#forty solar
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I have joined the society of bluetooth earphones
#refurbished for the record#i have been dragged kicking and screaming into the future#my phone doesn't have a headphone jack. my mp3 player does but it also has bluetooth capability. my ereader only has bluetooth for audio#so I figure since I'm going on the eclipse trip in a few months I should get some wireless buds for the train#went with some used skullcandy sesh because they were like twenty-two dollars had had a twenty hour battery life#I ALMOST went with some used Hesh headphones that looked really cool and had fifteen hours but were also forty-nine dollars#which combined with the other things I needed to buy would have put me thirteen dollars over my seventy-five dollar walmart giftcard#I was very tempted if just for the aesthetique~ but realized if I bought the cheaper earbuds I could have enough money for some instax film#and the cheaper earbuds and 2 pack of film plus the household objects I needed put me at a tidy seventy-four dollars and fifty-six cents#so I didn't have to spend any actual money on anything woot woot#the earbuds are blue. which is my favorite color. but they're like a pastel blue. which is like my least favorite shade of blue#ah well I'll sacrifice looks for function and affordability any day#*stares in slight dismay at hideously pink refurbished and thirty dollar instax mini 9*#what I REALLY wanted was some of those urbanista solar-powered headphones/earbuds#but even used/refurbished both were out of the total price range of the gift card(s)#I actually had two giftcards which together totaled seventy-five so that was pretty sweet
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Soulmate AU: First Words + End of the World ; requested by @justwannabecat!
Duke has long since accepted that he doesn’t have great luck. Most things in his life tend to go wrong very quickly, or complicate situations he was already struggling in (see: being a meta and getting his powers in the middle of a fight). Having an incomprehensible soulmark is an unpleasant discovery on the morning of his nineteenth birthday, but not entirely unexpected.
He had been hoping for something simple, a common one like hi it’s nice to meet you or sorry, didn’t mean to bump into you.
What Duke gets instead isn’t even words.
Scrawled across his left hipbone is a string of symbols glowing a faint green. They’re not in a language he recognizes, and the symbols seem to move, shifting ever so slightly so they look different every time he blinks.
“Well,” he says after a solid five minutes of staring into the mirror, unable to rip his eyes off his soulmate’s words, “I hope theirs looks nicer than mine.”
He spends his birthday in a bit of a daze, enjoying time spent with the Waynes and his friends. It’s hard to be fully present when he’s all too aware of the soreness on his hipbone flaring up each time he moves. It’s hard to keep his mind off of it, wanting nothing more than to search for answers, unravel the mystery of his soulmate’s first words.
“Something on your mind?” Jason asks, as the attention shifts off of him for a brief moment as Harper and Cullen get ready to leave and everyone rushes to give their goodbyes,
Duke shrugs, carefully keeping his hands still so they don’t drift to where his soulmark is hidden beneath his clothes. “Yeah. Nothing you need to worry about, though.”
Jason looks him over critically, then nods.
Duke resigns himself to being investigated by the rest of the Bats. If he’s off enough that Jason had to comment on it, then that means everyone’s noticed and are trying to figure out what’s happened. They’re not going to ask him, because they think he needs space to work through whatever’s got him so distracted, but they’re also not going to just do nothing.
This won’t be the first time they’ve done this. Duke expects it. Frankly, it would be stranger and much more concerning if they didn’t try to dig up all his secrets the moment they caught wind of him hiding something.
He’ll tell them about getting his soulmark soon. Soulmarks can appear on any birthday between the ages of thirteen to twenty five; they might suspect he got his, but they won’t be able to confirm.
For now, Duke can keep his soulmate’s first words (whatever that gibberish means) to himself.
He makes the decision then and there, as his birthday party winds down, to tell them in a week.
And because his luck is abysmal, a world ending threat hits five days later and suddenly there is no time for soulmarks and first words.
Duke is the last to arrive at the Fortress of Solitude, hitching a ride from Superboy to get there. The biting cold and the harsh winds keep the place far from the reaches of the rest of humanity, surrounded by nothing but deadly white.
Desolate as the landscape is, it’s still in better shape than the rest of the world.
Things would be better if it was alien invaders. It would be more bearable if some sort of cosmic colossus tried to eat their solar system. At least then there would be something physical that they could fight.
Instead, the world is breaking apart, the sky and earth both fracturing to reveal glowing green faultlines. Timelines are getting mixed up and muddled; just yesterday, Duke had to evacuate a building that had been demolished forty years ago, then stop a gang leader who wouldn’t be born for another eight years from taking over a neighborhood block and holding the residents hostage. Strange creatures are appearing out of nowhere, crawling out of shadows and tide pools and from beneath the roots of trees, all horrible, monstrous things that go after people with teeth and claws.
The Flashes and the rest of the speedsters are nowhere to be found. The last time anyone get communication from them, it had been Impulse sending Red Robin a glitchy, barely audible video chat saying something along the lines of “trying to fix—unstable—keep us here—never been alive before.” All things that are very concerning to hear, made worse by the fact that no one had been able to contact them at all.
The quiet loneliness of the Fortress of Solitude is a welcome change from the constant screaming, death, and destruction that’s taken over Gotham as well as the rest of the world. Last he heard, even Justice League China was at the end of their rope.
“In here,” Superboy instructs, guiding Duke through the halls. There’s no time to look around at Superman’s secret base. All his focus is stuck on staying conscious for another few hours to see if this gathering of heroes is able to find a solution to the world breaking apart.
Batman stands besides Superman. Both nod at Duke when he enters the room. Wonder Woman is watching over John Constantine as he writes something on the floor, muttering under his breath. The rest of the Justice League lean against each other, visibly exhausted as they wait for Constantine to finish up what he’s doing. A few other heroes are here too, and Duke goes to join them where they lean against a wall, fighting to keep their eyes open.
“Hey,” he greets, voice low. “Hanging in there?”
Wonder Girl sighs. “Somehow. I don’t know how much longer we can do this. There’s just too much…”
“We’ll get through this. I mean, even without us out there, plenty of civilians have formed rescue and relief groups to help with keeping things under control,” Speedy says, gently knocking her arm against Wonder Girl’s. “We just gotta keep going. No giving up.”
“What’s this plan, anyways? I just heard that they needed me here to some attempt to fix things.”
“Well, without the speedsters, you’re kind of the only one who can help with time and power related stuff,” Speedy says.
“That’s definitely a stretch. My powers don’t really have anything to do with time. It’s all just light and shadow.”
Speedy shrugs. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you? Too late to complain about it now.”
Duke doesn’t get a chance to say anything else when a loud clap catches his attention. The entire room goes still and silent as Constantine stands up and surveys the circle and symbols he’s written, taking up an entire corner of the large room.
“Alright,” he says. “Time to get started. Remember, let me do the talking. If you have to speak, it’s only to back me up or when a question is directed to you.”
Batman nods to the other Justice Leaguers, and suddenly everyone is falling into formation behind Constantine. Duke hurries to join them with Wonder Girl and Speedy, taking a place on the edge of the group where he’s a little closer to the circle than the others.
Constantine begins chanting. His voice is steady though none of the sounds make any sense, refusing to form themselves into recognizable words, and the air the in the room feels heavier. The chalk circle glows a blinding white and Duke can see magic swirling through the air, his power kicking in the let him watch as reality tears and a glowing star in the shape of a boy comes out of it.
Duke blinks, forcing his power down. The hypnotic swirls of magic fade from sight, but the boy still glows, bright and terrible as he floats above the circle and surveys them all. A crown engulfed in blue flame hovers above his head and the fabric of the cosmos is draped over his shoulders as a cape.
Just from presence alone, Duke can tell that this figure is now the strongest existence in this universe. He hopes this boy king is kind; no one, not even Superman, would be able to beat him in a fight.
The boy king opens his mouth and speaks, but it’s not words than comes out. A strange static like sound emerges, but light and almost melodic.
His left hipbone burns.
Duke gasps, hand flying down to it, and the boy king’s gaze snaps to meet his.
The world stands still. No one moves. No one dares to breathe.
And then the boy king drops to the floor and walks out of the circle.
“I thought you said that would hold him!” Batman hisses at Constantine, who is looking more and more distressed.
“It was supposed to! I wrote it specifically to hold the King of the Infinite Realms!”
The boy king glances at Constantine. This time, when he speaks, it’s in smooth English. “Did you name the king in your circle?”
“Yeah, I named Pariah Dark… Bloody hell, you ain’t him, are ya?”
“No,” the boy king smiles, “I’m Phantom.”
The cape and crown fade away, and suddenly it’s not an all powerful, terrifying king standing before them, but a young man with white hair and green eyes who looks Duke’s age. Like he could be any other new generation hero in the room.
“Phantom,” Duke repeats lightly, just under his breath, but it makes Phantom look at him again.
He walks forward, ignoring the other heroes’ aborted attempts to stop him, coupled with Constantine’s frantic back off motion happening behind him. Phantom leaves the circle and the Justice Leaguers behind to stand before Duke, a soft smile on his face.
“Hi,” he says softly, “I dreamed of you.”
“You—what?”
“I dreamed of you. I have for years now. To think that being summoned was what made us meet—” Phantom breaks off into a breathless laugh.
Duke swallows, then drops his had from where it had been pressed against his hip. “So we’re really—? You have my first words too?”
In the corner of his eye, he sees Batman stiffen up. Maybe he should have just told them the day after his birthday, but in Duke’s defense, this is the definition of extenuation circumstances.
“First words?” Phantom repeats, “Is that… Do we have different soulmate connections?”
“I think so. Here, everyone gets the first words their soulmates say to them appearing somewhere on their body.”
Phantom’s gaze darts down to Duke’s hip, then back up. “Oh. I get dreams. Where I’m from, we dream of our soulmates, and the closer we get to meeting them, the more we remember the dreams.”
“And you dreamed of me.”
“I did.”
“As touching as this is,” Constantine interrupts, and Duke gets to watch as Phantom rolls his eyes, “We summoned you here for a reason. Our world is falling apart at the seams and we need someone powerful, from the Realms, to help us fix it.”
“Okay.”
“...What do you mean ‘okay’?”
“I’ll help,” Phantom says.
“Just like that? No deal to be made, no price to be paid?”
“Just like that. I’m not one for deals anyways. If I can help, then I will. But I do want to see what the problem is with my soulmate by my side, if you don’t mind.”
Batman steps in, fixing Duke with a steady gaze, a barely noticeable tilt of his head. “Signal?”
“Yeah I’ll go with him. Of course I will. The sooner the better, in fact, because everything’s gone to shit.” Duke turns to Phantom, taking hold of one of his hands. “It is really bad out there,” he warns, “If you need help—”
“I’ll ask for help from others in the Realms,” Phantom says. “No offense or anything, but if it’s really that bad, I doubt living mortals will be able to do much to fix things. It’s why I was summoned, right?”
“Right. Let’s get to it, then.”
There’s a flash of mischief in Phantom’s eyes, and cheeky grin stealing across his face for a moment, before he says, “Aye aye, captain!” and picks Duke up like he weighs nothing and flies up through the ceiling.
Duke is able to hear everyone’s surprised, panicked shouts before they’re outside the Fortress of Solitude and Phantom is flying them away. He only needs a few directions from Duke before he finds the first of the large fractures in the sky.
“Yikes,” is all he says, which is not a great thing to hear. “I think I know how to fix it, though. We’ll need to do a little investigating as to who, exactly, started messing around with reality, but once we find the source, it’ll be an easy fix.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”
“Even better than meeting your soulmate?”
“I haven’t slept for more than four hours all week. Knowing there’s an end in sight beats everything else.”
Phantom laughs, throwing his head back and Duke can’t help but drink in the sight of him, so ethereal and bright and full of life. “Fair enough! Got any ideas as to where we should start?”
“I’ve got an entire crew of detective vigilantes,” Duke replies. He’s not taking any more chances. No more waiting to talk about important things; he messed up by keeping his soulmark to himself, so he needs to make sure everyone meets his soulmate before shit goes south again.
“Let’s go find them, then!”
They take off again, soaring through the skies that are barely holding themselves together.
The world is still ending, and every hero is being stretched thin, but held carefully in Phantom’s arms, racing head first into a solution, Duke can’t help but feel that everything’s going to be alright now.
He’s had enough bad luck. Now, his soulmate with him, bearing the title of King with grace, things are finally starting to look up.
#ghostlights#dc x dp#dp x dc#dpxdc#dcxdp#dc x dp fic#prompt fill#my writing#when its the end of the world but youre soulmate is here and ready to help fix it#meanwhile constantine had gone ON and ON about how dangerous summoning realms beings are#and all the precautions they have to take and how to be specific when making deals etc etc#it was supposed to be only the justice league but with the world ending they wanted their proteges and allies with them in case things#went wrong w the summoning. and with the rest of the bats helping out in gotham and around the east coast#signal gets to join batman. plus hes got his meta powers that could help in the worst case scenario#NO ONE predicated signal and the GHOST KING being SOULMATES#batman leaves for gotham immediately. updates the rest of the team w 'ghost king successfully summoned. he's signal's soulmate.'#and does not respond to ANYONE after dropping that bomb on them lol#they do all get to meet phantom when they join forces to find whatever doomsday cult caused all this#and the world gets saved!!#also. semi related to all this. the speedesters are gone bc time went wacky and they tried to fix things. but then the speedforce kinda#came to life and trapped them. so they have been lowkey eaten by the speedforce bc the speedforce is the true eldritch monstrosity here#anyways. thanks for the prompt!!#working on ur other two prompts now :)
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Cleo was looking at the donation tower signs at the start of their stream and they recognised your name. :D (And if you were looking to see your name on a sign, now you know where to look!)
me, still frankly reeling from getting to see a total solar eclipse like an hour and forty-five minutes ago: oh that’s cool cleo knows who I am,
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𝕸𝖆𝖈𝖆𝖇𝖗𝖊
Pairing: Hannibal X Reader
⚠️ Warnings: mentions of weapons and murder, implications of sexuality, that's about it ⚠️
AN: Hey panko shrimps, it's been a while! I hope to make this account more active going into 2024 so I hope this Hannibal fic is a good ease back into writing! 💛🦐
Your feet tapped against the hardwood floor in anticipation. It had been a long time coming to actually go along with your doctor's referral to see a psychiatrist and here you were, against your initial wishes. There wasn't much to you that you didn't already know as you considered yourself to be quite introspective most of the time; yet here you were with your anxieties hopefully concealed to your best ability, and the faux smile plastered on your face to hide whatever was left over. An unsettling feeling was still in your stomach which you hoped would eventually subside.
The waiting room itself was nothing short of grand. The marble flooring and intricately carved stone walls gave the impression of perfection but hindered the possibility for any sunlight that could have potentially set you at ease. It was a cold sort of old money interior, not that you had been directly expecting anything else of the sort, just silently hoping for a more inviting atmosphere. Dressed to match the occasion (and the environment, it seems), you were wearing a knee length black skirt and a white button down top. Black tights and matching flats with your hair neatly in place made the rest of the outfit cohesive. You weren't looking to stand out, especially not to whomever your new psychiatrist was.
But oh, how fast that would change.
A few more agonizing minutes went by before the large door to your right opened up revealing a tall man seemingly in his forties with unkempt hair and jackets piled one on top of the other. Black framed glasses adorned his angular and unshaven face; almost as if they were strategically placed there to cover the large under eye bags he had. Your initial response was one of surprise and then somewhat of a let down. If a man who was supposed to aide others through their difficulties looked as if he had a million and one of them himself, what work was there he could provide?
Setting your initial judgements aside, you reach your hand out to shake his. "Y/N. You must be Doctor Lecter?" You asked in a small voice, smaller than you intended. There goes your original plan of coming across as dominant and straightforward. Guess you'll have to use another tactic to try and withhold the fact you were terrified for this meeting.
"Oh, ah no." He said, offering his hand to shake yours and then immediately after doing so, wiped his hand on his jacket. A rude gesture that didn't go unnoticed. "I'm Will Graham."
Another anxious twinge ran through your whole nervous system. Were you in the wrong room? The wrong place? The wrong building, perhaps? That's infinitely more embarrassing than anything else you could've mustered about this gathering.
Stepping slightly aside and placing his hands into his pockets, another taller figure emerged from the doorway from beside this supposed Will Graham. This man, unlike the other, immediately had you floored. Slicked back greying hair with a chiseled face that of a Danish statue paired oh so wonderfully with a black tux, pink button down and an expensive tie was the only thing that filled your vision. His eyes were piercing with a hint of some unfamiliar darkness, however, that calming sunlight you had hoped for seemed a silly request now. It was almost as if those two things, this man's eyes and the sun, could not exist within the same place as though his expression would diminish the light emitting from the solar system. You'd never found yourself so infatuated so quickly and the thought scared you but drew you in with a perplexed curiosity that you hadn't experienced yet before.
"Y/N," he smiled, reaching his hands out to hold the both of yours in a formal greeting, "I must be the man you're looking for."
You almost said yes, yes you are right there and then. His hands were cold but steady, artist's hands. You briefly remember being told of Doctor Lecter's past occupation with working in the surgical room.
"Doctor Lecter?" You asked, as if you needed to confirm. You smiled at him, forgetting your worries and your determined voice came back to you and you silently thanked Will for being the person your meekness was originally directed towards.
"Ah yes, that would be me. Please forgive me for going slightly past overtime, I was just finishing up my appointment with Mr. Graham here."
Cordial and charming. What a dangerous mixture of the two adjectives.
"I'll be out now," Will said, looking down at his phone with a poignant expression, "Jack will be wondering my whereabouts anyways."
"Then you must go," the doctor said, never taking his eyes off of you once, "wouldn't want him to worry."
You watched as Will nodded and placed his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and made his way to the polished staircase leading to the exit. His disappearance almost didn't entirely register to you at all as you looked down and noticed your hands were still intertwined with the doctor's. As if he just noticed it as well, he offered up an awkward chuckle as he gently removed his hands from yours, not wiping them on his shirt as his counterpart had.
"Shall you come in?" He asked, placing the large of his back against the doorway with an invitation in the form of an outstretched hand towards the room he'd just come out of, making room for you to walk through.
"Oh uh yeah." You remembered your reasoning for being there in the first place as your senses came back to you. Let's get this over with.
• • • 💉 💉 💉 • • •
Inside, the office was massive, the marble flooring continuing into the carpeted room. A large desk loomed towards the front of the room with a decorative Turkish lamp placed atop along with various writing utensils and a laptop. A couple of chaise lounges took up residency by the furthest area of the study and were closest to the largest curtained windows you've ever seen in your life. A small table with large papers littering the top of it wasn't too far off from the designated seating arrangement and to top off the grandeur of the room itself, was a second half-story with walls lined with books.
It was as if you had stepped into some sort of museum with the way everything was spotless. Everything was clean and if it wasn't organized, it was a neat type of disorderly. What stood out to you the most was this small table of disorder with all the papers haphazardly sticking off the ends and so you went to investigate as the doctor stood a few feet behind you, watching your every move. With the slight sway of your hips and the way your hair fell, he would be amiss to not focus himself on you. It was not like him to feel this strongly, whatever this feeling was, about anyone upon first introduction yet here you were. A presence so familiar yet so foreign to him as he became mentally aroused by the thought of something that wasn't murder. Something that could captivate his interest and lure him in. Perhaps it was a good thing he'd gotten the patient referral.
Your outfit was inviting, yet not too revealing. It left him with an appetite for more yet an appreciation for the craft. The way you held yourself was one of someone who has been guarded her whole life, but has done the emotional work of opening up once more, although with caution. The slight dirt on your soles gave him enough information to know that you cared about your appearance, but not to the point where you were vain or someone who required a lot to make them happy. You were gorgeous, of course that was a given, but you came with the inner workings of a traumatic past- one that made you feel as though taking up space was a crime in itself. He was determined to rewire that thinking of yours, not just as a psychologist but as someone who could see the beauty in you.
Unbeknownst to his observation, you slid your hand carefully over the papers to see they had been drawn on in graphite. Beautiful images of anatomy danced over them in an alluring yet subtly worrisome way. The figures were beautiful, yes, but the compromised positions they were in and the sharp weapons that stuck out of their flesh had your heart skip a beat.
As if he could hear what was going through your mind, the doctor spoke up to alleviate any worries you might have. "The macabre. There is art in death and I hope to shed light on that through my drawings." He said, calm and sultry.
You heard his shoes against the floor as he made his way over to you. His cologne was sharp but not unpleasant as the scent filled your lungs, his arm just brushing yours as he looked down at his own works as if critiquing them in his mind although he was only really looking to see what your reaction would be. Would you flinch away from him after seeing these? Would you be drawn in, curious or would another wave of nervousness hit like what you had felt in the waiting room?
Instead, you look up at him, the two of you very close now. "They're lovely, I think your attention to detail is phenomenally done."
A wave of heat went down his spine. Why did it fill him with such satisfaction to hear a compliment of his work (which he knew was quite good) escape your lips? He dismissed it almost as quickly as it arose, however. He must keep things professional and he wasn't fond of the way his entire demeanor seems to have gone awry upon your arrival. It was so hard to be collected in your presence. How is that so?
Returning to his original formalities, he gestures for you to take a seat on one of the lounges, away from any implication of the monster he truly was on the inside, although his stoicism concealed it well.
You complied, respectfully making sure your skirt was correctly placed before sitting down on one of the velveteen sofas, trying your best to make yourself comfortable. Any forwardness you may have regained upon walking into the study has now left you alone, struggling to regain your composure. You tried your best to go down the list of everything making you anxious so as to tackle each problem in an efficient and healthy way, as you had been told to do from previous visits to therapists in the past.
1.) You're in a new setting.
This is something that a lot of people struggle with, you told yourself, trying to put yourself at ease and to not blame yourself too much. It'll become a familiar setting with the more meetings you have with the doctor.
2.) You're nervous about keeping up appearances.
Well, you had just met the guy and you haven't embarrassed yourself all too badly yet. You had mistaken his patient Will for him, but that was an honest assumption. You doubt he would've thought anything too much of it as it didn't seem entirely unusual.
3.) There is a very, very attractive man sitting across from you right now.
This was the one thing you weren't sure you could talk yourself down from. From the way he positioned his legs comfortably one over the other with his head rested against his palm in the armchair to the notebook he had in his lap, he was the literal definition of temptation. It was as if the devil himself were trying to get you to bite the apple and consume yourself with desire. This random invigorating feeling of lust springing up on you out of nowhere was so out of the ordinary for you. There was an undeniable tension between the two of you, yes, but this sudden satiation was seemingly preposterous.
You folded your hands in your lap and settled on looking at the floor rather than Doctor Lecter.
He cleared his throat and began to speak in that tone that drove you wild. "Would you perhaps like a drink?" He asked, innocently enough.
"Sure, as long as it wouldn't be an imposition." You say, finally mustering up the courage to look at him.
He smiled and arose from his chair to busy himself at the liquor cabinet you hadn't noticed upon first glance of the study. "Not at all, are you more of a wine or beer type of woman?"
He took off his blazer and laid it upon the backing of the chair closest to the large desk, revealing the pink button down from before. He opened the cabinet and poured himself a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon before turning to face you.
"I like wine, if you don't mind." You said, offering up another one of those faux faces of confidence. You felt yourself sit up straighter in your seat.
"I hope red is alright, I'm more of a red wine enthusiast myself. Pairs well with dishes." He states, before going to pour yours and offer you the glass, which you took tentatively.
"You're a chef?" You ask.
"Yes, it's a hobby of mine," He sits down in the chair again, placing the notebook in his lap once more before he asks, "Do you have any hobbies?"
He begins to write. The session has begun.
"I'm somewhat of an artist myself." You say, staring at the page as you see his hand create the unmistakable swirls of the cursive alphabet. Of course he writes in cursive.
"Mhm." He smiles to himself, reaching for another sip of the Cabernet. "Of what medium?"
"I prefer portrait work. With pencil, I mean." You notice a lipstick mark on the side of the glass you had just used, much to your dismay. You didn't want to make his dishes any dirtier than you already would be by drinking out of them. Lipstick could be difficult to remove.
He had also noticed this too, and had silently prayed for you not to remove it. Something in him told him he would be cherishing that glass after you had left it, reveling in the dark red makeup left behind by your lips. Even your stained imprint in his dishes had a divinity to it.
You set the glass down and continued the conversation. "I also enjoy reading, so you can imagine my surprise noticing your extensive library."
"You like my library? It took quite the time to build it, much less fill it with literature of my liking."
You allowed your eyes to move around the room and take in everything you may have missed on the second floor, seeing now the ladder that was placed against the side of the balcony. You would have a field day in here.
As if reading your mind again he adds, "You're welcome to it any time you'd like."
"I- thank you, that's very kind." You say, turning to face him once more. He seemed pleased you didn't immediately turn down the offer although he wasn't quite sure where the offer had come from himself.
"Not an issue at all." He states, looking directly into your eyes now. It's a gaze you don't feel as though you'll ever recover from. It's intense and cold but somehow so inviting in a way that's more peculiar than anything else. There's a darkness behind them, despite their bright blue nature. Everything around them fades to black and it's almost as if you're so deep into them that you've traveled to an alternate dimension entirely. You feel as though you're looking right through them, not into his soul, no. But to something much darker, much more insatiable.
Snapping back into reality, you notice how close the two of you have gotten to one another. He stands up, extending his arm out to you and then pulling you up with him, wine glasses and notebooks discarded along with the conversation you two never finished. Your eyes never left each other once as you were now face to face almost chest to chest, him towering over you.
"D-doctor I-"
He tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear, looking down at you.
"Please, call me Hannibal."
#fanfiction#hobisfavoritespritecan#mads mikkelsen#hannibal x reader#hannibal#hannigram#hannibal lecter#doctor lecter#will graham
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Milestone Monday Eclipse Edition!
Today’s total solar eclipse will be the last of its kind visible from the contiguous United States until 2044! Even if your location is not on the path of totality and the weather forecast may not cooperate for ideal viewing, you can still expect some uncanny experiences as the moon passes between the sun and earth. The sky will darken like dawn or dusk and may confuse animals’ circadian clocks, temperatures will drop, and during totality viewers may be able to see planets accompanied by a 360-degree sunset.
In celebration of the day, we’re sharing chromolithographs from Bilder-Atlas der Sternenwelt by Austrian astronomer Edmund Weiss (1837-1917). This pictorial astronomy atlas was published by J.F. Schreiber in 1888 and contains forty-one celestial chromolithographs, including the two shown here that capture the perfect eeriness and magic of a solar eclipse.
Happy eclipsing and remember to wear protective eclipse glasses while viewing!
Read other Milestone Monday posts here!
– Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern
#milestone monday#solar eclipse#eclipse 2024#chromolithograph#bilder-atlas der sternenwelt#edmund wiess#j.f. schreiber
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So. This has lived on my hard drive for over a year and a half now, and in my head for much longer than that. I have the entire plot mapped out in my mind, and it's not *too* long. But it's gonna require a lot of careful writing that I think is beyond my ability, and definitely beyond my current available free time level. Maybe when I advance to candidacy, or maybe this is the story I use a portable backpacking writing setup for.
Either way. It's very deliberately allegorical, and taps into a few sci fi cliche "twists" that you're supposed to kinda figure out early on, but are used for bigger themes later.
As I said. Probably beyond my ability.
But here's how I kicked it off a while back. It has a similar "flow" to the intro of biologics, where it cuts between expository introspection and the actual events happening. Idk if that's weird, but it's what made sense to me.
Also I hate the working title I gave it, but I can't think of it as anything else now.
Symphony of the Stars
The bar I found myself in wasn't much different than millions of others like it. A couple cheap liquors that could be found anywhere, maybe a halfway decent local beer or two, and some tacky tourist paraphernalia hang haphazardly on the walls. Absentmindedly, I swirled my drink. My eyes slowly drifted through the panel windows behind the bar, and onto the orange gas giant visible through it.
That was one thing that made me partial to this little backwater- that damn view. Sure, the closer moons might advertise themselves on their intimate little peeks at the red spot, or the faintest glimpse of Jupiter's barely visible rings, but the people there... Not that I minded the workers, I'm a mechanic of sorts myself- but the miners, water pumpers, and atmospheric skimmers of Jupiter's inner moons were a particular brand of insufferable. Thinking that a couple years managing equipment in the Hellas basin made them the most rugged people on the planet, and then shipped themselves out to the furthest flung inhabited spot in the damn solar system. Joke's on them- most of them don't survive 10 years out here. The ones that make it are a different story, I'll give you that. A certain breed of person actually has what it takes to make it out here, and those people have earned some respect.
But I digress.
Callisto was a remote place, damn far from the sprawling metropolises of Mars or the more cushy mining jobs in the belt. Up until recently, it had been my own little sleepy backwater that I had used to escape my extended hours fixing ships for the harvesters on the other moons.
That was before jumping.
Callisto boasted a small engineering and research center near the south pole, most famous for getting artificial gravity fields working nearly three centuries ago. That bit of notoriety let someone set up a particle accelerator that looped the whole damn moon on its equator. Forty eight years ago, a researcher hit the right island of stability when making ultra-heavy elements, and something just... came together. The exact right amount of mass was focused in the exact right amount of space to dent space time in a perfect little way. A few measurements later, they realized that they had created the smallest documented black hole.
My eyes again wandered to the space in between us and Jupiter. That was the other reason I came to this bar so often. It was also the only place around where you could watch the show.
After a few times generating and collapsing this infant of a black hole, some idiot of a scientist decided that they just had to throw something into it. It wasn't much of anything, just a probe that blasted a repeating live image from its camera in all directions. And hopefully, if it survived in any identifiable form, someone would pick up on it.
Well, someone did. A little over four years later, we got a picture of a star. Real helpful- there's only a couple septillion of those out there, right? But what mattered was the timing, and the direction. The star was eventually identified as Proxima Centauri. The moment the image from the probe had been received, the receiver was exactly 4.2465433 light years away from Proxima. And the image was received exactly 4.2465433 years after the probe was thrown into the hole. Meaning that the probe was at Proxima, exactly 4.2465433 years before the image was received. And it was thrown into the hole, on Callisto.... also exactly 4.2465433 years before the image was received. One moment, Callisto. One moment, Proxima Centauri. In some unit of time that was smaller than our ability to measure, it had traveled to the next star system. It was the textbook definition of a wormhole.
And with that discovery, well....
Jupiter's red spot quivered ever so slightly. They were right on schedule, it seemed. Just need to gain a bit of mass in the accelerator, get the magnetic railgun to throw it all into the space above it....
Like fluid down a drain, the image of Jupiter swirled as a dark spot appeared in front of it. Slowly, it grew, twisting the orange and red tones of the gas giant in mosaic patterns, until the black orb stopped, hovering in the emptiness.
After the initial wormhole generation all those years ago, it was found that by nudging the mass to be a little less, or a little more, or nudging to position of the superheavy object that created it, you could target distant parts of the universe. Soon, small spacecraft were being sent to distant stars. The scientists started it, of course. Shortly afterwards, the Callisto government began lobbying to make our little outpost the first official launch point for interstellar settlement.
That was forty years ago. And at this point, the five established settlements were fairly self sufficient- they just needed occasional contact and resupplies. Every week, a wormhole would be opened to one of the colonies. And every week, a freighter would be there to make the jump through, grab what supplies it needed, leave behind a new list of requests, and then disappear again until their specific colony was contacted again in another five weeks. And every week, I would be in this same bar to watch the fireworks.
My eyes narrowed as the perfect black circle reached its stable state. I watched these things every damn week. Part of me wants to say "blink and you'll miss it", but the truth is, at this point in the process, there's nothing to miss.
One moment, a featureless orb. The next moment, a deep space freighter. No flash. No gradual fade. No coming out of a tunnel. The hole was large enough for the entire mass of the ship to fit through at once, and the jump was seamless.
And to tell the truth... I didn't like it.
Humanity had reached and settled the furthest reaches of space, because of a magic substance that broke physics, stumbled upon by accident, in a random lab, by a some guy who was just trying to whip up a new element.
It was perfect. It was too perfect. And it bothered me.
And well, that's why I was here. I'd been visiting Callisto for years, and the pressure to make jumping more and more accessible to small spacecraft was insane. Pretty soon, everyone trying to engineer or maintain any kind of ship would need to have half of a quantum physics degree, and I wanted to be ahead of the curve. So when the launch point was made official, and they called for mechanics to service the ships that made the jumps to the colonies and back, I lept at the opportunity.
But the push was always for more applications, with little thought to the physics. More jumps, more colonies, more resupplies, more energy efficiency to increase the frequency at which it could be used. Some people were interested in the mechanics of the phenomena to exploit it further, sure, but most seemed to stonewall when you questioned too far. How the hell had this been missed? Why is everyone pushing for applications, and no one freaking out over how much this broke our understanding of the universe? Is it possible to measure the unit of time that the jump occurred in? Was it below detection limits? If it was, what did that mean?
And so, here I was. Sipping some herbal thing, staring at Jupiter, and thinking a little too hard about reality.
Eh, at least I could fix that last part.
"'scuse me bartender?" I asked. "Can I get another one of these, with an extra shot in it?"
He silently nodded, and poured me the synthetic gin mixed with... well, I didn't question it much. Anything to help keep these ideas in check.
The carbon fiber fingertips of my left hand gripped the glass with their usual calculated precision, while the skin of my right idly tapped the bar. I sighed.
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1912 Simplex 50 HP Toy-Tonneau
In 1911, William P. Snyder Jr. ordered his 50 HP from J.M. Quinby & Co., the New Jersey–based coachbuilder and body maker for Simplex automobiles. Replying to his inquiry on June 26, the coachbuilder wrote, “We propose to furnish you with the latest model 129 inch wheel base, 50 H.P. Simplex Chassis, equipped with a Bosch dual system and four volt battery, Solar Eclipse headlights, oil side and tail lamps, Presto Lite tank and Chassis work, less the rear fenders for the sum of Forty-nine Hundred and Sixty ($4,960.00) Dollars and to be delivered three weeks or as much sooner as possible.”
Snyder specified a shorter 124-inch, 50 HP chassis with a Runabout, two-seat body and folding canvas top, painted in Munich Lake with a medium red chassis, and maroon leather. He also added his monogram to the coachwork. Soon after Chassis No. 799 was delivered, it was crashed by its young owner, and, at his father’s insistence, returned to Quinby to be fitted with more conservative bodywork that might encourage more disciplined driving.
The car on offer still wears body No. 3038, the Toy-Tonneau coachwork fitted in 1912. The Simplex was passed down to Snyder’s son in 1940, and eventually passed down to the latest generation in 2011.
Brian Henniker, courtesy of Gooding & Company.
#art#design#supercars#sport cars#luxurycars#supercar#luxurylifestyle#luxurycar#vintage cars#1912#simplex#simplex 50#tonneau#classic cars#classic car#vintagecar#collectors
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Sunday is a studio day and I'm going to try an experiment:
Not Finished Art Sunday.
Pencil sketches, idle plans, set lists, diagrams. MAYBE inking ideas. No. NO INKING IDEAS. I'm starting early and not editing this post asidef rom typos and not that one IN THE SPIRIT OF THIS POST.
Not.
Finished.
Art.
Sunday.
The entire purpose is to create a STORM of work a VOLCANO of work A NEW SOLAR SYSTEM OF WORK that will get finished later.
No plans when to finish. No plans EVEN to finish. That will come later. MAYBE. It depends on WHAT IS MADE.
Thumbnail sketches and quickly drawn diagrams and Things That Are Ideas Made Visual but NOT PROGRESSED FROM RAW IDEA.
I want to wake up on Monday and see a goddamn ocean of STUFF. I want to work until I am exhausted, physically and mentally, and then recover, and THEN start saying:
"What makes sense to build? Combine, edit, archive?"
Not Finished Art Sunday is an experiment away from attempting to achieve perfection.
Not to get lost in edits.
Or fear.
Or doubt.
Or
"Will this work will anyone like it will it engage on social media will it ruin my career is it problematic is it cringe is it rizz is rizz good or bad I don't know i am in my forties i don't need to know i am including that as a end ramble to a purposeful run-on sentence i like purposefully run-on-sentences"
Not Finished Art Sunday.
It'll be fun!
Probably!
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As Voyager 1's mission draws to a close, one planetary scientist reflects on its legacy
For nearly 50 years, NASA's Voyager 1 mission has competed for the title of deep space's little engine that could. Launched in 1977 along with its twin, Voyager 2, the spacecraft is now soaring more than 15 billion miles from Earth.
On their journeys through the solar system, the Voyager spacecraft beamed startling images back to Earth—of Jupiter and Saturn, then Uranus and Neptune and their moons. Voyager 1's most famous shot may be what famed astronomer Carl Sagan called the "pale blue dot," a lonely image of Earth taken from 6 billion miles away in 1990.
But Voyager 1's trek could now be drawing to a close. Since December, the spacecraft--which weighs less than most cars--has been sending nonsensical messages back to Earth, and engineers are struggling to fix the problem. Voyager 2 remains operational.
Fran Bagenal is a planetary scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder. She started working on the Voyager mission during a summer student job in the late 1970s and has followed the two spacecraft closely since.
To celebrate Voyager 1, Bagenal reflects on the mission's legacy—and which planet she wants to visit again.
Many are impressed that the spacecraft has kept going for this long. Do you agree?
Voyager 1's computer was put together in the 1970s, and there are very few people around who still use those computing languages. The communication rate is 40 bits per second. Not megabits. Not kilobits. Forty bits per second. Moreover, the round-trip communication time is 45 hours. It's amazing that they're still communicating with it at all.
What was it like working on Voyager during the mission's early days?
At the very beginning, we used computer punch cards. The data was on magnetic tapes, and we would print out line-plots on reels of paper. It was very primitive.
But planet by planet, with each flyby, the technology got a lot more sophisticated. By the time we got to Neptune in 1989, we were doing our science on much more efficient computers, and NASA presented its results live across the globe over an early version of the internet.
Think about it—going from punch cards to the internet in 12 years.
How did the Voyager spacecraft shape our understanding of the solar system?
First of all, the pictures were jaw-dropping. They were the first high-quality, close-up pictures of the four gas giant planets and their moons. The Voyagers really revolutionized our thinking by going from one planet to the other and comparing them.
Jupiter and Saturn's ammonia white and orange clouds, for example, were violently swept around by strong winds, while Uranus and Neptune's milder weather systems were hidden and colored blue by atmospheric methane. But the most dramatic discoveries were the multiple distinct worlds of the different moons, from Jupiter's cratered Callisto and volcanic Io to Saturn's cloudy Titan to plumes erupting on Triton, a moon of Neptune.
The Jupiter and Saturn systems have since been explored in greater detail by orbiting missions—Galileo and Juno at Jupiter, Cassini at Saturn.
Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft that has visited Uranus and Neptune. Do we need to return?
My vote is to return to Uranus—the only planet in our solar system that's tipped on its side.
We didn't know before Voyager whether Uranus had a magnetic field. When we arrived, we found that Uranus has a magnetic field that's severely tilted with respect to the planet's rotation. That's a weird magnetic field.
Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune all emit a lot of heat from the inside. They glow in the infrared, emitting two and a half times more energy than they receive from the sun. These things are hot.
Uranus isn't the same. It doesn't have this internal heat source. So maybe, just maybe, at the end of the formation of the solar system billions of years ago, some big object hit Uranus, tipped it on its side, stirred it up and dissipated the heat. Perhaps, this led to an irregular magnetic field.
These are the sorts of questions that were raised by Voyager 30 years ago. Now we need to go back.
Culturally, Voyager 1's most lasting impact may be the 'pale blue dot.' Why?
I have huge respect for Carl Sagan. I met him when I was 16, a high school student in England, and I shook his hand.
He pointed to the Voyager image and said, "Here we are. We're leaving the solar system. We're looking back, and there's this pale blue dot. That's us. It's all our friends. It's all our relatives. It's where we live and die."
This was the time we were just beginning to say, "Wait a minute. What are we doing to our planet Earth?" He was awakening or reinforcing this need to think about what humans are doing to Earth. It also evoked why we need to go exploring space: to think about where we are and how we fit into the solar system.
How are you feeling now that Voyager 1's mission may be coming to an end?
It's amazing. No one thought they would go this far. But with just a few instruments working, how much longer can we keep going? I think it will soon be time to say, "Right, jolly good. Extraordinary job. Well done."
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In this part of the story we are introduced to the concept of cousin siblings. We are also introduced to clone ethnic minorities. By the year 3856 A.D human cloning is common and legal in many parts of the solar system. Two centuries prior in the year 38337 A.D clones were given equal rights on Mars, the moons of Jupiter and the Pacifica Empire. Sibling cousins are cousins who happen to have clone parents. Twin cousins on the other hand are people whose clone parents reproduced with another set of clones. A clone ethnic minority are a group of people who descend from a single cloned person. The Bun clan for example descends from nine clones. By the year 3856 A.D the inner system census documented 23,000 members of the Bun clan. They are well known for their ability to speak to plants and their unique hair in different shades of pink.
"Is that the famous Lilyfield summer home? I read about it in my travel books!" She said with an eager whisper to Mrs. Bun.
"Oh yes! The flowers are open, which means the summer social season is on! They'll host a big ball for Apple day tomorrow," Mrs. Bun smiled.
"She wasn't like this before, she was acting all weird and prickly at the telehub," Revati whispered to Brigadeiro.
"Maybe she had a concussion? One time I had one, and I bought two dozen cupcakes, and then I smashed them all over that wall," Brigadeiro replied as they scooted past a pond and onto grass that appeared to be made of real gold.
Brigadeiro was pointing at a house perched right next to the golden grass lawn. Unlike the fantastic homes they had passed, the building Brigadeiro was pointing at was thankfully ordinary. The walls were painted bright white with navy trimmings. The space station's false holographic "sun" was beginning to set behind the pointy roof. Next to the house, there was another similar building, this one surrounded by a crowd of people.
"And that building?" Pauletta asked.
"Oh, that? That's just the family house," Mrs. Bun explained as they pulled to a stop. The crowd of people had all gathered around outdoor tables covered in platters of food.
"It's more than a family home; your mother would love this! Our house is almost three thousand years old," Brigadeiro explained, helping Revati out of the cart.
"Three thousand years old, shouldn't this place be in a museum?" Revati asked, staring at the house. Actual historical buildings from old Earth were rare.
"This place was built in Australia in the year 1810 by a sea captain who hunted some sort of monster called whales! It was called Collingwood House," Brigadeiro explained as several family members descended upon them.
"And now it's here? How?" Revati asked, completely shocked.
"When the space station was first opened, it had a museum, and this was part of it! Then when my great-grandpa got cloned, the Mill family gave him this place as a reward," Brigadeiro explained, ignoring all the relatives who were frantically asking him about the terrorist attack.
Within seconds, Revati found herself jostled and pushed away from Brigadeiro.
"Sit! Sit," someone shrieked, and Revati found herself sitting down at one of the tables. Two old ladies who almost looked like twins were sitting down fanning themselves. Their grey-streaked pink curls were pinned under massive yellow disc hats, and they were wearing matching yellow dresses.
"So you're the Martian then? I'm Auntie Saffron," said the old lady to the left with a birthmark on her nose said.
"Mars has over forty-six countries and territories; calling me 'the Martian' is like calling someone 'the alien,'" Revati replied, looking down at her bowl. The meal on it appeared to be some sort of savory stew garnished with apple slices.
"Hah, she has you there! I'm Auntie Magdalena! I have to apologize for my sister-cousin; she thinks us being the oldest family members gives us the right to be rude," the second old lady smiled.
Here's the corrected version of the text:
"Cousin sister?" Revati had to ask after taking a mouthful of the stew. The stew filled her mouth with earthy, spicy heat.
"Our fathers were clones who married clones, genetically we're sisters," Auntie Saffron said, studying Revati as she ate. "You can handle my daughter's gumbo; I thought it was far too spicy," she remarked.
"It's spicy? Really? Most food on Mars can melt through carpets when you spill it," Revati shot back, and Auntie Magdalena cackled.
"You're not going to scare this one off easily. I heard she saved Bridgadeiro's life three times," Auntie Magdalena said to her sister-cousin.
"Actually, we're up to five times. He fell into a ditch two months ago, and yesterday a hairdryer tried to strangle him," Revati admitted after drinking some apple.
"A hairdryer! Bubby! You never told your parents about that," Auntie Magdalena shrieked as Bridgadeiro sat down next to Revati holding a plate of muffins.
"Well, I was a bit distracted by the enemy attack and getting Revati here," Bridgadeiro replied.
"I don't know why your parents keep letting you run off to Mars! I've tried to discuss it with my nephew, but he keeps insisting you're an adult now," sniffed Auntie Saffron.
"I'm almost twenty-two! Also, I told you I need to complete three months of field research on a terraformed world for my doctorate," Bridgadeiro replied.
"Surely you must have finished it all by now! I thought once you inherited this place you'd be back," Auntie Saffron whined, raising a snooty eyebrow.
"So! What do you do?" Auntie Magdalena asked Revati, yelling over her sister-cousin.
"Do? Well, right now I'm eating..." Revati pointed out.
"She means what do you do to earn money; people ask that here a lot," Bridgadeiro said.
"Oh! I follow a ghost haunting an android about on her quest to find her long-lost daughter, who's also my sister," Revati explained, taking another spoonful of gumbo.
"How interesting! And where did you go to school? I heard that New Singapore has many fantastic universities," Auntie Saffron remarked dryly.
"My mother and her partner educated me in an abandoned Victorian doll museum," Revati replied, glaring back.
"Your mother educates you? So you don't have any vocational training?" asked Auntie Saffron.
Revati dropped her spoon on the table, staining the tablecloth.
"Before the appliance war, Revati's mother was a history teacher at one of the best schools in her country, and she's written an entire book about the appliance war," Bridgadeiro said, grabbing Revati's hand. "She did the best she could. Before Bridgadeiro came along, none of us could leave my home without risking freezing to death," Revati explained.
"Freeze to death? Really?" Auntie Saffron asked doubtfully.
"Yes, and if you were lucky to have a tent for protection, you still ran the risk of getting kidnapped by a wasteland gang," Revati added.
"That's how Revati and I met! She saved me from a group of actors that were going to kill me in a play," Bridgadeiro added.
"My word! What an interesting life your little friend leads!" Auntie Saffron drawled, and Bridgadeiro nodded towards their hands.
"She's far more than a friend, Auntie Saffron," Bridgadeiro replied coldly, and Auntie Magdalena giggled nervously.
"Why don't you go take Revati to the desserts? Your Mama is serving up her Tarte De Maca," Auntie Magdalena asked, gesturing to another table.
Was Bridgadeiro far more than a friend? It was a curious thing to consider. First of all, Revati only considered a few people, such as Aurora, Little Hardi, and her favorite feral child, as friends. Now that she thought about it, she had never slotted Bridgadeiro neatly into that category.
There were nights when he visited her on the road. Cold nights when the android switched herself off to charge, and they huddled together under a blanket playing Buggle on down. Nights where the game often ended in a way it never did with her actual platonic friends. There were warmer days where the android was waiting in some distant city for a new DNA trace. Revati and Bridgadeiro would wander the streets together, Bridgadeiro pointing out a particular rare plant. One time a band was playing music, and her head dropped against his head as they danced. Of course, it always ended the same way. The Android would detect a sample of Dityaa's DNA, and they would head out. Bridgadeiro would pack up as well and head back to his university. Sometimes he sent her messages. Sometimes she didn't hear from him for weeks. And then came the Diwali with Margarine.
Despite all that, she hadn't been able to file him into his proper place. Instead, he floated about in her subconscious, occasionally popping up in strange dreams.
Mrs. Bun gave her a sympathetic look as she handed Revati a plate. Vanilla, who was standing next to Mrs. Bun, shook their head with a knowing smile.
"Was Auntie Saffron bullying you? She made me cry three times during my first Apple day," Mrs. Bun said, handing another plate to Bridgadeiro.
"She brought up me coming back, then she called Revati's life interesting and referred to her as my little friend," Bridgadeiro said.
"Oh dear," Mrs. Bun winced, her cheeks flushing red with embarrassment.
"Don't worry, Auntie Saffron referred to me as Barley's coworker at our wedding," Vanilla reassured Revati.
"She called me the housekeeper at Bridgadeiro's color day," Mrs. Bun winced.
"And you just put up with that? If anyone spoke to me that way back home, I'd stun them until they smelled like fried hair," Revati remarked, glaring at Auntie Saffron.
Auntie Saffron merely waved at their table with a heavy-ringed hand.
"Stunning people is illegal here; it's a form of assault," Bridgadeiro explained.
"Is it? How annoying," Revati remarked, still glaring at Auntie Saffron.
For a fraction of a moment, her eyes traveled further toward the crystal pond. Someone was moving amongst the waist-length clear crystal reeds. Someone with mint-green skin dressed in gold. They turned towards the party. Revati's eyes, well-trained from spending years staring into the dark, saw familiar weedy features.
"Hang on, who's that?" Revati asked, pointing at the person as they disappeared into the reeds.
"No idea; must be a guest of Lord Mills! Sometimes they get lost and wander into the private staff areas," Bridgadeiro remarked.
Revati merely shook her head, putting the plate back on the table.
"I'll be right back," she said before running to the pond.
In the dim light the stranger looked exactly like the Duke of Io.
Lakes, ponds, and oceans always seemed vaguely sinister to Revati. She knew that on faraway distant worlds, people swam in the waters and surfed the waves. The only body of water in Olde Landon was a man-made river filled with melted snow. Before the invasion, tourists would ride on lantern boats across the clear waters.
Authentic "bathing machines" had been set up on the pebble-covered beach. After the invasion, Revati would use the machines as makeshift showers. They never went further than the shallows. Skeletons lay in the sunken darkness. After the appliances invaded, the dead had been thrown off the bridge into the water.
Revati found herself standing at the very edge of the pond. Up close, the translucent reeds were tall and sticky, brushing against her dress. Something moved in the purple twilight, and Revati spun around. "I know you're there! I saw you all the way up from the party," Revati hissed, and there was another rustling sound. "Leave us alone," a man's voice hissed, and Revati's hand anxiously grabbed her golden necklace. No weapons, no bandages, and no bits of string. "It's you, isn't it? The Duke of IO? Or at least the appliance pretending to be him," Revati remarked, pushing her way through the reeds.
The reeds suddenly parted, revealing the glimmering pond. "I'm not pretending to be anyone! I'm the Duke and an appliance; two things can be true," the Duke of IO snapped back, his voice hidden from a boat floating on the pond. "I don't care who you are! Take me to my sister," Revati said, stepping into the water so she could wade over to the boat. "She doesn't want to see you! We didn't even know you would be here," the Duke's voice snapped back, and Revati grabbed the boat, rocking the edge. "I can't drown you, idiot!" the Duke shrieked.
"No, but you can probably sink," Revati snapped back, rocking the boat again. "Stop it right now, Sissy!" Dityaa's voice yelled, and Revati glanced over her shoulder.
Revati often dreamed about what she would do if she finally found Dityaa. The dreams were often filled with suffocating rage. Sometimes she would follow her, demanding to know why she never came back, how she could do such an awful thing to their mother. But in the dim light of the pond, Revati now felt nothing more than the cold water lapping around her legs. Dityaa was watching her from the other side of the small pond.
A different, somewhat more fragile Dityaa, her body stooped over as if she was in pain. Revati let go of the boat and waded towards Dityaa. The water now reached her waist. Dityaa was wearing a loose white shirt and a pair of grey pants. Her feet were bare. "What did you do to her?" Revati screeched at the Duke. "I didn't do anything!" The Duke protested, glancing over the eye of the boat. "You kidnapped her! And now look, she isn't even wearing a dress!" Revati protested. Dityaa often claimed she was allergic to pants. "He didn't kidnap me! I ran away with him, and we got married," Dityaa wheezed. "You married him! I've been chasing you for four years because you got married?" Revati shrieked, unable to believe it.
But then a thought occurred to Revati. "You got married! You literally wore a wedding dress to Medieval Faire," Revati snapped, wading towards Dityaa. "I knew you wouldn't approve," Dityaa murmured, her eyes fluttering. "I can't believe you did this! You almost killed Nanni! It would have taken three seconds to message anyone saying you were alright," Revati snapped, and suddenly Dityaa sighed before collapsing face-first into the water. "Darling!" The Duke cried with relief. "My darling," she whispered back with a small smile. Her eyes shut again, and she began to loudly snore. "You better not have brought that bitch of a maternity droid with you," the Duke said, and Revati violently shook her head. "Are you talking about the ghost who's Dityaa's real mother? I left her on Mars," Revati and the Duke nodded as if relieved. "She needs a bed; expelling the energy can be exhausting," The Duke said. "I don't live here! I can't just magically pull a bed out of nowhere," Revati pointed out. "It's fine, we have plenty of room in the kitchen building," Bridgadeiro's voice called. "How much of that did you see?" Revati had to ask, "I saw everything, but I think the party just saw you running back to the lake with the pie," Bridgadeiro replied.
Dityaa had, of course, managed to get the best room in "the kitchen building". Once Mrs. Bun realized the strange unconscious girl was Revati's sick sister, she insisted upon it. The kitchen building turned out to be much larger than the actual house. "In ancient times, it was used as a sleeping area by convicts and to store meat; now we use it for extended family," Bridgadeiro explained. Mrs. Bun merely made tutting sounds as she tucked Dityaa into bed. The walls of the bedroom were covered in thick thorny rose bushes. Gigantic pink and red roses bloomed everywhere, scattering the floor with heavily scented petals. The bed was fitted with pale pink sheets and pillows. "Why the rose bushes?" Revati had to ask. "Roses are excellent at monitoring the health of sleeping people; if something happens to her, they'll alert us," Bridgadeiro explained, shutting the door.
#comic#nanowrimo2023#nanowrimo#science fiction#speculative worldbuilding#speculative fiction#saying farewell to armageddon#life on mars#futurism#ya scifi#scifi ya#scifi comedy#clones
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There are many reasons to not go in for nuclear power and some reasons to go in for it after all.
Against:
1. It takes so many damn years to build. We'll be 20 years on and far past our carbon budget. That HUGE (they are insanely expensive) amount of money could have been spent on something more scalable. Nuclear is not scalable. Wind and solar are extremely scalable (and cheaper every day). One reason is that renewable plants (e.g a mill) are small and a repeated construction. Expertise for constructing renewables is widely available, nuclear plant construction expertise is in short supply. Counter (a bit weak): even if it takes ages to build, still, we're not on schedule for non-fossil fuel use anyway, so it will probably unfortunately still be relevant in twenty years.
2. A nuclear plant is a national security risk. One: in times of war. 2: in times of natural disaster. No counter to that except: surely war won't be THAT bad and the failsafes will always be enough.
3. Sourcing the concrete, steel and uranium that goes into such a plant isn't good for the environment. Nor is uranium renewable. Current stocks and use would provide us with 130 years of energy production. Build more plants, that number goes down. Counter: producing any power plant requires mining and transport - coal plants and renewables do too, for example.
4. Nuclear waste is a non-negligible problem. There are (war) incentives NOT to reduce waste. Even when waste is minimised, waste remains. Highly dangerous waste can kill people for longer than any society on earth has ever survived. 500.000 years... So no society can reasonably take responsibility for it. When nuclear waste is stored and then spills (as has happened in Germany) the state must pay billions in taxes to clean it up. Storage is difficult. There are NO permanent storage sites ready in all of Europe. There's about 180 plants now that have ran for decades. No permanent storage. If a company is made responsible for a nuclear plant, they tend to pay out to their shareholders one year and claim not to be able to take care of the waste for fear of bankruptcy the next - or they've already declared bankruptcy. Literally happened here. There are no incentives to deal responsibly with the waste for companies. Germany is projected to have to pay hundreds of billions of euros for permanently storing all the waste they've still got lying around at interim sites. Once again, money which might have been spent on scalable renewable production. 500.000 years... this a storage solution must last for 500.000 years. Ever seen concrete last so long... ?
5. We're seeing nuclear crowd out renewables RIGHT NOW IN REAL TIME in politics in the Netherlands and the UK. The money (and project managemeny time) really cannot be spent twice.
For:
6. Fossil fuels have done way more damage to the environment so far. Nuclear is preferable. In fact, 20% of European electricity and 10% of total energy is provided by nuclear power plants. 180. Plants. All renewables combined provide 17%. No real counter to that: they really do produce a lot of electricity without emitting greenhouse gases! Importantly: they don't need a lot of space. (Nuclear on the whole causes about as many greenhouse gases as wind energy equivalent and even slightly less than solar. Forty times less than coal.)
7. Nuclear is a proven way to produce a LOT of power. Weak counter: this makes it a liability in the electricity grid and incentivises less maintenance to minimise downtime (if no other plants can take over - generally not if they're too big. This makes them unreliable, just like renewables). Counter to that counter: much smaller (scalable) plants are being developed. Counter to that counter: they're experimental. The thorium reactors thay produce shorter lived waste are also experimental. I.e. it will take decades before we can build operational versions. (BUT! there's an ENORMOUS amount of thorium on earth, which is extremely important. Waste is much less problematic and meltdown impossible)
8. Nuclear plants that are not traditional baseload only plants and have load following capabilities can play a role in managing the ups and downs of renewables on the grid. Counter: even when built for this purpose, it's impossible to make enough money to pay for the construction and management and deconstruction and waste management by only running these plants as buffer. This is a problem because companies are asked to construct the plants, not the state. Counter 2: in a hybrid system with renewables the grid operator actually has to PAY OFF (millions) the nuclear plant to stop it producing so much. It's a liability in a hybrid system with renewables.
Final conclusion:
CURRENT nuclear power plant construction does not play well with the transition to renewables because there is no way in this financial system to use its production as a buffer, the state cannot produce the plants because there is a lack of expertise, companies cannot afford to run the plant as buffer and cannot be trusted and ideologically and politically nuclear power is proposed as an alternative to renewables instead of a complement which cuts into the much-needed financial resources necessary for renewable expansion. It is slow to build and badly scalable. We need speed and scalability considering our climate deadline. There is no permanent solution for waste and takes billions of euros to store right now already. Uranium is a scarce and non-renewable resource. Existing plants impede the transition to renewables (there is no need). They form a liability for continued production when it comes to short term production for the grid when needing maintenance and long term liability for energy production when they need to be decommissioned (France is dependent for 3/4ths on many plants that must be decommissioned at the same time). Nonetheless, existing plants are preventing a large amount of carbon emissions. Nuclear can be a useful element to the energy mix, and requires a lot less space than renewables. If innovations in scalable, smaller plants with increasingly better business cases, faster build times and ability to offload production to each other, there may be serious synergy with renewables. Still, these will be useful for 50-100 years until uranium runs out. Problematic, not just because it leaves us with expertise and infrastructure that will have no fuel, but also because we need to transition FAST and it's uncertain in how many years this technology will be operational. Thorium would be a solution to a lot of problems, but that is also decades away from operation. Putting money into research and test reactors is a priority. Decommissioning existing plants early would be stupid even if it would remove their contributions to transition intertia and the as of yet unsolved and increasing waste storage problem.
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Look, I know it works, but I just can’t really figure out a use case for a solar powered vampire repeller. It just seems like a contradiction in terms.
I mean, umbrellas.
I guess. When am I scheduled to speak again?
Forty-five minutes.
Alright. Let’s head to the stage I guess.
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HOW DOES SPEED AND GRAVITY AFFECT TIME??
Blog#328
Saturday, September 2nd, 2023
Welcome back,
The International Space Station will host the most precise clocks ever to leave Earth. Accurate to a second in 300 million years, the clocks will push the measurement of time to test the limits of the theory of relativity and our understanding of gravity.
Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicted that gravity and speed influences time; the faster you travel the more time slows down, but also the more gravity pulling on you the more time slows down.
On May 29, 1919, Einstein’s theory was first put to the test when Arthur Eddington observed light “bending” around the sun during a solar eclipse. Forty years later, the Pound-Rebka experiment first measured the redshift effect induced by gravity in a laboratory – but a century later scientists are still searching for the limits of the theory.
Luigi Cacciapuoti, ESA’s Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES) project scientist, explained:
The theory of relativity describes our universe on the large scale, but on the border with the infinitesimally small scale the theory does not jibe and it remains inconsistent with quantum mechanics. Today’s attempts at unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics predict violations of Einstein’s equivalence principle.
Einstein’s principle details how gravity interferes with time and space. One of its most interesting manifestations is time dilation due to gravity. This effect has been proven by comparing clocks at different altitudes such as on mountains, in valleys and in space. Clocks at higher altitudes show time passes faster with respect to a clock on the Earth’s surface, as there is less gravity from Earth the farther you are from our planet.
Flying at a 250 mile (400 km) altitude on the Space Station, the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space will make more precise measurements than ever before.
ACES will create an “internet of clocks”, connecting the most accurate atomic timepieces the world over and compare their timekeeping with the ones on humankind’s weightless laboratory as it flies overhead.
Comparing time down to a stability of hundreds femtoseconds – one millionth of a billionth of a second – requires techniques that push the limits of current technology. ACES has two ways for the clocks to transmit their data, a microwave link and an optical link. Both connections exchange two-way timing signals between the ground stations and the space terminal, when the timing signal heads upwards to the Space Station and when it returns down to Earth.
The unprecedented accuracy this setup offers brings some nice bonuses to the ACES experiment. Clocks on the ground will be compared among themselves providing local measurements of geopotential differences, helping scientists to study our planet and its gravity.
The frequencies of the laser and microwave links will help understand how light and radio waves propagate through the troposphere and ionosphere, thus providing information on climate. Finally, the internet of clocks will allow scientists to distribute time and to synchronize their clocks worldwide for large-scale Earth-based experiments and for other applications that require precise timing.
Originally published on earthsky.org
COMING UP!!
(Wednesday, September 6th, 2023)
"WHY DOES TIME GO SLOWER IN SPACE??"
#astronomy#outer space#alternate universe#astrophysics#universe#spacecraft#white universe#space#parallel universe#astrophotography
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Sunshine Blend Dark Roast is such a roller coaster and I love roller coasters and I also love games 😈…
God, that selfie thing made me cringe so hard…also, reader is so relatable?! I wish, I were more like her.
As always, perfectly written. 👌🏻
Have a nice day, babes 😘
bestie ima take for a riiiiiiiiiiide today!
Wordcount: 2.3K
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Sunshine Blend Dark Roast
part one - part two - part three - part four - part five
When Joe walked in the next day, you had your hand ready, resting on the tower of large brown paper cups and you glared at him threateningly. Like a western stand-off. A cowboy with their hand near their pistol, ready to pull it out and shoot as soon as the other made a move.
Joe saw. Eyed your hand, stayed quiet for a little bit and then let his eyes bounce between your face and your hand and you seemed... genuinely upset about something. So Joe caved.
"Can I get–"
You hurriedly took a paper cup, wrote down Joe, and then, typed it in on the cash register to make Joe pay. Didn't wait for Joe's order. Didn't wait for Joe to give you a random name. Didn't tell him that this one was on the house. You made Joe pay, and Joe grinned a little, realised this was a game he'd now won, and happily tapped his card to the machine. You hated every second of it and weren't holding back on letting him see that. Letting him feel that.
“So, you paid?”
Joe had just stuck his wallet back into his pocket, checked the pin machine, was about to say, yes, I did, because the payment seemed to have gone through, but you didn't mean today. Obviously you didn't mean today.
“You just went and paid? Thought you could just do that, go behind my back? Go and pay?!"
Yes, that’s exactly what Joe thought. He thought he understood the game. He thought this was how he could play. But the sunbeam of a girl in front of him was now a solar flare. You were no longer dripping with honey, or caramel, or any other type of syrupy sweetness. You still looked delicious, and Joe really wanted to go in for another bite if he could find the guts, but you looked like you were about to explode into high ejections of hot lava.
Joe remembered Jamie saying, “Oh she’s like the sun, that one. Got to be careful, if you stare long enough, you’ll go blind.” And this was like that. But vicious, and scary. No fun.
“Look at me and all my money,” you muttered, now making Joe’s drink, moving around without any care, slamming things down, picking things up like you were going to throw them like a pitcher in a baseball game. No more sunbeams, but just, a scary summer storm, raging. “Can’t appreciate a free drink when he gets one,”
“Forty-seven.” Joe interrupted you, and for the first time in weeks, he surprised you. Made you look up at him with rounded eyes, just for a second, because you realised, Joe had counted.
“They were forty-seven free drinks. Appreciated all of them, said thank you every time,”
Your rigid movements made something drop behind the counter. Joe didn’t see what it was, and you didn’t move to pick it up. Kept angry eyes on a boring cup of coffee you were making for whoever the fuck Joe was going to tell you he was that day.
Joe felt a small bite of guilt in his stomach. Had he ruined it? Had he misread the situation? Again? What did you want from him? There was always something people wanted, and even if they didn't ask, it was always so easy to tell what it was that they wanted.
So why then not with you? Why was Joe always guessing with you? And then, always getting it wrong with you? You'd given him free coffee every day for weeks, and for what purpose? What was the reason? Just to make him owe you? Was that it? Ugh, Joe couldn't stand it.
What did you want?
The first beats of The Proclaimers' 500 Miles filled the shop and Joe knew these were happy beats you would usually dance to. Except you didn't move this time. Joe was sad he couldn’t see your feet from where he was standing, because you were doing a stellar job at not moving a single muscle in your upper body, but he would put money down on the fact that at least one of your feet was tapping along.
God, you really were a sore loser, weren’t you? A very pretty one, very cute, all frowny and pouty, but a very very sore one, too.
“Are you... you can’t seriously be upset that I paid an outstanding bill, can you?” Joe kept his voice down, leant over the counter at the end where he'd pick up his drink in a second, tried to keep this conversation a little private.
This song was getting to you. Joe's worried face was getting to you. You were so close to breaking. So close.
“Can you?” his eyebrows knitted up higher. So expressive. You kind of loved it.
Okay. Enough. You let one corner of your mouth curl up, only slightly. Very small.
Jamie had called you the sun, but he had also said, “She’s like a party,” when Joe asked, “See what she’s like?” as they’d stepped out of the shop that day, coffees in hand. You were like a party, Jamie said, one that you didn’t want to finish, that made you make stupid choices, that would have you end up in a stranger’s house with a group of people you’d never met before in your life just because you didn’t want it to end. Needed it to go on for longer. Some nights weren’t allowed to just be over all of a sudden, and neither was this. Joe had ended a game. He hadn’t lost. You hadn’t won. It was done, but it couldn’t just be over.
But Joe seemed genuinely worried, and this was good song, and to be honest, your boss had started giving you suspicious eyes and you were afraid that maybe your coworker had dropped a comment that your boss wasn't meant to hear. Joe paying for all of his coffees was ultimately a good thing.
You were just a sore loser. And you still wanted to play. And then Joe was worried.
So you smiled - but only a little - as you handed Joe his large americano, and before you let go of it completely, said, “You better think of one hell of a way to make that up to me, Ed,” You almost said Eddie. Almost. And with a twist of your wrist, made sure your fingers brushed against each other before you let Joe take it.
The bright red that rose to his cheeks made up for everything. Joe walked out, smiling like a loon, feeling all warm and tingly on the inside.
Joe didn't come in the next day, and you weren't stupid, because Joe had work things, surely. But he did come in the day after, and it was a little busy, so you hadn't seen him come in, only noticed he was there when it was his turn.
“Let's get a coffee,” Joe said, chin slightly raised, a confident playful smile on his face.
You looked at him for a second, narrowed your eyes, not trusting this upbeat attitude from him, but, sure. Of course he could get a coffee. He was going to pay for it again, though, those glory days were over for Joe, and by his own hand too.
“Sure, boring same old same old?”
You were already reaching for a large brown paper cup when you heard him cough a laugh. You could’ve mistaken it for a scoff, or even a sob, and you saw how Joe let his head hang for a second. It gave you the perfect view of the tips of his ears which were suspiciously flushed already.
“No,”
Wow. What? You stopped in your tracks. Huge eyes on Joe. No?!
Joe had taken a full day to work up the courage. This was going to be mortifying, but he was going to do it. Surely, it was what you were after, and he actually didn’t mind the idea of it. Did he fully trust it? No. But he wore a smile, wore confident eyes, wore this version of himself that he’d let the lighter parts of his brain muster up after thinking of the best possible outcome. He had to be quick. Get it out fast, before the dark parts would take over. So he wore a smile, wore confident eyes, and he wore them like armour. Because he still needed a bit of protection, didn't he?
You stayed unpredictable, and scary, like a dark ride in a theme park. A rollercoaster in pitch black. Fun and adrenaline inducing, but terrifying and with dark corners Joe couldn’t see into. And did he really want to see into those corners? That would totally ruin the whole ride, wouldn't it?
It was a constant battle between wanting to know more, get the answers from you that Mr Self-doubt clearly needed, but also, let you exist as this mysterious, lovable, gorgeous lucky charm of a person that boosted the moods of everyone that accidentally got too close.
Joe wanted to know the technicalities behind the magic trick that you were, but also wanted to marvel in awe and pretend that the magic was actually real.
A never-ending back and forth. Confusion and delight. Never sure of your motive. Never sure if that voice was right, or had it completely wrong.
Today, Joe decided that he was going to be that voice himself, even if he could only manage to hold onto that for the duration of him being in the coffee shop.
He was the voice, even if it was stuttery, and even if it was going to crack like a prepubescent schoolboy. He was going to be the voice today, and he was going to use it to ask you an important question.
Joe lifted his head back up, looked you straight in the eye, cleared his throat which gave away his nerves, and said,
“No, I meant, let’s go out. Get a coffee. Together, sometime,”
He got the words out as he rubbed sweaty palms together slowly. You had done nothing to get him this nervous. He'd done that all by himself today, like a big boy.
“Well, well, well,” you plopped the paper cup back onto its tower.
For a moment, you just looked at Joe. Let your lips go from being sucked into your mouth, to a pucker. Let your eyes go from big, rounded, eyebrows raised high, to narrow little slits, almost hidden behind a frown. You let Joe’s words sit there for a minute. Thought them over carefully. Made him sweat a bit more. Joe’s smile got smaller by every second that passed, and just before it was completely gone, you turned your head to look at your coworker, then around the shop and shouted,
“Nobody look at me!”
Of course it did the opposite, made everyone look at you directly, and made Joe cringe. Inwardly, though, where you couldn’t see.
You leant a bit closer, lowered your voice, pretended you tried to make your conversation a bit more private, even though you’d literally just pulled everyone’s attention onto whatever you were going to say.
“All right,” you bit your lip in a bad attempt to hide a smile.
An awkward chuckle on an exhale from Joe followed.
“I get off at three,”
Oh my God, Joe thought. So direct. Being asked out on a date and then proposing to meet later on that same day? Joe would have never even thought of it as an option, would have never gone for it, and a part of him was already searching for excuses. No, maybe next weekend? Or even tomorrow? When I've had time to mentally prepare a bit more? But Joe was his own voice still, the best case scenario guy, and so he smiled, blushed, and nodded.
“Great. Then I’ll see you at three.”
And then you just stared. Looked into each other's eyes. Joe's eyes were like weapons of mass destruction, you thought. He better be real careful what he aimed those at. They were fine to look directly at you, though. Gave you a chance to get lost in them a little. Swim around inside them for a bit.
You grinned, and let Joe grin back at you, and in a terribly disgusting turn of events, you felt your own face burn up.
You smiled, and you blushed and you were definitely holding up the queue together, because by now two other people had walked in, but Joe had just asked you out on a date with him and you wanted to make this moment last longer. It couldn’t just be over. Not so fast.
Your colleague disagreed, and cleared his throat loudly, making the both of you turn to look at him.
“Are you going to order a large americano, or what?” stern eyes at Joe.
“Oh! Yes, please,”
You grinned, grabbed a paper cup, nearly dropped it because, oh my God, Joe was staring at you, stop it right now Sir, and found your sharpie with clumsy fumbly fingers.
“Name?”
“Eddie.”
Mother fucker used the joke you’d so very nearly used two days ago when you’d called him Ed. What an idiot.
“Of course.”
You wrote down Joe, and let him pay.
Joe thought he understood. You accepted, and so it was confirmed. You wanted something from him, and now he had finally figured out what it was. Joe understood now. And although not opposed, he predicted he was probably going to enjoy this too, knew it was just going to be what it was. A transaction. Just like with everyone else. It was a little different, because it had taken him this long to figure it out, and he was wary still, like he had been wary for months now.
But you wanted something from Joe, and Joe had just decided to hand it over.
Joe understood now.
---
The Taglisted:
@ghostinthebackofyourhead @dirtyeddietini @kiwisa @jasminearondottir @josephquinned @cancankiki @sidthedollface2 @dylanmunson @munsonsgirl71 @alana4610 @emmamooney @xomunson @sadbitchfangirl @thatonefan-girl @paola-carter @eddiemunsonfuxks @figmentofquinn @haylaansmi @thewondernanazombie @munsonmunster @kellysimagines @mybffjoe @harrys-tittie @chaoticgood-munson @jenisnotlost @sherrylyn628 @bdpst-massacre @xeddiesbattattsx @05secondsofsexgods @lovelyblueness @adoreyouusugar @nadixq @prozacandnicotine @munsonswhore86 @alwayslindie @thefemininemystiquee @hauntingbastille @eddie-joe-munson @ali-in-w0nderland @pepperstories @phyllosilicate-s @thebellenouvelle @luvrsbian @joesquinns @choke-me-joey @alizztor @thelostmoonofpooosh @did-it-work @capricornrisingsstuff - (tag list currently full)
#joe quinn#joseph quinn#joe quinn x reader#joseph quinn x reader#joe quinn x you#joseph quinn x you#joseph quinn x y/n#joe quinn x y/n#joe quinn fanfic#joseph quinn fanfic#sunshine blend dark roast#fanfiction#fluff#requested#rpf#part 4
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2379 March 19th
The air had a distinct chill to it by now, and Guz looked all around her as the sky took on an almost silvery cast. Gaps in the trees at the edge of the clearing acted as pinhole cameras, producing hundreds of little bright crescents onto the ground and onto the shuttlepod.
"I told you we'd be in the path of totality," Marta said, nudging Guz on the arm and pointing up at the sky. She tapped a button on her clear glass visor, and it suddenly became reflective and metallic. "Look at that. Any minute now." The Sun was now just a slim crescent, the Moon covering nearly all of it.
“Augh…” Guz said, rubbing her arms, “sorry I questioned your navigation skills.”
“Good,” Marta said.
"We have precisely three minutes and twelve seconds, by my count," Dyani said.
Guz had her telescope, a 5" catadioptric astrograph, set up on an equatorial mount, with a tunable Herschellian Wedge serving as a solar filter and heat rejection system. She was used to handholding her telescope, but with only three minutes of totality, she didn't want to take any chances. The holographic eyepiece she'd been using had dutifully captured full spectrum imagery of Sol and before the partial eclipse began she had tuned through the different visible wavelengths in the passthrough lens, allowing her, Marta, and Dyani to see prominences and filaments in Sol’s chromosphere, as well as detailed sunspots in its photosphere. Marta, having evolved around this especially hot star, could even make out the magnetically active plages in the deep-violet Calcium-K line, but Guz's eye lenses had a slight green-yellow tint which blocked far-violet, and Dyani's Vulcan eyes could barely even see blue--though she reported detail in the deep-red Hydrogen-Alpha view which astounded Marta and Guz. No matter--once the eclipse was over Guz would be able to process all of the spectral bands and find more appropriate wavelengths to display them in.
Guz was anxious, and she paced back and forth, shaking her wrists. They made an almost cartoonish literal slapping and sticking sound and she went, which was nice, because it was both tactile and auditory. She went back to the telescope, but she tripped on the tripod.
Guz emitted a gargling warbling sound which Marta was pretty sure was a mellanoid curse word, and she scrambled to fix the telescope’s alignment.
“AUGH!” she said “I messed up the polar alignment! It won’t track now…”
Marta stood up from her chair, and grabbed her canes. She walked up to Guz and put an arm on her shoulder. “Hey, Eaurp, don’t worry. The important thing isn’t the holos.”
“Actually the holos are incredibly important! I know you and Dyani are just here for fun, but I’m doing this for my Astro-251 class. I have to get these images!”
“Eaurp,” Dyani said. “It is unnecessary to fret. Professor Frederick made it clear that terrans have a long history of ‘eclipse madness’--”
“But I’m not a terran!”
“It is not a matter of the species, so much as the circumstance. As you are always so quick to remind us, Earth is the only known inhabited planet with a natural satellite that appears the same size as its parent star. The eclipses are rare and last only minutes,” Dyani said.
“Yeah girlie, you got the eclipse madness,” Marta said, “Just calm down for a minute. You’ll find a way to make up your project.”
Guz put her face in her hands, then looked up and began fiddling with her PADD to try and fix the alignment.
Guz tapped her combadge. "Cadet Guz's log, stardate 56212, continued. Terrans call it March 19th 2379. Local time is… 12:32. We are here in the Italian countryside, a minute away from totality, and I just bumped my telescope off of Sol. I have missed all three total eclipses that have occurred on Earth during my time here. This is my last year, and so my last shot. Everything has to go just right.”
“Forty seven seconds,” Dyani reported. Guz checked her chronometer. Dyani’s mental timing was ‘only’ two seconds off.
“Stop fiddling with that thing and just relax!” Marta said.
“NO! I HAVE TO SEE THE CORONA UP CLOSE!” Guz shouted, and she buried her eye into the holograph’s pass-through. “Ok! I see Sol and Luna!” Guz said. “This alignment will have to do…”
Guz watched as the last slivers of white sunlight disappeared. She looked up, and during that last moment, the entire world changed around her. She was standing in twilight, but with the sky orange all around her. She looked around. The animals were reacting wildly, with twitters and chirps and ribbiting from the local fauna, likely confused as to why the Sun went out in the middle of the day.
When Guz had first set foot on Earth, it was very literally an alien planet. But it still had blue skies, white clouds, deep blue seas, and green foliage (albeit much dryer and less sticky than she had been accustomed to).
The planet Guz was standing on right now was not Mellanus, not Italian Earth, and certainly not Luna--it was an entirely unique world, one which only existed for minutes at a time. Guz was standing on Planet Eclipse.
Guz looked up and shouted. “Hah! LOOK! LOOK AT THAT! THE CORONA!”
Nothing could have prepared her for it. The corona was a silvery halo that extended from the apparent black hole in the sky in all directions, with concentrated hairlike filaments stringing out from reddish pink spots on the black circle’s limb.
Before the eclipse, Sol had been white with a few dark specks and surrounded by darkness, but this thing was nearly its inverse: black, with a few tiny starlike dots inside of it, surrounded by a pale ghostly light. The Sun had disappeared, and something completely alien took its place. Intellectually, Guz knew that all stars--even Zwo-nmu--had coronae, but this was the first time she’d seen the corona with her own two eyes. She supposed it wouldn’t have to be the last--maybe next time she was in space she’d try to blot out the sun with her finger.
Guz could make out four starlike points, one to the left of the Sun, and three to the right. “Look! Look! There’s the other planets! The bright ones are Jupiter and Venus!”
She looked down and around again to see Marta sitting in the grass just staring up at the thing, her visor completely transparent. Dyani had taken her visor off entirely and stared, silently.
“WAIT! NO! The uh! The filter!” Guz said. She hadn’t remembered to remove the filter from her telescope. She scrambled back to the telescope, and twisted a dial on the Herschellian Wedge. The view through the passthrough eyepiece brightened up by 100,000 times and Guz actually saw the corona, magnified 50 times, in unfiltered, uncompressed detail. The detail was so delicate and intricate. Guz could now see the row of cilia-like prominences to the left, which Dyani had seen so easily before but which she and Marta had been unable to detect. In true color, Sol’s chromosphere was magenta, not the spectral red she had seen before in the H-alpha. As Guz’s eyes adjusted, she could even make out Luna’s city lights. She recognized Tycho City, and New Berlin immediately.
“Dyani, how much time do we have left?” Guz said.
After a moment, Dyani replied. “We should have another two minutes of totality left.”
Guz looked away from the eyepiece to get another look at the gaping hole in the sky where the Sun should be.
And then, in an instant, the corona disappeared entirely. A bead of intense white light bore into Guz’s retina, and she immediately flipped her visor down.
Guz’s hands shook. Then she slowly began to smile. “THAT WAS THE COOLEST THING I HAVE SEEN IN MY LIFE!” she shouted, and she began to jump up and down. Her hair went jiggly. Dyani looked at her with a blank stare, and Guz felt a little shy and stopped her celebrations. “I just can’t believe Mellanoids were robbed of this.”
“It is a remarkable celestial coincidence. The diurnal stellar eclipses visible on the T’khut-facing hemisphere of Vulcan do not capture the character of 40 Eridani A’s corona so completely, nor do they produce an atmosphere of such… eerie character.”
“Marta! Marta! Was it different to a Solar Eclipse on Luna?” Guz said, turning around.
Marta was still on the floor, rubbing her eyes, sobbing quietly to herself.
“Marta?” Guz said.
Marta reached out for a hand. Guz gave her a hand and pulled her up. Marta sniffled.
“Are you okay?” Guz said.
Marta just nodded. She didn’t look ok. Guz looked at Dyani, who just shrugged. Marta wiped her eyes again. Guz picked up Marta’s canes, and she walked back to her chair to take a seat.
Guz returned to her telescope. The herschel wedge had not been re-enabled. The holographic eyepiece was fried.
Guz stuttered a little. “Oh. Uh. Dyani. Um. There weren’t two minutes left.”
“What.”
“It was probably more like. Um. Two seconds. So the uh. The holograph is ruined.”
“Damn,” Dyani said.
“Haha. Yeah. Um. That coulda been my eye, haha…”
“Then it is fortunate you were not looking through the eyepiece at the end of totality.”
Guz checked her PADD to make sure the data was streamed properly to her recorder. When she was convinced that it was, she turned off the telescope and began packing it back up into the Class 2 Shuttlepod. By the time she finished, the sky had grown brighter; the air warmer.
When she was done, she sat down on the grass next to Marta’s chair, and put her visor back on. Luna no longer covered so much of Sol.
“It was… I don’t even know how to describe it…” Marta said. “I mean I’ve… I’ve seen solar eclipses before. And they’re beautiful from Luna, don’t get me wrong. But it’s all so different when you’re on Earth.”
“It’s a shame I won’t ever have the chance to see a solar eclipse on the Moon,” Guz said. “Well, I mean, I have seen one, it’s just, when you’re on Earth, we call it a Lunar Eclipse.”
“I’ve even seen terran eclipses before,” Marta said. “They don’t look like anything special from all the way up there. Just a little dark spot going across Earth. When I was younger, I wondered what terrans were so hyped up about, you know? But I get it.”
“And! And!” Guz said. “IT’S SO COOL! THAT YOU GET TO SEE ECLIPSES HAPPEN AT ALL ON LUNA AND VULCAN!”
“Indeed,” Dyani said, “the air temperature does drop noticeably during stellar eclipses due to the reduction in insolation. It is cool shit.”
“Omen doesn’t do that! When Omen got close to Mellanus, it was a lot like Luna--but a lot brighter. But it never goes in front of Zwo-nmu!”
“Why?” Marta said.
“It is a simple consequence of Mellanus’ coorbital trajectory,” Dyani said.
“Closest thing we get to eclipses is when Cold Ember transits Zwo-nmu and if you have really good vision you can see it with just a dark visor as a little dot.”
“I remember going out in my EV suit after finishing an early morning delivery in Oceanus Procellarum one time when I was 13,” Marta said. “The Sun hadn’t risen, but off to the east I could see this faint gray glow. I turned off my suit lights and just stared at the glow, with everything else almost black, just lit a little by the crescent Earth. The milky way was out, but this gray glow was even brighter than it. I kept watching it, even as my suit began to get freezing cold, I sat down on a little boulder a few meters from my shuttle. As I waited; it must have been almost an hour, I saw just about a quarter of a silvery circular halo. I saw a tiny hint of magenta come over the mountain in the distance, and before I knew it, the world exploded into light as the Sun came up. I had the ghost image in my eye for an hour after that. Made getting home a little harder.”
“Wow,” Guz said.
“In principle, what we have just witnessed was a sunset and a sunrise on Luna, just much farther away,” Dyani said.
“A couple years later I saw my first solar eclipse--what Terrans call a Lunar eclipse--and I realized what that ghostly glow was. But even then, I couldn’t see the corona all at once. Earth blocked half of it at a time,” Marta said. “But still I figured that the whole landscape around you turning orange-red from all of Earth’s sunrises and sunsets shining on the Moon more than made up for seeing the corona all at once.”
“Does it?” Dyani asked.
“It’s different when you’re standing out in the open without a space suit. You’re not in this temperature-controlled little box. It all feels… so much more real. The Sun shining right on my face, the air gets real chilly…”
“Is that why you were having an emotional reaction?” Dyani said.
“What? No. Not quite,” Marta said. “I dunno. Maybe. But I just realized, during totality, that that wasn’t just a big bite taken out of the Sun. That’s my home up there. I’ve seen it from space hundreds of times. But never like that.”
“Yeah…” Guz said.
“The Nevasan eclipses visible on Vulcan are similar to a Solar eclipse as viewed from Luna,” Dyani said. “Except the partial phase lasts minutes and the total phase lasts over an hour. It is essentially a brief second night time. 40 Eridani A’s corona is not visible for much of the eclipse.”
“My only other chance to see any eclipses was when I was doing survival training on Andoria, but they had us on Andoria’s far side and the one solar eclipse we would have seen due to an occultation by an outer moon, we were stuck inside the ice caves. Apparently Andorians don’t consider solar eclipses worth interrupting work for. Plus, 40 Eridani B is a white dwarf, so it’s not like its corona is actually visible. Also--you know how our shadows got weirdly sharp in the last minutes before totality? It’s like that all the time on Andoria. So at least there’s that.”
Guz looked down at the ground, then back up at the slowly brightening crescent Sun, and then at the dirt below her feet. The leaves of the trees still projected crescent-shaped images on the ground. Guz held her hair out, and bubbled it up, wondering if the green-tinted caustics cast on the ground would behave similarly.
“It was certainly one hell of an expedition to close out our senior years,” Dyani said.
“There she goes with the colorful language again,” Marta muttered.
“Perhaps you should speak up so Eaurp can hear you,” Dyani said.
They were arguing again. Guz didn’t think Dyani liked her very much, but she definitely didn’t seem to get along with Marta. “Thanks for coming out to Italy with me for this,” Guz said.
“Yeah,” Marta said. “It was… an adventure.”
“The Italian peninsula is home to many interesting historical sites. Perhaps we should visit some of them,” Dyani said. “For example, the fallen tower of Pisa.”
“Touristy nonsense, it’s just a field full of a bunch of people pretending to try to lift it back upright,” Marta said.
“I wanted to see it. Anyway we should probably start with finding any town, since our shuttlepod isn’t flying any time soon,” Guz said.
Marta gave Dyani some side-eye.
“That was not my fault,” Dyani said.
--------------
And yes, there really will be a total solar eclipse visible in Afroeurasia on March 19th, 2379 (at about 12:30 in Italy.)
Marta Martinez and Dyani were two of Guz's classmates at Starfleet Academy. In fact, Dyani was Guz's roommate. Dyani is @raydrawsdaly's OC. Marta and Guz are my OCs.
#Future Eclipse#Solar Eclipse#long post#fic#fanfic#Star Trek#Eaurp Guz#Dyani#Marta Martinez#Original Character#Original Characters#Starfleet Academy#Eclipse#Science Fiction#Slimegirl
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take me, one more wave | w. maximoff
summary: you start to take your first steps towards healing, but that doesn't mean the path will be easy. luckily for you, Wanda happens to be a great listener.
warnings: heavy make out, smut, strap-on sex (Wanda receiving), fingering (r receiving), hair pulling (Wanda receiving), dirty talk, dry humping, maybe a cumfilled strap hint, mentions of smoking, mentions of drinking, canon typical violence, heavily detailed panic attack, angst.
pairing: Wanda x fem!reader
word count: 11k
A/N: ok, things are finally getting better in a certain way (and horny, these people are horny), but the question is… how long will it stay like this, eh? kidding, i want the happiness of these two as much as anyone - but it's just so ironic to enjoy writing angst when you have a heart as gay as mine, i know
((wanda and r totally listened to deftones together btw
well, well, well, enjoy!
|series masterlist|
|part one| |part two| |part three| |part four| |part six|
《《《《《《《ᱬ》》》》》》》
Wanda's unwary green eyes glance toward the face of the brown-strap watch, screwed on solemnly by the length of her slender right wrist, in a necessary acknowledgment of the time marked by the small gray hands on its monotone interior—seven forty-two in the morning, still there is plenty of time to have breakfast peacefully and subtly.
And then she hears, in an avid gulp, Tommy drink the entire contents of his glass of warm milk at an astonishing speed, almost as if to quench a naughty thirst in the back of his throat that has lingered for more than days. And then Wanda takes a deep breath. It would be nice if he understood a little more of what peacefully and subtlety really mean.
Then she just blinks slowly because soon after she turns, with a spatula, the face of a homogeneous, round mass of blueberry and oatmeal, which is fried before the extension of a metal frying pan which she holds by the handle with her right hand, the pancake shivering in the air as she does.
Y/N used to be a natural breakfast pancake connoisseur, Wanda remembers well, which is why she suspects her boys have a specific taste for their morning meal too – blueberry pancakes, sugary cereal, toast with butter and orange juice, just as their mother was so fond of too.
Behind Wanda, then, on the counter stretched out to the left side of the sink, a juicy orange sliced in half floats and squeezes against a juicer made of yellow plastic, the spherical fruit with a porous rind shrouded in a thin layer of scarlet mist all around itself (the fruit which is enchanted to press itself against the object), turning and squashing, until all its fresh juice is extracted into a thick glass jar.
Nearby, in a pale plastic bowl, a wooden spoon turns clockwise as it mixes more pancake batter on its own.
At the dark dining table, which is set not that far from the stove where Wanda is standing on its edge, Billy, intently, finishes verifying a question answered the night before in his math notebook, eyes diligently digging into each of the numbers written there on the sheet of paper in airy strokes of pencil lead by his refined grammar, while Tommy, still with his cheeks cluttered with long swigs of warm milk, nibbles a green apple with a slurping hollow sound of “fronc”, even though his absorbed gaze does not fail to capture any movement made by the cartoon character that is highlighted by the television screen placed some distance away from the table, next to the dark linen sofa.
The sweet melic essence from the pancakes intoxicates the interior of the house, like an irrepressible deluge of intense domestic flavors worthy of a family environment, with its den centralized in the kitchen – a room which is being covered by a serene sheet of external solar beams, shy golden streaks, thin as small threads of gold, that enter the room through the long panes placed in their thin windows raised in front of the sink.
The mild climate that hangs over the city during the early afterglow of the morning, despite the sunny day that stretches across the celestial field, is prone to somewhat heavier clothing than the usual spring shots require, but this is something that in no way bothers the excellent brown-haired witch, who, in turn, wears, buttoned to her chest, only a simple silk shirt, and nothing superimposed on this banal piece of clothing.
As for her children, on the other hand, Wanda has that maternal need to wrap them up and keep them healthy and warm, which is why both twin boys wear long, thick fabrics on their small bodies – to shelter from the subtle chill that plagues that phlegmatic morning regurgitated through the so prosaic Westview.
“Boys” she calls over her shoulder in a motherly tone, “Have you packed your bags yet?”
“Yes, mama” is the immediate response from Billy, still sitting at the table.
"I was going to do that right now" and then Tommy gets to his feet, leaving the half-bitten apple on the table, "Be right back"
The boy turns his back and then heads towards the stairs - although his speed is not exceeding that of a normal child, there is still, on Tommy's part, a useful lightness in his actions as he steps fast, one foot right behind the other, down the wooden steps, inferring a warning from Wanda's reprimanding side.
"Tommy, please don't run up the stairs, I already told you that"
But there is no answer to be heard – just the tiny sounds of fast footsteps to be perceived stepping away, towards the upper floor. Wanda blows out a helpless sigh, shaking her head in denial as she mutters silently under her breath.
"I swear, he's just like his mother..."
There is the squawk of a bird outside the house, along with the wheels of a car on the asphalt. Wanda flips the pancake again, and then another one after that, before feeling the tiniest touch of solemnity beside her hip and a pair of expectant little eyes looking at the contour of her jawbone, right next to her ear.
“Mama?” a tiny voice calls out to her, sounding uncertain and vulnerable at her core.
Wanda allows herself to smile with the corner of her pink lips, losing the focus placed on her blueberry pancakes as she turns to the boy.
It is Billy who catches her eye, holding the hem of her silk shirt between the tips of the small fingers of his right hand. He wears a jacket of roomy red, white, and blue stripes to his juvenile torso, and looks down at the floor beneath his sneakers when Wanda tries to make eye contact with those eyes inherited from her ex-wife's family, offering him an affectionate smile, showered with kindness.
“What is it, Billy?”
But there is a hesitation in the speech on the part of the boy, Wanda doesn't take long to verify this fact because she knows him so well, she just knows so much about him. And the little boy seems cornered, somewhat irresolute, in an internal conflict with his own efforts to say whatever it is he has to say (because he presses his lips together and doesn't sustain eye contact with his mother). Wanda just knows, at her heart, that something isn't right.
And then she squats down on her knees, lowering herself to a height where she and Billy would be eye level, and Wanda scans his childish face with her gaze in half a second – his eyes looking back at her, the hesitation in the midst of the darkness, the disinclination which he is no longer able to hide as much as his mother is interested in the cunning childish caution. She takes her lower lip in her mouth and opens and closes her eyes, expelling a gust of warm air through her nostrils.
The hard plastic spatula magically continues to flip and fry the pancakes in the pan, even when Wanda no longer does it directly.
“Baby, what is it? Did something happen?” Moving her fingers closer to her son, Wanda holds him so that she can take the contour of his small face between the palms of both hands.
"You know you can tell me anything, don't you, dear?"
“Can I” Billy limps in an ambiguous vagueness, supported by his mother's gaze, which in turn propels him an encouraging smile, “Can I stay home today, mama?”
Something in Wanda tinkles – but she knows she shouldn't show such sudden estrangement at the boy's request, even though she knows well that it's not like him to be the type who openly takes advantage of any possible loophole to be able to skip class. She just tilts her head to the side of her left shoulder, stroking the skin of her son's cheeks with both thumbs in a circle.
“Why, baby? You like going to school so much... Did something happen there? Did someone say something to you?”
“Uh, no, no one said anything… it's just that” Billy falters a bit in wavering hesitation, brow furrowed, and a flash of fur creased between his dark brows, “They think too loud, mama. And I can hear what they think... what they think of me. They think I'm different. They are afraid of me"
The distraught voice lectured her, a grim veil clouding his innocuous childish gaze, his small, dull face exhaling an air of embarrassment, melancholy weighing down on his thick lepidopteran lashes, both razor-edged eyebrows twisted in a caliginous way.
There's an excruciating moment of silence, supplanted by an aching feeling of Wanda's heart squeezing inside her chest; a troubled gaze spread across her emerald-green eyes.
She knows what it's like, hearing what they think so loud it sounds like screaming inside her head, feeling what they feel to the point of wanting to throw up. The fear. The disgust. And she only came to feel it when she was already a young woman somewhat older than her boy is, better able to deal with this avalanche of judgments that feel like mosquitoes buzzing around her brain.
But Billy is just so young, and so small.
She knows what they think, what they assume—the boys' mothers are gifted with superhuman abilities, and so will they someday. And it’s scary. Perhaps with Billy there is even more stigma; after all, he is a sweet child, quiet and careful, even a little shy – the kind of child Wanda herself once was also.
With a gulf of anguish regurgitating her stomach, the enchantress touches the scrawny left shoulder of the harried boy with the palm of her hand; a faint, complacent smile directed at her son.
“Oh baby, they just don't understand…they don't understand what you are. And sometimes some people are afraid of what they don't understand. I think it's part of human nature to be surprised by the different, and believe me, I know how it is... how difficult it is, to be different. I know"
“Mom told me that everyone is a little different” the boy carries himself in a downcast way, somewhat embarrassed, prompting a frown on the part of Wanda, who promptly gives him a curious look.
“But… but no one seems to like it when I'm different...”
And then, she presses her lips together in a line. There's a pile of forgotten pancakes by the now-off stove.
“I…I understand, Billy. I used to think about myself in a certain way too, but... I know I'm something else. And so are you, honey. But that doesn't mean that you and I aren't ourselves anymore, we just... have something different that makes us a little different from other people”
She sighs.
“Me, you, your mom and Tommy, we… we're different, but that's who we are. And I know this isn't what everyone sees, but... you're still you, Billy. You’re still my sweet, precious little boy. So it's okay to be different, because you'll always have us on your side, honey. We could never leave each other even if we tried. Do you know why?”
She questions, in soft tones of a warm, loving maternal touch.
“Because a family is forever?”
Wanda smiles, caressing the skin of Billy's cheek with the pad of her thumb.
"Yes, baby. A family is forever. You, Tommy, me and your mother will always be a family. Even if it's a family of a bunch of weirdos with superpowers” she adds in a chuckling tone, inferring, on the boy's part, in a warm little smile, “You don't have to be afraid to be different, honey. Stand your ground, be yourself, and the rest of the world can never touch you”
“Even if they are afraid of me?”
“You can't control their fear, Billy” she pats him on the cheek, “Only your own. And you should never be afraid to be who you are”
“Right” Billy smiles, and, as in an infectious spread of his childish alacrity, Wanda ends up doing it too, “I can’t be afraid of who I am”
"That's right, honey"
She then stands up and wraps her forearms around the boy's scrawny shoulders, pulling his small body close to hers, enveloping him in a loving embrace that is gladly accepted when Billy tucks his face into her chest.
Wanda had long ago retained his facial features in memory (the sharp eyebrows, the small nose, the strong cheekbones like hers), but the witch, however, still devoted herself to studying him just to see that the boy was real, and he was there, and he was hers to love and care for; just as she did also with his brother.
She therefore placed a chaste kiss on a beam of skin on his forehead, before arranging for the caresses between the strands of his short, light brown hair. He still gave off a pleasant baby smell.
“I love you, Billy. I love you and Tommy very, very much” she smiles, and so does he, “But now I need to go see why your brother is taking so long to pack his bag, because I don't trust him alone for more than ten minutes and it's been a while since he went up"
And Wanda isn't the least bit surprised to find Tommy finishing his homework five minutes later – even though it's only thirty minutes before school starts this morning.
ᗢ
The tenuous hands of the circular clock on the wall emit ticks, clicks, as they move to mark the time of little more than 2:22 on a particularly gray afternoon, with infinitesimal touches of an insistent spring chill taking care of your keen senses inside one of your many, many jackets - this particular one is made of a dark material, with fleece trimming around the collar.
You took a sip of warm coffee before you arrived, interspersed with a few puffs of smoked cigarettes, and you think about having another cup of the hot drink once this meeting finally comes to a very anticipated ending.
The wall on which the clock is located is far away, painted in bands of a pale yellow and navy blue, but even so, your eyes focus on that thin piece of red plastic turning, getting lost in seconds, marking the emptiness of your gaze in an absorbed hypnosis that turns your brain into a dysfunctional, vacant mass. Concentration dispenses with intrusive thoughts, and you don't want to think about anything right now.
Still, something inside of you wants to get up, march and go to the sign that says, in big white bold letters, “HOW TO GET BACK NOW THAT THEY ARE BACK?” and rip that damn thing off like you rip a band-aid off a well healed wound.
It sounds stupid being there. You feel stupid for being there. What’s the point of being there?
Your heel propels your right knee up and down in a continuous motion of tendons, like the fluttering wings of a stirring bee. Up. Down. Up. Down.
On the thick material of your jacket, close to your right lapel, is an inviting sticker announcing your name written in the glossy lines of a thick, red highlighter, but the ripple of feeling characterized by the features of your face is nothing short of inhospitable and even a little grumpy.
You know you don't want to be there. You want to get up and go out and smoke a cigarette until you choke on the smoke and develop asthma (or something among those lines, whatever, who cares).
Then your leg wobbles. And it wobbles. As if you were trying to soothe one of your children when they were still tiny little babies, rocking them sitting on the kneecap of your knee joint.
But in the closed circumference of aluminum chairs, with broken people all gathered in a circle like a bed of dead flowers, that's not the only tic to point out (since an older man keeps poking his restless fingers, and a short-haired woman just can't seem to get her hand off her neck).
Fucking therapy group, that's what goes through your head when your teased eyes scrutinize around, finding themselves with gazes as bewildered as yours, among the other taciturn and hollow phantoms that mark their place in the thin unfolded chairs.
Everyone here is also a fucked up, one way or another.
Your leg wobbles.
The drinking fountain placed in the corner of the room bubbles a lot, but in view of the fact that you already were there for a considerable amount of lengthy long minutes, which were very painful to expire at the meager speed of a lame turtle (causing, thus, in your resigned relinquishment of counting them inside your own head), frugally seated in an uncomfortable creaky metal chair and utterly saturated, bored to the limit in your imo, this was not the first time the bubbles had sailed with snoring noises of “blob-blob” by the iced water.
You sigh in defeat, shrugging your shoulders into the faux leather of your jacket that is a bigger size than you really are – since there's nothing else you can do about it, you just hope to be able to remain in silence until the end of the meeting. It just seems… pointless, in all your honesty.
It's not as if you have any real interest in the account of that bespectacled man, with thinning hair already giving indications of a coming baldness, who so heartily narrates, with an audible lump pressed down to his throat, of the day that some friend of his (or his boyfriend, you didn't pay close attention and honestly you don't have any disposition to do so) crumbled to dust before his eyes on a casual lunch date on the 7th Avenue.
Or about how that same boyfriend knocked on his door five years later, as if nothing had happened, only to find him married for two years to another man.
Your leg wobbles.
"It's... it's hard, to think that you've moved on, that... that it's okay, that you're okay" his nasal voice echoes through the vault of the school gymnasium.
"Only for it all to come crashing down again when you least wait. When you see someone, or smell an odor, or hear a sound and... and suddenly it's all back, right there in front of you. Like it's happening again and again and again and there’s nothing that you can do about it”
You, however, aim cowardly eyes at your own feet, at your favorite pair of threadbare white Converse sneakers with the baggy laces that Wanda scolded you now and then for failing to tie them properly.
You know all about the creeping flashbacks slinking through the cracks of your damned soul. And the nighttime torments are your most frequent roommates – the shadows of your sleepless nights echoed to your bedroom wall.
You then let out a languid yawn, weary, turning to the wall clock above the Midtown High School bulletin board (the Academic Decathlon Team had won nationals once again in Washington), reality slipping away from you, giving stage to the impertinent boredom watered by the purest monotony, devastating everything that is present in its field of reach.
Click, click, stop. Click, click, stop – makes the clock. Your leg wobbles. And wobbles. But it stops just as abruptly, once someone calls out your name.
You blink just one time.
“Y/N?” it's Dr. Raynor who catches your eye when you look airy and scattered, urging you to tilt your chin toward her.
The middle-aged, upright woman sitting parallel to you with her right knee crossed over her left thigh, exuding a kind of polished erudition that makes her look out of place in the circle of chairs, looking too sophisticated to sit there in the company of wretched souls like those half-a-dozen poor sufferers (you included), aims your way with her dismayed eyes, and there's even a shadow of cynicism in those dark irises like burnt coffee beans that squint toward you.
Something about her tough stance, however, hints at a certain militaristic past, and you kind of turn up your nose at such a notion about the therapist.
It only takes a second of staring into the vacant eyes of that tart-faced woman for you to feel the bitterness of regret take over the tightness in your aching stomach, and a kind of compunction sinks in your shoulders as you wonder why you ever even resorted to Bucky Barnes to get the war veteran to refer you to a suitable therapist in the first place.
Maybe the old bastard did it on purpose. But he's the one who's coping better after all, and not you by any means.
"Why don't you share something with the group, Y/N?" the tapered toe of her shoe points towards your left knee, “It's your first day, so we'd like to know a little more about you”
You feel eyes, a bunch of them, reorienting their route all towards you (focusing, emphasizing, gauging your own figure), and to you it's kind of like a trial where Dr. Raynor is your judge and jailer, just waiting for the moment to come for her to hit with the hammer, and then, be able to sentence you to death by hanging. To pay for your sins.
The fingers of your right hand press along the outline of your left palm. The incisors in your upper jaw chew and harm the soft flesh of your lower lip. Blood, they want your blood. May you pay for your sins.
There, in that linoleum-floored sports gymnasium, there is no caressing of a sincere reception, the good old heart-to-heart typical of suffering misfortunes that find reciprocity in the experience of similar tragedies; in fact it may even be, but it is not possible for you to feel supported and sheltered in the face of the paying victims of your fateful failure.
If they are there, conglomerated by melancholy, engaged by sadness, agonizing in regrets that seem impossible to overcome, it is because your actions have led to this inevitable unfolding of successive events.
Of course, everyone there knows your face from Twitter, from the news, Youtube videos, press conferences, magazine pages and the damn action figures who never quite got the color arrangement of your old black and white suit right (which is now battered and folded, with a hole in the abdomen, stuffed inside a cardboard box gathering dust at the bottom of your wardrobe).
J. Jonah Jameson once said live that you were just an irresponsible little girl who should be stopped and sent away. So, they know. And you know they know. It's your fault, after all.
All yours, solemnly yours, it’s your fault that their loved ones went back to dust, they know, they know that you failed, that you didn't stop it from happening, that you didn't jump into the abyss, that you didn't give your soul.
They know.
You clean the inside of your throat hard, swallowing a sip of still saliva as you do.
“I don't know if there's anything interesting that I can... that I can share, no,” you mutter thinly, noticing a dirt on the heel of your sneaker, “I've never done this before, so I'm not sure where to start, doc”
“How about why you decided to join us today? It's a good way to start, and then you can say more about your personal experience with what happened” a short pause, “If you feel comfortable doing so, of course”
She adds quickly, almost emulating some fortuitous tone of cynical kindness. There is a moment of hesitation, covered by uncertainty and even anguish.
You can lie. Maybe give them, the hungry wolves, a condensed version of the facts and then call it a day.
But there urges a sense of honesty within yourself, of not straying along the easy paths as you have been doing for so many years; not when your motivation to be there, in that chair, in that group, is your deep yearning to be the person to instill a sweet smile on Wanda's kissable lips one more time in her life. Of being a mother to Billy and Tommy again, and no longer an uncertain figure throughout their lives.
You want to give it a try. You need to give it a try. For them (your family), it's always for them.
“My… my ex-wife asked me to come over, honestly” is what comes out of your mouth after a few shots of a long silence, “I think everyone here knows who she is. Who we are... who we were. What were we doing back then”
Your leg swings again, in a spasm of restless muscle.
“I think I'm here because I want to get better for her. For our... for our children. They don't deserve the way I treated them after… after all this shit, no”
You press your lips together in a thin line.
“I know they needed me. That they needed me to be there, but… it was hard. After that everything was just so goddamn difficult. Wanda, the boys... they've been gone for far too long. And I stayed. I just... just got left behind. And it was like that too when my parents died, I know, I should have known how to deal with it by then, but… but my parents didn't die because of me. I wasn't the one driving that fucking truck that hit us at 75 miles per hour. But that day... that day I was there, and I... I…”
You shift uncomfortably against the icy chair and clear your throat to ward off the acidic tears that accumulate in small pools inside your eyes, intercrossing your forearms in front of your chest as you lean your spine against the aluminum backrest.
“Wanda went to therapy after she got back, but I just… stayed there. Still. Stagnant. Not doing a damn thing about all of this stuck in here, in me. Drinking myself to sleep and staying up late. I think I just- I just couldn't get back to normal, you know? Not like other people did. Like there's something wrong with my damn brain programming, I don't know. I could barely hear my children cry without wanting to cry along with them, I… I didn't think I was worthy of touching my wife anymore, I... I don't know. I don't know"
And the one who gets the stage to speak is taciturnity, cold and cutting like the edge of a dagger.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t know”
There's so much you want to say.
So much stuff that swells and bubbles to be regurgitated out of you. They are words that are watched over by the martyrdom of your chest, contained in your guts, in your bones, in your bloodstream. Compunction has become part of your genetics at this point, you can even feel it moving through your cells, proliferating through your system like the ramifications of a harmful disease.
You do want to talk. But you just don't speak.
What you actually do is get to your feet, stretching your knees into the comfortable material of your pale baggy jeans, and then turn on your heels toward the half-open double doors of the gym, head down towards the floor, and the shoulders retracted as the psychologist calls out your name.
The only noise that accompanies your movements is the soles of your sneakers against the linoleum floor, making rhythmic squeaking sounds as your gait takes on a running air.
And you walk, one knee after the other, in a dreadful stomping march to the chipped pavement, even as the dimness of a firm grip leaves you blind as it swathes your corneas, and deaf as it envelops your eardrums.
The unavoidable collapse that follows, like the ends of a tasteless piece, is like a bolt of lightning that discharges from the heavens at the top of your head seconds later – electricity running through your nerves, your tendons, your spastic muscles.
It takes approximately seven seconds for hyperventilation to take over.
And you squat down, with both your feet flat on the pavement, when the joints of your legs sag and falter like soft lemon jelly, because the air becomes thick and gritty and so strenuous to swallow into your bronchial tubes, and even as the tissue in your lungs inflates and deflates like shriveled bladders being squeezed by vigorous fists, there is not enough oxygen for the blood in your head to flow, and the nausea and dizziness that wash over you like waves become too much to bear alone.
Maybe that was what it felt like to swallow a bunch of razor blades. Your pharynx constricts until it takes on a shape similar to a crumpled sheet of paper, and dark flashes crisscross your field of vision as your senses derail and fail.
Your skin bristles. You try to suck in the air, to keep it to yourself within the pathways of your sweltering aching lungs, but nothing happens. Your collapsing muscles no longer respond to your will.
Stomach acid rises up your larynx and the taste are disgraceful when it slides across the face of your tongue, an acrimonious sourness that burns between your teeth and seems to want to escape amid your parched lips. You slam your eyelids together as your heart seems to throb, swell and compress in thunderous internal hammers against the bones of your rib cage.
It looks like you're going to have a heart attack and die right there. And it’s dreadful. Petrifying, even. And then you blink once. And then twice.
The smell of scorched earth hangs in the air like a fog based on terror and despair.
There is nothing in all the vast longitudinal footage comprised of tens of miles circuited to your surroundings that is not limited to ruins, or craters, or rubble.
Vibrant whirs of spaceships rip through the slate-gray skies, metal and technology gleaming every time the sun comes out in timid beams from behind the thick clouds of smoke that billow into the sky—and then screams, several of them, and explosions, and the characteristic shiver of shimmering magic comes from the vanguard of Kamar-Taj's resident sorcerers in their quilted brown robes.
There are hundreds of devoted souls going to war against Thanos' army (again).
The undaunted battalion of Wakandan soldiers wade through the ruins and force their way through the row of gruesome alien sentries, brandishing their spears and shields where their strength is most concentrated, honoring their king in a dialect you've never heard before.
From their shoulders hung cloaks and fur, embroidered with droplets of blood and sludge of freshly splatted clay. Long streaks of yellowish-orange blistering magic pour from the battlefield.
I don't want to be here, you think as your vision clears the image of a colossal Ant-Man in the distance, as the deifies esoteric figure of a goliath, delivering a stunning punch to a winged creature wearing plates of extraterrestrial mineral armor, your own suit feeling suddenly too tight around the neck contour for you to breath appropriately.
I don't want to be here. I don't want to be here.
Archers, spearmen, mages, heroes, mounted swordsmen and a hundred more warriors to command them. The palms of your hands squeezing your own temples, crushing your skull thorough your hairline, quelling skin between your bent fingers.
I don't want to be here. Thanos killed my kids and my wife and my friends and he's here and it’s my fault that he’s here and I'm going to fail again and I'm going to die and everyone’s going to die and it’s my fault, it is all my fault.
You don't remember that it was Wanda who found you, crouching and deplorable like a wounded animal, tearing up wails of treacherous anxiety in the middle of the battleground; your face was smeared with dirt, dust, tears and blood. She didn't say, but she could hear the turmoil of your fretful thoughts from afar, all the way across the combat zone.
“Y/N! Baby!” the voice sounded so buoyant, covering the roars of the war raging round about you.
You don't remember seeing her again, all beautiful and sweaty, after five years apart from her. You don’t recall that when Wanda cried out your name, you could barely trust your ears as you lifted your head and saw her there, your gorgeous wife standing before you again.
And then you sobbed harder, and the first thing you uttered towards Wanda (after approximately 1825 days - 43.800 hours - without seeing her) was a chorus of wails, a compilation of cries, thick tears running down the contour of your scrunched nose as she involved your quivering, dirt-spattered body against herself.
She kissed the top of your head and a beam of perspiring skin of your forehead over and over again, cuddling you close to her necessitous tight embrace, because before she turned to dust, she also thought you were going to die in her arms. Her long disheveled red hair was like a curtain that captured you inside it, a barrier between the two of you and the rest of the war that raged there, around you.
“You’re alive Y/N, ty zhiv, moya lyubovʹ” she muttered against your murky hairlocks, more to herself than to you to hear, “You’re alive, baby, you’re alive, you’re alive”
“S-sorry! Sorry! I'm sorry Wanda, I'm sorry, I'm sorry Wanda, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I’m so sorry"
But this you remember, nonetheless. Of disgrace and shame. Of exhilaration and desolation.
From breaking down and wailing, crying out her name, bursting into tears, squeezing the material of the long, tattered, crimson coat that roofed your wife's warm body through your eager fingers. Of squeezing her so hard, your knuckles turning white, as if again she would go up in a cloud of dust through your firm grip if you let her go one more time.
As if you could still lose her, even when she was there, as close to you as she was. As if your grasp was the only thing holding her back to material reality.
You had so much to say to her. So much to tell, so much to ask. But after five years, your initial reaction was to grab her sturdy forearms and ask for forgiveness like a drooling, out-of-control child. Like someone with a widowed heart. Like a second chance.
"Sorry! Sorry! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, Wanda, I’m so sorry!"
And she held you close because she cried too. Because for a moment she was sure that she had lost you. That you had bled to death on the ground, your eyes empty and icy, blood seeping from your broken lips, and she wasn't there to hold you when the life had completely drained from your wounded body.
“It’s okay baby, it’s okay, you’re here, you’re safe, I’m here with you dorogoya”
It certainly wasn't the first time you've shed guilty tears on Wanda's behalf, though. And, of course, that wouldn't be the last time either.
ᗢ
Although, at the beginning of the week, a wave of scarce chill had hit the northeast region of the country, it was enough for when Friday arrived, right after the end of the week, for the sinuosities of the heat to return to the spring calendar, and a sweltering climate face again.
Over the pleasant little town of Westview, then, hangs the celestial vault, dazzled by dusk, from which all twinkle, like vivid space fireflies, the antecedent stars of a new tomorrow which contingently would come to lean over the serene little town, situated to the Mid-Atlantic region of US New Jersey.
The warm climate of seven o'clock at night prompts Wanda, in her residence, to dress her body only in a light burgundy silk shirt, and nothing superimposed on this simple piece of clothing.
She had just had dinner (both Y/N and their twin sons claimed there was something peculiar about her macaroni and cheese), and so she was ready to do the dishes - living in a house with just her and two others little boys, there's not even an ample amount of cutlery and plates in her possession to enjoy over a meal restricted to three people.
The bell rings in sudden chimes into the house, however, and Wanda, halfway through sliding the bristles of a foamy brush in a clockwise direction across the face of a china plate, somewhat guided by curiosity to discover whoever was knocking at her door on a full Friday night, tries to quickly dry both hands on a dish towel after closing the sink's faucet, in order to head with cautious strides towards the main entrance.
Her two twin sons, both snuggled up on the linen sofa and with their respective backpacks looking like guard dogs at their post tucked close to their heels, glare at their mother with their smart gazes overwhelmed in interest as Wanda crosses the living room toward the front door.
“Who is it, mama?” Billy asks, looking at her over his small, withered shoulder, his voice echoing over the sound of a random cartoon.
“No idea” is the return that comes from Wanda, who slides both of her damp palms down the sides of her hip dressed in a pair of dark leggings.
Opening the door causes the boisterous night breeze to kiss the high, sharp cheekbones of her pretty cheeks— however, it’s the figure of a woman clad in a shabby leather jacket and baggy jeans, Y/N herself standing in her front porch, what really takes Wanda by surprise.
The mindful pair of clever eyes look at the deep emerald-green shade of her own irises in firsthand, gleaming in a ruddiness that glows expectantly, but then they scan the entire length of her body until, finally, they reach her hip height.
And then, they've doubled in size, and Wanda realizes that it's been a considerable amount of time since her ex-wife has seen her dressed in such tight clothing.
“Y/N...?” she raises a single eyebrow at the other woman who is there in her doorway, her hands tucked into both pockets of the jacket that adorns her body.
It's certainly not a face Wanda expected to see there that night (although, in her core, she knows it's a more than welcome sight, because she can actually feel her heart skipping a lot, abruptly fueled with energy as she does so, and her mouth kind of salivates a little bit).
“Uh, h-hey, hey Wanda” Y/N breaths then, looking lost in her own words. This time she doesn't smell like smoked cigarettes.
There isn’t, for Wanda, a way to not to feel her gaze scorching her considerably toned thighs, which, despite being covered by the dark elastane fabric, suddenly feel so exposed, as if what she was wearing there were just one of the miniskirts she loved so much when she younger.
There's a brief moment showered with tentative silence, at which Wanda can well hear Y/N gulp and shrug. She, in turn, crosses both arms along her rib cage, just below her breasts buttoned by her red shirt, and leans on her side against the doorjamb.
There is a failed attempt not to bring back to her memory the fact that a couple days ago, Y/N had her face sheltered between those same thighs that she stares at so carefully.
“So,” Wanda chirps after a hushed pause, distant cricket sonatas adorning her speech, “Can I… can I ask what you're doing here? I mean, I don't want to sound rude, but... you know...”
She shrugs a little awkwardly.
“Oh yeah, sure” and Y/N emits a husky sound, as if clearing her throat, “Well, you told me to pick up the boys for the weekend on Friday, and… today is Friday"
Wanda opens her mouth to speak, but then connects her lips again in a fine line. Y/N seems to have stated the obvious, but she still stares at her ex-wife as if waiting for her reaction.
“Y/N” she begins, pronouncing the name in a slow-sounding voice, “I told you to pick up the boys next Friday, not this. Today they are going to sleepover at a friend's house. You know, Dottie, from school”
Y/N blinks once, and then one more time in realization of the facts. And then, she raises both of her eyebrows in a half-funny awe.
“I- wait, really?!”
“Well, yes” Wanda nods her head in confirmation, even as she cages a spark of laughter in the back of her throat, “Actually, I was about to leave to drop them there”
“I, I- well shit, I was actually going to order hamburgers this time…”
And that's when Wanda can't help but chuckle softly, feeling her shoulders light up against the silk of her shirt as they sway subtly.
“You can tag along with us” Wanda proposes in a friendly and courteous tone of voice that portrays a smile, despite not having expressed it to her lips as she said, “If you want to, of course”
She adds quickly, almost like a thin squeak of a hesitant little mouse, eyeing her ex-wife in an expectant air – the fingers of her right hand hook uneasily through the fingers of her left hand as she does so.
And she doesn't know exactly why she'd offered it to Y/N, but something adorned by a rash itch inside her sort of wanted her to accept the proposal, like a fish accepting the bait of a hook. Wanda wants to hook her. She wants to hook her and keep her for herself.
And something even more urgent thumped in a throbbing gasp within her guts when it was that Y/N willingly nodded, nodding and a complacent half-smile broken at the corner of her lips, her hands still clasped inside her jacket pockets, sort of emulating a jock pose.
And something builds up inside Wanda for a third time, when the family of four finds themselves snugly secured by the seat belts of her car (a Buick Verano dyed in a can-of-tomato-sauce-red color that, in a way, goes well with her), the twins in the back and Y/N in the passenger seat, all neatly arranged in a homely and domestic way, performing with mastery the role of a well-structured family.
When, from the backseat, Tommy asked Wanda for a song and she promptly took her relaxed right index finger to press the digit on the little button that turns on the radio, only for the rustling sound that would encompass the interior of the vehicle to be the melody of an old alt rock song (a bit corny one), Y/N couldn't help but utter a hearty, nostalgic laugh as both boys grunted in tandem with the song's lyrics, and just as fast as she had done so before, Wanda quickly turned off the radio, feeling a flushed warmth heat her cheekbones and the tips of her ears.
She doesn't want to look the other way, at her ex-wife sitting close to the elbow on her right side. Wanda just wants to disappear in mortification.
She and Y/N used to have that same music as a soothing background for their late-night conversations in the compound, when the two of them, a couple of young girlfriends who could never get tired of each other, were just two bodies hugging and sweating against the rumpled sheets of her bed, the whole room smelling of sex and the red color – Deftones was definitely a band to listen to on pillowtalk… or at the heights of the passionate moans that would come after such pillowtalk.
“Ew, mama, what is this?” Tommy twists a beam of skin from his freckled little nose, and in the rearview mirror, Wanda sees Billy do the same in an expression of pure disgust.
“Wait, wait, wait, did your mama ever tell you guys about her goth phase?!” Y/N turns her chin over her left shoulder, flashing a smile cut in taunt mockery at which her voice sounds like a jocular laugh.
Wanda, on the other hand, grunts in embarrassment, squeezing the steering wheel material between her fingers. Maybe the boys wouldn't mind if she threw their mother through the windshield, after all.
ᗢ
The path back to the house had been solemn and, at Wanda's sheer request, you joined her in a romantic tasting of tea in the living room, having barely given up after the scorching mid-night that spills over Westview.
You didn't expect her to actually ask you to stay after you dropped the boys off at their friend's house (the little girl's mother, Sarah, certainly put an ulterior motive between you and Wanda, and your ex-wife swore her mouth to call her a bitch when it was just the two of you back inside her car), and you suspect she didn't expect you to accept the invitation either, because a veil of genuine astonishment fell over Wanda when you nodded with your head and smiled towards her.
(The initial invitation was for a glass of wine, but you said you were trying to avoid alcohol and Wanda apologized, and then the wine turned into tea which became a lame excuse for you to stay until after ten o'clock of the night)
The television which flickers, on its monochrome screen, a French film in black and white, is the only thing that fills the room with any kind of light or sound, as the two women, both seated well on the cushions of the dark sofa, say nothing more to each other (although a sudden abundance of coziness has surfaced in Wanda's exhilarating core, she who has her head bent dangerously close to her ex-wife's vigorous shoulder – her silky hair emanating a sweetened scent of strawberry shampoo).
You, however, roll on your axis in search of a comfortable position, and your elbow brushes lightly against Wanda's under the silk shirt, causing the two of you to look at each other curiously – two dark glances in the middle of the lighted room, only lit by the artificial lighting of a meaningless old romcom.
Wanda craves the comforting body heat radiating from you when as close to her as you are.
As much as you wanted to touch her, however, and felt your fingers tingling to do so; you, however, held the notion of the fact that between the two of you lay an invisible dividing veil, which neither of you would dare to cross a second time in such a short period of time.
And with that thought also tucked into her mind, Wanda chose to scoop more of her tea, enjoying the boiled hibiscus acrimony flavor that slides down the face of her tongue, between her teeth and the flesh of her cheeks. But she feels a gaze scrutinizing her from her jawline and cheekbones.
And you stare at her in ethereal devotion, simulating her gesture as she sips from the tea poured into her pretty china cup.
“So,” she calls, albeit from behind her teacup, “How's therapy going?”
You wet your lips with the tip of your tongue.
"Well, I've only been in one meeting so far... and I couldn't make it to the end" shrugging, you just know there's no need to withhold the facts, "I know I need to, and I swear that I will, but... it's hard to bring it all back. It's exhausting, exhausting as fuck. Honestly, I just want to lie down and not get up”
“I know,” she says, in a tiny, meaningful voice, “Yeah, I know how it feels”
And the air is kind of bitter, but you know toughness is needed. You know about the fact that you made mistakes with the woman sitting next to your right elbow, after all (grotesque and disproportionate mistakes), and from that you always understood very well.
But withholding awareness of your errands to those you've hurt and trying to repair what's been broken, that's kind of a fresh start that Wanda wants to see in you.
“But I'm trying, you see. For the boys, for... for you... I'm trying, Wanda. I'm trying to be better for you. Trying to take responsibility for my mistakes”
Something sparks inside Wanda, in hibiscus-tasting greed. And she looks at your face – and you just want to feel her close, all to yourself, comfortable in your needy grip. It scorched in will and greed sharpened through your veins. But all she does is just look for another sip of tea.
“I'm happy for you, Y/N. I really am. I know that it's easier to live in denial, that it feels more comfortable to stay in a melancholy state of mind, that... that acknowledging that you need help is difficult. I know it's hard, trust me" she half laughs, "I think I know better than most what self-deception looks like. And I know that someone can't live like that"
And then she looks at you, and you look at her.
“But you deserve to allow yourself to heal, Y/N. Not for me or the boys, but mostly for you. You deserve more, much more than that. You deserve to heal” and then, a vague hesitation, “Because it's when you heal that I'll forgive you”
And the silence is tiny, but it lasts for a considerable amount of needy seconds. Someone laughs greedily in the movie on television, a plastered, off-air laugh, but you didn't pay any attention to the joke – not when Wanda is next to you, when you want that woman so much that your veins throb inside your skin just for you to take her for yourself.
And when she stands up, the linen on the sofa moving next to her body to do so, your gaze follows her closely, attentive, watching her make her way to the kitchen, whereupon Wanda heads towards a new round of hibiscus tea.
Her dark hair looks silkier than usual, and you want to run your fingers through the locks just to feel, between your avid digits, the softness that oozes from Wanda's head. To make sure that touching them one more time would be like reeling in a dark puddle from the source of your greatest victory, your greatest pleasure in life.
Then you get to your feet, stretching your knees out into your baggy old light blue jeans.
And as if a red leash is constricted around the outline of your neck and Wanda is the one holding the rein, pulling and squeezing until the blood rushes to your head, towing you around like her pet, you are magnetized towards the throbbing figure of your ex-wife – as if you might choke and suffocate if you didn't breathe from the scarlet oxygen molecules that evaporate so subtly through the pores of her skin.
You need her to fill your lungs, to quench your thirst, to teach you to breathe again.
And your fingers throb in anticipation as she turns and looks at you, standing there, in the middle of her kitchen, in the middle of the night; both of her irises drenched in a sharp shade of moss-green, her pupils dilated like two abyssal puddles you want to sink into, as if you're on the edge and need just one last incentive to give yourself away once and for all; her chest heaving weighty like an animal in confrontation mode.
And it doesn't surprise you, in fact, when the proficient witch stomps toward you and takes your face between her warm palms, grabbing the bones of your jaw to pull you into a needy kiss.
When your lips clash your obsession explodes inside your chest, as if your mind bends to Wanda's will; she who invades your senses with a deluge of scarlet liquid and usurps your essence, your soul, your heart.
You know you are as devoted to this woman as a believer is devoted to their god. That she is purely your religion and your belief, that her body is the reason for your idolatry.
Gradually, you obtained urgency to overcome the slowness, and rudeness took precedence over the elegance imbued in the act. The kiss is transmuted into something visceral and animalistic, primordial, just bodies lacking the warmth of flesh or the robustness of touch; a throbbing knot at the mouth of both of you bellies just waiting to be undone.
As if in a rehearsed ceremony, you run your hands over Wanda's thighs and evenly spaced knees, and she, in return, links the folds of her elbows to the outline of your neck, placing herself on your lap, belly to belly. Soon, a sly pink tongue slips back into her mouth in search of what is hers, expert and needy.
And then, a strong, powerful touch, palms wide open and pressed to the curve of Wanda's round ass over dark leggings, which elicits an ambrosial groan from her as you sit her on the kitchen table, rising from her heels, standing through her open legs.
And you dive towards her mouth again, being welcomed like a welcome hug.
You feel a warm forehead press to your pale skin band above your eyebrows. And you and Wanda open your eyelids at the same time – pupils dilated and not at all confused. You feel like two animals mating, studying, seeing who will devour the other first.
Dark strands like charcoal strumming against the material of your jacket that feels just so hot against your smoldering body.
Shedding with the tips of her cut nails along the line of your neck, Wanda, then morosely, slides her spandex-covered thighs across the accentuated bones of your hips, placing herself tucked beneath your navel—your legs bent, her heels rubbing against the jeans you wear.
Her gaze sharp and shadowed with impetuosity as you feel the familiar flicker of a crimson nebula caressing her mound of Venus, and Wanda's half-open mouth (parted lips gasping) projects a sly little grin at which she zippers your pants drop slowly, circled by a thread of intangible red.
In the green of her irises a haze of scarlet mist is traced and, like fire in a straw, it only takes a second for there to be no more trace of emerald in her eyes; red drowns green within its wall of vivid fire, red intoxicates you, red touches you where you urge to be touched.
“Wanda”
You mumble breathlessly, your breath hot against the pulp of her lips, her hand tucked inside your pants, fingers caressing you, your hips rocking in a friction against the tense lap below you.
“Wanda, Wanda please..."
“It’s okay, baby” the speech overflows in ecstasy, pure and high.
Expectantly, Wanda threads the sides of your hips with the insides of her thighs, searching for something only you can give her, her forehead pressed to yours.
“It’s okay, baby, you deserve this”
There's a hot touch on your clit and then you whimper in labored need, a whoosh of hot breath hitting your ex-wife's lower lip, a friction of your restrained hip rubbing against her nervous pelvis, looking out for each other.
Wanda's greedy nose drifts toward the curve of your neck, below your ear, and there she sucks between her lips a shaft of skin she could bite and nibble on.
The massage is continuous against your pleasure core, and the return comes in the form of suction, and then the flick of the cheek of Wanda's tongue against your stinging skin. On your part, a hollow groan implodes.
"F-fuck, fuck me, Wanda..."
“Shit, baby, you're so wet” she chokes against your mouth, “So tight Y/N…”
Wanda's cunning fingertips settle to your needy clit and then decline at your entrance in an idolatry-soaked endeavor, a continual action that brings out the nastiest, baser, animalistic side of you, who doesn't give a damn about the trouble of suppressing the yelps in your throat.
It's so raw, hot and visceral, so human, that you even seem to be able to cry while Wanda fucks you fervently on that table. There's something in you that needs her – you need her to untie the knot, to touch you in that place only she can touch.
Your clever hands run along the contours of Wanda's body through the fine silk of her thin shirt, which you don't take long to break the fastenings, buttons exploding like projectiles in all directions, so you can clear a path and then cover the pale skin of her neck with your own lips, brushing a lot of lethargic kisses and licks over her sensitive epidermis.
And then another finger appears. And followed by this, another one. Slipping, exploring and filling your embers inside. Stretching it, enlarging it and softening it.
You want to explode in red (so little is missing). Before you can squeal (the frayed lungs sparking to do so), another hand wraps itself around your neck, a stinging palm choking the yelp back into your throat. Your brow furrows and your eyes narrow as your inner walls press Wanda's fingers inside your cunt.
“You're close, aren't you? Huh?” The fingers curled inside you, coercing a ragged response from you. You nod fervently in affirmation.
“Y-yes, God, Wanda, please-!”
Her eyes flicker a maniacal crimson as she looks into your eyes, into your soul. And then she kisses you hard.
“Come, love” is ordered, in a mixture of moans and saliva on the pulp of her lips, “Come on my fingers, Y/N”
Like a spell, you do as she says.
As if your lover's oratory alone was enough to untie the knot of your lonely ecstasy, plaited all below your navel. Dark irises in smoldering glee dipped to the waterlines of your eyes, and a red haze, in delight, swamped your insides, pouring from your pulsing center the sweetest honey through Wanda's fist, imprisoned inside your lowered jeans.
So she kisses you where she can, as she can – in a thread at the tip of your brow, in the crimson cheekbone of your Apollonian cheek, in the corner of your sweet lips, in the curve of your tasteless chin. Your head drops to Wanda's shoulder, still drunk from the high of your climax. You can barely tell when the enchantress withdrew from your, only to bring her fingers to her lips, and taste your ether, your cum, with a shocked whisper in acknowledgment.
It took seconds for you to recover from the jolt of the powerful orgasm that washed over your pulsing core.
“You still taste the same” Wanda kisses a swath of sweaty skin above your brow, “So hot”
And then you stick your greedy nose into the curve of her pale, inviting neck, between a few strands of dark hair artificially smelling of strawberries, inhaling there the hallucinatory scent of Wanda's vegetable soap.
“Fuck, I love your smell. I fucking love your smell, Wanda”
And then, a new pressure blooms between your legs.
And it doesn't surprise you to see that there, by magic, a red phallus of considerable thickness and just the right length for Wanda to take was deposited around your pulsating clit. You know what she wants, and you feel ready to give it to her. You look at her as, without a word, you move your hips toward her, touching the tip of the silicone cock to Wanda the way you know she likes it, and you sip from the soft moan that bursts out of her.
“I want to feel you” she breathes, looking profoundly into your eyes as she does, “I want to feel your cock deep inside my pussy. I want you to tear me apart, Y/N”
Something inside you snaps. You then share a throbbing mouth moan, closed eyelids that keep dark and empty pupils, brows crumpled between the foreheads.
And then your hips begin its avid, pleasurable work, up and down, stimulating the nerve point deep within your ex-wife's thighs. Wanda is just a sweaty mess flanked by moans and rambling words; and pleasure, in its sweetest, purest, most genuine form, gnaws at your insides and demands more of you than you could ever imagine - a constriction in her womb that only you can touch.
Your ex-wife kisses you on the corner of your mouth, a flash of skin on your chin, the bone at the tip of your jaw - a lacked ecstasy compels you to collide with the pulps of her lips out of necessity, even if it is without the presence of tongues and an act much more carnal and rudimentary than it needs to be, so that the friction against her nervous lap never stops.
Her bundle of nerves is massaged, and as a result, Wanda squirms in between your legs.
“If you don't take those fucking pants off right now” you gasp against her ear, “I'm going to rip them off you”
“Y-yes” she pleads hoarsely. A haze of red is all it takes for the material of the pants to come undone, giving you access to Wanda's throbbing center.
"If you only knew... If you only knew how much I want to fuck you..."
You snake the smoldering tips of your fingers over the ruffled skin of the cool body below you, feeling the other woman's heavy breathing, drifting through the gap between her lovely breasts to her eager belly, leaving a hot trail of anticipation in its wake.
“How much I miss fucking you, and having to stifle your moans with my hand so you don't wake the boys... turn around, Wanda. Ass up”
And she does so without hesitation, her legs trembling in anticipation as her fingers pinch the edges of the table, and on the part of the experienced witch cringes a yelp as you squeeze between your palms both the pulps of her ass, massaging the soft skin, and carefully guides the toy to the entrance of the rosy, sensitive pussy, drawing from both parties a deep satisfying grunt as your fake cock comes into contact with the dark-haired woman's melancholic wetness in a burning, necessary and deliciously satisfying heat.
Still without penetrating her, however, prolonging your lover's preliminary pleasure as much as possible, you guide the length of the phallus to Wanda's swollen clit, masturbating her with the tip of your cock - and as you do, you take your skittish teeth to the curve of her pale neck with a faint scent of red, strawberry and sweat, where you began to pamper her bare skin with kisses and meticulous licks.
“Y/N please” she whimpers, quivering her ass in search of needy contact, “Please fuck me, please, ah-!”
Grinning hungrily against the bristly skin of her ivory neck, your teeth scraping the battered, reddened skin, you shove yourself against Wanda's wet, burning insides, which immediately spread a comforting sensation in her belly, complaining a small, barely audible “Fuck” out of her nose as you sink deeper and deeper into this delicious grip of delirious pleasure.
Wanda moans during penetration, throwing her head back dramatically, giving access to her throat for you, who cover it with kisses that leave her pale skin feeling feverishly warm. When you go all the way in, there's a needy squeal, and the television goes off-air—smell of sex and the color red oozing from her cunt.
“You're still so tight, damn it, Wanda,” your fingers tug at her scalp as, unceremoniously, you start a frantic rhythm against her ass, “I really missed your pussy squeezing me”
“Ah-ah-Y/N!” it was a squeaky grunt, her forehead against the wood of the table, “Glubže, malyshka, bystreye- faster- ah! Ah!”
The table rocks as you hit her cervix. The sound is of furniture creaking, and something in you roars. You love it. You love turning Wanda into a sweaty mess, filling her inside inch by inch, claiming her as your own, making her feel full of life.
As she leans on her elbows across the table and lifts her chest with heavy breaths, her hair being pulled toward you as she moans into her wet, nibbled lips, the brown locks covering her face like a dark veil, her breasts swaying at the same rate as the table legs scrape the floor and you sink deeper and deeper into it, she moans in pleasure like a needy beast.
“I bet you missed that too, huh?” you gasp, still keeping the steady rhythm of your strong hips against Wanda's, all the way inside her walls, “Someone to fuck you the way I know you like”
"Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes...!"
She takes her right hand back and grabs your forearm that holds her waist.
When she looks at you over her shoulder, you groan; at the sight of her drawn cheek rubbing against the wood of the table, the hollow of skin against skin echoing off the kitchen walls for a good few minutes now, you swaying your hips against Wanda's, taking distance as you move in and out of the warm embrace around her wet cunt, thrusting with the true intention of destroying her from within, taking her to heaven and hell if need to be done.
You bite your bottom lip, feeling your skein of orgasm begin to be woven in the pit of your belly.
“Wanda, fuck,” you curse into her name, sticking your nose into the crook of her pale neck with a faint scent of sweat, your hips fast, sloppy, in an unstoppable beat against her skin, “Wanda, Wanda, fuck, Wanda!”
“Faster, baby! Don't- don't stop- don’t stop- ah!” you do as she says, again.
You alternate between slow and fast, deep, precise movements, causing your ex-wife's eyes contorted beneath you to roll in their sockets, her chest being unconsciously thrust forward, brushing her nipples against the silk of her open shirt on the wood under her moving torso.
Her body suddenly stiffens, and her neatly trimmed nails dig into the edges of the table; around the crimson material of your cock, a hot, viscous membrane leach up the erect length. And you feel the same trickle down between your thighs, as a yelp erupts from your ex-wife and a scarlet fever haze slams every window in the house in a harmony of hollow beats that build on Wanda's scream.
With the enchantress panting and limp as a jelly, that was the confirmation that, in a cloud of pleasure, the woman reached her apex, melting into the erotic red haze that clouded her dark eyes. You, panting, get the toy out of her insides; the shiny liquid glistens around your cock, and Wanda squeals even feeling the sudden lack of you inside her.
The living room window is cracked. The table can disassemble at any second. Wanda's neck looks like a galaxy of bruises, and her waist and buttocks are groped with red handprints that aren't going away anytime soon. The crotch of your jeans is stained with your pleasure and hers. And then she looks over her shoulder at you, the two of you still panting like two ecstatic animals.
She looks deliciously worn and messy, and you feel a new sting dulling below your belly button as you realize just how much natural juices trickle out of Wanda's abused pussy.
“So,” you gasp, brushing a strand of damp hair out of your face, “This…this is starting to become a thing, huh…?”
"Y-yeah..."
Your cum leaks out of her and drips onto the floor between your feet.
《《《《《《《ᱬ》》》》》》》
taglist: @diaryoflife, @iliketozoneout, @raqelacevedo, @wizardofstories, @wlwfanfictionss, @wandsmxmff, @whhyyynotttttt, @sayah13, @when-wolves-howl
i wrote porn lol
#wanda x y/n#wanda maximoff x you#wanda x you#wanda maximoff#wanda reader#wanda maximoff imagine#billy maximoff#tommy maximoff#wanda maximoff x reader#wanda maximoff x y/n#wanda x reader#scarlet witch#scarlet witch x reader#scarlet witch imagine#scarlet witch x you#bottom wanda maximoff#bottom!wanda#bottom!wanda maximoff x you#bottom scarlet witch#elizabeth olsen#elizabeth olsen x reader
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