just wrote like three paragraphs ranting about my living situation and deleted it just know I am going insane and i hate it here and I need to live by my fucking self or I am going to absolutely fucking lose it

Budgetary Details For This Plot

I’ve decided that the FrUKSpa Christmas budget for the oldest kids (Matthew, Alfred, and Savino) was $2000 each, which they considered a nice round number and a reasonable amount. They’re wealthy, so they’re used to spending way more money than most people, but they wanted to put a limit on 16-year-olds who are playing around with debit cards for the first time and have to get Christmas gifts for seven people. They had a smaller amount of money they gave to Feliciano, and a smaller amount than that for Marcello (without the debit cards being an issue for either of them, of course).

I want Alfred and Savino to have spent an equivalent amount on each other, so back in September, Alfred bought approximately $500 worth of textbooks (because he was trying to buy in three different areas, and was drawn to some huge hardcover textbooks and some smaller paperbacks he thought would would be interesting). He nearly, but not completely, drained his checking account and FrUK were like WTF because Alfred hadn’t made a big, sudden purchase like this before. They talk to him about this, and Alfred says it was a Christmas present for Matthew. They hadn’t expected him to be thinking about Christmas so early and sometimes their family did spend more extravagantly than they could this year because they’re now buying for four additional people, so they forgive the mistake their teen son made only two months after getting a debit card. They explain the Christmas budget to him and say that now the budget will be $1500, so he will have to spend carefully and his presents for everyone else will be much smaller than they could’ve been before.

Savino bought his nearly $500 telescope for Alfred after Antonio explained the budget to him (which happened sometime in November, because I do talk about the kids doing Black Friday/very early December shopping). At this point, Alfred and Savino may or may not have been in a relationship, but that doesn’t matter for the background I’m giving here. Antonio talks to Savino about this, because Antonio is a very laidback guy, but Savino spent a quarter of his Christmas budget on one person when he has to buy things for six other people. Savino gives a very convincing explanation about this being an extremely good telescope for this price point and how he researched it extensively before he made this purchase (all of this is true). Antonio is like, okay, it’s fine you bought this really expensive present for Alfred this year, but make sure you have enough to get other people something without having to go so cheap it looks insulting (and in Savino’s case, he planned to get something for his grandfather, which Alfred couldn’t do, so his presents for the rest of the FrUKSpa plus kids group were a bit smaller-- around $200 rather than $250-ish).

By the time they get to Rome, both of them have maxed out their Christmas budgets, but they do have more walking around money than most 16-year-olds, especially since their parents wanted them to be able to buy a fun souvenir if they wanted (especially Alfred and Matthew, who’ve never been to Italy before). Alfred is able to buy an about $100 present for Mr. Vargas, and each of them spend about $50 to get a joint present for Chiara that is small enough it’s not suspicious (also their money was in cash at the Christmas Market, and Euros obviously). I mentioned them getting souvenirs at the Leonardo da Vinci Experience Museum that are about $77 dollars for Alfred’s and $42 for Savino’s (I’m rounding up), Savino bought a fairly inexpensive scarf for Alfred earlier in the month while Christmas shopping, and Alfred will probably spontaneously Savino a fairly inexpensive hat at the Christmas market. They might have also bought something small for close friends from school before they left for Rome, along with other minor purchases like the things they got at Starbucks at the mall. After Christmas, Alfred and Savino are low on money, but not in immediate danger of going into overdraft, so FrUKSpa aren’t bothered by this. They’re all happy the 16-year-olds (including Matthew) managed to stay within their Christmas budgets and didn’t go crazy buying tons of souvenirs for themselves.

On Christmas, people do notice that Alfred and Savino bought each other expensive presents, especially if one of them unthinkingly says something about it (like Savino looking at all the textbooks and going “Dio, this must have been so expensive.”) Antonio doesn’t really care, and he’s glad it wasn’t too awkward when Alfred got a substantially cheaper gift for Savino than Savino got for him (what he expected to happen). He thinks it’s cute Alfred thinks Savino is talented in so many areas that he picked out all these textbooks for him, and he’s like, “aww, look at this cute mutual friendship.” Matthew and Feliciano are like “okay, you guys went way overboard on each other,” especially since they had a girlfriend and boyfriend who weren’t accounted for in their Christmas budgets and had to plan their purchases more carefully to get them something, but they’re happy with their presents from Alfred and Savino and aren’t mad about it. Nonno Vargas is flattered that Alfred (along with the rest of the FACE Family) got him something at all, and he remembers going nuts with Sofia on present giving occasions sometimes, especially at the beginning of their relationship. (But I think the reason Sofia’s family weren’t happy with the idea of them being together at first was because Augusto was from a poorer family, so the dollar amounts were much smaller than I’m talking about here). Chiara is surprised Alfred helped pay for a present for her, and Savino usually gives her fairly small gifts for Christmas anyway since I don’t think he gets something for each of his twenty cousins and wouldn’t want to make that too obvious with a huge price tag for Chiara’s gift. They understand Chiara and Savino are close, so it’s okay if she gets a little Christmas present from him, but not if it’s some huge thing like he got for Alfred.

For maximum drama points, Marcello is stewing about Romerica after he figures out they must be doing NSFT things together, and he gets pissed when he sees their Christmas presents to each other. I don’t think he’d easily be able to make a price point comparison, but maybe he looks up Alfred’s telescope online and sees that it’s nearly $500 compared to his approximately $200 present from his brother (which to be fair, is still very nice for a nine-year-old and something he would enjoy). The textbooks would be harder for him to figure out since there were multiple ones, but maybe he looks up some of the bigger ones and figures out Alfred’s present to Savino is also substantially more expensive than Alfred’s present to him. He puts on a pleasant face for Christmas and the rest of the Rome trip (which maybe lasts a couple of additional days), and then he decides to blackmail them once they get home.

FrUK are very WTF about Alfred’s and Savino’s Christmas presents to each other, but they’re trying to mask it because of the Christmas Eve drama over the hickey I’d planned before. Arthur made Savino very upset the day he spoke to his dead parents and grandma, and they are trying to be nicer to him after what happened. Antonio gives an explanation for the telescope that they don’t totally believe is a friendship thing, but they’re more pissed about Alfred because he lied to them about the textbooks back in September (precisely because he was scared saying it was for Savino’s Christmas present would make his feelings way too obvious). They add the Christmas presents to their mental rolodex file of “Alfred and Savino are obviously fucking,” but probably don’t say anything.

After Christmas, Alfred and Savino are in no position to purchase a Vespa, or even a kiddie version of one. If Marcello insists on a real Vespa his brother drives for him, they try to do some quick research to figure out if Savino can even drive a Vespa right now or if he needs a special license and what models are allowed for that. Marcello is mostly about going vroom vroom on a Vespa, so I don’t think he’s looking too closely at the models and would be happy with one that’s not hyper expensive if his brother could actually drive him around on it (because according to whatever state laws I’m basing this on, Savino might need special licenses for some of the higher horsepower models but not the lower ones). Marcello might want one that’s a specific color or similar to one some cousin has, and Romerica are like “okay, sure” even if it costs more because they’re desperate to make this kid happy. At minimum, they’re looking at about a $4000 purchase which is both their Christmas budgets for the entire holiday combined, and they have to dip into their savings accounts that they had access to (I’ll try to research this so it’s not completely stupid plotwise for the fic) but that their parents told them not to touch until they turned 18 because they were specifically for their adult/college life. They don’t drain them, but they each take about $2000 out (possibly after cleaning out their checking accounts completely), and it’s very suspicious.

FrUKSpa are irritated by this immensely. Savino probably mentioned wanting to get a Vespa someday to Antonio before, but he thought Savino would wait until he was 18 or ask for that as his high school graduation gift. If he had to get a Vespa now, he could have tried asking FrUKSpa before this holiday they all just celebrated that involved buying gifts for each other. It might have been something they decided not to get him because it’s too expensive, but it’s weird as fuck that he did this right after getting gifts from everyone he seemed to appreciate. He could have asked for this when he turned 16, instead of/in addition to the car Antonio thought would make it more convenient for Savino to get around. Antonio may not have bought him a Vespa then, but it would have been a lot more normal for Savino to ask back then or before Christmas.

Alfred is the one who they’re most suspicious of, even Antonio. Antonio is able to brush off $500 of textbooks for Christmas (even if FrUK tell him the precise dollar amount and that Alfred lied about it back in September), but he can’t brush off Alfred paying $2000 to help pay for a Vespa that’s not even his. It looks like Alfred keeps getting these ridiculously extravagant gifts for Savino, and they’re all like WTF is going on (FrUK highly suspect, and at this point Antonio is beginning to as well). By contrast, Savino possibly pressured his stepbrother into helping him get a Vespa and made both of them dip into their savings accounts to make this sudden unnecessary purchase, so he needs to be confronted on his spending habits too, but it’s a different issue (and FrUK are especially pissed at him if they think he’s pressuring Alfred financially). Privately, they may decide that FrUK should confront Alfred on his behavior without Antonio since they’re his parents and since Alfred has made it abundantly clear he doesn’t think of Antonio in any kind of family way and will be very disrespectful if Antonio tries to tell him not to be an idiot with money. FrUK really want to confront Savino about the Vespa and possibly manipulating Alfred to get it, but maybe they’re willing to let Antonio talk to his own kid about this and have similar reasons for suspecting Savino would totally disrespect them if they tried to confront him about his spending habits.

Last Wish (1/15)

Oliver feels like his life is crumbling when his best friend reveals that she is sick. Desperate to help her through the toughest time of her life, Oliver puts all his energy in fulfilling the wishes on Felicity's bucket list. His hardest challenge - Felicity's last wish on the list is getting married.

* * *

1: Shock

“You look like that grumpy cat that was hyped on the internet a couple of years ago.”

Lifting his gaze from his feet, Oliver found his father standing at the foot of the stairs and looking at him with scrutinizing eyes. If it wasn’t for the sympathy that was in Robert’s gaze, Oliver would have probably apologized for his appearance. This way, he just pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and shrugged his shoulders.

There had just been a bad feeling pooling in the pit of his stomach since Felicity had texted him earlier today that she needed to see him. Something told him that he’d memorize this day forever and, unfortunately, he doubted that he would remember it in a good way. He couldn’t really tell his dad about it though. After all, it was just a feeling and a completely irrational one too.

“Are you heading out?”

Oliver nodded his head. “I go to see Felicity.”

That seemed to catch his father’s interest a lot more than Oliver’s bad mood. He lowered the morning mail he had just fetched and looked at Oliver intensely.

“Is she any better?” Worry was audible in Robert’s voice. “When she called in sick last week, she really sounded terrible. I sent her a gift basket with all kinds of stuff you can need when you are sick, but I don’t know if she even received it.”

Oliver bit down on the inside of his tongue. He knew that Felicity had called in sick at Queen Consolidated for the last two weeks, but he actually kind of doubted that she really had such a terrible cold as she had said on the phone. She had never refused to let him visit her because of a cold, but she had done so these last couple of days until today. That she had fallen sick the day after she had planned a romantic night with her boyfriend Ray was kind of suspicious too. Maybe the two had just used the last two weeks to enjoy some romantic time together.

Instead of saying any of that, Oliver just shrugged his shoulders once more. He couldn’t say that he liked Ray or wanted Felicity and him to spend so much romantic time together. She was his best friend though, and he knew that she had barely done anything other than working her ass off since she had graduated MIT at the age of nineteen. If someone deserved to skip work, it was her. He wouldn’t betray her no matter what.

“Maybe I put too much work on her.” Robert sighed, shaking his head. “When I made Felicity my Junior CEO, I thought she would want to learn the ropes as quickly as possible, so she had enough time for it before she will take over my position one day and-“

Oliver shook his head. “You know Felicity. She never does anything half-heartedly, and she wouldn’t have wanted to do anything less than to go all in. That’s just who she is. I guess a cold like this was bound to happen one day. Since I have known her, she has been sick for maybe four days, and she always managed to push the high temperature to the weekend, so she wouldn’t miss a day of work. She is crazily disciplined.”

Since Robert knew how well his son knew Felicity and since he trusted his judgement, he nodded his head in agreement. There was no reason to put any blame on himself. It wouldn’t be fair to Felicity either. She was a strong woman who made all her decisions herself, rightfully one should add.

“You should bring her some of Raisa’s chicken soup,” he said eventually, “because that one worked magic when you were a kid.”

“It still does,” Oliver replied, “which is why-“

“-he already ordered a pot.”

Looking at Raisa, who was coming from the kitchen with a box of soup in her hands, Oliver smiled. After Felicity had texted him this morning, Oliver had gone into the kitchen to ask Raisa for the soup, just in case Felicity was really sick after all. He hadn’t even needed to ask Raisa to cook the soup though. When he had mentioned that he was going to visit Felicity, she had immediately offered to cook it for her. Raisa liked Felicity as much as the entire Queen Family did.

He took the last couple of steps down the stairs and took the fragrant box. He kissed Raisa’s cheek in gratitude.

“Thank you, Raisa.”

“You are very welcome.” Raisa smiled warmly. “Tell Ms. Felicity to get better soon and that I will cook whatever she needs to get better.”

“Good wishes from me too,” Robert said, “and tell her not to worry about the company. She should get well first before she comes back. I need her in her best form.”

Oliver smiled. He knew how much Queen Consolidated meant to his father. It was like his third child, something he had built and raised by putting years of energy and love into it. That was Felicity’s health meant more to him than the company just proved how much Felicity really was a part of the family. Oliver loved that thought because she was family to him and always would be.

“I will.”

With that, he left the house and got into his car. He placed the box of soup onto the passenger seat and took some deep breaths before he directed the car down the driveway and towards Felicity’s townhome downtown. His fingers were drumming on the steering wheel nervously.

The truth was that Oliver knew where the bad feeling in his stomach came from. With Felicity’s romantic evening and the two weeks she might have taken for an extension of these romantic hours, Oliver suspected – and feared actually – that Felicity might have gotten engaged to Ray.

The thought made his stomach twist painfully. His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. His chest tensed. His breath got caught in his lungs as he struggled to breathe. Everything about that thought made him feel uncomfortable.

Oliver knew that Ray was probably a good guy. He was smart, shared a lot of Felicity’s ambitions and seemed to genuinely care about her. Felicity could have made a worse choice than Ray Palmer. At the age of 26, it wasn’t unlikely to get married either, and they had been together for almost a year now which was longer than any of his relationships had ever lasted. The odds were in their favor for a happy marriage as far as you could predict the success of a marriage beforehand.

Still, Oliver just didn’t like that guy because he just had a feeling that, although he was nice and everything, he wasn’t the one. Felicity deserved better, someone who was utterly crazy for her and who would always put her first. With Ray, who was currently setting up his own company, that would be difficult. She would have to take a backburner behind that company for the next couple of months or even years. Felicity deserved more than that.

Taking in a deep breath, Oliver tried to push those thoughts away. If Felicity would indeed want to get married to Ray, he would have to be happy for her. Felicity was smart, so he would make the right decision for herself. Nobody knew better what was good for her than she herself did.

Oliver stopped the car at the side of the street before Felicity’s townhouse. The shutters were all closed and the mailbox next to her door bristled. Felicity must have really locked herself in completely. Oliver had done the same during his first week with Helena Bertinelli as they had spent all their time ravishing each other.

With a groan, Oliver pushed the thought away. He grabbed the box of soup from the passenger seat and got out. On his way to the door, he reminded himself of the smile he would have to fake if Felicity told him that she and Ray had gotten engaged. He would smile and tell her how happy he was for her. He wouldn’t let her see anything else because it just wouldn’t be fair.

“You can do this.”

The words wouldn’t really sink in, and Oliver doubted that any reasonable frame of time would help with that. That was why he lifted his hand and knocked at the door.

Usually, it only took seconds until Felicity called that she was already on her way. Then he would hear her quick steps and the noises that were caused when Felicity ran against any of her furniture or stumbled about anything that she had just dropped on the floor carelessly before. It never failed to make him chuckled.

Today, everything stayed silent though, and the door stayed closed for quite some time. Only when Oliver lifted his hand to knock once more, the door finally opened.

A pang of guilt spread in his chest when he saw Felicity. One look at her was enough for him to know that she really was sick. Her face was pale, almost white really. There were dark shadows under her glassy, red eyes. Her lips were dry. A fine film of sweat covered her skin. She was wearing sweatpants and a wide hoodie which he had never seen her wear before. She looked like crap, not that he would ever say that out loud.

“Hey,” he said quietly, predicting it was better for the headache she probably had if he wasn’t too loud, “I know it’s summer which is not the right time for any kind of soup, but this one is magic in a box. You will feel better instantly.”

He lifted the box of soup for Felicity to see. She smiled, or the corners of her lips twitched into what was probably supposed to be a smile. It failed to reach her eyes though. It looked kind of miserable which only proved how terrible she must be feeling.

“Can you please just put it to the kitchen counter?” Felicity asked. “I am not ready to eat anything right now and-“

“Of course.”

Oliver walked past Felicity and through the open living space into the small kitchen area. He opened the box, so the soup could cool down until Felicity was hungry and ready to eat something. With a look at the spanking clean – because completely unused – kitchen, Oliver turned around to Felicity, who was still standing at the door.

“I can reheat this for you later,” he told her, “whenever you are ready. We don’t want you to burn down the entire house, the neighborhood and yourself in an attempt to use your heater for the first time and-“

“Oliver,” Felicity interrupted him, her voice sounding raspy, “you should sit down.”

Oliver chuckled, only shooting a brief look back over his shoulder. “I could tell you the same.”

Opening a couple of cupboards, most of them empty, Oliver eventually found a glass. He filled it with tap water and downed it in one go. He put the glass into the sink before he turned around to Felicity. She was still standing at the door, holding onto the door handle like she was unable to stand on her own two feet without holding onto it.

“Do you need help there?” Oliver asked with a little bit of a chuckle because Felicity really looked miserable which, of course, wasn’t funny at all, but it was easier to chuckle than to worry about her. “I could help you to get to the couch if you-“

“Oliver.”

Felicity’s voice was determined, much more determined than Oliver would have thought it could be. He looked at her, seeing the serious expression in her eyes.

“Sit down.”

She said the words slowly and pointedly, one by one. She meant it. She wanted him to sit down.

Immediately, Oliver felt reminded of the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. It had let go of him temporarily as he had been distracted by how miserable Felicity looked. His thumb was rubbing against the other fingertips nervously, considering to fight Felicity on her demand, but he walked around the couch and sat down there eventually.

Clearing his throat, Oliver rubbed his hands over his jeans to wipe the sweat from the palms of his hands. Was this the moment that Felicity told him that she was going to get married to Ray? If that was the case, he could at least say that her marriage with Ray was kind of ill-fated now. Who fell, that sick after being proposed to?

“Oliver,” Felicity said, loosening her hand from the door handle and straightening up as far as possible, “I’m sick.”

Oliver frowned, wondering why Felicity stated the obvious. There was no denying that she was sick. She looked like hell which still felt like an underestimation. Maybe she had suspected that he hadn’t really believed she was sick, and the thought made him feel guilty.

“I know,” Oliver replied hesitatingly, his frown deepening slightly, “which is why I am here. I can take care of you. I can make it comfortable for you here on the couch or in your bed and then I reheat you the soup and do whatever else you need to get better. I can also head to the pharmacy and-“

“But I am not going to get better, Oliver.”

Oliver chuckled. “Okay, I know it feels that way when you have a really bad cold, but I can promise you that you will get better with some time and a lot of sleep. And Raisa’s magic chicken soup.”

He looked at Felicity with conviction. She just had a cold which, of course, sucked big times and could feel like a life-threatening disease at times, but she was going to be fine. It would just take a little while. Every kid knew that a cold passed rather quickly.

The longer he looked at Felicity and had her looking back at him with the same conviction that he had in his eyes, the more he felt his own conviction wavering. Felicity seemed to mean it. It just didn’t make any sense. His skin tickled uncomfortably like a thousand needles were scratching over his skin and piercing through it from time to time. He felt every muscle in his body starting to tense.

“Felicity, it’s just a cold.”

With a long sigh, Felicity shook her head and left her spot at the door. She passed the distance to him. Her movements were slow and sluggish like it took Felicity a lot of effort to move. When she reached the couch, she almost dropped herself into the cushions next to him. Seeing her so close just proved once more how exhausted she looked.

Felicity put her cold, sweaty hand into his and looked at him with her soft eyes. She was smiling comfortingly now which felt surreal given how miserable she looked. He should be the one comforting her, telling her everything was going to be okay.

Oliver didn’t dare to speak. He could see in Felicity’s eyes that he didn’t want to hear whatever she had to tell him. He wouldn’t be able to live with it.

“Oliver, I have a malignant tumor in my brain,” she said almost a little cautiously like she knew that she had to be very gentle on him here, “a CNS tumor.”

Although Oliver nodded his head, he had no idea what Felicity was really talking about. CNS tumor? What was that? Was that something bad like some particularly aggressive kind of tumor? Should he know what that was?

Oliver just felt incredibly numb. He felt like he was caught in some weird dream that he couldn’t wake up from. No matter how firmly he was biting down on his tongue, unable to pinch himself with Felicity’s hands in his, he just didn’t wake up. He continued to be caught in this nightmare, helpless against living through this.

“I found out two weeks ago although I have suspected it for a little longer already. Since I have known, I have thought about how I should tell you about this. I mean I had a tumor like that in my childhood already,” Felicity continued just as slowly and as quietly as before, “but the treatment has been successful back then, so I have lived free of cancer for the past years. It’s different now, and it’s hard to find the right words to tell someone about this.”

Felicity had never told him that she had had cancer as a child. At least Oliver couldn’t remember about it. He would remember if she had told him though. He remembered that she had been chewing on a red pen when they had first met, so he’d remember such a big thing as cancer in her childhood.

It took a while, but finally the meaning of her words caught up to him. His brain might still have problems processing all of this, but it was holding on to every lifeline that it still had. The moment he would lose that final thread of hope, he’d be lost and drown. He knew that already, and he knew he wouldn’t survive.

“So there are treatments.”

His voice sounded hoarse and not at all like himself. It sounded as foreign to him as Oliver felt in his own body right now.

“Not really, no.” Felicity shook her head. “The five-year survival rate in kids with CNS tumors is sixty percent which sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t. I was lucky back then, but it’s different now. It’s an aggressive kind of tumor and the chances that I will heal completely are low. Treatment would probably just prolong the suffering.”

“But there is a chance that-“

“Oliver,” Felicity interrupted him, her voice soft despite its determination, “I won’t put myself through more pain and more misery than I absolutely have to. I am not going to take the last two, maybe three months that I have and waste them with time in the hospital. I won’t trade the months I have left to say goodbye to everything and everyone I hold dear to hold onto a hope that’s not really there.”

Although every single one of her words were echoing in her ears, the two, maybe three months was particularly present in his mind. When people talked about being sick and suffering from cancer, they usually had months or even years before they died. Two, maybe three months was nothing. In the blink of an eye, Felicity would die.

None of this could be true. It was too cruel to be true. Oliver knew a lot about that and his experience alone should be enough to let him know that life wasn’t always fair. In the words of Miley Cyrus, sometimes life came in like a wrecking ball. At least that was what it felt like right now. For the past few years, he had built his life back up, building his own little palace that he liked to live in. Now Felicity’s news was tearing everything down. She was the foundation of everything, so taking that away was making everything fall apart.

“I used the last couple of days while I was processing this news for myself to find myself a place in a hospice,” Felicity continued eventually, “so I have a good place to stay for these last weeks because there will be deficit manifestations. I already have trouble with my left hand.”

Felicity lifted her hand to prove her point. Watching it, Oliver could see her middle finger and ring finger twitching indeed. Her entire hand was trembling too. The tumor must cause damage to her nerves and muscles it seemed.

A hospice. Oliver felt his stomach cramp. He remembered faintly that he had watched a documentary about a hospice once. He had been half-asleep already, so he couldn’t remember much. All he knew was that he hadn’t felt quite comfortable watching it. Sure, everyone involved in running that hospice had done their best to make the dying feel good. Still, it had felt incredibly wrong.

The thought that Felicity, his Felicity, would spend the rest of her life in a house full of dying people, waiting for and preparing to die, was unbearable. Oliver couldn’t picture her there. She needed to be somewhere that felt like home. She needed to be surrounded by people that made he feel loved when she-

Oliver couldn’t think that thought to an end. He wasn’t ready.

“What about Ray?”

As little as Oliver wanted to think about Ray, maybe he could offer a spark of hope. If he really cared about Felicity, he shouldn’t want her in a hospice either. Maybe if they supported each other here, they could at least stop Felicity from moving to a hospice. It would feel like giving up because you only went there when you didn’t want to fight and just waited for death to spread its wings upon you.

“Ray and I broke up.”

At any other time, Oliver would have danced at the news which meant a lot because he never danced. He hated dancing, and he sucked at it too. Today, he felt like it was taking away some of his chances of keeping Felicity in his life for longer.

“He broke up with you because you are sick?”

Maybe he had good reasons to hate Ray after all. Oliver himself didn’t know how to process Felicity’s news. He had no idea what to do now. Breaking up with her instead of being there for her just felt incredibly wrong. Anger spread inside of him, banishing the indescribable mess that was still keeping him in a choke hold otherwise. How could Ray do something like that?

“He didn’t break up with me because I am sick,” Felicity replied, shaking her head, “it had nothing to do with it. It just didn’t work anymore.”

Oliver wasn’t sure if he believed that, but he wasn’t sure of anything right now. Everything felt weird and just so unbelievably wrong. He felt like the floor was ripped away from under his feet, and now he was just falling into the void, into some black emptiness where there was no life. There was barely existence.

While Oliver had been growing up, he had always believed that nothing and nobody could hurt him. All his family’s money had always or at least mostly kept away most damage. If he had had troubles finding friends, he had used expensive stuff to make himself more interesting. If he should have been kicked out of school, his parents donated a lot of money, so that wouldn’t happen. If he had been arrested for the foolish things he had done, they had hired the best lawyer to keep his punishment easy. Money couldn’t help with this. Nothing could help with this.

The feeling in Oliver’s stomach tightened more and more. He could feel desperation kicking in at the thought of being unable to do anything while his best friend was dying. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. He’d go crazy.

“There are specialists,” he said eventually, needing to say something, “and I will make sure that you see the best of doctors. My family has contacts all over the world. They know a lot of influential people and they will find someone who knows a way to heal this and for you to-“

“Oliver, I have been to a specialist,” Felicity said with a sad smile, shrugging her shoulders, “and there are no treatments that will heal this.”

What kind of specialist had she been to? Was he really a specialist? A luminary in this special kind of tumors?

Oliver doubted that a person like that could be found in Starling City. People like that worked in New York or Washington or somewhere in Europe or maybe even Asia. They didn’t waste their talent on Starling City.

“I wanted to talk to you before I tell your dad,” Felicity said after a while. “He has to know. He has to know that I won’t be there to take over Queen Consolidated one day. He should already look out for a new Junior CEO. I have a few people on my list that I think could be fit to replace me, but they need time to learn the ropes like I would have needed time for that. He needs to hire someone new as soon as possible, so-“

Felicity stopped when Oliver got up abruptly and started pacing up and down in the room. The longer she had been going on about the company and how she needed to be replaced there like it was nothing, the more restless Oliver had started feeling.

Did Felicity honestly think that she was replaceable for anyone around here? Because that was clearly not the case!

His father needed her in the company. Since Oliver had made clear that he would never take over as CEO of Queen Consolidated, Robert had been searching for someone to take over the company once he wanted to leave. With Felicity, he had finally found someone that he trusted with his company. Dozens of applicants had failed to win his trust before. With Felicity, he had said that it was the first time he didn’t fear for his company upon leaving.

Oliver shook his head. Who the hell even cared about that freaking company? Nobody!

Felicity was irreplaceable in every aspect of Oliver’s life. He needed her. He had barely made it through the last couple of years if it hadn’t been for her. She had been his most important support, the one person he had been able to lean on and talk to. She was the person who knew him better than anyone, the one who knew his darkest and his brightest sides. She was the most important person in his life. His life was everything with her in it, and it was nothing without her.

Stopping in the middle of the room, Oliver turned around to Felicity slowly. She had gotten up too, standing in front of the couch with her arms wrapped around her body tightly. She looked like she was holding herself, scared to fall apart.

For the first time really, Oliver wondered how Felicity was feeling with all of this. She had looked and sounded quite composed when she had been telling him all of that. He just couldn’t tell if that was real or if she was just trying to stay strong because she knew that he’d break down the moments she wouldn’t be able to keep it together anymore.

How had she reacted when she had been told that she had just a couple of months to live? Had she been scared? Desperate? Angry? Had she thrown stuff around in a need to destroy whatever she got into her hands like Oliver felt the need to do now? Had she locked herself in for the last two weeks to cry her eyes out and make peace with this news all by herself before she had opened up to him or anyone else? Had she longed to have someone to talk to but decided that it was safer to keep it to herself because she had been scared that she would have to comfort him if she told him? Like she had basically comforted him since he had stepped into her home today?

With two long steps, Oliver passed the distance to Felicity. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, pulling her impossibly close. One of his hands rested against the back of her head. His fingers stroked over her hair gently. His lips placed a firm kiss against the shell of her ear.

Felicity was the most precious thing he had in his life, the one person he needed most. He couldn’t lose her. He wouldn’t survive.

Oliver felt his throat burning. His chest felt tightened, almost making it impossible to breathe. He felt everything and nothing at the same time. Breathing felt like it was suffocating him which didn’t make any sense, but it was what he was feeling.

He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to run. He wanted to go home and tear his bedroom into pieces. He wanted to punch whatever and whoever came in his way. He wanted to feel the pain in his knuckles when the skin ripped. He wanted it to overshadow everything else he was feeling.

He couldn’t possibly leave though. He couldn’t leave Felicity alone. It wouldn’t be fair to her. In the last few years, she had always been with him. She had always been his rock, his lifeline. He had to do the same for her although he felt like he was in no position to do so right now. He was too shaken by all of this. He would just make her comfort him instead.

His arms tightened around Felicity for a moment before he pulled back and looked at her. He was sure that his gaze was enough to make Felicity know everything he was thinking and feeling right now. She had always been able to read him so easily, compensating his lack of finding the right words to say what he was thinking and feeling. If it wasn’t for her talent of understanding him even when he didn’t say a word, Oliver was sure that they wouldn’t be the friends they were today.

Felicity put her hands to his cheek, and Oliver leaned his face into her touch immediately. He closed his eyes for a moment and angled his head, so he could push his nose against her wrist. He could feel her pulse point, and it allowed him to smell her scent all the better.

Oliver wished he could get lost in, this moment. Having his eyes closed and just smelling the scent of Felicity’s skin was all he wanted and needed right now. It allowed him to forget this new reality and pretend that it was all going to be okay. He could imagine that it was just him and Felicity like it always had been and always should be.

When he opened his eyes, his gaze locked with Felicity’s. She was smiling softly though it didn’t completely reach her eyes. There was a glimpse of tears in her eyes, and it made Oliver’s stomach twist painfully. He hated that he didn’t have the strength to take away her pain. He hated himself for it, and he was so very ashamed of it.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, moving her fingers through his short stubble, “I needed time to process this too. You can take your time to process this too. I know it’s a lot.”

Oliver opened his mouth to say something. He wanted to apologize for not being strong enough. He wanted to tell her that all he needed were twenty-four hours, so he could process this himself, before he’d be there for her. He wanted to tell her that everything was going to be okay and that he would support her and stand by her through anything.

He was just unable to say anything, especially as he wasn’t sure that all of this was true. He wasn’t sure that all he needed were twenty-four hours to think everything through before he got a grip of himself. He was losing a person he loved, someone he held very dear, for the second time in his life. How was he going to cope with that? Ever?

“I’m sorry.”

He whispered the words to quietly that they were barely audible. Lifting his hands to Felicity’s against his cheek, he squeezed her fingers gently for a moment. He kissed the palm of her hand then before he lowered her fingers and let go of them. Slowly, he took the first step back, looking at Felicity’s face that showed nothing but understanding for his decision. Then he turned around and walked away.

With every step he took, Oliver hated himself just a little bit more. He hated being so weak that he put himself over Felicity. He hated that he was running again, something he had used to do for a long time. He hated everything about himself and everything about life as a whole.

As soon as the door fell shut behind him, Oliver screamed. It was one desperate sound that fell from his lips, filling the air. People in the houses next door were probably looking out of the window to see what crazy guy was causing this noise and whether or not they should call the police. Oliver didn’t care. He couldn’t bring himself to care.

Five years ago, life had ripped his sister away from him. Thea’s death had almost killed him. If it hadn’t been for Felicity, it certainly would have. He would have gotten drunk every night, maybe tried some drugs. He would have chased around on his motorcycle, taking all the risks possible to forget his pain, until it would have finally killed him.

Felicity had been his rock though. She had been there, talking him out of the bad decisions he might have made without her. She had been there for him and his parents day in and day out, offering help in all ways she could have. She had brought joy into their lives even at the darkest of times. She had helped all of them to go on.

Now he couldn’t do the same for her, and it was simply killing him.

Oliver had no idea how he made it home. It felt like one moment he was screaming in front of Felicity’s townhouse, while he was already back at Queen Manor the next. Walking through the door of his home, he couldn’t even say if he had run all the way as his racing heart and quick breath made it look or if he had taken his car. He really couldn’t remember.

He passed the foyer, heading right for the stairs. He kept his eyes lowered, trying to shut out everything and everyone around him. He didn’t want to talk. He wasn’t ready to tell anyone about this. He doubted that he could even get the words out.

“Oliver?”

Oliver felt his heart jump into his throat before it started racing in his chest. He balled his hands to fists, pushing his fingernails into his skin deeply. The physical pain made him suck in a deep breath and let him regain some control about himself. This wasn’t his secret to tell.

“Yes?”

Oliver turned around to where his parents were standing, looking at the collection of photos they had put on the table in the middle of the foyer. Sometimes, when they were feeling so very nostalgic, they looked at these old photos. Sometimes, it made them sad. Other times, it made them appreciate what they had all the more.

Although Oliver had no idea what he looked like, he knew that he must look miserable if he only looked half as terrible as he felt. The expression in his parents’ eyes told him that they didn’t miss that there was something wrong with him.

“Oliver.”

Worry was so very audible in his mother’s voice that he knew he couldn’t just steal himself upstairs into his room. His mother would come after him to check on him. She would have to make sure that he was okay because she had failed to see how miserable her daughter had been when she had still been alive.

Shooting her husband a brief glance, she passed the distance towards Oliver. Her hands reached out for his face, wanting to cup it like Felicity had before, but Oliver couldn’t have that. He moved back instantly, pushing his hands into the pockets of his pants and hunching his shoulders. He couldn’t be touched right now, or he’d probably lose it completely.

“What is wrong, honey?”

Oliver felt his throat growing shut once more. He couldn’t tell his parents about this because it was Felicity’s secret to tell. She was the one who had to tell them. He couldn’t go ahead and take that from her.

“You ate something Felicity cooked, right?” Robert shook his head with a chuckle. “Felicity’s got a lot of talents, but cooking is really not one of those.”

“Maybe we should ask Raisa to cook her special chicken soup for you know,” his mother added with a pitiful smile, “because we all know the terrible stomach cramps you get when you eat some of Felicity’s cooking.”

Robert smiled. “Do you remember how she tried to cook for all of us when Raisa was sick the month after Thea died?”

“Oh, yes.” Moira chuckled. “We all did our best to swallow it down, but it was so hard. I mean I am the kind of mother that even pretended to eat her children’s sand pies, but I am sure those would have been better than her cooking.”

“But she was so proud,” Robert said, “because she really thought that she had finally managed to cook her first meal.”

“Until she tried the first bite of it.”

“Oh, god, I will never forget her face and-“

“Felicity is going to die.”

The words just blurted out of Oliver. As much as he had tried to bite them back, he hadn’t been able to do so. His parents talking about Felicity just made him realize that soon they would be talking about her the way they talked about Thea now. They’d talk about her like she was gone which she would be rather sooner than later.

How was he supposed to cope with any of that?

Looking at his parents faces now, he regretted not having more control on his tongue. The way they looked at him was worse than he had imagined. The news was just as shocking to them as they had been to him. They loved Felicity like she was an actual part of the family after all. He shouldn’t have ambushed them with this like he had.

“Wh- what?” Moira asked, shooting a brief look back at her husband. “Oliver, what are you talking about?”

His mother was just as lost as he was. She was just as shocked as he was. The expression in her eyes told Oliver that she didn’t know how to deal with this. She was struggling to process this just like Oliver still was and he had had some time to let the news sink in now. At least he had had more time than his mother had now.

“Felicity has a brain tumor,” Oliver said, his voice sounding like it was the one of a stranger, “which it seems she had had in her childhood already. The doctors say that there is no way to stop the tumor from growing. Her death can only be stalled, not prevented which is why she won’t try treatment. She will move into a hospice soon. She already made peace with it.”

“What doctor has she been to?” Robert asked immediately, straightening his shoulders as he approached Oliver. “I have contact with a specialist in neurosurgery and oncology. There is still hope.”

“And what do you mean she had a tumor as a child?” Moira asked. “Did you know about that?”

“Is that what her mother died of too?” Robert frowned. “She died from cancer, right?”

“Why a hospice and why so soon?”

“What is her current condition? Does she need help with anything? Should she even be alone?”

“Maybe we should-“

His parents bombarded him with questions. They wanted to know how Felicity was doing now. They wanted to know how she had made it the last time she had had cancer. They wanted to know what exactly she had planned for the future. They wanted to hold onto the thought that maybe there was a little bit of hope left.

Oliver hadn’t been able to comfort Felicity although she had really needed it. He was even less able to comfort his parents.

“I- I can’t talk about this.” He shook his head vehemently. “I have to go.”

He wanted to run as fast as he could and as far away as he could. He wanted to run until his legs gave out from under him and his lungs were burning from the effort of trying to get some oxygen into his cells. His heart would give out, and he’d just pass out from exhaustion right there.

Lifting his hands in front of himself rejectingly, Oliver took the first couple of steps backwards. When his heels hit the edge of the stairs, he turned around. He took two steps at a time, wanting to get away as fast as possible.

Upstairs, he almost ran into his room. He closed the door behind him and locked it. He doubted that his parents would follow him, but he wanted to make sure that he’d stay alone. He needed time alone. And he needed air.

With large steps, Oliver crossed the room. He pulled the doors to the wide balcony open and stepped outside. Unable to stand still, he paced up and down there. He tried to take in deep breaths and slow down the wild rhythm of his heartbeat.

The warm sun of mid-August was blazing down on him. Oliver took out of his leather jacket and tossed it down the balcony carelessly. The sun touched his skin and seemed to burn into it. It was sticky and muggy. The fresh air didn’t feel fresh. It felt used up, and it didn’t help him to clear his head at all.

Oliver left the balcony with just as fast steps as he had gotten onto it. He almost ran against his door as he had already forgotten that he had locked it. It angered him and made him slam the door shut behind him.

In the gym room that he used almost exclusively, he turned right to the punching bag. He ignored the boxing gloves that he usually wore and just attacked the sandbag with his bare hands. He punched it restlessly, again and again and again.

Oliver didn’t know how long he hammed onto it. He expected his arms, shoulders and back to ache from exhaustion eventually, but that didn’t happen. His desperation seemed to feed his muscles with quite some energy. It not only allowed him but it even forced him to keep punching the sandbag. His knuckles were already bloody and swollen, but he continued punching nonetheless. He didn’t even feel the pain.

When Felicity died, this punching bag was all he had left. It was everything he had to process things. It would have to help him get through his darkest days. Oliver doubted that it would even be able to do a split of what Felicity did for him on a daily basis.

Losing her, he realized, would make him need her all the more.

Oliver her a low sound behind him, slow steps and the clearance of a voice. He didn’t have to look back to know who it was. Still, he shot a brief look at John Diggle, head of his family’s security staff and a good friend of his, but he could barely see the outlines of his body. His sweat was dropping into his eyes and blocking his view.

Oliver angled his head to the side to wipe his sweaty face on the sleeve of his shirt. It allowed him to see John walking around him towards the opposite wall. He leaned against it, crossing his arms in front of his chest, and looking at him with his warm, calm eyes. He didn’t say a word.

For a long time, Oliver ignored that he was there. He knew that John was the closest friend he had after Felicity. He could talk to him about what had happened, and he could trust John to find the right words that would help Oliver to see things a little bit clearer. Oliver just wasn’t ready to see things clearly yet. He wasn’t ready to process anything. He was still in shock.

As John continued watching him, Oliver couldn’t stay silent any longer.

“What?” he asked.

He knew it was stupid. His parents might have known that it was better not to talk to him right now, but they had certainly made sure that someone would talk to him about this news. They knew how close he and Felicity were and how this news must devastate him.

“Your parents told me what happened.”

It was all John said. He fell silent after that, just waiting for Oliver to say something. From the corner of his eye, Oliver could see John playing with a cooling pack in his hands. He guessed that John had known in what condition he’d find Oliver here. It just wasn’t a secret to anyone how much Felicity meant to him.

With one last and particularly hard punch, Oliver turned around to John and looked at him. Oliver opened his mouth to say something, but the words got stuck in his throat. There were just no words that could encompass how terrible he was feeling at the prospect of the next couple of months.

“Why Felicity?” he asked eventually, and his desperation was unable to miss in his voice. “Of all the people out there, why does it have to be her?”

Of course Oliver knew it wasn’t fair. If it had been anyone else, there were other people losing that person. No matter who fell sick, there were always people that suffered with them and there were always people that were left to mourn.

It was just that Felicity was such a wonderful person. She was full of light, and she brought so much happiness with her. She was just one of those rare people that were so pure. There was no falsity in her. She didn’t envy people. She didn’t hold grudges. She didn’t want anyone to suffer. She simply wanted to be happy and wanted other people to be happy too. It was inspiring.

“It’s not fair,” John agreed, nodding his head, “the world will be a darker place without her.”

Although John didn’t show it as much as Robert and Moira had before, Oliver could see that this news wasn’t easy on John either. He knew Felicity, and he liked her. They were all friends.

“After Thea died,” Oliver whispered, “she was my rock. She was the one I could lean on. She was the one I could talk to, the one I could count on. Always.”

Oliver knew that it was unnecessary to tell John about that. He had been here the entire time too, doing his best to support the family. He had seen the toll Thea’s death had taken on everyone, and he had helped the Queens through this hard time alongside Felicity.

“I can’t lose her, John.”

When Oliver suddenly felt tears welling in his eyes, he wiped the balls of his hands over them to wipe the tears away. He hadn’t cried since Thea had died.

John stepped closer to him slowly and held the cooling pack out to him. Oliver hesitated, but he grabbed it and put it to his bruised knuckles eventually. He might not be feeling any pain now, but that might change within the next hours or days.

“If this should tell you anything,” John said, “it’s that you cannot lose more time.”

Oliver lifted his gaze from the knuckles of his hands to John’s face. The expression in his eyes was meaningful. He wasn’t just referring to the little time he had left to be the best friend Felicity could possibly have and to give her back for everything she had done for him in the past five years. He was referring to something else.

Swallowing down hard, Oliver looked down at his feet. He knew exactly that John was referring to. It was something he had told him five years ago, but that had kind of gotten lost in all the twist and turns Oliver’s life had taken since then.

“It’s not the right time, John,” Oliver whispered, shaking his head as he looked back at his friend again. “Not now.”

Oliver knew what John would say even before a single syllable fell from his lips. He could see in his eyes that John wouldn’t agree with him. Not this time. He rarely ever did though. He disagreed with Oliver most times on almost everything.

This time, for once, Oliver was sure that he was right though. Felicity was terminally ill. She had bigger problems now. She had to focus all her energy on herself and on her health.

“It’s never the right time.” John sighed. “You wanted to tell Felicity that you loved her. Then Thea died, and you, understandably, lost focus of that. At least at first. Ever since, you always found excuses why you couldn’t tell her. It’s been five years, man. She should know.”

Oliver rubbed his hands over his face firmly. When his fingers moved into his hair, his fingernails scratched over his scalp almost violently.

Five years ago, he had found the courage to finally tell Felicity what he was really feeling for her. He had asked her to see him that night, and he had already been on his way towards her when his mother had called him to tell him that Thea had been involved in a terrible car crash. Instead of spending a romantic night with Felicity, he had been sitting on a hard plastic chair in the waiting room of Starling General, waiting for the doctor to tell him that Thea hadn’t made it through the surgery. Felicity had been there with him, and she had held him when his grief had turned his entire world upside down.

Ever since that night, he had had a thousand opportunities to tell her that he loved her. He had just never done so for whatever reason.

“Felicity’s going to die, John,” Oliver whispered, shaking his head, “so what good could this be now? Felicity needs to focus on getting better now.”

Again, John didn’t have to say a word for Oliver to know what he was thinking. He didn’t believe that Felicity was ever going to get better. He had already accepted what got Oliver still in denial.

No matter how much John believed that Felicity wasn’t going to be alright and the little time they had left should be spent without any secrets between them, Oliver knew better than that. He had to be her rock now like she had been for him for the past years. She could only really lean on him if she didn’t know how he really felt about her. She wouldn’t be able to let herself fall around him if she knew how he felt.

“I won’t tell her,” Oliver said, tossing the cooling pack to the edge of the room, “and neither will you. Felicity doesn’t have to know that. She has more important things to do now.”

With that, Oliver turned back to the sandbag and started working it once more. He needed to get rid of this energy, so he could clear his head and make a plan to help Felicity through it and save her life just like she had saved his before.

* * *

If you want to vote on my next multichapter, you can do so until Sunday.

* * *

@fannaz​ @promiseyoullbepatientwithme​ @bytemegeekette​ @felicity-said-just-in-case​ @phanseptiic​ @orangeisorange​ @mspotatohead14​ @whentheheavenfades​ @emmaamelia95​ @smoakingskye​ @seaolicity​ @ourwritinginvein​ @1022bridgetp​ @felicityqueenforever​ @leagueofolicity17​ @yryssss​ @myhauntedblacksoul​ @sherlock44​ @sinceriouslybea​ @olivyflavescentdeer​ @olicitys-castle​ @ofnothingcharming​ @vaelisamaza​ @smoakedandcharmed​ @alexisa1206​ @mysaudadespt2​ @florence-bubbles​ @addictiontelly​ @queens-of-arrows​ @memcjo​ @hysterical-for-joshifer-blog​ @oswinelevenforever​ @olicitylovemaking @bandanab310​ @mymusiclove101​ @lynslogic​ @scarletqueen23​ @olicityshipper19​ @alex-wesley​ @chattyyana​ @unabashedlynerdypatrol​ @louehmysoul​ @arrows-4ever​ @ontheolicityship​ @charlie-leau​ @coal000​ @samcrowleys​ @ishippolivia​ @julianegomesqueen​ @malafle​ @miriam1779​ @charlinert​ @melaux​ @ontheolicityship​ @myshipperlife​ @wrightainsley @lexi9515​ @ladygreenwood​ @multi-fandom-crazy-fangirl​ @morinamel​ @mje-thomas​ @kebarry​ @canadianheartgirl​ @nannett2307​ @almondblossomme​ @kathrynelizabeth89​ @imdfabulous​ @mrt2501​ @arsipaci14​ @salasvia​ @brandis91​ @cainc3​ @morganmiguess​ @pr0fessi0nal-fangurl​ @iamisalima​ @nessafrancis-blog​ @jonhdiggle​ @niki-is-amazing​ @universed-posts​ @hopeful-warrior​ @senoritaswiftie​ @bellemmie​ @green-arrows-of-karamel​ @iheartarrow​ @olicityovereverything​ @oliverfel4​ @olicity-in-the-heart​ @fullychippedcreation​ @geemarie​ @everything-but-normal-cat @myarroworld​ @tjmartinez​ @pleasantfanandstudent​ @j69confessional2​ @scentedcolorpirate​ @icanica74​ @tjmartinez98​ @certainmentalityface​ @tatianadamaceno @ryelew​ @wildwillowzepplin​ @missafairy​ @letsplaymurde-r​ @lipizette​ @positivepiper​ @nuttymilkshakehologram​ @laksagirl​ @turnupthemusicandscream​ @pumpernickle93​ @onceuponanolicity​ @1106angel​ @jaspertown​ @fadinglands​ @morganashimi83​ @mochababychristy​ @omglovechrissie​ @mariejr88-blog​ @thetaufactor​ @onceuponanolicity​ @speakandseethetruth​ @bri206​ @aglasgo​ @geemarie​ @pineprincess​ @nerdgirljen​ @eternal-olicity14​ @allyouhadtodowas-stay-stay-stay​ @lovelycssefan​ @tsseract​ @flowerandsunshine​ @dcnmarvelgamergeek​ @blondeeoneexox​ @monetsmark​ @bb-olicity​ @mashamarty​ @rulerofsilence​ @erika-amber​ @nothingmorethanmyotps​ @kayleenyc​ @tonto16​ @olicityfluv​ @olicitea1990​ @haahaaa2408​ @pattid1​ @faegal04​ @24karatgem​ @wrldtravler​ @readerkas​ @olicity-beliver @greencoffeecups​ @snorlaxishere​

(If you want to be tagged or untagged, just let me know. :))

Kaleb the Harpy

This is the first of three pride month stories, featuring the MLM couple Matt and Kaleb.

  You glared at the canvas. It was, no matter how hard you stared, stubbornly and solidly blank. You lifted your brush to the canvas, tip hovering just over the white surface. It trembled slightly and you had to take a moment to breathe and steady your hand again. It had been a solid two weeks and you hadn’t managed to paint a single new original piece. You were starting to get anxious just looking at the canvas.

“Matt?” You jerked up and looked at the door. Your sister was standing in the doorway of your studio, one hand raised as if to knock, despite the door being open. You two had rented out an apartment together and it was working out pretty well. At least renting with your sister meant you didn’t have to try and find a stranger that you worked with.

You lowered the brush to your palette and wiped your hands off on a cloth. “I thought I said you weren’t supposed to come see me when I was working.”

She shrugged as she walked into the room. “You’re not painting anyway. You haven’t painted anything for weeks.”

You glared at her. She rolled her eyes. “What? You haven’t.”

You turned back to the canvas and picked up the brush again. “Why are you here?”

“We’re going out,” she said. Your head snapped away from your canvas and the brush tip tilted, sending a line of paint down the canvas. A curse slipped from your lips and you hopped up, pulling the brush away.

  “Callie, what the fuck?” you said, staring at the line down the canvas. Callie just shrugged, expression still neutral.

“Look, you’ve been sitting in here for like, three days. You need to get out. Maybe it’ll give you some ideas for what you want to paint next.” She glared up at you. “Come on, Matt. I invited a friend, we’re just going out for lunch.”

You frowned at her, then at the canvas. That thin, black line down the canvas only made you more frustrated with the whole thing. “Fine, fine. Where are we going? Callie smiled. “A café that opened downtown. One of my college friends is coming. You know Kaleb?”

You shook your head as you headed toward the door of your studio. “I don’t know any of your college friends.”

“Well, you’ll see him when we get there. He’s an interesting guy. I think you’ll get along.”

It only took a few minutes to get to the café from your home. It was new, only about a month old, and had some pretty good coffee. That was all you really knew about it, though.

As soon as you walked into the café, Callie started waving. “Hey, Kaleb! It’s so good to see you!”

You turned your head to see who she was talking to and your heart stopped. Standing at the table was one of the most beautiful harpies you had ever seen in your life. He was tall and kind of willowy, with thick, gorgeous feathers along his arms and a long, flowing tail. His feet were taloned and almost resembled a stork’s. Even when he was still, you could imagine him moving with a flowing, gentle grace.

Kaleb rose from his chair, holding out a feathered hand. “You must be Callie’s brother, Matthew,” he said. His voice was surprisingly soft, considering his brightly colored appearance.

You cleared your throat as quietly as possible and took his hand. “Yeah, I am.” Kaleb smiled at you as he retook his seat.

The café was rather popular and bustling around lunch, so it was a little difficult to hear Kaleb’s soft voice over the noise, but you listened as intently as possible. He worked as a gardener for some rich people in the next town over. It was physical work and kind of dirty, but apparently, he enjoyed it. Callie spent several minutes talking about her job in HR, mostly complaining about how awful some people could be. Then, Kaleb turned to you with interest in his eyes. “What do you do, Matt?”

You couldn’t stop a sigh from entering your voice as you spoke. “I paint.” Kaleb took a sip of his coffee, eyebrows lifting.

“You paint? That sounds like a nice job. I wish I could paint.” Kaleb hesitated as you nodded, not saying anything else. “Are you working on anything interesting right now?”

Bitterness slipped into your voice. “No.”

Kaleb shrank back in his seat, glancing at Callie. “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”

Callie snorted, waving off his concern. “Nah, Matt’s just a big grump because he’s got artist’s block.”

 “Oh, I see,” Kaleb said. He offered you a smile. “That happens with me sometimes. I get chances to redesign some of the gardens, and sometimes it’s rather hard to think of what I want to do.”

You looked at him thoughtfully. “What do you do when you can’t think of anything to design?”

Kaleb shrugged. “Usually I go out and sit in the gardens I’ve already created. Sometimes I work on the gardens. It’s rather meditative. And the gardens are so beautiful, it helps me come up with new ideas.” He smiled tentatively at you. “It’s quite peaceful too. It helps me relax and the ideas just start coming.”

Lunch didn’t last much longer than that. As you were heading out the door, Kaleb caught your arm and walked along next to you. “Hey, I know that artist’s block can be rough. And I’ve been working on this really nice flower garden at my job. It’s very beautiful, if I say so myself.” He puffed out his chest and a note of pride crept into his voice. You couldn’t help but smile at him. “But I was thinking, if you wanted to come with me and see if you can get any work done when you’re there, I don’t think my employers will mind.”

You looked at him in surprise. “Tomorrow?”

“Well, if you want. You don’t have to. It was just an offer,” Kaleb said, shrinking back a little, a flush touching his cheeks.

To your surprise, you found yourself saying, “When do you want me to come over?”

Kaleb perked up, feathers rustling with eagerness. “I can pick you up tomorrow around eight. If that’s not too early for you, of course.”

It was definitely too early, but you smiled anyway. “I can be ready by then.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” Kaleb said. He took a nervous step back, waving one of his wings. “Bye.”

You waved as he headed off down the road and you headed back to your apartment. The canvas stared at you accusingly from across the room. The dark line across the surface made your stomach tighten a little bit. With a sigh, you took a sheet and draped it over the canvas so you couldn’t see it anymore. At least the thing wouldn’t be looking at you accusingly the whole day.

You woke up only ten minutes before eight and it was a scramble to get ready in time. Kaleb was already waiting for you outside your building when you ran out, still running a comb through your hair.

“Are you ready?” Kaleb asked when he saw you. You nodded, securing your bag over your shoulder. It had your paints and canvas in it and on your other shoulder hung your smaller easel. Kaleb smiled eagerly and led you to his car.

The car wasn’t really small, but it was cramped. Most of the backseat was covered in gardening supplies and it was starting to encroach into the front. The entire car smelled faintly earthy. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, not like fertilizer. Just a little like someone had recemtly dug up a garden.

Kaleb shoved a few tools into the backseat with a sheepish smile. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I haven’t cleaned out the car in a while.”

“It’s all right,” you said. He smiled thankfully at you. He’d dressed simply, in a pale T-shirt and short, dark pants. It made you feel a little out-of-place, since you’d put on one of your nicer shirts and long pants. Kaleb, at least, didn’t mention it. He just started the car and you headed toward his work.

You were aware of the general area Kaleb worked in, but you’d never actually been there before. It was a large mansion with one of the most sprawling gardens you’d ever seen. The entire front yard seemed to just be an extensive flower garden, verdant hills covered with brilliantly covered flowers in every direction. Closer to the house were trees and bushes, many sprouting blooms in every color of the rainbow.

“It’s beautiful,” you said, unable to keep your awe out of your voice. Kaleb blushed, a grin spreading across his face.

“This is the garden I’ve worked on the longest,” he said, pride entering his voice. “It’s one of my favorites.”

“I can see why,” you said as the car rolled to a stop. Kaleb got out and you followed him as he walked across the garden, stopping near one of the bushes.

He glanced back at you as you stopped next to him. “You can sit wherever you’d like,” he said, gesturing broadly to the garden. “My employers have never minded me bringing people around to look at the gardens. I think they like showing off.”

You hesitated for a moment, then paced a short distance away and set down your things. Kaleb got to work as you took out your canvas and paints and began to look around for what you wanted to draw.

Despite the beauty of the day and the gorgeous garden around you, you were having a hard time picking something out to draw. You’d locate a nice little patch of flowers, go to start painting, then your desire would die or you wouldn’t be able to figure out exactly how to start. After about thirty minutes, you considered giving up in frustration when you happened to glance over at Kaleb.

He was crouched over the bushes, gently touching at them with the tips of his fingers. His lips twitched like he was speaking to it softly. There was something about his expression that was different than the one you’d seen before. It was serene, completely at peace and confident with what he was doing. His movements as he tended to the plants were sharp and utterly knowing. He had no doubts about what he was doing. He was just perfectly in his element.

You almost didn’t realize it when you started painting. You just wanted to get down the way he looked then, perfectly at ease. The first few tries were nice, but not quite there. It was just missing the essence of him.

After a few sketches, you started on your canvas. Kaleb was tending to a fruit tree. It wasn’t bearing any fruit, just flowers, and he was pruning back some of the branches and apparently assessing the health of the tree. You moved quickly, not wanting to ask him to pose. You had a feeling it would sort of ruin the moment to do that. That if you asked him to stop moving, he would lose the flowing grace you were trying to capture.

This time, your brushes seemed to flow perfectly. Every line and every stroke just fell into place. For the first time in a long, long while, you lost track of time and just painted.

You only broke out of the trance when Kaleb called over to you. “How’s it going?” He trotted over, shaking a few leaves out of his feathers and wiping some sweat from his brow. “Are you ready to take a break?”

The painting was only partially done, but it was already looking better than anything you’d done in months. You turned the canvas away from Kaleb as he approached. He grinned at you. “Is it a surprise?” he asked.

“Something like that,” you said, feeling a touch embarrassed about having spent the entire time basically just staring at him. He didn’t seem upset by this. Instead, he smiled at you and sat down on the ground. He rummaged in a bag for a moment, then held out a small object wrapped in paper to you.

“Here.” You took the object from him. It was a sandwich, wrapped in waxed paper.

“Thank you,” you said. “You didn’t have to get me lunch.” Kaleb waved you off with a feathery arm.

“It’s no trouble. Your sister mentioned that you sometimes forgot to eat, so I thought I might as well bring something for you.” He smiled at you. It was so utterly charming that you felt your heart skip a beat. You looked away from him as your face heated up.

Lunch was eaten in silence. You snuck looks at him whenever you thought he wouldn’t notice. He seemed perfectly at ease in the garden, even in the silence. His feathers rustled slightly in the cool breeze.

“I’m glad you’re here with me,” Kaleb said after a long few minutes of silence.

You swallowed the bite of sandwich you’d taken. “Really? You seem like the kind of person who’d like being alone.”

“Oh, I do,” Kaleb said. “Don’t get me wrong. I like the silence and the meditation of being able to work on my plants and the garden. But sometimes it’s a little lonely. It’s nice to have another person around for a little while.”

Before you could even come up with a response to that, he reached out and took your hand. His fingers were warm and calloused from work. You could feel your blood rushing in your ears and your brain seemed to short-circuit for a minute. Kaleb squeezed your fingers tentatively. “Thank you.”

It took you almost a full minute to get your brain back into working order. “Thank you,” you said, trying your hardest not to stammer. “You’ve really helped me. I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t get through my block.”

“You’re a great artist,” Kaleb said. “Your sister showed me some of your work. You would have gotten through it eventually.”

“Maybe,” you said. “But I’m still glad you helped.”

“You’re welcome,” Kaleb said. He finished off his sandwich and went back to work. You sat back and continued to watch him for a few minutes before you returned to your painting.

The day passed slowly. You sketched and painted on and off, looking for good poses from Kaleb. You weren’t even bothering to pretend to paint the garden. Kaleb was your muse and you focused entirely on him.

Even though the march of time was technically slow, you felt that the day ended far too soon. The sun started to tilt down in the sky and you finally stopped polishing your painting. It was an image of Kaleb, wings spread, tail flicking out behind him, reaching up to examine the branches of an apple tree, tending to some of the blooms. It wasn’t perfect. You hadn’t quite managed to capture the expression on his face, one of pure contentment and focus. But you had managed to capture the flowing grace of his body, and that was better than anything else you’d done in a while. You’d even managed to use the black line down your canvas, working it into the tree trunk. It was, all things considered, a good painting.

Kaleb had approached you so silently, as you examined the painting, that you didn’t notice him there until he let out a soft gasp. “Is that me?”

You jumped and that motion drew Kaleb’s attention down to the discarded papers at your feet. He stared at them for a moment, then reached down and lifted a few of them. His eyes widened as he looked at them. “Are these all of me?”

It was hard to read his expression. His cheeks were red, but you couldn’t tell whether he was embarrassed or flattered.

You were pretty sure your face was as red as his. You stammered, trying to explain yourself. “It was just that you looked so good when you were tending the garden- I mean, I just got carried away in trying to capture you- Sorry.” It was hard to look up at him. Your gaze fixed on his feet as they twitched, talons digging into the ground.

“Really?” Kaleb said in a soft, disbelieving voice. “You wanted to paint me?”

You glanced up at him. His expression was definitely flattered and perhaps a little bit uncertain, as though he thought maybe you were trying to play a joke on him. “Of course. You’re… a good muse.”

Kaleb smiled at you. “Thank you.” His voice was soft, but absolutely sincere. You smiled at him, giving him a little nod. He looked at the painting for a moment, a gentle smile gracing his face. “It’s a beautiful painting,” he said. His feathers brushed against your arm. You smiled up at him.

“I tried my best. It’s not perfect.” You swallowed. “You’re better looking in real life.”

Kaleb laughed breathlessly. He looked at you. “Matt. Do you want to go out and get some dinner?”

Your heart thundered in your chest and you looked up at him. “Now?”

He smiled. “I’d like to spend some more time with you.” He glanced away. “If you don’t mind, of course.”

“No,” you said, gathering your paints. “I’d like to spend more time with you too.”

Santa Marta & Tayrona National Park; the coast of Colombia

Stop #8, January 28-February 5

We arrived in Santa Marta on Tuesday night with little expectation of what Santa Marta had to offer. Blog’s I’ve read had mixed reviews about this city, as were the reviews I heard from friends and other travelers. Either way, we had such an exciting month that took lots of planning up until now, and now we have no plans other than where we are sleeping at night.

We stayed at La Guaca hostel and got a private room. The hostel is really nice and clean and overall just has good vibes! This place quickly became my favorite hostel.

Wednesday was our first full day, and after sleeping in and taking our time with breakfast we headed into town. It turned out to be a really wonderful day. We wandered the streets of Santa Marta, both the touristy and non touristy spots. We picked up fruit and water at the grocery store to help out some of the young Venezuelan refugees in the area. We stopped in a suuuuuuuper hippy dippy cafe that was so beautiful; an entire wall was covered in plants! And, I swear, I recall a waterfall.. and mist spraying from the ceiling. Its so hot here in Santa Marta, the mist was a pleasant surprise! We continued to walk around and then we explored the free gold museum which was actually quite lovely. It showcased the lost golf of the indigenous Taironas. Lastly, we walked along the bay before renting chairs on the beach for the last 2 hours of sunlight. We were continuously asked to buy things from several vendors, but I only said yes to a young pregnant woman selling massages. I’ve been wanting one anyway, and I totally have a soft spot for pregnant women!! She is from Cartagena originally and already has one child, but the competition is too high in Cartagena so they now live in Santa Marta. Once it was over I stripped down to my undies, not expecting to swim today, and went for a dip. Luckily for me I was wearing granny panties so this time my white behind wasn’t blaring at everyone.

About an hour later we starting chatting with the family that rented chairs next to us. They are Colombian, living in Medellin, and are on vacation. It was a husband and wife named Oscar and Elisabeth, and their 18 year old daughter Mariana. The family was immediately welcoming and were really impressed with our Spanish. We talked about our favorite foods in the country and when I mentioned the delicious coconut rice in the caribbean coast, Elisabeth immediately invited me to her house in Medellin to teach me how to cook it. Hers, she says, is way better than any restaurants. :) We ended up hitting it off with this family so well that we exchanged numbers and planned to go to another beach together, the next day.

The next day we met at a bus stop at 11:00am to get on the local bus to Tagana, the neighboring fishing village with their own beach. Once we arrived we chatted with the boat companies at the dock and arranged for a transfer to Playa Grande. The boat ride was about 5 minutes, and we appeared on a blue beach with many other locals and tourists. We spent the day reading, drinking, swimming, and snorkeling with Oscar’s basic snorkel gear. I was so surprised by how many fish there were right along this beach! It was a great day with our new friends, and it was especially enjoyable to experience Santa Marta like locals (from Colombia) instead of gringos :)

For the next day, January 31st, we decided to splurge on a tour to a beach in Tayrona National Park. The park will be closing for the month of February, so unfortunately we won’t have time to explore it. They close every year for one month for restoration, and also so that the indigenous people living there can have time off from the tourists to connect with their roots. Our hostel offers a day trip to one of their many famous beaches, and so thats what we did!

Our early morning transport to Tyrona came at 6am. I slept on most of the journey, but once we finally arrived to the coast we took a boat for about 5 minutes to Playa Crystal. There were more people than I thought there would be, but it was a stunning beach none the less. The water is crystal clear (hence the name), and there was fantastic snorkeling. Sean bought some basic snorkeling gear at the grocery store the night before so we didn’t have to continue paying for rentals. It was a smart move, because even if we don’t take them with us once we leave it still saved us money. We made some friends on this tour as well, a couple from Spain and another Colombian couple that live in England now. We shared the cost of beach chairs in the shade and enjoyed another beautiful day on the beach. This beach was definitely the most beautiful one we were able to visit.

The next day we did absolutely nothing! Well, we actually did a lot of important things, but from bed. We had been so sun kissed and tired from the snorkeling this last week we decided to take the day off! I worked on my Colorado license for teaching, booked our next flights, organized our next hostels, uploaded photos (and worked on my tumblr posts), etc. Sean completed both our applications for a visa extension which was more complicated than it probably should be! He also went food shopping for us, buying lots of guacamole ingredients which I planned to prepare for the Super Bowl. We also both did a ton of Duolingo; we’ve been super into it lately, as its the only Spanish class we have at the moment! It was actually a very productive day, and in the evening we took a taxi to meet our Colombian friends Elisabeth, Oscar, and Mariana, for beers and people watching on a busy strip of beach in Rodadero. We danced, ate, drank, chatted, and really just continued to enjoy each others company!

The next day, Super Bowl Sunday, we slept in, went out for lunch, and then headed back to La Bahia de Santa Marta, the bay of Santa Marta. We met our friends again, swam, played Uno (which they gave us as a gift), and headed back with plenty of time to shower and watch the super-bowl pregame. Did the Super Bowl half time show have a lot of Spanish!? We watched the same show, right!? I thought it was a great coincidence that Shakira was one of the performers, because she is from Colombia! And I also loved how JLo held the Puerto Rican flag during the show. YASSSS QUEEN! 

On Monday we finally made it to Sisiguaca, a tiny beach close to Playa Grande in Taganga that the receptionist at the hostel told us about. We took a boat from Taganga beach about 5 minutes to Sisguaca where we shared a small beach with maybe 15 others. We sat in the shade close to the water, relaxed, and snorkeled. At this point our Colombian friends had flown back to Medellin. They invited us to stay in their home whenever we get back to Medellin; we look forward to seeing them again! Anyway, back to Sisiguaca. I ordered my favorite dish, arroz de coco (coconut rice), with a side of patacones at the tiny restaurant along the shore. The snorkeling was fabulous, as was our quiet surroundings. After throwing the nerf football around as the sun began to set, we headed back to Taganga via boat and then bus to Santa Marta. 

As per usual, we stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up some ingredients for our go-to dinner at “home”... pasta! But by this point we’ve gotten into the habit of buying water and bananas for the Venezuelan refugees seeking help outside the grocery store. Its became part of our routine in Santa Marta. Bottles of water and bananas/some other food is the least we could do and cost very little. The women with their baby girls were always happy to see us, as was this one disabled man that Sean helped out, every time we visited the store.

Next stop is Minca where we plan to stay for 4 nights before coming back to Santa Marta for a flight.

Thanks for reading fam, love you all. <3

Driving to Tehran   Day 27

Did I speak too soon?

We had a pleasant drive to Tehran today. It took almost 7 hours, but an hour of that was caused by our poor driver getting lost again in the chaotic maze that seems to be normal here. We eventually arrived after circumnavigating most of the city a couple of times and the driver was probably as relieved as we were. I hope he manages to find his way out to wherever he intends to stay tonight.

A couple of ad hoc observations largely unrelated to the drive, but prompted by our drive out of Isfahan and into Tehran. Right through Asia, I have been really impressed with the extensive parkland beside the roads in the cities, with sometimes very extensive gardens in the middle of divided roads too. In Australia, we have plenty of parks, but they are destinations - you have to go to them. Here, they are more in the nature of routes - they are just there, right on the main roads into the very centre of the cities. They are well-patronised and are wonderful cool green oases amid the turmoil of daily life, lots of big shady trees, water features (not sure where the water comes from in the deserts), lawns, gardens and paths, always spotlessly clean and tidy. Listen up Australia!

In several places we have been, particularly Isfahan, there are more than enough steps, but the risers are enormous, making them very steep - quite impossible for anyone with a mobility issue and even a bit of a challenge for us young people sometimes. We asked about it and were told that it was a deliberate policy to save on construction materials - but if they saved much more, they wouldn’t need to build anything at all because anything they built would be inaccessible anyway.

We also commented on the almost complete absence of safety gear - crash helmets, use of seat belts, etc., but also larger things like no protective scaffolding around high rise construction sites. It turns out that helmets are compulsory so we asked about enforcement. It is pretty weak and helmets are at the bottom of the heap. The fine is trivial, but the vehicle is confiscated for a week. For most other traffic offences (and driving/riding against the traffic is very common), if you happen to be the unlucky one in a million that gets pinged, you lose your vehicle for at least 3 months. Not sure about speeding, but there must have been a pair of cops with a radar gun every 15 or 20 clicks right along the 400+ km drive we had today. Everyone seems to speed excessively, but maybe the radar guns are faulty. I only saw one vehicle that had been stopped.

We actually saw lots of cars stopped, but not by the police. Most had the bonnets up with sad-looking people peering inside. But the saddest one was a Blue Mule that lost a front wheel and careened into the retaining fence, spilling the mountain of watermelons he was carrying all across the road. Most had burst open causing a horrendous mess that they were trying to sweep off the road with hundreds of cars screaming past at high speed. It could well have been some poor farmer’s entire year’s crop and I felt very sorry for him and his family.

Did I hear someone ask what a Blue Mule was? There are probably millions of them in Iran. They are mainly Nissan Zamyad pickups - big utes or small trucks invariably painted bright blue. They are the workhorse of Iran and you are very rarely out of sight of at least one or five. They mostly look to be wrecks, but carry absolutely ginormous loads, often towering more than twice the height and extending well beyond both sides of the vehicle. They started out as Nissan Juniors in 1953, but they eventually went out of production and Iran took up the challenge and now builds them itself under various brand names, but they are ubiquitous clapped out jalopies that keep the national economy in business. Just happens that they are all painted bright blue.

Back to the drive today..... it was through very dry desert with just occasional areas of irrigated green. From horizon to horizon it was dead flat except for the mountains! I mentioned this on the train into Isfahan, but it was even more marked today. There were no trees and where there was any vegetation, it was all less than half a metre high. It must be some of the least productive land we have seen since we left home. Did I say that it is flat, totally flat. But the mountains were spectacular - can we come up with some better words? We drove right through the mountains for an hour or so, but nearly all the way to Tehran, there were huge areas of quite high mountains, serried rows one behind the other lost in a whitish-grey haze that blanketed everything all day. The colours were remarkable from total black through every conceivable shade of grey, brown and yellow, creams, beiges, fawns - all those fancy colours that I can’t identify, through to some occasional white areas. Never saw much red, very little green and the only blues were in the sky and the thousands of Blue Mules. But the mountains took every shape imaginable, bulging and bristling, rugged and rocky, jagged peaks, bladeless for the most part with just an occasional straggly bush, dramatically dead, horribly harsh, a little alliteration the only thing sprouting! The rock strata was often so convoluted, one mountain had an almost circular twist of hard rocky strata adorning its side, but there seemed no end to the twists and turns the mountains and valleys formed. One could not help but wonder at the ancient forces that wrought such astounding formations and the eons of erosion that brought them to their present shapes. And they went on astonishing us for hundreds of kilometres.

We stopped about midway for lunch. It wasn’t quite MacDonalds, but its Iranian equivalent. Heather had fries, I ordered a hot dog - it was a Mastiff or a Russian Hunting Dog, I think. It was mammoth and with the best will in the world, I managed about half of it. Be careful what you wish for! It was the first western food we have seen, but it was huge even by western standards. We have been totally uninspired by the food, particularly since we left Beijing. It is OK, but the choices are narrow and tend to replicate themselves. They are all pretty bland too and we are hanging out for something quite different so lunch was a taste treat, despite the very few choices and difficulty in selecting from an Iranian menu. Dinner tonight will be a local version of spag bols - I wonder how they will corrupt that!

Anywhere there is a town, even a tiny village, there are domes and towers. Not sure that they are always mosques, but they stand out from all the single storey buildings around them. We have certainly seen many substantial shopping centres, down to quite small roadside stalls that appear to use them as ornamentation, perhaps for advertising, marketing differentiation, signs of (false) piety to attract custom, or whatever. The domes are usually silver or gold, some are ‘turquoise turbans’, but I also saw a couple that looked like terracotta today. The towers are more varied, usually towering (naturally!) over their surrounds with a variety of tops. Some are obviously minarets, but there are many different designs - the spice of life. But anywhere there is more than a handful of houses, there seems to be this reflection of Islam, whether as a symbol of Islam or a take-off for baser commercial purposes.

The traffic in Tehran is perhaps even more crazy than we have seen so far. The main roads seem mainly to be 3 lanes, each perhaps 2.5 or 3 metres wide and it is sometimes difficult to get the 7 or 8 cars and trucks abreast to fit into the space, causing great consternation on the part of the more aggressive. It constantly amazes me how fast and smoothly traffic flows. Everyone must know the exact width of their vehicles because passing at speed with less than a centimetre or so on either side seems almost obligatory. They must also have boundless confidence that when they move from one chaotic line of cars to another 4 or 5 lines across, all other vehicles will give way - and they do! In traffic travelling at 80 or 90 kmh, the distance to the car in front is rarely more than half a car length and the two-wheelers take constant advantage of that and zip through at great speed. We saw what looked like two very minor scrapes today - but there should have been at least 2000.

Exceedingly poor internet here again. Spent an hour or so trying to find a better arrangement this arvo, but alas, no go. Interestingly, the hotel’s instructions on how to get online if you have trouble say to go online to their server site and do it from there. How do I go online to do that if the reason I need to do it is because I can’t get online? And one additional little factor is that their server site is blocked by the great Islamic Firewall.

Have now eaten and are back in the room. The spag bols was OK, but uninspiring. Maybe we need to look for a Maccas?

There is some rather violent thunder happening outside at present. It would be nice if it rained to cool things down and banish the worst of the fog, but the forecast is still for fine and 32. Oh well, we can’t change that!

Sastiel Love Week - Day 2 (AU)

Sam woke to a pounding on the bedroom door, and an eternity of searing smoke and a world on fire. The smoke detector screamed overhead, lost in boiling dark clouds. Sam flew out of bed, inhaled a double lungful of hot, acrid smoke, and hit the floor. The entire inferno galloped down his throat with sharp, steely hooves, and he flopped on the carpet, fingers scrabbling for any kind of purchase. He rolled onto his belly and dragged himself forward, fueled by adrenaline as the oxygen petered out. His eyes watered, the door blurring in front of him. Underneath it, though, he could see a dull ruddy glow. This wasn’t how he was going to die, Sam thought, not like this. Not alone, trapped in the shitty bedroom of a shitty twelfth story apartment in Bed-Stuy. The floor vibrated as something bashed against Sam’s bedroom door again. Now Sam spotted two shadows, breaking the underworld glow. Feet. Feet? “SAM!” Bellowed the person on the other side of the door, and then again with more force: “SAM!” An oxygen mask muffled the voice, but Sam had a name made for screaming over oxygen masks. The door splintered. A couple precise chops with an axe and a well-placed boot managed the mickey-mouser doorknob lock. Sam’s DIY hardware (an extra slide bolt, because he trusted abso-fucking-lutely nothing to chance) went flying across the room. The door swung inward, revealing the owner of the feet. A fireman. Kitted out for the fucking apocalypse, like this was a disaster movie or a round of Team Fortress 2. “Sam? Fuck!” the fireman shouted, with surprisingly human fear. And oxygen-starved as it was, Sam’s brain still had enough juice left to do a little simple math. Castiel. Fuck, indeed. With the strength of a raging rhino, Castiel looped his arms under Sam’s and dragged him out of the room. Sam remembered later, in greasy smears of memory, the second fireman with the oxygen bottle and the long trip down. Reflections of the carnage wavered on the faceplate of Castiel’s mask. The glass had ripples, Sam thought; he thought something that important would be perfect. He lost the rest of the night. The white highway lines of twin fluourescent bulbs, as he rolled flat on his back down long hallways. Doctors and nurses asking questions, interspersed with long absences and a chaos of noise. An IV, and then two, and another oxygen mask. Someone came by with ice chips. Dean arrived, some time between sleeping and waking, and was there when the pain meds wore off. Minor burns, they said; smoke inhalation and some lung damage from the heat. If he’d been on his feet longer than a few seconds, he’d have been beyond saving by the time Castiel got to him. Dean tried to clean the soot away from Sam’s face, fingers running roughshod over the red welts someone smeared with cooling gel. He talked in a thick voice, little wet bursts of laughter about the cell phone that was probably melted, and how they’d have to find him some new clothes but the gift shop didn’t carry size ‘Yeti.’ Somewhere between all the white noise, Sam began to know he was safe. Safe. A memory ghosted up unbidden, of Castiel’s arms under and around Sam like bars of steel, and the hot white lines down the sharp edges of his mask. He’d been carried to safety and now here he was, alive, in a cool white room, his brother framed by the ugly blue diamond pattern of the separating curtain behind him. Fear smeared across his thoughts like the cinders of his burned apartment, and then relief. He was safe. The building was still on fire, he thought. Hundreds of other people might still be in there. And Castiel. Castiel was in there somewhere too, probably. But Sam was safe. He didn’t deserve to be safe. Sam’s chest tightened; eyes blurring as relief and guilt rooted themselves in deep. The fire in his lungs tried to force its way up his throat. Dean fed him more ice chips, although the nurse warned them to take it slow. The water cooled his throat, numbing the gritty stabs of pain that followed every hard swallow. They waited in the Emergency Room for hours. Dean wandered the floor, bringing back new details as they surfaced. The fire was almost out. Every hospital in the area had survivors from the fire. One of Sam’s next door neighbors ended up sharing his cramped room. They commisserated - awkwardly - about the fire and the kid with the snarky cockatiel and the lady who played Christmas caroles year round. Sam confirmed he wasn’t responsible for the garlic smell in the hallway. Dean smuggled him a diet Coke. The nurse came by and made him put his oxygen mask back on. Castiel arrived some time in the morning. It was probably ungodly early. Sam couldn’t tell. The emergency room was a windowless labyrinth of white light and lineoluem with lines in primary colors. Even in the heat of summer or a white-out snowstorm, Sam had the feeling this room would look the same. But it was different now, because Castiel was here. His shift must be over. And because it was Castiel, he’d come without stopping to change clothes, or clean up. The grubby flame-retardant gear made him bulky, larger than life; heroic. His handsome face was dark with soot, right up to the place where his goggles sealed to his cheeks and nose. He looked like a reverse panda. A Precious Moments panda, maybe. A panda with the saddest eyes. Castiel sidled in, twisting his car keys in his filthy hands. At the sight of him, Dean went from doting brother to attack dog. Sam reached out for Dean’s arm, bumping his IV into the rails of the bed. “Dean,” he croaked, pushing the mask away again, “Cas got me out.” Under Sam’s fingers, he felt the tension start to slide from Dean’s forearm. “Thanks for that,” Dean said, and made gratitude an insult. “Hello, Dean,” Castiel said wryly. Not unkindly. His gaze fell on Sam again, then, and wouldn’t be swerved. “You’re conscious. That’s very good. I’m grateful.” Sam nodded. The smell of Sam’s burned apartment intensified as Castiel drew closer, and he retreated behind the oxygen mask. Everything smelled like burnt apartment. Like plastic and sweat and grief. “I won’t - I won’t stay long,” Castiel promised, retreating a step, “I just needed - wanted - to see you. To make sure you–” He trailed off. Fiddled and clenched his keyring, in the hand nearest Sam. Finally, his gaze broke. He dropped his chin, like an actor ending scene, and brought it up again with a polite smile. “I’m glad you’re safe, Sam,” he said, turning away. Another smudgy memory surfaced. Of Castiel yelling his name, muffled by an oxygen mask. The panic that had been in it. The grief. Behind that, the memory of other times - when Castiel said it as he had just now. Soft, alive as a touch. Thankfully, Castiel’s name translated through oxygen masks just as well. And years, and tension, and memories so old they felt dead beside the heat of now. “CAS,” Sam coughed. Castiel turned. The saddest reverse panda in New York City. The man who’d dragged him out of Hell. The voice he’d missed. A second chance at forgiveness. And more, of course. There was more. This was probably insane. The smartest thing to do would be to let an ex-fiance walk out of his life again and stay. Chalk it all up to karma or something. “Stay?” Sam asked. Castiel’s expression shifted. Softened. He looked down at himself, and back up, and the sad panda look was back. “I’m filthy.” “Okay,” Sam replied, voice cracking with pain and hope, “come back?” He heard Dean huff next to his shoulder. “There’s a shower down the hall,” Dean said, amusement bright in his voice, “You need to change?” Castiel’s eyes darted to Dean’s like a wary animal. “I - probably. This material,” he fingered the heavy jacket lightly, “doesn’t. Um. Breathe.” Dean’s keys glittered in a long arc across the room. Castiel caught them neatly, and stared at them like they might bite. “I’ve got a change of clothes in the trunk,” Dean explained, “Top deck of the garage.” The slow smile that spread over Castiel’s face was almost, almost (not really) worth the burns. “The overwaxed, black Sixties-era extension of your penis?” he asked. “That’s the one,” Dean confirmed with a smile that didn’t quite say 'fuck you,’ but rhymed with it. When he was gone, Dean turned to Sam and said, “Are you sure? Seriously. You probably have like thirty different toxic chemicals swirling around your bean right now from the smoke. Not to mention the percoset - I mean you’re probably a foot massage away from drooling on your shirt. This is a bad time to be making critical life choices, bud.” Sam rolled his eyes. “I dated him, Dean,” he protested, “And he just saved my life.” And it’s not like I can text him 'thank you’ later, he thought; my phone is probably a puddle of melted glass. “'dated him’?” Dean echoed in disbelief, “You mean the guy we went camping with for two weeks in Nevada? The guy I went tuxedo shopping with? The guy who was on my couch every Monday so you could watch Alton Brown torture cooks–” “–chefs,” Sam corrected, only realizing his lethal misstep afterward. Dean’s hands spread in defeat. “Fine, whatever. Look. Everything about you and Cas is a crticial life choice. You know it and I know it. You went on a date to the fucking bookstore. Months, Sammy.” “–Dean,” “I had to hear about that for months.” Dean gave Sam a flat look, a don’t-stop-me-I’m-on-a-roll-here look, and continued. “I’m not saying 'no.’ I’m saying if you wanna maybe wait until you get a new phone and a new apartment before you decide you wanna buy a 2018 Pinup Fireman calendar, I can shuffle him out of here right now.” The horrified part of Sam wished fervently that the smoke inhalation could make him pass out. Most of him, however, squeezed his eyes shut and laughed, even if it hurt his chest. “Pinup calendar?” “You know what I mean,” Dean whispered. Sam did know what he meant. As a matter of fact, Dean wasn’t wrong. Everything about the way he’d connected with Castiel had Critical Life Choice written all over it. They’d almost gotten married. But the secretiveness, the worry, the distance and the raw fights towards the end - was Sam ready to risk that? He hadn’t been an innocent then, and he wasn’t now. But there was a reason why, when he’d realized he was being rescued from a fire full bridal-style by a guy he was still (and probably always going to be) in love with, his first thought was 'fuck.’ Things would always be complicated with Castiel. A guy whose heart was huge. A guy who could have been born with wings on his back. A guy who was always fighting to leave the shadows of his brothers and his big, heroic, out-of-the-picture dad. Sam didn’t need a savior, and dating one made him itchy. But of the two of them, he’d always been the optimist. And if he was honest, whenever he thought about Castiel, Sam missed more than he didn’t. “Yeah,” Sam said finally, “I can handle it, Dean.” So Castiel came around the corner, clean and wearing Dean’s Metallica shirt and making it look like sarcastic commentary by default. And he sat down beside the edge of Sam’s bed, flustered by the metal rails until Dean showed him how to fold them down. When Sam offered him his hand, he took it. Which was a Critical Life Choice, of course, but by that point Sam figured they were five deep already so, what the hell. And he stayed.

Oooooh, my goodness, nonny, this was so amazing! You pulled me right into the action and fed bits of a wealth of history between these two into the narrative so brilliantly! It’s beautifully contained, yet also offers so much in the way of expansion, and is so brilliantly them even in this new setting! Very well done!

The Cupboard Game Pt. 2

AU in which Splinter evaded the contents of the mutagen canister and ended up raising the turtles as a human. No real warnings apply. Mostly family fluff with a teeny hint of angst. (Also available on A03: http://archiveofourown.org/works/10471893/chapters/23136108)

[If sum won coms wat do we do?]

Splinter got the fist text message a mere few minutes after he clocked in, when he was gathering his cleaning supplies and heading off to mop up the coffee spill in the recreation room.

He allowed his sons to send him text messages so long as it was important, although to four year olds “important” easily ranged from ‘I’m feeling lonely’ to ‘the stove was left on’ and everything in between. Though the turtles always forgot to say who was speaking before sending a message, Splinter could usually tell who it was simply by their writing pattern.

This one was from Leonardo. He had an average vocabulary for someone his age, misspelling things and sometimes allowing autocorrect to fill in the wrong word, but that aside he used the phone properly, and was typically clear and concise about his messages.

[Is there a stranger in the apartment?] Splinter’s return text was sent immediately. Normally he waited at least a thirty minutes before replying, not wanting to be caught shirking his duties to pour over his phone messages, but after yesterday’s encounter he was fearful that he had been too quick to deem Michelangelo’s slipup inconsequential.

There was an extensive pause, eventually followed by the long slow “typing…” message that lingered for a while. Though this was status quo for a barely literate preschooler Splinter’s heart hardly beat the entire time.

[No] [Mike want to no just in cays] Splinter let out a heavy sigh of relief, then returned with his own text.

[Remember the fire escape on the fifth floor? It leads to an alley where there is a drainage pipe leading into the sewers. If you can’t hide and must run, go there.]

He knew this would strike a familiar chord with his oldest son. They had gone over a similar escape plan when discussing what they should do if a fire should break out in their small dingy apartment, a news story about such an accident striking justified anxiety into the hearts of his four children.

[The sewers are infested with bacteria, won’t we get sick?] The next text came two hours later, this one obviously from Donatello. The turtle was very intelligent for his age, sending full sentences with proper grammar and vocabulary words that most parents could only dream of getting from a four year old. Splinter finished scrubbing down the sinks, and once they were shiny and clean he took a moment to exchange his supplies in the janitorial closet and reply to the text.

[We won’t have to stay there forever. It’ll just have to do as our hiding spot until we find a new home]

Another two hours and there was a new text. The timing for this one apropos, as Splinter had just settled down for a lunch break.

[I don want to hid in sewer thats dum this were the toylet water goos we shelled not had to hid] [Wy cant we moov to a big tenthose like peepol on tv] Raphael was clearly less patient in his texts, writing runnon sentences interspersed with nonsense words, the meaning behind his statements sometimes a struggle to understand. In some ways he was similar to his older brother, thought there was a tone to his wording that certainly set him apart from the others. It took Splinter a solid minute to realize that “tenthose” was bad spellcheck child speak for “penthouse”

[You mean penthouse? the big glass fancy rooms at the tops of skyscrapers? Penthouses take a lot of money, more than I can make.]

There was a pause. He took a bite of his sandwich as he waited for the child to finish reading the hefty sentence. [Even if u werk 198490829 ours?]

[Even if I work all the hours in the world]

Splinter finished his lunch break and was retrieving the floor buffer and a few fresh rags when another text came in…. though this one was ambiguous whether it was from Leonardo or Raphael. [I do not want u to work all the ours in the world] Splinter couldn’t help but smile at this one, taking a moment to send back an immediate reply.

[Neither do I]

Four hours passed, the phone remaining silent until Splinter clocked out. Putting on a jacket to shield him from the brisk humid wind he tore into the New York streets toward the location of his next job. The overhead sky was beginning to darken, the air thick with the smell of condensation as the forecasted rainstorm rolled in a day earlier than predicted. Splinter sighed, wondering whether or not he should ask for a ride from one of the acquaintances at the docks rather than risk returning to the apartment on foot.

His phone buzzed, the arrival of another text pulling him out of his thoughts.

[Papa heanrm forkn sjklj isnuwant abcdefgabc Mikey] Even if the turtle hadn’t put his name at the end it would have been obvious who had sent the undecipherable key smashing. Luckily, Splinter often found that messages from his youngest son, though impossible to comprehend, were immensely easy to appease.

[I love you too]

He let out a sigh, contentment and exhaustion fogging together into a single undecipherable emotion as he put the phone back in his pocket and continued his way toward the docks, where heavy crates of imports and exports would be waiting for him. It was hard work, but it had an aura of adventure to it and was worth the extra money. This time, however, he knew who would be waiting there. He felt it in his gut; certainty that the moment he was done loading crates Nezumi would bump into him, claim it was a coincidence, then push and prod with his offer once again, and worst of all… Hamato Yoshi was actually beginning to reconsider.

The night Splinter got the turtles, for all of the positive changes it had brought to his life, was a long exhausting night of many conflicting thoughts. The idea of calling the police or notifying a neighbor came to mind more times than he’d ever like to admit, the sight of four reptiles the size of infants, acting like infants, initially striking him as wrong… horrific even. But they weren’t merely acting like infants, they were infants. With every passing second the genetic mishaps showed themselves to be nothing more than helpless children, who would likely be hurt or even killed if word got out about their existence. Not knowing where else to go Yoshi brought them to his apartment. He panicked at every crying fit, he panicked over whether to feed them warm milk or insects from the windowsill, he turned up the television in order to cover up the sound of their fits until the neighbors complained, and then he panicked when the tenants knocked on his door. All night, for many nights, he made the changes necessary to carry on with the secret existence of four infants, soundproofing cupboards and stockpiling supplies. He moved on instinct, an unexpected family in dire need of protection filling his life with a sudden unexpected vigor that he hadn’t felt since his days with Shen and Miwa. Of course it couldn’t last forever. He could only be absent from his waitering job for so long before he met an ultimatum: earn a living, or leave four squirming infants all alone for eight hours on end.

He knew he couldn’t choose the latter, it would put his newfound family in a position of terrible neglect even if he dedicated every hour he had apart from work to tending to their needs. He needed a miracle, and the universe followed through, though not without it’s price.

It was by sheer luck that one day, when he was walking to the convenience store, he discovered Nezumi being thrashed by gangsters who were demanding some sort of overdue payment. Splinter didn’t know much about the situation, but he did recognize when a lone unarmed man was being threatened by hoard of thugs wielding blunt weapons. To this day he still didn’t know whether it was intuition or simple stupidity that inspired him to interfere, but in the end Nezumi got a good glimpse of what he was capable of. As a show of gratitude Splinter was given an offer, an offer that would have him working for only two hours in the dead of night, filling his pockets with more than enough to pay the rent while leaving him full days to take care of his infants sons and ensure they got a decent upbringing.

Underground fights. Serious underground fights settling bloody feuds under the gazes of vicious gamblers. It was illegal and dishonorable and extremely dangerous and yet, so long as he wouldn’t be hurting anyone innocent, Splinter knew he couldn’t refuse. After that, his sense of being was constantly jumping back and forth from opposite sides of the spectrum. During the day he was a father, a good father, watching small children slowly learn to talk, teaching him what he could about language and history and how to keep out of sight. However, when he was in the fighting ring, he was a submissive attack dog beating men that were all muscle and meat into unconsciousness while surrounding crowds shrieked and hollered. It reached a point to where even the simplest fights turned into behemothic bet-hedging schemes, Nezumi leeching off of the ‘“street cred” Splinter never wanted to make a name for himself in areas that Splinter wanted nothing to do with.

Those months contained some of the best and worst moments of his life. Overall, however, he couldn’t say he had any regrets. All it took was one memory of the quartet of two year olds falling asleep in his lap while he read about the antics of The Cat in The Hat, and he could contentedly affirm that… despite everything… he had done the right thing.

Would it be the right thing if he went through with it one more time? It was just a couple of nights in the ring, maybe only one night judging by the purse Nezumi had mentioned yesterday. With money like that he would be able move his family to a small place outside the city limits, somewhere far away from the constant prying eyes of strangers where the turtles could run around carefree like boys should... …. like they deserved to.

When Splinter arrived at his destination he found his suspicions confirmed. There was Nezumi, sitting in a dingy little sports car just off from the docks, windows rolled down a crack to release the smog of a half-smoked cigarette. The moment their eyes met the skinny tattooed scarecrow jumped, startled to see that not only had his target arrived, but he was walking directly toward him. There was the sound fumbling as Nezumi let his cigarette drop to the floor and rummaged around the glove compartment, probably in search for some hidden weapon. When Splinter yanked him out of the vehicle by his wrists it became clear Nezumi probably should have dedicated more time to locking his door than locating his switchblade, and before he could so much as blink he was pinned to the concrete, foot on his back, arm twisted until pain forced him to unhand his weapon.

“Hey hey hey hey!!! Cool it! This trip had nothing to do with you! I’m out here meeting some old friends!” he squealed as Splinter took the switchblade “Coincidence! Pure coincidence! I’m not-“

“How much did you say that purse was?”

Nezumi suddenly stopped, rubbing his sore shoulder as he found himself released from the painful hold. He rose back to his feet, watching his attacker casually toss the swiped blade to himself, a look of calm earnestness on his face.

“You… you’re serious?” “I don’t know yet” Splinter muttered, “Tell me how much I’ll win if I take part in this fight you talked about.”

“Th-… thirty grand if you win the final round. Twenty grand if you get second place and-” “Fine.” Splinter closed the switchblade and pocketed it while giving his answer. Forgetting his swiped weapon, Nezumi took a moment to come to grips with what was happening, a look of idiotic glee on his face when he realized his hopes were confirmed. “The Splinter is back in action?”

“‘Mister Takara.’ Or Daiki if you want to be informal.” Splinter knew he’d regret accepting that “stage name” the moment it caught on. His old self laid across ocean, lost in the passing years, but making his lifelong nickname into a tacky “extreme warrior” title served to twist the knife rather than help him move on. But of course, Nezumi took the correction as a signal to keep their plans on the down low, and still wearing that stupid smile the scrawny little thug placed a finger against his own lips in a gesture of silence and winked.

Decision made and instincts already telling him this was a terrible idea, Splinter turned away and began heading back toward the loading docks. “I’ve got to go. I’m already late.”

“Wait wait wait!” Nezumi rushed ahead, blocking Splinter’s path with outstretched arms. “Tell me when you get off work! I’ll come by and pick you up!”

Splinter shot him a doubtful glare.

“I’m taking you to dinner!” Nezumi explained “It’s on me. You can ask for all the details you want over some hot grub and some wine. Huh? What do you say?”

Splinter’s glare softened. He would have to skip out on the wine, he had a notoriously low alcohol tolerance, but the idea of a good meal swayed him. That, plus a ride home that would keep him safe from the rain, and he couldn’t find the will to protest.

[I’ll be home late] Raphael saw the text at about six, an hour before their father was scheduled to get home. The small turtle slowly mouthed the syllables, getting through the sentence at an agonizing pace before Donatello swiped the phone and read the sentence at his preferred speed.

“Papa’s gonna be home late Leo!” Big dark blue eyes looked up just in time to see the brainiest of his brothers get tackled to the ground, Raphael wrestling to regain possession of the blackberry cellphone. Leonardo, remembering how angry Splinter had been the last time they’d broken a phone by fighting over it, trotted over and took the device from his feuding siblings before texting back.

[time?] [Very late. There is apple sauce and cheese sticks in the fridge. Nuts raisins and crackers in the cabinet. Be in bed by 8.] [Ok] [Make sure everyone brushes their teeth and washes their face too] [Ok]

“What is it?” Leonardo had just sent out the last text before his youngest sibling snatched the phone from his hands, squinting at the letters with his tongue hanging out of his mouth in concentration. “Papa’s gonna be late” Leonardo explained before his brother could finish reading the first word, snatching the cell right back much to Mikey’s displeasure. “We’re gonna eat and get ready for bed without him” “No bedtime story?” Leo shook his head no, a dutiful look on his face as he trotted to the kitchen and opened the fridge door, standing on his tiptoes in order to reach the assigned snacks.

“Don’t worry though! Papa usually makes up for this stuff. He’ll prob’ly bring pizza tomorrow!” Though this reassurance seemed to please the youngest turtle, Donatello and Raphael didn’t look all too happy.

“He shouldn’t be out longer! He needs to sleep more! Thas’ the opposite of what I told him to do!” Donatello said, sounding close to tears as he gave a little stomp of his foot. “Whadya mean he’s not going to be home?!” Raph added, joining in with his sibling’s protests “He’s never home and I miss him!” “He misses us too!” Mikey whined in turn, now crying for reasons he himself didn’t quite understand until Leonardo and shoved an unwrapped cheese stick into his mouth, satiating him.

“We just gotta be patient. We’ll watch TV” Leonardo reassured, as if watching television wasn’t something they’d already done all day to pass the time waiting for their father to get back. Already bored by his brother’s suggestion Donatello peeled back the translucent foil on the window, big ruddy brown eye peering up at the sky.

“Turn it to the weather channel. I don’ like the look of those clouds. Papa really should’ve looked at them before deciding to stay out longer” Raphael wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and found the remote, slowly clicking his way toward channel six. Mikey chewed contentedly on his cheese stick as he yanked some blankets down from the back of the couch, curling up on the floor in front of the screen as his eldest brother delivered the food and began dividing it out between his siblings.

MAGENTO COMMERCE EXTENSIONS – TOP 10 BEST FREE: WHAT DID USERS SAY?

In this day and age, e-commerce development is a must for every business that wants to take benefits from the rise of the Internet. Magento – one of the best e-commerce platform, is a wise choice that should never be overlooked. However, to make a website really become “your website”, you need to build it base on your requirements, which can be satisfied by adding Magento commerce extensions one by one.

In this article, CO-WELL will summarize users’ reviews about top 10 free Magento commerce extensions that rated by users. They can be free, but we are sure that they work.

  1. Why Magento commerce extensions?

As we have mentioned, Magento extensions are essential if you want your website to meet the demand of both your company and your customers.

The word “extension” itself expresses that it can “extend” or add extra functions to your e-commerce store. From reminding about abandoned carts to calculating sales tax, extensions are indispensable elements to boost your online business. 

  2. Top 10 free Magento commerce extensions for different areas

  a. Marketing

Yotpo review

Developer: Yotpo

Particular purpose: Customer relationship management (CRM)

Yotpo helps brands easily collect and leverage customer reviews and photos throughout the buyer journey to increase trust, social proof, and sales. With Yotpo, businesses can collect user-generated content and use it to build a stronger brand and better customer experience.

How it works:

First, Yotpo enables customers to write reviews, ask questions, and upload photos in the customer journey. Then, businesses display that content on-site, establishing trust and increasing conversion rates. And finally, businesses use customer content to boost search their ranking, enhance paid ad performance, drive traffic from social networks, and more.

Pros: According to a user’s comment on Magento Marketplace, Yotpo is:

“+ Easy to install

+ Optimize For Mobile: All of Yotpo’s features are mobile-friendly. When businesses send review requests, mobile users can leave reviews without ever leaving their email app.

+ Nice design: Customization of widget onsite, you can input your exact color to use for the text, review title, etc. You really can make the widget fit into the theme of your store.

+ Notification: About customer notifications, customers can set how many days post-order they would like before Yotpo auto-sends an email to the customer requesting a review. The customer can complete their review right within their email without having to go anywhere else (they can if they choose to). And about admin notifications, when a review is left, you receive an email notification. From there, you can click within the email to “Publish to My Website” (one-click) as well as to “Push to Social” (one-click) which will auto-post it to your Facebook or Twitter accounts per your settings. (Note: these posts as well have a default template you can then edit however you’d like your post to appear)

+ Supportive: “I did have issues on my first day, which appears to have been when they had a planned system outage for some updates (bad timing); either way, every single one of my 4 rather redundant support requests was answered (within 24-hours generally) and addressed professionally.”

Cons:

+ Yotpo has both free and paid versions, though free version seems quite enough for almost requirements, it is not flawless. “It has a very, very clean layout and is very easy in use. But, the free edition lacks a few ‘simple’ features – like commenting on a review. If you want these extra options, you pay a high price. A very high price. Most of the business wouldn’t be able to spend +300$/month only a review extension (not profitable).”

+ This runs with Java script, “so only our developers can do to speed load times.” Loading time is not really an issue with Yotpo, however, if you want it to work completely smoothly, developers are required.

  Abandoned cart email

Developer: CO-WELL Asia

Particular purpose: Email marketing

Nowadays, people have many reasons to leave e-commerce websites while online shopping resulting in a large number of pending orders caused by unwelcome interruptions. In order to help lock-in those deals and reduce shopping cart abandonment, that’s why Abandoned Cart Email extension was built.

How it works

Automatically sends emails to customers who accidentally forgot their selected products based on shop owners’ set conditions such as the number of items in the abandoned cart, value of the order and quantity of selected products in stock. Customers will then receive messages about their abandoned carts, encouraging them to come back to the online store and finish their orders.

Pros:

+ Boost revenue for sellers as the buyers are encouraged to complete their shopping process

+ Improve shopping experience as the buyers feel valued.

+ Highly customizable: This extension allows you to design email templates, set schedules and make your own rules as well as support you to manage the history of sent emails effectively

+ Easy to use with a premade template

Cons: Beneficial as it is, this Magento commerce extension pre-made templates are not diverse and well-designed so users need to design or code them.

  b. Content & Customization

Drupal Integration

Developer: CO-WELL Asia

Particular purpose: Product content

Drupal is an open-source CMS (Content Management System), which offers a solid platform to create highly advanced websites, while Magento is leading E-commerce platform which has a great reputation for its excellent scalability, features, SEO friendliness, and other market-leading attributes.

Drupal Integration is the ideal solution to capitalize on the power of both Drupal and Magneto in the fierce competition among E-commerce businesses.

How it works:

Drupal Integration allows you to operate your Drupal site as the back-end and a Magento site as the front-end of your E-commerce platform.

All the data in the Drupal site will be automatically transferred to the Magento site, including images, text, and articles related to the products. The data transfer process is achieved in just a few clicks with easy-to-follow guidelines.

Pros:

+ Data utilization to reduce development time

If you’ve got some experience in developing a website, then building an entirely new site in a couple of days is totally possible. This means you’re spending less time on the actual implementation work of the site, allowing you to spend more time being creative with your designs. This helps you stand out from the rest of the competition.

+ Organize Content Easily

One of the difficult parts of many CMS tools is the ability to organize your content for later use and recall. Drupal allows you to categorize your content through path URLs, create custom lists, associate content and create defaults. This structure helps you to organize, structure, search, find and reuse content.

+ It fits within your ecosystem: Standing out from other Magento commerce extensions for providing sophisticated content management and digital marketing capabilities, Drupal also enables data modeling and integration with an endless variety of applications and services, which makes it easier to adapt within an organization. This gives organizations a great opportunity to implement functionality in the most appropriate technology and then simply connect to it via web services or other means.

+ A huge community: 

With a community of thousands of users that always can report bugs and security threats in a nick of time, security will not become your issue anymore.

Cons:

+ Compatibility: Since this extension has plenty of new solutions, if you are used to an older system, getting used to its script could take some time.

  Nosto Personalization

Developer: Nosto

Particular purpose: Personalization & Experience Management

Nosto, a Magento Premier Technology Partner, analyzes hundreds of thousands of data points across your store in real-time, to help you go beyond the numbers and see the individual. Designed for ease of use, Nosto enables marketers to build, launch and optimize powerful 1:1 multi-channel marketing campaigns without the need for dedicated IT resources.

How it works:

Nosto’s patented technology combines proprietary algorithms and big data analytics to automatically predict the best products and offers for each individual customer based on a moment-by-moment analysis of their unique user behavior.

Pros: According to users’ comment on Magento Marketplace:

“+ User-friendly: “The site personalization for Magento is fairly easy to use – and it gives our webshop some great options so that customers have better and more relevant product suggestions. You can add rows of recommendations like: “You previously viewed…”, “Customers who looked at this also looked at…”, “Top sellers in this category…”,…. The blocks of recommendations can be modified to fit your shop’s needs, avoid duplications, be relevant to the customers, etc. It does take some thought and consideration before making changes to be sure that the recommendation will do what you want, but Nosto is very eager to help, and to make sure you don’t make any mistakes.”

+ Easy retargeting ads on Facebook, e-mail followup, “We miss you” e-mails,… all with customization options that are easy to set up. Pop-ups are another great feature – we use discount codes to encourage newsletter subscriptions. And the folks at Nosto are very helpful with new ideas, downloadable documents with suggestions, timely hints for improved holiday sales and more.

+ Supportive: “The Nosto team is also very helpful. Unlike may web-based services, with Nosto I have a contact person with a name and a personal e-mail address. This person is proactive, checking in with me periodically about how it is going and what I can do better – and she answers my e-mails within minutes.”

+ And finally, from one small business owner to another, once you get the Nosto recommendations set up and running the way you want them to, you can sit back and focus on other things. The recommendations and other features run in the background and tick along all by themselves. The reporting is clear, and you can see what works – and then just let it run.”

Cons:

“Nosto is overall a great tool for a Magento webshop, BUT it’s not really working. During the creation of an account it fails, during installation from backend Magento, it fails and so it continues…

I’ll probably get back to this extension later on, but for now, it has way too many bugs.”

“This is a very good add-on but unfortunately it’s not compatible with the new Magento 1.9.2 .”

  c. Shipping & fulfillment

Global postcode finder 

Developer: CO-WELL Asia

Particular purpose: Address verification

This extension helps to enhance the shopping experience by reducing checkout time. Reports show that customers are more likely to abandon orders at checkout if there are too many information fields to complete. This Magento e-commerce extension helps improve sales performance by simplifying the checkout process.

How it works:

Global Postcode Finder supports an improved experience for both sellers and buyers. When a customer enters a postcode, several suggestions will be offered, allowing the customer to choose their address, then simply add details such as the house number or building name. Shop owners can use the same function to edit customers’ information.

Pros:

+ Simplify the checkout process

+ Minimize abandoned carts

+ Reduce manual intervention by administrators

+ Simple installation

  Shipstation

Developer: Shipstation

Particular purpose: Order Management

ShipStation leads the e-commerce world with web-based software designed to make e-commerce retailers exceptionally efficient at processing, fulfilling, and shipping their orders from all the most popular marketplaces and shopping carts using all the top carriers.

How it works:

Save time and money with efficient shipping. Sync all your orders from Magento and wherever you sell and start printing labels from all the major carriers with a few clicks.

Shipping can be unnecessarily complicated and inefficient. This Magento commerce extension makes it easy for Magento users to scale their businesses by eliminating those complications. When you install and connect the extension, ShipStation imports your orders. Process your orders with automation rules and flexible workflows and ship them out with the best carrier, service, and rates to fit your needs.

Pros: The most out-standing pro of this Magento commerce extension is that it is time-saving:

+ Time saving: “This shipping program is really amazing. I have never before witnessed one program like this being a deal changer for our online store. Order processing is so fast that we have completely restructured our online business to utilize these time-saving abilities! And there is so much more built into the program, too, like custom sales reports, a stamps.com account, among other countless added features.”

“Shipstation has been a massive time saver for us, as we are a small business with few employees. It is a very intuitive application that allows us to attach weights to all of our products and it will do the math for us while shipping.”

+ Supportive: “ The support is very friendly and knowledgeable. They have got us up and running in no time at all. I highly recommend this great product. You will not be let down!”

“+ Shipstation is an excellent feature to streamline the shipping process for our orders. It automatically imports orders, provides options for the cheapest shipping providers and has the ability to note what shipping method the customer selected. It has amazing automation features, presets and many more.”

Cons:

+ Cost issue: “I had to pay a coding team to install ShipStation and getting their help wasn’t cheap. I attempted to do it myself and try to work with the resources on ShipStation and that was too intimidating for a non-developer like myself.”

+ Bug issue: “Shipstation has a major bug with Magento. When a partial order is shipped, Magento shows the ENTIRE order as being shipped even when this is not the case. This bug has been reported to Shipstation and they keep promising to fix it. Unfortunately almost 1 year with no solution.”

  d. Accounting & pricing

TaxJar

Developer: TaxJar

Particular purpose: TaxJar helps eCommerce businesses save time on sales tax by automating the hard parts of filing a sales tax return.

It helps taking all the complicated math and calculations out of determining what you owe and even automatically filing your return for you if you want to. This is called the AutoFile.

How it works:

TaxJar helps you save hours by automating sales tax calculation, reporting, and filing for your store. Magento customers can enjoy TaxJar Reports that break down the sales taxes collected and owed by the state, county, city and other taxing districts so your sales tax filings are all ready for you. TaxJar Reports can also accommodate any of the other channels you sell on, too (Including Amazon, eBay, and more).

Pros: This Magento commerce extension become many businesses’ first choice is because it helps to save their resources

+ Labor-saving: “It makes us legally compliant, keeps us up-to-date and saves us from hiring an additional person.”

+ Time saving: “We have been using this tool now for several months and it is saving us a lot of time and headache by keeping things simple.”

+ Supportive: “The support by the TaxJar staff is excellent – they reply quickly and they’ve helped us with some issues we encountered. It is drop-dead simple to set up and use. Highly recommended.”

Cons:

Need backing up the website: “Do not try and install this without backing up your site first. It totally hosed our website after throwing a bunch of errors when installing through Magento Connect. Nice concept, but definitely not a stable release. Proceed with caution.”

  eBridge Connections ERP Integration

Developer: eBridge Connections

Particular purpose: Enterprise resource planning (ERP) & Accounting

eBridge Connections delivers powerful, cloud-based ERP and accounting integration solutions that automate vital business processes and eliminate the need for manual data entry. The eBridge universal integration platform supports over 30 ERP and accounting systems including products from Sage, Microsoft, SAP, NetSuite, Epicor, and Intuit QuickBooks.

How it works:

Accounting system and ERP integration by eBridge Connections allow Magento store owners to automate orders, inventory, tracking information, customer data updates, product data and pricing and inventory levels, and more between their back-office accounting/ERP system and their Magento eCommerce store.

Pros:

“We have an old Sage system Mas 200 v4.4 and needed to integrate Our M2 Site and Amazon store with Sage.

We chose E-bridge and couldn’t be happier with the results. Now that we have the integration set up, all orders from our M2 site and our amazon store come into Sage sales order module so we don’t have to manually add them via hand typing.

Pros Huge time saver.

Implementation went very smooth, which from my experience is rare for technical projects of this nature.

The cost was very reasonable. Better than the other quotes we received from competitors.

E-bridge connector works via cloud, so you don’t need to set up hosting for the connector software.

Customization – Software allows for logic rules/customization so you can get everything mapped up just right.”

  e. Payment & security

Signifyd

Developer: Signifyd

Particular purpose: Fraud

This Magento extension solves the challenges that growing e-commerce businesses persistently face: billions of dollars lost in chargebacks, customer dissatisfaction from mistaken declines, and operational costs due to tedious, manual transaction investigation.

Signifyd’s guaranteed fraud protection is supported by a full-service cloud platform that automates fraud prevention through real-time, machine learning, allowing businesses to increase sales and open new markets while reducing risk.

How it works:

When a customer places an order with your Magento store, Signifyd automatically reviews the order and tells you whether to ship it or not. Signifyd’s guaranteed fraud protection covers merchants against chargebacks associated with fraud or unauthorized charges.

Pros:

+ Time-saving and money-saving: “Signifyd has saved us both time and money. Whenever we used to get large orders with different billing and shipping we had to contact the customer and make sure the order was legit and that took a bunch of time. No more of that. With Signifyd you get approved quickly and if the payment is disputed, they pay you back. Their service is great and highly recommended”

“It was a serious pain having to sift through international transactions and call banks to verify names and addresses. With Signifyd, it becomes a very easy process and with one click you can submit any transaction to be guaranteed by Signifyd against chargebacks. Great tool considering the amount of false credit card charges being made online. Easy to install and use, great customer support and follow up from their team”

+ Supportive: “Not only is the extension great and super easy to use, but the support that comes with it is efficient, reliable, and friendly. If I have an issue, I just pick up the phone and help is just a few minutes away.”

Cons:

“Signifyd doesn’t work with Magento cloud. If you have a bunch of e-commerce stores running on a single Magento instance it will NOT work. It only works with a single instance. So if you have 10 different stores for your clients running on a cloud, you have to have 10 different Magento instances running.”

Braintree payment

Developer: Paypal

Particular purpose: Payment Integration

Braintree helps businesses of all sizes, from small to large enterprises, accept and process payments to help maximize business opportunities and revenue growth. Companies around the world benefit from the technology and support of Braintree coupled with the scale, backing, and confidence of partnering with a PayPal service.

How it works:

This is an official Braintree extension built in collaboration with Gene Commerce. This extension updates and extends the core Braintree functionality that comes shipped with Magento 2. This extension takes advantage of the latest version of the Braintree SDK and it is strongly recommended that all Merchants using Braintree upgrade to this extension in order to benefit from many improvements and additional features such as Apple Pay and PayPal Credit.

Pros:

+ All mobile payment methods in one: “Great to have an extension with all mobile payment methods in one! We had one minor issue with Apple Pay showing up in the cart but this was linked to some CSS in the template which the developers quickly helped us identify. Great extension…it just works!”

“Great extension, exactly what Magento 2 needs, love the fact it has the latest PayPal smart buttons and all the mobile payment methods in one. Easy to set up and configure…thank you.”

Cons:

“We integrated this with 2.1.16 and found out only AFTER that the Kount fraud service we had with Braintree doesn’t work with our version and only works on the 2.2 or 2.3 versions. We have fraud orders flying through and can’t do anything to block emails, IPs, ship-to address, etc. Our sales team/support integrator and account manager take turns replying every few weeks. So if you want something that is basic, has little to no fraud filters and can’t get a reply from anyone there, pick this solution.”

“For some reason that they cannot explain, anytime an order is made the customer is charged the subtotal (even though the confirmation reads the grand total). This means that shipping and tax aren’t reaching Braintree.”

  3. CO-WELL Asia – A supreme e-commerce development service provider

There are millions of things to do when you start your e-commerce business (shipping, managing payment, improving sales,…), which can be either overwhelming or ineffective to do on your own. That’s why having outsourcing IT companies should be considered if you want your business to run smoothly and effectively in the long term.

With significant experience in building enterprise systems which manage more than 200 stores, over 20 million products and handle around 10000 orders each day, CO-WELL Asia offers consulting and development services for all levels of e-commerce systems.

We have developed the following Magento e-commerce extensions to functionally enhance our customers’ website: Abandoned cart email, Global postcode finder, and Drupal integration. 

These are unbiased reviews that we have summarized from Magento’s users. Despite some of the mentioned flaws, Magento e-commerce extensions are improving.  

  Bài viết MAGENTO COMMERCE EXTENSIONS – TOP 10 BEST FREE: WHAT DID USERS SAY? đã xuất hiện đầu tiên vào ngày Cowell Asia.

source https://co-well.vn/en/tech-blog/magento-commerce-extensions-top-10-best-free-what-did-users-say/

Hi Everyone! Julian here from Founder Stories (founderstories.io) - here's one of our latest interviews with ZenMaid's founder - Amar Ghose on how he and 2 Co-founders started a 40k+ / mo SaaS business.Interview: Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi, my name is Amar Ghose. I’m the CEO/co-founder of ZenMaid. Our software makes it easy for growing maid services to manage their cleaners, clients, and schedules in one easy to use software.While we might have started off slow (both my co-founder and I worked full time for over 2 years after starting ZenMaid) we now make more than half a million dollars a year helping maid service owners to achieve the freedom in their lives and businesses that we have (I’m currently writing this from Canggu in Indonesia!)how-we-validated-and-grew-a-saas-for-maid-services-to-500k-year What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea? I’ve always been quite entrepreneurial. I started as a kid selling candy to my middle school friends actually. Despite that I hadn’t been able to create a real business that really stuck until ZenMaid.In 2012 I came across a post on Reddit. A guy was starting his own maid service and documenting the entire thing. By chance a friend of mine saw the same post and started working on the technical side of the business (building a website and etc). My friend quickly realized that he didn’t want to deal with the people side of the business however. He tagged me in to help with operations and sales/marketing. From there I was quite quickly made an equal partner as he had yet to launch.Don’t fall into the classic trap of spending months building or working on something, only to find out when you launch that no one is interested.At the time I was doing sales for a tech startup so closing business by phone was my jam. From there I quickly learned basic man management skills to work with our cleaners.Fast forward 1 year and I was no longer living locally. I’d moved closer to home (the SF Bay Area) for a much better day job. I was 400 miles away from our maid service and that caused tension with my partner. Ultimately I gave up my portion of the maid service (which shut down shortly thereafter).It was at this point that another friend approached me about what became ZenMaid. He felt he could build a better management platform than the one he’d seen me using. And he was confident that I could sell and market the software given my skill set and industry knowledge.Hence ZenMaid was born (initially named MaidDesk though I doubt that’s ever been mentioned anywhere publicly before now :-) )While working full time (myself at a startup, my co-founder on his PhD at Stanford University) we began simultaneously working on the product and getting in contact with as many maid service owners and offices as we could.Take us through the process of building the product. My co-founder Arun was familiar with the coding language Python but decided after reviewing some of the existing libraries that Ruby on Rails was the right way for us to proceed.… so he taught himself Ruby in ~8 days and got to work. I’m still baffled by this looking back on it.Due to my full time work schedule I made calls between 5 am and 8 am on weekdays before going into work and all day on Saturdays.It took almost 6 months to get a working prototype due to Arun’s PhD program at Stanford (he worked from 11 pm to 3 am most nights on ZenMaid). I spent that entire time calling maid service owners and offices. Due to my work schedule (1.5 hour commute to SF each day) I made calls between 5 am and 8 am on weekdays before going into work and all day on Saturdays.We made the decision to focus our efforts on an easy to use calendar that specifically focused on truly recurring services (something that’s unique to maid services and housekeeping companies) and on automated communications around the appointments.To this day that is still our bread and butter, though we’ve added many features and benefits since.A lot of people have asked about our startup costs but we didn’t really have any due to our combined skill sets. The only expense we took on was once the product was live was ~$100-$200 per month for Google AdWords so we could get consistent traffic to our website and app.Describe the process of launching the business.We didn’t do much of a launch for ZenMaid as we didn’t have an audience to announce to. We paid for a press release service that didn’t do much but I did reach out to everyone I had been talking to when the software was ready. Our first customer came onboard for $1000 for life, paid over 4 months (we have given a few other maid service owners lifetime access for a set price but we quickly moved to a more traditional SaaS model priced monthly which now starts at $49)We already had a landing page at this point as I was treating the business/product as if we were ready at least 3 months prior to the software being launched. I believe we initially used a tool called LaunchRock and then moved to WordPress with a theme quite quickly.Launch numbers (this was fun to look up in Stripe) :We brought on our first customer on September 9, 2013 and ended that year with 5 customers (though 13 had tried and paid us for at least a month) so clearly there wasn’t much of a launch eventSince launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers? ZenMaid has always relied heavily on paid advertising (Google, Capterra, LinkedIn, Facebook) for a constant flow of leads however we quickly branched out from there to do content marketing which helped with SEO and a variety of other things.We actually stumbled on this by accident when I took the keywords I had researched for my maid service and I shared them in a Google Spreadsheet which we hid behind an email gate. This was our very first lead magnet and to this day it still gets us more leads than anything else :-)From there we built an extensive email marketing funnel that’s almost all quality content. Our goal is to never be forgotten by our leads because when they’re ready for our software, they’ll let us know. Essentially any maid service owner that signs up for our email list will receive high quality, implementable content for their businesses for almost two years, each email having a small, unobtrusive link at the bottom to learn more about the software. If they click this link they’ll get a couple more targeted emails. I set this up following Ryan Deiss’ The Machine course a few years ago.Two quick examples of awesome content we’ve done would be The Ultimate Hiring Panel, where we interview 3 industry experts on their hiring best practices, and “Steal This Cancellation Policy for Your Maid Service”, which is exactly what it sounds like: 3 example cancellation policies that can be copy pasta’d into a maid service whether they use ZenMaid or not.More recently we’ve added in extensive Facebook retargeting campaigns, also focused on quality content, that we use to nurture the leads we get from other channels.And finally, what we’re best known for in the industry, is our Facebook group, the ZenMaid Mastermind. We built the first widely joined community (some existed before us but were quite dead, and many have appeared since we did it) and at the 2015 industry event we were the talk of the town.More people knew us from that community than for our software though that’s changed since. It’s still where we get lots of leads, content ideas, and feedback on our software!Building the Facebook groupThe Facebook group actually happened by accident - I had a crazy idea that we could start a membership site and do it on Facebook so I launched a $19 per month subscription to our email list.Two months later and after signing up a whole 3 (THREE) members, I realized it wasn’t the time or place (in hindsight this failure was 100% on me and had nothing to do with timing or anything other than my lack of experience)We refunded the money of the members who had joined but left the group up on Facebook. Over time I started inviting people to join if they added me as a friend and were part of the industry.Fast forward a year and we had 50 members who were starting to chat regularly when an awesomely epic thread appeared. I sent an email to our list letting them know they might be interested and 50 members turned into 200 overnight. We haven’t looked back since.What was the thread? You know how they say Sex sells…One of the cleaning clients caught the team lead and a cleaner having sex in her bathroom while they were supposed to be cleaning. To make matters worse the 3rd cleaner on the team in question was the WIFE of the team lead (yes, you’re reading that right)Epic, hilarious, and very beneficial to our business.Since that time we’ve built up the group with great content and discussion as well as making it a safe place for owners to let loose and rant (my approach was to make this a place online that maid service owners could get the help they need but also relax with a glass of wine at the end of a long day and chat with their friends)These days we do regular Facebook Lives and feature many of the industry’s leading experts :-)And all of this has led to speaking engagements for myself and partnerships with almost every big name consultant in the industry. It helps a lot when we have a bigger audience than they do so at some point there was a snowball effect where most influencers chase us rather than the other way around.For example, we have a virtual summit coming up this year and, where most organizers have to chase speakers, we had 25 confirmed presenters within 24 hours of making contact with the first one.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?We recently passed the half million dollar yearly mark and will be breaking the million dollar a year barrier in late-2020.That will actually happen much sooner if we can accomplish the 3 primary goals I have in mind for ZenMaid going forward - two of which I consider to be “holy grails”1 - To extend our lead as industry leaders.It sounds weird to me to answer that but after 6 years of hard work and focus the truth is ZenMaid is now the gold standard in the house cleaning industry for software.We have some very good competition but none are focused on our industry specifically which gives us a lot of advantages that we’ve piled up over the years (for example, we now employ 4 current or former maid service owners which puts our support heads and shoulders above other software who serve our audience)2 - Negative net churn.We recently changed our pricing to grow every month with our customers as they are more successful. That change has lowered our churn significantly but we do still lose money each month from our current customers. By the end of 2019 I’d like us to actually make more from our existing customers even if we continue to lose ~5% of them each month.Software folk will recognize this as the SaaS holy grail, and we think it’s possible for ZenMaid :-)3 - Paid marketing that pays for itself (I’m not sure what the right term is for this - any readers want to let me know in the comments?)Inspired by Russel Brunson who actually makes money advertising ClickFunnels before people convert to paying software users … With our current lead costs my goal is to get a $97 or $197 info product that’s part of our email automations so that we can advertise the software and immediately recoup our advertising spend.If we can achieve #1 and #2 simultaneously the sky's the limit for ZenMaid, particularly as a bootstrapped company. It’s the holy grail of marketing in my opinion.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous? Test test test would be lesson #1 as we essentially lit our business on fire overnight about 2 years back. We had the best intentions and it absolutely turned out for the best but we burnt a lot of bridges and lost almost 30% of our revenue because we didn’t do enough testing prior to releasing a massive update on our software.Lesson #2 would be something I learned from Tim Ferriss which is “treat everyone like they can put you on the front page of the New York Times”.A lot of our best partnerships and relationships have come because I simply cared more about the actual people than our competition a few months or even years before either we could help them or they could help us. We’ve had multiple customers sign up who currently pay us thousands of dollars a month who knew me 6 years ago when the company was starting but we weren’t sophisticated enough for their businesses.On a similar note I’ve gone out of my way to help up and coming consultants, some of which became quite big years after and now refer us business left and right. And most consultants in the industry know they can approach me for tech or marketing advice if they want it. I’ll even fix problems for them (usually paying money out of my own pocket to do so) if I know it’s considerably easier for me or my team to do than for them.Lesson #3 would be to simply Not Quit. Everything in our business these days sounds like flowers and sunshine (and profits) but I can point to at least 20 situations where other entrepreneurs would have thrown in the towel. The reason we’re in business and successful today was that we never gave up when things got challenging. It’s easy to run a business when things go well, it’s what happens when the sh*t hits the fan that actually defines you and your success.What platform/tools do you use for your business?We use a lot of software as a software company so here are our daily ones:Slack - for chatting when an email is unnecessary. Group discussions and etc. I’ve seen people mention this can be a big distraction but with a remote team it’s absolutely vital to everything we doActiveCampaign - Email marketing and automation, we’re known in the industry for our email marketing and current email leads will receive messages for approximately 2 years after registering so this one’s important fo’ shoIntercom - I hate their pricing with a passion as it changes every month but they’ve done a great job of infiltrating every part of our customer process. We use them for support but also as a sort of customer dashboard (easier for us to find users with over X employees using intercom than anywhere else, for example)What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources? I listen to a ton of books these days (Audible on 3x speed) so there’s a lot to pick from but here are a couple that I think helped me a lot as I got started:The Four Hour Work Week - the lifestyle dream was always my why after reading this bookJobs by Walter Isaacson - this book completely shifted how I approached building the ZenMaid product and taking pride in many of the little details in our business I previously thought were unimportantThe Fish That Ate The Whale - Best entrepreneur [true] story I’ve ever read - everything about this man’s life is epicThe Foundation - a online course to help folks like me start software businesses. We went through this after picking up our first 5 customers and came out the other side with over 30Straight Line Persuasion - a sales course by Jordan Belfort, who everyone knows from the Wolf of Wall Street. I was already in sales and this course took my sales game to a new level. Shortly after listening to it we had our first +$200 MRR day which at the time was absolutely massive for usAdvice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?The main advice I would give to both starting entrepreneurs and even experienced one is to focus on FEEDBACK LOOPS, and increase the speed at which you go through them.A feedback loop is essentially asking yourself “How can I figure out if I’m on the right track as quickly as possible?” For ZenMaid we’ll run article headlines and outlines by our audience before we create content. We’ll do quick mockups of new features and share them first with our team, then with our champion user group on Facebook to find whether we’re on the right track to solve the problems we intend to. This has been absolutely invaluable.For a new entrepreneur, don’t fall into the classic trap of spending months building or working on something, only to find out when you launch that no one is interested. This is why I spent so much time calling maid service owners while we were developing the software and getting as much input from them as I possibly could. And this was despite the fact we “knew” what we were building.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?We try to keep our dev team lean and fast moving but on the non-tech side I’m always on the lookout for two types of people - entrepreneurial marketers and maid service owners.Most of the ZenMaid team members work part time for us and have their own businesses I’m happy to help them build. Anyone who can help me to get more leads, or convert more maid service owners into active users, is going to have my attention.For quite a few of our entrepreneurial team members their other business is an actual maid service in which they use ZenMaid. I can’t dogfood my own software anymore since exiting my maid service. But the next best thing is hiring our customers or potential customers to help with customer service, marketing, account management, and more.Where can we go to learn more?Your website: theamaricandream.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/godblessamarica Instagram: https://instagram.com/TheAmaricanDream/ If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Amar Ghose, Founder of ZenMaid‍

The problem with dealing with hurricanes, tropical storms, or other storm systems that bring a lot of rain in a little time is that you’re not just dealing with the storms. Though that’s certainly bad enough, sometimes it’s what comes after that does more damage than the actual storm.

What am I talking about? Flooding. I live in a hurricane zone, and we have a saying: hide from the winds, but run from the water. That’s because there usually very few lives lost due to damage from the high winds; most lives are lost to flooding.

On top of that, much of the extensive damage is also caused by flooding. How do you deal with the remains?

The actual storm itself rarely lasts more than a few hours but it can take weeks for a river to crest after the storm is past.

For example, the St. Johns River that runs from Vero Beach in Southeast Florida, up the middle of the state, then empties into the Atlantic Ocean in Jacksonville, is a north-flowing, lazy river. That can make for a bad situation for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s common for hurricanes to hit the southern part of the state then pound the rest of it with heavy downfalls. Since the St. Johns both starts and empties into the Atlantic Ocean, it can get a storm surge from both ends if the storm hits just right.

This Device Easily Turns Air Into Water!

Add in a foot or two of heavy rain to a state that’s not very far from sea level and you’re going to see major flooding in the dry areas, too.

So, you have the initial surge, which can push it off the banks, then you have water draining toward it from all directions inland then you have to factor in the slow rate at which it runs – .3 mph. That means that, assuming we’re lucky enough to have dry weather for a couple of weeks after the hurricane, it can take the river up to a week or so to crest; if it rains it can take even longer than that. And, since it’s lazy, it’s not receding for several days to a week.

So it’s not uncommon for a house near the St. Johns to make it through the hurricane just fine, but flood three or four days later, and stay that way for a few days. And this is a problem that happens all over the world; I just used the St. Johns because it’s one that I have first-hand experience with.

The reason that I took the time to go into this is because it’s important to understand that time plays a huge factor in things. Houses, yards, manufacturing plants, and buildings can be flooded for days, or even a week.

This opens up the door to a tremendous amount of potential toxins to flow, mix, and/or grow:

Septic waste: A septic tank may be able to handle a little bit of flooding, especially if it’s localized, but if the land is submerged for several days, it’s a different story. The leech field and even the tank itself are leaking into the floodwaters.

Fertilizers and pesticides: Again, a quick wash of floodwater may contaminate things a little, but when the water has plenty of time to sit and thoroughly saturate the soil deep down, it draws up toxins that have been soaking into the ground for months or years and spreads it far and wide.

Sewage plants: It’s practically a given that at least one sewage plant is going to suffer spillage during a flood.

Landfills: if it’s in a flood zone, it’s going to share the wonders of decomposing food, feminine hygiene products, diapers, and all the other stuff you’d typically want to make tea with. Home garbage containers also spill into floodwaters, so that’s another source of loveliness.

Dead Fish: between the contamination and the change in temperature and pH levels, there’s almost always a huge amount of dead fish that add to the contamination of the water, and also end up scattered on the banks, leaving the lovely smell – and health hazard – of dead fish strung along the shore, baking in the sun.

Mold: now that there’s a lovely, poisonous soup sitting in a building, or even on the ground, stewing in the heat, mold, and mildew start to grow. This creates another hazard that’s hazardous to you, both if you touch it and if you breathe it.

Storm debris: the winds and rushing water bring down trees and tree limbs, roof shingles, siding, fences, signs, and many other hazards that flow in the water and are left scattered behind once the water recedes, leaving physical hazards as well as chemical ones.

Now that you have an idea of just how damaging floods are, you need to know how to deal with the aftermath.

Be Prepared

Just like food is going to be scarce before the storm, cleaning supplies are going to be in demand following it. Stock up on garbage bags, bleach, rubber gloves, paper towels, rags, and whatever else you may need to clean up your area. Of course, if you prepare for a hurricane throughout the year, this may not be an issue for you.

Don’t Swim in It

After learning about all of the disgusting contents in floodwaters, the last thing you would probably think to do is swim in it. But many people don’t.

Kids of all ages like to get out and wade in the floodwaters, and even after the waters start to go down, it’s hot and people want to go swimming in the river.

Don’t. Just because the water has receded doesn’t mean that the toxins aren’t still there.

Pay attention to local EPA and Fish and Wildlife folks who monitor the level of contamination in the water and don’t go back in until they deem it safe.

Boil Water

Often, if you’re on city water, your city will issue a boil-water alert until they’re sure that the water is safe to drink again. Heed these warnings – they’re given for a reason. Usually, this is just for drinking water, but sometimes they’ll issue one for water used for hygiene as well.

It’s best to stockpile some water, both because your power may be out for awhile and because of the danger of contamination after the storm.

Test Your Soil

Though most of the time, the soil will be OK a few weeks or months after the flood, have it tested. The contaminants stay in it for a long time after the waters recede.

As a matter of fact, I once lost an entire litter of 4-week-old puppies to Parvo two weeks after a flood because the ground had been contaminated via rats’ nests that had been flooded.

As we know, rats also caused a couple of plagues, so this isn’t something to take lightly.

Wear Sturdy Shoes

By now, you’ve probably figured out that the ground is gross even after the waters recede. If you have to wade in the water, wear rubber boots that are higher than the water so that your feet don’t come into contact with water.

However, it’s best not to wade in the water at all because there are all kinds of things – boards with nails, broken glass, etc. – that you can’t see and will cut your shoes right along with your feet. Then all of those lovely contaminants are in your bloodstream.

Wear Gloves and Masks

Once you have to go in and start doing cleanup, you don’t want to touch the contaminated debris with your bare hands and you don’t want to breathe the air in enclosed spaces because of the mold and mildew. It can and will cause serious health issues once you suck it into your lungs. Medical masks are fairly cheap, especially compared to funeral expenses.

Dispose of Debris Appropriately

At the time of this writing, it’s three weeks post-Irma and there are still huge piles of yard debris lining the streets and stacked in parking lots. Follow local ordinances and be patient. If you want to dispose of it yourself rather than wait for city or county waste companies to get to you, there are often designated drop-off areas where you can haul it to.

Typically, these drop zones are for yard debris only. Drywall, fencing, shingles, flooded household goods and furniture, or any other non-bushy stuff isn’t accepted. Check for area dumps to haul building debris to, or call your municipality to find out if they’ve made special arrangements to pick up this type of waste.

Watch your Pets

Dogs and cats just love to roll in gross stuff and eat dead things that they shouldn’t.

There’s also the danger of nails, glass, and disease (see afore-mentioned Parvo) that are dangers to your animals. Horses are at particular risk, too, because of the way that their hooves are made. A nail can easily penetrate the sole, so be sure to police the yard and turnout areas where your pets will be roaming before you let them out.

Floods cause millions of dollars of damage and lives are lost both to the rushing waters and the hazards that accompany the water, both during and after the event.

Use common sense and follow precautions set forth by your local authorities. Post-disaster really isn’t a time to ignore safety directions because if warnings are issued, you can guarantee that there’s some level of risk.

That’s why you need to stay prepared and to know how to keep you and your family safe!

Have you been through floods and have suggestions, tips, or a story you’d like to share? If so, please do so in the comments section below.

This article has been written by Theresa Crouse for Survivopedia.

from Survivopedia Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

3 Most Common Mistakes People Make With Their Computers

New Post has been published on https://extraupdate.com/3-most-common-mistakes-people-make-with-their-computers/

3 Most Common Mistakes People Make With Their Computers

We all make mistakes, mainly with our computers. Hey, no longer every body is born tech savvy and no longer anyone may be laptop geeks. But there are just some mistakes we should not make. I imply there are matters that rely on a heavy understanding of a few programs or the OS we are strolling on our computers, but there are people who depend upon simple common sense.

Well with that being stated I will list three most not unusual mistakes people make with their computers. To some of you this can sound hilarious, for others they are nevertheless a trouble, so pay close attention as these need to be averted.

Mistake number one, failing to study the fundamentals of keeping your pc. We aren’t talking about starting your pc case and cleaning the motherboard and fanatics, we are speaking about a simple system of clicking on a few icons once or twice a week. We are talking approximately defragmenting your pc occasionally and retaining your folders smooth.

People tend to position all forms of matters on their computer systems, and the worst component is they don’t have any clue wherein they positioned what, which leads to lots of folders and documents scattered across your difficult drive. After some months your laptop starts of evolved to run slower and slower and you haven’t any clue why. Well, it’s far due to the fact the laptop is having issues finding the belongings you are looking for as they’re scattered, that is why you want to defragment your difficult power at least once a month. It lasts a couple of minutes if you do it often and it’ll hold your laptop pace and overall performance first-rate.

To defragment your hard power you can deploy software program like defragment seasoned which you will handiest want to setup once and overlook approximately it, it’ll do the whole lot on agenda. Or you may click on at the begin menu, pick out “all applications”-“accessories”-“gadget tools” after which click on on “disk defragmenter”.

Mistake variety, no appropriate virus, and spyware protection program installed. Now, this is genuinely a beginner mistake, simplest someone that hasn’t heard approximately internet might make any such mistake. I mean having no virus software established is like asking thunder to strike you, properly in this case it means that once some hours of surfing you may most possibly entice a virus, a trojan horse, a Trojan or other sorts of spyware and malware, not to mention that each one of your info may be accessed.

This trouble is easily solved; all you need to do is deploy virus software program like NOD or Norton or Kaspersky and Spyware software like AdWare. Once you put in them they’ll do all the paintings, there may be no need for any special information for your face.

The third fatal mistake people make with their computer systems is not shutting the computer down well. This is only that drives me crazy. I imply human beings see the movies all styles of stupid matters approximately computers like a 3D animation in UNIX! They also see people turning on and off their computers via a button, as that can be the case for a few laptops for a normal laptop that is deadly.

Just turning your pc off on a button with applications jogging can motive malfunction to your computer and in a few cases, it may damage your OS and even your hardware. If you need to close down your laptop you need to close all the packages after which visit begin menu, click flip off pc and then click at the flip of a button. After the laptop shuts down you could turn off the display or any other devices you have connected.

These are simply top three errors I had the respect of listening to first hand limitless of times. My advice, whilst you get a new pc, examine the basics, there are lots of places to achieve this, books, the internet and even the OS you’ve got comes with some simple protection and instructions for use.

Through these primary steps, college students can prepare for a satisfying profession in pc training. Researching the sector is extremely important in order to know what areas may be entered, what tiers of education exist in that vicinity, and which faculties offer training. After this initial fact is amassed college students can determine what software is for them.

The most important step earlier than a career may be started out is completing a diploma program. Students that reap a proper education may have a miles higher achievement charge inside the noticeably aggressive field of computer systems. When discovering the sector college students will find that educational education alternatives include.

Students can anticipate to find out about the data systems, computer databases, and computer networks which can be used internal organizations ordinary. The recognition of training teaches students a way to work with technological communications. Through course subjects on laptop layout, systems administration, software engineering, and more students recognize the ideas of artificial intelligence.

Training specializes in the troubleshooting tactics used to resolve technical issues. Students learn how to broaden, install, and manage laptop systems. Courses train students to paintings with pc networks, hardware structures, and software programs, which might be used to develop smoothly walking groups. Students must anticipate looking at simple records, arithmetic, and records systems.

Computers might be little to little need without powerful software. Degree packages train scholar to study, increase, and manipulate software. Education facilities on programming strategies to carry computer software up to conventional and preserve it going for walks at a fast and talented tempo. A big aspect of training includes knowledge programming strategies. Database management, software specification, and calculus are fundamental core guides that students will entire.

The viable schooling options additionally encompass database era, computer technology, and pc programming. Students that are interested in how computers paintings and what particular technological additives are used might be capable of locating diploma applications that match their expert desires and personal pursuits.

Professionals are had to work with computers and automated systems with a view to helping hold commercial enterprise and private computers. You can examine for a career in pc schooling via enrolling in an authorized faculty or college. Training may be completed at diverse stages and areas of look at. You can get hold of the accredited education you need to go into right into a successful professional with the aid of researching programs and enrolling in the one which meets your needs. Options range from a certificates level to a doctoral degree level in pc training allowing you to acquire the training you desire.

Educational options for pc education include acquiring an approved certificates or degree. You can sign up for the program of your desire to earn a certificate, in addition to a companion, bachelor, master, or doctoral degree diploma. The specialized region of taking a look at as well as the possible careers will depend upon the level of education being pursued. Each degree will require a positive quantity of education. Certificate packages frequently require numerous weeks to 365 days and partner diploma programs may be completed in years. Bachelor tiers usually take four years of accredited training to earn. Master and doctoral degree stages can require an extra two to four years of training to acquire. You can sign up within the application this is right so that you can begin the schooling procedure.

Manhattan is an island that’s part of New York City, located within the kingdom of New York, United States of America. Manhattan is populated heavily with a lively player in sectors of culture, industrial and economic sports in the entire globe. The headquarters of United Nations is located in Manhattan and there are also many essential radio, television and telecommunication organizations operating here. Manhattan is frequently called the economic engine of New York City for the truth that Manhattan provides greater than 66% jobs of the whole metropolis. Manhattan is the biggest of all relevant business districts in the complete United States of America with New York Stock Exchange, American Stock Exchange, New York Board of Trade, New York Mercantile Exchange, and NASDAQ.

With enterprise sports on such an extensive degree, the position of computer systems can be not noted. The computer technologies have to help on the way to run your organizations greater smoothly, not create hurdles and slow it down. Your enterprise will surely gradual down if right laptop repairs and preservation is not supplied on your computer systems. Manhattan has a number of the leading corporations which provide repair, aid, and offerings to all the regions within the state of New York. These Manhattan laptops restore organizations offer with one of a kind sort of offerings along with on-web page maintenance for hardware associated troubles, off-website upkeep for intensive repair services, far flung maintenance for software program troubleshooting, and so forth.

The Manhattan pc restore organizations are staffed with certified and experienced specialists who’ve information in extraordinary regions associated with enterprise help pc repairs, IT consulting offerings, networking engineering and networking infrastructures. These groups are busy in imparting offerings to local businesses, army groups, authorities businesses and enterprise initiatives of corporate levels having enterprise surroundings.

Most regular Manhattan computer repair services include: hardware maintenance and enhancements, software program installations and improvements, far away repairs, on-site maintenance, wi-fi networking setup and set up, statistics backups, information transfers, virus elimination, anti-virus protection and guards, conventional guide, new servers, software improvement, hardware installation and configurations, software program configurations, IT services, IT assist, pc optimization, configuring personal pc begin ups, enhancing laptop performances through making its pace faster and making sure easy go with the flow of operations, disk cleaning issues, registry upkeep, solving DLL errors and exe errors, and plenty of others.

If you need to navigate via your pc easily and quickly and need to get admission to your favorite applications with out a lot of trouble then you will be in search of personal laptop start up a configuration that is a distinctiveness of the Manhattan computer repair companies. If a private pc has a proper start up configuration then it’s going to allow your laptop to run even faster and extra smoothly than ever earlier than, that is what the most of the people in Manhattan are seeking today. That has to turn out to be the only reason for some of the repair agencies in Manhattan emphasize on personal laptop start up configuration.