing.

“I have to leave, Geralt. I have to go.”

Then his eyes go unfocused, staring past Jaskier, the line of his shoulders going straight as a rod.

Jaskier opens his mouth, but Geralt puts a hand up, tilting his head a bit.

The heat comes back roaring within Jaskier, “How dare—”

“Shh.” Geralt comes closer, his eyes now searching the line of trees surrounding them. Jaskier narrows his eyes, but then the anger in him dies out quickly when he hears it too. Crunching grass. Footsteps.

“Must have smelled your blood,” Geralt mutters.

Jaskier pushes Geralt, “Go.”

But Geralt doesn’t budge, his hand snapping out to grab onto Jaskier’s wrist, his full attention now on the bard. Not for the first time, Jaskier feels trapped under golden eyes, but instead of anger or exasperation greeting him, there’s pained desperation.

“Stay,” Geralt says, as if leaving was out of the question. Jaskier takes another step back, shaking his head, but he’s held in place by Geralt’s grip on his wrist. “No, Geralt, you don’t understand. I have to.”

“No, I understand, Jaskier. I do. But, please, fuck—please,” Jaskier flinches at the sound of a twig snapping. She’s getting closer.

Geralt’s tightened fingers bring him back, cornflowers on gold. A battered heart meeting desperation.

There’s nothing fake about it, only the most earnest desolation swimming in amber honey.

“Stay.”

Tightened fingers go lax, turning around Jaskier’s wrist so Geralt’s thumb can skim over his pumping pulse. The touch is gentle, delicate and scared.

“Jaskier,” Geralt whispers, not even twitching at the sound of louder footsteps, and tugs lightly on the bard, bringing the speechless man a little closer. They’re breathing the same air, almost nose-to-nose, and Geralt only has eyes for him.

“Don’t leave.”

Jaskier can feel something else in him spark, brighter than anything.

The sound of a shriek is what breaks Geralt out of his trance, but the haunted urgency doesn’t leave. He turns around and there she is—

Naked, blood-soaked, red-headed. The alp.

Geralt turns back to Jaskier and somehow, the anguish in his face is worse.

Jaskier can’t stop the rushed words escaping him, “I won’t.”

Geralt opens his mouth, but Jaskier places his hand over his lips, speaking faster now, “At the inn. I promise.”

Then Jaskier nudges him, nodding to the impatient vampire awaiting the Witcher. Geralt only spares the smallest of nods, and spins on his heel, brandishing his silver sword.

Jaskier doesn’t waste a moment, turning in the other direction and sprinting away from the action.

For a moment, Jaskier wants to run away. To leave.

——

The fight is rushed, over relatively quick. Maybe it’s because of the Black Blood coursing through his veins, or maybe it’s because of the relentless fear rushing through his body—piercing his heart and haunting his mind.

He cuts the head off of the alp and heads off to the tavern. He storms through the rotting wooden door—with the urgency of a man scared of losing the most important thing to him—and drops the head on the bar, staring at the barkeep with blackened eyes and blood-splattered armor.

The man is quick to toss the bag of coin his way, and when Geralt catches the bag, he turns away to rush out, not wasting time to speak a word. He steps towards the inn—the smallest of tension leaking out of his shoulders when he scents the pine and cedar and sea-salt at the threshold of the inn.

He skips steps when he climbs the stairs, following the awfully familiar scent like a dog following a treat. He fears the scent is old, because it’s the same room they got the previous night, and that Jaskier is long gone—run away like he said he would.

But he opens the door and the scent overwhelms him, drowning him in painful relief and dread.

Now that the danger has passed, he’ll have to face something worse than an alp.

Jaskier is sitting upon the bed, staring out the window with an air of melancholy that smells like cold soot—like a campfire that died overnight. The man turns to face him and it’s Geralt’s turn to feel trapped. He realizes all of the bard’s belongings are packed, right next to the man in question.

“I admit. I was thinking of—”

“Leaving,” Geralt finishes, his throat closing against his will. Jaskier nods, taking a soft breath that punches Geralt’s out of his chest.

Jaskier’s brows furrow, “The potion hasn’t run its course?”

He must be seeing the inky blackness of Geralt’s eyes, the deathly grey veins spanning over his sallow skin.

“Yes. I wanted to—” Geralt swallows hard, glancing to the floor, changing his words, “I didn’t want to be too slow.”

“So… you just ran over here?” Jaskier asks, slow, as if he’s scared of the implication. Geralt nods, jerky and awkward. He steps away from the doorway and glances at Jaskier, asking permission.

Jaskier looks between him and the door, something warring within his eyes, but something must have won because he ducks his head and quietly says, “Close it.”

Geralt inhales shakily and shuts the door behind him. He takes the first step towards the bed, knowing how horrible he must look in candlelight—bloody, pale, and spellbound by one thing and one thing only.

Jaskier looks away and that—

The small crack in Geralt splinters.

Geralt grits his teeth and steps away from the bed, settling down next to the fireplace, away from the bard. Everything feels precarious, like glass, like everything is balancing on one point and Geralt—God, he will do anything in his power to stop it from tipping over.

Jaskier sits there, waiting. Geralt knows he doesn’t have much time. There’s nothing right now that’s in his favour, except for the fact Jaskier is still here.

God, he’s still here.

Waiting, expecting something more—something that Geralt should have given him a long time ago.

Waiting.

Even after everything.

Geralt knows he’s so fucking selfish, asking him to stay when the bard should have left the moment he met the Witcher in Posada.

Asking him to stay when he almost got him killed, his throat torn to shreds.

Asking him to stay when he has the fucking gall to say the infuriating bard isn’t his best friend—his only friend.

Asking him to stay when he shut Jaskier out, letting an invitation to his open heart and a trip to the coast fall on deaf ears.

Asking him to stay when he said the only thing he knows will break the bard, blaming every shitshow he gets himself into on the poor man.

Begging him to stay when he has no fucking right to even look at those cornflower eyes.

Geralt is the first to break the deserved silence, “I’m sorry.”

Jaskier doesn’t even look up. “For what? You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“For everything.” Geralt’s tongue thickens in his mouth. “Everything I let you go through. Everything I did to you.”

Jaskier is quick to shake his head, “Geralt, you didn’t do anything to me—”

“Yes. I did.” Geralt looks down. “When was the last time you wrote a song?”

It’s silent. It’s enough of an answer for the Witcher.

“Jaskier.” His tone is almost begging, hoping the man will meet his eyes. And he does, but the look in those eyes he loves with every fibre of his being is stricken, teary and hurt. “I know you’re hurting yourself the longer you’re with me. I can see it.”

Jaskier’s breath becomes shaky.

“Jaskier. You can leave—I’ll let you leave. I will.” Geralt is wishing to every djinn out there that he won’t.

He licks his lips and hopes his heart doesn’t pop out of his chest from how hard it’s thumping in his ribcage. “If you listen to what I’m going to say.”

Jaskier nods his head, patient and still looking the saddest Geralt has ever fucking seen him.

Geralt locks his gaze onto Jaskier, pouring every bit of his heart into his eyes.

“Jaskier—”

Geralt clenches his fists.

“I love you.”

A beat.

Nothing but the blood rushing in his ears, his teeth grinding as his heart spills out from his sleeve and onto the carpet in front of him.

The sound torn from Jaskier’s mouth is harsh, cutting and so fucking grating it twists something in Geralt.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, right?” Jaskier rocks backwards on the bed, a cold laugh bubbling in his throat. But when he faces Geralt again, his face is splotchy, eyes red and tears glistening in warm candlelight—looking heartbroken.

“You can’t—Geralt,” his name sounds raw and wobbly out of the bard’s mouth, “You can’t fucking say that. You can’t.”

Geralt’s jaw is hardened when he grits out, “But it’s true.”

“How long?” Jaskier snaps.

Geralt straightens up, meeting his gaze. “Cintra. The bathtub.”

Jaskier’s gaze cuts deep, splaying him open, and Geralt can’t keep the eye contact, looking away.

“Right after I said I didn’t…” Geralt furrows his brows, “need anyone.”

“I realized what I said was wrong. But I didn’t want—I couldn’t take it back.”

Jaskier looks even sadder, something dark swirling in those bright irises. They used to remind Geralt of the sea, full of life and depth. Now, all he sees is dull, glassy eyes.

“Geralt—”

“I know I can’t apologize for everything overnight,” he blurts, something in him pushing him forward to pull through, “I know I can’t. But I want to try. Fuck, I want to try. For as long as it takes.”

It’s like steel forging within him, giving him the strength to yank out the last bit of brutal honesty. His words are a rumble, like thunder in a storm, “Because I don’t want to travel the Continent without you by my side.”

Jaskier is silent, parsing Geralt with his beautiful eyes.

The longer the quiet stretches, the more his hope dwindles in his chest, fluttering down into nothing.

“Promise me.”

“Anything,” Geralt is quick to say. It pulls a twitch of the lips from the bard.

“Promise me you’ll try. You can hurt me with your words and I’ll bite back—I swear to all the Gods, Geralt—I’ll fucking bite back.” Jaskier narrows his eyes, breathing out slowly. “But I’ll forgive you because I know you’re trying.”

Jaskier digs his fingers into the blankets, “So you have to promise me you’ll try. Otherwise I’ll leave. I’ll leave and I’ll never go out of my way to look for your stupid face again.”

“I promise, Jask,” he mutters, the words so deafening over the quiet crackling of the fire behind him.

“I-I’ll never sing your stupid songs, I’ll never speak of you again, I—” his voice cracks, a sob echoes and Geralt snaps up, his heart breaking at the sight of Jaskier crying, “—I won’t have to pretend like every insult of yours doesn’t make me question if everything is real—”

“Jaskier,” Geralt snaps and oh Gods, Jaskier fucking whimpers and fuck—

Geralt can’t stop himself from jumping to his feet and rushing over to Jaskier, picking up the man and plopping him into his lap as he sits on the bed, despite the bard’s protests.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Jaskier,” Geralt mumbles. The second his hand starts running through Jaskier’s brown hair, the bard quietens, his hands gripping onto Geralt’s armor as if it were an anchor.

They settle like that, Jaskier’s heart-breaking sobs muffled by Geralt’s blood-stained armor, his strong arms curled protectively around the bard.

But Jaskier wiggles out of his hold after a long moment, and braces his thighs around Geralt’s hips and—

He kisses Geralt.

The Witcher isn’t one to waste time, quick to reciprocate in movement and emotion.

It’s both everything and nothing that Geralt had imagined it to be. He never thought it would be salty with tears, or that they’re both so hurt and raw and open in a way Geralt never is. But it fills the gaping hole in his chest just like he thought it would, warm and tantalizing and soothing like a balm.

Everything isn’t going to be fixed overnight, they both know that. Everything is on the line for the two of them; the bard has his whole heart, soul and mind devoted to this; Geralt doesn’t want to lose the only thing that matters to him.

So, Geralt has to try. Wants to try. To fix every little tear and scar between the two of them. It may take days, months, years—Geralt doesn’t care. He’d spend his whole fucking life trying to make it up to the bard if he must.

But he has to start somewhere. And so he starts honesty in every action.

Geralt pulls away for a moment and grumbles on Jaskier’s lips, “In the forest, you said, ‘you don’t know why you’re doing this’.”

Jaskier nods, confused. Geralt’s arm tightens its hold on the other man’s waist, pulling them flushed, and the Witcher mumbles, “I’ll give you my answer. Because I want to touch you so much—”

Geralt’s nose trails the line of Jaskier’s throat, teeth grazing his collarbone, reveling in how the man in his arms shivers. “—it fucking burns.”

And he must say, it’s already looking up.

#geralt #jaskier #geralt x jaskier #geraskier #geraskier fic #geraskier angst #angst #my writing #my fish #prompt #anon ask #anon prompt

156 notes · View notes

thebibliomancer · 4 years

Text

Song of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 18

Song of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because sure the book is only half over but don’t you think we should really find that flute now?

Last times on book: Kylan, Naia, and Tavra have traveled to Home-in-Shadows to find a magic firca that will help them warn all Gelfling about the Skeksis. Maudra Argot’s delightful son Amri has joined the party to lead them to the Tomb of Relics.

Chapter 18

The gang meets urLii the Storyteller! They find the cedar box of Gyr’s firca! What a fulfilling chapter!

Amri gets them all lanterns and then the gelfs split up because they’ll cover more ground that way.

... Kylan imagined Naia and Tavra were seeing the same as him: a passage lined with dusty, lichen-covered, boxed, locked, rolled, stacked, and latched items. There were so many things crammed among the shelves that it was hard to tell, especially in the lacking light, where one item ended and the next began.

I’ve been taking all of the books off of my multiple shelves to move and I feel this description very hard. My room is just stacks of books now. Floor is books and bed is books.

And yet I feel a secret forbidden library/archive inside a mountain might be my ideal dream home.

Kylan walks through the Tomb of Relics and sees lantern light and a figure down a hall. Its Tavra and she tells him to get back on task.

The first room gave him no success, though not for lack of trying. There were so many things crowded in every cubby that he was sure he hadn’t possibly looked through everything. Yet if he followed his impulse and inspected every crate and scroll he found, it would take forever. Each artifact was unique, and wonderful, and Kylan knew he could spend his entire life in the Tomb if he lost track of his goal.

In the last chamber of the row, Kylan finds that a shelf against the far wall has collapsed (possible from an earthquake... shouldn’t that be thraquake?) and spilled books and boxes and chests and artifacts and broken stuff into one jumbled pile.

And then the pile starts to move as a Mystic rises from underneath it. Huh, guess the shelf collapsed recently or he was taking a long rubble nap.

Amri and Naia show up and Amri introduces the Mystic as urLii and that he sometimes comes down from the Sanctuary to bring new stuff to the Tomb of Relics.

Heyyyy, urLii the Storyteller!

He was great in the Age of Resistance comic! In that, he sorta lived in the Tomb of Relics like a dragon with a bunch of piles of treasures. He also guarded the Dual Glaive and had named the Tomb of Relics that to make it sound spooky because he didn’t want a lot of company.

urLii the Mystic finally cleared enough of the pile to step free of it. In full view, Kylan could see he was indeed the same race as urVa, the wise archer they’d met in the Dark Wood. He had a long body, from his long face to his long, heavy tail, his skin marked where it was visible with etching-like whorls and spirals. He was clothed in a simple mantle, wrists decorated with metal cuffs and cord ties. He cleared his throat and patted his body, as if to make sure it was intact, and then drew a pair of eye-prisms from the clutter. Once they were snug on his nose, he looked at the three Gelfling more closely.

Huh! I think this is the first Mystic with glasses? Even though skekOk wears multiple glasses, his counterpart urAc wears none.

... Although I’m seeing on the wiki that skekOk wears glasses just to look smarter. Amazing.

urLii recognizes that this is Amri’s first time in the Tomb and explains he was looking for something, which he doesn’t remember now, when a shelf fell on him.

Amri decides to ask for urLii’s help in finding the firca.

While Amri described the firca to urLii, as casually as with a sibling, Kylan tried to quiet a sudden pulse of jealousy. It was a bad feeling, and he didn’t like it one bit. Not only did the Grottan have access to such a trove of ancient treasure, but they knew one of the Mystics like a family friend? He sighed and tried to wave the feeling away. There was no need to be in competition with Amri, who was only doing everything he could to help them.

If you didn’t hate being underground so much, I’d suggest asking Maudra Argot to adopt you. She seems cool. And Amri could be your brother!

But, yeah, no, it’d never work.

urLii believes he knows where the firca is. Although he’s waffling a bit on which way that is and keeps getting lost and wandering from chamber to chamber.

While they follow him, Naia asks why Amri didn’t mention that he knew a Mystic.

“Mystic? Um... I guess he is pretty mystical, now that you say it! urLii has taught the Grotan clan for ages. He’s a master song teller, and he taught us all to dream-etch. We call him the Storyteller. Our younglings travel to the Sanctuary when they come of age to learn... Is that strange? Are there others like him?”

Kylan’s heart ached. A friendship with one of the Mystics, those that were as wise as the Skeksis were shrewd! Yet in all his ancient knowledge, Amri didn’t even know how lucky he was.

Naia speculates how cool it would have been if urVa had lived with the Drenchen and taught them and mentions that urLii could probably teach Kylan a bunch of songs he’s never even heard.

Oof, kinda inadvertently putting salt on the jealousy wound there, Naia.

It’s not explicitly mentioned but I imagine that the fact that all Grottan learn dream-etching and can read has got to contribute to his feelings of inadequacy and jealousy. Dream-etching was his special skill that he brought to the group but they’re bringing Amri along and he can do it too.

urLii eventually finds a shelf that he insists is where the firca is, even though Kylan is pretty sure they’d searched that shelf twice.

The Storyteller searched the shelves with all four long-fingered hands at once, picking up small chests and shifting things aside, looking and grumbling hmm, hmm the whole while.

Oh, to have four arms and super good at sorting...

Amri asks if he’s sure that this is the right shelf, I guess having the same misgivings as Kylan. Aw dangit, Amri is even misgiving better! Poor Kylan!

But urLii insists! He’s a very organized relic keeper! Since Gyr the Song Teller was a Sifa, he put it next to the Sifan Charms of Zale, a sextant, some Nebrie hide, and charms.

Amri suggests instead that urLii moved it or maybe it fell when there was a booklanche in the other room.

The Gelfs all split up to cover more ground again but in the same room.

Kylan stayed near urLii, waiting for the courage to speak to the Mystic. They worked side by side while Amri joined Naia on the other end of the room. Kylan had questions, and he wanted to hear everything the Mystic had to share, but no matter how long he waited, the courage never came. He could not ask about Gyr, or the firca, or even whether the Mystic race knew their Skeksis counterparts had broken the Heart of Thra. Instead they looked in silence, Kylan’s lungs filling with dust as he uncovered dozens and dozens of shelves, finding nothing.

Naia eventually declares that the firca isn’t here, prompting urLii to shake his head and respond “Oh, where, then?”

Is that catty? Can Mystics be catty?

I know they can be sassy, especially urSol, but I didn’t know catty.

Oh, and then Tavra comes in with the cedar box the firca is in, which she says she found two chambers over.

Womp womp.

She also notices urLii but doesn’t really respond to a Mystic being here. Like ‘well this might as well happen.’

Instead of presenting it to Amri, who could have been said to be the owner of the box on behalf of his clan that protected the Tomb, or to Naia, who had been their unofficial leader through everything, Tavra brought the box to Kylan. He accepted it in both hands.

“Here’s your firca, Song Teller,” she said.

See, now that definitely sounds catty or perhaps spiteful.

Naia encourages Kylan to crack open the box but he takes time to savor the moment or perhaps just to examine the box in detail so as to set the scene. It really is a great box.

Etched in great detail on the lid was a drawing of a bird, standing next to a grove of trees to demonstrate its fantastical size. Its head was all beak with an eye on either side, wings half-spread over a clutch of boulder-size eggs. The only thing peculiar about the etching was a character burned into the corner of the drawing, the symbol for S. The etching still felt warm, but then again, everything in the stuffy chambers did.

You have good taste in boxes, Gyr. And/or whoever boxed it. Possibly urLii?

Hmm, I wonder if the etching on the box is etching etching or dream-etching.

And I wonder about that S.

S forrrrrr Song Teller?

Kylan imagines the firca before opening the box, something that looks so similar to the tiny instrument he learned to play but just oh so much cooler and more powerful and also capable of saving the day against the Skeksis!

Which I’m not sure about. There’s like a hundred pages left.

Though, just finding the thing isn’t the end of the story. They still get to use it to graffiti the truth absolutely everywhere.

Kylan cracks the box open and.... aw dang.

Resting in the padded box was a collection of white fragments - bone, no doubt, and some still large enough to show intricate carvings. There were just enough pieces to know what it had been, and what it could never be again. All that mattered now was what it was: Gyr’s bell-bird firca, smashed into a thousand pieces.

What a shaggy fizzgig story.

#dark crystal #the dark crystal #Song of the Dark Crystal #liveblog #Kylan #Naia #Amri #Tavra #urLii #the Storyteller

11 notes · View notes

mybeautifulchristianjourney · 3 years

Text

Devotional Hours Within the Bible

by J.R. Miller

Building the Temple

The temple was David's thought. He was not permitted to build it, however, because his work was conquest, the establishing of the kingdom. But his thought was not rejected; it was approved and commended. He was allowed to make vast preparation for the work. He purchased the site for the building and gathered gold and other materials for it. In the fourth year of his reign, when Solomon was secure in his kingdom, he began to build the temple. He entered upon the work with great enthusiasm. He was a lover of magnificence, and spared nothing in making the sacred building the most splendid in the world.

Solomon received help from the king of Tyre. It was more than a commercial league that existed between these two kings - there was also a close personal friendship between them. So when work on the building was about to begin, Hiram sought an opportunity to assist. This is another of the blessings which came down to Solomon from his father. Hiram had been a lover of David, and he wished to continue with David's son, the friendship which he had maintained so long with the father. A father's friends become the inheritance of the children. This is a rich legacy when a man has lived a true and worthy life and has made good friends.

Of course, everyone really has to win his own friends. No son can go very long on his father's friendships. He must make them his own by a true life, by worthy conduct, by an unselfish spirit. But those who have been the father's friends - are disposed to be friendly to the son. He can make them his friends - if he desires. They are ready to become his friends for his father's sake. The "good will" of a long-established business, is the result of a man's wise, liberal, and honest dealing through his lifetime. He has built his own character into it. This the son may make his own - if he will maintain his father's character and principles and continue his father's honesty and truthfulness. So in all life - it is a great thing to have a good and worthy father, and the son may enjoy the benefit from the friendships his father has formed, unless by his own lack of worth and worthiness, he flings away his blessings.

Solomon reminded Hiram, that David had desired to build a temple to the Lord, and told him that now, since peace had come to his kingdom, he was going to build it. This rest from war and strife made the present, the time for the work. The temple could not be built in time of war.

Just so, times of quiet and restfulness in one's life should not be idle times. There is other work to do then, besides rushing activity. These are days for temple building. True living is not all struggle, conflict, conquest, gathering money, toiling with one's hands. Building of character is the great work of life. This goes on best in the quiet .

A man who had been himself occupied in business for a great while, with scarcely a day's rest or pause, was stricken down with a partial paralysis. He was compelled to lie still for months. His mind was clear and active, while his body was inactive. One day he said to his pastor, "I have grown more in these quiet months - than I did in all my long years of rushing activity!" He was now really building up the temple of God in his own soul. Ofttimes days of suffering, or pain, or sickness - are one's very best days. We ought not to wait for necessary inactivity to compel us to be still; we should get the quiet into our life - even in our busiest times. We should train ourselves to it. We should teach our hearts to be still - amid all possible confusion. Only thus, can we be ready for our best work. We must have a restful spirit, if we would build up the inner temple of our lives. There should be "silent times" in every day's life.

The secret of Daniel's noble character, while carrying a great part of the burden of the kingdom of Babylon, was that he never forsook the quiet place of prayer. Not even the threat of the lions' den could make him neglect the season of devotion. There is no other secret of a true and noble life, amid the world's strifes and trials. We must keep quiet within - that we may build up in our hearts the temple of God.

Solomon told Hiram of the work he had in hand for God. He purposed to build a house for Him. He knew what God's plan for his life was, and he purposed now to realize it. He knew that God wanted him to build a temple - and he set about building it. We should all seek to know our duty - and then do it. God has a plan for every life. For every child that is born in the world, there is some purpose in God's thought, something which He wishes that child to do, some place He wishes it to fill.

But how can we ever find out what God's plan for our life is ? Solomon knew what God's plan was in this case, for God had told David, and David had told his son. But most of us do not have such direct revealings of our duty. How then can we know what God wants us to do? The answer is, that if we will quietly follow Christ day by day - He will make known to us what His plan for us is. He may not tell us at the beginning what He would have us do years and years hence. But as we go on, doing each day the things that He gives - we shall in the end accomplish all His plan.

God's purpose begins with the little child. He found David when he was only a boy, keeping sheep. It was a long while before David would be a king - but every day of his shepherd life, was a part of God's plan in his preparation for being king. So we need not worry about what God wants us to do; we may simply do each day - the things He gives us to do, and then at the close of our life, if we have been faithful all the while, we shall be able to say, "I have finished the work which You gave me to do." We may not know in advance what we shall have to do any day - but as we go on, we shall know. Doing God's will as far as we know it - we come to know more and more of it, and thus finish it at last!

Solomon sent to Lebanon for cedar trees for the temple. Why did he not use the trees that grew in his own country? The reason was that the cedars which grew on Mt. Lebanon were the finest woods that could be found anywhere in the world. Solomon was determined to put into the temple, nothing but the best. He must have the finest stones, the best timbers, the purest gold, the richest precious stones, the most beautiful works of art in all departments. The temple must contain in its materials the best things the world could furnish. Nothing imperfect, nothing poor, nothing unworthy must go into that noble building!

We get a lesson here for ourselves. In the building of our character, nothing that is not beautiful, that is not the best, should be used. We should read the best books, so as to build into our life-temple the greatest and noblest thoughts in the world. Nothing stained or unholy should ever be used.

Our friendships have very much to do with the making of our character, and we should have only good, true, and worthy friends. Unworthy companionships build blotched stones into our life temple. Above all we should read the Bible, for it contains God's thoughts and God's words, which make the best building material. They are all white and of the purest marble, and there is no blemish or flaw anywhere in them!

Then above all companionships, we should have that of Christ, for He is the truest, the most inspiring Friend that any mortal can have. Let us be sure that we build only the best things into our temple fabric.

We should put into God's work what we do in other lives - only the best. We should never give a touch to any character, through word, or disposition, or act, or influence of ours - that is not clean enough to appear before Christ's holy eyes.

The laborers of Hiram brought the trees from the mountains of Lebanon to the sea. Thus the men of Tyre and Sidon became helpers in building the temple. It is interesting to notice that not only were many of the materials brought from heathen lands - but much of the work was done by heathen builders and artists. This suggests to us, that in the great temple of God that is rising in heaven, men of all nations do their part. Today the missionaries are carrying the gospel to all parts of the earth, to every nation under heaven, and many converts from heathen lands, are at work on the walls of the great temple. It will be seen at last, that there has been no nation under heaven which has not furnished some souls for heaven's great family.

Solomon devoted himself with enthusiasm to the work of building the temple. He did what God gave him to do - and then God gave him wisdom for each new duty and responsibility. God always keeps His promises - but His promises depend upon our obedience. If we will not do our part, neither can we have God's promised blessing. The lepers were cleansed "as they went." That is, they obeyed Christ's command to go and show themselves to the priests, and as they departed, healing came.

God promises us guidance in all our life's paths - but to get His guidance - we must go on, taking each step as He shows it to us. The guidance comes - only as we obey. God promises us strength according to our day - but to get the strength we must do the duty which the day brings. The strength is not given in advance - but it comes only as it is needed. If we will not go forward in the way of God's commands - we must not expect to get God's help.

There is a promise which says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God." But if we would get this wisdom, we must do our part. Wisdom is given - only as it is used. The lesson is one we should never forget, that all God's blessings depend upon our obedience and faithfulness.

#Devotional Hours Within the Bible #J.R. Miller #Building the Temple #April 7 #2021

4 notes · View notes