Flowers of a summer day

in which your significant other finally agreed to go outside with you for an impromptu picnic.

pairing: idia shroud x yuu/reader

contents: short oneshot, this is just angst with a happy ending tbh, idia might be ooc pls don't shoot me (^-^; ), reader is referred to as yuu, gender neutral reader and narrated with you/yours, reader has powers to manipulate plants (mainly flowers) to a certain extent

★ the daydreamer speaks — my entry for @cloudcountry's sweet shroud summer 2024!! this is literally an excuse to stimulate the brainworms hehe. also i was braiding my hair and my brain went "gasp. idea!! :D" and there you have it ^-^

do i tag? yes, i do. my main idia liker: @edith-is-a-cat, others: @identity-theft-101 @ferris-the-wheel @xen-blank @twistwonderlanddevotee @loser-jpg @lemonchuu

remember to reblog if you enjoy my work!!

"Is all of this really necessary?"

A chuckle.

"Well, yes, it is."

Summer was just around the corner.

The sun was shining brightly, accompanied by clouds bracketed to the clear blue sky. Flowers glimmered, blooming under the sunlight like jewels. The summer's breezes picked up their faint yet comforting scents, carrying them to distant lands. It was hot out in the flower field, indeed, but the forest surrounding it and a pond nearby helped cooled the air down. Birds took places hidden in the trees, singing a special harmony only they could do, tying every pieces of details together for a lovely summer day.

... It was also how Idia found himself sitting under a tree looking towards his beloved's flower field, having his hair braided and played with.

"You're killing me with the sun, Yuu-shi..."

You only chuckled at his incessant mutterings under his breath as your hands skilfully wove through his fiery long hair, braiding in flowers you grew with love and magic every now and then as you saw fit.

"But how can I refuse Ortho when he personally asked for my help?"

"That's—... Fair enough..."

He grew quiet as you continued on with your little mission.

If it was several years ago, someone told him that he'd have someone who loved and cared for him for his entirety, he'd malfunction and dismiss it as a cruel joke one would say to him. Until you came into his life, what with the ruckus in the opening ceremony.

He still didn't exactly get why you chose him. Him, of all people.

Every time he looked at you, you always shined, as bright as the sun, and as serene as the moon. Even in the drkest times, after every trouble you faced during your time on campus, you would still shined, as if nothing could diminish the light of your aura.

And he envied you for that.

Compared to you, he was no one special, a strange individual even, and not in a good way. Seven, he would agree if you outright said that to his face. He hope you didn't think of him so low like that, however, since it's not like you befriended him if you thought so, right?

... Right?

Oh, who was he kidding? Would you still be with him if you saw how weird he actually was? Would you get tired of him? Would you leave him one day? He would understand if you do leave him behind one day, but by Seven, would it hurt so much and he would never leave his room again if you—

—The sound of you humming tore through his suffocating thoughts, saving him from sinking even deeper down that rabbit hole.

'Right... No point in dweling into that anymore...' He thought, focusing on the soft hands threading through his hair.

You chose him. You stayed by his side, willingly. And even after everything he did, you forgave him. And you loved him for who he was.

"And... Done! There we go."

He looked so different in the mirror that you carried along, with his fiery hair cascading down his back, and the peonies and violets woven in the intricate braids. A lovely product of your creative mind.

Perhaps going outside once in a while wasn't as bad as he thought it was.

He felt himself smiling, his hair glowing a soft pink shade. It was a comforting thought, knowing he could live with moments like this. For eternity, if you would agree.

The Paris Review Guide to Becoming a Well-Read, Cultured, and Critically Thinking Person

Dear _________,  What kind of soulless freak could fail to answer your call? Your intelligence glows through your professed ignorance (as does the authenticity of “a very specific religious cult”). That sounds like an educationally less-than-ideal but, in other ways, fascinating childhood. My only piece of advice before recommending some titles would be: don’t fall for the inferiority/superiority racket. We’re not on a ladder here. We’re on a web. Right now you’re experiencing a desire to become more aware of and sensitive to its other strands. That feeling you’re having is culture. Whatever feeds that, go with it. And never forget that well-educated people pretend to know on average at least two-thirds more books than they’ve actually read.

A place to start is with Guy Davenport’s nonfiction collections, Every Force Evolves a Form, The Geography of the Imagination, and The Hunter Gracchus (with more pieces in The Death of Picasso). You’ll learn an enormous amount from these essays and sketches, but almost without realizing, because they give off the pleasure of great stories. Read the title essay in The Hunter Gracchus (about Kafka and the way symbols can take on a life of their own), and see if it isn’t as stimulating and creepy as the last good movie you saw.

Come up with a system of note-taking that you can use in your reading. It’s okay if it evolves. You can write in the margins, or keep a reading notebook (my preference) where you transcribe passages you like, with your own observations, and mark down the names of other, unfamiliar writers, books you’ve seen mentioned (Guy D. alone will give you a notebook full of these). Follow those notes to decide your next reading. That’s how you’ll create your own interior library. Now do that for the rest of your life and die knowing you’re still massively ignorant. (I wouldn’t trade it!)

Read My Ántonia, and then read everything else by Willa Cather. Inside her novels you’ll find it impossible to doubt that high enjoyment and extreme depth can go together. The most difficult art.

Read Isak Dinesen’s Seven Gothic Tales. I’m saying that randomly, because it seems right, and to approve the spirit of randomness.

If you get into a writer, go all the way and check out everything he/she has written. This summer I fell into a Defoe hole. Started with the major stuff, the best novels and the good journalism, and then read everything down to the poems and the tedious political pamphlets, since by that point I was equally interested in him as a human being and wanted to have as accurate a map of the inside of his brain as possible. His is one of the minds that helped shape the modern world—we’re literally still telling his stories—so there’s a vital interest. I read Maximilian Novak’s super-solid biography of him, Master of Fictions. That sort of questy reading ends up enriching your experience of each individual book and piece, and it lends a sense of adventure to the whole business, which after all involves a lot of lying down or sitting on your ass.

Borges and Denis Johnson—anything by either. Edith Wharton’s story “The Young Gentlemen.” (Random, random.) Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, and then his poems if you’re feeling spry. Find on the Web and buy an old paperback copy of the Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine–edited anthology Six Centuries of Great Poetry (a book for life). Read the next two things I’m going to read and then see how you like them: Grant’s Memoirs and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle. Read Nabokov’s Speak, Memory and Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Books that got me kick-started were the great modernist biographies, especially Hugh Kenner’s The Pound Era and Richard Ellmann’s life of James Joyce. Read those two books and you’ll have a decent-size grid on which to plot the rest of your reading. I’m somehow moved to spurt out, Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World. People have been writing about Shakespeare for half a millennium, and the very best of it just happened.

Ignore all of this and read the next cool-looking book you see lying around. It’s not the where-you-start so much as the that-you-don’t-stop. I was reading Phoenix Force novels until I was like thirteen. These days a lot of people I know are into Murakami. I should have said more novels. If it’s by a Russian, read it.

say my name and his in the same breath i dare you to say they taste the same. let the leaves fall off in the summer and let december glow in flames. erase myself and let go. start it over again in mexico. these friends, they don't love you t hey just love the hotel suites, now. i don't care what you think as long as it's about me. the best of us can find happiness in misery. 

name: benjamin baer teague. age / dob: twenty-eight, march 30th. gender / pronouns: cis male, he/him. preference: bisexual, biromantic. hometown: corona, germany. parent(s): reagan fitzherbert and beckham teague. powers: fire manipulation (a lot like johnny storm and ben10).

INTRODUCING BENJAMIN TEAGUE !! here comes the boy!!! there he is!! he’s been around for what seems like forever but this is my first time playing him and i cannot wait !!! below are some bullet points to let you get to know him better. after that are some wanted and taken connections. if you’d like to plot please feel free to message me here on tumblr or even on discord.

benjamin was born an accident to reagan and beckham... and it’s been a wild ride since then. he’s an aries and acts like one.. chaos since birth.

he grew up with his mother most of the time visited elias in the summers until he was older. he was known at the castle for being the full blown brat he is. he’s extremely charming and had the guards and everyone on staff on his side. 

he is the definition of a spoiled brat.. problem child and honestly all around goof. he makes any minor convenience in his life everyone else’s problem beside his own.

and a mama’s boy on top of it all. benny tells everyone that his mama is his best friend and always will be. he goes to reagan for everything and anything. he needs no other woman because he’s got his mama.

he’s a bit of an arrogant ass... but you kinda get used to it because he’s so charming. like-- really really charming. and not to mention he’s hot. so that helps.

chaotic bi-sexual. he sleeps around a lot.. with literally everyone. doesn’t care.. he just doesn’t like being alone at the end of the night.

hobbies include: motorcycle rides down the coast, sleeping with anyone and everyone he find attractive, fighting with anyone and everyone he can, crying into silk sheets when he doesn’t get his way, and getting meaningless tattoos. 

you would think he had plans to like-- be an adult or get a job since he’s pushing thirty but uh he’s a prince and will never be king so he spends his time doing everything but being responsible. 

lives by: here for a good time not a long time.

WANTED CONNECTIONS !! here is a short list of connections for benny i’m still looking for.

** benjamin doesn’t do relationships often. hook ups are common but unfortunately he’s his fathers son and won’t date much** 

enemies.

frenemies.

childhood friends.

school friends.

TAKEN CONNECTIONS !! here is a list of taken connections for benjamin.

juilet, flynn, leo, clarie, ada, and rosie: siblings, most half and one adopted it doesn’t matter to benny. he loves all his siblings the same. and would literally kill someone for them.

dani, asher, dante, and josh: fight club, the oldest children of the elias families who all are a tight knit group but also... fight a ton. very tight knit group.

aaliya: exes, benjamin was an awful awful boyfriend and it ended horribly. 

kieran: mortal enemy, they hate one another.. have since they were children but kieran got hot and now its a problem for benny. but also he still is a dick to him.

edith: the girl he flirts with to piss of his sister’s boyfriend.

Tony is in the middle of meeting and he read a text from peter, stating that he's all alone and aroused.

Ask and thy shall receive 💦 I hope this is what you were looking for! Thank you sm for the prompt ❤ Begins as unestablished.

TW: Slight imbalanced dynamic

The EDITH glasses, as it turns out, were the perfect solution for being accosted into attending Stark Industries' monthly performance meetings. He'd been playing Go Fish for the past half an hour, and nobody (except potentially Pepper, who eyed him suspiciously here and there) seemed any wiser. He had starved the temptation to snoop through their hardware, choosing instead to battle JARVIS at a good old fashioned card game.

He's winning, too, right up until the glasses give a muted flash on the inside lens and a message pops up in the upper corner of his left lens. It's an image that takes him a solid five seconds of staring to fully accept; mostly because it contains the elegant slope of Peter's back, the two arches of his thick asscheeks. It's been taken over his shoulder, the boy leaning forwards and presenting like a bitch in heat. The caption is a simple 'It's a bad time to be left alone.'

In the background, illuminated by the display lights, stands the Mark XIII. The boy is naked. In his workshop. Where Tony had left him not an hour before, decidedly not naked.

"Stark?' Max Kline has always had a high, watery voice, but it irritates him ever more now; drawing his gaze away from the image. "You looked a little startled. Are the figures not what you expected?" The man continued, and Tony forced his face to smooth into a calculated mask.

"No. Your infantile nature towards cash flow forecasts is what startled me. Please, continue. I'll shred you apart after the report," Tony tossed back, serene as he relaxed into his seat. Kline's cheeks glow like coals, but there's only a brief pause before the reports keep coming. Across the table, at her rightful seat as Consulting Director, Pepper arches a plucked brow at him.

Waiting for her gaze to leave him is agonising. If she catches his eyes flicking about, she'll know the glasses aren't just his usual fashion statement. It takes a solid 20 seconds, but eventually her prim stare fixes on some other sorry sap. Tony took a breath, then another, before 'typing'.

The King: I know you said you'd try not to distract me during the meeting, kiddo, but I gotta say. 0/10 for effort.

It's a risk. They've never done this before. He's not even sure if Peter is flirting half the time or if the boy just genuinely... Like that. The burning gazes and lingering touches have boiled into what he perceives as crippling sexual tension, but, hey. It never hurts to second guess yourself. Especially not in relation to a twinky little snack that just sent him a nude.

His fingers begun a slow tempo against the desk, his head turned towards the holograms but none of it sinking in.

Not when the three little dots dance on his screen, then disappear. They do this seven more times before Peter's reply comes through.

Stark In Training: Oh my fucking god. Wrong Tony. I'm so sorry, Mr. Stark. Please don't take away my suit! Or tell Aunt May! Oh my god, please don't-

Tony can't read the rest of it. Not with his eyes lazer-beaming at the words wrong Tony. How could he be the wrong Tony? He's the only Tony!

Alright, perhaps not the only Tony, but the only one in the kids life that should matter. That should be in his phone contacts.

A small, feral part of him adds; the only one Peter sends nudes to. It's the sheer principle of it, the -10HP to his ego that has him digging his nails against the table, frowning. He types so fast by the time he blinks for SEND he's a little dizzy.

The King: The wrong Tony? Excuse you. I'm the only Tony that matters. Plus, you're in my workshop. Way to hit my heart with a hammer.

It's a little cruel. He's toying with the boy. He can't help it. Pins the image to his lens so he can hungrily stare at the dimples at the small of his back, the lithe muscle definition, the dip between his cheeks that Tony wants to bury his face into.

And then;

The King: Aren't you a little young to be nuding about? Should I Google another talk?

Dots. Dots. Dots. More dots.

Stark In Training: You should pay attention to the meeting. And delete this. And never, ever talk about it.

Stark In Training: Please.

And Tony would. He'd be the responsible adult and ignore the nude from his protegé. Wipe it from technological existence and ignore it entirely when he gets back. Except...

The King: I'm the elder; I get to make the demands. And in any case, I apparently have another Tony to compete for your hero worship with. And he gets nudes. My feelings are mortally wounded and I'll never wear another Versacé suit as long as I live.

Stark In Training: You're ridiculous. He's not - He's just a guy. That I know. Named Tony. Please go back to your meeting. I can't die of embarrassment and type at the same time.

Tony wanted to scoff. Mm, no. But the little slut could bend over and seduce another Tony while typing. Speaking of which...

The King: Show me this Wal-Mart me. If someone is sexting my mini-me then clearly, I must vet him.

It takes a solid ten minutes of creative arguing, before a single picture graces his screen. It's not the best, a little grainy, but authentic. And... Yeah. Holy. Fuck. Peter quite literally found a Wal-Mart version of him.

The guy has dark hair and styled stubble, but his eyes are green and his jaw is boxy, too sharp. His body was tall, broad. A little too steriod-y to match the genuine, years-worked muscle Tony had. A poke at his Instagram shows he makes a living as a lookalike.

The King: That's... Personally offensive, frankly. Kid, I'm disappointed. I thought I taught you better. I thought I taught you to gun for the best of the best.

Stark In Training: I can't have the best...

Before Tony can reply, another image takes over. It's Peter, on his hands and knees of the workshop floor. He's still naked, hair mussed and lips dark.

He's licking the panel of the suit that would lay over Tony's cock. Tony can see the glisten of his tongue, the bliss visible even on the side of his face. And...

Fuck.

Stark In Training: You're not here. You've never spoken to me the way he does. The way I want you to. Never told me the things you'd do to me. Never touched me. The best doesn't want me.

Tony's never stood up so fast in his damned life. The financial secretary nearly punches through her hologram in surprise, and he waved a hand at them. "Workshop emergency. Continue without me; I read the reports while you were all typing them."

He's got a boy to prove wrong.

I think it was 60 for Ethan and Mc? Pretty please 😊

Thanks for the ask @noboundariesplease 💙

#60-Did you get any sleep last night?

You can find the prompt list here.

Taglist: @miyakokurono @trappedinfandoms @openheart12 @sekizincimektup @junggoku @ethandaddyramsey @edith-eggs1 @ethanramseysgirl @samihatuli @loveellamae @x-kyne-x @paulfwesley @zeniamiii @binny1985 @an-urban-witch-ig @ramseyegerton @noboundariesplease @mrsdr-ethan-ramsey @newcolonies @mkamra2355 @unluckygs @choices-love-affair @kaavyaethanramsey  @caseyvalentineramsey @ohramsey @virtualrain202 @squishywizardhq  @junehiratas @lilyvalentine @nooruleman @itsgoingnuts (if you want to tagged let me know)

Warning: This has no plot and pure SMUT😏 so it's N*FW

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Breakfast

Leah padded through Ethan's humongous apartment to the kitchen where she found him standing shirtless, making coffee.

His strong back muscles were gleaming under the mid morning sun. The indents in them and the way they strained with every moment just made her stomach clench.

Leah, they are just back muscles... Are you seriously turned on by them?

But they look so yummy...I want to run my tongue along them... Leah thought as she leaned against the kitchen island and eyed him.

Ethan turned and gave her a breathtaking smile. "Good morning sunshine. Did you get any sleep last night?”

"Kind of? A certain someone kept me up late last night." She teased as she walked towards him and hugged him from the back, her hands trailing his abs.

Ethan chuckled and turned around. Leah was just wearing her lacy panties and his shirt. The buttons of the top were open, letting him peak at the top of her breasts.

"I like what you are wearing now sunshine..." He said as he bent down to kiss her. Leah went on her tip toes and wrapped her arm around his neck deepening the kiss. Ethan wrapped his arms and pulled her flush against him, letting her feel his growing erection.

"Someone is excited." Leah said as she reached down and palmed his crotch.

"Wonder who is responsible for that?" He smirked before he pulled her into another searing hot kiss. He plunged his tongue into her mouth, to taste her.

She tasted heavenly, like ambrosia and he was addicted to her.

Leah's hands roamed all around his body frantically, feeling the indents and the strong muscles. The need to feel everything overwhelmed her and soon enough she was going down on her knees.

"Sunshine, what are you doing?" Ethan asked, his blue eyes darkening at the sight of her on her knees.

"Eating breakfast Ethan." She said as she pulled his sweatpants down, freeing his cock. She grasped it in her hand and stuck her tongue out, licking the tip, slowly while meeting his stormy blue eyes.

"Sunshine, didn't anybody tell you to not play with your food?" He asked, growing impatient.

And at the moment, she took him in her mouth. She hollowed her cheeks and sucked which made him see the stars. The remaining part which she couldn't fit in her mouth, she massaged it with her hand.

"Oh fuuckkk." Ethan moaned out as he felt her tongue running up and down her dick. His hands buried themselves into her hair and proceeded to fuck her mouth. Leah loosened her jaw, trying to accommodate him.

After a couple of strokes, tears welled up in Leah's eyes. The entire time pleasuring Ethan, his sexy moans just made her wetter and the need to have him inside her was increasing as the time passed.

"Get up sunshine, I don't want to come too soon." He lifted her up and quickly unbuttoned the shirt and tore her panties off.

Leah dragged him to the sofa and made him sit. She straddled him and out her hands on his shoulder for support. "Sunshi-"

"Shhh.. I want to be in the driver's seat." Saying that she slowly sunk into his dick, enjoying the feeling of him, filling her up.

Ethan reached up and kissed her, swallowing the tiny moans she was releasing. His hands went and grabbed her ass, massaging it.

"Oh.. my..." Leah moaned as her eyes fluttered close as she started picking up speed. Ethan smacked her ass and she yelped. "I know you can do better sunshine..." He said huskily as his hands went to her breasts and pinched the nipples.

"I-" she couldn't complete her sentence as she started riding him fast. Ethan went up to meet her thrusts, driving in deeper. He hit her sweet spot and Leah swore that she saw stars.

Seeing her reaction, Ethan angled his hips so that he could hit that spot consecutively. He threw his head back and let out another moan, enjoying the way her walls were clenching around him, his release getting closer and closer.

"Come for me Ethan." Leah said she surged forward and kissed him hard.

And he did. His dick twitched and he emptied his load into the condom, which triggered her release. Moaning, she came hard, her walls clenching him so tightly that it literally made Ethan cross-eyed with the pleasure.

Leah leaned her head on his shoulder and Ethan wrapped his strong arms around her, basking in the after glow.

Catching her breath she moved back and pressed her forehead to his.

"I think we scarred Jenner." Ethan said as he kissed the edge of her mouth.

Leah gave a dimpled smile, "Yeah... I think we need to pay for her therapy."

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Your Bloods Gone Bad!! 2, 3, 7, 9, 13, 15?

Ayyyy!! That ones a golden oldie omg, based on the comics by my angsty other half dr-chalk <3

2: What scene did you first put down?

Like I said I’m a very linear writer, so I always start at the beginning and work my way through, but in terms of which scene sparked the whole thing it was definitely when Varian first sees Quirin emerge though the smoke, what an amazing image from the comic.

3: What’s your favorite line of narration? 

Oooohhh I think if I had to pick one it’d be:

 “I…” Varian trailed off, looking up at his father’s glowing eyes, his mind flashing back to a year ago, to pain and suffering and the crack of amber in between frantic screaming and-  

 “I can’t…” The boy said, feeling very small.

I love writing characters having a breakdown, and chopping up the narrative flow to emphasize that. I find it really makes the reader feel the stress of the moment and empathize with the character!

7: Where did the title come from? 

Hunt You Down - By Hit House which is an AWESOME mood song

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic? 

Not with this one, since I was mostly following the comics. Even though the comics weren’t originally supposed to be together, I always thought of them as a pair since they both broke my heart so when I wrote the fic as a fun little gift for chalk I put that little spin on it

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? 

OH I always listen to music, since Blood was a pretty short fic I mostly was listening to Hunt You Down on repeat, though I also really loved this Toxic cover by 2WEI for foreboding moods, and the What Remains of Edith Finch soundtrack for that really good bittersweet, sad vibe

15: What did you learn from writing this fic? 

Oh fun! This was posted around mid-to-late-Rowboats if I remember correctly, so I think at the time the main thing I was learning was taking my visual brain and getting it translated into words. I think this fic really helped because I had a literal picture to work from, and I could look under the layer of the picture to try and get the... idk the vibe? Whatever you’d like to call it, getting the mood was more important that just describing the image.

Thank you very much for the ask @skitter-kitteruwu <3 always nice to hear from you dude!!

Ask Game Here!

Invite me, Noemi

It was a little celebration. Not even. There were so few people, it couldn’t even be called that. A get together, maybe. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a party. The very word party made Noemi nervous beyond imagination. Parties meant people, and people in general made his hands shake and knees quake.

But these are not just people, he told himself, they’re your friends.

Edith has reassured him that Violet didn’t hate him, “She’s just a very guarded person. You make her nervous.” He made her nervous? Violet, with her sharp eyes and even sharper knives, was nervous because of him.

Noemi didn’t say it, but he was sure Edith knew exactly what he felt about that statement. Bullshit.

Edith has been the one who suggested the...party, of course. Noemi wouldn’t have dreamed (nightmared?) of attending one, let alone hosting one. She hadn’t forced him, just insisted until he was tired of saying no.

“Throw a party, she said,” He mumbled to himself, fiddling with the edge of the envelope, “It’ll be fun, she said.“

Heart in his throat, Noemi approached the gate surrounding the castle. One of the guards seemed to recognize him, as they waved him over with a smile.

“ ‘Ello there, Noelly was it?”

Noemi began to nod, hating correcting people, but stopped himself. How was he supposed to muster enough courage to talk to Violet alone if he couldn’t even talk to a stranger. “Um, Noemi, actually.”

“Ah, Noemi. Forgive me, lots o’ folks passing these gates. Lots o’ names to remember. Where’s your friend?”

“Edith? She’s not here. I actually just wanted to talk to Violet...on my own.”

“Oh, didn’t see you on the list.”

The list. Of course. The only reason Noemi ever got inside was because he tagged alongside Edith, the literal savior of the kingdom. Everyone let her in.

“I...I didn’t call in ahead. I was just kinda hoping she wasn’t busy. I just wanted to give this to her.”

The guard eyed the envelope. It was an average cream-colored one, with that annoying glue that made it impossible to open without tearing. Noemi has stuck one of his sister’s little glow-in-the-dark star stickers on it instead. That way Violet could actually get to the contents inside. He suddenly realized it was a bit suspicious to carry an unmarked envelope around, especially considering his whole necromancer thing. That automatically made him look like he was going to poison someone.

“It’s a letter.” He said quickly. Maybe too quickly. “I don’t have to give it to her face to face. I don’t have to give it to her at all. Although I’d like to. But I can just schedule ahead or something. It’s okay. Sorry to trouble you.” His body felt heavy, like he was made of lead, not bone and blood.

“If it’s important I don’t mind checking in with the princess to see—“

“No! It’s really silly. No need. Sorry for bothering you.” He wanted to sprout wings and fly right out of there. He could actually, but knew better. Then he’d really have something to worry about. “Thank you. Have a good day.”

One foot in front of the other. That’s all it took. Left, right. Left, right. All the way back to the transports, all the way back to Abricot.

“Noemi?”

He stopped, without turning around, “Hey Violet.”

“Where’s Edith, did she head on in already. I didn’t expect her today.”

“No. No, I’m came alone. Just had a letter to deliver.” He finally faced her.

Noemi didn’t hate Violet. It was just that under any other circumstances, they would have never met. Edith was the only thing that bonded them. Besides, Noemi could never look into her eyes without nearly fainting. The piercing blue was just too much for him.

“A letter?” Signature glare, hands crossed in distrust. This was already not going well. “From who? Not Edith, right?” Edith wasn’t a letter person if she could help it. Face-to-face was the way to go with her.

“Um, no. Not from her. She was the one who convinced me to—well, she had this weird suggestion. You know her, all her strange ideas. And she’s always saying how I never have any fun and somehow she—funny story, Edith once got me to jump off a cliff when we visited, oh where was it, somewhere up north with all those mountains. It wasn’t funny at the time though. I still don’t know how she got me to do it. And...um.”

Violet was not a person who appreciated rambling. But, was anyone? “Noemi.”

“Yes?”

“Did you write a letter for me?”

“Well, you could say that.”

She held her hand out. “May I have it?”

“Yes. Yeah, of course. Sorry.”

Maybe Noemi was hallucinating from the adrenaline pumping through his veins, but he could have swore he saw Violet smile at the little sticker as she opened the envelope.

She was a quick reader, taking only a few moments to read through my blocky writing. “Basically a party.”

“Sorry?”

“You never once say the word party. Celebration, get-together, gathering. But not party.”

“Oh. Did I?”

She squinted. The way she looked at Noemi made him feel like some germ under a microscope. “Perhaps Edith was correct.”

“Correct? About what?”

Had Edith been talking about him to Violet? Complaining about how jittery he was? How boring he was?

It was Violet’s turn to become embarrassed. “You know Edith and her sayings. Don’t judge a book by its cover. She said you may look threatening, but your story is nothing, but kind.”

“She said that? About me? Are you sure?”

“Are you insinuating I am a liar?”

“What? No! I just...wasn’t expecting that, I guess.”

“Well, you’ve proven to be quite passive, regardless of your rather dangerous magic.” Noemi raises his eyebrows. He couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be an insult or compliment. “And I have grown to not despise you nearly as much as I did before. I suppose a—what did you call it?” Violet scanned the letter, “I suppose a friendly social would be all well and good.”

Noemi found the corner of his mouth quirked. Some of the heaviness he had felt, dissolved into a light, feathery feeling. “Actually,” he corrected, “it’s a party.”

— this is low key awful bc i wrote half in the lighting section of home depot and the other half in a very noisy car, but it is what it is! thank you very much for the ask! i enjoyed writing it regardless of my settting!! ❤️ —

SEND ME A PHRASE + MY CHARACTERS AND ILL WRITE A LITTLE DRABBLE ✏️

The Experiment: Ch. 24

Captain Underpants realizes he has issues. But he’s also not alone...

The CU gem au is by @angerydj

As much fun as it was, something didn’t sit right with Captain Underpants. Something about Tourmaline, about the name the boys had given him against his will.

How could you let them do that?

It’s out of fun! Nobody is going to get hurt!

You stupid gem!

Captain Underpants groaned. He was walking through the hallway, but had to stop and lean against a wall, holding his gem. He told the boys he needed some air, and left them to their drawing and writing. They should be done with them all by now.

Now every infant and teacher in the school will now know the name... Professor Poopypants. But also to make Captain Underpants feel better they included in the back of the book how other gems could make their own ridiculous name.

It was his idea. It was to make the bad thoughts leave him alone. It didn’t work.

You’re the one who can’t take a hint, and go away!

FOOL!

The agate gasped, feeling like his gem was hit by an unknown force. He squeezed his eyes shut. Everything started to heat up again. He had to calm down, focus on something else.

Think of Harold and George, the smiles of the infants. Think of them learning and growing and...

Little brats

Think of Edith. Her beautiful blue spots that glowed when she was happy. Her eyes sparkled like light dancing on ocean waves...

She’ll never love you

Think of... Something! Anything! 

He gasped like a fish out of water stumbling out of the school, leaving blackened char footprints in his wake. He fell onto his back and squeezed his eyes shut.

When he opened them, he wasn’t on the ground. He was sitting up in the shade of a great building. He was wearing his old agate uniform. He stood and saw his reflection in the mirror. Captain underpants sniffed and rubbed at the scratches and tear streaks on his face.

‘You’re a disgrace’ the other agates teased. They called him weak. Perhaps he was. He cared too much for the other gems, not just the agates. He thought pearls shouldn’t be servants. This and other thoughts made his superiors warn him... He was starting to sound like the rebels on Earth. He could be shattered for it.

Someone cleared his voice behind him. Captain Underpants turned. A fog blocked the new gem that approached him.

“Hey.” He said

“Hey what? Come to laugh at me like the others?” Captain Underpants asked, spots flaring. The hidden gem sighed.

“I’m.... I’m sorry. They were out of line, all of them. You didn’t deserve that.” Came the voice

Captain Underpants was surprised. Tears began to flow once more.

“Thank you.” He said with a smile and a sniffle. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply

He let the air out and opened his eyes. He was back on the ground in front of the school. The bad thoughts must have calmed down at the memory.

Captain Underpants sat up and noticed the sign. Whatever it said, the agate pulled the letters off. He hummed and spelled out “Tra-la-la”. Something didn’t look right, so he kept adding A’s.

“Eleven.” Came a voice. Captain Underpants turned around.

She was a strange looking gem. Squared hair, tinted visor, a star clear on her outfit. He tilted his head but smiled at her.

“Hello.” He greeted, “Eleven what?”

“A’s.” She answered

“Hm. Of course.” Captain Underpants responded, opening the small box below the sign that held the extra letters.

The strange gem knelt down next to him, pulling out more A’s. Captain Underpants was surprised to see two gems on her hands.

Fusion...

“Are... Are you a fusion?” He asked. She looked at him. He wished he could see her eyes behind the visor.

“And what are you?” She asked

Nothing...

Captain Underpants glanced down at his gem. No gem should be shaped the way his is. No gem should have bad thoughts and strange memories like he does. He noticed the crack had somehow grown bigger. It might be more noticeable now.

“I don’t know.” He answered with a shrug.

“Hm.” The gem stood, crossing her arms. “I thought you were a superhero. Protector of the colony, helper of infant gems, defender of truth, justice...”

“And all things pre-shrunk and cottony.” Captain Underpants finished, standing up. He stared at the strange gem, the looked away, tapping his fingers together. “Have we... Do I know you?” He looked back at her.

“The other one does.” She responded. It was an answer the agate was not expecting.

“Oh.” he said softly. She put a hand on his shoulder, closing the distance between them.

“Here’s a lesson you need to learn.” She said, “Sometimes you need to break before you become whole again.”

“Break?!” Captain Underpants said, backing up until he bumped into the sign. He held his gem as if the stranger would attack it.

“It’s an expression. Don’t take it literally.” She said, walking away. She paused and looked over her shoulder. “Or maybe... Do take it literally. Might help with your bad thoughts.”

Captain Underpants stared at her until she was out of sight. Today was very strange for him. And it became stranger when the front doors of the school burst open. Professor P was dragging George and Harold by the back of their shirts to him.

“There you are.” He said, dragging them along as he stomped up to the agate. “I have been looking everywhere. Do you know what these two little neophytes have been up to?” He finally let go of the boys. Captain Underpants looked back at the infants.

“They don’t look like nephrites to me.” He commented, making the boys giggle.

“What? No not nephrites! Just look at what they have made!” Said the professor as he held out the comic.

Captain Underpants had not read it when the boys were done. He flipped through the pages curiously.

“We should bubble them probably, like, forever!” Said the angry professor

“Hm.” Said the agate. “Oh my. This is not a comic. This... Is a History book.” The Tourmaline snatched the comic out of his hands. George and Harold giggled to themselves. Captain Underpants still believed he was a hero that fought monsters and the villain they just made up!

Although, really, the red agate was realizing the haze surrounding him and his backstory could slowly lift away in time. But this was to make the boys happy.

“And as such, I should be taught in every classroom! And you yourself must teach it.” He went on, “Because that is how good it is!”

“I don’t understand. I thought we’d be on the same page.” Professor P said

“Ah, what page is that?” Captain Underpants knelt by him and took the comic, “I’m on page 9, here. It’s fantastic.” He flipped the pages and held it out. “Look, see,” he pointed to each panel explaining the plot, “it’s about this evil science teach, who looks a lot like you, by the way. And he wanted to rid the colony of laughter, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. And what’s worse everywhere he would go, gems would be having fun and laughing! But then he discovered someone who wasn’t.” He pointed to a gem and in a nasally voice said, “I don’t get it! Why is it funny?” He flipped the page, “Anti-Humor Boy! Then the Professor said ‘Very interesting’.” Captain Underpants said with a chuckle, “That’s my voice for him.”

“Wait wait,” the Tourmaline pulled the comic back, studying the page, “that’s no Anti-Humor Boy. That’s the suck up Peridot from class. Very interesting.” He rolled up the comic and strode away, looking back at the gemstone. 

“You boys don’t even realize it,” he said, “but your silly little comic book just helped me figure out how to wipe out laughter in the entire co-”

He was cut off when a car collided with him. The boys winced and remembered the lesson their parents taught them: Always look before you cross a street. The  Tourmaline got up again before being hit by a truck that kept going with him on it.

“Wow.” Harold said “That actually worked out for once. Good job Captain Underpants.”

“At your service sidekicks.” He replied with a salute.

“So, I guess this chapter of our lives is done.” Harold added

“Hm, what’s next?” George asked

“You’re the writer.” Harold replied with a shrug

“Probably a look at things from a different perspective. I don’t know.” George said

Every Ladynoir Fic Ever (for Bullysquadess)

Happy Birthday @bullysquadess ! Thanks to you I’ve been sucked into this fandom and achieved minor internet infamy. Please enjoy this finely roasted Ladynoir in honor of your name day.

Disclaimer: This is a work of parody aimed at overall fandom trends and not at any one author or story. None of this is meant as a personal attack on anyone; just a sporking of common Ladynoir fandom tropes.

Please enjoy.

The cerulean skies above Paris’ venerable and antediluvian streets gave way into a rich mauve tinged with the auburn hues of a dying day. On the streets below, Parisians came and went, unaware that the most romantic act in the history of the cosmos was being prepared not three stories above them.

“And we all say

"Oh, well I never, was there ever

A cat so clever as magical

Mr. Mistoffelees"

Humming a jaunty cat-like song to himself (AN: get it? It’s because he’s a cat), Chat Noir went about lighting each of the two thousand one hundred and sixty two candles strewn about the rooftop; one for every hour he knew and loved the most wonderful, sublime, perfect, flawless, radiant, resplendent, exalted, magnificent, regal, truncular, and ethereal girl in all of Paris.

Nay, all the world!

Such was his love that he converted the rooftop retreat where they were to meet for their Nightly Evening Patrol into a lush, romantic scene out of Kenneth Branagh’s wettest Shakespearean dream. Laurels and ivy hung from every corner of the confused tenant’s roof. A record player played a suave Edith Pilaf song (AN: because they’re French) as celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck prepared a delightful evening meal for Paris’ greatest heroes- prime roasted rib, herbed potatoes, and garden salad for the Lady, and half-cup of Friskies “Friend-Zone” mix for the gent.

Chat may have spent upwards of eighteen thousand euro on his little surprise, but it was money well spent. After all, it was the three-week anniversary of the first time Ladybug accidentally spat on him when trying to dislodge a fabulous booger from her perfect nostrils! Such an occasion demanded splendor the likes of which Paris had never seen before. The rooftop scene before him made Versailles look like a dilapidated crack den full of sentient cockroaches, but still it wasn’t enough for his Lady, his partner, his love, his star, his treasure, his catnip (AN: get it? it’s because he’s like…a cat and stuff) his everything, his-

“Whats up ass clown?” Ladybug greeted, swinging onto the rooftop and shattering the intricate four thousand euro Ladybug ice sculpture centerpiece like it was Chat’s heart.

“Dinner is ser-AUGH!” Wolfgang Puck cried as Ladybug pushed him off the roof and into an open dumpster on the street below.

“What the hell is all this supposed to be?” Ladybug sneered at the wall of origami butterflies Chat had painstakingly folded over the course of the last seven months.

“Oh, w-well those are just origami butterflies to represent all of the akumas we fought together as a-”

“Ugh,” Ladybug groaned, blowing a raspberry and using a nearby candelabra to light the origami wall on fire. “Gross.”

Chat’s ears drooped like a kitten that had been caught pissing in the houseplant. “But...I thought we could have a fun dinner together.”

A vein in Ladybug’s forehead bulged as she drew a paper fan from nowhere and bashed Chat across the nose. “Ughh!  We don’t have time for fun! We have a serious and sacred duty to defend the people of this city! There is no time for fun!”

With that, Ladybug upended the beautifully carved table that Chat had spent ten years working on over the edge of the building and on to Wolfgang Puck’s head as he attempted to crawl to safety.

“Vamoose!” Ladybug cried, latching her yo-yo on to a nearby lamppost and swinging across the street.

Chat let a single tear roll out of his emerald green orbs which he quickly captured in a small glass phial so his father could use it in his Eau de Puss line of cologne. Ladybug never, ever, ever had time for anything other than straightlaced business and if it weren’t for the fact that they were supposed to be partners, she would have probably lit him on fire and tossed him in an open sewer drain by now. He would have deserved it, of course; his perfect, flawless, effervescent, stalwart, gladiator goddess of a Lady could have singlehandedly ended crime and cured cancer without his help at all, and his continued presence in her life was as a cancerous zit marring the face of perfection.

But oh; oh! How he loved her! Even with the constant battery, verbal abuse, and veiled death threats she hurled at him every time she opened her mouth, he was one smitten kitten!

“Oi, Simba!” Ladybug called from two rooftops over. “You have ten seconds to catch up and then I’m beating the everloving shit out of you!”

Yowling, Chat Noir scampered on all fours across the rooftops, landing with a pirouette behind Ladybug as she glared hard-boiledly across their city.

“So, m’lady, shall we take a swing along the Seine before heading to the Eifel Tower to close off the evening?” Chat Noir said hopefully, passing her a basket of food he saved from her wrath.

“Ughh,” Ladybug groaned, rolling her eyes. “Why is it always the Eifel Tower with you?”

“It’s certainly the most romantic spot in the city,” Chat Noir purred, waggling his eyebrows as Ladybug drove her elbow into the side of his head. “Ow! Wh-Why are you hurting me so much?”

“Sorry; I have a thing for some other guy so I can’t be civil with any other boy, otherwise I’m basically cheating on him,” Ladybug said, pouring Lucky Charm gasoline on a Lucky Charm table and grabbing Chat around the waist.

“Is that why you hurled a textbook at my head when I said hello to you the other day?” Chat asked.

“Basically,” Ladybug said, shrewishly suplexing her partner through the burning table. “You should know better than to say things to me by now.”

Chat Noir’s flirting was especially grating to her, because he flirted with literally everything that had a pulse and pair of legs. She was fairly sure that he once chatted up a mailbox because it was dark and his feline cat vision hadn’t kicked in yet. It was gross and didn’t make her jealous at all. I-It’s not like she liked him or anything!

Sh-shut up!

Ladybug’s tsundere inner monologue and Chat Noir’s pained, burning screams were cut short by the sound of a high pitched scream from just down the road. Without looking to see if Chat had recovered from her right hook, she took off, latching on to the spire of the Eiffel Tower and landing in a crouch near the far banks of the Seine.

All around her, people were necking in the streets like teenagers at summer camp; a summer camp for nerds who had never kissed anyone before. A ten car pileup in the middle of the road blocked traffic on all sides as the citizens of Paris lived up to their romantic stereotype by Frenching the first age appropriate person they saw. The half your age plus seven rule was in full effect for it seemed that even Hawkmoth had standards of basic decency when it came to brainwashing the Parisian populace.

“Okay, furreeze!” Chat Noir cried, landing with his claws out and leg outstretched like a cat as he surveyed the scene. “Who is respawnsible for this hissterical catastrophe?!”

“Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Ladybug groaned for thirty full seconds, pausing only to roundhouse kick Chat in the head. “Yeah, what he said, but not completely idiotic; who’s in charge of this fiasco?”

The Parisians seemed to be too busy playing tonsil lacrosse to answer Ladybug, but across the avenue, a low, throaty chuckle pierced the symphony of sloppy face sucking.

“Huhuhuhu,” the shadowy figure chortled, stepping out of the darkness. “So good of you to drop by, Ladybug...drop by for your doom!”

A hail of gold crossbow bolts assailed them from the shadows and Ladybug dove out of the way before Chat could throw himself in front of her as he usually did. From the darkness, a cloaked figure emerged, a bright sparkling grin the only thing visible from under his hood.

“You might have done well against Dark Cupid,” the hooded stranger chortled. “But you have yet to face the wrath of-”

The akuma threw the cloak back, revealing a painted on, bright pink bodysuit complete with assless chaps and heart shaped pasties.

“-Cupid Cupid!” Cupid Cupid crowed, soaring into the air on fluttering wings made of questionably shaped feathers. The citizens sucking face paused their tongue lashings to chant “Cupid! Cupid!” in unholy unison.

“I thought the full moon wasn’t until next week,” Chat snickered as Cupid Cupid shook his barely covered rear. His pun earned him another smack in the back of the head from Ladybug with a stray brick, who loathed humor in all its many forms, but puns more than anything.

“With the power of love and beauty, I’m here to take your Miraculouses, win the day, and bump this fic from a T to an M rating!” Cupid Cupid said, gyrating in a way that made Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Hawkmoth halfway across the city deeply, deeply uncomfortable. “Suck my throbbing love rockets!”

“Oh god, why?!” Ladybug cried, dodging the hail of crossbow bolts that crashed into the sidewalk with a hail of lewd cries. They scampered around the akuma showered them in a golden stream of heart tipped bolts, cackling as distantly Huey Lewis and the News blared on the speakers. But as agile as Ladybug was, Cupid Cupid’s golden shower (of bolts) managed to rain down and hit Ladybug in the side of the shoulder. She tumbled in midair, landing across the street as Chat Noir’s glowing green eyes narrowed into feline slits. Now madder than a cat in a room full of dog shaped rocking chairs, Chat Noir pounced on Ladybug’s prone form, carrying her up and on to the nearby rooftops away from the cosmically inappropriate akuma.

“Ladybug!” Chat Noir yeowled, shaking her stirring form with a pained expression. “Ladybug answer me!”

Ladybug’s pale blue eyes fluttered open, staring up at the young man standing over her. “Adrien?” Ladybug crooned sweetly and with more affection than she would have ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever…ever shown her partner.

“Uh…n-no, definitely not Adrien Agreste,” Chat Noir chuckled nervously, freezing as Ladybug cupped his face, eyes now literal heart shapes as she leaned in.

“Come on, model boy, let’s make out!” Ladybug said, making octopus-esque kissy noises as Cupid Cupid cackled in the distance.

“It’s no use; she has fallen under my spell and now thinks of you as the object of her affection!” Cupid Cupid cackled, firing his crossbows into the air like Yosemite Sam on the Fourth of July while shaking his hips. “She now has an insatiable desire to suck face with you while I make off with your Miraculouses!”

“How is this an effective akuma idea?!” Chat Noir hissed, trying to keep Ladybug from planting her lips on him.

“How is akumitizing a four year old a good idea?!” Cupid Cupid shouted. “Hawkmoth isn’t too good at this game, is he?!”

“Point,” Chat Noir said as Ladybug pounced on him, pinning him to the rooftop.

“Aaaaaaaaaadrien,” Ladybug said in a strange, gushy tone that reminded Chat Noir of Chloe in a way that made his hair stand up on the back of his neck. “I’m soooooooo glad you’re here and not my flaming dumpster fire of a partner~ I love you, Adrien! I always have!”

Another single, perfect tear rolled down Chat Noir’s cheek, for he knew that Ladybug was actually not really in love with him. She, like everyone else, was fooled by his corporate, soulless, perfect model boy persona. She had rejected the real him; the one who liked to run on rooftops, make terrible puns, and occasionally shit in a cardboard box full of sand because it felt good sometimes.

Ladybug would never love the real him; a cold, cold fact that did nothing to diminish the selfless, pure, innocent, all too perfect and unconditional love he felt for her. Even as her yo-yo wound its way around his wrists, effectively cutting off bloodflow to his fingertips, his heart was full of nothing but pure, beautiful love for the girl trying to bite his lower lip off.

“Uh, L-Ladybug, I can’t really feel my fingers,” Chat Noir panted as Ladybug tugged at his bell collar.

“Shh, Adrien, let’s just get you out of this…” Ladybug frowned as the bell stayed in one place. “What the hell?! Where’s the zipper?”

“Why would I have a zipper?!” Chat Noir meowed (AN: like a cat). “Why would my magic catsuit have a zipper?!”

“Fun?” Ladybug and Cupid Cupid suggested at the same time.

“Why are you still here?!” Chat Noir hissed

“I’m the creepy makeout akuma; what did you expect?!” Cupid Cupid crowed. “Don’t tell me your dad never taught you about the birds and the bees!”

“This isn’t exactly the birds and the bees; more like the ladybugs and the…cats or something,” Chat Noir muttered, eyes widening like a cat who just saw a canary as Ladybug withdrew the large, vibrating object she Lucky Charmed.

“Come on, you stupid zipper,” Ladybug said, pulling her Lucky Charmed chainsaw out and revving it against Chat Noir’s suit to no avail. “Gimme that sweet sweet Adrien fruit.” ‘

Wriggling under her, Chat Noir managed to arch his back like an angry cat and kick his baton between his chest and the revving chainsaw. The chainsaw flew up in a high arc, shearing Cupid Cupid’s lewdly shaped wings off his back. Much to the displeasure of Cupid Cupid (and a hidden Alya who was hoping to capture lewd Ladynoir content for the Ladyblog), the phallic wings seemed to hold the key to Ladybug’s brainwashing. She blinked, shaking her head as she looked down at her partner with thinly veiled disgust.

“…ew,” Ladybug said with a deep scowl, kicking her partner off the roof. “Looks like it’s up to me and only me to save the day. Lucky Charm!”

What followed was an acrobatic series of maneuvers involving a pogo stick too upsetting to print here. Suffice to say, Ladybug managed to get the fedora off Cupid Cupid’s head and purify it before Chat Noir could untangle the yo-yo around his wrists. As the butterflies disappeared, Ladybug held a fist out in front of her face and casually bumped it with her other fist.

“Good job, me and only me,” Ladybug said, scowling at Chat Noir as he stood up. “Oh…are you still here?”

Chat Noir’s ears drooped under horrible horrible Ladybug’s horrible words, prickling her black and icy heart enough to elicit a resigned sigh.

“Fine,” Ladybug conceded as though she were fighting to throw up with every word. “You…weren’t…entirely…useless…this time…”

Backhanded as it was, and even though half his hair was still missing from when Ladybug set him on fire, Chat Noir, our beautiful and innocent sunshine boy incapable of wrong, warmed at Ladybug’s snide comments, purring and rubbing against her legs before she kicked him off the roof.

“Don’t let it go to your head; I’ve had bowel movements that were more productive than you were, not-Adrien,” Ladybug huffed, with a blush. “B-Baka.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I think that’s a good thing,” Chat Noir said, climbing back up on to the roof as Ladybug’s earrings beeped. “Oh…guess it’s time to go.”

“Yeah, sure, would you look at the time,” Ladybug said as her earrings beeped again. “Gotta go.”

Chat caught her arm, and as Ladybug turned to stab him in the collarbone for daring to occupy the same space as her, she caught sight of his soft expression in the moonlight. She didn’t want to admit it (because if she did, Adrien would somehow know and accuse her of being a whore) but Chat Noir was kinda sorta handsome in a Kovu from Simba’s Pride kind of way. The kind of handsome that made her question a lot of things about herself; namely if she needed to register for Paris’ next furry convention as a keynote speaker. But mostly the fact that she had never even considered Chat Noir as a thinking, feeling entity until she sucked face with him. Something about shoving him against the rooftop and making out with him made her see him as something almost sort of approaching something that could almost be mistaken for human. 

“I know you’ve stated multiple times that you’re uncomfortable revealing your identity, but I’m gonna ask again because, fuck your feelings I guess,” Chat Noir chuckled in that boyish way of his. “Why can’t we tell each other who we are?”

The truth was that, despite being one of two superpowered demigods that protected Paris’ on a daily basis, Ladybug was…afraid that Chat would be disappointed if he ever found out who she was. He was in love with Ladybug who was completely different than her in every single way. If he ever found out that his Lady was just a fashion designer, artist, video game champion, graphic designer, baker, professional phone thief, and student council representative, he would throw up in his mouth and claw his eyes out for having ever been attracted to such a hideously ordinary cave troll. Even if her family, friends, classmates, neighbors, customers, fashion moguls, and passing rock stars all universally adored her, there was no earthly way that Chat would ever bring himself to care about the heinous sewer witch that was Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

“You know why,” Ladybug said sternly. “If we ever tell each other who we are, the Seal of the Apocalypse will be unsealed and the Dread Wolf Fenris will rise from the east to devour the sun. Quetzalcoatal would literally return to duel the Smoking Mirror at the end of the world as the seventh seal of the apocalypse would be unsealed, letting Satan’s forces up to ravage the planet. If I told you my name, Hawkmoth would literally hire a squad of disgraced Navy Seals to kill us and steal our Miraculouses. Up will become down; left will become right. Reality as we know it will absolutely cease to be if I ever knew who you were. Total, total disaster.”

Chat Noir nodded solemnly. “So you’re saying it would be…apo-cat-lyptic?”

Ladybug stared at him for a long moment before summoning a red and black spotted handgun and shooting Chat Noir in the leg.

“Same time tomorrow, asswipe,” Ladybug said, swinging up onto the rooftop as Chat Noir lay bleeding under a streetlight. As he clutched his shattered kneecap, the only thing he could think of was that Ladybug promised to meet him tomorrow, and how lucky he would be to be in her presence if he didn’t bleed out first.

“Guess tonight…really ended…with a bang,” Chat Noir said, aiming a fingergun at Ladybug’s retreating figure before passing out in the middle of the road.

okay, so please don't take this the wrong way bc i don't mean anything bad with it but like you talk about dissociating a lot and i don't understand what that means? what is it?

Oh boy. Okay. Well, fair warning to everyone: this is gonna be long, rambly, and personal. For those of you who hate my OOC posts, turn back now.

Okay, so. Dissociation is a symptom of a variety of mental disorders, and for me it’s a symptom of my Borderline Personality Disorder. In its rawest form, dissociation is basically feeling a disconnect from reality; feeling detached. Like, you look around you and it’s all sort of… fuzzy. Nothing really seems real and you’re just sort of drifting through a setting that has no tangibility to it.

For me, usually the first signs of dissociation starts in my hands; when I’m starting to dissociate, my hands just… don’t feel real. They don’t feel like mine. I feel like I’m looking at someone else’s hands entirely, even though they’re attached to my body.

It’s kinda like a drug trip. Sort of. Things you experience can include things like what I mentioned - feeling disconnected and dazed and wandering in reality - as well as things like temporary amnesia in which you completely forget where you were or what you were doing before/during the dissociative episode, feeling like objects and people are fake - automated humans, objects are changing in shape or size, walls are closing in, those sorts of things - or distorted.

I experience all of those. And I’m not sure if it’s true for others who experience this, but stressful situations only worsen my dissociation. Because the more stressed I am, the less rest I get, and the less rest I get the more exhausted I am, meaning I’m more dazed and more likely to lose control of my already less than stable mind functions.

It can also come with something called maladaptive daydreaming and intrusive thoughts, which I experience intensively. What this is, is basically daydreaming, but amped up to a thousand. While reality becomes hazy and ‘fake’ to you, the world inside your head is becoming more and more intense until that’s your reality. It’s a coping and defence mechanism in that reality is becoming too much; so your mind detaches from reality, withdraws into your head, and whatever is in your head becomes reality.

So much so that I’ve often been talking to people over text and started rambling about whatever was in my head at the time, leaving them confused. One time I was interacting with someone in my little dreamworld named Vin, and someone at work tried to speak to me and I replied to them out loud with, “Look, Vin, that’s not something we can do” before realising and apologising and helping them with whatever.

So it does get pretty intense sometimes and most people can learn to control it, so I’ve heard. I, personally… am not so good at that.

MADD can be pretty useful sometimes. It means your imagination is in overdrive, and if you’re allowed to sit and relax, you can create some interesting worlds and people. Good for writing. But in situations where you’re under a lot of stress, you don’t have as much control over the daydreaming. Which… can get scary.

That’s where the MADD becomes intrusive thoughts. You’re still in this dream world and escaped from reality by immersing yourself in whatever place you wanna be in your head - for me it varies, sometimes it’s just an alternate version of reality where everything is okay, or a television show I like, or this world I’ve been building up in my head as a safe haven. That’s fine, and it’s usually a way to help detach yourself from what’s stressing you and become calm enough to try and function semi normally, if not very dazed and spaced out,.

But the more intense the stress, the more intense the dissociation, and the more intense all of that is, the more intense - and uncontrollable, at least for me - the MADD gets. Meaning it can get really dark really quickly. The other day I had a mental break - a variety of things, but dissociation/MADD was a factor in it.

I had zero control of what was in my head and at first it was mountains, and I was okay with that. It was soothing, wherever I was in my head, there were snowy mountains and wind. But then - and it sounds fake, and it makes me sound crazy, but bear with me - it just sort of devolved. First I saw glowing golden norse runes I couldn’t understand.

Then it devolved into very violent, very gory imagery and intrusive thoughts to harm myself or harm others I suppose, but mainly myself. It scared the hell out of me because I couldn’t get rid of them, and I was so immersed in my head at this point to escape reality that I really had no choice but to bow out and hide somewhere until it faded. I turned on some Coldplay and kinda calmed down a bit.

I was fine-ish for the rest of the day except for a brief lapse of control again where I was in the milk cooler at work and somehow intensely convinced myself I was stuck in a mental asylum cell. I quite literally freaked out and all but body-slammed the door trying to ‘escape’, when in reality it was half-open already and I just went sprawling.

therwise, my dissociating was normal and I was just sort of unfocused for the rest of the day.

So that’s a lot of personal info that no one gives a fuck about, I know, but the only way I know how to describe this is if I use my own experiences.

It’s important to note that this is not necessarily what dissociating is for other people. Some people don’t have the maladaptive daydreaming as a side effect. Some people never get the temporary amnesia. Some people can function fine, some people can’t, it’s all dependent upon the individual and their situations.

But yeah. At its core: dissociation is a detachment and disconnect from reality, in which everything and everyone seems off or fake. That’s the gist of it.

Hope that helped! You can always look up information too; there isn’t a whole lot, but there’s some that doesn’t focus so much on personal anecdotes.

As for in-media representation, the only good rep I’ve seen so far that personally resonates with me are Jacksepticeye’s playthroughs of “What Remains Of Edith Finch” and “Night In The Woods”. Long playthroughs of very heavy games, but worth it if you’re out to see interesting stories and good visual representation of what dissociating is like.

DISCLAIMER: What I mentioned above about the intrusive thoughts is very rare. And while it isn’t exactly safe, considering when I’m that deep I have little to no impulse control - and afterward, little to no memory of what I did - and that could spell trouble. That said, it’s highly rare for these episodes to occur, and the chances of me simply being alone and unable to hurt anybody but myself is much higher than the chances of it happening when I could be a threat.

Statistically, I don’t pose much of a threat to anyone and I would appreciate it if you didn’t call the cops or something.

What if... Dr. Anthony Edward Stark

“So I should explain that this AU wasn’t originally my idea, the concept belongs to @tonystarktogo. Basically, in this universe, Tony Stark never really believed in Superheroes and Supervillains. Only people with powers that fight for good, evil, or survival. They still have lapses of judgement, they still make mistakes, and most importantly, they still get hurt. And what do you do in a world where no one can help these supers off the ground when they get hurt? Why build your own place that helps these supers that got hurt (for quite possibly stupid reasons).

This is that story, where Tony Stark brings in his first patient, only to have SHIELD knocking at his door in the next 24 hours.

---

Tony groaned: “JARVIS (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System, that part is canon), please tell me there’s something interesting going on.”

The voice of his robotic partner said: “I’m sorry, sir, but there appears to be no-” He was interrupted by a ping, and soon continued: “Oh, nevermind, there seems to be a potential super with grave injuries out in the streets of Manhattan.”

Tony asked: “Aren’t we in New York City?” JARVIS added: “Manhattan in a portion of New York, sir. I thought you would have at least studied the rough geographical regions of the city, given your new establishment here.”

Tony waved him off and put on his blazer: “Eh, whatever.” He grabbed a pair of sunglasses, the lenses glowing blue as he said: “EDITH (Even Drunk, I’m The Host, in this au she was designed as an assistant for Tony whenever he got drunk outside his premises, she is connected to his suits and lets him safely do things through NTENS (Nanoscale Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) intergrated in all his suits), get me a cab. We have a first customer.”

In the back alleys of Manhattan, a lone man struggled. He had a knife in his abdomen, one of his arms was metal for some reason, and he had no idea how the fuck he got thrown out of a moving taxi from a highway bridge, with a massive assault rifle in his arms and an uzi on his back. He just knew he was then jumped by like ten people wearing full-black with blue-silver badges showing an eagle on their belts, and he was forced to fight, when he then fell onto a knife after the fight was done. Literally, one of the people he either KO’d or killed (what exactly does turning the neck so much it cracks do again?) held a knife just in the right spot in their hand for him to trip and fall right onto the exposed blade.

He brushed his hair out of his face: “I need a haircut...” He limped out deeper into the alley, trying to get as far away from people. He needed to survive. He needed to run.

So seeing a man with sleek black hair and a perfectly maintained black goatee-beard combo, wearing blue-tinted glowing glasses and a black Armani suit with a red tie, walk up to him calmly when he turned the corner... Yeah, not a welcome sight.

He swung his metal arm at the Suit, who easily sidestepped. He was caught by fairly sturdy arms as he fell forward, and the Suit said: “Woah, easy there, pal, let’s not get too hasty.”

He helped prop him up: “You need a ride? Yeah, you need a ride, you look like shit. Come on, let’s go get you patched up.”

The metal-armed mad grunted: “No... Hospital...”

The Suit smirked: “Dude, I’m crazy, not stupid. I’ll take you somewhere where no one’s gonna search for you.”

A few hours later, back at Stark Aid, Tony looked over the schematics for the mechanical arm: “This is some ancient but inovative tech right here...” JARVIS asked: “Would you like me to run a diagnostics, sir?” He shook his head: “Nah, I can already see the problem parts. You can assemble a new schematic for the upgrade though.” JARVIS answered: “Intergrate the NAR (neoelemental Arc Reactor), sir?” He shrugged: “Why not. And while you’re at it, give him an internal nanoskeleton to help with the weight issues.” “Understood. I will report to HASHE (Helping And Super-Healing Embrace) immediately.”

Tony sighed, looking over the operation room, his first patient on the bed, being operated by state-of-the-art androids and surgery robots all lead by HASHE, the best surgery and medicine program in the history. He should know. He built all of it. Well, not by himself, but he did all of the conceptualization and design and supervised the development of the technology.

He soon walked off and said: “FRIDAY (Female Replacement Intelligent Digital Assistant Youth, also canon), schedule a meeting with the press for next week. Oh, and take a day off, you deserve it.”

A feminine android-like body soon joined him, wearing a stereotypical assistant’s outfit of a pencil skirt and a blazer, holding a tablet and a stylus: “Would you prefer Saturday at 10 am or Sunday at noon?”

Before he could respond, an alarm blared through the fascility. Tony groane dand started running: “JARVIS, secure the sector with the patient, and don’t let HASHE stop!”

JARVIS responded with a simple ‘understood’ as Tony and FRIDAY ran to the front door. Tony said: “FRIDAY, take the side exit, I can deal with this.” FRIDAY nodded and separated: “I will try and enjoy my time off, sir.” Her clothes altered as she ran off, changed to regular relaxed wear as she turned the corner.

Soon enough, he arrived at the front entrance, seeing a team of what looked like high-tech SWAT agents trying to break down his door. He stopped them and exclaimed: “Stop trying to break down my door, we have a doorbell for that!”

He then noticed something about their uniforms: navy blue with a grey crest of an eagle over the chest, with the initials SHIELD written on the back. He straightened out his suit: “What do you want?”

A man in a black suit, a blue tie and completely no hair came up to him and said in a plain voice: “Mr. Stark, I am Agent Phil Coulson from the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division. I have been tasked with retreating a war criminal called the Winter Soldier, and it is in my knowledge that you are currently housing him in these fascilities. I would request-”

“Nope.”

Coulson asked, slightly startled by this: “Excuse me?”

Tony said: “Whatever you were about to say, the answer is no.”

Coulson smiled and said: “I’m afraid you don’t understand the severity of the situation.”

Tony said: “What, you mean an unconscious man with all sorts of amnesia and a rickety prosthetic from the Colc War era with a stab wound and half his blood missing is a threat?”

Phil nodded: “Yes, once he recovers.”

Tony said: “Your agents jumped a disoriented man with an uzi that was just dumped out of a car on a free way, and one of them managed to stab him in the gut. He was very close to dying in that street when I found him.”

“That is none of your concern-”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I am just taking physical care of a fucking mental patient with a metal arm and less memories than a newborn infant, fixing up all his old scarring and physical trauma his body has endured, but sure, let me go back in, I’ll bring him over here in ten minutes when his body is open for medical procedures to improve his quality of life!”

Coulson said: “Aren’t you an engineer?” Tony said: “Yes, an engineer that designed medical systems, machinery and aids. So?”

Phil said: “Surrender him.”

“I don’t wanna.”

“This is not a debate.”

“Sounds like a debate to me.”

“This is a serious matter.”

“I know, and I’m serious in refusing giving you help unless one of your supers is hurt and needs medical attention.”

Phil said: “I can have you arrested.”

Tony shrugged: “Won’t be the first time.”

“For treason.”

“I sold military-grade missiles to terrorists without my knowledge, brought to my attention in court.”

Phil sighed: “Well, I guess we have no choice but to take him by force.”

Tony smirked: “I figured you’d say that.” Ten humanoid drones ran up behind him, getting in position around their boss, Tony. They held up energy rifles, the barrels glowing with charge: “The guns are set to stun. A great non-lethat deterrent.”

The SHIELD agents readied their weapons as well, the two men wearing suits standing still in a calm manner between the stand-off.

Tony said: “I’m not here to do business, okay, I’m just here because people get hurt and they can’t go to a regular hospital without risk of their identities being revealed, that’s it.”

Coulson asked, kind of in disbelief: “Wait, you think supers are just regular people?”

Tony said: “Well, yeah. Laser eyes don’t make you better at deciding what’s best for people. Neither does super strength, super speed, a healing factor, or turning into ice cream. Well, the last one makes you popular with kids, but I don’t think being eaten alive by an army of five-year-olds is beneficial to one’s career as a hero or villain.”

Coulson nodded before turning back to his men: “Okay, stand down. Our business is done here.” He turned back to Tony: “This isn’t the last time you’ll be hearing from us. We’ll be back for Barnes in about a week, along with, I suspect, plans for a certain arrangement.”

Tony simply smirked as the androids behind him walked off: “Inter-company contracts will cost money.”

Maple Quotes

Official Website: Maple Quotes

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• A lone maple leaf resting on sand Have you ever been out for a late autumn walk in the closing part of the afternoon, and suddenly looked up to realize that the leaves have practically all gone? And the sun has set and the day gone before you knew it, and with that a cold wind blows across the landscape? That’s retirement. – Stephen Leacock • A river is the most human and companionable of all inanimate things. It has a life, a character, a voice of its own; and it is as full of good fellowship as a sugar maple is of sap. It can talk in various tones, loud or low, and of many subjects grave and gay…. For real company and friendship there is nothing, outside of the animal kingdom, that is comparable to a river. – Henry Van Dyke • A sad sort of vulnerability was wafting from her, making the night smell like maple syrup. – Sarah Addison Allen • A solitary maple on a woodside flames in single scarlet, recalls nothing so much as the daughter of a noble house dressed for a fancy ball, with the whole family gathered around to admire her before she goes. – Henry James • A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn’t it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures? – Ivan Turgenev • After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible. – Elizabeth George Speare • Again the blackbirds sings; the streams Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, And tremble in the April showers The tassels of the maple flowers. – John Greenleaf Whittier • And again it snowed, and again the sun came out. In the mornings on the way to the station Franklin counted the new snowmen that had sprung up mysteriously overnight or the old ones that had been stricken with disease and lay cracked apart-a head here, a broken body and three lumps of coal there-and one day he looked up from a piece of snow-colored rice paper and knew he was done. It was as simple as that: you bent over your work night after night, and one day you were done. Snow still lay in dirty streaks on the ground but clusters of yellow-green flowers hung from the sugar maples. – Steven Millhauser • Anne reveled in the world of color about her. “Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill–several thrills? – Lucy Maud Montgomery • Around in silent grandeur stood The stately children of the wood; Maple and elm and towering pine Mantled in folds of dark woodbine. – Julia Caroline Dorr

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Maple', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_maple').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_maple img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • But truth be told, I’m not as dour-looking as I would like. I’m stuck with this round, sweetie-pie face, tiny heart-shaped lips, the daintiest dimples, and apple cheeks so rosy I appear in a perpetual blush. At five foot four, I barely squeak by average height. And then there’s my voice: straight out of second grade. I come across so young and innocent and harmless that I have been carded for buying maple syrup. Tourists feel more safe approaching me for directions, telemarketers always ask if my mother is home, and waitresses always, always call me ‘Hon. – Sarah Vowell

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• Catch a vista of maples in that long light and you see Autumn glowing through the leaves…. The promise of gold and crimson is there among the branches, though as yet it is achieved on only a stray branch, an impatient limb or an occasional small tree which has not yet learned to time its changes. – Hal Borland • Consider the many special delights a lawn affords: soft mattress for a creeping baby; worm hatchery for a robin; croquet or badminton court; baseball diamond; restful green perspectives leading the eye to a background of flower beds, shrubs, or hedge; green shadows – “This lawn, a carpet all alive/With shadows flung from leaves’ – as changing and as spellbinding as the waves of the sea, whether flecked with sunlight under trees of light foliage, like elm and locust, or deep, dark, solid shade, moving slowly as the tide, under maple and oak. This carpet! – Katharine Sergeant Angell White • Do you think I’m wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it’s only noon. You couldn’t be something that hundreds of others are. – Jonathan Safran Foer • Everyone had a Japanese maple, although after Pearl Harbor most of these were patriotically poisoned, ringbarked and extirpated. – Barry Humphries • For anyone who lives in the oak-and-maple area of New England, there is a perennial temptation to plunge into a purple sea of adjectives about October. – Hal Borland • For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the heat seems to have silenced the very birds and insects, and, lying sunk in the tasselled meadow grasses, one looks up through a level roofing of maple-leaves at the vast, shadowless, and unsuggestive blue. – Edith Wharton • For watching sports, I tend to drink Guinness; early evenings always begin well with a Grey Goose and tonic with plenty of lime; and on a cold winters night, theres nothing quite like a glass of Black Maple Hill… an absolute peach of a bourbon. – Martin Bashir • Freezing concentrates sugar (maple sugar), alcohol, and salt solutions as efficiently as heating distils water or alcohol from solutions. Open pans of maple sugar can have the surface ice removed regularly (each day) until a sugar concentrate remains. Salts in water, and alcohol in ferment liquors can be concentrated in the same way. – Bill Mollison • I always feel at home where the sugar maple grows…. glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage, warmth in its fibers, and health in it the year round. – John Burroughs • I always go to the lowest common denominator for that ingredient. So if I think squash, I try to think what it means to me — and if it doesn’t mean anything to me, I’m not gonna do well when I cook it. So [squash] means to me: fall, maple syrup, cinnamon, and things just come into your head so you can narrow the vortex and make it a bit smaller and you go with something because there’s no time. – Geoffrey Zakarian • I always have a good quality extra virgin olive oil. A cheap quality oil will end up cheapening your dishes. And I love sweetening my dishes with maple syrup. It has a bit of a bitter kick at the end that works wonderfully in savory dishes. – Nadia Giosia • I am passionate about tea, running, the idea that we are bound only by the limits of our imaginations, and maple syrup. – Misha Collins • I ate breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five miles to the station through the most glorious October colouring. The sun came up on the way, and the swamp maples and dogwood glowed crimson and orange and the stone walls and cornfields sparkled with hoar frost; the air was keen and clear and full of promise. I knew something was going to happen. – Jean Webster • I drink maple syrup. Then I’m hyper so I just run around like crazy and work it all off. – Rachel McAdams • I grew up trying to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs, not Team Canada. Didn’t even know it existed. – Adam Oates • I happen to know everything there is to know about maple syrup! I love maple syrup. I love maple syrup on pancakes. I love it on pizza. And I take maple syrup and put a little bit in my hair when I’ve had a rough week. What do you think holds it up, slick? – Vince Vaughn • I have a maple leaf tattoo over my heart, quite literally, and my two favorite things on Earth are being in Canada and making movies. – Jay Baruchel • I like Toronto a lot, it’s a good city. The only thing that really annoys me about Toronto is that you’re turning Maple Leaf Gardens into a grocery store, which is absolutely nothing short of disgusting. – Rick Wakeman • I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers. – Leif Enger • I sit where the leaves of the maple and the gnarled and knotted gum are circling and drifting around me. – Alice Cary • I think maybe, if I could be a Canadian super hero, I’d have some kind of freezing power and some sort of maple syrup weapon. Could be a little sticky. – Nathan Fillion • I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple. – Janet Fitch • I used to go to Maple Leafs games all the time when Nic shot To Die For here in Toronto. This is a great city. I love it here. – Tom Cruise • I was cutting and threading pipe in the tunnels to get water into the shower rooms for athletics. I was repairing old metal windows, fixing cement walls where rain was coming through, and drying out the maple gym floors in hopes of removing the warping. – Tom Baker • I was just getting acquainted with the wood. I wanted to see if it was maple or pine. – Kurt Rambis • If it’s not 100 per cent pure maple syrup, it can’t be called ‘pure maple syrup. – Nancy Greene • If you’ve only got one day to live, come see the Toronto Maple Leafs. It’ll seem like forever. – Pat LaFontaine • I’m not from a maple producing area and so my maple syrup credentials are very much of the eating side. – Nancy Greene • I’m very proud to be wearing the “C” for the Maple Leafs. It puts a smile on my face everyday – Mats Sundin • In New York and New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith. The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice; a rumor in the air for two or three days before it takes visible shape before you. – John Burroughs • In spring when maple buds are red, We turn the clock an hour ahead; Which means, each April that arrives, We lose an hour out of our lives.

Who cares? When autumn birds in flocks Fly southward, back we turn the clocks, And so regain a lovely thing That missing hour we lost in spring. – Phyllis McGinley • In the long dusks of summer we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and cut grass, waiting for something to happen. – Steven Millhauser • It is a poor observance of our first century as a nation if we run up a flag of surrender with three dying maple leaves on it. – Charlotte Whitton • It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of light, colored and glowing like oak and maple in autumn, when the sun gold is richest – John Muir • Leaf fans loyalty is unshakeable. The fans keep coming back and it hurts, I have been there. I have lost in game six to go to the finals with the Maple Leafs, against Carolina and what a great final that would have been. – Curtis Joseph • Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent. The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer. – Sara Teasdale • Many of the artifacts of my house had become potential devices for my own destruction: the attic rafters (and an outside maple or two) a means to hang myself, the garage a place to inhale carbon monoxide, the bathtub a vessel to receive the flow from my opened arteries. The kitchen knives in their drawers had but one purpose for me. – William Styron • Maples are such sociable trees … They’re always rustling and whispering to you. – Lucy Maud Montgomery • Maple-trees are the cows of trees (spring-milked). – Henry Ward Beecher • Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, The sailing pine,the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral, The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepest still, The yew obedient to the bender’s will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platane round, The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound. – Edmund Spenser • My end goal in the piano is to play Scott Joplin’s ‘Maple Leaf Rag. – Miranda Leek • My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves. – David Sedaris • My love of maple syrup. I’ve been known to knock back a can over a couple days: A swig here, a swig there, and next thing you know it���s gone. It’s a habit I have to stave off. I don’t want to lose all my teeth. – Rufus Wainwright • My uncle, Mr. Stephen Maple, had been at the same time the most successful and the least respectable of our family, so that we hardly knew whether to take credit for his wealth or to feel ashamed of his position. – Arthur Conan Doyle • No clouds are in the morning sky, The vapors hug the stream, Who says that life and love can die In all this northern gleam? At every turn the maples burn, The quail is whistling free, The partridge whirs, and the frosted burs Are dropping for you and me. Ho! hillyho! heigh O! Hillyho! In the clear October morning. – Edmund Clarence Stedman • October turned my maple’s leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers: Soon these will slip from the twigs’ weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser’s fingers. – Thomas Bailey Aldrich • Oh! to be a child again. My only treasures, bits of shell and stone and glass. To love nothing but maple sugar. To fear nothing but a big dog. To go to sleep without dreading the morrow. To wake up with a shout. Not to have seen a dead face. Not to dread a living one. To be able to believe. – Fanny Fern • One day the ‘Maple Leaf’ will make me King of Ragtime Composers. – Scott Joplin • Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves … But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean’s bottom. – William James • Spring has many American faces. There are cities where it will come and go in a day and counties where it hangs around and never quite gets there. Summer is drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England. – Archibald MacLeish • That`s a maple leaf, Canadian, not just for being too European but too Canadian. Not so subtly putting [Ted] Cruz`s face inside that maple leaf there. – Chris Hayes • The approach to that movie wasn’t, ‘Lets make this movie about Amsterdam and maple syrup.’ The concept was, ‘Lets go to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is fun.’ So we flew to Amsterdam with our cameras and we saw what happened and then we got back and we sat down and we said, ‘What’s the movie here.’ That’s when we realized that the movie was ‘The Maple Syrup Saga’. – Casey Neistat • The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood’s edge creeps the skirting blaze, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush. – James Russell Lowell • The food that’s never let me down in life is porridge, especially with milk and maple syrup, which is delicious. Paris isn’t a porridge place, but I can buy it in London when I’m there and bring it back with me. – Marianne Faithfull • The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple-universe. – Annie Dillard • The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry’s cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town. The maple wears a gayer scarf, The field a scarlet gown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I’ll put a trinket on. – Emily Dickinson • The rinsed foam swirled into one drain that always clogged come October when the maples dropped Canadian propaganda over everything. – Daniel Handler • The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills. – Bliss Carman • The spirit of the year, like bacchant crowned, With lighted torch goes careless on his way; And soon bursts into flame the maple’s spray, And vines are running fire along the ground. – Edith M. Thomas • The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown. – John Updike • The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised. – Henry David Thoreau • The summer ends and we wonder who we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And today I passed the high school, the river, the maple tree I passed the farms that made it Through the last days of the century And I knew that I was going to learn again Again, in this less hazy light I saw the fields beyond the fields The fields beyond the field – Dar Williams • The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams. – Henry David Thoreau • The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams. – Henry David Thoreau • The woman is not just a pleasure, nor even a problem. She is a meniscus that allows the absolute to have a shape, that lets him skate however briefly on the mystery, her presence luminous on the ordinary and the grand. Like the odor at night in Pittsburgh’s empty streets after summer rain on maples and sycamore. – Jack Gilbert • The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing–all of this [is] the integral community in which we live. – Thomas Berry • There is a beautiful spirit breathing now Its mellowed richness on the clustered trees, And, from a beaker full of richest dyes, Pouring new glory on the autumn woods, And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds. Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird, Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned, And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved, Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down By the wayside a-weary. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • There were so many miracles at work: that a blossom might become a peach, that a bee could make honey in its thorax, that rain might someday fall. I thought then about the seasons changing, and in the gray of night I could almost will myself to see the azure sky, the gold of the maple leaves, the crimson of the ripe apples, the hoarfrost on the grass. – Jane Hamilton • There’s nothing people like better than being asked an easy question. For some reason, we’re flattered when a stranger asks us where Maple Street is in our hometown and we can tell him. – Andy Rooney • This fastest of all games [hockey] has become almost as much of a national svmbol as the maple leaf. – Lester B. Pearson • This hill crossed with broken pines and maples lumpy with the burial mounds of uprooted hemlocks (hurricane of ’38) out of their rotting hearts generations rise trying once more to become the forest just beyond them tall enough to be called trees in their youth like aspen a bouquet of young beech is gathered they still wear last summer’s leaves the lightest brown almost translucent how their stubbornness has decorated the winter woods. – Grace Paley • To her bier Comes the year Not with weeping and distress, as mortals do, But, to guide her way to it, All the trees have torches lit; Blazing red the maples shine the woodlands through. – Lucy Larcom • We don’t want you convicted for condiment theft. You go to that prison, you’ll meet big-time operators. Maple syrup stealers. – Deb Caletti • We must keep these waters for wild rice, these trees for maple syrup, our lakes for fish, and our land and aquifers for all of our relatives – whether they have fins, roots, wings, or paws. – Winona LaDuke • We would much prefer to see ownership in the hands of the Maple Group, if only because we would much rather see Canadian ownership of our stock exchange. What we are first of all interested in is making sure that Montreal is able to preserve that niche or expertise. – Jean Charest • When April winds Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up, Opened in airs of June her multitude Of golden chalices to humming-birds And silken-wing’d insects of the sky. – William C. Bryant • When you were a kid, if you went to the Montreal Forum or a hockey game at Maple Leaf Gardens, which I did, there was a great feeling. The new stadiums don’t have it. Why don’t they have it? Building codes. – Frank Gehry • With the fans and the Toronto Maple Leafs organization, the way I’ve been treated here has been awesome. – Mats Sundin • Writing an informative yet compact thriller is a lot like making maple sugar candy. You have to tap hundreds of trees – boil vats and vats of raw sap – evaporate the water – and keep boiling until you’ve distilled a tiny nugget that encapsulates the essence. – Dan Brown • You cannot imprison me!” He bellowed. “I am Hyperion! I am-” The bark closed over his face. Grover took his pipes from his mouth. “You are a very nice maple tree. – Rick Riordan

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Maple Quotes

Official Website: Maple Quotes

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• A lone maple leaf resting on sand Have you ever been out for a late autumn walk in the closing part of the afternoon, and suddenly looked up to realize that the leaves have practically all gone? And the sun has set and the day gone before you knew it, and with that a cold wind blows across the landscape? That’s retirement. – Stephen Leacock • A river is the most human and companionable of all inanimate things. It has a life, a character, a voice of its own; and it is as full of good fellowship as a sugar maple is of sap. It can talk in various tones, loud or low, and of many subjects grave and gay…. For real company and friendship there is nothing, outside of the animal kingdom, that is comparable to a river. – Henry Van Dyke • A sad sort of vulnerability was wafting from her, making the night smell like maple syrup. – Sarah Addison Allen • A solitary maple on a woodside flames in single scarlet, recalls nothing so much as the daughter of a noble house dressed for a fancy ball, with the whole family gathered around to admire her before she goes. – Henry James • A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn’t it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures? – Ivan Turgenev • After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible. – Elizabeth George Speare • Again the blackbirds sings; the streams Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, And tremble in the April showers The tassels of the maple flowers. – John Greenleaf Whittier • And again it snowed, and again the sun came out. In the mornings on the way to the station Franklin counted the new snowmen that had sprung up mysteriously overnight or the old ones that had been stricken with disease and lay cracked apart-a head here, a broken body and three lumps of coal there-and one day he looked up from a piece of snow-colored rice paper and knew he was done. It was as simple as that: you bent over your work night after night, and one day you were done. Snow still lay in dirty streaks on the ground but clusters of yellow-green flowers hung from the sugar maples. – Steven Millhauser • Anne reveled in the world of color about her. “Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill–several thrills? – Lucy Maud Montgomery • Around in silent grandeur stood The stately children of the wood; Maple and elm and towering pine Mantled in folds of dark woodbine. – Julia Caroline Dorr

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Maple', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_maple').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_maple img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • But truth be told, I’m not as dour-looking as I would like. I’m stuck with this round, sweetie-pie face, tiny heart-shaped lips, the daintiest dimples, and apple cheeks so rosy I appear in a perpetual blush. At five foot four, I barely squeak by average height. And then there’s my voice: straight out of second grade. I come across so young and innocent and harmless that I have been carded for buying maple syrup. Tourists feel more safe approaching me for directions, telemarketers always ask if my mother is home, and waitresses always, always call me ‘Hon. – Sarah Vowell

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• Catch a vista of maples in that long light and you see Autumn glowing through the leaves…. The promise of gold and crimson is there among the branches, though as yet it is achieved on only a stray branch, an impatient limb or an occasional small tree which has not yet learned to time its changes. – Hal Borland • Consider the many special delights a lawn affords: soft mattress for a creeping baby; worm hatchery for a robin; croquet or badminton court; baseball diamond; restful green perspectives leading the eye to a background of flower beds, shrubs, or hedge; green shadows – “This lawn, a carpet all alive/With shadows flung from leaves’ – as changing and as spellbinding as the waves of the sea, whether flecked with sunlight under trees of light foliage, like elm and locust, or deep, dark, solid shade, moving slowly as the tide, under maple and oak. This carpet! – Katharine Sergeant Angell White • Do you think I’m wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it’s only noon. You couldn’t be something that hundreds of others are. – Jonathan Safran Foer • Everyone had a Japanese maple, although after Pearl Harbor most of these were patriotically poisoned, ringbarked and extirpated. – Barry Humphries • For anyone who lives in the oak-and-maple area of New England, there is a perennial temptation to plunge into a purple sea of adjectives about October. – Hal Borland • For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the heat seems to have silenced the very birds and insects, and, lying sunk in the tasselled meadow grasses, one looks up through a level roofing of maple-leaves at the vast, shadowless, and unsuggestive blue. – Edith Wharton • For watching sports, I tend to drink Guinness; early evenings always begin well with a Grey Goose and tonic with plenty of lime; and on a cold winters night, theres nothing quite like a glass of Black Maple Hill… an absolute peach of a bourbon. – Martin Bashir • Freezing concentrates sugar (maple sugar), alcohol, and salt solutions as efficiently as heating distils water or alcohol from solutions. Open pans of maple sugar can have the surface ice removed regularly (each day) until a sugar concentrate remains. Salts in water, and alcohol in ferment liquors can be concentrated in the same way. – Bill Mollison • I always feel at home where the sugar maple grows…. glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage, warmth in its fibers, and health in it the year round. – John Burroughs • I always go to the lowest common denominator for that ingredient. So if I think squash, I try to think what it means to me — and if it doesn’t mean anything to me, I’m not gonna do well when I cook it. So [squash] means to me: fall, maple syrup, cinnamon, and things just come into your head so you can narrow the vortex and make it a bit smaller and you go with something because there’s no time. – Geoffrey Zakarian • I always have a good quality extra virgin olive oil. A cheap quality oil will end up cheapening your dishes. And I love sweetening my dishes with maple syrup. It has a bit of a bitter kick at the end that works wonderfully in savory dishes. – Nadia Giosia • I am passionate about tea, running, the idea that we are bound only by the limits of our imaginations, and maple syrup. – Misha Collins • I ate breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five miles to the station through the most glorious October colouring. The sun came up on the way, and the swamp maples and dogwood glowed crimson and orange and the stone walls and cornfields sparkled with hoar frost; the air was keen and clear and full of promise. I knew something was going to happen. – Jean Webster • I drink maple syrup. Then I’m hyper so I just run around like crazy and work it all off. – Rachel McAdams • I grew up trying to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs, not Team Canada. Didn’t even know it existed. – Adam Oates • I happen to know everything there is to know about maple syrup! I love maple syrup. I love maple syrup on pancakes. I love it on pizza. And I take maple syrup and put a little bit in my hair when I’ve had a rough week. What do you think holds it up, slick? – Vince Vaughn • I have a maple leaf tattoo over my heart, quite literally, and my two favorite things on Earth are being in Canada and making movies. – Jay Baruchel • I like Toronto a lot, it’s a good city. The only thing that really annoys me about Toronto is that you’re turning Maple Leaf Gardens into a grocery store, which is absolutely nothing short of disgusting. – Rick Wakeman • I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers. – Leif Enger • I sit where the leaves of the maple and the gnarled and knotted gum are circling and drifting around me. – Alice Cary • I think maybe, if I could be a Canadian super hero, I’d have some kind of freezing power and some sort of maple syrup weapon. Could be a little sticky. – Nathan Fillion • I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple. – Janet Fitch • I used to go to Maple Leafs games all the time when Nic shot To Die For here in Toronto. This is a great city. I love it here. – Tom Cruise • I was cutting and threading pipe in the tunnels to get water into the shower rooms for athletics. I was repairing old metal windows, fixing cement walls where rain was coming through, and drying out the maple gym floors in hopes of removing the warping. – Tom Baker • I was just getting acquainted with the wood. I wanted to see if it was maple or pine. – Kurt Rambis • If it’s not 100 per cent pure maple syrup, it can’t be called ‘pure maple syrup. – Nancy Greene • If you’ve only got one day to live, come see the Toronto Maple Leafs. It’ll seem like forever. – Pat LaFontaine • I’m not from a maple producing area and so my maple syrup credentials are very much of the eating side. – Nancy Greene • I’m very proud to be wearing the “C” for the Maple Leafs. It puts a smile on my face everyday – Mats Sundin • In New York and New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith. The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice; a rumor in the air for two or three days before it takes visible shape before you. – John Burroughs • In spring when maple buds are red, We turn the clock an hour ahead; Which means, each April that arrives, We lose an hour out of our lives.

Who cares? When autumn birds in flocks Fly southward, back we turn the clocks, And so regain a lovely thing That missing hour we lost in spring. – Phyllis McGinley • In the long dusks of summer we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and cut grass, waiting for something to happen. – Steven Millhauser • It is a poor observance of our first century as a nation if we run up a flag of surrender with three dying maple leaves on it. – Charlotte Whitton • It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of light, colored and glowing like oak and maple in autumn, when the sun gold is richest – John Muir • Leaf fans loyalty is unshakeable. The fans keep coming back and it hurts, I have been there. I have lost in game six to go to the finals with the Maple Leafs, against Carolina and what a great final that would have been. – Curtis Joseph • Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent. The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer. – Sara Teasdale • Many of the artifacts of my house had become potential devices for my own destruction: the attic rafters (and an outside maple or two) a means to hang myself, the garage a place to inhale carbon monoxide, the bathtub a vessel to receive the flow from my opened arteries. The kitchen knives in their drawers had but one purpose for me. – William Styron • Maples are such sociable trees … They’re always rustling and whispering to you. – Lucy Maud Montgomery • Maple-trees are the cows of trees (spring-milked). – Henry Ward Beecher • Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, The sailing pine,the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral, The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepest still, The yew obedient to the bender’s will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platane round, The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound. – Edmund Spenser • My end goal in the piano is to play Scott Joplin’s ‘Maple Leaf Rag. – Miranda Leek • My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves. – David Sedaris • My love of maple syrup. I’ve been known to knock back a can over a couple days: A swig here, a swig there, and next thing you know it’s gone. It’s a habit I have to stave off. I don’t want to lose all my teeth. – Rufus Wainwright • My uncle, Mr. Stephen Maple, had been at the same time the most successful and the least respectable of our family, so that we hardly knew whether to take credit for his wealth or to feel ashamed of his position. – Arthur Conan Doyle • No clouds are in the morning sky, The vapors hug the stream, Who says that life and love can die In all this northern gleam? At every turn the maples burn, The quail is whistling free, The partridge whirs, and the frosted burs Are dropping for you and me. Ho! hillyho! heigh O! Hillyho! In the clear October morning. – Edmund Clarence Stedman • October turned my maple’s leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers: Soon these will slip from the twigs’ weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser’s fingers. – Thomas Bailey Aldrich • Oh! to be a child again. My only treasures, bits of shell and stone and glass. To love nothing but maple sugar. To fear nothing but a big dog. To go to sleep without dreading the morrow. To wake up with a shout. Not to have seen a dead face. Not to dread a living one. To be able to believe. – Fanny Fern • One day the ‘Maple Leaf’ will make me King of Ragtime Composers. – Scott Joplin • Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves … But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean’s bottom. – William James • Spring has many American faces. There are cities where it will come and go in a day and counties where it hangs around and never quite gets there. Summer is drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England. – Archibald MacLeish • That`s a maple leaf, Canadian, not just for being too European but too Canadian. Not so subtly putting [Ted] Cruz`s face inside that maple leaf there. – Chris Hayes • The approach to that movie wasn’t, ‘Lets make this movie about Amsterdam and maple syrup.’ The concept was, ‘Lets go to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is fun.’ So we flew to Amsterdam with our cameras and we saw what happened and then we got back and we sat down and we said, ‘What’s the movie here.’ That’s when we realized that the movie was ‘The Maple Syrup Saga’. – Casey Neistat • The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood’s edge creeps the skirting blaze, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush. – James Russell Lowell • The food that’s never let me down in life is porridge, especially with milk and maple syrup, which is delicious. Paris isn’t a porridge place, but I can buy it in London when I’m there and bring it back with me. – Marianne Faithfull • The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple-universe. – Annie Dillard • The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry’s cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town. The maple wears a gayer scarf, The field a scarlet gown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I’ll put a trinket on. – Emily Dickinson • The rinsed foam swirled into one drain that always clogged come October when the maples dropped Canadian propaganda over everything. – Daniel Handler • The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills. – Bliss Carman • The spirit of the year, like bacchant crowned, With lighted torch goes careless on his way; And soon bursts into flame the maple’s spray, And vines are running fire along the ground. – Edith M. Thomas • The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown. – John Updike • The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised. – Henry David Thoreau • The summer ends and we wonder who we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And today I passed the high school, the river, the maple tree I passed the farms that made it Through the last days of the century And I knew that I was going to learn again Again, in this less hazy light I saw the fields beyond the fields The fields beyond the field – Dar Williams • The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams. – Henry David Thoreau • The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams. – Henry David Thoreau • The woman is not just a pleasure, nor even a problem. She is a meniscus that allows the absolute to have a shape, that lets him skate however briefly on the mystery, her presence luminous on the ordinary and the grand. Like the odor at night in Pittsburgh’s empty streets after summer rain on maples and sycamore. – Jack Gilbert • The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing–all of this [is] the integral community in which we live. – Thomas Berry • There is a beautiful spirit breathing now Its mellowed richness on the clustered trees, And, from a beaker full of richest dyes, Pouring new glory on the autumn woods, And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds. Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird, Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned, And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved, Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down By the wayside a-weary. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • There were so many miracles at work: that a blossom might become a peach, that a bee could make honey in its thorax, that rain might someday fall. I thought then about the seasons changing, and in the gray of night I could almost will myself to see the azure sky, the gold of the maple leaves, the crimson of the ripe apples, the hoarfrost on the grass. – Jane Hamilton • There’s nothing people like better than being asked an easy question. For some reason, we’re flattered when a stranger asks us where Maple Street is in our hometown and we can tell him. – Andy Rooney • This fastest of all games [hockey] has become almost as much of a national svmbol as the maple leaf. – Lester B. Pearson • This hill crossed with broken pines and maples lumpy with the burial mounds of uprooted hemlocks (hurricane of ’38) out of their rotting hearts generations rise trying once more to become the forest just beyond them tall enough to be called trees in their youth like aspen a bouquet of young beech is gathered they still wear last summer’s leaves the lightest brown almost translucent how their stubbornness has decorated the winter woods. – Grace Paley • To her bier Comes the year Not with weeping and distress, as mortals do, But, to guide her way to it, All the trees have torches lit; Blazing red the maples shine the woodlands through. – Lucy Larcom • We don’t want you convicted for condiment theft. You go to that prison, you’ll meet big-time operators. Maple syrup stealers. – Deb Caletti • We must keep these waters for wild rice, these trees for maple syrup, our lakes for fish, and our land and aquifers for all of our relatives – whether they have fins, roots, wings, or paws. – Winona LaDuke • We would much prefer to see ownership in the hands of the Maple Group, if only because we would much rather see Canadian ownership of our stock exchange. What we are first of all interested in is making sure that Montreal is able to preserve that niche or expertise. – Jean Charest • When April winds Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up, Opened in airs of June her multitude Of golden chalices to humming-birds And silken-wing’d insects of the sky. – William C. Bryant • When you were a kid, if you went to the Montreal Forum or a hockey game at Maple Leaf Gardens, which I did, there was a great feeling. The new stadiums don’t have it. Why don’t they have it? Building codes. – Frank Gehry • With the fans and the Toronto Maple Leafs organization, the way I’ve been treated here has been awesome. – Mats Sundin • Writing an informative yet compact thriller is a lot like making maple sugar candy. You have to tap hundreds of trees – boil vats and vats of raw sap – evaporate the water – and keep boiling until you’ve distilled a tiny nugget that encapsulates the essence. – Dan Brown • You cannot imprison me!” He bellowed. “I am Hyperion! I am-” The bark closed over his face. Grover took his pipes from his mouth. “You are a very nice maple tree. – Rick Riordan

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What Remains of Edith Finch

So, this game was recommended to me through the gaming website Polygon. As they are closer to experts than I am, they know their stuff — and here I am! Recommending it again!

The STATS: Completed: Yessiree Game Console: PC Single-Player: Heck Ya! Story: 100% Gameplay: Walking Simulator/Puzzle Customisation: N/A Multiple-endings: N/A Romanceable: N/A Time: Short (like, maybe 3 hrs?) Difficulty: Not really difficult Fun: Yes!

I come bearing a really strange gaming experience!

If you’re looking for a story-driven game, this is a STORY. DRIVEN. GAME. So story driven that if you google the game itself, you may find it described as “a collection of short stories.” I’d have to agree! In fact, there are about 13 short stories to enjoy, each telling the tale of a different family member. And here’s the warning I never got: this is not a cheerful game. This family is cursed. Figuratively or maybe literally — it’s honestly unclear, but either way, I was completely caught off guard by the tone. (I’d only heard it was good, and I purchased it the next opportunity I had) That being said, it’s still very emotionally charged. In a good way! So, if that’s your thing, you’re in luck! But if you’re looking for a more playful game, this is where your journey should end (and that’s okay!).

Okay, warning aside, the bones of the game are like this: you play in the first person, walking around an abandoned house and puzzling your way into different locked rooms. (Easy, right?) Each locked room has one of these short stories that you navigate through to find out more about the Finch family. As I mentioned in the STATS, I’d qualify the game as a walking simulator. Not a lot of action — it’s mostly walking with moments where you interact with objects like doorknobs, peepholes, books, and whatnot. It completely works for the format though — kind of like a walking tour through several stories that range from whimsical to eerie.

That being said, there are two parts of this game: navigating the house and navigating the stories. Navigating the house is pretty straightforward — the camera does a pretty good job at orienting toward where you should head next. That being said, the short stories can be more challenging. Not because the controls are particularly difficult, but because the game doesn’t tell you what your goal is. For example, the one that stumped me the most was when I was given control of a toy frog. I was stuck in a tub, and I could hop around, but that seemed to be it. I couldn’t get out of the tub. I couldn’t find anything to interact with except a few other bath toys. Eventually, after hopping around enough I figured out that could interact with the faucet if I jumped high enough, and the story continued on from there. (Remember this hint to save you some trouble if you start playing!) And that’s the worst of it. There is no glowing faucet handle to hint at what you’re supposed to do — you just have to accept that you’re gonna have to try a few things before you figure out what’s going on. 

The game itself is pretty, visually and musically, but the sacrifice is that it nearly KILLED my laptop. It’s a big game and, although my setup is made to handle gaming to a certain extent, there was some lag at certain (more elaborate) parts. Just, something to be aware of if you know your computer is fragile and old or a weak baby when it comes to processing.

Miscellaneous stuff!

Lewis’s story is the part that almost killed my computer.

Gregory and Calvin’s stories were the most difficult for me to figure what to do.

Molly’s story is when I stopped playing temporarily and told my friends to play this game too.

———–

Hey, I’m just a humble fan of playing games! No in-depth analysis here! Just a couple recs from a pal who likes to have fun!

If you want any more recs, you can find my ever growing list here!

6 Women on the 1 Product They Wear When Going Makeup-Free

http://fashion-trendin.com/6-women-on-the-1-product-they-wear-when-going-makeup-free/

6 Women on the 1 Product They Wear When Going Makeup-Free

I used to think I looked ill without makeup, an admitted delusion I blamed on a beauty-industrial complex intent on selling me a “better” version of my natural face. But around last June, I stopped wearing makeup. And, aside from helping clear up what I thought was unshakeable acne, it made me realize my bare face doesn’t look tired or sick so much as…makeup-less. It just took some getting used to, that’s all.

None of this is to say I don’t enjoy watching people put makeup on for literal hours on YouTube (I thoroughly do) — I just equally enjoy seeing more bare faces around these days. And I get especially excited by trends like face-doodling and glitter eyeliner and matching lipstick to acne that hint we’re ushering in a beauty era for which the impetus is fun instead of “flaws.” Dark circles, spots, redness, puffiness, short eyelashes, neutral-colored lips…these things don’t make anyone look ill (most men have them in spades); they just make us look different.

In the spirit of an increasingly popular makeup approach that’s less “full face” and more “a dab will do ya,” I asked a few MR team members to tell me the one thing they wear when they sport an otherwise bare face. See what they told me below and then give me your answer too. (Bonus points for pics!)

Haley (I’ll go first)

What’s your product and how long does it take you to apply it?

Glossier Cloud Paint in “Haze,” and it takes under a minute to apply. Thanks for asking, self.

Why is it your go-to when you’re wearing nothing else?

Once I started defaulting to no makeup, a little color on my cheeks was the first thing I missed. I wasn’t looking for something dramatic, just the pinch of pink I get after exercising or something. Most of the time, I’m a sheet top-to-bottom; I’ve never been a natural flusher. (Harling hates that she blushes. Grass is greener, I suppose.) Then I got a sample of Cloud Paint at an event and loved it so much that it quickly became the only thing I wore on days that I wanted to look a little extra alive.

What makes this particular brand/product well-suited for this scenario?

It’s a liquid, which I’ve always preferred over powder for anything makeup-related, so it blends in with my moisturizer really easily. I like using blush alone because it makes me look like I just blew in from the cold, know what I mean? It doesn’t make me look like I’m wearing makeup (like say, eyeliner or mascara would), which is what I’m after since I’m usually not wearing any.

Any application tips?

I dole it out in tiny-ass drops and pat it on with my fingers until it looks like a natural flush. It’s really easy to go overboard, though, so be careful. One drop can be enough. The super-small bottle lasts forever. (I love that.)

Erica

What’s your product and how long does it take you to apply it?

Brow pencil. Specifically: Charlotte Tilbury’s Brow Lift Three-Way Shape, Lift & Shade Eyebrow Pencil in “Naomi.” It takes me about three minutes to apply.

Why is it your go-to when you’re wearing nothing else?

I’m assuming it’s because brows frame your eyes and those are the windows to your soul and whatnot. But filled and shaped brows instantly make me look I’m like “ready,” for some reason — regardless of what the rest of my face/hair/outfit/life is doing.

What makes this particular brand/product well-suited for this scenario?

The angular shape of the pencil end makes it easy to shape, extend and fill brows at the same time. I used to use the super-thin brow pencils, and while those are precise, it takes a lot more time and blending to create the final shape. I also love the size of the spoolie on this product in particular, and if you open the pencil in half, there’s a highlighter sponge for brightening under your brow if you’re fancy like that.

Any application tips?

Start and finish with the spoolie! Use it before you start filling to get your hairs going in the right direction(s), then follow up again after you do your drawing to help blend the product and get rid of any harsh lines.

Amelia

What’s your product and how long does it take you to apply it?

L’Oreal Paris Double Extend Beauty Tubes. I have never timed myself putting on mascara, but now I want to! Under a minute?

Why is it your go-to when you’re wearing nothing else?

When I was deep into my eyelash extension addiction, I went to a wedding in Miami without getting an eyelash touch-up. I felt I had wonky cow eyelids without them — you know, a few super-long ones, sparse short ones — which looks sooo lovely on cows but not so much on me. Anyway, in a scene that looked like something out of a mascara or tampon commercial, my friend Roxana was like, “Forget the eyelash extensions. You need to try this mascara. It’s life-changing and will make you look like you’re wearing a set of falsies. Plus, because of the ‘tubes’ technology, you don’t need makeup remover to take the mascara off. You just use warm water and very gently pull off the mascara with your fingers.” Honestly, sometimes I think I like the removal part more than anything. It’s like raking a little zen garden on my face. As for the mascara itself, I always feel much better with big fat eyelashes!!!

(I dye my lashes too so that they have some tint when I’m not wearing mascara — and I curl them every day whether I wear mascara or not.)

What makes this particular brand/product well-suited for this scenario?

It makes my lashes long and comes off easily in a way that feels much kinder to my lashes themselves and the area around my eyes. I practically had to use paint thinner and a Brillo pad to get my old mascara off.

Any application tips?

Do not do in a moving vehicle — and apply fast. It dries quicker than the average mascara, so you have less time to get it right.

Leandra

What’s your product and how long does it take you to apply it?

Some version of a tinted lip moisturizer. It takes about three seconds to apply (four, depending on how many times I feel like swiping across my bottom lip). My favorites are Dior’s Lip Glow color reviver balm, Ilia’s lip pen in the color “Dress You Up,” and while this one isn’t a moisturizer, the color is good on an olive-y skin tone: Glossier’s Generation G in “Like.”

Why is it your go-to when you’re wearing nothing else?

For the longest time, winters made my face feel somehow incomplete. I’d look in the mirror and feel like something was missing without being able to pinpoint what it was. I’d put on lipstick but felt like it made me look either too done-up or like I was 10 years older (I also only believed there was one color lipstick among the rainbow of applicators and that its color was red). Then, because I am a very late bloomer, three years ago in Paris, Emily Weiss gave me a sample of a new product she was launching for Glossier. It was a skinny lip pen in a color called “Like.” I put it on and still looked exactly like myself, just slightly more alive. The color — a sort of dusty plum or something — enhanced the natural color in my lips without exaggerating it, and THAT’S WHEN IT OCCURRED TO ME! My face wasn’t incomplete! Facial parts still intact, my dumb lips were just dry and pale!

What makes this particular brand/product well-suited for this scenario?

For Glossier’s “Like,” the actual color just complements the color of my winter skin, which is to say slightly green, slightly dead. The Dior Lip Glow and Ilia colors are great too, but since they’re moisturizing, I like that I don’t have to walk around with cracked-ass lips all day.

Any application tips?

Yes! Blindfold yourself and hope not to miss the slivers of tender skin that separate your chin from your philtrum.

Harling

What’s your product and how long does it take you to apply it?

Joey Healy Brow Lacquer in “Oak” — it takes me about 30 seconds to apply.

Why is it your go-to when you’re wearing nothing else?

I was first introduced to this brow gel when I met with brow specialist Joey Healy for a story about fixing my eyebrow patchiness. It’s so easy to use and makes my brows look 10,000x less sparse, so it’s the least I can do when I’m too lazy to spend more than a minute on my face. Of all my makeup products, this one gives me the most bang for my time’s buck.

What makes this particular brand/product well-suited for this scenario?

The pigment is pretty opaque, so I feel like it does a very effective job of making my eyebrows look fuller without much effort.

Any application tips?

I use it very lightly, just to fill in the sparseness at the edges of my brows. Because the pigment is so opaque, you can’t be too heavy-handed or your eyebrows will look like cartoon caterpillars.

Nikki

What’s your product and how long does it take you to apply it?

W3LL PEOPLE Bio Brightener Stick, and it takes me about a minute to put on.

Why is it your go-to when you’re wearing nothing else?

I like that it brightens my face. I put it on my cheekbones, eyelids (under my eyebrow and on the inner lower lid), and bridge of my nose. It’s one product, but I put it EVERYWHERE. Even if I wake up late for work all groggy, I like to imagine it makes me look awake and glowy.

What makes this particular brand/product well-suited for this scenario?

Since it’s a stick, it’s easy to draw on your face like a crayon — it’s fun! And I feel like it quickly enhances my entire face, not just my eyes, lips or cheeks specifically. Also, it’s natural, which has been a requirement for me since I switched to an all-natural beauty regimen (which you can read about here!).

Any application tips?

Apply, use setting powder, apply again for MAXIMUM GLOW.

Photos by Edith Young. 

I’m fairly new to kayaking, and have so far enjoyed a few afternoon paddles in the Hudson River near our home and in Goose Pond near Lee, MA, where we vacation in the summer. The more I do it, the more I enjoy the challenges it offers. It’s a great way to get alone time for a few hours, and maybe enjoy some non-work related photography. Or to just sit, bobbing up and down like a cork, watching clouds.

The Hudson River south of the Tappan Zee bridge. A timed exposure.

And so when Matt Kane of Prime Paddlesports invited me to join with him and a group of kayakers on an overnight expedition to the Execution Rocks Lighthouse, I was totally in. The longest kayak trip I’ve had to date was about 3 hours on the Hudson, so this was a big step up. We’d meet in Rye, NY, paddle 5 miles from the coast, south by south west, to a pile of rocks few miles north of Port Washington, NY, and back again the following morning, which happened to be Memorial Day.

Loading up.

Getting in.

Paddling off.

After meeting up at the appointed time and place, and getting our boats and gear sorted out in the Edith G. Read Wildlife Sanctuary parking lot, we popped into our kayaks and shoved off into the setting sun. Despite the increasing clouds, the weather was calm and pleasant as we paddled, keeping a wary eye out for holiday pleasure boaters and quietly chatting about the lore of the Execution Rocks.

During the Revolutionary War, British soldiers were reported to have used the 9 foot tide at the island to execute prisoners, chaining them to the rocks during low tide. Additionally, Execution Rocks is where cereal killer Carl Panzram claimed to have dumped the bodies of his numerous victims. They say on starless nights you can tortured hear voices calling out as the water rises. This is where we plan on spending the night.

Using charts to navigate.

The sky gets darker.

Feeling very small in a very big place.

Matt Kane glides over darkening waters.

Sun comes out before going down.

We were running late, but thankfully the lighthouse’s beacon began it’s regular pulsing in the dark, and we were able to plot a good path using it and some nearby buoys. Our landing on the rocks of the island was going to be a technical one, and as we finally reached our destination, the ocean seemed to want to test us by picking up its energy. Our hosts, Craig and Linell, helped by shining flashlights down on us as we methodically lifted one heavy, packed kayak after another up the rip rap that makes the island, to safety.

One last navigational discussion before nightfall.

Execution Rocks Lighthouse beacon guides us in.

Craig and Linell, a welcome sight!

The lighthouse is a creepy, remarkable affair, feeling abandoned and ancient until you poke around a little and discover signs of the owners. Tables with glowing lanterns, food and water in the kitchen, a nice grill outside. Ironically, though Con Edison uses the island as a switching point for millions of volts of electricity and the Coast Guard is obliged to keep the lighthouse’s beacon flashing, there’s no electricity for Craig and Linell. Not yet, anyway. They’re in the process of raising funds to renovate the historic structure. So we bumbled around using flashlights and settled in to the smell of cooked meat wafting off Craig’s BBQ.

After a good burger, made fantastic by the long trip, I figured some photography was in order, and began setting up to the complaints of nesting seagulls. I normally do portraits of people, and since the lighthouse now had it’s own persona in my mind, I decided a portrait would be fitting. It being Memorial Day and all, I decided on a patriotic theme, and introduced red and blue light to compliment the white beacon at the top of the lighthouse. I left Matt’s silhouette undoctored because it’s so ghostly, a fitting addition to the image.

The Execution Rocks Lighthouse off the coast of Port Washington, NY.

Later, as I dropped into dreamless sleep, I kind of hoped I’d see a ghost, and at the same time, really wished I wouldn’t experience a haunting. Around 2am I was jerked from my sleep by a loud crash and howling wind. Somehow, a door had come loose and blown open as a storm moved into the area, rattling the living room I was camped out in. Assuring myself it was wind and not spirits that had roused me, I got up and walked outside. It was high tide. The waves that had earlier been yards below us, were now right at the door step, as if to remind me of the location’s gruesome history. Gusts of wind clawed at me and I watched waves roll in out of the east. Though no apparitions made themselves known to me, I felt aware and vulnerable as I realized we might have to paddle back in this.

Still kind of creepy in the daytime.

Aborting our long paddle back to Rye.

Group photo before we shove off.

In the morning we powered up on food and coffee. I had instant coffee in a pink sippy cup. Literally. What? I have 3 little girls at home. That’s how I roll.

After that we packed our boats, casting nervous eyes off the island. The seas, calm and serene yesterday, were now breaking on 5 foot swells, with winds gusting over 2o knots. The plan had been to paddle around, maybe to the north shore of Long Island, and then back to Rye by the afternoon. But that was looking less and less realistic. Matt called a meeting where the group decided the most prudent thing to do was head directly to Pelham, seeking shelter from various islands on the way. From there we’d figure out a way to get our cars and go home.

Some photos just read better as black and white.

Getting our kayaks off the island was just as tricky as getting them on, and once we were all safely bobbing up and down in the water, we paddled around the sheltered side of the island and into the oncoming swells, which were now topping out at about 6 feet. My kayak, a red Wilderness Systems Focus 150, is known for getting pushed around by the wind due to it’s higher stance, and for being hard to edge and turn. To my dismay, this turned out to be completely true. Going into the wind and into the oncoming waves was a cinch, and I found myself having a great time. Until we needed to turn at a right angle from it. That’s where my trouble began.

The only thing you have to fear is fear itself. So goes the saying. As I wrestled my boat to take the wind and swells broadside, it kept slipping even further away until I had the wind blowing up my ass. The grin on my face from sloshing up and down over the oncoming waves gave way to tight, eye-bulging anxiety, as I attempted to keep the kayak headed in the right direction. It seemed that every wave tried to twist the boat away from me, forcing me to madly counterbalance, bracing first one side up the face of a wave, then the other side as I slid back down. The dread of possibly getting knocked over seeped into me. The water was cold. And murky. And we were at least a mile from the nearest solid ground. Fuck.

I heard my paddling partner Robin yelling at me to relax and go with the waves. “Your kayak wants to float! Let it!” That helped for a bit, and I was able to get myself sorted out. But soon the anxiety rose again, causing me to loose my rhythm and tighten up, fighting more than paddling.

Carl popping over the crest of a wave.

Trying to keep it straight against 6′ swells.

Caught with the wrong oar on the wrong side at the wrong time.

Over we go.

And down.

Getting knocked over was almost a relief, breaking the fear in a cold, wet plunge, cutting it off and replacing it in one motion with the clarity of the moment. One second I was rigid with resistance, and then, almost instantly, forced into the relaxation that comes with holding your breath deeply. I looked around in the greenness for the toggle on my spray skirt, popped it out, and surfaced, making sure not to lose my paddle. Or my hat. Or my camera. Shit, I had a lot of stuff floating around. Robin paddled over and asked in a friendly voice if I was ok, almost casually, as if we were on solid ground and just I’d stumbled a bit as we walked.

Performing an assisted or self-rescue in the chilly, rolling ocean is very different from one in the well-lit, chlorinated safety of a heated indoor pool. Thanks to Robin’s thoughtful coaching and her relaxed attitude, I was able to get back in my kayak and continue on, losing only a little of my pride and my favorite baseball cap, relieved now that the fear of falling had literally been washed away.

Landing on Huckleberry Island to regroup.

Nice kayak!

She and I rejoined the others and we all landed on Huckleberry Island to rest, pull ourselves together, have a snack, take a leak, and to figure out where, exactly, we were going to paddle next. It can be difficult to discern one small island from another when you’re sea level, so after making sure we were where we thought we were, we established a plan for the last leg of our journey, and got ahold of Lynda’s fiancé, Dave. He’d meet us there and drive a group of us to go get our cars.

Back to civilization.

Saved by Dave and the dog!

We shoved off again and paddled through one last nasty bit, quickly finding shelter near the coast. We then navigated past various beach and yacht clubs to an inlet and calm water. The passage underneath the small bridge that leads to Glen Island was as much a psychological relief as a physical one. Boom. Just like that the wind disappeared. And, and I could be mistaken here, it seemed the clouds began to lighten up a bit as well, and we were able to enjoy looking at moored pleasure boats as we dipped our oars in the water, propelling ourselves on.

From Glen Island, we glided around to the backside of Hunter Island and the Orchard Beach parking lot where Dave and he and Lynda’s dog were waiting. Tired, happy, ready to go home, we pulled ourselves from the water and unloaded our boats. Then we figured out which order we wanted to get our vehicles in. Dave drove batch drove away, leaving me with Robin, Gary, Ann and Kerry to chill and wait.

It was over. Happily, only two of us had been rolled by the water, and thanks to the competent experience of our group leaders, the dunkings were uneventful. And despite the challenges everybody seemed to have had a great time. Indeed, it had been an excellent trip, and as I drove home to my family, I found myself thinking about the next one. Hopefully I’d learn to roll my kayak back up this summer so that an assisted rescue wouldn’t be needed. We’ll see.

Thanks for reading! To see my portrait work, please visit my website: http://www.NJohnstonPhotography.com

1st row: Andrea, Kerry, Ann. 2nd row: Robin, Carl, Lynda. 3rd row: Matt, Gary, Nathaniel.

The Execution Rocks Lighthouse is an historic structure built in the 1800’s, and is currently owned by Craig Morrison and Linell Lukesh. Money for the pleasure of our over night stay and the amazing BBQ they welcomed us with go to the restoration of the lighthouse. To donate, please visit their website: www.lighthouserestorations.org

Prime Paddlesports is owned and operated by Matt Kane, and promotes paddlesport learning, adventure and fun for kayakers, creating opportunities for skill development and on-water confidence building with courses, workshops, coastal retreats and events. Learn more by logging on to: www.primepaddlesports.com

execution rocks lighthouse

I’m fairly new to kayaking, and have so far enjoyed a few afternoon paddles in the Hudson River near our home and in Goose Pond near Lee, MA, where we vacation in the summer.

execution rocks lighthouse I'm fairly new to kayaking, and have so far enjoyed a few afternoon paddles in the Hudson River near our home and in Goose Pond near Lee, MA, where we vacation in the summer.