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#submergings log
submergings · 1 year
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hobonichi 2023 // march logs
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elegyfortherings · 1 year
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Slide Reel Icons
Outer Wilds - Echoes of the Eye (2021) Mobius Digital Games
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frankensteincest · 3 months
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silversiren1101 · 1 year
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When one person responsible for nearly all of the mysterious drama in a relatively small fandom is finally revealed... everyone affected comes forward with their own personal receipts and their story starts to fall apart and the real one comes together... Lol. Lmao.
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bloobluebloo · 9 months
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*cleaning my house*
“Ah fuck why do the hand callouses have to peel NOW”
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godslittlesadge · 2 years
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aether and paimon when they stumble into the echoes of long-forgotten civilizations that hold immense historical importance
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davyjoneslockr · 4 days
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Few earthly delights quite like Jersey Mikes sub sandwich made by someone seeking to drown their creation in oil and vinegar
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dilatorywriting · 1 year
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Heroes vs. Villains : Octavinelle
Gender Neutral Reader x Octavinelle vs. Rielle Word Count: 1.5k
Summary: Woe to the Ramshackle Prefect, being caught up in the drama between the Disney Villains and their respective heroes. Octavinelle Version. ie. The Tweels' idea of fun is torture and an unsuspecting, red-headed, hero steps in to save the day
[PART 1] [PART 2]
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You were floating contentedly on a soft, yellow, raft. Enjoying the sun on your face and the gentle lap of the waves against your toes.
And then you were not.
And who was to blame for your sudden descent into the swirling, shadowed, riptides of the bay? Well, a pair of sharp smiles popping in and out of your water-logged vision was proof enough. Go swimming with Jade and Floyd, Azul had said. They’ll genuinely appreciate it, he’d said.
And what if they kill me? You’d said. Eat me? Drown me? Fill my swimsuit with sand and rocks, and then leave me at the bottom of the ocean?
Oh, they like you too much for that, he’d huffed, something sour and resigned twisting at his mouth. They may just… play with you a bit.
CLUNK CLUNK went the first of many stones as Floyd unloaded his mucky haul over your flailing shoulders. You could see the bubbles of his laughter swirling through the water, soon joined by the more subtle froth of Jade’s chuckles.
You were half-way through planning the best sermon to mortify Azul at your funeral when a strong pair of decidedly-not-eel-like arms wrapped around your torso and hauled you back to the surface.
“Are you alright?!” A pause as you hacked up a bucket’s worth of salt water all over your savior’s shoulders. “Well, clearly you’re not okay—but let’s just—I mean—I’ll take you back to shore!”
And so, you were returned to the warm, sandy, beach curtesy of a kind, sun kissed, stranger with a surprisingly good backstroke.
Once you had your feet properly back on the ground and had vomited mouthful after mouthful of murky water from your gut, you finally had a chance to observe your hero in all his glory.
He looked about your age, but there was a self-assuredness to him that would normally either speak of many years lived or many years catered to. Judging by his goofy but sugar-sweet smile and the swim trunks embroidered with what looked like actual gold threading, you were going to guess it was the latter. His eyes were as blue as the water he’d pulled you from, and lit with a mischievousness that was placid enough not to set your hackles on edge. The swoop of red hair atop his head was shockingly bright (and shockingly well styled, considering he’d also been submerged in that sticky seawater just moments before). Not even Ace’s awful mess of a hairdo could have prepared you for the blinding crimson locks curling softly against the breeze.
“Thanks,” you managed to wheeze out, hands on your knees and practically doubled over entirely. God, you were going to murder those stupid twins. Or at least dump all of Jade’s mushrooms down the toilet. And maybe get Grim to piss on Floyd’s basketball shoes if he wasn’t too much of a coward.
“Of course,” he smiled, gentle in the way that one may approach a spooked animal. Frankly it was a bit insulting, but perhaps it was just that having lived so long amidst your beloved, heathenish, classmates, politeness of any kind came across as suspect. “Do you need me to get the healer? Or—excuse me—the doctor? Yes?”
“I don’t think I’m that dead yet,” you mumbled and gave yourself a whack on the chest for good measure. “But I guess only time will tell, huh?”
Your savior looked properly startled, and you had to remind yourself once again that normal people did not laugh off horrific brushes with mortality. Normal people showed empathy, and compassion, and wouldn’t have dragged you to the bottom of the goddamn lagoon in the first place.
Sunshine-Boy shook himself out of whatever funk had swept through his brain quickly enough, and he stepped towards you with another one of those insanely luminescent smiles.
“Well, despite the unfortunate circumstances, it is my very great pleasure to meet you. My name is Rielle Tidal!” he beamed, and swooped into an odd sort of half-bow.  It looked very much like someone who’d only ever vaguely heard about the concept of a curtsy, and was trying to pull one for themselves. His lips quirked into a grin that was so wide and white it was practically seared into your retinas. “Youngest Prince of Atlantica.”
You just nodded, hoping it looked polite and not put-upon. At this point, you’d had more than enough of second princes, and crowned-princes, and so-rich-they-might-as-well-be-princes. Youngest princes probably wouldn’t be much better.  
“A pleasure,” you huffed and spat a sea-soaked wad of hair from your mouth.
Rielle’s inhumanely radiant smile dimmed under your lack of enthusiasm and he tried again, shoving his hand back out for you to shake. You did, if only because his dejected expression made you feel like he’d caught you kicking puppies or something. You managed to gurgle your name out past your salt-slick tongue and the burning in your lungs. He repeated it slowly, carefully, like he was memorizing the way it felt in his mouth.
“Well then! Are you feeling a little better now?” he asked, genuine worry swimming in his blue eyes.
“I don’t think I’m drowning anymore,” you sighed, and gave one, last, proper, hack for good measure.
“That’s good at least!” he laughed. It was such a strange laugh—not in a bad way. Just… weirdly perfect. Tinkling like bells and so warm it nearly wiped away the heavy chill that had seeped into your limbs. The most perfectly-perfect laugh that you had ever head. The kind of sound that poets could write endlessly about. After spending months with people whose giggles sounded like the rumbling of chainsaws or the underscore of a horror movie, hearing something so lovely and normal was… unsettling.
Out of the corner of your eye, you saw the tops of two very familiar heads crest above the waves.
You fought the very strong urge to stick your tongue out and flip them the bird.
Rielle noticed your change in focus and his sapphire eyes tracked out to the pair of twins bobbing up and down menacingly in the water.
“Are those your friends?” he asked.
“’‘Friends’ is a strong word,” you grit out.
“Is it?” he gaped. “Oh no! I’ve been using it all the time! Do you think I’ve been upsetting people?!”
You had to physically clap your jaw closed. Was this a real person? Actually? Could a creature so pure and bubbly actually exist in the same universe where someone like Azul could charge upwards of fifteen thaumarks for a single drink?
“I’m… sure you’re fine,” you placated.
Immediately he brightened. “Oh! That’s good! So can we be friends then?”
“You want to be friends. With me?” you deadpanned, shocked.
His cheeks bloomed a lovely shade of pink that somehow managed to not clash horrendously with his bottle-red hair.
“W-Well, maybe we could—”
“Awww~” came a horribly shrill, familiar, drawl. “Did Shrimpy make a new friend, hmm?”
“Now, Prefect,” followed an even worse voice. The one that had lulled you in once-upon-a-time with its deceptive politeness and professionalism. “You of all people should know how unfair it would be to attempt expanding your social circle further. What with all your commitments.”
“Who’s gonna’ scrub dishes with me, Shrimpy?” Floyd whined, draping himself over one shoulder. “Or make sure I get to basketball practice on time?”
“And what ever would we do without the Lounge’s most beloved executive assistant?” Jade hummed, pressing himself into the other.
“Suffer,” you spat, and Jade’s pointed smirk curled into a grin so sharp that you were a bit worried you were about to lose a chunk of your arm.
“Aw, see?” Floyd cried, tugging your closer to his soaking chest. “You don’t wanna’ be friends with this lil’ Shrimp, Princey. It’s mean.”
You fought the urge to bite his fingers. Prince Rielle was taking in the entire situation with a look of abject horror. And also… recognition? You could see his blue eyes narrow, as if in deep thought. And he was looking over Floyd and Jade’s ugly, snarling, mugs like if he squinted hard enough, maybe he could figure out just what exactly these two demon spawn were meant to be.
“Anways!” Jade smiled. “We ought to be going.”
“But you’re still soaked!” Rielle objected, turning back to you with a furrowed brow. “And you almost just drowned!”
“Ah. Did you?” Jade hummed, arching a brow at you. You stomped on his foot. He didn’t react.
“At least take this,” Rielle offered, rifling around in one of the discarded tote bags in the sand to produce a giant, fluffy towel. “And, uhm, maybe this too.” He pressed something small and silver into your hands. “To help brush your hair out, at least.”
“This is a fork,” you frowned.
“It’s a dinglehopper,” he corrected, looking horribly confused. And you decided to take back all the nice things you’d been thinking about him earlier.
“Well, thank you then. I think,” you huffed, accepting the ‘dinglehopper’ with as much grace as you could.
“I’ll be seeing you!” Rielle chirped, as Jade took one arm and Floyd took the other—bodily hauling you in the other direction.
“No, I don’t think you will,” Jade beamed, looking positively venomous.
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thyme-in-a-bubble · 8 months
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the lake
lilac, chapter five
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a/n: this chapter made me scream so much... both for horny reasons AND for emotional reasons...
summary: “oh my god,” you hastily spun around, droplets dancing down your spine as you turned it towards the familiar logger, “how long have you been standing there?”
warnings: lumberjack!frank castle x reader, lumberjack AU, pete castiglione era, past domestic violence, crazy ex trope, slow burn, swimming in a lake, unintentional flashing, crying
word count: 2688
∼ gentle reminder that feedback, but especially reblogs are the way you support writers on here ∽
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There are those comforting places that you go to in your mind when you try to fall asleep. Sometimes it’s a fantasy land from a novel, but for you, it had always been this forest. 
It was frankly kind of incredible how well you still remembered everything from the winding paths to the specific swaying trees. 
Tilting your chin up, you tried to catch sight of the birds you heard chirping to each other and whistled right back at them, just as you did as a child, the action purely pavlovian, causing you to smile after realising you’d done it. 
Glancing back down at the trail ahead of you, your grin only grew as you realised what the towering tree you were now nearing was. 
There was this legend around the parts of Dunbrook saying that if you and your sweetheart carved your initials into the thick trunk of this exact tree, whose branches had a wingspan so wide that some came down to kiss the wide lake it grew adjacent to, then you’d stay together forever in perfect happiness. 
Now was it true? Probably not. But that fact hadn’t squashed your childish wish of doing it one day. 
Pressing your palm against the grand trunk, you traced a few of the scratched letters and hearts scattered about. Exhaling slowly, you felt the warm rays of the sun, streaming through the treetops above, kiss your exposed skin that poked out from the breezy dress you wore. 
Giving the bark one last little tap as a goodbye, you then bent down and plucked one of the white flowers that sprang out of the mossy forest floor, rolling it only briefly between your fingers before sliding it into your hair, right over your left ear. 
You didn’t get much further before the glistening surface of the lake became too entrancing to resist and the next thing you knew, you’d tossed all of your clothing over a low-hanging branch and jumped in. 
Giggles bubbled out of you as you swam through the mild water, swiftly twirling onto your back in order to float, peering up at the clouds as a nostalgic melody tickled your memory, coaxing you to gently hum it to the skies above. 
Though suddenly, a clatter found your ears, startling your relaxed form enough to whirl to a stance in order to find the source. 
A few logs rolled across the bank, down towards the water, though in following their trail, your hands quickly shot up to cover your chest, as you spotted the person who had dropped them. 
“Oh my god,” you hastily spun around, droplets dancing down your spine as you turned it towards the familiar logger, “how long have you been standing there?”
“Oh, fuck, I–…” you heard Pete curse, “I swear I wasn’t looking.”
Utterly mortified, you shrieked, “what are you even doing out here in the middle of the forest?”
“I live here, uhm, right over there,” you briefly glanced over your shoulder to see him stiffly gesturing to the previously undetected log cabin not too far from the water, his eyes firmly averted and boring holes into the leaves looming above. 
“Oh, fuck my life…” escaped your lungs like a muffled cry, before you peeked back at his flustered visage to shout, “can you turn around? Please?”
“Uh, yeah,” he obliged instantly, “of course,” turning his broad back to your partly submerged form.
The water sloshed around your legs as you made your way to shore, the branch where your outfit was draped over, as if it was a clothesline, curled much closer to his figure than you’d realised. 
“I’m really sorry,” you uttered as you hurried to tug your dress back over your head, “I didn’t know you lived here,” though the linen quickly darkened as it began to cling to the wetness of your skin, “I just used to come up here as a kid and back then no one lived in there,” cheeks aflame, you promptly decided to keep your arms tangled over your chest as you glanced down to discover your pebbly nipples poke clean through the now much sheerer fabric. 
“Please do not apologise, ma'am,” he cautiously turned back around, never looking at you directly as he sighed, head hazily shaking atop his shoulders, “I should have–, I’m sorry…” a desperate offer then forced its way out of his lungs, “do you want a towel? Please let me give you a towel.”
“Uhm,” you blinked, toes curling into the damp moss, “a-alright, thank you.”
“It’s just, uh,” gaze ever averted, his broad palm awkwardly tapped the top of his thigh before pointing towards his home, “inside, so…”
“Yeah…” you nodded your burning features, swiftly following his long stride as he marched up to the hut, mastering all the steps in one leap as he hurried up onto the worn porch in order to nearly rip the front door off its hinges.
Frozen just shy past the threshold, you watched as Pete determinedly darted to fetch the offered item from the bathroom, leaving your eyes to explore the interior till he returned. 
It was oddly comforting in its haphazard decor. Kinda like a vacation home you nearly never visited, everything was mismatched and simply there for the functionality of it all, yet from the raw log walls to the rays of light streaming in through the small window over the round, steel sink in the kitchenette, it all sent a warm flutter throughout your belly, evening out a bit of the frantic nerves that were jostling around in there. 
“Here,” his return managed to startle you slightly, your eyes haven been glued in the opposite direction as he came back holding out a navy towel for you to grasp. 
“Thank you,” you finally uncrossed your arms and seized the terrycloth material, offering him a sheepish smile in return. 
Leaning back against the humble kitchen counter, Pete’s eyes raked across the woodgrain of the ceiling, surely counting all of the spiral eyes that dotted where branches used to be, while you gently patted the towel over your dripping form. 
Stepping further into the quaint cabin, you bashfully found yourself asking, “so, you live here?” earning a low grunt in confirmation as you carefully took a look around, “it’s nice, cosy…” the additional words came out in a tone that made you cringe lightly to yourself.
As you finished squeezing your hair lightly in the towel, the stout bookcase, settled to the right between the sofa and the unlit fireplace, caught your wandering eye. Draping the cloth around your shoulders like a blanket, you crouched down before the hardbacks, a breathy giggle uncontrollably bubbled out of your form as you spotted the unexpected titles that filled up his collection.
“What?”
“Sorry, it’s just–,” you glanced back at Pete’s cocked head and clasped your hand over your lips, “I don’t know what I imagined your bookshelf to look like, but I definitely didn’t peg you as a lover of the classics.” 
“Hmm,” he simply hummed, the rumble too neutral for you to decipher the unspoken meaning within it. 
Turning your vision back to the novels, you ran a finger over the spine of a tattered copy of Persuasion, “kinda didn’t imagine you being a reader at all…” 
Bottom lip captured in between your teeth as you rose back up to your feet, virtually feeling the rugged man’s stare fixed on the back of your head before you heard his low timbre break the silence, “do you want a cup of coffee?” you turned to meet his gaze, “it’s not like the stuff at the inn, but it’s something.”
Taken slightly aback, a faint smile bloomed on your lips, “I’d love some,” and you pulled out one of the wobbly chairs at the small dining table. Your eyes followed his brawny form as he snatched up the thermos that already stood on the counter, hooking his fingers in the handles of two of the mugs that hung on the wall before he sat down opposite you, pouring out the dark beverage into your cup before his own, “thank you,” you wrapped your fingers around the enamel mug, the warmth radiating straight into your bones. 
Lowering the cup after taking a sip, you stared down into the murky liquid, the embarrassment still stinging in your belly as you counted the faint coffee suds settled on the surface. 
Snapping you out of your trance, Pete’s broad palm suddenly came into view, his fingers swiftly reaching out for the hair dangling by your chin. Bewilderment fogging up your features, you nearly reeled back, before his fleeting touch faltered, briefly presenting to you the forgotten white flower that you’d previously stuck behind your ear in order to soothe your slight panic.
A giggle then bubbled out of you as he placed the small floret down between the two of you in the middle of the table. Blinking up at him only seemed to make it worse, “I’m sorry, I just–,” your hands clasped your face even though you knew you’d never be able to hide your mortified flush no matter how hard you tried, “I was about to say that I feel like you’ve seen me naked, but that’s exactly what happened, so…” a laugh shook throughout your belly, “you know, it wasn’t even really my idea, or well, the swimming part was, but not the spending my day out here, that was my dad’s. He thought I needed a break, so here I am, accidentally flashing you…” 
His restless forefinger glided over the smooth surface as he held his steaming mug, “if it makes you feel any better, I didn’t really see anything.”  
Your eyes twitched, unsure if you were to believe him, “it does, a bit…” though still appreciating the gesture.
Casting your glance out the window, you watched a moment as the birch branches swayed in the wind, the rigidity porch in plain view as you spotted a forgotten mug on a long wooden bench, surely one that once contained the same beverage you sipped on now. 
“Can I ask you something?” you heard Pete enquire after a few moments had passed.
“Of course.”
Carefully, he took a second to gather the courage needed to ask you cautiously, “are you okay?”
Chuckling lightly, you rolled your eyes, “yes, I’m alright. I’m sorry to tell you, Pete, but you’re not the first ever human being to see me naked,” you waited for him to mirror your laugh, but his expression only stayed as gloom as before. 
“I wasn’t–…” he exhaled deeply before repeating, “are you okay?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” you glanced back at him, your eyes wandering over the hint of age speckled throughout his beard.
“I just, uh,” he uttered warily, “I noticed some things.”
“Things?” the tightness of your furrowed brows dissolved as you watched him vigilantly gesture to your arms, exactly where your bruises had healed not too long before, “oh… o-oh…” your voice shook slightly as the realisation settled in, “uhm… did you tell anyone else?” you heard your paranoid words filled the air, “did you tell my dad?”
“No,” his head gently shook from side to side, eyes gingerly glued to your reaction. 
“Can you maybe not tell him?” you felt your bottom lip tremble, “I never told him about it or even him before and I just don’t want him to–…” if you’d been standing up then you might have tumbled over from how your head spun, “since he never knew, it kinda feels like, every once and a while, like it never even happened to begin with. Even if it’s just for a second, I can pretend that I’m just a kid again, with my dad and that I never had to grow up and be with–…”
Tilting his head in an attempt to catch your rattled vision, he promised, “I won’t tell him.”
“Thank you,” like a dam, the tears came flooding out, “fuck, I’m sorry,” every nerve across your skin felt utterly raw, each little hair standing up in alarm, “I don’t know why I’m crying…”
“It’s okay,” you struggled to meet his gentle glance, “have you not talked to anyone about it?”
“No… it always felt weird to tell my dad about the people that I dated and then when it turned into something more, something else, then, I don’t know, I just couldn’t… and I didn’t really have anyone else in the city… or I guess I did once, but Preston,” you sucked in a painful breath as you pushed through, continuing to share, “he didn’t really like them, so at some point, I stopped talking to them all together…”
Tears collided with the wooden tabletop, leaving little sombre stains in its wake, you heard the man sitting across from you offer carefully, “if you want someone, a friend, to talk to, then know that I’m always here.” 
“Really?” you blinked up at him, raising a shaking hand to wipe your cheek. 
“Yeah,” he exhaled solemnly, looking back at you in a manner that caught you off guard by how, for a lack of better words, safe it made you feel, even amidst all the chaos.  
“Thank you,” you sobbed, “you know, he wasn’t like that to begin with, he genuinely wasn’t, I really don’t want you to think that I just have a thing for abusive assholes. He was charming. Did everything a girl could dream of for her first love. I think I genuinely loved him, he was perfect and it happened so slowly, gradually over such a long time that I didn’t even really notice that he had changed, or maybe just dropped the façade, till he was holding me down, cutting off my air supply, just because he had a bad day at the office… I even tried to break up with him a few times, but it never worked… last time I tried I ended up with a ring on my finger…”
“Does he know that you’re here?” 
“No, don’t think so. I was so hungry for a fresh start back when I first met him that I barely told him about where I grew up, just that it was in a tiny mountain town and that my dad owned an inn… I mean, not that he ever really cared about that kind of stuff… guess I was a bit embarrassed about where I came from in comparison to him. He grew up on the upper east side, had always been used to having servants and that kind of stuff around him and I very much didn’t… I remember thinking he was like a prince back when I met him. I just couldn’t believe he loved me. But he sure did, does… he was set on me, wanted nothing more than to mould me into his perfect little–…” 
Your voice broke as you caught Pete's woeful eye, “I’m really sorry that you had to meet him,” he uttered genuinely. 
Tears welling up in your eyes once more, it took you a bit before you managed to say, “yeah, me too,” forcing your eyes up towards the ceiling, you attempted to compose the uncontrollable sobs that rumbled out of your lungs, “I really hate that game of what if this thing didn’t happen or what if I learnt this lesson earlier. It never fixes anything, never makes it better. All it can do is make you even more depressed, you know?” 
“Yeah,” he breathed distantly as you wiped the corner of the towel draped over your form across your glistening cheeks, “I know exactly what you mean…” 
Bloodshot eyes, though foggy, still managed to notice the shift in his features as Pete stared down his half-empty mug of coffee, “hey,” you reached out to lightly rest your hand over where his lied on the table, “I’m really sorry too.”
Eyes flickering up to meet yours, a light crease formed between his dark brows, “for what?”
“For whatever happened to make you look at me the way that you are right now… whatever it is, I’m really sorry…”
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© 2023 thyme-in-a-bubble 
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marlynnofmany · 3 months
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Decoy
Zhee stopped abruptly on the raised pathway, making one of many bug-alien hisses. This one was quiet and annoyed. The annoyed part didn’t narrow things down much for me, since he found many things irritating and wasn’t shy about telling the world about it (whichever world we were on at the time), but the quietness seemed significant.
I was glad I hadn’t bumped into him, and not just because he had the package we were supposed to deliver strapped to his back. (I’d volunteered to hold the thing, but he insisted that I keep my hands free since I only had two feet and was that much more likely to fall into the swamp. I’d wanted to argue that, but didn’t).
“What’s wrong?” I asked in an undertone.
“Them,” Zhee hissed, peering around a tower of sprouting plants and decaying wood that had once been a massive tree. The path curved off in that direction, blocked from view.
I crept forward for a look. Voices murmured. Then something splashed, and people were complaining loudly.
There on the path ahead of us were three Mesmers, all varying shades of gem-bedecked green to Zhee’s purple, waving their pincher arms about in irritation while a Frillian stood to one side with a fancy hovercart full of supplies and a long-suffering expression. The water rippled next to a half-submerged log. I wondered if one of them had thrown something or if a local creature had jumped in. Two of the Mesmers were holding bits of tech that I didn’t recognize from a distance.
Zhee was still hissing. “Why are they here, of all places? Blocking my way instead of getting on each other’s nerves literally anywhere else?”
“Who are they?” I asked. They hadn’t spotted us yet, busy as they were with complaining more than Zhee ever did.
“Rich idiots from my hatching year,” he grumbled. “They are not going to make this interaction pleasant.”
I looked around the swamp, with all its murky water and sparse trees. “We can’t really go around, can we?” The walkway was the only sign of civilization. While it was plenty wide for people to pass each other, even with hovercarts, it was the only one in eyesight. There weren’t even stepping stones.
“No,” Zhee said. “Wading through the water wouldn’t do us any good; we’d still be in sight.”
“I’m not even sure it’s shallow enough to wade through,” I said, eyeballing the water. It had all manner of algae and alien moss floating in it.
“It is,” Zhee told me. “I’ve delivered here before. But they’ll see us either way.”
“What are they even doing?” I asked. It seemed too much to hope that they’d just leave if we waited a few minutes.
Zhee jabbed a pincher into the soft bark of the stump. “Nature photography. Looking for rare specimens with their expensive cameras. Probably on the trail of a Shrieking Tatterwing or Hooting Fungus.”
“There’s a fungus that hoots?”
Zhee angled his antennae into a frown at me. “It’s an animal. Just looks like fungus.”
“Got it.”
Neither of us moved for a moment, just watching the trio of spangly birdwatchers and their assistant who probably wasn’t paid enough to deal with them. They really did argue a lot. As far as I could tell, the three of them were having two different debates at once: whose fault it was that the water creature had fled, and whether the glimpse of a wingbeat in the distance was worth leaving the path to investigate.
That gave me an idea. “Hey, are they likely to go off after a sound they haven’t heard before? Or something they can’t quite place?”
Zhee gave me a look. “Are you thinking of imitating an animal call from your planet?”
“Yeah. Either verbally or—” I leaned over the water to pluck something like a blade of grass from a spray of plantlife. “I can make a pretty sharp bird call with this.”
Zhee’s alien face regarded me, tilting slightly. “How?”
“Like this.” I stretched it taut between my thumbs, in the way I’d learned to do as an outdoorsy kid. There was just enough of a gap between my knuckles. With all my fingers spread wide, I blew through the gap, and it made a piercing shriek that could have been a bird.
The Mesmers looked around; Zhee and I shrank back out of sight. I adjusted the grass and tried again, this time getting a warbly call that sounded like a duck with a stuffy nose.
When I held my silence, I heard a heated debate over what kind of creature had made the sounds, and whether they came from the same one or two different beasts. But the argument wrapped up quickly with the reminded that they really were here to find a Hooting Fungus.
“Knew it,” Zhee said.
“This is worth a shot, then.” I let the grass flutter to the pathway and laced my fingers together into another childhood favorite. With my hands cupped around nothing and as airtight as I could make them, I again blew into the gap between my thumbs, this time just the top half. The air circled through into a satisfying hoot.
They got very excited at that.
“I told you! I caught a glimpse over there!”
“It sounded like it came from more over this way; it must have moved!”
“Hurry, before it moves farther out!”
Two splashes, then a third, and I was grinning in delighted surprise at Zhee. The quiet burble of a hover engine reached my ears as the Frillian took the sensible route off-road after them.
After a few moments, we peeked around the stump. There they went, off into the murk, complaining and shushing each other and aiming their cameras upward. Soon enough they were out of sight behind more trees.
Zhee stepped forward. “Well,” he said. “That was shockingly successful.”
“You’re welcome,” I said happily.
We strolled along the empty pathway, with plenty of time to get our delivery there in time.
Zhee said, “You should make those noises on the ship when no one’s watching. See if they think an animal got in.”
I looked at him in amusement. “You’re only saying that because you already know what it is.”
“Yes,” he said haughtily, which made me laugh.
“I’ll consider it,” I said, already thinking about what other animal calls I could bring out when my alien crewmates least expected.
~~~
The ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. More to come! And I am currently drafting a sequel!
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submergings · 1 year
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a month in my hobonichi // february 2023 💘
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florencemtrash · 3 months
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Brown Eyed Beauty — Lucien x Reader
Fond, childhood memories are few and far between for Lucien. But he's reminded of every good thing when he looks at you.
Author's note: DAMNIT! Brown eyes deserve to be treated with the same tender reverence as any other color. This one is for all the brown eyed beauties (and Lucien lovers) out there.
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There was a hidden stream Eris had taken him fishing once, back when he was a stringy child with two eyes and soft hands.
“You’ll need to build up your strength and the calluses on your palms, then the fish won’t be able to slip out of your grasp so easily.” Eris told him, standing up to his knees in the gentle current, pant legs rolled up with the ends dripping. His body was slim as a reed, but strong, and on the cusp of adulthood. Pale bruises were scattered across a pale, freckled chest, purple, green, and yellow.
Lucien watched with bated breath as Eris tracked a shiny, silver-pink body darting between the rocks, his eyes untricked by the bending of sunlight as it dove into the water. 
There. 
Eris leaned down and dipped his hands into the stream with lightning swiftness. “Gotcha.” 
His hands broke the water. The salmon writhed, fighting with every gasping breath and splashing water onto Eris’s already soaking trousers.
“Here.” Eris stretched his arms out to where Lucien stood in the shallows. The salmon was giving up, the rhythm of its whipping body slowing. “It’s tired. Try holding it now.” 
Lucien held on for five seconds before the tail slapped him across the face, startling him so much he dropped the fish and its scaly, sleek body began to race downstream.
“No!” Lucien dove for it, red hair slipping under clear waters. The current was stronger than he expected, or maybe it was just that he was weaker than his brother. He felt something pulling downward, keeping him submerged.
His first response was to panic, to flail his arms and legs out uselessly. But then he stopped. It was peaceful down here, the water so clear that he could catch every grain of sand splashed over brick-brown rocks like stars. Tiny fishes, silky smooth with beady eyes, darted in and out of crevices. Light behaved differently underwater, fragmenting and casting lovely golden shapes on stones the color of fresh-pressed coffee. 
Here it was calm. Here was a place where Beron’s power couldn’t touch him. Here he was safe. 
A strong hand grasped the back of his shirt, hauling him up soaking and sputtering with a brackish taste sliding down his throat. 
The bruises on Eris’s cheekbones stood out on his pale skin, the fright in his eyes turning to anger. 
“What the hell were you thinking?!” Eris yelled and all but tossed his sopping body onto a yellowing patch of grass. 
“I’m sorry,” Lucien mumbled. He sat, shivering in the Autumn chill until Eris caught another salmon and assembled sticks in a neat circle of sand, lighting it with a snap of his slender fingers. 
“Tomorrow we’ll come back,” Eris promised as Lucien sank his teeth into the juicy, pink flesh. The skin was perfectly crisp and grease dribbled down his chin hot and slick. Eris wiped it away with a soft swatch of moss. “I’ll teach you to swim properly.” 
He didn’t seem to mind the descending cold, and for that Lucien was grateful. It meant he would get to keep Eris’s shirt until his was finished drying on the cracked log. 
But unbeknownst to them, Beron had come home earlier than anticipated with their other brothers. Eris was whipped ten times for leaving the Forest House unattended and Lucien was locked in his room for three days. They never went back to that stream — at least not together — and Lucien learned to swim on his own in less forgiving waters. 
Lucien still clung onto the memories of that day. Good memories from his childhood were far and few between. 
“You’re staring again.” You sighed contentedly and shifted in the little cradle of earth you’d claimed for youself. Yellowing, waist-high grasses swayed above you, occasionally bowing down with slender fingers to tickle your cheeks. A hundred yards away the Sidra tumbled over stones, rolled onto gray-sand beaches. The air tasted of salt and seaweed. Crisp, tangy, clear. 
“How did you know?” Lucien asked, and you could hear the gentle caress of his smile in the words.
You cracked open your eyes against the sun’s assault high in the midafternoon sky. Sure enough, Lucien was staring at you, golden eye whirring. You ran a languid finger down the bond, light and airy as a kiss. He braced his arms by your head, sinking down until his body was pressed flush against yours. 
You smiled. “I can feel it. It’s my special talent.”
“Oh?” Lucien chuckled.
“I’ve cultivated it over the years. A product of having a brute like you chase after me like a hound goes after a fox.” Not that you’d ever gone far. 
Scarlet strands of hair slipped out of the braid you’d arranged hours ago. They hung around his elegant, scarred face like liquid fire, casting a warm glow onto his already tanned skin. You tucked them back behind his sharp ears. Traced the curve of his bones until he was leaning into your touch.
“You wound me,” he murmured, kissing your palms. 
You blushed, feeling the brush of his full lips against your sensitive skin. “I didn’t mean it.” 
He smiled — a crooked, boyish smile. “I know.” 
He looked into your coffee eyes. The light bent differently when they touched your irises, curving around the bends like honey, cutting amber crescents at the edges of their rich color. You closed and opened them slowly, letting the light pour in like cream into coffee, swirling and setting them aflame. 
Lucien was back in that stream. The world was still. There was nothing that could hurt him. Just clarity, peace, and the riverbed glittering beneath him. 
“I love you, Y/n.”
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silverskye13 · 1 year
Text
Being the universe's smartest super computer still made for a derpy, non-functional person. It was really easy for people to get caught up in the Cool Sci-Fi Shenanigans of cyborgs and robots and forget how awesome and powerful organic, sentient life was.
For example: Xisuma has a perfect memory. If someone gave him a date and a time, he could scan back through his memory logs, replay recorded data and footage, and tell you the exact recipe he used for those vegan cookies that one time six years ago. He knows the ambient temperature of a froglight that's been submerged underwater for six hours, three minutes and twenty-nine seconds. He can rewind a recorded memory, pause the time lapse, and watch in slow motion as Grian breaks a stone block at spawn with his bare hands because he was bored during their intro-season speech.
However, recorded data takes up a massive amount of memory on a standard hard drive when you record everything you see as a passive function, and all of it has to be purged by hand, regularly, just so Xisuma can maintain the memory needed for daily functions. He's tried writing algorithms to do it for him, but even the best pattern recognition software can't account for his momentary preferences. What differentiates his favorite sunrise from any other? If he were human, he could program some kind of learning software using data from tables tied to the output of different brain chemicals and electrical pulses that most frequently line up with a formative memory -- but if he were human he wouldn't be making a program like that in the first place, now would he?
It's one of those long, long days of trawling through recorded data. It would be shorter if he would just parse through the most recent memories, but he likes keeping long-term memory storage at exactly thirty percent of his total data storage, and he's been resting at thirty-four percent for the past month. Putting off the inevitable. It's just, there's been a lot of stuff to remember the past few weeks, and it's hard to choose what to get rid of sometimes. He's started deep-diving through old data, walking down memory lane. He has to be careful, some of this data is important, tied intricately with the complex spider algorithm that forms his memory data access system.
Click! Click! Click!
"What are you thinking, X?"
The screen that makes up the lion's share of X's face organizes itself into a smile, lights flickering on in the nanoseconds it takes him to process the memory he's watching and attribute happiness to it. Yes, this is a good one.
The playback jolts as he looks down at Tango. Not pictured is a redstone project they are picking away at. Xisuma knows this because this particular memory has a transcript, full of branching tags and keywords that pull up a wealth of information alongside it.
That's another thing about memory that organic life never appreciates. Memory isn't just the memory itself. It's a web of associations built on prior, learned knowledge. A tree isn't just a tree. It's color and texture and symbol and "when was the first time I drew a tree?" and "apples" and "saplings" and a thousand other tiny associations they just arbitrarily have. Xisuma has to synthesize that web. A memory doesn't exist in a vacuum. Unlike the organic mind, however, Xisuma can pull up as much accurate information as he has the processing power for. This memory brings him two more closely associated recordings, associated memories he's kept for context, the transcripts of six more deleted memories, the definition of redstone, a playback of isolated sound he deemed important.
The playback continues.
Click! Click! Click!
"What are you thinking, X?"
"Oh, I'm sorry Tango, I didn't know you'd walked up! I was doing research."
"Yeah? What kind?"
"Oh well, you know the new update. Redstone's always a little finicky after."
"Right, yeah, totally. I've been putting mine off, honestly. I don't feel like fixing broken stuff right now -- oh but, I guess you can't wait, huh?"
Xisuma parses through the data brought up with the memory. He knows the date this was recorded, the recent change to redstone mechanics brought on by the server update. He'd had three farms break. There was a linked document to a transcript of Doc's rant on redstone as it relates to radiation. There was a script note document typed the day after this recording was created: Clicking Good. There was a preliminary version of what he'd nicknamed "The Tick Script.Exe".
"Yeah, I've got a lot of bugs to fix."
"Are you going to get rid of the clicking?"
"Clicking?"
The clicking was an ambient noise made when Xisuma's system was a bit bulkier, his algorithms and scripts that handled memory and data access crude and unperfected. It caused a disc in a driver somewhere to click when he did searches. At the time, the clicking had been the closest thing to an annoying habit Xisuma could manage.
Computers don't have habits. Habits are repetitive motions that become subliminal, that take effort to break, and are oftentimes formed subconsciously. Xisuma doesn't have a discernable difference between conscious thought and subconscious. He has background processes, he has backburnered data, and he has executive commands.
Xisuma queries the memory, pulling up related tags and searches, letting the algorithm reach. This memory had been the start of a, for lack of a better term, humanification process for him. There was his observation table on organic ticks, habits, and movements. It had taken a lot of uncomfortable staring, but back then, staring was all he'd known how to do. One of the first entries on the table was blinking. Organic things blinked, clearing away dust and debris from lenses and membranes. Xisuma didn't have eyes, didn't blink. But the screen that managed his facial expression animations could be programmed to blink.
Xisuma queries blinking. He pulls up a transcript of an interaction with Stressmonster, where she mentioned he blinked every thirty seconds. She knew this because when she first noticed him blinking, she'd noticed it's regularity. That was when Xisuma learned that, to convincingly blink, time variation was necessary.
Coding randomization into redstone circuitry had always been difficult.
Xisuma returns to the Tango memory recording, replays the question about the clicking, the unintentional habit. Xisuma still clicked when he thought. The others probably still thought it had to do with bulky drivers. In reality, it had been a test in trial and error.
How many clicks was acceptable for a thinking pattern? The three dot ellipses was common in writing, and a two dot pattern was too reminiscent of a heartbeat. When he'd temporarily switched to a four dot pattern, he'd noticed people getting impatient, or worrying if his mechanics were stalling. (Stalling and slow loading does sometimes happen, but it manifests in freezes and long pauses, not in repeating clicks). He invented a three click pattern, tested a variety of click sounds, settled on something similar to a rotary phone click when a number is dialed. It was a good sound. Heavy and sharp. It sounded like something falling into place with intention. Click! Click! Click!
Xisuma doesn't actually need a sound to think. But it's a clever replacement for harder to code things, like remembering to two a surface or fidget.
Click! Click! Click!
Shifting weight had been a harder thing to code. Standing stationary, legs an equal width apart, was the most steady way to stand. It also made him look like a statue, made his unblinking stares eerie and uncomfortable. Organic things read it as unnatural, borderline on predatory. Large predators often froze and stared right before pouncing.
Looking back through old memories, Xisuma could tell if they were from before or after his algorithmic programming because of how still they were. Made for clearer visuals, and he knows in high-stress situations that focus on accuracy, he can cycle them off, but they're comfortable for people to watch.
Xisuma rocks back on his heels away from the screen he's watching. If someone else were in the room, it would be a sign of thoughtfulness. For him, it's the execution from a random table of acceptable fidgets while standing still. He should turn it off. He's alone right now. But sometimes the movements still catch him off-guard and the longer they run, the more he gets used to them.
Xisuma queries: rocking on heals
He gets a handful of save recording bits. Doc rocks onto his back legs and stretches his forelegs. Gem rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, her arms crossed behind her back, mischievous and excited. Scar rocks back on his heels and crosses his arms, thoughtfully examining some terraforming. Xisuma isolates the last recording and mimics it, feeling how the weight of his crossed arms counterbalances the lean back.
Xisuma queries his habits table and adds the motion to the list.
He never quite figured out how to program what to do with his hands. They spent a lot of time at his sides, or in pockets. Objectively he knew that was bad. Hiding the hands was often a sign of hiding something, and he liked being transparent.
Xisuma queries: Hands
Xisuma blinks at the long list of results.
Xisuma queries: Hands behind back
He gets several animations of Gem, Grian, and Scar, all with some variation of hands behind their backs and mischievous grins. Most of them are snippets made for studying purposes. Two are attached to longer videos, catalogued memories he's kept. His query returns almost four hundred memory transcripts.
Xisuma likes making transcripts. He feels it's similar to the hazy, distant memories people have when time and distance transform them. When someone else remembers something falteringly, he remembers the way he described it to himself. The older transcripts were rougher. He's gotten better at writing them over the years. His learning and pattern recognition softwares are still pretty good, even if they aren't perfect enough to manage the full range of expression on their own.
Xisuma queries: Do my friends know how hard it is to look organic?
This returns no direct results. He receives a directory of the people he's flagged as "friends" over the years, an article on the recent organics additions to the world in the latest update, and a handful of unrelated memory documents where he'd asked this question before and similarly pulled up no response.
Xisuma queries: Do I care?
This pulls up more entries. Xisuma glances across them and clears them.
Xisuma queries: Do I care today?
This pulls up only slightly fewer entries. He smiles. Asking subjective questions to a computer never gleans intended results. Computers aren't subjective. Or, well, they're not supposed to be. Of course, if he were merely a computer, he wouldn't be doing this, would he? If he were merely a computer, he would be sitting on a shelf, or a desk, running prewritten programs and searches for someone else, letting someone else build his code, rules by the guidances and intentions of someone who ultimately viewed him as a tool, if nothing else.
Xisuma queries: Who's flying this thing, if not me?
He pulls up a list of song lyrics and chords, a clip from a movie he'd watched once, an IMDB rating off some database somewhere.
Xisuma clears the data. He pulls up the last memory he was watching, rocks back on his heels and crosses his arms thoughtfully. He presses play.
Click! Click! Click!
"Are you going to get rid of the clicking?"
"Clicking? Oh, I guess I am clicking, aren't I? It's just an inefficiency. I'll fix it at some point, I guess."
Tango smirked at him. One of his hands plucked at his sleeve. Xisuma clips the motion, tags it with hands, nervous, thoughtful, fidget.
"You sure it needs fixed? I kinda like it."
Click! Click! Click!
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loaksky · 1 year
Text
— 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘭𝘶𝘦
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the lowdown — the one where lo'ak misunderstands your friendship with his older brother.
the who — lo'ak x fem omatikaya!reader
the word count — 806
the tags & warnings — ANGST (as i sort through my drafts, i realize this is common theme lmaooo), miscommunication, language heh.
part two | masterlist
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“You should tell him,” Neteyam says honestly, feet circling the pool of water below you.
He knows you all too well, knows that relying on his boneheaded brother to make the first move is like watching grass grow.
You sigh, swallowing down any excuse bubbling at the base of your throat. You and Lo'ak always watched the eclipse after dinner, quietly laughing amongst yourselves as you rehashed the days' events. Tonight, like many recent, you're submerged under the light of the bioluminescence, eclipse long finished and Lo'ak nowhere in sight.
“I'm just working on something top secret right now,” he told you a few mornings ago when you asked where he was sneaking off to.
Tonight, he didn't notice that you'd seen him sneak off with one of the elders' daughters.
“I'm scared,” you admit.
Neteyam gives you an incredulous look.
“There's nothing to be afraid of, ________,” he assures you. “It's easier to convince you to be brave. He's a coward when it comes to his heart.”
You sigh again, fingers fiddling with the hem of your loincloth.
“I don't know what to say,” you reason. “What if he thinks I'm stupid?”
He lets out a laugh, warm and comforting.
“Besides, we've all been friends since we were little,” you swallow. “What if he only sees me as a sister?”
His laughter hardens.
“Trust me, ________, he definitely does not see you as a sister,” he hums, brow bone raising suggestively.
You give him a sidelong glance, shoulders tense.
“Tell me what you'd tell him,” he says. “Do you think that would help you?”
You ponder it for a moment before shrugging.
“I don't know,” you whine, scrubbing your fingers down your face. “Maybe?”
Neteyam straightens, angling his body away from you.
“Here,” he says. “I won't even watch. Just say what you'd say to him.”
Your voice is lost for a moment, like you no longer have the breath or will to shout into the thin atmosphere that you desire Lo'ak Sully with every fibre of your being.
“I... I like you,” you say, voice shaky. “I like you so much, I feel infinite. Like I can touch the sky.”
You clear your throat, eyes latching onto a pattern of freckles on Neteyam's shoulder, willing the words to come out. You feel silly when the words catch on your tongue and your eyes cloud with tears.
“I can't imagine being with anyone but you,” you choke. “I want you more than every blade of grass, every flower petal combined. More than anything I want you to want me, too.”
Neteyam's neck cranes, face softening when he sees you reduced to tears.
“Please.”
“Aww, c'mon, don't cry,” he whispers, hand coming to wrap around the back of your head so that he can smush your face into his shoulder.
The chirp of the insects and the trickle of the water is shattered by the snapping of fallen branches. You and Neteyam part quickly, ears twitching as you survey your surroundings for any imminent danger.
You nearly sigh in relief until you catch a familiar glimpse of gold and hear the clicking of the stones beaded through his braids.
“Lo'ak!” you call, rising to your feet.
He'd come, he had finally come. But now he's weaving through the forest, climbing across logs, over branches and through thick vines.
“Wait, Lo'ak, where are you—”
He whirls around, fist shaking as he stares down at you.
“Are you serious?” he seethes.
He's mad, you realize, and your stomach ties itself into knots when you notice the fury blazing in Lo'ak's eyes. You'd never seen him like this. He'd never raised his voice at you, even when you hurt yourself so severely, the remnants of a gash roots from your achilles to your knee.
“Did you hear—”
“Yes, I heard!” he affirms and tears well in your eyes.
“I'm sorry,” is all you say, ashamed that the way he finds out about your affections is like this.
“I bet you are,” he laughs humorlessly. “Do you realize how embarrassing this is?”
You recoil at the venom in his voice, lips parting in disbelief.
“Embarrassing?” you repeat.
Lo'ak has been your friend for years, has talked with you through every milestone, every win, every defeat. To know that he's embarrassed makes your throat close and your heart fall.
“Yes, ________!” he spits. “I can't be friends with you knowing that you–”
“I didn't choose to feel this way, Lo'ak!” you cry, the back of your hand coming to wipe at your snotty nose. “I'm sorry.”
“Yeah, ________, me too,” he grunts, throwing what had been balled in his fist to your feet. “Fuck this.”
He storms off, and you're left standing in the middle of a quieting forest, the shaky beadwork of a novice choker staring up at you.
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an — thank you everyone again for all the love on my first fic, i'm so appreciative. just trying my hand at some angst & trying to get the creative juices flowing. this is independent of the full one shot coming soon so if you'd like a pt2, lmk hehe.
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neng © 2023
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northgazaupdates · 4 months
Text
11 January 2024
Severe flooding afflicts northern Gaza today. Environmental engineer Dr. Tamer Al-Najjar speaks on the conditions in north Gaza today:
“The utterly devastated northern areas are submerged in extensive floods!! As a result of destroyed water infrastructure, pumping stations, & stormwater drains which deeply contribute to this crisis…
“On the other hand, as a result of floods caused by rainwater, streets, debris, and craters are filled with sewage water due to widespread bombardment in northern Gaza. Which allows for the spread of more epidemics and health disasters!”
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The combination of seasonal rains and the destruction of water management infrastructure has caused the streets of north Gaza to become logged with freezing cold, disease-laden water.
Flooding conditions are catastrophic in displaced communities and communities in conflict zones for many reasons:
1. The omnipresence of water means people are constantly exposed to moisture, which can cause skin and blood diseases such as “trench rot” or gangrene.
2. Water is an extremely effective conveyor of diseases, including typhoid, cholera, dysentery, gastroenteritis, hepatitis, and many others. If any pathogen is in the flooded water, the flood brings it to everyone in the community simultaneously, which can cause epidemics.
3. Third, water removes a person’s body heat very quickly. If someone is already living in a tent or on a street in winter, they are already vulnerable to hypothermia. Flooding greatly increases this vulnerability. Children, who compose half of Gaza’s population, are especially vulnerable to this. Severe cases of hypothermia can cause disability, brain damage, and even death. Temperatures do not need to be below freezing to induce hypothermia in anyone, but especially children.
4. Flooding also spreads dangerous substances. In Gaza, many homes as well as centers for displaced people contain asbestos. The bombing of these structures has led to a sharp increase in the release of asbestos, which is now being carried by flood waters throughout Gaza. Asbestos is a mineral composed of fine fibers which causes myriad health problems in those who are exposed, including lung disease and cancer. Asbestos is just one example of a dangerous substance being spread by flood water.
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mskenway97 · 4 months
Note
Tfp merformers a.u Optimus x Reader.
I felt inspired for this one, I wanted to make it an everyday thing, there is a bit of a language barrier. But I thought it was adorable. I choose a human reader
Warning: None
Words: 829
(Merformers) Tfp Optimus Prime x Gn!Human!Reader
Fishing time
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Today was not a lucky day for Y/N. The tide was calm on a sunny day, in the boat. A lot of trash had been picked up this week, no fish were in the area.
Y/N was desperate to catch something, otherwise she was going to get kicked out and the boat was not hers. Although fishing wasn't her thing, she just wanted the boat to see her huge sea friend.... None other than a blue, red and white whale.
Literally that whale had saved her life in a storm. He wanted to know more about her without exposing her to danger. Only the mere thought that Y/N would never see her again tore him apart.
-Let's go mince little fish....
Y/N cast the rod with the bait, only to see that it barely moved after a while he saw that something was moving. Y/N saw the opportunity to cast as hard as he could, "I'm going to get lucky" thought Y/N but as he pulled it out.
Another boot.
-Oh come on! I'm already going to wear a shoe store with so many boots! - Y/N said to himself as he cast the rod again.
This time the rod moved faster, Y/N smiled as he cast it looked like it was going to be the good one but he saw that it was too heavy.
-Come on, it's possible... Ah!
Y/N fell into the water because of the force that pulled the rod. He felt huge hands around him and pulled him out of the water.
To see Optimus somewhat surprised.
-Hello big guy! I didn't expect to find you here - Y/N smiling.
Optimus left me in the boat as he made a few small grunts and pointed to my fishing rod.
- Ah, what do I do? Fishing and I'm not doing so good," said Y/N.
Optimus noticed Y/N's face, which was somewhat frustrated and sad. He had told her to fish... Maybe he needed some help, the big guy dove down leaving Y/N confused, thinking maybe he was in a hurry, after a few moments with no luck he saw that Optimus had returned showing something big in his hands.
- Wait... that's a swordfish! -Y/N was startled as the boat wobbled a bit and she remained calm.
Optimus was confused the quality of the swordfish was a splendid specimen, something Y/N would surely help with.
- People would ask me a lot of questions about how I got it....
Optimus released the swordfish and dived again.
A while later he came back with something else. Y/N walked over to see that it was an octopus that had latched onto it.
Optimus was trying to get it off her. After a while he succeeded but Y/N was a little depressed.
- I'm no good at fishing! I wanted to dive and explore? But if I don't... I won't be able to go back - said Y/N as he sat down Optimus' face was in front of it and nuzzle to Y/N.
It was humid, it was nice especially in summer weather, she smiled a little at the gesture, Optimus purred a little.
- I should make it clear with the fish I want.... Look it would be something like this.
Y/N pulled out a log book of the fish in this area, showing Optimus which ones she wanted.
Those fish, most of them had gone to other waters the record was out of date.... At least since photo was still around the area and they were plentiful.
Optimus carefully dragged the boat.
Y/N did not know where Optimus was taking him as he was unfamiliar with this fishing area. It was a little different than what she was used to seeing until it came to a stop. Y/N heard Optimus grunting and pointing to the fishing pole. Y/N didn't have time to answer him as she had already submerged underwater. Y/N didn't know what he was up to but he took the advice to grab the fishing pole and get on with it.
She waited for a while until he saw that he was biting not trash but several fish! She was amazed as she caught a good amount of fish. Until she saw Optimus come out of the water.- This is great, Optimus with these fish! They won't throw me out are the amount I needed! Thank you so much," said Y/N as she jumped right into his hands and hugged one of his fingers.
Optimus on the other hand was happy to help her. He knew the difficulties Y/N was having with the job had, he met her by accident and seeing her go was not something he wanted her to go. Besides being one of the few beings that freaked out when she saw him.The presence comforted him, it was different....
Maybe next time she would take him to give lessons in something else.But at least they both got the big fish.
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