#probably into an old magpie nest

[takeapeck]

so apparently I now have kestrels nesting here???? I didn't know they were this floofy

[tkingfisher]

So I write all sorts of things (fiction, fanfic, screenplays) and my mind is cluttered garden of flowers and weeds and shiny ideas, and I'm wondering how to form a writing practice to clear it into tidy rows? Is it possible to shepherd untamed ideas into order?

How do you manage all your wonderful worlds, characters and inspiration and not feel haunted by the story bits and pieces in your head? Any practical tips beyond dark magic?

Thank you, you are such a constant inspiration for me, both prose and just your presence. <3

*laugh* Oh god, Nonny, if I ever find out, I’ll tell you! When you read books, you’re getting the Instagram-filtered view of a writer’s brain, all the flowers that grew out of the compost heap, carefully composed and shot in optimal lighting. The real inside of my skull is a magpie nest of Neat Shit I Read/Saw/Thought Up While Lying Awake At 2 AM. There are characters and ideas in there that I’ve been trying to get into a manuscript since I was twelve and typing on an Amiga 500.

But, that said…really, I think it’s okay. Creativity is inherently untidy. The compost heap can be corralled into a very pretty box made of sustainably harvested materials, hand-stained by traditional artisans being paid a living wage by an employee-owned company, but as soon as you lift the lid, it’s all worms and coffee grounds and old potting soil and cow shit and the vegetables you swore you were gonna eat this time before they went bad. That’s what compost is.

Nevertheless, having been in the business for…uh…fifteen years now? (@dduane is snickering at me, I can feel it) and having written nearly forty books, I can offer three bits of something less than advice. It’s what I do. It may not work for anyone else, but it’s what I do.

Un-Advice The First: If you get a shiny idea and you are super excited by it? Go ahead and chase it. Pull up a new page in Word or whatever and slap down a couple thousand words while it’s exciting. I know that this absolutely flies in the face of common wisdom, but quite frankly, my enthusiasm is a much rarer commodity than my time, so if I’m excited about something, I write it down until I’ve taken the edge off.

Then I usually save it into a big folder called “Fragments” and go back to work on whatever I’ve got a deadline on. (Usually. Sometimes the edge doesn’t wear off, and I wind up with another book. Which, y’know, darn.)

There are vast numbers of people who will tell you that a shiny idea is a sign that something is wrong with your current project and the solution is to knuckle down and work! through! it! And those people are probably right for them, and I trust they know how their own brains work. Me, though, I got ADHD like a bat has wings. My hard drive is a vast swamp of story beginnings, neat ideas, random scenes. And that’s okay because I still get books finished.

In fact, it’s better than okay. Not that long ago, my agent sent a novella to a publisher and they said “We’ll take that novella and three more novels. What’ve you got?” And I ended up plundering my hard drive and sending the editor a good dozen random beginnings until we found one that we both liked, and then I wrote the rest of that book. And then another one. If I hadn’t had all those fragments lying around, though, it would have been a miserable experience of writing book pitches and trying to think of stuff I could get excited about. (This may not be how some editors work, but it’s how my editor and I work, anyhow.)

Un-Advice The Second: Trust that everything will find a home eventually.

This one is easy to say and hard to do because sometimes you get that overload that if you’re writing the book about, say, werebear nuns, you aren’t writing the one about the alien crustaceans. Or worse, you feel guilty. If you don’t use that one cool thing, was all that time you spent on it wasted?

Breathe. Be easy. Every single cool thing does not need to go into a single book. There is no sell-by date on the neat character. You will probably write many books in your life and all those random characters will find a home. (Seriously, the werebear nuns were lurking for like a decade.)

For me, at least, when I find the spot where something fits, it often snaps into place like a Lego. Easton’s backstory as a soldier from a society where soldiers were a third sex had been kicking around in my head for a few years, derived from about three different sources, and then I wrote the opening to What Moves The Dead and all of a sudden Easton was there and alive and they had strong opinions about everything and I had ten thousand words practically before I turned around.

You can also stave off guilt by writing some of your ideas in as highly personal Easter Eggs. A couple of my books have references to a white deer woman, a heroic deed done by a saint and the ghost of a bird, and a woman with dozens of hummingbirds on tiny jeweled leashes. Those are all characters and stories I’ve had vague notions about, but haven’t managed to work in anywhere or learn much more about. Still, the passing reference is enough to make me feel like I haven’t abandoned them.

(The advantage to this is that once you DO write those in, the readers are all “oh my god, she foreshadowed this a decade ago, she must have planned this all out in advance!” Then you look really clever and well-organized and no one has to know that you have no idea what you’re doing.)

Un-Advice The Third: Write the kitchen sink book.

At one point, I had so many stray ideas that hadn’t gotten into a book yet—the tree of frogs, the dog-soldiers, the stained glass saint, the albatross and the shadow of the sun, and also I wanted to write something with Baba Yaga—that I hauled off and wrote a book where I just put in everything and the kitchen sink. It’s called Summer in Orcus. There are bits in there that I had been cooking in the mental compost heap for decades, but that weren’t enough on their own to sustain a whole book. The phrase “antelope women are not to be trusted” showed up in my head some time in college. It’s a fun little book and I’m proud of it, but it’s very much a patchwork quilt of weirdness. But it’s also written so that if later on, an antelope woman shows up in another book in another context, that just adds to their mythology, it doesn’t break canon or whatever.

(Pretty sure I’m not the only one who has done this, either. China Mieville has said that he wrote Perdido Street Station because what he really enjoyed was writing all the weird monsters.)

So yeah, that’s my advice, for what it’s worth. Some days I just tell all the fragments and ideas that I promise that I’ll get them a home eventually but I need to write this thing here now. Sometimes I throw down enough words to get the story stabilized and then I’m okay to move on. Sometimes I write multiple books simultaneously.

Any method you use to write the book, so long as it doesn’t hurt you or anyone else, is a perfectly valid method. If anyone tells you different, you send them to me.

(…god, I hope that was the question you were actually asking, Nonny, and that I didn’t go off on a completely different tangent when you just wanted to know how I keep track of a plot or something.)

[roguemonsterfucker]

Baby bird news... Not great news but everyone is alive and okay.

The momma bird started attacking the babies. She pulled a chunk of feathers from Junior and I don't know what happened with Opaline but the poor baby looked traumatized. Uninjured as far as I can tell, but traumatized.

And then the momma bird laid an egg so that's probably why.

Unfortunately, I had to separate her and her mate from the babies, which sucks so fucking much because little Number Five isn't really old enough to be away from the mom but she's been really snippy with him too so I can't risk her hurting anyone.

So Happy and Bucky, the mom and dad, are in their own cage now. As soon as we're able, we're taking them to the vet to get a hormonal implant that will prevent them from wanting to breed anymore and once we see how that works out, the pair should be able to go back in with other birds. For now, Happy is too dangerous to be with even her own babies. I've been bitten badly by her before and I don't want the babies to be on the receiving end of that...

Not all bad news, though!

Even though Five is a week behind the rest, he's still growing very well! He flew and drank water for the first time today (that I've seen). Thank goodness. Because without that, he wouldn't survive being without his mom. But in theory, he should be okay at this point. I'll be keeping a close eye on him and I can hand feed him if needed, but I don't think I'll need to.

All the babies are doing great. The oldest three, Magpie, Opaline, and Junior, fly all around and eat and drink and explore. They've stopped sleeping in the nest. Only Five still sleeps in the nest.

I feel sick over having to separate Happy from her babies, but it was that or maybe wake up to a dead baby. And I love these little guys so much, I couldn't bear the thought of losing any at this stage.

Going into this, my mantra was "they probably won't live they probably won't live they probably won't live." But then... they did. They made it to an age where they're real birds, flying and eating, and I thought they were safe from all the risks I worried about. The idea that I could lose them now, after all the trials and tribulations, because the Mom became aggressive... I couldn't handle it.

They all should be fine. Little Five may not thrive as well as the rest because of this, but he still should be alright.

I'll reblog this with baby pictures later. @roguemonsterfucker Tagging myself so I can reblog this.

[owlafterhours]

Rating: T, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationship: C4-621 Raven/G5 Iguazu (One-sided) Characters: C4-621 Raven, G5 Iguazu, Ayre, ALLMIND Summary: Or as 621 likes to think of it: if fate is what you make of it, and you are very good at making things, then, surely, you can remake the fate of another. (Post-Alea ending, not that spicy imo but mind the tags)

Inspired by all the post-Fires AU I see around! A worldbuilding note under the cut bc some things got, haha, cut-

So this post Alea AU is like, kind of, Coral Release made a lot more mutations and they're mutations of different types some are more creature etc.etc. which is to say, the old BAWS arsenals are like, nests, of old BASHO machines. They're like super territorial, and always live in packs. You step into one of their nests without thinking about it and they Will come swarm you. You might see one or two mixed parts in there but they're all like, if they're not a BASHO they're probably a construction MT of some sort.

I think it would also be very cute to have roosts of Lammers and Nachts. Yes it is because they are bird themed. But also, imagine them divebombing like magpies???? Lammergeier swooping season…

[idk-what-to-put-here-123]

Post about Aussie animals bc they're fucking terrifying

To start, this is a magpie.

Spring / late summer is called "magpie season" here and if you walk under their nests or around the tree that their nest is in they will swoop

That beak and claws? Razor sharp. If you're a cyclist you're dead

Magpie helmets are a common sight during this time (you can literally buy them online)

Next: cassowary

See that weird lump thing on it's head? That's bone. They will run at you and impale you with it.

See one of these in the wild? Run for your life.

Cassowaries have three-toed feet with sharp claws. The inner (first) toe has a dagger-like claw that can be ~125 mm

They sometimes kick and you do not want to be within range when they do

These are pretty big at up to 1.8m tall with the males at 29-55kg and the females up to 76kg

There is a large variety of spiders in this fucked-up country but my personal favorite is the Queensland bird eating tarantula.

As you may have guessed, this fucker eats birds.

They're more commonly found in the warmer and more acrid regions of Australia, which means you'll probably find them in Queensland and around Darwin.

This wonderful animal I'm going to show you next is called the platypus.

They're probably my favorite animals they're so weird 😂

They're like otters but they have a bill and webbed fins like a duck

They're mammals but they lay eggs and theyre amphibious

The males have a venomous spur on their inner hind ankle

And the babies are called puggles which I absolutely LOVE

Ok next up is the emu

These things are relatively friendly

You can buy these little packets of emu food from certain servos which you can feed to them (they'll eat out of your hand)

Their eggs are fucking huge (average height 13x9cm, weight 450-650g) and so are they (average height 1.75m, weight 50-55kg)

KOALAS (not koala bears)

These balls of fluff are herbivores and their diet is mainly made up of eucalyptus leaves

They live in eucalypt trees and can sleep for up to 20 hours a day because the leaves they eat don't contain much nutrition

Koala babies are called joeys ♥️♥️

They're marsupials and the females give birth to undeveloped joeys which crawl into the mothers pouch where they stay for the first 6-7 months of their lives

Joeys are fully weaned when they're around a year old

Kooaburras ~~

Kookaburras are so annoying sometimes

They almost never stop laughing

And they steal your food

Once when I was down south with my parents (my sister hadn't been born yet) we were at this pub in the bush and I had fish and chips

In a tree relatively close to where we were sitting there was a kookaburra

And out of the blue it sWOOPED DOWN AND STOLE THE BATTER OFF MY FISH

And then I apparently started crying (I was like 4 give me a break)

Anyway

Kooaburras are almost exclusively carnivorous, eating mice, snakes, insects, small reptiles, and the young of other birds

They dont usually eat fish though they are known to take goldfish from ponds (I'm realizing now thats probably where my goldfish went)

[weirdlizard26]

Prompt: You touch The Ooze tm and are turned into a aminal (purposeful misspelling) person. You are writing your own comic - what's your deal and what's your fighting style if any.

DUDE this rules.

gonna put this under readmore just in case!

ok REALISTICALLY i would turn into some sort of insect bc im always very careful not to ever touch anything outside so the only non-human dna i could possibly have on me would be of a bug commonly found in any apartment. probably either a spider or a fly.

but comics arent realistic so i would probably be a magpie or a crow!! :3 im leaning more towards magpies bc irl they literally used to make a nest right outside my bedroom window for a few years in a row. so in fiction i could be like always around magpies somehow before getting mutated, as a motif or something. if i was younger tho id def be a gerbil because we used to keep pet gerbils when i was little! finally i could also be a kitty bc i visit my mom at school sometimes and theres an old cat living on the premises and while i try not to touch her, she rubs against me sometimes so id have her fur on my jeans or smth.

(can you tell im indecisive lol)

basically i think it depends on when and where i come into contact with the mystery goo. when im in middle school at home? gerbil. any other age at home? bug. any age after 6yo either at school or going home after it? cat. just hanging out outside? one of the local birds, hopefully a magpie.

my deal is probably that i take up residence in one of the abandoned buildings in my neighborhood and become the local cryptid inspiring many a ghost story >:) in my spare time i keep an eye on the reckless kids that wonder into the more dangerous areas of the abandoned building i inhabit, sometimes forced to simply scare them away from those areas.

im not really a fighter and i dont know any fighting styles but if anything, it'd probably be something more focused on self-defense than fighting itself

[unfortunateanimals]

Some less than fortunate birds from our recent road trip!

The first two are the same chick, the third and fourth pics are separate chicks - there were three we found in total. According o my godmother there had been a nest in their cottage’s gutter, and they’d seen the parents about and heard cheeping. We suspect a strong gust of wind probably emptied the nest all at once.

Fifth pic is a… thrush of some kind. It’s not a great pic but the lighting was low and there were a metric fuckton odd mosquitoes per cubic inch so I didn’t linger. Nabbed the skull though.

Sixth pic is a young magpie, ironically about half a meter outside an old graveyard’s wall.

[testormblog]

Money with Wings

One day, I found a live baby parrot on the ground, fallen from its nest.  I thought it could be my pet so carefully carried it home and showed it to my father.  Dad smiled sadly at me.  He liked the little bird too.  He said, ‘Jakob, put it in an old cage in the shed.  However, it probably won’t survive.’  He was right.  I brought a few more young parrots home.  We fed them bread and honey.  Unfortunately, they didn’t survive either.  The next one, I fed grain.  It lived and thrived.

I decided to catch more birds.  What a challenge!  They were smart and escaped me quickly.  I talked to Pop about this and he built me a single door treadle trap.  Inside it, I placed a tub of grain to attract my quarry.  Once the bird was inside, its weight closed the door.  The trap worked well and I caught some birds.  Dad then suggested we construct an aviary.

At that year’s Beenleigh Show, I loitered around the bird exhibits and discovered that people bought birds.  I had a keen eye for money making ventures.  Some rare birds were selling for ten shillings each.  I knew where these nested in the bush and could catch three or four of them a day.  Forty shillings beat the miserly two shillings an hour Mattie Jones paid me.

I expanded the aviary then built another and constructed more traps.  My hobby became a small business.  I held up to one hundred birds in stock.  I began to breed, both from birds I caught and purchased.  I bought a state show champion and bred beautiful opaline budgerigars.  My aviaries housed budgerigars of every colour, a variety of parrots, including some pretty peach face lovebirds, and java finches.  My birds won show prizes every year.  This gained me free advertising and clients.  Everybody wanted a pet bird yet suppliers were few.

Still, my enterprise wasn’t an easy lark.  My aviaries had to be registered with a government department.  I had regulations to learn.  These included which species I could legally trap and breed.  An inspector could arrive anytime unannounced.  Sometimes, a pretty bird flew my way and I had no idea whether I should make it mine.  Nevertheless, my pet shop clients never asked if the birds were trapped or bred.  I looked after my birds well and only kept the healthy ones.  I helped the local farmers in return for bird feed, otherwise difficult and expensive to obtain.  They let me harvest cobs of corn as well as stalks of milo to thrash for seed.  I nicked off from school at lunch to check my traps and transfer any quarry in with my call birds.  With Reggie, I delivered orders as far as Brisbane.  Reggie really liked driving his car if I covered his fuel.  The pet shops always accepted whatever I offered.  After expenses, each delivery earnt me a hundred shillings plus, over five pounds.  Good pocket money!

I quickly learnt which birds attracted what prices.  Generally, their prices reflected their availability for sale, their physical appearance and condition as well as their dietary requirements.  Scaly green parrots were plentiful and difficult to feed.  They fetched a shilling each.  Rainbow lorikeets were rare at that time as well as beautifully coloured.  They were worth twenty scaly greens.  A pair of pale headed rosellas brought four shillings.  Most finches sold at ten shillings per dozen except for a single gouldian.  This small purple and gold breasted, green winged, red faced bird netted twenty shillings.  Nobody wanted pigeons, miners or magpies however.  If a cockatiel flew my way, that was a lucky day.  The same applied to a galah.  Back then, the galahs lived out west and strays were difficult to trap.  Both these species were talking birds.  This made my price negotiable.

The biggest threat to my business were Mother’s two cats, Peter and Jimmy.  She loved them and they her but nobody else.  Dad and I avoided them.  They sank their claws into anything living and efficiently killed whatever wasn’t human, including native fauna.  Mother claimed they were good ratters.  Well, these cats bore a grudge towards me.  When I was little and they much smaller, I decided Peter’s bluey grey colour should be green thus painted him so with housepaint.  These murderers longed to avenge my misdeed and sought to slaughter my beloved birds.  They often prowled around my aviaries hoping for an open door before they buggered off to the chook house.  One day, they took their frustration out on a poor hen.  Dad then exacted his on them!

The illegal export game was a risk too.  I unwittingly became caught in it.  A Mr Bright enquired about birds for sale.  He had seen my aviaries whilst driving by.  I was suspicious of him.  He admired my best birds kept in the large open aviary.  Many of these were my call birds and weren’t for sale.  They called their wild cousins into traps for me.  He offered me prices I couldn’t refuse.  Thus, I sold some.  He ordered others and returned for them.

Mr Bright asked about a specific bird not available in the pet shops.  I knew this bird lived near the creek.  He offered me twenty shillings each, a pound, and placed a £25 order.  Big money!  I found a couple nests then watched the chicks hatch and grow.  I stole them when they had their feathers and were ready to fly.  I caught fish daily to feed them and waited for Mr Bright to return.  He didn’t!  I pondered what to do with these birds; release them or sell them to another client.  I figured they were valuable given Bright’s offer of a man’s weekly wage.

Late on a Saturday afternoon, Reggie drove me to a client’s house.  I regularly delivered birds there, showing up without prior notice, as was the case this time.  Dad came too.  He suspected something wasn’t right.  This client, nicknamed Happy Dog, sold top notch birds at his pet shop in the City.  Dad and I knocked on his front door for some minutes.  We heard grunting noises from inside.  An unhappy Happy appeared in his boxers.  He saw the cage of birds and beckoned us into the light of the enclosed veranda.  On this veranda was a bed on which sat a different type of bird wrapped in a sheet, likely the sort who did tricks.  She was displeased that her transaction was interrupted.  I was naïve to her kind of business and only hoped to offload the birds for my small fortune.

My hope evaporated.  Happy said these birds were illegal to keep.  The woman yelled at both him and I in coarse language.  She demanded I leave with the birds and he come back to bed.  He moved me away from her earshot and asked me the price.  I told him Bright’s offer.  The enormous amount seemed a joke.  He laughed, then replied he’d pay twenty-five shillings tops, a tenth of the price.  I reluctantly handed over the birds and resolved to stick to my usual species.  I continued to supply Happy.  He was a major client.

I saved my profits. My birds laid me quite a nest egg to feather my future.  When my adult life began, my business flew the coup.

[2n2n]

[...]

We both want the very same thing We are praying I am the one to save you But you don't even own your own violence Run away from home, your beard is still blue

[...]

You burn in the Mekong to prove your worth Go long, go long, right over the edge of the earth You have been wronged, tore up since birth You have done harm, others have done worse Will you tuck your shirt, will you leave it loose? You are badly hurt, you're a silly goose You are caked in mud, and in blood and worse Chew your bitter cud, grope your little nurse

[...]

In the middle of the woods Which were the probable cause We danced in the lodge Like two panting monkeys

I will give you a call, for one last hurrah And if this tale is tall, forgive my scrambling But you keep palming along the wall Moving at a blind crawl But always rambling

Wolf-spider, crouch in your funnel nest If I knew you, once Now I know you less In the sinking sand Where we've come to rest Have I had a hand in your loneliness?

When you leave me alone In this old palace of yours It starts to get to me I take to walking What a woman does is open doors And it is not a question of locking or unlocking

Well, I have never seen Such a terrible room Gilded with the gold teeth Of the women who loved you Though I die Magpie This I bequeath By any other name A jay is still blue

With the loneliness Of you mighty men With your mighty kiss That might never, never end While, so far away In the seat of the west Burns the fount of the heat Of that loneliness

There's a man who only will speak in code Backing slowly, slowly down the road May he master everything That such men may know About loving, and then letting go

[average-travel-companion]

I'm only a little bit sorry @wishicouldpostfromsecondaryblogs but I can't stop think about jaskier's bird crew (you called them the Aves) and you gave some of them codenames and i didn't want to just shout at you in your inbox so here i am.

[im pulling from wikipedia a lot btw]

Sandpiper: a coastal bird, with a long beak. It has four different feeding styles (differs based on habitat). They can range in size from 11 to 66 cm. (something something jaskier is a performer and can be big and showy or unnoticed as needed? the witcher netflix might disagree but they're on thin ice right now) The sandpiper is in a family of birds that are known as waders, meaning they wade in shallow water to forage for food.

- Side note, sandpipers are evidently a family of birds, made up of a number of species, like curlews and snipes. they're small to medium sized (which works with how jaskier was framed to be smaller than geralt in s1 and is taller than yennefer in s2 let me live the framing of certain moments was so good)

Nightingale: have been used to symbolize poets and their poetry, and a decent list of symbolic associates, specifically creativity, virtue, and goodness. They don't have as wide of a migratory distribution as sandpipers do. They're known for their singing. (Valdo Marx, anyone?)(after talking with @wishicouldpostfromsecondaryblogs Valdo would be a peacock so nvm i guess)

- Nightingales are in a species of birds known as Muscicapidae, also known as Old World Flycatchers? 9 - 22 cm in length, they live in environments with "a suitable supple of trees"

Magpie: known for their intelligence, in your fic had the hedgewitches in his group that would portal people from his and Nightingale's groups to safety. Magpies belong to the corvid family and are omnivores. They collect things.

- Corvidae are known for how they perch and sing, which is fun, they're medium to large in size

Skua: predatory seabirds, which makes sense with your fic in that Skua's group escaped on boats. As a species, skuas practice divebombing and nest in arctic regions, and are long-distance migrants. They practice what is known as kleptoparasitism, meaning that they steal other birds' catches. They're pretty big, 56 to 121 cm long.

- sorry not sorry but i'm imagining a witcher oc that's been lurking in my brain that's a cane witcher. Skua is the family name for this type of bird, there's an island known for this colony of birds. (the genus name for this type of bird in latin means "of dung" because it was originally thought that they were eating other birds' excrement)

Black Heron: known for using its wings as a canopy when fishing. It prefers shallow open waters and is found mostly on the eastern coast of Africa. they're medium-sized, 42.5 - 66 cm tall.

- black herons belong to the heron family, a group of herons is called a siege, they're carnivorous and migrate at night usually as individuals or in small groups (there can be more than one witcher/monster hunter)

Am I reading too much into the codenames? Probably. Do I want to expand on it? Yeah. (i also want to find a good like index or list of birds to compare sizes and locations but ye)(and also i kinda wanna extrapolate on beaks but here this is)

[bibliocratic]

I was going to write this for the Aspec Archives week, but I got overexcited, so here we are. 

AU: Mythical creatures. OG Archive team. 

Some CWs apply, see tags. 

The sea is more than water, her elder brethren taught her, warned her, chided her. It is home and harm and hungry, and you should not face it alone. Her siblings were older, ever knowing better, boisterous and boasting braver, but even they worried, scolded and fretted when she swam out too far alone into deep waters.

It will love you, but it will not always be kind, her eldest sibling bit out, snapped to mask their anxiety. There can be no bearings, in the deep-deep down, no anchors to denote where the sky lies.

When her people sleep, they rest wedged into some secure rock or crevice, tails looped around tails so no one is lost while dreaming.

You cannot be a shoal of one, my dearest, my youngest and bravest, the oldest of their shoal had said, when she told her she was planning on taking the rising when the waters warmed. Ascending landward on the tide swell, letting the shimmering scales of her tail split into skin.

She had not used the name Sasha at that time because that was a landward name she chose with care. Her folk gather names like a garland of pearls, to be constantly strung longer through life as age advances them; names for qualities, for momentous events, for hopes and desires. Her first name, gifted by her shoal, was guttural. It starts at the back of her throat, trails off into a susurration through gills. Mer is a difficult language to learn, though not impossible.

Tim tried. There is no one singular language of those who skirt the deepwaters, so he attempts to mimic her dialect. His pronunciation stumbling, he makes tentative sentences with the butchered grammar of fry. Martin’s grammar is even worse, though he picks up the eddies and waves of the sounds easier.

Jon, like most things in life, takes it as a challenge. One day, almost stubborn with nerves, to perform his task to perfection, he pushes out a juvenile approximation of her first name. Clipped and textbook and the stress in the wrong places, but Sasha smiles, showing her sharpest teeth in delight. Instructs him where to hold the hum at the back of his throat, how to roll the third phoneme upwards like an air bubble. Jon repeats it and repeats it, quietly smug and pleased at his achievement, and the sea in her soul rocks fondly at the sight.

She broached landward in the rising two moons after her age of maturation. She was one of a handful to come to shore. A sibling in Brighton who she phones every week, another two in Holyhead. Her first shoal traverses to warmer waters when the season shifts, and she would feel the rock-hollow absence of them if it was not for Tim, inviting her to participate in a hundred-and-one inane activities that keep her from feeling swept out; Jon, with his libraries of questions and intrigues, his quick-silver tongue; Martin, who sometimes swims a little further out from them but who finds her small knick-knacks in charity shops and craft markets and leaves them on her desk for no reason other than he has thought of her.

She makes three necklaces, plain with a strong chain, a single pearl attached. And on a day where her folk traditionally string garlands of seaweed and mangrove roots and colourful plants from coral reefs in a celebration of family –  there is no one word in her language for this idea; it poorly translates into hierarchies like sibling and brethren and elders, but these are not concepts that fit it exactly – she gifts them to the shoal that will anchor her in the depths of the sea, and bestows upon them names. Most Mer names are wishes for quick fins, calm waters, safe shores, and so she wishes these for them in a language they are not quite proficient in yet.

Her landward shoal is smaller than is traditional. But she loves them as treasures of her heart, and thinks she understands what her siblings told her, about anchors.

--

His parents, both harpies from local nests, are perplexed when his wings start coming in.

Must be a colouring from your mum’s side, his dad hums thoughtfully when Tim’s primaries grow in long and shining like struck bronze. He runs a careful finger down the central line of the rachis, and the wing shudders and jumps, the feathers still sensitive, and Tim complains that it’s ticklish. His wings are too small to fly away as his dad dives in, captures him in careful arms, corkscrewing upwards a little off the ground with Tim squirming and squealing and squawking in play, but they flutter and flap nonetheless.

The wing span’s from your dad’s side, no-one from my nest ever went more than five foot, his mother says, rubbing at the dark brown of his downy secondaries. Tim stretches them out wide, eager to boast at their length, the tips of his longest feathers reaching past his arms held out wide.

Danny’s wings are smaller. Magpie like, bold lines of white broken up by blue and black, the same as his parents. Tim’s wings, broader, a colour like beaten brass that tips into gold at the ends, draws attention, but he’s never been embarrassed. His family never treated him differently, so he didn’t dwell on it.

He can fly, though he doesn’t often. After his parents died, and after… after Danny, he moved to London, where there’s tighter airspace regulations and permits involved, so he mostly doesn’t bother. This doesn’t mean never, however. He has learned, while working in the Archives, that from the ground, his wings have enough lift to pick up both Jon and Sasha by at least a foot. He thinks he could probably manage Martin as well, if it wasn’t for the unfortunate fact that Martin is mildly allergic to a whole host of things, including feather dander, meaning he gets a bit watery eyed whenever he gets too close to Tim’s wings, and he’s a sniffing, red-eyed mess come  moulting season.

Anyway, he can always fly when he leaves the city. When it’s been too long since Sasha’s scales touched seawater, she invites him out to the coast. Jon apparently has had enough of the coast to last a lifetime, and Martin gets funny about large bodies of water, so it’s often the two of them. She swims out, the greenish scales of her tail catching the sun-struck water, and he, above, feeling the breeze brush through his cramped wings, follows her wake. When she breaches the surface in a playful arc, he swoops down, trying to catch her at the same time as she tries to splash him.

“You never thought to look into it?” Jon asks. Always brewing with questions. Tim is obligingly holding out one of his wings, and Jon, who takes everything like a project, has books out and webpages up but with no further clue as to why his colouration and span differ so from his parents.

Tim shrugs. “Doesn’t matter really, does it?”

Jon hums, clearly not agreeing, and Sasha rolls her eyes fondly,  and that is the end of that.

-

Marysia had hoped her child would not take after her husband. She’d lit candles and attended masses during her pregnancy, worn the beads of her rosary smooth. Her child had been born on land, miles from shore, and her husband had been a grounded man, who had folded up his pelt on their wedding night for her and swore to wear no other soul than his human one.

But then her husband leaves, the box where he kept his second soul empty, and Martin is eight years old, and he wakes up one morning glassy-eyed and complaining of nausea, his lip bleeding from where his sharpening teeth have ripped the skin, and she knows her prayers were not answered.

It is not unknown, for the second soul of some folk to flourish later. But it is a rough awakening, to have one’s body grow a new skin out of itself, and Martin is off school for over a week, riddled with fever and fervour, constantly parched, crying and sweating out salt-water.

She watches his skin prickle with grey and black fur, blotching with white over his stomach as he coils up under his covers, throws them off only for his limbs to reduce to shivering. His brown eyes have gone black-shot, his cries a mix of language and barks, and Marysia fears she will lose her only child to the sea.

It will be hard for him to fit in, she tells herself. It would be best to choose one, and he has his friends and family and her on land, and who knows where his father is now, and surely it would be cruel, an unnecessary agony for him to endure some other foreign pull away from all he knows.

She does what she thinks is a kindness, though that is neither excuse nor forgiveness. After nine days, his fur has come through, sleek and soft, his whiskers twitching, and she helps him peel it off as one would do clothes, revealing sweat-sheened limbs, his eyes slipped back into brown again. His gaze still distant and feverish, he tries to cuddle into her, and she soothes him while she finishes stripping off his pelt and folding it neatly.

While he sleeps, she burns it in a fire in the back yard.

When he comes back to himself, she lies and tells him that he’s been sick with a bad fever. And he trusts her, and never questions it. He doesn’t understand that she’s burnt a part of him up, scattered the ashes to the winds, but it was for the right reasons. To keep him safe, and happy, and with her.

He grows up human-limbed and cloven-souled, and she never tells him the truth.

--

Sasha floats in an ever-dark, stolen away and hidden. There is a knot, a cage-trap around her legs, which have fused into her tail although there is no water. The sea, far away, like the wail in a conch shell, throbs in her soul as she strains and shouts and snarls in the wrapping of spider’s webs.

The sea is the only thing with her in the dark.

Sound has a particular quality, underwater. She hears it first, an echo that shivers through her, like being thrummed on the backdraft of some shallow wave. And then it is a wash of insistence. A command.

The compulsion uses her names, landward and seaward and it pulls and demands her attention, and she shrieks and cries back, struggling in the depths. She is being called home, up up up to breach the surface, and she cannot help but answer.

There is a crack and the sea splits, and she is choking on cold and dusty air.

“Sasha!” someone is saying. “God, is she – she’s not – ?”

“Get that stuff off her, come on. Sasha. Sash, love, can you hear us?”

A series of thuds as she splutters. A twisting, gnarling screech, and several swear words.

“Jesus!”

“Shit – shit, get her out of the way.”

“Boss, move, give me the – ”

The screech degrades into a glitching, warping scream. There is the multi-layered sound of compressed air, and crackling fire,the woosh and stench of something burning.

In time, she cracks her eyes open to the punch of light. Her tail flaps weakly. Someone is pulling great strands of silk that has clumped like poorly soldered iron around her limbs, making visceral noises of disgust. She’s cold-stream shivering, surrounded by broken wood and chippings.

“Hey, hey, we got you. We got you. You with us, Sash?”

The faint scratch of feathers against her cheek. Furnace-warm arms are holding her.

Jon is kneeling down in front of her. Holding an axe and stinking of smoke, and she knows, she knows, that it was his voice she heard, although she doesn’t yet understand why.

Martin throws a blanket over her as she shivers, her tail shrivelling and bisecting into legs. He has silk in his hair, and his fingers are trembling, but his face is broken with a look of such relief.

“It’s you,” he says, and his hand touches at his throat, at the necklace she made for him. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

It’s Martin in the end that carries her out of the tunnels, tucking the blanket completely around her. He is talking in the scatter-gun way he does when he is anxious, babbling, and she can’t bring herself to listen. He smells of soot and saltwater, and she’s never noticed that before.

She falls asleep, curled up into his hold, drained and shaken, but feeling utterly safe.  

--

Jon is human. Completely, one hundred percent, although Sasha had joked once that way way back there must have been some Spinx in the family. Tim’s long suspected that Martin’s not quite human, no matter how he presents, but that’s Martin’s business, not his. Some folks have lineages that are rare, or mistrusted, or misunderstood, and Tim’s not one to pry.

Jon, though. Human through and through. Which is why he’s so worried.

“I shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Jon says. Martin’s with Sasha, making sure there’s no nasty side effects to her imprisonment in the table. Jon’s had a face on him for a while which means he’s Worrying with a capital W, and it’s taken hours for him to untangle himself into a blustered declaration to the rest of the class, spiked with nerves. “That place, it had her. It shouldn’t have… I don’t know what I did, but I told her to leave, a-and she could. And she shouldn’t have been able to.”

“And you think that you did that?”

“I – I know I did that, Tim, I felt it, o-or. I mean, I felt something!”

“Ok, alright. Alright. Let’s, let’s calm down and look at this logically.”

Jon goes over what he said while they struggled to rescue Sasha from the deep. It was something he said, he’s sure of it, which is why he is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the main archive office space with Tim, his trousers getting dusty and his temper scraping frayed, getting increasingly frustrated when he tries recreating exactly what he did with his voice, going through questions and commands and instructions and inquiries. And while Tim answers, it’s clearly not what Jon’s looking for, and he’s rubbing the hair at the back of his head in the way he does when he’s getting increasingly frustrated and is too bull-headed to walk away.

Then Jon, rolling his eyes and seething in annoyance, asks him a throwaway question, one of many he’s been trying – what’s your favourite colour? (seriously, Jon, that’s what you’re going with?!); What did you do at the weekend? (you know what I did, you and Martin were with me!).

“Why did you join the Magnus Institute?”

They both sit, frozen and horrified as Tim’s mouth opens and his words trip over his tongue in their eagerness to leave his mouth. As his eyes grow wide and water with tears as he cannot stop speaking about Danny, about the Covent Garden circus and Joseph Grimaldi. As Jon sits, ramrod-backed and cannot stop listening, a muscle jumping in his jaw.  His expression wars between frantic and panicking and hungry.

Tim feels wrung out and hollow once he’s finished. Jon’s manic with apologies. It takes both of them a long time to calm down.

“Maybe… maybe you’re a siren or something?” Tim suggests, but Jon is shaking his head.

“It’s this place, Tim. It’s those statements, when I read them. It’s … I – I think they’re doing something to me.”

Tim looks at Jon and the light strikes off his eyes in a way that it shouldn’t on a human.

He touches Jon’s arm.

“We’ll sort this,” he promises. “We got Sasha out, didn’t we? The four of us, we can get to the bottom of this, yeah?”

Jon nods, and gives a small fragile thanks, and that’s human enough for Tim.

--

Marysia told herself she was not a bad mother. That her son was simply a hard child to love, that he had all the worst trappings of his father, his brown eyes perpetually caught with a far-away look that doesn’t know where to place its longing. But even as she sickened, and he sloughed off every facet of himself in a pathetic attempt to please her, she couldn’t find anything but sorrow in her heart to look upon the man grown over familiar in face, a growth that grew deep-set and fungal into contempt.

She almost spat the truth out to him. Once or twice, with the thought that confessing might bring them closer. She wished he’d chosen the sea instead, so she wouldn’t have to look upon her amputated, half-formed child who would always be lost.

But she never did.

And Martin finds out alone, cornered in an unlocked office, his hands dropping the lighter as a thousand eyes open and watch satisfied as they pour his mother’s choices down his throat to choke him.

--

It starts when Martin starts sleeping in archive storage. When Tim watches worms burrow into Jon’s skin at the same time as they latch and gnaw and wriggle under his own. When they get Sasha back, and find Gertrude’s corpse and Jon leaves and gets hurt and hurt and hurt again, and the world around them gets smaller and meaner and there is nothing Tim can do.

He takes to storing food in their desk drawers. Nothing that will go off, or won’t keep. Tins and dried goods and non-perishables. He lines the walls of Martin’s storage room with fire extinguishers of different types, fire blankets, and spare first aid kits bulging with plasters and bandages and antiseptic wipes. He buys blankets and pillows and rope and penknives. He stress-moults constantly, and tucks his feathers out of sight, irritated and embarrassed at the sight of them,  and it occurs to him that nesting is not a healthy way to deal with this.

He wants his family safe. He used to think it was such a small thing to ask for.

He thinks about that when the bomb goes off.

He burns, and he is dying.

His rage and fear burn off into a different fury. That it has come to this, his family so threatened, that all he has to his name is his sorrow and trauma and frustration and vengeance.

Tim wants nothing more than to live. To see them safe. To rail and rage against what seeks to harm them. So he burns and he burns and burns, his wings aflame and his mouth twisted in a scream, and does not die.

They dig him out breathing from the rubble. His skin stained grey with ash and soot.

His new wings stretch out red as the sunset.

[gallavictorious]

Mickey Milkovich is Dead (and also a magpie)

You ever think about Mickey as a magpie? No? Well, if you wanna, read on –

Say Mickey gets hit by a car and dies somewhere between 1x03 and 1x07 (NO DO NOT WORRY THIS IS NOT SAD AT ALL I PROMISE). Say he comes before this deity / spirit / what-have-you who declares that Mickey has been a bit not good in life and is about to be sent something unpleasant but he’s so very young and also they can see that he has the potential for goodness so he’s going to get a chance to learn to…learn to love? Care for others? Embrace his true nature? Something like that. Anyway, as a test, his soul is being put into the body of a magpie for the duration of one month and during that time he is required to take care of and protect the person who was supposed to be his one true great love, Ian Gallagher. If he gets Ian to care about him in turn, he'll go to a nice afterlife place. (Yes, this is all very Beauty and the Beast. Deal with it.)

Cue Mickey spluttering about not being fucking gay and even if he was he wouldn't go for that scrawny redhead, also newsflash spirit person, Gallagher is dating my fucking sister, and how the fuck's a magpie supposed to protect anyone anyway, why not make him a pitbull or a fucking tiger, etc, etc. The spirit person obviously doesn't pay any heed to Mickey's outraged rant and hey presto! It is a bird!

Magpie Mickey's first instinct would probably be to fly the hell away from everything, but he's just a little bit curious about why the hell that idiot spirit would claim that Ian Gallagher is supposed to be his one true love. Okay, sure, the kid is pretty cute, he guesses, Mickey's always got a thing for red hair and freckles, but he's always seem like a bit of a pushover, soft, so what gives? (Also, if the guy's into dudes, why the hell has he taken up with Mandy? Mickey's not gonna let some closeted homo hurt his sister. Yeah – that's it. He's out to protect Mandy, that's all.)

Aaand you can imagine how it goes, as Mickey starts following Ian around and keeping an eye on him to figure out what the appeal's supposed to be. He soon finds himself getting a little bit intrigued, 'cause it seems Gallagher is actually kind of funny and smart and not anywhere near as soft as Mickey first thought? Also, yep, he's very, very gay, but it seems Mandy knows all about it so maybe Mickey doesn't need to pick his eyes out over it...

One day Mickey spots Ian being followed by some local lowlife, seemingly picking Ian out as an easy mark, and when the villain moves in to put a knife to Ian's neck Mickey's immediately in his face, talons out and beak at the ready. (Why? 'Cause Mandy would be sad if something happened to her fake boyfriend, obviously. What with their mum running off and then Mickey dying, she's got enough to be sad about already.) Mickey scares the would-be robber off, but maybe he catches the knife to a wing and is a little bit hurt and Ian has to nurse his unlikely saviour back to health? Brings him home and researches how to care for a wild animal – and it's weird but the bird doesn't seem all that wild, he's skittish but kind of docile and Ian knows he's just imagining things but it's like the magpie can actually understand every word he's saying?

Mickey finds himself reacting VERY strangely to Ian holding him so gently and then telling him he's being so good, he's doing so well, just a sec and Ian will be all done.

And then... they're friends. Ian now has a bird companion that kind of of just hangs around? Fiona won't have it in the house but Ian, with Debbie's help, makes him a cozy nest outside and bribes Carl into leaving the magpie alone rather than catching it for one of his experiments and brings Mick scraps and yeah, being a magpie fucking sucks but it doesn't all suck, maybe.

Ian tells Mickey all sorts of things, things he's never tell another person. Confides in him, complains about being in Lip's shadow, talks about his dreams and ambitions. Mickey thinks he should find it annoying, the way Ian won't shut up, but to his surprise he doesn't mind? He likes listening to Ian's voice. No one's ever wanted to tell Mickey things before. No ones's ever looked at him like they're happy to see him.

Mickey starts following Ian to school and to work, and when he sees Ian with Kash he is not pleased (because it's fucking disgusting, Ian getting with that old dude, not because he's fucking jealous or anything). Maybe starts doing shit to disturb them whenever they're making out, like attacking the door or, if he makes it into the shop, picking stuff up with his beak and tossing it around, ripping into the chip bags, shitting all over the register (or all over Kash). Ian's upset, but he's not that upset. “You're a fucking asshole,” he tells Mickey that evening, once Mickey's (not at all guiltily, but maybe a little worried that Ian will be pissed) makes it back to the Gallagher back porch.

Mickey's not sure why Ian calling him an asshole in that exasperated, fond tone of voice feels so right.

When Ian worried over the family being low on cash Mickey takes to brazenly swooping down and stealing bills right out of people's hand just as they've drawn them from an ATM. (That's actually really fucking funny, and Mickey keeps doing it just for shits and giggles until animal control is alerted and he almost gets caught.)

And then one day Mickey hears an unfortunately familiar voice calling his name from a great distance, Mikhailo, because the month is up and it's time to go, Mikhailo, and no, what the hell, he doesn't want to go, fuck heaven, he wants to stay with Ian, but he is fading, fading –

BOOM! He wakes up in a hospital bed because SURPRISE he isn't dead after all, just slipped into a coma after the car accident, but now he's awake, and it was all just a dream! (Yes, you bet your sweet ass I went with that cliche. Would you rather have Mickey be truly dead? Uh-huh. Didn't think so.)

Once he gets out of the hospital and back to his normal, shitty life, Mickey – for no particular reason, fuck you very much – decides to give school another shot, so he shows up for class and during lunch break he doesn't seek out some weakass kid to steal lunch money from, but just so happens to find himself in the vincinty of one Ian Gallagher.

Gallagher is watching him warily and when Mickey asks for a cigarette – asks, rather than punching Ian in the face and taking the packet out of his pocket – he looks downright startled. But he pulls out a smoke and hands it to Mickey and then they stand there in silence and this is awkward as fuck and Mickey is cursing himself, what the hell is he doing, it was just a dream, he doesn't actually know Gallagher, so why –

He notices that Ian is turning his head this way and that, as if he's looking for something.

”You expecting someone?” Mickey asks gruffly, for something to say.

”No, it's just, there's this bird that's kinda been following me around, but I haven't seen it since last night and... ” Ian trails off, shaking his head a little sheepishly as if realizing that what he's saying sounds insane. ”Never mind.”

Mickey doesn't say anything, but as he drags the cigarette smoke down into his lungs, he can feel his heart beat just a little bit faster, with sudden hunger and hope.

”You, uh, wanna do some shooting practise together after school?” he dares. ”Know a good spot.”

And Gallagher looks startled as fuck again – confused and maybe a little bit worried, like he thinks it's some kind of trap – but after a moment, he shrugs. ”Sure.”

(Oh, and since I am extremely against any notion of eternal damnation and the like, that spirit was never some guardian of the afterlife. If you want to imagine that it wasn't all a dream, imagine that she was some mischivious South Side spirit who'd gotten a little bit fascinated by Mickey and pulled some magic to give him a glimpse of a better life and a kick up his gay ass while he was in a coma. Well done, that spirit.)

[satashiiwrites]

Hello! 7, 29, and/or 40 for the fic writer asks?

7. Favorite piece of writing advice?

When you’re writing your first draft ignore the rules of what good writing should be.  

I’m serious.  

The most important part of a first draft is getting the words down.  You can always come back later and grimace over how you used the same descriptor like fifty times in a page or you misused the wrong word.  You can smack yourself for starting the last five paragraphs with the same word tomorrow.  You can realize that the dialogue doesn’t fit two months after you posted it. 

In the meantime, just write.  Get the idea out.  Put something down. Starting is also the hardest part. 

Side note: I’m a terrible editor. I usually get to a certain point and say: “good enough” and throw things out into the wild for other people to contemplate. 

I also think that there’s also a lot of terrible writing advice out there.  Yeah I know that long form fiction used to mean a certain word length when we were mostly bound to paper books but you know…. I’ve read just one actual paper book this year and it was because it wasn’t available digitally (which grrr). Old rules are meant to be broken—you just might write something more interesting for not having followed someone’s rules. 

Also—when’s the last time you got really great advice from someone famous?  I’ll listen to Neil Gaiman any day over just a magazine article listing ‘rules to get published’.  

Then again, I write mostly for myself and my friends’ enjoyment. 

29. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Everywhere?  Conversations with you ( @quietborderline or @radio-chatter) which sometimes ends up running me about 30 k words or more depending on what we’re talking about.  You both are great cheerleaders 😉, 

Sometimes all it takes is seeing something on my tumblr feed or a moodboard that doesn’t even seem related to the fandom in which I choose to write the idea.  I love the moodboards that other people post for other couples and my brain just is a magpie nest of random bits of ideas that end up stuck together some days. 

I also read/listen to a lot of books on tape.  I try to alternate nonfiction and fiction while I’m on my runs and they usually end up being my daydreaming/plotting sessions.  I’m also the type of person who will have the tv on in the background at home just for noise (which totally means I don’t watch things real closely sometimes) so sometimes I get random tangents with my favorite characters and attach them to whatever I last watched. 

I also watch a lot of documentaries on all sorts of random things.  

40. What do you think your writing specialty is?

Ooof. Well… um?  We’ve mentioned before that I don’t like editing very much. I’m probably your person if you like wordy, overly described deep world building/immersion in the story.  I think I do that okay?  Otherwise AAT would probably be only 100k words instead of the monster it is.  I love falling into research holes and have been known to listen to entire college lecture series on topics that pertain to my current writing projects (hello The Great Courses!). This is why I have a mini-hydroponics garden setup in my kitchen. 

Or maybe I should say shower sex?  That does seem to be a recurring theme 😅 see: exposure therapy, hydrotherapy for the soul, Just Friends? Buddie vs the Kiss Cam series.  I seem to write a lot about it (my inner Evan Buckley would like to remind people that the bathroom is the room where you’re most likely to get injured in your home so perhaps consider some anti skid patches for the shower floor). 

[in-tua-deep]

i love the unviable au an unhealthy amount, could you elaborate a little more on how they stop the apocalypse?

HMM. Well. They wake up, and Team Apocalypse is a go. Five absolutely insists that they get Vanya on the team, and he absolutely wants Vanya to know he’s alive. Well, present at least.

(Ben - Ben retreated from the world, after he died. He didn’t want the others to know. He wanted them to grieve and let him go. Besides. With how the rest of the family treated Klaus after - after everything

after Five. After Five vanishing and the drugs and Ben’s death and Klaus’s spiral that no one seemed to care enough to pull him out of. Klaus was the only sibling that could see Ben, and Klaus needed him. Needed him in a way that none of the rest of the family did. 

Ben didn’t ask Klaus to tell them others about him. Klaus figured that no one would believe him anyway.)

Klaus in hemming and hawing but Five isn’t exactly Ben, is he? He can interact with the world, in his own limited way. He can write. He could do this with or without Klaus.

But no one else needs to know, probably.

(Five doesn’t think much about how Team Apocalypse is going to be comprised of mostly people who he didn’t find dead on the ground. The only one he saw dead is Klaus, and isn’t that funny? To Klaus, a solid half of the team is dead.

To Five, only Klaus is.)

So Klaus and Ben and Five get up in the morning, and Five says that they Have To Find Vanya. Except Vanya’s not in the house, she’s gone back to her own apartment because she has stuff to do and a life to live.

(Somewhere, the Commission is getting antsy. Klaus heads towards Vanya’s apartment, and that’s not supposed to happen. Vanya is supposed to be isolated. Something is changing the timeline, and they aren’t sure what.

So they send some investigators. Their best. Hazel and Cha-Cha are deployed.)

So they go to the apartment. Klaus awkwardly knocks on the door and it swings open and there’s Vanya blinking at him in the way she always does. 

“Vanya!” Klaus cheers, and leans forward to wrap her in a hug, because he is a very touchy-feely person and he had to watch as Five and Ben got all the hugs last night. 

“Klaus?” Vanya says, sounding confused, but she lets her brother in. She watches him with wary eyes, and Klaus feels his heart break a tiny bit but - he’s known to his siblings, as a thief and a magpie. 

“Do you want... some tea?” Vanya asks awkwardly, shuffling towards her kitchen, “I have uh. I have a lesson soon, but I mean, uh...”

That’s about the time when Five loses patience from where he’s been telling Klaus to Say Something and starts picking up couch cushions and throwing them. 

“Uh.” Klaus says, staring, from Vanya’s point of view, into space. In actuality he’s looking at Five who is behaving like an absolute gremlin.

(Klaus is reminded, all over again, of how young his brother looks. Is. How old Five was when he died.)

“Do you want to explain what’s going on, Klaus?” Vanya asks tightly.

“Five is really impatient.” Klaus blurts out, and then covers his mouth because oops.

“Five?” Vanya says loudly, and Five rattles a cabinet in confirmation.

“Uh.” Klaus looks at Ben. Ben shrugs, because lets be honest they weren’t able to control Five when they were younger either, they have no chance now.

“Wait,” Vanya says, pale as milk, “So yesterday, in the courtyard...”

“Yup!” Klaus says cheerfully, putting on his best grin, “Aw, you know, a broken calendar is right twice a year and all that!”

“That’s not the saying.” Five informs him, flopping dramatically onto the couch.

“It was almost the saying.” Ben says sympathetically.

Klaus valiantly ignores them. 

“Five is... here?” Vanya asks, her eyes scanning the apartment.

“On the couch, like he owns the place the little shit.” Klaus tells her.

Vanya stares at the seemingly empty couch for a moment, and after a few beats of silence, she just says “I’m going to go ahead and cancel that lesson.”

(Somewhere, somewhen, the Commission’s hackles all go up in alarm as Harold Jenkins frowns down at his phone and wonders if he should try his luck and go to the apartment anyway.)

Later, when Ben has Five distracted trying to teach him to pick something up, Klaus talks quietly to Vanya.

“Van, he’s - he’s so little.” Klaus tells her, voice a little too thick, “He looks - he’s exactly the same as when he left. He’s so tiny, and he’s still in that fucking uniform. He’s so tiny and I can’t stand it.”

And Vanya wraps her arms around her brother. She and Klaus have never been close, not even when they were little, but they’re both outsiders. They’re both rejects. And there’s a certain sort of kinship in that.

“I wish I could see him, too. See them, too.” She whispers, because telling her about Five also means telling her about Ben.

And Klaus could say a million things to that. Could snarl and tell her to be careful what she wished for, because alongside Ben and Five came a hundred million nightmares that rattle around Klaus’s head every time he’s too sober to ignore them. 

But he looks over as Five slaps at Ben’s shoulder to get his attention and then guide his hands over to the apple they have settled in between them as their test subject. 

And then he looks at Vanya, and he says - “Yeah, me too.”

And then there’s a knock on the door.

“Shit.” Vanya says, swearing. “I left a message but - it’s probably my student. Just. Lay on the couch and look miserable or something.”

Klaus is very good at acting, sort of. So he immediately drapes himself across the couch and groans dramatically, adding in a cough for good measure. 

Vanya rolls her eyes, and opens the door to apologize to whatever child was supposed to have a lesson and - 

Oh. Not a child. An adult. She blinks, “Uh, hi. Can I help you?”

“Hi!” The man greets, smiling at her. Not too many people smile at her like that. “I’m here for the lesson? I know, I know. I’m a bit older than your usual clientele - ”

Klaus coughs loudly and Vanya winces, “I’m sorry.” She says, cutting the man off, ��I tried to leave a message - I’ve had an emergency come up and I’m not able to do lessons today.”

“Oh, but - ” The man starts, and Vanya suddenly feels someone push on the door as if to close it. She manages to catch it, but considering there’s no one there, well.

“I’m very sorry.” She says firmly, using one hand to bat through the air behind the door to shoo who she assumes is Five away. “If you send me your availability, I’d be happy to reschedule.”

“That would be really great.” The man says, nodding. “Do you think you’d be free tomorrow? It’s just - I’d really like to get started, you know?”

The door rattles again and Vanya winces, “I’m not sure. If it’s urgent I can, uh, send you the information for another teacher. I really am sorry about this.”

“I’ll call later then.” The man says, “Sorry for bothering you.”

“Not a problem.” Vanya says automatically, “Have a good day.” 

And then she closes the door, and turns around to frown at Klaus, “Tell Five to quit, I had that handled.”

“You know, I only have to translate his responses to you.” Klaus points out, sitting up and swiping a hand across the back of his mouth, “Like, he has ears.”

“Five, I had that handled. You didn’t need to be pushing on the door.” Vanya says to the room at large, her hands on her hips. 

“Five!” Klaus says loudly, sounding very scandalized, “Why! We oughtta wash your mouth out with soap!”

Vanya gives him a critical look, “I’m not sure whether you’re saying that to get him into trouble or if he’s actually swearing. Either way, we should probably talk.”

“Five says to clear your schedule for the week.” Klaus says scooting over on the couch and giving it an inviting pat, “You’re officially recruited for team apocalypse.”

“Me?” Vanya asks, completely confused. And why shouldn’t she be? None of her siblings have willingly recruited her for anything before. Forget being the last kid picked for team sports, Vanya wasn’t even on the list. 

Klaus’s eyes soften, because even if Vanya wasn’t on the list, Klaus was still the last picked kid. “Five insists. Loudly.”

And Vanya smiles. It’s wobbly, but it’s there, because she’s been leaving out peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches and leaving the lights on since she was a kid, grieving for the one sibling who was on her side. And here he is. Refusing to ignore her. Picking her for the team. 

Of course the apocalypse can’t happen the same way, because Vanya isn’t isolated. She’s part of Team Apocalypse.

Instead of nagging at her about Leonard, Allison sighs and tells say that she loves Klaus as well but... he’s Klaus. He’s probably going to rob her the moment her back is turned and all that. He’s still their brother, and it’s nice that Vanya is hanging out with him but...

And Vanya bristles, because yeah Klaus is the family fuck up but he’s their brother. She’s the family wallflower, the odd man out, the freak. So she and Allison still fight, and Allison still insists that she’s just looking out for Vanya and Vanya insists that she’s never needed Allison to look out her before now -

An important thing of note.

Five doesn’t have the eyeball.

Five knows what it looks like, he probably had it in his apocalypse nest and poked at it when he was stuck on an equation. He knows that color it is. He probably memorized its serial number. He doesn’t have the physical eye.

Klaus is still chaotic as fuck, but Vanya adds a certain sense of... level headedness to the team. And despite everything, Klaus is actually fairly efficient... when he wants to be. 

Vanya has the exhausted “I don’t want to be here any more than you do” look to her that inspires some measure of sympathy from overworked desk ladies so they probably get the info about the eye not existing yet without all the... extra drama.

Now. Hazel and Cha-Cha aren’t hunting someone down. They’re investigating. So they don’t burst in gun blazing, they’re basically stalking Vanya in an effort to figure out both What Changed and how to isolate her.

I know what you’re thinking. But what about Griddys? Do the squad not know about the commission agents trailing them?

Well, after the whole eye escapade, Klaus is hungry. He fondly recalls food an ex used to make with Vanya and she smiles and marvels at how different their lives are. And then, because she’s suddenly a little nostalgic, she offers to take him to the one restaurant they went to as kids.

Griddys.

So they go, and Ben and Five are there are well, and Klaus probably insists on getting them waffles as well (“it’s lunch time Klaus” “waffle time is ALL the time Vanya”) so they’re sitting there eating

and of course Cha-Cha and Hazel are stalking them. And why be careful and hide their faces. The Hargreeves don’t know them. They can just blend in as two ordinary people, eating lunch.

Except there’s the one little ghost who can. Five spots them, and immediately freaks out because those are ASSASSINS and he never did figure out what role Vanya played and What If They’re There To Kill Her

So he frantically informs Klaus, and Klaus whispers to Vanya, and Five tells them they need to get the hell out of dodge. ESPECIALLY Vanya. 

And this is Vanya’s life now, so she sneakily tucks money under her plate (because she isn’t dining and dashing Klaus, jesus) and smiles at Klaus and goes to the backroom, where she shimmies out the window.

Klaus stuffs the remainder of his waffle in his mouth and grimaces at his hands and goes to the bathroom as well, except he diverts and goes out the back entrance where he meets Vanya in the alley and they both scarper. 

“I can totally talk you through stealing a car.” Five says eagerly, “I saw like, loads of commission agents hotwire a care. I totally know what I’m doing.”

“Fucking sweet.” Klaus says, nodding. “Pick out a ride then, little man.”

“Absolutely not.” Vanya says, having gleaned enough from Klaus’s words to understand, “We are not stealing a car, jesus. If we need a ride, I can always... I don’t know. Call a cab.”

“The little dude has a point.” Klaus says, “Calling a cab isn’t exactly uh, you know. Conducive to a quick getaway.”

Vanya frowns.

“We could steal Diego’s car.” Ben offers, because secretly Ben is also very chaotic.

“Diego’s car.” Klaus agrees with wonder.

“We’re going to get stabbed, aren’t we.” Vanya sighs, putting her face in her hands. It’s not a question.

(And meanwhile in the diner, Cha-Cha realizes that the targets are gone and checks outside, and Hazel gets to chat with the lovely owner. Agnes. What a lovely name, huh?)

Honestly the whole au sort of ends up being like. The Klaus and Vanya show against the siblings while Five and Ben work together in the background and Five causes, you know, absolute chaos. And also gets lots of hugs. Ben and Five get lots of hugs in this au. 

Klaus still gets kidnapped. Not because they want to get Five, but because they want to isolate Vanya. Well, not just that. They’d just kill him if that was it. They also want to know - what changed. What made Klaus seek Vanya out. What changed the timeline.

And Five can move things. Five can write on things. So he sees Klaus get kidnapped and follows him, figured out where he is, tells Ben to look after Klaus, and goes back to Vanya. He grabs a sharpie, and scrawls the address on the closest available surface, and hey if Vanya just happens to be fighting with Diego about the car...

“What the FUCK.” Diego demands.

“Fuck.” Vanya says, looking at the address. “Fuck. Okay. Okay, Diego, are you in?”

“In what?” Diego demands, scrubbing a finger over the sharpie that has popped up on the windows of his fucking car.

“Rescuing Klaus.” Vanya says, looking braver than she feels.

“Klaus can deal with his own shit.” Diego growls.

“Okay.” Vanya says, and of course she’s alone, she’s always been alone in this fucking family -

“Where are you going.” Diego asks, jogging up to her, “I don’t know what the fuck he’s gotten himself into, but you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Then I guess I’ll get to see Klaus either way.” Vanya bites out, “And the family will have rid itself of another problem, huh? Win win all around.”

Diego swipes a hand over his face and swears, “Fuck just, fuck. Okay. Okay, fine. We’ll go drag Klaus’s ass out of the fire. And then you are going to explain exactly what the fuck happened to my car.”

“Deal.” Vanya says, already in the passenger seat and buckling in with determination. 

Safety first, bitch.

So they go to the hotel. They bust in. They manage to get away. And Klaus manages to get his hands on the briefcase.

“Klaus, wait - no!” Five screams, and Klaus opens the suitcase and vanishes.

(But Five was touching Klaus, was trying to grab his arm to pull him away, terrified and incapable of helping because he’s intangible. Five gets to go with on this side trip to Vietnam.)

And then a light flashes, and there’s Klaus, and Five, and - some random dude.

“I thought you were joking.” Dave hollers, staggering backwards and staring at the suitcase like it’s going to jump up and bite him.

(Five is impatient, and irritable, and wants to get home to take care of things and stop the end of the world. Klaus falls head over heels for a soldier, but in the past few days... he’s gotten awfully fond of Vanya. He wants to help her.

By our powers combined, we have a Klaus who is motivated to go home, but also motivated to convince Dave to come with. We end up with... alive Dave.)

(Wow this is one of the few aus I have with alive Dave. Go me.)

“Vanya, Diego, Ben.” Klaus says, beaming, “Meet my boyfriend, Dave!”

“Klaus, I say this with the utmost sincerity.” Vanya deadpans. “But what the fuck.”

“Ben?” Diego demands.

Vanya and Klaus turn to Diego with contemplative looks.

“Oh yeah, forgot about that.” Vanya says.

“In my defense I’ve been gone for like, months.” Klaus says. And then pauses meaningfully. “Wait a second, does that mean - ”

A pebble flies and hits Klaus in the face. This does not stop him.

“I’m the oldest sibling!” Klaus yells, preening like a peacock, “Behold, infants! It is I, your eldest brother!”

“Absolutely not.” Diego growls, as Klaus points at thin air. 

“Am so. Physically, I am older than everyone else. Yeah, it’s on technicality. Suck it, Casper.”

“Klaus, stop messing with Five.” Vanya sighs, sounding like this is something she has said before. “You know he can probably kill you.”

“Five?” Diego squawks.

“Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” Dave asks, already looking like he’s accepted his fate and life might as well be this weird. 

“The world is ending in five days. Welcome to team apocalypse.” Vanya tells him sympathetically.

“The world is what.” Diego hollers.

“Oh yeah.” Klaus muses, “Forgot to mention that as well.” 

“What is going on!” Diego howls.

“Don’t we all want to know.” Klaus flutters in sympathy.

After that, they decide to convene at Vanya’s apartment and go over what they know, and what they’ve learned.

Team apocalypse gains two (2) members! Welcome to the team, Diego and Dave. 

(Diego didn’t complain to Patch about a missing sibling because he doesn’t know Five is around. Patch doesn’t find a ransom note, because Hazel and Cha-Cha didn’t leave one. Patch doesn’t die, and Diego has no reason to go tearing off in grief and anger and vengeance.)

And that’s more on team apocalypse trying to stop the apocalypse lmao

[themindfulnessmagpie]

A fun little post for today, here's some random facts about magpies! The Eurasian Magpie is one of the most intelligent animals in the world and is one of the few non-mammals to be able to recognise itself in the mirror. They can use tools and some types can even mimic human speech. The Romans believe that magpies had great reasoning abilities and they were sacred to Bacchus, the god of wine. They are omnivores Most magpie species are monogamous and mate for life. Non-breeding magpies will often be seen together in flocks. They are non-migratory and often stay within 10km of where they first hatched. Research has shown that, contrary to popular belief, magpies are indifferent to shiny objects. It is probable that the operas 'la pie voleuse' and 'la gazza ladra' was responsible for this myth as in both, a young servant is sentenced to death for stealing silverware from her master when in fact it was his pet magpie. To stop the bad luck of seeing a single magpie you should salute it with 'good morning captain/general!' In Asia they are symbols of good luck. The Magpie is the national bird of Korea. The number of magpies in the UK and Ireland has quadrupled in the last 35 years, one suggestion as to why this might be is in the increase in carrion due to road kill providing a wealth of food. It is unknown as to whether the population of magpies has had a large detrimental affect on songbird numbers. Many say not, however in studies where magpies have been removed, numbers have increased. A male magpie, attracted to a female decoy, will attempt to court and mate with her unless his mate accompanies him, in which case their joint response is aggressive. Long eared owls will often adopt old magpie nests. Magpies often build their nests in trees but if none are suitable they will build their nests on the ground. Do you have any cool magpie facts? #magpie #magpies #birds #birdfacts #nature #naturefacts #corvids #crows #animals #animalfacts #animal #circleoflife #scavenger #attitude #flight #bacchus #picapica #facts #fun #intelligent #flock #shiny #mythology #myth #badluck #luck #goodluck #asia #korea #songbird https://www.instagram.com/p/CRgkPPyN1Cn/?utm_medium=tumblr

[pictureamoebae]

A little update on my squirrel adventures.

I know a few by name now. Stumpy (with half a tail) and Brazen Vinnie (the boldest of the lot, who will chase you down from a distance and take nuts from your hand) are my main pals and I love them with all my heart. Sometimes I won’t see one of them for up to a week but so far they’ve always come back again.

Then there’s Dennis (when I first saw him he was hopping), who has some fur missing on his tail in a line; Ears, who has the brightest white patches at the base of his ears and is a total chonker; Morticia and Gomez, who are nest mates who live in a tree in the cemetery that I can see from my kitchen and office windows; and Saga, who crosses a tree branch bridge to cross the road between the cemetery and a new housing development opposite.

Stumpy seems to be friends with Dennis and Ears. Vinnie isn’t friends with anyone but humans.

I feed the squirrels every day. The magpies follow me round the parks waiting for me to turn away so they can swoop down and hoover up any leftover nuts and seeds.

There’s an older gentleman (I mean, he’s probably only about 15 years older than me, I keep forgetting I’m an actual grown up adult) I see sometimes who comes from another town to feed the squirrels from time to time. He knows Vinnie and Stumpy too. Everyone knows Vinnie. You can always tell where Vinnie is if you see someone standing in the middle of some grass looking frantically at their feet. That means Vinnie’s there harassing them for food. A couple of weeks ago I taught a little girl all about the park squirrels, and gave her a handful of nuts to go and feed them. I exchange pleasantries with a man who always seems to be walking his absolutely gorgeous dog whenever I’m stood in the small park calling out like a mad woman for Stumpy. I’ve been filmed by random passersby feeding Vinnie. I have a couple of kilos of walnuts and hazelnuts in shells on their way to me so the squirrels have to break through to get the goods (their teeth continually grow, so it’s good for them to have to gnaw through stuff to grind them down). I also buy proper waterfowl food now for the ducks and geese.

On the subject of crazed waterfowl: there have been a couple of pairs of cormorants visiting the lake since late autumn. They’re not always there, and sometimes you’ll only see one of them, but they’re ace, especially when they’re drying their feathers. Collectively their names are ABBA. A largish group of goosanders have suddenly appeared on the lake too. Gil and Scott, the herons, are still around, although I usually only see Gil. Their old summer nest is really easy to spot now all the leaves are almost gone. A small group of collared doves has moved in and likes to perch in a group of trees by the lake. And there is a flock of some very tiny birds I can’t identify because they fly far too fast and are too small. They are usually foraging in the undergrowth where you can’t spot them at all, and when you get near they all fly up into the trees. They might be chaffinches or some kind of tit, idk. 

My mental health has taken a nosedive the past few months, but going to the parks every day is like taking a massive dose of medicine. I don’t know what I’d do without it. I’m so lucky to live within walking distance.