#just like. abandoning what everyone else thinks you are and becoming your final form: fat fuck :D
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Consider. Trans men immediately blowing up in weight as soon as they start T
#trying 2 manifest this#literally the only thing holding me back in gaining weight is dysphoria my waistline is in trouble a few months into hrt 😭#trans feedee#acacia thincks#I’m gonna b real this is one of my major Ideas#esp like the idea of a guy outwardly going from a skinny athletic conventionally attractive girl to a fat hairy dude (extremely attractive)#and everyone thinks he ruined their precious girl but he’s actually the happiest he’s ever been#just like. abandoning what everyone else thinks you are and becoming your final form: fat fuck :D
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(More LanLan rural vet AU)
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It had been a great idea.
"Look at it this way, at least you'll know we've gotten most of them," Luo Qingyang, their tiny clinic's only full-time nurse, told him. She was visibly trying to keep a straight face. Song Lan glared at her. He couldn't reply with words, because his hands were full of squirming, six-week old puppies. Also his arms, and his shoulders, and from the German Shepherd tugging at his scrub pants, soon his lap as well.
Song Lan had known, moving from the city to the rural countryside, that there would be some measure of culture shock. When one of the farmers had casually dropped that he didn't vaccinate his puppies, because there were, according to him, "Too many of 'em too fast to bother driving 'em out all that way, before you showed up," he had nearly broken his strict policy of sobriety during work hours.
"They're all going to die of distemper," he had told Wen Qing after the man had left, vaguely aware he was making his Strict Veterinarian Face (it was Lan Xichen who had given it a name, which made Song Lan warm all over, on top of the flush from anger) from the way his temples had started aching. "They're not even on heartworm medication. I'm surprised so many of them survive to get killed by the combine harvester."
"Just 'combine,' you sound like you're city folk," Wen Qing had said, ignoring Song Lan's mouthed protestation that he was, which was why he was used to people who kept Lucky and Xiao mi's shots up to date. "Look, these people-- they don't have time, and they don't have money. They're going to focus on the livestock animals they need to keep themselves afloat. It's not cruelly meant. They're doing the best they can."
"I know that," Song Lan said, somewhat abashed. He peeled his gloves into the bin by the sink and set about washing his hands as he thought. As always, he had to hunch over the sink, built for a much shorter DVM. Wen Qing's girlfriend had sent her some kind of fancy floral soap, and Wen Qing had delighted in placing it in both exam rooms and the surgery. It was a bit stronger to the nose that Song Lan would've preferred, but he wasn't going to argue with Wen Qing when it came to her girlfriend. The antiseptic covered it up, anyway.
"What about a vaccination fair? Or just a day," he said when he had finished drying off. "We used to do them at my old clinic. Bring in your pets, get them up to date. Pass out flyers about common infections. Gets the kids involved, too."
"Hm," Wen Qing had said. She'd begun gathering up the used sterile packaging and dumping it in the trash, neatly detouring the needles to the sharps container. "That's certainly an idea."
She'd argued him down from all pets to just dogs, and had him separate out areas based on the weeks since puppy birth, to for the older dogs the year or the five-year mark. Song Lan had thought it overly complicated-- he could just ask the humans involved as they came up-- but had acquiesced so as not to cause trouble. He was still learning how to fit in, here. Country folk were a lot more standoffish than city folk, for all they were initially nicer.
He was very glad now that he'd listened.
"You look busy," said a cheerful voice from behind him. Song Lan finished administering the Bordetella shot to the Border Collie mix Luo Qingyang was holding, giving the pup a scratch behind the ears and juggling the bag of chicken jerky underneath his armpit to keep the mutt-who-definitely-had-Bulldog-in-there-somewhere who was crawling across his shoulders from snatching an unearned reward. He turned, stumbling as the German Shepherd shoved her nose enthusiastically into his muddy shoe laces, and tried to keep his scowl affixed for Lan Xichen's teasing.
It was a pointless endeavor; as soon as he caught sight of Lan Xichen's face, glowing in the midday heat, he could feel his mouth pulling up at the corner. He occupied himself boosting the puppy under his left arm higher, propping his waggling tail on his hipbone, to keep his own dopey smile to a minimum.
"Shh," he told the puppy, when he yipped and started trying to eat Song Lan's scrubs. The puppy looked up, top canine caught in the loop the brand name tag had once hung from, before Song Lan had cut it off. He was not helping the dopiness meter.
"Mister Lan!" Luo Qingyang said, handing the Collie mix back to a child with worried arms outstretched (the dog, unperturbed, began licking every freckle on the child's face). "I'm glad you were able to make it! You brought us-- oh, you didn't have to, put that down. Here, you take this one." She plucked the heavy, stainless-steel carafe from his hand and replaced it with a black-and-tan puppy she summoned from nowhere.
Automatically Lan Xichen brought his other hand up to support the puppy's hind legs. The puppy sniffed the pens in the crisply ironed breast pocket and did not find them suitable. Song Lan realized he'd been staring and shuffled his furry passengers away from the jerky again.
"I didn't think to make it cold. It's a warm day, I hope it won't be too hot for you," Lan Xichen was saying, apologetic. The edge of the shadow from the extremely garishly striped outdoor tent Song Lan and Wen Ning had set up cut him right across his handsome face, one eye in the shade, the other squinting into the sunlight. As a teenager, Song Lan had had a movie poster where the actor was highlighted in similar fashion. He had hung the poster on the ceiling above his bed.
This is not the time for this was becoming a common repetition in Song Lan's inner monologue when it came to Lan Xichen.
"If it has caffeine in it, we'll love you whatever temperature it is," Luo Qingyang assured him, passing Lan Xichen another puppy; nearly identical to the first, but with one black ear instead of two. "This is his sister, they're getting their ten week vaccinations. A bit late, but don't tell their mother that. Do you know how to hold them?"
"I'm not entirely useless," Lan Xichen said dryly. He smiled at Song Lan. Song Lan nearly tripped over the German Shepherd again. "Ten weeks, that's...Influenza, Bordetella, Lyme…."
"DHAPP," Luo Qingyang confirmed, ponytail bouncing as she nodded. "I'm going over to help Wen Qing with the older dogs, you stay and hold puppies for Doctor Song, yeah?" She patted the male puppy on the head, blew a kiss to the female, and leapt over the barricade of folding chairs to rush to the other side of the tent. A queue was already forming there as Wen Qing argued with a woman in overalls, gesturing angrily. Luo Qingyang slid neatly between them and took the three-legged hound from the woman's arms the same way she had taken charge of Lan Xichen's tea carafe.
"You've got a criminal," Lan Xichen said pleasantly, pointing with his chin. Song Lan blinked, and then mentally swore, kneeling so he could free one hand to extricate the Pitbull mix from the open ziplock seal on OL' GRANDAD'S AUTHENTIC CHICKIN STRIPS (Reduced Fat). He pressed the hinge of the puppy's jaw to tug the pilfered treat free, tapping his nose when he tried to whine sadly. Song Lan hadn't gotten his certification yesterday.
"Can you hold them while I give the injections?" he asked, waiting for Lan Xichen's acquiescence before struggling to his feet again. Half-way up he felt a pull at his knee. He looked down and saw the German Shepherd, tired of being ignored, had a mouthful of his pants.
"No," Song Lan signed; but the dog hadn't been trained in sign language, so she growled playfully up at him, ears pricked. Song Lan reached to do the same trick he'd done on the Pitbull mutt, but he'd not accounted that the other set-down dogs would be investigating the other side of his newly-sniffable legs. With a grassy skid, and a very undignified shout, Song Lan went down. The dirt seemed a lot more solid when he was testing it with his nose and chin. Three of the puppies leapt on his face and began a series of scientific experiments as to whether he was dead or just playing. One slobbery tongue went into his ear.
"Are you all right?" Lan Xichen's voice was above him: Song Lan was never, ever going to live this down. He groaned and rolled onto his back, throwing an arm across his eyes and letting the puppies pounce on his hair and ankles. The German Shepherd, looking delighted with herself, sat her ass down on Song Lan's stomach and examined his face, tongue lolling. Despite himself, Song Lan smiled and reached up to rub at her belly. She flopped onto her side (oof) and threw her front paws up so he could gain better access. Her tail beat wildly at the ground beside Song Lan's leg.
"Just…dangle them over my chest," Song Lan signed up at Lan Xichen's looming figure. He was tall. Was this what he looked like to everyone else at the clinic? "I'll do them like this."
"Of course, Doctor Song," Lan Xichen said, carefully solemn.
They looked at each other.
The girl puppy swatted her brother in the nose. Immediately he started crying.
"Shall I get you a cup of tea too, then?" Lan Xichen asked, and Song Lan couldn't help it; he laughed out loud.
"I suppose 'buried in dogs' isn't a terrible way to go," he signed, as Lan Xichen, finally abandoning his masterful attempt, let his grin take over his face. It was blinding. "Yes, if you've got a funnel to pour it through?"
#mdzs#cql#the untamed#song lan#lan xichen#song lan gets to laugh in this one!#and it's happier over all#the last one was like deep feelings vibes this one is just fluff#my fics#fic: lanlan rural vet au#lanlan rural vet au#song lan and wq were both speaking in sign in the flashback there if that wasn't clear#(EDIT: when will i catch a typo before i post. When. tell me w h y)#lanlan
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This Is Our Way
Ch.1
Summary: What happens when you make the mistake of thinking you can steel from a Mandalorian? You land yourself and job and a plethora of adventures and emotion you could never even dream of. The question is; where will those emotions lead.
Warnings: Typical canon violence, NSFW implications and scenes later on
You can also read it on my Ao3 account.
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Clouds. Dark, impenetrable, depressing grey clouds are what greet you as soon as your eyes open, just like they have every day for years during your existence on the scrappy planet of Corellia. Home to the most desperate and cruel criminals, along with the enslaved and weak civilians and captives. All mixed in with your average day citizen trying to get by.
A great place to live.
The sound of tie-fighters overhead is what first woke you, screaming as they made their morning flight overhead, acting as an ever present reminder of the Empire's presence and signaling the start of your day. Bones and joints crack in sync as you push yourself up, rubbing your eyes and crawling from the busted old weapons crate that acted as a poor supplement for a bed. Its lid laid discarded to the side, allowing the cool night air of one of the only dry nights of the month to flow in while you slept. The hard metal lining was barely tolerable, even when padded with the few scraps of fabric you had managed to snag over the years, but it was sturdy and the lid provided great protection from the ever present rain on the overcast planet.
Taking care not to trip while climbing from the enclosed space, you stumble out onto the main section of the roof and stare over the city as you stretch, trying not to cringe as certain bones popped back into place painfully. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and not even the fresh breeze that floated in from the sea could make it any more appealing.
Boring, industrial buildings stretched as far as the eye could see in varying colors of black and steel, hardly standing out against the horizon of equally dull colors only punctuated by the occasional crism Empire flag. In the middle of it all was the only decently maintained and sizable buildings on the planet, where the majority of ships for the Empire were produced. It was thanks to the presence of that one building that there was even an economy here, keeping it from turning into a more dreary and wet version of Tatooine, the outlandish world it was. The sight was enough to make your stomach churn, but had nothing on the aching pain that radiated from the organ and had you mind wondering when you had eaten last. Three, four days maybe? It didn’t matter. However long it was, the meager scraps you had managed to find behind the restaurant district of the wealthy were but a distant memory. It was this very hunger that drove you from your safe space, forcing you to climb down the pipes lining the outside of the building you resided on.
The metal creaked and groaned in protest under your weight, but you didn’t give it a second though, knowing there was nothing to worry about. You had been climbing along these fixtures for years, nimble hands and feet finding the smallest of purchases as you move along with ease.
When the ground was close enough you dropped, rolling through the impact to your feet and taking shelter behind an abandoned stall as you momentarily stumbled, vision swimming and black dots dancing before you. Force, you really need to get something to eat soon. Rainwater could only fill your stomach for so long before it lost its abilities to hold you over.
Peering around the corner, your eyes scanned the narrow alleyway, looking for any sign of stormtroopers or other rough characters that would cause trouble. You were never much of a fighter, but today especially was a day you were feeling particularly weak.
‘Alright. All I need to do is slip out, grab a couple of credits, and get back. It should be fine as long as I don’t run into-’
“Well well well. Look what we have here.” Leon’s voice spoke from behind, making you cringe and berate yourself for not being more careful. This was the last thing you needed to deal with, and Leon’s sickly smooth voice only served to grate on your nerves more as you turned to face him and his three lackeys, identifying them as Sho, Everett, and Corin.None as dangerous, but all as bad tempered as their leader.
Glacial blue eyes stared from pale skin beneath his shock of blond hair, a combo that drew ladies like flies to him. Pair that with pearly white teeth and he could have been a poster boy for some prep school on Coruscant. If not for the tattooed arms and green vest that held the insignia of a ranicore tooth, marking him as one of Sozin’s many street enforcers. His kind was the one you hated most. Cocky guys who thought that just because they were someone in some gang they had power over everyone else, not giving a second thought to those they hurt, be it man, women, or child. As long as they got a nice cut at the end of the day they were fine. Despite your hate for them, by all means joining a gang was the best way to survive here. It promised food, shelter, and constant work. All you had to do was give up your own self respect and humanity in return.
“The little Jawa had finally come out from her fortress. Tell me,” He smirked as the others formed a loose circle around you, effectively caging you in. “Get anything good lately.”
You wanted to spit at him, slap that stupid smirk off his face and leave him to go crying back to his boss. But you didn’t. Instead, you took a more casual, defensive stance, ready to get away the moment you had the chance. Slapping a fake smile on your face, you cocked an eyebrow in mock teasing.
“Please. If I had anything of interest I’m sure you of all people would know.” You were getting more nervous now, keenly aware of how close Sho was getting to your current position. Far too close for your liking.
“And with the patrols increased and punishments cracking down, things have gotten harder.''
“True, but I just never know what those sticky fingers of yours may manage to pick up. Your skill has a reputation after all.” His eyes skimmed over your body, not even trying to hide the way he was practically undressing you. The slimy bastard had been pining after you for years, ever since he had watched you lift a number of things from a trooper when you were both just young teenagers. He claimed it was for your skills but it didn’t take a genius to see he was looking for something more. “Maybe you could give me a live demonstration some time.”
And there it was.
You said nothing, only pushing yourself further against the cool metal of the wall behind you in an attempt to create some sort of distance in between you. Your stomach, the traitor it was, decided that it would be the best time to voice its own opinion, letting out a loud growl of protest that didn't go unheard.
Leon’s face took on a mask of concern and sympathy, and you might have fallen for it had you not known any better. His tone took on a softer, more whispery tone, like he was speaking to a stray feline. Not that far off if you thought about it.
“You look hungry. Why don’t you come back with me. I can get everything squared away with Sozin, and I promise, I’ll take real good care of you.”
His hand extended out in invitation, strong fingers that had ended the lives of so many gently relaxed, the other crossing behind his back in a mock gentleman pose, as if he even knew what being a decent guy even started with.
“C’mon. Think about it. No more empty stomachs or fighting for every scrap. You’d even have a nice bed to lay in at the end of the day. No more sleeping on the filthy streets.”
Scoffing, you summoned the last of your confidence, brushing past him and ignoring his invitation. “I’d rather take the streets than your blood soaked sheets any day.”
That should have been it, and it would have been for anyone else on just a code of respect among those here. But Leon wasn’t known for taking no for an answer. Before you could even make it three steps his hand closed on your elbow, bringing you back closer to him. Despite all you twisting and pulling, his superior strength kept you close, breath fanning your skin as he spoke.
“Listen here, I’ve been more than kind in my advances. A saint some may even say, so you’re not going to walk away from me, understand? No your going to come back and-”
“Hey!” A shout from the end of the alleyway interrupted him, drawing all your attention as the squadron of storm troopers rounded the corner to the alley, falling in line behind their captain.”You there! What’s going on?”
At the sight of the local law enforcement and their blasters, Leon’s grip loosened a fraction. Just the smallest amount really, but enough for you to be able to slip from his grip and between Sho and Corin before they could stop you. You ignored the shouting of the officer, sprinting in the opposite direction and around the corner into the main streets of Corellia.
‘Good luck trying to find me now.’ You smirked, pulling your hood up to conceal your face as you effortlessly blended into the crowd, becoming just one of the thousands of faces that traveled through as you continued on your way. Now it was time for the real work to begin.
Just as with the seasons, your own hunting grounds changed, ever rotating through the different sectors in order to keep law enforcement off your tail. It was one of the first lessons you had ever learned; never hunt in the same spot for more than a few weeks.
Today was a fresh start in the port district, leaving an abundance of new and unaware targets. It was a popular place for travelers as well, who were especially naive, but even with that you knew today would be a challenge. It hadn’t been a lie when you told Leon that the troopers were cracking down. More patrols and increased severity of punishments had started to begin in order to ‘cut down the crime’, as your senator put it. Fat chance of that though, as one could argue that Corellia ran on crime. Still, the effort put forth was really putting the pressure on smaller people like you, who were just trying to survive, not to mention the street vendors and shop owners had installed their own new security measures in place, leading to an unfavorable combo that led to your current weak and hungry state. So you were here, looking for some oblivious fool to cop a few credits off from your perch just outside the mechanics.
As your eyes scanned the crowd, looking for visible money holders or those with liftable jewelry and other items, you saw him. He was hard to miss actually. The beskar he wore from head to toe shone proudly even without the light of the sun hidden above, speaking of its own durability and care shown by the owner. Alongside him was a pod, closed, and most likely carrying whatever supplies he had picked up from the market. The brown cape around his shoulders did nothing to hide the gun scross his broad back, nor the dozens of smaller weapons strapped to his person.
He stood tall above the crowd, most parting like water around a stone to avoid him, and it was no wonder. Even you had heard the stories about the Mandalorians. Fierce warriors and fighters who could track their prey to the ends of the galaxy. They were the best bounty hunters and hired guns on the market. You had been witness to more than one lowlife being pulled from their seat in the cantina by his kind, kicking and begging to no avail as they were carried away, dead or alive.
Teeth gnawing on inside of your cheek, you debated with yourself. On one hand, he was a high risk target, undoubtedly being used to these kinds of places and the people who lived here. Stealing from him would earn you a blaster shot to the head if caught, that is, if he were feeling merciful enough not to crush every bone in your body. But then, he was a bounty hunter. They always carried a lot of credits, and ones worth more at that. One swipe from him could set you up for days, if not weeks! He was also the only target you had seen open worth any value the entire day, and you weren’t sure you could go much longer without food.
You debated with yourself, going back and forth as you watched him grow closer to where you sat. If you didn’t make a decision soon you would lose your chance all together.
As if detecting your hesitance, your body made the decision for you, loosening another growl from its depths, prompting you forward and before you knew it you were on the move. Pulling a small guide book from your pocket, you pretended to be grossly interested in the useless thing, eyes moving to falsely skim the words as you carefully adjusted your path closer to his, threading between the crowd with as much ease as he cut through it.
The moments before were tense, each step leaving you feeling more electrified as adrenaline coursed through your body, only feeding your blind confidence as you counted down.
‘6..5...3..2..1….Now’
You pretended to stumble, tripping on your own feet as naturally as you would walk, veering from your course and bumping into the armored man. You winced slightly as your shoulder made contact with the metal, which made your grunt of pain that much more believable and distracting while your hands got to work. Like all bounty hunters, he kept his money in front of him, just slightly to the left of his leg. A tactic to prevent pickpockets like you that frequented the scenes they often found themselves in. Smart, but you had gotten used to this tactic before, and it was a simple swipe of your hand as it quickly entered and retreated the pouch, fingers closed around an unknown number of credits, all within a fraction of a second as you mumbled apologies, raising your opposite hand in distraction as your other moved to pocket your catch.
As soon as your own fingers left the pouch, you knew you were in trouble. Years of being on the streets had taught you when you had the upper hand in a situation or not, whether you were the predator or prey. In that moment, that small fraction of a moment, you went from poised victor to the most demure of prey.
And the man in front of you was the hunter.
His hand, even quicker than your own, moved to latch onto the retreating limb. The very one holding the credits you had thought had been yours.
Head snapping up to meet his, you were faced with an unfeeling gaze in the form of silver surrounding a small ‘t’ of inky darkness that prevented you from seeing his face. You tried to pull away, only to have his stern grip tighten even more, the leather of his glove squeaking in symphony along with the crackling of the joint. Yet you still refused to drop the credits, stubbornly holding onto them out of spite and fear. If he hadn’t seen them yet, there was no way he could indefinitely prove you had taken anything from him, though the way he focused on it told you he already knew the truth.
Kriffing hell. Why had you even thought this would be a good idea. He was a Mandalorian, and in your hunger driven brain you had somehow managed to convince yourself it would actually work. Well congratulations, you had the credits, but now you were as good as dead. If he didn’t decide to deal out his own justice and kill you then and there, surely he would turn you over to the stormtrooper.
The skin on your back tingles and warmed at the thought, memories of public whippings flashing in the back of your mind and doubling your heart rate and raising your panic even more.
Maybe you could still get out of this though. He was a man, as far as you could tell anyways, and all men were susceptible to one thing, hardened warrior or not. You could distract him, try to get a trade or compromise in return for forgetting about the situation. If not him then the clones. Maker knows they were always willing to pass up small crimes every once in a while in exchange for a way to sate their horniness. Though you had never tried the practice yourself, you had heard of numerous others getting off the hook that way. How hard could it be?
Your thoughts were interrupted by movement, bringing you back from your blind panic of plotting how to get out of this. The Mandalorian had tilted his head, t-visor still trained on your face as he observed you. Those around you were all too eager to ignore the situation, walking past with explicitly diverted eyes as they went about their business. The hand not holding yours moved, making you flinch back but with nowhere to go as he kept you trained in place. It moved towards your face and you braced, eyes scrunched and ready for the impact of a palm or fist making contact.
Yet, it never came.
Instead, the soft worn leather gently pressed against your face, fingers gently running along the curve of your cheek, highlighting the bone that protruded with hunger. The occasional scrape of his beskar along the skin makes you shudder, but if he even notices he doesn’t say anything, only continuing to stare as his hand tips your face every which way for him to examine. Then he just...let go. Without another word he had dropped his hands, stepping around and continuing on his original path, leaving you behind him, frozen in place and in a state of shock.
You could have stood there for any measure of time, be it seconds or minutes. Your brain was too busy trying to process what had just happened to even think about anything else. It was only when someone rudely bumped into you, almost knocking you to the ground, that you finally snapped out of it, and suddenly you were running. Feet pounding the uneven ground as you gained speed, faces flew past as little more than blurs as you continued to put more space between you and your should-have-been attacker. If it had been any other time you might have been proud of the speed you had, the burning in your lungs of little significance. Not even when you had seen Leon once again did you blink, blowing past as he called out and tried to grab you.
Before you knew it you were rounding the alley back to your little home, leaping more than climbing up the pipes with record speed as your feet barely touched the rickety metal. You practically dove into your little crate of a home, pulling the lid and locking yourself in darkness as you tried to sooth your pulse, taking deep breaths that did little to help. Absentmindedly, you began humming to yourself. A song so out of tune and unrecognizable it would have made a wookie weep, but it was what you needed as you pressed the burning and sticky skin of your forehead against the cool metal of the wall.
Eventually, after countless repetitions or the short tune, you managed to steady yourself, bringing enough sense back to realize you were still holding onto the credits from before, which were now gripped tightly in your hand. Enough to the point where the skin had turned a pearly white and your fingers hurt to move as you slowly unclenched them, revealing angry marks and even places where the rectangular currency had bit deep enough into the skin to draw blood. But oh what a beautiful sight it was.
One hundred credits laid in your fist, clustered together in a jumble of varying amounts and different kinds, but a total amount of one hundred. You normally only got this after a week of extremely successful hunting in the summer months. The sight of it now was enough to make you cry.
Despite the urge to go and get food from the nearest vendor, you knew better than to go out right away. For all you knew he had only let you go just to follow you back to your base, probably thinking he could turn you into the stormtroopers for a bigger ransom than what he lost, or loot your own place for anything you had stored up. Jokes on him if that was the plan, because he would only get back what you took from him.
The thought stayed stuck in the front of your mind, forcing you to stay tucked in your hiding space for the remainder of the day and keeping you awake through the night. Every little sound made you jump, convinced that you would once again find yourself at the receiving end of his burning gaze, the helmet he wore only masking his expression and leaving your fate uncertain. He never showed though, never ripped the lid off your container or dragged you out into the open.
By the time you managed to fall asleep, your body finally running out of its immense supply of adrenaline, the city itself had just begun to awaken below to the wee hours of the morning, and the fighters had just begun their morning rounds once again.
‘Maybe...maybe just a few hours of sleep.’ You thought to yourself, burrowing down into your small nest of blankets. What could be the harm?
Well, apparently a lot.
You had woken up in a panic, cracking the lid to see that the sky had already gone dark once again. Swearing to yourself, you emerged once again like a Nightshrike from its cave. Foregoing any normal rituals, you allowed your body to stretch itself as you moved, hustling from rooftop to rooftop, something you only did under the cover of night. The last thing you need is someone seeing you and discovering your home up top. You would never be able to get any peace after that.
You were in a rush though, and the thought of wasting a day of work didn’t bother you nearly as much as the thought of your favorite shop closing. With the amount of credits you had now, you wouldn’t have to worry about money for a while, so the only thought you had while the dim lights of the city flicked to life below was getting there as soon as possible. Who knows, maybe you’d even have enough to treat yourself to some fruit, an expensive and rare treat for anyone on the planet.
Skidding to a stop just before the end of the row, your eyes lit up at the sight of the shop still open, clearly readying to close. Shimmying back down to increasingly deserted streets, you were already drooling at the thought of biting into something and not having to wonder what it would taste like. No more than ten minutes later you were leaving, pockets now full of brick bread as the owner locked the doors behind you.
The plan was to only eat half of one on your way back, the nutrient rich and dense pastries giving you enough energy for the day in a single bite, but not even halfway back you found yourself licking the crumbs from your fingertips, hardly holding back from grabbing one of the four remaining loafs. Instead you reached into the opposite side and grabbed the meiloorun fruit you had managed to snag.
Now this was the main event.
Sinking your teeth into the soft skin, you nearly groaned as its taste exploded on your tongue, making your taste buds dance and sing as the sweetness became so intense it almost hurt. You still loved it.
Your stomach was full for the first time in forever, almost foreign as you had begun to forget the feeling. Juice dribbled down your chin as you continued on your way home, making a deliciously sticky mess to be wiped away and cleaned by your lips, intent on not letting a single morsel go to waste.
Thankfully the trip back was less eventful than your previous outing, helping instill an eerie yet calming silence over the city and prompting you to take your time.
You always enjoyed it up here on the roofs. Hardly anyone came up, not many having the same confidence and agility possessed by you and few others, and there was an ever present breeze up here that didn’t quite reach the lower levels. Not to mention the view it gave, which was one of the main reasons you had chosen a roof as your spot for a base camp. If only you could see the stars, but alas, the sight was as rare as greenery here, leaving it up to your own imagination to construct an array of bright lights on the top of your crypt.
Finishing the fruit, you paused at the edge of the building before your own. Small lights danced in the darkness, the occasional lamp illuminating a hustling figure and the street walkers that lined the corners of streets, calling to anyone in sight. The occasional search light of a patrol ship would shin above the buildings as it made its rounds over the city.
‘Must be looking for someone’ you mused, turning back to return home. No reason to get caught out tonight, especially when you were looking at a few days of relaxation.
As you turned, a familiar flash caught your eye, triggering a new taught panic response. You could hardly believe your eyes, rubbing them extra hard just to make sure you were seeing things right. But alas the sight before you neglected to change, unfortunately not a trick of the eye like you had hoped it was, and the Mandalorian you had thought you escaped the previous day continued walking down the dark alley.
You began to sweat backing away from the edge and further out of his line of sight, trying to still keep him in yours as you peered back over and tracked his progress as he got closer.
‘Kriff. I should have known he would want his money back.’
Panicking, you began going over all the escape routes near you. Ones through city street and sewers that would be much too small for him to fit through. Though, if he had tracked you here then chances were he would be able to find you wherever you went. This really wasn’t good. You might not even be able to go collect what meager possessions you had back in your box.
Then, materializing out of the darkness as if he were made of it himself, was Leon. He stepped into the path of the Mandalorian like he had no fear and, knowing how stupid he was, you thought he might actually not have any for the bounty hunter. But why would he when he was the primary enforcer for Sozin and still had his own backup, the three from earlier.
“Hey there.” He spoke in a voice that promised nothing but trouble, hands casually resting in pockets that undoubtedly concealed a weapon of some sorts. "I've been meaning to have a talk with you. The shiny Mandalorian warrior everyone is talking about."
This, you thought, was not good.
#the mandalorian#din djarin#mandalorian x reader#the mandalorian x reader#din dijarin#din dijarin x reader#x reader#star wars#fanfiction#star wars x reader#baby yoga#grogu#mando#mando x reader#boba fett#star wars fanfiction#the mandolarian
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Shroud | Calyssa
Last one. It’s arguably the best of the lot at least imo. Happy Halloween guys.
The flame cracks and roars the in the dark of the cavern, bringing heat where there otherwise is none. Even now, sitting as close to the fire as you feasibly can the icy chill is pervasive inside your unfitted armour. Your companion seems to have no such trouble, shifted well away from the heat as if it hurts her. You’re not accustomed to company down here in the nothingness; any mortal soul has a tendency to get swallowed one way or another here, whether it’s by the darkness or some monster. Indeed, you started with friends, once, now you don’t have any.
You eye the woman warily. She shows up every now and again, stomping in from out of the darkness and usually with armour bathed crimson with ichor. Indeed, when everyone else was dying around you—or leaving—she always showed up at your camp one way or another. That axe of hers, buried in the dirt once had a twin but how she lost it she never tells—one day she had two strapped to her belt, and the next it just… was gone. Your gaze drifts back to the flame and your suspicion fades. She’s become somewhat of a staple around here, really, the only source of company you’ve had for… Gods, weeks, perhaps even months. Time passes strangely here, there’s no use counting the days.
She’s quiet—always so quiet—but it’s better than being alone. At least if you get ambushed you have someone at your back.
As you stare at the calloused palms of your hands you hear the shift of rusted armour, a dragging against the dirt as your companion settles just a bit closer. Even then, you can’t see her from underneath that helmet of hers, can’t see what scars carve secret symbols into her flesh only she could understand—and you know she has scars, you do too. In this place, to have an inch of skin untarnished by a blade, or arrow, or magic is abnormal. In this place, pain is normal. You realise as she starts fiddling with her one remaining axe she’s sharpening the metal to a jagged edge, the whetstone produced from a satchel at her side overused and all but broken but you quickly realise she isn’t watching what she’s doing, no, she’s staring at you.
“May I ask you something?” Her voice feels hollow in the dark but in the moment it’s the best damn thing you’ve ever experienced you can’t help but lean into it like a caress along your cheek. She doesn’t wait for a reply, toying with the edge of her axe as if she’s tracing the rim of a teacup. “What do you hope to gain from this?”
The question floors you like a suckerpunch to the gut and you genuinely take the time to think about it because at the end of the day… you don’t know. Was it for the gold? The fame? You could have left when your last compatriot died—and by the Gods you should have—because you think your need for fortune and pretty titles died with him. Now… now you suppose you’re just curious. The spire at the center of it all looms in the distance; it’s so close now you can practically taste the answers. For all your suffering, for all the deaths, for the shroud. For every monster and friend turned mad by the ever-looming doom that makes its home down here you hope to find those reasons.
“And if you don’t find the answers you seek?” She clears her throat, “I mean, if at the end of the road all you find is an abandoned tower, what then?” Another hit, even if she doesn’t mean it, makes you bow your head. Your own fingers are toying with the blade by your side now, considering it. Would you keep going until you did? Would you turn back? You feel your heart clench, wrenching in your chest like a violent stab, stab, stabbing. You don’t have the resources to do either at this point. The tower is where you stop for better or for worse. Sucking in a breath you glance at your suddenly curious companion and try not to let the despair show. “Listen, you’re not like the others. You can just turn around—I can give you my rations, enough to get back to the surface—and you can just go.”
You have to huff out a laugh or else you might just cry. You wish it were that simple. And… also… What about her? You’re met with laughter, something bitter leaking into her tone, and bile crawls up your throat. Gloved hands clench at her axe and for one brief moment it almost sounds like your companion is hyperventilating. The laughter dies and the flame dims. It feels like an omen.
“I can’t leave.” Is all the reply you receive, then she goes quiet for a long time. Wrapping yourself up tighter in your fleece blanket you feel an icy breeze buffeting your cheeks. Eventually she mutters, “And if you do find the answers, you won’t be able to get back. And… if you die before you even get to the spire?” Then you’re dead. It’s the end of the road for you anyway. What’s one more death in a cavern of murder anyway? “I’m sure you have people who—” The platitudes fall from her tongue and she simply shakes her head. “I… don’t know if you have people on the surface. I can only wish you luck.” You thank her.
And you’re both silent until she leaves before the flame truly dies.
You don’t see her for some time after that. You fight through the darkness towards the spire and with each passing moment, each passing hour or day or week, you get closer and closer to the spire and what it contains within. Yet she never appears. At some point you sit yourself down and resign yourself to her death. You mourn in only the way you can down here; it’s private and it’s quiet, and you never shed tears. And then you slaughter the creature that sneaks up behind you, drawn to your camp by the flame that keeps you warm.
You move on. And eventually you’re at the entrance to the tower. It’s silent, only the distant drip, drip, drip of water splashing onto the ground from up high somewhere. A sprawling staircase leads up to other floors, but there are no rooms, no offshoots to other areas that might give you some clue as to why it’s here. No, there’s only up. And so you heed the call. The stairs go up, and up, and up for Gods know how long, yet you don’t tire, you don’t get hungry. You just… keep going. There are no floors to explore only the staircase and its path, some parts are crumbling to dust, leaving you with gaps to jump to just to reach further. If you feel, if you make a mistake, you will die from this height.
Only when you do begin to tire do you seem to make it to the second floor, the final floor, and you’re met with nothing. Nothing, that is, except a familiar set of armour and an axe at its side. Fat droplets of water fall from the ceiling and create a puddle, cutting the tension with its grating sound. For some reason it’s bubbling. “I told you to leave,” The woman murmurs, sounding as weary as you do in your soul. She’s not facing you, but her helmet is off and atop her head are messy brown waves. You ask her if she’s alright. She doesn’t respond. “Do you even understand why this place exists?” You don’t answer, just to see if she responds then. She doesn’t, just continues on. “Do you even understand what it’s like to dedicate yourself to someone, to sacrifice yourself to someone only to find out the sacrifice was in vain?” Finally she turns and it’s then you realise why she kept that helmet on. She wasn’t a soldier or someone who came with you, or even a veteran fighter, no, this woman is undead.
She was your enemy all along.
Her grip tightens on her axe and that bitterness from the last time you shared a fire together leaks through and into that torn ragged face. It’s all messy flesh and bone, no evidence of the once-human inside the shell of a body that keeps on walking. Just anger. Just bitterness. Just… sorrow. The puddle has started to coalesce into a solid shape, something rising from the thin surface like an island on the sea. Eventually it forms into a… figure. A woman bathed in silk, and she steps towards your past camp companion and wraps her watery embrace around her. There’s a veil that obscures her own face, the dress dragging across the ground as if she can even touch it.
“I’m sorry.” The armoured woman mutters, and stiffens as you ask her why she’s even doing this. Shaking her head, she takes out her axe and flexes her gloved hand. “Because I am compelled. Farewell, traveler. I enjoyed our time together.”
And with that the woman and her specter lunges.
#Calyssa#short#lmao i never have and never will know how to make a proper name#Rott#rott game#regrets of the traitor game#interactive fiction
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HEY do you maybe have like an oc page or could you tell me something about all your ocs because i'm Interested and you have my full attention :eyes:
AHSJDKGLHL that's so sweet i'm nfjghl???? i don't have an oc page bc i'm the embodiment of an old man being given an iphone after 50 years of using a rotary phone but !!! i can yell abt them a bit aaa thank you for asking abt them 🥺🥺💚
i put everything under the cut bc dear god i have a lot to say abt my kids and i'm not gonna make everyone scroll through that HHHHHH haw 🤠🤠
elliot fletcher
- he's my deputy in fc5!! he's from waverly in iowa and he's just...very tired nfjfkhl give my poor man a break
- everytime his radio crackles he ages 10 years and if it's john talking add another 10 years
- he keeps the three heralds alive but he doesn't care abt joseph <3
- gets in trouble bc he's impulsive af nfjghl when jacob is close to the cage?? ram his face in the bars. when john leans like rlly close in the confession scene?? headbutt 😌🙏🏼
- the only people who know abt his past are earl, grace, faith and john, the rest just kinda speculate and elliot lets them believe what they want bc not only does he rlly not want ppl to know the actual truth, it's also very funny to listen to the stuff they can come up with
- speaking of faith he often seeks her for advice and sometimes they get high together and he gets teary eyed bc she's just... very nice to him and when all you see everyday is violence it's overwhelming to be shown a little bit of kindness 🥲🙏🏼
- he's in love with john but also he'd kick him across the county if he could but also he'd give his life for him
- after the bombs and all he unlocks his final form and becomes A Husband™, complete with a beard, a scarf and bad jokes that make john want to officially marry him so he can divorce his ass
- fun fact i came up with the name elliot fletcher bc i thought it sounded neat but recently i found out there's a trans actor called elliot fletcher too??? like what were the odds ngl that's so cool
carter quill
- this is my character in the marvel dnd game my brother is dming!!
- his parents are peter quill and kitty pryde and he inherited his mom's powers (so he can become immaterial and stuff uwu) and his dad's tiny pebble brain~
- he grew up on a ship with the guardians so his family is just... a bunch of uncles, one of which is a tree
- he's part of an initiative called the peacekeepers with isaaq cage (luke cage's and jessica jones' son), finneas "zorn" reeves (brock rumlow's and sinthea shmidt's son), lu "highway star" khan (the mandarin's son), alexis "hex" pythagoras (doctor strange's protégé) and ev-lin (ronan the destroyer's daughter who also happens to be carter's bully when they were 11 HHHHHH)
- everyone agrees that carter is just... a puppy. a little labrador. so overexcited. head empty. he doesn't know what's going on but he's having fun with his friends and that's what matters <3
- he died once and went to hell for like 66 years bc he held a bomb while it was exploding but he got better and he doesn't remember most of his time in hell but also he's a lil traumatised
- he wears cute skirts sometimes and also froggie themed clothes 🥰🥰 he's terrible at applying nail polish and it ends up smudged most of the time bc he can't sit still for more than two minutes without going insane but he still likes it
- he has a pet bird called ink!! he thought it was a nice name bc his last name is quill so u know,,, ink,,, quill,,,, he inherited his dad's terrible humor also
- he's fruity and has a big fat crush on one of his teammates 😳😳👉🏼👈🏼
- he strictly refuses to kill, so he uses stunt energy guns and a three section staff to fight!! he accidentally killed someone once and threw up
- he knows asl and is fluent in it!! he's also very bad at reading measurements when cooking (and reading in general) so he relies on their proto-ai, dadji, to help him cook and he listens to audiobooks a lot!!
- idk what else to say abt him except like two games ago he was in the hospital bc lu got hurt and he wanted to get him muffins from a coffee shop across the streets but he panicked when faced with the selection so he bought one of each and came back to the hospital room with like,,,, twenty muffins
- i found this pic of his face claim and it honestly just radiates his vibe so here have it
thorgran galvish
- he's my dwarf enchanter from another homebrew dnd game!! in this universe (and maybe others idk shit abt actual dnd HHHH forgive me) enchanter dwarves are lowkey enslaved bc of their rare link with magic
- thorgran blew up a wall and ran away to the surface so now he's a fugitive and he's constantly on the run uwu trust issues ensue
- he loves the sky so much?? especially at night?? he knows abt constellations, but he thinks they're just whatever you see in the stars and doesn't know there are like,,, actual constellations so he sits on the roof of a tall building sometimes and finds his own constellations
- he also tries to draw them but he rlly sucks at it aslkdsgl that doesn't stop him from filling his journal with little stars and drawings!!
- during my very first game with him he found his rival, who turned out to be a 16 years old teenager?? millennial/gen z rivalry
- agh i don't have much abt him yet bc i've only just started to play him but he's my beefiest boy and also a dilf 🥰🥰
theadric "elder" montajay
- yet another character from the same universe as thorgran, but this time it's a funky little halfling bard
- his instrument is the violin!! he tried every other instrument and his mom was very supportive despite how bad he was at all of them. his community was raided and his father died, so he inherited his violin and that turned out to be the only instrument he could play
- took his love of the economy to the next level when he decided to fuck every gang leader he could find to control their operations and ruin their organizations so the money they hoarded could be put back in circulation
- accidentally fell in love with a half-orc gang leader and was abt to tell him the truth abt what he was doing but was exposed by the first person he'd cheated so he had to run without explaining himself to his lover smh ://
- "i don't wanna fall in the slutty bard cliché," i say before immediately giving elder the tightest leather pants and opening his shirt to show his majestic chest hair.
- surprisingly good with kids?? anyone younger than him who looks sad becomes His Child and he turns into a lil mama, tasting the food of an inn first to assure it's not poisoned, giving hugs, soft shit like that ngl he's just a mom 😔😔
- we abandoned the game he was in but we left off when he'd just escaped a dwarven prison with his new child and others owo anyway slutty bard with chest hair?? that's just the witcher's jaskier
scylla
- my gay pirate lady!! i don't have much abt her either bc AAA BRAINROT but !!! i still love her very much
- she's a hybrid between a human and a psaarinch (fish folks in our homebrew universe uwu) and she looks very human except she has like shark abilities?? she can smell blood, taste with her skin, breathe underwater for like two hours or smth, sharper teeth,,
- she started off as a privateer but like what was the kingdom gonna do?? track her down to make sure everything she did was legal?? nah man she got that sweet fleet and became a pirate
- she beats men up in inns and gives their wives a good time <3
- she's very close to her crew and they're kinda just a big family
- she fights with those s-shaped staffs?? but they're actually blades ngfhl she's very agile and looks like she's dancing when she's actually fighting
- fun fact she's my second shark oc the first one was called maito and she was a yellow lantern in a dc game we did (the main difference between them is that maito loved men while scylla is very much a lesbian 😌🙏🏼)
i have like so many more of them but that's already such a long post and i don't wanna do too much NGL if u wanna know more hmu i'll yell some more 😎😎🙏🏼🙏🏼
#thanks so much for asking abt my ocs man wha t#i'm still like terrified of posting abt my ocs bc :)) but i love talking abt them!! esp elliot and carter they're rlly my bestest boys the#my ocs: elliot fletcher#my ocs: carter quill#my ocs: thorgran galvish#my ocs: elder#my ocs: scylla#god i wanna rant abt my inquisitor too i ???? okay#better luck next time!! my brain is on fire#might fuck around and post abt him soon anyway hehe#nuclearvessel#answered;#i'm gonna queue this bc i'm genuinely scared of posting it HHHH#i tried the new tumblr editor thing it better work or i'll shove an entire wii remote up my ass#i literally have so much to say abt carter it's actually insane
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Freshman Fatties: Chapter 6
Shortly after the boys’ button-popping dinner, word began to spread about Andy’s weight gain. All the athletes were gossiping about how the school’s star quarter back had turned into a fat slob and was supposedly fucking his gay roommate. Word even spread into Benjamin’s inner circle, who had known about the relationship all along but were growing concerned about the boys’ weight. Andy grew self-conscious and began skipping class to avoid going out in public, preferring to stay inside and eat his feelings. Not surprisingly, he continued to pile on the weight at an astronomical level with Benjamin not far behind.
By the end of March, it was official. Andy had been kicked off the team. It was rather scandalous and rumors implied homophobia was involved. However, once Benjamin’s rather wealthy parents caught wind of the story they intervened. They pledged to fund the rest of Andy’s college career, football or not. The former jock was now free to pursue his interest in literature and leave the world of college sports behind. He felt relieved, but still insecure about his weight.
“Are you sure you like me like this?” He asked Benjamin one day. “I mean look at this gut. It’s covered in stretch marks, I can’t even see my cock. I have to sit down to pee.”
“Honey, I think you’re beautiful inside and out. I’m in love with who you are, not what you look like. Besides, you see how fast I get hard for that big fat belly.”
“I know, I know. It just takes getting used to I guess. I’m three hundred twenty pounds now. I never imagined I’d weigh that much. I mean christ, I break a sweat bending over nowadays.”
“Well look at me! At two fifteen I think I can kiss my twink days goodbye! Every part of me is fat now, and the last fifteen pounds went straight to my gut. It’s never stuck out like this before.”
“Your gut and your ass,” Andy grinned. “As long as that keeps growing along with the rest of you then I’m satisfied.”
“It doesn’t seem to be stopping. You’ve really rubbed off on me you know. I was skinny all my life.”
“God I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen. I don’t know how I got to this place.”
“Hey! You got here because you love food and I love you. You’re so fucking fat and sexy. You know it’s really turned me on watching you grow like this? It’s so great.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You know, if I’m being honest… I’ve kinda enjoyed it too. Part of me likes being the fat guy in the room, my belly commanding space and attention. And it feels soooo good when we’re fucking. Feeling your fat slap against mine, like fuck. That’s sex. That’s it.”
“You really feel that way?” Benjamin asked.
“Yeah, I really think I do.”
“You know, maybe we should intentionally try to get fatter. You know, like push ourselves more than usual.”
Andy sat in silence for a moment before exclaiming, “fuck yeah! Let’s get properly plump.”
The boys decided to challenge each other to ten pounds in one week, knowing it was next to impossible. No harm in falling short they wagered, every pound gained together was worth it. So they began to pig out at levels previously unheard of for them. Chinese takeout, pizza, and milkshakes with weight gain powder defined their week of unbridled gluttony. They only left the dorm to go to class or get food. Otherwise, they were naked, fucking, or eating.
They began chugging cartons of whole cream before bed. Both were completely bloated at all times of the day, prone to sweating and sleepiness from the constant supply of food. Andy’s heartburn had begun to flare up but they powered through it with Tums. Benjamin had grown intensely uncomfortable in his own body with the sensation of constant bloat and digestion. His belly had also become intensely itchy as new stretch marks began to settle in.
Although both Andy and Benjamin would go to gym a few times a week, they decided to abandon it altogether during their week of gluttony. They had to use every moment for maximum gains. Most everyone else in the dorm had begun to take notice to the fact that the two fat gay boys seemed to be in a constant food hangover, their bellies always gurgling and their shirts constantly riding up.
By the time the week drew to a close both were exhausted and frankly ready to go back to normal. Although they enjoyed eating and were turned on by all the fat play, it had become uncomfortable and expensive to maintain that level of consumption. Sure enough, though, their efforts paid off. Andy gained eleven pounds by the end of the week. Surprising both of them, Benjamin outpaced the former football player at a whopping fifteen pounds gained in one week.
Their successful stuffing was certainly evident. Andy’s gut began to droop out of most of his shirts and for the first time his massive pecs softened up considerably. More than ever his former life as a jock was disappearing under all the chub. Benjamin’s body exploded in all directions. He had a juicy layer of padding over every inch of his body, and had finally grown a proper paunch that hung over his waistband.
Of course, Benjamin’s ass grew as well. Two massive fluffy cakes bounced behind him wherever he went. When he sat down, the fat from his ass formed a fat roll that extended across his legs and down into the fat pad above his crotch. For the first time he had a signifcant FUPA and he could not stop playing with it, loving the way his erect cock would cause it to squish sideways.
In addition, his underwear could simply no longer contain his ass. The waistband stopped three quarters of the way up his cheeks and the fabric used in the seat left little room for his junk in the front. He felt positively restricted. Due to the discomfort, Benjamin began to forgo underwear altogether. It was much more comfortable to let his fat ass, juicy FUPA, and cock and balls bounce around his joggers now.
Both boys appetites evened out to slow and steady gains after their week of fun, but their libidos skyrocketed. They couldn’t get enough of each other’s chubby bodies, soft rolls, and sweaty bouncy curves. They were fucking every chance they got. Constantly aroused by the newness of their weight gain, they would sometimes even meet up on campus to suck each other off in the bathroom. Whenever one of them was overcome with desire, the other would help relieve it, even if it was just through FaceTime. They were embroiled in their own little world of eating and sex.
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My Girl Series: Chapter 9 - Bambi
…in which the little girl next door isn’t so little anymore.
Series description: Y/N falls in love with the older boy next door who doesn’t feel the same, years later they meet again at a funeral.
AU: actor!harry, older!harry, younger!y/n; (4-year age gap)
Chapter 8: Without The Love - Harry wants what he shouldn’t, and now he cannot leave.
Warning: smut (yes guys, finally), and also mistakes because my eyesight got blurry after going through 7k words lmao.
wattpad link
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"But boys don't like little girls."
"That's not true. I'm a boy and I like you."
"You do?!"
"Of course I do. You're my girl."
With a faint smile, fifteen-year-old Harry headed back to his front porch. He thought about the look on Y/N's face when he called her his girl, oh how happy she must've felt, and that made him feel special too. As the boy sat back down with his study group, his eyes still followed the girl until she was finally out of sight.
"Are you dating an eleven-year-old?" The fat kid named Brian said, pulling Harry's attention back to the skeptical stares everyone in the circle was giving him. They all cracked up at that one question, causing the poor boy to shift uncomfortably in his spot.
"She's just my neighbor," he said, but nobody seemed convinced.
"I think she has a crush on you," said the pretty blonde sitting right in front of him. When she pressed her lips into a smile, Harry swore that his heart might've just skipped a beat.
Her name was Kathy — the most beautiful girl in school. Earlier that year, there had been rumors going around that she secretly liked Harry a lot, but she hadn't found the courage to ask him out yet. And frankly, who wouldn't want to receive attention from such a beautiful girl? So when she assumed that his little friend might have a crush on him, he couldn't let her believe that was true, not even for a second.
"I think she only sees me as her big brother," he reassured Kathy.
Another smile formed on her lips as she combed her fingers through her golden locks.
"Trust me, I know when a girl likes a boy," she said, batting her eyelashes at Harry, who could only hope it wasn't obvious how red he had become.
"Dude," another kid spoke up, gaining everyone's attention at once, but he was only talking to Harry. "That kid was so excited to tell you about her first period. Talk about being obsessive! I can see her hanging your photos everywhere in her bedroom."
Everyone burst out laughing at what that boy had just said, everyone including his crush. So even though Harry didn't find any humor in the mean joke, he cracked a nervous grin. He felt so guilty afterwards though; if his Bambi had been there and they had said those words to her face, he might've reacted differently. But she wasn't there, Kathy was, leaving him no other choice but to play along.
When Harry looked up and met Kathy's blue eyes, she gave him a shrug as if to tell him to just ignore his friends. But how could he when they were all laughing at him? For a teenage boy, having a good reputation mattered a lot; and without a doubt, having a lot of friends was more important than having a real one. So those simple words the other kids had said caused him to overthink for the rest of the day. And from that day, the way he saw his little neighbor had also changed.
All of a sudden, he felt like it was inappropriate for a fifteen-year-old to spend that much time with an eleven-year-old. First off, people would make fun of him. Second, girls like Kathy would assume he wasn't mature enough for them. It was such a shame that both of those reasons were about him, and not Y/N. He didn't bother to think about how it would make her feel when he decided to keep his distance with her.
At that point, Harry didn't know how much he would regret it later on.
.
.
.
Checking his watch for the third time or so, Harry leaned back against the car, sighing as he looked up. He tried to find the window on the fifth floor that was Y/N's bedroom only to see if her light was on. It showed just how impatient he was getting. Fifteen minutes more and he began to fear that she might've forgotten about their "date" to the musical. So he decided to send a quick text to make sure she remembered. It didn't take more than a second for the word seen to appear and three dots to pop up in the chat box.
⌲ Bambi: The show starts at 9. It's only 7PM now?
Shit. He thought to himself and quickly opened the photo of the tickets she'd sent. She was right. He was too excited to see her that he thought the show started one hour earlier. Embarrassed, Harry quickly wrote her another text.
⌲ Sorry. But I'm here anyway so can I come up?
⌲ Bambi: Wait. I'll be right down with you.
⌲ Bambi: Btw, park your car somewhere. We'll walk.
Y/N suggested that they go for a drink first and then to the theater. He hadn't seen her so excited in a long time, she talked and laughed a lot. It wasn't her everyday personality but he thought he liked that side of her, he liked it a lot.
They walked side by side, two meters apart, him having both hands in his pockets and her with her arms folded to hold onto herself. Those defensive gestures might keep them from running into each other's embrace, yet it didn't stop their thoughts from wandering way too far from reality. He took a glance at her and turned away as she did the same. They had been walking for five minutes without exchanging a single word, and the silence had become way too suffocating.
"Why is this street so dark?" Harry finally spoke as he looked around and realized there was no one else but the two of them. The moon was nowhere to be seen, and the only source of light there was a dim streetlamp which went on and off every second.
Harry had checked the weather forecast before leaving his house and it said there was a 70% chance of rain that night. No wonder the stars in the sky were nonexistent, same as the moon, they were all hidden under thick blankets of dark clouds.
Not answering Harry's question, Y/N walked fast forward, taking a turn into an alley as she nodded her head, giving him signal to hurry along. She told him they couldn't take the direct route to the bar because it would be suicidal to walk down the street together at London's most busy hour. When they went out for dinner with her father and Marcy, they had tried to be as lowkey as they could've, but somehow still ran into his fans. This time, they had to be even more secretive, though it was admittedly tiring to literally hide in the dark.
"Do you always walk that far when you're out with a girl?" Y/N pointed out, making Harry realize he was keeping a considerable distance from her.
"Yeah, well, I don't even hold hands on a date unless it's for PR."
"Sucks to be you." She laughed. But he agreed. It sucked to be him sometimes.
In silence, Harry followed the girl as they walked along the rough cobbled road that caused his feet to ache. The abandoned blocks on both sides were tight together and loomed over the pair, creating an illusion that the alleyway was longer and more narrow than it actually was. The sounds of their footsteps ricochetted from one wall to the other, somehow causing his heart to beat in sync with his steady paces.
In the half light of the alley, his Bambi appeared so small. To answer the question in his head, she broke the silence, "I don't usually take this route when I go out alone at night."
"Good." He breathed out a heavy chuckle, feeling relieved. "I meant to ask."
They carried on walking, taking a few more turns. All those narrow streets looked almost the same, all dark and grey, causing Harry to think if Y/N had left him there to walk back on his own, he would've spent the rest of his life searching for the way out.
"We're almost there," she assured him.
Soon he noticed the yellow beams of the only lamppost ahead, and Y/N sighed in relief as she pointed to the metal door at the end of the road, saying that was the back entrance of the bar. She walked in without hesitation, pulling Harry along, so he assumed she had been there plenty of times before.
The place was hundreds of conversations told in loud voices, all mixed up with the loud rock song blasting on the speaker which nobody really paid attention to. Y/N made her way through the sweaty bodies, making sure her fingers stayed locked around Harry's wrist as they headed straight towards the counter to order some drinks.
"Andrew!"
"Little girl!" The big fat bartender laughed loudly when he spotted her face in the crowd. "I can hardly recognize you when you're sober."
Y/N rolled her eyes as she huffed and pulled a chair to sit down, telling Harry to do the same. It took the actor a moment to figure out why Andrew and everything there looked so familiar. That was the same bar he'd come to pick her up when she was shit-faced on that counter and threw up all over his shoes. He opened his mouth to speak, yet was interrupted by the loud bearded man.
"Glad to see you two back together again," said the man while looking at Harry. "The last time you broke up, she literally turned my bar into her second home."
"But we never dated."
"Don't fool me, little girl." Andrew scoffed, pointing a finger at Y/N. "If your pretty boyfriend hadn't come save your ass, I would've tossed you out on the street that night."
Harry and Y/N exchanged funny looks in silence. Instead of trying to explain, they just let Andrew believe what he wanted to believe and ordered a pint of beer for each.
Most of the people at that bar were blue-collar workers and middle-aged men who'd had too much to drink to remember who they were, let alone recognize movie star Harry Styles sitting just a few feet away from them. For the first time in the longest time, Harry finally felt like he was invisible and he actually loved the feeling of it. It seemed like Y/N was the only one there who knew him, and he felt free to drink as much as he liked and laughed as hard as he wanted. They sat and talked about life, his movies, her job at the library, and many other things that mattered to them. Then it was finally 8:30, they paid for the drinks and said goodbye to Andrew so as to get to the show on time.
Once again, the pair took the same dark route they had before, but this time instead of walking far apart, she had her arm around his waist and his on her shoulders. They were singing random songs out loud, knowing the only creatures they might disturb on that abandoned street were the rats and cockroaches in the sewers. But their ignorance didn't get to last for too long. As they took the final turn to get back to the main street, Harry immediately spotted a familiar face.
Under the lamppost stood a man, tall and slim, with a cigarette between his lips. He was too busy talking on the phone with someone to notice them. So Harry grabbed Y/N by the arms and pulled her back into the dark alleyway. She intended to ask when he pressed her against the wall, but with a finger to his lips, he signaled her to stay silent. Slowly, he poked his head out to check on the stranger, making Y/N frown in confusion.
"That man out there works for an online magazine that write gossip about celebrities," he whispered, now turning back to her, one hand resting on the wall by her head, the other on her neck. "Maybe we should wait a bit for him to leave. Can't let him see us together."
Y/N pressed her lips into a firm line, nodding her head to let him know she got it. She fought him a lot, so it was nice to see her listen to him even just for once. And she looked too cute for him to feel unfortunate that they got stuck in that situation.
For a moment, he got lost in the hues of her eyes. He told himself to stay calm, still couldn't fight the urge to caress her lips with his thumb. He thought about chewing on them if she would just let him kiss her. But knowing her, he didn't have much hope for getting a taste of those lips anytime soon.
Just as a drop of crystal-clear water appeared on his skin, Harry quickly lifted both hands above Y/N's head to shield her from the raindrops coming down. She gave him a smile, as if the thought of a rain excited her as it used to when she was a child. He watched her beam grow, unable to stop one from forming upon his face. However, the drops became heavier really soon. Harry poked his head out of the alleyway once again, but the annoying reporter was still standing there because he was safe with the roof above his head. Harry sighed in frustration, but Y/N only giggled. The sound of her laugh eased his mind as he stepped closer, almost sandwiching her between his body and the brick wall so the rain couldn't drench all of her, at least not as much as it was doing to him.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled, their faces so close that even with the sound thunder, he could still hear her breath get caught in her throat. Y/N cupped his face, wiping the wet strands out of his forehead. Her eyelids flutter as she stared at the droplets running down his pink lips.
"Why are you sorry?" She asked, laughing nervously when her body shivered from the cold. Even though it was pointless at this point to shield her from the downpour, Harry still kept one arm above her head, his other tightened the grip on her waist.
"I ruined our date."
"Our date?"
"Oh, fuck...I mean..." He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head and laughing lowly. "Shit. Never mind."
Y/N said nothing. The girl couldn't come up with anything to speak so she pulled him in. The water ran down their faces to where their lips collided. Neither seemed to care as they tasted the cold drops against the tips of their tongues. Harry pushed his lips in more firmly, and the intoxicating wave running through him caused his head to spin in circles. There was something so heavenly about a kiss in the rain, a tender yet intense moment that just wouldn't wait. The couple melted into each other, letting the water soak through to chill their skin, like a rebellion act against nature.
The universe could bring the storm, but the sunshine within could come through just as strong.
.
.
.
When Harry pulled his car over in front of his house, his first instinct was to look up at the highest window next door to check if Y/N had gone to bed yet. It was almost midnight then but he could still see her shadow pacing back and forth inside her room, and so he assumed she must've waited until the last minute to prepare for an exam again.
"What is it?" Spoke the girl sitting in the passenger seat, as she leaned over to see what her date was looking at, and why he was smiling. Harry just straight off told Kathy that it was nothing, and got out to come open the door for her. His mum was already asleep, so he asked Kathy to be quiet as he took her hand and led her into his house. The teenagers headed straight to the backyard, where they could be alone and didn't have to worry about waking up Anne.
Turning on the fairy lights on the porch, Harry set up two chairs looking out to the garden, and asked his date to sit down with him. But that wasn't what Kathy had in mind. Her attention was on something else. With a smile she pointed to the big tree standing right by the fence, and asked him, "is that your treehouse?"
"Yeah. My dad built it," he answered.
Harry almost included 'before he left', but he didn't think Kathy was ready to hear about his family drama when it was just their first date.
"Let's go up there."
"Go up there?" Harry widened his eyes at her suggestion, yet the girl already seemed so excited.
"Yeah. I wanna see your treehouse." She giggled and leaned in to study his facial expression, probably wondering why he seemed so unsure. "Do you have secrets that you don't want me to know?" Kathy joked, laughing slightly, but Harry only shook his head as a response. "Or am I not special enough?"
"You are, you are special," he said fast, laughing nervously.
Without a doubt, he liked Kathy very much. He would be insane if he didn't, because she was the definition of perfect. She was beautiful, and sweet, and smart, like the main girl in those romantic movies he'd watched and books he'd read. And to have someone popular and pretty like her as a girlfriend was certainly a dream come true. However, nobody else had entered that treehouse but him and Y/N. It wasn't just his treehouse, it was theirs. So even though Y/N was studying in her room and wouldn't be able to see him bring Kathy to their fort, he felt guilty about it still.
"I'm too exhausted to climb all the way up there," he lied. But Kathy just breathed out a laugh and took his wrist as she told him he was just lazy.
"Come on, Harry. Let's go," she urged him, pulling the boy with her before he could come up with another way to say no. And Harry didn't make an effort to stop her then. He let her get on the robe ladder first and followed right after to make sure she didn't fall. When they finally got up there, he switched on the lightbulb and stepped aside for his date to enter the world that was initially just his and Y/N's.
"Wow, 'do not enter'. Trying to be badass, huh?" Kathy giggled as she read the messy handwriting on the door. Little did she know, it wasn't Harry's.
The girl took a look around the tiny space, observing every little corner that belonged to her date's childhood, everything that used to matter a lot, or still mattered to him. It didn't take her too long to spot four simple words carved onto the back entrance.
"Y/N and Harry only?" She squinted her eyes, and turned to give Harry a questioning look. "Is Y/N that little girl who lives next door to you?"
"Yup." He shrugged, shoving both hands into his pants pockets. "This used to be our treehouse."
Used to. Harry couldn't believe he'd said that. If Y/N was there, she would be so upset, and the thought of it made him feel terrible.
"Our?" Kathy playfully stuck out her bottom lip, pouting as she said, "so I'm not the first girl you brought here?"
"She's just a kid." He chuckled, shaking his head, and the smile soon returned to Kathy's face. Slowly, she walked up to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and Harry felt his heart racing faster as his arms finally tightened around her small waist. Their foreheads rested against each other; and he let himself get carried away by the deep blue of her eyes.
"Sit. I have something for you." He sat down on the floor, pulling her down with him and reached out to grab the dusty guitar he'd left in the corner for too long. The last time he picked it up was when his Bambi asked him to play her a song. Of course he didn't mention it to Kathy, so the girl assumed she was the first and only girl he'd ever sung to.
The sad truth was, she wasn't even his first love, or even his love. She was just a girl he had a crush on at seventeen, the age at which not everyone could tell the difference between love and physical attraction. Harry and Kathy had their first kiss that night in the treehouse, but a few months later, they called it off because their feelings just weren't the same anymore. After the breakup, they never spoke to each other again, and it didn't take Harry too long to erase most memories he had with her.
But somehow, he couldn't do the same to the little girl he had abandoned.
.
.
.
The rain came in waves, splattering across the pavement and beating down on every hard surface. Soon the entire city had been hidden by silver sheets of water. As pedestrians dashed for cover, the hiss of car tires on glistening roads was competing with the wild howling of the wind. The scene was pure madness. But right there, in Harry's car, was the opposite of what was happening outside in the pouring rain.
He kissed her and the world fell away. Their heavy breaths had fogged up all the windows, obscuring the movements of two soaked body in the backseat of the steamy vehicle. She was sitting on his lap, grinding against the hard bulge under his wet jeans, earning a heavy groan that got stuck in his throat when he tossed his head back. His fingers pressed hard onto the exposed skin above the waistband of her tennis skirt.
"That man took too long to leave," she moaned into his mouth, hands hiking up his shirt as she was desperate for some skin contact. The thin fabric of her panties didn't really do its job because he could feel her heat burning through all those layers and knew she wasn't just dripping from the rain. It was killing him to not tear off her clothes and take her right there. He desperately wanted to, he knew she wanted him to. His mind tried to reason with him that once they'd had sex, they could never go back. But now she was moaning his name non-stop as he was sucking on her neck, it was impossible for them to stop at this point.
"We can't...not here." His breath hitched up as he clung to her hips, trying to push her away, but she grasped his neck harder, forcing him to open his eyes and look into hers. The look she was giving him could melt him into the puddle that had already formed on the leather seat because of their drenched clothes.
"Want you now," she begged, hot mouth sucking the spot right below his ear, causing him to moan out, and the sound to Y/N was just like a ballad made from heaven.
"Bambi-" She cut him off by kissing his lips. He kissed back, both hands moving to her neck and hair.
"Want you to fuck me," she whispered, pouting like a little girl, but now he knew she wasn't one anymore. "Don't you want that? To fuck me?"
"I do, fuck, I do." Harry loved and hated her dirty mouth at the same time, but he still managed to use a fraction of self-control he'd got left to reason with her, as well as himself.
"Just...don't want our first time to...god...to be like this. Not here." He tossed his head back when she kissed his jawline, neck, and collarbone. "Let's get you home." He shook his head, one arm squeezing her torso, but she only kissed him harder, leaving him breathless. "Baby, be good."
Y/N's lips curved into a smile as she heard that nickname. That was the first time he'd ever called her "baby" and she almost begged him to never stop repeating that word.
"Shh." She brought her finger up to his lips and kissed them again, before pulling away a bit so she wouldn't forget to breathe. "Don't worry about me. I've done this before."
"Fuck. No need to remind me that." He released a rough groan when she bit his earlobe, trying not to think about all the other men who had felt what he was feeling then. Their breathing then became rough and fast as she tugged on his shirt, and finally pulling it over his head to do the same to her sweater. She didn't have her bra on, so Harry's eyes nearly fell out when he saw her bare chest for the first time.
There was a vulnerability in Y/N's eyes as she felt him gazing at her naked form. With that look on his face, it almost felt like Harry had just seen a woman's breasts for the first time in his life, so she couldn't help but giggle lowly. His eyes didn't linger too long there, just enough for her to know how beautiful she was to him. She was literally trembling when she took his hand and placed it on one breast. He squeezed it gently, feeling the softness of her skin which was turning warm under his palm. One hand at the back of his neck, she urged his face down. Soon he opened his mouth and gently suckled, causing his name to spill out from her mouth, mixing up with wet moans that got his jeans tightened even more.
She was his drug. All it took was one touch and the intoxication was instant. Her scent became more prominent in the tiny space of his backseat and the fragranced hot air got all the blood in his body rushing to one body part.
Before they knew how it happened, they were both naked and their bodies were moving softly together as if they were one. Their tongues entwined in a sloppy kiss when he was finally inside, changing her breathing with every hard thrust as if her moans fueled him to go harder and deeper.
"No...don't...Bambi, look at me." He held her face to demand eye contact, not slowing down as she begged him not to. She struggled to keep her eyes open but never gave into the temptation to get carried away all at once. He watched her face twist with pleasure as his lips parted, hands guiding her hip to move her faster ontop of him.
"Feels good."
"Yea—Yeah? " He furrowed his brows as she did the same, clutching his hair a bit tighter.
"More." She moaned, nodding fast, not to look anywhere else but his green eyes.
"Such a good girl for me. Almost there, baby. C'mon," he coaxed her, capturing her mouth with his own and she caught him by surprise by nipping his bottom lip between her teeth. He was weak for her, entirely defeated under her. If she wanted him to beg, he would, as long as she promised to never stop until they both came undone.
When it happened, Y/N almost forgot how to breathe. She slammed one hand against the foggy window on her side, arching her back when he pounded into her. She couldn't care less if her scream could break the glass as she tossed her head back and dug her nails into his back. Harry released into the condom just a few seconds after her as he finally slowed down and kissed her hard on the lips. The stayed there, panting until they caught our breaths, sweaty foreheads against one another.
It was insane how they managed to get back to her flat, let alone strip each other down again once they had entered the living room. This time, he took her hard against her bedroom wall, still in their dripping clothes, too aroused to care or even make it to the bed. After the third orgasm that followed right after her second, Harry had to catch Y/N's limb body before she collapsed and carried her to the shower. They just stood there leaning onto each other for support, her head on his chest as he washed her hair, letting the warm water run down their flushed skin to wash the rain water, sweat, and the smell of sex all down the drain.
It wasn't until they had returned to the bedroom and began drying off that realization sank back in for both. They just stood there, staring at one another in silent. Harry had only a towel wrapped around his waist now that his clothes were all wet. And Y/N was wearing just a t-shirt big and long enough to look like a dress on her. The feeling was strange, yet new, and exciting.
It was Y/N who took the first steps forward, closing the distance between them two to hug him tight. Without saying a word, he did the same, sniffing in the apple scent of her still soaked hair.
"Stay the night," she said at last. And he happily nodded, squeezing her warm body tight.
.
.
.
Harry had been pacing back and forth for nearly a minute before he finally gained enough courage to ring on his neighbor's doorbell. The boy blew air through his mouth, hollowing up his cheeks as he heard footsteps coming his way. And when the door opened, it wasn't the fourteen-year-old he was there to see, it was her mother. Tam Y/L/N greeted the boy next door with a casual, yet heart-warming smile.
"Harry, look how grown you are! I haven't seen you around in so long," she said. He already knew that it'd been a while since he last came here, but to hear it from someone else made him feel worse somehow. "I heard you got the scholarship that you wanted. Your mother must be so proud."
"Thank you, Mrs. Y/L/N...Is Y/N home?"
"Yeah, she's upstairs. Want me to call her for you?"
"No." He stopped her just as she turned away. "Uhm...I'm leaving tomorrow. I think I should let her know. Can you tell her that for me?"
"Sweetie..." The corners of Tam's lips sank into a frown. "She doesn't even know about the scholarship."
Right. Of course she didn't know. The last time they talked was a year ago when she asked him to take her to that concert but he refused. He couldn't believe it had been that long. They had been two strangers for a year now, so to see her again and tell her he was gonna leave Holmes Chapel and wasn't sure when and if he was ever coming back would make him seem like a jerk. So even though Harry's initial intention when he rang the doorbell was to talk to her in person, but now the thought of it scared him a lot. Harry stood there, stuttering in front of her mother, trying to come up with an excuse so she would help him out by breaking this news to Y/N.
But the woman spoke before he could, "Harry, you know her. If she hears this from me she'll assume she doesn't matter to you." Then came a pause. "Do you care about her?"
He didn't answer that inquiry. But he didn't have to.
"Then I think you should tell her yourself. She really misses you," Tam said, giving the eighteen-year-old boy another smile.
She was right. Even though he had been keeping distance with Y/N for that long, he couldn't walk away knowing she would hate him and think she didn't mean anything to him. After all, she was still the girl he'd got into a fight for and risked getting sick as he walked in the rain to keep her safe. Even if his head told him she didn't matter, his heart knew she did.
After a moment, he finally nodded, and Tam didn't hesitate to turn her head and shouted upstairs,"Y/N, Harry is here to see you!"
"Wait," he spoke after a second thought. "Can you...can you tell her to meet me at our treehouse?"
"Sure, love," the woman said without asking why.
Harry thanked her and walked away quickly before Y/N came down and saw his face. He needed time to think about how to break the news without breaking her heart, and maybe his own.
It had been so long since he last visited their treehouse, and it was quite embarrassing how he had to struggle at first because he'd forgotten how to climb. He sat there on the floor like the night they first met, but this time he was nervous because he knew she was coming.
Harry turned his head as soon as he heard Y/N's voice at the entrance. He got up from the dusty wooden floor, smiling at the girl. Her eyes were still as bright as he remembered. He'd never told her, but all the emotions she was trying to hide always showed through her big eyes and gave away what she was actually feeling. But this time, it was hope that he saw in them. And he knew the goodbye was gonna be twice as hard as how he'd imagined it would be.
They sat down side by side on the edge of their little house with bare feet dangling in the air, listening to the cricket singing their summer song. He knew he was going to miss this, he was going to miss Holmes Chapel, and mostly he was going to miss her. Y/N seemed pretty quiet that night, so Harry had to initiate a conversation, asking her about school, about Celine, about her parent's constant fights. He also filled her in with most of the things that had happened to her in the past year, and kept her updated on his sister and his mum.
But eventually, he must say what he was there to say, "I'm leaving tomorrow morning. To London."
From the way her body stiffened as she heard those words, Harry had expected a different reaction from his little neighbor. However, she only laughed and asked him if he was joking. He wished it had been a joke, then it wouldn't have killed him to say it out loud. He told her about the scholarship, about being accepted into his dream school, and now he could finally follow his dream to become a famous actor. But she was quiet the whole time. He didn't know what she was thinking, he never did.
"I'll come back and visit you next summer," he said, not even sure if he could stay true to those words. But at least they would ease her mind. "I wanted to see you one last time before I left...Bambi, say something."
His Bambi turned to look at him with glistening eyes, and he silently begged her not to dissolve into tears because he wouldn't know what to do. But knowing Y/N, he was sure that she wouldn't allow herself to cry in front of him now that he was basically just a familiar stranger.
"I'm really happy for you, H," she said at last, putting on a smile. So he smiled back at her, reaching out to tuck a strand behind her ear. He told her to be strong when he wasn't around, and take care of herself, though she'd been doing just fine without him in the past year. And deep down, he hoped she would find a boy who wouldn't mind getting a black eye to make her happy. He couldn't be that boy, not anymore.
"This treehouse is all yours now," he told her. "Please look after it?"
"I will," she gave him her words. From the determination written on her face, he knew she would keep her promise, and somehow that made him happy. Maybe because he knew she didn't hated him like he assumed she would.
It was getting late, and he had to catch a train before sunrise. So Harry said his last goodbye to his little neighbor, telling her that they both should get some rest. But instead of letting him go, she cut him off just as he tried to say something else. "Harry...Can I ask you for one last favor?"
"Anything, kid. Tell me."
"Can you...Uhm...Will you..." She exhaled deeply and took his hand in hers. "Will you be my first kiss?"
The grin slowly faded from his face when he realized she was actually serious. "I don't think I should be your first kiss, Bambi. You should save it for the boy you like."
"But you...are the boy I like."
Harry was surprised to hear those words, yet not really. A part of him had always known she'd had a crush on him, but he assumed it would just disappear into thin air real soon. But after a year of acting like they didn't know each other, how could she still call him the boy she liked?
He wanted to lighten up the mood without hurting her feelings, yet he struggled to come up with what to say. But Y/N was impatient as always. She couldn't wait for a reply, probably because she knew she would never get one. So she just followed her instinct and cupped his face to bring her lips to his, only to pull away a second later. It was barely what one would call a kiss, but Harry was in shock and he couldn't even flinch. A fourteen-year-old had just kissed him on the lips. How could he possibly react in this situation? So he chose not to react.
He just sat there and watched her run back to the rope ladder. And the next moment she was gone, for good this time. He didn't think too much about the kiss even though it did put him in shock. But maybe it was for the best if her last memory of him was their moment on the treehouse and not him leaving her without saying goodbye. At least now he knew she wouldn't hate him forever.
She had been a big part of his childhood, and would always be a part of him. So as Harry watched her run back to her house, he truly hoped if they never met again, she would keep him in her memory if not in her heart.
For him, he would also do the same.
.
.
.
Harry woke up in the middle of the night, reaching for the warm body lying next to him, only to find the bed cold and empty. In an instant, he became frantic, thinking Y/N had gone. But it took him a second to calm down and remember he was at her place, not his. The girl hadn't even left the bed. She was just sitting up, holding her knees to her chest and staring at the window. She stayed very still when he crawled to her side.
"Bambi?" His voice was dreadfully quiet. "Are you...Why are you crying, love?" The left side of his chest ached when he saw a tear running down from the corner of her eyes. Slowly she turned to look at him, her lips trembled and her shoulders heaved with emotion when he pulled her to his chest.
"Is it because of me?" He sadly questioned, assuming it must be him. Maybe he shouldn't have been too rough when they had sex, maybe she regretted sleeping with him, maybe she was gonna tell him to leave and never see her again. His whole body tensed up in fear thinking all of those maybes could be true. But eventually, she shook her head no.
"I forgot my cup of tea," she whispered.
That answer left him confused. "Your cup of tea?"
Y/N nodded, staying utterly lifeless in his arms. "It keeps me from having nightmares."
"Is that why you always drink tea before bed?"
"Hmm," she hummed and buried her face into his chest, inhaling his cent as if to remind herself that she'd still got him. After a moment of silence and ragged breathing, she told him, "I saw my mum. She was standing right by a car. But before I could get to her, the car exploded, and all that was left was fire and smoke and the sound of my own screams..."
"Shh." He stroked her hair, pressing butterfly kisses to her forehead. It was then that he realized she was clinging to the locket he'd given her, somehow it put him at ease knowing his birthday gift could lend her some kind of emotional support when she felt afraid. "Want me to make you a cup of tea, love?"
"No. Just...don't let me go."
"Alright."
Harry laid her back down, this time with her back to his chest. When they clasped each other in a warm hug, Y/N could finally be calm enough to listen to the sound of the gentle night rain outside, feeling his chest rising and falling against her back, their breaths in unison.
For a second, Harry wished they could share their hearts as easily as sharing their body heat. He couldn't remember the last time he let another get close to him like this, but Y/N was special; though at the same time, being with her felt like carrying a time bomb. One wrong move and he was a goner, yet every time she tried to leave, it was him who convinced her to stay.
"I'll go to the wedding with you." Her voice pierced right through the silence of the room, causing his eyes to fly open. Y/N thought he didn't hear her, so she repeated the sentence once more, adding, "if your offer still stands."
"It does." He chuckled hoarsely. "What changed your mind though?"
"Thought I should stop running away from reality." That was her answer, nothing more. He didn't really get what she actually meant, but he didn't think she wanted him to ask, so he decided to let it go.
"When are you gonna leave?" She asked.
"Not tonight. I'm staying tonight."
Harry wasn't sure if when she said "leave", she meant him leaving her flat before she woke up, or him leaving her for good. But it didn't really matter. That answer would do for both meanings. Because no matter what happened to them in the future, he knew it wasn't gonna end tonight.
"Good," Y/N murmured with a tiny sigh, making Harry chuckle. His eyes gradually slipped closed, and a few minutes later, he went limp.
#my girl series#harry styles#harry styles smut#harry styles writing#harry styles imagine#harry styles fanfic#harry styles fanfiction#harry styles imagines#harry styles fanfics#harry styles fanfictions#harry styles angst#harry styles fluff#harry styles series#actor!harry#older!harry#younger!y/n
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I have finally finished both the meat and candy routes of the epilogue. Full(-ish) thoughts are under the cut, but for the tl;dr crowd: I honestly enjoyed myself, and I’m excited to read more.
First off, and to be totally clear, I am not trying to dismiss anyone’s particular emotional response to the epilogue. I am not here to say, “No, your emotions are not valid.” I’m making my observations just as subjectively as anyone else. So, thoughts:
I believe the epilogue’s main folly, perhaps the main reason it’s not going over well, is that it by nature may only appeal to a fraction of the original audience of Homestuck.
Homestuck’s original audience was vast, and the interests of the people who read Homestuck are varied. It’s hard to prove whether this is true or not, but it seems that a large, perhaps the largest, chunk of the original Homestuck fandom was interested in character. This epilogue, for that group, is not likely going to be satisfying. The epilogue seems to appeal much more strongly to the section of the fandom interested not only in character but in the overarching themes/conflicts/medium/metafiction of the story.
The other issue is the density of the epilogue’s existential and metafiction discussions. The level of reading comprehension necessary to not only wade through but also appreciate some of these details is somewhat ridiculous. That’s not out of line with Homestuck, which also has some fairly sophisticated commentary on the nature of self, identity, reality, etc., but it makes the more enjoyable parts of the epilogue somewhat inaccessible. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to discuss these topics in such depth and through such a story without getting a little over the top.
That said, I do think a large portion of the Homestuck fandom, particularly those most concerned with character, forget that Homestuck is at its core an absurd black comedy and occasional satire.
Remembering the villains in Homestuck helps to reframe the story: we have an underling turned god-dog who snaps because of a workplace dress code dispute; we have doll capable of possessing people; we have LITERALLY BETTY CROCKER; and we have a petulant boychild asshole turned muscle skull monster. Are we really going to get mad that Dave Strider’s big turn happens during a conversation with Barack Obama’s projected brain hologram? The precedence for absurdity was set long ago for this sort of thing.
Homestuck does take large breaks from its particular brand of comedy to deal with issues seriously and sincerely, but these instances do not change its nature. While the epilogue wasn’t uproariously funny by any stretch of the imagination, the kernel of absurdity rules it. Why else would Jake English’s ASS be such a big deal on Earth C, like as a plot point and major element of the conflict? The same can be said about the black comedy and satirical elements, which can and do affect characters and plot.
Even at its start, Homestuck was rather adversarial towards the audience, who literally sent suggestions to Hussie which he often fucked with as an element of his comedy. Based on what Homestuck is and has always been, it’s doubtful we would get an epilogue that was simple, clean, and palatable, especially towards characters.
About the writing: I have seen it said that the epilogue is an example of bad writing. I’m going to separate the craft of writing and characterization specifically, which I’ll discuss below. As for the epilogue as a piece of prose, I believe it is far from “bad.”
Writing two separate but intimately intertwined stories in itself is not an easy task. It requires careful planning before the figurative pen ever touches paper, and then the effect has be thoughtfully cultivated. The stories themselves are stable, decently well-paced, and sometimes astonishingly poetic.
The way the writers dealt with the overarching metafictional elements is actually brilliant, especially in the meat track. Like, they used a switch from third person perspective to second person as a form of foreshadowing. That’s bananas. I was impressed. Not to mention how Alt Calliope sheds light on it in the candy track, which either foreshadows the shift in control of the narrative if you’ve read it first or else explains its significance if you read it second. Like, shit!
About the mischaracterization, though.Yes, this is an element of writing, but it is also essentially an act of interpretation for any writer, including Hussie himself.
I will use Jade as an example. Did I like her characterization in these epilogues? Largely, no, I did not. I found it uncomfortable. But was it incorrect? That’s the harder question. When Homestuck finished, she was 16, and she had spent the majority of her life alone, often in a state of extreme unhappiness about it. Could she become a 23 year old adult who is the way she is? Well, yeah. Any character could grow up to be sexually liberated, if we’re being real, and she is part dog, which could be construed to affect her libido. She very well could have abandonment issues that could take the form of multiple sexual partners. Her characterization in the epilogues isn’t wrong; it’s just far from satisfying.
Same with Jane. The narrative explains away her behavior as being a subtle result of the Condesce. John even mentioned a thought I had myself: his nanna was Jane, and she just wanted to throw pies and have a good “hoo hoo!” The narrative gives us enough to make her what she is, but it’s not satisfying. Ultimately, the narrative needed a villain to push the conflict, and in a “utopia,” the only recourse is to exploit the dysfunctionalities in the existing powerful characters. In this case, the character needed to support the plot, rather than the other way around. That is, unfortunately, the breaks in this sort of situation.
The one character I was excited about was actually Dirk. I believe that his character was believable, as much as anyone might dislike me for it. Dirk realized that he had the ability, as part of his ultimate godtier self, to destroy the lines between himself and others, to destroy individuality, to essentially take control of everyone’s identities. Given that power, would there be any doubt he would use it to do his “machine and puppets” megalomania bullshit? The narrative makes it clear that he believes he’s doing what’s best for everyone, even if they think he’s a villain for it; to me, that sounds like exactly the sort of think he would do, faced with this situation.
Of course, that’s not to say there isn’t ANY straight up bad characterization. Eridan spoke like five lines and still managed to make me cringe.
The last thing I want to talk about is the sentiment that Hussie has given up, that he doesn’t care, or that he’s actively trying to alienate the fanbase.
I do not believe this to be the case. In fact, I would argue that the epilogue was rather lovingly constructed; as a creative writer, I can see that this text was not a slipshod job.
I believe the problem here is not a disconnect between Hussie and his text; rather, it is between Hussie and his audience, as I mentioned above.
Hussie is a person who writes the brand of comedy I discussed above. While he has grown tremendously since the first days of Homestuck, it seems sometimes that he’s being pigeonholed into a genre of writing that isn’t so much his wheelhouse. The fandom wants him to write a satisfying epilogue that somehow closes Homestuck and ALSO does justice to all of the characters; yet, Hussie’s writing in the past does not seem to lend itself well to this particular kind of conclusion, and neither does the story of Homestuck itself.
I rather believe that Hussie cares a lot but is split between his impulses as a writer, his artistic vision if you will, and the desires of the fandom. I’m not convinced that what we want is also what he wants. I’m also not convinced that what we want is more important than what he wants. After all, what did we pay to read the epilogue? I paid a whole fat boatload of NOTHING. I mean, I donated to the kickstarter, so I would like to see some satisfying reward there. And what has Hiveswap been so far? Characters! Lots of characters. Just what the fandom seems to like the most. But Homestuck? Was it ever meant to get this big, to put him on a pedestal to be boo’d or loved depending entirely on the fandom’s reception of his work, which was perhaps undertaken for his own pleasure as much as anyone else’s?
To conclude, a reader disliking the choices made for the epilogue is not the same as Hussie not caring. Perhaps the thing that Hussie cares less about is sacrificing his own artistic vision for the whims of his readership. The epilogue really is doing interesting things about exploring identity and narrative and the like. Perhaps that’s what he cares about.
Not that anyone has to like him, of course.
I think that’s all for now. I mean, I could have more to say, but I got my words off my chest about it.
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Neopian Gothic III
you are nine when you make your first neopet, and you are fifty six when the Earth is abandoned.
a husk, consumed, now the third desolate rock in a chain of desolate rocks orbiting a star; one, that in of itself, was so tainted by human tampering that staying within the solar system was hazardous.
yet, you quantify your terrestrial lifespan by the age of your digital pets. some would consider that odd, but nowadays you seek nostalgic comfort in anything from Earth.
it’s remarkable that anyone bothered to back up Neopets to the cultural archive servers. you sometimes wonder about the cultural items deemed less worthy than a petsite abandoned in 2040. who’s life work was lost because a website where you can eat literal shit was prioritized?
dwelling on it fills you with some emotion you cant quite name.
you pay it no mind. as you sit at the console in your narrow living space, you access the backup servers and try to log in. passwords are trickier now, it’s hard to get into the mindset you were at when you last joined. the you who lived thirty some odd years ago evidently thought the account’s security was so vital that you changed the it from the password you’ve used your whole life. frustrating.
maybe it was hacked. whatever.
after a few attempts you call it quits. you make a fresh account because, frankly, what else are you going to do in your free time? stare into space? actually work? fat chance.
immediately you look up your old account. everyone is still there. still wearing what they last wore. it’s like looking at a snapshot of your young adult life. sleek, clean CSS on your lookup, marred by the occasional broken image, chunks of corrupted text, but otherwise intact.
your pets are hungry. you wish you could feed them.
you look up the accounts of a few of your old friends. everything is still the same there too, at least for the unfrozen few. you let out a breathy sigh at some of these old usernames. you wonder if they made it off the planet.
clicking away, you are disquieted by the unchanging nature of the site. so much has changed for you, do your pets even experience time?
you chuckle quietly at that last question. Neopets never chased the AI train when it eventually reached the virtual pet market. after the shitshow that was the flash conversion, they never bothered to do any overhauls more complex than a code copy-paste. as you do your dailies, the flashing of webpages loading and unloading between win states wears on your eyes. you look away from the site. the night lighting has been turned on. how long have you been here? clearly your pets don’t experience time any better than you do, you think.
looking back at the console, you linger for a few seconds, before you log off and climb into your bunk.
your pets are hungry. this slips from your mind as you slip from conciousness.
the years crawl on, the emptiness of space makes time stretch relative to the human mind. it’s a lot harder to feel like days have passed when you don’t have a sun, or a moon, or a sky to remind you that time even is a thing.
it has been many years since you’ve thought of your Neopets. you logged on once in a while to check on your new account, play some games, and chat with the few remaining players on the colony’s ships. those days are long gone.
but now, as you’re laying in the medic bay, feeling increasingly weak, a rather unusual thought crosses your mind.
your Neopets are going to outlive you.
for some reason, this thought makes your skin crawl.
but on some basal level, something tells you that you’re not wrong.
days later, when the light leaves your eyes, and the recycled air leaves your lungs, the statement gains truth.
your pets are hungry. you can no longer feed them.
the idea that — after leaving the Earth — a new home planet could be secured used to be something constant, reassuring. years of pop culture and layman science lead everyone to believe it was a simple eventuality.
but it has been 130 years since humanity left Earth, and no planet has been satisfactory.
the population of the colony has sharply declined, those raised in space do not wish to inflict the same strife upon children of their own.
and as time stretches into nothingness, that decline reached it’s natural resting point at absolute zero. there is nobody left aboard the ships. they remain piloted by the on-board AI, who was never programmed to deal with the total collapse of the colony.
they were built to practically run without any humans, after all, so they didn’t even notice when the virtual manifest read as empty.
so they carry on, into the empty vastness of space.
the only evidence that thousands of years are passing by is the ever decaying behaviors of the AI. they feedback on themselves, winding down an endless repeating logic loop. but even when the AI eventually fail, the few ships caught in the larange points of distant stars collect enough energy to remain online.
your pets are hungry. there is no one to feed them.
and so as entropy becomes more violent, and the stars slowly start to blink out of the night sky, there is no one to witness it. except for your pets.
locked in a hibernal state, unable to affect their environment but at it’s total mercy. the eternally undying “dying”. perhaps, were there anyone left, they would observe this truly wretched state. your pets are cursed, purgatorian resident remnants of a civilization dead for millennia.
and yet, they stand stalwart, paragons of eternity. unchanging. despite their fellow sites slowly fading off of the serverbanks as their AI turn cannibalistic, they remain. conceivably, one could argue it was TNT’s refusal to update that ultimately saved them. if they adopted a hokey AI system, maybe they would’ve been released long ago.
the suns they orbit begin to rot. some ships manage to break free as the star’s gravitational pull fluctuates, barely escaping as they self destruct and are reborn as dwarfs.
set adrift in an ever darker space, the distant explosions of star systems offering the only change of scenery, they still persist. gnawing, ever present hunger does nothing to their digital bodies.
when the ships lose power, and become no more than space debris, the pets remain in their serverbanks.
even trillions upon trillions of years later, when the ships remain fetid fixtures in the vaccum of a cold universe, the servers survive. they were built with the intention to last forever, hypothetically, in the hopes that our accomplishments would outlast us in a worst case scenario.
how naive it was, to believe there was anything out there other than us, even more naive to believe that, had they existed, they’d take any interest in what we had to offer.
the pull of black holes begin to draw what remains of the universe into their infinitely dense maws.
the ships and dislodged servers are not immune.
at the end of everything, your pet is still hungry.
they bare witness to the heat death of the universe, the final act of consumption.
someone might find that ironic, if there was anyone left alive. someone else might find it completely inconsequential. they would probably fight about the metaphysical meaning of this event.
as the serverbanks tumble inward, parts being rend from parts, the final physical form of your pets is destroyed, flattened into a molecule thin sheet of raw matter. they don’t even get to see the event horizon.
as the black holes consume one another, there is nothing left. only the most base elements remain; just particles of light, nothing that could be seen as matter.
but.
data, at it’s raw level, is never lost. although what encased it may be gone, the points that made it up still exist within the abstract arbitration of the universe. finite particles coming into existence randomly arrange themselves in a pattern that resembles the binary code of your pets, before casting themselves out of existance once again. for the briefest of femtoseconds, it is as though your pet still lives. this happens, sporadically and increasingly rarely, as the universe cools to a consistent temperature.
then finally. after an inconceivable time since your death;
the universe is empty. and your pets are hungry.
#neopian gothic#neolodge#neopets#ask to tag!#sorry this one is also very long#all of them are long from here on out because im an idiot jackass who cant shut their goddamn mouth
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Klarosummer - Great Barrier Reef || Memento Mori
@klarosummerbingo
Bingo!
The RNG gods have finally given me a bingo, not that it really matters since my goal is to do the whole card, but still.
Warning: this one is on the darker side. It’s not too bad, but just heads ups. Also semi-graphic violence toward the end.
Caroline stared out into the blue-green sea (maybe in another life, she’d call it aqua or turquoise). And it was beautiful. Her keen eyes were able to see the shadows and distortions of the coral formation, even from her place on the shore.
A tiny smile broke the smooth lines of her face. She had promised herself that one day she would come here. Feel hot sand under her feet. Have the Australian sun glint off her hair. Dive into the Coral Sea and witness the beauty of the reef for herself.
And yet it still felt like a dream (no matter that her actual dreams were only blood and darkness). She had cradled and nursed the idea so carefully, so delicately for nearly two decades. And now she was here. Standing on the beach.
Alive.
In person.
Her golden dream turned to reality.
She could still remember the day that sweet dream was coaxed into existence. How the Caretaker spoke to them, voice infused with trained softness.
“Alright, little ones, are you ready for your next assignment?” He paused, waiting for the acknowledging nods and polite, yes,sir’s. “For the next several months, I want you all to pick and then research one place you would like to go above all others. And then, we shall discuss them all together at the end of that time frame. But for today, we’ll start with suicide sprints. Line up, little ones.”
How months later he congratulated them all for their hard work and dedication. Telling them to hold onto that drive and spirit, infuse it into every one of their assignments. That one day their reward would be the freedom to visit those glorious places.
How a few years after that he told them to crush that dream. That as Soldiers in the war against The Scourge, desire was the most dangerous thing they could possess. Desire meant leverage. Leverage meant death.
Caroline closed her eyes. Remembered the shock and sadness that appeared in some of the children’s faces.
Of course, some rebelled. And those that did quietly disappeared.
”No need to fret, little ones. Not everyone can be Soldiers. They have been transferred elsewhere, to a place where they can still be of use in our fight.”
By their late teens, those that remained, were frighteningly lethal little creatures. Obedient and cutthroat. The pinnacle of physical and mental performance.
“Congratulations, little ones. You are ready. Ready to become Soldiers.”
Despite their training, all of them screamed that day. Screamed until they fell silent. Came out the other side as Other, a few faces missing from their number.
But that was alright, not everyone could be Soldiers.
---
Caroline shook her head, compartmentalizing that mindset. It didn’t belong in this place.
On silent feet, she made her way toward the water.
“Soldier 31185.”
Caroline froze. No. How could he-?
Explosions. Fire. The entire complex and all of its inhabitants, burning to ash.
Yet, even as part of her scrambled to make sense of this ghost, the rest of her categorized the facts and her surroundings.
Director William Forbes survived.
And he was here for her.
---
Klaus had been observing the lovely blonde for some time now. At first he had been planning to have a little bloody snack, maybe more if she was receptive. Her legs were lovely after all, and he was sure they would look equally fantastic wrapped around him.
But something had made him pause.
He noticed she was rather quiet for a human. Oddly graceful as well. And he recognized that type of fluid lethality. She was neither a vampire nor a werewolf, so what made such a young woman a predator in human skin?
---
Caroline turned, keeping the man firmly in her line of sight, as she contemplated her options. No one was around, at least not within a human’s sensing range. She had picked a swath of private beach after all, desiring the peace and solitude.
And now she was unsure if it was to her benefit.
“Daddy,” she finally acknowledged.
It had been what she always called him in private. For years, it had made her proud to know the Director was also her father. Thought it made her special. And she supposed it did, in a way. She had been the most successful of all the Soldiers. The most efficient. The most obedient. The highest kill count.
But now she could only wonder if it was fanaticism or monstrosity that enabled the man to use his own daughter. The others carefully selected from a pool of street urchins and orphans, those who would be unnoticed and unmissed.
But not the director, no, he handpicked her. Reinforced all her lessons with his own brand of manipulated affection. Called her Care when he praised her. Braided her hair while he drilled her on her mental exercises. Tucked her into bed every night with a kiss to her forehead.
Now, the man just eyed her with disapproval.
“You are a disappointment, Soldier.”
Caroline couldn’t suppress her slight flinch, feeling something twist inside her when he only frowned more heavily.
“Such a waste,” he continued, derisive. “How you bring me such shame. After all I did for you, and you repay me by destroying some of my best work. Though I do congratulate you for your ruthlessness. You spared no one.”
This time Caroline’s face was stone. She had seen it as mercy to end the existence of her once companions. There had no longer been a trace of life in any of them.
“How can you hate me so much?” she asked, tone carefully level despite the words.
And her father’s face softened. “Oh, Care, because you are a monster, sweetie. And the Augustine Society destroys monsters.”
Her voice was ice when she replied. “I am only what you created, Director.”
He had the audacity to smile at her. “And you had been my greatest creation. That is why it is my duty to end your disgrace now, before I start my work anew.”
She didn’t want to hear anymore.
In a flash, she removed her dagger (her father had once given it to her. “Make me proud, Care.”), throwing it with honed expertise and unnatural force. The weapon buried itself to the hilt, tearing through his heart with unerring accuracy.
It was almost a surprise, when the man simply pulled the blade out again. His skin sealing shut in an instant.
“At least you can still do something right. The heart, though, 31185? Such sentiment.” He threw the dagger back, aimed for her head. Even with her own abilities such a blow would render her unconscious for a few moments.
He was right, aiming for the heart had been sentiment. An ordinary human would not have survived her path of destruction through the Society. And Caroline didn’t make amateur mistakes; William Forbes had been in the compound that night.
She caught the blade, spinning it dexterously to hold it properly. “Perhaps, Director, but I had expected a human opponent not a fellow monster.”
Rather than becoming angry, the man just laughed. “We need monsters to hunt monsters, 31185. You know that. It has always been this way. Why else did you think your enhancements were so much more powerful than the others?”
That did actually surprise her, enough that she nearly failed to block his sudden attack. Her dagger awkwardly dug into the flesh of his black, mutated arm, his skin unbroken.
Then, he backhanded her, sending her flying a few feet into the water. Strong.
She stood up in a flash, eyes fixated on the man who was nearly on top of her again. Fast.
Abandoning the dagger, Caroline extended all the nails of her hand, transforming the weak keratin into an arrangement of carbon nanotubes. Their near monomolecular edge sliced clean through the Director’s strange black form.
For a moment, she held him suspended there, impaled on the end of her arm.
“Is that all? Weak, girl.”
The man further sliced his own body as he shifted, rearing back and punching her, sending her flying back into the water.
She landed with a splash, floating among the coral, trails of his blood coloring the water as her nails washed clean.
She truly did only dream of darkness and blood.
---
It was an unusual feeling for Klaus to experience, wanting to defend another person. Yet he stayed his hand. He knew all about disappointed, murderous fathers. She would have no peace unless she ended him herself.
Or died trying.
Though, that would be a shame.
---
Caroline’s heart clenched, stuttered a beat, then set a pounding, unnatural rhythm. Her senses sharpened. Bones hardened. Muscles condensed. Stronger. Faster.
Enough.
She propelled herself toward the shallow bottom, bracing herself in the sand and rocketing herself up and out of the water. She cleared the surface and shore by tens of feet, using the vantage point to extend her nails farther. This time she sliced, tearing through the man’s limbs, even as they regenerated nearly as quickly.
Gravity eventually took hold, dragging her back toward the Director. She pursed her lips, using the added momentum to power a heel drop kick. It sent him (her Director, her father, William), into the ground, his skull and upper spine crushed.
She doubted he was dead.
Using the brief respite, she pulled a second dagger. It was nearly identical to the first one except for one special component. She hurriedly twisted the handle as she watched her father’s body rapidly heal. A little chamber opened up, and an odd purple-tinted fluid coated the blade. Nails retracted, dagger in her right hand, Caroline pinned her father to the sand, and waited for him to wake up.
She stared him in the eye, blue to blue, as she plunged the blade into his heart and twisted.
Unlike before, he couldn’t nonchalantly shrug off the blow. And though his body struggled to heal the wound, the mutated black pigment faded from his skin.
Caroline watched as bulging gray-blue veins crawled across pale, pink flesh. Kept watching until the life faded from her father’s eyes, his whole body covered in the raised veins.
Ironic. He almost looked like a vampire.
She twisted the handle a little more, ensuring all the fluid was dumped into his corpse. And then, just to be thorough, she stabbed a second copy, chamber open and blade coated, into his brain.
She wasn’t sure how long she stared at her father’s remains, but her own anatomy had returned to near-humans levels. When she stood, her legs felt almost cramped from kneeling for so long.
“Goodbye, Father,” she whispered, her next exhale shaky.
She closed her eyes, saddened, how even now the Society managed to taint a bit of her golden dream.
---
“That was very impressive, sweetheart.”
Caroline whirled around, startled that she had been caught off-guard twice now.
A tall, blond haired man stood several feet behind her. A little smirk, highlighting the dimples on his face. She frowned, realizing quickly that he wasn’t human, dreaded that he had seen and hear everything.
He clasped his hands behind his back as he took a few steps toward her, keeping a human pace though the motion was supernaturally graceful.
“My name is Klaus, and I would be most intrigued to hear more of your history. Never have I seen your like before.”
Caroline froze for a split second and his lips quirked a bit higher, his eyes flashing gold for an instant.
“And you’ve heard of me. Fantastic.”
---
Author’s Note: Memento Mori is the rather famous Latin phrase meaning “remember you will die.” I thought it rather apropos for this version of the Augustine Society. Fun fact: the symbol is a reference to St. Augustine and vampires, so very on the nose. Fun? fact #2: Translate Caroline’s number back into letters (3-1-18-5). Bill is a rather fucked up guy in this. And yeah, I used some blatant anime references here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
#Klaroline#KlarosummerBingo#Klaroline Fanfiction#Klaroline Drabbles#Klaroline Edits#Klaroline Photosets#Klaroline Aesthetics#My Writing#My Edits
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56: We continue, perhaps a bit later in the day than I might have liked.
Before we get started, I would just like to ponder something to myself: What is Dirk’s actual motivation? I had assumed that his decision to take over the narrative was just a result of the belief on his part that it was a natural part of his evolution, or that he was actually not doing it with a particular purpose in mind, but after Alt!Calliope accusing him of Megalomania became a thing, I guess I have to open up my mind to other possibilities. It could be that she has simply observed him exploiting the capacity he now has in order to heighten his control over others (as was the natural result, considering his personality), but it might actually be that there’s something more.
If I had to guess, it would be that (based on his conversation with Rose, and the statement about reality becoming congealed) he desires to prevent everyone’s lives from losing relevance and fading into an empty heap of incomplete thoughts and useless garbage. That is to say: given the story was over, but in such a way that things were left unanswered, the story was incomplete, and the main characters were gods that would continue growing over time, it is conceivable that once Dirk reached the point where he could actually discern the narrative himself and saw that Hussie had essentially abandoned Homestuck (closing out the story in such a way that locked LE in canon and placed the early parts of Universe C/Earth 3′s timeline[s] outside of it), he had a crisis surrounding his existence as a fictional character, and wanted to take up Hussie’s role as a way to attempt the preservation of all of their lives, and the integrity of reality within their fictional (thus murky/fluid/malleable) world?
Considering I know that Dirk is the first character with a “speaking” role in Homestuck^2, and that this is him writing a long letter (note: I am now reminding you all that I accidentally very slightly dipped into it before I realized that it was not the Homestuck Epilogue[s]), I guess... maybe he eventually succeeds? I mean, getting a continuation/spin-off would be one way to fulfill the “escape the destruction of Paradox Space by creating/traveling to a separate version of reality/world beyond its limitations” win condition that was one of the many possibilities that would mean the epilogue was satisfying in a narrative sense and not (entirely?) a Bad End. Given the fact it’s on a different site, which could further emphasize this achievement, if that is the correct interpretation/guess to make about the later events which I have not read yet... congratulations, horrible person/Unreliable Narrator for theoretically saving reality for a time?
I don’t know. That all seems uncertain and possibly a bit of a stretch at this point, and I feel like I’m cheating for including that accidental viewing into my analysis for the work I’m presently navigating. I want to be honest with you all about my thoughts and experiences-- or at least as honest as I can be while ensuring that I don’t essentially post things stream-of-consciousness -style. I do have certain standards of plausibility and coherence that I hold myself to, after all. I want to keep this interesting and entertaining for you guys, just as it is for me.
...
And finally, we get back to Terezi and John. I will not react to their entire page, this time-- or at least my intention is to not do so --but rather, only a half of it. That way this post won’t get as too terribly bloated. ***irony rimshot ahoy***
Uuuugggh! John, can’t you tell that you’re killing yourself?!?!?! Gah!
Tin of tobacco? What, is Dad a chewer? Certainly an int--- ooohhh, it’s pipe tobacco. I see. I wonder what sort of nutritional value there is in there.
(Note: That’s two toxic substances she’s been eating for some reason.)
OH MY FRICKING GOSH!!! XD
Hmm. John presents an interesting question, just after this, with regards to her getting flavors from colors. Indeed, that is very much a form of synaesthesia. That said: Yeah, I know at least chewing tobacco can do that. Not sure about flakes of the smoking variety. I know that it can poison you to death if you eat too much of it.
Oh, hey, it seems that Terezi has probably noticed John’s confused+growing feelings for her. Neat.
(And yeah, that’s what you get for talking with a Mind player. :P)
So great. So great.
... I am pretty sure it has been more than a few years. I guess the time in the Furthest Ring can be really fricking weird, though, and since Terezi said he wasn’t as old-seeming as she thought he would be, maybe the four of them somehow just got insanely lucky time-ways, which is... sortof ridiculous, considering Lord English’s time powers. I guess it’s like Clover’s caveat that luck only bends so far as to not counter things that could be considered either lucky or unlucky, or neither in great amounts? (Note: Clover’s defeat by Karkat happened because Clover thought it would be him “getting lucky” and falling into a Hearts, Stars, Horseshoes relationship with him. At the same time, it was unlucky because it was him being defeated. Thus, the power is shown to not only be weak against mediocre things like being hit with something that doesn’t hurt you [the only reason LE could get hit at all, probably, with the exception of his eventual critical sword wounds as the Green Sun Black Hole’s void influence grew], but also against things that could be described as either good or bad.) LE getting opponents that are not massively crazy from being held enclosed for trillions of years without connections to the outside world could be considered lucky insofar as he has been constantly desiring and looking for real challenges for ages upon ages, at least as far as I understand things.
Obviously, there’s the collective wills of all who have every been oppressed by him, and the prophesy of the Ultimate Juju being used as a weapon against him after its use by him to be considered, as well, but I think that there can logically be many sources playing into these sorts of outcomes.
But yeah, I guess maybe it was seemingly eons for everyone else, but that little pocket of the Furthest Ring inexplicably only suffered a few years’ passage~
Hey, you asked for her to get real with you! Don’t complain when her sincere reactions aren’t what you’d want! XD
Also: They’re totally going to run into something important while they’re not paying attention, aren’t they?
<3
Of course she’d put them on there. It was practically like using candy to bait a trap for a baby.
NOW CLICK YOUR SHOES TOGETHER THREE TIMES AND GO HOME!!!
Sortof like the fight with LE, but you got lucky and pulled a Pyrrha out of your hat.
This should remind you of the fact that you can use your retcon powers to go save Vriska. WHY DIDN’T YOU THINK OF THIS EARLIER?!?!?!!!
(Honestly, with his bleed+poison, it’s almost a miracle he’s thinking this straight, so I really don’t hold it against him, truthfully. ... And yeah, self-blinded “F1X TH1S” Justice Terezi Pyrope was so fricking amazing, it’s almost unbelievable.)
***suddenly feels like I got my heart torn out and bashed against a hard surface by a time travelling robot for not remembering [S] Terezi: Remem8er. merged her memories of the two sides of the Retcanon Timelines***
Gah. This... this hurts so much. ;~;
Huh. I thought for sure Caliborn’s circle drawing had “HUGE BITCH” in the center of it, and I was going to post that in relation to the Fat Vriska/Vriska being sucked into the black hole prophesy/foreshadowing, here, but it said, “FAT UGLY WHORE.” Still somewhat relevant, but not what I was remembering, and thus not quite so connected as I’d like. I guess there’s always her intro panel:
#Homestuck Epilogues#Homestuck^2#Homestuck Liveblog#Homestuck Spoiler#Vriska Serket#Terezi Pyrope#John Egbert#Dad Egbert#The Wallet#Green Sun Black Hole#Homestuck Theory#Thoughts#Stuff
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The true evil of RWBY
We all know Salem is meant to be the big bad and Ozpin (who we now know as Ozma but will be referred to as Oz to make like easier) is the one meant to be the good guy, tasked with destroying her, however I find him to be questionable, in fact volume 5 kept lowering my opinion of him ever further. My friend and I like to roleplay and make more of a character out of characters, you'd expect us to have Oz as a good guy and Salem as a bad guy but actually it's quite the opposite, Salem is generally our favourite character, she's a fierce beauty and we know barely anything about her (or at least before V6 we knew nothing but hooray for lore) we've come up with our own headcanons, we usually see her as a fair boss or loving mom, and Ozpin barely has a second thought, maybe sometimes we've thought of him as an ex love, or the opposite side to her but really we don't think about him much, reason being because we don't particularly like him, don't get me wrong he has a great character but like I said, I find him questionable and I'll tell you why in just a moment. Chapter 3 of Volume 6 showed us exactly what happened over a thousand years ago with the Gods of Light and Darkness and Salem and Ozma and answered a lot of our questions, but it got me thinking about who the real villian is, of course it's Salem but when you break down the four characters you begin to realise it's not all black and white...
The Gods
So we finally got to meet the brothers we've heard of only in stories by a campfire. The God of Light (GoL) and the God of Darkness (GoD) are two new interesting characters we had the misfortune of meeting, and yes it is misfortune. Good ol' GoL denied Salem of her love, refusing to bring him back, that's fair, and GoD brought him back but later destroyed him when he found out he was Salem's second choice after his brother, that's also fair, except he brought him back without question in the first place, likely appreciating that someone actually came to see him (but I won't get into the precious GoD headcanon). For her actions Salem was cursed by GoL with immortality, and told she must learn the importance of life, and this turned out to be the biggest mistake he ever made and you'll see why in a bit.
Upon Salem's betrayal GoD destroys THE ENTIRE planet, instead of simply taking away all magic (Salem's too), or condemning Salem to external purgatory, or literally anything else, instead he just decides to effectively Thanos snap the entire planet because one bitch did a thing, thousands of completely innocent lives, gallant warriors, and dutiful worshippers gone in a second, and GoL just let's it happen like yep this is completely acceptable. I understand the idea was to punish Salem with a failure so big that there is no possible way she would ever be able to undo it but they still kept Salem there... With hope that she could change and see the importance of life... But if there is no life how can she learn it's importance...
And then there's the fact they just up and abandoned that entire planet, then destroyed the moon as a f*** you, because there was no need for that really.
If you thought the world was a lost cause why not wipe the slate clean and start anew, why would you ever trust humans to set aside their differences and unite themselves, humans are incapable I mean look at our Earth for example, there will always be something they find to cause conflict, and everyone will never get along, it's impossible, and how can there be any good without the bad to balance it, there was likely conflict even with the Gods there so what hope is there without them... Well actually I believe that hope was Oz and Salem...
Salem
Now sure Salem was an arrogant demanding bitch when Ozma died and she called the Gods monsters for taking him away from her again and again even though they were probably just trying to keep the natural balance of life and death in check, and I know she kinda rallied the humans to try to take down the Gods but really... It's not that bad. I know that sounds insane but hear me out, her punishment could have been a lot worse, and she could have found another way, I mean she could certainly take her time to come up with a plan that's for sure. She got punished with eternal life, now for some that would be a blessing, getting to live forever, never having to fear death, and of course watching everyone you've ever loved fade away around you as their lives come to an end and yours keeps on going... doesn't sound too fun actually... But this was her punishment for betraying the Gods, and she had to learn her lesson, learn the importance of life, you'd think with eternal life that would be a synch... WRONG, the worst thing you could ask of an immortal being is to learn about the importance of life, what does life mean to someone who never dies? It means that no matter what mortals will come and go but you will stay forever as you are, you're guaranteed to outlive anyone and everyone you meet, losing people constantly, it makes you bitter, so you isolate yourself to avoid getting attached and losing them as you know you will again and again, and you become detached, mortal beings have no place in your life because they can never match you, especially when you have magic and they have nothing, why should you care about them when you are in every way superior, you even control their deepest fears (since Salem is basically Queen Grimm thanks to GoD's Grimm pits), and Ozma's own curse makes learning her lesson even worse, he's the only person she loved, and he is cursed to die and be reborn, into a different body, the only death she would care about is his, and if he keeps coming back even as a different person death eventually doesn't bother her, Oz will always come back, and that's a constant so why should mortal death matter when it's not the person she loves. On top of that she is definitely affected by the Grimm desire to destroy things, so she can never be 100% held accountable for her actions after she fell into the pit.
But the biggest point is - Salem was right.
Her suggestion that they forget about the Gods and become their own Gods was sound, sure the gods helped them but it's not like people knew of that now, the Gods abandoned them when their experiment failed and left the saving of the planet to the guy who knew the person to spark all this... Oz and Salem were beings of infinite potential, one can never die, the other will always be ressurected, and both have magic, a thing which no one possesses anymore, following them would be wise, they could have led the humans to a new kind of salvation. Now of course destroying those who don't comply is a little extreme but if Oz talked to her then he could have let her see that there was no need, why force people to follow you when they'll do so of their own accord, and if they don't believe then that's their loss, it's not like they could actually DO anything about it... They couldn't take the two out, they'd always exist, and they have superior power and displayed mastery over using their gifts to destroy Grimm, seriously why wouldn't you want to join their side!
I'm not excusing things she did I'm just saying she was right, and things would be incredibly different in the present had Ozma just talked to her, which brings me smoothly over to him...
Ozma
The glorious Oz, originally Ozma, we know him best as Ozpin, and now as Ozcar, but of course based off the wizard of Oz who was at the end of the story a big fat fraud... Huh... his roots don't seem to really work in his favour...
"Blessed" by the God of Light to experience death in every form and to join with another's soul to be reborn in a cycle that will last for eternity. Really it's more of a curse, dying over and over and over and over and over again doesn't seem too fun, but boy did he come to learn the importance of life because surprise if you have to experience death and live in another's shoes you really start to appreciate what it means to live. No wonder Salem will never learn her lesson, the Gods didn't do her any favours... the same Gods who abandoned their people because their "experiment" failed... and left the saving of the entirety of mankind to one guy just because he knew the person who basically "caused" everything... Whom the Gods created by providing eternal life... because he died and she wanted back but the Gods wouldn't allow it... and their solution was to have her live forever and eventually bring him back to her anyway and have him always be reborn... Seems they contradict themselves too...
Anyway point being Oz didn't seem to have things in his favour from the start, and it only got worse from there...
Turns out Oz has ALWAYS had that issue about not telling people things, it seems his most constant flaw that even thousands of years of dying and taking host of a new body couldn't fix, I mean I understand him to an extent but right at the beginning he didn't tell Salem about GoL's conversation with him straight away, and when he did he kinda just left it at that and didn't talk any more about it... And Salem didn't even seem to really mind (her eyes white showing she was in control and chill), that is she didn't mind until he tried to leave with their kids (eyes turned black with Grimm anger) and the fact he had to have his weapon didn't help him - I'm still not excusing what Salem did though, but they both killed their kids, caught in the crossfire, fatalities of the destruction they both caused.
Before I skip to Ozpin and Ozcar I have a gentle reminder here for you, this revelation came to me when I saw a post about how Ozpin has made more mistakes than everyone combined and one being the fact he had sex with Salem... A Grimm Salem... Multiple times (the exact wording being "Putting my dick in /that/ for starters") however that appendage wasn't his own, you forget at that point he had been shoved into a random guys body and immediately took over and controlled his every action, we know he had barely any care for his vessel or "host" (if we want to start the whole Oz is a virus rant) at the beginning because Jinn tells us that after his fight with Salem he EVENTUALLY learned to live in harmony with the soul who's body he shared... after ruining the lives of a countless many... we also know or rather assume he only suppresses the other soul rather than takes over completely as learned from Ozcar (and potentially Ozpin too), which means there was a suppressed and confused other soul wondering what was going on and being forced to take a back seat watching Ozma do whatever he wanted in a body that didn't belong to him, I can't imagine him actually being ok with this random and extreme series of events, this man watched as Oz made a family with Salem without even a fleeting thought for the man's own family that he no doubt had... And then Oz got this man killed in an unnecessary battle... what a glorious hero...
Anyway grazing over the numerous lives Oz ruined and all the other sh!t he no doubt did that brings us to Ozpin, though we know fairly little we know enough to say that he has a bad habit of doing things like playing the pronoun game, providing half truths, and of course not telling anyone what they actually need to know - "You have silver eyes" yes she does... What about them? (Hype for getting that answer this volume) - he fails to inform people of what matters, preferring to leave that until later when people have already died (including himself, so he is now Ozcar) and people are desperate... Except oh wait sorry he doesn't even tell you then, he holds back mostly everything with the excuse that you don't need to know, and even when he 'tells you everything' you STILL find out he was holding something back... Classic Oz I guess
Now we're on Ozcar and you see that he has a second bad habit of taking over control forcefully, he hasn't learned harmony with the other soul at all, this given how he's lived for the past thousand or so years shows that he hasn't changed, sure he may be 'better' than he was before but he still very much has not changed. Even when he and Oscar apparently talked about that he took over anyway in an attempt to prevent people learning about something he didn't tell them (shocker) except this time the vessel fought back (something I doubt many if any have done before)
All in all he is an extremely questionable character with even more questionable motives.
But as much as it may seem like I'm dragging him through the dirt I won't deny the achievements he HAS managed, the academies for one major thing, it really helped out the world and there'd be a lot more fear and chaos had he not intervened in such a major way, doesn't explain why he likes to throw kids off of cliffs or any of that but still, I'm sure he has his reasons, don't expect him to tell you them though.
He truly has made more mistakes than any man, woman, and child on the planet...
~~~~~~~~
When you really take a look at everything you begin to realise that the Gods kinda set them both up to fail, whether they knew it or not, imagine how different things would have been had a single thing gone differently, and how easily things could have changed
~~~~~~~~
And thus concludes this post, I hope I didn't miss anything (but if I did then oops)
Now I don't know about you but I would totally go up to Salem and tell her she was right, if Tyrian doesn't murder me the immediate second I show up, I've been leaning towards her side more and more since Oz pulled that sketchy move of controlling Oscar without permission (though I do realise death was a possibility it was still sketch) at least she doesn't build your hopes up only for you to discover they're lies, she seems like she'd tell you what's up. But that's just how I've committed think of her I suppose, she is an amazing and beautiful character, who we still don't know all too much about even with this lore... I really hope this means we get more backstories for more villians, I want to see a baby Tyrian.
But I digress.
#rwby#rwby volume 6#salem#ozma#ozpin#ozcar#oscar#gods of light and darkness#rwby villians#rwby lore#please don't hate me
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My daughter and God
FOUR YEARS AGO, driving home from picking up our twelve-year-old daughter from summer camp, my wife reached into her purse for a tissue and lost control of the car. This occurred on a stretch of Interstate 10 between Houston and San Antonio, near the town of Gonzales. The accident occurred as many do: a moment of distraction, a small mistake, and suddenly everything is up for grabs. My wife and daughter were in the midst of a minor argument over my daughter’s need to blow her nose. During high-pollen season, she is a perennial sniffer, and the sound drives my wife crazy. Get a Kleenex, Leslie said, for God’s sake, and when Iris, out of laziness or exhaustion or the mild day-to-day defiance of all teenagers, refused to do so, my wife reached for her purse, inadvertently turning the wheel to the left.
In the case of some vehicles, the mistake might have been rectified, but not in the case of my wife’s—a top-heavy SUV with jacked-up suspension. When she realized her error, she overcorrected to the right, then again to the left, the car swerving violently. They were on a bridge that passed above a gully: on either side, nothing but gravity and forty vertical feet of air. That they would hit the guardrail was now inevitable. In moments of acute stress, time seems to slow. The name for this is tachypsychia, from the Greek tach, meaning “speed,” and psych, meaning “mind.” Thus, despite the chaos and panic of these moments, my wife had time to form a thought: I have killed my daughter.
This didn’t happen, although the accident was far from over. The car did not break through the guardrail but ricocheted back onto the highway, spinning in a one-eighty before flopping onto its side in a powdery explosion of airbags. It struck another vehicle, driven by a pastor and his wife on their way home from Sunday lunch, though my wife has no memory of this. For what seemed like hours the car traveled in this manner, then gravity took hold once more. Like a whale breaching the surface, it lifted off the roadway, turned belly-up, and crashed down onto its roof. The back half of the car compacted like an accordion: steel crushing, glass bursting, my daughter’s belongings—clothes, shoes, books, an expensive violin—exploding onto the highway. Other cars whizzed past, narrowly missing them. A final jolt, the car rolled again, and it came to a halt, facing forward, resting on its wheels.
As my wife tells it, the next moment was very nearly comic. She and my daughter looked at each other. The car had been utterly obliterated, but there was no blood, no pain, no evidence of bodily injury to either of them. “We’ve been in an accident,” my wife robotically observed.
My daughter looked down at her hand. “I am holding my phone,” she said— as, indeed, she somehow still was. “Do you want me to call 911?”
There was no need. Though in the midst of things the two of them had felt alone in the universe, the accident had occurred in the presence of a dozen other vehicles, all of which had now stopped and disgorged their occupants, who were racing to the scene. A semi moved in behind them to block the highway. By this time my wife’s understanding of events had widened only to the extent that she was aware that she had created a great deal of inconvenience for other people.
She was apologizing to everyone, mistaking their amazement for anger. Everybody had expected them to be dead, not sitting upright in their destroyed vehicle, neither one of them with so much as a hair out of place. Some began to weep; others had the urge to touch them. The cops arrived, a fire truck, an ambulance. While my wife and daughter were checked out by an EMT, onlookers organized a posse to prowl the highway for my daughter’s belongings. Because my wife and daughter no longer had a car to put them into, a woman offered to bring the items to our house; she was headed for Houston to visit her son and was pulling a trailer of furniture. The EMT was as baffled as everybody else. “Nobody walks away from something like this,” he said.
I was to learn of these events several hours later, when my wife phoned me. I was in the grocery store with our six-year-old son, and when I saw my wife’s number my first thought was that she was calling to tell me she was running late, because she always is.
“Okay,” I said, not bothering to say hello, “where are you?”
Thus her first tender steps into explaining what had occurred. An accident, she said. A kind of a big fender-bender, really. Nobody hurt, but the car was out of commission; I’d need to come get them.
I wasn’t nice about this. Part of the dynamic in our marriage is the unstated fact that I am a better driver than my wife. I have never been in an accident; my one and only speeding ticket was issued when the first George Bush was president. About every two years my wife does something careless in a parking lot that costs a lot of money, and she has received so many tickets that she has been forced to retake driver’s education—and those are just the tickets I know about. The rules of modern marriage do not include confiscating your wife’s car keys, but more than once I have considered doing this.
“A fender-bender,” I repeated. Christ almighty, this again.“How bad is it?”
“Everybody’s fine. You don’t have to worry.”
“I get that. You said that already.” I was in the cereal aisle; my son was bugging me to buy a box of something much too sweet. I tossed it into the cart.
“What about the car?”
“Um, it kind of . . . rolled.”
I imagined a Labrador retriever lazily rotating onto his back in front of the fireplace. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me.” “It’s okay, really,” my wife said.
“Do you mean it rolled over?”
“It happened kind of fast. Totally no big deal, though.”
It sounded like a huge deal. “Let me see if I have this right. You were driving and the car rolled over.”
“Iris wouldn’t blow her nose. I was getting her a Kleenex. You know how she is. The doctors say she’s absolutely fine.”
“What doctors?” It was becoming clear that she was in a state of shock.
“Where are you?”
“At the hospital. It’s very small. I’m not even sure you’d call it a hospital.
Everybody’s been so nice.”
And so on. By the time the call ended, I had some idea of the seriousness, though not completely. Gonzales was three hours away. I abandoned my grocery cart, raced home, got on the phone, found somebody to look after our son, and got in my car. Several more calls followed, each adding a piece to the puzzle, until I was able to conclude that my wife and daughter were alive but should be dead. I knew this, but I didn’t feel it. For the moment I was locked into the project of retrieving them from the small town where they’d been stranded. It was after ten o’clock when I pulled into the driveway of Gonzales Memorial Hospital, a modern building the size of a suburban dental office. I did not see my wife, who was standing at the edge of the parking lot, looking out over the empty fields behind it. I raced inside, and there was Iris. She was slender and tan from a month in the Texas sunshine, and wearing a yellow T-shirt dress. She had never looked more beautiful, and it was this beauty that brought home the magnitude of events. I threw my arms around her, tears rising in my throat; I had never been so happy to see anybody in my life. When I asked her where her mother was, she said she didn’t know; one of the nurses directed us outside. I found myself unable to take a hand off my daughter; some part of me needed constant reassurance of her existence. I saw my wife standing at the edge of the lot, facing away. I called her name, she turned, and the two of us headed toward her.
As my wife tells the story, this was the moment when, as the saying goes, she got God. Once the two of them had been discharged, my wife had stepped outside to call me with this news. But the signal quality was poor, and she abandoned the attempt. I’d be along soon enough.
She found herself, then, standing alone in the Texas night. I do not recall if the weather was clear, but I’d like to think it was, all those fat stars shining down. My wife had been raised Missouri Synod Lutheran, but a series of intertribal squabbles had soured her parents on the whole thing, and apart from weddings and funerals, she hadn’t set foot in a church for years. Yet the outdoor cathedral of a starry Texas night is as good a place as any to communicate with the Almighty, which she commenced to do. In the hours since the accident, as the adrenaline cleared, her recollection of events had led her to a calculus that rewrote everything she thought she knew about the world. Until that night, her vision of a universal deity had been basically impersonal. God, in her mind, was simply too busy to take an interest in individual human affairs. The universe possessed a moral shape, but events were haphazard, unguided by providence. Now, as she contemplated the accident, mentally listing the many ways that she and our daughter should have died and yet did not, she decided this was wrong. Of course God paid attention. Only the intercession of a divine hand could explain such a colossal streak of luck. Likewise did the accident become in her mind a product of celestial design. It was a message; it meant something. She had been placed in a circumstance in which a mother’s greatest fear was about to be realized, then yanked from the brink. Her future emerged in her mind as something given back to her—it was as if she and our daughter had been killed on the highway and then restored to life—and like all supplicants in the wilderness, she asked God what her purpose was, why he’d returned her to the world.
That was the moment when Iris and I emerged from the building and called her name, giving her the answer.
Until that night we were a family that had lived an entirely secular existence. This wasn’t planned; things simply happened that way. My religious background was different from my wife’s, but only by degree. I was raised in the Catholic Church, but its messages were delivered to me in a lethargic and off-key manner that failed to gain much traction. My father did not attend mass—I was led to believe this had something to do with the trauma of his attending Catholic grade school—and my mother, who dutifully took my sister and me to church every Sunday, did not receive communion. Why this should be so I never thought to ask. Always she met us at the rear of the church so that we could make a quick exit “to avoid the traffic.” (There was no traffic.) We never attended a church picnic or drank coffee in the basement after mass or went to Bible study; we socialized with no other families in the parish. Religion was never discussed over the dinner table or anyplace else. I went to just enough Sunday school to meet the minimum requirements for first communion, but because I went to a private school with afternoon activities, I could not attend confirmation class. My mother struck a deal with the priest. If I met with him for a couple of hours to discuss religious matters, I could be confirmed. I had no idea why I was doing any of this or what it meant, only that I needed to select a new name, taken from the saints. I chose Cornelius, not because I knew who he was but because that was the name of my favorite character in Planet of the Apes.
Within a couple of years I was off to boarding school, and my life as a Roman Catholic, nominal as it was, came to an end. During a difficult period in my midtwenties, I briefly flirted with church attendance, thinking it might offer me some comfort and direction, but I found it just as stultifying and embarrassing as I always had, full of weird sexual obsessions, exclusionary politics, and a deep love of hocus-pocus, overlaid with a doctrine of obedience that was complete anathema to my newly independent self. If asked, I would have said that I believed in God—one never really loses those mental contours once they’re established—but that organized religious practice struck me as completely infantile. When my wife and I were married, a set of odd circumstances led us to choose an Anglican priest to officiate, but this was a decision we regretted, and when our daughter was born, the subject of baptism never came up. Essentially, we viewed ourselves as too smart for religion. I’ll put it another way. Religion was for people who wanted to stay children all their lives. We didn’t. We were the grown-ups.
In the aftermath of the accident, and the event that I now think of as “the revelation of the parking lot,” all this went out the window. I was not half as sure as my wife that God had interceded; I’m a skeptic and always will be. But it was also the case that I was due for a course correction. In my midforties, I had yet to have anything truly bad happen to me. The opposite was true: I’d done tremendously well. At the university where I taught, I’d just been promoted to full professor. A trilogy of novels I had begun writing on a lark had been purchased for scads of money. We’d just bought a new house we loved, and my daughter had been admitted to a terrific school, where she’d be starting in the fall. My children were happy and healthy, and my newfound financial success had allowed my wife to quit her stressful job as a high school teacher to look after our family and pursue her interests. It had been a long, hard climb, but we’d made it—more than made it—and I spent a great deal of time patting myself on the back for this success. I’d gone out hunting and brought back a mammoth.
Everything was right as rain.
In hindsight, this self-congratulatory belief in my ability to chart my own destiny was patently ridiculous. Worldly things are worldly things; two bad seconds on the highway can take them all away, and sooner or later something’s going to come along that does just that.
Once you have it, this information is unignorable, and it seems to me that you can do one of two things with it. You can decide that life doesn’t make sense, or you can decide that it does. In version one, the universe is a stone-cold place. Life is a series of accumulations—friends, lovers, children, memories, the contents of your 401(k)—followed by a rapid casting off (i.e., you die). Your wife is just somebody you met at a party; your children are biological accretions of yourself; your affection for them is nothing more than a bit of well-engineered firmware to guarantee the perpetuation of the species. All pleasures are sensory, since nothing goes deeper than the senses, and pain, whether psychological or physical, is meaningless bad news you can only endure till it’s over.
Version two assumes that life, with all its vicissitudes, possesses an organized pattern of meaning. Grief means something, joy means something, love means something. This meaning isn’t always obvious and is sometimes maddeningly elusive; had my wife and daughter been killed that afternoon on the highway, I would have been hard-pressed to take solace in religion’s customary clichés. (It is likely that the only thing that would have prevented me from committing suicide, apart from my own physical cowardice, would have been my son, into whom I would have poured all my love and sorrow.) But it’s there if you look for it, and the willingness to search—whether this search finds expression in religious ritual or attentive care for one’s children or a long run through falling autumn leaves—is what is meant, I think, by faith.
But herein lies the problem: we don’t generally come to these things on our own. Somebody has to lay the groundwork, and the best way to accomplish this is with a story, since that’s how children learn most things. My Catholic upbringing was halfhearted and unfocused, but it made an impression. At any time during my thirty-year exile from organized religion, I could have stepped into a Sunday mass and recited the entire liturgy by heart. For better or worse, my God was a Catholic God, the God of smells and bells and the BVM and the saints and all the rest, and I didn’t have to build this symbolic narrative on my own. My wife is much the same; I have no doubt that the image of the merciful deity she addressed in the parking lot came straight off a stained-glass window, circa 1975. Yet out of arrogance or laziness or the shallow notion that modern, freethinking parents ought to allow children to decide these things for freethinking parents ought to allow children to decide these things for themselves, we’d given our daughter none of it. We’d left her in the dark forest of her own mind, and what she’d concluded was that there was no God at all.
This came about in the aftermath of our move to Texas—a very churchy place. My daughter was entering the first grade; my son was still being hauled around in a basket. Houston is a sophisticated and diverse city, with great food, interesting architecture, and a vivid cultural life, but the suburbs are the suburbs, and the neighborhood where we settled was straight out of Betty Friedan’s famous complaint: horseshoe streets of more or less identical one-story, 2,500square-foot houses, built on reclaimed ranchland in the 1960s. A neighborhood of 2.4 children per household, fathers who raced off to work each morning before the dew had dried, moms who pushed their kids around in strollers and passed out snacks at soccer games and volunteered at the local elementary school. We were, after ten years living in a dicey urban neighborhood in Philadelphia, eager for something a little calmer, more controlled, and we’d chosen the house in a hurry, not realizing what we were getting into. Among our first visitors was an older woman from down the block. She presented us with a plate of brownies and proceeded to list the denominational affiliations of each of our neighbors. I was, to put it mildly, pretty weirded-out. I counted about a dozen churches within just a few miles of my house—Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ—and all of them were huge. People talked about Jesus as if he were sitting in their living room, flipping through a magazine; nearly every day I saw a car with a bumper sticker that read, Warning: In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned. Stapled to the local religious culture was a socially conservative brand of politics I found abhorrent. To hear homosexuality described as an “abomination” felt like I’d parachuted into the Middle Ages. I couldn’t argue with my neighbors’ devotion to their offspring—the neighborhood revolved around children—but it seemed to me that Jesus Christ, whoever he was, had been pretty clear on the subject of loving everybody.
This was the current my daughter swam in every day at school. Not many months had passed before one of her friends, the daughter of evangelicals, expressed concern that Iris was going to hell. Those were the words she used: “I don’t want you to go to hell, Iris.” The girl in question was adorable, with ringlets of dark hair, perfect manners, and lovely, doting parents. No doubt she thought she was doing Iris a kindness when she urged her to attend church with her family to avoid this awful fate. But that wasn’t how I saw the situation. I dropped to a defensive crouch and came out swinging. “Tell her that hell’s a fairy tale,” I said. “Tell her to leave you alone.”
The better choice would have been to offer her a more positive, less punishing The better choice would have been to offer her a more positive, less punishing view of creation—less hell, more heaven—and over time my wife and I tried to do just that. But when you’re seven years old, “love your neighbor as yourself” sounds a lot like “don’t forget to brush your teeth”—words to live by but hardly a description of humanity’s place in the cosmos. As the playground evangelism continued, so did my daughter’s contempt, and why wouldn’t it? She’d learned it from me. I don’t recall when she announced she was an atheist. All I remember was that she did this from the back seat of the car, sitting in a booster chair.
After the accident, my daughter spent the better part of a week in her closet.
From time to time I’d stop by and say, “Are you still in there?” Or “Hey, it’s
Daddy, how’s it going?” Or “Let me know if you need anything.”
“All good!” she said. “Thanks!”
There were things to sort out: an insurance claim to file, a replacement vehicle to acquire, arrangements to make for our summer vacation, for which we’d be leaving in two weeks. My wife and I were badly shaken. We had entered a new state: we were a family that had been nearly annihilated. Every few hours one of us would burst into tears. Genesis 2:24 speaks of spouses “cleaving” to each other, and that was what we did: we cleaved. We badly wanted to comfort our daughter, but she had made herself completely unreachable. Of course she’d be confused and angry; in a careless moment, her mother had nearly killed her. But when we probed her on the matter, she insisted this wasn’t so. Everything was peachy, she said. She just liked it in the closet. No worries, she’d be along soon.
A day later we received a phone call from the pastor whose car my wife’s had struck. At first I thought he was calling to get my insurance information, which I apologetically offered. He explained that the damage was minor, nothing even worth fixing, and that he had called to see if my wife and daughter were all right. Perfectly, I said, omitting my daughter’s temporary residence among her shirts and pants, and thanked him profusely.
“It’s a miracle,” he said. “I saw the whole thing. Nobody should have survived.”
He wasn’t the first to say this. The M-word was bandied about freely by virtually everyone we knew. The following afternoon we were visited by the woman who had collected Iris’s belongings: two cardboard boxes of books and clothes covered with highway grime and shards of glass, a suitcase that looked like it had been run over, and her violin, which had escaped its launch into the gulley unharmed. We chatted in the living room, replaying events. Like the pastor, she seemed a little dazed. When the conversation reached a resting place, she explained that she couldn’t leave until she’d seen Iris.
“Give me just a sec,” my wife said.
“Give me just a sec,” my wife said.
A minute later she appeared with our daughter. The woman rose from her chair, stepped toward Iris, and wrapped her in a hug. This display made my daughter visibly uncomfortable, as it would anyone. Why was this stranger hugging her? The woman’s face was full of inexpressible emotion; her eyes filmed with tears. My daughter endured her embrace as long as she could, then backed away.
“God protected you. You know that, don’t you?”
My daughter’s eyes darted around warily. “I guess.”
“You’re going to have a wonderful life. I just know it.”
We exchanged email addresses, knowing we would never use them, and said our goodbyes in the yard. When we returned to the house, Iris was still standing at the base of the stairs. I had never seen her look so freaked-out.
“God had nothing to do with it,” she said. “So don’t ask me to say he did.” And with that she headed back upstairs to her closet.
The psychologist, whom Iris nicknamed “Dr. Cuckoo,” told us not to worry. Iris was a levelheaded girl; hiding in the closet was a perfectly natural response to such a trauma. The best thing, she said, was to give our daughter space. She’d talk about it when the time was right.
I doubted this. Levelheaded, yes, but that was the problem. Doing a double gainer with a twist at 70 miles an hour, without so much as dropping your iPhone, was nothing that the rational mind could parse on its own. The psychologist also didn’t know my daughter like I did. Iris can be the most stubborn person on earth. This is one of her cardinal virtues when, for instance, she has a test and two papers due on the same day. She’ll stay up till 3:00 A.M. no matter how many times we tell her to go to bed, and get A’s on all three, proving herself right in the end. But she can also hold a grudge like nobody I’ve ever met, and a grudge with the cosmos is no simple matter. How do you forgive the world for being godless? When she declared her atheism from the booster seat, I’d thought two things. First, How cute! The world’s only atheist who eats from the kids’ menu! I couldn’t have been more charmed if she’d said she’d been reading Schopenhauer. The second thing was, This can’t last. How could a girl who still believed in the tooth fairy fail to come around to the idea of a cosmic protector? And yet she didn’t. Her atheism had hardened to such a degree that any mention of spiritual matters made her snort milk out her nose. By inserting nothing in its stead, we had inadvertently given her the belief that she was the author of her own fate, and my wife’s newfound faith in a God-watched universe was as much a betrayal as crashing their car into the guardrail over a minor argument. It was a philosophical reversal my daughter couldn’t process, and it left her feeling utterly alone.
My wife and I felt perfectly awful. In due course our daughter emerged, with one condition: she didn’t want to discuss the accident. Not then, not ever. This seemed unhealthy, but you can’t make a twelve-year-old girl talk about something she doesn’t want to. We left for Cape Cod, where we’d rented a house for the month of July. I’d just turned in a manuscript to my editor and under ordinary circumstances would have been looking forward to the time away, but the trip seemed like too much data. Everyone was antsy and out of sorts, and the weather was horrible. The only person who enjoyed himself was our son, who was too young to comprehend the scope of events and was happy drawing pictures all day.
The school year resumed, and with it life’s ordinary rhythms. My wife began looking around for a church to attend. To say this was a sore spot with Iris would be a gross understatement. She hated the idea and said so. “Fine with me,” she said, “if you want to get all Jesus-y. Just leave me out of it.”
It didn’t happen right away. God may have shown his face to my wife in the parking lot, but he’d failed to share his address. We were stymied by the things we always had been: our jaundiced view of organized religion, the conservative social politics of most mainline denominations, the discomfiting business of praying aloud in the presence of people we didn’t know. And what, exactly, did we believe? Faith asks for a belief in God, which we had; religion asks for more, a great deal of it literal. Christian ritual was the most familiar, but neither of us believed that the Bible was the word of God or that Jesus Christ was a supernatural being who walked on water when he wasn’t turning it into wine. Certainly somebody by that name had existed; he’d gotten a lot of ink. He’d done and said some remarkable stuff, scared the living shit out of an imperial authority, and given humanity two thousand years’ worth of things to think about. But the son of God? Really? That Jesus was no more or less divine than the rest of us seemed to me the core of his message.
We wanted something, but we didn’t know what. Something with a little grace, a bit of wonder, the feeling of taking a few minutes out of each week to acknowledge how fortunate we were. We decided to give Unitarianism a shot. From the website, it seemed safe enough. Over loud objections, we made Iris come with us. The service was overseen by two ministers, a married couple, who took turns speaking from the altar, which seemed about as holy as the podium in a college classroom. After the hokey business of lighting the lamp, they droned on for half an hour about the importance of friendship. There were almost no kids in the congregation, or even anybody close to our age. It was a sea of whitehaired heads. After the service, everyone lingered in the lobby over coffee and stale cookies, but we beat a hasty retreat.
“Well, that was awkward,” Iris said.
It was. It had felt like sitting in the audience at a talk show. We tried a few more times, but our interest flagged. When, on the fourth Sunday, Iris found me making French toast in the kitchen in my bathrobe and asked why we weren’t going, I told her that I guessed church wasn’t for us after all. “Thank God,” she said, and laughed.
In the end, as in the scriptures, it was a child who led us. To our surprise, our son, Tuck, had become a secret Episcopalian. His school is affiliated with an Episcopal parish, and students attend chapel once a week. We’d always assumed this was the sort of wishy-washy, nondenominational fare most places dish out, but we were wrong. One day, apropos of nothing, as I was driving him home from school, he announced that he believed in Jesus.
“Really?” I said. “When did that happen?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and shrugged. “It just makes sense to me. Pastor
Lisa’s nice. We should go sometime.”
“To church, you mean?”
“Sure,” he said. “I think that would be great.”
Just like that, the matter was settled. We now go every week—the three of us. St. Stephen’s is located in a diverse neighborhood in Houston, and much of the congregation is gay or lesbian. There are protocols, but very loose ones, and the church has open communion and a terrific choir. Pastor Lisa is a woman in her fifties with a gray pageboy who wears blue jeans and Birkenstocks under her robe and gives a hug that feels like falling into bed. She knows I was raised Catholic, and she laughed when I told her that I didn’t mind that she “got some of the words wrong.” I have my doubts, as always, but it seems like a fine church to have them in. My son finds some of the service boring, as all children do, but he likes communion, which he calls his “force field for the week.” He has asked to be baptized next fall.
Will Iris be there? I hope so. But it’s her choice. She has yet to go with us. I know this makes her sad, and it makes me sad, too. It’s the first thing the three of us have ever done without her.
Three years after the accident, in spring 2012, I failed a blood test at my annual physical, then failed a biopsy and found myself, two months shy of my fiftieth birthday, facing a surgery that would tell me if I was going to see my children grow up. Two of my doctors assured me this would happen; a third said maybe grow up. Two of my doctors assured me this would happen; a third said maybe not. We were spending the summer on Cape Cod, where we’d bought a house, and in late July my wife and I flew back to Texas for my operation. When I awoke in the recovery room, my wife was standing over me, smiling. I was so dopey with painkillers that focusing on her face felt like trying to carry a piano up the stairs. “It’s over,” she said. “The margins were clear. You’re going to be okay.”
Two days after my surgery, I was instructed to walk. This sounded impossible, but I was determined. With my wife holding my arm, I shuffled up and down the hall of the ward, gritting my teeth against the discomfort of the catheter, which was the weirdest thing I’d ever felt. The last two months had pummeled me to psychological pieces, but the worst was over. Once again the car had rolled and we had walked away.
From the far end of the hall, a woman was approaching. Like a pair of ocean liners, we headed toward each other in slow motion. She was very thin and wearing a silk robe; like me, she was pulling an IV stand. Some greeting was called for, and she was the first to speak.
“May I give you something?”
We were within just a few feet of each other, and I saw what the situation was. Her body was leaving her; death was in her face.
“Of course.”
She gestured downward, indicating the pockets of her robe. “Pick one.”
I chose the left. With an uncertain hand she withdrew a wad of white cotton, tied with a bow. She placed it in my hand. It was an angel, made from a dish towel. To this she’d affixed a heart-shaped piece of laminated paper printed with these words from the Book of Numbers:
The Lord bless and keep you;
The Lord make his face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you; And give you peace.
When I first learned about my illness, a very smart man told me that I should select an object. It could be anything, he said. A piece of jewelry. A spoon. A rock. Since I was a writer, maybe something to do with writing, such as a pen. It didn’t matter what it was. When I was afraid, he said, and thinking that I was going to die, I should take that object in my hand and put my fear inside it.
Wise as his counsel was, I’d never managed to do this. I’d tried one thing and then another. Nothing had felt right. This did. Not just right: miraculous.
then another. Nothing had felt right. This did. Not just right: miraculous.
“Bless you,” I said.
Two weeks later I returned to the Cape to complete my recovery. There wasn’t much I could do, but I was glad to be there. A few days before my diagnosis, I had bought a ten-year-old Audi convertible and shipped it north. Iris had just gotten her learner’s permit, and after a week of lounging around the house, I asked her if she’d take me for a drive. The day was sunny and hot. We put the top down and sped north, bisecting the peninsula on a rolling, two-lane road. From the passenger seat, I watched my daughter drive. In the past year a startling change had occurred. Iris wasn’t a kid anymore. She was taller than my wife, with a full, womanly shape. Her facial features had organized into mature proportions. Her hair, a honeyed red, swept away from her face in a stylish arc. She could have been mistaken for a college student, and often was. But the difference was more than physical; to look at my daughter was to know that she was somebody with a private, inner existence. She was standing at the edge of life; everything was ahead of her. All she had to do was let it come.
“How’s it feel?” I asked. She had perfect motorist’s manners: hands at ten and two, shoulders pressed back, eyes on the road. She was wearing large tortoiseshell sunglasses that would have been perfectly at home on Audrey Hepburn’s face. “Okay.”
“Not scary?”
She shrugged. “Maybe a little.”
Our destination was a beach on the Cape’s north side, called Sandy Neck. From there, on the clearest days, you can see all the way from Plymouth to Provincetown. We parked and got out of the car and walked to the little platform built to take in the view. I knew we couldn’t stay long; even standing was an effort.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” I said.
Iris was looking away. “You didn’t. Not really.”
“Well, I was scared. I’m glad you weren’t.”
She thought a moment. “That’s the thing. I knew I should have been. But I wasn’t. I actually feel kind of guilty about that.”
“There’s no reason you should.”
“It’s just . . .” She hunted for the words. “I don’t know. You’re you. I just can’t imagine you not being okay.”
She was wrong. Someday I wouldn’t be. Time and chance would do its work, as it does for all of us. But she didn’t need to hear that from me on a sunny summer day.
“Do you remember the accident?” I asked.
She laughed, a little nervously. “Well, duh.”
“I’ve always wondered. What were you doing in the closet?”
“Not much. Mostly watching Project Runway on my laptop.”
“And being mad at us.”
She shrugged. “That whole God thing really pissed me off. I mean, you guys can believe whatever you want. I just wanted Mom to feel the same way I did.”
“How did you feel?”
She didn’t answer right away. Boats were creeping across the horizon.
“Abandoned.”
We were silent for a time. I had a sudden vision of myself as old—an old man, being taken to the beach by his grown daughter. The dunes, the ocean, the rocky margin where they met—all would be the same, unchanged since I was boy. It was a sad thought, but it also made me happy in a way that seemed new. These things were years away, and with any luck, I would be around to see them.
“Are you doing all right? Do you need to go back?”
I nodded. “Probably I should get off my feet.”
We returned to the car. Three steps ahead of me, Iris moved to the passenger side, opened the door, and got in.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She looked around. “Oh, right,” she said, and laughed. “I’m the driver, aren’t I?”
She was sixteen years old. I hoped someday she’d remember how it felt, how invincible, how alive. I’d heard it said that one tenth of parenting is making mistakes; the other nine are prayer and letting go. “Yes,” I said. “You are.”
MEGHAN DAUM
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A Small Glitch Chapter 8
In Session
Dark sat at the edge of his bed, gently running his hand through Anti’s hair. Anti was still curled up in the blankets, staring at the clock sitting on the bedside table.
“I’d be making breakfast for her right now,” Anti said softly.
“I know,” Dark said, rubbing his thumb against Anti’s temple.
“I was gonna make pancakes...I was gonna put some apple slices on Ann’s.” Anti sniffed. “She loves apples.” He added, body shaking a little as he began to cry again. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“None of this is your fault.” Dark slid his hand down so he was now rubbing Anti’s shoulder.
“I’m the one who wanted Ann. I’m the one who convinced you to let her into our home. It’s my fault that she’s going back to live the same woman who fucking tied her to a door and left her there!” Anti sat up, tears streaming down his face. “How the fuck are they letting her go back to that woman!?”
“I’m working on it. I’m taking the legal route first to see if this can be done swiftly with the law on our side.”
“Fuck the law,” Anti growled. “The law is what took her away.”
“That’s why we have the egos.” Dark chuckled, nodding his head when there was a knock.
“We ‘found’ their names,” Wilford said with a smirk as he handed Dark a folder.
“Wait, ’we’?” Anti threw the blanket off of himself and got out of bed, not bothering to put a shirt on, or pants.
“She was malnourished when she was brought into their home.” Dr. Iplier stated while Bim was writing everything down into a notebook.
“She looked as if to not have slept in days as well.” Dr. Schneeplestein added.
“What…” Anti’s eyes were wide with shock. Their dining table had been moved into the living room, papers were scattered all over it and all of the egos were gathered around it.
“Waffle?” Chase offered, holding out a prepared plate towards Anti. Anti took the plate in stunned silence, looking over his shoulder when he felt a hand on it.
“I’m getting her back,” Dark said. “I know how badly you just want to attack the woman who caused this. But I plan on taking Annalise away from her like she did to us. I want her to suffer like we did and she’s going to pay.”
“That’s so fucking hot,” Anti said under his breath as Dark went to join the egos.
“I’m assuming you're going to represent yourself?” Google asked, a screen projecting on the table they sat at.
“No lawyer can do what I can,” Dark stated, straightening his tie and going to the head of the table.
“You gonna put pants on, bro?” Bing asked Anti. The virus tilted his head and looked down at himself.
“What-oh!” Anti quickly went back into the bedroom.
“Jolene Barbetti...how fitting,” Dark growled after opening the file. “Tell me everything.”
“She is twenty-one years old,” Google stated. “She gave birth to Annalise right after turning eighteen. She chose to keep the child against her parent’s wishes since her, at the time boyfriend, Alexander Richards, wanted to keep her.”
“Alexander is twenty-three. He’s a construction worker.” Bing leaned over Google’s shoulder to read what was on the screen. “He moved on to marry a woman named Kathy Harrington shortly after Annalise was born.”
“Alexander has said on record that Jolene is ‘a manipulative person who believes that she has never done wrong’.” Chase read from a piece of holographic paper.
“She’s about to meet the best manipulator ever.” Marvin chuckled and held up a wand. “And witness the greatest vanishing act ever.”
“Fill me in, what the hell is happening?” Anti asked when he came back into the room, sitting in the empty chair next to Dark and placing the plate of waffles in front of him.
“Viana called this morning and said there’s still a chance for us to get Annalise back,” Dark said, sliding the folder towards Anti so he could read while he ate. “Since Jolene technically abandoned her child, we can fight for custody since we were signed under temporary guardianship.”
“Temporary?” Anti said through a mouthful of waffle.
“We need to wait six months before the final form was filled and stating that Jolene fully gave up ownership of Annalise,” Dark explained.
“Adoptions are very complicated,” Google stated.
“They are only complicated when a bitch gets in the way.” Chase huffed.
“I still say we go in there and give her a few shots to the gut. That oughta tell her.” Wilford chuckled, pulling out his favorite revolver.
“We are not resorting to violence...yet.” Dark winked at Anti when he said the last word. “Our court date is in a week, we have a lot of work to do.”
x~x~x
Anti had a violent urge to vomit as everyone sat back down when the judge said they could. It took everything in his being to not lunge himself at Jolene and tear her apart with his bare hands. It also was almost impossible to not hug Annalise, who he knew was sitting in a room right next to them. Anti just wanted to get his little girl and leave. He just wanted to go home with his family.
“My client made a mistake. She’s human, it happens to the best of us.” Jolene’s lawyer stated. “She has atoned her actions and is more than fitting to care for her child.” The lawyer looked at Anti and Dark as he sat down.
“Jolene Barbetti is nowhere near fit to take care of our child.” Dark shot the lawyer the same look. “When Annalise was abandoned at our home. She was tied to our screen door with a rope. Annalise wasn’t simply let there, she was tied up as if she was a dog that was no longer wanted. Annalise is no dog. She is a smart and beautiful little girl that deserves to be happy and healthy.” Dark sat back down, holding his head up and knowing that he won that part by the look of sympathy on the judge’s face.
“Jolene Barbetti, you may take the stand.”
“Yes, sir.” Jolene bowed a little before walking, sitting down and forcing a perfect posture.
“You may present the evidence.” The judge stated as he began pulling out papers.
“As you can see, we have medical records stating that Annalise was twenty pounds underweight when she came into our care. She is now of healthy weight because of what me and my partner have done.” Dark stood with his hands behind his back.
“Care to explain, Mrs. Barbetti?” The judge asked.
“This economy is terrible. I’ve been working myself to the bone to barely make enough to have a roof over our head.” Jolene said, her tone beating out false sorrow.
“All I hear are excuses, your honor,” Dark said. “I would like to ask how Jolene’s medical records state that she is over the average weight of a woman her age and size while her daughter was in danger of starvation.”
“Are you calling me fat?” Jolene gasped, putting a hand on her chest.
“You clearly are not fat and I made no such statement. I am only going by the numbers.” Dark didn’t even flinch while Jolene looked at her lawyer and she sniffed loudly when he nodded his head.
“Your numbers don’t tell the story of everything I’ve been through!” Jolene shouted. “Your numbers don’t tell the story of the nights I went to bed sobbing because my baby was hungry and there was nothing I could do for her. Your numbers-”
“What’s Ann’s favorite color!?” Anti screamed, slamming his hands on the desk as he stood.
“Uh…blue…” Jolene answered, her voice clearly saying that she was lying.
“Orange. She loves orange. Orange makes her think of happiness.” Anti said. “What’s her favorite animal?” Jolene didn’t even open her mouth.
“Your honor, Mr. Frost is not-”
“Cats! It’s cats! And my name is Mr. Powell.” Anti glared harshly at the lawyer. “My wedding was last week when your ‘client’ decided that she so needed a child that she knows nothing about!”
“You honor!”
“I’ll allow it.” The judge stated, unseen to everyone that there was a red fog covering his head. Dark was now sitting in his chair, eyes blacked-out and staring straight ahead.
“What’s her favorite holiday? Halloween. Who’s her favorite character on Sesame Street? The Cookie Monster. She loves butterflies and ladybugs and bubbles and you have no right to take my daughter away from me!” Anti was crying at this point, tears falling on to the wooden surface of the desk.
“I...what the fuck!?” Jolene screeched. “His eyes are black! They’re black!” She pointed at Dark as she well. Dark blinked and his eyes were back to how they were before.
“My eyes are simply a very dark brown,” Dark stated, his hands shaking a little under the table as he struggled to keep together after using so much energy.
“My head.” The judge groaned. He started to rub at his temple. “We’ll finish this session tomorrow.”
“Your honor, if I may interrupt. I think we can clearly see that Annalise-”
“You’re a monster! You’re a demon or something from hell!” Jolene went back to her yelling. “He’s possessed! How can a creature take care of a child!?”
“I could ask the same of you,” Dark growled, the room going silent for only a moment.
“I knew there was something wrong with you! The moment I was told that my daughter was taken in my two men, I knew something was wrong!” Jolene stood as she shouted.
“Mrs. Barbetti, that’s enough!” The judge snapped. “Them being in a relationship has nothing to do with this case! I suggest you get your client out of here now before she says anything else that would change my favor.” He added to Jolene’s lawyer.
“Yes, your honor. Let’s-”
“Daddy! I want Daddy!” Annalise’s cries could be heard through the door. “I hate mommy! I hate! I hate!”
“I’ll be seeing everyone tomorrow.” The judge banged his gavel before leaving his stand.
“You’re not going to get her back. I need her.” Jolene said as she passed by, already recovered from her hysterics.
“Don’t be too sure of yourself,” Dark stated.
“I would suggest dropping this case now if you know what’s best for you,” Jolene warned.
“We are the worst people to threaten.” Anti stepped up to Jolene. “We will become your worst nightmare if you keep this up. You won’t just lose Annalise. You’ll lose everything.”
“Jolene, we need to leave now.” The lawyer took Jolene’s arm and lead her out of the room.
“We’re alone,” Dark said as he held Anti’s hand. Anti could feel it trembling in his grip and he quickly teleported them out of the room.
“Fuck!” Dark groaned when they appeared in their living room, the color of his skin shattered away and his aura exploded out of his back. “I need to work on that more.” He said as he panted. Dark turned his head and saw that Anti was pacing and glitching. “Anti, everything is going to be fine.”
“She threatened us. Us! Does she know who we are!? We make people disappear for a living! I fucking cut them open as if they were a fucking roast and laugh while doing it!” Anti’s eyes began to glow. “I’ll slowly cut off every single part of her body off and make sure she lives through all of it!”
“Anti…” Dark wrapped his arms around his husband, burying his face into the crook of his neck. “We’re going to win this. The judge would have to be crazy to allow Annalise to go back to her. I have everything written down, I have evidence to back up all of the allegations. Your forged recordings and my documents will ensure that Annalise will be back home with us soon.”
“I’ll kill her…”
“Later.” Dark lifted his head and started to rub Anti’s shoulders. “First, we break her.” Dark kissed Anti’s cheek. “We’ll lure her into a false sense of peace.” A kiss to the jaw. “She’ll think that she’s safe and sound.” A kiss to the neck. “Then we’ll come in.” Dark’s hands slide down Anti’s arm as he kissed his neck again. “We’ll destroy everything.” Anti took in a shaky breath as Dark’s hands slipped under the end of his shirt, untucking it and his tongue went across the bottom of his neck. “Her finances will vanish. Her friends will hate her. Her own mother won’t even look at her.” Dark’s hands began moving up, taking the shirt with it. His voice was a low whisper, his breath hot against Anti’s ear. “She'll hate everything in her life. She’ll hate herself.”
“D-Dark.” Anti groaned as one of the hands stayed up and the other slowly traveled down his stomach, his fingers barely grazing the skin.
“She’ll want to die. She’ll fight it at first. She’ll try to think of things that will keep her here and she’ll realize that it’s all gone. We took all of it away.” Anti leaned back into Dark as a thumb tucked itself into the top of his pants. Anti tilted his head back and his chest heaved as he breathed heavily. “When she’s finally ready to cave, we won’t even allow her the grace of ending it herself.” Dark grinned before giving Anti a kiss.
“Dark!” Wilford shouted as he threw open the door, not even blinking twice at the scene he saw. “You need to know something!” He kept shouting as he waved a piece of paper.
“What? What’s wrong?” Dark lowered Anti’s shirt and moved to let the other man could go behind him and make sure he was put together.
“It’s Alexander!”
“What about Alexander? He wasn’t at the trial, he clearly doesn’t care-”
“He’s the head judge!” Wilford interrupted, holding the page out.
“What!?” Dark took the paper and started reading it.
“Host kept saying that the trail wasn’t going to end well and we could not figure out what he meant. Google did some digging and found this.” Wilford explained. Anti scratched his head before speaking.
“What does Alexander being a head judge have to do with us? He left Jolene, he doesn’t…” Dark, Anti and Wilford all stared at Dark’s jacket when it began to ring. Dark gave Anti the paper and answered his phone, turning away from the other men.
“Viana, why are you crying?” Wilford and Anti shared a concerned look. “What!? How!? The judge said we had another session tomorrow!” Dark’s foot was tapping against the ground as he aura slowly grew. “That can’t be legal! Fuck what he says!” Dark suddenly stiffened. “Alright...fine...let her have her way.”
“Dark…” Anti watched as Dark started to shake. Both Anti and Wilford took a step back when Dark let out a yell as he threw his phone against the wall, shattering it.
“We lost!” Dark screamed. “We fucking lost!”
“How!? We still-”
“Alexander Richards,”Dark growled. “He took over the case and placed a ruling immediately, dismissing all evidence as faulty and granting Jolene full custody!” The three stood in silence, the only sound was Dark breathing through his teeth. He finally took a deep breath before slowly turning around, a very large grin on his face. “We’re going to get her back.”
“Is it my turn?” Anti asked with a chuckle.
“Fuck the law.”
Tag List: @readeatfightlove13 @kenzie-110101
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Ultraprocessed Foods : Hidden Dangers
Feb. 21, 2020 -- At his heaviest, Steve Konzelman weighed 503 pounds. His sign had reached 180/140. (Normal is 120/80 or lower). His doctor told him he could have a stroke at any moment.
He was in his 20s at the time. “Even then, I still didn’t take my medication,” he says.
Konzelman, whose mother, brother, and late father struggled with obesity, too, had looked into weight loss surgery several times. But, he says, “I just always felt like I could still appear the hay on my very own.”
As he neared 30, though, he knew he needed help. So he finally moved forward 4 years ago at age 29. Doctors had warned him that gastric bypass surgery, which reduces what proportion the stomach can hold and thus the quantity of calories and nutrients the body absorbs, had a high failure rate.
“It doesn’t fix your life. It’s only a tool. I had to travel into it fully committed,” says Konzelman, an operations analyst at Bank of America in Atlanta. He knew he’d reduce rapidly over the primary 6 months. But soon stay the load off, he’d need to change everything. That meant abandoning the calorie-rich and nutrient-poor ultra-processed foods that were a staple of his diet.
“I was the stereotypical fat American,” he says. “I’d hit up a fast-food drive-thru within the morning and acquire two breakfast sandwiches and two hash browns and a 40-ounce soda. Then, after having all my calories for the day in one meal. I'd appear the hay again at lunch and dinner.”
Those sorts of ultra-processed foods -- which include ready-made snacks, drinks, and meals that contain additives, artificial colors, preservatives, and much of sugar, salt, and fat but little or no nutrition -- account for up to 60% of some people’s diets. Recently, this subset of processed foods has become the foremost target of blame for ailments including heart condition, diabetes, obesity, some cancers, and overall shorter life.
What is Ultra-Processed Food?
Unless you create all of your food reception from scratch -- and even then -- processed food is practically unavoidable. But there are degrees of processing.
Minimal processing cleans food, preserves it, or removes inedible parts -- slightly a touch just like the outer skin of a coffee berry as its ground. Besides grinding, these processes include refrigerating, freezing, fermenting, pasteurizing, and vacuum-packaging. The key to keeping it minimal is that the nutrition content of the food remains almost an equivalent. Whole-grain flours and pasta also are minimally processed foods, also as some cooking ingredients. Think oils pressed from nuts, olives, or seeds.
Once you add sugar, salt, or fats to the mixture, the processing isn't any longer “minimal.” Canned fruits and vegetables that include added salt or sugar are processed. So are fresh-baked bread, some cheeses, and canned fish. Still, they’re not ultra-processed. Their ingredient lists are limited to 2 to 3 items, but they're typically able to eat (or a minimum of edible) right out of the package.
Ultra-processing includes multiple steps -- not just, as an example, adding salt and canning. The tactic also brings in ingredients -- usually with unrecognizable names -- that you simply wouldn’t find during a crop or on a farm. They include artificial colors and flavors, preservatives, and ingredients, like emulsifiers, meant to form the design or texture of the food more appealing.
Sodas, luncheon meats, sugary cereals, and chips are ultra-processed, in conjunction with many other packaged snacks and food, some frozen meals, and a few crackers.
“You’re introducing ingredients that shouldn’t be there within the first place, that doesn’t naturally exist in food and instead are brought in purely by human preparation,” says Qi Sun, MD, ScD, a professor of nutrition at Harvard University. “You destroy the structure of the food and reorganize it -- introducing a replacement food matrix.”
Food matrix? That’s a food’s structure. It’s not only a food’s components -- say, vitamin C and fiber -- that make it nutritious. It’s also the food’s structure. Meaning that albeit an ultra-processed food contains certain vitamins and nutrients, it still wouldn’t be as nutritious as entire food. That’s why, as an example, high-fiber whole food is best for you than, say, a fiber pill.
What’s the Harm in Ultra-Processed Foods?
Research links ultra-processed foods to quite a health problems. Folks that eat more of the things are more likely to be obese and have diabetes, a heart condition, and vascular disease (that includes stroke), too.
One recent study even tied the convenience foods to cancer risk. Researchers tracked the eating habits and health records of 104,980 adults for five years. Folks that ate the foremost ultra-processed foods were presumably to urge some quite cancer over the study period. The researchers then verified cancer risk supported the average number of servings per day over the 5 years. For every 10% increase in ultra-processed food intake, there was a 12% increase in overall cancer risk. That’s the difference between someone who eats one whole Twinkie per week for five years and someone who eats one whole Twinkie plus one bite of another one per week over an equivalent period of a short time.
Maybe it’s thanks to the danger for these diseases that studies also show eating more ultra-processed foods equals living a shorter life.
Experts can’t say needless to say whether the harm in ultra-processed foods is in what these foods contain or what they lack. “It’s probably both,” says Sun. “Certain chemicals, preservatives, sweeteners -- even folks that don’t have any calories -- may potentially interfere with metabolism. We all know these foods aren't good for us, but there’s also tons we still don’t know.”
And if you’re snacking on processed foods, you’re doing that rather than eating, say, an apple.
“A diet that contains more ultra-processed foods may contain fewer whole foods, so it's going to be the shortage of these foods that are most harmful,” says Katherine Zeratsky, a registered dietitian nutritionist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.
Ultra-processed foods, though not all of them, tend to be low in fiber and other essential nutrients. If these snacks take the place of whole foods in your diet, you’ll miss out on those nutrients and will see the health consequences that accompany that. Protein and fiber, for his or her part, assist you're feeling full, which suggests foods that contain these nutrients may assist you to control calorie intake throughout the day.
Some studies find that ultra-processed foods, no matter their nutrient content, don’t satisfy also as whole foods do.
That could explain the results of a recent experiment. Within the study, 20 healthy adults stayed during a lab under close surveillance for 28 days. Ten of them received a diet of mostly ultra-processed foods, including light bread, lunch meats, cheese slices, chips, and artificially sweetened diet drinks. The opposite 10 received the precise same amount of calories, sugars, fiber, fat, and carbohydrates per meal, but only within the sort of unprocessed and minimally processed foods. They ate things like beef tips with broccoli, rice, apples, and salad. (Note: It takes many broccoli and apples to match the calories during a bowl of potato chips). The study participants could eat only the food that was provided, but they didn’t need to clean their plates. At absolutely the better of the 4 weeks, those within the ultra-processed group had eaten about 500 calories per day quite the others. Which that that that that they had gained 2 pounds, while the others had lost 2.
Were the processed foods not as filling? Or were they only tastier, making it harder to stop? The researchers don’t know needless to say why people ate substantially more of the processed stuff. But, either way, the ultra-processed foods led to overeating and weight gain.
As for Konzelman, he always found that processed foods were more satisfying. “I liked to cook and had a taste for vegetables and home cooked meals. I just didn’t appear the hay considerably because those foods didn’t fulfill and satisfy me the utmost amount as take-out nutriment.”
How do I Quit?
On his extreme weight loss journey, which got him from 503 to 218 pounds, Konzelman transformed from a person who’d eat an entire pizza and a 2-liter soda for dinner to a minimum of 1 who brings his homemade dressing when he goes bent dine-in restaurants.
“I wanted a dressing that wasn’t full of sugar and everyone sort of artificial ingredients,” he says.
And, in conjunction with his stomach’s restricted capacity for food and his body’s limited ability to wish in it, there was no room for empty calories. “Now that I used to be only eating a little amount of food, I had to form sure that it had been full of the nutrients that I needed.”
Konzelman emphasizes that he didn’t go from whole pizza to make-your-own dressing overnight. When he first started preparing small, healthier meals reception, he’d cook vegetables, but he’d still contribute an ultra-processed sauce or marinade. Little by little, he learned about healthier ingredients he could swap in to exchange the less healthy ones.
And that’s the proper idea, Zeratsky says. Search for the low-hanging fruit. Are there a few of ultra-processed foods in your regular diet that you simply could swap out for something else? “You could start by curtailing on ultra-processed foods at snack times,” she says. “Cut quite the chips or cookies and replace them with apples and spread or vegetables with hummus.”
Dietitians and food industry professionals alike warn that it’s not about replacing one food with another seemingly better one. Don’t be swayed by labels on ready-to-eat convenience foods, like chips and cookies, which read “natural” or “organic.” You’re still likely to hunt out unrecognizable words among the ingredients.
“It’s not always that much different -- the so-called cleaner versions,” says David Foerstner, a foodstuff development consultant.
Even buzzwords like “plant-based” don’t mean it’s as healthy as entire food. “All these things they’ve come plant-based protein would still fall into ultra-processed foods,” says Michael Sigmundsson, a food and beverage product developer and consultant.
The ideal choice is whole, unprocessed, or minimally processed foods. Any movement toward more of these and fewer of the opposite could even be a positive change. It doesn’t mean you suddenly need to make everything from scratch.
“If you'd quite a convenient meal, are you able to get a bagged salad? Or devour an entire cooked chicken or frozen vegetables that you simply can heat?” Zeratsky says. “Because I don’t think we are ever getting to have a lifestyle that isn’t time-crunched which doesn’t demand convenient foods.”
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The Once and Future King
This takes place during the Season 3 movie premiere. When King River stops partying and accidentally summons the monster towards the city. Instead of getting motivated by Marco encouraging him, River just gives up entirely. Marco has to pick up the pieces of the kingdom. Once he’s done that, he becomes a worthy candidate for courting the princess.
Chapter 1
“She’s right, I’m not fit to rule,” King River said. “I’m a…” he trailed off, and turned around. He gave his crown to the young boy who stood with him, and then walked dejectedly into the castle. He locked the door behind him.
“Um, wait a minute,” Marco said, looking at the crown before turning to look at the king. He found that the king had locked the door, trapping Marco outside.
“I can’t do this anymore,” River cried, curled up on the couch and throwing his cape over his head.
“You can’t just abandon your people!” Marco said.
“You do it!” River whined. “You’ll be a better king. I make you my replacement.” The short and fat former king ran to the royal bedroom to hide under the bed.
“What?” Marco asked, turning to look out at the city. Godzilla was walking towards the city, which was already on fire. “I can’t do this,” he thought frantically, wracking his brain for any ideas.
“Star needs a home to come back to,” a voice said from behind Marco.
“Ruberiot?” Marco asked, surprised.
“Don’t let Princess Star down,” the musician said. “She needs you to save her kingdom.”
Marco took a deep breath. “You’re right,” he said. “She needs a home to come home to.” He took another look at the city, and made a decision. He ran inside the castle and grabbed some jewels. He opened a portal and jumped through. He landed in a familiar wing of Quest Buy. He grabbed a small package and threw the treasure as payment on the ground. He jumped back through the portal, landing on the balcony. “Goats!” he yelled as he jumped off the railing. He landed on an invisible goat and ran towards the monster. Just before he got to it, he ripped the packaging open. He threw the crystal on the ground at the monster’s feet, and a black hole opened. It expanded as the monster’s foot approached it, and the beast fell into it. It expanded until the entire monster fit through, and then it vanished.
“He did it!” someone cheered. “Three cheers for King Marco!” The crowd cheered, until another voice silenced the crowd with its horrible noise.
“Hip-hip hooray!” Ludo said, grinning.
“Ludo!” Marco yelled angrily. He was about to lunge forward when the rats swarmed the city. He jumped back on the goat and ran towards the castle. He got to a safe distance and started cutting portals. By the time Ludo got to the castle, Marco was surrounded by portals.
“Hundreds of portals and you still don’t have a chance to escape,” Ludo cackled.
“I wasn’t trying to escape,” Marco said. He grinned, and made a strange noise. The sound was echoed from every portal, and cats poured through in a wave of fur and claws. The rats hissed, and it was only minutes before the cats had destroyed all of them. “You see, cats are one of the few animals that kills for fun,” Marco said to Ludo, “They’ll kill every rat they find.” He was being attacked by four cats simultaneously. He was shooting blasts of green light from his hand, but the cats were too fast. Marco jumped around until he was behind Ludo, and then pinned his arm. With a quick twist the frail bone shattered. Ludo gave a screech of pain. Marco made a cast, but it pointed his hand at his chest. “If you try to blast your way out of here, it’ll hurt you more than anyone else,” Marco said. The guards dragged Ludo to the dungeons, and the cats were allowed to roam the city for food. Mewni didn’t have cats, so all the children in the city loved them. Marco set people to rebuild the walls first, and then others he had start bringing bags of mysterious substances through the portals from Earth. He brought some humans, and they helped direct the Mewmans in what Marco called “making concrete.” The humans and Mewmans worked together to build cement walls around the city, and then built the houses out of cement as well. Metals were collected from across the kingdom and melted down, then sliced thinly into wires. The “construction workers,” as Marco called them, put strange black plates all over the castle roof. Marco explained how the panels absorbed magic power from the sun and powered magical items using an Earth magic called electricity. It took a few days, but finally a night came where the city stayed brightly lit when the sun went down. Glass had been formed into light bulbs, and thus electric lighting had quickly been developed. The wood from the old houses had been collected and ground up, then spread over the fields to provide nutrients. New plants were brought from Earth to replace the dull repetition of corn. Marco contacted Buff Frog to begin peace negotiations with the monsters. He added hundreds of houses in a new part of the city dedicated to monsters with unusual needs, such as Buff Frog needing a swampy house. He employed them just as frequently as the Mewmans, and soon the humans he had brought were able to go home. He contacted King Pony Head and Tom’s father to discuss continued alliances, and they helped by giving him advice for starting out as a new king. Tom and Pony-Head became the delegates, and they started spending more time hanging out as a group. Ruberiot spent some time with them as well, writing new songs about the new king. That was their group on the evening Pony-Head brought up the question Marco had been avoiding.
“So what are you going to do when Star comes back?” Pony-Head asked one night after a movie.
“What do you mean?” Marco asked, feigning confusion.
“You and Star,” Pony-Head said, “Duh.”
“Pony, not in front of him,” Marco said, jerking his head towards Tom.
“Dude, chill, I knew longer than everyone,” Tom said.
“You suspected it, you mean,” Pony said, “I was the one who knew it first.”
“Well, I was the one who said it first,” Ruberiot interjected.
“I heard that went really well,” Tom smirked. Pony-Head laughed.
“Well, I still win,” Ruberiot said.
“I probably still wouldn’t know if it weren’t for you,” Marco said, “And I never thanked you for that.”
“No problem, man,” Ruberiot said. Marco hadn’t lasted a day before he made Ruberiot stop calling him “Your majesty.”
“You still with that board chick?” Pony-Head asked.
“No,” Marco said. “She said she didn’t want to watch me suffer over Star and trying to decide who I liked, and she said she would rather hurt than be hurt.”
“She probably saw it, too,” Pony-Head said. “So, what’s your plan?” she asked again.
“I don’t know,” Marco said, slouching back in her chair. “We’re back on Mewni! I can’t exactly ask her to the movies. It’ll be a miracle if her parents let her go to Earth again. She broke her wand, lost her book and Glossaryk, and nearly got sucked into that weird portal, all because she was on Earth.”
“Ludo would have made a move no matter where she went,” Ruberiot said. “He would have done something stupid to find her anywhere.”
“And nobody saw him stealing the book coming,” Pony-Head said. “He’s never been that good at planning.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Marco said. “That sounds more like something…” Marco’s eyes got wide.
“What’s wrong?” Tom asked.
“I know why Star left,” he said.
“Why?” everyone asked in unison, jumping to their feet.
“Toffee’s not dead,” Marco said. “He laid out a plan that took days just to get rid of Buff Frog when he suspected Toffee of having a secret agenda. He kidnapped me to get the wand.”
“But Star blew him up,” Pony-Head said, “She told us about it.”
“What if he knew a way to survive?” Marco asked. “If he had somewhere to hide, and then he snuck back to Ludo to plan a trap.”
“But Ludo would never listen to Toffee,” Ruberiot said. “He would hate Toffee as much as you and Star do.”
“Unless he didn’t realize it was Toffee,” he said. “Guards!” he called.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the guards at the door said.
“Have ten soldiers accompany us to the dungeon,” Marco said. The soldiers assembled.
“What are you thinking?” Tom asked.
“The guards that are watching Ludo said he’s been talking to someone, but whenever they look in, he’s just looking at his hand.”
“So?” Pony-Head asked.
“The broken wand crystal is in his hand,” Marco said.
“You think Toffee hid inside the crystal?” Pony-Head asked, seeing what he was thinking.
“It would make sense,” Tom said, realizing that Pony-Head was probably right. “If the blast somehow trapped him inside it, then Ludo would never realize who was talking to him.”
“He’s super stupid,” Marco said. “Ruberiot, go to the Butterfly library and see if there are any books on the power of the wand.”
“There won’t be anything except Glossaryk’s spell book,” Pony-Head said. “Only River might have some ideas if Moon ever told him anything.”
“I’ll talk to him, then,” Ruberiot said.
“Thank you,” Marco said. The bard nodded and ran back up the stairs. Marco, Tom, Pony-Head, and the guards got to Ludo’s cell. “The crystal in your hand can talk to you, can’t it?” Marco asked.
“How’d you know?” Ludo asked, startled.
“It told you how to steal the spell book, didn’t it?” Marco asked. “I bet it told you a bunch of plans.”
“No, I came up with all my plans!” he said. “I was smart enough to beat Star Butterfly!”
“You were never smart enough to beat Star Butterfly,” Marco said, “But Toffee was.”
“Toffee?” Ludo said. “What does he have to do with anything?”
“He’s in the wand,” Marco said. “I bet he was destroying Star’s magic, that’s why her spells have been so messed up since the wand broke.”
“No!” Ludo said. “I stole the book! I beat Star! I killed Glossaryk! I…”
“You what?” Marco asked. He almost collapsed.
“He said which one,” Ludo whispered. His voice had changed so much that Marco’s attention went back to him.
“What do you mean?” Marco asked, and now he was gentle.
“He said I beat the High Commission,” Ludo said.
“You what?” Tom asked. “That’s impossible!”
“I did it!” Ludo said proudly. His grin faded. “I thought I did, but Glossaryk asked which one of us he was talking to.” He looked up at Marco. “He meant me or Toffee, didn’t he?” Marco nodded. “How do we get him out?” Ludo asked, trying to swing his arm.
“We would have to cut it off,” Marco said.
“What?” Ludo screamed.
“It’s the only…” Marco was cut off by someone screaming his name.
Ruberiot leaned against the door frame, panting. “Mirror…call…frog…visitor….asked to see you…” he gasped.
“Ruberiot, slow down, what happened?” Marco asked.
“Buff Frog called,” Ruberiot said between deep breaths, “The Queen is at his house, and so is the Princess.”
“Star?” Marco asked. He spun around. “Tom, cut off his hand and cauterize the wound so he doesn’t bleed to death. Pony, can you get us up there faster?”
“Grab on!” she said. He grabbed onto her neck and they shot up the halls, blowing past guards and passer-byers on the stairs. They landed in the main hall, where River was staring at the mirror.
“Buff Frog!” Marco said, “What’s going on?”
“Star and Queen came to my old house,” he said. “I was still packing up to move to new house when they arrived. They were hiding from Toffee. He is not dead.”
“We know,” Marco said. “What else?”
“I told Queen that you were new king,” the amphibian said, “But I did not tell Star. She is playing with tadpoles. Did she steal your red clothing?”
“I wondered where that went,” he said. He shook his head. “That’s not the point, are they okay?”
“Yes,” he said. “Queen wishes to speak to you.” Moon walked into view.
“Moon!” River yelled happily.
“Hello, River,” She said warmly. “I had to make sure this wasn’t a trap.” She looked at Marco. “River really named you his stand-in?” she asked.
“Yes, Moon, he did, but that’s not important,” Marco said impatiently. “Is Star okay?”
“She’s fine, Marco, don’t worry,” she said, slightly annoyed that he said her kingdom wasn’t important. “We’re staying hidden from Toffee.”
“How can we stop him?” Marco asked. “Right now he’s trapped in Ludo’s hand. We’re going to cut it off so he can’t affect ludo anymore.”
“Marco, Toffee is Ludo!” she yelled. “It’s not just his hand!”
“What?” Marco asked. He was about to ask more when the entire castle shook. River tackled Marco, blocking him from the rubble. “River, are you okay?” Marco asked.
“Of course, my boy!” River said, standing up. Giant blocks of stone had fallen on him, and the stones had lost that battle. “Mewmans are made of stronger stuff than humans, and Johansons are made of stronger stuff than other Mewmans.”
“What happened?” Moon asked. “Marco, what’s happening?”
“Your Majesty, Ludo has escaped!” a guard yelled. Marco and Pony-Head ran down to the dungeon. They stopped a few feet short because there was no longer a dungeon. There was a hole through the wall leading to the outside, and everything else was rubble. Tom was passed out in a corner. Marco ran over to him. The demon teen was as cold as a corpse, but he moaned weakly.
“We need fire!” Pony-Head yelled. “Bring torches!”
“That’s too slow,” Marco said. He tossed Pony-Head his scissors. “Pony, go to my house and tell my dad to give you the stuff for a barbeque,” he said. She nodded, and went through the portal. Marco ran outside, finding an invisible goat and giving chase. Evidently Ludo had been in a hurry, because nothing had been damaged in the city. He lost sight of the small bird for a while, and when he caught up, he saw his worst nightmare unfold before his eyes.
Interlude
So this is where the Whispering Spell, Toffee’s Return, and Star’s totally awesome resurrection and execution of Toffee happen. It would all occur the same as it did in the movie, with the exception of the location. I won’t mess with how that was, but if you care enough about the show to be reading this, you probably know the scene pretty well. My story picks back up after the end of that scene, after Star and Marco have been reunited.
Chapter 2
“What are you wearing?” Star asked when she pulled back from their hug.
“Um, well, my king clothes, I guess?” he said.
“Why are you dressed like a king?” she asked. “Did you become king on Earth?”
“Your father seems to have named Marco as his stand-in,” Moon said.
“You’re king of Mewni?” Star asked, her jaw falling open.
“Only until you all got back,” he said. He pulled off his cloak and handed it to Star. It was muddy and torn, so she cringed and dropped it. “Now that you and your Mom are back you all can go back to ruling.”
“Is not the same Mewni that you left, though,” Buff Frog said. “Karate Boy has made big changes.”
“Like what?” Star asked.
“I guess you should see it for yourself,” he said. They all climbed up on the goat and went back to the city. Star and Moon stared as Marco showed them the new parts of the city, and the massive electrical grid they had implemented.
“It’s like Earth!” Star said.
“It’s getting there,” he said.
“What are those?” Moon asked, pointing in the distance.
“Oh, that’s a dimensional factory,” Marco said. “Tom got his dad to agree to create a permanent portal there to a remote part of the Underworld. Now that portal provides heat to melt metal. The factory produces more advanced machines that will make stuff like cars, computers, and other stuff like that.”
“Is that a hospital?” Star asked, pointing in a different direction.
“Yeah,” Marco said. “I was worried that more contact with humans might transmit some Earth diseases, so I brought doctors to do immunizations and medications and stuff.”
“This is impressive,” Moon said, “Well done, Marco Diaz.”
“Thanks, Queen Moon,” Marco said, smiling. They landed at the castle, and Moon and Star ran to hug River. Marco ran downstairs to check on Tom and Pony-Head. Tom was under a pile of coals soaked in lighter fluid, but his eyes were open.
“Hey,” he said weakly.
“You doing alright?” Marco asked.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine in a few hours,” he said. “I called my dad to come get me and take me back to the Underworld. The flames are hotter there so I’ll heal faster.” He grabbed Marco’s wrist. “Is Star…?”
“She’s fine,” Marco said. “We thought she had died, but she had gotten into her wand and fixed her magic. She killed Toffee.”
“That’s my Stardust,” Tom said, laying back down. He focused on his breathing.
“Let me know when he gets home,” Marco said, and Pony-Head nodded. Marco went back upstairs.
“Everything okay?” Star asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Tom got beat up by Toffee, so his dad’s coming to get him.”
“Okay,” she said, then she stopped, puzzled. “What was Tom doing here?”
“We were the delegates from our parents,” Pony-Head said as she flew in.
“Pony-Head!” Star yelled, running forward.
“Hey, B-Fly,” Pony-Head said with a smile as they hugged.
“This is truly remarkable, Marco,” Moon said as the scribes explained all of the changes and reviewed the new economy with her. “Will you please continue with your plan here?”
“Really?” Marco asked, surprised.
“Yes, I think this will be very good for the people of Mewni,” she said, “And I think something other than corn would be wonderful every once in a while.”
“You get to stay on Mewni!” Star cheered. “Now we’ve switched places!”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Marco said with a chuckle. “Hey, we missed a bunch of Friendship Thursdays. Want to go watch a movie?”
“Oh, I don’t know if I can leave Mewni right now,” she said sadly.
He chuckled. “We don’t need to,” he said. He took her hand and said, “Come on.” She followed him upstairs, Pony-Head a few feet behind them. He opened a door to an old storage room, and Star’s mouth fell open.
“It’s your house!” she said.
“I thought you might want to remember Earth sometimes, so I made this room look like my house,” he said, “But I got a bigger couch.” He had gotten a blue sectional couch, large enough for them and several friends. Pony-Head claimed one end, and Star curled up against Marco at the other end. He pulled the blanket over them and started the movie. By the end of the movie, the two were fast asleep, Star’s head resting on Marco’s shoulder, and Marco’s head resting on top of her head. Pony-Head smiled as she floated out.
“Oh, sorry, Queen,” Pony-Head said as she nearly bumped into Queen Moon.
“It’s fine, Princess Pony-Head,” Moon whispered. She smiled at Star and Marco. “Are they okay?”
“Yes,” Pony-Head said. “As long as they’re together, I think they’ll be fine.”
“I wonder what he’ll do next,” Moon said.
“He’s too dumb to know how to tell Star he likes her,” Pony-Head said, “So I’ve got a plan to help him do it.”
“Princess, that’s very kind of you, and I’m sure Star would appreciate it, but I’m not sure it’s the best idea,” Moon said awkwardly.
“Tom and Ruberiot helped make the plan,” Pony-Head said.
“Oh, okay, then it’s fine,” Queen Moon said.
Pony-Head rolled her eyes. “Wow, it’s like no one trusts me,” she said.
“Sorry, Princess,” Moon said, but she didn’t correct her. Pony-Head went to her quarters, which Marco had arranged for while she was a delegate. She called her father to update him on the situation, and tell him she would be staying a little while longer. Then she floated into bed and went to sleep.
The next morning she called Tom to check on him. “You got the thing?” he asked.
“Yeah, I got it,” he said. “It’s so boring I almost fell asleep reading it.”
“Good, bring it when you get here,” she said.
“Yeah, I’ll be back this afternoon. Dad says I have to go to the lava pools for a few more hours before he’ll let me go anywhere else.”
“Okay, but hurry up. We have to do this before they screw things up and make it awkward,” Pony-Head said.
“You’re right,” Tom said, “I’ll get there as soon as I can.” He hung up, and Pony-Head floated downstairs. Marco and Star were still on the couch, but they had sunk down so they were laying on it now, arms wrapped around each other.
“So adorable,” Pony-Head thought as she floated closer. “Wake up!” she yelled right above Marco. He screamed and bolted upright, which threw Star on the ground. She wrapped herself in the blanket and kept on sleeping. “Wow, the girl’s still a heavy sleeper,” Pony-Head remarked.
“Pony-Head, why would you do that?” Marco yelled, his voice still high pitched.
“Shhh, Star’s still asleep,” Pony-Head said in a stage whisper. “Whisper!”
“Why would you do that?” Marco hissed.
“Eh, close enough,” Pony-Head said. She started bouncing on Star. “Wake up, wake up, wake up! I’m bored! Let’s go have some fun!”
“It’s too early,” Star grumbled. She did eventually get up, not processing where she had probably spent the night. “Morning, Marco,” she mumbled. “Let’s go get some breakfast.” They all went downstairs and had breakfast with the King and Queen. After that, they went dimension hopping. They went to the Hop Hangout, the weird club that had replaced the Bounce Lounge. They went to a dimension where you became a character in a video game, and could really level up and everything.
“Oh, I heard about this awesome new place from Kelly,” Pony-Head said as they ran out of a party where everything was made of rainbows. “It’s this super wild, crazy party that’s also like, super fancy.”
“Sweet!” Star said, grinning.
“No boys allowed, though,” Pony-Head said. “Marco can go hang out with Tom or something.”
“Oh, but I don’t want to leave Marco out,” Star said, her grin dropping.
“It’s okay,” Marco said, giving her hand a squeeze. “I need to go check on the building projects soon anyway. I’ll meet you guys later this evening, okay?”
“Alright,” Star said, hugging him. The two of them went through a pink portal, and Marco went back to Mewni. Tom was leaning against a pillar.
“Pony-Head manage to distract Star?” he asked, leading Marco down a hall.
“Yeah,” Marco said, “So what are we doing here?”
“We are setting up a royal courtship agreement,” Tom said. They stopped in a small conference room. He pulled out a scroll and handed it to Marco. “This is the one my parents set up with Star’s parents when we were younger when we were younger.”
“What’s it do?” Marco asked, unrolling it. It rolled to the floor and kept going. They watched silently as it just kept unrolling. It stopped when it hit the wall on the other side of the room. “What is all this?” he asked, trying to read the very small print.
“I have no idea,” Tom said, “Dad didn’t either. No one reads this stuff. But we’ll find out, because we’re going to make one.”
“Well, three,” Ruberiot said, “A copy for the King, Queen, and Princess.” He walked in with an older guy in a weird outfit behind him. “This is one of the scribes of Butterfly castle. He composed the one for Tom, so he’ll have no trouble helping you write one.”
“What does it accomplish?” Marco asked.
“The royal courtship agreement,” the old guy began, “Is a traditional method of expressing a desire between two royal families for their royal heirs to court, and at an appointed time, the day after coronation, in Princess Butterfly’s case, be wed.”
“It’s a proposal?” Marco squeaked.
“Chill, dude, it’s no more a proposal than asking her out on a date would be,” Tom said. “They just use fancier words since it’s for a princess.” He sat down at the table. “Let’s get started.”
Chapter 3
Marco sat back, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “Okay, it’s done,” Marco said. “How is it?”
“Hmm,” the scribe said, reading through. “This part is very well said. Good job, and this is good too,” he muttered to himself as he scanned through. “Yes, this is acceptable,” he said. “This will be the copy for Queen Moon. Now you must write King River’s copy and Princess Star’s copy.”
“Yeah, alright,” he said, yawning.
“Marco!” he heard from the hall. The familiar yell signaled Star was bored and wanted company. “Where are you, Marco?”
Tom snapped, and the papers disappeared. “Go out and act like you were coming from a different direction,” Tom said, “Don’t let her find this room or she’ll see the scribe.”
“Got it,” Marco said. He slipped out the door, sneaking along the walls until he was into another wing. He looped around and walked up behind Star. “Hey,” he said, grinning.
“Hey, you!” she said back, grinning. “Have fun with Tom?”
“Yeah, we hung out and dealt with a bunch of the former king stuff,” he said.
“Cool,” she said, “Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” he said. They went to the royal dining hall and had tacos. Marco had taught the cooks how to make tortillas. It was a huge hit, especially with River, who loved anything he could eat with his hands. Tom and Pony-Head thought they were great, too, but Ruberiot passed since he was vegan. He still sat with them, enjoying his corn. After dinner the group watched more movies. They were continuing the Star Wars marathon they had started the night before. They had finished Episode IV and were on Episode V. When Darth Vader gave his iconic plot twist, Tom and Star gasped in shock.
“Wait, hold on, what did I miss?” Pony-Head asked, jerking awake.
“Seriously?” Tom asked, shocked.
“Whoa,” Star said, surprised.
Marco grinned. “Everyone on Earth reacted the same way,” he said. By the end of the movie Star and Marco had fallen asleep again, but Tom woke Marco quietly. Marco nodded, and carried Star to bed. He tucked her in, smiling as she wriggled deeper into the blankets. He followed Tom and Pony-Head back to their conference room. The others made sure he knew what to do and then went to get some sleep. “Okay, now what?” he asked when he had finished.
The scribe stirred. He had fallen asleep in the giant chair at the head of the table. “You need signatures of authority,” he said, yawning. “Two royal authorities to vouch for your ability to rule, one predecessor to vouch for your right to the throne, and one witness to vouch for your loyalty to the princess.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Tom said. “Two royal heirs that are also delegates, and the bard who has heard every story of your adventures with Star. Ruberiot’s family has been working among the royal family for generations. Their word is trusted as much as anyone else’s.”
“What about the predecessor?” Marco asked. “My dad isn’t royalty.”
“No, but I am,” River said as he walked in. “I figured this was what you were up to in here.” He walked up to Marco. “I named you my stand-in, so that makes me your predecessor.” He signed the paper, and so did Tom, Pony-Head, and Ruberiot. “Now, you’ll present it to Moon, Star, and I at the court session today.”
“Okay,” he said, suddenly nervous.
“You got this,” Pony-Head said. Marco nodded. He managed not to act too weird during breakfast, but Star could tell something was bothering him.
“We have a court session today, Star, so you’ll need to get ready after breakfast,” Moon said.
“But Mom, Marco and I were going to go exploring,” Star whined.
“Star, this is not up for debate,” Moon said. “You will come.”
“Fine,” Star said, rolling her eyes. After breakfast Star excused herself to go get ready.
“You’ve got to get ready, too,” Tom said. He and Marco headed upstairs to Marco’s former royal quarters.
“Some of the servants will help you choose your attire,” Tom said. “I’ll make sure you look decent before you head out.”
Marco nodded, and then spent an insane amount of time getting ready. Ruberiot came by as Marco was fixing his shoulder tassels. “Princess Star is asking if you will accompany her to the court session,” he said. “You couldn’t sit with the royal family, but you would be able to sit in the gathered commoners.”
“Tell her I’m busy with some other stuff,” Marco said. “Tell her I’m hanging out with Tom and Pony-Head.”
“Yes,” Ruberiot said, and headed out. Marco finished getting ready, and then followed Tom and Pony-Head. Ruberiot was waiting for them at the entryway. The doors were closed.
“Ready?” Pony-Head asked.
“I think so,” he said.
“Got the scrolls?” Tom asked.
“Right here,” Marco said. He took a deep breath and then nodded. The guards opened the doors to the main hall, and Marco walked in. Pony-Head flanked him on his left and Tom on his right, with Ruberiot following behind him. He walked towards the royal family at the end of the hall. Star was asleep with her head on her hand, but she stirred when the scribe announced, “Presenting Marco, King of New Mewni.”
“What?” Star asked, stirring. She looked down the hall, and her mouth fell open. “Marco?”
“Shhh,” Moon said.
“But…what’s going on?” Star asked.
“Hush, dear,” River said.
Marco stopped at the foot of the stairs. He dropped to one knee and bowed his head to each of the three royals.
“Queen Moon and King River of Mewni,” Marco said, “I humbly request the hand of your daughter, Star Butterfly, in marriage as part of a royal courtship agreement.”
“What?” Star screamed.
“B-Fly, you’re not supposed to scream during this,” Pony-Head whispered.
“Sorry,” Star said. She was blushing so hard that she reminded Marco of his hoodie. Marco walked up the stairs presenting a scroll to the King and Queen. He then handed a smaller scroll to Star. As Moon and River glanced over their long scrolls, Star opened hers. It was no larger than a piece of paper. She blushed even more as she read the simple sentence in the fancy calligraphy. It simply said, “Star Butterfly, will you go out with me?”
“You have good references,” River said, “This predecessor sounds like a respectable fellow.”
“Who is it?” moon asked, skipping to read the signatures. “River, really?”
“Honey, look, his predecessor is also named River! What a coincidence!” River said, chuckling to himself.
Moon finished reading the letter. “Well, Former King Marco, if Star accepts your courtship, then King River and I, Queen Moon, will also accept it.”
Everyone looked at Star. “Yes,” she said, signing her name at the bottom. Marco grinned.
“This court session has ended,” Moon said. Marco bowed, and he and his group headed out the hall. A few minutes after he got to his room he heard it burst open and Star ran in. He turned to look at her, blushing now. She froze, blushing also.
“Um, greetings,” she said.
Marco grinned. “Greetings?” he asked. “That’s not a normal Star hello.”
She laughed awkwardly. “I guess not,” she said. “Sorry.”
“It’s my fault,” he said, “I probably surprised you.”
“I was a little surprised,” Star said, “But not in a bad way.” She grinned as she walked closer to Marco. He walked towards her as well. They put their arms around each other, holding each other close. After a moment they leaned back to look at each other.
“Hi,” Star whispered, her lips only a few inches from Marco’s.
“Hi,” he whispered, and then leaned in. Their lips met gently.
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