#I wish I could donate a copy of this book to everybody who uses the internet
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Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body different from one another and each contributing what no other could. When you find yourself wanting to turn your children, or pupils, or even your neighbours, into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never meant them to be that. You and they are different organs, intended to do different things. On the other hand, when you are tempted not to bother about someone else’s troubles because they are ‘no business of yours,’ remember that though he is different from you he is part of the same organism as you. If you forget that he belongs to the same organism as yourself you will become an individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, if you want to suppress differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian. But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.
I feel a strong desire to tell you—and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me—which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
#I wish I could donate a copy of this book to everybody who uses the internet#C.S. Lewis#Mere Christianity
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Wings Of The Dawn | Chapter 2
AO3 link 🐾 | read chapter 1
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pairing: joel miller x fem!reader
Rating: 18+ eventually | first chapters free of smut
Tags: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Slow Build, Friends to Lovers, Age Difference, Small Town Dynamics, No use of y/n
Word count of the chapter: 6k
Next chapter will be posted: September 27th
Summary of the fic: You are Jackson's librarian, a doll with a good heart, that has your life changed when a handsome man decides to take his kid and start again in your small town after completing their cross country journey. Having a hard time ignoring Joel's dark brown eyes, you find yourself wishing to have him close as you both navigate through love triangles, teenage drama, city gossip, and ghosts from both of your pasts.
This is a comfort fic filled with slow burn and small town dynamics.
Chapter summary: Time for a lights out one on one session with your favorite Texan.
And no, I'm not talking about smut... Yet.
｡˚🐾₊˚
CHAPTER 2
If you stare into the darkness for too long, you will notice that you can differentiate the shapes near you. For the first seconds, as your eyes get used to the lack of light, everything appears darker than it is, but as you keep them open, you see the details around you. After 21 years of living in the outbreak, being in the darkness from time to time isn't as challenging as it used to be, even for someone like you who wanted to run into the light as fast as you could.
"How many candles exactly do we need?" You asked Nath as she melted the beeswax little by little. There would be a programmed energy rationing for the following days as the dam got its amends done, making the demands for other sources of light higher.
It was a scorching day, much hotter than average for this time of the year. The heat in the candle-making process was hard to deal with, forcing both women to wear summer clothes and accept sweating as a regular reaction. You felt somewhat dizzy with the heat coming from the stove.
"We have 300 residents, I'm considering maybe 2 per person." She opened her mouth slightly, with her dark blue eyes looking above her, "600 up to 700 candles, maybe?"
"With just me and you making all of them? This is impossible." You looked at her, putting one of your hands behind your neck, scratching a little. From time to time, she would get a new plan that involved you both making something daring. Still, today, you were feeling tired from the start and decided to sabotage it before even beginning.
"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. We will have helpers, they’ll be here any minute, so you better behave and help me get the rest of the wax." Next to her, there were some trays with leftover candles. Everybody donated what they had on their shelf for the initiative.
Accepting defeat, you look at her, thinking about having more hands on. "Wait, what kind of help? You never involve anyone else in your plans," you inquired while separating the donated wax by color. Nath was very social and had most of the city in a chokehold, but she wasn't the type to keep too many people in her private life.
"First of all, ouch, I have more friends other than you," you glared at her, which she promptly ignored, "second, I convinced your favorite teenagers to join us. What could go wrong? Am I right?"
Without asking, you already knew the teens she was referring to.
In the weeks after the dinner at Alfie's house, Cat spent at least one hour per day at the library, close to you. She made herself useful with the book system you created, helping to put the books back on the shelves before you asked for it. Other times, she would read to the little kids in a group that came with the people from the small daycare near the corner by the afternoon.
Cat was reading Dr. Seuss, a very old copy of Oh, the Places You'll Go!, with a few yellow spots at page corners due to time, one of the residents found under a bed when they first moved into a house and decided to donate it. The infants reacted with smiles and giggles when you heard the characteristic bell sound of the front door.
Ellie stepped in with two books under her arm. You recognized her plaid shirt from the day at the meadow, trembling a bit with the memory. "I presume you devoured both of those?" You said, nodding at the books. She laughed.
"Yeah, came to deliver these and get new ones," she replied, putting them on the counter. As you went to put them on the right shelf, you noticed her brown eyes lingering on the kids listening to Cat's reading.
"Why don't you sit with them for a bit as I get you something new?" She looked at you and nodded slowly, finding her a cushion on the floor behind the kids. You smiled and thought she probably hadn't experienced the childhood pleasure of someone reading for her. A quick image of your brother reading out loud came into your mind, and you buried it as you searched for your recommendation books' shelves.
Cat didn't mind Ellie listening to her as she flipped the pages and showed the images to the kids. Ellie was blinking slowly, following Cat's hand in front of the pages, no longer a teen but instead a child. You started to get her two books since only taking one per visit was no longer enough.
She came every day to the library. At first, she came and left in a few minutes, just wanting a book to take home, but slowly she started to stay longer. Sometimes, she came just to check the available titles, walking between the shelves; others to get new books to take with her, and at times just to go somewhere. She was lingering for something you didn't recognize but tried to provide to her. Comfort seems to be a word that came close to what you felt she needed. You separated a table for her, near the window, a little far from the main door, when you saw she only read at her house. It has been two weeks since she started to read by her chair.
Finishing the story, the kids got up, and the teacher thanked you and Cat, who was already on her feet and coming closer to Ellie. You noticed a little red on her pale cheeks, perhaps from not being around other teens that much.
"So, what do you think?" Cat asked with a smile similar to the one that Alfie gave.
"Kinda cool, but not much for me," Ellie answered, a little snarky but playful. You wondered if Joel had a similar approach to humor.
"Okay, what do you like then?" Walking through the shelves, Cat put a copy of The Princess Diaries at the table nearby. As Ellie rolled her eyes, Cat got a clue and flickered around the shelf a little longer until she found something. “Maybe this? It looks like a you type of book.”
Ellie read the Murder on the Orient Express engraved on the cover and gave a quick look at Cat, "Now we’re talking, what is it about?" and with that they kept talking until after the sunset. Your recommendations for Ellie that day were discharged as she took Agatha Christie home, following Cat's tip.
They became a buy-one-get-two kind of deal. Cat helped you around as Ellie sat and read whatever the girl chose for her. If Cat wasn't there, no problem, she would wait for her with you, doing whatever her mind wanted. This was one of those days when Cat wasn't supposed to be at the library for a while, and without someone of her age, Ellie swallowed up her shyness and started to talk with you at the back house.
The back house was mainly bureau style, with just the machine that once belonged to a printing place, primarily focused on invitations and small printing, you believed. Now, they were filling a different purpose, restoring books and helping to preserve memory a title per time. You were taking leather and measuring for a book spine near the table, Ellie watching it closely.
“Where did you learn to do this?” She quietly asked, absorbed in the process, her eyes watching every small move you made.
"My dad was an archivist for a church. Do you know what are those?" Putting the book spine right in the middle, you started to glue the leather at the cover and back cover. Ellie shook her head, confused.
"Books are more than just stories, they also hold details about the world around us. Or used to, at least. My dad's life purpose was to ensure that every document, book, or piece of paper that held the church's history, part of us, was in good condition. He took care of it to be preserved for the next generations. I used to watch him do this at our house, in his studio. I like to think he would like me to continue doing this."
“What kind of books a church needs?” Ellie was seated next to you, her arms crossed a little on the table with her chin resting above them. You glanced at her and saw that she was honest with her question.
"Do you know what a Bible is?" You asked, stopping all your actions. She shook her head once more. "Well, you don't need to know about it, anyway. Churches' books are mostly their origin history or a collection of stories about what they believe." Forcing your hands to work with the leather again, you reflected on how different your life would have been without religious symbols shoved down your throat.
"Sounds kinda lame if you need a book to tell you what to believe," she replied, twisting her mouth slightly as if she thought it was absurd. You smiled at her, thinking about how much she looked like your brother at the moment.
Cat came not much after that, together with Nath, who was wearing a t-shirt written: "turtley awesome." She saw you by the counter and grinned immediately, making you sigh.
"You have a new plan," you said, annoyed.
"Yes, I have a new plan." She announced at the same time. "Our favorite Mexican will be starting to work on the dam soon, so I thought my favorite doll could do this city a favor and deliver candles with me."
"That's it? Deliver candles from house to house?" Squinting your eyes at her, you felt it was too good to be true. She squinted back at you for a few seconds, making Cat laugh.
"She forgot to say that we don't have any candles left in storage. You'll need to make new ones," Cat said, and you mouthed an "oh" to Nath. Of course, her plan had a catch.
"Just like I said, our favorite Mexican will be working on the dam soon, and they need a shit ton of candles in, like, two days," Nath said, pointing to Cat, eyebrows raised. As Ellie left your work table and came closer to the counter, Nath looked at her.
"Nice shirt," Ellie observed, followed by Nath humming something and entering a staring contest with the girl. You looked at both of them, confused about what was happening.
"How old are you? 12?" Nath questioned. Ellie shortly replied, saying 14. "Do you have a curfew?"
"Okay, no more interrogation. Let the poor girl be. When do you want to start this candle mission?" Before Ellie opened her mouth, you moved your hands in a motion to stop, gaining a short laugh from both girls.
"You see, Cat I get it, but how did you convince Ellie to make candles with us? This is new. I only see her at the library," the gears inside your head running with you, wondering when they met beside the library a few days back.
"A lady never tells, Doll," she said, melting more wax, "but apparently, having a collection of t-shirts with puns did the trick."
From the Tipsy Bison, Nath had a good view of the main street. She was quick to observe who and what, and even faster to understand their motivations. She noticed that Tommy's niece was going every day to the library, and on the days it was closed, she would stay put at home.
Joel appeared here and there, mainly with Tommy by his side, she crossed paths with them a few times and could check Joel's address. With the house street in her mind, she made a connection: Ellie was going to the library straight from her house, not from the school building, and as Maria reported earlier, she was supposed to already have started.
Nath and Seth cooked the patrol's food daily, with the patrollers coming to the counter to collect it before going to the city gate. In one of the deliveries, she heard Joel would come with the day's patrol to inspect the dam before working on it. It was Sunday, the library was closed, Nath made up her mind to let Seth take care of the Bison for the day and started walking to Ellie's house.
"Hum, yeah?" The girl opened the door, confused. Nath and she had seen each other just once, at the library, a couple days ago. Ellie's eyes lingered a bit too much on Nath's chest area, probably reading the t-shirt with a mouse drawing and the phrase "smartest rat at the sewer."
"What color is your room's ceiling?" Nath asked, snooping with her eyes inside the house. Old American regular, not yet different from the previous decoration there before being occupied by J0el and his kid. Impersonal, just a place to sleep, not a home.
She needed to find a way to get Ellie outside fast since Maria lived on the other side of the street and could easily question her motives for being there.
“Dirty white, why?” Ellie crossed her arms and raised one of her brows.
"Congratulations, you are a bored teen. Let me tell you what’ll happen now: you’ll come with me and have an amazing city tour, or you can stay here and your best choice is to sleep." Nath started walking down the pavement, shouting, "You have a minute to grab your keys and follow me."
Ellie rushed behind her, eager to have any excuse to leave her house. Nath had two main focuses during the tour: to present her with the basics of how the city worked and to gain a new alliance. She tried to make sure the kid understood the main buildings.
"Okay, let's get to the basics: buildings. The city has some structures inside our walls, but we also have some land a few miles from here to get some specifics. The food you eat is a mix of everything, Chad," she pointed at the man working on the garden as they passed by it, "is our gardner. Vegetables, fruis — you name it, are harvest inside the city and the animals come from the land outside. Try to get close to Chad, when you crave something sweet, compliment him, and he will give you a few berries. Works like a charm."
"The stable's horses are for the whole community, but if you start to patrol, you can choose one to be your main one." Nath continued as Ellie looked back at her in wonder.
“Which one is yours?” Nath laughed at the absurdity of the question.
“I don’t patrol, kid. Do you really think that I’d go around the runners and lunatics outside these walls risking my life? Hell no! My contribution is good alcohol and movie nights orchestrated by yours truly at the mess hall. Do you like horror movies?" Ellie didn't answer immediately, almost as if she had never seen one. "Well, you can try and see if it fits. The next one will be in a few weeks, you should come."
They walked through the main avenue and the main buildings. Nath showed her where they produced paper, how they got new fabric to make more clothes and not rely only on "treasure hunting." Little by little, Ellie understood the whole system of the city, including the government model. They were walking back on the main avenue as Nath continued the final part of the tour.
"If you ever get fucked up pretty bad and need a doctor, you go there and ask for Edwin. He looks a thousand years old, but pretty cool dude in case of an emergency," she spoke, nodding at the clinic on the other side of the street.
About four houses down the street, she started to speak again. "The little kids stay at the daycare until late during weekdays – make sure to do not cross their paths, or you will smell a diaper from a mile away," she twisted her nose and pointed at the said building. Ellie laughed, eyes bright as if she was taking notes of everything.
"And this is the best place in this city," Nath said as they entered the Tipsy Bison as the city tour ended, "it also opens every day of the week but for adults, not pests. You can't drink anything I have behind this counter, but you can eat a mean grilled cheese. Hungry?"
Turned out it was Ellie’s first time in a bar, exactly what you would hope for a 14year old, anyway. She was seated at a stool in front of the counter, watching from the kitchen’s door Nath make her a sandwich. Above the door, there was a black plaque with white letters:
NO SWEARING
NO FIGHTS
NO CORDYCEPS DISCUSSIONS
NO END OF THE WORLD TALK
"Why the hell do you have these rules for?" Ellie asked out loud, making Nath look at the plaque as she passed the door with the grilled cheese plate. "What happens if someone breaks it?"
“Pawpaw’s rules, not mine, but I still follow them. Don’t test them and you will be fine. Eat your damn sandwich,” she replied, Ellie was already taking a bite. “You like to read, huh? I watch you walk to the library every day. Dolly may be somewhat innocent, but I’m not. You are running from something.”
"What do you mean?" Ellie replied, getting tense at her shoulders, her small mouth a little more rigid. "I have no clue what you’re talking about."
"I get it, pal. A new kid that crossed the country with a grumpy man and ended up in a small town? Not the smoothest life," the girl looked down and took another bite. Nath continued, "My grandpa and I had our share of adventures before coming to this place, just me and him. If anyone understands you, this person is me. You skip school to go to the library. Dolly hasn't realized it yet, but I do."
"What the fuck do you want from me?" Ellie replied using her meanest tone. Nath pointed at the plaque with the rules. The girl looked up. "Not saying sorry for your stupid rules."
“Didn’t ask you to. Listen, I’ll keep your secret for now if you do me a favor.” Getting herself a little closer to the kid, Nath whispered, “I need to deliver some things around town and can’t be seen while at it, but you, nobody knows you yet. Simple and easy.”
"What kind of things?" She questioned in the same breathy tone, trying to keep her posture. "What can you give me in exchange? I won't do it for a secret. It’s too little."
“Basic shit, I can give you more details later,” Nath replied and waited for Ellie’s reaction, that just nodded her head once, “here’s the deal: you make me one deliver to check the quality of your work and come to my house next Sunday afternoon with Cat, I get you something from a smuggler outside Jackson. You name it.”
"Really, man? You want me to help with your stupid candles?" Ellie rolled her eyes, and Nath maintained her neutral expression, trying her best to get the kid afraid of her. It worked.
Ellie took her last bite and shook her head, "Fine, but no, something smuggled is too little. I want your shirt. The turtley awesome one." They sealed the deal with a handshake. One week later, Ellie and Cat were helping to make candles, to your utter confusion.
"Are you sure that this is your preferred weekend activity?" You asked as you finished making the second batch of candles. Looking at Cat, you continued, "Aren't we too old to be your pals for the day?"
"Old? Yeah, lame? No, also, I'm hoping to be paid with another apple pie," Cat said, and you smiled at her, putting the topic to rest.
Turned out that 600 candles were indeed impossible with the amount of time you had. You were tired of making them until way after the sunlight went away. Cat had gone home already, Ellie stayed to help clean everything and you realized it was probably too late for her to walk back alone, Joel was most likely worried.
Despite the kid saying to you that it was alright, you insisted on chaperoning her, carrying with you some candles, hoping that Joel would be less angry by it. As you walked the few blocks to their house, you came to the conclusion that you had no indication, clue, or even context for what Joel was like. Ellie spent most of the days at the library, but you never spoke about her relationship with him. He was a book waiting to be opened, one that you wanted to read every page and write small comments at the margins.
“I’m home!” Ellie shouted downstairs, as she entered the main door, Joel came from the kitchen. “Oh no”, you thought.
With a cloth rag on his shoulder, he stopped near Ellie, both hands on his hips and a knee popped. She opened her mouth, he quickly dismissed, "Don't. I told you, this is a safe place, safe as it gets, but you need to give a heads up before disappearing like that."
"I lost track of time, sorry. Nothing bad happened. Tell him, Dolly," she replied quickly, looking at you behind her shoulder. You were still at the front door, feeling awkward to enter the house. Joel furrowed his brows and looked at you up and down.
It had been a hot day, summer was not far away anymore. A tank top with shorts made sense for a day with your best friend, but in front of Joel, you felt naked. More naked than the day at the meadow. You jumped a bit, put on your best polite voice, and announced, "Sorry for showing up late, we did lose track of time. Ellie stayed with us all day. I can assure you she was fine under my eye."
Joel gave you a look, almost as if he didn't believe you. Remembering your first proper encounter at the Bison, he knew immediately you hated your nickname. Now he knows you were being just polite, not yourself, real. He looked through the doll in you, putting some weight on how his dark brown eyes gazed at yours.
"I mean it, she showed up by noon at Nath's door and stayed a little later to help us clean the mess. We made candles for the nights without energy. No more than that. I brought you some." You said in your own voice, no more the doll one.
"Right," he replied, looking down and then to Ellie, "Go to bed, you have school tomorrow. It's okay. I'm not mad at you." Ellie nodded, her face tensed still, and left without making any comments, leaving you alone with Joel.
For a few seconds, staring at each other, you both seemed to forget what you were doing. He spoke first, "So, the candles, thank you for them. They’ll be useful."
“Yeah, they will.” Putting the candles in his hands, you looked away when your fingers touched his. Not giving in to the feeling, you continued, “Have you seen the dam yet?”
"Hum, no, I’ll see the dam structure tomorrow." Joel quickly replied, short answer.
“Maria told the council that you used to work as a contractor, are you happy to do it again?” You tried once more, hoping to get more words out of him.
"I think so, it’s been so long that it feels like another lifetime," Joel replied, putting the candles away and taking the rag from his shoulder, not daring to look at you. Another lifetime, another Joel.
A younger Joel would have already asked for you to join him in the kitchen for a drink, maybe to walk you home, not this version with old bones and fear of everything. This one was too busy trying to keep what he already had near him, avoiding at all costs to be greedy.
To say that his first day back at a construction site was a dog day would be to lighten it up. He lied to you. Joel met Tommy a week ago to understand better the dam plan, the needs, and all by visiting it.
"Alfie is a good fella, not like some of the people we used to work with back at Austin," Tommy said as they walked down the main avenue toward the city gate. Joel allowed himself to see his baby brother as the 50 year old man he was, putting some trust in Tommy's words despite his history of having too much faith in everyone that sold him a good story.
Over the prior weeks, he tried to get some ground for him and Ellie. He would make her breakfast early in the morning, just like when they were traveling. Leave a lampshade lighted all night near her bedroom door to avoid bad dreams. Meet her at the mess hall every night to have dinner with Tommy and Maria. Walk her to school every morning. However, no matter what he tried, he could still notice the weight on her stare from when she asked if he was being honest with her.
Biting down the corner of his mouth, Tommy introduced him to Alfie at the city entrance. The man was accompanied by a young girl who looked similar to him. "Alfie, this is my brother, Joel. He will be joining us today at the dam."
"I heard good things about your abilities. Nice to meet you," Alfie started with a smile and shook his hand, "this is Catarina, my daughter. I will be home before the sunset, mija."
Joel controlled the impulse to sigh. Alfie was too smiley, too happy, too endearing, too young. Probably had an effect on women because of his thick accent, and being in his late thirties, early forties maximum helped as well. He had a happy look in his eye as if he hadn't lived on the same Earth as Joel for the last 21 years.
Cat gave her father a long hug and started to walk, leaving Alfie to talk with Joel and Tommy. The scene felt like a slap on his face, a reminder of what he one day had and now was shaking on his boots to keep. He assumed that Cat and Alfie had a similar age difference as Sarah and he had. Alfie was a natural, appeared to get along with his daughter, could smile easily, and had been a good friend to his brother over time. Envy wasn't a natural feeling for Joel, but he was sure he was jealous of the young man's destiny over his own.
He could sense there was conversation near him but only paid attention when Alfie said his name back at him. "Cat and Ellie are getting closer. Perhaps you both could join us for a backyard barbecue," he invited, smiling.
"Yeah, we’ll be there. Thank you," Joel agreed, looking in front of him, despite having not heard a single time Ellie mention Cat. He didn't know when, but he got so lost in his thoughts as they followed the trail that he lost his sense of reality a little. They were no longer at Jackson but on the back of horses following for the dam. He had no idea of how much time had passed.
“Hey man, I forgot to ask you. We saw you at Dolly’s door the other night, all good?” Tommy started as he got closer to Alfie, Joel behind them at the back of the trail. “All this cat and mouse must be tiring.”
“Oh, Dolly,” Alfie looked down a little, peaking Joel’s interest. “It is not, like, she is avoiding me, you know? But she hasn’t searched for me yet, I don’t know what to do.”
Alfie's smile was no longer decorating his face. Joel felt slightly guilty when he found out he felt better seeing the man's sadness. He had crossed paths with you a couple of times, but you looked at him straight in the eyes instead of running away. He saw how you dropped your shoulders as Alfie left your doorway, almost as if you were annoyed by the idea of being close to the man.
For a second, Joel allowed himself to believe you would have put your arms around his neck if he was the one kissing your cheek instead.
"She is a little difficult, but hey, progress is progress! Have you tried to ask Nath about it?" Tommy put a hand on his tight and looked at Alfie, a little lost in his thoughts.
"Not directly, she scares me a little," both men laugh as Joel didn't get the joke.
“Well, you should get a beer and try to get some alliances if you really want the doll,” Tommy advised and went straight to the front of the trail.
A well-known face waited for them at the dam. Joel glared at Tommy, who didn't look back at his brother's face. "Can't believe you didn't tell me this shit," Joel hissed low in his brother's direction.
Eugene and Tommy were fireflies together. Joel heard about the man over radio conversations over the years, listening to Tommy's enthusiasm as he spoke of his people skills and electricity expertise. Tommy searched for an older figure in Eugene because he no longer trusted Joel, simple as that. When Joel and Ellie showed up last winter, Tommy kept Eugene's presence a secret. Coming back during spring, he told Joel right away.
"Okay, you gotta check this out. I found the old floor plant of the dam in one of the office's rooms near the entrance. It will be a good rainy season, baby!" Eugene shouted hoarsely as the trio stopped their horses, Tommy and Alfie already walking behind him. Joel, however, stood back, taking a good look at the former firefly.
A slender man with long limbs, round glasses cracked in one of the lenses, and shaggy gray hair. His front teeth were slightly separated inside of a large mouth. It burned Joel's blood seeing Eugene so carefree, living a good life after years of Firefly actions and filling his brother's mind with ideas. Joel saw in him an old man who hadn't allowed himself to get old and hoped he didn't appear like this to the others, a joke of a man.
You were looking at Joel like he wasn't a joke to you, at least not a big one. His mind returning to the house with you, he waved the cloth a little on the air as if thinking and speaking at the same speed. "Why was Ellie with you?" He questioned a little for himself and a lot for you. He put some weight on the remembrance of that day at the dam, deciding to deal with it later.
"My friend, the bar owner - Nath, invited her to the activity." You replied with a lower voice as you shoved your hands in the back pockets of your shorts. "I can tell her to no longer invite Ellie if you feel uncomfortable."
"No, it's fine. Just took me by surprise, I guess," he quickly replied, pouting a little.
As you opened your mouth to say goodbye, a sizzling sound filled the room, and the lights flickered, followed by silence and total darkness. "Goddammit, fucking Eugene," Joel said out loud, leaving an intense sigh out of his body.
In the total darkness, you saw his silhouette against the moonlight that filtered from the kitchen's windows, a little far from where you stood in the living room. You could only hear you and Joel breathing.
"Guess we will have to use the candles before we imagined," he dared to speak, walking backwards into his kitchen. You were unsure of what to do, start to walk home? Wait until he came back with a candle lit up?
You waited, not by choice, but because you couldn't decide in time. You saw Joel protecting the candle's flame as he got close to you, his face lines soft from the orange light. His dark brown eyes were even stronger as the flame danced, reflecting on them.
"Come, I’ll get you something to eat," he spoke gently, and you followed his steps to the kitchen table despite the fact you were talking back.
“No, I will walk home, it’s already late,” you said without any intention to leave.
“Nonsense, it’s too dark for you without the lamppost. Stay a bit,” he replied gentler.
There was something sweet about how Joel moved around when his guard was low. It was the third time you met the man, but you noticed his shoulder line relaxed and his hands precise in their movements. In the dark of his kitchen, you wondered if he would appear the same with the lights on.
Joel heated for you some leftover tomato soup he made earlier when he waited for Ellie to show up. With a hint of embarrassment, you accepted the dish, lowering a spoon and tasting it.
"I'm not a huge fan of winter food during hot weather, but this is very good." He smiled, and a dimple appeared on his cheek. "Do you like to cook?"
"Not really, but I had to learn it due to necessity," he shrugged, frowning down a bit with his mouth. You laughed, and he smiled again.
"I learned due to necessity, and my soups don't taste like this," you teased, having another full spoon.
Time passed with the candle melting, and the only sound on the first floor was both your voices. Without noticing, you were almost whispering. You weren't sure if it was to avoid waking up Ellie or because it felt like a secret to be there alone with him.
“Can I get a little nosy?” You chewed your lower lip after speaking, Joel nodded. “Ellie comes to the library all the time. I think she is avoiding something.”
Joel's eyes got harder. "What do you mean?" He questioned, putting his back against the chair, getting some space from you.
“She reads a lot, which is amazing, but she reads to forget reality, not to her entertainment.” You lowered your eyes at your almost empty plate. Silence filled the room again. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
"You are right," Joel affirmed, crossing his arms at his chest. His eyes were lost on the wooden table in front of him. "The way to Jackson wasn't easy, I can tell you this much. She came from a FEDRA school, it takes time to learn how to be a kid when you were raised to be a soldier."
Finishing your soup and resting the spoon on the plate, you looked at Joel. The lines between his brows were stronger now, his hands around his biceps holding tight his body closed. His plush lips were tensed as he stayed quiet, immersed in his thoughts.
"Time heals most things," you started, earning a quick glance from him, "she will open her shell. I will keep an eye on her, pinky promise."
His eyes went back and forth between yours. You felt a little awkward after saying such a childish phrase in front of a man older than you, forgetting for a second you weren't speaking with Nath or your brother but with someone you were spending more than 5 minutes together for the first time. Despite that, he put one arm on the table, close to your hand, and lifted his pinky finger.
Smiling with your mouth closed, you enlaced your finger with his. He slowly looked from your finger to your eyes and smiled back. In the low and trembling light from the only candle in the whole room, with his dark eyes boring into yours, you never felt more seen.
#tlou fanfiction#tlou fanfic#the last of us fanfic#joel miller#the last of us hbo#the last of us#tlou hbo#pedro pascal#pedro pascal fanfic#pedro pascal fic#joel miller x reader#joel miller x original character#joel miller x you#joel miller x fem!reader#comfort fic#wings of the dawn#wotd 2#angst/comfort#slow burn#the orange tabby cat
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Violet Evergarden: Booklet 2
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I wanted that star. I wanted to be the person who would piece through that star.
Leon Stephanotis and the First Star
I had once seen a comet that only came around every two hundred years together with a girl.
It had happened years ago. That was one beautiful evening. Even now, I can still vividly recall the twinkling of the stars we watched on that day while our bodies shivered at the coldness of the nightly wind. Like jewels scattered over a dark canopy, the starry sky was enough to make one forget to even breathe. As it passed by, dragging its white tail, the meteor looked just like a fairy in flight with insect scales scattering about from her wings.
Whenever I looked at a beautiful night sky, I would think many times over, “Aah, now that I’ve branded this moment into my heart, I’d have no regrets if someone reaped my life away”. Should I lose my life, I wanted it to be on a starry night like that. I wanted to die with the memory of witnessing something stunning.
“May the night sky be a beautiful starry one on the day I die,” I wished.
But that one evening was a little bit different. Maybe because I had someone to watch the stars with me. Maybe because that was my first love.
She was a gorgeous person. Even more than the stars. Her hair looked like the Sun when shining under the moonlight and her blue eyes were like gemstones created from a mix of the sea and the sky. With her porcelain skin and skylark voice, the way she walked was just as that of a well-cared maiden. In reality, she was an orphaned ex-soldier, as well as an Auto-Memories Doll from a far-away southern country, so the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” was pertinent when it came to her.
She was most likely an once-in-a-lifetime kind of person, one that you couldn’t know if you would ever get to meet.
My chest throbbed even at the sigh that leaked from her when she was peeking at the telescope. When she looked my way and smiled faintly, I experienced an impact as if I had been hit in the head, giving in to a love that made me feel like my whole body would melt and crumble down.
“Master, astronomical observations are quite a wonderful thing.”
If, by any chance, my body were to be crushed by a star in that moment, only on that day did I want to keep looking at something, even if for just one second more. I wanted to keep looking at her. Forever and ever, I wished. That was what I thought.
This encounter had changed my life and decided my fate. I didn’t mind if people laughed at that, calling me a romanticist. I, Leon Stephanotis, whose destiny had been altered, would always look back on it.
On the day that I had watched the stars with Violet Evergarden.
“There was a sea of gold in his land” – who was it again that had sung the praises of a desert like this?
“I’m beat.”
When bookworms read too much, their head’s capacity would exceed the limit, so they would automatically forget the things they had read in their early phases. I had confidence in my memorization abilities and yet I couldn’t remember this, so it was surely a passage from an adventure novel or something of the sort that I had read in my childhood.
——What a beautiful comparison.
When I actually stood in the middle of a desert, my impressions were drawn to the temperatures, sunlight and other such things regarding the environment instead, so this poetic expression hadn’t crossed my mind. In the destinations of my travels, I often reminisced to a certain someone who was somewhere in this world, as well as the things she, who spoke words as beautiful as that, used to say, as if borrowing them.
“So pretty...”
I liked the color of gold. I could observe the grains of sand moving smoothly for all eternity.
“Everyone, you did well; the books we excavated will be brought back by another group. Meaning that we from the starting line-up are finally off for the first time in months.”
As I was spacing out, I didn’t hear the commander’s words very well. I was only staring at the ground, missing out on everything. When I raised my head, the happy-looking faces of my bearded and somewhat dirty colleagues entered my eyes. All I understood right away was that we would get a vacation.
“After we get twenty days off, we’ll regroup in Iustitia, at Shaher’s headquarters. After that, we’ll go to that place in the south where the reconnaissance team was sent. Next will be our turn to bring back the luggage. Don’t let your bodies get weak.”
“Roger that.” Once everybody gave an agreeable reply in unison, we disbanded from the spot.
Iustitia, Shaher’s headquarters. The main office of my occupation. I was previously in a section called the codex department, devotedly working on the deciphering of documents and copying manuscripts, but now I had been transferred to a completely different section. It sounded good when we were called the leading actors, but it was actually a group of reeking adventure rascals, the literature collecting department.
I put my heavy baggage sack on the ground and heaved a breath. Wiping the white folk clothes that I had been provided with on-site, I dusted the sand off them. This clothing called dola – a long robe secured by a waist belt – looked flappy and inflexible at first glance, but it was surprisingly easy to move around in. It was made of a rather velvety silk material, so there would normally not be so much sand sticking to it, but since I was caught in a sandstorm until just a moment ago, there was no helping it.
We had returned from a thorough search in the ruins of an abandoned castle, once the dominion of a royal clan whose name was eminent in the past. A book burning movement had taken place in this land at a certain point, but we had received information that a scholar from those times, out of fear towards the situation, had hidden valuable books in the forsaken palace. The information was apparently right, so after wandering around all over the deserted castle, we had found dozens of books. The books that would be taken to Shaher’s headquarters were to be made into written copies and spread to the world.
Made for protection purposes, Shaher’s literature collection was also well-reputed in other countries. It was difficult to negotiate with the locals responsible for the abandoned castle, but we were allowed entrance this time as well thanks to our achievements thus far. Just like that, someone’s story, studies and feelings, which were supposed to have disappeared, would breathe once again. The books we had been looking for would be delivered to other people and comfort them during long nights.
——What a wonderful thing.
The working environment was awful, but I was proud of my job.
I sat down on my luggage and gazed at the cityscape while drinking water from my canteen. In this desert-zone city, everyone’s clothes seemed harmonized no matter what color they wore.
“Senior Leon, what will you do on your days off?”
As a junior who had not yet left the spot called to me, I furrowed my brows and looked at his face. He was a young man of masculine facial traits, which was enviable to someone as baby-faced as me.
“Hey, Sir.”
A rarity amongst the members of our unit, the man had not been born in Iustitia. If I wasn’t mistaken, he was a rich kid who had been born in a southern country and entered Shaher through connections with the foundation executives.
Getting a job at the Shaher Observatory was a daunting task even for those who had studied astronomy. It was hard to make it without learning in a good environment from an early age. Since Iustitia, the capital of stargazing, was the best place to study in, it was natural that the ones hired were mostly the locals.
——Well, this guy had connections, so this has nothing to do with him.
I pondered an answer. “Nothing in particular.” For the time being, I decided to be cold, acting as nonchalant as ever.
And this was also the same as always, but the junior took no offense in my crude response – rather, he laughed at me, looking happy. “Then that means you’ve got no plans. I was thinking of going home. If you’d like, how about we go together? We have a villa by the lake... If I go now, the schedule will allow my family to join in.”
“No, why do I—”
“Last time we had a break, I told my little sisters about your cool adventure story and they wouldn’t shut up about how much they wanted to meet you. Hey, hey, how about it?”
I was baffled. I had no idea what was good about me to this junior but he would oddly flock to me. The reason why I hadn’t told him about my plans right away was that I felt he would follow me if I did so. Honestly, he was a bother. Up to now, we had acted as a group. I wanted to be alone even if a second sooner.
“I’m not going.”
“No way... My family’s all pretty boys and girls! Sir, you like beautiful things, don’t you?”
“Do they look like you?”
“They do.”
“Then they might be pretty, but won’t be my type.”
“Sir! You’re horrible!”
“So loud. If your family’s waiting for you, hurry and go.”
While I gestured with my hand as if shooing a dog, the junior made a puppy-like sad face. Even though he had a big body, he was amicable and his display of emotions was richer than most people, making him look all the more like a dog.
“Then, if you ever feel like coming to see me during your break...”
“I won’t.”
“...could you contact a hotel called Varona in Leidenschaftlich?”
“I won... uh?”
“It’s a first-class accommodation establishment. It’s under my uncle’s administration, so you can get a stay there immediately, and I can pick you up as soon as you give me my name. Oh, you’re making an interested face, huh? Want to come with me right now?”
What piqued my interest was the word “Leidenschaftlich” – that was all.
——That’s where the CH Postal Company is.
And it was also where my first love worked at.
“You were from Leidenschaftlich...?”
“That’s right. I did say it in my self-introduction when I joined the department.”
“Well, I don’t listen to people I have no interest in...”
As expected, my junior gave a happy-looking smile with his whole face. “Sir, I like that you’re equally unfriendly to everyone. People only got close to me because of my title... and my family’s social standing... but Sir, you’re cold, and that feels nice.”
“Your suffocating actions are a pain in the ass to me. Besides, hum...”
“What is it, Sir?”
“Hum, say... is the CH Postal Company well-known?”
“Do you know Violet Evergarden?” – the reason why I couldn’t ask this was a literal embodiment of how much I lacked guts, I thought.
With an “aah”, my junior immediately made a face like the name rang a bell. “I know them. It’s the company of that businessman, Claudia Hodgins, right? They’re popular. Shocking that the name of a company would come from you.”
“I’m an adult, after all. I’d know the name of one or two renowned businesses at least.”
“That’s a lie, ain’t it? I already know you don’t have interest in anything but stars. Erm... if I’m not wrong, all the postal companies of Leiden got sucked into it. They also succeeded in company split-ups. Their president is a celebrity too. The newspaper series where he talks to other entrepreneurs is a trend... It got adapted into a book just recently. There’s a chapter in the extra edition where he talks to his secretary and the president of an affiliated company, and it’s so fun. The book’s in my room at the headquarters, so you can take it with you and read it all you want.”
“Is there nothing about business in that book? Like, about the Auto-Memories Doll field... Hum, according to my research, there should be a rather famous Auto-Memories Doll in it... Don’t know if she’s still there, though.”
I timidly attempted to ask, yet it seemed my junior didn’t know the details. That was expected. The number of people who could hire Auto-Memories Dolls was limited, so hardly anybody would know even the name of a famed Doll unless it was someone marginally acquainted with them.
“I wonder. I do sorta know that they apparently have one real beauty of a Doll. But I also have a good-looking face... so I don’t yield to beauties from here and there.”
“Got it. Thanks for the info. And for the nice conversation. Go home.”
“Sir...! If you get bored of being alone, please remember me!”
Leaving behind my clingy junior, I took off from that place. I strutted with a hand in my pocket.
My junior wasn’t a bad guy. He had a high-handed personality but fit into the category of good person. He must have talked to me like that because he knew about my background as an orphan who had lost his parents and got a job at the astronomical observatory by way of assistance from Shaher. Meaning he was worried about his senior, who would be spending his vacation alone with no lover or family. The reason why he had invited me to a house where his family would be was probably that he was exposing his intentions in his own way.
——But to hell with that.
I wanted to be alone. To say that the people who thought I was pitiful were the actual pitiful ones was my essence. I had always enjoyed watching the stars by myself anyway, and I enjoyed books about stars too. Book reading wasn’t meant to be done with two people, right? I liked being alone. This was also because I had lived a life of accepting solitude for a long time, but if anything, it was harder for me to settle down when I was in someone’s company.
When I turned the street corner and confirmed that he finally wasn’t following me anymore, I let out a relieved sigh.
——Alone at last. Time and space just for me.
The times when I was by myself like this were the ones I felt most comfortable in, and while I did have some things to reflect upon in that regard, unfortunately, I didn’t have a family to pester me about having children, unlike the rest of society. Because I was alone.
——I get that it isn’t a good thing.
There were things that you couldn’t get used to or change, despite understanding why you should. I was equal parts as obstinate as I felt inferior to those who had families. Only one person had ever made me want to be with her for a little longer when I was in her company.
——Only one.
Our circumstances were similar and we were also alike in that we were burdened with loneliness, but it wasn’t as if I liked her because of the similarity. It was because she seemed like she would be all right even if she were on her own, so I had wished to stay by her side. To get close to her. I “liked” her in that way. It wasn’t as if I wanted her to do something for me. I was the one who wanted to do something for her. It was that kind of “like”.
It had happened a long time ago.
After we had spent a little time together, she left. When we were bidding our farewells, I stopped her and confessed.
“Violet.”
I told her I was in love with her. I didn’t ask her, “I like you, so what do you wanna do?” – I simply told her I liked her.
“I’m... I’m... in the codex department now, but... I actually wanted to be in the literature collecting department like my father.”
She gave me this answer: the way that she cherished me was different.
“I had my hopes up that maybe my mother would come home one day if I waited here, bringing my father back with her... so I kept shutting myself in until this age, without ever stepping off into the outside world. That was possible in this place and I wanted it myself. But... just now...”
But if we ever happened to meet again, she wanted to spend time with me.
“I’ve just made up my mind. I’ll go around the world like you.”
In that moment, the woman who had said that she couldn’t feel emotions...
“I might face danger. I might lose my life without anyone ever finding my body, just like my parents. But—But that’s okay. I’m thinking of choosing that path.”
...smiled at me like a normal girl, looking happy, and told me something.
“If I do that, I’m sure we might get to meet someday, somewhere, under a starry sky. We’re both gypsies. And if that happens, will you...”
——...watch the stars with me again?
“Yes, Master.”
She told me that. She said it. This alone was already enough for me. This alone gave me the courage to come out of the world that I had been secluding myself in. Even if my love wasn’t requited, even if we never saw each other again, I was so happy.
She.
Violet.
Violet Evergarden.
Just that – just the fact that she had promised to watch the stars with me – had made me happy to the point of changing my life.
I kept making transfer requests ever since that day, finally earned approval and ventured myself into the outside world. The world other than Iustitia that I saw for the first time was bustling with a dizzying variety of things, which made me regret secluding myself. But surely, if I hadn’t met her, I would have taken a lot longer to go outside. No, I might have never left that bird cage to begin with.
That environment where I was allowed to wallow was terribly indulgent. After all, everyone was awfully nice to me for not being able to stand up, just because I was sad.
I didn’t simply think that I would definitely get to see her at least once. The probability of an astronomer and an Auto-Memories Doll, who had spent time together at work, meeting even once was surely the same as the meteor we had seen that day – once every two hundred years.
I was being ridiculous. If I really wanted to see her, I should just go visit her postal company in Leiden. The reason why I didn’t do it was that I was scared. That maybe her words were just out of friendliness, and that, if we did meet, she wouldn’t even remember me and I would be rejected. On top of being terrified of this, I also had a dream.
That if we ever happened to reunite, I wanted us to meet again truly by coincidence, under a starry sky.
If something like that really were to happen, just what would I do? Would I smile? Cry? Or ask for her love again?
I nodded at a passerby who had almost collided with me and started walking again. I had no particular destination. I could also go back to the headquarters just like this and be an idle bookworm in my own room, but going sightseeing around this city for at least a little bit was also good.
——I won’t get to see Violet if I stay in that place.
I had no free time to spend money, so I could afford the luxury of staying at a remotely nice hotel. Having made up my mind, I went into the main street and began looking for accommodation in the desert capital.
Local idioms were honestly my weak point. Even though it was a common language, it was hard to catch because of the many dialects. When I talked to elders, I was done for.
However, I could perfectly understand that the inn’s owner, an old gentleman, had treated me like a “young lady”. Of course, I told him he was mistaken, but he didn’t hear it. He led me to my room with a hand around my hips.
The room was quite a high-class one, so I let it slide. If it were my old self, I would have been as furious as a raging fire. But I had grown up. By holding back my anger, I would manage to spend the night in a proper bed, where it didn’t seem like bugs would show up, so becoming an adult was for the best. Even if my self-respect decreased a little.
While I was chilling in the room and writing my diary, the sun went down in a blink of eye and it was getting late into the evening.
“Heave-ho.”
It was the dead of night. I put on warm clothes and prepared myself to go out.
I wanted to observe the desert’s starry sky at my own leisure. As our activities had been limited to daytime ever since we had arrived here, I was now finally getting to do the things that I actually felt like doing. I had watched it together with everyone else from the windows of the cheap inn that the literature collecting department’s personnel had stayed at, but as expected, I wanted to see it from a spacious place with no noise or anything of the sort. As a scholar born in the so-called “capital of stargazing”, I obviously was going to have my fill of the desert’s night sky.
Unable to contain my feelings of excitement, I left the room after my lips relaxed a bit. For the heck of it, I greeted the innkeeper and told him I was going to see the stars. When I did so, he made a worried-looking face.
Apparently, women were forbidden of wandering outside at night in these lands. He couldn’t stop me from going out since I wasn’t a local, but warned me not to get too close to men. It wasn’t as if there were many ruffians among the people who walked around at night, but simply that this city had this kind of culture, so if the men suddenly spotted a woman, they might think badly of it. I had grown up in a men’s dormitory watching a bunch of idiots, so I understood what he was trying to say.
I showed him the retractable cane I was holding, and while I was at it, I also demonstrated with one swing that a blade came out from the tip as well. It was not for killing anyone, but it sufficed for making the other party recoil and holding them back.
Receiving the innkeeper’s applause from behind, I ventured myself outside.
The temperature gaps between nighttime and daytime was extreme in the desert. Having been raised in a mountaintop astronomical observatory, I was used to areas where there was a discrepancy in temperatures between day and night, but even then, I could bring myself to deem it as comfortable due to differences in humidity. The instant I stepped outside, I shuddered with a “brr”.
However, I forgot the cold as soon as I saw the sight spreading overhead. Surely, God must have dropped His jewel box. The starry sky unfolded in a way that made even someone like me come up with such a poetic saying.
Due to the fact that it was nighttime, there were few people out, but it wasn’t as if nobody was wandering about the city. Just as the innkeeper had said, it seemed that someone with a womanly appearance (I wasn’t a woman at all, though) walking around did catch people’s eyes, as they called to me countless times. I put myself on guard in each of those instances, and everyone withdrew with the same caution as the innkeeper.
Not letting the women walk around late at night was also meant for protecting them.
I had heard that there was a place for stargazing aimed at tourists somewhere a little far from the city, so I headed there, for safety as well. Several tents were erected around the sparse green area. In addition to privately built tents, there were also merchant tents selling drinks and food.
After looking through the signboards with the prices of the alcohol and warm soups that people of this region consumed and were familiar with, I picked the alcohol. I was an adult now and on vacation, so I told myself that it was okay to drink today and gave myself permission.
I went for a cloudy-colored alcoholic drink simmered in a large pot called the witch’s cauldron. It was warm and sweet, with a slightly spicy aftertaste. It warmed your body when you drank it and was the best delicacy to savor in cold weather.
Some people invited me to enter their tents, but I refused and steadily began setting up by arranging the astronomical observation tools that I had prepared. I assembled a demountable astronomical telescope over the sheets.
Even though this was said to be a place for stargazing, not everyone seemed to be astronomy freaks like in Iustitia – most of them were lying on the ground, enjoying a conversation with their companions while relishing in the jewels of the night. Everyone other than myself had simple handheld telescopes, so a few locals started appearing fussily around me, looking greatly interested. If anything, there weren’t just tourists.
A young father who had a child with him shyly came to ask me, “How much is it for you to let us take a look?” Apparently, he had mistaken me for a merchant.
“I don’t take money for it. It’s something for me to enjoy myself.”
The young parent made a bewildered face at my blunt reply, but nervously stepped in front of the kid and said, “It’s okay even if it’s just for a little bit, couldn’t you let this child take a peek?”
“Sure, it’s fine.”
He was also surprised at my ready consent. As he asked one more time if I really wasn’t going to charge for it, I declared that I wasn’t, swearing by this land’s god.
I beckoned the child. Our heights didn’t match since he was too small, so I lifted him by the hips.
“Can you see them?”
“Just a tad higher.”
“This much?”
“Amaziiing.”
At the child’s delighted look, the father and I locked eyes with each other and laughed. Then, other people who had been surrounding us at a distance came over one after another, asking me to let them see next. Whenever I said that I wasn’t charging any fee, they would ask me back, “Are you a saint or what?”.
In a land where you could see such beautiful stars, astronomical telescopes weren’t wild-spread among locals, enjoyed only by tourists and outsiders. That was probably the case. For them, this was an expensive item brought by outsiders. The stars were beautiful enough at naked eye, so if I had to say it, telescopes weren’t necessary. But if there was something that would help them see better, there would obviously be people saying that they want to take a look.
——Guess I’m gonna contact Shaher’s donors and indicate this place as a potential donation site.
If this pleased so many people, maybe it would be nice to have a telescope that everyone could look into, just as there were benches where everyone could sit on along the streets. I liked stars, so it made me happy even if just one more person fell in love with them.
“Having fun?”
“We are! You’re so generous!”
The figure of an elderly man much older than myself smiling like a boy, looking extremely happy, struck home pretty hard. It wasn’t like I wanted to hang out with anyone or that I had a preference for getting along with everybody. That wasn’t the case at all.
“This thing’s pricey, ain’t it? You okay with people touchin’ it without a care?”
“It’s not made for decoration; it’s something to look at.”
But these kinds of moments were nice.
——Very nice.
If these once-in-a-lifetime encounters would increase the proportion of stargazing in someone’s life, nothing could make me happier.
——When I get old, I guess I’m gonna run a rent-a-telescope or something like that somewhere.
I decided to take a few steps back and let everyone enjoy themselves.
This sensation that the joy of the surroundings was becoming more and more contagious. This feeling that people were gathering there only out of curiosity and adventurous spirit, not for profit. It didn’t seem fitting of my usual self, but something like this was also conceivable every once in a while.
With nothing to do, I naturally started looking around. Wonderful night, wonderful atmosphere.
The figure of someone standing still amongst it all entered my field of vision even without me wanting to. Everyone else had a companion.
The person was clad in dola like me and had a veil covering her face. From her physique, I could somehow presume that she was probably a woman.
Hoping that no weirdos would go talk to her, I worried about and kept watch over the woman, just like people had done for me. If she got caught up by anybody, should I intervene?
I used to hate women, yet here I was, concerning myself with one. I might have a misconstrued sense of justice, but I at least had to care.
I was just looking at her for a little while simply for that reason, but the instant that the wind blew strongly, all of my nerves became her captive. Her veil came off. It came off just slightly and I could see her face.
Her golden hair fluttered leniently. Her shapely profile was exposed under the starry sky. This beauty that could be discerned even in the nightly darkness was breathtaking.
It was really just a few seconds’ time and she immediately fixed the veil back on tight, but I had already seen her, so I knew. I knew.
I knew who that was.
Distancing myself from the telescope, I walked unsteadily towards her. Like winged bugs that gathered up to light.
This person literally shone like a lantern in my life. It was fire that wouldn’t disappear, no matter how much time passed. Time only strengthened the flame’s vigor.
That was why, aah, I... I...
“Violet Evergarden... is that you?”
That was why I called to her at that moment, with a shrill voice. As she looked at me, her eyes slowly crinkled, the corners of her lips went up and she smiled at me.
I felt like tearing up at that.
“It has been a while, Master.”
I had dreamed of this.
“Is it really you?”
I had dreamed of this day.
“Yes, Master.”
Always had been.
“Stupid, I’m not your master anymore... I have a name too... You’ve probably forgotten about it, but I... My name is...”
I had dreamed of this day and had always been thinking about what to say if we ever got to meet again.
“Mr. Leon Stephanotis. Is ‘Mr. Leon’ all right?”
If it were under a starry sky with not a single cloud, we could talk about its bare beauty. If it were on a rainy day, we could discuss the mythology related to the constellations.
“Did I mistake it? I have confidence in my memorization skills, but...”
If it were on a night where a once-in-every-two-centuries meteor were to pass by, we could share stories of the past in which we had observed the sky together.
“No... you got it right. You got it... Just ‘Leon’ is fine... Violet, the time you spent with me was so long ago, and yet, you sure... managed to...”
I had dreamed of this. You had no idea, did you, Violet Evergarden?
“You sure managed to remember.”
You were my first love. The first person I fell for. That day was the first time I confessed to someone.
“Leon, do you recall the promise we made?”
I opened the door to courage. I opened it thinking it would be okay even if I got hurt. But instead of hurting me, you accepted it. You broke my love to pieces, but still acknowledged it.
“Yeah.”
I had dreamed of this. Of this moment. You didn’t have to remember it. You could have forgotten what you had said to me. But if nothing else, I wanted to have one more look at you before I died.
“Have you memorized...”
One more time.
“...the names of a few stars?”
I wanted to see you one more time.
Violet Evergarden. I – the sixteen-year-old Leon Stephanotis – was in love with you.
He was in love with you. So was my current self. Now that you were in front of me, I could tell as much, even if I didn’t want to.
The flame inside my chest was saying, “This woman is the one who started the fire.” It told me that you were the woman who burned me up. You had burned me, and you still were. You melted everything that I had locked up within ice. It told me that you were the woman of my fate.
Violet wordlessly nodded in agreement. She nodded like a child. She was happy that I remembered what she had told me – I could tell by the facial expression she was making.
——You used to be so expressionless and doll-like – who was it that changed you so much?
You weren’t a doll anymore now. More like a girl who had someone’s love. You didn’t look like anything but that in my eyes ever since you were with me, though. But now, surely you had someone. This someone had changed you to that point, right?
“Violet,” I said, suppressing the pain of my sweltering chest. “If you have some time, won’t you spend it with me?” I asked.
I was attempting to open the door to courage again. Regardless of what awaited me beyond it, even if I regretted opening it. I asked nevertheless.
You changed me. You made me who I was. You probably didn’t know that. You didn’t have to.
“Yes, by all means.”
And this beautiful woman in front of me, too.
“I had been waiting for a day to come when I inform you about the fruits of my studies.”
Surely, she had also been made by someone.
“Should we ever meet, I had wanted to report them to you, even if you did not remember.”
Envy, affection and attachment ran through my body.
“That is what I was thinking.”
My sixteen-year-old self was screaming. “I was in love with you. I was in love with you. I was in love with you. I’m in love with you. Even now, I still like you,” he shouted.
I no longer had any of the youth and recklessness of those days. However, regarding my love for her, the me from back when I confessed to her was still here.
“I’m sure what I’m gonna say now will trouble you. But would you listen?”
I was still here. That version of me was still inside me.
Violet Evergarden, you...
“You can laugh if you want; you see...”
...to me, you... a woman like you was...
“You were my first love.”
Violet Evergarden, you...
“I still like you. Forgive me.”
To me, you were a woman of the stars.
#violet evergarden#fyeahvioletevergarden#veedit#kyoani#kyoto animation#leon stephanotis#violet evergarden booklets#akatsuki kana#takase akiko#novel#my translation#leon stephanotis and the first star#leon stephanotis to ichibanboshi
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04. Accidents
yes, the rumors are true. literally there are no rumors nobody is talking about this a month and a half later, i have finally updated my bella as a vampire and edward as a human fanfic inspired by an au that @bellasredchevy posted. you can read the new chapter on AO3 or here. i post updates on AO3 or on tumblr using the #equinoxjw tag.
me to kae like two months ago when i started writing this fanfic: i don't want the plot to follow exactly along with smeyer
also me: *copy and pastes midnight sun*
i promise i'll deviate eventually hehe leave me alone <3
It may have been an overabundance of caution, but I decided to hunt again that night once my family had coupled off into their perfectly matched pairs, leaving me to be the odd one out again. I had no desire to be an audience to whatever acts occurred when their bedroom doors locked.
Prior to this, I spent some time in Carlisle’s study along with Jasper. We worked in silence for the majority of our few hours together; Jasper quietly organized some of our recent identity paperwork, making preparations for the next set of documents we would require in a few years, Carlisle read through a very thick medical textbook for research, and though it was months too early, I was distracting myself by preparing to file our family’s taxes for the last year.
Our finances had been in something of disarray since Christmas anyways. Of course, the mind-boggling accumulation of wealth our coven possessed never necessitated a budget, but we still ensured to balance the checkbook to keep account of our transactions. The holidays were always an ostentatious occasion in our household. We tried to make the most out of days deemed special as means to have something to look forward to in the years that began to blend together as our endless amount of time passed.
Other than Carlisle and Esme’s gifts, it was typically a tie between Alice and Emmett concerning who spent the most on presents. Whereas Alice was flamboyant in her gifting – there was hardly a holiday season where hundreds of designer label bags didn’t appear beneath the Christmas tree – Emmett was mischievous. Although he always included something we’d actually enjoy, he managed to come up with something entirely nonorthodox year after year. There was a year where for Hanukkah, he had presented me with a deed to a piece of land each day, and by the eighth day, I was the owner of a very small country.
Carlisle and Esme made sizable donations in our names every year to charities of our choice. It may have been too on the nose of me, but I always opted for something that’d impact children’s reading education. There were many small libraries across the world named after both my immortal and mortal parents.
Just as my jaw nearly dropped upon discovering the amount Emmett had spent this past year on Christmas alone, I had been interrupted by my brother.
“Bella,” Jasper hesitantly spoke to capture my attention.
The look in Carlisle’s eyes as they flickered up from his book briefly and back to the page he’d been reading instantly made me feel suspicious. I knew Jazz would immediately detect as much.
“Yes?” I’d answered, reserved.
“We are always ready to move on at a moment’s notice, of course,” he’d begun, his tone cautious as he sampled the emotional climate. “However, I thought it might be best if we addressed how you’re feeling. Rather, we wanted to know more about your feelings and thoughts on the current situation.”
“Uh, you best of anybody understand how I’m feeling. What else is there for me to say? What are you getting at, Jazz?” I’d demanded, my focus no longer on the paperwork before me.
“I just thought that while we make preparations for additional documents for the future, we should ask if you’ve given any thought to leaving early...as in leaving now.”
“You want me to leave!?” I had almost shrieked, my voice rising a few octaves. Just as the shock had run through me, it’d been instantly sedated by my brother.
“Of course not, Bella,” Carlisle assured, closing the textbook atop his ancient mahogany desk. “It was only a question. We’d be horribly unhappy – Esme, especially – to not have you with us. And if you wanted us to move along with you, we would do so.”
“It was merely something for you to consider. A precaution. We wondered if perhaps providing you with the option might be beneficial bearing in mind how stubborn you are,” Jasper expressed, his words careful and his eyes vigilant.
I had been shocked at what I was hearing. My eyes narrowed.
“Me, stubborn? My tenacity is no match for Rosalie.” My adopted father had laughed in the middle of my response. “Really, I don’t understand where this is coming from.”
“Bella, we don’t wish for you to leave us,” Carlisle had guaranteed me again. “Nor do we wish to move on from Forks so soon. Naturally, neither must happen. It is entirely your decision, and we would all support you. Needless to say, but I have complete faith in you. However, I don’t want for you to feel as though you cannot leave if this is too difficult. There is nothing to prove to any of us, nothing worth proving. Nothing worth endangering the boy. The boy will be gone in a year or two. So if it is the better option, I wanted to offer the idea for your consideration.”
Jasper’s eyes had scrutinized my expression as he read the emotions, searching for some facial indication to explain what I’d felt. I couldn’t provide an explanation even if I’d tried. The idea of leaving emptied me, making me feel worn and hollow.
“It was just a suggestion, Bella,” Jasper had repeated upon experiencing my inexplicable hurt secondhand, offering a tiny smile to soothe me.
I’d absolutely miss my family. But that didn’t seem reason sufficient enough to match the level of anxiety and sadness that accompanied the idea of leaving Forks.
The boy would be gone in a year or two.
Carlisle’s words were just along the line of thoughts I’d had a week ago here in this forest.
I again felt bewildering sorrow for the life the boy would live without me. Rather, the life the boy would live that I could never live.
As I emptied another deer of its life source, I wondered about the question Carlisle had asked when I insisted upon staying.
“What holds you here?”
How could I explain to them what I couldn’t explain to myself?
Carlisle and Jasper had been right to suggest I leave. What was another two years in this small town to me in this endless life? It was merely a blink of the eye, and yet the fact made me feel deeper in desperation to remain here. So little time left to unravel the mystery of the weird bronze-haired boy’s pervasive insight...
But the mystery was not of the same value as the boy’s life. That was true. Edward, no matter how smug and obnoxious, deserved the right to continue on without my presence beside him as a looming threat. I could never forgive myself if in my pride, my stubbornness, I hurt him.
There couldn’t be that much behind him anyways. I’d figure him out in less than a week and resume my previous boredom.
Or at least I would have, had he not been the one human whose blood was temptation enough to consider leaving Forks.
It was the right decision to make, and yet, there was that incomprehensible woe inside me again.
I’d have to say goodbye today. Not only to my family but to the boy too.
I didn’t have to leave Forks, but staying at home for two years avoiding Edward seemed like a depressing waste of time. I could travel or spend some time in Denali.
It was melancholic to look at the forestry surrounding me, knowing now I’d be leaving it behind. By the time the boy graduated, it might be time for our family to move on.
I would miss Forks and its shrouding cover of clouds.
As a human, I’d hated the rain and snow, the gloom and the grey.
As a vampire, the rainfall was freedom–a promise of a day not spent blanketed in darkness. The snow was a beautiful romanticization of that freedom. Once the threats of snow had been removed thanks to the lithe grace that corrected my above average human clumsiness, I could now appreciate the beauty of the water droplets crystallizing in the air, seeing every unique shape of the flakes as they fluttered softly down in an effortless dance.
Today, the snow was stiffened after having refrozen. The scenery was enveloped in ice, the trees and grass and rocks sparkling with glossy glass.
Yes, I would truly miss it.
How many times had I sat on this stone in the past week, so pensive and desolate, as I stared out at the icy river? Last time, I cared little to watch the hidden sunrise beside Esme because of how indifferent I’d become. Now, though I could recall the image perfectly, I regretted not cherishing the moment.
At least my family would no longer have to be an audience to my ineffectual stoicism. That was something of a positive.
A nimble whisper of tiny feet against the glazed over blades of grass made my head flick upwards in time to see Alice appear beside me as if she’d been sitting there all along. Tucked in her hands, she carried two neatly folded stacks of dark fabric.
“One last day?” She asked, attempting to smile for me, though her dark eyes and bleak tone betrayed her.
“Of course you’d see the second I decided. I didn’t even think about that,” I laughed once without real amusement.
“Yeah, you’re very off recently,” Alice gently nudged me, her smiling taking on more authenticity. “Your future’s all blurry and vague. I can’t make much sense of it. I can’t even see where you’re going.”
“I don’t know where I’m going yet,” I shrugged, growing more glum by the second.
“You know Jazz and I will come with you if you want,” she offered, freeing one of her hands to grab mine, gently squeezing my palm.
“Jazz is the one who suggested I go.”
Alice snarled, a hiss escaping her teeth. “I heard.”
“He was right. And I know you’d come, I know all of you would. But I don’t want to uproot everybody, and it’s not that long anyways.”
Her pixie face contemplated for a fraction of a second, looking as if she wanted to argue, but she then sighed, giving in. Her lips twisted into a pout.
“I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too,” I carefully fixed an unconvincing smile onto my face.
My sister rolled her eyes before pulling me into a hug.
“Get dressed. You can tell the others when you’re ready.”
Alice stood up, kissed the top of my head, and darted off to the house.
I tugged the clothes on my body without thinking much about what they looked like, crumpling the old clothes I’d worn into a ball.
On the way to school, we sat in silence. Though Jasper could sense the sadness emanating from Alice and I, she made good on allowing me to be the one to tell them. I could always trust Alice.
Once we’d arrived at school, my eyes searched for the growing familiarity of a pair of sage eyes. The last time we’d been in this parking lot, I’d begun to feel my spirit lifting again. It seemed funny that it was once again crashing down like the first day we had crossed paths.
Today would be the last time I’d see him.
I didn’t know how to feel about the fact. It seemed maybe sorrow was the emotion that’d define my entire morning.
The others left for their classes, but Alice remained by my side as I waited, our backs leaned against Rosalie’s day car.
I tried to avoid Alice’s doll-like eyes as she gave me somber, pleading glances, instead listening for the quiet hum of Edward’s car as it approached the Forks High School parking lot.
It was easy to detect. The majority of students at the school drove older, used cars passed down from parents and grandparents with noisier engines.
I braced for his arrival as the wheels turned onto the slick, icy pavement. I finally gave in to peeking at my sister’s face, but she no longer looked at me with devastation. Instead, her eyes glazed over in search of the future.
I wondered if she was watching my indecisiveness as I grappled with what to say. I knew this attachment to saying goodbye to the boy was bizarre. I didn’t owe him an explanation, but something in me wanted closure with the person who was the reason for my leaving Forks.
I comforted myself by thinking that of course in this neverending span of time I lived, any minute connection was of interest to me – just something to find absorption in. This odd relationship of unwilling predator and over-perceptive prey was just another intrusive thought to occupy my time.
His shiny black car rolled into view as he expertly parked a few spots diagonal from Rosalie’s car, cutting the engine swiftly. He seemed to be a confident driver. How old was he? Seventeen? Eighteen? He couldn’t have been driving for more than three to five years, but I was relieved he seemed far more trustworthy behind the wheel than some of the other students’ reckless driving. It was no wonder we’d had so many assemblies preaching responsible, defensive driving with the way these teenagers ineptly sped around the town. My human father had often complained about the kids’ injudicious carelessness around here.
I was somewhat pleased because with all of my effort to keep this boy alive so far, it’d be a true shame for his own thoughtlessness to lead to an untimely death.
He stepped out of the driver seat, combing a hand through his bronze hair that was striking today in contrast to the cloudy, grey sky and the thick, black fitted sweater he was wearing.
“Hey, Edward!” Sara, the sandy-haired girl from biology who had taken a surprising dislike to me, called from a group of girls for his attention.
He looked in the direction of her voice, offering a wave which resulted in giggles.
I scoffed, once again seeing humor in the absurdity of the effect he had on the student body. Did they not find any annoyance in the grating edge of self-importance that coated his boyish charm? Humans were so unperceptive. Well, I could grudgingly think of one exception.
As I watched him, peripherally I could see the confusion knitting Alice’s thin eyebrows together at my smirk in response to the exchange. The ridiculousness made me grin wider. It seemed a safe bet to say I’d lost my mind, just as my siblings probably suspected behind my back. Well, they wouldn’t have to witness my deepening insanity any longer.
Rather than give in to the sadness that ebbed at the edges of my thoughts, watching the boy this one last time was a rush of dopamine, so I allowed myself this one moment of fun.
It seemed somehow we both could sense when one was watching the other, because as I let out a laugh amongst my own inner turmoil and chaos, the boy looked over, his pretty green eyes meeting mine.
They were alight, brilliant, and amused, asking to understand the joke. His strong face of angular features that garnered the fan club of silly little girls seemed pleased to find my attention on him, to no surprise of mine. Of course his ego would be stroked. I laughed again, a twinkling sound that distracted a part of my mind as the supernatural lure of the noise reminded me once again of the differences between us. He was human, and I was something completely other than that.
He leaned down to open the door to the backseat and reach into the car, pulling out the same leather-bound journal I’d seen him carry before, his eyes never breaking our gaze. Edward raised an eyebrow, smug as ever, his expression a clear invitation for me to approach him.
Just as my unfeasibly fast brain began to consider the words I’d say and the pain that’d come with saying them and the proximity to the boy, three things happened instantaneously.
First, I’d nearly forgotten about my sister before Alice’s tiny hand gripped onto my arm violently, her grasp unbreakably steel.
“Bella!” She hissed, the words a cry of warning as horrified air whooshed out of her lips in a gasp.
Second, I’d grown frigid as the implication of what she might have seen hit me until the shrill squealing of a van rounding the corner onto the parking lot at a negligent speed sent another shock through me. The angle the van’s tires hit the ice at was sending the large vehicle skidding, spinning in an unstoppable trajectory that would result in the destruction of the sleek, black car, the very car Edward still leaned into as his eyes finally left my face to discover the source of the noise.
It was only seconds before the van would crush him – crush and mangle his body to death.
Third, bent over as he was still straightening up from his reach into the backseat, his bewildered sage eyes flickered between the large van inevitably barreling towards him and my terror-filled face.
It was unacceptable. Idiotic. Careless. Moronic. Irresponsible and deeply selfish. But without another thought, I threw myself across the parking lot between the van and the boy.
Lifting Edward like a ragdoll, cradling his lanky legs to his chest, I launched us through the open door of the backseat just as the van made impact with his car, slamming the door shut into my back, the metal pressing and molding into the shape of my body with a groan as the motion sent us forward to crash into the car parked two spaces beside Edward’s, the glass of the window fracturing into thousands of glistening shards that I desperately shrouded him from.
“Holy! Fucking! Shit!” I cried out as I kicked open the door on the opposite side, sending it flying off its hinges into the car we were about to collide with beside us, throwing us flying out through the opening before we could be sandwiched in the wreckage, all the while begging to god or any deity that the glass of the imploding windows hadn’t reached any part of Edward’s skin to expose the blood beneath. Now was not the time to test my self control any further.
I’d crashed us into the pavement, carefully holding Edward beneath me. The warmth of his entire body pressed into mine made me painfully aware of how it burned my skin. One of my hands supported his head while the other held all of my weight off of him, and I was terrified of his fragility. Would my actions alone be what killed him? To my consolation, amongst the cacophony, I could hear the thunderous beat of his heart. Once I’d yanked him through the car, his legs had flown out wildly, stretching out again.
The van alongwith Edward’s car continued to bend and shriek as they warped into new grotesque shapes, smashing into the other car parked a space away from Edward, the friction finally slowing the accident to a stop.
The rest of the glass splintered off in a grating, violent shatter. My hand fluttered to block the stray pieces threatening to hit the boy beneath me, sending the fragments ricocheting back into the frame of the vehicles, denting the metal further like microscopic bullets.
Only seconds had passed, and I’d moved too fast for anyone to have detected any of my movements, but as I finally looked down severely into the eyes of the boy below me, as part of my brain registered immediate relief that he seemed to be unharmed by both myself and the wreckage, the other part of my brain registered the wide, astounded viridescent bewilderment of someone who’d seen everything.
I’d cursed again through my teeth, horrified with my actions, as the students witnessing the accident began to scream in panic. My forehead puckered as my eyebrows shoved together in torment.
What had I done? The risk I’d compromised my family with now was nothing in comparison to the exposure that’d have threatened us had I just murdered Edward Masen the very first day I’d seen him. The risk I’d placed Edward in as he stared wildly at my face beneath me was realer than it had ever been as his breath, warm and sweet, enticed me even without my inhaling his scent. The risk I’d placed myself in had never been greater as, though he looked unmaimed, my actions could have potentially damaged him far more than the van would have, which would only result in decades of deep self loathing for the harm I’d have inflicted.
The panicking footsteps clumsily sliding along the ice towards us meant we only had seconds before the other students discovered me here. Had they witnessed my materialization and supernatural maneuvers as well as Edward may have?
Somehow, it didn’t feel as important as my desperation that the boy beneath me was truly okay.
I knew my face betrayed my agony, so with great effort, I softened my features, though the pucker between my eyebrows remained.
Fiercely, I peered into the intense shock of his pretty face only inches from mine surrounded by a canopy of my long, dark hair.
“Edward,” I asked critically, my voice almost pleading. “Are you alright?”
“Never better,” he responded, though he blinked rapidly, disoriented from the trauma of the past minute.
The solace in hearing the sound of his voice was almost dizzying, and a manic, hysteric giggle escaped from my lips as I basked in the intoxifying relief at his sarcasm. Reluctantly, I sucked in air through my teeth. The scent of his blood was just as dizzying, if not more so, on my tongue, but I embraced the burning pain almost blithely. The blood wasn’t fresh, so it seemed I’d managed to protect him successfully, but whether or not it had been as thorough as I hoped, I’d need Carlisle to examine him internally for damage.
“Okay,” I breathed out. “I’m going to move away from you now. Stay still, and be very careful.”
Gently with as much care as I could, I laid his head down along the concrete, and lifted my body from shielding him. I scooted away, distancing myself from him, the glass clinking against the other pieces on the ground beneath me as I moved to lean against the misshapen trunk of his car.
“How-?” Edward began to prop himself up on his elbow.
“Edward,” I cautioned him sharply, cutting off the question that sobered my internal celebration at his well being.
Slowly – in effort to re-immerse myself into something more believably human – I crawled back over to where he laid, and softly pushed his upper body back onto the frozen ground.
“I said stay still,” I snapped, assertively but delicately grabbing his face to force his head to rest against the pavement. My fingertips were alight at the touch as if they’d been set on fire. I moved again, this time positioning myself to sit on the heels of my feet with my hands resting on my knees behind his body in case he made any effort to disobey again.
“How’d you get here so fast?” His chin tilted upwards to look at my face, his upside down expression revealing intense green eyes that bore into mine, searching intently for answers.
Something about our positioning reminded me of Mary Jane Watson and Spiderman. Except Spiderman never saved Mary Jane in favor of preserving her from a worse death – a death he’d have inflicted on her himself – had her blood been exposed. We were far more akin to Spiderman and Gwen Stacy – but without the romance – because it seemed I’d never stop shouldering more responsibility to keep him alive. If he were to die, it’d be my fault.
“I was right beside you, Edward,” I lied as a scowl pulled the corners of my lips down, severely examining his expression. I began to feel the anxiety of the risk I’d posed to my family.
“Don’t lie to me.” His face grew just as bitter and severe, his eyes accusatory. He began to move again as if he wanted to sit up, but I tugged him carefully back down.
“Can’t you listen?” I almost begged, the words holding multiple meanings.
The scene of the accident became surrounded as panicked students and faculty began to crowd where we were behind the barricade of the three cars. The bedlam was soundtracked by a torrent of shouting.
Although I could hear every exclamation of concern, every question, every instruction as we waited for the ambulance to arrive, I paid little attention to the canopy of humans, instead studying the strange metallic hues of his thick, tousled dark hair, the surprisingly smooth milkiness of his skin, the magnetism of his light green eyes, speckled with flecks of dark green the shade of the forests and brown the color of honey. This was the closest I’d ever been to him, and here I was, not falling into any monstrous temptations. It was a bizarrely beautiful sight – the upside down boy, the sparkling glass, the pretty eyes. I responded when urgent questions were asked of me but didn’t glance away.
Only when the ambulance finally arrived a few minutes later did I look elsewhere as the boy disappeared from the ground, being lifted onto a gurney along with another student, the careless van driver. It was Melanie Dean, a very striking girl with curly hair and luminous dark skin. My frozen heart felt as though it sunk upon realizing it was her. She seemed to be in much worse shape with gashes across her body bleeding profusely. Her mother was very kind to Esme, and she was a very responsible and kind student. She couldn’t have been careless; it must have truly been an accident. I mentally forgave her and let go of the resentment I’d already built for whoever had placed this annoying boy in harm’s way.
After reassuring the EMTs I was perfectly fine, I climbed into the passenger seat of the ambulance, chatting with the driver, a friend of Carlisle’s. I didn’t look back at Edward, procrastinating facing the accusations in his eyes and trusting the medics to do their jobs.
I ignored the fierce stares of my reconvened family members as we drove out of the parking lot. Their anger wouldn’t be enough to keep them from destroying any evidence I’d left behind.
It was a great deal of luck to find Carlisle alone in his office. Hearing my approach from down the hall, his golden eyes were full of perplexity as I entered the room, becoming aghast upon seeing the gravity of my expression.
I could almost see the thoughts flash across his face as he assumed the worst, but he was polite and patient enough to allow me to speak.
“Carlisle, I’ve done something terrible,” I confessed. “Edward – or, the boy – is fine, or at least, I hope so. I didn’t do anything to him per se.” I might as well have been monosyllabic with how effective I was communicating the situation. I continued in a rush. “There was an accident. A student’s van nearly crushed him,” I decided to correct myself, “would have crushed him had I not intervened. It was entirely reckless and irresponsible. Carlisle, I am so, so sorry. I-” I faltered, my voice catching in my throat in a strange way, the sound becoming thicker as I realized this was exactly the kind of mistake they had encouraged me to leave to avoid making. “I’m so sorry. I put you, Esme, the entire family in danger. It’s all my fault. I should have left as soon as you and Jasper said so, I shouldn’t have-”
Immediately, my adopted father materialized by my side, pulling me into a strong hug, shushing me. How many consoling stone hugs would I be enveloped in these days?
“Sweet Bella,” he began, smoothing the top of my head. “You are not the first – and I’m certain you won’t be the last–” Carlisle chuckled before continuing, “–of our family to be less than perfect. You have had grace for us countless times, and we will have grace for you.”
It was typical of Carlisle to include himself in the plural even though it seemed he had never made a mistake in his mortal or immortal life.
He pulled away from the embrace but only to hold me at arm’s length and examine my face. I looked up into his comforting eyes more than a head above me, so full of compassion and understanding that I felt unworthy of. Something about the unrelenting and unconditional love in his perfect face made me think of my human father. “Now, explain again what happened.”
I recalled every action in meticulous detail. Every shriek of the tire, every movement of my sin, every expression on Edward’s face as he watched me. As Carlisle listened, he left my side to straighten up his desk, closing the thick textbook atop it, and folded up the prescriptionless reading glasses he sometimes wore at work to hang on his collar.
“You did the right thing. And it couldn’t have been easy for you. I’m proud of you, Bella. Perhaps only the boy saw, and with all of the shock and trauma of the moment, he might be considered the least reliable witness.”
“He knows we’re...different. He knows something is wrong with me,” I whispered like a scared child.
“If we have to leave, we’ll leave.”
I frowned.
“Has he said anything?”
“Not yet, but he asked that I didn’t lie to him. Well, demanded really. Which is a very privileged stance to take when someone’s just saved your life.” The frown on my face deepened as I recalled how maddening Edward could be in the little time I interacted with him.
Carlisle brightened at my words, a small smile pulling at his lips. I wondered what he found funny.
“Anyways, I’ll come up with an explanation. I’m sure I could be persuasive enough to discredit his account of the events.” There was an edge of doubt to my voice.
“Perhaps it won’t be necessary. Shall I check on our patient?”
“Please!” I said. “I’m worried that maybe I ended up hurting him instead!”
Carlisle’s fair eyebrows raised, and then he shook his head, laughing aloud. “With Alice a part of our family, we rarely have such a strange day that comes as a shock to us, don’t we?”
Strange, indeed. This morning we discussed how it may be more beneficial for me to leave to protect the boy, and yet, had I been gone during the accident, my absence would have accomplished the opposite.
I found myself unexpectedly laughing too as Carlisle left the room.
I impatiently waited alone in his office, distracting myself by listening to the passing voices throughout the hallways of the small Forks hospital. The anticipation was too much as I listened to the van driver’s diagnosis of injuries. I felt bad for her mom but was relieved there seemed to be no permanent damage.
Edward patiently awaited his turn for x-rays, and I was anxious to hear Carlisle’s voice. He seemed to be allowing the physician’s assistants to do the bulk of the assessment. It was probably better this way. Carlisle’s face would instantly trigger the memory of me snatching him and all but flying through the backseat of the car. Who knows what might break Edward’s silence.
Melanie and Edward chatted back and forth. He consistently brushed off the staggering guilt that led her to apologize profusely, instead charmingly turning the conversation onto other subjects as if they weren’t sitting in a hospital post accident. He seemed to always know the perfect thing to say, soothing the tension of the circumstance and distracting her from the discomfort of the PA’s inspection. Edward asked about her now deceased van, her home life, her aspirations once completing high school, making guesses as to the reasons behind her answers. Melanie was shocked at how spot on some of his assessments were. It seemed he truly was a good reader. Only when she chuckled at some of his words did she remember where they were as the laughter pained her bruised and maybe broken body.
I froze with stress as Melanie finally asked how he had gotten out of the way.
Without hesitation, Edward smoothly replied, “Oh, Bella pulled me out of the way.”
This was true, but it didn’t pose a significant risk to me.
“Bella Cullen,” he spoke again as Melanie hesitated. She must have looked confused.
Edward had spoken my name before, but something about hearing it again this time overcame me with inexplicable excitement.
“Bella was right next to me in the car.”
“In the backseat?”
“Yes.”
“What was she doing in the backseat?”
“That’s not really any of your business,” Edward laughed. He said it perfectly in a way that made it clear he wouldn’t reveal more but wasn’t rude, making Melanie laugh as well. I wasn’t sure how to feel about the implications of what he said.
“Bella Cullen… That’s weird. I didn’t even see her. It was all so fast, I guess. Did she make it out okay?”
“I think she’s perfectly fine. She’s around here somewhere, but she seems to have the right connections at this place. No stretcher required and a first class ticket to sit passenger side in the ambulance.”
I smiled to myself.
Absentmindedly, I wandered around, feeling frustrated at the distance the circumstances forced between Edward and I. I wanted to see his face for myself, know that he was okay, and figure out what needed to be said.
Near the radiology room, I snuck a peek at the X-rays they just imaged of Edward when the nurse was looking elsewhere. His scent lingered in the hallway, though muddled by the movement of passing visitors and orderlies. It tickled my throat, but the temptation didn’t consume me. I could tell he’d already been moved back to the emergency room.
Carlisle caught me, giving me a meaningful glance as he pinned the images to the light board.
“He’s absolutely fine, Bella. No harm whatsoever. Well done,” my adopted father whispered so quietly that only I could hear.
The praise evoked a complicated reaction in me. I was very pleased but remained silent for a moment.
“I think I’ll go talk to him before he sees you. Act as though nothing happened,” I whispered back. He nodded approvingly. “Act as though I didn’t kick the door off a car,” I added sarcastically.
Carlisle chuckled quietly to himself.
Arriving at the ER, I hesitated. This would be the last time I’d ever see Edward Masen. A slight ache in my chest kept me from beginning this last of moments with him. I guess I could toy with the possibilities for the explanation as to why later once I’d left Forks.
I inhaled deeply, moving into view.
Edward’s thick eyebrows raised once he saw my face, his eyes accusatory again, but he relaxed his expression immediately before Melanie could see. “Ah, our fellow survivor’s finally decided to join us.”
Melanie’s dark eyes snapped over to look at me. She blinked rapidly, distracted by either a disorientation from her wounds or the proximity I stood to her. I was rarely this close to humans I didn’t share classes with. I probably looked even more unnatural, more inhuman under the fluorescence of the hospital lights.
“Oh, hey, Bella.” She said once recovered. “I’m so sorry-”
“No blood, no foul,” I interrupted her apology, shrugging. I smiled widely.
Glancing over her wounds, I found myself relaxed by the lack of desire. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be so strong and unaffected. The fleshy areas of her skin and fresh blood soaking through some of the bandage wraps around her arms hardly distracted any part of me.
It was nothing in comparison to Edward’s unexposed blood.
I strolled over to seat myself on the end of Melanie’s mattress.
“So, fellow survivor,” I mimicked the name he used, “give it to me straight. What’s the verdict?”
“As I said before, never better.” He answered. Edward’s green eyes were narrowed slightly in suspicion, though I doubted Melanie would detect as such. His eyes held allegations. They seemed to say I don’t trust you.
As he shouldn’t. “They won’t let me leave though. Is there a reason you’re not strapped to a gurney? I didn’t know nepotism could extend to medical treatment.”
“It’s all about who you know,” I smiled again at his irritation. Carlisle’s tread was nearring us down the hallway. “But lucky for you, I came to spring you.”
As Carlisle entered the room, I glanced down at my hands, unwilling to watch Edward’s reaction to my father’s face. I knew he’d notice the resemblance immediately. I winced when a quiet gasp escaped from Melanie’s mouth as she dropped it open in surprise.
“So, Mr. Masen, your X-rays look good. How are you feeling?” Carlisle clipped the X-rays to the light board on the wall opposite the bed.
“I feel perfectly fine,” Edward replied smoothly.
“Does your head feel alright? I heard you hit the ground pretty hard,” Carlisle crossed over to Edward’s hospital bed. He reached forward to gently run his fingers through Edward’s bronze hair, searching for any bumps from the impact.
I froze again watching this, stunned by the nearness. A bizarre surge of something like envy crashed over me as I wished I could have the control to so tenderly touch him, no fear of inflicting pain or harm… No longing for his blood the way I longed for it now.
“I can assure you, I really am okay, Dr. Cullen.” Edward laughed.
“Well, in that case, you’re free to go. Although, I’m afraid your car wasn’t so lucky with its fate. We spoke on the phone to your father, but he-”
“Had a meeting in Seattle today, I know,” the boy finished for him.
“He’s on his way back to Forks as we speak, however if you don’t want to wait three hours, I’m sure Bella wouldn’t mind taking you home.”
I was unprepared for Carlisle’s words. My eyes immediately flashed to his, searching for an answer as to his madness. Was now truly the optimal time to push the boy’s luck? My father’s honey eyes were partly apologetic but full of faith. Clearly he trusted me too much – trusting me to ensure the safety in our secrets and the safety of the boy’s life. He reached for a clipboard of medical paperwork, looking away.
Edward barely had time to glance in surprise at me by the time our exchange had occurred. Again, he raised his eyebrows, the green irises beneath full of questions.
“Of course I wouldn’t mind, Carlisle. However, I don’t have the car with me,” I began with false politeness, knowing I was being extremely rude to question his judgment but questioning it nonetheless.
“You can take mine.” He didn’t look up as he flipped through the paperwork.
“Perfect,” I replied before standing from Melanie’s hospital bed and walking towards the exit of the room. “I’ll be right back, Edward.”
“Mr. Masen, if you feel dizzy or have trouble with your eyesight at all, come back. Bella will stay with you until your father comes home or she’ll leave a phone number for you to call if you require assistance,” Carlisle instructed as I walked down the hallway in pursuit of his office.
“Thank you,” Edward replied politely.
“It seems you were extremely lucky.”
I entered Carlisle’s office, crossing to collect the key from his belongings.
“Lucky that your sister in law happened to be beside me,” he agreed, a stern edge to his tone. I grasped the car key so tightly I nearly molded it into a new shape.
“Ah, well, yes,” Carlisle replied. I’m sure he detected the same note in his voice that I had. I listened to the near-silence of his feet and the turning of papers. “Unfortunately, Ms. Dean, it seems you weren’t quite as lucky. You’ll have to stay with us a little while longer.”
As I heard the shuffling of Edward sliding off the hospital bed, I rounded the corner of the hallway to the ER.
“Handle it whichever way you think is best,” my father mumbled silently beneath his breath upon hearing my approach.
I leaned against the wall outside the doorway, listening to the beating of Edward’s heart sending the blood circulating throughout his entire body. With every step of his feet against the tile, I wondered how I was going to do this. Sit so close beside him. Lie to him. Say goodbye.
Every thought pained me.
Edward exited the emergency room and was startled to see me already leaning there.
I smiled mournfully as I listened to the pounding of his heart in reaction.
“You scared me.”
“You ready?” I asked, holding up the key for him to see.
Without waiting for a response, I turned and walked down the hallway, silently gasping in the waves of air as other people passed by. He followed behind me through the automatic doors.
“Would you like to wait here as I bring the car around?” I turned to look at him.
“Please, Bella. I’m not that fragile. I’ll walk.” His jaw tightened. He looked down at me, the same indignant expression from earlier on his face. Don’t lie to me, he had said…
“Okay.” I frowned, storming off in the direction of Carlisle’s black mercedes.
Once no longer beneath the overhead of the hospital, the dreary grey gloom of the sky released the frosty droplets of an oncoming rain.
I groaned internally. The rain made everything smell so much more saturated, and Edward Cullen didn’t need the extra help. The universe seemed determined to rid him from the planet today.
I unlocked the car, sliding into the driver’s seat and revving the engine to life. Although unaffected by the weather, the air was glacial, so I reached to blast the heat throughout the vehicle for his sake.
Edward caught up to the car then, opening the passenger door and dipping down to settle into his seat.
I turned to face the outside world one last time, taking a deep breath of the wintry air before closing my door.
It was worse than I imagined. The tension. The longing.
Here, in the intimacy of the interior, the heat from Edward’s body was deliciously sweltering. I was almost dizzy as the venom began to pool. I swallowed hard.
Slightly less tortuous, I could sense the resentment in the air.
I slammed my foot on the gas, reversed the mercedes out of the parking spot, and sped to the highway as if I could avoid all confrontation by racing to his home.
“Address?” I asked through gritted teeth.
He answered quietly, and I nodded, redirecting myself in that direction.
I refused to look over at him as I swerved through any traffic. There wasn’t much at this time. Hardly any witnesses…
I accelerated.
Even without breathing through my nose, I could still taste him on my tongue just as I did in biology class. Just as I did in the parking lot. But now, there were hardly any witnesses...
My foot slammed down on the gas again.
This was exceptionally more dangerous for multiple reasons. There was no hope for fresh air from a hastily closed textbook or a passing student unless I inexplicably opened a window in the very end of a chilling winter. There was no menagerie of other human scents to dilute the potency. There was no means of exiting the situation without leaving him in a car with no driver barreling down a highway. It was an inescapable inferno.
“Bella,” Edward finally spoke. His voice was softer than I anticipated. Less accusatory. I wished I could read his thoughts to understand what led to the resolvement in his tone.
I kept my eyes on the road ahead of us.
“Bella,” he began again. “I understand that for whatever reason, you don’t want to provide an explanation as to what happened today.”
He paused, waiting for me to respond in any way. I felt his eyes scrutinize my face. I kept my features fixed into an impassive mask.
“But I’m not as gullible as you think I am. Or hope that I am. I know what I saw.”
“And what do you think you saw?” I demanded, still watching the giant firs streak past.
“Bella,” he groaned. I couldn’t help but notice he’d said my name so many times today. This time, his voice was as accusatory as his eyes had been. “Don’t patronize me. You were next to your cousin-sister by your car. I saw you. And you were laughing at something as you watched me. Then, when Melanie’s van began to skid toward me, suddenly, impossibly you were beside me, pulling me through the backseat of my car. And even more impossibly, as we were about to crash into the other car, you somehow kicked the door of its hinges and got us out, pinning me to the concrete as the collision crushed my car like a soda can. It would have crushed me, killed me even, had you not been there. So don’t act as though you were beside me the entire time, and I’m just too stupid to remember clearly. Or don’t act as though I’m too stupid now to not know when I’m being lied to.”
Finally, I looked at him.
I was horrified. But even more than that, I was awestruck. He had seen everything.
His face was fierce and weirdly beautiful.
“Nobody will believe that,” I almost whispered.
“Bella,” he quietly said my name again. The intensity of his expression softened slightly. “I had no intention of telling anybody.”
As I looked into the sincerity of his magnetic sage eyes, I was shocked to see how genuinely he meant it. I believed him.
“Then what does it matter?” I asked stubbornly.
“I value transparency. If I’m going to lie, I want to know why I’m lying for you.”
What he asked of me was fair. And I was surprised that I wished I could give it to him. That I trusted him. Something in me wished he could trust me.
But he couldn’t do that. And he shouldn’t.
I realized what was so stirring about the connection to this strange, bronze-haired boy. The draw of his blood was the inciting complication driving us together but outside of my family, these were the first real conversations I’d had in years.
And I can’t even truly be honest.
I pulled onto his street, scanning the numbers for the correct address.
“Here,” he said as we slowed in front of a lonely house nestled behind giant trees and bushes, much too large for the boy to go in to be alone. It was one of the nicer houses in Forks with its latticed bay windows and small wraparound porch. But it was a grey home against a grey sky and lifeless within. The windows were dark as if nobody had been home for a long time.
There wasn’t much I could do about having to breathe to speak. Reluctantly, I inhaled. The appeal was every bit as powerful, and I battled with the instinct to grab hold of him and crush his neck to my mouth.
I gave myself a moment to recover, willing myself to clarity.
He waited, watching me. I turned my head to face him.
“Edward,” I began this time. “Please. Can you please let it go?”
He stared me down, his eyes dark and contemplative.
“I can’t.” He moved to unbuckle his seatbelt. “But I can see that you won’t tell me, so don’t worry about it. Thank you for the ride.”
I placed the car in park and cut the engine as he began to exit the car.
I should have just let him go, but stubbornly I couldn’t let that be the last moment I’d ever spend with him.
“What are you doing?” He asked as I got out, shutting the door.
“Carlisle said to stay with you, didn’t he?”
“He said that after you’d left the room,” he pointed out. I wanted to kick myself, but this was a minor slip up in the grand scheme of today.
“Well, it wasn’t hard to assume. How else will you make it back to the hospital if something happens to you?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
His words took on a double meaning to me. Maybe I should just leave now. He will be fine. Or at least, he’d only ever truly be fine once I’d left Forks.
“You’ll still have to wait three hours for your father to make it home. If you died in that time, it’d be my responsibility.” Tenaciously, I kept pace with him easily up the walkway to the porch. Whether Carlisle missed something crucially life-threatening from the accident or not, the words were true.
“I don’t see myself dying soon,” Edward fished in his pocket for a set of keys. “But whatever helps you sleep better at night.”
His strong face was sullen. The heavy eyebrows pulled together in frustration as he used the key to unlock the door.
“You’re angry with me,” I said.
He sighed heavily, pausing to look down into my eyes. His eyes were stormy and brooding. Then, he swung the door open and stepped inside.
Hesitantly, I followed him in.
His home was shrouded in darkness – not that my eyes needed the silvery light pouring in from the open door he was shutting behind me. I could see how carefully decorated it was. Navy walls and dark wooden accents everywhere – the floors, a great big grandfather clock, bookshelves, the frames on paintings. There were touches of white and black here and there too – gothic white lattice doors to the right leading to a home office with shelves of books nearly rivaling Carlisle’s collection behind a massive, intricately carved desk, a glossy black grand piano in the small, living area off to the left up a small step.
Here in the dark, it was even worse than it had been in the car. Though there was more distance between us now, lessening the heat his body washed over me, still, everything smelled of him and I was waging a war within. A bizarre current of energy coursed through the air between us and into my dead veins.
He turned on a small lamp illuminating the small entrance hallway with golden light that warmed his angry eyes.
“Do you play?” I asked in an attempt to distract myself from the inevitable bloom of the mouthwatering aroma beneath his skin, glancing again at the piano.
“Yes,” he responded, not bothering to elaborate.
“We have a piano just like this at home. Rosalie plays,” I spoke quietly. Aside from the bloodlust begging for attention in another corner of my brain, the intimacy of the two of us in this large house made me feel shy.
He looked at me meaningfully again for one moment, the mesmerizing green of his irises betraying some of the hurt he felt, before he turned to walk down the hallway.
The aching in my chest returned and without consciously deciding to, I was following him much too fast. The monstrous side of me was instantly excited by the pursuit, so I slowed myself to subdue it.
I paused for a moment before rounding the corner he had turned, wrestling with myself, suppressing the violence that begged me to lurch forward and empty his body. I smoothed the anguish contorting my face but finding that the pucker between my eyebrows was unwilling to undo itself.
With another excruciating breath through my mouth rather than my nose – I told myself that the burn ripping across my tongue was a good thing seeing that it was a reminder he had survived the car accident and the unexpected car ride that soon followed later – I turned the corner.
This must have been the real living room. Again, it seemed much too large for just the boy. His house wasn’t overwhelmingly huge but definitely bigger than average for this town. The room was decorated again in the strange assemblage of something victorian, something gothic, and something modern. It seemed reminiscent of another time. The room was still in the rich, dark jewel tones of navy, onyx, and pearl with the dark accents of wood. Patterns and textures of damask and velvet covered the rugs, tapestries, and drapery.
The boy was squatted down by the ornate white fireplace, his silhouette dark against the brilliant orange that erupted from the wood once he successfully got the fire started. The room was instantly filled with a heat that could nearly rival what it felt like to sit beside him in Carlisle’s car.
He stayed down for a moment, his back to me. Although completely vulnerable, the monster was quieted for now as I watched him in wonderment.
Finally, he stood up, looked at the fire for a second longer, and then settled onto a long white couch before the fireplace, stretching the length of his tall body across it.
“Edward,” I almost whispered from the entrance of the room, unsure of what to do with myself.
Tentatively, I took slow, cautious steps towards the couch as if approaching a wounded animal. With every movement, I measured the risk I posed. When I trusted myself, I crossed around the couch, gradually sinking down to sit down on the rug that extended from the edge of the fireplace across the length of the room.
I might as well have sat in the fire and allowed it to consume me for how much distance I tried to leave between the two of us. I was practically a foot from being perched on the wood. I wrapped my arms around my knees as I watched Edward’s eyes move along the mantel, the heat of the fire on my back and the boy in front of me warming me wonderfully. The flickering of the flames cast shadows that danced along his face, illuminating his green eyes. His rain-sprinkled hair appeared redder than ever, all traces of the warm bronzy-brown having vanished before the orange light of the fire.
“I know you’re not stupid,” I spoke. Edward’s eyes flickered over to me.
“I’m not,” he agreed, a halfhearted smirk tugging at his lips.
“You’re not,” I said again, surprising myself by laughing. His smirk grew into a sweeter smile, and I was relieved by the change in expression. In this moment, it felt as though no barriers existed between us. Like I had no secrets to hide from him, no differences among two friends. Except I did. And we weren’t friends, nor could we ever be.
“But?” He asked, already reading that I was unwilling to relent.
“But I can’t explain myself. I simply can’t. And I need you to promise me that you’ll let this go.” It was too much to ask and horribly unfair.
He sighed, sensing that the moment was clearly over.
“Okay,” Edward replied simply, reaching for a blanket hung over the back of the couch. He unfolded it, throwing it across his body. “I’m going to try to take a nap.”
“Okay,” I answered.
He propped his head up on a plushy brown pillow, his arm sliding beneath it, and closed his eyes.
I watched him for a moment, wishing he’d change his mind and open his eyes instead of hiding them from me. I hadn’t been ready to never see them again.
“Are you just going to watch me sleep?” He asked, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. His eyes remained closed.
“No,” I shot up, unsure of whether I should leave or stay or where to even place myself if I did.
“Well, make yourself comfortable. You really don’t have to stay though. I can take care of myself,” Edward chuckled, readjusting his position on the couch.
I nodded even though he couldn’t see, deciding he was right. As I noiselessly made my way out of the room, his voice stopped me.
“Bella?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For saving my life.”
“Goodbye, Edward,” I whispered.
“Oh, and by the way,” he yawned. “I’m still not letting this go.”
I said nothing as I left the house.
i hope u enjoyed. sorry for taking so long!
nobody:
vampire bella: my vampire mind is infallible and so strong and fast because i'm a vampire and i can smell everything and see everything even in the dark because my vampire powers are so strong did i mention i was a vampire?
if we’re being real, smeyer’s bella would have said holy crow at the accident, but MY bella can curse because i’m not a mormon.
#twilight fanfiction#twilight au#the twilight saga#twilight saga#edward cullen#bella swan#edbella#edbella fanfic#twilight renaissance#twilight revival#midnight sun#stephenie meyer#equinoxjw#new moon#eclipse#breaking dawn#alice cullen#carlisle cullen#jasper hale
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So someone's reached the main 5 oh oh! Their 50th birthday celebration! Not any major deal. fifty will be the healthy forty. And denial is the brand new mathematics! Anyway, it is one of the milestone birthdays, that somehow always seem to be much more funwe hostile, when was the final time you went to a surprise 48th Birthday Party?
Needless to say, you want to be right there with an unusual methods to help your birthday celebration star glow in the spotlight! So listed here are 50 amazing ideas for a 50th birthdaysome that will cost as little as 50 centssome which are a little more extravagantsome designed to just need your thoughtfulness and time. And that's a thing they'll like as much if not more!
Tell it such as it's. Write a listing of 50 reasons why they are the very best, then get it framed! Or even also include 50 photos as well as convert everything into a photo guide.
Stress-free birthday. Gift a 50 minute knead, manicure or facial foundation. Join them if you are able to pay for it!
Living is a roller coaster. Top for the amusement park with the birthday star, you, as well as three more friends as well as ride 10 different rides. Sure, the carousel is important.
Being lucky? one by one wrap fifty one dolars lottery tickets.
Have a sweet teeth? Buy fifty portions of special chocolates or candies from yesteryearor gift label fifty donut holes or even 50 of their favorite cookies! (Wrap in batches of five or 10 so they are able to freeze some for later!)
Let's assume cheesy. Make a fun 50-minute video clip of family and friends wishing them a happy day.
Couch-potato free. Get in concert once a week to walk one mile 1 day. It's a present which usually keeps on giving. (Take two weeks from out of 52 for vacations, etc!)
Talk about some teeth. Get together with family and friends and overflow the mailbox of theirs with 50 birthday cards!
Talk about a few laughs. Fill up their inbox with 50 distinct digital songs, video games and birthday wishes!
Try painting the city. Give them a $50 gift card to the fave restaurant of theirs, theater, club, etc. Not terribly original, we know, but generally appreciated! A word: Limo
Bingo! Imagine every one of the video games you can play using fifty penniestiddly winks, bingo, penny pitch, etcthen enjoy yourself enjoying them!
Might I help? Deliver 50 minutes of tutoring in a number of apps they do not know how to work with.
Tis safer to giveMake a summary of fifty simple ways you could potentially volunteer the time of yours, then go and help out together. Or donate $50 to the preferred charitable organization of theirs.
Kill the dollar. If saving $$isn't the thing of theirs, get them an investing for dummies book as well as give them $50 to get their first share of stock.
Cheers! Gift wrap a $50 can of wine with a note that it is an unique bottle to be provided with their another person special.
One reservoir excursion. Treat them to a whole day of situations which are inside a 50-mile radius of where they live. (A rise in the woods, a round of mini golf, lunch in the park, etc.)
Just what the heck does that suggest? Opt to discover fifty new words if you gather (over time, of course!) For fun, keep paperwork and find out who remembers probably the most fresh phrases!
Sorry, I am not really a mind reader. Gift a 50 minute psychic readingmake the own predictions of yours ahead of time and then check notes in the future!
I am here for you. Promise one another a number of 50-minute soulful conversations sans texting, email-checking, phone answering, twittering, etc.
I will never forget Paris. Share with each other a list of 50 men and women, places, things that made you who you are today.
2 left legs. Gift item a 50-minute swing dance lesson. Gift item 1 for you as wellyou deserve a little fun, too!
LOL! Spend 50 minutes with each other doing a thing you both dislike (laundry, grocery shopping, etc.), but do it in a different manner (blindfolded, in heels) for making it funny and ridiculous.
The Big 5 0. Invest the day together going around city taking photographs of clues, billboards, etc. with the number 50 within them. If you cannot find lots of, perform the 5 as well as the 0 separately and develop a collage!
Flashback! Throw a retro gathering commemorating the 50-year-old's birth year-complete with music, hair styles and clothing from that particular era.
Attack which! Get a group in concert, go bowling and find out who can mark under 50 while not spreading gutter balls.
That is a lot of hot air! Get a 50-balloon bouquet and tie it to their wrist.
Yeah, that as well. Make a 50 is nothing to Snicker at indication and put it in a bowl of bite sized Snickers bars!
For Her: Add a cannot trust you're flippin' 50! label to a pair of interesting flip-flop sandals.
For Him: Create an It is (Name's) 50th Birthday! Tie one on! Have a bunch of older connections in a bowl and in addition have everybody who use 1 for a team picture!
Money Does not Grow on Trees. Effectively, perhaps it doesA money tree is a fun strategy to present fifty dolars money!
Still Hot at fifty. Gift basket filled with hot sauces and spices perfect for a great cook or grill-master.
A Box-o-Balloons. Put notes or maybe cash inside fifty inflated balloons then seal them in a label. A lightweight present to provide and / or drive (ground delivery).
Really? Gift item a 1-year membership to AARP!
A Farewell to Youth. Throw a party by having an RIP tombstone cake, fifty black balloons, etc., as well as advise navy outfit.
Just how many techniques are you able to say fifty? Finish off the sentence Turning 50ġ with items in a gift basket. Example: ȡis nuts! (peanuts); ȡstinks. (air freshener); ȡis merely peachy! (schnapps).
Might the force be with you. Have the team think of fifty lines from favorite movies and also see how many they are able to drop into the chat at the birthday party of theirs.
Hmmmthat's puzzling. Get a jigsaw puzzle with 50 parts. Or create one by lowering a big greeting card into puzzle shapes, placing in an envelope and mailing with your best wishes! You can also order a personalized New York Times puzzle with the real front page of their birthdate!
Call me moneybags. Offer the birthday star $20.50in fifty quarters, 50 nickels, 50 dimes as well as fifty pennies. Naturally you are able to make that $70.50 by bring 50 singles, also!
Red-colored alert! Reddish alert! Create a 50th Birthday Emergency Kit and also include whatever you think is suited for any birthday celebration owner (aspirin, noisemakers, adult diapers, etc.)
Something Old. Something Gold. It is their personal 50th anniversarygive them something in vintage gold or something wrapped in gold.
M-m-m-m beneficial. Purchase 50 MY M&M'S Party Packs of personalized candies complete with pics and words and phrases!
An evening meal is Served. Arrange a progressive 50th birthday dinner party, with each host/hostess serving a thing that was to the entire year the birthday celebration star was born. Dress correctly!
Who stated that? Make a book of fifty quotations on birthdays and also ageing, ranging from enjoyable to inspirational.
Suits me to a T. Purchase a custom T-shirt with some enjoyable copy on it. Example: Looks twenty two, Feels eighteen, Acts 10that can make me fifty! Or Does the shirt make me appear fifty? Check out online for some other creative ideas!
Better YetOrder customized t-shirts for the whole gang that feature a picture of the birthday celebration star and also a personalized email about converting fifty! Wear them at a party, out to a birthday dinner or even to a favorite watering hole.
Lots of memories. Take fifty downloadable pictures & fill them into an electronic photo frame.
Checking between the collections. Present them along with the publication, fifty Things to do When you Turn fifty: fifty Experts about the subject of Turning 50. It's a wonderful assortment of thoughts from people as Garrison Keillor, Suze Orman, Erica Jong, along with a lot more. Well, 47 additional, to be exact!
Did another person say party? Throw a themed gathering such as a South of the Border fling with invitations for any Nacho Average 50-year older. Fulfill Mexican food, hang a few piatas, etc. Some other themes could possibly consist of tropical-Life's a beach and afterward you switch 50! etc.
A treasury of your time. A number of days before the big working day, have friends and also family members every produce a scrapbook page which has favorite accounts, cards, mementos, photos, and more. Take all of the pages in unison and make a really special recollection album.
It all offers up. Do most of the things on this list. We're sure it will guarantee a lifetime of enjoyable as well as relationship!
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FAQ
What is this blogs purpose?
We are hoping to bring comfort to Shawols through fiction written by other Shawols in the memory and dedication to Jonghyun.
Once we collect enough stories, we will be making a physical collection of them. There is also a larger goal to make a copy in Korean to send to SHINee.
What do you need to accomplish this?
Authors, mainly. After all, it’s a collection of short stories. Eventually we would like to see if we can get different artists to make works inspired by each story, and especially for the cover. We may also possibly need a Korean translator, but that is also for a later date.
We would really like everyone taking part of this to be a Shawol, or a supporter of SHINee.
How can I submit my story?
If you have an idea for a story, please send an ask stating your name and a synopsis of your story idea. From there you will either be accepted or declined (Honestly though, it’s going to be hard to get declined, so don’t worry.) After that, we will add you to our authors list. Once you finish the story, please notify us and submit it privately so we can get it run it by beta readers to work out spelling and grammatical errors. (We will not require deeper beta reading, such as criticizing plot structure, plot holes, or line edits. However, if you want to have your work more intensely beta-read, then please tell us.) Once all of that is finished, we will post a credited teaser of the story onto the blog.
What is allowed and what isn’t?
We will allow any story, as long as it doesn’t have elements listed below. The ideas of the story should be inspired by ideals of Jonghyun; quotes he said, lyrics he wrote, symbols associated with him, or just something that reminds you of him or that you thought he would have enjoyed.
We will not allow smut. Sexual ideas are allowed if vague, but straight up erotica will not be accepted. (Dirty jokes are a-okay, however.) Graphic material such as gore and abuse will not be allowed, as it may be disturbing or triggering. We will also not accept fanfiction. We understand that most of you who wish to participate are fic writers, but please hear us out. The big end game here is to get this to SHINee. I don’t think they want to read fiction about themselves or their colleagues.
Can we get some examples of what a story plot may look like for this?
There could be a story with heavy symbolism of the moon. Maybe a story that teaches the message that it’s okay to cry. Just things like this. Allow it it come from the heart, and write with him in mind.
Is there a time limit?
We hope to have all the stories and fanart collected by late July, and send out the physical copies and make available digital copies by September at the latest.
Is there a word count?
Yes. The word count of your story should be between 2,000 and 20,000. That way we can fit more stories into one book.
How long is the book going to be?
We want it to be a decent size, but don’t want it to be too large, so we’re thinking around 400 pages.
How many stories are you accepting?
At the moment, as many as we can. If we receive more than we can fit into a single book, we may put some stories off for a second volume. However, we promise every story submitted will be published.
How will the stories be published?
The stories will be self published in a psychical format for shawols to purchase. (Please see below for the ins and outs of how we are handling this, I promise we will not be earning a cent.)
We will be posting teasers for each story one they are finished.
What if I want to write something but don’t want it to be published?
Then there’s no need to fret! You can write a drabble that’s 2,000 (give or take) words or less and we’ll post it directly to the blog! We’ll be sure to credit you too! With this, you’re free to write these as fanfictions, but the other rules still apply.
What program is being used for publication?
We will be using a print-on-demand website called CreateSpace. This website allows books to be, well, printed on demand, and offers a way to get a printed copy of ones book PRIVATELY. Yes, there is an option to release the book onto public platforms such as Amazon, but we are not doing that. All copies will be privately printed, and not available anywhere else except here.
On that note, if you find you don’t want the book anymore, PLEASE DO NOT SELL IT TO SOMEONE ELSE. NO ONE SHOULD PROFIT OFF OF THIS FOR SELF BENEFITING PURPOSES.
Which brings me to the next question.
How is purchasing being handled?
Each book is going to be charged the same price. As the book is not finished at the moment, this is undetermined. The price will be a combination of the base price CreateSpace gives us for printing a copy, plus some extra dollars to cover the shipping. With this, when you purchase a book, please give us your address so we can send it to you. We promise all of this will be private and no information will be exposed to the public.
Once a book is purchased, we will be using the money to print the book and ship it to the shawol who purchased it. Any leftover money will be donated to The Trevor Project.
What if we can’t buy a copy?
Once the physical book is formatted and set up, I will also be making a free ebook to download so those who can’t pay will be able to read it. Eventually, further down the line, I’ll post all the full stories on the blog. So don’t worry, everybody will be able to read it.
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Announcing the IFComp Colossal Fund
Everybody, we'd like to introduce you to the Colossal Fund, IFComp's new cash prize pool. Colossal Fund, this is everybody. Say hi!
Granted, it's not all that colossal at the moment, but we hope you can help us with that. Let us explain...
As you know, IFComp prizes are donated by you, the generous patrons of the IF community. In past years, we've usually had a small handful of cash prizes and a much larger assortment of books, games, art objects, snacks, and other miscellaneous items. (Plus a few prizes on special terms such as the Golden Banana.)
If you're a software engineer with a full-time job, writing IF for fun, then the difference between a $200 cash prize and a cool book isn't very important. But that doesn't describe all IF fans! We see games by students, by up-and-coming indie game designers, by freelance writers, by all sorts of people.
So we'd like to offer a larger and broader pool of cash prizes. Not a giant payout for the top winner, but modest prizes for everyone who does well.
It remains the case that all IFComp prizes come from donations. But as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, IFTF can run a more effective fundraiser than the usual IFComp "hey, please donate" announcement. So that's what we're doing! Launching a fundraiser for the Colossal Fund. Our fundraising target is $6000.
You now have a whole barrel of questions, which we will endeavor to answer.
How do I donate? Go to IFComp.org and push the big blue Paypal button on the front page, under the Colossal Fund header.
Is my donation tax-deductible? Yes, to the extent allowed by law. (Consult a tax professional, that's all we can say.)
What happens to my donation? We will place 80% of cash donations in the Colossal Fund. The other 20% will go support IFTF's management of IFComp.
Wait, 20% to "overhead"? What does that mean? Hosting fees for the IFComp server. Our lawyer's advice on managing IFComp as part of a nonprofit. Renting our PO box. That sort of thing.
Does the Colossal Fund replace the usual IFComp prize list? No! These cash prizes will be in addition to the usual IFComp prize list. Please visit this page to donate objects and services as prizes.
Who gets cash prizes? The top two-thirds of entries. If there are 60 entries in this year's IFComp, then the top 40 will get cash prizes.
How big will the cash prizes be? That depends on how much money is donated. We have a formula! See below. In rough numbers, the prizes will range from a few hundred dollars down to ten dollars.
How will the cash prizes be distributed? Via PayPal. If you can't accept PayPal, we can mail a US check to a US address. If that doesn't work for you, or if you wish to decline the cash prize, we will roll the money into next year's prize fund.
And now, the formula...
The underlying formula is (x-1)2 -- a down-curving segment of a parabola. That seems like a nice curve; doesn't drop off too fast, bottoms out nicely. Easy to integrate.
Then we want a minimum prize value ($10), so we add a constant: (x-1)2+m.
We're stretching that curve horizontally (to reach the top two-thirds of the entries) and vertically (depending on the size of the prize fund). So the formula is really a(bx-c)2+m, but I can hear your eyes glazing over so I'm keeping it simple. The graph above lets you eyeball the numbers.
The exact values -- again, assuming we have 60 IFComp entries and reach our fundraising goal:
1: $331.80 11: $189.49 21: $88.43 31: $28.61 2: $315.71 12: $177.53 22: $80.59 32: $24.90 3: $300.04 13: $165.98 23: $73.16 33: $21.60 4: $284.78 14: $154.84 24: $66.15 34: $18.71 5: $269.93 15: $144.11 25: $59.55 35: $16.24 6: $255.49 16: $133.80 26: $53.36 36: $14.18 7: $241.46 17: $123.90 27: $47.59 37: $12.53 8: $227.85 18: $114.41 28: $42.23 38: $11.29 9: $214.65 19: $105.34 29: $37.28 39: $10.46 10: $201.86 20: $96.68 30: $32.74 40: $10.05
The sum of these numbers is $4800, which is 80% of our $6000 goal. (Again, the other 20% goes to support IFTF operations.)
If you want to see the math, run this Python script. It lets you adjust all the assumptions by setting various command-line options.
Now, I bet you have even more questions.
Why is there a minimum prize? Because sending someone $2.50 by Paypal is annoying, not gratifying.
Why is there a cutoff at 40th place? (That is, two-thirds of the way down the IFComp results tally.) We don't want people to enter lazy two-minute IF games just to pick up an easy ten bucks. Typically you need a score of 4.5 to 5.0 to reach the two-thirds mark. So this scheme will reward entries which are at least trying to be good.
What if you raise more than $6000? All donations beyond that will go to fund IFTF operations.
What if you raise less than $6000? We'll still put 80% of donations into the Colossal Fund, and distribute it according to the formula. For example, if we raise $3000, then the prize fund will be $2400. The top cash prize will then be $156 and the numbers will curve down to the $10 minimum.
What if IFComp has way more than 60 entries? Then the money will be spread out over more winners. It doesn't break the system. (If the entry slate looks really huge, we might adjust our fundraising goal.)
What if you raise less than $500? Below $500, we can't guarantee the minimum prizes ($10 for roughly 40 entries). In that case we will look at the situation and adjust the numbers to suit.
Obviously the formula is arbitrary. There are a lot of formulas we could have chosen. I picked this quadratic and then twiddled the constants until the numbers felt right to everybody. Our considerations:
We were inspired by Etienne Vouga's 2015 donation of a cash prize pool, $1000 distributed among the top 40 entries. Of course, we got more mathy about it.
The maximum prize of $330 is comparable to the top cash prize in previous years (usually around $250). We don't want to change IFComp too much too fast. If the Colossal Fund works out, we'll think about doing a larger fundraiser next year.
The mid-range prizes are still pretty good ($95 for 20th place). That will encourage authors to enter even if they don't expect to win. We hope it will also encourage experimentation and unusual new IF ideas.
Our curve is fairly shallow. That is, the difference between one place and the next is never large. We don't want someone to feel like they lost out on $100 just because their game came in 8th instead of 7th.
You might reasonably ask why we're doing a big fundraiser, but not increasing the top cash prize by very much. Ultimately, IFComp's goal is to encourage more new IF. We feel the best way to do that is a broad distribution of modest prizes, not a few very large ones.
If you have further questions, please contact us at [email protected]. And thanks for your support!
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I’ve always liked dogs.
Liked them.
I wasn’t necessarily a ‘dog person.’ We always had a dog when I was growing up. A steady stream of strays and dogs that just happened into our lives. Truly, I never gave it much thought. I liked cats better. Especially once I hit young adulthood and lived in an apartment.
But now, somehow, dogs have taken over my life. My days, really my hours, revolve around dogs. Currently, we have four here at the house. Two are permanent residents and two are foster dogs only here for a spell awaiting the moment when their forever families find them.
As I write, our dog Gracie is sleeping to my left and our other dog, Frankie is gnawing on an antler (a real one he found in the woods).
Our foster Flannery is flitting in and out of the room. She is ever-busy, checking on foster dog Daisy who keeps erupting in barks in the kitchen (whenever a plow or truck makes its noisy way up the hollow) and pausing at my side, paw on leg, to be certain I don’t want to stop staring at this small gray box and come play.
In another hour, I will get up and take them out for a romp in the snow, maybe catching it on video so I can put it up on my Facebook page for potential Flannery adopters. Daisy will need a walk then, too.
This morning while digging out the run-in shed, that was nearly knee deep in poop thanks to the constant snows, I imagined what my life would be like if I didn’t foster dogs. Surely, there would be more cats and horses, since my soul has an animal-shaped need to be filled, maybe even a fish tank again.
In our first house, Nick and I had a huge tank where the TV belonged in the built-in cabinet that covered one wall. We spent a lot of time watching those fish. (Can you imagine a life where there is time to watch fish? I sure wish I’d appreciated that when I had it.)
If I didn’t foster dogs, my house would be much, much cleaner. It would probably be more tastefully decorated, and I wouldn’t need to open/shut two gates to get from the kitchen to my office. The kitchen would be more spacious since there wouldn’t be an enormous dog crate consuming so much floor space (and there wouldn’t be the huge stain on the wood floor beneath it where some anonymous dog had an accident that went unnoticed too long). My chair rungs wouldn’t be gnarled and my windows wouldn’t be snotted. I’d have a lovely garden on my sideyard instead of a puppy fence.
If I didn’t foster dogs, I’d have more time for myself – I wouldn’t have canceled my Y membership because I’d have plenty of time to take classes in step, weight-training, and X-bike like I used to. By now, I would most certainly have taken up yoga. I’d be able to wear snaggable sweaters and yoga pants without runs or a layer of dog hair.
I’d have a lot more disposable income since I wouldn’t spend it on Bark Boxes and treats and grain-free dog food and expensive indestructible toys (that Frankie can usually destruct). I wouldn’t own my Honda Element because there would be no need for a car that fits an assembled large crate and you can hose out.
If I didn’t foster dogs, our attic wouldn’t house boxes of donated blankets and towels, extra crates, several puppy pens, garbage bags of homemade dog toys for the shelters, and other miscellaneous dog paraphernalia, instead maybe we would have a pingpong table or a satellite office tricked out with nice furniture. My mudroom would be filled with plants wintering over and seedlings getting started, as it used to be this time of year until it began to fill up with a constant stream of puppies.
If I didn’t foster dogs, I’d also see my friends more often because I wouldn’t be rearranging my schedule around transports, adoption events, and meet & greets with adopters. I would go out more instead of staying home, ‘hanging out with the dogs’ (although truth be told, we prefer to and it’s much less expensive).
Nick and I could get away to Florida and escape this incessant cold and snow and ice, and take advantage of free housing in the form of his father’s place. And when we did get away, we wouldn’t have to factor in whether they allow dogs and what activities we could plan that would include dogs or pony up serious cash to pay a house/horse/dog sitter.
But, if I didn’t foster dogs, I would have missed out on the opportunity to love 137 dogs and help them find their families.
I would never have met Frank and Oreo, who taught me that big boy dogs are sometimes the best ones.
I would never have had the pleasure of listening to Whoopie or Carla howl as only a hounddog can.
I would never have enjoyed so many hours of snuggles and smiles that puppies offer in abundance or been awed by canine examples of motherhood like Edith or Schuyler.
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photo Nancy Slattery
photo Nancy Slattery
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I would never have been taught by Chuggy and Okeriete and Flannery O’Connor that small dogs are not large rodents, but actually enormous dogs in tiny bodies who provide endless entertainment.
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photo Nancy Slattery
I would never have met Gala, who taught me just how complicated and beautiful a dog’s soul can be.
I would never have met Estelle and Darlin’ and Dixie and been privileged to witness the miracle of seeing puppies come into this world.
And I would not have met Daisy and found the firm bottom of my heart holding puppies whose lives flickered out as quickly as they started.
photo Ian Achterberg
I wouldn’t know the heart-wrenching wonder of seeing a terrified, shut-down dog come into its own as I did with Hadley, Meredith, Bambi, and now Daisy.
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And I would never have adopted Frankie, who makes my heart smile every day.
If I didn’t foster dogs, I would never have been surrounded by so many dog-hearted people who will drop everything to help a friend (or a dog) and show up at my house despite their own inconvenience. I wouldn’t be a part of the OPH family, people who ‘get it’ and who support me, cheer me on, and jump in to catch me when necessary.
I would never have been surprised and inspired by the generosity of strangers who help to pay the vet bill of a dog they will never meet or to fund a shelter many states away.
I would never have become a part of lives so foreign to my own, simply because we have both loved the same dog, or witnessed the ‘adoption magic’ that happens again and again proving that there is someone for everyone.
I would never have met so many heroes fighting to save lives despite all odds, too-small budgets, under-invested communities, and a never-ending stream of unwanted dogs.
I wouldn’t have met people from all over the world who, like me, enjoy a good dog story. I would never have been on television (multiple times), or radio or mentioned in People magazine or featured in the New York Post on a very bad hair day. And I would have written more novels, because I wouldn’t feel compelled to write about dogs day after day after day.
If I didn’t foster dogs, my life would not be nearly as rich. I would not know how much I am capable of doing or how strong I can be when necessary.
I wouldn’t have my heart broken and filled over and over and over again on a near daily basis.
photo Nancy Slattery
If I never fostered dogs, my life would be much simpler, but somehow, I’m pretty sure, I’d be wondering what was missing instead of looking forward to the adventures to come, and hoping they include a lot of dogs.
I had lunch yesterday with a writing friend who has fostered a few dogs herself. She said, “Fostering is hard. I never realized that.”
It is hard. And beautiful. And instructive. And so, so, so much a part of who I am now.
Honestly, I can’t imagine my life without foster dogs in it.
Thanks for reading
If you’d like to know more about my blogs and books, visit CaraWrites.com or subscribe to my monthly e-newsletter (which is rarely monthly, but I’m working at it…everybody needs a goal).
If you’d like to know more about the book, Another Good Dog: One Family and Fifty Foster Dogs, visit AnotherGoodDog.org, where you can find more pictures of the dogs from the book (and some of their happily-ever-after stories), information on fostering, the schedule of signings, and what you can do right now to help shelter animals! You can also purchase a signed copy or several other items whose profits benefit shelter dogs!
If you’d like to know how you can volunteer, foster, adopt or donate with OPH, click here. And if you’d like more pictures and videos of my foster dogs past and present, be sure to join the Another Good Dog Facebook group.
I love hearing from readers, so please feel free to comment here on the blog, email [email protected] or connect with me on Facebook, twitter, or Instagram.
One more thing! If you’d like to follow along on the upcoming OPH Rescue Road Trip, be sure to like/follow our Road Trip Facebook page. We’ll be sharing lots of pictures and stories of the dogs and people we meet in the rural shelters.
Best,
Cara
Released August 2018 from Pegasus Books and available now
What if I didn't foster rescue dogs, what would that look like? #togetherwerescue #anothergooddog #bethechange I’ve always liked dogs. Liked them. I wasn’t necessarily a ‘dog person.’ We always had a dog when I was growing up.
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Ernest Cline’s ‘Ready Player One’, A Review – Or: ‘I wish I knew more about 80’s pop culture’
Born too early to explore the universe, born too late to understand eighty percent of the references from Ernest Cline’s teenage years.
That opener might make it seem like I didn’t enjoy Ready Player One, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. No, Cline managed to grab my interest immediately by making his novel about A) Video Games, and B) Video Games.
We find ourselves in the year 2044 where poverty is rife, oil is all but gone, and jobs are so rare we don’t speak about the horrible things your mum does to get you that coveted fast food gig. We follow ‘poor-enough to make a compelling Protagonist’ Wade (five-)Watts as he lives life in the Stacks: state of the art, luxury caravans, clumsily and recklessly piled atop one another. Like the world’s best game of Jenga, but it’s gotten a little out of hand and everybody’s forgotten it started as a game.
But the fun doesn’t stop with oversized Jenga! Wade (ten-)Watts escapes daily into a virtual reality called the OASIS. Inside the OASIS, a person can be anyone or anything they want to be. So if you think the internet’s a weird place now, just wait until it replaces reality. There’ll be bountiful new ways to catfish your friends and family! The OASIS is a virtual reality created with the sole intention of giving every geek a raging, uncontrollable erection. There’re entire worlds dedicated to movies, or games, shopping or TV. Literally anything is possible inside the OASISand we owe it all to genius inventor, James Halliday.
That’s the setting and this is the plot: James Halliday–an eccentric recluse–is dead. In his last will and testament he states that ownership of the OASIS, including his personal wealth (billions of dollars), will go to the person who can solve his riddles and collect, in turn, the Copper, Jade and Crystal keys, and use them to open the Copper, Jade and Crystal gates, eventually finding Halliday’s revered Easter Egg. Halliday was notoriously obsessed with 80’s pop-culture, and in order to obtain the three keys and pass each gate, the players must be devoted to everything Halliday was interested in. Even passing interests. The man was so self-indulged that in his death he created a world in which everyone had to love everything he himself loved. To that end, 80’s pop-culture has again descended upon humanity. Joust your little hearts out.
I read Ready Player One in a little over a week and found it to be a thoroughly gripping experience. But this is Ernest Cline’s first book and it kinda shows. Whilst the concept is utterly unique–annoyingly unique–I had a hard time believing a lot of the dialogue. Many of the characters sound the same and they all see James Halliday as some sort of patron saint when every piece of trivia and anecdote concerning the man paints him as a socially inept, nasty piece of work. He once fired an employee for not understanding a reference…Haha! So quirky! What a guy! No…what a quantum spanner!
What sort of a man stages a worldwide contest to see who gets to inherit his billions, anyway? Why not donate it to a worthy cause? Let’s keep in mind that this is an incredibly poor future and in staging this contest he knows full well what sort of chaos he’s about to unleash. Children are straight up murdered for being further ahead in the game than others. Halliday, why not–I dunno–take all the effort you put into coding your competition, and instead put it into funding a sustainable future in the real world! Of course, there’d be no novel if he’d done that, and I can believe that James Halliday would be the sort of self-centred jackface who would rather usher in a half decade of chaos than try to use his massive fortune to actually make a difference in the world. If you ask me, Halliday is the real antagonist in this book.
Still, at least he wasn’t obsessed with 90s pop-culture. I’m not sure I could have read a novel with endless supplies of chain wallets, rat-tails and Spice Girls references.
I actually don’t have much more to say about Ready Player One. It’s a great read for anyone who was alive in the 80s and anyone with a passion for video-games/ old sci-fi movies. I’m the latter here. Do yourself a favour and pick up a copy before Spielberg inevitably hacks it to pieces because Dreamworks refuses to buy the rights to the entirety of War Games.
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Ready Player One is Ernest Cline’s first novel, it’s a fantastic concept that’s just a whole lot of fun to read. Cline has a second novel out now called Armada which I’m sure I’ll get around to reading. In the meantime, Steven Spielberg has picked up Ready Player One for adaptation onto the big screen and I’m looking forward to how the whole thing’s handled.
Ernest Cline: http://www.ernestcline.com/
Ready Player One: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/0099560437
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When “old chestnut” was new
Q: You’ve used the expression “old chestnut” on your blog, but you never explain its origin. Where does it come from?
A: There’s no definite answer here, but all the evidence points to an origin in 19th-century show business.
Before going on, we should mention that the word “chestnut” was spelled “chesnut” for much of its life, but we’ll use the modern spelling except when quoting an early source.
Since the 1800s, the Oxford English Dictionary says, “chestnut” has been used figuratively to mean “a story that has been told before, a ‘venerable’ joke.”
In extended use, the dictionary says, a “chestnut” means “anything trite, stale, or too often repeated.” The adjective “old” was added along the way for emphasis.
But what’s the literal connection? Did the stale old “chestnut” originally refer to the tree, to the nut, or perhaps to a chestnut-colored horse?
The OED’s formal answer: “origin unknown.” However, the dictionary offers a possible explanation.
The usage may have been inspired by an early 19th-century melodrama, William Dimond’s The Broken Sword, which includes a scene featuring a chestnut tree.
The comic relief in the play, first performed in London in 1816, is provided by Captain Zavior, a character who monotonously retells his old exploits, much to the chagrin of his long-suffering servant Pablo, who knows them by heart.
Here’s the scene involving the chestnut tree (we’ll expand the OED’s citation):
Zavior: Let me see—aye! it is exactly six years since, that peace being restored to Spain … I mounted a mule at Barcelona, and trotted away for my native mountains. At the dawn of the fourth day’s journey, I entered the wood of Collares, when suddenly from the thick boughs of a cork tree—
Pablo: (Jumping up.) A chesnut, Captain, a chesnut.
Zavior: Bah! you booby, I say, a cork.
Pablo: And I swear, a chesnut—Captain! this is the twenty-seventh time I have heard you relate this story, and you invariably said, a chesnut, till now.
Zavior: Did I? Well, a chesnut be it then. But, take your seat again.
Pablo: Willingly—Only out with the cork, and I’m your man for sitting.
Zavior: Well then—from the thick boughs of a chesnut, suddenly slipped down a little boy, who cast himself on his knees in the path before me. … I dismounted, fasten’d my mule to the—the—
Pablo. (Eagerly.) Chesnut.
Zavior. Well, well, the tree that stood next me.
The play, forgotten now, was very popular in its day. It got rave reviews, had long runs in London and New York, and was a favorite with touring theatrical companies.
So it’s “plausible,” as the OED puts it, that “chestnut” became show-biz slang for a worn-out story and, by extension, anything trite, stale, or too often repeated.
Unfortunately, the dictionary’s first citation for the figurative use of “chestnut” doesn’t appear until many decades later—1880.
But we’ve found what might be an early figurative use—a pun from 1826 playing off the “chestnut” that’s a joke against the “chestnut” that’s a horse.
Here’s the passage from Charles Dibdin’s comic poem “My Kingdom for a Horse,” which italicizes words for horse colors that have other meanings:
“No critic can carp at the bays,
Though jokes on each chestnut he cracks,
And, should he look blue at the grays,
Molineaux will stand up for the blacks.”
(From Universal Songster: Or, Museum of Mirth, London, 1826. Tom Molineaux was an African-American prizefighter who toured professionally in Britain in the early 1800s.)
And we’ve come across an anecdote, supposedly from 1867, that was reported in a California newspaper, the Daily Alta, in its issue of April 27, 1885:
“Hanley, Harrigan & Hart’s old theatrical manager … says that the term originated eighteen years ago. He alleges: ‘In 1867 I was traveling through New York, putting an old play called ‘The Broken Sword’ on the stage with Marietta Ravel as leading lady.”
Here the manager summarizes the comic chestnut-tree routine from 1816, with Captain Zavior and Pablo, that we quoted above. He then continues:
“ ‘After the performance in Rochester, P. Connelly, dead now, was in one of the dressing-rooms with others of the company, and he started to get off a funny story. Everybody interrupted with shouts of ‘Chestnut!’ It clung to the company all season, and, of course, was soon caught by the profession.’ ”
The OED’s earliest example for “chestnut” used to mean something that’s repeated too often is from a May 27, 1880, American diary entry that also has a theatrical connection:
“When he said that the song was ‘Nancy Lee’ we girls nearly fainted! … Really, I thought we should choke with laughter and dismay. Think of doing that awful old ‘Nancy Lee’—such a chestnut!—in a romantic Portuguese opera, and following it up with that hoppy, romping dance!” (From Diary of Daly Débutante, first published in 1910 and written by Dora Knowlton Ranous, an actress in Augustine Daly’s theatrical company.)
And this 1889 example nicely meshes with the 1867 anecdote above. In Reminiscences of J. L. Toole (1888), by Joseph Hatton, the American actor Joseph Jefferson is quoted on the origin of “chestnut.”
After repeating the relevant lines from The Broken Sword, Jefferson continues:
“William Warren, who had often played the part of Pablo, was at a stage-dinner a few years ago, when one of the gentlemen present told a story of doubtful age and originality. ‘A chestnut,’ murmured Mr. Warren, quoting from the play, ‘I have heard you tell the tale these twenty-seven times.’ The application of the lines pleased the rest of the table, and when the party broke up each helped to spread the story and Mr. Warren’s commentary.”
From 1880 onward, the OED has citations for this figurative “chestnut”—and the more emphatic “old chestnut” (from 1886)—extending into the late 20th century. The expression has been used for everything from an old repertory piece to a stale idea for advertising copy.
Given the popularity of that old melodrama, it’s reasonable to suggest that the usage began among actors and spread into general usage.
However, another expression involving chestnuts was in the air when William Dimond’s play came along, and it might have given the figurative “chestnut” usage a boost.
This older expression, very popular in its day, was a catch phrase to the effect that a “horse chestnut” is not the same as a “chestnut horse.”
We’ve found scores of published examples, the earliest from an entry in the journal of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall in reference to the 1808 session of the House of Commons. (The entry was included in his memoirs, published posthumously in 1836.)
Here’s the journal entry, from a passage largely devoted to parliamentary business:
“Mr. Matthew Montagu seconded the address to the throne. It was of him that General Montagu Mathew, brother to the Earl of Landaff, said in the last house of commons (upon some mistakes arising relative to their identity, produced by the similarity of their appellations), ‘I wish it to be understood that there is no more likeness between Montagu Mathew and Matthew Montagu, than between a chesnut horse and a horse chesnut.’ ”
When the story was picked up by a Philadelphia literary digest in 1809, it was embellished a little:
“There are two members in the house of commons, named Montagu Mathew, and Mathew Montagu; the former a tall handsome man; and the latter a little man. During the present session of parliament, the speaker, having addressed the latter as the former, Montagu Mathew observed, it was strange he should make such a mistake, as there was as great a difference between them as between a horse chesnut and a chesnut horse.” (From Select Review, and Spirit of the Foreign Magazines.)
That same parliamentary anecdote inspired a humorous poem that ran in the November 1808 issue of The Sporting Magazine, London.
The anonymous poem, “A Chapter on Logic: Or, the Horse Chesnut, and the Chesnut Horse,” was described by the editors as “occasioned by” the incident in the House of Commons.
It’s too long to quote here, but we’ll give you the gist. A young “Eton stripling” who’s a student of logic is invited to spend a fortnight at the estate of his uncle, who is something of a practical joker.
Sir Peter, promising to give his nephew a “chesnut horse,” leads him to a tree, shakes from its branches “a fine horse-chesnut,” hands it to the youth and says, “saddle it and ride.” By the rules of logic, he tells the boy, “a horse-chesnut is a chesnut horse!”
The poem became a popular recitation piece, remaining in print through most of the 19th century.
But apart from its humorous use, the motif of the horse chestnut versus the chestnut horse cropped up frequently in serious 19th-century British and American writing as a rhetorical device for contrasting and comparing. Here’s an example:
“No two things in nature, not a horse-chestnut and a chestnut-horse, could be more different.” (From Maria Edgworth’s novel Harrington and Ormond, 1841.)
As for the etymology of “chestnut,” the word for the tree in Old English, cistenbeam or cystbeam, was derived from Germanic sources.
But the term evolved in Middle English under the influence of Middle French. The Gallic word for the tree (chastaigne) gave Middle English a word spelled various ways, including chesteine, chasteine, and chesten.
In 1519, according to the OED, the term “chesten nut” showed up, meaning the nut itself. Later in the 1500s the word “chesnut” appeared in reference to both the tree and the nut.
As the dictionary explains, “Chesten-nut was soon reduced to chestenut, chestnut, and chesnut: the last was the predominant form (82 per cent. of instances examined) from 1570 to c1820.”
The “chestnut” spelling, which was adopted by Samuel Johnson in his dictionary of 1755, “prevails in current use,” according to the OED.
Current standard dictionaries no longer include the old “chesnut” spelling.
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from Blog – Grammarphobia http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2017/01/old-chestnut.html
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