#the great lakes are.. indefinable

[marc0wave]

Fic丨Xavier Thorpe x Reader

I just finished watching Wednesday! This is a request about the overly obsessed Xavier Thorpe x reader. A quick one shot, if there are any grammatical errors please just leave a comment and let me know, I'll correct them, and more requests are welcome!

Xavier Thorpe x Reader

- Swear to God, Xavier must not be one of those highly emotional geniuses who can read minds. To say where he has spent his greatest talent in his life, look at his private studio, his secluded room piled with sketches and other paintings, which is his stage.

- Of course, he is not yet so skilled at controlling his work, and usually the more emotionally charged the work is, the more likely it is to surprise him with something unexpected. He paints your eyes in an aimless drawing, so intent is he that he doesn't take a step back until those eyes blink in front of his eyes, as if in a dream. At that moment, Xavier realized that when he talked to you, even just passed by you, he felt a burgeoning, stormy anxiety from the bottom of his heart.

- The last time he felt this anxiety was when he realized the fact that his special abilities might not be completely under his own control for a while.

- You are so indefinable that any adjective or metaphor can only come infinitely close to you, but cannot perfectly describe any of your qualities. So, yes, you are not easy to speculate about, you remind him of his dreams and his special abilities, and of every moment he spent unaccompanied at night, painting in his studio full of doubt and pain.

- Xavier doesn't like the uncertainty, too much randomness makes him feel like he doesn't know where to go, but he can't deny that it's this dangerous randomness that makes him willing and eager to be close to you. There is a subtle voice in his heart, as subtle as the ripples caused by falling leaves on the surface of a lake, a voice that prompts him to believe that you are different from those students who fawn and inherit human inferiority. You are kind, pure as the first snowflakes of winter, and most importantly, you will not judge him, you will not pressure him, and you will not hurt him. How can he restrain the desire to get close to you?

- Xavier is not the kind of person who can easily surrender his trust. Perhaps it is because of his family environment, or perhaps because he has been in a seemingly harmonious but in fact contradictory environment like Nevermore for so long that he has become a good observer and not a good participant. He can keep his head on the sidelines, but can't make sure his every word is so wise when confronted with you. When he sees your eyebrows raise slightly at some silly expression of his, he mentally reprimands himself. But to be honest, he also enjoys seeing your puzzled look once in a while. You are so different from those people that he wants to observe you with the respectful attitude of an observing muse and cherish your presence.

- So there are times when Xavier can be a bit of a humble companion. He never thinks about going further immediately, but he shows vague jealousy when he sees you getting along well with others. Instead of embarrassing you, he will only secretly embarrass himself, turning his thoughts and mood swings into jumbled lines. Soon, he will accumulate a whole sketchbook about you.

- For his ability, a sketchbook is of great use, isn't it? He can't hold your hand, but he can spend sleepless nights gazing at the drawing of your hand awakened by his magic, dancing before his eyes, recreating the moment you were writing notes in class. Your eyelashes twitched vividly in the wind, your lips would purse tightly when you encountered a difficult subject, your lovely cheeks and your bobbing tresses, any detail that belonged to you, slept in Xavier's sketchbook. Everyone has a secret that they hate to keep until it rots, and for the current Xavier, it's this sketchbook. He doesn't want to be treated like a stalker just yet.

- The sweetest moment for him is when he stands in his chair drawing the graffiti on the wall and you stop and watch him draw. For just a moment, he is a straw man, a fleeting bubble, a feather in the dark, a memory that can easily be replaced, a paintbrush, but he doesn't mind. The fact that your footsteps stop for the colors born under his brush is enough to satisfy him.

- An amazing fact, it was not until the day he got up the courage to give you a painting that you exchanged cell phone numbers. He dared not imagine what kind of reason made him actually forget to use this excuse to get close to you in the beginning, but he felt that it was a special honor. You don't text, you don't use video calls, but it's surprising that he felt so connected to you in such a detached way from modern technology.

- It's kind of hard, isn't it? He's dealing with roommates who have become increasingly eccentric in recent months, as well as his own emotions and the recurring dreams and opposing realities of your presence, but the good thing is that you're his anchor point, and where once he might have needed a beacon like you to be enough, now, Xavier is willing to tell himself this, it's probably you he needs, only you, not anyone else like you. He is attracted to your sincerity, your sanity, your character traits that can bring peace and hope to anyone, and your wisdom, which will not wear out any of his expectations, even if there is no response beyond friendship for the time being.

- Nothing bad is good, he said in his mind. Everything is still going on, and before he fills his next sketchbook with your sketches about you, he will surely find a way to ask you out.

[laundrybiscuits]

(Hanahaki AU tag)

They pull out of the parking lot in a kind of nearly-comfortable silence, the radio crackling with some Heart song. It’s not Eddie’s favorite, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Madonna or the Bee Gees, so he finds himself humming along. He drums on the steering wheel a little, letting the I-43 take up all of his conscious mind for a spell. 

The road curves, and they’re out of the suburban sprawl, nothing but scrubby green trees and long gray warehouses on either side; it’s a straight shot all the way to the hazy hills on the horizon. Eddie takes a deep breath, and it’s like his lungs are expanding all the way up to the sky, like he can breathe in the slick blue heavens and the road dust being kicked up in their wake all at once, like the whole sun-baked world is flowing through him.

It’s a beautiful day, he thinks, and then scoffs at himself, at how mundane a thought it is. This could be—this is the last summer he’s ever gonna see. Every day had better be fucking beautiful. He’ll wring the beauty out of the world with his last breath.

———

They get far enough out, eventually, that the wildlife starts to look a little different. Eddie’s gotten a lot better at identifying Indiana wildflowers over the last few weeks, but he’s seeing more and more stuff he doesn’t recognize. He always sees black-eyed susans before too long, though. Seems like they grow wild pretty much everywhere he looks, like they’re following him around or something. He doesn’t stop to pick any more, even though the ones in the van—the ones not coated in spit and bile—are starting to get a little funky. It was such a dumb idea to have them around, like that would help at all.

They stop for the night in Salt Lake at a motel for once, because they really can’t go too much longer without showering, and Eddie chucks out whatever plant matter he can find in the van. Maybe he’s ruining the local ecosystem or something, but he doesn’t care.

Steve helps. He’s obviously a little bemused by this development, but he doesn't ask any questions, just fishes rotting stems out of the footwells before they head over to reception. 

The woman behind the desk is probably thirty or so, with a dirty blonde ponytail and an ankle-length skirt; she looks deeply unimpressed with two grubby young men showing up in a beater van around sunset. Too late, Eddie thinks he probably should've sent Steve in alone to work whatever vestiges of charm have survived through the funk of having slept in a van for the last few nights. Even in a pretty innocuous t-shirt, faded enough that the ACCEPT logo and tour dates are barely legible, disreputability wafts off Eddie. The long hair, the visible tattoos, and something indefinably Munson is more than enough to make the clerk's face twist like a skunk just wandered in through the door. 

"Hi," says Steve, bright and oblivious, somehow coming across as clean-cut country club despite the stubble growing in. Definitely should've sent him in solo. "Can we get a room? Two queens, if you've got 'em."

The clerk looks them up and down, taking her time about it. "You boys know where you are?"

"...Salt Lake City?" Steve looks adorably confused. "We're just passing through, ma'am."

"Might be worth passing a little faster. We don't have any vacancies right now."

Steve very obviously leans back to glance at the lit VACANCY sign outside and the utter dearth of other vehicles in the lot. "What, seriously?"

"Sign's broken," she says, cool as ice.

Eddie rubs at the bridge of his nose and pushes in, leaning his elbows on the counter. "Listen, lady, we're just. Two pals on a little roadtrip through these great United States, trying to see some nature and shit, okay? We just want a couple beds for the night, that’s all. Not looking for any trouble.”

He sees the instant the penny drops for Steve, because Steve’s face goes all flushed and scandalized and kinda mad. Eddie kicks his ankle, hard, so Steve doesn’t get all bitchy about it. 

The clerk can’t be more than ten or fifteen years older than them, but she sniffs like she’s some kind of embittered dowager empress. 

“Maybe I can find something,” she says. “But I hear even one single complaint, you two are out. No refunds.” 

"Copy that, yep, won't be anything to hear." Eddie counts out the cash quick before she changes her mind, and steers Steve back out by the shoulder, nice and neutral. 

"What the hell was that?" Steve bursts out as soon as they clear the door. "What was—"

Eddie drops his hand from Steve's shoulder and squints at the chipped number on the keychain. "You see a Room 5 around here anywhere?" 

"Eddie."

"Steve."

"I'm serious."

"So'm I. Gotta pull the van around once we find it."

Steve subsides grumpily, folding his arms and peering around in the growing dusk for the door numbers. The lingering glow of the blood-orange horizon picks out the contours of his face in a hundred warm caresses, brushing copper along his cheekbones and igniting molten honey in the depths of his eyes.

Eddie will say this for Utah: it sure does have some pretty sunsets.

[dondeenblog]

The man and the woman

Man is the highest of creatures.

The woman is the most sublime of ideals.

God made for man a throne for the woman an altar.

The throne exalts, the altar sanctifies.

Man is the brain.

The woman's heart.

The brain produces the light, the heart produces the Love

Fruitful Light, Love resurrects.

The man is strong by reason.

The woman is invincible by tears.

The reason convinces, tears moving.

Man is capable of all heroism.

Woman of all martyrdom.

Heroism ennobles; sublimates martyrdom.

Man has supremacy.

The woman's preference.

Supremacy is strength, represents the right preference.

The man is a genius.

The woman an angel.

Genius is immeasurable, the angel indefinable.

The aspiration of man is supreme glory.

The aspiration of woman is extreme virtue.

The glory makes everything great, virtue makes everything divine.

Man is a code.

A gospel woman.

The code corrects, the gospel perfects.

Man thinks.

She dreams.

To think is to have a larva in the skull; dream is to have a halo on his forehead.

Man is an ocean.

The woman is a lake.

The ocean has the adorning pearl, the lake, dazzling poetry.

Man is the flying eagle.

She is the nightingale that sings.

Flying is dominate space. Sing is to conquer the soul.

The man is a Temple.

The woman is the Tabernacle.

In short: the man is placed where the land ends.

The woman where heaven begins.

[monasteryicons]

The Two Easters and Tomorrow’s Annual Miracle

The Patriarch of Jerusalem brings out the Holy Fire from the shrine encasing the Tomb of Christ

Every year on Holy Saturday according to the Eastern Orthodox calculations, a miracle takes place in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where Christ was crucified and entombed, and rose from the dead. The miracle of the Holy Fire has taken place at the same time, in the same manner, in the same place every single year for centuries. No other miracle is known to occur so regularly and so steadily over time.

Beginning the afternoon of Holy Friday pilgrims wait in anticipation for the miracle, camped as close to the Holy Sepulchre as possible. Beginning at around 11:00 in the morning on Holy Saturday the Christian Arabs chant traditional hymns in a loud voice. These chants date back to the Turkish occupation of Jerusalem in the 13th century, a period in which the Christians were not allowed to chant anywhere but in the churches. "We are the Christians, we have been Christians for centuries, and we shall be forever and ever. Amen!"- they chant at the top of their voices accompanied by the sound of drums. The drummers sit on the shoulders of others who dance vigorously around the Holy Ciborium. But at 1:00 pm the chants fade out, and then there is a tense silence, charged with the anticipation of the great demonstration of God's power for all to witness.

Shortly thereafter, a delegation from the local authorities elbows its way through the crowd. At the time of the Turkish occupation of Palestine they were Muslim Turks; today they are Israelis. Their function is to represent the Romans at the time of Jesus. The Gospels speak of the Romans that went to seal the tomb of Jesus, so that his disciples would not steal his body and claim he had risen. In the same way the Israeli authorities on this Holy Saturday come and seal the tomb with wax. Before they seal the door, they follow the custom of entering the tomb to check for any hidden source of fire which would make a fraud of the miracle.

How the Miracle Occurs

The Orthodox Patriarch then enters the Holy Tomb alone. Listen to this account of Patriarch Diodorus, who was Patriarch from 1981 to 2000:

"I enter the tomb and kneel in holy fear in front of the place where Christ lay after His death and where He rose again from the dead. I find my way through the darkness towards the inner chamber in which I fall on my knees. I say certain prayers that have been handed down to us through the centuries and, having said them, I wait. Sometimes I may wait a few minutes, but normally the miracle happens immediately after I have said the prayers.

"From the core of the very stone on which Jesus lay an indefinable light pours forth. It usually has a blue tint, but the color may change and take many different hues. It cannot be described in human terms. The light rises out of the stone as mist may rise out of a lake — it almost looks as if the stone is covered by a moist cloud, but it is light. This light each year behaves differently. Sometimes it covers just the stone, while other times it gives light to the whole sepulchre, so that people who stand outside the tomb and look into it will see it filled with light. The light does not burn — I have never had my beard burnt in all the sixteen years I have been Patriarch in Jerusalem and have received the Holy Fire. The light is of a different consistency than normal fire that burns in an oil lamp.

"At a certain point the light rises and forms a column in which the fire is of a different nature, so that I am able to light my candles from it. When I thus have received the flame on my candles, I go out and give the fire first to the Armenian Patriarch and then to the Coptic. Hereafter I give the flame to all people present in the Church."

When the Patriarch comes out with the two candles lit and shining brightly in the darkness, a roar of jubilee resounds in the Church.

The miracle is not confined to what actually happens inside the little tomb, where the Patriarch prays. For the blue light is reported to appear and be active outside the tomb. Every year many believers claim that this miraculous light ignites candles, which they hold in their hands, of its own initiative. All in the church wait with candles in the hope that they may ignite spontaneously. Often unlit oil lamps catch light by themselves before the eyes of the pilgrims. The blue flame is seen to move in different places in the Church. A number of signed testimonies by pilgrims, whose candles lit spontaneously, attest to the validity of these ignitions. The person who experiences the miracle from close up by having the fire on the candle or seeing the blue light usually leaves Jerusalem changed.

How Old is the Wonder?

The first written account of the Holy Fire dates from the fourth century, but authors write about events that occurred in the first century. So Saints John Damascene and Gregory of Nissa narrate how the Apostle Peter saw the Holy Light in the Holy Sepulchre after Christ's resurrection. "One can trace the miracle throughout the centuries in the many itineraries of the Holy Land," writes the Russian abbot Daniel, in his itinerary written in the years 1106-07.

Only the Greek Patriarch

The awesome honor of invoking the miracle of the Holy Fire is reserved for the Orthodox Patriarch – literally reserved by divine fiat. Several times over the centuries clergy from other churches or Moslem conquerors tried to exclude the Patriarch from the Holy Sepulchre on Holy Saturday. When this was attempted in 1579, as the Orthodox Patriarch Sophrony IV stood sorrowfully with his flock at the exit of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre near the left column, a divine light split this column vertically and the Holy Fire flashed out near the Orthodox Patriarch. A Muslim Muezzin, called Tounom, who saw the miraculous event from an adjacent mosque, immediately abandoned the Muslim religion and became an Orthodox Christian. The split column can be seen to this day.

Seeing is Believing

Numerous online videos of the Holy Fire are available on YouTube. One of the best is this 30 minute documentary:

"For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible."

The Two Easters

Easter is a moveable feast, meaning it is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. The First Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon (the Paschal Full Moon) following the northern hemisphere's vernal equinox. The date of Easter therefore varies between March 22nd and April 25th.

Why do the Western and Eastern churches sometimes celebrate Easter on different dates?

The Eastern churches base their calculations of the date for Easter on the Julian Calendar whose March 21 corresponds, during the 21st century, to April 3 in the Gregorian Calendar. So their celebration of Easter therefore varies between April 4 and May 8.

[amerasdreams]

I wonder what people from other countries think when Americans mentioned what state they're from. Do they have any idea what that state is like? I mean I bet they have as much of an idea as me for a lot of countries, very vague. It is "just" states within a country, we can't expect people to know about it. When a lot of Americans don't know much about other states... tho to be fair there are a lot of them. The US is vast. We don't really have a conception of it and you can't even being to until you travel extensively. But people from other countries probably see a skewed version of us from movies, the media... they can only see from the outside while we see from the inside (and millions of individual perspectives). They probably only know mostly about New York, California, Texas, and Florida. There's a lot more to US. A lot more nuance. A lot of states that tend to be overlooked but are also worthy of attention... underrated places it would be fun to go to/learn about. So many interesting corners of the world (which of course exist in other countries too... States just aren't so prominent)

[swtorramblings]

I Shall Save Myself-3: Inspiration

Senya at Vaylin’s bedside by @fleeting-sanity.

I Shall Save Myself Second Draft Chapter List

The Alliance has a plan to contain, rather than kill, the fallen Empress, if she should ever wake, as well as caring for her injuries and physical health. This has been developed in secret, and even those involved believe it is simply a way to delay her eventual execution.

Dr. Oggurobb looked very pleased with himself, but sometimes it was hard to tell how meaningful that was, he had that expression so often. Lana spoke first. “Is your design finished?” The doctor responded, “Oh, yes! I do not know why you went through so much effort to save her, but who am I to turn down the chance for Inspiration?” He turned to his panels, and a holo activated. “I do have to wonder, though, wouldn’t it be simpler to use a suppression device? Or keep her unconscious?” “We suspect she is simply too powerful now for anything we have to be enough, and Theron seems to think the Commander wouldn’t approve of keeping her in a coma indefinately.” Theron frowned and said, “He would, and you agreed with me.” “Of course he would. I don’t have to like it.” There were several seconds of silence before Oggurobb went on. “Very well. I don’t have a name for it yet, we developed it too quickly, but it should meet all your needs. A small, portable enclosure, with fully automated medical and defensive facilities. With some modifications, it should be useful in helping our forces survive the more extreme battlefield injuries.” He pressed some buttons, and the holo zoomed in to the inside of the design. “Of course, considering who will be occupying the prototype, we have put a number of automated weapons inside, and the unit will be sealed unless authorized personnel unlock it from the outside. It will give fair warning to Patient Zero if she were to wake, as well as alert us with great urgency. It is reasonably self sufficient for at least a month, for both medical and dietary needs. It can be fed materials as necessary from outside. If the occupant can gather local resources, it may last longer, but of course that won’t be possible in this case.” Theron said, “Still, let’s put the first one down somewhere with some kind of access to edibles and water. I’m sure the Tiralls will appreciate it.” Lana took it all in, then said, “All right, Doctor, it looks as though you’ve surpassed yourself, as you somehow always do. Considering the delicate nature of the project, we will need the names of everyone that worked on it so they can be debriefed.” Oggurobb thought, and replied, “It was just me and my usual staff. Oh, and young Vette helped with some of the automation routines.” The two humans looked at one another. Theron spoke first. “You didn’t tell her what this was for, did you?” “Of course not! We have kept the actual reason for the prototype, or why it became priority, in strictest confidence.” Lana looked suspicious. “Did she, by any chance, make any suggestions on the design?” “Yes, just one, we have added a small but efficient explosive device to destroy the unit. It would be a tragic loss, and an expensive one, but we don’t want any of our opponents to capture our Creations. It can be detonated remotely or with several pre-programmed triggers.” Theron rubbed his face with one hand. Lana looked at the ceiling for a moment. They said together, “She knows.” “I’ll have my people bring her in. Hopefully she can be made to understand the need for secrecy, if nothing else.” Theron walked out of the room. Dr. Oggurobb asked, “Is everything all right? Should we remove the explosive from the design?” Lana, ever pragmatic, replied, “No, leave it in for the prototype. We will discuss it with future production.” She paused, “All right, Doctor, this is your highest priority. How long will it take?” “No more than a week. We already have fabricators ready and programmed with the designs. I still do not understand all this effort for a person that will likely try to kill us if she recovers.” Theron returned just then. “It’s the right thing to do. Probably. Maybe. Are we doing the right thing, Lana?” “Perhaps. Regardless, we are committed to this course. Anyway, we will need Senya and Arcann soon, and they will not leave her side without some kind of assurance that she will be protected and cared for.” “Oh, yes, your brilliant plan.” “It is a risk, but it is necessary. Thank you, Doctor, we will be checking in daily. Theron, we need to go meet with Senya at the meeting point to discuss the next steps.” “The fun never ends.” “No, it really doesn’t.” Finally, they left the doctor. He released some of C2’s aroma of the week. It was going to be a long day of invention. He already had a dozen refinements to make for the next production model and needed a name for it. “To Inspiration.” He returned to his work.

As promised, just less than a week later, the prototype was ready. It was transported well outside the base, put down next to a lake surrounded by thick forest. Arcann and Senya brought the former Empress, now prisoner of the Alliance and the most hated woman in the galaxy, to the site. Though her injuries had been mostly mended, they gingerly took  her from the shuttle and carried her to the cubicle. The sensors recognized them, two of four people that had been granted access, and the defenses went into stand-by mode and the door opened. Senya carried her daughter into what would be her prison, if she ever returned to herself, and laid her down in the medical bay. She bent down and kissed her on the forehead, then exited the unit. She nodded to Arcann and stepped out to take Lana’s call. While his mother assured Lana that it was them, and that the transfer had gone smoothly, he stepped into the cube. He walked to his sister’s side and laid his hand on her shoulder. He said nothing. Soon, he turned and joined his mother. Unnoticed, a spark of lightning traced the young woman’s body and face, then was gone, before the internal sensors could activate for the first time. The doors sealed behind Arcann, and the camouflage systems activated. Mother and son knew that they were now being tracked by sensors and a fair amount of firepower. It would not be enough to stop a concerted effort, but they were needed elsewhere. If any of them were to have a chance, including Vaylin, they would need to leave her for a time. No one else would tend her or protect her, and they would not trust anyone that volunteered. They would have to trust her to this technology filled box in the wilderness. They returned to the shuttle and flew back to base. Behind them, their only remaining family slept, but not well.

[dreaming-about-fanfictions]

Love and Cat Pee - Leonard McCoy x Reader

Words: 1952 Pairing: Leonard McCoy x Reader Warnings: None, just a lot of fluff.

A/N: My Tag list is old. Please tell me, if you want to be removed! Some of you seem to have changed their usernames so I’m sorry if I didn’t tag you in this story. Tell me if you want to be added <3

Some days, being able to work on the Enterprise was the best thing that ever happened to you. You got to travel, see new planets, and meet people from all over the universe.

On other days, being able to work on the Enterprise made you wish you had stayed back on Earth in your hometown, working in your family’s little shop, instead of almost dying 200 light years away because you accidentally drank from a wrong glass.

Today was one of those days.

“Sit her down over there,” Captain Kirk ordered and two Security officers grabbed you under your arms, helping you sit down on a bench. “Kirk to Enterprise. Enterprise, please come in.”

“Enterprise. Scott here.” You heard a faint voice coming from Kirk’s communicator.

“Scotty, be prepared to beam Lieutenant Y/L/N up. And tell Doctor McCoy to get ready to treat a patient with Ladocsris poisoning.” After Mr. Scott acknowledged, he closed the communicator and looked down at you, frowning. “How are you feeling, Lieutenant?”

“Horrible, Captain” you managed to get out. You writhed in pain, arms tightly clutching to your side. It felt like someone had stabbed you with a burning hot knife right in your stomach and now continued to twist it around. “Am I dying?” you asked with gritted teeth.

Kirk shook his head. “You’re not going to die from this.” He suppressed a chuckle and shook his head. “Why the hell would you drink that, Lieutenant?”

“Certainly not because I wanted to spend my day in sickbay!” You wiped away sweat that had formed on your forehead. “Excuse me, Captain, but – fuck!” Another wave of pain washed over you.

The Enterprise had delivered some medical supplies to this planet and as a thank you, the crew was invited to join their Spring Festival. Because the ship was on a tight schedule, a landing party consisting of only six people beamed down to avoid coming across as disrespectful. At one point, you were all offered drinks. There were two different glasses on the table. You didn’t correctly understand which one you should take and since everyone was involved in conversations, you didn’t want to interrupt and ask. So you just took one.

Kirk looked at you sympathetically when you closed your eyes in pain. “Do you know what it was?”

“What?”

“The drink.”

“No, why?” You opened your eyes in suspicion.

“Well,” he looked down to hide the obvious amusement in his eyes. “They have this giant cat-like animal on the planet. It’s a sign of fertility because …. because its urine is basically the best fertilizer you can get.”

You stared at him, words slowly starting to make sense in your head.

After a few seconds, he continued. “Even though it’s not meant for drinking, they still collect it for their Spring Festival. It’s like a … religious thing.”

“You mean … You mean, I just drank …”

Kirk nodded.

What happened next was probably the worst thing you had experienced since the day you started working for Starfleet. You felt it coming up in your throat but it was too late - with a groan you leaned forward and vomited. All over your Captain.

***

When you woke up again, the pain was gone. It was replaced with a slight dizziness and a faint headache.

You tried to sit up, realizing you were in sickbay. Oh, you hated it here. That’s why you had become an expert of skipping annual exams and basically coming here at all. Not because you were afraid of them, no, that wasn’t it. Simply, because since day one you had the biggest crush possible on one particular Doctor – and you didn’t know how to deal with it. At all.

“Don’t get up just yet.”

Speaking of the devil.

Doctor McCoy appeared from behind a curtain. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” you mumbled, avoiding eye contact. Of all the professionals working here, he had to treat you? “Just a headache.”

He nodded. “That’s normal. The heada-“

“Oh, she’s awake!” Christine Chapel interrupted. Apparently she was on the way somewhere, carrying various blood samples in her hands, on her face a big grin. “You’re feeling better?”

“Mhm,” you nodded, slightly confused.

“That’s good to hear!” The grin didn’t fade when she walked away.

Furrowing your eyebrow, you looked over to McCoy. He kept his eyes locked on a hypo in his hands but you didn’t miss the amused sparkle in his eyes.

“What is it?”

“Mh?” The doctor cleared his throat, injecting you with the hypo. “The headache should disappear within a few hours. I will keep you here for a bit longer and run another test but I believe you should be fine.”

Another nurse kept passing by, nodding at you with a big wide smile. Ignoring what McCoy had just said, you answered: “I’d like to think everyone is just really happy to see me here but I’m sensing it’s something different.”

“I don’t know, maybe it has to do with you vomiting all over our Captain,” McCoy said casually and shrugged. “Just an idea.”

Oh fuck, was the only thought running through your mind when you suddenly remembered.

“Ugh,” you let out a loud groan and dramatically placed your hand over your eyes. Why did those things always happen to you?

On the last mission, you had accidentally pushed Chekov into a lake with a reddish color which resulted in him having a weird rash all over his body for two weeks and red hair. Now you not only drank something you wasn’t supposed to and probably sabotaged the whole shore leave, you decided to throw up on Kirk afterwards.

“I sabotaged the whole mission,” you scolded. “Fuck!”

“Watch your language in my sickbay. I’m the only one allowed to curse here.” The doctor was still standing in front of you when you removed your hand from your eyes. “Now stop being so dramatic, that corn-fed goblin –“

“Corn-fed goblin?” You interrupted.

“Yes.”

“I thought it was green-blooded goblin and corn-fed idiot.”

“Sometimes I like to vary a little with my insults.” He gave you a half smile before continuing. “The Captain will be fine. Jim had worse things on his body than vomit. Believe me.”

You frowned. “Do I wanna know?”

“No.”

A sigh escaped your lips. “I still have to apologize though.”

“Probably.” He turned to his instruments, shuffling things a little while you stared at the ceiling. “The crew won’t let you live that down, be prepared for that.”

You made an indefinable sound.

“I won’t either.”

Great. As if the embarrassment hadn’t already reached its highest point for this month.

“One of the security guards has also the opinion that you could’ve turned away if you wanted to. Now people are wondering why you didn’t do it.”

“How do you even know so much gossip?”

He shrugged. “My nurses talk a lot.”

You shook your head in disbelief. “Why I did it?” You scoffed. “Oh I don’t fucking know – excuse my language – maybe because I felt like it. Or maybe it was just me trying to get here so I can confess my love to you!”

Doctor McCoy put down the instruments and turned around again. “Well, was it?”

Realizing what you had just said, you kept your eyes locked on the ceiling. “No!” You denied, with probably a bit too much force in your voice. “Of course not. I mean. No.” You felt heat rising to your cheeks.

“Right,” the man replied. You didn’t see the smile on his lips. “Maybe I’ll just let you rest for a while, alright?”

“Maybe my headache will actually disappear then, Doctor.”

He left with a chuckle.

***

You weren’t able to sleep after he had left, so for another hour you were just staring at the wall, listening to regular beeping noise coming from the instruments.

You weren’t sure which event of the day was the worst but the more time you were thinking about it, probably the latter. He knew. He wasn’t supposed to know but now he did and you a part of you was – aside from being embarrassed – terrified. Yes, you had a crush on him but it was the kind of crush where you just admired him from afar. Nothing would happen between the two of you. But now that it had slipped from your mouth, it was real.

“I brought you something.” The curtain got pulled away and McCoy came in.

Oh no.

You lifted your head from the pillow. He was holding a small cup, which he placed on the small table next to the bed. A delicious smell ascended from it.

“My favorite tea?” You asked him a bit puzzled.

“Yes,” he smiled at you.

“How do you know?”

“You always drink it.” He simply said.

“You noticed?” A warm feeling began to spread in your stomach.

The doctor nodded.

“Well, thank you.” You took a sip of the tea. It was still hot, but not hot enough to burn your tongue. Just perfect.

“So about earlier –“

You almost choked on the liquid. “Please, don’t. I’ve been humiliated enough for one day.”

“I know,” McCoy chuckled. “That’s why I wanted to ask –“

“What?”

“Damn, you really need to stop interrupting people.” He shook his head.

“Sorry, please finish,” you mumbled and lifted the cup to your lips again.

“I wanted to ask if you’d like to have dinner with me tomorrow. Dinner as in … a date.”

This time you choked for real. You started coughing and Leonard was luckily fast enough to get the cup from your hands before you spilled hot tea all over yourself.

“So is that a yes?” He asked when you calmed down and were able to breath normally again.

You stared at him with mixed emotions, not quite believing that Leonard McCoy actually asked you out. Goddamnit, you were acting like a lovestruck teenage girl not like a full grown human and Starfleet member. “Yes.”

“Fantastic!” There it was again – the smile that Leonard McCoy almost never showed. It lit up the whole room, you thought. “Normally I’d take it slow and wait for a few more days before doing what I’m about to do next but you have already confessed your love for me so –“

“Oh, please stop it!”

“– so there’s no real reason to wait,” he finished his sentence with a smile. McCoy took a step forward so that he was now standing directly next to your sickbed.

“Wait for what?” You asked furrowing your brows. He already asked you out on a date. There was really nothing more he could do to make this day any better.

Slowly Leonard leaned down towards you and before you realized what was happening, you felt his lips on yours. The kiss was slow and tender and made you feel dizzy. His lips were soft, much softer than expected, and you wanted to melt when you felt his hand cupping your cheek. Apparently there was something he could to make this day any better. Two seconds later, the kiss was over. Leonard pulled away and looked at you lovingly. You were out of breath.

Suddenly his smile vanished and he grimaced.

You felt your stomach plummet. What happened? Were you that bad? Did he already regret asking you out and kissing you? “Did I do something wrong?” You asked, your voice barely audible.

“No, no, darlin’,” he reassured her quickly and lifted his hand to his mouth. “The kiss was … something else.”

“But?”

“But I think I can still taste a hint of that cat pee drink on your lips.”

***

My Masterlist

Send me a message if you want to be added to or removed from the tag list! Tag list: @goingknowherewastaken , @waitingforthestarstofall , @imoutofmyvulcanmind , @whatif-animagineblog​ , @loverbug1123​ 

[dulcidyne]

Experiments in Diplomacy: Compiling [8/?]

There’s nothing in the Interspecies Diplomacy subsection of the Initiative handbook that covers sharing a tech lab with an angara who can kill her in her sleep. She knows, she’s read every page. Twice. (A collection of in-between vignettes from the Tempest tech lab) 

//Jaal x Ryder // Humor. Romance. SFW // Previous chapters: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] or read on Ao3

Somewhere along the way to age seven, in Citadel docking bay 223, Se-ah Ryder decides crying, hugs, tantrums, and other public displays of emotion are things she has outgrown. Perfunctory, precise, she shuts them away as if embarrassing emotional habits can be sealed into donation boxes for young needy children in the Lower Wards like her half-melted asari dolls.

Donated or lost, the box she puts them in stays shut. She doesn’t cry when they pay their respects to her grandmother’s urn at the columbarium. Or, much later, in another docking bay, when Scott waves goodbye as he ships off for Arcturus. She doesn’t cry the first time Iraenya plays down their relationship to her colleagues, embarrassed and ashamed.  And when her mother dies, she takes a page out of her father’s book and finds a hospital supply closet and stifles her tears into her shirt collar.

It stays shut, that is, until now. Until twenty-eight uninterrupted minutes of sobbing into Jaal’s chest, followed by forty-one additional minutes of sporadic weeping interspersed with flailing grasps at composure. So, obviously, there is only one logical conclusion to make.

“Just run them again,” Se-ah hisses.

“Once again, Ryder, my scans do not detect any pathologic neurological patterns outside of baseline variation.”

She woke up to the dim ambient glow of the powered-down machine displays running through their background system scans, half-reclining in Jaal’s arms, in his cot, having cried herself to sleep in his embrace  like an infant--that alone is an abnormality. She doesn’t understand why SAM is having difficulty with the concept.

“Outside of baseline,” she pauses, the gnarled tangle that is her hair fluttering as Jaal’s snores gust over her head. It tickles her temples but she doesn’t want to dislodge the warm arm banding around her shoulders to brush it back. “Wait, SAM, does that mean you normally detect pathologic patterns?” “It exceeds my functional parameters to parse this data into a clinical diagnosis. It would be unethical to make an attempt. Dr. T’Perro would undoubtedly provide better insight.”

Maggie’s lights pulse unhurried staccato patterns from the corner. Se-ah stiffens in Jaal’s loose embrace, indignant. “ Unethical. You’re an AI integrated into my entire body. Little late to be worried about ethics isn’t it?”

“A relevant point. I additionally lack subjective expertise. My data collection is limited to two genetically similar individuals. It is therefore relatively impossible for me to extrapolate what is normal and abnormal outside of overt structural dysfunction.”

“Further,” SAM says, “I am not an inert observer. It cannot definitively quantify what impact my integration and ongoing observation and interaction has had on your baseline neurological state.”

Disquieting. Se-ah stills and attempts to parse this new revelation while Jaal’s chest rumbles against her ear like the purr of a massive but very contented kitten. It’s nice. She wishes she were still half asleep and allowed to enjoy it and not awake and mortified over her predicament. Mortified and now, thanks to SAM, horrified.

“So not only can you not tell me if my brain is broken, you’re also saying that just by being in my head, you’re changing how it works and doing so in a way that you lack the ability to detect? Like some kind of quantum observer effect?”

SAM doles out a calculated pause for her benefit. All his pauses are for her benefit as he processes information in nanoseconds, but this one feels especially so. A pity pause. Bad news pause.

“Correct.”

“Great,” she mutters, “I’m Schroedinger’s basketcase.”

“My scans do detect significant decreases to harmful neurological metabolites and reduced cortisol levels...likely the product of sufficient rest.”

So that’s what it is. No creaking limbs, phantom aches or raw fatigue scraping the inside of her eyelids raw. A loose, shivery sensation clings like mist in her chest. It feels like a lungful of the air on Mr. Orleal, saturated in starlight and the ozone tingle of the eezo deposits under the lake.

Melatonin has nothing on Jaal. Lexi would be thrilled. Happiness flutters against her ribs. She hides her smile against the vast sloping ridge of Jaal’s alien chest even though there’s no one else there to see how foolish it looks. A familiar scent tickles her nose and she sniffles back a sneeze. He smells warm and herbal, like grapefruit orchards and Earth sunsets--carnelian, blush,and gold-- if Earth sunsets prickled in her sinuses like wasabi.

As far as smiles go, this one caught on the precipice of a sneeze, feels the stupidest.

“Pathfinder, if you have a moment, I would like to discuss some of the data I obtained earlier…”

The tentative flutter of joy in her chest curls inwards on itself, recoiling. She screws up her face, tipping her head back over Jaal’s arm, his r ofjinn bunching up against the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck.

“SAM, I don’t want to waste all this beautiful mental clarity on parsing out my emotional breakdown.”

It’s not fair and she regrets saying it. He provides more than his share of explanations for her and this is supposed to be a reciprocal relationship after all.

“That classification is interesting, Pathfinder. Noradrenaline phasic signalling was decreased, indicating the absence of a stress response. You rate the subjective experience, however, as a negative one?”

Half the words don’t even sound familiar. Despite being the daughter of a neuroscientist, she picked up precious little on the subject. Latching on to what she understands, she attempts an answer.

“No. Not negative. The opposite, I guess?”

“I see.”

She absurdly pictures SAM fitting the L of his imaginary thumb and pointer finger to his imaginary chin in a gesture of academic interest. Her father used to do that, unwittingly providing Scott with ample ammo for his ‘Alec Ryder, mad scientist’ impressions.

“This supports my observations of the intense activity within the mesolimbic circuit--”

Se-ah winces. “You know, it’s pretty weird to hear all the gory details.”

“I do not comprehend the discomfort.” SAM states, an echo of her father’s scientific fascination faint in the synthetic voice modulation. Her own imagination, she’s sure. “Your emotions are best described as the limited interpretation of this signalling process.”

For some indefinable reason, she bristles.

“Maybe technically, but...it was this amazing, overwhelming experience and it didn’t feel limited . It felt...immense. Bigger than anything. Like I couldn’t possibly keep it in without bursting and then I did burst and apparently that looks like a lot of crying.”

Ugly crying. There was a not-small-amount of snot involved.

“It’s more than mesolimbic circuits,” she persists, words coming faster and her voice tightening,  “Sometimes things are more than their physical, observable state. When I’m on a summit, what I experience isn’t just snow and stars and rocks...it's…well I wouldn’t bother with it if that was all I got out of it. Look, I don’t think I could ever explain it in a way you’d be able to understand.”

The channel goes silent, longer than the normal exaggerated pauses SAM inserts into his responses. The silence is deafening on the heels of her tirade. As if he’s...affronted.

“Thank you Ryder.” SAM says at last. Clipped and professional. Is it her imagination or is it too professional? If there were such a thing? “I will attempt an analysis with this feedback in mind.”

Se-ah nods, unnecessarily given that it is SAM, her heart sinking. Who knows what havoc a peeved AI could wreck in her brain, apparently without either of them any the wiser? And if she can’t explain it to SAM she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to explain what happened to Jaal. Not that she didn’t try before, during all the sobbing, but it was impossible to get anything out that wasn’t ‘I’m fine, I just...’ before dissolving into tears again. He didn’t press her for more.

But maybe now that she isn’t an emotional wreck, he might. Whether she has answers is less certain.

‘Sorry, SAM says you overloaded my mesolimbic circuit and that it’s all very scientific and reasonable and I’m not crazy. Or I might be. Have you heard the human folk tale about the cat?”

Awful. The shivering sensation in her chest unfurls again and spreads out into her fingers. She furrows them into the crease of Jaal’s side and the cot, letting his warmth soothe the trembling overtaking her frame. His arm wraps tighter reflexively. This is the sort of moment she wants to soak in, slow, like sunlight filtering through leaves stippling ancient Morse-code patterns over her face. Eyes closed, she inhales and vague memories sift warm impressions on the backs of her eyelids.

Hands, scarred and calloused and massive sweeping soft, reassuring circles against her back. His chin on the top of her head, her face tucked into the graceful sweep of his neck where a crook would be on hers. A low thrum: his voice, unintelligable, but soothing. A musical hum buzzes through the air.

Se-ah sighs and blinks her eyes open to glance up. He’s still deep asleep, snoring away. A hazy, contented smile gathers at the corners of his mouth and makes him look, for all the universe, like someone having a pleasant dream.

Despite spending the vast majority of her waking moments on the ship in his makeshift bedroom, she’s never seen him this way. The quiet of the ship is unsettling, he claims. Unlike his naps on the NOMAD, the only sleep she sees him take on the ship is fitful, almost violent--covers twisting, his hands clutching, face grimacing, the names of the lost wrenching out of him as he jolts awake. But even the sleep he snatches on the NOMAD doesn’t look this peaceful. It takes him quick and fast, like something joyless and inevitable. She grimaces. Like death.  

Studying his lidded eyes, she shifts on the cot to lean her weight more on his chest and tip her head back, peering up at the sweeping planes of his cheekbones, the point of his chin, and the fine ridge of his brow. He’s beautiful. All angara are, to her eye-- all grace and noble carved profiles like ancient Athame sculptures given color, life, and a Romanesque bone structure. But Jaal’s beauty is sharper, more defined than anything out of asari or human antiquity. War and grief etch his face in a landscape of visible and invisible scars, throwing the softness that remains, obstinate and miraculous, in high relief. The softness is all she sees now.  It is the face of a man who dreams, hopes, composes poems and perfumes, and is always seeking, searching, finding bits of wonder. If it weren’t for the kett, this might always be his face and Andromeda would be a place where it would fit. The dreamer. The tinkerer. The explorer.

But the kett stole that place away from him. War is spare. Merciless. There is little room for anything else but soldiers. Se-ah bites the inside of her lip, hard. Jaal is the first to insist he isn’t much of a soldier.

She doesn’t realize the snoring stops until he, without bothering to open his eyes, asks, “Yes, Ryder?”

Chagrined and surprised over how close she’s gotten, she immediately jolts away. “You’ve been awake? How long?” The slant of his smile changes but his eyes stay closed, “Long enough. Were you under the impression that you were being discreet?”

Fair point.

“So why didn’t you say something?” “I was trying to sleep. Speaking seemed counterproductive.”

“Uh huh. To your eavesdropping, maybe.”

Jaal doesn’t look at her, on account of the fact that he’d yet to bother opening his eyes, but the resigned set of his shoulders conveys a beleaguered expression that comes with an air of ‘No, I don’t think I’ll even bother ’. It’s one he wears around Liam with regularity. “Please do not attempt to explain that one. If I cannot sleep I’d much rather occupy my mind elsewhere.”

He makes a point of settling further into the cot, the large divot his body forms in the fabric deepening. Maybe he’s trying to free up the arm underneath her she realizes, belatedly. Renewed mortification crowds up her neck and she coughs to clear her throat. “Oh, then I should...leave you to that then,” she says, cheeks burning as she draws back against the gravitational pull of his weight on the cot, narrowly avoiding toppling on top of him.

“Stay.” At last Jaal blinks open his eyelids, a slow reveal of vivid blue. He looks at her, uncharacteristically uncertain, before saying, simply, “If...you’d like. You could join me.”

She hesitates. “Join you--elsewhere?”

“No, just here.”

Somehow he feels...closer. Not physically. It’s as if the gap in the universe between them has vanished overnight. She’s no longer on the precipice, her thoughts and feelings a faint, distorted comm. She’s there , a few bare centimeters in front of him and he’s looking at her as if he can see every detail of her with absolute clarity. It’s dreamer’s look with a tinkerer’s focus and his eyes are luminous, twin helium nebulae lit from within with something like wonder. She mistook it for morbid fascination once. This time she knows better. He smiles as if he might laugh. Fond. Unbearably so. Her chest hurts to look at it.

“No idioms, nothing else. Just this. Right now.” The words linger, rippling against her skin in gentle, rumbling waves. Jaal crooks his pinned arm and brushes back the fluttering snarl of her hair.

A quiet bubble settles around the tiny cot, enclosing them within the warm, sunset smell of him. It feels safe. Like home. She doesn’t know the last time she felt those things. Not since-- It should be strange to find them here, an entire galaxy away, with an alien who openly spoke about killing her after they’d just met.

Jaal’s huff of a laugh skips across the quiet like a smooth stone on a lake surface. Something about it tells her he’s picked up on the precise turn of her thoughts--too perceptive by half. “You know, you are remarkably expressive. Almost angaran.”

She tucks her face into the slope of his neck and pulls a scowl, even though it isn’t an insult. The memory of her tragic poker loss to Gil is still all too fresh and she feels a little too raw, a little too exposed with nowhere to hide her vulnerabilities. Instead of answering, she buries a noncommittal sound into his bare skin.

He laughs again, rueful and soft. “It was a clumsy effort, but it was intended as a compliment. We are a vocal people. More than words and expressions. In addition to combative and deliberate communication uses, our bioelectrics have subtle subconscious patterns and pulses. I believe your hanar are similar, in the visible electromagnetic spectrum. It is difficult to suppress. Few have scrupulous reasons to try.”

His fused fingers twine into her hair. It seems a point of endless fascination for him. Even in the Milky Way, hair is something of a novelty.

“The emotions of those around us pervade all our senses. It saturates our lives. My first days on this ship were so...disorienting. I felt the absence keenly, like a limb lost in battle.”

Her scowl vanishes and she looks up to meet his eyes again. Of course, she’d suspected his trouble adjusting, but never knew the full extent. He kept so much hidden then. “It must have made it that much more difficult, deciding if you could trust us.”

Jaal laughs. It sounds pained. “Very. I learned to look harder, with time. There is a beauty in subtlety. Underappreciated among my people, but I’ve grown quite fond of it. Humans were easier. And then, there was you.”

“About as subtle as a flaming ship crashing on your planet?”

Genuine mirth threads into his laughter, his eyes tracing over her upturned face. “Yes. An apt comparison. Vivid, exciting… deeply alarming to some.”

She brightens and his smile deepens. The hand at her temple curls against her skin to brush a soft line over her cheek with the backs of his knuckles.

“It made trusting you more easy than wise, considering the risk.”

“I’m sure Evfra disapproved,” she says.

“Of course. Evfra is a cautious strategist. He despaired of me.”

Jaal leans his cheek against her head, looking off towards the dim ambient glow of the machines running through their downtime routines.

“My caution was always a feeble force and your face...says such beautiful things. I didn’t understand why you struggled  so desperately to hide them away.” He adds, blunt as ever, “Not... well, of course . But with an extraordinary amount of effort. I imagine it was exhausting. Inexpressibly painful. My heart ached just to see it.”

The corners of her eyes begin to prickle. Machine lights catch on the dust motes, adrift on the flickering electrostatic currents weaving around and between them, setting each pinpoint aglow like rippling eddies of distant stars.

“I thought the same about you, you know. Before we rescued the Moshae.”

Caution shackling his expressions and the strategic withdrawals into clipped one-word answers calculated to give as little away as possible. She’s more glad than she can say to have earned his trust and the chance to see his genuine self without the fetters of fear and uncertainty. He said getting to know her would be a gift and that is how knowing him better feels--like the best gift she didn’t even know to ask for.

He nods. “Yes. I wept for joy that she was safe and for the wrenching horror of what we learned that day but also I wept for my freedom from my own fears. Escaping them was...liberating despite my grief. Cathartic. I think perhaps you felt something of that same freedom. Earlier, when you cried.”

Catharsis. Freedom-- but from what? She wasn’t on a diplomatic mission with alien intruders. She was just-- her . A touch-starved awkward hugger with a trigger-happy mesolimbic circuit. But, that feels insufficient as far as explanations go. Instead, she remembers Scott crying, wailing, hands fisting over his eyes. It’s gone. I have to find it. People are looking. Mom ignores them and kneels despite the crowd, attempting to soothe him. Alec Ryder’s stonefaced expression fractures into a grimace. Pained. He turns away. His hand presses down on her own small shoulder and squeezes. It feels like pride. She forces her chin to stop quivering. She won’t cry. Nothing will ever be okay and everything is wrong but she is Alec Ryder’s daughter and she is old enough to do that much.

A tear slips into her hairline and Jaal’s thumb rubs it away. Breath held, she reaches up between them to capture his hand in her own. His eyes are full of reflected stars, twin galaxies pulling her into their inexorable spin. At the point of her outstretched fingernail is a pinprick of light, fanning off, faintly luminous, refracting off her tears.Se-ah pauses, taken aback, blinking away the moisture collecting on her lashes. It’s not a trick of the light. Her fingertips are actually glowing. And, she realizes, the air is...humming.

“SAM, are we about to fry anything with this corona discharge?” she asks. All at once the air changes, the charged dust motes around them still and the lights on her fingertips flicker out. It smells and feels like a storm just swept out of the tech lab.

“Appropriate precautions have already been taken to accommodate non-combat angaran electromagnetic field manipulation, Pathfinder. Ozone levels are also within acceptable limits.”

Jaal coughs and looks away, suddenly awkward.  “Ahh...as I was saying, it requires some concentration to suppress.”

“Can you stop? Concentrating that is? It’s not as if--well, SAM said it wouldn’t hurt anything.”

Now that she’s paying better attention, she can feel the tingling pressure building and shifting around them. The hairs stand up on her arms. The air smells bright and clean. Light collects on her fingertips again. Faint, but visible. Se-ah laughs, delighted, and slowly bends her fingers, watching the blue flicker and reappear. Ionized plasma balancing on the edge of an electromagnetic field pierced by the short point of her nail. Hardly seemed subtle in her book. Little about him was.

“We call this St. Elmo’s Fire,” she tells him. “It was considered a good omen by ancient human voyagers.”

“Ah. I’m your good omen then?”

“Well, we haven’t crashed once since you got here.”

He brings his free palm to hers, one fused, two separate for her five. She adds, sincerely, “It’s beautiful. Does this happen to you a lot? I’ve never noticed before.”

“No. This is...it’s more. It is special. Explaining would be difficult. Clumsy. I cannot do it justice.”

Hands pressed together, his palm dwarfing hers, a swell of emotion courses through her and a stubborn tear traces down her cheek. She laughs and a sniffle turns it into a tremulous, hiccuping burst of happiness.

“Is there a word for it in Shelesh?”

“No,” he says simply. “There is just this.”

Churning waves of electrons are crashing against her fingertips, caught in the lunar pull of him. Everything dissolves in the watery film of tears and she’s floating, falling, swept by tidal forces into an endless depth of variegated blue. There can be no words, in Shelesh or any other language. But she knows anyway. Floating in an electron sea of his design, palms pressed, wrapped in his embrace--she knows exactly what he is saying.

[gnosticinitiation]

Man and Woman - Victor Hugo (Gnostic Initiate)

Man is the highest of creatures.

The woman is the most sublime of ideals.

God made for man a throne, for the woman an altar.

The throne exalts, the altar sanctifies.

Man is the brain.

The woman, heart.

The brain creates light, the heart, Love.

Light engenders, Love resurrects.

The man is strong because of reason.

The woman is invincible because of tears.

Reason is convincing, tears, moving.

Man is capable of all heroism.

Woman of all martyrdom.

Heroism ennobles; martyrdom sublimates.

Man has supremacy,

Woman, preference.

Supremacy is strength, preference is the right.

The man is a genius.

The woman an angel.

Genius is immeasurable, the angel indefinable.

The aspiration of man is supreme glory.

The aspiration of woman is extreme virtue.

Glory creates all that is great, virtue makes everything divine.

Man is a code.

Woman, a gospel.

A code corrects, the gospel perfects.

Man thinks.

Woman dreams.

To think is to have a larva in the skull; to dream is to have a halo on the brow.

Man is an ocean.

The woman is a lake.

The ocean has the adorning pearl, the lake, dazzling poetry.

Man is the flying eagle.

Woman, the singing nightingale.

To fly is to conquer space. To sing is to conquer the soul.

The man is a Temple.

The woman is a shrine.

Before the temple we discover ourselves, before the shrine we kneel.

In short: the man is placed where the earth ends,

Woman, where heaven begins.

---

"These sublime phrases of the great Initiate humanist Victor Hugo invite us to live the Path of the Perfect Matrimony.

Blessed be love. Blessed are the beings who adore each other." - Master Samael Aun Weor

[scribbl-plink]

ineffable

meraki

/greek/

/may-rah-kee/

noun.

to do something with soul, creativity, or love; to put something of yourself into your work.

---

“Look! I really captured the movement in this one. I fixed the iso and...” 

Concentration stole the rest of her sentence. Mik showed me the camera screen, barely giving me time to glance her way in the silvery dark before taking it back. She fiddled around with a switch before leaning precariously over the railing again, earrings dangling toward the rushing waters below. A wave of sound enveloped me, drowning out the night. 

“‘Kaela…” 

Her eyes turned to twinkle at me, a glimmering laugh on her lips as she mimicked me. “Ella-a!” 

She got the satisfaction of a smirk, and I turned to survey our surroundings. An almost-full moon was pinned in the sky, illuminating the dense bushland that hugged the river’s shores. Both railings on each side of the bridge were empty, their glimmering metal bars silent and out of place without the usual tourists. Snap, snap. Filtered streams of moonlight chimed down to us, liquidised into silver threads that made a tapestry in the rushing water- something inside me ached. Snap. I listened quietly to the hum of the crickets that faintly serenaded us in the background. A distant owl gave a low hoot. Snap, snap. Mik’s foot left the bridge as she leant further forward, tipping by the slightest of degrees. I heard her lens: snap, snap, snap. 

It returned: snap, snap, snap.

Snap, s-

“Mik!”

---

yūgen

/japanese/

/you-gen/

noun.

a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe that triggers a deep emotional response. 

---

The lake shimmers in silence, dull and meek. Rays of sun are swallowed up by the muddy waves as they lap apathetically at the ground. The air is frozen in heat- every tiny bit of space suffocatingly filled to the brim. I can’t read the words on the gravestone.

But I know what they say. 

Mikaela Cowell - beloved daughter, granddaughter and friend - 2000-2019. 

Black, fuzzy silhouettes are blurring in my peripheral. Petrichor drifts upward between black dresses and handkerchiefs from damp earth underfoot. 

Everything echoes now. The words of the Pastor, the choked sobs, the merry twittering of sparrows. I’m hearing, feeling the words- their dead weight like web tangling my fingers together. They work together: threading themselves into each other and wrapping around my shoulders. Ends draw entwined and enveloped. Tighter and tighter they pull and tug until up and up towards invisible hands... 

I am suspended in memory, on strings. It is not beautiful. It is not wondrous, and it tastes like bitter medicine except there is nothing to cure. Muscles strain and burn, circulation stops. One tremor on the side and my body jerks, a nonchalant flicker and I’m on my knees. The little expressions that were my beauty now hold me hostage. They used to guide me. Now they demand compliance. 

I know everyone is looking at me, sympathy in their eyes, but I can’t meet their gazes. 

The sun shines cheerily on, despite. 

Perhaps resignation is part of humanity’s true destiny. Perhaps our brokenness is fated. 

Snap. 

I can hear it...

---

erlebnisse

/german/

/er-leb-nis/

noun.

the experiences, positive or negative, that we feel most deeply, and through which we truly live; not mere experiences, but Experiences.

---

Everyone has gone, grief trailing behind them. The lake continues to slowly soak up the warmth, and the breeze shivers. My puppet-body follows suit. 

I’m still. Paused. Just feeling the breath from my nose mockingly kiss my upper lip before waltzing out into the air. Knowing I will probably inhale it in again. And again. Then always someone else’s breath becoming my own. It never ends. Only repeats, and continues giving. For how long will I be able to bear it? This cycle comforts me, morbid and undying. 

My muscles tense. She’s here, beside me. Her faint outline is a mirage that shimmers out of sight, out of mind. Is she here? Or will she be forever in the cold embrace of those dark, silvery waters, never to resurface? Tears are pricking and the tension is moving inward, getting a two-handed grip around my throat. 

Squeezing, twisting, stretching…

Then, release. 

Release. 

Snap goes the strings. She is cutting them- her memory holds the blade. 

Snap, snap. 

Snap. 

Obligations and offerings fade. Suddenly, I know my words don’t have to cost who I am. 

They are an overflow. 

An echo. 

---

ineffable

/english/

/in-eh-fuh-bl/

adjective.

too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.

---

My post-grad existence was a blur. It was filled with drafts, editing at 4am, cold coffee and laptop batteries on 5%.

I eventually understood even more than the desire to capture memories, the necessity to let them fly. 

It was after I wrote and edited and wrote again, after I tried wrangling my experiences, some part of myself into short stories and suites of poetry and novellas so that one day a college dropout could find my strings of words and try again. After I dreamt of taming each phrase into submission so a grandmother could experience fun again- as if every paragraph was a jack-in-the-box and all I had to do was fit each piece inside like clockwork. 

At some point after all that I realised memories were not butterflies, waiting to be caught in a net- they were stars. With words, we aimed to define the indefinable. We look up at the celestial heavens and wish our phones would work against the great blackness but really, why should they? The most I could’ve ever done - the most anyone can do - is create an impression of those stars. An impression of that unending, fateful river. Its voice drifts back to me now, its memories: a soft, singing note with a trailing echo.

Snap.

Or… 

Just an echo... .  .  .    .     .       .

[lindoig4]

The Zephyr - 8-10 July

Today, we are leaving San Francisco and boarding the Californian Zephyr for Chicago.  I think we slept a bit better last night, maybe the jet lag is starting to lag, but we were still up by about 6am and checked out before seven.  As we were checking out, I saw the TV with news of a series of serious earthquakes with a lot of damage and casualties about 300 km from here.  We are fine, but I thought the earth moved a little for me at one stage when we were out walking yesterday.  Perhaps I wasn’t just imagining it after all.

Our train is called the Californian Zephyr, despite it traversing California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois!

We walked through a dank and foggy San Fran down the hill to the bus station and in due course were transported across the magnificent kilometres-long Bay Bridge to Emeryville where we caught the train.  The bridge is quite wonderful, an engineering masterpiece affording great views of the huge turbid bay and its surrounds with its ships and docks.  We even drove across Treasure Island and although I kept an eye out, I never saw Long John Silver (although I did see two Jolly Rogers swinging from the flagstaffs.).

We followed the shore for quite a long way before crossing a very wide area of marshland where I saw a few birds and even identified a couple.  For the rest of the day, though, we saw very few birds, all too far away, too small, too fast, too fleeting or just too uncooperative for me to identify.  The only ones I did identify were four Canada geese swimming along close to the track when we were travelling very slowly. And the only non-bird animal I saw all day was one lonely white butterfly.

I should make a declaration at this point!  I have already run out of superlatives and the next few days make superlatives pretty pathetic anyway. Please just add as many ‘spectaculars’, ‘fantastics’, ‘brilliants’, ‘gorgeouses’ and so on as you can and I will limit my amazement in my comments and retain it primarily in my memory.  There simply aren’t words or pictures adequately to describe the wonder of some of the things we saw.  But here goes anyway…..

We climbed up into the Cascades and passed through range on range of steep hills and deep valleys, mainly covered by a few varieties of conifers. We transitioned through several landscapes during the day, but after the marshlands, we were very quickly into heavily wooded conifer forest and steep mountains with valleys disappearing into the deep gloom.  There were patches of dirty snow hidden among the trees, still laying around almost in the middle of summer and large areas of pristine snow on the mountains a little further from the train.  Everything seemed so clean, fresh and green, but no doubt cold as well if it were not for the air-conditioning in the train.

Then we were into open grassland that reached the horizon in all directions with just a few stunted trees scattered about.  There were areas that weren’t flat – indeed, where nothing was flat.  It was as if a group of giant children had been playing at mud pies and left lumps of dirt and mud everywhere – often mound on mound with one misshapen lump running into the next.  It was strange to see such a jumble of small round hillocks crowded one on the other and to wonder how in the world they formed and why they haven’t weathered uniformly.

Further on, we were in desert: large flat grey muddy patches in otherwise brownish-grey scrubby expanses.  The bare earth didn’t look sandy.  Rather it looked more like dried mud in such a neutral ‘muddy’ colour that it was indefinable.  And the scrub was almost the same – dull green that was almost washed out of any colour at all. It was real ‘cowboy country’ that we saw in so many Westerns a hundred years ago.  (But wait until tomorrow!)

At dinner time we went through a flooded area, a waterlogged grassland with lots of birds, but again, very hard to identify.  I eventually identified several with a reasonable level of confidence – just enough to claim them – but I will talk more about bird identification later.

During dinner, our bunks were set up by our steward (Maclin – a huge friendly black man and a lot of fun) but they took up so much of the cabin space that we virtually had to go to bed.  I was in the top bunk and it was quite coffinlike.  Not a lot of room between the bunk and the ceiling and I recalled a lot of the Edgar Allan Poe horror stories I read as a teenager about being buried alive or confined in small caves, etc.  The mattresses were rock-hard and we slept very badly with aches and pains, perpetually either too hot or too cold, but we survived the night. We had a very long stop in Salt Lake City in the middle of the night so on our first day, we had crossed California, Nevada, Colorado and half of Utah.

We were up early next day and looking out, I immediately saw some antelope – about 20 or so in singles and several small groups.  I also saw a jack rabbit just outside the window on one of our stops. There were lots of stops, some for small stations, but also for traffic reasons.  They had some extreme heat here recently and there was an amazing rain storm and a couple of hours of continuous(!), completely uninterrupted(!!), lightning on our second night combined with signal problems around Denver and an escaped alpaca on the tracks later on – all contributing to our trip being exactly 7 hours longer than expected. The slow progress due to the heat risk and rainstorm resulted in the crew being over their maximum legal stretch of shift so we sat at one little siding for a long time until a fresh crew arrived from another station to relieve them.  The end result was that instead of arriving in Chicago at 2:10pm, we arrived long after dark sharp on 9:10 in the evening.

In the daylight, Utah was really iconic cowboy country.  Nothing seemed quite as big and grand as Monument Valley, but all the features were there, just a bit more crowded and closer together.  Massive buttes and mesas, unbelievably jagged and craggy rocks, every conceivable structure.  Buttes and long ranges of hard rock with precipitous cliffs falling to great triangles of scree around the base – typical Western badlands landscapes and impressive beyond words.  We sat agape, staring out the windows, clicking frantically on our cameras as each more magnificent vista paraded in front of us.  Did I say ‘Spectacular!’?

Then there was the Canyon country.  We traversed two very long canyons beside the Colorado and Fraser Rivers with towering cliffs on both sides, incredibly rugged, with the rivers roaring past – the Colorado hurtling westward to the Grand Canyon and the Fraser racing eastward to the Mississippi.  The speed of the rivers was breathtaking, especially after an apparently extremely wet season, and the rapids were awesome – many turgid Category 4s and 5s. We saw hundreds of canoeists and rafters – and one long stretch of the Colorado is nick-named Moon River – due to the long-established routine of the rafters ‘mooning’ the train as it passes. We saw an awful lot of (awful) bums over maybe 100km.

We were now well into the Rockies and again, words fail me. I never imagined I wold see them and they are not quite what (or where) I imagined, but maybe even more spectacular. Towering mountains, craggy rocks everywhere, plenty of snow-caps not too far away.  Quite an awesome journey, but equally impossible to describe.  Imagine as much as you can and double it – and then again a few more times!

We continued eastward through Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois, all less awesome, but still fascinating.  Gigantic swathes of corn fields – enough to feed the entire world surely – truck farms and increasing industrialisation as we approached our destination.  Many little towns, all amazingly neat and symmetrical, quite quaint in many cases, but with little to separate them from their neighbours.  Lots of silos, some for corn, but mainly for silage – in goes mountains of grass, it ferments and out comes astronomical volumes of stockfeed.

Because we were running so late, they had to provide an extra meal on the train (everyone got beef stew and veges for that one).  The food was generally very good with about 6 choices for each meal (the same set of 6 each day) and a fair choice of alcohol that we had to pay for.  Staff were exceptionally friendly and helpful – maybe with an eye on their anticipated tips, but they seemed genuine enough.  Tipping is alien to us, of course, but we did what we thought reasonable and hope we didn’t offend anyone or appear too stupid to them.

Chicago at last and a cab ride to the hotel where we checked in and slept in much more comfort than the hard mattresses on the train.

[monabela]

I read the sentence ‘your memories belong to the lake now’ while playing an escape game, and immediately decided I should write a fanfic. and I happen to know a song about a lake (the poet and the muse) that I like very much and was inspired by and sO this was born! ft my favorite femslash pairing, because why not

The White Lake

characters/pairings: Belarus (Bela)/Monaco (Olympe)

word count: 2841 summary: The mysterious woman in white brings back the writer's inspiration, but at what cost?

also on AO3

She came wearing white.

She was like a beacon, a specter on the lake, and perhaps she should have been fearsome, incited wariness, but she never did. Not in Olympe.

Olympe lived by the lake, the White Lake, up the slope of the mountain, her cottage nestled between the grey rocks and the evergreens. She wrote. When she didn’t write, she tended to her vegetable garden and wove, or went down to the town in the valley to sell the proceeds of those things on the bustling market, and she thought of what she would write.

Without a doubt, the townspeople thought her crazy – a woman alone in the woods? Not to mention the writing at all. It all wasn’t very ladylike of her. Olympe did not mind.

She minded, though, when her inspiration waned in autumn, when she needed it most. She had to find a new coat for the winter, among other things, and the vegetables were almost all harvested by now, so there would be no selling those. She sat wrapped up by the lake often, with her quill pen and her inkwell and a completely blank piece of paper that stayed that way. Even telling stories to the still water didn’t help.

And then there was her.

She showed up at Olympe’s door the morning after the first frost, like the ice come alive. Everything about her was pale but her eyes, which were instead dark blue like the lake.

“Who are you?” Olympe asked, mind running a mile a minute. This woman was not only mysterious, she was also beautiful, and it seemed to be that she brought some inspiration with her.

“I am here to help,” said the woman. “You can call me Bela.”

“As in beautiful?”

She smiled slowly, wickedly, showing teeth. “As in white.”

And, even though Olympe was not a very trusting person by nature, and all evidence screamed to be wary of Bela, she let her in.

Not just that once, as she had feared. The mysterious woman disappeared in the evening, yes, when the first moonlight reflected on the still water of the White Lake, but she returned the next day, and the next, and many – almost all – days after that. Olympe was curious – how could she not be curious about this woman who had brought her creativity back with her simple presence? – but she also had the distinct feeling she shouldn’t ask questions.

Did Bela have a home? Was she human at all? God knew there were plenty of legends about the mountains, hailing from the medieval times when the town in the valley had just been a small village, some from even earlier dates. Olympe had thought about compiling them in a book at some point, but never had come around to it.

It was perhaps foolish to be keeping on like this, but she didn’t care.

  Even as winter set in, the mountains became bitterly cold and the lake froze over, Bela kept coming. She didn’t wear warmer clothes and didn’t want to borrow any off Olympe either, appearing unbothered. She read what Olympe wrote and, increasingly, offered her opinion. Bela was blunt and it made Olympe laugh sometimes just how different she was from her target audience in the cities, or indeed from herself, with her wealthy upbringing.

“This book doesn’t bear your name,” Bela said one dark afternoon, when she seemed the only light.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I am a woman. No one will want to read a book written by a woman.”

Bela was quiet. It really was as if she was from a different world altogether sometimes. But other times…

“Well, that’s stupid,” she said. Olympe laughed, and laughed more when Bela looked surprised, and pleased.

“The world is stupid,” Olympe said.

“You aren’t.”

She snapped her head up to look at Bela, who was actually looking less pale right now. Was she blushing? That was new. Olympe decided she liked it.

“You aren’t stupid either,” she replied.

Bela only shook her head, dark eyes downcast.

“I am very stupid,” she said cryptically. Before Olympe could push it, she had gone, just like that.

She didn’t think Bela was stupid. Quite the opposite, actually. It was true that the she didn’t know much about social interactions or the finer points of etiquette, and that she had no idea who the current ruler of the country was, but Bela could tell Olympe a great many things about the history of the mountains and their myths and legends, and knew nature in a way that seemed to be becoming increasingly rare.

And, yes, her white dresses were about 300 years out of fashion, all trailing sleeves and embroidered pearls and she never wore a hat, as if she were a woman of easy virtue, but that added to the mystery, and to the things that inspired Olympe to write yet more.

Bela knew much, but her knowledge seemed to stop past a certain point in history, much like her way of dressing did. Olympe had never met anyone like her, and didn’t think she ever would again.

Once, her cousin Francis came to visit her for a few days, and Bela didn’t show until he was gone.

“You could have greeted him,” Olympe said, not knowing how she would actually feel about sharing Bela.

“He didn’t ask,” Bela replied, which made little sense, but Olympe decided to let it slide. She wondered, though; had she asked somehow?

Later, she tried to ask Bela how she had known that Olympe needed help, needed a muse, but, unsurprisingly, the woman only smiled ever so slightly and gave no reply at all. Olympe was not sure she would want to know, when it came down to it.

That was something else she wondered about, if that was all her, because she was a curious woman by nature, whether society liked it or not. It was unlike her to let things slide so often.

  “Who are you?” she asked Bela again, one day in spring, as the tall woman was standing in the cold water of the White Lake, which pooled around her ankles and soaked the hem of her dress even though she had lifted it a little. She looked at Olympe with eyes as deep as the lake.

“Whoever you want me to be,” she eventually replied. Her voice seemed hoarser than it already tended to be usually.

“I want you to be yourself.”

Bela bowed her head so that her pale hair fell over her shoulders like rivulets of water and hid her face.

The water rippled around her bare feet but stayed otherwise still.

“Who do you want to be, Bela?”

Now, she looked up again.

“I want to be your inspiration,” she said matter-of-factly. Some unseen force rippled through the entire lake. Olympe thought she might understand.

“You are.”

Bela nodded sadly. “I know.”

  With all the writing she had done lately, Olympe hardly had to sell her fabrics anymore, but she liked to interact with the townsfolk every now and then, so she went to the market anyway. Bela never wanted to come along, insisting the mountains were her home. There would be so much to show her, Olympe thought wistfully. And perhaps they could find her a more modern dress, one with a higher waistline and tighter sleeves and maybe a hat to match.

Not that Olympe disliked her mysterious muse’s hair. It was the opposite, in fact. Lately, however, she had been struck more and more often with the desire to run her fingers through it in a way that had little to do with seeking inspiration and everything with how fascinated – one might say infatuated – Olympe was with her as a person, something that she saw more of every day.

Maybe, she thought, Bela never had been herself before and somehow Olympe was her inspiration too, in a much more profound way. She liked thinking that, because she couldn’t actually tell if she was worth as much to her at all.

And so summer rolled into the mountains with the scent of drying grass and wildflowers, and Bela’s eyes seemed to brighten with the sun even as her skin remained pale. They spent a lot of time by the lake, sometimes talking, sometimes silent but for the scratch of Olympe’s quill pen.

One day, Bela said, à propos of nothing, “I have done many bad things.”

Olympe carefully put her quill away and turned to look at her expectantly. Bela just looked out over the lake, her silhouette sharp in the sunlight.

“I have never felt remorse until now.”

“How so?”

Bela looked at her with one light eye.

“I never cared before.”

Warmth blossomed in Olympe’s chest. Much as she wished the circumstances were different, it was good to know that Bela cared in her own way. She didn’t ask what it was she felt remorse over, feeling she would not like the answer, provided she received one at all. Instead, she just put her hand, which looked tiny, softly over hers. Bela breathed steadily. Her skin was cool, but warmed under Olympe’s fingers.

They sat like that for a long time. Eventually, Bela turned her hand over and entwined their fingers.

  Long hair whipping in the October wind, Bela walked along the edge of the White Lake. Olympe thought it looked like she was searching for something, but had no idea what it would be, or she would help.

As it were, she could only watch the lone, distant figure in white through her lorgnette, and wait.

After a while, Bela strode up to her cottage, hair wild and eyes dark. Olympe didn’t expect to say anything about what she had been doing, and she didn’t, but what she did do was far more surprising than that. The tall woman dropped to her knees, dress pooling around her, and looked up at Olympe with an indefinable emotion on her face.

“Bela, what is…” She gestured vaguely. “Are you alright?”

“I wish…” Bela started, reaching her hand up as if she wanted to touch Olympe, then letting it fall.

Slowly, almost afraid of startling her, Olympe mirrored her, sinking to her knees. She reached out with caution and wrapped both hands around the one Bela was holding in her lap now. She didn’t speak. She waited.

“I wish I could be more,” Bela eventually said. Her voice was barely audible over the wind that howled around the house.

“You are enough,” Olympe replied. This was true in many ways. She gripped her hand tighter, hoping to impart this message without words. Bela’s eyes were deep and sad. Olympe could almost see herself reflected in them, a small woman in blue with a tight braid, so different from her muse.

“You are more.” It didn’t sound accusing, or jealous. It sounded almost admiring.

“I do not think I am so much,” Olympe said bashfully, lowering her gaze. Bela put her free hand on hers, her fingertips ever so gently stroking Olympe’s wrist. Her next words were barely more than breath.

“Olympe, you are everything.”

When she looked up, Bela was closer than before, and it was all Olympe could do not to gasp. Instead, she followed her instincts, pushed up, and pressed her forehead against Bela’s gently. Her skin was cold; it always seemed to be. Nevertheless, she breathed warm on Olympe’s neck, steady and reassuringly there.

“Please stay,” Olympe heard herself say. “Please.”

“As long as I can,” Bela promised.

  Finally, Olympe could indulge the need she felt to run her fingers through Bela’s long, loose hair, or let her know in other, small ways how she felt about her. Nobody could ever know about this, of course, but most people did not care much for what Olympe did either way. It was good.

And then it ended.

It was the night of the new moon. Olympe jerked awake for reasons unknown in the very early morning – it was silent outside, and still practically pitch dark. Yet, after a brief disoriented moment, she rose from her bed and padded to the window, grabbing her lorgnette on the way. She didn’t expect to see anything.

Maybe the more accurate word, she thought, would be hope. She hoped she would not see anything out of the ordinary.

But, no, there she was, truly looking like a supernatural being this time, a spot of light against the darkness of the lake. Bela, walking into the water every so calmly, barely disturbing its surface. It didn’t seem as though she was looking for something this time – more as though she knew exactly what she was doing. But that made no sense. Granted, many things about her didn’t make sense, but this was truly something else.

Olympe wanted to run outside, but was also afraid of losing sight of her muse for even a second, afraid that she would simply disappear. Indecision and fear paralyzed her.

So she watched, unmoving. Frozen as the edges of the lake, still like the mist over the water. Was that all her?

The very first ray of sunlight falling through the evergreens illuminated Bela in blinding white, and when Olympe blinked, she was gone. The water was still as if she had never been there.

Had she?

Was it a dream?

  Olympe called out for Bela in the morning when she didn’t show, walking around the lake with chattering teeth, pressing her lorgnette to her nose as if she could see more that way. It yielded no results. Not a single hint towards the mysterious woman’s presence. The lake was dark, and remained so when Olympe glared at it, yelled and pleaded at the water. It had given her so much… And it had taken everything.

So she wrote, and wrote, and wrote as if it were her final day every day for the lonely next month. She wrote a letter to Francis, asking him to come visit in the approaching spring and to take her manuscripts with him so they may be made into books. But mostly, she wrote about Bela, and about the hateful White Lake. She wrote until she ran out of ink and her fingers cramped and even her lorgnette could not help her see clearly.

It had to be done. Olympe couldn’t say why.

And then, that too ended.

All at once, the new moon was back. The day before had brought a storm that could still be heard in the distance, but the mountains were quiet around her cottage. The lake was still. The lake was foreboding, Olympe thought. She’d thought so many times.

  She came wearing black.

At first, Olympe thought she was a dream – a nightmare, perhaps. Everything about her was pale but her eyes and her dress, which were both dark as the night reflected in the water of the White Lake.

“Bela,” Olympe breathed, sitting up in her bed. The woman simply nodded. She dripped on Olympe’s floor, the water like an ink stain in the near-darkness.

She looked away when Olympe tried to catch her eye, and walked to the door when she got out of her bed, tried to reach for her. Olympe followed, somehow unsurprised yet still terrified of what was to come.

Bela stood at the edge of the lake on bare feet, her black dress floating around her calves. Her back was turned to Olympe, but she could still see that her hands were clenched in tight fists.

“Who are you?” Olympe asked. Bela looked at her over her shoulder, wet hair plastered to her forehead. A hint of a smile flitted over her sharp features, but it was a sad one.

“Bela, as in white,” she reminded Olympe. The water of the White Lake rippled out from her feet. Olympe swallowed. She wished she could say something that meant something, but her mind was blank.

“You helped me,” she just said.

“Yes.” Bela waded deeper into the water. Olympe followed her to where the shore became rocky and plunged straight into the deep. It was unwise, she knew that.

“Is there no way for you to stay with me?” she asked. Her own hair fell across her shoulders when she knelt on the rocks, touching her fingers to the freezing stone.

Bela shook her head. “You must understand. The lake demands payment.”

“The lake, or you?”

She raised a hand above the water and ran her fingers through Olympe’s hair, swept her cold thumb over her cheekbone. She didn’t answer the question, but, as with so many things Olympe had asked her, she wasn’t sure whether she really wanted to know the answer. She leaned farther forwards, cupping her own hands around Bela’s face.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. She clutched the fabric of Olympe’s nightgown with her free hand, the grip nothing short of desperate.

“I know.”

“Your memories belong to the lake now.”

Olympe reached forward and forward and forward to kiss her, and the water closed over their heads.

[oyevans]

Why I hate...#2

 “…The headcanon (because that’s what it really is) that James relentlessly pursued /harassed Lily Evans until she finally agreed to go out with him"

A bit of an indirect response to those who say James Potter couldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

keys:

direct quotes/direct quotes

{summary of certain part of a scene}

[my thoughts]

… means I’m skipping certain parts that aren’t important to this discussion

First let us take a look at the only scenes pre-dating they share together while alive, or scenes the other Lily is discussing them James.

Starting chronologically with the train scene (it occurs after Petunia calls Lily a freak):

Snape was hurrying along the corridor of the Hogwarts Express as it clattered through the countryside. He had already changed into his school robes, had perhaps taken the first opportunity to take off his dreadful Muggle clothes. At last he stopped, outside a compartment in which a group of rowdy boys were talking. Hunched in a corner seat beside the window was Lily, her face pressed against the windowpane.

Snape slid open the compartment door and sat down opposite Lily. She glanced at him and then looked back out of the window. She had been crying.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said in a constricted voice. “Why not?”

“Tuney h-hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore.”

“So what?”

She threw him a look of deep dislike.

“So she’s my sister!”

“She’s only a —” He caught himself quickly; Lily, too busy trying to wipe her eyes without being noticed, did not hear him.

“But we’re going!” he said, unable to suppress the exhilaration in his voice. “This is it! We’re off to Hogwarts!”

She nodded, mopping her eyes, but in spite of herself, she half smiled.

“You’d better be in Slytherin,” said Snape, encouraged that she had brightened a little.

“Slytherin?”

One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Lily or Snape until that point, looked around at the word, and Harry, whose attention had been focused entirely on the two beside the window, saw his father: slight, black-haired like Snape, but with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for, even adored, that Snape so conspicuously lacked.

“Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” James asked the boy lounging on the seats opposite him, and with a jolt, Harry realized that it was Sirius. Sirius did not smile.

{Adorable James and Sirius friendship moment.}

Snape made a small, disparaging noise. James turned on him. “Got a problem with that?”

“No,” said Snape, though his slight sneer said otherwise. “If you’d rather be brawny than brainy —”

“Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?” interjected Sirius.

James roared with laughter. Lily sat up, rather flushed, and looked from James to Sirius in dislike.

“Come on, Severus, let’s find another compartment.”

“Oooooo …”

James and Sirius imitated her lofty voice; James tried to trip Snape as he passed.

“See ya, Snivellus!” a voice called [Likely Sirius], as the compartment door slammed… .

Okay, so let us look at the evidence in this scene.

Lily was alone in the corner, so James and Sirius left Lily alone whenever she entered the compartment or whenever they did.

One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Lily or Snape until that point, looked around at the word… So James didn’t notice nor fall head over heels for Lily Evans upon seeing her.

The only interaction between James and Lily in that entire scene is her looking at James and Sirius in dislike and “James and Sirius imitat[ing] her lofty voice.”

Scene two (the one between Lily and Snape, takes place after the Whomping Willow Incident):

{Lily tells Snape she doesn’t like some of the people–Mulciber and Avery–he’s been hang around with. She asks Snape if he knew what Mulciber tried to do to Mary Macdonald.}

“That was nothing,” said Snape. “It was a laugh, that’s all —”

“It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny —”

“What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?” demanded Snape. His color rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in his resentment.

“What’s Potter got to do with anything?” said Lily.

{Talks about how they sneak out at night. The Lupin is a werewolf theory.}

“I know your theory,” said Lily, and she sounded cold. “Why are you so obsessed with them anyway? Why do you care what they’re doing at night?”

“I’m just trying to show you they’re not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are.”

The intensity of his gaze made her blush.

“They don’t use Dark Magic, though.” She dropped her voice. “And you’re being really ungrateful. I heard what happened the other night. You went sneaking down that tunnel by the Whomping Willow, and James Potter saved you from whatever’s down there—”

Snape’s whole face contorted and he spluttered, “Saved? Saved? You think he was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and his friends’ too! You’re not going to — I won’t let you —”

“Let me? Let me?” Lily’s bright green eyes were slits. Snape backtracked at once.

“I didn’t mean—I just don’t want to see you made a fool of—He fancies you, James Potter fancies you!” The words seemed wrenched from him against his will. “And he’s not … everyone thinks … big Quidditch hero —” Snape’s bitterness and dislike were rendering him incoherent, and Lily’s eyebrows were traveling farther and farther up her forehead.

“I know James Potter’s an arrogant toerag,” she said, cutting across Snape. “I don’t need you to tell me that. But Mulciber’s and Avery’s idea of humor is just evil. Evil, Sev. I don’t understand how you can be friends with them.”

Harry doubted that Snape had even heard her strictures on Mulciber and Avery. The moment she had insulted James Potter, his whole body had relaxed, and as they walked away there was a new spring in Snape’s step…

Evidence from this scene:

James definitely fancies Lily at this point in time which is fifth year. Considering Snape tells Dumbledore that Sirius was capable of murder at the age of sixteen in Prisoner of Azkaban–which is not really accurate considering Snape was following them around and would have figured out how to get in sooner or later, Sirius only told him how to get in but Snape suspected Remus of being a werewolf already and shouldn’t have been an idiot and gone–and Snape isn’t likely to know Sirius’ birthday is in November, so I wager it happened after Snape turned sixteen. So by January of fifth year, James already fancied Lily Evans.

After Snape tells Lily that he’s trying to prove to her they’re not as wonderful as everyone we get this line: “The intensity of his gaze made her blush.” Which makes it seem that he had a reason to need to prove this to Lily along with a quote from Rowling herself in an interview when asked “How did they get together? She hated James, from what we’ve seen.” She answers with, “Did she really? You’re a woman, you know what I’m saying. [Laughter.]” So there is the possibility of Lily liking certain aspects of James prior to SWM or Snape perhaps seeing them talking–they were both Gryffindors and likely shared multiple classes–and reading too much into it.

“I just don’t want to see you made a fool of—He fancies you, James Potter fancies you!” The words seemed wrenched from him against his will.” I’ll be making a similar point for James but it seemed like it pained Snape to say this, so this is likely the first time he’s told her this and doesn’t want her to know this piece of information. All Lily really says to this piece of information is that she knows he’s “an arrogant toerag,” not that he won’t leave her alone or is annoying.

And our last scene is, of course, Snape’s Worst Memory (takes place between late May and Mid June):

…

Harry stared at Wormtail for a moment, then back at James, who was now doodling on a bit of scrap parchment. He had drawn a Snitch and was now tracing the letters L. E. What did they stand for?

…

Harry looked down at his father, who had hastily crossed out the L. E. he had been embellishing, jumped to his feet, stuffed his quill and the exam question paper into his bag, which he slung over his back, and stood waiting for Sirius to join him.

…

Harry wondered why James didn’t tell Wormtail to get a grip on himself, but James seemed to be enjoying the attention. Harry noticed his father had a habit of rumpling up his hair as though to make sure it did not get too tidy, and also that he kept looking over at the girls by the water’s edge.

…

Snape lay panting on the ground. James and Sirius advanced on him, wands up, James glancing over his shoulder at the girls at the water’s edge as he went.

…

“Leave him ALONE!”

James and Sirius looked around. James’s free hand jumped to his hair again.

It was one of the girls from the lake edge. She had thick, dark red hair that fell to her shoulders and startlingly green almond-shaped eyes…

…

“All right, Evans?” said James, and the tone of his voice was suddenly pleasant, deeper, more mature.

“Leave him alone,” Lily repeated. She was looking at James with every sign of great dislike. “What’s he done to you?”

“Well,” said James, appearing to deliberate the point, “it’s more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean… .”

[I’ve always thought this had to do with Snape being a nuisance by following them around in order to get them in trouble and the Whomping Willow Incident. Also note that the only spells James had used on Snape up to this point were a disarming spell, a spell to slow him down, and–after he let out a mixture of swear words and hexes which may have been dark in nature considering James’ tone of voice and the spells Snape’s friends used and a specific one Snape uses next on James–scourgify.]

…

“You think you’re funny,” she said coldly. “But you’re just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter. Leave him alone.”

“I will if you go out with me, Evans,” said James quickly. “Go on … Go out with me, and I’ll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.” Behind him, the Impediment Jinx was wearing off. Snape was beginning to inch toward his fallen wand, spitting out soapsuds as he crawled.

[This supports my theory that James didn’t ask her out prior. The way the question seems forced out of him like admitting that James fancied her was wretched out of Snape seems to indicate that he didn’t really mean to say it but that he didn’t want to be seen as an idiot, so just went with it.]

“I wouldn’t go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid,” said Lily.

“Bad luck, Prongs,” said Sirius briskly, turning back to Snape. “OY!” [As well as Sirius’ attitude, if he thought James liked her as more than a crush, he’d probably be a bit more sympathetic with his best mate.]

{Snape uses a non-verbal sectumsempra on James causing his blood to splatter his robe and James uses levicorpus in return. Some people in the audience cheer.}

[People like to claim that James used levicorpus on Snape because he couldn’t take ‘no,’ because Lily rejected him. Yet notice that he uses it not right after Lily rejects him, but right after Snape uses Dark Magic–which is what Snape calls it when he’s briefly mocking Harry for using it in Half-Blood Prince on Draco Malfoy. People also claim that the only reason James bullied Snape was because Snape was close to Lily, but Rowling’s exact words were: “James always suspected Snape harboured deeper feelings for Lily, which was a factor in James’ behaviour to Snape.” A factor, yes, but not an entire reason.]

Sirius, James, and Wormtail roared with laughter.

Lily, whose furious expression had twitched for an instant as though she was going to smile, said, “Let him down!”

…

“LEAVE HIM ALONE!” Lily shouted. She had her own wand out now. James and Sirius eyed it warily. [For those who have implied that James could have possibly abuse Lily. Yeah, both Sirius and he obviously respected her ability as a witch and knew she could hex them into oblivion. And that kind of, again, supports the theory that James could not have been constantly asking Lily out frequently if he knew and respected said abilities as is shown.]

“Ah, Evans, don’t make me hex you,” said James earnestly.

“Take the curse off him, then!”

James sighed deeply, then turned to Snape and muttered the countercurse. [Lily rightfully calls James’ bluff, he takes it off Snape as soon as she asked.]

“There you go,” he said, as Snape struggled to his feet again, “you’re lucky Evans was here, Snivellus —”

{Snape calls her a mudblood, and Lily tells her she won’t bother in the future, tells him to wash his trousers, and calls him by Sirius and James’ nickname for him.}

“Apologize to Evans!” James roared at Snape, his wand pointed threateningly at him.

“I don’t want you to make him apologize,” Lily shouted, rounding on James. “You’re as bad as he is… .”

“What?” yelped James. “I’d NEVER call you a—you-know-what!” [Can we just appreciate the fact that James can’t/won’t even say the word ‘mudblood,’ I’ve read a few fanfictions that have had James using this word. I mean, he’s James Potter, he’d probably hex anyone who said it.]

“Messing up your hair because you think it looks cool to look like you’ve just got off your broomstick, showing off with that stupid Snitch, walking down corridors and hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can—I’m surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it. You make me SICK.” She turned on her heel and hurried away.

[Okay, so she list his hair, the Snitch, and hexing as reasons. Never that he’s a player or that he harasses her–so it’s really likely that he wasn’t a player and didn’t harass her.]

“Evans!” James shouted after her, “Hey, EVANS!” But she didn’t look back.

“What is it with her?” said James, trying and failing to look as though this was a throwaway question of no real importance to him.

“Reading between the lines, I’d say she thinks you’re a bit conceited, mate,” said Sirius.

“Right,” said James, who looked furious now, “right—”

There was another flash of light, and Snape was once again hanging upside down in the air.

“Who wants to see me take off Snivelly’s pants?”

[The last part was uncalled for–so was hexing him to begin with but it was a rivalry–not that that makes it okay–and I’ve already said why I think it started to begin with–but I doubt Snape didn’t try something on James for ruining his hanging on a thread friendship with Lily.]

But whether James really did take off Snape’s pants, Harry never found out.

So I explain most of my thoughts within the writing so main points:

He’s fancied Lily for at least four or five months at this point.

the drawn Snitch and him tracing Lily’s initials, James’ version of a heart with his crushes name. Two of his favorite nouns (a noun is a person, place, thing, or idea and I didn’t want to call Lily a thing, but quidditch is a thing so…).

James kept looking at the girls Lily and messing up his hair. Nervous habit.

His voice changed tone when talking to Lily and he was trying to prolong talking to her (”said James, appearing to deliberate the point”).

The way he asks her out is rushed out, indicating that he might not have intended to ask her out.

Bonus: for those who have said James doesn’t know how to take ‘no’ for an answer, after Lily said she’d rather date the Giant Squid James he doesn’t try to use it as leverage when she asked him to take the curse off Snape again and still defends Snape calling her a mudblood even though some guys may have been bitter about it. And doesn’t even mention it to her for the rest of the scene–which is all we have Jily related of this encounter.

So yeah, no canon evidence anywhere to support that he repeatedly asked her out or even that he fancied her prior to fifth year. One of the only other pre-dating references we get is this:

“And,” said Harry doggedly, determined to say everything that was on his mind now he was here, “he kept looking over at the girls by the lake, hoping they were watching him!”

“Oh, well, he always made a fool of himself whenever Lily was around,” said Sirius, shrugging. “He couldn’t stop himself showing off whenever he got near her.”

“How come she married him?” Harry asked miserably. “She hated him!”

“Nah, she didn’t,” said Sirius.

“She started going out with him in seventh year,” said Lupin.

“Once James had deflated his head a bit,” said Sirius. [Notice he says “a bit,” and not had a change of personality like in a numerous amount of fanfics.]

“And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it,” said Lupin.

He always made a fool of himself, showing off; not he was always an arse and asked her out repeatedly.

Why it matters?

Lily Evans was a capable witch and wouldn’t stand for not being respected. She was in denial of Snape becoming who he was, so as soon as she labeled him a lost cause–as in wanting to join the wizard equivalent of the Nazis or the KKK and hanging out with those who would gladly see her dead–she refused to be friends. Lily demanded respect, and I can’t see Lily dating someone who at one point in their lives didn’t respect her (but we do see James’ respected her skills as a witch) and again I don’t think Rowling would insinuate that Lily may have harvested feelings/attraction for James while still friends with Snape if Snape didn’t give her a reason to doubt him (as we see in The Prince’s Tale) and if James was really a pig. Again, “How did they get together? She hated James, from what we’ve seen.” She answers with, “Did she really? You’re a woman, you know what I’m saying. [Laughter.]”

James also grew up with older parents (even for the wizarding world) who were likely traditional and would never raise their son to harass a girl for a date but rather to court her if he really liked her–and even if James wasn’t the courting type, he isn’t the type to stalk/obsess/harass someone into dating him like many like to say he was with no canon evidence to back it up. James Potter wasn’t a player as many like to imagine. I respect Lily Evans’ opinion and doubt she’d go for someone who asked her out repeatedly and was annoying (if you’ve ever had a stalker you know how annoying and paranoid inducing it can be).

I love and ship Jily, and insinuating this diminishes both Jily’s relationship and James and Lily as characters. They loved each other, a pure, blissful love that began with a rough start (a bit like Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice). Lily was so happy the day they married, and in the picture Snape ripped Lily was laughing at her infant son and her husband. So forgive me for not thinking James was a nuisance to Lily.

Regarding Fanfiction

Do you realize how hard it is to find full length stories with Jily that don’t mention James repeatedly asking Lily out in the present or in the past (depending what years it takes place in)? I’ve read a few one-shots, but I don’t think I’ve read any canon multi-chapter stories [I now recall reading one, but it’s so OOC, and it was because of a bet that was made in their fifth year, so I don’t really want to count it. Really well written though.] that hasn’t had James “infatuated/obsessed” with Lily since first, second, third, fourth, or fifth year (I include fifth year because infatuation and fancying someone is different).  

If you’ve read any good canon, non-James obsessed fanfics please share, it’s important not to romanticize obsession versus pure love.

Also, if you like this post read this post on canon Jily and this one on why Jily was indeed in love by th1syearsgirl.

And these articles by me:

Why I hate the headcanon that James changed for Lily

Why is James [Potter] a Stalker in Many Fanfics?

Citations and Sources:

Anelli, Melissa, and Emerson Spartz. “The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet interview Joanne Kathleen Rowling: Part Three.” Accio Quote! N.p., Summer 2005. Web. 13 June 2017. <http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2005/0705-tlc_mugglenet-anelli-3.htm>.

Anelli, Melissa. “JK Rowling Web Chat Transcript.” The Leaky Cauldron. N.p., 30 July 2007. Web. 13 June 2017. <http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/07/30/j-k-rowling-web-chat-transcript/>.

Rowling, JK. “Career Advice.” Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. New York: Scholastic, 2013. 671. Print.

Rowling, JK. “Snape’s Worst Memory.” Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. New York: Scholastic, 2013. 642-49. Print.

Rowling, JK. “The Prince’s Tale.” Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Scholastic, 2013. 670-75. Print.

[i1976blunotte]

FIRST MEETING

Mars’ high heels nearly sank into the soil as she walked up to the hill. 

She needed calm. She needed to reach the peaceful spot she learnt to love since her first coming to Earth. She needed to sit under the sallow and watch the lake, her feet in the fresh water as the leaves rustled in the wind and the sunlight played through the tree’s branches.

Annoyed. This is how she felt.

She murmured to herself, “Princess Serenity and Prince Endymion … I don’t know why but I feel something terrible is going to happen because of their love.” She shook her head in frustration, “Why these pesky feelings?”

And now, even Venus, Jupiter and Mercury looked closer and closer to the Prince’s Guardians.

She shook again her head, trying to forget about her talk with Venus, just few minutes before.

Annoying.

“Earth is amazing. One day, we followed our Princess to Earth and we found out how beautiful it is. Now I understand why Princess Serenity loves coming to the blue Planet.”

Venus gently placed her right hand on her mouth and had a soft laugh. She finally looked into Mars’ eyes, violet-blue eyes into purple eyes, “Earth’s beauty isn’t the only reason why our Princess is attracted to this Planet.”

Mars sighed and shook her head, “The main reason is Prince Endymion. I know it, Venus, and I am not happy about it: I feel this is wrong … and dangerous.” Venus shrugged, “Maybe not. Things look peaceful, here. Speaking about Prince Endymion, what do you think of his Guardians?”

Mars blinked and stared at Venus, “The Shitennou?”

Venus nodded, her look serious.

Mars smiled, “Do you want to know my opinion, don’t you? You are studying them in order to understand if they are a possible harm to our Princess, I see. And I reckon you asked Jupiter and Mercury the same question. OK.” She sat down on the grass and looked at the landscape in front of her, “The one with long silver hair … uh … Kunzite?”

Venus sat by Mars’ side, “Kunzite, yes.”

Mars nodded, “He is their leader. He is really serious and aloof. He looks strict and I guess he is really strong. Better not having him as enemy.”

Venus smiled, “I agree. He is a good leader. I can learn a lot from him, both about this Planet and the Court. What about the others?”

Mars tossed her long hair behind, “Nephrite, the one with long brown hair. He always has that self-confident smile on his face, like if he thinks he is better than you or he understands everything better than you. He gets on my nerves.”

Venus sniggered, “Jupiter says she feels very comfortable with Nephrite, instead. Despite that self-confident smile, he is really kind and clever, and he is also a great warrior. But, yes, you’re right, he is overly proud of himself and impulsive. What about Zoisite?”

Mars looked up at the sky, thoughtful, “He is polite and really elegant. He has a piercing look, and I guess he is really smart.”

Venus nodded, “Good analysis. He is the strategist of the foursome. Mercury too thinks he is really clever and smart; she is curious to understand how his mind works.”

Mars stirred and stood up, “Before you ask, I haven’t met the last one, yet … what’s his name? Uh, yes, Jadeite. When I’ll meet him, I’ll tell you my opinion about him.”

Venus remained sitting, “You haven’t met him, yet, ‘cause he was away from Elysion until yesterday. A reconnaissance. He is a sort of ambassador, the peacekeeper of the group. Kunzite introduced him to me, yesterday.”

“I heard some people of the Court … women … saying he is beautiful. It is true?”

Venus turned her head to Mars and smiled amused, “You’ll see. He has short blond hair and he wears a pale blue uniform. It seems any of them has his color, like us.”

Mars rested her hands on her hips and bent her head toward her right shoulder, “Short hair? I thought he had long hair, as the others. Blond hair, OK, and what about his eyes? You know, those women were babbling about strange eyes.” She folded her arms, closed her eyes and had a deep sigh, “Women’s talk. I don’t understand how they can waste their time this way.”

Venus laughed, “I don’t know what women say about Jadeite’s eyes. I can’t say what’s the color of his eyes, honestly. For sure, he doesn’t talk very much.”

Mars frowned, “You haven’t noticed Jadeite’s eyes ‘cause of Kunzite. It looks like you have a soft spot for him. Be careful, Venus. Love brings just complications, and Princess Serenity in love with Prince Endymion is already a BIG complication.”

Venus stood up and stared into Mars’ eyes, smiling sweetly, “Kunzite is just an interesting man to talk to and to learn from. Don’t worry. There’s nothing wrong in becoming friends with the Shitennou. Kunzite is teaching me a lot of things. He is the leader of the Shitennou, and it’s really interesting to talk with him about duty and responsibilities. Besides Earth, he’s talking to me also about the Court and the other Shitennou. For example, Nephrite is a great warrior, but he is also clever, kind and caring; his problem is his temper, he can be really emotional, so acting reckless. Jadeite is the calmest one, the peacekeeper, the negotiator; he is a planner, he isn’t strong as Kunzite, Nephrite and Zoisite during attacks, but he is pretty good in defensive maneuvers; his problem is that his calm and planning can turn into passiveness and being lenient. Kunzite says that Nephrite and Jadeite are like pain in the ass, for him, ‘cause he spends his time trying to cool Nephrite’s hot temper and inflame Jadeite’s coldness.” She had a brief laugh and then kept on talking, “Zoisite is the youngest one, a great warrior but also really sweet and joyful; unfortunately, sometimes he is a bit immature and provoking with his jokes.”

Mars sighed, “If Kunzite already talked to you about them, why did you ask me?”

She winked, “I was just curious of your thoughts. And you look really curious about Jadeite even if you haven’t met him, yet.” She gently brushed some grass off her short orange skirt and she walked away, waving goodbye, “See you later.”

Mars yelled at Venus going away, “I am not curious about him!”

Annoying. 

Mercury was having fun with Zoisite’s joyful way to explain her everything of Earth, Jupiter was definitively falling in love with Nephrite and now Venus was coming closer and closer Kunzite.

Mars needed to calm down.

She arrived at the top of the small hill and stopped, surprised, staring at the hollow after the hill. She stared at her loved lake, at the sallow … and at the usurper lying under the tree.

She frowned.

She walked to the tree and recognized the pale blue uniform with cyan piping of the man sleeping under the tree: the last of the Shitennou to meet, Jadeite. The usurper of her favorite spot.

Damned annoying.

Jadeite was deeply asleep under the tree, in fetal position. 

Mars observed his cape folded under his head as a pillow, her boots nearby (looking at his bare feet, she wondered if he liked to keep his feet in the fresh water of the lake), his belt abandoned in the grass, and his sword in his left hand. She wrinkled her nose at that negligence, but his negligence somehow emphasized his beauty: short blond hair, curly to the point to look disheveled, cowlicks nearly covering his closed eyes; perfect nose and fine features; perfect lips.

Women at Elysion’s Court were right: Jadeite was beautiful. And it annoyed Mars.

She frowned and folded her arms, “Hey, you! You should guard your Prince instead of sleeping!”

He slowly opened his eyes, sat up and stared at her with a curious look.

“I can’t say what’s the color of his eyes, honestly.” Venus was right. The color of his eyes was an indefinable mix of pale blue and gray; pale blue, gray and … some lavender too? Beside that amazing but indefinable color, his eyes’ shape too was puzzling: wide eyes faintly slanting. And those eyelids, long and perfectly defined.

Mars understood why Court’s women talked of Jadeite’s beauty: he was beautiful, of course, a different kind of beauty than the other Shitennou, a classical and clear beauty, objective beauty. She couldn’t deny that both Endymion and his Shitennou were good looking, any of them, nevertheless, but Jadeite … 

Utterly annoying thought.

Towering on him, her arms folded, Mars kept on looking at him.

His curious look turned polite; he finally smiled amused, “Sailor Mars, I suppose.” He stood up and had a gentle bow, so strange in his negligent outfit, “Nice to meet you. My name is Jadeite, one of the Shitennou, Knight of Prince Endymion.” Soft voice, with a pitch of hoarseness.

Annoyingly formal.

Mars half closed her eyes, glancing at his uniform’s accessories scattered on the grass; she snorted, “Very strange Knight.”

He caught her look and burst out laughing.

His sudden and soft laugh surprised her. She opened her eyes wide and observed him laughing, his eyes closed and his head down while his cheeks tinged a soft red.

He slowly put his boots and cape on, then his belt, “Uh, sorry. I am not in my best look.”

Mars tossed her long raven hair behind and sighed, “I didn’t think I was going to find someone here. It’s always lonely and peaceful, here, and I love it.” Why was she telling him about her feelings for that place?

Jadeite shrugged, still that gentle smile on his face, “This is my favorite place, too.” He sat down, his back against the tree, “You can spend your time here whenever you want, I won’t bother you. There’s enough place for both of us, here.”

A sudden fire on her cheeks and her heart beating faster, Mars turned on her heels and walked away, her hair fluttering in the wind, “You shouldn’t spend your time sleeping under a tree but guarding your Prince.”

From the hill, before to leave, she glanced again at Jadeite. 

He was laughing, that soft laugh of him.

And Mars felt again that feeling. Annoyance. 

It was annoyance, wasn’t it?

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Star Wars Camelot AU Fucking Go

CLEARLY Finn is King of Camelot, destinedruler of all Albion, hero-king snatched from a training center designed to churn outdevoted soldiers for a dangerous faction rising in the wake of the previouswicked king’s demise (Palpatine, obvs)

Rey is his queen and court enchanter, andFinn met her after being separated from his guardsan attack by bandits—shewhomped him good with a staff and threw him into a lake with magic.  Naturally, he brought her back to his citadeland was like “This is our new court enchanter, she used to be a feral mountainchild” and within a few months everyone went “Hey Finn what if you got married”and he went “Sounds great, meet your new queen!”  And everyone was EITHER really delighted ORcompletely horrified.  They’re a kickasscouple and Rey is really good with seeing possible lines of influence and Finnis actually a killer diplomat and basically they rock.

With the help of their Most Loyal and TrustedKnight, who would DIE for his king, especially since Finn swooped in and savedhim when his quest went horribly awry in the process of booking it from theFirst Order.  Obviously this is the adoptedson of the Lady of the Lake, Sir Poe Dameron (du Lac)…  

You see where I’m going with this.

KyloRen is breathless when he dashes into the king’s study, the crash of the heavywood door drawing King Finn’s attention at once.  The strong lines of his face creases into abroad, friendly smile as he straightens up, setting aside his work andgesturing to a chair.

“SirBen,” the king says warmly.  “What can Ido for you?”

KyloRen keeps his face still at the old name and remains standing.  He tries to look anxious, even stricken,wringing his hands and glancing away from Finn’s gaze.  “Sire,” he says, and tries to make it soundlike the word is hard to get out because he’s stressed, rather than because theword is sour in his mouth—usurper, hesnarls in his mind.  “I don’t—I don’tquite know how to tell you this, but.”

Hestops.

Finnfrowns, folding both hands on his desk. “It’s all right, Ben,” Finn says, gentle.  “What’s wrong?”

“Oh,sire,” Kylo Ren says, plastering a look of dismay onto his face.  He quashes down the flicker of something likeguilt at throwing his foster brother to the wolves of fate, but needs must.  “I saw—I saw—I’m sorry, sire, I saw the queenand Sir Dameron kissing on the battlements.”

Theking’s face does something indefinable. Despite Finn’s talents as a diplomat and general, he never did quiteconquer the habits instilled by wearing a helm at all times before leaving theOrder.  Kylo Ren can usually read himperfectly, but now…  Finn could bethinking anything.

There’sa long beat of silence, the only sound the crackling of the fire, before Finnsays, “Thank you for telling me, Ben.  Pleasedon’t discuss this with anyone until I have the chance to sort things out.”

“Ofcourse, sire,” Kylo Ren says, bowing from the waist as Finn rises and stridestoward the door.  He lets himself grin,wild and triumphant, as the door closes behind Finn.  His master’s plan is working beautifully.

KyloRen remains under this impression for three days, during which Sir Poe isnowhere to be found and the king and queen spend the vast majority of theirtime having conversations in low tones, conversations that come to abrupt andawkward ends whenever someone comes close enough to overhear.

Andthen on the third evening Sir Poe is back and Kylo Ren sits back comfortably towait for the fallout.

He’sutterly confused when, the next morning, breakfast is a positively jubilantaffair presided over by a beaming king, with Queen Rey giggling at his lefthand and Sir Poe smiling almost shyly on his right.  

In which the plans of Kylo Ren Mordredare thwarted by convenient threesomes. So instead of a lot of catastrophe and death and Camlann, the Camelotarmy survives Camlann and so do Finn and Rey and Poe, and they go to war with theFirst Order and Kylo Ren, foster brother of Sir Poe Lancelot, revealshimself as a sneaky-ass traitor and thus we preserve a lot of the knife-twistybetrayal aspect that makes Le Morte D’Arthur so tragic.

Other highlights include:

Luke is the ex-court enchanter who wasrunning a small school for magic users before every student was murderedfifteen years ago by a knight in strange black armor, with a sword limned inred fire—Luke went into hiding in a forest afterward, and no one ever found outwho the killer was.

LEIA THE LADY OF THE LAKE, KINGMAKER ANDARMY-RAISER AND STRONG IN THE MAGIC OF THE WORLD—in this universe, theslaughter of the village of Alderaan was the last desperate ploy of KingPalpatine, who had been bled badly by the rebellion led by Leia, lady of thenoble house Organa and adopted daughter of Alderaan’s magistrate.  After being mortally wounded defending herpeople, Leia’s comrade and lover, the sellsword Han, brought her to the edge ofthe lake of Avalon on her command, and her lost twin brother met them there.  Leia’s blood spilled into the lake and shewas bound to it, body and soul—immortal and unaging, a servant of the deepmagics.  Despite her somewhat…nontraditionalcircumstances, Leia helps raise, arm, and empower the army that Finn leads ontothe field of Camlann, and he wields the sword Excalibur that she gave him.  She’s his most trusted advisor on militarymatters.

Poe was a foundling, but Ben is Leia’s son,blood and bone, a gift from the power of the lake when Leia wished for achild.  His betrayal, believing that hehas been cheated of the magic that should have been his, is a bitter thing.

The fighter pilots are the Knights of theRound Table.

Poe’s horse is a chestnut named Beebee.

No member of Rogue One was a knight duringtheir life—two monks, a desperate escaped message rider from Palpatine’s army,a spy for the Rebellion and his ill-tempered manservant, and a criminal wantedin half a dozen cities under half a dozen names.  They weren’t knighted after their deaths, either,after their suicide mission into the heart of enemy territory to send word ofthe terrible squadron of mercenaries known as the Star—the message rider makesit out of the citadel of Scarif, bleeding down his horse’s flank, and liveslong enough to tell Leia in person before he dies.  But nonetheless they are remembered as thebest of the Rebellion’s loyal knights.

IDK Anakin is still a fuckup but he’s notForce Jesus, he’s just stupidly powerful in terms of magic with critically poorjudgement, and the Jedi were an order of enchanters who were still reallyunhelpful with the whole ‘emotion’ and ‘attachment’ thing so basically thatwent about the same, Padme is dead and Anakin stomps around in black armor that’sbeen bonded to his severed limbs by Super Dark Magic.

Poe takes that entire three days to go to theedge of the lake of Avalon and panic in full Technicolor at Leia, who puts upwith it for about a day and a half before she points at him and goes “Listencarefully while I impart the wisdom of the ages to you.”  And he listens and then he’s taken very abackwhen she says, slow and articulate as if she thinks he’s taken one too manyblows to the head, “Fuck them both.”  Heblinks at her and she clarifies, like she thinks he might have misheard her, “Iam telling you to have sex with the king and his wife.”

Far be it from Poe of all people to disregardthe advice of the Lady of the Lake.

[foodtellsastory]

Ben Carson and the Fate of Soul Food

Ben Carson and the Fate of Soul Food

70. Dr. Ben Carson, a brilliant pediatric neurosurgeon, is now the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), because he’s….Well, I suspect the internal discussion went something like this: The U in HUD stands for “urban,” and, as Paul Ryan showed us, “urban” is a code word for “black.” So, let’s make Ben the head of HUD. A match made in Heaven or wherever, quod erat demonstrandum.

(By the way, this post will be about food. I promise.)

Anyway, back on March 6, 2017, his first day in office, Dr. Carson spoke to his HUD employees, declaring: “That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great grandsons, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”

Let’s just say that the world of social media noticed. The Food Network’s Sunny Anderson had one of the more restrained reactions:

Carson’s statement did seem odd. When we think of “immigrants” coming to America, we probably don’t picture it like this:

Later in the day, on his first attempt to talk his way out of it, Dr. Carson appealed to a linguistic technicality: An immigrant might be defined as an individual member of a migration. Some migrations are voluntary, and some are not. (Ask the Cherokee people about the “not” version.) And so, it was as he first said: The enslaved were “involuntary” immigrants.

Well, ok. Some still objected. Jelani Cobb noted that calling an enslaved person an “immigrant” is like calling a kidnapping victim a “house guest.” At the time, slaveholders insisted that they were merely importing farm equipment, like a farmer today might import a Volvo tractor. The enslaved were considered property, not tourists. (Except when it came to seats in Congress. Then the slaveholders wanted their “property” to count the same as them. That’s where the infamous 3/5ths rule came in as a compromise.)

But even if we’re charitable and grant Dr. Ben that technical definition, it still wouldn’t explain his characterization that the enslaved had “worked even longer, even harder for less” in order to win the American Dream for their descendants.

On the face of it, it sounds like a backhanded argument against raising the minimum wage. Can’t make it on $7.25/hr? Stop whining, and work 16 hours instead of 8.

If that’s your politics, fine. But don’t compare it to life under enslavement. If we say they were working “for less” instead of “for free,” then we’re assuming that the enslaved at least got “paid” in free room and board, so it was ok. I mean, a hovel and a cup of cornmeal is worth something, right? There’s no free lunch.

And the rest of your “compensation”? Whippings were thrown in for free. Character-builders, I guess. Maybe Frederick Douglass wouldn’t have gotten up the gumption to escape and become an abolitionist hero if he hadn’t been beaten up so much.

Fact fact (not an “alternative fact”): Many of the enslaved who escaped made their way to Canada. What do we make of that? Carson said the African immigrants dreamed that their descendants “might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.” But for many, “this land” was Canada, not America. So were they just un-American ingrates who didn’t realize how good they had it here? (See painting above….)

And while we’re at it, the enslaved weren’t quite allowed to have dreams for their descendants, because those descendants automatically inherited their enslaved status, simply by being born. They were, legally, the property of another person from birth. The tragic reality was something more like this newspaper clipping found by Michelle Munyikwa:

Before the day was over, the good Doctor was in full retreat. Carson insisted that he knows the difference between slavery and immigration. But that’s not so obvious. As Tera Hunter pointed out, this wasn’t the first time that Carson has waded into this swamp. He has compared Obamacare to slavery. He has compared reproductive freedom to slavery.

2014: One of the good ones had the guts to speak up

That rhetoric plays well on the right. Some insist on minimizing the horribleness of American enslavement, like Bill O’Reilly’s ridiculous comments last summer about “well-fed slaves.” We just don’t expect to hear it from a guy with ancestors who were, we assume, enslaved.

Bill O’Reilly, between lawsuits, pronounced slavery not so bad

But let’s turn the clock ahead to the early 20th century. Now, talk of “immigrants” (or more accurately, “migrants”) dreaming of a better life might be more plausible. We’re referring to the period known as “The Great Migration,” lasting from World War I into the 1960s, when millions of African Americans managed to leave the southern states for the north and west.

In this case, we certainly have the element of free choice. Indeed, as Carol Anderson summarizes in the second chapter of her book, White Rage, the southern white power structure used every tool at its disposal, short of starting another Civil War, to prevent African Americans from leaving. By that measure, it was the opposite of a forced migration.

We also have the motives that traditionally lured Europeans to America. Some went northward in search of better economic opportunities than were available in the segregated economy of the south. Others were running for their lives, seeking to dodge the renewed outbreak of lynchings and violence encouraged during the Woodrow Wilson administration.

In this sense, one might compare the experience of African American migrants in the north to the experience of foreign immigrant groups across our history, from the Germans, Irish, Scandinavians, Chinese, Italians, Mexicans, Koreans, and Vietnamese, to the Somalians, Ethiopians, and other more recent arrivals.

Food. Talk about Food…

For many reasons, migrants often seek out the food they ate back home. Opening small operations, such as cafes, food stands, pushcarts, and catering businesses has been a first step available for many minority groups in the face of racism, bigotry, and restriction.

Then, two things happen. First, the original “ethnic” dishes begin to take on the flavor of their surroundings. That was certainly the case for African American migrants. Some of the ingredients that were common and cheap down south were either unavailable in the north or their seasonality was more restricted. Much of today’s debate over yellow cornbread vs. white cornbread, for example, stems from the simple reality that up north, yellow cornmeal is what’s more likely to be on the grocery shelves. Northern wheat flour is different too.

We see this in the various menus of the Sweet Home Cafe at the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture. What we probably think of as “soul food” is well-represented by the “Agricultural South” menu, with items like fried chicken, collard greens, mac and cheese, Hoppin’ John, and so on. The “Creole Coast” menu, representing the Low Country and Louisiana traditions, still sounds like soul food, with items like fried catfish (as a Po’Boy sandwich), and candied yams.

But as we move into the “North States” and “Western Range” menus, we run into items that don’t sound like “soul food” at all, like smoked Haddock, Yankee Baked Beans, “Son of a gun” Stew (with beef short ribs), and BBQ Buffalo brisket.

Sweet Home Cafe: soul food surrounded by history (NMAAHC photo)

These menus remind us that “soul food” is more than a particular list of dishes or ingredients. As a general rule, “soul food” dishes are characterized by close attention to seasoning, no matter what the dish is. There’s also that more esoteric quality of putting “love” or “soul” into the cooking. That’s impossible to pin down scientifically, but we know whether it’s there or not.

Both distinctions are important. Sometimes, we make “soul food” shorthand for “what black people eat.” By that measure, a Big Mac is soul food. In some areas, food redlining, like housing redlining, has helped create or reinforce segregated neighborhoods where people without sufficient money, transportation, or free time often end up going to the ubiquitous fast food places to grab cheap items made from government-subsidized ingredients. A Big Mac may not be a nutritionist’s dream food, but it is an economical way to get a lot of calories in a hurry.

No offense to the good folks at McDonald’s, but Big Macs are the antithesis of “soul food.” They’re not particularly well-seasoned, and it’s hard to put that indefinable element of “love” into food designed to be mass-produced quickly with minimal human intervention. There’s also no sense of down-home regionality in a Big Mac. Franchising’s raison d’être is that sandwich you buy in Bangor, Maine should taste like the one you buy in Pensacola, Chicago, Topeka, Sioux Falls, Salt Lake City,  Oakland, or whatever McDonald’s in DC is closest to the NMAAHC.

Just don’t call it soul food

On the positive side, the historic regional flexibility and adaptability of African American cuisine offers a key to its survival. Fair or not (and in this blog, we say Not), many criticize the traditional soul food menu as unhealthy. But there’s no reason why soul food restaurants can’t include lower fat, less sweet items or vegetarian/vegan items and still be made with love and good flavor. The African roots of soul food point to an emphasis on vegetables over meat, and developing flavors beyond what we can get from fats and sugar. “Soul food” was inherently adaptive, and still can be.

The other thing that happens to migrant foods is more challenging: As migrant groups become more fixed in the community, people from outside that group start frequenting the local eateries, and over time, the food itself changes to meet the tastes of the new customer base. Americanized versions of Chinese, Italian, or Mexican dishes are typically unrecognizable to visitors from those nations. The taco you buy at a Taco Bell in Minneapolis is not like the taco you might buy from a food truck in Los Angeles, let alone one from Mexico.

Midwesterners have discovered this with the influx of Latin American immigrants in the last twenty years. Here in Sioux City, when we’re sorting out dinner plans, “Let’s have Mexican!’ is inevitably followed by “You mean real Mexican or Taco Bell?” Many local Mexican restaurants cater to both tastes. For instance, you can usually order a taco “American style” (i.e., with cheese, ground beef, and no cilantro).

One meme put the issue succinctly. Don’t look up chingadera. Use your imagination.

Even the “real Mexican” menu is an invention. There is plenty of regional diversity in Mexican cuisine, and most restaurants pick and choose. Some “real Mexican” restaurants around here include Dominican or Guatemalan dishes, in an attempt to cater to the needs of as many groups as possible.

How far can “authentic” soul food be stretched before it becomes something else? I’ve heard it said that “southern” cooking is nothing more than soul food dumbed down in taste, fancied up in looks, and boosted up in price. I can order fried catfish and a side of collards at the Cracker Barrel, and it’s ok…but it’s not quite soul food either.

In real estate, “gentrification” describes the phenomenon of young white professionals moving into older, predominantly African American neighborhoods in search of cheaper rents or home prices. They fix up their houses, and open up coffee shops and such. In the process, property values increase, rents go up. Then, those without the incomes to support the new requirements find themselves being driven out.

In 2015, “Saturday Night Live” doctored up a real-life business in Bushwick to create their “Martha’s Mayonnaise” spoof of what happens under gentrification in Brooklyn.

Recently, this phenomenon of “gentrification” has been applied to soul food.

Two things happen with gentrification: First, we risk losing the historical significance of soul food. Think of it this way: There’s nothing more All-American than hamburgers and hot dogs, but we never think of their German roots. What was the “Hamburg” style of meat? Do we ever stop to think that “wiener” refers to Vienna? Does eating a chicken and roadkill hot dog oozing with white filler move us to seek out the rich sausages of the Central European tradition? Likewise, if soul food survives by the gentrification route, would it get disconnected from its soul?

Gentrified German soul food

Second, with gentrification, the people who created soul food may well be left out in the cold. On the eater’s side, Eboni Harris noted the phenomenon of how “‘ethnic’ foods are ‘discovered’ by well-meaning foodies – often white – who then raise the price of these meals until the original purveyors and consumers can no longer afford to eat them.”

Once upon a time, for instance, oxtails were considered so useless that some butchers gave them away for the asking. Today, oxtails are expensive, especially considering the small amount of meat on them. Barbecue aficionados have noted the same when it comes to brisket.

This is significant for soul food because one of the historic keys to soul food was in the ability of African American cooks to apply the legacy of West African cuisine to make less desirable foods, like neckbones or collards, taste great. But it’s hard for the average person to practice cooking and perfecting traditional dishes if the ingredients break the budget. (When I wanted to make oxtails, I practiced on cheaper stew meat before I dared invest in actual oxtails.)

On the cook’s side, we run into appropriation, aggravated by the multitude of ways in which institutionalized racism hinders African Americans from being able to capitalize on their food heritage. The difficulties faced by trained African American cooks in becoming chefs are quantifiable. We can work our way through the lists of the annual James Beard award winners. We can count up the black chefs that make it onto Chopped episodes, or check cookbook sales.

Last fall, there was a minor media fluff over Neiman-Marcus selling collard greens. We titled our reaction, “Greens for People Better Than You.” The gist of the piece was to wonder why anyone would pay so much for frozen greens rather than go to a local soul food restaurant and by some fresh greens for a fraction of the cost, and probably with superior flavor to boot.

Robert Irvine no doubt makes fine collard greens. Does it matter if his face becomes the face of collards, and his seasoning sets the standard?

For some, this is when “gentrification” begins to sound more like flat-out appropriation: white folks coming in and taking over, obscuring the history, and making money off of other people’s food traditions and hard work, while using the tools of contemporary segregation, such as equal access to capital, to shut out or shut down competitors.

It’s a double injustice. Many southern/soul food dishes were created or perfected by enslaved cooks paid nothing, or by underpaid cooks working under Jim Crow. Spin the clock ahead to 2017, and their descendants are feeling cheated again. Many soul food places are closing down just at a time when southern cuisine and barbecue are coming to national attention and popularity.

At that point, the broader quest for social and economic justice will have an impact on the fate of soul food. If the arc of the moral universe really does bend toward justice, the impact will be positive. The restaurant business is always challenging, but people who want to cook soul food, or include soul food dishes, will benefit from increased opportunities to follow their dreams.

Those of us who like to eat and/or cook soul food have a moral obligation to those who passed it down to us to invest ourselves not just in groceries but in the broader quest for justice. That requires, in the first place, knowledge. We should learn the history behind the cuisine, and also understand the current situation. More on that in a moment.

Soul food may also benefit from a renewed interest in home cooking. Some watch food programming on TV just for its entertainment value, but others get curious enough to try their own hand at things. I can tell from the new options on the grocery shelves at my neighborhood Walmart that people’s kitchen horizons must be broadening.

For some, cooking is a lost art. I’ve had the disconcerting experience of being asked to give advice, tips, or soul food recipes to younger African American women. I’m always flattered, but it just feels weird that they’re asking an old white guy for something that would be better learned from their parents or grandparents. What do I know? I’m just a student myself, and a pretty elementary one at that. I feel like John the Baptist meeting Jesus: “You want me to baptize you? Dude, you should be baptizing me!”

Cooking takes time and practice, a willingness to learn by trial-and-error, screw up a dish, apologize to your family…and then come back and try it again. The current level of interest in cuisines and cooking may give soul food a boost, both in terms of learning to cook them the old-fashioned way, and in adapting the classics to meet our interest in healthier options.

Hopefully, this hands-on practice in the kitchen may also get more people interested in the history behind the soul food. It’s in the nature of that cuisine that some of us are curious about what has gone into the “soul” part.

We know how this works in music. When Chuck Berry died in March, many of us on the downhill half of life’s mountain climb paused to reflect on the music of our childhood.

Chuck Berry in London, 1965. His music ended up teaching me more than music.

Like a lot of white teenagers in the 70s, I discovered Chuck Berry retroactively. I had learned his songs first from the covers done by the Beatles and the Stones. But then I got interested in going back and finding Berry’s originals, and that, in turn, led me to dig back even further into the roots of rock and roll in the r&b and jazz of the 1930s and ’40s. It wasn’t just the music either. Learning how the Delta blues became the Chicago blues, for instance, led to my introduction to the topic of the moment: the Great Migration.

The same has been true in exploring soul food. It prompted me to go back and learn a lot of history that I was never taught in school, and then to think about how that history continues to impact us. This blog reflects some of that journey. I’m sure some react to putting food and history together the same way that some react to putting pineapples on pizza. But I like it.

So, the question of authenticity may solve itself. Some will surely try to capitalize on dumbing-down soul food dishes for a broader audience, but others will respond by offering something more faithful to the living traditions.

Bottom line? Food is always in transition. Techniques, equipment, ingredients, and tastes change. “Soul food” isn’t a museum piece. It’s a living cuisine, and it would be inauthentic to try and somehow freeze it in time. Even the name may change. “Soul food,” after all, was a 1960s invention. The great Edna Lewis, it will be remembered, called it “country cooking.” But my educated guess is that it, whatever “it” is, will survive.