#the golden bell clan

[brewed-addiction]

doodled them when they're still small little cuties and cried as soon as its done 😭😭 i love them so much hngngngn,,,

also designed Ce'yta's brothers!

no colours yet tho, maybe someday x'(

[paarthursass]

also "silent protagonists aren't immersive" my "immersion" in a game has been broken so much more by voiced protagonists saying The Wrong Fucking Thing than it has been by me having to use my brain to read dialogue options.

vtmb may be buggy as hell. it may have textures that load incorrectly sometimes so you've got doors that are half a stop sign. but i still get so drawn into the story that the ocean house hotel level manages to scare me every time. it's still so so tragic to watch how heather descends into her obsession with you if you make her your ghoul. it's satisfying to be able to have 5 different ways to tell lacroix to go fuck himself. and it's fascinating how, depending on which clan you pick, you have an entirely different experience - not just playstyle-wise, but interaction-wise as well! there's certain dialogue with maximillian strauss you only get if you're a tremere. your opinion of gary golden is going to change MASSIVELY depending on whether you play a nosferatu or a toreador.

voiced protagonists don't create immersion. fancy bells and whistles don't create immersion. good writing does.

[powdermelonkeg]

Theory that solves(?) "founding of Hyrule" timeline inconsistencies:

Origin of Hyrule no. 1: Skyward Sword. Zelda, Link, and the Skylians settle the surface world at the game's conclusion. Notably, their dress looks nothing like the Zonai era.

Origin of Hyrule no. 2: Tears of the Kingdom. Rauru and Sonia are the king and queen who founded Hyrule. Notably, Zonai mechanisms and architecture greatly resemble the pre-Skyward-Sword-era Lanayru mining tech and symbolism, though Skyward Sword's art direction is more cartoony than TotK, so that has to be taken into account.

That's where it gets cyclical. If TotK's forgotten era came first, then:

Zonai influence should be ALL OVER Skyloft

The Gerudo should not exist, because they're (implied to be) descended from Groose, a Skylian; at the very least, there should have been a whole Gerudo culture in the Sky

Where did the Secret Stones go?

We should have seen Zeldra flying around in the sky, let alone Dinraal, Farosh, and Naydra

But if Skyward Sword came before all things Zonai, then:

The Lanayru Mining Facility (assuming it to be Zonai in origin) should not exist

Hyrule should have already been founded by Rauru's time

Of the two, Skyward Sword being first on the wild surface makes more sense. But if that's the case, there are even more questions:

Where did the Secret Stones come from? Are we to believe that Hylia gave them to the Zonai, since the Golden Trio have already left the Triforce and departed?

What about the Zonai themselves? They supposedly descended from the heavens. Were they just up so high that the Skylians couldn't find them? Did Hylia cleave the ground twice? Did they spontaneously appear up there like mice in grain bins?

Why is there a whole Temple of Time with bells that Rauru, one of two of the LAST of his species, woke up and went to sleep to? In fact, why is there an entire kingdom's worth of structures already built before the Sky Reckoning?

My solution:

The Zonai did exist pre-Skyward Sword, and did descend down from the sky ages ago. They built the Lanayru Mining Facility, utilizing the power of Timeshift Stones in their work. This is not Rauru and Mineru's era.

The Zonai are among the people that stay behind to fight Demise alongside Hylia, while the Skylians were sent up to Skyloft. The people of the Surface are entrusted with the Secret Stones as weapons against Demise, with the caveat that they keep them hidden. That's why they're called Secret Stones despite being well-known to Ganondorf in TotK, it was PARAMOUNT that Demise not know he could get any stronger.

The war ends. Just about every civilization is obliterated by it. The Zonai retreat as far from Demise's seal as they can to lick their wounds. They take the sages' Secret Stones with them, so as to not be caught unawares and lose them to Demise when he eventually reemerges.

Skyward Sword.

The evil is defeated, the Skylians come down to the Surface. That's the signal that it's safe to return now. Shortly after the Skylians officially start to settle, the Zonai, who know how things work, help them build a proper civilization.

Time passes. The Surface is officially a bunch of scattered clans with varying degrees of territory. People are content, though nothing is particularly efficient. The Skylians take on Zonai fashion and building styles as generations pass. The Zonai themselves dwindle.

Rauru, married to the leader of the Hylians, looks to unite the scattered clans under one banner in the name of prosperity and shared resources, idolizing the pre-Skyward era where the gods walked the land. He and Sonia officially name the place Hyrule, and any clan that signs treaty with them is considered within its borders. Mineru, meanwhile, has made her first construct models based on the Lanayru Mine Robots of old, which add to the appeal of joining Hyrule as its subkingdom territories.

Tears of the Kingdom, Zelda's first 12 memories.

Between the Master Sword going back in time and Zeldra's ascent, Zelda and Mineru get to work with as many constructs as possible to protect the Sky Isles they plan to send upwards. They need a TON of Zonaite, and recycling is a priority, leading to the gachapon machines.

Zelda knows enough about her kingdom that she knows where the land is particularly rich is where the people of her time settled, and Zonaite is shown to enrich soil greatly. This is why all the old Zonaite mines are underneath the towns in modern Hyrule, despite changing geography through other eras, and Tarrey Town's new-ness.

Zelda ascends.

The secretive Sheikah clan, having seen the Blood Moon's rise when the Demon King took power, realize that Demise isn't, in fact, all gone. They decide this means that their job serving Hylia isn't truly done, and return to help the fledgling kingdom as best they can. They bring the knowledge of the Master Sword of Skyward Sword days with them.

Ganondorf first shakes the seal he's under without form, leading to the first Calamity and the initial rise of Calamity Ganon. This is 10k years before BotW. This is also the first documented use of the Master Sword to seal the Demon King away, recorded in the tapestry.

The Sheikah are forced to abandon their technology. The Yiga/Sheikah split happens.

Literally all the rest of Hyrulean History happens after this.

Breath of the Wild.

Tears of the Kingdom.

[hanilessa]

could you do a part two for the when they realise they love you headcanons 👉👈 they’re so cute esp childe’s oneeee

you don’t have to if you don’t want to but could you mayyyybe include kaeya and diluc?

` Author’s notes: hiiii, darling!! thank u for your request! <3 i really hope you enjoy it. i mentioned childhood friends to lovers trope in diluc's part and marriage of convenience in ayato's part. i like these tropes sm so i couldn't help but add it!

part one!

» :、♡  WHEN THEY REALIZE THEY LOVE YOU

` Includes: Diluc, Kaeya, Kamisato Ayato, Thoma x fem!reader (separate)

` Genre: fluff, romance

The realization of his boundless love for you comes to Diluc when both of you were running across an endless field full of wildflowers and fragrant flowers. Your hair fluttered in the pleasant summer wind, the sun illuminated your joyful and happy face, and your lips smiled with the most beautiful smile in the world. The ringing of your laughter, similar to the ringing of a bell, brought Diluc back to his childhood, when everything that surrounded him seemed so light, at ease and innocent. As innocent as you were. His childhood friend. And now the only love forever.

Kaeya's heart starts beating faster when he hears your ringing laugh that falls from your lips as you laugh at his stupid jokes and ridiculous flirting. Your cheeks are covered with a pinkish blush due to the alcohol you have drunk earlier, your hair is disheveled, your eyes are slightly sleepy. But Kaeya understands that now you're the most beautiful girl in the world for him. Please, he only asks that he always spend such evenings next to you, joking and enjoying good drinks. And also to be the one who can take you home after every evening in the tavern.

Ayato falls in love with you the first second after you entered the room accompanied by your parents. You were absolutely adorable, so small, in a beautiful golden kimono, with a bright blush on your cheeks. He never wanted to marry for convenience, and when his parents told him that they had found a bride for him, he cried for a long time and said that he would never love her. But when Ayato saw you, when he saw how beautifully your eyelashes fluttered framing your deep amazing eyes, he swears that he's ready to take that back.

You were an absolutely amazing and kind person and it always made Thoma want to be closer to you. As the older sister of the Kamisato clan, you should have been refined, light and gentle. But you were strong and brave. You were absolutely kind to servants and maids in Kamisato Estate and always eager to help them. Every time Thoma got in your way, you instantly found yourself next to him and offered him your help. He will always remember with trepidation how sweetly you smiled, taking from his hands a small stack of your brother's documents. And he will always keep your smile in his heart.

[shanastoryteller]

happy valentine's day, shana!! your writing is so wonderful and reading your prompt fills always brings me so much joy!! 💕💕 (the newsletter too!! ghost bride mulan SLAPS and i adore every update). could I get some more of sect heir jiang yanli or servant wei wuxian?

a continuation of 1

Jiang Cheng thinks that a general and an immortal's disciple masquerading as servants is a stupid idea.

Meng Yao had pointed out that technically, he and Wei Wuxian are servants. Especially as far as anyone outside their clans is concerned.

"If their prejudice can't be changed, it might as well be used to our advantage," he says, eyes gleaming.

Meng Yao and Nie Huaisang are alike in all the worst ways. No wonder they get along so well.

"You can't be okay with this," he says to Wei Wuxian. The only ones that know what Wei Wuxian usually does with his summers are him and A-jie, and obviously Wei Changze, but Wei Wuxian has been treated as much as a servant as his father has - which means, not really at all.

He and his father carry swords, for fuck's sake. Although Wei Wuxian will have to seal his away if he's going to play servant at Cloud Recesses.

Wei Wuxian shrugs. "If the Wens are going, it's not like Nie Mingjue and your dad are wrong to be concerned. Meng Yao and I are probably the only ones who can get away with pretending to be servants and not set off a thousand alarm bells."

"You'll have to suppress your golden core," Meng Yao says. "All it will take is one person grabbing your wrist and then technicalities won't mean much."

Wei Wuxian makes a face, but shrugs.

He turns to A-jie. "What about you?"

She purses her lips, but says, "I think our father is overreacting. But I'd rather A-Xian is with us, no matter the circumstances."

Great. Now he can't continue arguing about this without looking like an asshole.

[cluelessteam]

Eternal Harmony: {~Fateful Encounter~}

Summary: Y/N's ordinary life takes a supernatural twist when they encounter the mysterious Cullen family in Forks. Immersed in a world of eternal love and trials, Y/N becomes a vital part of the Cullens' immortal story. Guided by Alice's visions and Jasper's wisdom, they face cosmic threats and navigate the complexities of supernatural existence. The story unfolds through eclipses of emotions and trials, culminating in a dawn where enduring bonds and love echo through the ages—a forever-bound journey in the supernatural realm.

Characters: The Cullen family

Pairing: Jasper x Reader x Alice

Warnings: No Warnings

Word Count: 563

Chapter 1 --- Chapter 2

The rain-soaked streets of Forks glistened under the diffused light filtering through the low-hanging clouds. Y/N, a newcomer to this seemingly ordinary town, meandered through the wet thoroughfares with an air of contemplation. The scent of damp earth mingled with the piney aroma of the surrounding forest, creating an atmosphere that felt both serene and mysterious.

Forks High School loomed ahead, its brick facade appearing almost foreboding against the backdrop of the verdant landscape. Y/N couldn't shake the feeling that this journey wasn't just a relocation but a shift in the very fabric of their existence.

As they entered the bustling corridors, the air hummed with subdued conversations and the shuffling of students. Y/N felt the weight of curious gazes, the subtle scrutiny of a town where everyone seemed to know everyone else. Yet, amidst the familiar faces, one group stood out—the enigmatic Cullen siblings.

Alice, with her ethereal grace, moved through the crowd like a dancer in a world of mere mortals. Her short, spiky hair seemed to defy the norm, and her golden eyes held an otherworldly sparkle. Beside her, Jasper exuded a quiet strength that hinted at experiences beyond the scope of high school dramas.

The Cullens' eyes met Y/N's, and for a brief moment, the world seemed to pause. Alice, her voice carrying a musical cadence, was the first to break the silence. "You must be Y/N! I saw you coming." Her words, though cryptic, were delivered with a warmth that melted away any apprehension.

Jasper, standing beside Alice, offered a polite nod. "Pleasure to meet you, Y/N," he greeted with a subtle Southern drawl, the formality of the words belying the enigmatic aura that surrounded him.

The introduction seamlessly transitioned into an invitation to join them for lunch. Y/N found themselves at the epicenter of the diverse Cullen clan—Edward, Bella, Emmett, and Rosalie—each with a presence that hinted at a shared history beyond the confines of high school hierarchies.

The cafeteria buzzed with the energy of animated conversations and laughter. Alice, with her infectious enthusiasm, occasionally paused the discussion to share glimpses of the future she saw in her mind's eye. "Look at this, everyone! Y/N's going to make our lives even more interesting," she proclaimed, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

Edward, the mind-reader, chuckled. "It seems Alice has foreseen a lively addition to our family dynamic."

Jasper, the empathetic one, added, "There's something different about your emotions. It's refreshing," his words resonating with a depth that hinted at untold stories.

The day unfolded with shared classes, stolen glances, and the palpable sense of an unspoken connection. Bella, observant as always, leaned in. "Looks like you've caught the attention of the fascinating duo."

As the final bell rang, Alice took Y/N under her wing. "Come with us. There's something we'd like to show you."

Jasper, with a rare smile, added, "It's a part of our world, Y/N. A world that you're now a part of."

As they led Y/N toward the woods surrounding Forks, a sense of both trepidation and excitement filled the air. The trees stood sentinel, their ancient branches whispering secrets to those who dared to listen. Little did Y/N know that this fateful encounter was the prelude to a journey where love, immortality, and destiny intertwined in ways they could never have imagined.

[notwarriorswiki]

Main Story - Into the Wild #3

The world was spinning.

Attempting to push himself back to his paws, Rusty could only wince as a dull pain persisted in his back. Cool air brushed against his neck, causing his fur to rise and his skin to tingle. He craned his neck back and forth, feeling the fur brush against the groove of his chin. He softly exhaled, blinking back the blurriness to focus on the item before him.

His collar.

Snapped in two, loose, brittle thread jutted out from the breaking point. The bell that always jingled in his ears with every small movement was now a short distance away, alone and hanging from nothing. The sunlight caught its golden shell, allowing it to glisten in the sunlight.

Rusty stared at it, green eyes unable to look away. He lifted his paw, as if he might reach to gingerly scoop it back up. However, the golden light would fade, the sun's rays shifting.

He looked up. A cloud loomed overhead, passing by a portion of the sun. The glitter of his bell faded, and instead the sun's rays danced to rest on Rusty himself.

His fur felt warm, his neck especially. The soft intermingling scents came with a faint breeze, tickling his chin as a smile spread across his face. His green eyes shifted to instead look up, his gaze expectantly fixing upon the blue gray she-cat that had invited him here.

She stood powerful and stern, blue eyes betraying none of her thoughts. And yet as Rusty purred proudly, he couldn't help but notice the smallest twitch of her whiskers.

“The newcomer has lost his Twoleg collar in a battle for his honor," Bluestar called. "StarClan has spoken its approval—this cat has been released from the hold of his Twoleg owners, and is free to join ThunderClan as an apprentice.”

A swell of excitement filled him. Rusty basked in the sunlight's warm glow, his ginger fur radiant under its eyes. He waited for Bluestar to come down and congratulate him, but the she-cat remained perched atop the Highrock.

"You look like a brand of fire in this sunlight..." she murmured, causing Rusty's ears to prick. Her eyes flashed briefly, as if her words had more meaning for her than he knew.

“From this day forward, until he has earned his warrior name, this apprentice will be called Firepaw, in honor of his flame-colored coat.”

The gazes of the clan were fixed upon him, Rusty's fur prickling with full awareness of their presence.

Smudge could never be a clan cat. Not like me.

Instead he basked in their attention. He raised his head proudly, turning to gaze once more upon the collar. The cloud's cover was fading, and sunlight once more rested on the bell. But this time he didn't admire its beauty.

Firepaw trotted over and stopped just before the mangled scraps he once wore. With a quick turn, he kicked dust and grass over his collar as though burying his dirt.

Longtail growled, turning to saunter away.

"Not so fast," Bluestar spoke.

The clan cats looked back at their leader, uncertain what she would say next. Firepaw straightened up, ears pricked and attentive.

"This young cat will need a mentor." Bluestar looked to Longtail. "And I think you'll do just fine."

Firepaw and Longtail both froze.

"What?!"

-------------------------------

What you have read here is a sample of a Warrior Cats Rewrite, using a concept that I have been contemplating for awhile now. This concept seeks to combine both an art and writing medium, using Tumblr's post and tagging system to tell a Main Story, episodic series that does not rely on Chapters. This also opens up opportunities for Side Stories about the various characters in the clan, which while not required, will provide insight into some of their behaviors, as well as allow viewers to get to know them.

This concept is not unique, rather there are many Warrior Cats blogs who use a format like this. I'm unsure if it has been used for a rewrite, as well as with the branching pathways I have in mind, but I find it is a more viable way for me to share the Power of Twelve Rewrite with people after the Ao3 Series died out.

The question is if you enjoyed it. Do you like this concept? Are you interested in it? Would you follow Power of Twelve with this concept? I'm curious to get people's thoughts, as well as other things that could be implemented. There's also the question of if you don't like this, and I want to hear that too!

Either way, thanks for reading, and I hope this post was a fun read!

[mundanemoongirl]

It's so funny editing the last few chapters of my first draft because it's so obvious I was rushing to get to the end. Take a look at the difference between my first attempt and my second draft.

First draft

It took several minutes for my morning haziness to wear off the next morning. I was dressed and ready, waiting for Maya. Then I remembered what she had done and that she was not coming. I was almost late to class. Catalina pulled me aside after class to update me. She said there was not much her mother could do since we were attacked outside of school, but she was going to announce later that we are all to stay on campus for the time being. 

Second draft below cut

Maya did not show up to my room the next morning. I did not wait for her. Dressing was harder than ever with only one completely functional hand. I struggled with buttons and tying up my hair, and the strain I put on my hand worsened the pain so badly I had to stop multiple times. It took almost the entire morning to ready myself, but I could not rely on my attendant. Not anymore.  I pushed Maya to the back of my mind on my way to class, having decided the night before that the best course of action was to discuss this issue with Madame Spiritwalker. As the highest authority figure in our clan, she had the right to know.  I trusted her to make a decision that deep down I knew I could not. A month with Maya as my attendant made me emotionally involved, and that was the last thing a Spiritwalker needed. My mother taught me how to be just. I did not want her to see how I fell short of that quality in this situation. By the time I made it to the hallway, classroom doors were already slamming shut. Catalina waited outside one of them, her concern placed elsewhere. She frantically glanced around the hallway, visibly letting out a breath when she saw me. When I came close, she pulled me off to the side with her. “Are you alright? I’ve been waiting for you all morning.” She was thinking about last evening. I knew because I was too. Placing Maya out of my thoughts left room to be filled, and the knowledge that someone tried to kill me demanded that space. I realized that in the chaos of the event, I never did get to tell everyone that I was alright. I reassured Catalina then, making sure she knew my lateness was about my hand, not the attack. The bell rang mid-sentence, but from her softening features I knew she understood. “I wanted to tell you,” she hurried, “that my mother said since the attack happened off campus there is nothing she can do, but she is going to address it.”

Spiritwalker taglist (ask to be added or removed): @the-golden-comet @pixies-love-envy

[aimfor-theheart]

Chapter One: Swallow

· · ───────── ·𖥸· ──────── · ·

Masterlist | <- Prologue: Godlings | Chapter Two: Anything, Everything -> | Read on Ao3

Pairings: Satoru Gojo x f!reader

Summary: And the form leans down, closer, as their voice drops to a murmur, all honey and thorns, the promise of something far greater than you. A storm to come. The future that you will bear upon the slant of your shoulders. And when they speak, you know they’ve cursed you;

“I will teach you how to make a God.” 

(Arranged marriage, angst, hurt/comfort, dark content)

Warnings (specifically for this chapter): Parental abuse (emotional and physical), possessive behavior, unhealthy relationships, toxic dynamics, and manipulation. Please be wary of overarching story warnings, too. Let me know if you think I should add any other warnings! **Please mind warnings overall and for each chapter**

Word Count: 10k

A/N: well, here is chapter one (two technically but you get it!) i hope you enjoy! another deep thank you to @lorelune who beta read this chapter as well and has been SO helpful!! i really would love to hear your feedback, questions, gripes, predictions, anything! thank you so much for reading!

· · ───────── ·𖥸· ──────── · ·

Satoru stands lonesome against the sky, head haloed by the last rays of golden sun. 

He is only fourteen but holds all the world on his shoulders. He’s growing into his sharp tongue and wicked smile. His eyes are too bright, hopeful for a future he thinks he can still change and shape to his own vision. 

He visits you weekly. You’re confined to your family’s grounds. You’re kept on a tight leash by your father as per requested by the clan. They can’t have you running off or forming your own thoughts quite yet. 

You train your technique with other members of your clan, you learn from your aunt on how to be a good wife, your mother tries to shield you from it all. You wander around the garden when you want peace. 

Satoru always meets you in the garden.

He has become your friend. Perhaps your only friend at this age. Perhaps yours, only. 

He doesn’t greet you with a kiss (you are still twelve, still so young and clueless in so many ways), he doesn’t hug or reach for you. 

But he does walk with you, follow you around trees and stone, dogs your steps. He does sit beside you, knee to knee, elbow to elbow.

You call him Satoru by this age. He calls you by your first name. 

(By fifteen, you will start shortening his name to Toru. When he is sixteen he begins to call you darling, dear, honey—a joke, in the beginning, for your ever approaching marriage, but then not.) 

You go to him now, so he isn’t so lonely against the massive sky behind him. 

“You walk so lightly. Like a rabbit. Or a doe.” He says when you brush up against him. 

“My father says I should wear a bell.” You reply, “did I startle you?” 

But you know the answer before you even ask it. You just want to see his lips lift at the corners. 

“No, but you would be cute in a bell.” 

Heat engulfs the round slope of your cheeks. 

You slug his arm hard enough that he gives an undignified yelp. 

He never puts up his guards around you. He lets you hit him and push him and pinch him and tug on his hair. He lets you nudge him and lean against him and play with his hands. At this age, it is still a little childish, rounded with playfulness–flirting, perhaps, but in the way children do, uncertain and wobbly and with a pinch of pain. 

You wonder if he’ll bruise beneath his sleeve. You think about leaving a mark on him. 

“You’re getting meaner,” Satoru tells you, rubbing his arm, “sharper. More prickly. You’re going to be absolutely evil by the time we’re married–” 

“I thought I was a sweet, little rabbit? Or a doe?” You counter, moving past him to the stone steps that will lead down to a small, winding path. He watches you for a moment, before following. 

“I take it back. You’re something mean and vicious and quiet.” He says, shoving his hands into his pockets. He is boyish at this age, a little gangly, not quite grown into his ears or his hands. “A fox or a leopard. Something with teeth.” 

As you walk ahead of him, you smile, feeling your own teeth emerge behind a tender lip. You turn to stick your tongue out at him from over your shoulder. 

He picks up his pace to finally fall into step beside you. 

A small stream of water bubbles softly. Koi swim lazily in the wide dip of water. 

“I start school in a few weeks.” He says, “I’ve decided I want to move into the dorms to get away from my family a little.”

Your face twists, unsatisfied, a pinch of irritation. 

The idea of losing him to high school–to new friends and somewhere further away, where you certainly won’t be able to visit per your father’s strict rules—is horrible to you. 

You feel jealousy rise in you like a mountain at the thought that others will have him day in and day out. Jealousy that he will go and you will not; that he can escape his family and you will never be able to. The freedom of a man.

(Of a god–)

More than that, possessiveness steals your breath for a moment. At this age, you can’t name it. 

Later, it will sink its claws into you; mine, mine, mine. He is only mine. 

“I’ll still visit you,” Satoru says quickly, attempting to soothe you, appease whatever beast he’s awoken in you. 

You think he must’ve done this with his mother, too, you think that’s why he knows how to do it. 

You’re young and not quite done being hurt. You want to pout. You want all the world to know your pain. You turn away from him, walk a little further off. He follows again and it begins a chase that you lead. 

“It’s not too far,” he says, and you continue to wander from him. A sigh leaves you. You pass over a small, wooden bridge. 

He follows. 

“I said I’d still visit you–” 

You lope around a willow tree, careful of its roots. 

He cuts to the other side. He stops you from running. 

He catches you. 

“Every week.” He adds. 

You look up into his face, eyes flitting along the glasses over his eyes. He rarely takes them off. In fact, you’ve only seen his eyes a handful of times as he’s gotten older. You know them more from your dreams, from memories that you hold tight to, from the sky at a particular point in the day. 

You lift your hand and without a second thought, you tug on the glasses until they fall into your waiting hands.

“Do you promise?” Your voice has an edge that he might catch himself on. 

His eyes are all cosmic sapphires, too blue, too bright, too beautiful. 

White lashes flutter. He is so soft looking at this age, pretty, with a dash of pink on his cheeks. His wind-chapped lips. Your boy. Yours. 

“I promise.” 

The world turns, but you think time must stop for you. For him. For just a moment. And you wish it always would, wish you could just keep him and trap him for yourself. 

(Time must stop, for gods–) 

He encircles your wrist with a big hand and you let him pull you towards him.

He isn’t so tall yet. It’s easy for you to get up into his face. 

“Repeat after me,” you say.

And he smiles, “repeat after me.” 

“I will always have you,” you say and it’s almost a hiss, almost with teeth. A little heat. Maybe it’s a threat, halfway to a vicious promise. 

And he soothes, “I will always have you.” 

You feel him squeeze around your wrist, anticipating your next words, craving them, “you will always have me.” 

And he promises now, voice gaining a stronger note, “you will always have me.” 

You sniff, as if you’re deciding whether to accept him or not. Then;

“And I’ll never forgive you if you don’t keep your promise. I’ll bite you with the sharp teeth you think I have.” 

Satoru tosses his head back and laughs, the sun slipping through pearl locks, drenching him in its light. Always so light. His laugh so full and blooming that you want to hold fast to him, to cling to his shoulders, dig your nails into his chest. You want to hear his laugh forever. You want to shout at him because it makes heat blot your cheeks. Because it makes you angry. Because it makes you unreasonably happy. 

 You push him again. He laughs harder. Chases you when you dart off. 

And he never misses a week–but he’ll still let you bite him with your sharp, sharp teeth.

***

Your training intensifies. So does Satoru’s in preparation for school. When you see each other, it’s a brief reprieve. Bags grow beneath your eyes. You don’t think you’ve slept well in days but everything begins to feel like a dream. 

Satoru comes up with bruises and scrapes and things his mother says–

“She told me I should be untouchable without my technique.” And, “it’s just the way she shows her love–she says, sometimes it hurts a little. She says, you hurt me, when I gave birth to you, and I still love you.” 

And you tell him things your father tells you, “he says it’s all I was born for. All I was made for, was to decipher Time. To know it.” And, “he’s harsh because he has to be, because the world is, and Time will be harsher still.” 

But Satoru can make you laugh at least, until your sides hurt. He can drive you crazy, too, until your head spins. At least you are young with him, though, at least he makes you feel your age.

Your mother tells the two of you, watching as you shriek and chase each other in the garden, that it’s good. 

That no one should take youth away from young people. 

But they will anyway, she knows, they always will anyway. 

***

You scour time with your amulet. Some days, you think you are mindless with it, the shell of a girl with swimming eyes that keeps darting in and out of the past. You push for the future and come up empty handed. You push for–

You can’t seem to find the person you first found. They’ve slipped through your fingers, through time. 

Still, you’re relentless. 

Your mother tries to pull you from your trances. Yanks the amulet from your hands until your eyes clear. You become stronger, though, unwilling to bend to her. Even when she pulls the amulet from your hands, you can still see it, time, swimming in front of you and you hold fast to its untempered currents. 

It’s so old, has such a large future, too, that it is nothing like looking into a human’s lifespan. Humans become so quick for you. A blink and you’ve swallowed their whole life. 

You snap at your mother, sometimes, wrench the amulet back into your clutches from her. 

“It’s mine,” you seethe, “it’s mine.”

She looks as if you’ve struck her, when you act this way. Sometimes she yells back until all the house is filled with it. Until your father intervenes, until he hands you the amulet again. 

Until he says, leave her. 

(Hindsight is a funny thing. But you’re just a child now and you don’t understand half of it.)

You spend your days in and out of dazes, fever dreams of the past, of the haunting future. Some days you can hardly speak, your mind on fire, your eyes burning. 

You cry out of frustration. Your temples throb. Some days you vomit, wretch because you’ve hardly eaten. Some days you end up barefoot, in the back garden, while it storms, staring into this amulet endlessly. 

On one of the worst days, your mother calls for Satoru. 

And he is the one to pull you from your stupor, yank you from all of time only for you to be met with the skyblaze of his eyes. 

And you hiss at him, too. 

“Don’t you understand?” You crow, “you know what this is like!” 

He pulls the amulet clear from your neck and keeps it from you. You scream and shout and throw a fuss. 

The one time he uses his Infinity on you to hold it far from your grasp, your sudden shouts of anger go unearthly quiet. 

Tears well in your eyes. 

You must look betrayed, because he drops it immediately. But it’s too late and you’re crying like a baby and he’s trying to coo and shush you. 

You’re crying like your heart has been broken, like something inside of you, huge and otherworldly, has just split open and ruptured. It gushes, overflows, nearly drowns you at the idea that he would–

That’d he’d use it on you. 

Untouchable. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry–look, it’s down.” And he touches your shoulders. Your arms. He lets you take his hands as if to prove to you that you are above his Infinity, you have collapsed it. 

You sink your claws into his wrists, dig into them until blood wells to the surface and say through your hitching sobs, through your bared teeth;

“Don’t ever do that to me again.” 

***

Your father is desperate for you to look into Satoru’s future. Everyone expects you to. Including Satoru, you think. Especially his mother, who watches you with all the contempt in her heart.  Your whole family awaits it, the card you could hold above him, above everyone, all of the world. Your mother, who defends you at every turn, is the only one who does not press you for it. She has never pressed you for dealings of the past or the future. 

You can hear your parents argue for the thousandth time about you. 

“She has every right not to, if she doesn’t want to.” Your mother’s voice is strong. It’s always been strong. You hope you’ll have her voice one day. 

(But you’ll realize no one listens to her still, that it doesn’t matter how great the bark if–)

“Don’t be naive.” Your father snaps. 

“Do you want her to go insane?” You can hear your mother’s low hiss of a threat. “She’ll go insane if she sees too many peoples’ future–if she sees his–” 

(If there isn’t any bite.)

“I told you she shouldn’t be spending so much time with him.” 

“Don’t you want her to be happy?” Your mother pleads, “don’t you want her to be as safe and cared for and loved as she can be with him?” 

“I keep her safe here!” Your father’s voice raises. “She has a responsibility!” 

“She’s a child!” Your mother shouts back. You can hear the tears in her voice. “She’s just a child! So is he!”

There’s a slam. The pictures on the wall of your room rattle. You have already seen this. And all of their fights, you have seen your mother’s fate. 

(He didn’t hit her, if it soothes you, just the wall beside her head. But it scares her enough into quieting, into hiding her teeth–all bark, no bite.)

Your father will lecture you again tomorrow morning. You will bow your head and lie, tell him that Satoru doesn’t let you touch him yet, that he always keeps up his Infinity still. It will buy you time.

Oh, time. 

***

“I can’t stand you!” You scream before lobbing the apple in your hand at Satoru’s head. 

It doesn’t touch him, thanks to his Infinity. 

“You’re so touchy today.” Satoru muses.

“And you’re so annoying!” 

“That’s right, because you’re such a dream to deal with–” he says before he can stop himself. 

You freeze and he can tell he’s said something he perhaps shouldn’t have. You can tell he regrets it, by the way his mouth opens, then shuts. He’s always been good for this, little one liners that are snippy, snarky.

He’s like his mother in that way. 

You have tea with her, on occasion. 

And she’s beautiful like him and untouchable. She says things like, you’re a scrappy little thing, aren’t you? Like, your hair could use a trim. And, didn’t your mother teach you to dress? 

You can feel tears welling in your eyes. But before they can fall, you snap at him, “get away from me.” Before he can see you crying, you turn away from him and storm off, deeper into your garden. Your garden that has always cradled you. 

Instead, he lurches towards you, “don’t be like that–” 

You can feel him hot on your heels, taking quick strides to try and catch up with you. 

You want to make it hurt worse. You want to reduce him to these tears that prick your eyes. It isn’t fair, you think, to have this heart, and this boy who you’d do anything for–

You turn sharply and he almost runs into you, hard stops and comes up short. And before he can open his mouth again, you hiss, “it’s not a dream being stuck with you, either.” 

He rears back a little. 

“You’re being mean.” 

“I’m being honest.” You sneer. 

So fast your eyes don’t even catch it, he’s got your wrist in his hand, pulling you towards him. “Then let’s break the vow,” he threatens, “if that’s how you feel. I’m sure I could figure it out.” 

You squirm in his hold, pull a little, but he tightens his grip. The look in his eyes, above his glasses, is strange. Otherworldly. Challenging in a way that makes a thrill go up your spine. 

“Is that how you feel?” You demand, all teeth. 

He softens a little, and then;

 “I haven’t figured it out yet, have I?” 

You glare up into his face, “have you tried?” 

“A little.” He admits and it hurts worse than it should, a wound to the chest, a sudden stinging in your eyes. 

“Because I’m just so awful–”

“Because I’m so awful.” He says softer than you anticipate, “I’m not stupid–we’re both young. Neither of us had much of a say in it. And I know–I know your life would be easier without being tied to me.” 

You glance down at your wrist still in his hand. You don’t try to fight him anymore, though. 

“Do you want out?” You ask tentatively, terrified of the answer, your heart like glass in his hands, ready to be shattered. 

“I don’t try very hard,” he admits, “selfishly,” he pulls you a little closer to him and perhaps it’s the first time you’ve been this close to him. “I want to keep you. I don’t want to be alone. And I don’t think–” 

His thumb, tender, gentle, rubs against the pulse point of your wrist. You hold your breath. 

“I don’t think there’s anyone else.” 

You sink your nails into his tender hand, stilling his movement, and look up at him with all the venom in the world. And you vow, voice sweeter than the look in your eyes, disarmingly so;

“There isn’t.”

***

“It’s you.” 

The person who greets you in the amulet this time is different from the first one, you can tell by their voice, by the shape of them that slowly comes into focus. 

You clutch your amulet tight. 

Their face is clearer, a man that must, in some way, be an ancestor of yours. You can tell because his eyes are like yours, the base of his are brown, but then a slash of silver in one, a speck of gold in the other. 

You are peering into the past at someone who is peering into the future at you–it makes your temples throb to think about. 

“I don’t understand how you know me–” You get out, “I don’t understand how we can speak to each other.” 

The man eyes you, brows furrowing, almost into a glare. “You’re the only one who ever figured it out,” his voice is smoky, soft and old. “You’re the one that figured out we could communicate by finding the exact moments in time when we peer at each other; right now, you are looking into the past, at this exact moment, at me through the amulet, while I look into the future at this exact moment, at you through the amulet.” 

“But I didn’t–” 

“Imagine folding paper in half and stabbing your pen through both sides at once.” He continues. 

“I didn’t figure that out.” 

Your voice is quiet. Just a child’s voice. 

“Not yet.” He says and it’s accusatory. In the tense silence, you feel guilt for something you have not yet done. You can feel his judgment. Eventually, his face softens fractionally, “you’re still young now. Still innocent, huh? I forget–”

His voice catches. 

“I forgot that you were once this young and unknowing.” 

You don’t know what to do with that, how to feel. “So you know me differently?” 

“Very differently.”  

“When I’m older?” You ask, “can you tell me more?” 

He shakes his head, “I don’t think I should.” 

“You’re supposed to teach me.” You respond and perhaps it is accusatory. His eyes flash, a flickering of recognition. As if to say there you are, the one I know. 

Regretfully, he nods. “I will. We all will. Until you surpass us and then we’ll spend the rest of our days peeling through time to try and catch up to you.” 

You aren’t sure what to say or how to respond, you’re not sure what you should feel or do. You frown. 

“Do you ever catch up to me?” You ask when you can think of nothing else.

He smiles now, a little bitterly, but almost fondly, “no. You leave us all in the dust.” 

“Does that make me your best student, then? Out of all the other Hindsight and Foresight users?” 

A laugh is startled out of him and the hand that is holding up the amulet, the same hand of yours, lifts so you’re both eye to eye. Amulet to amulet. Hand to hand in two different places and two different times. 

Past to future. 

“The very best of us all.” 

***

Satoru begins school. 

He upholds his promise and tells you about his new classmates. He gushes about their potential; a girl with the ability to reverse her cursed technique and a boy who can swallow curses to control them. 

Not to mention his seniors, all so shiny and exciting to him. 

Jealousy curdles inside of you, bubbling and ugly. You can’t quite swallow around it. You can’t quite stomach it. 

But he wants you to meet his other first years, Ieri Shoko and Suguru Getou. He wants them to know you, he wants you to know them. He wants those important to him to get along. 

He brings them to you in the garden and you can’t help but feel as if they’re intruding on this little world you and Satoru have created since you were young. Since you first became engaged. 

When you see them with Satoru, flanking his sides, you have to fight the urge to glare, to bare your teeth to them. 

Satoru sings your name, though, excited, so you slip out from your hiding place among the trees and flowers. You’re quiet as you approach, one foot carefully over the other, like a predator watching. Waiting. 

It is only Satoru who senses you behind them, who turns sharply and laughs when he finally spots you. 

“Trying to surprise us?” He asks.

“Something like that,” you answer, eyes flickering over the two beside him. 

He smiles nonetheless and introduces you proudly, introduces you as his fiance. 

“So strange to think you have a fiance at your age.” The girl, Ieri, says. 

Satoru shrugs, “we’ve known since we were young–plenty of time to accept our fates, huh?” 

You hum, “funny choice of words.” 

The dark-haired boy who's been watching you a little too closely finally says, “your technique is with time, isn’t it? Satoru was telling us–”

You finally approach and it’s a little too close, enough that it makes Ieri shift uncomfortably. But to his credit, Suguru doesn’t budge, even as you look up into his face and ask, “what else does Satoru tell you?”  

Suguru smiles slowly, disarmingly so, like a cat. “That you’re pretty. And smart. I can tell he likes you a great deal.” 

And despite it all, you can see Satoru’s cheeks flush darkly out of the corner of your eyes. He fidgets, “I think I said–”

 “What has he said about me?” Suguru asks and the darkness of his eyes is mesmerizing. The exact opposite of Satoru, where his eyes seem to reflect light, Suguru’s consume it. 

You hold his gaze for a fraction more before severing it. You turn away, wander a little further off as you say over your shoulder, “he hasn’t.” 

Suguru laughs as Satoru squawks, beginning to deny you but Suguru interrupts him cooly, “you’re a poor liar.” 

“He’s mentioned Shoko, though–you can reverse your cursed technique, can’t you?” You respond, just to get under his skin. This time, it’s Ieri that laughs, an amused huff. 

“That’s me.” Her eyes, sly and tired, slip to Satoru, “anything else he’s said about me?”

“That you smoke too much.” You say and this time, you’re being truthful, perhaps too truthful. Enough that you can feel Satoru’s eyes on you. You’re trying to cause trouble and he can tell. Your smile is knowing, just a little too barbed, “those things’ll kill you, ya know.” 

The irony is not lost on them. 

You wander further away to test Satoru, see if he will follow you or stay with his friends. You can feel his draw, his uncertainty for a moment. But surprisingly, it is Suguru who moves after you first. 

“Will you come to school with us? When you’re old enough?” Suguru asks and Satoru is on his heels. Ieri lollygags behind. 

You can feel the heat and attention of Suguru and for whatever reason, it makes warmth bloom deep in your cheeks and for all your trouble and bravado, you are perhaps still just young. You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling at his attention, at the way they follow you. You face resolutely forward and don’t allow them to see the full scope of your face. 

“No, my father forbids it.” You tell him, leading them through a maze of lush flowers and small trees that lope over your heads. 

“I told you, I’ll fight for you to go.” Satoru pipes up and because he knows the garden well, he takes a sharper left, beats you around a hedge to stop you in your tracks. Suguru almost runs into you. “I’ll tell him I want an educated and trained wife.” 

“Gross,” Ieri scoffs, and then she says dryly, “who knew you were such a traditionalist, Gojo?” 

“I’m not! But I have to speak his language!” Satoru protests, “you two don’t know her father. The clans. They’re impossible and archaic.” 

You think of your mother, at one point, in your position; betrothed to a man at your small age. But she didn’t know the future and your father was no revolutionary. No, he didn’t shake heaven and earth with his birth. He was not meant for greatness. 

The only greatness he would achieve is you. You think he resents you for it, you think that is why you are kept so firmly beneath his thumb. 

You think your mother should resent you for getting more, for being her warped reflection of could’ve been and should’ve beens. You wish you saw more of yourself in her, sometimes, that you weren’t growing into such a beast. That you weren’t so gifted or strange or burning. 

You have learned, though, that the difference between you and your mother will be her life. Lamb-hearted woman she is, you resent her for not being you. For not having bigger teeth, for not resenting you more. 

“But you’re going to change it all, is that right?” 

Suguru’s voice slices through your thoughts, cool and cleanly.The way he says it, like it’s hardly a question but an accusation, sends a shiver rippling through you. There is an undercurrent to his voice that makes you go completely still, the way a predator does when it senses danger. “That’s what you said, isn’t it?” 

You know now that you will have to lay your hands on Suguru. For Satoru, you will dig into the pits of his future and pull it out with your own trembling fingers. 

Satoru looks at you, “I’m trying to. We’re trying to.” 

“We have our work cut out for us.” You tell Satoru and with your back to Suguru, you mean it only for him. 

We, as in just us. Just us two, always. 

You try to shut Suguru out, maybe, you try to shut them both out. But it is hard and as they talk and joke and amble with you in your garden, as you watch them interact with Satoru and with each other, you understand horribly what it is that Satoru likes so much about them. 

Unfortunately, there will be no ridding Satoru of them. Unfortunately, they will stick and stay and bleed into your life. 

So unfortunately, you will get attached. And worse than that, you will then need to learn how to get unattached, because you will know exactly the path they will walk and it isn’t one you are interested in enduring to love them. 

But still you will love them. 

Even though you know. 

You will always know. 

***

When you are fourteen and it comes time for you to enroll in school, Satoru fights tooth and nail to get your father, your clan, to allow you to join him. He hems and haws, he bickers and makes scathing comments, he acts out. He tries to pull every card that he has. 

None of it works. 

And for the millionth time, Satoru comes storming out of the room he’d been speaking with your father in again. You are never allowed in, even though all they do is discuss you. You are their centerpoint and yet you remain outside the doorway, lingering, listening faintly to your name pass between their lips. 

They are very naive, to think you don’t know all of this already. For how miraculous your technique has been treated, they have the strangest tendency to forget how it works, what it implies for you. Even Satoru at times forgets, perhaps purposefully, what you know, what it must mean. You don’t think he wants to think about what it might imply about you or who you are becoming, at least not yet. 

Still, you follow after him quickly, leaving your father behind, “I told you—“ 

“I’ll keep trying.” He clips, heading through the winding halls, towards the front entrance. You want to reach out and grab him, stop him in his tracks, force yourself in front of him, but you wouldn’t dare touch him where you know your father watches closely. 

Instead you say his name, sharply, a little ringing.

It has the same effect. He stops. His back is to you, shoulders raised slightly in tension. 

“I told you, my father will not change his mind. He never will.” 

Satoru’s shoulders drop with a hard exhale. 

“Do you know this for certain? Is this—“ 

The future? 

“Yes.” You respond coolly, “I will never go to school with you. I have known this for a while.” 

“Well, now it must be a self-fulfilling prophecy because you told me this. If you’d never have told me, would it still happen? Or would I keep trying until they let you come to school with me? In telling me this, does it make me give up? So you never do?” He asks, turning finally to face you. “Why tell me this? Whose future did you see to know this?” 

So many questions. You can feel the sudden tension between you—the surge of distrust or inkling in the back of his mind about you. It must be all of his doubts rushing forward.

He must be wondering why you told him this, why you won’t tell him more then. 

“My mother’s.” You respond, “she argues with my father about this, too, and to no avail.” 

Satoru stares hard at you. And you hate the look on his face, the sudden unease as he gazes at you, like he doesn’t quite recognize you. Upset and anger prickle inside of you.

“Why do you look at me like that?” 

“Like what?” Satoru asks. 

You narrow your eyes, “don’t play dumb.”

He pauses. And then, as if hesitantly, he decides to ask, “can you change the future once you know it?” 

And right now you are only fourteen, still rather naive, if not growing sharper and quicker, slicker. You have an inkling. You could share it with him; I think you can. I think, if I play everything correctly, I could. I think if I–

Instead, you say, “I’m not sure yet. I’m still learning.” 

“Are you experimenting with me?” He asks and it surprises a laugh out of you. 

“Well, now that you say it–” 

Finally, his smile crooks up in the corner. The tension in him snaps and gives out, deflating him. He takes a few steps towards you. He is lanky at sixteen and stands a head over you (he’ll keep growing, taller and a little broader, muscled beneath your future hands).

“You’ll tell me, won’t you?” He asks, “when you figure it out?”

Now it’s your turn to stare hard at him. 

“Of course.” You say and instantly, you recognize it for what it is;

The first lie you’ll ever tell Satoru Gojo. 

***

Over the years, Ieri and Suguru will visit you frequently. With Satoru and without. With each other and without. Ieri will let you take drags of her cigarettes, put it up to your lips, let her fingers press there, too. Suguru will wander around the garden with you aimlessly, he will playfully flirt, he will tease you. Both will confide in you. Both you will love and hate; love them for who they are, who they could be and hate them for having pieces of Satoru. Hate Suguru for who he will become. 

You hate him for what he will do to Satoru. 

You decide relatively quickly that on an instance where one of them allows you to touch them, or touches you, that you will peer into their futures. 

Ieri’s comes easily, she is always leaning and draping herself over you. She is always sharing candy and cigarettes and swigs of alcohol she sneaks past your father to you. You have learned that if you don’t want people to suspect you have peered into their future, you must do it at a time that seems light-hearted, simple, fleeting. 

She leans her head on your shoulder one night as the sun slips easily beneath the trees. It’s a Friday night. 

She says, “I wish you could come out with me. The boys are pissing me off.” 

And you are barely able to get out a very plain, far away, “me, too,” before your vision tunnels. You are careful to breathe through it. You are careful not to make a sound as her life begins to play out in your mind’s eye. Cursed energy that takes her shape shimmers to life in front of you. 

At once, you see her very plainly. 

But what you care about most, is that she will always be loyal to Satoru. That is what you sought and what you found. A knot unravels inside of you, unspools easily and your suspicion of Ieri dissipates. Momentarily, you sink into the feeling–but in peering into her future, you’ve caughten another glimpse of Satoru’s. 

Another piece to the puzzle of his future that you are slowly attaining. 

(One day, you will know all of it, one day you will guard all of it, one day you will swallow all of it and stomach what comes with it.) 

But today, you sink into Ieri’s side, back in the present, and let the smell of smoke cloud your mind. You breathe it deep, only for her to press the cigarette up to your lips, soft fingers and all. You inhale and let it burn. 

You sputter out a cough, which gives way to Ieri’s rough laugh, her head tipping onto your shoulder, and the sun drenching you in its last light. 

You’ll let her curl herself around some part of you. She’ll ask you one day, as everyone does, “did you ever look into my future?” 

And they’re never sure if they want the truth. 

You’ll smile, though, an asp’s clever grin, and drawl, “we’re still friends, aren’t we?” 

***

Nanami Kento and Yu Haibara are your age. You would be in their grade, if Satoru had gotten his way and your father had allowed you to attend Jujutsu Tech. You meet them only briefly, but even then, Satoru catches the way you create a reason to touch each of them. For Haibara, it is just to brush past him, knocking elbows a little. 

(At the time, it wasn't so bad. It doesn’t startle you. He is not a domino effect. But he can be–you know he is the perfect sacrifice.) 

For Nanami, you are braver. You sweep his hair from his face, “I want to see your eyes.” You say boldly and though Nanami recoils back slightly, glancing quickly at Satoru, you have already gotten what you need.

(Nanami, you think with a slight sigh, you like a great deal. Both loyal and caring. Enough so that he would give his life for Satoru, for what Satoru wants. Martyr-boy, golden-hearted, he is perhaps the best of them.)

Afterwards, you can tell Satoru is displeased in some way, prickly. 

“You’re upset,” you say when it is only the two of you in the garden again. 

He opens his mouth to deny you, you think, but then promptly shuts it. 

“Do you do that with everyone now?” He asks carefully. 

Your eyes flash to him, “do you want the truth?” 

He stutters a step towards you, but holds himself back, careful, unsure. “Always.” 

“Then ask again, as if you actually want it.” Your voice doesn’t sound quite like your own. It’s beginning to slip from you, become someone else’s, you think. You’re losing whatever cadence you had as a child, losing the tone that used to reflect your mother’s. 

You see the furrow of his brows, but don’t see his eyes behind the wrappings. He frowns. “What has gotten into you?”

You, something inside of you hisses, but it’s older, a little foreign. It almost sounds like–

“Do you want to know or not?” You ask instead, flippant, but your eyes burning, hot. 

“I don’t like what you’re becoming,” he says suddenly, and once he’s said it, he doesn’t stop, “I knew you should’ve come to school with me, I knew it wasn’t good for you to be stuck here with your father and the clan–is this their doing?” 

Your laugh is sharp, tittering, almost, a little off-kilter. 

It’s so ironic, isn’t it? To think he knows what’s best. People think they know everything and they think you know so little. 

You step towards him, have to tip your chin up, rock onto the tips of your toes just to get into his face now. 

“You know what’s best for me now, do you?” The wind picks up like your voice has agitated it, rushing past, between, around you two. “My fiance knows what’s best for me?” 

 “I didn’t say that,” he replies and the sudden inability to see his eyes makes your anger spark and break into a fire. 

You reach up, snatch the bandage from his eyes so quickly that your nails catch the delicate skin of his face. It unspools around his neck. He doesn’t flinch, though, his eyes now finally finding yours without the barrier, looking you over like he’s trying to root around inside you. 

The wind is sharper this time, colder, it whips past both of you, pulls at your clothes. 

“Ask. Me. Again.” You bite out, the flash of your teeth make his eyes skip down to your mouth, back up. 

When he asks, something in his voice has changed. It isn’t the voice of the boy you grew up beside, but someone stepping into godhood. Satoru Gojo the Untouchable. 

Regret pulls inside you like a dog at the end of its leash, don’t be untouchable to me. Not me. Never me. 

“Do you do that with everyone now?” He asks again and he needs to know. 

“Yes,” you breathe, just a hiss of your breath through your teeth. And because he suddenly feels far from you, you reach up, and lay your palm to his cheek. He never put up his Infinity, he never blocked you out. Your shoulders ease, you can feel relief hit you like a rush of cool water. 

Still yours. Still close. 

He swallows hard, like he isn’t quite sure what to do with that information. You know he is weighing his next question carefully. 

You thumb the little scratch you left on his cheek, streaked pink against his pale skin, let your nail drag featherlight over it again, like you’re thinking of making it deeper. Oh, to scar the Untouchable. 

“For your clan?” He forces himself to ask. 

You shake your head fractionally, make an irritated little noise, “you think so little of me? I thought you knew me so well? We hate the clans.” 

Satoru finally brings his hand up to cradle yours, lets his cheek sink into your palm, even with the threat of your nails. Maybe especially. 

“Then for who?”

You, a voice inside of you howls like the wind, oh, you, you, you. 

“For us.” You say instead, “for our future.”

When he remains silent, you press on, “isn’t this what I’m supposed to do? This is my technique–should I never use it?” You turn on him, and then when you’ve got it between your teeth, you shake hard, “are you scared of it? Scared of me?” 

“No,” Satoru says quickly, “never you.” 

“Then why are you upset?” You snap, low and hot. Your fingers begin to dig a little more desperately into his skin, angle his face so he can’t look away, so he can’t run, “why do you look at me like that?” 

 Satoru is silent for a long moment. 

You let him be. 

Eventually, he turns his face into your palm and you feel the brush of his lips, soft, a little shy. 

It brings a surge of warmth to your cheeks. 

(You’ve never even kissed yet, only poked and prodded and tickled and held and brushed and scraped. Never felt his lips like this. Never felt his words on the inside of your wrist–)

“Would you tell me? If what you saw was–” he won’t finish the sentence. 

“Do you want to know?” You ask again. “Do you want to know the future?” 

He weighs it, you can feel the way he gets heavier in your hands with the decision, let your fingers slip down his jaw, brush over the pulse that thuds at his throat. 

“Say I did,” he murmurs, “would you tell me?” 

“Yes,” you answer, but as you study his face, you know he doesn’t want it. “If you could stomach it.” 

“Can you?” 

“I was fed it until I could.” You let him go finally, “I can tell you can’t.” 

You turn away. 

The wind rushes through you, carves its distance between you two. 

When you move to walk away, Satoru follows you as if compelled, jerks forward to you as if pulled by a string. “Do you want me to?” 

“Would you learn to stomach it for me?” Make yourself sick with it? Make yourself mad with it? Would you do it all for me, too? 

“You’ve learned to stomach it for me.” He answers and so you pause to let him catch up to you as a reward. 

When you look at him this time, something inside you softens, “I will only feed you what you can stomach, if you want it.” 

You are not lying. 

Satoru lets out a slow breath and chooses to allow you to decide what he can swallow around. He decides he can trust what you feed him, that it will go down easy and not poison him, that you won’t make him regret it. 

He nods, agreeing. 

His trust blossoms hot and sweet inside of you. You have to hold back a satisfied grin; a cat with a canary, beautiful white feathers fluttering by your feet. 

You look ahead, let the wind catch your hair, cut across your cheeks. 

You summon the vows that now feel like an ancient part of you, old words, soothing words;

“Repeat after me.”

As if possessed, he says, “repeat after me.” 

You smile, slow and knowing, “I will always have you.” 

He leans into it, takes it easily from you, “I will always have you.” 

“You will always have me.”

Like prayer, he finishes, “you will always have me.” 

And after, when the wind gusts and pulls at you, you dare to admit to him, “Keep Nanami close. He will always be loyal to you.” 

You don’t turn to look at him, but you can tell he has gone inhumanly still. After a moment, he dares to ask, “and Haibara?” 

Your lips twist, just a flash of a grimace like the quick arch of a bat’s wing. 

You refuse to look at him when you say, “just leave Haibara to me.” 

When he swallows around that, too, you know now that you’ll always have him eating from the palm of your hand. 

***

Suguru only visits alone at dusk. Twilight suits him in the same way that you think dawn suits Satoru. 

Usually, Suguru comes to you pensive, almost irritable. You imagine he can’t decide what to do or think of you, you imagine he can sense your animosity or jealousy, you imagine he is too clever to not know what it means if you, a user of Foresight, do not like or trust him. 

You know his future intimately. You see it behind your eyelids at night, hot and simmering, too brutal, too brilliant. You have memorized it the moment that you saw it, replayed it over and over and over until it no longer made you sick. Until you could look him in the eyes again. You know it so well that you think you could recite it to someone who asked, could say Suguru’s words to him before he ever even thinks of them himself. 

You think that must mean you know him intimately, too. 

When he finds you, you frown, and then ask, “what are you doing here?” 

“Delightful, as usual.” He responds lazily. 

You grin at him, “where’s Satoru?” 

“Mission.” He responds a little too bluntly. 

You sink your claws into it, “without you?” 

He doesn’t rise to your bait this time, “your father’s in a bad mood.” 

You pause. 

Your father isn’t happy with you. He never is, though, he never will be. 

“Why are you here, Suguru?” You ask instead, drifting around the trunk of a tree to emerge on the other side of him. 

“I can’t visit a friend?” He counters. 

“Are we friends?” You ask. “I don’t like you.” 

He laughs then, warm and low and in a way that reminds you that he is just shy of being a man. “You wound me.” He says, turning over his shoulder to face you, to let you come up to his chest. 

There is something magnetic about Suguru, you can feel the pull of him, like he’s ready to swallow you whole, too. Ingest you if you aren’t careful. 

He reaches out suddenly and you force yourself to remain very, very still. Suguru’s hand, careful, graceful, tucks a strand of loose hair behind your ear. 

“Satoru asked me to check on you while he was away.” He admits and at the mention of his name, you allow Suguru’s fingers to linger at your jaw.

“When will he be home?” You ask instead, uncharacteristically subdued for the moment. Suguru must realize it, because he becomes bolder, steps closer. 

You let Ieri touch you and wrap her arms around you, lean her head against your shoulders and pull you into her lap. You let her drape herself across you, crawl over top of you. Tuck up against you. Satoru knows. He doesn’t mind, rather, you think he’s pleased that you’ve found a friend in Ieri. 

But with Suguru–

“When will he be home?” 

“You don’t know?” Suguru asks and something in your expression must give you away, because it is his turn to dig into wounds, “he didn’t tell you?” Faux sympathy touches his voice, like you’re a cat to coo at. His knuckle traces lightly along the line of your jaw. 

His brow arches fractionally as his thumb traces over the line of your chin, to your bottom lip, “or better yet, you didn’t look into his future? Know when he will return to you? That he would return safely?” 

Anger is a slow rumbling beast inside of you, raising its weary head, cracking open an eye. 

“I thought you knew everything.” He insists. 

When his thumb parts your lips, you sink your teeth down onto his thumb, hard and quick. 

But he laughs again, surprised, delighted. 

He squirms his thumb out from between your teeth, wretches it away, letting you swallow around the faint taste of his skin once it’s gone. 

“It’s always been so amusing to me, to see bruises and scratches and bite marks in Satoru’s skin. He is supposed to be untouchable and yet–” 

“What do you want?” 

(You know what he wants.)

“–he isn’t. Not to you.” 

“Never to me.” You agree, if only to spite him. 

“I’m only here to check on you,” he says, but his voice is strange, always setting off alarm bells in your mind. “Just as he asked.” 

“Aren’t you a good friend?” You sneer, because you know what he will do, you know how this ends. You know because–

“The very best,” he answers and it is almost sad, voice losing some of its bravado, its oil. All water now. It pulls at you. You swallow hard. “I only came to check on you.” 

He means it this time. 

You look at him, hard and long, before you say, “did you enjoy it?” 

“What?” 

“Walking in his footsteps? Coming here like you’re him? Trying to touch me like you’re him?” You ask and your voice isn’t mean, but honest, genuinely curious. “Do you want me to treat you like him, too?” 

Surprise parts his lips, rounding out his eyes fractionally.

“Do you want to be him? Or have him the way I do?” 

But then his surprise sloughs off, melts away into a slow revelation. His face transforms, suddenly open.

“You’re jealous of me,” he realizes. 

“In the same way you’re jealous of me.” You answer him and his smile is a slow, confident curl. 

“In the same way that we’re both jealous of him.” Suguru says and his voice is just a rasp, caught somewhere in the space between you two, in the horrible truth of it all. 

You turn your head away from him, give him your profile, but he snatches your jaw back quickly and forces you to look at him. 

“If I was him, I would marry you and make another garden to keep you trapped in. I would perfect a veil you could never get through. I would keep you safe somewhere. I would keep you on a leash somewhere.” The admittance frees from his mouth and makes you squirm and fuss, suddenly struggling in his hold, “I would never let you out of my sight.” 

You claw a little at him, jerk your head free enough from his grasp to bite out, “it’s a good thing you aren’t–”

“I think he underestimates you. I think you’re his blind spot.” Suguru says, eyeing you, almost glaring at you, trying to unravel you with his gaze alone and pull you apart. “I think you have something horrible inside of you.” 

It’s your turn to laugh, wildly, letting your head fall back a little in his grasp. Crowing up to the sky. 

“Suguru,” you say his name, “Suguru,” you sing it, clawing at his clothes, his arms, up to his chest and shoulders, “Suguru,” you purr, laughing again, looking up into his face until the clash of your eyes could have sparked and burned a whole forest down. You look at each other, horrid reflections of one another, a wretched mirror, and smile the way he does, like a lazy cat that’s caught the truth between its teeth;

“I think the same of you.” 

***

Your amulet winks in the sun. You let your eyes flutter, let it pull you throughout time. 

One of your ancestors is on the other side; the man who you’ve seen several times. Who sees you now and frowns as if you’re a bad omen. 

“Hello, again,” he still says. 

“You don’t look pleased to see me.” You say, and then before you can stop yourself, “my father looks at me like that.” 

His face instantly crumples, “I’m sorry–I’m sorry.” He shakes his head, “sometimes, I think you just needed someone to treat you like your age, to treat you kindly.” 

“My mother does.” You say, almost defensively. Infinitely, you are defensive of your mother, you wish you could covet her. You wish you could be her. You wish the world hadn’t been so cruel to her. And then you speak, “but my father will kill her.” 

You think about Zeus, sometimes, and how his father swallowed him whole. How he had to gut him to get out. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, “we’ve tried countless versions to–”

Slowly, you realize, “you’re trying to save me.” 

He looks too guilty for that. 

“No,” you say carefully, “you’re trying to stop me.” 

You wonder if they should’ve stopped Zeus, too. 

Formidable you are, they can’t quite seem to do it, though, somehow, someway, it is always you. 

“I often think it’s the same thing.” He says gently, “but at every turn, we’re stopped.” 

“By who?” You ask. 

He goes silent now and the vision begins to bend and run, like watercolors washing together on a page, it’s all going sideways. 

“By the person who orchestrated this all from the beginning, the one we can’t–” 

Stop.

***

You plant seeds now. 

You begin to throw fits, as your clan calls them. Whatever that means. 

Tantrums, is what your father bemoans about, warning your mother that if you don’t cut this shit out, he’d do it for you. 

But you have days where you won’t stop screaming and crying. When you start, you realize sometimes it just won’t stop, like there is a beast howling inside of you. Agonized. It burns and aches in the pit of you, to get on all fours and cry and cry.

To sob wretchedly. To wail until it fills your whole house with that sorrowful noise. 

You thought, at first, you were only doing it for yourself. For what you needed. It’s realer than you can understand, the tears are real, cutting down your face, the anger is real. The heartbreak. 

You break things. You and your father scream at each other. 

He slams hands against walls beside your head. 

He grabs you too harshly, shakes you so hard that your teeth click in your head, and all you do is fight and kick. Moan and cry. Growl and hiss through clenched teeth. 

At some point, you always beg for Satoru. 

And at some point, your mother always sends for him.

And he always comes. 

Always. 

It happens once, twice, three times, until there are too many to count.

He always comes. 

Your father won’t hurt you in front of him. Your clan, everyone, leaves you to him, since he is the only one who is able to calm you. 

(You plant the seeds now, so when you need them–they’ve already grown.)

Behind closed doors, he holds you, cradles you to his chest and coos until you can calm down. You’re reminded of being children like this, puppying up next to his side, against him. 

You think he loves it, being needed by you. Being the only one who could soothe you. 

(The only one who can ruin you.) 

Possession blossoms in him and tenderly, you nurture it. 

Until one day he looks at you, with your tear stained face and sniffling nose, thumb brushing beneath your eyes, along your faded little scars, and says;

“I think I owe you an apology.” 

You pick your head up a little, tilt it to the side. 

He gives you a sad smile, loving, and doting, but infinitely sad.

“I think I made you–” he murmurs, “I think I made you like this.”

And when he says he’s sorry again, you can’t help but feel he isn’t that sorry, after all. 

You know you aren’t, at least.  

***

Your side is slammed into the wall, hard enough to make your teeth clink together, but slow enough that you knew it was coming. You know how this argument goes. You know everything your father is about to say before he even says it. 

Your mother is pounding on the locked door. It is best she doesn’t see this. 

She screams and scratches at the wood for you, wailing, begging him not to hurt you in any way. Her whole life she has begged for you. 

You think Rhea must’ve begged Kronos like this, too. 

A knot aches in your throat, tears blurring your eyes as you listen to her scream, and scream, and scream. You refocus on your father. 

He approaches you again, lifting you by the front of your clothes, up from the ground. “I’m sick of your excuses,” he hisses to you. “I know you have had opportunities to look into this future.” 

“He keeps his Infinity up around me–” 

“Bullshit.” Your father slams you again against the wall, the back of your head colliding hard enough with the wall that it leaves a dent. Pain radiates up the back and you think you can feel the slow warmth of blood blossom there. 

Something inside of you goes completely still and quiet. 

Then it roars forward like an animal at the end of its leash. 

“You refuse to look into his future–I will not have raised a weak, sentimental–” Your father drops you in a heap, turns away from you as he rakes a hand through his hair, “you’re just like your mother.” 

You can feel blood slide down the back of your neck. You reach around to touch tentatively at the wound, your fingers returning to you slick and shining with it. You rub it between your fingers before peering up at your father. 

With everything inside you, you wish you were like your mother. 

“I am not,” you say simply and he rounds on you again. 

“Then prove it to me that–” 

“I will kill you one day.” You tell him and there isn’t a threat in your voice. 

He freezes, hovering above you. 

You smile at him, slow, all teeth. 

“What did you say?” He asks and maybe he’s trying to intimidate you, but you can hear the note of fear in the question, the tremble that he can’t contain.

So you say again, slowly, so he can understand you perfectly, “I will kill you one day.” 

“How dare you threaten me–” 

He raises his hand like he will strike you. 

“It isn’t a threat, father.” You tell him, “it’s just the future.” 

The slap stings but it only makes you laugh. Barking. Hysterical. Your mother has gone quiet. 

All the world has gone quiet, you think, with what you’ve said. 

You pick yourself up from the ground and rise, a little unsteady, as more blood rushes from the wound in your head. But your father doesn’t move, doesn’t budge, frozen in shock, maybe fear, as you return to the door and open it slowly. 

You will gut him one day, crawl out of his belly victorious. 

Your mother falls into your arms in a heap. You hold her, let her hold you, let her fold you into her arms and cradle the wound at the back of your head like you’re a child again. You look at your father over her shoulder and the look on his face is nothing short of horror. 

You must have proved to him that you are nothing like your mother, after all. 

***

Masterlist | <- Prologue: Godlings | Chapter Two: Anything, Everything ->

[rmoonberry]

cw: dead, blood, angst.

Even though Cangse Sanren was able to call her with the bell, it was too late. Finding her dead body covered in blood, Li Yue burst into tears, hugging her beloved shimei.

Before leaving the heavenly mountain, Li Yue, the first disciple of the heavenly fox, Baoshan Sanren, gave to Xinyue a bell. "If you ever need me, just stir the bell. It doesn't matter where you're, I'll go find you,"

Xinyue laughed "Now I have six tails, Shijie! I will be fine, but do not blame me if I call you just to bother you" Li Yue looked at his shimei with an soft smile and her heart beating fast.

Her feelings overflowed, but never told them out loud. Xinyue, now known as Cangse Sanren, called her to tell her about the man she fell in love, when she married according to the foxes traditions, when she became pregnant and when she had her baby.

The bell broke and Cangse Sanren waited. It only needed a couple of minutes to arrive and Li Yue was always happy to see her Shimei and her family. Seeing her happy relieved her heart. Li Yue always went to her on each occasion, giving her a new bell every time the previous one broke

The last time Cangse Sanren used the bell, Li Yue hoped to see her shimei's smile, the husband's voice and her little nephew's laugh. What she saw, on the other hand, was a massacre. Bodies scattered throughout the forest and a strong smell of blood.

Li Yue saw Cangse Sanren lying on a tree with a hole in her stomach. Her husband was a few meters away, without moving, also covered with blood. She was frozen, thinking that it should be a nightmare. Cangse Sanren's hand fell and a golden bell rolled away and broke into thousands of pieces.

Yue hugged her Shimei and cried, cried and swore to take revenge. She knew the name of the clan who did this, probably in looking for fox tails. She wanted to go there and freeze everything. Her eyer glowing in a icy blue. It was only a sob that make her stop.

Within Cangse Sanren's tails, there was her baby, Wei Ying, snuggled against himself, with his eyes strongly closed and accelerated breathing. Yue took it in my arms and cried. The little kit was burning in a fever. Cssr had probably not called her to ask for help but for her kit.

Forgetting her revenge for a moment, Yue took the baby with her, promising in silence that she would protect him with her life.

end

[zhng96]

LUCEM - terazono keita

↳ synopsis: hearts planted six feet underground, the buds of flowers still manage to pierce through the rotten soil and basks in the unfamiliar light.

↳ pairing: prince!terazono keita x gn!asassin!reader (royalty au)

↳ genre: fluff, comfort, angst

↳ warnings (updated at the beginning of every chapter): mentions of death, mentions of assassination, the queen is literally evil, sadism (from the queen), mentions of being stabbed, unedited writing, ummm i think thats it?

perm taglist: @tzuberry @hrtattcker @neohyxn @avocarua @dwcljh @uyujns @knrejj @taeraemisu @leejeongz

(scroll to the end to find the masterlist.)

oo. PROLOGUE.

the thunk of your heartbeat could almost substitute that of the queen's band as her gaze lingered on your bowed head with a disturbingly scrupulous gaze.

rumors of the queen's true attitude often resurfaced around the peasantry population of mare- after all, being completely isolated from the other nations, what had they better to do than gossip.

whether some would consider it lucky or unlucky- you were given the opportunity to serve her majesty herself. however, serving the highest power in mare does not commend you to overlook your crimes; neither does it pay very well. despite working under her royal majesty, your job was not of your choice- only a debt of your father you had to serve in his stead. a responsibility those innocent had to be burdened, while the perpetrator lives a life of wealth a far ways away.

a church bell ring and the silence of the juries. you almost find yourself laughing at the juxtaposition if it weren't for the unnecessary cuffs binding your wrists, and the guards ready to spear your feet in place if you even as much as shifted between your feet.

while the queen rewarded other guards with bags of coins, you were reminded of how lucky you were that she refrained from killing your entire bloodline for the mistakes of your father.

"by judgement of the juries, i hereby declare this treasonous scoundrel... the death sentence."

you didn't do it... really. you did nothing more than steal a single loaf of bread for your family... it wasn't like you killed anyone...

murmurs fill the room. some even resort to cussing you out directly- words that were never welcome in the palace- only by exception of a trial for treason.

stumbling upon the body of the beloved knight captain at the entrance of the palace was truly just a coincidence...

your ears seem to twitch at the sound of the guards' grips tightening against their spears. death sentence... here? right now?

nothing but a knave to her, you were. always dishonest, always untrustworthy, always...

"halt!" her golden eyes seem to glisten with irrevocable levity- it was almost as if- no it was sure she was enjoying this. "why... quite unfair that i don't get a say... especially when they are one of my most prized knights." an unsettling giggle dies on her lips as she speaks. liar, you think, your fingers twitch to just get a hold of her throat and squeeze- "wasted potential.... what a shame. i say we send her to kill queen terazono! if she doesn't come back with either her head or her heart, well then... we'll deal with her... accordingly." a sickly giggle bubbles from her throat as she tuts. her smirk grows even wider at the sight of you cowering under her gaze.

always... so easily controlled.

you lips part... sure you were a knight... but that does not compare to being an assassin. your head spins at the sentence- were you to kill the queen and be banished from ager (the land of the terazono clan) and be released from these baseless accusations, or be killed in mare (pathetically, if you had to add) without a fight. you growl in overwhelm, finally meeting the eyes of the woman that holds your fate like dough in her hands- no doubt she knew what she was doing. "i'll do you one better... i'll come back with the head of their next heir. how does terazono keita sound?" by the look of pure glee and the dainty clap of her hands at your proposal, you assume you've played the right cards... for now.

ooi. ONE.

oii. TWO.

iii. THREE.

oiv. FOUR.

navi. mlist.

[brewed-addiction]

whatever it is you're doing for the day/night, they're here to cheer you on :D

[basicclangenblog]

Allegiances

Morning-Dove Clan

Leader: Creststar - a grey tabby she-cat

Deputy: Lightdew - a white and golden tom

Medicine Cat: Softwhisker - a long-furred golden ticked tom

Warriors:

Websprout - a long-furred speckled pale grey and white tom

Paleleap - a golden brown tabby and white tom

Ravendawn - a long-furred black smoke she-cat

Creekdaisy - a grey tabby she-cat

Lakeclash - a black ticked she-cat

Bubblingfoot - a dark brown tabby and white tom

Apprentices

Queens and Kits

Bubblingfoot, caring for Moosekit (a grew tabby and white tom) and Wormkit (a brown tabby and white she-cat)

Roach - a ginger tabby and white she-cat, caring for Milkkit (a brown tabby and white tome), Antkit (a white she-cat), Bogkit (a white and brown tabby tom), Fernkit (a white and masked ginger tabby tom), and Kestrelkit (a golden tabby and white tom)

Elders

Wisteriadrift - a long-furred dorsal-striped grey tom

Glowing-Fish Clan

Leader: Piperstar - a dorsal-striped pale grey tom

Deputy: Stempelt - a long-furred dark brown she-cat

Medicine Cat: Scorchleaf - a long-furred black tabby tom

Mediator: Brightdapple - an unusually dappled pale and white tom

Warriors:

Lilacmimic - a long-furred white and sorsal striped black point she-cat

Chirpflame - an unusually dappled cream and white she-cat

Hushnoise - a long-furred unusually spotted black and white she-cat

Hyacinthrain - a speckled dark ginger and white she-cat

Squirrelwing - an unusually spotted pale she-cat

Yewrun - a silver ticked tom

Elio - a pale she-cat with a cyan bell collar

Apprentices:

Queens and Kits

Cats Outside the Clan

Fern

[noirandchocolate]

Round 3 super fun happy comments post time!

Match 1, Vimes vs. Rob

Vimes I love you buddy but there is no way you can handle a Feegle going down your drawers.

--@purpledemoncat

Vimes would probably get adopted by the clan. He has a similar distaste for lawyers. All they need to do is get rid of his penchant for following the law.

--@missnotlob

Feegles are superstitious Rob would see the following dark and bugger off.

--@shiftyfly

But also this poll missed a golden opportunity for Rob v Adora Belle. Because there's plenty of people Rob could beat who could also beat Adora. But I firmly believe no male feegle could ever beat her. You really think that someone afraid of the pursin' o' the lips and the tappin' o' the feets could beat Spike??? I do think after the fact all the rest would be terrified of her but Rob would actually become great friends with her. (Much to Moist's terror.)

--@myidealhousehaschickenfeet (This is so funny, yes I definitely want these two to meet.)

Match 2, Granny vs. the Librarian

Granny would just Borrow him and we'd have a "stop hitting yourself!!' situation.

--@purpledemoncat

Granny turns the Librarian back into a human, or headologies him into doing it himself. He spends the next week crying and trying to grab things with his feet.

--@missnotlob

I once again point out that Granny Weatherwax is somewhat unclear on the concept of a friendly fight and very unclear on the subject of Granny Weatherwax losing anything. The Librarian ain't no fool. He's either pulling a Rincewind or backing away very slowly.

--@the-damn-things-overlap

The Librarian is a clever ape. He takes the bag of peanuts Gytha Ogg brought, thoughtfully eats one, shakes his head and points to Granny. He isn't gonna fight her.

--@msmeiriona

I feel like the fact that the Librarian is an inherently silly figure is what could lead to an upset here. Granny can rise above any serious threat and will herself look silly sometimes in handling minor ones like say raindrops or her broomstick. But I don't know how well she'd tangle with an inherently silly threat. And I think the Librarian could actually snag this one.

--@omicheese

Match 3, Vetinari vs. Nanny

@pourablecat did fanart of this match's outcome!

I can't articulate why I voted Nanny but I looked into her smiling face and it just felt right.

--@hazelnootle

There's a reason why Nanny lives in Lancre and it's to stop her from pile driving this man.

--@purpledemoncat

It's sheer narrative logic. What looks like a friendly old lady goes up against a trained assassin. The only way this could look more million to one was if she were blindfolded on one leg.

--@katistrophe

Vetinari plays Thud, Nanny Ogg plays Twister.

--@modstin

Would Nanny winning be fucking hilarious? Yes. But they had to invent a cursed gun and an entirely new system of poisoning to get a scratch on Vetinari so. And he couldn't be convinced to drink her scumble anyway. Vetinari got one-shotted by a magic user exactly once and is not about to let that happen again.

--@twofoursixohjuan

Vetinari may be a dictator but Nanny Ogg has to plan family game night for 100 people every weekend. I think that makes her far more powerful a foe. His ass is not ready for the Ogg.

--@spunchthegoblin

The only person Vetinari has ever feared is his Aunt. Nanny is the primordial matter from which all Aunties are formed.

--@thisblogisboundforglory-blog

Match 4, Carrot vs. Angua

@thestuffedalligator and @oorpe made this one sexy in a silly kind of way, and I am here for it.

Carrot, being ever the chivalrous gentleman, tries to LET Angua win. She realizes what he's up to & losers her whole entire temper. Carrot ends up having to pin her to stop her thrashing him in a fit of rage. he wins by accident for the pin & is DREADFULLY embarrassed about it.

--@javaelemental

This is a IDW Sonic Issue #57 moment, here.

--@cipher-of-the-round-table (I don't know what his means but I laughed.)

SO MUCH good commentary on the fights this time, I really enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts. Everybody go check out the notes on all the fights, they're full of more funny and well-reasoned rationales for voting!

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday our longest running comic, first published on July 30th 1938 the Beano is 85 years old today!

An ostrich called Big Eggo was the front page star, and the comic only cost 2d. The central composition was also different. While the modern Beano is entirely based on comic strips, the early Beano had stories told with pictures with text beneath explaining what was going on, and stories told only with text. It also lacked many of the characters that are synonymous with it now, Dennis, Rodger and Minnie only arriving in the golden years of the 1950s.

A few months before The Beano came its sister paper, The Dandy, and a year after another sister, The Magic comic. Due to the Second World War however, only two of these were to survive. The war meant that comics had to use fewer pages, by printed in lesser numbers and less often. This meant that the Beano and Dandy were made smaller, only available to those who pre-ordered them, and were only printed on alternate weeks. They provided a vital service in the war, warning children to leave alone things like mines on beaches and printing stories to outline the difference between Nazis and normal Germans and so teaching children not to demonize people based on nationality. They also pictured the enemy leaders as bungling fools, such as in The Beano strip, Musso the Wop and in the many times that Lord Snooty and pals went to give the Fuhrer a piece of their mind.

The 1950s is thought to be the golden age of The Beano as so many of the most popular and long running characters were created then, such as Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Rodger the Dodger and the characters that would eventually become known as The Bash Street Kids, whose original incarnation was a basically identical story called When The Bell Rings.

As well as it’s regular characters, the Beano also had it’s supply of irregulars, who popped in every so often for one off-stories. These were usually less cartoony, the characters looking more realistic and detailed, and the stories themselves were often more serious. These stories included General Jumbo and The Iron Fish. A more recent example would be Billy The Cat.

Of course being a Scottish publication there were some characters who were based here, most notable were two from the 1970's Wee Ben Nevis T\and he McTickles., the latter involved Chief Jock and his highland clan fought a comic war of attrition against their rivals the McNasties, while avoiding the pranks played on them by the "McHaggises", small round animals with a similar shape to a haggis and with long noses and thistles for ears. Some McHaggises had legs of different length on opposite sides of their bodies, allowing them to remain horizontal while walking around the sides of mountains.

More recently The Beano has been moving with the times n recent years there have been a number of tweaks and changes made to some of the principal characters and now, to mark the publication’s 85th anniversary, five new characters have been added to the Bash Street Kids: Harsha, Mandi, Khadija, Mahira and Stevie Starr to better reflect 21st Century life.

One of the new characters suffers from anxiety while another wears a hijab and they have already been scrutinised by some sections of the media. Beano bosses are prepared for accusations of ‘wokery’ and yet another so-called politically correct assault on our heritage, but insist that we all have to move with the times and that, prior to the changes, all ten of the original Bash Street Kids were white and nine were boys.

This outdated picture, they quite rightly argue, doesn’t reflect the society that today’s Beano readers inhabit and, if they want to retain existing readers, not to mention attract new ones, they need to move with the times. It was the same motivation which prompted management at the comic to rename key characters Fatty and Spotty, Freddy and Scotty a couple of years ago.

While Freddy still looks like someone who wouldn’t ever say no to extra chips, there is no need for his old, outdated nickname, which quite frankly, has been outlawed in playgrounds across the land for the past three decades at least

Of course there will be thosde who disagree with the newer characters and name changes, but I wonder how many of these folk have actually picked up a copy of The Beano since the 1970's?

If being respectful of others’ beliefs and feelings makes me woke then I’m guilty as charged and, quite frankly, I would be worried if I wasn’t considered to be as such.

Tens of thousands of copies of The Beano are sold every week which, in this digital age, is very impressive and is testament to its enduring relevance. We live in different times to those of our grandparents and recognising that fact is a strength rather than a weakness.

[ell-vellan]

Ooh for the WIP game!! Bull introduces El to Zevran.... and Untitled Document 😈

So as it turns out, I didn't check what "untitled document" was specifically as it was an old doc I recently found again (old enough that El had a different name!). And it's part of the Bull introduces Zevran to El lead-in, just like...longer. 🤣 But some of the details may not line up right. It needs editing for sure.

So you'll get both! Sorry to disappoint it's not something more salacious!

--

"Hey, kadan. See that elf over there? The one with the tattoo?"

They were sitting in Herald's Rest, enjoying a lull between crises, for once, in their usual corner.

El had to lean out from her seat. She just caught the profile of a swarthy male elf, blond, with an amiable face, his eyes crinkling with laughter as he apparently charmed the bartender. His tattoo wasn’t Dalish, and neither were his clothes – leather, but not a craftsmanship she recognized. "I've never seen him before."

"He's not one of ours. He's just passing through. I met him on a job some five or six years ago. Name's Zevran."

The name rung a little bell in the back of her mind, but she couldn't place it. “That isn't a Dalish name, as far as I'm aware.”

"He's Antivan, not Dalish. Former assassin for the Antivan Crows. Well, former member, anyway. Pretty sure he's still an assassin."

Ellawayn reeled, starting to stand. "An assassin? Here?"

Bull chuckled. "Relax, kadan, he's not here for you. He’s a friend. He left the Crows over ten years ago – and the Crows don't exactly allow their members to leave. Last I heard, he had taken out a handful of their leaders, to boot. So the fact that he's still alive is pretty impressive." Bull took a nonchalant sip from his tankard and said casually, "Guess it's not too surprising that he was one of the hero of Ferelden’s best buddies during the Blight. Helped him take down the Archdemon in Denerim."

El stared at Bull. Mahariel was the most famous elf in an age – that is, until she got herself into this mess – and her personal hero as a girl.

“Pretty sure they’re married now, though,” Bull continued conversationally. “Or whatever the Dalish equivalent is. Definitely seemed like it when I met ‘em.”

Ellawyn lowered herself to the table and hissed under her breath. “He’s – that’s – that’s Zevran Arainai?”

She looked at him again. Other than the daggers strapped conspicuously to his waist and thigh, she wouldn't have initially considered him a threat. He was a handsome older elf, lively and engaging the patrons around him, making them laugh. Bits and pieces of his lyrical accent floated about the bar noise.

“So, funny thing,” Bull continued. “He’s here because I wrote to him.”

--

“Zev, I'd like to introduce you to Inquisitor Lavellan.”

Zevran stood with a bow. When he spoke, it was with a lilting Activan accent. "My dear lady – your eminence – it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance." He kissed the back of her hand with the most courtly of manners, as though he were a prince and not a former member of the Crows, and El froze, feeling an absurd blush rush to her cheeks. All of her diplomatic training fled in the face of this charming man – the bonded of the most famous elf in Thedas before her.

Zevran’s golden eyes flashed to Bull, questioning. "But, ah, I thought it was Herald? This is the Herald's Rest, yes?"

"It's both, I'm afraid," she answered with a self effacing smile. "But please. Call me Ellawyn. Neither title really suits me. And anyway…I've heard so much about you, I feel as though we're already acquainted.”

Zevran lifted a mischievous brow at Bull. “Has she, now? What silly tales have you filled the Inquisitor’s head with, my friend?”

Bull laughed heartily. “Not from me!” He cocked his thumb at El. “El’s been hearing about your Warden’s exploits since she was a kid.”

Zevran’s eyes widened on Ellawyn.

“I was perhaps fourteen during the Blight,” she explained. “News of Warden Mahariel’s heroism reached far and wide, even to my clan in the Free Marches. He was a hero to us all.”

Zevran clutched his chest and pretended to stumble backwards. “Oh, you do wound me. Alas, it is not your fault, my dear! But no, I suppose time marches on. Come, come, let us speak somewhere with perhaps fewer ears to overhear. I believe all three of us have many people who want us dead, yes?”