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[wordtotherose]

the haunting of hill house, shirley jackson

[wordtotherose]

never before joined across the cold airless terror of space…

[wordtotherose]

PUT MORE YAOI ON MY DASH

don't mind if I do

[wordtotherose]

Y'all being so nice about my fic 🥺 thank youuu

I'm really happy with this one personally so it means a lot that you guys are too!

Now just gotta find the threads of another one

[wordtotherose]

Sending Jay ahead was the right thing to do. It was.

But every minute on his own now is worse and worse and worse. It feels like the sun is setting quicker than he's moving, the shadows of the village getting darker and not really any bigger as they travel. Out there, past the small village, rocks the rowboat they arrived in, and further still the dipping sun over the water he and Gillion call home. 

Puddle is going as fast as they can, Chip knows this, recognises the signs of an animal pushing themself further than their limits allow. Chip and Puddle. Racing down an empty road with urgency pumping their hearts and, at least for Chip, a screaming void in his head blocking all cohesive thought. The bracelet on his wrist is useless so far from its counterpart but Chip strains regardless to make sure he notices the very second he's close enough to make out the familiar presence of Gillion's mind nestled next to his. 

Jay is barely a shadow in the sky when he sees her dip back towards land, still a distance from the village and her mother and Gillion Gillion Gillion. His breath scratches in his throat as he watches, waiting to check that she lands on her feet and keeps going, that, despite no shot ringing out, she hasn't been shot down. But no. Of course not. She's moving. Not even a stumble. Her hair is catching the fading light and the idea that they might still be too late is sickening, enough for his stomach to drop and his hands to shake. With every second they aren't there, every moment the spell isn't being done, Gillion is fading. Gillion is dying. Alone. Without either of them. With a stranger he was so desperate to still look his best in front of upon meeting, a stranger who doesn't know him!

May won't thread new braids into his hair in comfort like Jay does. May won't kiss his cheeks like Chip does every night before sleeping just to make the triton smile and stop his constant motion for a heartbeat. She won't know he doesn't like his hand held by anyone but his closest friends, Chip or Jay or Caspian. Will she work out that he needs to be kept damp? That he's more likely to drink if she offers water with salt mixed in? He needs to drink. Needs his strength. 

Jay is flying again, in short bursts now as she tries to make the most of her energy. An angel in the sky. He has to fight back the tide of self-disgust he feels for having no true part in helping here. She'd have gotten the gemstones without him. Maybe even been quicker about it.

Puddle slips on a loose rock and Chip slides, clawing his way back up to being steady on the raccoon's back. Of all the bloody minded things for Gillion to do with the last of his magic, to turn a perfectly suited horse into a raccoon just because they were Jay's favourite. Because he wants to make them smile even when he's dying.

Chips shakes his head and focuses on the flare of Jay's orange hair until she vanishes between the buildings.

***

It's hard. The bed he's on, he means, and it isn't swaying with the bone deep sense of home innate to the waves he's always in or on.

Land? Where were they heading last? 

Why is everything so blurry? So dark?

Continue Reading on AO3 or under the break...

He twists towards the side, hoping to turn over and find Chip or Jay nearby to ask his questions to. 

Something stops him short. Tight resistance around wrists he cannot shift and legs he cannot feel and a chest he doesn't recognise the shape and agony of. 

Where? 

Kind words, a gentle but firm voice. Unfamiliar. Unknown. Where's Chip? Where's Jay? 

Pretzel?

Oh. There. 

Pretzel. In his hair, above his head. He can't hear her chirruping purring sound but he can feel it, vaguely. Half removed from the idea of sensation entirely. 

He thinks he manages to convince his body to say something, a hand touches his own and he flinches away. It retreats and settles on his shoulder instead, over his wetsuit. 

The flinch hurt. 

The voice is starting to sound urgent. 

It's dark. 

And the world isn't swaying.

And his friends aren't here. Maybe it's a nightmare. Maybe he just has to grit his teeth and wake up eventually. 

***

The streets are more full than normal, what with the Den being closed for business for the night. Jay dips and throws herself round corners and shortcuts with the surety of being home. People are calling greetings to her, making friendly jabs at her frantic pace. 

She ignores every last one of them. There's no time to worry about good impressions, no spare seconds to feel anxious about being nice. They'll forgive her. Most of them watched her grow up, after all.

She's not sure she can stand for Gillion to die in her home. Not sure how to reconcile the loss with what this place has always been, what she wants it to always be. 

But if she doesn't get these stupid gems there soon, before the sun sets fully probably, knowing their portentously shitty luck, well. Then she won't have a choice about it all. 

The world will be new again, without Gillion. 

It's a world she doesn't want to wake to.

***

They're dead. 

That's the truth of it, that's the burning in his chest, the cause of the vice around his heart. That's why Pretzel is so upset somewhere above him, petting him like he's the one injured. He is, he supposes, if they're both dead. 

What's left for him, what is destiny worth if he can't use it to protect them?

They died in his arms. Under his hands. With their eyes looking up into his for help, for rescue. He let them down. He let them die. 

So maybe he just needs to wake up. 

Or does he?

Which world is real?

Didn't he wake up earlier? With the knife? The ice knife? 

He needs water. Needs to make another. Needs to check. Jay will just heal him if it's real-

If it's real then Jay is dead. 

Fuck. 

Someone is talking to him still. Have they always been? A woman. Talking. Asking him questions, it's in the lilt of her tone, she expects an answer.

He tries to shape a name, a question in return. 

"Chip?" 

He doesn't hear an answer so he tries again, screaming through the pain of grief; he never wanted to meet grief like this. Not with them. 

"Jay?"

There's a gurgling sound and he fears it may have been him. There's movement. A shaking. A rocking but not the sea. Like a body coughing and bending up only to fall back with the effort. Like when Chip was having his nightmares and couldn't stop, couldn't think, couldn't understand. Chip…

Dead. 

They're both dead. 

Right. 

Ice knife.

Wake up. 

Or are they... 

...if they're....then…

***

Chip falls off of Puddle into the dust of the street just as they pass the first home. His knees scrape and the pain is so far away, locked up in a chest in the back of his head for later. The trousers he loves, that Ollie has embroidered silly little sea birds onto the cuffs of under Drey’s patient tutelage, they're maybe ripped. His skin is maybe split and bleeding, the palm of one hand is for sure, blood smearing sticky and wet on his forehead as he pushes his hair out of his eyes, fixes his coat so he can breathe to run.

Puddle collapses into an exhausted lump and Chip would feel bad if he had any time. 

As it is, he's scrambling to his feet, checking the bracelet is still on his wrist, and is bolting to the Eagle's Den with only a shout of apology over his shoulder to the creature. 

People out are slow moving, glorying in what, to them, is the tail end of a beautiful sunset and the start of a warm, sparklingly starlit night. They are not best pleased when he pushes past them, gasping out more apologies that he knows they won't hear as he rushes past, leaping onto and over boxes outside homes and fences separating gardens and growing plots. He doesn't stop. Cannot stop. 

The cresting wave of another's thoughts alongside his own hits hard, nearly knocking him off his feet again, absolutely punching the air from his already tight lungs. He's delirious still, jumping from one half formed idea to the next, remembering and imagining and percieving everything altogether in one muddled mess. It sort of hurts to try to look at too closely but it's still so faint that Chip doesn't dare take his focus away. Gillion can't hear him in return, he knows that, but this way he can know if Jay is there, if the spell is being done.

Only...nothing. Gillion is so far gone, slowing and slurring even in his mind...no…

Chip hops the last fence in his way and pushes through the burning in his lungs, the closed door ahead taunting him. Tempting him. Teasing with what little good he'll even be able to do in this situation when he does get there. 

Gillion's thoughts vanish in one silent drop three steps away from the door.

Continue Reading on AO3...

[wordtotherose]

Craig Santos Perez, from “Love in a Time of Climate Change”

[Text ID: I love you as one loves the most vulnerable / species: urgently, between the habitat and its loss. / I love you as one loves the last seed saved / within a vault,]

[wordtotherose]

I absolutely adore your books and have been obsessing over A Power Unbound (how is it possible to be even better than the first two?! How can anything be this good?!) and honestly have not fallen this head-over-heels in love with a book series in years, but it's more than just loving the characters and story, the writing is fantastic-- how do you do it?!

You're a marvellous author so you probably get asked for writing advice all the time, so I'll try to make this a bit more specific: do you have any advice for writers of LGBTQ+ Romantasy?

thank you! & oof, that's still a pretty large area in which to give advice, but I'll go for something quite specific:

find the weird and specific thing that you love the most, and write it as hard as you can. 'romantasy' is a useful marketing term that publishing is currently enamoured with but which will have its season like everything else; don't try to chase trends or fit with what seems to be selling at the moment. by the time you finish it, the market trend might have shifted. don't try to water down your personality, your ideas or your style. you will only survive the drafting, editing and publishing process if you are truly in love with the story you've written and you truly believe in your own voice. and I think the best thing any of us can do is write for the small and specific group of people who have also, unknown to us, been craving exactly the story that we have been craving.

[wordtotherose]

nice to see miyazaki has the same writing process as me

[wordtotherose]

“ i Love You “

I haven’t drawn in weeks and I listened to “ Your stupid face “ by Kaden Mackay and thought about them. It’s supposed to sound like Chip confessing to Gillion but in the end you find out it’s Gillion talking . They are two faces of the same coin both doomed by destiny in some way .

[wordtotherose]

absolutely love reading such a well-written story and falling a bit in love with the author based solely on the way they write. like baby the way you italicize words makes my heartbeat quicken.

[wordtotherose]

Mmm the angst the potential mmm the hurt comfort the pain mmm writing ideas mmm

[wordtotherose]

I need your fish and chips prompts like I need air, give direction to my procrastination

And any Jay prompts, I love her so so much

[wordtotherose]

Jay watched, painfully still for more reasons than she could keep track of, as Chip took what looked to be the most deliberate breath of his life, just as the body of the Navy officer dropped to the floor. Off of his blades.

There had been so few times in which she'd seen him so still. No shifting weight to and from the balls of his feet. No tapping fingers. No slight sway to his shoulders. No smile, no bright, shadowed eyes, no unerring flippancy. For half a second she was back at the worst, her back to her father, his hand on her shoulder, the poisoned truth spilling from her sea-chapped lips. For another she was staring where Gillion had been, where all his belongings, ever last gift and piece of armour, were scattered now on the ground.

A crash rattled the floor, the windows in their frames, the horror from Chip's expression.

"The fuck was that?" He asked, sounding to all intents and purposes like he hadn't just been told that every insecurity they'd coaxed out of him just days ago had been spat into his face by a complete stranger. "Where's Gill?"

Shit. Shit.

Read More Under the Cut or on AO3...

Jay pushed a hand into Chip's chest as he tried to walk past her, out of the building, towards the rest of the fight.

"Chip, wait! Just-"

He didn't slap her away like he might have normally but he didn't wait with a single ounce of patience. She didn't want to tell him this. Had hoped, ferverently and desperately, that Gillion would have dealt with it by now and be back before Chip could react to the fucker who'd probably been responsible for the catastrophic sounding breakage outside.

"What? Jay, spit it out! He's with Ollie, we need to-"

She cut in quickly, curling her fingers into one of the lapels of his bloodied coat. "Kuba Kenta," she forced out, fighting back her wince as Chip's expression closed off again, "he's fighting Kuba Kenta. Ollie is fine, I'm sure. Gillion won't let anything happen to him but, Chip, listen to me. Chip, he's after you specifically so the best thing you can do for Gillion right now is stay put, don't make yourself a target."

Her breath was coming fast now, her grip loosening as he gripped her wrist in his own fingers, one cold pinky prosthetic not so tight as the others, one less nail digging into her skin. Brown eyes flinted spark red as she evaluated and replanned number upon number of plans and potentialities that could be about to occur. Always looking for the best outcome, the one where they emerged as unscathed as possible. Seconds ticked by. Chip looked over her shoulder, avoiding her searching gaze. He was a mess. Close to passing out on her. She knew him. Loved him. Would save him everytime, even from himself. But she couldn't stop him now, she wasn't in much of a better state and if what she thought had happened had happened then the stronger swimmer of the two of them was about to need to launch a desperate, watery rescue.

***

Ollie's return startled Jay enough that Chip could slip past her, finally able to look for their missing counterpart.

Gone. Was the answer. Just.

Gone.

Again.

Admittedly, down through a hole by the looks of it this time. But there was no mop of green hair spread across the surface to let Chip know Gillion had survived the fall and was cheerfully swimming his way back to them.

Not even the ripples of their impact remained far, far, far below.

Right.

Fuck.

He stumbled back into the shop, lurching into the doorway unintentionally with a muffled curse before he relayed the information to Jay. Jay with her still sore and red tattoo bleeding occasionally on her back, pulling at it further as she bent over Rufus to check for a pulse, for breath, for life. Gods. He hadn't even stopped to check. Great friend that made him.

Ollie stood to the side of Jay, nervously tugging at the ends of his sleeves, a braid of his hair in his mouth before he caught Chip looking and spat it out, mumbling an apology. Fucking hells, Chip thought, what the actual fuck had they been thinking waltzing back here all high and mighty? Bringing the whole crew along to get absolutely fucked over by the goddamn Navy. Idiot.

Jay was saying something, not that he could hear a word over the ringing in his ears, and he hesitated, stupid stupid stupid, before taking the healing potion she was holding out for him to take, impatience brewing like a storm on her face. He caught her snapped order to 'Go!' and put the rest of it together on the way back to the hole in the fucking floor. Pausing only to down the bottle to have the strength to survive the dive, he tightened his coat, wished he had the time to leave his shoes, and followed after Gillion.

Read The Rest On AO3

[wordtotherose]

Heinrich Vogeler - Summer Evening (1902)

[wordtotherose]

Ruth Awad, from “Let me be a lamb in a world that wants my lion”

[wordtotherose]

SHOT BY CRYSTAL LEE LUCAS @moonletgarden

[wordtotherose]

being a writer is sometimes just like

“she raised the sword - *stares out of the window for three minutes* - high above her head, its- *plays with pen* - silver skin glinting in the- *gets up and walks around the room* - golden sunlight. her face- *opens tumblr*