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tazzytypes · 3 years

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Apocalypse: Sanctuary - Chapter 17

Authors note: Hey guys! Sorry, had to delete and repost this chapter because Tumblr is, once again, giving me difficulties. Just want to thank y'all so much for being patient with me as I finished up with classes. Hoping these next few months will give me more time to work on this fic. As always, your comments and likes always make my day and help me get through the worst of writer's block and I cannot thank you enough for that!

READ MORE on AO3 or see the Master post!

When the witches got back to the academy, the sun had barely risen above the horizon. Emily hadn’t realized how accustomed she had become to the usual hustle and bustle; the silence was nearly as stinging as the constant noise.

They were all dead on their feet. After hell, sleep had eluded Emily. The fact Madison had forced her to sleep on the ground didn’t help… neither did the darkness. It was suffocating, that place. Sometimes she was afraid the underground fortress would become her tomb. They had all tried to catch up on sleep during the plane ride home, but Misty snored so much it made the feat nearly impossible.

So, barely able to put one foot in front of the other, the witches made their way through the door. Zoe grumbled about canceling classes, Cordelia muttering an agreement.

“A break? Already?” Coco said. She stood next to Mallory by the stairs, looking more like butlers than students. The pair must have been the only ones awake, looking to one other and smiling at a silent inside joke. “I like this school.”

“I trust there were no disturbances while we were away?” Myrtle asked, handing off her bags to Kyle who proceeded to take them up the stairs.

If Mallory were a bird, Emily would have said she was preening, “No more than usual.”

Kyle paused by Emily for a moment, hand extended, but she waved him forward. Kyle smiled and nodded, proceeding past them and towards the stairs.

“Oh, lover-boy,” Madison sang as he began to take the first step, pulling Emily’s attention away from Mallory and their headmistress, “my bags?

The blond man hesitated, then doubled back. He rearranged the bags on his arm and picked up the ex-movie star’s numerous suitcases, all either Chanel or some other overpriced name brand.

“You have two arms,” Zoe snapped at the woman, her own bag in hand. Emily’s gaze flickered to the floor, green eyes darting between it, Cordelia, and the scene unfurling before her.

“It’s fine,” Kyle said quietly, giving a pointed look at Zoe, “It’s my job.”

The look seemed to soothe Zoe, her shoulders tense but her back no longer arched like she was about to swing at Madison. Madison opened her mouth, unable to resist not having the last word.

A body barreling into her side kept Emily from hearing exactly what was spoken. By the look on Zoe’s face, it was nothing good.

“Oh, I missed you!” Coco exclaimed, squeezing the girl in a hug. Emily did her best not to tense, but the reaction was second nature to the brunette. “How was California?”

“Dry,” Emily said, earning a chuckle from Coco.

“Obviously you didn’t go to the beach,” Coco said, “How did it go?”

The brunette’s eyes darted to the figure moving towards them, continuing to speak as Mallory approached. For some reason, Emily had expected her and Cordelia’s talk to last longer. She settled in to place beside Coco, listening with an attentive grin.

“We’re all in one piece,” Emily said, looking back to Coco, “so I’d say rather well.”

Mallory reached out and squeezed Emily’s arm, her ever-present grin widening ever slightly. “See? I knew you’d do great!”

“Who’s this, Firefly?”

Misty had always got possessive a little too quickly. It was her vice, clinging to things too tightly. Her mother used to call her a “little python…” the snake in the garden of Eden.

Emily faltered ever slightly. As someone who kept to herself, she was more used to being the one introduced, not the one introducing.

“Coco, Mallory,” She spoke, glancing between the two girls and her new acquaintance, “Misty Day.”

Mallory rushed forward to shake the woman’s hand as if she were meeting Stevie Nicks instead of a girl from the swamplands of Mississippi.

“I’ve heard so much about you from Miss Cordelia. You’re a legend here!”

Misty pulled her shawl in tighter and glanced between Mallory and Emily. Being the center of attention was an anxious position for her. The last time she was the center of attention, she went to hell. The first time had her burned at the stake. Her steps back from Mallory and into Emily’s side were more a flight instinct than an anxious tic.

“Aw, shucks,” the swamp witch said with a flickering smile and a chuckle, “Didn’t think I was here long enough to make an impression.”

“Resurgence is a remarkable power,” Mallory insisted, “If not for you, I would have thought myself a freak.”

“Well, ain’t that sweet.”

Myrtle was quick to rescue the woman from the over-exuberance of the younger witch, placing a steadying hand on Misty’s shoulder. Cordelia was not far behind. Emily could feel her brown eyes on her back like a botanist studying a new plant species.

“While I love pleasantries,” Myrtle said, “I am absolutely famished. Airplane foods always fall flat.”

“It’s because of our sense of smell,” Emily said, trying to ignore the weird looks she was getting, “The altitude affects our nasal passages, making it harder to smell and thus harder to taste. The two are inseparable.”

“So, it’s like how parents plug their kid's nose to get them to take their medicine,” Mallory said. Emily sent her a brief, but thankful smile for making the moment feel less awkward than it was.

“Exactly.”

“Either way,” Myrtle said with a wave of her hand, “I am craving a crème brûlée with a glass of chardonnay.”

Emily smirked a bit before she spoke, “Chardonnay sounds good.”

“Not yet, you,” Cordelia admonished through a chuckle, ruffling Emily’s hair a bit, “We may be lenient with a lot of things, but underage drinking will not be one of them.”

The brunette wanted to note she had done plenty of underage drinking the night before but refrained. Part of being able to bend the rules is pretending you didn’t break them.

“Oh, come on,” Madison said, standing at the back of their little group with her arms crossed in front of her chest, “Little miss indigestion just went to hell. Let her live a little.”

“Maybe a glass,” Cordelia relented, earning a few chuckles from the group. “One.”

Emily echoed the expressions of her fellow witches, but Cordelia’s humor did not amuse her. The headmistresses statement assured her of one thing, however. The brunette had secured a place in the inner circle of Robichaux. It was a feat she would have been proud of before, but now…

Now, the real world seemed so dull. Sensations failed to feel real-- like the world was covered in a fog. Her hands would hover, expecting something to come to her palm and playing off hesitation when it didn’t. Emily had always fancied her dreams to the waking world. The real world now felt more dull than usual. The young witch found herself missing hell, debating whether or not to chase that high.

“Full already?” Cordelia asked at the table they all gathered around. Emily had been picking at her food for the past ten minutes, gaze flickering to the many conversations around the table.

Emily was quick to brush it off, putting down her fork and taking a sip of her sweet tea, “I’ve always eaten like a bird.”

“Birds eat ten times their weight,” Myrtle noted with an amused smile. Cordelia had been so tense since Hawthorne. For once, Myrtle had to be the optimistic one… if only for the sake of maintaining an air of control.

“Good thing I wasn’t talking in ratios.”

Myrtle chuckled and went back to her food, but Cordelia continued to watch Emily carefully as she turned and offered Misty her desert.

“You alright, Firefly?”

“Just tired.”

“Bad dreams?”

“Something like that.”

Cordelia’s glance flickered to her mentor. The slight quirking of the redhead’s brow gave away her own concerns. The headmistress gaze returned to Emily, her posture straightening ever slightly.

“About your personal hell?” she asked.

Emily faltered slightly at her headmistress’s voice. While they were surrounded by people, most had the decency not to eavesdrop on the more intimate conversations — feigning ignorance even if they heard every word. It was one of those unspoken rules of society.

“No. I didn’t have a personal hell.”

Shit.

Her exhaustion and weird mindset had made her careless. Then again, Cordelia was supposed to help with things such as these, right? The whole point of being here was to learn. How could she learn if she never asked questions? Why did her gut churn like she had been caught with her hands painted red?

Green eyes slowly turned to the brown ones that had burned holes in her skin since she had arrived in Mississippi. Cordelia’s brows furrowed, lips twisting in the way they always did when she didn’t have the answers.

“Then where were you?”

“… I don’t know.”

The table was consumed with silence, no one able to pretend they weren’t listening in to the conversation at hand. Coco glanced around at the table, noting the unwavering stares. Glancing to Emily, she saw her eyes flick between them all, her plate, Cordelia, and back again.

“Probably the jet lag,” the heiress said, “shit makes you forget what your own name is.”

Emily smiled with the rest of them, sending a thankful glance to the woman who squeezed her hand and smiled. The table fell back into idle chatter.

“Hell of a spotlight,” Coco whispered into her glass, eyes flickering around to her fellow witches.

Emily mimicked her movements, “you’re telling me.”

The pair shared a glance and promptly fell into laughter.

“Next time you need to swing by L.A. Beaches are crowded, but the experience is worth it.”

“There’s a tattoo parlor there I wanted to check out,” Emily noted, “Purple Panther. One of my favorite artists works there.”

“We should go and get matching tattoos.”

“What did I miss?” Mallory asked, returning from a trip to the bathroom.

“We’re all going to get matching tattoos.” Coco declared.

“Of what?”

Emily smiled and leaned in, “we should get the triquetra from Charmed.”

“Oooh, yes!” Coco exclaimed, “I loved that show as a kid.”

Mallory’s face twisted in confusion, “Haven’t seen it.”

“We’re binge-watching it,” Coco declared, “tonight.”

“My room?” Emily asked, “I have a TV.”

“No offense, your room is a broom closet.”

“Feels like home,” Emily jested, a genuine smile curling on her lips, “certainly been in it for long enough.”

Coco snorted out a laugh, infecting Mallory and Emily into a fit of giggles. The brunette could feel Cordelia’s eyes on her, a hand going to smooth down the hairs on the back of her neck. She didn’t like it, the feeling of being watched.

“Oh!” Mallory said, “I have a tattoo idea — swords.”

“Swords?”

“For the Three Musketeers!”

Emily gasped as an idea hit her, pulling out her sketchbook and scrawling out an idea.

“What if…”

She finished the crude drawing — a sword with a triquetra behind it. Some of the lines of the triquetra looped around the blade where it was positioned at the end of its point. “… we did both?”

“Both?” Mallory asked.

“Both,” Emily repeated.

“Both is good,” Coco finished, the three falling into giggles once again.

Emily was unsurprised when Cordelia cornered her later in the day. Classes had been canceled for the day, older girls put in charge of amusing the younger ones. The brunette had dozed until 12 o’clock when the cheerful laughing and screeching from the lawn kept her from falling back asleep.

Book in hand, Emily had nearly made it to the greenhouse when Cordelia intercepted her. The blonde woman had been leaning against the door of the rotting shack. Emily wondered how long the headmistress had waited for her out in the sun.

“Walk with me,” was all she said as the brunette got within earshot, her tone filled with bad news. They strolled in silence for a good while. When the playful yelling and screaming was muffled by distance and the trees around the property, Cordelia finally spoke.

“I’ve been to hell myself. It changes a person… for better or worse.”

Emily’s eyes were trained on the ground, navigating over twisting roots and rocks that jutted from the dirt. She spared Cordelia a brief glance. “Which was it? Better or worse?”

“That’s the thing,” Cordelia said, head high and eyes steady on the path ahead of them, “you can never tell which. It’s something only others can see.”

“Is this an intervention or something?”

A smile tugged at the blonde’s lips, “Or something.”

Silence consumed them once more. It became clear that Emily could either talk or they would walk until she did.

“Hell was like a dream,” the brunette relented after a minute or so, “Dreams always feel so real until you wake up. Then, you mourn the reality you lost.”

“Even with nightmares?”

“All I ever have is nightmares.”

Cordelia spared the woman a look. Emily’s eyes were trained on the ground as she took a step over a fallen trunk. Dark circles ringed around her eyes, the purple somehow making the green even brighter. Cordelia realized she had never seen Emily without them. Were her dreams something more? Something that paraded around as sleep when it was really anything but?

Emily’s words were hardly louder than a whisper, “It isn’t the situation I mourn, but the power I have.”

The book in Emily’s hands suddenly felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. It was one of her many journals, each page dedicated to the carefully worded and detailed recollections of the visions her mind procured in sleep. The voice said her dreams were something more. Emily feared the implications. She was a stickler for a little thing called proof, however. Spirits can lie and trick just as well as humans could.

Cordelia regarded the girl beside her, “Powers such as what?”

“In hell, I could pull a weapon to me as if I reached out and grabbed it with my own hand. I could conjure flames and move them to my will.”

Her words were like a snarl on her lip, a frustration that plagued her every hour. Then, the snarl faltered and the grief set in. “Everything was so much clearer… simpler.”

The headmistress stopped and placed a hand upon the girl’s shoulder, squeezing it for good measure. Emily wished she hadn’t. It was easy to hold back tears and emotions when you didn’t have to look someone in the eye.

“You went to hell and brought back my dearest friend,” she pressed, hand trailing down Emily’s arm and taking her hand, cupping it in her own, “just because you cannot perform grand acts of magic does not mean you cannot fight.”

Emily looked at Cordelia, searching for something in those brown eyes. Everyone’s eyes were covered in a fog of optimism. It made real-life feel more like a dream than her dreams did. Their gazes never failed to make her shudder. Coco was the only one who did not succumb. Thus, the only one she somewhat trusted. Carefully, Emily pulled her hand away.

“Michael brought back Misty, not me.”

It was something she had said a thousand times since her return. The people here either didn’t listen or didn’t care. Which was worse?

“With your aid.”

For a moment, Emily contemplated telling Cordelia everything. She was so desperate for answers — so desperate to cut through the fog. She was reminded of The Odyssey, Odysseus’s travel to an island where everything seemed perfect. It was so tempting to give in, to be alright with not knowing.

What was Michael?

Why did the voices speak to him?

Why did she understand their words while Misty did not?

“I had a weird dream last night,” she found herself speaking, her silence lasting a little too long, “I know it means something, but I can’t quite place it.”

Cordelia seemed content in her words, a small smile telling Emily that she had chosen the right words… even if they were not the words she had intended to speak. There was trust to be built before Emily could talk to Cordelia about hell.

“Tell me about it,” her Supreme commanded, gently ushering Emily back the way they came.

“I was in a field,” Emily started, an air of distance taking over her voice. When Cordelia looked to her, she was miles away — eyes filled with fog. “You were there just… waiting. For me, I think, but I could be wrong.”

“What happened?” Cordelia asked, “in the dream?”

“You were standing next to a girl. She saw me first… said her name was Nan.”

Cordelia’s gasp was quiet, but still loud enough to draw Emily from the fog. A manicured hand came to her mouth before going to her stomach as if the woman had been punched. Emily was afraid Cordelia might pass out again.

“Nan,” Cordelia said, speaking around a frog in her throat.

The younger witch felt a surge of anxiety. She should have said nothing, kept her mouth shut. Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? It had been an easy feat until she came to Robichaux.

“She was sweet,” Emily found herself saying, “told me not to worry.”

Cordelia leaned on a nearby tree. Emily wrung her hands, biting her lip and waiting for the woman to say something. Her heart leaped into her chest when she heard the woman sniffle back a tear.

“Did I say something wrong?” Emily asked, heart hammering. Cordelia didn’t answer. Should she get closer? Should she squeeze her arm as Cordelia had done to her many a times? Emily had never been good at consoling. “I’m sorry.”

The woman finally shook her head, the heels of her palm swiping away the few tears that had trailed down her cheeks. “No… no, you’ve brought me a great deal of peace.”

Curiosity always got the best of her.

“Nan…” Emily said, “You recognize her?”

“She used to be a student here… before her untimely death.”

“I’m sorry.”

Cordelia sighed and straightened her shirt, quickly taking back the decorum Emily had managed to peel back. At that moment, Emily realized something darkened in her Supreme. The fog left the brown eyes and hardened into something more tangible, her jaw clenched ever slightly, and the mother-like tone left her voice.

“I’d advise you not to approach her in your dreams again.”

Emily faltered for a moment, too caught up in the change to process the woman’s words.

“Why?”

“For your safety.”

“She hardly seemed dangerous.”

“It is not her I worry about.”

Her lips opened to ask more questions, but Cordelia quickly overtook the conversation. “Tell me about the rest of this dream.”

It was probably best if she didn’t argue. Emily went on describing, glancing at the woman now and again. Cordelia’s eyes lost their dark edge as the tale continued — flying, levitation, conjuring of fire and wind — until they once again held the optimistic fog Emily had become accustomed to.

“And when I wake up,” Emily concluded, “I felt like I was not myself. That my real self lies within these dreams.”

Cordelia simply nodded.

“Dreams are more powerful than we can imagine,” she said, “it is, in short, an insight into our true nature — witch or no witch.”

“Then what is my true nature?” Emily asked, jumping back as a boisterous toddler ran past her, two more hot on her heels. They had made it back to the garden.

Cordelia smiled at her, giving her shoulder one more squeeze before she trailed after the children.

“That is something only you can answer.”

Cordelia paced her room, thoughts writhing like a snake that had worked its way into a knot. Unable to move forward or back, she wondered how long she had until death. Do nothing and she would starve — giving into the circumstances like a beast baring its belly to the knife. Tug too harshly, however, and she would sever her own spine.

“I do hope you have good reason for waking me in the middle of the night,” Myrtle sighed as she entered the room. She carefully closed the door, the only sign of her entrance the dulled click of the lock behind her.

The Supreme ceased her pacing, taking to wringing her hands instead as she came to a stop before the redhead.

“I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong.”

“You just put a petulant boy in power,” Myrtle scoffed, “What can be more wrong than that?”

“I did it for the best of the coven.”

Myrtle let out a sigh, unable to keep up her irritation. Tense shoulders and crossed arms relaxed and rested at her sides. “My dear, what good are you if you keep working yourself into a fit of hysterics?”

Cordelia either didn’t hear her or didn’t care to address the topic. Hurrying over to her desk, she pushed papers this way and that until she found what she was looking for.

“Were you able to look into the matter we discussed?”

It took all Myrtle’s power not to roll her eyes.

“Evocation rituals of that nature aren’t exactly common if they exist at all.”

“But they do exist?”

“None that I could find.”

“What if we modified a resurgence spell… combined it with dreams. That’s where her skill shows the most, after all. If we could get into that otherness—”

Cordelia had thrown the idea around with the woman multiple times before they visited Hawthorne. Seeing the aftermath of the Seven Wonders, particularly in the trial of Descensum, had made the Supreme all the more convinced of her path. If Cordelia shared any traits with Fiona, it was her stubbornness.

“I still don’t see how her power, any power, could be trapped inside her,” Myrtle insisted once more, “That family of hers didn’t have a lick of magic in her bones. Her mother has no magical talent whatsoever and don’t get me started on that father of hers.”

“Then why is she here at our school?”

Myrtle spared her a pointed look. Cordelia huffed and leaned on her desk, keeping her eyes locked with her mentor’s.

“Emily’s powers have to originate from somewhere,” she said, shaking her head and averting her gaze for but a moment, “Her grandmother died. Maybe she used the last of her power to protect Emily. Delphi had yet to be disbanded when she passed.”

“If that were the case, she wouldn’t be able to go to hell, dear. Maybe it’s as you said; her magic is tied to the other — dreams, visions, prophecy, the whole shebang.”

Cordelia shook her head, “That doesn’t feel right.”

Myrtle was now the one to pace. The carpet was sure to be filled with holes if the issue loomed over their heads any longer. If Cordelia could not let go of this vision, the coven would be doomed. How many more dead ends did Delia need to hit before she recognized the futility of—

“Why are you so adamant about this?” Myrtle found herself asking, more out of desperation than curiosity.

Cordelia gave her a pointed look and the woman scoffed. “Mallory—”

“Mallory didn’t go to hell.”

“And our dear Emily can’t make a butterfly out of petals. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. One false step and they all shatter.”

“Then help me eliminate this option,” Cordelia said, voice pleading, “Let's perform a ritual and get our answers before too much time has passed.”

“Alright,” Myrtle relented, “let's pull out the books… and the booze.”

Emily sat on one of the tables in the greenhouse like she was waiting at a doctor’s appointment, picking absentmindedly at the thin layer of paint atop the table. The inner circle of Robichaux stood around her watching Cordelia and Myrtle as they gathered material and passed it out.

Misty sat at Emily’s side, holding her hand and offering reassuring smiles whenever the brunette turned to look at her. Part of e was afraid they were going to kill her… or something worse. Death certainly wasn’t the worst thing the lot of them had experienced.

“We believe there is something blocking out our dear Emily’s powers,” Myrtle explained, placing jars of… something around the table.

“Or she just doesn’t have any,” Madison sighed, obviously wanting to be anywhere else as she studied her nails — she just got a manicure. The others stared at her in annoyance. “What? We’re all thinking it.”

“She saw Nan,” Cordelia spoke. She had been silent the entire time and didn’t even greet Emily when she was escorted into the greenhouse by Myrtle. If her silence was out of concentration or concern, no one could tell.

Queenie’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. Her arms fell to her sides and all she could do was look between Emily and her Supreme. “She what?”

“I didn’t know who she was,” Emily said, glancing to Misty who held a similar expression to Queenie, “Not until I talked to Cordelia.”

“Is she alright?” Zoe asked. She stood opposite to Misty, carefully watching Cordelia and Myrtle as they prepared. “Did she say anything?”

“Nothing of note.”

“But she did say something,” Queenie said, a silent command in her voice.

“Only that I shouldn’t worry.”

Zoe’s brow furrowed, “worry about what?”

“… I don’t know.”

“If we are able to unlock your powers,” Myrtle said, ignoring the scathing look Cordelia sent her. The redhead still held her doubts. “Perhaps we can find out.”

Her words seemed to motivate the other girls. One by one they fell into place around the table, taking a string as Cordelia handed it to them. Misty and Madison stood at Emily’s left, Queenie and Zoe at her right. Myrtle stood in front of her, a large tomb of a book in her hands as she watched Cordelia work.

“Lay down, my dear,” she told Emily, who hesitantly did as she was told, “We will be delving deep into your subconscious and I’d rather you didn’t wake with a concussion.”

Cordelia came to a stop at Emily’s head. The brunette looked up through her lashes and watched as the woman lit a stick of incense, quickly blowing it out and placing it in a cup of sand. Emily really hoped they wouldn’t have a fire accident. If her hair were to be cut even shorter, she’d look like an egg wearing a toupee.

“Concentrate on the power you had in hell,” She whispered, so low that only Emily could hear her, “Visualize it and keep the sensation in the forefront of your mind.”

Emily felt if she were in some weird baptism, one you’d see on a TLC show about those weird Mormon cults. Shaking her head, she reminded herself to focus. She thought of hell, of that classroom — the fire, the words, the void. Emily felt her eyes become heavy before they closed. She saw Michael, blue eyes only showing a brief moment of alarm as fire raged around him.

Cordelia looked to Myrtle. The redhead began to chant. One by one, the other girls echoed her words. Emily was only slightly aware of their actions, their voices sounding miles away. Finally, Cordelia echoed the words. Her hands cupped over Emily’s face, covering her eyes and centering the spell between her brows, the third eye.

Once again, Emily fell into a slumber. Cordelia prayed that, when she awoke, her questions would be answered.

#michael langdon x reader #michael langdon x oc #michael langdon

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little-luthottie · 3 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Supergirl (TV 2015) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, Alex Danvers & Kara Danvers, Alex Danvers & Lena Luthor, Querl Dox/Nia Nal, Eliza Danvers & Lena Luthor, Alex Danvers & Eliza Danvers & Kara Danvers Characters: Kara Danvers, Kara Zor-El, Lena Luthor, Alex Danvers, Nia Nal, J'onn J'onzz | Hank Henshaw, Eliza Danvers, Brainy, Querl Dox, Lori Luthor, sc oc kid Additional Tags: SuperCorp, Established Relationship, Married Couple, Kidfic, supercorp kidfic, Mild Angst, but I swear it gets fluffy, they just want to have start a family, dansen isnt meantioned but assume that its happening okay, they're in LOVE your honour, Married Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, KARA AND LENA ARE MARRIED AND HAPPY, ...mostly, they sad but then they happy again, mentions of death but nothing graphic, Promise Summary:

"Its just hearing the heartbeat of their child for the first time only for it to slowly give in and there is absolutely nothing they— she with all her superpowers could do, Kara doesn’t feel any bit of the hero she’s come to be. Not a single ounce , not when their child’s vitals were slowly deteriorating and watching as Alex and Eliza flounder around for ways to stop yet another foetus from dying. Lena’s on the medical bed doing all she can to aid in keeping their child alive , even if its just to keep her own heart rate steady."

Kara and Lena are ready to expand their family but complications keep them from it. Kara's at her limit and is so close to losing hope ...

until she finds her

and then everything changes.

_______________________

The heart rate monitors beeps are slow as if trying to tell Kara she can’t stop the inevitable. That again she’ll lose someone dear. Its only their third time and they knew going in this wouldn’t easy. But Lena was determined she could do it and Kara believed in her wife.

Its just hearing the heartbeat of their child for the first time only for it to slowly give in and there is absolutely nothing they— she with all her superpowers could do, Kara doesn’t feel any bit of the hero she’s come to be. Not a single ounce , not when their child’s vitals were slowly deteriorating and watching as Alex and Eliza flounder around for ways to stop yet another foetus from dying. Lena’s on the medical bed doing all she can to aid in keeping their child alive , even if its just to keep her own heart rate steady.

This time around they’ve opted for an artificial womb. One that could support the genes of a half human and half kryptonian baby since the others…failed to. Lena’s idea after their last try and everything seemed to be going well. In fact little Lori survived far longer than her other two siblings had— yes they’d gotten enough hope to name her and now, now it feels like that hope is slowly shattering , another crack for every painfully delayed heartbeat. Its only a matter of moments before she says goodbye to her sweet girl but Kara can’t stomach the idea of being here for another flatline. Another deafening, gut wrenching beep taunting her , ripping away a future she so desperately craves. So leaves , she flies out of there fast enough that when everyone realises she’s gone , she only barely here’s the whisper of her name from Lena’s lips.

It’s the final punch to the dam before the wall completely breaks and out gushes the tears. She’s far away and at a high enough altitude not to be seen , she doesn’t think she could handle the publics questions as to why their golden girl was spotted a sobbing mess in the sky.

In that instance her eyes , though blurred by tears , find the star she once called home. Kara finds herself go silent , her chest still rising and falling rapidly but despite the shallow breaths of all the sobs she’d just erupted , she’s completely still. As if in a weird limbo , floating in the air above the city that’s seemed to have gone silent like its paying its respects to the hero and her losses.

She’s just there. Floating. Staring. Waiting. For what she doesn’t know. Her tears have ceased and its remains slowly drying on her cheeks it feels like there’s a sign waiting to be shown. That if she stays up here long enough she’ll find it , see it , hear it.

And she does. The sound of loud wailing muffled by every other sound of the night which resurfaces right as the wails start. Before Kara knows it she’s following the sound , zipping through the skies , between buildings until she finds it.

Not it, her.

There in a dilapidated cardboard box that looks about ready to fall apart is a bundle wrapped in white cloth. For a moment the blonde just freezes in her tracks , her feet hovering mere inches from the ground as she watches the baby , who seems to be barely older than a few months scream for her missing family. The moment her boots touches the concrete of the alley the child’s crying halts.

And like before there is this moment of silence , a moment of serenity between the two. Its in this moment of what feels like sizing up that Kara notices the golden wisps of blond locks flicked in wayward strands and the most enchanting green eyes. There’s this intelligent curiosity to them , and the blonde kryptonian can’t help but compare them to similar orbs she knows so well and loves.

It becomes abundantly clear what she must do. What she will do. Kara unclips her cape from her shoulders and reaches down to swaddle the bundle who feels alarming cold. However the little girl makes no sound but stares in wonder , green eyes twinkling in the dim florescent light. Once she knows the baby is tucked snuggly in her cape she takes off into the sky ,mindful of the precious cargo.

She lands at the tower once again and watches everyone hault at her presence. There’s a silence once again but this one doesn’t feel as comforting , this one she fears is filled with pity and sorrow. She wants to take off again, she can feel her heart rate start to pick up , especially at the confused and alarmed stares Alex and Eliza are giving her right now. She’s just about to take off when the small bundle shifts in her arms , eyes now closed as she sleeps soundly. For a minute Kara is stunned by how immediate the child had taken to her and couldn’t help but think how perfect she seemed not to mention the physical traits that made her seem as if somehow , in some twisted way the universe had given her , given them this precious gift.

“Kara?” Lena calls , standing a few feet off right before her. She’s in the sweatpants and old college hoodie Lena loves to wear on days she can spare to sleep in.

Karas focus is immediately brought back to reality , back to the point of why she was here , why everyone seemed concerned and she can’t believe she almost forgot. Almost.

“Look Lee just hear me out okay?” the blond says and hovers over to her wife. Lena seems exhausted and all but ready to go home but she still nods , still humours Kara anyways.

“I just- I’m sorry I left but I couldn’t take another second and I just needed a moment by myself to grieve the loss of our baby”

“Kara-“ Lena tries , but Kara’s on a role she needs to vent all of this right now or otherwise she won’t be able to explain herself properly.

“I know I left you alone in that moment and I’m sorry Lena really-“ the blonde steps forward scared Lena might leave because of it. “but I just lost it and I couldn’t understand why we keep losing them. I don’t want to keep losing them!”

Kara stops. Knowing she’s raised her voice , can see the alarm in everyone’s eyes and the sympathy. She shuts her eyes , takes a breath and focuses on the movements of the little one in her arms. When she opens them there are those curious green staring at her and its doubled when she looks from the baby to Lena. She knows Lena finally noticed the bundle , realised what it was and is now worried.

“Kara whose baby..” Lena trails off as if scared to finish that sentence in fear of what the answer will be.

And no! She’s got it all wrong. Kara would never— no matter how distraught.

“No no no! Lee this- that’s what I’m trying to tell you this baby was abandoned in an alley! I heard her cries and immediately rushed over—she was just there in this tattered box. She was confused by why the people who were supposed to love her-“ Kara consciously pulls the bundle closer , “just left and here we are-struggling to just-And I just had to do the right thing and save her but I thought what if. What if this is our chance?”

Kara is now smiling down at the little girl , whose eyes never leave her and misses the way Lena reaches for her stomach and then grabs Kara’s bicep.

“Darling I understand” the brunette says earnestly , unshed tears glistening in her eyes. “we have been through unbearable pain with the last two pregnancies and I understand your pain believe me” a tear slips down Lena’s cheek and the first instinct is to wipe it away. Lena should know its not because of her body , that there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with her. So she moves in to tell her but Lena just squeezes her bicep. Those green eyes so intelligent and vibrant , shines with a knowingness Kara is so familiar with. As if she had the power to read her mind , Kara wouldn’t be surprised if Lena could though she-

What was that?.

Her train of thought out the window as Lena guides the arm not supporting the bundle to her stomach and- oh.

There it is , loud and persistent as if scolding Kara for doubting it , doubting her.

“Lori?” just the name alone makes the tears fall from Kara’s eyes once again. How could she have missed that? Her daughters heartbeat. That was once so weak is at a steady rate. Their baby made it. They’re going to have a baby!

She finds Lena’s eyes , tears falling as well , the knowingness shining so bright. Kara thinks its more the pure relief of not losing another child. She pulls her wife in , hugs her as tight as is humanly possible with one arm. She feels so happy , so filled with love and hope.

And that’s when their little guest grunts , probably shocked by the sudden confined space and Kara laughs , just pure joy ripping out from her lungs as if it was held captive there for too long.

“I’m sorry little one” the blonde loosens her grip but doesn’t let’s go of Lena. She still keeps her close. Now there’s two pairs of forest green eyes staring at her and she’s surprised by how enraptured she is by both.

“Lee I , I can’t abandon her too. Please-“

“Kara I would never do that.” Lena pushes the sides of the cape aside so she has a view of the cherub face. “its not going to be easy but we can make this work. In any case we did agree on a big family” the grin that splits onto Lena’s face is enough for Kara’s heart to feel as if it just grew that much bigger. After all these years Lena could still make her so happy , feel so loved and understood.

“Now hand her to me so I can check her vitals” Lena takes the bundle from Kara’s arms , cradles her close and steps away towards the medbay Alex and Eliza have been in this whole time eavesdropping.

“What why? Did I hurt her?” Kara immediately frowns and follows , notices now how everyone hadn’t moved since she’d flown in and now seem to have found it in themselves to move and act busy. Shameful.

“No honey but you did say you found her in an Alley and we need to see if she’s suffered any harm from it.”

“oh” is all Kara says , and watches how Lena unwraps the bundle to reveal the baby in a soft pink onesie. She still doesn’t make any cries of protest but just watches Lena with those intelligent eyes.

And Lena’s smiling. Smiling the whole time. From checking her heart rate with the stethoscope to taking her temperature with a thermometer , Lena smiles and is so gentle with the little girl it makes her heart melt.

“So I’ve got two nieces now huh” Alex remarks , nudging her side with an elbow. Kara watches as Eliza goes to aid Lena in her tests and it makes her rock back and forth on her heels for a bit.

“Yeah” Kara grins and looks to her sister with such a wide smile her cheeks are protesting. She’s giddy , she can’t even contain it. At one point tonight she’d thought she would never have this but here they are. Two girls. One on the way and one already here. Granted they would have to go through the right adoption processes but there’s no doubt that, that baby is already theirs. How could there be when Eliza rocks the child gently in her arms while Lena stands at the computer probably waiting for test results, a hand caressing her stomach while her attention is on the blonde little girl whose seem to have everyone gravitating towards her as Nia , Kelly , J'onn and even Brainy enters the room.

“despite it being so early and you guys actually have to legally adopt her still-“

“I know Alex but-“

“Hey I’m not raining on your parade okay? I know how long you’ve been waiting for this and I have every bit of faith you’ll get custody of her” Alex grabs her sisters shoulder and squeezes it gently. Kara needs more than that though , so she pulls her sister in a little too tight of a hug and laughs at the grunts Alex dramatically elates but she hugs her back nonetheless.

“so you have a name yet?” Alex asks after they pull away.

Kara turns to where their family is surrounding Lena , who is now holding the baby.

It’s the purest sight , the most wholesome. A vision of everything she has desired right before her.

“Well I need to run it by Lena first but yeah” she turns back to her sister , eyes twinkling with mirth.

“Elan”

___

hope y’all liked it uwu

#supercorp #sc fic #kidfic #sc kidfic #married supercorp #sc oc kid #lori luthor #lori danvers-luthor #mentioned #supercorp fanfic #mild angst #its soft tho #mentions of death #but nothing graphic

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peter-horrocks · 3 years

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The glacial ice cave at Les Deux Alpes

After another hot summer in the south of France (sorry for those of you who experienced the opposite, I know how you feel I come from Manchester, UK) I was beginning to seriously wilt so it was with some relief that we headed off for ten days in the high French Alps.

The entrance to the ice cave at Les Deux Alpes is just beyond the people along the track

After last year's very successful trip to Les Menuires I doubted that we could repeat similar enjoyment this time round as at some stage it is bound to rain in the mountains and there has been plenty of that in many parts of France this year. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We spent the first three days at La Foux d’Allos which is just two and a half hours drive north of Grasse where we live. Earlier in the year, we had spent a pleasant week there, just the two of us. This time we met up with my French wife’s sister and husband who had brought two of their grandchildren along with them, all the way from Normandy. They had a trying fifteen-hour journey down spent mainly in traffic jams ending with a rather terrifying last section over the Col d’Allos where the narrow road and huge vertical drops tested their nerves to the limit, though the kids marveled at the scenery. Regular skiers it was the first time they had holidayed in the high mountains in summer.

It was interesting to observe the reaction of the children who are aged seven and nine, the youngest is an absolute live-wire and the elder somewhat reserved and a bit of a bookworm, as La Foux d’Allos is a low-key sort of place and the main attraction is mother nature. Our first days walk directly from the apartment where they stayed (which is owned by a friend of ours, we stayed there previously) was up the valley to the source of the river Verdon which goes on to carve out the Gorge which is one of the most spectacular and visited in France. Up by the source there was hardly anyone, yet the scenery is magnificent and it gets better and better the higher you walk, and we got up high, to 2200 metres. Everyone loved it and the numerous marmots (a sort of groundhog) and circling birds of prey kept us entertained. I was delighted to rediscover the rock with a partial imprint of a giant ammonite fossil which I discovered last time, just off the beaten path.

Lac d’Allos

The following day, early in the morning (to be sure we got one of the limited parking spaces) we drove up to the Lac d’Allos which is the biggest, highest freshwater lake in Europe. A wonderful place for pleasant walking at high altitudes and a superb spot for a picnic in the fresh mountain air. Even after a couple of days of long walks, the kids were still keen to walk out in the evening so they could sit and watch the marmots gamble around grazing as the sun set, it was they who were pestering us adults to go.

Marmot

We took our leave and headed further north another four and a half hours drive to the Oisans valley and the famous ski resort Les Deux Alpes where we stayed in a superb recently built wooden chalet on the edge of the village with the luxurious feature of a hot tub on the big balcony which commanded stunning views of the valley, mountains, and glaciers.

This time we were with my wife’s five grandchildren aged from three to twelve and their parents, like last year. It is amazing how relatively inexpensive such a high-quality chalet is even in peak season. There is demand and there are people who take holidays in the high mountains but its nothing compared to the millions who prefer to pack on to hot crowded beaches and pay through the nose for exorbitant coastal accommodation.

There is still a buzz around Les Deux Alpes in summer as the ski set is replaced by mountain bikers. This activity has exploded with the development of electric bikes which has opened up the sport to less fit people of all ages. And in the resort, there are lifts running to take bikes and riders up very high and dedicated graded tracks to ride down. There are specialized shops for hiring the bikes and all the necessary protective equipment too. All-day long there were hundreds of people setting off nice and fresh or returning covered in a respectable amount of mud, nearly all smiling, chatting, and enjoying themselves.

There were many bars and restaurants open and it was our first experience of presenting our Passe Sanitaire (obtained after our double vaccination jabs), which were duly scanned by the waiter’s mobile phone system when we paid our bill, all very relaxed, easy, and reassuring. None of the bars or restaurants were particularly busy but the atmosphere was pretty cool all the same, out on the terraces in the fresh air overlooking the magnificent mountains, it was nice after so much time at home recently, avoiding people.

The children enjoyed walks around the valley and their treats were the dry toboggan run and the ingenious non-motorized carts which were adapted to be dragged up the mountainside by the Poma lift leaving gravity to provide the speed on the downhill with braking being the drivers main preoccupation. All good fun. An unexpected bonus was the de-stocking of the equipment shops in the resort at the end of August with loads of high-quality gear being sold at half price, we picked up some incredible bargains including walking boots and ski jackets.

Just inside the glacier surrounded by raw ice

The highlight of our stay was a visit to the ice cave at 3400 metres up on the high glacier. I had wanted to visit one since I discovered more about them during my time working in Chamonix where I had the privilege of skiing down the Valley Blanche, but never got round to visiting the ice cave in the Bosson Glacier. I’ve always been fascinated by glaciers, especially the fact that such a huge quantity of ice is constantly on the move, typically 25 cm a day. And my imagination was enhanced by the tale my brother told me of when he discovered the frozen body of a Japanese mountaineer on one of his expeditions up Mount Kilimanjaro from the Kenyan side, the glacier finally gave up its prisoner after 15 years of entrapment, and they were able to reunite the preserved remains of the unfortunate man with his family at last.

The ice cave is hacked out by hand

It costs 25 euros for the lift pass and entry to the ice cave at Les Deux Alpes. A ride up two very long gondola ski lifts then on the highest funicular railway in the world which actually goes through the rock under the glacier via a tunnel, is easily worth the money. We were accompanied by Mathieu and his twin boys aged seven, one of whom has difficulty walking, all of us were well kitted out with puffer jackets and walking boots, which we appreciated as we had to walk a couple of hundred metres across the snow to get to the ice cave entrance and there was a bitter chill wind blowing up there.

The ice sculptures in the cave included this octopus

Inside the ice cave, I was surprised at how long it was, there were vivid explanations of how it is hacked out by hand and there are parts with fabulous ice sculptures of things like sea horses and fish which are beautifully smooth and nicely lit for maximum effect, which had the children enthralled. Clearly not one for the claustrophobic, it did not disappoint as an experience.

The views from the suspended platform were spectacular

And once outside we walked a few hundred metres more in the snow to a suspended viewing platform with awesome views of the surrounding mountains and as we made our way back to the lift we saw the white peak of Mont Blanc the highest mountain in Europe which loomed above all else.

The passes are valid all day and Mathieu immediately insisted that his wife Caroline accompany him back up to the ice cave as he didn’t want her to miss out, his interpretation of how she would feel was correct, she didn’t want to come back down, she loved it so much up there on top of the world. None of us wanted to leave Les Deux Alpes at the end of our stay either.

At the tourist office in Les Deux Alpes, we learned that in August this year the glacier was closed for summer skiing for the first time ever due to the effects of global warming. I can but hope we are not too late to react and modify our way of living in time to both avert pending climate-related disasters and save the magnificent mysterious glaciers all over the world.

#Les deux alpes #glacier #ice cave

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nebris · 4 years

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How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive

In 2015, Bic launched a campaign to “save handwriting.” Named “Fight for Your Write,” it includes a pledge to “encourage the act of handwriting” in the pledge-taker’s home and community, and emphasizes putting more of the company’s ballpoints into classrooms.

As a teacher, I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could think there’s a shortage. I find ballpoint pens all over the place: on classroom floors, behind desks. Dozens of castaways collect in cups on every teacher’s desk. They’re so ubiquitous that the word “ballpoint” is rarely used; they’re just “pens.” But despite its popularity, the ballpoint pen is relatively new in the history of handwriting, and its influence on popular handwriting is more complicated than the Bic campaign would imply.

The creation story of the ballpoint pen tends to highlight a few key individuals, most notably the Hungarian journalist László Bíró, who is credited with inventing it. But as with most stories of individual genius, this take obscures a much longer history of iterative engineering and marketing successes. In fact, Bíró wasn’t the first to develop the idea: The ballpoint pen was originally patented in 1888 by an American leather tanner named John Loud, but his idea never went any further. Over the next few decades, dozens of other patents were issued for pens that used a ballpoint tip of some kind, but none of them made it to market.

These early pens failed not in their mechanical design, but in their choice of ink. The ink used in a fountain pen, the ballpoint’s predecessor, is thinner to facilitate better flow through the nib—but put that thinner ink inside a ballpoint pen, and you’ll end up with a leaky mess. Ink is where László Bíró, working with his chemist brother György, made the crucial changes: They experimented with thicker, quick-drying inks, starting with the ink used in newsprint presses. Eventually, they refined both the ink and the ball-tip design to create a pen that didn’t leak badly. (This was an era in which a pen could be a huge hit because it only leaked ink sometimes.)

The Bírós lived in a troubled time, however. The Hungarian author Gyoergy Moldova writes in his book Ballpoint about László’s flight from Europe to Argentina to avoid Nazi persecution. While his business deals in Europe were in disarray, he patented the design in Argentina in 1943 and began production. His big break came later that year, when the British Air Force, in search of a pen that would work at high altitudes, purchased 30,000 of them. Soon, patents were filed and sold to various companies in Europe and North America, and the ballpoint pen began to spread across the world.

Businessmen made significant fortunes by purchasing the rights to manufacture the ballpoint pen in their country, but one is especially noteworthy: Marcel Bich, the man who bought the patent rights in France. Bich didn’t just profit from the ballpoint; he won the race to make it cheap. When it first hit the market in 1946, a ballpoint pen sold for around $10, roughly equivalent to $100 today. Competition brought that price steadily down, but Bich’s design drove it into the ground. When the Bic Cristal hit American markets in 1959, the price was down to 19 cents a pen. Today the Cristal sells for about the same amount, despite inflation.

The ballpoint’s universal success has changed how most people experience ink. Its thicker ink was less likely to leak than that of its predecessors. For most purposes, this was a win—no more ink-stained shirts, no need for those stereotypically geeky pocket protectors. However, thicker ink also changes the physical experience of writing, not necessarily all for the better.

I wouldn’t have noticed the difference if it weren’t for my affection for unusual pens, which brought me to my first good fountain pen. A lifetime writing with the ballpoint and minor variations on the concept (gel pens, rollerballs) left me unprepared for how completely different a fountain pen would feel. Its thin ink immediately leaves a mark on paper with even the slightest, pressure-free touch to the surface. My writing suddenly grew extra lines, appearing between what used to be separate pen strokes. My hand, trained by the ballpoint, expected that lessening the pressure from the pen was enough to stop writing, but I found I had to lift it clear off the paper entirely. Once I started to adjust to this change, however, it felt like a godsend; a less-firm press on the page also meant less strain on my hand.

My fountain pen is a modern one, and probably not a great representation of the typical pens of the 1940s—but it still has some of the troubles that plagued the fountain pens and quills of old. I have to be careful where I rest my hand on the paper, or risk smudging my last still-wet line into an illegible blur. And since the thin ink flows more quickly, I have to refill the pen frequently. The ballpoint solved these problems, giving writers a long-lasting pen and a smudge-free paper for the low cost of some extra hand pressure.

As a teacher whose kids are usually working with numbers and computers, handwriting isn’t as immediate a concern to me as it is to many of my colleagues. But every so often I come across another story about the decline of handwriting. Inevitably, these articles focus on how writing has been supplanted by newer, digital forms of communication—typing, texting, Facebook, Snapchat. They discuss the loss of class time for handwriting practice that is instead devoted to typing lessons. Last year, a New York Times article—one that’s since been highlighted by the Bic’s “Fight for your Write” campaign—brought up an fMRI study suggesting that writing by hand may be better for kids’ learning than using a computer.

I can’t recall the last time I saw students passing actual paper notes in class, but I clearly remember students checking their phones (recently and often). In his history of handwriting, The Missing Ink, the author Philip Hensher recalls the moment he realized that he had no idea what his good friend’s handwriting looked like. “It never struck me as strange before… We could have gone on like this forever, hardly noticing that we had no need of handwriting anymore.”

No need of handwriting? Surely there must be some reason I keep finding pens everywhere.

Of course, the meaning of “handwriting” can vary. Handwriting romantics aren’t usually referring to any crude letterform created from pen and ink. They’re picturing the fluid, joined-up letters of the Palmer method, which dominated first- and second-grade pedagogy for much of the 20th century. (Or perhaps they’re longing for a past they never actually experienced, envisioning the sharply angled Spencerian script of the 1800s.) Despite the proliferation of handwriting eulogies, it seems that no one is really arguing against the fact that everyone still writes—we just tend to use unjoined print rather than a fluid Palmerian style, and we use it less often.

I have mixed feelings about this state of affairs. It pained me when I came across a student who was unable to read script handwriting at all. But my own writing morphed from Palmerian script into mostly print shortly after starting college. Like most gradual changes of habit, I can’t recall exactly why this happened, although I remember the change occurred at a time when I regularly had to copy down reams of notes for mathematics and engineering lectures.

In her book Teach Yourself Better Handwriting, the handwriting expert and type designer Rosemary Sassoon notes that “most of us need a flexible way of writing—fast, almost a scribble for ourselves to read, and progressively slower and more legible for other purposes.” Comparing unjoined print to joined writing, she points out that “separate letters can seldom be as fast as joined ones.” So if joined handwriting is supposed to be faster, why would I switch away from it at a time when I most needed to write quickly? Given the amount of time I spend on computers, it would be easy for an opinionated observer to count my handwriting as another victim of computer technology. But I knew script, I used it throughout high school, and I shifted away from it during the time when I was writing most.

My experience with fountain pens suggests a new answer. Perhaps it’s not digital technology that hindered my handwriting, but the technology that I was holding as I put pen to paper. Fountain pens want to connect letters. Ballpoint pens need to be convinced to write, need to be pushed into the paper rather than merely touch it. The No.2 pencils I used for math notes weren’t much of a break either, requiring pressure similar to that of a ballpoint pen.

Moreover, digital technology didn’t really take off until the fountain pen had already begin its decline, and the ballpoint its rise. The ballpoint became popular at roughly the same time as mainframe computers. Articles about the decline of handwriting date back to at least the 1960s—long after the typewriter, but a full decade before the rise of the home computer.

Sassoon’s analysis of how we’re taught to hold pens makes a much stronger case for the role of the ballpoint in the decline of cursive. She explains that the type of pen grip taught in contemporary grade school is the same grip that’s been used for generations, long before everyone wrote with ballpoints. However, writing with ballpoints and other modern pens requires that they be placed at a greater, more upright angle to the paper—a position that’s generally uncomfortable with a traditional pen hold. Even before computer keyboards turned so many people into carpal-tunnel sufferers, the ballpoint pen was already straining hands and wrists. Here’s Sassoon:

We must find ways of holding modern pens that will enable us to write without pain. …We also need to encourage efficient letters suited to modern pens. Unless we begin to do something sensible about both letters and penholds we will contribute more to the demise of handwriting than the coming of the computer has done.

I wonder how many other mundane skills, shaped to accommodate outmoded objects, persist beyond their utility. It’s not news to anyone that students used to write with fountain pens, but knowing this isn’t the same as the tactile experience of writing with one. Without that experience, it’s easy to continue past practice without stopping to notice that the action no longer fits the tool. Perhaps “saving handwriting” is less a matter of invoking blind nostalgia and more a process of examining the historical use of ordinary technologies as a way to understand contemporary ones. Otherwise we may not realize which habits are worth passing on, and which are vestiges of circumstances long since past.

Josh Giesbrecht is a writer, artist, programmer, and public-school teacher based in British Columbia, Canada.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-the-ballpoint-pen-killed-cursive?utm_source=pocket-newtab

#handwriting

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blossomdriver · 4 years

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Title: Lines that Burn Author: Ambercreek Characters/Pairings: Fenchurch/Zavala Warnings: None Fandom: Destiny Summary: The Obelisk at the Tower is meant to bring lost Guardians home. What happens when it attracts exiled Guardians?

[AO3]

The Obelisk at the Tower is meant to bring lost Guardians home.

What happens when it attracts exiled Guardians?

+++

In the time before Fenchurch was exiled. He never lingered around the Tower and City for long.

The Warlock was curious (as most warlocks are). Always searching for things to unearth from the time before Guardians - whatever remains of the Golden Age that has gone untouched by Time and other third parties.

Fenchurch's favorite part was always bringing his findings back to the City. Showing them off as his Trophies. Looking back on it now, Fenchurch could pinpoint those small moments were the start of his undoing. A ticking time bomb ready to go off that led to exilement.

But the past was in the past and there wasn’t anything he could do about it now. The lingering stung had vanished a few decades ago.

And just because he isn’t allowed within the City walls, doesn’t mean he was completely in the dark about what happens at the Tower. Tess does her best to keep Fenchurch up to date, though some details slip through. You can only write so many words on a postcard before things become too cluttered and illegible.

Where he sits now, he is hovering just outside of Earth’s orbit. Able to see the floating shape of the Traveler from here.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Neville asked, floating to rest in the spot behind his Guardian’s head. His single optic following the path that Fenchurch was staring off to.

“If I’m going, to be honest here, no,” Fenchurch says, shifting slightly in his seat. Suddenly over aware of the uncomfortable leather that pressed against his back. “Though when was anything I did ever a good idea,” He adds on. But he can’t deny the weird dry feeling at the back of his throat.

The worst thing that will come from this is that the Vanguard might do something to Tess. Either exile her from the City as well or perhaps going the extra mile to find any way to shut down the Eververse shop. It was Fenchurch’s remaining tether to the Tower. And that is something he isn’t thrilled about losing or worrying about his niece being caught in the crossfire of his mistakes.

However, from what Tess has told him. The Vanguard has become laxer when it comes to exile guardians after the Red War. If Osiris’ was able to get his lifted for the most part, why shouldn’t the same be done to him?

Fenchurch isn’t in a hurry to plot a course for the City. Soaking up the view for just a little bit longer. He had been on Europa for the last few months and he’d forgotten what other colors besides white, off white, and various shades of light grey looked like.

The hum of the ship could only do so much to help soothe his anxious thoughts.

Turning his head to look behind at Neville, he gives his Ghost a soft smile. The Ghost turning itself to stare back in turn at the guardian.

“You ready?” The Ghost asks and The Warlock lets out a quiet sigh as he looks once more out the window of the ship. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

+++

A knot had been forming in Fenchurch’s stomach ever since he broke the atmosphere. He powers through his worries and does his best to brush it off like nothing is the matter.

The Warlock wasn’t the one to get overly anxious over things. His mind keeps being brought back to the negative outcomes of him doing this. So he swallowed thickly around the coils in his throat and kept his attention drawn to the window.

It won’t be much longer till he reaches the Tower - able to see the silhouette of it a few miles out (not like it was a hard thing to miss after all). Adjusting a few of the settings so he is flying at the correct altitude, not too close to the City, and not too high enough that the ship wouldn’t have enough time for it to descend to park in the hangar bay.

When Fenchurch parks his ship and enters the Hanger. There aren’t many people to be seen, mostly maintenance works finish any last minute things and Frames going among their route.

Taking his time to stroll through the Hanger, eyes lingering over anything and everything. So much was new to him, and if this was to be his only ever trip to the Tower, he might as well do his best to map out the layout. You never know when it might come in handy.

However, it felt with each step he took, the nervousness that rattled his body grew worse and worse and it was impossible to pinpoint if it was his own or Neville.

“We really should turn back now, while we still have a chance.” The Ghost said as he began to climb the first set of short stairs.

“We’ve made it this far,” He tells Neville. He rarely was a helpful one.

“That’s because no one has seen us yet!” Neville snips back in return. Fenchurch could practically taste the worry that radiated off of the Ghost. But regardless, all he does is venture forward, ignoring the Ghost pleads about leaving.

Fenchurch steps into the Plaza, halting in his place as his eyes fall onto the Traveler. Tess wasn’t joking when she had told him of how the Traveler freed it’s from its cage, braking itself in the process. From the lowering sun casts a glow on its shell, making it look more otherworldly than it already is.

He continues to glaze his eyes over everything. His eyes first land on the Eververse shop that is to the left of him. He smiles a little. From where he is standing, he could see that it was closed. And here he thought he was finally going to be able to see Tess face to face after all this time.

There was always another - if he is ever allowed it.

The second thing his eyes fall on is the object that lays out in front of him. Four glowing runes circles around on their own personal platform. He is quick to come to the conclusion that this must be what the Obelisk device Tess had mentioned was. Yet it was hard to see from where he stood, catching glimpses of something purple tied around the base of it. Perhaps ribbons.

The third and final thing that grabbed hold of Fenchurch’s attention was the figure standing all the way on the other end of the Plaza. He doesn’t even need to squint his eyes to know who it was. Fenchurch could recognize that silhouette anywhere. The all familiar armor plating to how he was hunched over the railing, looking over the City.

A found smile spreads over his face.

Ignoring a familiar bitter sting in his chest, he starts walking again. This time crossing the Plaza in the direction of the figure.

“Zavala?” The call of his name startles the Vanguard Commander, quick to turn himself around to face whoever called for him. Though as soon as the Titan’s eyes fall upon Fenchurch, he freezes. Hands curling inwards as he draws them to his side.

“Should I inform Ikora?” Athena asks through the shared bond. In any situation, he would tell her, yes. Because Zavala was always quick to action, never lingering on what was going on before springing into action.

Yet here, he didn’t feel the rush to tell the Warlock Vanguard that

“No,” He replies, though the tone in his voice contradicts his words.

“Fenchurch.” The Vanguard Commander greets - though it isn’t a pleasant one. “You do remember you are not allowed within the City’s walls.”

Fenchurch turned around and pointed over to the Obelisk. “This thing was created, to bring lost Guardians back to the City, correct?” He says as he turns to look at the Commander once more.

In the gram scheme of things, perhaps he should have consulted with the Vanguard first before showing up unannounced. Though that would have ruined the surprise of it all. But perhaps it would have also saved him from his current situation.

The Warlock clasps one arm behind his back, using his other to do a sweeping gesture in front of him. “Yet you aren’t so quick to do something to make me leave?” He starts, aware of how thin the line he was treading had become.

“Unless in the aftermath of this Red War that my exile has been lifted or your reaction time has gotten slower Commander.” The moment those words left his mouth, Fenchurch realized just how much he had just screwed himself over.

So bringing his other arm out from behind his back, he coughs into his hand before tucking his hand into his elbow.

Zavala pushes off the railing and comes towards Fenchurch. The Warlock could taste electricity in the air - at the back of his throat.

He doesn’t have to tell Neville to be on standby for revival, the Ghost is already well prepared.

But a disintegrating punch never lands, Fenchurch doesn’t die, all Zavala does is just stare at him. Arc flickering in his eyes that makes the Warlock bite back any other words he has to say.

The two stand there for a while, staring at each other. Zavala has a million words running through his head but he doesn’t dare to speak any of them. So instead all they have to keep them company in this unbearable silence is the ambient noise of the City below.

Zavala turns his back on Fenchurch as he returns back to his post at the railings, leaving enough space to the side of his as a silent open invitation for Fenchurch to join him at his side. And the Warlock was more than glad to take it

The fleeting sunlight paints the backdrop. The cool metal of the railing pressing into Fenchurch’s back as he leans against it. Keeping sure his eyes are fixed on the Vanguard Commander.

Fenchurch throws a smile at Zavala and the Titan has to suppress his urge to mimic the gesture.

Zavala’s hands are resting on the railing. Lips pressed into a thin line, keeping his head turned. He can just feel Athena’s disappointment from the back of his head. And the Titan keeps pushing it further and farther back til all it becomes is white noise to him.

Zavala opens his mouth to say something, though slowly closes it again. Unsure on how he sure breach the subject.

“Looking back on it now,” Zavala eventually says, “I had a lapse in judgment and I regret going so far as to exile you,” Fenchurch opens his mouth to say something but Zavala cuts him off before he can utter a single thought. “I have grown with the City, for better or for worse, and I want to tell you that,” A pause.

“I’m sorry.”

All Fenchurch can do is stare at the Vanguard Commander with big doe eyes, blinking a few times. In all his lives, never once did he think that Zavala would actually end up apologizing for his mistakes. Perhaps he didn’t know the Titan as much as he thought he did. Maybe Zavala really had changed over the decades in their separation and this was a Zavala he wanted to grow closer with.

Another part that will become Fenchurch’s undoing is that he is far too bold and adventurous. Able to throw caution to the wind and simply wing it without thinking a plan through.

He inches his hand closer to Zavala’s, doing it slowly as not to startle the other man as if he was a wild animal. When Fenchurch gets his hand close enough to brush against the other Awoken’s hand, he reaches his pinky finger out. Looping it around the other’s pinky.

It was a sign that Fenchurch didn’t overstep his boundaries since Zavala himself hadn’t moved his hand away at the gesture. So he was in the clear for right now.

The two of them fall into comfortable silents after that. The sky had gone dark a good 20 minutes ago and here in the silents did Fenchurch finally have time to take in everything. The Tower and City had gone quiet, but it wasn’t eerie or terrifying like how it was in the early days.

Fenchurch throws his head back as he laughs. Not the sort of deep belly rumble, but a light feathery kind. But he leans far to back when he does that, feeling himself giving way.

The only thing Zavala can do is watch in horror as Fenchurch’s body goes toppling over the railing. Seeing as his body falls all the way down to the City Ground. Zavala should have felt numb to the feeling, after seeing so many Guardians in the past fall over the same exact railings.

Neville is floating next to the Commander, not even a second later. Though the Ghost seems more annoying than worried about his guardian’s safety.

As another second passes, Fenchurch’s body reappears. The man looked equally annoyed as his Ghost did. The Warlock brushing off the non-existent dirt from his clothes while all he can do is stare dumbfounded at Zavala.

“I felt that was the Traveler trying to tell me something.”

And that gets a chuckle from Zavala.

#destiny #destiny the game #Fenchurch Everis #Commander Zavala #Zavala #Fenchurch Everis/Zavala #amber writes

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garryspolicememories · 4 years

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Policing Memories of

Garry Crawford Circa 1962

Part XV

When I first arrived in Wawa in the Spring of 1971, to the best of my recollection there were no civilian radio dispatchers. I believe it was sometime in the next year or so that they started hiring dispatchers. I mention them because they are the unsung hero’s. They are the lifeline for the field officer. They are the ones who would answer the phone and get the necessary information that could mean life or death to so many. The caller in a domestic dispute, or life defining incident. The Officers who would be dispatched to know just what they were walking into. The information they received and dispatched could make all the difference. They received little or no training. They worried about the civilians and their officers on the road. They knew what was happening, where the dangers were and did what they could to support us. If they had not heard from an officer for a certain length of time you would get a check call. At the end of the day, they had to take all of these pressures home with them and they were not to speak to anyone about them. Please remember them and thank them where you can.

I am listing the names I remember in the early days, some of them moved on the Sault Ste Marie and other Districts. I apologize for any I have missed or have mistakenly listed. These are the ones that come to mind. I thank you all for having our back. Olga McCluskie, Joyce West, Ray White, Roly MacDonald, Dave Doucette, Mullen, Kathy Toop, Rose O’Hearn, Marilyn James. I can remember so many times I would have conversations with these people that were so helpful. The smart ones would ask a question in a very diplomatic way, so often they would make you take a second look at your decisions and adjust accordingly.

Linda Skorniak was our secretary and filled in, in so many ways. Brian Ringrose was one of the custodians who was our chief cook on some of our larger bush searchers. Without his volunteering we would have had a pretty hungry group. He always added to the espirits of the group

I have to tell a little story that comes to mind when I think of Linda Skorniak. One day I was working in the back end of the Constables Office. Linda was also in the office at that time. A lady came in to the front desk and on seeing me she asked Linda if I was Corporal Al Jordan.

Linda replied: No Al Jordan is a really good looking guy. I forget just what the lady wanted, but between the two of us we satisfied her query and she left the office. I then said to Linda: Linda I overheard what you said to that lady about Al. If Al is the really good looking one, what the hell am I. Linda kind of stammered then replied: Oh you are a more rugged looking guy. To this day I am still trying to understand whether that is good or bad. I do know I appreciated Linda.

The Sinking of The Edmund Fitzgerald

The Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in a Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29. When launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes, and she remains the largest to have sunk in Lake Superior. This occurred in Canadian Waters Off Whitefish Point. The following day there were many OPP members involved in walking the shoreline in search of debris or survivors from that wreck. No one was ever found from the wreck. Gordon lightfoot wrote his song: The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald a couple of years later which most Canadians can recall.

During the summer of 1977 we received word at Wawa Detachment that a human leg bone had washed up on a small beach on the west end of Michipicoten Island. Michipicoten Island is located in Lake Superior about 60 km off shore from Wawa. A request was submitted for the use of a force helicopter. Permission was given and an OPP helicopter piloted by Norm Kerr was dispatched to Wawa. Ed Zelionis District Dive Master, Bud Brennan of DHQ Identification Branch and myself, proceeded to the scene. A human leg was recovered, all of the bones were still attached with the exception of the last little toe appendage. A search was made of the beach and shallow water area for further items. Ed and Bud remained at the scene while Norm and I flew to the West End lighthouse where I arranged with the light keepers to make periodic searches of the beach should further remains wash up. The beach was quite narrow. On our return to the beach from the lighthouse, Norm made his round out over the water. He then drifted the helicopter sideways at an altitude of just a few feet. His intention was to set the helicopter down as soon as we were over the beach.

When Ed had completed his dive he had removed his wet suit and left it lay on the beach to dry. We had not noticed it and as we edged closer to the beach, the rotor wash started to lift the wet suit. The danger being, if it was to lift either into the main rotor of the tail rotor, it could result in serious consequences. Norm attempted to back away from the wet suit. As he did there was a very loud bang. We were parallel to the beach; which meant the back up action moved us down the beach. There was a dead spruce tree that hung out over the beach. We had hit it. Norm and I both had mikes on. I remember when I heard the bang, Norm said: Do you know what that was? My reply was very quick. Ya sit her down, sit her Down.

I had to laugh afterwards as Norm is an excellent pilot and he did not need me to tell him what to do. All I could think of was, we had hit with the tail rotor. Damage to that would cause the helicopter to start to spin. Spinning and crashing you don’t stand much chance as the jolt when you stop usually breaks your neck. Needless to say Norm did a good job of recovering and did set the helicopter down on the beach. I remember examining the main rotor. It had several small wrinkles in it at one point. Norm advised it was fit to fly and we were able to return to Wawa. Before we left Bud Brennan took a photograph of the three of us sitting on the beach. If you look carefully you can see the white end of the overhanging spruce tree behind the helicopter. The photograph from L to R shows Ed Zelionis hugging his wet suit Lol, Garry Crawford and Norm Kerr the pilot.

We did not have DNA analysis available at that time, so there was no way of making a definite determination as to where the leg had come from. It did make a lot of since that the there was a high probability that it came from the wreckage of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The extremely cold water of the lake would explain the remains surviving intact for that length of time. The counter clockwise circulation of the lake current would explain how it ended up on that small beach so far out on the lake. An examination revealed that the find was from a man estimated to be approximately 65 yrs of age.

Lake Superior is extremely deep, however the currents are effected by weather to great depths. I remember another case where a fishing boat had sunk and Ed Zelionis had recovered the bodies. The boat had sunk in excess of fifty feet of water. I believe it was a month or so later Ed was approached by the fishing company to assist in recovering the boat. The boat had been relatively undamaged when Ed made the original recovery, however when he returned to recover the boat. There was extensive damage where the boat had rolled over several times on the bottom.

A Typical Drowning Recovery In 1970’s

Prior to the mid 1960’s most under water drowning recoveries were made using Dragging Irons. These were lengths of pipes with short lengths of chain attached that had large treble hooks attached that we use to refer to as Sturgeon Hooks. Where a search area was identified a series of parallel passes would be made dragging the irons behind a boat. The hooks would hopefully snag on the victim allowing his recovery. They were quite difficult to use as they snagged on everything they passed over.

In the latter part of the 1960’s the OPP decided to form Underwater Recovery Teams. I think it was George Orser from Kenora who travelled around doing the testing and selection for the job. I remember I was a very strong swimmer and wanted to try out for the group. When they did the testing for the Sudbury District Members, I attended but was not allowed to take the test, mainly because I had no experience using scuba equipment. The main part of the original test consisted of putting on the tanks mask etc. Diving to the bottom in about fifteen feet of water removing mask and tanks. Then putting your mask back on clearing the mask and repositioning the tank on your back. I thought I could hold my breath long enough to do all those activities even if I didn’t use the scuba. George justifiably rejected my opportunity. Little did I realize at that time just how much scuba diving required you to know.

In later years I did obtain some knowledge of that occupation. I also learned that scuba diving should not be done by the faint at heart or the fool hardy. There are numerous dangers to be aware of. As an example most people that have not taken up the sport do not realize that a lung full of air from a tank of compressed air at 30’ doubles its volume at surface. So if you are working at 30’ and your tank went empty, then you returned to surface holding your breath you would seriously damage your lungs or worse. The deeper you dive the more the expansion and the greater the danger. One must always keep breathing as you come to surface or exhale if out of air as the air you have increases as you come up. Working for extended period at depth requires you to use a careful formula to avoid air in your blood or what they call the bends which can also be fatal.

I remember in the mid 1970’s receiving a call at Wawa Detachment that there had been an alleged drowning on Hobon Lake, south of Franz, Ontario. I proceeded via a bush road to Hobon Lake with Ed Zelionis and one other District Diver whose name I can not recall at this time. Our equipment consisted of about a fourteen foot outboard boat with a 15 hp motor. The two divers; diving equipment including extra tanks. About 150” of ½” rope. A large number of javex bottles with string attached. Two diving fins which were made out of 5/8” plywood. They were approximately 2’wide and a 1’ deep, with straight sides and back, curved from the centre area down back to the sides. There was a slot cut from the front centre almost to the centre of the board where there was a hole to attach one end of the tow rope. There were hand holds cut about centre on both sides.

The first thing one does when attending a body recovery site is to try to make an educated guess as to just where the body may be. This is done considering where the person may have entered the water, plus taking into consideration the water temperature, wind direction, current, What they may have consumed etc. and body buoyancy. Any of these things can effect where the body may be. I have seen cases of fast water where the body is recovered right at their point of entry and others where they were recovered twenty miles away. Usually one starts at the established point of entry plus and you work your way down stream or downwind from that point. I say plus because there is always that chance that your information is a little incorrect and the person entered the water upstream or upwind from where your information led you to believe.

In the recovery at Hobon Lake, the occurrence involved a Native man who had allegedly fallen out of a canoe about half way up the Lake. We started taking into consideration where the canoe came on shore and working upwind from that point. I ran the boat. We attached one end of the rope to the back corners of the transom, placing one rope on each side. Each of the divers took one of the fins on the end of the rope and was dragged behind, using the fins to take them up or down and side to side. The visibility of the water dictated just how wide a strip we could cover on each pass. Hobon Lake is a long narrow lake. So we started at centre of the lake and worked towards the shore on the side where the canoe had been found and upwind. I dropped off Javex bottles as I proceeded south in this case. The attached string had a weight secured to the bottom which anchored the bottles in place as I dropped one. This gave me direction and reference. As I reached a point where I would return, I would similarly mark it and make a parallel return pass. We had to be careful as there were fallen trees etc, on the bottom that I could not see. A close watch was kept on the diver’s bubbles. I remember on one pass having to stop as one of the divers had been pulled into a down tree that tangled up his line. We had completed about ¾ of the selected area when the body was recovered. I remember that with all of the diving equipment, and the three of us there was no room in the boat for the deceased. We placed him in canoe and towed him down the lake to where we had left our truck. We then carried him and the canoe up to the truck and placed him in the box of the truck, wrapping him in an emergency blanket. The body was then transported out the bush road to Dubreuville; where we were met by a local undertaker. Who then transported the deceased in his hearst to Wawa. I mention this as in so many cases during my career I was either party to or actually involved in a strange method of removing a deceased. In some cases it was in the box of a pick up truck, others holding them upright on a snowmobile, tied to a stretcher then lowered out a window. In one case before snowmobiles I remember using and old army truck that had a mounted A frame and no box. We wrapped the deceased in a mattress wrapping chain around to hold everything in place. Then laid it over the front fender like a deer. There was no disrespect meant. It was simply a matter of making do with what we had. I also remember a skier who froze to death being brought out frozen in a sitting position in a helicopter. These were things we had to do.

A question I remember being asked by people who witnessed some of the macabre situations that we were involved with was: What do you do at the end of the day? My answer was always the same. As police officers, you do what you have to do. If you are lucky and have a clear conscience. You do what everybody else does. You go home cook your supper, go for a walk or cut the grass. You enjoy your family, the same as everyone else.

If you wish to read my previous submissions, they are all stored at the following URL: <garryspolicememories.tumblr.com>

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ruthandliamgoplaces · 5 years

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People are amazing!

It. Is. Sweltering. We’ve been cycling through through the French heat wave and have paid the price. Man down, man down! Liam is experiencing heat exhaustion, we think. On reflection, there is no wonder. With regular highs of 42 degrees Celsius, and it not getting cooler than 21-25 on a night, cycle touring through the heatwave has been an inhospitable environment. However, we’ve still managed to have a lot of fun along the way.

The rain.

We departed from our rest spot 11 days ago and had two days of rain and storms. In our little green nylon fortress, we could hear the rumbling of thunder for an hour before the lightening struck overhead. Then the rain arrived, wailing, merciless, startling rain, nearly collapsing our tent onto us. It felt like we were in the eye of a hurricane! And then, as fast as it arrived, it passed. Just enough water to guarantee that our tent was soaking for when we had to pack it away in the morning!

The following evening, we once more had rain. This time we had constructed a bivvy spot next to a large bush in some wildlife reserve land next to a major road into Montpellier. The campsites were too expensive to stay in and we decided to brave the elements and trust our gear. As the sun set, I flicked ticks off my camping mat, batted mosquitos away, crawled under a nylon ground sheet tarp, into my hot sticky bivvy bag, and cried. I was doing exactly what I wanted to do, but it was so hard. As it goes, I slept extremely well, and our system worked perfectly because we both woke up dry despite the rain all night. Of course, all of our gear was damp from the condensation! For added amusement, the busy road had turned into stand still traffic in morning rush hour, and commuters looked at us in bemusement and bewilderment as we stood on the scrubland brushing our teeth as the traffic crawled slowly by. I felt like I was an animal in the zoo!

Finally, the last night of rain… we splashed out on a campsite because we were depleted by being splashed on. The rain spat down on us all night in our tent, and the mosquitos circled menacingly. We, and most of our posessions, were damp. However, the sun was on its way! We rejoiced.

The heatwave.

Oh, just how much we would miss the feeling of cold air on our face, we did not quite appreciate. A new kind of dampness was in the post. A heatwave bringing 40 degree heat to most of France hit us in the face, and soon we would be battling with stifling, relentless heat. A blanket of exhausting warmth that did not fade even with the evening sun. Being constantly covered in a layer of salty sweat, turning us into desperate shade seekers, with a mortal fear of running out of water.

Our tent, definitely dry now, became uninhabitable. We abandoned it in favour of stringing a mosquito net underneath trees and sleeping outside looking at the stars, with no need even for a sleeping bag.

Litres of water, teaspoon after teaspoon of salt, we struggled on. Getting up early to cycle until 1pm because by 4pm, you could not cycle. By the late afternoon, the heat became totally unmanageable and fatigued.

We struggled on, I had more tears sheltering under a walnut tree at lunch time. The heatwave warning said a danger to human life. How could we carry on? Oh, but we did. Maybe a little foolishly, we bashed out 80km days, 1000m altitude climb days, long days, hard days… and we were only 150km away from our target when Liam became unwell from suspected heat exhaustion. Which brings me to my overwhelming memory of the past 11 days.

The kindness of fellow humans

It started with a stranger giving us a bottle of fresh mineral water along the Meditteranean Sea near Sete. It continued with two couples making us a coffee at a campsite in Saint Gilles, seeing us struggling with our stove in the rain. A Danish couple also gave us chocolate! Chats about the Lake District with an English couple replenished our spirits. Playing with some Spanish Children in the town square. And then, there was the free glass of wine the Wine Bar owner bestowed upon us, after seeing the Gendarmarie move us on from sitting on the steps of the Church in the town centre. So many cheers from French people and road cyclists - ’Bonne Voyage!’ ‘Bonne Route’ and my favourite - ‘Bonne Courage!’. So many offers of help with directions, or just general cheerful and heart warming interest in our adventure. We’ve been powered by human kindness.

The kindness overflowed when we stayed with three Warmshowers hosts in Valence, Chateauneuf-sur-Isere and Voreppe. Warmshowers is a network of cycle tourers who host other cycle tourers - and we were lucky enough to meet three amazing sets of people. In Valence, we met a woman who regularly cycles 200km days and is entering a 1200km race! She let us pitch our tent in her garden, fed us, washed our clothes and we swam in her swimming pool! Our next host fed us raspberries from the garden, and we listened to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack from our comfy bed. Our last host let us stay very last minute and arranged it from London… and also washed our clothes! We had such an amazing time with each host, learnt a lot about French culture, had really interesting conversations, incredible food, lots of laughs, and shared stories of travel and cycle touring. These hosts saved us from the heat! We realise now, just two days of camping in the heat and Liam fell ill. Those nights of shelter allowed us to keep going.

On the last day of cycling, a French woman flagged us down to offer to fill our water bottles. And then, when Liam got sick, an amazing woman accepted our Couchsurfing request. I cannot imagine how she felt when she received a message saying ‘my partner has vomitting and diarrhoea, can we stay with you?’… but she accepted and even came to pick Liam and his bike up from our campsite. She also took most of my things, and I just had to cycle a light bike 10km to reach shelter. We’ve been resting in her home today and she said we can stay as long as we need for Liam to get better. Even though she has family staying from England right now, our ex-pat Mancunian hero Angie, offered us a place in her home. People, are just amazing.

That brings me to the next bit of amazing. Our Workaway hosts that we’ve been racing to get to, have been so understanding of Liam’s sickness. They said as long as we can make it to Geneva (40km away), they can pick us and the bikes up. I am just blown away!

The cycling…

When I think of everything we have achieved over the past 11 days, it makes my eyebrows raise a little. We’ve cycled nearly 1300km now, and the last 7 days have been particularly amazing. Up impeccable cycle tracks, along beautiful rivers, past castles, Chateaux, Nuclear power stations, wetlands, parklands, sunflower fields, apricot trees, vineyards, apple trees, cherry trees, walnut trees, beaches, historical market towns, churches and through forests. We’ve swam in rivers and picnicked anywhere with shade. We’ve mostly been on the Via Rhona, the track along the Rhone River to Switzerland. However, we’ve taken a few detours to make the route quicker.

The route is getting hillier and hillier, and we’ve had to push up a few of the hills due to the gradient! This is no easy feat - my legs are much stronger than my arms! Most of the hills we’ve managed though, in low gears, grinding on, with regular gasp breaks.

The treats!

We’ve also gotten a little better at treating ourselves. We realised that our adventure had become a Cycle Tour of Suffering! So, we’ve managed to relax our budget a little, and stay in a few more campsites and have a few more bottles of wine. A particular favourite during the heatwave was buying a 2 Euro for 4 box of magnums and eating two each! We also love having strawberries and cream. We’ve absolutely needed to treat ourselves a bit in this weather!

What next?

So, we are due to start with our Workaway Host on the 2 July. However, we have to see how Liam recovers. We are a bit gutted not to finish our cycle adventure into Ogens - visions of triumphantly cycling over the Swiss border and arriving at our workaway host on bikes, have been shattered. However, problems are all part of the adventure. We remain upbeat, and feel blessed to be staying with the lovely Couchsurf host. We turned the disaster into part of the adventure. We will wait until Liam is well enough, then get a train to Geneva and be collected by our Workaway hosts, or get a train directly to them.

The verdict? What a bloody adventure we’ve had!! Cannot wait for the next few weeks… looking forward to being indoors and our Workaway Opportunity, but we will miss our bikes! So far our adventure has been everything we wanted it to be. The warmshowers, couchsurf and workaway experiences are making it for us a very exciting cultural cycle tour experience of human kindness, learning and exchange.

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mtntopbakery · 5 years

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HERBAL COLD CARE for KIDS

I’m NOT a doctor! I’m just a crunchy mom but want to share MY HERBAL ARSENAL! Several people have contacted me that my remedies helped them tremendously so I decided it was time to finally lay it all out in a post to share.

Once you have these on hand you can use one dose here or there, optionally when they have huge exposures like birthday parties, swim class, or travel for maintenance but you won’t use the whole bottles at a time! I want to emphasize this because I know most health care plans do not cover herbs/supplements and these high quality super foods are not cheap but I still champion them as the best possible heath care you can provide for your children. This investment will be your herbal first aid kit & they have very very long shelf lives. Follow directions for keeping and storing.

WHY COLDS IN SPRING?!

It’s always cold & flu season when people don’t stay home! I can never get over how many sick people I encounter in the world and have heard my own relatives tell me they are trying to pretend they are not sick when they are 🤣 Guys. Let’s stop this! Self-care isn’t only important for your longevity & mental health, but staying home is an act of love & consideration for your community.

Here are the old-fashioned remedies we use in our house to keep the kiddos healthy! They don’t have as much exposures as kids being sent to school with other sick kids because they are home with me, but they have definitely had long exposures to sick kids at play dates or have started to show symptoms and we have always been able to quickly win the battle with these natural remedies. The kids now only get sick about once a year and only for a few days. We have never used antibiotics or any pharmaceutical products on them.

Sometimes kids don’t realize they are getting sick & we can look for some symptoms as clues that it’s time to start herbs and rest: you discovered someone you were with was sick, crankiness after a busy week, pulling on ears, ANY nasal discharge (do not assume it’s “teething” as I have never even experienced my kids having any runny noses during teething, but I have had moms tell me their kids snot was from teething at play dates only to have my kids come down with a cold shortly after), red eyes, puffy eyes, voice changes (hoarseness), mild fever.

At this point it’s time to keep your child home. Cancel your plans! Ever heard of JOMO? The Joy of Missing Out is the new FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). If you ever needed an excuse for self-care or nurturing your little ones, now is the time. I have really found activating all the parent powers & herbal remedies full force at the onset of symptoms can have your babies feeling better in just a few short days instead of days of fever or weeks of lingering cough. Once you get into that territory you’re heading into emergency antibiotic treatment & steroids which should be avoid at all costs. The idea is to work with the immune system instead of suppressing the symptoms, and facilitate a total cleanse of the body at once to eliminate the bacteria or virus which has made your child ill.

When fevers arise I monitor them closely by taking temperatures every hour (or more) & make adjustments to clothing and room temperature to help make the child more comfortable, but I do not use fever reducers. When the body has completed the elimination of the bacteria or virus, the fever will subside on its own and I have found my children able to do this in about 4-8 hours. Reducing the fever artificially essentially keeps the body temp low aka hospitable for these new and unwanted pathogens consequently prolonging the presence of the pathogen. Therefore, ancient wisdoms agree fevers are constructive when your child is under care and close observation. A full recuperation, even after symptoms subside should generally be a week of rest and relaxation to avoid a secondary infection.

Don’t worry about feeding your child regular meal portions. The body is focusing on healing and will often self-regulate appetite in order to focus energy on healing & detoxing.

When one family member goes down, I start to administer herbs to the whole family as a precaution. Avoid tickling, rowdy play & dairy especially because it creates mucus in the body. Replace calcium sources with vegan options such as nuts, seeds, beans, kale smoothies, tofu and oranges.

We do the following things every two hours/daily for 24-48 hours as needed to clear sickness.

MAINTAIN A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT

1. Change bed & bath linens repeatedly

2. Wash hands as much as possible with basic natural soap & warm water (antibiotic soaps can cause thyroid issues please avoid)

3. Give child tissue box to encourage them blowing their noses & offer a small trash bag to contain their used tissues that you can take out a few times a day or use saline spray & Nosa Frida every two hours for baby

4. Herbal hand sanitizer can help with a very tired child who is taking less hand washing trips to the bathroom

5. Essential oil diffuser with oils like lavender, eucalyptus, Tea tree or “thieves oil” cleanse air & help set the scene for relaxation (you can also boil onions to help reduce airborne germs)

6. With a dry cough, especially in winter or high altitudes, a humidifier can help make the cough more productive

EVERY TWO HOURS

1. Elderberry syrup: Mix into small amount of water for your child to drink if it’s too sweet or thick by itself

2. Loquat syrup: Phenomenal blend of ancient Chinese herbs KIDS LOVE IT! So yummy

3. Echinacea Tincture: 1 drop per every 5 lbs body weight or 1 drop per every 2 lbs of body weight for more serious cold mixed with water or use a throat spray

4. Essential oils (tea tree/eucalyptus/oregano/peppermint/lavender): Blend with almond or coconut oil and rub on feet and ribs. An herbal petroleum-free chest salve is also fantastic for this

5. Sweet potato & fruit popsicles (no sugar added/organic): Help keep your unhapppy kid hydrated and acts as a vitamin C / vitamin A supplement

6. Cold care tea: Hot or cold this is delicious. Check the box and get one with yarrow & hyssop. Steep one bag for kids & two bags for adults

7. Vitamin D drops

ONCE A DAY

1. Probiotics: child powder or drops mixed into cold tea, juice or elderberry water

2. Colloidal silver drops: Clear & flavorless yet POWERFUL antibacterial/antimicrobial

3. Garlic-Mullen ear drops: Just one drop in each ear is fine when infection isn’t present. This will introduce garlic, a natural antibiotic, to the ear nose and throat areas immediately staving off nasty complications from ear infections (the ears are more prone then one would think to be the access point for germs, because they lack the normal heathy bacteria you produce in your mouth for example.)

4. Eucalyptus bath: especially with the addition of Epsom salt for the older kids

5. Pillows under mattress under the pillow area will help breathing & create more productive nasal drainage & cough

6. Zinc spray: these often come flavored or with added herbs for immunity and are so easy to administer to kids or to mix into a bottle

7. Multi vitamin: if your kid isn’t taking one daily already, now is a good time to cover any bases for nutritional gaps

For deep seated coughs in children over one, encourage child to eat one finely minced clove of garlic in honey. Follow with orange juice, carrot juice or sugar free organic popsicle. Here is a great video to share with your kids!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDavvGuwoRE

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For deep coughs Onion Poultice is HIGHLY EFFECTIVE video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-J4mXTyLqk

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If cough is keeping child from sleeping at night try lemon balm tincture in water or tea, a drop of CBD oil between the eyebrows, or mix a drop of CBD oil with massage oil or herbal chest salve and apply to chest and ribs. Alternatively older kids can take 1/4 tsp brandy with lemon and honey can be taken to help relax coughing muscles for sleep.

Consult medical care if fever doesn’t go down, redness in skin occurs, child complains of pain or stiffness. In an emergency, stay with your child. Hospitals may tell you it is their policy to not allow parents, but a policy is not a law. Your presence will bring comfort, safety and continuity in care your child very much needs. You also need to be present to monitor all potential interventions or procedures related to your child’s care.

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rex-rises · 6 years

Note

82. “Did they touch you or hurt you? Who was it? Are you okay?”

Note; i’ll be using the idea of an abandoned city as my clan’s lair for this prompt. I will also be assuming that Babs is staying over for the night for whatever reason.

It was dark. The ruins of the city remained as silent as ever. The night sky shined above as the moon lit up the ground below for any soul who dared to brave the eerie silence. As it happened, there was indeed a dragon that stepped into the streets. A pink gembound spiral by the name of Babs tried to remain as silent as she could be in the air without winds.

Thirst drew her away from the soft cushy mane of her lover. She tried to rouse him, but even though Alexander was smaller in his adolescent stages, she was no state to wake an imperial in his slumber. So, she struck out alone. She could hear the soft snores of his clanmates in an almost rhythmic harmony-only interrupted every now and then by the grumbled snort of a snapper here and there.

In the midst of the citadel laid a well. It would be difficult to work the mechanisms for a spiral like herself, but she was confident that she could find a way. The clan lacked any smaller breeds such as herself, so the everyday mechanics lacked a way for them to go about life with ease. The gears in her mind clicked and turned with each flap of her wings, but she was not quite so naive as to ignore what surrounded her.

Scrape.

She stopped her flight and turned to look behind her. Her wings held her in place in the air as her electrified gaze searched the dark streets. Each form of each object looked about as average as usual. Unease stirred as a shiver rippled through her scales. With a curt nod to reassure herself followed by a swallow of her fears, she snapped back around and continued to her path until she reached her destination.

The stone well was filled with water, but it was quite a climb down. She landed on the edge with a longing gaze towards the liquid below. Her tongue was about as sandy as the wasteland around her with her mouth as dry as the sun. She skittered around the edge as she looked down into it as if she questioned whether this was a good idea or not. Her forearms tested the edge of the well while her hind legs rested on the surface with her tail wrung around a pole that held a bucket.

“Hm…might be able to…” she mused to herself. With the friction the rocks provided, she could cling to the rocks as she drank. Her hips wiggled as she prepared to jump down and leap into the well. Her legs pushed her off as she tucked her legs in, but pain suddenly erupted from her tail as a sudden force pulled her away from paradise. She cried out in both shock and pain as the teeth that snapped onto her tail pulled her further into the creature’s jaws. Half of her body could feel the sickening saliva begin to drool onto her. Fearful cries escaped her as loud as she could before electricity began to crackle around her. The monster’s mouth was forced open as the spiral bolted as quickly as her little wings could take her. Blindly at first, but she was quick to reach her senses in the panicked state and remember her way back to Alexander. She would not go alone, however, as the predator gave pursuit.

Despite her natural speed as a spiral, she failed to nearly disappear in an instant to the beast. One of her wings pained her-slowed her. Despite her disadvantage and risky situation, she stole a glance behind her to see what exactly chased her. Despite the pale moonlight, all she could register was the hungered gaze of four that chilled her to the bone. She dodged a swipe from the mirror as she struggled herself to gain altitude. Just as she happened to get a bit higher, the feral dragon jumped away from behind her and clung to the wall of a building.

Now on the rooftops, the beast followed alongside her with the intent to jump down on her should she get too high. Fear crawled as her heartbeat at a pace she did not even know was possible. She turned and shot to a different direction in an alleyway. The mirror followed with a sneer that almost sounded as if it were a laugh. “Almost there…almost there…” she breathed heavily. She turned a corner and there it was, just down the street-Alexander’s den!

She cried out as loudly as her voice could muster, “ALEX-!” only to be cut off as the mirror jumped down from the building with its claws outstretched. The last thing she could feel before she blacked out was being slammed into the ground, pinned as a droplet of saliva plopped against her cheek.

—-

“ALEX-!”

His eyes snapped open, pupils constricted. He woke from his slumber as he quickly began to search his body. His eyes scanned his back, his mane, wings, and even his front claws in search of Babs. The quick search did not take long to determine one important fact: Babs was not with him-that voice was not a dream. He snapped out of his sleepy haze almost completely before he pushed himself to his feet and out into the streets. His lips curled back into a snarl as his roar echoed throughout the streets, “WHERE IS SHE?” he demanded.

If the pitched squeal had not woken the clan up, his voice sure had. Various dragons roused from their slumber, irritated, confused, and some even concerned. The most noteworthy reaction out of the bunch, however, would have had to be Razohr, who simply shook his head and sighed in exasperation. “Not this…” the skydancer could be heard to those who bothered to listen.

His eyes scanned the streets as an umber wildclaw would approach him cautiously with a tone that commanded answers, “Alexander, what is the meaning of this ruckus?” her posh accent struggled to maintain itself in the circumstances.

His gaze snapped back towards her as his mouth opened to answer her, but he seemed to think better of it-if his decision could even be called ‘the better of it’. He shook his head, “Nevermind that, where’s Babs?”

The wildclaw squinted her eyes, almost as if confused before her memory finally recalled that there seemed to be a missing annoyance next to his side. She began to babble on, but Alexander would come to ignore her as he spotted something just behind the wildclaw. His lips curled back into a snarl. Echo, the wildclaw, stopped her speech mid-sentence, shocked by his sudden display of aggression. He launched himself forward, the biped leapt over to the side in order to avoid being trampled by the adolescent.

It was a shape, he saw. It was in the shade of a tarp, so it was difficult to spot at first glance. He was certain he could see the shape of something moving. His first instinct was to chase the hidden figure. As soon as it was apparent that he was headed that way, however, the shape looked back at him with its white beady eyes before a shape dropped from its mouth. The creature fled into the night while Alexander investigated what was dropped.

It was Babs. Broken and beaten, her small and frail body looked as if it had gone through hell and back. Despite the obvious fact that she was not okay, he scooped her up with breathless panicked words, “Did they touch you or hurt you? Who was it? Are you okay?” She did not respond.

Echo revealed herself to have followed after him after she instructed everyone uninvolved to return to their slumber. A panicked and disgraceful squawk of some sort could be heard from the normally stoic lady’s mouth. As quick as the spiral that was injured, she would speak, “M-Medic! Mel! Forget sleep, get your tail over here!”

Alexander clasped his hands over the tiny spiral’s body protectively as he rested on his chest. He waited ever so impatiently for the slow snapper to stomp her way over to put her wise old knowledge to the test. It was difficult with how small the spiral’s body was, but with the assistance of an exaltee fae, they were able to stop the bleeding and get her wrapped up. They situated themselves inside the snapper’s den, where the stout dragon had access to all the supplies she needed to treat the spiral. Alexander paced outside, snorts and huffs could be heard. Echo was with him. She tapped her claws impatiently as she bumbled about relations with the Stonegrove clan, Babs’s home. Finally, the snapper would emerge from the den with a hearty sigh. Both heads snapped towards her.

“The child will be fine,” her weary old voice spoke up, “It was not as terrible as it looked, but it was good that you stopped that monster before things got any worse.” The snapper’s weary smile pulled back gleefully, but the scowl did not wipe itself from Alex’s expression. He gave an affirmative huff before he would turn around and begin to walk with purpose. Echo took a moment to notice this, but she chased after him as her voice piped up, “Wait-where are you going!?” she questioned.

He made no hesitance in his answer, “There are only three dragons of icewarden within this clan.”

The wildclaw looked baffled as she followed alongside him, “Don’t tell me you’re going to go about attacking everyone with eyes of ice?? You can’t just accuse others without proper-”“Only one has four eyes,” he growled before he began to travel at a much faster pace. Within a leap and a bound, he was in flight.

#blood #habby-fr #mirror #alexander #babs #mel #echo #tigris #prompt #technically incomplete because i got tired of writing #fucking hell this is long #might do p2 later

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hellionkat-star-wars-edition · 6 years

Text

Bright Lights Cast Tall Shadows (Rey/Kylo Ren)

So…here’s a little something that’s been sitting in my WIP binder for waaaay too long and needs to be shared…Thanks so much to betaingbyme for helping me edit this incomplete fic of mine. She was a real pleasure to work with and if ever you need help beta-ing your star wars fic you should def’n go to her.

Summary:

There’s been a distrubance in the Force.

It’s Kylo Ren.

He’s dying.

Two-hundred and thirty-four breaths.

The young Jedi gobbled down another. At such high altitudes, Ach-To’s rolling mists tickled down her respiratory organs like a strong shot of Knockback Nectar.

Rey exhaled quickly blowing sticky hair tendrils off her face.

Two hundred and thirty-five breaths down and thousands more to go. If she succeeded, her body would numb and her consciousness blur with the will of the Force. She might even levitate a little. Rey thrilled at such a prospect. Luke meditated in this way, believing that contact with the ground could prove distracting. She doubted she’d miss the cold sting of volcanic rock beneath her rump.

R'iia take her–the chill dancing down her spine was exasperating. It almost made her miss the dry heat of Niima.

Almost.

Rey would not allow Ach-To’s foreign mists to sabotage her focus this time. She was no stranger to the overtly meticulous. She’d shimmied down Imperial wrecks and scrubbed minute specks off scrap for less payoff.

Luke had called her a fighter. A survivor. Claimed her desert-dwelling resilience would put even the most disciplined Jedi Knight to shame. But Rey knew her master’s kind words were a hollow reward for all her sleepless nights spent yearning for a family.

Cruel Jakku might have been Rey’s teacher in resilience, but to be self-reliant a Jedi must have no desires. And in Rey’s short lifespan, ache and want and unfulfillment were all she’d ever known.

Luke said when they first met her inner turmoil was so loud it was audible. It resonated like the shrill cry of a lost child trapped within an infinite feedback loop.

Force meditation was the only remedy.

Luke worried if she did not heal her internal scars soon her new Force powers could spiral out of her control, and leave her open to attack. If that happened, then she’d become lost to the chaos within herself forever. Just like another of Luke’s students, and Rey wanted nothing in common with him.

He was the whole reason her Master made her sit hours on end in solitude when they could be practicing battle forms instead. She knew Luke didn’t want to lose her as he had lost his nephew. Why the legendary Jedi kept her at a distance with forlorn smiles and seldom eye contact. Surely, he hadn’t meant to make her feel like an unwanted burden. But the possibility that she might succumb to the Darkside like his former apprentice always lingered in the air between them. It stung like being punished for a crime she had yet to commit.

Rey stiffened.

Just when she thought she was making some leeway with her Master, Kylo Ren had managed yet again to take another important person away from her.

Venomous monster. Remorseless creature. Father killer.

An unfamiliar wave of fury crept into Rey, a heat. Unbidden, it bubbled and surged like a Steelpecker egg trapped in a Neutrino radiator. Panicked by its suddenness, her breathing wavered as did her connection to the Force.

Open palms clenched into fists.

This had been her twelfth attempt today to maintain a steady connection, and it’d taken her countless attempts throughout the week just to get to where she was now.

Rey wanted to scream.

She had failed. And she only had herself to blame for allowing Kylo Ren to once again creep into her mind and occupy her meditation.

Why did her thoughts always stray back to him like the curious pull of Ach-To’s tides?

She hated it.

Hated how her kind Master’s voice trembled whenever he uttered that monster’s given name. Hated how much his sorrowful tone parroted Han’s. Kylo Ren didn’t deserve their remorse, their pity, their forgiveness. She didn’t want to hear another cautionary tale of a boy who had everything only to lose it all, who hadn’t always been a monster. As if innocence in a past life could ever make up for his current crimes. Could ever make up for how tiny and helpless he’d made her feel on Starkiller. The humiliation. The rage.

Rey loathed the way his fears and his aches and his longings had clawed into her like a greedy beast. How closely they reflected her trepidations in twisted mirror image.

Don’t be afraid I feel it, too.

Brow marred in sweat, the young padawan tried with all her might to recapture her hold over the Force.

But it was like grasping at frayed wires.

It was gone.

Rey hung her head in defeat. Luke was wrong about her. Jakku hadn’t geared her towards the Jedi way. She was too fueled by fury, too starry-eyed and too ignorant of the galaxy and all its perils – too much like him.

A hot tear trickled down her face.

At this rate, she’d never become a Jedi.

Burning adrenaline ripped through Rey’s esophagus as tremors ransacked her muscles and robbed her of breath.

She bristled. It was the same hateful sensations she’d been struggling with all week. Ashamed, Rey had kept them hidden fearing Luke’s disdain. But this time, this time they were far worse.

Rey doubled over in confusion.

What the kriff is happening to me? So much anger and despair. I feel so empty, so helpless and alone.

Let go, Rey commanded as she whispered the Jedi code through gritted teeth, but her attempts at peace were fruitless. It was difficult to concentrate when it felt like your whole world was being flipped upside down.

Let go of anger. Let go of hate. Let go of it.

But she couldn’t.

Not this time.

Anxiety pummeled through Rey’s chest in perverse locomotion, and her eyes widened as it dawned on her that she hadn’t lost her connection to the Force. This was the Force. She was still somehow connected. Whatever these disturbing feelings were, they were coming from an outside source. Her Master had once told her a Force user could be so in tune to the Force they could sense horrible tragedies many trajectories away.

Had some disaster been fueling her pain and muddling her concentration the past few weeks?

Rey’s breath hitched.

Had another planetary system been obliterated by the First Order? An attack on the Resistance, perhaps?

Rey let out a swift prayer for Finn’s safety as her heart rate accelerated and her stomach recoiled from the pinprick-like shocks. Every particle in her body was on fire and vibrating with a tension so thick it could rival Ach-to’s fog. She couldn’t stop shaking. Her hair stood on end from all the generated static.

She tried to hold onto the ground for balance but… there was no ground.

This should not be happening!

She hadn’t nearly reached her master’s tipping point for when consciousness melded into Force.

This was all too new. Not that long ago, the Force had merely been an abstract idea to Rey. A word the Teedos used in vain like their goddess R’iia.

She closed her eyes in a desperate attempt to remember her Master’s teachings on Force meditation, anything to get her through this. What if she was having another Force vision? Rey baulked. She wasn’t prepared for that. She wasn’t prepared for any of this.

Not yet.

“We are all empty vessels awaiting the Force’s guidance, Rey,” Luke had told her one starless night, illuminated by the glow of a dying campfire.

“When you least expect it, the Force will reveal itself to you as it did on Takodana. It manifests itself to all Force users in time, albeit differently.”

“What’s it like for you, Master?”

“Where to even begin?” Luke laughed. “That’s like trying to have me explain a new colour.”

Luke stroked his beard as if seeming to search his mind for the right words of description.

“For me, when I’m out there–it’s like returning home. I can taste the whipping tails of dust whistle by and feel the dry crunch of desert crust sift through my fingertips. All is endless dunes, limitless it runs on forever like slithering sand snakes into a red cloudless horizon as bright as a Tatooine sunset.”

Rey scrunched her nose attempting to picture the two orbiting suns her Master often spoke of, and Luke laughed.

“The force means different things to different people, Rey.”

“Leia once told me she first saw the Force as muted colours like pastel ribbons on an Alderaanian tapestry.

Luke’s temperament softened as he spoke of Leia.

“When I last saw my sister, she had the ability to make out the impression of our mother’s face, even though they’ve never met.”

Luke stared long and hard into his hands. Finally he rose to tend the flame. An unnecessary act, considering the fire had long died out.

“Ben never could stand Force meditation,” he whispered.

“There was always this shadow hovering about Ben, a chaos. A temperamental whirlwind just like his mother and father, and the Force only magnified it tenfold and Snoke-” Luke rested for a moment, breathing deeply. “-I do not wish the same for you, Rey.”

Luke took both her hands in his and shook them, “One day you will know peace, you will know belonging, and you will reconcile your past. Trust in the Force, Rey. It might seem scary at first, but I beg you to listen to what it tells you. Its song led you to me. Its melody protected your friend Finn from my nephew, and if you allow its will to be done, the Force will set you free from anger, loneliness, hate-” Luke smiled stiffly, “-just as it did for my father before me.”

But has it done the same for you, Luke? Rey had wished to ask her Master on that somber night. Are you free from all the hollow pain of your past?

Instead, she had bit her blasphemous tongue and stared up at the starless sky, her mind wandering back once again to the taboo subject of Kylo Ren.

How did he experience the Force?

Listen to the Force, Rey. Luke’s voice reverberated, breaking her reverie. Listen to its song.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

But how could she possibly listen when she was being torn apart?

Disintegrated. Her mind was literally being disintegrated. Her thoughts and ideas and memories scattered and wrinkled. From nowhere, invisible hands tugged and pulled and collided into Rey as if she were in a crowded Niima marketplace. Beings that wanted to shove and push her down a million different paths at once. And they wouldn’t stop talking. The noise was unbearable. They were just incessantly talking to her in a symphony of terrible crescendos. Voices of beings she didn’t even recognize in languages she had never heard before.

And then silence.

Rey’s eyes shot open.

The Light. It was blinding, ethereal, detached.

She’d been sucked into the Force, and all she could see for miles on end was nothing. Nothing made nowhere, only stretched wider and made more infinite.

Rey had to admit she had hoped for more than this, perhaps not Luke’s sand snakes, but something.

And then she felt it.

Beacons of green and blue effervescent light poured out of Rey like a holoprojector. At first, the signals flittered like fuzzy bits of static until finally pictures swam into view.

Rey blinked back her surprise.

She was onboard the Millennium Falcon. Or at least, it appeared that way. Entangled in wires, the Falcon blinked in and out of reality like rotating galaxies mimicking the ship’s circuitry. On closer inspection, Rey found the stars to actually be holes with long luminescent cords pulled through them. And there were piles of said wires scattered everywhere. Some of them even lead to… to her. Like umbilical cords they clung to her center.

Puzzled by this new discovery, Rey itched to wrap her fingers around the pulsing conglomeration and find their source. Two cords in particular grabbed her attention. The first a sad, pallid cord that no longer looked functional, while the second behaved as an exposed copper wire, ready to spark and burst into flames.

“Well, you’re in luck,” Rey told the hanging cords, “I happen to know a thing or two about mending broken things.”

Without a second thought, Rey tugged on the first connection and watched as it hummed in broken transmission.

Leave…Come home…Still light…

Like an echo lost in time the faraway voice resonated in static pleas, like it belonged to-

Rey’s eyes widened.

“Han?”

…There’s still light in…

“Han?” Rey cried again but there was no reply.

Spooked, she dropped the broken wire.

It couldn’t be; Han was dead. Her mind was playing tricks on her in this Force created nowhere land. She should head back to her body, back to the real Rey who sat cross-legged and out of breath somewhere on Ach-to’s rolling hills.

Rey twitched as a familiar sensation pulsated directly into her core.

Anger. Despair. Alone… so alone.

The all-consuming heat had returned in full force and it had come from the volatile second wire. Sparking out of control, it cut her deeper than any vibroblade ever could. Whatever was connected to her on the other side was tugging back, hurtling her towards its trajectory at light speed

Rey’s surroundings blurred and fizzled out of view.

No longer in the vortex of space and time she found herself staring down empty corridors with walls that zigzagged between obsidian and metallic supports. The ambiance of it made her head reel.

Where am I?

As if in answer, two figures strolled head on towards her. One Rey recognized as a state of the art 2-1B surgical droid and the other a red-headed man in a First Order overcoat.

Oblivious to Rey’s presence, the man paced around the medical droid with a perpetual frown.

“Status report,” he insisted.

“All attempts at recovery have been a failure, sir.”

Arms crossed the red-headed man wavered between rage and worry and gratifying smugness.

“Should I inform the Supreme Leader then?”

The droid whipped its head around, “No need, General. He’s already been made aware.”

“Pity,” sniffed the General, “Looks like I’ll have to forgo the pleasure of informing him myself.”

Rey strained to hear more, but it grew difficult to listen when she was seeing double when she was seeing red. The copper wire connected to her core pounded out an erratic rhythm of hard and fast, hard and fast, drawing her closer to synthetic strands and flashing filaments that clung and pumped into-

Rey gasped.

No.No. No. It couldn’t be.

There—in the corner of the cold, chrome facility lied the very naked form of Kylo Ren hooked to a bacta tank breathing apparatus. His body was bent and brooding over the same bundle of glistening cords that blinked in and out of reality to intertwine with her.

Rey wanted to weep.

How could the Force be so cruel?

Like gears set in motion, it all clicked together now for the young Jedi.

There’d been a disturbance in the Force.

It was Kylo Ren.

She’d felt him.

Though the man made no motion towards her, Rey instantly recoiled. Gooseflesh running up and down her arms as if the angry red crackle of a phantom saber dangled at the nape of her neck.

But the underdressed Darksider was no threat to her: he floated about listlessly, almost lifeless. Kylo Ren was a half shadow– every muscle on his torso flowing from the light into the dark, his body a topographic map of craterlike gashes. Rey sucked in a sharp breath at the one she gifted him on Starkiller. The angry scar wrapped his prominent jaw and curved dramatically across the length of his shoulder until it shrank into the twining cords of muscles leading lower still to bold thighs and calves-

Rey flushed at what came next, restricting herself to only looking above his torso, feeling very much the voyeur. She should not be gawking at her naked mortal enemy; instead, she should be asking the Force why it brought her to him.

Why would it bind her to such a monster?

Listen. Listen. Listen.

“I’m trying.”

But all she could hear was Kylo Ren’s erratic heart-rate monitor bleat out a sad melody no service droid bothered to remedy. In fact, it didn’t seem like anyone was concerned with his wellbeing. This was a med bay after all, a place of healing, but many of his wounds looked fresh and newly infected, the glass of his tank cracked and smeared with bloody fingerprints.

Something was not right with this picture.

Cautious, Rey drew closer to her slumbering counterpart to circle his desolate enclosure. Behind Ren’s container lay a shady gaggle of gadgetry. Discarded torture devices she recognized from her scavenging days, some that hadn’t been used since the Empire. The one connected behind Kylo Ren’s tank was the most barbaric, the T-26G – an electric shock device set to a timer–known to inflict madness in its victim with unconditional jolts and spasms.

Kylo Ren was slowly being driven insane.

How cruel, Rey thought with a shudder, but why would the First Order torture one of their own?

Why should you care? The padawan clenched her fists.

It wasn’t as if he deserved her pity. In fact, he didn’t deserve her anything. He was a killer and in turn karma had finally come for him. Kylo Ren was an unsolved puzzle best left unsolved.

And yet.

Looking at him now—defeated and vulnerable; something faltered within Rey. Her pride wouldn’t allow her to call it pity, but it was a familiar ache nonetheless, a stirring, a sense of misplaced kinship, perhaps. After all, she’d unknowingly been privy to his thoughts and feelings for weeks. Trapped within his private world of pain and suffering; a world they now had in common.

Rey shook her head.

Perhaps, she was weak for feeling thus.

A chime went off inside the T-26G startling her.

Small electric shockwaves bubbled and foamed inside the murky bacta tank. Like a marionette Kylo Ren’s bulking body twitched to life under clouds of pressure.

Red flooded Rey’s vision. She had to clutch the tank just to steady herself; it was as if the floor underneath her would crumble – crushing her with feelings of overwhelming failure and abandonment that were not her own, but very well could have been.

A faint cry filled her ears.

Among the wires the broken grey cord wailed under the assault.

…there’s still light…

Han.

No, Rey corrected, not Han.

Han Solo had gone to join the living Force.

This was the severed link that once connected them, begging her with empty whispers and remnants of the past.

…we can still save him… I know it…

No, never. Monster, her mind screamed back.

“You ask too much of me.”

She was done with listening to the Force she was heading back.

Delirious, Rey tried with all her might to break apart the glimmering gradients of cables and cords jutting out from her belly. But determination soon dwindled to despair; the chains were just too strong. For each pull away, Rey was pulled closer to Kylo Ren as if they were binary stars set to collide. Her cries intermingled with his; their tears running together as one.

Now the crimson wire radiated with a red hot fury, and shadows oozed like tentacles. They spoke in rhythmic clicks and howls and strangled mists thick enough to choke. Visions swarmed her, drowning her in memories not her own. Her entire consciousness was being torn out of place and put back together. It felt like dying. She was dying. She was inside him.

Was this how Kylo Ren experienced the Force?

And then there was nothing. All was crippling darkness.

Rey’s eyes adjusted to her bleak surroundings until an inky hand gripped her face and purred.

“Kill her. You said it yourself she has too much light.”

Two glowing orbs and a saccharine grin gripped Rey in petrified thrall. It made her think of a sand cat toying with its food. Red filled her vision until she heard herself respond.

“No!”

It was the pleading voice of Kylo Ren.

“Her light may be strong but bright light casts tall shadows, Master. I’ve witnessed it myself in her mind and in battle. For all her bright, childish hope, there is a deep and lovely void- a rot not unlike my own- that if left to fester could-”

The spectral figure snorted and dizziness consumed both Rey and Ren.

“I am confident I can turn her, master.”

“I know you are my apprentice,” The creature soothed, “-and it disappoints me.”

Anger. Despair. Alone… so alone.

Grief gripped Rey’s chest like it had back on Ach-to, but now it was as though an invisible hand had coiled itself directly into her gut and was digging for whatever it could find.

“Master, please! I do not understand. Why?”

“Your pathetic hope of turning her to our cause will be your folly.”

Hope?

“No, never…I-”

“Liar!” The creature cursed and clawed deeper still into Kylo Ren’s fractured psyche.

“You, you see an island. You long to be there with her. The scavenger!” The shrill voice gleefully accused.

“No, no I have not veered from your teachings, Supreme Leader. I am stronger now more tha-”

“You are weak. You cannot hide it from me, boy. I can smell her on you. She permeates in the air around you. At night you dream of possessing her, yearn for her companionship like a teenaged fool, a vapid obsession.”

The more this Supreme Leader continued his assault, the more Rey felt like she was the closest she’d ever been to dying.

“Worst of all-” The monster seethed, “you see a future with her.”

“No, she’s no one.” Ren weakly coughed through choked sobs.

“Not to you.”

The phantasm gave a knowing smile and Rey’s heart stopped.

***************************

Welp, that’s as far as I got with this. I think after watching TLJ I might be able to go back and retcon some things if I do decide to keep going and post it on A03.

Be a dear and tell me what you think! :)

#reylo #reylo fanfic #Kylo/Rey #betaingbyme #reylofanfictionanthology #reylofam #unfinished #star wars #Reylo fanfiction #tfa #tlj

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cyb-by-lang · 6 years

Text

Cold-Calling Preview

Figured I’ve been taunting you folks a fair bit. Here’s a sample of what is slooooowly coming down the pipeline.

And as the intended target shrugged off the P-90 fire with almost exactly the same ease as Ra had once upon a time, Daniel reflected that it really was just a typical Tuesday in the lives of SG-1.

Doctor Daniel Jackson

Yesterday, PK4-399

The data from PK4-399 seemed promising at first. The planet had the same nitrogen-oxygen balance as Earth did, with no outstanding concentrations of anomalous materials or lifeforms that seemed hazardous to human life. In fact, the MALP they’d sent first even provided a headlight-illuminated view of what seemed to be the inside of a temple complex. There were crumbling paintings on wall scrolls and red pillars. Someone had left a flat tray with cups on a dusty-looking table, and the MALP’s tires were rolling across an apparent rug.

“Stay or go?” Daniel asked, after they’d spent an hour reviewing the feeds and the atmospheric data.

They’d even been able to send the MALP to find both the Dial Home Device and a conveniently located staircase, though the steps were too high for a wheeled vehicle to traverse. If there was any chance there was a human civilization that would help Earth stand against the Goa’uld—or was willing to accept help for the same reason—Daniel was ready to be the first through the Gate.

Aside from the robot, anyway. As a valuable member of the team, Daniel was sure Jack would make sure Sgt. Rollo V got credit for his discoveries. If he didn’t, SG-2 probably would, and slap another promotion on the MALP for good luck.

“Go,” was the order by General Hammond, and SG-1 headed through with no further prompting. The wormhole was inviting despite the inevitable sense of disorientation that followed gate travel and altitude adjustments, and Daniel was eager to get moving once again. It was a brand new day around a new sun.

Their first breath of the new planet’s air made Daniel sneeze.

“Always a great sign,” Jack said, as their team fanned out to secure the area as quickly as possible. The inch-thick layer of dust was the most likely culprit, but no one else had any time for that. “Teal’c, got anything?”

“Apophis never visited it during my tenure as First Prime. This complex is unfamiliar.” Teal’c took up a position next to the only apparent exit to this gate’s chamber, staff weapon at the ready. “But it does not mean the inhabitants are not potentially hostile.”

Daniel sniffed, then adjusted his glasses by the bridge as he bent to examine one of the wall scrolls. His fingers did not brush the delicate-looking paper, because it looked like it would crumble at the slightest touch. “Oh! Jack, this isn’t Goa’uld. It’s not even an Indo-European derivative.”

“It’s not?” Sam asked, heading over to join Daniel once she’d finished her handheld scans of the immediate area. Nothing suspicious, or else she would have said something.

“Not at all,” Daniel said, stepping back so Sam could see. “It’s actually traditional Chinese script. The signature—or what I’m assuming is a signature, because it could easily be a title or part of one—is fairly stylized, but it’s hard to mistake.”

“And it says…?” Jack prompted.

“This part says ‘crane wings over bamboo valley,’” Daniel replied, pointing at a tiny line of script toward the upper right corner. “The other seems to be the artist’s name. Other than that, the use of literati painting—or shuǐ mò huà—” Daniel cut himself off as Jack raised an eyebrow. “Hey, this is the first sample we have of what language the inhabitants of this place may have used. Even if they did use Chinese when this was originally painted, the art is old. The language could have easily shifted over time. Just ask about the Great Vowel Shift in English sometime.”

“If I don’t, I’m sure you’ll let me know when we run into someone not playing by those rules,” Jack replied, and Daniel shot him a dry look. Knowing their luck—and Jack’s penchant for making it worse by tempting the universe—he’d just guaranteed that they’d run into spacefaring pirates straight out of a cheesy film at some point in the near future. “Let’s move. With any luck you’ll be testing your Mandarin on the locals soon.”

“That assumes that they even speak Mandarin,” Daniel protested, but he was already heading for Teal’c.

“I wonder how long it’s been since the last time this planet’s culture encountered the Goa’uld,” Daniel heard Sam say, but there wouldn’t really be any way to guess beyond tracking linguistic drift in written language until they met someone who wanted to hold a conversation.

“It may be hard to tell. Chinese characters are one of several writing systems that evolved from pictograms, but they’ve been used by half a dozen cultures. Now, if that had been simplified instead—” Actually, if it had been in simplified characters, that would have raised questions Daniel wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to, except for the worrying and pressing possibility that the Goa’uld had somehow been abducting people from China while both Earth-based Stargates were effectively defunct. “Uh, never mind. That would have been bad.”

“Define ‘bad,’” Sam suggested, while they hiked up the stairs the MALP had been utterly stymied by. “Because thus far, this planet seems to be about as peaceful as the Land of Light. Aside from not encountering any people.”

“We’d need to start asking China about missing persons’ reports,” Daniel said, wincing. “As a worst-case scenario.”

“I can just imagine how well that would go over,” Jack commented, in a tone that said it was a vast understatement.

“Do languages evolve on Earth so quickly?” Teal’c asked, as they approached the surface.

“They can,” was Daniel’s reply, and then they got their first real look at PK4-399.

SG-1 emerged from the cave and stood blinking in the early morning sunlight, and the terrain unfolded before them. While the MALP’s data and Sam’s scans had indicated oxygen levels consistent with decent altitude above sea level, it was one thing to hear it and another entirely to look down the slope of a mountain. The staircase they’d followed cut through a deep and ancient forest, giving them just enough of a view to see a valley between their vantage point and the next, shorter peak. If it wasn’t for the plant life being entirely unsuited for Colorado Springs, being far less scrubby, it was almost like they’d turned around and walked right back through the Stargate onto a random deciduous forest by accident. And best of all, there seemed to be a village somewhere down the slope, because a thin streak of smoke was visible above the treetops.

Daniel sneezed again.

“It may be spring here,” Sam suggested, eyeing the flowers growing on the path like Earth dandelions would. “Or early summer. But I don’t want to make too many assumptions about seasonal patterns on a new planet.”

“Sounds like both,” Jack said. “Well, let’s head down there. With any luck, we’ll be able to do the ‘take me to your leader’ thing and make new friends.”

“Indeed,” Teal’c said. Which really seemed to sum it up.

“Danny, you’re up first.”

#Cold Calling #The B Plot #catch your breath fanfic #stargate sg-1 #Stargate SG1 #crossover

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nicoleswanderings · 5 years

Text

ANNAPURNA CIRCUIT- Part 1

The first 11 days of the trek were a rollercoaster. We started the journey in Pokhara, took a 6 hour public bus to Besisahar- the official starting point. We decided to skip the first 5 miles or so on a dirt road so we took one more bus to Nadi Bazaar. My first thoughts as I put on my pack and started hoofing it up the hill were “holy shit. This pack is wayyyyy too heavy. Is it going to be uphill the whole way? Why did I want to do this again?”. And that was the start of working through that voice in my head that continually wanted to be in comfort. That needed to find a way to complain to escape the moment. It became routine for me to have these thoughts the first couple days. We would wake up around 6:30 am, eat our breakfast (which for me was overnight oats soaked in water with dates, walnuts, almonds, peanut butter, and protein powder- no wonder my bag was so heavy 😂), pack up our backpacks, and head out around 7:30. To be fair, the first 3 days we really didn’t reach our destination for the night until around 6pm- so they were freaking long days. But I just couldn’t for the life of me pull myself out of this rut of resisting everything- “ugh I don’t want to wake up”

“Do we really have to climb this hill?”

“Veg curry it is...for the 4th time in a row.”

and I was choosing to be here! I had been dreaming about this place for months!

But by the end I realized truly that this had nothing to do with the trek specifically- that was just a great environment for my mind to showcase its power and for me to recognize a habit I have (not just in the mountains) that needs to be trained.

Physically, it was hard- but not that hard. After the first few days, I got in a groove and my mantra (courtesy of Ruby) became I ACCEPT. I accept this blister on the back of my heel that rubs raw every time I step. I accept that it is freezing cold right now. I accept that I am hungry. I accept that there is no hot water. I accept that there are feelings of sadness inside my body. I accept that I miss home and the people I love. I was accepting the moment, with everything it held, for no other reason than this is all there is. This is life. A string of continual moments that come into fruition as NOW. All I was doing by resisting what already existed was causing suffering to myself with no option to change it. I couldn’t make there be hot water. I couldn’t force myself out of the feelings I was having. I could merely change my attitude toward them from one of disgust to one of accepting it with open arms and shedding love on that negative feeling. Truly love is the only thing that can dissolve reactionary emotions. I let go of the “shoulds”. “I should be feeling happier.” You have 2 options in any given moment. Accept all that is in this moment and feel the gentle ease grow inside you, or resist it and live in your mind out of alignment with the world around you. And soon, I ACCEPT didn’t hold any tinge of resentment or force- I was appreciating all the unfoldings as they came. Most of the time 😉

Okay more about the trek. We met amazing people in the first week. Since there is a pretty standard route to do this circuit, if someone starts the same day as you, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be seeing them until the end. Which is awesome. Trail family saved my sanity many times. We would play cards or tell stories around the fire in the living room of guest houses. Share about our countries, really just talk about life. Ruby and I hiked with a 20 year old couple from Sweden a lot, Josh from San Diego who does sweet seasonal work (and may buy my RV!), Eric, a retired hippy from Rochester NY who now lives in Turkey with his wife, and Babette from Holland.

In terms of housing, we stayed in guest houses for free each night in return for eating dinner from their restaurant. For being out in the middle of nowhere, we actually did have some nice luxuries. Electricity, a fire to dry our clothes, WiFi (sometimes) and hot food. They did have the same government regulated menu at every place though. But no hot water or toilet paper- though I have come to love squat toilets and the Nepali way of wiping ( lol look it up. Actually is more sanitary I think.)

The food was mostly MoMos (dumplings), curry, garlic soup, chapatti or buckwheat bread (like roti or tortillas) and Dal Bhat (lentils and rice). It was all pretty good actually! They also had fresh Seabuckthorn Juice at high altitudes which was amazinggggg!! It’s know to be the highest vitamin C food in the world!

So our first 11 days were spent uphill making our way over Thorong La Pass at 5,400 meters. The last 2 days had heavy snow and we were all layers. The locals told us this year actually has been a lot more unpredictable and snowy than normal. 6 people died about a month before we went up actually. But that was because of avalanches and the pass was closed when they went. The day before the pass, we hiked up to high camp as we left our beloved Josh behind to acclimatize a bit longer because of a headache. We were hiking in a total blizzard and made it to High Camp around 5pm. There is one structure here to house those crazy enough to spend the night. Most people leave around 4 am the next morning to get up there before wind hits, but we waited because we wanted I hike in the daylight- I am glad we did that. Every inhale at that altitude feels like not enough, my body was never satisfied with how much oxygen was in it.

At one point I had a buckle over my chest to keep my backpack secure but I started getting dizzy. I later realized after Unclipping it that it was because my chest couldn’t expand enough with true clip on. It’s really the smallest things. I also took Gingko Biloba and Co-Q10 a week before to help with heart health and oxygenating the blood. And doing day hikes to high altitudes then sleeping at lower ones is very helpful (I.e. Ice Lake).

Anyways we made it over, but culturally, into another world. Stay tuned for part 2!

Here’s our route:

Day 1- Pokhara-Ghermu

8:30-6:30 6 miles

Day 2- Ghermu- Tal

7:30-6:30 11.5 miles

Day 3- Tal-Danaqyu

7:30-1:30 7 miles

Day 4- Danaqyu-Chame

8-1 6.5 miles

Day 5- Chame-Upper Pisang

8-1:30 9 miles *BEAUTIFUL DAY*

Start of the huge Mountain Views!

Day 6- Upper Pisang- Mungii

8-3:45 7.5 miles

Day 7- Mungii-Ice Lake- Manang

8-4:30 9 miles up to 4500 meters!

Day 8- Rest day in Manang ( I got to see the old version of Into Thin Air in a makeshift movie room!)

Day 9- Manang-Letdar

8-1 7 miles

Day 10- Letdar- High Camp

8-5 3.5 miles

Day 11- High Camp- Muktinath

7-4:30 8 miles

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coeurdastronaute · 7 years

Text

Giant

high school supercorp au. kara struggling to keep her superpowers at bay around the pretty super nerd. kara hasn't grown into her hero image yet & lena hasn't grown into her name.

There's a giant leading me to God knows where I've got news, I'm going my way Fighting, and I feel I'm getting somewhere All is right, all is right.

From high atop the water tower on the very edge of town, a shadow sat, pushing up her glasses as they fell slightly down the bridge of her nose. Just below, an entire city stretched out toward the sea, the lights bleeding into it, which then bled into the horizon, into the very sky itself. Down by the boardwalk, someone was throwing away old bread and cotton candy while the gulls gulped them down with contented caws that got lodged in their noses. The smell of the freshly cut, end-of-summer lawns wafted through the night, perfuming the last night of summer break perfectly.

Long legs kicked in the night as she leaned back on her elbows and listened to the house down on Juniper Street with the old couple who put on records and let Mr. Johnny Cooltrane wail through the open windows as the screens exhaled with each note so that the porch filled with the sound of summer and mingled with the creak of the ceiling fan that did nothing but push around the warm water. They drank mint juleps and complained about the state of the world before the rocking chair sang along.

At her own home, she could hear the way her adoptive mother hummed to herself as she washed the dishes while her sister typed another email to their father. Up in the hill, in the gated world, a family fought, down on Main Street someone got angry and argued with a parking attendant. Just a few blocks away, a tiny voice prayed for good things and a new bike.

From her spot, her tiny throne, unbeknownst to all the living souls beneath, Kara looked up at the stars and breathed in her last few breaths of summer before the inevitable prison of school came to trap her once again, one final time.

She lasted as long as she could, listening and watching, until she heard the telltale noise of her mother finishing up and letting the dog out, the final steps of her routine. With a sigh, she stood and dusted off the dirt from her thighs before taking off with almost a crack in the air. She flew so high, she could see four towns over, see the mountains, see the lakes beyond them before breaking off and lazily gliding backwards toward her home.

The thing with growing, with really coming into her powers over the past few months, since the last round of holidays, was that Kara had never experienced power like this. Gifted as she’d always been, when her cousin warned her of what was to come, she almost didn’t believe him. And then she threw a tennis ball so far, it was never seen again one evening when taking Boomer to the dog park. And then she ripped the steering wheel off in a fit of road rage. And then she ran to Alaska in under an hour.

Unpredictable surges would happen, flare up, even, and then sometimes they would dissipate to nothing at all. Which was never that big of a deal, unless she was flying, as she was on her way home.

It wasn’t like a prop plane, running out of gas like on Indiana Jones, she realized as soon as it happened. There was no sputtering and no warning light flashing on the dashboard. Instead, there was just falling, graceless and messy, limbs flailing as she bit back swearing and tried to will it back.

And then there was a wall, a thick, hearty, brick and ivy kind of wall that she landed into back first and upside down, though she didn’t do the math until she realized she was laying in the rubble and lifted her head to survey the damage.

With a cough, dust and dirt tried to leave her lungs and dry throat as she took stock of her limbs and senses as best she could.

“Mom’s going to be so mad,” she sighed, letting her head drop so that she looked upside down at the hole.

In the distance she could hear the sound of a golf cart approaching, a radio signal that referenced an alarm being tripped at the Luthor residence. With a groan, Kara winced and tried to pick herself up, stumbling slightly in the rubble.

The hole was almost ten feet wide, decimating an entire section of the tall wall outside of the newly purchased home in the most illustrious and wealthy part of the city. Rubbing her hand along the back of her head, Kara tried to adjust her eyes, grateful that her glasses were only cockeyed and not lost. Through the gap, she looked up at the mansion in the distance and coughed a bit more as footsteps approached.

“I’m in so much trouble,” she realized again before taking off once more and skating by at a much lower altitude.

She hovered just above the treeline as the flashlights and security guards arrived, scratching their heads. Blue lights arrived just a few minutes later, and quickly Kara raced home with a fresh burst of energy.

Boomer woofed outside as she slid into her window and collapsed on the bed, breaking the frame once again.

“Another one!” Alex called over the gentle music Kara left on while she snuck out for just a bit.

“When do you go back to college?” Kara groaned, rolling over and stretching out the soreness of her crash.

She made a mental note to call her cousin and see if he had any solutions for these outages and surges while she adjusted to her new found powers. Balance. She just wanted balance. Normal, honest, simple balance. And a bed that didn’t break.

“You’re going to miss me when I’m gone.”

“Distance makes the heart grow fonder,” Kara reminded her before standing up and lifting the bed and box spring. “I think this one’s a goner.”

“Fifth frame this summer,” Alex nodded, crossing her arms, furrowing her brow, pursing her lips. “What happened to you?”

“Um...I fell.”

“Looks like it.”

“I hit a wall.” With a grunt, Kara tugged the mangled wood from her bed and stacked it in a pile before putting her bed back down as if it were nothing. “Don’t tell Mom.”

“You’re not supposed to be out there… flying,” Alex whispered, her eyes growing intense and angry and heavy. “What if someone saw you?”

“I know, I know,” Kara sighed and tugged her dirty shirt off before throwing it in the bin. “I just…” she paused and held her hands out. It was impossible to articulate, and her family loved her too much for her to make them think she did anything but love them as much, despite the ache that possessed her to do something… anything. “I feel like an animal at the zoo sometimes. I need just a few minutes to stretch my legs.”

“Kara.” It was soft and a warning at the same time. “I--”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupted. “I know I shouldn’t. I won’t.”

“I was going to say that I can’t imagine how that feels,” Alex confessed, sitting on the edge of the bed as her sister dug for a fresh shirt. “I want you to be happy, and safe. I just don’t know how to do both for you. If I did, I would, kid.”

“Hey, girls, I heard a noise,” their mother knocked softly and pressed open the door to her youngest’s room. “Another one, sweetie?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Kara offers quickly. “I just… flopped down.”

“Maybe we’ll just leave your bed like this for a while,” she smiled at her daughters.

Alex gave Kara a look, and she knew what she had to do, even without it.

“I also went out flying and hit a wall.”

“Kara…”

It was the same voice that her sister had, and Kara felt the entire weight of it on her shoulders, which felt anything but capable of bearing the burden at the moment. She could lift a bus, toss a cement mixer the length of a football field, uproot an elm like a tornado, but those familial sighs were too much.

“I don’t know what happened,” Kara explained, her hands moving quickly as she slumped into her desk chair. “I thought puberty was done and that was miserable enough, but this super power puberty is literally the worst. I can feel this new kind of power, and then… nothing. It’s like growing pains.”

“You didn’t get hurt did you?” her mother fret.

The dog came in, oblivious to the moods, wagging his tail and nudging his favorite human’s hand in search of a treat or toy. Kara smiled to herself and ran her hand along his snout before he sat beside her and used her knee as a chin rest.

“No, but you should see the wall.”

“No one saw?”

“No one saw,” she promised.

“What kind of wall?”

“Mom,” Kara groaned and let her head tilt back in defeat before her sister laughed and threw a pillow at her. “It’s not funny.”

“Was it a building? A guard rail? Metal? Flimsy? I want an image,” her mother teased.

“It was a brick fence over at the Deerbrooke.”

“Ooohh, you broke an expensive wall,” Alex teased. “Probably super old, too.”

“I crashed from very high up into the Earth, and this is what you decide to latch onto?” Kara asked, relieved and slightly happier that she wasn’t in official trouble, just the personal kind that she held herself to constantly.

“Seems to be a habit you have,” her sister laughed, tossing another pillow at her.

“It’s okay, honey,” her mother cooed and kissed her forehead. “You’ll figure it out eventually.”

“Or tear down every wall between here and the ocean,” Alex tried to help, earning the same pillow thrown back at her.

“Leave your sister alone,” Eliza pushed her oldest from the room. “She has to think of a way to pay back the damage she caused.”

“Mom! It was on the Luthor’s property! They won’t even notice what it costs to rebuild!”

“What’s the rule?” her mother paused at the door.

“I break it, I buy it,” Kara repeated the familiar motto.

“Get some sleep. Tomorrow is your last first day of school, and you can’t be late.”

“Love you.”

“I love you, too, honey.”

For a moment, Kara sat in the chair and looked at the pile of broken bed frame before turning her chair towards her laptop. Another night, another email to her father serving somewhere overseas, another veiled response about her ‘asthma’ acting up again. To be fair, Kara felt herself chuckle to herself as she told him that she hit a wall pretty hard with it.

She hit send and sat on her window ledge listening to the last night of summer. In the hall, Boomer spread out in the hall between the bedrooms, unsure of who needed him in the moment, and too tired to fight it. Alex kept packing to go back to school for her second year of med school, and that still made Kara sadder than she could admit. From downstairs, a gentle song emerged, faint and barely there, of her father’s favorites, that her mother played with a glass of wine as she read some research too late into the night.

But Kara could have guessed all of that without the gift of incredible ears. Now, she focused on the specific noise of a spot she became quite intimate with not twenty minutes prior. The cops and security guards were all puzzled and confused, at first assuming it to be a meteor or something, though nothing could be found. A man yelled and swore and said he paid too much money for these kind of shenanigans to be happening in a neighborhood like that, while a softer, gentler voice told him to calm down because of his heart. Still, fainter than that, another voice interrupted and asked if perhaps it was a crime directed at them, though they tried to assuage her fears with promises that no one could hurt them.

It hurt the worst that someone could think she was capable of pain. Never before had she so badly wanted to rush over there and tell them that, trust her, she was just incredibly clumsy, not incredibly powerful. The truth was, she was clumsy with her powers, with herself. She just wanted to not be the cause of fear for someone. That broke her heart.

With a heavy sigh, the window froze, her breath chilling it as she stood and rolled her eyes. Kara grabbed a towel from her bathroom and placed it on the ledge to catch the inevitable dripping before crawling into bed and thinking about her final year, and how she still had no idea who she was, and if anything, was somehow farther from who she thought she was supposed to be.

School and senior year brought about its own, intense kind of distraction, which was almost a nice reprieve from the summer and her own personal fight to master her body. The questions became about the future, giving her time to dwell on anything other than her own nagging thoughts. What came was the tests and college questions, the trying out for teams and the assembling a new kind of normal routine that included homework and a part time job and flying to see her sister on weekends when she could. If she made herself busy enough, Kara didn’t have to think too hard about home and how her mother would have had answers.

There were still moments. Still nights spent sneaking out and burning off the energy, of letting herself out of the tiny cage she put herself in to protect her family. Kara felt herself getting stronger, felt it all evening out, whereas before it didn’t seem to be part of her. Now it was as if she began to grow used to it, or at least, she was trying. She took to flying over the ocean, so when she crashed it just made one heck of a splash, and that was all.

And just as she thought she was fine, she crushed a lock in her hand, mangling it completely. A pair of green eyes met hers in the hall and Kara found herself yanking it completely from her locker. Just as soon, the moment was gone, and she bumbled slightly to herself, shoving the mangled metal in her pocket.

With a sigh, Kara leaned her head against the cool metal of her locker in the hall. She shook her head and blushed, mentally kicking herself. Her nerves were her enemy.

“Did you finish that paper yet?” Janey asked as Kara took her seat beside her friend.

Short and sturdy, she was primly dressed and more polished than anyone had a right to be at seventeen. Headstrong and passionate, pulled in every direction imaginable, she was a true friend, loyal and kind, protective and sassy, despite her small demeanor. To Kara, she was closest to a Jack Russell, perhaps. Tiny, but with a terrific bark, and better bite. High strung and possibly manic, if given the chance.

“I, um, I… almost,” Kara admitted, adjusting her glasses.

“I haven’t even started. It’s only October, and I’m already behind,” she complained, surveying her very precise agenda. “I’m never going to sleep again. I’m just going to work. Debate practice, volunteering, babysitting, softball practice, art project, that article on soccer--”

“Why do you do all of that stuff?”

“Because if I’m going to be the next Cat Grant, I have to start now.”

“What can I do to help?” Kara offered genuinely, eagerly, as she was always known to do for just about anyone.

Their math teacher finally stood after surveying the attendance log and making sure his class was there. Kara sat up a bit straighter.

“You could do the soccer story,” Janey whispered, handing over an article outline. “You can have the byline.”

“I don’t want your byline,” Kara sighed. “I have an article already.”

“I will love you forever.”

“I already know this.”

“Seriously. You’re my hero.”

“Anything to keep you from a nervous breakdown before Thanksgiving,” Kara chuckled and flipped through her notebook.

“Lunch is on me. Anything you want.”

“Anything?”

“I’m going to regret this,” Janey shook her head and looked back toward the blackboard.

Kara played with her pencil and forgot about the broken lock, instead electing to dream of what her price for helping her friend would entail. She was thinking pizza. Six of them.

From high atop the water tower on the very edge of town, a shadow sat, pushing up her glasses as they fell slightly down the bridge of her nose. There was a breeze that lazily looped through the world as autumn fell and tucked itself atop the world. For just a moment, Kara allowed herself a bit of escape. Brain, fried from school at sitting placement exams, heart, lonely and missing her adoptive father and sister, she just needed a moment to see how vast things were, and how tiny she was comparatively.

Languid, she rested there, letting her eyes drift to the stars and her legs hang from the side of the water tower.

Not until a scream ripped out in the night, did Kara hop up and search for it, closing her eyes and listening before finding some hint of it. Without a thought, she bolted to a side street just a few seconds away where a woman laid on the ground bleeding. A man in a dark jacket and hat stood above her, yanking at her arms and legs, until Kara arrived and punched him so hard, he hit the dumpster opposite the alley with a tremendous clang. The gun went off as she came in contact with his jaw.

Slumped over, he could barely breathe as a figure stood over him, fumbling with her hood.

“Try to do anything like this again, and I won’t pull my punch,” Kara growled. “I’ll find you,” she promised, grabbing the collar of his shirt so her words aren’t missed.

The assailant could barely think straight, let alone make out her face, and instead, his head lulled to the side as he passed out.

“You’re going to be okay,” she finally offered, approaching the woman who couldn't have been any older than Alex. The woman cowered slightly, pushing dirty hair from her face.

Kara kept her hood up, ducked, stayed under it, grateful to have some kind of protection from being recognized. The woman sputtered slightly as the stranger helped her stand.

“He… he… shot you,” she pointed at the hole in the sweatshirt.

“I’ll be fine. Are you okay?” she earns a nod. “Call the police,” Kara murmured, looking at the hole and covering it with her hand. “I have to go.”

The woman clung to her slightly, thanking her, sobbing, but Kara peeled herself away and ran toward the corner before taking off once more.

Barely able to breath after her little outburst, she didn’t move her hand until she was standing in her own bedroom. Afraid at what she would see, she held her hand on the hole and pulled off her hood. No blood followed, no pain came. Instead, all that she found was a bullet, smushed as if it had hit a steel beam. Held up, close to her eyes, Kara peered at it and lifted her shirt, running her hand over her stomach where nothing but a small, purple bruise formed, already paling. She ran her hand over it a few times, as if trying to remove a stain, and then looked at the bullet again in her palm.

“Golly,” Kara whispered.

Two days after her daring rescue, Kara saw the article in the city paper. Just a small little blurb about a foiled robbery and assault. The assailant kept saying a human tornado hit him, while the woman said it was an act of fate in a red hoodie, a gift from God, her guardian angel. Kara smiled at the description and took a deep breath as she folded the paper and looked out at the soccer field where the teams practiced in the October evening.

Two pizzas, six burgers, and the promise of a milkshake had her waiting around for a sports puff piece, by far, the least favorite of the beats to cover for the paper. But she truly was worried about Janey having a breakdown before Thanksgiving at the rate she was going, and even though her mom was still there, home felt empty and different with Alex and her father, not as fun to go home to being the last one left. Any distraction was a welcomed distraction.

“Danvers, here to cover the best looking athletes at Oceanside?” Jack asked, leaning against the railing of the bleachers. His grin was the devil, and Kara knew it.

The tormenter of her until she grew boobs and about six inches, Jack Thomas had pioneered pulling pigtails and making Kara’s life pure hell since seventh grade. He coined the nickname Manvers, as well as deciding that she shed that moniker Junior year and should marry him to complete the transformation into model. It was an abrupt switch, one that Kara dreamt of as a freshman, and now that she had the attention of the quarterback, she missed being invisible.

“I actually am,” Kara smiled. “The girls’ soccer team. They might actually win a championship this year. What are you guys? Two and three?”

“Listen, whenever you want to finish up that exclusive,” he stood straighter, unbothered by her remarks. A wink came and she gagged before standing and making her way down the bleachers.

Something about stopping a bullet made her a new person, and she had an interview to finish so her friend could put off having an aneurism.

“You look really good, Kara,” Jack offered, gentler as his friends backed off slightly toward their practice. “Do you have a date to the dance next week?”

“Thank you, and no,” she blushed despite herself. “I’m probably going to visit my sister anyway.”

“Well, if not,” he offered politely. “I’ll be there.”

“Thank you, I… um… I should go.”

Kara shouldered her bag and tossed the newspaper in the trash before adjusting her glasses slightly. He ran his hand through his hair, tugging at its ends so that it defied gravity and gave her a smile that tested her resolve.

“See ya, Kara.”

It took a lot of effort to be exceptionally average. Kara had just enough friends to never be alone, her grades were just well enough to be considered smart, but not too smart. Her looks, she tried to balance out with glasses and conservatively dressing. She did a few activities, involved herself just slightly enough. It was a full time job being herself.

Being exceptionally average took a turn when she approached the sideline at the end of practice and introduced herself to the coach, who then called over a few players.

The pencil snapped in Kara’s hand when she saw those green eyes again, this time attached to an entire face and smile and sweaty, short shorts wearing soccer player. She was anything but average.

“I, uh, must have… it… I have another,” Kara supplied quickly.

“If you’re uncomfortable because I’m a…Luthor...” she pulled her shirt up and wiped her face. Kara gulped and felt her heartbeat through her chest. She looked down just to make sure it was still there and not visibly palpitating at the sign of such pale and perfect skin attached to hips and those…

“I’m sorry, that’s… no. Can I start over?” the reporter shook her head, furrowing and decidedly looking nowhere at all but her hands and the notebook they contained after tugging a pen from her pocket. “I’m Kara Danvers.”

“Lena Luthor,” she shook the hand that was held out to her. Kara’s mouth was dry and her brain was in overdrive. Too many smells distracted her, too many noises, she was stuck in overload.

“I’m just…” It lasted too long, the handshake, but Lena was good-natured enough not to notice, or at least pretend she didn’t as Kara snatched her hand away quickly and tapped her pen against the notebook. “I just have a few questions, for an upcoming article about the rest of the season, if that’s alright?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. Here it goes,” Kara willed herself to say words that made sense.

The soccer player smiled politely and took a seat on the bench as the bustle of players leaving for the day swelled around them. She tugged her socks down and tried not to stare too much at the awkward and slightly adorable reporter who pushed up her glasses as they slipped slightly with the movements of explaining.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch the question,” Lena asked, shoving things into her bag.

“I just… I was wondering. Just. Where you came from? You lead the team in…” Lena didn’t mean to be, but she was endeared by the furrowed brow and the flipping of pages which denoted research. “Assists and penalty shots. We were fourth last year, and now we’re sitting in first, going into an easy second half. You’ve, you’ve, you’ve made an impact.”

“I came into a very good team,” the striker disagreed politely. “It’s the team. We’ve been clicking well, and working hard.”

“But you arrived this year?”

“We moved here from Smallville.”

“Senior year? That must stink.”

“Less of a commute for my dad. He wants to set up his west coast office, and it doesn’t really matter. A place is a place.”

“How are you enjoying it?” Kara pressed, wanting to hear more of her.

“It’s not so bad. I have just a few classes here in the afternoon. In the morning I take classes at the University downtown.”

“Golly, you must be smart.” The reporter earned a nod and smile.

“You haven’t written anything down,” Lena nudged her chin at the notebook with a good-natured smile

“Right,” Kara realized, looking down at her non-existent notes. “Sorry. I just. I got distracted. I guess.”

The soccer player grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder before waving a goodbye to a few of the remaining players.

“You’re cute,” she smirked. “Anyway we can finish this on the way to my car? I have some homework to finish at home.”

“I’m cu-... no, I’m… what? No,” Kara stammered and shook her head quite seriously. “I’m sorry. I have just a few more. I’ll stay on track.”

“I like the tangent. I just… I didn’t allot time for it. I would have,” Lena offered quickly, amending her words, “If I had known it were you.”

The reporter tried to ignore the words, distracted with the implications and the small idea that perhaps this soccer player was flirting with her, and so very well, and so very soon after meeting her. Instead, as they made their way to the parking lot, Kara carefully went through her pre-arranged questions, taking notes as they slowly walked. It wasn’t many, but she wished she’d had more prepared.

“Thanks a lot. I don’t usually write sports stuff. I tried to cover it all,” Kara murmured as she shoved her notebook in her bag.

“I think it went alright.”

“Yeah?” she practically glowed. “Good.”

Hanging against the car to her door, Lena leaned her chin on it and stared at the blue-eyed stranger that brightened her day quite unexpectedly.

“We have a game on Tuesday. If you want to come for more notes or another article,” she offered, unsure why, knowing only that she very much wanted to see her again.

“I don’t usually cover sports, just helping out a friend.”

“Oh,” the soccer player nodded, oddly disappointed. “Right.”

“But I’ve never been to a game, so maybe I’ll come.”

“I’m sure I’ll see you around, even if you don’t make it.”

“Definitely,” Kara smiled brightly.

Lena was certain she was the sun.

Perched in her normal spot, well after Eliza fell asleep, Kara surveyed the city and ate her second burger of the night, waiting for something to happen. She could stop a bullet. That was something. She could put out a fire, she learned that a few nights ago. She could punch people very hard and not kill them. Everything was a test, and since she began to flex her newly minted powers, she found that they were easier to control, less haywire, less bulky, more refined.

Happily, Kara surveyed her city, eating her snack, and waiting to be a hero like her cousin. Clark made her promise to never use her powers unless it was absolutely necessary. The common good seemed necessary, or so she told herself. If Clark could save a school bus and keep a plane from crashing, surely Kara could stop a fire and armed robbery. They weren’t that big of a deal.

Her pocket buzzed, and Kara nearly dropped her phone from that height getting it out so quickly. There was only one person who would text her so late, the only other night owl in her world.

Hey, you up? Lena texted.

Just barely, Kara lied.

Is it alright if we work on your science project over here on Thursday? I have to be here when the caterers arrive, or the world will end, according to my mother.

Kara chuckled to herself and rolled her eyes at the question.

Sure. No biggie. You’re the one helping me, remember?

Oh, yeah. Right! Meeting at my house then, chump.

After the article, Kara somehow found herself tagging along with Janey to the game. And when it was over, she didn’t think a certain green-eyed girl would wave happily and invite them both to a tiny party thrown by one of the captains. And she definitely didn’t think that she would have fun, talking and playing games with Lena. It was a new kind of friendship, and it felt good and honest. Kara had acquaintances, not friend-friends.

You’re so good to me, Luthor. Get some sleep!

The sound of screeching tires reached her ears, and shoving her phone in her pocket, Kara tugged down the ski mask and put up her hood before taking off toward the sound on the highway behind her.

By the time she made it home, tugging off the mask and sweatshirt, her shoulders aching with the strain they’d just been under, Kara added another thing to the list of things she can do: stop an out of control, speeding tractor trailer.

The Luthor estate was probably the biggest house she’d ever seen in her life. Kara grew up comfortable, well enough off, never wanting anything. Back home, she was noble, she lived a life of fancy and void of strife. But the Luthor estate was more akin to the castles Kara remembered being enchanted with when the Danvers travelled through Europe sophomore summer. Nestled above the flat expanse of the city, tucked against the gentle rolling hills, beneath tall, waving Spruce trees, the house was quiet and terrifying.

The front yard and driveway was full of people in white coats, carrying in equipment and food, setting up tents and lights. It was a lot of activity to try to figure out.

It took Kara a minute to ring the bell. Standing on the steps to the large house, she felt very unsure how a girl like Lena could want to be friends with her. Lena was already taking mostly college classes. Lena, who scored a lot of soccer goals. Lena, the one who worked in the mailroom of the giant conglomerate her family owned. Lena, who didn’t bat an eye when Kara ate every single snack when they hung out. Lena, who had eyes that were--

“Kara! I thought I heard you,” that voice greeted her. “Did you find it okay?”

“Yeah, not a problem,” she offered quickly, adjusting her bag.

“Sorry all of this is happening,” she mentioned, gesturing to the staff. “My mom is hosting her first fundraiser, and she’s a little scatterbrained. Must make a good impression, save the world, and so on. Come on in.”

“It’s really not a big deal. If anything, I feel like I’m interrupting you helping. I really… we can do this… like… we don’t have to do it today.”

“You’re actually saving me,” Lena stopped her, interrupting a familiar start of a ramble, which she usually let go on a little longer, enjoying the way Kara grew nervous. “I’d have to help a lot more with all this junk.”

“You don’t like it?”

Kara followed Lena through the hall, past a lot of rooms with expensive looking furniture and flowers in every room. Tables with dark blue cloths were littering the landscape of each, but Kara could see the lived in parts before Lena had her follow up a large set of stairs.

“I’ve been a Luthor since I was five, I’ve done my share of dressing up and listening to the same stuffy stories and having to behave.”

“Since you were…” Kara furrowed and followed up the steps, her feet slowing as she thought.

“You might be the only person in Midvale to not google me,” Lena chuckled. “I’m adopted.”

“Oh! Oh, okay. Oh.”

“Come on. Are you hungry? I can call down to have some snacks brought up.”

“I’m always hungry,” Kara grinned before following Lena into a room that led into what felt like another living room.

“Just give me a second. Make yourself comfortable.”

For a moment, Lena smiled and disappeared into another room. Kara heard her pick up a phone and went about making herself comfortable in the form of surveying all she could. Opposite the door, giant windows covered the entire wall, looking out onto the back yard, all tall trees and shadows and pool. The door was closed that led out onto a balcony. The view was spectacular, but didn’t tell her enough.

Kara moved to the bookshelves, noting the heavy lean toward science and textbooks, though a few poetry books were thrown in for good measure, to really throw her off. Pictures in frames ranged from formal events with the entire Luthor clan, to silly candids and pictures with what Kara were sure were friends. Her favorite was on the small desk behind a couch, one of a young, knobby-kneed Lena with a baseball hat on, perched atop her father’s shoulders while a preteen boy waved a foam finger, and a beautiful woman hung on her husband’s arm.

“That was my first birthday with Luthor as my last name,” Lena murmured, leaning against the door, making Kara drop the frame back on the desk. “Dad just bought the National City Hawks. Me and Lex would go to every game in the summer.”

“Sorry. I didn’t-- I wasn’t trying to. I didn’t,” Kara stammered and fumbled with putting it back where she found it.

“It’s fine,” her friend promised, leaning on the back of the chair there. “I think I look quite adorable in that.”

“Yeah, definitely,” she breathed, looking at it again before blushing. “Is it weird, having a new last name?”

“I don’t think I ever had a different one,” Lena shrugged and grabbed a few books before taking a seat on the couch. “It’s kind of an honor. I remember when it was official, my mom hugged me so tight, she always wanted a daughter. And Lionel, he was harder to crack. He tucked me in one night, and told me I was a Luthor now, and that meant family above all else. I had responsibilities and I was going to change the world. Mind you, I was six when it became official,” Lena chuckled and leaned back as Kara joined her. “He said the name gave me power, only when I gave power to the name. Ever since then, he’s been my daddy. A push over. Don’t tell him I told you though.”

“Wow,” Kara sighed, leaning closer as she listened to the story.

“It’s a good name. I have a good life. A good family.”

“I feel the same, I just… never was able to put it in words.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m adopted too.”

“It’s interesting, isn’t it? Being chosen?”

“Do you remember your real family?”

“This is the only family I’ve ever known. They are my real family.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean--”

“I understand, it’s fine.”

“I guess it’s a little different. I was eight when it happened. I still remember my family, my entire life before I became Danvers.”

“I can’t imagine.”

Something about Lena’s intense eyes, the way she tucked herself up on the couch and listened to Kara’s words, truly digested them. In just twenty minutes of being in her home, Kara confessed things she’d never said to anyone, and it was so easy, it was disarming. She looked away, unable to hold a look like that and cleared her throat before opening her bag and digging out a notebook and book.

“Sorry, we should get started. I always seem to be on a tangent with you.”

“Kara, that’s called being friends,” Lena laughed, a genuine, relieved kind of laugh that was infectious.

“Friends?”

“I mean, I don’t have many I consider close, but yeah, I think this is how it goes.”

“Right, yeah. Of course.”

Outside, the sun began to set and the little string lights created an entire universe full of new constellations throughout the backyard. Lena was smart, too smart, Kara realized quickly, as she helped her with physics calculations. It seemed as if she could do them in her head, but was patient enough to be humble about it. Never patronizing, always ready to make Kara laugh, it was the best way to learn earth physics, which seemed like Greek compared to her home planet’s.

Snacks came in waves, which Kara was grateful. Her mother would be surprised that she only ate three platefuls for dinner. Various plates mingled with open books and notes on the coffee table.

“Lena, honey,” a voice called before entering the room. “I can’t decide.”

Lillian Luthor was beautiful. Dark, chestnut hair flowed to bare shoulders. Her jaw was slender, her features slender, though not as sharp as kara was certain they could have been, as if she worked hard to avoid the natural pitfalls of anger. She walked into the room staring at different earrings in her palms. A set of pearls sat against the long stretch of neck.

“Oh, hello,” she finally looked up and saw that her daughter was not alone, or anywhere close to ready. “I’m sorry, I forgot you were having a friend over. It’s so rare. We tend to embarrass our daughter.”

“Mom, this is Kara,” Lena shook her head and groaned slightly.

“Kara Danvers, ma’am,” she popped up and held out her hand quickly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Any relation to Eliza Danvers?” the mother took her hand and shook it warmy, sizing her up, critical without being, making Kara push up her glasses and look back at Lena for assurance.

“She’s my mother.”

“How is she? I used to be on the board of the Children’s Hospital with her back in National City, way, way, way back, well before either of you were born.”

“She’s doing well. She works at Tora doing medical research.”

“Wow, Eliza Danvers,” she hummed, smiling warmly. “It’s been ages. You’ll tell her I said hello, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll have to call on her one of these days.”

“I’m sure she would love that.”

“Mom, didn’t you have to finish helping the band find the right place to set up or something?” Lena suggested.

“Which one?” she asked, holding up both earrings, alternating until her daughter picked. “Thank you.”

“We were just finishing up.”

“Lily! Lil, I can’t figure out which tie won’t clash with you!” Another voice echoed down the hall, deep and baritone. Kara heard Lena sigh and shake her head.

“I’m sorry. My parents can usually dress themselves without so much uproar,” she promised.

“I know you like the red, but I think this green one, Lena got me--”

“Lionel, please, Lena has a friend over.”

“Right,” he looked up slowly, slightly disinterested. “But which tie. You’ll end up looking at the pictures and complaining if I choose the wrong one, and I’ll hear about it for the next month.”

“Honey.”

“Lionel Luthor,” he stuck his hand out, which Kara took eagerly, shaking it too hard. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“This is Eliza’s little girl,” his wife offered.

“Eliza?”

“Danvers,” Kara interjected. “I’m Kara.”

“I’m sorry, we’re just not accustomed to Lena bringing friends over very often. It’s a little new to us,” he smiled.

“I bring people over,” his daughter argued.

“She’s embarrassed of us,” he informed Kara as his wife picked his tie and threw it around his neck, beginning to tie it for him. “I suppose we’re doing something right then.” He grinned and winked at his daughter.

“We were just finishing up,” she promised. “I’ll be ready quick.”

“Lena was tutoring me. She’s a lifesaver.”

“I would hope so, she’s been doing those equations since she was ten,” the father bragged. “Don’t be a stranger, Kara. You’re always welcome.”

“Thank you.”

“Come on, let’s let them finish up,” Lillian smoothed her husband’s shirt and jacket. “Kara, we mean it. Don’t be a stranger, and be sure to tell your mother I’ll be stopping by.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“You look beautiful,” Lionel whispered as he was tugged from the room.

“Sorry about them,” Lena smiled and shook her head. “They mean well.”

“Danvers, you’re the one that wrote that article in the school paper about Lena,” Lionel remembered, stopping at the door.

“Yes, sir.”

“I liked it. Have a copy hanging at the office.”

“Dad,” Lena groaned, drawing it out until he relented and smiled. “I’ll be down in a bit.”

“They’re nice,” Kara supplied.

“I’ll keep them.”

With a smile, they went about cleaning up, Kara apologizing profusely for eating all of the snacks, with Lena dismissing it. Most of all, Kara could only think about how she felt like a friend who got to know Lena Luthor.

Walking down the steps, the crowds in fancy dressed already started to arrive. Grossly underdressed, Kara tried not to gape too much. Instead, at the door, she caught herself a glimpse of Mr. and Mrs. Luthor, laughing and standing very close. The look he gave her was nothing short of utter devotion, and the smile she reserved for him, even just in that instant, was all of her joy.

“You’ll get home okay?” Lena worried, observing the dark that settled. “I can have Calvin drive you if you’d like. No trouble.”

“I’ll be alright,” she said, adjusting her bag. “Thanks for the help.”

“Sure, anytime.”

With a smile, Kara took a step and paused, turning back on her heel.

“Do you want to hang out tomorrow? My mom is going to be leaving for a conference.”

“Maybe you’d want to come over and help us eat some of these post-party leftovers?”

“Yeah, I can probably help you out with that,” Kara chuckled, squinting against the light. She watched Lena put her hands in her back pockets.

“Movies and leftovers. I’ll tell my parents.”

“Awesome.”

“See you tomorrow, Kara. Text me when you get home, okay?”

“Yes ma’am,” she rolled her eyes and she loped down the steps and into the driveway.

From atop the steps, Lena leaned against the door and watched her friend with a smile on her lips. She’d been warned often to make sure she chose good people to surround herself, because her name came with people having ulterior motives. For the first time in a long time, the youngest Luthor felt as if she’d picked well.

Never before had Lena been able to say, with such confidence and happiness, that her life was perfect. It was the best year of her life, and it was only just starting. Fresh from her holiday abroad with her family, as soon as they landed on their private airfield, Lena pulled out her phone and texted her friend to let her know she’d arrived.

Come over now! I have great news and cookies!! Kara practically squealed through text.

With a small smile, Lena relaxed in her chair as they taxied to the gate. New school, state soccer champ, best friend, great family, perfect holiday skiing the Alps, internship at her father’s company, accepted to her dream school… the list was one that she never thought she’d ever have.

Not that her life wasn’t already perfect by other’s standards. Perfect didn’t lead to happiness, she’d learned slowly. In fact, it was usually messy and free and unexpected that led to that permanent smile. That was what Kara was teaching her.

“We should have dinner to celebrate the news,” Lionel beamed as he scrolled through his own phone. “Early admissions to your family’s alma mater is something worth celebrating. Where would you like to go, princess?”

Every Luthor since the beginning of time had gone to Kingsmont. When she got the email, Lena felt the weight lifted off her shoulders. Not a disappointment, flashed in front of her eyes as she read the words congratulating her on admission.

“Can we go tomorrow?” she ventured.

“What?”

“She’s been gone from her friends for three weeks, and forced to spend time with her family,” Lillian interpreted for her husband, giving her daughter a nod. “Let the girl go have fun.”

“But it’s Kingsmont. She’s a Scottie now. I’ve already ordered new colors and shirts and scarves and pennants for the family. I got one of those ugly stickers for the car that says Proud Kingsmont Dad.”

“And she’ll still be going there tomorrow.”

“Please, Daddy?” Lena subtly pouted, knowing between her and her mother, he was outgunned.

A look of frustrated defeat, followed by amused acceptance played across Lionel’s face as he looked between the two women of his life. He shook his head and chuckled before relenting.

“Fine. I’ll have Lynn set up something for the three of us tomorrow night. Maybe Franco’s?”

“Perfect. Thank you, Daddy,” Lena hopped up as the plane stopped and the door opened. She kissed his cheek and hugged her mother.

“Don’t stay out too late,” Lillian suggested as she earned a hug as well. “It’s been a long day.”

“I won’t.”

“Tell Kara we said hello.”

“Bye!”

In a second, Lena was down the steps and taking the car while her parents elected to wait for another. She was practically giddy by the time she pulled up to the now familiar Danver’s residence.

“Thanks, Cal. I’ll call you later.”

“Tell Ms. Danvers I said hello,” he smiled, tipping his hat as she closed the door.

Before she made it a step inside the yard, just as the gate was shutting, arms were wrapped around her neck, and it felt as if a boulder had knocked into her side. It was a familiar feeling of a big, floppy puppy that was her friend.

“It’s been too long,” Kara squealed, hugging her tightly. “I missed you. No more whisking off to Europe.”

“I’ll do my best,” Lena laughed.

It wasn’t that she was unaccustomed to hugs and such, but the degree to which Kara latched onto her was new and not entirely unwelcome.

“You have to tell me everything, and I have so much to tell you,” she began to rattle as she tugged Lena toward the house.

“Let her breathe, Kara,” her mother chided as she finished pulling something from the oven. “Hello, Lena.”

“Mrs. Danvers,” she nodded. “Happy belated Holidays.”

“Will you be joining us for dinner? I’ve made plenty.”

“Yes,” Kara answered for her.

“I don’t want to impose…”

“You’re not. We’ll be down in a bit, Mom,” her friend offered quickly, practically sprinting up the stairs. “I can’t believe you’re back. It felt like years.”

“Did you get the chocolate I sent?” Lena asked as she flopped down on Kara’s bed.

The room was not new to her. Lena grew to know it well, felt comfortable in it, just as Kara felt in her own home, grabbing snacks at will from the fridge, driving the chef’s crazy.

“Yeah, I think my mom and sister actually got more than me.”

“What!? How?” she pretended to gasp at the news.

“I may be quick, but when it comes to chocolate, they rival even me.”

“Tell me everything I missed.”

It was all the prompting Kara needed. She went through the holiday, spending time with her sister, the string of vigilante incidents happening in the city, how she got a new laptop for her birthday. It all came out so fast, Lena didn’t have time to ask questions, but she loved watching Kara talk like that. Someone so good and kind and happy, they were just… just… they were the sun, she thought again, soaking it in as best she could.

Exhausted, she watched Kara lay down on her bed and stare at the ceiling, practically vibrating with excitement. Lena propped herself up on her elbow and laid beside her friend. She felt the soft smile on her own lips, the jittery feeling of her own stomach, that felt as if it was lined with sparklers, all going off at one time.

And when blue eyes turned to her own, she couldn’t help but smile.

The sparklers and butterflies soon turned painful, agitated and ornery as Kara told her about how Jack kissed her on New Year’s Eve, and how they’d been hanging out. Like a Luthor, Lena knew how to have a proper poker face, and pretended to smile for her friend.

“And, I just got the email today,” Kara sat up quickly. “I got into National University!”

“I got into Kingsmont!” Lena yelped in return. “Congratulations!”

A second later, Kara was hugging her tightly again, her hot breath against Lena’s neck. She felt the weight of her friend settle atop her and Lena closed her eyes, memorizing it all.

“We’re going to be in the same city, just a subway ride across it! This is great,” Kara beamed as she pulled away. “I mean, if you want.”

“Of course I want,” her friend argued. “I think you’re one of my truest friends I’ve ever had. You’re very important, Kara.”

“I’m… I’m, impor-- I mean. You, too,” she nodded, serious and forceful with her words. Lena tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear and Kara felt herself blush. She chanced a look at her lips and it was a mistake. Friends. “I bet your dad was over the moon,” Kara offered, sitting up and pulling away.

“He bought the whole campus store, I think,” Lena laughed, closing her eyes and remaining on the bed, shaking her head slightly.

“You’ll have to get me something, so I can rep it a little, too.”

“Naturally.”

“Kara, honey! Dinner!” Eliza’s voice wafted up the stairs.

“I almost forgot the best news,” Kara smiled again as she pulled Lena quite easily from the bed. “Speaking of dads, mine called on Christmas.”

“From overseas?”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “He thinks he’ll be home by June.”

“Seems we’re both ready to have an amazing year.”

“Let’s… can we just…” Kara paused at the door and turned to face her friend before she reached out and hugged Lena again.

Arms slowly wrapping around Kara’s broad shoulders, she felt her inhale and hold it for a moment. Strong biceps held her tightly. Lena all but melted right there on that spot. She would have given her entire inheritance to keep that moment forever.

“Everything is perfect right at this moment,” the blonde explained. She hovered a few inches higher, taller than Lena. It was easy to hug her neck, to hide in her hair. “I don’t want to forget it.”

“It’s only going to get better,” Lena promised.

The butterflies came back, and Lena cursed them, buried them, deep, deep, deep down. It was a selfish thing.

#supercorp

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jacewilliams1 · 4 years

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If only… The friends I’ve lost in airplane accidents

I’ve struggled with writing about this tragedy for a long time. I wanted so much to give other pilots a glance at this image, hoping a few might take a moment before a flight to see if there were any gotchas they missed amid their haste and distractions. But I recoiled against the prospect of telling a very personal, painful, and graphic story about a good pilot buddy. Finally I decided to just start writing rather than let this opportunity die along with him, though I must protect his anonymity. I’m certainly not a writer, nor have I ever written anything for public consumption. I may never again. This is straight from the heart.

Hundreds and hundreds of people. Family, friends, business associates, and employees. Every seat in the large church sanctuary filled. Others standing along the walls. The foyer and hallways so crowded that more stand around outside, roasting in the sun, straining to hear the memorial service being broadcast on speakers. All the parking lots filled, with illegally parked cars choking the roadway for hundreds of yards in both directions. No dry eyes. So many lives so profoundly impacted. So many futures changed forever. If only…

My friend and his passenger died in an airplane crash.

“This has become a far too frequent occurrence for me.”

I’ve seen turnouts like this before, when young men die suddenly and violently while living life to the fullest. These gentlemen were well known and respected in their community and businesses, and served others for most of their time on this earth. They were humorous, articulate, and responsible. They loved and provided well for their families, friends, and employees. In our busy age it’s a great tribute that so many have made the effort to pay their respects and offer comfort and condolences to the suffering families as they start dealing with their own grief.

This has become a far too frequent occurrence for me, and I’m getting a little tired of it. I’ve lost sixteen friends and numerous acquaintances in aircraft mishaps. So far. Of my friends, four died in military training and combat, and all the rest in general aviation. Nearly all were highly skilled, with decades of experience in all sorts of aircraft and conditions. And I miss these good men and women every single day.

Oddly enough, I don’t personally know anyone who survived a GA crash where others died. This might be due to the nature of flying in a part of the country with very challenging terrain and weather. But records show that terrible, life-altering injuries are frequent. A common trait among pilots is a highly developed sense of responsibility for protecting our passengers. I can’t begin to imagine the lifelong load of guilt a pilot must have to carry after killing or maiming people who trusted their lives to them.

So how do qualified, well-trained pilots lose their lives? My friends perished due to various causes: continued VFR into IMC, midair collision, severe turbulence in mountains, flight control malfunction, low altitude stall/spin, descending below approach minimums in IMC, flying up blind canyons, attempting a go-around from a one-way strip, and catastrophic engine failure. There was no hotdogging, buzzing, or overt recklessness involved. These all should’ve just been normal flights.

Come to think of it, I’ve only known one person who died in a traffic accident, and he was on a motorcycle. Anyone who tells you that flying is safer than driving is probably talking about airline flying. Either that or they’re misinformed. And in this instance at least, the old flying adage holds true: “… if you crash because of weather, your funeral will be held on a sunny day.”

Please don’t get the wrong impression. I love aviation. I’ve been completely passionate about it since I was a toddler. In fact, the first thing I want to do after coming home from work (if you can call it “work” — I fly for a living) is go flying in little airplanes. Hey, I’m sick! I need help!

But these losses have changed me. I find myself double checking so many mundane things, and kicking myself if I discover anything I’ve missed. Much of the time that I used to take to enjoy the view is now crowded out by going over the “what ifs.” I experienced an engine failure a few years ago, and now I hear my inner monologue saying things like, “There’s a good place to deadstick it in! There’s another! And another!” But I know that I can’t possibly account for everything that could bring me down.

Accident reports rarely convey just how awful an airplane crash really is.

This nagging understanding makes me refuse to take the chances that I might have in the past, like taking more than one grandchild up in my airplane at a time, or trusting that the destination weather will improve by arrival time. It also makes me less willing to fly hard IFR when I’m not at work. That’s too much like work, anyway, and I bought my airplane for blue skies and beautiful days. Most of all it makes me realize that I’m not invincible. But if this risk aversion makes me a safer pilot, then it’s all worth it.

We’ve all read the accident reports, full of terms like “high degree of energy dissipation upon impact” and “rapid descent into terrain.” But this kind of cold, clinical language disguises the real aftermath: the disrupted, often destroyed lives of loved ones, the hardship and loss experienced by those left behind, and the horrors they can never forget. These reports seldom let us see through that veil, but we MUST look beyond and understand the massive consequences our actions or omissions might bring.

We’ve all seen or heard of bad examples of airmanship, ranging from ignorance to foolishness to false bravado. But in dealing with all my personal aviation tragedies, I’ve found some things common to most: complacency, overconfidence, inadequate planning, lack of qualification or competence, and lack of preparation. But the biggest contributor to my buddy’s fatal crash: very poor judgment.

This is a difficult thing for me to say about my pal, especially since I had been something of a mentor to him. But I have to put it right out there in the hope that it might save a life someday. Besides, who among us hasn’t displayed poor judgment at one time or another, especially when acting as a pilot?

Get-home-itis was the biggest link to the faulty judgment in this tragedy. It is a powerful force, so powerful that both men aboard were willing to risk single-engine flying over unlit mountainous terrain. In the middle of the night. Without a discernible horizon or an instrument rating. In smoke, clouds, and turbulence. With the moon adding all sorts of visual illusions. And with embedded thunderstorms along their route.

This combination of factors produced very unsurprising results: classic spatial disorientation followed by the inevitable graveyard spiral and final dive, terminating with high-speed vertical descent into terrain under full power. There was no in-flight breakup. The impact was so powerful that body parts were scattered up into surrounding trees, according to the sheriff’s report. This ghastly image haunts me still, and I wasn’t even one of the poor souls who had to clean up the mess. Human remains were so fragmented that no one could determine what belonged to whom. Even the credit cards in their wallets were shattered. And undoubtedly those who responded to this disaster will never be able to unsee what was laid out before them.

What haunts me even more is imagining what those last moments in the cockpit were like. I can hear the shrieking of the air rushing over the airframe at well over 200 knots, feel the disorienting g-loading, and sense the overwhelming terror that they must have experienced in the eternity of the last few seconds of their lives as they plunged into the blackness. I can only imagine how the thought of this must sicken their loved ones. The only upside? It didn’t hurt for long.

Even celebrities aren’t immune to VFR-into-IMC accidents, as Kobe Bryant tragically learned.

Disasters like this are far too common in general aviation. Some 40% of GA accidents are caused by spatial disorientation, yet it is not commonly understood. Remember JFK Jr? Ever hear of “The Day the Music Died?” What about Patsy Cline? Kobe Bryant?

As a matter of fact, my friend did call other pilot friends that night to get their advice, which he quickly disregarded. They begged him to spend the night and come home at first light. Now they will be forever plagued by thinking that they could have done more to convince him. But obviously he had his mind made up, and was only looking for affirmation. After all, both victims had nonrefundable reservations for their families’ vacation together starting the following day. If only…

Calling a “knock-it-off” would have cost them this vacation. Well, so did pressing on.

If only my buddy could have been given even a tiny glimpse into the future, he could have avoided the horrible results of his decision.

The real tragedy is that he did have the opportunity for that glimpse.

This outcome was foreseeable. His actions under these conditions had predictable results. But here’s the worst thing: He had just come through these conditions on the same route as his ill-fated return flight, and he KNEW what was ahead!

Much of airmanship is managing risk. Of course, awful things just happen sometimes (i.e., catastrophic structural failures), but this disaster was caused by easily avoidable and well-known risk factors.

I plead with any of you who face the host of decisions that comprise every flight to take one moment and play the pessimist. I know we all hate to think about this, but how high will the cost be if not everything goes your way? Look at how all your people would be affected if something life changing, or life ending, were to happen on your flight. Think about how overall risk jumps when a few bad little things happen at about the same time. Have an escape plan for when things do go wrong. Can you divert? Is there landable terrain below you if you have to put it down? Are you properly equipped to survive the aftermath of a remote landing? Can you see well enough to land there? Can you flip a “U-ey” in time to get out of a bad situation? Where are the rocks? What about going tomorrow (or next week) instead? Always leave yourself an out.

Better yet, leave yourself lots of outs. Here are some examples: before you push up the power, take an extra minute to consider the worst case. Double check weather and NOTAMS. Consider your gross weight and performance. Ask for advice. Know where your possible divert fields are. Think about the true priorities. Learn about spatial disorientation and how insidious it is. Beware of overconfidence and complacency. Assess and manage your risk. Take your solemn responsibility for your passengers seriously. Realize that even if you’re solo, you are risking the lives of your loved ones. Don’t get in a rush. And never let yourself start thinking that you’re bulletproof.

There’s already plenty of risk in this life. Aviation brings more, whether we like to admit it or not. Manage it well and you can enjoy a lifetime of fun sharing this great gift of flight!

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from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/05/if-only-the-friends-ive-lost-in-airplane-accidents/

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