#they have a good amount of the books over in my county but its more scattered and they dont have as much books of anything in general

[yuridovewing]

went to the library in the county besides the one i live in because pretty much everything they have over there is better and guess what? they had the rest of the avos arc including the super editions associated with it + squirrelflights hope! and im getting all of it because i hate myself

this is my punishment

[mooremars]

Camelot 2023 Act 1 ramblings about the music and book and also the visuals again because turns out 3,000 words wasn't enough.

I cannot possibly recommend anyone actually read this because it is so absurdly, comically long but I needed to get some feelings out. Also it's in two parts because apparently Tumblr has a maximum character count and I hit it.

Overture

• Firstly, female conductor, we love to see it

• I love overtures and entr'actes and this show's is so good

• Shoutout to the orchestra

• I have never experienced a bad Broadway orchestra but still doesn't mean they do not deserve serious praise

• Does just the instrumental of Camelot make me very emotional and think about fundamental human goodness?

• Yes, this show did its job

• The end of the If Ever I Should Leave You part is just permanantly in my brain as the part during bows where they point to the orchestra

• Whatever the music that plays as everyone starts walking onstage is epic

• The vibe is set and I'm ready

Act 1 Scene 1: A hilltop near the castle at Camelot

• I've said it once and I'll say it one thousand times, I am obsessed with the way they've used the space in this show

• I love that they can walk up the back of the stage, I love that they have the stairs in front, I love that they've got so many exit and entrance points

• Sorry to the actors who probably had to do a lot of running around but it was fun for me

• As much as I like spectacle, I don't inherently prefer it over this kind of more minimalist thing

• But I do feel like they did a good job at conveying scale and drama even though the set is extremely minimal

• "I have the exact same amount of information that you do" just immediately starts the show off on the right foot

• This is a new take and I was here for it instantly

• And such a funny way to deliver a ton of exposition, this will be the first of what will become the prevailing theme of my rambling which is I adore Sorkin's writing beyond measure

• Merlyn's delivery drenched in sarcasm for every line is perfect and we clearly see where Arthur gets it from

• Specifically "do you know what calamity means?"

• But also "things in England are changing too fast"/"words that have never before been spoken"

• Establishing Sagramore in a funny way that becomes so serious by the end

• We jump right into the Sorkin dialouge rhythm and it feels so right

• There's the perfect amount of everyone overlapping each other and finishing the other characters' thoughts

• And also the jaunty music when most of the guards leave, like I don't exactly know why it sounds like that since it doesn't fit but I love it anyway

• I know it's part of at least the movie's score but like to me it's still strange, I've been calling it clown music in my head

• The difficulty finding the king exchange and also the pheasant hunting exchange are so funny and set the tone so well

• Can you see I'm attempting not the write out every line of dialouge?

• But also I love that we get this little build to Arthur to wonder what the hell is going on with this guy

• Because if you're me, you've come into this show with basically the association with JFK and that's it

• So I had no clue and was curious

• The knights have like mostly terrible points but Sagrimore's delivery of "snear all you like but five minutes ago we were at war with that girl's county and tomorrow I'll be swearing an oath to protect her with my life"

• He's not wrong

• The knights are so good, the actors are perfect

• Every bit of casting is inspired and those three are no exception

• "Arthur get the hell out of the tree"

• Again with no context, the tree really got me

• "Hiding, I'm obviously hiding" - I am instantly in, the delivery on this line is so funny

• Okay fine I was in from the way he said hello, also a hilarious delivery

• My roommate brought up immediately how effective it is not to have him do a British accent and how it again just makes Arthur relatable - genius

• Whatever voice he's doing is a perfect choice

• Also young Arthur is so much the right choice it's staggering to me that they ever did it any other way

• They thread the needle so perfectly of Arthur being young but not in a way where he's like an incompetent child

• Which I feel like is actually how some of the other versions with older actors still managed to come off

• But this Arthur is just young and trying

• "My mouth disconnects from my brain"/"I've witnessed that"

• As like a character note, I love that exchange but I also was worried this was gonna be what it usually is, which is a male character who cannot treat a woman like a human person

• But no, Arthur has absolutely no problem with that, his mouth only disconnects from his brain when he's trying to confess feelings and that is 1000% more endearing

• "Years of tutoring in philosophy and law, why didn't you ever teach me about love and marriage?"/"You're not marrying for love and there's nothing about it that can be taught."

• To which my roommate that I dragged to see this twice and who has just been forced to talk about this show with me, maintains that perhaps you could maybe convey that relationships are about communication

• That lesson might've helped just a bit

• "You're not marrying for love" like Merlyn is trying to warn Arthur and he sure did not listen

• "They should be reading" Arthur babe they literally can't, it's the Middle Ages

• Also the establishment of no magic is so deftly handled

• Arthur complaining that people think that dragons are real and you get exactly what this world is

• I love that I Wonder What the King is Doing tonight becomes his noble king music

• Also I just absolutety love any time anything has a recurring musical theme it just lights up some part of my brain every time

• The yelling of "he's scared" and all of the subsequent lyrics in that spot is again hilarious and just very good characterization

• Also the delivery of the slaying a dragon part whatever that singing accent is I love it

• Actually the way he sings all the parts where he's imagining what other people are saying

• The other characters have a lot of songs that are gorgeous and require some incredible vocals and songs with fun lyrics and fun performances but not at lot of them get to infuse this much personality and character into the songs through just the delivery

• Don't know if that's from the original or not but it's one of my favorite characters introductions I've seen in a bit

• From what I've seen this is definitely an escalation of previous versions and I adore it

• He's so annoyed, he hates this shit so much and he's so funny

• I mean also lots of credit to the lyrics because they are obviously very funny

• I love this song a lot

• Arthur's "shhhhit" when he realizes that he's managed to run into his future wife

• The multi-layered complication line, so quintessential Arthur

• The contrast between the gorgeous Julie Andrews channeling singing and Genny's brashness in her movement and dialouge

• Like obviously that's already in the lyrics but the book and direction just stretches it

• Everyone knew Phillipa Soo was going to be perfect and she is

• A lot of my strongest impressions are about Arthur

• Because I had no idea who the actor was and because in the limited amount of adaptations I'm familiar with of this whole story, Arthur is the bad guy or a good but extremely boring guy

• But I knew going in that I was gonna love Guenevere and Phillipa Soo even if I've never seen her on stage before

• So it was unsurprising

• Like my expectations were sky-high and she's so talented in every way and the writing for Genny is so good that she exceeded them anyway

• And she's so damn funny

• Obviously the whole rescued in the wood bit is already just a good joke and I'm honestly impressed with how funny the original songs are

• I am a sucker for the thing in stories where we know what's going to happen because they've been told so many times

• When they have a character say something the audience knows is foreshadowing

• "Cause a little war" is what I'm thinking of in this moment but there are tons and every time it's a hit with me

• The delivery of the clause one bit is perfect and her backing Arthur into falling on the bench and then just turning around and back to angelic singing

• The turnaround from the aggressiveness to the extremely soft and feminine singing is brilliant

• "The more knights slaughter each other, the fewer there are to slaughter the rest of us"

• The exchange about the dowry still being in the carriage

• Their deliveries are so funny

• They immediately bounce off of each other perfectly

• And Genny not even escaping with the dowry she's supposed to be using to buy her freedom, amazing

• "What is power uuuused for? That is a very interesting question."

• Genny just immediately knocking Arthur's socks off

• Trying to write out some of the word deliveries he does is so hard but there are a few that absolutely kill me

• They've known each other for five minutes and they're already having a debate

• "I've known kings, I'm daughter of a king so marrying a king doesn't have the same allure for me that it apparently has for you"

• She just speeds through those words at the end and it's great

• "They run to here" is another bit of hilarious delivery but I also love the contrast it sets up between Arthur trying to be kingly in a way that doesn't fit versus later when he does it his own way

• I could listen to them go back and forth saying why for ten minutes

• Genny's incredulousness when he says the weather

• I can't remember but I think she's walking away and then just turns to stare at him in absolute confusion

• Like he's so ridiculous that she can't help but engage

• I did a quick bit of intermission math and we know this takes place seven months before the Lusty Month of May which is obviously happening in May

• So Arthur is literally singing to Genny about how there's no winter until December while at best - assuming the one month later and six months later are rounded up - it is snowing at the absolute beginning of November

• More likely October

• No wonder Genny thinks he's full of shit

• His improv did not pan out

• This is a joke for me, thank you Aaron Sorkin

• Do love that canonically, Arthur is in fact singing the song Camelot - that he just made up in a panic - what a dork

• Genny's little interjections of skepticism are all so funny

• Also just instantly establishing her as someone you love

• She's perfect

• But my favorite is "my escape is time sensitive, do you understand that?"/Arthur still singing/"no he does not"

• These actors are both hilarious, the amount of stuff required of musical theater actors continues to blow my mind

• Like not only to do the whole singing, dancing, and acting thing but then you have to convey it to a whole theater but also not overact to the people up close and be able to do comedy and drama how

• I was in practically the back row up top and not a good view but extremely close (like seeing the actors spit close) on the side for the under 35 tickets and then also in very good seats and the performances by literally everyone never felt too much or not enough

• "Are there any other people in these woods you could recommend?"

• Also this moment which is the cutest thing you've ever heard

• Do I remember exactly what happened? No. But do I know it was adorable? Yes.

• "And we have poets in France"/"Oh yes of course... But do you?"/Genny angrily naming French poets/"Understood" and he's already singing again

• The entire performance of this song and especially getting her to sing along, so charming in the most annoying way

• But also she's sort of into it which is cute

• I do see on YouTube that there was a bit more to this French poets discussion which was probably right to cut but I am delighted to find literally anything new

• Sidebar

• I have been known to have issues with staying present when I watch things and not letting my mind start wandering. And one of the reasons I knew Camelot was good the first time was that I was totally engaged the whole show. But the last time, I did have the one moment where a thought popped into my brain during this song that completely threw me out of it

• And that thought was "this Barbie has taken a carriage ride to hell" after Genny says that line and like why brain?

• (For the record Genny and Arthur are both Barbies. They are everything. Lance is just Ken. Perfecting his body and soul is his beach. He is Kenough. Arthur and Genny have a terrible day every day. Lance only has a terrible day if Arthur and/or Genny look at him.)

• (I believe I have come up with a combination of words that have never been spoken before and perhaps a genuinely new opinion on a thousand year old legend)

• (In a bad way)

• Anyway

• The pure chaotic comedy of the knights finding Arthur and Genny freaking out is not something I can articulate but I adored so much

• Phillipa Soo is stealing the whole show in this one

• Does Genny come out of her hiding spot with her mouth wide open before she gets on the ground or am I misremembering?

• "We call that a sin of omission your majesty"

• With no remose "oh we call it that too"

• "Were you never going to tell me?"/"No I was going to get to it"/"When?"/"After I told you about the weather"

• Not a single bit of remose again

• I don't have anything to say, I just think the exchange is very funny

• I love not making Arthur any kind of royalty, he is truly just some guy

• Like I'm reading The Once and Future King and Arthur's lineage is so weirdly complicated and I just don't care, I like him as some guy

• "He discovered he didn't have his sword because I left it at... a house, that doesn't matter, that's my fault"

• Now that's a line that is funny on time one and fills you with dread afterwards

• The most exasperated "I was just going to borrow it for the day"

• Something about the delivery of "when I opened my eyes the square was filled with people shouting god save the king"

• Like Arthur never actually says out loud that he didn't want to be king but Genny gets it right away

• "I see you now, you're just a boy wearing a crown you never wanted sitting atop a throne two sizes too big"

• Just an absolute cutting response but Arthur doesn't take it that way at all, he's so earnest

• She reads him to filth but it doesn't even rattle him, he just takes it because it's true

• Gorgeous writing in what she says and his response

• "But provenance has put us both here, both of us highness and want it or not we are commanded to wear that crown and to grow into that throne"

• Chills, the delivery is outstanding

• We finally get King Arthur

• And Genny being convinced, all it took was one genuine moment and she's ready to engage

• Then Arthur again just taking so passionately about what he wants Camelot to be

• No wink, no sarcasm, no shame

• This show is unabashedly sincere and optimistic and I love it

• Genny falls in love with Arthur, I fall in love with Arthur, Genny falls in love with Camelot the idea, I fall in love with Camelot the show

• Everyone including the audience and Arthur were already in love with Genny for Phillipa Soo reasons so there's no moment for that one

• I feel like the trope-y thing would be to have Genny be a cynic here but no, she's just as much of an idealist as him

• She put up a little front of cynicism at the beginning but as soon as she gets the option of hope, she's choosing it instantly

• "Or you can stay. And together we may discover if power might be harnessed as a force of good"

• Like he's instantly treating her as a partner in this endeavor

• And I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight playing under it so beautifully and then the seamless musical transition back to Camelot is so perfect

• I am music stupid so I wish I had something to say about it but your songs have got to be tight to flow that way

• "I don't know if I'm worthy" also just a heartbreaker

• We don't really get to hear anything about Genny's life in France but she's clearly very opinionated and competent and I wonder if besides the whole wanting romance and adventure thing

• She also had an idea of what the life of a queen is like

• After all she's the daughter of one

• And she didn't imagine having this kind of role in actual ruling and doesn't know whether she can live up to this ideal that Arthur has set

• Like maybe she thought the only way she'd get to impact the world was knights killing each other over her or being the cause of a war, at least that's something

• But now she has a chance at more and she's grabbing it

• Genny singing the reprise is so beautiful thematically - it makes me a little teary just watching her instantly be like I see your dream and understand it and I want to be part of it but via some of the best singing maybe ever

• Such an amazing recontextualization from the original

• I've seen little clips of this reprise from 1961 and this one just feels warmer and more meaningful because it's about the ideals and not them confessing love at first sight

• And somehow more romantic

• They're instantly established as a team who share intellectual and philosophical similarities

• To so quickly convey that and make it believable

• It not only cements their relationship but makes them characters you root for

• And then the sounds of people coming in as soon as or maybe even before they get to finish singing together, like it's their world and they're falling for each other but there's no time, they're king and queen now and that will always supercede their relationship

• Also something about the moment when Arthur introduces her to the court just also really gets me

• "She's nice... some of the time"

• It's cute how smitten he is with her, all of her, immediately

• "Something about her makes me want to be a better king" (so Arthur is actually capable of expressing a romantic thought, don't get used it it)/"She's very attractive"/"Oh she is but it's not that"/"Arthur"/"Well it's not just that"

• I love the way they flip the speech Arthur gives Genny from the original about not feeling like a king until now meeting her

• But now that they've actually gotten to know each other a bit and it's after she's agreed to stay it actually makes sense here

• I do also love that even though he can't manage it to Genny's face, he does feel completely comfortable expressing his feelings about her to Merlyn

• The "oh she is" is so cute, he's so excited

• The music under his conversation with Merlyn before he starts just monologuing, very ominous

• I'm obsessed with it

• "We finally have peace" is another line delivery that I just need to sit and think about

• The joy of it, the relief

• Again the idea that Arthur has been a king at war this whole time

• Merlyn mentions, as part of a joke but still, almost as soon as we meet Arthur that he's fought armies

• He's not optimistic about the world because he hasn't seen conflict

• He's more determined because he sees what it does

• Channeling best man in all fiction Waymond Wang this is how I fight energy and that's very my shit

• Very much my shit might be a slight understatement

• It might not be surprising to learn that Arthur is my favorite thing about this show, they revamped this character so well

• So much of my life was spent in the media age of male anti-heroes and I love that we've returned to a point of male heroes

• Arthur idealistically talking about how they can finally start making Camelot for everyone and Merlyn walking off stage while the ensemble sings I think the part from the cut song and I assume some new stuff that's very Medieval church music

• So so good

• "What do I do next?" so eager and then just the emotional drop-off to his scared little boy when it becomes clear what's happening "Merlyn?"

• Stunning performance

• I think Arthur falls to his knees at some point but I'm already doubting

• The "what the hell do I do now?"

• Perfect scene ender

Act 1, Scene 2: The King's study - one month later

• The transition music between scenes is always good

• It's gonna be a struggle not to just quote this whole scene

• "Arthur, please call me Arthur" is so desperate like he has no one now, no actual human connections to him as a person instead of a king now that Merlyn is gone

• And then asking what she was called back home, he wants connection so badly

• And probably he still feels guilty for taking her from her home to be his wife

• "I was a royal princess, I didn't have friends"

• Well there is a reason they're both terrible at relationships

• I also love the way Phillipa Soo says Arthur in such a stilted way at the beginning of this scene and it becoming more natural every time she does it

• Genny telling him he's not attending to his duties with enthusiasm like she is not the least bit afraid to challenge the king a month in

• Love to see it

• Arthur's "I beg your pardon" when she asks about cortesans and the look he gives her

• "My father kept his women, his extra women, in their own wing of the palace. Where are yours? Might they cheer you up?"

• Genny the proactive problem solver

• Also something about the way she says extra women makes me laugh

• "I don't have extra women, I'm a married man. You were at my wedding" perhaps one of my favorite deliveries and lines in the whole show

• Genny's point of view in this scene is very interesting

• Like she does bring up that it's his legal right instead of dropping the whole thing and that's a choice

• Does she think he's lying about not having cortesans and reminding him that she is legally obligated to be cool with it so to be honest?

• Or is she just baffled by Arthur and his choices because this is a normal thing for a king to her?

• Or maybe since she already has feelings, she's trying to balance her own expectations to not get hurt?

• Possibilities

• "I'm aware of my legal right in that regard and I assure you I have no intention - oh my god - no intention of exercising it"

• Specifically the delivery of oh my god but the whole thing, he is so offended

• "And making the world into Camelot, are you abstaining from that too or will men at honor continue to plunder villages and take, rape, and kill whatever they please?"

• Genny

• Genny you are a hero

• She's so smart and fierce and unafraid to stand up to Arthur

• "I didn't make the world"/"You make a part of it"

• Arthur being so defensive and Genny calmly holding her ground

• She's taken to her new role so well

• And then Arthur admitting he doesn't know how to proceed without Merlyn, I love the way he builds trust in her in this scene

• "What would he say?"/"He'd say my god you're the slowest student anyone's ever tried to teach"/"Well I can convincingly say that"/"It's good that you mock me, kings should be mocked from time to time, it brings people pleasure. But for the record it's no fun for the king"

• Genny sounding so pleased with herself, Arthur getting out another sarcastic response

• Also what a lie, it is fun for him

• Mocking each other and public policy are their love languages

• "He once explained why but I got distracted because a white tailed eagle flew right by" with the most excitement and boyishness

• And then starting to go off on a tangent about eagles

• Never change Arthur

• I just think it's sweet the way she redirects him because she's fully committed herself to the idea of Camelot and her role in it

• "Pace freely at your own pace"

• Another brilliant line and delivery

• Channeling some Mary Poppins here

• Genny getting Arthur to think is so good

• "You had to pace and comcentrate to arrive at that?"/"It's hard to imagine why your country was willing to part with you"

• The proposition/resolved structure of this scene is very good

• And also that he starts with this pessimistic tantrum about human nature and Genny guides him back on track

• It's a great relationship moment but it also lets Arthur have some struggle and lets Genny be for Arthur what he was for her in the first scene

• Arthur collapsing on the floor and muttering "extra women" like wow he cannot handle being thought of as not a good person

• "That's it?"/"Wait"/"I wasn't going anywhere"

• Her being on the floor with him, gently pushing him

• He can't even maintain cynicism for more than a few minutes

• Them building the idea of the round table together, this is peak romance

• I can't just quote this scene in its entirety but every moment of it is a delight of them passing ideas back and forth

• "Isn't it also about the law?"/"It is"

• A standout delivery

• I love when they're working out the wordings like they make each other better

• "The law will be the stone upon which this rock - the rock upon - wait the church?"/"Have mercy"/"The law will be the rock upon which this church is built"/"Nothing can be more important"/"Nothing can be as important"

• This is what I love about Sorkin's writing

• The way that he has characters discuss ideas

• Like everything is an exciting discovery

• There's no singing in this scene but it has so much rhythm and is so compelling when in another writer's hands it would be boring and forgettable

• I broke out a chunk but it's so dense there are so many words and I love each one

• Genny counting down to his return, she already knows him so well

• Again I am trying not to type out every line

• I think they both yell for the page but I'm actually not sure, either way they are so excited and yelling something

• The new book has done so much to deepen their relationship, I adore these idealistic little nerds

• Arthur cannot contain himself

• His attempt to cool things down for himself by taking his hands off her face and then "you were very helpful, thank you"

• Smooth

• Convincing

• Definitely professional and platonic

• Truly do not know how Genny does not realize he's in love with her at this point but she sure is not gonna get better at that

• "And I suppose France too"/"I know that hurt"/"A little bit" and then he laughs it's adorable

• They're both so giddy here

• "Arthur I did already know that about you, that you were a decent fellow"/"I'm glad"

• They're in love. They are so in love.

• Arthur has taken on Genny's tone for the word inspiration when he talks to the knights

• "You've invited the French" every time Sagramore says it, it's just as funny

• "We may not be born equal"/"We are not sire" (with so much contempt)/"So our laws will make us equal" (with no room for disagreement)

• The immediate conflict

• And we see Arthur being a king and taking a hard line which we don't get to see much in this show and I love it

• "What about God's laws?"/"Not. Our. Jurisdiction" like are we sure this is not actually from the west wing

• I'm internally cheering when I hear it, I love this line far too much

• It's funny but also authoritative and kingly

• I get that some people do not vibe with Sorkin's style and that's fine but I very much do

• This show is so for me it's kind of incredible it was not made with that purpose

• A Sorkin character who would love Sorkin's work, I just adore it

• And according to the funniest line from any review I read, also has Sorkin's haircut

• That just lives in my brain because it's funnier than any piece of media criticism I will ever hear

• The knights already dissenting is very good but also that they don't fully agree yet with each other

• They build it in immediately and that's such a good choice, it makes every escalation feel totally plausible instead of the knights just easily falling for Mordred's bullshit

• Dinadan quoting Plato's ideas and saying how they're the well-educated people who should be in charge is great

• I love that the knights get to be characters and have thoughts

• Their constant vacillating between loyalty to the king and loyalty to the power structure they benefit from

• One of my favorite running tensions

Act 1, Scene 3: The countryside outside of Camelot - six months later

• The performance of C'est Moi is so funny

• Going 100% immediately

• Jordan Donica was just as perfectly cast as everyone else

• The lyrics are so funny and then he is just so loud

• His little whispered "C'est Moi" after the second verse while posing is so much funnier than it is on the cast recording

• "Had I been made the partner of Eve/we'd be in Eden still" is my favorite lyric

• The scream on clean destroys me

• Lance is always at a 10 and he's so delusional, I'm obsessed with him

• There's so much loud breathing in this performance which I love

• And whirling his sword around the stage

• "Beware enemies of Arthur do you hear me beware, from this moment you answer to me" while Arthur is literally unconscious behind him, this is comedy

• "You raised your sword to me"/"Oh I was saying hello"/"I did not know that"

• Lance is not sorry at all and it's hilarious

• He's just on another planet compared to everyone else and I love it

• Also Arthur so pure, just seeing a random person and trying to say hi

• Like you're the king of the country, you do know many people are not exactly going to be friendly, right?

• "I honestly thought I was more recognizable to the French"

• "Have you changed your Francs to English shillings?"/"Why?"/"This man's face is on money"

• Arthur subtly trying to tell Lance what's happening but the word subtle is not in Lance's vocabulary

• "I'm underwhelming in person"

• Says the man that keeps making French people instantly fall in love with him in the woods

• "My security detail... right in the nick of time"

• "I beg your majesty to forgive for me for by forgiving me I'll suffer even more"

• Lance is screaming the whole time

• I don't know how he does it

• "But my strength comes from purity of spirit"/"What was that?"/"Purity of spirit, my personal relationship with the almighty, he favors me"/"I'd keep that to yourself"

• I can't write it out but this

• And this is about to have to switch out for the rest of the show so like even more screaming somehow

• He's so funny, it isn't reasonable

• Also love that his language is the least modern of them

• It fits

• Seems like some of his lines come directly from the original book and it works amazingly

• "Be a faultless example to children" is another iconic delivery

• Also Lance asking for a mission, incredible

• He just plays everything so straight and it's perfect

• Like not a single acknowledgement of the ridiculousness of this character

• Arthur will literally get a concussion to avoid a social function, relatable

• "Until you came along and whacked me in my head"/"AND FOR THAT I BEG YOUR HARSHEST PUNISHMENT"/"Nope, nope, we're not going back to that"

• Yes the all caps is necessary, Lance is always speaking in caps, if he lived in a time a cell phones all of his texts would look like that

• And Arthur's tone when he responds

• When Lance starts singing again and then Arthur just says nope so many times

• This is their whole relationship

Act 1, Scene 4: A park near the castle

• This scene is just a magnificent Phillipa Soo showcase that we have been blessed with

• Like she is just so talented and I am blown away

• There's a reason Lusty Month of May is the song they have the most out there

• "The birds and the bees with all of their vast/amorous past/gaze at the human race aghast" is my favorite and she does it so perfectly

• Also the intro music just exactly captures that buzzy spring feeling

• My roommate and I both had the experience where the first time we saw the show, none of the music stuck with us

• And then the second time, all of the sudden it burrows into your brain

• This burrowed first because of course, it's so vibrant and lovely

• The original music is so good and somehow the transition from the more modern dialouge into the songs is seemless

• Genny has two missions: justice for all and bringing sex to England

• Look there's none in her own marriage and she needs an outlet, make those people kiss, it's all you have

• Genny's so fun and adorable in this song and it's perfect and I have no notes

• I'm just gonna go watch the today show performance and bask in it, this is the most classic Broadway musical sequence in the whole thing

• I love the idea that she's inviting all these normal people in and the beginning of the knights absolutely hating it

• "Be right quieter"

• And when they refer to Genny as a guest in the country

• The original is very and everyone loves her and I love that there's this tension where the people with power don't like her but everyone else does

• They say all the quiet parts out loud in this scene

• The show needs the knights so badly to show the discontent growing over time

• But they still respect tradition enough to enforce respect for the queen on Pellinore

• "I've only lived here a short time"/"Oh and you're already the queen, well done"/"I really had nothing to do with it"

• "Full of youth he was but brooding over problems that would confound Solomon. Ever met him your majesty?"/ "Constantly, he's my husband."

• With such affection ahhhh

• "You must be Morgan Le Fay... oh how he'd go on about the loveliness of Morgan Le Fey, her unsurpassing beautiful"

• Genny getting emotionally slapped in the face, it hurts so much

• The first crack in their relationship because they couldn't talk to each other...

• "I'm glad that nice young man found a nice young lady"

• Why does this make me feel things?

• I love the royal music every time

• "As you were everyone, pick grapes, eat flowers, or uh the other way around"

• Arthur and Genny's little catch up about Pelli is very cute, we don't get to see them be cute for a while after this so I just want to appreciate it

• Lance having no social awareness and continuing to make proclamations while Genny could not care less and is actively trying to speak to someone else, brilliant

• Genny and Arthur just waiting for Lance to stop talking after she keeps being interrupted and then Genny rushing out her lunch invitation and Arthur rushing out his response

• Arthur immediately wanting to run ideas by Genny, she is crucial to the development of Camelot and it's very much not a secret

• Arthur's "uh oh" when Lance is doing some casual misogyny

• "That sounded like a friendly exchange of pleasantries"/"It was not"

• No fucks for Genny today

• I wish I could one day know the translation of Genny and Lance's friendly exchange of pleasantries

• "Who would serve as the standard?"/"Oh certainly not me your majesty"/"See no hubris"/"My standards are much too high"/"Dammit Lance"

• "Have you achieved perfection milord?"/"Please say no"/"Of course I haven't your majesty"/"Good"/"Refining the soul is an endless struggle... but physical perfection"/"No"/"Yes"/"Go back to speaking French"

• "And in your quest for spiritual perfection have you considered the value of humility?"/"Ah something we should all consider. In fact let's take two minutes of silence to consider the value of humility."

• The dialouge between the three of them is so funny in this scene

• The ship is sinking and Arthur is just there with a tiny bucket while Lance and Genny keep creating giant new holes

• Genny calling Lance a jackass is both hilarious and also so valid

• "She already has an affectionate nickname for you"

• We have officially reached the beginning of the end, well we had some nice moments

• Like imagine if Pelli didn't start going on about how in love Arthur was with Morgan and then Arthur didn't show up with his new best friend who immediately implied women were too stupid to engage in government

• Genny was having a no fucks day and was probably ready to do a stupid thing and maybe that stupid thing was her husband

• A true tragedy

• "And with humility I"

• Dinadan's line deliveries are so dry and good

• And Genny's laugh

• "And whom will the three of you want to impress?"/"We want to impress the king too."/"Ah yes English men"

• I love the knights, they've all got their own little comedic touches in this song

• Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss Genny

• Take Me to the Fair is a masterpiece

• I don't know what constitutes a hot take about this show because there are 5 people talking about it

• But my hot take is that as much as Lusty Month of May is a brilliant and amazing song

• This is actually the Phillipa Soo tour de force

• Her fake crying is so good

• There are so many good flourishes in the singing

• Same thing I feel about I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight, Phillipa Soo is just enhancing every line with her hilarious delivery

• Also this sound

• Sagramore is always operating at 50% more intensity than the rest of the knights and it's perfect

• Him having to be held back by the other two when Genny sings to him

• It's involuntary at this point that I turn my head back at French during this verse

• His very loud delivery of "I swear to you the challenge will be met"

• "Sirrrr Liiiiionel"/"Ma'am"/"Ugh"

• And when she gives his chest a little slap after "and young du Lac"

• Perfect

• And her laugh-cry at the end of Lionel's part

• Their faces when she touches them are also just very confused and funny, she is not good at this

• I love when the knights are singing together, bringing up Lance really has wrapped them around her finger

Act 1, Scene 5: The King's study - the night before the tournament

• "You know that it's your move right?"/"I did not know that. I'll need to alter my strategy now"

• Honestly so relatable I suck at chess, Pelli is the best

• "If we're to care about justice, we need to care even more about injustice"

• Just a good little Sorkin nugget

• Pelli refusing to understand any of Arthur's ideas, excellent

• "Do I understand that you intend to be history's first king to yield power?"/"Oh now you're catching on"

• I do just love Arthur so much

• And the delivery of "she wrote what you just read"

• He's so pleased to inform Lance that Genny's writing treatises about justice

• Pelli's smug little "it's your move" like that's correct, no one is allowed to not respect women in Arthur's study

• "He's had you in checkmate for an hour and a half"

• Arthur's patience is astounding, Lance should be taking notes while he's perfecting his spirit

• "Would you like to play me or do you ever do anything but perfect your soul?"/"No I also perfect my body"

• Again just perfect deliveries and honestly so much respect to the new book for making Lance even more irritating but eventually more human too

• I am not dragging Lance, this is a compliment

• Just the way Jordan Donica plays it completely straight without being able to detect sarcasm is hilarious

• "The arrangement I'm in is called a marriage, having some fun would be called treason. And finally I hate his breathing guts."

• Setting up the consequences we know are coming with a little joke, I like it

• "Well be sure and give us clear skies tomorrow when you're arranging things with god tonight"

• Savage, I don't like most of the original dialouge but we had a winner with this one

• Her delivery just elevates it

• "No one could refuse your wish"

• The gall of Lance to say that like that in front of Arthur like he is shameless

• "Why do you have to bait the man?"/"I dislike him, I thought I was making that clear"

• Genny is so relatable

• Their first fight and Arthur's already insulting the French, I'm not sure why he thought this was going to go well

• Arthur trying to delicately ask Genny to withdraw her permission from Dinadan

• He's trying to have this conversation as her husband and not her king but Genny is not even having it a little

• Genny explaining that she already gave permission for all the knights is so funny

• I know they're basically the original lines but ya know, sometimes Lerner nailed it

• "It will seem to the entire court as if you are rooting for his downfall and championing his defeat."/"The only reason it will seem that way is because I'm rooting for his downfall and championing his defeat."

• "He's going to embarass those three. These are not men who take well to embarrassment."

• Like Arthur already knows exactly who his knights are

• He knows that they don't exactly match up to his ideals

• The delivery on "will you withdraw your permission" is also spot on like Arthur is ready to exit this conversation right now

• Also on "if I do will you forgive me"

• Like he knows that's not happening

�� "Not as long as I live, no"

• Perfect riff on the original book's line

• Arthur doing some investigating on Genny hating Lance like he knows before she even does

• Ouch

• And then him starting to get frustrated when she's not answering like babies' first fight is not going well

• "Because he needs to be brought down to earth... literally not metaphorically"

• Like she has yet to be wrong

• "Merlyn never taught me how to handle a woman"/"You didn't read the book?"/"There's a book? No I can see from your face that there's not a book. Though maybe in France they would have published something, no I can still see on your face"

• We love a Genny dripping with sarcasm moment

• And Arthur being an idiot nerd

• He's so so stupid

• Another one of my truly favorite lines and deliveries, he is so excited that he completely forgets he's mad at her for a second and then pouting when he realizes

• "If the king wishes me to withdraw my permission, let him so command... nope, then I will bid you goodnight"

• The aggressiveness on her daring him to command her is so much

• Perfect

• I love her nope, a little power play

• Because she knows he won't and he knows he won't and she's happy to remind him of that they both know that and then leave

• His silence is doing so much work too

• Damn this scene is good

• "And before I go to bed as a gesture to Lancelot and to you, I'll pray it's over quickly"/It will be"

• They're so mad, I love it

• "There should be a book"

• Grumbling sullen Arthur is very funny even if How to Handle a Woman is lowkey the worst song

• And Arthur's worst impulse, which the narrative knows because it plays under him talking about vengeance and what he's entitled to later

• Like they do a good job recontextualizing it but it's still not the best

• Just hearing him sing the word threaten is kind of jarring, I cannot even slightly imagine this Arthur even thinking it once

• In my opinion they should've just cut it, I'd gladly take more Sorkin dialouge instead

• I do appreciate the way they scaled back this music in the rest of the show

• Because it's all over the second act of the movie, Arthur and Genny's theme if you will

• Like even during their last conversation

• Because they're not the love story so their theme isn't really a love song

• But then here, they play it under Arthur's worst impulses at the end of act 1 and banish it which is so smart

Act 1, Scene 6: A grandstand - the next day

• The music coming into this scene and when Arthur and Genny show up, again fantastic

• The outright hostility between the knights and Lance, they turned it so far up in this version

• Pushing him down and shit

• I love Athur and Genny showing up and getting to see them actually be king and queen and have their over-the-top outfits and crowns in this and the last act 1 scene because it's so removed from who they are the rest of time

• Arthur's speech at the beginning trying to glorify them not having the tournament and how great losing is and having to be stopped by Genny

• He's trying so hard and his speech is not good

• The fact that she basically tells him to stop and his response is fine like I think he forgets that he's actually in charge

• I love a sword fight

• The movement, the drama, the loud clanging...

• I am but a humble girl raised on the Pirates of the Carribean movies

• Dinadan being a dick before the fight with "and now for your lesson sir"

• The way Lance knocks the sword out of Dinadan's grip and makes him pick it up before defeating him, such an asshole move

• I truly can't tell if Lance has just such a superiority complex that he doesn't realize what parts of his own behavior are making people dislike him or he's just so stuck in his toxic little mindset that he doesn't care if people hate him for it

• I kind of feel like Lance is so into his specific notions of the world that even he doesn't really know why he acts the way he does

• "Dinadan seemed very inspired by your kerchief, should we continue?"

• "You know he almost had him, right up until the moment he never stood a chance"

• Their fight being played out by proxy while Arthur makes snide comments and they give each other looks is good shit

• Sagramore's scream, he's always going so hard

• The fact that Arthur fighting instead of Lionel is new for this

• Genius

• So good

• The dialouge around it is good too

• The temptation to just transcribe the whole thing is so strong

• Commanding Lance to pick back up his sword like damn

• I love seeing this new side of Arthur

• He can and will fight and he's good at it

• "I know what a damn baguette is"

• His little bit to Lance about it just being about morale is very good

• But also he can see what's going on even if Genny can't so is it?

• The fact that he may well have won the fight if it wasn't for a cool bird, what a man

• Fun fact about me, I didn't even see the bird or realize that's why he got distracted until the last time

• He and Genny are like very much not in a good place this moment but he will let it slide to point out a bird

• Arthur's fall is very good

• Can you tell I think this scene is also very good, I've only written it like twelve times

• The fact that they're letting people fight with swords and there isn't a doctor for 12 miles, amazing planning by everyone

• The bit of everyone thinking Arthur was dead and him sarcastically correcting them is amazing 100% of the time

• "He put life back into him" is just consistently hilarious

• "I'm not wanted here Arthur"

• With the most heartbreaking delivery

• Aw we finally see Lance have some shred of being an actual person

Act 1, Scene 7: The castle terrace - on the evening of the same day

• I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight intro-ing into this scene

• "Well you got me there" being screamed is perfect

• Pelli sensing that something is bothering Arthur, their relationship is very sweet

• Pelli describing the way Genny and Lance were looking at each other, what a shit stirer

• "It may be the only way to get him to stay"/"Maybe it's best if you let him go"/"Let him go?"/"Maybe it's best"/"Why is that?"/"Well...You said yourself, morale"

• Like she's trying to protect them but she won't say it

• For obvious reasons

• But it's confirming what Arthur already suspects

• And just drawing them further apart

• Another great her silence is doing so much work moment

• The entire telling Lance he's being invested discussion is so intense

• So much anger simmering in Arthur that can't help but come out in the line deliveries in the beginning

• Genny refusing to engage and turning her back to the whole thing

• "I'm sure he'd like to hear it from another child of France"/"This is my country now"

• Oh boy I love this exchange

• Like she's trying, she's trying so hard

• And I don't know what the fuck Arthur is thinking with that one, in what way could she possibly respond that's not going to be bad for him?

• Arthur leaving them alone like whyyyy

• And then Arthur giving Genny back her bloody kerchief, fuck

• All is very much not forgiven here

• "God dammit Pelli, I wasn't dead"

• Genny making it clear she does not believe Arthur was dead, I appreciate that she's also very clear on the fact that their world is not magical

• I wonder if Lance does think he willed Arthur back to life

• Probably

• "Don't ever say it out loud. Neither of us can ever say it out loud"

• This was another straight up gasping in the theater moment

• The entire conversation between Genny and Lance is so good and tense

• And the delivery on that line just feels like getting punched in the gut

• Phillipa Soo is amazing

• I love that she won't let them say it, that she's fighting it

• And the way she cuts him off, the way she makes him agree to not say it

• This is the intense love she wanted and it doesn't need to be said which is exactly what she needed to feel from Arthur but didn't get

• Also Lance just trying to confess his feelings the first second he can is just such an interesting character choice

• Like the truth is his purity of the soul bluster doesn't hold up to the slightest temptation

• He's ready to betray Arthur the second he leaves the room

• It's all a front

• Not intentionally, like he believes the things he says he believes

• But he can't keep to it

• I think he's so drawn to Arthur because Arthur actually has the qualities he's proclaiming define him

• But I don't even think Lance knows any of this about himself

• At least not until later

• He's just impulsive

• Which is I think what makes him an interesting character to me but also makes his motivations hardest to decipher

• Before I Gaze at You Again is such a stunning song

• And watching Phillipa Soo just emote for the whole time

Act 1, Scene 8: The great hall - on that evening

• All the music that starts this scene is brilliant

• "I'll never disappoint you"/"I know"

• I just...

• Like we the audience know but also the characters sort of all know and they are determined not to let it happen but that only makes it happen anyway

• Ugh those lines are a little nothing but they're everything

• I have the YouTube clips of Richard Burton's version of this and it does just indicate how well they've modernized

• Theater has changed so much so the pacing of 1961 compared to this is kind of fascinating

• This is also actually the writing I think is the best from the original and it is so fascinating to compare the two versions which I'm sure someone has done and I want to read it because there is so much to say

• It's so bold to close act 1 with a speech instead of a song

• I had no context coming in so they had me in the first half, I wasn't sure if this was Arthur's turn into the villain moment

• Once again I'm just like pointing to the whole speech and yelling how good it is

• Whoever decided this belonged on the cast recording is my personal hero

• This is just on my normal spotify playlist and as long as I'm not reading, I will not skip it

• But I love the idea that in the original book Arthur starts out by declaring his love for Genny and Lance and in this version it's like he's actively talking to the audience to defend himself

• To say he's not some stupid optimistic kid, that he sees everything we have

• Comes out swinging

• I can't explain how much "proposition: I am not a befuddled king" shook me, I was ready for shit to go down and I love it as the opener to this

• The pause before "whom they love", the sadness in it

• "And she didn't choose whom she married"

• Like Arthur can never get rid of that guilt

• The push and pull of this entire thing where he will try to make an argument with himself that everything is fine but the bitterness keeps seeping in until there's no rationality left

• Trying not the write out the whole thing but the rhythm of it, the pacing, this performance is spectacular

• The way the audience startles when he starts screaming

• Like he's having his back and forth rational debate with himself and finally we see him lose that control

• And it is the good shit

• I can't explain how much I came in with no context for this show and how much this completely threw me in the best way

• We're finally a glimpse of what's happening inside Arthur's head, to see the way he's been holding so much back from everyone else

• I love that he's still yelling at Merlyn, not exactly sure what I want to read into that, I feel like there are a few lines of thought

• "Am I not entitled to a man's vengence?"

• Perhaps my favorite line in the first half

• Every line is sort of my favorite but I guess let's settle on this one

• Because the original is "I demand a man's vengence"

• And same sentiment but entitled is so much more toxic

• Like the thing about this magic-less universe is that Arthur wasn't destined for some greatness and so he pulled the sword from the stone

• He wasn't owed something, he didn't deserve it, it just happened and he chose to rise to the challenge

• And this is the first moment he's decided he might be entitled to anything

• And then he does a 180 into deserving nothing

• "Proposition: I'm not a man, I'm a king"

• Like wow so much to unpack psychologically there

• I mean he and Lance have very much the same problem of trying to suppress their own humanity but the reasons are so different

• When Arthur switches into his idealistic mode and they start playing I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight because he's being kingly, literally gets me every time

• The entire thing is so good, I love the second half so much

• "I wasn't trained for this"

• I love the running theme of Merlyn training Arthur in all of these important skills but never teaching him how to handle emotions and relationships and uh maybe he should have

• There were perhaps some limits to Merlyn's wisdom that set Arthur up to fail

• Because he's been king since he was barely out of childhood

• He never got the chance to have normal, equal relationships where he could figure shit out

• So instead he just pushes it all down because he's not wrong in that he doesn't get the luxury of following his emotions

• I love every second of this scene

• I love every line, every delivery, every movement

• Like it is a hard ask to make an actor just walking around the stage monologuing compelling in a musical and this is so so compelling

• Just on the whole of this show, I don't know that I've ever been so blown away by a stage performance as I was watching Andrew Burnap and this scene is just a perfect encapsulation of why

• Whatever he's in next, I will go

• Okay real talk something about this man's face just renders it unrecognizable to my brain so more than likely I'll see something and be like wow that person was amazing, who was that and then it will turn out to be him

• I say specifically because I happened to be watching Under the Banner of Heaven the whole time I've been having a Camelot obsession and how did I find out he was in it? I happened to see his name in the end credits four episodes in...

• But anyway I will at least try to know whatever he's in next so I can go on purpose because this performance is living in my brain and I don't think it's leaving

• I do make fun of previous versions of this show for casting people who are clearly not musical theater actors in this role but actually I do think casting actors who do straight plays does add so much as long as they aren't terrible at singing

• All of which to say again that I do think this was some of the most perfect casting I have ever seen

• Basically the statements you can tell Andrew Burnap is not a musicals person and you can absolutely tell Phillipa Soo and Jordan Donica are absolutely musicals people

• Are both extreme compliments to the people that decided on this casting

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Miscellany

Who made the dark?

This book is consistently the dark, and it constantly teases you as to who is its maker. Navidson, Zampanò, Johnny... There are endless scraps of poetry, quotes, and pictures here, and all are quite interesting. I'm sure they hold tons of clues about who the author is, promising answers if only you'd dive a little deeper into it.

I choose, however, to exit the maze. I have zero doubt that the inclusion of all these fragments at the end, over 100 pages worth, is really good food for the people who want more. But ultimately my feeling of House of Leaves is that you must, eventually, draw your own conclusion on what reality is. Bearing your light in the darkness of infinite possibility.

So all of these pages. Fragments, poems, letters, pictures, quotes... All of the get folded into this one review at the end. Am I a poor reader if I said I get the same feeling out of them all? It's...

Have you ever seen a leveled house? There are floorboards and shards of a door and a fragment of what might be the sink all around you. Nails poke out everywhere and you could never hope to tell what its little job was in the structure that was. That's the feeling I get reading through these passages and bits. It's all fragments and leftovers of a whole that'll never really be that. It's that big sadness when you find a scrap of cloth, and you wonder if it were the child's dress, the kitchen curtain, or a doll's Sunday best. Or maybe it was just a bit of a lost handkerchief covered in sneezes. Bereft of their context, the only meaning we have is the one we can pull out of the aether and attach it to.

Karen was right, the house really did dissolve. And became this.

At least we know where Johnny gets his purple prose, and maybe his madness, from. It's... heartbreaking to see someone lose touch with reality. I say that from experience but won't relate that experience here. Pelafina, Johnny's mother, clearly adores her son. Vastly so. Almost scarily so, he can do no wrong but the crime of not coming to see her. There is more... I feel something potentially terrible being insinuated here behind it all. But I have to admit to skipping through these a bit.

I'd rather not revisit this difficulty, just yet, please excuse me.

What I will say, though, concerns that fairness I talked about last time. The Navidson Record is alluring because it is fair, it has cadence. Then this is the opposite. This bill for cremation, but with very special offers for just 3000 or 1000 dollars more. Way to go, capitalism, you've done it again. You've cheapened death down to what you can sell to the aggrieved in need. It is an abrupt, pale end. It's not a grand sendoff in a mahogany room with fine carpet and beautiful music playing. It's the county morgue with its buzzing florescent lights that reeks of industrial cleaner.

And with that, as I close the last cover, I find I have to do it with some mindfulness. that I have to choose to let go of the scraps and mysteries. That I have my conclusions and have to hold to them. The house will always be here for me to revisit, after all. It really was the incredible experience my dear friends recommended to me. I'd love to see more like it, this amount of passion and deliberate choice, all to say something you can just barely get a grasp on.

I'm glad I read this book. What more could I say about it? What did I take away from it?

I think my answer is creativity. I think it's a story about facing infinite choice and carrying on. Putting faith in what you mean to do rather than get lost wandering.

But, as Zampanò said, this story has a way of slipping the bounds of any label or answer you put to it. Rather than say that I have the ultimate solution to it, I think instead I'll say...

I got the photos I want, finally.

[briankeene]

Time In A Bottle

Today marks eight years since the passing of my best friend and frequent collaborator, J. F. (Jesus) Gonzalez. Every year, right around this time of morning, I remember getting the call from his wife, Cathy, telling me he’d passed. See, while Jesus was indeed battling cancer, his death was still unexpected. The cancer was bad, and he was in the fight of his life, for sure. But we all thought he’d have longer. So that call was unexpected, and it shook me, and eight years later, it shakes me still.

In the time since, we (the genre) and I (Brian Keene) have lost more dear friends. Tom Piccirilli, Dave Thomas, Dave Barnett, Gak, Dallas Mayr (who readers knew as Jack Ketchum), Charlee Jacob, John Pelan, Jay Wilburn, Peter Straub, and many more. It doesn’t seem to stop.

But, for me, it all seems to have started with Jesus.

I’ve spent the last eight years honoring the wishes he expressed to me, and taking care of his literary estate. We just arranged the return of rights for Survivor, Monsters and Animals, Hero, The Killings, Clickers, Clickers II, Clickers III, and Clickers vs. Zombies. Which means that his wife and daughter now have the right to everything in his catalog (they already had the rights to all of the rest of his work). New editions of those books will be released over the next year. A new edition of Shapeshifter will be released around the holidays, and a new edition of Conversion will follow next year, as will a new edition of Clickers Forever with brand-new bonus content.

But that’s it for the reprints. Now we are left with unpublished r uncollected short fiction (enough to fill three or four more collections), unpublished non-fiction (enough for two or three collections), a few short novelettes, and a handful of unfinished novels. That may sound like a lot to you, the reader, but it isn’t. It is a finite amount. Indeed, I can’t think of anything that feels more finite. If his work were sands in then hourglass, then those sands are growing thin.

Speaking of sands in the hourglass, here’s the top of my desk.

So, what are we looking at here? Well, the Legos and Play-Doh sculptures were gifts from my youngest son, as was the Spider-Man action figure. The Irish mug belonged to Richard Laymon. The Bloom County mug was a gift from my mother, when I got out of the Navy. The stuffed animal was a gift from Mary. The two stone sculptures came from my grandfather, picked up overseas during World War Two. The Spider Jerusalem action figure is something I bought for myself.

And the little mini-whiskey bottle?

That’s Jesus.

The desk was Jesus’s, as well — his last great practical joke on myself and director Mike Lombardo, who spent most of a day struggling and cursing to get it up out of his basement office and onto a truck, and then into my house… before realizing that we could have taken the fucking thing apart and then put it back together.

But I digress.

Some of Jesus’s ashes were scattered in the Pacific. Some reside with his wife and daughter. The rest, contained in this mini-bottle, were sealed up in a wall at The York Emporium, our favorite local bookstore. Were sealed is the key statement there. If you’ve read End of the Road, then you know about the heist, and then the reverse-heist, both involving this bottle. Well, earlier this year, I got the ashes out of the wall again. Ostensibly it was for a book that I am writing for Richard Chizmar at Cemetery Dance. I’m not going to tell you much about the book, except to say that it acts as both a sequel to End of the Road and stands on its own, as well. And Jesus’s ashes were key to writing the thing. So, I sprung him from the Emporium earlier this year (but this time with no subterfuge), and he’s secretly been coming to every signing and public appearance I’ve been at since March. And when we’re not on the road, he sits there on the desk. Good times, saved in a bottle.

Except that’s not really true, is it? Unlike that beautiful ballad of old, you can’t save time in a bottle. If anything, the bottle is a reminder of those sands at the bottom of the hourglass, growing thinner and thinner with each new release.

I believe that our consciousness continues in some form after we leave here. But I also believe that what we leave behind is just dust in the wind (to quote another great oldie).

I used to believe that our words gave us a sort of literary eternal life — a permanence not available to others. And sure, that still applies in some cases. Mary Shelley and Poe and Shirley Jackson and Lovecraft and Richard Matheson live on. But there are a whole slew of writers whose literary output would be dust in the wind if not for Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks From Hell and the efforts of publishers like Valancourt Books and Centipede Press and Borderlands Press. Indeed, I have been of a mind for quite some time that if anyone is responsible for horror fiction’s latest resurgence, it is Grady and Valancourt (and since many critics and historians — rightly or wrongly) credit me with the previous resurgence, then I reckon my word carries some weight in this regard.

But if Paperbacks From Hell hadn’t been published, or worse, if it had been published and nobody read it? There’s two decades of horror fiction writers who’d barely be remembered except by uber-fans of a certain age.

I know what happens to us after we die. I have solved that mystery to my content and satisfaction. But I don’t know what happens to our words after we die, and that is something I find myself thinking about more and more when I look up from my computer and stare at the bottle.

— Brian Keene

[novelconcepts]

fic: walking with the lady

Every movie, every book, every story about the horrors of letting in the ghosts has prepared Dani for the constant state of alarm. The panic. The discomfort of the situation.

Not a single goddamn one told her how stupid it would be.

***

The first time Viola Lloyd rears her spectral head outside of a dream, Dani is doing her best to enjoy an incredibly pleasant spring morning. She’s been having strange thoughts--strange echoes of night terrors that have been escalating, images weaving as though shot from the depths of some great ocean--for a few months now. Has been trying her very best to take Jamie’s advice and not worry about it. One day at a time. Stop gazing into every reflective surface in the county and just...live. 

And she’s been doing that, she thinks, with a decent amount of peaceful abandon for a woman carrying an unknown beast in the depths of her psyche. She’s traveled. She’s seen much of America, and more of Jamie. She’s learned she’ll never get any better at tea, that she’s honestly not terrible at pasta, that she can talk the ear off old women who just want to stop and smell the flowers. It’s been a serene six, seven, eight years, if she lays them all end to end, and she’s glad of it. 

But the dreams are coming faster now. With more regularity. Long stretches of night fade into black and white, into memories she can feel with her whole body, but knows aren’t her own. Corsets and sweeping skirts, a sister she never had, a husband. A child. None of this belongs to Dani, so it must be her, mustn’t it? 

It scares her. She talks about it to Jamie when she wakes--sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the middle of the night; whether she’s truly awake or not, Jamie always listens. They always hunker back down, holding tight to one another, Jamie whispering into her hair that you’re still here, you’re still you, it’s all okay, Poppins. It helps, as much as anything’s going to. 

What doesn’t help is sitting here on this park bench, a list of shopping plans open in her lap, and hearing--hearing isn’t even the right word for it, it’s like a ringing voice coming up from the very back of her head--someone say, “And what on earth is that?”

Dani sits straight upright, every line of her body rigid with fear. “What...is what?”

She’s said the words out loud, she realizes when an elderly man with a basket of stale bread turns slowly to look at her. Her mouth twists itself into a rictus grin of apology, and he shuffles off, looking very much like a man prepared for his own murder at the hands of a lunatic schoolteacher. 

“Well,” the voice says, coolly amused. “That was embarrassing for us both.”

What, Dani thinks, the fuck is going on?

“What’s going on,” Viola Lloyd’s deep, accented voice says, “is truly beyond my knowledge. Do you know the last time I had this many thoughts of my own? Must have been...oh, three hundred years, now...”

Why, Dani thinks furiously, are you having them now?

“I certainly couldn't say.” Viola sounds astonished. “The last I recall, I was trying to reclaim my child--”

Flora, Dani interrupts with a rush of anger, was not your child. 

She imagines she can feel Viola’s hand flip to and fro, carelessly. “It’s all apples in the end, isn’t it?”

She’s clenching her fists in her lap, she realizes, as if there’s anything to fight. As if she could ward Viola off from inside her own body. 

“Oh,” Viola says coolly, “I wouldn’t worry just yet. I couldn’t say for sure--it’s all rather new, you must understand--but I don’t think I could do anything to you. Not yet. Look, here, I’ll try...”

Dani’s muscles strain against an invisible force that never comes. Viola chuckles. 

“See? Nothing. The lights are on, my dear, but none but you is really home.”

Then why are you awake? Dani demands. 

“Not a clue, darling. It’s nice, though, isn’t it? You really take it for granted in life.”

Take what for--

“Seeing,” Viola breathes. “I haven’t seen anything properly in centuries. I’d forgotten how bright the world was. How full of...color.”

Is it Dani’s imagination, or does Viola’s tone hold an edge of disgust on that final word?

“So, again, I find myself asking. What on earth do you call that?”

Dani allows instinct to turn her head, somehow sensing the direction Viola wishes for her to look. She finds herself staring at a young child playing at her mother’s feet. 

I--it’s... And it’s here, in this moment, faced with the nearly impossible task of explaining to the 400-year-old ghost woman who shares her body what a Slinky is for that Dani Clayton decides this whole cohabitation thing might have been a mistake. 

***

“Hang on,” Jamie says. “Hang on, she’s awake in there?”

Dani, folded nearly double on their couch with her face in her hands, nods. Her head is pounding. Viola has been, ah, what’s the polite way to put it? Running her mouth. For nearly four hours. 

“She’s got some...opinions,” Dani mumbles into her cupped hands. Jamie stops rubbing light circles into her back, curious. 

“About what?”

“Might be a shorter list, to ask what she doesn’t have an opinion about,” Dani says. At the back of her head, she feels Viola cross her arms. 

“This sounds like you are on the path to impudence, Miss Clayton.”

“But hang on, I thought--” Jamie seems to be choosing her words carefully. “I thought she was just sort of...in there. Tucked away, like the kids said. What do you mean she can see?”

Dani blows out a long breath, wishing dearly for a cigarette. “I don’t know, Jamie, I’m not the authority on carrying Victorian women around in my skull.”

“Bit nearer to it than me, Poppins.” Jamie’s smiling, plainly trying to make her feel better. Dani turns to glower at her. 

“I love you very much. Please don’t test me right now. She hasn’t stopped talking for more than twenty minutes all afternoon.”

Jamie raises her hands in surrender. “Can she...can she see me now?”

“Tell her,” Viola says. “Tell her I can see her, and her mannishly-inappropriate hairstyle.”

“I will not be saying that,” Dani mutters. Jamie raises an eyebrow. 

“Are you having a conversation now? What’s she saying?”

“Please let her know I find her insistence upon men’s trousers silly at best, her blouses are entirely too loose, and I am bewildered by the wealth of ankle she seems to find appropriate in mixed company--”

“She says you have a nice smile,” Dani says. Jamie’s eyebrows raise to her hairline. Viola makes a horrible little noise of revulsion.

“How dare you place words in my mouth!”

“You are absolutely not telling me the truth, are you?” Jamie says in the same moment. Dani groans.

“Aspirin. I am going to need so much aspirin.”

***

It’s not all the time, thankfully; Dani thinks she’d go mad if Viola were truly there at all hours, yammering away about silks and petticoats and the good old days when a person could just drop dead of the plague with no notice. Sometimes, Viola even goes days at a stretch without saying a word, as though she’s sunk back to sleep in whatever little corner of Dani’s mind she calls a bedroom. 

And then, like a thunderstorm, she emerges once more. Usually with something snappy and irritating to share with Dani.

“Are we really wearing that?”

“There is no we, Viola,” Dani grumbles. She’s in the process of trying to choose between a flower-patterned dress and a denim vest, unable to gauge what kind of day it’s going to be when she steps out of the closet and into the chaos. Business has been booming down at The Leafling, which is wonderful, but more than a little overwhelming. And Jamie, god love her, has taken to watching Dani when she thinks Dani won’t notice, always with this worried little crease between her eyes. 

It’s making her crazy, if she’s honest about it. Jamie isn’t the worrier in the relationship, and watching her slip into the role is making Dani feel worse about the whole situation. She needs Jamie to tell her it’s all fine, it’s all perfectly all right, they’re going to make it through this new weirdness together no problem. 

“My dear, we became a we the night you said the magic words,” Viola says, a bit pettily. “Or have you forgotten me already?”

“How,” Dani grits out, “on earth am I supposed to forget you? Feel like I spend every day just...waiting for you to spring up and ask some idiotic question about cars or airplanes or deodorant--”

“For a schoolteacher, you surely lack for patience, Miss Clayton.”

Dani closes her eyes, searching for strength. Her hands grope, landing on dress and vest and yanking them free. “You know what? Both. We’re doing both today.”

“We most certainly are not! Not even a glove to be found? And again with the florals! We’ve been over how tacky the florals are, Miss Clayton. Miss Clayton, are you listening?”

“No,” Dani says decisively, wriggling into the layers and looking around for her chunkiest pair of earrings. 

“You are the scandal of the town, Miss Clayton,” Viola sniffs.

***

“Does she, ah...watch when we do this?”

Dani groans. They’d been having such a nice evening--an old movie fading slowly into wandering hands, Jamie’s mouth making its way down her neck, Jamie’s fingers slipping beneath the hem of her shirt and tickling her ribs. She’d just flipped Jamie onto her back, was just looking to remove the deeply inconvenient articles of cloth between them, when Jamie pressed a palm lightly against her chest. 

“Not trying to be weird about it,” Jamie says, breathless. Her eyes are dark and heavy; though she’s stopped Dani moving closer, one of her legs has wound around Dani’s hip, easing her in. It’s giving Dani the worst kind of mixed message, to say the least. 

“Would you like us to put this sort of thing on hold until I find a way to exorcise the demon from my head, Jamie?”

“I did not say that. I decidedly said nothing of the kind.”

Dani lets her head fall forward, covering Jamie’s face in a fall of blonde. “Sorry. That was snippy. I just...I don’t know the answer. She’s...” She tilts her head, eyes shut, searching. “Quiet. For now.”

Jamie brushes her hair back, cups the side of her face, thumb moving in a slow arc across her cheekbone. “S’all right then. Can’t blame me being curious, can you? I mean, it’s not every day you find a third party sneaks into your bed.”

Dani leans into the soft stroke of her hand, sighing. “I don’t like it, either, you know. She’s so...judgey. I hadn’t realized ghosts could be judgey.”

“What’s she judging?” The hand on her chest slides, gripping a fistful of her shirt, pulling her toward Jamie. Dani sighs again, letting Jamie kiss her with the soft determination of someone apologizing for stopping this train in the first place. 

“Me,” she murmurs against Jamie’s lips. “You.”

“Me?” Jamie sounds affronted. “What’s there to judge about me, I’m a bloody peach.”

Dani laughs, bites her lower lip until Jamie groans. “It’s not anything personal. It’s just...the whole world is so different from what she remembers. There’s TV, jean shorts, women out there having jobs and lives without consent of their husbands...for her, it must be the Wild West.”

“Judges what she doesn’t understand, is that it?” Jamie is doing an admirable job of pretending to still be invested in this conversation, even as her hands are making short work of Dani’s sweatpants. Dani sucks in a breath. 

“I guess. Yeah. Can’t blame her for that, really.”

Jamie mulls this over, fingers tracing hipbone. Her nails bite gently into soft skin. “Does she judge us for this, I wonder?”

“Do you care?”

“Not,” Jamie says, twisting her hand and bringing their mouths together hard, “in the least.”

***

“Put it out the window.”

“I am not putting it out the window, Viola.”

“Down a flight of stairs, then! What in all cosmic reaches of hell is this for, if not throwing it somewhere it can never harm another soul again!”

Dani exhales through her nose, slowly, embracing every meditative memory of dealing with errant children. “I am not,” she says slowly to the empty apartment, “going to throw my television anywhere. And I'd really appreciate it if you’d stop making that suggestion every time I turn it on.”

“You are letting your soul rot from the inside out with this filth!” Viola is all but shrieking. Dani imagines her pacing back and forth, back and forth, her hands wild. “Your moral fiber, Miss Clayton. What of your moral fiber?”

“If MTV rots away one’s moral fiber,” Dani says, as calmly as she knows how, “then I suspect we’re all lost causes, anyway.”

Viola is silent for such a long time, Dani thinks she’s done the trick. She turns her attention back to the laundry she’s been folding to the tune of Janet Jackson. Her head bobs gently in time as the videos shuffle past--Madonna, Michael, Paula, George. Then, with the hour change, newer fare. She’s still getting around to some of these artists, still trying to work out how she feels about them. 

"Did you hear that?” Viola seethes. “What was that about an anaconda? Is this man suggesting we feed a woman to snakes? What barbarism do your people accept in this age?”

Dani folds a pair of Jamie’s socks with such deliberate care, she nearly forgets to breathe while doing it. 

“Moral fiber,” Viola hisses. “Moral fiber is wasted on this age of nudity and...and...hammertime.”

Dani finds herself desperately invested in ironing the wrinkles out of a pair of jeans with her hand until Viola goes quiet again.

***

“You could have such nice hair,” Viola croons. “Such nice hair, if you would only put them away...”

“They’re convenient,” Dani says, scraping her hair back into a pink scrunchie. Viola makes a noise of disgust. 

“They’re abhorrent. Honestly, your time and its...fashions. What do you call this?”

She’s gesturing toward the bathroom counter, to the little basket that holds all the hair supplies. Dani sighs. 

“It’s a headband, Viola. We like headbands. They keep the hair out of our eyes.”

“There are other ways. Fine hats. Lovely veils. Why don’t you own any lovely veils, Dani, do you want the common folk seeing your every decision in your eyes?”

Dani reaches for the hairspray. Behind her, Jamie bustles in with shirt half-buttoned, suspenders swinging around her thighs. Viola makes another catty little noise. 

“Any news?” Jamie asks, reaching around for a hairbrush and kissing Dani’s cheek. 

“She doesn’t like scrunchies,” Dani reports. “And she’s started calling me Dani.”

Jamie frowns. “Good sign or bad?”

“Impossible to guess.”

“Tell her you want some veils,” Viola says sweetly. “And for her to learn the value of a fine skirt.”

Dani, ignoring this, reaches around the back of Jamie’s neck and pulls her into a searing kiss. Jamie drops the hairbrush with a clatter, leaning Dani back against the counter and gripping the small of her back like she’s suddenly forgotten they’re both late for work. 

When they break apart, they’re both flushed, Dani giggling into the underside of Jamie’s jaw, Jamie’s eyes glazed. In the back of her mind, she hears Viola sigh. 

“That is truly childish, you know.”

***

It’s kind of an accidental habit, punishing her inner ghost for bad behavior by channeling her frustrations into sex. She couldn’t explain it if she tried, except to say Viola does tend to shut up when Dani’s properly distracted. Maybe it’s just the way the connection works, thinner when Dani isn’t willing to give it energy. Maybe Viola’s embarrassed. Either way, a year after Viola first speaks, her life with Jamie burns hotter than it ever has. 

It’s best when Viola is trying to run her mouth over Jamie’s fashion sense, she’s noticed. It is, in fact, the only way to shut Viola up about the aforementioned fashion sense. Which Dani intellectually understands; coming up from a world 400 years away, where women dressed in endless layers and a person’s value was often found in the shine of her jewels and the rich fabric of her skirts, slamming face-first into the 1990s must have been a trip. Truly, Viola is lucky Dani didn’t cart her out of that lake earlier. If she thinks scrunchies are bad, she should have seen the heyday of shoulder pads. 

Honestly, though, the worst thing is listening to Viola trill on about how much better Jamie could look if she’d only bow to the whims of femininity. Jamie, whose primary word on fashion has always been “can I dig a hole in this?” is perfect just the way she is. In fact, as the years go on and her jeans grow cuffs, her shorts grow shorter, her tops crop midway up her stomach, Dani thinks the world is finally suiting Jamie instead of the other way around. 

“She’s prancing around for the world to see--”

“It’s ninety-six degrees out,” Dani says in a low voice. She understands these conversations with Viola can be internalized, but she tends to wind up wearing this distant expression every time, and Jamie can spot it a mile off. Best to just mutter aloud in the sanctity of their own home. 

“She’s walking her wares up and down the block,” Viola rages on. “Not a shawl to be seen!”

“Jamie,” Dani calls from the kitchen, “have you ever in your life worn a shawl?”

“That’s, uh, one of those blankets with the fringy bits, yeah?” Jamie calls back. She’s bent over the air conditioning unit, trying to coax life into the old girl. The cropped line of her black t-shirt rides up her back, revealing glistening skin. Dani tips her head to enjoy the view. “I’ll pass on account of any blanket in this heat being like to kill me.”

“Best not to test it,” Dani agrees. Viola heaves the longest-suffering sigh Dani’s ever heard. 

“It doesn’t bother you in the least, your woman out there, where anyone could see her...her bare stomach!”

“One,” Dani says coolly, “she’s my girlfriend, not my woman. Two, I’ve never once tried to dictate her clothing, and I’m not stopping because a dead woman insists. Three, I happen to like it.”

“Like what?” Jamie strolls back to her, pushing sweaty hair off her forehead with a sigh. She stops a few inches away, rocking back and forth on her heels like she wants nothing more than to close the distance despite the mind-numbing heat. 

“Viola is commenting upon your more risqué clothing choices.”

“What? This?” Jamie grasps the exceedingly high-cut hem of her shirt and tugs it gently upward, teasing. “What’s her problem with all this?”

“It’s on display, evidently.”

“As it should be,” Jamie says almost primly. “I’m a fine specimen to behold. Learn to enjoy it, love, it’ll be faster than trying to change the view.”

This last, she says in a slightly louder voice, as though speaking to the shadow behind Dani’s eyes. She’s grinning, and Dani has time to think how strange it is, how quickly they’ve learned to accommodate Viola’s appearances into their conversations--Jamie has taken to leaving beats between her sentences, allowing for Dani to process two people speaking at once--before Jamie is wrapping both arms around her and lifting her off the floor. She squeals in surprise, delight turning to desire as Jamie licks a bead of sweat from her neck. 

“Not again,” Viola sighs. “You’ll wake the whole village.”

“Apartment,” Dani corrects, catching Jamie by the jaw and kissing her hungrily. It’s too hot for this, probably, but she can’t quite remember how to care when Jamie pulls free of her grasp and slides to her knees, taking Dani’s skirt with her. 

“It’s a nightmare, regardless.”

***

Eventually, Viola proves herself capable of learning a thing or two. Namely, that she is welcome to run commentary on anyone in the world except for Jamie. 

Even old ghosts can learn new tricks, apparently, although it takes a number of months, a great deal of sex, and one memorable weekend in which--upon Viola raging over every article in Jamie’s side of the closet for half an hour--Dani simply removed the option of clothing from Viola’s sight altogether. 

“This,” Jamie panted, both of them on the floor with a sheet draped over their tangled limbs, “is working for me in the weirdest way, Poppins.”

“I think she’s really starting to hate me,” Dani said conversationally, even as her fingers slipped between Jamie’s legs yet again. Jamie’s hips rose to meet her, one hand burying itself in her hair. 

“Well, that makes one of us, doesn’t it?”

***

Not commenting on Jamie, naturally, does nothing to stop Viola talking about every other goddamn thing in the world. 

“We’re going to have to have a long talk about not shaming women for their bodies, you know,” Dani tells her one afternoon. Viola has been tearing a young woman to pieces over her short skirt, furious that someone so pristine could soil herself with such impunity. Dani must be getting used to this in the weirdest way possible, because this kind of floral language is starting to feel second-nature. 

“I would never shame anyone,” Viola protests. “I am simply stating fact. Men do not value women as it is, and while we may win their games, we get nowhere at all if we do not play them.”

“This isn’t a game, Viola, it’s her life. Her body. She can do whatever she likes with it.”

“But I want her to succeed,” Viola insists. There’s an almost disconcerting eagerness to the words. She really truly believes what she’s saying. “A woman viewed as nothing more than a strumpet will have an even more difficult time securing a dowry, and then where will she be?”

“In college?” Dani suggests blithely. “Traveling? Living isn’t just for men, Viola, I know you know this. You refused the oath of obedience on your wedding day.”

“Of course it’s not for men’s sake alone, but when the law--”

“The law is different here,” Dani says, almost gently. “Has been for a long time. Or haven’t you noticed how well Jamie and I get along without a man to be found?”

Viola’s silence stretches so long, Dani’s sure she’s either gone back to sleep or is finally choosing this moment to let the ugly banner of homophobia unfurl. She’s been waiting for this moment for years, it seems, waiting for the ghost in her head to mimic her mother on the one and only occasion she attempted to send home a letter. 

“You’re different,” Viola says at last, very softly. Dani blinks. 

“Pardon?”

“You’re different,” Viola repeats. “Jamie is your forever. Does that young girl have her forever, Miss Clayton?”

“Well--I don't know, I don’t suppose it’s my business--”

“Perhaps she will find it in one like our Jamie,” Viola says impatiently. “But perhaps she will find instead the stones of men who have not, over four centuries, really changed all that much. Is it so wrong of me, to have a mother’s care for that?”

Dani doesn’t know how to answer. Doesn’t have the first idea, when faced with a Viola who is not simply catty for cattiness’ sake, but genuine. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, unable to find argument. 

“We just. We just don’t pick on girls for what they do with their bodies, all right? It’s...it’s cruel, and it isn’t necessary.”

Viola sighs. “Fine. But we still ought to discuss the pattern choices. Those polka dots are not flattering in the least.”

It’s only later, watching Jamie chop carrots for dinner, that Dani realizes Viola had said our. Our Jamie. 

“Oh sweet Christ,” she mumbles.

***

The change is slow. Subtle. If not for the fact of carrying this woman in her head, Dani’s not sure she even would have noticed. 

“She what?” Jamie looks up from the plant she’s tending, fingernails grimed with soil, wedding ring carefully strung upon a thick chain around her neck until she can clean up again. “She...sorry, what?”

“I can’t be sure,” Dani muses. “It sounds...crazy. But I think she’s starting to like you.”

“Well, sure,” Jamie laughs. “I’m a deeply likable human being. But this is the Lady, yeah? Same one who dragged Peter fucking Quint to his death? Same one who thinks I show too much skin?”

“I’m...not convinced she thinks that anymore.” It’s really hard to say for sure. On the one hand, it’s possible Viola has shut up about Jamie’s shorn sleeves and shorts because every time she mentioned either, Dani made it her personal life’s mission to make sure Jamie never wore anything else around the house. On the other...

“I think she looked at your butt the other day.”

Jamie raises her eyes slowly, brow furrowing. “Can she do that? Turn your eyes to something you weren’t already looking at?”

“No,” Dani says, a bit stiffly, all too aware of stepping into the trap. Jamie grins. 

“Thought not.”

“But it was different,” Dani presses on through flushing cheeks. “I mean--even if I was already looking, she was--I mean--she--”

She doesn’t know how to explain it. How the rumble in her chest, already so familiar at the sight of Jamie puttering around their home, had seemed to expand until it encompassed all of her. How it was like someone had turned the heat in the room to its breaking point. 

“I can just tell, okay?” she says, aggrieved. “She looked at your butt, and she liked it.”

Jamie makes a thoughtful face, brushing dirt off her hands with slow, deliberate motions. “So...what you’re saying is...your personal ghostie has a crush on your wife?”

Dani presses her face against the counter, letting the cool metal relieve her blush. “Shit. Yeah. I think she might.”

“This is,” Jamie says triumphantly, pressing up against Dani from behind and kissing the back of her neck, “the funniest thing that has ever happened, by a country goddamn mile.”

***

A series of events, cascading in short order, that Dani almost actually feels bad about. If one could feel guilty about putting strain on one’s personal-pan Casper. 

The Britney Spears video, for one. Viola still does not like music videos--or music, frankly, unless it involves a ridiculous number of flutes and orchestral swells--but she’s grown to tolerate them. Mostly. 

That is, until Britney sways onscreen in a plaid skirt and schoolgirl pigtails. 

“Fuck,” Dani gasps, hand coming down hard against her own breastbone. It’s like someone grabbed the dial on her blood pressure and cranked it all the way up. That someone, she suspects, being the dead woman who has been more and more present of late. 

“I--I cannot--I simply am not capable of understanding--” Viola sounds like she’s short-circuiting. “I know we are not meant to comment, but what on earth is she doing?!”

“Dancing,” Dani says sharply, trying to coax her breathing back down. Is this what a stroke feels like? Is her fucking ghost roommate giving her an actual stroke? “Viola, you’ve seen dancing.”

“She is so young! She is a child! Who is protecting this person from the world?” Viola is furious. Viola is exploding. Dani sort of wonders if her chest is going to explode, too. 

“She’s...a pop star. This is what they get paid lots and lots of money to do.” It’s a bad answer, she knows. These videos make her a little uncomfortable too, when she thinks on them too long. But Viola? Viola’s rage is a towering beast of a thing. For a minute, lungs scraping at the air, Dani is genuinely afraid this is the point where the switch flips. Where she finds herself staring at the room from the back of her own head. 

“Someone,” Viola says in a low, terrible voice, “must protect these children.”

It takes almost an hour to calm her down. Dani doesn’t turn MTV back on for a while after that. 

***

“The. The moon?” The opposite end of the emotional spectrum this time. If Viola had been nearly apoplectic over Britney’s choreography, she now sounds faint.

“You should have floated that a bit more softly,” Dani tells Jamie, who looks confused. 

“Float what, all I did was mention NASA--”

“The moon,” Viola repeats. “We have seen. The moon.”

“She’s having trouble with the moon landing,” Dani says. Jamie waves her hands helplessly.

“Poppins, I have trouble understanding the geography of Texas, we all have problems.”

“We have,” Viola breathes, “stepped foot. Upon. The moon.”

Dani pours herself another large glass of wine.

***

“How’s this, then?” Jamie gives a very small, somewhat self-conscious twirl. “Too much? Too little? Too, ah, revealing, as the ghost contingent might say?”

Dani, leaning against the bedroom wall, can’t quite find the words. Viola, too, is conspicuously silent. 

“It’s bad,” Jamie says, nodding fervently. “Yeah, y’know, I think I knew it when I picked it up. Better on the sales rack, as they say. I can just...if you wouldn’t mind popping the zip real quick...”

“Yes, Dani,” Viola says quietly. “Pop the zip.”

“You don’t even know what that means,” Dani hisses. Jamie raises an eyebrow.

“What’s that?”

“It’s not bad,” Dani says quickly, ignoring the little harrumph Viola utters. “It’s very not bad. Opposite of bad, really.”

Relief floods Jamie’s face. The dress is low cut in a way very little of her clean-up clothes are, with a slit running clear up the leg. Patterned in burgundy petals, the black velvet is stark against her pale skin. 

“I won’t get run out of the convention, then? Only they said there’s a bit about drinks and networking, and it was just shy of black-tie. I could do that instead. Get a black tie. Think I’d look nice in a black tie.”

“The dress,” Viola says in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Tell her it is a nice dress.”

“It’s a nice dress,” Dani repeats with comic dazedness. “Best dress I’ve ever seen, maybe.”

“And now,” Viola says soothingly, “you go to her. Walk confidently now, shoulders back, chin up--”

“Are you...wing-man-ing me toward my own wife?” 

“Seduction requires confidence, Dani.”

“What’s she saying?” Jamie’s face has gone a curious mix of apprehensive and amused. Dani swallows. 

“Seduction requires confidence, evidently.” 

A slow grin spreads across Jamie’s face. Dani raises a hand, finger extended. 

“Don’t. Don’t make that smug face.”

“What’s smug about it?” She’s moving across the room, arms already reaching. “This is my very natural expression, I’ll have you know. The most normal expression in the world for a woman whose wife is being told to undress her by the ancient rage-ghost sharing her body.”

“Our lives,” Dani says helplessly, already pressing herself flush against Jamie, “are different than other people’s lives.”

“Yes,” Jamie agrees in a low voice, sliding the sweater over Dani’s head. “Can’t find it in me to complain, though, can you?”

***

It’s weird, almost. Weirder, that it’s almost not. That the beast in the jungle, the creature Dani spent nearly a decade dreading, has pounced at last and...mostly, she just seems to want to see Dani happy. 

Jamie finds it hilarious, in that pretend-callous way Jamie has of smoothing over genuine concern with soft laughter. She doesn’t like Dani sharing her mental space with someone at all hours, Viola popping up like a wack-a-mole game on high. But, if Dani must share the space with anyone, at least--

“It’s someone who thinks I'm gorgeous.”

“You are gorgeous,” Dani replies, a bit exasperated. “Gorgeous, silly, perfect person. But my inner ghost has a crush on you, that isn’t strange for you?”

“Poppins, my life has been strange since a doe-eyed American strolled into it and told me she still saw her dead fiancé when we kissed.” Jamie reclines on the bed in a sleep shirt and underwear, hands playing lightly with the pillowcase beneath her head. “Strange is my bread and butter these days, and if I had to sacrifice you to have it any other way, we both know how it would go.”

Dani makes a mulish sound under her breath. Jamie cups a hand to her ear. 

“Say again?”

“It’s weird,” she repeats, arms crossed over her chest. “She’s weird. I always thought she’d do something bad--walk me off a roof, or strangle someone to death, or try to rob a convenience store. But mostly she just wants to protect young girls from an uncaring world and look at your butt in the shower.”

“That is...very specific,” Jamie says lightly. Dani shakes her head. 

“It’s so bizarre. The longer this goes on, the more she sees of the world, it’s like...like she’s getting more real. More Viola, less Lady.”

Jamie sits up, hand sliding to rest high on Dani’s thigh as if to shield her from harm. “But not more solid, right? Not taking up space you already rent?”

Dani shakes her head. “That’s the thing. She doesn't feel like she’s taking over. And it feels...like she should.”

“You want her to?” 

“No, no, of course not.” Dani raises Jamie’s knuckles to her lips, raining soft kisses up and down her hand until the tension goes out of her brow. “I just don’t understand what’s happening. This isn’t...what I expected.”

Jamie exhales, shifting her weight until she’s sitting in Dani’s lap. She takes a Dani’s face between her hands, kisses her long and slow until Dani eases back against the headboard. 

“This is good, Poppins. You’re a good influence. You were on those kids, and on me, and now on this Lady of yours. Maybe that’s all a ghost needs, deep down.”

Dani leans into her, lets the rhythm of kiss and gentle bite and hands slipping beneath her clothes carry her away for a while. Still, no Viola, and she’s grateful. She doesn’t like to think how that would feel, Viola popping up while Jamie’s curling her fingers deep, groaning soft against her shoulder. There is a time and a place for hauntings, and time with Jamie is something else entirely. 

She’s pretty sure Viola even respects that. Which is, like everything else, incredibly strange. 

***

Viola attends their second wedding. Their real wedding. It’s bizarre on a level Dani isn’t prepared to deal with, feeling her surface as the plans become reality. Jamie’s got flowers, naturally, and Owen’s catering, and Henry has the kids--who are kids no longer, but fully-formed people with lives of their own--running errands on the day. And Dani...

Dani is looking at herself in a wedding dress for the second time in her life, only this time, she can breathe. 

“You are radiant,” Viola says. Dani closes her eyes for a moment, steels herself. 

“Nothing else to say? No notes?”

“You chose wisely,” Viola says. Dani sighs. 

“I figured lace was classic, and someone told me I had nice shoulders once, so--”

“The dress is beautiful,” Viola says. “But I was not talking about your grooming for the day.”

Dani gives a shaky laugh. “I love her, you know. I really do.”

“I can tell.” A beat of silence. Then: “I did not understand at first. Her. Or you. I suppose I will never understand completely. But...I understand the depths of what you feel. It is a part of me, too, I think. That devotion, sinking into all the spaces where I had forgotten.”

“You’re in love with Jamie, too?” Dani asks, not really wanting the answer. Viola laughs. 

“Yes. And no. You and I are intertwined, Miss Clayton. What you feel, I feel, to a degree. More importantly, I have seen your life with her. The life you build with the reckless joy of two people doomed one day to die.”

“Thanks,” Dani says, a bit sharply. She senses Viola putting her hands up, a terribly-modern gesture of surrender. 

“You understand what I mean. It takes courage, to love this completely. To do so while carrying a burden neither of us can truly comprehend is...something else altogether. There is a strength there I could not have understood on my most willful of days.”

“You turned Death away at your own doorstep,” Dani points out, smiling. Viola is pleased. 

“I did, didn’t I? And I could never regret it, even now. But you. You are doing something so much more incredible. Loving, even knowing what ending love must craft.”

“This is a bit dark for my wedding day,” Dani points out. Viola nods. 

“You are radiant. And you are fortunate. And I wish you both all the happiness in the world.”

It is the strangest wedding toast she’s ever heard, and something within Dani’s heart has never been more at peace.

***

“How’s our Lady doing tonight?” Jamie asks as Dani slips into bed beside her. She tips her head, thinking on it. Viola, as she usually is once Dani crosses the bedroom threshold, is nowhere to be found. 

“Good, I think. Calm.”

“And my wife?” Jamie looks at her, eyes serious. “You’ve been quieter lately. Fighting her less?”

“She’s been fighting me less,” Dani says. “She...likes it here, I think. Likes us. You know, I thought after this much time, she’d get bored or restless or...go back to her old ways, but...”

“But I’m just too gorgeous,” Jamie teases. Dani slings a leg across her body, holds tight to her with hands that never feel as though they can hold on hard enough. 

“I think sometimes...sometimes it’s just about remembering. What it’s like to be a person. What it’s like to be in love.”

“Mm,” Jamie agrees, fingertips drawing dizzying spirals on the bare back of Dani’s shoulder. “Well done, you. You’ve tamed your beast.”

Dani sighs, content. “I think it was a joint effort.”

“Yes,” Jamie agrees, kissing the top of her head. “Because I am, famously, too gorgeous to deny.”

[notebooknebula]

Casey Ames's Story In Real Estate | Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority

https://www.jayconner.com/casey-amess-story-in-real-estate-jay-conner-the-private-money-authority/

Jay Conner’s special guest, Casey Ames’ talks about his humble beginnings, struggles in life until he achieves his success in the wholesaling niche of the real estate business.

Casey Ames has a strong heart for the Lord, a luxury Home builder, multi-family Developer, SFH developer. He runs a large wholesale outfit averaging over 100 per year. A mentor and has been in the Real Estate business for 5 years.

Taylor Jene Homes builds high-quality homes and renovated older homes with care and a spirit of revival. No matter if starting from bare land or existing structure, President and founder Casey Ames ponders possibilities, develops and embraces a vision, and delivers excellence with quality and creative design.

Constantly improving on processes along with the use of technology and systems, Taylor Jene Homes empowers its crews to execute plans with clarity. Add in the singular focus of subcontractors and trades, city and county officials, professional engineers, and others to do what they do best within the project plan, a well-orchestrated collaboration results in remarkable home and new development creations.

For more valuable information click on this link and watch the complete episode: https://youtu.be/rDCWEZA0O6A – “Casey Ames on Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority”

Private Money Academy Conference:

https://jaysliveevent.com/live/?oprid=&ref=42135

Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now? It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book

Free Webinar: http://bit.ly/jaymoneypodcast

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

What is Real Estate Investing? Live Private Money Academy Conference

https://youtu.be/QyeBbDOF4wo

YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEstateInvestingWithJayConner

iTunes:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/private-money-academy-real-estate-investing-jay-conner/id1377723034

Listen to our Podcast:

https://realestateinvestingdeals.mypodcastworld.com/11267/casey-amess-story-in-real-estate-jay-conner-the-private-money-authority

Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner

Jay Conner:

Well, Casey, you and I met a few months ago we’re in a fellow Mastermind and I was just really taken away with your presentation that you gave at the Mastermind. So it was for that reason that I invited you here on the show. So let’s start out with your background story. What’s your background looked like and how did you get into real estate?

Casey Ames:

It’s a long story as most are I suppose, but I kind of struggled around when I was a kid, gotten a decent amount of trouble. I don’t know how much more than most boys in general, but didn’t really focus in on education. I’d always A’s the test and never do the homework. So I ended up with C’s that was kind of just that’s who I was. I didn’t need to overachieve. I was always good at sports and had a competitive nature inside of me. And so I got some restaurant jobs. I opened up some PF chains, restaurants all over the west coast for a while and was doing that. And around that time this would have been about five years ago, my parents switched, they were in the insurance business and they had moved to Phoenix to start in real estate and had found some pretty early success in flipping.

And then they had a deal go bad. And that kind of, in my opinion, that was and there’s two. That was the door. And the window that God chose to open for them was through this failure that had happened in this flip. Well, they had met some pretty spectacular people. God kind of stewarded them along with just very good connections. And they started a wholesale company. And that was before the time of TTP with Tom’s Old Company Wholesaling, Inc. and really there wasn’t a lot of systems that had been created or at least were marketed around that time. So we were using very advanced systems at that time to not only pull data, but to do the acquisition of those deals. And my mom just called me one day and said, “Hey, you’d be really good at this stop serving tables.” I worked both jobs for a long time. Not really that long time, I should say probably like about two, three months I worked both jobs and then I landed my first wholesale deal. And well, my first big wholesale deal and it was about 20K and that was my push to go all in. And so I went all in from there. And that’s kind of the introduction to, I guess how I started at least.

[thatgamefromthatad]

Ads vs. Gameplay (Merge County Review)

(Ads on the left, gameplay on the right.)

This is a three-item merge game that follows the same format of another game I’ve played called EverMerge. As far as I can tell they’re not made by the same companies and EverMerge came first so I suppose Merge County is kind of a ripoff of EverMerge so far as you can call two games that follow the same basic genre format ripoffs of one another. I’m guessing things like match-3 and merge aren’t patented or anything though so I guess it’s debatable.

Anyway, the difference in format from something like Merge Dragons for example is that instead of collecting characters to harvest from resources who eventually run out of stamina, you have a set number of workers who can work at a time and each resource has a set amount of energy it costs to harvest and time it takes to harvest. Larger items that you merge up to also need to be “built” by the workers to “complete” them, which also takes a set amount of time. So there are two ways to hit a wall where you have to wait to keep playing - running out of energy or having all your workers tied up with long harvest/build times. I’ve found this requires you to kind of strategize to get the most playtime possible by trying to use up your stamina first before having all workers stuck in 30 minutes plus tasks (and you only get two workers to start with).

I won’t go over all the differences between these two distinct flavors of 3-item merge games (that might have to be its own separate post if you’re interested) but basically if you’ve played Merge Dragons or Merge Magic, Merge County is not quite the same, and if you’ve played EverMerge, this game is basically the same thing in a different skin. As far as which type I prefer, I’m personally more of a Merge Dragons gal, but anyway, let’s get more into the quality of this game (and the ads) below.

***

***

***

***

***

As far as free casual mobile games go, this one is pretty well made, has decent art, no issues with mechanics (other than their lack of originality) and no pop up ads which is a big plus in my book. To review the gameplay would basically be reviewing an entire genre since there are just so many games following the exact same concept with different art and storylines, but one thing I do like more about this kind of game vs something like Merge Dragons is that when you have 3 (or 5) items next to each other they don’t merge unless you actually place them on top of each other - I find this makes it easier to avoid accidental merges of items that end up next to each other and easier to make the 5-item merges where you get a bonus item. Also this game (and EverMerge) have a kind of clicky sound that plays when you move around items like you’re clicking the item into place on the board. That feels more satisfying to me for whatever reason and overall it feels easier to keep the board organized in this game vs Merge Dragons etc.

The storyline of this game is based around this postal worker main character basically fixing up the town/county or whatever and the characters you meet are people with roles in the town like firefighter, teacher etc. Can’t say I’m super invested in the storyline and there’s nothing really exciting or interesting about it but the character designs and art are pretty good. However, this boring plotline goes to show just how fake the ads are, there’s no infidelity, no mom trying to fix up a cold cabin for her kids, none of that. You basically harvest things like mailboxes and merge them up to build a post office etc. It’s cute that the items are themed around the different characters and you’re merging toward a goal of building something specific related to the plot but again this is no different than what’s in EverMerge.

There are also separate event boards that have their own items and side storylines which is cute (the one I mostly played was about the zookeeper working with the teacher to teach kids about animals so the items were school supplies and penguins). With the main board and event board (which has its own separate energy storage) together you can get a decent amount of playtime in one sitting, but when you’re merging up to bigger items that need workers to finish building them the time can be up to an hour or more, so there can be some significant waiting involved depending on where you are in the game and how many workers you are using at a time. For final buildings you also have to wait at 24 hours for them to finish but there’s only one of each building so you can still do things with the other worker(s).

Overall this is a decent game as far as games in this genre go, just with especially egregiously bad ads and a pretty boring plot.

Ad Honesty Rating: 1/5 (there are ads for this game that really have nothing to do with the game, not even the same characters or type of gameplay, the only honest thing is some of the ads show merging)

Overall Rating: 4/5

Thanks so much for reading! 🥳

[blissfulalchemist]

HEADCANONS FULL CLEAR FOR LANCE THEN SINCE WE'RE RUINING MY INBOX

HERE TAKE YOUR GRADE A CAGE FREE RAISED DILF ASH! I love you still Ash! 

⌛ for an alternate universe headcanon

AU where the cult never happens Lance gets to be a wonderful grandfather and rekindles his romance with Dr. Joan Roberts! They all live happily ever after until he’s old and grey and watching a sunset in the Whitetails.

💄 for an appearance headcanon

Did Lance ever actually start going bald prompting him to just shave his hair really short? You’ll never know because he will never tell you. In all reality he always shaved his hair pretty short once he turned 40 so he really hasn’t noticed if it happened yet.

👽 for a beliefs headcanon

He still has a slight mistrust of technology because he thinks something like the Terminator or I, Robot will happen one day. He still really hopes its after he’s dead.

👩‍👩‍👧 for a childhood headcanon

Lance still has mixtapes from his youth along with records all in pretty pristine condition (Wheaty is required to remain 100ft from the collection as per the social restraining order). During game events he does sacrifice a few of them in order to pass information off to the militia. So Chance will have tapes titled “Songs for Cow Tipping ‘84″ or “Stargazing June 14th”. Chance does believe that these are all secret codes they aren’t just something to keep them inconspicuous.

🔥 for a dislikes headcanon

Lance hates diner food as that was his main source of a meal since the age of ten and was finally able to reach the stove and counters with ease. You take him to one though he will suffer with a smile on his face though.

🧦 for a domestic headcanon

Lance gets a house in the Valley once initially earning John’s trust and respect. It belonged to someone he most likely knew in passing but he keeps everything where it was when he got there. Anything that he moved out to make room for his things are packed away neatly into boxes and stored in the attic. He deep cleans the house every other week.

😢 for an emotions headcanon

Lance is actually pretty in touch with his emotions, but he understands that there’s a time and place for them. He says it was all the parenting books he read over the years to connect with his daughter Sage. Many of the ones he found most helpful were geared towards women so there was a lot of introspection happening, it also helped that his mother encouraged him to cry and be vulnerable until he started to go to school and learned how to be a real man.

👗 for a fashion headcanon

Lance buys a good amount of clothes from places like Walmart and Target, so the shirts never quite fit right (but who’s gonna complain if they’re a bit tight?). He spends a little more on jeans but he needs those to last longer. 

👻 for a fear headcanon

Lance feared the dark once coming back from his tours so spent many nights awake. He still took to his wood whittling and produced enough figurines that he just gave them away to anyone he simply passed by. 

🍕 for a food headcanon

Lance can’t actually cook very many things. He can grill, make pasta of different varieties (though nothing fancy), and a great sandwich (the most popular being PB&Js)

👯 for a friendship headcanon

He and Eli got close once working together on some of the bunkers in Eden’s Gate. He hated having to go through with killing him despite that being what Eli entrusted him to do. No one else. If Jacob wanted him dead then he wanted Lance to kill him.

🎭 for a hobby headcanon

Lance loves to work on cars and would have been a mechanic in the county if there weren’t already like 3 mechanics per person in the county by the time he moved up there. He has a dream of building a classic car from scratch still.

🕎 for a holiday headcanon

His favorite holidays were the ones where Sage got to visit him in Hope County. Fourth of July became his favorite as that was the one Sage came to the most.

🏡 for a house headcanon

Lance bought a house that had a big enough garage to work on cars along with his wood work. The wood work takes up the most space though.

💕 for a love headcanon

Lance didn’t and still doesn’t believe that he’ll ever find someone to spend his golden years with. He screwed things up with his ex-wife and has a feeling he’ll do it again. Joining Eden’s Gate didn’t help in his prospects to say the least.

🎻 for a music headcanon

Lance will never have a digital music player. So long as tape devices work he will use his mix tapes to listen to his favorite music. Most of his music taste lands in the punk, hair metal, and just guitar heavy rock songs. 

👀 for a personality headcanon

Lance is someone that has such a rough looking exterior that it made him have some authority in the military, truth is though he’s just not as cold as he can appear on first glance.

⛄ for a seasonal headcanon

Lance loves the snow and winter is his favorite season. He’d have moved to Alaska if he didn’t want to be close to Sage. Yes his wardrobe did make him look like a cheesy christmas movie lead in his younger years.

👩‍🌾 for a work headcanon

Being a park ranger was never in the plan, if he was able he would have taken on more of a role at a VA center to help with other vets that had PTSD. Sadly the most he can do with that is volunteer and well the bills have to be paid.

[thatesqcrush]

Neighbors, Pt. 3

Rafael Barba x Reader. CW: angst, pining, language. Episode references: Nationwide Manhunt (SVU) & The Song of Gregory William Yates (CPD). WC: 1892

AN: A non-smut chapter? Who am I? Forgive me for typos. 

--

The next morning you woke up startled. You rubbed your eyes and tried to make sense of your surroundings: you had fallen asleep on your couch, the TV screen black (with the flashing reminder to turn off your TV if not watching). Your alarm was screeching from the bedroom and there was pounding on your door. You reached for the remote and turned off the TV before going to answer the door. You stood and paused, groaning as your head began to throb.

You undid the deadbolt but left the security chain on and cracked the door open. “Oh, Raf – it’s you.” You replied with a sigh of relief. “Hold on.” You closed the door and undid the chain and then re-opened the door. You both stood there in the doorway, staring at each other, nothing being said. Finally, Rafael opened his mouth, taking the first step.

Can I come in?” Rafael looked fashionably sensitive, in his dark tapered jeans and oxford shirt, with his sleeves rolled up. You cocked your head and wondered if the Harvard lawyer truly knew how handsome he was.

“Sure.” You replied, opening the door wider to let him in. “I have to turn off my alarm, give me a second.” You walked down the hall to your room. “Look about last night…” You called out as you turned it off.

Rafael gave you a shrug. “Don’t worry about it, detective.”

You gave him a look that was half-bemused and half annoyance. “I have a name. What did I tell you about that?”

Rafael crossed his arms and grumbled an expletive in Spanish, which made the corner of your lips twitch slightly, knowing that you could get under his skin a little. “Y/N.” He replied, his voice clipped.

You let out a small laugh. “I am just teasing.” Your smile faded quickly. “Seriously, though, I’m really sorry.”

Rafael eyed your unkempt appearance and gave you a small smile before shaking his head. “You were hurting and drunk.” He pulled you into a tight hug, squeeze and you took a deep inhalation of his cologne which comforted you. Reluctantly, you broke the hug.

“I think we should keep things professional from now on.” Rafael announced quietly. He shifted his footing and shoved his hands into his pockets. He didn’t miss the hurt that flashed across your face.

You straightened and took a deep breath. “Duly noted.” After a beat, you continued. “And I think that’s best.”

Rafael nodded slowly, taken a bit by your quick agreeance. “So…” Tension quickly filled the room and the pounding in your head intensified.

“Want to get some breakfast before work?” Rafael suggested. “Just as colleagues.” He added for good measure.

“If you don’t mind waiting…” You waved your arm over your haphazard appearance.

“Not at all.”

You started walking backwards towards your bedroom. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be out in a bit.”

Under the hot steam of your shower, you wondered when everything got so fucked up and longed for the days when things were so simple. When you emerged back into the living room, you paused as you slipped on your watch. Rafael was sitting on the couch, watching CNN. There was something so domestic about it. Your heart skipped a beat.  

‘No. Focus.’ You thought to yourself. You plastered a smile on your face and put the kibosh on any feelings that were forming. “Ready?”

Rafael turned off your TV and stood, turning to face you. “Absolutely.”

As you walked by, Rafael grabbed your wrist, stopping you in your tracks. “Hey – are we okay?” He pointed his finger at you, then at himself. You winked.

“Of course. Now, lets get some food. I’m starved.” The waft of your lavender shampoo made its way to Rafael’s olfactory sensors and he felt his stomach twist painfully as he followed you out the door.

--

You both settled at a diner near One Hogan Place. You ordered an egg scramble and whole wheat toast and Rafael ordered an everything bagel with lox. Copious amounts of coffee were had. You were grateful for easy, though at times stilted, conversation. As Rafael settled the bill – which he insisted on doing – a breaking news alert on the overhead TV caught your eye.

You flagged down a waitress. “Excuse me, can you raise that?” The waitress nodded and raised the volume. The reporter’s words shook you to your core. Rafael watched as the color drained from your face.

Breaking news: two inmates from Green Haven Correctional have escaped. Both Yates and Rudnick were serving life sentences for multiple counts of rape and murder. They should be considered extremely dangerous. Officials are cautioning that anyone who sees them or has information on either of the two men should not attempt to interact with them. We will keep you updated as this story continues.

--

You stormed into the bullpen with Rafael following at your heels. “Liv! What the hell are we going to do?”

Olivia cocked her brow at your outburst. “Y/N, I take it that you heard the news.” She took off her glasses and sat on the corner of Amanda’s desk.

“We’re going to run this by the book. We’re headed up to Green Haven. Hank and I spoke, the 21st is going to meet us there. Y/N, you’re staying here.”

“Like hell I am!” You snarled.

“Y/N, it’s best if you stay here. We are keeping you safe.” Liv replied softly. “Yate’s baiting you.”

“After using me to talk to him, you decide now to bench me? If he wanted me, he would have had me already.” You replied angrily. You slammed your hand on your desk. Rafael put a hand on your shoulder and you shoved his hand off.

“If I'm bait, let me be bait. I can draw him in. Let me do my job.”

“You are too personally invested. You need to stand down.” Olivia replied sternly.

“No. I need to come up. Just… I can help from behind the scenes. I won’t do anything stupid.”

“Famous last words.” You whipped around and stared at Amanda who gave you a knowing look. “Look Y/N, I know how Yates works too. I can put myself out there – use me.” Amanda replied.

“All due respect, but no.” You retorted. At that moment, your phone buzzed. You pulled out your phone and looked at the text. “It’s Erin; I have to take this.” Rafael didn’t miss how your face crumbled as you walked out to take the call.

--

State troopers, FBI, ATF, SVU and CPD all converged at a local church in Stormville, just 90 minutes outside of Manhattan to begin the search for Yates and Rudnick.

“NYPD's Special Victims Unit and Chicago Intelligence are here to give specifics about the fugitives.” Warden Lucille Fenton announced.

“These guys are intelligent. They're motivated. They're charming, and they are without conscience.” Olivia began. She listed their heinous acts on her fingers. “Their crimes include rape, kidnapping, torture, and murder.”

“Now, Yates is definitely capable of hot-wiring cars. He's adept at identity theft, and he is highly manipulative. Especially when preying on young women.” You continued.

“Rudnick can blend in easily. We know that he assumes disguises, usually of an older female.” Sonny finished.

“We've already begun house-to-house searches and roadblocks. Air support with heat sensors and infrared will be in the air within the half hour.” Major Bowman with the State Troopers announced.

“Search every inch of this county. My staff has pulled security cameras, visitors' logs, and personnel files.” Lucille turned to Olivia.

“Okay, my team can help with the interviews.” Olivia agreed, before going over to you.

Rafael watched as you and Olivia spoke from the other side of the room. “Hey, how bad are these guys?” Lucille asked Rafael quietly.

Rafael swallowed hard. “Think Robert Durst and Ted Bundy on the run together.”

After an exhaustive search that came up empty, Olivia advised that a local hotel was putting up everyone for the time being. “Those who can keep going, we appreciate it. Those who need to rest… rest and come back.”

“Y/N, why don’t you get some sleep.” Rafael suggested, taking in your worn appearance. “It’s been a long and hard day.”

“I’ll rest when we have Yates and Rudnick.” You replied, pouring another coffee. As you reached for the sugar, you knocked over your coffee, spilling it all over on a table that had been set up at the church. You swore and scrambled for napkins to clean up. As Rafael helped you, your ex-fiancé, Adam approached.

“Y/N, are you okay?” Adam questioned. “Need help?”

“I got it!” You snapped. You took a deep breath. “Sorry. Just on edge.”

Adam walked around and reached for your arm, stopping you. You looked at Adam and Rafael watched as Adam pulled you into a tight hug, his arms wrapped around you. Rafael could see the appeal of Adam with his rugged looks. You melded into Adam’s embrace. You opened your eyes and met Rafael’s. You tried to read his face, but he appeared stoic and impassive.

“I think I am going to head to the hotel a bit and get some rest.” You replied breaking the hug. You grabbed the soiled napkins and shoving them into the now empty coffee cup. Your hands were sticky and smelled like coffee, to which you crinkled your nose in disgust.

“I am too.” Rafael replied, shaking himself back to present. “Want to ride together?”

“I’ll drive.” Adam offered. “Come on.” Rafael followed behind slowly as Adam and you walked ahead, Adam’s arm wrapped around you.

Rafael felt something in his guts churn that felt an awful like jealousy. Rafael let out a huff and you turned your attention to Rafael. Rafael didn’t say anything and you felt more puzzled than before.

--

The next morning, Rafael knocked on your hotel door, hoping to check in on you. You opened the door, clad in nothing but an oversized t-shirt, that barely skimmed the tops of your thighs. Rafael swallowed hard.

“Hey – “ Rafael began. His voice trailed as he looked past your shoulder, watching Adam walk in the background.

“What’s up? I told Liv I’d be down in 20. Has there been an update?”

“Um, yeah – overnight Carisi and Rollins apprehended Rudnick. He was discovered hiding in a docked boat by Caroga Lake. Rudnick suffered multiple injuries.” Rafael replied. Adam joined from behind, tugging on his shirt. Rafael ignored him, focusing on you.

“I'm not shedding any tears.” You replied, as you crossed your arms, leaning against the door frame.

“Yates hobbled him - broke both his knees, his ankles, pierced his eardrum. Just left him to die.” Rafael continued.

“Should have let him. Is he talking yet?”

“Only to Carisi, and he's in and out of consciousness. He did indicate the plan was to cross the border at the Saint Lawrence River.”

You turned, pushing past Adam and grabbed your jeans, which were laying on a heap on the floor. “Come on – lets go.”

“What are you going to do?” Rafael asked.

You holstered your gun into your waistband. “What I should have done a long time ago.”

“Olivia…”

“Olivia nothing. Now, Rafael – just get out of my way.”

Rafael looked at Adam. “You’re going to let her just go after a serial killer?” Adam scoffed. “No. I’ll go with her. We’ll see you at the church.”

TBC.

--

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[coeurdastronaute]

The Story, Ch. 3

Previously on The Story

The heat roared into July without a bit of relief. Days stretched onward without the slightest speck of a cloud in the sky, without the slightest taste of rain for the county. The lawn lost its blush of green, lost its softness, instead growing dry and brittle and angry. The grounds seemed to sweat under the sizzling sun, thwarted from any relief by the burdensome layer of humidity that seemed to weigh everything down further. 

Over the course of the week, Dani noted the change in the way the gardener moved through the grounds. Ever with a weary eye no the horizon for any sort of break, she seemed to grow slightly more hopeless with every set back as she attempted to save all of her hard work. Still, day after day she toiled along, and Dani ran out of reasons to see her most days. 

The week became a grind where nothing went quite right, though there were no major catastrophes. The kids were slipping back into a mood, despite Dani’s best efforts, and the mythical heat wave didn’t help at all. Lessons weren’t going quite right, and the days were longer, nothing left to do. 

So, for the first time in perhaps her life, Dani decided to do something, to make her own moment of happiness. She did this, of course, by prowling the halls while the children were reading their assigned chapters to themselves. She did it with purpose and while almost admitting to herself that she enjoyed her time with the gardener. She hid it in benevolence and worry though, creating excuses in her mind to appear in the tiny room off of the back of the house, the glass roofed green house where a certain gardener could be seen prowling at any given moment. 

“It’s boiling in here. I don’t know how you do it,” Dani murmured, making her way down the few steps, careful and with hands full of sweating glasses that dripped on her feet. 

“I sweat my bloody tits off, that’s how,” Jamie retorted, not looking up. 

“Thought you might need to cool down. It’s lemonade. Don’t worry, Hannah made it.” 

Jame cracked half a smile. That might have been Dani’s favorite one, and with that realization she recognized that she must have been cataloging them. 

“It’s much appreciated. You’d take the time to think of little old me out here toiling away.” 

“It was actually the commotion you seem to make that reminded me.” 

“Well, whatever I gotta do, right?” Jamie smiled and accepted the glass, taking a long, long drink and sighing with the relief it brought. 

“Seems like it’s been a rough week for you.” 

“No rougher than the one before I imagine,” she shrugged, pulling her gloves back on. “Or the one to come.”

Dani watched her shoulder flex, not huge and built, but prominent and there, the muscle slivering beneath her skin. She watched her bicep move with purpose as she dug around. And finally, perhaps most importantly, Dani shamelessly watched the tank top ride up a few inches as Jamie reached for something on the shelf. And Dani gulped before blinking and staring at her drink. 

“Haven’t seen you around much.” 

“Not much for me to do, unfortunately. Just watering everything I can, all damn day.”

“Your starts are lovely though. I mean, your hard work shows. I’m sorry it hasn’t been easy.” 

Dismissive of any form of praise, Jamie just shrugged and returned to the pot. 

“They’re accustomed to this kind of thing, you know,” Jamie explained, elbow deep in a pot of soil. “Drought. Sun. Wind. Even the most fragile thing was made to withstand more than it thinks. I’m just trying to help them along as best I can.” 

“It’ll break soon.” 

“Now you sound like me.” 

“I like to believe in the inevitably of rain. Even now, it feels like one of the few sure things in life,” Dani decided, earning a smile. 

Jamie dragged her forearm against her brow, a streak of dirt appearing above her eye. She searched the au pair, to see if there was a hint of teasing in the line, but recognized the hope she once felt, as well. 

“You okay, Poppins?” 

“The kids are a little off. They’re bickering more than ever, and I’m getting more attitude from Miles than I have before. I offered to take them swimming in the pond again, and they about lost their minds--”

“This pond? Here?” 

“The one behind the old stables,” Dani nodded, furrowing at the look Jamie gave her as she paused her digging. 

“Did no one tell you about Becca?” She shook her head and Jamie sighed. “We found her body in the pond. That pond. Or rather, Flora did. They won’t go back to it.” 

“Jesus… I didn’t know.” 

“I don’t know if I would ever go back in. I don’t even like looking at it, I get so mad.” As if to accent her words, she shoved more dirt in, pushing harder. Dani felt her attempt at cheering up the gardener begin to backfire. “When I pulled her out… there was just… We did what we could.” 

“I thought I was escaping tragedies, and I keep bumping into them it seems,” Dani bit her lip, tightening them as she fret over it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” 

The guilt bubbled up, for bringing it up, for learning this about Jamie when Dani doubted she wanted it to be known. She thought of the gardener, soaked in her overalls, carrying the body of the former au pair out of the water. The way that must have hurt. 

“I’m alright. The kids are doing better. You came along and have really done a number on the whole place, if we’re being honest.”

“I don’t know if I can take any credit.” 

“You should. You have. Even for me.” 

From her spot leaning against the work table, Dani fiddled with the worn wood, ran her thumb along the knots and grooves. She knew she was blushing which she also knew, for some reason, only made Jamie look at her more intently. 

“I don’t know what to do for them now, though. They’re just…”

“Cooped up kids in a long, hot summer. Just let them be kids.” 

It wasn’t exceptional advice, but Dani felt better for hearing, for learning that sometimes there wasn’t a solution, or worse yet, perhaps there wasn’t even a problem for her to solves. 

“There is a place for a swim though, if you’re up for it,” Jamie offered without looking up from the pot she was arranging. “Not really appropriate for the wee ones. A little bit of a hike.” 

“I don’t know if I should leave them for any amount of time. They’re about to burst.” 

“You worry too much, did you know that?” 

“I worry just the right amount, actually.” 

Jamie laughed, one big ha. 

“You fret. It’s adorable, but you do.” 

“It’s not-- I don’t-- They’re my responsibility.”

“Hannah can watch them this evening, and you know it,” Jamie reminded her. “You haven’t left the grounds since you arrived. It’s been three months of being an au pair. You can have a moment.” 

“You’re a rotten influence. I came in to cheer you up, and I’m corrupted now.” 

“That’s the spirit,” Jamie nodded. Her spirit had been lifted. “I’ll meet you at the front gate at eight tonight.” 

“I have to see--”

Somehow, Dani realized too late that Jamie was so close, in her space, eye to eye and intimidating in a way that made the au pair want to never move again because it was incredibly thrilling. It’d been a stretch to go without human connection. 

“You can’t just fix everyone here, and not allow yourself some of that. I’ll see you at eight,” the gardener insisted, reaching around the frozen body, snagging a large sack, swinging it over her shoulder in one fluid motion. 

She backed toward the door outside of the green house as Dani just watched it happen. 

“I heard you were a good time once.” 

“Eight.” 

“Eight.” 

Before she could say anything else, to argue or confirm, Jamie walked out with a smile over her shoulder. Dani watched the gloves in her back pocket bounce and sighed, for the first time, audibly and defeated as sweat ran down her back in the sweltering room. She was still running, even if she didn’t realize it. Jamie made her see alternatives. 

In the distance, Jamie disappeared behind an ivy wall, and Dani finally made herself leave the green house. The tickle at the base of her sternum felt nice. 

XXXXXXXXXX

In the dark, Dani stood at the front gate, monstrous and wrought as it was, unsure of what she was doing there, leaving the grounds and the children, off to some undisclosed location with a relative stranger. Though, Dani reasoned with herself, Jamie didn’t particularly feel like a stranger. She felt like a book she’d once read but forgotten and rediscovered. She was understood, if not at all completely remembered word-for-word. There was an inherent safety and comfortableness with the gardener that Dani couldn’t quite place, and yet she didn’t know her birthday. Couldn’t even begin to imagine if she was right or left handed, wasn’t certain if she liked to read or enjoyed crappy tv. 

Behind the bleachers at the ninth grade dance, Dani kissed a girl. Neither ever spoke of it again, and Dani wasn’t sure she’d ever beat the feeling of having feelings and beating them back, deep into the bottom corner of her heart. 

Jamie felt like she was prying that open again, and it was exhilarating and also something insanely easy to overthink. There weren’t any bleachers at Bly Manor. 

The truck rumbled up the road, stopping before Dani had too much time to fully address the trail of thought she’d just found herself toying with. With a squeal of the breaks it stopped. Jamie slipped across the seat to open the door. 

“Are you ready?” 

“As I’ll ever be,” Dani resolved, hopping into the cab and offering a smile in the dark. 

The lights from the dashboard made the truck glow, and Jamie hadn’t changed since earlier. There was dirt on her neck now, but she remained unchanged by whatever happened in the hours between the morning and now. 

“There’s not much out here, so you haven’t missed anything,” Jamie said as she changed the gear and shifted until they were going down the road. 

“I don’t mind. It’s a nice change of pace honestly.”

Already there was a quiet between them as they trudged along. Dani took a deep breath and looked out toward the darkness, but couldn’t make out much minus the shadows of trees and the beam of the moon. But she didn’t fight it, as she normally would, hoping to escape any kind of quiet for too long. 

It was a short trip, just a few minutes up the road until Jamie heaved the wheel, turning them toward a pasture where she parked beside a fence. 

“I don’t understand,” Dani squinted to see what she was missing. “I don’t see anything.” 

“We’ll go on foot for a little bit,” Jamie explained as she hopped out. “I thought you were up for a little adventure.” 

“I am! I am.” 

Scurrying, Dani followed, taking Jamie’s hand to help her over the rails of the fence. She didn’t let go for a few more steps; until she caught her balance, she told herself. Jamie led them across the field, directing the best path away from the fence and the trees by the road. 

The heat stuck around from the day. In the distance, clouds formed, billowing and bulbous and just out of reach. They illuminated with static shocks every few seconds. 

“Looks like the rain is coming.” 

“Just heat lightning,” Jamie tossed over her shoulder, not pausing to give it too much attention. “But soon.” 

“I never thought I’d miss rain as much as I do this summer.”

“In a few months we’ll beg for this much sun.” 

“We’re never pleased, are we?” 

“Occasionally, and only for a very short amount of time.” 

“Do you ever think we’ll talk about anything other than the weather?” Dani tried. 

“Is there anything more pressing at the moment?” 

She never stopped moving, but Dani tripped slightly over the uneven field while Jamie pushed forward up the gentle hill, ever farther away from the car and the fence and the known. 

“Where are you from?” 

Jamie stopped moving so quickly that Dani nearly bumped into her. She turned around, her face barely visible in the night, but smiling as she snorted at the shift in their conversation. 

“That’s what’s on your mind?” 

“I don’t know anything about you,” Dani shrugged. “I’m curious.” 

“I heard that doesn’t go well for cats.”

“You don’t answer questions, you know? You skip past or say something to distract from them. It’s almost like you’re doing it as a reflex.” 

It seemed to have hit a spot as they walked for a few moments in the silence of their shoes clomping through the grass and the heaving breathing that came with the exertion of the hike. She didn’t want to, but Jamie seemed to admit to herself that maybe she did that, and maybe it was perhaps the most innate thing about herself, to defer, to deflect, to keep it all. She didn’t willingly keep herself a mystery, but rather preserved herself. 

“It’s a small suburb, a hamlet, really. Fallholt. Nothing there but coal dust and bitterness.” 

“How far is it from Bly?” 

“About three hours north. Do you feel like you understand my entire being now with this tidbit?” 

“It’s a start.” 

While she wanted to sound annoyed, Jamie didn’t seem to mind telling the au pair anything about herself. The problem came with the fact that she held so much of herself so tightly in her hands, it was proving difficult to wretch the words from herself, to wrestle anything free to give up. So well-practiced was she in the art of hiding herself away, that even when she gave herself permission to speak, it was impossible. 

“Are you right handed or left handed?”

“Seriously, Dani?” 

“Curious.”

“Righty.”

Triumphant with this knowledge, Dani caught up to the longer strides of the gardener until she saw the moonlight reflecting off of the water halfway down the other side of the hill. 

“That’s where we’re going?” she asked in disbelief. 

“I promised you a pond.” 

“Is this someone’s property?” 

“Isn’t everything someone’s property?” Jasmine asked innocently. “Do you think they’ll mind two trespassers?” 

“Probably.” 

“Maybe,” she agreed. “If they find out. Come on. I’m sick of sweating.” 

Before she could lodge her first protestation, Dani watched as Jamie started walking toward the pond. She doubled her own steps to catch up a minute later, though by then the gardener was already tugging off her shoes. 

By the time she reached the water’s edge, Jamie had created a pile of her boots and socks and unbuttoned part of her shorts before turning around to the au pair. Much more carefully, Dani put her shoes on the ground and looked warily over the water. 

“Um, where can I cha--”

Dani watched as Jamie tugged her top off and add it to the pile. 

“Let’s go, Poppins. I’m not going in alone.”

“Right, yeah,” she nodded quickly and began working at her own shirt, turning around to give some semblance of privacy. 

Over her shoulder, Dani looked quickly as she unbuttoned her shorts to see a gardener run and jump off of the small pier lit only by moonlight and heat lightening, clad only in a bra and underwear. The splash echoed across the empty field until she popped back up with a laugh and hiss at the chill. 

From the water, Jamie tossed her hair out of her face and tread, watching the form of the au pair wrap her arms around her middle and walk out onto the pier.

“It looks cold.”

“It is,” Jamie nodded, splashing an armful of water towards her, making her squeal. “It feels wonderful.” 

She worked exceedingly hard to keep her eyes trained on Dani’s. That was the polite and proper thing to do, and despite it all, Jamie worked hard to be just those things, despite what even she believed about herself. 

“Is there a ladder or steps?” 

“Good time, huh? Just jump. I promise to rescue you if need be.” 

“I can swim.” 

“Prove it.” 

There was a debate, some internal convincing before Dani stood there and pinched her nose, taking the leap a second later with much less force, but coming up with the same hiss and chattering teeth. 

“How is it s-s-s-so cold?” 

“Isn’t it great?” Jamie decided, taking a few strokes lazily around the newly bobbing body. “Haven’t felt this cool in weeks. I think I was overheating completely. My brain was about to melt.” 

“It does feel better than this afternoon did. Is there anything in this? Like fish?” 

“Oh, probably a few. Maybe some snapping turtles. Maybe some wee beasties on the hunt of trespassers.” 

Jamie skimmed along the water as Dani turned around to follow her. 

“That’s not funny.” 

With a mischievous grin, the gardener slipped beneath the water. Not a ripple remained of her, not a bubble as Jamie peered into the dark water as if it would help. Too long seemed to pass before she called out. Her leg was pulled a moment later, dipping her under. She came up splashing and shoving at the warm body. 

“That’s really not funny,” Dani complained with a laugh. 

“You could have fooled me,” Jamie laughed as well. “Don’t worry. Just you and me and maybe a few sleeping minnows.” 

“So long as they’re sleeping.” 

The water grew more comfortable, losing that biting chill that came to especially overheated bodies. Despite a few splashes earned for her not funny jokes, the pair simply glided around, enjoying the stars and the evening, falling into a relatively calm quiet. The groaning of bull frogs on the banks and the crickets in the field made more than enough noise. 

But Jamie couldn't help but feel the need to say words, something she was beginning to dislike. Silence never bothered her. She’d learned long ago not to fill it up with too much because it was a gift. 

“I think you know plenty about me,” Jamie muttered as they floated, relaxing in the cool chill of the water on their overheated skin. Dani stretched, pulling herself through the water and furrowing at the blurted comment. “Earlier… you said I deflected. Like a reflex.” 

“You’re a tightly shut book. But I don’t mind.” 

Jamie dipped her smile into the water to hide it before wetting her face, running her hands over it to further hide any blush. 

“Where are you from?” she asked as Dani slicked back her hair. 

“A suburb of Chicago. Not too big, not too small. Perfectly average in every single way a town could hope to be.” 

“And you really were a teacher?”

“Mhm,” Dani nodded, shifting, skimming through the water. “Fourth grade. Started teaching immediately after college.” 

“How do you like it here?” 

“This might be the most questions you’ve ever asked me.” 

“Might be the most I’ve asked in my entire life,” Jamie agreed. “You’re not exactly an open book either, you know.”

The two bodies rotated around each other. The moon shined on slick shoulders, danced in the ripples they created. Neither looked away from the other, just floated along in an even harmony. 

“I like Bly. I love the manor. I appreciate everyone being so welcoming. I hadn’t thought of that part, but it’s been a nice surprise. And the children are… they’re special. They’re in so much pain sometimes, and they just don’t know what to do with it all. But they’re still so inquisitive and eager.” 

“Kids are resilient,” Jamie agreed. 

“It gets harder though, doesn’t it? To bounce back?” 

“Yeah. It does.” 

Dani nodded to herself and took a deep breath before closing her eyes and leaning back slightly. 

“Thank you,” she finally offered, finding Jamie’s face in the water as it gazed at the heat lightning rolling toward the west. “For showing me this.” 

“Couldn’t let you melt, could I?” 

“I suppose not.”

Dani pulled herself onto the pier finally, hoping to dry in the humidity and heat while the looming grey clouds flashed beyond the tree line, retreating somewhat from their threatening posture. She wrung out her hair and huddled slightly, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on it. 

Not wanting to leave the relief of the water, Jamie hung on the edge, letting her legs hang lazily, her hips remaining under the water. She rested her cheek on her arm as she stayed there. 

“What if I just want to forget everything from before?” Dani whispered, almost too quiet, almost as if it were an absent thought. “I don’t mean to be dismissive, I just… what if I want to not be or remember all of that?”

It was only when she met Jamie’s eyes did the gardener realize she was waiting for an answer, that it wasn’t just a dream. 

“I don’t know if you can.” 

Dani nodded, not enjoying the answer. 

“But I think it gets easier, sometimes,” she continued, hoping to provide some kind of relief. “It’s exhausting to keep running, isn’t it? I tried. I still do sometimes. But I think at one point I just stopped. I stood there and let it all tackle me, and it sucked. I didn’t enjoy it. But I got to walk afterward. And it wasn’t so tiring anymore.” 

“I know who I want to be, I just don’t know if I can get there, away from it.” 

“You can.”

“How do you know?” 

“If I can survive it, I know you can. You’re much tougher than I, Poppins.” 

To accent her words, Jamie tugged a toe, making a leg flop back into the water. Jame rolled her eyes and splashed with a kick, the girl who hid on the other side of the pier. 

“What if I’m not who you think I am?” 

“Who ever is?” 

“You can’t keep answering questions with questions to make yourself sound wise.” 

“Can’t I?” Jamie asked, pushing herself away until she floated on her back a little more. 

The moonlight was at its brightest in that moment, and Dani watched the pale skin of the gardener’s torso shimmer beneath the water. She lost the tan lines and curls, and was smooth and at peace. Like a fountain, she arched water from her mouth, grinning as she did. A true dichotomy of freedom and fear, all in one person. 

Dani stood once again, ready to keep running, at least for another night. She took a step back before launching herself with a laugh at the gardener. In a splash, they disappeared beneath the water, emerging only a second later with giggles and swearing and splashing.

NEXT

[whatdoesshedotothem]

Monday 20 August 1838

4 50

9

fine morning F66° now at 5 ¾ am breakfast – A- had had her bath – off at 7 5 our 2 guides on foot – at Gèdre at the douane at 9 ¼ - detained getting an acquit à caution for the horses to go into Spain – not certain whether it would be wanted now or not – sat sometime at the douane signed my name as usual A. Lister in the book – gave my name Anne Lister de Shibden hall in the county of York which address the receveur copied – the horses were toisés measured and described – Mr. Palesset and Charles our cautions (bordersmen) for the amount = 1200fr. if the horses should not return within 25 days – fine (amende) 500/. each and value 100fr. each horses = 1200/. we latterly left to the douane and went and sat at the auberge – this acquit à caution business takes from ¾ hour to an hour every time – off from the auberge (Gèdre) at 10 5 along the Gavarnie road till 11 12 when leaves this road cross the game by the fenceless wooden bridge of Barilyas near the little hamlet of the same name, ascend the hill and at 11 25 stop a minute or 2 at excellent point de vue of Gavarnie and its pretty green basin, and the cirque and cascade and Marboré just opposite to us – excellent station for a picture – at 11 35 a little higher up the hill stopt five minutes for Charles to drink petit lait at what he called the best in Gavarnie (i.e. the little district) le maison d’Yarré – view from here of Mt. Ferrat d’Ossoue (Ossoo, Charpentier spells it Ossōnne) i.e. of one pic of this mountain – then snow, and then Vignemale – off from la maison d’Yarré at 11 40 – at 12 ¾ good point de vue of Vignemale – just catch its over four pics and below these 3 summits reaching down to Mt. Ferrat – at 12 48 pass (right, on the other side the gave) the 1st cabane – cabane and wood bridge d’Artǐgolĕ – at 1 5 alight at the cabane de Saoussats Dabats – fine narrow savage valley – glad to see it again and clear – shut in east by the Piméné – west by the Vignemale – en face de la cabane (to the north) the tower like pic blanc -  I question that (had we gone as intended yesterday to the top of it (Charles did not know of my altered plan till at Gèdre this morning) it would have served us for a good point de vue of Vignemale – there is a high point, and high rock still beyond that, on the same line of crête, that might obstruct our view? Charles agreed that our labour would have been lost – bright, lovely day – the glacier of V- fine from here (standing at the cabane-door) – but I am strange to this side of the mountain – late and brouillard both evenings of our arriving at the cabane, and on the day of ascent out daylight spent on the Spanish side – here (at the cabane door) valley closed east by the top morsel of the pic de Piméné and its crête down to the summit of the Coumélie – and west by one point of Mt. Ferrat, then the snow – then 2 summits with spots of snow between – a crête and larger rounder summit – then the glacier reaching to the 3 visible pics of Vignemale – and one round lower summit stretching down till it closes our vale d’Ossōnne – on arriving A- ate one wind and the breast of an cold fowl then sketched Vignemale from the cabane door in her little note rough book –

SH:7/ML/E/21/0172

all the bergers away on our arrival – but we had taken some of their milk (always kept in a sort of drain made exprès with a stream running thro’ it) and had just wrapt up a franc in a written paper to be left in the compartment of drain we had taken the milk from when a berger came broche to to one of the bergers here before, and who went with us as guide – Charles measured the cabane inside – 2 umbrellas long and two + 4 pouces broad – not much space for ten of us to sleep in – En route again at 2 35 – the vale d’Ossōnne running east and west not far from its origin west, throws off 2 branches, southwards – the cannau de Lourdes leading to the Port de Plat d’[aow] (Plāh d’aow) which we passed on the 7th going to the V-      and the Plāne à combe ([coorn]) the easternmost of the 2, and leading to the Lac de la Bernatoire – the range of mountain forming the north side of the vale d’Ossonne, and on which rises about mid length the pic blanc is called on its south side towards the vale d’Ossonne, the mountain d’Ossonne or as Charles pronounced it Mountain d’Ossonne, and on its other north side Sowgué (Sowgay) – off from the cabane de Saoussa[t]s dabats at 2 35 – turned by and by (left) up the Plāne à coone [combe] – passed the cabane of the Spanish berger who carried our baggage on the 7th, and at the top looking down upon the very pretty little lac de Bernatoire at 4 35 as according to A-‘s watch, my watch would have indicated – but I had sometime before discovered that it had stood since 2 35 – very pretty little round deep lake exactly filling the bottom of a crater-like contorted rock basin between the two crêtes of rock forming the port or brêche perhaps about a couple of hundred feet high north and south, and rising into a high rock range west, and a high pic close over the lake east and its rock range stretching out towards the port de Bouchero – the crête of the whole of this rock-range separates France and Spain .:. ½ the lake is in French ½ in Spain – too cold for trout – no visible outlet for the water – the rock-basin hoary and bare of vegetation except a little on the west side along the talus of debris along the bottom of which (having descended to the waters’ edge on the north side)   we wound ½ round the lake to the south side up which we went by a little narrow zigzag scarcely visible track to the top having made this little trajet (from 1 side of the lake to the other) in ¼ hour – fine look down upon masses of rock Spain and the Port de Bouchero road en face, the fine rocks above which we had not been to see when just under them in passing from Gavarnie – coldish strongish south wind at the top of the port – it was 4 55 when we paid off our berger whom we had had since 2 35 and began the descent upon Bouchero – A- walked till 6 from which time she rode almost all the rest of the way – I walked till 6 ½ - then mounted for ¼ hour then walked all the rest of the way – very fine day – at Bouchero at 7 10 .:. from the cabane to the port 2 35 to 4 35 = 2 hours rounding the lake and stopping 20 minutes Descent from 4 55 to 7 10 = 2 ¾ hours so that we had taken in all 5 5 hours from the cabane de Saoussa[t]s dabats to the hospice at Bouchero – walked about the house out a little till about 8 – then supper – soup but made with too much oil, that we could not touch it – 4 or 5 eggs fried with a little fat bacon – we could have eaten more but unluckily no more to be had – good bread of which we both ate pretty well and Eaux-bonnes cheese of which A- ate a little – the water excellent – I had a [joram] of boiled milk of which I daresay I drank about a quart and left the rest for Charles who had a little colique this evening – I had felt my stomach far from well – it has been more or less derangé these 3 weeks – our room much better than we expected – largeish – one window about 2ft. 6in. high by 3ft. wide – 2 doors – nor glass nor frame – the woman brought at 1st lighted splinter of fir-wood, and on our asking for a candle brought  a little lamp which hung up against the wall – and as it must be hung up (would not stand) and we could only find one nail near the winds’ [edge] head of my bed, we were obliged to place our table accordingly – we had 2 beds each having a mattress over the pailasse, and sheets, coarse linen but clean – of course, nor baldaquin nor curtain – the great store seemed a large old kist forming also a high seat or table, in our room from which our good but dirty-looking landlady took sheets, cheese and all – all ready and room cleared at 8 ¾ - lay down with our things on A- taking off only her habit and shoes and stockings and I taking off my shoes and gaiters and cincture – very fine day

[lov3nerdstuff]

Voluptas Noctis Aeternae {Part 3.6}

*Severus Snape x OC*

Summary: It is the year 1983 when the ordinary life of Robin Mitchell takes a drastic turn: she is accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Despite the struggles of being a muggle-born in Slytherin, she soon discovers her passion for Potions, and even manages the impossible: gaining the favor of Severus Snape. Throughout the years, Robin finds that the not quite so ordinary Potions Professor goes from being a brooding stranger to being more than she had ever deemed possible. An ally, a mentor, a friend... and eventually, the person she loves the most. Through adventure, prophecies and the little struggles of daily life in a castle full of mysteries, Robin chooses a path for herself, an unlikely friendship blossoms into something more, and two people abandoned by the world can finally find a home.

General warnings: professor x student (however no underage romance), blood, violence, trauma, neglectful families, bullying, cursing

Words: 5.8k

Read Part 1.1 here! All Parts can be found on the Masterlist!

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Unsurprisingly, working with Snape was absolutely demanding and still (or therefore) absolutely delightful. The Sunday evening they had started the slow process of making the potion, Robin had mostly watched Snape working and listened to him explaining what he was doing as he moved along. But over the days and weeks, she was allowed to do more and more herself, and somehow, miraculously, a second chair had found its way to the laboratory by the end of the third week. Being allowed to do more practical work, however, had come at the cost of Snape correcting literally everything Robin was doing for a good amount of time. Whether it was cutting something up, separating something else, or even something as simple as stirring… he always had something to complain about.

Robin loved every second of it dearly, even though she would accidentally sass him sometimes in return to his corrections of whatever she did. There also was no denying that she was learning more than she had ever expected, and even though the times when they actually had to work on the potion were not more frequent than two to three nights a week, she always looked forward to it from the very moment she left the lab in the first place.

Unfortunately the two months came to an end eventually, and Snape summoned her to the lab on a Saturday night in December to bring their work to an end with the very procedure this all had led up to. The restoration of the page. Honestly, Robin didn't know what to expect of it. They still had no idea what was hidden on that page, but she felt honoured that she was allowed to be here for the final revelation nonetheless. He was by no means obliged to keep her around at any point, especially not now, and Robin was well aware of that, which was what had led her to be all the more grateful in return.

"What do you think we will find on that page, professor?" She asked as she sat on her stool, observing how he placed the old book on the table, opening it to the two pages that enclosed the missing one.

"If I knew, we would not have to go through with this entire procedure."

"I know that you don't know… But what is your assumption? What do you think is worth hiding like this?"

"I do not know, Miss Mitchell." He sighed, but then turned to her as he lifted an eyebrow. "What is your assumption then, if you expect me to have one?"

"Well… I've actually spent quite some time thinking about this." She smiled to herself for a moment. Truth be told, she had been thinking about little else over the course of the last two months. "Seeing as this page is probably from the Renaissance, it would be something THEY deemed worth hiding. So I asked myself: What was worth hiding in the 15th and 16th century? The answer would be: basically the same as today. Sex and power, the driving forces of mankind since the very beginning. Now, I honestly doubt, or rather I want to doubt, that this entire spell is about sex, so I'm staying with power. The means to power are control and protection, which leaves us basically with weapons and security. Now back to the Renaissance: as far as I remember and as far as the library here allows me to research, most of the European countries weren't actually counties but basically a rag rug of principalities and such. That again leads me to believe that wars, especially of the magic kind, weren't actually fought on a scale large enough that would bring forth a weapon strong enough to be worth hiding like this. That leaves us with security, and thus protection. Which is, to finish this off, what I believe this page is about. A protection spell."

Mildly amused and badly hiding it, Snape raised an eyebrow at her once again. "You seem fairly confident in your thesis."

"If I wasn't confident in it, it would hardly be a thesis worth upholding." Robin smirked. "I would even bet my non-existent birthday presents on it."

"If they are non-existent, that statement hardly counts for anything, does it?"

Now Robin had to laugh out loud indeed. "True, unfortunately. But I'm still fairly certain about my thesis."

"Then we shall see if you are correct." Snape mused and finally moved on to follow the instructions in Robin's literature spell book. First, one had to make the potion. They'd done that already, at least. Then the potion would have to be drizzled over the part of the spine on the inside of the book where the page was missing. Snape allowed Robin to do this step, and it admittedly was an easy task, but she was only too happy to get to do something in this procedure at all. Next, the actual spell had to be spoken, which Robin gladly left for her professor to do, as she honestly didn't even know how to pronounce the words she'd read on the page. After that was done, the instructions merely said to wait, and then they would be done. So that's what they did, merely sitting on their stools and staring at the book while waiting for something to happen.

"Do you think it worked?" Robin asked after five minutes of silence, when still absolutely nothing had happened

"Yes."

"I honestly can't believe it was this easy after freaking two months of making that potion."

"Luckily efficiency not always correlates to effort."

"I hope you know that I'm very grateful that I got to help you in this, sir, no matter how difficult or easy it is. I've learned so much, and I truly believe that I've never felt so filled with… passion, and joy, and curiosity, in anything ever before."

"I know." It was a simple statement, but Robin understood what he meant to express. He wouldn't have made an effort to teach her any of the things she'd learned if he didn't know she appreciated it.

"Good." She returned with a smile, then looked at the book once more only to jump in her seat. "Bloody hell! It's glowing! It's actually working!"

Snape rolled his eyes, but still had to suppress the not-smirk at the same time, which was only a partial success, seeing as Robin still noticed it. "Of course it's working, Mitchell, get over it."

"Sorry." She bit her lips and tried to contain her sheer excitement, but it honestly was difficult. It was actually working! "It's just… a spell I found, in my book, with a potion we made, restores your book page! How amazing is that!"

"You seem to have had fairly few successes in your life if you get that excited over this one."

"Well, all successes I've ever had were utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Getting good grades, winning minor quarrels, scaring scummy shop owners… It wasn't anything worth mentioning. But this could be something amazing! Something that actually matters!"

"We will see in just a short moment." He mused, then turned towards the book and once the page was entirely restored at last, he went to read it over once, twice, another time…

"And?" Robin asked anxiously, after giving him almost fifteen minutes to read that one single page. Nobody needed that long to read a couple words!

"Shush."

She rolled her eyes, but complied. If the past two months had done anything, they had proven to her that the odd amount of trust she put into Snape was actually justified. And thus she waited another ten minutes until he finally turned to her with a grave expression.

"Is… is it something… bad?" Robin tried again, and her insecure frown met his stoney gaze for a moment until she looked back at the book.

"You should read it." Was all he said, before standing up from his stool and busying himself with whatever he could to obviously distract himself from whatever it was he had just read. To think about it, perhaps.

In an instant Robin's eyes were glued to the book. It was a protection spell indeed! The grin was on her face immediately, and she felt proud to have come to the right conclusion. As she read on, everything became a bit clearer, and yet also a great deal more confusing. It wasn't a spell… it was a potion. After reading it a second time, she looked up from the book and her eyes found her professor's across the room. "Quite frankly, I'm not sure I understand."

"I would be surprised if you did."

"Why?"

"Because I am not certain I understand it either, and I would much prefer if I didn't."

"What?!" Robin frowned at him in honest question. "Why would you hope you don't understand? What exactly is it you believe to understand?"

"You were the one to guess that it was a protection spell. Why don't you tell me what you understand?"

"Alright…" Robin sighed and let her eyes travel over the page once more, before looking back up at Snape. "As far as I got any of this, it's a potion, not a spell."

"Good. Go on."

"Well, it is supposed to protect the person drinking it from the influence of any kind of magic. But not their own, somehow. So… it's like a two-way mirror, kind of. Nobody can magic you, but you can magic everyone else."

"Precisely."

"But…" Robin added reluctantly.

"But?" Snape frowned in return, clearly not having expected her to continue.

"Yeah, but…" Robin frowned as well, as she looked at the page once more. "It seems like this spell will only protect…" She stopped there, feeling like this was probably a really silly thought. If Snape hadn't understood it this way, it was probably wrong anyway.

"Do go on." He encouraged, or rather demanded though.

"It sounds like it only protects half bloods. Or maybe also muggle borns, I'm not sure… but definitely not pure bloods."

In an instant, Snape was by her side and looking at the book as well in an astonishing intensity. "Where did you read that?"

Robin pointed to a paragraph at the bottom of the page. "Here it says 'Only thee who is't hast ventur'd both worlds shalt beest the one who is't dwells in the safety of the beshrew's blessing'. In my opinion that would roughly translate to 'Only you who has ventured both worlds shall be the one who dwells in the safety of the curse's blessing' in modern day language. And seeing as the entire book is a mixture of the muggle and wizarding world, I just thought that those are what's meant with 'both worlds'. The only people who usually know both worlds are muggle borns or half bloods. So… yeah."

Snape read the short paragraph again, then looked up at Robin in sincere astonishment. "I believe you are right, Miss Mitchell."

"Wait, what? Really!?" Robin stared back at him in equal surprise and doubt, eyes wide as they searched for any sign of mock in his own. But he was entirely serious.

"It seems fairly obvious now that you pointed it out, but I must admit… I failed to notice it before." He commented, reading the paragraph yet another time.

Had he just-... No, surely not… but he definitely had admitted that she had found something he hadn't, right? Right?! Robin was too stunned to even give any proper reply, so she simply offered him a happy half smile.

"However I am not certain if this means that pure bloods cannot make the potion, or if it will not affect them, in disregard of the ones who made it." He mused after a few seconds, and Robin finally snapped out of her daze as the words sunk into her brain.

"Them?" She asked before she could stop herself from saying anything at all. "Do you mean… you're not…?"

Immediately he shot her a defensive glare. "That is not even remotely of your concern."

"I'm sorry." Robin replied quickly and while she still felt curious, she also regretted bringing it up. "I really didn't mean to pry, sir."

"Simply forget about it, will you?" He murmured, then turned towards the book once more.

"So… why does it matter if they cannot make it or if they merely cannot use it?" Robin asked for the sole sake of a change of topic.

"You know the answer to that." He replied with a pointedly annoyed expression.

"I do indeed…" Robin whispered to herself, then looked at the book in front of her, and finally to the ingredients on the shelves. She really had screwed this up, hadn't she… It had been truly stupid to ask him something that personal. "Sorry…"

"Don't apologise. You had a crucial part in the project, and this discovery is your merit as well as it is mine. A potion like this has been searched for for centuries, and would any of this become known… It would be revolutionary."

"...would? We're not going to… to tell anyone about it?" Robin asked in surprise, and a mild twist of disappointment. "But… we can try it out at least, right?"

"No." He replied with a quiet solemnity that made Robin's heart sink even further. "This potion is dangerous, more so than you likely realize."

"But how? Why?!" Robin asked in desperate incredulity. "What's wrong with protecting yourself against your enemies? This potion could help so many people…"

In a moment's notice, Snape turned to Robin entirely, not even an arm's length away, and looked down at her with such a seriousness and intensity that she inevitably shuddered. "Nobody can know that this potion exists. Not a single soul but you and me, do you understand that?"

"I do." Robin replied quietly, as she still looked up at him with sad eyes. "But please, at least tell me why."

"Promise me that you will never lose a single word about it to anyone but me. Not the other teachers, not a friend, not even Professor Dumbledore or the Minister of Magic himself." He really seemed to be dead serious about this, and Robin started feeling sick with anxiety again. If he truly wanted her to swear her silence, he had a reason to.

"I promise." She replied in complete seriousness and utmost honesty. "I don't know if it means anything to you, but I promise."

"It does." He replied a little less gravely, and took a step backwards, out of her personal space. "Coming from you, it does."

"Can you… please tell me why this is so dangerous? Please… I just wanted to understand." Robin tried once more after a moment of silence, not even caring if her begging was pathetic, but she needed to know.

"Do you know Oscar Wilde, Miss Mitchell?" He asked completely out of context, or so it seemed, and Robin only looked even more lost.

"Yes, I… I've heard of him."

"I thought so. He supposedly said: 'Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth'." Snape made a small pause, and Robin considered the quote for a moment before he spoke on. "In my eyes, the same principle applies for might. Make someone believe they are invincible, and they will show their true self in their actions. Now, I'm certain you are aware of the propensity of mankind to oppress their oppressors, if given the chance. What do you think would happen to the muggle borns after centuries of being oppressed by the pure bloods, if they gained access to a potion that makes them invincible?"

"Oh…" Robin's face softened from pouting incredulity to actual understanding, but her chest still felt painfully small for her thudding heart. "It-it could lead to some very serious damage in the world, I guess. There's always someone willing to start a revolution… but we mustn't give them an opportunity for that." She finally concluded on her own, nodding to herself as if to help the words sink into her mind and shake out the disappointment.

"Precisely." He confirmed, back to neutrality if not even a subtle touch of calmness. "That is why nobody can know of its existence. Do you understand that now?"

"I do… and I agree, even. I just didn't really consider that something so good could be used for something so bad." She sighed, picking at the buttons of her shirt subconsciously rather than by choice, and looked from Snape down to the book. "What do we… what will you do with it?"

"The very same thing the previous possessor did. Destroy the page, keep the book of nonsense safe." He replied as he sat back down on his own stool, and Robin could feel his eyes on her even though she kept staring at the book to hide her tears.

"So all efforts were for nothing, huh?" Her voice was throaty and thick, and Robin felt like they got stuck in her chest in the first place. She had been so focused on this whole thing, had put so much of her heart into it… and now it would be destroyed, and thus every chance of possibly continuing this out of class work with Snape was over once and for all. That maybe –no, definitely– was even worse than the loss of this remarkable potion that had been lost in the first place anyway.

"Will you stop being so dramatic, now…" He gave right back, feignedly scolding, but it did its job and Robin pulled herself together as he spoke on. "Nothing about this project by any means was in vain, seeing as we both learned a valuable lesson. And wouldn't you say it was our aim to solve a mystery rather than strive for material gain?"

Once again, Robin had to realize that Snape was right. Of course he was... It was ridiculous to be upset over this, she should be happy indeed that they had actually managed to solve the mystery. That she had gotten to help, and that she had gotten to learn so much over the last two months. In this new light, the tears stopped burning in her eyes and she could blink them away before looking up at her professor with an attempted half smile. Better.

"We definitely did solve the mystery." She said, and the smile reached her eyes a moment later. "And I definitely learned a lot from all of this, and from you, professor. It truly was a joy."

"Your understanding of joy is rather curious, if you consider being constantly corrected one."

"I consider potions a joy. And learning." Now she had to smile for real, and the sadness faded from her mind like clearing fog. This wasn't the end.

"That is… acceptable."

Robin had to snort at his choice of words. "It's 'acceptable'? May I ask, what did you learn, sir, if you say we both learned something from it? Is it just the spells and potions or… something else?"

His face went straight back into stony nothingness, and Robin believed she had said the wrong thing again as he got up and walked across the room to fetch an empty bottle, probably to store the remainder of the potion.

"I learned that at least one person in this school full of dunderheads is worth my time and efforts." He finally replied, likely as indifferently as he could manage, but the words were clear enough even without any means to convey them appropriately. Professor Snape deemed Robin worth his teaching. He didn't regret allowing her to help. Maybe he would even let her do it again. Robin's smile widened into a grin before she could help it.

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me, I believe." She smirked before she could think better of it.

"Who said I was speaking of you?" Came his immediate reply, but now both his tone and expression clearly gave away the obvious tease. Robin found herself enjoying it… those extremely rare moments when he wasn't void of any sentiment, on the outside.

"I beg your forgiveness for being so pridefully assuming." She laughed, and there it was again, the sarcasm she got scolded for more often than not. And still Robin couldn't wipe the smirk off her face.

"Forgiveness granted."

"That was easy…"

"Careful."

"I'm in the potions master's private laboratory… whatever else would I be but careful?" While her tone was still anything but serious, he actually seemed quite pleased with her statement, and that made Robin smile even more. Slowly her cheeks were starting to hurt again… it was odd how she always seemed to go through a wide array of emotions in the shortest time spans whenever she was around Professor Snape. He was irritating, and everything he did was too. That must be it.

While Snape filled the remainder of the potion into the bottle he had just retrieved, and then labeled it and put it away into one of the shelves, Robin looked over the page with the dangerous-protective potion again (she couldn't find a name anywhere and thus that's what her mind had labeled it, for now). Would destroying it really prevent it from being found in the future? Sure, Snape was brilliant, but if a potions professor and a third year student could restore it almost by chance, then who said nobody else would in the future?

"Professor… can I ask you something?" Robin started her attempt to voice just that thought in a way that wouldn't possibly sound like an insult to him.

"You may ask, but there is no guarantee that I will answer."

"So… I was wondering if the spell we used to restore the page in the first place, and with spell I mean potion and spell and the entire thing, if, you know…" Just get the question out, idiot! "Don't you think someone like us will eventually do the same thing we did? I mean restoring the page that you're destroying now. Wouldn't that simply be a delay of things, if the next person finding it isn't as considerate of its dangers?"

He seemed to really consider her words for a moment, which he had done quite often over the last weeks actually, before he looked at Robin when answering. "That is possible, yes."

"So maybe… a repetition of history wouldn't necessarily be the… best idea?" Robin suggested vaguely and already made a face that clearly showed what she expected him to reply with. A scold, namely.

"What would you suggest I do instead?"

Now, she hadn't expected that. But she'd take the opportunity to voice her thoughts a little more in detail. "So this is the point where my logic kind of depends on my very limited knowledge of things, but… I was thinking, if there really isn't another possibility but to restore the page with a spell-potion-whatever thing like we did, then one should consider how the process of restoration works. From what I understand, the spell in my book refers to the destruction of the page itself which is, kind of, reverted by the procedure we just did as well. Seeing as you said two months ago that all the book restoration spells you tried didn't work in this case, that would –with a bit of corners and loops– mean, in the end, that the page needs to be destroyed first to be restored in the book. If it's not destroyed, while it simply being taken out of the book wouldn't qualify as destroying it I believe, one couldn't restore the page with the book alone."

"So?"

"So… You could take the page out of the book, but NOT destroy it. Because if the only means to getting the page back into the book is a restoration spell or potion, which in return only works if the page was destroyed in the first place, then nobody will be able to get their hands on the page if they have the book." Robin suddenly wasn't so sure about her idea anymore… what if he deemed it stupid? But she'd already voiced too many dumb thoughts around him to let that stop her now. "That of course would still leave open the possibility for the page itself to be found, when it's not destroyed, especially since it's no longer hidden by the book… However if you find out just what exactly counts as for the page being 'destroyed', you could always do something else to it to make it useless. Something that doesn't count as destroyed, and thus will make a restoration impossible, but will also make the page useless. In the end you will thus have a useless book, and a useless page, and neither can be made to function again."

"Where, pray tell, did you get that idea from in this instant?" He raised an eyebrow at Robin, but otherwise didn't give away what he thought of her suggestion. Idiot…

"I… think. A lot." Robin replied lamely. "I mean, I don't know much, and I can do even less, but I'm fairly decent at thinking… I think."

Snape rolled his eyes at that admittedly silly statement, and Robin tried to force the heat out of her face. For a minute, it was completely silent.

"Your mind truly is an ever-surprising quarry to delve in, Miss Mitchell…" He commented then, with a frown and a curious look at her, and while it wasn't really a compliment, his words still made Robin shiver for some reason. "I will consider your suggestion before making my decision about what is to do with the page and the book."

"Thank you, sir. I'm just glad it wasn't complete nonsense." Robin replied with a nervous chuckle, then scooted herself off her stool and awkwardly took a step towards the door before turning back once more. "Uhm, is there… anything else for me to do tonight?"

"If I'm not mistaken, you have an essay to write for my class." Aaand he was entirely back in professor-mode, scowl, bored indifference and all.

"I finished it last night, sir."

"I assigned it last night, Miss Mitchell."

"Yes, and I wrote and finished it after dinner. Proofread it this morning. Edited it this afternoon. All done now."

"The class really is too easy." Snape sighed dramatically. "Unfortunately, all the other students would fail if I made it any more difficult."

"Don't they fail as it is already?" Robin whispered more to herself than to him, and still received a glare and a not-smirk in return.

"Goodnight, Miss Mitchell." He said after two more seconds of silence, and Robin understood a polite invitation to leave when she heard one.

"Goodnight sir." She gave back before she let herself out, with a smile that didn't leave her face for the rest of the night.

_______________

It was almost a month later when Robin heard about the book, and the dangerous-protective potion again. Just as last year, she had decided to stay in the castle over Christmas break. However this year she actually knew from the start what she would be doing, and Professor Sprout seemed rather delighted about Robin's enthusiasm to help her out again. But one thing did change in comparison to last year. This year, Robin received a Christmas present. Not in the traditional sense, admittedly, but to her it would always be one all the same.

Seeing as she would only get the money from her parents once she would go home in the summer, Robin hadn't exactly expected to be given anything at all. And it surely wasn't given to her the way she would expect either. While usually the students who stayed here over the holidays received their presents in the common room upon Christmas morning, this is not how Robin came to hers.

Christmas arrived in a whirlwind of snow and cold, just like last year, and it also went that way again. Robin worked in the greenhouse most of the time, but occasionally she would be sent to Hagrid's for a change. She hadn't really had much contact with the man in question before this particular Christmas break, but seeing as Professor Sprout didn't require her assistance every single day, the herbology teacher still was kind enough to refer Robin to the gamekeeper. He wasn't the brightest fellow, admittedly, but good-natured and kind to the bone, and that made Robin like him in an instant. She helped him out with all kinds of things, from taking care of the magical creatures (which she unfortunately knew nothing about since she hadn't taken this particular class) to simple work in the school garden, and admittedly, she did learn a lot from Hagrid, too.

In the evenings Robin would still come to sit in Snape's classroom, alone, for she still couldn't stand to be in the common room even though it had become rather deserted. The overwhelming panic she had felt in the beginning of the term hadn't been back since, but Robin assumed that it was solely due to the fact that she had been avoiding situations that made her panic in the first place at all costs. Christmas came and went this way, without a present, but with a good lot of practical work every day. She actually felt content, with enough decent company throughout the day, and enough time to read by herself at night. The only thing that nagged at her mind from time to time was the absence of a certain potions professor from the classroom or his office in the evenings, but then again, she reasoned that since he still showed up for most meals, he surely was fine. Still, she felt worried about him. A little. An appropriate amount. It was perfectly normal to worry about someone you usually saw every day. Almost. She didn't let his absence stop her from making good use of his classroom every evening though. The first night she didn't spend in there was New Year's.

After her work of the day in the greenhouse was done, she got cleaned up and tidied her part of the room, then wrapped herself in her warmest clothes, and in sweet remembrance of last year headed out into the arcades that surrounded the courtyard at roughly eleven. With a soft smile she sat down in the same arch as last year, crossed her legs underneath her, and started to read her book on the care of magical creatures. Maybe she could convince some people to let her join the class after the holidays, if only she caught up with the class material before then. It's what she'd been trying to do ever since the first day of working for Hagrid, when she had discovered that magical creatures actually were a very much similar subject to herbology when it came to its usefulness for potions.

"Becoming predictable, are we?" Snape's voice called out to her even before he was anywhere to be seen.

"I'd rather say I've been spending surprisingly little time out here this Christmas." Robin replied with a smile, but kept her eyes on the book. At least she hadn't jumped again.

"What are you reading this year?"

"The textbook for the 'care of magical creatures' class. I thought about convincing whoever teaches it currently to let me join the class after the holidays."

"Where does the sudden interest stem from?" His voice had gotten closer now, and Robin believed he had once more taken a seat in the arch next to hers.

"It's surprisingly handy to know a bit about the creatures whose body parts and liquids we use in potion making. Just like it's useful to know herbology." She smiled to herself, eyes still on the book while yet she had stopped trying to read.

"Clever."

"That's what I’d rather hoped."

"Consider it done."

"What exactly?"

"Your inquiry to participate in the class. I will speak to Professor Kettleburn, and he will let you join once term resumes."

"Wha-... Thank you! That's… amazing! Really, thank you so much." Robin's eyes finally lifted off her book and she looked towards the arch next to her, but yet again could see nothing more than stone and ornamentation.

"Yes, well… just do me the favor and make sure you are not ahead of the class right on the first day already." He mumbled in the usual discomfort upon being thanked, and still Robin had to snicker at the comment.

"Then I better stop studying their textbook now and leave the last two chapters for another day." She commented with a grin, and indeed closed her book in her lap only to rest her forearms on it to lean forward just enough to get a glimpse of her professor in the next arch. He looked gnarlier than usual, if one could even say that about someone that young, and Robin seriously wondered what he'd been up to during the holidays. But it wasn't her place to ask.

Thus they merely sat in silence yet again, watching the snow falling slowly and calmly as the minutes ticked by without their notice. Robin did wonder for a moment why Snape was out here with her, but she dismissed the question when she couldn't even tell the reason why she was here herself. Maybe it was the calm, or the solitude. Even if technically it wasn't solitude in the first place, with it being the two of them, but still it was like solitude from all the stupid people. Just two people who understood the silence like a part of themselves. At least that's what Robin thought, and for her it was a good enough theory to stick to.

At last it was the noise coming from Hogsmeade again that made Robin aware of the turn of years, and she smiled to herself as she realized that she had spent another new year's out here with the potions professor. Maybe it was turning out to be an odd little tradition, just like Professor Sprout's –who had told Robin that she always spends new year's sitting in her room's window with a piece of cake, watching the fireworks in the distance– which she had told Robin about the other day. While Robin found the herbology teacher's tradition quite charming, she preferred her own that hopefully would come into existence for real. Just Snape, and silence, and darkness, and Robin. She could very well live with that. Too well, perhaps.

_______________________________

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[kckv]

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[tinydooms]

Original Short Story: written in early 2016 while I was minding the doors at Handel and Hendrix in London (in my glamorous past life). Content Warnings: demons, assault, demonic sexual assault, murder.

The Death of Andromeda Ashton

Now darling, you know that there is a big empty house on this property, away up past the formal gardens; you can just see it from your window when the leaves are down from the trees. Ashton Manor is its name, so called because my ancestor, Joseph Ashton, built it centuries ago, when Queen Anne ruled this isle. A solid English manor house, with wings stuck on it during the reign of the Georges, built of grey stone and with hundreds of windows peering down at us like so many curious eyes. It is the country seat of the Ashton family and has been for almost three hundred years. But we do not live there. Not anymore.

I can see impatience in your face. I know all this, is what you’re thinking. Patience, dear one, for I am going to tell you why.

They were great collectors, the old Ashtons were, and as the years went on they filled the Hall with all manner of treasures, ancient books and paintings and sculptures from far off lands where strange gods were worshipped and men look nothing like you’d believe. Every generation of Ashtons contributed to the Collection, until one day, one of them brought home something monstrous.

The house is empty now, its windows stare unseeing; its treasures are locked up and guarded by an aging caretaker. All know that it is abandoned, most of its treasures still inside, though some were safely moved to London around the time Queen Victoria died. But never, in eighty years, has anyone broken in to steal anything. There are too many stories about the place. You’ve heard some of them, of course. The crying that can be heard in the east wing. The singing heard on stormy nights. The dark figure that prowls the corridors and the woods by the park, thinning the packs of rabbits that live there. The woman sinking into the lake. Yes, I can see by your eyes that you know of what I am speaking.

Her name is Andromeda Ashton. She lived here many years ago, when the house was an open and happy place. She was the darling petted baby daughter of older parents, born when her elder siblings were almost grown and had thought their parents were passed the age of engendering children. Her eldest sibling, Henry, was already well into his first year at Cambridge, her sisters away at school. The closest brother in age was Edward, seven years older than she, a quiet and thoughtful boy.

Now, because she was the baby, and in no small part because she was a beautiful, intelligent little thing, Andromeda was given license to behave in ways that were most unusual for a girl of her class in that time. She had a governess and a tutor, learned Greek and Latin from childhood, and could always be found prowling the family Collection or reading books by great explorers and renowned antiquarians. By the time she was eighteen, Andromeda was widely considered to be one of the brightest Ashtons for a generation. What a shame, people said, that she was not a boy and could then use that pretty head of hers. What a shame such remarkable intelligence was all for naught.

They need not have feared, for Andromeda had plans for making her mark upon the world, in the form of her family’s Collection. She may not be allowed to attend Cambridge like her brothers or study theology like Edward, but she was allowed and encouraged to contribute something to the Collection. And it would be more than just her portrait, which showed a slim, wind-pale girl with dark hair and eyes, gazing at the painter with a fiery intensity. No, Andromeda had not spent her life reading the tales of antiquarians for nothing.

Now dearie, you know that there are many stories of ghosts and legends in these parts. The hills are as dotted with stories as they are with sheep. On the eve of her nineteenth year, Andromeda began to collect them. With her father’s blessing and the help of her former governess, a project was begun: to compile the county’s folktales. It was no small task. For months, Andromeda could be seen riding from farm to farm, speaking to laborers and landowners alike, and writing down their stories. The Crone of Tetley. The Wailing Well of St. Edmund’s. The Fenbury Witch. She recorded them all, never realizing that she herself would one day become such a whispered story.

“I don’t know how you sleep at night, after hearing these tales,” her mother said once.

Andromeda smiled. “They are not true, Mother! They’re silly superstitions that came about because people in the past had no learning. People tell stories to ascribe meaning to what they do not understand, that’s all. There’s no truth to them.���

This, my dear, was Andromeda’s firm belief: that superstition had given way to science, and that all the ghostly tales of the past, while amusing and interesting, had a rational explanation. It was to be her undoing.

Now, as is sometimes the case with amateur antiquarians, Andromeda began to be curious as to the truth behind these stories. There was one in particular that caught her fancy, and that was of the Chalice of Tilbury St. Bartholomew. What’s that? The what? I knew you would ask; it’s certainly not talked about anymore. Not since-no, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The story goes like this: centuries before, at the time the plague first appeared in England, there was an alchemist who thought he could escape the illness by coming to the countryside. And where did he come? Why here, of course. Tilbury St. Bartholomew, though in those days the name was rather different. It was whispered that this gentleman-I use that term lightly, for he was no such thing-continued his strange experiments in his cottage, and that he not only practiced alchemy, but the dark arts as well. You’re skeptical, I see. So was Andromeda. What were considered the dark arts then is known as science now, of course. But for all that, the villagers were afraid of him. It was said that he conjured devils, and that one such devil was contained in a silver cup he kept with him in his bedroom, ready to do his master’s bidding. Village maidens dreamed of a dark shape coming into their beds at night, bending over them and stroking their hair. The alchemist leered at them in church on Sundays, leading to speculation that his demon was kept for the hunting of women. Unease and unrest grew in the village, yet the alchemist continued his work unmolested.

But when the plague finally came to Tilbury St. Bartholomew-for no part of the country was left untouched-the villagers said it was the judgments of God upon them for allowing an evil sorcerer to live unhampered in their midst. The alchemist was dragged from his home and burned at the stake. The village maidens breathed sighs of relief, for though the plague raged about them, the dark creature came to their chambers no more. The alchemist’s cottage was burned, too, and the silver chalice was lost. No one knew what became of it.

Andromeda, though, had her suspicions. She was a learned young lady, and figured that there had to be some record somewhere of a necromancer and his effects. I don’t know what sort of research she did, but one summer evening, when her brother Edward was visiting from his Cambridge seminary, she asked him to ride out with her. No one knows where they went, but when they came back, Andromeda looked quite pleased, and shortly thereafter presented an ancient silver goblet to the family.

Why did she want it, you ask? Why, if such demonic stories were attached to the thing, would a young lady wish to bring such an object into her home? Come, child, haven’t you been listening? Andromeda was not a believer in such things as demons. She was an active and intelligent young lady, and it rankled that she could not use her brains to their fullest capacity. A book was all very well and good, you see, but a treasure such as this cup was a real asset to the Collection, and it gave her a measure of fame, besides. She wrote the card for it herself. Silver chalice, English, circa 1330. What a find! Everyone in the family and many people outside of it admired the discovery.

All of this is common knowledge. You can find Andromeda’s book in any bookshop in the county, and the local historians will tell you about the silver goblet. They will also tell you that the goblet has been lost under strange circumstances, and when pressed for an answer, they will sigh and tell you it was a great tragedy. For you see, darling, very few people know exactly what happened to the Ashton family in the months following Andromeda’s discovery.

Most of what I know comes from Edward’s personal diaries, and they are to be treated with much caution. He lost his mind that year, you know. But I think he was saner than anyone knew.

Nothing went right for the Ashtons after Andromeda’s discovery. First Mrs. Ashton, who had never been strong after the birth of her daughter, succumbed to illness, soon followed by Mr. Ashton, so that Henry, the eldest son, living in London, found himself head of the family. That was in September. Then there began to be problems with the livestock. Horses went mad, sheep began to die for seemingly no reason, and the gamekeepers reported outrageous amounts of dead rabbits and birds in the woods. The servants began to complain that tricks were being played upon them, for it seemed as though they were being pinched and grabbed at by unseen hands. Edward recorded in the days that followed his mother’s funeral, was the sense of being watched when you knew you were alone, of a cold breath at the back of your neck, the creak of a chair that only creaked when sat in. There was a presence in the house, he said, and everyone knew it. But no one spoke of it.

Andromeda was not spared. Alone in her room at night, as she lay in bed, she felt the gentle caress of fingers across her cheek, in her hair, running over her body, cold as a breath of winter air. She told herself that she only imagined the icy kisses on the back of her neck, on her shoulders and breastbone. They were the products of a fevered mind, surely, imaginations brought about by grief at the death of her parents. She ignored the caresses. What’s that, darling? She must have been very brave? Yes, or very foolish.

By late November, the events had become too real to ignore. When serving tea to visitors, Andromeda would feel whispery fingers on her thighs, and moments later her stockings would loosen as her garters untied themselves. Something tugged her hair as she brushed it, or grasped her hand as she reached for a pen. At night, the sensation of someone cuddling close to her became unbearable, until she jumped for a light, gasping. And then she would hear it: a soft, cold laugh.

At last, after one such night, Andromeda swallowed her pride and told Edward what was happening. He was a priest, or nearly so; of course he would help her.

“It has only been since we brought home my goblet that this has happened,” she told him as they walked through the portrait gallery. “But artefacts cannot truly contain demons. Can they?”

Edward rubbed his hand through his hair, eyes straying to Andromeda’s portrait, swinging in its frame against the far wall. “We cannot know what devilry a sorcerer can conjure when he goes against God. I fear we made a mistake in unearthing that cup, Meda.”

“What must we do?”

“We must put it back where it was. As soon as possible.”

They agreed that Edward would write to one of his teachers, Reverent Dr. Padgett, to come assist them in exorcising the demon. The letter was duly dispatched. The reply came by telegram the next morning: Dr. Padgett would arrive that evening on the six-thirty train. They would commence their business immediately.

That afternoon, Andromeda asked the servants to leave the house for the night. She found them eager to do so. None of them liked to say how relieved they were to be away from the house and its unseen occupant. At half past six, the head footman was dispatched to the station to collect Dr. Padgett. In the back of the carriage was his own trunk, for he had no intention of remaining alone with the family in the house once he had safely delivered the doctor. It was a cold, windy evening, and later he said that his master and mistress could not have picked a worse night to be alone in that house.

All of this is fact; you can find the records in the village police archives, if you’ve a mind to. But what I’m about to tell you know, darling, are the words of a madman. You see, the only two people who know what happened in that house are Andromeda and Edward, and the latter was in no fit state to speak coherently of what happened for some months afterwards. Besides, his tale was dismissed by doctors and magistrates alike as being too unbelievable to come from a sound mind.

What Edward said was this: believing that Padgett would soon arrive, he and Andromeda set about making preparations for the exorcism. The house was empty, but the air around them seemed heavy, oppressive. As there were no servants to light the lamps, they sat in near-darkness. Their black mourning clothes must have made the scene even darker. Once or twice, Edward felt as though something touched the back of his neck, but there was no one there but Andromeda, sitting on the sofa by the window, peering out into the windy dusk.

“Perhaps we should bring the cup here,” she said, at last. “Perhaps Dr. Padgett will be willing to go out with us immediately.”

“Certainly,” said Edward. “Shall I go for it?”

“No.” Andromeda stood, smoothing her black skirts. Edward says that her hands were shaking. “I feel certain it has to be me.”

Though neither of them said it, the fact hung in the air that Andromeda was the one to have meddled in what she should not. Still, Edward, being a kind soul, rose from his seat and put her arm through his.

“We will go together. Come now, little sister, chin up. Everything will be all right.”

The silver cup was in one of the many rooms that housed the Collection, deep in the bowels of the cold house. I’ll show it to you one day, if you like, through the window. Night was falling fast as they walked through the halls, the strong wind driving dark clouds before it as it screamed around the manor. The lamp in Edward’s hand flickered in the draught, and his diary says that it was with some relief that they gained the Collection rooms. Leaving Andromeda by the door, Edward moved across the room to light the lamps, thinking to bring some cheer to the evening, if cheer were at all possible.

It was as he was lighting the lamps that Edward heard the screams. He ran to the door to see Andromeda lying in the corridor, beating at something unseen with both hands. He ran to assist her and all at once found himself picked up and flung back into the room he had come from. Undaunted, he picked himself up and made to run to his sister, only to again be thrown down by the unseen creature. It must have been terrible, fighting such a force while Andromeda’s shrieks echoed through the halls. Edward says that she twisted this way and that as though grappling with something. He made for her a third time--and this time, Andromeda was thrown down on the floor, gasping, and the thing, the monster, the demon, grabbed Edward by the neck and dragged him back into the Collection room. He was sure it would kill him. But it did not. A moment of white hot pain, and Edward found himself pinned to the floor with an arrow through the leg. Where the dart came from, he did not know. He could not move. Apparently satisfied that the young priest would prove no further nuisance, the thing returned to Andromeda. Helpless, crying with pain and horror, Edward heard his sister’s screams renew, growing more and more awful until they were drowned by a low, terrible laugh. Then there came the sound of a body dragging, and Andromeda’s shrieks faded as she was carried away.

Dr. Padgett, arriving an hour later, found Edward, alive but in a terrible state. Having asked his driver to wait at the door, Padgett was able to send for a medical doctor, and a search was made for Andromeda. It did not take them long to find her, for though the wind continued to buffet the county, there was no rain. You know where they found her, of course, my dear, for you can see her there still, some nights. She was in the lake, just under the water, her dark hair a loose cloud around her, her heavy black frock covered in hundreds of tiny gashes, her shoes and stockings gone. Her eyes were closed, her skin bleached of color in the green water. She was quite dead.

For months afterwards Edward screamed in the night, howling that the monster had come for him. Certainly in the mornings he was covered in scratches that had not been there the day before. A team of doctors agreed that his mind had been shattered by his sister’s murder, for they did not believe that anything but a mortal man could have done such a vicious thing to the Ashton children. The best thing for him, they told Henry, was to retire to the coast in the care of a nurse. And so Edward never returned to Ashton Hall.

And the cup that had started the horror? Dr. Padgett conducted a search for it, but it was nowhere to be seen, though Edward swore it was in the room when they were attacked. No one knows what became of it. Perhaps it had gone, and the demon with it. I see the doubt in your eyes, dearest, and I have to agree with you.

Ever after, the servants whispered that there was something still haunting the rooms and corridors of the hall, and the gardeners swore they saw Andromeda slipping out of the lake on icy winter nights. Henry’s family certainly never felt comfortable in the Hall, and so it was shut up. And so it has remained for these eighty years, and who knows if we will ever return to live in it? But one thing I know for certain: on nights when the wind blows and the moon is dark, shapes can be seen moving in the windows of the Hall. And out in the lake, a dark-haired Victorian lady floats just underneath the water. Watching. Waiting.

[notebooknebula]

Average Assignment Fees In Wholesaling Business | Casey Ames & Jay Conner

https://www.jayconner.com/average-assignment-fees-in-wholesaling-business-casey-ames-jay-conner/

An assignment fee can either be determined as a percentage of the purchase price or as a set amount determined by the wholesaler.

In this short video, Casey Ames shares his latest average assignment fees in managing his wholesaling business.

Casey Ames has a strong heart for the Lord, a luxury Home builder, multi-family Developer, SFH developer. He runs a large wholesale outfit averaging over 100 per year. A mentor and has been in the Real Estate business for 5 years.

Taylor Jene Homes builds high-quality homes and renovated older homes with care and a spirit of revival. No matter if starting from bare land or existing structure, President and founder Casey Ames ponders possibilities, develops and embraces a vision, and delivers excellence with quality and creative design.

Constantly improving on processes along with the use of technology and systems, Taylor Jene Homes empowers its crews to execute plans with clarity. Add in the singular focus of subcontractors and trades, city and county officials, professional engineers, and others to do what they do best within the project plan, a well-orchestrated collaboration results in remarkable home and new development creations.

For more valuable information click on this link and watch the complete episode: https://youtu.be/rDCWEZA0O6A – “Casey Ames on Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority”

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Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

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https://realestateinvestingdeals.mypodcastworld.com/11281/average-assignment-fees-in-wholesaling-business-casey-ames-jay-conner

Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner

Jay Conner:

In your wholesaling business, what would you say your average assignment fees are these days?

Casey Ames:

Well, consistently they were 17 for a couple years in a row. I would say the average is probably somewhere around 15 right now. I get a lot because my build company and my flip company are so big, we buy a lot of inventory. And so we will methodically sell that off if the rotation isn’t right. Or I don’t feel it’s the right neighborhood for the types of houses I’m doing or whatever the case is. But if there’s 10 to 20 grand to be made we’ll make it. And so I’m not going to pass on deals. I did go through a stage in wholesaling where I was being really critical with the price. And I didn’t want to take anything if there wasn’t a good spread in it. And so I’m not as picky now.

I just want to feed the people. And so for me flipping, I have a unique position that I own: Jim State Cash Offer, which is our wholesale company out of Idaho. So I get to see all these deals, but you got to remember that most of the flippers and builders out there don’t have a wholesale company that they can lean on to get their inventory. And I understand that. And so I have a decent amount of people that I don’t know if they were alive, fully on me, but I feed them deals and I try to stay consistent, so if I make five grand on a deal and it’s going to make sure that they have extra room in their budget to set them up for success, then I’m going to make five grand. If I buy low and I get it worked out and we maybe spend a month or two months on the lead and or even five or six months at that point, and I make a hundred grand I’m going to make a hundred grand on that wholesale with the intent to make sure that there’s value created for the flipper builder.

So I kind of just dictate. I don’t have a metric where I say this is going to be a percentage I’m going to sell it at. I’ve found that each individual flipper has their own criteria and the more we can adhere to them then we can get bigger values. I have guys that do a lot of rentals. They don’t need to buy them as cheap. They don’t need as much room. They’re not selling them. They’re not paying commissions to realtors. So we have a deal, I make sure they have good rental inventory and they pay, they paid the fee for it but I always give them inventory.

[kylekozmikdeluxo]

RIP Blue Sky Studios...

Established in February 1987... Iconic commercials, early innovation in CGI, packed to the brim with top talent, a rare East Coast-based house, and one of the first studios in a post-Don Bluth age to really challenge Disney and Pixar in the feature animation field...

Gone.

Once a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Company had them since early 2019 after the acquisition of their parent company. It looked as if Disney was going to keep them around, despite already having two powerhouse animation studios making family features for them. I wondered back in the day if Disney could rebrand Blue Sky as a sort-of outre little studio that did more experimental, quirky fare as opposed to the more digestible works of Disney Animation and Pixar.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, signs were rather troubling. Despite a management change, you had the rather ho-hum marketing for SPIES IN DISGUISE. To me, Disney sort-of let that one disappear between FROZEN II and STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. I found SPIES IN DISGUISE to be a fun little movie, with a timely pacifist message and memorable gags. Sadly, it did not make its money back. Even more troubling was the constant delaying of NIMONA, an adaptation of Noelle Stevenson’s webcomic of the same name from FEAST and PEARL director Patrick Osborne. From the rumblings I’ve heard, it looked to be an innovative CG film and a next-level family film in general. Like a next SPIDER-VERSE. It was to be released January 14, 2022. 70% of the film was completed by this point... It is no longer a reality, Blue Sky is done...

450+ animators and staffers out of a job during an awful worldwide crisis...

Why couldn’t The Walt Disney Company just sell off Blue Sky Studios to a distributor looking for more animation to stock up on? If they didn’t need more than two animation studios (see the shuttering of their own Disneytoon Studios in early 2018), why shutter them and wait so long to do so? I know that absorbing competition and killing it is nothing new, but this is **expletive** for a multitude of reasons. Multiple talent out of a job, more movies and work squashed, a nearly-completed film likely dead. (It would be great if it was instead on the market, so that someone could snatch it up and complete it, but we shall see...)

Blue Sky Studios were no slouches. ICE AGE established them, big time. In fact, I’d say they helped show the industry that the features world wasn’t just Disney’s game anymore. Disney had seen rivals in feature animation in the past, notably Don Bluth and Ralph Bakshi, but they continued through the decades while Bluth and Bakshi’s feature opportunities waned. Blue Sky, alongside DreamWorks and a fledgling Sony Pictures Animation, changed that, and they were here to stay. And it’s quite sad that Disney had to acquire this notable studio and shut them down, they would’ve thrived elsewhere because of the success of their previous work and the amount of talent they have/had over the years.

They have a pretty distinct body of work, too. ROBOTS, HORTON HEARS A WHO!, RIO, EPIC, THE PEANUTS MOVIE, FERDINAND, SPIES IN DISGUISE. Some of them, I’d argue, were quite innovative. ICE AGE stabbed at cartoony, Looney Tunes-esque humor and visual design. The work in that movie rung more Warner Bros. than it did Disney or something more naturalistic in design. Their later work embraced that kind of outlook as well, but you started seeing other studios doing this as well: DreamWorks with MADAGASCAR, Sony Animation with OPEN SEASON and CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, and so on. The antithesis to the ever-more-realistic Pixar styles. Then Blue Sky just straight up redefined the computer animated feature with THE PEANUTS MOVIE, which not only kept the comic strip aesthetic of Charles Schulz’s iconic characters and world, but adapted them to a computer animated world while doing something new in the process. PEANUTS MOVIE, along with similar pictures like THE BOOK OF LIFE and CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS, are indeed stepping stones to SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE and what lies beyond that feature. In short, Blue Sky played a big part in computer animation showing that it didn’t just have to look like Pixar movies, or most other computer animated works that were out at the time of ICE AGE’s early 2002 release.

Who knows where that could’ve all gone. NIMONA looked to be something new and exciting, something to really push things forward and widen the computer animation canvas. A musical called FOSTER also sounded like it had potential. When TWDC acquired 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios), Fox Animation in general had several animated films in development, hoping to branch out beyond their one studio... All of that seemingly died after the Disney acquisition, with only Blue Sky and a couple of Fox primetime TV-showed based movies (i.e. THE BOB’S BURGERS MOVIE, another - and inevitable - SIMPSONS picture) left. Now Blue Sky is gone. More animation, gutted. And for what? Disney didn’t have to do this...

It’s even more egregious when you consider where Disney was in 1991... As opposed to now, 2021...

Think of this... Under the controversial Michael Eisner, The Walt Disney Company was willing to sink a massive amount of money into a project that had already been cancelled. Said project was given to blockbuster king Steven Spielberg, hit director Robert Zemeckis, and animation mastermind Richard Williams. This was not even a few years after Disney was a quiet establishment being circled by corporate raiders that could’ve ended them for good... And what came of it. WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. An innovative animation-live action hybrid movie for a more adult audience. One of the biggest films of 1988, a bonafide blockbuster that Disney hadn’t seen in years, and more than lit the fuse of animation’s 2nd Golden Age.

Then, in 1990, a former animator of theirs turned big-time director realizes that a short story he wrote while at the company was still owned by them. That man was Tim Burton, and he expressed interest in revisiting that poem. A studio was set up, with similarly outre director and former Disney animator Henry Selick taking the helm. The result was an innovative stop-motion film that leaned more towards horror and German expressionism than something like BEAUTY AND THE BEAST did. The result was THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS in 1993. A respectable hit then, an iconic classic today. Without NIGHTMARE, would have ever gotten future stop-motion efforts like CHICKEN RUN and everything Laika has made?

Finally, in 1991, Disney makes a three-picture deal with a small computer graphics studio based out of Marin County. One of their main guys was a former Disney animator as well, similarly outed for being too ambitious. Their plan? Make the world’s first all computer-animated movie. That studio was Pixar, their first movie was TOY STORY. Need I say more?

The Disney of today would’ve never in these three instances. Blue Sky could’ve been their chance to really make some kind of a splash in a post-SPIDER-VERSE world. Various shorts made at Disney Animation (including Osborne’s own FEAST) suggested this, and some Pixar shorts as well... But nothing really came of this. In terms of features being put out by Disney Animation and Pixar, only parts of MOANA, INSIDE OUT, and SOUL put this kind of thing in a long-form format. Blue Sky, who operated on smaller budgets, could’ve been their arm for more experimental feature animation. I say this because while Disney doesn’t need to hog up animation, Blue Sky was owned by them, and I felt the best way to go about this was to re-establish them as a more experimental studio. Make the most of it, you know? But no, they had to shut it all down.

When a studio shuts down, I feel a chunk of the animation world is just broken right off... While some of the artists are apparently being welcomed into various Disney houses, it sucks to see a studio with its own identity and output gone. Of course, my hope is that everyone employed there will have somewhere to go by April (when the studio shuts down completely) and that maybe, just maybe a new studio could be formed up from the remains. (Think Don Bluth setting up shop upon his departure from Disney in 1979.) Somebody has to get their happy ending, right? I know it’s moot asking for such a thing in this hellscape business of massive octopus conglomerates engulfing everything into their eight tentacles, but...

I wish everyone involved well, and that they’ll prosper afterwards. I certainly hope the 3/4 completed NIMONA doesn’t remain unfinished. (Netflix? Someone?) I hope to see some good come out of this...