thistleanddown

[thistleanddown]

The de Luna pack wasn't quite what anybody would expect from werewolves. Anna may have only had constant contact with one member, but by the stories Gabriel told, they all certainly broke the mold in one way or another. Gabriel was cheerful and dorky, Alejandro and Emmanuel were the ultimate pranksters, and Kurai… was Kurai. (Privately, Anna felt she more resembled a vampire, with her stoic face and haunting voice.)

 Then there were Feroz and Kiba.

Standing at exactly six foot three, it was clear that Gabriel and his siblings got their height from Feroz. A myriad of scars littered his body, past fights and deaths he survived, but the two he was most proud of were the subcutaneous mastectomy scars on his chest. They were newer than the rest, judging by how well they stood out against his brown skin. By far, though, Anna was most intimidated by Feroz's eyes. Normally a honey brown, they were a gleaming amber now. A hunter's gaze.

Kiba sat with his hands in his lap. He was much shorter than Feroz. Long black hair tied into a low ponytail, his eyes were far more human-looking, with a brown so dark Anna nearly mistook it for charcoal. In fact, he could almost be mistaken for a human; the supernatural point of his ears gave him away. What scared Anna the most about Kiba was his facial expression. Or, the lack thereof. Not a single emotion graced Kiba's features.

It was unnerving, sitting across the table from the two of them. Then again, Anna supposed it was normal to feel that way in the presence of werewolves, no matter how used to them she was. Anna was fairly certain she was either going to throw up or be eaten, and neither option was particularly good.

"Why have you come here, Miss Vacarescu?" Feroz's low voice made Anna's heart shake.

"I… I wanted to talk to you about Gabriel,"she replied, mouth dry.

Feroz quirked a brow.

"Do you intend to leave him,"asked Feroz in a conspiratorial voice.

Anna balked. "No! No, no, never. I love Gabriel more than anything. I want to marry him."

"You have come to ask for our blessing,"Kiba spoke up.

Anna nodded.

Dropping her gaze to the table, Anna fiddled with her bracelet. There was a far away look in her eyes and a smile on her face.

"I love the way he smiles. I love making him laugh, I love his gentleness, I love how he talks about the thing's he's passionate about and how he grumbles when he's grouchy. We don't always agree. There are hills we'll both die on, and sometimes they're not the same hill, but I respect that. I would never dream of trying to change him or tame him. I love him, and he loves me, and I can promise you that fact won't change."

"Never?" Feroz prodded.

"Never," Anna replied. "There's not a single force in this world that could ever hope to try."

Feroz and Kiba glanced at one another. Kiba nodded. Feroz placed his hands on the table, leaning forward, seemingly getting comfortable.

"And if our son ever decided he was unhappy in your marriage? If he ever wanted to separate; what then? Would you still love him?"

"Of course! Even if we were no longer together, I would love him just the same and want him to be happy."

Suddenly, Feroz was smiling. The overhead kitchen light caught his fangs, and Anna felt her breath catch in her throat.

"Good answer."

Blinking, Anna began to stutter some kind of reply. Her heart beat fast in her chest. She was sure she was about to faint. A wide, excited smile graced her lips.

"You mean--"

"You have my blessing to marry Gabriel, yes."

Unable to stop herself, Anna's hands flew to cover her smile, so wide it hurt. She stood from her chair and did a quick lap around it. Every step felt like she was walking on air. At that moment, Anna felt she could take on the world. Hell, she could take on the gods if she wanted to! Nothing was in her way!

Sitting back down in her chair, Anna dipped her head once.

"Thank you!"

When she looked back up, her eyes fell expectantly upon Kiba. There was the slightest hint of a grin tugging at his lips.

"You have my blessing…"

Anna's heart soared.

"On one condition."

Furiously, Anna's stomach turned. The tips of her fingers went cold. That was when Kiba set those near-black eyes on her. Anna's body turned to ice. He pulled something from his pocket. A pack of playing cards, Anna realized. The box was worn, yellowed at the edges, with wrinkles and cracks scattered about. Devilish and wicked, Kiba smirked, waving the pack of cards.

"One game of poker. If you win, you will receive my blessing."

It was an insane wager. The kind where you'd have to be either a fool or a god to even consider accepting, let alone imagine you could win. A cautious woman would have backed down. A cautious woman would have played it safe. A cautious woman would have asked for time to think.

Anna Vacarescu was not a cautious woman.

"Deal."

Her answer was met with a toothy smile.

"Then we begin."

Kiba opened the pack, the flutter of cards and soft bolero music overtaking all sound. In the midst of his shuffling, Kiba beckoned to his husband with his index and middle finger. Feroz leaned down. Anna watched as Kiba whispered something in his ear. Rolling his eyes, Feroz stood, rounding the table and exiting the kitchen. He returned with a small case. Inside were poker chips. Kiba took Feroz's hand and placed a chaste kiss on his knuckles.

Feroz grumbled something in what sounded, to Anna, like Spanish, but didn't retract his hand until Kiba did.

Tapping the cards on the table to neaten up the stack, Kiba placed his blind. Anna followed suit. There was a soft thwap as Kiba dealt the cards, two to Anna and two to himself.

"Do you call, raise, or fold?"

Anna placed several more chips on her blind.

"Hefty start,"commented Kiba. "You must be very confident."

"Not confident. Certain."

The wager was set.

It was a blur of card after card. They lay on the table, fanned out, mocking Anna from her hand. Porcelain stacks grew higher and higher in striped columns of red, green, blue and black. The image of a six of spades and the wood grain of the kitchen table was burned permanently into Anna’s retinas, sure to haunt her in her nightmares for the next decade. Yet she refused to fold. Anna held on to the bitter end, determined to clamp her jaws, bear-like, around victory’s throat.

There was no longer the slap of cards as they hit the table, or a clink as poker chips were stacked or moved. Absolute silence. Nothing. Finality settled in the air like lead. It was done.

The match was over. The winner was called.

Anna had lost.

Kiba raked the chips towards himself, a smile on his face. He counted them silently.

“Another game.”

Raising a brow, Kiba slid his near-black eyes towards Anna.

“What was that?”

“Another game,”Anna said again.

Glinting, the corners of Kiba’s near-black eyes crinkled. He spoke in a low voice.

“No, one game is more than enough, Miss Vacarescu.”

Standing quickly, Anna’s chair scraped backwards with a furious screech, her hands slamming onto the table.

“Another wager, then!” Anna pressed on, refusing defeat. “Anything! A race, a fight, take my blood if you want it! I’ll do a thousand trials to join this family properly.”

“I know,”replied Kiba. “Which is why there only needed to be one wager.”

He finished counting the chips, and took one of the black ones from it’s stack. Kiba then opened the chip case again, and pulled one of a color Anna hadn’t initially seen. It was a bright purplish-pink. She had never seen a chip that color before.

“This poker chip,”he began, holding the black chip between his thumb and index finger, “Is the highest-value chip in a basic poker set. About one-hundred dollars. Did you know that?”

“No,”admitted Anna, drawing out the word with visible confusion.

Where was he going with this?

“Why did you pick these chips, then?”

Tilting her head, Anna’s violet gaze fell on the chip, considering.

“I suppose… I suppose because the black makes me think of Gabriel’s hair.”

Kiba chuckled. If possible, that made Anna more nervous than his previous lack of expression. He then held up the pink chip in his other hand.

“This chip, in comparison, is worth only about two dollars and fifty cents. However, it is much, much rarer than the others. Most new poker sets don’t even include it anymore. It’s used more in black jack, although even then it is also rare. You haven’t seen it before, have you?”

Anna shook her head.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m getting there.”

Kiba placed both chips in front of Anna. With his hands so close, Anna could make out the slightest curve of claws at the very tips of his fingers. With his right pointer finger, Kiba tapped the black chip.

“This chip reminded you of Gabriel, and I can’t say I disagree. My family is the single most important, valuable thing to me, Anna. I would tear my own heart from my chest for them. I am loath to part with them for any reason.”

Pointing to the pink chip, Kiba continued:

“This chip, however, reminds me of you.”

There was a buzzing in Anna’s hands, and she looked up to meet Kiba’s eyes. They were softer now. Finally, Anna was beginning to see the warm brown beneath the hard, nigh-unforgiving charcoal.

“It’s not every day I see someone so willing to go through hell, and I am sure this is hell for you, to prove their devotion. It’s even rarer that it moves me. But you, Anna, like this chip, are rare. Unheard of. You saw odds that were against you from the very start, and even though you did not win, you did not falter or back down. However, even when you lost, you didn’t quit. You were not content to resign to your fate.”

With burning eyes, Anna gently picked up both chips.

“Anna Vacarescu,”Kiba began, “I would be quite happy to have your determination and rarity grace my family. You have my blessing to marry my son.”

Reaching across the table, Anna took Kiba’s hands, and brought them close and placed her forehead on them.

“Thank you,”she said, trying her hardest not to sob. “Thank you.”

Slipping the pink and black chips from her hand, Kiba placed them back in the case with the others.

“May your happiness and love outlive the stars, little one.”

Anna left that night with a heart lighter and a future brighter than she ever thought possible.

[thistleanddown]

Before he is anything else, Gabriel de Luna is a wolf. He is human in shape alone, and even that is only true some of the time.

In the day, despite the beaming sun and blue sky, there is always a flicker of the moon in his eyes. If you catch him early enough in the morning, when dawn is fresh and the colors deep, you will find the edges dark, as if still coated in shadow. Canine teeth that are just a little too long. Bared against the sunlight they are white and cold like the furthest stars. The corners of his mouth curve into a smile both gentle and challenging. Great, wide hands with absent claws and calloused fingertips from running in another form.

It will show in the turn of his head. Tracking with his ears first, he is still as the trees, and then slowly his head will follow. Smooth and calculated is the motion. It is rare that he only turns his eyes. It should be no less feared. Whether his head or his eyes alone move, it is still the gaze of a hunter that pins itself to you. Night or day, manshape or beast.

Other times his voice gives him away. Low and lilting. Gabriel’s voice rises from his stomach and spills over those too-sharp teeth like a distant roll of thunder. That voice, which comes from a human-seeming mouth, has sung on countless winds and bayed and barked. It shakes with a roar and a whisper tangled together.

There is wolfskin beneath his flesh. Ever-wild and writhing within his skin and bone and sinew. Not an ounce of tameness lives in him.

Oh, there is gentleness, to be sure. Softness. Kindness and a warmth not unlike that of the sun itself. The great, thrumming heart enthroned in his chest is not cold. Never was, never will be. Gabriel is a man of colossal love and tremendous passion. These things do not a bridled wolf make.

There is no such thing as a biddable storm or a pliant mountain or an obedient flow of lava. Just as there is no such thing as a tame werewolf. Gabriel de Luna is wild. First, last, and eternally.

[thistleanddown]

Everyone who has ever met Anna Vacarescu has collectively decided there is something incredibly uncanny about her.

Anna was born human, raised human, and has remained such well into her current year of 56. She does not look like it. Flowing within her is unbridled magic, thick as her blood. Stars race down her veins with every pulse of her heart, faster than it takes to blink. It trickles down her arms to her fingertips. Glimmering, you can only catch it in the corner of your eye. Only the corner. Her hair, a length beginning to rival that of Rapunzel, is an impossibly pure shade of white. It behaves of its own volition, pouring from her scalp in thick waves, like the curtain of a waterfall and shining even when there is no light to catch. Eyes the color of heliotropes that seem eternal in their depth, and it is rare to find someone who can meet them without falling dizzy. At certain angles, they don’t seem to belong to her. Sometimes they look as if she took those deft fingers of hers, plucked them straight from the skull of an archfey and placed them, still bloody, beneath her lashes.

In the buzzing fluorescent lights of the hospital corridor, she ripples, appearing as if she was a reflection taken from the surface of the water and set free upon the land. Even the inhuman staff members cannot believe Anna truly exists.

“She must be a changeling, or some other kind of faerie,”says Joaquin, the vampiric head of the pediatric ward, with unshakable certainty. This is despite the fact that the fair folk have denied several times over that she is theirs. Fearfully, his eyes dart over to the entrance of the cafeteria. “There’s no two ways about it.”

“No, no, no,”replies Kida, shaking her head fervently. Her voice is conspiratory. “She’s a wraith of some kind. That’s why she stays around the hospital, see, to feed on the life of dying patients.”

This is not the first time this conversation has been had about her. It will not be the last. All throughout, they do not say Anna’s name for fear of catching her attention. It does not matter that she is nowhere in the room, or that she isn’t even on shift today. Just as the Mycenaean Greeks called dread Persephone by Despoina and the ancient Greeks called her Kore for fear of invoking her, it is common knowledge to never say Anna’s name, for she will hear and she will know.

(Anna pretends she is not aware of this. After all, what fun is there in shattering the illusion that keeps so many of the rowdy postgraduate residents in line?)

Few are there that are not instinctively wary of Anna. Comfort radiates from her like heat from the hearth fire, but so does power. Magic hangs thick in the air about her. Lead-weighted, its tendrils reach out and out, white-hot and ice-cold, and there is an unspoken understanding of volatility. Within a fraction of a fraction of a second it can swallow all in its path whole with the same effort of striking a match and letting it fall into a puddle of gasoline. This is neither on purpose nor by accident, simply an unconscious operation. Just as the magpie does not force the blue and green iridescence of her feathers or the flesh thinks to rot from bone; they simply do. Her form shimmers and flickers, an inward and outward contradiction. Human and yet overflowing with magic.

One does not throw themself into magic and come out untouched. Every inch is torn apart and remade, stitched together again with chthonic grace and savage edges. Ethereality blossoms in the bones. Such is the creation of a witch.

Anna Vacarescu was certainly uncanny. She could not be anything else. She did not want to.

[thistleanddown]

Joaquin's ten-year plan was simple: Get his bachelor's degree in environmental science (major forestry, minor conservation), find literally any well-paying job in that field, live far, far away from his parents, pay off his student loans, and maybe finally tell Daisy he's been in love with her since sophomore year.

By all accounts, Joaquin had done it. He'd graduated as valedictorian, found a lifelong career working to help conserve both California redwoods and sequoias (which are not the same tree, thank you very much), and was a comfortable 925 miles from home. And sure, maybe that last one was still a work-in-progress, but to his credit it was all wrapping up nicely.

And then Joaquin got bitten. Not on the job by a rattlesnake or mosquito, or at home by a spider. He was walking home from the bar--he'd insisted he was fine to walk, keys stashed safely in his pocket to pick his car up in the morning--and he was bitten.

Officially? His admittance papers listed it as an unknown canine, possibly a coyote.

But that wasn't what Joaquin had seen. He knows what a coyote looks like. For God's sake, he grew up in Albuquerque--coyotes were about as common as seagulls on the boardwalk! A coyote wouldn't run directly towards someone, snarling so loud Joaquin could feel it in his bones. Coyotes weren't twice his size. They couldn't pin him to the ground with a paw that felt too much like a hand, or leave a bite mark so wide and deep his scapula had chipped.

The paramedics who found him drop by to see how he is. They arrive after his second round of rabies shots. He's tired and sore, but they tell him he's looking good.

"We just wanted to follow up,"says one, an older man with silver-blond hair and crow's feet. "Do you have any idea what bit you?"

Joaquin sits up, wincing at the burning pain in his shoulder and chest, and succinctly says, "It was a werewolf."

Both paramedics blink.

"Werewolf?" Asks the second, who looks to be Joaquin's age.

Joaquin nods. The two look at one another, then to Joaquin, and back again.

"Werewolf,"the younger one repeats. "You're sure about that?"

"Yes, I'm sure! It's not an easy mistake to make. I know what happened to me. It was a werewolf!"

The paramedics look at each other again.

"We haven't had any werewolves in Fresno since the 80's,"the older one says. "Are you really sure? You were pretty drunk."

Joaquin blinks. He had two drinks. He's seen his chart--his BAC was 0.04%. Below the 0.08% legal limit and barely a buzz, but Joaquin refused to chance driving. He was still aware. 'Pretty drunk' as the paramedic had described was 0.17%--which Joaquin was nowhere near.

"Please leave,"Joaquin asks, suddenly so very tired.

When a different nurse strides in to change his IV, she asks what happened.

"It was a werewolf,"he tells the nurse, who doesn't even look up from her clipboard.

"Don't be ridiculous,"she admonishes, clicking her tongue. "Werewolves and most supernatural folk are rare here. It's too hot."

"I live with a vampire,"Joaquin says. "It's not too hot for her."

The nurse lets out a sigh, fixing him with a look that screams 'what do you want me to tell you?'

When the surgeon that had done Joaquin's stitches comes by to check on him, he holds his chart and laughs.

"I'd never seen a dog bite that big!"

"It was a werewolf,"Joaquin says again.

At this, the surgeon tilts his head.

"You sure? Looks more like a pit bull to me. Here, see how the teeth are arranged?"

He holds a photo of Joaquin's injury out to him. With the end of his pen, he gestures to the width of the jaw and marks out the shape, and Joaquin can feel those same teeth tear into him again. It's still the exact same wound. But, somehow, it suddenly looks smaller in the picture.

"So, you see what I mean?" The surgeon asks. "It's an easy mistake, but it was just a dog."

"Then why does it say 'coyote' in my chart?"

From behind wire framed glasses, the surgeon glares at Joaquin. He's still smiling, although it's thinner than before and doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"It does?" Asks the surgeon an a cold, even voice.

"Never mind,"Joaquin finally says. "Just-- When am I getting discharged?"

"End of tonight, thankfully,"the surgeon says, "You'll have to come back next week for continued rabies shots."

He goes to leave just then, but turns on his heel, brows creased in some form of epiphany.

"By the way, have you ever been tested for an anxiety disorder?"

Joaquin had been tested. He didn't have anxiety. He had a dopamine deficiency, inattentive-type ADHD, not anxiety. Even if he was, anxiety can't produce a hallucination powerful enough to see a coyote or a dog as a werewolf.

And yet, Joaquin can't help but wonder, briefly, if his diagnosis was wrong.

When Joaquin goes to fill his prescription, the pharmacist looks at the painkillers and antibiotics. Bushy brows raised high, he reads it over and over again, shocked at the potency of the medication.

"Good lord! What on earth happened to you,"he gapes.

"I got bit,"Joaquin says.

"By what?"

Joaquin's lips purse into a thin line. He doesn't answer.

[thistleanddown]

And now that the blog's little FAQ thing is posted... I have no mcfreaking clue how to proceed. I know I can just post all the writing my heart desires, but, where do I even start?

Me, making this blog: Finally! I have a place to put my things! I'm gonna crush it! I'll figure out what to post when it's all done

Me, not even five minutes later, when it's time to actually post things: ...Oh no...

[thistleanddown]

New and shiny blog post!

Hello, I'm Rose! Welcome to the little place I'll be posting bits and bobs of my writing. My main genre is fantasy, which will be about 90% of what I post. However, I do love sci-fi, horror, and romance. So, expect to see some of that make an appearance here and there, too!

This blog will be mostly original content and characters, and will be tagged as such. Any fanfic I post here will of course be tagged regarding the fandom. Story-specific triggers and content warnings will be tacked to each post; if I misspell a tag or miss a tag altogether, please let me know!

I am over 21, and my writing will reflect that. Hence, as previously requested in my description, I'd really rather not have minors following or interacting with my posts.

I do not give any consent to the re-posting of my work to other sites (I have an AO3, that's it), translating, entry of my work into AI programs, or other such bullshit.

And finally, if you enjoy what I write, please let me know! Comments, reblogs here on Tumblr, likes, kudos on AO3--they mean the world to me.