#shadow-woman and blackbird

[peaxhygirl]

𝙰𝚁𝙼𝙰𝙽𝙳𝙾 𝙰𝚁𝙴𝚃𝙰𝚂 𝚇 𝙵𝙴𝙼𝙰𝙻𝙴 𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙳𝙴𝚁 - 𝚅𝙸𝙲𝙴 (4)

: ̗̀➛𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚊 𝙱𝙻𝙰𝙲𝙺 𝚏𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚎 𝙾𝙲

: ̗̀➛𝚂𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢: [WARNING] There is smut present in this chapter.

: ̗̀➛𝙰𝙽: This is also long, maybe longer than part 3-- I may have over indulged. Hope it doesn't suck!!

Raven laid in her bed doing a mental recap of the night. How had they gone from fighting like cats and dogs, to not speaking, to her being on the verge of begging him to fuck her on the spot just to relieve that dull throb he'd stirred up.

Every thought she had of the night made her feel like she was right there on that dance floor all over again. She could still feel the scruff of his beard tickling her cheek, and it reignited the goosebumps on her skin. She'd been constantly going back and forth about what would drive him to do such a thing. Constantly trying to explain away his actions so she could get some peace of mind and go to bed.

She was coming up with nothing. "You know what, I'm just gonna go ask him." She spoke to herself before rising from her bed. She took one step forward before puasing to look at herself in the mirror. "Girl, no the fuck you not."

The soft knock on the door of his bedroom caused Armando to sigh in annoyance. "If it's Dorn, it's too late to talk about techy shit. If it's Marcus, I don't want to hear about something you weren't even going to tell me, man." His words were met with a brief silence before the door began to creek open.

He didn't move from his position, laid on his back with both hands behind his head. He was relaxed, which was a very rare occasion, so he wasn't going to break that. He simply turned his head to not see either of the men, but to his surprise Raven slowly stepped in.

Even in the shadows and moonlight that seeped through the window, her face was still gorgeous. He eyed her briefly. Noting that she only wore a large t-shirt that read "Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa House." Whatever the fuck that meant. "Come in, blackbird." He rasped.

His eyes were trained on her, this wasn't the same woman. She was more timid than usual, softly closing the door and coming to sit on the edge of the bed near him. "Why do you keep calling me blackbird?" Her face softly contorting in confusing. "Because your name is Raven, genius." He smirked.

Raven stared at him for a moment, how was he so casual with everything that'd happened tonight. She had a million questions, and she couldn't think of a single one to start with. "I--I'm sorry for calling you a drug dealer. That wasn't a nice thing to say to someone who's trying to turn their life around." Not only was her demeanor different but so was her voice, it was soft, almost as if she was scared to break the silence of the night.

A warming balm spread across the male's heart. In his life he hadn't gotten many apologies, even when he was clearly wronged. So, hearing this from the same women who threatened to pull her gun out on him just a few days ago was surprising yet appreciated.

Raven on the other hand couldn't deny that this was a beautiful man. That Lowery DNA was something special. She studied each of his features thoroughly in the darkness of the room. Those thick and defined eyebrows accented by dark curly lashes always caught her attention. She hadn't realized how hard she was staring until Armando cleared his throat, ripping her from her trance. "I appreciate that, but tell me, little one. Did you just come here to apologize?"

With that simple question her throat grew dry and her face hot. Why did she come here? What was this going to accomplish? She'd spent ten minutes arguing with herself about this and not once had this crossed her mind. Her teeth sunk into her bottom lip, what the fuck was she supposed to say?

Armando sat up from his position, his bare muscular chest visible to her doe eyes. "Nah, I know that look. You're looking a little needy right now, baby." His hand gently gripped her chin while he observed her face.

She was practically spewing pheromones all over this room. "Just say the word and I can fix that for you. Cause God knows I've been fantasizing about these lips since we left that club." He spoke to her in the sultriest tone she'd ever herd. His rough thumb pad pressing into her lip and pulling it away from her teeth. His body was now on autopilot as he moved closer to her. Closing the gap between them. Thier lips inches apart, close enough to just gently brush together as his spoke. "Can I take care of you?"

The woman had no audible response, only leaning forward to fully close the space between their lips.

The kiss between these two was much like their dynamics. Feverish, rough, passionate, and yearning for more. Armando wasted no time stripping Raven of her clothes, delighted to see that she wore noting under her shirt.

The dress she wore that night had done no justice compared to the masterpiece of her bare body. "Just relax, baby." His voice was muffled while he kissed along her inner thigh. His eyes darted from her anxious face to the beautiful pink junction between her legs. Just looking at her he could see her juices coating glistening folds.

He licked over his lips before offering her the same release. His tongue traveling up her center. The soft moan that filled the space when he'd brushed against her swollen bud was music to him, it was a sound he'd commit to memory for the rest of his life.

And Raven, poor Raven had lost all of her bravado. Hell, Armando was sucking it out of her- literally. He licked and sucked along her pussy, teasing her when he'd rotate his tongue just around her clit but not fully attaching his mouth to it, not giving her the suction she'd kill for. "Eres la cosa más dulce que he probado en mi vida, nena." "Armando." She was breathless, doing her best to get out her words as her chest heaved. "P-please."

"Please what?" He questioned with a sinisterly teasing tone. "You want more?" His words were followed behind him plunging two of his thick fingers into her. Immediately, her warm walls squeezed him as his pumped his hand. "Oh god." She cried, moving her hips to meet his motions. Finally, Raven took the moment to gaze down at the male who was already staring at her in hunger. "That's right baby, be a good girl and ride my fucking fingers." A shiver ran down her spine at his words, he was going to drive her insane. "Armando, make me cum." Finally gaining some of her wits back, Raven reached down, locking her fingers into his dark hair pulling him back into her center.

Her assertion of her own dominance in this moment caused Armando's rock-hard length to ache even more as happily obliged. Diving back between her legs. This time, his lips finally wrapped her throbbing bud, sucking roughly and swirling his tongue. His fingers continued their assault on her sopping hole. Curving upwards slightly to gently press into the spongy space of her g-spot. She wouldn't last long with this combination and they both knew it.

Her hips writhing against him, pushing herself farther on to his face. "F-fuck Armando. I'm about to c-" She hadn't even been able to finish her statement before her orgasm hit her like a ton of bricks. He felt her contracting around his fingers, her clit throbbing against his tongue as he continued to lap her at juices until this wave of ecstasy subsided. It'd honestly knocked the sound out of her.

Seconds felt like hours to Raven. The pleasure that shot through her body was something no other man had made her feel. She basically had to pry Armando's mouth from her sensitive core feeling breathless, but he only smirked in pride at the whimpering bundle of nerves he'd just turned her into.

Raven sat up on her elbows, still breathing heavily as she glanced down at his exposed erection. She couldn't help but be mesmerized as he stroked himself. He was beautiful, long, thick, and veiny. She gazed up at him through her eyelashes to meet a lustful stare before turning over to all fours. She positioned herself in an arch that left her head flush to the mattress and her pussy and ass propped in the air exposed to him. "Well." She smiled innocently. "Show me what 'cha got."

That was all he needed to hear from her. He wasted no time positioning himself behind the ass that was as beautiful as he thought it would be. He stared down between the two. Watching as he drug the thick pink tip of his length through those slick folds he'd certainly be tasting again. He took a moment to apply the slightest pressure to her entrance before sinking into her.

She fit around him like a glove, squeezing and engulfing him in warmth and wetness. For Raven, he stretched her walls so deliciously she almost started to drool.

Both of them moaning in unison.

Slower strokes started their passionate session, Armando knew he wasn't small by any means and wanted her to comfortably adjust before things truly got started.

The wet sticky sounds of him slowly working into her were pornographic. With growing speed, he felt her grow better. His hands gripped her hips, thumbs digging into her soft skin as the slapping sounds of their bodies colliding together grew louder. "Joder." he growled, his head tilting back with slightly parted lips and closed eyes.

Raven couldn't believe how wet she'd grown; her arousal coated the inside of her thighs and even created a wet spot on the bed below them. Her body was rocked by Armando's powerful thrusts, damn her being sore tomorrow. She'd enjoy whatever he had to offer now. She allowed herself to come up a bit, moving her hips back to now meet his thrusts. "Throw that shit back, mami. Let me see what you can do." A challenge mirroring her own was all she needed. Immediately Raven began to throw her weight back into him, her ass bouncing off was a sight he'd be storing in his memory bank for a lonely night. Their mixed calls of pleasure and obesities filled the room along with the occasional smack of the ass he gave her.

Eventually. they ended up in a position where Armando was kneeling behind the woman who was practically seated into his lap as she bounced. Armando's large hand tangled itself in Raven's hair, yanking her head back to look at him. The sight of her flushed cheeks and a slight sheen of sweat present on her skin drove him crazy. And fuck did she fit him snugly like she was made for him. Not releasing her, he began animalistic thrusts that caused her to bellow out. "Shit.' She cursed. "Cállate, pequeña. Despertarás a los demás."

His own voice was laced with the need to release. Something they both felt coming once he began to throb inside of her. "Fuck, are you about to cum? Please cum in me, I wanna feel it. Please. I wanna feel you." Her begging cut the last remaining shred of control he had. His thrusts becoming sloppy, short, and shallow as he worked towards his own orgasm. One hand stayed tangled in her hair while the other squeezed at her double D breast and pinched at her hardened nipples. As soon as Armando felt the tensing of his abdominal muscles, he also felt the release as he shot his warm load into her. Raven experienced her own secondary orgasm, their bodies already in sync. Her fingers had been working at her clit, but they both knew it was him coating her walls that threw her over the edge.

Heavy breathing filled the room, neither one of them daring to pull away from the other. Armando placed a kiss on the woman's head. Her hair already starting to curl back up. It took a moment, but eventually Armando managed to pull himself and Raven from the bed. Cleaning them both because he'd honestly worn her out. Her attempt to return to her own room was met by Armando following behind her, stating that she might as well put that bonnet on and get comfortable, because he'd be sleeping with her for the night.

𝚃𝚁𝙰𝙽𝚂𝙻𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂

"Eres la cosa más dulce que he probado en mi vida, nena." - You're the sweetest thing I've ever tasted, baby.

"Joder." - Fuck

"Cállate, pequeña. Despertarás a los demás." - Quiet down, little one. You'll wake the others.

[greenerteacups]

Hello greenTeacup!

I see you post art on here occasionally, and I wonder, are there any poems you love? or would love to share? or even ones that have stayed with you over the years?

I think we all can always do with more poetry, and here's one that comes to mind when thinking about the amazing women you've written in Lionheart.

The Knight Wonders What, Exactly, He Rescued by Jeannine Hall Gailey

His hands are full of brambles, and the woman in that tower a bit more feral than anticipated; it turned out she had a bone collection and a habit of turning princes into toads. With her her hair cut short, sometimes her eyes and cheekbones look so sharp she reminds him of some forest creature gone astray in a floating green dress. He makes dinner for the two of them, gently snapping asparagus in two, cutting the fascia away from a chicken breast with a sigh. A backfire, a black spire, a fear ark, a fae bicker: a creature with a beautiful song and sharp claws. Nothing the way he pictured it.

Hello! What a lovely poem. I think dropping this in someone's inbox is like leaving a tray of baked treats on their doorstep. Great use of "fascia," too, that's a word we should bring back into circulation.

In return, I offer you "Evolution," by Linda Bierds.

How, Alan Turing thought, does the soft-walled, jellied, symmetrical cell become the asymmetrical horse? It was just before dusk, the sun’s last shafts doubling the fence posts, all the dark mares on their dark shadows. It was just after Schrodinger’s What is Life, not long before Watson, Franklin, Crick, not long before supper. How does a chemical soup, he asked, give rise to a biological pattern? And how does a pattern shift, an outer ear gradually slough its fur, or a shorebird’s stubby beak sharpen toward the trout? He was halfway between the War’s last enigmas and the cyanide apple—two bites— that would kill him. Halfway along the taut wires that hummed between crime and pardon, indecency and privacy. How do solutions, chemical, personal, stable, unstable, harden into shapes? And how do shapes break? What slips a micro-fissure across a lightless cell, until time and matter double their easy bickering? God? Chance? A chemical shudder? He was happy and not, tired and not, humming a bit with the fence wires. How does a germ split to a self? And what is a—We are not our acts and remembrances, Schrodinger wrote. Should something— God, chance, a chemical shudder?— sever us from all we have been, still it would not kill us. It was just before dusk, his segment of earth slowly ticking toward night. Like time, he thought, we are almost erased by rotation, as the dark, symmetrical planet lifts its asymmetrical cargo up to the sunset:  horses, ryegrass— In no case, then, is there a loss of personal existence to      deplore— marten, whitethroat, blackbird, lark—nor will there ever be.

[bonnieisaway]

Hi ! I am so happy to meet other people liking scissors seven ! The joy is enormous ! Anyway I was wondering about your thoughts on the Xuanwu assassins mostly the ones like Blackbird, the red woman (forgot her name), Red Tooth, Green Phoenix, etc

HELLO :33 okay this post might get really long

as for Blackbird: honestly I don't have too many thoughts on him... fucking LOVE his design though. and his backstory is super cool and I love how subtle his motivations are but how obvious it feels to any viewer why he's doing the things he does and why it makes sense. Over the course of the end of season 3 and the start of season 4, Blackbird starts the fight saying he doesn't want the money, he wants Seven to die slowly and painfully at his hands. and then by the end of it, he's saying "Your death will be quick, I promise you." And it's kind of subtle as to why his attitude changed but uses his backstory to illustrate his personality and motivations so much. He wants to be the hero. He wants to be selfless and say - "oh, I don't care for the reward, but I need to punish him" when we've seen no indication as to why he would want Seven dead personally, but when Seven starts winning the fight, Blackbird isn't playing games anymore. He needs Seven dead. He needs to be the hero here. He's been conditioned as long as he's be training that someone else can take the prize, the notoriety, the reward, but he has to be the one to do the job. And it fuckin destroys him when he can't because he can't possibly fathom not being the hero. Because he's sacrificed his entire body and life for this, if he doesn't win this fight, if he can't be the hero here, then what was it all for? What was the point of his suffering and his pain? And ultimately he goes so far to justify his suffering that it gets him killed. Which is unfortunate because I kinda wanted to see more of his character, but it's so.. in line and dedicated to his motivations and character building. Like it's so on brand for him and it illustrates his character so well, I just hope we get to see flashbacks of him in the past so we can see more of his personality.

Manjusaka (the red woman): HOOOOOO BOY. So I also adore her design, I actually have a character I made (for a different thing, not related to S7) where I took inspiration from Manjusaka's coat because I just love her design so much. She's very.. confusing to me? I hope we get to see her in flashbacks too - or at least she somehow lives through the end of season four, though it seems unlikely) - because I don't understand her motivations, or why she was obsessed with Seven. Every other Shadow Killer has their own reasons for their relationship or fight with Seven, most of them boil down to greed or their pride, but with Manjusaka you just don't know. Of course she's obligated to at least TRY and kill him because the leader said "kill that man," but what's the reason for her "crush"? Her obsession? What purpose was there in killing the Girl in White - or at least lying to Seven that she did??? What about her mentioned previous obsession with Green Phoenix?? She's notably the only woman of the Shadow Killers, does her demeanor have anything to do with needing to be stronger than the men around her, similar to Eleven? I dunno! I want to know more. So badly. I feel like I'm gonna say "I WANNA KNOW MORE" about like all of these characters

Redtooth: I don't know if this is a hot take but I hated him back before season 3 came out. And even then I kinda still hated him up until season 4. I could not fucking fathom why everybody loved him, because his backstory just looked like "boohoo I signed up to be in a clan where I can't have a girlfriend and I want a girlfriend" , but I'm fucking THRILLED that season 4 went so in-depth with his story and emotions and really made it clear why he is the way he is. I mean, the show uses a lot of show-don't-tell, so it's not OBVIOUS obvious, but they laid it out in a way where he made sense to me and I could put together why he's like that. I think I had like three separate posts about him and his relationship with Huilian (do I call her Huilian, or jiang?? is Jiang the last name??) but I really wanna focus here: I fucking adore how his past and his relationship with Huilian shaped his relationship with Seven. He fought tooth and nail and gave up everything he ever wanted to become powerful and worth something, and when this scrawny, 15 year old kid becomes a Shadow Killer without a single kill to his name, Redtooth feels threatened by him. To dare imply that this kid could somehow be on the same level as him? And then Redtooth couldn't beat him in that fight - mostly because he got stopped by Green Phoenix - and Redtooth is fucking furious he can't win. He needs the be stronger than Seven, he has to be better than this literal child! And he isn't and his hatred just festers and festers and he just wants Seven dead. And it's not said out loud but this is so obviously because of the way he had been treated in the Heaven Lily sect, and it's just so insanely well written the way his past warps the way he interacts with the world around him. I think this goes for everybody, just their past and present always feel so beautifully connected and so well represented in the way they act.

Green Phoenix: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

okay actually. like I feel like there's so much to say about him and I don't know where to START bro. mainly I adore his relationship with Thirteen. During season 2 I was impartial about him, and during season 3 I did not like him - I mean I loved seeing him and he's so cool, but as a character I hated him (not as much as I did redtooth tho) because I only understood that he was just using Thirteen. He's such a glaringly obvious replacement for her father, he is her weakness in every situation because he matters so much to her, being that he's the closest thing she has to a father, even if he's ruthless - I mean, in her eyes, being ruthless and teaching her to be the way she is was all she ever wanted. And then in season 4 he admits that he used her, every step of the way, from the very beginning, and yet through all that he could never predict that he'd care for her so much and love her like a real daughter, I fucking cried. I cried so hard. I have so many daddy issues I do not know how to deconstruct these two's relationship. I mean, the show has such a MASSIVE emphasis on protection, and your loved ones, and Seven's constant motivation is his adoration for the bonds between the people around him, and just .. the most calculated and cold Shadow Killer, the "weakest" yet the smartest, being unable to account for the love he could feel for someone he saw like his daughter and letting that ruin his decade or better of planning. It's so perfect. He's so perfect. I love that he's not explicitly forgiven or he never tries to say that Thirteen shouldn't be upset. She's reasonably disappointed and you can see it in her face - but when he hands over his sword to her to take her as a real disciple, to pass on the art of Green Cloud as if she were his own daughter, he's not forgiven, it doesn't make up for it, but it means so much. Thirtreen changes his perspective forever - as the Prince of Green Cloud, it was always his priority, and his revenge for what the leader of the Shadow Killers did does not mean killing him, it doesn't mean destroying the Shadow Killers, but it means letting Green Cloud live on through Thirteen. He tried to kill all of Green Cloud and erase it and he failed, and Green Phoenix may not be able to kill the leader, or to ruin the Shadow Killers, but the key difference is: every Shadow Killer is doomed to die in the act of killing - as White Fox says - and they are. Green Cloud will never die. It lives on in Thirteen. But Redtooth has died and come back already, Green Phoenix is dead, Blackbird is dead, and Manjusaka is dead - or at least they were wounded fatally enough I don't think they're getting back up.

I think I love most of all how loveable all these characters are (Manjusaka is ....... sometimes, she is! She sure is a character sometimes!!) despite the fact they are point blank the villains in the story. That they're an obstacle that, in most cases, have to die. That doesn't stop them from being loveable, from having such intricate backstories and detailed personalities, and sometimes it feels like nobody is the villain aside from the leader, given how fervently everyone believes in their own motivations and wants. But that doesn't redeem or ignore the things they have done - Manjusaka killed a group of random people just for talking shit, Redtooth is a conniving, evil and broken man shaped by his past, Green Phoenix spent almost his entire life tunnel visioned on a revenge plan that ultimately almost ruined the person he cherished most, Blackbird is known for being somebody who tortures and psychologically ruins people, a brutal, prideful man with a fallen apart sect that he can no longer save. They've all done such objectively awful things and yet they're written so well and motivated so beautifully that it doesn't always justify or dismiss the things they've done, but you're capable of loving them anyways. Being an obstacle in Seven's path doesn't make them two dimensional or black and white 'evil.' The writing is just so insanely good in this fucking show. I feel like I could (andprobablyhave) go on for days about it because just. Everytime I feel like I'm done talking there's more to talk about. GOD this show needs a bigger fanbase there's so much thought and love put into it and just AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Sorry this answer got so long nonnie ;; I know you might've been expecting something a lot shorter and condensed just once I get started talking about this show I can't stop. I'm like a dog in a cage and if you put your fingers through the bars I WILL bite (start babbling about scissor seven) and I feel like this isn't even the full extent of how much I could talk about these motherfuckers. I do better when I'm asked specific questions because god there's just so much in this show and so much to talk about when I'm asked general questions it's so hard to get everything out. Anyways thank you so much for the opportunity to rant I love you with my heart I love meeting and talking to scissor seven fans it's so wonderful okay ily have a good day

[wickcdlcvely]

𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐨𝐧.

i just want to go somewhere where nobody knows my name.

aesthetic : longing for the irresponsibility of childhood while the weight of expectations press down, clever as the devil and twice as pretty, staying up all night just to see the sun rise, always having to be the loudest voice in the room even when she has nothing to say, having a heart full of fire offering warmth to those close and scorching remarks to those in the wrong, will you ever find where you belong?

compare to : elizabeth bennett (pride & prejudice ), violet baudelaire ( a series of unfortunate events ), alina starkov (shadow & bone ), ginny weasley ( harry potter ), rachel chu ( crazy rich asians ), rosalind walker ( chilling adventures of sabrina ), kinsey locke ( locke & key ), bonnie bennett ( the vampire diaries ), katara ( avatar: the last airbender )

( CLAUDIA JESSIE + CIS WOMAN + SHE/HER ) dearest reader, i am delighted to introduce [ ELOISE BRIDGERTON ]. They are [ TWENTY-TWO ] and are known among mayfair as [ SHARP and IMPASSIONED ] but also as [ BRASH and REBELLIOUS ].

*:･ﾟ ⸻ 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒

full name : eloise iris bridgerton nicknames : el age : 22 birthday / zodiac : october 24th / scorpio gender / pronouns : cis woman / she/her sexual orientation : bisexual romantic orientation : demisexual occupation : graduate student in women's studies

*:･ﾟ ⸻ 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

personality traits : sharp, impassioned, brash, rebellious, brazen, arrogant, witty likes : reading & studying, pub crawls on the weekends, winning, dislikes : losing, romcom movies, the color orange, cold showers, tardiness secret talents : very good with names & faces, can do card tricks goals & ambitions : become a world-renowned women's rights activist or professor memorable traits : a laugh too loud for polite company character alignment : neutral good labels : the insurgent, the bibliophile vices : arrogance, ambition virtues : wisdom, wittiness

*:･ﾟ ⸻ 𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄

eye color : blue hair colour : dark brown hair type/style : typically worn down with little fanfare height : 5'6 build : slender exercise habits : enjoys going for a run every morning dominant hand : right glasses/contacts : n/a tattoos : blackbird tattoo on left shoulder blade, small minimalist fire/flame tattoo on arm, many other small tattoos scars : scar on knee from falling off a scooter as a child, small burn scar on hand from a cooking incident piercings : ears pierced twice faceclaim : claudia jessie

*:･ﾟ ⸻ 𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘

father : edmund bridgerton ( deceased ) mother : violet bridgerton siblings : anthony bridgerton, benedict bridgerton, colin bridgerton, daphne bridgerton, francesca bridgerton, gregory bridgerton, hyacinth bridgerton children : n/a extended family : n/a pets : a grumpy old cat named percy

[grandmaster-anne]

To the lighthouse

Country Life | Published 29 July 2020

Guest-Edited by HRH The Princess Royal

The Princess says: ‘This garden is slightly off the beaten track! The photographer picked a very good day to capture it. This is Northern Lighthouse Board territory—I’ve been there three times now and sailed past it on a number of occasions. The garden is looked after astonishingly well.’

THERE are two ways to reach the lighthouse at Rubh’A’Mhail, or Ruvaal, on the north-east point of Islay: by boat or by walking for more than two hours across The Hill, a windswept wilderness of cotton-grass bogs and heather moorland riddled with gullies, waterfalls and burns. Those that make the journey to Howard and Suzanne Cobb’s one-acre garden, where salt-laden storms can sometimes topple a grown man, will be amazed at what has been coaxed into growing in this barren landscape of exposed rock and topsoil that is, in places, only 1in deep. They will be even more surprised that this horticultural miracle is the work of a slender, 5ft 1in-tall, 75-year-old woman—yet the indomitable Mrs Cobb, who made and maintains this garden pretty much singlehandedly, is a gale force to be reckoned with.

Rugosa roses cock a snook at the wind and mounds of improbably delicateRosa Alba Semiplena and soft-pinkR . Celeste have braved the odds to become 5ft-plus-high bushes. In the shelter created by the shrubs and trees, bistort and buddleia, astrantias, nepeta and hardy geranium are a few that have made this rugged ground their home.

Tucked into precious pockets of soil are masses of small bulbs that light up the garden in spring. On the upside, the Gulf Stream holds off all but a couple of frosts a year and old-fashioned favourites, such as lupins, sweet williams and pinks, generally thrive in this fully organic garden. Everything is generously enriched with homemade compost —enhanced by the secret ingredient of seaweed that’s washed up on to the beach by the winter storms, gathered into rich trailer loads and transported home behind a quad bike.

Due to the secluded and modest nature of the garden at Ruvaal, Mrs Cobb was astonished when she learned The Princess Royal had singled it out as one of her favourites. ‘Princess Anne must go to so many wonderful places and yet she’s picked my humble garden,’ exclaimed Mrs Cobb, before explaining that The Princess first visited 25 years ago, as part of her role as patron of the Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB). ‘The garden was still in its infancy then, although she did admire my cabbages. When she next came, she noted how everything had grown and the third time, she seemed quite impressed—I think because it’s in such an exposed and unlikely location. Or perhaps it was the chocolate cake I served on that occasion!’

Even the insect life is undeterred by the remoteness. Butterflies adore this garden. Last year, Mrs Cobb counted 57 painted ladies on one privet. Regulars include the marsh and dark green fritillaries, small copper, small blue, peacock, small tortoiseshell and red admiral. The hummingbird hawk-moth feeds on the red valerian and bumblebees love the cotoneasters, which do well here.

Birdlife proliferates. Golden eagles soar above and sea eagles fly past, with smaller birds—yellowhammers, meadow pipits, reed buntings, dunnocks, redpolls, whitethroats, stonechats and goldfinches—congregating in the shadow of the lighthouse, too. There are also resident blackbirds, a nesting song thrush and swallows that nest in the porch. However, the most unusual visitor is the cuckoo: one year, Mrs Cobb counted three.

‘I had wanted to live on the west coast of Scotland ever since I was 11 years old and came here with my parents,’ admits Mrs Cobb who, until 26 years ago, resided in Buckinghamshire. When her husband’s work began to involve regular travelling, which meant that there were no longer restrictions on where they lived, the couple decided to look for somewhere fairly remote with a bit of land close to the sea. One day, Mrs Cobb spotted an advert for a former lighthouse keeper’s cottage on Islay, which had views of Colonsay, Mull and Jura, and they felt they ought to take a look.

The cottage (originally two, knocked into one) stood in the curtilage of the 112ft lighthouse, which had been completed in 1859 and was fully automated in 1983. There were few windows, which made the rooms terribly dark, and the water supply was described as ‘spasmodic’. Indeed, it was so poor that the Cobbs would not have been able to run a washing machine. The garden consisted of nothing but one redcurrant bush and some rogue potatoes in the former vegetable patch. Nonetheless, despite the inaccessibility of the site and the fact there were only two small co-op shops on the island (there are, happily, plenty of distilleries) the Cobbs were smitten, and have never looked back.

‘Howard was away quite a lot at the beginning, so I had to learn how to handle a boat pretty quickly,’ Mrs Cobb recalls. She soon had the measure of a 19ft Orkney Fastliner, in which she ferried the workmen back and forth, negotiating the Atlantic swell at the jetty. Eventually, when she was ready to move in, Mrs Cobb and her black retriever-cross Tara brought the last of their belongings to the island in the Fastliner, using her wheelbarrow to make the many journeys up and down the hill from the beach to the house.

On board were some cuttings from her garden in Buckinghamshire, a classic village garden with cottagey plants and winding paths. These weren’t nearly enough to fill the barren acre, but there was much generosity and goodwill from the islanders. A forester gave her a heap of rugosa roses, declaring they should grow well. He also gave her some pines and firs.

Not wanting her to be disappointed, a kind old seafarer who saw her load the roses into the boat said: ‘Ye’ll nae grow roses out there, lassie.’ One day, when Mrs Cobb was setting off home from Port Askaig, an old boy threw a sack of montbretia corms into the bottom of the Fastliner. ‘They’ll spread and protect other things,’ he told her.

The obvious first move would have been to plant a shelterbelt, but, with the garden open to the sea on three sides, complete protection would have spoiled the views—on a clear day, as well as the islands, it’s possible to see the mountains of Glencoe 65 miles north on the mainland. Instead, Mrs Cobb planted the evergreens on the land side and put in rowans and birches that grew into multi-stemmed bushes. After a slow start, the evergreens took hold and stand a good 20ft high today. The rugosa roses have spread, filling the garden with scent, and both Rosa Alba Semiplena, perhaps Mrs Cobb’s favourite, and Celeste have proved tolerant of the salt.

The NLB’s boatman offered some cuttings from his escallonia hedge—which have now blossomed into 6ft- to 7ft-high bushes. Hebe cuttings gathered from a shrub outside a former police station 30 miles away have also thrived, despite an early loss: one exceptionally strong gale uprooted a small hebe, sending it bowling across the garden and away over the wall, never to be seen again.

Fuchsia magellanica grows well here, too —both the deep-pink variety and a white that was given to Ruvaal by a friend who was digging out some of hers.

Incredibly, some plants, such as foxgloves, arrive of their own accord, with Mrs Cobb counting 63 digitalis in one bed alone. Other wildflowers—such as celandine, common orchids, scabious and thousands of bluebells —proliferate on The Hill.

For many years, she enjoyed her cedar-wood greenhouse, starting seeds off there and using it to grow tomatoes and cucumbers. Eventually, however, after suffering more than 20 years of Force 10 and 11 gales, it blew down, forcing Mrs Cobb to overwinter her scented-leaf pelargoniums in the lee of the house. Most sweet peas are grown under glass, as, after September, it becomes too windy outdoors for a wigwam. These are now in pots on the table outside the back door where they trail instead.

The original NLB vegetable patch is in full use, despite the predations of two pheasants, which appeared from goodness knows where and have caused such a nuisance that workmen had to make a wire cage to protect the brassicas. Of course, the wily birds soon got around that. ‘I grew kale last year and the wretched pheasant just sat on top of the cage pecking at what grew through the wire,’ laments Mrs Cobb, who, this year, decided to grow a dwarf variety instead.

When the couple first moved in, Mrs Cobb was warned that she would never grow apple trees, but, typically determined, she did and, as have the blackcurrants, these have been a huge success. Mice and voles do help themselves to some French beans (it’s too windy for runners), yet not enough to be a massive problem. Luckily, the deer and rabbits are kept out by the stone wall. ‘The red deer stand there gazing enviously through the gate,’ observes Mrs Cobb, without a great deal of sympathy.

[bigwitchencrgy]

i figure if i'm gonna be a mess, i might as well be a hot mess.

aesthetic : having a heart full of fire offering warmth to those close and scorching remarks to those in the wrong ( the war is trying to douse your fire, but you refuse to lose your spark ), glitter in your hair from the night before, staying up all night to see the sunrise just to make sure it still comes up, wishing on every star in the night sky, always having to be the loudest voice in the room even if you have nothing to say, a matchstick heart just waiting to burn, empty liquor bottles, the grim days slowly beginning to overshadow the good ones, messy hair don't care days, off-key singing in the shower, the warmth of the sun on your skin, arrogance hiding insecurities, people call you fickle & you laugh in their face ( who would ever want to be known as predictable? ), coward was never a word meant to describe a mckinnon, but it's the only word that feels right when you refuse to take a side, you had always been convinced in happy endings, but now it feels like the end, and there’s no happy ending in sight.

compare to: penny ( the big bang theory ), mikaela banes ( transformers ), han solo ( star wars ), anthony dinozzo ( ncis ), lorelai gilmore ( gilmore girls ), peter quill ( mcu ), thea queen ( arrow ), sarah cameron ( outer banks ), steve harrington ( stranger things ), jesper fahey ( shadow and bone ) oberyn martell ( game of thrones ), shawn spencer ( psych ), emmett cullen ( twilight ), sabrina spellman ( chilling adventures of sabrina ), buffy summers ( buffy the vampire slayer )

Is that  MARLENE MCKINNON  stepping out into Diagon Alley? Ministry records tell us that they were born on  OCTOBER 13TH  and are a  TWENTY-THREE  year old,  HALF-BLOOD  who works as a  PROFESSIONAL QUIDDITCH PLAYER.  Some have said that they can be described as being  CHARISMATIC, ADVENTUROUS & INDEPENDENT,  however, they also see themselves as being CAPRICIOUS, STUBBORN & BRASH.  Apparently,  THEY  look a lot like  JESSIE MEI LI,  whoever that is, and if they had to pick a side in the war, they would choose to  REMAIN NEUTRAL.

☼ pinterest ☼

*:･ﾟ ⸻ 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒

full name : marlene yue mckinnon nicknames : marlene, marls, mckinnon age : 23 birthday / zodiac : june 13th, gemini blood status : half-blood gender / pronouns : demi woman & she/they sexual orientation : demisexual romantic orientation : bisexual occupation : professional quidditch player hogwarts house : gryffindor affiliation : neutral, order leaning

*:･ﾟ ⸻ 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

personality traits : charismatic, capricious, brash, careless, stubborn, impatient, sarcastic, witty, loyal, adventurous, independent likes : quidditch, having a good time with friends, bonfires, summer, dragons, late night bar crawls, photography dislikes : cold showers, being early, oranges, romance movies, reading, divination secret talents : can juggle up to 6 items, ambidextrous goals & ambitions : to find a life goal/ambition memorable traits : an air of confidence, a laugh louder than necessary character alignment : chaotic good label : the icarian vices : arrogance, impatience, spite virtues : loyalty, courageousness, compassion

*:･ﾟ ⸻ 𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄

eye color : dark brown hair colour : black hair type/style : long and wavy, typically messy or thrown into a bun height : 5'3 build : slender/athletic exercise habits : regularly goes for a run/works out/plays quidditch dominant hand : left, but is ambidextrous glasses/contacts : wears contacts & has glasses for reading but also hates reading tattoos : a blackbird tattoo on her shoulder blade scars : many small scars from various incidents over the years piercings : ears pierced multiple times, septum, both nostrils faceclaim : jessie mei li

*:･ﾟ ⸻ 𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘

parents : george mckinnon ( father, auror ), mei mckinnon ( mother, potioneer ) siblings : marcus mckinnon ( older brother, hit wizard), matthew mckinnon ( older brother, auror ) children : n/a pets : two ferrets named chewie and cherrie, an old hand-me-down owl named firewhiskey significant other :

*:･ﾟ ⸻ 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑

wand : dogwood wood, dragon heartstring, 11 in., slightly bendy boggart : her own death though she claims it's her great aunt edna who regularly gets drunk and streaks at the family christmas party patronus : cannot cast one yet, but would likely take the form of a golden retriever amortentia : smoke from a fire, blackberry tarts, honeysuckle, homemade caramels

*:･ﾟ ⸻ 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃

marlene operates under the life motto "i'm here for a good time, not a long time" which is somewhat ironic considering she's afraid of fully involving herself in the war ( but no one has ever accused her of making sense )

fully expected to be put into ravenclaw because let's face it, there's no one more clever than she is ( total lies ).

always wanted to become a quidditch player even though her parents wanted her to be a bit more realistic with her options. so she choose dragonology as a backup which immediately made her parents hope she made it as a quidditch player instead.

has two ferrets named cherrie and chewie that she absolutely adores and would do anything for. she poorly knits them little hats and sweaters.

is listed as neutral because she doesn't necessarily want to be part of the war even though her family is, though she's fully supportive of the order's side and has made that very clear. however, she will eventually join the order once she gets over her own fears. marlene is afraid of death and losing those close to her to this war. ( in my mind, it will take the death of a family member for her to finally get fully involved in the war )

more coming soon!

*:･ﾟ ⸻ 𝐏𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐀𝐋 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

find them here!

[gorbalsvampire]

Story finale tonight!

Wild Roses: Season 4

[Instrumental]

You've been drinking like the world was gonna end (it didn't) Took a shiner from the fist of your best friend (go figure) It's clear that someone's gotta go We mean it, but I promise we're not mean

I seen a woman standing in the snow She was silent as she watched them take her man Teardrops burned her cheeks For she'd thought she'd heard the shadow had left this land

Am I a hero? A fallen hero now? Hear my sin Lord Speak no evil now

Old heat of a raging fire Come and light my eyes Summer's kiss through electric wire But I'll never die

I know it's strange Another way To get to know you We've got to move Here comes the moon So let me show you

I'm building an empire So little time and so much to do I must say this is as good as it gets So why you wasting your blood, your sweat, your tears

Oh yeah, you think you're God You're just another fraud So what? I have my flaws I won, so you take a loss

And when you lied before You broke our tie before And then I tapped into a feeling that I could not ignore

You say it's only words but they hurt so much You think your hands are warm but they are cold to the touch Ooh, you fucking hate and manipulate, only I am no one You think it's all right to be cruel, it's so human of you

I'm suffocated as you try to cage me in But you don't know me All the shades of who I am Try to catch me if you can I just slip right through your hands

In come the blackbirds in murders and in droves to cover you in shadow as they clean you to the bone And here I come, a firebird Don't offer up your sorrow Today you see me crash and burn but I'll be back tomorrow

Thicker than water, thick as thieves Oh how the river runs deep We are blood, we are family Hail, hail the black sheep

Stop the… shake your fist on … needs to be Self righteousness … who are you to be misjudged by.

How long 'til the sunrise again? I've grown cold, heaven-sent And wicked men will always fight 'til the end So don't follow

A serpent on a bed of leaves in the month of May What do you want me to say?

[dhampiravidi]

(ignore this) spotify wrapped '23

just me using this post to type my Spotify Wrapped so I don't have to keep going back to that page 😅 I like the stats but also I have ask memes riding on this--

if you feel like using a song title as a prompt, go ahead!

Top Genres:

Pop

Alt Metal

Modern Rock

Pop Punk

Rock

Top Song: "bloody mary (lady gaga) - sped up version" by sped up viral; played 203 times

Top Artist: Bring Me the Horizon (in the top 0.1% of fans); played 5550 minutes (no surprise there)

Other Top Artists(?)

Bring Me the Horizon (peak listening month: September)

Fall Out Boy (peak listening month: August)

30 Seconds to Mars (peak listening month: August)

Måneskin (peak listening month: September)

Dua Lipa (peak listening month: September)

Total Min: 42, 427

Then I temporarily switched to SoundCloud for a better deal, hehe

Top Songs, 1-100

bloody mary (lady gaga) - sped up version by sped up viral

Heartbreak Feels So Good - Fall Out Boy

AmEN! (ft. Lil Uzi Vert & Daryl Palumbo) - BMTH

Love Again - Dua Lipa

Let's Get the Party Started - Tom Morello, BMTH

Stuck - 30STM

Grown Man - Marshmello, Polo G, Southside

BABY SAID - Måneskin

No Love in LA - Palaye Royale

Just Pretend - Bad Omens

Black Hole - We Came As Romans, Caleb Shomo

What You Need - BMTH

Shakira Bizzarap Music Sessions, Vol. 53 - Shakira, Bizarrap

All Around Me - Envied by Angels

Start the Fire - Jamie Bower

Bad Habits (ft. BMTH) - Ed Sheeran

Woman - Doja Cat

Bones - Imagine Dragons

SUPERMODEL - Måneskin

maybe (ft. BMTH) - Machine Gun Kelly

Heat Waves - Glass Animals

Enemy (from "Arcane") - Imagine Dragons, JID

Warrior - Atreyu, Travis Barker

Strangers - BMTH

Unholy (ft. Kim Petras) - Sam Smith

Running Up the Hill - Our Last Night

The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie - RHCP

One Day the Only Butterflies...(ft. Amy Lee) - BMTH

Beggin' - Måneskin

God's Menu - Stray Kids

I Ain't Worried - OneRepublic

Happy Song - BMTH

Records - Weezer

Paralysed - Jamie Bower

Transylvania - McFly

I Wish - Skee-Lo

Pump It - Black Eyed Peas

Parasite Eve - BMTH

Say So - Doja Cat

The Worst in Me - Bad Omens

Blackbird - Alter Bridge

Teardrops - BMTH

Drowning - Atreyu

fleabag - YUNGBLUD

Shockwave - Marshmello

Shadow Moses - BMTH

Alejandro - Lady Gaga

I WANNA BE YOUR SLAVE - Måneskin

You're Going Down - Sick Puppies

DiE4u - BMTH

Teeth - 5SOS

Best Things in Life Aren't Free - The Unlikely Candidates

Fancy - Iggy Azalea, Charli XCX

IDGAF - Dua Lipa

CODE MISTAKE - CORPSE, BMTH

Sunshine - OneRepublic

Ghost - Badflower

Animal I Have Become - 3 Days Grace

Contemptress - MIW, Maria Brink

Monsters (ft. Demi Lovato & Blackbear) - All Time Low

Wonder Woman Main Theme - Tina Guo

maybe (ft. BMTH) acoustic version - Machine Gun Kelly

Levitating - Dua Lipa

Pain - Jimmy Eat World

Die Young - Ke$ha

Angel - Theory of a Deadman

Lost - Linkin Park

Come as You Are - Nirvana

Dark Passenger - MIW

Betty (Get Money) - Yung Gravy

La Tortura (ft. Alejandro Sanz) - Shakira

I'm Good (Blue) - David Guetta, Bebe Rexha

Renegades - X Ambassadors

Judas - Lady Gaga

Hips Don't Lie (ft. Wyclef Jean) - Shakira

Save Me - Remy Zero

The World I Used to Know - We Came As Romans

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT - Elley Duhé 

Two Against One (ft. Jack White) - Danger Mouse, Daniele Luppi

Here We Go Again - Pixie Lott

Astronaut in the Ocean - Our Last Night

Tribute - Tenacious D

Follow Me - BMTH

Lose Control (ft. Ciara & Fatman Scoop) - Missy Elliot

Dani California - RHCP

House of the Rising Sun - Five Finger Death Punch

In the End - BVB

Cake by the Ocean - DNCE

Last Resort - Papa Roach

Attack - 30STM

Watermelon Sugar - Harry Styles

High Enough - K.Flay

Behind Blue Eyes - Limp Bizkit

Kings and Queens - 30STM

Been Away Too Long - Soundgarden

Lived a Lie - You Me at Six

Los Angeles - Sugarcult

Sundial - Wolfmother

Broken Generation - Of Mice & Men

Round & Round - Selena Gomez & The Scene

[readerbookclub]

Paranormal - A Book List

Hello everyone! This month’s list is a collection of novels that deal with the supernatural! Are you ready for something a little spooky?

As always, please vote for which one we should read using the link at the bottom of the post. 

The Saturday Night Ghost Club, by Craig Davidson

Growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls--a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place--Jake Baker spends most of his time with his uncle Calvin, a kind but eccentric enthusiast of occult artifacts and conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turns twelve, he befriends a pair of siblings new to town, and so Calvin decides to initiate them all into the "Saturday Night Ghost Club." But as the summer goes on, what begins as a seemingly lighthearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined. With the alternating warmth and sadness of the best coming-of-age stories, The Saturday Night Ghost Club examines the haunting mutability of memory and storytelling, as well as the experiences that form the people we become.

Opium and Absinthe, by Lydia Kang

New York City, 1899. Tillie Pembroke’s sister lies dead, her body drained of blood and with two puncture wounds on her neck. Bram Stoker’s new novel, Dracula, has just been published, and Tillie’s imagination leaps to the impossible: the murderer is a vampire. But it can’t be—can it? A ravenous reader and researcher, Tillie has something of an addiction to truth, and she won’t rest until she unravels the mystery of her sister’s death. Unfortunately, Tillie’s addicted to more than just truth; to ease the pain from a recent injury, she’s taking more and more laudanum…and some in her immediate circle are happy to keep her well supplied. Tillie can’t bring herself to believe vampires exist. But with the hysteria surrounding her sister’s death, the continued vampiric slayings, and the opium swirling through her body, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for a girl who relies on facts and figures to know what’s real—or whether she can trust those closest to her.

Later, by Stephen King

The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine - as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave. Later is Stephen King at his finest, a terrifying and touching story of innocence lost and the trials that test our sense of right and wrong. With echoes of King's classic novel It, Later is a powerful, haunting, unforgettable exploration of what it takes to stand up to evil in all the faces it wears.

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson

It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, the lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

In the Shadow of Blackbirds, by Cat Winters

In 1918, the world seems on the verge of apocalypse. Americans roam the streets in gauze masks to ward off the deadly Spanish influenza, and the government ships young men to the front lines of a brutal war, creating an atmosphere of fear and confusion. Sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches as desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort, but she herself has never believed in ghosts. During her bleakest moment, however, she’s forced to rethink her entire way of looking at life and death, for her first love—a boy who died in battle—returns in spirit form. But what does he want from her? Featuring haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs, this is a tense, romantic story set in a past that is eerily like our own time.

Please vote for our next book here. 

[criticallyacclaimedstranger]

Fic: Misty, chapter ix

chapter i | chapter ii | chapter iii | chapter iv | chapter v | chapter vi | chapter vii | chapter viii | chapter ix | chapter x

Read on Ao3

Rating: Explicit (whole thing)

Fandom: Prospect

Pairing: Snowman!Ezra x f!reader (monsterfucker au)

Tags: it’s basically monster fucking but with a snowman which could technically be classified as a monster i guess?, gothic horror kind of, sorrow, dementia, anxiety, dog murder, masturbation, Frankie thirst, pet murder, racism mention, huge age gap, implied possible sexual abuse of minor, spookiness, PiV sex with an actual snowman, possible hallucinations, hypothermia, Frankie yearning, the spookiness continues, More dog murder and implied sexual abuse of a minor, implied illegal abortion, adulterous kissing, lots of crying.

Chapter warnings in addition to the above mentioned: Incest mention, amputee mention, abortion mention, murder, ghost sex. Yes, I said it. ghost sex. Multiple orgasms.

Summary: Escaping your empty apartment after having been dumped by your fiancé, you rent a cottage at Oakgrove House over Christmas to nurse your wounds. But strange things seem to happen at the estate, where an old woman wanders around in search of old friends long gone, and snowmen appear as if by themselves on the lawn…

Chapter word count: 3,335

A/N: One more to go after this one, folks. Thanks for sticking by me!

Tagging: @harriedandharassed @paulalikestuff @pazizz @lovesbiggerthanpride

The attic is a shallow one, insulated but dark, cold, and dusty. You use the flashlight on your phone to look around you as you peek up through the hatch. The pull-down ladder seems rickety, so you scramble up quickly, sneezing from the dust as you land on the plain wood floor.

Not knowing what you had expected, you feel a little discouraged when you see the amount of stuff stored in the small space. Cardboard box after cardboard box are lined up along the walls, old clothes bags hang from the ceiling, and one of the gable walls is hidden behind stacks of old newspapers. Turning around, you give a startled gasp when you see a shadow against the faint light of the other gable wall. For a split second, it looked like the outline of a human form, but your brain quickly registers the coveralls hanging in front of the window. Heart beating furiously, you take a deep breath and tell yourself to get a grip.

You get started with one of the boxes, finding only stale, old clothes inside. Rummaging through them in search of something hidden between the folds of fabric, you grimace a little at the smell and how dusty and unclean your hand feels after having touched the clothes. Already despairing, you look at the row of boxes and realize that this is going to take the whole night. With a deep sigh, you lift down the next box on the floor.

A sharp knock on the window makes you drop the box and your phone. Shaking and groping for the phone, you look up and see something move on the other side of the gable window. There is snow around the frame and against the white of it, you make out a bird. You swallow hard when it leans against the window again, and pecks the glass with its beak.

It's a common blackbird. You recognize it from the book earlier, otherwise you'd just have to guess. It's staring right at you, head tilted one way, then the other. When you do nothing but stare back, it shakes its wings and pecks the glass a third time. On weak legs, you slowly walk up to the window. The blackbird keeps staring at you in a most demanding fashion until you're just by the window and your foot hits something. You look down and spot a hat of some kind. Looking up again, the bird has disappeared. When you shine the flashlight through the unclean window, you can just about make out the tiny typewriter arm traces in the snow on the sill.

"Didn't imagine that," you mumble to yourself before taking a closer look at the hat. It's a safari helmet of that slightly uncomfortable colonialistic kind, at it has a dusty, dirty netting hanging at the back of it.

"Beekeeper's helmet," you muse to yourself as you turn it in your hands. The estate must have kept bees at some point. Did the gardeners tend to the hives, or did they have separate beekeepers?

You look at the coveralls, noting their olive green color. Aren't beekeeping suits always white? You have no idea. Thick gloves hang from one pocket and the zipper is pulled almost all the way down. That strikes you as odd somehow: clothes in storage are usually folded, zippered, buttoned. This one is not, and the right arm is inside the garment, as if it had been shed in a hurry. You start to frisk the coveralls and find something in the pocket that is not stuffed with gloves.

An envelope, thick with content, with nothing written on it. Holding your breath, you open it and take out the single folded paper. A smaller piece of paper falls to the floor and you bend down to pick it up. It's stiff, a lot stiffer than ordinary paper, and the side turned away from you is smooth. Your fingers know it before your mind does: it's a photograph. Slowly, you turn it, and look straight into the dark eyes of Ezra.

Sinking down onto the floor, you stare at the man in the black and white, slightly yellowed photograph. It is Ezra, you just know it. Broad shoulders, sharp nose that gives him a noble kind of ruthlessness. A hint of a smirk grazing the full lips, surrounded by a mustache and a tidy, short beard. Dark, short hair. He's wearing the beekeeping coveralls; the helmet is under his arm. It seems to be summer; the surroundings are verdant despite the monochrome snapshot.

"There you are," you whisper, brushing your thumb over the photograph. You look at it for a long time, noting down every detail, from his big hands to the scar on his left cheek. You wonder how he got that scar.

Setting the photo to the side, you open the letter, finding more photographs. One is of Ezra with garden shears in front of a rose bush, seemingly unaware that he is being photographed. Another is of him on a bench with a book in his hand, the other hand shielding his eyes against the sun as if trying to see who is disturbing his reading time. All three pictures are snapshots of everyday situations, but there is something unsettling about them all. You can't put your finger on it, but there is something about Ezra's whole being that does not sit right with you.

The last photograph makes you gasp. It is Ezra, now in the wintertime, standing in front of a boarding house. He looks like a completely different person: his beard is uneven and unkempt, his hair has a white tuft in it, his eyes have a coldness to them that makes you shiver, and his jaw is set in a hard line that you realize now has been hinted at in the previous photos. But the most shocking, heart-breaking thing is his right arm, or rather the lack of one. He is clearly missing his right arm. The sleeve of his coat is pinned to the side and he's standing with the right side slightly angled towards the camera, as if showing off the fact that he is an amputee.

You remember the snowman and its lack of an arm and it’s like the temperature drops immediately. You shudder and direct your attention to the letter instead. It is not long, and you recognize the handwriting. It is by Olga.

Dearest E,

I will wait. One day we can sit in the garden and read each other poetry or play in the snow and spend long evenings by the warming fire. I can see it when I close my eyes. We will be safe. Please respond. I need to know you are well despite your misfortune. I do not care about the stones in my necklace, I only need to know that you are well. Write to me, your letters can no longer be intercepted.

Your Blackbird.

The heartfelt plead brings tears to your eyes. Did Olga ever send the letter, or was it sent back to her? Did Ezra return, was he able to give her letter back in person? The old paper offers no answers.

Your findings in one hand and phone in the other, you leave the attic, slowly descending the ladder. Almost down, it sways and creaks, and the sudden unsteadiness makes you miss the next step. You plummet clumsily down the last couple of steps, falling hard on your backside when you reach the floor. The impact sends a shockwave of pain through your spine, and you curl up on the floor with a whine and try to breathe through it. The tears flow freely, your hand closes into a fist and you bang it against the floor in frustration and anguish.

When you finally sit up, gingerly and assessing the damage, you are not alone: Across the small landing stands Ezra. The ache dulls your reaction, and you simply meet his dark, unreadable gaze. His contours are oddly floating, and you can see right through his oddly colorless form. You think, That is a ghost right there, but the words mean nothing. It’s Ezra. He’s come home.

He is quietly watching you, his unblinking eyes disquietingly feral in their intensity. His right arm is missing and the scar on his cheek seems to glow white. You find yourself hypnotized by his stillness, and for long moments, you only sit on the floor and let him control you with those eyes of his.

Eventually, you clear your throat and wet your lips.

“Hello, Ezra.”

He does not move nor acknowledge your greeting in any way, but you think you see a flash of recognition in his eyes, so you continue.

“Did you ever return?” You look around you and find the letter and the photographs next to you, where they have fallen from your hand. Reaching for the letter, you groan from the pain. You hold the paper up to him.

“Olga wrote to you. She wanted you back. Did you return?”

Now his chin rises slightly and his nostrils flare, as if scoffing in disdain. But there is pity in his eyes. You instantly know what it means.

“You didn’t. This letter was returned to sender. She says that you could return, that it was safe for both of you. What did she mean?”

Ezra looks almost bored, like he is dismissing you.

“You never intended to return.”

His sharp eyes turn interested again.

“She was too young for you. You were never interested. You only played with her, like a cat with its prey.”

Now he glowers at you, and you sense that if this weren’t some specter or figment of your imagination, you’d feel unease at the barely hidden ferocity of this man. But you find yourself glowering back at him.

“What did you do?”

His lips are tightly pressed shut so you change your tactics.

“I found the cards you sent her. You did that to let her know you were alive and well, right?”

A nod.

“Until… you lost your arm in one of those mines. Didn’t you?”

Another nod, and a pained frown. Now his remaining hand rises, crosses his chest, and grasps the stump that is left at his shoulder. His gaze lowers, as if in a silent prayer for what he has lost.

“And then… you died.”

He looks up at you, surprised and confused, like you just told him something he did not know.

“So you couldn’t return.”

Slowly, he nods again, face falling before he rearranges his features into something more guarded.

“I’m sorry,” you offer. It’s not much, but you wanted to say it. He inclines his head in an acknowledgment of your condolence.

“Why are you here now?” you venture, but Ezra has lost interest in you. He is staring right past you, and you sense a presence.

“He is here to say goodbye.”

Turning around, you see Olga at the stairs. She, however, is not looking at you, but at Ezra.

“You look just like that last time I saw you.”

Ezra regards her with his head slightly tilted, as if trying to find the young girls behind the old lady mask. A little twinkle lights up in his eye before he smiles a crooked smile.

“Your arm was gone, your hair was going white, but you were still my Ezra,” Olga continues in a quiet but firm voice. “I waited for you for a long time.”

You feel like you should leave, give them privacy, but curiosity has gotten the better of you. Pain forgotten, you swallow before speaking.

“Why, Olga? Why did you wait for him? He was twice your age, he used you, he – “

“It was not Ezra!” Olga cuts you off, her voice rising. “Ezra never touched me. True, I was a young, infatuated girl, but Ezra was my ally.”

“You said you needed a procedure,” you whisper, head swimming with every piece of new information. “You drowned your dog on Ezra’s request. So that he knew he could trust you not to tell.”

“He helped me get an abortion,” Olga clarifies, voice softening in affection when she looks at Ezra, who meets her adoring eyes with a tenderness you could only describe as paternal.

“He had to make sure I wouldn’t tell anyone. It was illegal and we had to cross the state line. My parents had me under surveillance but worst of all was my brother.”

Your stomach turns. “It was him.”

“Yes. It was him.” Olga’s confirmation is direct, almost emotionless.

“Your parents…”

“Knew nothing. And died in a traffic accident. My brother became my guardian. I wanted to run away with Ezra, but he wouldn’t take me with him until he had money to support the both of us.”

She shakes her head at Ezra, who lowers his gaze.

“That almost broke me. As if I needed any riches. I only needed freedom.”

“And then he was injured,” you guess. Olga tuts with disdain.

“No. He came back every Christmas to let me know how he was doing. He couldn’t write to me, all mail went through my brother. I had no friends. I could only wait for his sign, the snowman in front of the gardener’s cottage, and hope that I had not missed him.”

The snowman. He will come tonight.

“But he came back eventually?”

“Yes.” Olga raises her chin at you. “He came back. We met in secret in this cottage. The gardener was at mass. And my brother had grown suspicious. He followed me. He found us.”

Ezra’s ghostly form seems to darken, his face a terrifically frightening image as he listens to Olga.

“What happened?” you ask in a trembling voice. Olga’s features are perfectly composed, her eyes like steel.

“The garden path was icy. He slipped and fell.”

Ezra’s amused little smile is lethal.

“You killed him,” you accuse him weakly. The smile grows broader, and Olga shakes her head.

“No. Ezra merely fought him. He fell and hit his head. I told Ezra that he had to run away. I would make sure nobody even knew he had been there.”

She now turns to Ezra again, her eyes despondent. “Sending you away that time was the hardest thing I ever did. But you were not safe. We were not safe. He was still alive.”

“You killed him,” you state, feeling an odd sense of justice in it. Olga nods.

“He was in a coma. I had to wait for a while, make sure all paperwork was in order. Then it was a simple matter of covering his face with a pillow until he breathed no more.”

Ezra smiles at her, almost proudly. The morbid confession and his obvious satisfaction do not faze you. You are beyond that at this point.

Good for her.

“Why didn’t you leave to find him?” you ask. A faint blush stains Olga’s cheeks.

“I had met the man who became my husband.”

The ghost of the man she had once loved inclines his head with a faint smile. Olga smiles back.

“He was good to me, Ezra. I never told him, but I think he knew. He treated me right.”

Slowly, Olga walks up to Ezra, arms opening almost hesitantly. When she reaches him, her arms go right through his form. She smiles sadly.

“It was good to see you, Ezra.”

Your nose itches from lingering attic dust and you can’t keep from sneezing, turning away from the old woman and the apparition to do it as delicately as you can into your elbow.

When you look up again, sniffling, Olga is gone, and Ezra is watching you. A little unsurely, you meet his gaze.

“Why are you still here?”

His eyes narrow and the diamond glint of a canine makes you realize that he is smirking.

“For… me…?” you breathe, not sure that you want to know the answer to that question. Now Ezra walks across the landing to the bedroom. His feet may be moving but he is floating an inch above the floorboards. He stops and turns around to beckon you to follow. Hesitantly, you do, and when he asks you with a gesture to lie down on the bed, you obey. Your tailbone sends aching impulses up your spine, making you groan.

Ezra leans down over you, or floats above you, you cannot tell. His gaze cuts right through you and you want to sink into the mattress. Your hand fumbles next to you and your fingers touch something. You lift in front of your face and see that it is a small piece of bark from the snowman, somehow left behind even after your cleaning.

You look from it to Ezra, see the desire turning his ghostly eyes dark. The bark falls from your hand and you reach instead through smoke, wanting to pass your hand over Ezra’s stubbled cheek, run your fingers through his short-cropped hair.

“Come to me, Ezra,” you allow, and he descends on you, face so close to yours. His lips are cold and wispy, and just as you think that you can feel the plump softness of them, the hint of corporeality disappears, and the foggy chill of Ezra is sucked into you like a reverse exhale of cigarette smoke. You cough, thinking for a moment that you will suffocate, but then he spreads into your limbs, makes you heavy and full.

“Ezra,” you sigh as he settles inside your pelvic area and starts a suction that makes your nerves spark and crack with pleasure. You bare your neck as your knees bend and your feet plant themselves on the mattress, pressing your pelvis down, your buttocks moving against the mattress as you try to find alleviation, or more traction, you don’t know. Your tits feel like they are being fondled, suckles, adored, and when you touch them, it becomes to much and you have to fist your hands into the mattress instead. Your moans sound eerie and unfamiliar to you and the word possessed flashes through your mind before you decide that you don’t give a shit. Your legs press shut against the insane stimulation but unlike when having someone go down on you, it does nothing but heighten the sensation. You can feel Ezra smirk behind your frontal lobe and then you arch your back and shout out as he does something new. It’s like being fucked from the inside out, there is no other way to describe it, your pussy is being ravaged, your clit is pulsating, your nipples are so sensitive you have to wiggle out of your shirt. Another surge of pleasure makes you scream out loud and you roll over onto your stomach, getting up on your elbow and whining loudly as you hump the bed, movement the only way to deal with the ferocity of the pleasure. The heat of a breath long gone runs down your spine and you lose control, your panties turning wet and warm when your pussy gushes in a first orgasm. Ezra praises you but does not slow down, continuing to work your nerves and muscles until he has milked you of another one. You slump down and roll over, kicking half-heartedly against the pulses as they once again increase in intensity and speed. You moan his name again and he answers with a jab that makes you see stars. It’s not just your pussy anymore, it’s your whole body, everything is steeped in pleasure you have never known. Every single hair on your skin is raised stiff and crackling, every vertebra is on fire. When you exhale in loud moans, your breath comes out a hot cloud. When Ezra finally lets you cum a third time, it is a full body orgasm that rips you apart and puts you back together, all at once. You feel Ezra caress you into sleep, and you close your eyes.

[cmbrosia]

[ rose williams , 22 , cis woman , she/her ] have you seen , MARIGOLD AMBROSE the WITCH has entered court? said to be INTELLIGENT + ELOQUENT , we can only hope their good qualities outshine that they are also SELF-DESTRUCTIVE + OBSESSIVE . when asked about them , people are always reminded of: smeared scribbles written in black ink on yellowed pages, moving shadows in a moonlit room, an ornate golden mirror and the unnerving sound of a pounding heartbeat. they are THE LADY OF HOUSE AMBROSE. they believe in THEMSELVES. may their wand guide them to absolution. 

FACTS

full name: marigold henrietta ambrose. nicknames: mari, goldie. title: lady marigold ambrose, daughter of duchess ambrose. age: twenty-two. sexuality: bisexual.  relationship status: unmarried, not engaged. languages: english (with a mild french accent), french. looks: dark hair, brown eyes. wizarding school: beauxbatons (had she attended hogwarts, she would have been in ravenclaw).  patronus: blackbird. wand: ash, dragon heartstring, 12″, stiff.  

STORY

marigold grew up in france and only recently returned to england with her mother, the duchess ambrose. despite having an english mother, she had a classic french upbringing and attended  beauxbatons instead of hogwarts. all she has ever known is france. despite living a privileged life with glamour and riches, marigold grew up extremely lonely in a big empty house. there were no children around, only her. it always felt like she lived with a stranger instead of a mother, she has never once felt loved by the duchess ambrose. due to not being around children growing up, the young witch mainly entertained herself with books — and later she began writing poetry. her poems were dark and reeking of melancholy, so marigold never showed them to anyone, and she knew her mother would only laugh at her words. the duchess had given her a bright name, a golden name, but she always felt unable to live up to it. she was not sunshine personified, she was midnight rain.

school became her saving grace and marigold discovered new sides to herself at beauxbatons. the biggest one was that she actually learned how to make true friends. she was a master at small talk, of being polite and charming as she had been taught, but she never made a real human connection before starting school. the moment she said goodbye to her mother, something inside her changed, a weight was lifted from her shoulders. marigold had always thought herself incapable of making friends, she had thought that she needed no one but herself. her years at school were her happiest by far. she wrote fewer poems but she filled her hours alongside her little group of friends. the young lady was finally content. when she graduated from beauxbatons marigold truly believed that everything would change, but almost immediately she found herself falling back into the same pattern, her mother made sure of that. the house was still empty, filled with beautiful things and balls hosted every month, but her mother still felt like a stranger. countless poems were written, all filled with gloom and despair, a wish for a different life. she wanted her old life with her friends back, she did not want to meet french noblemen and women whose vainess rivaled that of her mother. but then one day the duchess suddenly announced they would return to england. mari decided then and there this was her chance to finally escape the numbness, to finally feel something again, even if her mother has proven to be more set on finding a suitable husband for her daughter than to help marigold grow into her own person.

the day after returning to london marigold ventured out to the shops, her object of desire being a new hat and after introducing herself to the shopkeeper, she overheard two women nearby whispering about her mother, how they had no idea that the duchess had a child. at first marigold did not think anything of it, but somehow the thought planted itself in her subconscious and it is currently haunting her. mari knows that she was born in england, surely the ladies must just be remembering wrong. she knows it makes no sense. why would the duchess raise another’s child... but what if there is a reason why the duchess has never loved her — one other than her not living up to her mother’s expectations?  

PERSONALITY 

marigold is an introvert that has been molded into an extrovert. it saps a lot of her energy, but she can smile, small talk and entertain with the best of them. some part of her enjoys knowing that she can put an act on so well. she is fiercely intelligent, scoring high marks in all her classes in school, and she actually enjoys learning and spends a lot of time with her nose in books. she is most skilled at charms which makes her a dangerous duelist, she is also very creative with her choice of spells. she is generally pleasant to be around, marigold takes no enjoyment in other people’s suffering, but neither does she go to great lengths to make others happy.

due to her unhappy childhood, she can get caught up in her sadness. it can take such a deep hold that she becomes self-destructive. there is also a deep rooted rage inside her. it rarely bubbles to the surface but when it does, mari has no control of herself. none of her poems before she started school has survived, she burned them all in a fit of rage years ago. marigold has a tendency to be obsessive, she finds it hard to stop or let go when something has managed to capture her interest. this has led to countless sleepless nights spent thinking, reading or writing about the same subject over and over again. 

she is in the process of figuring out who she truly is without the influence of her friends, of her mother or her old life in france. 

[o5-the-daughter]

Warnings: child death, death, sickness, description of cramps/spasms, implied domestic abuse, grief, repetition, hallucinations, implied place of scene: mental hospital

Word count: 2.464

Only visible to Experimenter (@o5-blackbird).

•

Two pairs of soundless steps wander down the cracked, dusty street, watching on as the warm afternoon sun shines her light over the wrecked buildings left and right, over the chunks of stone that had once belonged to beautiful facades, and over their intertwined hands, which seem to melt together in an almost comforting manner amongst the breaking of the world around them. Dark mist dances around their feet as Lauri takes a few steps up to balance on a large boulder, one that was part of a skyscraper's mighty upper floor just a few hours ago; Noel raises his hand gently to follow the motion, supporting his balance despite there being no genuine weight to hold his partner up.

Amongst the rubble, a woman's labored breathing slowly begins to break the silence, a noise that the two shades approach as the minutes pass; the woman appears to be the only survivor of the catastrophe nearby, the only one that they can find, at least, kneeling between the splinters of her broken home, digging her hands bloody on the smaller rocks surrounding a heavy stones that looks to be almost twice her size. Noel pulls his hand away now, though the smoke between their fingers lingers for a second longer, and Lauri's pure, white eyes follow him as he quietly wanders up to the woman. In a gesture meant to comfort, his hand comes down to rest on the survivor's shoulder, though he flinches back as the woman's grief-stricken scream breaks the silence loud as thunder just a second later.

She breaks down sobbing, sorrow shaking her shoulders as she cradles the bloody, broken hand of her child still buried under the stones.

••

Another dry cough shakes the young adult's malnourished body, and their hand curls tighter around their husband's fingers as bitter blood colors their pale lips scarlet. Nine months, the doctors had said, but it hadn't come that far, the sun was only now setting on the third and the sickness had already taken their voice alongside their laugh, with the only thing left to take being the very breath in their lungs; their husband whispers a soft, almost silent prayer as another coughing fit shakes their fragile ribcage, causing them to squeeze his hand so hard that it might have broken had their strength not left them many weeks ago as well.

Between the quiet whisper of Hebrew words, neither of them quite notices the shadow that had been clinging to them for so long now, draining hope and life from them much like a black hole seems to manifest into a form matching that metaphor quite well, a black hole with boney fingers and exhaustion living in his every movement as if he were the one losing a fight with humanity's worst disease instead of them.

Differently from the first two, Tomasz appears capable of noise, humming an old-timey tune that appears to go unnoticed by the couple as he drags himself out of the corner of the hospital room. With each step of his, their spasms become more and more aggressive, the monitors to their right singing a panicked song much in sync with the one he directs, the color draining from their already ashen face beyond what should have been possible as they struggle for air. Their husband's words have reached speaking volume now, his hands holding theirs tightly as his tears wet their fingers that grasp on too tightly before, too suddenly, falling limp.

The white-eyed creature of shadow and smoke stands over their bedside still, his head tilted in vague curiosity over his own doing.

•••

Eyes are often called the windows to the soul, and for good enough reasons too, as a young woman's eyes glittering brightly with life as she sings of her lover's proposal can tell just as long a story as the empty eyes of a teenage boy tending to his bruises, staring straight ahead at the bedroom door forced shut with a drawer pushed infront as a hand made of little more than dark smoke presses an ice pack to his shoulder. Her movements are harsh, rougher than they had ever been in life, but the effort to be kind to the boy is still there, in the manner in which her cold fingertips wrap up smaller cuts and in that of which her blank eyes wander back to the door to make sure it is closed safely still.

Somewhere in the house, a bright shriek of anger sounds over the already loud arguing, and something fragile breaks; the manner in which the boys expression darkens, twists with a bitterness usually only worn by men twice his age or more, tells Dio all there is to know, even interrupted by the slamming of another door downstairs. Brushing straight the last little plaster, she pulls away, though she lingers a moment longer in the echo of a fight waiting to return.

She has become a known guest in the boy's room by now, one whose presence is barely ever known or acknowledged, but which slowly darkens the child's heart nonetheless. She can't bring herself to pity him for falling for her gift, either - it had been an easier solution for her as well.

••••

The Foundation has always been a place to take more than they were willing to give, a hundred years ago the same as today; take a family's strange child, offer them 20 bucks for their troubles; claim a spring their own despite its owners' protest, offer them compliance or death as their possible options; and so on, and so forth, always the same game of taking and taking and giving so little to the civilian world beyond protection of what had been taken. It's an ancient practice, by the standards of their history, and one that will always cling to the faceless heads of the organization, haunting and chasing them into a future where there is no more to take, no more to desire, no more to wish for.

But wouldn't that be nice? To have it all, and wish for nothing more? To be satisfied after so long?

But there is always more to take, at least for now.

Willow's ash dark fingers brush lightly over the shoulders of those they pass, leaving behind a thin trail of what almost appears to be coal where they touch, though the mark disappears quick enough with each step they take away from the bearer. Five times they had rounded the meeting table by now, with its familiar voices and not quite so nonexistent faces, listening in to their topic of discussion despite it being past their role and past their time to do so still; they have little work to do here besides listening, hearing of the forest containing fae and spirits and others alike that the Foundation wishes to name and number and hold onto.

There is little to do for a white-eyed shadow in a place where greed has already settled deep into people's hearts.

•••••

Leaving a beautiful, red rose behind, the old woman rises to her unstable knees and off the ground, off the grave below her where another darling once she knew many years ago lies resting still. She leans heavily on her cane, even as it sinks a little into the ground that is still wet and muddy from the past day's rain, though she cares little for the ground or the trail of steps she leaves, moreso being focused on the path of roses that drags on and on and on over more graves than she wants to think of; too many lie here buried, too many she had known for too long as to not lose a piece of herself as each of them disappeared from her life, one by one by one. A light shudder shakes her fragile body, urges her to pull the scarf closer around her shoulders and pushes the eye-corner glimpse of Iva's shapeless figure out of her thoughts before the sight can even be registered there.

Dark mist spreads behind her with each step, drags on like a wedding dress's train and sweeps over the carefully placed flowers as she stalks after the woman, the petals wilting and withering as they are touched before just as quickly regaining their life once the smoke lets them free once more. It's an almost fascinating play to watch, though one that becomes threatening all too quickly when the old woman sinks to her knees infront of another grave once more, the shadow following close behind her as the bouquet of the remaining flowers finds its place infront of yet another stone.

She lurks over the woman's shoulder in complete silence, blank, white eyes staring down at the engraving reading beloved wife and mother in a beautiful cursive.

••••••

He had been declared a hopeless case in his youth already, when he was little more than a child that didn't understand why his own mind seemed to work against him; it didn't get better with age, either, as they had first promised, then hoped it would, and even then, he could hardly recall when anyone had last bothered to try and give him hope. Even now, with these terrible creatures pouring from the corners of the bleak, white room they were keeping him in these days, locked up like an animal, no one bothered to speak a comforting word or offer any sort of relief to his fear; the knowledge that it was 'just' his mind 'playing tricks on him' had never made it better, never made it any less real.

With a soft sob, he presses himself further into the corner of his room, against the white tiles and into the arms of the shadow woman cradling his head like a wounded animal. Her fingers brush through his sweaty hair, push a few strands out of his face in a manner so gentle that it has become almost foreign to him by now. He leans in further, further, lets her darkness wrap him up all the way until she finally pulls him closer, too, and rests her arm over his eyes.

Raisa, in life, had known the cruelty of the human mind just as well as he knew it now.

•••••••

Slender fingers wrap themselves around Experimenter's throat from behind, with sharp nails digging deep enough into his flesh to draw blood as his chin is pushed up, forcibly correcting and straightening his posture beyond comfort; there is something painfully familiar about this touch, despite how much colder and rougher it is than it had ever been in life, despite that little protest of he wouldn't that never makes it beyond a thought cut short; wouldn't is too untrustworthy a word these days, one that is betrayed far more often than it is proven right. A wouldn't proven false is how they had ended up here in the first place, after all, in an almost-known hallway with too-well-known faces coming across another for the first time in a while.

Another ice cold hand runs over his flesh, comes to a rest on his wrist and pulls it upward, too, taking aim more precisely than he would have been capable of any other time, taking aim at a tired face with lifeless eyes, ones that might as well belong to one long dead as well. He doesn't flinch back, not this time, barely even seems startled at all, but much rather.. quietly expectant. Relieved. He tilts his head ever so slightly at the sight of the gun's barrel, and dark hair streaked with grey falls over his eyes, just a little, not quite enough to cover his sight entirely. He simply waits.

The mist-made hand at Experimenter's wrist loosens its grip, instead moving to cover his hand, lending itself to him and replacing the missing fingers that would have made the next step difficult; the thing moves closer to him this way as well, another uncomfortably familiar sensation of this slim, cold body pressed against his, with the weight of the creature's head coming down to rest on his shoulder in an almost gentle manner. Glancing down, he sees the outline of the face before him doubled, though with blank, white eyes wide open and staring up at him, meeting him together with a sharp-toothed grin too wide and too wolfish to be human.

Almost there, it whispers with his voice, warm and rough and just another reminder that there are worse things that could happen to Eight than death.

No one will know who of them pulled the trigger, in the end, but the result is much the same either way - a deafening gunshot, and the sound of a limp body hitting the floor.

••••••••

Ten's office is much the same still as it had always been, a rustic design consisting mostly of leather and dark wood, with a comfortably crackling fire somewhere in the background. The old bear of a man hums contently, a warm melody of old shared with him by the tongues of Death and Plague. He leans back in his seat as he watches his whiskey flow into the nine-sided glass with its pale engravings reading the names of those having died for his glory; his eyes, nowadays, are the same, stark white as theirs, a resemblance he knows - with amusement - they would hate, if they still had the choice to.

He turns slightly in his chair, picking up his glass as he does, and watches the shadowy figure of the young woman seated at the locked window, her fingers resting against the glass in silent longing and mourning. He smiles, ever so slightly just, at the irony in the repetition of this ancient story, with Hope trapped back inside as her eight counterparts of humanity's troubles and woes left to roam the outside world.

A soundless sigh escapes Kierra Thier's lips as she rests her head against the cold glass.

•••••••••

[fog-weaver-of-nyc]

Unexpected Assistance

The argument made Sterling's blood boil, he didn't know what it was he and Ez were even arguing about. Was it in relation to Athena's death? Things were tense since his failure to protect his second eldest, and maybe things just had finally reached a boiling point. He was so… angry? Was that the word? Why was that what he was focused on?

Wait.

Why did he taste blood?

Oh. Oh fuck.

He dropped the other spider like a sack of potatoes, and scrambled back like he had been burned. Had the other still had blood in mere's body, Sterling was sure it would have been staining his hardwood flooring.

Not that the floor fucking mattered.

Sterling was too out of it to process waking, instead vomiting and crying quietly, believing he was still dreaming. And Lucid couldn't take It. A few nightmares would have been fine, probably could have been done without the kidnapping, and would have been just fine for the slight.

He had killed another sister, this time because he couldn't control himself. He felt the bile in his throat, and couldn't keep it down as he collapsed to the floor.

-----

But Dreams had ordered more. And now Lucid wasn't sure of his actions. He tried to force down his own bile as he continued to paint, pretending to not feel his mistress watching him.

"It's not enough. Next iteration, have him kill the child."

Lucid paused, and nearly dropped his brush.

"Dreams, mom, that's too-"

He was cut off as claws scratched his cheek, he was in shock. That was not how she normally was. She'd never lay a hand on him, and if the alarms weren't going off in his head before they were now.

"Don't speak to me so informally, champion. I am to be called Mistress or Lady. Are we clear?"

"Yes, Dre-, I mean, My Lady."

"Good. Now follow orders, this lesson will need to truly sink in."

The thing masquerading in his employer's skin left the room, and Lucid lightly poked the gashes.

They weren't healing.

His mind immediately went to the champions of fear, and he couldn't help but wonder if this was how it started for them. He sincerely hoped not, but…

This wasn't like his boss. Something was wrong. She wasn't cruel. She wasn't.

Lucid knew he couldn't keep this up. He couldn't do this to the demi mortal any longer, this was illegal as it was. He was supposed to be the role model, one of the oldest. And what was he doing? What was he doing…

All he knew was he needed to help, and he needed to get help. But how… he needed to figure it out. And quick.

-----

It took him at least a full twenty-four hours to figure out a solution. And another five to work up the courage to one of the few he could trust. Lucid knew he was running out of time, his boss would only be gone so long.

Scribbling out the message in his champion's tome, hand shaking badly, Lucid could only hope his actions hadn't angered her beyond the point of helping him, and the man behind him.

-----

This was not what Justice herself was expecting. She had been working with her fellows to trace Dreams' and Lucid's current whereabouts, when the doors to her war room flew open and a greatly panicked looking Blackbird scrambled in, her time clutched to her chest and usually pristine appearance in disarray. Death immediately was on its 'feet' and moving to the woman.

"My lords and ladies, we have another situation."

The champion of the end of all things shoved the book at her lord, it's expressionless guise staring down at the book as it automatically flipped to what Blackbird wanted to show it.

Everyone felt when the temperature dropped and the shadows reached for it.

"And it was confirmed?"

"Yes. I had champion Oath look at it. It's the truth."

"It seems we have our location. And a cry for help."

Death put the book on the table. Upon it's pages, was the image of Lucid, the scratches across his cheek looking maybe a day old, something that didn't happen with champions. Not like this anyway. With it was a message, the shaky hand writing not the usual for the usually composed and easy going champion of the sleeping mind, pleading for assistance.

"Heather, I know you're probably pissed at me, there's no way you don't know what's happened, and I'm not gonna beat around the bush. I fucked up bad, I should have refused Lady Dreams' orders on the grounds it breached laws and I'm fully ready to accept whatever punishment the council dishes out.

But I need help.

Yesterday she actually struck me when I tried to voice concerns with what we were doing, and pretty much told me to refer to her formally. I know, she would never lay a hand on me like that, but it's the truth, I swear on whatever honour I have left. She wants to break Rebellion's child and I'm terrified if he endures anymore… he wouldn't just break, he'd be unfixable.

I can't do this, whatever loyalty I had to her is quickly burning away, and I don't know what to do. Please. If not to help me, then to help the spider."

The silence at the message was deafening, several of the gods with looks of fury on their faces.

"He's not lying. I can feel the genuine fear from here."

The goddess of fear spoke up, her voice quiet, like she was hesitant to break the seal.

"I'm with her. He didn't lie in that message, nor is the image falsified."

Loyalty agreed, the youngest god looking queasy.

"Something was wrong from the start, we all know Dreams, she's not vengeful, and would normally brush what happened off. Lucid is generally the more vengeful of the two born from his loyalty and protective nature towards her."

Void mused, the queen of the pantheon's pitch coloured nails drumming on her collarbone.

"And Lucid wouldn't go this far without her orders."

"Indeed, Death. Something is very wrong. While it doesn't entirely take the blame from champion Lucas Row, it does paint a concerning picture of what's happening."

Void's hand drifted to the red core that hung from her necklace. The older deities knew what she was thinking. They couldn't afford another former fate.

"Blackbird, alert your fellows, all of you are to fall back to the main hall, bring Jace Glendon Fletcher with you. We will handle Dreams. One way, or another."

Void ordered, Death not arguing the command given to it's champion. Blackbird would have protested, but knew better. She remembered the last time a god had behaved oddly and they didn't catch it early enough.

"As you command."

A simple bow was given, the tome returned and the orders delivered. Now dismissed, Blackbird headed to the hall of the gods, silently hoping they were quick enough. For both Lucid and Sterling's sakes.

------

Mentions of @ask-spidersisters Athena, and @ask-spidermom Ez

[mamusiq]

Songs You Totally Misunderstood, Explained

These songs have more to their meanings than meets the eye—or ear.

Have you ever been singing along to your favorite tune and suddenly realized that the song might be about something completely different than you previously thought? Don't worry, you're not alone. In fact, there are more than a handful of hits that have more to their meaning than what meets the eye. For instance, if you like dancing along to "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People, you'll be floored to find out that it's actually about mental illness. And did you know that the early 2000s novelty hit "Who Let the Dogs Out" is a feminist anthem? To help clear things up—from The Beatles to the Boss—here are the famous songs that have been totally misunderstood.

1 "Who Let the Dogs Out" by Baha Men

As much as we love our four-legged friends, this Caribbean classic is not about canines. After eight years of research, Ben Sisto got to the heart of the titular question in his documentary Who Let the Dogs Out, which premiered at SXSW in 2019. The final answer? The steel drum-infused song is actually a feminist anthem.

According to The Daily Beast, Trinidadian artist Anslem Douglas wrote the song—originally titled "Doggie," but famously known as "Who Let the Dogs Out" thanks to Baha Men's 2000 cover—as a "rallying cry" against cat-calling. Hence the lyrics: "Well the party was nice, the party was pumpin'/And everybody havin' a ball/Until the fellas started name callin'/And the girls responded to the call/I heard a woman shout out/'Who let the dogs out?'" And for other reputable remakes, check out The 50 Best Cover Songs of All Time.

2 "Blackbird" by The Beatles

In terms of symbolism, "Blackbird" is one of The Beatles' best metaphors—and no, it doesn't have any aviary connection. The British band was fascinated and appalled by the American civil rights movement happening in the '60s. They wrote the song "Blackbird" after hearing about the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American students who fought to desegregate the school system in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 2016, Paul McCartney tweeted, "Incredible to meet two of the Little Rock Nine—pioneers of the civil rights movement and inspiration for Blackbird," following a meet-and-greet with Thelma Mothershed Wair and Elizabeth Eckford.

3 "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind

This '90s hit from San Francisco rockers, Third Eye Blind, isn't what it seems. Despite its upbeat sound, the lyrics have a much darker undertone. In a 1997 interview with Billboard, frontman, Stephan Jenkins, calls "Semi-Charmed Life" a "dirty, filthy song" about, well, sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.

"I think people hear 'Semi-Charmed Life' as a happy summertime jam. And that's fine with me," Jenkins said. "I don't think the song should be so blatant that I have to come out and say, 'Couples who take speed tend to break up, so don't do it.'"

Even the title itself refers to "a life that's all propped up," Jenkins adds. "You know, the beautiful people who lead bright and shiny lives that on the inside are all [messed] up." And for more music about relationships gone wrong, check out, The 100 Best Breakup Songs of All Time.

4 "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler

This breakup ballad is not about your typical "boy meets girl" scenario. In fact, Jim Steinman who wrote the song for Bonnie Tyler, told Playbill that he based the song off a fantasy about vampires. No joke. It was originally called "Vampires in Love," which explains all the creepy lines such as, "Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time/I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark."

5 "Waterfalls" by TLC

Who could ever forget this carpool-karaoke staple? You loved singing the 1994 TLC hit, but you may have overlooked the song's serious subject matter. It's actually about the AIDS epidemic, as referenced in the line: "His health is fading and he doesn't know why/Three letters took him to his final resting place."

"Anything that's self-destructive, that's chasing a waterfall," singer Rozonda 'Chilli' Thomas told The Guardian. "We wanted to make a song with a strong message—about unprotected sex, being promiscuous, and hanging out in the wrong crowd." The music video furthered this message by showing a kid dealing drugs and a man contracting HIV.

6 "Slide" by Goo Goo Dolls

Don't be fooled by this popular 1998 song by the Goo Goo Dolls. "Slide" is not a love ballad, but rather, a story about an unplanned pregnancy. In a 2018 interview celebrating the 20th anniversary of the album Dizzy Up the Girl, lead singer Johnny Rzeznik told Billboard, "I was thinking a lot about the neighborhood I grew up in. 'Slide' is about a teenage boy and girl. They're trying to figure out if they're going to keep the baby or if she's going to get an abortion or if they're just going to run away. They're dealing with these heavy life choices at a very early age. Everybody grew up way too fast."

Don't believe it? Just take a glance at these lyrics: "Don't you love the life you killed?/The priest is on the phone/Your father hit the wall/Your ma disowned you."

7 "Macarena" by Los Del Río

The choreographed moves are almost as iconic as the tune itself. But this '90s Spanish cult-classic isn't as innocent as our childhood memories would expect. The rhythmic hit is actually about a woman who cheats on her boyfriend (with his two friends!) while he's being drafted into the army.

8 "Harder to Breathe" by Maroon 5

Maroon 5's breakout album, Songs About Jane, may be full of steamy love songs, but "Harder to Breathe" is not one of them. In fact, it is actually about a different suffocating relationship—with the group's record label.

"That song comes sheerly from wanting to throw something," frontman Adam Levine said in a 2002 MTV interview. "It was the 11th hour, and the label wanted more songs. It was the last crack. I wanted to make a record, and the label was applying a lot of pressure, but I'm glad they did."

9 "One Way or Another" by Blondie

Blondie frontwoman, Debbie Harry, pulled from personal experience to create the '80s rock classic, "One Way or Another." But, what sounds like a cat-and-mouse game between lovers is a scarier situation in reality. "I was actually stalked by a nut-job so it came out of a not-so-friendly personal event," Harry told Entertainment Weekly. "But I tried to inject a little bit of levity into it to make it more lighthearted. I think in a way that's a normal kind of survival mechanism. You know, just shake it off, say one way or another, and get on with your life. Everyone can relate to that and I think that's the beauty of it." And for other earworms from the '80s, check out 25 Songs Every '80s Kid Knows By Heart.

10 "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People

This head-bouncing bop sounds like it has simple origins about a teenager with sweet new shoes. In reality, it's trying to raise awareness for mental illness and gun violence, as seen in the chorus: "All the other kids with the pumped up kicks/You'd better run, better run, outrun my gun."

"I remember that week, there was some shooting that happened, and it really bothered me, because I recognized that it was going to continue to get worse," lead singer Mark Foster told Billboard in 2019, setting the scene of the song's creation. "And then that song popped out."

11 "Gangnam Style" by Psy

As one of the earliest viral sensations—reaching 3.5 billion views on YouTube—Psy's "Gangnam Style" swept the globe with its infectious beat and dance moves. But behind the South Korean artist's lyrics, lies a sharp social satire on the ultra-rich residents of Gangnam, a neighborhood known as the Beverly Hills of Seoul. In the music video, he pokes fun at the   glamorous lifestyle, but even doing that didn't bring him much satisfaction. According to The Atlantic, Psy said: "Human society is so hollow, and even while filming, I felt pathetic. Each frame by frame was hollow."

12 "Born in the U.S.A." by Bruce Springsteen

At first glance, the title track of Bruce Springsteen's seventh album seems as patriotic as patriotic can get. According to The New Yorker, the 1984 hit was even used in Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign. This quickly prompted the Boss to clarify things a bit, saying that "Born in the U.S.A." was "the most misunderstood song since 'Louie, Louie.'" From then on, he played an acoustic version of the hit that made its darker tone—about Vietnam veterans—more obvious to listeners.

In a 1984 Rolling Stone interview, Springsteen said: "When you think about all the young men and women that died in Vietnam, and how many died since they've been back—surviving the war and coming back and not surviving—you have to think that, at the time, the country took advantage of their selflessness."

13 "S&M" by Rihanna

If you thought Rihanna's 2010 bop, "S&M," was about a racy relationship, guess again. The songstress intended it to be about her tumultuous experience with the media. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Rihanna told Vogue in 2011, "The song can be taken very literally, but it's actually a very metaphorical song. It's about the love-hate relationship with the media and how sometimes the pain is pleasurable. We feed off it—or I do. And it was a very personal message that I was trying to get across."

14 "London Calling" by The Clash

Although "London Calling" was known as a political punk-rock anthem in the late '70s, the song was much more relevant to a topic of today's time: climate change. According to The Wall Street Journal, the British band was scared after reading a 1979 London Evening Standard article about the Thames river flooding the streets of London. Originally, frontman, Joe Strummer, focused his lyrics on the subject of drowning but then broadened his approach to include an array of dire circumstances. You can hear it for yourself in the chorus, "The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in/Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin/Engines stop running, but I have no fear/'Cause London is drowning/I live by the river."

15 "Royals" by Lorde

Although the lyrics to Lorde's 2013 hit "Royals" depict the idea of rejecting fame and fortune, the true meaning is literally in the song's title. The New Zealand pop artist was flipping through a 1976 issue of National Geographic, and stumbled upon a picture of George Brett, a Kansas City Royals baseball player, who was surrounded by screaming fans begging for his autograph. In an interview with VH1, Lorde explained, "his shirt said Royals… I really like that word, because I'm a big word fetishist. I'll pick a word, and I'll pin an idea to that."

16 "The A Team" by Ed Sheeran

Soothing acoustics aside, "The A Team" is a melancholy story inspired by Ed Sheeran's experience performing at a charity concert for Crisis, a foundation that helps the homeless in the U.K. After visiting the shelter and hearing their stories, Sheeran went home and wrote the lyrics in 20 minutes. You can pick up some of the references, especially in lines like, "Ripped glove, raincoat/Tried to swim and stay afloat/Dry house, wet clothes/Loose change, bank notes/Weary-eyed and dry throat."

17 "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga

Since she first stepped onto the scene in 2008, Lady Gaga has been an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and representation. And on her debut record, The Fame, she explores her own bisexuality in the song "Poker Face." According to NBC, the pop star said the song was "about being in a relationship with a man but fantasizing about a woman; hence, the man must read her poker face."

18 "American Pie" by Don McLean

Don McLean's catchy 1970s ditty may be the perfect campfire sing-along, but it's not as happy-go-lucky as it seems. In fact, the line "the day the music died" nods to the tragic 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson (a.k.a. The Big Bopper), and Ritchie Valens.

"The lyrics had to do with the [deteriorating] state of society at the time," McLean told The Guardian. When he auctioned the song's original manuscript at Christie's in 2015, McLean said, "Basically, in 'American Pie' things are heading in the wrong direction. It is becoming less ideal, less idyllic… it is a morality song in a sense."

19 "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan

This Sarah McLachlan song may conjure those sad SPCA animal commercials, but there's more to the tear-inducing tune. According to ABC News, McLachlan penned the piece in memory of Smashing Pumpkins keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin, who died from a heroin overdose in 1996. "The story shook me because though I have never done hard drugs like that, I felt a flood of empathy for him and that feeling of being lost, lonely, and desperately searching for some kind of release," McLachlan wrote on Quora in 2014.

20 "Closing Time" by Semisonic

You've most likely heard this crooner at the end of a late night out with friends. But contrary to popular belief, "Closing Time" isn't about the last call at a bar. Semisonic lead singer, Dan Wilson, actually wrote the piece for his daughter, who was born prematurely. At his college reunion at Harvard in 2008, Wilson told the crowd, "I hid it so well in plain view that millions and millions of people heard the song and didn't get it. They think it's about being bounced from a bar, but it's about being bounced from the womb."

https://bestlifeonline.com/misunderstood-songs/

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The 65 Best Cover Songs of All Time Admit it, these tracks are so good, you actually thought they were originals. April 28, 2021

30 Famous Songs Everyone Misinterprets Wait—"Hey Ya!" means what?! September 27, 2018

[patrickmdunn]

opening paragraphs of random pieces of fiction i’ve been slowly working on over the last year

BLACKBIRD

Whispering Pines was a town built on a foundation of faith and flaky, buttery biscuits. Every street corner boasted a church, with stained glass windows catching the sunlight and spires reaching towards the sky. But at this moment in time, there was an undercurrent of suspicion, at least according to Sheriff Everett “Rustic” Hollis. Everyone may profess their love for Jesus and quick breads, but behind closed doors, they all were potential suspects in his eyes.

AMONG US

In the merciless grip of the Texan sun’s unrelenting heat, a vulnerable figure, stripped bare and pallid, sought refuge in the dense foliage of the mesquite bush. Huddled beneath the sheltered canopy of gnarled and twisted branches, his frail form trembled, begging for forgiveness from the untamed terrain. 

CONVEYANCE

When his phone finally chirped, the text was short: Second Floor, Room 212. 

A rush of nervousness overwhelmed him as he began to make his way towards the elevator, heart pounding with each step. He paused for a moment, standing rigid and contemplative, his thoughts swirling like a storm inside his head. His fingers drumming against his thigh as he debated the next course of action. Should he proceed or turn back? After all, he made the thirty minute drive to the boardwalk, illegally parked on the street, and crossed the parking lot of the Shark Shack, a rundown hotel that had somehow escaped his attention until now. 

UNTITLED

As the hour of my eighty-fifth year drew near, I found myself buried within the confines of my study. The air was thick with the scent of decaying books and yellowed papers, their whispered secrets haunting me as I sat among them. The shelves were lined with ancient texts, their spines cracked and faded from years of neglect. Each book held a piece of my past, a reminder of the long stretch of time that I have spent within the walls of the Whitman House; a grand estate that has been my home since boyhood. Perched atop Copp's Hill, the highest point in the North End, it once stood tall and proud above all other buildings. But now, it seems to cower in fear, a shadow of its former self. What was once a symbol of elegance and history has become a place of darkness and foreboding dread.

WATCHER

The bartender poured another generous amount of whiskey into Angus T. Rutherford's glass, making sure to leave enough room for the splash of cola that he added next. As he took a sip, the warmth of the alcohol spread through his chest, easing the tension and numbing his senses. It was his third, or maybe fourth, drink of the night; he had honestly lost track. Each one went down smoother than the last, the familiar burn of the whiskey now a welcomed sensation rather than an uncomfortable one.

SUN GOES DOWN

In his four years of college, Liam Ryan experienced many firsts. He had his first kiss, his first blow job, his first time making love, and his first time falling in love - all with one remarkable woman. As a tall, skinny kid from the suburbs, Liam was reserved and somewhat shy around women. Growing up, he never quite knew how to act in a sexual manner. But in his freshman year of college, everything changed.

EMBRACED

The blue blanket was the only tangible connection that Evan had to his birth parents. The only thing that offered any semblance of their existence in his life. For years, he kept it carefully folded and tucked away in a closet, a reminder of what he could never have. Through the changing landscapes of life, as he wandered from one place to another, he always contemplated discarding it. But like a jumbled box of tangled wires and cables, it stubbornly clung to him, refusing to be left behind.

UNCANNY

As the sun descended beyond the horizon, splashing the sky with vibrant shades of orange and purple, Annandale-on-Hudson came alive like a living postcard. The small hamlet within Dutchess County, New York, was illuminated by the warm, golden light that cascaded over its streets and buildings. In particular, the riverside park that sat beside the mighty Hudson River seemed to be aglow, as if it were a magical oasis.

[phantom-trollbooth]

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I

Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.

III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.

Wallace Stevens