#whether its out of thin air or making a constant loop of something

[mortedeveles]

BEAST. [Halloween Week] [P.2]

Summary: Throughout the years you’ve known Bakugou Katsuki, he’s never celebrated Halloween with you. This year seems to be an exception, and you’re not sure if it’s a good or bad thing. One day at a scare house unravels the secrets of the friend you’ve been pining after for months, and you experience horror and fear like never before. 

THIS IS PART 2. FIND PART 1 HERE: BEAST P.1

PLEASE CHECK OUT MY OTHER HALLOWEEN WEEK FIC HERE: TILL DEATH DO US PART. 

HALLOWEEN WEEK MASTERLIST! 

Pairing: Werewolf! Bakugou Katsuki x fem!reader

Theme: Horror, fantasy, halloween, quirkless!au. [HALLOWEEN WEEK] [ONE-SHOT: PART 2] 

TWs: description of graphic violence, fighting, cursing and blood. 

Word Count: 3K (aprox. 3026 words)

A/N: Hey guys! Here’s the second (and final, until stated otherwise) part of BEAST! With this, I’ve concluded my part in Halloween Week! HOWEVER, please continue supporting the event and my fellow writers with REBLOGS, comments and likes!

If you enjoy this, please support me with REBLOGS, comments, follows and likes!! 

''Ka-Katsuki,'' your lip wobbled as you spoke. ''Are you still in there?'' 

The werewolf bared its teeth, growling lowly. Your heart raced as you weighed your options.

I need to get away from him. But if I run, he'll overpower me. Beads of sweat dripped down your forehead.

Wolves live in packs. They work with one another. Maybe, he'll still recognize me...?

With a hard swallow, you rose from the ground. Bakugou growled and his body tensed but made no attempt to rip your body apart.

''Hey,'' you said softly, slowly reaching out a trembling hand. Bakugou growled loudly, saliva dripping from his fangs. You swallowed.

Wolves can smell fear.

Straightening your posture, you licked your lips as you forced yourself to stop trembling, and stared at Bakugou at his eyes. Time seemed to slow down as you did so. Your movements were impossibly slow, sluggish and at any moment, you could make a mistake. 

''It's Y/N. You remember me, big boy?'' Slowly, you stepped closer, keeping your hand outstretched.

Surprisingly, the werewolf only grunted in response, watching your every move.

''I'm your friend. And you can be a gremlin sometimes, but you won't hurt me, right?'' 

You reached the beast. Your hand brushed against Bakugou's head, softly petting the fur. His chest rumbled and slowly, his body relaxed.

But just as the storm had calmed down, it picked up at full speed. A few feet away, you heard a howl from the bushes, followed by loud growling and the rustling of branches. 

Bakugou immediately tensed, pushing you a few feet away and snarling towards the source of the noise. His fur tips stood up, claws gleaming in the moonlight, his beastly eyes swarming with bloodlust. 

You fell to the ground- again, and staggered backward, fearing what was to come. In a blink of an eye, a large, lean werewolf leaped out of the bushes and tackled Bakugou to the ground. 

A flurry of snarls, growls, and yelps filled in the air and for a second, Bakugou's eyes met yours. And they weren't pitch black, but the shining red you loved. As he yelped, you swore you heard his voice intertwine with the whine, yelling at you to leave. 

Nearly tripping on your own feet, you raced out of the forest, even as you heard Bakugou yelp. It made your heart squeeze from the worry, but all you could think about was escaping the forest.

Branches scraped your arms as you ran through the forest, and you nearly wept out of joy when you left the trees behind and stepped onto cracked concrete. 

Your foot slapped against the road as you raced further away from the forest, following the road signs until you reached a familiar looking neighborhood. Home.

You don't remember how you must've looked as you arrived home, with scratches and scars, twigs and branches in your hair, and a look of absolute fear on your face, but surprisingly, your parents weren't home, so it was one less problem. 

Since it was the weekend, you had been planning to sleep in all day and try to recover from whatever the hell happened yesterday. The images still flashed in your mind, all of them blending together- the scare house, Bakugou's horrific transformation, the gruesome fight. Your stomach wouldn't stop churning.

Around the afternoon, the doorbell rang. You heard your parents shout and fight earlier, but ultimately left around ten in the morning. Groaning, you buried your face deeper into the blankets, deciding to ignore whoever was at the door.

But then the doorbell rang again. And again, and again, until it kept ringing consecutively for minutes.

''Go the fuck away!'' You shouted from your bed, hoping it would reach the stranger's ears.

Maybe it did, but they didn't care. The doorbell continued ringing, and you buried your mouth in a pillow and screamed into it.

After a few minutes, you regained your composure and went towards the front door. Surprisingly, they were still there. You froze when you met familiar red eyes. 

It was Bakugou. He was holding an orange plastic bag in one hand, his other scratching his neck nervously. When he saw the door swing open, his eyes widened for a second.

''Hey.'' He said gruffly. Even as he retained his cool and careless composure, you could see the sweat trailing down his forehead, and his left shoe tapping the floor anxiously. There were some stitches and bandages on his face that weren't there yesterday. 

''What- what are you doing here?'' You asked, wondering whether if this was the end of your friendship or not.

Bakugou swallowed. ''We need to talk.''

You bit the inside of your cheek before reluctantly nodding.

''Okay. Come on in.''

                                    ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

''What do you remember?'' Was the first thing he said as the two of you sat at the dining table.

You snorted, tapping your fingers on the table. ''Bakugou, I was scared, but I didn't go into a coma. I remember...everything.'' You swallowed thickly. He remained silent. You pressed your lips in a thin line.

''What...why didn't you tell me about it before?''

He scoffed dryly, raising an eyebrow in amusement. ''Wouldja have believed me if I did?'' 

You shrugged, before pondering it for a few moments. ''Yeah, you're right. That was a dumb question.'' 

Katsuki chuckled, before shoving the mysterious object in front of you. 

''What is this?'' You questioned as you examined the bag.

''It's for you, obviously.'' His snarky comment made you smile.

When you opened the bag, your smile grew wider. It was hundreds, if not thousands of candy, the type you'd get after trick or treating at dozens of houses.

''Look, I know... yesterday didn't go as planned, a lot of weird shit happened, and I'm sorry.'' 

You giggled. ''You don't say?'' The blonde snorted and rolled his eyes. 

When he moved, you noticed how he softly winced and clutched his ribs. Your eyes widened and you leaned over the table to examine his face and chest.

''Oh god. You're hurt from yesterday, aren't you?'' 

Bakugou shrugged you off, avoiding your gaze. ''It's nothin'. Just got roughed up a bit.''

You frowned, rising from your seat and walked towards him, grabbing his face in your hands. You didn't notice how his face went warm.

''This is my fault,'' you murmured, brushing your thumb on his cheek.

''If I hadn't suggested going to that stupid scare house, you would've been at home, you would've been safe-,'' You stopped when Bakugou's hands reached for yours and wrapped around yours.

''Shut up, dummy.'' He furrowed his eyebrows. ''It's not your fault. If I hear you blame yourself one more time, I'm going to smack some sense into you. Got it?''

You laughed softly. Between soft laughter and comforting words, you hadn't noticed how close you'd gotten to him, or how easily you'd slid onto his lap.

''Bakugou...it doesn't matter. You're hurt. Let me help you.''

''No.'' His tone was firm and for some reason, angered you. ''I'm fine. Just fucking drop it.''

''No, you drop the act,'' you snapped back. ''Can't you just let me help you?''

The blonde's face hardened. ''I hid this from you for years, because it's not fucking safe for you. This is my shitty problem, so stop nagging.'' 

You slipped out of his lap, crossing your arms over your chest. ''Bakugou, even if I wouldn't have believed you, you could've told me. Look, I don't know how this works, but I could've been there for you. I could've helped.'' 

He growled and rose from the chair, meeting your determined gaze.

''No, I don't need your fucking help. I'm fine.'' 

Maybe it was his constant refusal, or yesterday's events, or the screaming match your parents had in the morning, but you lost it. You lost the reins to your control and exploded. Grinding your teeth together, you rose from his lap and stepped back. 

''You're fine?!'' You shouted, slamming a fist on the table. ''Bakugou, you're a werewolf for christ's sake! And I didn't even know until yesterday! You got hurt yesterday, you need help!'' He scowled and opened his mouth to protest, but you raised a hand.

''No. You listen to me, Bakugou Katsuki. You kept this secret for me for years, and who knows, you might be hiding something else!'' You cried out, rubbing your forehead.

''Don't you trust me?! I've been in love with you for so long, and-,'' A sudden warm and soft pair of lips pressing against yours froze your sentence midway.

Bakugou's hands slid to your hips and you quickly melted into the kiss, looping your hands around his neck. He pressed you closer, lips dancing and communicating in a way neither of you could do verbally.

''I'm sorry,'' he said breathlessly. ''It's so hard for me to say this but fuck- I'm sorry. I know that you're going through a shitty time and this isn't helping.''

Both of you pulled away, chests heaving and swollen lips.

''Shut up,'' you murmured as your hands tangled themselves in his spiky blond hair. ''Shut up and kiss me again.''

Bakugou was quick to comply with your wishes.

                                         ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ─── 

Who knew that an angry discussion would end out in a makeout session, followed by the official start of your romantic relationship with Bakugou Katsuki?

''Oi, Y/N,'' Bakugou knocked on your open door as he stepped inside your bedroom. You beamed and greeted him with a kiss on his cheek, to which he replied the same. You grinned when you saw his face redden.

''Glad you could make it. I have your costume here!'' You rushed to your closet, but Bakugou held you back and squeezed your arm. You raised an eyebrow.

''What is it, Katsuki?'' 

He scratched the back of his neck, before revealing a neatly wrapped black square. 

''I...'' He cleared his throat, averting his gaze. ''I got you something.'' 

Your heart softened. ''Oh, you didn't have to get me anything. What did you get me?''

The blonde placed the wrapped black box in your hands and shoved his hands in his pockets. He didn't respond and instead walked over to your bed and sat on the edge.

''How the fuck am I supposed to know?'' He snorted. ''It's yours, so fucking open it.''

His crude language made you snicker. You took a seat next to him and began to unwrap it. Your jaw slackened as you pulled out the brand new, expensive-looking dress and black, sleek, and shiny cloak.

''I saw that your costume...got turned to shit. So you can use that one, I tried to find the same dress.''

Shocked, you remained silent for several minutes. The dress looked far more expensive than your original one, with richer colors and fabric, as well as the cloak.

Bakugou shifted uncomfortably and you heard him scratch his neck. ''Or not. Do whatever the fuck you want with it, I don't give a-,'' You didn't give him the time to finish his sentence as you launched yourself on him, wrapping your arms around him in a tight hug.

''Thank you,'' your voice was muffled by the blonde's chest. His body stiffened by your embrace, but slowly, hesitantly returned your hug. 

''Tch. It's-it's not a problem.'' As you hugged him tightly, Bakugou was vaguely concerned whether you'd hear his racing heart, somersaulting, and fluttering at your proximity. 

After a few minutes of comfortable silence, the two of you pulled away. You quickly shooed Bakugou out of the room to dress and prepare your costume. Once you were done, you opened the door and allowed him inside once again.

''Alright, you ready to go?'' He gave you a once over and his face slightly reddened. ''You-you look good. Let's go.'' Katsuki grabbed your hand, but you stepped back.

''No!'' You said with a mischievous grin. ''You're dressing up as well.'' 

His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. ''What? Of course not. I'm not taking part in this shitty holiday.'' 

You gasped, grabbing ahold of him and pushing him down on your bed.

''It's not a shitty holiday. Now hush, while I find the perfect costume.''

The blonde grumbled and complained loudly, but made to attempt to leave. 

''You have to do this,'' you said as you fussed in your closet, digging and searching through years worth of clothing.

Bakugou scowled. ''Tch. Out of all the things you want to do, trick or treating is the most important one?'' 

You quickly turned around and beamed in agreement. ''Yeah! Yesterday was weird, to say the least,'' He snickered in response. ''But today will be different. We're going to go trick or treating, and you're going to enjoy it.'' 

The blonde huffed and smirked as he watched you move back and forth in your closet.

''Aha!'' You grinned as your hands wrapped around the year-old ears, collar, and tail, and pulled them out of the basket. Alongside, you picked up the other part of the costume, folded neatly into squares. 

''Here's your costume,'' You shoved them in Bakugou's outstretched hands.

''You've gotta be fucking kidding me.''

You cackled at his stone face. ''I'm not. Now hurry up, I want to see how you look in them.''

With a loud, animalistic growl, Bakugou marched out of your room and locked himself in the bathroom. You couldn't stop giggling as you heard him curse and mutter while dressing. 

Once the door swung open, you sat upright on your bed and waited with expectant eyes.

Bakugou marched into your room with a sneer. You nearly squealed in delight. He was wearing a pair of dark brown wolf ears, a red collar with some loose chains, a long olive green parka that was ripped at the edges, a plain white teeshirt, loose jeans, and a dark brown tail attached to his behind to top it off.

You clapped your hands slowly with an everlasting grin on your face.

''You look... divine!''

Bakugou sneered. ''Out of all the humiliating costumes you could've picked, you decided to go with the most ironic one, didn't you?'' He huffed, before shaking his head and sliding his hand into yours. ''Come on dumbass, let's go trick or treating.'' 

With an excited giggle, the two of you left the house and stepped outside. Houses were decorated with Halloween objects, orange, purple, and yellow fairy lights, hanging ghosts and skeletons, and the wealthier ones had impressive equipment such as a groaning zombie android. 

Children of all ages shuffled past you, in a swarm of hundreds of colors and costumes, each of them running toward houses with an incomparable amount of passion and excitement. You heard squeals, giggles, laughter, and the often ''Trick or treat!'' 

''C'mon, let's go!'' Tugging Bakugou forward and your orange pumpkin bag hanging on your other arm, the two of you raced forward.

Hours went by as you walked house from house, and your bag grew heavier with every house you visited. Bakugou would barely speak when approaching a house and resigned to keeping watch over you.

''Come on, Katsu, you have to enjoy the night!'' You complained as the two of you strode to a small park, deciding to take a small break and sit on the swings.

''I am.'' He replied dryly and you sighed, shaking your head.

''How much candy do you have?'' He opened his bag of candy. It was only a fourth of what you had collected. 

You clicked your tongue. 

''We can't take a break, you need more candy.'' Bakugou shook his head.

''No, I need a break from hearing those screaming brats,'' he grumbled, throwing his head back. You laughed softly.

The screams and squeals of children were distant, and the wind softly blew past you as nearby crickets chirped. Some people lingered by in the small park but weren't too close.

''You're such an old man,'' you teased with a playful grin.

Bakugou growled. ''Fuck no! I am not-what the hell?!'' Shocked, the two of you glanced back, only to see a small pomeranian dog growling, teeth clamped around Bakugou's green parka.

''You little shithead!'' The blonde growled. He abruptly stood up and attempted to grab the parka, but the dog was persistent. It growled loudly, tail wagging as it tugged at the parka.

You sputtered out a loud laugh, eyes wide as you watched the bizarre interaction. 

''Fuck off!'' Despite Bakugou's aggressiveness, you noticed how he made no attempts to harm the dog. 

''Oh my god! I'm so sorry!'' A squeaky voice interrupted your observation and you watched a young girl dressed as a bee rush forward, quickly picking up the biting dog in her arms.

''Fucking control your dog!'' Bakugou snapped as he brushed his parka. ''I don't want to see this shit again.'' 

The girl swallowed before nodding and running off. You sighed, shaking your head in disapproval.

''You could've been nicer to her, she's just a kid.'' 

The blonde grunted. He sat back down on the swing. 

'Whatever. Next time.'' You snorted. 

''I understand why the dog went after you, though.'' Swinging back and forth, you grinned at Katsuki. He raised an eyebrow, unamused. 

''One dog recognizes another, don't they?'' His eyes widened and before he could get his hands on you, you giggled and raced off, leaving the park and Bakugou behind you.

''You little sh-HEY! Get back here, Y/N!'' You laughed loudly as you raced past crowds of children and decorated houses. Just as you thought you had outrun him, a pair of strong and heavy arms wrapped around you and turned you around.

Smiling sheepishly, you looped your arms around Bakugou's neck. His vermilion eyes were still blazing, but with a playful look.

''Getting cocky now, aren't you?'' He smirked, hands grabbing your hips. You tilted your head to the side with a small smile.

''Maybe.'' 

The blonde snorted. He leaned closer, his lips brushing against yours until they were completely pressed together, chasing after each other.

A loud ''Eww!'' broke you apart and you stifled a giggle as Bakugou glared down at the child who had interrupted your moment. The child quickly scrambled away. 

 You smiled, brushing your nose against Bakugou's.

''Happy Halloween, Katsuki.'' 

PLEASE SUPPORT ME WITH REBLOGS, LIKES, FOLLOWS AND COMMENTS!!! 

If anyone’s interested in seeing BEAST extended (this is the final part), send me an ask or DM and I’ll see what I can do! 

TAGLIST: @sandwichez01​ @ur-local-simp​ @moonri3e​ 

[alexseanchai]

Fanfic 2020 in Review

I got tagged by @kasienda @noirshitsuji and @marvelousmsmol and I am tagging whoever wants to play!

1) List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

*filters own works to complete and updated in 2020*

1 - 20 of 57 Works by AlexSeanchai

nope. *adds filter to include only works of at least 1000 words*

unless otherwise indicated, these are all Miraculous Ladybug:

“don’t bake it lying down”, post-reveal Marichat vs Felix Graham de Vanily

“veracity”, canon divergence from “Ladybug” featuring Mister Bug and Verity Queen (so also Marichat, I guess)

“(no request is too extreme, if) your heart is in your dream”, in which Hawkmoth wins, for the thirty seconds or so before Emilie saves Ladybug and Chat Noir’s lives

“tell me you love me and make me believe it”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire ropes Ladybug into helping plan her civilian self’s escape slash social transition

“kingmaker, oathbreaker”, in which Hawkmoth wins and Emilie watches her son remove himself from the family

“stay and let me watch you break it down” (Twelve Dancing Princesses), a modern setting

“set a course for winds of fortune”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire has already escaped and Gabriel and Nathalie are trying to bring Gabriel’s son home

“we ground love in a hopeless place”, in which post-reveal Marinette’s attempt to remain resolutely not in love with her partner dissolves like sugar in coffee when they start a pun war

“ring the bells that still can ring”, in which Alya is deeply confused about why Adrien and Marinette are planning a wedding when last night both were single

“burning wishes at both ends (the cold wind and long loud wail remix)”, in which Gabriel made a monkey’s paw wish and Emilie makes another

“words cannot espresso”, in which Marinette’s OC roommate is justifiably worried for Marinette’s safety, and meanwhile Adrien takes care of Marinette

“the compromise of truth” (the chronologically second-earliest part posted to date of nine lives, snake’s eyes), in which Adrien tells his friends how he won some freedom and respect from his father

“At The Present Time”, the Ladrien/Ladynoir marriage proposal follow-up to @art-deco-shrimp‘s  “Your Presents Required”

“j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”, in which the events of canon must just have been a series of dream sequences, Marinette and Adrien both think, until they both arrive at Chloe’s Halloween masquerade dressed as themselves from the dreams

2) Number of words written:

ahahaha no. I am not counting all my scattered fic drafts and trying to figure out what I did and didn’t write in 2020. I refuse.

AO3 says I posted 162K in 2020. it is counting all of keeps you guessing (like any real love), which (a) I started posting in 2019 (b) is co-written by @galahadwilder​; it is counting all of my meta snippets collection, much of which was written in 2019; it is counting the Vimeo passwords for my vids. but I probably cleared 150K by a safe margin.

3) Your most popular fic:

“veracity” has a four-digit kudos count, wow, when’d that happen? this is also the 2020 work with the most hits and the most bookmarks, but “tell me you love me” has four-thirds as many comments as its nearest competitor.

4) Your personal fav:

“cannot break us, not with a thousand swords”, no question about it. this is the one in which Ladybug proposes marriage to Chat Noir via Princess Bride meme on Tumblr. (if you intend to download the work or otherwise to consume it with creator style off, you want the accessible version instead of the primary version.)

5) Your fav scene:

aaaaaaaaa

—okay so this is cheating and I know it, since Uncertain Humors (the one where Marinette/Adrien is both Orpheus/Eurydice and Theseus/Ariadne) is nowhere near finished, never mind posted (maybe I'll get “Sanguine” done to post on my birthday?)

but it is still my favorite of the year. as you might guess from that description of the story, this scene has content notes for character death:

Hell is a maze. Marinette walks.

This acrid passage has little to see but damp stone, seeming blood-stained in the dim carmine light. At about the height of her heart, the faintly glowing thread cuts through the not-clammy air; it ought to be pulsing at the same rate as the heart it's bound to. She might be able to see her own reflection if she looked down at the open sewage pipe, or at one of the puddles that now and again she splashes through, dampening the canvas of her shoes. She might see reflected what's behind her.

She remembers Mme. Mendeleiev lecturing on human physiology. In healthy humans old enough to have learned how, urination is a voluntary action: one may not know which muscles one tenses and relaxes in order to do so, and probably isn't paying attention to those details when one is doing, but one has conscious control over whether one does. Usually. Stress and anxiety mean some people are unable to relax the relevant sphincter muscle and others are unable to stop themselves. It's voluntary for cats, too: it's one way they mark their territories. Cat-boys have other ways.

There is a moment in every human life when all one's muscles relax at once. Some Parisians have had several such moments.

The thread is braided with itself around her left fourth finger, rows of tiny red half-hitch knots, and falls loosely over the back of her hand to loop twice around her wrist. She holds it wrapped between the fingers of her right hand to keep it at a constant tension, as though knitting with this insubstantial thread, so fragile for something two (two dozen, two million) lives hang from—too thin to sew with, no thicker than one strand of his hair. As she walks, she winds it around and around and around her wrist.

Between her ring finger and her right hand, it loops twice.

Marinette's shoe lands in a puddle she didn't see. The rainwater splashes soundlessly onto her bare ankle and on the stone.

(With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal— It's a very loud song.)

She walks on.

6) A fic or scene that challenged you:

where the firelight fades, no contest. this is the second story I’ve ever been able to stick with more than a couple hundred words past the 20K mark, but it’s easily the twentieth novel-length I’ve begun. (though also, you know that kedreeva post? well, 90K later, I’m less than 15K from completing this 10K fic! I think.) and I have been learning so much about long-form fiction.

there has also been a lot of weeping and tearing my hair. case in point: I just trashed the chapter 15 draft because I figured out the reason it wasn’t going anywhere! I can probably keep the first few hundred words of that draft without any editing, and another few hundred with some revision...

7) A line of writing you’re proud of:

from “j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”:

Everything about their partnership is fragments of sentences in the dream diary Adrien writes in ultraviolet pen. Disjointed flickers of thought even when examined under the black light he hides in the snack cabinet under packets of Super Yoyo sandwich cookies and bags of cheesy Monster Munch potato chips and boxes of petit écolier butter cookies (chocolat noir)—none of which explains the gym-socks smell. All fleeting incoherent flashes, invisible between the mundane lines of La Modification shelved at his bedside between Leroux and Dumas. None of it is solid. Adrien has more proof his room's haunted.

okay let me break this down for you!

* Adrien started a dream diary to make sense of the memories

* in invisible ink, in a book that (according to Wikipedia) is thematically appropriate and won’t (if Gabriel sees it) look like anything other than Adrien developing an interest in French literature

* shelved between Phantom of the Opera and The Three Musketeers

* look I didn’t come up with the name “black light”

* or “chocolat noir” for what English speakers call “dark chocolate”, or “petit écolier” (that is, “little schoolboy”) for that sort of butter cookie

* also not my fault that “chocolat noir” sounds remarkably like “Chat Noir”, which, attentive readers may have noticed, is not a name that appears in the story after the header and before Miraculous Cure

* I found the website of a store in Boston, Massachusetts that caters to French expats, and the yo-yo cookies and the monster chips were right there in the photos, y’all

* the snack stash and the black light live in the cabinet where, in canon, the Camembert lives; yes, that cheese smells in the real world like gym socks

* this story’s akuma was not able to affect anything but squishy human memory: nobody affected remembers anything about Ladybug or Chat Noir or Hawkmoth, not in any solid way, not even when they read news articles about the subject, and this includes Marinette and Adrien not being able to see or hear or remember their own kwamis—but you know what Adrien’s Insta post about his poltergeist and Adrien’s Insta post with the floating sock don’t show and don’t explicitly refer to?

* I love this paragraph so much (my housemates may have been lovingly mocking me over it)

8) A comment that touched you:

there are people (y’all know who you are) who said y’all are studying my style. I ded of blush.

9) Something that inspired your writing:

by volume of fic drafts that can be blamed on any particular person, the winner is probably @norakwami​

10) Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

so that longest-story-ever-written record I set in 2007 with the 89.5K story that, till where the firelight fades, was the only story I’d gotten much past 20K?

I broke that fucking record!

and then I deleted the draft of firelight chapter 15 😭

11) Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I’m starting work on a fantasy novel, a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which I explore (among other things) the economic consequences of the king’s ordering all the spinning wheels burned, and I want to make significant progress on that. and I want to not make my hands any worse; I kind of need those!

(breaking news alert: bodies fucking suck. so does giving yourself repetitive stress injuries in doing one and a half to two people’s worth of work for an organization that was never ever going to pay you more than one person’s worth of pay.)

[akillysheel]

TENUOUS. ❜ ( 2 )

Summary:  Kuro asks the important questions before he and Cthugha decide on a starting point for their investigation. Warnings:  N/A. Notes:  N/A

    'I need to think about it.'

    Kuro slouched in his armchair, the events of the morning playing on loop in his head.  After Cthugha's untimely arrival, the Sheriff had taken it upon himself to take the rest of the afternoon off in an attempt to compartmentalise his thoughts.  He seldom ever took breaks, but when he'd emerged from his office as white as a sheet, his colleagues had ultimately pulled the plug on his hopes of remaining at work, advising insistently that he should go home.

    'Fine.  But you just remember, every minute you sit around ruminating about your stupid little life, that's another minute that this girl is missing, and that means it's another minute closer to doomsday too.'

    Could it be true?  Doomsday?  The end of the world?  It sounded to him like the paranoid ravings of a conspiracy nut...  yet he'd spoken with such calm authority, countered every one of the problems he'd had with a rebuttal of his own.  Every one of his questions had an answer;  everything he'd said about Raku  ( at least as far as his limited understanding of Gods was concerned ) was true.

    Mia Vanton's case sat on his lap.  It was a thin file, one that spared details for there hadn't been many to uncover, but in that moment it felt heavy.  Cumbersome.  As if he'd been shackled to the floorboards.

    This thing's been shut since 2001.

    One calloused thumb traced over its front, teasing the corner away from the papers inside.  He really didn't know whether he wanted to look at it or not.  It felt oddly like picking at a scab wound, baring himself to old pain that needn't be revisited.  Did he have it in him to feel as hopeless as he did twenty years ago?

    He grunted as a headache set in. It had steadily been growing for the past two hours, fostered in his brain like a bad habit.

    Is there any point in opening this up again?  Surely if she was to be found, she'd have been found by now.  This year marks the twentieth anniversary of her disappearance.  In two weeks, in fact.

    Was that relevant?  He couldn't help but consider it.  As much as he wanted to push Cthugha's prophecy aside as garbage, the fact was that he was impressed  -  and a little worried.  He knew things that nobody could have known, and deep down he knew that his colleagues wouldn't sell some random kid information.  Huron's task force was known for being small, humble and honest, and it's good service had been a near constant hallmark for the district's deep sense of peace.  There had never been a recorded incidence of internal corruption--  not even with other, less composed Sheriffs in the front seat.

    How else could he have known about Olivia?  About Raku, even.

    The Sheriff let out a deep sigh as he closed his eyes, knowing already what he had to do.

    “I’ve decided t’help y’.”

    “Thank.  God.”   The statement trembled with sarcastic frustration, Cthugha’s cobalt eyes all but grey on account of the storm that had entered them.  He sat in Kuro’s chair, his feet propped up on his desk.  The rubix cube--  the one that had previously been half-completed--  sat in his hands, its coloured faces now perfectly arranged.   “While you were busy jerking off to the end of all life in this realm, I was busy compiling resources that might help us stop it.”   He paused to reach inside of his jacket, retrieving a file of his own, before he dropped it unceremoniously on the desk.   “You’re welcome.”

    “Where were y’keepin’ that…?”

    “Just look at it.”

    Kuro hesitated briefly before dragging the file closer, opening it up to find himself staring at a myriad of newspaper clippings, interview transcripts and photographs.  It was makeshift work, by no means tidy, but the sheer wealth of information was staggering to him.  Even so, as he skimmed over them briefly, he realised that there was nothing there that he didn’t already know.

    Of course there isn’t.  Why would there be?

    I don’t know.  Maybe I assumed he was an agent of God or something.

    “Aside from all that,”   Cthugha started, rising from his commandeered seat.  In what felt like a flash, he’d moved from the desk to the far corner of the room, grabbing a hold of a whiteboard on wheels before reappearing where he had been.  Kuro blinked hard.   “We can rule out all the places you already searched in your previous hunt for her.”   Feverishly, the rifter began to fill the board with haphazard notes.   “That means you don’t have to trawl through Whit’s a second time, nor do you need to bother checking their home or questioning her papa.  He came up clean, remember?”

    “Yeah…  he was so dedicated t’findin’ his daughter that he all but singlehandedly led the search party campaign despite us tellin’ him that it was dangerous.  Had t’bust him outta a few compromisin’ positions fer his efforts...”

    “Exactly.  Also means that the tunnels are a bust too, so you don’t have to waste time trawling through the underground like a family of sewer rats.  Wherever she is, she’s somewhere ya didn’t think to comb through.”   He paused when he found his whiteboard pen beginning to run dry.   “Damn it--”   Much like before, he flickered away, a brief rummaging sound filling the quiet office before he reappeared before the board.   “Okay, so--  here’re all the places you don’t gotta worry about that I can think of off the top of my head.  There’s…  what?  Why’re ya staring at me like that?”

    “How’re y’doin’ that?”

    “You can write too, Kuro.”

    “I mean the…  disappearin’-’n’-reappearin’ thing.  Obviously.”

    “Oh, that.  Yeah, I guess that makes more sense…”   It was the closest to sheepish that he’d seen Cthugha thus far;  a break from his smug attitude was certainly refreshing.   “It’s just a teleportation shtick.  Think of it like…  instead of macro-leaps, I’m performing micro-hops in time.”

     "Huh,"   said Kuro, deciding not to question it.

     In truth, the more they talked about the Vanton case, the more he began to recall.  Kuro seldom ever forgot a victim - even though he'd been the Sheriff of Huron for over three centuries, and a police officer for even longer than that - but he wouldn't say that the details were as long-lasting.  There were simply too many nuances in too many cases--  too much information for him to store everything tightly away.  His brief read over the case file before he'd come back to the office that following morning hadn't helped much either, if only because there hadn't been much for him to garner in the first place.

    "I do have a question though,"   Kuro spoke up as he handed Cthugha a cup of coffee.  He wasn't sure whether he was trying to placate or subdue him.   "... or a couple."

    "Are they constructive?"

    "Maybe.  I mean--  y'mentioned parallel timelines 'n' shit.  Couldn't y'just…  hop into one where I found her 'n' tell me where she is?"

    "Parallel timelines are born out of choices, dummy.  Unless you're admitting that you purposefully didn't find her, that isn't gonna help at all."   A swig of his drink was taken, the rich flavour seeming to soothe his annoyance somewhat.   "Nah.  You're thinking of alternate timelines."

    "Then what about that?"

    "We're not really supposed to dip into those if we can help it.  Definitely a last resort sort of deal.  It creates the possibility for people to run into themselves;  fractures the separation between realities.  Doppelganger action is a one-way ticket to hell for the Universe.  Also the fact that, like parallel timelines, there are MULTITUDES of alternate timelines where everything's the same except one little thing, meaning it'd take a shit-ton of time to comb through 'em all--  most likely more time than we’ve got.  There're several versions of you out there, Kuro, but you're this one.  You should focus on that."

     "This's all real confusin’…"   the Sheriff mumbled, deflating a little.  He was so sure he'd had a good idea under his belt, but hell, what did he really know about the way that reality worked?

    "Mm.  Anything else?"   Cthugha asked tersely, eager to move on.

    "Just one more thing,"   Kuro affirmed, shifting in his place for a moment before deciding that brevity was more favourable than kindness.   "... how does this girl stayin' missin' end the world?  People go missin' all the time.  Some come home, some're found dead.  Some’re never found, yet the world keeps on spinnin’.  's just a cruel fact’a life."

    For the first time since their meeting, Cthugha fell silent.  A harrowing emptiness entered his eyes as he thought about the bleak future that awaited them if they did nothing.  A hazy field of fire, the once clean air ashen and thick.  The destruction spread like cancer, first exploding in Huron before it gradually spread outward.  What was perhaps even more frightening was that the one responsible for it seemed impervious to the herculean effort required to topple a district;  by the time he was done with Huron, he was already looking for a bigger, more developed fish to fry.

    It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the Universe in ruins by far, and he doubted it’d be the last.

    That didn’t mean he was accustomed to seeing it though.

    “Well,”   he said softly, whiteboard pen twirled absentmindedly in between his fingers.   “... let’s just say, grief does things to people.  Do you have any clue who Mia’s father is?”

    Slowly, Kuro squinted.    “Aside from knowin’ his name ‘n’ his daughter’s case?  No.  Should I?”

    “No.  That’s exactly why ya should be worried:  he’s got nothing left to lose.  Do you think he’s going to care about hurting anyone when he’s hurting this much himself?  He’s got no children to provide for;  no public image to protect.  When he loses his mind, he does it for real, and damned’re the consequences, get it?”

    “Got it…”   Kuro muttered.  He knew all too well about people like Mr.Vanton.  While an anonymous existence was ultimately a peaceful one, when crime was brought into the mix, it became a dangerous shield.  Who suspected the nobody?  Nobody, that’s who.   “Then we gotta get movin’.”

    “I have to ask,”   Cthugha started as he stepped towards the chair he’d been sprawled in, reaching for his jacket and shrugging it on.  Now that he had a little time to look over him properly, Kuro noted its strange cyan decals and the symbol that he’d never seen before adorning the right side;  two parallel lines with a small triangle beneath the centre point of the bottom one.  It looked vaguely like a seesaw with two slats on top instead of one.  "What made you change your mind?"

    “Well, I guess I never got over the fact that I couldn’t solve it.  D’y’have any idea how hard it is t’look a parent in the eye ‘n’ tell ‘em that the search fer their child is over?  There was nothin’ else I could do, but I still felt guilty.  I figure, even if yer full’a shit ‘n’ this really is some heartless stunt all fer yer own amusement, I can at least make sure that there really was nothin’ else I could’a done fer the Vantons.”

    The rifter hummed softly as he adjusted his tie.   “Heh.  Ya really are a good person.”

    “Y’had doubt?”

    “Who doesn’t?  Much easier to expose a bad person who’s pretending to be good than to find an actual good person these days.  I guess it’s just an unfortunate byproduct of evolution.”

    “Yer wrong,”   Kuro said firmly, pulling his black coat closed.  The gun at his hip was touched briefly before he pocketed his hand, satisfied that he had everything he needed.   “There’re a lot more good people in the world than bad.  ’s just that the bad leave behind their messes t’clean up.”

    “Well, whatever the truth is, it’s clear we’re dealing with a bad person here, huh?  So, got any bright ideas?”

    Already were the gears in his head turning.  With the compiled notes to aid him, he knew of the place that he wanted to start with.  It may have been a dead end--  wishful thinking more than anything--  but he wouldn’t be able to progress until he knew he’d upturned every stone on this property.   “We should head t’the Valerie Vineyard first.”

[parasympathic]

@emilianopavone​

The first fight, after an agreement that had been effectively signed and sealed, was the hardest. Trying to find some balance between playing down his strengths while still looking like he was making some effort, and the unexpected appearance of another telekinetic as his opponent. One that threw him into a wall the second the light over the door turned green. If Monty was quick to drag him forward with a twisting of his wrist, it still turned too quickly into a physical fight, one that ended with a few more bruises than he wanted, but the man pinned to the ground with Monty’s knee in his spine.

The second fight required a little bit more creativity, and a desire he shared with Emiliano not to get himself too damaged in the process, because he didn’t want anything to do with the kind of scars a pyrokinetic left. It left him spending too much of his time just trying to avoid getting hurt, but it ended with a shower of glass when he ripped the flourescent lights from the ceiling. Splintering the bulb, a puff of mercury in the air before he jammed the pieces into flesh, purposefully avoiding any major arteries. Significantly more control than he’d wanted to show, but it might fulfill his end of the bargain.

Saturday night, four days after his last Tuesday meeting and one day after that fight, his cuffs finally burned out. An exercise in extreme patience that finally paid off.

The theory had come from Emil’s words, as innocuous as they’d seemed. Fresh out of R&D, a mix of magic and technology, but both of those things were bound by certain rules. Magic wasn’t limitless, technology could break, and he doubted the cuffs on his wrist were any exception. There were three possibilities that he could see; the first, to break them in a much more physical manner. The problem with that was obvious, both a lack of tools that might accomplish it, and constant surveillance. He still tested it once, slamming his cuffs against his bed post, and if it didn’t yield any miracles, it still scuffed the sides of it. Marking them as his, so he could at least be sure he was always working with the same cuffs and not a fresh pair whenever they removed them for those fights or training exercises. 

The second, was to simply overload them, a thing he tried once out of curiosity, trying to pull on as much power as he could, hating the vast emptiness that greeted the effort. It didn’t change anything, and he didn’t waste the time and energy on it again. It seemed a safe assumption that they would test it against Prime level power, and he’d been reminded enough lately that he wouldn’t ever be that strong.

The last, the one he thought most likely, and least likely that they’d really had a chance to test and observe yet, was to try and burn it out through repetition. If he was right about its functionality, they could create a closed circuit, an enchantment that would take any power he tried to expend and loop it back on itself to power the very cuffs stopping it from making any difference. But at some point, whatever mechanism that accomplished that, whether magical or scientific in nature, would burn out. Just like any other surge protector. It was the theory he dedicated himself to, every night, in thirty second intervals, for hours at a time. A brief expenditure of power as he tried to lift his bed off the ground, watching those runes light up and then die before he tried again. 

He knew how it looked on the monitors. He’d thought about that too, it was why he’d picked something heavy, something that wouldn’t move without a lot more effort on his part. Blue flared to life around his cuffs, he laid on his bed, gaze focused on the ceiling and not on the cameras in his room. It faded and dimmed, but this time when he tried again there was no brief flash of blue. There was power rushing to his fingertips, gravity abruptly subject to his whims again, and the quiet creak of metal underneath him. His breath caught in his throat, his eyes closed, and then he was covering his face with his hands as he turned his back on the cameras, curling in around himself on a thin mattress. Shoulders shaking lightly, and he imagined it played out he wanted to; an image of despair, of his will breaking, not a smile he had to hide and contained laughter.

It was easy to play detached after that, a natural state that he settled back into, feeling more like himself than he had in weeks. Silent and numb acceptance of whatever they wanted from him, sitting quietly while they drew more blood, holding onto a single thought, that there was no point. No point in continuing to test his cuffs, no point in fighting back. He felt it once, Monday before the third fight, that familiar pressure, a man searching for answers inside his head, and he was too close to getting out of here to let him see even a piece of it. So he curled his hand tightly around the still healing cuts on his arm, squeezing until that pain was the brightest thought in his head. Holding on even after that pressure receded.

They threw him into a room with an alchemist, which he could have told them was stupid, because they were dependent on their toys. And it was one of the first lessons that had been drilled into him by a dead man, to a telekinetic, any weapon the enemy held could so quickly become his. So when the woman tossed a small glass bottle of something green his way, it didn’t require him to be at his best to catch it midair with the flick of his fingers and throw it back. Just competent. Green smoke pouring back out when it shattered against the woman’s chest, collapsing to her knees as her own poison knocked her unconscious.

Then Tuesday came, and detached became harder and harder to hold onto. Anxious energy that almost had him pacing the floor, forcing himself into a seat to stop the motion. A dozen half formed plans skating through his thoughts and ignored, because he couldn’t afford to let go of that mantra he’d been holding front and center for days. It didn’t matter. There was no point. Just in case Hugo decided to drop in on this one too. It was still an effort to stay sitting when the door opened, just as much of one to sound indifferent. “Mr. Pavone. How good to see you again.” 

[squidpro-quo]

Elemental Experimentation

A/N: This is my piece for the @avatarbaang! I worked with the lovely @dejavidetc and the majestic @ladvy as artists and with the amazing @rosieclark and the wonderful @thelosthero as betas! 

I hope you enjoy it!

It didn’t happen on purpose, Zuko swore later. Personally, he felt like blaming the others for all of it, with their damned openness that he doesn’t know how to deal with, and Uncle for his doggedly discerning teaching over the years. But in the end, blaming the others wouldn’t change what happened so he’s got no one to point fingers at except himself.

He didn’t notice the first time. It was only a training session with Aang, the usual constant tug-of-war between distractions and the forms they were supposed to be practicing. One moment they were working their way through the dragon’s dance and the next Aang was wreathed in the smoke pouring from his hands.

He wiggled his fingers, creating whirls in the grey wisps that were sublimating off of him, forgetting all notions of practice immediately. Zuko opened his mouth to call him back to attention but he couldn’t  deny the ache of their exercise settling across his shoulders and maybe a break would do them both good.

Aang didn’t look up from his new-found skill of imitating a coalstack and instead turned to that age-old futile task: catching smoke with his hands. Settling down on one of the logs surrounding their training area, Zuko watched with head propped on hand and prepared to be amused.

He remembered how much such a thing had frustrated him, almost a decade ago, when he’d attempted the forms he was meant to be mastering and produced nothing but discolored smoke and not the smallest lick of flame. It had been disheartening, a sign of his failure and a mark of ridicule. Something he couldn’t control.

Aang brought his hands together, collecting the smoke between them with slight gusts of air. Zuko supposed it was fitting that an airbender would be one who could step over the line of what was possible. He recognized the way Aang’s eyes narrowed, the crook of his fingers as he slowly brushed the wisps of pale grey in the direction he wanted. Concentration furrowed itself across Aang’s brow until he was scrunching his face up so much Zuko had to wonder if he could even see what he was doing. A snort escaped him just as a swirling ring formed between Aang’s hands.

“Zuko, look! I did it!” Aang bounded over to him, the gently rotating loop of smoke almost blown away by the speed of his steps but he somehow managed to keep it intact. “Now if I add rocks…”

“This is firebending practice, not earth or airbending practice,” Zuko muttered, knowing already that he wasn’t going to chase after Aang. Perhaps this would simply have to be a lesson in control or precision or some other tenet that he could use to justify skipping the rest of the day’s drills.

As Aang set to work on whirling the small pebbles he’d pulled up out of the ground and adding them to the stream of smoky air, Zuko glanced down at his own hands. He’d never tried producing smoke on purpose, and he had a sudden itch to give it a try.

It was an odd sensation to do something wrong on purpose, especially something he’d worked so hard to do right in the first place. The familiar warmth that came with firebending tickled his fingertips as he tried to keep the fire repressed without tamping it down entirely. The smell came first, surprisingly, of something burning before a thick plume of smoke rose from his palm.

He passed his other hand through it, finding a slight heat to the haze as if it rose from a real campfire. It was unexpectedly relaxing, nothing like the anxiety of seeing it when he was a child.

Curling his fingers in the way he’d seen Aang do, he concentrated on the warmth that radiated with the smoke and felt it flicker in response. He almost closed his hand in surprise, the column of grey stuttering from his shock before it billowed out again when he called it forth. The more he focused on the way it languidly rose through the air, the more he could feel its shape in his mind, the currents that ran through it. It was perhaps the oddest thing he’d ever felt, the way it almost mimicked fire with its flickers and unpredictability.

He tried pulling it back in, to contain it, but the smoke dissipated into nothing. Curious now, he glanced over at where Aang was poking holes in his own insubstantial smoke with miniscule rocks, grinning all the while.

Watching the Avatar, Zuko let out a contemplative sigh. There was something to be said of experimenting, of taking detours and tangents, of having some fun with it. Puffing out his cheeks, he sought to find that hazy warmth again and blew. Smoke passed from his lips in streams, speckled with embers glowing in the shadow of the trees. He almost inhaled before thinking to breathe through his nose instead, wary of coughing from his own creation.

Seeing the way it wove through the air in curlicues and ethereal strands, a burst of elation rose inside him along with it. Now to see what he could do with it.

Taking a deep breath, he puffed out another bout of smoke and tried to channel Aang, to channel his sense of fun. There was nothing Aang couldn’t twist into a game or a wild ‘adventure’.

Zuko held still in case a stray movement messed up the process and as the smoke rose in front of him, he tweaked its path through the air. Just small nudges, it barely felt like he was doing anything with how gossamer thin the connection felt but it slowly drifted into shapes that might pass for a fat turtleduck, or a fire ferret.

He was just easing the fin on a sea serpent into place when he felt Aang’s eyes on him.

“Let’s have a contest! I want to try a lotus flower or maybe a Kiyoshi frowny face!” Aang’s exuberant shout was at odds with the way he slowly lowered himself in a crouch opposite Zuko. His grey eyes traced the edges of the smoky shapes and his trademark open-mouthed smile slid onto his face.

The training session was well and truly foiled by now, Zuko wasn’t even going to deny it. But maybe it was a mark of how much Uncle had affected him over the years that he stubbornly clung onto the idea of teaching through any means possible. It had worked on him, eventually, so why not on the Avatar himself? “You can practice your breathing while you do and don’t bend any other elements,” he ordered. Despite it all, he was already thinking of whether he could make a dragon out of smoke before the call for dinner came.

~*~

Zuko didn’t expect to find Toph in his mother’s old garden, leaning against the collapsing corner of the south wall with her meteorite bracelet tracing lazy shapes into the air in front of her. The sun spilled over the broken bricks beside her onto the only patch of green in the entire yard, a clump of weeds with bright pink flowers and spiny leaves.

“Hey hothead, your garden needs some serious work.” The comment was punctuated with a heel dug sharply into the dust at her feet. Stepping over the rocky outcropping that had sprung up in front of him, Zuko took a seat next to her and looked down at the bay just visible through the break in the wall.

“I’ll let my mom know about it when I find her,” he said, wondering if she’d even want to come back here. He had a handful of good memories, but even the one of this garden was hazy as smoke and just as hard to grasp. “If you wanted to remodel some parts of the house, feel free. Or demodel even.”

Toph grinned, sliding her feet across the ground, as a pillar rose up in the center of the yard and resolved itself into the shape of her in a triumphant pose, complete with boulder hefted in her hand.

“My contribution for when she gets back, a statue of the real Melonlord gracing her garden.” Grabbing her still-twisting bracelet from the air, she stretched it between her fingers like sticky taffy. “What was it like? When you met the dragons?”

Zuko fell silent at the sudden question and found himself staring at the stone Toph’s large belt buckle and interestingly defined muscles. He’d almost have thought it looked like the Ember Island Player’s version of Toph, buff and tall despite the reality sitting next to him. She was larger than life in many ways, but sometimes it was startling to remember she was really only twelve.

“Why do you ask?” he finally hedged, if only to have more time to figure out how to put it into words. He’d been speechless then too and nothing had changed since, how did you describe what they’d seen or what they’d felt?

“I guess I want to know if they were like the badgermoles. They didn’t speak to me, but I felt like I knew what they meant when they moved the earth and shook the core of the mountain.”

The badgermoles… He’d heard of them, had considered them to be legend until now like the dragons and sky bison were, but he’d been wrong about those too. Running his hand along the sunset-goldened terracotta beneath them and feeling the warmth they still leaked, he thought of the solemnity he and Aang had faced, and the momentary panic at the zenith of the mountain facing such ancient beings, and the colors of the fire that had surrounded them.

“The dragons were the same, they showed us what they wanted us to see.” He looked over at her and sighed, kneading his forehead as he wracked his brain for some way to make his words make more sense. “I mean, like all the different things fire can be.”

“Besides fire? Last I checked you still can’t bend lightning like your psycho sister,” Toph said, drumming her feet against the brick wall and sending tremors along the foundation in a steady beat.

Her bracelet lay between her fingers, odd spikes and whorls jumbled together into a mess of a shape. Reaching out, he paused before he touched it.

“I’ll try to show you.” He poked the sharp end of a spike, gingerly. “With this.”

Toph passed it over, barbs and all.

“It needs to be flat.”

Spreading out her fingers like she was pressing down a scroll or the pages of a book, Toph bent the metal into a sheet as thin as paper. Zuko looked along the edge, discreetly seeing if it would bend, but it remained as straight as an arrow.

Placing it on his knees, he held up a finger and focused on the sun warming his back, the waning strength that nevertheless burned all the same. A jet of fire appeared at the tip of his index finger, red as the crushed bricks beneath his shoes.

That was good enough to start.

He’d never been an artist but drawing on metal with only a pinch of fire turned out to be easier than he’d expected. It burned a clean trail across the sheet, turning from a curling half-moon to a jagged squiggle. Concentrating, he pushed the heat higher, hotter, until it turned from red to a brighter orange and seared the metal in a line of sizzling sparks.

Toph leaned closer, face turned toward her statue while she held the edge of the plate in her hand.

“I can tell there’s a difference,” she muttered, voice as hushed as he’d ever heard it.

Zuko took that as his cue to keep going. Careful to angle the flame away from her, he slowly pulled in a breath as he sought to raise the temperature even more. Azula could do it without breaking a sweat, he could remember their teachers’ excited and awed whispers when she’d first turned her flame blue, the sign of a true prodigy. The flame wavered at a clear orange, before finally tipping over into a pale purple bordering on white. It bit into the metal with an audible hiss, scorching the metal into patterns that glowed in the afterimage of its sizzling wake.

By now, he’d abandoned the jet of flame and instead drew with a searing corona haloing his finger, pressing it against the metal like he was fingerpainting. He could feel the heat in the metal, both from touch and as a fire encased underneath the surface, seething inside the sheet and a hairsbreadth from his control.

A thought rocked him back on his mental heels as he realized the similarity to how Toph had once explained her discovery of metalbending. Seeking out the element, in whatever form or shape it took and reaching out for it, bending the edges of what people thought was possible. That was Toph’s modus operandi in the end. He wondered how close metalbending and firebending could get, how thin the line was that separated them and if this was what Aang meant about the balance that he felt between all of the elements.

“I like it.” Toph broke the silence, pulling Zuko from his reverie as he lifted steaming fingers away from the design now marked on the asteroid metal’s surface. He couldn’t capture what the dragonfire had looked like exactly, but then again that wouldn’t do Toph any good anyway. But the harshly etched lines were formed from what he’d learned from them, the range of color and heat that fire could present and the control it took to keep the flame inside you.

“I mean, you’re not Aang-level, have you seen his noodle portrait of Ozai?” Toph continued, “That’s talent. But you got a spark, hothead, I get what you were going for.”

Zuko looked down at the burned lines and handed the sheet back to her, shaking his hand in an effort to cool it back to normal. As soon as she touched it, the metal rolled up into a scroll and wrapped itself around her forearm in a wide band, the edges of a deep groove showing along its face.

She ran her fingers along the burn ridges and smiled, huffing out a laugh before socking him in the shoulder.

“You still owe me a fieldtrip, don’t forget.”

“Yeah, I know.” He glanced at the statue again, before nudging her back.

“Shouldn’t you have made that boulder a melon?”

“Good point, hothead, I’m on it.”

~*~

The next time wasn’t as lighthearted of an occasion. His fingers were growing numb as he watched Katara pull the girl, little more than a child, over the edge of the ice floe and into their boat.

It had started as an excursion to show him ‘how the water tribe has a good time’ and went downhill from there faster than if you’d used an otter penguin as a sled. Sokka’s reassurances of how often he and Katara had gone out on their own before they met Aang did nothing to reassure Zuko. With that much water around, he thought his nervousness was rather warranted.

And he’d been right. Two hours in and the only thing they’d fished out was a child who looked on the verge of death.

“Zuko, hold still. You’re making the boat shake.” Katara’s voice was as calm as ever, steady as the ocean and just as unwavering. Her hands traced the girl’s body and pulled water out of the furs and cloth that bristled with frost. The face hidden under the hood was a sickly ashen brown, the lips purpling amidst shallow breaths.

Zuko grabbed hold of the boat’s sides, struggling to come up with something to do. He could only watch as Katara took the extracted water and blanketed her hands in it before trying to heal the girl with an expression that defied resistance. A familiar glow spilled over the worn wood of the boat, flickering in synchrony with Katara’s graceful curl of her hand from the girl’s brow down to her feet.

Katara was the embodiment of the dichotomy between water and ice, how it could turn from something that gave life to something that could steal it away just as insidiously, always with the same gentle but unwavering force. She could turn what flowed from her hands to protect and fight to something that slipped inside your body to heal or to hurt. She refracted as much as the surface of a stream, deeper than it looked.

But the crease along her brow only deepened.

“I can’t heal what’s not damaged. We need to get back to the village,” she finally declared, looking up at him with a gaze that could chisel rock. “Watch her, I’ll steer.”

Zuko didn’t argue, only shifted his weight forward until he sat next to the girl in the middle, leaving the stern free for Katara to stand up in and spread out her arms.

As the boat lurched forward with the swell of a wave spread out behind them, Zuko checked the girl’s breathing. It was alarmingly shallow, with her skin as cold as shadowed marble. Wrestling his way out of his parka, he laid it over her and hoped the layer of fur would do some good. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as thick of a coat as it could have been; after the Boiling Rock, he’d found it was easier to endure lower temperatures as long as he conserved his energy. And sitting around in a boat hardly counted as exercise.

Gingerly resting a hand on the girl’s head, he tried to imagine how Katara would do it, how she managed to fix what could not be seen. His first attempt produced a sweaty palm inside his glove but nothing more. It did no good for him to be warm unless he could share it with her as well. Heating up the air around her would do no good either, not with the breeze blowing by as they sliced through the frigid sea waves.

It was a foolhardy idea but he’d always gone for those anyway. It was almost his trademark.

Taking his glove off, he held his palm an inch away from the front of the girl’s parka and pictured the way Katara moved. He’d seen her do it hundreds of times now, had felt it when she healed his own wounds too, but what paltry comparison was that to truly knowing how to do it, and being able to.

His fingers grew cold and stiff as he focused on what felt stupid and most of all impossible.Containing the spark inside his own body, protected from the outside and unquenchable, was different than to kindle it in someone else’s.

He wanted to close his eyes, keep himself from seeing his own clumsy movements, but he thought of new forms and old advice. The first motion was too fast, rushed and embarrassed. On the second attempt, he forced himself to slow down, to keep each awkward jerk of his hand as he watched himself play pretend. By the third, he could feel the drag of a current against his fingers, of something catching in the girl’s body and drifting with him for just an instant, numbing the tips of his fingers in just that instant. Her peaceful face reminded him of Azula’s, when she’d been young enough to sleep peacefully.

The fourth time, he searched for the snag that he’d felt before and gently pulled it up to the surface from her core deep inside, coaxing it slowly from its kernel with a promise of returned warmth. Starting from the forehead and down to her wrapped fur boots, he pushed the cold away inch by inch in waves of as gentle a heat as he could muster, the tendons in his fingers aching from the tension of fine control and the energy draining from him. His thoughts narrowed to the glowing current from the girl’s body he thought he could sense, spreading like a river when it widens down her limbs in a warm flow of heat.

The boat bumped into the jetty with enough force to throw him against the side and jarred his concentration into scattered embers as the girl was lifted out of the boat and carried away by a team of healers and who could only be her parents. Zuko waited until his balance felt ready for dry land, or as dry as it could be in the south pole, and stepped onto the dock in a daze.

A hand across his back and Katara’s face swam into view in front of him, smiling even as she steadied him.

“Takes a lot out of you, huh? I’ve been there,” she said, pulling his arm across her shoulders and leading him back towards the tent they had been staying in. “How does it feel to steal my moves?”

“You can have them back, they don’t fit me very well,” he muttered, eyes straining to stay open against the fatigue settling into his bones. It had crept up on him, too immersed in what he’d been trying to do to see what he was using up in the effort, and now Katara’s hand across his own felt like the faintest of pressures while a swarm of scorpion bees seemed to prick at his numb skin.

She’d helped him like this once before, the night he’d fallen to Azula for the last time and had risen from there to Firelord. It had been thanks to her that he still breathed the sooty air of a burning city and saw his sister’s descent into crazed anger. He’d thought he knew what effect his choice to join the Avatar had had, but he’d been wrong, been blind to what they taught him, to what they changed in him, to what they made him see more clearly. And it happened more times than just what he can clearly remember, it happened during the travels on Abba, during silly antics and the scrapes that they got into, in the little moments and the hidden ones. And Uncle would have been proud.

“Maybe once you sleep this off, I can give you a lesson or two on what not to do.”

They stepped over the threshold into the room with fire-warm furs inside and his nod was lost to the covers of the bed, Aang’s excited questions failing to penetrate his hearing as he blinked up at the ceiling.

“It’s harder than it looks,” was all he managed to say before he fell into an exhausted slumber.

[sleepychai-fics]

Lance x Female!Reader - Realise Your Beauty

Request: Anon;  Lance x female reader where the reader has self esteem issues and Lance try’s his hardest to reassure her that she’s beautiful

this also hit me personally so i put a lot of effort and feelings into this

not that you guys should care

hopefully its enough

has some stuff about insecurities and self hate stuff so i’ve decided to put a keep reading tab for those sensitive people not that anything is wrong with you everyone deserves love and you can fight me if you think otherwise

Tag List:

@fanderrawr @thecinnabitch @dontcallmecedge

Want to be Tagged?

The dark abyss, clouded with never ending stars and non-avoidable asteroids. Planets overcome with fear of the known danger that claws at their atmosphere. Cries for help never ceasing for a moment. Ships, big and small, crashing and fighting against one another, the big ships remaining victorious and destroying the lives of others willingly.

To most, it’s the universe. But to me, it’s my mind.

That’s how I look at the universe, how I look at myself, a constant array of destruction and battles. It’s how I relate to the universe. It’s why I find myself staring at the large glass display located on the bridge.

The cold air of the castle has little effect on me, even though I am very loosely dressed, my thin night clothes being my only warmth.

The universe exhibits its undisturbed solar system we currently orbit in, freed from the chaos only days before.

That’s another similarity with me and the universe. It can be calm and quiet, with no troubling intrusions. But the next minute it can be complete chaos. A riot of struggle against the control of the abyss.

Take the past 48 hours for example; we were in the midst of a violent battle, and I was there, ready to fight against the attackers. My mind was clear of all disturbances. And now, as the universe resides in its peace, my mind is in a state of conflict.

It’s funny how life works out that way.  You can remain completely calm and focused when chaos ensues around you, yet when you’re consumed in peace, your mind is a shitstorm.

I close my eyes, taking a long, slow breath in before exhaling. I tuck my knees up to my chest, hooking my arms under them and propping my head on top. I open my eyes and resume my silent watch, lazily gazing over the various planets and stars.

Nothing can make me forget myself like the universe can. When I loose myself in the sight, I often find myself imagining the true freedom the universe contains, imagining what it’d be like to float freely within the universes, to not have to care or worry about anything. I almost forget that I’m human, and not the stardust that roams the universe.

But the universe can’t solve everything. No matter how much I loose myself in it, it does nothing compared to what human comfort does. And there’s only one person I know that can comfort me through mayhem.

“There you are. I knew I’d find you in here.”

Speak of the devil.

Lance sits down beside me, a blanket neatly folded in his lap. He’s dressed in his warm pyjamas, his night gown wrapping loosely around him. I look over to him and smile. My smile is small and holds little sincerity but lots of effort. I hardly ever let my emotions show, often covering them up with a happy façade, and it always works.

But of course he knows that. He knows better than to be fooled by my façade.

“Are you okay?

That question never affects my façade when it’s coming from others, but when it’s Lance asking the question, the façade always cracks.

I look away from him and drift my attention back to the universal view.

I feel a small wave of warmth as Lance places a hand on my bare arm.

“Holy shit you’re freezing!” Lance exclaims in surprise.

Lance drags my over to him, placing the blanket beside me and pulling me towards his lap. I comply by throwing my legs over his lap and wrapping my arms around his waist, nuzzling into his chest.

“You’re really warm.” I mutter as Lance unfolds the blankets and lays it over me before wrapping his own arms over me, completely cocooning me in his warmth.

“Warm? I thought I was hot!” Lance says with a teasing tone.

I scoff. “You are.” I reply with a hint of amusement.

Lance chuckles fondly before silencing himself.

“No seriously though, are you okay?”

This is one thing I love about Lance, whenever it comes to talking about my personal care or anything like that, he refuses to drop the subject until he is satisfied I’m content and happy.

I sigh through my nose and tighten my grip around his waist. “I don’t know anymore.” I reply in a dull manner.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

The silence that overcomes the room isn’t comfortable but it’s not tense nor is it awkward. It’s…respected?

“I just…don’t feel like I belong here.”

I can practically hear Lance’s eyebrows twitch in confusion. “What do you mean?”

I lift my head out of Lance’s chest looking at him with a firm seriousness etched on my face. As expected, he looks at me with concern and slight worry.

“Lance, thing about it. You, Shiro, Keith, Hunk and Pidge are all paladins of Voltron. You play a vital role in the universe. Allura is the princess and practically has her whole life force connected to this castle. And Coran is the engineer and whatnot. Everyone on this ship has some sort of role in the universe. But what part do I play? The only reason I’m here is because you had managed to drag me onto a rooftop. Even when I try to help you guys, I always end up screwing up. Take today for example; I nearly jeopardised the whole mission! If it wasn’t for Allura and Coran, you wouldn’t even be here.”

Lance’s thumb slides across my cheek, wiping at the tears slipping from my eyes. “Hey, that’s not true-“

I cut him off as I continue my vent. “That’s not even mentioning how I feel. What part do I play here? None. The team doesn’t even need me. I don’t deserve to be here.”

“Don’t say that-“

“I don’t feel like I’m worthy enough to be here. Half the time I question whether I’m even acknowledged by anyone.”

“Now you know that’s not-“

“I mean, look at me! I’m fat, I’m ugly, I’m dumb. I don’t know if I deserve to be here. I don’t know if I even deserve to live-“

Lance surges forward, lips colliding with enough force to push me to the ground, eyes closing on impact.

The blanket falls off me and lays underneath me. Lance’s nightgown drapes over his body and manages to reach the floor. His body presses against mine as I lay there, sandwiched in between the comfort and warmth.

His lip mould with mine, passion clearly prominent within the kiss. One of his hands tangles itself within my hair, gripping it and pushing me further into the kiss. The other one gently loops its way around my waist, pulling me up and pushing me flush against him. I mindlessly and reluctantly snake mine around his shoulders.

I feel tears drip down the side of my face, too lazy and tired to fight against them. I feel small drops splatter my cheeks, pooling together before finding a path down to my ears.

Lance gently nips my bottom lip before pulling away, letting my head rest on his hand. His other arm copies the movement and allows my back to lay against it. He seems to rest above me, the space between our stomachs never changing.

I open my eyes and look up at him to see small droplets pooling at the bottom of his eyes. It doesn’t take long for them to fall to my cheeks.

Lance makes quick action to remove his hand from my hair and wipe away the tears splattered and dribbling down my face.

I do the same, cupping his cheeks and wiping my thumb under his eyes.

Lances looks at me with unidentified sorrow and pain, almost like he regrets something. Maybe he regrets m-

“Don’t you ever say that, or even think about that ever again!” Lance chokes out a sob and looks away. He brings his arm up to his face and furiously wipes his eyes with his sleeve.

I stare at him in bewilderment, tears reforming at the brim of my eyes. I watch him as he leans down to me, resting his forehead on mine.

His nose presses against mine, almost nuzzling it with small motions. He opens his eyes and I can see the intense struggle in them as tears begins to shine their way through.

“(Y/n). You are so beautiful and amazing. Why can’t you see that?” I can hear the strain in his voice as his throat tightens.

“Lance, I-“

“No! Please just, let me talk.”

I stare up at him as the tears begin to take form.

Lance sighs and hastily wipes away his tears before leaning down and planting a soft kiss on my nose. He looks at me as he parts away, only moving away a couple centimetres.

“(Y/n), you are so important to me. It hurts to hear you hate yourself. I hate seeing you lonely because I know what kind of thoughts go through your head, and I hate how I know.”

My eyes water at his words, heart beating painfully at the thought. Lance gently cups my face and wipes away at my eyes.

“You have every right to belong here, with me. And maybe the team doesn’t need you but I certainly do. I can’t live without you, you’re worth everything to me.”

Lance leans down and kisses away at my eyes, kissing away the tears that had formed within seconds. Once he finishes, he lays his head on mine, noses squished against each other.

“You don’t need to change anything about yourself. If you feel overweight, which is the complete opposite of what you are, you and me can work out together. If anything, you are going to get abs.”

“That won’t ha-“

“That will happen.” Lance immediately cuts me off and glares at me sternly. “Look at Hunk. He’s technically on the overweight side but he’s strong as fuck! Even stronger than me! He’s got yellow who is the second biggest but the strongest lion of Voltron. Plus, his bayard is a huge gun.”

I smile a little at his statement and stare into his blue eyes. Lance smiles back brightly, placing a quick peck on my lips.

“And (Y/n). You are so smart. The amount of times you’ve guided me through missions is ridiculous. You help me understand where I need to go and what I need to do. You’re smarter than me.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? What if it’s true?”

I feel my heart jump in panic at his words. “It’s not true.”

“Neither is anything you’ve just told me.” He replies.

I gasp as I realise what he just did.

“You hated how I put myself down right?” There’s no hesitation in my nod. “That’s how I feel every time you put yourself down.”

I exhale and nuzzle him with my nose. “I’m sorry Lance.”

“Don’t say sorry. Everybody has their moments, some more than others. It’s about what you and others around you do to help you. No one can fight their battles alone. Remember that.” Lance brushes away my tears and briefly presses his lips to mine.

I kiss back immediately, matching his slow and passionate rate.

“Now, let’s end this on a happy note.” Lance smiles at me, lifting his head away and sliding off of me, using his grip on me to roll me over towards him as he lays on his side.

I place a hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat slightly against my fingertips.

“Name one happy thing about yourself. It can be small but I just want to know one thing you are happy about.”

I look away in thought, running through my self-description and trying to find one thing I’m happy about. Then it hits me.

I lock eyes with Lance, his eyes sparkle with hope and happiness.

I smile brightly. “I’m happy that I love you.”

Lance returns the smile and kisses me. My smile remains within the kiss, enjoying the warmth and comfort he brings.

He rolls over onto his back, sliding his hand from my back to my upper thighs, attempting to drag them over.

I oblige by swinging my legs over and laying them across his lap.

We pull apart from each other with a satisfying ‘click’.

Lance looks at me with his signature grin before sitting up from the ground. I go to move away from him but instead he slides a hand around my back pulling me closer to him.

Lance grunts as he tucks his knees in against me.

“Let’s go!”

He stands up within seconds, securing me in his arms in bridal style.

I squeal and instinctively wrap my arms around his neck.

“Where are we going?!” I ask as Lance begins to walk towards the door.

“To get a midnight snack. Because I know you haven’t eaten anything since lunch” Lance looks at me with a knowing smirk.

“Try breakfast.” I mumble.

Lance stops before the door. He looks at me with unamused shock.

“Forget the snack, we’re having a feast!” He declares before striding down the hallway with me huddled closely to his chest.

Like I said before, there’s no one person I know that has the ability to wash away my own thoughts and provide me with the comfort I need and love.

[sanomo-blog]

Blue Skies

Synopsis: Sometimes even the bad days can have good moments. Contains Pearlmethyst and Lapidot.

Also available on:

FF.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12894559/1/Blue-Skies

Archive of our own: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14234547

With gentle ease she draws the tip down the center of the fingernail, her patient stroke leaving behind a streak of carnelian. The brush fans out, yet still missed the edges. Pearl goes back to finish. Eyebrows knitting in concentration, to far enwrapped in what was supposed to be an enjoyable activity. The hand over top of her palm giggles when her fingers curl, stroking the underside of a pudgy wrist. That laugh is free spirited, kind, loving, tender, and so much full of love. Enough to disperse some of the storm clouds.

Still, the feelings are there, like a perpetual sensation of dropping from a great height playing on loop in her gem. Pearl takes a moment to rub the big jewel in her forehead. Frustration built towards a flat sigh. It should be easy to just-put it all away. To hide all these thoughts that want to clutter the room of her mind. If only it could be so easy to be rid of this, but why wasn't it?

Pearl painted another nail while taking the time to consider that youthful face. It was hard to tell who he had inherited those features from. They were dark, those eyes, but she likened the feeling they conveyed to that of a very friendly sheep. Especially with such springy hair. Not that she was inferring Steven was an animal of some kind. Even if his table manners were a little...poor. Especially when those cookie cats are involved.

With the final touches Pearl makes sure the cap is screwed tightly before she takes the Childs hand and brings it close for scrutiny.

"How do they look?" Steven asks, a bubbly happiness in his words.

"Yo Stevey you looking hot." A comment thrown from a small pair of legs sticking out from behind Pearls tall, yet skinny frame. White boots unable to touch the ground even when draped over the side of the couch. Purple tinted hair consumes her face when she sits up. Stubby hands part the heavy curtain reveals a wide grin.

"Aw shucks Amethyst." The boy blushes, even bats the air to shoo away the compliment.

There is a wink given somewhere in all that hair.

The small glass bottle rattles when it is placed on the coffee table, caused by the unsteadying hand which places it. Pearl grabs for it with the other, clenching the tiny glass bottle between both to keep it from falling, from-shattering. An ungodly familiar sound pervades her ears and shakes her spine.

Steven is on his knees, "Pearl?" scared to scoot ever closer. Afraid he might cause her more undue pain keeps him away. Knowing it was best to let a more experienced gem take control of the situation.

That hand is her lighthouse during choppy seas, those purple fingers stroke against her skin as they hold her; crawl slowly towards the end of her arm, "Gentle." Amethyst whispers, a rarity for such a usually loud gem. With encouragement, Pearl lets go, and Amethyst makes sure Pearls hands are returned to her lap. "Remember to breath, P" Amethyst demonstrates by swallowing a slab of air. Expanding that thickset body of hers.

Pearl copies, although, it is a struggle not to cough on the unseen smoke; but a frantic blink washes the images away. She is back in the house. A comforting hand having cheekily snuck itself round her waist. Steven, with those deep black eyes which she still cannot discern whether they were from his mother, or father.

Steven makes sure not to get the same bottle, that one is left where it was placed. "Can I do your nails?" So caring, and unfortunate, that he sounds so strained that it makes Pearl feel ashamed for her little outburst. I've been a mess this whole week.

She's tried many times to retrace her steps.

To out her finger on the cause, but cannot find the trigger, this time.

His hands worry. Leaving un-dried nail polish on his palms.

Rather than give need for worry Pearl gingerly outstretches herself.

Steven is hesitant. The fear is a rusty nail pinned between his joints.

Pearl makes the move. Gracious that nothing pops into her head to make her arm to stiffen in freight. In fact, it is quite slack, too slack, a dead fish almost. Fingers tickle the spot right above her sash.

The cap is unscrewed and Steven begins to paint her nails.

A grumble makes its way down to her ears. Remarkable how she could hear anything with such dense hair; so big and square.

"Hey! Keep it steady." Came an angry shout.

A pair of sunglasses which could reflect either the intensity of the sun, or the gentleness of the ocean catch a stray band of sunlight as they are adjusted. Yet all the tall gem can see is a pair of tiny legs straddling the sizable wooden beam she is holding. There comes no apology, or better yet she makes no effort to acknowledge one. It is there in the way she straightens, the way she puts her other hand back upon the wood.

Those small feet swing upon the beam, toes fidgeting inside the thin material. An adorable sight for those bellow, an inconvenience to the one above. Her reach having diminished due to...a series of unfortunate miscommunications-is what Peridot was now calling them. Between her and her new (as Steven put it into earth terms) family. The rough beam prickles her behind as she slides across to get what she needs. Things were much more of a struggle without her limb-enhancers. Hmm, yet maybe that wasn't the best way to put it. As Peridot felt a better sense of accomplishment doing things in this more primitive fashion. As she puts the drill in her lap and slides the massive metal bracket into place over the damage. Her fingers prod the large crack in the wooden beam. They feel the roughened sharp splits.

"Garnet…"

"A little fusion fun. That's all, Peridot." Such a calm voice. So serene.

A face swings over the side of the beam. Lips are curled, hair extruded into the sharp point of a diamond, "I really wish you wouldn't cut me off."

"Sorry, can't help but see it coming." A chuckle.

"Yes well," Peridot swings her head back up to look at the crack and position the bracket into the optimal position so that it could support the brunt of the strain without allowing anymore damage to be done physically to the beam, "if you would elaborate more I might be able to come up with a better solution. Furthermore, do you think it wise to be doing combat training within Stevens living quarters?"

Although she was bellow Garnet was sure that Peridot had her hands on her hips. "It was all in good fun." She explained, as if the sparser the details gave more clarity to everything.

As if the word fun was a complex enough term to explain- everything. Such round about ways of what she thought of as the gem trying to get out of elaborating upon her actions. Sure, when you have an on-call repairman. Yeah sure, why don't we just have Peridot come and fix this, or the broken microwave, or…everything.

"You know we don't think that way about you."

Peridot growled, unsure why she should feel defensive. "I said nothing."

"I didn't ask this time." Such vagueness was…aggravating.

Peridot heard a chuckle which dwelled deep in that large chest.

"You infuriate me,"

"I know."

"Yes, well, just making sure that we're clear." Peridot began to drill pilot holes through the ones in the plate.

The whirring twisted the feelings of those occupying the room, though not visibly in Garnets case. Limbs locked. Her lips nonplussed as the tip of her tongue licked the backs of teeth hidden within. This would be fine. Pearl-would be fine. Their work wouldn't add to her current unfortunate cloudy spell.

Shavings fell as dying butterflies and brush the super thin material of her form. Although Garnet enjoyed any feeling that touched her senses; the wood shavings however, weren't at the top of that list. Not like air. Oh, how she loved the way air worked its magic. The most marvelous invisible presence on this planet. Intangible, add unpredictable too; you can't predict what something will do if you can't actually see it now can you?

Some wood shavings fell into Garnets afro. She was unaware of this. Charmed with thoughts of forces even she couldn't predict. This planet always amazes her. New constants continuously popping up on this beautiful blue ball. New friends for Steven, and new gems for them. Her shades reflect the small dangling leg as her lips curl.

Those feet vanished, taking an unsafe stance as the smaller gem put her full weight on the drill with its tiny motor coughing due to heavily incurred abuse.

Yet with such a deep and commanding voice, it easily boomed over the noise of the drill. "Peridot!" This had been a mistake. One rather so unfortunate, yet unavoidable, as far as Garnet could 'see'.

For having gotten the other gems attention also drew painful memories. Of times best forgotten. Those times that were already forgiven. However, it was hard letting go of the past.

The drill died, and Garnet heard Peridots croaky voice, "What?"

"Be careful. You might slip." Even though she was sure the gem was tough, could take a beating well above that of a normal fall. Still, Garnet didn't like to see her friends hurt. The outcome of which would have been far worse if it had been allowed to happen. Not here. Not for 'their' group. But later, when Peridot went home a little grumpier than average because of a broken drill, and-without asking for that bit of advice.

Garnet felt the gentle coax in her mind, the cool whisper when sapphire was trying to let her know something. A way of avoiding a worse outcome. Garnet took one hand from the beam to adjust her sunglasses. Her tick, or nod as a thank you to the seer in her head.

Those shoulders had gone locked. Hand rigid, the nail polish still wet and glistening. Pearls eyes were wide as a deer caught in headlights. Not frightful (at least on the surface), that she was able to keep well hidden from Steven and Amethyst. The two of which looked as if they were diving for fish without masks. In this case it was easier to smooth things over, to wash that anxiety from that pale face with a thumbs up, and letting more of a smile show. Garnet even showed a little teeth to stack the future better in Pearl's favor. At least that's what the whisper thought best. A parent who never wanted to steer their child in the wrong direction.

A slow blink allowed a little resemblance of happiness to return to those sky-blue eyes. Or invigorate them at least.

Garnet Waved.

Pearl returned it in kind with shaky fingers as a smile crept out of the sadness.

Peridot spoke, "I'm ready to get down now." It sounded annoyed for needing to seek help. "Here let me hand you the drill and stuff first." The words helpful now, not as nocuous as when they had first meet. Gone were the insults to her constant...being. After so many centuries with the same gems Peridots new dynamic was refreshing. Again, this planet always had a habit of throwing new things their way in the most unexpected forms. Not bad, just somewhat unforeseeable that these new-family members had a far easier and shorter time adjusting to living on Earth. Garnet had thought it would, or should, of taken them at least a little longer. Then again this was the magic in the air, wasn't it? This place, Garnet thought with a rueful smile to herself.

For a few seconds as she dangled her legs over the beam Peridot took it all in as well. What to her was a completely unique trait to the beings populating her new home. Such a waste of time these dwellings were. Yet it wasn't like Peridot was on some sort of schedule now that her ties to homeworld were cut. No more threats from superiors, or having to answer for any mistakes. She could make them all she wanted; sometimes on purpose to get a giggle from her. As Garnet said, she was her own gem, and could decide how she wanted to spend her days here. Whether that was trying to accomplish everything, or...I need to get back to Lapis, Peridot reasoned.

Blue, lots of it, under her feet swelled a ghostly ocean. Reflective of what must be happening back at the barn. The others were oblivious to the imaginary ocean constructed by Peridots own mind; having an enjoyable time with their painting activity. Although Peridot thought of a better method than localizing the canvas to a small part of her body, why not paint everything on her form. Interesting, that may make a unique morp. Rather than herself, an analog might be better suited. Maybe she could get Steven, or better Amethyst, to volunteer.

Peridot gave a shrill scream as she felt something grab her leg.

A calm voice answered for the hand that was giving a sort of tickle to the back of Peridots calf. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you." Garnet said.

Face slight with green, Peridot coughed her embarrassment into a closed fist. "Yes, well…I'm fine."

With her feet back on the ground Peridot breathed a bit of relief. Not because she was afraid of such a meager height. Heck, Lapis has taken her on a short trip before...once. It was Garnet who had become a gem that Peridot felt held as much useful information as Steven about this planets…peculiarities, with hands so large and strong. Even the slight pressure as she took her down forced an intake of air.

"Wow-Thanks." Peridot says as she takes a few steps away to begin to pack her things into an old leather bag scavenged from under a pile of junk in the barn. At first Lapis wanted to use it for meep morp, but with some persuasion Peridot got to keep it. It had become very handy for holding things. Now that she didn't have her limb enhancers the gem was without the convenience of having multiple tools on hand (sort to speak). Really, why make only one tool fulfill only one single purpose. Clearly these 'humans' were still technologically behind gems by...oh how incalculable a number. Their television might be something to call homeworld about but what category would that even fit in? Homeworld doesn't have television. And the theaters were for higher class gems such as that of the Diamonds, or those well beneath them but considered to be of a noteworthy status still.

There was a nod, but no reply. Again, that was sufficient enough from Garnet, at least. Anyone else Peridot would expect a little more words in an exchange, unless it was Lapis too. This was what Steven called courtesy, rather wasteful of one's time to eat it up with fluffy words, but this was earth. Peridot would think that these humans with their short life spans would want to speed things up rather than waste precious time on…formalities. Those were for the diamonds anyway, who did these humans think they were? Diamonds? Peridot openly scoffed into her shoulder as her eyes rolled in her head.

She looped the bag over her shoulder while laying a hand over the flap to keep everything secure inside. Peridot's other hand grabbed the strap for some unconscious moment of security as she stepped forward. The tip of her hair a meter to measure how far her head had to tilt back in order to look up into those patient features. A handshake that was seemingly stronger than the gem nestled in the palm of that hand; even more so it swallowed Peridots like the mouth of a gem beast. Yet a kind smile spread, and Garnet made sure not to linger long with the gesture.

"It's been fun..."

"Yes, it has."

"...but I must be getting back to the barn." Peridots fingers lightly drummed on the weathered leather strap feeling the rough stitching where it had been re-sewn, by who? That was a mystery Peridot really didn't care much about. What was interesting was the gem before her. An enigma with hair 'almost' as extraordinary as her own. The records in homeworlds archives reflected poorly of her character. Which was much richer an experience in person. She had been wrong; which Peridot was wholly willing to admit now of her initial reactions to the fusion. This-Garnet 'could' be intimidating, even dangerous with the way she threw her strength about. However, her behavior when they first met, after the...hiccups, then there was the almost fusion, and the singing (although still silly), and everything else after. What changed it the most had been Steven, or specifically the way Garnet interacts with him, that caring, thoughtful, and often considerate time spent with the half-gem boy. Anywhere else, with anyone else, Steven might not...Peridot understands why homeworld, why the diamonds are so afraid of this planet. It not only inspired the very first rebellion in gem culture, but because of the way this planet affects everything's perception of which comes to breath from its atmosphere. It might be worthwhile to study the composition of the air, maybe it has traits which are different from the other planets they had colonized before. The life was certainly strange from what she had seen compared to other planets in other systems.

Garnet calls Peridot's name, freeing the gem from her thoughts.

Her hmm still carries the contemplative tone that had captured her attention before.

"You should be getting home now"

Referring to her place of dwelling got her feet moving. Peridot ran to the warp pad and was gone in a flash of crystallized light.

Garnet turns at the sound of disappointment.

Steven is frowning. Toes splayed on the coffee table. Showing off the fresh coat of nail polish. There is a slender arm perched across his shoulders.

Pearls nails are a very warm rose color. She minds the polish when her hand closes in comfort around the teens round shoulder. "I'm sure she'll be back again-soon." Irritation is painted better than her nails as she notes the stray marks onto her skin. The back ends of her pixie cut fray even more as she dips her nose to her breast. Pearl looks down the length of her nose at the tips of her flats, crossed, next to Stevens's feet on the coffee table. Under the thin layer of fabric she can make out the nervous twitch of her toes as they cross and un-cross.

The couch cushion sinks low as Garnets heavy frame settles in next to Steven. Her fingers are caught by the boys' brown curls.

"She'll be back." A knowing statement.

"Yeah, things are soooo much more funnier when P-doh comes around." Amethyst's thickset frame is pressed into Pearls side; two ill-fitting puzzle pieces of a much beautiful picture.

Pearl harrumphs.

And Amethyst pounces, "You jelly, P'!"Such a cackle should only come from a cartoon hyena, not-a physical being who was much older; very much older.

"A pearl such as myself, jealous? Of a Peridot," Pearl harrumphs, "Whatever you two get up to is hardly anything to be worried about." Those rose-tinted fingernails flash out in front of her. They curve and dance side to side as they descend lower and lower like a leaf before falling on a swollen purple knee. For a moment Amethyst looks into Pearls eyes, can see them clearing. All the things the gem had been fretting over pushed to the side in order to express her desire. "That is one thing I do not need to worry about, Amethyst."

Blue sky above, green growth beneath, and a slanted wooden roof in-between.

Such beauty was lost to her. Lips fretting, as fingers much the same blue color as the ocean wrestled nervously, maybe even angrily, with each other. No sort of dominant play going on here. Simply a means to whittle away the time and her feelings as they needle her mind gratuitously.

Fear of the past, of the present, and of an uncertain future. Well, maybe Lapis Lazuli knew the kind of future she wanted, yet felt it might have been easier to extinguish a star. A pipe dream, was all she made it out to be. As if a gem such as her could ever have anything resembling happiness graced upon her. As if she deserved to be happy. These thoughts spoke in venomous whispers with sharp fangs that bit her mind with lethality. They inflicted scars. Opened the wounds that were freshest first, before going for the older ones.

Steven was wrong, I'm a horrible person for what I did to all those other planets, what I could have done to the earth if I hadn't been poofed. That mirror had been my punishment. Those thousands of years hadn't been enough. The sentence should have been longer. He had no right letting me free.

As the thoughts formed, her eyes turned to mirrors. Lapis was unaware the pool of water in front of the barn slowly began to drip into the sky.

"Lapis? Are you up there?" Said a loud scratchy voice.

Water came back to the earth. Some made it into the pool, while the rest soaked into the dirt.

Lapis crawls to the edge of the roof. That green gem in the middle of Peridots forehead sparkled with childish exuberance. Reflected in those eyes as well.

"Wait one moment! I'll be up." The gem calls.

Those slight arms wrapped themselves around her knees. Lapis really wasn't in the mood for company. A grumble helped her chew her already raw lip.

Wood shingles creak and flex with a need for replacement. "Hey." Peridot greets, as she struggles to keep her bearings with the weight of the satchel.

A grim face with blackened eyes and a lethargic hand that paws the air. "Hey." Lapis returns with much less energy. She struggles to keep her hand from simply going limp as she sets it back in her lap.

"I see you are-still on the roof." Peridot points out; the exact same spot she had left her when she had been summoned to Steven's home in fact.

Lapis snorts, however could she move? Her legs felt like rocks rather than the pure weightlessness of light.

"I make a cool lawn ornament, huh." As Steven had informed them of the proper earth term for all the meep morps which occupied the front of the barn. Peridot thought them more like sentries. Except-you know-without the whole being able to protect them thing, which was a project termed: in the works.

Lapis had a feeling this had been more for her benefit, to help set her at ease if they were to be thought of as such. Maybe it was to put them both at ease really? As with any unknown noise, or weather phenomenon, insistently evoked thoughts of a threat to their safety. And Peridot never said it aloud, but she probably would have labeled it something to do with homeworld if not for the tight hold over her lips.

The strain of the weight could be heard through the painful stretching of the leather straps as the bag was set down so that Peridot might take a seat. Two and a half hand lengths between them. That always seemed to be the length lapis measured in her head. A reasonable distance. A comfortable one? A safety zone so as not to invade another's bubble. Except, no one was truly safe at any distance so long as there was even a bit of moisture in the air. She should be afraid like everyone else, Lapis reasoned, except-this was Peridot. Her emotions and intents were as visible as her gem. To argue that was a waist of energy. Especially when Lapis felt she had so little at the moment.

Eyes as green as her gem, while being just as sharp, noted the suns lazy stroll across the sky, now high over their heads. Shriveling their shadows close to their forms for warmth (or comfort?).

Their shoulders meet awkwardly; Lapis being much taller found her tricep stabbed by Peridots. Those two and a half lengths were now zero. The semi-wet smell of stagnant water mixed with and washed out Peridots oily metallic one.

Peridot went stiff as stone.

A cause for alarm? Had Lapis finally done it? They weren't really like the other two. Who never seem to keep their hands off one another. At least from what Lapis saw of the gems that made up Garnet.

There was that one time-after the boat trip with Steven…she was pushing too much. Of course she was. Learn to read the mood, Lapis chastised her own ineptitude.

From the shingles around them, to half her body, was suddenly, forcefully, bathed in a faint green glow.

Peridot had her hands over her gem in an instant trying to stifle the glow. "Sorry." She apologized. Her lip set in a deep frown, "I'm still having trouble with my gem."

Such a uniquely Peridot way of putting it. Trouble? 'Really?' was what Lapis wanted to say, instead she snorts loud enough to disturb the birds in the tree's behind the barn. Would one call that kind of reaction something to be trouble by? It was flattery at its worst. Wasted on someone as undeserving as herself.

Though Lapis found it a struggle the expenditure of energy was well worth it. Taking those tiny hands off that glowing gem to stare into the eye of emotion; sort to speak. Or more frankly, the heart. That's what their gems were right? Their...hearts? Well, Peridots was a dazzling network, layers of crystalline anatomy. As intricate as her personality, while not so deep or secretive.

Lapis had never seen her gem, but she was sure there would be parts that were hidden, dark, sinister even, under its blue glow.

She said nothing more yet gave a smile which came off rather strained looking to Peridot. It caused the gem some grief. To know that her...that Lapis was experiencing such an unfortunate distress.

"Would you like to watch Camp pinning hearts?"

"No." Tone flat while more of her weight began to rest upon the other.

"How about we make some meep morp?" Peridot proposed.

"No."

"How about you help me feed the fish."

"No."

Fingertips nervously tap against one another, "Is there anything you want to do?"

Again, Lapis answered with that frank two letter reply, however her actions next caused some confusion for Peridot. The steady glow became a thumping pulse, intense and frantic, the green light was beating almost such to that of a heart trying to pump all its vital blood out.

Those blue hairs tickle of a shoulder, even with such thin wears in the way of Peridot's sensory receptors. What humans called skin. Peridot assumed it could be called the same thing for gems even if that wasn't a completely accurate statement.

Lapis closed her eyes. The thoughts had gone slightly quiet; still there, but had at least shut up a little bit so she could think. Comfy, surprisingly considering how small Peridot was. Bony too.

She turns her head till the side of her nose can touch a swollen cheek. Instantly a shiver courses through those small thighs. Oddly enough this too was pleasant, but it touched a feeling inside that caused her some regret. She did not want to dominate Peridot. Not like how things had gone with Jasper. She can see it so clear. When they were fused, when they had been that thing. The orange flesh shivering. How Jaspers-the veins in that thick neck bulged as she struggled; to break free of the mental hold she had been trapped in. That Lapis had trapped her in. Had taken such a proud gem and broken her. This was what lapis did. She broke things. Planets, and gems alike. It made no difference to a Lazuli

We are horrible, aren't we?

Allowing a little selfishness Lapis drags a finger down Peridots leg. The response thrilled her horribly so.

Peridot might as well of been sending a distress beacon out of her noggin.

Such jubilance made Lapis sick to her gem. Especially, when it was made for her. She didn't deserve any of this. Steven, the barn-Peridot. Her frustrations bubbled. Lapis twisted away; undeserving. Hands finding her eyes. A comfort taken in the pain she caused herself by pressing hard enough to see stars. Such lonely stars they were.

Frustration boiled into anger, "why do you put up with me?"

Confusion settled like a misbehaving insect, "I don't get the question? I've never had a problem with you Lapis. If you remember, it was you who had the problem with me. But I thought-you-we were passed that now. I mean we've been getting along fine? Haven't we? Did I do something? I told you that if you had a problem that you could tell me and I would stop immediately."

As Peridot shifts the blame onto herself it only heated the others emotions more, "No! It's not your fault. Stop-stop putting all the blame on yourself Peridot. I'm at fault too. I can be the bad guy too."

Those eyes swirled with blue as Lapis opened them to look; to take in everything as she had been trained to do in the mirror. Green cheeks, green eyes, less green hair though. Small, and oh so vulnerable right now; always really. Lapis' fingers lace over her chest to be held there for good measure. Waves of thoughts swept over her mind. The swell gained fervor once more.

"But you aren't that bad a 'roommate'" Peridot quoted Steven's term for their living arrangements; was it also supposed to be humorous. What with that eerie not so hidden snicker?

Peridots lashes flutter; she takes a gulp of air as she allows one of her hands to wonder close to a blue cheek. Hovering, but never touching. Keeping a boundary between them. Safety, Peridot assumed to be for the others benefit.

Nostrils flare as they eject air. Lapis grabs the green hand not so kindly and cups it too her cheek. "If you're going to comfort me at least do it properly." The words angry, yet her eyes closed when skin met skin.

A strangled hiss makes Peridot squeamish.

"Your bad at this."

"I'm trying." Peridot grumbles. Gem pulsing, albeit at a much calmer pace. Gentle, steady, the green, although bright, was more becoming now. At least in Peridots case, and this only being from only Lapis' point of view.

Things take a turn with lapis' next words, "You should hate me."

"I don't."

"I was the reason you got stranded here."

Peridots fingers tap a little hard on Lapis' cheek, "No." Air fills that small chest. Peridot observes the movement of the trees; proof of some unforeseen factor. "My mission was to come to earth and check on the cluster. It was-inevitable I'd meet the crystal gems at some point. Then the rest..." She took a moment to go over everything in her head. Carrying the variables and thinking of all the outcomes. Unlike Garnet, she didn't have future vision. But there was only one clear path. Always, only one clear path, "the rest would follow much the same. If not exactly as it happened. I could never beat them, and I probably would have always wound up joining them...may I?" Such confidence through-out the entirety of her rambling on the inevitableness of fate, yet coming to those two words her voice shrank to a whisper.

Lapis sees that the hand is hovering near the tuft of hair which frames the side of her face. Tiny fingers wiggle in anticipation.

"Knock yourself out." She shrugs and the feeling of anticipation is...not something she likes to think about. Far to pleasant.

The glee cannot hide. It shows in Peridots eyes and the curve of her lips. She is quick to lay her touch upon each of them. However awkwardly so they were positioned on the roof.

"Ouch." Lapis frowns.

"Sorry." Peridot says with painted cheeks.

There was a strange heaviness to the hair. Peridot would have thought the opposite, but no. Lapis' hair was sort of like a lead weight in her fingers. It didn't struggle to flow through them, however, it fell out of her hand with an eerie deadness. Curiosity caused a need for a closer inspection; again, Lapis was not so keen as to have her form mishandled.

"I'm not going to let you touch me if you're going to abuse the goods." How the grin swallowed the others self-confidence so easily. Lapis had turned Peridot into a stuttering, apologetic mess. "Chill." Words Lapis regretted. Delicate went hand in hand with innocent; Lapis did not consider herself such.

Things ran a little smoother thereafter. Peridot enjoying her 'studies' of the mysterious properties of her roommate's hair. While Lapis twiddled her thumbs and bit the inside of her cheek nervously; her eyes focused on the horizon before them.

She felt the pull of her emotions; the desire to give into them. To caste everything to the side. To ... "Sometimes I wish I could leave again." Stern, focused, eyes and chin tilted upward so she could be face to face with Peridot.

Apparently, it was something worth scoffing at, "Why would you want to do that? It's not like there's anything out there for you." She said, touching a nerve she didn't consciously mean to touch so foolishly.

"Is there anything here for me either?" Suddenly closing the distance between them. Her eyes are challenging. They make Peridot shy away from their scrutiny.

"We-I-I thought that-um this was our home away from homeworld? We are free-from them, and their rules. We can be whoever we want." Peridot wanted to add a 'with' to that whoever, but that be too much to say; currently.

A blue hand grabs hers, "We can never be free from Homeworld Peridot. They'll come for me, for you, for Steven, and the gems." Somber truths; things which should not be spoken aloud because somehow that would suspend the magic which had taken over their little slice of earth.

Yet always and ever defiant Peridot says with as much a stern face as she could, "I won't let them take you, ever."

Lapis inches close till her lips can brush a quivering green cheek, "You're just a Peridot." The words uttered in such a manner that lapis hops will still trigger some of the indoctrination ingrained in the others psyche. That homeworld had instilled in all of them. Know. Your. Place.

"So what!" Peridot brimmed with anger. She turned the tides by reversing the hold, while adding her other hand to make sure Lapis couldn't get away. "I'm no ordinary Peridot anymore! I've got powers!"

Seeing such bravado from someone so pint sized-how those dimples deepened and those green cheeks expanded in anger. Lapis found her mood dispelling. She laughs, and cries, and is thankful that her world shrinks to just the two of them and the roof they are sitting on.

Homeworld is forgotten. Jasper...is forgotten. Lapis can forget all of it for one blessed moment.

"Thank you, Peridot."

"Wow, thank you too, Lapis. Although I'm not quite entirely sure for what."

Lapis rubs her thumbs along Peridots cheek, her smile cheeky, "Guess it's a mystery you'll never know the answer too huh?"

"That isn't fair! You can't know something that I don't."

"Oh," a hot breath turns green flesh warmer, "well I guess you'll just have to get comfortable. That's going to happen a lot in our home away from homeworld."

Peridot's giggle isn't so sweet, but much more maniacal instead, "I will discover all the secrets of this planet!" The statement was meant as a challenge unto herself; so why did Lapis derive so much pleasure from the others professed forthcoming victory?

Hair fluffed, cheeks bloated with mirth; that blue hand curled under her chin. Laughter tumbled like grass clippings caught in a gust. She was…Lapis was…Peridot knew what kind of gem she was, classification, facet, and cut-but beyond all that was still being written, all the data was still being logged before she might draw her conclusion. Who was Lapis Lazuli?

Infuriatingly true, I do still have a few mysteries left; to join in on the fun Peridot let her lips widen.

"Heh, still needs some work. You look like a feral gem." This got another laugh that began and ended with a series of snorts. After which silence took them, and took them pleasantly enough without the need for kicking or screaming. What else to do but to settle in.

BARK, BARK, BARK.

Orange face alight with happiness, and a little drool. Lush green vine whipping as frantic as her movements. Its stubby paws scratched the side of the barn leaving behind an orange residue.

Lapis and Peridot observe the living vegetable. It's roundish body, and oddly animalistic features; such as limbs, and a mouth. Not something naturally occurring on earth as 'human' scientists might say.

"You think he's hungry?" Peridot asked Lapis, "ARE YOU HUNGRY VEGGIE-HEAD!" The gem shouts below.

The vegetable tilts its head, as if it didn't get the message.

"She's always hungry." Lapis says.

Peridot rubs her nose proudly, "Well, she's a growing girl, of course she would be."

With a laugh as noisy as a song bird, lapis said, "Of course you'd say that." Unable to hide a smile bigger than the hand in front of it. "Well," The gem stands, a signal which makes Peridot do the same. Their difference in height more noticeable now. "let's feed her then?" Without warning the gem draws in the moisture in the air to her back where it forms a pair of squabbled wings. Lapis then hooks her hands under two armpits and glides them down to the other member of the barn.

That weightless feeling made Peridot's gem flip-flop. Totally different from levitating on a trashcan lid, less solid, more…terrifying if she were being honest.

The greeting that awaited was warm, wet, yet not displeasing. Peridot was affectionate, nurturing. With plenty of good girls mixed between jarring head pats. Which the vegetable responded in kind. Nipping at the gems green fingers. A solid couple of barks too.

However, the 'animal' grew calmer when standing before blue feet. Settling onto, presumably, its backside. Veggie-head tilts itself just so. Mouth slightly open so it could vacuum in the air. Lapis greets with a single stroke from the ridges of what is probably her forehead to the stem in the middle of her back. That was enough for the vegetable. Whom gave a comforting purring sound, instead of a noisy bark. Then, she breaks into a trot around the two of them. A prideful strut, as if saying to the world that these two beings were hers. Her caretakers. Her…parents. Something, that others could put a label on yet the three were at a loss as to how to define their dynamic. Maternal words didn't exist on Homeworld.

They watch her, and she them. Pale green, and pale blue, against dark black, the kind of black which stole the affection of your heart.

Veggie-head's tongue lolled out, a teaser, to get them to bite. To come to her. For she really wanted those pets from the blue one again. So rarely given, yet absolutely amazing. The blue one had the right amount of pressure behind her strokes. While the green one was wild and uneven. Bordering on unwieldy when she was brimming with excitement.

"Bark, bark." Said Veggie-head, rolling onto her back easily enough due to her shape. Yet mindful of the stump lest she get stuck like times before.

"Ooooh, someone's going to need a bath before their meal." Peridot chuckled, humored by the prospect of engaging in earthly chores to show doting and affection. Hands clasped together. The gem's lips spread to each ear. She found the whole bathing concept thrilling. Earth creatures were wholly inefficient in their ability to simply will the dirt away, not like a gem could; since they are made of light and all; which clearly still proves their superiority to this planets species.

Lapis frowns with her words, "Don't expect me to help." Crossing her arms.

"This is a partnership Lapis, you have to do your part."

"Well she never sits still."

"She's just a free spirit like her Aunt Amethyst." As they began to stroll towards the barns wide entrance. Meeting and passing what were several makings from two-very interesting minds. Lumps of metal, bottles in different states of usability or none at all. An umbrella flipped upside down with the upper torso of a scarecrow impaled upon the handle. Its legs posed in a frozen trot a few feet away. Suggesting that they may be pursuing its other half which had-cheated on it with the umbrella? Was that the meaning behind it? Neither were dead set on that connotation just yet; it was still a work in progress.

"What's an-Aunt?" Lapis paused by another Meep Morp. A single ear of corn taped to a lamp post, which then was secured to the ground by a few irregular lengths of rebar snaking their way around it like roots of a tree. The blue gem peeled the corns husk just a hair more to expose the little yellow teeth inside. She then continued their walk without another thought of her morp.

Peridot followed, flaying the air with her fingers as she explained, "It is another one of those human things. Like the Greg-dad. Steven says he's Veggie-head's Uncle. Although this seems to be simply another one of his silly naming games. Like shoes. Really, their just feet coverings. That's more appropriate a description for such an item. Wouldn't you say?"

Lapis nodded her agreement, none of this really interested her but everyone seemed less annoyed if she nodded to whatever they said. Sometimes she would pretend to pick something off her forearm. She didn't feel like it at the moment.

"I told him that Veggie's ours and that I don't get why he's trying to worm his way into our group dynamic; he's got the gems anyway. Let us have our own thing."

Lapis nodded again, although actually in agreement rather than to placate her roommate. The less the crystal gems got involved in their cozy little slice of earth the better. "I don't like Amethyst thinking she has rights to Veggie either."

"She doesn't know how to take care of her own stuff from what I've seen of her room."

"You've been inside the Temple?" Lapis snarled her lip.

Unaware of the others anger, "Once, only in Amethyst's portion of it, though I rather hope Garnet and Pearl keep their spaces much tidier." Peridot says as she steps around a small mishmash of metal piled up. Some were leftover parts from the drill, and others she had scrounged from the barn. They were arranged to look like a face. Sprockets for eyes and a heavy motor chain arranged in a frown. "She says," Peridot gestures with air quotes, "she's got a system. Yeah," Peridot snorts, "a system."

Lapis laugh's much to do at the expense of another.

"Let's just say I don't think I'll be making another visit until she embraces a new form of organization." A snort flares a stubby green nose.

"Good."

"Huh?"

Her blue dress sweeps behind her as Lapis edges around the small man-made pool of water to the right of the barn doors. Lapis takes a seat in a beach chair. Making sure to pull her skirt to proper length so it's just shy of her exposed ankles. She folds her hands over her chest and tucks her chin into the crevice of her clavicle.

"You really aren't going to help me?"

"Nope." The gem nibbles the side of her cheek to seal her lips so the conversation can end appropriately.

With a huff Peridot looks down at her vegetable companion whose all bright eyed with vine tail a swinging.

"Bark. Bark. Bark." Veggie-head rambles. Pawing the ground to freshen the earth so its scent sticks to her nose. Alluring enough that it makes the vegetable roll in it so that she may carry the smell with her.

A small green foot stomps the ground right by the wiggling pumpkin, "Stop rolling around in that mess and get yourself cleaned off or else you will not be getting anything to eat." Peridot points to the pool of water which is still, but not stale, and nearly a matching blue to that of Beach City.

Veggie-head laps at the foot which causes Peridot to recoil. The gem clenches her fists at her waist, yet a puffy pouted lip tries to be intimidating, "No! You are filthy and have to properly maintain your form Veggie. Now-listen to me, and get in the pool. No! Don't show me your belly, I am not interested in that right now…Lapis!"

Eye's mirrored the carefree disposition of the clouds as Lapis now watches their slow crawl. Giving no inclination having heard a word. Her thumbs twiddle one another soothingly.

"Fine! Come here."

"Bark!" The vegetable quickly bounces out of reach.

Peridot lurched, arms forward and pumpkin width apart.

"Come here now." She tries another step. Hesitant, with due reason.

The pumpkin takes another as well, "Bark, bark."

Peridot stabs one of her tiny digits towards the ground, "Sit!" Her voice booms across the hills of the farmland.

Veggie-Head does as she is told; her rump lands on the ground. The pose held for more than four seconds before the vegetable thinks that her owner may enjoy it if she were to roll onto her belly. Though she forgets about the stump this time in her excitement. Now pole vaulting from side to side as she tries to expose herself.

Peridot rubs her temples, mumbles, then reaches down. That orange stomach spasms as tiny fingers hook underneath. Peridot hoists the vegetable into her arms.

"You shouldn't do everything for her." Lapis chastises, her chin still aimed skyward.

Peridot grits her teeth, "Well she won't listen when I talk, so the only way is to show her." Her statement received well from the vegetable in her arms. If, Peridot thought Veggie-head had any ability to understand her. Green fingers skimmed the top of the pumpkins head. Peridot sighed, If only.

A small smile just as the cloud shadowed her view of the blue sky. Just like the ocean, Lapis thought, as both arms twitched in her lap, her knees tighten to stop the involuntary motion. They are here now. Her neck may have been composed of light, but it still hurt to move it so fast.

Blue eyes followed that small green figure, tight body suit, nowhere as fashionable as Lapis thought her own clothes were. Then again everything about the other gem was in the name of being efficient. Lapis snorted, how does that explain the height? Maybe not everything then. Though this was homeworld stuff that Peridot probably could have easily explained to her, not easily, what would be thought to be layman's terms for a gem as knowledgeable as her though.

The two marched (one being carried in this instance) to the edge of the pool. The cloth of her body suit shifted, shallow divots as her shoulders began the wind up which resulted in a splash as water welled up.

Peridots voice boomed again in the open air, "Now paddle around till your clean." She instructed their…roommate? Pet was a word Steven told them was what he would refer to the vegetable-but that didn't sit well in Lapis' mind. Veggie-head was more like how Peridot put it, they'd made their own kind of kindergarten. One that left no holes behind. No reduction in their lands hearty glow. No destruction attributed to Veggie-heads growth at all. The things they had grown on this land invigorated it, not decimated. The pumpkin had been born from the good things of the earth. Plants were a good thing, it meant the land was thriving, that the world was still living, that Steven was right. What homeworld had done could be reversed. It hadn't been too late.

Lapis eased her legs straight. Hands brushing up the sides of her shoulders to instill more comfort to her claims.

The end of the chair sank, "Lapis?" Peridots face was a mixed drink, brows knitted yet lip trying to put on a comforting upturned greeting.

When Lapis speaks, it is low, but confirming, "Yeah." Is all she says along with a nod, and a slight smile. It is enough to assure the other.

There comes barking from the edge of the pool. Their Veggie-head had her paws on the grass.

"Don't forget to wash your stem. I don't want to find ants crawling around it again." Peridots tongue darted out quickly before retreating to allow a loud BLEUGH out after.

There was a bark of acknowledgment before the pumpkin disappeared below the rim of the pool.

Lapis crawls to sit beside Peridot. Shoulders not quite touching. The silence there. Pleasant for one, while creating a nervous energy for the other. Building, and building till a bright flash of green. POP, like a snapper, and Peridot is grumbling about her gems 'unfortunate' malfunction…to Lapis it would be better to call it a betrayal of one's feelings.

Peridot still didn't get it.

The End

[bellatrixobsessed1]

The Fishbone and The Firelily (Part 20)

Azula blinked the remaining visages of sleep from her eyes. Sokka was still deep in slumber, the man had a habit of sleeping in. Not that she blamed him, the frigid air was plenty of reason on its own to stay beneath layers of sheets, furs, and blankets. It had taken much effort for her to get used to the frost of the Southern Water Tribe. All of that time, and she still wasn’t quite acquainted with it. She forced herself to stand, put her hands on her back, and stretched. She supposed that she was as ready as she would be to start the morning. Azula pulled a coat on, no doubt she’d be hearing it from Sokka again, how she wore more layers of clothing than anyone who had ever visited the Water Tribe.  She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. This woman had a sort of gentleness in her golden eyes, a glow that wasn’t there before. In general her features seemed somehow softer in the company of such a tender expression. Perhaps this was due in part to a lesser use of makeup—things were simpler in the Water Tribe, in that regard. The makeup she did use was limited to a soft sweep of eyeliner and a lighter shade of lipstick. Complimenting the lack of makeup, a thin scar running, uncovered, along her cheek. A scar she hadn’t thought too much of in years. Her thoughts of that endeavor had mostly faded into the background coming up only once in a while, in the shape of a dream, during times of stress. She trailed her pointer along the length of the scar. To some degree, Azula didn’t quite recognize herself, especially now that she found herself adorned in Water Tribe garb. Her hair was longer still with strands pulled through beads of many colors and shapes.

She wandered outside where she was met with another flurry. The snowflakes never seemed to stop falling around these parts. They clung to her lashes for seconds before melting away once more. Adjusting to life so far from home, and so outstandingly different had been a task. Learning to walk on the snow and ice was unexpectedly tedious, there had been a few times when she had placed her foot in the wrong spot and landed face first in the snow. On those nights she’d go home shivering and accompanied by a bought of childish laughter from Sokka, who had apparently been getting a kick out of watching her make friends with the ground. The food, to her dismay, was all of the sea variety. Naturally had to overcome her aversion to its taste.  Before long though, she as adapt as anyone else in the villager—if not, very close to it. Even still it had taken the village some time to get used to the presence of a firebender within their walls. Azula was a rather curious thing for them, coupled with being a woman of high birth, she found herself being the subject of many stares. Gradually the number of eyes on her dropped until she was just another woman going about her life; fishing with Sokka, gazing at the curtain of light in the sky when it was present, and on certain nights joining a traditional dance or two. All in all she had grown fond of the place. She had to admit that it was rather laughable, that just as she was getting used to being there, she, Sokka, and Katara would be going back to the Fire Nation. Though she was eager to hear how well Zuko had been taking care of Muzuko in her absence. The child in her hoped that the toad-squirrel was giving him a hard time.

 Deciding that it would be best to start packing, Azula ended her reminisce and re-entered the house. Upon doing so, she was greeted with an odor of seafood and a type of spice that had to have been imported from the Fire Nation. The smell of seafood, as it turned out still made her nauseous—oddly enough more than before.

 Sokka didn’t miss the appalled look scrunching her face, “Don’t you just love the smell of seaweed and squid?” He held his bowl of seaweed stew right under her nose.

 Her lip curled back in disgust, “get that away from me before I throw up.”  She pushed the bowl back towards him.

 “Good morning, to you too.” He laughed.

 “Yes, that was quite a greeting.” She muttered.

 “How’s the weather?”

 “Roasting, absolutely scorching, Sokka.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s the same as it is every day. Cold and snowing.”

 “Yes, but is it a flurry or a sleet, or a blizzard?”

 “Does it matter?” Azula asked, already knowing the answer.

 “To a good tribesman, yes it does!” Sokka declared offering her a bowl of stew with a scent masked more heavily by Fire Nation spice.

 “I don’t know about you all, but I’m stoked!” Katara dropped her already organized suitcase at her feet. “Aang said he would meet us on the boat. And someone still owes me a trip to the royal spa and I’m ready for it.”  Azula had to give the waterbender props, the woman’s memory was just as keen as her own.

 “Yes, I’m quite read for that myself.” Azula agreed as she forced herself to eat the last of her breakfast, it wasn’t quite sitting well with her that morning. “It will be nice to be in the heat again.” Truth be told she had mixed feelings on the matter—going back would surly reawaken just how much she longed to have lightning dancing on her fingertips. In the Water Tribe it was so much easier to forget…to just put it behind her. No other firebenders were around to remind her of what she no longer had. “You should start getting your things together, I wouldn’t like to miss our boat.”

 “Don’t worry, I don’t pack much anyways.” Though that’s what he had told her, the man turned out to be very particular with his belongings. He would question exactly which pair of pants to bring and whether or not he really needed that many pairs of socks.

 “I can’t get all of this to fit.” Sokka huffed as he tried to ram another fold of clothing into the pack.

 “Here, let me.” Azula offered, only to be ignored by the man who was so invested in getting the job done on his own.

 “Just…just give me the suitcase, Sokka.” Azula grumbled, eventually resorting to snatching it from him with an impatient glare.

 Sokka lifted his hands. “Alright, alright. No need to get angry.” And then to Katara he mumbled, “she always gets so moody when she’s nervous.”

 Azula, who was bent over the luggage, came to an abrupt pause and dropped the shirt she was holding. “I’m not nervous!” She snapped. “And I’m not being ‘moody’.” She finished folding the shirt and put it away neatly.

 “You weren’t supposed to hear that.” Sokka gave her a lopsided grin.

 “I’ve heard a lot of things that I wasn’t supposed to.” She shrugged. “Anyways, if you want it all to fit you can’t just toss it in, you have to actually fold it up.”

 “Noted.” Sokka replied.

 “I can’t believe we have to teach you this.” Katara rolled her eyes. “You’re what, thirty now?”

 “Twenty-Nine!” He corrected as if it made things any better. He hunched over to give his suitcase one final run through.

 “Sokka!” Azula huffed. “You already checked your suitcase thrice over. What’s in there that’s important enough to check it so much.”

 “Oh you know, my favorite pair of socks, my best underpants, all of the finer things in life.”

 Azula groaned, “say something like that again and I’m leaving you.”

 He slung an arm around her neck, “and let you miss out on the true joys of our relationship, not a chance.”

 .oOo.

 Sokka dug around in his suit case again. He wrapped his fingers around a velvet blue pouch. He couldn’t imagine that it would go anywhere after zipping his suitcase tight, but it still brought him relief to know for sure that it was still there. Between his fingers he fiddled with the pearl on the end of the band that held the pouch closed.

 “What’s that?” Katara asked.

 “Very important.” Sokka replied. He looked up to see Azula making conversation with Aang. With cautious hands he pulled the pouch open and dumped a necklace into his palm. He turned it over for Katara to see. It was a thing of elegant craft; smooth polished turquoise etched with intricate swirls and bas relief waves. Fixed in the center was a large sapphire and around it looped a series of deep blue onyx.

 “Is that…”

 Sokka nodded. “I just don’t know when or how I’m going to ask her.” 

 .oOo.

 The air ran hot across Azula’s face, welcoming the princess back into her country. More than anything about the Fire Nation, she missed the way the sun scorched and kissed her skin. The bliss of it, displayed itself quite plainly on her face.

 “Oh thank Agni you’re back, this thing is driving me nuts.” Zuko greeted, thrusting the toad-squirrel cage into her arms.

 “He’s doing very well then.” Azula stroked the head of her old companion.

 “Welcome home.”

 “Thank you, Zu-Zu. Be a dear and tell one of the servants to carry my things.”

 “First, tell me what you thought of the Water Tribe.” Zuko requested.

 “Once you get past the cold, it’s a very charming place. Have you ever seen lights dancing in the sky?” She rather enjoyed the phenomenon—it had become one of her favorite things about the south. “The penguins are pretty lovely too, sometimes they sneak into the house.”

 “Well that’s something I haven’t gotten a chance to experience.” Zuko laughed.

 “You should try it some time. They kind of just tower of you until you wake up and notice that they’re there.” She put her hands on her hips. “How have things been in the Fire Nation?”

 “The usual. Mother has me watching Kiyi in between council meetings. I got a…strongly worded letter from the prison.”

 Azula chuckled, “did father have anything worthwhile to say?”

 “Just that I’m letting the Fire Nation go to shit and that aardvark-sloth could do a better job than me. He said that uncle is a uh…never mind. He called our mother worthless as well and he didn’t mention you, which is probably a good thing.”

 “Wonderful to hear.” Azula replied. “At least we have one constant to rely on when everything else is changing.” She fell back to talk to Katara and give Sokka some time to chat with her brother. Sokka had a few things that he was bursting to tell Zuko, including things about his increased hunting abilities, this new sword he had crafted for himself, and some other news that apparently wasn’t for her to know. “So what kind of petals would you like in your bath?”

 “I’m fine with any as long as it comes with a facial mask.” Katara grinned.

 “I enjoy rose and pandalily myself.”

 “I don’t know, I’m more of a lavender kind of guy.” Aang put in. For all of her people skills, she couldn’t tell if he was joking or if he really wanted to join them.

So she replied, “I’ll make sure you get them.”

.oOo.

 From what Sokka gathered, the spa was not quite enough luxury for Azula for one day. He found her that night sitting on the stony ledge of the hot spring, absently kicking her feet at the water below when he approached her. The steam furled and licked her bare skin, rising up aplenty to meet the full moon above. The warm night was made humid by the churning water below. He watched her slip into the spring water. Once chest deep in the water, she closed her eyes and let a relaxed sigh escape her lips. He could tell that she had missed the Fire Nation’s abundant selection of springs. In general, she seemed happy to be home, her fiery mood, efficiently smothered. She tossed a look over her shoulder and patted the water next to her, “join me.”

 Sokka striped down and eased himself into the water. He on the other hand, missed the cold air and had to take getting into smoldering water in strides; first getting his ankles used to the temperature, and then his calves, and then his thighs, and so on. She extended her slender arm out to him. He took hold of her hand and she tugged him towards her, letting the water do most of the work.

 “It’s a nice night.” She commented. “Lots of stars.”

 “I just wish it wasn’t so hot.”

 “Is that right? It wouldn’t be a Fire Nation summer if it wasn’t suffocating hot.” She replied. He had a feeling that she’d have it no other way. She trailed her pointer in circles over his chiseled chest. Her demeanor was lax, emitting an aura of leisure. He allowed his hands to glide from her shoulder blades down to her lower back and then some lower. She dipped her head and kissed his neck. “One day we should go to Ember Island together. You’ll find out what it really means to endure Fire Nation heat. If I had my firebending, I’d be able to show you right now.”

 “You’re still on about that?” He dared to ask.

 “You’re a nonbender, you couldn’t possibly know what it is to have something all your life and then feel it ripped from you.” For a moment he thought he’d effectively pissed her off. But the tempered expression passed in fleeting, giving way to something more somber. “It’s not something you get used to, it’s something you forget about until it comes up again.”

 “You’re right, I don’t.” He agreed softly. With that he was holding her listening to the bubbling and hissing of the spring water. She looked up and followed her stare until he was staring at a sea of space dust and a kaleidoscope of stars. The reflection of them in Azula’s eyes magnified their birth-blessed radiance. She swam out to the center of the spring where the moonrays fell directly over her. The glow the moon put on her skin and the shine it put in her hair seemed so natural—she’d been in the Water Tribe for so long it looked right on her. If it weren’t for the vivid color and slanted shape of her eyes, Sokka realized that the princess could easily pass as a tribeswoman.

 Gradually, she submerged herself completely. When she came back up she remarked. “I lost something very important in the Forgetful Valley.”

 Sokka stepped out of the pool, rummaging through his heap of temporarily discarded clothing. “I like to think that you found something more important to you.” He responded, upon reentering the spring water.

 Azula hummed lightly, “maybe so.”

 He drifted behind her and fastened the betrothal piece around her neck and slipped his arms under hers in a loose embrace. “I’ll let you decide if you want to keep what you’ve found.”

 Azula rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb. “I always keep what I catch.” She smirked.

 It was the answer he was hoping for, delivered in such a fashion that only Azula could have successfully managed. Azula slipped out of his hold and let herself float lazily on her back. For a good while he simply watched her glide. He couldn’t place for how long they remained like so. But in due time he was at her side with on hand touching the scar on her cheek and the other held at her back. The stars reflected enchantingly in the delicately thrashing water.

 .oOo.

 The scar opened up.

At first it was a pinching pain.

And then it was piercing.

And then she was on the floor with a steady stream of blood welling down her cheek and along her neck. The gash grew longer and wider still as she lie on the floor trying to hold it closed. If Azula held on long enough the skin would fuse back together. But the wound just kept splitting open. She wanted nothing more than a moment of peace. As she lay, there came a sudden awareness that there was no purple glow to be seen. On weak arms, she dragged herself to the pool’s edge and peered in. The heart was missing. Yet she could still see perfectly in the dark. She could see her blood drop into water, breaking the solid surface. A few droplets unfurling in smoky clouds turned into many droplets. And then a rain of them until her blood outweighed the water itself.

 She felt it, then. The heart—first in her throat and then in her stomach. Pounding out of sync with the heart in her chest. Had she swallowed the heart? Her own lurched. She put a hand on her belly. It was there, she had definitely consumed the heart, though she had no knowledge of ever doing so.

 In a flicker of images too fast to actually catch, she was in the other cave, on her back, the stingray beneath her and Sokka to the side of her. He gazed reassuringly into her eyes and she into his. The stingray drifted away and she could see an infinite tunnel lined with crystal clusters.

She still couldn’t find hers.

 And in the same merciful that brought her there, she was back on the cave floor in perfect darkness feeling colder than ever. This time she had no clothing, in its place was a horrible sense that she was being watched. Acting without permission of her own, her mouth twisted into a smile. A jagged purple smile. She was paralyzed. Paralyzed and alone with his grin on her face and a distinct beating in her tummy to go with the rapid pounding of her chest. The cave was in her and she could get it out.

 She woke with her hand on placed exactly as it were in the dream. In waking, she could still feel the phantom sensation of the heart pounding beneath her fingers. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. For that moment, she feared that the cave was still in her. She rolled over and pressed herself up against Sokka, a new desire seeping into her soul. A certain and sudden sense of purpose.

 .oOo.

 Azula seemed to be deep in thought when he sat up for himself. She was as close to him as she could possibly get, but her eyes were so far away. His concern was short lived, for the minute she noticed that he was awake, she came back to the present and sat up.

 Without getting up himself, he asked, “what’s wrong?”

 Azula sat with her hands clasped together on her lap, seeming to stare off for some time. “I have to go back there.” She said at last. “To the Forgetful Valley. To the cave.”

 “Why would you want to do that?” He asked.

 “Resolve, I suppose.” She replied, sounding very much like she had something to add. He sat quietly and waited for her to elaborate. “You asked me where I’d like to get married. I’ve considered many places; mother thinks I should take the traditional route and marry in the ceremonial temple. This family hasn’t been very traditional at all lately, so why should I?” She languidly inspected her nails. “I’d like to hold the ceremony near or under the mangrove tree.”

 “Do you really think that, that’s a good idea?” He questioned.

 She drummed perfectly filed and manicured nails upon her chin, processing the inquiry. There was a sense of finality when she simply repeated, “Good idea or not, I need to go back there.”

[vikasgoddubarla]

How To Tell Your Brand's Story?

The heart and soul of the company are human-to-human relations. You work with people at the end of the day–the business fixes challenges eliminates pressure and delivers delightful customer experience. Revenue is a by-product of a strong business model and a positive customer experience. Storytelling is an effective tool for relationship building. This is an age-old concept which unites and engages people. Where you are in the world or how much your company is funded does not matter. Good stories give small businesses big voices. It is therefore important for businesses to take the time to create their own storytelling strategies in full. Marketing and storytelling go together. Only think about it. Only think about it. You need to catch the audience's attention whether you create infographics, writing copies for a Facebook ad or writing an online guide (like this one). Consumers (including themselves) face a constant flood of ads. Marketers also fight for the interest of their clients and prospects. Your company would be buried more often than not with spammy marketing posts. How do you get your brand to stand out? The storytelling. This guide is an inclusive guide which explains why the storytelling should be your priority for your brand and how your company should begin. It, too, is not soft. The storytelling technique is strong and realistic. Do you believe? Let's get to it. Let's just get to it. Related: 12 Best Tools To Use For Your Startup What is Storytelling of a brand? Brand storytelling: The reason why your company has come to be What motivates the team to wake up and work every day How did you make your product? What types of customers esteem your brand and why A straightforward view of the company's employees A relationship-building tool Subtler than you would grasp A definition that emphasizes the whole web presence Everything the whole team requires at the organizational level A look into who you are as a company Direct Avoid telling your story brand in: A long-winded, 5-paragraph essay about your company A blog post Something isolated A split view of the market Just one for the marketing department A PR stunt A viral video A consumer and opportunities identification tool Boring Artsy Brand history does not concern your company, contrary to popular belief. It's about the clients and the interest they get from the product or service. Those that give customers priority are the most strong brand tales. Think of the supporting character of your business. It is a crucial element in your brand strategy. That is significant. This idea is frequently hung up by marketers. You stress the right message and are uncertain about whether the business will be involved in this initiative. Surely you should employ an adviser? Do you want to loop on corporate communications EVP in your company? So what would you be if you were an engineer? You're dead, doesn't that mean? Do not reverse this process. Do not reverse this process. Storytelling is obviously something we do. We don't even know we're doing it more often than not. The problem is that it's hard to write online content. Through translation, tales are lost. The expectations of the people behind our brands will be broken down. So you feel lost— a lack of vocabulary to tell your clients what you do. So why don't your clients tell you your story? Clarity did that. The business provides consultants and specialists with a commonplace to communicate and exchange client advice. A variety of reports from real consumers have been published recently. Take lessons from the leaders who really use Clarity if you wonder how Clarity can help develop your business? This efficient approach is not only used by startups. CRM SalesForce shares videos on its Pinterest page for consumer performance. The storytelling of brands is more than what you write to your clients on your website. More than the updates and the articles you share on your blog. That's how the messages are conveyed. These are your values. These are your values. In every piece of copy, customer service responded, okay, so you're sure your brand's stories are values. But what does all this mean by the heck? Telling stories still seems hard. The writing of site copying and marketing messages is still difficult. That is what you have to do. Forget about brand marketing This might sound contrary to the idea, but it is the key to marketing success. Avoid as a marketer thought. Stop marketing the company and then focus on increasing public interest. Answer the question of why people should be interested in what their company is to say. Related: Creating a More Repeatable Sales Process for Your Startup: Experts Advice It means to be persuasive and emotional. Don't be boring whatever you do. Don't let the words on your website mask your organization's personalities. Share what you sell more than. Share your strengths, your weaknesses and who you are now. One way is by participation in the process of storytelling. For the consumer reviews and case studies, make sure you pay for them by giving other companies case studies. Be Conversational Copywriting relies on authenticity. You will lose faith with your audience if you are too formal or guarded. And because customers can detect false messages from thousands of kilometres. Empty messages can only hurt your brand, from awkward stock photos by fake customers to false promises. Instead, be honest. Be mankind. Tell yourself you talk to a new acquaintance about drunkenness or coffee— don't give a lecture in 1862. If you refer to your clients and opinions (or display some signs of disrespect), you can automatically quit listening. Don't dwell on whether you use perfect grammar or not. A copywriter can also be hired for this. Avoid thinking about the misplaced viruses sometimes. Concentrate instead on improving your message. Talking always means keeping it short. Write down what you want to learn. Get it on paper. Get everything on paper. Break it then. Once again, break it off. Stop getting into the mind you need a minimum word count to effectively convey information. Write down what you'd like to write — unless you're too long and complicated to make your tales. Too much writing on a website or blog post will confuse or lose your followers. Say in as few terms as possible what you have to say. No need to pretend to sound-wise. Your clients and prospects will view your firm as extremely knowledgeable if you are creating a successful product. Expertise in a Message architecture The storytelling of brands is more subtle than your company says. The' how' is just as relevant as we discussed previously. Learn from Tiffani Jones Brown, Pinterest's chief marketing strategist. The voice, sound, copying user interface, grammar conventions and pinner education on the website are the responsibility of both She and her five-man team. That's right. That's right. Five people are expected to accurately receive Pinterest's public message. This may sound shocking because certain companies have zero resources to fix their communications. The architecture of the company's message is not by chance. Good strategic planning is needed to position the strategic plan. Don't expect positive news from thin air to emerge. You must concentrate on correctly getting your message. You will create the messaging infrastructure for your company to emphasize all your interactions with your brand. Yeah, that's a true material. Informative Blogs and Support center: For almost all on the website, the business history as a technology, alliances and customer service organization is conducted. Though the company's blog and support center, for example-a leading customer service agent and marketing consultant-is operated by two separate individuals, the same brand heritage still shines. Speak2Leads is a public interest organization dedicated to fixing a real selling issue. And how do you continue to choose the keywords in the architecture of your message? Name strategists use the method known as card sorting. Set up a list of brand-related keywords. Those may be keywords that customers have talked for your business or your own definitions. Into index sheets, transcribe the keywords. Specify the words most relevant for your band by means of note cards. as a group. Divide from the rest of these terms. Go through the left and identify the brand's keywords as a priority. Who are and who aren't most relevant? Assemble these words into the phrases the company represents. Bring together the architecture of your message. Consider including the customers in this process if necessary. One approach is for consumer cases to be consulted. What are their terms and phrases for your brand description? The more interviews you perform and the more service ratings you begin to see. Let your customers determine your messages for your brand. Only let them describe the company's expression. Unify your presence on-site and off-site You can follow your team members everywhere, ranging from blog posts to PR opportunities on the main media outlets, the history, message architecture and brand identity of your company. You must establish as cohesive and coherent as possible the identity of your organization. Like we said before, the picture you share of the world in your organisation should be real, honest and clear. Choose Your Words Wisely It is as important what you are saying as how you say it. Make sure you use the style of your listeners ' sound, speech and communication. What do you know and what words do you choose? Turn back to Chapter 1, where the art reaches your audience with the facts. For example, if you speak to a crowd of thousands of people, they tend to take on a casual, conversational tone and style–more than a crowd of baby boomers would. Also, if you were an English college major (as was Ritika), voice, sound and style definitions are very loosely described. How are you putting everything on paper? What you need is a style guide for both on-site and off-site contact with your company. Start with the following template: Start Website objective: Refer to some information on what visitors to your website are supposed to do while visiting your website. Audit: Who would you trust to deal with these specific parts of the website? Main principles to be strengthened: After visiting this part of your site or the email, what do you want your readers to feel? Tone: Which emotions will happen after someone has read your website's story or section? Outlook: Do you want your first, second, or third person authors to communicate? Who's the storytelling? Voice: Is it conversational, formal or somewhere between the language? You can tailor your brand style guide and message architecture to any form of multimedia over and above writing. Your plans must ensure that your messages are consistent across media whether you create infographics, branded images, e-books or blog posts. Online correspondence is just one way to communicate. Make sure you spend time on energy building the framework behind all your online production. Conclusion The heart of marketing is human-to-human relations. The storytelling of the company is a strategy that can reinforce these ties. Stories will give your brand a strong voice no matter whether you run a company, a small business or a startup. Tales are medium-agnostic. Tell your story through blog posts, customer service facilities, websites, videos or infographics. You need to formalize your brand history, particularly if your company is actively developing PR strategies to create connections both on and off your web. Storytelling is more than simply what you think. It is like sharing the message and engaging with the target audience. The notion of storytelling is ambiguous, theoretical and difficult to prepare. Configure the plan and spread it around teams on card sorting exercises, message layout charts, and brand concept guides. Brand history is a cross-functional undertaking that should direct your whole business. The message of your products will be conveyed by the sales staff, developers, marketing managers, executives and entry-level professionals. Who defines your brand? Who defines your brand? Your friends. Research what they mean about you and really understand that. Identify trends and keep them as close as possible to your heart. Related: Effective Marketing Tips for a Small Business 2020   Read the full article

[stantoncassandra]

Published Art Essay

Tourniquet

Scene I: Finding L

I found you. Took me weeks, hours at a time. I figure you’d been anticipating my internal arrival because when I finally forced my way through the dark static blizzard, between imprinted afterburn of what I’d been seeing, the shadowed neon canvas parted like a white rip. Your eyes met me; sought me. As a child, I felt soothed by the movement still present in the dark after shutting my eyes. When you see a thing only you can see it’s as if the universe has a secret for you, like you’ll be okay because you’re here for a special reason. Of course, the sensation is simply blood pooling into my thin eyelids. I long for the strange hope that, like death, there would still always be something swimming beyond the permanent darkness. I do not have time for belief anymore. Death is fine, it hasn’t stopped me from finding you in its clammy palm of calamity. You sit there cross-legged. One of you sits. Dozens of you dance around the terrain in a frenzied symphony of body, but I long for stillness; stillness weighted enough to be envied by the silent hunter who waits patiently before ripping into its fruit. I am not sure what I am physically doing. I left my body limp somewhere hazy. A messy afterthought of an olive-skinned stocky figure lies in a room. I beat mindfulness into myself with a dull-headed hatchet. I search the taste of my recollection. I don’t risk the thought of another room. Being here takes everything. I am gulping the synesthetic taste of late noon on the gritty wallpaper of your basement. I didn’t break-in, I had a key cut hours before you died. I am violating your space. I am saying all of this to you without speaking. Longing is a language. I am certainly the shadow wrapping itself around all of you, not letting you go in any dimension. Our memories together are the thorns on a syndicated timeline. I pluck a thorn from the body my mind has made for me. A memory ensues.

Scene II: Barren Circus

When away from a person too long we experience corrosion. Whether the memory becomes corrosive or the details corrode incorrectly remains unknown. We visited a traveling circus in Alamosa; accidentally. Or maybe it came to visit us. There’d only been one act, a slew of similar people whose similarities made them not so human at all. I looked over at you often to protect you or read your reactions, whichever intention seemed more intentional. You never gave much away in the way of fear or excitement just constant straining inquisition. You said they reminded you of tourniquets, I told you you were thinking of the wrong word. You said you didn’t care, the word sounded exactly how you thought it should for what you saw, which was this: dozens of performers glittering the plain and plugging any blank space the eye searched for on the horizon. Ashen mountain backdrops gave an infinite stage effect. A barren, formless, full landscape of grandiose squalor due to the frantic static meddlesome motion of them. “Semi-organic apocalyptic phenomena,” I could hear you whispering all sorts of incomprehensible descriptions to my left. You with your words took a hotel painting and projected Basquiat all over the unhappening landscape. You were not wrong about the odd feeling they provoked. Contortionists put it mildly, acrobats from hell, they didn’t say a single word or burp up a goddamn sound while they twisted around for us, only us. Why wasn’t anyone else around that day? Their bodies played intimate Tetris together, I couldn’t look away, the completion felt satisfying, but I never admitted so to you. Instead, I feigned uncomfortable. The thought of you finding any satisfaction in their prickly postures meant another entity was pulling you away from me. Their springy motions were bizarre, the majority were smiling to themselves. Some looked critically at the others. This helped, knowing their eerie act had breaks in the execution. The way their garment wrapped around their bodies reminded me of artifacts on a sailboat we took out, just the two of us; a white beacon against the beastly Cerulean sea. You kept us afloat.

(We touch mouths somewhere)

Scene III: Evolving Ocean

I hear myself feeling this. My body jerks distantly in response, a tug in my chest and trousers. You still remain seated in front of me. This place is more familiar now. Another you I see from the corner of my vision drops its tongue to the ashen ground. A thorny vine takes its place. I allow myself to be taken for a moment: I fear you so deliciously. I want to eat your expressions from a depthless cereal bowl. I pleasure myself daily for drawing your face in the sand, remembering, finding your face in the marble veins of my shower, ripping a hole in the mattress where you slept. What’s an echo without the source? You’re always contradicting our pasts, so misdirection makes you my sole soul consumption. Locked into you, a freckled foe offering me a gift to husk hands-free in exchange for simple sanity. My mind has an ongoing affair with right and wrong. Avoidance places itself at the tip of that trismic palace we used to call home. I lied. I can’t say I’ve avoided a single inch between the whole passing of yes to no. You do not sit any longer. A pressure I can’t see is pressing onto you. Surrounded by leaping constant leaping, you now lay as still as the atmosphere allows. Your leaping is your longing. The twitches pull grafts of your flesh away. I’m losing you in this mind. You exist as time does in the loop of impossible roving. Magnets pulse behind your vision; features twitch with stagnant anoxia. The tongue is writing in the ash now. You’re begging me to remember our time at sea, so I do, and you pull yourself back into focus and speak inside out.

L: Evolution is a maxim. 

Me: I don’t know what that means.

L: Ev -olution- Ev -eryone- (ev) Something and everything has to apply to everyone. 

The vessel we rented was called Apocalypse, No! which you liked very much. I recall ruffling your hair as we walked towards the beached boat that just kissed the waterline. You didn’t like that very much. You walked ahead after confirming times with our Thai tour guide. You were a renegade trying to exsanguinate lightyears of evolutionary dilution by going about your ways in such obvious dissociative behavior. My mistake was seeing you as my novelty. At one point on the ship you read me something you’d written. The magic wouldn’t stop, minutes prior we’d seen a whale in the far distance, such a dark far-cry sounded so many miles away. Your words seemed the source of its pain.

Enigmatic loss becomes the sun

Animals fall dead in a consolatory clap

A wash of sanity sirenic at last. 

Beautiful suffocation blossoms grand singularity 

Enigmatic loss, a fortified wash to a quiet world. 

Your dark hair pooled in my lap while we floated aimlessly. When you slept the world had time to be without scrutiny. I don’t want to be in this memory any longer, why have you put me here?

Scene IV: Four Walls

The only way to find you is to swallow either side of symmetry. Fucking the life out of contradiction with the one state of being it cannot exist within; emptiness. I wonder where you sleep, nest or web. The only real difference between the two is life and death. Webs are mid-air traps spun for death’s sustenance. Nests are nourishing proof we’re all collectors. We collect materials for comfort, for new life. I prefer stolen comforts. I see you crowding yourself. I see your faces glitching with repetitive velocities, like a bullet shrouded in cotton pegging the sides, resuscitating truths. There is only your movement or stillness. I am violating the gray maggoted coils in my skull by forcing myself to stay just a bit longer. I am distantly evolved to simply get me through the day. This day is the pinhole I strain my whole being against wishing my two eyes could evolve to one in order to focus better. The smell of the oceanic air followed me back to this squandered present place. I slink from the memory of our sailing while rolling my eyes around to reset. I stay wrapped in your unempirical flicker. You stay folded in the mind desert around me. I spoke with a specialist about losing you. They suggested meditation. I would’ve taken sailing advice from the middle of the black ocean, from a tide trying to swallow my sails. I don’t trust professionals but such simple advice from a decorated person made me giddy. Triumphant deterioration of self. I release the grip. Strain is replaced by paresthesia. There is no loss. There is hard work. The days between my finding you will shrink into seconds. This is the only way to love, at either pole of perfection and destruction. You make feats of my dreams but not tonight. I feel a caressing between my shoulder blades and remove myself from the restraints, then the room, then your house. I walk into the night, picturing white rips opening the tight night. Sleep is soft, tempting, and terribly asking. Meditation is following something with your eyes while they’re closed. Forced meditation is being. Being without is living with death.

[laramariesimons]

Nature is nothing if not surprising. You could spend your whole life learning the wonders of wildflowers, migratory birds, or creatures of the seashore and still discover only a fraction of the things the living world has to offer. Though nature is fascinating in its own right, it can also teach us many ways of improving our own lives; indeed, it's been a constant source of inspiration for inventors. Some fashion designers and clothing manufacturers are now turning to nature for help in developing biomimetic clothing, which performs more effectively by mimicking the wonders of the biological world. Others are getting as far away from nature as possible with smart clothes, based on cutting-edge electronics and computing. Let's take a closer look at these two, radically different ways of creating hi-tech clothes!

Photo: Now that's what I call a fur coat. Can animals like these musk oxen inspire us to design warmer human clothes? That's what biomimetics is all about. Photo of musk oxen on Nunivak Island by courtesy of US Fish & Wildlife Service.

Biomimetic clothing—learning lessons from nature?

When a German engineer called Otto Lilienthal (1848–1896) strapped wings to his arms and jumped off a hill in an attempt to fly, many people thought he was crazy. They had a point: he did, eventually, kill himself trying to fly like the birds. But his pioneering glider experiments inspired the Wright brothers to develop their engine-powered airplanes in the early 20th century and played a hugely important part in the history of human flight.

Photo: Reinventing flight: Biomimetics doesn't always work. To begin with, humans tried to fly by flapping wings like birds. People only successfully took to the air when they thought about the problem a different way and stopped copying nature so literally. The Wright brothers making their historic powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in December 1903. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Lilienthal the "birdman" is only one example of how nature has inspired inventors. How about the story of British engineer Marc Isambard Brunel (1769–1845), father of famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), who invented a new way of digging tunnels underwater after watching a worm burrowing through the wooden planks of a ship? Or what about Swiss engineer George de Mestral (1907–1990), who invented the amazingly useful fastening material called VELCRO® after seeing how stray burrs from the burdock plant stuck like glue to the fur of his dog.

Photo: VELCRO®: George de Mestral's amazingly useful two-part textile fastener was directly inspired by nature. This is a diagram of the hook-and-loop mechanism sketched in his original patent US Patent 3,009,235: Separable fastening device (filed 1958, granted 1961). Artwork courtesy of US Patent and Trademark Office.

Before synthetic textiles such as nylon and polyester were developed in the 20th century, people only ever wore clothes made from natural materials like leather, wool, silk, and cotton. Now synthetic fibers have proved useful in all kinds of ways. Nylon, for example, is strong, hard-wearing, easy to clean, and quick-drying—so it's a popular choice for outdoor clothing. But wearing simple, ordinary nylon is a bit like wrapping yourself up in a plastic bag. Very quickly, you start to sweat—and on a hot, rainy summer's day you can easily become wetter through perspiration than you would have done just by letting the rain in. Natural materials like leather are much "smarter" than this: they let perspiration flow out but stop rain leaking in at the same time. What makes us think our synthetic materials are automatically better than the ones we can find in the world around us? Honed by millions of years of evolution, nature's materials have many lessons they can teach us.

How can soggy sheep keep you warm?

If you've ever gone walking on a mountain in winter, you've probably marveled at how sheep can survive in damp, cold, and utterly horrible conditions. The explanation is simple: wool is an amazingly good insulating material. The best wool of all comes from a breed of sheep called the merino; that's why sportswear companies use it in their high-performance base layers (insulating underwear for active sports like climbing, cycling, and surfing).

Photo: Sheep are built to stay warm, even when they're wet.

Several brilliant features make merino the perfect thermal underwear for sheep. First, it has much finer fibers than ordinary wool. Finer fibers means more fibers and more air trapped between them. It's trapped air that gives you warmth in clothing (that's why wearing several thin layers is generally warmer than wearing one thick pullover). You can also fluff up the surface of merino so the fibers occupy more space and trap even more air—giving more thickness and insulation with no added weight. All dry wool (and merino wool in particular) has an amazing ability to mop up steamy moisture from inside it and merino can absorb over a third of its own dry weight in water. As perspiration soaks into the fiber, it turns from a gas to a liquid, giving off what's called latent heat of fusion. The water molecules actually lock onto the wool fibers making chemical (hydrogen) bonds with them. Bonded molecules are more stable than unbonded ones, so the chemical bonding process releases energy, giving off what's called heat of sorption that keeps you warm. That's significantly different from what happens with synthetic fibers. If you wear polyester clothes and you sweat, the sweat will evaporate from your skin and cool your body down, which probably isn't too helpful if you're climbing a mountain in midwinter. But if you're wearing a merino base layer and you start to sweat, the merino will lock away the moisture and give off heat as it gets wetter, helping to keep you warm.

Will clothes ever clean themselves?

Photo: The leaves of the lotus plant (Nelumbo nucifera) are self-cleaning. Photo taken in the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge by Elise Smith, courtesy of US Fish & Wildlife Service.

One of the most irritating things about clothes is that you have to keep washing them to keep them clean. Animals wash, clean, and preen themselves too—but you don't often see plants doing the same thing. That's because some plants, like the lotus, have a clever built-in mechanism that naturally keeps them clean. The leaves are coated with nanoscopically tiny bumps and the bumps are, themselves, covered with a thin layer of wax. Dirt particles balance precariously on the waxy bumps but never get a really good grip on the main surface of the leaves below. When it rains, water droplets roll down the leaves, pulling the dirt particles free and washing them clean. The nano-bumps work a bit like a natural detergent, holding dirt clear of the leaves so water can easily wash it away. Surprise, surprise, clothing manufacturers are now coating garments like skate pants with nanofibers so they work in a similar way. The idea is that dirt is held slightly apart from the main fabric so stains cannot penetrate deeply; clothes coated with nanofibers can be washed clean much more easily.

Why does it help to swim like a shark?

Skin is an amazing material: it's waterproof, it's breathable, it helps to regulate our body temperature, and it can repair itself automatically. One thing it was never designed for was swimming. Water doesn't flow well past human skin—not least because our skin starts to wrinkle (by absorbing water) after we've been swimming or bathing for some time. If you have a particularly hairy body, every single one of your hairs will drag and slow you down even more.

Photo: Unlike humans, sharks are designed to slip easily through water. Photo of navy divers and sharks at the Newport Aquarium, Kentucky, by Davis Anderson, courtesy of US Navy.

Now you might think super-smooth suits would work better than rough ones as you swim through the pool, but the Speedo company's Fiona Fairhurst noticed something surprising: sharks have quite rough skin and still manage to swim fast. That was one of the key insights that powered the development of a revolutionary new Speedo swimsuit. Known as FASTSKIN®, the tight-fitting suit is covered with tiny v-shaped channels, just like the ridges (technically known as placoid scales or dermal denticles) on a shark's body. The idea is that water whizzes along these channels, reducing the frictional drag (essentially, turbulence) between the water and your skin, so you can swim faster.

Another of Fairhurst's important insights was to realize that a swimsuit could be engineered to force a swimmer's body into a more effective posture. So Speedo's suits fit very tightly, squeezing your body into a shape that reduces form drag (the basic resistance that the shape of an object offers as it pushes through water or air). Compressing muscles helps to reduce fatigue, so the suits also help you swim faster for longer. According to Speedo, swimsuits like this can boost a swimmer's speed by up to 3 percent. It's hardly surprising that many champion swimmers now wear suits like these. At the 2004 Sydney Olympics, swimmers kitted out in FASTSKIN earned an impressive 47 medals.

Why should clothes work like pine cones?

Photo: Pine cones naturally close in wet weather and open up in dry conditions. Something as simple as this could inspire new clothing designs.

You probably know an easy way to tell the weather. Get a pine cone and watch whether the spines open and close. If it's going to rain, the spines close up to protect the seeds inside; if it's going to stay dry, the spines open up to improve the chances of the seeds escaping. Researchers at England's Bath University and the London College of Fashion are trying to design biomimetic clothes that could work the same way. The fabric could be made with an outer layer of tiny spikes, only 1/200th of a millimeter wide. When it's hot, the spikes would open up to let out the heat, cooling you down. When it's cold, the spikes would flatten back down to trap air and provide more effective insulation.

Smart clothes

Biomimetic clothing is ingenious and inspired, but nature doesn't have all the answers. Thankfully, we also have human ingenuity to draw on in the quest for ever more useful clothes.

Clothes for health

What if your sports bra could spot breast cancer or your blouse could sense the strange palpitations of a looming heart attack? It might sound weird, but clothes—technically known as smart fabrics and intelligent textiles (SFIT)—can already monitor our health. Some years ago, a company called Textronics figured out how to build comfortable sports bras and shirts with electrode sensors naturally knitted inside the fabric to monitor an athlete's heart beat. They automatically capture puffs and palpitations and beam the data wirelessly to a monitor you wear on your wrist or stuff in your pocket. Nike+ shoes harness similar technology for health and fitness. A piezoelectric sensor (one that turns squeezing pressure into bursts of electricity), buried in your inner sole, generates a tiny electric pulse each time your foot hits the ground, firing a signal with a wireless transmitter to an iPod or iPhone in your pocket and an eager app that tracks your lap-time and personal best.

Photo: Wearable electronics could automatically monitor your health.

Sounds trivial? How about natural-looking, comfortable clothes that elderly people could wear to monitor their movements and anticipate declining health? Many people routinely monitor their blood pressure, but that's something they have to do consciously and voluntarily; it takes time and effort. Smart clothes with built in monitors not only measure standard health indicators like this, but also offer an easy and affordable way to keep tabs on things like changes in gait, caused by progressive conditions like Parkinson's disease or strokes, and to monitor, proactively, whether elderly people are more likely to fall and injure themselves.

Clothes for safety, entertainment, and power

Where health ventures, safety often follows. Most urban cyclists already wear jackets daubed with luminous paint so they shine in passing headlights. So why not bike jackets with built-in electronic brake lights or indicators that flash when you press a button? If you can stitch electrodes into clothes for things like that, why not more frivolous and entertaining things too? Why not skirts with built-in fibre-optic cables that flash and flicker on the dance floor, synced to the beat, programmed by a circuit hidden in the hem? Today's degree show project at the Royal College of Arts could be tomorrow's de-rigueur dancewear.

Flashing and flickering is pretty tame stuff. Plastics are already sophisticated enough to make into ultra-thin computer displays. Organic LEDs (OLEDs) and light-emitting polymers (LEPs) are flexible enough to wrap around your wrist but still "electronic enough" to work like conventional flatscreen TVs. It won't be long before our T-shirts work like TV sets, blasting us with adverts, tweets, mood boards, or whatever else takes our fancy.

And in a world that watches energy use like a hawk, what about turning shirts into solar panels? If you can build conductive fibres into a t-shirt and make it flash with a battery, it should be easy enough to run the same idea in reverse. With flexible solar cells mounted in the front and back panels, feeding into rechargeable batteries in your belt, you could turn yourself into a mini solar panel, trickling milliamps to your cellphone so its batteries never run down.

Suddenly, the phrase "smart clothes" takes on a whole new meaning!

[maptoourescape]

               Awakening into his idle state of being came primarily in form of a non-abrupt opening of his eyes, accompanied with a simultaneous, deep inhale. This time around, waking up was nothing like the adrenaline shakiness he would be met with after experiencing multiple REM hours filled with nightmares only. Instead, the return back to consciousness was surprisingly delicate – albeit there was a tremble rendered unavoidable for his silhouette soon thereafter, caused by the cooler-than-room-temperature-but-not-that-cool-at-all night air slipping in by the open balcony door, brushing only moments later through the crevices between where thin pieces of night clothes were semi sticking to hot and sweaty skin. It also wasn’t exactly a terror that perspired his entire body when he was still in the sleeping phase. One could argue it was quite the opposite, even. Paths his brain decided to stray upon when supposedly giving itself rest were namely rather… lascivious, instead. So the explanation behind the tackiness of his tan, glistering in the minimalistic illumination of the outside sources tonight – yellow with Berlin streetlamps and pale white-blue with the bright crescent moon, greens and reds of blinking semaphores, and pinks and oranges of neighbouring apartment complexes – actually lay upon having a lewd dream.               Funny thing about that all was, though, that there seemed to be a very thin line between eroticism and the sense of dread sometimes. Because the phenomenon of how fucked up his real life was contrasted all too damn well with how fulfilling and redeeming his dreams were in its stead. So – where non-bad bad dreams should be met with the relief of reality – that’s where the real horror truly began for the dark haired male. Or shortly: who’s to say that this sweet illusion he was having wasn’t nought but a twisted nightmare of a special kind, after all, seeing how its contents were merely wishful thinking targeting an excruciating craving. A craving that brought him to the point where he was left with nothing else to do but to grunt painfully when reaching out to brush at his damp forehead, all whilst moving his body sideways slightly to readjust – only then noticing what he failed to notice in the past few seconds of finally being awake. That is: the truthfully agonizing stiffness between his legs that was most likely bestowed upon him by the fucking Devil himself. The intense manifestation of his delusive longing, throbbing and sore, and most definitely not any longer “just a projection” of what his deepest needs were.               A debate could be had whether the world revolving around him at the moment was more vivid or more dull within its grey casted shadows: whether the perception of the dream, in all its velocity and escalation and explosion made the real world seem even more depressing; or if, quite contrary, the cruel existence of right-then-and-there proved to be bizarrely conceivable instead, leaving the fantasy to be an untouched diamond in the rough that dwindled into the night like the occasional honk of a taxi on the streets down below. Truth most likely lay somewhere in between, as it commonly did, but whatever the case might have been, one thing was for sure: the room remained stained with heatwaves that reminded the restless lanky body of a lover’s embrace, and reeked of an unachievable sort of nostalgia. And so he closed his eyes tight again, fists crumpling together at the sheets that weren’t covering him any longer, lost throughout the toss and turn, while his mind was trying to un-think the unthinkable. Crossing his ankles, rubbing his calves, readjusting his knees – he did whatever was physically in his power to just make it go away. But it wouldn’t do that. It simply wouldn’t comply, wouldn’t obey, wouldn’t follow any orders pointed at abandoning its stance.               Pressing his thumb to the side of his groin, against the artery, it is with frustration that he groaned, grinding his teeth as he went in to lightly punch at his upper thigh. “Come on,” escaped from him the obvious helplessness, slight tremor in the frustrated tone, a little vibrato against the pillow to which such was muttered in a sort of defeat. To no avail he tried to draw over the images burned in his thoughts with markers of unattractiveness, not being able to concentrate on anything but the sculptured perfection he had the satisfaction of caressing only moments ago in his vision. In vain it was that he attempted to redirect his brain in another direction, tint the hair of the muse in his reverie he was pulling on a few shades darker, and re-arrange the geometry of the anatomy he was devouring with his own arches and corners. Picture perfect and on a constant loop, the projection evolved behind his closed lids, unsynchronised only in the inner conflict of what was his bodily need, and on the other hand, knowing that this shouldn’t be happening. Not any longer, at least. The frames of the traced back scene were branded in his mind, so much so that he could swear he saw the film burning at the sides, as though such was being a metaphor for a headache yet to come, while the prickly flickering of its flames sparked more and more unwanted excitement. 

              Tom thought of his brother, and he didn’t want to do it. Tom thought of his brother, and that’s also exactly why doing it was unavoidable, as well. Bill wanted things to be different between them. Bill longed for other people. And Tom, well… Tom was lying in his bed, awoken with all the repressed yearning of the months that had passed, immorality spurring from his sunken imagination. To think of it in that way – as immoral, of all things – made his heart feel even heavier, for they were never seen as obscene in his eyes, ever… until lately. Shamelessness was found in the worldly perception of their sin, usually, for both of them, always knowing that they meant something more, realizing they were something otherworldly. But the brunette had never felt like more of a degenerate than right then and there, trying to shut down his body. What made it wrong, perhaps, more than anything else, was in how one-sided it all felt at the given moment. How Bill’s words and doings of recent weeks resonated in the back of his head, all the while the active parts of his brain thrived towards being released, the image of their bodies gliding and rubbing against one another prominent and intrusive. There was nothing he could do, really. To say he was a slave to it sounded so morbidly cliché, but to put it in any other context would be a lie if there ever was any.               It was half against his will that he almost roughly pulled on his underwear then, until it was all but pulled down to the extent where he could work with what needed to be carried out. Needed. Rushing, urgent, throbbing; the act wasn’t really one of pleasure. Palm feverishly set in movement, the producer buried his face deeper into the pillow, exhaling shakily against it – glad his hard-on was tended to, but disgusted he had no other way out. His breath tasted stale, of beer and gin, something that might have fallen to attention a bit more was he probably still not a bit drunk from the hours before. The wild fabrication, the nightmare – it was so real, and Tom held onto himself too tightly for it to feel good, almost in a sort of a deranged punishment upon himself for even having the atrocity to pull through such an act. Reaching his ears only, the slickness of repetitive jerks intensified by the second, and with the aching warmth of his lower belly arose in heat also his cheeks. Straying away from the serious mindfulness of his doing, nearing his high by the second, Tom replenished all the bad and filled it up with Bill only. Bill’s lips ghosting upon him, his touch completing him, love exchanged in words and actions… And perhaps that’s why the fall was all the grater, after mere not even three minutes a weak, petty orgasm made him snap from the obsolete deceit of his psyche back to… reality.               Life of colour dissolved into nothingness, leaving him with nothing but his ragged breath, and a shaky hand still clasping his messy private parts. He’d hurt himself with the abusing touch, but that was not why his chest heaved more bizarrely, still, only a second later. Tears escaped and the air in his pipe hitched. A “fuck” was spoken out so bizarrely quiet one wouldn’t know it left his mouth at all was one not in his direct proximity. All that was left anymore was the same old insignificance and mind-numbing guilt. And shame and pity. And worthlessness and loneliness. Heavy limbs, heavy everything. And a newfound lusting – one for destruction of some sort. In a mindless explosion, the producer then tosses the pillow from underneath him to the other side of the room, knocking down with it unintentionally the glass from the nightstand, because it’s the closest thing he can do in order to demolish something if that something can’t be himself – but such serves for nothing more than to catch a sight of his lower body better with how he suddenly had to half sit up to do so, causing him to break down in abhorrence for good. The feelings are too substantial to fight against them, and rigidly, Tom’s body slips back into a horizontal state, face hiding away at the expensive sheets down below, staining them with tears and snot and saliva as trembling and silent sobs shake the pathetic, half bared body he had to be the master of. And that’s how he remains. Mindless. Moronic. Number by the second.

[azvolrien]

Anchored Tempest - Chapter Nine

Regarding the WordPress: I’m still going to do it (when I get around to it) but I’ll continue posting stories here as well.

In which inclement weather poses an obstacle.

~~~

         It took four days of searching the corries and valleys around the foot of the highest of the Tempest Spires, in the constant shadow of the storm clouds, before they finally found the base of the Throat – a tunnel, as Karash had theorised – and then another two to fully clear away the landslide blocking its entrance. There was no elaborate carving beneath the rubble, just an open archway with a suggestion of broken hinges at the sides, but it was easily big enough to admit Karash.

           “What do you suppose they made it for?” wondered Nirali, testing the stability of the bottom step. It was reassuringly solid.

           “An emergency exit, probably,” said Una. She peered upwards into the storm, but the clouds completely concealed the stronghold. “I would guess from the size of the mountain itself that the High Citadel is much smaller than Eyrie Spire, the old Balaurin capital in the north, but there’s still probably room for many more humans than for dragons. If there was a fire or some other emergency, it would take too long to have the dragons ferry everyone out. Better to have a way out on foot.”

           “How did the rebels never find this way up?” asked Karash.

           “Not sure,” said Una. “But this valley is fairly well-hidden – surrounded by high ridges on three sides and a steep drop on the fourth. And look at the rock face above the doorway – there was an overhang hiding it from the air, before they collapsed it to seal the path. Whether or not the evacuees made it out of the mountains before the rebels found them… That’s another question.”

           Nirali touched her throat with a grimace. “If they were caught, it’s not mentioned in any of the songs I know,” she said. “But… I’m not sure how merciful the rebels would have been towards escaping Sky Kings, even civilians. After seven hundred years under the whip… I’m not sure the distinction would have mattered.”

           There was a short silence as they considered this. Karash was the first to break it.

           “Nothing to be done for them now, either way,” he said, and poked his head through the archway to look up the stairs. “There are brackets bolted to the walls,” he informed them, “but the torches are long gone, if they were ever there at all. We shouldn’t get lost – we’ll have to run out of up eventually – but it’ll be a dark climb.”

           “Actually…” said Una. She picked up a pebble of white quartz and pressed it between her palms, scrunching up her face in concentration. The pebble began to glow with a soft white light. “Here.” She tossed the pebble across to Karash, who caught it in one hand and held it up to inspect it. Its glow was bright enough that they would be able to see where they were putting their feet in the darkness of the Throat, but dim enough to avoid casting a painful glare in Nirali’s eyes. “A bit rough and ready, but it should last a few hours.”

           “How did you do that?” asked Karash.

           “Conjuring a witchlight is one of the most basic spells there is,” said Una, demonstrating. She closed her hand and the hovering light vanished. “And crystals are good at holding magic. Putting the two together is fairly straightforward, though a proper Constructist would have been able to make a more permanent lamp.”

           “I suppose we’ll meet you two – four – at the top, then,” said Nirali.

           Karash passed her the glowing pebble, frowning as some worrying thought struck him. “Una, do you have a long rope?”

           “Yes, there’s one in that saddlebag – why?”

           Karash took it without explaining, and tied one end to the girth of Star’s saddle and the other to Tsheer’s. Both creatures looked down, affronted. Star wanted to know what exactly that had been for. Ikara looked as if she quite seconded the question.

           “I don’t want you to get separated in the storm,” said Karash, once in Orcish and once in Balaurin. “This will help you to stick together, in case one of you needs help.” He turned to Ikara and asked her something, to which she just lowered her eyelids in an exasperated stare.

           “What are they talking about?” Una asked Nirali.

           Nirali smiled. “He’s telling her to make sure she has her snow boots and hood, because it’s bound to be cold up there.”

           Ikara gave an exaggerated sigh, but took the requested items from a pouch behind Tsheer’s saddle, held them up for Karash to see, and pointedly put them on before strapping her flying goggles over the hood. The fleece-lined boots looked more like oddly-shaped gloves to Una’s eyes, with a separate section for each of Ikara’s toes – four at the front and one at the side, almost like a thumb but neither long nor flexible enough to be truly opposable – but they fit snugly and still had tough leather soles. Karash nodded his satisfaction and stood back to let Ikara climb into the saddle.

           Star gave Una a pointed look. She took the hint and swung herself up onto her back.

           “Be careful up there,” said Karash in Orcish. “We’ll see you both soon!”

           Una and Ikara looked at each other. Ikara held up one hand and folded her fingers down one by one. On the last, both Star and Tsheer kicked off from the ground and took flight. The rope, thankfully, was long enough that they were not forced into an uncomfortably close formation as they flew north from the valley, gradually climbing until they were level with the clouds. Una pointed back towards the mountain; Ikara lifted a fist in acknowledgement, and both dragon and rukh plunged into the tempest.

           Within the storm was chaos. Although nothing fell to the ground below, hail pelted them like tiny slingstones, carried by the swirling winds in wild loops midair. Now and then, lightning crackled through the clouds, casting baffling shadows and brilliant glows; so close to the source there was no delay between the lightning and the crash of thunder.

           Star narrowed her eyes against the storm and held her wings to let it carry her, not fighting the wind as she tried to read it, watching the ways the hail flew and the clouds roiled. Around, up, down – although the way it was anchored around the mountain was thoroughly unnatural, the patterns within its clouds were not unlike an ordinary storm.

           She had it. With a signalling roar to Tsheer, Star angled her wings and rode the storm in a huge, narrowing spiral around the peak of the central mountain, now and then half-folding her wings against her sides to plunge through narrow gaps between one cloud mass and the next or rolling to stay away from another high peak that loomed out of the clouds. Una lay flat on her back and wrapped her arms around her neck; anything else just then would only distract Star from the half-seen, half-felt path she followed. Behind them, on the other end of the rope, Ikara did the same with Tsheer.

           The storm grew wilder, winds forcing them upwards; more hail battered them, and lightning struck harder and more frequently. Star roared, shying away from a bolt dangerously close to her wingtip, but quickly shook her head and forced herself to concentrate once more, forging onwards through the storm.

           The next instant, there was total calm. The clouds cleared and the wind died; above them, there was nothing but blue sky. Before them, standing proud in the eye of the storm, was the High Citadel.

           It was easily the highest mountain in the Eastern Highlands: a towering pyramidal peak, surrounded on all sides by near-vertical cliff faces tapering to a pointed rocky summit. The lower slopes, far below, sported a light covering of trees and bushes, but this high and this steep there was nothing but bare black stone and a thin covering of snow. As they drew closer, the Balaurin handiwork became clear: watch towers had been shaped from the rock at each corner of the peak, and soon the tiny pockmarks of windows and the low, wide mouths of the landing terraces and dragon halls could be seen.

           It was not, Star thought, unlike the Sky Kings’ old home of Black Mountain Keep, back in the Dragon’s Teeth. The mountain itself was similar and the style of carving was almost identical. She looked back to check Ikara and Tsheer were still with them – they were; Ikara had lifted her goggles from her eyes and was gaping blankly at the mountain – and set her wings for a steady glide in to the highest terrace. No different to exploring Eyrie Spire; she flared her wings out to slow her descent, lowered her hind legs to grip the stone, and dropped to all fours before hopping out of the way to make room for Tsheer. He gave himself a shake, shedding hailstones from his feathers as Ikara climbed down from his back.

           All four of them walked forwards into the emptiness of the dragon hall. It, too, was much like those in the strongholds in the north: a space wide enough for even the biggest dragon, carved from the mountain itself with huge nesting alcoves all around the wall. The main difference was at the far side: another dragon-sized archway, providing a path deeper inside where the inner passages of most strongholds were only suitable for humans.

           Una exhaled hard, watching her breath cloud in front of her. They were not so high that it was difficult to breathe – not for creatures like them, used to life in the mountains – but it was still bitterly cold. Ikara’s fur fluffed out on her shoulders and she pulled her snow hood a little tighter.

           Una conjured a witchlight and set it floating a few feet above their heads. “Well, if they left something here,” she said, thinking aloud, “they must have hid it much further inside.”

           “Yeah, it’s much too exposed in here,” said Ikara. “I spotted some shutters as we flew in, but they clearly didn’t bother to close them before they flew out to the battle.”

           A moment of silence. Then they both wheeled around to stare at each other.

           “I understood you!”

           “I understood you!”

           “But I’m still speaking Imperial-”

           “And I’m still speaking Orcish!”

           “But I understood what you said!”

A few more moments of silence. Then, in approximate unison:

           “What the fuck?”

           Una folded both hands behind her head. “There must- there must be some kind of, of… translation spell imbued into the stones of this place,” she said. “I know the Balaurin have translation magic – when I first came to live with them, they gave me a potion to drink that kind of… poured the knowledge of their language right into my head – but I’ve never heard of it working as, as a field like this.”

           Ikara ran her claws through her fur. “Nirali’s going to love this.”

           “Yeah, she is.” Una crossed her arms. “I’d rather wait for her and Karash before we explore this place. They’ll still be climbing all those stairs.”

           “Mm. We should find somewhere a bit more sheltered to wait. Try and see if they left anything to make a fire.”

           Unlike Eyrie Spire, where the population had had plenty of time to pack their things and leave, the High Citadel still showed signs of a rapid evacuation. Rooms still contained furniture, some of it tipped over in the inhabitants’ haste; wardrobes still contained clothes. Kitchens still held pieces of food, probably no longer good to eat but still preserved in the cold. After a couple of hours of wandering the deserted halls, they found a room with fewer draughts than most and took apart a couple of old chairs to make a fire. Una held out one hand, narrowing her eyes, until the broken wood sparked and popped as the flames took hold.

           Star lay down against one wall; Tsheer settled down by the opposite. Una and Ikara sat down with their backs to their respective beasts, facing each other across the fire.

           “Is your home in the north somewhere like this?” asked Ikara.

           Una shook her head. “No. Well… No.”

           “Hm?”

           “This place… It’s clearly patterned on the main Balaurin strongholds back in the Dragon’s Teeth. Places like Eyrie Spire, or Black Mountain Keep. A city fortified within a mountain. But all of those in the north were abandoned long ago. Where we – not just us, but the rest of the dragons, the last of the Balaurin – lived was a tiny village by the standards of the old empire.” She took a thin spar from the fire, blew out the end, and used it to sketch a rough map on the stone floor. “It’s all contained within one big corrie, on one face of a mountain,” she explained. “A central square, here, and homes for both humans and dragons dug into the rock – but not hollowing out the mountain like this place. Just a few sub-surface chambers. Recently our council decided to abandon the place and move everyone to a new site, further west and nearer… well, nearer civilisation, that’s a bit more like this, but the mountain isn’t as high.” She tossed the stick back into the flames and sat back against the side of Star’s neck, stretching out a hand to scratch the base of one horn. “Though if I’m honest with you? I love Star, and I get on well with the Balaurin, but… the Dragon’s Teeth aren’t home. Not in here.” She tapped her knuckles to her chest.  

           “Where is?”

           “Stormhaven. It’s where I was born, where I grew up, where my family is… It’s home. I think it always will be. But Star needs to be with other dragons, and it would cut my heart out to make her miserable.”

           Star appreciated it. She really did. With a soft croon, she curled her neck around Una and set her chin in her lap. Una gave a small smile and folded her arms on top of her head.

           Ikara prodded the base of the fire with her spear blade. “Tell me about your family.”

           “Yeah?”

           “Yeah.”

           “Well… You already know I’m an only child. My parents both work at the College of Sorcery, where I was trained in using my magic. My father is a teacher there – he leads the School of Combat. My mother is a librarian.”

           “A what?”

           “I… suppose you could think of her like a Memory-Singer,” said Una. “A keeper of knowledge. Except everything is written down, not just memorised.”

           Ikara nodded. “What you told Tagra back at the Warren – how much of that about them was true, and how much was just for effect?”

           “All true, every word of it. My mother can transform into an animal as easily as changing a hat. My father… You saw me blast those rocks from the cliff face back then? My father could probably have cracked the whole mountain in two.” She paused. “He wouldn’t, though. He’s quite a gentle soul. He and Karash would have fun swapping hair-care tips.”

           Ikara sniggered. “Karash usually spends a lot more time combing his fur than he’s been able to recently. Most of the males I know are pretty vain about their capes, secretly or otherwise.”

           “My mother is the parent you really want to watch out for.”

           “Yeah?”

           “Once when I was eight, I was at the market with her. A man grabbed her arm, and when he refused to let go, she bit his hand so hard that he almost lost two of his fingers. Blood everywhere.”

           Ikara blinked twice, hard.

           “She had an unconventional upbringing,” explained Una.

           “Sounds like a lesson for everyone involved,” said Ikara. “He learned not to grab people, you learned how to deal with someone grabbing you, and your mother learned the bite force needed to break skin.”

           “Oh, I think she knew that already.”

           Ikara poked the fire again, sending a little whirl of sparks up to the ceiling. “Karash is the only family I can remember,” she said. “I was very little when the others died – I hadn’t even outgrown my cradle-name yet. He was only eighteen himself. Some of the others in the village didn’t think he was old enough to take care of me. They used to say things about his childhood ending too soon.”

           “I don’t think I’d call eighteen a child. That’s more of a young adult. Gods, there are plenty of places where eighteen-year-olds are already married with their own kids.”

           “I know, right? But things worked out. I think I turned out all right, anyway.” She stroked the fine, soft feathers on the underside of Tsheer’s jaw, and the rukh made a quiet chittering sound in reply. “Some of the other Windkindred are much less well-adjusted.”

           “What’s a cradle-name?”

           “You don’t have those? No? Weird. Well, when somebody’s first born, you can’t expect to know what they’re going to be like, right? You can’t know what name’s going to fit. But you have to call a baby something, so they get given a cradle-name – usually something really straightforward and descriptive – until their parents have a better idea of a good name for them. People usually get their proper name when they’re a couple of years old, once their personality’s had more time to emerge.”

           Una tilted her head. “So what was your cradle-name?”

           Ikara sighed. “‘Little Red’.”

           “That’s certainly descriptive.”

           “You’re one to comment – your parents named you ‘First’!”

           Una laughed. “I’m actually named after my aunt – my mother’s sister. I never met her, she died long before I was born.”

           “People do that here as well, sometimes,” said Ikara. “Naming after family. Karash is named after one of our grandfathers.”

           “What was his cradle-name?”

           “D’you know, he’s never told me.”  

           It was a while longer until footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, a dim white light appeared, and Karash and Nirali looked around the doorjamb.

           “So this is where you stashed yourselves,” said Karash.

           “We thought we’d find somewhere to warm up,” said Una. “How were the stairs?”

           “Numerous and steep, but we made it. I- wait. That wasn’t Balaurin.”

           “Nope. Imperial. My first language.”

           “I… do not speak Imperial. How…?”

           “Magic,” breathed Nirali.

           “Magic,” confirmed Ikara.

           “Well.” Karash sat down by the fire. “I don’t know what kind of a trip you four had through the storm, but we have been climbing stairs ever since you left. Before we go poking around in this place, I think we would all benefit from a few hours’ sleep.”

           Nobody could bring themselves to argue too hard against that.

~~~

Honestly, Fayn asking that guy to let go first was progress for her. Only a few years before she would have gone straight to biting.

[jacewilliams1]

It was a smooth day until that one big bounce

After eight days on the ground working on behalf of a national non-profit emergency services group running one of their Points of Distribution sites in Wilmington, North Carolina, I was ready for some air time. Lucky for me, one of the final air missions of Hurricane Florence was on the books for the following day and they were in need of a mission pilot (MP), with the mission observer (MO) and airborne photographer (AP) slots already filled. I was excited to get an air mission as this meant I’d have both ground and air missions in the books for one event. Had I taken that staff job they offered me, I’d have had the hat trick. But flying was what I really wanted to do so off to the airport I went.

I’d never flown an AP mission before, nor had I taken the AP class to be a photographer, something my mentor in this organization had pointedly reminded me of upon my arrival at the airport. It is not required for the pilot to also be an AP, but suggested. So after promising I’d take his AP class at some unspecified time in the future, we proceeded to get ready for the mission. This consisted mainly of looking at the weather and wondering when it would get better.

After this comes ashore, the cleanup (and aerial photos) start.

At 200 overcast and one mile visibility, things were not looking promising for what is a VFR mission. The weather was forecast to improve by mid-morning, up to marginal VFR. I thought that would be fine as we really didn’t need much in the way of ceilings since our mission is a low and slow one anyway, and the visibility was forecast to be much better as soon as the morning fog burned off.

Our MO, with whom I’d never flown or even met, expressed some hesitation about “scud running” and I took his comments seriously. I don’t like people who are part of my crew to feel uncomfortable with what we are doing so I took a moment to pull him aside and quietly ask him what specifically made him uncomfortable. After a bit of conversation, he discovered that I was a current and qualified instrument pilot. I discovered from our conversation that maybe I should have actually given him a bit of info about myself before I asked him to put his life in my hands. With the knowledge that we’d simply climb above any issues, call ATC, and get a pop up clearance to get home, he felt much better about the mission.

The weather didn’t really cooperate and our 10 a.m. weather window became noon. Mission base was getting antsy as the customer actually wanted us over target at high tide, about 9:45 a.m. If we waited too long, the entire mission would be scrubbed and I’d not get my chance to log an air mission to complement my ground mission. Normally I’m a very conservative flier, but I have to admit that I was ready to go just to get this mission underway.

Knowing I was abnormally ready to go (a different form of get-home-itis but just as bad) I made sure to involve the full crew in the decision to stay or go. We decided that the weather was better over our target than where we were so we’d launch IFR and then we’d cancel en route as we got to the reported better weather. The weather was forecast to improve at our base so when we returned, we’d be returning to VFR conditions. With solid outs in case of an emergency we were all comfortable with our plan, and our flight release officer concurred. We were a go.

Preflight having long since been completed, we hopped in and taxied out. Run up, clearance, and departure were in quick and well-practiced succession. Even though some of us had never flown together before, our organization’s required crew training paid off as we each knew our roles. We popped into the clouds at 1000 feet, and out at 2000 feet. Just a thin layer at this point and much improved over what we’d had all morning. ATC wanted bases and tops reports from us and we were happy to oblige, updating the weather forecast with our better than called for reality. Finally into the sunshine, we settled in for the trip down to the target area, with only one instance of popping back into the clouds to mar the otherwise blue sky trip towards Wilmington.

Arriving at our first target, the undercast was breaking up as forecast, and we notified ATC of our intentions, cancelled IFR, and asked to stay with them VFR for an extra set of eyes. Up to this point, I had been the aircraft commander. My MO, via talking to mission base on our proprietary radios, was routinely relaying information and was therefore sometimes the one taking control via his messages. Now that we were over the target, control of the mission transferred to the back seater who was holding the camera.

Unfortunately, there was a lot to see after Florence.

It was an interesting transfer of control back and forth, requiring clear and concise communication amongst the crew, which sounds easy but isn’t in actual practice. When I’m on Com 1 talking to ATC, Com 2 is on 121.5 (Guard! Or Chewbacca noises at random intervals) the MO is on Com 3 (yes we have three COMs) back to mission base, and a disembodied voice is in my head from the backseat giving directions via the intercom, communications can get a bit hectic.

Add in the fact that I liberally use the pilot isolate button on the G1000 panel so I could clearly hear ATC, and then sometimes forgot to turn it off so that my intercom conversations were a solo act, and you have a situation where communications can get missed.

As we descended into the target at about 1000 feet msl, avoiding clouds and towers, and looking not only at the target but surrounding areas for damage and washed out roads and dams (we saw both) we switched over to our back seat driver.

“Give me 20 degrees left”

“20 left, Roger”

“Keep the turn coming left. Keep coming. Stop turn. Pick up the wing to give me a shot.”

“Make the next pass a bit wider than the last one. 1/2 mile wider, same track.”

“Ok, give me a slip so I can get a clear shot.”

At every target we had towers that were at least tall enough to be interesting and usually we had some higher than our altitude and within a few miles of our location. When you are making loops around a target, always looking back towards the target, it is easy to miss the 2000 ft. tower that is the other direction from where you are looking. I tasked the MO to keep a constant eye on any tower we identified as a possible conflict and to annoy me by constantly updating me on its location regardless of whether I wanted him to or not. That sounds silly, but you’d be surprised how people will withhold information just because it seems like you might be busy. “Keep talking till I’m annoyed with you, then talk some more” is an oddly effective order.

The flying was fun. More enjoyable than I thought it would be. It was the normal turns around a point we all learned as private pilots, with random slips in the middle of the turn, and random 270 degree turns thrown in to reverse the angle for a different shot. All the while trying to hold airspeed and altitude to FAA test standards. Why to test standards? Many reasons but first, two other qualified people are in the cockpit with you and being off altitude or airspeed will come up in the debrief. All I want to hear in the debrief is, “Nice job.” Plus we all know the pilot’s prayer, “Please God, don’t let me screw this up.”

We worked our first two targets and then proceeded about 50 miles to our third and last target, a power plant surrounded by lots of water.

Heavy equipment required.

It looked to be in good shape with no dam breaks or washed out roads on the immediate site. There was a washed out dam just a mile away but there was already heavy equipment onsite repairing the blow out. Things looked pretty benign so we proceeded with our mission. Again we verbally switched command to the back seat and I flew dutifully as directed.

“Make this next pass a bit closer. The last was too far away.”

“Keep the turn coming. Further. Stop turn!”

“For this next pass, make the pass straight, then make a turn over those [exhaust] stacks then make a left turn.”

As I proceeded to fly as directed, I took us right over the short stacks right on airspeed and altitude. I was feeling pretty good about myself and really enjoying the flying. We were almost three hours into the mission and we had about two more passes and we’d be done and head home. Assuming I didn’t bounce the landing, I could add a challenging but successful air mission to my logbook. I was feeling good.

Suddenly the plane slammed upwards and the right wing shot up in the air putting us into about a 25-30 degree bank. The nose pitched up as well, maybe 10 degrees up. It felt like the biggest summer thermal I’d ever ridden, probably about +2.5 Gs. I exclaimed the famous last words most pilots say: “Oh S***!” I didn’t enter any control corrections as I didn’t know why we were heading upwards and I’ve yet to hear of an airplane crashing earthward by going up. No sense in adding additional airframe stress by trying to fight whatever it was.

We were heading upwards and the plane was banked and pitched but not banking further, a relatively stable situation. I had time to look around, look back inside and quickly scan the instruments, and then look around outside again. Then as suddenly as we’d entered the thermal, we were out of it. I leveled the plane and came back down to altitude, only then realizing what had happened.

The power plant, despite all the water, was quite functional. The bank of short exhaust stacks we’d used as a visual reference point were happily pumping out heated, and very clear, air. This heated air was shooting as a hot stream straight up to my unsuspecting airplane roughly 1000 feet above, giving us a free ride up to a new altitude.

Now back in the smooth air away from the plant, I mentioned, with some black humor to the crew, that we would not be taking that particular route around this plant again. Everyone agreed and we made a few more passes, with a wary eye on towers and now exhaust stacks. My right seater, a sailplane pilot, told stories of how back in the day they used to ride thermals over power plants to get free lift. But since 9/11 that it was most decidedly frowned upon. I reflected that riding that thermal would be a good source of lift, and, if I’d done it on purpose, it wouldn’t have even been that big of a deal. But coming on a completely calm day, out of the blue, it wasn’t something I’d want to repeat.

We returned uneventfully to base and I did manage to get us on the ground with a squeaker. We chalked the mission up as a success, each departing for our normal lives but eager for another mission on another day.

The post It was a smooth day until that one big bounce appeared first on Air Facts Journal.

from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2018/10/it-was-a-smooth-day-until-that-one-big-bounce/

[voodoochili]

My Favorite Albums of 2017

Thanks to the magic of Spotify Premium, I was able to listen to over 150 new albums this year. Most of them were pretty good! It took weeks, but I was finally able to piece together a list of the year’s best that I’m happy with! Here is the list of my favorites, spanning several genres and countries of origin. Hopefully, you enjoy the read and maybe find something you’ll love!

And, oh, while you’re here, check out In Itinere, the new EP by my band The Chordaes: https://open.spotify.com/album/79kKlk7OYfu1G62AjD3nlk

Check below for the Top 20, plus a ranked list from 21-50, and honorable mentions. I’ve included Spotify links for each of the top 20. Happy New Year and Happy Listening!

The Top 20:

20. Future – HNDRXX: Departing from his usual dark-night-of-the-soul-trap aesthetic, HNDRXX shows another side of Future—the unapologetic pop star. Packed with potential hits, (none of which, obviously, connected at actual radio), HNDRXX paints a glorious picture of a future (no pun intended) where pop, R&B, and rap meld into an invigorating hybrid. The stretch from “Damage” to “Fresh Air” represents some of the most accessible, emotional, and best work of Future’s prolific career.

19. Björk – Utopia: People often lament that the influence of the smartphone has driven people to isolate themselves from the physical world. Not Björk. On Utopia, which she describes as her “Tinder album,” technology has the power of bringing people closer together—“I literally think I am five minutes away from love,” she warbles on “Features Creatures.” Moving beyond the harsh, metallic soundscapes of Vulnicura, written and recorded at the end of a decades-long relationship, Utopia is a blissful and pastoral record, populated by flutes and bird sounds and overflowing with joy.

18. Smino – Blkswn: Powered by future funk production courtesy of Monte Booker, Smino’s first proper album makes good on years of promising SoundCloud singles. The perfect antidote of the flat-voiced rap-n-b perpetrated by Drake and PartyNextDoor, Smino’s voice has an underlying bluesiness and soul that grounds Booker’s soundscapes and paints a picture of the rapper’s life as a St. Louis transplant in Chicago. Highlights from Blkswn include the sweetly sung, romantic “Netflix & Dusse,” the unconventionally lustful “Anita,” and the gorgeous “Glass Flows,” a duet with frequent collaborator Ravyn Lenae.

17. Playboi Carti – Playboi Carti: Dancing on the perimeter of his own cavernous cloud-trap, Playboi Carti is hip-hop’s pre-eminent wave-rider Blessed by the wizardry of producer Pi’erre Bourne, a master of counter-melodies whose beats are as danceable as they are sonically absorbing, Playboi Carti might be mindless ear candy, but rarely has that candy been this sweet.

16. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – The French Press: A Melbourne-based five-piece with three distinct singers and lead guitarists, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever overwhelm with a veritable avalanche of jangly guitars.  With overlapping lyrics and guitar lines that evoke a conversation with constant interruptions, The French Press is a decidedly Aussie take on guitar pop—an album-length exploration of the guitar tornado from The Velvet Underground’s “What Goes On.”

15. Tyler, The Creator – Flower Boy: Ditching the shock tactics and abrasive sonics of his earlier projects, Tyler, The Creator creates a vibrant, pastoral, even peaceful, jazz-influenced soundscape on Flower Boy. As you can possibly tell by the tongue-in-cheek title, Flower Boy is Tyler’s “sensitive” record, and the one that feels more in-touch with Tyler Okonma, not the monster he Created. Whether exploring his loneliness on “911,” existential ennui on “Boredom,” or casually revealing his fluid sexuality on the album’s hardest rap track “I Ain’t Got Time,” Tyler manages to subvert rap tropes even on his most mainstream release.

14. Ulver – The Assassination of Julius Caesar: Straight outta Norway, where the sun shines for approximately 5 minutes in the winter, erstwhile Black Metal band Ulver’s latest is a goth-industrial epic, foregoing noise for Depeche Mode-esque orchestral pop. The songwriting is as ambitious and accomplished as the music, imbuing important events in modern history (the Battle of Dunkirk, the death of Princess Diana) with the grandeur and majesty of Greek (or Norse) myth. It’s easy to get lost in the band’s world as it lights up the sunless sky with cascading falsetto harmonies, sweeping strings, and massive drums.

13. Bedouine – Bedouine: Born in Aleppo, Syria, raised in Saudi Arabia and three of the United States before eventually settling in California, Azniv Korkejian is as nomadic as the tribe that inspired her name. Her gentle, gorgeous debut album as Bedouine reflects the sunshine of her adopted home, but retains a lived-in melancholy that reflects her turbulent past. Evoking the big names in singer-songwriter-ing in equal measure (Bob, Joni, Carole, and especially Leonard on the single “Solitary Daughter”), her best track is her most atypical: the mournful, haunting sound collage “Summer Cold,” about the transformation of Aleppo from a vibrant city to a horrific war zone.

12. Algiers – The Underside of Power: Cataloging hundreds of years of oppression in one densely-packed fusion of DC hardcore, post-punk, and southern soul, The Underside of Power is a tough, but invigorating listen, explaining our nation’s bitterest conflicts with a beat you can dance, or at least mosh, to.

11. Oxbow – Thin Black Duke: A heavy, and loosely conceptual album, Thin Black Duke is a theatrical blend of noise rock, avant-jazz, and blues, dominated by frontman Eugene Robinson’s inimitable baritone, which gurgles, bellows, and stretches out syllables like taffy.

10. Mozzy – 1 Up Top Ahk: The game’s most reliable purveyor of starkly honest and soulful slaps, Sacramento rapper Mozzy had a prolific 2017, releasing five projects in the year’s first eight months. Though they were all worth a listen, the strongest and most substantial of these releases was 1 Up Top Ahk, his “official” album. Somehow only 30-years-old, Mozzy has the presence of a grizzled vet, relaying empathetic and violent street tales, flashing internal rhyme, and stacking syllables with the most pronounced NorCal accent in modern hip-hop. Despite the glistening mob instrumentals from frequent collaborator Juneonnabeat (don’t shoot him in the street) and other Bay Area mainstays, Mozzy’s life is not glamorous—the violence he depicts is not stylish, just an ugly fact of life about providing for his family. Featuring appearances from kindred spirits like Boosie, Jay Rock, and (in one of the project’s highlights) the late The Jacka, 1 Up Top Ahk proves Mozzy’s worth as a successor to the struggle rap throne.

9. Moses Sumney – Aromanticism: Dripping with emotion and otherworldly sexuality, Moses Sumney’s voice might be the purest and most versatile instrument in modern music. On Aromanticism, Sumney stacks, loops, and manipulates his voice to create an unclassifiable hybrid of art rock, neo-soul, and cosmic jazz. The songs on the album generally follow a similar structure, with Sumney’s angelic falsetto rising above plaintive piano chords or a snaking guitar line or rippling harp, gradually opening up into an orchestral tapestry at the song’s climax. But the lush beauty of the arrangements, coupled with Sumney’s emotional songwriting and unique voice, ensures that the album never grows stale. There’s no need to tinker with a formula that works as well as Sumney’s—after all, Monet never got tired of painting water lilies, did he?

8. Migos – Culture: It’s hard to believe when you think about it now, but in Summer 2016, Migos was an afterthought--an act that despite its youth seemed to be past their peak of popularity, latching onto the “Dab” craze as if their career depended on it. That changed in October 2016, when the trio dropped “Bad & Boujee,” a titanic banger that built enough momentum to reach #1 on the Billboard charts. How could Migos possibly live up to the massive expectations they built with “Bad and Boujee”? Well, an easy way is to make an album where “Bad & Boujee” is only the 4th or 5th best track. Culture was the most consistently replayable and enjoyable rap album of 2017, overflowing with infectious ad-libs and an impressive arsenal of distinct flows (not just the triplets!). The highlight of the album, and possibly of human civilization, is “T-Shirt,” a lurching drug dealers’ anthem that showcases the individual talents of the three-headed monster: Quavo’s smooth melodicism, Takeoff’s blunt-force bars, and Offset’s chameleonic and charismatic combination of the best qualities of the other two.

7. Alex Lahey – I Love You Like a Brother: Combining the dry witticism (and Aussie-ness) of Courtney Barnett with the bubblegum overdrive guitar riffs and emotional sincerity of Weezer, Alex Lahey’s I Love You Like a Brother was my biggest surprise of 2017. Shamelessly layering her tracks with unstoppable melodies, “whoa-ohs,” and “wee-ooohs,” Lahey has the acuity to make those massive moments feel earned. Even if you don’t normally go for pop-punk (which I don’t), Lahey’s debut is insanely fun, with sing-along anthems like the surprisingly literal title track, the grungy “Lotto In Reverse,” the plaintive vocal standout “There’s No Money,” and the standout, generation-defining “I Haven’t Been Taking Care of Myself,” highlighting the hookiest rock record I heard all year.

6. King Krule – The OOZ: On The OOZ, Archy Marshall piles trip-hop, lounge jazz, rock-n-roll, and beat poetry into a blender and arrives at the most evocative imagination of the grimy underworld of the soul since peak-era Tom Waits. Though they have similar low, scratchy, bellowing voices, King Krule doesn’t sound like Waits (except on “Vidual” which is a dead-wringer for the first side of Rain Dogs), but The OOZ is an engrossing, hour-long trip through the 23-year-old’s mind. The album wallows in an unconventional sort of beauty, with Marshall airing his anxieties with his ungodly growl over clean, snaking guitar lines, creating an unforgettable ambience that sounds like the late-night act at the last jazz club standing after a nuclear apocalypse. Explained Marshall, “The Ooz for me represents … your sweat, your nails, the sleep that comes out of your eyes, your dead skin. All of those creations that you have to refine.” It’s a perfect title and a great metaphor—The OOZ synthesizes Marshall’s ugly thoughts and disparate influences and refines them into a style that is all his own, topped off with his striking, evocative, and poetic lyrics: “She sits as dust, with an earthly pus in a capsule on my tongue/And I think of what we've done and sink into where she sunk.”

5. Susanne Sundfor – Music For People in Trouble: When I first heard Music For People in Trouble, I was slightly disappointed. Ten Love Songs, the last album by Norwegian pop artist Susanne Sundfør, was a gothic masterpiece—a maximalist pop epic that resembled the lovechild of ABBA, Siouxsie Sioux, and Johann Sebastian Bach. Music For People in Trouble, on the other hand, is a relatively simple record, eschewing the grandiose arrangements of Ten Love Songs in favor of sparse recordings that feature only one or two accompanying instruments. As I spent more time with the album, however, I began to focus more on the songs on their own terms, and marvel at the power of Sundfør’s quivering soprano. Few living songwriters can write a melody like the classically-trained Sundfør; they lilt one moment, soar the next, and always reach unexpected, yet natural resolutions. If Ten Love Songs was an ode to the turbulent heart, Music For People in Trouble offers serenity for the aggrieved with gorgeous folk songs like “Mantra” or “Reincarnation,” pop power ballads like “Undercover,” and the pastoral dirge “No One Believes in Love Anymore.”

4. Sacred Paws – Strike a Match: An erudite indie pop group that uses African polyrhythms and snaking guitars to explore the intricacies of modern life—where have I heard that before? While Vampire Weekend is a great band, they often seemed like dilettantes when dipping their toes into African waters; not so for Sacred Paws, the muscular brainchild of guitar/drums duo Rachel Aggs and Elidh Rodgers. On Strike A Match, the duo adds a horn section to the revue, imbuing bouncy, skeletal pop songs like “Nothing” and “Everyday” with an added grandeur, in the process creating the most invigorating and danceable rock album of the year.

3. Slowdive – Slowdive: The most melodic and majestic of the English bands that comprised the Shoegaze movement’s late ‘80s/early ‘90s heyday, Slowdive reunited after a 21-year absence to deliver their second magnum opus. Filled with buzzing guitar riffs and heavenly harmonies, Slowdive is enveloping and engrossing, a triumph of atmospheric dream pop. Foregoing the ornate space operatics of 1996’s Pygmalion, the group’s self-titled 2017 album is a proper follow-up to 1993’s classic Souvlaki, one of my all-time favorite albums. Couching gorgeous, soaring melodies within circular bursts of noise and distortion, the band augmented their signature strain of shoegaze with tighter songwriting and a broader palette of musical ideas, whether embracing Glass-like minimalism on “Falling Ashes,” incorporating massive ‘80s drums on “No Longer Making Time,” or schooling imitators with dream-pop classics like “Sugar For The Pill” or “Don’t Know Why.” A master class in emotional dynamics, Slowdive establishes the band as not just genre stalwarts, but as uniquely gifted in the realm of sonic world-building.

2. Big Thief – Capacity: Last year, Big Thief drew national attention with the album Masterpiece, a cathartic and intelligent set of songs. Turns out, they might have used that title a year too early. Delicate and devastating, Capacity is a leap forward for the young band—a mature and varied collection of stories and moods, and an intimate exploration of human emotion. Led by Adrienne Lenker, with her literary gift for finding the extraordinary in mundane moments, the album derives its strength from its simple, yet note-perfect arrangements that augment and provide emphasis for the lyrics. Make no mistake, Capacity is a heavy album—the gorgeous “Mythological Beauty” embodies the point of view of a mother during a child’s graphic near-death experience, and the astonishing “Haley” finds Lenker in the bargaining stage of grief—but it’s buoyed by the inventive arrangements, the power of the band, and the winsome fragility of Lenker’s voice. But beyond all that, Capacity feels necessary, like if Lenker didn’t write these songs, the emotional weight would have been too much to bear. As a listener, I’m eternally grateful she decided to grace us with her music.

1. Kendrick Lamar – DAMN.: Ladies and gentlemen, the artist of the decade. I listened to well over 200 new albums in 2017, but this is the one to which I kept coming back, the one that never left my rotation. Only Kendrick could make three (four if you count untitled unmastered) straight albums of rap tracks deep and innovative enough to satisfy critics, while also landing at #1 on the Billboard 200 year-end chart. It’s so haaaard to be humble…

2015′s To Pimp a Butterfly was an insanely ambitious future jazz odyssey, with Kendrick Lamar looking outward, trying to find a universal theory of race relations in the United States, but never quite coming up with a satisfactory answer. On DAMN., Kendrick looks inward, reckoning with his own rising star and asking a simple question: is it possible to live the life of a rap star and still be accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven? With songs with titles that tackle the multitude of feelings, values, and desires we all contain, DAMN. paints a vivid portrait of the artist as a 30-year-old man, expertly rendering Kendrick’s inner conflict into his most “traditional” rap album to date. There are plenty of themes and lines that repeat throughout the project (Kendrick, like everybody else, really hates FOX News), but there is no overarching storyline or unifying concept. Instead, Kendrick gives us the clearest glimpse yet into his personality and what drives him—his love for his high school sweetheart-turned-fiancé on the gorgeous “LOVE,” his fear of death on “FEAR,” (man, these titles really spell out the themes, don’t they?), and the difficulty of remaining level-headed despite being so goddamned dope that it should be illegal on the smash hit “HUMBLE.” And it all ends at the beginning with “DUCKWORTH,” a superhero origin story (or more accurately, a prequel) that explains how small decisions can have life-altering consequences. 

Best of the Rest:

21. Nick Hakim – Green Twins 22. The Clientele – Music for the Age of Miracles 23. Cornelius – Mellow Waves 24. Anna Wise – The Feminine: Act II 25. Young Thug – Beautiful Thugger Girls 26. Broken Social Scene – Hug of Thunder 27. SZA – Ctrl 28. Kelly Lee Owens – Kelly Lee Owens 29. Nadine Shah – Holiday Destination 30. Guerilla Toss – GT Ultra 31. Jens Lekman – Life Will See You Now 32. Deem Spencer – We Think We’re Alone 33. Jay-Z – 4:44 34. The Mountain Goats - Goths 35. Forest Swords – Compassion 36. Ty Dolla $ign – Beach House 3 37. Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels 3 38. Ibeyi – Ash 39. Daniel Caesar – Freudian 40. Charly Bliss – Guppy 41. Sinkane – Life & Livin’ It 42. Kamasi Washington – The Harmony of Difference 43. Bicep – Bicep 44. Rexx Life Raj – Father Figure 2: Flourish 45. Vince Staples – Big Fish Theory 46. YoungBoy Never Broke Again – AI Youngboy 47. Jason Isbell – The Nashville Sound 48. Do Make Say Think – Stubborn Persisent Illusions 49. Pile – A Hairshirt of Purpose 50. Fred Thomas – Changer

Honorable Mentions: Jay Som – Everybody Works Kelela – Take Me Apart Blanck Mass - World Eater Drab Majesty – The Demonstration Caddywhompus – Odd Hours Talaboman – The Night Land Kelela – Take Me Apart Lowly – Heba Jidenna – The Chief Landlady – The World is a Loud Place J Hus – Common Sense Miguel – War & Leisure