#so the ritual where both might survive is tempting

[bisexualmultifandommess]

I’ve been putting off playing dragon age origins because it’s getting to the end and I don’t want it to end 😭 but I also really want to complete it too so I can move on the the second game

One thing I’m uncertain of is whether or not to do the ritual Morrigan offers because I know if you don’t either you or Alistair die or something like that and obviously I don’t want that and I’ve heard it’s important to other games I think. The things I’m unsure of is that it feels weird to do it and whether it affects the relationship my female warden has with Alistair if you make him go through with because I’m romancing him and he’s accepted ruling with her

Im thinking of trying a both survived ending and a sad sacrifice ending but wondered if anyone had advice.

[omgkalyppso]

When Étoile needs some peace of mind, is there an activity they like to do or a place they like to go?

Do they involve others or do/go alone?

Thank you so much for the ask!

I let this get away from me for a bit so I was like "I'll just cut out all of THIS and make it its own post" and then tried to rein in what I was trying to say, and then it got away from me again! So. fdskghdksfjgh

magical self harm mentioned. fictional character death mentioned.

For the most part Étoile wouldn't mind their friends or partners being around them when they need some peace of mind. Depending on their level of frustration, they might even need to talk it out or hear someone else's problems to put their own in perspective. Otherwise they're very social. They'll take part in louder activities (drinking), more physically exerting ones (dumb challenges, like climbing), or other nonsense you'd expect from a more rowdy character, like Karlach. They also enjoy social comforts, like just being near someone while they pray or meditate or what have you. And that's where things might start to get tricky.

Auril is an extreme god, and sometimes when Étoile seeks guidance from her, they might intentionally "burn" their hands by holding Ray of Frost for an extended period while reciting their prayers, and comparable expressions of devotion which invoke Auril's cold domain. Unlike Loviatar, the pain isn't the purpose of their divine connection, their practices could make people just as uncomfortable to sit around due to lack of custom.

I think a lot about these sections of the Church of Auril wiki pages:

When an individual wished to become part of the clergy, they had to undergo a ritual called the Embracing. This ritual required the applicant, in only boots and a thin robe, to spend the evening exposed to a raging blizzard. Holy symbols of Auril were painted all over the applicant's body. The applicant was forbidden to use any sort of magic to protect themselves from the cold. Those who survived until morning were deemed worthy by Auril and accepted into her Church.

.

Clerics of the Frostmaidan were bestowed a natural immunity to cold which was identical to the effects of the resist cold spell. Powerful clerics had the innate ability to duplicate the effects of the ice storm spell, and summon ice para-elementals. Clerics of Auril had access to the spells of both the Time and Wards spheres. Unlike rank and file clerics, specialty priests of Auril were unable to turn the undead.

But there are also times where they need to be alone, whether in prayer or just in silence. There may come a time where they feel "alone, together" with Astarion, but that's actually years off.

Étoile does have hobbies, but I can't picture them doing them for the sake of centering themself / finding peace of mind. I can't imagine them being able to focus on reading either — maybe meditation, but that's really conditional.

Anyway. The spawn they follow into the Underdark find ways to severely irritate, confound and distress Étoile. Which leads me to my two other answers to this question. While Étoile may visit Halsin's Moonrise Village, their mountain in Impiltur, and other locales post-canon, they have two semi-permanent homes for the foreseeable future: one in the Underdark, and another in Baldur's Gate. I haven't yet decided whether the Szarr Palace should be in the Lower or Upper City in my headcanons, but it's only a temporary residence for any of the "vampires" (Astarion and his siblings) in my post-canon (more intended as a place for staff and spawn), and they will have their own residences in the city otherwise. Wherever I decide to place the Palace will influence the number of those homes and whether they are in the Upper or Lower City.

Étoile would probably be tempted to have the windows taken out of any residence in Baldur's Gate to allow Astarion (et al) free reign of the space even in daylight, but Astarion would refuse to live in a fucking box, so shutters and curtains and the the security of a coffin for reverie would have to suffice. Étoile would have a room or three depending on the size of residence, two of which would cause Astarion some anxiety: a bedroom, rarely used in place of the master bedroom but still providing the possibility that they expect conflict between them (this is not the room's primary or intended purpose), and a study, which is where they would go to be alone when necessary to find peace of mind (reading and writing letters; some to intentionally be never sent), in which Astarion is welcome, but scrutinized if he goes in alone.

Astarion has his private spaces also but it takes him longer to grow accustomed to not having space that's going to be stolen from under him or shared / invaded by family and masters.

Étoile's third room would be one dedicated to Auril; kept politely clear of where Astarion rests because once they place something of her likeness in there, the room radiates cold. I imagine this room goes questioned by those who know of it, because why have this inconvenience and then not spend more time in there / why would this not be Étoile's default place to go to to find peace of mind — to which their answer would be, if they'd wanted that then they would have stayed on their mountain.

In the Underdark, I have such a specific vision of what their settlement turns into. It wouldn't be anywhere near as grand as I'm picturing after only 6 months into the epilogue, so in those early days, Étoile would just go for a walk, pace the border and their boundaries and find a high point in an outpost to look out over their community.

With magic, Menzoberranzan and the Sword Coast easing the way, House Ienith is technically a functioning town two years post-canon and is maybe a third of the way to being finished to a level of construction that makes it a desirable place to live. But by this time there is a working library with a window overlooking a town square where Étoile can unwind and spy on the vampiric wizards and scholars in their studies. And, more importantly, a river has been diverted to have a channel flow beneath the town and then curved back into the river as a source of renewable water. It's neither fresh nor clean without magical intervention, but with a few runes it feeds wells, kitchens, laundromats and bath houses, the latter of which is the alternative somewhere for Étoile could go for peace of mind.

I picture a private, fully stone room, candles unlit, three days below ground (Advanced Darkness), with a recessed pool of water that grows deeper the further you walk into it. Grotesques and murals carved into the walls. Whether the water is warm (hot) or cold, I think Étoile and their dark vision would enjoy the tranquility.

[fandomandtravels]

I just got an idea for a horror/thriller trilogy.

First movie is about a woman, who is kiddnaped by a psychopat who holds her in his basement for some time. He is trying to win her heart over the fact that he is desperatelly trying to find somebody who would apreciate his agressive way of love. How does she get out? She starts using arguments about the basement that the place isnt safe because there is mold, bugs etc. And she mentiones that with a few fixes she could at least make it look nicer since she has so much free time. They begin renovating the basement. He starts to trust her more and more until there is finally the moment. He is not paying attention when painting the ceilling and stabs him. Before she smashes his head with one of the items for diy and house renovation, he smiles a little and whispers his last words: "I finally find you, my love."

In the second part, we see the same woman visiting a psychologist. She has nightmares about him even after couple of years. That he survived and wants to not only kiddnap people but also torture and kill them. It is absolutelly imposible, since the police found his body. She also later identified him, as he was known to kiddnap and later kill both man and female. After visiting the house, where she killed him and doing a lot of research, it starts to seem like his ghost is following her, tempting her to do "bad things" and stepping into her dreams, too. She also finds a medium, person, who can communicate with the ghost, but doesnt want to try contacting Mr. psycho. So, opposite opinions from both the psychologist and the medium are making our main hero a big mess in her head. She finally decides to face her demon. She doesnt know if he is real or just hidden in her head. She is ready for any option. She uses a ritual to call upon and trap him in the basement. And it seems like a real ghost is caught there. She used old spell to banish him. He dissipates into a mist. Whe suddenly, the real Mr. Psycho shows up behind her in flesh. As mentioned before, she was ready for any posibility and manages to stab him. Again. Tired, she slides next to the wall. When she looks on the floor, there is no body, only a fresh puddle of blood. Her own blood. Which is pouring from the stabbing wound in her belly, where she was sure, she just hit the Psycho. What she just saw befor was just in her head....

The last part is about a young couple looking for a house to buy. In this economy, you dont choose. So when you find a cheap murser house, you buy a cheap murder house. After all, it has such a nice mancave in the basement. Anyway, they start to notice wierd stuff in the house. Things are falling, room is suddenly chilly, typical "ghost presence 101". Still better than a rent above a pizza place. The strangest thing is that most of the "wierd stuff", tend to fix itself. A book fell on the ground? Gues what, book is back usually in couple of minutes. Most of the wierd stuff is happening in the basement but with a busy life of the couple, the barely notice this. Until one night, they are both found dead. Their ghosts find out that there are other 2 ghosts. They are the original Mr. Psycho and girl from the first 2 thrillers. They find out that the ghosts repeat what they did, when they were alive. And it is only at midnight, when for a full hour, they realise they are dead. So most of their time was spent on him keeping the protagonist in the basement or she was killing him. When there was the midnight, the main protagonist from the last 2 stories was trying to warn them and make them run away. While Mr. Psycho was picking up every book and destroying every message she might get through. And he was also planning his next murder.

The end.

[web1995]

SECONDARY BURIAL IN THE RAT’S PRIESTHOOD: WHY WAS CHUCKY CHEESE’S EFFIGY DESTROYED?

Cheese temples are an abundant, frequently excavated type of Neolithic archaeological site. The rat’s priesthood was clearly far reaching and embraced by millions of devotees (as a protector of children, gamblers, and harvests), and yet effigies of the rat himself are surprisingly rare— whether in the form of priest’s anthropomorphic costumes, or automatons. Recent findings, such as the unrecognizably dismantled automaton in Fig. 1, and a rare depiction of the destruction process in Fig. 2, have indicated that Chucky Cheese’s effigies were almost universally deliberately destroyed. 

Fig. 1

While human remains and burial grounds are not typically discovered within or nearby excavated cheese temples, the ritualized destruction of Chucky Cheese’s effigies closely mirrors burial practices in which the skull is broken. 

Fig. 2

In the authors’ opinions, this may indicate that the rat’s priesthood symbolically continued to bury their god as they once buried men.

Fig. 3

Discoveries of complete or even partial Chucky Cheese effigy heads, as seen in Fig. 3, are rare. The destruction, whatever motivated it, appears to uniquely target the rat’s face— or, to be specific, his skull. Though this violence was initially believed to be the actions of opponents to the rat’s priesthood, reading it as an act of desecration simply does not account for the scale on which it was done, nor for where it was done. All evidence points to this practice belonging to Chucky Cheese’s followers. 

Until recently, archaeologists and art historians could only guess at the motivations behind this practice. However, a recent finding (the Showbizpizza Tome) has provided astonishing new insights. 

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

In Fig. 4, 5, 6, 7, we see selections from the Showbizpizza Tome in which the rat priest reader is instructed as to the proper ritual care for the rat’s anthropomorphic costume. Clearly a document intended to preserve Chucky Cheese’s dignity and educate his priests in his mysteries, the real revelation is that it also provides instruction in the destruction rites. 

Fig. 8

In Fig. 8 (also the complete context of Fig. 1), Chucky Cheese explains himself: “Ouch! That smarts, but is very necessary so that I am no longer recognizable as Chucky Cheese. After de-identification, I may be discarded.” This depiction of the rat god clearly indicates a belief in defacing (literally!) the body before burial, which invites new speculation as to the origin of the rat’s priesthood. 

Did the rat’s priests originally destroy human bodies before burial as well, before retaining the tradition in the symbolic destruction of Chucky Cheese? The theory may at first seem absurd, but consider Chucky Cheese’s words. Why must his skull be destroyed for a proper burial? Evocative of other Neolithic secondary burial practices, such as the (roughly contemporary to the rat’s priesthood) mass grave site found at Herxheim, at which people of the Linear Pottery culture broke apart a staggering number of human skulls with peri-mortem violence, Chucky Cheese insists on de-identification. 

Perhaps Chucky Cheese was originally a death god, and his priests responsible for the care of the dead. 

Fig. 9

Why continue symbolically enacting a formerly-practiced burial method, if that is the case? We know that many rat priests themselves were buried in “coffins” or cremated, and have yet to find any evidence of ritualized skull destruction done to any human follower of the rat. Perhaps Chucky Cheese’s status as a deity who protects vulnerable members of society— children and gamblers— contributed to a need to protect him in turn. In Fig. 9, a modern reconstruction of a cheese temple, we see a pair of mosaics depicting Chucky Cheese alive and well, alongside happy and healthy children. 

Fig. 10

The architecture of the cheese temples, as seen in Fig. 10, which depicts another angle of the temple reconstruction, is eerily reminiscent to our modern readers of something which immediately resembles a tomb. It is tempting to ascribe significance to this similarity, especially when so many other details appear to support a theory that the rat’s priesthood really did stem from a funerary order of some sort, but this sort of building may have had no such connotations to its builders. Even if the authors’ suggestion is correct, the style of architecture seen here could just as easily have had the opposite meaning in its context, and been an attempt to separate from the religion’s deathly origins. We must not make assumptions from our own perspective! 

Fig. 11

Fig. 12

Fig. 13

Fig. 14

Fig. 15

In figures 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15, we can observe the destruction pattern of effigies preferentially targeting Chucky Cheese’s face/skull. This pattern is undeniable, unlike tenuous connections such as the tomblike atmosphere of the cheese temples or basing an entire analysis on a single document. Regardless of its origin, the destruction of Chucky Cheese’s skull undoubtedly held a deep ritual significance to the rat priests. In Fig. 15, only Chucky Cheese’s eyes have survived. 

As a note, it is not possible to identify which of these effigies may have depicted figures other than Chucky Cheese, given the complete destruction of the skull. De-identification truly does appear to be the goal. However, it is possible to identify separate eras of Chucky Cheese’s depictions, indicating that this practice continued across centuries. 

How might Chucky Cheese have transitioned from a death god to the deity his priests seem to have recognized him as?

Fig. 16

In Fig. 16, we see a tentative timeline of Chucky Cheese’s depictions throughout the centuries, beginning in the 1977th century BC and ending in the 2012th century BC. 

Fig. 17

His earliest depictions are obviously chthonic (Fig. 17). Around the 1994th century, these associations begin to disappear, giving way to a greater emphasis on his physicality, energy, and youth. 

While he seems to have remained a protector of both gamblers and children throughout the prominence of the rat’s priesthood, artists increasingly placed emphasis on his status as a protector of children, foregoing the guise of a high-stakes gambler, and the chthonic imagery. Chucky Cheese became a young athlete, then a musician, then an unemployed man enjoying a life of leisure (Fig. 18 shows an effigy depicting a later incarnation). 

Fig. 18

This overall movement away from the underworld towards a celebration of life are an excellent reason to consider that the mysterious origins of the rat’s priesthood (lost to history) may have been outright connected to the dead. 

Fig. 19

Sometimes, the removal of Chucky Cheese’s visage leaves no doubt as to its former presence, as seen in Fig. 19, which shows a partially excavated cheese temple. This defacing is reminiscent of damnatio memoriae which occasionally assists in recognizing faceless portraits (as certain historical figures whose faces’ images were destroyed), and yet a ceremony with apparently opposite intentions— to honor the deceased— to praise Chucky Cheese, not to bury him.

Cheese temples and the rat’s priesthood remain a little-understood part of Neolithic history, despite the abundance of rat-associated sites and the many well-preserved cheese temple artifacts. It is our hope that this article has invited the readers to make their own studies into the subjects of Chucky Cheese, secondary burial (ancient and modern), Neolithic skull destruction, cheese temple architecture, death gods, and so forth, in order to draw their own conclusions. The field is always in need of fresh eyes and new minds to think outside the bun! 

[yanderenightmare]

yandere ! BNHA headcannons

SLEEPING HABITS

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goodiebag WARNINGS: dubcon, noncon, yandere, abuse, profanity, anxiety, arson, kidnapping, Stockholm syndrome, manipulation, mind control

BAKUGO KATSUKI - KACHAN

Bakugo respects sleep to the point of obsession. Always in bed before eight thirty, and though the thought of railing his little darling into the mattress is always a tempting thought, a long day of hero-work almost always calls for cuddles and sleep and nothing more and nothing less. He’s just so tired once he comes home, all sweaty and coated in smog with only one petite little gorgeous thing on his mind. He scarcely takes a shower before heading to bed, coming in through the door, grabbing his little darling wherever she is, whatever she’s doing going to waste or having to wait until the morning again, because there’s no chance in either heaven or hell she’s escaping what lock she’s been secured in under Bakugo’s arms, making quick work of shedding all clothes and brushing his teeth harshly in bare-minimum war-like effort, before scooping her up in his arms and collapsing in the bed with a bounce and a much needed groan.

He’ll have her on her side, spooning her, squeezing the breath from out of her lungs, his heavy heartbeats crashing and wreaking havoc through her ribs, hand harshly gripping onto her hip, pushing her ass firmly against his crotch, hissing each time she makes a move. This is how it always goes, every night, no exceptions. She’ll always be locked and pushed to his chest, guarding her as though he’s a dragon protecting his treasure. His breaths wafting close to her ear, those heavy growling huffs making her heart catch in her throat. He’ll breath in the scent of her hair, loving how flowery and serene her scent is as opposed to the smell of smoke and caramel. Finding it a perfect aroma to fall asleep to, pleasant dreams conjured by the associations it provides.

DABI - TODOROKI TOUYA

Dabi can’t go to sleep without some sugar. But he too can come home tired after having over-exerted himself with the use of his blue flames, therefor sex isn’t always in the deck of cards for his darling once he comes home. Though, if she thinks she’s off the hook, she’s mistaken, there will be no sleep until he’s satisfied. He’s a selfish asshole about it too, pulling her up and his chest, hands cradling her ass, pinching the soft plump flesh as he makes her grind on him, his tongue and teeth coming to mark-up that pretty soft neck of hers, her soft timid whimpers enough to make him groan, wild energy surging through his loins, perhaps enough to persuade him in ripping those little panties off her anyways.

Afterwards he’ll be lying on his back, having her lie halfway on his chest. One hand stroking with slender fingers up and down her sides, loving how her goosebumps never fail in greeting him. On those days he wants more contact, he’ll swing her leg up over his torso, hand holding onto her ass-cheek, pulling her some further onto his chest. His heart fluttering in gratification as her small hands come to trace his itching aching scars, those careful curious blossom-tipped fingertips dancing over his marred skin, goosebumps of his own flushing the surface in reverence. His spine shivering as he falls ever so softly into sweet-dream sleep.

SHIGARAKI TOMURA

Tomura’s sleep habit is sporadic, but despite being tired, his boyish horniness always outweighs his need for sleep. Actually, he finds he sleeps even better after having pumped what frustration the day had given him into his poor little darling. Having her jump up and down the length of his cock, or humping her silly into the mattress. However, he always prepares her first, loving to feel her quivering little thighs locked and spread with his face buried in what sweetness found between them, gorging himself in exploring what places has his darling going cross-eyed. His hungry-hearted curiosity making quick work of finding out which way to curl and scissor his fingers when burying his digits knuckle-deep inside her, feeling her spongy walls clench and flutter about him until her juices drip shamefully down his hand, a cocky smile stretched upon his face as he kisses her stomach. Her prepared slicked-up wet and velvety walls so eager to suck in his cock, the fluttering feel of her walls kissing his girth enough to have his toes cramping and eyes going wild.

He’ll be exhausted afterwards, and clingy, cradling her chest like a toddler. His face using her chest like a pillow, hand squeezing and tweaking at her nipple as though it were some plushie for him to drool over. His foot coming to cuddle and snake with hers until he feels perfectly comfortable. Snores quickly following suit as well as a satiated blissful smile stretched upon his face.

SHINSO HITOSHI

Nothing can help Hitoshi’s darling from doing whatever he wants, however he wants it, whenever he wants it. No amount of groveling, begging, pleading, crying, screaming will stop him. And, although he comes home multiple times throughout the day, having subjugated his darling to his will again and again for several hours on end, sex is still mandatory before she’s allowed to sleep. He’ll laugh as he clutches her mind in a choke-hold, having her focus on every single little movement he makes, making her tremble upon every feather-light touch he bestows upon her, watching her eyes wrench shut upon every vein and bump and ridge as he pinches her clit between his callous fingers, watching as she loses count of how many times he’s made her cum in the span of the mere last hour.

He’ll be a real cocky, manipulative, degrading asshole during their entire play-session, but when it comes to cuddles he’ll wipe the shit-eating grin off his face and kiss her temple softly, stroking and petting her hair as he whispers sweet little nothings into her ear. Still a smidge of cockiness evident in his otherwise awe-struck tone. Limbs flung over and under each other, thoroughly entangled in an intricate and comfortable knot, coated with sweat. He’ll release whatever hold he had on her mind once their done, happy to see her comfort herself in his chest, soft sighs sounding from her small frame, in contrast to watching her pathetically try and snake her way from out of his hold.

TAKAMI KEIGO - HAWKS

Poor darling. She’s lucky she can still stand on some days throughout the week. Praying, wishing and screaming at whomever might be listening, whomever might be in charge of her fate other than Keigo has become like ritual before going to bed. Her prayers are never answered though. It’s a cruel joke, a game, a satire, some form of heaven yet some form of hell. How he comes to her in the shape of an angel, similar to the ones she’s been praying to, only he answers her prayers in whichever way he wants. He’ll have her for hours on end in prayer stance, kneeling, clinging to him as though he were a life-line. He’ll have her slipping in and out of consciousness, with his almighty hands guiding her every movement where she’s grown too tired to do as much as lift a finger in protest, where all that leaves her mouth are cute incomprehensible sounds.

But even he gets exhausted after a while, after a long, long while of snapping his hips forward, jutting into his poor little baby-bird. Sometimes, if he still has the energy, he’ll lay them both in the bath, message whatever strain gathered in her shoulders away, have her melt against him, but on most days: he’ll simply wrap both his wings around her sweat-slicked glowing dewy body, inhale the sweet scent of their love and nuzzle into her neck, whisper small cooing praises and adorations, holding onto her as though she’s absolution, drifting off to sleep while feeling the spontaneous remnants of himself spasm and jolt through her.

MIDORIYA IZUKU - DEKU

Izuku uses everything with purpose, as a lesson, as a reminder, as a threat, as a weapon. Sex is no exception. Does his little darling not understand her place, he’ll gladly teach her. Does his little darling forget who she belongs to, he’ll gladly remind her. Does his little darling think she can leave, does she think she can survive on her own, does she really think she’ll breath better without him? She’ll soon be preaching otherwise while clamping down around the girth of his cock, with his swollen cockhead kissing her cervix each time he pushes into her. He’ll have her screaming, crying, begging for forgiveness, and being the forgiving hero that he is, he’ll allow her rest if she tells him one more time what she’s done wrong and make him believe that she’ll never do something like it ever again through promise upon promise upon tearful promise.

He’ll allow her rest when he’s convinced she’s learned her lesson, where after he’ll always draw a bath before sleeping, carrying her to the water and letting her soak while he changes the bedsheets. He’ll be sweet then, still stern and domineering and intimidating, but refraining from being harsh and brute and cruel. He’ll have her lying on his chest every night, legs secured between his, large hands propping her into position if she slides off or tries shifting, having her ask for permission to leave the bed to do simple things such as using the bathroom. His hand running through her hair, large enough to capture her entire skull in his palm, enough to make her fear sleeping yet enough to make her feel lonely when she wakes up without him.

CHISAKI KAI - OVERHAUL

On days where Kai is content, or at least something akin to the feeling, all he wants is to cherish sweet moments with his darling. Soft-tinted cuddles in bed where silence is a type of peace that makes his soul feel light like dandelion-fluff. But, days where the hours has spared Kai of the worlds ugliness, sickness and depravity are few and far between. Meaning, it’s not often he comes home content. And when he’s aggravated, when everything feels sporadic and irate and static and like pure and utter chaos, there’s only one thing that can make him feel collected again, like he’s in charge, in control, and that’s having his little darling beneath him with his cock tearing through her, it’s seeing those gorgeous watery eyes look up at him through a thick veil of plead, it’s having her innocence wrapped around his fingers.

It’s soothing, though it looks like punishment, though it looks like torture, it’s the only way he can find peace. Afterwards, lying face to face, tangled together, limbs an artwork of intense and passionate knotwork, his shallow breaths turning to long-felt satisfied inhales and exhales. Feeling the cleanliness of her trembling flesh beneath his fingertips, having her small breakable defenseless body tight against his, the drums of her heartbeats dancing against the thunder-claps residing in his own chest, droplets of tears hanging off her eyelashes as her gem-like orbs look up at him, his hand on her waist. It’s reassuring knowing that perfection still exists in a world devoid of order.

TODORKI SHOTO

Shoto would play all day everyday if he could, but he can’t, which makes the pressure on those hours in which he can play that much more crucially vital. Yet, knowing what’s to come doesn’t mean his darling ever knows what to expect when the night conquers the sky. She’ll be counting the seconds until she hears the front-door unlock, the click sending gunshots to ricochet through her ribs. She’ll hear his booted footsteps on the stone-floors, notice her breathing turning grim and shallow, feeling the beating pitter pattering of her heart in her head, and then she’ll feel him outside the conjuring of her own fears, she’ll feel his slender petal-veined finger gliding up her leg or shoulder, tangling in her hair, his firm lips pressing softly against her forehead, her crippling fear and the rushing of blood boiling past her ears rendering all sounds incomprehensible.

Her mind knows what to expect, what to dread, what to prepare for, but her body never seems to learn. He’ll bite, he’ll claw, he’ll strangle, long digits curling and scissoring in places too deep for her to ever even dream of reaching. Cold then hot then cold and hot or hot and cold or frostbitten and boiling. She always falls asleep with a fever. Cradled and comforted in the same arms that caused her unraveling, her eyes opium-blown as she stares blankly up at him, falling deeper and drowning in chromatic galaxies. Her whole body cold and sweat-slicked and breathless and overwhelmed with Shoto’s inescapable embrace, whether she’s lying beneath him or on top of him or curled up against his chest, she’s not allowed to breath her own air when with him.

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[aster-aspera]

It’s just my skin

@badthingshappenbingo

Prompt: loss of hearing

Pairings: (platonic) jonmartim

Warnings: claustrophobia, hospitals, hearing loss

Masterlist

If you liked it please reblog <3

The aftermath isn’t as quiet as Tim thought it would be.

Maybe it’s the fact that he isn’t dead even though he should be, maybe it’s the dreadful ringing in his ear, maybe it’s the way his chest is heaving in gasping breaths he can’t hear.

There’s a thousand pounds of stone pressing down on his back and somewhere far above him he can feel the ground rumble and shift. He can’t even find it in himself to worry about the whole place coming down. He wasn't planning on making it out alive either way.

He thinks he floats in and out of consciousness for a bit. Time seems to wind and stretch and loop back, only the rubble on his back and the incessant ringing to keep him company.

Something shifts eventually, a change in the air at first, the darkness becoming just a bit softer, a bit less cloying.

And then there are hands and stretchers and needles and people pulling and prodding him and over it all is still that high pitched ringing, rising higher and higher into an impossible crescendo. He thinks they ask him things, he is sure he sees their lips moving and their expectant gazes. He thinks he tries to say something, but his lips feel awkward and unwieldy.

Everything goes dark after that. A cool blessed darkness where he just floats, no stone, no rubble, no dust, just peace.

He thinks about Danny for a while, and the ritual and the burning collapse of it all and the way Sasha smiled at him every morning when he came into the archives. Then he just sleeps.

He wakes up a bit more coherent the next time. The ringing isn’t gone yet, but at least his brain doesn’t feel like it’s through different planes of dimensions at a hundred kilometres per hour anymore. At least now he can breathe without the dust clogging his lungs.

He looks around the overbright hospital room, the disconnected monitor and the IV dripping a clear fluid into his veins. There’s a bouquet of orange flowers on the bedside table. Probably from Martin, he thinks bitterly. There’s no one else who would go through the trouble.

Martin walks into his room at some point and Tim wonders why he’s here and not hovering around Jon like some lost puppy. Maybe Jon didn’t make it out of the explosion.

Something sharp and painful shoots through Tim’s chest at the thought and he does his best not to examine it too closely.

He looks up at Martin, whose lips are moving as he fusses with the flowers on the little table. Tim stares up at him uncomprehendingly, waiting for sound to come through, waiting for that unbearable ringing to resolve itself into something he can understand.

It doesn’t.

“I can’t hear,” He says, his lips forming the words, his vocal cords vibrating, but no sound comes out, not to him at least. Martin looks up at him with concern, his mouth moving in shapes that should have been familiar, had they been accompanied by the right noises.

“I can’t hear,” Tim says again. And this time, it doesn’t come out half as controlled. He can feel something very close to panic crawling it’s way up his throat and he doesn’t quite manage to swallow it down.

Martin presumably says something else, before giving up and typing something on his phone, shoving it into Tim’s hands before stalking out of the room.

Getting a doctor, stay here

Well of course he’s going to stay here, does Martin really think he’s going to wander around London when he’s just survived an explosion? He isn’t Jon.

He waits impatiently in his bed, rubbing the uncomfortably thin hospital sheets between his fingers and trying to adjust the flat pillows so he can sit up.

Eventually the doctors come in and once again, it’s back to being poked and prodded. Doctors examining his ears and brain and all the million scans they take, with Martin occasionally coming in to hover over him, bringing along coffee from the cafeteria.

In the end, the verdict is predictable. Permanent damage from his proximity to the explosion. Figures he couldn’t just walk out of that unscathed.

And most people would probably consider being permanently deaf better than being dead. Tim wasn’t too sure he agreed with them  yet.

They let him go home eventually, with a whole laundry list of instructions on how to care for himself. Tim throws the papers into a corner as soon as he gets home. He’ll be fine, he’s survived Jane Prentiss, he can survive this. And it isn’t like it matters much.

His phone buzzes to life when he sticks it into the socket, all the messages he missed streaming in at once, a tidal wave of promotional mails and push notifications. He’s half tempted to just shut it off again when he notices one text notification between all the others.

Jon

Martin had told him he was alive, of course. But something about seeing his name displayed black on white on his phone screen drives the point home in a way Martin’s scribbled notes hadn’t done. Something sharp and hot shoots through his chest and he wants desperately for it to be that familiar anger that carried him through the last few months.

But as he lets his head fall back onto the couch, he can’t quite feel it burn the same, and without its familiar warmth, he feels hollow in a way he hasn’t since Danny died.

He swipes away the message without reading it and curls up on the couch, pulling an old, dusty blanket over himself and shutting his eyes. He tries not to think too much of the darkness after the explosion, of the plaster dust swirling through the air and settling in his lungs, of the stone crushing his limbs at awkward angles.

A dark apartment isn’t much like a collapsed building but his brain doesn’t care when it brings up vivid images of his time under the rubble. Despite it all, he does eventually drift into the comforting darkness of sleep, his slumber taking the pain and weariness out of his bones for just a moment.

It’s peaceful, till he wakes up gasping from a nightmare.

His desk rattles slightly when a heavy book is dropped on it and Tim looks up in annoyance, ignoring the painful squeezing in his chest when he meets Jon’s tired, regretful eyes.

‘Learning sign’ The book proclaims and Tim feels irritation bubbling up.

“Fuck off,” He says, focusing his attention once again on his desk.

‘I know sign, I can help, or at least recommend you some classes/books’ Jon informs him through the notes app on his phone.

“I don’t need your help.”

‘I know you don’t, but I’d like to'

“Why? So you can feel better about everything that happened? You think this is going to fix it?”

‘I’m sorry Tim’

“Sorry is too late,” he bites out, shoving out of his chair roughly. He tries to move past Jon, make it out of this stifling, dusty room, get somewhere it doesn’t feel like the walls are watching him.

A rough, calloused hand shoots out, wraps around his wrist like a vice. Jon’s eyes are dark with concern and Tim feels an odd anger at the expression. How can he show so much empathy after everything that happened?

He looks at the hand wrapped around his wrist and suddenly, it’s all just too much.

The deafening ringing in his ears, this wretched place that trapped him and choked him and took his best friend from him. And Jon, eyes still hopeful, still compassionate, after Tim had blamed him and hurt him for months on end.

“Go away,” He tries to say and he doesn’t even make it to the first syllable before his voice betrays him with a choked sob. A shudder runs through him and he looks down at the wooden floor, trying to compose himself.

The grief has never felt as all consuming as it does in this moment and it chokes and burns and pulls him under all at once.

And then, there are arms around him. A familiar touch, a familiar weight, from days so long ago Tim can barely remember them. The first touch that isn’t hostile, the first comfort he has felt in so long.

And it’s all from the man he’s tried to hate for months.

His hands curl themselves tightly into Jon’s cardigan and he buries his face in his shoulder, biting back tears with all his might. It doesn’t do much good against the tidal wave of emotions sweeping through him and soon he’s shaking all over with the sobs that wrack through his body.

Jon’s hand comes up in a familiar movement, brushing through Tim’s messed up curls. It’s hesitant at first, as if Tim will yell at him again, but when he makes no motion to do so, only melting deeper into the hold, the fingers carding through his hair become surer.

There’s a rumble against his cheek as Jon says something and Tim wishes desperately he could still hear it, hear Jon’s sure and steadying voice.

He remembers when, near the beginning of it all, he would stand in the corridor outside of Jon’s office and listen as his voice drifted through the halls, all the pain and fear and emotions painted so clearly on it. He’d always thought Jon a bit ridiculous for the way he read those statements. Now he just wished he could hear it one more time.

He closes his eyes as the loss of his family and his friend and even his hearing tear through his chest, leaving him shattered and shaking.

Jon’s chest rumbles again and Tim presses his cheek into it, pretending for just a moment he can hear a sound that isn’t the awful ringing.

Another pair of hands close around him, softer ones, broader ones. They pull him up gently and he’s not entirely sure how they both ended up on the floor, it probably has something to do with how broad he is and how skinny Jon is.

He’s pulled close against a soft, broad chest and relaxes into it almost immediately. Martin’s safe, he always has been.

He’s deposited gently on the cot, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a warm mug of tea pressed into his hands. He feels a bit like a child, being coddled and carted around. But right now, he can’t find it in himself to care.

He thinks Jon and Martin are saying stuff. Martin’s chest is rumbling against his back and he tilts his face so he can feel it better. Martin runs a comforting hand along his face, brushing away the tears that stick to it.

A hand settles on his knee, comforting and grounding and he’s sure it’s Jon’s. Both of Martin’s hands are occupied holding him together after all.

He closes his eyes. He can deal with the mess of it all tomorrow.

Right now, he just feels safe. His friends are here and that’s enough.

[kanri-tea]

The TDD get punted into the world of Demon Slayer via illegal microphone, starring:

Ramuda as Tanjiro

Jakurai as Nezuko

Ichiro as Zenitsu

Samatoki as Inosuke

None of them know what's going on and they're all disasters (they blame Ichiro though, this anime-esque shit has got to be Ichiro's fault). The only mostly responsible one has been turned into a demon and Ramuda is panic-screeching in his mind.

Ramuda and Jakurai live together. Jakurai runs a small cliniic and orphanage which he's been running for quite some time before he stumbled upon a child Ramuda and took him in.

Ramuda was not a happy camper when he comes to and comes face to face with Jakurai, but since they're in the Edo period ("We are in the Taisho era, Amemura-kun" "Ugh, whatever! Close enough!"), he figures it'll be safer if he sticks with the old man.

Ichiro is an orphan that gets picked up by Kuwajima like Zenitsu, but no electrocution for this boy. He's a diligent student, but can't seem to really pick up any other of the Thunder Breathing forms other than the first one because of plot device

Samatoki grows up in the forest as well, but he is a civilized person no matter what anyone may say. Plus, he has some experience of survival cooking thanks to Rio. His Beast Breathing is a combination of influence from the wild animals that he grows up with and memories of Rio and Jyuto

Ramuda returns from selling coal when Muzan kills everyone at the clinic and turns Jakurai into a demon, paralleling canon with Tanjiro and Nezuko. Jakurai doesn't recognize Ramuda at first, mind still stuck in the in-between of human and demon. He doesn't eat anyone but he does nearly attack Ramuda when he gets back but regains his mind at the last second.

After an encounter with Giyuu and Jakurai proving that he's still very much himself, Ramuda travels to find Urokodaki with a child sized Jakurai in a basket. It is very awkward for both of them and Ramuda promises that he'll find a way to turn Jakurai back into a human

Ramuda is very much panicking and screeching in his mind because what the fuck is going on and why the fuck do demons of all things suddenly exist and Ichiro, this is totally your fault, what is this, an anime???

Jakurai is a very tired (tm) and kinda pissed that he has to rely on Ramuda now. He's also a little mad about having to be the size of a toddler most of the time

Ramuda learns Water Breathing while Jakurai starts rehoning his assassin skills. He might be a healer now, but with how dangerous this world seems to be, well, someone has to watch Ramuda's back.

Along the way, Ramuda figures out that he can use his microphone's ability along with Water Breathing. His sense of smell is also ridiculously good for some reason, which is helpful to find demons, he supposes. Jakurai on the other hand, finds out that not only can he use blood demon arts, but also use his microphone's ability, except it's more like he can help others regenerate/heal fast. They're both really weirded out, but hey, at least its useful???

Ramuda ends up meeting Ichiro on his way to Tsuzumi Mansion. To say that they're surprised would be a huge understatement. Ichiro had assumed that he was alone while Ramuda had assumed that it was only him and Jakurai. Jakurai is conveniently asleep in the box when this happens and it slips Ramuda's mind to tell Ichiro. Ichiro is slightly suspicious though, because his sense of hearing is really good and he's pretty sure there's a demon in there, but Ramuda wasn't saying anything???

Samatoki is trapped in Tsuzumi Mansion and cursing himself for rushing in without a plan when he encounters Ichiro with a civilian kid. While surprised to see each other, they nearly start fighting before being reminded that hey, they're kinda in a demon lair right now.

When Ramuda, Ichiro, and Samatoki finally reunite, it's a bit bittersweet because on one hand, they're really glad they're not the only ones here, but on the other hand, why are they in this weird ass world?

Also, Ichiro and Samatoki question, if the three of them were here, where was Jakurai?

"Uhhh... Yeeeah... About that... The old man is kinda, uh." Ramuda sweats his way through this conversation, "I'll tell you guys when we get to the Wisteria house, 'kay?"

When they finally get to the House with the Wisteria family crest ("Holy shit, that old lady is creepy." "Stop being a baby, Ichiro.") Ramuda finally reluctantly reveals what happened to Jakurai.

"So, about the old man. We kinda ended up together," Ramuda starts explaining, "Like he ran a clinic and everything and I lived there for a while."

"Eh, did he stay behind?" Ichiro questioned, confused to where this conversation was going. Samatoki is nodding next to him, confused.

"About two years back, we... the clinic got attacked by a demon. Muzan," Ramuda breaths, "And the old man..."

Ichiro and Samatoki's eyes widen. Was Jakurai dead?

"... Jakurai got turned into a demon," Ramuda finally admits. He turns towards the box and raps his knuckles on it.

"Yo, old man. Are you coming out or not? You've been asleep in there for ages!"

The door of the box swings open, a tiny hand revealing itself before its owner crawls out, purple hair splayed everywhere.

"What," Samatoki breathlessly stares, "the fuck."

A toddler-sized Jinguji Jakurai stares back, muzzled mouth quirking down and an unimpressed look plastered on his child-like face.

Both Ichiro and Samatoki are very, very surprised. They quickly agree to help Ramuda find a way to turn Jakurai back into a human. If they happen to spend a couple minutes cooing over how cute he looks, well that's no one else's business, now is it?

They learn that while Jakura has retained his mind, his body is still very much like a demon's. He can't stand in sunlight or eat human food. His energy comes from sleeping and while he can speak, but only when he's in his adult form. He's more or less non-verbal as a child.

Ichiro stews in his thoughts in the meantime. He's fairly sure this is the plot of an anime he saw once... He keeps quiet though because he's not 100% certain, but did the illegal mic seriously punt them into an anime?

Jakurai is very unhappy with what happened at Natagumo mountain and is even more unhappy with being stabbed multiple times while in the box while being put on trial. Honestly, what sort of barbaric trial is this? Hitoya would be so dissapointed.

When Sanemi tries to bait Jakurai using his own blood, Jakurai just sends a "I'm very exhausted and exasperated" look at Ramuda

"Oyakata-sama," Jakurai hears someone scream, "I will present to you the ugliness of what we call demons!"

He's mildly cranky at being woken up by all this chattering and being suddenly stabbed, but even that isn't able to distract him from the sudden scent of blood seeping into the box.

Sweet... But, no, Jakurai had sworn that he would not fall prey to these demonic temptations.

"Hey demon! It's time to eat! Sink your teeth on this!"

As the door of the box is ripped open, Jakurai frowns at the rudeness. The blood is tempting, yes, but more importantly...

Jakurai tilts his head to look at Ramuda. Are they serious?

No fucking duh! The look Ramuda shoots back is scathing and furious, though more because he was being restrained by the man with the snake then at Jakurai.

"Shinazugawa-kun, was it," he sighs as the people watching gasp. He's well aware that he's rather tall, even in the modern age.

"You shouldn't needlessly injure yourself," he grabs a roll of bandages and starts wrapping the young man's wound. The boy looks rather shocked and angry, but Jakurai didn't really have the energy to really care.

"Huh?"

"Eh?"

Jakurai hears the confusion around him, but chose to ignore it. Giyuu and Ramuda could deal with the questions later, he decided, Jakurai was already exhausted from Natagumo mountain.

"Wait a second!"

Jakurai turns, finishing up wrapping the young man's arm.

"I thought the box was stupidly heavy, but you're like the size of a toddler normally," Ramuda starts, "Have I been basically carrying a shit-ton of medical supplies?!"

Jakurai rolled his eyes, shooting the most unimpressed look he could at the pink-haired gremlin, "Well someone has to take care of your injuries, no?"

"You - you stupid old man! I can't believe anyone calls you saint! Aaughh!! I hope you break your back!"

"That would most assuredly be very difficult to do with my regeneration. Though, I suppose object permanence is rather difficult for children like you."

Maybe they should tone down their arguments a little... nah. It effectively derails the meeting, which was the entire point of Ramuda's outburst, of course.

When Ramuda and Jakurai finally arrive at the Butterfly estate, they find Ichiro with shrunken limbs ("The medicine sucks, but it's nothing worse than what sensei's given me before...") and Samatoki with a crushed throat ("Fuck... I was so weak..."). Ramuda is also in a lot of pain. Jakurai manages to recover fairly quickly with lots of sleep and spends a lot of their recovery time assisting the nurses.

Ramuda tries to figure out why he can do Hinokami Kagura and is very confused. Jakurai tiredly reminds him that it's probably because he used to watch Tanjuro, a former patient who lived at the clinic, do it. While Jakurai only knows about Hinokami Kagura as a ritual dance, he is reminded that the sick and frail man had died and left behind a pair of strange-looking earrings.

When training begins, Ichiro, Samatoki, Ramuda are motivated and stubborn to a fault, so they manage to learn Total Concentration: Constant. Ramuda also has a conversation with the Butterfly pillar, Shinobu ("Please do your best, Ramuda-kun. When I see you doing your best in my stead, I feel much better."), it makes him think back on his relationship with the Chuuoku. These people... They care a lot and they're fighting for their lives and humanity every day. They aren't even comparable to manipulations and cruelty of the Chuuoku, and Ramuda wonders a bit if he even wants to go back. Sure, there's Gentaro and Dice, but... here, he's not sick. He's not living day-to-day wondering if he'll outlive his usefulness. Here... he's able to stay at Jakurai's side.

Jakurai is the one to become friends with Kanao is this universe, because let's be honest here, Ramuda is really not the type to be nice out of the goodness of his heart, and Ichiro would probably do it, but he's kinda still recovering from nearly becoming a spider.

"You should listen to your own heart," the purple-haired demon hums. He's talking to her, but Kanao doesn't know why. The demon - Jakurai, she thinks - had been taking time out of his day since he'd recovered to talk to her.

She doesn't respond often. Her coin doesn't land on tails that often, but it doesn't seem to bother the tall demon. And tall he is, his height easily looming over her, but there's an aura of kindness and gentleness that tells Kanao that this demon wouldn't hurt her. It's a strange thing to think about a demon.

It's Jakurai's last day here. The other demon slayers, including the one that Jakurai travels with is leaving. Kanao isn't sure, but she thinks she might be a little sad about it. The demon has been good company, she has to admit to herself a little.

"People," she hears him breathe, "are driven by their hearts. If you live by your heart, your heart will grow stronger than ever."

Jakurai smiles down at her. It's gentle and warm and his eyes crinkle a little bit at the edges. He ruffles her hair a bit, a familiar motion over the course of the month.

She knows it's time for him to leave when he gets up. He leans over and straighten outs the butterfly in her hair, giving one last kind smile.

"Live by your heart's desire, Kanao. And stay healthy."

With that, he leaves, leaving Kanao behind contemplating his words. Could she really live like that? Live by her heart's desires...? There was something in the kind demon's words and smiles that made her think that maybe, just maybe... she could.

Samatoki and Ramuda's first impression of Rengoku is that he's a weirdo. Ichiro on the other hand thinks he's kinda cool. Jakurai is asleep and therefore doesn't care.

When they're put asleep by Enmu, they end up dreaming about their respective division (sans Jakurai). It's also a bit of a harsh awakening that they've all gotten pretty complacent of this world and that they need to find a way to get back to the modern age ASAP.

When Rengoku is nearly dead because of Akaza, Ichiro, Samatoki, and Ramuda are inconveniently a little bit attached to the strange Hashira. As a desperate last resort, Ramuda gets Jakurai to try and heal the man. After all, they were all sick of the people they cared about dying and if this could save him...

"There's no point in shouting now," Ramuda hears the hashira call out from behind him. His vision is blurry from tears, and distantly, he recognizes the resigned tone in the man's voice. Rengoku Kyoujuro was had already accepted his death as inevitable.

"The wound on my stomach is opening," the man tells Ramuda, "And your injuries aren't minor either."

Samatoki is watching silently and Ramuda can see out of the corner of eye that Ichiro is making sure Jakurai doesn't get killed by the sun.

Wait. Jakurai. The old man could heal Rengoku, right?

It takes a moment of shouting to Samatoki and Ichiro to convey his idea, but even as Rengoku is staring at them with a single, intense eye, they manage to get Jakurai and Rengoku into the shaded trees of the forest nearby.

"Ramuda-kun," Jakurai quietly says, before focusing his attention on Rengoku's injuries. It's not a promise, Ramuda knows, but Jakurai is a doctor through and through. He'll do his best to ensure that Rengoku survives, he knows this.

Rengoku is watching them confused, a couple of protests having spilled out, but he's ignored in favor of getting Jakurai over as quickly as possible.

Ramuda has seen Jakurai heal a couple of people over the years with his ability, but it's always amazing to see it like this rather than through a microphone.

"Hypnosis Microphone: Medication," Jakurai breathes, and as his hands glows, the injuries beneath start to mend themselves. It starts off slow, but as color returns to the hashira's cheeks and breathing evens out, Ramuda knows that it's working. Knows that Jakurai is doing everything he can to heal the man.

There's going to lots and lots of questions later, Ramuda knows, but for now he's glad. He's glad that Jakurai is here, that Ichiro and Samatoki are here, that he's not alone.

He's glad that he doesn't have to see another person that he cares about die.

[thegrapeandthefig]

Hera and her ship models

(note: this post ended up refering a lot to information I wrote about last week. You might want to read that post before this one)

When I wrote the post about the Samos Heraion, I quickly mentioned this impressive dedication of a boat in the sanctuary, but left out other ship and navigation related offerings that have been discovered there. The conservation state in Samos was expectional (allowing wooden objects to have survived!), which is why it is an important source. However, small ship miniatures have been found in quantity in other sanctuaries too, and while they are not exclusive to Hera, they deserve some attention.

In fact, ship models constitute a recurring offering in the Greek world and have been found in 12 sanctuaries, 4 of them being dedicated to Hera. As I've mentioned, Samos is exemplary as we have found about 40 of those models, some being in wood. Others could be made of terracotta or bronze.

Now, the most obvious way to analyse this information is to take a look at the location of those temples. Most of them are, indeed, placed close to a river or a harbour, if not an island. However, Hera's link to the sea doesn't stop there, especially if we consider her role in the myth of the Argonauts and the importance of Jason as a hero dear to her and a founder of sanctuaries sacred to her like Samos and Poseidonia.

Helmut Kyrieleis, former director of excavations at the Heraion in Samos, tells us this about the ship models:

"[they] reproduce the elegant shape of Greek warships and trading vessels in simplified form’. Given their rough workmanship he doubts that these were dedications: ‘Their appearance […] might suggest that these boats played a role in the ritual of festivals of Hera as a kind of symbolic cult object."

Now, it's difficult to generalize the use of those ship models as a whole based solely on the findings of a sanctuary, but if, like Kyrieleis suggest, those aren't dedications, then we're missing something important about Hera's festivals. Another sanctuary, located in Foce Del Sele, has shown similar ship models. One of the interpretations given so far is that those were used as part of a procession, such as during the Samian Tonaia, where the statue of Hera would taken to the shore. The festival itself commemorated the Tyrrhenian pirates' failed attempt at kidnapping Hera. As for the two actual (life sized) boat that were placed on sanctuary grounds, they were dedicated to both Hera and Poseidon, thus obviously linking the goddess to the marine world.

It's obviously difficult to consider those aspects of hers when we have so little information about her maritime cult and it is tempting to say this role was relevant to the lives of many Greeks who lived on the coast and, therefore, sought protection on sea. That being said, most of those ship models were dated between the 8th and 7th centuries BC and it is also very likely that this aspect of hers pre-dates the pan-hellenisation of the pantheon and might have been somewhat abandoned when Hera became mainly worshipped as Zeus' wife, instead of on her own.

Further reading:

Boedeker D., Hera and the Return of Charaxos, in: The Newest Sappho: P. Sapph. Obbink and P. GC inv. 105, frs. 1–4, 2016

de La Genière J., Héra. Images, espaces, cultes, 1993 (republished 2019)

[scapegrace74-blog]

Ceremonies

A/N  I’ve been very busy with work, life, etc. and haven’t found much time or energy to write.  Add to that the fact that I left Metric Jamie and Claire in a very happy place, wrapped up in each other under the eaves at Lallybroch.  But I found myself wondering how their return to normalcy might unfold, and this little glimpse is what I came up with.

There’s no song to go along with this fic, because finding accompanying music is time consuming!

All other parts of the Metric Universe are available on my AO3 page.   One of these days I’ll get around to re-ordering them chronologically.

September 1, 2018, Spitalfields, London, England

The door to their flat was tight in its frame, still swollen with damp from the aftermath of the fire.  Jamie rested his duffel bag on the hallway floor and gave it a strong nudge with his shoulder.  The wood acquiesced with a squeak.  Her erstwhile roommate and putative boyfriend ushered her into their home with a polite gesture.

Polite.  Since returning from Scotland the previous Monday, politeness had underscored every one of their interactions.  Jamie had accompanied her from Euston Station back to her temporary lodging at Joe and Gayle’s before wishing her good luck for the beginning of her second year lectures and kissing her farewell.  Politely.  His nightly texts were warm and punctual.  Yesterday’s phone conversation to make plans to pick up their keys, brief and business-like.  It wasn’t that Jamie was typically uncourteous.  Quite the opposite.  But there had been nothing polite about the way their bodies came together under the canopy of the laird’s bed at Lallybroch, and it was the juxtaposition that was unsettling.

Jamie re-appeared from his bedroom to find her standing in the middle of the barren living space, arms hanging loosely at her sides.

“I... uhh... I’ll leave ye tae settle in, Sassenach.  I’ll just jog down tae Tesco an’ grab us some basics.  We can do a big shop t’morrow.  If ye wish, that is,” he added hastily.

She dug through her purse to find Jamie some money to cover her half of the groceries.  When she turned to hand it to him, he had already left.

She wished there was a ceremony for what they were experiencing.  Working in healthcare, she had often been struck by the seemingly universal human need to ritualize times of transition.  Pregnancy to infancy.  Childhood to adulthood.  Single to couple.   Living to dead.  A ceremony delineated the transformation, helping those involved cast aside what was and replace it with what was to be.  Sadly, there was no such tradition for the metamorphosis from roommates to lovers.  They were just going to have to make it up as they went.

Surprisingly, their flat didn’t reek of smoke.  Instead, there was an odour of fresh paint and floor wax, but nothing remained of the whiffs of burnt toast, vetiver and damp running shoes that she first learned to associate with Jamie at home.  With a pleasant jolt, she realized that from now on, the apartment would smell of the life they made together.

Unpacking her small travel kit, Claire decided to take a shower.  Dripping wet and wrapped in only a towel, she retreated to her former bedroom while Jamie banged away in the kitchen, singing along exuberantly (though tunelessly) to Biffy Clyro as he made his lunch.

As the signatory of their former lease, Jamie had been the sole recipient of the tenant’s insurance settlement.  It was a paltry sum that he insisted on sharing equally with her.   Her bed furniture had survived intact, and she’d used up most of the money to pay for a new mattress and linens.  Standing beside them now, she considered whether replacements for her water-logged textbooks might not have been a better investment.  Would she even be sleeping in this room, or would she be sharing Jamie’s king-sized bed every night?  Despite the deliberate nature of their courtship, it was another detail they’d yet to address.

“Do ye want mustard on yer sand....” Jamie’s voice tapered off into breath as he entered the room and took in her state of near-nakedness.  She watched in amusement as the tops of his ears grew red.

“I’m sorry, Sassenach.  I shouldha knocked and no’ barged in.”

“It’s alright.  My door wasn’t closed.”

Approaching slowly, he traced the path of a bead of moisture as it escaped her unbound hair.  Her skin shivered to life beneath his touch.

“It feels strange tae be allowed tae see ye like this.  Tae touch ye like this.”

Her mind was bounding ahead of the scene.  Were they going to have sex?   Did she want to have sex?  She’d just emerged from the shower.  But then, sex with Jamie was worth a secondary wash.  Living together as they did, if they had sex every time one of them felt the urge, she’d have a UTI in no time.  During their brief introduction at Lallybroch, Jamie’s libido had proven to be near indefatigable.

“Good strange or bad strange?” she asked the far wall as her thoughts raced, hesitant to meet his gaze.

“The verra best strange ye can imagine,” he whispered in reply before stepping away deliberately.

“Once ye’re dressed, there’s a sandwich wi’ yer name on it in the kitchen.”

Dressing hastily, Claire joined him at the tiny circular dining table, stealing shy glances between bites.

“Thank you for lunch,” she smiled after her last mouthful.  

Unlike her own limited talents, years of bachelorhood had turned Jamie into a decent cook.  Twice a month he laboured over a giant pot of beef stew, adjusting the blend of vegetables and spices with near-scientific focus, before lugging it along with copious quantities of dinner rolls to the fire station, where it was devoured by dozens of appreciative co-workers.

“Och, twas nothin’,” he insisted.

“You’ve got a little smear... no, the other side... just there...”  

Leaning across the table, she wiped a splotch of mayonnaise from his coppery stubble.  Eyes flaring, he grabbed her wrist before she could lean away and deliberately pulled her thumb into his mouth, sucking it clean before releasing his hold.  The air between them pulsed with possibilities.

Once again, it was Jamie who broke the impasse, looking around the sun-filled space.

“This room is sae empty it echoes,” he remarked.

Claire glanced over her shoulder and had to agree.  Besides the two chairs and table they were currently occupying, the only other furniture that survived the fire and subsequent dousing of water and flame retardant was Jamie’s metal shelving unit, her ergonomic desk chair and the wall bracket that once held a wide-screen TV.  It would take them a long time to rebuild.

“We can stream Netflix tae our computers for now, but I reckon we need a sofa, so we’re no’ forced tae sit on the floor when we do so.”

“We could always watch in your bed,” she suggested before thinking it through.

Once again, Jamie’s aqua eyes burned.  She could feel herself flushing, but managed to not look away.

“Aye.  We could.  Tho’ I doubt we’d see sae much as the opening credits.  Dinna tempt me, Sassenach.”

He was almost pleading, and his intent suddenly became clear.  Whether by instinct or design, Jamie was trying to define a new normality for their lives together.  Grocery and furniture shopping were a shared endeavour, but there was still space for privacy and quiet.  Two sandwiches instead of one, but they both could decide whether to eat them together.  

Their ceremonies would be modest, and gain significance by their sheer number.  A dozen funerals for their solitude, and a thousand baptisms of love.

She reached across the table and clasped his hand.

“I saw the perfect sofa in a shop window the other day.  I’ll rinse these dishes, and then let’s walk over and see it.”

[affcgato-archived]

a collection of meta & mythology surrounding LILITH, taken from various sources to include general Jewish mythology & apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Babylonian Talmud, & Kabbalistic mysticism/the Zohar, combined with canon established in The Shadowhunter Chronicles.

Lilith.

this is my own interpretation of various materials, & is written here only for reference purposes. unless interacting with another interpretation of Lilith, this is a rough idea of how she will be approached & referenced on this blog.

      Lilith was originally created out of the Earth as a wife for Adam, molded from the same clay as god’s favorite creation; however, she would not obey him or God. after defying her creator & those who would subjugate her, Lilith was rendered infertile for her disobedience, cast out of the Garden of Eden - a place where sickness & death were unknown - & made to walk the world, unable to return to nor see the Garden ever again.

      in her wanderings, she came upon the fallen archangel Sammael1. her relationship with him corrupted her, turning her into the first demon to have been originally human. this corruption also twisted her grief, & her pain; when Sammael told her how she was replaced, with someone more pliant, more submissive to those that would have seen her chained, she swore an oath that she would see their creations fail, that disease, & death, would come to their garden & take their children from them. before this could be fully realized though, she traveled the Earth with him, siring demons & leading to the creation of warlocks, & the Fair Folk.

      eventually they would create one demon too many, & Heaven, which had until this point turned a blind eye & granted lenience, took notice of the growing danger to a still young humanity. a war was declared on demonkind - they were driven from Earth & into the Void. to ensure that demons could not simply return things to the status quo antebellum upon the withdrawal of Heaven’s forces from the Earth, the angels altered the Earth in such a way as to make it hostile to a demon’s very presence on it, & strengthened the barriers between the Earth and the Void. should even a powerful demon such as Sammael or Lilith manage to force a return to the Earth, they could only remain for hours at most before they withered away and their essence was pulled back into the Void.

       the incursion. this wasn’t to last. in 1000 AD, Sammael & Lilith performed a ritual that significantly weaken the Veil between dimensions, strengthening demonic immunity to Earth’s environment so that their ‘children’ could once again walk the realm. this victory would be short-lived; Sammael was hunted down & slain by Michael with Glorious. shortly after, Raziel would create the Nephilim in order to combat the darkness seeping out from the Void.

     because of the curse laid on her, Lilith cannot have children of her own. her demonic children might be created from her, but she cannot birth a live child in her own image. this was perhaps the more painful punishment for her perceived sins. she would have given up the garden itself for a child, & its loss pales in comparison to the envy she feels for Eve as a mother. because of the corruption within her because of Sammael, this envy has twisted into a deep, deep obsession. when she was approached by Valentine, that obsession & curiosity tinged with desperation led her to allow her blood to be used in his experiments2.

      as she was once human, Lilith possesses a soul3. it’s unknown how this soul has withstood the corrosive demonic energies, especially in light of having been shattered repeatedly & cast back into the Void. it is possible that she is able to retain her soul because she is one of God’s original creations in this Realm, given inherent special protection similar to the protective charms laid on newborn Shadowhunters that has enabled her soul to survive when others would have corroded & malformed entirely.

note;

1Sammael is described as both the main Jewish archangel of death, & as a fallen angel. he is additionally believed to be the father of Cain in some traditions. in the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, he is stated to have planted the Tree of Knowledge to intentionally cause the Fall of Adam out of envy. this same source material also paints him as the snake that tempts Eve. (Asmodeus is also sometimes listed as subservient to Sammael, source dependent, but also listed as a partner to a lesser Lilith*.)

           *Kabbalistic texts (Treatise on the Left Emanation) have stated             there to be two Liliths; the Matron Lilith partnered to Sammael,             & the lesser Lilith, partner to Asmodeus.

2For the life of the flesh is in the blood(Leviticus 17;11). because her blood was given to the unborn boy, she believes him to be her son, & herself to be his mother. it’s interesting to note that Valentine was successful in a way that has not yet been entirely replicated, as the Church of Talto was unable to produce any viable children.

3it is BECAUSE she was once human that demons - especially Greater Demons - can feel some faint vestiges of human emotion, but the demonic corruption of Sammael’s influence has corroded that, & with each new demonic wave, that tenuous trace of humanity fades.

additional headcanons;

one of the most pervasive driving forces behind her actions is her obsession with her infertile state & her fixation on children.

Flowers that symbolize Lilith are; poppies (death and cold) & white roses (sterile passion).

Because of my blended canon, I both acknowledge her book-base appearance (beautiful, except that she has black snakes protruding from her otherwise hollow eye sockets. long, shining black hair. her shape is slim and lovely, and her skin pale white.) as well as her appearance as on Freeform’s Shadowhunters. I blend these two the same way I account for Jon’s blended appearance - she utilizes a glamor reminiscent her former human appearance to appear fully human on Earth & mask her otherwise demonic & corrupted appearance.

Lilith’s jealousy of Eve - as her sworn enemy, the Seelie Queen endowed Eve with Seelie beauty.

[mediaevalmusereads]

Master of Crows. By Grace Draven. Self Published (?), 2009.

Rating: 2/5 stars

Genre: fantasy romance

Part of a Series? Yes, Master of Crows #1

Summary: What would you do to win your freedom? This is the question that sets bondwoman, Martise of Asher, on a dangerous path. In exchange for her freedom, she bargains with her masters, the mage-priests of Conclave, to spy on the renegade sorcerer, Silhara of Neith. The priests want Martise to expose the sorcerer's treachery and turn him over to Conclave justice. A risky endeavor, but one she accepts without hesitation--until she falls in love with her intended target. Silhara of Neith, Master of Crows, is a desperate man. The god called Corruption invades his mind, seducing him with promises of limitless power if he will help it gain dominion over the world. Silhara struggles against Corruption's influence and searches for ways to destroy the god. When Conclave sends Martise as an apprentice to help him, he knows she's a spy. Now he fights a war on two fronts -against the god who would possess him and the apprentice who would betray him. Mage and spy search together for a ritual that will annihilate Corruption, but in doing so, they discover secrets about each other that may damn them both. Silhara must decide if his fate, and the fate of nations, is worth the soul of the woman he has come to love, and Martise must choose continued enslavement or freedom at the cost of a man's life. And love.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: sexual content, blood, magical violence

Overview: After being a little lukewarm on Radiance, I decided to give Grace Draven one more try, mostly because her books seem to be popular on tumblr. I picked up Master of Crows on a whim, and though I think it has more plot than Radiance, the main characters were really not to my taste. For me, Martise was too passive and Silhara was too much of a jerk to be likeable, and the massive power imbalance between the two meant that I didn’t really root for their relationship to succeed. Thus, this book only gets 2 stars from me.

Writing: Draven’s prose is fairly straight-forward. It’s easy to get through and it flows well, giving the reader just enough to know what’s going on. I don’t really have any criticisms for its simplicity because Draven is writing within romance, and the point isn’t to be poetic. Rather, it gets the job done, and I think most readers will appreciate that.

Where I do think I can criticize this book is in the repetition of phrases. More than twice, I saw the term “half mast” used to convey when a character’s eyes were half open, and I think I saw “tattoo” used multiple times to describe a rapid rhythm or tapping. It’s not the biggest deal, but I was definitely pulled out of the story when I noticed these things.

I also think I can criticize Draven for telling us some things that should have been shown. We’re told, for instance, that Silhara isn’t a noble man, that he’s selfish and ambitious, etc. but we’re never really shown scenes of him acting out of ambition or being actually tempted to give in to Corruption’s influence. I would have liked to see Silhara be put in positions where he is making choices or doing things that make the reader think he was susceptible to Corruptions influence. Maybe we see him researching spells for making himself more powerful. Maybe something happens on page with Conclave that is so bad, he starts seriously considering Corruption’s offer to give him revenge. It could be argued that we do get some of that, but it felt like everything was told to us, or happened in the past, and we were expected to absorb it.

Plot: Most of the non-romance plot of this book revolves around Silhara trying to figure out how to destroy the god Corruption while Martise acts as a spy, trying to get some dirt on him so the Conclave (a collection of priests/mages) will have an excuse to kill him. To be honest, I thought the initial premise was a good one; I liked the idea of conflicting loyalties and the eventual shift from enemies (of a sort) to lovers.

However, I do not think this plot was handled well, mainly because Corruption seemed to be a background threat. Multiple times throughout the book, we see Silhara be more or less tormented by the god, whether through dreams that keep him up at night, through disrupting Silhara’s magic abilities, through manifestations, and through temporary possession. While scary, I don’t think these scenes had much lasting impact, which didn’t make Corruption feel like a real threat. If Silhara is being kept awake at night, for example, I want to see scenes where his sleep deprivation gets him in trouble. If his magic is out of control, I want to see scenes where he has to decide whether he wants to risk using it or if he should go through his life without his powers. Something other than Corruption just being a lurking boogeyman that occasionally pops up and becomes a nuisance rather than a real, omnipresent force.

I also think Martise’s plot was a bit weak, mainly because we’re never really shown her having conflicting feelings or arguing with herself about whether or not to give Silhara to the Conclave. Martise is a slave, and her master promises to free her if she can get dirt on Silhara. While fine, the desire for freedom never seemed like a driving force for Martise; we never see her digging through Silhara’s study for potential dirt, of trying to eavesdrop or do other things that would show her actively trying to achieve her goal. Instead, Martise is rather passive, waiting for information to come to her, and she never really wrestles with her life as a slave, not the decision of whether or not to report Silhara once she falls in love with him. I would have liked to see more angst or at least more of an evolution where it felt like Martise had an arc independent of her service or usefulness to Silhara.

Characters: Martise, our heroine, is rather passive and seems to exist mainly to be used. I really didn’t like that she seemed to have no ambition or agency; she mostly waited for things to happen to her, and only shows agency towards the end, when the big showdown happens. Even her “gift” - the magic ability which lays dormant in her until Silhara awakens it - seems to be built around her being a tool to be used, and I was extremely disappointed that her arc didn’t seem to be about empowering her as a woman or as an ex-slave.

Silhara, our hero, is the type of love interest I absolutely hate. He’s extremely powerful, but is a complete jerk to the heroine and commits random violence towards other people out of jealousy. While we’re told over and over again that Martise loves him because he’s a good person at heart, I really didn’t see it. He not only beats up someone who speaks poorly of Martise, but he also seems comfortable ordering her around and treating her as a servant until the very end. The only redeeming qualities he had seemed to be that he doesn’t like people treating women poorly (which, ok, I guess) and he’s kind to his servant, Gurn. Other than that, he’s not an alluring figure.

Side characters were fun, if under utilized. Gurn is Silhara’s mute servant who uses a kind of sign language to communicate. I really liked this character because it inserts some disability representation, and I liked his relationship with Martise. The two seemed to bond over their shared status as servants, and I honestly wish there had been more of an arc or exploration about class with these two. Other characters served their purposes. Cumbria, Martise’s owner, is largely absent, but manages to look bad in every way. He’s not a super compelling antagonist just because he’s not on the page too often, but when he is, I think Draven did a good job not making him over-the-top evil. He’s mostly just greedy and petty, and I wish he had been used more deliberately in conjunction with Silhara’s exile as a commentary on corruption within religious orders. Corruption, the god, is a different story. As I explained in the plot section above, Corruption isn’t much more than a boogeyman, and I got really tired of him really fast.

I’m not sure how to feel, however, about the Kurman people in this book. The Kurmans are a nation/ethnic group/tribe/society with some rather odd gender dynamics. Women can apparently own property and vote, and they are supposedly respected, but they are kept separate from men much of the time, wait on men at feasts, can’t meet men’s eyes unless they want to communicate sexual availability, and so on. It was rather bizarre to me, and I seemed to be getting conflicting ideas about whether or not this society was feminist or not. I also wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be modeled on any real-life ethnic groups or societies; they are described as wearing pointy shoes, having swarthy/dark skin, having multiple wives, etc. so I got the impression that they might have been like Arabs, Mongols, or Ethiopians (due to the food they eat, etc), but if so, I didn’t quite like how Silhara refers to them as “barbarian,” even if it was in jest.

Romance: I couldn’t get on board with this romance. At all. Martise was already too subservient as a character, and while I get that some of this could be a survival technique, it didn’t make sense that Silhara would fall for her based on the ways in which she surprised or challenged him. Because she barely did. She never called Silhara out in any meaningful way and seemed to go along with whatever he wanted until the end.

Most of my discomfort, however, comes from two main issues: 1.) Silhara never seems to put Martise’s well-being first, and 2.) there is a huge power imbalance between the two that isn’t corrected until the very end, and Silhara never seems to be interested in leveling the playing field. First, Martise’s well-being: Silhara constantly offered comments that seemed to tear Martise down or, at the very least, be a back-handed compliment. He never seems to want to find ways of making her happy, and he centers his own desire and well-being even after big things happen. For instance, in a scene where Silhara is temporarily possessed by Corruption, he hurts Martise so badly that she cannot speak (as in, he chokes her almost to blackout). When he is freed from possession, he never seems to care about what he did to Martise or how she might be in pain. Instead, the first thing he does is order Martise to get away from him, then he orders Gurn to look after Martise to make sure she’s ok. All the while, he focuses on his own pain and jokes about his balls (which Martise kicked in order to free herself from his grasp). I was flabbergasted - why wouldn’t you want to make sure for yourself your lover is ok after something like that?

Second, the power imbalance. Even though Silhara doesn’t know Martise is a slave for the majority of the book, he does take her into his household as a servant, and has no qualms about ordering her about or taking advantage of her gentle nature. You’d think that if someone fell in love with a servant, much of the romance would be about overcoming class barriers or finding some way to put the two characters on equal footing. Sometimes, this is done by the lower class person having a sharper wit or calling out the upper class person on things that make them change for the better. Martise and Silhara never seem to have that arc. Martise calls Silhara “Master” throughout the whole book, and Silhara didn’t seem uncomfortable with it except when they were having sex. He never stops presuming to give Martise orders and expecting she obey them, not even at the very end when the question of her freedom gets resolved. And there are books out there where this class barrier is done well (Jane Eyre comes to mind), so I think Draven could have put more work into exploring the dynamics and how Martise is a match for Silhara, even given her status and lack of magic (at least, for a while).

TL;DR: Master of Crows has a good premise, but ultimately suffers from unlikeable or passive protagonists, a weak plot, and a romance with uneven power dynamics.

[omgkalyppso]

How about 5 and 17 for those OC ship asks!! Any ship you want to talk about

Thank you for the ask! I'll answer for my bg3 durge oc Meabh (they/she) and the villain Enver Gortash.

5. Where was their first kiss? What kinds of emotions were tied up in the moment or aftermath?

I headcanon Meabh and Enver knew each other since childhood, separated for a time, but reunited two years into Enver returning to Baldur's Gate. She was out on the streets with ill intent but rather than pursuing their own goal single-mindedly, they allow themself to be enticed and distracted by the sight of this short man being crowded into an alley. She sees some of Enver's inventions and hidden weapons, and doesn't quite step in, but kills one attacker who sought to run and another he'd simply knocked out, a strange and unexpected addition to his predicament.

He was surprised to be both recognized and remembered. I imagine them exchanging dialogue that foreshadows Meabh's eventual amnesia. They don't kiss then, but Enver's fascinated with discovering how Meabh has survived, and they're not unattractive, so he invites them to dinner, with a few days preparation - and enough time for Meabh to perform work enough to please her father.

But it is after this dinner that they share their first kiss. Under a bridge in the Lower City. Meabh's more curious than emotional, delighted by the sensations and the way Enver looks at her — different than reverent cultists, fearful victims, moronic souls who'd seek to direct their violence, or even those who would leer on the street if they deigned to let others see them. Enver would have expected Meabh to have burnt out if he'd deigned to think of them at all since his return to Baldur's Gate — he had thought of them occasionally during his time away, when he'd been fed and when he'd been tempted to kill the devils in his company or die trying. But now, Meabh's presence feels significant, an omen of the best kind, and with the potential of being a resource and inspiration. He wants to know everything of the dark machinations of their mind, how they evade the so-called justice of Gods and men, and what other ways they might be good for each other.

17. Do these partners ever live together? If so, do they both / all give up their previous living spaces or does one move in with another / do some move in with another? Are there disagreements about decorating / aesthetics / furniture? If so, what compromises can be found?

I have to see how The Ending plays out for them to decide what happens with them post-canon.

Pre-canon they do not live together. As children the whole of their time was spent outdoors. As adults, for various reasons at different stages of their plots and their relationship, Meabh doesn't risk making a home of anywhere but the temple, and Enver doesn't dare ask — though he makes their welcome obvious. Once Enver has his own estate in the Upper City, a factory / workshop by the docks, and the Iron Throne is under construction, he no longer has the need to seduce the nobility for their money when coercing and blackmailing them for their loyalty is far more fitting for a man of his station. His influence extends, but he is no longer running across the planes, and so, at home, he allows himself to feel at home, and to have expectations, he keeps a wardrobe for Meabh, implements to care and style their hair, tools and toys for their sexual intimacy, a room for them to draw in, and another that they might use to kill in, if not in ritual to Bhaal at least in a fit of passion, as well as access into a basement where he keeps a workshop for each of them.

I think if Meabh ever moved in, that while the foyer might have more than an incidental amount of iconography to Bane, especially an overhead window and an eight foot wide mask immediately across and above from the entrance door, above staircases and a balcony leading inwards; that a grand mosaic or comparable depiction of Bhaal is installed in the floor so the two deities can stare each other down, feeling superior in the execution of their own portrayal - Bhaal, in the foundation, inescapable, whole, vs Bane's glorious, imposing oversight, not underfoot, fractioned like the facets of a jewel.

[laurelsofhighever]

The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 66 - The Promise of Spring

Chapter Rating: Mature Chapter Warnings: Gore, Dismemberment Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fereldan Civil War AU - No Blight, Romance, Angst, Action/Adventure, Eventual Smut, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Fereldan Culture and Customs, Cousland Feels, Canonical Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort

Read it on AO3

--

First day of Wintermarch, 9:32 Dragon, First Day

Dim, early morning light seeped through the curtains in Rosslyn’s room. Her windows faced east and north, over the sea, and for years her mornings had been spent hiding from the sun to catch a few more hours of sleep before the inevitable start to the castle’s day, but on this morning, the first peek of dawn did not bother her. She was already awake, if barely, warm under the covers and content. Alistair lay beside her, sharing her pillow, his legs tangled with hers, running gentle caresses along her arms and back with the tips of his fingers.

“I should go,” he told her, breaking into a yawn.

She nudged forwards, brushing a slow touch over his collarbone. “Just a little longer.”

“I’ll be missed,” he warned. “And then I won’t be ready in time. And neither will you.”

“You’ll be cold if you leave,” she pointed out, with a pout.

“I’ll just have to keep myself warm thinking of you.”

Still not quite awake enough to laugh properly, Rosslyn sighed, and leaned into the soft touch along the side of her face before wriggling closer to rest her forehead against his.

“You know, this wouldn’t be such a problem if you married me.”

Her smile widened. “Hush with your logic.”

The subject had become something of a joke between them, moments of levity strung out like beads on a necklace that started when she had airily asked if she could expect him to steal the last pastry at breakfast every morning of their lives. Since then, they had discussed so many things, from the inane to the serious, what colour they should use to monogram the egg-cups and whether it would be better to live in Denerim with the king, or in Highever where they could help Fergus rebuild.

She leaned into him now with a slow press of her lips against his, the gentle hitch of her leg over his waist, a quiet hum when his palm graced her thigh.

“Are you sure you’re not a little bit tempted to stay?” she asked, with her fingers carded in his hair.

“I know what this is,” he replied. His expression remained soft, but worry pulled at the corners of his eyes and she found herself wanting to hide away in the safety of his shoulder. “I won’t ask if you’re sure –”

“I am.”

“And I’ll be beside you for every step of today,” he promised. “And after that, it’ll be over.”

“But they’ll still be gone,” she mumbled. “Is it strange, that after all this time it still feels like a little part of me was hoping that… that they’d just spring back into being?”

Pressing a kiss to her forehead, Alistair shook his head. “When my mother died, they wouldn’t let me see her.”

She held herself closer; he talked so rarely about his childhood.

“For months I wouldn’t believe she was dead, I kept insisting that she was travelling no matter what anyone told me. I grew out of it eventually, I guess, but it’s hard, not getting closure like that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he answered. Their hands found each other and laced together. “I wish I could do more to stop you hurting – but I’m not staying!” he amended quickly, as one fine eyebrow arched.

“Worth a try,” she teased.

“You’re incorrigible.” He scooted across to kiss her. “And I have to go before your maid comes in and scolds me.”

She huffed good-naturedly against his mouth. “Fine. If you must.”

“My lady is so gracious.”

He brushed one last kiss over her lips and rolled over to wriggle out from under the covers, careful to avoid opening their space to any chill inrush of air. As he winced along the cold boards retrieving his clothes so haphazardly discarded the night before, she stretched under the blankets and watched him, and when he reached the door still shrugging his jerkin onto his shoulders, he glanced over at her and his smile might have melted the winter around them.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

“I love you.”

--

Three hours later, she stood on the headland outside the city on a flat spur of rock that lifted itself above the tide line, protected from the buffet of the wind by layers of leather and quilted samite, and a hood of thick fur that tickled her cheek with every gust. The sky over the sea had darkened with the burgeoning threat of a storm, an occasional flash of lightning behind the charcoal smudge of heavy rain, and it stirred a bitter tang of damp wood and rotting seaweed in the back of her throat.

The journey down from the castle had begun with the usual chaos of the season, the celebration for the turning point of the year that came with shouts and coloured streamers and a turfing out of old things, and with Alistair and Fergus at her side she had led Highever’s population to a cove rimmed with greyish sand and flat, smooth boulders poking out of the shingle in the low tide, topped with limpets and serpent-green seaweed. A single column of rock rose out of the surf among its smaller brethren, its uneven face stained with rust from the ancient iron rings riveted to it at half the height of a human, a landmark that had once been nothing more than one of many eroded sea stacks along the teyrnir’s coast, but which had been pressed into service generations ago for moments just such as these.

As a crowd gathered on the dunes around her to watch, guards in Laurel blue marched to the cage drawn behind their carriage and hauled Howe from the floor before dragging him to where she waited with the others. He was filthy. The people they had passed in the streets had thrown ash over him from the dead fires of the previous year, but the grey streaks over his skin did little to hide the way it sagged, the stains on the cloth and the lank hair, the sores at his wrists and ankles where the cuffs had cut too deep. The guards gripped him by the elbows as Rosslyn stepped forward to address the crowd, and it was only in part to make sure he didn’t try to escape.

“The year past has been hard on us all,” she called to the people, in a voice lacking the wobble it had carried that faint, faraway day on Harrowhill when she ordered the retreat. “We have lost, and we have mourned, but we have also survived to stand in defiance of those who would have trodden us into the mud.” Rapt silence met her words. “We have much to rebuild, but today is a day of celebration, a day of hope, and a day of justice for those who have done us wrong.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned and drew the Rose’s Thorn form its sheath.

“Maker spit on you,” Howe snarled as she approached. “I deserved more.”

“I agree.”

One of the guards fisted his hand in Howe’s hair to keep his head still. He struggled nonetheless, but she paid him no mind as she drew the tip of her blade along the crest of each sallow cheek, deep enough for a line of blood to well and mix with the coating of ash, but not deep enough for true disfigurement.

“After today, you will be forgotten, your name never spoken, and your bones left to rot in the depths of the sea,” she told him in an undertone. “You had best hope the cold takes you before the sea drakes catch your scent.”

At that, what little defiance was left in his eyes drained away. He had been present to witness her father dispose of the Orlesian duke who had stolen the Cousland seat and treated the people like amusements, had seen first-hand the old punishment brought into new use, the ritual that was both catharsis and warning for those left standing on the shore. Perhaps Howe had thought she would lack the spleen to use it.

She let her gaze slide past him and turned back to the crowd. Her voice, raised from the stomach as Aldous had taught her, reverberated from the circling dunes so that it had an almost magical power. “Now, as for generations, we send the ashes of our past griefs into the sea, to be cleansed so that the world may be renewed.”

A small wave of her hand, and the guards shoved Howe along the causeway, beyond the stretch of the sand and the maze of boulders to the spire already being licked with the first waves of the incoming tide. One held him in place while the other passed chains through the central ring, then fastened the ends around each of his wrists. He would have enough slack to move, to pace if he wanted, but not so much that he would be able to keep his head above the water – if he kept his head at all. The people watched in silence as the guards returned to stand with the rest of the Cousland escort, and even the storm itself seemed to pause, as if waiting to see what happened next.

“What now?” Alistair asked in her ear. Officially, he had come as the king’s representative, to see justice done, but his presence at her back steadied her even if the method of execution wasn’t to his liking.

“We wait.”

The water rose slowly. It undulated in and away, creeping to cover the rocks until only little bobbing patches of seaweed marked their place and then they too disappeared, while crests of white foam lapped at first the shingle then the sand, then at Howe’s ankles where he stood chained to the spire. This was the point, the dread of the inexorable ending. Even from so far away, she could see the nervous darts of his head as his eyes scanned the water, his start as the first spines broke the surface. On his other side, a narrow draconic head smooth with grey-blue scales lifted from the waves with a plume of spray from its nostrils, its head turning this way and that to regard him with large, yellow eyes, before it slipped back under the next crest and disappeared. More shadows stirred under the water, each movement becoming another half-glimpsed fin or a lightning flash of scales, attracted by the smell of blood and Howe’s splashing as he backed against the stone.

The water reached halfway up his thigh when the first sea drake hauled itself onto the causeway. Even half-submerged, it was still huge, with a thick neck and powerful shoulders, a sloped back armoured with interlocking scales that narrowed and paled down its flanks. Webbed black spines ran in a ridge down its back to a broad, paddle-shaped tail, and up to a pair of vestigial horns that crested its head like a crown. Rosslyn had only been small when she had first seen one through her mother’s glass, sunning itself on the pebbled shore of a rocky islet, but even so many years later her awe of such a creature had not diminished. Howe kicked water at it and shouted as it stalked towards him on short, stately legs, and with the air of an affronted cat the spines flared along its back, its hiss a thing of primeval menace as it dived into the swell of an incoming wave. Before Howe could celebrate his triumph, however, another drake surfaced on his other side and made a feinting snap at his knees. He drove off that one, too, but others were already closing in.

“And we just watch?” Alistair asked, trying to keep his voice steady. “How long do we stay here?”

“Until it is finished,” Fergus answered.

“This is how things are done,” Rosslyn told him, her eyes fixed on the far, struggling point. “You were right that we can’t match the suffering he caused, but it isn’t about killing him.” Her expression softened into doubt, and she turned to him. “You don’t have to stay.”

The crash of a wave drowned out Howe’s yelled curse, but not the chorus of inhuman cries that followed it. Alistair’s jaw clenched at the sound, but he reached for her hand anyway.

“I promised I would,” he said.

She had told him what was planned, waited with held breath for him to make her choose between his righteousness and justice for her people, but he had merely nodded, and followed her lead, and now the last of her worry washed away in a sigh of relief. A scream behind her brought her gaze back to Howe. The water reached almost to his chest. For a moment she saw only a patch of darkness spreading like oil over the water, and then stillness, and streams of sinuous forms moving against the current. And then the water frothed pink. Howe shrieked. His arms jerked to try and get away, the chains sparking against the rock, until with one final shudder his body fell limp, and the only movement then came from the squabble of the sea drakes over their feast.

Through it all, Rosslyn watched stony-faced, forced herself not to look away. A single tear leaked from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek, but she ignored it. For a moment, the emotion stirring beneath her ribs went unrecognised, like a call in the darkness, until her breathing eased and she realised the slow spread of peace through her limbs. The encroaching storm and the rising water swallowed up the scene before her. It would take days for the bones to be picked clean, and somehow that was enough, final enough, that a weight she had not realised she had been carrying lifted from her shoulders, and when she turned her head to face Fergus, he met her gaze with the same tired look in his eyes. When they had stood together on the steps of Castle Cousland nearly a year before, her head had been full of the stories of battle, valiant triumphs and victories over fearful opponents, but few had mentioned what came after, the emptiness when there was nobody left to fight, and nobody waiting at home to welcome the hero’s return.

She had forgotten Alistair’s hand in hers until he squeezed it lightly to get her attention. People were already starting to leave. Watching them, the slow, steady amble back to hearth and home and family to light the fires for the coming year, she sagged and let her head fall on his shoulder, accepting the quiet flow of his strength with nothing more than a sigh. Her mind drifted back over the past few weeks, to their argument and the question he had asked her. They had spent so much time together since then, sharing meals and sneaking out of each other’s beds in the mornings, small moments that would have been unthinkable to the girl who had thundered out of the barbican gates in the middle of the night at the head of an army.

“It’s getting late,” Alistair murmured as the first drops of rain pattered the rock around them.

“It’s done,” she agreed. “We should go.”

The journey back to the castle passed in silence, and more silence met them beyond the barbican. Aside from the complement of volunteers filling the duty roster, most of the guard and the servants had taken the day to visit friends or relatives after the services in the chantry. As Rosslyn descended from the carriage, her thoughts drifted to Morrence, who had found her home a wreckage of the one she knew, and who had gone with Leliana to spend time with Gideon and his brothers.

“You’re back!” Amell cried from the top of the stairs, her voice nearly blown away by the wind. “Lord Fergus needs his treatment.”

“Can it wait?” Fergus asked. “I want to walk in the gardens.”

“Your Lordship, the weather –”

“Dearest little sister, how about we take a turn together?” he interrupted.

Something in his tone reminded Rosslyn of their mother when she was determined to get her way, but she had inherited the Seawolf’s steel, too. “Are you warm enough?”

“What, under the four blankets you’ve already piled on top of my five layers?”

“I feared you wouldn’t be able to walk if I added any more,” she told him with a wry quirk of her brow.

“I’m fine,” he huffed. “You fuss worse than Nan ever did.”

Alistair delicately cleared his throat. “I’ll be in the library.”

She squeezed his fingers, mourning that she had to let them go. “I’ll see you soon.”

For an instant, his gaze lingered on her mouth, but with their company he let her go unkissed, and they parted, he up the keep steps into the warmth of the castle, and she after her brother, who was already halfway to the door in the curtain wall that led down to the uppermost terrace of the gardens. The stairs in the pass were free of ice, but the narrow corridor channelled the wind into a freezing knife that cut at any flesh not safely hidden under winter layers. The gravel paths beyond wandered as they always had between beds now devoid of their summer verdancy, as if no horrors had befallen the castle at all, with only the ragged line of the clipped rosemary hedges betraying the months of neglect.

Fergus’ cane tapped a steady rhythm along the path, keeping time with the pace of Rosslyn’s thoughts as she fidgeted with the silence. She let him lead her, distracting herself with the work that would need to be done, and hoping the sky would leave off opening long enough for her brother to say whatever was clearly on his mind.

“That was a good speech you gave today,” he said eventually, poking at a weed that had sprung up between the stones. “Are you going to take your own advice?”

“What do you mean?”

“Moving forward,” he answered. “Building a life.”

He turned off the formal walk to a path that clung to the base of the keep wall, and her step faltered. She knew where they were going.

“The war isn’t over yet.” She picked a stray bit of leaf from her glove. “There are still things to do.”

He stopped, turned. “You have a man who loves you – a good man, who’s worthy of you, as far as I can tell. Putting that off helps no one.”

“Putting what off, exactly?”

For the space of a breath, he held the challenge in her gaze, battling her will to be obstinate in the face of his prying, until he grumbled something unintelligible and lifted his eyes skyward. Whether he was cursing her or the weather was difficult to tell.

“You’ve become quite grouchy in your old age,” she remarked as they continued along the path.

An elegant glasshouse waited at the end of it, set against the northern wall of the keep and best placed for the sun and the views as the terraced levels of the garden gave way to sheer basalt cliffs. Many of the glass panes between the wrought-iron frames had broken, and dead leaves piled inside the door, but with nothing to burn or to break, the interior had been left mostly untouched. The servants must have kept the plants watered for there to still be so much greenery, but Rosslyn doubted many of Howe’s soldiers had ventured far enough into the gardens to even discover Oriana’s solar, the gift she had found waiting for her when she stepped off that final ship from Antiva.

Of course Fergus would want to spend time in this place, on this day. He was already wandering through the space, his hands brushing the leaves of the orange trees his wife had planted as the rain finally unleashed itself upon them. It clattered on the glass like a volley of ballista bolts, globs of gritty sleet that turned into a water race towards the gutter and spilled over the broken bits in the roof. He ignored the roar as the front passed over them and settled into a steadier drone against their shelter, busy instead with an overturned chair that he dusted off with the tail end of one of his blankets.

“He asked you, didn’t he?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not talking about this with you. I had enough of you all prying into my personal life years before I ever met Alistair, and it’s not going to change now. It’s between me and him. And I can’t believe you would be so hypocritical! You nearly ran away to Antiva when Mother mentioned –” Her mouth snapped shut, but too late to avoid the grief pinching at the corners of her brother’s eyes.

“Don’t deny yourself happiness out of pity for me,” he cautioned. “I lost everything except you, don’t – don’t add to that. You deserve the same joy I had. There’s –” He blinked and looked up at the rain. “There’s nothing like it, and we Couslands don’t do well when denied our passions. We mope, and you’re awful when you mope.”

Unsure of how to reply, she turned away from him and out to the raging sea. It was all well for her brother to sit and hand out advice like one of Canavan’s battle lectures but he had had nothing to lose in pursuit of Oriana; he would still have been himself. She wanted the future she saw with Alistair, that image of them curled up together in the library with the sunlight streaming through the window, but in the darkness when the nightmares woke her and only the sound of his breathing kept her panic at bay, the fear of losing him – of the husk she might become without him – became a visceral, living thing that threatened to engulf her whole. She couldn’t take the step, couldn’t make it real.

She deflected for something simpler. “What about you?”

“I’ll do my duty, as Father would have wanted,” he answered, stabbing his cane through a leaf. “And if that prince of yours ever forgets how good he has it, I’ll have to step in and remind him. Forcefully. With a sword.”

At that, she smiled. “You’re so annoying.”

“It makes up for all the years you tagged along after me, trying to keep up,” he shot back, and even stuck out his tongue.

“We used to drive Nan mad.”

“It’s a shame she worked out our scheme for stealing biscuits from the kitchen.” He sighed. “Go on in and see His Highness, before he comes out looking and thinking you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole or something. I – I want to stay here for a while.”

Alone, he didn’t say.

“And your healing session?” she asked.

“I’ll manage without it.”

The dutiful part of her worried, wanted to argue, but she remembered Deerswall, and the solitude she had looked for in the grove away from the eyes of all looking to her to lead. So she nodded, and drew her weather layers more tightly around her shoulders for the walk back to the keep.

“Don’t stay out too long,” she said, and stepped out into the rain.

[siliquasquama]

Step back from the beach a moment

I don't celebrate on Memorial Day.

Remember, yes -- that is the point.

Commemorate, if you prefer, though that implies some manner of ritual, or some form of public ceremony, held at a slight remove from emotion, as the crowd along a parade route is both at a remove from the parade and part of it.

But to celebrate, to call it a day of relaxation or take it as a day of revelry --

I stopped doing that after I heard a particular song, in a particular movie. The movie itself is The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Wherein the effort to find a Union soldier's grave, supposedly full of gold, is shown to be rather petty in comparison to the war itself -- which is presented primarily as a tragedy. A useless battle over a little bridge in a bleak corner of the West; a field of shallow graves marked by crude crosses; a stockade for prisoners of war, where weeping men are made to kneel in the dirt and sing a pretty song to drown out the cries from men being tortured --

You would think that the officer who chose the song would pick something less critical of the war, but who knows what he was thinking? As for the director, one might say he chose the song to distill the movie's message. As the final verse goes:

Count all the crosses, and count all the tears -- These are the losses, and sad souvenirs. This devestation once was a nation -- So fall the dice. How high is the price we pay?

After I heard that song my Memorial Days became rather grim.

I am always a little conflicted about the song. I know the political tendency of Americans -- especially white Americans -- is to elide the cause of our civil war, and elude the full implications. The decades after the war would not be the last time that reconciling white Americans meant leaving black Americans out in the cold, open and vulnerable to the people who would never stop trying to subjugate them.

Tempting to say both sides were right, and both sides were wrong, so as to bury the hatchet --

And yet: those who would subjugate black Americans dig the hatchet up whenever they think any government is trying to stop them. Be it in the decades after our civil war, or the decades after the second World War, or the decades after the country chose a black man to lead us towards a gentler peace and greater justice -- they do not forgive any movement towards the true power and freedom of black Americans, except by the acquiscence of the country to their predation, for any move towards freedom is a move away from what they have built, and threatens their coffers. As their coffers were filled by slavery, so they seek to maintain it, in one form or another.

Thus the old song from slaves long ago remains relevant, and its hope is ever present:

Oh Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn, Oh Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn. Pharaoh's army got drownded. Oh, Mary, don't you weep.

Did they?


I do not know.

So, when I hear the soldier's lament, I wonder if it was made to elude that question. Perhaps it is that the director, being Italian, at a far remove from this continent and its ways, only saw the war as it was described to him, and thus saw it as the hatchet-burying narrative would have it, and so in his movie made no judgment nor mention of why the war began, nor what cause stood at its center by the end.

Or it could be that the lyricist, being not Ennio Morricone but a white American man, may have written the lyrics to paper over that question, and the compoaser and director alike looked at it without considering it too thoroughly.

Which would assume signores Leone and Morricone would ever dare do sloppy work.

Most likely it is that, if the movie is presented as tragedy, Leone couldn't introduce any of the concepts that have led Americans to call the American Civil War a glorious struggle of freedom. No John Brown's Body nor grapes of wrath for him. In the battle for the bridge, Captain Clinton sees his job as pointless, and that's the story the movie tells. No sense muddling the message by talking about glory. Even if the southwest did have its own battles for freedom, separate from the question of slavery, which could have been shown in the background.

For, if I speak of freedom only in terms of black Americans, I forget the peoples who were also targeted for predation by white Americans, whose resistance to them began long before slavery was planted here, whose story always complicates the simple narrative of White versus Black  --

And as I speak of many peoples to think of them as a whole is complicated, if not impossible, for one tribe does not speak for another nor decide the same as the other. Over the centuries of struggle each tribe had interests separate from and sometimes against their neighbors, such as the people of pale faces could exploit to divide and conquer them.

In the case of the Civil War there were more such tribes who allied with the Confederate forces than with the Union. As it was in the rebellion that established the United States, as it was in the War of 1812, which was, in North America, sought by paleface warhawks as a battle against Indians -- in each such war that threatens the existence of the Federal Government of the United States, the victory and continued survival of that government has been the loss of many tribes and the deaths of their people.

I wish they had not sided with the British Empire, nor with the Confederate slave-holders, yet I understand why they did, for so many of the people we call American heroes were also villainous towards native tribes -- George Washington and Abraham Lincoln alike. The hope of those tribes was the scattering of the forces set against them and in the Revolutionary War, at least, it was not a hopeless effort, nor would it have looked hopeless to them in 1812 nor 1860. For the sake of those people I will not sing patriotic songs, nor wave the flag, nor call the American Revolution nor the American Civil War an untarnished good.

Nor any war. Hard to see blood spilled out on the ground, be it for the best of causes. Blood spilled and bone scattered. Young rascals and old coots alike left as shells, empty as the casings spilled about them, and these days we send mostly the bright young ones to that end. Lao Tzu said a general must mourn their victories.

And there are many of us come from overseas who have seen their loved ones die before them, seen bodies scattered amid the rubble of what they thought would stand, as so many wars these days are civil wars fought in and over civil settings, thereby to flatten those settings -- how could I celebrate any war, in the face of such people? How could I say any war was for a good cause?

And yet -- Pharaoh's army got drownded. Hard to ignore that point.

And for the folks who fought for the life of their people against the federal government, and lost, I wonder if I would dare tell them that war could have no noble cause.

So if I consider Memorial Day as anything, it is a day to mourn victory. Never to forget its price nor what it purchased. Never to speak of that purchase as if it were for the petty game of nations. It is not for for them. It is for the living and the dead. One life given for another, or for many. Perhaps given freely. Perhaps a trade made by someone else far away. Therein lies the tragedy.

For his part, Sergio Leone did not let his movie side with the Union's political cause. If he sided with anyone, it was with the soldiers. The song is called "Story of a Soldier" and it shows the battles through a soldier's eyes. Smoke, cannons, flags in the distance too ruined to read, crosses and tears counted one by one.

The movie's main battle is, as I said, useless. Not from the perspective of whoever gave the orders, but certainly from the perspective of Captain Clinton. His men have to take the Branstone Bridge. If the Confederate forces also want it, then might as well blow the damn thing and leave, and he's desperate to try. But orders are to take the bridge. Maybe as a political favor, maybe to achieve a larger strategic goal. Either way thousands of people will die. That's why Captain Clinton reeks of alcohol. He couldn't handle the job any other way. So when two scruffy and disobedient recruits go and destroy the bridge after all, though it be for a selfish and petty goal, Captain Clinton's dying words are in gratitude. Thousands of people will live. That's what he cares about.

You would think the larger scale of taking that bridge would be more important! Politically, strategically, maybe. But for the life of each man involved -- not so much. They can't see that far. To them the small scale is what they know. And maybe it's more important anyway. The song is called "The Story of a Soldier." Maybe that's what the movie is actually about. And the two bandits are just a way of bringing us to the place where we see what became of him. Which one he is among thousands, that's harder to say. There's an Arch Stanton on one grave marker and 'unknown' on the other. We don't know anything about either man. The lives of both men were on the small scale, not big enough for anyone outside their little worlds to care.

But someone living on the big scale got a lot of people into a big mess, and war means spending a lot of the small scale for the sake of the big scale. Basically shovelling your world into the furnace bit by bit to keep the engine running. Sometimes it means you lose your peach orchard; sometimes it means the army needs your 500-year-old church bell for scrap metal. Hard to tell if it's worth it at the time. Or when you're laying flowers on a grave later.

But when you lay flowers on a grave, are you saying the war was worth it? Or is it an apology for letting a bad situation get out of hand? If you're going to lay your flower on the grave and say the war was worth it you had better include an apology because that's a hell of a lot smaller price to pay than what you're looking at.

Now as for why I post this today and not the 25th -- as I said, I don't celebrate on Memorial Day, and I don't much like the fact that it was moved from the 30th of May to the last monday in May to give people a 3-day weekend. That all feels a bit crass. Seems like it made it easy to forget why this holiday exists. Everyone takes a trip to funtown for the day.

Well, fine. I can't blame people for doing that if they don't remember why the holiday exists. We don't much emphasize the Civil War part of it anyway. Easy enough to forget when you turn a day of memory into a day for parades.

I'm not trying to spoil the day for you when you were looking for a rare chance to relax. Go and have fun.

Just let me stay here with the graves.

[the-rebel-archivist]

Love & Duty

The camp was so empty without him there. It had always felt full to bursting when Alistair was around. His personality pervaded through any space he was in, leaving no room for loneliness or sadness.

Lyna had set up her tent while it was still light out but now shadows cast by the light of her bonfire danced on the canvas. Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted and its mate answered as they hunted together in the darkness. The sky was devoid of stars, the only light from above faded moonlight partially obscured by clouds. It felt a little like rain, heavy and silent. It would be appropriate if it rained tomorrow. 

She shivered in the chill from the evening and moved closer to the fire. Before, he would have put his arm around her and pulled her close, freely sharing his warmth; he always had run hot. Now she was alone.

She hadn’t had to be. She could have been inside the city at the palace instead of on her own just outside the tall stone walls. Alistair certainly wasn’t lonely tonight, on this, the last night before he was wed. He was probably completely intoxicated and surrounded by the gaggle of vapid women who seemed to dog his steps nowadays. It was embarrassing to watch them throw themselves at him. She would never fawn over him the way they did, simpering and swooning at every stray glance or word from his mouth. She respected him more than that. He’d invited her to come tonight, of course - she was his best ‘man’, after all. But attending the wedding and feigning happiness tomorrow would be trying enough as it was so she had made her excuses and left the city. She would return to the castle before the sun was up to dress for the grand event. She needed time alone to think, and couldn’t get it inside the confined, monochrome palace.

The fire was dying down and she threw another small log on, wanting a bit more time before she resigned herself to restless sleep. The light flickered and tiny pockets of sap crackled as the fire consumed the new wood. She would have to be up very early to bathe before leaving or else she’d smell like smoke, but she’d do it. She was determined to outshine any of the fine ladies who were far more suitable for court life than a Dalish elf such as herself. Ladies who were acceptable to be queen or princess or teyrna or whatever foolish, invented title they held.

This wedding had always been coming. She’d arranged it herself, a perfect marriage of convenience to secure peace in Ferelden. Of course, when she had pushed Alistair take up the kingship she had intended to share his throne. She was going to end the Blight and then have her perfect happily ever after ending; she should have known better than to believe that even then. She hadn’t been so naive as to think that her being an elf wouldn’t be a problem, but her feelings and misplaced confidence had blinded her. How had she allowed what she felt to cloud her judgement? She knew better than that. 

When she had faced resistance to her plans she had changed tack with barely a blink, orchestrating a union between him and the dowager queen, with whom she had made an arrangement that would allow her to remain by his side. Everything had been meticulously planned, all possible outcomes accounted for. She had only failed to consider the impossible. The hurt she felt now wasn’t her fault, it was his. There was no way she could have possibly considered that he would leave her. It was a variable that had she had never factored in.

She picked up her spade from her pack. With no one else to mind the fire she would rather wrap herself tighter in her blankets to keep out the chill than allow for the fire to potentially become unmanageable while she wasn’t conscious to control it. She should try to sleep anyway -  this disgusting self pity needed to be suffocated before it began in earnest. It served no one well for her to start thinking about what ifs. The flames hissed as she piled earth over them to snuff them out. 

It was much darker now that the fire was only scattered embers, but she knew instinctively where her tent was; she always set it up the same way when she was alone.

She hadn’t used this blanket in a while. For some time now she’d been recovering in the city and hadn’t needed it. This was the first occasion for her to take it from her pack. The smoke from the fire had irritated her eyes, she thought to herself when she unfolded it. That was why they were watering, no other reason. She hadn’t cried since she had seen that Alistair was still standing after the archdemon was dead and she blamed that weakness only on the sudden lack of adrenaline. There would be no tears now, even if the blanket did still carry the smells of leather and sweat and harsh lye soap, the same scents that she had loved to breathe in as she curled up next to him. That part of her life was as over as the Blight.

If Morrigan were here, she would know what to say. The witch had disappeared after the battle and so both of her dearest friends had departed, though only one was physically distant. Morrigan could have shaken her from this abyss she found herself in, knocked away the heartsickness that made her feeble with a few well chosen jabs. But she was gone and presumably pregnant with the child of the man Lyna loved. She felt a pang of some indefinable jealousy and swallowed hard. Her mouth suddenly felt dry. It was unpleasant.

For a moment she had considered refusing Morrigan’s offer to complete the ritual that would allow both her and Alistair to survive. Some brief dramatic inclination had tempted her to allow the archdemon to take her now that she was without the man she loved. She still didn’t know what had come over her then. Morrigan had helped. Even though Lyna was well aware that she had her own private motivations for the ritual, the witch’s words to her had rung true. It was not worth it to give up everything for any man, not even the one who had pieced back together her fragmented soul after she had become a Warden, the one that she needed to complete her. 

No, she didn’t need him. She shouldn’t allow herself to think that way. It was more than possible for her to be whole alone, she had never felt like she was missing anything before him. He was to blame for ever having made her so pathetic, with his idiotic, beautiful grins and stupid, clever jokes. It was his fault that she was heartbroken.

Maybe she flattered herself, but she thought he needed her too. 

No, not too. Stop that. 

He wasn’t shrewd or calculating. He was too trusting for his own good. She had decided to become his chancellor to help him. It was all for him. It was to preserve the peace she’d brokered. Her girlish emotions would be put aside so that she might be of service to him. She was not interested in any political gains for herself.

Squeezing her eyes tight shut, she balled up her fists and bit her lip until she tasted blood. It was all a lie. She had always made an effort to be brutally honest with herself when the situation required. The lies she whispered to herself were just that, and she was uncomfortably aware just how untrue they were even as she told them. She would never beg for him to take her back, not ever. But the thought of a life without him was intolerable, completely unimaginable. There was no altruistic desire to help a country that she felt little attachment to. She didn’t want to help him, she wanted to be near him because she was an idiot and couldn’t let him go. Perhaps helping him would allow her to assuage her own guilt.

Maybe this situation is all your fault, she thought as she stared upwards at the darkness. Alistair didn’t break your heart, you stupid child, you did. It was something she must accept; she had miscalculated. She had reduced people to chess pieces on a board rather than living, feeling beings and had grown upset when they didn’t behave like automatons. It was not a mistake she was liable to make again, but now she must endure this path she had unintentionally chosen.

She lay on her bedroll, unsleeping, for the rest of the night.

---

Nobody seemed to notice her entering the next morning. Servants fluttered about, busily preparing for the feast that would begin in the afternoon and not end for two days. No one had a single thought to spare the quiet elf, hair still damp from river water, resolutely striding down the halls before most of the nobles had arisen. Lyna was glad of it. It was going to be trying enough to converse with the other guests later; needing to put on her social mask early and act the happy Hero of Ferelden to any servants might overexert her before it mattered.

Her room wasn’t in the guest quarters. As chancellor, she had a room nearer to Alistair’s than was quite comfortable. She hadn’t taken any pains to make it feel like hers, but nobody who entered would have assumed that it was anyone else’s - it either belonged to her or was a storage closet for Grey Warden memorabilia. All of the commemorative glasses and dishes and ridiculous carved figurines of archdemons and griffins were stacked in a corner - Alistair had insisted she get one of everything made. It was unclear what their purpose was or what she would ever do with them, and so they sat, untouched, in a pile. 

The room itself was lavishly furnished, with a four poster bed made from some dark wood that gleamed with lacquer, a rug so plush that it made her somewhat uncomfortable to walk on in stocking feet, and reddish coloured tapestries with images of Mabari embroidered on them on the walls. Alistair had told her that he’d replace the musty old wall hangings with anything she wanted but she hadn’t made any suggestions. He took far more of an interest in her living space than she did. 

She had left her dress laid out on the bed and the tiny pots and jars that held the cosmetics she made herself by the glass in the room. The mirror was the only part of the room she had requested. It was the largest she had ever seen; she could almost see her whole body in it while standing up. She still wasn’t used to the luxury of being able to see her reflection when getting ready, but appreciated it today.

Piece by piece, she laid her armour on the stand in a corner. It had been broken and repaired so many times that it was likely beyond fixing now. It hadn’t seemed to be worthwhile to invest in something better - a week ago she had received a missive requesting that she travel to Orlais to meet the Warden Commander there and be fitted for new armour. She was sure it would look nicer than the leather that had grown soft and ragged; Orlesians were known for their fashion sense. It would be uncomfortable until she became accustomed to its stiffness though - new armour was always so unpliable.

Her dress was long and as green as her eyes, the fabric shiny and stiff in its own way. Though it was tight around her waist it had no corset. She couldn’t have worn one even if she wanted to anyway due to the long wound from the archdemon’s claw that wrapped from just under her right breast to the back of her left hip. It had mostly healed now but was taking longer than the mages and physicians had expected. Ever since the blight sickness that had necessitated her becoming a Warden everything seemed to take longer to heal, even with magical help. Her own frailty and powerlessness to make herself heal angered her.

The gown left her shoulders bare and revealed a decolletage that she was really quite proud of. It could definitely hold its own among humans, and Alistair certainly hadn’t complained. Golden threads were embroidered across her bodice and the loops of fabric that served as sleeves. Roses and griffons - it had been her special request that everything be connected by sharp, thorny vines. She could almost feel their prickliness. The seamstresses had done well. 

She looked impassively at herself in the glass. Yes, this would do. She cut quite a serviceable silhouette. This gown was far longer and nicer than any she had ever worn before, and yet it already felt like an extension of her skin, made exactly to her taste, protecting her. Anora’s dress would likely be overcomplicated and gaudy in its detail in contrast to the simple elegance of this one. Good.

Taking one of the jars from the top of the dresser she applied a powder to her face. The cut on her right cheek was still so ugly and angry. Just when she had thought it was almost healed it had gotten infected, twice. At least now it would be less visible. The powder covered her vallaslin too so she traced over it with something dark green, darkening and filling out the tattoos. She used the same green on her eyelids before darkening her eyelashes and pinching her cheeks, finishing everything off with a reddish-brown lip paint. There was a time when she didn’t wear makeup as heavily, but today she needed it. It would help her hide the feelings she was determined to suppress. It would allow her to be beautiful again.

Peering into the mirror again she took in the full effect of her transformation. Last few touches now, she thought as she dabbed perfume from a small vial onto her pulse points. Amber, jasmine, tuberose. All difficult to come by but important for the occasion. Hair down. He’d always liked that. She brushed it out and styled it quickly; it had dried nicely, the platinum waves cooperating for once and falling softly midway down her back. 

She was going to torture him.

There was a knock at the door. Arrayed for battle now, she was ready to be charming and sociable and nothing like the Dalish savage she’d heard herself described as.

His lopsided grin nearly broke the resolve to control her feelings that she had so carefully nurtured all night. She was going to torture him? The man hadn’t said a word and yet he’d dispelled all the determination gained the evening before.

“Soooo, how do I look?” he asked, as he exaggeratedly posed to show off multiple different angles.

Lovely. Adorable. Handsome. Happy. But she couldn’t tell him those things. Was there anything to say to that that was safe, for either of them?

“Like you could almost be the minor lord of some distant province.”

“Ouch! I think I clean up rather well, thank you very much.” He looked away from her face for the first time and was less than subtle in his appreciation of her dress. Oh, he was trying to be subtle, there was no doubt about that, but she knew him better than she knew herself. 

“I won’t tell you how nice you look - it’s plain on your face that you know exactly how distractingly beautiful you are and I don’t need you going and getting cocky on my day.” He had always been so good at deflecting with humour. Sometimes it had annoyed her, but today it seemed like it would be her saving grace.

“Now if you’ll let me in, I promise it’ll be worthwhile,” he said as he pulled a flask out from an inner pocket of his jerkin and waved it at her conspiratorially.

She looked at him incredulously. “I don’t know how you can even look at that after last night.”

“A fair point. And yet...” He laughed with that beautiful, full laugh that made her want to burst out laughing with him. She didn’t. “It ended earlier than planned, actually - less fun without you.” He looked down as he said the last bit and refused to meet her eyes.

She made a space for him and he entered the room, making a beeline for the stack of trash in the corner. Rooting through the boxes, he produced two low glasses with pewter griffins stuck to one side.

“See, I told you this junk would be good for something.” 

His voice was a little less confident than it usually was. It made sense that he would be nervous today.

Lyna sat down on the bed. While Alistair poured the whiskey, focusing intently on ensuring that the liquid was even in both glasses with his tongue to the side of his mouth, she took the opportunity to really look at him. He was starched and ironed within an inch of his life and the red and gold of his clothing was positively regal. Theirin colours. He might not like it, but kingship did suit him. Her Ali, put together for once in his life.

He’s not your Ali. What is wrong with you? Al-ist-air. No more nicknames.

A glass was placed in her hand and the space on the bed beside her taken up as Alistair sat down. 

“Just a little drink, is it?” she asked him as she swirled the rather generous amount of amber liquid around. She could smell how smoky it was even from far away.

A flush spread over his cheeks. “I needed a little courage, and well, I just kept trying to make them even and then there was so much…”

“You’re an idiot, Alistair.” She smiled at him softly and felt the doe-eyed expression on her face that she couldn’t seem to stop. You’re the idiot here, Lyna. Stop it. Why does he make you so weak?

“Cheers to my idiocy.”

The whiskey burned in her mouth, then left a sweetness on her tongue that faded away into a bitter aftertaste.

“I wanted to see you before everything, just us,” he said, meeting her eyes intently. “Lyna, I’m terrified. It’s going to be so… there are... a lot of people. It will be hard.” Somewhere in the middle of his speech he had had to turn away and look down at his lap. His fingers traced the embroidery at the bottom of his vest. She didn’t think her heart could break more - maybe it couldn’t for herself, but it broke for him.

He had never been one to mind an audience; she knew what he was saying. The stolen glances and studious avoidance of any physical contact told her that he was still pretending, too. If she was thinking clearly she would put her guard up now, shield herself with anger, but this was Ali. He needed her.

“I’m scared too,” she said in some attempt to be reassuring. Scared to lose him, scared that she would somehow become unhinged and scream or cry, scared that she wouldn’t. She wished that she could take his hand in hers, at least comfort him properly. But it was too risky. She couldn’t allow herself to do that if she had any hope of not telling him to run off into the sunset with her. She would not under any circumstances let herself be that weak. They both had duties to fulfill. 

“You can’t be scared! If you’re afraid then there’s no hope for me.” He was still uncharacteristically serious, but a slight twinkle appeared in his eye and a half smile played in the corner of his mouth. She did love that little smile, the one that so often broke out into a dopey grin. Sometimes, when he did that after he said something stupid and funny and looked at her like he was just waiting for her to groan she used to wipe it off his face with a kiss. It caught him off guard every single time.

That is enough, Lyna, why are you doing this to yourself.

“Tell you what,” he began, “If you can keep it together then so can I. I’ll take your lead, just like old times.”

Like old times. Times when this ridiculous boy had been so afraid of command that he put an untested girl in charge - and she’d made him king. Another reason why she needed to stay here in Denerim to look out for him.

“I can guard your flank and pick off any enemies who get too close.” 

He chuckled. “I’m glad you’ll have my back. You were always good at that - except for that one time, you remember, the day I said something that was very likely quite horrible to Morrigan and she hit me with my own frying pan while you just watched.”

“I didn’t have time to react! And besides, it was just a little tap.” She was truly smiling now. It had been really funny, though she had worried for him at the time. Morrigan had been so angry; she couldn’t even remember what about now. 

“Oh was it? Easy for you to say. I’ve never felt more betrayed by something that usually brings so much joy. By which I mean the pan.” He grimaced petulantly and Lyna took another sip of her whiskey to try to contain her laughter.

That solemn expression returned to Alistair’s face and he shuffled slightly in his seat before opening and closing his mouth as though he was working up the courage to say something.

“I’m glad you’ll be with me,” he said softly. “I could use my family being near - we are still family, right?” They had promised to always be that to each other, but that promise was so very long ago, before everything.

“We’ll always be family.” She still meant it, even if she was hurt, even when it was difficult to spend time with him. It was the only way left that she could allow herself to care for him.

He gathered her up in one of his enthusiastic, tight hugs and she had to take care not to spill her glass due to his fervour. Her face was pressed against his shoulder, the satin of his finery soft on her skin. He smelled like soap. And warmth and love. The heat from his body made her realize how very cold her arms were. She was afraid to let go; letting go meant that all of this was over.

Her clan had never stayed in one place for too long, certainly not long enough to grow attached to a place. The concept of home was one that she had barely understood - until she had met him. Here, now, together: this was home. 

I’m so sorry, she thought, not sure whether she meant it for herself or for Alistair.

---

The golden band in her hand felt as though it was burning a circle into her flesh. 

Some insane part of her had never truly believed that it would actually happen, even as she got ready - even while she took her place slightly off to Alistair’s side. Why had she agreed to stand beside him? She could have refused. She could have been a guest, like their other friends in attendance. There were so many eyes on Alistair, and on her, their hero. She would need to keep tight control over her features so that she didn’t accidentally betray herself. At least she was sure that she wouldn’t cry. She had held it together with Alistair earlier. She would be fine.

Music played as Anora walked from the back of the great hall towards where he stood. It sounded joyful, but to Lyna it was as mournful as a funeral dirge.

Alistair shifted from one leg to the other uncomfortably and pulled at his collar before turning to her for reassurance. Their eyes met and a wash of understanding flooded through both of them: it was a goodbye. There had always been some hope while they were both still free, but this marriage denoted a definitive break. 

I love you too, Ali, she told him in her answering gaze. He turned back and squared his shoulders, prepared now to do his duty.

She would never again express her feelings on the matter. Not with words, not with her eyes, she would hide it all.

Anora caught her eye as she approached and looked at her graciously, inclining her head ever so slightly toward her with a polite smile on her face as befit such a well-bred lady. She knew she had won; she understood courtly games and intrigue far more than Lyna did. The place she filled could so easily have gone to another - maybe even to Lyna, had she been more experienced and well connected. Maybe something could have outweighed the fact that she was an elf. Lyna was a quick study; she smiled back, beaming at her as though this was the outcome she had intended all along and made an effort to hide the ice in her eyes. 

Wedding dresses in Ferelden were going to be black for years to come, Lyna could already see it. Anora’s gown was as decorated as she had expected it to be, a dusky satin overlaid with complex embroidery in golden thread and embellished with rubies. It wasn’t simple like her own dress, but it was far from gaudy despite the sheer amount of ornamentation. Anora had impeccable taste. She could choke on her perfect fashion sense. Was there anything that Lyna could do that Anora couldn’t do better? She stood a decent chance to be a good, perhaps even great monarch, but dread wolf take her.

She had never seen a chantry wedding. It didn’t seem much different from the bonding ceremonies in her clan, just presided over by a woman in a big hat rather than a keeper. There was a time when had wondered if Alistair would have agreed to be bonded in the Dalish way. Maybe if she’d pushed to run off and get married in the woods she wouldn’t be standing here now, watching the queen promise to love and care for the man she loved.

She was going to keep that promise - Lyna had made it clear to her how seriously she should take it. She wasn’t sure if it made it easier or more difficult to know how little Anora cared for him.

As Anora made her promises in her clear, confident voice, Lyna could have sworn that she heard a sharp crack as her heart broke. 

It was Alistair’s turn next. She had to hand him the ring. Something that was not Lyna but took her form walked forward and placed it in his hand before returning to her place. Their fingers touched, but she might as well have been made of wood for all she felt. She was frozen, lifeless and cold, watching with unseeing eyes, listening with unhearing ears as Alistair said his vows. 

Somehow, it didn’t hurt.

The chantry mother pronounced them husband and wife and more music played. Very little was different, only a few words had been spoken, and yet everything had changed. She had worried that what came next would be the hard part, but it seemed that the hardest part was already over and she had come out the other side. Here there was no sadness, no pain… no feelings at all. Now she could be strong again, no longer distracted by childish dreams. 

Her heart was buried, the dark closing around it. There was some comfort in the knowledge that it would not be disturbed any longer.

She played her role as the supportive friend, the Hero of Ferelden, for the rest of the day and felt absolutely nothing.

[drferox]

Fantasy Ecology: Vampire Illithid

I'm really sorry Nucklavee, you missed out again, 6 votes to 8. One day you'll get your chance, you weird skin-weilding beastie.

Illithids, commonly called Mind Flayers, are a common and notorious foe in Dungeons & Dragons. They make an excellent BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy) because they are extremely dangerous, able to be leveled, organized, and intelligent enough that you might be tempted to think you can reason with them.

And the whole 'brain eating thing' is just icing on the squishy, salty cake.

There's a bunch of cannon information on them, and other abberations, in the Lords Of Madness book, which is highly recommended if you're into that sort of thing.

They are an excellent horror monster with a strong sense of 'other', in part because of the frankly bizarre reproductive cycle that involves taking a sapient humanoid host for the body and parasitising it while it's sill alive.

But Illithids are more complicated than they look (and they already look complicated), and they look like they're actually being domesticated or farmed.

I present to you the so-called Vampire Illithid.

You can see this dude (gender neutral, they're canonically true hermaphrodites like most snails are) looks an awful lot like the classic Illithid, but with several vital differences.

Normal is a healthy (?) purple-blue colour. The vampire is pale.

Normal is intelligent, conversant and refined. The vampire is feral and animal-like.

Normal feeds mostly on brains. The Vampire feeds both on brains and blood.

Normal clothes itself. The vampire does not.

Normal barely contains its seething rage. Vampire makes no such attempt to.

Normal exist and reproduce in a colony. Vampire does not, usually solitary, not known to reproduce.

Normal Illithids prioritize the destruction of Vampire Illithids.

Normal is connected to the Elder Brain. Vampire is not.

The conclusion this leads me to is that a Vampire Illithid is not really a 'Vampire' like we think of other vampires, it is simply a domestic Illithid that has become freed somehow.

Freed from what?

From that mysterious Elder Brain they so carefully tend and feed their young to.

The 'Normal' Illithid life-cycle looks like this:

Adult illithid spawns into a briny pool, releasing thousands of tiny 'tadpoles'. In this pool lives an Elder Brain, a separate highly intelligent entity that controls the illithid society.

The Elder Brain snacks on these tadpoles, as well as the brains of dead illithids that are ritually collected and fed to it by the illithid attendants.

If a tadpole survives for a decade, it is given a humanoid host and grows into the illithids we know so well.

That illithid goes about its life until it dies, and its brain is fed to the Elder Brain again.

It is not clear how the Elder Brain reproduces.

There are some variants on the normal Illithid, a lot related to studying different fields, being extra strong or extra clever, but the Vampire Ilithid is most interesting, and I don't think it's got anything to do with vampires at all. We just mistake it for one because of the paleness and consumption of blood. The Vampire Illithid is cut off from the Elder Brain. It's free from its influence, and as a result is wild, animal-like and feral. And the Elder Brain hates it for it, demanding its domestic Illithid destroy them any time they can.

Couple that with the cannon that the Elder Brains actively deceive Mind Flayers into believing their consciousness will live on in the Elder Brain after their brains are consumed by it, and it looks to me like the Elder Brains are actively domesticating Illithids.

And why wouldn't you? You get a bunch of servants to feed you their tadpoles and other brains, build you nice pools and such. The illithids earn bipedalism, and are discouraged from breaking away from society or seeking immortality in any other way, aside from having their own brain eaten.

The Vampire Illithid is freed. It's feral in the literal sense of the word, broken away from the Elder Brain. It used to be the illithids we know, but it's lost that connection somehow.

The body of an illithid - the humanoid bit with two arms and two legs, is artificial. It's stolen from a humanoid host (and they're fussy about them not being too short) that has a mature tadpole implanted within it. This is what I mean by them 'gaining bipedalism'.

Those tadpoles can be implanted into other creatures, but most are not viable.

However, the Neothelid is what happens when an illithid tadpole is not given a host, and just has to learn to hunt on its own. Initially it hunts other tadpoles - there's nothing else in its pool other than the Elder Brain - but it will eventually emerge from the water to hunt small animals like rats and frogs, growing larger until it can take down sapient prey. This is the real, natural, illithid. They are also described as feral and animal-like, just like the Vampire Illithids without an Elder Brain to rule them.

The Neothelid is the real, natural, untamed illithid. And if you have Vampire Illithids running around without the control or rules of a society, these things are going to be in the water. They can grow ridiculously huge, by the way.

So where does the blood feeding come from?

Illithids in cannon have conscious control of their digestive system, which means they pick up hormones, enzymes and neurotransmitters from their means which they would not make themselves. So they eat brains because they need to (though this probably means they would very much like chocolate and intestines as well).

A Vampire Illithid lacks the intelligence of its former state, but still has an unfortunately small and poorly structured mouth, so is limited to eating all the squishy bits it can get. Again, it probably also likes intestine.

It’s also walking around on a literally stolen, parasitised body. No wonder it looks pale and half dead, because it technically is.

So next time your group of adventurers clear out a Mind Flayer Cabal, make sure they get every last one, or they're going to find Vampire Illithids showing up, and those things have no qualms about where they leave their tadpoles and Neothelids a decade later.