#suck the abundance of the seas

[scripture-pictures]

[hopelesslyromanticshark]

hi can i get a percy x daughter of persephone fic where they have been best friend since before camp and are in love with each other and finally confess. p.s. love ur writing

⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚ Lotuses, Water Lilies, And All These Lovely Things

content: percy jackson x daughter of persephone! reader fic warning: none???? i don't believe???? author's note: you wanna know what's crazy???? i was fighting for my life to write this and then i put on hozier and it just...wrote itself??? wtf???? what is that man doing to me???? it was actually kinda scary wtf???

look, percy didn't want to a be a half blood. but, he especially didn't want drag his best friend down with him. she was the only one person, other than his mom, who managed to stick around for so long. she bounced schools with him, mostly because she got grouped in with whatever problems percy managed to cause. he felt so much guilt about it, but she'd just wave him off, saying she would have followed him either way.

he couldn't remember when y/n came into his life, it just felt like she'd always been there. they had things they could bond over; she was raised by a single dad and percy was just raised by his mom. she struggled in school, almost nearly as bad as he did. oh, and they both had godly parents.

percy and y/n had been avid summer campers at camp half blood for nearly three years at this point and not much had changed between them. sure, percy had discovered he could control tons and tons of water and y/n's green thumb increased immensely but they were still just each other's best friend.

just best friends. that's it. that's all they're ever be.

at least, that's what you told yourself, late at night, inside your lonely cabin. persephone didn't have many children, as she had grown fond of hades over the years and they'd been attending godly couple's therapy for a few millennia to sort out their issues. you'd purely been an accident between your mother and your father, a florist with an affliction for using fruit in his arragnments. persephone had a fling with him, producing you. strangely enough, hades had no ill will towards you, he even offered for you to stay in the Underworld with your mother during the winter and fall seasons. you'd told him you'd think about it, and to your surprise, you actually had been thinking about it.

while it sucks finding out you were never intended to be born (loose term here, seeing as you kinda just plopped out of a flower), but its better than the alternative, being born for a purpose...like percy. you'd always felt bad for the boy, forced to live under constant expectations of being something great or nothing at all. you didn't know how he did it.

which is why, at every opportunity, you'd bring percy away from the hassle of camp and towards the woods, bobbing and weaving through the trees until you stumbled upon your favorite spot in all of camp. far in the reaches of the forest, a pond sat. it overflowed with life, the monsters purposefully put in camp basically avoiding it. water lilies and lotuses grew in abundance, nearly covering the whole lake. clearly someone had discovered it before the two demigods, a shabby dock put there (clearly not the work of a child of hephaestus). you and percy would just hang out, listening to the sound of the babbling creek and the chirping of the birds. no words needed to be shared, which is why you were certain you loved percy. he made just being...easiler. there was no pressure with the son of the sea god.

"is a hotdog a sandwhich?" percy questioned, breaking the silence, causing you to giggle, basically rolling around in the soft grass. percy looked over with a cheeky smile, his eyes catching on how the grass seemed to chase after you and brush your skin. he never thought he'd be jealous of grass, yet here he was. he wanted it to be his skin that brushed against you, not some flimsy, photosynthesizing, piece of shi-

"hmmm. techinally, yes but my heart says no. pineapple on pizzas? yay or nah?" you shot back and percy shakes his head, trying not to get lost in thoughts of your skin, your skin on his skin with nothing much between them-

"the answer if obviously yes."

"that better be a joke, jackson."

"if you think pineapple doesn't deserve to be on pizza, you are not the person i thought you were," percy mocked back, squinting a glare at the girl, who was struggling to fight her smile down.

"Looks like we can't be best friends anymore," you dramatically reply, pressing the back of your hand to your forehead and pretending to fall back into the grass, which greedily reached up to catch up and gently lay you down on itself.

"shame," percy muttered back, pushing up with one of his elbows and looking over at her, his smile slowly slipping off and being replaced by a more serious look. you raised a questioning brow at him, but your smile was slowly slipping as well.

"what's going on in your head, sailor?"

"we can't be friends anymore," percy replied, instantly, and partnered with his serious face, didn't land the way he thought it would. you were instantly reeling, pulling away from the boy with a hurt look. the green grass turned from a vibrant shade to a depressive green and the water lilies began to drown, dragged down by there own roots.

"wait, wait, that came out wrong-"

"how the hades else should that have come out?" you bit out, glaring over at the boy and tucking in on yourself.

"no, no, y/n, i just- i meant- ugh, this is going terribly," percy groaned, shoving his head into his hands as the grass swiped out at his ankles, trying to give him paper cuts. it all stopped though as you set a hand against percy's wrist, pulling it away from his face and forcing his eyes to glance up at your patient face.

"try again," you offer, nodding your head gently as you rub your fingers over his calmingly

"you sure?"

"i promise you, it can't get any worse than that."

"rude," percy huffed, laughing with the girl for a moment before taking a calming breath.

"i mean it, y/n, we can't just be friends anymore."

"man, you love to prove me wrong, don't you?"

"hear me out. friends shouldn't look at each other the way i look at you. friends shouldn't think about each other as much as i think about you. friends really shouldn't be willing to put their whole lives on hold because one of them wanted to get lost in the woods. we can't be friends anymore because i can't go another moment longer just being your friend when i know i want more," percy ranted, getting lost in his thoughts, his hands moving about nervously and his eyes refusing to meet yours, no matter how hard you tried.

"percy-"

"and i know i'm putting all these years in danger-"

"percy-"

"but if i went another second without telling you, i think-"

"percy!" you all but shout, giggles following as percy physically jolted as though you hit him. he turned to you with wide eyes and a tilted head.

"yes?"

"just shut up and kiss me."

"wha-"

before percy could continue to yap, you jolted forwards, cupping his face and bring his lips to yours. it took percy less than a millisecond to comprehend what was happening and for him to response. he pulled your body closer to his, desperate to use all of his senses during this kiss, in hopes to lock it in even the deepest parts of his ADHD riddled mind.

not that either of you noticed, but the water lilies returned from under the water, bobbing as though they had been held down there against their will. then they began to multiply, the water lilies and lotuses nearly bursting out of the pond with how many of them there were. the pond, which never had waves, was swishing as swirling like a hurricane was wrecking havoc on it and it alone. a foam was building against the bank and riptides could just be seen swirling under the surface.

and then you two parted and the pond settled once more, like nothing had happened. you two shared a soft smile, one of secrecy and exuberance. then, like nothing had happened, you both cuddled back up with the grass, eyes darting up to the sky and silence settling back over the pair.

though, this time, their hands were firmly locked together and the grass was softly licking at both of their hands, intertwining itself to mimic their fingers and hearts.

[fanaticsnail]

Flowers

Full-length fic because my roses are currently in bloom in my garden and I couldn't get the romance away from my head while crocheting.

Word Count: 3,587

Swordsman just needed something light and fluffy.

Masterlist Here, song vibe suggestion here.

Inhaling the sweet fragrances of botanicals, you reopened your eyes to gaze at the vast abundance of colours that lay before you. Hues of vibrant orange tulips, deep red roses and the softness of babies breath with sweet jasmine paling the arrangements within the harbour-side florist.

You tapped your chin and hummed thoughtfully as you continued to mull your decisions over in your mind. The whole reason you joined the Straw-Hat pirates was specifically to document rare and unusual species of flora, fauna and fruiting plants that remain undiscovered and undocumented. You worked hard with Sanji whilst out on the open sea, determining the edibility of certain plants or what properties they could possibly wield to benefit your crew.

“Can I help you with anything there, love?” a voice called from inside the florist shop. An elderly woman made her way over to you, a warm grin adorning her cheeks in welcome.

“I’m just browsing for now, thank you,” you smiled in return, turning your gaze immediately to seek out a small floral arrangement in the corner of the room.

Vibrant green-drooped flowers hung lowly; trumpeting out along their wide stem. Peppered throughout the arrangement were pastel purple orchids, small bundles of dark crimson and yellow roses and small bulbs of vibrant pink gumnuts. Although the arrangement was beautiful, the true star of the show were the larger stemmed clusters of the emerald flowers.

“Ah,” the shopkeeper sighed, “you’ve seen my gladioli. Aren’t they spectacular?”

You gasped in absolute delight, bringing yourself closer to the cluster of florals.

“The arrangement,” you began, turning back to the elderly woman, “it’s breathtaking.”

“It’s peaceful, romantic and-,” she cut herself off, a small gasp sucked through her hissed teeth before releasing her breath, “sorrowful. This day marks ten years since my husband departed from this life and awaits me in the next. These are what I created for him.”

“I may not have known him,” you said, walking over to the woman and bowing a nod of respect towards her, “but from the representation of the flowers: the roses for grief and devotion, the eternal love from the orchid, the playfulness in the gumnuts; he sounds spectacular.”

“Don’t forget the gladioli,” she smiled through her sorrow, “they were his favourite.”

“Gladioli for integrity, honesty, and,” you reached down and took her hands within your own, cradling them against you warmly, “strength in character. He sounds like an amazing man, and I am truly sorry for your loss.”

She smiled at you and nodded her head at your words, receiving comfort from the sympathetic utterances from a complete stranger. You tore your gaze back towards the vibrant emerald colour of the gladioli flowers, fixating on their beauty.

“This may sound a little harsh; but, may I buy them from you?” you asked her in a low tone, turning your face back towards her with a soft smile, “you’ve placed a quest onto my heart that I require to see meet fruition.”

She quirks her brows at you and looks back to her prized arrangement, looking longingly at them.

“I would only sell them for good reason, lass,” she nodded, pursing her lips, “what quest holds over you?”

You sighed and released her hands, rummaging into your bag in search of your berry.

“Under usual circumstances,” you began, furrowing your brows as you continued your rummage, “men only receive flowers once in their lifetimes.”

“Oh,” she gasped lowly to you, nodding her head sorrowfully in acknowledgement, “how long has he been departed?”

“He’s not dead,” you smiled and shook your head, “although try as he might, he’s still with us.”

She furrowed her brows, tilting her head to the side and immediately smiled at your words, “these are for your fella then?”

“He’s not exactly my ‘fella’,” you nodded with a light laugh at her words, “but for a friend, yes.”

A small twinkle formed within her eye as she brought herself closer towards you and whispered; “and for how long have you been in love with him?”

You stiffened at her words, halting in place in shock. You had never thought about how you felt about Zoro aboard the Going Merry. Not when he would bring you a fresh cup of coffee and sit with you in the early mornings, silently watching the rising sun bring warmth over the ocean in solitude. Not even when he would instinctively hold out his left arm to shield your body from harms way once conflict arose with formidable foes. Even still, not a single thought regarding him absent-mindedly seeking you out for your opinions on shrubbery and moss he’d located and presented towards you; sitting adjacent to you and cocking his head to the side as he actively listened to everything you said about botany.

She hummed in delight and made her way over towards her arrangement and began to collect the stems from within their display, flourishing it with a brown hessian sash and tanned parchment paper.

“35,000 berry and they’re all yours, sweety,” she cooed at you, scrunching her nose up at you.

“That’s awfully low, Ma’am,” you frowned at her, locating a more appropriate amount of berry, “you’ll take 352,000, and I’ll also leave you with my name for future business arrangements.”

She halted her movements, looking down at the arrangement in her hands one more time before nodding to you and taking your berry from your outstretched hand.

“Thank you for parting with these,” you upturned your eyebrows in empathy, placing your hand on her shoulder and giving it a light squeeze in comfort, “they are beautiful and represent everything I want to now say.”

“I’m glad to be of assistance,” she hummed, tilting her head into your embrace. You held onto her for a moment longer before bidding her farewell with your departure.

It took a while for the remainder of the crew to return to the ship, you sat and documented within your botany journal a diagram of the flowers you purchased; shading various petals and leaves to depict the beauty of the arrangement.

As you had a small amount of time to yourself, you began to actively think on why exactly you immediately thought of your crewman as soon as you saw the flower shop. You never usually purchase flowers, especially since you would always find them on your adventures and set up arrangements to decorate the kitchen and your crew-quarters. You had never once thought to decorate a fellow Straw-Hat’s crew quarters, nor gift an arrangement prior.

What changed? Did you have budding romantic feelings developing for the loyal knight and protector of the Straw-Hat crew? You gulped the dry pit forming in your throat, a giddy feeling arising within your chest. Your fingers began to tremble and your heartbeat thumped with a drum-like rapidity.

You shook your head to rid them of the thoughts, your hands remaining the only thing strained and trembling under the implications of a small budding infatuation. Rolling your shoulders back and closing your eyes, you began to shake the feeling away before the crew began to rejoin you aboard your ship.

“There you are,” you heard a voice behind you. You upturned your head, seeking out the source of the voice.

Zoro’s vibrant green hair was the first thing you drew your attention to. The gladioli were the exact vibrant hue of his short locks; the entire reason you first intended on purchasing the arrangement.

“Here I am,” you replied with a cock of your head and a wide smile. His expression was airy, yet unreadable. He had his left wrist hanging on the hilt of his white blade attached to his hip, raking his eyes over your seated position at the polished wooden deck table. He quirked his head once his eyes met with the flowers in front of you.

“You got flowers?” he asked, his brows furrowing together in the middle before asking you again, “someone give them you?”

You laughed a small melodical chuckle before rising to your feet and clutching the wrapped flowers within your hands. You walked over to his place above deck and grinned at him.

“Actually, Zoro,” you began to anxiously giggle, your eyes widened in shock at your next words, “I bought them specifically for you.”

The furrow in his brows rose as he began searching between your two irises for hidden intentions, silently questioning your actions as you held out your hands with the arrangement. He hesitantly reached for them, looking down at the mixture of greens, reds, yellows and soft muted pastels and hesitated.

“Why?” he asked in a low rumbly whisper, halting his fingertips a hairline away from receiving your gift.

“Because I wanted you to see them,” you whispered in return, searching his face for reason for his apprehension at receiving his gift.

His fingertips brushed yours as he took the parchment wrapped florals into his grasp; the waft of whimsical beauty falling in waves over his senses.

“Why do you want me to see them?” he asked you, continuing to hold your hands within his as they clasped around the flowers. Both of your eyes held firm to the complimentary florae, focussing on anything other than fixating on each other’s eyes, ignoring the tension arising between you as you relished in his extended touch.

You sighed low and sorrowful, retracting your hands from the stems as you secured them within Zoro’s grasp.

“Men only receive flowers only once in their lifetimes, and they never even get to see them,” you sighed, taking your lower lip between your teeth to halt your nerves. A small rumbly growl of confusion began to rise in Zoro’s chest, questioning you on your thoughts.

“I wanted you to see them,” you reiterated, “you are so strong, Zoro,” you reached your hand up and hesitantly pressed your palm against his cheek, “you fight valiantly and with honour and integrity.”

You began to retract your hand, Zoro chasing your palm with his cheek as he clutched the flowers within his hands. You giggled at him, reluctantly placing your hand back to his cheek.

“And what is the one occasion men get flowers?” Zoro cluelessly asked you, prompting all playfulness to flee from your face. You didn’t think you had to actively inform him on the subject. Your brows rose upwards in sorrow as you searched around his cheeks, chin, nose, forehead and temple before settling once again on his eyes.

“Their funerals, Zoro,” you whispered, completely retracting your hand from his face, “this is a mourning arrangement for the honourable departed.”

Your eyes fled from his face and again made contact with the arrangement he held within his grasp.

Pursing your lips, you hardened your resolve and began to walk him through the several pieces clutched in his expert grasp.

“The yellow rose is for strong ties, as I am bound to you as your crewman,” you uttered in a low tone before adding, “the dark red is for grief and sorrow.”

You stood taller on the tips of your toes as you stooped with your index finger extended towards the various florals; “the gladioli, that’s the green one, is for a strong character. You’re so strong, Zoro,” you snuck a glance upwards to see Zoro’s eyes darkened and his teeth held tightly shut in a vice-like grip. You hesitated before continuing, “the gumnuts are for your humour.”

A small rumble began to form from his chest in disapproval at your comment, prompting a small giggle to escape from your lips as a natural and organic response.

“And the big purple ones?” he asked, his brows creasing and lip upturning in thought, “what are they for? I don’t speak flower.”

A wide grin appeared once again to your cheeks as his smirk playfully returned to his.

“Those are orchids,” you whispered, your eyes and smile softening as you stepped closer to him. You felt your pulse drumming painfully harshly within your ears as you sucked in a trembled and shaken breath, nodding to yourself before declaring; “those are because-,” you hesitated once more before flittering your eyes down to the flowers before looking up at him through your eyelashes, “well, they’re because I love you, Zoro.”

Disbelief. Complete and utter disbelief came over Zoro as he heard those words depart from your lips. He never thought his feelings towards you would ever be returned, holding fast within his resolve for his broody pining to forever remain painfully unrequited.

He had hoped, sure. He had longed, absolutely. He had dreamed that you would lean yourself against him in the early rise of the sun’s rays as you sat together. He had imagined having your lips meet for the first time as he loyally protected you from harms way on the battlefield. The way you spoke so passionately about honing in on your craft as botany and plant specialist bewitched him every time you opened your lips to depart knowledge onto him. His thoughts were only of training to finally match the league of Dracule Mihawk, and of how desperately and deeply he cared for you.

“I’m sorry,” you added, retreating from your proximity of him, “I shouldn’t have said anything. Please-,” you held your right hand up defensively in front of yourself and began to back away in retreat, “-please don’t treat me any differently. Enjoy the flowers,” you added with a small, soft smile, “they’re yours to do with what you will.”

Zoro now found himself in a bewilderment. He was perplexed that you relayed your emotions and intentions in such an unbridled manner, so boldly presenting him with your gift. He was sure you had even surprised yourself, not intending on relaying a romantic declaration on a meagre Tuesday afternoon in the middle of a random layover.

“Hey,” Zoro called over to you, a small harsh growl erupting from his tone; halting your step in your retreat, “get back here.”

Your body ceased up at his command, every fibre of self-preservation in your body refusing to turn to face him again. A warm blush had reddened against your features, hues over your nose, cheeks and tips of your ears heating your face to an uncomfortable temperature.

“Now,” Zoro again ordered you. Your body responded immediately, turning back to face him with your head holding firm in its bow to the floor; your eyes fixating on the wooden crevasses of the ship’s deck. Once close enough in bodily proximity to the swordsman, you heard his footsteps approach your body and almost stand flush against you.

The scent of the flowers hung within the air as he brought his left hand, which cradled the bunch, against your right shoulder. His right hand hooked his index finger under your chin as he raised it upwards. Your eyes first met with the broad scar across his chest, inflicted by the great warlord of the sea as he granted to spare his life under the great duel.

He continued to rise your chin, your gaze meeting with his lips; focussing on the small flicker of his tongue which darted out and retreated back within his mouth.

“Look at me,” he uttered with an air of confidence, prompting you to hesitantly meet his gaze with a small rose-tinge lingering still atop your cheeks.

His eyes held a foreign softness within them, his aura still commanding and noble as he held you tenderly within his fingertips. He smiled, wrapping his left arm around your shoulders and hooked you into his torso; the floral bunch resting behind your back within his clutches. Your breath hitched within your throat as your eyes widened in shock at his closeness.

“You buy me flowers for my funeral,” he uttered into you, the whisper of his breath against your lips force your eyes half-lidded in desire and anticipation, “and you don’t even stay for the procession?”

A small whimper fled from your lips at his attention, a tingle shooting up your spine and igniting the follicles on the surface of your neck and forearms. He released his hold on your chin as he fled his hand down to grasp at your hip, pulling you flush against himself as he brought his lips down to mould themselves atop your own.

You stood in shock, your eyes looking at his face in awe at his kiss. You snaked your arms around his shoulders to rest at the nape of his neck; fingertips brushing against the tri-pierced left earlobe as you raked your right hand over his muscles. You flittered your eyes shut and smiled against his lips in glee, standing atop the tips of your toes once more to reach more of his towering body.

He immediately dragged his left arm over your shoulders to draw it down to your hips, immediately hoisting you upwards into the air. You shrieked in surprise, feeling his lips grin against you as he picked you up below your thighs. You hooked your ankles behind his back, thighs resting atop his hips as he arched his face upwards to meet against your lips; arching his jaw and chin to deepen the connection shared between you. You felt his blades begin to awkwardly dig their hilt against your flesh, but paid them no mind as you were now held securely within the strong arms of the valiant knight and loyal protector of the Straw-Hat pirates.

You drew your right hand up to rake your fingertips against Zoro’s hair, gently caressing his follicles with your fingertips. He groaned against your lips, furrowing his brows and leant appreciatively against your touch. While continuing to clutch the flowers within his left hand, he smoothed his right hand to rake its hold against your thigh, reaching around the flesh to grasp the muscles of your ass and support your body further against himself.

You were so enraptured by each other’s touch, the feel of your bodies moulding so intimately together; you felt as if you were the only two people existing on this side of the world. Zoro walked your body over to the table and placed you down to rest atop it, his swords again bumping against your body awkwardly; prompting a small giggle to flee from your lips and onto his at the collision.

Zoro tentatively placed the bouquet gently beside you as he stood himself between your parted legs, hooking his hands below your knees to bring your body as close as he could possibly feel you while clothed. You moaned into his mouth as you brushed your hand over his hair and onto his cheek; feeling the cool metal from his piercings once again below your palm.

All of your senses were completely overwhelmed by your swordsman; the way his body felt flush against your own, the waves of desire you could tangibly feel radiating from him for every hungry kiss placed against your lips. He trailed his lips against the corner of your mouth, brushing and grazing your skin below his tongue and teeth as they raked their way down your neck. A small whimper escaped your lips as he located your pulse, swirling his tongue against it with a rough groan falling from behind his own lips.

The smell of the bouquet beside you was as sweet as the sounds you were pouring from your lips and into the awaiting audience of Zoro’s ears; a private performance meant only for him and him alone. The ocean breeze wafting over your senses as the wind picked up, a small inkling of something not entirely unfamiliar to you; but unwelcome never the less.

Tobacco.

A rough cough interrupted Zoro’s action of pulling the neckline of your shirt down to reveal your clavicle for his next assault with his mouth. You both snapped your eyes over to the sound, noticing the blonde chef ignite the end of a new cigarette with the filter end drawn between his lips, a small litter of depleted butts pooling at his feet.

“H-how long have-,” you began to stutter out, eyes wide and in shock at the knowledge you were in the presence of an audience.

“-Long enough to not miss the procession,” the chef chuckled at you both, inhaling the cigarette before releasing the nicotine riddled smoke in a long exhale, “came to let you know lunch is ready.”

“And you didn’t say a word?” Zoro growled through gritted teeth at the chef, prompting another laugh to flee from Sanji’s lips.

“Hey,” Sanji began, holding his hands up defensively, “we placed a wager on it, I didn’t want to sway the odds.”

Zoro growled, reluctantly releasing you from his grasp and shielding your dishevelled body from view of the blonde chef.

“Are you okay?” Zoro asked you quietly as you collected yourself. You sighed with a light smile coming to your face.

“I am, Zoro,” you replied, “better than ever.”

He smiled down at you, fixing the scabbards of his swords on the hilt to his side with a large, wolfy but bashful grin. As you both collected yourselves, you hopped down from your place atop the table and turned to walk towards Sanji, vocal reprimands fleeing from your lips as you did so.

Zoro chuckled under his breath, turning back around to collect his flowers. He stared at the bouquet, examining it. They were beautiful, a perfect reminder of his mortality. He vowed to return the favour at the next port, wooing you with a reminder of your own fleeting moments together in this life.

[turnstileskyline]

fall river massachusetts late 1892-1893 dash simulator

🥃 remember1794 Follow

lmaoo of course l*zz*e was a member of the temperance movement….. broads like that are always the worst

📿 godbeliever Follow

and??? are you saying that being against the overconsumption of alcohol is somehow akin to being a brutal murderer?????

🥃 remember1794 Follow

yes

🪓 bordenupdates

dont bother engaging with remember1794 his entire blog is posts about the whisky rebellion of 1794 or about how much he hates women

#notborden

7,394 notes

👒 gibsons-a-girl Follow

look all im saying is that miss lizzie is unmarried and hasn’t had ANY suitors… and maggie is unwed too. im just saying!

👞 shoeshiningisawomansduty Follow

im so tired of you sapphists projecting your filthy disease onto everyone. no one cares.

👒 gibsons-a-girl Follow

thats not what your mother said to me last night

👒 gibsons-a-girl Follow

wait why is your blog just photographs of mens footwear

#wild ass site

1,808 notes

❄️ alaskafan Follow

i think the uncle did it bc what the fuck kind of middle name is vinnicum

❄️ alaskafan Follow

AND hes a butcher ? might as well write murderer on his head lmaoooooooo

❄️ alaskafan Follow

bordenupdates just vagueposted about me

#hope this is ok to rb op bc LMAO

9 notes

🐋 righttowhale Follow

ever since the 1850s big petroleum has been working to destroy the whaling industry, backed by the naturalists who find a problem with the hunting of whales, despite there being an abundance of the beasts in the sea! do not reject whaling – trust when whale experts say that these creatures will never be at a serious risk, don't fall for the propaganda of big petroleum

⚓️ sunkenmen

what the fuck are you talking about. did a whale kill your parents or something.

🐋 righttowhale Follow

yes, actually.

⚓️ sunkenmen

. sorry

#sorry for your loss but your politics suck

94,726 notes

📿 godbeliever Follow

i don't believe that women are capable of a crime so brutal. even when judith slayed holofernes, she did so by the guiding of God. her actions were virtuous in nature. women, being of the fairer sex, who serve God as lizzie does are not capable of a murder so foul. jezebel was able to do as she did because she spurned Him.

👒 gibsons-a-girl Follow

stop lumping sapphist lizzie defenders with these freaks.

#this discourse has been incredible #anyway block godbeliever

3,552 notes

🕯 literate-lover-19

the adventures of sherlock holmes my beloved

2 notes

🧺 thepoppypamphleteer Follow

theres nothing wrong an opium reliance.

🧺 thepoppypamphleteer Follow

i always wanted to fuck her

437 notes

🧵 spindlecity

does anyone wanna take me to the columbia exposition :( i know its in illinois but still

0 notes

[chroniclingworlds]

Auranauts

As the Viatora evolved wings to take advantage of atmospheric water, their predators soon followed. Now, huge clouds of arboreal Viatora travel the planet as “air plankton”, following the moisture-filled clouds that sustain them. In turn, these are hunted by some of the strangest animals on Strix. With one lung adapted into a buoyant gas sac and bodies modified to be as lightweight as possible, the Auranauts glide through the air without ever touching a solid surface.

Silverwings

Pictured: the greater kite-bird, found across the skies of the northern hemisphere.

With lazily undulating wings, the Silverwings fly through the lower atmosphere, beneath the cloud cover, searching for any air plankton that get caught in downdrafts. Unlike all other Auranauts, who brood their young attached to their own bodies until their gas bladders develop, the Silverwings are a more primitive lineage who must deposit their eggs on a tree. They do this with impressive aerial acrobatics, swooping down and laying an egg in the canopy without ever landing until they have deposited all their young. The eggs stick to the leaves and hatch into tiny versions of the adults, who take flight almost immediately after birth.

Devilbirds

Pictured: the magnificent devilbird, the largest species, migrates seasonally between the northern and southern hemispheres with the rain.

Although their name is intimidating, these are harmless creatures which feed only on air plankton. However, their large size and angular jet-black bodies have created ominous legends about them, including that they are omens of death. These are the largest of the Auranauts, typically living in groups of five to ten and cruise relatively low in the atmosphere, often just above the surface of the Southern Sea. These creatures migrate huge distances with the seasonal rains, behaving almost like small versions of the Papyracetae, potentially an example of convergent evolution between these two different lineages.

Stormriders

Pictured: the yellow-spotted stormrider, which has been seen all across the planet but most frequently sighted in the south.

While most Auranauts avoid the strong winds and dangerous lightning found inside storms, Stormriders take advantage of these conditions. With a highly sensitive electrical sensory system, they can detect the lightning coming and avoid strikes, and the shape of their bodies allows them to remain balanced and return to an upright position even in turbulence. Utilizing the chaos that storms enact upon clouds of air plankton, they snap up the disoriented Viatora and will also feed on Darts that are sucked into the storm cloud. These exquisitely adapted animals are captivating to witness flying in and out of storms.

Darts

Pictured: the iridescent stripe-wing, which migrates seasonally with the rain between the Moon Sea and the Southern Sea.

Like a dragonfly, these animals can fly in any direction they please. While many Auranauts evolved to be larger and gulp huge mouthfuls of air plankton, Darts took the opposite approach and became tiny and highly maneuverable to catch individual Viatora. They live in all levels of the habitable atmosphere, following swarms of air plankton wherever they go, and are frequently preyed upon by larger Auranauts. Some scientists consider them to be air plankton themselves, given their abundance, small size, and status as prey animals. Certain species also follow around the Papyracetae, feeding on parasites that attach to the giants.

Cruisers

Pictured: the orange-headed cruiser, which patrols the regions between the Southern Sea and the Black Mountains.

A larger relative of the Darts, Cruisers are incredibly fast and agile, and unlike their relatives, are macro-predators. They hunt and feed on smaller Auranauts, including juveniles of bigger species. These intelligent pack-hunters communicate with high-pitched trills and clicks, and seem to have complex social structures within their groups. Although formidable predators, they are preyed upon by the larger and more voracious Terebroids, so one member of the pack always serves as a lookout when others are hunting or resting. Aside from the Rostertia, these may be the most intelligent animals on Strix.

[anarchy-and-piglins]

"You know you brought this upon yourself, right?" Wilbur said.

Techno sighed, gills flaring in annoyance. He wasn't exactly being subtle about hiding his irritation at the situation, but it paled in the face of how weak he felt. "You promised," he complained.

"No, I promised not to say 'I told you so'. And I didn't say that." With a laugh, Wilbur curled his tail around to the side so he could reach for the poultice. "I said 'You brought this on yourself'. Which you did and you know it."

"You're a horrible nurse," Techno said. "Your bedside manners suck."

"Harsh words coming from somebody who can barely lift a fin," Wilbur smiled down at him. "Admit it, you're glad to have us. I shudder at the very thought of you living without a pod for over a month, it's a surprise you didn't die."

"I was fine," Techno said.

"Yeah?" Wilbur's webbed fingers ghosted over the scar on Techno's shoulder left by the harpoon, leaning forward to place the wrapped seaweed herbs on his forehead to chase away his aches and hopefully keep down the fever.

Techno was never going to admit it out loud but Wilbur was right, he did bring this on himself. He knew that swimming too close to the surface was going to make him sick. His scales felt too tightly set in his skin, digging uncomfortably into his nerve endings. A deep sea mer like him wasn't made for that heat or the abundance of oxygen so high up. He was supposed to stay down in the ravine.

But also, they needed more anemones for the nest. Phil and Tommy were on a trip and Techno didn't want to leave the chore up to Wilbur by himself. He wanted to help his pod.

He wanted to be useful to them, care for them. Like they had for him.

"Don't tell Phil," he said. "He'll ground me."

"You're an adult," Wilbur responded.

"So? Do you think that will stop him?"

Wilbur brushed Techno's hair out of the way while chuckling. "Well, Tommy and Phil aren't around anyway. If you get better before they get back, I won't snitch on you. Twin's honor."

They weren't even related.

"Pod's honor," Techno said.

"I'll get you to say it sooner or later," Wilbur hummed. He could be stubborn about these things. Then his expression turned more serious. "Don't do it again though. Please."

Techno closed his eyes but didn't answer. He wasn't going to lie to Wilbur. That would be worse.

And in the silence that followed, he could tell Wilbur already knew.

[probablyasocialecologist]

It’s worth taking a step back to emphasise just how extraordinary the lack of access to water is. There is not a shortage of water. Sure, regionally speaking, there are shortages, but not at a global level. It also doesn’t take a genius to get access to water or move it from A to B. The UN estimates it costs $60 to $70 per year per person to get the infrastructure in place for potable water and sanitation to everyone. A sum that pales in comparison with that spent bailing out the banks in 2008, for example. So it’s in that context that we should look at these new technologies. Desalination of water has been around for a long time. You boil salty water, it’s that simple. However, what has happened over the past 20 or 30 years or so, is desalination is increasingly seen as an environmentally friendly, safe and cheap way to get almost an abundant supply of water. Sea water is in great abundance, it is not owned by anyone for the time being, you can suck up as much as you want of it and not pay for it. Of course, desalination at scale is not ecologically friendly. Desalination takes a gargantuan amount of energy. It’s true that the costs per unit for energy production have gone down, but it’s still very energy intensive. It also takes significant infrastructure to suck the water from the sea, which has an adverse impact on marine wildlife and ecologies, as well as producing highly saline and toxic leftover waste. There’s no way to recycle this so it often ends up back in the sea or stored on land, in barrels somewhere. These technologies are also often used to defuse or, more accurately, sidestep political disputes. Take Spain, for example. Water access and distribution is difficult in the south of Spain, while people from Catalonia or Aragon generally speaking don’t want to share their groundwater with those from other regions. Desalination is an easy answer. Let’s get to the sea, extract free water, there’s no contestation. This all falls under what I’ve called a ‘productionist logic’, we need to get more of the stuff to carry on doing what we are already doing. This perpetuates a logic of reproduction that does not consider the structures of demand: who’s using it, under what conditions etc… It helps us escape considering the contradictions of current demands.

[corner-stories]

38 for rainy day prompts please

Rainy Day Dialogue Prompts 🌧

38. "I hate thunderstorms." "Don't worry, I'll protect you." y'all seem to like the post-canon seaside cottagecore AU so...

The seaside cottage is sturdy, yet the storm causes the walls to creak as droplets relentlessly strike the roof. The sound of thunder echoes in the distance, mixing with the noise of the waves crashing against the shore.

Under an abundance of blankets, Annie tosses and turns. Despite being in bed for hours, she hasn't gotten any sleep. She's not sure which sensation is keeping her up — the distant roar of thunder, the heavy rain, or that anxious feeling in her gut that something is going to go wrong.

She turns to her side, trying her best not to rouse the second body on the bed, and forces her eyes shut. It only lasts for so long, because a few moments pass and suddenly the sky above the sea is filled with light.

Annie sits up just in time for the space she shares with Armin to be illuminated, but just as quickly it fades away and the darkness returns. The thunder follows, as well as the creaking of the cottage and the crashing of the waves, causing Annie to sigh.

Before submitting to another sleepless night, a different noise soon makes itself heard, an unfamiliar occurrence within the soundscape. Annie sucks in a breath before shifting a bit, stepping out of the bed and touching her bare feet to the cold floor.

A short walk takes her from the bedroom to the cottage's main living space, where she is quick to spot the source of the sound.

In the kitchen is a window just above the sink, and it seems that tonight of all nights is the one where the wind forces it open.

Annie grumbles. "Fuck..."

Whether the main factor in the incident be a faulty lock or someone forgetting to properly close it, Annie doesn't care. She simply walks forward, adjusting the wooden shutters until the window is securely shut. Then when all is done she is quick to rush back to the bedroom.

Another lightning strike illuminates the cottage as Annie arrives. In the light she sees Armin, still miraculously asleep despite the chaos. Thunder is heard by the time she's slipping back under the blankets.

Annie makes a place for herself next to Armin, shamelessly putting her face in the crook of his neck, her arms snaking around his slender torso.

In response, he lets out a confused groan as his girlfriend settles around him. He is very slightly awake, though not enough to completely disturb his improbable slumber.

"Hmmm?" he says, only slightly befuddled by the current situation. He's receptive to her touches though, unhesitatingly letting her rest against him and placing his hand on her back.

"I hate thunderstorms," Annie mutters, forcing her eyes shut again in another attempt to get some goddamn sleep.

Armin lets out another hum, though this one seems to be tinged with less confusion and just a bit more amusement.

"Don't worry," he promises in a voice so tender it sounds out of place in the storm. "I'll protect you."

[rriavian]

Hello! I saw your December prompts post, so may I suggest "reunions" for Corinthiel? Would love to see more of them in your style <3

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy how I write them because they are still a very new pairing for me so I'm slightly nervous. Sorry this took a while - I had an idea for what I wanted to write but it only really came together today, so I frantically wrote this on my lunch break haha. Please enjoy! <3

-

A first kiss; yet not that at all, not even close, novelty and familiarity combining sweet and decadent. The dessert one serves to a god, a full flavoured taste Daniel doesn’t need to chase to find.

He still does.

Daniel still licks greedily at his Corinthian’s mouth—will chase what is abundant, will hunt what isn’t rare—still takes and takes and takes.

There are golden white strands soft under his hands, fingers running through the Corinthian’s hair on a loop. It is something of a compulsion, though there is no accident in Daniel’s surrendering to it, no trap here but his own.

The Corinthian surrenders too.

He is a smirking, sauntering thing; laughing into Daniel’s mouth, pushing back with the same claim he’s held with, hands clamping down tightly on slim hips. The wish to bruise is the Corinthian’s own trap; to anchor, to tie them tightly together past the ability of a vow made only with words. No air moves between their skin, even if his fingers could speak the Corinthian doesn’t allow the distance that’s needed to make a sound. They both know drawing back to say sweet words is still withdrawing, is still a parting, time spent separate before reuniting still an unacceptable goodbye.

This is a greeting, a joining, the Corinthian keeps Daniel like this to make it last. He’s slipped his hands beneath the clothes to lay fingerprints on Daniel’s skin, to show the place his hands should always be. Indents to make him incomplete unless he’s being touched.

Daniel very much approves of that.

Hello, he thinks, hello my protector, my guardian, my Corinthian.

It seems they both know how to hunger like a human, have taken that for their own, a concept that serves their own ends. A human appetite compliments an endless one. The greed of wanting every moment—of knowing you will have it—is such to devour infinity while leaving room to spare, but the greed for just one moment makes the now its own banquet. A singular event no crumb. He’d always been so unhurried, is still that same thing making a marathon out of eternity, but occasionally there is an urge to sprint that Daniel doesn’t hesitate to indulge.

The sea may repeat a pattern but that doesn’t mean it’s steady.

The tide can rush in too, frenzied within the structure of its own pattern, can crash wild against a shore lined with cliffs. Even Dream of the Endless can run; wind whipping through his hair, pounding heart and burning lungs, chest rising and falling with rapid, heaving breaths.

This is one second that will never be had again. And that means it must be taken now, must be claimed because it will pass and never ever come back.

It will be lost.

The thought strikes. Daniel curls fingers in the Corinthian’s shirt collar, bites, remembers—aspects always interlocking, he is what he was, and now Morpheus chuckles, murmurs, has waited until desperation hit its height and oh that is so very Dream—aha, it can be kept. Sand can only fall through Daniel's fingers if he lets it go. This can come again; it will, it's already been promised, and oh Daniel can relive whatever he wants within a dream.

He will have this moment a thousand times again. 

Daniel tastes blood from that sharp bite, soothes with a greedy suck at the Corinthian’s lower lip, swallows the moan like taking a breath. It’s a sound made without the sacrifice of distance, another thing to remember, the truth of how that’s a possibility another thing that calms. Yes. Daniel has this. An eternity just like it; his mouth on the Corinthian’s until the world ends, Daniel has the greed to ignore it all as it burns, can spend forever touching him and having him.

He smiles because he knows he will.

A balm for all that distance, all those centuries apart, all those moments where role and duty lies between a kiss. There is space for this instead, no crumb in a moment—

A dream where every second they reunite.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Appendix III: Nesting Associations.

Audubon’s Journals (Audubon and his Journals, New York, 1898), especially those relating to his life on the coasts of Labrador and the St. Lawrence river in the thirties, contain excellent descriptions of the nesting associations of aquatic birds. Speaking of “The Rock,” one of the Magdalene or Amherst Islands, he wrote: — “At eleven I could distinguish its top plainly from the deck, and thought it covered with snow to the depth of several feet; this appearance existed on every portion of the flat, projecting shelves. “But it was not snow: it was gannets, all calmly seated on their eggs or newly-hatched brood-their heads all turned windwards, almost touching each other, and in regular lines. The air above, for a hundred yards and for some distance round the rock, “was filled with gannets on the wing, as if a heavy fall of snow was directly above us.” Kittiwake gulls and foolish guillemots bred on the same rock (Journals, vol. i. pp. 360–363).

In sight of Anticosti Island, the sea “was literally covered with foolish guillemots and with razorbilled auks (Alca torva).” Further on, the air was filled with velvet ducks. On the rocks of the Gulf, the herring gulls, the terns (great, Arctic, and probably Foster’s), the Tringa pusilla, the sea-gulls, the auks, the Scoter ducks, the wild geese (Anser canadensis), the red-breasted merganser, the cormorants, etc., were all breeding. The sea-gulls were extremely abundant there; “they are for ever harassing every other bird, sucking their eggs and devouring their young;” “they take here the place of eagles and hawks.”

On the Missouri, above Saint Louis, Audubon saw, in 1843, vultures and eagles nesting in colonies. Thus he mentioned “long lines of elevated shore, surmounted by stupendous rocks of limestone, with many curious holes in them, where we saw vultures and eagles enter towards dusk” — that is, Turkey buzzards (Cathartes aura) and bald eagles (Haliaëtus leucocephalus), E. Couës remarks in a footnote (vol. i. p. 458).

One of the best breeding-grounds along the British shores are the Farne Islands, and one will find in Charles Dixon’s work, Among the Birds in Northern Shires, a lively description of these grounds, where scores of thousands of gulls, terns, eider-ducks, cormorants, ringed plovers, oyster-catchers, guillemots, and puffins come together every year. “On approaching some of the islands the first impression is that this gull (the lesser black-backed gull) monopolizes the whole of the ground, as it occurs in such vast abundance. The air seems full of them, the ground and bare rocks are crowded; and as our boat finally grates against the rough beach and we eagerly jump ashore all becomes noisy excitement — a perfect babel of protesting cries that is persistently kept up until we leave the place” (p. 219).

[itofthames]

Freefall Pt 9 (Jing Yuan x Reader)

wc: 886

jing yuan x reader

tags: nothing new, nothing too n--s----fw

can you tell this story definitely got out of hand?

Read here or on Ao3

It’s a dizzying feeling.

When you imagine standing alongside Jing Yuan again, it is always with grit teeth and a mountain of shared regrets.

Instead, the moment you both return to work, a wave of stressed-out interns and burnt-out co-workers crash down on Jing Yuan with piles of paperwork. In moments you’re a sea apart with him being dragged off, a single dot in an ever-growing crowd of swarming tasks. You head back to your typical workplace, at the front of a myriad of holographic recreations of the ship. By midday, you’re back up to your chin in work; trade requests, mistranslations, drafted legislation, reports on cult and disruptive activity by the Denizens of Abundance.

It’s like nothing ever changed, save the occasional co-worker asking about your ‘vacation’. It’s a shock when the clock rings, informing you that it’s time to clock out. You leave alone, feeling hopelessly off-kilter.

Perhaps Jing Yuan’s romantic life isn’t the most important thing on the ship and you’ve been making a mountain out of a molehill.

That’s life for a week. You hardly see Jing Yuan anymore, due to recent flare-ups and overlapping issues. When you do see him, it’s in passing with him standing in the center of the room, giving the occasional order and taking in information from informants, before being rushed off again by more interns requesting meetings. How he even manages to keep up with his duties is a wonder to you.

Another day at work and Jing Yuan is standing at the head of the room, arms crossed and contemplative, as always.

“Where is that report on the damages done in Starwatcher Avenue?”

“I think they might have it,” someone says, pointing to you.

You realize that you had compiled that report. You straighten out in time to see Jing Yuan approach you.

Jing Yuan bites his lip. When he realizes how that must look, he ducks his head down and wipes the expression from his face. When he’s upright again, he clears his throat, “I hope you’re back in good health.”

You nod, sucking in your lips. The last thing you want is to ask him why you haven’t spoken in more than a week after that night, but it’s the only thing you can think about.

He holds out his hand. “The report?”

“Ah, yes. Here you are, sir,” You hand the paper off to him and his hand lingers against yours. His thumb brushes over yours.

He pulls away quickly, thanking you as he goes.

You’re left with desires bubbling up in the pit of your stomach and a spiking heartbeat.

Another day and night go by. It’s your first weekend since the vacation and you sit at home, curled up on your couch with a book you’ve read a million times already, pretending to be okay while keeping your ears peeled for a telltale knock on the door that never comes.

Had it only been a week before when he’d been fucking you to bawling pieces on this very same couch? It felt like forever ago and you still feel the ghost grip of his hands on your waist. If his face had been anything to go by, the feeling was painfully mutual.

So, why nothing?

The weekend drags by and you head back to work. Today’s focus is on sleep-inducing discrepancies in weapon inventory. Your eyes glaze over the same lines of information over and over, but they never actually penetrate.

“....yeah, I get it.”

You bolt back to reality and look over your shoulder. Jing Yuan stands there, arms folded and looking rather amused. Between the wrinkled clothing and the unshined lion pauldron, you get the idea that he’s not holding up too well.

“Are you too busy?”

“Absolutely not,” you say, pretending like you aren’t shaking from him being so damn close.

“Good, that’s—that’s good...” he says, blinking a couple of times as if he couldn’t quite believe what you’ve said. You’re half a mind to ask him what’s going on, but there are too many co-workers around for you to feel safe asking, “Please follow me,”

You walk behind him without saying another word. A familiar buzz blazes through your skin and fingertips as you disappear down corridor after corridor until you can hardly tell one from the next.

Jing Yuan picks a door, seemingly at random, and leads you inside.

It’s a room of never-ending bookcases.

You only hear the door close before Jing Yuan’s arms wrap around you from behind and his nose buries itself in the crook of your neck. You freeze until it hits you exactly what’s happening. Then you melt. It’s been long. Too long.

“Thought—thought you left me,” Jing Yuan says, parting from your neck to get a breath in before shoving you against a bookcase, crushing your body against it until you can’t move. He takes a tight hold of each of your wrists and pins them above your head, and his mouth is on yours, in that same familiar hungry, desperate way you’ve come to miss.

“No, wouldn’t—,” You sneak in between kisses.

Jing Yuan backs away enough to stare into your eyes, “never?”

“Never.” 

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

The Future Glory of Israel

1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. 2 For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. 3 And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. 4 Lift up your eyes all round, and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. 5 Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and exult, because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you. 6 A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord. 7 All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you; the rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you; they shall come up with acceptance on my altar, and I will beautify my beautiful house. 8 Who are these that fly like a cloud, and like doves to their windows? 9 For the coastlands shall hope for me, the ships of Tarshish first, to bring your children from afar, their silver and gold with them, for the name of the Lord your God, and for the Holy One of Israel, because he has made you beautiful. 10 Foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall minister to you; for in my wrath I struck you, but in my favour I have had mercy on you. 11 Your gates shall be open continually; day and night they shall not be shut, that people may bring to you the wealth of the nations, with their kings led in procession. 12 For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish; those nations shall be utterly laid waste. 13 The glory of Lebanon shall come to you, the cypress, the plane, and the pine, to beautify the place of my sanctuary, and I will make the place of my feet glorious. 14 The sons of those who afflicted you shall come bending low to you, and all who despised you shall bow down at your feet; they shall call you the City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. 15 Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, with no one passing through, I will make you majestic for ever, a joy from age to age. 16 You shall suck the milk of nations; you shall nurse at the breast of kings; and you shall know that I, the Lord, am your Saviour and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. 17 Instead of bronze I will bring gold, and instead of iron I will bring silver; instead of wood, bronze, instead of stones, iron. I will make your overseers peace and your taskmasters righteousness. 18 Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders; you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise. 19 The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. 20 Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. 21 Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified. 22 The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation; I am the Lord; in its time I will hasten it. — Isaiah 60 | English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Anglicised Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Cross References: Genesis 25:13; Genesis 27:29; Exodus 6:7; 2 Samuel 7:10; 1 Chronicles 28:2; Psalm 48:7; Psalm 102:13; Psalm 147:14; Isaiah 1:7; Isaiah 10:22; Isaiah 11:12; Isaiah 49:21; Matthew 2:11; Matthew 4:16; Matthew 15:13; 2 Corinthians 6:11; Colossians 1:13; Hebrews 12:22; Revelation 21:4; Revelation 21:23,24,25 and 26; Revelation 22:5

[moncey-imagines]

WDW Trip Headcanons | Sans x GN!Reader

Sorry this took so long, Thanksgiving week has been quite busy 🥲 but now it is done and out for all the world to see 🐎🐎for context, the reader is hyperfixated on the disney parks (just like me 😎)

!!THIS HAS NOT BEEN PROOF-READ OR EDITED!!

enjoy!!!

Also I added an intro to lead into the headcanons 😱

It started with a simple statement:

* WHAT?? SERIOUSLY???

* seriously.

This is the first time you found out that Sans had absolutely no idea about the pure magic and majesty of Disney parks.

* You've been on the surface for like a year...how do you STILL not know about Disneyworld...

* idk

* Do you even know about the Disney company at all??? You have to, they are industry giants in like every category of anything ever...

* i think so, are they the ones that have the princesses?

* Which princesses?

* you know, the ones.

* No I don't, you have to tell me which ones.

* the ones with the hair.

* WHAT KIND OF HAIR?

* long hair i think.

* Rapunzel?

* idk

* Okay yeah that's it, we're going to Disneyworld, lemme go book the flights.

* cool

Two weeks later, you and your skeleton boyfriend were off to Orlando so you could expose him to the wonders of Walt Disney World.

Once you two are there and walking around, he'd probably be more focused on you rather than the park. I mean, it's kind of hard to ignore how excited you get over being in the park. The amount of facts that pop up in your brain the second you're in the parks is abundant, so much so that there is no way to stop you excited rambling (not that he'd try, he thinks it's cute).

* Look!! Look at the windows!!

* im lookin.

* It's a tribute to Marc Davis!!

* i...sorry, i dont know who that is.

Expect a lot of Sans not understanding a single thing you're talking about.

* Sans!! Look at the rocks, it's shaped like the Nautilus!!

* yeah?

* Yeah!! That's cause 20000 Leagues Under the Sea was here before The Little Mermaid ride!!

* wow.

* Do you know what any of what I just said means?

* um...not really no, im sorry.

He'll still listen though, he likes seeing you happy and excited.

* i really don't think these guys have the guts to be in here naked

* They're fake skeletons, Sans, but there's a rumor that the skull on the bed in Disneyland if re- wait...they don't have the guts. I just got it.

* took you a minute huh.

* Shut it, bonehead.

* sorry, but a name like that won't get under my skin.

* These jokes suck, you must have left your funny bone at home.

* i know, im just a lazy bones like that.

Everyone around you two have to occasionally either sit through agonizingly horrible jokes or get up and walk away.

* Hey, Sans! Do you think you can solve the murder mystery?

* murder mystery? isnt that a little dark for magic kingdom?

* It's not too dark for the Haunted Mansion, that's what this ride is all about.

* ah, okay. i wont let it rattle my bones then.

* You're such a doofus.

* actually, in your own words, im a bonehead.

* Do you think you can do the puzzle or not? The lines gonna move...

* yeah, yeah, okay.

Sans also seems to really like standing in line to hear what other people are saying.

* people say some wild stuff here, (y/n).

* Like what?

* i just heard a little girl ask her mom what happened to Mickey Mouse when he went backstage and her older sister said that the staff skinned him.

* Oh my god.

* thats not all, after that her mom agreed and told her thats how they make the Mickey ear hats.

* these fireworks are pretty nice.

* Did you know that they have to set them off no matter what? For safety reasons, they can't let old fireworks sit back there unused, even is they cancel the shows.

* so theres technically always a show?

* ...I guess so, yeah.

* ...

* What do you think happens if an airplane flies to close to the fire works?

* what happens?

* It probably becomes a scareplane.

* that one's a stretch

* C'mon, I thought it was funny.

* you were close, but not close enough. maybe next time.

Driving the car to the hotel, you turn to Sans.

* Did you...like today's trip? I wasn't annoying was I?

* i liked it, yeah, and not at all, i thought all your little facts were great. im excited for what you tell me tommorow.

* Alright, I'll stock up on my facts for Animal Kingdom tomorrow.

* you better, ill even polish my humerus.

* I knew you were gonna make some kind of pun, I felt it in my bones.

* what, have you been spine on me?

* Okay, that one was knee-t.

Sans lets out a sigh.

* What's wrong?

* nothing at all, i love you.

I'M SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG AAAAA

also sorry if its more dialogue than headcanons, I've been coding VNs as of late DHFYSGADFh

I kinda wanna make this into a short visual novel...but I cannot at the moment, I must get this fic out DHGFIYFSG

I hope it was good, if anyone wants a part two in another part just send in an ask 😎

[hazbin-pimping]

Are you aware of Retro's ever growing Sea Bunny plushie collection?

What are your views on it, Vox asked us to stop giving them ideas after someone suggested they get pet Sea Bunnies.

“I think it’s cute. They’ve hidden a few new bedazzled pistols for me among some of the many heaps. The pure abundance makes for some very convenient cushions for me to throw myself onto after a long, hard day at work, telling whores that they need to suck dick better.”

[androgynouspaperyouth]

Can We Afford a Future?

Climate change. It's scary, it's complex, and it seems like every solution is mind-bogglingly expensive. But what if we reframed the question? What if solving climate change is the best investment we could make?

The Dire Numbers

Scientists have a target: 400ppm for atmospheric CO2. It's still a bit higher than ideal, but it could slow things down and buy us time. Trouble is, the cost estimates to get there are astronomical! We're talking trillions of dollars, maybe more, just in the first decade.

What if...

What if all the wealthy nations in the OECD banded together? There are 38 of them. Now, what if each country chipped in 1 trillion USD per decade for the climate fight. Suddenly, we're talking about serious money: $38 trillion every 10 years!

Where Does It Go?

* Flip the Power Grid: Overhaul everything – solar, wind, storage. Make clean energy so abundant that fossil fuels become the expensive choice.

* Suck It Out of the Air: Plant trees on a massive scale – forests are natural carbon suckers. But also invest in the sci-fi tech – machines that pull CO2 right out of the atmosphere.

* Help the Most Vulnerable: Seawalls aren't enough. Climate change is already here. We need to help communities on the frontlines adapt.

* Innovation on Steroids: Fund the crazy science. What if we could turn CO2 into building blocks? Or grow crops that thrive in drought?

So, After 20 Years...?

Realistically, we might not hit 400ppm by then, but here's what could happen:

* We'd finally see emissions dropping FAST, putting us on track for later in the century.

* Clean tech would be booming, creating jobs, and becoming cheaper.

* People wouldn't be constantly fleeing floods and wildfires – there'd be less humanitarian crises.

Can we Afford Not to Do This?

The military, that gets trillions. But wars don't stop rising seas. Climate disasters are already costing us massively. Let's rethink our priorities here.

[freuleinanna]

trials (and errors)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | AO3

Chapter 5: Bonds

The afterthought. Of cold creatures, scarce friends, and inevitability that comes with it.

Welp....... As you might have noticed, I suck at consistent writing. I wouldn't blame you if you have no idea what was happening in the fic before :D Maybe it's even a plus. I struggled with this chapter so much, because I think it's kind of abundant, and then it kept growing longer and longer, and I'm sorry in advance if it's over-explaining or simply not good. I like parts of it, though, so I'm posting it to have it all there. Let's have the last look at Marisa - and see the aftermath of a bloodbath that was love.

Asriel walks out of the court that day stripped of all status, lands, and money, yet still somehow a free man.

She walks out a widow and a pariah with her husband’s estate still hers, with her money untouched, and a gnawing feeling of being flung into oblivion.

The car is moving, but she sits immobile: shell-shocked in a way, staring out of the window and not really seeing a thing behind the glass. Inside her, something spreads. What Marisa initially thought to be an exhaustive after-wave of tension, accumulated up to a breaking point and then suddenly released, continues to grip her in a far less decipherable manner. Head tilted in curiosity, she’s tracking an unfamiliar presence. Come to think of it, it’s been there the whole time. The presence appears alive, conscious even, and cold – cold enough to raise concerns with little icy snakes slithering through her limbs. So much so, it makes her frown and collect herself for confrontation.

She never does confront. In a similar way, victims of a shipwreck know it’s over when the last crumbs of their warmth succumb to the glacial sea. A tragedy, yes, but also a salvation. As the same coldness crawls between Marisa’s ribs and over the devastated lands beneath, a sigh escapes her, for at that moment she starts to feel preciously,

mercifully,

less.

Parts of her resist, fighting to keep the pain. Her daemon becomes restless. There’s turning and chattering, and looking around, and clawing at air as though he senses some vague threat but cannot locate it precisely. When his little paw brushes against Marisa’s elbow, she almost cries out, so hot it gets in her chest. She thinks of volcano eruptions: mountains of earth convulsing lava out of their smoldering depths, wailing in pain. No wonder it happens so rarely. It must be terror for volcanoes to erupt.

Marisa Coulter, née Delamare, cannot afford terror.

With her bankrupt nerve, she can hardly afford anything anymore, so she invites the freezing touch further in. The monkey zings away from her. It feels like discovering breathing for the first time. No one discovers breathing and then gives it up.

Questions of right or wrong do not entice her while busy streets outside grow emptier and wider, dissolving into landscapes. Her womb still aches, and her heart does too, and she is, simply put, tired of things constantly aching. She wishes for a relief.

Then, of course, the house. The car door opens, inviting the raindrops to draw a haphazard pattern on Marisa’s dress. She hesitates, locked in her metamorphosis. Funny, how colors get darker with water. Blue grows dim, as if across her knees miniature bottomless trenches appear, like those on a sea floor. Something’s coming from them. It is rising,

flowing,

entering her,

filling her to the brim.

Water is licking embers off the ground.

And then – it spills.

‘Madam?’

‘Yes.’

Snapping out of it, Marisa draws cool air.

She steps out with flooded lungs.

Raising its mighty roof into the drizzling skies, the house looks a living creature, a nightmarish one. It opens the hungry gates to swallow her, and rearranges the corridors, and prepares for a long, long digestion. A few lit windows could pass for unevenly placed eyes, the gravel – for the voice. Exile, exile, it whispers in the rain. What the house doesn’t notice, however, is the change occurred in Marisa, for a creature that came forth within her is strong, stronger than masonry walls, and much more twisted in its nature than their elaborate floral moldings. When she walks in, a spark of indigo against the muted shadows, she’s not afraid of being consumed.

She may be stuck with the house, but the house is just as much stuck with her.

From there, it’s fast.

Whatever isolated hermit life she was leading is rushing at her from every corner. Sinking into it was gradual, but sinking back after having got out is a plunge. A dive. A jump into abyss, now dreadfully deeper if Marisa cared to feel dread.

Instead, she–

Well.

She spends her days locked up in countless rooms with a maid that hates her and acid burning her insides. She drinks, and goes insane for a while. She wears the most extravagant dresses and demands dinners to be served in the dining hall. She tortures the help into submission. Whether it’s a part of her defense or something she was born with, Marisa doesn’t bother herself with contemplations. She contemplates very little at all, but enjoys contempt in Hilda’s eyes. At least it’s a feeling, a mark of her existence. Marisa struggles to feel properly alive. At the same time, she undeniably is.

That vicious mind of hers sits right between her eyebrows day and night, always hateful, always painfully alert. She drags it around like an anvil. Perhaps, it is the tragedy of brilliant people: their mind never truly sleeps. It studies everything with a probing interest, assessing and categorizing, analyzing and synthesizing, seeing in perfect clarity all the vulnerable spots to attack, everyone a subject, including the carrier.

So Marisa wanders, and watches, and keeps silent except to wound with words. Then wanders some more. Always an enthusiast for shadows, now she downright rejects having sunlight seep through heavy drapes. Oftentimes, she forgets to eat, or eats a pick or two out of whatever feast she makes the kitchen staff come up with, so she grows thinner, scrawnier. Maternal roundness slips off of her, no more missed than food leftovers she doesn’t think twice about. It gives her a girlish look. It gives her a girlish look in a sense of there being multitudes of girls who burn their woman’s grief like fuel to keep running.

Time is stealing around without causing too much disturbance to still waters.

There’s one particular day when Marisa spends hours staring at her reflection. Not for vane reasons, and not for philosophical ones – she merely stumbles across the mirror and feels drawn to it, exploring herself as a scientist would. To her genuine pleasure, she discovers that, when she makes a little effort to hide the monsters, she still looks extremely attractive, with the kind of allure that can easily be used as a weapon.

‘Why, yes, Your Excellency, I’ll gladly resume my work,’ she laughs, training the dry cracking out of her voice. ‘It truly takes extraordinary people like yourself to look beyond the old ways and welcome the scientific potential.’

Sounds flow lighter than a melody, equal parts fluttery and charm. Marisa tries a few more phrases. They all come out just as perfect – silver bells chiming in the wind, waiting for a listener to enchant. She winces in anger, at once losing her appeal. Words are just words until she has something substantial to offer, an actual line of research, because empty-handed beggars, however pretty, receive nothing.

Her mirror self returns a heavy look. She has a weary face now. That’s unpleasant. Around her mouth the lines have deepened, etched into her skin, adding elle-ne-sait-quoi to the appearance. Something monkey-ish, it feels. Animalistic in the worst form. Marisa stands miming violence at the mirror, conjuring the most horrible expressions in complete silence, biting air, so close to the glass that her reflection all but disappears under the foggy trails of breath she leaves on the surface.

Her daemon sits nearby, engrossed in picking at a loose thread of a curtain. In his crafty fingers it slowly, but inevitably, comes out, sometimes tearing the cloth when he tugs too hard. A hole appears then, and some growling is heard. The thread is golden, shiny. Beautiful. He undoes it for however high he can reach from the floor, then jumps on the table to continue.

To Marisa, he doesn’t pay attention. An unforgiving daemon he is and a proud one, and rejected things are prouder than any. When Marisa hisses him away, the monkey chatters aggressively over his shoulder before fleeing to the other side of the room. She throws a comb at where he sat. The ivory thing bumps against the drape and falls hanging on gleaming zigzags caught helplessly in its teeth.

Where there was a crack, now is a canyon. They never speak, yet he never resists another digging into his fur: the pain is excruciating, outweighed only by its intimacy.

Marisa thinks they still look impressive side by side, which is enough for whatever purpose she might pursue – a perfect mask to hide the holes and loose threads barely keeping them together.

She thinks she’d like another daemon.

She thinks no other daemon could match her.

She thinks, sometimes, that it is yet a question to be answered: whether it’s her who flooded him with darkness, or the other way around.

She thinks – she thinks. The process never stops.

She thinks of Asriel, too. The more time passes, the more within Marisa grows dissatisfaction, vague at first, then fully-fledged and poisonous. More and more she finds herself haunted, revisiting that day in court in her memory and boiling over her own stupid generosity. Generosity – for lack of a better word, although dozens of better words crowd her mouth, she’s just too embarrassed to even spit them. That brewing keeps her awake at nights, making her grunt into the pillow thinking: Asriel got it easy. His life wasn’t shattered, he hasn’t truly lost anything.

He continues his research, Marisa learns from the Institute’s monthly print, timely delivered to her a few weeks after the trial. She reads every word about harnessing Aurora energy and shrieks like a furious cat, because didn’t they both use to agree that that kind of research lacks zest? That it’s laughable at best, below their pride? Yet here Asriel is, obsessing over scientific expansion, resource control, wilderness, witches, and, somehow, spreading the holy teachings – all at once – still managing to make sense of it. She knows that kind of writing. That kind of writing attracts serious money, grants. He’s after the sponsorship, and he knows exactly what to promise to the high and powerful to become irresistible.

Pages are flicked through until they bulge in the middle of a thin print. Marisa has to burn them to stop reading.

Her own research article, the one she fought for getting published under her name, gets mysteriously pulled the last minute. It is a minor thing, considering. Still, the unfairness is driving her mad.

She could have crushed him. She should have. Even her daemon couldn’t pick this obsession loose.

So Marisa chooses the next-best thing. She grows colder still. Where this cold was used for mere bone-structure, it now thickens. Where it sent little snakes across her veins, she now feels rivers, oceans. No temperature is too low. No depths hold little enough life.

Every day, bit by bit, the swirling pool of scorching, messy emotions inside her starts to solidify under a crust, much like a pond in winter. Frostbites spread from the edges to the center. Waters become heavier to stir. Drowning in them, everything Marisa wants to rid herself of: the longings, the painful recollections. Nothing breaks into emptiness, she learns. There are always shards to graze and cut your fingers on, and she’s a walking bag of them – so out, out with everything that hurts. North has nothing on ice settling in her blood. Radical, youth is. Never thinks about what’s going to happen, when that numbing pool is drained, and emotions, shivering, half-forgotten, claw their way back into the chest. For now, Marisa finds not feeling to be quite liberating.

Thus, on her own will, she keeps sinking.

Further.

And further.

Yielding as much of herself as possible.

Excited for someone else to take over. Someone whose rage has cooled down into calculation and pain become productive, allowing her to wait and play the necessary part.

Roaming the empty halls in the shadows, Marisa is listening to the steps. To each of her own, there is another. The sea creature is following her closely, and very soon the little pauses between their steps disappear. She and Mrs. Coulter walk as one, talk as one, feel as one, until finally, at the very end of ends, become one.

Time keeps flowing.

***

Survival, scientists agree, is an instinct. All living beings have it. There is, however, a regrettably thin line between taking drastic measures for the purpose of self-preservation and repeating them beyond reason to keep up the illusion of salvation. In simpler words, a wounded animal gnaws through its own leg to escape the trap. A wounded person, already out of the snare, continues gnawing through the remaining limbs to recreate the feeling of escaping. No research is needed to say who stands a better chance at surviving.

It could have gone very wrong for Marisa at the time. She almost reaches the coldness incompatible with any life, her own included. Her predator mind almost starves on insufficient prey. It almost eats through itself, chained to the prison walls and slowly getting used to it.

What saves her, peculiarly, is Hilda – for none other reason than her being, thank heavens, human and petty, and fed up to her neck with Marisa.

‘A visitor for you,’ the maid announces shortly, voice no softer than a stale cracker fallen on the kitchen floor and forgotten there for days.

Marisa chooses to ignore her. A rather early morning escapes her worldview. Her sleeping habits have deteriorated so, it’s a wonder she still has any internal understanding of the time passage. Nights spent reading, or sometimes staring at the pages for hours without turning them, melt into mornings of withdrawal when the help starts clanking around the house with the usual noise of steps, chores, and rare conversations. Marisa prefers to avoid them altogether.

A thud comes – the monkey lands on the back of a sofa across from her. Behind him, bookshelves tower. Anbaric lights are gleaming off two black voids where nothing reflects but vicious animosity. Instantly, the house cat daemon bristles up. Ears twitch, flattened. The monkey leans forward: his tail rises straight to the ceiling and hooks a little over his head, long fangs silently bared. He hates that fucking cat.

Marisa feels his hatred as a deformed clump in her side. It moves, pushing at her insides like an unborn child. She grimaces at the sensation.

Her daemon, the purest, physical part of her soul, a faithful friend and companion, a confidant, a keeper, screeches like a common animal. Even Hilda is unsettled. Her eyes dart to the golden creature as she takes a step sideways to protect the cat. The monkey paws at the upholstery, scrutinizing them both. He doesn’t sound like a daemon. He doesn’t even look like one with his lustrous fur dusty and dimmed to a mere memory of gilt.

He appears a wildling with no consciousness.

A deformed clump, somehow forever attached to her.

Enough!

The book is slammed shut. Around the four of them, air sizzles – or, perhaps, it’s just the humming of the lamps making itself audible. Without saying a word, Marisa looks up.

Enough. Go.

The monkey is staring at her. She knows that stare very well. The feeling of it, rather: a tingling at the back of her neck following her around the library. A rustle of careful steps overhead. Beady eyes shining in the dark. Like a twisted game of hide-and-seek all children play with their daemons, only he’s the one both hiding from her – and seeking. Oh, how he seeks her.

Her things go missing at times: a ring, a bracelet. A hairbrush with a few hairs still stuck in it. There must be a pile of treasures somewhere in the house. Sometimes Marisa wonders if her daemon sleeps among them, and if so, if he’s doing it for comfort or bites on an old earring of hers, pretending to sink teeth into her flesh.

As if catching on to her thoughts, the monkey squeals a shredding sound, then quickly turns, and the next moment he’s gone. A spot of dirty-gold flashes on top of the bookshelves, and the dusty kingdom of neglect regains its ruler.

Marisa opens the book again. A different page, not that she’s noticed. The humming continues.

Has it always been this loud?

Symbols cluster in unpredictable ways, mocking her with gibberish. She might as well be reading in a made-up language, but she’d rather die than show it. Scanning line after line of outdated research – and badly composed at that – takes a considerable willpower on her side, yet Marisa feigns utmost concentration. Something about Hilda discovering that her pastime has been reduced to staring into space feels especially humiliating. Marisa couldn’t say exactly how it happened. There’s plenty of literature to go around, she’s just lost… interest. Prospects. Purpose. Whichever makes more sense.

Every seven lines or so, the lower humming switches to a high-pitched one that continues for another one or two lines of text. By the end of the second page, that’s all Marisa can focus on.

‘Did you want something?’ she snaps finally.

The hovering figure by the door scoffs, earning itself a hostile glance.

‘Well?’

‘As I said, Madam,’ if only politeness could kill. ‘There is a visitor to see you, waiting in the East Room.’

‘I don’t accept visitors.’

‘I am well aware.’

Oh, are you.

It is a pattern they have, admittedly, fallen into. Competing species in conditions of forced coexistence always do. When the mood is right, it even entertains Marisa to poke at the maid’s patience and see what insults her bitter mouth can produce. She is a fighter, that one. Never runs out of things to say.

Tell the staff to keep quiet, Hilda, they’re giving me a migraine.

Everything is, Madam, comes the response.

Or even: That would be the brandy.

Now is no such time.

‘Send them away,’ she waves a dismissive hand.

That’s usually enough to get the situations resolved. They tend to disappear when Marisa stops looking – a useful trick she’s applying to the world. Her mind wanders to having a half-glass of something and sliding into bed. Maybe sleep will come. Maybe, sleep will last. There’s hoping.

‘I had, on five different occasions, which is neither my responsibility nor a way matters are handled in respectable houses.’ An arrogant tight-bunned head is sitting so proudly on Hilda’s shoulders, there’s no denying how little of that respect pertains to Marisa personally. ‘If you want him gone, Madam, you can tell him yourself.’

It takes some restraining to not hiss an attack. Not hiss, in general.

What a rotten inheritance Edward left her.

‘Him?’

Marisa moves in the armchair. The eyes opposite of her are steel-colored and steel-hard. She, too, can be steel-hard. Her wrists limp in perfect arches over the armrests, whereas the features of her face sharpen. It’s almost a muscle memory at this point. A grimace she learned in front of the mirror – to warn, to scare.

Yet she forgets.

‘Don’t flatter yourself. His daemon is no snow leopard.’

She forgets that her bleak, unforgiving inheritance knows her too well to be afraid.

Meteors fall. A series of steady hits, one for each word, ruptures the surface. As loud and terrifying as it is, that’s not the worst. Stones keep sinking, driven by sheer combination of mass and catastrophic speed. Then: a series of quakes. An underwater impact. A shock wave of such magnitude, it pierces through miles of breathless, half-frozen space in a matter of seconds, exploding the sea outwards. Causing hands to shake with anger.

‘You are forgetting yourself, Hilda, darling.’

Marisa presses palms together. Tsunami almost breaks her fingers. There isn’t one imperfect note in her chiming.

From the library darkness, laying an undertone to it, a distant snarling comes. The cat daemon looks up. As does Hilda, for a moment. She steps from one foot to the other, clearly cautious of the malicious creature lurking nearby. And yet it only adds to her spite.

‘I suggest you hurry,’ she nods. ‘He did mention he’d be leaving shortly.’

‘Do you have any idea what I could do to you?’

Snarling is creeping closer. This time, the old maid doesn’t bat an eye. She pulls her apron down, demonstrating a remarkable resilience. The cat arches his back at her feet.

‘The East Room, Madam. If you can’t navigate the house in daylight, just ask the help for directions.’

On that, she leaves. Well-oiled hinges purr.

Humming, humming, humming.

Marisa imagines herself throwing a book at the lamps. Then going after Hilda with a pistol from Edward’s study. Both options feel unnecessarily dramatic, although the latter amuses her– but no, no. She’d have to stand another trial. The thought rips a laugh out of her lungs. It sounds sick. She feels exhausted.

It’s pleasantly dark when her forehead touches the smooth silk of the robe, and her hair streams down. Fingers are digging softly into the ribs. Marisa presses. Bones are right there, somehow unshattered by the rippling. The other thing is there too: that un-dissect-able part she drowns, and freezes, and can never fully extinguish. It flames underwater. In a palpable, scientific reality, it takes aluminum and something else to flame underwater. Finely powdered, set afire at the highest temperatures. What was the other thing?

Smoldering pieces fly out and continue burning brighter than day.

Did she see that somewhere? She couldn’t have, not in the Magisterium. Before Marisa’s eyes, a dozen of suns are exploding at the bottom of – what, tank? She must have seen it.

Well. She doesn’t want to see it now.

Dim lights attack her eyes. Reality is slowly fleshing itself back. A visitor in the East Room. Couldn’t be Hugh, could it? She ignored enough of his letters to earn a house call, but in no scenario would he have let an old hag to turn him around. People like him don’t. Not once, certainly not five times.

Actually, none of the people she knows would. Certainly not… but it isn’t a snow leopard. The snow leopard one (don’t flatter yourself) wouldn’t come.

The sensation of being watched tickles her skin, and as soon as Marisa notices it, she also realizes it’s been present for some time. From beneath the ceiling, her daemon is peering at her. They exchange a long look. The monkey doesn’t move. He resembles a statuette, an alarming little monstrosity placed on top of the bookshelf as a practical joke on those whose eyes drift up – and then forgotten, left to gather dust. His gold barely shimmers through it.

Just minutes ago, he was a wildling. Now some clarity has settled over him, knotting Marisa’s stomach. Her soul; unkempt, unloved. She would have preferred him an unintelligent beast. Unintelligent beasts are easier. They aren’t attached to people by umbilical cords, drawn to emotions like parasites, shining consciousness from their eyes until the chest boils. Marisa jerks a shoulder. The monkey shows teeth. At least, that part hasn’t changed.

I dare you.

He blinks. Two glimmering sparks hover in the dark.

Then they disappear.

Marisa hears herself exhaling. Proper ladies in proper dresses shouldn’t look for excuses to torture themselves, but she isn’t a proper lady. She’s not even a properly dressed one, which brings her back a little. She winces.

Right.

The visitor.

Marisa rises from her chair, half-suspicious that is she waits any longer, Hilda will bring him right to the library and lock the door from the outside.

The hallway light is way more irritating to the eyes. Daylight, that is, not the flickering lamps. Somewhere in the house heavy drapes are open, the air brings sounds of the help going about their daily routine. Marisa makes it exactly till the second door on the right and has a split second of pride to enjoy, when punishment comes. A brutal tug. She sways, clawing at the doorknob. In the library, her other part presses itself against the wall and growls in pain, scratching at the wooden panels. Ancient instincts yank their hearts back to the safety of blissful togetherness, but ancient instincts have never fought Marisa Coulter and her daemon before: each angry and stubborn, each pulls in their own direction.

The next few steps are a nightmare. Her chest feels raw. Every breath swishes right through, cold as a blizzard on the open wound. Nausea comes in waves. The damned monkey resists. Without seeing him, Marisa knows exactly how heavy the risings of his chest are, how sweaty the forehead; how clenched the teeth, threatening to crush from the force. How terrified, and pained, and longing he is. She’s all that too, but someone has to be stronger.

She has to physically drag herself forward until finally, there’s a release. Threads fall loose again, stopping the horrible stretch. A squeal in the back of Marisa’s mind mixes with the rattling in the air ducts. She smirks, panting. The little demon never wins. In equal measures he can’t stand seeing her – and being apart from her, so he’s taken a habit of following Marisa around through the ceilings. A smart solution, save for the dust. Most of the time, she can’t stand seeing him either.

Her dress of choice is jade-green. The color is as sharp as she needs to be, and, by coincidence, only a shade darker than splashes of Aurora lights.

When she leaves the room, her daemon is already glooming in the corridor. He’s evidently cleaned himself. Patches of old web have disappeared. His fur breaks scarce sunlight into a ripple of glints across the wall. He is beautiful, audience-ready, except when Marisa looks, the golden elegance crumbles to reveal the same dirt-coated creature, always hissing and snarling around. They walk down the corridor together. The care placed in keeping the distance might have reminded somebody with a keen eye of a crowded room where every soul treads just as carefully, stepping and flying around paws, hands, tails and shoulders, avoiding the forbidden contact to the best of their ability. Between two beings joined since birth, it looks oddly repugnant. Unnatural, one might say.

Marisa would put it differently. She’d recall coming back to their floral-molded prison. The burning feeling she got from her daemon’s touch, the piteous cry of him recoiling when coldness sprouted. She’d call it self-preservation.

One of the hallways she walks twice. Not that Hilda could pry it out of her, that stuck-up old if-you-can’t-navigate-the-house-in-daylight witch.

The East Room welcomes them with a closed door.

Marisa pushes it, and goes blind.

The light.

Winter sun is flooding the space. There are no drapes here, no peaceful twilight. Everything is hard, bright, and aggressive. Two nocturnal creatures withdraw, seeking shadows. Something golden is flitting around the space: floor – the fireplace – windows – floor again. Something green is standing frozen, tearing up against the cold shining. The hasty getting-up and the turning of another figure escape Marisa, taking away her chance to prepare.

‘Madam,’ a voice rises to her ears. What a curious voice it is. A male one, for sure, marked with slight roughness of age. There’s a quality to it that makes Marisa hesitate. An unexpected care, almost… respect. She got unaccustomed to hearing genuine respect.

Light keeps pouring in. As does her uncertainty.

‘Allow me,’ the man says.

Promptly, and with nimbleness of step that betrays years of excellent training, he walks to the window. Sunlight seems to collect around him for a moment, as if he was the source. Then a drape slides over, cutting the flow in half. Marisa blinks the blindness away.

Her daemon stops pacing around and settles beside her. Even before the man turns, they recognize the bolding head, and a winter coat, and the sleek black fur of a pinscher daemon.

‘Madam,’ Thorold repeats with a slight bow.

His pinscher follows the example. Marisa can’t answer. Her lungs get overcome with the urge to cough up ribbons of air, thickened and shredded by at least a dozen of invisible knives. The monkey crawls forward. His golden tail is rising in a warning. There’s a flash of surprise on Thorold’s face, one he is quick to hide, but not quick enough for Marisa to miss.

Good, then. That’s settled.

She makes an effort to miss sorrow in that surprise.

‘What does he want?’ A demand, not a question.

Thorold looks up. His shoulders shrink a little, even though a minute ago he was demonstrating the perfect posture. He’s obvious in searching for words but his own thoughts, apparently, are giving him a battle too. A mixture of indecision and half-concealed sadness boils into a real suffering across his face.

‘Have you completely forgotten speech?’

A beat of pause.

‘No, Madam, I have not.’

‘Be useful, then. He must have sent you for something.’

The pinscher daemon brushes against the man’s leg. The simple comfort of the gesture frustrates Marisa. It could be jealousy. Could be disappointment, because at least with Hilda, she always knows when cruelty hits. Counterstrikes never leave her guessing.

‘I’ve come on my own behalf,’ Thorold manages at last.

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, Madam.’

Well, a man of few words and fewer answers. Her expression darkens. She would have understood Asriel sending his servant: reasons may differ and still remain plausible – but that? She hardly knows what to make of it.

And the way he says ‘Madam’. Like he’s asking a storm not to rage, soothing waters into clarity. Despite herself, Marisa catches a shiver. People who haven’t received a lot of compassion cannot abide the warmth it brings, thinning the numbness of detachment where their hearts plunge to heal. Survival is an instinct. All human beings have it.

‘Then what do you want?’ Anger clangs inelegantly in her voice.

‘To return something of yours. If I may?’

He hesitates for permission. Marisa, frowning, just nods. She watches Thorold approach a set of sofas: there, on a chair next to them, sits a leather bag she’s seen countless times before. Its worn-out patterns haven’t changed, still keeping in themselves a mystery. A reminder of home, perhaps. Half-illegible words of a half-forgotten language breathe northern air. On the side, a flock of birds, always just about to fly off the leather on spirit-borne wings. Marisa used to admire the birds. They never flew anywhere, but they looked free.

She moves closer, her steps drowning in a ridiculously thick carpet. The golden shadow follows in a distance. His observant presence tugs at Marisa’s side. She wishes for him to disappear in the air ducts again. It is a passing feeling, but the precise thing is, she doesn’t want to feel. It gets harder when her soul is wondering around.

Thorold turns.

‘Here it is, Madam.’

He hands her a book of sorts. A smallish one, and the first thing Marisa registers is that something’s wrong about it. Her frown deepens. She takes it with caution: not exactly alarmed, just confused. Thorold lets go – there’s a glimpse of his fingers with white calloused tips. Then his palm disappears, and the mystery of the book holds no longer.

It’s badly burned, that’s what’s wrong about it. The cover’s all bulgy, melted in random places. Patches of coal-black mix with the remaining tints of color but there’s no logic in it, no structure. Just a hardened, deformed leather flesh, curled from the heat. The bottom corner is the worst. Something burned through the cover there, leaving a crescent-shaped edge with brown contours. Pages underneath are burned in the same exact fashion.

The other side is nearly intact, save for a few spots blooming here and there. It’s been burned the front side down. Besides that, the examination offers very little.

Marisa has never owned anything of the sort. She almost says as much. Then it occurs to her to look inside. She sits down, book on her knees for convenience, and tries to open the smoldered brick. Pages refuse to give in: their fire-licked edges stick to one another. It takes Marisa a minute to part them. When she does, however, realization comes at once. She’d recognize her own handwriting anywhere. Line after line is filled with it, neatly arranged statements bursting in cascades of notes on the margins. Beginnings of phrases on one side and endings on the other have disappeared in flames, but it doesn’t stop Marisa from reading a whole paragraph, tracking her own ideas and filling the gaps with words that have once been written.

She recognizes now not a book, but a research journal she kept at Asriel’s house. Sea depths heave. A sharp sensation knots her stomach. Marisa blames it on her daemon approaching, taming an overwhelming urge to kick him away. Her mouth is aching with words she can’t spill.

‘Why?’ she croaks.

Thorold takes a seat, too. His plain wooden chair can’t be too comfortable, but it allows him a space next to Marisa without the inappropriateness of sharing a sofa.

‘I thought you might need your work back,’ he simply says.

She shakes her head impatiently.

‘No, why come five times just to return this?’

‘Madam?’

The old man looks so sincere. His daemon is tilting her head in attention. Marisa catches her eyes: brown they are, but nothing close to burned paper. More like almonds, or sunlight dancing on fresh earth. Brown kissed with gold. She never knew golden things can be warm. Somehow, right now, it’s Thorold’s fault, too.

‘You could have left it with my maid.’

‘She seems a good woman,’ he nods respectfully.

‘A treasure,’ Marisa sneers.

The journal rests on her knee. Thorold glances at it, appearing again to be choosing his words. He doesn’t resemble someone to whom the trick of conversations comes naturally, least of all with Marisa, but the effort brings out a heartfelt sympathy in his eyes.

‘If you pardon my saying… Madam,’ he adds, like he wanted to address her differently but didn’t allow himself the right, ‘I thought you may want to talk with someone.’

‘Talk?’

‘Ask questions, is what I mean.’

‘Questions.’

‘If you wish to… to know of…’

He struggles finishing the phrase without letting the ghosts in. Fails, too. Unnamed hauntings surround them, as if woven out of light. The pinscher flaps her ears and yelps quietly. Daemons are intuitive like that.

From the shadows, the monkey is prowling forward, his little face twisted in a grimace of pure hate. Marisa smiles. The scent of heated metal hangs in the air. It’s going to betray her emotions for years. She’s going to think everyone can notice. In fact, there’s only going to be one person who will, probably because mothers and daughters have a connection that, in human measures, is just as sacred as the one with their daemons.

Lyra will always associate metallic scent with menace, but will never learn to understand that it comes not from steel, of which her mother, an masterful self-deceiver, deems herself made, but of fires flaming underwater, where it’s the darkest and the coldest. Where human feelings shouldn’t survive at all.

Extinguishing those fires is something Marisa will never be able to do.

‘No, Thorold,’ she objects softly, softness honed to a sharp edge. ‘I don’t wish to know. Spare me your old man sentiments. If you thought we’d be shedding tears over your stories, you’re an even bigger fool I took you for, and you never learned a thing about me.’

See? Self-deception.

That is easily the moment when Marisa finally combines both sides of the mirror: the loud, perceptible beauty mixed generously with ferocious instincts of an animal hiding in deepened lines. It will cause her few allies and all of the enemies to address her respectfully as Mrs. Coulter even in her absence, barely restraining the urge to look behind their backs in case she’s there – or worse, her spying daemon is. High Magisterium officials and children will both learn the danger of pretty gleams dancing in those wonderfully blue eyes that make you think of frostbite. Marisa is quite happy with the image. It’s got enough claws to keep her safe.

She sees a change in Thorold’s expression as he’s watching her. The pictures must not be aligning: he’s searching Marisa’s face as one does when trying to uncover familiar features, match them with something from memory, but cannot. The pinscher nuzzles against his hand. The man hardly notices. A look of regret settles over him. He’s watching, and watching, and then his shoulders sink a little, and the kindest sorrow spills all over his wrinkles.

‘Oh, child,’ he says. ‘So very young.’

Just that – just that.

And suddenly, the pool is drained.

‘Copper?’ she asks, somewhat disgruntled by the eagerness, with which a golden lightning zings around the laboratory, fetching equipment for Asriel.

Asriel glances over, so incredibly smug she wants to both kick him and watch him forever. His investment in this stupid experiment is driving Marisa insane. It’s not even science, just a… well, a party trick, at best. His beloved professors at Jordan must be showing it to a bunch of 10-year-olds to gain their attention.

He just laughs, mixing a brown-red powder to the aluminum one. When he laughs like that, new universes spring into existence.

‘Watch.’

A strip of something white goes in. Magnesium burns silver, then – then everything is bright orange, and the little ceramic pot is submerged into a tank, and the fire is flaming all hells underwater. Resilient, absolutely magnificent.

Oxygen, Marisa realizes. An oxide, that is. Next to her, Asriel, a world-class scientist in the making, is looking incredibly proud of himself for that silly amusement. He’s always doing that, showing her something she missed out on. The same is true about their whole relationship.

‘Iron oxide,’ she exhales. Then nods, ‘Beautiful.’

Asriel chuckles. He looks at the blinding, raging fire shooting pieces of molten iron to the bottom. A corner of his lips curls up, but the eyes remain serious, full of furious admiration. The one Marisa often notices directed at her.

‘There’s beauty in corrosion, don’t you think?’ he says.

Iron oxide. Corrosion.

Rust.

The second part of that volcanic combination that keeps igniting the living day out of itself until the flames eat through. No wonder her fires keep burning.

She’s made of rust.

A steel carcass inside Marisa shudders and gives way. Down below, in the pool drained of mercifully numbing waters, the longings and feelings she pushed in have re-emerged. Shards sharper than glass and pain sharper still – she can see it all rusted, layered so thick with corrosion, the blazing is going to persist for years.

A barely audible whimper catches her off-guard. Marisa turns before realizing: the monkey is standing beside her. There’s not a single wretched line on his face. His hand hovers mid-air, reaching out. In his eyes, a plea for consolation. An offer of one, too. The brainless thing doesn’t seem to understand what he’s offering.

It is terror for volcanoes to erupt. Her chest, where the damage of connection grows, pulsates with it.

Making a conscious effort, Marisa twists her heart, watching her daemon flinch. He resists for only a second, and then drops to all fours, backing away from her slowly. The further he gets, he more hunted his expression becomes, until familiar sparks stare at Marisa, and it’s the same wild, ill-tempered creature that hides behind the sofa. She wonders if he would have touched her hand. She wonders if he wonders how badly her cold would have burned him.

She wonders how people breathe without pushing away their soul. Aren’t they choking on it?

‘I am… truly sorry, Madam.’

A voice holds her in embrace. Marisa does her best to reject it. Her teeth clench. Facing kindness feels unnecessarily cruel, so she avoids looking at Thorold, staring at the journal instead. Her fingers slide across mountains and valleys of disfigured leather, tracing the non-existent patterns. Every peak is whispering its own story, and yet none of them has sufficient answers.

She imagines Asriel. Was it morning, day, night? What was he wearing? What was he thinking? Did Stelmaria try to talk him out of it? Or was throwing the damned thing away simply not enough for his hatred?

‘Why would he burn it?’ Marisa whispers.

Her eyes stay low. She’s not waiting for a reply, but when it comes treading the air, her whole body listens.

‘I don’t think…’ Thorold pauses, starts again. ‘I think he was trying to do something else, Madam.’

‘What, then?’

‘Well…’

‘Well?’

Despite herself, Marisa glances. Sharp winter sunlight falls onto the old man’s shoulders. Where it touches his coat, light seems to lose its cutting quality. Gentle streams of gold float around.

Thorold sighs. His palms open, as though he’s trying not to grip the words too hard, afraid of saying anything too much, too certain.

‘I can’t speak for him, Madam. His thinking is of heights I could never follow, but I suppose… The way I see it, he was breaking a bond.’

Words are laid carefully on the air. Elusive to the grasp as they are, their shadows are heavy and fall into Marisa deeper than she can recognize at the moment. Another pinch of rust and aluminum to burn later. She just nods, not trusting herself with speaking. There’s nothing left to say anyway – or ask, or confess. Even coarse leather stops singing under her fingers.

Was it singing under Thorold’s? His hands are still open, fingertips calloused and hard. Mostly on the right hand, Marisa realizes. The placement is so uneven, it doesn’t look like callouses at all. Pinker streaks run from under patches of thick, pale skin. Like scar tissue. Like old burns. Those permanent kisses from burning coals and melting leather, pressed to the naked skin of hands that were hurrying to salvage something they cared about.

Palms curl, hiding the injury. Marisa looks up. Thorold is looking back with an apologetic smile which only makes his eyes sadder and warmer. He doesn’t say a word. There’s nothing left to say – or ask, or confess. It’s all there, between an old man, whose heart has softened for the sea, and a young woman with sea in her name. Both of them understand it is the care she cannot afford to accept. Both of them grieve it a little.

Any reasonable timing has now passed to continue the conversation. Marisa draws a long breath. She’s never been the one to avoid the inevitable.

‘Go now, Thorold,’ she says quietly. Thorold has no idea of knowing it, but that moment makes him the last person to ever hear Marisa’s actual voice – at least, for the next twelve years. There’s no silvery smoothness in it. Just cracks all over.

‘Madam.’

He gets up, takes his bag. A flock of northern birds flies in front of Marisa’s face. Buttons of a winter coat take Thorold’s attention for a few moments as he meddles with them. Just then, Marisa remembers what Hilda said: he’d be leaving shortly. She wonders, where. Is Asriel’s research finally taking them north? She concludes so. She also concludes that Asriel must have left earlier to set up, leaving his servant to oversee the last preparations here in Oxford. Otherwise, Thorold wouldn’t have come looking for her. A strange fondness moves in her.

He stands now, pinscher daemon by his side. Two heads bow courtly. With the last exchanged look, their shared grief stings a little, knowing it’s probably a farewell. Marisa just nods. When Thorold leaves the room, the light leaves with him.

At least, it feels that way to Marisa.

She wipes the sudden tears away. The gesture is nervous, angry. Embarassed. Her breathing sounds incredibly lonely in the emptiness of surrounding space.

‘Get away,’ she hisses, sensing the clump in her side twitch as it always does when her daemon approaches.

A golden shadow stops on the floor in the corner of Marisa’s vision. Thoughts and feelings, awakened so inconveniently, are buzzing worse than a beehive. His presence amplifies them. Flooding fires with water won’t make a difference now because he who is responsible for this madness is too close.

Leave me alone.

No movement. Marisa raises her eyes. She sees the hideous creature swing his tail. A hypnotic stare is burrowing into her, reaching where threads are caught in their warlike endurance of each other. He won’t go. There’s no place for him to be except between her ribs, leeched onto humiliation that is her feelings. The truer they are, the more powerful, and the harder he’s drawn. The closer he wanders, searing Marisa from the inside by simply drawing breath. She wishes desperately to cut whatever’s sewn them together.

She throws a cushion, and doesn’t look where it lands. She senses her soul clear enough to know it’s not as harmed as she’d want it to be. Maybe then he’d learn.

The monkey only growls, when she refuses to acknowledge his attempts at connection and opens the journal again. As far as choices go, hatred is a preferable one. Better hatred than constant self-pity. Pondering over half-eaten lines, Marisa recalls that thing Thorold said, about Asriel breaking the bond. Asriel, it stings her suddenly, seems to have succeeded. In fact, while she spent months sleep-walking through wall-papered corridors, Asriel kept himself busy.

Blood rushes to her head, throbbing in such an agony, her temples all but explode. Masses thick and hot come breaking against the eardrums. They seem possessed to pound their way out, tearing the thin veins. Asriel would have laughed at her.

She bites on a nail. A stupid habit.

Another habit is cold-ing herself down as soon as she hears paws coming nearer. Her daemon hesitates. Then turns. Marisa sits peering into space, gnawing on her lip until it swells. She doesn’t want to sleep. Not anymore.

The thing is, predators are not designed for prolonged sleep. They wake up hungry. Quite newly to herself, Marisa feels hunger for something to do.

Pages crust as she’s flicking through them slowly. Hard edges cut her fingertips, hardly even shifting her attention.

She thinks.

She thinks.

The process has never stopped.

‘Breaking the bond,’ her whisper ripples the air. It tastes like something. The golden silhouette jumps on the sofa across from its human in crisping, snow-fresh Aurora color. Sunlight remembers of there being winter. Chilly coolness spreads. ‘Breaking the bond.’

Something’s stirring in her mind, though what it is, Marisa cannot fully formulate yet. The idea, however, is strangely fascinating. Her eyes lay on the daemon heavily.

She’s made of bonds. One with Asriel, another with their child – she may resist it, but it’s handwritten all over her body, and the handwriting it hers. A bond with her own soul, too. The one she hasn’t yet succeeded in dissecting in order to understand and control. Cutting it should feel miraculous.

Perhaps, if she were still a child, she muses. She’d give anything to go back and nick those annoying threads that got handed to her as a given. She remembers questioning why they existed at all – not in words, certainly not in scientific terms, but he knew she thought about it. Always digging deeper than children do in glorious self-understanding. There seemed to be the answer there. Why she was so restless all the time. Why her behavior never satisfied anyone. Why she was doing every wrong thing, why she loved Asriel, why she needed Lyra. The answer might still be there, only there’s no way of harvesting it now –   

But a child. A child could answer those questions in all their childlike innocence. Marisa could learn the answer. She could steal it.

She could learn how, where, and when to cut.

The air is freezing now. The monkey is anxious. Marisa sits very-very still, like predators do. Much like an image, her fate comes to its fullest, cleanest form. It’s not a grand, heroic fate, and there’s no description to it yet, only anticipation. It is, however, going to be more befitting one for a woman, young with the cruelest of youth, with punches and heartbreak and blood on beautiful hands from hitting a wall, than anyone could have imagined.

She will spend her short life trying to break the three most powerful bonds she’s ever formed – and fail, miserably.

Marisa Coulter, née Delamare, walking to her late husband’s study with full intention of making it her own, is a long way from knowing it yet. The irony will unveil itself twelve years and a war later as she leaps off the edge of an abyss. Those three sacred bonds she could break however hard she tried, they will all weave together to save what she cherishes most. For now, she’s too enthralled by a monstrosity that will eventually lead to the silver cages, and lacks serendipity.

Youth, people say, is arrogant. It’s wrong emotions at the wrong time, it’s thinking that love can be left trampled to the ground. That love can be examined, prepared, dissected and understood. That it hides logic.

That it ceases to be if you just deny it enough.

As Marisa ravages through Edward’s old papers, three things occupy her mind. One, is that rattling air-ducts are a small price to pay for a chance to function productively instead of being crippled by emotions.

Two, is that she’s going to need a place somewhere else, perhaps in London, because these walls are making her sick.

And three, she hopes she succeeds.

After all, breaking a bond shouldn’t be that hard.

Just a simple process of trials and errors.