#love the remains of old lives that exist along the roads | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

exhausted-archivist · 8 months

Text

Deep Road and Dwarf Facts From Buried Pasts Adventure - Dragon Age Tabletop RPG

Bullet point list of the interesting bits I found, I've added the excerpts below the cut.

The Deep Roads and Thaigs are 2-4 miles (3.21 - 6.43 km) below sea level. Making them deeper in areas like those beneath mountains.

Mining galleries tunnel upwards into mountains while thaigs tunnel downward towards the mantle.

The environment of the Deep Roads can shift from shockingly cold to blistering hot depending on the area.

Thaigs are heated in old thaigs by lava but in newer (now abandoned) thaigs it was common to use steam.

If traveling the Deep Roads, carrying a light and heat source is required. Without a heat source you could die from the cold.

There is complete pitch darkness outside of the glow of lyrium or lights created by people.

Dwarves make oil lamp using nug and bronto fat.

The shadows are so long when a light source exists that it makes it hard to spot what might be lurking in the dark.

Sounds louder than a whisper will echo further than they would above ground in a space/passage.

Dwarves love wood instruments and design their spaces to allow for sounds to echo in thaigs, giving them an ever present hum poets have compared to the song of the Stone.

Dwarven stone-sense fades the longer you are on the surface.

Magic and lyrium resistance in the dwarves comes from the constant exposure of lyrium. When on the surface for too long that resistance will fade away completely.

Dwarves are masters in close quarter combat, favoring morning stars, crossbows, and shields.

Note: There are weird wordage/typos in the text itself that I didn't alter because I couldn't tell which way to go with so I've left it as is.

Deep in the Dark (page 3)

"...For those who have spent their entire life being able to see the horizon, the cramped, confusing conditions underground can be difficult to adjust to. The human and elven sense of direction is easy to lose underground, sound travels further as it echoes off the walls, the environment can be shockingly cold in one space and blistering hot in the next, and the cramped conditions impede the styles of fighting surface-dwellers will be used to..."

Light and Shadow (page 3)

"Above ground is never completely dark, even on a clouded moonless night. Underground, in uninhabited areas of the Deep Roads, the only light in the pitch darkness is that which the heroes bring with them and the glow of lyrium veins. The slightest obstruction creates a long shadow such that even with light characters are unlikely to be able to see everything within the reach of their light source. As characters move through the environment, everyone of those shadows will move in keeping, further hindering characters watching for creatures in the dark..."

Sound and Silence (page 3 & 4)

"Although the solid rock stops sound from traveling to completely sealed areas, anything louder than a whisper will echo much further than it would above ground along the passageways and chambers of the Deep Roads. The effect is especially pronounced on the roads themselves, as dwarves built their underground passageways long and straight with vaulted ceilings to greatly enhance the distance at which sound can be heard. The constant echoing combined with the dwarven love of deep wind instruments and song gives inhabited thaigs a background hum of sound that dwarven poets have compared to the Stone. Orzammar itself is never silent, and the impact of moving into the stillness of abandoned Roads beyond the city's control is greatly upsetting to dwarves who have lived with the comforting sense of community the background noise provides..." "..Any parties with dwarves in them may find the dwarves natural stone sense a help or frustration. Dearves who spend most of their life underground will find the sense still sharp and comforting. By feeling the stone, navigation is easier. However, the sense fades the longer dwarves remain on the surface and when the darkest parts of the Deep Roads it can be a vague distraction as the sense is dulled and irritating, though not completely without use.

Heat and Fuel (page 4)

"The majority of the Deep Roads and thaigs are built about two to four miles beneath sea level, although in the Frostbacks that means they're actually much deeper beneath the surface. Dwarven mining galleries normally stretch up rather than down, tunneling up into the mountain regions of Ferelden and Orlais from beneath, while the thaigs themselves burrow downward toward pockets of lava that have moved up from the mantle. Most older thaigs (including Orzammar) have open regions of molten rock near their center that are used for heat, while more modern thaigs (ironically those more likely to be abandoned thanks to the darkspawn pushing the dwarven empire back on itself) used steam heating. Inhabited regions between thaigs are heated and lit by oilk lamps using the fat from nugs and brontos. Away from lava or artificial heating, the Deep Roads are bitterly cold. The lack of weather is a mercy, but travelers that go too ling without a source of heat will begin to feel the effects. As their lanterns are likely the source of their heat as well as light, travelers must take extra care with the amount of fuel they have; the dwarven empire once maintained frequent waystations along the Roads for resupply, but running out of lamp oil in the modern Deep Roads can be a death sentence..."

Fighting at Close Quarters (page 4)

"The dwarves of Orzammar equip their rank-and-file soldiers with shields, maces, and crossbows, perfect for the cramped conditions they are expected to fight in. Skirmishing is a thing of the surface battlefield, except in the largest caverns. The dwarves train their warriors to block passageways with shieldwalls and corral disorganized opposition into killing grounds. Height is the main restriction. The dwarves built the main tunnels of the Deep Roads with lofty ceiling clearance, and thaigs are usually organized facing into large caverns to give a sense of space, but private houses and other areas not intended for heavy traffic can be uncomfortably cramped to a human. The lack of space can get in the way of swinging the large weapons humans may be used to..."

Dwarven Magic Resistance (page 16)

"...The dwarven resistance to magic is the result of prolonged low-level exposure to lyrium in the Deep Roads and is also the reason Orzammar dwarves can handle lyrium in relative safety in amounts that would drive a human mad."

#dragon age #dragon age ttrpg #da ttrpg #da ttrpg: buried pasts #lore: deep roads #lore: dwarves #lore: ttrpg

31 notes · View notes

kujojotarolover · 2 years

Note

Queen of the meadow for Jotaro, please!

cw: Yandere Themes, Mentions of Violence, Mentions of Assault, Injury / Injury Imagery, Possessive / Obsessive Thoughts, Isolation, Allusions to Isolation, Death, Mentions of Death, General Dark Themes not Suitable for Immature Audiences. Reader-Insert, Gender Neutral, pre-6taro. Uncomfortable scenarios included, read at your own discretion! 18+ ONLY!

author's note: This is the last request for these prompts! I hope that you enjoyed them and that this one is to your liking as well! I had a lot of fun writing these. These "Yandere Prompts Flower Language" were written and coined by @/nanasparadise . That original post can be found here. I do not condone unhealthy behavior in any sense! This is not a good situation. Please, stay safe!

PROMPT: Queen of the Meadow (uselessness): "Be grateful you've got me. Who else would take care of such a useless thing like you?"

word count: Approximately 1.1k

Kujo Jotaro knew that this would happen.

Since the beginning, days and months and years long gone to the winds of time, he’s known this. Before everything skewed, before everything turned for the worse and Jotaro didn’t think there was much to life besides growing up, getting a life, and then growing old. That death itself was merely just the destination, the end of the narrow and winding and precarious road that stretched for miles and miles on rocky terrain. That life was a pass-time meant to be spent filling it with whatever one so desired.

And then, in the blink of an eye, Jotaro’s life flipped and suddenly the world lay beneath the top of his head.

Life was no longer fun and easygoing. The hardest part had only just begun. And it was the longest one. Jotaro would never be the same. Death was his new beginning. The end of the way that Jotaro recklessly drove to because the hazardous roadblocks along were just too much. Too much lost, too much decayed. All of it—gone.

But at least Jotaro had you.

The flagger that guided Jotaro through the detour of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and—the one Jotaro never thought he would be able to fathom—acceptance. To process the change of his new life, to accept the reality that Jotaro will never be able to live a normal life.

You’ve been there since the start. The rev to his ignition. The spark that sent electricity coursing through his bones and made him feel alive. You’ve been there through it all. You’ve known Jotaro for all of these years. For so many years. You knew him and you stayed alive. You’re here, you’re breathing. You’re flesh and blood. Jotaro can stretch his arm out, let his fingertips trace the smoothness of your arm, and embrace you. You didn’t die.

You survived it all and Jotaro couldn’t handle change.

So, through the dark and harrowing black of the whispers in his mind, Jotaro stole you away.

He took you away from the dangers of the world, away from all of the deadly and ominous threats that lurked in the shadows of his peripherals. He was keeping you safe, protecting you. Jotaro wanted nothing more than to make sure that your body remained unscathed and that beautiful mind stayed intact. To make sure you didn’t perish in the world that wanted nothing more than to eat you alive.

Jotaro had done such a good job so far. He had. Keywords.

Everything had been going so well. He was so in love with you, in love with a past he could never experience ever again. He had spent years perfecting himself, his methods, and your wellbeing. Trapped away, hidden in a place not a single soul would even dare to look. Jotaro kept your existence transparent. Everyone who could even be someone had forgotten that you’d even been a person, faded away from the claws of memory and disappeared within the flow.

Stored in the walls of his home. Always there. Always smothered. Always suffocating. Caged where nothing could bring you harm.

Years. Since that fateful trip to Egypt. Over twenty years. You’d been there. Crying, begging, sobbing, sniveling. You pleaded and you prayed—but Jotaro didn’t budge. How could he? Though you were completely shattered, you were where Jotaro could always protect you.

So why?

Why did you run away whenever he wasn’t looking?

Jotaro reprimanded himself. Vicious and terrible words of anger stung his skin and he felt a gross spit in his mouth that he swished around and spat to the ground as he stormed forward. Cold tensions made him compress and shiver, but he was nothing except on fire. Embers of rage broiled and bubbled beneath the top of his skin, down deep where no scratch would alleviate.

His eyes prickled with a temperature Jotaro had never known before as he glanced down at you.

There, in his arms, lay your absolutely ravaged and demolished body. Bleeding, bruised, broken. So small, so weak, so tiny in his grasp as he clutched you closer and tightened his hold with a hushed snarl. Seafoam eyes roved down the cuts on your body, on the wounds of fate that would never heal no matter how much ointment he applied, and Jotaro felt like he might just go crazy by the sight alone. The curves of his filed nails left grooves into your clothes, into the marred flesh. The skin of his knuckles pale.

Jotaro was furious.

Furious at you? At the enemy Stand User that attacked you? At himself?

Jotaro couldn’t answer that.

The fact that he’d been right made him itch with this crawling sensations of pins and needles and Jotaro felt like he could flinch and arch away from himself as that realization dawned on him. As soon as you faced the world with those doe eyes, that naïve air, that joy and innocence and hope and love that made Jotaro feel like he was but a young boy again, Jotaro knew someone would prey on you. He’d been correct! You should have listened to him! DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND WHY HE DID THIS? WHY HE COVETED YOU?

Yet, you selfishly ran away from Jotaro! You fled and someone that wanted to make Jotaro suffer smirked and stalked your frail self like a cat to a mouse. An enemy that must have been watching his house, keeping a close track on him, and see? Even whenever Jotaro thought he was safe, something had to happen to make him doubt himself.

Death had almost taken you and Jotaro couldn’t comprehend.

Had Jotaro not arrived in time to save you, there might not even be a heartbeat pumping through your body. You would be dead. Dead. And Jotaro feels like his stomach is turning and twisting into knots that make him feel drunk. He almost staggers. The Kujo Jotaro. A man that’s so collected, so prepared, so still. Weaving and wobbling like he was absolutely plastered and it’s all because he can’t stop the eventual panic searing his poor mind.

Jotaro feels his vision go for a spin and he grits his teeth with a disgruntled groan.

He can’t believe it.

He was right.

He was always right.

And Jotaro feels a scalding conflagration of blinding white fill his world as he stares down at your body in pinched agony and growls,

“Tch, dammit. You don’t understand. Everything I’ve done is for you. Now you could die. Be grateful you’ve got me. Who else would take care of such a useless thing like you?”

Jotaro’s head veered forward, dangling and swaying over your heaving body like a slurred riff of musical static, and he stared at the wince of sleepy pain etched onto your features with a gaunt and haunted swallow.

“Because I can’t lose the only thing left.”

Not again.

#yandere jotaro #yandere x you #yandere jotaro x reader #jotaro x you #jotaro x reader #jotaro x y/n #jjba x you #jjba x reader #yandere jjba #yandere jjba x reader #tw yandere #your average wfsn

187 notes · View notes

lurafita · 5 months

Text

Make Them Sparkle

(fanfic, oneshot)

Summary:

If Raphael had any say in this, Magnus would not be allowed to give mundanes writing advice. Ever.

Magnus prided himself on being a person who went with, and adapted to the ever changing times.

He had witnessed many immortals who got stuck in particular time periods. Be it refusing to adopt new fashion trends, or remaining stagnant in certain behaviors or mindsets that had been common at one point in history. Bemoaning how things ‘used to be so much better back in the day’. People who needed to anchor themselves in the past, in order to face the present and future.

Not Magnus, though. While he treasured many of the memories made during his long existence, he had always been the type to look forward, instead of back.

He had seen and embraced the progress humanity made, philosophically, technologically, and socially.

And, while the road of progression hadn’t always been a smooth one and weathered its fair share of hiccups along the way, Magnus certainly appreciated the fruits of this particular labor.

(And not only mundanes, but the shadow world, too, had come a long way from what it had once been. Magnus would never not be proud of the part his dearest Alexander and his friends and family had played in that development.)

Anyway, being a "modern" warlock, and having personally supported some of the various technological marvels of the world they now lived in, Magnus had a deep appreciation for the internet.

A way for so many people from so many different places and stages of life to come together, to connect and share with each other, was truly remarkable.

There was almost nothing that the internet didn’t have, unless it connected to matters of the shadow world, but even that was slowly changing.

From funny videos and beautiful music, to shops and art and so much more.

Websites tailored to specific hobbies or tastes. Sites to find employment, or living accomodations. Those that gave the user an opportunity to make friends, or find love.

And, of course, so called help-forums. Professionally or community run sites, spanning various topics all around offering advice when someone needed it.

Like one particular writing forum for aspiring authors, which Magnus had found himself in one sunny afternoon, as he had been browsing aimlessly to waste some time.

One of the requests had caught his eye especially.

‘Please help me bring fresh wind into old supernatural lore!’

Clicking on the request and reading further, Magnus had learned that the hopeful author was trying to write a teen love story with vampires and werewolves, revolving around a highschool mundane girl and her vampiric love interest, as well as a werewolf contender.

Magnus had snorted, thinking the idea hardly original, and had almost clicked away again, but one sentence had stood out.

‘Vampire love stories are a dime a dozen, I’m well aware of that. But while plot and circumstances often change around the different narratives, the lore and rules behind the vampires rarely do. It’s always a thirst and need for blood, a weakness to religious artifacts, and an inability to bear sunlight. That last one especially, I wish to change for my story, as I feel that describing a whole world that most humans are unaware of, and plays mostly in the dark, is terribly restrictive. But I also think that just waving any effect the sun might have on a vampire away, is a missed opportunity for exploring alternative plot points. Which is why I’m asking for any kind of inspiration or thoughts any of you might be willing to share.’

So Magnus had read on as the author had described their world and characters in a little more detail.

And upon learning of the broody, dark haired, stubborn, kind and compassionate main vampire character, Magnus couldn’t help it when his brain had made the comparison between a fictional character, and his very own favorite broody, dark haired, stubborn, kind and compassionate vampire.

And as he was thinking of his dear little Raphael, the vampire he had taken under his wing decades ago and practically raised (even though Raphael had been 24 and fully adult by mundane standards when he had been turned), Magnus hadn’t been able to curb his more mischievous impulses.

Clicking on the answering function to the thread, he had snickered heavily as he typed out just three words.

‘Make them sparkle!’

Who would have thought that, just a few years later, this little bit of innocent fun he had had, would come back to interrupt his sexy make out session with his precious shadowhunter boyfriend?

“Magnus!” The door slammed open and shut in barely more than a second, as an incensed Raphael stormed into the loft.

A lifetime of training and battle ready instincts had Alec lift Magnus off his lap and behind him in just one move (which was so fucking hot, if not for their unplanned intruder, Magnus would have climbed his boyfriend like a tree), as his other hand seemlessly went down to quickly retrieve the throwing knife strapped to his lower leg.

The defensive maneuver was aborted as soon as Alec registered who had just barged into the apartment, and instead the tall man slumped back into the couch (careful not to crush his boyfriend) with a deep, slightly annoyed, sigh.

Raphael though reacted to neither the knife that had almost been thrown at him, nor the glare the shadowhunter was giving him right then.

Instead, he held up the book he had in hand and snarled in Magnus' direction. “What the fuck is this?!”

Magnus blinked, still trying to sort through the haze of his newly ignited arousal after Alexander’s display of strength and speed, and the clearly agitated mood Raphael seemed to be in.

“It’s called a book, my dear. It holds in its pages the wonder of the written word and thus the power to create wonderful and fascinating tales for all to share.”

If anything, that answer made Raphael look even more mutinous. Which was just rude, if anyone were to ask Magnus.

“I know what a book is!”

Magnus huffed, finally straightening himself out of the mess of limbs he had been from Alexander’s manhandling him to safety (And they would have a talk about that later. As hot as that had been, Magnus couldn’t have his Alexander trying to shield him while facing a threat on his own.)

“Then why did you ask?”

Raphael could apparently not be bothered to explain, and instead just chucked the book at him. Once again shadowhunter reflexes trumped Magnus' own, and Alec snatched the book out of the air before it could hit the warlock.

He scrunched up his nose a little (which was adorably cute in Magnus’ humble opinion and he quickly leant forward a bit to peck Alec on the cheek) as he read the title. “Twilight?”

It made Magnus smirk. “Oh, I think I have heard of this. A supernatural teen romance novel, if I remember Biscuit’s words correctly. I must be honest, my dear boy, I didn’t think this would be your type of thing.”

But the vampire just crossed his arms over his chest. “Open it up to the introduction.”

A little puzzled, but also curious, Alec and Magnus did just that. It appeared to be just your ordinary preface to any book.

‘I thank everyone who has supported me through this, bla bla bla, I’m incredibly honored and grateful for this opportunity to share bla bla bla, I hope this tale will find a way into your heart bla bla bla.’

Really; pretty standard as far as the warlock was concerned. Until they reached the last section on the introductory page, and it slowly dawned on Magnus just why Raphael looked as if he had been forced to listen to Simon ramble about a deep introspection on why Spider-Man was the best Marvel superhero ever.

Oh.

‘I would like to give special thanks to someone I unfortunately have never met personally, but whose input has definitely helped to inspire me to spice things up a bit. So this is to you, The_Magnificent_Bane. I “made them sparkle”!’

“Oh.”

“Oh?” Raphael thundered. “That’s all you have to say to this? You told this woman to make her vampires sparkle in the sunlight like some demented disco ball! We don’t sparkle! The only sparkly crazy person around here is you! Do you have any idea what the stupid flea balls are going to say when they learn of this? Are you laughing? Stop laughing! There is going to be so many glitter jokes in my future now thanks to you! I’m never gonna hear the end of this! Magnus! Stop laughing!”

Magnus stopped laughing. Eventually.

#magnus bane #alec lightwood #malec #shadowhunters tv #shadowhunters #fanfic #raphael santiago #magnus is a menace #twilight reference #it's all magnus' fault #poor raphael #alec being a bamfy bamf

19 notes · View notes

justforbooks · 11 months

Photo

The immense talent of the American novelist Cormac McCarthy, who has died aged 89, was for three decades a secret that circulated from hand to hand between a small number of readers, but among them were some influential champions of his work.

Gordon Lish, senior editor at the New York publishers Alfred A Knopf, gave a copy of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985) to the critic Harold Bloom. Bloom loved it, declaring it a great book, right up there with William Faulkner and Toni Morrison. There are pages of prose in his work, remarked George Steiner, “that may be at the moment the most electric, the most violent, the most inventive prose being written”. Saul Bellow bullied and cajoled the prize committee of the MacArthur Foundation in 1981 to acknowledge McCarthy’s remarkable talent.

McCarthy seemed to come from nowhere and for most of his career wrote in the hermit-like obscurity of a JD Salinger or Thomas Pynchon. Refusing all attempts to publicise his work, McCarthy politely declined to be interviewed, never signed copies of his own books, attended no literary conferences, did not teach, and was more interested in science and cosmology than fiction. He was an American original.

Working at first in the southern gothic mode, he remade himself as a southwestern writer after settling in Texas in 1976. He carried the influence of Faulkner, Herman Melville (Moby Dick was reportedly his favourite novel) and Ernest Hemingway along with him, and remained true to the literary values that those richly complex writers had made their own. McCarthy had no time for Marcel Proust or Henry James; he had no interest in the psychological intricacies of motivation, sensibility or modernist thinking about consciousness. His novels, early and late, were grim, violent tales of life stripped down to the raw fundamentals of existence in a hostile world.

Acclaim and a mass readership came late in his career. Until the runaway success of All the Pretty Horses in 1992 (his first New York Times bestseller), McCarthy had sold fewer than 5,000 copies of the hardback edition of any of his novels. By 2006, Blood Meridian, a blood-dripping tale of scalp-hunting and massacres in northern Mexico in the 1840s, was placed at No 3 in a Time magazine list of the 25 greatest American novels. McCarthy seemed the real deal to readers such as Bloom, Lish and Bellow. He reached an even wider audience via film adaptations of books including No Country for Old Men (2005) and the Pulitzer prize-winner The Road (2006). Not since Faulkner had an American author been so extravagantly talented and, by choice, so distant from the literary culture.

McCarthy was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the eldest son and third of six children of Gladys (nee McGrail) and Charles McCarthy. The family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1937 when his father, a Yale law school graduate, was appointed legal counsel for the Tennessee Valley Authority. Growing up in a large Roman Catholic family in the fiercely Protestant environment of Tennessee, McCarthy was sent to exclusively Catholic schools in Knoxville. Neither the family’s religion, nor their comfortable upper-middle-class life (maids, a large family house), was much to his liking. He did not want to be respectable, and this was not popular in the McCarthy household.

McCarthy attended the University of Tennessee in 1951-52, studying physics and engineering, but dropped out. He had no career ambitions, hated “progress” and rejected most of the expectations that shaped the lives of his siblings and fellow students. He had been named after his father, and the decision legally to change his name from Charles to the Gaelic Cormac suggests some of the family tensions that shaped McCarthy’s relations to his family.

In 1953 McCarthy enlisted in the US air force, and was sent to Alaska, where he had much time to catch up on his reading. He also hosted a programme on a local radio station. After his military service ended in 1956, McCarthy re-enrolled at the University of Tennessee where, as “CJ McCarthy, Jr”, he published two short stories in a campus literary magazine. They attracted some attention, and he received the university’s Ingram-Merrill award for creative writing in 1959.

He promptly left the university without taking a degree, and went to Chicago, where he worked in an auto-parts warehouse. In 1961 he married Lee Holleman, a fellow student from the University of Tennessee. They had a son, Cullen, moved back south to Asheville, North Carolina, and were divorced soon after. When asked years later about whether he paid alimony, he responded: “With what?” He was, for the next 25 years, poor, rootless and happy.

In Chicago, Asheville, and then in New Orleans, he worked on the manuscript of his first novel, The Orchard Keeper. Knowing little of the literary scene, and less of the publishing industry, he sent the novel unsolicited to Random House, where it was plucked from the slush pile of doubtful self-submitted manuscripts and reached the desk of Albert R Erskine, vice-president and editorial director. Erskine was a legendary figure in the world of literary publishing, but even with his support, The Orchard Keeper (1965) – a Faulkneresque tale set in rural Tennessee in the inter-war years, portraying the relationship of a young boy to an outlaw and bootlegger who has murdered the boy’s father – attracted little attention.

Nonetheless, McCarthy received the William Faulkner Foundation award for the best first novel by an American writer. Erskine’s enthusiasm for McCarthy’s talent was undiminished, despite the commercial failures that followed. McCarthy remained a Random House author until his editor’s retirement in 1987.

The Orchard Keeper also won McCarthy a travelling fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. On his sea voyage to Europe for a planned visit to Ireland, he met Anne DeLisle, a young British singer and dancer, who was working as an entertainer on the ship. They married in 1966, and lived in a rented finca in Ibiza in a boozy community of expatriate American artists and writers. In that happy milieu McCarthy wrote Outer Dark, a tale of incest and violence, in a note-perfect recreation of the Tennessee poor-white vernacular. It was published in 1968, and sank without trace.

A grant from the Rockefeller Foundation enabled the couple to return to the US in some style for DeLisle’s first visit to McCarthy’s parents. When they reached Tennessee, they rented a cottage adjacent to a pig farm south of Knoxville, where they lived for 10 years. McCarthy poured the memory of his life in Knoxville into a long autobiographical novel, Suttree, which appeared in 1979, telling the story of a young man who turned away from a privileged family background and chose to live on a houseboat boozing with a colourful assortment of locals.

With Suttree in mid-draft, he walked out on DeLisle, and moved to El Paso, Texas. Although they divorced, he continued to send drafts of Suttree to DeLisle in Knoxville for typing, and they remained close friends. “I lived waiting for him to come home for years and years,” she recalled. “I never would have stayed there unless I thought he was coming back to me.”

McCarthy received a phone call from the MacArthur Foundation in late December 1981 informing him that he had been awarded a “genius grant” of $500,000, which enabled him to buy a small stucco house behind a shopping mall in El Paso. The Nobel-prize winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann was the director of the MacArthur Foundation, and he and McCarthy became close friends. Invited by Gell-Mann to affiliate with the Santa Fe Institute, a freewheeling thinktank for scientists, McCarthy at last found an intellectual home. In 1999, with his third wife, Jennifer Winkley, and their son, John, he settled down in Tesuque, New Mexico, and worked on his later novels in his office at the institute, pecking away on a small portable Olivetti Lettera 32. “I like being around smart, interesting people, and the people who come here are among the smartest, most interesting people on the planet.”

The move to El Paso began a new phase for McCarthy. His books up to Suttree were “southern” novels, written strongly under the influence of Faulkner. With Blood Meridian, he wrote about southwest Texas and the Mexican border territory, which he explored in an old pickup truck. His descriptions of the cauterised border territory were stunningly vivid. Bloom claimed that the landscape in Blood Meridian was better than anything except Shakespeare.

The novel’s violence was also spectacular, though oddly affectless. Death comes helter-skelter for the killers and innocent villagers alike in northern Mexico in the 1840s – scalpings, evisceration, beheadings, presented in detail. The motives for this gory mayhem, conducted by contract killers selling Apache scalps to the governor of Sonora, are unfathomable. The figure of Judge Holden takes motiveless malignity to sickening heights. Philip Roth, a novelist whose interests never involved skinning knives, rifles or clubs, found nothing of interest in Blood Meridian; it was described as an ambitious and sophisticated failure in the New York Times, and sold fewer than 1,500 copies in the first printing. A film adaptation was talked about, but the consensus seems to have been that it was unfilmable: too dark, too violent. Asked about this, McCarthy robustly dismissed these objections as “all crap”.

In the early 1990s, McCarthy acquired a new publisher (Knopf), a new editor (Gary Fisketjon) and, for the first time in his career, an agent (Amanda Urban). In 1992 Fisketjon and Urban persuaded the reluctant author to give an interview to the New York Times. All the Pretty Horses appeared that spring, and was a runaway success, winning the National Book award for fiction and the National Book Critics Circle award. In 2000, it was made into a film directed by Billy Bob Thornton. Matt Damon played John Grady Cole and Penélope Cruz played Alejandra, both rather miscast playing adolescents.

McCarthy thought the movie “could’ve been better” and bought a new pickup truck with the income from the book. It was the first volume in the Border trilogy, and was followed in 1994 by The Crossing, and in 1998 by Cities of the Plain. Most of the elements of his earlier books are here: virtuoso descriptive powers, laconic dialogue, a set of engaging younger characters and his signature violence. Occasional flights of inflated rhetoric accompanied McCarthy’s search for deep meaning. His account of the doomed relationship between John Grady Cole and the beautiful Alejandra is suggested by: “As she walked toward him her beauty seemed to him a thing altogether improbable” – which was hard to disagree with.

No Country for Old Men, published in 2005, was dismissed by the critic James Wood as “an unimportant, stripped-down thriller”. The Coen brothers movie of 2007 revealed the perfect geometry of this violent tale of pursuit and revenge. Tommy Lee Jones led the cast superbly as craggy Sheriff Bell, Javier Bardem was Chigurh, the remorseless killer with the bad haircut, and Josh Brolin was the outgunned man who found the drug money.

McCarthy attended the Academy Awards with the Coens. “They had a table full of awards before the evening was over, sitting there like beer cans,” he recalled. “One of the first awards they got was for best screenplay, and Ethan came back with the Oscar trophy and said to me, ‘Well, I didn’t do anything, but I’m keeping it.’”

The Road appeared in 2006, a spare, powerful novel portraying the struggle of a father and his young son to survive in a world in which civilisation, and the ecosystem, has collapsed after an (unspecified) cataclysm. It received the best reviews of his career. The experience of fatherhood is seen powerfully in this novel, as are the doom-laden seminars at the Santa Fe Institute discussing entropy, climate change and Carl Sagan’s widely-read scenario on nuclear winter. Together they offered McCarthy a subject that was perfectly matched to his late prose, muscular and taut.

For a writer never much known for his concern for intense emotional attachment, the feelings of the (unnamed) father for his son was something new in McCarthy; it gave The Road an emotional depth. There are hints of a consoling, redemptive ending, unknown in his earlier books, but the stronger note is a sense of the inevitability of death, of a father’s bitter knowledge that he will leave his young son to make his own way in the blasted world.

The Road was filmed by the Australian director John Hillcoat in 2008. Joe Penhall’s screenplay stayed close to the book’s dialogue (McCarthy explained it had been basically transcribed from conversations with his son John). Filmed mainly in Pittsburgh in midwinter, the film embodied McCarthy’s sense of a world dying. The relationship between father and son, played by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee, preserved much of the novel’s intensity of affection.

McCarthy received the PEN/Saul Bellow award in 2009, given to an American fiction writer whose work “possesses qualities of excellence, ambition, and scale of achievement over a sustained career which place him or her in the highest rank of American literature”.

Two late novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, appeared in 2022, capstones to an intense and remarkable career.

McCarthy’s third marriage ended in divorce in 2006. He is survived by his sons, two grandchildren, and two sisters and a brother.

🔔 Cormac McCarthy (Charles Joseph McCarthy), novelist, born 20 July 1933; died 13 June 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #Cormac McCarthy #in memoriam

23 notes · View notes

gcdeater · 11 months

Text

𝒕𝒊𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕, 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒅𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈.

brittany o’grady . demi-woman . she/they ➶ I RECOGNISE THAT FACE ! that’s ERIS DOUGLAS , the TWENTY-SEVEN year old UNDERCOVER ASSISTANT GAMEMAKER from DISTRICT FOUR THIRTEEN . they’ve been in the capitol around TWO YEARS , long enough to gain a reputation for being so COMPASSIONATE & HOTHEADED . they’re so lucky getting to live in the tribute center for the duration of the games! ( character IS part of the uprising )

STATS

name: eris douglas birthday: november 3rd zodiac: scorpio sun, capricorn rising gender: demi-woman pronouns: she/they orientation: pansexual panromantic role: rebel district: four thirteen family: unnamed mother, unnamed father, apollo redfield (half-brother) faceclaim: brittany o’grady

PERSONALITY

positive traits: compassionate, protective, courageous, perceptive, witty, resilient negative traits: hotheaded, dogmatic, impulsive, sensitive, guarded, paranoid moral alignment: chaotic good mbti: estj-t (the consul) enneagram: 8w7 (the nonconformist) temperament: choleric deadly sin: wrath heavenly virtue: charity parallels: arya stark (game of thrones), june osborne (the handmaiden’s tale), imperator furiosa (mad max: fury road)

BACKGROUND

In a career tribute household, parental love is frequently conditional. Your family is no different. You watch as your older brother scrambles for it pained you each time you’re forced to witness it.

You are resistant at every moment. When you’re older, you skip training. When you fail to escape attending, you purposely tank your performance.

The flame of the rebellion always existed within you. You dedicate much of your adolescence to researching the history of revolution— learning more about how much your ideals aligned with the uprising.

It is knowledge you know your family would disapprove of. You are careful, even with your older brother. You want to believe he wouldn’t betray you, but you already saw how he reacted to your minor rebellions. For him to understand the fullest extent of your rebellion could threaten your already imploding sibling bond. Your allegiances did not align— simple as that.

Your brother is fifteen when he volunteers. Amidst the commotion, you manage to get your first real taste of rebel activity. Even more so after he ends up winning. You adamantly refuse to live in the Victors' Village, deciding then that you’d overstayed your welcome in your familial home.

You skip town alongside someone you became close with at the meetings you attended— a risky, reckless decision that ends up working in your favor. You live with your friend in District 13 with the woman who’d taken them in, earning your keep completing odd jobs, continuing your life with a new name, stripping yourself wholly of your former identity. It is here that you finally find a place you belong.

Today, you remain an active participant in the uprising, working undercover in the Capitol as a gamemaker. There’s only telling how reckoning with your past will alter the current state of things.

FUN FACTS

When she runs away from District 4, she sheds her birth name, Kore, in favor of an alias, Eris.

Passionate and caring, but with a temper to match. Is easily goaded into fights. Instigation couldn’t be easier with them.

Has a mutt named Nyx that she found on the streets 5 years ago in District 13.

Has a tattoo of a trident behind her ear, along with a net inside of her wrist.

PLOT HOOKS

district 13 friends, enemies, exes, hookups / a select few people who knew her in district four (she left 15ish years ago / rebel friends, enemies, hookups / unlikely capitol friends / capitol enemies / maybe like (1) capitol hookup she can treat like ides of march / maybe someone who knows just a little too much about her and is blackmailing her / “work friends/enemies” who truly just think she’s an assistant gamemaker

#intro / eris

3 notes · View notes

lostinthelightss · 2 years

Text

we could leave the christmas lights up 'til january (lover, ch. 1)

Nina had always loved the Christmas season in Ketterdam...

Nina had always loved the Christmas season in Ketterdam, even though Kaz reminded her at every turn that it wasn’t like her Ravkan holidays. No, when you lived in Kerch, every ‘holiday’ was still in service of Ghezen, and though the twinkling lights scattered throughout the city were Nina’s favourite part of the winter after the Feast of Sankt Nikolai, she was all too aware that business still reigned supreme in this city.

Still, when given the opportunity to walk along the embankments under the lights for Matthias’s first winter in Kerch, she’d jumped at the chance. They’d stopped at a vendor’s booth near their apartment that was selling warm spiced wine, and the alcohol, combined with Matthias’s arm curled around her shoulders, pressing her into the side of his body, had kept the chill away from her bones. Thankfully, the presence of the ocean typically held most of the extreme weather at bay, so they didn’t have any snow to contend with, but the wind off the canals still managed to be harsh and unyielding if you weren’t careful.

Now, as they finally reached the main road, hundreds of sparkling lights were strung every which way, from lamppost to lamppost, across and around the walkways, illuminating every inch of the paths.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Nina sighed, the heat from her breath steaming as it came into contact with the cold air around them.

“Yes,” Matthias replied, his hair shining positively golden under all the lights. “It reminds me of Tustärjna,”

Nina turned to look up at him, furrowing her brow. “Tustärjna? I’ve never heard of that.”

“It’s an old tradition. Most don’t practice it anymore, but my grandmother does, every year,” Matthias said simply. “She would light candles every night for a week, and place them in the windows to beckon good spirits to the household. Then she would make food to place on the doorstep as an offering, and we would recite prayers before bed, and on the last night, all the lights in the house were darkened, and we would watch as the stars appeared in the night sky, and if we were lucky, Djel would send a snowfall, accepting our offerings and prayers, and the good spirits would remain with us until the new year.”

“And if he didn’t?”

Matthias smiled wryly. “It was Fjerda, Nina, darling. There was always a snowfall.”

And so, a few weeks later when the Christmas season was over and the new year was fast approaching, Nina announced that they would be celebrating Tustärjna that year. Their lights remained in the windows instead of candles, and on more than one occasion they’d forgotten about the offerings left on their porch, and Trassel managed to treat himself to a second dinner, and most nights Nina forgot at least part of the prayers, but they were happy to do so. On the final night, they huddled together on their couch, both watching as the stars slowly winked into existence as best they could over the brilliantly lit city.

“Happy Tustärjna, Nina,” Matthias whispered into the night sky.

“Happy Tustärjna, Matthias.”

The next morning when they awoke, they would open their eyes to see a truly miraculous sight. For the first time in decades, snow had fallen upon Kerch.

. . . . .

want more? lover+ updates every monday, tuesday, wednesday on tumblr

#six of crows #helnik #nina zenik #matthias helvar #matthias x nina #helnik fic #helnik fanfic #nina x matthias #soc #grishaverse #soc fic #soc fanfic #shadow and bone #sab #sab fic #sab fanfic #modern au #fluff #lover

7 notes · View notes

lynnsworkshop · 2 years

Text

Laketober 2022 - Day 1: Future

Hello all! I have emerged from the depths to participate in Rusty Lake’s Laketober event! I hope to be more active soon; still have a couple of stories in the works. Thanks for sticking with me this long!

(More below the cut)

CW: references to a real-life disaster

● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ● ☉ ●

Fall 2022

Ever since I was little, I’d loved the idea of cryptids, animals that may or may not exist. Sasquatch was a favorite of mine. Nessie too, of course. I fancied myself a cryptozoologist, someone who studied such creatures.

Then one day, I caught a documentary on the local history channel about a being known as Mothman. For around a one-year period, beginning in November of 1966, residents of Point Pleasant, West Virginia reported seeing a 5-7 foot tall figure with a 10-foot wingspan. It flew shockingly fast, keeping pace with highway speeds, omitting a shrill screech and lighting its way with glowing red eyes. Its last sighting took place at Point Pleasant’s Silver Bridge about a month before the structure collapsed. Some regarded Mothman as a “specter of death”.

The supernatural implications, along with the multiple eyewitness accounts, are what hooked me. Mothman was unlike any cryptid I’d heard of before. So, when new reports started trickling in last month on my favorite cryptozoology forum, I knew I had to go digging.

It began with a person claiming to have seen Mothman outside of their home in Canada. The creature stood atop a tree “like a great shadow”, remaining still for several minutes before taking flight and disappearing behind a row of trees. The second account described a large winged figure with red eyes flying over a road in northern Ontario. However, as the reports went on, they seemed to describe something more akin to Britain’s Owlman, commenting on pointed ears, clawed feet, and even a feathery appearance.

A location was brought up more than once, somewhere called Rusty Lake. That’s when the figurative dam burst. The trickle turned into a flood as people began to recount events involving not only this supposed Mothman, but also shadow people and even a lake monster. This Rusty Lake appeared to be a cryptozoological treasure trove.

I managed to get in contact with a woman who lived in the Rusty Lake area. She was reluctant to open up about the strangeness surrounding her home at first, but I persuaded her to after promising to keep her identity a secret.

“Things like your cryptids have inhabited Rusty Lake since long before I was born,” she wrote.

I messaged her back. “What kind of things?”

“They used to be human, is what I’m told. Part man and part beast. Ghosts of them too, wandering the Lake.”

“Have you ever seen one?

“Once, the Owl. It’s never a good thing when you do. They’re an omen of death. The Vanderboom brothers tempted them and the entire family was cursed. Generation after generation was met with tragedy. They’re all dead now.”

“Have investigations ever taken place?”

“People have come looking for the Lake, yes. It draws you in. Like a siren’s song, an itch that needs to be scratched, you know? Most haven’t returned. I’d advise against joining them.”

“Ghost stories don’t scare me.”

“They should.”

Despite her warnings, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity like this. In the 21st Century, actual cryptid sightings like this were almost nonexistent. Google, surprisingly, didn’t yield a reliable result on Rusty Lake’s location. When I asked the woman, she stopped returning my messages. I was left having to turn to a good old-fashioned library.

My search would’ve lasted much longer if it weren’t for my amazing local librarians. They really took it upon themselves to help me crack the mystery of where in the world Rusty Lake is. I think they were just happy to have something to do.

Finally, yesterday, we uncovered a yellowed newspaper clipping from 1969: “Win a trip to Rusty Lake...”

#laketober #laketober 2022 #teamfuture #rusty lake #cube escape #rusty lake roots #writing #creative writing #writing snippet #story

3 notes · View notes

rockchickensposts · 2 years

Text

Gossip Girl (2007)

"Gossip Girl here, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite."

If you saw an episode or two, you gotta be familiar with this sentence. Back in the 2010’s, everyone watched the famous series. I mean, who doesn’t just love drama? Well, you have 6 seasons, all together 121 episodes (, each of them is minimum 40 mins) for that. Something’s always happening, and there’s always a blogger (aka Gossip Girl), who can inform us about the latest news, scandals, commotions, etc.

We have 5 main characters, Daniel Humphrey (according to Gossip Girl: Lonely Boy), Serena van der Woodsen (S/”It Girl”), Blair Waldorf (B/Queen B), Chuck Bass (C) and Nate Archibald (Golden Boy). They are mostly the target of Gossip Girl’s posts, who’s been following their lives since the characters got into high school. One person started it; however, everyone could send tips and blasts about everyone. So basically, it makes everyone the Gossip Girl as they all the part of the posting. Because of this, Gossip Girl has eyes in everywhere. Later on, the original maker of the website disappears, and another character starts to post as Gossip Girl 2.0, then the character passes it to another, which leads to Gossip Girl 3.0. Not so far from this, the original Gossip Girl takes back their website.

In the final season, we get a reveal on the real Gossip Girl, until that we don’t even have a clue. Gossip Girl 2.0 and 3.0 was known, but the OG Gossip Girl’s existence is a secret. Let me tell you, dear reader, it is indeed a plot twist. Too bad I knew it all along, because I watched the Netflix’s ‘Emily in Paris’, and they spoiled it… They must have been doing that on purpose, since Gossip Girl is on HBO Max… But seriously, don’t believe my word, I was just joking around. (Or was I?).

Something's always happening around the main characters, it is certainly hard to catch up on the plot, because everyone’s with everyone then no one’s with no one, one relationship starts to bloom then the other is falling apart. The good thing about old school series is that they are the original versions so it’s hard to guess the plot. It’s not a typical plotline, okay-okay, you can always guess that the 2 main relationships are gonna somehow make it to the end, even if it’s a rough road. But that’s all, all the other things are remains as Gossip Girl’s many secrets. Until I can say more,

"And who Am I? That’s one secret I’ll never tell. You know you love me. XOXO Gossip Girl"

#gossip girl #series #old school #blair waldorf #serena van der woodsen #dan humphrey #chuck bass #nate archibald

2 notes · View notes

alianterres · 2 years

Text

Fleeting Time

Have you seen a firework show in your life? It’s gorgeous, dazzling but lasts short time.

Have you seen the meteors in the sky? I tried to say my farewell but they always fly thousand miles away soon.

I still remember in the late evening I met some people that I knew before and you were amid the people. You tried to talk to me in German. My German speaking was terrible, so we changed into English to continue the conversation.

At first I didn’t think that you were the special one. Like some people asking me the basic questions, everything was regular except I told you that I like man. Then we found a place to play billiards. After we finished, you told me that you lost the game to me intentionally. I looked into your eyes and smiled ,”I know that.” We separated on the road and I remained standing there and looking at your view of back far away.

I kept asking myself, are you the one? But in my life numerous people come and go , I predicted vaguely that you won’t be the exception.

Several days later I met you on the street again. I said I would like to have a walk along the river and you wanted to go with me. You asked me, “Why are you always alone when I meet you?” I answered,”Because I am new here, I need time to make friends.”

But you kept asking my life story. I cannot refuse that when you asked me with a very serious attitude. Although many memories that happened in the long past faded away in my head, when I tell them to you, I felt relief.

My life sucks all the time. When I was 15 years old, I have ever considered seriously to suicide. Endless examinations, complicated humanity and disgusting surroundings made me feel like living in a jail. But when I graduated from the high school and joined the university, I was conscious that I had just entered another bigger jail. I knew clearly that people who intended to suicide were always weak. They just didn’t know how to face the world. I was not willing to be a weak person. I was hopeless but not weak.

I asked you,”Do I look weak?”

You answered,”Yes.”

“No. I am always independent. I have suffered this fickle and tough life all these silent years on my own.”

We sat on the bench by the tranquil river. In May of Germany it got dark so late. I can’t remember how much time passed by, but your face started to become vague in the dim light.

You stood up so I also stood up. I knew it was time to leave here.

We climbed up the bridge. Suddenly a thought appeared in my head like a match lit in the dark. I must seize the opportunity. I can’t let it pass away from this important moment.

“Can you give me a hug before we go down this bridge?”

You smiled,”Okay.”

I felt your body temperature and breath in the tight hug. You talked to me at my left ear. We even shook for a while, as if we were doing some kind of dance.

And then I felt something hard besides my leg. I moved my leg to touch it. Instantly I knew it was your dick. You asked me if I was thinking sex. I said yes and your dick became hard now.

“Because your leg touched me.” You answered, “I am not gay. In the future I would get married with a woman and have several kids. This is support for you rather than love. You have to be brave.”

When the first time I met you, I knew you would be a good boyfriend and even a good husband if we lived together. And at this moment I can ensure it without more hesitation. But I didn’t know how to stay with you. I never possessed this kind of abilities. So I held you tight enjoying every second. I didn’t have another chance to rewind this emotion.

In this year of our lives, we are destined to meet inevitably. Even you can’t deny that you have good impressions of me. However, our encounter is the beginning of the separation. Afterwards we met several times but you are far away from me with the speed of light years.

I exist in this fleeting time.

0 notes

hellofeanor · 3 years

Text

Fëanorian Quenya

Hey friends! Do you like elves? Do you like the Silmarillion? Do you like Fëanor and co? And most of all, do you like spending hours thinking about minor details pertaining to made-up languages??? If so, boy do I have a treat for you! Let’s delve into the weird world of Fëanorian Quenya and explore some history and mechanics of why they talk Like That.

I’ve seen a lot of posts joking about the Fëanorian lisp, which is about as funny as a joke about a speech impediment can be. 👍 It’s important to understand, though, that this IS a joke. No, they didn’t really speak with a lisp. Yes, they did pronounce some S sounds as TH. That’s the critical disclaimer here: SOME. It’s not a blanket pronunciation. There’s a lot of background research that goes into determining which words would be pronounced with S and which would be TH, and that’s what we’re going to look at.

So if this is something you’ve come across in fandom and you’re not totally sure on the details, or if you ARE sure and just want some more in-depth info, read on.

The stuff probably everybody knows already

For anyone who’s been hanging around the Fëanorian corner of the Silm fandom for more than three minutes, there’s about a 100% chance you’ve heard of Fëanor’s penchant for retaining an archaic TH pronunciation after the majority of the Noldor went ahead and started pronouncing this sound as S instead. You may also know that this sound is represented by the letter thorn (Þ) in HoME, but since thorn doesn’t exist in modern English orthography and it’s a pain to keep typing the ALT code, I’m sticking to TH here. Anyway, all this was due to the fact that Fëanor was a huge mama’s boy, and his mom Míriel Therindë (later called Serindë, which made Fëanor want to punch walls and possibly also fellow elves) was an outlier who retained the TH after it fell out of use. Her son Fëanor, in turn, kept this up to honor her. Now, whether or not he would have bothered if this sound hadn’t literally been a critical part of her name is debatable, but that debate is outside the scope of this essay.

Fëanor continued to use the TH pronunciation until his death, and required his sons to use it as well. Finwë, however, switched over to S after the death of Míriel and before his marriage to Indis. Fëanor, reasonable and level-headed as he was, took this as a personal insult and decided that anybody who rejected TH likewise rejected him. So presumably, his loyal followers would have obeyed his totally reasonable demands not to give in to the seductive S-shift.

Why tho

Why did the Noldor decide to alter their pronunciation from TH to S? Great question. Nobody really knows. For the hell of it? IDK. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But the important thing to understand is that elves, and especially Noldor, were really committed to making sure their language sounds cool. This is why it changed so much and so comparatively quickly for an immortal population: they were actively invested in changing it. They liked inventing new words and exploring new sounds and messing around with grammar.

So at some point some influential Noldo might have been like, hey y’all, let’s stop saying TH and say S instead! And everyone (except Míriel I guess, who was known for her elegant manner of speech and didn’t want to muck that up by changing pronunciation of a whole letter) was like, whoa, capital idea my good egg. And they went with it. Previous ideas along these lines included ‘hey y’all, let’s stop saying KH and say H instead’ and ‘hey y’all, let’s stop saying Z and say R instead’, and those went over swimmingly. Nobody could have foreseen the problem this TH to S business would cause.

Now here’s a fun fact. There was another change to Noldorin pronunciation that happened AFTER Fëanor’s birth, that he himself was involved in. This one was all about bilabial to labiodental F. And those sure are some words, so if you don’t know what I’m talking about (I don’t blame you), BILABIAL is a more whispery sound that happens when you say F using only air passing through your pursed lips, and LABIODENTAL is when you say F with your top teeth touching your bottom lip. Going forward I’m going to use PH to represent the bilabial sound, and F for the labiodental.

So F got on the radar of the Noldor via the Teleri, who used this sound in their language. And ol’ Fëanor figured it would be awesome to incorporate it into Quenya because he thought the PH sounded too close to HW, and the two were getting confused by lazy speakers. Why did he care? Because of his dad’s name and his own, of course. If people started to get lazy in their pronunciation, we’d end up with Hwinwë and Hwëanáro, which would be terrible and stupid and unacceptable. He accused the Vanyar of leaning down that road, and he wanted to stop that kind of shift before it happened to the Noldor. How to do that? Why, by instigating a different shift from traditional Noldorin PH to Telerin F!

“Hey y’all, let’s stop saying PH and say F instead!”

“Whoa, capital idea my good egg.”

Moral of the story: Fëanor is only concerned with Quenya pronunciation insofar as it affects his own name and the names of family members he likes. He does not care whether it’s staying the same or moving to a new sound so long as it personally makes him feel good and his name sound cool. Therefore the true way to piss him off would be to call him Curuhwinwë Hwëanáro, son of Serindë.

Okay so here’s how it works

Now that history is out of the way, let’s get back to how TH was used by the Fëanorians. As I mentioned earlier, TH wasn’t a blanket pronunciation. It all depended on the original form of the word, and whether the root had a TH or an S. And some very similar-sounding words come from different roots, so this can get tricky. A great resource that’ll give you this information is Eldamo: Quenya words where the S was originally TH are marked out with the Þ (thorn) symbol in the wordlist.

Some examples:

Súlë (spirit, breath) comes from the root THŪ, which means it would be pronounced with a TH. Silma (white crystal) comes from the root SIL, so it and related words like Silmaril would be pronounced with an S. No Fëanorian would say Thilmaril. Isil (moon), however, is a similar-sounding word that comes from a different root: THIL. Olos (mass of flowers) comes from the word LOTH, but: Olos (dream) comes from the root LOS. Fëanorian pronunciation would immediately differentiate between these two words.

While Fëanorians may have retained the distinct pronunciation of TH vs S, other Noldor can still differentiate between original S and S-that-used-to-be-TH in their writing. There are specific tengwar to use depending on the word’s original form. Silmë (the one that looks like a 6) is used for original S, while súlë (or thúlë, the one that looks like an h) is used for original TH.

Which other elves used this sound in their speech?

Fandom has really latched on to this TH as a Fëanorian thing, but it wasn’t that exclusively. The TH sound was actually ubiquitous in other elven languages, and in Valinor, only the Noldor dropped it. It was still used in Telerin and in Vanyarin Quendya. The Vanyar retained the TH not because of anything to do with Míriel, but just because they were a little more conservative and their language didn’t pick up on all the changes that the Noldor made. They also noped out of the Z to R shift the Noldor initiated, opting to keep the Z around.

When Indis married Finwë, she stopped using the normal Vanyarin TH and switched over to S as a gesture of loyalty to him and his people. Finarfin, however, out of love for the Vanyar and Teleri, switched BACK to TH. I like to think about how much it would have annoyed Fëanor that his snot-nosed kid brother was speaking correctly, but for the wrong reason. Go down one more generation, and Galadriel very specifically did not use TH. But this time it was absolutely a choice made as a glaring middle finger to Fëanor.

What this means for your fanfic or whatever

The big takeaway here: you can’t just have Fëanorians replace every S with TH and call it a day.

If you’re inventing names for your Fëanorian OCs or coming up with phrases for them to say, it’s important to look into the history of all Quenya S-words you end up using to determine if they should be S or TH. If Fëanor got mad about somebody saying Serindë instead of Therindë, he’d get equally mad about somebody saying Thilmaril instead of Silmaril and assume they were mocking him. Remember: this is a dude with no chill. (On the other hand, if you WANT somebody to be mocking Fëanor, Galadriel would 100% do this because she has an equally negligible amount of chill.)

It’s also important to note that the TH isn’t a true shibboleth, since pretty much all elves EXCEPT the non-Fëanorian Noldor use it. And even the S-preferring Noldor would still be able to pronounce the TH. Those who went into exile would go on to use it commonly in Sindarin, and those who remained in Valinor would still encounter it among the Vanyar and Teleri. So if you’re writing a scene where somebody has to pronounce a TH word to prove their loyalty… yeah, everyone can pass this test. And in the opposite direction, you can’t use TH to prove somebody’s an evil Fëanorian, either. They might just be Vanyarin or something. Or, like. Really Old.

Would the sons (and followers) of Fëanor keep using TH after his death? Oh hell yeah. This is an entire family unfamiliar with the concept of not dying on hills. They will keep using it unto the ending of the world. Actually, with Sindarin becoming the common language of Middle-earth from the First Age, probably not a lot of change happened in exilic Quenya. It became a lore language: a piece of living history. It would have been preserved as it was when the original speakers left Valinor.

(And then, thousands of years later, Galadriel finally returns home to Tirion like, Long have mine eyes awaited this most blissful of sights, and ne’er hath my sprit soared with such grace, for I am returned! And all the Amanyar Noldor stare at her like, whatchu bangin on bout, eh? Because they had nothing better to do in the peace of Valinor than push Quenya to brave and frankly questionable new horizons.)

Anyway, there you go: a somewhat brief history of Fëanorian Quenya. I hope you found this informative and useful, or at the very least not boring. Obvs this is super condensed and, uh, not particularly scholarly, but I promise I know what I’m talking about. I have a university degree! (Not in anything even remotely related to what’s written above, but I hardly see how that’s relevant. It’s still a DEGREE.)

Questions? Need clarification or want more info? My asks are always open!

#feanor #silmarillion #quenya #tolkien #middle earth

430 notes · View notes

favoniuscodex · 3 years

Text

the art of modernity [ prologue ]

prologue - jueyun karst

pairing: xiao x gn!reader warnings: canon-typical violence mention words: ~1.8k words fic masterlist [ prev ] - [ next ]

chapter summary: you drag four of your closest friends to jueyun karst to chase after possible traces of the adepti. none of them expect for you to actually find any, but hey, anything is possible, right?

a/n: can't believe 'making xiao eat a chicken nugget and french fries' is becoming an actual fic but here we are. enjoy !! :D

when you had asked yanfei the legal repercussions of disrupting jueyun karst, the entire brunch table had looked at you as if you had grown a third eye. kaeya had sat down the third mimosa he had been nursing, while childe had actually stopped speaking for once. yanfei giggled with intrigue and keqing had stared at you with an expression that screamed are you serious right now?

yet somehow, you had ended up in keqing's overcrowded car and made a road trip to fuel your farfetched dreams. sure, like any kid growing up, you had read percy jackson and the archons, but, unlike most kids, you had taken the myths of the archons seriously. shrines and ruins still sung praises of their names, but most liyuean mythology was treated as having no greater value than old folk tales. the world had moved on past the need of teyvat's expansive pantheon of the elemental archons, visions, and celestia, yet some scholars sought to prove the existence of the old gods. most of the time, their efforts were fruitless.

you, of course, were no scholar. you were simply a dumbass who graduated college and decided in their post-college/pre-settled life panic to go traverse the treacherous lands of jueyun karst. as prosperous as liyue was, jueyun karst still remained heavily untouched as there were areas that even rich moguls were scared to get their grubby hands on. why turn the beautiful mountains and swirling lakes into sprawling shopping centers if the entire area was rumored to be cursed anyways? so, the country had turned jueyun karst into a protected area in the form of a national park.

but now, with your car full of three and a half dumbasses (keqing certainly doesn't count and yanfei is only halfway to idiocy), you had decided to certainly ignore the title of protected area. you had full intentions of disrupting whatever you could get your grimy hands on. you wanted to see the adepti in action and, if others called you crazy for it, then so be it.

"gods, where even are we?" kaeya asks. his tone lacks the annoyance you would expect from childe nor the worried-yet-still-composed nature you would expect from keqing's words. so, you shrug him off with a simple wave of your hand.

"not really sure, but there's enough of us out here that we won't die, right?" you ask and kaeya stares at you blankly before turning to look behind the two of you at the three stragglers.

"keqing!" he calls, realizing that you are of no help. "where are we?"

keqing huffs as she approaches the two of you while yanfei and childe stagger behind her, both acting tired despite being some of the most athletic people you know. in typical keqing fashion, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a compass. kaeya stares as the compass needle spins around aimlessly in her hand, its connection clearly disrupted by some force in the area.

"oh gods, what does that mean? we're going to die. we're going to die out here," childe deadpans, panic creeping into his voice. yanfei swats him playfully on the arm before he can begin his usual theatrics, knowing full and well how childe loves living in the spotlight.

"dying in a protected national park is illegal," yanfei adds and kaeya stares at her with a baffled expression.

"what? are the police going to arrest a corpse?" kaeya asks incredulously and yanfei folds her arms over her chest, staring at him with narrowed eyes.

"didn't you want to be a cop at one point? shouldn't you be aware as to how arresting procedures work?" yanfei asks and kaeya recoils at her question.

"no, i was considering going into military like my dad. i don't wanna be a cop," kaeya shoots back and childe jokingly gags once he hears the word 'military'.

"military? yuck," childe says and becomes the next recipient to receive childe's incredulous gaze.

"didn't you literally join the fatui for two years?" kaeya asks but childe shakes his head.

"not like you have any proof," the ginger-haired man shoots back.

"i can easily acquire proof?" kaeya says, but keqing clears her throat loudly before the two men can engage in a full showdown of words.

"c'mon, guys, we have bigger problems to solve than childe's blatant lies," keqing redirects the conversation with ease but not before kaeya lets out a triumphant hmph at keqing's words. "like figuring out why this compass isn't working and figuring out how to get back because it doesn't work."

"ooh, maybe it's not working because there are ghosts nearby," childe says, but before yanfei and kaeya can engage with his dumbassery once more, you interject.

"it's likely just elemental energy or adeptal energy. i know you guys probably don't believe in them, but this is said to be the former realm of the adepti. wouldn't be surprised if there are traces of them left!" you say, voice far too cheery for the implication of your words. kaeya only shrugs at the suggestion that gods are watching over you as you travel through the park, yanfei only looks intrigued in a nearly-dangerous way, keqing looks nonplussed due to her strong belief that the gods no longer exist, and childe looks absolutely terrified yet is trying to act like he isn't.

"anyways," you continue. "maybe there's a domain!"

"ancient liyuean law forbids unauthorized entrance into domains without proper licensure from the adventurer's guild," yanfei says, as if knowing ancient law is a completely normal activity for a twenty-something-year-old.

"what is a domain?" keqing and kaeya ask at the same time before glancing at each other.

"i'm... not sure. pretty sure they have like... ancient monsters and stuff," you confess and, for the first time today, childe perks up excitedly, eagerly taking a step closer to you.

"monsters? like those uh... hollychirls? whatever they're called? how big do you think they are?" childe asks with an excited glimmer in his eyes.

"weren't you just worried about dying?" keqing asks, but childe ignores her question.

"so like... we're trying to find this domain, right?" childe asks, confused. "what are we looking for?"

"i don't really see why a domain would have adepti traces so we're probably better off looking for something else," you say and yanfei perks up.

"like that?" she asks, pointing off at something glowing faintly orange in the distance. you squint slightly in an attempt to better look at it, but you're unable to distinguish what exactly yanfei as pointing at.

"we might as well go see what that is," keqing says and you're slightly surprised for the purple-haired girl to suggest such a thing, but you figure she's just trying to find a place where her compass actually works. the spinning dial isn't too much of a concern for you since you're in no rush to leave, but the friends you've brought along aren't quite as keen on discovering the secrets of the adepti as you are, so you follow the herd as they begin to move over to the glowing orange light.

the five of you climb down, approaching what soon reveals itself as a stone pillar with a glowing chunk of cor lapis on top. it's certainly nothing new and is probably a protected relic, yet no guards are stationed in front of it. it's almost certainly been discovered before, so why isn't it..?

"oh, isn't this area usually flooded?" yanfei asks and everyone turns to stare at her.

"you've been here before?" keqing asks and you wonder to yourself when these people will stop asking questions and instead keep looking for hints.

"you guys haven't traveled to jueyun karst before?" yanfei asks, confused. "yeah, this area's usually flooded with water. i've never seen that thing before."

if it's usually flooded, then it was likely discovered before, but not relocated, you think to yourself and immediately break out in a sprint towards the cor lapis tower. sure, it was about the height of you, with the cubic chunk on top reaching the height of your head, yet you were more than satisfied with looking at the carvings on the side. childe is the first to catch up with you, using his long legs to match your pace. he sighs as you finally stop and watches as you frantically begin poking and prodding at the pillar.

"are you sure that's a good idea?" he asks, nervously. "what if it's a mechanism or something?"

"what's the worst that could happen?" you ask and childe sputters over his words.

"a lot of things!" childe insists, yet kaeya, keqing, and yanfei's joined arrival interrupts him from making an even bigger fuss.

"try putting your palm flat on the diamond," yanfei suggests and you take a step back. with a steady hand, you lays her palm flat against the side of the pillar, in which a diamond has been engraved onto its surface. around the group of you, the remnants of water begin to glow orange as the pillar emits an even stronger, unnatural glow of energy. the pillar begins to vibrate rapidly and yanfei lets out a small, knowing laugh while the rest of you watch, wide-eyed and confused by the moving pillar.

yet, all that happens is that the cor lapis situated on the top of the pillar falls off, landing on the side of the pillar with a resounding crack. the four of your friends immediately move over to look at the now shattered chunk of cor lapis on the ground, yet you gravitate towards the stone pillar. on the spot where the cor lapis fell, a single name is etched into the stone, as if this pillar is supposed to mark a specific area.

"'xiao'?" you breathe, reading off the word on the pillar.

"what's xi-" kaeya begins, glancing over at you, but before he can finish, a flash of green appears on the opposite side of your friends. your lips part in shock as you watch the deity appear before you. a mask rests on his face and a polearm rests in his hand, yet despite his disguised face, you can sense the anger rolling off his form in waves. his green hair ruffles in the wind as his free hand reaches up to lower his mask. infuriated amber eyes pierce into yours, but the adeptus speaks before you can.

"i am adeptus xiao. how dare you mortals infringe upon jueyun karst and disrupt my land?" xiao seethes and, for once, all five of you are silent as the yaksha points his polearm at you.

taglist:

@somemothgoingferal @miicachii @hq149 @albedostar @the-astrumnauta @falconcoast @dilucsz @transactionalrelationship @koko-cherry @dumpling-gif @shulkerdotjar @popdrop @seokflwr @solarpearl @tsubaki3192 @marifujioka @astronomeh @daichiri @cryspyjk @svnflowery @anseoo @rintaoreo @fuhuashandholder @squashbee

please send in an ask (not submission or dm!) to be placed on the taglist! if your name is in italics that means i am unable to tag you!

#xiao x reader #genshin impact x reader #xiao #genshin impact #//the art of modernity #//taom #axia's writing

443 notes · View notes

helloalycia · 3 years

Text

lose you [one] // leigh shaw

summary: after Leigh ignores your existence for a few days, you decide to force her out of her room and spend the afternoon with you, but it ends up leading to something more

warning/s: mentions of grief and implied death

author's note: this was requested and I finally got around to watching Sorry For Your Loss (which is so good by the way! i'm so mad it got cancelled), so here is a little Leigh Shaw imagine! It's a three-parter so stay tuned :)

part two | part three | masterlist | wattpad

"Where is she?"

Jules, her sister, pointed up at the ceiling, referring to upstairs, as she finished chewing on a grape. "What did she do now?"

I refrained from rolling my eyes at the reminder that Leigh had been ignoring my calls and texts for the past few days.

"Nothing," I mumbled before leaving her in the kitchen to eat her fruit.

I'd been friends with Leigh long enough to invite myself into her house and let myself head upstairs. When I reached her room, I knocked on the door and tried to hide my impatience with a sigh.

"Jules, I'm not in the mood," her voice grumbled from the other side.

Ever since losing her husband a year ago, Leigh's personality had become more... erratic, if you will. Understanding her mood changes and temper tantrums was a skill in itself, but I was determined to stick by her if it meant she'd be okay. Like now, for example.

"It's not Jules," I called back. She didn't reply, so I said, "You better have clothes on, I'm coming in."

Without wasting a second, I opened the door and found Leigh laying on her bed, thankfully dressed, and looking up at the ceiling. Her room was slightly messy and the curtains were half open, like she'd been in the same position for the past few days. I wouldn't have put it past her.

When I entered, her eyes glanced my way before she continued to stare a hole into the ceiling. I breathed out, unsure what to say.

"Don't look at me like that," she said quietly.

"I wouldn't have to if you'd replied to any of my texts," I retorted, though my tone was anything but harsh.

"I've been busy," she mumbled.

My eyes raked the room once again. "Yeah, I can see that... it's two in the afternoon."

Suddenly, she sat up and narrowed her eyes at me. "Look, if I wanted a lecture, I'd have let Jules in here. If you've not got anything nice to say, you know where the door is."

Rolling my eyes, I ignored her flippant attitude and went to the set of chest drawers pushed against her wall. I rifled through them, earning complaints from behind me, before pulling out some clothes and throwing them at her.

"We're going out," I told her sternly, crossing my arms.

She removed the clothes from her face and gave me a disapproving look. "No, we're not."

"I'm not leaving unless you come with me, so..."

She could be a bitch when she wanted to be, but she knew I could be, too. Our stubbornness was our weakness, since neither of us could back down in a fight. Nowadays, it usually ended with me giving in because I pitied her, but not today. Today I was adamant on cheering her up.

"Fine," she said through a sigh of defeat. "Just get out already."

I smiled victoriously. "See you downstairs."

After waiting for Leigh to get ready and out of the pyjamas I was sure she'd lived in for three days straight, we got in my car and I began to drive.

"Where are we going?" she asked, glancing over at me with mild annoyance, like she'd rather be anywhere but here.

"Not sure yet," I admitted, ignoring the disbelief on her face.

"Then why did you make me come?!" she asked, her attention fully on me now.

I shrugged. "Thought you could use the break." Shoulders relaxing, I added, "I also thought we could spend some time together since we haven't in a while."

I didn't want to say it was because of the fact that she'd been avoiding me, or at least been making no effort to talk to me. I also didn't want to make her feel bad because of those facts, but she seemed to take it personally anyway, resorting to a good old-fashioned Leigh-specialty eye roll.

"I'm not sorry for grieving," she said knowingly, getting comfortable in her seat and looking out the window.

I gripped the steering wheel harder and tried not to let her words make a difference. She had a bad habit of twisting my words or making things seem worse than they were and I knew it was a coping mechanism of hers. She only tried to cope when things got too much, which only confirmed my reason for taking her out today.

"You don't have to be," was all I said, before focusing back on my driving.

—

Halfway through our drive to nowhere, I pulled the roof of the car down so we could feel the wind in our hair and the sun on our backs, since it was a nice day. I also put the radio on, hoping it would ease the tension on Leigh's end of the car.

Pop songs blared through the speakers, some that I knew and some that I didn't. Of course, the ones that I knew I immediately sang along to. Leigh definitely didn't like that, opting to roll her eyes and pretend I wasn't there. But eventually, I knew she wouldn't be able to resist and she began to hum along, making me smile.

On the road that led to nowhere, I noticed a public footpath leading into the forest and decided to take a pit stop, utilising the car park nearby. When Leigh noticed what I was doing, she straightened up and looked around with confusion.

"What are you doing?" she asked, eyes falling to mine.

I tried not to laugh. "We, my friend, are going on a walk."

"You're kidding."

"I'm really not."

I felt her eyes on me as I parked up and turned the engine off. Unbuckling my seatbelt, I opened my car door and met her judgemental gaze, noticing she wasn’t making a move to leave.

"You coming?" I asked with a raised brow.

"Do I have a choice?"

"Of course," I said, not quite stepping out the car but hanging my feet out. "You can either come with me on a nice walk through the forest, or you can stay here and roast to death in the car because of the heat whilst you wait for me."

"Or I can steal your keys and drive home without you," she offered as a third option, smiling bitterly.

Grin on my lips, I hummed in agreement. "That's also an option, yes."

Letting out a sigh through gritted teeth, she wordlessly got out the car and I smiled with satisfaction, knowing she'd give in. Getting out the car, I stretched my arms before locking the doors and joining Leigh's side. She sulked like a child, but allowed me to lead her to the trail ahead.

It was a lovely day out, warm but with a slight breeze that cooled our skin as we walked. Sunlight peeked through the tall trees, reflecting off the greenery and filling me with a sense of awe as I appreciated mother nature up close and personal.

Glancing over at Leigh, I noticed how she fell into step with me but remained closed off. Hugging herself, she focused on the path ahead and stayed quiet, jaw clenched and lips pursed. Streams of light that shone through the trees shone onto her, spotlighting her and making her hair look golden, blinding but in the best way.

I'd never admit it aloud, but I always loved the way her green eyes sparkled in the light, and even when she turned to glare at me, I felt my heart rate speeding up at how beautiful she looked.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer," she said dryly.

Not letting her mood get me down, I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo, making her smack my hand away. I laughed and, for her sake, pretended I didn't see the ghost of a smile on her lips.

"That's one for the books," I teased, putting my phone away.

"It's fine, I have plenty of you," she mumbled.

I smiled to myself but said nothing. We continued to walk through the woods, following the trail and myself remembering every turn we made so we could make it back the right way. There were a few other people out, but we passed them with a quick hello (from myself since Leigh was still sulking) and moved on.

Twenty minutes into our peaceful walk, I noticed a wooden footbridge up ahead, possibly built over a stream. Excited, I stopped and looked to Leigh who noticed I wasn't beside her and turned around to see what was up.

"Why d'you stop?" she asked, pulling her hair up into a ponytail impatiently.

I smiled eagerly. "I'll race you to the bridge."

"Y/N," she breathed out, raising her eyebrows. "We're not kids."

I walked forward slowly, smile fading into a frown. "Fine. Sorry for trying to liven things up."

She rolled her eyes and continued to walk beside me in silence. But my pace picked up, as did hers, and I exchanged glances with her, realising she was walking faster than usual. Before I knew it, we were breaking into a run, trying to reach the bridge before each other.

"Thought you didn't wanna race!" I said between heavy breaths.

"I don't!" she called back, her pace picking up as she managed to get ahead.

I sucked up a breath and pushed on, tailing her as she reached the bridge. When she got there, she began to cheer and point at me obnoxiously.

"Ha! I win!" she said with a grin, as I slowed down and bent over to catch my breath. "Sucks to be you."

Her laughter filled my ears as I straightened up, hands on my hips. She looked so happy, even if it was momentarily, and I watched her with adoration, not even caring that I'd lost. She was stunning when she was smiling and I could only hope she'd do it more as time went on.

"I let you win," I joked, waving my hand dismissively.

"Sure you did," she played along, leaning on the bridge's railing as she watched me with amusement.

"You literally exercise for a living," I told her with a shrug. "S'not fair."

"Whatever," she said with an eye roll, smile still dancing on her lips as she turned around to look over the bridge. A gasp escaped her lips as she said, "Wow."

I joined her side, holding the railing to see what had taken her breath away. Then I saw it. A stream ran beneath us and was framed by some beautiful flowers and tall, transcending trees whose branches curled outwards and were covered in green leaves. The sun's rays filtered down through the leaves and made the water look like it was sparkling, rippling with every rock it pushed past.

"Looks like something out of a children's book," I said with disbelief, smile of amazement on my lips.

Leigh hummed in agreement and I glanced at her, seeing a similar expression on her face. Glad she was in a better mood, I looked back to the picturesque view before us and leaned on the railing, merely appreciating the sight.

"This is nice," Leigh said quietly, after a moment.

I tilted my head to get a look at her. She was already looking my way, leaning on her arms and meeting my gaze.

"Thanks, I put it all together myself," I said playfully, making her nudge me with her elbow as I chuckled.

"I'm serious," she said, before looking ahead again. "It is."

Knowing that was her way of saying thank you without actually saying it, I nodded in agreement. "It is."

We admired the sight for a few more minutes before deciding to head back, taking our time as we followed the route I remembered. Leigh was a little less tense this time, seeming to relax into her surroundings a little more. She even had a smile on her face at times which was all I wanted.

"You hungry?" I asked when we reached the car park.

"I guess I could eat," she said with a shrug.

"Well, according to this sign," I said, pointing to a board beside the start of the footpath, "there's a café a little way down the road. Wanna go?"

She motioned for me to go first. "After you."

Green eyes shone bright with amusement as she looked to me with a suppressed smile. Losing my words, surprisingly startled by her gaze, I cleared my throat and took the lead, making her laugh.

I sometimes wondered if she knew the effect she had on me or if she just liked catching me off guard. Maybe it was both.

—

After having a late lunch, or early dinner depending on how you saw it, Leigh and I got back in my car and I began to drive us back to hers. It was quiet, just like our meal was and just like she'd been for most of the afternoon. I was fine with that, I guess, but I felt like she was holding something in.

Turning off the radio, I earned her attention.

"You should try screaming," I suggested casually.

"Excuse me?"

I felt her eyes boring into me with confusion as I got comfortable in my seat. Looking in the rear view mirror, I noticed there were no cars behind us or in front of us. The road was empty as I drove on the edge of one of the many beautiful cliff-sides in Los Angeles.

"Scream," I repeated to Leigh. "It'll feel good. Watch."

Wasting no time, I began to scream at the top of my lungs, being sure to stay focused on driving at the same time. My voice flew into the air as my car sped down the road, leaving me feeling liberated.

"Geez, a warning would be nice!" Leigh snapped, uncovering her ears when I was done.

I laughed. "I did say to scream." Giving her a sideways glance, I added, "Come on. Try it with me. On the count of three."

"This is stupid," she decided, leaning back into her seat and pushing her hair from her eyes as the wind blew it about.

"No, it's not," I said with certainty. "Three."

"Y/N."

"Two."

"Stop it."

"One."

"Y/N!"

I looked to her with a grin before screaming at the top of my lungs. When I didn't hear her join in, I stopped and pouted.

"You gonna leave me hanging?" I asked, looking between her and the road. "C'mon. Last chance."

"Y/N–"

"Three. Two. One."

This time, to my surprise, she joined in and we screamed together, our voices echoing into the hills around us. It was exciting, thrilling and freeing all at once. Once we were out of breath, we stopped and caught it back.

"Felt good, right?" I asked with a grin.

She began to laugh, quietly, slowly, then loudly and hysterically, making me join in. Though, when my laughter faded, I realised she was still laughing, and then I looked over to her and saw tears streaming down her cheeks. With concern, I reached over to comfort her, but stopped when I realised it was weird to do, even for a friend.

"Leigh, I'm sorry, I–"

"No, no, it's fine, I'm fine," she cut me off, wide smile still on her lips as she wiped away her tears with the sleeve of her jumper. "They're happy tears. Y/N. They're happy tears."

I furrowed my brows with confusion, eyes flickering between the road and Leigh. "Are you– are you sure? Because it's okay if–"

"I'm okay," she promised, resting a hand on my arm. "I am. And the screaming helped. You were right."

I almost made a joke about how I'm always right, but my concern for her, despite the smile she wore, was still present. Teary eyes watched me with reassurance and she squeezed my arm gently before getting comfortable in her seat.

"Okay, if you're sure," I said, still uncertain.

We continued driving when I noticed the sun setting and decided to stop the car off to the side of the road. The hills were the perfect place to watch the sunset since it had a perfect view of the city whilst leaving enough space to see the sky in all its glory.

"Now why are we stopping?" she asked, though her voice didn't carry the same venom it did earlier.

"Isn't it obvious?" I asked rhetorically, getting out the car and motioning to the view before us. "We're gonna watch the sun set!"

I thought she'd put up a fight or complain like she had with everything I'd been recommending today, but to my ease, she simply got out the car and joined me. The two of us leaned against the car door as we watched the sun dipping into the horizon, casting an orange-pink hue across the skyline and the few clouds in the sky. It always reminded me of a watercolour painting, like someone had dipped their paintbrush in water and dragged it across the sky.

"Thank you for today," Leigh said, pulling me from my admiration. "I actually had a really nice time. As in, the part I spent with you and not the part where I moped around in bed."

I gave her a half smile. "Anytime, Leigh."

She winced, shaking her head in disagreement. "No, I mean it, Y/N. For everything, not just this." She paused, and I tried to ignore the way the last of the sun's rays made her skin glow and eyes shine brighter than anything I'd ever seen. "You've been here for me, even a year later when other people would have left."

"That's what friends are for," I reminded her, and her eyes flickered to mine, holding a million questions that I couldn't decipher.

"I'm not the best company," she admitted.

"You're not that bad," I said dismissively.

"I wouldn't want to be around me," she continued.

"Who likes to be left alone with themselves anyway?" I said jokingly, making her sigh discontentedly. Smile fading, I lost my humour for the moment. "You're not as bad as you think. And even if you were, I'd still stick around."

She locked her jaw, looking down to her shoes silently. I crossed my arms and looked back to the sun, it lowering into the horizon further and further as each second passed.

"I didn't mean to force today onto you," I said hesitantly. "I just– you didn't reply to any of my messages and I was worried."

She scratched the back of her head awkwardly. "I haven't really checked my phone."

"I figured." Finger playing with my shirt mindlessly, I said, "I got a promotion at work. That's–" I cleared my throat. "That was why I called you the first time."

She looked up, eyes wide with apology. "Oh my God. Y/N, I'm so sorry! That's amazing! I should have–"

"It's okay," I reassured her with a small smile, dropping my arms to my side. "I just wanted to tell you because, well... I just wanted to tell you."

I wanted to tell her because that's what we did. We told each other everything. She was the first person that came to mind when anything good happened in my life. Of course, with everything going on, it was hard to tell her the good stuff when she was going through so much.

"I'm so proud of you," she said softly, and I looked her way when she grabbed my hand. "You worked really hard for this promotion and I knew you'd get it."

A smile crept onto my lips at her words. "Thank you, Leigh. You know that means a lot."

She nodded, mirroring my expression, before squeezing my hand gently. I wanted to look away after a few seconds, but she was still holding my gaze, eyes piercing mine as if conflicted. I suddenly became hyper-aware of her hand in mine, fingers gently tugging mine subconsciously, and the way her shoulder brushed against mine, the contact so natural I almost didn't realise it was there.

When I finally decided to break our staring contest, deciding I'd never know what was going on in her head, she took me by surprise and pulled me forward before kissing me. Her lips pressed to mine quickly, hand letting go and resting on the back of my neck dominantly.

It happened so quickly, my mind working overtime as it tried to decipher Leigh's soft lips against mine, the shiver that ran down my spine from her hand on my neck, the tenderness of her cheek as it came into contact with my nose. I didn't even get chance to react, to kiss her back like I wanted, as she pulled away in an instant.

Seemingly startled by her own actions, she let go of my neck and took a step back. I already missed the contact, my lips feeling cold as she pulled away. I, myself, was taken aback, still frozen with shock at the fact that she'd just kissed me.

"Th– that was a friendly kiss, obviously," she stuttered out, eyes avoiding mine.

I licked my lips awkwardly. "Yeah, obviously..."

"To say thanks," she added unconvincingly. "Y'know?"

"Mhm."

Neither of us looked up as we stood apart trying to understand what happened. Why did she do that? Did she actually want to? Was she caught up in the moment or was she just seeking comfort? I wasn't sure. But I knew I wished I had reacted quicker than I had.

"We should go home," she mumbled.

I nodded in agreement. "Right. Yeah. Home."

The two of us got back into my car, neither of us saying anything as I drove her back to her place. The radio played quietly in the background, filling the uncomfortable silence that formed between us, and I hated that a good day had ended on a bad note.

Pulling up outside her house, I chewed on the inside of my mouth with discomfort. She cleared her throat and still didn't look my way as she spoke.

"Thanks again for today," she said, before opening the door. "I'll, er, see you whenever."

I nodded, eyes focused on the steering wheel. "See you. I, erm–" I wanted to say something about the kiss, but she clearly didn't and I didn't want to piss her off. So, I said, "Tell Jules and your mum I said hi."

"Will do..."

With that, she got out the car and headed to her front door, leaving me sat there for a moment as I tried to comprehend the situation I was now in.

Why did Leigh have to be so confusing?

#leigh shaw x reader #leigh shaw imagine #leigh shaw x you #leigh shaw #sorry for your loss imagine #sorry for your loss #elizabeth olsen #elizabeth olsen imagine #elizabeth olsen x reader

406 notes · View notes

selenavtl · 2 years

Text

Travels of a Broken Heart ( Thranduil x reader) DISCONTINUED : Prologue

My name is Y/n. I was born in Rivendell, 3215 years-ago, and raised by Lord Elrond, until my fate took me away. My parents died so early in my life that any memories of them disappeared with time, and all that is left, are the powers I inherited from them. From what Elrond told me, my mother was a healer, but he never really spoke about my father.

When I was old enough, Elladan and Elrohir, Elrond’s sons, started taking me out of Rivendell. We went searching for herbs, and occasionally, we would hunt down packs of Orcs coming from the mountains. I instantly knew I was meant to be outside, and not in the beautiful safety of the Hidden Valley.

As a result of those trips, I started training with Elrond’s soldiers, and quickly became one of the best archers. These fighting skills, along with my healing abilities, made me “the most powerful edhel on Arda”, as Elrond says.

Life went on and on, peacefully, for hundreds of years. I’d be sent away on political trips, or charged to rid areas of Orcs and other disgusting creatures, almost every day.

Until darkness took over the world and the War of The Last Alliance took place. Men and Elves, fighting together against the forces of Sauron, for years. This is where I first saw him.

Amongst the thousands of men, elves and Orcs’ dead bodies, the Prince of the Woodland Realm, Thranduil. Fighting two cavern Trolls by himself, with for only weapon his bleeding sword. Even swollen in black blood and dirt, his long white hair shined like a ray of light, in the dark fields of Mordor. Seeing him was like being struck by lightning, and that’s when I knew he was my One.

Elves already have a special vision of love, only having a single lover for the eternity that is their life. But a One, is more powerful than any possibe feelings one could have. Once you find it, your souls are bounded until death, and when the end comes, whether you die together, whether the remaining beating heart breaks. That is, if the feelings are mutual. Which wasn’t the case for me, since the Prince was already married.

When the war ended, and Sauron died ( or at least that’s what we thought), I decided to not go back to Rivendell, the main reason being that it was too far away from the Woodland Realm, and from Thranduil who was now King considering his father died during the War.

Though, Elrond was still too saddened and traumatized by the Battle, so he told me to go and find a wizard, Gandalf the Grey. Finding him was easy, but living with him was not. We were always on the road, from North to South, and East to West, taking care of situations only a wizard could handle. I was happy since I was travelling the world, but the ache of being far from my One only grew harder to bare. We travelled together enough time for Gandalf to become a father to me, just like Elrond.

One year, we were (mostly Gandalf) invited to Mereth Nuin Giliath, the Feast of Starlight, by the Elvenking Thranduil himself. The prospect of seeing him again was relieving, but also worrying considering that he was not even aware of my existence, nor that I would come along with Gandalf.

It occurred that I was right to worry. I never felt so unwelcomed and out of place in my life, and yet, it felt like home. The realm was dark, but warm and inviting, candle light illuminating every bridges and trees. We were led to the throne room as soon as we arrived by an elf named Feren. He also was fighting against Sauron back then. The room was huge, but what impressed me the most was the large and high wooden throne, ornated by what seemed to be elk antlers, and covered in silk drapes. Two guards were standing before it, and two other ones arrived, escorting the King.

Seeing Thranduil again was like I was reborn, all the pain and feeling of emptiness leaving my body as he welcomed Gandalf. Our eyes met for the first time, his icy blue ones piercing into my E/c ones. He seemed surprised at first, but finally welcomed me as well.

We never exchanged a word, even when I was sitting by his side during the dinner that took place that night. Gandalf, who sat next to Thranduil’s wife, was recounting our adventures, which allowed me to embrace the relief my body felt.

The King was as stunning as ever, the wooden and spiky crown on his head made him look even more regal and majestic, yet he seemed somewhat older, and more similiar to his father. Gandalf told me that evening that a crown can change a person in many ways, a statement that confirmed itself many times all along my story.

I made the biggest (and worst ) decision of my life later that night. Gandalf was already asleep, and possibly a bit drunk considering the amount of wine he drank, but I, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep. I decided to head to the library Feren showed us earlier, but didn’t suspect that the King would be there, and very much alone. We didn’t speak much, but it was enough for me to tell him that I felt incredibly good in the realm, and for him to tell me to try and stay here for a while.

And so I did. I lived by his side for years, and it was better, better than being away, but still not enough. I barely saw him, barely talked to him, and his wife was never truly nice with me. To this day, I still wonder if she suspected or even knew my feelings toward Thranduil. The only friend I ever made in the kingdom was Feren, who knew all of it, and who was always here whenever I needed an advice.

Until one cold day of October, my feelings and pain became unbearable, so I decided to tell the King everything. How I felt, what he was to me, everything. He didn’t believe me at first (and I don’t think he ever did), but his wife knew it was true. She rejected me, banished me from the realm for my feelings and he watched, silent from up his throne. She made the guards escort me out, with no weapons, no food, nothing. I ran and ran, out of what was still Greenwood, until I felt it. The pain of a heart, literally breaking. No wound I’ve ever gotten was as intense and painful than that. The only thing I remember is crying out of pain in the middle of nowhere, and then eveything went black.

When I woke up, the wooden elven walls were replaced by cold, stone columns. Actually everything seemed to be made of stone, even the bed felt like it. The room was empty, besides a few candlesticks here and there, and a desk covered in fresh food. Then I noticed a young dwarf, with black hair and a beard quite short for his kin. His name was Thorin, grandson of the King of Erebor, where he brought me. I knew Erebor because of the stories about golden rooms that people talk about. He told me he found me a few days before, unconscious near the forest, and brought me to his kingdom.

Thorin quickly became my best-friend as I recovered for more than a month. The pain was still here, going back and forth, but I felt better as the days flew by. I was ready to leave, far away from all of this, but Thorin almost begged me to stay. So, I did.

I lived peacefully, away from the world, in Erebor for years, and it becamr the closest thing I ever had from a home, since Rivendell.

The first time I heard about Thranduil again was when a messenger from the Woodland Realm came to the mountain, to inform us that the Queen died. He was carrying a box, full of white gems that were hers, and that Thranduil wanted to be made as a necklace. He came to Erebor when it was done, but Thror, who was already consumed by sickness, stole them from him.

We didn’t hear from him again, until the dragon came and took our home away from us. We were all hurt and desperate, and he just watched, and left. Thorin never forgot, nor forgave, but I did, somehow.

But here I am, today, in a place I didn’t even knew existed called The Shire, in front of a small, round wooden door, marked by a certain grey wizard, waiting to go take our home back.

Elvish translation:

Edhel = elf

#the hobbit #thranduil #thranduil x reader #thorin x reader #soulmates #friendship #bard x reader #slow burn

132 notes · View notes

robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Text

Spilled Pearls

- Chapter 29 - ao3 -

“In the future, you should send your children to the Cloud Recesses for me to teach,” Lan Qiren said. He was sitting with Wen Ruohan on one of the rooftop gardens in the Nightless City, watching the moon and stars from a pavilion placed there for that purpose; their bodies were pressed close together, and it felt as if they were far away from all the things that were familiar. “You and Lao Nie both, and naturally I’ll come visit with you often as well, bringing my nephew. Between the three of us, we might even be able to teach them how to be proper human beings.”

Wen Ruohan laughed in his ear and pressed his lips to his cheek – he had taken to kissing him at random, spontaneous, as if still overwhelmed by the fact that he now had the right to do it.

“I will,” he promised. “I agree, I think they’ll turn out better that way…you would really have me educate your precious little A-Huan?”

“If I’m willing to entrust myself with you, why not him? Anyway, I can teach him music, and with the aid of the other teachers in my sect the sword in the Lan sect style, but you can teach him much more than that. You know how to look at the world and see it for what it is, and then bend it to your will, make it sing to your tune. He’ll be sect leader in the future; he needs to learn that, and you can teach it to him.”

“I can, and I will,” Wen Ruohan said, then thought for a moment and asked, “What does Lao Nie bring to the table?”

“Flexibility, mostly.”

Wen Ruohan barked out a laugh. “He certainly has that.”

He didn’t even sound bitter about it any more.

Lan Qiren smiled.

“In the meantime, I will handle the rest of it,” Wen Ruohan added, and Lan Qiren looked at him in silent question. “Come now, Qiren. Did you really think that I would allow you to remain caged in the Cloud Recesses your whole life?”

Lan Qiren paused. That was the sorest part of his heart, his most painful misery, but he didn’t think Wen Ruohan would bring it up casually. If anything, he was a bit more afraid of what Wen Ruohan might get into his head to do about it – there was very little Wen Ruohan wouldn’t dare.

“Da-ge –” he started warily.

“No, no,” Wen Ruohan said, lightly scolding. “Little Lan, be serious! I already rejected the opportunity to cage you here at the Nightless City, playing only for me, despite how much I longed to do so. I refused to do it – me, refusing myself – because I knew it would only make you sad. Do you really think I would allow other people a privilege that I have denied myself?”

Lan Qiren did not laugh, but he dearly wanted to. It might be the first time he’d ever wanted to laugh about his situation – not even Cangse Sanren had managed that. “Has anyone told you that you are extremely self-absorbed?” he asked instead. “Arrogance is forbidden. Do not be haughty and complacent.”

Wen Ruohan smirked back at him. “All true, little Lan, but don’t forget your favorite: Do not tell lies.”

Self-absorbed, narcissistic and arrogant, Lan Qiren concluded, and there was no helping it. It was clearly a terminal case.

He used his sleeve to hide his laughter.

“What are you planning, exactly?” he asked once he had recovered. “If you harm my sect, whether directly or indirectly by denying them my services, I would be even more upset than if you tried to lock me away in here.”

Wen Ruohan waved a hand dismissively. “Do you think me so incapable? I have already begun making arrangements. Discussion conferences may only be once or twice a year, being as they are tremendously irritating to arrange, but there’s no reason that we of the Great Sects should not recognize our greater duty towards the smaller sects, and not to mention our obligations to protect the mortal world –”

“You know that it exists, then?”

Wen Ruohan ignored him. “The resources of cultivation clans are limited, and the world large. There are many places which would benefit from aid that do not see any simply because they are far away or tucked in inconvenient places, and no sect lives nearby – naturally, it is our duty to fight evil no matter where it is encountered. Lao Nie has already agreed that it is critical that the sect leaders demonstrate our sincerity by fulfilling this duty in person, leading by example.”

Lan Qiren’s heart had already felt as if it were overflowing with warmth, and it felt even more so now, almost squeezed to pain by how much joy was there. More than he had known he could contain.

Bad luck in brothers, he thought to himself - but oh, he had such good luck in friends!

“I see,” he said, thankful that his usual neutral tone concealed how happy he felt. “And naturally, where you and Lao Nie go, Sect Leader Jin cannot be far behind in his eagerness not to lose out, and where three of the five Great Sects lead, naturally the rest cannot be far behind. So I, too, will be obligated to...what? Go out on night-hunts in inconvenient places?”

“The world is too large, and the number of cultivators too few – and at any rate, there’s no point in setting up a full night-hunt which draws in every person from a thousand li for a few paltry fierce corpses or a ghost or two. I propose, instead, that we would send cultivators out alone, in pairs or in small groups, to wander for a few months through the remote places in the world and clean them up. Then, at the next discussion conference, the Great Sects could jointly agree that whoever was most enterprising would receive a reward, and naturally, stories of various exploits could be exchanged – ”

“Ah. Another reason for young men and women to gather and boast of improbable exploits.”

“Think of it as giving them more opportunities to win glory,” Wen Ruohan said. “And stop talking down about ‘young men’; you are a young man. Naturally you are also qualified to go out to do such things. Required, even: if our Great Sects do not set a proper example, who will?”

“Mm. A proper example. Even if I coincidentally happen to spend more time playing music than hunting demons?”

Wen Ruohan’s eyes were bright. “Even so. And naturally, you could always bring along someone more powerful to do the demon-hunting for you…”

“How convenient.”

Wen Ruohan smirked. “Do you doubt that I will be able to make it happen, little Lan?”

“No,” Lan Qiren said, then added, honestly: “I think you could take over the world if you wished.”

“Naturally! But it would be quite irritating, I think, if I had to also ensure that both you and Lao Nie did not disapprove of my methods…” He paused, lips twitching. “By coincidence, while we’re discussing convenience, I was thinking that it would be dangerous to send all those wild and reckless young men out there without proper support. Surely it would be only reasonable to set up a few convenient places here and there, not so far away, to provide them with supplies and a place to rest and recover –”

Convenient places that would fly the Wen sect’s flag and spread its influence, Lan Qiren presumed. Lanling Jin would be furious – using wealth to buy influence was their favorite technique, and they resented other people copying it – and would immediately insist on establishing their own set of “supply stations”, and then the rest of them would have to catch up and make their own. Yet another expense, and the Great Sects would need to do more than most; it would probably wreck havoc with the Lan sect’s annual budget.

On the other hand, well the remote parts of the world really did need the help. One of the Lan sect’s newly recruited guest disciples had been talking about a place not far from his hometown that specialized in making coffin goods; it was, according to him, the most inauspicious place that could possibly be imagined…

Not a place anyone might want to go, unless they truly were intent on traveling.

Lan Qiren smiled once again. He thought he might never stop smiling.

“Indeed,” he said, trying to sound dry and rational. “Very coincidental. No one will doubt that this is nothing but a scheme to expand your reach and power, rather than any personal motive.”

Wen Ruohan did not answer, but instead, matching a smile of his own to Lan Qiren’s, pressed his lips against Lan Qiren’s once more.

After a little while of silence, Lan Qiren cleared his throat and asked, “Do you intend to tell people?”

He was not referring to Wen Ruohan’s plans for the future.

Wen Ruohan understood.

“In time,” he said. “As much as I would love to shout that you are mine and I am yours from the rooftops and perhaps have bulletins be posted to every town -”

Lan Qiren grimaced. It would be one thing if he thought Wen Ruohan was exaggerating for romantic effect, but unfortunately it would be just like him to engage in that level of over-the-top grandstanding.

“– but your position is not yet certain, and my reputation is too questionable. People would make assumptions and spread malicious gossip, and I – I would not harm you to please myself.”

“Sweet-talker.”

“It’s not sweet-talking when it’s true,” Wen Ruohan protested, although he was chuckling. “When you are more renowned as a teacher than a sect leader, when little A-Huan is old enough to have passed the worst stretches of childhood – then we will announce it, and let the rest of the world choke on it if they like. You, me, Lao Nie…hmm. Jin Guangshan will probably think we’re concealing a conspiracy and ask to join in.”

Lan Qiren gagged. “I refuse,” he said. “I don’t care if I’m not physically involved, neither you nor Lao Nie are allowed to even think about it. That man has visited so many prostitutes that one might be forgiven for thinking he believes that the road to immortality is paved with venereal disease.”

“…thank you, that was an image I did not require.” A pause. “Jiang Fengmian –”

“Remember when he punched me in the face in a fight over a girl I didn’t even want?”

“It wasn’t a serious suggestion.” Wen Ruohan chuckled once more and pressed another kiss to his cheek. “Some years ago now, I swore to your Cangse Sanren that I would do right by you. I ought to invite her here and show her that I’ve made good on it.”

“You haven’t made good on it.”

“I haven’t?”

“No. Such a promise is fulfilled through the keeping – if you want to do right by me, there is no one singular moment that would qualify, but rather a continuing obligation.” Lan Qiren smiled up at him. “I’m sorry, da-ge. You’ll have to continue to do right by me for the rest of our lives.”

“I will,” Wen Ruohan said, and smiled back. “It would be my pleasure.”

-END-

#mdzs #lan qiren #wen ruohan #my fic #my fics #spilled pearls

163 notes · View notes

cherrysha · 3 years

Text

Run

Remember when i posted abt lumberjack a/b/o Uvo? well here it is!! shoutout again to ram fr helping me with this piece!! This is my first attempt at a longer story with more plot. Part of me wanted to break it up into more chapters but I like the build up thats there by keeping it in one piece. Its my take on abo (I know some people love it and some absolutely hate it but the lewding potential was too much for me to pass up) Very loosely based off of this song by hozier

Summary: Alphas are rare, Omegas even moreso. The standard for society is being a Beta, but unfortunately you weren’t born as one. Being an Omega is a presentation so detestable that it’s hard to even survive. In an era where it’s completely normal to cast you from the village for simply existing, to keep you blind from what it is to truly be an Omega, will there be any respite for you? (Yes, this is a period piece)

Word Count: 5.8k

Warnings: A/B/O, dubcon (since the readers in heat), predator/prey, a little blood, one slap, breeding, overstimulation, unprotected sex

“Do you ever get the feeling that they are lying to you?” you stare at the weathered wooden boards of the porch before you dare to glance at her face. The miller’s daughter was an omega as well, and often you found yourself gravitating to her if only out of comfort. The one of few in the village that could relate to you. She looked so soft in the morning sun, so lighthearted and gentle as she picked at the frayed patchwork of her dress.

“I don’t like to think about it too much or else I scare myself, y/n” she giggles.

So Naïve.

You mull it over before coming to the conclusion that you and her are not the same. “I guess I understand”

Her father always says she’s too kind, but that’s exactly what was so endearing. A world where it was normal to treat people like you and her as lesser, and she was still so kind. Absently, you wondered if you'd ever see her again after her next heat. It had been too long since an omega went missing.

“Will you still be walking with me to the market?”

“Ah, mother seems to have found some extra fabric that had been tucked away somewhere, so I suppose not. However, I’m glad you came to visit y/n!” she giggles as you stick your tongue out at her like a child.

The walk there gives you an opportunity to think of her words. Was denial better than the fear that came along with the truth?

Plenty of omegas had gone missing. When you were younger, the elders would tell you that there was a man who lived on the edge of the forest. He wasn't an alpha, or a beta, or even an omega. He was only a monster.

The path stretches before you and the heat of the summer sun is almost enough to make you turn around. But you persist, the idea of returning home empty handed was enough to make you ignore the sting on the back of your neck.

This man, this beast, would eat omegas. That’s why it was important to return home before dark, the man in the forest used the cover of night to hunt; to take. that’s why omegas always went missing in the village.

You momentarily take refuge in the cool water in the creek on the outskirts of the village, watching idly as water swirled around your bare feet.

When were you old enough to realize the flaws of that story? Was it your first heat? When with shaky hands, your mother had packed you enough provisions for the week and whispered for you to leave? Or was it the anger in your father’s voice when you asked to stay and he bitterly told you that omegas only brought misfortune?

You sigh. No, it was the day you'd found out one of the few remaining omegas hadn’t come back and that truth had only been a hard pill to swallow for you. No one seemed to care, it was as if the man in the forest didn’t scare them, had never scared them.

Not much sooner had you made the connection. Alphas were few and far between, but omegas were even more scarce. The ones who couldn’t find omegas settled down with betas, but what would a married alpha do when an unclaimed omega went into heat? Only the forest knew.

Sometimes you wished the beast was real, and still the lie had persisted. The younger omegas believed it to be the wood smith and while he was a recluse, so much so that you'd never even seen him, he was far too young to be the monster from your youth. He’d only made his appearance in the village every so often, and in truth he hadn’t lived in the area for that long. You let them hold on to their delusion instead, not wanting to be the one to burst their bubble.

Your heat was many moons away, but the fear of living still persisted.

The water feels nice on your neck, gentle and cooling as you scoop handfuls of it over your burning skin. It makes you forget about everything for a second, soothing over you like an expensive balm. Somehow, It reminds you of when you were little, before you presented and the friends you'd made in the village. Small and unassuming, no worries about presentation or etiquette. Just young and carefree. The thought brings a smile to your face.

Now, boys your age would rather die than be seen with an Omega, not that you cared about their indifference. In their minds it was completely warranted, and in yours the Betas had nothing to offer you. You both saw each other as fundamentally useless. No one gave mind to insects, most of the time they were just there. Some were cruel, yes, but most went their way, and you went yours. That was the best you could ask for.

Sighing, you pick the coin purse out of your pocket, taking a moment to count the few coins your mother had given you.

It was barely enough to buy thread, but you weren’t surprised. Her and father were still angry that you'd ripped another hole in your dress again since it was one of the little clothing items they had granted you. If it weren’t for the fact that the hole steadily became bigger, threatening the integrity of the entire garment, you don’t think it would’ve been mended at all.

The wind swirls around you, reminding you of your task and the repercussions of wasting time.

With a grunt, you force yourself back up and onto the road, sidestepping a rather large man carrying probably one of the largest baskets of wood you'd ever seen.

Mother says that its impolite to stare, so you don’t let your gaze linger for too long, but the sight was unusual to say the least. He’s tall, so tall in fact that you have to peer up to even try to see his face, eventually you give up and your gaze ends at the well toned muscles of his chest that are thinly veiled underneath a rather dingy tunic. You couldn’t judge him, right now you were wearing the same dress that desperately needed patching up. Still, he was somewhat of an unbelievable height, it was hard not to wonder of his presentation. Surely, there couldn’t be Betas that tall, but it was even more so unbelievable for him to be an Alpha. The Alphas in your town were well known, their large presence in the village applauded by most and avoided by Omegas. Like the tavern owner with wandering hands under the guise of drunkenness and the butcher who stared a little too long that one might find it indecent.

as you make your way through the village opening you can feel his presence pressing closer behind you with each step. It’d be easier to know for certain if the wind carried his scent, but at the present moment it was blowing yours in his direction, a thought that was a little unnerving to you. Nevertheless, you persisted, pushing past the mounting feeling in your chest that seemed to get worse the louder his footsteps became behind you. Surely, he was just selling the basket on his back at the market. And since he was a stranger to you, It would make sense for him to follow you so closely there if he wasn't from the village.

You let yourself relax, tense shoulders easing up as you finally come to the only conclusion that made sense. You were an Omega; A Beta had no better reason to follow you other than directions.

The sun still beats overhead, making the exposed skin of your face damp with sweat. With little thought, you wipe it away with the handkerchief stashed inside your pocket. It was little more than torn fabric that mother had no use for, but you appreciated when she had given it to you nonetheless.

The market wasn't busy for this time of day, which you were grateful for. Less people to cast you a distasteful glare as you silently perused through the stalls in search for thread. It only takes a few moments to find it at a stand with colorful fabrics, pins and needles and textiles that were definitely worth more than anything you'd ever own.

The smile on your face lights up as you find the cheapest option available, speaking quietly to the stall owner you ask for it.

You're met with silence, its only when you look at them that you realize they aren’t even looking at you. Instead, you follow their gaze behind you, to the burly man who had somehow gotten close enough to block out your view of the sun.

“Gorgeous too, huh?” he smiles down at your shocked face, even daring to lean down, hand gripping your jaw to force your head up, leaving your neck exposed to him. He’s not quick about it either, his nose coming to scent you as he indulges himself in the smell he finds there.

“And where have you been hiding?” he whispers it, a secret between the both of you that your too scared to acknowledge. In stark contrast, you've been rooted to the spot, too scared to do much of anything as the complete stranger ungracefully takes his time mulling you over.

It’s a funny thing, he can smell just how frightened you are, but it doesn’t mask the scent that made him follow you in the first place.

The scene is far too intimate for such a public space, and subconsciously, you're aware of that. You know this isn’t right, you shouldn’t be letting yourself get so carried away by the stranger, even if he does smell wonderful. Nothing like any Alpha you’ve met. Although his presence is completely overwhelming, his scent isn’t, and he lets out a breathless laugh when you subtly try to scent him back.

The only thing that snaps you back to reality is the stall owner clearing their throat, forcing you to realize how blatantly improper you were being. It’s far too embarrassing to handle, and mortification sets into your bones. The man pays them no mind, instead using one of his large hands to slam a few bills onto the counter.

“Whatever she wants” his voice comes out as a low and guttural thing, hoarse from days of disuse, as his breath fans across your face. He thinks it’s cute, the way your eyebrows shoot up makes his grin even wider.

With shaky hands you point to the cheapest bobbin of thread, hands fumbling for your coin purse before he grabs your wrist. “What did I say, Omega?” its stern, but all you can manage to do is bumble over your words, eyes cast downwards as you try to ignore the embarrassment settling on your face. He was just trying to be nice, maybe he was a tad bit uncivilized about it, but his impropriety shouldn’t make it okay to decline such a kind offer. The thread is taken from the counter, his hand slowly ruffling the folds of your dress as he finds your pocket and drops it in.

At this point you’ve become a spectacle, passersby muttering not so subtly about just how close you are to him, how rude it was to make a scene like that in public. With a cough you back away, surprised to find that he doesn’t follow, only aims a grin at you as he continues to stare. Not wanting to leave on a sour note, you ask

“What’s your name?”

Maybe one day you could repay the favor, although he didn’t look like the type to need to buy thread. He didn’t look like the type to care that much about his appearance at all, if you were being honest.

“its Uvogin. Gimme what’s in your pocket.”

“The thread?” with a wolfish smile he shakes his head no. It takes you a moment but clumsily you pad at the dress before finally finding your pocket and dipping your hand in to pull out the tiny wad of fabric in question. The only other thing in your pocket besides your coin purse. Your handkerchief. You don’t think about it as you hand it over to Uvogin, your head feels fuzzy just by his proximity. Don’t even think about how closely he must’ve been watching you to see that you had one, or how long he’d been doing so as he walked behind you and into the market. Right now, he could ask for a lot of things and you'd gladly hand it all to him with no second thoughts about it.

“You should head home. Maybe get some rest before it happens” he leans closer to sniff at your throat one last time, albeit a lot quicker than he had in the past “Although, I don’t think you’ll have much time.” The end of his sentence comes out in as a laugh, jovial enough to make you forget how sinister his final words were. With little grace, you slowly backpedal, eyes still on his before you turn around and walk out the way you came.

You smell. You reek of him. It’s the only thought in your mind as you clutch at yourself tightly, eyes cast downwards to avoid the shame of looking at others. There wasn't a pair of eyes that didn’t linger on you, most likely smelling exactly what you smelled; The stench of an Alpha. So thick and cloying that you couldn’t pretend it was anything other. Maybe you could rinse it off in the creek before you got home, but you doubted it. The smell permeated through your dress and settled into your bones. Quickly, you head out of the village and towards the sound of running water.

He was handsome, his scent so alluring that it made your mind wander as you tried desperately to rinse it off of your skin. A hint of sweat, pine and something sweet you had no name for. Sitting on your haunches, you let out a whine at the fact that nothing you did could rinse it off, and part of you didn’t want to, anyway. He’d ruined your dress by doing little more than touching it. If your parents smelled it, who knows what they would do. Probably cast you out like they’d planned on doing when you tore your dress. Any little infraction was worth your disappearance. This would give them every reason not to want you around.

It seemed to be getting hotter. So hot in fact you were half tempted to wade into the creek, dress and all, just to get the feeling to go away. The sun had been hidden by an overcast sky, clouds threating to burst at any moment, and you prayed they would. It could drown out any scent lingering on your skin, your clothes, the far recesses of your mind that held onto it like a bloodhound. Why was it so hot?

Wordlessly, you waded into the water, thinking little of the repercussions of coming home with a sopping wet dress as you sat down, letting the stream flow over you and around your shoulders. It felt soothing at first, like a cool bath when you were sick, but all too soon the water felt just as warm as you were. It. Was enough to elicit another strangled whine from your throat.

Slowly you stood, the weight of the fabric hugging tighter against your skin all too noticeable. This wasn't right. The sun was gone, the water cool, so why did you feel so sick all of a sudden?

It took a minute to fully accept it, as part of you didn’t want to. But you couldn’t excuse the need growing in your abdomen as anything else.

You had to leave here, quick. Get as far away from the village as possible. Away from the Omegas and your family, away from everything in order to have a chance at saving yourself.

Wading out of the water, you give no pause to the way your skirts cast dark droplets onto the dry ground.

With little to no hesitation, you make your way back onto the road before veering right, into the underbrush as you picked up the pace. Before, you'd have a day’s head start to get as far away as possible, but this was different. The telltale signs of your heat stirring low in the pit of your belly was a fortnight too early. Your thoughts were already starting to fog around the edges, an in a few hours all you'd be able to do was cry out from the sheer pain of it all.

With every step you find yourself walking faster, legs getting whipped by the low lying brambles. The way they so easily tear into your skin going almost unnoticed by you in your sheer panic. It wasn't supposed to be this way, it’s a type of confusion that adds on to the delirium already buffing away at your subconscious.

After a few minutes of running, only your panicked gasps keeping you company, the clouds burst above you. Fat drops soaking the underbrush and you along with it. In no time the ground beneath your feet becomes even more treacherous, mud and leaves and errant roots making you stumble and fall at every opportunity. After one nasty fall, you can't help but sit for a moment, a manic chuckle ripping through your chest as you examine your skinned palms. Your dress is filthy, the tear even larger than it had been when you set out this morning. Absently you wonder if mother will let you try to mend it before she casts you out for it. Without looking down at your legs, you already know the bruises that will be there from every bump and fall you’ve taken on your little journey. It does little to worry you, once the adrenaline wore off, maybe then you'd feel yourself start to care again.

With a sigh you let yourself rest. Hypervigilance slipping as you gaze up at the canopy in awe. How could rain be so loud?

Mentally, you try to assess your location. There was a place not far from here that served as your hideaway in times like these. A fissure in the face of a sheer cliff, only big enough for you and any other Omega that had the misfortune of being cast out into the woods. It wasn't much, the crack was uncovered, the rain and wet still able to reach you, but that wasn’t what was important.

Standing up gives you a better view of your surroundings. With little thought you start to head in the direction you remembered, down the slope of the hill in hopes of finding your salvation at the bottom.

It doesn’t take long before you hear it. Crackling branches under heavy, heavy footsteps. It’s not a promising sign, to say the very least. Feverishly you pick up the pace, mind racing as you try to figure out who would’ve followed you. It’s not like you did much to hide where you were going, in truth you didn’t think about it at all. Mind glazing over, you don’t notice the thick tree root that’s in your way, stumbling over it as your palms meet the forest floor once again. Ungracefully, your body tumbles easily down the rest of the slope, a cry leaving you as you hit the ground repeatedly.

Uvo’s laugh is audible over the thunderous sound of rain. Its jarring. A wretched reminder that you're actively being hunted down like an animal.

“Sounds like I’m getting close, huh?” he yells, still too far away for you to see him under the darkened canopy. His voice echoes and you can't tell where exactly he is behind you, only knowing that its entirely too close for comfort. Hazily, your mind makes the connection, his voice rattling back in your ears over and over again as you pick yourself up.

You can’t say that you've gotten any faster after realizing who exactly was chasing you. The ache in your body from multiple falls was finally catching up to you, along with the heat that was settling low in the pit of your stomach that seemed to be burning even brighter than a few minutes ago.

After a few minutes of running, you see it and almost sob with relief. Thick with vines, the opening of the rockface, your salvation, is almost within distance.

“I hope you're not thinkin’ of doing what I think you're gunna do.” Its not a yell. Not anything other than an irritated statement thrown so casually and so, so close to you that it causes goosebumps to rise on the back of your neck. Quickly, you look behind you, a slight yip leaving your throat as you take in the distance between the both of you.

In a last ditch effort, your body works on autopilot. Fear drives you, pushes you faster and faster until the only thing you can hear is the thrumming of your own heart in your ears. He’s loud behind you, yelling something unintelligible as you try to make your escape. You're within reaching distance of the opening now, but his hands grab at you. The slickness of the rain serves in your favor. Easily you slip from his grasp, body lurching forward and into the opening as he tears at the shoulder of your dress.

The air surrounding him seems to vibrate with raw anger, something akin to a roar tearing through him at just how close he’d come to having you.

Big hands come to slam against either side of the opening as he peers down at your shrunken form. Chest heaving, the rain glints off of his skin and the image alone is enough to make you whimper in submission. He’s so tall, broader than any Alpha you'd seen, and he’s incredibly angry. Uvo’s gaze doesn’t leave you as the seconds tick by. After a few moments of him trying, and failing, to collect himself he finally speaks

“I’m not gunna hurt ya, now come here” he says, and it sounds sincere enough that your fuzzy brain almost believes him. Almost gives in to the temptation of his scent, his open arms goading you to leave the small space.

“I don’t believe you” you whine, shaking your head ‘no’ as if he wouldn’t understand the meaning of your words.

It’s so unbelievably hot. The fat drops of rain hitting your face and soaking you through to your very core did little to relieve the feeling. if anything, it overwhelmed your heightened senses, every little drop on your skin felt like something you needed to pay close attention to.

“Just wanna make you feel better” the statement alone forces a whimper out of your throat, body edging backwards as if to physically deny him

“You can't make me feel better, no one in this damn town can make me feel better.” it’s a lot more hysterical than you meant it, but Uvo’s face contorts in confusion all the same.

It’s quiet for a moment as he assesses you. Big green eyes rake over your shivering form, more anger than pity bubbling to the surface of his features as he realizes how much he doesn’t like what he sees.

“You don’t know anything, huh?” he mumbles to himself, letting one of his large hands swipe away the excess water on his face before settling on his hip “What’s it gunna take for you to come out then?”

You want to tell him to leave, to let you be alone but another part of you wants something. Something you can't explain enough to even know yourself.

“Just don’t hurt me, okay?” no matter how much you try to calm yourself down it still comes out too whiny and nasally for your liking.

Uvo laughs at that, boisterous and loud and it almost seems to overpower the sound of heavy rain hitting the tree branches around you.

“I just told you I wouldn’t, you forget that already?” you have half a mind to nod in affirmation, “Come on out then” he gestures towards you, wolfish smile marring his face.

As if to try and soothe you, he asks for your name. The question eats away at the open air before you finally find your voice enough to answer him.

In the quiet that precedes your answer you realize numbly that It’s getting darker out. You have no provisions and now you’re drenched. If you didn’t listen and stayed put, the rest of your heat would be torture. There’s a lot to consider, truthfully too much to consider in your current state. The ramifications of your actions, the honesty of the large man in front of you, the means in which he planned to help, how long you could actually survive out here without him. Your brain functions moved with the viscosity of syrup. The more you thought about it all, the less it seemed to make sense.

Quietly, you make your way to the opening, Uvo lets out an excited laugh as you crawl ever closer to him. It doesn’t take more than a few steps before a gasp is being torn from you as he grabs you by the arm, pulling you completely out and into his embrace. It feels nice, albeit a little jarring, but you won’t deny the full feeling in your chest at his proximity. A big and sturdy hand rakes up your side as the other holds you to his chest.

With little thought, you bury your face in the crook of his neck, relishing in the scent that hasn’t been completely washed away by the rain. Its calming, maybe he’s pumping out pheromones to induce that emotion within you, but at the same time it makes the coil in the pit of your stomach reach incredibly high temperatures. It hurts, oh god, it hurts

“Hurts, huh? I can fix that.” You don’t remember saying it aloud, but the burly man responds quickly by tearing the flimsy fabric of your dress, making sure to rip through your underwear as well. When you whine at the sensation all he does is mutter “Didn’t expect me to let you keep that ratty thing did you?”

It’s a makeshift blanket once he tosses it onto the ground, saving your back from most of the drenched forest floor as Uvo sets you down, his own body hovering over yours. His warmth is so nice, nothing like what’s eating you up inside, and with needy hands you run your fingers through his hair, a high pitched whine leaving your throat at the groan you coax from him.

“Fuck” he growls “M’gunna knot you so good. Bet it’ll only take one time before I get you nice and round”

You nod up at him, delirious and wanting. The only thing on your mind being the feel of him under your fingers.

With little finesse, Uvo thumbs at the opening of your sex before sliding over the bundle of nerves that lies just above it. He smiles at the confusion on your face before slowly, slowly sinking one of his large fingers inside of your heat. Your body writhes with broken sobs at the feeling. Its unlike anything you ever experienced before.

“All this for me, huh? Must really want it.” It comes out in a huff, his smile ever growing as you nod in affirmation. You can hear the slickness he’s referring to as his finger pumps in and out of you.

Right now the wind was bustling, rain beating down harder than it had been all night, but all that you could feel was the comfort Uvo gave you. As if his wandering hands were stroking your very soul.

Unbeknownst to you, Uvo’s already dipped another digit inside of you, marveling at the way your body so easily opens up to his touch. It’ll only take him a few more minutes of his fingers dutifully scissoring you open before he’s able to lay his claim.

“Doesn’t hurt, does it?” he smiles as you shake your head, mouth open and panting as your lovestruck gaze meets his “Of course it doesn’t.”

He takes his time, languid strokes and teasing bites against your chest. No rush in his movements until you brokenly sob for him. The feeling in your gut was only getting worse with every movement. With weak hands you claw at him, trying desperately to pull his body closer.

His hand moves from your cunt, popping his digits in his mouth with a groan. When he finally sucks them clean, his hands go to his belt, “Impatient little thing” whispered from his lips.

The sight alone makes your mouth water. Too long and jarringly thick, his cock slaps up against his stomach.

“Gunna make you feel a loot better” he mumbles, taking himself in hand. God, you want it, want every bit of him no matter the repercussions. He kneels above you, chest wet and heaving with excitement as his gaze lingers on your exposed pussy. A Grecian God chiseled from marble and sent here just for you.

With steady hands he presses you your legs up, folding you in half until hes achieved the angle he’s looking for. You have no choice but to comply, whimpering as he guides himself into your aching cunt.

The stretch of it burns, it makes your body quake almost as if the size of his cock alone has rendered you weak. It’s an overwhelming sensation that eats away any rational thought until you can only focus on the piercing sharpness of it.

“Stop, please, s’too much.” You can't recognize the sound of your own voice. Its hoarse as if you'd been yelling for hours. Uvogin buries his nose in your neck again, hands coming up to press your legs to even further against your chest.

“Here… got somethin’ to take your mind off it”

With little warning his teeth are in your neck, tearing a wretched scream from your throat as Uvo draws blood. True to his word, he sinks the entirety of his length within you without your notice. Only thing on your mind is the feeling of your flesh being torn open by him, claimed by him.

There’s’ little compassion in the way his hips snap against yours. Its brutal, making you cry out even more as the force of it jostles the teeth still buried snugly in your neck. Your hands claw at the ground before eventually settling on his back. Uvo groans at your nails digging into him, spurring him on to go faster, harder, to give you everything he’s got until you drain him dry.

The noise of Uvo thrusting into your warm cunt is loud, almost deafening compared to the rain around you. It’s all you can hear; All you can feel as he doesn’t waste any time in finding the exact spot within you that makes you scream.

Every shift of his hips is maddening. Every sharp thrust enough to push the air out of your lungs. Eventually Uvo’s mouth pulls away from your throat, lapping at the bloodied mess he’d left there. You can't focus on it too much. Can't focus on much of anything at the present moment, only the slick sounds of his cock dragging in and out of you filling your mind.

“Gunna need you to do somethin’ for me, doll” his words are almost too far away for you to hear. As if he’s underwater, it takes a light slap to your face in order for you to process them.

“Huh?” you ask dumbly. You can't remember if your voice always sounded that small. That meek.

“M’not gunna last long with the way you’re suckin’ me in like this” he growls “Gunna need you to bite down.” One of his hands that was previously holding your thigh up reaches for the nape of your neck, pulling you up until your face is flush against the side of his throat. Something is growing inside of you, burning through your very being and he’s the cause of it. It’s mind numbing, this pleasure you’ve never felt before. Lazily you recognize it enough to know that your own orgasm is mere seconds away.

“Right here.” you nod, heat searing through you as his hips stutter. There’s something catching against your cunt now, impeding every kiss of his hips against yours as he struggles to fit the rest of his cock inside.

With an audible groan being your only warning, Uvo cums inside of you. It sears against your insides as something finally stops his movements, his body unable to do anything besides grind against your own. So full, you jerk with the feeling, finally letting the coil inside you snap. The scream that leaves your broken throat is cut off by Uvo shoving your face harder against his neck and, dutifully, you bite down. Its mere instinct driving you, or maybe the need to drown out your warbled cries for him. Either way, the wound makes him laugh, his hand pushing harder against you as if to force your teeth further into his skin. The tang of metal in your mouth does little to stop the ebb and flow of your orgasm as it washes through you. It’s too good, so good in fact you find yourself pulling away only to be met with Uvo’s unshakeable grip. Tears prick at your eyes at the sensitivity of it all, the overwhelming buzz that courses through you with no end in sight.

It takes a minute of blindly thrashing against him before you give up and settle on the wet ground below.

It’s completely pitch dark now and the rain has quieted into a slight drizzle. You can't see him, can only feel as the hand not gripping your neck finally lets your other thigh down to ghost over the plains of your face.

“You're mine now” he whispers. Silently, you nod your head in agreement, not fully understanding the meaning of his words. It didn’t matter. Nothing truly mattered anymore besides the man above you. Uvo presses a lingering kiss to your neck, your jaw, before landing on your spit slicked lips. It’s almost soothing, the gentle touches his attentive hands leave on your body. Soothing enough to make you forget how you got here.

With a gentle tug, he finally pulls out of your sex. The laugh that leaves his throat as his fingers explore the wetness that paints your lower body is euphoric. Soon enough he’s pulling you into his arms and standing up.

“Feel better?” it sounds like more of a statement coming from his mouth, but you nod all the same. As he starts to walk your eyelids droop in exhaustion, mind focused on the way his chest vibrates with every garbled sentence you can't quite hear.

#abo uvogin #uvogin x reader #Uvogin #uvo x reader #uvo

461 notes · View notes