#someone screwed up

[shadesofmauve]

Fire the headcan(n)on: Problems with long-term management of biotic resources for maximum strategic potential in the Alliance military

It is obviously not ideal* for a ship's CO to be running risky ground missions, but the issue demonstrated by Commander Shepard actually brings to light a larger dilemma that's been discussed within the upper echelons of the Alliance military for years. Biotic personnel are a huge asset as front-line troops, and any still able-bodied biotic moving off the front lines is considered a net loss. This poses a potential retention problem, since the usual route for advancement would remove them from where they're considered most valuable.

A trail of internal communications dating back over a decade (recently acquired by Westerlund News) documents how the Alliance instructed recruiters to push biotics to enlist (with exorbitant sign-on bonuses) rather than attend school for a commission.

It's worth noting that when faced with a similar recruitment-and-retention problem for pilots, the Alliance chose to offer commissions, while technically-skilled Specialists can be brought in as officers or warrant officers, depending on their pre-military career and level of education.

Alliance military doctrine suggests preventing a "Shepard Problem" not by restricting a biotic CO to their ship, but by making sure they'll never command a vessel in the first place. If at all possible, biotic personnel should not be given the opportunity to advance to senior command positions until they are physically unable to serve on the front lines.

*Understatement

[fandom-imagination-ss]

So someone at Amazon prime screwed up, and dropped first 3 episodes of the new season tonight in Canada!

They other dropped first 3 episodes or the complete season? Cause they also dropped bonus features?

[soniccrazygal]

9C for Mike Pines?

[nelkcats]

Ghost Train

It was no secret that the trains in Gotham were damaged, whether it was from all the explosions that flooded the city on a daily basis or the fact that the rails were broken wasn't completely clear. At that point, what was once a train station was nothing more than an empty place used by some homeless people to sleep.

Or that's what it was supposed to be, because while the station was damaged and underneath the city, it was actually active. It just had another kind of train, a slightly more interesting one.

In Danny's defense, he was extremely bored and there was an abandoned train station he could use to play with. All it took was calling in a favor from Technus and a fully functional ghost train connected the Infinite Realms to Gotham.

The ghosts, of course, used this for fun. Fighting each other, chasing each other, celebrating, having concerts. It was a way to go to the human world without anyone causing trouble for them, not that anyone was paying attention anyway.

Or at least, no one was supposed to be paying attention, because Waylon was dumbfounded at the sight. He had escaped to the old rails when he had no other choice, his sewers were compromised and he needed a way out. He didn't expect to walk right into a party, or be offered a sandwich with a smile instead of a shout.

He could also observe a clearly glowing train and the fact that everyone there was glowing. They could be metas, or another completely new creature, but Waylon didn't care, they gave him food and he wasn't a snitch.

[egophiliac]

it's been an absolute shitball of a week, so here's something massively self-indulgent to make myself feel better.

[ebonyheartnet]

Prompt: Dorathea has her position as queen be threatened because misogyny sucks, blah, blah, blah. Someone brought up the whole, “lack of an heir,” thing and claimed women just up and reincarnate/move on randomly, because they’re, “easily overcome with emotion.” The best way to keep there from being a riot without just giving it back to her brother? Just name an heir.

Now if only Dora had remembered to actually tell Danny.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

it’s time for another stupid fandom poll

welcome to mdzs university!!! what’s you’re major? just kidding, it doesn’t matter. what does matter is you have to join a group to complete your first group project. no pressure, the project only counts for 50% of your total grade this semester.

so:

put your reasons in the tags if you feel so compelled! i’ll mix up the group members for the next poll just to keep things interesting 👀

[commsroom]

it's true that sometimes people will soften eiffel, forget that he's kind of a dick, and play up the more good-natured, goofier aspects of his personality while downplaying how self-centered he is and the amount of undeniable Cis Guy Behavior he is known to display. but his character arc only works the way it does because he is, despite everything, very lovable - it's there in how minkowski's reaction to eiffel's conviction is set up to mirror the expected audience reaction, and desire to believe the best in him. wolf 359 captures something very real in eiffel that i've never seen as authentically represented anywhere else: a sincere, kindhearted man who still perceives himself as the default type of person, who wants to do right by people, but perpetuates harm through selfishness and ignorance. he's held to account for it, but isn't condemned. it matters that he improves because the people holding him to account are doing it out of care for him, because they want him to be better, and to be in their lives.

[sleepy-writes-stuff]

DP X DC WRITING PROMPT #15

(#) = Notes at the end of post

✦

A Lonely Star Shines in the Night

The Guys in White have gone too far. So far that the Danny's universe as they know it is collapsing into itself as a result of the agent's foolish attempt to rid the land of the dead, undying, and neverborn. They tried nuking the Infinite Realms and all it got them was their dimension erased with the Infinite Realms only suffering minor damage.

Either way, Danny's home is gone.

In the struggle to gather his family and spirit them away into the Ghost Zone, he was separated from them when the GIW blew the portal to smithereens with him on the other side and his family still in the living realm. Overtaken by grief, his core cracking from his failure to protect those precious to him, he scoured the Realms for a natural portal back, to no avail.

In his search, he is nearly driven mad by his desperation. Unable to see their King in such pain and slowly unraveling into a second coming of Pariah Dark, Clockwork, Frostbite, and Pandora gather their strength and force him into an entirely different universe to grieve and heal. A universe full of heroes. He won't know this for a while, however, because where he ended up was the old Gotham observatory.

With his obsession of protecting--his friends, his family, his town, his entire world--torn to shreds, his damaged core magnified his secondary obsession: the very cosmos itself. His core latched onto the remaining obsession and inadvertently temporarily tied Danny to the very foundation of the old observatory. That is where he lingers for years, unable to leave and unable to stop crying for his lost family and friends, repeating their names over and over in a neverending mantra.

It isn't until much later that people start to notice his presence, due to the observatory having been unused for decades. What use was an observatory if you couldn't even see the stars in the perpetual smog that blanketed the city? At some point, however, a couple of daring teenagers snuck into the observatory one night and had a first hand encounter with a strange being. Needless to say, they didn't stick around for much longer. The reports they made to the police and what they posted on social media the next day were nonetheless wildly interesting.

Each of them described relatively the same thing. Of first seeing a bright, sliver star shining in the dark(1) of the empty building but then quickly noticing it was set in the center of the chest of a being that might as well have been made from the black void of the night sky itself. They described a being with hair that faded into white, glowing mist that was circled by a crown of ice crystals and star dust. Most notable of all to them, however, were the low humming whispers coupled with the mercury tears leaking from aurora green eyes in a neverending stream that dripped and echoed hauntingly across the marble floors below.

Of course, no one really believed their wild tales at first. Then it became a game among high schoolers and college students to wander the old observatory just to see if they would catch sight of this mysterious being. If not, no harm done. That is until one student accidentally injured themselves trying to find this ghost they've been hearing rumors about. (2)

Regardless of whether or not the being inhabiting the observatory directly caused this student's injury, he's gained the Batclan's attention.

✦

Notes:

(1) The star in his chest is his core. The black/night parts of his ghost form are slightly translucent even when not intangible/invisible. You can literally see straight through him to his core, which basically looks like a condensed white dwarf star. Also, due to the damage his core has taken and his grief, it's cracking and looks like it's going to go supernova.

(2) Danny didn't directly cause the student to get injured. The student literally just turned the corner and nearly ran right into Danny as he was wandering in his grief-stricken stupor. This caused the student to freak out, run the opposite direction, and fall down a flight of stairs cause they weren't watching where they placed their feet. Danny is not violent or territorial here. His mind has literally checked out and left because trauma, grief, and a fractured sense of ghostly self are one hell of a combo on a halfa.

[cuoredimuschio]

okay, but where's my steddie AU where steve wants to learn to play guitar to impress a girl he's infatuated with and he remembers that munson kid was always hanging up posters for his weird band at school, so he hikes out to eddie's usual dealing spot behind the track and asks (with far less groveling than he really should have) if eddie will teach him how to play, and obviously eddie says no because why would he want to help king steve, but of course, steve offers to pay him, $20 a week, and well, that's the kind of get-the-hell-out-of-this-shithole-town cash eddie really can't afford to refuse, so fine, he'll teach steve to play and they'll spend inordinate amounts of time together tucked away in eddie's room and they'll start to see that they have more in common than they thought and that they kind of had each other all wrong, and eddie will put his hand over steve's to help him get the placement for a tricky chord and it totally won't awaken anything in either of them?? where is it??

edit: i started writing it

[lamuradex]

I really like how they handled Golbetty.

An all powerful, inscrutable chaos goddess, utterly inhuman, and yet her reactions still feel strangely understandable. She never communicates, and yet they still dealt with the relationship drama. They left it ambiguous if that conversation was with truly her or all just in Simons head, resolving the issue to himself (I think he was speaking to her). She's a dark and terrible deity who will body The Lich into a Tetris block and refuse to elaborate, and act in ways that constantly leave you questioning her motives, and perhaps imposing your own on her chaos.

Unknowable, all powerful, unpredictable.

But you touch her Simon, and she will turn you into bugs.

[be-an-echo]

from another mother...

the day when Tess and Maria got shitfaced

[queenlucythevaliant]

Tell Your Dad You Love Him

A retelling of "Meat Loves Salt"/"Cap O'Rushes" for the @inklings-challenge Four Loves event

An old king had three daughters. When his health began to fail, he summoned them, and they came.

Gordonia and Rowan were already waiting in the hallway when Coriander arrived. They were leaned up against the wall opposite the king’s office with an air of affected casualness. “I wonder what the old war horse wants today?” Rowan was saying. “More about next year’s political appointments, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“The older he gets, the more he micromanages,” Gordonia groused fondly. “A thousand dollars says this meeting could’ve been an email.”

They filed in single-file like they’d so often done as children: Gordonia first, then Rowan, and Coriander last of all. The king had placed three chairs in front of his desk all in a row. His daughters murmured their greetings, and one by one they sat down. 

“I have divided everything I have in three,” the king said. “I am old now, and it’s time. Today, I will pass my kingdom on to you, my daughters.”

A short gasp came from Gordonia. None of them could have imagined that their father would give up running his kingdom while he still lived. 

The king went on. “I know you will deal wisely with that which I leave in your care. But before we begin, I have one request.”

“Yes father?” said Rowan.

“Tell me how much you love me.”

An awkward silence fell. Although there was no shortage of love between the king and his daughters, theirs was not a family which spoke of such things. They were rich and blue-blooded: a soldier and the daughters of a soldier, a king and his three court-reared princesses. The royal family had always shown their affection through double meanings and hot cups of coffee.

Gordonia recovered herself first. She leaned forward over the desk and clasped her father’s hands in her own. “Father,” she said, “I love you more than I can say.” A pause. “I don’t think there’s ever been a family so happy in love as we have been. You’re a good dad.”

The old king smiled and patted her hand. “Thank you, Gordonia. We have been very happy, haven’t we? Here is your inheritance. Cherish it, as I cherish you.”

Rowan spoke next; the words came tumbling out.  “Father! There’s not a thing in my life which you didn’t give me, and all the joy in the world beside. Come now, Gordonia, there’s no need to understate the matter. I love you more than—why, more than life itself!”

The king laughed, and rose to embrace his second daughter. “How you delight me, Rowan. All of this will be yours.”

Only Coriander remained. As her sisters had spoken, she’d wrung her hands in her lap, unsure of what to say. Did her father really mean for flattery to be the price of her inheritance? That just wasn’t like him. For all that he was a politician, he’d been a soldier first. He liked it when people told the truth.

When the king’s eyes came to rest on her, Coriander raised her own to meet them. “Do you really want to hear what you already know?” 

“I do.”

She searched for a metaphor that could carry the weight of her love without unnecessary adornment. At last she found one, and nodded, satisfied. “Dad, you’re like—like salt in my food.”

“Like salt?”

“Well—yes.”

The king’s broad shoulders seemed to droop. For a moment, Coriander almost took back her words. Her father was the strongest man in the world, even now, at eighty. She’d watched him argue with foreign rulers and wage wars all her life. Nothing could hurt him. Could he really be upset? 

But no. Coriander held her father’s gaze. She had spoken true. What harm could be in that?

“I don’t know why you’re even here, Cor,” her father said.

Now, Coriander shifted slightly in her seat, unnerved. “What? Father—”

“It would be best if—you should go,” said the old king.

“Father, you can’t really mean–”

“Leave us, Coriander.”

So she left the king’s court that very hour.

 .

It had been a long time since she’d gone anywhere without a chauffeur to drive her, but Coriander’s thoughts were flying apart too fast for her to be afraid. She didn’t know where she would go, but she would make do, and maybe someday her father would puzzle out her metaphor and call her home to him. Coriander had to hope for that, at least. The loss of her inheritance didn’t feel real yet, but her father—how could he not know that she loved him? She’d said it every day.

She’d played in the hall outside that same office as a child. She’d told him her secrets and her fears and sent him pictures on random Tuesdays when they were in different cities just because. She had watched him triumph in conference rooms and on the battlefield and she’d wanted so badly to be like him. 

If her father doubted her love, then maybe he’d never noticed any of it. Maybe the love had been an unnoticed phantasm, a shadow, a song sung to a deaf man. Maybe all that love had been nothing at all.  

A storm was on the horizon, and it reached her just as she made it onto the highway. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Rain poured down and flooded the road. Before long, Coriander was hydroplaning. Frantically, she tried to remember what you were supposed to do when that happened. Pump the brakes? She tried. No use. Wasn’t there something different you did if the car had antilock brakes? Or was that for snow? What else, what else–

With a sickening crunch, her car hit the guardrail. No matter. Coriander’s thoughts were all frenzied and distant. She climbed out of the car and just started walking.

Coriander wandered beneath an angry sky on the great white plains of her father’s kingdom. The rain beat down hard, and within seconds she was soaked to the skin. The storm buffeted her long hair around her head. It tangled together into long, matted cords that hung limp down her back. Mud soiled her fine dress and splattered onto her face and hands. There was water in her lungs and it hurt to breathe. Oh, let me die here, Coriander thought. There’s nothing left for me, nothing at all. She kept walking.

 .

When she opened her eyes, Coriander found herself in a dank gray loft. She was lying on a strange feather mattress.

She remained there a while, looking up at the rafters and wondering where she could be. She thought and felt, as it seemed, through a heavy and impenetrable mist; she was aware only of hunger and weakness and a dreadful chill (though she was all wrapped in blankets). She knew that a long time must have passed since she was fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering beside the highway in a thunderstorm, slowly going mad because—because— oh, there’d been something terrible in her dreams. Her father, shoulders drooping at his desk, and her sisters happily come into their inheritance, and she cast into exile—

She shuddered and sat up dizzily. “Oh, mercy,” she murmured. She hadn’t been dreaming.

She stumbled out of the loft down a narrow flight of stairs and came into a strange little room with a single window and a few shabby chairs. Still clinging to the rail, she heard a ruckus from nearby and then footsteps. A plump woman came running to her from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and softly clucking at the state of her guest’s matted, tangled hair.

“Dear, dear,” said the woman. “Here’s my hand, if you’re still unsteady. That’s good, good. Don’t be afraid, child. I’m Katherine, and my husband is Folke. He found you collapsed by the goose-pond night before last. I’m she who dressed you—your fine gown was ruined, I’m afraid. Would you like some breakfast? There’s coffee on the counter, and we’ll have porridge in a minute if you’re patient.”

“Thank you,” Coriander rasped.

“Will you tell me your name, my dear?”

“I have no name. There’s nothing to tell.”

Katherine clicked her tongue. “That’s alright, no need to worry. Folke and I’ve been calling you Rush on account of your poor hair. I don’t know if you’ve seen yourself, but it looks a lot like river rushes. No, don’t get up. Here’s your breakfast, dear.”

There was indeed porridge, as Katherine had promised, served with cream and berries from the garden. Coriander ate hungrily and tasted very little. Then, when she was finished, the goodwife ushered her over to a sofa by the window and put a pillow beneath her head. Coriander thanked her, and promptly fell asleep.

 .

She woke again around noon, with the pounding in her head much subsided. She woke feeling herself again, to visions of her father inches away and the sound of his voice cracking across her name.

Katherine was outside in the garden; Coriander could see her through the clouded window above her. She rose and, upon finding herself still in a borrowed nightgown, wrapped herself in a blanket to venture outside.

“Feeling better?” Katherine was kneeling in a patch of lavender, but she half rose when she heard the cottage door open.

“Much. Thank you, ma’am.

“No thanks necessary. Folke and I are ministers, of a kind. We keep this cottage for lost and wandering souls. You’re free to remain here with us for as long as you need.”

“Oh,” was all Coriander could think to say. 

“You’ve been through a tempest, haven’t you? Are you well enough to tell me where you came from?”

Coriander shifted uncomfortably. “I’m from nowhere,” she said. “I have nothing.”

“You don’t owe me your story, child. I should like to hear it, but it will keep till you’re ready. Now, why don’t you put on some proper clothes and come help me with this weeding.”

 .

Coriander remained at the cottage with Katherine and her husband Folke for a week, then a fortnight. She slept in the loft and rose with the sun to help Folke herd the geese to the pond. After, Coriander would return and see what needed doing around the cottage. She liked helping Katherine in the garden.

The grass turned gold and the geese’s thick winter down began to come in. Coriander’s river-rush hair proved itself unsalvageable. She spent hours trying to untangle it, first with a hairbrush, then with a fine-tooth comb and a bottle of conditioner, and eventually even with honey and olive oil (a home remedy that Folke said his mother used to use). So, at last, Coriander surrendered to the inevitable and gave Katherine permission to cut it off. One night, by the yellow light of the bare bulb that hung over the kitchen table, Katherine draped a towel over Coriander’s shoulders and tufts of gold went falling to the floor all round her.

“I’m here because I failed at love,” she managed to tell the couple at last, when her sorrows began to feel more distant. “I loved my father, and he knew it not.”

Folke and Katherine still called her Rush. She didn’t correct them. Coriander was the name her parents gave her. It was the name her father had called her when she was six and racing down the stairs to meet him when he came home from Europe, and at ten when she showed him the new song she’d learned to play on the harp. She’d been Cor when she brought her first boyfriend home and Cori the first time she shadowed him at court. Coriander, Coriander, when she came home from college the first time and he’d hugged her with bruising strength. Her strong, powerful father.

As she seasoned a pot of soup for supper, she wondered if he understood yet what she’d meant when she called him salt in her food. 

 .

Coriander had been living with Katherine and Folke for two years, and it was a morning just like any other. She was in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee when Folke tossed the newspaper on the table and started rummaging in the fridge for his orange juice. “Looks like the old king’s sick again,” he commented casually. Coriander froze.

She raced to the table and seized hold of the paper. There, above the fold, big black letters said, KING ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT. There was a picture of her father, looking older than she’d ever seen him. Her knees went wobbly and then suddenly the room was sideways.

Strong arms caught her and hauled her upright. “What’s wrong, Rush?”

“What if he dies,” she choked out. “What if he dies and I never got to tell him?”

She looked up into Folke’s puzzled face, and then the whole sorry story came tumbling out.

When she was through, Katherine (who had come downstairs sometime between salt and the storm) took hold of her hand and kissed it. “Bless you, dear,” she said. “I never would have guessed. Maybe it’s best that you’ve both had some time to think things over.”

Katherine shook her head. “But don’t you think…?”

“Yes?”

“Well, don’t you think he should have known that I loved him? I shouldn’t have needed to say it. He’s my father. He’s the king.”

Katherine replied briskly, as though the answer should have been obvious. “He’s only human, child, for all that he might wear a crown; he’s not omniscient. Why didn’t you tell your father what he wanted to hear?”

“I didn’t want to flatter him,” said Coriander. “That was all. I wanted to be right in what I said.”

The goodwife clucked softly. “Oh dear. Don’t you know that sometimes, it’s more important to be kind than to be right?”

.

In her leave-taking, Coriander tried to tell Katherine and Folke how grateful she was to them, but they wouldn’t let her. They bought her a bus ticket and sent her on her way towards King’s City with plenty of provisions. Two days later, Coriander stood on the back steps of one of the palace outbuildings with her little carpetbag clutched in her hands. 

Stuffing down the fear of being recognized, Coriander squared her shoulders and hoped they looked as strong as her father’s. She rapped on the door, and presently a maid came and opened it. The maid glanced Coriander up and down, but after a moment it was clear that her disguise held. With all her long hair shorn off, she must have looked like any other girl come in off the street.

“I’m here about a job,” said Coriander. “My name’s Rush.”

 .

The king's chambers were half-lit when Coriander brought him his supper, dressed in her servants’ apparel. He grunted when she knocked and gestured with a cane towards his bedside table. His hair was snow-white and he was sitting in bed with his work spread across a lap-desk. His motions were very slow.

Coriander wanted to cry, seeing her father like that. Yet somehow, she managed to school her face. Like he would, she kept telling herself. Stoically, she put down the supper tray, then stepped back out into the hallway. 

It was several minutes more before the king was ready to eat. Coriander heard papers being shuffled, probably filed in those same manilla folders her father had always used. In the hall, Coriander felt the seconds lengthen. She steeled herself for the moment she knew was coming, when the king would call out in irritation, “Girl! What's the matter with my food? Why hasn’t it got any taste?”

When that moment came, all would be made right. Coriander would go into the room and taste his food. “Why,” she would say, with a look of complete innocence, “It seems the kitchen forgot to salt it!” She imagined how her father’s face would change when he finally understood. My daughter always loved me, he would say. 

Soon, soon. It would happen soon. Any second now. 

The moment never came. Instead, the floor creaked, followed by the rough sound of a cane striking the floor. The door opened, and then the king was there, his mighty shoulders shaking. “Coriander,” he whispered. 

“Dad. You know me?”

“Of course.”

“Then you understand now?”

The king’s wrinkled brow knit. “Understand about the salt? Of course, I do. It wasn't such a clever riddle. There was surely no need to ruin my supper with a demonstration.”

Coriander gaped at him. She'd expected questions, explanations, maybe apologies for sending her away. She'd never imagined this.

She wanted very badly to seize her father and demand answers, but then she looked, really looked, at the way he was leaning on his cane. The king was barely upright; his white head was bent low. Her questions would hold until she'd helped her father back into his room. 

“If you knew what I meant–by saying you were like salt in my food– then why did you tell me to go?” she asked once they were situated back in the royal quarters. 

Idly, the king picked at his unseasoned food. “I shouldn’t have done that. Forgive me, Coriander. My anger and hurt got the better of me, and it has brought me much grief. I never expected you to stay away for so long.”

Coriander nodded slowly. Her father's words had always carried such fierce authority. She'd never thought to question if he really meant what he’d said to her. 

“As for the salt,” continued the king, "Is it so wrong that an old man should want to hear his daughters say ‘I love you' before he dies?” 

Coriander rolled the words around in her head, trying to make sense of them. Then, with a sudden mewling sound from her throat, she managed to say, “That's really all you wanted?”  

“That's all. I am old, Cor, and we've spoken too little of love in our house.” He took another bite of his unsalted supper. His hand shook. “That was my failing, I suppose. Perhaps if I’d said it, you girls would have thought to say it back.”

“But father!” gasped Coriander, “That’s not right. We've always known we loved one another! We've shown it a thousand ways. Why, I've spent the last year cataloging them in my head, and I've still not even scratched the surface!”

The king sighed. “Perhaps you will understand when your time comes. I knew, and yet I didn't. What can you really call a thing you’ve never named? How do you know it exists? Perhaps all the love I thought I knew was only a figment.”

“But that’s what I’ve been afraid of all this time,” Coriander bit back. “How could you doubt? If it was real at all– how could you doubt?”

The king’s weathered face grew still. His eyes fell shut and he squeezed them. “Death is close to me, child. A small measure of reassurance is not so very much to ask.”

.

Coriander slept in her old rooms that night. None of it had changed. When she woke the next morning, for a moment she remembered nothing of the last two years. 

She breakfasted in the garden with her father, who came down the steps in a chair-lift. “Coriander,” he murmured. “I half-thought I dreamed you last night.”

“I’m here, Dad,” she replied. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Slowly, the king reached out with one withered hand and caressed Coriander's cheek. Then, his fingers drifted up to what remained of her hair. He ruffled it, then gently tugged on a tuft the way he'd used to playfully tug her long braid when she was a girl. 

“I love you,” he said.

“That was always an I love you, wasn’t it?” replied Coriander. “My hair.”

The king nodded. “Yes, I think it was.”

So Coriander reached out and gently tugged the white hairs of his beard. “You too,” she whispered.

.

“Why salt?” The king was sitting by the fire in his rooms wrapped in two blankets. Coriander was with him, enduring the sweltering heat of the room without complaint. 

She frowned. “You like honesty. We have that in common. I was trying to be honest–accurate–to avoid false flattery.”

The king tugged at the outer blanket, saying nothing. His lips thinned and his eyes dropped to his lap. Coriander wished they wouldn’t. She wished they would hold to hers, steely and ready for combat as they always used to be.

“Would it really have been false?” the king said at last. “Was there no other honest way to say it? Only salt?”

Coriander wanted to deny it, to give speech to the depth and breadth of her love, but once again words failed her. “It was my fault,” she said. “I didn’t know how to heave my heart into my throat.” She still didn’t, for all she wanted to. 

.

When the doctor left, the king was almost too tired to talk. His words came slowly, slurred at the edges and disconnected, like drops of water from a leaky faucet. 

Still, Coriander could tell that he had something to say. She waited patiently as his lips and tongue struggled to form the words. “Love you… so… much… You… and… your sisters… Don’t… worry… if you… can’t…say…how…much. I… know.” 

It was all effort. The king sat back when he was finished. Something was still spasming in his throat, and Coriander wanted to cry.

“I’m glad you know,” she said. “I’m glad. But I still want to tell you.”

Love was effort. If her father wanted words, she would give him words. True words. Kind words. She would try… 

“I love you like salt in my food. You're desperately important to me, and you've always been there, and I don't know what I'll do without you. I don’t want to lose you. And I love you like the soil in a garden. Like rain in the spring. Like a hero. You have the strongest shoulders of anyone I know, and all I ever wanted was to be like you…”

A warm smile spread across the old king’s face. His eyes drifted shut.

[rayman-raymania]

Can Rei use his hair to propel himself as well?

theoretically yes, but his hair is less cartoony than Manny and Remy’s hair

i do think he could fly with his hair before Eden but that’s about it

he can sure try but no guarantee

[handonhaven]

#when you’re asked to convince someone to watch legacies