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gococogo · 10 months

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In the White Roses | Shaytham

Synopsis : Shay has been missing for the last couple of days. He is normally by night fall but when he doesn't return, Gist alarms Haytham is his disappearance. While searching, Haytham seems a bit more worried than he should be.

Word Count : 3.7K

Genre : Angst / Hurt

Pairing : Shay Cormac / Haytham Kenway

[Warnings] : Blood, Gore, injured!Shay

The thing is, Haytham had gone to the Morrigan and Fort Arsenal looking for the Hunter. He even went to the Greenwich Tavern in case the man had stopped by there. But the bar keep had not seen Shay since he was in here with the Grandmaster last. Which was a week ago.

Gist had seen him two days ago before Shay had gone off on his own. The Hunter’s disappearances were common enough that no one thought anything of them because the man always came back within night fall to look over his ship. Haytham would say he loved that thing more than anything else in his life sometimes.

When he had not come back the first night, Gist thought it strange. When he hadn’t returned by morning is when he reported it to Haytham. It took the entire day of asking around New York to get a location on where Shay could have gone. It very quickly seemed to Haytham that Shay was good at what he does. Hiding in plain sight.

But as the day dragged on into the second night, Haytham’s worry had grown strong. Gist had gone back to the Morrigan to rally up some of the crew to help search instead of just the two looking around Greenwich. But Haytham’s search took him further out than Greenwich.

It takes him to Lower Manhattan towards the known Assassin Den. This Den has yet to rid of and there have been plans to do so. Shay was going to lead with some other men. But maybe… Haytham hopes not.

But his suspicion grows stronger as he looks upon the Den from the outside. There’s usually some movement, yet all that comes from the Den is silence. The feeling that rises and closes Haytham’s throat is something he hasn’t felt in a long time. Fear? No. That is something he has pushed down with sheer force in his years and he has mastered to control. But it seems every time a situation comes about with Shay, all those years of control of his emotions come undone.

Haytham scales up the side of a two storey building to get a better view of the den. He nearly slips halfway up, his mind somewhere else. He looks over the den and watches for any lanterns or any movement at all. There is still nothing. It’s dead.

A rope from the building travels over to one of the rooves of the den and seems like a better way than climbing all the way down. Haytham seems to stare at it for a second before running across it before he hesitates too long. He isn’t the best at free running as Shay and will most likely never be since the man was trained in the way of the Assassin much longer than Haytham. Running the rope was a gamble and he nearly looses his balance three quarters way across. The rope wasn’t as tight and firm as it looked when he started. His heart his beating wildly in his chest by the time he gets across.

Haytham investigates the den carefully after he settles himself. What he finds is what he suspected.

Bodies line the court of the den and inside of each building. The first smell of decay is strong and mostly all of the bodies are starting to bloat. Haytham stops in front of one and has to cover his mouth and nose with his cape. The body lies face up with half of his face beaten and bloody. There are multiple slashes across his chest and stomach. The blood is dried and almost black in the darkness, the whites of his eyes stark.

As caring and gentle as Shay can be, seeing this truly puts him in another light. This blood bath shows the anger and his true frustration inside of him towards the Creed. That what he has gone through still holds on with its teeth and claws, reminding Shay of what he’s done. What the Creed caused. They created their own worst enemy that has the right amount of motivation to be their undoing. It’s almost ironic. But also brings a curiosity to Haytham on who Shay was before the incident. He knows about Lisbon but he doesn’t know if Shay knows that.

Haytham moves on.

The rest of the den is the same. It’s been cleared out entirely. But then where is Shay? If he cleared it out then he should have returned after wards. Haytham uses his vision and looks around to see if he missed anything. Nothing glows brightly to him, not even the bodies that are a slumbering grey against the blue world.

Until a shimmer of red catches his attention to his left. Split reaction at the colour, he flicks his blade out fully expecting an Assassin to jump out from behind the building. The small streak of red doesn’t move but it flickers and ebbs in Haytham’s vision. He moves closer towards it, the streak of red becoming noticeable as a handprint on the side of the building wall. A smeared handprint that leads to a trail of blood on the brick floor. A heavy trail.

Haytham’s eyes strain from the vision and he has to blink away, rubbing his face. He picks up a nearby lantern and uses it to light his way. Who ever is at the end of this blood trail is still alive, there’s no other reason for it to be attracting his vision like that. He just hopes it’s the man he’s been looking for tonight.

The fat drops of blood on the ground are easy to follow. They lead out of the den and onto the side street that runs along the back of the Den. Haytham flickers in and out of his vision when he loses it, not wanting to take a turn down the wrong way. The red trail leads down an ally way drastically at one point. Haytham follows, noticing another bloody hand print on the building as he passes. Whoever this is, is badly injured.

The trail stops behind a small court behind some resident buildings. There’s clothes lines in the middle of the area and white rose bushes lining the back of the buildings. It’s hard to see in the dark but the roses seem to glow in the moon light. Even the petals of the ones that are speckled with red. His heart beats dramatically in his chest at the sight of it. Slowly, Haytham moves towards those ones, bringing his lantern in front of him. His body is tense as he stands in front of the bush. Slowly, and gently, he pushes aside one of the broken branches and looks inside. If Haytham wasn’t trained by his father when he was young, he would be dead right now. If he was a little slower, his neck would be open and turning these roses fully red below him. But the hidden blade misses his skin by an inch as it slashes out at him in defense.

In the rose bush, lies Shay Cormac.

In the yellow light of the lantern the slick of blood can be seen over his black coat. Like the dead man Haytham saw, half of Shay’s face is covered in blood, bleeding from a head wound that is obviously causing his delirium. He now breathes heavily, the movement twisting his body in a way that must hurt to whatever injury he has.

“Shay,” Haytham speaks firmly and loudly. All so that the man below him knows who is speaking to him. Hoping that his voice breaks through the haze.

And it seems to. Shay’s one good eye peers up at him but it is as if he is not seeing. His body seems to relax a bit though, knowing he isn’t in danger anymore.

Haytham bites back an edge in his chest he doesn’t recognize. He pushes it down as he holds his hand out to Shay, wondering if the man will take it. Shay looks at it and goes to take it. But as if exhaustion and blood lost have finally taken a toll, his eye roll into the back of his head and he passes out.

With a curse, Haytham drops the lantern next to him and breaks away at the bush so that he can get to Shay. He picks Shay up with a huff and a loud grunt, swinging the entire dead weight of a six-foot-tall man over his shoulder. He heaves and strains, but he stands firmly. Haytham begins the slow and long walk back to Fort Arsenal with the warm feeling of blood soaking through his clothing.

It is late in the night by the time Haytham gets back to Fort Arsenal. Gist is already rushing out of the manor before Haytham crosses the front gate.

“What happened!?” The first mate calls out.

Gist helps Shay off of the Grandmaster’s shoulders and they both heave the man inside, holding onto an arm each. Shay tries to catch his feet under him but he trips and staggers, making the trip a little difficult.

“Were I followed?” Shay mumbles out, his accent blurring his words together.

Haytham only just catches the words said.

“No. You weren’t Shay. You did good,” he responds, hoping to lesson the man’s worries.

The answer satisfies Shay as he seems to pass out again, causing both men to nearly fall inwards at the sudden extra weight. Under all his gear must be just muscle and stone because there is no way one man his size can be this heavy.

They get Shay inside where Gist calls out for the maids of the manor. They come running, instructing them both to lie him down on his bed. Gist worries about the blood but the maids do not care at this given moment. A groan escapes Shay’s mouth as he’s laid down.

“I’ll go fetch the doctor,” the youngest maid inquires before leaving the room.

The other one, an elderly woman in her late fifties by Haytham’s guess, begins taking off Shay’s clothes. There are too many straps and too many layers for her liking to get to what is making Shay lose so much blood. She ends up cutting off most of the straps and cutting into his shirt with a pocket knife she pulled from god knows where.

“Mr Gist, can you get me a bucket of water with a cloth,” the maid calls back without taking her attention off of Shay.

Gist is gone before Haytham can blink. Shay had only become a Templar in the past month but has been working with them for the on going year. In such a small amount of time he has full loyalty from his crew and his house maids. It’s not a common thing to see in such a place a New York. Something that Haytham never grew up with. The maids and the hands served him because he’s a Kenway. The Templars look up to him because he is a Grandmaster and from where he comes from. All because of status, not for who he is.

Shay. Shay came from the enemy and the street. One should sneer and spit when they learn of his past. Yet, everyone around him respects him for the stuff he had done. Even Haytham must admit that before he met Shay at the ceremony he had heard of stories from Monro and Gist about the former assassin. He had expected a man that would give some sort of sympathy towards the assassins and want the best way possible to make them see their wrongs.

But the man he met was not that. He met a hunter. A man with a cause for revenge. One that hides his true anger and intentions but will not lie when asked. Lies is what caused him to see the wrongs within the assassins which made a truthful man. A stronger man.

Hence why, Haytham realizes, that Shay hid away instead of coming straight back to Fort Arsenal. All because he thought that someone would follow the trail of blood like Haytham did. To protect the Templars and the others inside.

Gist comes back with the bucket of water and plants it down next to the bed. The maid opens up Shay’s bloody shirt to show the black blood slicked skin. Haytham doesn’t know what he’s looking at. He doesn’t know when the injury starts of ends. The maid tries to clean away the blood but only more welts up and spills over. Haytham realizes he doesn’t know what he’s looking at. He doesn’t know where its just blood or its flesh.

Haytham stands frozen as he watches the maid try to cover the wound back up to stop the bleeding. All until the doctor gets here. Gist even snaps into action, helping the maid and getting his hands dirty. Haytham on the other hand, he has seen plenty of guts and gore his entire life. Killed men. Cut them up from hip to throat and then slit their jugular for good measure. Yet the thought of that being Shay stirs something in his gut.

He’s broken from his thoughts as Shay hisses loudly. He tries to pry Gist off of him, but Haytham quickly comes forward and grabs the man’s hands away. Shay wrenches one of his hands free from Haytham but doesn’t proceed to reach out. His brows are furrowed and his nose scrunches. The smell of blood is off putting it must be getting to Shay as well.

Shay’s free, shaky hand comes up to his face and he tries to wipe away the blood from his eye. But he doesn’t succeed, all he does is smear it over his face. At the struggle, Haytham brings out his napkin from the inside of his coat. He hits Shay’s hand away before wiping away the blood from his eye. When Haytham is satisfied, brown eyes stare up at him calmly.

Before anything else stupid happens, Haytham is pushed roughly away by the doctor. He slams his briefcase at the side of the bed and begins ordering the maids around, even Gist. Shay’s first mate is sent off to grab another pale of water and the maids are to stay and help hold the injured down if needed. The doctor looks to Haytham with a furrowed expression.

“Come and help hold him down,” he orders.

In any other circumstance, Haytham would have snapped. But he moves forward again to hold onto Shay’s shoulders. Gist comes back with the pale of clean water and slams it down next to the bed. The doctor begins cleaning Shay’s wound and Haytham watches the hunter go from dazed to conscious within a second.

The doctor works quick but carefully to clean away all the old blood and to see what truly is underneath all the gore. Things start become clear and Haytham is able to depict what is what. There’s a gun shot wound in Shay’s right side that weeps red and a slash from a sword across his chest that seems to have healed badly over the past couple of days. A wave of nausea sweeps over Haytham that he has to quickly get under control.

Haytham doesn’t know much but he does know in his experience that the sword wound is going to have to be reopened and cleaned. But the doctor isn’t worried about it right now. The gunshot wound is the main priority. The doctor moves Shay over so he can look at the man’s back.

There’s no exit wound. The bullet is still inside of him. Shay lets out a breathy chuckle as if the situation is funny. But before Haytham can snap at him, his brown eyes become hazy again.

“I can’t put him under,” the doctor suddenly says. “There’s a risk he won’t wake up if we do.”

Haytham understands. “Gist, help the ladies hold his legs down. I’ll hold his shoulders dow-“

“I’ve seen men throw men like yourself off, sir,” the doctor cuts him off. “I suggest you wrangle him to hold his arms in place.”

Haytham hesitates, but moves when Shay lets out a ragged groan as he’s let back down on the bed by the doctor. He takes off his coat and hat, setting it off to the side before he sits on the edge of the bed and moves Shay into his lap. Haytham wraps one arm around Shay’s chest, being careful of the wound, while the other hand is holding onto one of his arms.

“I’m going to work quickly, but this is going to be painful,” the doctor instructs. “There’s healed tissue I’m going to have to cut open to get to the bullet.”

“Get on with it,” Haytham snaps through gritted teeth.

The doctor washes his hands in the second pale of water before putting on gloves. He rummages around his case and comes out with a thick piece of leather. For a split second, Haytham is confused until the leather is placed roughly into Shay’s mouth. It just rests in his mouth right now but soon, he’s going to be biting down on that thing hard enough that one could lose a finger or two.

The doctor goes back into his case and bring out a pair of surgical scissors and tongs. With a cloth in his other hand, he wipes away the fresh blood from gun shot before getting to work. He digs the tongs in to open the wound and Shay instantly reacts, biting down into the leather.

His body tenses and his brown eyes become black with how big his pupils dilate. But it’s when the doctor starts cutting away at healed tissue that Shay flails and shouts past the gag. Gist and the two maids manage to hold his legs from kicking about but Haytham’s hold nearly slips.

The one arm that can’t be held down comes around and grabs onto the arm that’s across his chest. He tries to pry Haytham off of him and he nearly succeeds. He guesses having to hold and steer a ship nearly every week along with climbing buildings and scaffolding does render this type of strength. But Haytham holds tight, almost choking the man.

If Shay had come home straight away and not let his wounds heal, this would go ten times smoother. But he had chosen to stay hidden away in case any one had followed him. Stupid, but smart.

Shay’s body arches off the bed but he can’t go anywhere further since four people are holding him down. A choked cry escapes his throat as the doctor digs in deeper. It’s a sound that Haytham wishes he could cover his ears for. But as the doctor cuts more away and burrows for the bullet, the more Shay bites down on the gag and his body shakes from the pain that has a grip on his body and mind.

“It’s nearly done,” Haytham says, trying to get the man under him to calm down some.

In truth, Haytham has no clue if the doc has found the bullet. Or is anywhere near done. He just needs Shay to calm down so that this can be over quicker. But it’s Shay Cormac he’s currently talking about. And he will go down fighting.

As if on que as well, all Gist is able to get out before Shay frees a foot and kicks him square in the jaw is a small plea. Gist falls to the ground heavily like a sack of potatoes. The doctor has to take the tongs out of Shay as he thrashes about again. The maids gasp but are on it quickly afterwards, the eldest grabbing onto the free leg and holding it down. A groan from the first mate is all Haytham gets to say that he’s okay.

“Hold him still,” the doc snaps.

“They’re trying their best,” Haytham seethes.

He will not have some man snap at Shay’s employees. The doc doesn’t pay him any mind though as he starts fishing for the bullet once more. Shay’s entire body goes stiff once more as the whole process begins again. Tears now flow down his face as he squeezes his eyes shut.

“Gotcha,” is all the doctor says as he carefully picks the bullet from Shay.

He drops the bullet on the bed and a calm comes over Shay almost. The worst of it has past, but there is still pain to endure. Haytham pats Shay’s arm, trying to assure the man. But the doctor doesn’t finish his work until an hour later. Having to stitch up and also wait out Shay fighting them in his daze.

Unfortunately, the man did not pass out at any given time due to the pain. Shay had stayed awake the entire way through. Haytham had hoped he would pass out halfway through. But for some reason he wanted to stay conscious.

The doctor pats his hand son his thighs before standing up. Without a word, he begins cleaning up and shoving stuff into his briefcase.

Shay’s waist and chest are fully bandaged, and he’s been put back together. Haytham has let go of him, but his head still lays in his lap. He should move. He should be leaving now knowing that Shay will be alright. His maids will look after him.

“I’ll be back in the morning to check up on him,” the doctor gruffly.

Gist, who is now conscious and has been looked over already, grunts and shows the doctor out. He’s a little off on his feet, having been a little concussed by the kick he received. But the doc said he’ll be fine. The maids leave as well, following them out with the pales of water in hand.

That leaves Haytham alone in the room with Shay in his lap. A hand comes and rests itself onto Shay’s hot forehead. Finally, those brown eyes close shut. It finally feels like Haytham can rest as well. His own body aches from having to hold Shay for so long and he doesn't realize how tired he had become until now.

“You stubborn fool,” Haytham mumbles.

The smallest smile comes to Shay’s lips. But it’s only now that he can rest, knowing he is safe and sound. And yet Haytham doesn’t move, finding himself not wanting to go in case something happens for the rest of the night. With that thought, Haytham stays up for the rest of the night, listening to Shay breathe hoarsely but strongly. That’s all Haytham needs to know that everything is alright.

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tev-the-random · 1 year

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(Continuation of this!)

If he had to call the attack on Tumble Town anything, Sausage would call it ominous.

You see, the thing about living thousands of years and multiple lives is that you start to notice patterns in tragedy. So although most people said there was calm before the storm, he knew otherwise: there was always a bit of a dark sky in between, some sort of warning bell. And Sausage knew quite a lot about dark skies.

He was the first one to offer support as soon as he got the news. If not because his colourful empire greatly valued the terracotta trades, then because the Sheriff was a good friend. The man confided to Sausage — which means everybody everywhere was aware of it by noon — his strange encounter the previous night. The Red Light Bandit, as he’d taken to calling the suspect, definitely gave off the feeling that they were looking for more than a victimless inconvenience. They both knew this wasn't going to be a one-time thing.

Someone needed to keep an extra eye out, if anything. It was in the Guardian's nature to protect what was vulnerable, regardless of whether or not it made a chill run down his spine. He owed it to Tumble Town, after all. He should do right by it at least once.

Citizens of Sanctuary were quick to volunteer a hand once the message started circulating. Now, if there was one thing Sausage was sure of, it was that those who lived in Sanctuary — the refugees, the runaways, the lost souls and found families, — understood better than anyone what it was like to pick up the pieces of a broken home.

Two days after the incident, Sausage showed up to the mesa with a whole group of volunteered help behind him. Truth be told, try as he might, the Guardian couldn't keep up with every single soul that came and went from the safe haven he'd created; he wasn’t, therefore, completely familiar with the entire bunch. There were one or two elves with whom he’d had friendly conversations over the years; an enderian who often humoured the thought of moving to Tumble Town, where the humidity was far more bearable than in the jungle; a couple of fae he had personally welcomed into their community after their forest burned down.

They were followed over the torn hills by four avian friends — no older than eighteen or so, from some country overseas, — a number of dwarves with a heavy accent from somewhere way up north and a few humans from all over the place. Sausage couldn’t say he knew any of them by name, but he made sure to keep track of them nonetheless.

“Alright, everybody! The Sheriff offered us some tools in this box here,” he announced, stepping out of the sheriff’s office with a heavy chest full of equipment. “There are a couple of spots that could use our help, I’m pretty sure everyone can find something they’re good at. If you need any guidance, just come looking for me and we’ll figure it out, right? Right, let’s get to it!”

Sausage’s enthusiasm was infectious, and his people promptly took the initiative. They scattered throughout the town to help break up debris, repair broken rooves, move animals, replace light sources and all the likes of manual labour. Seeing them work alongside the citizens of Tumble Town who had the condition to stay and rebuild, the various goblins carrying materials all around and even a few of Joel’s obedient subjects, Sausage was glad to conclude most of the group had no trouble fitting in. Some, however, seemed a bit more unsure.

One of the humans — or at least he thought that’s what they were; something seemed a little off about it, though he wasn’t quite sure what — caught his attention after a couple of minutes. They looked around with some sort of polite intrigue and a quiet demeanour Sausage assumed was related to shyness. Their nervousness spiked immediately once they noticed Sausage staring, and his approach didn’t seem to make it much better, despite his best intentions.

“Hey there!” He started with a smile that aimed to soothe. “Sorry, this is all a bit of a mess. I guess you haven’t found something to do yet?”

They stared at him as if he was about to bite their head off. Eventually, they nodded.

Sausage hummed. He scanned the wreckage of the town, eyes landing on the Sheriff — who was busy instructing his cheery avian quartet on something, — then following the jagged hills around them in search of vacant stations. His look then went back to the man in front of him, eyeing him up and down once. Although he had a thinner frame than Sausage’s own, he was still built like someone who was used to carrying lots of weight; his long blond hair, streaked with the occasional grey strands, resembled a very messy curtain, taking over his features like he had never his life bothered to brush it back. Still, the Guardian could tell the man had tired dark eyes that avoided his stare at all costs.

“Tell you what, you seem pretty strong,” Sausage concluded, nodding to himself. “I think you should join Vilde by the train tracks over there, if you can.”

Next to the tunnel that once led to the east side of Tumble Town, an elf chipped away at the boulders that blocked it. She was a tall and burly woman who Sausage knew to be quite amicable. It seemed like a good match to him.

He gave the man an encouraging pat on the back, which was returned in the form of a relieved smile. Rolling his shoulders and taking one of the pickaxes inside their equipment box, the stranger — Sausage realised a few seconds too late that he forgot to ask for a name, dang it! — walked away. He promptly received a warm greeting upon reaching the train tracks, which the Guardian was pretty satisfied to see.

After making sure everyone was well taken care of, Sausage set off to get his own work done. He did not spare a single thought to how often the dark gaze behind blond locks drifted his way.

They met again when the sun over the mesa got too hot for them to work. Tumble Town’s saloon was bustling with all the helpers that had come inside to escape the heat and rest for a while. Sausage, for one, had no trouble weaving his way across the crowd and towards the duo sitting by the bar.

Vilde, the sturdy elf, managed to pull some conversation out of the man she had been put to work with. His name was Terrence, she told; he came from a small ranch in a very far away land he refused to speak about, but which he referred to with some fondness.

“Aww, have you met Larisa yet?” Sausage interjected. “Xe’s Sanctuary’s best shepherd, I’m sure xe would love a helping hand with the animals!”

“Maybe,” Terrence replied, softspoken. His hair, no doubt an inconvenience, had since been braided back, but few strands still found a way to fall over his eyes. His face was littered with little scars. “I ain’t got much experience with sheep, but if Larisa needs help with cows, I’m pretty much a magnet for them.”

“I guess that makes you a cowboy,” Vilde chirped, a proud glint in her eyes as her new friend sighed with lighthearted disapproval.

The minutes ticked by, and as it often happens to him, Sausage wasn’t sure how they got to the topic they got. He had just finished a long-winded story about his and Joel’s complicated relationship — not sparing details about the other people with whom he had all sorts of “complicated relationships” — when he finally decided to take a breather. Much to his mildly horrified audience’s relief.

Almost as if on cue, a familiar flutter of wings made itself heard outside. The Guardian of Sanctuary turned around to find a certain teenager standing timidly by the entranceway. The brightest of grins immediately illuminated his face.

“Hermes, my boy!” He shouted, waving frenetically as if from across a field. “I’m right here, come on over!”

Anyone with even the slightest observational skills could tell that the last thing the boy wanted was to be perceived by the saloon full of people. They shrunk into themself as if hoping they could disappear if they just didn’t move. But they couldn’t really do much when both of their fathers were some of the most flamboyant people in all of the empires. Sausage remained regrettably unaware of it.

Vilde and Terrence watched with distinct forms of interest as Hermes won over his hesitation and approached his father, who promptly gave him a loving kiss on the cheek as a greeting. He was still little for a demigod, and his soft appearance would have you think him no older than an early pre-teen.

“Oh, do you remember Vilde, Hermes?” Sausage questioned. “And this here is Terrence! He moved to Sanctuary a few weeks ago, isn’t that nice?”

The elf had met Sausage’s child a handful of times over the years she had lived in Sanctuary. Still not enough for them to return her smile with quite the same enthusiasm as her.

Terrence, on his part, tilted his head with thinly veiled curiosity. It was as if the boy had kickstarted a furious thought process that made for a very amused conclusion.

“So you’re that Hermes I’ve heard so much about.” Tipping an imaginary hat, he smiled at the teen. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

They nodded in what was almost a greeting. The two of them stared at each other for maybe a moment too long before Hermes was no longer able to hold eye contact.

“What are you doing here?” Sausage asked, oblivious.

Hermes vacillated, opening and closing their mouth a couple of times. In the end, they opted to speak with their hands.

“Dad left me in Sanctuary early. I couldn’t find you.”

“Oh? Oh god, I’m so sorry! You must have been waiting so long— I told Joel I was busy today!” Sausage voiced his frustration dramatically. He sighed, then eyed his child with concern. “Does Thunder Daddy know you left Sanctuary? Did you come here all on your own?”

The boy made a face.

“I’m not five anymore.”

“Aw, you’ll always be my baby boy, even if you’re a hundred years old!”

The Guardian captured his son in a tight embrace, earning a squawk from them. Vilde laughed into her glass of water, trying not to embarrass them further, while Terrence observed the scene with a mix of fondness, amusement and something a little deeper, but undecipherable.

In the end, Sausage left earlier than intended, only taking his time to report back to the Sheriff and make sure everyone who came with him was still well. The others stayed for an hour or two more before most of them started heading back to Sanctuary. Terrence, on the other hand, seemed hesitant to leave.

“I was thinking... maybe I should stay here for the night,” he said, a little sheepish. He and the extroverted elf who had so promptly adopted him as a friend stood outside, where a few people still mingled about after a day’s work. “I would really rather avoid having to take the tram back and forth everyday...”

“Oh, tell me about it.” The Sheriff chimed in. He sat on a chair at the front porch of the saloon, leaning back against the wall. “Those damn rails give me motion sickness for days. Why don’t people just walk places anymore?”

“We can go walking if you want to,” Vilde offered.

“I dunno. I don’t think we’d get there before dark.” He placed his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky, musing. “I don’t wanna keep you out too late. I mean,” the man eyed Vilde with an awkward smile. “You could probably crush a zombie’s head with your bare hands, no offence, but I’d still feel bad.”

The elf opened her mouth to protest, only to get interrupted by the Sheriff.

“Pretty sure there’s room in the inn, if you want.” He knocked on the window behind him. “I know those people from Stratos are staying over. Considering you’re helping us fix the town and all that, I think the innkeep will be more than happy to have ya.”

Terrence let out a sigh of relief. He smiled gratefully, not quite meeting the Sheriff’s eyes.

“You’re sure you’re staying?” Vilde asked. He nodded. “Well... I’ll warn Sausage about it, then.” She gave him a firm pat on the shoulder and a grin. “Be seeing you tomorrow, Terry!”

The Sheriff watched him wave off the elf as she skipped away. When it was just the two of them left, they stood there, occasionally exchanging some idle conversation. The old man found that Terrence was quite the pleasant company, albeit a generally timid one, with an easy laughter and a witty mind. The man’s competent rancher stories were enough to keep him amused until the sun came down, by which time they decided to enter the saloon-inn.

He didn’t drink, though. After Terrence bid him good night and disappeared upstairs, the Sheriff kept an eye out for any signs of trouble outside. He hadn’t felt so restless in years, and it rubbed him in all sorts of wrong ways.

Little did he know that, later that evening, the timid blond man with streaks of grey hair and face littered with little scars would manage to sneak his way into the Mezalean house on the other side of the hills. The place, albeit more or less intact, had no signs of living other than a few recent footprints of red sand and some disturbed dust on the shelves. The Sheriff, for one, never bothered checking it out, which made it perfect for hiding things.

Terrence opened a chest to find a set of clothes he unceremoniously changed into. They smelled like gunpowder, and he — Jimmy, he reminded himself at the sight of the heart-shaped scar on his chest. His name is Jimmy — couldn’t possibly feel more comfortable in them.

As he stepped into the small hidden cave next to the building, he couldn’t help but stare at his own reflection on a near-dry puddle under the moonlight. A faint red tint in his otherwise dark eyes stared back at him. It was a wonder that no one seemed to pay attention to it all day long. Not that he was complaining: it felt like waltzing around memories that couldn’t quite look him in the eye anymore. It’s an empowering feeling, despite the rather pathetic persona he had chosen to play in front of them.

Inside of a hole in the wall of the cavern, concealed behind an inconspicuous stone block, a lantern of bright, pulsating red light called to him. He held it like a long lost friend.

They had business to attend to.

#In honour of the Old Sheriff's and Jimmy's children totally surviving I bring you more of this shit #RLBAU time!#I will die on the hill of Hermes' selective mutism #If you get why I gave Jimmy the alias Terrence then you like me spend way too much time on Jimmy's streams #I took the joke and made it canon in the au there's no going back-#anyways I wrote and rewrote this one a few hundred times because I wasn't sure whose perspective to write #Had to introduce the Terrence idea somehow!#but alas I'll leave it be #Empires SMP #Empires season 2 #Solidarity Gaming #Mythical Sausage #Red Light Bandit AU #RLBAU #Don't Mind Me I'm Writing My Blorbos

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sometimesraven · 1 year

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@febuwhump Day 12: "Can you hear me?”

Fandom: Dragon Age Whumpee: Female Lavellan

Summary: Lavellan falls off the roof of a building while pranking with the Friends of Red Jenny. Fortunately, it initiates a meetcute.

AO3 Link

~~*———————————————*~~

Miriel had lost count of the hours she had been awake. Her work with the Friends of Red Jenny had been far more hands-on than she had anticipated, given her diminished responsibilities within the Inquisition, and she certainly hadn’t planned on spending all her waking hours chasing dead-end sightings and rumours of Solas’ movements.

Still, in the three years since the Divine Conclave she had grown accustomed to it all. At times she could almost fool herself she wasn’t sick, able to mask the pain and fatigue she had always felt even from herself from time to time. Being a Jenny was a welcome distraction from the world-ending danger she always seemed to be facing.

The problem, however, with ignoring a sickness was that it tended to remind you of its existence at the worst possible moment. Not moments after the pink paint poured from the rooftop onto the head of another masked noble than Miriel’s legs had shaken and given way. She toppled and failed to catch herself in time, landing heavily on a balcony below, and the world faded.

“Inky? Can you hear me?”

The voice was unfamiliar; a low rumble that pierced directly into her chest. Miriel slowly opened her eyes, wincing as several jolts of pain hit at once from varying parts of her body. She automatically reached for her left hand, only to sigh and flop back down when she remembered it was no longer there.

Her arms hurt. Her legs hurt. Her back hurt. She was fairly certain she needed a healer. Instead, she eyed the concerned face above her. Another elf gazed down at her with narrow hazel-gold eyes, greenish-white vallaslin adorning her brown skin like fade-touched serpentstone. The marks were of Falon’Din, she realised with a tinge of sadness.

“Only Sera gets to call me that,” Miriel managed eventually, the act of speaking shooting pain through her chest that had her choking on her own words.

“Apologies, ma’am,” the stranger hummed, her voice holding a similar Ferelden roughness to that of Sera, though flatter like Cullen’s. “Keep still, I’ll heal you.”

A mage? Miriel groaned with equal parts pain and relief as the familiar tingle of magic filled her body, feeling muscle and bone pull back together and her back crack into place. The relief was almost enough to knock her back out, but she forced herself to stay awake; though made no efforts to move.

“There, that should help. Sera warned us you were reckless with your health but I don’t think anyone expected you to take a nosedive off the roof like that.” Offering her a hand, she pulled her to her feet with a surprising strength Miriel hadn’t been expecting. “Nice to finally meet you though. I’m Adris, by the way. Or just Sabrae if you want.”

“Sabrae?” Miriel quirked a brow, recognising the clan name from both her books and Varric’s tales of the Champion. “You’re a Marcher?”

“Nah,” she hummed, “I’d only just got my Vallaslin when the clan moved north, barely more than a child. Decided I’d rather take my chances with the Blight than follow my clan across the Waking Sea.”

There was more to it than she was letting on, Miriel could tell. It explained her accent at least. “And now you’re a Jenny.”

Adris shrugged, “It’s fun, and it makes a difference in little ways. What’s not to love? Besides falling of rooves.”

“I’m never going to hear the end of that, am I?”

“Nope.” Adris grinned a wide, toothy grin and Miriel found herself smiling back despite herself. When was the last time she’d made a new friend, truly? “So. Gonna let me take you home or are you too big for that, Herald?”

Miriel grimaced at the title, “Just Miriel, please.”

“Apologies, your holiness~”

Oh, she was going to hit this elf before long, she just knew it.

#dragon age #dragon age inquisition #dragon age fanfiction #lavellan #Inquisitor Lavellan #female lavellan #friends of red jenny #original character #clan lavellan #clan sabrae #miriel has a thing for mages apparently #febuwhump #febuwhump2023 #febuwhump 2023 #febuwhumpday12 #can you hear me #man i'm a million miles behind huh #mine

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titoist · 2 years

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my attempt at writing my own "fan cities" in the style of Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities"... with the conscious admittance that his style of prose is remarkable & that thinking i could imitate it convincingly would be really self-conceited, but... that, regardless, i can maybe attempt to make something in the same vein, with the same spirit - "...And beyond those six rivers and three valleys, lies the sleeping city of Tseram, who's stone boulevards and perennially-creaking rooves wait with bated breath for each new traveler... who's entrance will, all at once, signal a grand awakening - as the lonely construction now begins to twist and contort inwards, a living organism now heaving under its own weight in a frantic bid to entertain its new audience. But for the man who arrives here early one June morning, who lays witness to the monuments commemorating mayors that never were, of the windows which seem to writhe on their lonesome, and the city's desperate begging to venture ever inwards as the warm multi-colored street lamps seek to conceal the plume stacks rising in the distance, he is filled but with one distinct sensation: That, here, he is reduced to something existentially loathsome. An insect scurrying on a dead thing..." "...When one arrives by canoe to the dock of Harne, their eyes will naturally shift, with awe, to the colossal set of towers rising in the city's skyline, carefully placed so as to cover the four corners of the city...a city which, when viewed from beyond, seems more like a sea of concrete and moss than a community of peoples. Each tower constructed, and adorned, with minerals and jewels and emeralds which seek primarily to overwhelm and impress. What one will subsequently notice, once they have mustered the will to turn away their gaze, is almost just as striking - That there exists not a single soul left in Harne, the shining jewels having reflected the sunlight directly earthward, melting their homes and rendering the area as dry as the deepest stretches of the Sahara. Whether one should view this as the creation having betrayed its creators, or the creators having abandoned their creation, is up to each individual visitor to infer..."

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smartblondeontour · 2 years

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LONG day today...57km, 38 degrees and a lot of uphill. We left at 8:30am and met up with the boat at 6:30pm. We were in the Alpilles (the little Alps) which you can see in the picture below.

We went to a neat place. It was a sandstone cavern where they project art, etc. onto the walls. It was a Venice presentation with music. Quite beautiful...plus the cavern was nice and cool.

Up the hill (yes, more up) was a castle with an old town around it. They had an old battering ram there. It was cool because they built rooves over them so that the soldiers didn't get shot with arrows. The castle people started shooting burning arrows so they covered the roof with animal hides and manure to keep them from burning too quickly.

We went through some pretty busy streets today which I don't like. There were also some very narrow streets that seemed like they should be single lane...but were not...

There were also a lot of really cute stone houses with wooden shutters that were right on the road...not even a curb. You could touch them as you went past.

There is a lot of bamboo growing in the area. From afar it looks very much like corn. I half expect evil children to emerge from it... 😉

This was the hardest day so far and I am very glad to have the eBike. Screw pride - I used it all day today!

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utteringsofamadone · 4 months

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Something I can't get out of my head...

CW: content (I lack the foresight to be more descriptive, let alone the consideration to recognize what deserves such a thing)

It was around 4 years ago.

I was walking through the city streets of downtown Charleston, South Carolina at witching hour. The road was empty but for streetlight and storefronts, and just past the lights a block away a person, riding towards me on a bicycle.

"Can ya help me, please?" called a voice as the cyclist approached. Seeing his bulky jacket and haggard demeanor, I took him for one of the many homeless people who frequently sought the kindness of strangers, myself included. Typically, I might have considered walking with him to an ATM to give him some cash. I'm privileged enough to be Tall and Imposing enough to dissuade most danger, and kind enough to rarely invite it, after all. This time, however, I was recently without a job and soon to be moving away-I didn't have any money.

"I don't think I have any means to help you, unless you want to bum a cigarette..?" I offered sheepishly as the man on his bicycle was nearly upon me.

"Hell no! I'm tryna get of this bike, can you hold it steady for me?" It was at this point I noticed a large bag of handyman's tools on his shoulder opposite me. I hastily moved to hold the handle bars of his bike as he cruised to a stop at the curb by the sidewalk I was walking on, and reached for the bag on his shoulder.

He stepped off his vehicle and turned to face me, graciously proclaiming his thanks. He asked me to walk with him a moment, and started leading his bike back the way he had come. It is at this point in the memory that I begin to doubt my perceptions...

He told me he "Sensed trouble in me, turmoil." This conversation was only a few months after a recent brush with an intense goal of ending my own life by way of poison tea, the same way civil war soldiers received mercy should their injuries prove too severe. It may seem selfish of me, but this life has long weighed rather heavy on me. I am tall, white, attractive, and skillful enough at masking my neurodivergence that I can usually receive acceptance from anyone I am willing to lie to. Keeping up with lies is exhausting, though, and the only way these qualities benefit me are if, when, and how I am willing to exploit others in order to bring that benefit to fruition. I am not a skilled enough negotiator to pull off changing minds, save for those who know me long enough to pick up on any examples I try to live by. Obviously I chose life...

Before I could respond, he continued, "if you have never had a home, you will never grow like this here tree, you see? This tree has been here for years, decades, and has good, strong roots. To be like a tree, you need to grow your roots! Now, it don't gotta be here or now... but it better happen sooner, rather than later!" By this point in our talking, we had stopped to stoop near the corner on the block I had first noticed him riding from. Shortly after, he picked up his heavy bag of tools, got back on his bike, and rode away... I still remember his paint speckled sneakers to this day. I saw him once more before taking my leave from that city, he was amongst many people as I walked past the park he was standing in. He disrupted his own conversation to call out to me, "Remember what I said! Grow them roots, and be good to people. Like me!"

Certainly that man had no way of knowing I grew up in no particular home, over 40 rooves above my head before I reached legal adulthood, and several more by that point... and to this day, 4 years later, I struggle with the mission I was given that night. What soil could possibly be worth growing roots, in a world held up by draining the very land in which I ought to grow them... It very much reminds me of why I hate the way that Nazis have taken the phrase "reject modernity, embrace tradition," because by my best estimation it was human tradition to revel in progress. The so called "traditions" these neo-fascist shitheels support can arguably be called a symptom of modernity: expectations that a standard order be adhered to... Before men [falsely] claimed dominion over women and land, tradition was to help one another at all costs, no?

This seed is beginning to wither, with no roots beginning to sprout.

Oh, , , what is there to be done?

#activism #yapping #mystery #musings #environmentalism #sustainability #human rights

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theblackrivergame · 2 years

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Chapter 1: Luminita

Sadly not OC Kiss Week related, but at any rate here is the snippet (2000~ words) explaining what was going on with Luminita during the events of Chapter 1. Turns out that she, like Ia, was secretly present, at least for a very short time hehe

Featuring another stand-in mc with random traits, and also some Lore and some Facts!

Luminita wasn’t having a particularly good night. She hated this place–it stank of the sea, and all the regular night-time wildlife sounds were gone, replaced with different ones from animals that smelt and moved differently, too, and, on top of everything else, the mist somehow felt different than the mist back home, thicker and less smoky–and she could hardly imagine why the empress would feel differently.

Innovation. That was the official justification, of course… the fancy new city-wide power grid. Steam-powered lights… bah! Luminita growled to herself softly as she hunkered down further under the awning she was using for shelter against the rain, still waiting for her people to return. The humans should just smell their way in the dark and get some real problems.

Then she sighed, deliberately trying to relax. She was aware that her condemnation was unfair; it wasn’t their fault that their sense of smell was rubbish, and anyway she was just disgruntled about everything and lashing out. But she couldn’t help it! None of it made sense–it wasn’t as if the empress was planning on adopting the much-touted invention back home. Couldn’t have the lowly peasants having access to heating and hot water and free lighting in their homes, oh no. So why pretend to be interested?

And what did she really want?

Growling again, Luminita resorted to kicking the toes of one of her feet against the nearby brickwork rhythmically in an attempt to stymie some of her nervous energy. Seriously, where were they? All three of her scouts should definitely have reported back by now. The one who was supposed to infiltrate the ambassadorial dinner should have been back by midnight.

She hated it when a mission went sideways even more than she hated Badjawarrah.

The empress couldn’t have been more obvious about how suspicious this little trip abroad was, and so Luminita had had to follow her here, despite knowing full well that it was some kind of trap. No doubt the streets of the capital back home were running red with blood in the absence of Luminita’s resistance leadership while she stood here cooling her heels, a fact that did nothing to help keep her restlessness under control. Because even so, even knowing that it was a trap, she couldn’t have not come. What, leave the humans to the empress’ devices? Of course not.

You didn’t oppose a leader just to stop them committing atrocities in places you liked to visit–at least not unless you were a really shitty resistance movement, anyway.

And all of this was already bad enough without adding in whatever was going on with the wardens. Luminita snarled against her will, remembering the sight of the dead wardens on the street below her; dead wardens were always bad news, or bad news and a half in the same town as this fucking empress. She had followed one of them from the town centre, spotting them right underneath the giant clocktower from her perch between the eaves of two rooves, before it had seemed like they were seized by something, sprinting off in a hurry.

Messages from the gods, she supposed.

But it hadn’t helped their comrades. They had all been dead by the time the lone warden had arrived, with Luminita in pursuit–some of them had gunshot wounds, some had defensive knife injuries, and all of their throats had been slit with precision. That was confronting enough on its own, the deliberate ruthlessness of it all, but what she found hardest to understand was that she hadn’t heard any of it. There hadn’t been a single gunshot on the air tonight until she herself had fired her rifle in an attempt to attract more wardens to the scene, and she had been listening carefully for them, on alert for potential catastrophe.

No additional wardens had arrived to investigate her gunshots, either, and that was another special brand of terrifying.

It had been hours since then. The sun would no doubt rise soon, but Luminita didn’t know what kind of horrors it would shine on, what kind of new world it would illuminate. She had a bad feeling about all of this.

None of this was her job, of course. Her job was… had been, she reminded herself, cruelly, Chief of Security for the previous emperor. A job that she had demonstrably failed at, to the ruin of her entire homeland. Somewhere deep inside her, a small part of herself wanted her to accept that none of it–the new empress, the war with the churches, all of the deaths–was her fault, but she shoved that part of herself down like a bully elbowing a smaller child out of the way.

Emperor Lucien had tried to teach the wolven that they didn’t need to be bloodthirsty, or to always be ravenous for power and influence, that they could help each other, and his enemies had made their disagreement clear. There was no room left for mercy and compassion in the Empire, not anymore. Nothing left to do but tear it all down, and watch it burn.

Give her a minute alone with Empress Sorivinia… just a minute…

Perhaps it was Lucien, currently in a coma in the imperial palace, supposedly being cared for by skilled healers, that was the reason Luminita had been lured away from the Empire. Perhaps she would return to find that he had tragically died, no doubt of natural causes and certainly not murder. Perhaps then she would lose all hope, and be shot down by the empress’ guards making a doomed attempt to avenge him. Perhaps none of it really mattered, and she would go on fighting on behalf of a dead man forever, until the gods made her stop.

Perhaps she’d already run out of reasons to keep going, and it was only habit that had brought her here at all.

She stood there for a few more minutes, mindlessly watching the rain as she wondered what her best friend would have said about all this, before her instincts caught up with her, rousing her to action. She couldn’t wait any longer; whatever was going on, it was clear that her spies had been caught up in it somehow, probably in the same manner that she had been. She pulled her cloak tight around herself, checked her rifle carefully, and took a deep breath of the wrong-smelling night air. She was just going to have to go out there, track them down herself, and retrieve them–or enact vengeance for them, depending on how unlucky they had been.

Grimly, all thoughts of home behind her, she made her way up the side of the building she had been leaning against, the brickwork making easy purchase for her clawed forepaws. Most wolven were fairly reluctant to transform, especially outside of the Empire, but Luminita had found that she was less bothered by it than most–and anyway, if ever there was a moment that had called for teeth and claws, it was almost certainly now. She had started the night in her basic form, but right now the situation clearly called for being prepared for anything.

The slate tiles of the roof clicked and shifted under her feet, the rafters beneath groaning under the weight of a three-metre-tall wolf monster. She ignored them, climbing up to the apex of the building near the chimney, and looked out over the city, eyes scanning for any tiny sign of movement. There was barely any noise, which was in itself a red flag; there had been parties earlier in the evening, even up until midnight. Where had all the people gone? Why hadn’t she heard them disperse? Why was everything in this town so gods damned quiet?

The mist rolling in over the city made it difficult to see much of anything either, so she took her own advice, shutting her eyes tightly and deciding to concentrate on smell. Wet basalt… the blasted sea… citrusy flowers in the rain… clockwork oil… wine spilled on chalky dirt… gunpowder… blood… there.

Without waiting, she took off running and leapt from the roof in the direction of the scent, trusting in her wolf form’s ability to make whatever landing she had to make unscathed. As luck would have it–or maybe not, from the perspective of the poor homeowner–she cleared the broad avenue in front of her easily and landed on the roof on the opposite side, ignoring the cracking of beams underneath her and taking off again immediately.

Five or six more slightly-damaged rooves later and she found herself looking down over the town’s central square; it was nearly unrecognisable compared to how she had last seen it, decorated all fancily for some of the festivities. It was now strewn with bodies (unfortunate partygoers, she thought to herself, darkly), many of them seemingly left where they had fallen. A raised platform that seemed to have been supposed to house a small orchestra was instead covered in strange stone slabs and bodies arranged in some kind of odd pattern, some of them attached to upright pieces of stone and others laid out on the floor in a circle, for some reason that she couldn’t begin to fathom.

Luminita was suddenly beginning to doubt that this had anything to do with the empress at all. Sorivinia might have been evil, cruel, treacherous, heartless, ruthless, manipulative, vicious, covetous, avaricious, spiteful, petty and an extremely poor dinner guest–among her many, many faults–but at least she wasn’t weird about it.

In the centre of the platform, pulsing with a strange, soft silver light every few seconds, was an odd dodecahedral kind of beacon, about a metre tall. It didn’t seem to be giving off any noise, but then again, she hadn’t heard any of the massacre here occur either… maybe it was what was dampening all of the sound?

Before she could decide whether or not to jump down and take a closer look, she became aware, by the raising of the hairs on the back of her neck, of the presence of something bearing down on her from behind. She spun around instantly, expecting some kind of attacker, but what she saw was much worse; an airship, of a kind such that she had never seen before, like a gigantic steel beetle the size of a building, odd glowing lights flashing on the sides and bursts of flame firing to keep it aloft.

It must be the thym’ani, she realised, numbly, as it continued to descend, what with it having all of the hallmarks of their technology and all, but even that made no sense. What interest would the thym’ani have in odd rituals and ambassadorial negotiations between the Umnassian Coalition and the Wolven Empire?

She made ready to leap down and attack anybody who disembarked, but rather than landing, the airship stopped several hundred metres above the ground, the jets of flame required to keep it hovering there generating so much force that it nearly flattened her against the roof. Then, as she watched, the machine emitted a kind of beam–similar in appearance to a laser fired from a thym’ani weapon, only without the hard, seemingly tangible edges–directed at the strange pulsing beacon on the platform.

There was a blindingly bright light for a few long seconds, and then the world broke in two.

Luminita fell, the building under her crumbling away like a biscuit in a cup of coffee, and, in a panic, she leapt upwards with all her might, only just managing to grab onto a jagged and collapsing chunk of the dirt beneath the street, what once had been solid earth. Desperately, painstakingly, she clawed her way back up the cobbled stone surface, and hurled herself away from the yawning gap.

What had they done?

That was for someone else to find out, she decided, as the thym’ani ship began moving once more. Without hesitation, she turned on her heels, put her tail between her legs, and started sprinting for home–she was just a Chief of Security, not someone capable of saving the whole world. Maybe, if she got back in time, she could at least warn someone, though. She could at least tell people what was coming.

Her mournful howls echoed across the city, drowned out by the sound of screaming stone and buckling earth.

#the black river if #RO: luminita damaschin #i did think about doing oc kiss week stuff but i dunno. feels like jumping the gun a bit #if you’re really keen feel free to send me an ask with a suggestion or something #i’ll try and get some done as long as they’re not spoilers #but anyway. Facts and Lore. and luminita ^_^#long post.

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dailyadventureprompts · 3 years

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Any ideas for a dungeon for an all wizard party? Looking for inspiration for a fun one-shot in between campaigns

Oneshot: Latenight Brainstorming

It’s time to hit the books!

Setup: The party are a group of incorrigible youths attending a magic school (no not that one, another one), who are facing down a big test that may or may not decide whether they’ll be forced to repeat a year. Sadly for the party, they’re not great at school, and their only hope not to be forced to endure the humiliation of being held back is an all-night cram session before the big test.

Cram session, as in “ cramming ourselves into a secret passage we found to the forbidden section of the library, then cramming as many high-magic tomes into our packs and hope that one of ‘em will have a spell we can use to cheat on this test.”

Challenges & Complications:

Step 1: The Heist. Plan out with your party the way in which they’ll circumvent the various defenses of the library, from the insomniac upper classmen ALSO cramming for their exams, to the demonic librarian that patrols the stacks endlessly, looking to castigate any who put a book back where it doesn’t belong. The challenges should seem relatively easy to overcome, so encourage your players to think outside the box and use what their characters would know from their various classes.

Step 2: The Secret Passage. Getting to the Forbidden section of the library is easier said that done, and requires going through a winding series of cramped and forgotten hallways crawling with spiders, alchemically mutated rats, and all manner of other minor threats.

Step 3: The screwup. Things are progressing well trough the heist, with the party having gotten to the forbidden stacks and managed to toss a few promising looking spellbooks into their “study pile”. Then things start to go wrong: the party stumbles across one of their classmates ( the one who may or may not be the chosen one) and her do-gooder friends, Who’ve ALSO decided they need a few books from the library ( likely for worldsaving nonsense) and protest at the party sniping their supply. A squabble between the two groups attracts the attention of a demonic librarian, and the party is forced to flee through the stacks and back through the passage.

Step 4: Study The Maelstrom Tome. Among their purloined parchments, the party discovers a magnificent book that claims to be an invaluable treatise on weather magic. Knowing that one of their proffessors was stressing the utility of such spells, the party begin perusing the book without any acknowledgement that it’s started to rain outside. Messing around too much with the tome ends up releasing a powerful storm elemental, which threatens to blow their tower-dorm down if they don’t manage to seal it back in its book. The party will have to skirmish across rainslick rooves, possibly climbing spires or hitching a ride on one of the castle gargoyles in order to reach their flying foe.

Step 5: The test has been rescheduled due to inclement weather. With most of the roof blown off of the grand hall and the carefully laid out tests nearly washed away by the rain that came sluicing in, the party have miraculously managed to obtain a reprieve from their encroaching deadline.

Future Adventures

If you wanted to use this adventure as a springboard to a larger campaign, have the story pick up some years after the characters have graduated, having moved out of their awkward adolesence on to varying other carriers out in the wider world. Have it be a reunion for old time's sakes and work with each player to figure out the trajectory of their life in the interm period. Eqch of these characters has accued their own problems, but reunited, they might just be able to scheme their way out of trouble as they once did.

Art 1

Art 2

#Anonymous #prompt postage #wizard #d&d #d&d adventure #adventure #dnd #low level #press start #heist #elemental: storm

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the--highlanders · 3 years

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21. “What did I say?”

on ao3.

“But we can’t get in.” Polly’s voice was tinny and distant, ringing out of the rusty little device on the table. No matter how often he saw them, Jamie was sure he would never get used to things like this. The voice of a real person coming out of a wee metal box just seconds after they had spoken, even though they were half a day’s journey away. “It’s no good thinking about how we’re going to get out.”

The Doctor was standing opposite him, elbows resting on the table just as Jamie’s were, the two of them swaying from side to side in unison. “Well, perhaps,” he said, spinning the box around so the cluster of holes at the bottom faced him instead. “But something may come up that would let us in. And if it does – it’s best to be prepared, hm?”

He was always so optimistic. Jamie could only wish he shared that optimism. What were the chances that something would spring out of thin air, letting them sneak into these mystery invaders’ complex? They had no idea of who or what they were dealing with, or what they wanted. That was the whole point. Even if an opportunity did come along – they probably wouldn’t know what it looked like.

Judging by the disparaging noise she made, Polly shared at least some of his doubts. “I still think we should be trying to work out how to get in,” she said.

“Why do we have tae find a way in?” Jamie said. “Can’t we just – make one?” The pair of them fell quiet. The Doctor was staring at him, and he was sure Polly would be doing the same, if she could see him. “We cannae just sit around waitin’ forever, ye know.”

“But how can we make one?” Polly asked. “They seem – well, pretty much invincible, from where I’m sitting. And I can see them from my window.”

“Yes, yes, we know,” the Doctor said hastily, exchanging a grin with Jamie. Ever since joining the watch team, Polly had appointed herself as the expert on the invaders, eagerly reporting back every little detail. Ben seemed rather less enthused, and more irritated with the fact that the two of them had been reduced to making coffee and answering messages. “But, ah – I must agree with Polly, I’m afraid. It does seem rather unlikely that we’d be able to make a way in without – well, without getting their attention.”

“I never said I knew how we’d do it. Just that we should think about it.”

More silence from the box, broken only by the creaking of a chair, like Polly was leaning towards her precious window. “I don’t suppose we could dig in,” she said dubiously.

“Oh, I expect their walls have rather deep foundations. Perhaps even in-built alarms.” The Doctor shook his head. “If this planet were more – well, technologically advanced, perhaps we could glide in somehow.”

“Now you’re just being silly,” Polly scolded him. “And besides, I’m pretty sure the guns on the wall could shoot us down.”

They carried on bickering back and forth, and Jamie let his attention drift away from them, propping his chin up on his fists. He had heard them have this argument a hundred times, anyway, and it always ended the same way. In a stalemate.

Polly had given them so much information. Surely it couldn’t all be useless. The way the ground was scorched around the compound, the walls, four or five metres high and bristling with spikes, the overhanging rooves on the buildings that would stop anyone trying to climb up. Whoever had closed themselves away in there must have thought of everything. They just hadn’t done anything yet, besides set themselves up. Simply cast their shadow over a chunk of countryside and bunkered down, leaving everyone else wondering when the attack would come -

There was something interesting. The countryside. A whole swathe of it, its inhabitants kicked out. But the fields hadn’t fallen into disarray like they should have without their tenders.

What did they want the countryside for?

“How are they feedin’ themselves?” he asked, a little too loud in his excitement. The Doctor and Polly stopped their squabbling, falling quiet again. “I mean – they’ve got tae be livin’ on somethin’. Unless they’re – I dunno, robots.”

“Well -” The Doctor glanced between him and the box. “Well, I suppose they brought their own provisions, Jamie.”

“Then what -” Tugging the map Polly had sent them out from beneath the box, he jabbed his finger down onto the red-ringed loop of countryside. “Do they need that for?”

“Oh, I expect -” Frowning, the Doctor circled around the table to stand beside him, tilting his head back and forth. “Polly?”

“Yes?”

“Have you seen them out in the fields?”

“It would help if I knew what they looked like,” Polly snipped back. “No, I haven’t.” The Doctor and Jamie sighed as one, shoulders slumping. “But I have seen – something. Automated machines, maybe.”

“So stuff’s comin’ in and out,” Jamie said eagerly. “Which means -”

“We can get in and out,” the Doctor finished triumphantly. “Jamie, you’re a genius.”

Jamie scoffed. “What did I say?” It was simple, surely. Almost embarrassing that none of them had thought of it before. Maybe not the Doctor – it was too simple for him, in a way, the sort of thing that his grand, overdramatic bluster would overlook. But for him and Ben and Polly… They really should have thought of it earlier.

The Doctor was still beaming, though, his fingers tapping together excitedly. “Oh, Jamie, I could – I could kiss you.”

He almost choked on that, staring up at the Doctor like he had gone mad. Or like one of them had gone mad, anyway. His own mind was whirling with a thousand half-formed thoughts, too fast for him to properly catch any of them. Where on Earth had that come from? It was hardly the usual sort of thing that the Doctor came out with. And now that it had been said – what was he meant to do with it?

The Doctor wasn’t supposed to say that. He wasn’t supposed to say anything like that. Everything was meant to be so simple. He loved the Doctor, and the Doctor didn’t love him back, and that was fine. Good, actually. Better than anything, just to know that the Doctor cared about him in any way at all. They were friends. And he had long since grown used to how much he loved the Doctor, resigned himself to the fact that he loved him properly, not just as some passing admiration, and that the Doctor was different, he wasn’t human, he couldn’t understand. It was for the best, really, that he couldn’t understand. Loving him was frightening – but the thought of the Doctor loving him back was even more so. A gaping gulf of possibility, too deep for him to see the end of it, and full of thoughts and words and ideas that he couldn’t even put a name to.

Maybe he had heard wrong. Maybe his brain was playing tricks on him. Or maybe the Doctor had just said it as a joke, and was expecting a joke in return. That would be the safest option, he thought. If he acted like something was wrong – and he was probably already acting strangely, staring at the Doctor like this for so long – then he would start to seem suspicious.

“Aye, go on, then,” he said, mustering up a grin – and then the Doctor leaned in and kissed him, and all the thoughts whirling around in his head vanished.

You were supposed to – do something, if someone kissed you. Probably. His brain was too full of static, the sort of buzzing that came from the little box if the signal was too bad. But some part of him was sure that you were supposed to kiss back, hold onto the other person, do something, something more than just stand there in shock. Before he could figure out exactly what to do, though, let alone actually wrench himself into doing it, the Doctor had pulled away, clearing his throat and turning back to the map. Like he hadn’t done anything at all.

Maybe I imagined that, too was the first thought that drifted through Jamie’s mind as his brain started to work again. Maybe he didn’t really kiss me at all. Maybe I dozed off for a second. Raising one hand to his lips, he pressed his fingers over them, like he ought to be able to feel some imprint left behind. The Doctor had kissed him.

But why?

He was chattering away into the box now, as nonchalantly as if he hadn’t just turned around and kissed Jamie. “Now, Polly,” he was saying, “make sure the guards focus on the fields. Watch those machines, watch to see if anything else comes in or out. Watch the gates, especially. We need to know what security is like.” Perfectly ordinary. Perfectly calm. But if Jamie looked closer – one hand lifted to his face as he paused to listen to Polly’s reply, fingers rubbing over his lips, just as Jamie’s own hand had done a moment earlier. His other hand was resting over the map, fingers restless, almost trembling.

Why would he kiss Jamie out of the blue like that and then turn around and pretend nothing had happened, when he was so clearly shaken himself?

The realisation that the Doctor was not quite as relaxed as he seemed stirred Jamie into action. Plucking the box off the table, he lifted it to his mouth to speak into it urgently. “We’ll call ye back,” he said, ignoring Polly’s squawks of protest. “No, Polly – it’s alright, just – do what the Doctor said for now, aye?” The Doctor himself was still staring down at the table, as if the box was still there, and he was still listening to Polly go on about – whatever she had been going on about. Whatever she was still going on about. “Aye, we’re alright, just – give us a few minutes, aye?” Clicking the thing off, he tossed it back down onto the table with a crash of metal against wood. The Doctor flinched at the noise, but still didn’t look up at him. “What was that about?”

“Hm?”

“That.” The way the Doctor wouldn’t even look at him was – nervewracking? Infuriating? A relief? Jamie had no idea which it was. Mostly infuriating, he decided. To do something like that and pretend it had never happened… The Doctor had some nerve, that was for sure. “Ye know what I’m talkin’ about.”

“Jamie -”

“Why did ye kiss me.” He didn’t say it like a question. Somehow saying the words was more important than hearing the Doctor’s reply, in that moment. “Why did ye do it?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” The Doctor waved one still-shaky hand vaguely. “I suppose I was so – well, this whole business has been going on for rather a while now, and you were so terribly clever, and I got a little overexcited, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” His heart was sinking. It shouldn’t have been sinking. He was meant to be relieved, to know that the Doctor hadn’t really meant it. Everything was meant to be so simple. He was meant to love the Doctor, and the Doctor wasn’t meant to love him back, and that was the end of it.

And now the Doctor had gone and kissed him, and everything was coming apart at the seams, all the hopes he didn’t allow himself to have spilling out through the gaps. That gulf threatening to drag him down and swallow him up.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” the Doctor muttered miserably, apparently more to himself than to Jamie. Why was he miserable? What was he regretting? Maybe he had forgotten what humans meant, by kissing – but Jamie couldn’t really imagine that the Doctor’s people, whoever they were, were the sort to go around kissing people whenever they felt like it. He couldn’t really imagine that the Doctor was the sort of person to do that, either. Else he’d have been kissing lots of people, whenever he got excited about something. Jamie had seen him excited lots of times, but he’d never seen him kiss anyone. “Oh, dear.”

“Come here.” Taking the Doctor by the shoulders, he steered him over to a nearby stool, pressing down to make him sit. They were at an equal eye level now, the stool making up for the couple of centimetres he had on the Doctor, but the Doctor still wouldn’t look at him properly. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

His hands stayed on the Doctor’s shoulders, almost of their own accord. If he pressed hard enough, he thought, it wouldn’t be so bad. More brusque than tender. The Doctor’s face was so terribly close to his, and his heart was aching with it, the impulse to lean in and kiss him again, to pay attention this time. How silly he was, he scolded himself, to have the Doctor kiss him, and not pay enough attention to properly remember how it had felt.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” the Doctor muttered gain. “I thought – oh, it was silly of me, really.”

“Tell me.” The Doctor’s reply was mumbled, too low and slurred for him to understand. “Eh?”

“I thought,” the Doctor said just a little louder, spitting out each word like they were bitter in his mouth. “If I just – kissed you, you wouldn’t notice.”

Despite himself, Jamie started to laugh, stepping back a little and tilting his head up towards the ceiling. It was so ludicrous, such a silly thing to say, and so typical of the Doctor that he couldn’t help but feel a little rush of affection, enough to redouble the aching in his heart. “Ye thought I wouldnae notice bein’ kissed?” Only the Doctor could think a thing like that, surely.

“Well, no,” the Doctor said, his cheeks – aha, Jamie thought, he doesn’t turn red after all, he turns orange. He had thought so, but he hadn’t ever been close enough to the Doctor when he blushed to be entirely sure. It was such a small thing, but so impossibly charming, and the pain in his chest had risen into his throat now. In a perfect world, he would have leant forward and kissed the Doctor’s cheeks until they turned even more orange. But this wasn’t a perfect world, and all those hopes and wishes were getting out of hand, now. This was why he had clamped down on them so tightly. “I thought – perhaps – if I was fast enough, you wouldn’t notice.”

“Why didn’t ye want me tae notice?” Jamie asked, but the Doctor didn’t seem to be listening, burying his face in his hands.

“Oh, I’ve been so terribly silly,” he moaned. “If I tell you – I rather think you’ll hate me.”

Before he could even stop himself, Jamie had shifted his hands over, his thumbs hooking between the Doctor’s fingers. The Doctor’s hands fell away from his face a little, revealing wide, baleful eyes, and Jamie settled his thumbs over his cheeks. So much for being brusque rather than tender. “I’m no’ going tae hate ye,” he said gently. “But – ye did kiss me. I think ye owe me an explanation, at least.”

“Oh – oh, I suppose so.” The Doctor sighed, hanging his head so his fringe fell over his eyes. “I thought,” he mumbled, “that if I kissed you, just like that – oh, I suppose I thought you’d notice. I wanted you to notice. But I thought there might not be a fuss. And we could simply carry on as we were – and then another day, I might kiss you again, and again on another day, and so on, until it was simply something we did.” Pausing, he rubbed at his eyes. “Ah – like hugging, you know. One day you hugged me, and nobody made a fuss, and now -” He tilted his head over, pressing his cheek into Jamie’s palm, and Jamie pulled his hands away hurriedly, his own cheeks warming.

What could he say to any of that? The Doctor hadn’t said he loved him – hadn’t said he felt any differently at all. But he hadn’t said he didn’t love him.

Don’t be silly, he told himself. He’s not even human. He probably doesn’t understand how it sounds. It wouldn’t be right, to let him carry on like that. But how could he let him down gently?

“Kissing isn’t like hugging,” he started, a little falteringly. “It’s – different. Means somethin’ different, usually.”

“I know it’s different,” the Doctor mumbled. His head was still bowed, his expression unreadable. “I know what it means, I simply – wasn’t sure how to get to it.”

Everything he said was making this more and more tangled. And bringing it closer and closer to the thing Jamie feared. “An’ did ye?”

“Hm?”

“Mean it.”

The Doctor scoffed at that, his head raising just enough for Jamie to catch a hint of a slightly impatient smile flickering over his lips. “I would have thought that was a little obvious.”

“Do ye -” He swallowed. They were standing at right at the edge of that gulf, now, and the only rational thing to do was to back away. That was what he had told himself all along. If you ever find yourself here, at this point, then back away. Lie, if you have to, pretend you mean something different. Don’t break what you already have. But he had only ever thought about what would happen if it was his fault, if he had given the game away himself. He had never dreamt that the Doctor might be the one to say something. “Do ye want tae know how to get to it?”

Wordlessly, the Doctor dipped his head in a tiny nod.

“Ye ask.”

“I don’t want to talk about -”

“We are talkin’ about it,” Jamie said firmly. “We’ve got tae talk about it.”

And they really did have to, he realised. If he thought back – he knew with some deep, unbridled certainty that there would be a hundred tiny things, a thousand brief moments when he should have known. He loved the Doctor, he knew that. Loved him so much that there was almost too much of it for him to hold. He should have known that the Doctor loved him too.

But apparently the Doctor hadn’t realised, either. They had been standing opposite each other, mirroring each other, but with their own stubbornness in between them – and neither of them had realised the thing that ought to have been obvious. He had been afraid that it would be complicated, to love the Doctor and be loved back. What exactly would have been complicated about it, he didn’t know. It was just huge enough to terrified him, a step into the unknown with no way of knowing whether there was solid earth or empty air beneath him, and no way of going back. And the Doctor had felt the same, by the sounds of things. But now, on the cusp of telling him the thing he should have told him from the start, he found that it was simple. So simple that they had both completely overlooked it.

“Ye ask,” he said again, “if ye can kiss the other person.”

“I did ask,” the Doctor mumbled, a little petulantly.

“Ye ask seriously,” Jamie said again. “So they know ye really mean it. An’ if they say yes -”

“You kiss them, I suppose,” the Doctor said slowly. Lifting his head, he met Jamie’s eyes. At the same level. Jamie wasn’t particularly used to that, and something about it made a lump rise in his throat. “Jamie -”

“Aye?”

“Can I kiss you?”

He should have thought of something to say. Something clever, or funny, or gentle, something perfect. But the lump in his throat was to big to let anything pass, even if he had thought of something, and he just leant in and kissed the Doctor, slowly this time, lingeringly. Comfortably. A little clumsily, the two of them bumping against each other – but that was alright. There was a simplicity in that, too, in neither of them really knowing what they were doing. A sort of acceptance. You were meant to do something when someone kissed you, he knew that quite clearly now, and the Doctor’s hands came up to settle over his waist, and he cupped the Doctor’s cheeks in his hands and curled his fingers into his hair and kissed him, his brain buzzing with the desperate need to remember.

Breaking the kiss, he gasped for air, laughing in between breaths. “Aye, ye can,” he said. “Ye can kiss me any time ye want.”

“Well, I’m -” The Doctor looked breathless, too. He was so rarely breathless. “I’m very glad, Jamie.” He bit his lip, then added - “can I kiss you again?”

Jamie’s laughter grew louder, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, willing the lump in his throat back down. He had cried over how much he loved the Doctor so many times. Cried because he couldn’t hold it all in, or because he had to hold it all in, and wished he didn’t. He certainly didn’t need to start again now, when he was overflowing with happiness. “It’s nice tae ask,” he said, “but ye don’t always have to. I meant it when I said ye can kiss me any time ye want.”

“Oh, good,” the Doctor said – and then leaned in to kiss him again.

#second doctor #two/jamie #fanfic archive #my writing #fictober 2021

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taleasnewastime · 3 years

Text

Snow globe

Namjoon x reader genre: fluff word count: 750

a/n: January can get depressing (especially with a bloody lockdown), but Namjoon always has the best words to brighten the mood. And who doesn’t love snow? Hope everyone is doing ok and enjoys reading the little drabble :)

Blanket wrapped around your shoulders, you stare out the window to the world outside. Pulling the blanket, a bit tighter to your frame you watch as the snow that was once small drops thicken so it now falls in large chunks. Though the fire is on and the blanket keeps you warm, you can’t help but shiver slightly as you watch the snow settle on to any surface it touches.

The world outside is transformed into a black and white daydream, the snow taking away any colour that was previously there. Snow collapses, falling off rooves due to its own weight, people skid as if the roads have turned into ice rinks and birds rush to find shelter anywhere they can find it. As much as you love the snow, you are suddenly very grateful that you are watching it fall from inside.

A few shrieks manage to make their way up to your window, children making snowmen and having snowball fights on the streets below being the source. It reminds you of times when you were little and would get excited when the snow fell. When you would run to grab a sledge and get hot going up and down the hills on it. How school would always go into chaos when there was even a hint of snow, lessons abandoned when children would wrestle each other to get to the window for the best vantage point to see if the flakes were settling. It brought joy to the world, even if just for a few hours, and you loved it for that.

“You cold?” You feel hands land on your shoulders and your back is pressed up against someone's chest.

“No,” you hum the words out as you try and look up at Namjoon.

Twisting your head enough you manage to steal a kiss before you are back looking at the outside world. He pulls you ever closer to him and his arms start to run up and down your arms. If you thought the scene was good before, now it is complete with him stood with you.

“I feel like we’re in a snow globe,” you say as thick chunks of snow continue to fall.

“Someone’s given us a pretty good shake,” Namjoon muses. “We should go on a walk in it when it’s finally settled.”

You nod your head at the thought. “We can take the sledge with us,” you say, excitement seeping into your voice.

Namjoon laughs at you, but voices his agreement, you are never too old to enjoy the snow. You reach out, grabbing his hands so that they lace with yours and bring them to rest in front of you. Namjoon stoops down to rest his head on your shoulder, pressing a kiss to your temple before looking back out at the world again.

“It’s one of the only good things about January. When it’s crisp and cold and the snow falls,” you say.

“One of the only good things?” Namjoon gives a small chuckle.

“Yeah,” you scrunch your face in disgust. “January is always so depressing. Christmas and New Years is over so there’s nothing to look forward to. It’s dark all the time. Work starts up again. Everything is just so dull. Apart from when it snows.”

Namjoon hums and you can tell he disagrees with you.

“You disagree?” You challenge, wanting to hear what he has to say.

“I just think that there’s always so much hope in January,” he says. “A new year, a fresh start. You don’t know what lies ahead and I think that’s exciting. If anything went wrong last year then this is where you get your fresh start. There’s so much unknown opportunity, who knows where we’ll be this time next year?” He shrugs his shoulders lightly as if dismissing everything he just said. “A whole year of possibilities.”

“I like that,” you smile. “I like the way you see things.”

You turn in his embrace so that you can look at him instead of out of the window. His eyes reflect the lights from outside and they seem to dance across his eyes making them look as if they contain stars. Smiling up at him, he lightly squeezes your side before returning your smile, his dimples popping out.

Pushing up onto your tip toes you connect your lips.

“A whole year with you is all I want,” you whisper into his mouth.

“Lucky for you, you aren't getting rid of me,” he says before firmly pressing his lips to yours.

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janaikam · 4 years

Text

Roommates

HAPPY BIRTHDAY @emsylcatac!!!!!! You are such an amazing friend and I hope you have the best day ever!!!!

Summary: When the new mayor of Paris offers an apartment to Paris' heroes, Ladybug and Chat Noir couldn't pass up on the chance.

Beta reading done by the marvelous @macaronsforchat

Read on AO3.

“Woah!” Ladybug and Chat Noir breathed, looking around at the apartment.

Mayor Beaumont, Paris’ newest mayor, had recently offered the heroes an apartment in Paris. He claimed that it was to honor the heroes’ hard work over the years. But Ladybug figured that it was to keep him on the public’s good side. After all, he barely beat Mayor Bourgeois in the last election.

Although Marinette had her reservations about the apartment, she wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to have free housing in Paris. She had just started looking at housing for her second year in university, and it was not cheap to find a decent apartment.

Plus it helped that Mayor Beaumont was keeping everything with the apartment confidential. It turned out that he owned multiple buildings around Paris, so they didn’t have to worry about a landlord selling the heroes out.

She was a little hesitant about rooming with Chat, but Beaumont reassured her that he would find the best apartment that would not reveal their identities to Paris or each other.

The last thing Marinette expected was for the mayor to get them a penthouse style apartment.

The apartment had a large kitchen, and after quickly checking the cabinets, it was fully stocked. An island in the middle of the kitchen separated it from the living room which had some nice black couches with some dark grey and white spiral pillows on top of it. Surrounding the couch there were two dark grey single seats. There was a door on the back wall that Ladybug realized was a balcony.

The walls were a plain cream color making the room not as inviting, but Marinette was sure that they could make it feel homier without them revealing their identities.

A little in between the living room and kitchen were two hallways on both ends. Walking down the hallway on the right, Ladybug saw that the hallway had two rooms--one looked to be a bedroom and the other an office--and a washer and dryer unit. Connecting the bedroom was a bathroom that had both a huge bath and a shower.

She could only imagine that the other side was set up similarly. It would definitely be possible for them to hide their identities without having to use their kwamis too much.

Walking back to the main area, Ladybug saw that Chat was just coming back after checking his side of the room.

“Alright, Chat, if we’re going to make this work, we need to set some ground rules.” She went to sit on the couch, and Chat followed.

“Anything for you my lady.”

“First off, I think in our respective spaces we can be detransformed, so we don’t overwork our kwamis. Second, whenever we’re here in the main space, we should be transformed or at least have something to hide our identities.”

Chat nodded in understanding. “What about inviting friends over? Some of my civilian friends know I’m moving into a new apartment, and it’d be really hard for me to keep them from here.”

Ladybug hummed. She had the same issue because Alya was definitely going to want to come over.

“How about we tell each other in advance? Like send a message or write a note? That way we would know when to just avoid coming to the apartment.”

“We could get separate phones to text on!” Chat’s eyes lit up. “It would be like we’re spies with a second phone.”

Ladybug scrunched up her face. “Ignoring the fact that we’d have to pay for phones and service, I think my friends would wonder why I suddenly have two phones.”

Chat deflated a little. “You’re right. Hmmm. Oh! We could use one of those online messaging apps. We could just make accounts and message each other there!”

“That would work.” Ladybug nodded.

“I’m excited to be your roommate, m’lady.”

“I’m excited to be your roommate, Chaton.”

--------

It had been a week living with Chat, and so far it had been going smoothly. Their schedules thankfully allowed them to miss when the other left or came back, so Marinette had no clue what Chat looked like. Though she did make a couple of masks that resembled their superhero ones. She always slipped hers on when she got on the elevator just in case, but there hadn’t been much of a need for it.

They had also found a website to message on to let the other know someone was coming over. He had some friend over earlier this week, and she just ended up spending the afternoon with her parents at the bakery.

It was her turn to have the apartment to herself as Alya was practically demanding to see Marinette’s new place.

Marinette was tidying up her new sewing room--she decided to use the office space for her sewing--when she heard a knock at the front door.

Opening the door, she saw Alya standing there practically bouncing with excitement.

“Marinette!” The brunette jumped onto Marinette and gave her a hug. “It’s been too long!”

Marinette laughed, hugging Alya back. “It’s only been a week.”

“Exactly. Too long.”

“You’re ridiculous.” Marinette shook her head as Alya walked in and set down her purse on the island.

“Not ridiculous. Excitable.”

Alya examined the fairly large apartment, walking over to the living room. Alya picked up one of the picture frames that Marinette had placed down. Marinette followed, looking over Alya’s shoulder and saw that she had picked up the picture of a Ladybug on a green flower.

Marinette smiled as Alya put it down. The photo just seemed like a regular picture to anyone, but for her and Chat it was a little nod to their identities.

“This place looks really nice. How on earth are you affording this?” Alya asked, turning to face Marinette.

Marinette nervously laughed, trying to think up an excuse. It was times like this she wished that she didn’t have to keep secrets to keep her friends safe. “My roommate knows the owner of the building and they worked out some deal, so we got the apartment at a nice price.”

Alya nodded, accepting the answer. “This must be some roommate if they’ve got connections like that.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty awesome.” Marinette sighed, thinking of Chat.

She wondered what he was doing right about now since it was the middle of the afternoon, and he couldn’t be at the apartment. It had been something she found that she was always thinking about ever since they moved in together. Shaking out the thoughts of Chat, Marinette turned back towards Alya.

Her best friend was giving her a suspicious smirk that Marinette couldn’t quite place.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. I can’t wait to meet this super special roommate. He really seems like something,” Alya said, the smirk still on her face.

Marinette shivered, thinking about the trouble Chat’s civilian self might get into with Alya. They were already mischievous as it was when they were heroes back in collége, who knows what they would do.

“Ah, you probably may not see him around much. We have pretty different schedules, so I don’t see him much as it is.” Marinette let out a soft chuckle. “Hey! Let me show you my side of the apartment!”

Marinette dragged Alya to the hallway on the right, but a thud from the balcony stopped her in their tracks.

Turning towards the balcony, Marinette saw a blur of black before it quickly disappeared.

“What was that?” Alya freed herself from Marinette’s grasp and walked over to the balcony.

Marinette followed her onto the balcony.

“Is that Chat Noir?” Alya pointed to a fast-moving blur on the rooves. Marinette nodded, recognizing her partner from this distance. “I wonder if he’s going to that new apartment the mayor got the heroes. But why is he in such a hurry?”

Marinette turned to look in the direction that Chat had just come from only to see a large purple blob moving towards them.

“I think that might be why.”

Alya’s eyes widened as she spotted the akuma.

“Hey, Mari, I’m gonna have to take a rain check. See ya!”

With that Alya ran out of the apartment, phone in hand ready to record.

Marinette shook her head at her best friend. Despite how much they’ve grown, she was still the same person.

“Tikki, spots on!”

----

CN: Movie night?

Marinette considered the text. It wasn’t like Chat and her hadn’t been in the same room before, but the thought of being in the same room as Chat for at least an hour seemed like a weird concept to her. But it definitely didn’t sound unpleasant.

LB: What movie?

CN: You pick

Marinette hummed. It didn’t seem like a bad idea. Plus she was likely going to watch a movie by herself, so might as well have someone to watch with.

LB: Sure

Grabbing her mask and a couple of blankets, Marinette made her way to their living room.

Chat was already there along with a mountain of blankets and two medium-sized bowls of what she assumed was popcorn. Her kitty had the biggest of grins on his face, and when he spotted her he patted a spot on the couch where the pillows created a hole for someone to sit. The T.V. was already opened to the Netflix search.

Once Marinette had settled herself into the spot, Chat handed her one of the bowls of popcorn and the remote. Glancing down at the bowl of popcorn, Marinette noticed that there was a bunch of M&Ms and hardened chocolate syrup all over the popcorn.

“Omg, Chat, did you make all this?”

Chat nodded excitedly. “My mom and I used to make it all the time when I was younger. I thought you might like it.”

Marinette smiled back. “It looks great. Thank you, Chat. But how’d you know that I would say yes?”

“So what are we watching, my lady?” Marinette glared at his obvious change of topic but proceeded to find her favorite movie on the streaming service.

Clicking on the movie, she clicked play and settled back into the couch.

“Mirror, Mirror?” Chat asked.

“Yup. It’s a fantastic take on Snow White, and the costumes are just to die for,” Marinette said, popping some popcorn into her mouth. “Now hush, it’s starting.”

Marinette groaned, snuggling up closer to the wall next to her as a finger poked into her side. The wall chuckled, and the poking shifted into a slight shake.

“My lady…” a voice whispered near her ear. “My lady, the movie’s over.”

Slowly opening her eyes, Marinette saw that the movie credits were rolling, and some Netflix recommendations were showing on the screen.

She looked over to where Chat was and realized somehow during the movie, she had snuggled up right next to him.

She jumped up off the couch, a blush forming on her cheeks. “Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry for falling asleep on you!”

“You’re good my lady.” Chat grinned. “You were right, the movie was great.”

“Uh yeah, I’m glad it enjoyed you.” Marinette shook her head. “I mean you enjoyed it. Anyways have a good night!”

As quickly as she could with her blanket, Marinette ran into her room, not daring to look back at Chat.

----

Marinette and Nino laughed as Alya slapped Adrien’s hand away from her fries. Adrien pouted but leaned back in his seat beside Nino.

“That’s what you get, you fry snatcher,” Alya reprimanded, holding a fry to emphasize her point.

Marinette couldn’t help but break out into laughter again. She missed spending time with her friends like this. The four of them had all started university at different schools this year, and it was hard for them to meet up. It just so happened that all of them had the afternoon free, so they planned to get lunch together and walk back to Marinette’s place.

Aside from Adrien stealing Alya’s fries, the afternoon consisted of the four of them sharing university stories.

They had already paid for their food and were waiting on Alya to finish so they could walk over to Marinette’s place to watch movies or maybe play some video games.

“There, all done. Now there are no more fries for you to steal.”

Adrien stuck out his tongue, causing Alya to sick out hers.

“Children, children, let us go so you can continue your childish games later,” Marinette said in an obnoxious accent.

“Pfft. What was that?” Alya asked, laughing.

“That was called a sophisticated voice, something you clearly know nothing about.”

Nino shook his head, standing up from the table. “You all are crazy.”

“If we’re crazy, then what are you? Cause you aren’t sane that’s for sure,” Alya teased.

“I’m saner than you.” Nino poked Alya’s nose with his finger and led them all out of the restaurant.

The walk to Marinette’s apartment building didn’t take that long. In fact, if Marinette didn’t know better, Adrien looked a little pale as their group entered the building.

“Hey, dude, don’t you live here?” Nino asked while they waited for the elevator to come down.

“Yeah, top floor.” Adrien flashed one of his model smiles, which meant something was bugging him, but Marinette couldn’t fathom what.

“I live on the top floor too. I didn’t know you moved into an apartment.”

The elevator doors opened, and Marinette clicked her floor.

“Yeah, turns out my dad owned this building, and I figured I might as well move into one of the apartments,” Adrien explained, scratching behind his head.

Adrien was lying. He had to be. The mayor of Paris owned this building. But why on earth would Adrien be lying about something like that? It didn’t make sense.

“Oh, uh, that’s neat.”

Thankfully they reached the top floor before Marinette could confront Adrien. He probably just didn’t want them to think he was wasting his money. Yeah, that had to be it. She didn’t know how much these apartments cost, but she figured it had to be a whole lot.

“You know Marinette has this hot roommate. From what I hear, he’s quite some guy,” Alya said to Adrien.

“Alya! You haven’t even met my roommate!”

“Do I have to meet him to know that he’s cute?” At this Nino raised his eyebrow, but Alya waved him off. “Not as cute as you babe.”

“Good.”

“1377. This is me.” Marinette unlocked the door to the apartment and let them in.

“Okay are you guys messing with me?” Marinette turned to see Nino standing in the doorway, looking between Marinette and Adrien.

Adrien himself looked like he was in a state of awe and panic.

“What do you mean?” Marinette scrunched her face together.

“This is Adrien’s apartment.”

“No, it’s no-oh my gosh.” She looked over at Adrien, making eye contact with the blonde. Her eyes widened as she recognized the familiar green eyes of her partner. It suddenly made sense why Adrien had been acting the way he did.

Staring into his eyes, she could see that he was having the same realization that she was. Slowly, Marinette made her way to Adrien, cautiously reaching her hand up to touch his face.

“It’s you,” Marinette gasped, covering her mouth.

“It’s you.” Adrien smiled a real smile, not his fake one.

She hugged him tightly as tears filled her eyes and threatened to fall. Adrien hugged her back just as fiercely, and she could feel his own tears flowing down, causing her own tears to fall.

“This is weird right?”

“Yes, Nino, this is weird.”

#roommates #happy birthday emsy #and they were roommates #my fic #my writing #ladybug #chat noir #adrien #marinette #alya #nino #djwifi #birthday gift #crack #miraculous ladybug

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ownworldresident · 3 years

Text

We Are Our Own Heroes. Chapter Four: Tentative

Book: The Royal Romance, seven years post-TRR

Premise: Six years after a tragic loss, Liam and his adopted daughter meet Cassandra, an artist with her own troubled past, and the three find in each other the friend they never knew they needed.

Disclaimer: Setting and some characters belong to Pixelberry. I am just borrowing them and will return them when they feel better.

Themes: found family, (power of) friendship, healing

The Master Masterlist (link) | Our Own Heroes Masterlist (link)

Liam

“We’ve completed the background check you asked for, Sir.” Bastien announced from the door of Liam’s study. Liam sighed, and looked up.

“And?”

Bastien held up a manila folder. The guilt and uncertainty he felt mixed with relief at how thin it was.

“There is nothing to suggest Miss Rice has any harmful intentions.” He entered the study and placed the folder carefully on Liam’s desk. “She is Cordonian, originally from Portavira, studied fine arts and theatre abroad, and works as a temp and freelance ghostwriter for—”

“That’s enough, Bastien,” Liam interrupted. “I didn’t ask for this to pry into her private life. I just want to know whether I can trust her.” He winced at the double standard he was presenting; this wasn’t just curiosity, he reminded himself, it was assurance he and Emily would be safe. Blind trust wasn’t something he could afford.

“I believe so,” his bodyguard said, more conversationally. “Her only criminal records are parking tickets.”

Liam smiled. That was common enough. There were a lot of questions he would have liked answers to; where she had studied and why, what kind of art did she pursue, where was her family…

“Does she…” Liam’s brow creased as he considered the question, then mentally apologised to Cassie for the invasion. “Are there are partners or ex partners that could provide some risks?”

“None.” Bastien said, and when Liam looked up at him, his bodyguard shrugged.

Deciding not to pry further, Liam ended the discussion.

“If you believe she can be trusted, then I believe you.” Liam lifted the folder, removed the clips, and opened a cupboard to retrieve his shredder.

Cassie

Cassandra screamed.

The lonely peak she stood upon absorbed it and the sky answered with a sheet of lightning and close crack of thunder. Beyond the waves below the peak there was rain coming, and not a day too soon. The electricity in the heavy air vibrated through her very bones. She stamped her foot down on the craggy outcrop, balled her fists tight, and screamed again.

When the front hit, it was with a rush of cold air that buffeted her face. White peaks of the restless ocean splayed before her. They became dotted with heavy rain; she stared hard to commit the feeling and energy to memory, to burn it into her mind. There was so much anger there, but she didn't know whether it was her or the vengeance of the skies that conspired to keep her darkness.

The rain crested the peak, and for a lightning filled moment Cassandra raised her face to the broken skies with eyes shut and arms flung wide. Then thunder cracked around her, rolling against her ears, and, heart pounding, she fled.

By the time the world was awake, Cassie was heaving long breaths in front of her easel. The echo of the storm outside resonated on the canvas, with a vast expanse of swirling masses that floated at the edge of being distinguishable things.

She grinned, stepping back from her new painting. It was a story she was trying to tell, she was sure, and this part was more darkness in form than of it.

---

Cassie

Above the main city were lines of terraces stacked up onside a low mountain. Parting the upper and lower levels was an open space more familiar to locals than tourists, overlooking the main city and the bay. Cassie stood at the edge of the cobbled space, lost to the world as she stared over her city. It wasn’t the pier or the outcrop, but the dark swirling storm was as beautiful here as it would be there. There were several perfect views here for painting, in fact. Lifting her hands to make a rough square with her thumbs and forefingers and squeezing one eye shut, she imagined the image captured from different angles. Too perfect. This might be a real place, but even the organic, eclectic mix of buildings with colourful rooves… set on a backdrop of a low grey sky… there wasn’t enough grit or imperfection to translate.

Leaning her elbows against the half wall, she tried to imagine the view with a fire or collapsed building, something to put more conflict in the image. That dream kept her occupied while she waited.

“Cassie!” A young voice she knew called out behind her, and she turned to see Emily running to meet her. The girl stopped a few feet away and Cassie stood to attention to salute her.

“Hey, Em,” she said as Emily saluted her in return, “I like your shirt.” She nodded at the image of an open ocean and a few clouds. Emily looked down, then up again.

“Thanks.” Emily turned back as Liam reached them, smiling when she saw that he was.

“I hope we didn’t keep you waiting.” He smiled, but his posture was stiff. Cassie wondered what was going on behind it. Maybe she was reading too far into things.

“Not at all,” she replied, energy closer to that of Emily than of Liam. “I arrived early anyway.”

“Good.” Liam lifted an arm to point down the street. “There’s a really nice café down this way. I thought we could get lunch? If the weather holds, we might be able to sit outside.”

“Sounds perfect.” Cassie kept an eye on Emily as they walked. She looked back every so often at her father. Liam didn’t seem phased by the habit, instead walking with an absent half smile for the first part of their walk.

“How was your week?” Cassie asked after a time, not sure where else to start. Liam exhaled, and turned to her.

“Busy,” he said, still smiling, and didn’t give her much more than that.

At the café, which was more of a restaurant, Emily chose a table beneath an outdoor awning. She bee-lined for the tree-shaded playground adjacent with the decisiveness of a child who played on her own a lot. Liam watched her for a moment, and Cassie noted the dark crescents beneath his eyes.

“Thank you for meeting us,” Liam said after a time, looking over at her. His smile was tired but a little more relaxed. It was an interesting study to watch them, Cassie thought, seeing how they interacted in public, and she wondered if they were much less guarded behind closed doors.

“I seem to remember me asking you first.” She stretched, warm in the sun. “I should be thanking you for reaching out.”

Liam laughed, short and genuine, then nodded. “Why did you reach out?”

“I like your daughter, and you seem nice.” Cassie shrugged, then grinned. “Why did you?” Saved from having to answer by the arrival of their food, Liam thanked the server, and called Emily over. When the ball of energy arrived and they started eating, Cassie found herself plagued by questions from her about what she did and who she was and offered as many answers as she could. When Emily discovered she was an artist, she became more interested in that than her food.

“Would you like to see some of my work?” Cassie asked, already pulling the ever-present sketchbook from her bag and handing it over. Emily reached for it, nodding profusely.

“Yes please!”

“Fingers.” Liam reminded her, and Emily glanced at her hands, wiped the sauce from them with a napkin, then took the sketchbook and started flipping through.

“I wish I could draw…” she commented absentmindedly as she flipped through the pages. Liam looked surprised, and Cassie wondered whether she had expressed that wish before.

“I could teach you, if you like,” she said, and Emily looked up, grinning.

“Thank you!” She glanced at her father, who nodded, smiling, then turned back to the pages. Liam began to speak but was cut off by Emily’s laugh.

“You drew Drake?” Emily looked up again, wide-eyed. Cassie shrugged. She had written the man’s name in the corner of the sketch.

“I met him at a bar the other day.”

“His face looks exactly right.” Emily lifted the page for Liam to see. “Doesn’t he?”

“Do you know him?” Cassie frowned as Liam inspected the page.

“Very well.”

“Are you dating him?” Emily’s innocent question caught her off-guard, and both of them sent her questioning looks, though Liam’s was tinged with amusement.

“Definitely not.” She reached for her coffee, then realised how forceful her answer had been, and added, “He seems like a nice guy, but no.”

Far from relaxing, Liam seemed even more surprised, and looked away from her when she caught his eye, which confused her. Had she given the wrong impression? If he was offended he would say something, she believed him frank enough for that. Maybe not in front of Emily.

As soon as the latter had finished her food and waited the several fidgety minutes that her father requested, she raced off to the playground again, scaling the climbing frame with ease and dancing across the top as if she’d been born there.

“Dating?” Cassie asked Liam for clarification.

“She gets some… interesting information from her school friends. And movies don’t help either.” He shrugged, but there was a little unease in his manner.

“Must bring up some interesting discussions.”

“Sometimes.” He smiled, then frowned, focused on something on Cassie’s shirt. “Your necklace.”

Cassie looked down to see that the small chain had come free from her shirt, and reached up to touch the smooth diamond shaped flag: black, grey, white and purple.

“Do you know it?”

“I do.” He smiled, nodded as if with some new understanding, and sat back.

Her orientation wasn’t something she had come prepared to openly discuss, so she was glad Liam was aware of the community. She tucked the flag back beneath her shirt and let the subject end there.

Left alone with Liam, it wasn’t lost on her that barely any of their conversation centred on him as a person. She had no trouble being open about most parts of herself, and they talked about general topics, but Liam only spoke of things she could discover easily enough in a newspaper, or seemed near inconsequential to disclose.

They parted in the middle of the afternoon, when Emily returned, exhausted, to bury her face in Liam’s side. Taking that as a queue to let the girl go home and rest, they walked back to where they had met up, Emily half leaning on Liam, though Cassie half suspected it was for dramatic effect.

Cassandra

Cassie spent the next few days busy and inspired, her confidence bolstered by her time with Liam and Emily. The large canvas was still blank, but she had moved it behind a couple of finished pieces and was focusing on the smaller ones, less daunted by it being empty. An overcast day had cast some more drama over the beach she frequented, and she had spent some time photographing it to paint at home and letting the salty wind and light rain sink into her to remember the feeling.

She didn’t see Liam at Emily’s training, but did see him at the game, and they had agreed to meet afterwards. Her team didn’t win, which left them a little downhearted after three straight victories but didn’t curb Cassie’s optimism. They left much less dejected, and while she packed up she ran through ways to help them in their next training session. Liam and Emily met her outside.

“Ready?” asked Liam, and the lower guard in his smile heightened Cassie’s spirits as she nodded in response. Emily dragged her feet, and Cassie knelt to face her.

“You tried your best, Em, right up till the end, and that takes a lot of courage.” She ducked her head a little to Emily’s tired, downcast face. “There will always be losses. What matters most is how we come back from them.”

Emily’s frown lifted into a tiny smile. “That’s what Dad said.”

Cassie looked up to Liam, whose eyes crinkled as he watched them. “That’s because your dad is a very wise man.” She stood. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yes.” Emily turned back to Liam, smiling again.

“You too, Panda.” He turned toward the emptying car park. “Ready for that movie?”

Nodding, Emily started again toward the car.

“Wherever your mother is now, I’m sure she would be very proud.”

Cassie knew it was a mistake the moment she said it. Emily stopped, and though Cassie couldn’t see her face, she felt the shock. Liam schooled a patient expression, approached Emily and squeezed her hand. She looked up to him.

“Dad?”

“It’s okay, Emily.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, voice low and soothing. “I’m here.”

“I’m sorry.” Cassie clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes darting between the two as her heart dropped. “I shouldn’t have said… I’m sorry…”

Liam turned to her now. “Give us a few minutes?”

Cassie nodded, staying back from the two and wringing her hands. The mask of Emily’s father broke when they made eye contact and some of the pain seeped through. Familiar pain. Liam picked up his daughter and walked away.

The official story read that Emily was Liam’s god-daughter, and he had taken her in after her parents had died in an accident. It explained the hypersensitivity to loud noises Emily had displayed in the past and perhaps her need to keep Liam within her sight.

Around the time the media excitement had been dying down, Cassie arrived back from studying abroad. She had followed the attempt on Liam’s life, the ensuing turmoil, and a bit about Emily’s sudden appearance, but hadn’t realised how much Cordonia had been obsessed with it until she landed. It had seemed disproportionate to the tragic circumstance, confirmed when Liam gave a public statement reaffirming some facts and refuting a few less accurate reports, and requesting privacy. Cassie’s friend had been disappointed, but it had been a long time since they had spoken.

——

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#choices the royal romance #the royal romance #trr liam #choices trr #king liam #trr fanfic #trr fandom #trr au fanfic #trr au #trr king liam #liam rys #liam and cassie #we are our own heroes #our own heroes #angst with a happy ending #friendship

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r0sebutch · 4 years

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american midwest Vast appreciation post

you’re driving to a nearby event. it’s only two cities away. it has been two cities away for the last three hours. you have not seen a building. the road stretches in front of you, endless and yawning in the sun. you think they should call someone down here to deal with it. you’ll mention it when you get to the next city over.

it’s fall. a farm you like is doing an apple picking event. they’re even selling cider donuts! you purchase a bag and begin to roam the lines of trees, picking as you please. you start at the center of the orchard. you’ve been picking for a while now, how long has it been? you have not seen another person within the trees. you pick another apple. your bag is not yet full.

you drive up to your state’s biggest city. compared to your town, the buildings are huge. compared to any town, you think. the buildings are so tall, they bend at the top, because the rooves of them brush up against the very top of the sky. you’d think it would make the sky seem smaller. it does not.

you go to the forest reserve. you do not remember the name of it, but that’s alright, because everyone just calls it the forest reserve. you take the bike path through it, thinking you know your destination. you’re supposed to meet a friend. the trees stretch up, up, like jagged teeth eating at the edges of the sky. you continue on the path as the trees grow taller and taller. you’re supposed to meet a friend.

there’s a field by your house. is it yours? it seems very big for that. it stretches past the horizon. you know there are trees on the other side; where are they? why cant you see them? you begin walking. you need to find the trees. it gets dark, so you turn back. the field stretches past the horizon. you know there is a house on the other side. why cant you see it?

#the vast #tma #the magnus archives #my writing

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kiatheinsomniac · 4 years

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Huntress VI

Huntress Masterlist: [CLICK HERE]

The light slanted down onto the market from between the rooves and alleys of the Venetian houses, light reflecting off the surfaces of the canals and casting shadows everywhere else simultaneously. She observed from the corner of her hood, shifting from foot to foot on the cobbled path as she idly turned an orange over in her hand, feeling all the pores of its skin as she counted down slowly in her head.

'Five. . . Four. . . Three. . . Two. . . One. . .'

There he was, the guard, right on the dot - the same one who had doubted her vampire-hunting abilities solely for the fact that she was a woman. She looked back down at the stall, not wishing to be recognised. Having grown much too humiliated in her borrowed courtesan attire, (Y/n) had borrowed a spare set of Ezio's clothes while he was in the basement of their new hideout: a villa belonging to a trader and his family who were currently away for a wedding in Rome. (Y/n) and Ezio would be able to camp out there for a week until they were back.

The Assassin's robes were much too big on her: the shirt still too large despite being tucked into the trousers which were held up by the borrowed belt and had to be rolled up at the ankles. The brown cloak was stolen from a washing line and the shoes were taken from the family home they were resting in - and she was careful to not be spotted because these certainly weren't running shoes.

The huntress had one current objective: plot her route into the Duca's villa to retrieve her things. Apparently, the guards were on high alert and Ezio's contact was unable to acquire (Y/n)'s belongings. Part of her wanted to kill the Duca while she was there too: throw a knife from the door while he slept, guarded by two men but she knew that this plan would only result in failure: she didn't have that set of skills.

She placed the orange down on the market stall and eyed up the guards stationed around the villa again. If the night routine was the same, she should have a window of time to make her way into the ground floor through a window.

"Three oranges, please." She requested of the vendor as she pulled a coin purse from her pocket. The money was Ezio's and she was calling it 'borrowed' to make herself feel better about it. Given the nature of their relationship, he wasn't in much of a position to reprimand her anyway.

She pressed the coins into the man's hands as she continued to observe the patrols from her peripheral, turning her head down when a group of guards passed her, heading straight to the villa to take over the shift. She watched as they replaced the ones who had previously been on duty, a smug grin pulling at the corners of her lips as the three oranges were handed to her, wrapped in a creme fabric.

♰♰♰

When (Y/n) returned it was with a head full of new ideas, a heart full of determination and a hand full of oranges. She quietly closed the backdoor of the house (they were using that route to avoid being seen by the neighbours) and made her way to the bedroom they were camped out in when she walked in on a most surprising sight. Her eyes widened and she quickly turned around, hands clutching the fruits within them.

"So is this whole seeing each other almost naked something you vampires do? Because I'm not so sure that I'm fond of it." She spoke and heard a sigh behind her.

"Well, if someone hadn't taken my clothes, I wouldn't be like this and if someone hadn't taken my money, I would have been able to buy new ones." She heard the flat tone from behind her, making her laugh awkwardly. It wasn't a nervous laugh or a dry one: it was the sort that was created to fill space, to try and call attention to itself to try and clear away another subject. Her eyes skimmed down to the terracotta-coloured tiles and the off-white walls with their large extravagant portraits that stretched down the main hall, statues dotted between them. A dark red carpet ran along the middle of the floor as well.

"Well, if your contact had been able to retrieve my stuff, I wouldn't have had the need to borrow these things. I need a- are you decent yet?" She cut herself off, finding it too uncomfortable to talk to him with her back turned.

"I don't have anything to wear."

"The sheets!" She snapped in response. She waited to hear the rise and fall of fabric shuffling before turning around, seeing that he had only covered his legs. It wasn't like he was entirely naked - he had underwear on - but it was far too little for (Y/n)'s liking. She glanced over to the curtains which fluttered lightly in the breeze, the window must have been open.

He was seated on the grand four-poster bed and it's dull white silken sheets. The room was rather bare other than a vanity, a desk and a wardrobe - all of which were mostly empty seeing as this was a guest room.

"What happened to your clothes anyway?" She mused as she set the oranges down on the bedside and tossed his coin purse back to him, noting the look of disdain on his face at noticing she had spent his money. "Look, it may not be important to you but eating is very important to me." She added.

"There's a passage under the villa that leads to a canal, it's dark but it's a good way to travel in the daytime for someone like me. What I hadn't anticipated was the guard at the end of the tunnel who managed to push me into the water during our fight." (Y/n) thought over his words before a bigger picture became apparent in her mind.

"When was the last time you. . ." She trailed off, not quite knowing how to put it in a non-alarmed way. She shot him an almost warning glance from the corner of her (e/c) eyes. He shot her a questioning look and she made her way over to the window, peeking out from the edge of the curtains and spotting his clothes laid on the sill. She held onto the velvet fabric, caressing its softness with her fingertips. An unspoken threat.

"Fed?" He questioned, seeing the witch nod her head in response, he sighed and held his hands in his lap, leaning forwards. "Too long ago." She knew that it had been almost three weeks now. He must be starving.

"Do you plan on. . . I mean, I'd rather it be someone else than me." She debated over making a joke of this, showing her trust by following this up with a laugh and walking over to the screen to change out of his clothes. But she didn't trust him yet so she followed it up with a serious gaze, fingers wrapping around the edge of the dark and heavy curtain.

"I was planning on going out tonight." He replied.

"What time will you be back?" She quizzed, perhaps trying to make such a dark subject seem more casual, to seem more about concern for him than for whoever he would kill later that day. She didn't ask it the way someone would interview a murderer, how would one even go about that? No.

"Don't wait, I won't be back until just before the sunrise." (Y/n) scoffed, knowing what it meant if he would be back so late.

"We have work to do and you're going to play games?" She raised a brow and watched his face contort into offence.

"Look, it may not be important to you but eating is very important to me." He quoted her own words from earlier.

"Yes but I don't sleep with my food before I eat it." She threw back, "I know how Elizabetta was found. Most of your kind like to play some sort of sick game before you go for the kill, something to get the blood pumping." She sneered, realising that that disdain no longer sounded natural in her voice, it was becoming more forced now - a part of her that she thought was so important to her life that she almost didn’t want to let go of it, even if she knew she had to.

She knew she was now swinging, like a pendulum, between trying to earn his trust and reverting to what had almost become an instinctual prejudice. In the past, she always spoke so lowly of vampires, always slandered them at every given chance, so hellbent on revenge. Now that she owed her life to one, it didn't feel right.

"At least I'm more civil about it - I could make them fear for their lives with a chase in the woods." He replied as he stood up, tucking the sheet around his waist and walking towards her, delicately taking her wrist and drawing her hand away from the looming threat of the curtain.

"Yes, because-" She began sarcastically before cutting herself off. Even if she disagreed, it wouldn't help anything to voice that aloud. What they needed right now was to be able to trust one another. He had drawn her hand closer to him, thumb caressing her wrist and she curled her fingers inwards, hesitantly tugging her own hand back to her side, feeling him press down on her pulse before his eyes met hers and he realised that he may be putting her in a fight or flight position.

And he had learned already that she was the fighting type.

"I need to ask a favour of you. . ." She began, making her way back across the room and tossing her stolen cloak onto the foot of the bed.

"What is it?"

"I need you to steal something for me: the uniform of one of the Duca's guards." Her (e/c) eyes flitted to their corners where she caught how his brows shot up.

"Why? May I ask?" He spoke as he checked the dampness of his clothes, being mindful to keep his skin away from the sunlight.

"I want to break in, that's why." She replied in a cold tone, the stinging of her feet and the bite of rope against her wrists reforming in her memory, "I want my belongings back and I'll set the bastard's chambers alight if I'm able." She paused as the picture of it formed in her mind: the smoke pluming from the window she would leave open, allowing it to rise up like a beacon; a sign to the man who had used her then tried to kill her once she became an inconvenience - him and everyone else in this group she still felt that she knew too little about. "I want him to be afraid." A silence hung over the room, a pensive one.

"Do you know how to pickpocket?" Ezio spoke up and she could hear him retreat to the far side of the room, securely tucked away from any possible venturing sunlight.

"Why would I need to?" She returned with a small glance over her shoulder in his direction.

"So you can stop stealing my money and start stealing someone else's." He replied with a laddish smile, watching in delight as she rolled her eyes but returned his comment with a hesitant smile of her own. "If you truly want to make use of yourself, I'll leave you in the hands of a friend of mine. She'll teach you some skills that will come in handy if you wish to stay with me until we can finish off the Duca."

"And this friend? Is he a vampire too?" (Y/n) knew that she could handle Ezio and that he could tolerate her but she knew that her sharp tongue and developed vampiric disdain could get her into trouble with anyone else of his kind kind.

"She is very much human. More of a political ally than one of kin." He responded as he sat back down at the foot of the bed.

"What will she teach me? Other than pickpocketing?" The witch spoke as she seated herself down on a stool by the unlit fireplace, glancing at the ashen pit and somewhat wanting to light it, with the autumn chill snaking in through the open window.

"How to climb, keep your balance over rooftops-"

"What need do I have for-"

"Even how to climb right into the Duca's window." He continued, playing to her wish to set fire to the man's room as he had ordered for her to be burned. He could see the intrigue in her eyes now, the way she looked up from beneath her lashes.

"It's probably best that you start making contacts in Venice seeing as you've lost all of them now."

"The word 'lost' doesn't quite seem to portray that they tried to execute me. . . with fire." She replied with a sigh and an undertone of bitterness at the memory.

"How have your legs been feeling?" He asked out of concern. It often slipped his mind just how fragile she was compared to him. He watched as part of her dropped a little and she brought her legs up on the stool with her, crossing them.

"I don't think that the scars that will go away. The worst of it is at my ankles but some of them stretch up my calves a bit." She bit down on her lip and one of her hands went to rub at the puckered flesh there under her socks, having already toed off her stolen shoes. "My legs feel better though, stronger than they were at the start of this anyway. I hope your friend will go easy on me." She added a laugh at the end of the phrase but it came out drily - Ezio could tell that she was still thinking about her injuries. Perhaps, he thought, she didn't even care that she would have to live with a memento of it for the rest of her life; perhaps it was because she could live with them while all those in her coven died with them.

They passed the next hour in conversation before (Y/n) made her way to the drawing-room where a shelf of books had caught her interest the previous day. She nestled herself in the window seat (with the curtains drawn, of course) and began reading a copy of Illiad.

A good amount of pages in, the shimmer of a blade caught her attention from her peripheral. There stood Ezio, in his clothes once more, with one sword at his hip and the other being held out to her in offering.

"What? Want to lose?" (Y/n) mused with a teasing grin on her lips as she set the book down.

"You haven't practised in weeks. I've been keeping up." He reminded her as she took the blade and rolled her shoulders, getting into a fighting stance as he drew his own blade from his hip.

"You don't forget how to wield a sword." She began before darting towards him, using the element of surprise by attacking halfway through the phrase.

The clash of steel rang through the room until it grew dark and (Y/n) grew tired. She fell down into the bed of the guest room they had selected for their stay (they tried to keep to as few rooms as possible in order to avoid leaving any trace of their presence in the house). The witch had grown exhausted from so many hours of sparring.

She looked to the end of the bed where Ezio was now fastening his belt and armour of his robes. But her body was now both weakened and tired and she rolled over, bringing the blankets around her figure as she did so.

Ezio made his way to where she lay and reached for the thicker comforter at the end of the bed, throwing it over her body to keep her warm, knowing that her body was much more prone to the cold than his. Her eyes remained closed and her breathing had now slowed as her head sank into the softness of the pillow which lulled her to sleep. The man reached his hand out to brush the hair back from her (s/t) complexion before cupping her jaw, leaning down to press his cold lips to her warm cheek which only grew warmer as her nose scrunched up a little and she turned her head into the pillow more.

"Go and get something to eat." She murmured and he hummed, almost not wanting to leave her. It was rare for him to see her so peaceful, he had stood in the doorway for a few minutes just to admire her reading before offering to spar earlier for this very same reason.

With reluctance, his hand fell from her warm skin and he vanished into the Venetian night.

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maplesamurai · 3 years

Text

The Witch’s Apprentice Book 2- Godmother Knows Best, Ch. 2

Pulled by two hard working draft horses, an unassuming wooden carriage rolled its way down into a small town tucked away in a northern province of the kingdom of Gallia. Looking out of one cab window, but cautiously keeping the shutters closed enough to keep passersby from stealing a glimpse of the carriage’s interior, Arthur Butcher stuck his blonde-haired head out to take a peek at where he and his mistress had arrived, looking left and right with eyes as green as wheatgrass. After all of the shocking new experiences he had had this morning, Arthur gave a sigh of relief at how familiar his new surroundings were. Where this manors and temples of this country’s big cities that he had seen from the road had been very Baroque in their design with striking colours, domed roofs and rounded corners, the homes of rural communities such as this one seemed little different from those of his native Albion, favouring the kind of blocky brick and stone structures he was used to. Granted, there were still some differences. Shingle rooves appeared to be more common than thatch, for example, and hedgerows seemed to be a rarer method of enclosing farm pastures, but it was nonetheless refreshing to see something so familiar after his life had changed so much in just the past day.

“I trust our surroundings are to your liking, my child?” a melodious voice teased from behind Arthur.

Arthur turned around, to see the pallid face of the Witch of the Woods smiling back at him, cup of tea in hand as she lounged in her favourite chair by the tea table, her long, ebony hair swept past the chair’s back.

“Well, it’s certainly refreshing to see such familiar surroundings after seeing how different Gallia’s countryside is to Albion’s,” Arthur admitted, recalling just how much of a shock it was to find that not only had the cottage he now resided in transformed into a horse drawn carriage while he was sleeping with the interior remaining completely unchanged, but that said carriage had traveled to a whole other country just by turning around the bend in the Witch’s forest home.

“Then I would suggest enjoying it while you can,” the Witch advised, “for I imagine you will be far less used to our client’s manor once we arrive there.”

“You would be right,” Arthur admitted. “I’ve never even so much as seen the front gate of our local lord’s manor up close back home. Is there anything I should know about how to conduct myself when we get there?”

“I would advise just following my lead, but apart from that, the most important things you should remember would be to simply mind your manners, do not touch anything, and leave the talking to me unless you are spoken to beforehand.”

“I see,” Arthur said. “So this local lord we’re visiting… what’s he like?”

After taking a few moments lost in thought, the Witch finally answered, “He is, to be absolutely blunt, quite the grumpypants.”

“Isn’t that kind of a harsh and juvenile way to speak of someone from a higher station?”

“And what higher station would that be?” the Witch laughed. “Besides, there is really no other way to describe him. He is bitter, impatient, has all the tact and diplomacy of a raging boar, and is to be perfectly honest, petulant in the manner that only rich folk who have never had to grow up can be.”

“He sounds quite pleasant,” Arthur sighed. “So, what problem does he need your aid for, exactly?”

“It is actually a problem that I have been attempting to help him with for quite some time,” the Witch admitted. “A long time ago, his lordship became afflicted with a terrible curse, and he has enlisted my services to rid him of it. I have visited him to help with his predicament multiple times now, but I have yet to divine the exact means with which to break his curse.”

Widening his eyes in surprise, Arthur asked, “How can you have been trying to help him for this long and still not have cured him? With your power, can you simply not wish away his curse and be done with it?”

“Well, look who just became an expert on magic overnight?” the Witch teased. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple, my child. Do you remember what I said you first came to me, about how I needed to know what illness had afflicted your sister before I could provide treatment? It is not too different with curses and other magical ailments. Whenever a caster or other magical being lays a curse upon someone or something, they must do so with some condition that the accursed must meet to break that curse.”

“I see. So in your past visits, you have been trying to determine what kind of curse the lord is under, and which conditions he must meet to break it?”

With a proud smile, the Witch told Arthur, “I’m impressed how quickly you catch on. I’m sure you shall be a fine apprentice.”

“I, uh… thank you, mistress,” Arthur said, humbled, before inquiring further, “So, how much headway have you made in figuring out his curse?”

Resting her head on her wrists as she gave a thoughtful look, the Witch answered, “I have a theory as to what his lordship must do to rid himself of his curse, which I presented to him during my last visit to his estate. This latest visit of ours is to see if he has been keeping to my prescribed treatment, and if so, what affect it has had on his condition, if any. We shall soon see at any rate, as we should reach his homestead in a few minutes’ time.”

Curious to see what the remainder of their carriage ride would look like, Arthur opened the window shutters once more and looked ahead in the direction the Witch’s horses were taking them. It seemed that they had reached the end of the village proper, as the peasant cottages grew sparser until they eventually gave way to the outskirts of a forest not dissimilar to the Dark Forest just outside Arthur’s hometown, with their mode of conveyance rolling down a single path that cut through said forest. What was different from Arthur’s own home, however, was a small castle whose highest towers peeked over the forest canopy, which Arthur realised, must be their destination.

As the carriage moved further down the forest path, a thought occurred to Arthur. He turned to the Witch and asked, “Hold on, earlier today you told me that the Heart of the Forest is connected to all of the forests in the world, so why didn’t you just travel here directly?”

“I have a few reasons,” the Witch began to explain. “First of all, I simply enjoy the scenery of taking a longer journey, and I also thought you might enjoy it as well.”

That did make some sense to Arthur. As much as this fantastical trip had served to remind him of how truly far from home he was, seeing the landscapes of far off lands roll by from the cottage window certainly was a breathtaking experience he would not soon tire of.

“Second,” the Witch continued, “if I had arrived at the manor so quickly, our client certainly would have insisted I get to work immediately, so a longer journey suits me better because I can then make the day’s preparations at my own pace. And thirdly, it also gave you the opportunity to sleep in and to get adjusted to your new situation and learn what you can expect from day to day life from now on.”

“Yeah,” Arthur admitted, “despite everything, that’s certainly helping me adjust to this whole thing.”

“I am glad to hear of it, my child,” the Witch said with a smile, “but I would advise adjusting quickly, for we are here.”

Moving back to the window and opening the shutters to see, Arthur saw the trees of the forest give way to a wide, open clearing within which stood the most impressive building that Arthur had ever seen. Surrounded by well-tended gardens and hedges was a massive stone-walled castle that made the lord’s manor back home look like a hovel by comparison. At the end of the terrace, a monumental stairway led up to a higher level upon which several columns held up stone archways before an ornate set of double doors, with above the archways corralling a great balcony. At each end of the castle’s front face was a wide stone tower, each dotted with glass windows and topped with a conical shingled roof, with the tops of even more such towers peeking out from beyond the main building’s slanted roof and many chimneys. Yet more of this manor’s sure to be impressive property lay obscured by great, ivy wreathed stone walls extending from each end of the castle’s front.

The Witch could not have seen Arthur’s expression from behind (or perhaps she could; one could never be sure with her), but she could obviously still tell how amazed he was, because she admitted, “It’s not quite to my own taste; but I suppose His Lordship is blessed with quite the impressive estate. I do not even know what I would do with such a large property.”

“Me either, to be honest,” Arthur said as the shock wore off and he withdrew his head from the window. “The lord’s manor back home isn’t even one tenth this large and even I’ve wondered why rich folk insist on having so much land for their property that they don’t seem to do anything with. I’ve always guessed it’s just to show off how rich they are.”

“I suspect that may indeed be the case,” the Witch laughed as she finished her tea and stood up from her seat. “Now be a good man and close those shutters, will you? We shall be stopping in a moment, so it is best not to invite the cold in more than you already have. Once it makes itself at home in here, it becomes quite difficult to convince it to leave.”

Arthur wondered whether he should laugh at such a remark, knowing full well how the Witch could be speaking literally when she said that. In any case, he closed the shutters and walked back to the table, asking the Witch, “Is there anything I will need to bring in to the castle for the day’s job?”

“Nothing that you would not normally bring with you on a trip out,” the Witch told him. “Most of what we shall need, I shall either have on my person, or we can find within the castle itself.”

Arthur nodded, and making sure the iron sword that his Uncle Melion had gifted him two nights ago was securely tied to his belt, headed to the front door to retrieve his cloak from the coat hanger, itself a gift from his mother on that same night. As Arthur put on his cloak, he felt the carriage come to a stop and felt the need to ask, “Will the lord here provide some stables to keep your horses? I did not see any at the front of the castle, and it would be quite cruel to leave the poor things out in the open this deep into winter.”

“That will not be necessary,” the Witch reassured Arthur as she walked to the door with her own winter coat, despite Arthur never having seen her put it on, “I brought my own stables with us.”

Just as Arthur stopped to wonder what she could mean, he felt the whole cottage subtly shift. Before he could even ask what had just happened, the Witch passed him to open the door, and as she opened it, she turned to Arthur and said with a wink, “Come out, and you shall see for yourself.”

Once he had finished putting on his winter boots, Arthur cautiously walked out the door to see just what the Witch was talking about, and what was easily the strangest thing he had seen since meeting the Witch (which was saying quite a lot). Not only had the carriage had returned to the form of a thatch roofed cobblestone cottage, but it had taken the Witch’s entire property with it; the Witch’s cottage, garden, well and indeed, stables all standing where the forest road met the manor’s terrace.

“Well?” the Witch asked as she too exited the cottage and shut the door. “What do you think, my child?”

Noticing that his mouth was still agape at this sight, Arthur immediately closed it before opening it again to say, “I think that you went about arriving this way just to see how I would react to seeing it.”

“I shall neither confirm nor deny that,” the Witch chuckled. “But I will admit that your reactions to such things are quite amusing.”

Arthur considered making a retort, but thought better of it and simply sighed, realising that there was nothing he could do or say to stop the Witch’s chicanery even if he tried.

“Well, if you are done gawking, shall we make our way to the castle? Our client may become quite cranky indeed if we dawdle too much.”

Seeing no reason to argue, Arthur simply nodded his head and the two began walking across the manor’s terrace and towards the castle’s front door.

It took the two several minutes just to cross the terrace and reach the stairs to the front door, but eventually they made it up to an ornate set of double doors beneath the stone archways, flanked by two suits of armour that each carried a long, sharp looking polearm. Arthur at first thought that those suits of armour must be ornamental, until he and the Witch approached, and at which point the armoured sentinels crossed their weapons across the doors, barring the two’s entry.

As Arthur jumped back in surprise, the Witch stood her ground and calmly told the steel guardsmen, “I am the Witch of the Woods, and this is my servant Arthur. We have been summoned here at the request of His Highness, Prince Adam, so that we may help rid him of his curse. Shall we come in, so His Highness is not kept waiting?”

Without a moments’ hesitation, the two full plate clad guards uncrossed their polearms and wordlessly stepped away from the doors, which opened all on their own. As he and his mistress stepped through, however, Arthur could not help but notice how unnaturally still the guards stood once they had returned to their original positions, or how something had sounded off about them as they moved. They had sounded as if the suits of armour were hollow, rather than being worn by the guards… but then, Arthur realised how that may have indeed been the case, seeing how he now lived in a house filled with such animated objects.

Once Arthur had stepped through the threshold, he set foot upon a flawlessly polished checkerboard patterned marble floor, upon which were built Romanesque stone pillars that supported the high vaulted ceiling. Against each wall stood several pieces of ornate furniture and impressively carved busts and other statues, with masterfully detailed paintings and other works of art adorning the walls themselves, just one of which must have been worth more than every farm in Arthur’s hometown put together. Just ahead of Arthur and the Witch through an arched threshold stood a marble grand staircase adorned by a scarlet carpet at the centre and bordered by an iron guardrail at its right, which curved into a spiral as it went up the second floor above, past what Arthur could view through the archway. But just as Arthur was drinking in the incredible sight of just this castle’s entrance hall alone, something dawned on him about just how his mistress had referred to the master of the house.

“Wait a minute,” Arthur said to the Witch, stopping in his tracks. “Did you just say, ‘Prince Adam?’ Do you mean to say that we shall be attending royalty today?”

“Why yes, that is the case,” the Witch said nonchalantly. “Did I not mention that earlier?”

“No, you just said he was the local lord! I had thought I was out of place meeting the nobility, but a prince of this entire kingdom? I wish I’d have known sooner!”

“I don’t see what you’re fussing about, my child. Lots of people are royalty, you know. And besides, he does nonetheless serve as lord of that town we just passed through, so it is not as though I mislead you. Nobility, royalty… what’s the difference, anyway? They’re both titles certain people give to themselves to argue why they and their descendants should be in charge of everyone else, aren’t they?”

Arthur considered whether he should argue the difference to the Witch, but quickly figured that he should not bother. After all, someone of her power could probably afford to pay no heed to the social standings of mortals, be they king or commoner. Arthur on the other hand, did not have that luxury. If he failed to make a good first impression with this prince, then there would be little stopping him from ordering Arthur executed on the spot, other than fear of the Witch’s retaliation (granted, that probably was a strong deterrent, but it would nonetheless do Arthur little good to think himself untouchable because of it).

Arthur did not have long to ponder on that thought, however, as he then saw the flickering of candlelight growing brighter from the spiral staircase to the upper floor. Was it a servant of the prince’s, he thought, come to show them the way to the master of the house? That conclusion soon began to look incorrect when Arthur noticed that the source of the candlelight appeared to be far closer to the floor than any human would be expected to hold a candle or lamp. And in the few seconds it took for Arthur to ponder this, the reason for it had revealed itself: an ornate brass candelabrum was hopping down the staircase under its own power, jumping down from one step to the next as carefully as one imagined it could. It appeared; Arthur thought to himself, that he had been right in thinking that the objects in this castle were under a similar enchantment to those in the Witch’s own cottage.

Upon reaching the floor, the moving candelabrum pointed its arms through the archway that it had stepped through like they were the arms of a man, and as he and the Witch made their way towards said archway, Arthur politely said, “Oh, thank you,” to it, on reflex more than anything else. After all, this was just an animated object like those at the Witch’s cottage, so why thank it if it could not answer?

“You are quite welcome, monsieur,” the candelabrum indeed did reply, making Arthur jump in surprise as it turned towards him to reveal a human-like face that appeared molded into the very brass of the object, even as it moved just like a human face.

Seemingly noticing the shock on Arthur’s face, the candelabrum said with a chuckle, “Je suis désolé, monsieur, I should have guessed you would not be used to living furniture.”

“Oh don’t worry; I’ve become somewhat accustomed to that sort of thing,” Arthur tried to assure the candelabrum, shooting the Witch an aside glance as he did so (who seemed to be enjoying every minute of this exchange, if the grin on her face were any indication). “It’s just my first time encountering one that will respond when I speak to it.”

“In that case, I am honoured to be the first that monsieur has laid eyes upon,” the candelabrum laughed, and with an elaborate bow, introduced himself as, “Lumière, at your service.”

“And Arthur Butcher, at yours,” Arthur reciprocated with a simpler bow.

“Oh, no need for that, Monsieur Butcher. After all, it is you who is the guest in this house, and one accompanying someone that the master of the house is eagerly expecting, no less!” Turning to the Witch, Lumière said, “Shall I lead you to His Highness, Madame Witch?”

“That would be most helpful, my dear Lumière!” the Witch answered with a smile. “I imagine His Highness shall become most irritable if we dawdle, anyway.”

“Oui, he most certainly would,” Lumière replied as he began hopping back up the steps, soon followed by Arthur and the Witch. “I must say though, Monsieur Arthur, it is quite a surprise to see someone accompanying Madame Witch for a change. Are her ward or something of that sort?”

“I’m her apprentice, actually,” Arthur replied.

“Are you now, Monsieur? If I may ask, did you take up the position recently? I do not recall Madame mentioning an apprentice before, much less her bringing one with her until now!”

“Yeah, I agreed to take the position early in autumn, but I only started working for her last night.”

“Did she, now?” Lumière chuckled, turning to give the Witch a knowing smirk. “Making your apprentice work on the Eve of the Solstice, are you, you old slave driver? For shame, Madame!”

“Now now, you cannot blame me for needing the extra help on my busiest night of the year!” the Witch laughed good-naturedly. “And besides, I would hardly say that you and His Highness are ones to talk yourselves, given today’s date.”

“Well, you have us there, Madame!” Lumière laughed as he hopped up the final step of the staircase and onto the upper floor, soon followed by Arthur and the Witch. “The Master has unfortunately never been in the mood to celebrate the Solstice ever since he received his curse on this very day all those years ago,” he continued, clearly to explain this to Arthur more than to the Witch, “If not for your scheduled visit here he would likely hole himself up in his study all day while the servants, myself included, would celebrate the season once our daily duties are finished. I even suspect he scheduled today’s appointment just so have something to do other than sulk all day.”

“Well, having to work today isn’t that bad,” Arthur rationalised, trying to convince himself more than anyone else. “Because we had a few months to prepare beforehand, my family thought to have our Solstice Party the night before I left, so it wasn’t a total loss. Besides, being the Witch’s apprentice has its own perks. Not every job lets one see so many magical wonders in one day, even if my mistress hasn’t quite worked out how to get her utensils to talk herself.”

Arthur looked to the Witch to see how she would react to such a jab, only to see her make a quite loaded look. But before Arthur could even wonder what he had said wrong, his attention was caught by the sound of Lumière weakly laughing as the walking candelabrum explained, “Well, I would not fault Madame’s magic should she fall short in that regard. After all, I do not imagine that her utensils were once people.”

Arthur stopped in his tracks, wide eyed in shock as he exclaimed, “What?”

“Oh, yes,” Lumière continued, “I was once human, you see, as were most of the living objects you see around this castle. When the master received his curse, so too were we changed, trapped in the forms of the very objects we handled when we were flesh and blood.”

“I…” Arthur stammered, “…I’m so sorry, I didn’t know!”

“And I accept your apology, Monsieur Arthur,” Lumière said as the three approached the door at the end of the hallway. “Just have a care to not be so careless with your words in the future; not all of the servants in the castle are as forgiving as I am. For example, my husband, the head butler around here can be, how do you say in Albion, quite the sourpuss.”

“I heard that,” an old, snooty voice grumbled from just up ahead, in the accent of Arthur’s own homeland. Looking down towards the source of the voice, Arthur saw a small pendulum clock standing at the foot of the door, with a rather disgruntled looking human face upon the clock’s… well, face.

“You’re late, Lumière,” the clock, who was apparently the head butler of whom Lumière had spoken of, scoffed. Moving its brass arms to gesture at the clock hands upon its face, the clock continued, “You said that it would only take you a minute to fetch the Witch once she had arrived. As you can see, it has nearly been two.”

“Ah, George, mon amor, how dutiful of you to keep us all doing our duties on time!” Lumière greeted his clock faced husband with a knowing smile. “But must you be so stringent in doing so?”

“Can you really blame me, Lumière, when you know how irritable the His Highness becomes when he is kept waiting?” George sighed, before his eyes wandered over to their guests, and focused curiously on Arthur. “I do not believe I was informed that the Witch would be bringing additional company during her visit.”

“Well, I’m afraid that was too recent a development to inform the master of the house in as prudent a fashion as he would have liked,” the Witch cut in to explain. “My dear George, may I introduce my new servant and apprentice, Arthur?”

“You apprentice, you say?” George inquired, quizzically raising what might have been an eyebrow (Arthur could not be certain). “Given how hard the master has had you working in this problem of ours, I’m surprised it has taken you this long to get one.”

“Well, I would have sought out the services of one sooner, but I had not had the opportunity to do so until Arthur found his way onto my doorstep this past autumn. And I daresay I have needed the help for some time now!” Turning to Arthur, the Witch explained to him, “As you may have surmised, Arthur, this is the head butler to whom Lumière was referring nary a minute ago, one George Jeremiah Thwaites.”

“The majordomo of this castle, would be the correct title,” George corrected her snootily, “but yes, it is my duty to take charge of the other servants in this castle and assure that everyone accomplishes their tasks on time.” Stopping to breathe a deep sigh, the clock continued, “And before you ask, yes, I have noticed how our curse seems to have a sense of irony in that regard.”

“I was thinking nothing of the sort, sir!” Arthur reassured George, trying his best to make eye contact with the living clock without staring at the clock hands ticking across his face.

“Your accent,” George noted with a hint of nostalgia in his voice, “you would not happen to be from Albion as well, would you?”

“I’ve lived in a small town in the Albion countryside all my life, sir,” Arthur confirmed. “Today is my first time setting foot outside the area I’ve grown up in.”

“Ah, so you’ve never been to Camelot, then, have you, boy?”

“I can’t say that I have, sir. We’d occasionally hear word from there from passing merchants and travelers, but I’m afraid I’ve never been within a stone’s throw of the capital myself.”

“I see. I can’t help but miss it now, but a long while ago I grew tired of the hustle and bustle of the big city and I moved here to the Gallic countryside and found a quiet position working in the lord’s manor,” George reminisced wistfully before gesturing to his clock-like body and exhaustedly sighing, “and then this happened.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”

“Don’t be, my boy, it was before your time. I just hope you can help the Witch in ending this curse so I may be in the condition to take some leave and visit the old country again. I have always wanted to show Lumiere the sights back home…” George noted wistfully before snapping back to reality and said, “Speaking of which…”

George waddled over to the door that he had been standing guard at and knocked, calling, “Prince Adam, Your Highness! The Witch of the Woods has arrived to see to your condition!”

“See her in, then!” a gruff voice snarled from beyond the door. “I have been waiting for her to arrive all morning!”

“As you wish, sire!” George called back as he leapt up to grab the doorknob and twisted it, kicking off of the doorframe mid-jump to open it for the prince’s guests.

“There is no need to open the doors for us, my dear George,” the Witch told the little timepiece as she entered, “but your efforts are appreciated nonetheless.”

Closely followed by the servant couple, Arthur cautiously entered behind the Witch, bracing himself for what was to be his first meeting with royalty. Entering a large, but not too unusual study, Arthur spotted a shadowed figure sitting in one of the comfortable looking cushioned chairs by the lit fireplace.

“Prince Adam!” the Witch called amiably. “It has been quite a while since we last spoke!”

“Too long,” the voice from before grumbled as the shadowy figure rose from its chair and turned to face the Witch. Arthur had not known what, exactly, to expect the prince’s cursed appearance to look like. As most, he had expected him to appear as an enchanted object, just as the servants of the castle. But what had now turned to face them, Arthur never would have expected, even in his dreams.

The fine fur-lined nobleman’s clothes the prince was wearing stood in stark contrast to his physical appearance, which was that of a monstrous beast the likes of which Arthur had never seen before. While many parts of his body looked like those of animals Arthur had at least read of in books, few of them looked like they belonged on the same creature. He was covered head to toe in particoloured fur of black and red patches, with a dog-like head from whose gaping maw jutted two sets of warthog-like tusks. From the back of his head extended a pair of goat-like horns, and even though His Majesty visibly made an attempt to walk upright like a man, it was clearly a struggle for his top-heavy form; his long, muscular arms looking to be made for walking on his knuckles like an ape’s, but distinguished from such a beast by the curved grasping talons that tipped his fingers. Struggling to fit in the prince’s expensive looking britches were digitigrade legs that ended in monkey-like grasping feet that too were tipped with talons like a bird of prey’s; and lastly, from the waistband of those britches extended a long, tufted tail like a lion’s, which went nary a moment without twitching irritably.

The beastly lord of the manor looked straight at Arthur in both surprise and contempt, with wary blue eyes that appeared to be the only human feature on his body.

After a moment of tension that felt like hours, the beastly lord spoke to Arthur, in a voice that was both gruff and sophisticated, “What are you looking at, boy?”

Arthur was at a loss how to speak. It was only seconds into his first meeting with nobility, and already he was made to feel like he had done something wrong. And as Arthur tried hard to think of how to put his thoughts into words as diplomatically as possible, the prince roared “Well, boy? Are you daft or something? Speak; I haven’t all day!”

“Well…” Arthur began, still trying to find a polite way to word what he meant to say, “Your Highness is not quite what I expected…”

“Oh yes, of course. Amazed, are you, to gawk of the visage of the beast that walks like a man?”

“Forgive me, Your Highness; I meant no offense!” Arthur responded penitently. “I-I’ve certainly seen worse!”

“Well, how honoured I must be then, to be graced by the presence of one so worldly, that the source of my torment is so unimpressive!” the lord spat in contempt. Turning to the Witch, Prince Adam demanded, “Who is this kid, and why the hell is he here?!”

“Ah yes, I should have introduced you two when you walked in; my apologies, Your Highness. Prince Adam, I would like you to meet Arthur Butcher, my apprentice.”

“Your apprentice, you say? He can’t be a very good one, if he just stands there gawking every time he sees something magical.”

“Well, this is only his second day on the job, so Your Highness must forgive his greenness in such matters. I expect he shall grow used to such things in time.”

“Well, he’d better hurry it up, then. I’m getting sick of being gawked at already!”

The prince was not alone in already growing so weary of another’s behaviour. Arthur did not at all enjoy being spoken of as though he were not there, but as a peasant, he supposed that there was not much he could do to tell royalty such as Adam what to do.

It seemed that the Witch agreed with the former sentiment, as she softly told Adam, “Your Highness, is it not impolite to refer to my apprentice as though he were not here? He is here to help with your condition just as much as I am, after all.”

“Is he now?” Prince Adam said skeptically. “And how is he supposed to help with that? From what I’ve seen of him, he should barely be able to buckle his own boots, let alone solve a faerie curse.”

“And what do you know of my apprentice’s capabilities, if I may ask? You have known him for nary a minute, and have barely allowed him to get a word in edgewise in that time.”

“Very well,” the prince sighed with a roll of his eyes, as though the very notion of allowing Arthur to speak to him was an inconvenience, “So then, boy, what do you have to say, how could it possibly be of any value?”

“Well…” Arthur said nervously, carefully thinking of what to say that the prince would consider helpful while still speaking respectfully, “perhaps you could tell me how you received this curse of yours?”

The prince shot Arthur a rather irritated glare in response, prompting Arthur to diplomatically continue, “I’m sorry that it is surely a sore subject, Your Highness, but I’m afraid I can’t exactly help rid you of your curse if I do not know what I am helping with.”

Taking a moment to consider Arthur’s point, Prince Adam closed his eyes and sighed, “Very well.” Taking a seat in an armchair close to the fire, he looked at Arthur and after a moment of waiting, looked back to Arthur and asked, “Well, what are you waiting for? Sit down, then!”

Still more than a bit intimidated by the prince’s irritable demeanor almost as much as his bestial form and royal station, Arthur took a seat in the couch across from the prince, on the other end of which the Witch took a seat of her own.

With a long, drawn out sigh, the prince began, “it was ten years ago, and Father had taken us on our yearly Solstice holiday out to the country. If only I had known that this holiday would herald such a cruel twist of fate. It was on the morning of the Solstice when I rushed down the stairs so I could be the first to the tree to open the presents. But as I finally reached the bottom of the stairs, there was a knock on the front door. The servants insisted that they open it and send for the master of the house, but as heir to the throne, I was impatient to play the part of being master of the house, and demanded that I deal with whoever was at the door. Behind the door was a hideous old beggar woman asking to stay the night. Naturally, I told her to piss off and find some other homestead to leech off of. It was those words that proved to be the end of my life, when the woman’s form changed to that of a beautiful faerie enchantress. I tried to apologise, but she said that it was too late, and with a wave of her wand, cursed me into this… thing you see before you. She then spouted some pretentious crock about judging a book by its cover before vanishing, leaving Mother and Father to see what had become of me once they had come down to see what caused the commotion.”

“I see,” Arthur said with a sympathetic nod. He knew firsthand just how duplicitous and cruel the Fair Folk could be, having only narrowly escaped the clutches of the Wild Hunt just the previous night. He could not help but wonder how easily he could have shared a similar fate to the prince that sat before him, but for now, he had another question on his mind.

“And what of the servants here?” Arthur continued. “Did this enchantress change them, too?”

“Oh right, them,” the prince said offhandedly, as if he had not thought of it before. “Yes, they also changed into what they are now when I was cursed. No idea why, though. Maybe because they let me open the door when I refused her shelter? Your guess is as good as mine.”

As he recalled the events that had led to his current state, Prince Adam’s sour expression grew bitterer still, so thinking it was best to change the subject, Arthur remarked, “Well, it’s a lovely castle you’ve got here, Your Highness.”

Softening his demeanor a bit, Prince Adam said, “Yes, this was my favourite vacation spot as a child. So, imagine my delight when, so soon after I was stricken by this curse, my family deigned to grant me Lordship over the nearby town so I could take up permanent residence here.”

As he mentioned his permanent residence, however, Prince Adam’s face darkened once more, as he continued, “which I’m sure had nothing to do with allowing them to dump me in some backwater part of the kingdom where they could quietly forget about the family embarrassment.”

“Oh… I’m sorry to hear that, Your Highness.”

“Oh, so you pity me, do you, boy?!” Prince Adam snapped back at Arthur.

“I meant no offense, your highness!” Arthur quickly apologised, more than a little intimidated by Prince Adam’s monstrous visage. “Please forgive me for so forgetting my station!”

“No need to apologise, Arthur; everyone makes mistakes,” the Witch cut in. “And Prince Adam, must you address Arthur as ‘boy?’ He is only a year younger than you are, after all.”

This was a surprise to Arthur. With his statuesque height and irritable demeanor, Prince Adam had struck him as being much older. But then again, he supposed the height could just be a part of his transformation, and that in the prince’s condition, anyone would have become so jaded.

“And why should I care about how I address a mere peasant like him?” the prince snapped to the Witch.

“Because it is the polite thing to do, is it not?” the Witch sighed. “Did you not promise you would work on that attitude of yours when I had prescribed you do so on your last visit? This does not bode well for your recovery…”

“But he…” the prince briefly protested before giving a heavy sigh and conceding, “Oh, fine.” Clearing his throat, Prince Adam said, “I’m sorry for addressing you so rudely… Arnold?” before giving Arthur a smile that, apart from being so obviously forced, when given by Adam’s beastly maw of wicked looking fangs and tusks, came across more nightmarish than the prince surely intended.

“It’s ‘Arthur,’ Your Highness, but I accept your gracious apology,” Arthur said back.

The Prince Adam then turned back towards the Witch expectantly, seemingly waiting for some kind of praise, only for the Witch to rest her chin on her hand in a thoughtful expression before sighing disappointedly, “Well, it’s a start, but I had hoped that you would have made more progress since my last visit. Have you really saw fit to work on your manners so little that you still need to be reminded to apologise for your outbursts?”

“It’s not my fault!” the prince whined defensively. “It’s hard having to learn all these things after so long, and I haven’t had much time to practice!”

“Your Highness,” the Witch sighed, the prince’s excuses seeming to be wearing on even her patience, “it has been months since our last visit. How, may I ask, have you not found the time to improve on your treatment towards others? I thought that surely you could have at least found time to practice during the scant times in which you deigned fit to acknowledge your servants’ existence.”

“I- I have been busier than usual in these past few months!” Prince Adam stammered, avoiding eye contact with the Witch as he continued, “I have had to entertain company on a few occasions!”

“Have you now?” the Witch inquired with a raised eyebrow and a spark of curiosity in her eyes. “And how did you conduct yourself before your guests, may I ask? Because I cannot imagine that you would conduct yourself more respectfully behind closed doors than you would in front of those attempting to assist in breaking your curse…”

As the prince shifted his eyes from side to side, clearly uncomfortable with the prospect of truthfully answering that question, Arthur cleared his throat and asked, “Excuse me, Mistress?”

As the Witch looked down to Arthur, her expression softened into an embarrassed smile and she said, “Oh, but of course, Arthur. You wish to know what Prince Adam’s manners have to do with breaking his curse, I presume?”

“Yes, it would be quite useful to know that if I am to assist with his condition,” Arthur said with a nod.

“Well, you do remember how in his recounting of how he received his curse, that the faerie who cursed him mentioned the old phrase of not judging a book by its cover? Well, my theory is that learning that lesson is the key to breaking the curse. In my experience, while many among the fair folk will trouble mortals for their own amusement, others still are quite fond of inflicting terrible curses such as His Highness’s for various wrongdoings, trivial or harmful alike, as a means of teaching lessons for such behaviour. And in Prince Adam’s case, for refusing shelter to one whom he believed to be a shriveled old beggar, he was cursed with a form that would require others to see past their first impressions of him and look within to judge him. And as you have seen, he is found applying this lesson in his daily life quite difficult indeed.”

“What do you mean?” Prince Adam objected. “I haven’t so much as said anything about how either of you look!”

“Haven’t you, now?” the Witch asked incredulously. “There is more to appearance than just physical beauty that people judge others for, you know. Like say, as an example I am simply listing off of the top of my head, one’s social class. When Arthur walked into his room, what did you know of him other than his clothing indicating a lower station than your own, may I ask? And how did you treat him as a result? Did you ask him why he was here, or what he had to contribute? Or did you write him off as stupid and useless for your purposes before you so much as knew his name?”

“Well… I…” the prince stammered; his eye twitching as he searched for some excuse or rebuttal, before asking, “Well, he looked at me funny when he saw what I looked like! So, it looks like he’s the one who needs to learn this lesson, doesn’t he?”

“Perhaps he does, and it certainly would do him well to not gawk at those whose appearances he would judge as unusual, especially given my wide variety of regular customers and other folk he shall no doubt encounter over the course of his apprenticeship,” the Witch admitted, before sternly continuing, “however, we are not here to discuss his behaviour Your Highness, but yours. And nevertheless, the poor behaviour of another is not an excuse for your own, is it? It simply means that both of you must work on how you conduct yourselves, and since it is your curse that we are here to undo, we shall have to save Arthur’s lesson regarding his preconceptions for a later date while we deal with yours.”

Prince Adam opened his mouth to speak, almost lifting a finger in dispute as he did so, but paused as he seemed to consider what the Witch had said, and lowered his finger and closed his mouth as he looked down guiltily.

“And now that we have explained everything to Arthur and addressed your point, shall we begin your lesson for the day?”

“Sure,” the prince mumbled grumpily.

“Excellent!” the Witch smiled happily. Looking to Arthur, she asked him, “Arthur, may I ask you to fetch me some things I will need to attend to Prince Adam?”

“Of course,” Arthur replied. “What will you need from me?”

“Well,” the Witch sighed as she conjured a quill and parchment with but a wave of her hand and began to write something down, “you could start by asking Lumière to show you down to the castle library and fetching these books for me. I am afraid that teaching grown men how to behave their age is not a skill that I have had to exercise too often in my life, so with that in mind, it may be useful to have some reference materials on hand regarding how to teach proper manners and the like.”

As soon as the Witch finished writing down her list, she rolled up the parchment and handed it to Arthur, who promptly took it and unrolled it to read. Arthur had not known exactly which titles to expect such a list to contain, but most of them had such titles as Proper Behaviour for Young Nobles and Raising & Disciplining Spoiled Children that made it seem like the Witch was aiming to teach manners to one much younger than Prince Adam’s age, but Arthur decided to err on the side of caution and not comment on it to her or Adam’s face.

“I’ll return with them as soon as I can,” Arthur promised with a nod before turning around and looking down at Lumière to ask, “Would you care to show me the way to the library, Mr. Lumière, so I may return with these books as soon as possible?”

“Oh, but of course, Monsieur Arthur!” the candelabrum said with a jovial smile as he hopped out the doorway. “Just follow closely, and I shall show monsieur the way!”

Arthur followed Lumière but nary a second afterward, but after he had stepped through the threshold and shut the door behind him, he barely made five steps before he noticed the Witch walking beside him, not even having seen her leave.

Jumping in shock at the sudden sight of her, Arthur asked, “Mistress, what are you doing out here? I thought you were back in the room helping Prince Adam!”

“And I can assure you that one of me is, my child,” the Witch began to explain with a sly grin. “I split my form while His Highness was not looking too carefully, and should my other self not give too noticeable a slip of the tongue, he shall remain none the wiser until I return.”

“Oh right, I forgot you could do that,” Arthur admitted, somewhat embarrassed that he had forgotten, despite having learned just the previous night, that the Witch could split into multiple identical bodies in order to be many places at once. Doing so that night did turn out to be an error on her part, as dividing her power among multiple bodies did weaken her to the point where the faeries of the Wild Hunt managed to snatch Arthur away from under her nose, but thankfully not so much that they could stop her from coming to rescue him.

“Well, you had quite the hectic and exciting night when you learned this, so I cannot fault you for forgetting such details, no matter how fantastical they might be,” the Witch chuckled.

“Well, thank you for understanding,” Arthur sighed, relieved that he would not be chided or teased for forgetting such things, “but why do need to be elsewhere while also attending to Prince Adam? Will I need your help finding those books you asked of me?”

“Oh no, between Lumière and the castle librarian, you should have more than enough help doing that,” the Witch reassured Arthur with a pat of the shoulder. “In fact, you and I shall be parting way right as you begin to make your way to the library. As for my actual reason…”

Briefly casting a suspicious glance over to the door to the prince’s study, the Witch turned back to Arthur and once she seemed confident that the prince would not hear through the door, continued, “I have my suspicions that Prince Adam may not be completely honest about how he is progressing with my prescribed treatment when asked face to face, so I would like to have a talk with each of the castle servants in private. Hopefully through them I may gain a more thorough insight as to how much his highness truly has adjusted his behaviour since our last meeting.”

“Oh, I see what you’re trying to get at,” Arthur said. “When to someone as powerful as you, the prince may be watching his behaviour more than he usually would, but may not extend that courtesy to those working under him when they are behind closed doors.”

“Smart boy,” the Witch said with a proud smile on her face. “I should be blessed to have such a gifted apprentice if you grasp everything that I teach you so quickly.”

“Thank you, mistress,” Arthur said, blushing slightly at the compliment. “I suppose I’ll see at least one of you once I return.”

“Indeed, you shall,” the Witch chuckled, before being asked by Lumière, “Will Madame need to converse with me as well as my colleagues? I would hate to delay Monsieur Arthur on his own task, but if you believe that it will help rid His Highness and the rest of us of this curse, I shall answer whatever question Madame would have of me!”

“You need not answer my questions right this moment, my dear Lumière,” the Witch reassured him. “I am perfectly willing to wait until after you and Arthur have already returned with those books to speak with you.” She then turned towards George, himself still standing watch at the door, and continued, “But if you have the time to answer my inquiries, George, then I shall be more than happy to speak with you.”

“I suppose I can make the time if Madam wishes it,” George grumbled before nervously looking towards the door he was standing watch over and mumbled, “But perhaps we could speak a bit farther from His Highness’s room? Just in case we are not completely out of earshot?”

“Oh, but of course,” the Witch said with a smile, “Perhaps you may even show me the way to where your fellow servants should be working, and we may walk and talk.”

Just as Arthur and the Witch began to part ways following their respective guides, Lumière called out to George, “Don’t be too long in helping Madame Witch on her errand, my love! It would be most embarrassing if someone so skilled in keeping everyone on schedule ended up being late for our Solstice dinner tonight!”

“Lumière, neither of us have been capable of eating for ten years. Must you make light of our situation in such a way?”

“My dear George, you knew what you were getting into when you married me,” Lumière said with a wink.

Laughing for the first time since Arthur had met him, George chuckled back. “Yes, I did, didn’t I? You be sure to finish helping Mr. Butcher as quickly as possible, as well, you hear? I’d hate to spend the night without you.”

Arthur began to follow Lumière down the hallway east of the study, as the Witch glided towards the west.

#witch #fantasy #fantasy writing #prose #original fiction #my writing #the witch's apprentice #godmother knows best

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