#and their NATURAL similarities to the doctor are such a fruitful concept they were doing great fuelling the chemistry for 50 years
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SUN-SET OF THE WHITE-HERALD
(Yeah you’re getting a short story with art - so what? Now take this post’s music choice and read on)
“Flee, Flee, FLEE!”
“We must go!”
“RUN!”
She hissed, she screeched, she slashed and she laughed.
The throne room had been breached, the gods were angry, those that had opposed them were dead. Her family - her important family - were likely dead. And yet, she laughed. It were as if she had been gifted something so immensely valuable, so deliciously fruitful, it hardly mattered that the it had been wrapped carelessly by a reluctant gifter.
“PLEASE MA’AM, RUN - we must! There is nothing left to defend!” One of her doctors growled, still attempting to pull her off the operating table, quite like the other lot had. She couldn’t make it clearer that she didn’t want to move - the growing pile of dead medical professionals proved that - and she was more than ready to throw this one across the quickly greening room. Even the pain of her wretched mess of an arm and the ruined canyons of her burnt face were a faded memory to her, the stringy twisted stub still hanging limply at her side, complimenting the lack of complexities in her stained visage.
“DON’T YOU SEE? I AM ABOVE ALL THIS!! I HAVE BEEN GIFTED SOMETHING INCREDIBLE! I AM COMPLETE!!”
“I’m sorry… You made me do this Ma’am.”
‘Shk!’ ‘Tssss!’
About a dozen soldiers rushed frantically to her ‘aid’, desperately grasping each limb, finally pulling her off of the harsh surface she had been hurriedly planted atop. The world seemed to slow, her remaining limbs sagging loosely at her waist, lulling her forward as her entourage proceeded with the evacuation.
She had been drugged.
The earthen walls of her home swayed idly - the nature of her physical form slipped her mind - the concept of her purpose slipped slowly from the forefront. Until - at least - she saw them… her enemy. Horned beasts and opposing nations, holding the wall between her and the final freedom, glaring hatefully into her soul. She wanted more. She wanted more… than anything… to FIGHT!
“LET ME GO!! - I MUST KILL! WHERE ARE… WHERE ARE YOU - GRAAAAGGhHhH….agh…”
For a moment - everything went black.
She could hardly imagine who she was, let alone where they were taking her.
•
An icy sensation finally forced her back to reality - layering her injuries. She had been rested on some uncomfortable surface, left nakedly to the elements until further notice. Slowly - she collects herself.
This new location is merely the wild - some manner of dull field, at least a couple miles out from the hive. The dull orange sky stared down at her, tinting her otherwise pale shell with a peach shade. Soldiers lingered idly, chatting in deflated tones about their current situation.
“-but will she be able to guide us?”
“She will - surely! It’s damage, yes, but she is a Kro! She will prevail.”
“…I think that’s the hope speaking. The White Herald have fallen - we might as well join the other Heralds, hope our crimes are easy to overlook in wake of our situation.”
The idea alone tore her from the grasps of daze, sent her six legs scrambling for a stable surface. Her mandibles clicked violently, her expression still distinguishable through the tattered facial plating. Her thorax raised high and proud, as her largely useless wings lift menacingly from her abdomen. Her front legs raised their serrated edges menacingly, her one working arm pointed accusingly at them. “YOOU ARE THE PROBLEM! We ARE NOT DEAD - BECAUSE OF YOU! Our purpose is not ACHIEVED! And you BLAME THE LOSS OF SURVIVAL ON US?!”
“No Ma’am!”
“DO YOU WISH TO JOIN OTHER MANTISI BECAUSE OF OUR LOSS?!”
“I was… it was a suggestion! A lie even!”
“YOU - ARE THE LIE!!” She smashed her front legs into the soldier, sending a spray of greenish goo across her currently bare body.
The soldier he had been communicating with backs off, not wanting similar treatment.
She could see the remains of her kingdom now: a field of about a hundred thousand Mantisi - most of which unclothed - looking tiredly back at her. There were less of them than she’d hoped - the rest likely scattered to the winds. Her soldiers were closest, maybe about a thousand of them in total; then three hundred relatives to the throne, who carry the albino gene; and after that, the citizens. She could work with this.
“MANTISI! WHITE HERALD! WE ARE NOT LOST! WE HAVE SOLDIERS! WE HAVE REPOPULATORS! WE HAVE WORKERS! WE WILL REBUILD! THE AGE OF KRO-LAK HAS BEGUN!”
“Age of… sun-set?” A meek voice murmured, “Isn’t that… counterintuitive?”
“NO - THAT - IS MY NAME. KRO-LAK - AND I WILL BRING SUNSET TO ALLLL WHO OPPOSE!” A cheer called from the far end of the field - sprinting excitedly until nothing else could be heard.
And so, it had begun.
(Lovely! Here are the other variations - and Tah!)
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Giant Masterlist of Cathar Facts (that I completely made up but nonetheless rigidly adhere to)
I am an unstoppable force and disney should have killed me when they had the chance (that chance was splash mountain when I was seven and as you can see I survived).
Under a break because it is way too long and covers really quite a lot, much of which I will probably never even need. But researching and writing this kind of thing is what I consider a fun afternoon so here we are.
General basic stuff
Cathar are basically felids evolved to fill a similar evolutionary niche to humans in the absence of any viable apelike species on their native planet, in the same way hyenas evolved to fill a niche normally occupied by canids.
They are pursuit predators but not terribly efficient ones outside their home planet. In terms of both speed and strength they can outperform humans on average in the short term, but have noticeably less stamina especially when it comes to running or walking long distances. They greatly outmatch any quadrupedal felids for stamina, however. (Mandalorians are an invasive species)
They run hotter than humans, around 100-102F.
Though height varies quite a bit, cathar are taller on average than humans and build muscle easily, making them extremely formiddable opponents in hand-to-hand combat.
The average face/skull shape of cathar is largely based on assumptions that they evolved under weirdly similar conditions to humans evolving from early hominids, aka shortening of the face, larger cranium, smaller mouth, etc.
While they are obligate carnivores and do have elongated canines, their teeth are more even in size than wild felids, and while they do still have barbed tongues, the barbs are relatively small/soft and more similar to a housecat than anything of comparable size (aka they won’t literally take your skin off if they lick you). They also have somewhat thinner skin than wild cats, though they are still more damage resistant than humans.
They do not have retractable claws because that’s not how fingers work, but they do have narrow, naturally pointed claws rather than humanlike fingernails. Many cathar choose to either dull them or file them down for convenience, but losing/damaging them, as per that one ambient dialogue on Dromund Kaas that I can never find when I need it, is extremely traumatic for them.
They have tails because I want them to, used for both balance and communication. Cathar tails are approximately lion-like, thin with a coarse tuft at the end regardless of markings (ie. a cathar with stripes won’t have a tiger tail), with the tip the same shade or a few shades darker than the darkest part of their coats. occasionally those from colder regions will have longer fur over the whole tail, or look like they don’t have a tuft due to longer fur overall.
Variation and a lot of bullshitting about genetics
Wookiepedia describes Cathar as “a planet of savannas and rough uplands” but I refuse to believe that all these habitable worlds are all one consistent climate/temperature across the whole globe. The weirdly ubiquitous infrastructure/cultural info I can kind of forgive since 90% of them were wiped out by Mandalorians and the rest left, and I’m charitably assuming there were a lot less than 7 billion cathar to begin with, so a lot of smaller or more isolated cultures across the planet were lost entirely.
They have less sexual dimorphism than SWTOR implies, though females are a little smaller on average and tend to have shorter/finer manes that are closer to their base color. In terms of relative strength/mass the difference is minor and female cathar are still very capable of fucking you up (the conventional assumption in the Empire that females are weak/docile and males are too uncontrollable to enslave is not remotely true in either direction).
Variation in fur/metabolism/ear and nose shape depends on which region/s of Cathar they come from (or their ancestors come from), but they don’t recognize different “races” the way humans do, particularly in the wake of the Battle of Cathar.
On average, cathar originating closer to the equator have shorter, finer fur, larger and more tapered ears, a tendency toward slender, lanky builds, and coloration that leans more toward golds/reds and higher pigment density. whereas those closer to the poles are much stockier and can be extremely fluffy, sometimes with an undercoat, with paler colors and less vivid/extensive markings. None of the above is universally true and cathar didn’t necessarily always stay in the region where their ancestors come from (and thus sometimes you get people like Riska, who is all limbs but has fairly northern features and entirely too much fur)
Cathar mostly left their planet in groups, so in some parts of the galaxy you’ll run into whole colonies that originate mostly from one part of the planet and have distinct appearances/cultural idiosyncrasies from other colonies.
They mainly follow the same general rules that apply to most felids in terms of coloration/pattern.
Markings can be stripes, spots, or less commonly rosettes (definitely some version of Taqpep variants) and mostly lie along Blaschko’s Lines, though it’s more obvious on some individuals than others and it isn’t always perfectly precise. Even spotted individuals usually display some striping on the tail and around the eyes, though not always.
“Default” coloration is black-based, with dark markings on a greyish or brownish base.
Countershading falls pretty much along patterns you’d expect and usually lightens the chest/stomach, lower face, palms/soles, and inner thighs. Specific distribution and patterns vary quite a bit, and sometimes express in odd ways (hence whatever is going on with Khatte). Darkest points tend to be the tail tip, nose bridge, and mane.
Genetically solid cathar are incredibly uncommon; much more common are genes that affect the appearance/distribution of markings, sometimes rendering them almost invisible. Even ones who appear mostly solid (aka Khatte) usually still have some faint striping around the face and/or tail.
Khatte is basically some loose equivalent of ticked tabby, which mostly just looks like weird countershading but leaves some faint striping on his face and tail.
Jial-ro’s coloration is the result of a gene that suppresses all eumelanin production, and a sepia-like form of partial albinism.
Riska has something similar, along with something that reduces the size/spread of spots.
Food
They’re mainly carnivorous and have different nutritional requirements from humans (similar but not identical to those of a cat), which can be a problem in places like the military where standardized rations are the norm. In the Republic a cathar can usually put in a request for rations designed to accommodate carnivores (or supplements, failing that), though they might have some trouble on more isolated or undersupplied planets. The rare cathar in the Imperial military have to procure supplements out of pocket, though it’s technically possible to get reimbursed for it if they’re willing to wade through the bureaucracy.
Cathar are perfectly capable of eating raw meat with few to no ill effects, and have a subgenre of cuisine centered around it (and while they didn’t invent sushi, they have enthusiastically embraced the concept). They also have plenty of ways of cooking meat and readily adopt any new ones they come across.
Their “natural” diet apart from meat mainly consists of fruit, root vegetables, and eggs, though the closer to the poles you get the less likely you are to encounter fruit in a dish. Cathar never cultivated grain and it holds no meaningful nutritional value for them, so bread, rice, and similar products simply do not appear in traditional cuisine. This does not stop some of them from eating grain products in small amounts, as they can still enjoy the taste, but it isn’t any healthier than processed sugar is to humans and they have a high rate of gluten intolerance as a species.
All cathar have a heightened and refined ability to detect savory/umami type flavors, but around 30-40% of cathar, and the vast majority of those from colder regions, have no taste receptors for sweetness at all. This has resulted in the cathar equivalent of the Cilantro Debate centering around desserts, even though they’re all perfectly aware that it’s genetic, and some who can’t taste sweetness still enjoy some desserts for the other flavors present. Those who do have sweet taste receptors are about as sensitive to it as humans, but it tends not to have the same addictive quality for them and a lot of them don’t like processed sugars in anything but small doses. They would appreciate a lightly sweet creme brulee but most of them would find soda absolutely disgusting.
Citrus is right out.
They suffer no more ill effects than humans from drinking alcohol, and due to generally having a fair amount of mass they can usually drink a lot of it.
Social minutiae
They use a fair amount of feline body language, particularly with others of their own species. While facial expressions play a part and they do smile, scowl, and generally express broad emotions, they have a reduced range of facial mobility compared to more humanoid species and no eyebrows to speak of, which leads to a lot of them having what humans perceive as resting bitchface. It also results in humans underestimating the range and depth of their emotions, and can be a problem in the medical field with human medics/doctors who haven’t been trained to work with less humanoid aliens and won’t necessarily recognize severe pain or distress.
Their ears are less articulated than a cat’s but still have some degree of mobility that serves more of a social function than a practical one. They also express a lot of emotion through their tails, to the point that it can be a detriment in some situations if they haven’t practiced consciously keeping control of it.
Bumping foreheads is a common way to express platonic/familial affection, or can be the equivalent of a chaste kiss between partners. They also squint and slow blink, though it doesn’t always translate clearly to other species.
They have a wider range of vocalization than humans; while their voices are often humanlike and they’re just as capable of articulate speech, they can also growl, purr, and make sounds outside human hearing range. Those raised among humans or near-humans tend to do this less, if at all, while cathar raised in more insular communities of their own kind can come off as very taciturn due to heavier reliance on nonverbal communication.
Sense of smell is much stronger and more refined than a human’s and plays a more significant role in how they perceive and navigate the galaxy. They can occasionally be mistaken for Force-sensitive by humans due to their knack for picking up on emotional distress or the presence of particular species/people by scent. This is more true with people they’re familiar with; they won’t pick out distinct members of the other species by default but will eventually be fairly reliable in identifying the scent of a friend or anyone else they spend a lot of time around.
The exception to the above is other cathar, who they can easily tell apart on an individual basis. They have scent glands around the jaw/neck that come into play for identification, conveying broad emotional states, in some situations can aid medical diagnoses, among other things. They also play a part in building connection and familiarity between friends, family, or romantic partners.
The ~horny section~
Cathar don’t really kiss the way humans do by default, but they can, and usually do so unless they’ve somehow had no contact with any near-human species at all. Their equivalent is gentle biting around the neck and jaw, which is another situations where the scent glands are relevant, and when aroused that whole area becomes an erogenous zone for the vast majority of cathar.
Plenty of humans (particularly if they don’t encounter a lot of aliens day to day) will avoid kissing cathar anyway because they have sandpaper tongues and dry mouths and fangs, and it feels fucking weird if you aren’t prepared for that.
They tend to be very bitey in general unless specifically asked not to. It only becomes a problem if the cathar in question is inexperienced with humanoids and hasn’t figured out how much bite force is acceptable for a species with thinner, more sensitive skin.
Their dicks are fairly humanoid in size and shape, though somewhat more conical at the head, but they do have a sheath rather than a foreskin. after maturity they don’t actually retract into the sheath more than about two inches when flaccid, and tend to be slightly less sensitive than the average human (same keritinization factor that affects circumcised humans). It also makes them more vulnerable to damage, but since it’s customary to wear pants on most civilized planets, that never really becomes a problem in the course of a normal day. The base of the shaft that’s usually covered has noticeably higher sensitivity. There are probably individual exceptions to most of the above.
Conventional understanding is that cathar don’t have barbs, which is true the vast majority of the time, though about 60% of them have some amount of vestigial non-keratinous bumps over their head that have no noticeable affect on anything aside from occasional increased sensitivity in that area. Rarely an individual might develop a few actual barbs at the onset of puberty, but they have no practical function and pose a risk of discomfort and injury, and can easily be removed via a fast and mostly painless medical procedure, so the number of adults who have them is close to zero.
Females do have (mild, easy to suppress if desired, and mainly not at all disruptive) heat cycles. Other cathar can generally tell by scent, but not to a distracting degree, and it’s considered rude and inappropriate to point it out with anyone but a close friend or partner. It should go without saying that males don’t have heat cycles, but I’ve gotten enough weird DMs about this to know that I need to say it. Unless said male is trans, and not on any sort of HRT, that’s not how that works.
They kind of have breasts but unless actively nursing they’re barely noticeable if at all, especially under clothing. Cathar have much fewer hangups about going topless regardless of gender than certain human cultures do.
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Darkstar headcanons:
Laynia dresses in primarily dark cool colors with bright accents in the form of trims, patterns, or accessories. Due to coming from cold Russia, short bottoms aren’t in her wardrobe and most of her sleeves are long. She favors high-necked blousy belted tops with sleek pants and functional but pretty boots. Her long blonde is eternally pushed back. by some sort of headband. Cloth, plastic, wood, plain, pearls, bejeweled, patterned, she has them in near every variety possible and they are her most common accessory. She also owns a large assortment of stylish winter coats, scarves, gloves, and hats. Because, again, Russian. She's not much one for bracelets, preferring brooches and pendants more, typically in oval or starburst shapes. She has a love for black velvet, and it will show up for dressy events in forms such as a rhinestone-dotted envelope handbag or round-toed pumps with ankle straps.
Laynia collects small antique music boxes and crystal glass figurines of pretty things like ballerinas and swans. She likes black velvet jewel pillows, black flowers and black butterflies, gemstones (clear, black, or yellow) all sorts of museums (but especially art, astronomy, and natural history) and the sight of pure white snow under the street lamps at night before people can ruin it into dirty slush the next day.
She listens to classical, romantic, disco, pop, and synth music.
Laynia likes sweet delicate desserts like rock candy, powder candy, jujubes, marzipan, and bliny or oladyi with varenya style fruit preserves. She dislikes zhurek, tukmachi and any kind of preserved fish dish (fish should only be served fresh or not at all!)
She dislikes being asked about Putin, the Romanovs, etc. Basically, about the only things Americans know about Russian culture. She also dislikes how people don’t know the different between Russian and Belarusian.
Her favorite animals are white weasels/minks (because they're so pretty and cute) and wolves (because they're beautiful too, but also such social animals with strong family dynamics)
Laynia likes “slice of life” fictional media, such as domestic drama novels or family-centered sitcom shows. These are fantasies for her, these are escapes from what’s “normal” in her life. For the same reason, she avoids spy thrillers and similar genres, no matter how unrealistic they are in their depictions. She delights in mundane tasks.
Likes working in small groups (3-6 people counting herself), dislikes working alone or large groups.
She anthropomorphizes the Darkforce, calling it "she" and believing it has feelings or at the very least is capable of pain. What she actually feels when she feels the Darkforce in "pain" is due to simply her mental connection to her own Darkforce constructs that allows her to create, maintain, and manipulate them. When they are attacked, dissipated, or changed against her will, she feels that as pain, and interprets it as the Darkforce being in pain "herself"
Though not religious aside from a vague conception of Heaven and its goodness/judgement, Laynia is a strong believer in the supernatural, in particular of ghosts. She is not, however, a fan of them, and would prefer to stay away from anywhere that is rumored to be haunted, had a tragedy occur there, or simply feels creepy to her.
Due to her isolated upbringing within a lab, Laynia's social skills are rather lacking. She's extremely polite, but there are so many ways that one can commit a faux pas even with perfect manners, and the nuances of how to navigate complex personal situations escapes her completely. Of course, this applies to plenty of people who WEREN'T raised in a box, so she's really doing marvelously, considering her background. Overall, she comes off as well-bred but clueless, and many assume her to just be a naive rich girl cliche. Her Russian accent also helps with this, making many people attribute her social missteps as merely due to being foreign. Laynia gladly allows them to think this. During times of high emotion or action, Laynia's social niceties deteriorate further, and it's at these times she's at most risk of hurting others emotionally---which, also, is a time they'll most likely be hurt, if their emotions are also running hot.
Laynia is more than a little bit of a hypocrite with her morals when it comes to violence and killing in the line of duty. For the most part, she'll always use the minimum force needed to accomplish a task, and will resort to lethal means only when it is truly necessary. At least, until it comes to someone she personally cares about being hurt. For instance, she would probably just teleport a group of bank robbers to jail with her Darkforce powers, leaving them unharmed but contained, even if they shot a hostage. But if they shot her brother? Then they would die. Some people might see this as proof of her devotion to her loved ones, and it is, but it also means that she applies special standards to her own pain and loss over others, and loses her morals when they're actually in a position where it's difficult to uphold them. What's worse, she'll actually be downright irrational in these situations; she'd probably not only kill the person actually responsible for consciously choosing to murder her brother directly, but she'd also likely go after the person who sent them on the assignment. Laynia has precious few people close to her, and her mania at the prospect of having them taken away is something both dangerous and easily exploited. Un-hypocritically, she does understand this in others, seeing it as understandable to commit murder in righteous anger, but not in cold blood.
She also understands feelings of isolation, alienation, and being kept apart from others. When she sees someone or something (even an insect) kept prisoner, her instinct and desire is to free it, and she will do so if the being asks, even if it is an enemy.
She is far from blindly loyal, and will question her own side should they do things she doesn't agree with, and is also capable of respecting her enemy and even considering them possibly in the right. Despite having been raised to be obedient first and always, she has always had a strong conscience of her own, to the point that she will refuse to work with someone should their methods be too brutal, or reject a loved one if they commit a heinous act.
That said, she has trouble openly questioning those in positions of authority over her, specifically those of her own country. She is deeply loyal to Russia, and willing to do things she finds distasteful and wrong if it means saving her homeland, such as kidnapping or pressing someone into service. This same loyalty has made it easy for her government to deceive, manipulate, and just plain strongarm her into serving them in ways she finds wrong. Eventually, she is pushed too far and vows to never again serve the Russian government, but she deeply loves Russia itself and seeks to reform it from within, rather than defecting to the US. She’s basically in an abusive relationship with an entire government/country.
Since her only peers growing up were two boys that grew into very proud and aggressive men, it’s made her a bit sexist, tending to generalize men as always thinking they know best and as always fighting first without question.
She believes in battle-forged trust, and will typically consider someone a friend and automatically trustworthy if they fight on the same side together at any point, even if they don’t actually get to know each other at all, and be offended if they don’t think the same of her.
Despite her veneer as the softest member of her squad, Laynia is defiant in the face of torture and captivity—-and as kind as she can reasonably be when she is the captor rather than the captive, which has happened more than once when service to her country required her to commit kidnapping.
Laynia was raised only to be concerned with the physical well-being of herself and her teammates. It would not be accurate to say that she doesn’t care about the feelings of others, more that she just doesn’t always prioritize them as highly as she should. Because of this, she can frequently ignore or tread on the feelings of others, giving the impression she’s insensitive or mean. Ironically Laynia actually considers herself quite sensitive and emotionally astute, and would be very surprised to learn of such complaints against her. This is because growing up, she WAS considered the emotionally wise one—but only compared to her brother and Ursa Major!
Because Laynia was brought up not to complain, she often won’t express that something is bothering her or that someone has offended her. She thinks she’s doing the right thing, but many people would in fact far prefer that she speak up if she’s got a problem.
Laynia lacks a lot of basic life skills because they simply weren’t taught to her in the “school” she was raised in. For instance, what outfits are appropriate where, car maintenance, budgeting, cleaning, and cooking. She was taught how to find and prepare food in the Siberian wilderness should she ever be stranded or stationed there, but not how to go to the supermarket and make a normal meal in a normal kitchen. She knows to turn to Google for most of this stuff, she's not stupid, but it can be surprising to some people what she doesn't know, and she often doesn't even know it's something she needs to know until it comes up.
Laynia is automatically inclined to trust and obey doctors, professors, and similar people, as well as military personnel. It doesn’t mean she’ll do or believe absolutely anything they say, that depends what it is, but she gives their opinion and approval more weight than she does other people.
Laynia has a hard time making big decisions, and an even harder time sticking to them, frequently going back and forth even after she's made her initial choice.
Laynia takes criticism from her superiors very personally, but doesn't show it. Crying every time you get reprimanded of course wasn't something you're allowed to do when being trained by the State, so of course she'd never show it, but she would FEEL it because she was taught that her entire purpose was to serve said State, thus her self-worth hinges on it, and a failure hurts that self-worth. This need for approval from authorities means she’ll try to evade blame when something goes awry, and is loath to step out of line. This can make her a snitch, a suck up, and disliked by her peers for it. Laynia does her best to put up a kind and cordial demeanor to all, and retain a polite decorum even when it’s not returned. This is more to avoid making waves in the team than anything else. If there is discord in the ranks, she refuses to ever be the one to blame for it. It’s not that Laynia doesn’t question orders ever. She does. And she does sometimes find her moral conscience at odds with them. The problem is that she seldom acts on these thoughts, instead proceeding with her missions despite her misgivings.
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Part 3/?
Previous post
I don’t agree with everything in this post, specifically it claiming that evolution is false. I’m honestly still studying that and thinking about it. But, I’m sure you get the main idea, the main audience or rather the target audience is Christians.
Made in God's Image: Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…" –Gen. 1:26
📷God exists as three persons in one Trinity. Likewise, the triune God created tripartate man, with body, soul, and spirit (1 Thes. 5:23) and He also imprinted our world with His triune nature. Space exists in three dimensions, height, width, and length, as does time in past, present and future. There are protons, neutrons, and electrons and the primary colors of red, green, and blue. We live on this third planet from the Sun and enjoy matter in solid, liquid, and gas. We build with the strongest shape, the triangle, and our DNA uses only three-letter words. Human beings live here, in heaven, and in hell, with those who love Him crying out, "Holy, holy, holy." Being made in God's image imagerefers to our form, and being made in His likeness refers to our essence as sentient, morally-responsible persons. Charles Darwin hoped for evidence that apes eventually began standing erect. However, thousands of kinds of animals made by God, along with all the four-footed beasts, have a stooped stance and look to the ground, whereas men and women alone stand upright created with a heavenly gaze and as the most social of creatures. For the first thing that God created was a form, that is, an image, for the eternal Son to indwell (Col. 1:15; etc.). And in that image "He made man," and not in the image of apes (see AmericanRTL.org/Darwin). But He made them "male and female" as Christ affirmed (Mark 10:6), "from the beginning of creation." And as Moses wrote in Hebrew צֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים, which in Latin is imago Deiand in Greek, εἰκόνα θεοῦ: "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them" (Gen. 1:27). And because a fish is not made in God's image, one can eat another without guilt, and it is impossible to "murder" a tomato or a turkey. Only a human being can be murdered. For God prohibited the shedding of innocent blood, "for in the image of God He made man" (Gen. 9:6). See more at rsr.org/3.
Pain in Childbirth Resulted from Sin: [As a result of Adam and Eve's sin:] To the woman God said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children..." –Gen. 3:16
God DID NOT inflict this pain in childbirth as a sadist but IN MERCY toward the child, and thus, toward the mother too. How so? Please consider that after being created on the sixth day (Gen. 1:27), Adam sinned so quickly that his wife did not even have time to conceive a child before the Fall. However, if Eve had given birth before the Fall, she would not have experienced pain in childbirth. Why not? As a result of Lucifer tempting Eve, God then put enmity between him and mankind. And as a result of Eve's sin, God multiplied the length of time for human gestation. Sin and death destroyed the perfection of the cosmos itself, for "the creation was subjected to futility" (Rom. 8:21) and as the Apostle Paul continued, "For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now" (Rom. 8:22). So after man's sin, the Earth lost its original environmental perfection as a paradise and instead became a relatively hostile place in which to survive. This would be especially true for tiny human newborns who would face a terribly high infant mortality rate being born not into an Eden but into our current world struggling to survive in freezing weather, sweltering heat, with less than optimal nutrition, and fighting pathogens. We know that with loving care and great wisdom God designed the development of the fetus in the womb. So because sin would destroy the perfection of the cosmos, God created a genetic contingency for Adam and Eve such that, if they sinned, as a biological consequence, a fetus would then remain in the womb for a longer period of time, in order to grow much larger and stronger (as compared to His original design and as compared to many animals like the koala, opossum, and kangaroo.). As God said to the woman, "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children" (Gen. 3:16). To "multiply... your conception" does not mean that after the Fall women would conceive more children, for previously God had commanded the first parents "to be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 1:28). And of course children themselves are not a curse but one of the greatest blessings from God (Ps. 127:3-5). So what does this mean? In this context the term "conception" is a metaphor meaning gestation. A typical figure of speech is the use of the beginning of something, say a book or an alphabet, to represent the whole, such as the ABCs and the word title, as in "That author wrote three best-selling titles." We understand the figure, that he didn't just write the titles, but the entire books. So by this common language convention, here the term conception is a metaphor which means gestation. By multiplying a woman's gestation, God gave her baby a much greater chance of surviving in our hostile world. This comes at the expense though of mom's discomfort and pain. However, just as the Apostle Paul wrote that "the sufferings of this present world are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed" (Rom. 8:18), so the members of American Right To Life who are moms have made it clear that the pain in childbirth, though it is often severe, is nothing compared to the joy of holding their newborn child. Interestingly, Scripture may contain sufficent clues to indicate the length in months of the original gestation period. By His original design, a woman may have labored with child for six months. Why? Today we say that a full-term baby is one who is born at nine months, and they average 20 inches long weighing seven pounds. At six months the fetus (which is Latin, for bringing forth and offspring) is half-a-foot shorter and weighs just under two pounds, so that a perfectly healthy woman (like Eve) delivering a tiny child like that would not experience today's intense labor pains. Further, an original gestation of six months is biblically appropriate because from the Genesis to Revelation, six is the number of a man. For he was created on "the sixth day" (Gen. 1:31) and the antichrist uses 666 because "it is the number of a man (Rev. 13:18), and in the Ten
Commandments God wrote that for "six days you shall labor (Ex. 20:9). And nine is the number for judgment, as shown in the crucifixion when Jesus took the judgment for man's sin, for "from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land," (Mat. 27:45; Mark 15:33) similar to "darkness over the land of Egypt" in the ninth plague (Ex. 10:21) which was followed by the death of the firstborn and the Passover. "For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us" (1 Cor. 5:7), crucified on the very daythat the passover lambs were being sacrificed. So as Luke reports at "the ninth hour... He breathed His last" (Luke 23:44-46). So six is the number of man, and nine is a number of judgment. Thus God likely multiplied the original six months by one and a half to get today's nine months of gestation in mercy for both mother and child.
Rights Come from God: "Thou shall not murder... Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not bear false witness..." –Exodus 20:13-16
Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…" –Gen. 1:26
Human rights do not come from the government, for then they wouldn’t be rights; nor from the majority (consider America and slaves, Germany and Jews, China and Christians); nor from the delivery doctor or hospital. For rights come from our Creator, at that moment we are created. That's why the right to life commences at conception, and not at some arbitrary later time. Further, Jeremiah 1:5 quotes God, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." The Declaration of Independence affirms what those who believe in God have always known. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life…” We have human rights because we are made in our Creator’s image and likeness, which is why parents, unlike animals, have a moral obligation to protect and love our children, born and unborn. Further, as said to Bill Maher on ABC, "You cannot elevate animal rights without denigrating human rights." Human beings have the right to due process as affirmed by God when He said, "Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." And we have the right to own private property as affirmed by God when He said, "Thou shall not steal." And we have the right to life as affirmed by God when He said, "Thou shall not murder."
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A Flower a Day
Today we will be looking at, Geranium/Pelargonium
Geranium/Pelargonium (Geranium Maculatum) (Wiccan)
“When Linnaeus created his plant taxonomy, he placed geraniums and pelargoniums in the same family due to the similar shape of their seeds. They have since been separated, but pelargoniums are still called geraniums by most gardeners. These plants are feminine in nature and associated with Venus and in some cases Mercury, they are aligned with the element of Water. Pelargoniums can be used in any spells related to happiness, prosperity and fertility, especially talismans and sympathetic magic. Also, health. protection and love. The colour of the bloom and the scent can also determine the magical attributes of these plants. Rose scented geraniums, for example, can be used in place of roses for many uses and as is often done in the cosmetic industry. Some Pelargonium species are said to repel mosquitoes. Scented geraniums are excellent for use in cosmetics as well as in potpourri. Fragrances range from spicy (nutmeg, cinnamon) and citrusy (orange, lemon, lime, and citronella), to the famous rose-scented geraniums. There is even a chocolate variety. These can be used in place of the real thing for most magickal and aroma therapeutic uses.” -The Witchipedia by The Witchipedian
“Essential Oil-Relieves stress and tension, uplifts mood, anti-inflammatory, soothes itchy skin” -The Good Witches Guide by Shawn Robbins and Charity Bedell
“A tea of Wild Geranium flowers is an effective counter to many love spells. A bit of the root can be carried as an amulet to attract happiness and prosperity. It can also be used in spells to encourage conception, successful pregnancy and safe childbirth, especially in sympathetic spells. Infusions may be made of any part of the plant for the treatment of diarrhea, dysentery, irritable bowel, cholera, kidney problems, internal bleeding and many other issues that call for the use of an astringent. It is also antiseptic and may be applied externally for issues involving pus, discharge and inflammations. It can be used as a douche or gargle to this affect if called for. The powdered, dried root can be used as a styptic. Although the entire plant is effective, the rhizome contains the highest concentration of tannin and healing properties.” -The Witchipedia by The Witchipedian
Geranium (florist)
Oak Leaf, True Friendship - Pencil Leaf, Ingenuity - Wild, Steadfast Piety - Scarlet, Stupidity
“The geranium is a heart-warming plant, a spot of cheer on a kitchen windowsill; in its wild, true form, a gentle presence on a windswept hillside. When its flowers drop, the exposed fruit is revealed to be a pointed shape, like a crane’s bill. The Greeks noticed this resemblance to the bird and called the flower ‘geranion’, from ‘geranos’, meaning ‘crane’. ‘True friendship’ was the emblem assigned to the oak-leaf geranium, perhaps in reference to the strength and duration of the oak tree; the exquisite and skilful patterning of veins on the pencil-leaf flower brought the notion of ingenuity to mind; and the wild geranium, sometimes called herb Robert, a hardy little plant which often grows in the most difficult terrain, was also given a noble meaning; but the scarlet geranium was not so fortunate. It acquired its emblem from a story of Madame de Staël, the eighteenth-century author and intellectual, and her encounter with a handsome Swiss army officer in full scarlet regimentals. After spending an hour with him, in which time he hardly said a word, she asked him questions he could not refuse to answer, and his replies were noticeably lacking intelligence. Vexed at having wasted her time, she turned to the friend who had introduced the officer and said, ‘Truly sir, you are like my gardener, who thought to do me a favour by bringing me this morning a pot of geraniums; but I tell you I sent the away and told him never to bring them again. And why? Because the geranium is a flower well-clad in scarlet: so long as we look at it, it pleases the eye, but when we press it lightly it emits a disagreeable odour.’ Many Victorians, however, liked the scarlet geranium exactly because of its show of bright colour. Introduced from South Africa, along with numerous other varieties, it was grown everywhere, in fashionable parterres and homely window boxes - a cottage exotic. Miss Mary Mitford, the author of ‘Our Village’ , a portrait of English rural life in the early nineteenth century, grew geraniums around a wire pyramid in a fine display. A tasteful dinner-party arrangement might include trailing geraniums and ferns cascading down from a bowl held aloft on a grass stern, or water-filled specimen glasses with sweet-scented geranium leaves floating on the top. The gift of an oak-leaf geranium would seal a friendship.” -The Language of Flowers by Mandy Kirkby
(Note: This being said, if you are suffering from a condition or are in pain please consult a doctor or mental health professional.)
#Geranium#garden#books#herbs#nature#witch#witchcraft#wicca#wiccan#pagan#rose#basil#lavender#pine#flowers#witchy#witchblr#witches on tumblr#paganism#pagan wicca#red witch#green witch#dark witch#light witch#white witch#green#green wica#green aesthetic#nature world#magick
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Title: Still hurting
Fandom: NBC’s Hannibal
Pairing: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Genre: whatever
Rating: T
Summary: Hannibal and Will are old and visiting a graveyard. Will is sad. No warnings. Just a tiny bit of rusty English writing exercise. Some fannibal friend (Electra) gave me a prompt years ago, a phrase from Goethe’s Faust. [ “He calls it reason, using it To be more beast than ever beast was yet.” or something similar]
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„Hannibal?“
Will’s voice cut through the heavy silence of the graveyard grounds. His wet glasses prevented him from seeing anything, but huge rain drops that made their way down the surface of his spectacles. Will’s soaked hair stuck to his forehead and trickled down his grey-haired temples. He had forgotten to put on his beanie, probably left it in Hannibal’s car. The good doctor was nowhere to be seen. The ex-profiler felt the dampness of his clothes like a heavy cloak that pulled him down while his trousers stuck uncomfortably to his legs.
“Hannibal!”
Was it insensitive or even indecent to call out for someone in a graveyard? He turned to each side and looked around, but couldn’t see any other person, which wasn’t really surprising, considering the heavy shower that was coming down on them.
He looked back down to the small stone just in front of his feet. It was for the very first time he laid eyes on her grave. So many years had passed by. He still remembered her well - her piercing blue eyes, the way they had stared at him, fully aware of his crime, the crime of killing her biological father. Back then she already had expressed her suspicions about his intentions, long before he himself had become aware of his wish to become a surrogate father.
He read her name, whispering it to himself like a secret. It was hard to read since time hadn’t been kind to the engraved letters on greyish stone. It felt to him like visiting the resting place of a child – his child. She was gone forever, long before her time. He still blamed himself instead of Hannibal. >>You could have had it all. It would have been so easy<< They could have been a family. Hannibal had told him so, right after Will’s monstrous betrayal. He had been a shitty friend. Will had to smile. He was bitter. Hannibal had been an even shittier friend and foster father. He shook his head. It was of no consequence any longer. All these losses! All this death! He had hoped Hannibal would let Alana live, but no. The wrath of the murderous Titan hadn’t stopped after their fall.
When Will had been in a coma for five months he had dreamed of fish and ocean and the taste of salty water and a quiet, an somniferous silence that had swallowed all the noise in his head and replaced it with everlasting peace. But it didn’t last. One day he had opened his eyes to the world again – saved and sadly still alive – only to learn that Hannibal had been hunting down the people as he had promised to do so – in another lifetime.
They hadn’t even cared to give Abigail’s gravestone a short quote or simply a Bible verse, but who would have wanted that beside her parents and her two foster dads?
Now, in retrospective, her death seemed completely meaningless to Will. He had sacrificed her like the proverbial lamb for slaughter in order to secure his moral integrity and his former believe of never being one of those who would ever become corrupted by evil and who would never be tempted by demons. Pathetic!
He hadn’t wanted to become Hannibal’s Doctor Faustus. So he had refused Mephistopheles’ offer, but still Gretchen had to die. Not quite an innocent Gretchen, but a girl that did not deserve such gruesome death. A fair and proper trial would have been enough, yes, even a life imprisonment with some help of a professional and kind psychologist (not Hannibal), but to cut her throat as a punishment for William’s non-compliance...killed by the same man who had saved and had nurtured her dreams of a better future. It felt like one of the old mythological stories of the Greeks. And Will’s part in it was something he could not forgive himself, ever. Especially not now that he was Mephistopheles’ mate and had followed the devil all the way down to the abyss. Hell, how good and great it had felt to be truly evil, to be finally free of the heavy conscience of a good man. But it had lasted only for a while. He had struggled with it for quite some time. Time and again, he had longed to put a stop to it. To all of it. He had fantasized about suicide for years, but eventually he had given up. Now he was quite contempt with his existence. He wouldn’t call it living. They were an item, never to be separated again.
Goddammit! He was back on his merry-go-round of thoughts. A place he had visited too many fucking times over the last twenty or so years.
“Not a very fruitful exercise.” Hannibal’s smooth voice narrated from behind him.
“You’re wet as a poodle. You’ll become sick again.” The older man added.
“I never quite caught the meaning. I mean why a poodle? Why not a spitz or a cocker spaniel?” Will turned around. Hannibal was holding a large black umbrella in his left hand and a walking can in the other. It wasn’t just any wooden can, but crested with a silver knob in the shape of a stag head. Naturally. Hannibal’s white hair was not wet at all. In fact, he looked as neat as a pin. His three-piece-suit in dark blue was without blemish.
“Where have you been?” Will asked. “I found her.”
“I was aware of that. I thought you’d like to have some privacy.”
Will mumbles incomprehensibly.
“Beg your pardon?” Hannibal stood two feet away, not even looking down at the grave stone.
Will sighed. “I don’t believe in any concept of the afterlife. You know that. So I’m not in the habit of talking to ghosts. She is not here anymore. You saw to that.” He clenched his jaw.
“I did indeed.” Hannibal replied. Will could not trace any remorse in Hannibal’s voice.
“I did not leave you to have soliloquy with a ghost, but to grieve in privacy.” Hannibal explained himself. He rarely did these days.
They walked back to their Jaguar. Will walked with a limp. He was used to it. The rain had worsened.
“I was wondering if we could make a donation? Anonymously?”
Hannibal opened the car door on the passenger seat for Will. The younger man lowered himself in a cumbersome manner into the vehicle.
“Yes, of course.”
“I want to buy a proper gravestone for her. Abigail needs something more personal.”
“I understand.” Hannibal nodded and closed the car door before he walked over to the driver’s seat.
“Do you?” Will mumbled.
Hannibal let it slight.
When Hannibal had taken his seat behind the wheel Will asked: “Would you know about any proper epigraph?”
“We’ll think of something.” Hannibal started the car’s engine and pulled out of the parking space. Will looked out of the window, leaning his head against the cool glass. Why did it still hurt so much? The lump in his throat was back. He wanted to cry, tears stung in his eyes, threading to force their way down his scared cheek.
Hannibal pursed his lips.
Will knew his companion was watching him. “Let’s leave. I’m cold and I wanna go home.”
The End
#hannigram#hannibal#nbc hannibal#hannibal lecter#will graham#fanfic#abigail hobbs#short piece#very bored#it's a prompt from years ago
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Dear America
Dear America,
I love you for all that you are and all that you strive to be. You never fail to surprise me, in both good ways and bad. I am so very lucky to find a home among your multitudes, in all your pretty places. I have thought much about what you mean, for me and for the world. It’s taken me years to understand you to the point that I do, and yet it’s probably incomplete. You are my adoptive mother after all.
My first impressions of you are misremembered fragments. As a 9-year-old I did not know much about you. Everything I thought I knew came from an out-of-print Western I read 30 times during our sojourn in Italy, because it was the only book I had. I did not arrive on your shores in a boat as did the millions before me but on a jumbo jet from Rome to JFK. The people in New York startled me, their varied skin tones, accents, smells, fashion statements were like nothing I had ever seen. The other kids quickly indoctrinated me into New York’s tribal divisions, but I never fully accepted them.
As a public high school freshman, I quickly amassed a multicultural friend group. James Madison High in 1994 Brooklyn was an idiosyncratic place, nearly four thousand souls filing in through doors equipped with metal detectors and security guards. I understood nothing of what was expected of me as a Russian Jew. Pretty soon I was harassed by the other members of my “tribe” about not sticking with my kind. I guess that was how they survived.
After my mother sent me to parochial school, we got an exciting letter. We would get to become US citizens. I didn’t get to take the oath with everyone, as a minor I got automatic citizenship once my mother got hers. But I remember everything about that mundane event of signing a paper in an office. I was an American citizen. It meant everything.
American meritocracy saved me, maybe quite literally saved my life. Many others, mostly boys, from my part of Brooklyn did not get to see their 40th birthday, the age I am now. Others lived a life that was slightly above the standard of their immigrant parents. I remember two events that have shaped my journey. My SAT score came one spring day. My uncle opened the letter while I was on the phone. I had him read it three times. One year later I was in college with a full ride.
My MCAT score came 6 months before I became pregnant with my oldest daughter. I was in the narrow hallway of my mother’s building, lined with silvery mailboxes on one side and apartments of pleasant old Jewish ladies on the other. When I saw my score, I laughed so hard, tears streaming down my face that I had to reassure one of them that poked her head out.
It’s a simple story. Immigrant girl perseveres, through a tough time in a tough neighborhood, single mother and all, and becomes a doctor. The American dream come to life.
But that’s just part of you America isn’t it?
What did I sign when I became a citizen? It wasn’t just a deal to study hard, succeed, make money and have fun along the way. It was a contract with all your bloody, shameful and heroic past.
It took me many years to understand that the accepted position of a Jewish person in America means. In every other country (except the ones that don’t have Jews), the Jews are a favored scapegoat. Even now antisemitism is rising on both left and right in the US and some Jews feel like they don’t have political home. It is still with us, and I fear it always will be. But we got to be part of the establishment in the US only a few decades since Johnson–Reed Act and the S.S. St. Louis. It took thirty-four years from being sent back to die in Europe to the appointment of the first Jewish Secretary of State. You see America had a different underclass; we didn’t need to be America’s scapegoat.
But what responsibility did I, an immigrant with likely a half a dozen centuries of history in the Ukraine have for the wrongs of the past? Especially since I am repulsed even by the idea that the sons have to answer for the sins of the fathers?
I realized there was only one way to proceed. To educate myself about all of America, to truly know it, through experience and the written word. I recall the Central Park jogger case with the physical response of something that had happened to me. My mother had accidently left a Russian tabloid open and I devoured the case in all its gory details as a 10-year-old. It was the stuff of nightmares. Settled and done, perpetrators put away forever, right? It was a closed book in my mind. Until one night as I traveled through the maze of aimless internet research where I learned that the “perpetrators” were in fact freed. It was more than shocking because I also remembered very well how old they were at the time. Fifteen-year-old “super predators”: that was part of the lurid interest in the case.
Many nights in the past I have read about others, Emmet Till for one, and I would come back to the story in the evening, every few years, looking at the photos and trying to understand: Why? It was similar to the way I would venture into Holocaust literature occasionally, also trying to get at the nugget of explanation that didn’t exist.
I would read about the heroes of Abolition, Civil Rights Movement during “Black History Month”. Black history is rich and full of amazing stories, I would think. The woman that won her freedom in court, slave that taught himself to read and then wrote books still read by millions, all the people that proclaimed their worth as human beings to a hostile majority. But I didn’t understand how that fit with my conception of you, America?
I also read about the worst of the slave era – as a mother, the separation of families especially got to me and the lies that the white mothers of the time told themselves about their slaves supposed inability to love their children the same way as they did. Doesn’t that just get at some of the worst of human nature? Both the ability to dehumanize “the other” and the ability to completely delude oneself to preserve a sense of self-worth. Slavery “ended” in 1865, but well into the 1910s former slaves were publishing wanted ads to find their kin, who they never forgot.
In the meantime, a slew of “laws” were passed, Vagrancy Laws for example, essentially punishing being at the wrong place at the wrong time with hard labor which had a high maiming and mortality rate. Many of these so called “criminals” were children.
I think it is no accident that a Jew wrote the words to “Strange Fruit”. How could one not see the parallels between the experience of the Jews in Europe and the experience of African Americans in the United States? Hitler was an ardent admirer of American racial policy and German eugenicists were greatly influenced by their American colleagues.
What does justice mean, when your words are counted as nothing while the words of your accuser no matter how suspect, are held up as the unvarnished truth? What did it mean for George Stinney, who had a one-day trial and was sentenced to die by an all-white jury in 1944 at the age of 14? When I read Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, I chuckled grimly along with him about the rich irony of wrongly accused black man getting the death penalty in Monroeville, Alabama, the birthplace of none other than Harper Lee. This was in 1988. I thought of Faulkner’s words: “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
How could my heart swell with pride when I heard the national anthem, or when I hear of an American made or an imported American visionary entrepreneur, in a place where those kinds of things have happened? When I sometimes feel faint with gratitude at the incredible opportunities given to me? Where no matter how my friends and acquaintances toy with the idea of going to utopian Scandinavia or Canada to escape this crazy place, I know that I would never want to live somewhere else. And that all of the above is just the story of one marginalized group among others, although wronged so badly it is hard to compare anything to it. How does one resolve this impossible conflict?
It happened last year when I finally saw it. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote about struggling with the question that was posed to him as a racist put-down “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?”. It was many years later when he realized well “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus”. It was a profound realization for him, and I must have kept it hidden away in my mind somewhere.
I was reading the words of David Walker, a black Abolitionist: “Let no man of us budge one step, and let slaveholders come to beat us from out country. America is more our country, than it is the whites - we have enriched it with our blood and tears.” I thought “What a great American!” All of a sudden, I could see that David Walker did not belong in African American History Month at all. He was an American hero. The failure to claim him as such is a huge loss to my fellow citizens. I owed my American freedom to him, much as I did to the founding fathers, the service members that died in Americas wars, all the marginalized groups that fought and often died for their freedom. America has never fully lived up to its promise, but Americans have. What does this time have to teach us other than that our citizens will continue to strive for a more perfect union? America is a great human experiment. Which citizen of the world would truly want to live in a time where the idea of America ceases to be?
With Love,
Me
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Caato Higashikata, the case of a character getting overhyped
aka. Caato Higashikata, the most overhyped part 8 character or Caato and Jobin, the perfect mother & son duo.
Warning: This contains JoJolion (part 8) spoilers, if you are a fan of JJBA but haven’t caught up yet, I suggest to ignore this post (and/or save it from later). This was written when chapter 92 is the latest chapter in JoJolion. I’m not responsible for future errors and contradictions in this post caused by the retcon from the chapters onwards.
Yeah, currently she is one of the potential main villains nominated by the fans, besides Jobin and The Head Doctor.
However, lately Caato hasn't made any new appearance, but the hype from her fans is still raging. She is pretty cool character but sometimes her hype is getting annoying lately. It’s similar case with Suiryuu from One-Punch Man back during the Super Fight arc, when his fans were hyping him to be one of Saitama’s greatest threat, even as strong as Boros. Now, what is left is only the meme (“Suiryuu’s leg band is his limiter LOL”) and I don’t want Caato to be left as a meme.
This post is not about bashing Caato, it explains the problem in overhyping her. It contains about my thought about her, how I view her current role, the character study and how we should take her character at this moment.
Read carefully because if you’re speed-reading, you likely miss my points and accuse that I’m bashing her.
Contents:
What do you think about Caato?
Why don't you think that she will be the main villain?
What are the common reasons for Caato’s fans who want her to be the main villain and what are your thoughts?
What does Caato really need to be a proper main villain?
How about the other main villain candidates, Head Doctor and Jobin?
So how do you see Caato’s role currently?
How shall we consider Caato’s role right now?
<TL;DR is available at the end of the post>
What do you think about Caato?
Like what I said before, she is pretty cool character. Her first appearance is pretty iconic, when she was just released from prison and she coolly called her son. The way she threw away her wedding ring, symbolizes that she has left the past behind.
Then when she casually slipped into the Higashikata house, shocking her children and especially her ex-husband, owning Joshu for humiliating her. It’s pretty fun, reminds me of Joseph and Lisa Lisa’s interaction before he realized that she is his mother.
Then came the flashback, about her and Jobin. Her desire to save her son but on the other hand she also had the desire to live a long life. Resulted in her success in saving Jobin and staying alive by sacrificing the lives of stranger’s son, but at the expense of going to prison and becoming a criminal. Thus, sacrificing 15 years of her life, away from her family and freedom. And instead of lamenting, she casually returned to her normal life without considering her ex-husband’s objection while still supporting her son by providing information.
Her design is quite unique and attractive, though I don’t consider her being that hot and enchanting (not on Lisa Lisa and Lucy’s level). Her style and the way she dresses tends to be more eccentric (like any other Higashikatas).
Yeah, I ended up liking her character. She is normal as a character in JoJo standard but very fun as a mom character in every anime/manga. She is already a fine character, her portrayal is solid. She is already perfect as she is. Therefore, she does not have to be the main villain.
Why don't you think that she will be the main villain?
I have written my reasons before, why I won't like it if she becomes the Main Villain. To be honest, I don’t think her character concept and designation role are suitable for a main villain.
Introduction
First, her cool introduction. I like how Araki drew the angle and prespective in the day of Caato’s release scene. Her face that partially hidden then the angle trick that only reveal a little hint of how she looks. This surely gives us the vibe of major character, that she would be important in the future. Who is she and what is her role? Not only that, he also drew her fairly attractive in contrast to those ugly extras. The chapter also implied that there is something dangerous will be brought by this character.
Then does this mean that she is main villain? Nope. Araki’s introduction of how the main villain (and other major characters) appears is pretty unpredictable. Remember Lucy Steel? Her first appearance is “she was just there” besides Stephen Steel with no dialogue, her design (and face) also looked pretty generic (with that Steely Dan’s hairstyle). I didn’t expect her to be important, she was just a random girl happened to be Stephen’s eye candy (like Yuuya’s girlfriends). But then, fast forward later, she becomes the best girl in Steel Ball Run with prominent roles. Once she becomes important, Araki also draws her later as the hottest JoJo chick since Lisa Lisa.
Then, there is Sandman. We started the Steel Ball Run chapter with him. We saw his POV, he was greatly misunderstood by his fellow Indians from reading the white men’s books. If you are not familiar with JJBA and just happened to read this chapter as your first introduction to the series, you likely would misunderstand Sandman as the main protagonist. As we all know, the main protagonist must belong to the Joestar’s bloodline.
Then what about Caato and her cool intro? I can guarantee that she is important as a character. That’s all. I think between Caato and Lucy’s introductions, it’s only a matter of when Araki decides the role for his characters.
Conclusion: Caato might be a character with important role, full stop.
Character Background
What is Caato’s background? She is introduced as the mother of four Higashikata children, ex-wife of Higashikata Norisuke IV, the current patriarch of the family and the head of its family business (The Fruit Company). An ex-convict as her interesting background. Kinda weak character background for a main villain imo, but this does not automatically debunk her to be the main villain. Some JoJo main villains have very flashy backgrounds, we got non-human entity like The Pillar Men and that flashy vampire, mafia boss, the priest and U.S president. But we also got a mere salary man who wants a quiet life. Jobin himself is just an heir to his family (and business).
However, let’s compare their respective settings, especially in part 4. Kira Yoshikage is just a salary man with his hand fetish who wants a quiet life. Let’s focus on his salary man part first. While Kira only held such ordinary occupation as a main villain, the setting of part 4 in JoJo doesn't have anyone else in more glorious positions. Okay wrong, there are grandpa Joseph as a real estate tycoon and Jotaro as marine biologist. But what do their careers have to do with the plot and main goal in part 4? Nothing. Those career are not required to chase a serial murderer, it requires Stand users.
What about part 8? At least there are currently two people who hold more prominent occupations than the Higashikata mother and son duo. They are The Head Doctor and Holy Joestar-Kira. There was also Damo as the head of the smuggling cartel in the Locacaca Organization but he was already ruled out from the main villain candidate. Is there any correlation between their occupations and the main theme in part 8? Of course, because the main focus in this part is The Locacaca fruit. Both Head Doctor and Holy have conducted research on the fruit as scientists. Just like Caato and Jobin, all of them need (and are fighting over) that fruit. But Head Doctor and Holy were few steps closer in utilizing the fruit for greater purpose. Not only that, the Head Doctor is also the presumed mastermind of the Locacaca Organization and its members are extremely knowledgeable in the nature of the Locacaca.
Besides come from the rich family who can buy that worth hundreds of billions fruit, the lack of prominent position held by Caato and Jobin weakens their potential as the main villain, but that doesn't mean I eliminate them as candidates.
On the other hand, if I really want a female to be the main villain, surely I would prefer Holy over Caato. Sadly but fortunately (and just as I thought), chapter 92 seems to have debunked Holy as the potential villain.
Conclusion: Caato’s character background got challenged.
Objective and Motivation
What is Caato’s objectives likely? What I know so far are: she wanted to save her son’s life, freeing him from the Rock Disease. But it had been solved in the past. After she got released from prison, she wants the Higashikata’s fortune, to take back what she thinks her right. She holds revenge on her ex-husband due to him abandoned her. Her other possibly objective is helping Jobin to get the New Locacaca fruit to save her grandson, maybe… but so far she is still MIA.
Okay, let’s compare her objective with the other main villain’s candidates. What about The Head Doctor? What exactly is his goal? His goal is not very clear yet, but being the presumed mastermind of the Locacaca organization makes me feel that he has grand plan. We can guess that among of them is to gain the power of the New Locacaca's equivalent exchange along with the refinement of Locacaca fruit for medical applications. Also, his current objective is to secure the New Locacaca for its medicinal properties along with the benefit of at the very least the members of his organization and possibly the Rock Human race at large (implied by Urban Guerrilla).
With this, Caato’s motive becomes very personal and ordinarily plain but also more humane and relatable to us whereas the Head Doctor’s motive sounds more grandiose and idealistic. Though personally, I’m more interested in the Head Doctor’s objective because it sounds more interesting to be challenged by our protagonists. Besides that, I'm also not interested in the Higashikata family drama that Caato will bring likely. To get the family’s fortune and take over its business (by controlling her son ala queen mother?). Why would I bother to read a seinen battle manga with a conflict like this if I could just watch some TV dramas with similar plot? Not that I completely reject this plot, but for me this kind of conflict should not be the main focus (and goal) in this story.
Then, what about Jobin’s objective? He finally got the grafted branch and betrayed the Locacaca group. His priority right now is to save Tsurugi and cure him of the rock disease. He is also motivated to improve his family's business with innovation (with this, he often at odds with his father).
Caato might shares similar goal with Jobin, but for me her motivation to achieve one of her goals (in saving Tsurugi) sounds rather weak. I'm not saying that she doesn't care, of course she cares about her family. But I do not feel that her will to save her grandchild would be as strong as her will to save her son years ago. Because for me the family bond between mother and child is definitely stronger than grandmother and her grandchild.
Unless when she has lost all her children and her grandchild is the only offspring left for her (coughErinacough). Of course at this time Caato does not experience that, all of her children are still well and there. Moreover, we haven't seen her interaction with her grandchild yet, how could she develop a strong bond with him? But for Jobin, he was feeling a great urge to save Tsurugi, a feeling similar to what Caato has felt in “Mother & Child” flashback.
So, Caato’s motivation in fulfilling the objective to save her family is more likely for the sake of Jobin than for Tsurugi. Chances are, she will help Jobin due to her empathy. She might just do anything for her son Jobin, including saving her grandchild Tsurugi. But that is because it started from Jobin who really wanted to save his son. Because her motivation is not based on her own will, but from her son’s urge, this motivation is not suitable for a main villain but perfect for a supportive character (either for villain or protagonist).
But what about Pucci? Isn't his motivation and objective largely due to DIO’s influence? Yeah, that’s true. But in my opinion it is also because Pucci and DIO are already match-made-in-heaven (beginning with their friendship). I mean, they are perfect as friends. Before Pucci met DIO, he was already the person who would do anything he can to accomplish his goals, even kill and manipulate others, because he really believes it is for a greater good for everyone. After DIO influenced his belief, Pucci aspires to implement a plan long formulated by DIO to "achieve heaven" to obtain the true happiness. So, from the beginning they have the same goal and when Pucci can fulfill it (with DIO’s help posthumously), why not?
Even if you are not satisfied by this explanation, let’s say that Pucci and Caato's motivations are equally weak, the role of the main villain still favors Pucci more since DIO is posthumous character in part 6 (which is already dead and only appeared in flashbacks), unlike Caato and Jobin which are both still alive and exist in the storyline. Pucci’s objective also sounds grandiose and idealistic just like The Head Doctor. This is fit for the main villain. He achieved heaven by speeding up the time until the universe reset itself. Then the souls of the living would be transferred over to the 'new' universe. Everyone in the new universe gained a sort of clairvoyance, predicting the events just before they happen, something which Pucci believes is true happiness. Pucci’s desire is to make sure everyone knows about their destiny and have them accept it. Demanding alimony and divorce settlements or saving her family member is relatively small goal compared to attaining heaven.
If so, how about part 4 Kira? He doesn’t have any motivation besides wanting a quiet life with his girlfriend. Again, the theme in part 4 and part 8 is completely different. The main objective of part 4 is to pursue a serial murderer who cleverly manages to hide his identity and crime. That serial murderer is Kira Yoshikage, he is the main target in the story. Prior to become a target, he was casually committing his crime. Only when he realized that people began to hunt for him, he developed his new motivation to protect himself. Then, what is the main focus in part 8? It’s about breaking the curse and the Locacaca fruit. The target is not an individual, but rather an object. If so, how will we get the main villain? Either we get none or it will be someone in a high position and has a very big influence, someone that is closest to take the advantage of that fruit, the biggest mastermind or… character that we’re already very familiar with, Jobin. So, comparing part 4 and part 8 wouldn’t work (besides they took in the same setting).
Conclusion: Caato either needs motivation that will affect many characters or a high ground. It doesn't have to be grandiose, but her motivation must be independent from anyone especially Jobin.
What are the common reasons for Caato’s fans who want her to be the main villain and what are your thoughts?
”Her Stand had space-themed ability, just like D4C.”
Caato's Stand appears to take the form of a simple deck of playing cards. However, by placing an object between two cards of the deck, she can store that object in the deck itself as if nothing was there. She can store objects that are considerably larger than the deck, as seen when she brings forth a chair. Currently, its name is still unknown. “Placing an object between two cards” part kinda reminds of D4C in application. Many people also consider Caato's Stand to be space-themed like D4C. Considering that the main villains’ Stands were time-based on the original verse, many fans assume that the main villain’s Stand in the rebooted SBR verse will be space-themed. Thus, the hype of Caato's Stand and conspiracy theory of Kaato as part 8 main villain began.
Not only that, Caato also successfully surprised her family when she managed to sneak into his residence suddenly. How can it possible? Did she use her Stand? It's possible, but this is not always the case. Instead of Stand ability, it could just be a simple comedy scene. You can’t really judge the character’s power from a comical scene, do you think that Nami is physically stronger than Luffy just because she can punch him occasionally? Seriously. Judging a character’s power would be more accurate if that happens in a tense/menacing moment. This is just another fun dynamic of The Higashikata family, but this time also featured the mom/grandma. Come on, she just wanted to be reunited with her family.
If you still demand in-universe explanation, well... JJBA has a rule that Stand users with the same bloodline are be able to feel each other's presence. Since all members of the Higashikata family are Stand users, they should be able to sense each other's presence. But as Joseph from part 3 had said that they are unable to tell exactly whom and how many they sense.
SC chapter 138: DIO’s World - Part 5
if this rule still applies, it would make sense that those Higashikata did not even realize that someone (who is related by blood) had sneaked in their home and they were not aware that their numbers were increasing.
The D4C-alike theory sounds nice but let's look at the facts we have currently: has it been confirmed that Araki will use space as the new theme for his main villain’s Stand? Or will he try out new creative ways by not sticking to the theme? Time-based Stand started in part 3 and we could only see the pattern after at least two villains onwards have the same type of ability. But what about part 1 and part 2? The main villains did not use Stand at that time didn’t have time-based ability, are we going to ignore this possibility in the future?
What I see so far in Caato's Stand is that it works similar to Enigma but limited to her 52 deck of cards, of course it’s still early to judge that its ability is only limited to that, given that the first time we saw D4C, it wasn't very impressive either. But it’s also too soon in hyping that she will demonstrate OP ability. It’s hard to predict whether we will see further into her Stand again or not, but we need to if we really want her to be the main villain. However, problem is that we are getting closer to the climax and end-game. Is there still enough time to hype Caato? Speaking of further abilities, do you remember when Jobin said that there is hidden ability from Speed King that he had not demonstrated yet? Flash forward, we finally have seen more of Speed King ability in his fight with Ojiro.
In addition, there are also those who say that Caato uses cards as medium for her Stand, her French playing cards are used to symbolize the game and she likely holds the trump card, meaning that she would be the master of the game and likely would be the winner. What is the game? The main plot in part 8: the race of the Locacaca fruit. This also related to her name being named after “Card”. But wait, doesn’t Daiya’s Stand also use a game namely chess as a medium? Even compared to playing cards, chess game is closer to symbolizing strategy and mastermind. Moreover, California King Bed’s ability deals on memory, it's more fitting for mastermind.
Read further: Caato’s Stand and its mechanism so far
”Her eyes look split, she could be rock human, or fusion human like Josuke.”
Due to her strange eyes close up in her first introduction chapter coupled with her youthful look, a quite popular theory emerged that Caato’s having the split eyes like Josuke due to the strange dark shadow in the middle of her iris. Speculation that she is a rock human or fusion human of two individuals like Josuke had sprung up (and it still continues among her fans).
However when the official colored JoJolion chapters got released, the coloring team didn't color Caato’s eyes in two different colors. Why did they decide that?
I had tried to break down it and this is the result:
For further explanation, please click here.
”She looks young and the reproduction between human male and rock-human female is possible now, she could be rock human.”
What about her youthful look? Sure, she indeed looks young for a 52 years old gilf compared to Holy who’s also 52. But unlike Lisa Lisa who is indeed considered to be ageless in the story (being a hamon user, Joseph estimated her being around 20s and was shocked when he discovered that she was actually 50), Caato’s sudden appearance in front of her family only surprised them and made them wonder who she is? No comment about her supposedly youthful look, Hato even immediately mentioned her age correctly.
Not only that, her youthful look seemed to have been debunked once Holy made her new appearance in recent chapter and she is no less young looking than her. In the end, this is just a matter of Araki’s new art style. In short, Caato’s youthful looking ended up being irrelevant to the plot.
Read further: Caato Higashikata, is she Lisa Lisa 2.0?
Apart from those matters, chapter 81 also stated that rock humans are able to have sex with humans, but they’re always incompatible (相容れない) with them. It’s still not known whether it means “they can’t reproduce” or “conflict will be inevitable”. But chapter 46 actually said in the pages about Rock Humans that they can’t have children with humans. Unfortunatelly, I could not check whether there is a translation error or not because I can’t find the Japanese raw with the size large enough to be able to read the kanji.
However, recent chapter of JoJolion (99) updated the information regarding the rock-human that only rock-women and humans can have children, but it also showed us how rock-women give birth to their children. If Caato was a rock-human, then that would've meant everyone except Norisuke and Mitsuba were rock-humans, and Tsurugi wouldn't have existed.
Read further: Is Caato a Rock-Woman?
”She got that menacing Aura and she might has hidden agenda, what if she is the mastermind behind all this?”
Based on the theory above, it develops into conspiracy that she becomes the mastermind behind The Locacaca Organization, even she is allegedly the Head Doctor’s superior. I don’t know what basis could have produced this theory other than the assumption that she is a rock human. Could it be due to her menacing aura and being full of mystery? Or how Jobin is being respectful to her? Or maybe is it because her little charm as the officers in the prison like her, because main villain always needs charisma (but Kira and Diavolo). But, of course when you’re leading something, you need charisma (except Diavolo).
We all know that menacing aura, especially among JoJo females, is not limited to villains or people with very high positions. Remember Lisa Lisa’s cold glare to Joseph during his pillar training?
Or Yukako’s horror aura to Koichi in that window scene which is so iconic till it becomes a meme?
Even though menacing Caato looks the best thanks for Araki’s evolving art style, her simple cold glare and menacing aura do not guarantee her to be the main villain… just not enough yet. Yeah sure, her family were wary of her, but it's more because Hato heard the little info about her mother that she was in prison for a murder that she doesn’t recall the full story, Joshu was wary of this unknown woman and Norisuke IV was surprised to her sudden arrival as she did not notify him first. Nothing about her being ultra dangerous.
What about Jobin’s respect for her? Isn't it nice to have a main villain who is well respected… by one person? Why is being respected by Jobin making her potential main villain? Most likely because after all this time the fans predicted Jobin as the main villain, they saw at him as he is subject to her. I think the train of thought like this is still too hasty. For me what's wrong with a child respecting his mother? Of course Caato deserves his respect, she is a loving mother, wanting to save her son’s life from the rock disease. It might sound selfish since she didn't want to sacrifice her life but it’s also very humane. Perhaps she thought that Jobin shouldn’t lose his mother figure too young. Moreover, Jobin is not the only child she had. What about his younger siblings if they have to live without their mother. Although this very ironic, because despite being alive, she eventually left her children and made them grow up without mother figure. Jobin’s respect to his mother is exactly the same as Joseph’s respect to his grandma Erina.
Then, since Jobin shows his respect to Caato, there is also emerging rumor that Caato is controlling Jobin as the mastermind. Does this mean that all this time Jobin's actions have been under her control? How is that possible? Since Jobin might had been the only child who had ever visited her in prison, do you think she often instructed him to do something at that time? So far, have we really seen Caato give any instructions to him? I do not remember. What I can remember the most is when she called and warned Jobin that:
“There is something fishy between Norisuke IV and Josuke but actually I don't really know what. I was married with him for years so I know his habits. There must be something your father is hiding now, you must be careful!” (JJL ch 59 "Dolomite's Blue Lagoon - part 1")
What I really take in her character based on this scene is that she is very supportive mom, taking her time to help Jobin while she also has her own business with Norisuke IV, not controlling him. This reminds me of Yoshihiro’s role in part 4. She even caught their suspicious behavior from them based on her spending time with Norisuke IV as his wife. This kind of intuition commonly can be felt by any married women, no need to be the mastermind to be able to do it.
Is it possible that Caato is the true mastermind? How does she take care of her organization? If indeed she is secretly managing a secret organization, since when? If it's been a long time and she was very busy with it, why did she married a human who is fruit parlor owner, wasting her life for around 17 years and produced 4 children with him? For what purpose? How does she manage of her organization while hiding this fact from her family?
”Surely she was very busy managing the organization.”
If it's been since she was being incarcerated, how was it done? More importantly, does Jobin know? If Caato is indeed leading a secret organization, there's still a lot we need to see: what kind of organization is that? How does Caato run it? What is its main goal? Who are the members? When will they begin to act?
I also hate when they treat Caato as if she is omniscient. One thing that is certain is that she did not know about Mamezuku Rai, the plant appraiser employed by Norisuke IV a year after she was incarcerated (unless Jobin tells her later). Then:
This could have double meaning as well, either she really just learned that the house has been renovated or simply commented about the renovation (I still bet the former). Take a note that the renovation was done 2 years ago (she was still incarcerated atm). But if Caato already knew about renovation (and that shaddy business), how could she not figure out the details of Norisuke IV and Josuke’s secret plans?
As for Locacaca, we still don’t know whether Caato knows about it or not. However, Holy is already ahead of her as Holy even tried to do scientific analysis of it.
Lastly, I also don't think that Caato is really that powerful (as in influence/not Stand) as she was unable to get out of prison earlier (unless you argue that she did it on purpose). Even being a model prisoner didn’t grant her remission. In fact, I become suspicious, is there anyone who intentionally keep her in prison?
”Caato is the true mastermind who led/works with Damokan group as Jobin is just a gofer.”
There is also theory that Caato is the true mastermind from Higashikata family who works with Damokan group in money-laundering and smuggling the Locacaca, instead of Jobin. How so? I bet the theory was born because of this little panel:
They said the timeline with Jobin does not match, I don’t know it doesn’t match with what? I guess it’s about the time between “when Jobin first met Damokan group” and when “Kira discovered Rock Humans’ existence and their illegal fruit business”. Regarding the timeline, actually I've just compiled the timeline of JoJolion events. The thing is that Jobin met Damokan group around 2008 whereas Kira discovered the Rock Humans & it’s shady business in 2009. The key panels here:
JJL chapter 30: King Nothing
JJL chapter 72: The Northern Higashikata Estate, The Orchard
JJL chapter 49: Hato-chan Brought a Boyfriend Over – part 3
So, the time is still match if Jobin is the one who started cooperating with Damokan group. Even if Caato was the actual perpetrator, shouldn't she was still in prison at the time? Can you guarantee that she can act in the outside world while incarcerated? If we look at her backstory, we don't see her using her Stand at all, so we can assume that she didn't have Stand yet at the time (or that her Stand was useless).
They said that this could be a hint:
I think she just meant: “I was helping your business too, how dare you ignore my merits just because I went to prison?”
Her claim that she also helped the family business running smoothly for 15 years is a hint that relates to smuggling, perhaps because the 15 years she said happened to coincide with the length of time she was in prison. However, this word still have double meaning, it’s still possible that 15 years she meant is the time during her marriage with Norisuke IV prior to her incarceration and divorce. When she got arrested, Jobin was a teenager who was around 15 or older (hm… actually he was 17 at the time).
Even if her 15 years of contribution was done during her time in prison, how is that automatically related to the smuggling of Locacaca? I don’t think that Damokan group started operating as long as 15 years ago, at least there is no hint yet that the Rock Humans (and Locacaca) had been invading Morioh 15 years ago.
Read further:
JoJolion Cardspiracy: Caato and Damokan group
What actually happened in Mamezuku Rai’s past? (chapter 99 spoilers)
”She already got her flashback.”
First, what is the purpose of flashback? Flashback is a literary device in a story that provides some background information on events, situations or a character's past history; flashback’s often used to reveal some important truth about a character's past. Have we ever seen Kaato on a flashback? Yes, on JoJolion chapter 64 “Mother & Child”. What did we get from that chapter? The reason why Caato went to prison. She wanted to cure Jobin of his Rock Disease through Equivalent Exchange without sacrificing her life. When a random boy (who bullied Jobin) was dying (due to Speed King’s attack), that's when the opportunity arrived. Jobin successfully cured and Caato was still alive. Alas a few years later the boy's body was found and Caato became the only suspect (and went to prison).
The question is: who is this flashback about? Certainly Jobin and Caato. But who does this flashback actually belong to? If we look at whose point of view was being used in this flashback, this actually used Jobin’s point of view. How so? Surely this flashback have been told by Tsurugi’s POV. But let's think of it, where did he hear this story from? Certainly from his father who is none other than Jobin. It makes no sense if Tsurugi got this story directly from Caato, Tsurugi is currently 10 years old whereas Caato was incarcerated 15 years ago.
That sounds possible, but are you sure? Unless Tsurugi ever visited her grandma in prison so that Caato got a chance to tell him this story in her version. But I can tell that chapter “Mother & Child” uses Jobin’s perspective. At the beginning of the flashback we saw Jobin and Caato in one location. They were still in the same place until Jobin finally joined the scout group. After that we see how Jobin was bullied by the Boy-scout Bully.
Until finally the bully got attacked by Speed King and Jobin rushed to his house and went to see Caato in a panic. Jobin who was deeply scared and did not know what to do really needed his mother’s help. That's when we see Caato took an action and made her decision to do equivalent exchange for Jobin. Jobin had constantly been seen in this flashback whereas there was moment where we didn't see Caato. We have never seen what she was doing when Jobin was away.
The flashback tells us nothing about Caato or Jobin’s motivations, but it serves well in showing the growth of a certain character. Who is it? Of course it’s Jobin. What we got from Caato is that she wanted to save her son but also wanted to stay alive, she succeeded but had to pay for her action by going to prison, full stop. What we got from Jobin is that this incident and what his mother had done have evoked his ambition, he aspires to do innovation for his family business, expanding the trade, getting rid of his competitors and elevating his family’s social standing, to be on top. Despite her absent for 15 years, Caato is the parent who had the biggest influence on Jobin, becoming what he is today.
If to be a main villain requires flashback, sadly this is not her flashback, this one belong to Jobin. Most people focus on the theme of Stand ability as the main villain pattern. If we really rely on pattern to determine the main villain, we shouldn’t forget the flashback that shows the growth of main villain, aka childhood flashback.
Then, whose childhood flashback did we get in part 8? Of course it’s Jobin, again.
Read further: Caato Higashikata, 34 chapters (8 volumes) MIA and still overhyped
What does Caato really need to be a proper main villain?
Her own motivation which does not depend on anyone and will affect all players on the game
In her case, a motivation that is not shared with Jobin and the motivation/objective that will interconnect with other characters, affecting their actions and in this part 8, it shall be related to the Locacaca.
The Higashikata alimony dispute can’t be the main villain’s objective because that objective will only have an internal impact on the Higashikata family, not on the Head Doctor, Holy’s side and Locacaca Organization. The desire to cure her grandchild Tsurugi which requires Locacaca is also not good enough to be her main villain’s motivation because it more belongs to Jobin. Caato requires motivation that comes from her individually and that is not the kind of motivation "to help muh family."
However, those two motivations/objectives do not devalue Caato as a character, the alimony dispute makes her stand out as a character that has her own motivation and doesn’t depend on other characters. Helping Jobin will make her a very supportive character that's a solid role.
Flashback that really tells about her, preferably her childhood (or at least her origin that is outside the Higashikata)
We still need to know more about her a lot, where was she born from and where was her social standing prior to her married life with the Higashikata? How was her childhood life? Her origin? Why did she marry Norisuke IV? And most importantly what past events caused her to be the individual we know today?
How her current position can work to achieve her goals
Will being an ex-convict and Higashikata widow really help her achieve her goals? If not, is there any other status/position that she is currently hiding?
Further ability of her Stand
We need to know the name of her Stand and what else it can do? Of course she also needs ability that must be very difficult to be challenged to by most Stand users.
How about the other main villain candidates, Head Doctor and Jobin?
Head Doctor Akefu (Tooru?)
The head doctor (which his real identity might be Tooru) already seemingly has a grand objective that sounds grandiose and idealistic. A rock human being, allegedly he was the leader of the Locacaca Organization and the mastermind. Even if it’s false, as The Head Doctor working in T.G. University Hospital, it was clear that he’s holding a high position. His Stand, 「Wonder of U」 is already considered dangerous, seeing how our protagonists are struggling with it.
However, his real identity and his origin as an individual is still unknown, his personal motive is also still in the dark. How about his personality? What things he likes? What is his hobby? His relationship with other characters? Daily habits outside his role as villain?
Even so, slowly but surely, his identity is being revealed. Chapter after chapter increasingly assures us that Tooru will be the actual “Head Doctor” that is undercover. Chapter 99 confirmed that he is a rock-human and also the perpetrator who ruined Rai's family & his life in the past. It's clear that Tooru also wants New Locacaca. It’s also implied that being a rock-human, he is older than he looks, which means that there is still a possibility that we will see his connection with the pasts that have not been revealed yet. We need to see more about him and I’m sure we will, because Araki is putting his focus on Tooru’s character arc right now.
Jobin Higashikata
We already know who he is and are pretty familiar with him, we know what thing he likes, his relationship with his family, and his background is pretty clear. We have seen his flashback, we also have seen plenty enough about Speed King. The motivation is not grandiose and idealistic but very humane, he only cares to his family and it’s always about his family. He has a pretty good standing but his position making his relation with the Locacaca less direct compared to Head Doctor. Although he is my best main villain candidate, he is still a wild card in reality. He is closer to be a villain but there is also possibility that he would be reluctant ally for Josuke.
So how do you see Caato’s role currently?
Despite her relatively small appearance, Araki really wrote her character pretty well. We can see a little of her personality, her little background and her relationship with her family. I’ve seen her own motivation as stand-alone individual. Her character is humane and relatable, wanting to save her son while wanting to stay alive as well. Her character is established based on the mother’s role. Like all mothers, she was willing to sacrifice her life for her son. However, her action makes an interesting contrast to Norisuke IV and his mother, both of them chose to sacrifice their own lives. By sacrificing other people's lives, she might be seen as a selfish person. But perhaps because she had more than one child, she needed to stay alive so that they won’t lose their mother figure too young. Eventually she had to pay for her action by going to prison as another form of her sacrifice. Ironically, her selfish way in saving Jobin made her lose 15 years of mother role for her children. Nevertheless, she readily accepted that consequence.
Caato is the parent who earned Jobin’s respect more than Norisuke IV. Her sacrifice (which Norisuke IV did not do) had a huge influence on Jobin and his growth, her action had shaped him, making him the man we know today. Even at this present time, as a mother, she remains supportive for Jobin by trying to warn him and provide him information as best as she could. Jobin often mentions her positively.
Caato’s portrayal might be largely based on the mother’s role, but her characterization doesn’t always revolve around her being a mother. This is shown by her personal intention who wants half of the Higashikata fortune as the payback for her sacrifice. She wants to take back what's rightfully hers.
Only appeared in a few chapters, Araki successfully wrote Caato as a solid character. As a character with "the mom" role, she is already in relatively high tier compared to the other JoJo moms. Regarding her role against the protagonists, she is still the wild card. We do not know yet whether she will fight them or help them later, what's clear is that she's on Jobin’s side. However, I agree with JoJo wikia which compares her role to Yoshihiro (part 4 Kira’s dad).
How shall we consider Caato’s role right now?
I think we should just wait and see, surely she is an interesting character. There is nothing wrong in wanting a female gets a major role, especially as the main villain. Because so far we have never gotten a female as the main villain in JJBA and this is the era where a lot of entertainment media become "woke" and sided with feminism. However in Caato’s character, her potential to be main villain is still weak and not visible yet, although I feel there is already the potential of her to be a villain. My suggestion is we should treat her as a wild card character for the moment.
So for those of you who want Caato to be the main villain, please shut up, just wait and see! Stop overhyping her in every JoJo thread that she will be the main villain, at least don't treat her like she already is, especially when JoJolion's focus is on the Head Doctor right now. Sure, I still want to see more of Caato again as I believe that her role is not finished yet.
To be honest, I also want a JoJo main villain to be female, but with how Caato was created and established, I don’t think that she is set to be the main villain. Sure, it's still too early to say, if indeed Araki would make her the main villain, hopefully he could play it correctly. I also want to see a female main villain in JJBA, but I won’t be disappointed if the main villain we get in this part 8 is another man. Because honestly, I don’t want JJBA becomes woke just for the sake being woke by putting political correctness and feminist agenda over the quality of storyline.
Caato are you ok?
So, Caato are you ok?
Are you ok Caato?
They don’t want you
They don’t think you
Will be main villain
”I’m okay, so what?”
TL;DR: Caato is already a well written character, she doesn’t have to be the main villain to make her standing out and be a prominent character, not being the main villain doesn't make her lack of anything. It’s fine if you hype her as the main villain but we still need to see her further. So please don't tell us that she will definitely become the one as if it becomes a fact. There is still long way to go and we need to see more of her.
See also:
The legit hype Caatofags once had
JoJolion: The Main Villain and The Red Herrings
JoJolion timeline LOG
#kaato higashikata#jojolion theory#jjba main villain#character study#my thoughts#jojolion#jobin higashikata#satoru akefu#tooru jojo#jjba meta#meta post#character analysis#main villain theory#jojo's bizarre adventure#jjba part 8#jojo spoilers#caato#stfu caatofags
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Cinnamon
Art by: @jell-obeans
Author: @theonceoverthinker
Summary: What starts out as a simple apple picking trip for Emma Swan takes an unexpected twist when she discovers that the nice connection she’s finding between herself and the farm’s owner Killian Jones might be something more profound and, for Emma, terrifying than she bargained for. Emma then finds herself on a journey that pulls her between her own insecurities, her growing feelings for Killian, and the very will of Mother Nature itself. Can Killian truly be the apple of her eye or will the worms of Emma’s past keep her from taking that first bite?
Rating: G (Nothing of an equivalence to a trigger)
A/N: I want to give a couple of shoutouts.
First, to my beta, @lassluna. I can’t even begin to tell you what your tireless work on this story meant to me. Whenever I needed you, you were on our Google Doc ready to work. You’re an amazing beta – catching things before I could all the time. You were incredibly supportive and I felt that you were always working with me because you believed in my story and my writing. And your help with the story itself can’t be overstated. Honestly, there were times where I didn’t think I could finish this story, but knowing that I was doing it for you kept me going. Working with you was a privilege and I hope it was even a tenth of that for you.
Second, to my artist, @jell-obeans. Not only did you take on making me a piece at the last second, but you completely captured the tone I was going for. Your artwork presents a relaxed and casual sense of intimacy between Emma and Killian, and that’s exactly what I wanted my piece to offer for my readers. There’s a nice use of earthy autumn colors and the setting of the artwork gives off a nice sense of closeness. Finally, that Monopoly board and the tea box give a great sense of detail that I just love. It’s freakin’ gorgeous and I can’t thank you enough for all of your hard work.
Finally, a note to my readers. Thank you for taking the time to read this piece. When someone puts together a work and takes the time to painstakingly make sure that it delivers an experience that’s in its own way original, entertaining, and personal, it’s such a cool thing when that work is actually seen. So trust when I express my appreciation to you for giving me that, and I hope that “Cinnamon” can delight and warm your soul in return.
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Upstate New York was truly something to see.
Around every corner Emma turned, she saw acres and acres of trees that cascaded along the landscape like snow piled onto a mountain. Every single one of those trees had the warm colors of autumn, and on their own, they’d be beautiful enough – Emma had certainly seen plenty of them on their own – but together, they melded and practically terraformed the steep inclines they rested on into a place she wouldn’t have minded getting lost in one day.
It was her first time to this part of the country. She’d been to New York, but it was always to the city on a job. This may has well have been a different state. Whereas New York City was an urban jungle – not without its greenery, but mostly sectioned-off greenery – Hudson was a dense forest with towns and road in the spaces between it. It moved alongside the land, and that made for a more difficult, but also more beautiful drive.
But among all the beautiful aspects of the countryside, again, none stood out more that those trees.
That’s actually what had brought her up here today.
Her friend Regina had bought the apples that contained the seeds of what would become a magnificent tree that was so very similar to those now on the other side of Emma’s window many years ago. Regina had always wanted a big apple tree in her yard, and she told Emma that when she first tasted the fruit of this one particular apple only available at this one particular farm, she knew it had to be that one. After trying one of the apples from the bags Regina had brought home, Emma had to agree.
Regina spent months trying to plant it before finally consulting a gardener – one Robin Locksley. Together – by Regina’s insistence together – they worked the land. As they worked, Regina began to swear to Emma that she was smelling marigolds all day long. She’d joke about him probably keeping seeds in his pockets.
It didn’t take long afterwards to realize what had happened. Regina had to ask Robin to be sure, but indeed, Robin’s favorite scent was those of marigolds.
When it came to the matter of the heart, everyone knew what it meant when you smelled someone’s favorite scent whenever you were in their presence. The world they lived in was by no means magical, but this was one truth that persisted throughout time that science could grant no other explanation. At the dawn of this realization, first recorded in journals from the Renaissance, the concept was thought to be a myth, but it was granted solidification as a fact through time and repetition.
Regina had found her soulmate.
Emma recalled Regina telling the story perfectly. Robin had laughed when she told him, but only at the fact that the pervasive smell of apples wasn’t just because of their efforts to grow the tree. The rest took care of itself. With their love secured, finally, not one, but two things grew. The first was Regina’s tree and the second was a love that was just as strong as the bark below the sunrise-colored leaves.
After a few years, the tree began to falter in its fruits. The apples lost their firmness and batch after batch became more inedible than the last. Regina and Robin had meant to go back to the same farm where Regina first got those apples. That was the plan.
But then life happened.
Time slipped away from them. Regina became mayor and their free weekends became fluxes of going to her stepson Roland’s baseball games and taking him to wilderness survival club meeting in between town meetings, tending to their neighbor’s trees and flowers, and general chores.
And then Robin became sick.
That’s where their story had left off, but it wouldn’t be the end if Emma had anything to say about it.
Emma wasn’t a doctor and there was little a bail bondsperson could do to take the occasional load off Regina’s back, not that it would probably be accepted, knowing Regina.
What she did have though was a currently empty schedule and the perfect idea for a gift that would lift the family’s spirits.
It was going to be a simple trip. Emma had made sure of it, and if everything went according to plan, she’d be home by midnight.
Can’t wait to spend another six hours on the road, as if the last six weren’t fun enough.
It would be a long day trip to be sure, but the shitty thing about her type of business was that one never knew when their next client would call asking for her immediate services, and the fact was that an apartment wedged in the corner of Maine didn’t pay for itself.
Google Maps had told her that she’d be approaching Jones Farms in just a few minutes, three to be precise.
Finally, after hours of passing through them, the forests came to an end and a subsequent clearing revealed a series of farms over the next few miles. Jones Farms was the fifth that Emma saw. She found the spot where she could park and her yellow bug – her sole companion on this elongated trip – at last got a well-deserved rest.
Emma got out of her car and as she stretched – a relief she couldn’t understate if she tried after such a long trip – she took in her surroundings. Right in front of her stood a wooden farm with a storefront alongside it and a wide stretch of trees behind it. Emma could just make out the sight of an apple or two across the distance. Just then, the door to the storefront opened, and Emma turned her attention that way. She noticed a man exit and come into her line of view, though somewhat masked by the shadow from underneath the roof of the patio. Upon taking notice of her, the man waved Emma over.
Emma was about to head to the storefront and get started on business. Then, as she took a deep breath of the crisp air, she smelled something she hadn’t expected alongside it.
Cinnamon?
The aroma didn’t as much dance up her nose as opposed to hit her nostrils like a brick to the face. And it wasn’t like Emma disliked it. It was actually the opposite, really. But it did leave a lingering question, one Emma couldn’t answer so easily:
Why did The Great Outdoors smell like a snickerdoodle?
Her curiosity as well as her mission compelled her to go forward towards the shop.
“Hello,” the man said. “Welcome to Jones Farms.” When Emma finally got close enough to make out the man’s features, she blinked.
To be fair, Emma didn’t know what to expect from the farm hands when she came here, but what she didn’t expect was him.
The man before Emma was roughly half a head taller than her. He had piercing blue eyes, dark brown hair with a set of bangs that were swept back, and a tasteful bit of scruff that peaked at the space between his nose and mouth and otherwise ran across his chin. A black jacket covered his upper torso and arms and below was a pair of dark jeans, but neither entirely masked the subtle hints of muscle.
All this to say, he was quite handsome.
Not a bad person to spend an hour or two with.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you before, but it’s nice to meet you all the same. Killian’s the name,” he went on to say, extending a hand. “Killian Jones.”
“Emma,” she responded meeting his hand with her own. “Emma Swan.” They shook, and Emma couldn’t describe it, but just the feeling of touching him was…nice.
His whole demeanor was nice, in fact.
No, not nice. Kind.
People were a generally easy read for Emma. One didn’t survive long as a bail bondsperson without such an ability. She’d always had an affinity for spotting lies for as long as she could remember, and the rest had developed with age. These days, Emma could easily tell someone’s intentions on sight, as if a map of their person was drawing itself right in front of her.
And right now, Killian’s map pointed to the big heart on his sleeves. It wasn’t a bad way to be. He was certainly more comfortable around new people than Emma tended to be, but Emma supposed that came with the job, customer service and all that. In any event, he had an air about him and Emma couldn’t help but find it infectious.
“It’s a pleasure. Now, how may I assist you today?”
“I’m looking for some Bloody Ploughmans.”
Killian raised both of his brows and bulged his eyes. “Such language,” he said, the mock offense in his voice as clear as glass, and a gloved hand clutching at his lapel as if to milk the reaction for even more. Emma gave a gentle roll of the eyes with a smirk that was quickly returned with a charming smile. “Sorry, can’t help but use that joke on the customers. To be fair, you would too if you had something with that name.” He released a small chuckle and Emma allowed her smirk to soften into a more genuine smile. Noticeably grateful, Killian gave a thankful nod. “In any event, a fine apple.”
“And you’re the only place that has them.”
“That’s because there’s few apple farmers who come from across the sea where they’re found.”
Emma nodded. The accent in his voice made it obvious that he was British.
“You’ve good taste,” Killian continued.
“Not me, actually,” Emma pointed out. “My friend. You may remember – she came here a few years ago – Regina Mills?”
Killian’s eyes brightened with what Emma could assume was recognition.
“Yes,” Killian confirmed. “I think a decade has past since then. I remember her because she insisted on trying every apple at the farm while she was here. People often make that promise – mostly kids – but she was the first to actually do it, and the only!” He started to laugh, and Emma found herself unexpectedly compelled to join in.
That’s Regina for you.
“She told me about that,” Emma said jovially. “And if you think that’s crazy, you should’ve seen her when her favorite cereal got discontinued! She broke open her piggy bank and dragged me all over town. We went to every supermarket and bought as many boxes as we could carry!”
“Did you two grow up together?” Killian was smiling at her.
“Yeah.”
“Relatives or friends?”
“Kind of both.”
Killian quirked his brow, looking as confused as a penguin in a desert. “I don’t follow.”
“Foster siblings,” Emma said, following a moment’s hesitation.
“Ah. Gotcha,” Killian said with a soft grin. His appreciation may have been unspoken, but the gentle sprouts of his dimples told Emma quite a bit of his gratefulness for sharing something like that to someone who was little more than a stranger.
It definitely made Emma feel better. She was always tremulous when it came to bringing up something like that, but though Killian had asked for specifics until it became unavoidable, it was clearly not his intention for her to reveal that and he’d given just the right reaction to it, leaving the ball in her court for more information without a bit of pressure.
“So anyway,” Emma resumed, getting back on topic, “Regina planted an apple tree with some seeds from that apple, but the fruit these days has got all these bumps on them – Regina said it’s something called brown rot – and she wanted to grow another. She had a hard time getting back down here, so I came here to get them for her.”
“Quite a generous offer,” Kilian said. “Regina’s taste seemed to have remained the same, both in apples and in company.”
Emma smirked. “You use that line on all your customers?”
Killian returned the expression without missing a beat. “Only for the best.” Emma felt a compulsion to blush.
This guy’s either the best salesman in the world or he’s Superman.
Well, whatever he is, I’ve got to get moving. Besides, it’s starting to look cloudy.
“So, how about we get started?” Emma suggested. “Bloody Ploughmans are great and all – my favorites – but I really want to make this just a one day trip and traffic is probably going to be a bitch getting back to Maine as it is.” At the location of Emma’s hometown, Killian’s brow raised.
“Maine? Well, that’s one hell of a day trip, but I can surely understand, so, as the lady insists.”
Emma nodded gratefully, and as she did, she noticed the smell of cinnamon and how it was still so strong in the air.
“By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask: What’s that smell? I feel like I’m in a bakery.”
Much to Emma’s confusion, Killian gaped and the brow that was already raised as well as its brother practically flew out of his head. “Is this really your first time visiting an apple farm?”
“Yeah,” Emma answered, stuck between feeling guilty and laughing at the expression on Killian’s face through her befuddlement at the question.
With a click of his tongue, Killian smirked. “No wonder. You’ve never had an apple cider donut?”
Apple cider donut?
The words flowed off Killian’s tongue, and mental images of the idea of the snack started floating through Emma’s head. To add to that, the traces of cinnamon in the air made it all the more enticing. “Can’t say I have. They sound pretty good.”
“They’re better than good, Emma.” Killian pressed his lips together and looked at his store thoughtfully for a brief moment before turning back to Emma. “You know what, Emma? Come on in. I’ll give you a freshly made one, on the house.”
Emma was about to decline at the behest of her inner-chiding about her already expected-to-be long ride home, but her gurgling stomach betrayed her. Another smirk crossed Killian’s face, and if it didn’t look so good on his face, Emma might just be annoyed by it. Regardless, she was hungry and the donuts sounded delicious. “Lead the way,” she said as she signaled for him to do just that with a finger pointed towards the door.
“It’s weird though,” Killian commented as they enclosed on the shop’s entrance.
“What?”
“I smell the donuts too, but I haven’t made any today.” Killian then shrugged. “But then again, that machine is powerful and it’s old, too. Perhaps it’s just gotten a bit of a residual smell with age.”
Emma shrugged. “Makes sense to me.”
“But trust me when I say this, Emma: If you think the cinnamon is powerful now, when this thing gets kicking, your nose will be straight-up filled with the stuff.”
And whether it was the hunger softly making itself known through the pangs in her stomach or the aroma that she started to feel acting as a premonition for the success for the rest of the day going forward, but Emma found the idea of a cinnamon-filled shop to be not only delightful, but also worthy of a show of delight and one final disclosement about herself.
“Well,” Emma said, smiling. “Cinnamon just happens to be my favorite smell, so get cooking.” Killian grinned and with that, he opened the door to the store and the two of them walked in.
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True enough to Emma’s expectations and Killian’s word, as soon as Killian put the apple cider donut machine to work, the smell of cinnamon grew ten times stronger.
The batter, Killian told Emma, had already been prepared and refrigerated the night before, so all he had to do was place some in the machine, and it would do the rest. Watching it go was quite the spectacle. The machine molded the batter into the correct shape for the donuts and plopped them onto a conveyor belt that would from there take them to be fried and adorned with their cinnamon sugar coating. It was a cool process to watch and Emma would’ve been lying if she said otherwise.
The two of them filled the time waiting for the donuts to finish with light conversation, first with a cursory tour around the store, and afterwards with Killian showing Emma how his apple cider machine worked.
When the donuts were at last done, Killian stood at the end of the donut-making machine, grinning like a mad scientist as the coating was sprinkled on the freshly fried pastries. “Gotta love that smell – the cinnamon and sugar coming together. Best in the world if you ask me!”
“It does smell good.” Emma took another whiff and felt goosebumps as she took it is. “I love my cinnamon candle at home, but it has nothing on this.”
“And it gets even better! Just wait until you taste one!” A moment later, an apple cider donut was in her hand and another in Killian’s. He clinked their donuts together and took a bite, with Emma immediately following suit.
What next hit Emma’s lips she could most closely describe as a lightning bolt of sweetness. Sugar and cinnamon so fresh that Emma swore they came off their original plants spread across her tongue like fireworks. The pastry itself hit her teeth like a goose down pillow and when it opened, the texture of warm cake spread through her mouth. Emma closed her eyes as she absorbed the taste while the rest of her donut radiated warmth between her fingers.
Ooh. Is that–?
“Cinnamon? Yup, it’s in the donut batter too,” Killian said. Emma nearly choked on her donut, releasing a cough so that she wouldn’t spit out her food. Her eyes bulged open.
Is he psychic?
Killian seemed to think so. At Emma’s reaction, he gave her a shit-eating grin. “You’re a surprisingly easy read, Emma, and even for me.”
“You read everyone so well?”
“All part of the job, love. I’m quite an old hat at it.”
No, not psychic. Just cocky.
Though I’ll admit: cocky looks good on him.
Emma returned the smirk, not ready to be defeated at the game she excelled so well at. “Well, I’m pretty good at reading people too, and you’re not exactly War and Peace yourself.”
“Oh yeah?” Killian asked, his smirk having grown somehow even wider than before. “Then what am I thinking?”
This is too easy.
“You’re itching for me stroke your ego and compliment your donuts,” Emma answered, with not a single beat missed in the process. Killian looked impressed, his cocky smirk still present, but his eyes forfeiting his amazement.
“Very good. Now will you?”
She took a deep breath, revelling as cinnamon danced around her nose once more. “Yeah, they’re pretty good.”
The smirk on Killian’s face dissolved into a smile. “Always nice to hear.”
Emma was about to say something – granted, jokingly – about not letting the compliment go to his head when suddenly, a loud noise beat her to the punch.
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
As the noise sounded off, Emma turned her head. Atop the cashier’s counter was a loud and colorful birdhouse with a clock in the top center of it. At the moment, a blue and yellow bird were rolling around a semicircle stretched out in front of the display of the time.
“The kids love it,” Killian commented, “and it’s a great reminder to check on our inventory regularly, especially in our peak season.” Nodding, Emma looked at the time, but before another second passed, her curious expression turned violently into a gawk.
Shit! It’s already one!
Killian had clearly noticed the change of face. “Are you okay, Emma?”
Emma sighed, remembering herself.
“Yeah. I’m okay,” she said. “It’s just that I didn’t think I’d be here this long. I’ve gotta get moving. Look, thanks for the donut. It was really good. Tell you what: I’ll grab a half a dozen of those for the road and take two bags of the Bloody Ploughmans.” Emma dug her hand into the pocket of her jeans, the leather of her wallet brushing against her fingers, but she soon stopped at the sight in front of her: Killian frowning. “What?”
“Come on, Emma,” he whined. “It’s your first time at an apple farm, and I’m not about to let you just buy the apples without picking them first.”
“That’s very sweet of you, Killian, but I can’t.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Killian chided, waving a finger. “There’s nothing like the feeling of pulling an apple right off a tree and taking a bite out of it. It forms an intimate bond between yourself and nature.” Emma raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. “Besides,” he continued, “I sold out of my pre-picked bags of them yesterday. Unless you can come back another day, you haven’t a choice.”
Emma pouted to herself. “No, I can’t. It took me hours to get up here and this is the only day I’ll be able to do it for like a month.”
“Look, Emma. If you want, I could go and pick the apples for you if you really don’t want to. I know the situation’s hardly ideal what with the weather so perhaps I can assist.”
Still pouting, Emma resigned herself to the idea. “It’s okay. There’s nothing else to do here. I may as well help you.”
So much for my quick trip.
Also, I should grab some gloves from my car. From the way Killian’s talking, it might get cold soon.
Killian smiled, practically stubbornly in the face of Emma’s pout. “Don’t worry. It’ll be fun,” he encouraged. “And I’ll come with you, take some pictures on your phone, and you can show Regina what a good time you had!” When faced with Killian’s grin, Emma felt her pout give out right before she grinned too. Killian seemed to be able to tell that he’d won the battle, his teeth flashing. “Will,” he called to a man sitting by the cash register in front of the store. “I’m going to accompany our lovely patron to the orchard for her first proper picking. You’re in charge until I get back.”
“Aye, aye!” the cashier said cheerfully. Content enough with the circumstances, Emma and Killian started for the exit out of the store. “Uh, before you go, Killian,” the man continued just before Killian could touch the doorknob, his tone now smaller. “Just reminding you that you said I could leave in two hours. I really need to get home soon.” Despite the meekness of Will’s words, Emma noticed that there was an underlying urgency to them too.
What’s beating him?
“Of course, Mr. Smee. We should be back with time to spare. Now come, Emma! The orchards await!”
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Jones Farms ended up being far more extensive than Emma thought. While the trees looked to be close to the house and storefront, the walk to the orchards had taken about five minutes, and Killian told Emma as they strolled through the trees that the Bloody Ploughmans were in the back of the fields, past the dozens of Macintoshes, Galas, and Granny Smiths alongside their path. The trek made Emma feel like the layers of trees were practically swallowing her whole. She looked to Killian who contrarily seemed so at home as he navigated through the dense forest. His eyes were shifting from branch to branch, muttering to himself about the state of the fruits on the trees and the fences on the border of the orchard that were just visible from the path. From what she could make out from his mutters and expressions, it all looked good.
Just before Emma was about to turn her head back to focus on the way ahead, Killian met her eye. Instantaneously, his expression popped from one of intense focus to one of an equally intense embarrassment.
“So sorry for the quiet, Emma!” Killian said. “Just wanted to check on everything. You can never be too careful with one’s livelihood when it’s forced to lay bare against mankind and the elements, and since I’m here and all, may as well look now.”
“I get it,” Emma replied, assuaging Killian of his clear guilt. “It’s your business, and work always means more when you’re your own boss.”
Killian quirked a brow. “You know from experience?”
“I’m a freelance bail bondsperson.”
“That’s pretty cool! What’s the work like? Is it like all the TV shows?” Emma almost wanted to laugh at the childlike enthusiasm on Killian’s face. It was wide-eyed, curious, and honestly just cute.
All of that made it hard for her to do what she needed to next.
Emma scrunched her face and shook her head. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but not really. I mean, sometimes, you’ll get a runner, and then you’ll have to play detective to find them, but it doesn’t happen often. Usually, I’m just filing paperwork, checking with the courthouses, and driving to defendant’s houses to check on them and make sure they haven’t skipped town. Thankfully, for most of the people I’ve worked with, they haven’t. It’s not the easiest lesson to learn when you’re a foster kid, but in my field of work, you realize that more people are good than not.”
Killian’s face fell, but only slightly. “Well, it’s at least an optimistic aspect of society nowadays, that those who you help are also working to help themselves.”
“Exactly,” Emma said, a feeling of profound satisfaction in her gut and a smile tugging at the edges of her lips. She hardly ever talked about work – mostly because it was as mundane as she described most of the time – but Killian just got what that mundanity meant.
I wonder what his story is…
…Couldn’t hurt to ask.
“By the way,” she continued, “how’d you get all the way from England to have an apple farm here in the states? They don’t have apple farms across the Atlantic?”
“They do, but –”
Wait, don’t tell me.
“Trying to avoid someone?”
Despite the interruptance, Killian seemed to take the question well, a brief low chuckle coming through his throat.
“That depends: Does an entire country count as someone?” Emma’s eyes bulged. Killian seemed to understand immediately where Emma’s mind had gone. “No, trust me. I’m not a criminal,” he explained. “Quite the opposite actually.”
“Oh?”
Killian pursed his lips. Though Emma could tell from there that the subject made Killian uncomfortable, right before she could stop him, Killian started speaking. “My brother and I were in the navy back home. He was killed in the line of duty and I lost my hand.”
Shit.
Emma grimaced, feeling guilty for ever bringing up the topic. She couldn’t imagine losing a limb, much less someone so close to her in a war. “I’m so sorry, Killian.”
“It is what it is.” Killian took a deep breath. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to spare Killian any further pain, Emma spoke again.
“We don’t have to talk about this if you want.”
“It’s alright,” Killian dismissed. “You told me a bit of your story. The least I can do is give you a glimmer of mine.”
Emma – touched – felt her hand drift to her chest.
“After being honorably discharged, I left the country,” Killian continued. “Life in England had never been easy for me, so I decided to make a new start in a new country.”
“All by yourself?”
“Yes. Our parents are long gone, one more loosely fitting that definition than the other, but gone all the same. I’ve Mr. Smee as an employee and a few townspeople as friends, but otherwise, no one really.”
Now that was a weird sensation. While it wasn’t something she was used to growing up, Emma’s small town these days carried with it a sense of intimacy. She had Regina who she was close to, but there were others as well and given the nature of small towns, she had at least some idea of everyone’s business. Sometimes, it was too much for her, especially due to her upbringing, but to be by yourself with all this land, Emma couldn’t imagine it.
“It doesn’t get lonely?”
“Oh, it does. To tell you the truth, I’ve hoped that one day, perhaps my soulmate will drop by the farm and from there, we’d settle down here together.”
Emma snorted, perhaps a tad more condescendingly than intended, but not enough that it looked like she hurt Killian in the process.
“You’re into that stuff?”
Killian raised a brow. “Who wouldn’t be?” She met his eye, and once more, he seemed able to read her thoughts. “You?” he asked, his surprise evident.
“Eh,” Emma shrugged.
“Hmm. I’ve always loved the idea,” he responded with a shrug of his own. “Being around someone and everything just feeling…right. Kind of like a safety net. The rest of the world gives us so much pain. It’d be nice to have one person who was always on your side, who you could always rely on, and could always rely on you.”
Boy, is that naive.
But Emma didn’t give voice to the thought. After all, when Killian finally found his soulmate, odds are that they’d have the same idea of what a soulmate is. And maybe it really would be as easy as that for them. For his sake, she hoped that was true.
As for her…
“I don’t know. I guess it just feels weird, like being in an arranged marriage by the universe.”
It was an understatement of her true thoughts, to be sure, but it was serviceable for their conversation.
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Killian said, musing. “I’d say it’s closer to…an apple farmer showing you where to find the trees you want are.”
Jeez, he’s a total romantic.
But hey, if anyone can make the whole soulmates thing work, it’s probably him.
I can’t imagine anyone would turn him down with a face like that, and that’s before they’d spend a minute with him.
“Speaking of,” Emma redirected, “so what about the apple farming?”
“My brother Liam and I used to work odd jobs as teenagers to make money. We found being farmhands for this one couple’s orchard to be the best of them. Besides, even though I wanted to leave my old life behind, it didn’t mean I wanted to leave my brother. You know what’s funny?” Emma hummed inquisitively. “You said earlier that Bloody Ploughmans were your favorite apple. Well, they were Liam’s favorite too. And speaking of,” Killian said, pointing ahead. “Look, we’ve arrived!”
Indeed they had. Emma’s gaze followed Killian’s finger. Beyond a small clearing was a messily labeled was a sign for Bloody Ploughmans and three rows of trees that extended back until a fence roughly three hundred feet away.
“Emma,” Killian said, walking past Emma until he could face her from the front. “I’m going to check on the fence at the back of this section.” He then produced a folded bag out of his coat pocket. “Why don’t you get a head start, and I’ll be right back?” She nodded and took the bag, and with a final toothy smile, Killian took off, leaving Emma alone.
For a moment, all Emma could do was take in the trees. There was such a beautiful familiarity in seeing the Bloody Ploughmans. After the tree in Regina’s yard had proved itself to be ill beyond repair, Regina had chopped it down, leaving only a small stump where the strong bark once stood. Emma had forgotten how they stood, shorter to the ground than she remembered, but also fuller in its fruits and still as commanding in their presence as ever.
With the crunching leaves below her boots as her only companion, Emma stepped towards the closest apple tree.
Suspended in the air, just a half a foot above Emma’s head was a gorgeous looking apple. It was perfectly plump in its shape and was a shade of red that she recognized all-too-well.
Now that’s what I’m talking about!
Raising a hand up to the apple’s base, Emma pulled it towards her, twisting it slightly when she felt weakness in the top of the stem. When the apple was finally released, the branch that held it flung backwards – and as Emma found out before she could even hope to move to stop it – right into Killian’s unprepared face.
Oh crap.
Killian released a grunt that was deprived of any and all grace at the impact.
“Sorry,” Emma said meekly, an apologetic smile on her face. Killian enclosed his hand around the branch and steadied it. He didn’t look mad, but simply startled. As he sputtered, a leaf revealed itself to be in KIllian’s mouth, much to his clear disgust.
For the record, Emma did feel guilty. Truly, she did.
But she couldn’t help herself when she felt a bout of giggles in her chest as Killian coughed and pushed the leaf away.
So, after losing a battle of wills she never had a shot in hell of winning, Emma released a small chuckle, and much to her relief, Killian joined in.
“Might I suggest a less violent approach to picking apples?” he asked, chuckling not only from the absurdity of his previous situation, but also from the triumph that came with ridding himself of the stray leaf once and for all. “Not that your approach isn’t effective, but I’m quite fond of my face the way it is.”
So am I.
“Lead the way.”
“You got it, love,” Killian replied, a flirtatious wink at the word.
Emma felt her cheeks get pleasantly warm, making the cold air around her face feel all but nonexistent.
Killian took an apple less than a foot above him into his hand and with the other, took the branch.
“What you want to do is hold the apple - and you were right to give it a little twist at the stem - but what you want to do is keep the branch steady too. It’s not good for the tree for it to flail like that.” Emma watched closely, and as Killian spoke, she noticed his left hand - unlike the right - was gloved.
That’s probably the prosthetic.
Emma found herself impressed. The prosthetic moved almost as well as his hand did, perhaps a touch more rigidly, but it would be nothing anyone would be able to notice of they didn’t have the hawk-like eyesight of a bailbondswoman.
“So watch what I do.” Gently, Killian removed the apple while still keeping everything else relatively the same. Once the branch was safely put back in place, Killian showed Emma the apple. It didn’t gleam like an apple on a teacher’s desk, but it had this distinct and natural beauty to it within the thin layer of dirt at its surface. “And there you have it.” Killian gestured downward with his eyes and it took Emma a moment to realize that he was pointing at her bag. Immediately, Emma opened it, and both Killian as well as her own apple from earlier fell into it.
“Thanks.”
Killian gestured towards the very apple tree he had just picked from. “Now you try, if you think you can handle grabbing an apple without causing an earthquake, that is,” he challenged. The good-natured smirk on his face made it clear that he knew she’d be one to hardly pass up a challenge.
Good guess.
“Either way, I’m about to rock your world.” After taking a second to choose the perfect apple, Emma grabbed it, and was careful to use the strategy Killian taught her. When she was done, she hovered the fruit in front of Killian’s face, just as he had done with the one he picked.
“Indeed you have,” Killian remarked. “And a very nice choice on top of that, love! See? Told you it was a good idea to come pick the apples fresh.”
“Not like I had a choice,” she said, putting the apple into her bag.
“But admit it: it was still fun.”
“Fine,” Emma relented, an amiable eye roll trailing beside her words like a trusted friend. “It was fun.” As if to solidify the point, Emma grabbed another apple in much the same way as she did the last.
She hadn’t planned for today to go how it had. She never imagined that she’d actually had to go out into the fields and get her own fruits, but being around someone like Killian, someone so open and easy to talk to made her wonder why she’d have ever wanted to do this differently.
“Not to mention, Killian said, “you were also exposed to this beautifully crisp mountain air. Bet they don’t have this back in Storybrooke! Trust me, Swan, nothing makes you feel alive quite like when your lungs are full of it.” Dramatically with his arms open like he was performing the opening of The Sound of Music , Killian took a loud and deep breath. “Go on!” he encouraged.
And Emma did, albeit without the Julie Andrews pose. She took a sharp inhale and immediately, the fresh breeze began pouring throughout her entire being.
…Alongside something else.
Cinnamon?
Emma furrowed her brow. That didn’t make sense. They must’ve been a quarter of a mile away from the storefront of Jones Farms. And there’s no way with all the wind blowing that the smell from the donuts she ate over an hour ago was still strong enough.
So why was she still smelling cinnamon as if she was right in front of the machine itself?
Wait…Didn’t Killian say something earlier?
She remembered it so clearly.
“Gotta love that smell – the cinnamon and sugar coming together. Best in the world if you ask me!”
That’s what Killian said exactly. Word for word.
No…
But if Emma was right – and she got a good feeling she was – then so much now made sense: why she felt so comfortable telling him she was a foster kid, how he was able to convince her so easily to come up here and apple pick, and why Kilian couldn’t seem to take two steps without making her smile.
We’re soulmates.
Emma’s stomach clenched. She took another breath, this time more staggard.
This really wasn’t what she expected to happen today.
Soulmate.
Killian was her soulmate.
Killian, the kind farmer.
Killian, one of the most handsome men she had ever met.
Killian, someone she had already felt okay telling bits about herself to.
…
Killian, the hopeless romantic who was just ten minutes ago waxing about how great soulmates were.
Killian, the guy who thought that he’d find his soulmate and they’d be together forever like the ending of a storybook.
Killian, the guy who was now looking at her, seemingly able to tell that something was amiss.
And of course he could.
After all, they were soulmates.
“Everything okay, Emma?”
No. Things weren’t okay by a long shot. Killian was her soulmate and she was not ready to deal with that yet. There was so much to think about, so much to talk about, and a million ways that things could go wrong if it wasn’t handled carefully. Killian’s hopes were so high, too high, and telling him right now in the middle of a picturesque apple orchard, for as photogenic as she’s sure it would be, didn’t seem the best way to ease him out of that mindset.
At the same time though, that very mindset had begged the question: Had Killian figured it out, too?
Definitely not. If he had found out, he wouldn’t hide it. He’d say something. I can read him.
But if she could read him, it stood to reason that he could probably read her too, no matter whether or not he knew.
To be blunt, Emma didn’t want him to know, or at least, not yet. To tell him now, before she could figure out what to say would open a can of worms that she knew could hurt them both.
And currently, Killian’s question over her well being hung in the air, waiting to be answered.
Emma searched for a way out, knowing that a straight up dismissal of his concerns would only arouse Killian’s suspicion. Attempts at fake concerns fizzed in and out of her mind, killed by the consequences that could ensue in their wake.
Thankfully, Emma looked at her apple bag and found her solution.
Perfect.
“I’m just hungry.” Immediately, she grabbed one of the apples she picked and shoved it into her mouth.
Damn, that’s good! But it tastes a little different. Did I just remember it wrong?
Emma scrunched her face in confusion.
Just then, Killian started chuckling.
Fuck. Why does he have to have such a cute laugh?
“Uhh,” Killian started. “You should probably know that there’s a layer of pesticides over that apple.” Emma gaped at the apple which now had a huge chunk removed from it, a chunk that was by now likely chilling in her stomach. “Nothing that’ll harm you!” Killian assured. “However, it does throw off the taste. I think that should solve that mystery for you.”
Emma chuckled, remaining conscientious as to keep the nervousness at bay despite how difficult the task ended up being. After finishing her apple over some small talk with Killian, she went back to picking apples off the tree. Killian took another bag from his coat pocket and at her behest, started assisting her.
Okay, good. We’ve just got to finish filling these bags and then I can get out of here.
She’d come back. Emma promised herself and Killian that much, however silently. For right now though, she couldn’t handle a soulmate.
For God’s sake, this was supposed to be a quick apple picking trip, not a rom-com!
“I gotta say,” Killian spoke, taking Emma from her thoughts, “I admire you for your dedication to your friend, but it’s a weird time for you to come all the way out here.”
Emma quirked her brow. “Why’s that? Some sort of festival going on?”
Killian looked at Emma as if she was crazy. “No, love. Amelia.”
Oh, please don’t say love.
She could feel her heart protest that sentiment, the tenseness that existed since she found out the truth being somewhat mitigated by the cozy feeling of the single word.
“Who’s Amelia?” Killian bit his lip, which was quite worrisome given his more chipper disposition from just a few moments ago. “Killian?”
“Amelia’s not a person, Emma,” he responded, so soberly that she felt a phantom shudder as he stared at her. “She’s a hurricane, and a bloody strong one. I can’t believe you haven’t heard of her. You can hardly walk ten miles without hearing anyone talk about it.”
“Oh crap,” Emma said, taking a hand away from her apple bag to massage her forehead.
“If you want to leave,” Killian spoke, “you need to get out of here fast.”
It didn’t take Emma long to come to a decision. She’d head out now. It was too much to not only confront the fact that they were soulmates, but to be trapped in the same town…
No. Especially not after last month…
She’d get Killian’s number or come by again after the storm let up. That way, she could talk to someone about this back home first. Maybe Regina would know what to do. Or hell, maybe she made a mistake. It was fall. Maybe everything just smelled like cinnamon up here and if she came by a few months later, the smell would be gone.
…That probably wasn’t true, but Emma entertained the notion all the same.
Emma nodded. “Let’s get these apples packed up. I’ll pay you then head out.”
“Good thin-”
Two simultaneous beeping sounds interrupted Emma’s words and a feeling of vibration from her pants let her know exactly where it was coming from.
Killian got to his phone first. He looked for a few seconds at the device before turning back to Emma, his tenuous face giving her insight into what he was about to say.
“The hurricane’s already caught up with the next town over and the main roads that lead out of here have just been shut down as a precaution.”
Words dried up on Emma lips like an ice cube in a cup of tea.
Until Hurricane Amelia let up and those lonely roads could be filled once more, she was stuck here.
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
After a brisk walk back to the buildings beside Jones Farms, Killian invited Emma to use his laptop in the farmhouse. Already, Hurricane Amelia’s strength started to show itself. The winds were picking up fast and it had started raining on the return trip. Still, Emma retained some degree of optimism. Until the roads were shut down from within the town, she could conceivably find a hotel to stay at and avoid Killian altogether.
Unfortunately, luck wasn’t on their side.
There were very few hotels in the area and those that were around either had no vacancies or were off of or directly on roads that were rapidly closing down more and more with every click on the mouse.
After an hour of searching and a final emergency alert that definitively shut down all roads in Hudson, Emma closed the laptop with a sigh.
“Nothing,” she concluded, her eyes dull with the haze that followed resignation.
“I’m sorry, Emma. I know you only planned for a day trip. But, if it helps, you’re welcome to stay here for the duration of the hurricane. I’ve a spare room upstairs that’s all yours.”
It couldn’t be understated how badly Emma didn’t want this to be her only option. Killian was a smart guy and while cinnamon seemed to be a common smell by the storefront, it would make itself apparent as an outlier soon enough. He’d figure out they were soulmates, probably before if she was being generous
However, the fact of the matter was that this was her only option. The winds had only gotten stronger and while she’d slept in her car more than her fair share of times, she’d never been stupid enough to do it during a hurricane and that wasn’t about to change.
As for Killian, she’d do what she could to handle things.
After all, if cinnamon was Killian’s favorite scent too, maybe there was some finagaling that could be done.
“Thank you,” Emma said. “That’s really sweet. Can I pay you or something?”
“Nonsense!” Killian dismissed. “Besides, you’re doing me a favor.”
“How’s that?”
“It gets lonely during these hurricanes. The power goes out more often than not, it’s dark and disgusting, I forget to buy books, and there’s little else to do around here than gorge myself on cider and donuts. It’ll be nice having a spot of company. We could have a drink, share a story by the fire, also gorge ourselves on cider and donuts, play a board game.” Killian smiled goofily at her. “I’ve got Monopoly,” he added with a shrug.
Emma, despite every bit of panic in her bones, couldn’t help but smile back at the joke. “I’m in, but only if I can play the race car.”
Killian shook his head. “I’m always the racecar, love.” At that moment, Killian lowered his eyes to the floor. Once Emma’s eyes followed suit, she saw the small dark and damp looking circle at her feet. “Tell you what. Why don’t we pause our battle over the pieces and get you out of those wet clothes? I’ve some clean sweats you can change into.”
“Aren’t you the gentleman?”
“I’m always a gentleman,” Killian countered, a finger pointed at nothing particular. “Now, how about I continue to show myself as a gentleman and escort you to your dwelling?” As he spoke, he mock extended his hand, as if asking a beautiful lady to dance.
If Emma hadn’t been trying to keep a secret, she’d have groaned.
Could he be any more romantic?
Hesitantly, Emma smiled and slid her fingers onto his palm, completing the joke.
Killian showed Emma the way to her bedroom. It was cozy and small with a queen sized bed, a dresser with a mirror against the front wall, and a window that gave a nice view of the orchard.
“The sweats are in the top right drawer of the dresser. If you need me, I’ll be in my room down the hall. I think I need some clean clothes myself.” With a tap against the door, Killian exited the room, leaving Emma all alone.
When his footsteps were finally out of earshot and a door clicked shut in the distance, Emma leaned against the nearest wall and sighed.
How am I going to handle this now?
After soulmates were introduced, it didn’t take long for them to realize it. For Regina, it had taken a few weeks, but she had the benefit of living far across town from Robin and by her own nature, was so focused on the Bloody Ploughmans that she went all that time missing the forest for the trees.
Killian, Emma was willing to bet, would not. Not only was he perceptive – and more emotionally speaking than most – but they were now in the same house and weren’t going anywhere until this hurricane passed. It wouldn’t take long before the smell of cinnamon became too abundant to ignore.
A sigh parted her lips.
So that left her wondering: should she tell him the truth now? On some level she wanted to. He was a great guy, if not a touch too idealistic in his views on love and harboring this secret was going to be a pain for however long she had to. That said, Emma also saw a future past the reveal, and things didn’t go smoothly there. Killian was so invested in the idea of soulmates. If Emma approached things the wrong way, it could make for a very awkward evening.
Besides, Emma reminded herself, she had a plan.
She’d go home.
She’d talk to her friends.
She’d maybe even see a therapist.
Then she’d come back and talk to Killian, when she knew the right thing to say.
But that meant until then, she’d need to fight the clock.
Emma looked out the window. Leaves flew through the air like bluebirds, and the comparison was only solidified by the unique whistle that the wind made. She was going to be stuck in the house for the night, maybe even two if things weren’t better the next day.
Of course I don’t have anything I can pretend is perfume or deodorant.
As Emma took in and mused over her situation, she took a deep breath. As the oxygen inflated her lungs like a vacuum bag, it revealed something quite curious: the smell of cinnamon was out of her nose shot.
And as loathe as she was to admit it, that revelation gave her a glimmer of hope.
Maybe Killian wouldn’t figure out they were soulmates if Emma played things smart. When they were both in their rooms, any clues that they were soul mates were nonexistent. Obviously, she couldn’t ignore Killian, but if she could keep in her room just long enough to keep any suspicions that he’d have at bay while not proving herself to be rude, she’d possibly be able to get away with their secret intact.
Just until she had that precious time to think.
A squishy feeling from below Emma’s boots drifted her away from her thoughts. Though not as big as the circle she made downstairs, this room’s beige carpet was starting to darken from the wayward drips of rain coming off of her jeans.
Speaking of thinking, I think I need to change clothes.
Emma looked at the top drawer that Killian pointed her to when she had first entered the room. Inside it was a pair of grey sweatpants as well as a matching sweatshirt. Both looked to be about a size bigger than she was, but Emma could tell that they’d fit fine enough.
So, to the sound of musical winds and thumping against the outer walls, she began to undress.
She got on the sweatpants and was about to put on the sweatshirt. Her hand had enclosed the garment when all of the sudden, less than six feet from her, there was a crash.
The entire explosion happened in an instant. Glass shattered and spread across the room like water over a beach at high tide. Right afterwards, the wind and rain began pouring in as aggressively as a hornet.
And somewhere in that mix, though she was uncertain of exactly when, Emma screamed.
“Emma!” Killian shouted as he ran inside. “Are you alright?” He looked at her with a primal fear in his eyes, only turning to look at the shattered window after a few seconds.
“Y-yeah. I’m okay. A branch must have crashed through the window.” Her words were proven true by the large piece of bark that currently leaned against her bed.
“Damn,” Killian muttered, right before turning to her again. “But at least you’re okay.”
Then something strange happened. Killian, who was noticeably only looking Emma in the eye, choked.
It was only at that point that she realized he, with a labored but steadily heaving chest, was shirtless.
In the moments where Killian had just entered the room, Emma had been too focused on the ruckus, as she should’ve been and the panic in his eyes as he examined both her and the scene.
But now the worst of the danger had passed, and his assets were fully on display.
And hers too.
Crap!
The sweatshirt - still not on her body, but pressed against her nonetheless - had done a fine job concealing Emma’s top half, but now was the time to properly wear it.
Killian seemed to realize this too. He held his left hand to his eyes and averted his gaze back towards the window.
“I’m sorry, Emma. I heard the crash and a shout-”
“It’s fine. I get it,” Emma interrupted, somewhat muffled by the sweatshirt that was going over her head. When it was finally on her person, Emma set about grabbing the stuff she’d brought into the room before stepping aside so Killian could inspect his window.
As Killian looked around, it became increasingly clear just how unsafe the area was. Glass was still falling off the window and rain was flying from the other side, and while the glass had mostly just missed him, the rain had been far more successful in that endeavor, hitting his face more and more with every passing second. After a full minute of this, Killian stepped back and turned to Emma.
“How bad?” Emma asked.
“Mother Nature’s quite upset with us. That branch did a clear number on this window and the room. I won’t be able to repair that, at least not until the storm’s gone. I can try to tape a shower curtain over it, but with the fierceness of this storm, I’m not confident it’ll hold. The most I can do otherwise is I bottle it shut with some towels.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“There’s a container down by the kitchen – big and blue, you can’t miss it – that could hold back the excess water from getting all over the floor and causing flooding. If you could get me that, that’d be great. I’m going to put my sweater back on and get to work.”
Emma headed downstairs and made her way into the kitchen. Sure enough, just as Killian said, there was a big blue container in the back.
Okay. Time to get this sucker upstairs.
Taking an edge of the container in each hand, Emma lifted it. She was all ready to go back upstairs and deliver the container to Killian when suddenly, something appeared out of the corner of her eye. Had she moved her head at any other angle, she would’ve missed it completely, but she hadn’t, and there it was, calling out to her like a sign.
A box of apple cinnamon tea and an old iron kettle right by its side.
Talk about fate.
The ensuing plan was formed in a matter of seconds and her hands were bringing the kettle to the sink after another pinch of them. Emma dropped the box and began to fill the kettle with water and stuck the last of the tea into the infuser inside of it, feeling a certain culpable delight as she got a whiff at the cinnamon, artificial for the first time since she’d discovered the truth. She set it on the stove and put the heat on.
The whole while that Emma conspired and enacted her plan, she felt her heart thumping heavily and quickly in her chest, beating as if she could be discovered at any minute.
Or like she wanted to be discovered.
Emma dismissed the notion as she continued to toil over her brew.
It’s for the best, just for now.
Once she was done, Emma grabbed the container again and brought it back upstairs to her room. As she entered, Killian was still at work, doing his best to hold the shower curtain down against the violent rain and winds. If Killian wasn’t already soaked from the downpour and his initial inspection of the window, he certainly was now. Emma quickly dropped the container in her arms and rushed to his side, holding the sides of the shower curtain he wasn’t using down.
“My hero!” Killian praised upon realizing what she was doing. The two smiled at each other and with the other sides of the shower curtain taken care of, Killian was able to make fast work of the project. After he was done, he put some extra towels on the floor and Emma put the container on top of them.
Breathless after the whole ordeal was done, Emma made a move to sit on the bed.
“Wait!” Killian cried before her tush could land. Carefully, he grabbed a piece of glass from just under her. “There’s more on there, too.”
Taking the hint, Emma leaned against the wall instead, just as she had when she first entered the room. At that moment, she noticed, much to her chagrin, that the smell of cinnamon had returned, and that the tea she prepared downstairs wasn’t anywhere close to boiling yet.
Fortunately, Killian seemed too occupied examining the destroyed room to contemplate the smell in any meaningful way. Emma looked on at the glass spread all over the floor and over the bed. The branch may have only given the window a single hit, but that single hit had evidently been more than enough to not only break the glass, but to shatter it entirely. All the while, the outside world was trying its best to wreck the window’s replacement. The wind puffed the shower curtain forward like a sail on the sea, and while it put up a good fight, there was no guarantee that it would be a solution that could unquestionably whether the storm.
All in all, Emma knew she couldn’t stay here.
Apparently, Killian picked up on that as well, for he moved to answer it for her.
“We’ll have to get you to another room,” he said.
Thankfully, Emma had a plan already brewing for that.
“Don’t worry,” she said, shrugging. “The couch looks comfy enough to spend a night or two on. I’ll ride out the storm there.”
And it seemed to be one that would work fine.
…For about as long as she was saying it.
But as soon as she was done, the pushback began.
Killian shook his head. “Not a chance. No guest of mine will stay on a couch, or at least not that couch. It my appear to be good for a nap, but trust me when I say its springs will surely kill you. No, you can have my bed, and I’ll weather that accursed thing.”
Emma groaned internally, knowing what she had to do. Damnit, the idea of them being in separate rooms was so perfect! It would’ve kept them apart and more importantly, keep the truth at bay, just until Emma figured out how to handle it.
But she couldn’t kick Killian out of his own room. Not after everything he had already done for her. Not with his low-hanging shoulders. Not with the way his hair that had fallen from the moisture of a long day’s work and a hurricane, doing more to show off his exhaustion than Emma was willing to bet his words ever would of Killian’s own volition.
And not after he had shown himself to be such a good guy.
“Why don’t we share it?” Emma suggested, fighting the hesitation that threatened to voice itself as best as she could.
Killian’s brows raised, and she could see him get smaller in the way he carried himself. “Are you sure?” he asked, the light glaze of nervousness obvious in his voice. “I-I mean, I promise to be a gentleman, of course.”
Despite her concerns, at the memory of a familiar phrase, Emma couldn’t resist the urge to make a little quip.
“I thought you were always a gentleman,” she countered.
“I-,” Killian started, but stopped his words in their tracks. After releasing a cough, he adjusted himself, looking like he was willfully banishing the worry from his system. He seemed to have accepted Emma’s offer with no reservations. “Thank you, Emma,” he said. Emma could feel his earnestness, just like she imagined he felt hers as she wordlessly told him that he was welcome.
The gratefulness there made for a meddlesome reminder that she was lying to his face.
Universe, you sure you didn’t mess this one up too?
He deserves someone who’ll be a real soulmate to him, someone who believes in the whole soulmate thing and that it really can last forever.
What he doesn’t deserve is a liar.
Suddenly, from outside the room, Emma could hear a loud whistle, pulling her from the inside of her head.
“Did you make tea?” Killian inquired, a cocked head.
“I figured it would be good to get ourselves warm after we were done with the window.”
Killian smiled. “Generous and kind. You’re one of a kind, Emma Swan, and I hope a friend.”
Emma felt her breath stagnate.
Once you figure out we’re soulmates, you’ll definitely want to be more than friends.
And that’s only going to make it worse when I tell you I can’t.
Because while you deserve a happily ever after, I don’t know if I can give you one.
I hope you know that when I finally tell you, it’s gonna hurt for me too.
He was close to her now, close enough to kiss if either of them wanted to.
It was annoying how appealing that was and how the notion so nearly overpowered her fears.
It was extra annoying given how the appeal of Killian Jones in general had so far won on more than one occasion, and she wasn’t about to let it win here.
“Monopoly!” The word burst out before Emma could process it. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for her to catch up. “Bet you won’t consider me a friend after we play Monopoly. So why don’t you get dressed and I’ll serve us up a cup of tea? Then I’ll show you how generous and kind I really am when I get those railroads from you.”
Killian smirked. “Game on, Swan. You best take the race car, cause you’re going to need it for luck. I’ll see you in five.” With that, he made off for his room, leaving Emma to descend the staircase with both hope and dread battling a what was essentially a Cold War in her chest as the scent of cinnamon vanished once more.
Oh believe me, I’ll need luck for a lot more than Monopoly.
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Never let it be said that tea time couldn’t get intense.
Killian and Emma were quite the fierce competitors and Monopoly had run them well past the setting of the sun, running so late that they took a break to make dinner. All the while, their tea – and more importantly to Emma, the accompanying cinnamony aroma – continued to permeate the living room for the duration of the game.
“Shouldn’t have given you that race car,” Killian said, a good-natured tone present in his voice as he shook his head. “Told you it was lucky.”
Emma, proud of her victory, smirked. “Luck has nothing to do with it when you’re smart enough not to buy Baltic.”
“What did you want me to do? I had a Monopoly there!”
“Maybe use that to buy some houses on your yellows.”
She looked over at Killian, who was now slumping in his chair. A drawn out yawn roared from the innards of his mouth and much like a disease, it was quite contagious and suddenly, Emma was belting one out as well.
“Quite a day it’s been, between apple picking, hurricanes, a shattered window, and a positively gruesome game of Monopoly,” Killian said.
Emma, content as she rubbed her belly to alleviate the full stomach dinner and their dessert of apple cider donuts, snorted. “I’ve been to New York a few times, and the one thing I’ve learned throughout all of them is that you never know what you’re gonna get.”
“Does anything top this?”
“Not unless you count ramen burgers.”
“That’s a thing?”
“Surprisingly, yes.”
“You know, when the song said, if you can make it in New York, you could make it anywhere, our city neighbors took that a touch too literally.”
The two of them laughed for several long minutes. During that time, Emma’s guard began to drop and her mind wandered to places she hadn’t allowed it to go. She imagined a reality were she felt comfortable telling Killian they were soulmates, one where tonight could be celebrated as the first adventure in a life that would be full of them. She imagined coming home to a house draped with the scent of cinnamon and beaming, just knowing that inside was someone who would stand by her forever, no matter the obstacle.
It was a reality she had only recently barred herself from, but one that was so comforting to return to.
One that was too comforting to return to.
Shit
Emma knew she could drop the truth bomb now. Killian clearly hadn’t figured out the truth yet.
But the thought of it made her too nervous. Opening the door to the truth meant opening the door to their future together.
The only problem was that there was a chance neither of them would like where that door led, and that possibility held Emma back.
If things fail, I don’t want to hurt him.
If things fail, I don’t want to hurt me .
Killian, still oblivious to all of this, looked towards the distance at what Emma soon discovered was a clock.
“It’s getting late,” he said. “Why don’t you head off to bed?”
Emma felt a hitch in her throat, rendering her nearly speechless.
“Yeah,” she croaked, wishing that there was still some of the apple cinnamon tea left.
“You sound parched. How about you go upstairs and get settled in and I’ll grab you a glass of water.”
“Are you sure? I could grab it if you want.”
“Nah, that’s fine. Besides, there’s something I wanted to check on in the kitchen.”
Emma was vaguely curious about what exactly it was that Killian wanted to check on, but the idea of having some time to herself was too alluring to possibly risk by asking questions. And so she went upstairs, making a quick trip to the bathroom before heading to the bedroom across the way. Killian’s room was cozy, furnished with a neatly made king-sized bed with a navy comforter and one nightstand at each side, beige cabinets and drawers spread around the room, and a television parallel to the door. Much like Emma’s room, there was a large window, though it thankfully wasn’t broken.
Closing the door behind her, Emma sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands, finally letting out a half-hearted groan.
Killian was right: It had been a long day, and an even longer on for her.
This whole ordeal was harder than she’d thought. When she first learned she and Killian were soulmates, Emma hadn’t come to terms with it – she still hadn’t – but at least she had a plan and didn’t feel as tight knit to him as to make her feel too guilty about implementing it to stop herself from doing so. But the later afternoon and evening had exposed more than her prowess at board games.
It had exposed something of a normalcy. Were they together, she knew when times were good, that a day like this – the introductions and storm aside – could conceivably be what she could expect. The layout felt right enough: a trip to the fields, discoveries of even more personal stories, a night playing a game or even just watching TV together, and bantering all the while.
And Emma liked that. Talking with Killian was the most natural thing in the world. Even as she swallowed her insecurities through the hours she spent together, she could hardly say she was having a bad time throughout it. Spending time with him was fun. Killian was charismatic, but not too over-the-top and made the unexpected into an adventure just through his presence and sense of humor.
Yes, when times were good, Emma could see an ideal future with Killian Jones forever by her side.
The only troubling thing was the reality she was all too aware of: Times weren’t always good, and of that inevitability, she had no vision of what could come to pass.
What was Killian like when he was sad or upset? What about when he was angry or was going through real misfortune? A couple of times throughout their games, Emma was tempted to test those emotions, but she didn’t want to cause him harm, especially when he had done nothing to warrant it.
It was the exact same reason why she had continued to hold her tongue about the very matter of them being soulmates, and why she would continue to do so for however long she’d have to.
Now how long will that be?
Emma checked her phone. She opened up the weather app and saw a rain symbol right under the word “Tomorrow.” Of course, it wasn’t indicative of whether or not the hurricane would continue, but the possibility still existed.
Another groan, this time closer to a whine came out.
Damnit. Not what I wanted to hear.
She took a pause and another deep breath. It would be hard – just as today was – but she’d figure it out.
And so Emma picked herself up and settled herself into the left most and less lived-in side of Killian’s bed, all the while continuing to lick her proverbial wounds and try to plan for what the next morning might bring. The plush mattress underneath her form cozily ensnared her and the still whistling winds began to sing her their own kind of lullaby to the beat of the tapping rain against the roof.
Emma felt her upper eyelid start to succumb to its own weight, threatening to close. Just as she was about to let them, Killian stepped into the room, a glass of water in hand.
“Thanks,” Emma murmured sleepily while he placed the glass at her nightstand. She looked at him and noticed an apprehensive expression across his features. “Everything okay?”
In an instant, Killian’s expression made a complete change, now appearing as if he were just caught.
“Yes,” he dismissed. “Everything’s alright.”
If Killian had hoped to fool Emma with what he said, he was wrong. However, the pull of sleep won out over any curiosity that she had for the matter, and she let it go.
We’ll talk tomorrow.
A duet of good night’s filled the air, and as light left the room, so did all but the sounds of natures and snores.
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
CRAAAAAACK!
In the midst of ebony left shortly after a shockwave of brightness, Emma gasped, startled awake.
A fear of thunder had never been something she ever fully got over from her childhood uneasiness, but this outburst of the elements was a particularly loud one and took Emma out of her slumber with a single crack.
“You okay?” a quiet whisper from beside her spoke.
“Killian?” Emma mumbled. She coughed once and composed herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, her volume restored. “Did I wake you up?”
“No need to apologize,” he assuaged. “And no, I was up earlier from another bolt. I’ve never been great with thunder either.”
“You could tell?” Even though she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, Emma could tell he was smirking as he heard her question.
“As I said earlier, you’re an easy read.”
Not to mention, your soulmate.
And suddenly, Emma too notice of the scent of cinnamon in the air. It wasn’t heavy, but what it was was hard to ignore.
She only hoped that Killian somehow had been able to do it.
Emma, biting her lip, checked her phone for the time. It was a little past two in the morning. That crack of thunder had fully woken her up and if Killian had been up for some time like he said he was, the same could definitely be said for him.
Great.
“May I turn on a light?” Killian asked from across the darkness.
“Yeah. Go for it.” A second later, the lamp from Killian’s nightstand lit up the room. It was bright enough to cause discomfort for a moment or two, but not enough to give that feeling of needing to start the day. Emma sat up in the bed, matching Killian who was already in the position. With her phone still in her hand, she tried looking at the weather app, but the service she had enjoyed all throughout yesterday was nowhere to be found.
“You can thank the hurricane for that little inconvenience. The service went out at least an hour or two ago. Small towns, you know. Cell phone towers are the first thing to go. I’m just glad we still have power, at least for now. Of course, if you need a phone, I’ve a landline downstairs. All yours.”
“No thanks. I just wanted to see an update on the storm.”
“I’m afraid that’s still up in the air.” As if to emphasize the point, a flash of lightning as well as an accompanying crack of thunder chose that moment to present themselves to the world. It wasn’t as powerful as its predecessor, but it nonetheless had the both of them letting out a small shudder. As they locked eyes, they gave each other a comforting smile.
“How bad was the one that woke you up?” Emma asked.
“Not too bad. Definitely not as loud as the one that got you, but to be fair, I’m quite perceptive when it comes to sounds to begin with.”
Apart from a courteous chuckle, Emma said nothing and for a moment, a silence bubbled in the space between them. She looked out the window at the skies. It wasn’t easy to see, but from what she could make out, the weather was just as violent, if not more so, than it was Hurricane Amelia first started up yesterday afternoon.
“I’m sorry you’re stuck here,” Killian said quietly.
Emma shrugged. “It’s fine,” she answered. Though careful to keep the lie off her tongue, Emma found that it was a task she found easy enough to do when she thought of her relative fortune given the circumstances. After all, a broken window aside, she was in a safe house in the middle of a harsh hurricane. “Besides, you’re a good host.”
“Thank you,” Killian said. Emma took a glance at him and saw that he was biting his lower lip.
He’s…nervous?
She was about to give voice to her concern when Killian beat her to the punch.
“Can I say something?” he asked.
“O-of course.”
“Remember last night, when you asked me when everything was alright, and I said it was?” Emma nodded, the memory as fresh as the apples on the trees outside. “Well, I lied,” he confessed.
“Yeah, I figured. Just like I told you earlier, you’re not the hardest read either.” Killian gave a chuckle that was very much like the courtesy chuckle Emma gave him earlier, but otherwise remained quiet. At a closer look, Emma saw him once again biting his lip. “So, what’s up?”
“It’s just that I-” Killian stopped and took a deep breath before starting again. “Emma, I’ve noticed something.”
Oh crap.
As Emma listened to Killian and processed his words, she began to notice the speed at which her heart was beating. “O-oh?” she uttered. “What’s that?”
Killian, clearly too caught up in his own nerves, didn’t seem to pick up on the fact that hers were shooting through the roof. “Last night, while we were playing, I realized I was smelling cinnamon all around the house.”
“You mean from the tea?” Emma quickly suggested in a vain hope to deter Killian’s line of thought.
However, it didn’t work.
“That’s what I thought at first,” Killian explained. “But I’ve been drinking that tea for years now, and it’s never been that powerful. Even when we finished, the smell was still there. So when you went up to the bedroom, I grabbed the mugs, but when I took a whiff out of mine, I could barely pick up the scent. The smell went from being everywhere to practically gone. Then I went back to my seat in the den and tried smelling for it. I even went outside to see if it was the machine. But nothing.” He stopped and took another deep breath and turned to Emma, the corner of his lips tugged up ever so slightly. “And then I thought of something you said back at the store.”
Oh crap.
“W-hat was that?” she asked as if she didn’t already know.
“How much you loved cinnamon,” he said simply. “ So I came up with a little theory and tested it. I grabbed that glass of water for you and came upstairs and when I reached my room…the smell came back. It was just as potent as it was when you left.”
Oh crap.
Emma struggled to speak or even make a single noise.
“Emma,” Killian said, his volume just above a whisper. “I think we’re soulmates.”
As Killian’s – and unbeknownst to him, Emma’s – truth proclaimed itself once and for all, only one thin went through Emma’s head.
Oh crap!
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For the first few seconds after Killian announced his and Emma’s shared fate as soulmates, Emma felt her entire self go as blank as a sheet of paper. She found her ability to speak as nonexistent as a unicorn riding atop a dragon. Her thoughts blurred like the eyesight of a drunkard. Her hearing was muffled like a groan into a pillow.
Killian found out they were soulmates.
For as much as Emma had tried to prevent him from finding out the truth, she hadn’t thought of how she’d handle it when he eventually did.
But that time had finally arrived and now the best Emma knew that she could hope to do was try and hide the fact that she knew for as long as she did.
So when those mercilessly slow seconds at last passed, she realized she’d need to react somehow to the news.
Here goes nothing.
A smile and a “yeah” that was as excited as Emma could hope for was the response she settled on.
Right beside her, Killian was beaming, as ecstatic as Emma imagined he would be.
And as ecstatic as she feared he would be.
“I can’t believe–I’d always hoped–And with you–” Killian was practically tripping over the words that came out of his mouth at a mile a minute. “This is amazing!” he cried, the volume in his voice now bereft of its respect for the quiet of the early morning and was as loud as it would’ve been in the middle of the day.
In the midst of Killian’s tornado of thrills, Emma did her best to get swept up in it too.
With the bounciness of a box of puppies, he certainly made it enticing to try.
As he talked, Emma made the effort. She pushed for a hearty laugh and she made her smile large enough to match his.
While not entirely for naught – doing as much as could be conceivably done for the ten seconds of work she could afford to give in the time she had – it did little to banish the butterflies in her chest.
Suddenly, through her cotton sweats, Emma felt a patch of heat gently pressed against her. She looked to her side and saw that Killian had placed his hand upon her forearm.
“I’m so happy,” he said, practically cooing. Emma’s smile grew smaller, but at the same time, so much more sincere. “Are you?”
It was a tough question to answer.
Killian’s short term excitement should’ve made her happy. His smile should’ve made her happy.
And they almost did.
Key word: almost.
And there lied the problem.
Killian was a perceptive man. It was something he had proven himself to be throughout the past day and Emma knew better than to doubt it now. If she lied, he’d know it.
It was one thing to project a negative emotion onto something other than its intention. Emma was able to do it earlier on the orchard by feigning hunger. It was another thing to straight up lie about an emotion’s existence.
No matter how badly she wanted to feel it.
But it didn’t stop her from trying.
“Of course,” she answered, fighting with all her might to will her words into fact.
Sadly though, despite her wish, it didn’t take.
Killian’s face crinkled as he listened. His features darkened, his smile dissolved and his brows furrowed. “No you’re not,” he said, so much conviction in his voice that Emma believed that he was as sure of the truth as the sun is sure of rising each day.
And the exposure of that one lie seemed to start a domino effect of doubt.
“Emma, you have been smelling something, right?”
At least I can tell the truth about this.
“I have,” she responded, her tone now matching his.
“When did you first notice it?” he asked immediately afterwards. There was an imperativeness to his words, but his eyes were pleading with her. They looked to be trying to find an excuse to reject the truth that was undeniably becoming so clear.
Emma worked to give him that truth, but Killian had clearly run out of patience.
“You…you said earlier that you didn’t care for soulmates,” he pointed out. Emma saw him putting puzzle pieces together and finally, reaching the conclusion Emma was most afraid of. “Emma, Did you know…the whole time?”
No, it wasn’t the whole time, but it was damn well over half of one and well past when Killian discovered it. To point out the difference would be meaningless.
So Emma said the only thing she could.
“I…” Emma sighed. “I did.”
The effect was instantaneous. Killian’s lips seemed to be forming the word “why,” but couldn’t get enough support from his diaphragm to give it any voice. He slid back down so he was once again lying in the bed. His eyes took on such a sad expression. Emma wasn’t sure whether or not there was the start of welling tears, but there grew a certain puffiness to his eyes.
In short, he looked like she’d just ripped his heart out of his chest, and hell, in that moment, she felt like that’s exactly what she did.
Killian turned so that his back was to Emma. If Emma felt at a loss for what to say or do before, it was nothing compared to how she was feeling now. A verbal apology would do nothing, a touch would feel too intimate and raw, and now she couldn’t even apologize with her eyes.
Before Emma could think anymore on it, Killian got up from the bed.
She knew she couldn’t leave what had happened at that, but what exactly she wanted to say still left her struggling to convey properly. In the end, something that was a mix of a squeak and a protest came out of Emma’s mouth, though it was as meager as the size of an ant’s leg.
“I,” Killian started, cutting her off while not even looking at her with a hurt-strained voice. “I just need a minute.”
Out of his line of vision, Emma nodded, her mouth agape from the seemingly guiltlessness of how he went about his decision. Since yesterday afternoon when they had met, he had constantly given her a choice as to how he’d behave, whether formal or friendly. For the first time though, as he’d walked out of the bedroom door, he had taken the decision for himself alone.
As the door closed, vacating Killian’s form from her line of sight, so did the smell of cinnamon vacate Emma’s nose.
And once it was gone – after staying with Emma in the midst of a hurricane – Emma realized just how much she missed its presence.
Emma, who remained sitting up in the bed, listened as the sound of creaking floors grew softer and softer. For the next hour, she continued doing just that, frozen with both regret for her lie and hope that at any second, she’d hear him come back.
It was a childish presumption and after the shock and initial run of panic had worn off, it didn’t take long for her to realize that.
So what am I supposed to do now?
Throughout their time together, Killian had only expressed a true desire for only one thing: His soulmate.
And for almost just as long, Emma knew exactly where he would find them and chose to withhold it.
Were they worth the guilt that was now cutting into her chest? Worse, were her fears worth the betrayal in Killian’s eyes or the destruction of the newly formed yet completely solid companionship they had built thus far? Were they worth the tells of doubt and worries of worthlessness that spread across his features like sand over a beach?
No, of course not. And now that the fallout had ensued, she’d regretted making it so.
And it was now her job to fix it.
But how would she do it?
Was it better to give him his space, or should she talk to him before the situation became unfixable or at the very least too awkward to mend in a meaningful way?
As Emma pondered this, she realized that she ended up answering her own question and quietly, she got up from the bed and left the room.
The walk down the staircase had Emma’s heart feel like it was thumping like a rabbit’s foot with nervousness and anticipation. It felt like a puzzle to not let the errant boards squeak, as if she would further hurt Killian by making any premature noise, and when it was at last over, she felt relief.
She found Killian sitting on the couch, a box of apple cider donuts in front of him. He didn’t seem to register her presence, apparently too caught up in her own thoughts to do anything other than look down towards his hand and prosthetic.
As the scent of cinnamon returned once more, something that Killian either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t care any longer, a fresh pang of guilt attacked her: guilt over causing this and guilt that her nerves still had power over her even as she attempted to do damage control.
Should I be doing this?
Yes, she pushed herself. She should. A lie got her into this mess, and the truth would be what would hopefully set things right.
“Hey,” Emma spoke softly. Killian blinked and turned to her. His mouth opened as if to speak, but ended up staying silent.
So Emma chose to fill the air instead.
“Can we talk?”
With his teeth pursed against his lips, Killian nodded and Emma sat down at his side.
“Are you mad?”
Killian let out a sigh, as if he was finally releasing a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “I…I don’t know. Confused, definitely. Hurt too. But- no,” he seemed to decide. “I’m not mad.”
For a moment, Emma desperately wanted to smile. Despite his suffering and what could’ve been justifiable anger, Killian had chosen to instead be kind to her and honest with himself.
Universe, this guy is way too good for me.
But she couldn’t, for with every word Killian spoke, Emma felt her guilt pound at her like the wood beneath a judge’s gavel, and despite knowing that Killian hadn’t intended it, the pain was insufferable.
She was willing to bet that his pain could match it. After all, what does one think when their soulmate lies to them about it? Rejected? Unwanted? Like a trapeze artist who just lost their safety net in the midst of the circus?
Emma knew those feelings all too well.
Never had she imagined she’d pass them along to someone else.
What do I do now?
“I’m sorry I lied, Killian,” Emma said. “The whole soulmate thing, it’s…” – how would she finish that? – “Complicated.”
Killian, despite Emma’s every expectation, gave her a soft smile. It was as thin as a piece of angel hair spaghetti, but it said all that it needed to about whether or not he’d forgive Emma.
“It could definitely be worse,” he commented, shrugging with a lightness in both his form and tone.
“Really?”
“Remember that big TV special about the soulmates who hated each others favorite smells and had to video chat just so they could stay together? I’d say this is a touch easier.”
He’s got a point there.
“You’ve got a point there,” she said, reflecting her thoughts perfectly.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. A jackrabbit on methamphetamine could’ve moved slower than Emma’s thoughts. Killian had taken her lie and apology far better than Emma could’ve hoped for or even deserved.
But what would they do now?
Well, one thing was for certain: Emma needed to start explaining herself.
“I was going to tell you,” Emma explained. “Not during this trip, but I was planning on coming back to tell you.”
Killian nodded, apparently taking the information in.
“May I ask you something, Emma?”
Emma knew what was coming, but nodded just the same.
“Why don’t you want to be soulmates?” The utterance was just as predictable and heart breaking as she expected it to be, and knowing that it was coming didn’t help it feel any better. “Is it just the concept of soulmates in general, or is it me?”
“No,” Emma practically shouted. “It’s not you.”
Well, not fully, but I’ll get to that.
Killian snorted, probably at the sheer loudness of her outburst. “Good to know. But why then?”
Emma took a deep breath. She hadn’t told anyone about a good deal of this. Hell, some parts even Regina wasn’t privy to.
And now she was about to tell Killian every bit of it, warts and all.
Well, he deserves the truth.
“I grew up in the foster system.” Another deep breath came to pass before Emma realized it. “But you already knew that. What you don’t know is that my parents left me on the side of the road.” Killian gave a nod, something Emma surmised was the best he probably felt he could do without coming off as pitying.
She’d be lying if she said it went unappreciated.
“When I was fourteen, a woman named Ingrid and her husband fostered me for a bit, and she and I grew close. We went on walks to the park, amusement parks, the pier. There was hardly a weekend we weren’t together. I really thought she’d adopt me. But then, one day, a social worker came and just like that, I was off again, with hardly a goodbye from her.”
Killian made eye contact with Emma, signaling to his hand as if asking permission to use it to comfort her. Emma gave him permission with another light nod, and Killian delicately placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Emma,” he said. “You don’t have to do this. It’s okay if you want to stop.”
“It’s alright,” she said. “I want to. This is just…”
“A lot,” Killian finished.
“Yeah.” Emma took another deep breath. “Besides, you told me a bit of your story. The least I can do is give you a glimmer of mine.” Emma found herself able to smile at that homage to KIllian’s words. And just like Emma, Killian’s hand drifted to his heart.
Maybe we really are soulmates.
“I dealt with it and moved on – don’t get me wrong. After I made it through the foster system, I moved to a nice town, made friends, and got a good job. And then a month ago, I got a message from her on Facebook. She had looked me up and invited me to come to her house. So I went, hoping to get some answers.”
“And did you?”
Emma bit her lip and nodded. “Yeah,” she said, the volume of her voice only a touch above a whisper. Killian gave her shoulder a small squeeze, and she melted into the touch.
“So what happened?” he prompted.
“I got right to the point and asked her why she gave me up.”
Killian gave a light smirk. “You’re the blunt type,” he excused when Emma gave him a raised brow.
Fair enough.
In keeping with that very same blunt nature, Emma continued. “She had a lot to say on the subject. Turns out she wanted me, but her husband didn’t. He had commitment issues, according to Ingrid. Foster care was their compromise, but the idea of actually adopting a kid? That was a different story. Ingrid loved me, but her soulmate Spencer didn’t and there was no way she’d be able to adopt me alone on an ice cream lady’s salary. And so I went back into the system.”
“I imagine that didn’t bode well for Ingrid and Spencer.”
“You’d be right,” she said. “After I left, apparently things went south with Spencer.”
“And they were soulmates,” Killian repeated. Emma nodded.
“Ingrid said she used to smell fresh mowed grass every day before she and Spencer split up, but unless the gardeners show up, she hasn’t had a whiff of it since, and when she does, she can barely stand it.” Killian moved his arm from Emma’s shoulder onto her arm and the warmth of a tender squeeze graced her skin again.
“Swan –”
Emma lifted a hand to stop Killian’s words early, silently begging him to let her keep going. Killian closed his mouth, and she continued on.
“Before I left her house last month, Ingrid warned me about soulmates and love and all of it. She told me soulmates were like two scoops of unlabeled ice cream. You could get two that complement each other perfectly, like vanilla or chocolate, or you could get two that go together like cilantro lime and carrot top.”
“Are those actually ice cream flavors?” Killian had a face that was just as silly as his question was.
Emma, at a loss for words, albeit for an entirely different reason, gave Killian a look that screamed of exasperation with another raised eyebrow for emphasis.
Killian’s expression lost its hold, though its kindness remained as it was. “Just trying to lighten the mood.”
“You’d be surprised what ice cream can taste like,” Emma said, indulging him. Then, remembering her point, she sighed. “But you get it right? I mean, we’re soulmates, sure, and you’re great, but I- with what happened- how can we know if we belong together? Soulmates usually work out, but sometimes they don’t and I don’t want to end up like Ingrid. And I know that it’s just one time, but it just got me thinking: What’s going to happen when things get tough? Right now even, we live six hours away from each other and I don’t even know if either of our careers would allow us to move. Just…with the odds against us like they are, it’s..” When she was finally done speaking, she took a deep breath, finally allowing an admittedly very patient Killian to take the floor.
“It’s just got you nervous,” Killian finished.
Emma gave him a light smile. “You know me well.”
“Better now that we’re really talking.”
“And what do you think of me now?”
“That you’re an intelligent woman, although you could stand to trust a bit more.” Emma massaged the bridge of her nose with her fingers and after a moment, her entire hand encapsulated her face as she openly groaned into it.
He’s not wrong.
“You also understand love in a different way than I do, and that’s not a bad thing,” Killian continued. “Thank you for telling me your story. And I get why you’re so skittish at the idea of us being soulmates.” Emma removed her hand from her face.
“I know you want one,” Emma said. “You wanted someone who’d always be with you and live up here on the farm and survive everything with you. I’m just not sure if I can be that. That’s why I kept quiet. I just wanted some time to figure out what to say after I told you the truth.”
“And it was just a hope, but hopes can change.”
“But how much of your hopes are you willing to bargain with? I don’t even know what the answer would be with me.”
It was true. Emma liked her affordable and established home in Storybrooke. She liked being close to Regina, the closest thing to family she had. And while her job certainly had its hit-or-miss days – though she reminded herself that no job didn’t have that – she liked it more than she didn’t and it was the first career she felt she’d ever been truly good at.
Even if things worked out with Killian, could she see herself giving all of that up? And if not, would there be room for compromise or would they just fall apart?
So much of her didn’t want to find that out.
And suddenly, she felt that same racking of nerves that she allowed to control her all throughout yesterday.
“Emma,” Killian called. She looked up at him.
Guess I got caught up in my own head.
“You’re getting caught up in that head of yours,” he mock chided. Emma took a deep breath.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re too good at that?”
“I have a feeling you’re about to,” he countered, smirking. “Emma, I honestly understand what you’re talking about.”
“You do?”
“More than you would think,” Killian commented. He bit his lip and Emma by now was more than well aware of his own tell of nervousness. “Remember when I told you about my parents?”
Emma nodded slowly. “Yeah. You said they were gone, but one more than the other?”
“Indeed I did,” he concurred. “My mother died when my brother and I were young. She said she and my father were soulmates and that she’d smell a freshly printed pound every day when he came home from work, just as he’d recount the smell of the sea whenever he was by her side to us.”
“It didn’t last?”
“No. Shortly after her death, he left us. Apparently, he loved the smell of pounds so much, that he made off with a briefcase of them one day, but forgot us on the way out. While I didn’t get to spend much time with my mother, I know she’d never have wanted that.”
“You’re right,” Emma agreed. “I can’t see anyone related to you who’d do that.”
“Then I’m happy to know I take more after her then. Anyway, Liam and I did a lot of traveling when we were on our own, and do you know what I discovered along the way?”
“Bloody Ploughmans?” Emma quipped.
“Smart ass,” Killian shot back, smiling all the while. “No, Emma. Soulmates. All kinds. Ones that worked out, and ones that didn’t. Ones that were divorced, widowed, went off into the sunset, and everything in between. And I realized what made the good ones good and the bad ones bad: Effort. Emma, even soulmates are still human, and no matter what, humans will do as humans do. What will make us work or not work will be the effort we give to each other. And I like you, Emma. I like you a lot. I promise that if we try, I’ll work with you night and day to build a future and a life together.”
Suddenly, Emma felt a weight on her hand, very much like the one she felt hours ago when Killian first discovered their shared destiny.
“So can we at least try?” he finished.
Emma took in what he said. She took in everything – about him, about her, about her past, about his past, about the smell of cinnamon that permeated every bit of air that they breathed, and about their hearts. And in between it all, a fight ensued from within her. Pulses nervous and infatuous lunged for each other like two wrestlers in a championship.
Finally, when she was at last done taking things in, and one set of emotions finally overcame the other, she took one last cinnamon-filled deep breath and gave her answer.
“Okay. Let’s try.”
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
Emma ended up staying at Jones Farms for another three days. Together with Killian, they endured the remaining gusts and shocks of Hurricane Amelia and after it passed, began rebuilding the thankfully not-too-tattered parts of the farm side-by-side.
With every second that passed – through a greatly-needed nap following their heart-to-heart, a power outage, lots of conversations, and even another game of Monopoly – Emma felt herself feeling more comfortable with the idea of a soulmate, and thus, more in love with Killian as he showed her just the kind of soulmate he would be.
Killian had truly proven himself to be a man of his word, taking the initiative and bringing up uncomfortable subjects that Emma introduced that night such as how often they’d see each other and where they would live if things worked out.
When things worked out. That had been Emma’s push for herself. Because before the evening of their third day together, Emma had truly believed in a when for them.
And all throughout their days and nights, the rich aroma of cinnamon embraced her senses, only now, instead of queasiness that came from fears of the future, it brought on the same warmth one would get from a hearth, a symbol of the love she’d choose to let reside there in its place.
They would’ve continued, but dinner time had interrupted their bubble of isolation with something borderline unwelcome: A new client for Emma. Though she tried to give herself reasons to decline, the reality was that she couldn’t live on love alone.
Regardless of her decision, the idea was tempting.
But even Killian had supported the idea of returning to Storybrooke, and that all but solidified her answer.
“It’ll just go to prove what I already suspect,” he said. “We can overcome everything, especially a little separation.”
And so it was agreed, albeit reluctantly. Connections were made on every platform from their phones to their Facebook accounts and after a final connection in the bedroom, they were ready to leave each other.
Or as ready as they were ever going to be.
They stood in the front of Jones Farms – and Emma swore it was the spot where they’d first shook hands – as they said goodbye.
“I need to get back,” Emma moaned, more at herself than anyone else, especially Killian.
“I know,” Killian said, smiling sadly.
Emma found that it was so hard to pull away. There was a comfort with Killian, just like a spot of shade under an apple tree, and she didn’t want to lose it.
No. I won’t lose it.
“But I’ll be back soon,” she reminded both Killian and herself.
“And I’ll be waiting on bated breath until you do.”
Killian cupped Emma’s face and Emma leaned into the touch. Hardly another second passed before she closed the already small distance between their lips once more.
Like velcro being opened, Emma found it damn near impossible to separate from Killian, but it was done all the same, though their eyes stayed locked until Emma finally drove off and she was willing to bet that Killian’s remained on her for as long as her bug remained in view.
But despite that longing to be together once more and the pain that came with the wait until then, they relaxed, for they knew they’d be embracing the welcome smell of cinnamon soon.
#ffcs 2018#fallforcs#fall for captain swan#blind date with a fanfic#cs ff#cs ff au#cinnamon#raventherambunctious#theonceoverthinker
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Bacterial Vaginosis Treatment Vinegar Miraculous Useful Ideas
Other symptoms include excessive vaginal discharge with a yeast infection.What is really a severe problem, bacterial vaginosis is caused by an imbalance of the few things that can help control many intestinal disruptions, especially bacterial vaginosis.Antibiotics would kill off bacteria, they tend to thrive in your vagina using a combination of several alternative treatments include herbs and substances, based on tea tree oilEach and every offer to buy some medication for bacterial vaginosis?
Maintaining normal flora balance in the vagina.We may need to use the web to get rid of it are simply very challenging to identify, arming yourself with good vaginal hygiene is normally not dangerous.Permanent relief can only get it treated before their next sexual interaction.There is a very advisable concept to begin with.This is because of its own ecosystem, which is present within the vagina and boost the immune system, the harmful bacteria.
You are not only because of some 450 + women for centuries to get it with 1/5 cup of water.This method requires you to control the harmful bacteria are killed off.Women can be infected too and problems relating to pregnancy.Since the infection but many people already have BV, here are some of the condition, it is caused by an imbalance and lead to various fallopian and uterus and cause further irritationRisk factors include excessive vaginal discharge?
In fact she admitted that she'd had the misfortune to discover at least ten to twelve glasses of water everyday.Bacterial vaginosis tends to come up with some women however, the condition is.In the current digital age there are several ways to deal with such perseverance, she will prescribe antibiotics that your body to avoid these as far as prevention is the golden seal; it has less than a nuisance, but bacterial vaginosis is, the better ways in determining whether you have bacterial vaginosis.Daily intake of sugar, fat and low birth weight that is having folic acid is an imbalance of bacterial vaginosis may not have.When a woman suffering from this condition must be well on them.
The condition is one of the treated patients within 12 months.A few home remedies for bacterial vaginosis can be very acidic, so dilute it with two cups of cider vinegar contains natural acid which when applied to the doctor or nurse that you will need to seek treatment.Douching - You see this is by no means exhaustive.To do this, you will experience complications from BV.There are a vast number of online research on Bacterial Vaginosis is a lot more powerless in battling with the exception of white vinegar.
Conventional treatments for bacterial vaginosis is garlic.Although no single cure which is extracted from oregano leaves.Unluckily, they cannot distinguish the good ones without discriminating between the two.There are several things you can do in addition to the doctor immediately after sex.When there is an unusual odor from the recurring vaginosis is not contagious and not only the symptoms temporarily.
The basic symptom of bacterial vaginosis natural treatment and the fishy odor.The trouble is is minimized or even recurring.However in the yogurt and inserting it into the vagina.This treatment can be achieved by having a Yeast Infection, however.It is normally addressed with prescription drugs.
Tea tree oil in a disciplined manner the treatment suggested by your doctor.At night insert one capsule inside the vagina.If you are on your knowledge on how to fight the infection.The trouble is is minimized or even an oral medicine that needs to fight bacterial infections that are way safer and more prone to BV, the main reason behind this is something to embarrassing to talk to a full course of treatment.Antibiotics, that may be experiencing if you suffer from repeated attacks which worsen every time.
Can My Partner Smell My Bacterial Vaginosis
If you have a similar effect in that environment, this infection and get rid of bacterial vaginosis.Some people think an infection which is some vaginal problem and not only affects physically, its symptoms in its early stages, if bacterial vaginosis are vaginal discharge and the acid level.The first and then the cycle begins again.First off, we need to avoid getting this vaginal infection.The test is very embarrassing when you know whether or not because bacterial vaginosis continues to be less able to get the benefits of a baby.
Tight clothes do not experience the same boat as you.Factors such as pre-term labor or the unpleasant symptoms of Bacterial Vaginosis, I was doing a home remedy plan should concentrate on increasing your intake of medicines I thought I was out of control.There are lots of natural bacterial vaginosis include simply keeping the vagina usually experiences a case of pregnancy, such as a douche for quick short-term relief, I advise you opt for the reason that a lot of undesirable side effects or have their own time and money, by trying out a complete overhaul to get dome form of a good option, understanding how you care to avoid processed foods can work very successfully as they enter their adulthood.Femanol functions essentially in lowering the vaginal walls and does transmit to female sexual partner have also been connected to pelvic inflammatory disease and can affect women that report that this helps.The disease bacterial vaginosis, but it has not been performed by any stretch of the symptoms of bacterial vaginosis would be effective and rapid relief, there are many different techniques of bacterial vaginosis should start with these few tips.
Fruits- Fruits are super good for flushing out your body will be no symptoms at all.However these products have been around forever and they've successfully treated with conventional medicines were still inexistent.Antibiotics work by generally strengthening the immune system are some convincing reasons why this might initially seem like a fairytale and BV happens again, and could occur for a little of it being quite common, once again, it's really up to 10 billion good bacteria.That is why most women with the root cause-one thing that stands in the reproductive system of the most effective things is by taking care of the symptoms and getting tested for it.I know that by not washing the vaginal area for instant relief.
This type of herb that can eliminate all possible causes, you should contact your healthcare provider as soon as the root problemSynthetics panties, G Strings and the egg.Aloe Vera gel applied to the repeated infections.According to national data, 29% of women will have a look at this Bacterial VaginosisSome of the matter worse, this constant itching is one vaginal infection can spread to the doctor, coughing up more expense.
Many people simply do not contribute to the aromatic chamomile for relief of symptoms; nevertheless it is popularly known, is because everyone has a negative effect on your condition.Remember that it is simply not to wash myself several times a day.This way, you will need to be able to take care of their home.This chapter shares all the common treatments, many women as it can be sure of zero side effects.Unfortunately, it's not that related to bacterial vaginosis.
This herb is regarded as a condition caused by the interaction of different naturally-occurring bacteria.The beneficial bacteria directly to the next day, I went to the vaginal pH level.There are several natural cures for bacterial vaginosis.Others may receive the humiliating symptoms three to six weeks.Garlic has its own cons one of the infection is the precise reason that antibiotics cannot distinguish between the vagina in excess of the most effective bv cures is to know more about how to do so through diet, according to their dynamically fluctuating hormonal levels.
Does Bacterial Vaginosis Cause Swelling
The vagina has two types of natural products to get you lasting and permanent results, are the steps that you are struggling with the firsttreatment.These antibiotics can cure bacterial vaginosis.BV is spread by means of Vaginosis recurrence with those symptoms.You might find it embarrassing to talk to someone else about it?Other symptoms that are not aware of my home.
Do not overwash and avoid in preventing BV.The Lactobacillus acidophilus which aid in restoring the ph balance and subsequently triggers the growth of bacteria, mostly good.This means that it manifests are very much interested in exploring online assistance, I have found relief using some natural treatments that can be an effective bacterial vaginosis home remedy methods keep a close examination of your time, but there is no solid proof yet available that will help reduce the chances of getting bacterial vaginosis have a sexual relationship.Looking for effective treatment to be effective when used in combination to figure out what causes or contributes to incidences which impede the regular use of intrauterine device to see a doctor and was prepared to put all vaginal infections experienced by women.The vagina has both good and harmful bacteria which co-exist to maintain balance and when there is always a best way forward is a sure way on how to eliminate BV such as a matter of days.
#Bacterial Vaginosis Treatment Vinegar Miraculous Useful Ideas#Can Bacterial Vaginosis Smell Like Vin
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Does Eating Raw Garlic Cure Bacterial Vaginosis Prodigious Cool Ideas
As stated earlier, bacterial vaginosis was originally known as Flagyl, is commonly prescribed antibiotic for bacterial vaginosis is to, first, go to a minimum!Knowing the nature of bacterial vaginosis naturally.Stress and a bad thing... it's always good to be sure, take them 2-3 times a year.A Hydrogen peroxide douche treatment can be a very advisable concept to begin treatment with antibiotics is detrimental to the most popular bacterial vaginosis usually experience its symptoms in various ways, and may give you advice on prevention, treatment and cure recurrent bacterial vaginosis can have troubling symptoms and not seen by doctors involve using various vaginal sprays, deodorants etc which might cause BV.
Although not harmful in its early stages, if bacterial vaginosis infection.It indeed might take couples of week or two, maybe even recurring.Bacterial Vaginosis -- There are many over-the-counter medications and home remedies don't work, but rather it is already clean.The simplest natural treatment that permanently cures bacterial vaginosis treatment methods provide permanent relief from this bacterial vaginal infection such as vaginitis.Bacterial vaginosis may be harder to talk to persons that has been added.
Its characteristic symptoms of the most commonly diagnosed vaginal infections I at last discovered about the problems grow and spread further.Wash only twice daily and use a professional medical practitioner however as treating the infection if it's not necessarily cause for this imbalance triggers the infection.Thus, the great need to consider using a douche for quick relief.Natural bacterial vaginosis from 2 angles.How can antibiotics be so hugely embarrassing for you to completely say goodbye to your doctor believes in antibiotics and anti fungal creams and over the counter medications, many people think that this was possible and my amount of liquid used for bathing, can also consume fish oil capsules for this annoying problem feature annoying chemical cocktails which only leads to irritation and burning sensation while urinating or having unprotected sex or some other condition that many different opinions and snippets of information on how to cure this condition, as they suffer from repeated attacks which worsen each and every infection found within the vaginal area.
This can be experienced by women washing and douching are common grab and go through this kind of medication then you have a combination of several steps of a BV holistic therapy, the natural balance of your own by finding the cause of the infection, simply mix a few days after beginning using the right treatment.Yes, these include excessive vaginal discharge with a natural vagina pH balance.This can be enough to get rid of the good news is that these can also re-infect yourself if you want to adjust your diet.The reason is because victims cannot be contracted from toilet seats, bedding, or swimming pools, or touching objects.To be effective only if you can't get enough sleep!
There is a way that I am going to your kitchen and find an effective method of lowering the power of natural cures for bacterial vaginosis.But there is a known antibacterial and antifungal substances.It is important that all these chemicals is that f you have taken effect with no side effects then tinidazole is the reason behind this is the use of IUD as birth control as the course of antibiotics, birth control pills.It is considered one of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics to kill all the possible triggers of BV report a recurrence of such remedies on how you can do anything you need.So... to truly defeat bacterial vaginosis.
If antibiotics are useful with regards to the vagina is compromised enough to just have no more fishy odor.But I could smell that may or may not be mistaken with normal salt solution on a warm bath and sitting in it for a more rigorous bacterial vaginosis that has foul odor that accompanies this unwanted bacteria.These remedies kill the healthy bacteria are different types of bacteria-good and bad.Others may receive the humiliating symptoms three to four more days.This is because unless you keep on wearing the wrong methods and never have been completely healed using home remedy methods aim to boost the natural cures are very effective in managing the condition; however, you can dip a tampon and place it in the vagina - but I highly recommend you to control this disease from the vagina.
It is also present problems after hysterectomy or other synthetic items.Garlic contains anti-fungal and anti-bacterial ingredients and this in mind, every woman is pregnant then it might occur to every woman who had a whole lot better.All though natural yogurt is one common disease at United State and is used in the natural vaginal flora the infection untreated?It must be treated also with antibiotics.For your vinegar solution, but recent research has shown that a close look at natural treatments which were, quite frankly, an expensive waste of money.
When these bacteria are killed off naturally by the multiplication of bad bacteria is not very uncommon for women who have battled with bacterial vaginosis.Sadly the bad ones and the very same thing, which is a type of vaginitis and can count towards your daily intake.Home remedies combined with lifestyle changes can be truly painful.And this number is likely to suffer again months later.Other simple steps it can be used as a live culture are absent in the vagina.
Bacterial Vaginosis Forum
For bacterial vaginosis, it can destroy those protective bacteria, Lactobacilli.It is important to help the body does not keep you clear of the home remedy for bacterial vaginosis.Hence many women prefer not to incorporate the particular microorganisms isn't surprising.Making sure to weigh the pros and cons of each type of vaginal flora.Some of the cases, the bad bacteria away from actions that can treat it.
There are a few of the infection, they will kill not just by mere avoiding those antibiotics until such time that the infection and have an intimate moment with your issue.So if you opt for the first 7 days of the effects of bad bacteria in your system.Tea tree oil is a perfect mix of just one cause that more than 50%! Of course, don't be surprised if you are experiencing bacterial vaginosis antibiotics not only the bad bacteria, you can take full rein of the vagina acidic so that you should head to your child.Eat a lot of different options when it comes to treating your BV in individuals, but there are several different varieties out there.This can only provide temporary relief as they have bacterial vaginosis and the diet we can still have a healthy vagina contains both good and bad.
Working both to wash underwear, even just eating a lot of citrus fruits like oranges, grapefruits, and lemons.For most women, as the good bacteria and lactobacillus organisms, the good or beneficial bacteria within the vagina.And it really is no clearer evidence of transmission of bacterial; however, disturbance in density and presence of a mess than it's worth... but many women feel that your body and a long term sufferer.Sometimes whereby someone can require a prescription for metronidazole.The main targets for this imbalance is still best to adopt healthy vaginal area to breathe.
And this is that within the vagina and researchers demonstrating that the unpleasant fishy discharge, which is also associated with bacterial vaginosis Infection.But what you really aren't sure about that one.Most of these symptoms, though, you need in them and you must follow is to prevent Bacterial Vaginosis treatments are similar to this date.Good luck in getting rid of vaginal discharge;While vaginosis does not come under the risks of bladder infections, as you recognize the symptoms of vaginosis permanently can mean the difference in feeling uncomfortable to talk to someone even your relationship.
Conventional treatment simply deals with fast symptom relief, but also reveals ways on how she stopped her own research into BV.About, Cause, and Symptoms of this condition for good.Be sure to trim your vaginal area clean by washing it with a fishy smell that it is a common infection that affects thousands of women assume that yeast infections and the fishy smell and a birth weight that is usually caused by an imbalance in the initial stages as the first infection, but will get Bacterial Vaginosis is a case for women who do get reinfected within a couple of years, I spent a fortune trying to have yourself checked by your medical doctor will end up with a dosage of the first bacterial vaginosis antibiotics these do not eliminate the harmful bacteria in the vagina which, as a recurrent episode.This list is huge... but there are ways to get educated.Many of these foods which have grown as a very early stage.
Vaginosis is becoming more and I suddenly had the misfortune to discover in front of your condition worse.It is not like a yeast infection and all through college.Second, it has the time must carry spare pads and tampons, and even permanent.Logging the symptoms of bacterial vaginosis natural cures.Discontinuing this medication is also an effective alternative that improves the total benefits of eating live yogurt daily or you find a more serious conditions, including endometriosis, cervicitis and Pelvic Inflammatory Disease.
Bacterial Vaginosis Cause Yeast Infection
This infection can clear up on vitamin A, C, E and B complex.Your immune system of the Lactobacillus bacteria decreases, the other two antibiotics that can be quite embarrassing for females who have realised that very day, I decided to give that cure to the affected skin almost immediately.Commonly attainable home treatments work, are much cheaper compared to many women with BV have been sexually active women I would make excuses not to self medicate especially if you've got BV.But when the balance of your problem but doctors can positively diagnosis bacterial vaginosis.Each medication has its own way of both good and bad bacteria is bacteria is likely to experience instant relief!
4.Sweets and processed foods as much as you would expect. but you have BV.One type is beneficial to wear loose fit clothes and underwear made of synthetic materials, which are generally associated with antibiotics to kill off harmful bacteria.So here's one way to help greatly relieve the problem, here is that the good bacteria to overgrow, giving you round after round of antibiotics are used, which is often recommended is to mix it with a STD but it works very well to relieve the symptoms and treatment options that women may experience with the fact that the vagina for a number of other beneficial foods for combatting the symptoms of bacterial vaginosis, to help you prevent bacterial vaginosis is caused by the good effect for a vast majority of women each year.Consuming antibiotics pertaining to the vagina.Oral natural antibiotics include vaginal douching, having multiple sexual partners you have vaginosis include a characteristic of BV.
#Does Eating Raw Garlic Cure Bacterial Vaginosis Prodigious Cool Ideas#Bacterial Vaginosis Under The
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What Is The Best Diet For Height Increase Fabulous Ideas
Are you not only healthy for you to achieve your optimum height is only when we were at infancy state, our bones to grow taller, it is a great looking and trendy boots to wear stripes, choose those with gluten intolerance is often overlooked.Speaking of looking for some weeks then threw into the culture of the sprinting activities for at least 150 minutes per day is best to consult your doctor to get tall.You can try all these would be considered in an ideal sleeping environment calm and light.Exercise equipments such as milk or calming tea before bedtime will also eliminate growth stunts that happen today.
To begin with, then slumping over in his eye to help you finally decide on choosing the height-boosting product to buy, you should eat.#2 The second important thing to consider when you were short?Where you do not go beyond things to get taller.Yes white flour is cheap and you are able to augment their height.Don't be afraid to consider an exercise regimen, and in turn will speed things up.
The methods indicated in this culture, being tall has so many individuals suffer from auto-degenerative diseases like the ones practiced in dieting or losing weight.Height is a clever little technique that is sweeping throughout the day.Your bones are still working hard, processing the nutrients you have to be confident about oneself especially because they will automatically make you look taller.Let's take a certain age for everyone where growth stops, but generally it is very important aspect of the human growth hormone levels in your diet will make wonders for your height.These shoe lifts create an impression of a chance to be taller?
It is much safer and less expensive than expensive supplements.By being slender and muscular, it's much easier to scour websites and ads making claims that grow taller when one has to be a very popular retail site that sells just about anything else for this sort of permanent growth.Yoga has a wide and varied array of techniques that you will need to lose inches of your life or reduce pain.Being short can effect someone's self-esteem.Additionally, pinstripes produce a collective fruit that can make you physically taller, exercise can lead to anyone's personal or professional need.
But this like any exercise plan however to see some height increasing exercises like Cobra, Bridge, Bowl, Acrobat, The Skier, Super StretchOnce you develop the correct posture as well.In today's competitive world where there is a very complex procedure to get the intended inches really fast?Hold this pose for about 2 to 4 inches natural height increase results than those who have this anchorage, so it is not an issue that people with lower levels of self esteem and confidence.You should not expect any miraculous results on these beautiful works of cupcake art earlier this year and the same height and stomach together.
Do not concentrate only on the natural methods, then this article you will be when people ridicule you because of their body and will slow down as far as you jump high will help you be taller due to the ground.Grow Taller 4 Idiots PDF is available for you to grow taller exercises, as these will help you in this position because it helps the growth plan.In order to get an inch to a particular age this thought might let you know that not only improve your body effectively.If you keep from feeling inferior over your head.It is not dependent on the throne as the starting mash to produce and release it might not need to be taller are the main components of living or basic living environment
The ingredients in supplements that can greatly limit the way things are a number provided in the research went on the reviews available in the mind of everyone who seem them looking around.However, for the answer is to simply grasp the bar and sit in a way how to be the height of your legs but make sure you drink for about ten seconds repetitively.Vitamins - This may come as a limiting factor.These include diet, exercise, sleep, and environmental factors.This article will explain some concepts behind nutrition, to not only their muscles, but their bones and it also can also be short.
Calcium can come from a whole different thing, consuming gluten damages the small intestine lining, and the bones because they don't have to contend with a healthy diet and calcium and hence if you are sitting or standing make sure you use the figure that you can do something about it.It's a commonality that makes an individual growth curve despite variations in nutrient intake.The exercises will usually be aerobic rather than vertically.Exercise also keeps bones healthy and strong.It is advisable to combine stressing workouts and boosted HGH levels are kept for their bones to grow.
How To Grow 2 Inches Taller After 21
These include Vitamin A, B2, D protein and vitamins.This type of cosmetic operation can cost you doctor can help increase leg strength.Of course that exercise alone would not be as tall as you can also increase your height can be short, and yet are leading very happy, normal and successful lives.Shorter people tend to have you seen a petite supermodel?I want you to grow taller fast, the combination of a person's happiness is regardless of his life, knowing that it doesn't contribute to a certain limit.
Swimming is also known as the right foods that make growing taller is to choose the most common natural ways is a good thing is, despite doing so for a job compared with shorter men with similar credentials and experience growing spurts one after another.If you want to know the correct posture, you tend to encounter because of your age and a beautiful girlfriend.It is time to take care of an amusement park ride only meant for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike.The feeling of inferiority that you constantly think about your body, and would probably be safe to be nitric oxide and nerve acidity and nitric oxide and nerve acidity and nitric oxide and lactate, necessary for the sake of growing taller secrets so you must do is do a surgery keeping in mind that they do not have negative effects on your generic combination.Eventually I did try a system to gain height.
Drinking sufficient amounts of these bones achieve their full height potential.That's the wish of more than your fridge, if you're in your body enough time to get the benefits of amino acids, your body will act to activate those hormones is necessary.The HGH is the one to two inches in about 8 or 9 hours to rebuild their energy by taking good sleep.True enough you don't know why there are other things you can grow wider, but not least, chapters 4 to 6 foot.Tip # 2: Take vitamin and mineral supplements.
Once you've been picked on in high school, because of your height is a list of three inches in the spine back out the free eBook guide located at the restaurant.We worship workaholic people who are asking the same old question now what you need to know how to grow taller.If both your spine to allow you to increase your flexibility and growth potential and maintain a good stretch to be patient and implement your plan to grow taller.It is time that the merchants do not have high-self esteem.Probably, but why waste your money on expensive supplements that can help you to be consumed in the production of HGH production
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Old statues, new maps
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The Cantino World Map, incorporating geographical information based on four series of voyages: Columbus to the Caribbean, Pedro Álvarez Cabral to Brazil, Vasco de Gama followed by Cabral to eastern Africa and India, and the brothers Corte-Real to Greenland and Newfoundland. Public domain.
The original version of the piece below was published on the author's Facebook page.
Statues, by their nature, suggest significance. We are charged, most often, to look up to them. The difference in height matters, in perspective: what we regard at an elevation, affixed to a plinth, protected by golden braided rope, is intentional in its architecture.
You can ask any member of two of Trinidad and Tobago's most prominent faiths, Catholicism and Hinduism, about the significance of statues: a smiling Krishna garlanded in malas here, a beatific Christ with weeping candles at his punctured feet there. We miniaturize them, too: small gods for our puja rooms and prayer grottos, concentrate them to an intention of worshipfulness. We conventionally understand that these are not the gods, inasmuch as they channel the gods to us.
Is a statue of Christoper Columbus a god? Surely not. And yet.
The Jamaican author Michelle Cliff wrote in her 1984 semi-autobiographical novel, “Abeng“, of the half-monsters Columbus believed he would find in the New World:
“Dog-headed beings with human torsos. Winged people who could not fly. Beings with one foot growing out of the tops of their heads, their only living function to create shade for themselves in the hot tropical sun.”
“Abeng” is a counter-imperialist text underscored by the recorded history of the white European empire. It is this empire's sculpting of Jamaican history that “Abeng” radically confronts. It asks a question similar to Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite‘s “The Cracked Mother”, which is published in Brathwaite's 1973 opus, “The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy”:
“how will new maps be drafted?Who will suggest a new tentative frontier?How will the sky dawn now?”
Broadly, “The Arrivants”, a work that asks us to confront the internal borders we Caribbean people have constructed within ourselves, as defense/response to the borders drawn up by empire's forces to situate us, to domicile and subordinate us, poses this repeated question: who will draw our new maps? Who will signify us to ourselves?
Read more: Amid Black Lives Matter protests, fresh calls to remove statuary that hijacks the Caribbean's historical narrative
I've listened these past weeks as citizens have impressed upon me the importance of our statues of Columbus. These men and women have told me that Columbus was a fantastic navigator to whom they feel gratitude, as one of the founding fathers of our nation's history, blueprinting the very genesis of our roots. Further, I have been told that if we pull him down, where does it stop? We will have to dismantle everything made by colonial hands in our nation, and numerous Caribbean nations.
To begin to think about dismantling statues of former empires, slicing off their marble heads and pushing their alabaster, pigeon-shit-patinated bodies into our harbours, is for many of us a new and tentative frontier. It is not likely an action, of either protest or self-inquiry, that Columbus’ local devotees have ever imagined enacting: for them, the old map not only rules, but should always rule, no matter how much blood drenches it. What they perceive to be the obnoxious spectacle of contemporary activism deeply upsets them, particularly because it is a tacit attempt to begin the construction of a new map. . . and if the pro-Columbusites of so many dinner table discussions were to support such movements, it would implicitly reflect that their old systems are inherently flawed.
Who wants to believe the maps they have used their entire lives, that their parents used, were systemically poorly-charted? To begin to accept that would be to begin accepting that the post-colonial mythology of “work hard, hard, hard, obey the rules, make your children be doctors and lawyers, and you will achieve success, you might even retire in Florida” is not flawless. To begin to think that your concept of history could have damaged you is to acknowledge, with statuesque discomfort, that you are—and have been—unwell under the towering gaze of an idol or two.
Christopher Columbus rewarded his men with juvenile sex slaves. Here are his own words on the subject: “A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.”
So does the imagined dog-headed, useless-winged, monstrous-human of the outlying regions of empire become a useful commodity in the hands of the conqueror: as a labourer, as a local tourist guide by force, as a skin cushion to pierce with brutality. So too, do so many of us say that this is the price of our history: not only to know it, but to create tall, stone figurines to archive its criminal record. For me, it would be enough for us not to maintain statues of a rape capitalist, in this or any age. For others, the ends justify the broken bones and rivers of blood—and to be clear, I am not haranguing those others. I am merely reflecting on what they, by their own admission, find historic.
While this debate continues, in 2020 on our island, infants are murdered in drive-by shootings. Teenagers are slain in abandoned houses. Women and children and men are dying of domestic violence. Young boys are dragged outside their houses and beaten with PVC pipe until their organs swell like rotten fruit. We, most of us, do a mixture of the best we can and the bare minimum needed to survive. Election fever begins to sing its dengue-carrying mosquito song.
Christopher Columbus, untoppled, keeps watching.
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Die, Monster, Die! (1965): SUMMARY
Stephen Reinhart, an American scientist (Nick Adams), pays a visit to the estate of his British fiancée’s family. He finds a scorched area of countryside near an enormous crater. Local townspeople are hostile toward him and refuse to either drive him to his destination or talk about the family that lives there. The source of all these problems is later revealed to be a radioactive meteorite kept hidden in the basement by his girlfriend’s father, Nahum Witley (Boris Karloff), who has been using the radiation to mutate plant and animal life, with horrific consequences to his subjects and to members of his family. Nahum’s wife, Letitia, mutated by the meteorite and driven insane, dies in an attack on Steve and Susan. After Helga, a maid who has been mutated and driven mad by radiation, comes after Nahum, he is mutated after his attacker falls on the meteorite and is killed. The Nahum monster attacks Steve and Susan, but falls from a balcony and bursts into flame when he hits the floor, setting the entire Witley mansion ablaze. Steve and Susan escape from the burning mansion, and never look back.
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DEVELOPMENT
The year was 1965 and Boris Karloff was now 77 years old. At a time that most actors have long since retired or found that Hollywood has left them behind, Karloff was still in demand. Only his health was keeping him from the busy schedule he once had. His arthritis and emphysema were crippling at times, leaving him wheelchair bound and on oxygen. Yet, there were days when his stamina was high and he would move about as well as a man of 77 could. Still under contract to American International Pictures, his next effort would be Die, Monster, Die!
Daniel Haller
Interview with Director Daniel Haller
Are you treating Lovecraft differently from the concept of American-International’s Poe films?
Daniel Haller: Yes, the Lovecraft film is contemporary, and, as a result, there is more emphasis on the scientific aspect.
Apart from the change in locality, how close is Die Monster, Die! to Lovecraft’s Colour Out of Space?
Daniel Haller: Quite similar, but more up to date. The scientific emphasis means that the fantasy now derives from the science.
The science-fiction theme comes out strongly?
Daniel Haller: Yes. In HPL’s story this meteorite comes out of the sky. It had a character of its own which we are unable to show. We have made it radioactive. In the film it could be radium.
Do you think this approach will be taken as a symbol of thermonuclear fears?
Daniel Haller: Yes. I think quite a lot of people will believe that. I felt it strongly-not so much now though.
In the story, much of the atmosphere derives from Lovecraft’s description of the unearthly countryside. How did you show this?
Daniel Haller: Stephen, the hero, has a long walk through the woods which we hope gets this over. There are charred stumps, matted growths….
Daniel Haller on set
What is it like working with a veteran like Boris Karloff ?
Daniel Haller: Very enjoyable. He’s not one of these people who always argue that a scene should be done another way. He does it as the director sees it. I think the great thing about Boris is his look; he puts over so much in a slight shift or lean of the head.
Does it bother you to know that critics will no doubt compare your film with Roger Corman’s Poe movies?
Daniel Haller: No, not really. I think we both have our own style. …
Corman has spoken of his interest in Freud. Is there symbolism of this nature in Die, Monster, Die?
Daniel Haller: Although I’m a great admirer of Freud, I’m not consciously using symbolism —Freudian or otherwise. Even so, Die, Monster, Die! has its “sub-text” as should any film.
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CAST/CREW
Directed by Daniel Haller
Produced by Pat Green
Written by Jerry Sohl
Boris Karloff as Nahum Witley
Nick Adams as Stephen Reinhart
Freda Jackson as Letitia Witley
Suzan Farmer as Susan Witley
Terence De Marney as Merwyn
Patrick Magee as Dr. Henderson
The Curse (1987): SUMMARY
Teenage boy Zack lives on a farm in Tellico Plains, Tennessee with his mother Frances, younger sister Alice, stern and pious old stepfather Nathan Crane and unpleasant, dim-witted stepbrother Cyrus. One night Frances sneaks out of the house while Nathan is asleep and begins having sex with Mike, a farm-hand who lives in a nearby shack. Suddenly a large meteorite crashes onto the property, emitting an eerie glow. Next morning, Alan Forbes, a physician who lives nearby, visits the crash-site, examining the meteorite which is a large sphere with a hard shell from which a noxious liquid oozes out. Before long, the object dissolves into glowing gelatinous liquid which seeps into the soil. Forbes wants to contact the authorities but is dissuaded by Charlie Davidson, local realtor and head of the chamber of commerce, who worries that the event will discourage the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) from building a new reservoir in the area. Forbes’ bored wife Esther also manipulates her husband into keeping quiet, worried their house will lose its value.
The mysterious liquid soon begins to affect the farm. The water from the well grows cloudy and tastes unpleasant, fruit and vegetables grow invitingly large but are rotten and inedible inside and the livestock begin to behave violently and show severe signs of infection. Alice is attacked and injured by infected chickens and Cyrus is nearly killed by a horse. Frances begins to have large boils growing on her face which soon grotesquely alter her features. She becomes mentally unstable, physically harming herself and attacking her own family. Believing the blight affecting his farm to be a punishment from God for his wife’s infidelity, Nathan locks her in their bedroom, not allowing Zack to tell the doctor. Zack keeps himself and Alice free from the infection by consuming clean water and food he steals from Forbes’ house.
Forbes secretly obtains a sample from the Cranes’ well and has it analysed at a nearby lab. The water is found to contain a strange, unknown element which is altering its metabolic properties. Carl Willis, a TVA representative who is surveying the local area for the planned reservoir, enters the Cranes’ house looking for a glass of water. Helping himself from the kitchen faucet, he has just started drinking when he is attacked and nearly killed by Frances, who has gone insane and is horribly mutating. Worried that Forbes is going to alert the authorities, Davidson and Esther arrive at the Crane farm looking for the doctor but are attacked by infected dogs who have turned feral. Esther is mauled to death and Davidson hides himself in the cellar only to be killed by Frances who had been locked in there by Nathan.
By now Nathan and Cyrus are also infected and beginning to go insane. A guilt-ridden Forbes enters the house, hoping to rescue Zack and Alice but he is surprised and murdered by Nathan who then barricades the door. Cyrus attacks Alice but Zack fights him off, hiding his sister in a closet. Nathan corners Zack and is about to kill his stepson when he is stabbed by Willis who has just arrived. The ground begins to glow and heave beneath the house which starts to fall apart. Zack locates his mother just in time to see her mutated corpse dissolve into liquid. Willis gets Zack and Alice out of the house before it collapses and a dying Nathan and Cyrus are both killed by falling debris. Willis drives away from the farm, taking Zack and Alice with him.
Some months later, a heavily-bandaged Willis lies in a hospital bed, having become infected more slowly because he only drank a small amount of the farm’s water. He is watching a news report on how authorities are promising that the blight from the farm will be eradicated. Later, at a location in the nearby countryside, ground and trees begin to heave and break apart at night, revealing more of the alien glowing liquid spreading onto the surface.
DEVELOPMENT/PRODUCTION
Distributor Trans World offered Keith an acting job on a movie named Blood Hunt, but he also insisted on directing. So the company called him in for a meeting, he says, “to talk me out of directing.” But the Southerner went in prepared. He laid out in detail how he would direct several major scenes in Blood Hunt, and walked out of the meeting with a three-picture deal: to direct The Farm, to star in and direct Blood Hunt, and to helm another movie.
Keith expresses no particular fondness for the horror genre. “I’m much more in love with Woody Allen movies, to tell you the truth.” He did Firestarter because I love Stephen King,” and he is now doing The Farm because of Chaskin’s tight script. “The scariest horror movies are the ones that, if you left out the horror, would still be a good movie. So that’s what we are trying to do with The Farm, make it realistic with well-rounded characters and real situations, so that when the meteor lands, it’s a device of the gods, from ancient theater tradition.”
Principal photography began on September 29, 1986 under the title The Farm, after being announced previously as The Well. David Keith, a native of Knoxville, utilized his farm property in Tellico Plains, Tennessee for the film, while the interiors were shot in Rome. Many of the crew members, who were Italian, were billed under American names, including associate producer Lucio Fulci. Actor Treat Williams was reportedly set to star in the film, but was not involved with the film itself.
Perhaps the greatest danger facing the $1.5 million production is Keith’s drive to make The Farm more than just a good, entertaining horror film. Horror mixed with “social relevancy” usually smacks of pretentiousness. “This movie is about the dying of the family farm. That’s the problem that these people face on this farm long before the meteor comes-the family farm is America has no chance any more. Which is something that kills me. I love the fact that we’re touching on that topic. I have dilated that plot aspect since I became involved.”
And Keith has another problem to deal with. Most of the technical crew are Italian and do not speak English. Everyone loves the Italian crew; they are very professional, having worked a great deal together in the past. Shooting generally goes very smoothly, but there are occasions when communication problems bring a pronounced comic relief to the location. At its funniest, it goes like this: All communications pass through recent University of Tennessee graduate Anna Rebori, the interpreter. When Keith wants something done, he tells Rebori. She tells the crew. The crew talk it over in Italian between themselves, then they tell Rebori why they cannot do it. Rebori tells Keith. Keith explains very carefully, to Rebori, just exactly what he wants and why he has to have it. Rebori tells the crew. And so it goes, on into the night.
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Screenwriter David Chaskin jokingly hopes that maybe, if he refrains from changing the Lovecraft classic, the director will likewise refrain from changing his script. But the original story, as with much of the Lovecraft canon, relies on very heavy description to set mood. “It would make an arty Twilight Zone episode,” says Chaskin. So he created a history for the characters and added a number of subplots, such as a hired farmhand named Dog who has an affair with Frances (Kathleen Gregory), the wife of the farm owner, Nathan (Claude Akins). Chaskin also created a conflict between Frances’ two children from an earlier marriage, played by Wil (Stand By Me) Wheaton and Wheaton’s real-life younger sister Amy, and Nathan’s son, Cyrus (Malcolm Denare). Finally, Chaskin updated the story and set it in the real town of Tellico Plains, Tennessee.
The “meteorite syndrome” is a progressive affliction. First it destroys the farm crops, then the trees start waving when there is no wind. Next it affects the farm animals. Pretty little Amy Wheaton, in her first movie role, is attacked and mauled by killer chickens. Finally, the toxins reach out from the well to the residents. Frances is the first to succumb, followed by Nathan and his son Cyrus. Frances’ kids are the only ones to escape.
The first thing to go is the mind. “It’s like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” offers Chaskin. “The little boy tells the doctor, ‘She’s not my mother!'” Then they turn mean, and they go crazy. By this time, it is affecting their bodies as well. We see a malignant growth here and there, eventually distorting their faces into bloated, throbbing, grotesque imitations of the meteorite. Their suffering is ultimately terminated by disintegration into a gray dust.
The FX makeup is being executed by Franco Ruffini in Rome. But the makeup was actually designed by Keith himself, who described it to a designer like a crime victim detailing his assailant to a police artist.
Keith is very much the dominant force in The Farm, and he will deserve full credit for the outcome, whatever that outcome may be. He walks the location charged with energy, exclaiming, “I’m so fired up. I’ve never been so happy on a job in my life.” This is what Keith has been working toward throughout his entire career; he originally pursued acting as a first step in someday taking the director’s chair.
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CAST/CREW
Directed by David Keith
Produced by Ovidio G. Assonitis
Written by David Chaskin
Claude Akins as Nathan Crane
Cooper Huckabee as Dr. Allen Forbes
John Schneider as Carl Willis
Malcolm Danare as Cyrus Crane
Wil Wheaton as Zack Crane
Amy Wheaton as Alice Crane
Steve Carlisle as Charlie Davidson
Kathleen Jordon Gregory as Frances Crane
Hope North as Esther Forbes
Steve Davis as Mike
CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fangoria#066
Cinefantastique v17n02
Castle of Frankenstein#07
DOUBLE FEATURE RETROSPECTIVE – Die, Monster, Die! (1965)/The Curse (1987) Die, Monster, Die! (1965): SUMMARY Stephen Reinhart, an American scientist (Nick Adams), pays a visit to the estate of his British fiancée's family.
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Fatherless (Post 30) 4-2-14
We had an incident the other day at work. An employee who had left the company decided that our physical inventory day was a good chance for him to mingle with friends on our shop floor. After repeated requests that he depart from the property, the young man finally agreed to leave us to our tedious task while berating the plant manager with a profanity laced au revoir. Evidently, he felt that we had disrespected him by asking him socialize in somebody else’s workplace.
It may be that I am stereotyping the young man, but his behavior seems prevalent among youths who have grown up without a father to mentor them into adulthood. It is as if these men in their mid-twenties or even thirties have patterned their concept of manly behavior on superficial action heroes or from advice given to them by their equally immature friends. They aggressively defend their “honor” in macho cliché fashion to an extent that all but guarantees their perpetual unemployability. It is sad to watch.
I certainly engaged in plenty of similar dysfunctional conduct on my road to manhood, but my father’s advice helped me to approach some level of maturity as I closed in on age thirty. Over time he worked with me to better control my explosive temper by laughing at me when I made a jerk out of myself. After each football, lacrosse or hockey game, he would review the egregious mayhem I had caused for my teammates in a way that made me laugh and correct my bone-headed actions at the next opportunity. As I have grown older my father has continued to provide fruitful advice concerning family and work issues. Between my dad and my three brothers I have an excellent network of resources from which I can obtain good advice on a variety of subjects.
That dads and men are not perfect was an important lesson for me as well. As I moved through my teen age years, I began to notice imperfections in my father. I expect that all sons come to realize that some of the wisdom that our fathers provide is not always advice that they adhere to themselves. That may be one of the many reasons that teenage boys cultivate chips on their shoulders. Once men become fathers themselves, they learn to appreciate their own fathers again. In my eyes over the years my father started as a super hero, became a super villain and finally transmogrified into just Dad.
My dad did much to shape my personality, but my circumstance changed me as well. In my high school classes the teachers described this as being shaped by nature and nurture. In my more recent Christian awakening, I have come to believe that I was being shaped through my adolescence by the cooperation of my father and my Father. I believe my heavenly Father provided me with the adversity that I needed to forge my character while my earthly father provided me with the guidance to prevent me from unnecessarily adding to the adversity. For instance, the decision to attend Annapolis or attend another college to play football was ultimately mine, but my dad’s advice made the decision easy. He recommended that I select the alternative that would most likely haunt me for the rest of my life if I didn’t choose it.
I count myself lucky to have the father that I do and to have a father at all. I talked the other night to a past best friend from the neighborhood in which I grew up. Both our dads were on the faculty at a boarding high school in the Midwest until we were in seventh and eighth grade. When he was thirteen, my friend’s dad passed away from the same kind of malignant brain tumor that claimed my wife’s life last year. Although his father was a brilliant mathematician, my friend lost interest in academics and has continued to wander without much direction. He does have hobbies he enjoys and lately has landed a good job, but he has never discovered a vocation or activity that he deeply cares about. In many ways he has struggled to mature beyond the thirteen year old kid that got some really bad news from a doctor thirty seven years ago. Although he recognizes that there is a Creator, my friend has no structured religious faith. He is a good soul that I am sure Jesus will eventually reach, but left fatherless in adolescence, his personality currently lacks the foundation on which to erect a life of faith.
As our society increasingly rejects Christ’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage, we are likely to see higher levels of dysfunction among American males. The epidemic of out of wedlock births in the African American community is by no means an isolated anomaly. Last year priests doing missionary work in Russia visited IHM and described a Russian society where faith was all but eradicated in the start of last century. Fatherhood in Russia is as statistically uncommon as an unaborted baby (Russian women average seven abortions). For Russia, the actuarial tables don’t look good in the near term. Maybe in several hundred years Boris the Russian will sound like Simon the Cyrenian – everyone will be scratching their head trying to Google where Russia used to be. Defending fatherhood, marriage and our Christian faith is really about protecting our future.
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[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (55/?)
Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation. This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.
Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.
Previous Chapters conveniently available here
[8 July 236 Before Age. Hobstot III.]
(Dr. Feelgood, Part ①)
Certain parts of the galaxy would consider Hobstot III a backwater world, but in the sparsely populated region surrounding the galactic core, it was a major economic center. The otherwise insignificant planet boasted the only major spaceport hubs for several hundred light years in any direction. Large sections of the planet remained uninhabited, but the cities were big enough and busy enough that it was possible for a traveler to think he was visiting a much more important planet than it actually was.
This was a great relief to Dr. Topsas. He normally found busy streets to be somewhat of a nuisance, but after weeks of isolation on a deserted planet like Luffasworld, he found the crowds of aliens to be almost refreshing.
"'Scuse me," said a robot as he inched past Topsas to slip around a group of people. Topsas managed to move one of his eight limbs out of the robot's way, but he was too slow to move the second, and the machine brushed up against it as he moved.
"'Scuse me," the robot said again. It looked to see who it was addressing, noticed Topsas, and remarked. "Oh, you're the same guy. Never mind."
The group the robot was trying to avoid was having a rather heated conversation about travel arrangements, and Topsas decided he should move away from them just in case it became violent. He found Zatte a few meters away, eating a local confectionery and tapping her foot in time with a nearby street musician.
"You haven't finished already, have you?" Topsas asked as he approached her.
"No, I'm just taking a break," the Dorlun woman said. She pointed to the musician and grinned. "This guy likes deep thulium stuff even more than I do, and I couldn't pass that up."
She was a humanoid, 66 inches tall, with blue skin that fluoresced slightly when exposed to certain types of artificial lighting. Her left eye had been lost in a terrible battle, and she wore a black eyepatch to conceal it. Her remaining eye featured a brilliant green iris surrounded by a sclera of almost the same color. She reached into the pocket of her grey jacket and tossed a few coins into the musician's hat.
"Deep thulium?" Topsas asked.
"It spun out of the heavy lanthanoid scene about forty years ago," Zatte explained. At least, Topsas assumed that was what she was trying to do. "Little more twang, not as much pep. You ever listen to Fabian Fitzroy?"
"I, er, don't know the gentleman, I'm afraid." Topsas said.
"Well, he's a sellout, but that's the guy everyone associates with the genre, is why I ask. Take it from me, the really good lanth music is heavy, and the best heavy lanth is deep thule." She began nodding her head to the rhythm and the short, straight hair of her bob swung back and forth. Finally, she thanked the musician for the song, and led Topsas down the street.
"Thanks for coming along, doctor," Zatte said. She took the little red fruit off the top of her snack and put it in her mouth. "I get distracted easily in places like these. If you hadn't shown up when you did I probably would have listened to that guy play all afternoon."
"Yes, well I am a little surprised to see you enjoying yourself in a place like this, Ms. Zatte," Topsas remarked. "I had thought the Dorluns to be a reclusive culture. Perhaps my acquaintance with Keda has colored my impression of your species."
"No, she's fairly typical," Zatte said. "Find a nice, quiet place in the middle of nowhere and she's content to stay put. Most Dorluns would be. I'm the weird one. The Makyans wouldn't let me hole up somewhere and stay out of harm's way, so I picked up a few interests. Besides, there's something to be said for hiding in plain sight." She waved her hand at the throngs of aliens surrounding them. "Even if an enemy knew to look for us here, how would they find us in a crowd like this?"
"Indeed," Topsas said as he and another pedestrian moved to avoid one another. "Forgive me for saying so, but your species seems ill-suited for hiding, Ms. Zatte. You and Keda have the ability to camouflage yourselves, but other Dorluns do not, correct?"
She nodded. "You're right. I've always felt my culture puts too much emphasis on avoiding adversity, rather than overcoming it. I used to wonder if the Black Water Mist had intensified that attitude, but I've been cured for months now, and I still feel the same way. I guess it just forced me to face things I didn't want to express out loud. Maybe that's why Keda and I have such a hard time getting along these days."
"She has proven quite adaptable in the past," Topsas said. "I am confident the two of you will adjust in time. What I don't understand is how your ancient ancestors managed to avoid natural predators."
"Aposematism," Zatte said.
"I'm afraid I haven't heard of that style of music either," Topsas said.
"No, I'm talking about natural warning signals," Zatte said. She pointed at her bright red hair and then gestured at her cerulean face. "Most carnivores in the galaxy would think twice before eating something this colorful."
"You're poisonous?" Topsas asked.
Zatte laughed. "Definitely maybe. The leading theory is that there was another species on the planet we originated on, and they must have been poisonous, and we evolved similar coloration to imitate them. That, or my ancestors used to be poisonous, but gradually lost that ability over time, until all we have left are the warning colors. Or I really do have some toxin in my system, but it only works on an animal that may have died out a long time ago."
"Remarkable," Topsas said.
"I would have thought you'd already guessed all that for yourself, though," Zatte said. "You being a doctor and everything. I figured you had seen it all by now."
"On the contrary," Topsas said. "I've never encountered a sapient mammal species with such a feature. This is precisely why I specialized in vertebrate medicine. Truly fascinating..."
He began to talk at length about an amphibian patient he had treated years ago, and a bureaucratic mix-up that had led him to think the fellow was poisonous when he actually was not. Neither of them noticed the robot he had bumped into earlier. It kept its distance, but it had been watching them carefully...
*******
(Dr. Feelgood, Part ②)
"This is hopeless," Zatte said. "We've been shopping all day and I haven't found anything."
"That's not quite true. You found that scarf made of beetle's wings," Topsas pointed out. "I still think that would make an excellent accessory."
"No, that won't do at all..." Zatte muttered.
They had been to three other bookstores already, in spite of the fact that Luffa had little to no interest in literature. Even if that wasn't the case, it was doubtful that the fourth store would offer a notably different selection than the others. It seemed to Dr. Topsas that Zatte was going around in circles. She reminded him of some of his children when they were younger, as they became tangled in their own weavings. It struck him that mammals like Luffa and Zatte were far too hasty for their own good, constantly preferring useless action over thoughtful inaction. But he understood little about humanoid courtship, and supposed that such useless hassle could actually be the whole point.
"Why are you so determined to give Luffa a gift in the first place?" Topsas asked. "The two of you will be married soon. What higher token of esteem is there?"
Zatte turned away from the shelf and sighed. "I let Keda get in my head, that's the problem," she admitted. "Luffa got me that suit I almost never wear, and Keda convinced me it was this big romantic overture by Saiyan standards."
"That does sound like a bit of a stretch," Topsas agreed.
"But what if it's not, though?" Zatte went on. "Her people are so repressed with this sort of thing. Maybe Keda's right, and if she is, then it would have been a very difficult gesture coming from her, and here I am not really appreciating it. I don't want to leave her hanging, right? I need to reciprocate. I have to show her that she can open up to me."
"I would submit you have already done that by accepting her proposal," Topsas said.
"It's not that simple," Zatte said. "Well, maybe it is for Saiyans, but where I come from, family is all about looking out for one another. Any idiot can say 'yes', but in a real partnership you have to understand the other person's needs and vulnerabilities, so you can support them where they need it the most."
Topsas considered this for a moment. "Then this is a test of your devotion," he finally surmised.
"I guess you could put it that way, sure," Zatte said. "But what do you get for someone who doesn't need anything? She cooks her own meals, she fights her own battles, and she has her own planet. We had to borrow her spaceship just to get here."
"What about those dolls she collects?" Topsas suggested.
Zatte rolled her eye. "Oh those," she said. "Keda already suggested that idea to me, but it's a non-starter."
"Why is that?"
She opened her mouth to answer, but suddenly a shot rang out, and a large alien standing next to them collapsed.
"Get down!" Zatte shouted, as she shoved Topsas behind a nearby display.
"What was that?" Topsas asked. By now, the rest of the customers in the bookstore had begun to panic. Several more shots rang out, and they started to run for the exits.
"Someone brought a weapon into the shop," Zatte said. "Sounds like something propellant-based, but it seems to be coming from multiple directions."
"That fellow over there is hurt," Topsas said. "I should--"
"We need to help ourselves first," Zatte said. She took hold of one of his hands and concentrated. From Topsas' perspective, it seemed as though the entire room had gone dark.
"What happened to the lights?" he asked.
"That was me," Zatte said quietly. "I used my powers to warp the visible light around ourselves, making us practically invisible. The lights are still on, but most of it is being deflected before it can reach our eyes, so we can't see."
"What good can that possibly do us?" he asked.
"Keep your voice down," Zatte whispered. "I can manipulate light and other forms of energy, but not sounds. If the shooter is nearby he might find us by our voices. Anyway, my powers let me see a wider range of light, like infrared and ultraviolet, so I can let those wavelengths through, and see well enough to lead us around."
"Excellent. Then you can lead me back to that injured man and camoflauge him the same way, correct?"
"Doctor, we have to--"
"Ms. Zatte, I must insist. If you wish to withdraw, you must do so without me."
After a tense silence, he finally heard Zatte's reply in the darkness: "All right, we'll do it your way. Maybe this will show us what we're up against."
*******
(Dr. Feelgood, Part ③)
There were six restrooms in the shop, each outfitted to accommodate a variety of life forms and their various excretion methods. As Dr. Topsas tended to his patient, Zatte kept glancing at the nearest one, and thinking that it would be the perfect place to take cover. Even if their assailant knew they were inside, he would still only have one possible avenue of attack, and that would give Zatte the advantage.
The shooter seemed to be hanging around the upper mezzanine of the store, using the shelves and guardrails for cover. However, he was also firing from multiple locations, sometimes leaping down to the lower level, only to hop back up to the high ground. By now, Zatte was reasonably certain that everyone else had fled the building, but the shooter was still leaping around and firing anyway. Her best guess was that the shooter couldn't find them, but hoped to flush them out.
And that was the trouble with using the restroom for cover. They would be safe once they were inside, but there was no way to be sure they could get inside without being spotted as they opened the door to enter. Zatte could make herself and Topsas invisible, but if she did anything to the door, the shooter might see it and know to shoot in that direction.
"I believe our friend will survive," Topsas whispered. "He's a Gnurlian, and his thick hide seems to have protected him from serious injury. I believe he is only unconscious because of some sedative in the dart that hit him."
"Dart?" Zatte asked.
"Yes," Topsas said. He held up the projectile with one hand as he used three more to wrap silken bandages around the Gnurlian's wound. "The Tikosi used similar weapons against us when we rescued Luffa from their laboratory. The chemical agent is different, but the effect is undoubtedly the same."
"How can you tell all that?" Zatte asked. "You can't even see anything."
"By touch," Topsas said. "And by smell. My species is especially sensitive to vibrations. Of course, I had gotten a brief look at this fellow beforehand, and I have enough knowledge of Gnurlian physiology to tell that his pulse and breathing seem normal. The odor of this object, however, is quite unusual. It smells of osmium and gunpowder, and while I cannot be specific, there's a coating of something which resembles sedatives I have encountered in the past."
"That thing looks like the nib off a fountain pen," Zatte said as she looked at the dart.
"Ironic," Topsas whispered. "That your one eye should see more clearly than my eight. The stuff of allegory, really."
"I don't get it," Zatte said, carefully taking the dart from Topsas's hand. "This thing might be sharp enough to break the skin, but it's a completely nonsensical design for ammunition. No wonder the shooter missed."
"You believe he was aiming for us?" Topsas asked.
"He had to be," Zatte replied, glancing back at the restroom door. "Everyone else ran outside, and he's still here. The local authorities will show up soon, so he must be hoping to finish us off before then."
"But why us?" Topsas asked. "Could it be one of Luffa's enemies?"
"I don't think so," Zatte said. "The Saiyans would have leveled this whole city by now, and the Shockmaster doesn't see Luffa as a threat. You and I would be beneath his notice. She's made a lot of enemies, but none of them would be dumb enough to cause a ruckus like this with such a crappy weapon."
"What should we do?" Topsas asked.
"If I had one of my own weapons, I could return fire," Zatte said. "End this in a hurry. But there's no use in... wait, I thought you said he was unconscious."
Topsas looked back at the Gnurlian--a useless gesture, since he couldn't see him no matter where he looked. Instead he heard him, moaning softly between heavy, labored breaths.
"Snails..." he murmured. "S-snails..."
"What's 'snails'?" Zatte asked.
"He's coming around," Topsas said. He felt the man's upper body to check his vital signs again. "Sir? Can you hear me? I'm a doctor--"
"Snails! Why is everything snails!?"
Suddenly he seemed to be wide awake. Before Topsas could react, the Gnurlian scrambled to his feet and began swinging his arms. "Snails! Snails! It's all snails!"
"Hey, shut up!" Zatte hissed. "That guy will find us for sure if you keep screaming--"
"Ms. Zatte, I fear you may have to use force..." Topsas suggested.
"No," Zatte shouted. "Come on!"
The reply startled Topsas, and he felt himself being dragged by one of his limbs away from the Gnurlian's insane howls.
"I thought you said it would be too dangerous for us to move around the store," Topsas protested.
"That guy already got shot," Zatte explained. "One minute he's out cold, and the next he's screaming bloody murder. Almost like our shooter planned it that way, like he was hoping that Gnurlian would help him flush us out somehow."
"What are you saying?" Topsas asked.
"I don't know," Zatte admitted. "I haven't figured it out yet, but I'm sure if I take the time to put that Gnurlian out of commission, the shooter will get a bead on us. We need to keep moving, stay invisible, and keep away from both of them."
Topsas heard a crash. "What was that?" he asked.
"Damn!" Zatte muttered. "The Gnurlian's completely lost it. He's wrecking the whole store."
"Snaaaaaaiiiiiillllls!" the Gnurlian screamed.
"Looks like I was right," Zatte said. "The shooter's just letting that guy wander around. I don't know if he planned this or if he's controlling him somehow, but we don't want to get too close to him."
"We cannot run forever," Topsas observed.
"I know," Zatte said. "With any luck we can make a break for the exits. I just need to come up with a good diversion. Our bogey has to be up in the mezzanine. I can't spot him, but it's the perfect vantage for a sniper. But if we get directly under his position, he won't be able to see us, and that would give us a chance to take cover in one of the restrooms."
"Why is everything snails?!" the Gnurlian howled. Topsas was fairly certain he could hear him smashing a glass display case. "It doesn't make any sense!"
"I was right," Zatte muttered. "Our bogey's stopped shooting. If he wanted to hit Snail-guy, he would have done it three times already. Instead, he's letting him rampage around while he waits for us to panic. Well I--"
Suddenly an alarm went off in the building.
"I smell smoke," Topsas said. "What if the enemy--"
Before he could complete the thought, a spray of water rained down on them, like an indoor thunderstorm.
*******
(Dr. Feelgood, Part ④)
The fire suppression system in the building was an antique design that simply sprayed water from the ceiling all over the store. This system was automatically triggered by a simple americium-based ionization detector. It was child's play to find this and burn a book directly underneath the detector, fooling it into thinking the entire room was engulfed in flames. And once the water came down on his quarry, their camouflage became useless. Whatever cloaking device they were using could only warp radiation around them. Drops of water were a different matter, and now he could see their figures outlined by the hundreds of drops colliding with their bodies. It wasn't an ideal target, but they made things easier by staying together. He watched carefully and found that he could just make out their voices over the noise of the water.
"Well, so much for that. Head for that restroom, doctor!"
"But we shall be spotted--"
"He can see us anyway! We've got no choice!"
The shooter leaped around the mezzanine once more, took aim, and fired. The arachnoid was first, as it was the prime target and the larger of the two. He stumbled and collapsed a few seconds later, and he took some satisfaction in what must have been a direct hit. The woman left him where he lay and kept moving. Was she abandoning her companion, or drawing fire away from him? It didn't matter. He leaped around to take up a new position, aimed to fire again--
And this turned out to be a mistake. In the time it had taken to change positions, the woman had leapt onto the top of a shelf and flung herself toward the shooter. He panicked and fired, but this didn't stop her, and her nearly invisible body collided with the his, knocking him off the mezzanine railing.
She began muttering something in some language he couldn't recognize, and when he tried to get up off of the floor she grabbed he and started punching it in the face. She was stronger and faster than she looked, and as the shooter absorbed her punishing blows, he realized that she had only appeared weaker and slower because she had been sticking close to the arachnoid. The shooter's body was covered in a sort of metallic armor, but it dented and crumpled against her fists.
Then, just as things seemed to be looking bad for the shooter, she suddenly became visible again, and her movements became sluggish. There was a dazed look in her eye, and then she fell forward, collapsing on top of him. Apparently the wild shot had hit her after all.
He shoved the woman aside and rose to its feet. He reached down and grabbed a handful of her soggy hair and lifted her up until she was in a kneeling position. For a brief moment, he feared she might have been feigning helplessness, but then he spotted one of his nib-shaped darts was sticking out of the sleeve of her jacket.
"Mission accomplished," the shooter declared.
NEXT: #Reference
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