#western plows

[andy-clutterbuck]

4x01 | 30 Days Without an Accident

[ryin-silverfish]

One nerd's musing about Chinese religion and "respect"

-I try to stay away from fandom discourse, but, much like how you can smell the stench from a dumpster fire without walking into said dumpster fire, I've noticed something that seemed to come up a lot in western JTTW + adjacent fandoms: "respect Chinese religion".

-Usually as a reason for why you shouldn't ship a character, because of fucking course it's shipping discourse too.

-And my first reaction is "Man, you are taking Chinese religion too darn seriously, more than people who are born and raised in China."

-My second reaction is "I mean, most of us are atheist/agnostic by default anyways, with a good number of what I'd call 'atheist/agnostics with superstitions': people who said they were not religious, yet believed in Fengshui or divinations and burnt incense at temples for good luck."

-My third reaction: "But why do I get the feeling that when you mention 'Respect', you are thinking about something completely different?"

-Then I reread an essay from Anthony C. Yu, "Religion and Literature in China: The "Obscure Way" of Journey to the West", and the metaphorical lightbulb just lit up over my head.

(Everything below applies more to Daoism + associated folk religions, but by the time most classic Chinese vernacular novels were written, the blending of the three religions had become well and truly mainstream.)

(The conception of gods differs from dynasty to dynasty. What I'm describing here is mostly based on Ming and Qing ones; if you went back to Han or pre-Qin times, most of these would not apply.)

(I am one of the "atheist/agnostic by default" people. I just have an interest in this kind of stuff. I am also just one Chinese person, and an actual Daoist/Buddhist/Religion Studies researcher would probably have a lot more valuable information and perspective to offer when it comes to contemporary practices and worship. Like any people on the internet: take my words with a grain of salt.)

-Even in the past, when society was far less secularized, Chinese gods are not omniscient, perfect beings whose worship is a solemn, humorless affair. Some's worship are Serious Business, but that has more to do with the sort of gods they are and the patronage they enjoy, not godhood in and of itself.

-And even the ones that you are supposed to "treat seriously" are still very human. To use an analogy I've used plenty of times before: you respect and fear them in the same way you'd respect and fear an emperor's official, or the emperor himself, because if you don't, you are not gonna like the consequences.

-However, unlike Jesus, the emperor & his officials were capable of being temperamental, flawed, or an outright asshole, divine or not. Ideally, they wouldn't be, and if you were one of the "serious" believers——people who actually got an official permit, became ordained clergy, and went to live in a temple, you were unlikely to think of your gods in that manner.

-But it wasn't a complete, utter impossibility. The lower you go in the pantheon, the closer you get to popular religion, the less "serious" the gods and their worship become. By that, I mean general attitude, not sincerity of faith. You still shouldn't be rude to them, but, well, they are more likely to take a joke in stride, or participate in the "vulgar" pleasures of commoners because they weren't as bound to Confucian moral standards or religious disciplines.

-To stretch the same analogy further: you should still respect your village head, they could still give your ass a good spanking for being a disrespectful brat, but you were not obligated to get on your knees and kowtow to them like you would do in front of a provincial magistrate, the emperor's minister, or the emperor himself, nor did they have the power to chop your head off just because you were rude.

-On the other hand, the emperor would never visit a random peasant just to help them fix their broken plow or treat them to a nice meal, but your village head could, and your relationship would probably be warmer and a lot more personal as a result.

-Your respect for them was more likely to stem from the things they actually did for you and the village as a whole, instead of something owed to this distant, powerful authority you might never get to see in your lifetime, but could change its course with a single stroke of a brush.

-Now exchange "village head" for your run-of-the-mill Tudis and Chenghuangs and friendly neighborhood spirits (because yes, people worshipped yaoguais for the exact same reasons), emperor + his officials for the Celestial Bureaucracy, and you'd have a basic idea of how Chinese religions worked on the ground level.

-This is far from absolute: maybe your village head was a spiteful old bastard who loved bullying his juniors, maybe your regional magistrate was an honest, upright man who could enjoy a good drink and a good laugh, maybe the emperor was a lenient one and wouldn't chop your head off for petty offenses. But their general degree of power over you and the closeness of your relationships still apply.

-Complicating the matter further, some folk gods (like Wutong) were worshipped not because they brought blessings, but because they were the divine equivalent of gangsters running a protection racket: you basically bribed them with offerings so they'd leave you alone and not wreck your shit. Famous people who died violently and were posthumously deified often fell into this category——shockingly enough, Guan Yu used to be one such god!

-Yeah, kinda like how your average guy could become an official through the imperial examinations, so could humans become gods through posthumous worship, or cultivate themselves into immortals and Enlightened beings.

-Some immortals aren't qualified for, or interested in a position in the Celestial Bureaucracy——they are the equivalent of your hermits, your cloistered Daoist priests, your common literati who kept trying and failing the exams. But some do get a job offer and gladly take it.

-Anyways, back to my original point: that's why it's so absurd when people pull the "Respect Chinese Religion1!!1!" card and immediately follow up with "Would you do X to Jesus?"

-Um, there are a lot of things you can do with Chinese gods that I'm pretty sure you can't do with Jesus. Like worshipping him side by side with Buddha and Confucius (Lao Tzu). Or inviting him to possess you and drink copious amount of alcohol (Tang-ki mediums in SEA). Or genderbend him into a woman over the course of several centuries because folks just like that version of Jesus better (Guan Yin/Avalokitesvara).

-But most importantly, Chinese religions are kinda a "free market" where you could pick and choose between gods, based on their vicinity to you and how efficient they were at answering prayers. You respect them because they'll help you out, you aren't an asshole and know your manners, and pissing them off is a bad idea in general, not because they are some omnipotent, perfect beings who demand exclusive and total reverence.

-A lot of the worship was also, well, very "practical" and almost transactional in nature: leave offerings to Great Immortal Hu, and he doesn't steal your imperial seal while you aren't looking. Perform the rites right and meditate on a Thunder General's visage, and you can temporarily channel said deity's power. Get this talisman for your kids at Bixia Yuanjun's temple, and they'll be protected from smallpox.

-"Faith alone" or "Scripture alone" is seldom the reason people worship popular deities. Even the obsession with afterlife wasn't about the eternal destination of your soul, and more about reducing the potential duration of the prison sentence for you and your loved ones so you can move on faster and reincarnate into a better life.

-Also, there isn't a single "canon" of scriptures. Many popular gods don't show up in Daoist literature until much later. Daoist scriptures often came up with their own gigantic pantheons, full of gods no one had heard of prior to said book, or enjoyed no worship in temples whatsoever.

-In the same way famous dead people could become gods via worship, famous fictional characters could, too, become gods of folk religion——FSYY's pantheon was very influential on popular worship, but that doesn't mean you should take the novels as actual scriptures.

-Like, God-Demon novels are to orthodox Daoism/Buddhism what the Divine Comedy is to medieval Christian doctrines, except no priests had actually built a Church of Saint Beatrice, while Daoists did put FSYY characters into their temples. By their very nature, the worship that stemmed from these books is not on the same level of "seriousness" as, say, the Tiantai school of Buddhism and their veneration of the Lotus Sutra.

-At the risk of being guilty of the same insertion of Christianity where it doesn't belong: You don't cite Dante's Inferno in a theological debate, nor would any self-respecting pastor preach it to churchgoers on a Sunday.

-Similarly, you don't use JTTW or FSYY as your sole evidence for why something is "disrespectful to Chinese religion/tradition" when many practitioners of said religions won't treat them as anything more than fantasy novels.

-In fact, let's use Tripitaka as an example. The historical Xuanzang was an extraordinarily talented, faithful, and determined monk. In JTTW, he was a caricature of a Confucian scholar in a Buddhist kasaya and served the same narrative function as Princess Peach in a Mario game.

-Does the presence of satire alone make JTTW anti-Buddhist, or its religious allegories less poignant? I'd say no. Should you take it as seriously as actual Buddhist sutras, when the book didn't even take itself 100% seriously? Also no.

-To expand further on the idea of "seriousness": even outside of vernacular novels, practitioners are not beholden to a universal set of strict religious laws and taboos.

-Both Daoism and Buddhism had what we called "cloistered" and "non-cloistered" adherents; only the former needed to follow their religious laws and (usually) took a vow of celibacy.

-Certain paths of Daoist cultivation allow for alcohol and sexual activities (thanks @ruibaozha for the info), and some immortals, like Lv Dongbin, had a well-established "playboy" reputation in folklore.

-Though it was rarer for Buddhism and very misunderstood, esoteric variants of it did utilize sexual imageries and sex. And, again, most of the above would not apply if you weren't among the cloistered and ordained clergy.

-Furthermore, not even the worship of gods is mandatory! You could just be a Daoist who was really into internal alchemy, cultivating your body and mind in order to prolong your lifespan and, ideally, attain immortality.

-This idea of "respect" as…for a lack of better words, No Fun & R18 Stuff Allowed, you must treat all divinity with fearful reverence and put yourself completely at their mercy, is NOT the norm in Chinese religious traditions.

-There are different degrees and types of respect, and not every god is supposed to be treated like the Supreme Heavenly Emperor himself during an imperial ceremony; the gods are capable of cracking a joke, and so are we!

TL;DR: Religions are complicated, and you aren't respecting Chinese religions by acting like a stereotypical Puritan over popular Chinese deities and their fictional portrayals.

[flowerishness]

Cirsium vulgare (bull thistle, spear thistle, common thistle, cotton thistle)

When most people hear the word thistle, they think of the Scotch thistle (Onopordum acanthium) but there are 16 genera of thistles in the daisy/sunflower family Asteraceae alone. One of these genera, Cirsium, has at least 200 species with about sixty of them native to North America. Native thistles are beneficial to the environment but they are easily out-competed by invasive species. Just to be confusing, Scotch thistle grows throughout Europe and western Asia but it is not native to the British Isles. It's actually this species, Cirsium vulgare, that is Scotland's national flower.

We call this a bull thistle where I live but, like the Scotch thistle, it's a major agricultural pest. This scrawny specimen is growing in a crack in the sidewalk but it really doesn't do a healthy bull thistle justice. This species gets a lot bigger, with multiple arms and very prickly leaves. No grazing animal will eat it and it can completely take over a fallow field in a couple of years. Noxious weed control companies say serious bull thistle infestations can't be totally eradicated, only controlled. They recommend herbicides and yearly deep-plowing, so that (hopefully) it only grows on the margin of a field. I understand the farmer's point of view but, you must admit, Cirsium vulgare does have a very pretty, purple flower.

[chairofchaos]

When the Blood Burns

Blood (Part 1)

Burns (Part 2)

Pairing: Azriel x Eris

Summary: Azriel and Eris find themselves drawn together during the first war with Hybern. (Requested here)

Rating: Explicit (see warnings- I mean it. I can give details in DMs if you want specifics before reading)

Word Count: 5.5k

Warnings: violence, homophobia/homophobic violence (if you want details my DMs are open), graphic depictions of wounds and wound care with a very rudimentary understanding of the subject, alcohol use, and much less important than the others but still concerning: unedited.

A/N: Shoutout to @tsunami-of-tears for once again providing me with the perfect divider for this fic. Shoutout to @unanswered-stars forgiving me permission to do whatever I want with this request. And please know I tried to make it short. But now it's almost 10k so this is part 1 of 2. Maybe 3.

Their first meeting was unremarkable. Azriel, blinded with rage over Eris’ rejection of Mor and the ensuing pain it had caused his family, thought nothing of the young lord other than how callous he had been, and avoided him under the orders of his High Lord.

So the first time they had truly met was in a war tent five years and seven months into the war with Hybern. Eris stood with his elder brother behind Beron’s seat at the round table. Rhys and Azriel stood shoulder to shoulder behind Rhys’ father. When the High Lords had dismissed their advisors for a recess in planning, somehow only Eris and Azriel found themselves walking outside. 

They were silent. Azriel scanned the passing troops for any sign of Cassian. It had been three weeks since either he or Rhys had seen him, but there was a chance, stationed here near the western battle grounds, that they would encounter him. Still, even Azriel’s shadows hadn’t been able to locate his brother. 

The shadows' presence was thin. There were only so many he could task, only so many he could control. Only a fraction of his usual cloud of shades stayed with him. Still, they whispered to him. 

“The Autumn lord watches you,” they hissed. They seemed less concerned than intrigued. It wasn’t often people stared directly at him, and yet when Azriel turned his head, the lordling was staring, openly and with no concern.

“Can I help you?”

Eris shrugged evenly. His face was impassive, but he either didn’t know or didn’t care Azriel would notice the shuffle of his feet. “No.”

Azriel raised an eyebrow. “And yet, you have something you want to say.”

Eris’ lips pinched, his eyes darting to the tent entrance. “You have less shadows this time.”

“Yes.”

Eris waited, but Azriel was more patient and well aware that the Lord just wanted him to speak. Finally, Eris sighed. “Are you… well?”

Well? Azriel was… oh. He dared a glare. The lord was nosy. “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

“You have less shadows. That isn’t a symptom of something being wrong?”

“No. It’s a symptom of being at war.”

“Ah,” the lord breathed. “That’s… good.”

Azriel didn't bother to respond before he turned and walked back into the tent. Such an odd male.

Two months passed before they crossed paths again. Azriel had shadow-walked to take a message from his High Lord to the High Lord of Winter. Rhys had been sent away as well. There was little to lure him back, so he would take advantage of the distance between the two encampments to take a night away. It was already after dark. He could safely return in the morning with no one noticing.

Once he retrieved the paper with the instructions, he walked the encampment shrouded in shadows. Here, Winter and Autumn soldiers did not mingle. In fact, the road Azriel walked through the camp was so stark a dividing line he found himself all alone. Except…

“Oof!”

A figure had darted awkwardly from behind a Winter tent. They were looking over their shoulder, and had plowed straight into Azriel. 

Azriel snarled, wings flaring behind him to keep himself righted as the figure fell at his feet.

“Watch where you’re going,” he growled, stepping back. His hand instinctively rested on Truth Teller’s handle while he glared at the figure. The road was so dark he couldn’t even see the insignia on the soldier’s tunic.

“I- My apologies.” It took Azriel the time it took for the male to scramble to his feet to place the voice.

“Vanserra?”

“Shadowsinger,” was the response. It was curt in a way Eris’ attempts at conversation hadn’t been previously. Yet this time, Azriel’s shadows said nothing.

“You really should watch where you’re going.”

“I know,” Eris snapped.

“Snippy tonight, aren’t we?” He had been moving quickly, and yet was no longer rushing. It was odd enough for Azriel to order shadows to examine him. It was dark, so it was easy for them to go unnoticed. 

“Do I owe you courtesy?” was the bitter response.

“You crashed into me.” His shadows slithered about his ears, talking over one another.

“And I apologized.”

It was then that the shadows’ one-word report made sense. Blood. There was blood gushing from the male’s body. When he paused, Azriel could smell the metallic tang from Eris’ general direction, distinct from the days old blood scent of the camp around them. It was enough to send his shadows into a vague fury, as if they couldn’t decide whether this was something to be concerned about given who the male in question was. 

Eris waited, standing there in complete stillness. 

“You’re injured,” Azriel finally settled on. 

Eris snorted. “And? So is everyone.”

“It isn’t a war wound. This camp has not seen battle in over a week and that wound is fresh.”

“Does it matter?” Eris snapped. “I don’t know why you bother to bring it up at all.”

Azriel took a deep breath. “Because if you’re fighting next to my brother your injury could get him killed. I know you haven’t seen much battle, but from what I’ve heard your father is doing everything he can to keep you on the front lines to get you killed. I’d rather not give him the satisfaction if it means my brother dies.”

Autumn and Night court soldiers had been fighting alongside each other frequently. With Winter replacing Night Court forces in this camp, chances were dwindling, but it wasn’t a risk Azriel was willing to take.

Eris tried a new tactic: complete silence. Still, Azriel saw his silhouette cross his arms defensively. It was a bad move. His hands were pinned where they were, and he was already off balance. Azriel took the opportunity to reach a hand out and shove the male’s shoulder with a moderate amount of force.

Eris’ sharp intake of breath gave Azriel more pause than he expected. “I’ll tend your wound,” Azriel said gruffly. “I refuse to let you get killed over some stupid fight with a soldier from another court.”

Still, Eris didn’t move. 

“You can walk, can’t you? You were doing fine when you ran into me.”

“I’m fine,” Eris bit out. “Leave.”

Azriel snorted. Now he definitely wouldn’t leave the male alone. “No. You’re in more danger like that than you know.”

“And what would you know of it?” Eris all but hissed at him, arms uncrossing to clench against his sides. “You don’t scare me.”

“I should,” Azriel snapped back. “I should terrify you. I could have killed you about thirty different ways in the course of this conversation.”

“You’re not touching my– wound.” Eris’ voice broke. 

“You aren’t tending it yourself.”

“I’ll go to a healer.”

“No,” Azriel shook his head. “You won’t. Because if your father finds out he’ll use it to his advantage. Why does he hate you so much?”

“I can handle it myself,” Eris’ voice was losing all conviction and confidence. 

“No.”

“Leave.”

“I trust you know somewhere safe enough. I’ll get the supplies and meet you there. A shadow will tell me where you end up, or I can winnow us there.”

That seemed to give Eris pause. “I thought shadowsingers did something called shadow-walking.”

Azriel balked. It was rare anyone bothered to know the difference, let alone remark on it. He nodded, then remembered the male likely couldn’t see him. He cleared his throat before saying, “Yes.”

“Can we shadow-walk?” Now, the lord just sounded tired.

“Yes. Where are we going?”

“North of camp, there’s a glade.”

“It’s safe?”

“Yes.” Eris reached his right hand out.

Azriel gripped the male’s wrist roughly with his own right hand, binding their hands together with shadows who seemed all too eager. “Don’t let go,” he warned. 

“I won’t.”

A blink and a breath of complete darkness followed before they arrived in the clearing, which Azriel’s shadows had found quickly. A small fire was reduced near to ashes in the center of the glade, but it was more light than the road had held. Eris moved to drop Azriel’s hand, but the shadowsinger shook his head, motioning for the lord to stay silent and wait.

The shadows not binding them together scattered, darting around the trees at the outskirts and winding back to Azriel once they had cleared the area and confirmed its safety. “Safe. Safe. Safe,” was their chorus, one after the other. 

When Azriel was satisfied, he sent a third of them for supplies, tasking another third to unroll the lord’s bedroll, which they had found tucked in an oak, next to the fire. Dropping Eris’ hand, he crossed to a small pile of wood at the edge of the glade and collected half of it to bank the fire. Eris stayed where he was, watching silently. 

“Come sit,” Azriel ordered, pointing to the bedroll as he squatted to blow at the cinders and coals and encourage what little flame was left to grow, to light the new wood and give them more light and heat. Eris made no move to help him, so Azriel didn’t bother to ask. 

With the increasing light, Azriel could see the dark gleaming of what had to be blood down Eris’ thigh as he walked. There was a lot. The side of his leg was saturated to the top of his boot, while the wound seemed to originate near his hip bone. It had to be nasty for Eris to be bleeding that much. That explained why he hadn’t offered to help with the fire, or, better yet, to feed the fire himself with his power. Yet, he walked. 

That took strength. Azriel almost found it in himself to be impressed as the male lowered himself gracefully to the ground. 

His shadows had begun piling bandages and other important things by Azriel’s side. He sent one of them off in pursuit of a new pair of pants for the lord, who wouldn’t be wearing this pair again without an excellent laundress, and those who could keep secrets were in short supply in a war camp when information was money.

“Take your pants off,” Azriel commanded. Eris winced.

“I’m not sure I can.”

“I'll have to cut them off.”

Eris hesitated, his eyes darting to Truth Teller. “Be careful.”

How badly hurt was he, that he would allow Azriel to have a knife that close to his skin, to vital blood supply? 

As the light increased, so did Azriel’s concern that the male’s condition may not be as stable as he originally thought. His skin seemed to pale more and more with every flare of the fire. Sweat dripped from his brow, despite the chilly night around them. And he was obedient. Vanserras, in Azriel's admittedly limited experience, were never obedient. Certainly not to orders given from a Night Court grunt.

As if they sensed his growing concern, shadows dispatched to scan the male again. They returned with whispers of blood and wounds– multiple. Azriel nearly sighed. This was perhaps a bigger job than he anticipated. He sent shadows now to retrieve his own bedroll and bag. He’d be damned if the last thing anyone saw before the autumn lord died was the two of them together, and there was no real way to guarantee he hadn’t been seen with Eris on that road. Damn it all.

“How many wounds are there?” he asked, unsheathing Truth-Teller and setting the supplies beside Eris.

“Just the one.”

“Don’t lie to me. If you die, it’s my wings they’ll come after.”

Eris glanced over Azriel’s shoulder at the reddish membranes which were his constant companion, his pride and joy.

“Three.”

“Only three?”

“Only three,” Eris confirmed.

“Where?”

Eris gestured at his right shoulder, waved a hand over his injured leg, and then looked away.

“That’s two,” Azriel commented. “You’re going to need to take that tunic off, too, but let’s start with your leg.”

Eris laid back. Azriel reached into his boot to retrieve a flask and offer it up. “Whiskey. It’ll take the sting off.”

Eris grimaced, but took the flask anyways, draining what was left of the alcohol from it before handing it back. 

Azriel knelt at his side, the fire on Eris’ other side giving him light to work. Truth Teller made quick work of a cut through Eris’ pants from ankle to waist, and Azriel sheathed the blade quickly. When he removed the fabric a barrier which had begun to form to protect the wound would be removed, and he needed to know everything he could before that happened.

“What blade was used?”

Eris blinked at him slowly. He was fading, fast. “A dagger.”

“Was it poisoned?”

“No,” Eris shook his head with conviction.

“Was there anything special about the blade?”

“Standard Winter court issue,” he said. 

Azriel nodded. “Alright. This is going to hurt.”

Eris paused, looking at Azriel, then turning his head to the fire. Azriel barely heard the quiet “I know” which followed.

Azriel pulled the fabric of the male’s pants away from him and grimaced. Eris didn't even flinch. The cut went across the male’s hipbone nearly twelve inches to the outside of his upper thigh, getting deeper as if Eris had rolled into the knife to protect his midline.

“Tell me what happened,” Azriel ordered as his hands began to move. Damn it all, they were cold. And tired. He was so tired. But he couldn’t let Eris die. For some reason, he needed the male to live.

“No.” Eris countered with a fire he hadn’t shown all evening. It was the first anger Azriel had heard from the male, and it awoke something in him. He dumped three antiseptic potions across the wound. Eris barely moved, blinking up at the stars.

“You could die,” Azriel snarled, pressing bandages against the seeping wound. “Why? You are the son of a high lord. If it was a standard issue Winter court blade it likely wasn't anybody of your status. Why protect them?”

Eris bit his lower lip. Azriel pulled Truth Teller out to cut through what was left of the male’s pants and underwear and remove them. A long strip of fabric wound around the male’s waist, then around his upper thigh, to secure the padding of bandages against the long wound. When Azriel was certain the bands wouldn’t move, he tied them off in a quick knot and looked up at the lord’s face. 

His eyes were closed, his face turned slightly toward the fire. He looked slightly flushed, and yet entirely too pale. His breathing was shallow. He needed water. Food, too. He didn’t seem to be interested in answering any more questions. Maybe those things would loosen his lips.

First, the other wounds. The removal of all his clothing revealed a gash along his shoulder, about four inches long. It wasn’t deep, but it was angled, and the skin could be folded back away from the wound. Azriel stitched that one with quick stitches. He would have stitched the large one, but without any indication that it wouldn’t get infected, he was unsure about closing it with the sutures which would solidify by the time the horizon had light on it. An infection growing beneath the skin was much worse than a scar from skin knitting itself back together.

The last wound didn’t immediately present itself, so Azriel had nudged Eris until he grudgingly rolled onto his side.

His bare back was a maze of scars. Azriel was struck immediately by how well his hands blended with the mottled skin of Eris’ back, burns seemingly crisscrossed by the stripes of what had to have been made by a very long, thick whip. It turned his stomach to see just how broken the male’s back was. They weren’t that different in age, and Azriel had his fair share of scars. But this was a level of brutality Azriel hadn’t expected to find carved into the male’s skin. It was no doubt he hadn’t flinched at the stitches, or even the bandaging. He had to be intimately familiar with both.

One wound on his back, a long stripe across his shoulder blade, was red and struggling to close. Azriel stitched that closed, too, before throwing the bandages he had used to wipe the male’s blood away into the fire. Seeming to know it was over, Eris rolled back onto his back. He didn’t open his eyes, but his breathing seemed slightly steadier.

Azriel grabbed his bag from where the shadows had dumped it unceremoniously behind him and retrieved a tin of dried meat and crackers.

“Eat,” he ordered, setting the tin on Vanserra's stomach. “I’m getting us water.”

Eris cracked an eye open to stare at him. “Fine.”

Azriel ordered some shadows to scout ahead for water, and some to watch over the lordling, as he unrolled his own bedroll next to Eris. Better to have the fire lord between him and the fire, he told himself.

His shadows returned with a satisfactory report, so he went when he was certain Eris would eat more than a bite or two.

On his return, the container sat on his bedroll, half the food gone.

“You should eat more,” Azriel said, nudging it towards him. 

Eris shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“Drink, then,” he tried. Eris nodded, reaching a reluctant hand to grip the offered bottle.

He propped himself up on an elbow to drink, and swallowed until he finished the whole bottle with a gasp. “Thank you.”

Azriel nodded. He felt as though he hovered over the lord, but he found himself unsettled. “I’ll take the watch.”

Eris didn’t argue or say they didn’t need one. It would have been a lie neither of them would have accepted. He just nodded, dropping his head back and closing his eyes again.

Azriel didn’t bother to wake him through the rest of the night. When light began to peek over the horizon, Eris stirred on his own, sitting up with a groan and a stretch. 

“Thank you,” he said again. 

Azriel nodded. “I need to check your–”

“No,” Eris said abruptly, sitting. “Enough. I will go back to camp, and so should you.”

Azriel shook his head. “You can’t fight like this.”

Eris smirked up at him. “I’ve done it before.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Azriel narrowed his eyes.

Eris shrugged, shuffling awkwardly until he was on his feet, even though he panted. “That’s fine.”

“I just spent last night putting you back together. If I hear you undo that work, I’ll kill you,” Azriel protested. Eris seemed to soften at that. “I think you should go.”

Azriel bristled even as his shadows obeyed his silent order to retrieve all his things. “Fine.”

“I’ll burn away any trace of you being here,” Eris assured him, waving a hand at his bedroll. It disappeared.

Azriel nodded. “Check those wounds this morning.”

Eris nodded. “I will.”

When Azriel had his bag and bedroll in hand, he shadow-walked away, Eris not sparing him more than a moment’s glance as he disappeared from view.

Their third meeting was much like the first. Outside a war tent, the Autumn court delegation lingered in hushed circles. Their forces had been hit hard in the last of Hybern’s offensives. No doubt they were reconsidering their participation in the ongoing war, if only to save the rest of their soldiers. Still, from the thick of the fray strode Eris Vanserra, his gait no less even than it had been the first times Azriel had seen him.

Azriel couldn’t help but watch him as he stood outside the tent. They had tightened the circle allowed in. The recent losses had been too stark to eliminate the possibility that someone on the council or one of their advisors was selling information or even was an agent of Hybern. It was no doubt that fact which kept the sons close, and everyone else at a very great distance. Still, Azriel could watch from here. Could keep an eye out for either of his brothers. 

Shadows told him nothing of them. Their names were not on the rolls. But here was Eris. Alive, breathing. He would have known if Eris had died. And Eris had not.

“Shadowsinger,” a curt acknowledgement. Azriel nodded firmly in return. No words could explain his relief, even to himself. Eris rolled his shoulders, his embroidered coat restricting his motions. Instead of walking past Azriel, the lord stopped at his side.

“Thank you,” Eris murmured. If Azriel hadn’t been attuned to the male's presence, he wouldn’t have heard it at all. It was dangerous to speak this openly. Eris had to know that. Surely, a High Lord’s son would know that speaking to the spymaster of another court was dangerous. Surely.

Azriel turned to walk away. He would not risk it, but Eris still tried. “Azriel.”

He spun to face Eris, schooling his face into an angry mask. “What?”

Eris’ eyes flashed with an answering anger, then cooled. “I saw your brother. The soldier.”

This was unexpected. Azriel’s eyes narrowed. How would Eris know he searched for his brothers?

As if anticipating the question, Eris stepped closer. “Your shadows, the ones who stayed, told me. I asked them how I could… repay you. They told me. He’s in the next camp over. Injured, but not badly. Ask for Madja.”

Shadows zipped away from Azriel faster than he could respond. He had left some of them with Eris that morning to ensure the male checked and cleaned his wounds.

Now, Eris watched them go, nodding once, then walking on past Azriel. Eris knew what it meant to see those shadows go out. It was all he had needed to see. 

Azriel may not be able to get away on his own, but he could send those shadows. They would find Cassian, who would recognize them and maybe even be able to get away for a day. 

More pressing was that the shadows had spoken to Eris. Had deemed him worthy of information about Azriel. That happened so rarely. Only when Azriel was truly in need of something, or on the rarest of occasions, when he was in true danger, would his shadows bother to try to communicate with anyone. Never before had they shared with someone as nonsensical as Eris Vanserra. He would ask them later why. He hoped they would tell him.

Someone was calling his name. It was the middle of the night, and his shadows were rousing him from sleep with a frantic energy. Months had passed since he had seen Cassian, or Rhys. He had only just gotten back from a scouting mission in Hybern that evening. The war still raged, still slowly marching them all toward death. 

But someone was calling his name. “Hurry,” his shadows urged him. “Fight.” 

The second prompt was enough to speed him. He rarely slept without weapons at hand, and he grabbed two Illyrian blades and strapped them to his back with the speed of a soldier who had been at war for over six years. 

Finally ready, he ordered his shadows to take him where they willed. Emerging from their total darkness into the moonless night with Truth Teller clenched in his hand, he found himself at the edge of that familiar glade. 

This time, it was anything but peaceful. Eris fought against three warriors dressed in dark clothes, their faces concealed by darkness. Azriel recognized the fighting style more than the clothing, and it was for good reason Eris didn’t bother to use his powers. 

In a split second, Azriel shadow-walked to be behind the Autumn court soldiers, disarming one with ease while Eris held his own against the second. Azriel’s blade slid into the side of the throat and was pulled through the front, removing the attacker’s ability to scream as his life faded to a bloody end. 

The third spun from Eris to Azriel. He opened his mouth, but behind him, Eris flicked a dagger from his waist, the blade glinting before Azriel saw the male’s head jerk forward. When he fell, the handle of the blade stuck at a perfect right angle from the base of the male’s skull.

As Azriel had drawn Eris’ attention, his moment’s glance to throw the blade had left his left side unguarded. The remaining autumn warrior took advantage of the opening, and launched himself at the lord. His hand closed around the lord’s throat, and Eris was knocked toward Azriel, but Azriel was faster than the other warrior had perhaps anticipated.

In the span of moments, Azriel had removed the male’s hand from Eris’ throat, disarmed him, and bound him hand and feet with a cord he kept coiled in his boot for moments like this. His shadows had been dispatched to guard the borders of the glade.

Eris rubbed his neck as he offered a wad of cloth to Azriel, who crouched beside the bound warrior. Azriel took the fabric and shoved it into his mouth until he was satisfied the male wouldn’t be able to remove it.

“You need to kill him,” Eris said quietly. 

“I know,” Azriel said. The male’s eyes settled on Azriel as if he had only just now recognized the winged warrior. He began to scream through the fabric. Azriel’s remaining shadows spun around the warrior, examining him.

“Why do you scream?” Eris asked, crouching beside Azriel. “You chose to attack me. Your death was predetermined.”

The male’s eyes flicked to Azriel, then back to Eris, then back to Azriel again as his screaming increased in volume.

Eris snorted. “You truly think the death he will give you is worse than the death I could?”

Azriel couldn’t help but watch the Lord of Autumn as Eris stood. 

“A word, Azriel.” Eris looked down his nose at the screaming soldier. Azriel stood. They walked some distance away before Eris paused and looked over his shoulder at their prisoner.

“We have to kill him,” Eris said. “He recognized you.”

“That’s not surprising,” Azriel said. “Why did they come after you in the first place?”

Eris sighed. “I did something I shouldn’t have, and got caught doing it. Whether my father sent them or they took it upon themselves, I don’t know.”

Azriel paused. “What, exactly, were you doing?” If Eris was spying for Hybern, if he had used Azriel somehow…

Eris sighed. “I slept with one of their brothers.”

Oh. Oh. Prythian was generally safe for males like Eris. And Azriel. But some families held old ways of thinking that would incense hatred beyond caring that Eris was the son of a High Lord. It was that which kept Azriel hiding. He lacked the protection offered to Eris. Currently, he lacked even the protection of his brothers. 

So Azriel just nodded. When Azriel didn’t say anything, Eris sighed.

“How did you come here?”

“My shadows sent me. They were concerned.”

“Have they been watching me?”

“I don’t know,” Azriel admitted. “Sometimes they follow their own whims.”

Eris nodded. “I can handle him.”

“Do you want to?” What was one more body on Azriel’s tally? He’d killed nearly thirty yesterday, getting away from the Hybern guard who had started asking too many of the right questions. What was one more, in the face of the river of blood which had flowed from his hands?

“Not really,” Eris sighed. 

“You sound weary,” Azriel dared. After six years he was more than used to the ebb and flow of fights and battles, yet his heart still pounded in his chest.

“I am.”

“I’ll do it. Stay here.”

Eris said nothing in return but bowed his head.

Azriel crossed back to the bound warrior, who had started trying to roll and scramble away from them with whatever faculty he retained. Azriel placed a booted heel against the man’s collarbone, his toes grounded to the earth as he stood above the male.

“I’m going to take out the gag. Then you’re going to tell me who sent you, and what they wanted. If you don’t, I’ll torture you. This is your one chance. Do you understand?”

The male nodded, eyes glinting with starlight and terror. Azriel bent to remove the gag, whispering, “Scream, and I’ll gag you with something much more unpleasant than this fabric.”

He ripped it from the male’s mouth, and to his credit, the male said nothing.

“Who sent you?”

“No one. We came with him,” the male tipped his head at one of the bodies. “His brother died, and when they found his body on the battlefield, that bastard’s scent was all over him.”

“Eris’?” Azriel questioned. 

The male nodded. “They were… intimate.” He said it with a snarl, as though Azriel would not know and was being deceived. 

“You wanted to kill him.”

“Yes. For that, yes. It’s not–”

“Enough,” Eris’ voice sounded behind Azriel.

Azriel glared at him. “If it’s enough, kill him yourself.”

Eris shrugged. “Fine.”

The male opened his mouth to start screaming again, but Eris flicked his slender fingers. Azriel stepped back quickly as a reddish glow started emanating from the male’s throat and smoke began to billow from his mouth. 

Eris was burning him. Burning him from the inside out. The light of life in the male’s eyes was steadily replaced by the glow of that slow burning fire until the male was nothing more than ash in the wind.

Eris turned to Azriel. “Thank you for coming.”

Azriel nodded. Why was he so hesitant to leave? The second the male was dead, he should have walked away. Dawn was nearing again. He would need to be back before the High Lord woke in case he had further questions after last night’s debrief. Six years and ten months of this. Azriel wasn’t sure how much more of it he could take.

“Thank you for finding Cassian for me.” 

Eris smiled at that, not even looking as he lit the other two bodies on fire. “You saved my life.”

“You gave me the chance to see him. It had been a long time. It means more than I think you realize.”

Eris shook his head. “I imagine if I had a brother I trusted I would do just about anything in my power to see him.”

Azriel chuckled at that. “No friends among family?”

Eris sighed ruefully. “I’m afraid not.”

“Me neither. Except–”

They finished the sentence together, “my mother.”

“If you didn’t send for me,” Azriel crossed his arms, “Why did you trust I wasn’t there with them?”

Eris tipped his head back to stare at the sky. “My father has railed against your… proclivities in sexual partners. How he knew, I have no idea. I’ve never even heard whispers of you from anywhere else. I knew, if my father was somehow right, your presence was either on orders or to help me. I was willing to bet you wouldn’t kill me for something we share.”

“Beron knows about me?”

“Somehow. I think he had someone tailing you for a time, after Mor.”

Azriel bristled. He had been careful at 19, but apparently not careful enough. It was likely the best explanation. “You have no idea? Truly?”

Eris shrugs. “I was young when he brought it up. The timing seems right. I never put much thought into it.”

“So you assumed I was safe because of that.”

“No,” Eris laughed, quietly, but unmistakably amused. “No, I mostly assumed you were safe because the last time you saved my life you told me not to undo all of your hard work.”

“What happened then?” Azriel was demanding. He felt as though he was truly seeing the Autumn Lord, seeing him open and unguarded for the first time. Maybe now he could get answers.

Eris seemed to be willing to indulge him. “A winter court soldier didn’t realize who I was until I was on my way out of his tent. He tried to kill me.”

“It seems to me like you’re sleeping with the wrong people,” Azriel commented. Eris finally turned to face him, levelling him with a molten stare Azriel found himself drawn into. “And who are the right people?”

“People who have as much to lose as you do.”

“Like you?” Eris challenged. 

Azriel shrugged. “Are you offering?”

Eris smirked, turning to face Azriel. Dawn was growing, and the red light of morning lighting the leaves around him gave him the appearance of a body of molten fire. “If you ever wish to take me to bed, Shadowsinger, show up. I have spells on the glade. It will let me know you’re here.”

Azriel laughed. “Chances are slim, Vanserra.”

“But not zero.” Eris raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms in a slightly mocking reflection of Azriel’s own stance. 

“No.” Azriel admitted. “Not zero.”

[thebunnylord]

List of excuses that Thomas gave to get out of wearing a snowplow

There’s barely any snow

It doesn’t fit

It’s too small

It’s too big

The fat controller said that I didn’t need one

Toby doesn’t wear one

Someone stole it

It’s too hot

Edward didn’t say I needed one

The twins just plowed the tracks

It makes me look fat

I can’t see with it on

It causes the snow to blow up into my face

The trucks stole it

It’s not Great Western ™ [THE LITTLE WESTERN COUNCIL WILL LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT IS UNTRUE, AND HAVE GIVEN THOMAS A FINE FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT]

I don’t feel like wearing it

I accidentally threw it in a tree

It fell into the harbor somehow

It got run over

It fell into the turntable well

I forgot

We won’t be needing snowplows when global warming hits

Someone stole it

I rammed it into a set of buffers

It’s too old

Nobody else back on the LB&SC had to wear one

I’m only pulling passengers

It’s just snow

It’s too heavy

I can barely move with it on

It’s summer in Australia

Can I just not wear it for this one time?

It keeps on scrapping against the tracks

I bet Edward wouldn’t make me wear it [EDWARD THE BLUE K2 LARGER SEAGULL ENGINE WOULD LIKE TO STATE THAT THIS STATEMENT IS FALSE]

Fight me

I gave it to Bill and Ben

I left it at the quarry

Diesel was jealous that us steamies got snowplows so I gave him mine

I broke it

The snow is melting

It rained last night

It accidentally broke off somewhere along the branchline

It was making funny rattling noises

My buffers ache

We’re not even going that far

Why?

I’m not even the one plowing the tracks

Over my dead body!

It had a scratch on it

It’s too wide

I will blow steam at you if you try

Make me

What are you going to do if I choose not to wear it? Scrap me?

!!!!&^%$$#!!!!

[ainyan]

FFXIV Write - Day 4: Reticent

“Dinner.”

“No.”

“Lunch!”

“No, thank you!”

“Coffee? I’ll even toss in a nice danish.”

Huffing out a breath, Kal’istae spun on heel, causing Thancred to trip over his own feet as he barely avoided plowing into her. “Sheriff Waters,” she said severely, having to peer up at him and yet somehow seeming to gaze down her nose - just like his own teachers often had, snickered the irreverent part of his mind. “I do not wish to go out with you. Please stop asking.”

Turning, she strode off, and he watched her go for a moment, then trotted up to her side, smiling as he heard her exasperated sigh. “Why not?”

Although she knew perfectly well what he was asking, Kal’istae refused to make it easy for him. “Why not what, Sheriff? Such a question requires a subject.”

Gods, she was so adorable, with that prim tone and those huge, lavender-edged eyes looking just a bit irritated beneath the serene mask she had adopted. “Why won’t you go out with me?”

“Because, Mister Waters, you are the father of one of my students.”

What?

Thancred missed a step and hopped to the side to keep his balance. “Wait, you won’t go out with me because I’m Ryne’s father? That’s it?”

She glanced at him sidelong, secretly delighting in the flabbergasted expression on his face. “That is correct, Sheriff Waters. Now. If you will excuse me?”

His hand darted out and he gently snagged her elbow, ready to release her at the slightest hint of resistance. Though she stiffened, she did not pull away, and turned to look up to him as he tugged her to a halt. “I wouldn’t change that fact even if it were possible, Miss Miurani,” he said soberly, and didn’t miss the approving glitter in her eye. “So tell me what I can do to get around it.”

One eyebrow arched upwards. “Are you asking me to bend my rules, Sheriff Waters?”

“Even scoundrels deserve a bit of grace in the face of good behavior, ma’am.”

Oh, how she wanted to give in. It didn’t show, not in her placid expression, not in her dark eyes full of secrets. But she wanted to say yes. She wanted to give him that grace - give herself that grace - and give him an in. But she had her job to think of. Her students. Her reputation. So she remained reticent despite herself.

“I am sorry, Mister Waters,” she murmured, and he thought he heard genuine regret beneath the gentle rejection.

He released her arm. She gazed up at him for a moment longer, then turned and continued down the street, and this time, he did not follow.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking about her. And about what he could do to change her mind.

There had to be a way.

FFXIV Write 2024 (Daily Prompt List)

Day 4 - Reticence

OC: Kal'istae Miurani

NPCs: Thancred Waters

AU: Stars over Western Waters

[20th-century-railroading]

"GTW plow action"

A Grand Trunk Western plow extra is working its way toward Caseville, Michigan out of the yard in Pontiac. This "78" winter saw a lot of snow and this drift prone line along farm fields saw lots of plow action. Here working north near sunset at Kingston on February 4, 1978 with CN GP38 5528 and GTW GP9 as power.

[marxism-transgenderism]

Mythmaking associated with the acquisition and settlement of Indian lands problematizes our understanding of the Ohio River valley: the association of plow agriculture with civilized behavior, the beliefs that Americans brought agriculture to a wilderness landscape and that settlement was a peaceable process. Closer examination of the Ohio River valley provides a better understanding of the agrarian orientation of Indian villages, their high levels of productivity, and the ways in which violence became embedded in the acquisition of Indian lands during the Early Republic. This reexamination also reveals the rampaging that devastated these Indian villages and killed many innocent Indian women and children. It would fault a colonial settler process built, not on peaceful expansion, but rather on brutality and rapine. The conquest of Indian lands did not begin in the trans-Mississippi west but on the eastern seaboard, from where it continued into the heart of the Midwest, in the Old Northwest Territory. Scholars and raconteurs have downplayed the aggression associated with settler colonialism because of an intransigent belief that Indian victims were murderous, backward, and doomed. Anglo-Americans have come to believe their own rhetoric rather than understand that Ohio Valley Indians deployed violence in defense of their villages, their families, their homelands, and their way of life. Americans justified their brutality because of their greed for Indian land and fostered a western frontier where carnage was endemic to settlement.

American arrival changed the dynamics of Indian persistence. The newcomers cleared forestlands and drained the southern tier of wetlands along the Ohio but avoided the marshlands of the northern Wabash River valley, which stretched into present-day southwest Michigan. These undesirable farmlands lacked navigable waterways and deterred incoming Americans. Indian villages migrated north and settled adjacent to the wetlands and swamplands. Native people were skilled in securing subsistence from a variety of resources. Men continued to trap, and women processed those furs; they harvested plants from the wetlands and grew corn along the river bottoms. The marshes and swamplands of the Great Lakes basin became a haven for Native villages intent on persistence. The lost world of the Ohio River valley was not entirely lost, after all.

— Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690–1792

[handeaux]

Memories From Half A Century Ago; The Cincinnati Tornadoes of April 1974

On the evening of April 3, 1974, your narrator interviewed a woman who found a perfectly new, pristinely crisp, twenty-dollar bill in her front yard. This random occurrence of good luck became newsworthy because her miraculous benefit had floated down into her yard from a passing cloud that had recently spawned an F5 tornado.

At the time, I was not a reporter exactly but everyone that evening became either a reporter or a source. The memory of that day remains so fresh and clear it seems impossible that it transpired exactly fifty years ago.

In the fading afternoon, a heavy storm blew in as I drove a clunky Ford Econoline van from the Hopple Street Viaduct onto Westwood-Northern Boulevard. I was, at that time, a senior at the University of Cincinnati desperately yearning to graduate and move on to the next chapter in my life. To cover tuition, I worked as a printer for the Western Hills Publishing Company. Our offices were on Davis Avenue in Cheviot and our printing presses occupied a floor in the historic Crosley Building on Arlington Street in Camp Washington. My duties as the junior member of the printing crew involved shuttling copy and page flats from the editorial offices to the typesetting and composing staff.

As I climbed out of the valley toward the English Woods housing development, hail scattered across the road. Hailstones rattled on the van’s roof, then pounded, then stomped. It sounded like some gremlin with a baseball bat hammering on the roof as ice balls the size of oranges smashed into the asphalt all around. Tree branches cracked and split and thatched the roadway.

Somehow, I made it to Cheviot and pulled into the Press parking lot. It was full of people, just standing around. I got out and looked at the van. The roof looked like a moonscape, there were so many dents in it.

“Hey! Look at this,” I shouted. No one turned or said a word. And then I saw why.

Stretching from the horizon halfway to zenith was the tornado. It was impossible to comprehend the scale. More than two miles away, we heard no sound except endless sirens calling to one another from every direction. Where we stood transfixed it did not rain. There was no wind. There was only the tornado.

“Look at all that paper swirling around,” someone said.

“Those are garage doors,” another answered.

We watched as the horrendous vision scraped its way northward, the finger of God plowing a furrow along South Road out in Mack. We watched as it withered and lifted and twisted into nothingness against a pallid sky, waving it seemed in farewell at last as it vanished. We stared at each other, silent, unable to find any words.

Gradually, we realized that all the lights were out. There was no power in the offices. The publisher sent me around the corner to a hardware store to buy all the candles they had in stock. It was going to be a long night.

At this point, for the benefit of readers younger than I, it is necessary to explain a few details. The cash register at the hardware store was mechanical. It did not require electricity, much less Wi-Fi, to operate. The editorial offices were stocked with manual typewriters. The telephones were landlines, on a separate network, and functioned even when the power was out. Everyone had a battery-powered radio.

Anyone with the ability to write a coherent sentence became a reporter. I was sent out, still wearing my printshop uniform, in the divotted Econoline, to gather eye-witness reports. I found a small crowd at the Western Hills Country Club who had been herded into a downstairs bar while the sirens howled. They queued up for every available telephone to check in with their families. I found people in shock, wandering through piles of rubble that had been their homes, clutching any random possessions they recovered. I saw ambulances backed up in a line, waiting for utility poles and power lines to be moved. I saw people wrapped in blankets, standing in the middle of nothing left, sobbing on each other’s shoulders.

There were people who swore they saw two funnel clouds and people who claimed there were four, twisting like snakes in the sky. There were people who confessed to being so transfixed by the surreal wonder of the twister that they stood paralyzed as it swooped down on their houses.

And, in the curious way the universe laughs at we mere humans, I found humor.

There was the guy who, in a dispute with his insurance company, was photographing damage to his roof when the warning sirens erupted. He saw the funnel approaching and dove into his basement. When he emerged, his roof was gone, and so was the rest of his house, but he bragged that he had the photos to press his prior claim.

I talked to one of the rescue workers who told me about a kid, maybe 15 or 16 years old, who approached him and begged him to hide a bottle of vodka. The kid didn’t want his mother to know he had the bottle hidden in his bedroom – the bedroom that was now nothing more than a debris field.

Meanwhile, at the University of Chicago, Dr. Theodore Fujita drafted a questionnaire to be sent to almost every newspaper, every radio station, every television station in the country. Dr. Fujita asked a lot of questions about the duration and intensity of the 148 confirmed tornadoes reported that day. He and Allen Pearson of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center hoped to refine the tornado classification system they had created just three years previously. Someone at the Press filled out the questionnaire and sent it back.

A year later, having graduated from the university and transferred to the newsroom, I found a largish cardboard tube lying amid the usual pile of news releases and complaint letters that constituted our daily mail. On opening the tube – it was addressed to no one in particular – I found a map of the eastern United States titled “Superoutbreak Tornadoes of April 3-4, 1974.” Dr. Fujita, compiling all those questionnaires, had mapped and labeled every one of those 148 tornadoes.

In the center of the map, there was my tornado, the only tornado I have seen with my own eyes, officially designated as an F5 monster.

[mesetacadre]

The collective farm, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, fits in admirably to the military organization; it already has its defense group, its labor battalions, its organization for caring for children and the weak. If the farm is in the immediate rear of the Red Army, its activities are those typified in the Ukrainian village “K.” Through its formerly quiet streets roll endless truckloads of fuel and ammunition bound for the front; in case of need, the collective farm’s machine shop offers minor repairs. Many of the farmers are now in the Army and are replaced by women. The remainder have rapidly harvested the crops and threshed more than half of them, taking them to the railroad for transport to the rear. During a brief lull on the front, fifty Red Army men came to assist in the reaping and threshing; they accounted for fifty acres of peas and forty acres of wheat before they had to go back to fight. Some forty of the farmers are working full time repairing roads for the Army. Gangs of girls and women, under the direction of Army sappers, dig trenches and camouflage them with foliage. This organized dovetailing of the activities of Army and people continues without a break if the Army is forced to retreat. Some of the civilians retreat with it as labor gangs. They destroy the village completely before they go. A detailed account of this “total destruction” was given by a village designated only as “X.” When the Germans approached, a group of young people entered the granary, loaded nine trucks, and sent them to the railway station camouflaged under green boughs. Four tons of barley and vetch, which could not be removed, were burned. The tractors plowed down and uprooted the beets. The milkmaids drove the cows through the maturing wheat and rye; they were followed by eighty girls and women with sickles and scythes who chopped up what was left. The mechanics broke the fuel tank; the blacksmiths destroyed the harvesters and thresher. The broken machinery was thrown down a steep precipice. The people burned the pigsty, cowsheds, granary, beehives, and the new stable. The best horses were driven to the forest for the use of guerrillas. Fourteen fattened pigs were slaughtered for the Red Army commissary, the rest were driven to the railroad and shipped to the rear. The wells were filled with earth, and the water from the pond was let out by breaking the dike. Even the green apples were picked by the gardener with the remark, “They shall not ripen for the robbers." If possible, the entire population of the village scatters in an organized manner. If there is time, the children and weaker adults are evacuated by train to the interior of the country; a fortnight after the war began, trains of evacuated people began arriving in Sverdlovsk and other towns of the Urals, where jobs or accommodations in rest homes were at once available for the newcomers – a fate quite different from that which befell the refugees of Western Europe. The most able-bodied of the population go into hiding in the woods as a guerrilla organization that harries the enemy’s rear under direct orders from the Red Army and often in co-ordination with the fighting at the front.

The Soviets Expected It, Anna Louise Strong, 1941

[sparrowsworkshop]

"Optimus Prime & His Feisty Little Two-Wheeler" by OneWingedSparrow

🏍️ First Draft: 2021 ⤵️

🚛🏍️ Main Tags: TFP, Arcee & Optimus Prime, Pre-Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Mild Hurt / Comfort, Found Family Summary: A tribute to Peter Cullen for striving to always keep Optimus Prime "strong enough to be gentle," told from the perspective of TFP Arcee towards her newfound leader, when she first comes to Earth and joins Team Prime. Made for the "To Be Gentle Zine," hosted by @allsparkzines ! Please check out everyone else's stories and artwork; they're all lovely! :D Read on AO3; paired artwork here Reblogs are appreciated! ~ Arcee refused to affiliate her name with anything. The Autobot faction was her lone exception. Her former leaders left her...and, after she lost Tailgate, the only teammate who respected her for who she was...she didn’t wish to be associated with any singular bot.

Her spark was broken, and no medic fixed sparks.

But over the years...Arcee realized there was one person she could stand to fight beside. One person she could fight for. One person she could depend on, and willingly link her name to.

His name was Optimus Prime.

~

The first time his name is affixed to hers, she is jolted with shock.

“It’s the Prime’s scouts! All units, fire!” The Prime’s—the Prime’s…? Arcee trips over her own feet.

Magnus had been the one she followed. Before that, Prowl. She is a stranger to this Prime.

Sure, the moment she forsook the wastelands of Cybertron, racing Cliffjumper through Shockwave’s space bridge, she rolled straight into the ranks of Optimus Prime, who sought refuge on this rugged rock called Earth.

...but is she already counted as one of his?

Their cover exposed, Bumblebee bounds towards a farther bunker, retreating from the Decepticons’ barrage, as Optimus directed.

As Optimus directed, as Optimus ordered, as Optimus would….

Hand flipping into a gun, Arcee shakes her head and follows.

Everything she does now will be in his name.

~

The first time he delivers a speech in her earshot, she cramps her neck looking up.

Arcee knew Optimus Prime was tall, but she never stood on level ground with him. Only now does she realize how truly massive he is; the tip of the pink tiara spike atop her helmet doesn’t even reach his hip.

This mission is futile. They’ll never see optic to optic.

No one ever does, with a two-wheeler like her.

So, she gives up, dropping her gaze to the Autobot insignia emblazoned on their new base’s floor.

The same symbol embossed onto her wings. The same symbol that gleams on the grill of the Earth truck form Optimus has chosen. A Western Star, she heard the human soldiers call it. Lumbering engine, muted paint job, lackluster tires...it’s surely a far cry from his regal Cybertronian form, but he steps into the disguise humbly.

Her thoughts are wandering. She’s lost track of the speech. She forces herself to focus on her surroundings. Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, Bulkhead and Ratchet stand beside her, listening intently as Optimus continues. I’m part of the circle, she thinks, suddenly. This is new.

Will it last? She doesn’t know.

Only time will tell.

As always.

~

The first time he rolls with her, she feels her systems stall.

“Arcee,” he says. Her name lolls in the air.

She straightens her frame, flashing an urgent salute. “Sir!” “At ease, soldier.” He gets down on one knee.

This only stiffens her further; Ultra Magnus never adopted such a lax posture.

What’s more, Arcee decides, looking directly into Optimus Prime’s face is mildly frightening. Here is a Warrior who has plowed through fire and acid, shrapnel and rust, energon and terror—and captured the weight of all to carry forever. In those piercing, blazing optics, she can see the glory and the pain, the fervor and the fury, of a leader blessed by Primus….

And she knows, while she beholds, that he will brake for nothing in bringing this war to its end.

Arcee trembles under his gaze.

“I am coming with you,” he says.

Statement. Declaration. Fact.

In shame, her spark plummets to her feet. The Prime must have higher priorities than her safety. No one ever makes the effort to care. Why would he waste his time on a two-wheeler most bots look down upon?

Are you sure I’m worth it? Arcee blurts out, unheard.

Aloud, she stammers the scrap substitute:

“Sir?”

“You are in need of backup, and there is no one else to accompany you at this time. Therefore, be mindful of my presence.” Arcee wants to protest.

However, one glance at his decisive expression deactivates all argument.

You just can’t argue with Optimus Prime.

~

The first time he saves her spark, she flinches, and not from her wounds.

Bulkhead fell back. Bumblebee paused to reload.

A quick scan of the battlefield revealed only a “few” Decepticons. Her arm blades clicked from their casings. The enemy seemed distracted.

She thought she could take them all on.

Arcee speeds into the open. An ever dutiful partner, Cliffjumper attempts to provide cover fire. Dust billows in her path.

She flies, wings spread wide with the thrill of the hunt. Leap and dodge, flip and kick. Swipe and cut, scratch and slice. The Decepticons falter, unprepared for the frontal assault.

Until they get smart to her timing, and they stab her through the gut.

Her frame screams with pain. Something else roars louder.

Optimus. Her enemies freeze.

He charges, blasters smoking. Optics blazing.

They’re dead in seconds. Arcee’s lifted up, leaking energon.

Wordlessly, Optimus carries her home.

~

The first time he rebukes her, she wishes she could hide in vehicle mode.

Not hide as in “cower.” More like hide as in “transform, to then zoom away.” The best kind of hiding: speeding so no one can catch you. She’s already transformed. Engine’s running. Kickstand’s up. She’s already halfway gone.

But her wheels don’t roll.

Deep down, she knows barricading in vehicle mode while he has words to deliver would be incredibly rude, and she’s not sure she wants to disrespect him so, after he saved her tailpipe. With that, she mentally punches herself in the T-Cog, and stands up to face him.

“Arcee,” he says, so far above her, voice stern and edged. “Your judgment today was far from exemplary.”

She swallows.

“Make no further attempts to engage the enemy alone.”

“Yes, sir,” she whispers.

Those optics meet hers, once again.

“We will fight on,” Optimus says quietly. “That is a promise…

“Stay with me.”

Arcee blinks something from her vision.

If he notices, he says nothing.

~

Now, whenever he summons her, she’s alert and prepared.

“Arcee, with me.”

She nods, and falls into step beside him.

Though one step for him is many for her, they march in the same time.

His massive, towering form no longer feels as looming or daunting as it did. She’s learned to rest in his shadow, to trust he will shield her. She’s not sure why she grew so comfortable with his presence so fast, but perhaps his mannerisms influenced this transformation.

He stands tall to intimidate, but not to belittle. He bends down to her level more than anyone else. In battle, he never abandons her. He even looks back for her, when his extensive strides travel farther than her shorter limbs can reach. And when he sends her ahead to scout, hidden well in lofty places, she always finds him watching for her when she returns with a report.

Quiet things. Subtle things.

Little things a great, big Prime needn’t trouble himself with.

But he wants to.

He cares.

So, when he says “With me,” she follows...

Because the little things have shown her that he is someone worth following.

~

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Late Night Vallentuna: Bright Mars and even brighter Jupiter are in close conjunction just above the pine trees in this post-midnight skyscape from Vallentuna, Sweden. Taken on August 12 during a geomagnetic storm, the snapshot records the glow of aurora borealis or northern lights, beaming from the left side of the frame. Of course on that date Perseid meteors rained through planet Earth's skies, grains of dust from the shower's parent, periodic comet Swift-Tuttle. The meteor streak at the upper right is a Perseid plowing through the atmosphere at about 60 kilometers per second. Also well-known in in Earth's night sky, the bright Pleides star cluster shines below the Perseid meteor streak. In Greek myth, the Pleiades were seven daughters of the astronomical titan Atlas and sea-nymph Pleione. The Pleiades and their parents' names are given to the cluster's nine brightest stars. Image Credit & Copyright: P-M Hedén (Clear Skies, TWAN)

[Robert Scott Horton]

* * * *

"It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. This means stepping out of ego’s constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort, or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking. One must step out of spiritual materialism. If we do not step out of spiritual materialism, if we, in fact, practice it, then we may eventually find ourselves possessed of a huge collection of spiritual paths. We may feel these spiritual collections to be very precious. We have studied so much. We may have studied Western philosophy or Oriental philosophy, practiced yoga, or perhaps have studied under dozens of great masters.  We have achieved and we have learned. We believe that we have accumulated a hoard of knowledge. And yet, having gone through all this, there is still something to give up. It is extremely mysterious! How could this happen? Impossible! But unfortunately it is so. Our vast collections of knowledge and experience are just part of ego’s display, part of the grandiose quality of ego. We display them to the world and, in so doing, reassure ourselves that we exist, safe and secure, as “spiritual” people.

~ Chogyam Trungpa, 'Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism'

[mariacallous]

While Ukraine’s surprise combined-arms incursion into the Russian oblast of Kursk gets all the headlines, Kyiv continues to carry out a parallel, deep-strike operation to target Russian vulnerabilities, with continued attacks on oil refineries and fuel depots behind the front lines.

A massive tank farm in Proletarsk, a city in Russia’s Rostov region, has been burning uncontrollably for four days after Ukrainian drones slammed into 70-odd tanks full of diesel and gasoline; by some estimates, the fire could be incinerating as much as $200 million worth of Russian fuel. Overnight on Tuesday, Ukraine launched one of its biggest attacks yet on Moscow, and although most of those drones and missiles were shot down, Ukraine did seem to start another conflagration at an oft-hit refinery in Novoshakhtinsk, also in Rostov.

So far this year, Ukraine says that it has successfully attacked more than 30 Russian oil installations, some deep inside Russia. The latest estimates are that about 17 percent of Russia’s (admittedly ample) oil-refining capacity has been damaged to some extent by the strikes. But more broadly, Russia continues to export huge volumes of oil and even a fair bit of natural gas, ensuring that oil revenues continue to fuel its war machine despite the odd million spent here and there to repair damaged crackers and condensers.

Ukraine’s pinprick assaults on Russia’s oil infrastructure, often answered with counter-battery Russian missiles aimed at vulnerable Ukrainian power plants, are part of the latest tit-for-tat energy battle in the longer-term, less violent energy war that the two countries have waged for years, especially over natural gas supplies and prices. 

In some ways, the energy fight is an adjunct to the fight on the battlefield. Ukraine’s ability to damage (even for short periods of time) Russian refineries and fuel depots is meant, in part, to undermine logistics for the Russian army, which continues to occupy large swaths of southern and eastern Ukraine. Blowing up expensive installations deep inside Russia is also a psychological boon for Ukraine, which has been largely on the back foot since early 2022. Russia’s systematic destruction of the Ukrainian electric power grid, meanwhile, is meant to undermine civilian morale and resilience ahead of winter.

The White House had initially warned Kyiv not to strike Russian oil installations, fearing Russian reprisals as well as an inconvenient spike in oil and gasoline prices ahead of the U.S. election, but Ukraine has plowed ahead regardless (just as it did with the Kursk incursion). 

The big question is: Do all the eye-grabbing explosions at refineries and fuel depots make much of a difference to Russia’s surprisingly resilient oil-based economy?

“The drones can cause economic damage an order of magnitude or higher than the cost of the drones themselves, and so yes, there is some economic damage and net benefit, cost-wise. But the damage done is brief and relatively easy to repair,” said Sergey Vakulenko, an energy expert at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “Will it make drastic impacts on Russian oil revenues? Probably not. The drones cannot do what the sanctions were unable to achieve.” 

In some cases, Vakulenko said, the oil installations that Ukraine is targeting, chosen because they are within easy range of drones, may not be the critical marks that Kyiv imagines. Many of the older refineries in western Russia were built to take advantage of export customs loopholes that made it more beneficial to export barely refined oil products, even very low-quality ones, than to export regular crude. These aren’t the crown jewels, but the cracked zircons.

“The benefits of hitting those refineries may not be what the Ukrainians thought,” said Vakulenko, who was previously an oil executive at Russian and international companies. 

Like the Kursk operation, high-profile blows by Ukraine threaten to distort the view of what otherwise remains an unequal battle. If the war has come to the energy patch, it is because Russia—from nearly the beginning of the conflict—has targeted Ukrainian power installations as a deliberate part of its campaign to destroy civilian infrastructure. During the first year of the full-scale invasion, Russia targeted easy-to-hit structures, such as power transformers, that could disrupt electricity across Ukraine, especially in big cities. But that damage was relatively easy to repair, and Ukraine made it through the first winter in fairly good shape. 

At the beginning of this year, once Ukraine had homemade drones and missiles that could strike deep into Russia, thus neatly skirting both U.S. targeting prohibitions and leaky Russian air defenses, Kyiv began systematically hitting oil installations. 

In response, Moscow intensified its campaign against Ukraine’s power grid, this time using heavy missiles to go after harder-to-destroy and much-harder-to-repair power plants themselves. More than half of Ukraine’s electricity generation capacity has been blown up or seriously damaged, a huge problem heading into winter given the reliance of Ukraine’s urban heating system (and water supplies) on the power plants.

But that campaign peaked just before summer; since then, there has been a respite in the Russian vendetta against power plants. The aftershocks are still felt, though. This week, in addition to a small-scale Russian attack on power facilities just across the border in Sumy, Ukraine announced a return to rolling blackouts for many parts of the country—mostly due to increased peak power demand during the hot summer months, but clearly exacerbated by the loss of so much generation capacity, which is still a huge concern for Ukrainian officials and Western experts.

“We have not seen wide-scale attacks for six weeks or so. Russia may just be collecting missiles to attack later in the year, in October or so. As of now, there is no sign that weaponization of energy is weakening,” said Andrian Prokip, an energy expert at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute in Kyiv.

Yet the fight over refineries and power plants is just part of an even broader energy war that has aspects both of the absurd and of the absurdly normal. 

Last week, after months of feverish speculation, conspiracy theories, and finger-pointing, reporting (and a German arrest warrant) emerged that seemed to put blame for the high-profile 2023 destruction of Russia’s no-longer-operational Nord Stream gas pipeline on a band of Ukrainian freelancers. 

Meanwhile, Russian natural gas continues to transit in pipes through war-torn Ukraine, headed for customers farther west in Austria, Slovakia, and Italy. Not even Ukraine’s cross-border grab of Sudzha, the pumping station for the last trans-Ukraine pipeline, has interrupted the (limited) flows of gas moving from one belligerent state through another. 

And then there are the nuclear power plants. Since early in the war, Russia has occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, in the south-central part of Ukraine. Since then, the International Atomic Energy Agency has periodically warned of concerns over the safety and security of the plant, which is now in shutdown but still potentially dangerous. Two weeks ago, a mysterious fire broke out at one of the cooling towers; a few days later, a drone explosion threatened the power supply to the facility. For years now, Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of nuclear blackmail and brinkmanship over the plant. 

Once Ukraine leapt across the Russian border, Russian media immediately warned that Ukrainian forces were seeking to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant for an apparent atomic hostage swap; most recently, Russian defenders began digging trenches around the reactors.

“The Russians have used and will continue to use the precarious state of nuclear safety at Zaporizhzhia for their own rhetorical and blackmail purposes. I suspect they may try to do the same in relation to the Kursk NPP,” said Darya Dolzikova, a research fellow of the Royal United Services Institute. 

“I see no indication that Ukraine is looking to attack the nuclear plant and the Ukrainian government has refuted any suggestions to that end,” she added. “So any Russian statements or actions to the contrary I take to be fear-mongering by Moscow.”

[bg-sparrow]

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲🌲 || day 8 Manure Truck Driver

After Biff plowed into Old Man Jones’s manure truck for the second time that week, he would be in some serious debt if he wanted his De Luxe cleaned up again.

“I’m not paying for him to haul it away again,” Terry said as the car was towed in. He pointed at Biff. “That’s on you.”

That is how Biff came to have an after-school job at Western Auto.

He paid for his car’s repairs and Jones’s fee after two weeks, but Terry kept him on.

“You’re not the best mechanic,” he said, “but you sure can make ‘em shine.”

[bonesandthebees]

hey hey im just rocking by to ask for book recommendations i have been plowing through so many books recently and i have a need for more and to which i come here because i trust your judgement!

- 🪿

oh yeah I can definitely give some more recs :)

first and highest rec that I've read recently:

Babel by RF Kuang - this isn't exactly an obscure one, I'm sure a ton of you have heard this recommended but I'm not kidding when I say it genuinely blew me away. I'd read Poppy War from RF Kuang before and didn't love it, so I was shocked when I fell so deeply in love with the world and characters of Babel. the characters and their relationships are all so complex and interesting, the worldbuilding is fascinating, and it has so many interesting things to say about the art of translation and how complex it really is. it also is a very powerful book that has a lot of important things to say about western imperialism and racism. just know ahead of time it's not a happy story, but it's a really really great one.

okay other recs

The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin - I think I recced this once on here before but I'm still thinking about it. It's such a fascinating fantasy world told in a very unique way that jumps from time period to time period without telling you directly. The worldbuilding is genuinely incredible I have never seen a fantasy world done quite like this before and I adore it. There's also just such an interesting magic system in place. If you like the earthbenders in atla, you'll love what's going on here. I'm planning on reading the sequel to this one very soon

Hild by Nicola Griffith - okay this is kind of a doozy to get through because the text is very dense. It takes place in 7th century Anglo-Saxon England and uses a lot of unfamiliar terms. There's a glossary at the back of the book but it doesn't cover everything. it took me ages to get through this one and I walked away unsure if I wanted to read the sequel just because of how much brain power it took to read, but after a few months I can't stop thinking about the story so I know I'm going to read the sequel at some point. it's a historical fiction novel about the childhood and adolescence of the real figure St Hilda of Whitby, or as she's known in the book, Hild. It talks a lot about Anglo Saxon era politics along with societal structure and the role women filled in this society. Hild is such a complicated and interesting character and I loved watching her grow up throughout the course of the novel. it's also really interesting to see her role as a 'Seer' with the King thinking she can see the future, and how that intersects with the rising spread of Christianity in England at this time. Definitely look into this one before you dig into it, but I really enjoyed it

Hope you enjoy these! Lmk if you ever want more!

[ghostherlig]

gothic western drabble 2

they won't leave me alone- so here's another bit of them being silly with each other <33 ft old western slang and phrases bc i forgot how much i love old timey phrases

The marksman just wanted to rest after all that transpired.

Doing anything with Johnny was exhausting, but travelling followed by fighting, followed again by travelling, and then setting up camp was beyond exhausting with Johnny.

"Wanna snort?" The actor smiled, his usual charm cranked up to a hundred now that Kenshi was tired beyond belief. Despite the canteen held out in a more than friendly hand, Kenshi raised a brow at him, as if Johnny had been speaking in tongues.

"What?" He breathed, Johnny chuckling at his confusion.

"Sorry, sugar, do you want a drink?" He corrected, and Kenshi pursed his lips as he snatched the canteen, Johnny hissing another laugh.

Kenshi took a swig, sighing in relief and dumping some of the water over his head, the heat of the afternoon still lingering into the evening.

"You act like I was tryin' to clean your plow," The actor rolled his eyes, the marksman tempted to throw water at him. Instead, he rolled his eyes in return, Johnny laughing.

"I don't even know what you're saying to me half the time," Kenshi grumbled, taking another swig of water, sighing and letting his head fall back against the tree.

His eyes had fallen shut, letting himself cool off. Despite his closed eyes and tense demeanor, Johnny still stepped in front of what little sun was left of the day, Kenshi peeking an eye open.

"Now you know how I feel when you grumble to yourself in Japanese, Takahashi." Johnny teased, pinching the tip of Kenshi's nose, the marksman making a noise of discontent and slapping his hand away, pushing himself up to stand.

"Don't start with that, Carlton," Kenshi warned, and Johnny put his hands on his hips, looking behind him at some imaginary audience while pointing to Kenshi.

"And here I thought he wouldn't care a continental," He joked, the marksman groaning at his antics, tossing the canteen back into his chest once he had screwed it shut.

"What's so difficult about speaking normally to me?" Kenshi sighed, exasperated with Johnny's words.

"I am speaking to you normally! Well, normally for here, anyway," He amended, and Kenshi sighed.

"私がこれまでに下したあらゆる決断が、私をあなたへと導いたのです。" He complained, throwing his hands up in the air before reaching up to grab his hat from where he had placed it on a branch.

"Well, you sound dreadful pretty like that, darlin'," Johnny smirked, trailing right behind the marksman, Kenshi flushing at the obvious staring Johnny was doing below his belt, "Fine as cream gravy." The actor mumbled, and Kenshi was tempted to turn around and slap him.

"Quit staring at my ass." The marksman spoke instead, clear and concise, and he heard the footsteps stop behind him.

Kenshi turned, Johnny looking like he was struck by lightning, face flushed and mouth hung open.

The marksman took his opportunity to get Johnny back just a little bit more, taking a step forward. One hand landed on Johnny's waist, the other palm up, Kenshi's fingers extended to close Johnny's mouth.

"You'll catch flies, darlin'," Kenshi mimicked Johnny's accent, the actor blinking like he'd just been struck.

The marksman's hands retreated, giving Johnny a pat on the shoulder and an annoyed smile before he continued back to his tent, Johnny sputtering and chasing after him again.

Maybe travelling with the actor wasn't so bad.

(the japanese was done using a translator (linked bc i think it works better than google does), but it's supposed to say "Every decision I've ever made led me to you, you absolute moron."

also, the phrase "clean your plow" means to beat somebody up, and "fine as cream gravy" just means "very good" or "top notch")