Art by Charles van sandwyk

the fall of Mab.

A dream of winter and a queen gone mad. Darkness eternal, ice encasing all. Not even summer's heat could melt the world. It was not my sister on the throne. Another, then, of the deepest sorrow. A heart broken, Bleeding pain, Snow and soil both stained. Deep it seeps, roots kissed, blossoms blooming of bitterness and hatred. And then a third, a final vision. A sword piercing a young queen. Pinned to her throne, preserved evermore in frost. A palace, once. Now, a tomb.

(I have a headcanon/fae world with characters I sometimes write about. In it, Queen Titania dreams of all possibilities. In this dream, she witnessed the fall of her sister, replaced by a queen with a heart frozen by grief and hatred. She longs to freeze the world, but she will not succeed.)

13 days left to preorder Stories for When the Wolves Arrive! I’m counting down the remaining days with a line or stanza each day from a piece that didn’t make it into the final collection.

I read a kakaobi fic yesterday... OMG.

for love of a boy by revecake. Based on Yukio Mishima's The Sound of Waves. One word: masterful. My art does not depict a specific scene from the fic, it's just something inspired by its mood! Obito's appearance is not fully fic-compliant. Just look at these various quotes:

from the water, kakashi rises and rests his arms on the edge. a tilt of his head, his wet hair falls, pooling silver on obito’s boat, and when obito looks, looks with a certain haze across his eyes, kakashi becomes the mystical half-fish of his dreams. kakashi smiles, and the plain beauty of his naked face is perfectly real. “it’s a good catch today, isn’t it?”

“kakashi-kun?” his father laughs, an exasperated turn of his brow. he continues to trace his blade under the skin of tuna, and another piece of flesh comes butterfly-free, as light and pink as a sakura petal floated from the island’s schoolyard to the sea.

the rain blurs for a moment, and the sight through the dripping leaves is akin to a sheen of sun being thrown from the sky. dazzling, a celestial maiden’s robe has been haphazardly tossed from the heavens to be muddied as a damp blessing across the fresh ground.

when he’s finished, the only curtain to his nudity are the wet clothes draped and swinging from the window pane. they balloon and deflate in the imitation of a body in the wind, but as obito rises, stretches, strides towards the bedroom, the shape of his shoulders and back leaves a solid impression through the wet glass. he doesn’t need to wash, not when the sun has already bathed the lean lines of him in dry heat.

dreams are only fading things, passing on waves, caught in the wind, melted into dew by the morning.

obito looks up at that pale face, and what he sees - he wraps his hands around kakashi’s wrists to keep him there. how can he say this? how does he give language to his desire, how does he make kakashi understand his earnesty in this very moment? he cannot let it become an untranslatable disappearance, as so many dear things are, have been lost to sea.

Are you reading anything good? I'm always taking book suggestions!

source: To a Dusky Maiden, the Pittsburgh Courier, August 6th, 1927.

“Perhaps all the dragons in our

lives are princesses who are only

waiting to see us act, just once,

with beauty and courage.

Perhaps everything that

frightens us is, in its deepest

essence, something helpless

that wants our love.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke

and maybe one day we shall learn to love

without it consuming us whole

“Yes, take a look at me. I am as I am, and I will not change myself anymore.”

Hermann Hesse, from “The Fairytales of Hermann Hesse.”

This vibe>> ❤️

The Queen of Revenge

Nothing can stop her. She is unstoppable, an inevitable force. She lost a man she loved because of her. Now, she’s lost her mother because of her. She is out for blood. She’s out for the heart she’s longed to hold. She will not stop until she has what she wants. She has been engulfed in darkness; it consumes her. All of the White in the world will be blotted out by the black in her soul. No amount of good can overpower her wickedness. She is way past the point of reasoning. Hatred and sorrow drive her forward. She will do everything in her power. Her power is limitless. Magic is her greatest ally, as well as her worst enemy. Any who get in her way will perish. From their suffering will rise her victory. From her death will rise her joy. She cares not of what others think. She fights only for herself. She is anything but innocent, far from pure. She wants to kill her. She needs to kill her, to crush her heart in her hand. Her victory will be the end of all existence. She not only fights herself, she fights the world. None compare to her malevolence. Her revenge shall be great.

the lonely princess

Soon we will have warm spring breezes through open windows 🪴 Has Mother Nature also been giving you a sneak peek the last few days where you live?