Dancing in the Rain

“You know, when I pictured this vacation, I imagined a little more tropical beaches and a little less torrential rains,” Kensi commented, peering out the cabin window with a grim expression.

Since Hetty disrupted their plans to road trip across the state after Deeks’ FLETC graduation, they’d been forced to make alternative plans a few months later. By that time, the Airbnbs and hotels they’d originally booked were no longer available, or way outside their budget, so Deeks had to look for alternative accommodations.

Which is how they ended up in a little cabin smack in the middle of the Oregon woods. During a particularly rainy week. Normally, the rainy season had wrapped up by April, but not this year. It had started raining shortly after they arrived, and barely let up since.

All the fun activities Deeks had planned went to the wayside, keeping them cooped up inside for the most part.

“I’m sorry,” Deeks apologized, wrapping his arms around from behind, and resting his chin on her head. “Everything I checked indicated that the weather would be nicer by now.”

“It’s not your fault.” Kensi made a disgruntled sound. “You didn’t decide to come home from FLETC early, or cancel our vacation.”

From her tone, he could guess who she did blame. Once the dust had settled around his expedited graduation, Kensi’s annoyance had grown exponentially. Four months later, and she still hadn’t completely forgiven Hetty for her scheming.

Kensi slid her hand up to cover his. “I know how hard you tried to make this a good trip.”

“You just were hoping that leaving the cabin didn’t require water skis?”

She snorted at his summation, then sighed deeply.

“I guess I was hoping for this to be a break from all the crappy stuff that happened this past year. Now this just seems like an omen of more disappointment.”

They watched the rain pour down onto the flourishing trees and vegetation. It seemed to fit Kensi melancholy, the familiar scent and sound of water hitting leaves.

“You know, there’s no reason why we can’t go for a small hike,” Deeks suggested a few minutes later.

“You mean other than the flood?” When he didn’t respond, Kensi twisted her neck to look at him. “You’re serious.”

“Yeah. We brought boots and jackets. It’ll be good to get out.” He paused, lowering his voice playfully. “Unless you think you can’t keep up. I mean I prove that I’m capable of keeping up with FLETC’s best.”

“Oh, I can definitely keep up,” Kensi said with a hint of her usual competitiveness. Exactly as Deeks had hoped. “Get your raincoat and try not to fall, Atticus.”

Ten minutes later they were decked out in coats, boots, and carrying umbrellas just in case. They decided to take one of the many trails that surrounded the cabin—a huge selling point when Deeks had booked the place.

It was surprisingly peaceful, and as they hiked through the muddy leaves and weeds, he felt his spirits rising. It was also warmer than he anticipated. After trekking up a particulary steep part of the path, he tugged his hood down, letting the cool rain wash the sweat off his skin.

“Deeks, you’re going to get soaked,” Kensi said, slipping over the leaves as she followed after him. He offered her a hand, and she tugged herself up, resting briefly against a tree, inhaling deeply.

“What didn’t you ever play in the rain?”

“When I was about 5.”

“You should try it again. It’s good for the spirit,” Deeks said, unzipping his jacket and shrugging it off. He stuffed it into the backpack he carried, then held his arms out from his sides as the rain began to seep through his shirt.

Kensi shook her head, then reluctantly stripped her own jacket off. Once it was safely stored away too, Deeks set the bag to the side, and took a few step backwards.

“No, lets see if you can catch me,” he taunted, darting off down the path.

He heard Kensi gasp something unintelligible, then the sound of her racing after him. Deeks grinned, dodging a tree stump. He kept a good gap between them for most of the chase until they entered a small clearing, marking the end of the trail.

Deeks spun around as Kensi crashed through after him, hair plastered to her head, and sweatshirt equally wet. She had a dangerous look on her eyes. He started to backing up, holding his hands up in surrender, but Kensi didn’t stop.

Instead, she wrapped her arms around his middle, moving them both until his back his a tree.

“Gotcha,” she murmured, fire and triumph sparkling in her eyes.

“Yeah, you did,” he said unevenly.

Stretching up on her toes, Kensi grasped the sides of his head, fingers sliding through his dripping hair, and kissed him. Her lips were hard and insistent, making him gasp. Dragging her hands down his back, she sucked his bottom lip between her teeth.

She pulled back with a wicked grin. “You know what else is fun in the rain?” In answer, she stripped his shirt over his head. The wet fabric clung to his skin, and they were both giggling by the time she got it off.

Sliding her hands across his bare skin, Kensi pulled his head back to hers.

“Best vacation ever,” Deeks murmured right before their lips met again.

***

A/N: I have no idea if it was actually more rainy in Oregon in April 2021.

Why exactly would they go to Oregon you might ask? Well, it’s quite rainy there, and it’s a fair distance from LA.

Also, the title is misleading since no actual dancing occurs.

Mallow Flowers (1)

Malva sylvestris: Mallow carries many symbolic meanings that overlap, including romantic interest, healing, and survival in tough conditions.

(a/n) This is my first TWD fic but I've been watching the series for a while :) This post will also continue into a series, thankyou so much for reading and any feedback is appreciated (a/n end)

You don't know how long it had been since the world fell apart, days? weeks? months? It didn't matter, all you could focus on was the burning in your feet and shins, and the painful cramp in your ribs. The sun beamed down through the trees, what was once a beautiful green canopy you could find solace in, now obstacles as you ran through the woods, forcing yourself to keep going against your body's will. In some desperate attempt to ignore its pleas your mind went to anything it could, and that was the cause of the world’s fall. You had never been religious but you thought if there was a god, he had one fucked up sense of humor to bring the dead back to life. Though as if he heard you, an unearthed root caught your worn down sneakers and sent you tumbling head first down a hill. 

Finally your body came to a stop, more bruised than before, a stinging cut adorning the bridge of your nose, you're pretty sure it's broken. A groan left your lungs and you shifted to get up, but you were barely able to lift your hands more than a few inches off the muddy soil. Muddy… OH MY GOD. Mud, the sign that there was a stream in reach. As soon as the promise of water reached your cloudy mind, so did the scratchy feeling in your mouth and throat, that small stream suddenly became your goal, a life line to reach for. 

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Hand gripping the earth, slightly pushing your body up slowly, following the rhythm of your now caught breath. It was agonizing, not the physical pain, but the sound of running water, that couldn't be more than ten feet away, but was miles out of reach. Though you were never one to give up, not when you were little, not when your teenage self thought being happy was impossible, and definitely not now, not when your life depended on it when your life depended on it.

“Dad this is impossible, can't we just stop for today?” 

The wooden bow clutched that had fired arrows anywhere but the red not in the middle of the target. You knew it was possible to let go of that string and had the sharpened tip make a bullseye. You've seen it done many times, even by the tall man next to you, but in your hands it felt like you were destined to fail.

“It ain't impossible y/n, you just need practice more, if you give up now y'all know if the next arrow you shoot i'll be the one to hit that target”

His eyes met yours, and they held the same look they did whenever you tried to give up, the encouragement and strictness that kept you trying.

You hadn't hit a bullseye that day, but you went out the next and the next until that red dot no longer seemed like a threat, but an achievable target you had learned to concur. 

Each movement felt like dragging a weight behind you, the overexertion, sleep deprivation, and over all malnourishment was catching up. You didn't know you had crossed what felt like the Oregon trail to the stream until the cuts on your hands stung slightly at the cool liquid. It didn't take long for you to dunk your face into it, all reasonable thought gone as you scooped water into your mouth with your hands, stomach hurting from the odd feeling of not being completely empty. Laying back to face the sky you felt as though for the first time since the end, you weren't completely fucked. You knew you weren't safe, not with the dead walking, but that didn't stop your lead heavy eyelids from betraying you and falling closed.

Dreams have meanings, hell theres books about it. But you didn't quite know what a dream about a crossbow wielding man carrying you away from the stream you passed out is supposed to symbolize. Maybe he was sometime of guardian angel here to bring you to the afterlife? Who knows, if he is, at least your guardian angel's handsome

Fun fact of the post: I just got broken up with (^-^)

Pet-Related Events and Activities in Your Local Area: Where to Find Fun and Entertainment for Your Furry Friend!

Introduction

If you're looking for pet-related events and activities in your local area, there are several resources available to help you find fun and entertainment for your furry friend. Here are some options to consider: - Pet Expos and Shows: Check out local pet expos and shows in your area for a variety of pet-related activities, including new product showcases, exhibitors, speakers, free classes for children to teach them how to examine and care for their pets, free doggy boot camps, and more. Some events may have both in-person and virtual options . - Local Directories: Look for directories that list pet-friendly things to do in your area. These directories can help you find activities that you and your pet can enjoy together, whether you're looking for laid-back and low-key options or high-adrenaline adventures . - Parks and Trails: Consider exploring local parks and trails with your pet. Some parks and trails may be pet-friendly, allowing your furry friend to join you on hikes and walks. Some outfitters even allow canine companions on river trips . - Mobile Apps: There are several mobile apps available that can help you find local pet-related events and activities. For example, some apps provide details, times, and locations of events, and allow you to browse events by category , while others help you discover pets, groups, events, and volunteer opportunities in your local area . - Training and Obedience Classes: Learning basic manners and recall are the perfect places to start when preparing to take your furry friend on hikes and walks. Some organizations, such as Lollypop Farm, offer a variety of training classes to get you and your pup on the right track . - Seasonal Activities: Depending on the time of year, you may be able to find pet-friendly seasonal activities in your area. For example, during the holiday season, you could give your pet a seasonal pet food mat or pet stocking to hang on the mantle . Remember to always research the activities you plan to do with your pet and make sure they are safe and appropriate for your furry friend. Enjoy your adventures together!

Exploring the Great Outdoors: Pet-Friendly Events and Activities

There are plenty of outdoor activities and events that you can enjoy with your furry friend. Here are some options to consider: - Oregon Ridge County Park in northern Baltimore County offers a variety of outdoor activities, including a large swimming pool, kayaking, and canoeing. The park no longer requires a multi-pet permit for households with three or more dogs. - Shelby Farms Park in Memphis is one of the largest urban parks in the country, offering a massive off-leash dog area, 40 miles of pet-friendly trails, a disc golf course, and canoe, kayak, and paddleboard rentals. - If you're looking for outdoor activities to do with your dog, ASPCA Pet Insurance recommends walking groups, patio dinners, and hiking. - Asheville, North Carolina offers over a million acres of protected wilderness with plenty of outdoor activities for pets, including hiking, mountain biking, fishing, and kayaking. - Adventure Bound offers a fun zone, alpine water slide, and pool for all ages. There are also plenty of paved trails that are perfect for exploring with your pet. Pets are not allowed in rental cabins, but RV and tent camping sites are available where pets are permitted. - If you're looking for outdoor exploration activities to do with children, consider exploring the backyard, playground, or park to see what treasures can be found outside, such as flowers, bugs, animal tracks, and smooth rocks. Children can also draw, journal, or take pictures of what they find and compare them to other outdoor spaces. - Maryland State Parks allow pets to visit their undeveloped areas all year, including Chapel Point, Fair Hill, Gunpowder Falls, Mattawoman, Rocky Gap, and Youghiogheny River, among others. - According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children, exploring the outdoors is an opportunity for children to actively engage in learning. Parents can guide children's exploration of the great outdoors by exploring safely and keeping an eye on them. - If you're planning outdoor events, consider teaming up with a local venue that has outdoor space. This way, the hotel can accommodate sleeping rooms while guests can enjoy event activities outdoors. Some outdoor event ideas include a beach party, wine tasting, or a backyard barbecue. - Jersey Island offers sea kayak tours for those who want to reconnect with nature. Explore an island shaped by the sea with some of the most astonishing tides in the world. Kayak with local guides whose knowledge makes this more than just a paddle around the bay. Top 5 Dog-Friendly Hiking Trails in Your Area Based on the various sources, here are the top 5 dog-friendly hiking trails in the world: - Gatlinburg Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, United States - This trail spans over 800 miles or 1,287 kilometres and is a great option for hiking with your furry friend. The trail is relatively flat and easy to hike, making it perfect for dogs of all abilities. - Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, Mosca, CO, United States - This park offers a unique hiking experience with its vast sand dunes, mountains, and grasslands. The park allows dogs on leashes in the designated areas, so you can enjoy the scenery with your furry companion. - Dog Mountain, Washington, United States - This trail, located in the Columbia River Gorge, offers beautiful views of the surrounding mountains and rivers. The trail is steep and challenging, but the views at the top make it worth the effort. - Glenwood Canyon, Colorado, United States - This trail follows the Colorado River and offers stunning views of the canyon. The trail is dog-friendly and relatively easy to hike, making it a great option for a day trip with your furry friend. - Arches National Park, Moab, United States - This park boasts the densest concentration of natural stone arches in the world and offers many dog-friendly hiking trails. The trails vary in difficulty, so you can choose one that best suits your dog's abilities. When hiking with your dog, remember to follow the National Park Services B.A.R.K. principles, which include bagging your pet's waste, always leashing your pet (on a leash no more than 6 feet long), respecting wildlife, and knowing where you can go . Fetching Fun: Dog-Friendly Beaches for a Day in the Sun Here are some of the top dog-friendly beaches: - Jekyll Island, Georgia: Most of the ten miles of white sand beaches on the Georgia coastline here are dog-friendly, with the exception of Glory Beach, which is a bird sanctuary . - Jupiter Dog Beach, Florida: This 2.5-mile stretch of beautiful beach is a popular dog-friendly beach where your off-leash pup can stretch their legs and surf the waves . - Montrose Dog Beach, Illinois: As one of the biggest and best-maintained dog-friendly beaches in the region, Montrose Dog Beach is a happy escape for pet owners. Though there are many sandy areas here, pups can only be off-leash inside the specific dog beach . - Fort De Soto Park, Florida: It is one of the only locations in Florida where your dog can enjoy splashing in the waves without their leash. The section of this beautiful beach where dogs can run free is called the Paw Playground . - Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Dogs are welcome on the beaches, boardwalk, and promenade, but please respect the guidelines and hours. From May 1 through Labor Day, pups can come before 10 a.m. and after 5 p.m. . Note that each beach may have specific rules and regulations, such as requiring dogs to be on a leash or certain hours when dogs are allowed, so be sure to check before you go. Cat-Friendly Adventures: Indoor Activities for Your Feline Friend Cats need plenty of stimulation to keep them healthy and happy, even if they're indoor pets. Here are some great ideas for indoor activities to keep your feline friend entertained: - Play games: Cats love to hunt and play, and there are plenty of games you can play with them to keep them engaged. A simple option is to use a cat ball with a jingling sound to encourage your cat to run and jump . Alternatively, use a wand toy to simulate a hunting scene by moving it around as if it is a bird or a mouse . - Provide a multi-level cat house or a cat wall: Giving your cat a space to climb, explore and hide can provide plenty of entertainment for them. You can make use of a multi-level cat house or a cat wall to give them more space to play around in . - Interact with your cat: Find out if your cat likes playtime, or being gently combed or brushed. You can also teach your cat to use treats by rewarding them when they exhibit desirable behaviours such as sitting, coming when called, or other tricks that they can learn . - Use cardboard boxes: Cats love playing with boxes, and you can use them to create hidey-hole for them around the house. You can pop treats in them or sprinkle a little catnip in the bottom to pique their interest . Keeping your cat engaged and active with these activities can help to prevent boredom and encourage mental and physical stimulation for a happy and healthy feline friend.

Fun and Games: Indoor Pet-Friendly Activities

If you're looking for indoor pet-friendly activities to keep your furry friend entertained and burn off some energy, there are plenty of options available. Here are some ideas: - Indoor Dog Games: Check out these 15 indoor dog games recommended by Woman's Day, which include hide-and-seek, puzzle games, and agility courses . Pretty Fluffy also has a list of 15 indoor activities for dogs, including indoor ball games with iFetch and DIY agility courses . - Indoor Obstacle Courses: Icebreaker Ideas suggests building an indoor obstacle course using toys and furniture, which can be a fun activity for both pets and their owners . - Teach Your Pet a New Trick: Teaching your pet a new trick is not only mentally stimulating for them but also helps burn off excess energy and staves off bad behaviour. Breed Advisor recommends using rewards to motivate your pet and make it a fun activity . - Balancing Games: According to Care.com, you can practice patience and create some adorable Instagram-worthy moments by balancing treats on your pet's nose . - Hiking: If you're looking to get some exercise and fresh air, BringFido suggests checking out dog-friendly hiking trails like Runyon Canyon Park in Los Angeles . Overall, there are plenty of indoor pet-friendly activities to keep your furry friend entertained and active, from games and agility courses to new tricks and hiking adventures. DIY Pet Toys: Making Playtime More Fun for Your Furry Friend Pet toys can be expensive, but with some creativity and a little bit of effort, you can make your own DIY pet toys that are safe, durable, and personalized for your furry friend. Here are some ideas to get you started: - Dog Toy Cruncher: These toys are made from plastic water bottles with a soft, chewable covering for hours of crunchy fun! Check out the full tutorial at Five Barks . - Rope Chew Toy: This classic toy is easy to make and can be customized to your dog's size and preferences. Check out the full tutorial at Instructables . - PVC Agility Jump: Keep your furry friend fit and active with this DIY agility jump that's simple to make. Use furniture-grade PVC pipe and fittings for safe and sturdy construction. Check out the full tutorial at DIY Projects . - Fleece Tug Toy: Cut a strip of fleece material and tie knots at each end for a simple tug toy that's perfect for playing and chewing. Check out the full tutorial at I Love My Dogs So Much . - DIY Pet Projects Roundup: If you're looking for more DIY pet toy ideas, check out this roundup of crafts, toys, and furniture that will make your furry friends happy. It includes a no-sew dog jacket, a cat tent, an ombre rope dog leash, and a scratch pad. Check out the full roundup at DIY Projects . Making your own DIY pet toys has several advantages. It allows you to customize the toys to your pet's specific preferences and size, choose safe materials for dogs with allergies or sensitivities, and select durable and high-quality materials for pups who are strong chewers. It's also a cost-effective alternative to store-bought toys and provides your pet with safe, durable, and personalized playthings . Pet Cafes and Bars: Enjoying a Drink with Your Furry Companion Pet cafes and bars are great places to enjoy a drink or a bite to eat with your furry companion. Here are a few options to check out: - Freds Mexican Cafe (San Diego) - This dog-friendly restaurant in San Diego's Old Town boasts an alfresco dining patio where your pooch can join you for a meal . - Cat Cafes - If you're a cat lover, there are many cat cafes around the world where you can enjoy a cup of coffee while playing with some free-range feline friends. The first cat cafe opened in Taipei, Taiwan in 1998 and the trend has spread to other countries like Japan . - Dog-friendly Bars in Seattle - Dogwood Playpark and Bar, Norms Eatery and Ale House, and Lamplighter Public House are a few of the best dog-friendly bars in Seattle. Dogwood offers an indoor and outdoor dog park space, Norms Eatery and Ale House has a separate menu for both you and your furry friend, and Lamplighter Public House is a pooch-friendly pub . - Pawsome Dog Cafe (Davao City) - This dog cafe in Mindanao, Philippines allows you to bring your own furry friend or make friends with the many pups running around in the cafe. They also have an extensive menu with salads, pastas, and more . - Dog-friendly Cafes and Bars in Wellington - Squirrel welcomes all four-legged companions both inside and out and even provides water bowls to keep dogs hydrated. Goldings Free Dive is another dog-friendly option in Wellington . Overall, whether you're a cat or dog lover, or just looking for a place to enjoy a drink with your furry friend, there are many pet cafes and bars to explore. Puppy Playdates: Socializing Your Dog with Other Furry Friends Socializing your puppy with other dogs is essential for their development and overall well-being. Puppy playdates are a great way to help your furry friend learn how to interact with other dogs and people. Here are some tips on how to host successful puppy playdates: - Select appropriate playmates: Make sure to choose dogs that are similar in size, breed, and temperament to your puppy. This will help avoid any potential conflicts and ensure a positive experience for all dogs involved. - Start early: The critical period for socializing puppies is between 3 and 12 weeks of age. It's essential to begin socializing with your puppy during this window to ensure that they develop positive behaviours towards other dogs and people. - Bring positive reinforcers: Use treats and food to create a positive association during the playdate. Let your dog lead the interaction with the other dog and don't force them to interact. Pay attention to any toys or resources that could lead to resource guarding and be aware of body language. - Stay aware of your pup's body language: Observe your puppy's behaviour during the playdate and make sure to intervene if they seem stressed or overwhelmed. Promptly address any negative experiences to ensure that your puppy's socialization experience remains positive. - Visit dog parks and go on walks: Regular trips to the dog park and walks can help your puppy socialize with other dogs. Make sure to look for dogs of similar sizes to avoid overwhelming your puppy. By following these tips, you can help ensure that your puppy has a positive socialization experience with other furry friends.

Celebrate with Your Furry Friend: Pet-Friendly Events and Holidays

There are numerous pet-friendly events and holidays throughout the year that pet owners can celebrate with their furry friends. Some notable pet holidays include Universal Birthday for Shelter Dogs (August 1st) , International Cat Day (August 8th), National Spoil Your Dog Day (August 10th), National Check the Chip Day (August 15th), National Black Cat Appreciation Day (August 17th), International Homeless Animals Day (August 20th), National Take Your Cat to the Vet Day (August 22nd), and National Dog Day (August 26th) . In addition to pet holidays, there are various pet-friendly events that pet owners can attend with their furry friends throughout the year. Some examples include the AKC Museum of the Dog's pet-friendly hours , the Santa Paws Parade in San Antonio , and various local pet parades and festivals that can be found through a simple internet search. Pet owners can also include their pets in their holiday celebrations by dressing them up in holiday-themed outfits , decorating their living spaces with pet-friendly decorations, and ensuring that any food or candles used during the holidays are safe for pets . Additionally, pet owners can volunteer with pet therapy programs such as Pet Partners to bring joy to others and their furry friends . Overall, there are many ways for pet owners to celebrate with their furry friends through various pet-friendly events and holidays throughout the year. Bark in the Park: Attending Dog-Friendly Festivals and Events Bark in the Park is a popular name for dog-friendly festivals and events across different locations. Here are some of the events: - Bark in the Park 2023: This event is hosted by the Humane Society of Tampa Bay and is described as Tampa's favourite dog and family-friendly festival . The festival supports homeless animals at the shelter and includes activities such as vendor booths, food trucks, music, and fun activities for dogs. - Bark in the Park Ventura County: This event is one of the biggest dog festivals in Ventura County and includes various contests such as a dog costume contest, a dog race track, a dog agility course, and a DIY dog area . The festival also features celebrity dogs, dog entertainers, and a cool-off water area. - Bark in the Park Downtown Tampa: This outdoor festival is described as dog and family-friendly and features adoptable animals, vendor booths, food trucks, and music. The festival is held at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park in Downtown Tampa . - Bark in the Park Festival 2022: This dog-friendly event was held at the 4H Fairgrounds in Mays Landing, New Jersey, in September 2022. The festival included various activities, such as vendor booths, food trucks, and a beer garden . Read the full article

A Lone Butterfly - Chapter 14

Title of Chapter: Hide Out

Word Count: 2.6k (mostly smut)

Warnings/Tags: Explicit Language, Significantly younger ofc, Smut, Foreplay, Sex

Pairing: Javier Peña (Narcos) x Isabel Cotrille (OFC)

Summary:  After Javier leaves, Isabel's anger and frustration with him grow. Later, she and Javier are forced to confront each other, finally acknowledging the tension that's been building between them.

Notes: I didn’t want to give away everything in the warnings, but this chapter contains explicit sexual content. 18+ only, please.

This ended up taking me way longer to write than I imagined...

Hope you enjoy reading this. It’s a good one. x

Read it on ao3

It doesn't take long before Javier has left and Sanz shows up. I'm furious. He knows what the cartel did to me better than anyone, yet still he's forced me here against my will. I might as well go back to Oregon. I would be put back into Witness Protection, but at least I'd be more free than I am now.

I can tell Sanz isn't exactly enthusiastic about the baby sitting job she's been assigned, but she tries to hide it somewhat out of consideration.

"You know, he's only doing this for your own good."

"Don't start."

"But he's right. If you go and get yourself tangled up in this, we'll have an even bigger mess on our hands."

"I know." Arguing with her would be useless.

_______________

The day passes agonizingly slowly as I sit with my anger, unable to do anything about it. I try thinking about what I'll say to Javier when he comes back. Maybe I won't even say anything. I've never been a violent person, but I think if Javier were here right now I would slap him for putting me in such a position of helplessness. He said he trusted me once, though it's clear that can no longer be true.

At one point I try to lure Sanz out of the room by feigning hunger. She doesn't take the bait, and instead has food brought to us. I switch on the television in an effort to distract myself.

After a while, I've stopped counting the hours as they pass. The light outside suggests night is not far off. Worry starts to trickle in. Not for the first time today I wonder what Javier's team uncovered at the location. Did they arrive only to find out Matías lied to them?  Was it a a set up? Despite my anger at him, I'm anxious to see Javier, to know he's okay. I get up from my seat on the couch, suddenly restless, and start pacing the room.

Sanz's phone rings and she steps outside to answer it. Once she's back, her calm demeanor from before is gone.

"Pack up your things.  Peña's on his way and wants you ready to go once he gets here."

"But why-"

"You're not safe here any longer, just do as he says."

Fear replaces my anger. I don't argue with her.

Soon after my things are all stuffed into the suitcase, Javier crashes through the door. He barely looks at me before hauling my luggage in one arm and tugging me out the door with the other.

"C'mon," he says, his voice rough. "We've gotta get out of here now. The cartel knows you're in Columbia."

My eyes go wide as I allow him to lead me to the waiting car. He throws my things in the back before placing me in the passenger seat. He explains the details to me as we're driving.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"The Embassy's got a place a ways out, a hide out. You'll stay there until we get the cartel under control."

"So he was lying."

"Not entirely. When we got to the location, some of Matías's men were there. They ambushed us. Somehow, they must have found out we were coming. There's no way that's where they're keeping the girls though."

"How do they know I'm here?"

Javier's looks out the window, despondent.

"I went back to Matías's cell after the ambush, to confront him. During our... chat, he revealed that he and his gang knew the moment you arrived. Somehow, he's had eyes on you the entire time."

"Why not just send me back to Oregon?"

"We can't be sure they won't track you there also. They already have once. For whatever reason, whoever is operating this cartel is hell bent on getting to you."

I remain silent, stunned. How has the cartel been able to track my movements so closely? More importantly, why bother? They've already replaced me with at least a dozen other girls.

Javier and I drive for hours until it's well past dark. We pull up to a dirt road and drive down it for what seems like an eternity. As we near a little cottage, I notice a river bank running not far off. The car comes to a halt just in front of the house and Javier steps out to get me. The place looks like a setting for a horror movie, but I say nothing as we walk inside.

_______________

Now that the panic has settled somewhat, I remember the rage I felt from before. I remember the rough way in which he spoke to me, the way his hands dug into my arms as he tried to reason with me. And then, the door slamming behind him as he left, locking me inside. Deep down, I know he was only trying to protect me, but it still hurt. I wanted to be useful, wanted to help the women who were now in the same position I was once in. It seemed, though, I wasn't going to get that chance.

He flips the lights on and locks the door behind him. The place is surprisingly cozy.

"Are we safe here?"

"It's secure. Only a small number of people know this place even exists."

There's a tense silence between us as I consider bringing up what took place this morning. The events of the evening have made it seem less important. Before I decide, he beats me to it.

"I know you're still mad about this morning, Isabel."

I refuse to respond to him, so he continues.

"Just so you know, I wouldn't have done what I did if I didn't think it was the only way to keep you safe. If I had to, I would do it again."

My eyes meet his finally and I know he can see the defiance in them.

"I know you hate me for it. As long as I know I'm keeping my promise to look after you, you can hate me all you want."

I remain silent for a moment before responding.

"I don't hate you, Javi." I stare down at my hands, suddenly unable to keep eye contact as I make my confession. "I don't think I ever could. I just... don't like feeling like that. Helpless."

I glance back up to him, and his expression breaks me. Unable to control it, and annoyed that I can't, my eyes begin to water. I quickly look back down at my hands.

The floorboards creak as he closes the distance between us. He towers over me as he gently grabs hold of my upper arms.

"You're not helpless, Isabel. You never have been. Even when you were captured, you found a way out. It was you who took Matías's eye from him. You've always been strong. And brave. But that doesn't mean you don't deserve to be protected."

My throat closes up as his words warm me. Somehow he knew exactly what I needed to hear. I feel guilty for ever doubting him. I want to respond, but can't seem to figure out how.

He holds my face in his hands and brushes my tears off with his thumbs.

"Shh, baby, don't cry."

He pulls me into a hug. His smoky scent hits me and I feel instantly better. Clinging to him, I savor the strong feel of his arms around me. The urgency of our situation combined with our close proximity causes an overwhelming sweep of emotion to wash over me. I tilt my head, meeting my lips with the edge of exposed skin at his collar.

He groans. "Isabel."

I ignore him and go for his mouth instead. He beats me to it. His lips meet mine, gentle at first. He deepens the kiss almost instantly, and I feel his tongue sweep against mine. Not breaking contact, he backs me up until I'm flush with the wall.

As our mouths explore each other with tongue and teeth, his arms leave me to remove the leather jacket from his body. He comes back to me as soon as it hits the floor. His arms roam my stomach, back, and chest. As his hand comes up to gently grasp the base of my throat, he shoves one of his legs upwards, between both of mine. I gasp in his mouth as warmth pools to my center. His mouth leaves mine, trailing down from my cheek to my neck. At the same time, his right hand travels up to my breast, grasping it over my dress. My hips move involuntarily against his thigh. The friction causes a deep ache within me and I whimper at the sudden feeling of emptiness. Javier makes a sound that forces my hips to react again.

He places his hands on either side of them, holding me still. I open my mouth to protest, but before I can he hauls me up, forcing my legs around him. His lips meet my own once more as his tongue finds mine again. He backs away from the wall, aiming for the hallway. We don't break away from each other until we reach the bedroom and he sets me on my feet.

He leans down, moving his hands from my body up to my face.

"Isabel. If we don't stop now, I may not be able to," his eyes are closed as he utters the strained words.

"I just want you, Javi." I touch his jaw with my fingertips. "Please," I mutter, my voice breaking.

The single word that comes from him is barely a whisper.

"Fuck." He grabs my face once more and this time his mouth is gentle on mine, a stark contrast to the heated passion felt moments before. I fumble with his buttons, but his hands are quicker as he tugs off the shirt gracefully. I press my hands against his hard chest as his eyes study me. He holds me in his gaze as he removes my cardigan, leaving me in only the dress beneath it. He rubs one thin strap between two fingers.

"Is this okay?"

I nod, looking at him intently.

He pushes the strap down. The other one comes next until my sun dress falls to the wooden floor. There’s nothing under it except my panties. My arms fling to my chest in a sudden urge to cover myself up.

"Let me see you."

I allow him to guide my arms down back to my sides.

"It's not right," he mutters to himself as his eyes roam over my almost completely naked body.

I frown, suddenly insecure at his bizarre statement.

"It's not right that you're so beautiful, so sweet."

My cheeks warm at his praise.

"Lie down."

I back up until I reach the bed and allow him to push me back onto its softness. He props himself up on an elbow and continues to kiss me until I can't take it anymore. His hand lingers over my breasts- pinching, squeezing. Finally, he travels downward. He slips his hand underneath my panties, brushing over one spot in particular. When he removes his hand too soon, I softly groan in protest.

"Please," I gasp.

"I know what you want, Isabel, but you're not gonna rush me."

He moves then, leaving soft kisses down my abdomen until he's settled between my thighs. He doesn't waste time, pulling down my panties until their off and taking me into his mouth. When his tongue brushes against me the first time, my hands fly to my mouth. He breaks contact to look back up at me, and pulls my hands away.

"No," he says firmly, "I want to hear you."

He resumes his torture until the sensation becomes almost painful. His tongue moves against the sensitive area, faster then slow, bringing me closer and closer but never quite all the way. My hips writhe against him but he grabs hold of them, forcing me to stay still. The sounds that come from me are vulgar and if I were at all able, I would try and hide the moans escaping my lips. He doesn't stop until I practically beg him to.

"Javi, please. I can't- ," I manage to get out.

He lingers a few more seconds before crawling back up to me, his body hovering over my smaller frame.

He studies me, relishing my blushed and breathless state.

"I wasn't done yet, hermosa. I'll remember that later."

He kisses my mouth slowly. The obscenity of it makes our previous kisses seem ridiculously tame in comparison. As he deepens the kiss, he drops his hand once again. He brushes against the overly sensitive spot with his thumb and then eases a finger inside. As I moan into his mouth, I hear a groan escape him.

"You're so wet, Isabel."

My cheeks instantly heat as he says what is already obvious.

As he moves his finger slightly out and back in, the movements of his thumb slow, becoming even more tortuous. Once I'm nearly over the edge, he withdraws his hand and pushes off the bed, standing up.

He unfastens his pants and removes the rest of his clothing until he's completely bare. He stares down at me until my whole body is on fire.

“You’re beautiful like this, Isabel,” he says as his eyes take me in, ready and waiting for him.

His sheer manliness would terrify me if I didn't crave it so desperately. I let my eyes roam, ignoring my embarrassment. For as restrained as he's kept himself, it's clear he's been just as affected as I have.

He once again joins me on the bed, holding himself above  me.

"Tell me if you want me to stop."

I nod, but he's not satisfied.

"Promise me."

"I promise."

He shifts his body until I feel his erection right between my thighs. I part my legs as he slowly glides into me. The feeling is almost too much at first. Sensing it, he stops, but I urge him on.

"No- don't stop," I whisper breathlessly.

Once he's all the way inside I lift my hips off the bed to meet his. We set a rhythm against each other and the tension continues to build within me.  

I'm so close but can't quite seem to get there. He reaches his hand between our bodies to touch me, finally giving me the release I crave. I come undone around him, and he swallows my moans with his mouth.

Javier continues moving against me, his thrusts becoming more erratic. All at once, whatever control he had before just... snaps. He grabs hold of me, keeping me still, as he thrusts into me with unrestrained desperation. His groans become feral as he comes inside me.

He drops his head to the crook of my neck, catching his breath. Once he pieces himself back together, his hand grips the side of my face. His lips fumble around my cheeks until he kisses my mouth, then my nose.

"You okay?"

"Yeah... I think so."

He laughs softly, leaning over me and onto his side. He brushes wisps of hair back from my face with his hand.

"Stay here, I'll be right back."

Javier escapes to the bathroom and while he's gone, I pull back the covers. They feel impossibly cool against my heated skin. He returns and joins me once again on the bed. My eyelids begin to droop from exhaustion.

"I'm so sleepy," I say absent mindedly.

"Come here."

He pulls me to him, cushioning my head with one arm and draping the other around my side. The blissful aftermath of our night together lulls me to sleep almost instantly.

Just as I'm drifting off, Javier whispers something in my ear. I struggle to make out the words, but they escape along with my last thread of consciousness.

Keeping Me Alive

Chapter 11: Heathens

by @dracusfyre

They made it to the long-term cruise liner parking lot where Tony had staged an SUV for their escape when James stopped and said, “Tracking devices.”

“Shit.” Of course Hydra would have some way of tracking him; he was an expensive tool, after all, not a person. Tony had Jarvis scan him and found two transmitters, one in the metal arm and one in the back of his neck close to the spine. “I can jam them both until we are in a safe place to remove them,” Tony said, “but I can’t get the one out of the arm without tools. And the one in your neck…” Tony trailed off when James pulled a knife out of the sheath on his thigh and held it out.

“Get rid of it.”

Tony wanted to protest but he bit his tongue when he saw the look on James’ face. He would want it out of him as soon as possible as well; he was lucky that Stane hadn’t thought to put one in him too. He climbed laboriously out of his suit and took the knife as James turned around and bent his head. Guess I get to stick a knife in the Winter Soldier after all, Tony thought with a grim smile. Years of working on circuit boards had given him a steady hand, so even though he grimaced as blood welled to the surface when he sliced through James’ skin, he was quick and efficient. “What should we do with it?” Tony asked when it was on his palm, tiny and shaped like a pill capsule. James took it from him and crushed it with his metal hand, letting it fall to the ground before grinding them into the pavement with his boot.

James helped him pack the suit in the back of the SUV and then they both went for the driver’s seat.  “I have the key,” Tony said, pulling it out of his pocket and closing his hand around it when he saw James eyeing it. “Also, you don’t know where we’re going.” 

“If Hydra comes, I should be driving,” James said with a scowl.  

“If Hydra comes, you should be shooting,” Tony countered, and James considered that for a second before going around to the passenger seat. He’d already stashed one of the duffle bags of arms and ammunition that they’d taken from the lab in the floorboard, and as Tony pulled out of the parking lot he began methodically loading all of the rifles and spare magazines. It was a funny thing to find relaxing, but it made him feel safer to think that all of the Soldier’s lethality was on his side for once.

By the time they got onto the 5, the car had fallen into a strained silence, so Tony turned on the radio. The news of his demise had made headlines about an hour into their drive, though the police being interviewed were very careful not to officially declare Tony dead. The radio was the only sound in the car until they were four hours north of LA, when James finally spoke again. “Why?” He asked, his voice low and gruff and barely audible over the radio, even though Tony had the volume low.

Tony, who had been waiting for the question since he first took his helmet off in the lab, glanced over to see James studying him. “Do you recognize me at all?” After a moment of hesitation, James shook his head and Tony turned his eyes back to the road. “You and I have a long history,” Tony said finally. “None of it good. I don’t blame you for it,” Tony added hurriedly when he saw James stiffen. “I mean, I did, but I don’t now, because...Well, the point is, I realized recently that we are – were – both prisoners of Hydra. So I figure that means we have a common enemy, and that we should work together."

"You want me to help you take down Hydra?"

"Well, yeah." Tony glanced back over; James' expression didn't say what he thought of that. "Unless you don't want to, I guess. But we should still stick together until it's safe. I don't know about you, but I'm not going back."

James snorted at that. “So where’re we going?”

“Safe house.” There was silence in the car again as Tony pulled off the next exit to get gas. After he started the pump, he climbed back into the car and opened the center console. It was filled with protein bars, candy, chips, and drinks. “Pick your poison,” Tony said as he grabbed a bottle of water and a candy bar. James eyed Tony and then the stash of snacks before picking out a protein bar and bottle of Gatorade.

“What’s this?” He asked as he eyed the unnaturally blue drink.

“Sugar water, mostly.” Tony chugged his water as James took an experimental sip. “Your file says after you, uh, wake up you need a lot of protein and electrolytes and stuff. So drink up, it’s good for you.”

James grimaced at the taste but drank it steadily like a person that is used to taking medicine. When he was done he started making his way through the stack of protein bars with a grim determination that was almost impressive, if Tony hadn’t started to worry that he should have packed more food for the drive. They weren’t even a quarter of the way to their destination and James had eaten more than half the food. Finally the pump turned off with a thunk, so Tony finished paying and climbed back into the driver’s seat.

“If you've read my file,” James said as they got back onto the highway, “then you know a lot more about me than I know about you.”

“That’s not a high bar,” Tony said with a ghost of a smile. “I know more about you than you know about yourself.” James shot him an unamused look and Tony shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

“You said your name was Tony Stark,” James said. He pointed to the radio. “If that’s true, why do the police think you’re dead?”

Tony’s eyebrows climbed. He didn’t realize James had been paying attention to the radio; he’d spent the entire drive so far staring out the window and checking the rearview mirror, presumably looking for Hydra. “Because I want them to think I’m dead,” Tony said. “That way I can be free to do what needs to be done.”

“What did Hydra want you for?”

“I make weapons. Made,” Tony corrected. “Their little pet engineer, cranking out planes and tanks and bombs for them,” he added bitterly, gesturing to the weapons in the bag at James’ feet. “I have also been fixing your arm for the past few years.”

That made James’ eyebrows draw together. “Music,” he said after a long moment. “I remember loud music.”

“Yeah, that was me. You remember that?”

“Hydra doesn’t exactly play me tunes on a regular basis,” James said dryly. “It stood out.”

Tony barked out a surprised laugh and turned the radio away from the news to classic rock. They switched vehicles a few hours later, then again at the border with Oregon. When they finally pulled in to Tony's cabin - one left to him by Ana and Edwin, and significantly renovated over the past month - Tony turned off the car and sagged against the seat. It wasn't until he felt his shoulders and jaw relaxed that he'd realized how tense he'd been the whole drive; he was suddenly acutely aware that he had been awake for almost 24 hours. "Home sweet home," he said unnecessarily as the engine ticked and cooled.

"I'll be the judge of that," James said. He climbed out of the car then proceeded to fit an unlikely number of firearms on his person before he disappeared into the woods. Tony shrugged and started to lug the suit piece by piece into the house, and when he took a moment to fire up the surveillance system he could see James evaluating the perimeter, pausing each time he noticed one of Tony's cameras. "I may not be an expert, but I am paranoid," Tony said to the monitors, then went back to the SUV for another load. By the time he had the suit in the gantry and ready for the next time he needed to put it on, James had finished his patrol and was standing in the middle of the living room. "Does my security meet your standards?" Tony asked as he headed for the freezer. For now, the cabin was stocked with shelf-stable food and the freezer was packed with instant meals, enough that they could avoid leaving for a few weeks as long as they didn't want things like milk or eggs or fresh fruit and vegetables.

"I have some suggestions," James said, following Tony into the kitchen. "Mostly involving explosives."

"Then you must not have checked around the foundation," Tony said. He picked out a frozen pizza and, checking the instructions, turned on the oven. He turned around to see James still standing there, looking uncertain, and he cursed internally. He wasn't used to having someone else in his space; it was going to take a while for him to get used to having a roommate. "Come on, I'll show you around."

James' room was in the top of the house, in a renovated attic space. Tony had picked it because the windows gave it excellent views on all sides of the house, and since James' files said he was a sniper he thought James would appreciate it. But as they stood there, Tony realized he had underestimated how tall James was, because if he stood anywhere other than the middle of the room he would have to duck. He'd also have to sleep diagonally on the queen size bed, but from the way James had gone all still and quiet when he'd looked at the room, Tony thought it might be good enough. There was one bathroom and it was on the ground floor, next to another bedroom. That was supposed to have been Tony's, but when he'd tried to sleep there he had woken up multiple times with panic attacks, feeling exposed and vulnerable, so his room was now in the basement. The basement had started life as a cellar but Tony had expanded it and reinforced it until it could probably now be classified as a bunker instead.  "And this is HQ," Tony said as the lights came on to the main room. He'd moved everything important out of the LA home before he'd sent it into the Pacific, including his computers, JARVIS's servers, and all of the tools and machinery he would need to design and build new suits. What drew James' attention, though, was the murder board that took up one wall of the room. It was pretty sparse at the moment because Tony had only just started to dig through the Hydra files he'd downloaded, but there was Stane, Pierce, and Stern, as well as some of their more prominent hangers-on.

There were also the people that Tony had seen last time he was in the lab with Stane. Tony picked up a marker and put an X on all the faces he remembered. James pointed to one that he'd missed and then Tony hesitated, fidgeting with the marker before he finally said, “I was there the last time they…” Tony blew out a breath, unable to finish his sentence. "With the.."

“The chair,” James finished for him.

“Yeah.  And I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“Why? You weren’t one of…” James made an aborted gesture towards his head. “I knew them. I didn’t remember them, but…I knew them.”

“Because I didn’t stop it earlier. I mean, I didn’t know about it, but it was because I didn’t want to know. I was scared and…” Tony swallowed thickly and forced himself to keep going. “Weak. I let Hydra break me down for so long and they didn’t even need the chair to do it.”

“How long?”

“Over twenty years. Since I was sixteen.”

“Sixteen? Christ, you were a child,” James said with disgust. “Where were your parents?”

“Um…” Tony glanced over at him and grimaced. “They died. When I was eighteen.”

“Died?” James caught the look on his face and cursed long and low under his breath. “It was me, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Tony fidgeted with the marker in his hand. “I told them what was happening, and Hydra had them killed.”

“Ah, fuck. When you said we had a bad history you weren’t fucking kidding.” James ran a hand over his mouth and crossed his arms. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s not like it was your idea,” Tony started, and then got cut off when James snorted. “What?”

“Look at us idiots, apologizing for shit that was Hydra’s fault,” he said. “I’m sorry Hydra made me pull the trigger on your parents. You’re sorry Hydra tortured and brainwashed me. I hope you got me out because you have a plan to make Hydra sorry I killed your parents and they brainwashed me,” he said, pointing to the murder board.

Tony met his eyes and felt a smile tug on his lips. He pulled out the picture of Ana, Edwin, and Maria from Christmas out of his pocket and propped it up on his desk. “Yeah. Yeah I do.”

(III) Three Iterations of a Birth (and Death)

Part Three: Fantasy

PG-13 | 2.2k wds | s8 AU (diverges after “Alone”)

Summary: This time he gets it right.

A/N: It’s finally done! Part One, Tragedy, is here but you don’t need to read it if you hate pain (character death warning) and Part Two is here, which is angsty but ends well. This one is happy, but I hope not tooth-achingly sweet. Just a better version of things, and fulfilling this (very old) prompt:

I hope you like it, anon!

_+_

“Mulder, you should know something.”

She sat on his couch with hands on her round belly, wore a tank dress and complained of the heat. Her feet, white-sneakered, rested on his coffee table. He handed her a glass of water and sat beside her.

“What’s that?” He turned to her, elbow propped on the back of the couch and watched her sip. She’d been smiling for much of today, tucked beside him and flirting gently at Layla Harrison’s bedside, demanding they stop for Mexican food on their ride back from the hospital. He sensed, though, a seriousness in her tone now. A small fold appeared between her brows.

“Not long before we found you, I had a procedure done by doctors that I thought I couldn’t trust.” She glanced at him briefly. “An amniocentesis.” Her fingers twitched against the side of her sweating glass, and she leaned forward to set it on the table. When she struggled to reach, Mulder took it from her and placed it on a coaster. “Thank you,” she said.

He nodded, but his heart was pounding, his face stilled and pinched in that look of panic. “An amniocentesis?”

“Yeah,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “I wanted to run a PCR on the baby.”

So it was time, then. He’d waited for this conversation, felt it hovering like a thundercloud around them for weeks while they tiptoed around every mention of her pregnancy. Mulder swallowed hard. “And did you?”

She hesitated, eyes fixed on her knees. “I didn’t run it myself.” He watched her fingers fidget at the apex of her belly.

“But someone did.”

“Yeah.”

Mulder felt like yelling, like plugging his ears or running into another room. He didn’t think he wanted to know this, but he was also desperate for the information. “And?”

Scully took a deep breath. “Entirely human,” she said, then lower so he almost couldn’t hear, “and yours.”

Mulder chewed at his bottom lip and stared at her hands, still grazing the taut fabric over her belly. His child. He thought of her holding that baby in Oregon, of tiny Matthew’s fuzz-covered head in San Diego. His mind touched on the thought of an infant in his own arms, then shied away. He’d already watched one child of hers sicken and die; neither of them could bear that again.

But she’d also said entirely human.

“The results were clear?”

“99.9%,” she said. “But like I said, I didn’t run it myself, and I was so scared.” Her eyes lifted to meet his now, and they were round, wet. “I wanted to believe it, but how could I be sure? How could I trust anyone, Mulder?”

He saw her small and afraid, facing months of uncertainty. He saw these same wide and tearful eyes wanting to believe the results of a PCR test. He saw how much she needed him to believe with her: that this was only a normal child and theirs alone. He reached out a hand to take hers and she squeezed it hard.

“Why would they lie about that?” He whispered. He ran a thumb over her tense knuckles while a tear slipped away from the corner of her eye to trail down the side of her face.

She shook her head. “What if they want me complacent? What if they’re in the hospital when it’s time… when he’s born?”

He again. Their son.

Scully was staring at the ceiling now, willing her tears back into her eyes, trying to steel herself against these possibilities, as she must have done for months. Mulder sensed there was more she wasn’t telling him, so he lifted her fingers to kiss them. “What changed? You said you thought you couldn’t trust it, but you believe the test now?”

She held her breath for a moment’s hesitation before she whispered, “Yes.”

“Why?”

She looked at him. “I did another one. I mean I… I worked with my doctor and I ran the tests myself.”

“Scully.” Not quite chastising, but there was worry in his voice: a risky procedure, now run twice in an already complicated pregnancy. When had she done this?

“The results were the same.” There was something desperate in her eyes now. “He’s yours, Mulder.” Quickly she amended, “If you want him to be.”

—

It wasn’t because of what she’d told him, he thought, but because they’d finally talked about it at all. He kissed her on his couch and she clung to him, fierce and needy, arms tight around his back and face buried in his chest.

He pressed a palm to her belly between them and said, “Stay.”

She nodded, hot breath on his collarbone.

The earth and flower smell of her scalp under his nose made him think of their last night in Bellefleur: regret and sadness, but also the depth of love he’d felt while wrapped around her then. This, right now, was the so much more. Her body on his mattress, her cheek on his shoulder, marked the first time he thought to himself that maybe he was healing, that they both were.

Before she fell asleep she ran a finger down the center scar of his chest and whispered, “You said stay,” then kissed the thickened skin of it. “But Mulder you need to stay.” Her eyes were two small pricks of light in the darkened room that spoke to him of a deep uncertainty, of real fear.

He gathered her whole self to him in both arms, knee hooked over her hip, and said, “I know.” He held his lips to the crown of her head and whispered, “Scully I’m not going anywhere.”

—

“You’re really sure?” She asked him, face in that half-crumpled furrow of disbelief. She wore maternity jeans and what must have been one of his own pilfered button-downs.

“Yes!” He said. “Now watch out!”

She stepped aside as he carried a cardboard box—seven books and roughly fifteen t-shirts (he wasn’t good at packing)—through her doorway.

It made sense. She had that second bedroom already.

—

A different night and very late, after two, he sensed her tension: a strained quickness to her breathing beside him. She was facing away, trying to hide it. Mulder curled his palm over her hip and asked low, “What is it?”

She stiffened. “I’m okay,” she said, but he knew her. He tapped two knuckles on her hip bone.

“Scully.”

A long sigh: a concession, an opening up because they were doing this right, now. “I’m worried.”

He nodded, careful. “About me?”

She shook her head and was quiet for a moment. Then, “I spent my whole life thinking medicine was good, that its whole purpose was to make lives better, safer, longer…” She shifted so her back pressed against his chest and he slipped his left arm fully around her. “But after everything we’ve seen, everything that’s happened to me… I just don’t know that I can trust doctors anymore.”

Mulder tucked his nose in that place between her neck and shoulder. They had taken her faith even in this, shucked her convictions in the good of medicine. The meddling hands of whatever forces they were up against reached down and out into every institution she’d once trusted. “Even your new doctor?”

She shrugged.

He let his hand slip down, covering as much of her round abdomen as he could. He loved touching her this way now, feeling the little knees and feet press outward, the subtle hiccups that came in the evenings. “What can we do?”

She covered his hand with her own and guided it to a place where some small limb pushed toward the outside world. He drew a small circle around it with his index finger and kissed her ear.

“What if we went away? Maybe…” She swallowed. “Maybe some little town in West Virginia or Ohio with a birth center? We could use different names and maybe my mom could come with us and we could just… disappear for a little bit? Until he’s born.”

“You’ve been thinking about this.”

“Since the first amnio. Since I realized Parenti was bad.” Her voice wavered—there were tears in it now. “I thought I’d have to do it alone.”

Mulder shook his head, heart breaking for her—that this was her secret, her worst fear. “You won’t be alone, Scully, I promise. We can do that. We can go. Let’s do that.”

—

In the mountains of West Virginia, a place called Willowdale that sounded beautiful and safe, they were Kate and Richard Mulvey for two and a half weeks. They made quiet preparations in a rented vacation cottage, paid for in cash to a widow named Ruth. Maggie took no pseudonym, put her name on nothing, and stayed with them in the second small bedroom. She was a steadying maternal presence bearing folded blankets and cloth diapers, years of accumulated knowledge, and endless gratitude for being asked to come.

Scully had been having little contractions off and on for days until, on a Sunday afternoon in late May, they gripped her hard, forcing her to bend over the kitchen table and bite her lips together. “Mulder,” she whimpered, voice high, and he was beside her in a second.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re ready. We’re ready,” he told them both, willing it to be true.

The birth center was small and quiet, more like a house, and it kept its medical secrets hidden: beeping machines inside cabinets, monitors and needles and IV bags tucked away in drawers and closets, just in case.

Their baby was born in what looked like a farmhouse bedroom: soft light and calm music, yellow flowers on the curtains. Maggie took photos and offered her daughter sips of water, encouraging smiles. Mulder, who had killed with his own hands, who had chased monsters through dark streets with a gun, felt a different kind of wild adrenaline now, watching his partner rock her hips to some rhythm he couldn’t know. It was the anxiety of powerlessness: her body did this. It was she who had to make it happen. He could only wait and hold her hand.

There was a tub. Of course Scully wanted a tub. She sank into the warm water and groaned a sound older than time. When the intensity passed she said, “It feels good. The water feels good,” and then after that she couldn’t speak.

Blood in the water worried him, but the midwife assured him it was fine. “Your baby’s coming,” she said. In a mirror angled between Scully’s knees, he saw the baby’s head emerge.

Scully held him first, lifted him herself from her own body through the water and into her arms, sobbing with relief while he turned from purple to pink and the midwife helped her cover him in a blanket. When the umbilical cord went soft and white, Mulder, still dazed, still not quite believing, separated mother and child at last.

“That’s good,” the midwife said. “Now you can hold him.”

The infant, wrapped and red, was pressed into his arms so Dana could stand, pass the placenta, dry off. Mulder looked down at the impossible face of his son and realized that something, for once, had gone terribly right. They had done this. In spite of everything, he found himself part of a family.

“Let me see.” He heard Maggie’s voice and she was smiling. She took their picture, he with the baby—a nervous father’s first moments—and came to touch her grandchild. “He’s perfect.”

“Yeah,” Mulder croaked.

Scully appeared beside him in the terrycloth robe she’d brought from home, eyes wild with euphoric relief, smiling like he hadn’t seen in far too long. She put one hand on the baby’s head, the other on his shoulder. “You’re both here,” she sniffled.

Mulder, catching her euphoria, bent and kissed her hard and open-mouthed, right in front of her mother.

—

Back in their apartment (theirs now), the Gunmen brought gifts and marveled at the boy child who was ordinary, yet no less miraculous. Mulder showed him off, chest puffed out in fatherly pride. William, they called him, who weighed nearly ten pounds already and had no hair to speak of.

“You are one lucky sonofabitch,” Frohike told him, wiggling his fingers in front of the child’s eyes.

Luck was part of it, Mulder knew. Things could have been so different, both better and worse. There was a universe of infinite variations in path, in outcome, in seemingly fated misstep. What if there was only one choice? Scully had asked him once, and he’d contemplated all the possible errors that might have held them apart. He wanted to believe it were fate or luck, but he knew there was also choice. He would need to choose this path, not just now, but every day. It seemed so clear, so easy.

Mulder kissed the invisible fuzz on William’s head and nodded. “More than lucky,” he said.

When the boys left, he bounced his son into the kitchen where Scully was pouring iced tea into two tall glasses. She smiled at them, bright as sunshine.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said to her. “You give this guy some lunch, and I’ll make some for you, hmm?”

Her smile widened and she reached her arms out for the baby, who fussed when he sensed an approaching meal. “Sounds good,” she told him, tugging already at the neckline of her shirt. “Get in there and make me a sandwich.”

Mulder laughed. He felt suddenly whole and warm, taken by a need to touch her. Before they were out of reach, he threw one arm around Scully’s shoulders and bent to kiss her neck: a noisy smack just below her ear. “Yes ma’am,” he murmured. He let her go and watched them settle on the couch.

— end —

Survey #434

“i hate this town, it’s so washed up, & all my friends don’t give a fuck  /  they’ll tell me that it’s just bad luck, when will i find where i fit in?”

You get a text from your ex. He/she wants to hang out. How do you respond? Admittedly, I would. Do you have a friend of the opposite sex that you secretly want to be more than friends with? No. Well, there are times where I think I WANT to like-like Girt, but I just don't. And yet he's always been there for me without fail, is super funny and kind and chill... but I think we were just friends for too long; he feels like my brother by this point in time. If your partner smoked, would that be a problem for you? If it was cigarettes, yes. Even weed (UNLESS it was for medicinal purposes and not a constant thing) I'd be iffy about. I just don't want to date a smoker. Lung damage is lung damage and weed actually has more carcinogens, and I don't want to sign myself up for all that. I don't want to watch my partner wither away from nonstop smoking and also have myself suffer from second-hand smoking. When will you next see your best friend? There's no telling. Right now I'm trying to be realistic and responsible with the money I DO ever get and put it towards more important investments, but I really do want to take a plane up there at some point. But that's also waiting until Covid is in the past. Heeeell no would I be stepping into an airport right now, even being vaccinated. How many tattoos would you like to have? Too many to count, ha ha. I want LOADS. Paint me, baby. :') Do you like your first name? I actually do. Have you ever talked to a boyfriend about an ex-boyfriend? Yes. It's kind of inevitable when you go into a new relationship, hoping it'll go well and be seriously invested, that you let your partner know "oh hey, this happened and seriously affected me to where I'm going to have 'my days.'" Greatest birthday gift you ever got? My snake Venus was technically a birthday present, though I obviously picked her out. Worst memory you have? Losing Jason. I can't say enough that the night of the breakup still doesn't feel real. First memory you can remember? My brother going down our slide into the Hurricane Floyd flood in our front yard, ha ha. I was around two, I wanna say? I don't feel like looking up the date of the hurricane. Oldest object you own? When did you get it? I'm sure that would be a stuffed animal we have stored away somewhere. Or my baby blanket, also safely tucked away. Meanest person you know? Why do you feel this way? I don't "know" Colleen anymore, but God knows she fit the bill. She was so fucking rude to people (yes, she was one of those people that bitched out store employees that have no control over things that inconvenienced her), the world revolved around her problems, she started drama with the damn grass... It's funny even picturing how she was my best friend once. My standards were lower for who I could befriend back then, but goddamn. Ever been dumped? By who? Yes, Jason. Technically Sara as well, but "dumped" seems like an unfitting term? Like we just talked it out and sorta mutually agreed that it was wiser that we weren't together at the time. Have you ever dumped someone? Why? Yes, mostly because I didn't like-like them. Juan was more so because I believed a rumor by Rachel, and Tyler, I just wasn't invested in and had NO desire to put up with the "we need to talk every five minutes" crap. Where do you buy most of your food? Wal-Mart. Last house you have been to: whose was it, and why were you there? My sister's, for my nephew's birthday party. Have you ever been a drunk driver? No, and fuck you if you've ever put others (and yourself) at risk like that. One kid you cannot stand? None that I know, and that's very few. Has anyone ever saved your life? Jason and Mom literally have. Last thing you cried about? Ha ha, I finished watching another SOMA playthrough earlier, and I will ALWAYS start to cry at the end. Without fail. Would you sacrifice your life for someone else's baby? I honestly think I would if it was a split-second decision. Tell me about your latest dream: I think my APAP mask wasn't positioned well last night, because I had a SHITLOAD of nightmares. Too many to even remember. Have you ever been in a limo? No. I've always wanted to experience that once, man. Have you ever been the maid of honor in a wedding party? No. Has anyone ever seen you naked? I was born naked, my man. Mom used to give my sister and I baths together, and I took a bath with a best friend once as a kid. Then one other person has. Do you have a calendar? If so, what is the theme of it? Not a current one, no. Nicest thing you have ever done for a complete stranger: I have no idea. Meanest thing you have ever done to a complete stranger: *shrug* Have you ever been sent to the principal's office? If so, why? And how did you feel? Yes, I think because they wanted to ask the reason behind all my morning tardies. I was soooo scared, just being a kid. Person you hope you never run into again: Colleen. Have you ever streaked? Heeeeell no. Why do you hate your ex? I don't hate any of them. What animal did you last pet or hold? Roman, my cat. What color is your hair? It's my natural brunette right now. I want to dye it SO badly. Have you ever fallen asleep in someone's arms? Yeah. Have you ever had to clean a cat box before? Yeah, seeing as I own an indoor cat. Christmas is coming. Who are you buying gifts for? In the hypothetical situation where I had the money, I'd buy things for my parents, my stepmom, my two immediate sisters, Ash's kids, as well as her husband, but only because I'd feel obligated to as he's considered a close member of the family. I'd also totally get something for Sara! When somebody intimidates you, how do you usually act around them? SCARED. I get quiet, stutter if I do talk, and possibly cry. Is your favorite singer in a band or does he or she ride solo? He was originally the singer of Black Sabbath, but he's been solo for forever now. I prefer him solo, honestly. Did your parents ever hang your old artwork up on the walls? Ohhh yes. Mom still does, ha ha. What is the weirdest obsession you’ve ever had? Nothing really "weird," I think... How long can you be in a car before wanting to get out? It depends on if I have my music or not. If I do, I can last hours, but if not, I don't really like being in the car at all. Have any songs ever inspired you to play an instrument? No. Do you ever use Pandora?No. Are you better with creative writing or writing essays? Creative writing, but I'm fine with both. What is the weirdest animal you’ve ever seen as a pet? I know OF someone who rescued I want to say a baby bobcat, or something along those lines, but I didn't know that guy personally. I don't think I've ever actually met someone with a truly *strange* pet... The most unique I've seen is probably just a chinchilla. If you had to change one, would you rather change your hair or your eyes? My eyes. I don't like them much, mainly the shape. What was your favorite computer game as a kid? I loved the various Oregon Trail games, as well as one I think was called The Amazon Trail 3. Then there was a few dinosaur games I LOVED, and then there were the classic kids' games like the Putt-Putt and Fred the Fish series. Any shows on TV that you flat out refuse to start watching? 13 Reasons Why. I don't even support that show existing. Pajamas with feet: yay or nay? NOOOOOOOO, that is so uncomfortable. What is your opinion on fruitcake? That's an even BIGGER "no." Who did you last dream about? I don't remember. Do you have trouble remembering important things? Yes. .-. I barely remember anything. Which animal can you imitate the best? I dunno? Have you bought any drugs this month? I don't do drugs, so. Have you ever set foot in a tanning bed? Nope, never will. Do you know the Soulja Boy dance? Ha ha, I did as a kid. My then-best friend, younger sister, and I wanted to learn it. I don't remember it now, that's for sure. What is the best ice cream flavor? Ben and Jerry's "Phish Food" is GODLY. Wallpaper on your computer's desktop? Teddy, my late dog. Do you clean when you’re upset? Hell no, I do the opposite: nothing. Do you sleep with the door open or closed? It stays open. My cat would pitch a fit otherwise. Do you know anyone who has actually been in an alcohol or drug related crash? Yes, actually. It was incredibly tragic; the both of them were high (maybe drunk, idr for sure), and my friend was driving with her best friend in the passenger seat. They crashed, and said friend's best friend died. For YEARS she would share pictures of them together on Facebook, "talking" to her, and it was just so heartbreaking. I doubt she's forgiven herself to this day, but she seems to have mostly moved on the best she could, being married with a daughter now. Have you ever gotten a professional massage? No, and I do NOT want one. I don't want some random stranger touching me in ANY way. Do you have a good relationship with your first love? No. We haven't talked in years, so maybe he feels no hatred for me at this point, but I do for myself. I don't hate him at all. Do you feel like you have life figured out? bitch hell no What would you do if you were faced with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy (at your current age)? Was I raped? I'd almost certainly abort because I would be traumatized as FUCK. If it was my own fault, I think I'd go through with the pregnancy, but give the baby up for adoption. There is no way I could raise a kid right now. Or probably ever. Water or Gatorade? I don't like either, really, but I HATE Gatorade. Have you ever thought about getting your nose pierced? It's been pierced twice, and I'm thinking of getting it redone again, but this time use a hoop instead of a stud to keep the damn piercing from falling out and closing in my sleep. Have you ever slapped someone? On the arm as a kid. That doesn't excuse it, though. Who are the pictures of in the room? I have a lot of posters, but no real photographs of anyone. Have your parents ever smoked pot? Dad did a lot of drugs before I was born, but Mom's never touched anything. I think. Would you ever consider moving to a different country? I'd love to live in Canada, if that didn't entail leaving my family. What is your favourite food from your culture? Cheeseburgers, alsdf;alwer Do you know any pick-up lines in a foreign language? No. What degree are you or will you pursue while in college? I've dropped out of college three times. I am never going back to major in anything. I changed my major quite a few times while I was there. Favorite arcade game? I don't really have one. One of my life goals is to go to an arcade that has Silent Hill: The Arcade, though. There are very few throughout the world, and it looks fun. Would other people consider your sense of humor inappropriate? I don't see how. Some inappropriate things can make me laugh, but it's definitely not my favorite form of humor, and I myself don't really make jokes of that sort. Who is your biggest celebrity crush right now? Mark Fischbach. :'') What are they famous for? He's a big YouTuber, aND WILL ALSO BE A MAIN ACTOR IN A SHOW NEXT YEAR. LET'S GOOOOOOOOOO. Have you ever had a controlling boyfriend/girlfriend? No, I would NOT stand for that bullshit. Do you have any gay family members? I know my mom's... cousin I want to say is gay. Somebody related to her is. Was your first kiss romantic? I feel like it was. What are you most likely to go to jail for? Pirating shit. Well, can you even be locked up for downloading minor shit? Shows what I know. Have you ever liked someone that was in a relationship with someone else? Boy, have I. Would you ever get a boob job? When (or if...) I lose all the weight I want, I can almost guarantee a breast lift will be something I'd want. Certain things happen when you lose a shitload of weight alsdkf;alkwe Have you ever tried to break up anyone because you liked one of them? Not intentionally. What would you think if you found out your ex was gay? If we're talking THE ex, safe to say I'd be shocked. Did you ever think someone didn’t like you, but come to find out they really did? It's weird, I've felt both ways with Girt? Like there were times I was pretty much 100% certain he liked me, but I'd also be like "nah, no way, he sees me as a sister." Turns out he like-liked me. Are you worried about anything right now? I can't possibly recall the last time I WASN'T worried about something. When you are home alone, do you still close the door when you shower? I don't shower when I'm home alone because I'm afraid of ever fainting and busting my ass again. What noise do you hear? I'm currently listening to "All Signs Point To Lauderdale" by A Day to Remember, and I can also hear my fan going. Do you go online everyday? Pretty much without fail. It'll probably be a cold day in Hell before I willingly don't come online, ha ha.

The Bloom Is On The Rye

Her ring was still loose on her hand but it felt like hers now as she rested it on Henry’s shoulder and then gripped him tightly, urging him to kiss her again.  She could feel his breath on her lips and his thumb just under her chin and the nearness of him was intoxicating, like she’d been drinking wine instead of eating berries all afternoon.

Emmry Forced Marriage Mercy Street/Oregon Trail crossover! Chapter 4 below, also on AO3

a continuation of In having new eyes by @jomiddlemarch​ and beta-ed into being better by @the-spaztic-fantastic​.  Thank you both for your contributions to this story!

They left Fort Kearney with ten yards of calico and ten yards of sheeting muslin, a dairy cow, new boots for Henry, and a dress that with only minor adjustments could be worn right away.  Emma didn’t like to think about what might have befallen the woman it originally belonged to.  She wasn’t the only one who had suffered hardship on the trail, but in many ways she was lucky.  Henry was able to replenish what stores were waning and to add the supplies that feeding another person required.  It became obvious at the trading outpost that others on the trail were selling off wares they had once treasured enough to take on a 2,000 mile trek, parlaying a cookstove or a piece of furniture into more flour or sugar or simply the promise of a lighter load and quicker travel.

As they drew closer to the North Platte River, Emma and Mary gathered serviceberry and gooseberry and chokeberry, staining their fingers purple and their lips and tongues too. Dr. Foster had heard of outbreaks of cholera around this heavily traveled area and warned them all to boil water before using it, an untested preventative measure he was nevertheless certain would help.  That was a sweaty task, but the walks for berry gathering were a delight. They never ventured so far as to let the dust of the wagon train out of sight, but Emma could tell exactly when Henry spotted them returning from these excursions.  Even from afar she knew the tight set of his shoulders, the way he stood at the front of the wagon, looking for them.  The way his face broke into a grin at the sight of her and he jumped off the wagon in a fluid motion to coax the oxen with a “Come up, come up” as they plodded along.

They returned to camp with full stomachs and full baskets, enough that Dr. Foster declared them safe from scurvy and Mary spoke of making pies for everyone, even that horrible Silas Bullen who leered at everyone and hadn’t stopped complaining about leg cramps all day.  When Silas began playing on his fiddle and Henry and Emma lingered over their fire with the Fosters nearby, Henry wiped a thumb across Emma’s lips and then leaned in to kiss her. 

“Your lips are purple.” He spoke against her mouth, which made it feel less chaste than it started, the simple press of his lips against hers not unlike the one at their hurried wedding.  Emma could hear Mrs. Brannon singing along to the mournful tune Silas was playing and it felt like a song just for them.

But meet me, meet me in the Ev'ning, 

While the bloom is on the Rye. 

But name the day, the wedding day, 

And I will buy the ring.

Her ring was still loose on her hand but it felt like hers now as she rested it on Henry’s shoulder and then gripped him tightly, urging him to kiss her again.  She could feel his breath on her lips and his thumb just under her chin and the nearness of him was intoxicating, like she’d been drinking wine instead of eating berries all afternoon.

The moon shines bright and clear;

Then pretty Jane, my dearest Jane,

Ah! never look so shy,

But meet me, meet me in the Ev'ning,

While the bloom is on the Rye.

Her mouth was open and she looked from his eyes to his mouth just as he formed the word “Emma.”

“Give her a flourish for me, young fella!” Silas shouted, his speech slurred by skullvarnish and the strings of his fiddle screeching to a halt.  Mrs. Brannan shouted him down and he started playing again, mercifully, as Henry pulled Emma by the hand to their wagon. Once inside, he dropped her hand and took a step away from her.

“Why don't you?” She asked, trying to make it sound like a joke. She was angry with Silas for ruining a moment where it seemed Henry was finally looking at her in the way she wanted and now his eyes were on the floor, like he’d never look at her again.  “If I'd have married him he would have done it.”

“That’s why,” Henry said, meeting her eyes and looking so solemn she thought of Jimmy’s name for him, Old Stone-Face.  “If we did that, if I did that to you...I would be no better than him.  And you deserve better than that.”

“You wouldn't be doing it to me.  We would be doing it together.” If she was still in Alexandria she would have stamped her foot, but of course if she was there none of this would be happening.  She was an expert in avoiding assignations not of interest and encouraging affection only when it wouldn’t ruin a reputation, but not how to convince her husband she wanted his touch. He swallowed and moved a bit closer, and she could see his face changing from stone to man once more. 

“I didn’t want to eat the fruit too early.  It would have made me sick. Both of us sick.” He cupped her cheek and she nestled into it eagerly, willing him to see her eagerness.  “I thought we could fall in love. I could love you. I didn’t want you to be obligated or grateful, I wanted you to love me too.  But if I took that - “ He trailed off, and Emma wasn’t surprised when the words he came back with were familiar ones from the Bible.  He used it to speak for him so often, especially when he had no words of his own. “Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.”

She heard it for what it was, a promise to love her if she’d let him.  “I desire it, Henry.  I desire you.  I love you.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

And then his mouth was finally against hers and his hands on her waist, untying her skirts and then working at her back to undo the buttons she had carefully redone on the unlucky woman’s dress. When his hands touched her skin, it felt like fire burning, a bright spot of heat where his palms moved to cup her breasts and then graze her sides, embers flaring down into her belly and outwards.  She had the wild thought that the flames he had put out on her ruined dress he was now putting back in, stoking a flame that she wasn’t sure how to quench.

She ran her hands under his shirt and then around to his back, pressing him closer against herself, delighting in the sharp exhale he made as their hips connected. 

And then, the sound of a loud thud and Dr. Foster cursing, silence where there had been fiddle music, cries of alarm instead of the murmuring of weary travelers.  

“Cholera!” Dr. Foster shouted as they adjusted their clothes and ducked back out of the wagon.  “I’m sure of it.  Damn fool didn’t boil his water, I’d wager.”

Henry kissed her forehead and then left to help Dr. Foster move Silas’s prone body to the edge of camp.  Emma took several breaths before joining Mary to see what was to be done. She had never nursed, but then again she had never done a great many things.  

Author’s Note:  Boiling water was not known to be a preventative measure for cholera but in 1850s London Dr. John Snow (really) isolated the cause of a cholera outbreak to a water pump, so I figure it is not too outlandish for Jed to have formed his own ideas a little bit earlier about cholera and its spread.

Overlanders did more often walk than ride, gathering berries and fuel for fires as they went.  Oxen were not driven by reins but rather voice commands and whips.

The Bloom is in the Rye was a popular song at the time wagon trains were moving west.  

“Give her a flourish for me, young fella!” is the best line out of the musical 1776, spoken by delegate Stephen Hopkins from Rhode Island to Thomas Jefferson as he announces he is going home to Virginia to see his wife. I can’t imagine Stephen and Henry are related, since Henry would never say anything remotely like that, even if we want him to.  

Skullvarnish was whiskey cut with molasses to make it last longer which sounds like just about the least appetizing thing I can imagine, and exactly what Bullen would drink. 

“Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires”  is a verse from Song of Solomon and I’m sure it made an impression on Henry because it’s in the book three times at least: 2:7; 3:5; 8:4.

​ @emeraude-nobrega

LONG AND RAMBLEY FIREBIRB FACTS INVOLVING HISTORY AND PEOPLE CONNECTING HIM TO DARK MAGIC AND THE DEVIL BC IM A HISTORY NERD  AKA, THE ACCOUNT OF AEDUS BEING ENTIRELY DONE WITH HUMANS AND THEIR SILLY SUPERSTITIONS AND REACTIONS TO THEM:

Aedus was absolutely, repeatedly  accused of being the devil, himself, during the Middle Ages all the way up through to the American Civil War… which tends to happen when you have unusually colored eyes, a charming demeanor… and the habit of catching on fire. During the European witch hunts, he was even accused of being a warlock, having sold his soul. So, they tried burning him at the stake. That worked about as well as you’d expect. He didn’t want to harm anyone, as many of those in the crowd were innocent women and children caught up in this hysteria, so Aedus    ( then, going by the name Aurav )   simply waited until the flames burned through the ropes, freeing him, and he casually strolled away from the terrified and screaming onlookers. Stark naked. And positively miffed that they’d burned one of his favorite shirts.

And that wasn’t the only time. Throughout his years of traveling, Aedus has found that most mortals generally don’t take very well to seeing a man who can ignite himself at will… or who’s most GRIEVOUS wounds heal in a matter of days. During the reign of Bloody Mary, he was, again, burned at the stake. This time, not because he was believed to be a witch, but because he was branded a heretic, spreading wild stories about a history that didn’t align with the current church’s beliefs. That, also, went about as well as you’d expect. Again, he walked away, bemoaning the loss of his clothes and terrifying everyone who attended the execution.

On the other end, people attempted to drown him for witchcraft in Salem. Aedus made the mistake of stopping there just toward the tail end of the trials. Already, the townsfolk were in a panic and treated him with suspicion when he arrived. And, then, some man he got into an argument with accused Aedus of CURSING him and the Phoenix was dragged into the courtroom. Four other people he’d never even laid eyes on testified against him, claiming he’d come to them in dreams and used magic to make them behave strangely. Aedus, of course, denied it. So, he was dragged to the river, bound to rocks, and thrown in to either prove or dismiss their accusations. Well, since he doesn’t need to breathe, the Phoenix remained under there far longer than anyone could hold their breath — almost an hour, before he was dragged back up. Still alive. Of course, this didn’t go over well with the Puritans. Even less so when Aedus had, understandably, had  ENOUGH  and ignited every inch of skin, MELTING the ropes and evaporating every drop of water off of him. The heat got so bad, those who hadn’t already retreated screaming prayers were forced to. They called him the devil. And Aedus, essentially, had to go into hiding for a few years as word of him spread past Salem. But, the story did die out fairly quickly after the trails ended and the town magistrate tried to brush everything under the rug, so to speak.

Throughout his time with Samuel during the Revolutionary War, Aedus did try very hard to hide what he was from the population. It worked, up until Samuel’s death during a particularly brutal battle… then, the Phoenix sought out the man who’d fired that killing shot and burned him to ASH. That  unnatural death  frightened the community, who claimed it was magic. They weren’t entirely wrong.

With the passing of the Land Act in 1804, Aedus moved  West  with a SMALL caravan ( only three wagons ), hoping to find solace after Samuel’s death. Halfway through the journey, a terrible winter storm struck. The wagons sought shelter in a grove of trees along the trail, but that wasn’t enough to keep the cold from taking its toll. Hypothermia, frostbite…. The oxen were in danger of dying, winds whipping through reaching a chill FAR below freezing… so the Phoenix made the decision to reveal what he was. To one of his friends, first, a young woman. She was scared, of course, Confused. But, she understood that he could save them and get them safely through this weather to Oregon. She’s the one who broke the news to the others, and, even though many of them were extremely frightened of him, in their desperation, they accepted his help. He kept them warm. Helped them cook their food. Offered light in the way of flames sprouting from his fingertips whenever needed to help conserve their supply of candles… being unaffected by the cold, himself, he offered all of his clothing to the others, save enough to preserve modesty, for them to layer. He went out hunting and gathering food. For two weeks, he kept them alive, warm, fed, and safe… everyone revered him as something of a guardian angel. Less of the MONSTER  they’d first thought when they’d found out, and more of a miracle from God. They reached their new home, all of them swearing to keep his secret safe as they set up their new lives.

so since aedus is active right now, too, i would like to take this moment to say… if your muse ever needs a place to stay, or someone to look out for them, especially if they’re a lost or scared kid, throw them at this soft-hearted, ancient firebird.   he will 10000% make sure they have food in their belly, a warm and safe place to sleep, will have their back and protect them.   just aedus, y’all.  he’ll open his home to anyone who needs it.  he’ll make them tea or hot cocoa, give them freshly tumbled blankets so they’re warm and cozy.    listen, the amount of kids he’s essential;ly adopted, helped raise, looked out for, cheered for, over the centuries??   i mean for someone who’s scared of being a dad bc of PHOENIX FAMILY DRAMA ™, he sure as hell has that powerful paternal instinct.  will 1000/10  adopt your muse    all you gotta do is throw ‘em his way and he will take them right under his fiery wing    

ME:  considering how much losing people he loves screws him up, could it be another few centuries and this phoenix could possibly snap and grow colder, and begin to distance himself from humanity, just to spare himself from that pain?? ALSO ME: he’s legitimately too soft-hearted and too attached for them for that, so despite the pain, he will continue to integrate himself into humanity and continue to watch those he loves fade and die, mourning them, subjecting himself to that pain willingly… because the alternative is isolation and he already tried that once after samuel died and he wound up on a wagon train west, making new friends, watching them pass, and new friends out on the coast… and watching them fade, too, before he finally moved back. Because even when he actively tries to distance himself he physically can’t, ‘cause he needs that companionship. and not only that, but he recognizes that being around humanity keeps him grounded and helps him be better, improving himself as they improve… and without them, he would truly be lost and stagnant

also, some of aedus’s physical traits, because appearance and tactile senses do play a big part in interactions. especially first meetings ( i.e. things i am totally okay with your muse noticing about him right from the get-go tbh )

GOLDEN EYES:  his irises look a LOT like fire… they’re a lighter gold at the top and darken to almost an ORANGE near the bottom. TEMPERATURE: his skin does feel incredibly warm to the touch, as though he’s constantly suffering from a high fever… this heat can even be felt simply radiating off of him when the fires inside of him flare hotter, such as when he’s angry or upset. ATTIRE:  Aedus is always impeccably dressed. Considering how rich he is from all the money he’s stored away throughout his life  ( a big chunk of it coming from selling items after they’ve become antiques and VERY valuable to collectors. Authentic coins from the Roman Empire, first edition books dating all the way back to the early 19th century, random household items from the homes he kept throughout the Middle Ages, clear up to the American Civil War )    he can definitely afford the BEST tailors his current place of residence has to offer. Not to mention, he does have quite a discerning taste when it comes to fashion. I mean, he worked hard making this body look just how he wanted it… of course he’s going to wear clothes that accentuate it. VOICE: his voice holds traces of accents from all over the world. It’s a little difficult to pinpoint just one… but, I’d say the more prominent ones, most simple to pick out, would be Irish and British. He has a very LOW voice. Keeps his tone very soft and steady for the most part.

random reminder that samuel’s watch is aedus’s most valued possession. it’s the one he usually keeps on his person  ( unless he’s planning on picking a fight with someone, in which case it sits securely in his bedside table’s drawer )    and it’s something he would risk his safety to get back if lost or stolen. it’s the very last shred of samuel that remains… the last physical reminder of the man he loved more than anything in this world, trusted more than anyone else, would readily have married if they’d been granted the chance. aedus will be extremely hesitant to let anyone else touch it, no matter who they are…

apocalypse diaries

a little account of living in oregon during the 2020 wildfires/COVID-19 pandemic. mostly under the read more :)

Monday, 9/7

This morning, the sky was blue. Hot, the sun harsh for September, but blue and clear. I went on a walk with my mom, threading through shaded forests, cresting the hilltop with a view of town, and passing by fields rimmed with sweet ripe blackberries on the bush. We saw lots of people -- a perfect late summer day in a perfect little town, where the grand brick buildings of campus and small downtown storefronts are ringed by rolling farmland, a smooth-flowing river, and forested hills that grow into sheltering mountains.

Of course, we walked six feet apart, and hid our noses and mouths behind masks whenever we passed others on the narrow trails. And almost everyone else did too, in a show of courtesy -- it felt perfectly normal. I am still occasionally taken aback when I shy away from others or try to trap my breath or hear an announcement beginning “To stop the spread of the virus...” while grocery shopping. But these things don’t surprise me as much as seeing a photograph of two people unmasked and nearly touching, or watching the neighbors have a birthday party, people and music spilling out of their kitchen and onto the balcony. The connection and celebration I had known my whole life, now completely foreign.

Despite it all, that morning felt perfectly normal. After discussing our birthdays, my classes, and my mom’s anxiety about going backpacking, I returned home and made vegetable soup, watched Prince of Tennis with my roommates, and practiced taking integrals. The afternoon passed quietly, doing calculus at the table, until I glimpsed a sliver of strange sky through the blinded window. I stepped onto the balcony and into another kind of apocalypse.

The most welcome thing about outside was the breeze, making the dry air just bearable after the hot day. The concrete was still warm under my feet, comforting. It seemed the wind had blown in smoke from some fire, far-away until now. The sun, setting and shrouded by the smoke, glowed red and foreboding. The rest of the air was tinted yellow, and if not for the sepia tones, it might have just looked foggy, everything smudged and faded. 

Notably, the smoke hadn’t stopped the games of beach volleyball in the park across the street. Quiet shouts and static-y pop music filled the air along with the wind, which rattled the trees’ dry leaves. Someone walked their dog by, pausing to take a picture of the sun. A car started and pulled out of our complex. A leaf scraped across the ground, and the smoke filled my nose.

I stood outside for longer than I needed to, somehow trapped by the warm concrete under my feet and soothing breeze on my arms. The smoke scent was light, and seemed innocuous until I thought about how far away the fires must be -- out in the Cascades, not the little hills that sheltered my town. The wind suddenly seemed a bit less friendly, carrying them closer. I thought about the emergency alert for high heat and winds earlier that day, and (among other things) the big signs along I-5 that discouraged travel during the pandemic, and slipped back inside.

Instead, I raised the blinds, to observe the progress of the red sun and the shrouding smoke and just-green trees buffeted by the wind. I did try to go outside again, to write, but the smoke was thicker, enough to make me cough. I thought about the virus, and watched bits of ash float past, and went back inside. It wasn’t worth the worry of giving myself a sore throat. 

So now I’m sitting in my kitchen, and watching it grow unnaturally dark as the clock passes 7:00. The sky is yellower, and the trees and volleyball players have faded, drifting into the thickening smoke. I looked up the air quality a bit ago -- unhealthy for people with sensitive lungs, which is better than I expected. It all feels very strange, but mundane. The volleyball continues even as the sky grows dark. Cottonwood seeds float by with the ash. And I am just watching from a quiet kitchen, with dishes that still need doing. I wonder how long the smoke might last -- I’d love to open my window tonight. 

This morning had felt so normal in comparison, even though the smoke is such a small thing in comparison to the shuttered schools and stores, the cancelled concerts, and the rules of six feet and masked faces. But still, I get up and do the dishes, move my laundry to the drier, and watch a movie with my sister (over Zoom, of course). I can hear the wind whistling outside, and the smoke scent begins to seep in even though all the windows are closed. I hope that I don’t wake up smelling smoke and that I can open my window soon. Wishful thinking, and I realize that I barely bother to wonder anymore when I might dare to touch someone I don’t already share air with.

Tuesday, 9/8

 I wake up a few times as night fades into morning, mostly from the growing light, but once from the shower starting on the other side of the wall -- my roommate has work at 8:30. My comforter is on the floor, my battery pack and earbuds are in the bed where I discarded them before going to sleep. I am almost too warm under just a sheet, but I curl back into it each time I wake. The whole sky is yellow-orange, as if the sunrise fills all the air, but it’s just smoke shrouding my surroundings. It is alien, this dusty neon sky, but I go back to sleep anyway.

When I get up, the downstairs is dark, one window covered and smoke filtering light out from the rest. It feels like evening, but I make an egg and toast and eat a beautiful nectarine, which reminds me of yesterday morning, a flawless piece of summer. It is hard to think of anything about this summer as flawless. I can see bits of ash flutter by the window, like snowflakes, and I long for last winter.

After breakfast, I water the balcony plants. The smoke scent is strong, sharper than yesterday, and the fires creep closer. There is ash layered in the pots, and on our table and chairs. My bare feet leave prints. I also mist the plants with water, to make the balcony air, dry from the wind, more bearable. Balcony life is ill-suited to most plants, and I wonder if they know where they are, if they know that the salvatory humidity on their leaves is man-made.

I finish as quickly as possible, and return inside, where the air is already too warm (the cool morning outside had been a relief), but clear and clean. I would like to drive to the stormy coast, to go swimming in the cold water of the nearby river, even to cool myself with a mist from the plants’ spray bottle, but I don’t. Instead, I wash my face and brush my teeth and get my calculus workbook and another cup of coffee. I open to the chapter on motion problems and watch a dog-walker drift by with the ash. There is no volleyball today, the air hazardous.

-

The first part of today passes like yesterday. I finish my calculus and eat yesterday’s soup for lunch. I call our internet provider to complain about our abysmal internet speeds. The call takes 30 minutes, and we get nowhere. She asks about the weather where I am, and I hold back a laugh. I glance out the window, as if to check that the smoke hasn’t up and left and say “Not too bad. We have some smoke blowing in from wildfires though.” I guess it’s not too bad -- I’m safe, at least.

Afterwards, I go up to my room to get something, and wince at the scent of smoke inside. My throat has started to catch, and my roommate’s eyes are watering. We decide to venture out to get sealing tape. It’s nice to do something, and for a moment, this feels like an adventure, a brave expedition into the unknown to protect us and ours. For one of the first times since March, I am present, letting the moment, the heavy smoke sink into my skin. I will remember, but who will I tell about these days? What will still be here, who might still be shocked by it when this is all over?

The feeling of adventure only lasts as long as the Home Depot parking lot, where the smoke chokes thick in my throat and the wind whips ash into our eyes. It is evening, and the sun must be sinking again, because the sky turns from dusty brown to red-orange, far too dark for a summer 6:00. It makes the grass a plastic shade of vibrant green and suddenly, I want nothing more than to be home, out of the smoke. The adventure is gone, and even when we return home, the sickly orange from the windows and bright ceiling light makes me feel melancholy, lonely and lost.

I’m not sure what to do with the feeling, but I know that I need to start taping our doors and windows. I go downstairs, where it is the worst, and as I run tape along the seams of the front door, I feel ash beneath my feet. The flames seem to lick at our walls, and for the first time, I wonder how far the winds will drive the fires. Where would we go, when the rest of the state is already fleeing to us? 

I think of March 11th, when my university announced they would go online for most of finals week and the first week of spring term. I remember how we watched other states, other colleges, shutter, and wondered when or if we might do that. I remember March 23rd, when the governor ordered us into our houses to stay, and how we planned grimly for a few weeks’ change. I wonder how long this will last.

Thankfully, we watch Prince of Tennis and read our dumb romance novel, and I forget for a bit -- it is nice to be stuck inside with these people, at least. As the evening winds down, we finish taping windows. We tell our other roommate, who is away, to come in through the garage when he gets home. It’s the only door we don’t tape, the double entrance acting like an airlock. I even carry the balcony plants inside, so we can seal it off. They are dry and ashy, but probably happier to be inside. Even coated in ash, the basil, sage, and tomato still smell like lovely and herby, and it makes me smile.

Wednesday-Friday, 9/9-9/11

    The next few days pass like this. We stay inside, and watch the shifts of the sky from orange to yellow to sepia, a strange fog settled over us. We monitor the smell of smoke in the house, how it changes from day-to-day and room-to-room. At least the smoke blocks the sun, and keeps it cool while we can’t open the windows.

    I am reading a Money Diary on Friday morning, and the author mentions how “shocking the images coming out of Portland are”. For a moment, I am amused -- Portland has some of the least smoke in Oregon right now. Then I realize she probably means the protests, or the detainment of protestors in unmarked federal vans.

    I thought it was a good thing, how little the smoke bothered me. I’m a natural resources major -- I know that forest fires are inevitable. Even though they are unusually bad right now, in part because of climate change, their existence does not alarm me. It is tragic that people are losing their homes, but that is almost inevitable, as long as we build in forests and let fuel grow thick and close to what we love.

    But even so, this has never happened before, and in some moments, it hits me. It is scary the fires have stretched so far, that they may continue to be this bad for many years, that we are so ill-equipped, that this happens as people go hungry and are evicted and die from this pandemic. As I typed the words “detainment of protestors in unmarked federal vans.” I wondered if I had become numb. I know this is bad, but it feels so distant, so unreal, so unavoidable. I am almost powerless, so what does it matter if I care? It’s easier to not feel anything, to fixate instead on the hundreds of tiny crises my mind makes of my body and life. I finish my coffee and do my math and try to ignore the pain throbbing in my elbow.

Saturday-Thursday, 9/12-9/17

    It was supposed to clear up on Friday. When it didn’t, Tuesday and even Wednesday looked better, the air quality “moderate”. However, it remains “unhealthy”, and I cancel my trips to The Arc and Goodwill, so I can at least meet my mom outside for her birthday. She is struggling with the smoke, but glad to get outside for a bit. Instead of the long hike we had planned, we sit six feet apart on a bench, and I feel like a monster for cringing away from her. The breeze on my skin, though, is a blessing, salvation after a week of the same stale, still air in our house. I want to open my window.

    There is rain coming, and wind, and maybe later this week the smoke will clear. We plan for my birthday, assuming that outside, the only safe place to meet our friends, will be safe itself. I imagine pulling all the tape off, and wonder if it will have to go back on. When will we feel safe enough to let the air in? Will I ever shake hands with a stranger again? Will I continue to recoil at the very thought of entering a store without a mask? It feels like being naked.

    The rain does come, in drizzles, on Thursday night. It comes with flashes of lightning and rolling purrs of thunder, soothing, while we make pretzels and fondue, and I feel joyous, unhindered for the first time in more than a week. When we finish our cooking, we go outside. It is still smoky, but muted, and the smell is mixed with the delightful scent of a long-needed rain. I grin and hop onto the curb as we walk to the park. We talk and I climb on the play structures (I dropped my bouldering class, even though I miss it fiercely) until the thunder roars too close, and we return inside. It feels like a gift, something I could pray for.

Friday, 9/18

    I’m listening to ASMR in bed (it’s after midnight, so technically Friday), and when I take my headphones off to go to sleep, I realize it is pouring. I briefly entertain the idea of going outside, but it doesn’t quite seem worth drying off after. Instead, I lay awake, listening to thunder and rain, and think about what could have been. I am still happy, finally given a good form of novelty.

    I wake up that morning and the sky is clear as can be. I grin. As soon as I eat breakfast, I grab my bike to go shopping -- the air quality is “moderate”. I take deep lungfuls, uncaring that the air is public. It smells so good, smoke-free and rain-filled. 

    The first rain of autumn always feels like a return home. I don’t like the dry grass and merciless heat, especially when I am stuck inside, watching. It feels so strange, to see the exact same yellow-brown leaves littering the ground, feel the same cool damp air on my skin, the same weak, soothing sun. So much has changed, but this is still the same. I think of my middle and high school soccer games, of watching my favorite YouTubers play Undertale with a cup of tea on stormy Saturday nights, of sitting next to my dad’s fireplace with our kittens, of doing homework while my mom’s partner watches football. The season reminds me of home, but I’m not sure that I feel comforted. 

    I know that I’ve changed, and so has the world. I desperately, desperately, want this place to still feel like home, and maybe it will tomorrow, maybe it will next fall. I also don’t want to think about next fall -- what will have happened by then? What will have happened in five years? I have my hopes, but they feel slim. I hope that I am home and safe, and that I can take a breath without fearing smoke or virus or tear gas. And I am lucky, in the grand scheme of things.

    At least I can breathe right now. I bike home from the Arc, and revel in cold rain dripping from my legs when I stop at Fred Meyer, where I get prints of my friends for our living room. At home, I pull off the tape and throw open the windows. Cold, fresh air rushes in, and it feels like life. The sound of pouring rain and thunder is refreshing, after so many days of static. Here, now, maybe not in five minutes, but now, I feel relieved, unweighted, even if just briefly. It will not be a long reprieve, but I am grateful nonetheless.

August 29th-September 14th, Colorado-Washington

I had to include this great picture Ben sent of he and Rob on the move.

Kipp and Deb went in to PB&J production mode to stock Kipp’s freezer with Kipp’s version of frozen dinner... and I have to say they look pretty damn good!

We got the new fridge in place after Kipp’s buddies pitched in during the party the night before.

Gae and Kipp harvested all the ready vegetables from the garden before the freezing temps and snow hit on the 7th... A decent haul for the first season.

Here’s the garden on the 8th, after harvesting on a 100 degree day!

Our first trip with Nala, and she seems to be settled in nicely.

I carefully plotted course to Seattle to avoid all the passes over I-70, taking I-80 instead. Sadly, we arrived to closed and police protected entrance ramps in Cheyenne, Wyoming!

Here’s what the grass next to the van looked like after sleeping next to I-80 on the 8th... ok, ok, probably good they closed the road overnight.

The drive across I-80 in the morning was a bit hard on my knuckles!

We also ran into a lane closure that cost us 45 minutes before we were able to dodge to the frontage road.

After a night in wally world in Twin Falls, Idaho, we checked out Shoshone Falls Park... there’s Gae with a rainbow just behind her.

Here’s a panorama of the snake river canyon and falls, a beautiful spot.

Here we all are, safely protected from the fall(s).

We saw a little wildlife, including the 3 inch lizard scurrying along the ridge trail.

On the way out we stopped to watch the base jumpers braving the 400+ foot drop to the river from the Perrin Memorial Bridge, just plain nuts!

Here’s Gae and Nala enjoying the show.

The river valley floor to the west was beautiful.

We drove to Owyhee State Park, Oregon to spend 3 days camping.

A very narrow tunnel through rock is part of the drive.

We discovered that Nala likes swimming at the lake... she’s going to love Stacy and Jeff’s place!

Here’s Gae getting close and personal with the water on our first walk.

The view from our campsite was beautiful.

The last two days there were thick with smoke, apparently still the best air in Oregon, according to several campers we spoke with.

The drive out provided some nice views of the interesting formations.

Our drive to Seattle on the 13th was smoke filled... here’s the Columbia as we crossed it. Really.

After gassing up at Costco, we took Nala to Westcrest dog park to return Luna’s ashes to her brothers and sisters, where we admired the 2 foot seedling we transplanted to the park some 18 years ago. That’s the sun in the background!

The planters I’d built last year were still intact and looking good!

Headlines

Dueling versions of reality define 1st week of fall campaign (AP) On the campaign trail with President Donald Trump, the pandemic is largely over, the economy is roaring back, and murderous mobs are infiltrating America’s suburbs. With Democrat Joe Biden, the pandemic is raging, the economy isn’t lifting the working class, and systemic racism threatens Black lives across America. The first week of the fall sprint to Election Day crystallized dizzyingly different versions of reality as the Republican incumbent and his Democratic challenger trekked from Washington and Delaware to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and back, each man on an urgent mission to sell his particular message to anxious voters. All the conflicting messages carry at least a sliver of truth, some much more than others, as the candidates fight to navigate one of the most turbulent election seasons in modern history.

Love or hate them, pandemic learning pods are here to stay (Washington Post) Some love them. Some hate them. But nobody working in education today can escape pandemic learning pods: the increasingly popular phenomenon in which families band together and hire a private tutor to offer in-person learning to a small group of children. Teachers throughout the nation are sketching out schedules and pondering whether they can squeeze in pod tutoring after virtual school. They are weighing health risks, deciding on ground rules—should all pod students wear masks?—and asking parents how much they will pay. (A lot, it turns out.) Sometimes, they are quitting their jobs to lead pods instead. That is what Kendra Newton is doing: The 24-year-old first-grade teacher resigned from her job with Orange County Public Schools in Florida after learning she would have to teach in-person this fall. She is moving across the country to Oregon, where she will lead a pod of eight students—for a higher salary than she earned in Florida. “It gave me a way to feel safe working,” Newton said. “I will have guaranteed money coming in and a stable idea of what my life will be like because there won’t be a school district changing its mind every two seconds. For my mental health, it’s just a better option.”

Americans see skepticism of news media as healthy, say public trust in the institution can improve (Pew Research Center) Many Americans remain skeptical toward the news media, questioning not only the quality of journalists’ work but the intentions behind it. For instance, no more than half of U.S. adults have confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public, and Americans are more likely than not to say that news organizations do not care about the people they report on. Yet three-quarters also are open to the possibility that Americans’ trust in the media could improve.

With office life dormant, white-collar Washington is adrift (Washington Post) Greg Crist is a D.C. lobbyist who used to wear suits, and go to lunch, and spend his days taking meetings on the Hill, or in his nicely appointed office at 701 Pennsylvania Ave. Now that his office is closed because of the pandemic, Crist is a man who commutes a few hundred feet from his Alexandria, Va., home to his silver Audi, where he spends much of the day taking calls in the only place where the important people on the other end of the line cannot hear his toddler son scream. Much of white-collar Washington has accepted the reality that it may be a long time before it returns to the office, or the office-adjacent customs of the city’s glad-handing classes: the power lunches, the networking receptions, the comped sports tickets and day trips to New York on the Acela. “Initially I thought, ‘Well, I’ll be back at work by Easter,’ ” says Crist, the chief advocacy officer and head of external affairs at AdvaMed, a medical technology trade association. Easter turned into June, which turned into Labor Day, which turned into a big question mark. The politicos and super-connecters are achy, stuck at home, stranded on the other side of the work-life divide. The lobbyists are without their lobbies. The conference denizens haven’t donned a lanyard in months. That infamous D.C. conversation-starter, “What do you do?,” has a new answer: I sit at home, stare at my screen, fend off my kids, try to keep it together. You?

Mexico states run out of death certificates (AP) The coronavirus pandemic has hit Mexico so hard that the governments of several states ran out of death certificates. Officials said Friday the federal forms started running out about 15 to 20 days ago in at least three states—Baja California, the State of Mexico and Mexico City. Authorities say a million new forms have been printed and are being distributed. The certificates are printed with special characteristics because falsification has been a problem in the past. Mexico has suffered the fourth-highest level of COVID-19 deaths in the world.

Washington firm ran fake Facebook accounts in Venezuela, Bolivia and Mexico, report finds (Washington Post) When Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself the nation’s legitimate president in January 2019, an Instagram account, @FrenteLibreVzla, posted a video declaring him a “new leader” who would bring freedom to the embattled nation, according to a research report published Friday. Those watching the video had no way of knowing the account was based not in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, but downtown Washington, managed by a strategic communications firm with clients across Latin America. The firm, CLS Strategies, this week became the latest communications company to be chastised by Facebook for using fake accounts—including on Instagram, a Facebook subsidiary—to secretly manipulate politics in another country, in violation of Facebook’s prohibition on foreign interference. Facebook announced Tuesday it had closed 55 accounts, 42 pages and 36 Instagram accounts linked to CLS Strategies that targeted politics in Venezuela, Bolivia and Mexico. The effort spent $3.6 million in advertising across all three countries, a sum that Facebook executives said was notable for its size and reflective of what happens when actors with deep pockets mount a disinformation operation. The pages had amassed more than 500,000 followers. The operation by the public relations company is an example, the report says, of how Americans sow disinformation in foreign countries.

Coronavirus Crisis Shatters India’s Big Dreams (NYT) The hit that India’s dreams have taken from the coronavirus pandemic can be found in the hushed streets of Surat’s industrial zone. You can see it in textile mills that took generations to build but are now sputtering, eking out about a tenth of the fabric they used to make. You can see it in the lean faces of the families who used to sew the finishing touches on saris but, with so little business, are now cutting back on vegetables and milk. Not so long ago, India’s future looked entirely different. It boasted a sizzling economy that was lifting millions out of poverty, building modern megacities and amassing serious geopolitical firepower. It aimed to give its people a middle-class lifestyle, update its woefully vintage military and become a regional political and economic superpower that could someday rival China, Asia’s biggest success story. But the economic devastation in Surat and across the country is imperiling many of India’s aspirations. The Indian economy has shrunk faster than any other major nation’s. As many as 200 million people could slip back into poverty, according to some estimates. Many of its normally vibrant streets are empty, with people too frightened of the outbreak to venture far.

India and China agree to ease tension on border (Reuters) India and China said on Saturday they had agreed to work towards reducing tensions along their contested border, following a meeting of the defense ministers of the nuclear-armed Asian giants. Both sides deployed additional forces along the frontier running through the western Himalayas after a clash in June, during which 20 Indian soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand fighting. China has not released casualty figures for its troops. In the highest level face-to-face political contact between India and China since tensions first flared along the border in May, defense ministers Rajnath Singh of India and General Wei Fenghe of China met late on Friday on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Moscow. Both countries agreed that “neither side should take any further action that could either complicate the situation or escalate matters in the border areas,” India’s defense ministry said in a statement.

Super Typhoon Haishen aims for calamitous strike on Japan, S. Korea (Washington Post) Super Typhoon Haishen is roiling the unusually warm waters of the Western Pacific Ocean. The storm rapidly intensified on Thursday Eastern time, vaulting from Category 2 to super typhoon status with sustained winds of 150 mph or greater in about 24 hours. Super Typhoon Haishen is poised to strike the same areas as Typhoon Maysak, which hit South Korea early Thursday local time, to become the second typhoon to make landfall there and in southwestern Japan in just one week. The back-to-back typhoon strikes may worsen the damage, since infrastructure has been weakened by strong winds, heavy rains and storm-surge flooding, only to be hit again.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews clash with secular Israeli officials over coronavirus measures (Washington Post) Israel’s rapidly escalating coronavirus crisis is aggravating a religious divide in the Jewish state, with ultra-Orthodox leaders accusing mostly secular health officials of discrimination and fostering anti-Semitism by focusing on outbreaks in highly observant communities. As the government struggles to contain the outbreak, ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbis, cabinet ministers and parliament members have resisted attempts to curtail activities in ultra-Orthodox areas, including many that have emerged as covid-19 hot spots. Facing particular ire has been Ronni Gamzu, the pugnacious former hospital administrator appointed last month as the government’s “corona czar.” Gamzu has clashed with religious leaders over his efforts to impose targeted lockdowns on neighborhoods with high infection rates, block a yearly pilgrimage to the grave of a revered Hasidic rabbi in Ukraine and compel virus testing for thousands of foreign students who have recently arrived to attend religious schools, or yeshivas. Gamzu said last week that 80 percent of the most recent coronavirus cases occurred in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. The government expects to enact targeted restrictions Monday in 10 hot spot communities, many of them ultra-Orthodox. The tensions have riven Israel’s coronavirus cabinet, the government body that sets policy. On Friday, one day after Israel recorded 3,141 new cases—the largest single day per capita increase in any country since the pandemic began—cabinet discussions grew heated over proposed lockdowns during the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur later this month.

Sudan declares state of emergency over deadly floods (AP) Sudanese authorities declared their country a natural disaster area and imposed a three-month state of emergency across the country after rising floodwaters and heavy rainfall killed around 100 people and inundated over 100,000 houses since late July. Flooding caused by seasonal heavy rainfall, mostly in neighboring Ethiopia, led the Nile River to rise about 17.5 meters late in August, the highest level it has reached in about a century according to the Sudanese Irrigation Ministry.

Is it safe to drink rain water?* A #stlwx guide

The STL is currently getting hit by the remnants of a Tropical Depression and dumping lots of water on us, which means that Mother Nature really has it in for for us as she already sent us Covid-19 depression.

The short answer to this question is that would be a bad idea.

“But I have a rain barrel that I use to water my plants. Why can’t I drink that?” The first reason is that the water comes off of your roof and more than likely has tiny pieces of asphalt in it as roofs degrade over time and this happens mostly with rain. The second reason is that the barrels have been sitting outside and are not air tight. This means that bugs can get in and lays their eggs in the water and potentially give such grime outcomes as diarrhea, dysentery (everyone’s favorite way of dying in Oregon Trail), West Nile, Ebola, and Covid-19.

“Can I drink from moving water after a storm? I’ve heard that is ok.” Hell no. Have you seen the Mississippi or the Missouri? Do you really want to drink from that.  If you are talking smaller streams or cricks, even those are suspect. You have no idea what happened upstream from where you are drinking. Some petrochemical business person could be dumping toxic waste in that stream while he counts his money and chuckling softly. A sweet little raccoon could be peeing in that water.  I also happen to know for a fact that The Momo loves to bathe in streams and is obviously an asymptomatic carrier of Covid-19.

“‘I set a plastic water bottle out to catch rain. How can that be a problem if I drink it right away?” First off you are monster for still using plastic water bottles and are personal responsible for all climate change everywhere. Plus plastic water bottle degrade after one use (as they are designed to do, I swear) and start shedding stuff called micro plastics which you will then ingest along with all the stuff in the rain to begin with arnd did you forget that acid rain is still a thing.  I have no Covid-19 reference for this answer.

Can I make rain water safe to drink?

The answer is sort of.

Water purification tablets will make water safer to drink, but the only way to get them is from one of your survivalist friends but you will have to trade some of your Covid-19 hoard of toilet paper, beans, or sour dough starter to get them.

Using a reverse osmosis machine will filter out most small particles like lead, mercury, and asbestos, but will not filter out already liquid chemicals like pesticides, volatile organic chemicals, and need I really say it, Covid-19.

Boiling rain water will kill pretty much any virus (Covid-19) or bacteria in water which is why we get boil orders from the water company whenever a water main breaks near where you live.

*The claims in this article are not all scientifically proven, especially the one about raccoons being sweet.

A Funeral: Chapter 11 (Arthur Morgan x Mary Beth Gaskill)

Fandom: Red Dead Redemption 2 | Pairing: Arthur x Mary Beth | Rating: Mature

Content: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Touch-Starved, Humor, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Angst, Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Fake Marriage, Epiphanies, Backstory, Banter, Deep Emotions, Sharing a Bed, Swimming, Arthur to the Rescue, Forests, Abduction, Angst, Heavy Angst, Mutual Pining, Friends to Lovers

Summary: To help her process Sean’s death, Mary Beth asks Arthur to take her on a hunting trip, somewhere far away. He agrees, and on their journey, they find quietude and take comfort in their easy bond. In their desperate search for meaning together, they endure a number of trials, some small, some big—all of which bring them closer to one another as well as to the future, and to the unchecked dangers of the natural world.

Thanks @bearly-tolerable for the lovely banner!! <3

For the rest of this story, you can visit the masterpost or AO3, both linked in the replies to this post and also at my blog. ^_^

Chapter 11: Deer Cottage, Pt. 2

They got to the cottage in the early evening. It was good timing, as dark hadn’t fallen and so there was time to drum up and gather their supper. Arthur didn’t want them to be traveling or hunting after dark, and Mary Beth didn’t either. It was just too much risk after what they’d been through the night before. Their plans were to stay in the cottage that night, head north to hunt early in the morning, and then be back to the cottage by evening once more. They had no more plans to sleep in the tent outside, not until they left these more remote parts of the land, heading back to Shady Belle.

Deer Cottage was just as Hamish described it. Modest but clean, with a little garden of lavender and what looked like moss roses. There was some thyme growing around, too, and the moment they got there, Mary Beth began to pick a bunch and gather it into her skirts, and then she found a basket sitting by the green door and dropped it in, along with a selection of poppies and apple blossoms and lavender, too. Arthur fed the horses and made sure they were watered and then together they went inside.

It was small, one room, but it had a very nice and open look about it. The fireplace was clean, with wood chopped and ready, and there was a full kitchen with a basin and a stove and a bed and a table with two chairs. Nothing grisly about it, nothing unsightly or out of order. Hamish was a tender man, it seemed, when it came to keeping his spaces. There were even extra pillows and blankets in the armoire by the door. He noticed, too, there was a gramophone. A real one. It looked dusty and he didn’t know if it was working, but there it was, a fancy novelty item, sitting there by the end of the bed, on the floor.

“This is so quaint,” said Mary Beth, happy. She put the basket of flowers on the table. Then, she went through the cupboards till she found an empty pitcher. “We need water,” she said.

“I saw a working well out back,” said Arthur. “I’ll get it. I’ll see if I can’t shoot something for us to eat as well.”

“Be safe.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, smiling.

The cottage was up a narrow path off the valley road. He took his rifle off of Sarah and his shotgun, too. He didn’t have to go very far. He found a bunch of whitetail grazing in a patch of open grass, the sunlight spreading through like gold. With patience, he honed in on a small doe, took it down in the crosshairs, watched the rest of them scatter, along with several birds. He hauled the deer back to the cottage, flung over his shoulder, tossed it on the ground, real crude, to skin and carve it up. He wasn’t Mr. Pearson, but he could get the job done okay. It was a big score, a nice pelt, and a lot of the meat he salted and wrapped, preserving for the way home. He was bringing in a couple fresh cuts for their dinner now, a big bucket of well water, and some wild carrots, too, which he had found growing along the path back up to the cottage.

When he got back inside, Mary Beth gasped. “Arthur,” she said. “You’re up to your eyeballs in gore."

He looked at his hands, his sleeves, quite bloodied. “You're right,” he said. Then he set down the fresh cuts of meat, the water, and the carrots. “Guess I should wash up.”

“What did you get?” she said.

“Whitetail,” he said. “A good quantity. We’ll have some for tomorrow and the way home as well.”

“Good job, Arthur,” she said, smiling. “I mean it.” She had cleaned up the kitchen, and it looked far less dusty than before. She then poured most of the water from the bucket into the basin, and then the remainder into the tea kettle on the stove. Then, she handed the bucket back to Arthur.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

She watched him, very courteous. He tipped his hat to her and then went out the door to the advancing twilight. She saw him fill the bucket with more water from the well, then he proceeded to splash it over his arms and his face, through his hair till the blood was gone. He removed his shirt, went over to Sarah, found a different one, folded up real tight inside the saddlebag. This one was white. He took a quick look at his stitches, and then he buttoned up the shirt and replaced his suspenders. All of this Arthur did having no idea how she watched him. She felt quietly rebellious. She hadn’t meant to spy. But he was right there, so close, going through with his intimate and masculine routine. He dumped the bucket, filled it up with clean water. Then, he was heading back to the cottage.

She busied herself at the basin, washing some dishes she had found in one of the cupboards. She had also started the burner on the stove for frying up the meat and the carrots. She was touched that he had thought to bring in carrots. It was like he remembered her unfinished business from the night before and made it whole, and he said not one word about it.

He got in and closed the door behind him. He held out his hands, showed her his clean face and collar. “Better?” he said.

“Less bloody, that’s for sure,” she said. “I thought I’d make up dinner now.”

“I’ll, uh, start a fire,” he said, gesturing to the mantle.

“Sounds good.”

Things had changed a little, between the two of them that day. They were more cordial somehow. They had known each other for years, but now it was like that kiss had sealed them up tight, but it also removed them into some new and foreign territory. Neither was entirely clear on how to navigate it yet, but there they were.

After he got the fire going, Arthur began going through the flowers Mary Beth had brought in from Hamish’s garden outside. He chopped some of the thyme for her with the hunting knife from his belt. He set the chopped thyme in a mortar and set it on the counter, beside the stove. She thanked him. He then went about pouring some of the fresh water from the well into that glass pitcher, and then he found an empty coffee can in the pantry. He blew out the dust and put just a couple inches of water in the bottom, and then he put Mary Beth’s assortment of gathered flowers inside. He set it on the table, as he knew she had intended, and he admired its pretty simplicity. It made the cottage feel a little more like a home.

“You know,” said Arthur, leaning now, watching Mary Beth cook. The smell of the meat was filling the air. It was very comforting, making him feel sentimental. He did not have a problem feeling sentimental in front of Mary Beth. He never had. “My ma used to bring home wildflowers like that. In a basket and everything. This reminds me.”

This made Mary Beth blush. “That’s real nice.” She looked at him then, pushing the loose hairs off her face as she stood by the stove. “Where were you born, Arthur?”

Arthur thought on it, went and sat down at the kitchen table, folded his hands in front of him. “I’m not exactly sure,” he said. “I think whereabouts of southern Nebraska. But we took off on the Oregon Trail when I was barely old enough to speak.”

“Oh my,” said Mary Beth. “That must’ve been hard.”

“On my ma, sure,” said Arthur. “I don’t remember much. If anything at all.”

“So up in Oregon, that’s where she died?” said Mary Beth.

“Yeah,” he said, looking down at his clean hands. “She got sick.”

“What sort?”

“I don’t recall,” said Arthur. “A fever, maybe. My pa took me east after that, into Idaho, then Montana where we lived for a long time. He was a hustler, mostly card games, but he robbed folks as well, got busted one night when I was maybe ten years old. We went running into Wyoming, where he was killed, eventually. South Pass City. Pulling a bank job he was ill-prepared to undertake.”

“Did he run with a gang?”

“No,” said Arthur. “Perhaps that was part of his many failures. He did not get on well with others.”

She turned to face him then. The food was almost finished. She leaned against the counter, like she was thinking real hard. “South Pass City,” she said. “Is that where you was found by Dutch?”

Arthur smiled. It wasn’t fine times, looking back. But it didn’t hurt too bad. And her standing there, listening, it made him feel like sharing. “No,” he said. “No. I wandered on my own a while. Maybe two, almost three years. Robbing homesteads mostly to stay alive. I worked at a ranch for about one of them years. That’s where I learned breaking horses. I left there, and then headed back west, to the Tetons, in a place called Jackson, that’s where Dutch found me, working tables at the saloons. He saved me from getting my ass almost beat to death. I was barely fourteen.”

“Working tables?” she said. The meat was done. She checked it a little and then turned off the stove and took the pan off the burner, wearing a green oven mit. “What’s that?”

“Cheating cards, mostly,” said Arthur. He was slouching in the chair now. He’d taken off his hat, hung it on the back of his chair. “I was a good con artist because I was so young. No one suspected a kid to know how to cheat successfully at Blackjack.”

“Cheating cards, you learnt that from your daddy?”

He nodded. “My pa was a poor outlaw and a piece of shit but he wasn’t none too stupid with numbers. He could hold a lot of them in his head at once, and it turned out I could, too. He taught me when I was...nine or ten. I got some sleight of hand I’d use as well. Things I’d picked up over time. No one ever caught me, not right up till the very end.”

This seemed to both amuse and impress Mary Beth very much. She stood over the smoking pan. “I didn’t know you could do all that, Arthur.”

Arthur smirked. “I don’t do it much no more,” he said. “Takes the fun out of gambling. And if you get caught, well, you get killed. I’ll do it to John sometimes just to piss him off, but never in the saloons.”

Mary Beth laughed. “Oh, John,” she said. “He’s kind of sensitive, ain’t he?”

“In certain ways,” said Arthur. “Sure.”

He got up then, instinctually, to get the clean plates off the counter. He brought them over to the table, along with a couple of forks and knives. Mary Beth followed him over, served the venison and the pan-fried carrots. Arthur poured them each a big glass of water, and then together they sat down at the table to eat. The food was good. They spoke in an idle fashion. They felt civilized and grateful as humans in the world.

When they finished, it was full dark. Arthur peaked through the window, picked up his shotgun, which was leaning against the door frame. Mary Beth was clearing the plates and asked him what he was doing.

“I’m gonna just take a quick look around the perimeter here,” he said, looking back at her from the window pane. “I’m sure everything’s fine, but it would just make me feel better to know exactly what’s out there and what things sound like, so if anything changes, I’ll know.”

Mary Beth stopped very cold, holding a plate in each hand. She seemed surprised. “It’s so dark out,” she said.

He sighed. He had half-predicted her concern. “Nothing’s gonna get the jump on me, Mary Beth. I promise. I know what I’m doing.”

“I know you do. It’s just—it’s not just men could be out there,” she said. “There’s animals and things.”

“I know. But I been in these parts many times. I won’t be gone but ten minutes. I promise. I need to take this precaution, Mary Beth. Please understand.”

She still did not move, but she did understand. She nodded, swallowed, dry. She strained a smile. “Just be careful,” she said.

He nodded, trying to reassure her. He was not afraid. She didn’t need to be afraid either. “I always am,” he said. “Lock the door behind me. I’ll be back soon.”

She obeyed. He put on his hat. She went with him to the door, and he went out of the door, then she closed it and turned the bolt and pulled the chain. She heard his heavy boots on the step and then soft in the grass, and she heard him load the shotgun and cock it, ready to shoot.

Mary Beth waited very impatiently after that. She bit her nails. She wondered stupidly at first about why it was he couldn't bring the key, and why instead she had to lock the door behind him. But she knew. It was so that in case someone got him, they couldn't find the key in his pocket, which might lead them back to the cottage. And back to her. He was locked away into the outside world and its myriad of threats and deadly agents just to protect her. She closed her eyes to the possibility.

Mary Beth was used to sleeping outside and noises and enemies everywhere. She was used to men and even women like Karen and Sadie and Miss Grimshaw doing the perimeter walks at night with their big guns back at camp. She never felt afraid at camp. She liked to see the good in their situation. She liked feeling safe. Before now, she trusted that Arthur was a superhuman when it came to the likes of violence, like so many of the other men of the gang. They were impervious. They went out, they shot things, they worked mean angles. They robbed banks and coaches with armed guards. They brought entire trains to their knees. These were serious men of their serious trade. When Arthur had come back almost dead from that O’Driscoll ordeal, even then, she knew in her heart of hearts that he would live. Because he was solid. He was made of something stronger than regular men, and this would protect him from the scourge of mortality. She always saw him that way, maybe him more so than anyone, because he stood so tall and so eager, and he had great skill for what he did.

But somehow, this trip was changing things. It had started with that night at the Winterson’s B&B. It wasn’t about seeing him injured, seeing him bloodied or beat up. That, to her, was second nature. It was about seeing him scared. That night, that dream about Eliza. He was scared. And then the night before with the ambush, when that horrible man had him by the neck in the woods, in the middle of that violent storm, that knife so close to cutting him open right in front of her—he was in danger. He could have died. She could have died, too, or worse, but she wasn’t thinking about her. That’s not what this was.

When he kissed her back in the loft at Hamish’s cabin, it was like a dream. Even if it was only for the moment. She remembered what it was to feel safe and held and accepted, like she had a place somewhere solid and real in the world, tucked away into his arms, arms she had, up until now, understood only as abstractions, symbols of strength and vitality and the unflinching heroism of such a handsome outlaw with a stoic disposition.

Their swelling intimacy, grown of both fear and what might be amounting to love was bringing him all the way down to earth now. She had always known he was a man, and a good man, but now he was a mortal man—he got scared, he lived his live in danger, and he was sort of becoming hers a little bit, and seeing and touching these inside parts of Arthur made her realize that he was not super, he was not impervious—not in his mind, heart, or his body. He could be hurt, and he could die. And thinking of this made her think about a life in which he did not exist. In which she did not hear his boots on the porch step no more, or walking the hallways of Shady Belle at night, making sure everyone was in their right places, safe as houses, before he would allow himself that same luxury of sleeping. He was so solid and big and strong and brave. How can a body like that die? How can a man like that feel fear? She had never thought about it before. And now, he was just out there, in the wilderness, alone, with his guns and his know-how, doing what he always did, which was just to make sure everything was safe, and she was frozen. She could barely even busy herself with the dishes. She was so consumed with her sudden realization that Arthur Morgan could die, that her heart was like a dumbass drum in her chest. And at some point, it was getting to be too damn much.

So she turned around from the window, and she tried to smack some sense into herself like Miss Grimshaw would do. Miss Grimshaw was a mean bitch but she knew a thing or two about practicality, a trait without which no woman of ambiguous station could have survived in their world. Mary Beth took a deep breath, leaning against the table.

“Get it together, Mary Beth,” she said. “This ain’t nothing new.”

After that, she came to her resolve. She pushed off the table, washed the plates and set the pan in the basin. She filled it with some water from the bucket, and added a little soap to let it soak. She found a bottle of bourbon under the sink then and took just one sip, and it burned and made her cough. She had no idea why she did this. Maybe because she thought it was something Sadie would do, or Abigail. These women who were a little older and ripened to the world, and they both had been in love with men and gone through real fucked up shit in their lives with men, and their maturity and wisdom about men gave her something to shoot for. She set the bottle down on the counter. She breathed. She blinked. And that is when she looked over at the bed nearby the crackling fire, and she noticed the gramophone.

It was dusty, but it looked new. It was half covered in a plaid-looking dust cover, tucked against the wall. Dutch had one sort of like it. He would play music that permeated through the camp and made it feel romantic and safe. She went over, and she took off the dust cover and picked it up. It was heavy, but she was strong. She brought it over to the kitchen table. It had a record and everything, and it was a little dirty on its surface, so she wiped it down with a soft linen towel, and she wiped down the record, too. The label was missing. She didn’t know what she was in for. But she secured that record back on the turntable, and then she removed the little break on the spring motor, so the turntable rose up a little and the record started to spin. And then she set the needle down on the record, gently, and in an instant, it started to play.

Meanwhile, Arthur was outside. He did not encounter much on their horizon. It was quiet, and typical, and a boring perimeter check, which was the only good kind, but still. There was a grown black bear, night-prowling, rubbing its back on a tree not too far. When he came upon it, he made eye contact with the beast, pointed his gun and made a whistle, shouting for it to flee, and he waved an arm in the air. The bear was annoyed. It lazied away from that tree and kind of gave him a rebellious look, but then it lumbered into the dark, all aloof. Arthur lowered his gun. He was chewing on a piece of bark. He spat it to the earth and looked around some more. The world was pristine. He was done. He started heading back toward the cabin, and pretty soon he got close enough that he could hear music coming from inside.

It was weird at first. Not what he expected—such a manmade sound. He got up to the door, knocked, peaked through the window, took off his hat when he saw Mary Beth. She opened the door and right away she took his hand, gathering him inside the cottage. She palmed his cheeks like she was checking to make sure nothing had got a piece of him in secret while he was gone, and then she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him so hard, it dragged him down the full ten inches of height he must’ve had on her.

He laughed, holding her, dropped his hat. He was taken by surprise. “I’m fine,” he said. “There was nothing out there but a dumbass black bear.”

“Did you kill it?” she said, her face deep in his neck.

Her hair was getting in his mouth, his nose, everywhere all around. It was a clean smell of rainwater and iron, and it tickled. “No,” he said. “It might’ve robbed us blind of our provisions but it ain’t no danger. I just scared it off.”

“Okay,” she said. She was still right there in his collar, like she was breathing him in real deep.

He didn't want to move. He pushed all of her hair over one shoulder. He was taken aback by her level of relief and concern. As usual he had underestimated her affection for him, or perhaps he just kept forgetting. A defense mechanism of sorts. He sighed and held her face gently and pulled away so he could look her in the eye. “I’m fine,” he said, smiling. “See?”

Mary Beth nodded, her cheeks red and she kind of cast her eyes downward like she was embarrassed. “I know. I'm sorry.”

"Don’t be sorry."

They met eyes, and there was a moment, but then Mary Beth defused it by tucking her hair behind her ears and moving away. She went past him, and he exhaled and watched her go, and then he locked the door and closed all the curtains, and he leaned his gun against the kitchen table and removed his neckerchief and rolled up his sleeves and took a deep breath. He went over to the gramophone, where Mary Beth stood now with her arms crossed, watching the record spin. Arthur examined it with his hands on his hips. It was playing a lovely waltz, violins and a piano and everything. “It works,” he said after a little while.

“Yeah,” said Mary Beth. “It’s pretty new. I think it’s nicer than Dutch’s.”

This was amusing. “Don’t tell him that.”

“I never would.”

Arthur was rocking back on his heels a little bit now, looking at Mary Beth and her pretty face, her warmth, smiling at the gramophone. He was done with the day. The day was over, its various procedures and protocols taken care of. All these things he had to do to safeguard against so many of life's uncertainties. Riding, hunting, preparing, protecting. But that wasn’t all there was to it, was there? Life.

When he had been outside before, getting dirty and cold, spooking that bear, he felt good about their dinner, their conversation, and how it had been so warm in the meantime, even despite this newfound tension between them. It made him think of her, and, again, how he just liked hanging out with her, and how he knew her touch now, her taste, and he'd felt her, and he'd let her in, and he hadn't allowed this for himself in so many years. So many. It changed things, and while he was outside, away from her, he missed her, and he did not want her to be worried, and it was too much. It turned out that it was too much, but for a man like Arthur, too much was probably just enough. It was only that he needed a little bit of hindsight. What does a man want at the end of his day? When his duties have been fulfilled, and the moon is high. What did Arthur want? He glanced around the room now. His gun was leaning by the door. His hat hung up for the evening. He felt accomplished in some weird way he could not pin down and could not describe, and yet, he was unfinished.

“So,” he said, deferring to her. "What do we do now?" She always had good ideas.

She had both of her hands behind her back. She looked at him, hopeful and a little pleased with herself. She said, “Do you wanna dance?” And she held out her hand.

Arthur smiled. He took her hand in a familiar fashion. He said, "Sure."

This last week was a blur. I’m trying to think of what all I did, and honestly I can’t tell you much. The weekend was full with hiking, family get-togethers, and yard work in the decent weather. We also watched a couple movies and spent the holiday relaxing together, a rare occurrence these days.

Last Week

Publish two blog posts

Write 500 words/day on Tavi

Finish reading A Conjuring of Light

How’d I Do?

Publish two blog posts

Yep! Including two book reviews.

Write 500 words/day on Tavi

YES! Writing went very very well this week.

Finish reading A Conjuring of Light

…yes. I am so sad because of it. What the hell do I do now?

Weekly Word Count: 4,980

I think it’s safe to say that the novel is officially in the third act and things are rolling downhill and gathering steam. Every time I sat down to write I wrote almost double of what I’d hoped to. I’d exceeded my word count goal by one hundred words by Saturday, and so rewarded myself with a writing-free Sunday. I also wrote about 1300 words hammering out a 500 word story for PodCastle’s Flash Fiction Contest. It was a real challenge, which was the point, but I’m pretty proud of what I came up with. I’ll have more details about this over the summer, once voting on the stories begins.

Book reviews for both Trail of Lightning and A Gathering of Shadows are out now, so check those out!

Thursday was a four mile Walk ‘n’ Talk with Madhu, where we mostly commiserated over waiting to hear about submissions. After that, since it was such a lovely day, I found a patio, had a beer and some french fries, and got some good writing time in.

I went on a lovely hike this weekend at Opal Creek, one of Oregon’s most popular hikes. It was a cool and misty morning that broke into a gorgeous day. The water was gushing with fresh snowmelt, the roar of the river never-ending. We packed a lunch of tuna salad, hard-boiled eggs, dolmas, cheesy bread, and dried coconut and apple chips. The picnic at the middle of the hike is always my favorite part.

And then Sunday was a chill day, watching movies, making good food, and enjoying the peace and quiet. I finished reading A Conjuring of Light last night, I cried a good deal, and then moped in bed because what else could I do? I have a serious case of book hangover right now.

So, What’s Next?

Publish two blog posts

Write 500 words/day on Tavi

Finish reading The Light Brigade

This straightforward approach has worked the rest of the month, so why not keep it going? I’ve got the review for A Conjuring Light to post this week, and will probably have another post later in the week as well. Writing continues to progress at a steady pace, so I’m confident that I’ll make my goal for the week. I’m working a little bit less this week too, so I have more time for writing.

I’ll also have some more time for reading, which is good because I haven’t even started The Light Brigade yet! It’s not too long, and all the press and reviews I’ve seen about it promise a fast-paced and gripping story. So, I should be able to finish it this week. I’m slowly, but surely, catching up to my reading goal.

This week is a busy one otherwise. I’m going to Portland on Thursday for the SFWA’s Reading series, where both Rebecca Roanhorse (Trail of Lightning) and Sam J. Miller (Blackfish City) will be reading and speaking! I am so stupid excited for this event and Trevor’s even going to come with me!

Then Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day. Each year The Book Bin does a big daylong celebration with panels and authors, and usually ends the day with a release party for the newest issue of The Audient Void. This year is no exception, with issue #7 final proofs returned to Obadiah today. So, if you want to come down, support a local bookstore, and grab your issue, hot off the press! If you don’t live near Salem, you should still visit your local indie Bookstore and give them some love.

No hikes for the next couple of weeks, there’s just too much going on. So I’ll be home or at writing/book events, getting work done. That’s the plan. I’ll see you soon with a review, Bloggos.

Until then,

  BZ

  Goals Summary 2019 – Wk #16 This last week was a blur. I'm trying to think of what all I did, and honestly I can't tell you much.

The Tides: Riding the Ups and Downs on the Oregon Coast Trail

By Henley Phillips

I’m in a Safeway parking lot in Lincoln City trying to set a new supported fastest known time on the Oregon Coast Trail (OCT). I didn’t plan to quit when I sat down, but the combination of chair and lapful of Dairy Queen is drawing me down into a comfortable state that I haven’t felt in 139 miles. I do some quick math for the next section - 4 mile wrong turn earlier in the day, 270 miles left to go, 18 miles still left for the day, it’s 5PM, I’ve eaten all the chicken strips, no way I can do this. ** **

Am I quitting?

So far I‘ve covered the miles out of pure excitement and adrenaline, but now I feel well out of my league. I decided to do this just 6 weeks ago. My longest run was only 32 miles; the biggest week a mere 42. This was just to get a taste of what this FKT world is all about. I get it. It’s hard. I don’t want hard. I want a relaxed summer with my wife on the Oregon coast. 139 miles is pretty damn good. 

Am I quitting? I think so.

When you attempt something like a fastest known time, your mind is constantly calculating the gains and losses of the experience to regulate and preserve your physical well-being. In fact our brains work in this mode every day with almost every task. It’s basic survival wherein your mind and body work to maintain a safe equilibrium of pleasure and pain. I think it’s fair to say for most of us, myself included, we do a good job of making sure the scales tip to the side of pleasure more often than not. 

On my first day of the trail I ran in a state of almost pure bliss for 14 hours. The northern terminus of the OCT was windy and cold that morning, the ocean and sky a blur of blue and gray with waves crashing somewhere unseen. The trail had it all that first day - serene beach running all to myself, road miles through Seaside with its tourist trinket shops, enchanting singletrack over Tillamook Head and Cape Falcon, and then the quiet miles of a sleepy highway 101 at the end of the day. That night we stealth camped at the baseball fields in Nehalem. My wife made beef stir fry for dinner. I inhaled it, scrubbed my legs in a community faucet and went to bed like nothing happened, 52 miles later. Pure pleasure. 

Day two. Katie asks how I feel first thing.

“Everything... feels intact.” I do a stupid dance to show it’s true. 

The OCT is unique for two reasons - towns and trails. It’s less of a wilderness route like the word trail conjures up, so towns and resupply come easy. You also have to time the beach hiking just right or else you’ll be caught in high tide with no route off the beach or left with an unexpected road walk. Today the goal is to hit one of the main estuaries at low tide to avoid a 4-5 mile road detour. 

Near the end of the day, trudging up Cape Lookout and nearing a cumulative 100 miles, my mind begins that gain vs. loss calculation - pain developing in my feet and knees, hips tight, stomach still good but then there’s the hamstring. I topped the climb as the sun was setting, and the thrill of making the estuary crossing at night took over. Headlamp, food, layers and a towel in case I had to swim the crossing. I dropped down to Sand Beach and covered the 4 miles to the estuary outlet under a sliver of moon and the beach to myself. 

I sensed the outlet before I could confirm it. In the pitch black of 10:30PM, my headlamp beam was simply swallowed up by the ocean to my right and the now empty space of the estuary void to my left. No low-lying beach topography to bounce light or give perspective. Deep black on either side and moving water underfoot. 

The water quickly rose to my chest on the first try, and I half-panicked and almost threw myself into the flow to swim across, dry clothes be damned. Luckily I took a quick glance across and saw a high, steep bank on the other side, which meant deep water and no easy way up. Trying again further up the estuary, there was no steep bank; in fact, there was nothing at all, which I chanced to mean shallow water rather than endless water.

The water is cold, up to my chest halfway across, but I feel in control, safe. Without thinking, however, I start chanting ‘please’ out loud. Please don’t let me have to backtrack now. Please don’t sweep me out into the dark ocean. Please let there be a safe way out of this channel. Finally my foot hits the bottom a little sooner, the water drops to my stomach, and I spot a level bank to exit the current. I let out an animal sound of satisfaction and relief but immediately realize I’ve crossed too high. Now I have a stagnant tidal lagoon to cross, the remnants of the estuary not carried out at low tide.  

My phone battery is very low, so I forgo using Gaia to navigate and instead head towards where I think the beach should be, which is the other side of this lagoon. Compared to the relatively clear water of the first crossing, this stuff is a muck of seagrass and shoe-sucking sludge. I can’t see the bottom and have no way of judging depth. As I whip my headlamp around in all directions, tens of little fish jump silver streaks out of the water. Then I notice palm-sized crabs floating in the tops of the seagrass, right at chest level. Do crabs bite humans? 

Twenty minutes later I’m back on the beach and running the last two miles to where Katie is waiting. The adrenaline quickly fades. I’m ice cold, and all the pain starts welling up after a day of 58 miles.

In anticipation of the building fatigue and inevitable pain, I quit on day three at the Lincoln City Safeway after a measly 28 miles. The third day was going to be tough, I knew, but my mental focus had already shifted from enjoying the Oregon coast to desperately calculating my next rest and meetup with Katie. I ended the tracking on my inReach and sent a message to my family letting them know I had quit, and to my surprise, I felt a choking, welling tightness in my chest and throat. 

“I think I’m crying about this,” I told Katie.

Sleep came quickly that night, and I went to bed without dinner. We drove further south down the coast to where I was supposed to have ended my day on foot, tucked the van into a side road, and that was the end of my FKT. 

In the morning I woke feeling better than expected. I stretched and jogged a little and figured I should be feeling a lot worse if I’m going to quit. We had a leisurely morning together drinking coffee with a quintessential Oregon coast view. Turns out the record was still doable, and my one-woman crew was still down to keep going. 

I devoured miles for the next five days - 44, 52, 50, 50, 53 and then a casual 20 on the last day into Crissy Field and the California border. 408 miles in 8 days 5 hours 2 minutes. 

I had assumed the most critical moments of a fastest known time attempt would be the cumulative minutes lost or gained during breaks, or, specifically for the Oregon Coast Trail, hitting the river outlets and tides at just the right time. Turns out the key decision for me was quitting on the third day when I thought that I’d had enough. 

The important thing about quitting is that it immediately calls into question your tenacity. The moments directly after you pull the plug on something can be so illuminating and provide deep-gut feedback on the decision. In the past several years the concept of vulnerability has become quite popular, at times creating a culture and mindset of easy outs. Quitting has been flipped and is now strong, follow-through less important and rephrased as stubbornness. What’s worrisome to me about quitting is that the immediacy of relief can sometimes overshadow those moments of truer clarity directly after. Surely there are moments when quitting is the prudent, safe decision, but how often is this truly the case? Or is it more likely that your resilience, grit and ruggedness are simply being called into question?

Don’t hit the damn button. Keep going.