#copernicus' breath
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He Likes You Like This (Homelander x Reader Smut)
18+ | Soft homie smut, riding. Gender Neutral Reader | Fic Directory
He likes you like this.
Straddling his lap. Smiling down at him as your thumbs stroke his cheekbones, fingers scritching just at the nape of his neck.
He sighs deeply, head lolling back, neck exposed. If he were a creature of prey, he’d be dead. If you were a predator, fangs sharp and serrated, he would be fully at your mercy. Perhaps that’s why he likes this so much.
Knowing you would never, ever hurt him. Your touch is love. It is kindness, warmth, and acceptance in droves– and, god… it’s everything to him.
You are everything to him.
You are the beauty in every sunrise. In his eyes, you glow more beautifully than the moon. You are a fresh summer breeze gracing him, blowing softly through his hair and kissing at his cheeks. You are the vibrancy of springtime flowers. The soothing sight of snow cascading past streetlights.
Once upon a time, Copernicus theorized that the sun was the center of the entire universe. He was wrong, of course, but Homelander would wager that it is actually you who holds it all together.
He’d bet his life on it.
His eyes flutter shut when not fangs, but soft lips press to his neck. Those soothing strokes of your thumbs trail up to his temples and he feels weightless under you.
He feels no shame in letting a smile creep onto his face. Does nothing to hide the breathy little giggle that slips from between his lips. He knows you love it.
There’s only so much of this tenderness he can take before he’s hardening. He feels your smirk against his skin, and he knows you know.
His hands travel down your back to your hips, rocking you against his need.
You kiss him to muffle your moan. Your hands snake down to undo his belt, tossing it to the side. Hips press up against you, and it’s not long before you’ve got his cock free and yourself stripped enough to take him.
He slides in like it’s his home. Like your heat was made for him, and he for you. He gazes up at you with hazy eyes and a lazy grin, faltering only when you start to move.
You ride him slowly for a time, preferring instead to watch each little twitch of his face, hear every little breath. His hands are under your shirt, palms pressed against your flesh.
He wants to feel every bit of you that he possibly can. Each time you sink down on his cock, he tries to bury his face in your neck until you finally get the hint and let him. He breathes deep, letting the scent of you overtake his senses until all there is, all there ever will be is you.
His breaths are hot and heavy, whimpers barely muffed against your skin. His tongue darts out to lave over you, tasting you down to the most base chemical level. He whines, tells you he’s close just as his hand snakes down to finish you off.
When you come on his cock, he swears he sees stars.
The air leaves his body, his muscles lock, and he howls your name against your neck. He kisses and laps at where he’s nibbled marks, promising more. Homelander holds you through the quakes of your orgasm, thrusting up into your pulsing heat as he paints your walls with proof of his love.
Oh, how you glow above him. You are more than all the stars could ever hope to be.
He holds you there. Stays inside you, runs his hands up and down your back. Whispers in your ear how perfect you are, how much he loves you, how grateful he is to have you.
In times like these especially, he’s not afraid to tell you what’s in his heart.
You nuzzle his nose with yours once you finally come down, leaning back just a smidge to gaze at him. His eyes are so soft, twinkling with adoration and appreciation. It stirs the feeling of butterflies inside, and you shine brilliantly as you smile once more.
He likes knowing he’s the reason for it.
“I love you,” you tell him.
He likes having you so close.
He likes knowing you’ll be the last thing he sees before he sleeps, and the first thing when he wakes.
“I love you…”
He likes that you love him just as much as he loves you.
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Saturn ♄
Group IX/UW, The Dove, No. 13, Hilma af Klint, 1915
The centre is not here,
Nor branched above are the heavens,
The middle is in the edge,
And God is to be known in the haunted wind.
The sacrament is where the temple sits,
And the divine in the illuminated page,
Nothing is in existence within the vast stars vault,
And the kingdom of God is scattered like ash about the globe.
The universe is an idea,
Whose existence breathes in the mind,
Rather than in oceanic depths we will not sail,
As the ascent into heaven we will not know.
The cosmos is what it always was
When devised in the minds of dreamers,
Who saw the world as the poet does his love,
The Centrepoint of the heavens,
where bodies around it circumnavigate,
In sightings of movements mysterious,
Where the pilgrimage of stars destinies away
burn strange paths through the vacant black.
Ptolemy measured the heavens,
And with it married matter and spirit,
The centre was an echo of the heart,
The earth a reflection of the soul,
The crowning achievement of the cosmos,
Man—the jewel of creation amongst all the others,
Sculpted in the God reflecting waters,
To be beneath His angels.
Though history is perpetual revolt,
The biography of people in flux,
Shifting as the moon does the peaceful sea,
Like when Copernicus annulled matter from spirit,
The sun transformed into the universes primary concern,
In which bodies around it dance,
As the maypole of pagans of old,
With it sowing the discordant seeds of nothingness.
Aren’t the stars above a strange mirror to the soul?
Is the void not a darkened glass to the self?
The things out there are buried deep inside,
The centre exists in the mind,
Though the centre is not here.
The more we look out at the lustreless sky through lens,
The deeper we peer into the psyche.
Melancholy becomes the residue of all knowledge,
Increasing with the founts of wisdom.
Copernicus introduced us all to insanity,
Shifting like plates the foundations of truth,
Divorcing meaning from matter,
As if it were the lady of Aragon from her beloved.
The naturalistic idol he envisioned was sculpted,
Admonishing the preconceived notions of our forebears,
Of the creator devising the cosmos for us to gaze up in wonder,
Contemplating with awe the majesty of his devotion.
Though the centre is not here,
Nor branched above are the heavens,
The middle is in the edge,
And God is to be known in the haunted wind.
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Looking For A Beta (Aziraphale/Crowley Academic!AU)
Dm me if interested, 889 word excerpt below:
The ethics board didn’t know what to do with him; Neither did the medical board or the astrological association. Dr. A.J. Crowley was an academic rockstar—for all that the term “rockstar” meant in an environment where the ratio of knitted sweaters to human beings was an astounding 3.3 sweaters for every researcher in too many layers—his name plastered somewhere on most of the papers produced by Tadfield University, as well as a hefty chunk of papers produced outside of TadU (his groundbreaking statistical analysis popping up in all sorts of odd places, although, most notably, in Aziraphale’s pub arguments). A born contrarian, the sciences had called to him. And of course they had! Science was the occupation of mule-headed pricks (see: Nicolaus Copernicus), curious entrepreneurial spirits (see: Nikola Tesla), and madmen (see: Freud). And Crowley just so happened to be all three. There wasn’t a major field of study that he didn’t have a thumb in. If there was a scientific consensus to be had on the matter, then there was also a Crowley to unrepentantly flip the bird at it.
These were the foreboding thoughts overshadowing the mind of one young (although only young by the standards of post-PhD graduates, which is to say, not young at all) Dr. Fell as he glanced, awestruck, to the other side of the University cafeteria, where Dr. A.J. Crowley sat, eating a bowl of store-bought salad. Aziraphale had been crushing—academically, of course—on Crowley ever since he had read the man’s first paper on multidimensional approaches to quantum entanglement. That Crowley was wrong in his conclusions about relativity and its subsequent angles of observation was no impediment in Aziraphale’s appreciation of his intelligence. They might have disagreed on the finer points, but Crowley’s writing was a wonder to behold. Aziraphale had nearly vibrated out of his seat upon spotting him. Nevermind that he logically understood that Crowley published papers under TadU, the same university that Aziraphale himself wrote for, and therefore bumping into him was not outside the realm of possibility. It was the principle of the matter. Aziraphale knew Crowley as a photo above a well-read author’s note; It was something else entirely to witness him, breathing, flesh and blood, as he gazed into his salad, wine coloured locks flowing down his back. Odd to know that he had poor posture, or that he forked his food around more than he actually ate. Intimate, in a strange way; That Aziraphale could quote the innermost musings of a man mere meters away from him.
Unfortunately, Aziraphale’s single player staring contest was quite suddenly put into co-op mode, as Crowley—almost like he could sense the attention goring into his back—looked up from his salad and into Aziraphale’s, now bashful, gaze. A tense moment of delicate liminality followed, Aziraphale waiting (much like a man at the gallows) for Crowley’s reaction to his impropriety. He was then surprised when Crowley's expression morphed into one of recognition, rather than one of disgust or awkwardness.
“Dr. Fell!” Crowley called, a grin overtaking the once thoughtful lines of his face. He waved one of his arms haphazardly in a ‘come-over-here’ kind of gesture, using the other to pull out a chair beside him. Aziraphale had the grace to be momentarily astonished before hurrying over to meet his academic hero.
“Dr. Crowley, It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance! I’ll be honest, I-I never expected you to know who I was… Let alone…” He let his words trail off into pitiful nothings, stuttering and red in the face.
“Just ‘Crowley’ if you will, or ‘Anthony’ if you must. And the pleasure’s all mine! I first read your work, oh… It’d have to be at least five or six years ago now. Your master’s thesis, I believe. On Paul’s doctrines.” With a leering grin, Crowley leaned forward.
“I will admit, Dr. Fell, your writing had me positively hooked.” He said it as though it were a secret, the kind you wouldn’t dare repeat to your mother. However, from what Aziraphale could tell, he just sort of spoke like that. Like someone who was constantly sharing the intricacies of some deviant sexual act for all the innocence of the actual words themselves. Every sentence that fell out of his mouth reeked of an implied “you saucy minx” like the ghost of Fran Drescher past.
“Er.” Aziraphale replied intelligently, taking a seat. Crowley seemed unperturbed by the sudden verbal ineptitude. When working with academics, you get used to an assorted array of oddball characters. It’s terribly presumptuous, and even more so unproductive, to expect them all to conform to the typical back and forth of neurotypical communication. You don’t get to become Dr. A.J. Crowley, pain in the arse to astrophysicists everywhere, by being over-particular about the oratory of one’s downtime.
“You’re wrong, of course.” He continued with an impish grin, forking his salad cheekily. Aziraphale hadn’t known someone could fork a salad cheekily, but nonetheless, here Crowley was, attempting to prove him incorrect on two fronts.
“Wrong? Dear boy, that was my master's thesis. Should you choose to debate this, I fear I’ll have the home field advantage.” His response was deliberately unaffected, a haughty tune laced with the playfulness that Crowley was absolutely drenched in.
“Unfortunately for you, I’ve read it. And, as such, I fear nothing.”
#ineffable husbands#good omens#crowley#fanfic#fanfiction#ao3#archive of our own#aziraphale#aziracrow
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Man in the Mirror
Inspired by @kazachokolate ‘s art here on Tumblr
Word count: 10,319 words
Parings: Melinda/Edred, Emma/Winston
In the wake of Melinda's disappearance and Winston grating at his nerves, Edred will be forced to face his demons by an unlikely source.
READ ON AO3
Edred couldn’t quite understand how he was even alive. He hadn’t been able to breathe ever since Merlin deceived them and ambushed Melinda, that horrifying magic of his taking the form of a monstrous hand, crackling with electricity as it reached out for her and gripped her without mercy. The heart-wrenching echo of her pained and anguished screams had yet to stop bouncing around the walls of his tortured psyche.
He felt sick, the hand covering his mouth as he waited felt like some sort of last ditch attempt to keep the heaving and anxiety at bay. Worry and terror for his beloved like he hadn’t felt in centuries held his heart in a vice grip, constricting it more and more with each second that went by without an answer, without a lead, without the promise that they would find Melinda again and he’d be able to hold her in his arms. Even if things between them right now were a far cry from the deep, long-lasting, unyielding love they once shared, he would give anything to be able to just melt into her sweet embrace once more. Anything to reassure his troubled heart its rightful owner was safe.
But all he could do at the moment was just that—wait.
The moment that traitor took Melinda away, Edred wasted no time asking Seng to look for her in the Cosmic Realm, his friend’s powers being their best bet in their quest. But alas, as he remembered the monk explaining time and time again, the cosmos was so vast and it spanned so many eras, and timelines, and worlds, it would definitely take him a while before he could lead them to Melinda. After all, if he had trouble finding her before while being in the same city, then naturally looking for her with no clear clue on where to start was only going to be even more challenging.
And so, while Seng scanned the entire universe for even a sign that might lead them to Melinda, Edred waited. Seated on top of some debris from Otto’s ship, a pile of scrap metal of some kind, one hand covering his mouth while the other was firmly tucked in between his side and left biceps, he could only pray to the Northern Star and the Heart of the Forest that guided his people it wouldn’t be too late when they finally reached her.
If being near her yet so far away due to her conflicting emotions had been torture, he did not want to even entertain the thought of what losing her completely would do to him.
And just in case the overwhelming fear and worry for his Eternal Flame weren’t enough to cause him no small amounts of stress, the living reminder of the precarious situation their love was currently in just had to insist on helping them look for her. Edred could only take a deep breath to force himself to calm down when that Emma girl’s lap dog—an expression he never expected he would ever use literally, but lo and behold, here he was; Melinda was right, this awakening had definitely changed things—kept sniffing around, belly pressed against the floor and posterior high in the air, trying to identify either Merlin or Melinda’s scent to track them down.
He thanked his lucky stars, from the bottom of his heart, that at least he was back to wearing his diaper. That man’s rear and dangling genitals was not something he needed to see.
Forget Melinda; what did that Emma person ever see in him?!
The sound of whirring gears and steam being released coming from Copernicus snapped him out of his musings, making him look up at the robot. With a few more chirps and rotations of his head, he pointed to the section he and Seng had been in before Merlin struck.
“You found Otto’s corpse right before Melinda was attacked?” He asked, perplexed by this revelation but thankful nonetheless for the distraction his robotic friend provided.
Copernicus’ whistling was all the confirmation he needed. “This whole situation is shrouded in mystery. Otto helped us rebuild you, even if he was ultimately unable to bring you back without the help of the Heart. But at the same time, it is also very suspicious that the Fox Lady suddenly found and attacked us, it was almost as if she knew precisely where to look for us…”
“But she could as well just have been tailing us.” Seng was quick to point out, coming to hover closer to his companions even if he never lost his lotus position. “Don’t forget, she’d been watching us as we fought her animated statues. And seeing how I encountered her in the Cosmic Realm even before she first revealed herself to us, she must’ve been keeping a close eye on us from the very beginning.”
“Seng! How come you’re not looking for Melinda?” Edred exclaimed as he rose to his feet so he could be eye-level with both the monk and Copernicus.
“Oh, I am. I’m just good at multitasking.” He explained simply with a shrug, and Edred gracefully decided against commenting on his struggle to focus properly since their awakening. They had much more important matters to deal with, after all.
“Nevertheless, I still don’t like this.” With a sigh, he plopped back down on the cold material he’d been sitting on, his ears drooping as images of what Melinda could currently be going through flashed behind his eyes, haunting him. “And to think her own father would do such a thing as betraying his kin, his own flesh and blood…!”
“Wait, Lord Fairfax is here?” Winston’s head curiously shot up from behind some rubble, and this time the elf couldn’t prevent himself from groaning in annoyance at his useless contribution to the conversation.
Seeing as his elven friend was too busy rubbing his hands down his face in frustration and Winston wouldn’t be able to understand Copernicus anyways, Seng took it upon himself to correct him. “Uh…no. I don’t even know who Lord Fairfax is. We’re talking about Merlin.”
“What does Merlin have to do with anything?”
“Did you not see him attack Melinda?!” Edred snapped, throwing one hand to the side as he glowered at the young man. Centuries spent fighting untold evils and the bane of his existence was a diaper-wearing, shapeshifting ginger.
The diaper-wearing, shapeshifting ginger in question crossed his arms and sniffed snootily in response. “Of course I did, don’t be ridiculous! I just don’t understand what that weird old man has got to do with betraying one’s daughter!”
The elf was seconds away from asking Twillion to make a coat out of his pelt, whether he was transformed into a wolf or not. “Merlin is Melinda’s father.” He explained instead through gritted teeth and a twitching eye.
“You’re joking.” The werewolf scoffed in clear disbelief.
“Does it look like I’m joking?” Edred shot back, his face displaying about as much jest as Copernicus’.
“But she’s so young! And he is so…old.” Winston made a face, his newly-acquired fangs sticking out. “Just, how old was he when he had her?!”
While Edred massaged his temple and muttered obscenities under his breath, it was Seng who answered his question, hovering a little too close into his personal space for the young man’s comfort. “Oh, Melinda is only that young because Emma is; we were all probably at least a decade or two older than our current hosts during our first lives.”
Winston’s eyes comically widened like saucers while his previously crossed arms fell limply to his sides. Somehow, finding out that balding, superpowered hobo was related to someone as lovely as his darling, or the knowledge that Emma was currently possessed by a 40-year-old woman was proving itself to be far more difficult to process than…everything else he had gone through in the last few weeks, really. Turning into a werewolf included.
As he remained there, completely still, the Warriors began to grow uneasy. When Seng waving his hand in front of his face to get him to react yielded no results, the young monk turned to his friends with a worried frown. Jerking his thumb towards Winston, he said, “Uh…I think we broke him.”
Edred rolled his eyes with a huff. “No, he was already like this when we found him. Although, I’ll admit this newfound silence is a most welcomed thing.”
Said newfound silence was broken immediately after, much to the elf’s dismay and the robot and monk’s surprise, by Winston suddenly jerking back in shock, eyes ridiculously large with his index finger pointed towards his rival, and exclaiming, “That almighty vagabond is your father-in-law!?”
Edred, for his part, almost choked on his own spit at the outburst. “What?!”
“Oh, you heard me!” Winston smirked smugly, wagging his finger and strutting confidently closer to Edred, who immediately upon having him near took a step back to distance himself from him once again. However, the red-haired gentleman wouldn’t be deterred. Each time Edred widened the distance between them, Winston would take another step closer to him until he was practically in his face.
“You and Merlin are family! Your father-in-law just attacked your wife!” The Warriors could only exchange a confused glance as his eyes unfocused, seemingly adrift in a sea of memories. “My, it sort of reminds me of last Christmas at my house, although in that case it was Aunt Margaret who attacked her daughter’s husband…Which is understandable when you take into account one of her friends had recently caught him two-timing poor Abigail, so it is only natural Aunt Margaret, as a loving mother, would try to defend her daughter’s honou—”
“You’re rambling.” Edred grumbled, unamused.
“And this situation is nothing like the one about your cousin’s cheating husband.” Seng chimed in matter-of-factly, and Edred couldn’t help but smile smugly at his friend having his back. Only for the smile to be wiped off of his face when the cosmic monk continued feeding unnecessary details to his romantic rival. “Edred and Merlin aren’t family because he and Melinda aren’t married—!”
He was rudely interrupted by Edred clamming a blue hand over his mouth in order to silence him. “Alright, Seng, that’s enough. You should go back to looking for Melinda!” He chuckled nervously, a strained smile plastered on his face.
But it was too late, Winston had heard the kid loud and clear. “What?! You’re not even married to the woman you love and yet you dare try and come in between me and Emma? What kind of shameless hooligan are you?!”
Even though on the inside he was horrified Winston was now aware of that particular piece of information, since he just knew that glorified, oversized dog would not hesitate to use it against him (just like he was doing right now), Edred chose to mask his mortification as indifference. With a practised roll of his eyes and an arched eyebrow, he simply shot back, “Last time I checked, neither are you and Emma,” right before turning away and hurriedly putting some distance between the group and him with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Whose fault do you think it is?” He could hear Winston mutter to himself. He didn’t turn around even as his ears perked up when he called after him, “Hey, don’t ignore me! I’m still talking to you!”
But he paid him no mind, even as he huffed indignantly and grumbled something along the lines of “No way he’s a prince with those manners…” Instead, Edred just kept walking, hands behind his back and eyes peeled for any clue that might lead him back to his love.
His ears twitched as he heard the rest doing the same, indicating Copernicus was back to moving pieces of rubble around while Winston resumed his sniffing. The lack of distinctive sounds coming from Seng was all he needed to know the young monk was back to focusing entirely on scanning the universe. And so, he followed their example, crouching low as he manoeuvred his way around the wreckage in search of any clue that might lead them to Melinda.
Perhaps the robotic remains could clue him in on what he needed to look for. Maybe the crash had scattered important documents detailing their next course of action. Maybe he could even have Twillion of the North try and track either Merlin or Melinda’s magic signature. It wasn’t something they had ever tried before, but even to this day his loyal sword never failed to amaze him with its many talents. Perhaps they could even—
“You really need to change your approach, you know?” A mysterious and heavily accented, yet oddly familiar, voice suddenly said, snapping him out of his thoughts.
Startled but not about to let anybody catch him by surprise again, Edred immediately jumped a few feet away, Twillion already firmly secured in his grasp as his eyes darted around in search of his possible attacker.
He gripped the sword’s hilt a bit tighter and dug his feet on the ground, steadying his battle stance. His ears twitched every which way as they tried to discern either the origin of the voice or any sounds that might reveal its owner’s location. His eyes kept looking around, waiting for any sudden movements or faux pas on his opponent’s part.
For the longest time, nothing happened.
Just as Edred was about to sheathe his sword and blame his momentary loss of lucidity on stress—and werewolf-induced irritation—, the same voice from before echoed once more, a distinctively amused inflection in its tone, “Turn around.”
Tensing up at the possibility of having lowered his guard enough for his assailant to sneak up on him, the warrior elf slowly, very slowly, did as he was told. His grip on Twillion so tight his knuckles turned white. At the last possible second, he swiftly spun around, thrusting his sword’s tip into his unknown enemy’s neck…only to be taken aback when the collision was met with an unexpected clunk, rather than the sound of steel meeting flesh he had been aiming for.
His confusion soon morphed into bewilderment at the sight before him, his jaw dropping in astonishment.
At the other end of his sword, lookin completely unscathed and even a little bored, was a young human man. The man in question had an olive complexion adorned by delicate facial features and long lashes surrounding his deep, dark eyes. Atop of his head a carefully combed mop of raven black hair was styled into a tuft of hair sticking out upwards. For some strange reason, he was wearing the same red kaftan and black pants and boots combination as him—they even had similar builds! He stood with his arms folded over his chest, his long fingers drumming rhythmically against his left biceps as he casually leant against…seemingly nothing? How…?
“Who…are you?” were the only words that left Edred’s mouth, as he was clearly having a hard time trying to understand what was going on.
The stranger’s face positively lit up, which only exacerbated the elf’s existing uneasiness. He could only look on in bewilderment as the strange human dramatically bowed down, one hand pressed against his chest while the other was extended high in the air. Not even the most brown-nosing of his father’s subjects reached that low when they bowed before their king. It was nothing short of disconcerting.
“Dimitri Dynamo at your service, my friend.” The stranger finally introduced himself. Only to yelp in surprise when his conversational partner once again pointed his sword at his throat.
“And I’m just supposed to know who you are?” Edred asked with narrowed eyes, not trusting this weirdo for a second.
The weirdo—Dimitri—regained his composure just as quickly. Ignoring the cold steel right in front of him, he dusted himself off as he stuck up his nose. “Well, I would expect you to, given we are one and the same.”
That gave Edred pause. “What are you talking about?”
Dimitri simply gestured down at himself before sending a meaningful look the elf’s way. “Where do you think you got those tantalising eyelashes and glass-cutting cheekbones from?”
Edred could feel his eyes widen as realisation struck him. Those clothes, that voice, those features…! Of course they were all so familiar, they’d been staring back at him since he was awakened! “You’re my host!” He exclaimed with a yelp, Twillion thrusted forward as he unconsciously used it to point at the human talking to him.
“And a round of applause for Edred for finally figuring it out!” He joyfully exclaimed, almost as if he were talking to an audience, before clapping triumphantly himself.
“But…how is this possible?!”
“Don’t ask me…” Dimitri shugged. “You’re the one who’s been overtaking people’s bodies for hundreds of years. If you don’t know how this works, how do you expect me to?”
For his part, Edred just massaged his forehead in frustration. “No, not that! I mean how is it possible that you are talking to me; our merging was the only one that was successful. You should have been completely overwritten until our duty was fulfilled and my soul left your body!”
His host only hummed noncommittally. “Truth be told, I was never fully subsumed. I have been conscious and aware of everything from the start.”
“What?! Then how come I haven’t had any problems with you, unlike Melinda and her host, Emma?”
“Oh, that I can answer!” The delighted smile that curled at Dimitri’s lips wasn’t helping Edred’s anxiety any. In fact, it only got worse when his host casually admitted, “I was just having fun.”
“You…you were having…fun…” Edred drawled out the words, practically chewing them as he tried to process this unexpected turn of events. If this was what Melinda had been dealing with lately, he owed her a massive apology.
Dimitri nodded fervently, the grin never leaving his face. “That’s right! You see, I’m a stage magician, so when that metallic friend of yours zapped me with that light of his and I saw your memories, I just knew this was my chance!”
“Your chance? Your chance for what?” Edred raised an eyebrow, choosing to focus on that rather than on the disturbing prospect that this nutcase had seen his innermost thoughts and memories. He’d much rather deal with one traumatic experience at a time, thank you very much.
Even though they were separated by a metal barrier—as the warrior came to realise he was talking to the street performer through his reflection on a chunk of metal, rather than his physical form—Edred still leaned back unconsciously as Dimitri seemed to lean forward and invade his personal space.
“To live an epic adventure, of course! As the greatest magician of all time, I have always been intrigued by anything magical or dramatic, and having a warrior elf invade my body while he waged an endless battle against an ancient evil promised to be both things! I just couldn’t pass up on an opportunity like that!”
“But if you’ve been conscious this entire time, why didn’t you manifest sooner?” Edred countered. “Melinda seemed to struggle with Emma’s presence in their body, yet I never knew you were still around until now.”
To his confusion, the street performer just shook his head good-naturedly, hands balled into fists on his hips. “I already told you; I never posed a problem for you because this arrangement didn’t pose a problem for me! While you fought using my body, I could see everything through a tiny, tiny window, enjoying every second of it.”
“So why speak up now?!” Edred demanded to know with a snarl. This whole experience was getting old fast. This Dimitri fellow wasn’t really providing any kind of useful insight and, even worse, talking to him was robbing him of precious time he could be using to look for Melinda. His love was clearly in danger as they spoke; he didn’t have time for this!
However, his narrowed eyes and borne teeth slowly melted away as, for the first time since making his presence known, Dimitri’s expression sobered up into what could only be described as chilling disappointment. “Because now I have a problem with you.”
“W-what,” he cleared his throat, interrupting himself. He was not willing to let a mere host see he had some kind of effect on him, “What is it?”
“You’re not handling the situation right.” Dimitri sentenced. Before the elf could so much as question him on what he meant, the Russian performer beat him to it, raising a palm up to silence him. “You are not treating either Melinda or Winston right.”
Edred could feel the tips of his ears heat up in outrage, his fists clenching at his sides as his shoulders squared in rightful anger. Who did this guy think he was? What, just because he claimed to have been watching he thought himself entitled to his life? He thought he could just comment and criticise him just like that? He had no idea what he had been through during this awakening, the things he had lost, and how much it all heavily weighed on him.
He was just like Winston, he realised with a start. He thought that just because he was in a bit of an odd situation that made him some sort of expert on the matter, like he belonged on the team just because! Well, he was determined to nip that ludicrous idea of his right in the bud.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Edred practically growled, his voice lowering an octave as his burning eyes zeroed in on his reflection. Dimitri remained undaunted, however, simply folding his hands behind his lower back and leaning forward so he was closer to his elven guest.
“As I said, I saw everything.” He sent him a pointed look. “Including how you let your petty rivalry with Dog Boy cloud your judgement. And look at what happened! One measly punch and Melinda’s gone!”
Dimitri’s words, a cruel reminder of how he failed to protect the love of his life, struck a chord within Edred. He already knew he lost his temper and went overboard when he let Winston’s jabs get the better of him, resulting in his momentary lapse in judgement and him punching the boy, his actions soon after escalating into a brawl that kept them distracted while his love needed his help the most. He already knew he let her down, the last thing he needed was another mortal way in over his head rubbing the fact in his face!
“You may have seen everything, but you know nothing about me.” He said in a low, menacing tone. One last warning for Dimitri to back off and mind his own business.
What he said next disarmed him completely, though.
“I know you’re hurting.”
Edred couldn’t help but let out a small gasp at the affirmation, Dimitri’s words shaking him to the core. In his stunned state, he didn’t register when he loosened his grip on Twillion until it fell off his hand. Hadn’t it been for its enchantment, the sword would have hit the floor instead of coming to hover beside its owner. His jaw slackened and his ears lowered in shame as his mind processed what the street performer just told him.
Was he really hurting?
Truth be told, it hadn’t been an easy couple of days…For the thumping of the Heart, who was he kidding? Nothing had been easy since the very moment he was awakened!
First Melinda didn’t recognise herself or either of her closest friends, including her love, him. Then, that pachyderm took them by surprise and ended up driving her away. When they found her and faced the Fox Lady for the first time, for some reason she refused to act like herself and use her powers to their true potential, until he pushed her too far by refusing to help her when she needed it most and she ended up summoning a vicious monster that ultimately destroyed Copernicus.
And now he was forced to deal with the aftermath of his actions all those years ago and leave his home behind forever for he had lost his only connection to his homeland by giving his original body up to Aelwulf. And because facing an existential crisis and losing a core part of yourself wasn’t torture enough, that Emma person’s fiancé just had to turn into a werewolf and chase after them, all the while he mocked him by reminding him his Eternal Flame couldn’t be bothered to reaffirm her devotion for him while she was clearly fond of the human.
In all honesty, the ache in his heart hadn’t left him once since Melinda refused his kiss when they reunited. If anything, it only grew more intense by the second. But he’d rather kiss that mutt’s fuzzy rear than admit anything to a mere mortal who had no idea what he was talking about.
As Edred was contemplating on everything that led him to his current predicament, Dimitri limited himself to watching him in silence. If there was one thing he had learned while sharing a body with the elven prince, that was that he was prideful. Very much so. He would have to tread carefully and measure his words if he wished to help him.
However, when he saw Edred’s definite decision was to resolutely trudge away from him, the street performer was left with no choice but to throw all caution into the wind and pull a somewhat reckless gamble. He was a magician, after all; risky moves were his specialty. “You know, I would be angry too.”
Edred, who had already reattached his sword to his back and had begun his march away from the pesky human, stopped in his tracks at his words. Fists clenched at his sides, for he knew better than to entertain his host, he cursed himself when his curiosity got the better of him. His eyes narrowed in suspicion, he looked back at Dimitri over his shoulder, caution written all over his face. “What do you mean?”
“I would be angry too if some overzealous boyfriend tried to insert himself into my life and that of my beloved.”
Edred’s eyes widened for a second, before he averted his gaze to anywhere but Dimitri. With a resigned sigh, he turned to face him again, making his way to stand in front of him once more. “It’s…more than just that, unfortunately.”
Dimitri allowed himself a small victorious smile before continuing. “It’s Melinda, is it not?”
He flinched at the painful throb in his heart caused by hearing her name on his lips. “I just…I just don’t understand. We’ve been together for centuries, our love was the only reassurance we had in a life of constant change and uncertainty… How come she doesn’t remember me, but has no trouble showing affection for him?
“And the way that fool just can’t seem to grasp this isn’t some sort of adventure like the ones he must have read in a novel! This has been our reality for centuries, we chose to give it all up for the sake of the world, yet he treats it like a mere inconvenience that is getting in the way of his perfect little relationship with his little fiancée! Lives are at stake here and he treats it all like some cheap romance novel!”
As he spoke, his shoulders shaking, Edred hung his head low, unable to meet Dimitri’s gaze, terrified of what he might find. Would he pity him? Judge him? Side with Winston?
Would he understand him?
No, of course not. How could a mere child ever understand the kind of issues plaguing his mind? He said it himself; having his body overtaken was an exhilarating experience for someone like him, who lived for drama. Much like with Winston, this was all just a game for him.
“I must admit, I cannot exactly relate to your problem,” there he was, confirming all of his suspicions as if he had read his mind. However, what he said next caught the elf completely by surprise, making him look up at him in wonder, “But I can only imagine how painful it must be seeing how your love not only distances herself from you but seeks comfort from another man.”
“That is an understatement.” He muttered, averting his gaze to the ground before Dimitri’s next words made him look back up at him.
“Then again, I can sort of understand why you two fight for her? With that long hair, black as night; those beautiful, big eyes; those plump lips of hers…” With every word Dimitri used to describe Melinda, Edred only grew more and more uncomfortable, and more and more miffed, his fists itching for a fight. “My, if she isn’t the most beautiful flower I have ever seen…”
“Watch it!” Edred finally snarled, fists high in the air and shaking. “I already have my hands full dealing with that overgrown fur ball, I do not have the patience to deal with you too.”
Much to his bafflement, unfortunately, Dimitri simply eyed his fists and raised a questioning eyebrow his way, unimpressed. “I may not have centuries of fighting experience like you, but something tells me punching what is essentially your reflection on a metal board is not exactly the brightest thing you can do.”
As much as he hated to admit it, he had a point. With a scoff, Edred slowly lowered his fists and once again turned his back on Dimitri, only this time he actually leaned against the metal, arms crossed over his chest. “It’s all because of Melinda’s host.” He grumbled after a beat of silence. “That Emma person has been affecting her ever since she was reawakened. And now it has got so bad her little boyfriend came running for her and convinced her to let him stay!”
“But I thought Melinda was now the dominant personality once again?”
He let out a heavy sigh. “I believed so too. She even appeared distraught at the idea of me staying in my kingdom…” Just then, Edred’s wistful expression at the prospect of his Angel of Darkness caring about him turned grim, darker. “But just as I thought I was on the threshold of finally getting my love back, Emma’s fiancé had to complicate everything even more.”
“You are aware his name is Winston, right?”
“If you name him, you will grow fond of him and then it will be impossible to get him to leave.”
“...Because now he is a dog?”
“Yes, because he is a dog!” Edred snapped, making Dimitri flinch. Before the poor performer even had time to recover, he went on with a scoff, “And in more ways than one, too! Seriously, does he not swear his utmost devotion to Emma? Then why does he not seem affected in the slightest by now that he is currently flirting shamelessly with Melinda?
“And I don’t even mean it as being disrespectful to me, Melinda’s lover, but to Emma herself. He has made it perfectly clear he is well aware of both women sharing the same body, for the Heart of the Forest’s sake!” He exclaimed irately, throwing his arms to his sides and making his host cower. For a second, Dimitri had to remind himself that no matter how much he moved and flailed his arms around, Edred could not hurt him. “He even rubbed the fact that Melinda still shows affection towards him in my face! How isn’t he more troubled by it? What, does he only care for Emma’s body so as long as any woman looks like her he doesn’t mind?” He sniffed at the mere notion. “Surely, Emma deserves better than someone that will wag his tail for just about anyone…Literally.”
There was a beat of silence where Edred kept silently fuming to himself while Dimitri looked unsure of how to even broach the subject. Suddenly, trying to help the elf he now shared his body with didn’t seem as good an idea as it did on paper. Eventually, he couldn’t help it anymore and asked, “Is that supposed to be another jab at his current dog-like state?”
Edred could only inhale deeply through his nose in vexation, convinced he would end up embedding his fist on the cold metal if he didn’t try to keep his temper in check. He would need to have a serious chat with Copernicus on his host choices in the future; between this Russian buffoon, Melinda’s uncooperative, fool-attracting brat, and Seng’s too-young-to-even-function-properly kid, the last batch of chosen ones left much to be desired.
“As a matter of fact,” he chose to say instead, “that was just a metaphor. The fact that it also applies on a literal level is mere coincidence.”
“Ah, I see.” Dimitri replied unintelligently. For a while, silence settled over them, the only sound that could be heard was the nervous tapping of the performer’s palms against his thighs. Taking a deep breath, he chose to shoot his shot. “You two are remarkably similar, however.”
“What?” Edred barely spared him a side glance. “Who do you say are similar?”
“You and Winston.”
Edred nearly burst an artery at that.
Whipping his head around so fast Dimitri was genuinely surprised he hadn’t got whiplash, he all but screeched. “What?!”
“Yes, the both of you actually have much in common! Really, it’s like watching a cat trying to scratch its reflection in the mirror.”
The elf was so outraged he couldn’t even speak coherently. For a while, all that would leave his mouth would be stammering and huffs and scoffs, perhaps a few short syllables or lonesome words, but a minute or two passed by before he would manage to sputter out, “D-d-don’t b-be ridiculous! Winston and I are not the same!”
“And thank goodness for that!” The redheaded man’s grating voice reached Edred’s ears, immediately causing him to grit his teeth and slump down his posture in irritation. Taking a deep breath through his nose, he chanced a look where the shrill sound was coming from, and lo and behold, there Winston was, standing a few feet away in all of his copper-diaper glory.
While the elven prince looked upwards, begging whatever deity that might be listening to put an end to his suffering, Winston strutted closer to him, his head moving every which way as he took in his surroundings. “You and I not being the same must be the first intelligent thing you’ve said all day! You’ll have to forgive me, Your Highness,” he mocked, coming to stand beside his rival and resting his arm on his shoulder, only to have it shoved away by Edred, “but no matter where you look, there is simply no comparison! I’m a refined gentleman on a mission, to assist his one true love in any way he can! And you…” He trailed off, eying him up and down disparagingly, “...you are a blue barbarian who can’t read the room holding onto what once was.”
“Oh yes, it is very gentlemanly of you to scratch behind your ears with your foot. I shall inform my childhood governess of your impeccable etiquette.”
Winston flushed at the sarcastic remark, and Edred allowed himself to smirk, pleased to have finally ruffled this insufferable imbecile’s feathers for a change. “I know this is most likely a stupid question—”
“Just like the little prince asking it…”
“—since there is literally no reason for you to be here with us in the first place, but what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be playing hound like your friends, the dogs from the police department?”
“As a matter of fact, I was trying to track that Merlin fellow and Emma—”
“Melinda!”
“—down with my highly developed sense of smell, until my equally heightened hearing caught wind of you talking to someone.” He kept on explaining, ignoring him, with his posture straightened and hands behind his back in a scholarly fashion. “But since I couldn’t identify any other voices, I came as fast as I could to make sure you hadn’t gone mad.”
He then proceeded to dart his eyes all over his form critically, causing Edred to shoot a glare his way. “Not like it would make any difference from the current you, mind you.”
The elf was about to protest, and hopefully come up with a hurtful remark of his own, when Winston’s words registered in his mind. One raised finger frozen in mid-air as his jaw slackened slightly. “Wait, you didn’t hear him?”
“Who?”
“Him!” He said, pointing to his right at Dimitri, who was watching the exchange curiously.
All Winston could see, however, was his rival’s reflection pointing right back at him. “Oh, yes.” He said after a pause, giving Edred hope for a second, “I see it is already too late. I shall let your friends know you have clearly lost it. Hopefully they’ll know what to do with you.”
“Wait!” Right as Winston was about to return the way he came from, before he had time to question his actions, Edred placed his hand on his shoulder. Before the werewolf could get a word in, he turned to face Dimitri. “How come he can’t see or hear you?”
All Dimitri could do was shrug. “I don’t know, as I said, you’re the one who’s been doing this for ages, not me. Though if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because I’m your host and therefore only you can interact with me. After all, you are aware of Emma’s presence in Melinda’s body, are you not?”
The elf nodded, “Yes, I know about Emma,” just as his romantic rival questioned, “What about Emma?” Only to be ignored.
“But you have never seen her, have you?” The performer pressed on.
“No, I have not.”
“Seriously, who are you talking to?” Winston asked, trying in vain to wrestle himself free of the warrior’s grasp, as the absence of the full moon rendered him practically powerless.
“Then I assume only the host and guest can communicate with each other.” Dimitri concluded. “By that logic everybody else would only be able to hear one half of the conversation.”
“So he just assumes I’ve been talking to myself this whole time?” He rolled his eyes with a sigh, “Wonderful. Just wonderful.”
“Would you let me go already?!” Winston cried, squirming out of the elf’s grip, who had honestly forgotten all about him. “Seriously, who do you keep talking to?! And you had better give me a good answer because I’m this,” he brought his thumb and index fingers closer together, separated only by an inch, “close to going back to the floating kid and the robot to let them know they are two teammates down!”
Both host and guest just stared blankly at the werewolf for a second, blinking several times at his outburst. The silence was only broken when Dimitri spoke up, “See? This is what I mean when I say you two are very similar; you both are very impatient.”
Edred whipped his head around to face him, a glare on his face. “Don’t you dare compare me to him! We have nothing in common!”
“Oh, look! Not all is lost!” Winston said with feigned cheer. “That has got to be the first thing we actually agree on...” He flinched under the elf’s gaze when he snapped his head to glare down on him.
“Would you just shut up?! I’m not talking to you!”
“Then there’s also your astounding pettiness.” Dimitri pointed out. “I swear, I never thought two grown men could bicker with as much intensity as two debutantes wearing the same dress at a party. Yet, here you two are, proving me wrong.”
“We do not bicker like two debutantes!” Edred countered. “Our arguments are far more meaningful than wearing the same dress to a ball!”
“I don’t know about that.” Winston said, his thumb and index finger cupping his chin in a pensive manner. He had all but given up trying to find any sense in the situation. “Wearing the same dress as another debutante is a very severe matter. After all, they use those balls to introduce themselves to society, so it is imperative the night goes off without a hitch, and being eclipsed by another is a disastrous start to aristocratic life… Besides, I have been to my fair share of debuts in high society where genuine bloodbaths took place for far smaller offences. Those girls are vicious, let me tell you.”
“Fascinating.” Edred deadpanned, a disinterested frown on his face. “My point is,” he said pointedly to Dimitri, “we are nothing alike!”
“I could have told you that…” The redhead scoffed, crossing his arms.
Again, he was ignored. “So you can keep your unhelpful observations and ridiculous accent to yourself.”
For the first time since this crazy exchange started, Dimitri looked genuinely offended, a hand pressed over his heart as he gasped dramatically. “For your information, many people find my accent positively charming! I dare say many would prefer my natural voice over yours any day of the week.”
“Ridiculous?!” Winston cried, completely oblivious to the magician’s side of the conversation yet again. It was all Edred could do not to send Twillion to cut his tongue off and silence him once and for all. They really didn’t have time for this! “Excuse you, I’ll let you know I took rigorous classes meant to help four-years-old form the perfect intonation and enunciation, and my teacher said I was the best student she had ever had!”
“That’s hardly fair.” The elven warrior snarked. “Four-year-olds have nothing to do against a fully grown man…”
“I was four at the time, too!”
“How you two can argue like petulant children and still not see how much you have in common is beyond me.” It was Dimitri’s time to deadpan.
“Oh, then please, do tell. How exactly are this foolish mutt and I similar?” Edred challenged his host, having finally had enough of how he only backed his allegations with vague comparisons.
“I resent that remark.” Winston grumbled as he went back to sniffing around the area, making sure to keep an eye on the mentally unstable individual he had the displeasure of working with.
Forget Emma; what did Melinda ever see in him?!
“To put it simply, you are both on the same boat.”
Again with the vague explanations that didn’t amount to anything… “For the last time, we are not on the same boat!” Edred snapped.
“And now he’s talking about a boat!” Winston exclaimed, incredulous. “In case you haven’t noticed, Your Highness, there is no boat! If anything, we’re on a ship wreckage.” He pointed out, swatting away some remaining pieces with his hands as he looked around the area as if to prove his point.
“Fine, in that case you two are on the same ship wreckage.” Dimitri conceded with a shrug. He then began to dart his eyes around the scene, an infuriating smirk making its way to his lips as he tapped his finger against his cheek. “Now that I think about it, that is indeed the most accurate description of your current situation.”
Edred just knew he was going to regret asking, “And why would that be?”
Ignoring the naked man’s shrieks that urged his elven guest to just look around him, the performer took his chance to finally make some progress. “Because right now both of your relationships with each other and your respective loves are fractured.”
Edred bit his lip and looked away, bearing through the pain caused by the feeling of his heart sinking. Why did everyone have to constantly remind him of the state his relationship with Melinda was currently in? First that red-headed pound convict and now this eccentric man with the Eastern European accent.
Dimitri chose to capitalise on the elf’s silence to move the conversation along and where he wanted it to be. “Edred, I will not pretend to understand everything you are currently going through. To be completely honest, none of my romantic endeavours has ever evolved beyond a fling, let alone become a love that transcends numerous lifetimes, so I simply cannot fathom what it must be like losing that.”
“Then why do you insist on commenting over something you know nothing about?” Edred countered pointedly, glaring at his reflection. But Dimitri could see beyond his anger and notice the pain and hopelessness dripping from his voice. With just one look at his eyes the Russian magician could see inside the prince’s soul and witness how his heart broke in two.
“Because even though you do know what it’s like, you are doing nothing to solve your problems.” Dimitri sentenced gravely, looking him dead in the eye.
“What? Do you hear yourself? Didn’t you say you’ve been watching since the very beginning?”
“That is correct.”
“Then how can you claim I have done nothing to solve my problems?” Edred challenged. “I have been doing everything in my power to help and bring Melinda back!”
The young man remained unperturbed, the only sign that the elf hadn’t been talking to a wall—although, technically, he had been doing just that for the past half hour or so—was the heavy sigh that eventually escaped his host’s mouth. “You have definitely been taking action…but I’m afraid most, if not all, of your ideas were…” a hesitant pause, “...flawed.”
“What do you know?!”
“Again, I’ve seen everything.” Dimitri shot back. “When Melinda first started acting unlike herself, your only solution was to push her beyond her comfort zone in an attempt to get her to remember everything more quickly. Which sums up pretty much your problem: for the most part, when Melinda doesn’t act like you want her to, you double down on your efforts to get her to do just that instead of actually tackling the issue!”
Edred scoffed with a roll of his eyes, crossing his arms, “And what do you suggest is the issue, oh, great relationship guru?”
But Dimitri answered back without missing a beat. “For the most part, she has been lost and confused over who she is and what she should do and in dire need of support.” He sent him a meaningful look as he spoke. “Support you have been denying her!”
The warrior jerked back, stunned by his words. “How dare you?! I have been nothing but supportive of Melinda since the day we first met!”
“But now she needs a different kind of support!” Dimitri implored his guest to work with him, to listen to what he had to say. To listen to what Melinda had to say and needed the most. “Up until now, what she needed most wasn’t you throwing her to the wolves to fend for herself in hopes of getting her to snap out of whatever funk she’s in. What she needed was for someone to be with her and have her back while she navigated some clearly confusing and complicated matters! She needed a shoulder to lean on and time and time again you refused to lend it to her!”
At the magician’s words, Edred was sent reeling back, looking like he had just been slapped in the face. For a while, he remained immobile and a heavy silence settled between the two. Winston’s sniffing around, burrowing through demolished robots, and occasional critical remarks on how poor Emma was surrounded by madmen the only sound echoing through the ship's ruins.
Dimitri was blinked back into reality by Edred’s voice cutting through the silence, though it was surprisingly low and soft compared to what he’d seen of the elf so far. “I did try to be there for her and offer her support…but even then she didn’t want it.” He choked on his next words. “She didn’t want…me.”
Dimitri’s expression softened. He didn’t like to see anyone looking as depressed as Edred did at the moment, that was why he became a performer, after all; to bring cheer to everyone around him through his tricks. But he was glad he was finally allowing himself to be vulnerable around him nonetheless.
“Because as I said,” he began softly, placing one hand against the cold metal he was reflected on, “you had just thrown her to the wolves when you left her at that ship. And she was still healing from it.”
Edred winced at the reminder. That definitely wasn’t one of his best moments, and it eventually only led to all kinds of trouble. He remembered the conflict and guilt gnawing away at him the moment he turned his back on Melinda after she was taken by that naval monstrosity, but he had seen her deal with much bigger threats practically single-handedly in the past. He was so sure that was the key to bring his Angel of Darkness back…
In the end, it didn’t matter. Melinda accessed her powers and freed herself, yes. But at what cost? She unleashed a terror that ultimately destroyed Copernicus and put centuries of devoted sacrifice in jeopardy. It didn’t even help to bring them closer together, if anything, she only pushed him further away after that. No wonder she didn’t accept his offers to help her, genuine as they might have been.
He wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up hating him after this awakening was over.
Dimitri watched worriedly as Edred seemed to wither away. His expression turned sombre, his eyes were downcast and practically devoid of life, his posture slouched like a convict about to be hung, and his ears were so low it was a miracle they weren’t touching the floor.
“Hey, now.” He said to get his attention. Once the elf’s eyes settled back on him, he continued. “I know facing one’s mistakes and owning up to them is easier said than done, but it’s something we must do if we truly seek forgiveness and to mend our relationships with our loved ones.”
“Then what do you suggest I do?” Edred practically implored him, finally willing to accept his help. It was all Dimitri could do not to grin like a madman.
“Talk to her.” He said simply. “Once we get her back safe and sound, tell her you want to talk. Apologise for your recent behaviour towards her and just…open up your heart.”
“Open up my heart?” He questioned, tilting his head in confusion.
The street performer nodded with a smile. “That is right. Tell her how you’re feeling. Tell her you love her and seeing the distance she’s putting between you two is killing you inside. Tell her you were desperate to get her back and acted impulsively as a result. Just…be honest with her and try to accept whatever decision she makes. After all, isn’t the person you love more than anything worth it?”
Edred remained silent as he contemplated Dimitri’s advice. Of course Melinda was worth one potentially difficult conversation. How could she not when he had left his kingdom for her and never looked back until very recently? And even if given her complicated relationship with Emma she ended up rejecting him, well, all he could do was accept it and cherish every moment together they had, and cherish every moment they would have, albeit as allies and friends rather than lovers…
After all, he still remembered how she willingly, though no less painfully, chose to let him go for the sake of his people so he would be married to another before he himself chose to run away. He could still feel the warmness in his hand and the ache in his heart as he wiped away her tears from her face when she said goodbye.
Melinda was the love of his life, in this and every life, and so, she deserved to be treated with all the love he possessed.
With one final nod, he came to rest his hand against the cold metal, and on top of Dimitri’s outstretched one. “I promise to do right by her. Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” Dimitri said with a smile, before it turned slightly more devious. The sight was enough to make Edred gulp involuntarily. “Now let’s talk about the other elephant in the room.” He said meaningfully as he nodded his head towards where Winston was crouched down, his nose pressed against the floor.
“Must we really?” The elf whined.
The performer chuckled. “I’m afraid so.”
With a huff, the elf let his shoulders slump in defeat. With a sigh, he straightened back up with his hands raised up in surrender. “Alright, alright. What do you suggest I do with…” He motioned with his head towards his rival, “...him.”
“First, it would do you some good to acknowledge you’re not so different after all.”
“I still fail to see what you mean by that.”
“Let’s see…” Dimitri pretended to think, tapping his finger against his chin. “How about that you two have proven to be very determined, are both facing the prospect of being separated from the woman you love in one way or another, and willingly gave up your life to be with her in any possible way?”
Edred hung his head in defeat, finally seeing the connection. “I hate it when you make sense.”
“So, what are you waiting for? He’s right there!” The magician urged, gesturing towards the werewolf. “Talk to him while you can.”
Just as Edred was mustering up the courage—and patience—to call Winston over, the ginger beat him to the punch by coming to stand beside him. He had his fists on his hips and an eyebrow raised as he looked critically back at the warrior prince.
“Are you done filling your belfry with bats so we can continue our search for Emma, or should I contact the famous Sigmund Freud everyone’s been talking about?”
Resisting the urge to correct him on Melinda’s name, Edred allowed his clenched fists to loosen as he took one last calming, deep breath. “I…actually wanted to talk with you.”
“Oh, really?” Winston adjusted his diaper before crossing his arms, and Edred had to muster every single bit of self-control he possessed not to make a scathing remark about if it was somehow too loose given its contents. “What, here to insult my, and I quote, ‘childhood crush’ some more? Because if that is the case, you can save it.” He said with a wave of his hand.
Just as the lycanthrope was about to walk away, Edred stopped him by placing his hand on his shoulder. “Actually, I wanted to apologise.”
With an eyebrow raised, Winston regarded him with his full attention. “I’m listening.”
Edred took one last breath, this was it. “I am sorry for the way I have been treating you. Me being hurt over how Melinda treats you as a result of Emma’s love for you and hold on her is no excuse for my actions. I should have taken you to shore instead of leaving you stranded with nothing but a scathing remark. And I am fully aware the current situation we’re in is my fault; if I had handled my temper better, you and I wouldn’t have come to blows and get distracted and maybe…maybe Melinda wouldn’t have been taken.”
While it was true he was pleasantly surprised by Edred’s apology, Winston couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “I already told you, I don’t mind being a werewolf! That just means I get to be with Emma again.”
“And I’m afraid that is what you don’t get.” Edred countered, looking him straight in the eye. “While I do admit I said it mostly to get under your skin, I meant it when I said your current curse might work against you not that far away from now. Winston, what you did is foolish in more ways than one!”
“How do I know you’re not just saying that so I’ll stay away from your ‘precious Melinda?’” Winston mocked. He should have known this blue, arrogant jerk would never give him a genuine apology. He only wanted him to give up and get out of his way!
What his rival said next caught him completely off-guard.
“Because I’ve seen it before!” Edred snapped, coming to stand within the redhead’s personal bubble. “I told you, Winston! Melinda, Seng, Copernicus, and I have been doing this for centuries! Do you really think you’re the first relative of one of our hosts to decide to throw all caution into the wind and follow their loved one to danger? Do you have any idea how many of those people lost their lives trying to help their loved ones? How devastated Emma would be if she got her body back only to learn you died because you stubbornly insisted on following us?
“You have no idea about the gravity of our duty, boy. We essentially gave up our lives to protect the world in an endless battle throughout time. We know our mere presence in their bodies already poses changes of enormous consequences to our host’s lives. Which is why we always try to defeat the Evil as quickly as possible; so the people whose bodies we occupy can go back to living as much of a normal life as they possibly can, because the more time passes, the less likely they are to ever get their old lives back.”
After what felt like an eternity, he finally leaned back, allowing Winston to breathe once more. “You being turned into a werewolf isn’t so much a blessing as it is a disservice to Emma, who will have to live knowing you essentially ruined your life for her sake. Just like you being with us isn’t your chance to squeeze in as many dates with your fiancée as you can, rather, you’re putting people’s lives in danger, starting with yours.”
A heavy silence hung over them after that. Edred wondered if perhaps he actually let his still volatile emotions get the better of him yet again and was too hard on the boy, while Winston contemplated on what he had just learned. For his part, Dimitri kept looking back and forth, wondering who would break the silence.
In the end, it was Winston. “I’m sorry.”
Edred’s ears perked up. “What?”
“I said I’m sorry.” The young man repeated, a little louder this time. “You’re right, I am clearly way in over my head.” He admitted, flopping down on a piece of scrap metal with his hands covering his face. “I suppose, in my haste to be reunited with Emma and protect her from the strange circumstances she was involved with, I clearly didn’t think things through. I ended up causing trouble for everyone. I’m really sorry.”
Edred hesitated for a moment before he too sat down beside him, doing his best to be supportive while tentatively putting a hand on his shoulder. “Trust me, you’re not the only one who’s ever done something foolish out of love.” He chuckled to himself. “I would know.”
“I…Uh, I’m also sorry for rubbing Melinda’s apparent fondness of me in your face.” He rubbed the back of his neck, fearing another punch was on its way. “You’re right, I don’t know what it’s like spending centuries together with your love…nor what’s it like when they suddenly can’t remind you and everything you’ve been through…”
Edred sighed. “It’s quite alright. You only said that because I kept looking down on your love for Emma.” He looked back at him before quickly averting his gaze, clearing his throat. “And…uh…sorry for punching you in the face.”
“Sorry for punching you back.”
The two remained quiet for a little while, until Edred took notice of Dimitri looking down at them with a thumbs-up with an ear-splitting smile on his face. He chuckled, shaking his head fondly. “Who would have thought you would be so right, Dimitri?”
“Dimitri?” Winston tilted his head with a raised eyebrow.
“My host.” He explained, jabbing his thumb at the metallic wall. “It’s him I’ve been talking to this whole time.”
“Huh, would you look at that?” Winston commented. “No wonder you’ve been such an unsavoury individual; you’re Russian!”
Unfortunately for him, his attempt at humour was ill-received by the Russian in question. “You know what? Now I see why you couldn’t stand him. Would you be so kind as to smack him on my behalf?”
“With pleasure.” And before Winston could so much as ask what he meant by that, Edred slapped him on the back of his head, eliciting a very satisfying and delightful-sounding Ouch! from him.
“What was that for?!” He complained, rubbing his sore nape.
“That was from Dimitri.”
Before the werewolf could get another word in, Seng’s voice cut through the air, calling for them. “Edred? Emma’s husband? Come quick! I think I found something!”
“Well, that’s our cue to go.” Edred said as he got up. He surprised himself when he offered a hand to Winston to hoist himself up. “Are you ready to get the girls back?”
Winston stared at the blue hand offered to him and back at Edred for a few seconds. Finally, a smile crept up his face and he clasped the elf’s hand as he raised from the floor. “You’d better believe it.”
As the two of them went to find Seng and Copernicus and resume their search for Emma and Melinda, Edred turned one last time to send a grateful smile Dimitri’s way. For his part, the magician grinned back with a nod before vanishing, hopeful Edred would be able to turn this eventful awakening back around.
#unicorn: warriors eternal#unicorn warriors eternal#unicorn warriors eternal spoilers#uwe#uwe spoilers#uwe fic#my fic#Melinda#melinda the sorceress#edred the warrior elf#Edred#Seng#seng the cosmic monk#Copernicus#merlin#winston#Emma Fairfax#Emmelyn#Dimitri Dynamo#edred × melinda#emma x winston#meldred
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Good Stuff: Unicorn Warriors Eternal
or How to Not Worry and Relish as the Enigma
I don't like to put famous creators on pedestals, the expectation can dwindle the moment you know they're noticeably fallible, but I'll say Genndy Tartakovsky has earned his keep. Killing it directing both banger shows and quality Adam Sandler movies, you could say Unicorn Warriors Eternal is a victory lap considering that was a project years in the making and Primal being successful enough for the network to have the unfathomable idea of giving it more than two seasons. But for UWE, this is the prime project for Genndy and now that it's out, does it soar like his previous works or does it feel like something's missing for it?
Just as good question: Can the Popeye movie have another chance too?
Unicorn I'll say has a good unique idea being a mix between high and low fantasy. We got dark magic, elves, and cosmic psychonauts taking place in a steampunk version of the UK. The main crew live beyond time and as Genndy puts it, any further season can be a jump into another period. The team themselves I feel come together as well as the trio from Sym-Bionic Titan. What I'm unfortunately going for is that there is good to be had, but the execution of things... I dunno, isn't as satisfying?
Except Copernicus. Literally the best.
I feel Genndy understands that there can exist consequences, but the main idea of throwing everlasting souls into still breathing humans is something I feel is not explored well. We grasp the struggle Emmelinda has with basically living as two people in one body, but nobody really concerns about how Alfie might've been feeling having the ability to feel eternity and infinity all at once or that Edred is more clear minded but can't read the room of the team not being on the same page as him. This being a supposed mini-series, things aren't allowed to simmer and beats that do you're just expected to accept when they immediately move on. I can remember Merlin acknowledging his notable negligence toward Melinda, but it didn't resonate as well as it could have. The kitsune exists for a few moments and then *POOF* were we meant to keep June Way in mind? Who knows? We get moments and revelations with hardly the satisfaction.
Winston's the one consistently good part of all this
I'm not saying Unicorn is bad with pacing, but it's an enigma figuring out the flow of the narrative as I felt it was spinning its wheels for half the show. They make up for it by having good characters and animation, it does have its endearing moments because I like Emma's journey, Winston is more of a chad than Edred, and it is just great seeing a fantasy action series for once. What hurts it I theorize is the episode limit. While Genndy of course had everything planned, ten did not feel like enough to have everything wangjangled well compared to the final season of Samurai Jack which had an ongoing narrative too. Fact that the longest episode was purely about exploring Edred's past tells me that this could've worked with either one more episode or a few more months with story revisions. I'm saying Unicorn could've been given better time to breathe while the quality of direction can remain the same. Otherwise, it's at least good seeing Genndy's dream project evolve and finally realized with the style he appreciates the most.
When other time am I gonna get badass Betty Boop?
I wanted to review this series before the finale to see how well this would turn out after finally premiering. One-half remained gleeful over the Tezuka and Fleischer influence that makes the blood of this show's visuals and the elements of action and character don't miss. This is Tartakovsky's project, through and through. The other half isn't calling this Genndy's all time greatest purely because it was his passion project because not everything clicked storywise. I would not binge this either, the week by week release kept the tension and intrigue better than I thought. Overall, I'm mixed. I recommend it definitely, but after Primal it isn't as jawdropping a banger as I hoped. I'm nonetheless happy Genndy finally got this off the ground, and if the finale promos are anything to go by this might be able to stay off the ground. Let the hope be strong, but I want to be honest and say...
7.5/10; Strong in style but rough in being resonating
#Unicorn Warriors Eternal#UWE#genndy tartakovsky#Cartoon Network#Adult Swim#cartoons#animation#reviews#Good Stuff
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The End of The Beginning
My main issue with the Unicorn: Warriors Eternal finale is really an issue I have with the entire show:
It needed more time to breathe.
I feel like Genndy wanted to get every idea he had for this series right out of the gate, and the result of that is a show with some serious pacing issues and a lot of loose ends. The finale is especially egregious of this. No questions are ever really answered and like only TWO plot threads out of the thousands are ever given proper resolution.
If/when this show gets a second season, I seriously hope it gets more than 10 episodes so that Genndy can tighten up the plot because I wanna love this show. I REALLY wanna love this show. But I can’t. I can only kinda like it.
[Copernicus noises]
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Breath of Copernicus/ コペルニクスの呼吸
That paint never leaves your face boy
#asumiko nakamura#digital art#exploring styles of other artists is so eye opening!#i really enjoy it#and I also love her works with my whole heart
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okay, so. eiffel likes music. i like to make lists about eiffel. i wanted to make a list of (at least most of) the songs/bands he references, particularly the ones he directly says he likes. there aren't really a whole lot of surprising revelations here, but if you would also like an overview of eiffel's music taste, well. here it is.
- ep 2: "... while humming 'mercedes benz' by the immortal janis joplin!"
- ep 4: "everything's gimme shelter out here."
↳ song by the rolling stones
- ep 6: "unless you leave out 'anarchy in the UK', that would be mathematically unsound."
↳ song by the sex pistols
- ep 9: "riders on the storm, man. riders on the storm."
↳ song by the doors
- ep 11: "ground control to major tom, is your circuit dead, there's something wrong. here i am, floating in a tin can..."
↳ space oddity, song by david bowie
- ep 20: MINKOWSKI: “because you are you and he is he and i am me and we are all together. / EIFFEL: “goo goo g'joob?”
↳ i am the walrus, song by the beatles
- ep 27: “yo, copernicus! look out the window and smell the joni mitchell”
↳ referencing her album, blue
- ep 27: “yeah, yeah, we’re tangled up in blue. we get the picture.”
↳ song by bob dylan
- ep 30: “i’ve got my entire mental john williams discography to get through.”
↳ well, if there was going to be a composer eiffel really liked, i guess that would be the one. does suggest he has a good ear/memory for music, though.
- ep 37, 42, 61: “and let us analyze the real slim shady without a dozen french horns in the way.” / “which slim shady is the living, breathing, human version of your friend!” / “in the immortal words of slim shady: guess who’s back!”
↳ what can i even say about this. three times. i guess these songs are enough of a recognizable pop culture thing to be arguably distinct from the rest of eminem’s music, but like. three times.
- ep 47: “FOR YOU TO GET TOGETHER AND FEEL ALL RIGHT.”
↳ one love, song by bob marley. referenced by the dear listeners, but they got it from eiffel.
- ep 49: “because it’s like radiohead says: you do it to yourself, and that’s what really hurts.”
↳ lyrics from ‘just’
- ep 54: “all along the watchtower, princes kept the view, while wild women came and went, barefoot servants too”
↳ originally written by bob dylan, but the jimi hendrix version is the one most people will think of first
- ep 54: “in the immortal words of marvin gaye: let’s get it on!”
- ep 54: “you gotta check out some of the latest advancements. otis redding. zeppelin. taylor. sir mix-a-lot. i think he’s been doing some of the best scientific work of the last fifty years.”
↳ i would like to be able to give you an alternative explanation. i would like to be able to be like, well, clearly he means singer-songwriter james taylor. he means guitarist mick taylor. he doesn’t. he means taylor swift. you can feel free to suggest another artist who it would make sense to only call ‘taylor’ in this context, but first keep in mind he’s a millennial in a show written by millennials and the writers do, in fact, listen to taylor swift. i’m resigned to it.
- ep 61: pryce mentions “the first two queen albums” as an item in eiffel’s memory
he also agrees with hera that “yeah, this is nice” about the transmission in bach to the future, but doesn’t recognize the piece. further confirmed by a little night music that eiffel’s familiarity with classical music is ‘yeah, i’ve heard this somewhere’ at best. he can’t name any of it.
of the songs and artists listed here, the ones that he is directly saying he likes and/or doesn’t have some clear contextual reason to reference are: ‘mercedes benz’ (and janis joplin in general), ‘anarchy in the uk’, john williams, ‘all along the watchtower’, otis redding, led zeppelin, taylor (swift? i guess?), sir mix-a-lot.
that said, i think you can safely assume he likes pretty much all of these things. they occupy some space in his mind, anyway. so what conclusions can you draw from that? uhh. well. he mostly likes classic rock? he’s a guy who still listens to the radio? he has, all things considered, incredibly normal taste?
none of that is really news, but there you go.
#wolf 359#w359#doug eiffel#there are a few things i thought about and chose to leave out because#they felt too indirect redundant or like more like references to other types of media#but this is all under a cut so if i missed something i can add it in#and i think you can make some easy extrapolations based on this#but i don't want to do that or bring in outside information. for the purposes of this post.#i do have a playlist of exclusively classic rock songs i think eiffel would like though. i've thought about this a lot.#he's sooo normal... i want him so bad.#ALSO i love to play mercedes benz for people who haven't heard it because i feel like more than once that has like#somehow reshaped their image of eiffel a little bit. and it's wonderful to me.#i love that he likes janis joplin and joni mitchell in particular i can forgive all of his more questionable choices for those.#also ALSO. wolf like me doug eiffel official playlist. can't miss an opportunity to bring that up again.
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Marriage Ethics
“I” is the most important word in cultures of western society. For us moderns, the “I”, one’s own ego, is the defining lens of reality. If I say it is, then it is. If it looks this way to me, then it must be. If I think it is right, well it’s right and no one can tell me otherwise. Copernicus got it wrong. The world does not revolve around the sun, it revolves around the “I”. The universe is not heliocentric, it’s egocentric.
“Want” is the second most important word in western cultures. In effect, it is the driving force of all action. Ask any person why they did what they did and eventually when you press back far enough it will come down to the fact that they “wanted to.” Why did you go to college? To get a job. Why did you get a job? To make money. Why did you make money? To buy the stuff I want. Why do you buy stuff? Because I want to!
String the words together and you get the defining phrase of western culture: “I want.” Deep within us is a longing desire in search for fulfillment – but fulfillment to what end or for what purpose? The “I” is in search for stable ground on which to anchor our contingent existence. And so we grasp. Our quest is to simply obtain the desire of whatever our ego wants. Christian wisdom has always advised that this desired fulfillment be directed away from us, away from the ego.
The gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) instructing Christian faith have something to say about our quest for personal fulfillment. It is to be found not in the “I” but in the “thou.”
Christian marriage, in particular, demands the sacrifice of this self-serving ego. Rather than a mutual agreement between two “I wants” marriage is a covenant between two “I do’s.” One reason it might be set forth for the lack of success of marriages in our day is that marriage, in the Christian sense, is antithetically opposed to the idolization of the “I” in our culture. But, it’s in the air we breathe and we hardly notice it until we are forced to our knees with some regret for the way we are behaving or moved by some piece of inspiration .
It is the difference between lust and love. Lust desires the other for the sake of self. Love desires the other for the sake of the other. Lust wants. Love gives. It is the difference between “I want” and “I do.”
The paradigm for this ethic is found in the life and death of Jesus Christ, the one we call Savior of our lives. Jesus gave himself for the likes of us and underwent the worse that human beings can mete out to another human being for reasons that he and his Father and the Spirit that fuses them both are in love with the human race. This Trinitarian God of Christian faith wants us where He is. This gospel narrative – this paradigm of self-sacrifice is supreme inspiration for all our friendships and especially our marriages and family life. Some can do this; others don’t have it within them to do this, unfortunately.
So, how does one move from the mindset of “I want” to “I do? Jesus, in his life’s pattern, death and resurrection gave us reason for living away from the “I” where human fulfillment is premised precisely in subtracting from ourselves in order to add to someone or some thing else.
How does one change the focus of reality away from the “I” to someone outside of himself or herself? Such changes are necessary if one is to succeed in a Christian marriage. What we are talking about is a change in the pattern or mode of thinking. It is a change in habit. It is the cultivation of those virtues which run contrary to selfish egoism. It is voluntarily taking up, from a Christian perspective, a critical stance against the culture. It is the cultivation of an authentic friendship with Jesus Christ in between us.
Selfless virtues are the basis of authentic friendship. This is why the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, trans... Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999, writes that “those who wish goods to their friends for the friend’s own sake are friends most of all.” Friendship is the willingness to will the good of the other for his or her sake. It looks at the other before considering the “I”. Friendships are not self-interested. They simply delight in the goodness of the other as being other.
At the center of “Christian” marriage should exist a most intimate and authentic friendship. This friendship sharpens the relationship between the lovers, purifying their desires of all selfishness. For, says the Greek philosopher, “virtue is forged in friendship.” Authentic friendship teaches one how to be selfless. It cultivates an attitude of “I do”. In order to re-establish good and healthy marriages it is important that we come to learn how to have good and healthy friendships.
We Christians have a lot of work to do to overturn the culture by the sheer witness of our Christian lifestyle. Christianity was meant to season life’s experience as salt and light (Matthew 5, 13-16). We need more images of self-sacrificing friendship if we would be turned opposite selfish lives and see more clearly the Christ of our faith.
Again, the modeling comes from Jesus and the empirical experience of Christians at their earliest. The New Testament letter to the Ephesians (5, 25-33) exhorts, “men, love your wives as Christ loves his bride, the Church!” And how does Christ love his bride? Well, he sacrificed himself for her. He bled for her and squeezed out his life for her. There was no egoism or narcissism or me-first in any of that action on his part.
— writers of this article are, Jegar Fickel and Bishop Joseph Perry Mundelein Seminary 2014
" Honoring our wives, which not surprisingly is also one of the best things we can do for our children, requires us to slow down, pay attention, listen, and be truly present."
-- Joel Schmidt
From 'Journey to Heaven - A Road Map for Catholic Men' by Randy Hain
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McFly July, day 2: Backstage
I took it a little differently and decided to write a hidden, "backstage" scene in 1955
November 5th, 1955
9:43 pm
Barely ten minutes ago, Doctor Emmett Brown had finished giving his strange new visitor a grand tour of his mansion. To admit, it was harder for him to adapt to having another person in his house than he thought it would be. However, he realized just how lucky he was that Marty already knew him - 30 years didn't make all that much difference.
"Hey, Doc? Can I pet your dog?", Marty suddenly asked, standing in front of the inventor with a curious look on his face.
Doc raised his eyebrows, confused. "Copernicus? Oh, yes, certainly. Go ahead, I'm sure he won't mind."
The scientist watched as the future boy bent over to stroke the little dog's fur. The animal leaned into the touch, surprising Emmett. "You're good with dogs," he told Marty, causing the teen to look up, grinning.
"Do you really think this will be your last dog?" Marty smiled. "Thanks for showing me the house, Doc. It's really neat."
"No problem, no problem." Doc didn't mention that he actually had been certain that Marty knew the building, having been acquainted with the inventor for years in the future already.
Copernicus let out a small whine. “He’s hungry…”, explained Doc, picking up the animal. “Of course, I forgot to feed him dinner.” He walked into the kitchen, Marty following him. The teen sunk into his thoughts as the dog are the food. He had a week to make sure Emmett would continue feeding Einie after he gets back home.
Home. 1985. It seemed to be further away than ever. But now, in that moment - him and Doc and a dog - it almost felt like home.
Marty took a deep breath. He would manage it. With Doc by his side he definitely would.
#back to the future#bttf#marty mcfly#doc brown#bttf fic#mcflyjuly#its lazy but i have to get ready for tomorrow#tomorrow is a big day for bttf fans#the 37th anniversary omggg#cant believe its been so long since ive fallen for this trilogy jesus#anyway enjoy this little something
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National Look Up at the Sky Day
Slow down, take a deep breath, and take a moment to look up at the sky and appreciate the small beauties in an otherwise hectic, fast-paced, sometimes ugly life.
Most people are extremely busy these days. The world goes at a breakneck speed and sometimes it is difficult to keep up. So much so that many people hardly have the time to just spend enjoying the simple things in life anymore!
Not only that, but a consumer-driven culture has had a tendency to lead many people to believe that money is one of the most important things.
This attitude might manifest itself in a myriad of ways. For instance, some people might feel they aren’t valuable if they don’t make a lot of money or have the ability to display wealth to their neighbors, family, and friends. It’s easy to forget that life is about more than money.
In order to validate the need for recognition and admiration, some people even travel halfway across the world to vacation in exotic destinations, only to then spend the entire trip taking selfies and posting them on social media to impress friends! And, sadly, this can keep a tourist from actually making incredible memories on their journey by simply enjoying themselves.
When asked what he finds to be the most surprising thing about the world in general, the Dalai Lama replied: “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
The Dalai Lama wasn’t far off in his assessment of many cultures, societies and people today!
But, with National Look Up at the Sky Day, the time has come to pay attention to something other than the rat race going on around the world. It’s time to take a look at life and make sure it is actually being lived to the fullest!
History of Look Up at the Sky day
The creators of this holiday may remain anonymous, but their goal is very clear: to encourage people to take a little time to slow down and appreciate the smaller, more precious things in life.
The list of famous people who have been known to spend a lot of their time looking at the sky includes Nicholas Copernicus, the scientist who eventually came to prove that the earth revolved around the Sun (and not the other way around as previously thought).
Albert Einstein, the creator of the Theory of Relativity, was also well-known for looking up at the sky. And Leonardo da Vinci, who envisioned the first flying machines, spent a great deal of time staring into the sky and imagining this invention that eventually came true years later.
So, rest assured, people who choose to celebrate this day will be in the best company!
How to Celebrate National Look Up at the Sky Day
While spending the entire day simply looking up might eventually become a strain on the neck, it’s the idea of enjoying something that is right in front of our faces that counts. Consider these ways to appreciate life and celebrate National Look Up at the Sky Day:
Look Up!
As the name of this little day suggests, the first order of business is to take some time to look up at the sky! People often slip into the habit of taking natural beauty for granted. In fact, many people only pay attention to the sky if, say, it happens to be raining and they are annoyed by it.
So, if the weather cooperates, go ahead and take a blanket out to the park, just lay down on it and gaze upwards for a while—you’re likely to be amazed at how it changes depending on wind and other factors.
Get Involved in Star Gazing
Looking up at the sky can happen during the day or at night. People who have a telescope can really get involved in looking up at the sky and identifying stars and planets. But even people who don’t have a telescope can enjoy gazing at the stars, making out the constellations–and those waiting long enough might even get to see a shooting star!
Listen to a Sky-Themed Playlist
While spending some time leisurely staring at the sky, it might be great to have a little silence and listen to the birds chirping or the grass growing. But some people live in busy, loud places and would prefer a soundtrack to go along with their Sky-Staring Day.
Of course, plenty of nature sound playlists exist and would be perfect for this day, but others might want a list of sky-themed songs to choose from. Classics or modern, there’s something for everyone who wants try these out–or come up with other creative ideas for songs:
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (1967) by The Beatles
Ribbon in the Sky (1982) by Stevie Wonder
A Sky Full of Stars (2014) by Coldplay
We’ve Got Blue Skies (1971) by The Jackson 5
It Came Out of the Sky (1969) by Creedence Clearwater Revival
To the Sky (2010) by Owl City
Spirit in the Sky (1969) by Norman Greenbaum
Get in Touch with Nature
Watching birds go about their lives as if nothing of importance was going on elsewhere might be a relaxing way to spend time on this day. And watching planes soaring high above may even provide the needed motivation to take a trip to some faraway land.
Gazing at the clouds can be a fun activity, depending on the weather. Sometimes, on a day when the sky is perfectly blue and the clouds are fluffy and moving rather quickly, it can be fun to follow the clouds to see what different shapes they morph into. It takes patience, but that’s okay because looking at the sky is the only important thing there is to do on this day! National Look Up at the Sky Day was created to motivate people to see the world from a different perspective than we usually do, and appreciate the beauty of nature. So, with that in mind, be sure to get out and celebrate this day and make your life just a little bit more meaningful!
Source
#Ely#Alamosa#Nevada#Colorado#Kayenta#Arizona#clouds#sky#original photography#dark clouds#vacation#summer 2022#14 April#USA#National Look Up at the Sky Day#nature#silhouette#evening sky#daylight#NationalLookUpattheSkyDay#cityscape#sky photography#Navajo Nation
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BETA READERS - Pweese??? (Audio Transcript Below Cut)
The ethics board didn’t know what to do with him; Neither did the medical board nor the astrological association. Dr. A.J. Crowley was an academic rockstar—for all that the term “rockstar” meant in an environment where the ratio of knitted sweaters to human beings was an astounding 3.3 sweaters for every researcher in too many layers—his name plastered somewhere on most of the papers produced by Tadfield University, as well as a hefty chunk of papers produced outside of TadU (his groundbreaking statistical analysis popping up in all sorts of odd places, although, most notably, in Aziraphale’s pub arguments). A born contrarian, the sciences had called to him. And of course they had! Science was the occupation of mule-headed pricks (see: Nicolaus Copernicus), curious entrepreneurial spirits (see: Marie Curie), and madmen (see: Freud). And Crowley just so happened to be all three. There wasn’t a major field of study that he didn’t have a thumb in. If there was a scientific consensus to be had on the matter, then there was also a Crowley to unrepentantly flip the bird at it.
These were the foreboding thoughts overshadowing the mind of one young (although only young by the standards of post-PhD graduates, which is to say, not young at all) Dr. Fell as he glanced, awestruck, to the other side of the University cafeteria, where Dr. A.J. Crowley sat, eating a bowl of store-bought salad. Aziraphale had been crushing—academically, of course—on Crowley ever since he had read the man’s first paper on multidimensional approaches to quantum entanglement. That Crowley was wrong in his conclusions about relativity and its subsequent angles of observation was no impediment in Aziraphale’s appreciation of his intelligence. They might have disagreed on the finer points, but Crowley’s writing was a wonder to behold. Aziraphale had nearly vibrated out of his seat upon spotting him. Nevermind that he logically understood that Crowley published papers under TadU, the same university that Aziraphale himself wrote for, and therefore bumping into him was not outside the realm of possibility. It was the principle of the matter. Aziraphale knew Crowley as a photo above a well-read author’s note; It was something else entirely to witness him, breathing, flesh and blood, as he gazed into his salad, wine coloured locks flowing down his back. Odd to know that he had poor posture, or that he forked his food around more than he actually ate it. Intimate, in a strange way; That Aziraphale could quote the innermost musings of a man mere meters away from him.
Unfortunately, Aziraphale’s single player staring contest was quite suddenly put into co-op mode, as Crowley—almost like he could sense the attention goring into his back—looked up from his salad and into Aziraphale’s, now bashful, gaze. A tense moment of delicate liminality followed, Aziraphale waiting (much like a man at the gallows) for Crowley’s reaction to his impropriety. He was then surprised when Crowley's expression morphed into one of recognition, rather than one of disgust or awkwardness.
“Dr. Fell!” Crowley called, a grin overtaking the once thoughtful lines of his face. He waved one of his arms haphazardly in a ‘come-over-here’ kind of gesture, using the other to pull out a chair beside him. Aziraphale had the grace to be momentarily astonished before hurrying to meet his academic hero.
“Dr. Crowley, It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance! I’ll be honest, I-I never expected you to know who I was… Let alone…” He let his words trail off into pitiful nothings, stuttering and red in the face.
“Just ‘Crowley’ if you will, or ‘Anthony’ if you must. And the pleasure’s all mine! I first read your work, oh… It’d have to be at least five or six years ago now. Your master’s thesis, I believe. On Paul’s doctrines.” With a leering grin, Crowley leaned forward.
“I will admit, Dr. Fell, your writing had me positively hooked.” He said it as though it were a secret, the kind you wouldn’t dare repeat to your mother. However, from what Aziraphale could tell, he just sort of spoke like that. Like someone who was constantly sharing the intricacies of some deviant sexual act for all the innocence of the actual words themselves. Every sentence that fell out of his mouth reeked of an implied “you saucy minx” like the ghost of Fran Drescher past.
“Er.” Aziraphale replied intelligently, taking a seat. Crowley seemed unperturbed by the sudden verbal ineptitude. When working with academics, you get used to an assorted array of oddball characters. It’s terribly presumptuous, and even more so unproductive, to expect them all to conform to the typical back and forth of neurotypical communication. You don’t get to become Dr. A.J. Crowley, pain in the arse to astrophysicists everywhere, by being over-particular about the oratory of one’s downtime.
“You’re wrong, of course.” He continued with an impish grin, forking his salad cheekily. Aziraphale hadn’t known someone could fork a salad cheekily, but nonetheless, here Crowley was, attempting to prove him incorrect on two fronts.
“Wrong? Dear boy, that was my master's thesis. Should you choose to debate this, I fear I’ll have the home field advantage.” His response was deliberately unaffected, a haughty tune laced with the playfulness that Crowley was absolutely drenched in.
“Unfortunately for you, I’ve read it. And, as such, I fear nothing.” If at all possible, Crowley’s smirk got even wider, eyeing up a challenge like a dog would eye a rather large t-bone steak. It made him seem like the same kind of fellow you’d find jumping between skyscrapers in one of those panic attack inducing youtube videos. Within the relatively safe environment of academic discourse—long past the days of Pythagoras’ maths fueled murder, or, for that matter, Plato’s wrestling prime—it made Aziraphale feel brave.
“Those are bold words, Crowley. Especially coming from someone who has genuinely used Shrodinger’s cat to argue for quantum superpositions.”
Startled, Crowley laughed, mouth opening wide enough to expose the mushy green remnants of the salad he had been chewing. Behind dark glasses, his eyes glittered with a delighted surprise that told Aziraphale Crowley hadn't read his paper on modern approaches to unified field theory.
“Just because the sod wouldn’t have liked my stance, doesn’t mean I can’t use his thought experiment to prove it.” Crowley snorted, looking at Aziraphale speculatively.
“Anyway, it figures you’d like Shrodinger. All that religious symbolism.” He sighed, inching closer. It would have been a suave manoeuvre were it not for the horrible screech of metal chair leg against hard concrete flooring. Aziraphale shuddered at the sound, wincing apologetically at Crowley. Hoping to convey with his eyes alone that ‘oh no, I did notice your blunder, but I shan’t make a fool of you; I’m kinder than that, see?’
“Science as an imitation of the religious seems more like your sort of thing, actually. I prefer proper works of faith.” He said instead, realising that the eye message wasn’t getting across all that well (because Aziraphale was about as smooth as Crowley in that regard).
“Proper works of faith, huh?” The raise of Crowley's eyebrows could be seen from space. Not that space would want to see such a thing. Aziraphale imagined that space would feel quite silly indeed, if such a glance had been directed towards it. At least, Aziraphale felt quite silly, watching Crowley’s eyebrows approach his hairline; Knocking—not impolitely—for entry.
“C.S. Lewis, mainly. I don’t mind a spot of Tolkien, either. I don’t suppose you read a lot of fantasy, do you?” As Aziraphale was wont to do when embarrassed, he puffed up. And subsequently puffed down; Softening the sulky turn of his tone with the upwards lilt of a question at the end.
“I don’t read much at all, really. Although I do make an exception for the Screwtape Letters.” Crowley answered, trying to find some common ground.
“You seem the type. Devilish as you are in your academic work.” Aziraphale teased. Regardless, Crowley soldiered on, giving tit for tat. Crowley did like tit.
“I’m more into the digital age, not that you’d know anything about that. You don’t even have a Twitter as far as I’m aware.”
If Aziraphale had indeed known what Twitter was, it would have been remarkably telling that Crowley knew he didn’t have one.
#fanfiction#fanfic#crowley#good omens#ineffable husbands#ao3#archive of our own#neil gaiman#aziraphale#aziracrow#ineffable husbands fic recs#terry pratchett#darcydoescomedy#darcydoescomedie#beta reader#beta reader wanted
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Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Bacon, Descartes, Kant and Schopenhauer. Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Boyle and Bohr. The Malleus Malleficarum. Pavlov and Freud. The foresters, dairymen and doctors. All speaking from an ever-increasing objective distance, analyzing, ordering, establishing hierarchies, proclaiming the truth, defining reality, dividing the real into useful layers and manageable bits. Listen to Griffin: ''Separation. The clean from the unclean... The changing from the sacred. Death from the city. Wilderness from the city. The cemetery. The Garden. The Zoological Garden. The ghetto. The neighbourhood of lesbians. The prison. The witchhouse. The underworld. The sewer. Space divided. The inch. The foot. The mile. The boundary. The skin of the sea otter... from the sea otter... the weed from the flower, the metal from the mountains, uranium from the metal, plutonium from uranium, the electron from the atom... energy splitting, the chromosome split, spirit burned from flesh, desire devastated from the earth.'' As we experience the violence of the tradition with which we are familiar, as we experience the numbing into fearful silence of women's voices down through time, the familiar becomes very, very strange. ''We open our mouths. We try to speak. We try to remember.'' We question and question. We notice ambiguities. We ponder alternate interpretations of the familiar words. We begin to speak with each other. ''What is buried emerges... What is unearthed is stunning, the one we were seeking... is ourselves. We are flesh, we breathe... We speak. The time of our silence is over. We do not deny our voices.''
Gail Stenstad on Susan Griffin's Woman and Nature: the Roaring inside Her in Anarchic Thinking (1988, 90-1)
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Where the leaves fall
Copernicus had been in the tree for a long time waiting for something to happen, but nothing really happened. He stood there and watched the leaves fall one after the other, without asking many questions, just watching. He followed each leaf that fell with his beak, watched where it ended.
He soon discovered, without knowing that the leaves all fell randomly, it was not the tree that decided where they were going to rest. The leaves simply fall. And, Copernicus stood there looking at what he had in front of his eyes, not because he had nothing else to do or out of boredom, no. He was curious, and he wanted to see.
In the branches higher up he could see well that the other crows were laughing seeing him so curled up on his half-dry branch, but Copernicus did not mind to them.
Instead, he listened to the whisper of the wind that caressed his feathers, that light breeze passing under his beak made him sneeze every now and then. Not even he knew why he stayed even when all the other crows were gone, perhaps out of curiosity or perhaps simply laziness.
Copernicus wanted to know what happened after the last leaf had fallen, maybe after that, it was the turn of the branches, and maybe eventually the tree would also fall. He soon realized that his ideas were foolish, however, certain that the tree would not fall. And the branches, not even they broke off the trunk. He was still waiting, but he was beginning to feel cold, and hunger as well. At that moment, though, he didn't want to think about eating or about the cold. His thirst for knowledge was greater than any other need.
He closed his eyes a little to let them rest, and when he opened them again the tree that was previously green was dressed in a splendid all-white dress. It was a marvel, Copernicus thought that maybe he was dreaming. He was, however, wide awake and he noticed it when a small snowflake landed on his beak, a shiver ran down his back and the feathers began to quiver.
He began to feel cold and hungrier. He decided that his curiosity could be left aside for a while, and so flapping his wings he took flight, and after a couple of wing flaps, he found himself high in flight, over a white world. The colors that had filled every corner just earlier had dissolved into pure, pure white. He flew over that wonder with wide eyes.
Under a large pine tree, he found some acorns and three worms that filled him. He had to look for some warmth, under the roof of a stable, perhaps near a cow or a goat that would warm him with their heavy breathing.
He spent some time in the stable listening to the cow complaining and the goat laughing at her, without paying too much attention, he didn't care much. He wanted to know about the tree instead, and so he decided to go and see. To Copernicus' utter amazement he found the tree he had left dressed in white, completely naked, almost like a skeleton. As he approached he saw the little buds on the finer branches. Gems of life, opening up and giving shape to ever-larger new leaves, with some flowers scattered here and there.
Read the rest of the book here:
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[1/4] Chapter 4 Execution | DENIAL
There’s a disturbance in whatever tethers them all inside of Morph’s domain, and little by little, the quiet, welcoming town with no name crumbles.
Only the secluded cabin remains, and as Wren steps out into the fracturing environment, he hesitates, taking a step back toward the stairs he descended from.
The void—the unknown—creeps closer, and when he’s the last person to be expelled from the Domain of Prey, Wren’s heart sinks.
He’s not ready.
It’s really happening, and he’s not ready.
In the moment, it felt like the right thing to say, that he would accept whatever punishment resulted so long as he saw a conclusion to his own motivation. Grief and passion guided him to a final destination that had been mere seconds from reach, but regardless of his intent, regardless of whether the rest of the cohort believed him or not, a single missed exit was all it took to put him on a road straight to Hell.
Wren had entertained the act of revenge for weeks, just one of many things coming for Copernicus Antares, ousted from his own fantasy on the threshold of it turning to reality.
Now, the only anger he feels is for himself, and just as he thinks he can outrun the unknown, something roots him in place.
Dry, dead thorns snake their way out of the earth and around Wren’s limbs, leaving him trembling and acutely aware of each barb and bramble grazing over his skin. Not a drop of blood is spilled even as he feels each press and drag that threatens to break that thin layer separating pain from awareness.
No. You stay.
The voice that speaks to him is one he’s never heard before, halcyon and indignation, dissonant with its serenity, as much rage as it is grace, but Wren knows exactly who it is.
I’m not done with you yet.
The infinite darkness of the unknown swallows him.
It’s hard to tell how much time has passed as Wren stares beyond a vast expanse of stars twinkling peacefully overhead, a gust of dry wind from yesterday sweeping across the flat, empty desert around him.
The Mojave is silent and peaceful, the same feeling of waking up in the morning, unhurried and without urgency, and the dreamy, instinctual sensation of eyes that drift to the space beside you where you’d find a partner, a friend, a pet, a cherished toy.
Wren knows the slim figure beside him and the duality of all of Rus’s sharpness that accompanies his vulnerable state where he sleeps. For a moment, he wonders if it’s already over, if this is where he’s meant to be, but the area around them is alien, not at all where either of them came from or a place he can recall the name of.
He reaches to touch his lover, brushing against dark hair that curls along the back of his neck—
—but the empty space in his heart crushes him, the last of his breath leaving him cold with shock as he remembers.
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Space Is A Lonesome Place
It was red across the board. No fuel. No water. No food. The recycled air smelled stagnant and putrid. The fusion cells had all been depleted, barely sustaining enough power to make it to the nearest habitable spaceport.
The Copernicus drifted silently through the vast emptiness of space between Jupiter and Mars. A small, bullet-shaped vessel with a crew of one. Dull chrome with a bow displaying a series of viewports similar to that of a B-29 bomber of Old Earth.
V-shaped fins ended in two barrel-shaped engines on either side of the cylindrical craft. Above the cockpit was a clear, plasteel dome outfitted with a single blaster cannon.
A long-discontinued model, the Cromwell VCX personal craft was not designed for long-range space travel. Primarily a service vehicle utilized within a planetary system and its moons, it had been converted the small ship into a fast and sturdy interplanetary vessel.
Directly behind the pilot’s seat was a circular hatch that led into a cramped and cluttered hold offering the simple luxuries of any space traveler - a musty cot, a cooking station, and a toilet. The remainder of the hold was an assembled disarray of containers, survival gear, and assorted rubbish gathered during voyages.
It had been a long journey from Saturn’s moon of Ganymede. Colt Corrigan sat in the pilot’s chair of his small spaceship and breathed in the stale, dust-laden air as he checked the navcom for a place to set down.
The screen flickered in a dot-matrix cathode glow of green as the line image rendering of the nearest asteroid popped up. Tartarus, an arid terra-formed landscape of broken rock and graphite.
On Earth, long before the Great War, ancient astronomers once considered the asteroid a planet along with the notable discoveries of Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta. At two hundred and ninety kilometers in diameter, its small size and irregular shape eventually excluded Tartarus from being designated a dwarf planet.
The planetesimal orbited slightly closer to the Sun than Ceres or Pallas and was moderately inclined at 12 degrees to the ecliptic, although at an extreme eccentricity, greater than that of Pluto. Tartarus rotated in a prograde direction with an axial tilt of approximately 50 degrees. The trajectory of the asteroid was elliptical carrying it on a path between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
The navcom revealed the asteroid had been fitted with a single atmosphere factory and a gravity well during the golden epoch of Los Diaspora Una. The asteroid also provided a single spaceport aptly designated Hades Vale, inhabited by oingo rice farmers and throx ranchers who maintained no love for the Sankari Dynasty.
With no military outposts, the asteroid was well off the shipping lanes and rarely traveled. This attribute alone encouraged a hub for teht pirates, liquor smugglers, and an assortment of unsavory characters.
Hmm. Sounds like a real shithole. Let’s see what else we got, Colt thought as he flipped through the navcom screen.
The young pilot flicked a switch and pushed several buttons on the dimly lit console. The graphics of the screen changed to reveal a low-rez image of Bennu, an asteroid sixty-three thousand kilometers distance beyond the orbit of Tartarus. It stated the smaller asteroid offered one pit stop, Phillip Long’s Atomic Dump and pseudo-Chicken Fried Steak. ‘Good noodles! Great Coffee! Questionable service!’. The navcom did not list anything else.
Nope.
Colt heard his stomach growl. He stared into the inky void. He could just barely make out the glinting asteroid Tartarus in the distance. He licked chapped and gunky dry lips as he glanced at the fuel gauge on the control board.
It never seems to matter how low you sink in your decisions, Colt thought, there always remain those damn options of right and wrong dangling in your tired and frustrated face. Ultimately, you end up choosing one or the other.
You can go in one direction, try to validate the stupid shit you did somewhere else, and attempt to make it right with the whole ordeal usually crashing in failure. Or, you can head in the other direction and aimlessly wander the void… eventually getting your ass caught for the shit you did and end up spending the rest of your days on a frozen penal asteroid.
He pondered the distant fleck.
“Bad ideas are seldom boring,” the young pilot whispered to himself as he expertly flipped switches and adjusted dials on his ship’s command console.
With a silent shudder, as if the ship itself lamented the decision, the diminutive, bullet-shaped spacecraft rocketed toward the twinkling asteroid Tartarus drifting in the remote and inky distance.
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