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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

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Pastime (with good company) (ao3) (aka NMJ/WWX/LWJ) - part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, past 5, part 6, part 7, part 8

warning for adult content

The room Nie Mingjue led them to next had several rooms attached, each full of crafting materials.

“We’ll need some of your yang energy to bind you to the channel,” Nie Mingjue said briskly, guiding Wei Wuxian in the direction of one of the side rooms. “Not blood; that’s too common, and you want your saber – or whatever you eventually use – to be able to shed other people’s blood without being inclined to try to change masters. There’s a crafting vessel in the room by the corner that you can go fill up.”

“Well, that’s an unfortunate requirement,” Wei Wuxian said. He was feeling jittery; he thought it might be the uncomfortable sensation of having hope. “Since I can’t do that.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m serious! That’s the whole point of what I was explaining before,” Wei Wuxian argued, a little exasperated. “I can’t summon up yang energy, not without a golden core; even if I try to manipulate what little spiritual energy I have left in my meridians, it won’t respond – I’m telling you, I simply can’t do it.”

Nie Mingjue’s responding look was scathing.

“Are you or are you not a man?” he demanded. “Even if you can’t cultivate yang energy, you still have it, and you’re not without the more traditional methods to obtain it.”

Wei Wuxian was still thinking about his lack of a golden core, so it took him a moment – and Lan Wangji’s ears abruptly turning red – to realize what Nie Mingjue meant.

“Oh,” he said, and coughed. “Uh, yeah, I mean. There’s always – that type of yang energy.”

Yang energy at its core was associated with male energy – everyone had it, but obviously men had it more than women, centered in various places throughout the body and most specifically in the genitals. There was a reason they said that the Cold Spring in Gusu was good at quenching yang fire.

(He thought that Lan Wangji might be smirking at him somewhere behind his stern expression, but that would be childish and beneath him…and yet Wei Wuxian really hoped he was. He’d like to see Lan Wangji proud and smug and smirking; it would be incredibly hot.)

“Well, then? What are you waiting for?”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes went round. “Wait, you mean – now? Here? On demand?”

“At your age, I’m surprised a stiff breeze isn’t enough to get you hard,” Nie Mingjue said, rolling his eyes. “It certainly did for me; I could have hammered nails three times a day if I was so inclined. You seriously don’t think you can?”

“Not with all this pressure.” That was a little bit of a lie, actually, since Wei Wuxian had some tried-and-true fantasies currently starring the two men standing right in front of him that were guaranteed to work (especially with that intriguing comment about going three times a day…), but on the other hand the idea of going into the next room over and touching himself – while they were waiting –

Wei Wuxian couldn’t quite figure out if he was feeling mortified or turned on.

“It is necessary, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, and he was frowning in legitimate concern. “Without your yang energy, the channel will not be attuned to you – that would be even more dangerous than having no channel at all.”

“Just what I need,” Wei Wuxian grumbled. “More pressure.”

“It’s fine,” Nie Mingjue said. “I’ll help you with it.”

Wei Wuxian was abruptly hard as rock at the mere thought of it, but Lan Wangji was already shaking his head. “Mingjue-xiong! As the future husband, it would be inappropriate –”

“Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the customs; I’m not going to touch him –”

A pity.

“– but there’s never been any restriction against future spouses engaging in correspondence. On the contrary, there’s a rich tradition of it.”

“Correspondence?” Lan Wangji asked, blinking, and Wei Wuxian couldn’t blame him – he had no idea what Nie Mingjue meant, either; weren’t they all in the same place right now? Who would he’d be writing to? “How…?”

“Wei Wuxian will go into the other room, as is appropriate, and I’m going to sit out here and compose a letter. I may need to read certain parts of it out loud, and in the meantime he’ll do what he has to do.” Nie Mingjue turned his fierce gaze on Wei Wuxian. “Any objections?”

“None whatsoever,” Wei Wuxian said at once. Like he was going to turn down a chance for – well, whatever this was.

Correspondence, apparently.

Erotic correspondence.

This was either going to be a disaster or fantastic.

��Then go.”

He went into the other room, then sighed when he saw the crafting bowl there, sitting there innocently as if it wasn’t the vessel that was supposed to contain his yang essence if you know what that means. A bare room, fit for crafting, after a wild and emotional night - it really wasn’t conductive to getting off on command.

It would have been so much easier if he just had his golden core – he could’ve filled the bowl with energy in a heartbeat, just using his willpower, and there’d be none of this embarrassing nonsense.

“Wei Wuxian,” he heard Nie Mingjue say from outside the door. “Greetings, best wishes, your health – the usual.”

Wei Wuxian hid a chuckle in his sleeve. That was a very political way of starting a letter; one could tell that Nie Mingjue was accustomed to writing letter as sect leader, rather than as himself, and the usual letter would have been filled with stock phrases dealing with each of those subjects. He must have some very long-suffering secretaries doing much of the official sect correspondence.

“I look forward to our wedding with great anticipation. It will be a pleasure to share that day with you, to bow to the heavens and the earth alongside you, to drink wine with you – but not as great a pleasure as it will be to take you back with me to my bed that night.”

Wei Wuxian swallowed, his chuckle dying in the back of his throat.

“You’ll be dressed in the finest clothing the Jiang sect has to offer, no doubt, and I will regret only that I cannot tear it off of you, tangle your arms and legs in it – I will have no choice instead but to draw you in towards me, to take your face between my palms, to kiss you until you’re breathless.”

He was breathless already.

“I will run my hands down your body as you laugh and try to pull off the clothing; you’ll make a mess of it, I’m sure, and in the end I’ll lose patience with your teasing. I’ll lift you up and throw you down on the bed, and when you try to get up I will press you down with a single hand. You’ll like that – I’ve see the way your eyes trail after me when I fight, the way your pupils contract when you see my strength. I’ll climb up on top of you, pin you between my thighs, and then I’ll kiss you again. Your mouth, your cheeks, your neck – all the parts of you that I can reach.”

Wei Wuxian’s hand dropped down to his waist. He didn’t reach inside his clothing, not yet, just rubbed a little, enjoying the anticipation.

“I’ll use my teeth and my tongue on you, and when your laughs have at last turned to moans and choked-off whimpers, I’ll turn you over and put you on your knees. That’s when you’ll see Wanji there, watching.”

Wei Wuxian shuddered, closing his eyes and imagining it. Lan Wangji there, a figure in white – no, not white, red. A bride’s clothes, red and gold like that fateful archery contest but so much more sumptuous. More decadent.

“He’s been waiting at the corner for his turn, like the good boy he is, but you can see from the way he stands that he wants you. I’ll whisper in your ear a question, asking if you want him, and you won’t be able to tear your eyes off of him as you say yes. I’ll ask you if you want to touch him, and you’ll say yes to that, too.”

He would.

“I’ll tell him to come forward, but just as he’s reaching for you, I’ll tell him to stop – to put his hands behind his back and stand at attention. I want you to touch him, instead. You’ll be on your knees on the bed in front of him, and you’ll reach out and undo his clothing. Not all the way, just enough to free his cock, and your mouth will go wet just looking at him.”

Wei Wuxian’s fingers fumbled to get his cock out, to start stroking himself, and Nie Mingjue was right. He was drooling just thinking about getting his mouth on Lan Wangji.

“I’ll let you touch him, as a start, and you’ll be so distracted by it that you don’t even realize that I’ve gotten you out of your clothing until you feel me pressed up against you and realize that you’re trapped between us – that you’re naked and we’re still dressed, like you’re some toy for our amusement. You’ll like that, moaning, rubbing up against us like the shameless thing you are, and lean forward to put your mouth on Wangji; I wouldn’t have said you could yet, but you’ve always been disobedient, haven’t you? But when you’re disobedient to me, that only means I have to punish you...but I think you’ll like that, too.”

Wei Wuxian’s hand was moving faster on his cock now, his other hand stuffed into his mouth to keep himself quiet. He wouldn’t interrupt this for all the gold in Lanling.

“Have you ever read a spring book, Wuxian? Not the usual ones that get passed around between boys, but the cutsleeve ones. I’ve often wondered: do you know what there is to be done between men? Do you think it’s all hands and mouths – or do you dream of getting fucked?”

Wei Wuxian nearly bit himself.

“Because that’s what I’m going to do to you. I’m going to have Wangji use that pretty little mouth of yours while I put my hand on you, working you as hard and good as you like it, and just when you think you’re about to get off, I’m going to stop, because you’re not going to be allowed to come, not until I have you splayed open on my cock. I’ll have my hands on your hips, tight enough to leave bruises, and by that time Wangji will be kneeling down to kiss you, his fingers tugging at your hair.”

Wei Wuxian knelt down, trying to mimic the position. Trying to think how it would feel, having something inside of him like he’d started imagining after reading that one spring book Jiang Cheng managed to find him only a few weeks before – having Nie Mingjue inside of him.

He’d be big, wouldn’t he? He’d feel full, even a little pained, but it’d be worth it to feel the heat of him.

“You won’t know what to do with your hands, probably try to touch yourself, disobedient as you are, and in the end Wangji will lose his patience with you, too; he’ll tear off that forehead ribbon of his and hand it to me, and I’ll tie your hands behind your back with it. You’ll be helpless, trapped between us: your back pressed up against me as I fuck you, and Wangji pressed up against your front, his cock against yours, rutting up against each other. He’ll have already come once, in your mouth – or maybe on your face, I think he’d like that – and so he’ll be steadier than you, have more endurance. You, though, you’ll be desperate, begging for more, for someone to touch you. You’ll want me to touch you – to touch you and him both.”

Yes. Yes, he would.

“I’ll wrap my hand around you, both of you, and you’ll be dripping all over my hand until it’s slick and the movement comes easy. And in the end you’ll do just as I said you would, you’ll come on my cock, come so hard that your entire body thrashes and you see stars. And you’ll feel me inside of you, too, as you squeeze me until I come as well, until Wangji does, until you’re dirty with our seed, covered with it – and then I tell you that we’re just getting started.”

Wei Wuxian whimpered when he came, all the beautiful mental images burning their way into his brain.

“Fuck,” he hissed. “Fuck – I – fuck.”

Nie Mingjue had enough mercy to pause for a few moments as Wei Wuxian gasped for air, trying to refill his suddenly empty lungs.

“Since we are not yet married, I cannot yet make into a reality what I have written to you, so my words will have to be a means, however insufficient, to express the full measure of my anticipation. Best regards, Nie Mingjue.” He paused, then added, with far too much composure for someone who’d just blown Wei Wuxian’s mind without laying a single finger on him, “Tell me you got some of that into the crafting vessel, Wei Wuxian.”

“I did,” Wei Wuxian croaked, and straightened his clothing a bit before heading back to the main room. As he did, he saw Lan Wangji walking out of another room – possibly a closet – and he looked as wrecked as Wei Wuxian felt. “I got it. Crafting vessel full. That was…wait, are you actually writing?”

“I did say it was correspondence,” Nie Mingjue said, his brush continued to slash its way across the page. His expression was only very barely not a smirk. “And I don’t lie. As soon as I finish this, we can get to forging…would the two of you like to wash up?”

Lan Wangji nodded his head in abrupt jerk, and suddenly Wei Wuxian’s cock, which he had been sure was spent, gave a twitch as if it was considering another round just at the thought of why Lan Wangji might also need to wash up after listening to that.

“Well,” he finally said as they splashed water on their faces and hands. “At least we know Nie Huaisang came by his porn addiction honestly?”

Lan Wangji looked disdainfully at him, but in the way that Wei Wuxian was starting to figure out meant that he was amused. “Mm,” he said. “But he lacks the voice.”

Wei Wuxian had to concede the point. Nie Mingjue’s voice was deep and steady, his words smooth and unhindered, the tone fierce and unyielding…if he could do nothing but listen to him, he’d die a happy man.

Except he wasn’t going to need to, because Lan Wangji and Nie Mingjue were going to help him, and he and Lan Wangji were going to help Nie Mingjue, and they were all going to get married so he’d be able to touch as well as hear.

“I,” he announced, “cannot wait to be married.”

Lan Wangji nodded in fervent agreement, and they went back out together to the main room where Nie Mingjue, damn him, didn’t even have the shame to look remotely ruffled by any of the preceding events.

“Good,” he said when he saw them. “Now we can get started in earnest.”

Wei Wuxian was never going to be able to hear that phrase again in his life.

#mdzs #wei wuxian #nie mingjue #lan wangji #my fic #my fics #pastime with good company #and now we get to the OTHER half of that scene

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not-majestic-bluenicorn · 3 years

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Crescent || Chapter 3

Fandom(s): ATEEZ

AU: Treasure Hunters

Genre: Action, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Relationship: Everyone x Everyone, Established Hongjoong x Yunho

Language: English

Status: Ongoing

Chapter WC: 5,254 words

Warnings: Character Death, Stabbing, Fighting, Blood, Aliens, War, Funerals, Kidnapping, Attempted Kidnapping, Mentions of Child Abuse / Child Work, Explosions, Murder Attempt, more will be added.

Chapter Warnings: None apply

Summary:

Wooyoung sat up immediately as he wiped at his eyes, trying to push down the tears and regain his breathing, but he had never felt anything like this before. The sun was barely rising yet but he couldn't focus on that. He felt happiness, pain, and unbearable yearning.

AO3

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Tagged: @angel0taiyo

At first, there was nothing but darkness, but he felt conscious, so he knew it was a dream. Then, the darkness was filled with countless celestial bodies around him, tiny and bright and very far away. Like that, Wooyoung was floating in the middle of space. It was beautiful, like nothing he had ever seen or imagined since he had never left his home planet, Oniris.

The Somnum almost never left Oniris. Their clairvoyance abilities made them highly sought after, which is why they didn't belong to any known empire and they didn't accept strangers on their planet. They didn't need to travel to know, however, since they could see and know everything through their dreams. Wooyoung knew, even without being a highly experienced Interpreter, that this was one of those dreams.

As he turned around, he spotted a beautiful vessel coming towards him. It was dark in color, but the white sails created a contrast that reminded Wooyoung of a moon reflecting the light of a star in the night. He floated towards it, looking around, and on its side he saw a blurred name and a detailed drawing of a crescent moon. He couldn't make out the name, so he guessed he wasn't supposed to know that just yet, but at least he had a clue.

When he landed on deck, a few voices caught his attention and he turned, looking for them. He found seven other men standing on deck, talking to each other. Wooyoung's heart started beating faster as he approached them, a sudden adrenaline filling his body. He stopped once he got close enough, eyes fixed on two of them. He had seen them before, in a previous dream, and knew their names: Hongjoong and Yunho.

In the previous dream, Hongjoong's brother had died and Yunho had had to stop him from attacking the people around them. It was bizarre to see him now so calm, smiling among these other men whom he knew nothing about. They all looked so happy, and without warning, Wooyoung's heart found itself yearning to be with them, to be part of that happiness.

The feeling left him breathless. He had had many dreams before, but nothing like this one, never a true vision. He realized that this was his awakening as a Somnum. His people believed in destiny, and at some point everyone got a prophetic dream that set them off into fulfilling it. Wooyoung knew this was his. His eyes filled up with tears as he struggled to regain the control over his emotions, but it was so overwhelming.

For a moment, he thought they were looking at him, but then it became too much and he woke up. Wooyoung sat up immediately as he wiped at his eyes, trying to push down the tears and regain his breathing, but he had never felt anything like this before. The sun was barely rising yet but he couldn't focus on that. He felt happiness, pain, and unbearable yearning.

With difficulty, he managed to calm down little by little until his breathing had returned to normal. It was still too early to do anything, but he decided that as soon as his parents had woken up, he would ask them to take him to see the local Interpreter. Seeing Hongjoong and Yunho again in this dream, and what he had felt during it were no coincidence. It was time for him to start his own journey.

Hongjoong and Yunho were sitting at a table in the inn they were staying at. They were reviewing the job applications they had gotten from potential crew members, which were quite a few. So far, they had already decided on five of them, so they were missing five more. As they were reading the applications, one in particular stood out to Hongjoon and he put the rest of them down to read it.

The lad's name was Lee San. He had been part of the expedition team on his home planet, however the government had dissolved it to fund other things and he had ended up unemployed. It said he had been part of an archaeological research institute, but he had quit because he wanted something that would allow him to travel around the universe instead.

"I like this one," Hongjoong passed it to Yunho. "He could help us deciphering the map."

"And I like these two, give them a look." Yunho passed him two more applications and Hongjoong read them.

The first one was a man Yunho's age named Mingi. He came from the mining planet Merth X-24, and was an expert managing all sorts of chemicals and explosives, which could come useful when retrieving the treasure. The writing was neat and pretty, which somehow contrasted with the image of a miner, but it was nice. Merth X-24 was one of the planets in the Kim Empire, and while there was the risk of being recognized, Hongjoong thought it would be okay.

The second application was from a man named Jongho, a couple of years younger than him. He had worked in ship assembling and maintenance, which would make him a valuable crew member. Hongjoong didn't even need to read the rest of his application to consider him in. He put both applications on the accepted pile, and soon enough Yunho did the same with San's application.

They finished choosing the crew members within the following hour and asked Siyeon to message them their acceptance and cite them there next morning to begin their journey. After that, they went to the shipyard in charge of their ship, as they had received confirmation that it was ready. When they got there, Hongjoong's heart sped up in anticipation. This was going to be his very own ship, designed to his image and taste, built only for him.

Of course, he had a royal ship, but even that one didn't feel his. It was too flashy, too alien. This ship wouldn't wear the royal symbol nor would it be designed by others. Hongjoong had taken part of every step of the design process to make sure this ship would be only his, a safe space. He could bet that Taejoong was proud of him.

Yunho softly squeezed his hand to center him when he noticed Hongjoong was starting to get anxious. Hongjoong smiled at him, grateful, and soon the Master Shipwright guided them towards their ship. It was simply gorgeous. The wood was dark and smooth, the sails were white and almost looked like dragon wings when fully extended.

They walked around it as the Master Shipwright explained the process they had followed and how they had incorporated all the details Hongjoong had asked for. And then they stopped next to where the name was painted on in beautiful silver letters. Crescent. That was what Hongjoong had chosen to name it. The C was a crescent moon painted with intricate designs in it. It was beautiful.

"Why Crescent?" Yunho asked him once the shipwright was gone.

"Because the waning crescent symbolizes growth and action, and the waxing crescent symbolizes achievement and completion." Hongjoong smiled, admiring the artwork. "I want this mission to be a success, to give us a new start." Yunho smiled and passed the left arm around Hongjoong's shoulders, pressing his lips softly to his temple.

"I like it," he affirmed. "I have no doubts we'll be able to succeed, wherever this mission takes us."

When morning came and Wooyoung woke his parents with the news, they hugged him tightly and congratulated him. They both cried, making Wooyoung break into tears again, but it felt comforting. His mother treated him to a plentiful breakfast and his other parent reserved a meeting with their local Interpreter for him.

He told them about the dream as they ate breakfast, and it was obvious by his parents' faces that they had caught onto the fact that he would probably have to leave them. They were a bit sad, of course, but the excitement of their son finding his destiny overpowered it. Wooyoung knew the news would spread fast, and that following his visit to the Interpreter, there would probably be a lot of people waiting for him to tell them.

It made him feel a little nervous. Of course, he had gone along with his parents to visit other households and leave a little gift for the Somnum that would be leaving to fulfill their destiny. But it was an entirely different thing to be the object of that attention. The idea of people paying so much attention to him like that made him more nervous than leaving his parents. Still, he would be nothing but grateful as he sorted out the gifts on the few days he would probably get before leaving.

After breakfast, he helped his parent wash the dishes and then went to get changed, trying to dress himself with his best attire as his parents prepared the offering for the Interpreter. Wooyoung groaned as he put his shirt inside out on the first try and hurried to fix it. Soon enough, he was downstairs, tying his shoes and meeting with his parents outside of the house.

Rather than super populated cities, the Somnum lived in small yet technologically advanced villages that satisfied all of their needs. The planet wasn't particularly big, but the Somnum weren't quite fertile either, and thanks to their good government, they had an almost perfect resource distribution. Wooyoung had never lacked anything.

Because of their nature, the government always made sure they had everything necessary to fulfill their destiny. Even the farms his parents owned, since it was part of their destiny, the government had provided. Now they were one of the biggest food providers in Oniris and also one of the main sources of food products for commercial trade. Wooyoung had always thought his destiny would be to inherit the farm, but here he was instead, dreaming of ships and voyages.

As they walked into the Interpreter’s house, they were received by an assistant who took their offer and shortly after guided Wooyoung into a different room. There was a low table and some cushions, with a teapot and a couple of cups. Every window in the room had been covered by thick velvety curtains, and the room was illuminated by a small chandelier that hung from the ceiling.

Not long after Wooyoung had sat down, the Interpreter came in. They were tall and thin, with skin frail from their age; however, their eyes were alive with wisdom and knowledge. Wooyoung wondered for a moment how many visions the Interpreter had had since they’d been able to remember. Visions could be very exhausting because of the emotional toll they took on the person, so learning to handle it was a major part in an Interpreter’s training. He couldn’t help but feel curious about what it was like to hold such an important role.

“Jung Wooyoung?” The Interpreter asked, breaking the silence.

"Yes, that would be me." Wooyoung nodded, rubbing his hands together trying to warm them up.

"Please sit down, don't be afraid." The Interpreter smiled at him and Wooyoung nodded, sitting opposite to them at the table.

Despite being on the floor, the cushion was so soft he didn't feel uncomfortable. From up close, he could easily smell the hot lavender tea in the teapot, and he felt himself inhaling deeper as it helped him calm down. The Interpreter poured him a cup before pouring one for themselves and pushing it towards Wooyoung. He took it, but didn't drink it immediately.

"This is a syndesia and lavender infusion," the Interpreter explained. "The syndesia plant will make it easier for me to access your mind and see the vision, that way I'll be able to give you more insight. You could think of it as establishing a temporary connection."

"Does it feel... weird?" Wooyoung asked, looking at the liquid with apprehension. The Interpreter chuckled.

"A little bit, but it's not painful, I promise." The Interpreter assured him. "Now, if you will, drink the tea and lie down, try to relax."

Wooyoung did as instructed and drank the tea in silence. The Interpreter also drank their cup in front of him, occasionally humming to themselves as they did. The more he drank, the more relaxed Wooyoung felt, until he found himself struggling to keep his eyes open. At that moment, the Interpreter helped him lie down with his head on the cushion, and before long, Wooyoung was in a deep trance.

It did feel really weird. At first, he started recalling his vision just like he had seen it the night before. But when he found the Interpreter inside and tried to follow them, his vision became just a muddy shade of black and he couldn't see anything anymore. It felt like he was still there, and he could certainly sense the presence of the Interpreter, but he couldn't see anything anymore.

After a few minutes that felt like hours, Wooyoung was able to wake up as the Interpreter helped him sit down and offered him a glass of water. Wooyoung felt disoriented and a bit confused. Nothing had changed so he couldn't have slept for more than a few minutes, but it felt like he had been gone for hours, lost in the nothingness.

"Drink the water, it will help you get rid of the effects of the syndesia." The Interpreter instructed as they themselves drank a cup of water.

"Did it go well?" Wooyoung asked after downing half of the glass. His throat felt parched and he really was starting to think he had been out for more than a few minutes.

"You have a great journey ahead of you," they smiled against the rim of the cup. "I'd say you have a lot to deal with, the seven handsome men you saw in your dream are destined to be your lovers." Wooyoung choked on his drink and he desperately coughed, trying to breathe normally. The Interpreter smiled.

"My apologies, but what do you mean?" Wooyoung stammered. His whole face was red and he could hear his heartbeat in his ears.

"They aren't all together yet, but they will be." They continued to explain. "They're on a mission to find the Treasure of the Seven Galaxies, but they will face many unexpected difficulties. As for you, well..." the Interpreter put down their cup. "You'll get there when they most need you. I suppose the relationship is a bonus."

"But how will I find them? I don't even know their names..." Wooyoung mumbled.

"Worry not, did you think I would send you away without any clues?" The Interpreter smiled as they stood up.

They left the room through a small door in the back wall that Wooyoung hadn't even noticed before, nervous as he had been, and returned shortly after. After they sat down again, they offered Wooyoung a necklace. It was a light purple stone circle wrapped by silver branches that hung from a silver chain.

"It's amethyst infused with syndesia," they explained. "Those studying to become Interpreters wear them when they are just starting, it will help you amplify the visions and obtain information from them."

"But... I am not an apprentice." Wooyoung looked at the necklace, hesitating.

"No, but your journey will take you far away and you won't be able to rely on us the Interpreters to help you," they smiled kindly. "Take it, maybe when you're done with your mission you could look into becoming an Interpreter, but for now, that necklace is yours."

"Thank you," Wooyoung nodded. He unclasped it and put it on, admiring the pendant as it rested on his chest.

"You should go now, your mission requires you to leave as soon as possible." The Interpreter stood up and urged Wooyoung to do so too. "Try going to Sonne U-28 first, you might find some clues."

"Wait, what?" Wooyoung turned to them in panic.

"If you don't leave now, you won't be in the right places at the right time, it's time you start your journey." The Interpreter smiled. "Don't be afraid Jung Wooyoung, all the answers are already within you, just trust yourself."

Wooyoung looked at their eyes, expecting to find mockery or deception, but of course there wasn't anything like that. So he took a deep breath and nodded. He thanked the Interpreter for their services and then left to find his parents, who were waiting for him outside. They wasted no time asking him what had happened and how the meeting had gone. He was in a hurry though, so he promised he would tell them on their way home.

And so he did. As they walked home, he explained to them what had happened and everything the Interpreter had told him. His mother stopped him to hug him tightly once Wooyoung revealed he had to leave as soon as possible. Like him, they had hoped they would at least get a few days to spend together before having to say their goodbyes, and it hurt that it would have to be so sudden.

When they got home, there were already families from the village waiting for them, carrying gifts to aid Wooyoung in his journey. His parents welcomed them all into the house and their neighbors asked what had happened during his meeting. Wooyoung's face was red with embarrassment and nervousness as he tried to explain it all to them again; the attention felt so uncomfortable and awkward.

Eventually, his parent intervened and told Wooyoung to go prepare for leaving. He didn't need to be asked twice as he hurried to his room and locked himself in, regaining his breath. He could still heat the rest of the village talking downstairs, but at least his room felt like a safe space... Except, the sole thought that he needed to leave already weighed him down. He had never expected he would have to leave his home so suddenly.

He was afraid. He could still remember as a child, the fear he had felt of never seeing his family again, of losing them forever. The Universe wasn’t usually a kind place to those of his kind, and he was afraid of what could happen to him without the protection of his people. Everyone knew about the stories of those who never came back. What if he didn’t get to come back either?

Wooyoung's heart grew heavy with each new thought as he picked a suitcase and began filling it with clothes and personal care items. He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't even realize what he was packing until his mother knocked on his door and brought him out of his daze. She walked in and gently guided his hands away from the suitcase, arranging the items herself.

"You're going to be okay." She said after a little while, hands still busy fixing his suitcase.

“Mom,” Wooyoung looked up, eyes bright. “What do you mean?”

“I know you’re probably afraid,” she smiled, “but not all the people outside of Oniris are bad, you’re going to be okay.”

"I'm going to miss you, both of you." Wooyoung said as he teared up.

"And we're going to miss you too, but we'll be rooting for you." She smiled, putting the clothes aside and cupping Wooyoung's face. "Maybe when you're done with your mission you can come back and introduce use to your seven handsome boyfriends."

"Mom!" Wooyoung complained, face burning red. "Don't say that, it's so embarrassing." She chuckled.

"Honestly your parent was acting all jealous about it, so I'm sure spending some time away from you might help them come to terms with the fact." She smiled, complicit, before she went back to helping with his luggage.

"Are you going to be okay?" Wooyoung asked, pouting slightly as she handed her a few more items.

"Us? Baby you should be worrying about yourself!" She laughed. "We're just simple farmers, you're the one going on a mission to find some sort of mythical treasure! We're not at danger here."

"Still..." Wooyoung's pout grew as he hugged his mother's back. "At least pretend you're gonna struggle without me here!"

"We're going to live like newlyweds all over again." She teased him. "Maybe even go on a honeymoon again."

"I am so underappreciated in this household." Wooyoung huffed as he moved to help his mother close the suitcase. His heart felt lighter.

"I'm kidding, of course we'll struggle without you, but that doesn't matter." Once the suitcase was closed, she turned around to face him. "We love you so much, but it is time you focus on yourself, we will always wait for you." She opened her arms and Wooyoung hugged her, knowing he wouldn't be able to in a long time.

"Captain, all of the crew members have arrived."

Hongjoong turned around to face Yunho as he finished buttoning his shirt. Both smiled at each other as Hongjoong followed his now First Mate to the deck, where every member of the crew was waiting for him. They had moved the ship to port the previous day after the last few details had been settled and they had loaded the supplies into the ship.

Of course, Hongjoong knew half of the crew members since they were all his soldiers, but he pretended to know them just as little as anyone else. If he wanted his identity to be kept secret, he would need to act his part. From now on, he was only Captain Yoo Hongjoong, treasure hunter. He was no longer the third prince of the Kim Empire, and he wouldn't be until he returned home with the treasure.

"Welcome, everyone!" He exclaimed, raising his arms. All at once, a surge of adrenaline filled him. This was his ship and the crew he had chosen, it was almost a dream come true. "From today onward, I am your Captain, Yoo Hongjoong. Under my command, we will achieve the impossible! The treasures and legends that no one has dared to follow or has managed to find will be all ours!"

Everyone cheered, breaking into applause and cheers. Hongjoong smiled. He felt almost invincible, like nothing could stop him from fulfilling his mission and making the culprits pay for the death of his brother. He was doing the right thing, he could feel it inside him. Hongjoong looked at Yunho for a second and the taller man was smiling at him. Clearly, Hongjoong's excitement was contagious.

"We're leaving in under an hour, settle in and get ready to set sail!" Hongjoong ordered.

"Yes sir!" The crew replied in unison and began moving as Hongjoong turned around to leave.

One tall man stood in the middle of the deck with his small suitcase, clearly looking a little lost. Mingi had never been in a ship like this one, so he wasn't entirely sure where he was supposed to go to leave his stuff. He was also a bit too nervous and scared to ask. Their captain had looked so cool as he motivated them, and everyone had replied enthusiastically, so Mingi had allowed that energy to stick onto him. But now he didn't know what to do.

"First time on a ship?" A shorter man asked him, smiling at him genuinely.

"On one like this one, at least." Mingi nodded, ears tinted red. The man offered his hand and Mingi was quick to accept it.

"My name is Jongho, Choi Jongho." He introduced himself. Jongho seemed confident in what he was doing, and it calmed Mingi down slightly.

"Song Mingi."

"Come with me Mingi, I'll take you to the quarters." Jongho began walking and Mingi quickly followed him.

He was so earnest and hurried that he didn't even notice the crew member standing next to him, and when he moved to follow Jongho, Mingi ended up accidentally bumping into him. He turned around and quickly began apologizing, not even looking the man in the face. It truly didn't feel like it was his day at that moment, and he was getting increasingly nervous.

"It's okay." The man replied. His tone was so flat that Mingi thought he had made him angry.

"I'm really sorry." Mingi apologized again. Jongho patted his arm when he noticed how nervous Mingi was, and he looked back with a grateful smile.

"It's really okay, don't worry." The man repeated. His voice and eyes were so cold it was almost scary, and it left both Mingi and Jongho speechless. "I already heard you from before so there's no need to introduce yourselves; my name is Lee San, I hope we can work along well." San introduced himself before turning around and leaving.

"That's what you call a scary presence..." Jongho muttered. "Come on Mingi, let's go, we need to get working."

Without thinking it twice, Jongho grabbed Mingi's wrist and pulled him along, since the taller still seemed frozen from the scary meeting with San. Mingi let Jongho guide him to the quarters in silence, just hoping he wouldn't get in more trouble that day.

The next morning, Wooyoung and his parents woke up very early to eat breakfast and send him off. His parents talked plenty during breakfast, like they would usually do, but Wooyoung remained silent and they didn't press him about it. It was obvious he was still nervous and hesitant, he needed some space. When they were done eating, Wooyoung washed the dishes while his parent helped bring all of his luggage down.

His mother had ended up helping him pack to maximize the usefulness of his suitcase. Plus he had packed an extra backpack with all the essentials he might need so that he wouldn't need to open the suitcase every single time. After the visitors had left, they had sat together to buy his ticket to Sonne U-28, making it official that he was leaving. Despite the fact that the Somnum almost never traveled outside of Oniris and that they didn't allow visitors except under specific conditions, it had been easy to get a ticket.

The trip would take a few days, but at least the Interpreter had given him a lead to begin with, since they weren't allowed to intervene with the destiny of other Somnum. Wooyoung had thought of using the necklace the previous night to obtain more information as well, but in the end he had been too nervous to do so. He would get to Sonne U-28 first and figure it out from there.

"Are you ready?" His mother asked once there was nothing left for him to do. Wooyoung nodded.

"As ready as I can be, which to be fair isn't much," he chuckled. "I'll be okay though."

"Of course you will, you're our son." His parent affirmed, patting his back. "Let's go."

They had already called a taxi, and with their help, Wooyoung loaded his suitcase on the trunk and they rode to the port. Almost every ship there was for commerce, and Wooyoung observed with curiosity as they loaded the shipments into the enormous vessels, preparing them for their long trips to other planets. His parents asked the taxi driver to wait as they helped Wooyoung unload his luggage and bid farewell.

"We're not forgetting anything right? We can hurry and go back to pick it up." His parent said, checking their watch.

"I don't think that would work out well honey." His mom chuckled, pushing his arm down. "Stop being so nervous, you're gonna make Woo nervous."

"Right, sorry." They smiled and pulled both Wooyoung and their wife into a tight hug. "I'm going to miss this, I'm going to miss you."

"I'll be back before you notice it." Wooyoung assured them.

"And with seven boyfriends no less!" His mother added. His parent's expression immediately darkened and they huffed.

"Don't even mention it, I cannot believe-!"

"Okay then, I'm gonna get going." Wooyoung squeezed his parents with his arms before disentangling himself and grabbing his luggage. "I love you!"

Wooyoung walked away after quickly pecking both their cheeks and repeating how much he loved both of them. He looked back a few times as he walked, each time spotting his parents standing outside the taxi and watching him leave. Tears welled up in his eyes for a moment but he pushed them back and moved forward.

The ship he was going to board was built like some sort of small cruise. It was an impeccable pearl white color and on the side the name was painted with black letters. It was named The Oneironaut, certainly a fitting name. After showing his pass, a crew member took his luggage and guided him to what was going to be his room for the next few days while they traveled to Sonne U-28.

He opted to settle in while the rest of the passengers finished boarding and the crew made the last checkups to the ship. Taking everything out of his suitcase would make it too complicated, so he opted to just leave it open in one corner of his room. He did take everything out of his other backpack though, since those were the things he would be using the most, and placed everything carefully in the bathroom and the drawer unit in front of his bed.

When the ship honked to signal their departure, Wooyoung hurried out of his room and to the main deck. He wanted to see how it looked to leave a planet and enter actual space. He looked around to see if his parents were still there, but he couldn't spot them among the ruckus at port, and that was when he realized he was truly going to do this by himself. At least until he could find the others.

Finally, the ship sailed, and he watched little by little how the port, and then his village, became smaller under his earnest gaze. Faster than he would have expected, they had exited the atmosphere and now he was out in space, by himself, ignorant of where destiny was planning to take him.

Hongjoong's gaze was fixed on his compass but his mind was far away. He kept thinking back to the death of his brother but he couldn't actually remember it all that well. He remembered the messenger telling him about it, but after that it's all a blurry mess of incomplete memories. Through it all, however, the image of his brother, lifeless but still bleeding out, was etched perfectly in his memory.

A soft hand rested on his right cheek and he blinked twice, remembering where he was. He snapped the compass shut and looked up at Yunho, who was now cradling Hongjoong's face with both hands and looking at him with adoration. Hongjoong blushed at the intimacy of the look and Yunho chuckled, pecking him softly before letting him go.

"Don't go on a journey without us Captain." Yunho said, grabbing his hand. "It's time Hongjoong, we have to go."

Hongjoong nodded and followed Yunho to the door of his quarters. He paused for a brief moment just to squeeze Yunho's hand before letting go of it and going out. The crew paused what they were doing to look at him. The emotions were palpable: excitement and nervousness mingled to create a timed bomb just waiting to explode. He made his way to the quarterdeck and placed his hand on the wheel.

"Weigh anchor and raise sails! Our journey begins now!"

#kwritersworldnet #kdiarynet #8makes1teamnet #kpopscape #ateez #ateez fanfic #ateez fic #ateez fanfiction #kpop #kpop fanfic #kpop fic #kpop fanfiction #crescent #bluenicorn writes

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lsbaird · 3 years

Text

The Devil’s Luck - Chapter Three Preview!

I’m a day late, it’s true, but hopefully you’ll forgive me. Today Etienne rallies to give it the old college try one more time, but he’s beginning to realize his target may not be quite so murderable as he appears...

It was the D'Grassa, in fact, that proved to be the next opportunity for dispatching Frey. In the morning Etienne dined alone, again, as Frey was tied up over his breakfast meetings, where he held court with his tenants and resolved grievances between them. There was a sticky situation involving a sheepdog and some geese, Frey had told him, and it would be quite boring for Elsa. Etienne heartily agreed. Not to mention, of course, that Elsa's presence at Chancelion was supposed to be something of a secret for a week, unofficial until her aunt had time to accept her niece's elopement, and the engagement was fixed. Or, in terms of the Order, when Frey was dead and the Lady Elsa vanished into thin air.

So Etienne made his way though another round of oatmeal and bland tea, and then retreated back to the library. Maybe he couldn't steal the D'Grassa yet, but at the very least he could read the damn thing.

But once he had settled in the window seat, Etienne opened the tome to its first illuminated page and stared at it without comprehension. His mind was not on the Binding of the Archdemon, centuries past. It was on the prevention of that same Archdemon's return. His easiest opportunity to do his sworn duty had ended in failure, but there were numerous other methods to be tried. After all, it was only the second full day of his stay.

He had no idea how long he was there, lost in thought, staring out the window. The rain had let up, but it had stripped all the autumn glory from the trees, and Chancelion's forests were skeletal frames with flecks of red and peach clinging to them. The timber hills, whose evergreen wombs birthed the hulls of Verlia's merchant vessels, were a dark-green smudge in the distance under a brilliant sky. In the stone courtyard below, past the lacy ironwork points under the windows, tatty leaves chased each other back and forth like schoolchildren let off their studies, whirling into circles and then breaking apart. The sudden sound of Frey’s voice scattered Etienne’s thoughts in a much less poetic fashion.

"I would have said my library lacked for nothing, but I see now what it most needed is here at last."

Etienne started. Frey was standing in the doorway, his eyes only for his betrothed, love lending him an added appeal that his already fine figure did not need.

"Frey!" Etienne said, even as he scolded himself for letting someone—a target, even!— sneak up on him. He hurried to rescue the book that was falling out of his lap before its fragile binding could crash to the parquet floor. "I didn't even hear you come in."

"I could not bear to disturb you, in whatever thoughts you were having." Frey smiled. "Dare I hope that I was in some small part of them?"

Etienne liked nothing better than when Elsa could be honest and full of lies all at the same time. It was so gratifying. "Why, yes, I do confess that you did feature rather prominently," he said, and neglected to elaborate. It wouldn't do to tell Frey that those lush, private fantasies had all involved Frey's murder. "Did you think I would be thinking about the lawns, or the sparrows on the roof?"

"The mystery was so much of the appeal," Frey sighed, happily. "I should have you painted just like that, tilted away from the frame, so I could always watch you daydreaming."

Etienne put the book to his mouth to hide his expression. He breathed deep the reassuring smells of old leather and parchment and felt calmer at once. "Really, my lord," he said, pleased with the teasing note he'd managed, "one would think your thoughts might be ungentlemanly."

"They are," Frey said, with a dark little smile that made him look far too much like his Great-Uncle, "entirely ungentlemanly. And if my lady insists on calling me lord, and thinking me so chivalrous, I might have to remind her that I was born a bastard, in a cattle barn, to a tavern wench."

"So long as your elusive father was not one of the cows, I'm hardly concerned," Etienne said, lightly. "After all, you are Lord Reichwyn now, are you not?"

"So everyone insists on telling me," Frey said. "And he has come to ask his betrothed if she would like to go out for a ride."

Horse-trampling, being thrown from the saddle, neck-breaking, falling down a gully, drowning in a creek, impaled on a broken branch, oh yes. All the things Etienne's dreams were made of. "I would adore the chance for some fresh air."

Frey held out both his hands. "As I hope you adore me?"

Etienne had to rush up then, and take his hands, and be scooped up into another kiss. It was an easier lie than saying yes, Etienne supposed, but he disliked how it set his lips buzzing and made his heart so loud. A dull thump from the window put Frey off his affections, but not enough to release his lady. "What was that?"

"Ah, damn!" Etienne said, with feeling. "It’s the D'Grassa. If I've broken the binding I'll never forgive myself." The book, left teetering on the edge of the window seat in Etienne's wake, had toppled over onto the floor with its pages splayed.

"Not to worry," Frey said, bending to pick it up. "It's been all right for centuries, it looks like it can take a knock or two."

"Still, I hate to abuse a book—oh!" Etienne broke off, because Frey, kneeling there over the book and looking so wonderfully vulnerable, had just given him an idea.

"Something else wrong?" Frey asked, looking at his lady in confusion.

Belatedly, Etienne clapped a hand to his ear. "Yes! Ah, I've lost one of my earrings. It was one of the pearls you had in my wardrobe for me. I hope it's not gone for good!"

Frey put the D'Grassa safely on the window seat, and as Etienne hoped, went back down on his knees. "Not to worry, it must be around here somewhere, as I saw you had it when I came in..."

Etienne hastily took out one of his earrings and chucked it away in the direction of a distant bookshelf, while Frey flipped up the edge of the carpet by the window seat, peering at the floorboards beneath. "This library eats things, I believe. Just the other day I lost one of my pen nibs, and I was rather fond of how that one laid down ink... Oh look! Here it is."

Etienne's hands froze on his collar, but Frey had only found the pen nib, not the earring. "I hope then my pearl will turn up," he said, and as Frey went back to searching, Etienne yanked a length of fine, deadly wire from the net of stiffened black lace that rose up from his collar. The handles were gilt toggles that looked like common decorations, and the wire whispered a high, thin note in Etienne's hands. What would one more red line be, among the many already lacing Frey's body?

Frey sat back a little to look under the cushions of the window seat, and then, Etienne sprung.

It was beautifully simple. The invisible wire looped around Frey's throat, drawn tight in Etienne's hands as the assassin used his entire body to leverage his force. It was quick, elegant, bloodless. With Frey's windpipe blocked, there was only a moment's silent struggle, like a fish dangling at the end of a line. Frey's grasping hands reached out blindly for aid and knocked over the ink-pot on the writing desk, upsetting a candelabra and igniting the desk papers with a breathy roar. The heat of the rising flames licked Etienne's face, relaxing the false curls of his wig. Soon the conflagration would take the entire room, and Freyton Reichwyn Landry with it, along with all the Archdemon's desires. It was a shame about the books, but it was a mission, Etienne's mission, and it must be accomplished at any cost.

...except that it wasn't.

Etienne did not, in fact, get much further than looping the wire around Frey's neck. The rest happened with glorious brevity in his imagination, until Etienne pulled the wire taut, and it snapped. The unexpected lack of murder sent him staggering backwards a step, bewildered. The finest garroting wire in Ivanis City, specially made for him by a master craftsman in the tools of death, broken in two as though it were no more than a cobweb!

Frey fell back on his heels with a surprised cough, and Etienne stuffed the broken garroting wire down into his bodice.

"My lord?" he asked, shoving his own annoyance aside to radiate mild concern instead, wondering if Frey had chanced to see the wire flickering in front of his eyes. Perhaps he'd thought it only a stray hair, one of the ones that so often escaped from his queue. "Are you all right?"

"Ah—yes, I think so," Frey said, patting his cravat in some confusion. "For a moment I thought... It must have only been this pulling tight, though."

"This?" Etienne said thinly, bracing for accusations. But Frey only pulled an object free of his waistcoat. Twirling on the end of a silk ribbon was a miniature painting of Etienne dressed as Elsa, the one that had been sent along with his letters. Ephaseus had painted it himself for the ruse.

"I put it round my neck this morning, you see, and wound it twice as the ribbon was a bit long. It must have just pulled tight when I bent over. The locket's gold, so it's quite heavy." Frey rubbed his throat, laughing ruefully. "For a moment there I thought you were trying to strangle me!"

"Aha ha ha heh!" Etienne's laugh lacked any humor at all, at least to his own ears. Surely Frey must know it was false? "But why would I do that! I haven't even gotten my ride with you yet." By the time he got to the end of his protest, Etienne had managed a decent grasp on his facade again. Still, the word ride came out in far more of a provocative tone than he planned. Frey looked startled and pleased and a little bit breathless at it, though the last was probably more from the near-strangling more than from his lady's advances. "I mean," Etienne fumbled, and looked around in desperation. "I, er—oh, look, there's my pearl!" He hurried over to retrieve the earring, and to do what he could to repair his disguise. "Would you put it back in for me? I'm afraid you startled me so that my hands are shaking. I wouldn't want it to be lost again."

"Your least wish is my highest command," Frey said, and with a deftness that belonged to the card-player more than to the manor lord, Frey slipped the gold earring wire back through Etienne's ear, and admired it there a moment. "I'm so pleased you like them, and your dresses. This is another you're wearing today, is it not? From the ones I had here for you?"

"Ah, yes," Etienne said, trying not to squirm away from the things Frey was doing to his ear. He detested being tickled. "They really are lovely. And the jewels... You are too generous."

"I'm nothing of the sort. Chancelion's fortune is your fortune, and they are yours by right. I've worked hard to bring the family wealth back here, and to provide things suitable for the lady of the house." Frey's hand slipped down to Etienne's jaw, and suddenly it was worth the pain Etienne had gone through to have his beard yanked out with hot sugar tallow before the mission. The least roughness would have been unfortunate, so close. Damn the man for being such a warm-hearted suitor. "It pleases me to see you in them."

Etienne felt a flicker of surprise. "You chose my jewels and things?"

"I did, though Tobias saw to the fitting of your rooms. He said you would be more used to extravagance, coming from the southlands."

"Ah." Gracious adoration, Elsa my girl, he told himself. You are a woman in love with a rich, handsome man, remember. "It's… so kind of him," he finished, and for once was grateful to be kissed, because it meant not having to talk. I am going to throw that accursed cherub in the duck pond when I go.

"I would give you all that and more," Frey said, when they parted again. "But first, I think it best if you try that riding habit on for fit, and meet me down in the courtyard? Say, a quarter of an hour? I'll see to some hawks for us, and mounts."

"I can think of nothing finer," Etienne breathed, kohl-darkened lashes fluttering.

"Good." Frey ran his thumb under Etienne's lower lip. "Till then, my love." He kissed Etienne's knuckles and then was out the door, whistling again, a besotted and happy man.

Etienne sprawled back in a spindly chair not meant for sprawling in, his legs splayed wide and his skirts in disarray as he allowed himself one moment of utter and complete disgust with the world.

"...Fuck."

#the devil's luck #sneak peek #queer lit #indiepub #naughtiness and rude things #fuck that cherub seriously #i know it's really a putti #but putti is specific and cherub is generic and this isn't supposed to be our universe #real writer problems

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jamiebluewind · 4 years

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Charatcter Descriptions and Summary 2.13

As always, let me know if I need to edit or add anything and tag/ask/PM me about art and stories so I can check them out! I'll try to add warnings later. Also, we have 8 episodes left including this one, so the last one should be number 20.

***

Things

Dusk Moss

Hallucinogenic moss with very few alchemical properties that puts the user into a state of lucid dreaming where they are also concious of waking world (basically fantasy marijuana)

Is a flammable powder that cannot be unlit once lit

Crumpkin said his brother swears by it and that everyone should try it at least once.

It will even you out if you take a little bit and a quarter of teaspon will send one of them on a trip all day (so what about the size and race of the person?)

Can buy in a massive block from Tinkerer's Hall where a dose of the powder can be shaved off the block to use

Mystery Rune

The rune was abjurative magic: metamagic school (instead of protection, wards, and shields) which shapes the nature of magic itself. Specifically, the rune involved curses and a way to mask powerful curses and spells. One can take a tremendous amount of spellcraft (or the ability to cast multiple spells), put it into a curse, and have the curse ride under other curses. In other words, if connected to an object, the object would have been "cursed" to be a vessel for a wealth of other spellcasting (flash drive), but hidden under another curse (advanced encryption and a virus).

The larger and more permeable the curse, the more able it is to ride under another curse.

The curse on top (dummy curse) works best the more widespread, static (can't be easily ended or doesn't have random frequent spell effects), ambient, and passive it is like using a magical landscapes or creatures instead of a spell made by a spellcaster.

***

PCs With Datemates

Kristen

Took a picture on her crystal of the unknown goddess mural (originally wondered if it was a tequila advertisement)

Kissed Tracker and the tree she was hiding behind

Wanted rosé with the cold fratatas, but thought it was weird that he put both kale and spinach in them (as did Tracker)

Looked through the medical papers Adaine and Riz found and figured out how to cure the Kalina infection (greater restoration due to studying records or a tinsure that requires dusk moss, the alchemical supplies Gorgug got from the tinkerers, some things Adaine can pull from her jacket, and one or two things they'd only be able to find beyond the wall)

Her and the group decided on the tincture method despite the risk of curing behind the wall as she can only cast greater restoration once per day (only one 5th level spell slot and 5 infected: Tracker, Sandra Lynn, Ragh, Riz, and herself), but the option of using greater restoration on herself and Riz while leaving the others behind or inside Van was discussed (side note: could she team up with any of the locals bards/clerics/druids/artificers/celestial warlocks who know greater restoration and teach them the specifics of the altered spell while they wait on the others to get back?)

Suggested they pretend they all died after they take the tincture in order to give them an advantage due to Kalina thinking the party was cut in half (all but Adaine agreed)

Owns little handcuffs with her and Tracker's initials on them

"I don't know why I'm saying this, but Go Ball."

Assumed that the team in hell were just stuck in a waiting room, possibly drinking pina coladas

Investigated where Aelwen, Adaine's mom, and Killian entered the briar wall. It was much more tangled, far from Arborly, up a cliff with difficult rocky terrain between them and the temple. It was a place where they wouldn't be looked for, but it would take them longer to get there.

Tracker

Said the thing with Vraz made her werewolf issue with the Shrine of Thorns the second weirdest thing that's happened

Started transforming after glancing at the uncovered mural image of the unknown goddess, growling as half her head transformed as she fought changing before rolling off and hiding behind a tree (per Kristen's suggestion)

Couldn't go to hell because she couldn't enter the shrine

Gorgug

Got springs put in his shoes by the gnomes which gave them thick rubbery soles (Spring Coiled Sneakers of Bounding) and also asked for shock thing from tinkerers which would have a spare the dying effect (unknown if he got it)

Wears size 19 canvas shoes

Looked through a big log book with the alchemic ingredients in tinkerer's shorthand before buying the same alchemical ingredients that Killian bought (magnesium, antimony, and mercury which are used in magical candles) for 350 gold. Killian also bought two huge blocks of dusk moss incense (600 gold for both which he split cost wise with Fabian), but he was nervous about buying it (dusk moss details above).

Explained cell towers to the tinkerers

Considered jumping into space to either get to or place a satellite

Found a picture of his parents launching their satellite into space (Wilma and Digby giving double thumbs up, the van tipped on it's nose with it's back doors open to launch the satellite from the back of it, a lot of papers and a mobile desk in van's glovebox) and found space tech-esk routing info for the satellite in Van which allowed him to make a satellite phone

Originally left his crystal and the info with the tinkerers (original timeframe 1-2 days), but came back to help which speed up the process

Was curious why Gilear wasn't infected by Shadow Cat like Sandra Lynn and was later sorry he brought it up

When they found out they couldn't enlarge/reduce Van, he considered making a massive vest with massive pockets he could wear that everyone could jump in before they used enlarge/reduced on him, but the idea was scrapped

Suggested that if they played dead after taking the tincture to not warn Gilear so he wouldn't be acting when they "died".

"Hey, this is based on nothing, but I feel like Gilear is dead."

Believed that hell wasn't as bad as people said it was, just unfamiliar and like 5 degrees hotter

Ran into the briars after the portal closed

Likes a hot hot tub because warm ones just makes him wonder what's cooking in there

Was up all night sweating with his hoodie off (first time in a long time) working on his phone before finishing up the crystal pack (made his phone into a satellite phone). He felt pretty good about making it work.

Got a slew of unread messages once he turned his phone on (few old ones from Zelda, some from his parents checking in, and tour stuff)

Called Zelda with a video call, putting his hoodie back on as it rang and rang (most of the call is in Zelda section)

Told Zelda he loved her for the first time (after she said it first). Said he wished he was there, but hadn't figured that technology out yet and admitted that he might not have service once they went into the forest ("I'm here to communicate")

The gnomes erupted into cheers over the crystal working, but he was equally exciting over Zelda saying she loved him. They popped some gnome wine (pink fizzy champagne that smelled like cloying sweet strawberries) and shared it with him in celebration

Got a bunch of DMs from the other seven maidens saying "Way to go big guy"

Zelda

Was at Ostentata's house at night for a party (everybody was telling the story of when Gorgug jumped the fire elemental there and when he backyard wrestle smashed the beer pong table while time was stopped) when Gorgug called

Told her adventuring party he was calling before she went outside, but they followed

Answered her phone while still wearing her earbuds and assumed he was back, but was told he figured out how to make his phone work. He did it because he felt like it was important to be able to talk to her, the world, and her (not because it was part of the quest). She asked if they had cell towers, but Gorgug said that he had been working on artificer stuff and used his parents' satellite.

Started crying over Gorgug doing a whole bunch of new science to make his phone able to call back, apologized to him over getting upset, and said she missed him and he was the best

Was embarrassed by the other maidens eavesdropping (they called out "Good lookin out Gorgug! Stand up thing to do! You did it!"). Gorgug went on speaker and said "Well hello guys!" before she shooed them off to talk to her boyfriend

Made sure that Gorgug's friends weren't in danger over him working on his project, but was reassured that he was having down time and it would also help them in the long run

Told Gorgug that she loved him for the first time and freaked out (insulting herself) before he said that he loved her too. This was followed by her saying "oooh I just wanna... I just wish you were here."

Said the Red Waste was super hard, but they were done and thought they would get a good grade on it

Called Gorgug cool (and was called cool by him). Said what he did meant a lot to her. The call ended with one last quick I love you from Gorgug.

Fig

Subpoenaed to be a witness for Gortholax before a tribunal due to him being negligent for his infernal domain (after his 9th and final request for appearence lapsed). The print of her subpoena got so fine that it was mostly illegable without a magnifying glass. It was also in infernal (which she can read)

Asked Vraz if she could leave the door to hell open with them following later (left open, but was yelled at)

Considered disguising herself as Gortholax and offered to disguise herself as a famous lawyer from billboards to help Gilear

Wanted to know more about law so she could defend Gortholax domain and yelled "THE CHOSEN ONE!" when she discovered that Gilear knew the law

Wanted to start a grass roots campaign about the demons working with the nightmare king (as devils hate them both)

Asked her mom why Gilear wasn't infected and discovered her parents had slept together many times, but not in the last 3 years

Got upset with Riz over his opinion on devils (quote in dialogue link)

Had to be the first through the portal to hell, but straddled the flaming doorway with Riz on her back to try to keep it open

Tied a rope around Hangman so she could wakeboard while smoking a clove, library card behind her right ear

Thought Gortholax's home was tasteful and knew the door code.

Blamed herself for the quality of Gilear's life (quote in dialogue link)

To Vraz "What going on with you? Do you need a hug?"

Lit a cigarette in court, told them that Gortholax was trapped in a gem, put her feet up, and said Kalina the Shadow Cat used a proxy to trap Gortholax with the assistance of demons (but was able to hide the fact that she was the proxy from Vraz)

Asked for help getting into the forest of the Nightmare King, but got yelled at because calling a recess does not mean the trial is over

Cut her arm and offered the tribunal her blood as proof she was Gortholax's daughter, but the blood sizzled when it hit the ground and either summoned or created an imp which served as proof

Ayda

Told Adaine what the rune was (details below)

Still working on plane shift

Got upset over Fig getting sucked into hell, insisting that they had to go rescue her "Well, we should do whatever we can to make it happen as fast as possible because I'm going to get another kiss, whatever happens"

Said Fig's lips are the softest things she's ever felt (grossing out Adaine) and "If I don't smell Fig's hair again, I'm going to incenerate"

Asked Adaine for advice as the Oracle, wanting to know how many potential futures there were were Fig wouldn't want to kiss her or be around her anymore and if they could be avoided. She was also worried that Fig might have kissed her, but not felt attracted to her.

"If we kissed a bunch of times over the course of an hour, does that mean we are girlfriends or wives?" (potentially but ask to clarify)

Was worried that she would look sad, weird, or not normal from a social standpoint for asking Fig to clarify if they were girlfriends (to which Adaine said she was not and was in face very very cool).

Worried about her mind being foreign to other people and despite not being the same as Adaine, felt better after talking to someone who understands not being like everyone else.

Told Adaine "You're a very special person to me and your friendship means the world to me. I hope we study magic together for a long long time" and that she loved her.

Has notes on how her brain works and built an entire friendship section in the library because she was so lonely.

Went to the Synod to be alone because she lived "on a dirty pirate island"

***

Other PCs And People In The Party

Adaine

Released an aura in the crime scene and might have put on gloves

Found the non detection runes her mother had placed (to keep elves off the trail) and the remains of two rituals, one to kill Killian and one to put the Devil's Heart (with Gortholax) inside Killian. The rituals happened 24 hours appart, meaning they left the night the teens arrived or her mom knew to kill Killian before Aelwen arrived.

While looking for something in the room (something nice her mom might have said about her), she found a blank piece of parchment on a small desk and revealed a message using "the pencil trick" ("Aelwen is with me. You are betrayed. You have no other choice darling. Come with us.") which she believed was probably for her dad. Later got the original copy (wrote out for a sending spell) by using mend on ashes she found in a trashcan

Suggested a cold fratata picnic

Pulled beautifully printed pamplets out of her jacket for Fig's grass roots campaign, but they had a typo so she tossed them

Told the group to give a thumbs up to someone who had the message spell (currently only Fig and Adaine) if they had something to say to keep it from Kalina

Was caught by briars and ejected from the hell potral, keeping her from entering, but decided that heaven and hell were just reflections of each other so she wasn't worried

On dusk moss, said "I've heard it's good for anxiety." and suggested that they all got high while waiting on their friends to return from hell (but was unable to convince the others)

Discovered that the unknown goddess' spellbook had a distinguishing mark on it, an occult rune that was in a lot of stuff at Compass Points (which Ayda would have studied) and on the coin given to Kalvaxus (more info under mystery rune)

Liked a hot tub that started off very warm at first and then got more comfortable

Messaged Ayda late at night for help "Avast ye scurvy devil. How is plane shift going? Also, need info on rune. It looks like [x]" (answered back "I'm not a scurvy devil. Let's use the synonym. Right jacket pocket.")

Found a key made of glowing blue crystalline energy in her pocket as the keyhole on a nearby door started glowing slightly blue.

Was given a scroll with a first level spell by Ayda that granted her access to the Synod of Spyre which is a meeting place for wizards

Told Ayda "I think your great", made her laugh by telling her that curses were "ten a penny", and told her that she enjoyed talking to her about their magic as Ayda is someone who gets it and is not mean to her

Asked Ayda to tell her everything (about the kiss), but then realized that she didn't want or need to know everything. She did say (about Ayda and Fig) "I support this. I am happy about it. I am amazed. Oooo she's secretive!" and that while on a macro level, some people will kiss without caring, Fig wouldn't because she cared about everybody (she did kiss those two older guys though?)

Admittedly that being oracle only let her help out a little every day and occasionally she got a terrifying vision, but she doesn't know when the event will occur or what will cause it

To Ayda, "If you like a person and they like you and the relationship is good, it shouldn't matter how other people feel about it? I think."

"I want to be alone and also surrounded by my friends at all times."

Riz

Worked the crime scene in the Owl and Harp with Adaine (putting on gloves before starting)

Found that the rituals were specifically to get Kalina into Silvar by bypassing the need for permission from a devil authority by using petrismosis to move from an infected creature into a gem to commandeer the devil within it

Petrismosis: The body's ability to start having elements of the magical gem within it to start permiating orgainic membrane; the process of an organic body and gem to become one which includes osmosis of blood to gem (ragh mom constrantly fights against the being within her gem using her rage, blood, and soul)

Told Adaine "It's great to fin- be around someone who just focuses up. Me and you? Everybody else is super horny. Super emotional. But me and you? *slaps hands together* No emotions between the two of us." (she was looking for something nice from her mom)

Discovered that Adaine's mom had packed WAY more rations than they needed to get to the temple, some alchemical ingredients, and all primary work, leaving only hints behind as well as some research and medical diagrams (which Adaine and Riz took). The medical diagrams were extremely old velum grave robber level medical stuff written in a character based pictogram language (think hieroglyphs, almost like emoji) that was most likely centaur. One medical diagram was of a disected and dismembered centaur with dark, very scary looking cat symbols (refered to as the disease or infection) behind eyes, in ears, on tongue, deep in sinuses, and on spine. It also showed that the brain was carefully taken apart and looked at, but the infection was not present there.

He and Adaine deduced that Kalina could only look through one person at a time using their senses and couldn't get into their brains, but could cause paralysis. The only safe place would be the moon haven/Kristen's hallow, but Kalina might be able to ride one of the infected into the haven if she was actively trying to do it. They could however talk anywhere using telepathy (such as the message spell).

Was worried about going to hell while infected, but later said "I meantioned that I was concerened about going to hell and her possibly being able to see the trial, but hell is also bad so I don't really care if they end up fighting and killing each others. Let's just go to hell. Also, they're super far along already. They have Gortholax and they're in. So it's not like... yeah."

Might have internalized racism/goblinphobia and has bias towards devils (both from his reactions in this episode and his reaction to Gortholax in season 1)

Suspicious of devils and doesn't think they should be super cool with them (quote in dialogue link), later becoming upset over what Hangman said about goblins ("Oh like goblins have such a great reputation.") and the others reaction to his and The Hangman's statement.

Road into hell holding onto Fig's back.

Upon seeing Gilear knocked out, said "See I told you that hell was bad! I mean, this is awesome, but this is bad." Pointed out the irony of Gilear getting mad at him a long time ago for stealing the first aid kit that gave him the healing feat.

After Hangman said the evil souls were murderers, thieves, and liars, he started sweating and said "Liars huh?" (side note: Riz has actually done all three)

Grabbed Gilear's face and investigated him to figure out why he was so confident (he said no to an offer from Sandra Lynn). Hissed at Gilear and then apologized, saying they were in hell, it was weird, and the things said about goblins earlier made him feel kinda crazy

Hissed at Vraz repeatedly, even after she threatened him.

To Vraz "Well I'm Riz The Ball and I'm just gonna ROLL WITH THIS! We're here! We're here for your trial thing! *hiss*" Is held back by Gilear while Fig tried to push him forward towards Vraz (told her to stop it)

Hissed at Vraz again (when she was mean to Fig) saying Vraz calling somebody in the middle of a trial was weird before the pair got in another hissing/screaming match. Asked The Hangman to hold him back and got his foot run over.

Fabian

Ownes 250 to 312 pairs of shoes (depending how many have been thrown away or given to childen), has size 5 feet (and is self conscious about it), said he had delicate feet and was lithe and dexterous, and his father had small feet and mother had normal sized feet

Said "god damn it" when he discovered Krumpkin wore the same size shoes as him, lied and said he had big toes and wore a 5.5 because he didn't to exchange shoes with a gnome, and quietly said "...let's go" when Gorgug asked if he wanted little bells on his shoes (side note: was he teased in the past?)

Completely confused by tinkerers logbook, so he deferred to Gorgug. Tried to help by rubbing his sheet on the gold coins they were buying supplies with, but nothing happened

Was nervous about buying or using dusk moss, saying he knew a guy who tried it while wearing a hat and now he always felt like he's wearing the hat. Told the rest of the group "We bought so many drugs." when they dot back.

Fabian's bardic "You feel the power of Fabian's support and care for you" (the explanation of his new stats is linked below)

When asked if he wanted to stay in the Tinkerer's Hall, he answered "Absolutely. With all these weird little men and women. No thank you. Ragh, let's go!"

Has a bunch of private stuff on his phone that he doesn't want anybody seeing

Tried to ride Hangman into hell, but caught by the briars and ejected as the portal closed

Told Hangman "You are literally the sweetest meanest thing ever."

Mutters "Go off The Ball, go off" while Riz was in a different dimension from him (yelling at Vraz in hell)

Said he didn't worry about his father as he was thriving, but he missed him. When told he could get word to him, originally assumed Bill would be busy, then agreed but asked Hangman not to be needy about it, then tried to pretend that he was cool either way and that he didn't need it and it wouldn't fill him with joy, then admitted that it would fill him with joy, and finally just asking "yes please do it"

Likes a warm hot tub due to it being better for his skin and he can stay in there longer

(Multiple quotes can be found in the dialogue link below)

Hangman

His presence (a devil) closed the portal to hell, seperating him from Fabian. He could still talk to Fabian telepathically, but freaked out. When asked to turn it down, he replied "I can't turn it down, I'm sad!"

Said that the portal was created for the dark tribunal and afterwards the devils are required to deposite them from where they came from

Gave Gilear his mark by making his eyes glow dark red pinpricks and etching an infernal ruin of blood and fire on his forehead

Got pissed off over Gilear having to ride on him, but did it to stop his complaining. Meanwhile, Riz also road on him (with a "Huzzah!") and Fig tired a rope around him so she could wakeboard on her skateboard behind him

Approved of Riz hissing at Gilear

Said the souls falling into The Bottomless Pit were evil and of murderers, theives, and liars

Got the tribunal to allow them to stay at The Bottomless Pit (as Fig was both Gortholax's daughter and she had passage there) instead of prison

When he was told only Fig was going to go in the hot tub, he pouted and said "I want to go too!"

Offered to send word to Bill Seacaster for Fabian

Gilear

Made fratatas (with both spinach and kale) immediately, but they all got very cold due to the teens being away for hours (were so cold that they thought he put them in the freezer)

He was not "the face" when he worked in Fallenel at the elven counsel (where he said he was a glorified paralegal), but was still an expert in international and interplaner law

When Fig told him that it was his moment and she needed him, he immediately replied with "Nope!". He eventually gave his word to help, but was confused about how they got into trouble in Arborly, discovering the trial was both in hell ("what? what? oh no.") and delivered by a really keyed up woman who was probably working through something ("I...what have you done?")

From Adaine's jacket, was given a barrister wig from Fig ("None of the cultures I've worked for use these wigs"), a gavel from Kristen, and a black robe from Adaine

Found that the subpoena had no clause concerning ther souls, but hell would send people to get Fig if she didn't go

Wears boat shoes and had a powerful aura of disease coming from his feet (again Gilear DOCTOR! or have a healer greater restore!)

His bald spot was hit by a bit of fire before a blast of fire hit him and knocked him out, setting his wig on fire. He was healed by Riz, but left with burns.

Was given the Mark of The Hangman, which was an infernal ruin of blood and fire etched on his forehead which caused a red force field to appear that protected him from the fire as long as he was with The Hangman

Noticed how Fig was acting (library card behind ear) and started asking her questions, but she dodged them until Riz confronted him about his confidence and got him to confess "I got confidence because Sandra Lynn asked to sleep with me and I said no!" Said that he and Sandra Lynn talking until morning and towards the end she made an offer, he said "No. Thank you", and everyone was still happy and fine afterwards

Told Riz he was very scary and intense sometimes, resulting in Riz hissing at him

Did not actually help during the trial due to fear.

(Has multiple quotes in dialogue link.)

Sandra Lynn

Covered for the teens messaging by talking about finding where Adaine's mom entered the forest as the teens nodded along

Had to explain to her daughter that her and Gilear slept together, but she could have gotten the Kalina disease anytime in the last 3 years and Gilear wouldn't have been infected ("I love you. It's weird. Sorry for all this weird info.")

On Kristen attempting to handcuff her "So help me god Kristen Applebees. I understand that I work for you, but so help... wow."

No longer with Jawbone, but ended on good terms

Was very kind to Gilear the first night in Arborly. She offered to sleep with him at one point and was turned down.

When she asked what the teens were messaging about (dusk moss), Kristen said Spring Break and suggested Sandra Lynn have a spa day with a hot tub soak and a massage with cucumbers on her eyes. Gorgug suggested cucumbers on her ears. Fabian said they should get the weird gnomes to pound her (dear god Fabian! XD) with Kristen saying "gnomes all over your body", Adaine adding that they would walk on her back, and Fabian adding that the little shoe bells would be meditative

Ragh

Asked for a lost spring from the tinkerers

Wears a size 17.5 shoe (quote in dialogue link)

Was paranoid about buying dusk moss (ARE YOU A COP!?), but after Crumpkin's reaction, he grabbed Fabian and Gorgug's arms and said "I think drugs are legal here"

Took a solid chunk of dusk moss and was found staring at his hand ("My hand is just little animal on the end of your arm")

Came into the van later, shirtless and looking like he'd sweat ten gallons. Said "Everything in the world is connected", (on Adaine thinking of trying it) "Adaine, for real? I can never be anxious again because I don't even know if I can ever be fully in my body again.", and (response to Fabian saying it sounds scary) "No no. I'm part of the universe dude" before drinking a glass of water and going off to go to bed.

***

Gnomes

Crumpkin Springbill

Head Tinkerer of the Tinkerer's Hall of Arborly

Confused as to why anybody would be mad about people buying or using dusk moss

Told Gorgug that it would take a long time and a lot of materals to build a cell tower

Size 5 shoes (but likes a little toe room) with curled toes so he can puts little bells on them (sounds like the general style of shoes for the gnomes there as well)

Said hello to Zelda enthusiastically over a video call

Polly Pullypad and Osmand Wobbletrouble

Accidentally flew into where they stacked all the old pots and pans (Polly)

Brought Gorgug his altered shoes back and bowed to Gorgug

Asked to examine Gorgug's crystal in exchange for the spring shoes (Osmand)

Suggested they try to skip building a cell tower and connect directly to a satellite

(Unnamed Twins)

Shallower cone hats with tufts of fur on the ends of springs

Took gorgug shoes off his feet

***

Devils

Vraz the Mean

Sarcastic erinyes with a +13 insight and a beautiful but uncannoy vally porcelain face with a beauty mark

When Fig and Kristen asked if she could leave the door open so they could follow "Are you guys having a fun time? BECAUSE YOU SEEM PRETTY FUCKING GLIB! Keep your sass to yourself!", but still left the door open

Got hissed at by Riz a lot (multiple quotes in dialogue)

Said she is having a bad time between her title (Vraz The Mean), species (Erinyes), running hell, and her title (Arch Secretary)

Called the tribunal into order (with her two co-jurors in a room with a small 3 seat judges bench), stating that it concerned the issue of Gortholax's infernal negligence

Tried to call her boss Blozo, but he couldn't come due to traffic

Found that being trapped in a gem counted as extenuating circumstances and he would not be punished, but they needed a new regnant for the Bottomless Pit so they called a recess while they consulted the bylaws.

Yelled at Fig for asking for help after the recess saying (in a durr voice) " *points at temple* Do you know what words mean!? Do you know what words mean!? *jacking off motion* Huh?"

Was going to imprison "the mortals", but was convinced by Hangman to put them under house arrest at The Bottomless Pit

Kystrona (Ky-stron-ah) The Chained

Vaguely humanoid figure that is just like

A person with chains coiled where arms would be as well as the torso and head, making a massive mound of chains

Moved with a lot of strain (including trying to shrug) and voice is muffled from all the chains

Lorzug (lore-zug) The Impaled

Bone thin naked person with incredibly pale skin and translucent vains all over

Impaled through the stomach about 10 feet up a jet black iron spike as they kick and scream

Only responded with screams

Retch Rot

Tiny blood red imp with a scorpion tail summoned by Fig's blood (calls her mistress)

Might look like a red Boggy with really long legs for his size (Ally wondered if he looked like "a really famous mouse", including suspenders, but I personally give Emily's description more weight as she is in fact in hell as Fig)

Valet to Fig while in the Bottomless Pit

Wanted to show them to their quarters and the many doors of The Bottomless Pit (but had to make it clear that the doors were just rooms in the pit and not portals)

***

Other Stuff From 2.13

***

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[To be added]

#fantasy high #fantasy high live #fantasy high spoilers #dimension 20 #d20 quotes #d20 character descriptions #d20 descriptions #descriptions #vraz the mean #krumpkin springbill #retch rot

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polarishq · 4 years

Photo

Meet WREN THERON. They are TWENTY EIGHT years old and hail from NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK. Wren embodies the star, RIGEL. They use she/they pronouns. Their faceclaim is HALEY LU RICHARDSON.

Rigel reminds me of the quiet click of a bathroom door locking, the stutter of words and breaths and hearts and back to words, locks of hair twisting around a shaking finger, the difference between a vessel and a person, the slip of a needle through fabric, the excited chatter among the stars as something new blossoms into the world. .

BIOGRAPHY

TW for drug abuse.

Typically, stars don’t meddle in the creation of humans. They have power, yes, but they also have limits. They were never meant to create men. But Rigel has always been the one to push the envelope. When the idea of something new bursts into the minds of men, Rigel is lingering in the shadows, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to meddle. So when the newest Theron child’s eyes opened with the idea of an imaginary friend, Rigel leaped at the chance to give birth to a dream.

The child was unexpected and unwanted, to say the least. At first, no one knew where she came from or how she ended up in the same incubator as the Theron heiress, but they found it impossible to get rid of her. Any attempts to separate her from her apparent twin resulted in both children growing inconsolable. When the doctors tried to take the mysterious child away, only a few hours passed before her skin grew pale and her lungs began to lose function. Fearing what would happen if this continued, the girls were put together again and Wren was officially considered a Theron.

The thing is—- stars were never meant to make humans. So when Rigel crafted a person out of a newborn’s fantasy, it was bound to turn out defective.

First, it was the speech impediment. She’ll grow out of it, they all said. After all, she was just learning how to speak, just like every other child. So no one gave much thought to the way she stumbled over her words, face turning red as she struggled to form ‘s’ and ‘p’ and ‘t.’ Words would die on her tongue and she’d receive patient looks because you’ll get it one day.

Then, it was the clumsiness. She’ll grow out of it, they all said. After all, she was just learning how to walk, just like every other child. So no one gave much thought to the way she stumbled over her own two feet, scraping knee and cheek against concrete as her ankles crossed in the wrong direction. Her hands would fumble and drop Lego blocks and she’d receive mildly irritated sighs but it was fine because you’ll get it one day.

Eventually, it was the learning disabilities. They were less forgiving, because that’s a ‘d,’ Wren, not a ‘p’ and it’s simple addition, stop using your fingers. She’d spend hours hunched over her reading assignment, tutors slowly pronouncing words over and over again, encouraging her to use the calculator, there’s nothing wrong with needing help. Still, some people had faith that you’ll get it one day.

She never did. The only thing Wren ever really learned was how to survive not being in the same room as her twin. She grew accustomed to distance: a few inches, a few feet, a few rooms, twenty miles. Still, she never learned how to really stand on her own two feet.

As years passed and her tongue, feet, hands and eyes continued to stumble and stammer, the Therons grew less patient. It was bad enough that this abnormal child was invading their perfect family; it was much worse that she couldn’t do anything right.

The only good thing they could say about her was that she had a great deal of magic. Rigel’s mark had been proudly resting on her heel since the moment she appeared. While it’d never intended to stay with her, it did, as if its companionship could serve as an apology. Its way of saying, I’m sorry I did this to you. I would undo it all if I could. Since I cannot, I’ll stay with you. We’ll get through this together. While the mark did not save Wren from all of the Therons’ malice, it spared her from total disownment.

That doesn’t mean things were okay. Their patience grew thin as Wren got older and clumsier, her defects harder to ignore. By the time she was twelve, she was pulled from public view entirely. She was homeschooled, never to be seen at any galas or events where the Therons needed to attend as a family. Her parents’ disappointment couldn’t have been more obvious if they’d written it on a skyline. Wren Theron was a mistake and one that they could not get rid of.

The clear disdain from her family pushed Wren into the furthest corners of herself, replacing any cheer and joy with debilitating anxiety. The days where she couldn’t get out of bed in fear of throwing up angered her mother; the days where she cried over her textbooks angered her father. There was no way to win, so she did what anyone would do in a situation like hers: turned to drugs.

With Theron money, it was incredibly easy to get drugs. She didn’t have to give a name or connection; as long as she had enough money, then she could get whatever she wanted without any questions. She fell into a rabbit hole, wasting her days away with drugs that did nothing to ease her stutter or her frazzled mind, but did everything to help her escape the pressures of her every day life.

She was sixteen when things finally reached a head. The tongue-lashing her mother delivered (over a stupid and meaningless mistake) was one for the ages. Humiliation and self-loathing led to a familiar scene: the private bathroom attached to her rom, sleeves rolled up and needle pressed against skin. She’d love to say she could remember what happened next, but she’s never been a good liar.

What she does know is this: Rigel is a star of creation. It can create, create, create, but it cannot destroy. So Wren can make all that she can dream, but she can’t kill. Bugs, dreams, animals, people; certainly not herself.

The close call was enough to shake her out of her own abyss. She ditched the drugs she’d stashed throughout her room and checked herself into rehab. She knew her family never would; none of them even knew she’d gotten addicted in the first place. For the first time in her life, she stopped pitying her circumstances and decided to do right by herself.

It was in the midst of rehab when she met a father-daughter duo who offered her a bit of reprieve. Freshly seventeen years old and just learning how to stand on her own two feet, Wren jumped at the chance to escape. When she approached her family about separating from them, they were all too happy to let her go, so long as she didn’t carry their name anymore. With no desire to stay and argue, Wren agreed and moved in with her newfound companions.

Her stay didn’t last long. It was long enough to develop some unrequited feelings; it was long enough for a seed to be planted in her mind. When Wren went off to Polaris at nineteen, something that already changed within her, though she would be the last to know it.

Her anxiety eased with time away from her family, but it never fully left. It’s still debilitating, even on her best days, but there’s less pressure to be perfect these days. With Rigel’s help, she’s started up a business of making things for people, usually for free. Most face-to-face transactions are done through a dependable middle man, so most people don’t even know who’s behind the creation. She doesn’t mind that so much; as long as her customers are happy, she won’t ask for any sort of fame or recognition.

She still has self-harmful tendencies, but they’re manageable. At the very least, she isn’t shooting up in the bathroom anymore.

INCLINATION

Rigel, whether or not they are aware of their “maker” abilities before they are sponsored, has long been known as the creator star. Rigel typically sponsors those who have a gift for craftsmanship magic, or rather, the creation of magical objects for witches to use. Rigel is a creative thinker and a tinkerer, preferring to do things their way rather than let someone else tell them how they’re supposed to operate. They are particularly gifted at transfiguration, which is the basis of their magic, but they also possess a wide knowledge of tools and workmanship in order to create whatever it is their heart desires.

CONNECTIONS

Filling Verity Anwar’s Teach Me, Oh Wise One

Middle Man: Basically the fact of Wren’s business! They do all of the interactions and communication, unless they absolutely cannot. This person has all of Wren’s trust, if only because they never hold her difficulties against her, and they actually have her best interest at heart.

Helping Hand: Literally… someone who doesn’t mind Wren holding their hand once in a while, just so that she has something to hold onto when her anxiety gets bad. She isn’t totally dependent on them, but they help stabilize her when she feels incredibly unstable.

Penned by Ricki ★

#fire.#rigel.#ricki.#student.#taken.

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cyanogastra · 5 years

Text

drowning in the depths of you (don’t save me)

[modern fantasy + mermaid guan shan AU]

Chapter 1 | Read on: AO3

Chapter 2: Questions of Identity

Guan Shan finds out about He Tian’s background. Little does he know, what he learns only scratches the surface of He Tian’s true identity.

He then has an unsettling encounter with a man with bright yellow eyes and hair as white as ash. The man’s words leave his mind in disarray.

A/N:

1 HKD = 0.13 USD = 0.11 Euro

哥哥 (Gēgē) - older brother. Can be affixed to a name (-ge) to indicate brotherly relationship.

---

An ancient Chinese writer named Lai Guo once wrote into detail about his experience of meeting a mermaid. He claimed to have met a woman so devastatingly beautiful, whose upper body was of a human but had a fish's tail instead of legs. He wrote of how the scales on her tail shone like the rainbow, of how the spaces between her fingers had a thin sheet of translucent skin. Her tail had been lime green, the same color as her hair, but her eyes were of a soft amber. He wrote about her voice as she sang, the ocean’s calling as he called it, her song so absurdly mesmerizing he could not put the sound into words. Only that he had felt the pull of the ocean at his heart and the cascade of all emotions at once.

Sometimes she cried as she sang, and Lai Guo felt nothing but the weight of her overwhelming sadness. When her tears fell on the sand, they turned into exquisite pearls.

At that time, no one really took his writing seriously. It was said that he died months after he had completed his work, feverish and mumbling all incoherent nonsense. The people around him believed him to be insane, and his work could not be trusted as truth. Instead they thought of his work as fantasy, a legend about beautiful women who lived in the sea.

It was not until a few hundred years later, when the warlords ruled over all of China. The story about far-faring fishermen had emerged, who had come home with a nearly damaged vessel, with half of the men missing. The story tells of how they would brazenly talk about fishpeople who had lunged at their vessel, pulling their men with them underneath the raging waves. They talked about hearing a song that rattled their hearts, coaxing them to jump from their boat. The ones who survived recall with great horror as they watched their fellow fishermen jump willingly into the sea, and into the arms of the creatures.

The people were perplexed as the stories of the remaining survivors were astonishingly consistent with one another. Months later, all of them passed away, crying and shaking and spouting nonsense about needing to go back to the sea.

As the story spread far the more people became unnerved. Lai Guo’s story started to make sense. Many became interested in finding the fish people and have dedicated themselves to venturing out into the vast oceans.

The Chinese were not alone in their search for the legendary fish people. Similar legends had come forth across different nations, giving them other names; mermaids, sirens, lorelei. Each legend describes into detail the impossible beauty the creatures possessed, and how their songs drove men to madness.

Even to this day, in the dawn of a new age, the mermaids remain elusive.

---

Guan Shan emerges from the surface of the water. He looks around him, once, twice, before hoisting himself up on a rock, cringing as the sharp edges dig into his webbed hands. He takes a moment before willing himself to transform.

The red scales covering his lower body begin to crack and fall off, revealing human skin. The layer joining his legs and the spaces between his fingers and toes also fall away. He feels his gills seal themselves tight on his sides at the same time.

He takes a deep breath, inhaling the humid air into his lungs. Cupping seawater into his hands, he washes the cracked scales from his body. Most of them have already fallen away but some still remain in patches.

Here, behind the rocky out-cliffs of the Hong Kong shoreline, Guan Shan feels safe from view. He doesn’t think anyone has ever seen him morph, otherwise he would have been on the run from traffickers a long time ago.

He walks over to his belongings and begins dressing up quickly. In his haste, a velvet box almost falls from the pocket of his sweatpants. He scrambles to catch it, fingers closing on the object a split second before it reached the cracks between the rocks. He lets out a few curses as he struggles to regain his footing.

With the box safe in his grip, he lets out an exasperated huff. He hesitates before finally pulling the lid open.

He stares at the earrings, black matte and heavy on his hand. The bands stare back, as if mocking him.

During the past week he had refused to acknowledge it, going as far as stuffing it in the back of his closet to hide it from his view. At work he's able to forget about it temporarily, but at home it persistently takes up space at the back of his mind.

Just like all the other gifts from before, and the man behind them all.

He feels the heat rise up to his ears again. He remembers the way He Tian looked like on that particular afternoon, smirking, one eye-brow raising as Guan Shan gaped at the object on his hand. He remembers He Tian’s breath on his ear, making the skin at the back of his neck break out into goosebumps.

‘Wear them for me next time I come by, okay?’

He shakes his head from the memory, embarrassed at how he felt. He can’t get He Tian out of his mind, how his actions make him crazy, how the insufferable curl of his smirk seems to be burned at the back of his eyelids.

‘Damn you, He Tian.’ He says to himself, blaming the other man for the heat in his gut. He carefully takes the earrings out of the compartments and wears them on his ears, feeling the pull of their weight.

He walks over to the rocks’ edge to look at his reflection on the water, turning his head side to side as he observed them.

He won’t easily admit to the other man, but he likes what he sees.

---

The sun’s rays start to peek out from the edge of the horizon. Within minutes, the city starts to buzz with life as establishments open one by one. Guan Shan checks his phone and sees that he has enough time before he’s needed at the restaurant.

He enters a 7-11, relieved to find it mostly empty. He goes to collect a tuna sandwich and a soda and brings them over to the counter. His eyes wander to the magazine rack as he pulls his wallet out of his pocket. He sees something that makes his mouth fall open in shock.

There, on the latest cover of Sudden Weekly, was a picture of a man that Guan Shan has become quite familiar with.

MEET MR. HE TIAN, THE DASHING, YOUNG CEO OF NOIRE

‘What the fuck?!’ He almost says out loud. He’s frozen on the spot, unable to comprehend what he had just read. He blinks a few times, not really believing his eyes.

“That would be 20 dollars, sir.” The cashier’s voice brings him back. He fumbles to open his wallet and quickly hands the exact amount. The cashier accepts it, looking at him with a questioning eye.

A million questions races over his head. He feels an overwhelming amount of incredulity as he takes in the words printed on the magazine. He looks back on the presents, the obvious markers of wealth on He Tian’s person, a different luxury car with him almost every time he comes by the restaurant. He knew the man was rich, but he never expected him to be the CEO of giant corporation.

‘Gods, how old even is he?’

He moves to take a closer look, and sure enough there was He Tian, poised and perfect for the photo.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE: A GLIMPSE ON HIS WORK LIFE AND…LOVE LIFE

Guan Shan chuckles humorlessly, reading the smaller title. He rubs his face and hopes it was all a dream.

Belatedly, he realizes that this new fact makes everything more complex, with He Tian apparently being a big enough presence that entertainment magazines would dedicate an issue about.

'Love life, huh?' Curiosity begs at him to learn more but he ignores it, judging himself for being slightly willing enough to take the bait. Instead, he thinks about how truly far their worlds were; He Tian and his multi-million background, and him, clothes still wet with seawater. He Tian, going all the way to Sham Sui Po, relentless in his advances despite Guan Shan’s unfriendliness.

A panicked thought crosses his mind but he squashes it down. 'There's no way they could know about me, right? '

He gives the magazine cover one last look before straightening up. With rigid posture he turns back and stomps out of the store, breaths falling away from his mouth, his heart thumping so wildly he feels it on the back of his ears.

---

Noire isn’t just any other corporation. It’s one of the largest corporations in the world dedicated to creating technologies ranging from phones, cars, to military grade reconnaissance equipment. Run by the He family based in China, Noire continues to be one of the nation's most sophisticated developers of Asian technology.

But Noire, just like many others of its kind, possesses a deeply hidden secret.

Once, there was a time when China had been ruled over by warlord families. They had stayed in power for the longest time, until Meng Zie Tao championed his revolution. As a result, many of these warlords fled into neighboring countries such as Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia. It was in these nations where they aimed to re-establish their power using the remaining wealth they had accumulated from China.

These families eventually formed the Triads, known today as the largest organized crime group comprised of elite Chinese families excluding the ones from mainland China. These were not just simple elite families who possessed major holdings, on the contrary, their resources stretch far and wide beyond what touches the light of day. Their influence is so vast they could exert enough political control over countries.

Eventually, Meng’s revolutionary government became corrupted with revisionists. This resulted to the re-establishment of some Chinese crime groups back into the mainland. Outside of China, the Triads remain in power.

Just like the yakuza in Japan, and the mafia scattered throughout the West, the Triads and the Chinese crime groups are usually affiliated with legal holdings. It is of no secret to the average person that the largest corporations may or may not have ties to the families.

For the He’s, in particular, Noire was their legal front.

---

“The board of directors has found it necessary to fast-track our development for the prototype of the YZ3. However, our research department protested strongly as they argue that the second engine tests did not quite meet expected results….”

He Tian listens passively, having already read through the reports. He knows where it’s set to go, having advised his executive board to postpone the development until the research was ready. He taps his fingers lazily on the table, his lax posture contradicting sharply with the stiff atmosphere in the room.

He feels the table vibrate. “Sir, a call from Mr. He Cheng.”, his secretary speaks beside him as he gestures to He Tian’s phone. A few heads turn to his direction, surprised to hear the Chairman’s name. He excuses himself curtly, urging them to continue without him.

Outside the meeting room, he answers the call.

“Tian.” The voice on the other end speaks.

“Hello, Cheng-ge.” He answers with a neutral tone, leaning his head on the wall behind him. He Cheng doesn’t answer for a moment.

“Father’s condition has worsened.” He Cheng tells him, voice gruff and devoid of any trace of worry. He Tian finds humor in that, how his older brother had been unmoved since as far as he can remember. Unbearably calm, even now at their father’s downfall.

“So I’ve heard.” He replies airily. The news unnerved him at first, but He Tian supposes it was time.

“Come home to Shenzhen at once. Mother is waiting for you.” He Cheng says from the other end of the call. He Tian chuckles, already expecting the reply. He knows it’s a command, not a request, but he can't really find it in himself to give a damn.

“And Hong Kong? Are you telling me to abandon it?” He Tian challenges, uncaring if it will incite his brother’s anger. He knows perfectly well where this is going. With his father’s failing health came the fall of the He’s, at least that’s what the other families would like to believe. His brother wants him to go back and help him in ensuring their influence in the mainland doesn’t fall apart. At the cost of losing their hold on Hong Kong.

“Just do as I say.” He Cheng says with a finality. He Tian doesn’t push him for the second time. He presses the end call button.

He runs a hand through his hair as he contemplates on the news. His father, once strong and proud, spending long decades perfecting the family businesses with precision, weeding out whatever he found weak. What they didn’t need, he threw away like ragdolls. He's sure his father would have done it to anyone. Even to his own sons, if he didn’t spend time perfecting them as well.

He remembers the weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder, speaking to him in low tones as they watched over the dancing city lights.

“Look them in the eye, He Tian.” His father once said. "Find it in your heart to see them for who they truly are before letting the cold wash over you. To be strong, you must embrace the world’s cruelty and become one with it.”

He Tian can’t remember what he felt on that day, can’t remember how he thought of his father before he had come of age. He doesn’t know any other memory worth latching on to.

One thing he knows very well, was that he was a man who had created monsters for sons.

---

Guan Shan pulls at the collar of his uniform, feeling a little suffocated by the fabric. His sides itch, the feeling of ocean water rushing through his gills still fresh.

He observes a pair of young women who are excitedly conversing at the table nearest to the window, their voices audible throughout the restaurant. Guan Shan collects a few parts of their discussion.

“Have you seen the magazine?....this morning!”

“….so handsome! And young too!”

“…says he’s engaged to Jian Yi, the director of Volentis,…believe it?”

He hates himself for suddenly being interested, wondering if they were talking about a certain man.

Xui Hong places their order on the serving station which he picks up quickly. He reaches their table and places the dishes down, the ladies not really paying him attention. His eye catches the page of the magazine they’re poring over.

On the page was a candid photograph of He Tian with a pale blond man sitting next to him. The man had a slim face with shoulder length hair, his eyes almost white. The man and He Tian seemed to be talking to each other in the photo.

“Wow. He’s beautiful.”

“I know right! Such a power couple!”

Guan Shan walks back to the station, eyes down. For the second time that day, his mind was once again full of questions.

He finds himself more confused than ever. 'Who was Jian Yi? Were they really engaged? What the hell was He Tian doing?'

He knows he should not trust sources like that, always speculating on private lives as if they had a right to know.

But he also knows that He Tian should have said something about who he was and what he did. He doesn’t feel right knowing about He Tian’s background from a gossip magazine at a convenience store. That, or about He Tian supposedly being engaged.

He can’t help but feel like he’s being played with.

He ponders on where he stands given the absurd situation. A mermaid with nothing under his name, his kind seen more as a luxury item rather than a living being. His kind, rightfully belonging to the ocean and not to the slums in Kowloon, struggling to get by each single day. Hunted, afraid, powerless.

'He Tian should be with someone like him.' Guan Shan thinks, the pale man’s face in his head.

His heart doesn't seem to follow with the thought.

He’s so stunned into silence that he doesn’t hear the door chime, failing to realize that the new customer had already seated himself.

“Excuse me.” A masculine voice calls out. He breaks out from his stupor and hurries to table where the man was sitting. He hands him the menu to which the man just gives a cursory glance.

“I would like braised mushrooms with abalone, if you may.” Guan Shan nods and writes it down, flustered.

“Anything else?” Only then does he look at the customer. The sight was something he didn’t expect.

The man had wavy white hair and bright yellow eyes, his pupils so thin as if they were just slits. On his hands were a multitude of ornate gold rings, and on his wrist was a silver watch with intricate machinations.

His appearance sort of resembled the man he saw in the magazine, but the way he smiled at him was more like He Tian.

Except the comparison was not quite right.

The man shakes his head, face unchanging. Guan Shan bows and hurries back to relay the order to Xui Hong in the kitchen who mumbles something about an expensive dish. He goes back out and leans on the station, arms crossed.

Guan Shan looks at the man and finds him staring back. He looks away quickly, feeling unsettled.

‘He looks inhuman.’ He thinks, noting the color of his eyes. Normally he'd feel less worried about humanoids and visibly looking creatures. Somehow, the man makes him feel on edge.

Long minutes pass by as he waits for the man's food to finish, the weight of the other man’s gaze still heavy on his skin. Years spent being in high alert for traffickers have shaped him to feel wary of that kind of attention.

The order is completed. He puts them on the man’s table wordlessly, making eye contact when he has safely placed everything down. He’s unsurprised to see the man already looking back.

‘This is fuckin' creepy.’ He thinks to himself.

He doesn’t break his gaze away. The man meets his stare head on, the tension between them palpable. He wonders why the man seems so invested in him, and briefly he feels self-conscious.

One of the ladies call out to him for the bill, an interruption which he's thankful for. He collects their bill from the counter and brings it to their table. The ladies leave shortly after paying.

The restaurant goes quiet with the closing of the door, the chime’s shrill rings echoing through the air before slowly dying out. The only occupants left in the restaurant was the owner, Guan Shan, and the white-haired man.

Not once did he stop feeling the man’s gaze on him, even as he proceeded to wipe tables and rearrange chairs. He realizes briefly that the other man must be studying him. The thought troubles him greatly.

“Your hair.” The man speaks suddenly, breaking the silence. Guan Shan straightens up before facing him.

“You haven’t dyed it, have you?” The other man continues, leaning into his hand. Guan Shan decides he does not trust him. He definitely doesn’t like the implication.

“And what about it?” He counters, letting aggression lace his tone.

The man smiles, all teeth. The reaction doesn’t sit well with Guan Shan’s gut.

“It’s such an interesting color. I don’t see it very often.” The other man replies, unaffected. Guan Shan doesn’t say anything back. He doesn't want to entertain whatever the other man was thinking.

“You must be special.” The man says, grinning, eyes unblinking. Eyes not leaving Guan Shan, he stands up and makes his way to the door.

Guan Shan grits his teeth and glares back.

“I’ll be seeing you again.” The man says one last time before letting go of the door handle.

The door closes shut, the force of the slam echoing throughout the room. Guan Shan’s left standing by the table, hands gripping the edge hard. The man was not being subtle. The remark about the unnatural shade of his hair, how he wasn’t like any other.

He thinks he might feel a little nauseous. The way the man’s yellow eyes looked like him seemed like he was sizing him up. Guan Shan recognizes the danger hidden behind the gaze, and the words.

Belatedly he notices the brown-colored bill on the table, a 500 dollar no doubt. The cost of the meal wasn't even half of that.

The abalone was left mostly untouched.

---

He goes home an hour later, his insides still feeling scrambled from the encounter. He tries his best to put in the back of his mind, along with everything he had just learned starting from the early hours of the day.

He’s on the way to the bus stop when he feels his phone vibrate on his pocket. He picks it out to check the message.

6:37 PM

From: He Tian

Hey beautiful 😉

Guan Shan rolls his eyes at the text, having gotten used to He Tian’s antics. He wonders why he ever agreed to give the man his number a month ago. Granted, their message conversation is pathetically short.

His phone vibrates again.

6:37 PM

From: He Tian

I was supposed to go there but I got held up. I’m sorry. You must have missed me 😊

Normally he'd feel exasperated. Right now, however, the knowledge of He Tian's background was still burning in his mind. The thought of seeing He Tian so soon makes him uneasy. He types back a quick reply.

6:38 PM

To: He Tian

No.

6:38 PM

From: He Tian

Come on, Red. Admit it

6:38 PM

From: He Tian

Have you left the restaurant? I’m on the way there. I’ll treat you to dinner.

Guan Shan’s breathing stops for a bit. His heartbeat starts to pick up, and suddenly he’s nervous. He doesn't know how to face him. Not yet, not before he could properly absorb the fact that He Tian was not just a regular affluent man. Or that he's supposedly engaged. Or that he's potentially wrecking a supposedly established relationship between two elites just by existing.

He forces his fingers to move.

6:39 PM

To: He Tian

I’m already walking to the bus stop.

He hopes that was enough to detract He Tian.

6:39 PM

From: He Tian

Alright. Where should I meet you?

It was not.

Guan Shan bites his lip, completely unsure of what to reply. He considers rejecting him, then he realizes the opportunity. He could ask He Tian the truth of why he never told him anything. He reasons that there's no need to delay the inevitable.

6:41 PM

To: He Tian

I’ll just meet you at the stop, I’m almost there anyway.

He closes the messaging app. 'It's now or never.', he says to himself, mentally readying himself for the confrontation. If he were to know everything, he should hear it from He Tian face to face. He does his best to ignore the discomfort that came with the anxiety.

He resumes walking, feeling butterflies in his stomach, his heart beating faster each passing second.

He turns to an alley, the bus station only two blocks away. He stops for a moment to put his phone back in his pocket.

Only then does he hear another step that’s not his own.

---

A/N:

Pardon me if I update pretty slowly, I have acads and org stuff to think about. Writing is my only escape lmao To be completely honest I don't fully understand how the Triads work. Rest assured I'm not interested in joining them or anything. Lmao.

I hope 'Meng Zie Tao' ringed a bell. I don't mean to make my political alignment ~really~ obvious, but yeah, I'm all for that stuff. Wealth inequality begone, snap the 1%.

The lore about mermaid tears turning to pearls? I originally read about it from the Children of the Storm. To my surprise, it was actually an ancient Chinese lore *amazed gasp*

Btw, my model for Guan Shan is Ten from NCT/WayV. Idk how that will be relevant to the story but uuhh I just wanted you guys to know that I guess.

Chapter 3

#tianshan #mo guan shan #he tian #19 days #19 days fic #19 days mermaid au #jian yi #zhan zheng xi #mine #fic

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nadziejastar · 5 years

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Day 255: A Midsummer Night's Dream

“Ay me, for aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. . .”

The summer solstice, also known as midsummer, is when the sun reaches its highest position in the sky. It happens on June 21st. It is the day with the longest period of daylight, which makes it the longest day of the year. This is a very important day in the game. It’s shown to you as soon as you begin. On this day, Xion talks about how she dreams every night and begs Axel to tell her who she is. Axel tells Roxas why the sun sets red. And it’s revealed that Saïx can’t really “see” Xion. Nomura likes Shakespeare. Versus XIII had a tagline based on Hamlet. So, it’s not surprising that KH has Shakespeare references, too.

“Are you sure

That we are awake?

It seems to me

That yet we sleep, we dream.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comic fantasy of four lovers who find themselves bewitched by fairies. There's only one mission available on Day 255, and it’s in Wonderland. A dream world set in a forest. It’s just like the play, which involves magic love potions and fairies who live in a forest. The main theme of the play is love, and the crazy and absurd effects it has on people. A Midsummer Night's Dream is full of strange, dream-like sequences and irrational behavior. Probably the most basic significance of dreams in the story is the representation of unreality, or the distortion of time and consciousness.

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

This line is one of the most famous in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for its humor, but it is also thematically important: first, because it captures the exaggerated silliness of the lovers’ behavior; second, because it marks the contrast between the human lovers, completely absorbed in their emotions, and the magical fairies, impish and never too serious.

Hearts and Emotion

Watching that foolish beast flail about only deepens my disdain for humans and their incessant need to be pinned down by feelings. We became Nobodies precisely to avoid the shackles of emotion. It was only later that we realized the scale of that loss: that some things simply cannot be done without a heart. Nonetheless, I see nary a pleasant thing about it.

Xemnas is a good representation of Puck. Xaldin represents this ideology well, too. Puck is a mischievous fairy who delights in playing pranks on mortals. His antics are responsible for causing chaos within the group of young lovers.

“If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream"

This is another famous quote. Puck speaks these lines in an address to the audience near the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, extending the theme of dreams beyond the world of the play and putting the reality of the audience’s experience into question.

“And the quaint mazes in the wanton green For lack of tread are undistinguishable: The human mortals want their winter here; No night is now with hymn or carol blest: Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air, That rheumatic diseases do abound.”

As many of the characters believe that the magical events of the play’s action were merely a dream, Puck tells the crowd that if the play has offended them, they too should remember it simply as a dream. At the end of the game, Roxas wakes up from a dream, and remembers none of the events you just played through.

“Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame or a dowager Long withering out a young man revenue.”

The moon is often depicted as a feminine virginal obstacle to romance, which male characters find 'cold.' At the play's opening, an impatient Theseus complains to Hippolyta with the above quote. Much of the play takes place at night, and there are references to moonlight, which changes the appearance of what it illuminates. One of the main themes of the play is transformation---things are not always as they appear.

“Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams; I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright; For, by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams, I trust to take of truest Thisby sight.”

However, at times, the moon is depicted as assisting or blessing lovers instead. In Act 5, the wedding play is performed for Theseus and Hippolyta. In it, the moon lights the way for lovers Pyramus and Thisby. Here, the moon's light is 'golden' and 'sunny' rather than cold and gloomy.

“Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; Four nights will quickly dream away the time; And then the moon, like to a silver bow New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night Of our solemnities.”

Unlike Theseus, Hippolyta is content to wait the four days until the wedding. Here, the moon is transformed in the course of a few lines into the image of fruitful union contained in the "silver bow," an implicit reference to Cupid's arrow, which draws lovers together. Utilizing the imagery of the silver bow, Hippolyta also invokes Diana (or Artemis), the virgin huntress who is the guardian spirit of the adolescent moon. In this guise, the moon is the patroness of all young lovers, fresh and innocent, just beginning their journey through life.

“Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.”

However, this quote is BY FAR the most famous from the entire play. I think this idea was actually the foundation of the entire story in 358/2 Days. Essentially, love has the power to transform “base and vile” qualities into “form and dignity”—that is, even ugliness and bad behavior will not deter someone in love. This is the case because “love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind”—love depends not on an objective assessment, but rather on an individual perception of the beloved.

Roxas: Have you gone nuts? Xion's a person, not a puppet.

Axel: She's smoke and mirrors, Roxas. And when I looked in the mirror...It wasn't you I saw.

Xion is nothing but a robot---a puppet. She is not really Kairi. She’s all smoke and mirrors. But Sora has transformed something base into something lovable, based solely on his most precious memories---those of Kairi. It's only in the person’s mind that she has any form at all.

Xigbar: If people see with their hearts, Saïx, then you're even blinder than the rest of us.

Saïx is nothing but a vessel of Xehanort---a puppet. He is not really Isa. He’s all smoke and mirrors. But Axel has transformed someone vile into someone lovable, based solely on his most precious memories---those of Isa. It's only in his mind that Saïx has any dignity at all.

#kh meta #kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 358/2 days #kh xion #kh roxas #kh axel #kh lea #kh isa #isalea #leaisa #akusai #kh saix

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thatlesbiannudistcult-stories · 5 years

Text

Finding Goddess (Chapter 10)

The day at the office had been hell. Carol didn't know how she survived it. But somehow, she did. She mustered on, fought through the discomfort her suit gave her, and was able to wrestle her way to the day's end. And when the clock struck five, she was out of there like a bolt of lightning.

No sooner had she closed the door to her apartment did the clothes start dropping. She didn't even wait to get to her room; she just stripped every garment off one by one as she trudged purposely in its direction, leaving a trail of unwanted business attire behind her. By the time Carol set foot in her room, she was already completely naked.

"What a day," she groaned as she flung herself on the bed. "Thought it would never end."

By all accounts, it shouldn't have been as horrible a day as it felt. There were just a few manuscripts she had to comb over. She didn't need to talk to any pushy authors, let her ears get boxed by any middle management assholes, or sit through any unproductive meetings. But the constant claustrophobic feeling of being constrained in her clothes made the whole thing very trying. She had to make a few trips to the restroom just to relieve herself, and not in the way the restroom was designed to be relieved in. Sometimes she took off her top just to give her breasts a little time to breathe. Other times she lifted up her skirt just to let the air caress her bottom and her labia. But the result was always the same; get the clothes off her body, and expose as much skin as possible.

But it was over. She was home now, and she could expose as much skin as she wanted! Carol sighed dreamily as she let her completely exposed self sink into the mattress. After having to spend so long in her restrictive office clothes, it felt good to just be naked again. Unlike most days when she was done with the office, Carol didn't feel the need to get up and do something physically active. Today, she was content to simply laze around in her birthday suit.

Carol let herself doze off as she laid back in her bed, lightly caressing her body just to relish in the sensation of her own nudity. Her smile deepened as her eyes fluttered shut, and already the nudist could feel the comfort of sleep begin to wash over her with the promise of a pleasant dream to follow.

Then the phone began to ring.

"Goddess damn it!" she growled as she pushed herself upright. "Who the hell is calling now?"

Stomping to the kitchen where the phone was, Carol yanked the infernal device off the receiver and very nearly hurled it to the ground in fury. "What do you want?" she snapped, unable to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

"It's me, Katy," said the person on the other line. "I'm returning your call from last night."

Carol's annoyance was gone in an instant. "Oh, uh, right! Hi Katy!"

"Um, is this a bad time?"

"No, no, it's just...I had a long day at work is all. But I'm all better now. Especially after hearing your voice."

"Oh, that's good," said Katherine. "So...are you naked right now?"

Carol smiled deeply. If her girlfriend was standing right in front of her, she would have been flashing her best bedroom eyes at her. "Always," she said seductively.

"And will you be...later tonight?"

"You know I will. Especially since the kids aren't here."

"Oh, great! I'll be over tonight then. I still gotta do my workout for the day. Unless you want to come by the gym right now, so we can do it together?"

Carol had to take a moment to think it over. If she took Katherine's offer, she'd have to get dressed, and that wasn't something she was looking forward to. But on the other hand, she wouldn't enjoy being naked half as much if she didn't look her best. And she wouldn't look her best if she fell out of her exercise routine. She already blew the whole weekend without lifting so much as a water bottle. Though I suppose all the sex had to count for something.

"Sure, I'll meet you at the gym."

"Okay, great! I'll see you there...Mommy!"

"Uh...right."

Carol shuddered as the girl on the other line hung up. No matter how many times she heard that girl refer to her by that word, it would never stop sounding strange to the nudist's ears. For what had to be the thousandth time in her life, the mother wondered what she did to get into the kind of relationship she had with Katy.

***

Carol arrived at the gym, thankfully without forgetting to put on her workout clothes, and was immediately pounced on by her second girlfriend.

"Mommy! I'm so happy to see you!" cheered Katherine as wrapped Carol up in a big hug.

"Uh...happy to see you too, Katy," said Carol, returning the hug hesitantly. "But, uh, could you please not call me that right now? There are people here."

"Why not? Don't you always say you wished your daughters would work out with you?"

"I do, but that's different than what...we're doing. And I'd rather people not find out about that."

Carol loved Katy, really she did, but she wasn't a quasi-normal person like Henrietta. She wasn't just a girlfriend who liked to have a good time, in or out of bed. Katy had a very big oddity to her, one that had a long history tracing all the way back to her birth. Her mother died while she was still an infant, which left her to be raised by her father alone.

Now Katherine wasn't necessarily sad about never knowing her mom. But being forced to grow up without any sort of mother figure left her with a sense that there were a lot of things in life she was never going to experience. Like how it would be knowing there would be an older, nurturing woman waiting for her at home. Or what it would be like to have someone tuck her into bed, wipe crumbs off her face while she ate, fix breakfast in the morning, cook dinner in the evening, bake cookies, spank her behind when she was naughty, and...do all that other stereotypical mom stuff. Oh yes, she had her father, he did what he could to keep her loved, safe, and respectable, but Katy had explained that she just didn't think it was the same thing.

Motherhood remained a mystery to the girl all throughout her childhood, one that she would never cease to wonder about. As she got older, as she began to blossom into a woman, her curiosity bloomed into something else as well, something decidedly less innocent.

In short, Katy had a mom fetish. And in Carol, who Katy described as having "the bestest MILFy look ever," she found the perfect vessel to channel her kink into.

It was seriously the weirdest thing Carol had ever dealt with. This girl, who was admittedly young enough to be her daughter, insisted on calling her Mom or Mommy all the time, even when they were making love. Especially when they were making love. It was weird, off-putting, and more than a little creepy. Carol didn't know where this girl got her grossly misinformed sense of motherhood from, and frankly, she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Now, no one would ever imagine Katherine was her daughter. The two honestly couldn't have looked more unrelated if they tried. The girl was about a head shorter than Carol, her build was less curvy and more slender, her chest was relatively flat, and most notable of all, Katy was black. But the younger woman didn't let those minor details prevent her from living out her fantasy. If anything, she seemed like she was doing her damnedest to look as related to Carol as she possibly could. When the mother first met the girl, her hair was long and braided. But not long after they met, Katy had her hair cut and stylized into a smooth bob cut much like what Carol wore. The nudist never inquired what the sudden change was about, but she had an idea. And that only added to the creepy factor.

Even so, she was at least willing to humor the girl. Katherine thought Carol was a very attractive older woman and was absolutely gleeful at the prospect of dating a nudist, and Carol most certainly would not object to having a young lover. But...this whole 'Mom' fantasy the black girl insisted they indulge in was really embarrassing. Carol could only hope to the Goddess that her real daughters never found out about it, or else they'd never look at her the same way again.

"Aw, don't be that way, Mom," said Katherine tilting her head as she pouted cutely at the older woman. "Who's going to object to some simple mother-daughter bonding time? No one, that's who. The only one making it weird is you."

"Let's...let's just get on with this, okay?' stammered Carol." I've had a long day and really need to blow off some steam right about now."

They changed into their gym clothes, which for Carol were thankfully more bearable than her work clothes, if only because they allowed her to show off some skin. She wore a black sport's bra on top and a matching pair of biker shorts on bottom, which left her legs, her midriff, and her shoulders bare, and also showed off an ample of amount of cleavage. They felt...a little tighter than usual, but not so much as to irritate her. The important thing was she could at least breathe in them. Hopefully, she'd get through this workout without flipping her lid again.

Unfortunately, she had plenty of other reasons to be a little concerned, namely when Katherine approached her wearing more or less the same ensemble, only sized to fit her smaller frame. Her clothes even had the same brand logo on them!

"What of it?" Katy said, already sensing her fake mother's unease with her current outfit. "It's normal for moms to shop at the same store for both themselves and their daughters...right?"

"Uh." Carol couldn't argue with that. It is what she did after all. "Right."

After going through their stretches, which included plenty of gawking and appreciating of the other's body, the two got started on the treadmills. They ran in comfortable silence next to each other for a little while, just a mother and her not-daughter. In minutes, Carol could already feel the stresses of the day start to fall behind her, as if she was leaving them behind her as she ran the distance.

Running, exercising, generally any kind of physical activity had always been very relaxing and enjoyable for the mother. She had been a sporty girl in her youth, always wanting to get down and dirty in the fields with the boys. She had been quite the accomplished soccer player in her school years, and may have won it some trophies if only the rest of the girls on the team could pull their weight.

Carol sighed as the memories played out in her head. When she was a kid, she always dreamed about becoming a professional athlete. She didn't care what sport she got into: soccer was her favorite, but she also liked other things like baseball, basketball, volleyball, and hell, she would have gladly played some rugby or polo. They were all way more exciting than sitting behind a desk all day, like all the adults she knew back then. But alas, reality eventually came to kick her in the teeth; the barriers of entry were too steep to make going professional a viable career. Worse, not only would she most definitely not be able to get a job playing professionally, but once she reached adulthood, she wouldn't even be able to play sports for fun. Sooner or later, she would just have to give them up entirely, and inevitably, she did once high school came to an end.

Just another one of many things I enjoyed that I had to give up.

No, she couldn't think like that. It would only make her depressed. Carol may have given up sports, but she soon found a new enjoyment to be had from working out. Pumping iron and seeing how many miles you could run may not have been as exciting as ripping, tearing, and fighting to some arbitrary goal, but it still got the adrenaline pumping and the endorphins flowing. It made keeping her body fit and trim almost effortless actually. While other women pissed and moaned about their weights, Carol was slimming down and toning up like it was the most natural thing in the world. She didn't need to worry about fitting into a dress, especially since she looked good naked!

She sighed again. Naked...

She hadn't run naked for...for a long time. And she hadn't gotten a chance to run naked during her public outing in New Deastone. Now that she thought about it, she didn't remember how it felt to run naked at all!

It must be like the wind is blowing all around you, but harder, or as hard as you want it to. And you can feel it everywhere on you, even between your legs. Mmmm. And your boobs...they must bounce around all over the place. Sure, it can get painful after a while, but it does feel nice to feel them joggle about so freely, just for a little while. Oh, that must be so liberating. I can feel it right now...

"Boobs." Katherine's voice whispered right next to her.

"Yes? What was that, Katy?" said Carol.

"Your boobs, Carol! They're out!"

"Huh? What do you—oh, ah, AHHH!"

Her boobs! They really were out. Jumping and jiggling all over her chest. That feeling of liberation she was experiencing wasn't her imagination, it was happening right now! Somehow, she didn't know how, her sports bra had been pulled upward, exposing her breasts for all to see.

Carol was off her treadmill in a flash as she struggled to get her sports bra back in place, her cheeks burning as red as her exposed nipples.

"Are you...feeling okay?" Katherine said between huffs as she continued to run.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine," said Carol. "No one saw me, right?"

"I don't...think anyone did."

"I hope you're right," Carol breathed, fidgeting with her top some more, as if she feared it would crawl over her chest again and expose her breasts once more. "I wouldn't want to get kicked out of this place."

"Then why did you slip it off in the first place?" said Katherine as she shut her treadmill down and hopped off to speak to Carol more directly.

"What?" said Carol, turning to her girlfriend. "I...did this?"

"Um...yes?' Now Katherine was starting to look very worried. "You just...stopped pumping your arms and used them to slip your top up over your breasts. I thought maybe you caught me looking at you and decided to give me a show." The black girl's lips curved up in a smile that was as warm as it was bashful. "I did like it by the way. You have such beautiful breasts, Mommy. I wish you could expose them all the time."

"So do I," Carol said wistfully. "But, uh, obviously, I can't! And not now! Let's just forget about this and move on to something else."

In light of her...unconscious stripping routine, Carol decided it would probably be a good idea to do something that would keep her busy hands...busy. Her eyes landed on the row of pull-up rings. Yes, those would work quite nicely.

Carol took hold of one pair, Katy took another, and the two began their workout. They had a system in place where they would do the same exercises together, try to get in the same number of reps, and try to keep pace with one another. They started out with some ring rows, pulling themselves up from an almost prone position on the floor to an almost standing position. Then they did the inverse, using the rings to perform mid-air push-ups. They followed with chin-ups and dips, pulling and pushing their whole bodies upward, and lifting their legs aloft for good measure. And as the two women went through their repetitions, Carol felt Katy's eyes bore into her form every step of the way.

There was absolutely nothing unusual about that. The younger girl just loved the older woman's body, loved to see it in motion, loved to see Carol clench and tighten and stretch herself out. She wasn't very good at hiding it either, and the mother was forever thankful for that, for it meant she was able to secure another friend and lover, and a young one at that! Even if she did have to deal with Katy's odd kinks.

I bet she would appreciate this more if I was naked though.

Oh, Carol could just picture it now. Holding herself aloft on these rings, performing somersaults around them like a gymnast, doing splits in the air as she stretched one leg out in front of her and the other behind her, her every muscle on display, tingling with excitement as the air flowed into her sensitive inner flesh. Katy would see them all for herself, see them ripple, see them tighten, see them pulse. Carol would clench her glutes that much firmly for her, pull her stomach in that much harder, perform her spins that much slower so that her girlfriend could take in her every motion as she pulled herself up. Then she would roll into a ball, squishing her breasts against her thighs, and twirl in the air atop her arms as they turned rigid from holding her whole body up. Then she would unravel herself like the coiled serpent she was, planting her bare feel on the ground with a deep inhalation as all her joints flowed back into place, her entire body glistening with perspiration, making her muscles look all the more sleek and shiny. Katy would not be able to resist; she would throw herself upon Carol, thrust her head between the older woman's legs, push herself onto her birthing tunnel, and lap at it ravenously. Carol would not stop her, she would simply caress the younger girl's head and gently push it ever deeper into her...

"Mmmmm...hm? Oh!" The world of dreams vanished in a puff, and Carol was back in the real world. Which was similar to the world of her fantasies, save for the fact that she was not naked, and Katherine was not eating her out.

I really wish she was though, she thought with a grimace as she ran a hand delicately over her crotch, which was tingling and throbbing fiercely from under her shorts. Damn it, I made myself horny!

"Mommy? Is everything alright?" said Katherine.

"Huh? Oh yes. Everything's fine!" Carol said with a startled jump. "Just...peachy."

"Are you sure? You kind of zoned out after a while. Like, you were doing the routine, but

in a trance. And when you were done, you just stood there with your eyes closed. I honestly thought you were, I dunno...sleep-exercising."

"I'm..." Carol wanted to say she was fine, but she knew otherwise. Too much had been happening all day for it to be a coincidence. No matter what she did, her thoughts just kept on returning to nudity and sex, and her body was quick to follow suit. But how could she explain that to Katy without sounding like she was losing her mind? Hell, how could she explain it to herself without sounding like she was losing her mind? Because with every passing hour, it seemed more and more like she was.

"I was having a fantasy is all," she finally said, which was true in a sense.

"Really?" said Katy, tilting her head cutely. "Was I in it?"

"Mmm, yes."

"Was I naked?" Katy purred, whispering that last word as she stepped closer to Carol, hooding her eyes seductively at her older lover.

"No, you weren't. I was though, and I was working out in front of you that way. Showing off my every nook and curve for you."

Katherine licked her lips. "Sounds delicious. I would have loved to see that myself. Not that I don't love you in your current getup, but...yeah, I'd love to watch you work out naked."

"You'd love it if I was naked all the time, wouldn't you?" said Carol, stepping even closer to her girlfriend.

"Even more than you would. And I know how naked you love to be, Mommy."

Carol could just kiss her, and likely would have right there, had someone not suddenly coughed attentively to her side.

"Uh, excuse me, ladies," said a muscular guy who was looking a little unsure and uncomfortable. "But, uh, if you're done using those things, can you maybe step aside for now?"

Carol turned tomato red in a flash. "Oh, right, sorry. Yeah, we'll uh, we'll get out of your way, sir. Come along, Katy!" Hastily she scurried away, pulling her girlfriend by the arm as she did, cheeks burning hot all the way.

Katherine only giggled in amusement. "Hee, hee! Think he heard everything we said, Mommy?"

"Be quiet!"

"Do you think he actually believes I'm your daughter?"

"I said be quiet!"

"I wonder if he thinks that's hot?"

"Young lady, if you do not shut your mouth this instant, then I'll gag it shut for you and smack your bottom so raw, you won't be able to sit down for a week!"

"Ohhh, do you intend to do that when we get home...or right now?" At this, Katherine turned around, bent over, and wiggled her round, shapely behind playfully at Carol.

"Goddess, Katy, you really grey my hairs sometimes."

Katherine giggled some more. "It's what I do best!" Her smile faded as a look of confusion suddenly came over her. "And, uh...what's this about a goddess?"

Carol blinked. She didn't actually say 'Goddess,' did she? Yes, as a matter of fact, she did. Now that she thought about it, it wasn't the first time either. Lately, it seemed like every time she had to vent her frustration, she always uttered 'Goddess' instead of the usual suspects like 'God,' 'Christ,' 'Jesus,' or 'Bob Next Door.' She even did it in her head, where no one else could hear her, and now that she was actively thinking about it, she realized she had been doing that unconsciously as well.

"N...nothing," she stammered. "I'll tell you about it later. Come on, we still have some more exercising to do."

Goddess, this was getting to be a bit much. All day it felt like she had been waging some kind of war inside herself, Katy wasn't helping, and she was still horny from her earlier fantasy. She needed to unload this stress somehow. Fortunately, she was in a gym, and knew just the thing to do that.

Carol had never really been one for wailing on a punching bag before. It just seemed so uncouth and unrefined, and the mother preferred to think of herself as a lover, not a fighter. But today, it was looking very punchable, and she was ready to teach it a lesson it would not forget!

"Geez, Mom, what did that bag ever do to you?" Katy chuckled once Carol finally stepped back, panting heavily as she admired her literal handiwork marring nearly half of the big red sack.

"I was...thinking of you," Carol huffed in response, flashing her girlfriend a smirk that she hoped looked evil.

Katherine only laughed. "Oh, you always say that. 'Bam, zoom, straight to the moon!' But we both know it's never going to happen. Gravity being a tough thing to beat and all."

"Then I'll just have to get a rocket," Carol playfully shot back. She had to admit, going wild on the punching bag was a lot funner than she thought it would be. It helped that it gave her a chance to unleash a lot of the tension that had been boiling inside her; maybe she'd consider adding it to her routine in the future.

"So is that it?" said Katherine. "Should we call it a day?"

"Hmmm...not quite," Carol hummed, giving her arm a good flex so she could check the size of her bicep. "I still got a little energy left. I'd like to see how many reps I can bench."

"Sure thing, Mom!"

They headed over to the weight-lifting section of the gym. After applying her chosen weights to the barbell, Carol took her position laying down on the bench press while her girlfriend stood over and behind her head to spot for her. After confirming she was ready, Katherine released the barbell from the rack and watched attentively as Carol got started.

One...two...three...four...five, six, seven...

"Whoa, whoa, slow down there, Mom. You're going really fast."

"Right, right, sorry," Carol mumbled. Take it easy, girl, this isn't a race. Eight...nine...ten...

"That's better. Keep it going, Mom, you're halfway to beating your record!" Katherine cheered.

Carol looked her in the eye to give her a thankful smile. Or at least she tried to. From her position, she realized her face was resting dangerously close to her girlfriend's crotch. It was hovering mere inches away, wrapped neatly in tight black fabric that left little to the imagination. So little that she could even make out the indent of her the younger girl's precious flower underneath. And if she breathed in especially deeply, she could even detect trace amounts of her distinct scent that assured the mother that her fake daughter was very aroused.

I could lick her right now, Carol thought with a hungry lick of her own lips. Pull my head up just a few more inches and run my tongue down her slit. I could just pull those shorts off her right now and eat her out right here in the gym. She'd be standing there, moaning loudly, crying 'Mommy' out loud. Everyone would watch us. Everyone would see...

"Uh, Carol? I know I might be sounding like a broken record now, but is everything okay?" Katherine sounded concerned again, particularly since she was now referring to Carol by name, something she only ever did when she got serious, worried, or seriously worried.

"Huh? Uh, yeah. Why do you ask?"

"Because you just stopped all of a sudden. You're just sitting there, you're drooling, and, uh...you're holding the weight all the way up here."

"I am? Oh shit, I am! Hang it up, Katy! Hang it up!"

Katherine obliged her, pulling the barbell back onto the safety rack. Carol bolted into a sitting position, her body trembling all over, and not from the fatigue of weight-lifting. The black girl took a seat next to her and began to pull the hair away from Carol's face, her eyes shining with worry.

"Something's up with you. I can tell. You've been out of it all day. What is it, Carol?"

Carol shook her head in frustration. "I told you, Katy, I'm f..."

No. She wasn't fine. She hadn't been at all since she woke up this morning,

"You're right," she said with a relenting sigh. "I am out of it today."

"Do you...want to talk about it?" said Katherine, gently caressing the older woman's face in a way that was oddly very motherly of herself.

"Maybe. Perhaps when we get home, though. This place is too noisy for that kind of thing."

"Okay, I guess that works for me. C'mon, let's shower off. Taking a shower with Mommy helps me feel better. I'm sure it'll help you feel better too."

Carol felt another headache coming. "Okay, but could you PLEASE drop the 'Mommy' stuff for now? That's really not helping."

At least Katy was happy again. "Hmph, you're no fun."

Fortunately, the showers did indeed do a lot to take the edge off Carol's mind. Getting the clothes off and exposing her body never ceased to have that effect on her, and the lukewarm water spraying all over her bare skin was absolutely divine. For a lot of women, the gym's showers would probably be a very intimidating place, as there were no private stalls in this one; it was just one big open field of showerheads and drains, like what you would expect to find in a prison. But for an exhibitionist like Carol, they were fine. They gave her a chance to appreciate the local 'talent,' and find those who appreciated it with her.

Come to think of it, I think I met most of my lovers in shower rooms like this. You're just quietly looking around, admiring a boob here and a butt there, and next thing you know you're looking eye to eye at a girl who was doing the same thing you were. That's exactly how I met this particular girl...

As if reading her thoughts, "that particular girl" suddenly rounded her form and took hold of it in a gentle loving hug. Katherine buried her face in between Carol's breasts, her dark skin contrasting deliciously against the older woman's creamy bosoms like hot fudge on a sundae.

"Mmmm...Mommy," she whispered as she nuzzled Carol's boobs with loving grace, smiling blissfully as the soft, pillowy flesh squished and slid against her face. She looked so at peace when she did that, like she could just crawl between these two most sacred parts of the mother's anatomy and live inside them forever.

Carol wanted to sigh, wanted to push the younger girl away, tell her to knock it off and that this wasn't the time or place for that kind of talk...but she didn't. She couldn't really. For as much as Katy's fetishes creeped her out, she could never find it in herself to tell the younger girl to stop once she got really into it. Something about that gentle, seemingly innocent voice she spoke in, and the tender way she gripped Carol's body like her life depended on it really spoke to Carol's maternal instincts. It made her want to hold the girl and rock her to sleep like she was her own child.

You really are like a baby, Katy, she thought as she embraced her lover in return, running a hand daintily down her back. A baby with a well-toned ass.

Her hands came to a rest on the younger girl's waist, and her fingertips strayed nicely on her butt. It felt firm, hard even, still tense from the recent workout it had endured. It was such a cute butt, one that she would gladly hold forever if she could.

"Mmmmm," Katy purred, enjoying the contact, pulling herself even closer to Carol's form. The mother shivered as the younger girl's hardened nipples brushed against her flesh and began poking little indentations into it.

I could just eat you up, girl.

Carol responded in kind squeezing Katherine's butt even tighter as she pushed her closer against her form. She was tickled slightly when her public hairs flattened against her skin as the two bodies pressed into one another, and even more when a full bodied shudder overcame the black girl as they brushed against a very sensitive part of her.

Carol could no longer contain herself. I'll have you right now!

Katherine's eyes went wide with shock when she found herself abruptly shoved into the wall. She had only a few precious seconds to shoot her lover a questioning look before her right leg was yanked upward by a forceful hand, and something soft, warm, and tender began to press down on her exposed sex. She was pinned, her legs were splayed, and if she didn't know any better, it looked like Carol was going to...going to...

She gasped when a feeling of electricity surged through her core. She could feel Carol rubbing her down, grinding her crotch into her own, kissing her with her lower lips, again, and again, and again. She...she really was doing what Katherine thought she was doing. She was having sex with her right here in the gym showers!

"C-C-Carol...I-I-I don't think...haahhhhhh!"

Carol only giggled in response before she leaned in to nibble on Katherine's neck, biting the supple brown flesh as she continued to thrust and grind her form against the younger woman's. Her large breasts bounces playfully atop Katy's, gracing her chest with their bountiful softness, occasionally tickling her with the hardened nubs of her erect nipples.

Tits, teeth, breasts, and clits. Tits, teeth, breasts and clits. That was all Katherine could think about, all she could imagine. She knew this was wrong, inappropriate, and highly illegal, but she didn't care. This was good, this was amazing, Carol was so wonderful, she was coming onto her like a woman who always took charge, just like how a mommy was supposed to be, the mommy she always wanted to have.

"Mmmm! Mrrrrrr! Rmmmm!"

Carol was growling and purring predatorily between every love bite she left on Katy's neck, with every bob of her pelvis, with every squelching wet rub of her inner folds on the younger girl's. She was slippery with moisture all over and within, ready to bloom, ready to burst, ready erupt in a holy explosion of liquid fire, ready to...

What...am I...doing?

Carol froze in place mid-rub. She stood stock still, one foot on the ground, the other bent and wedged into the wall to keep her legs properly splayed so that she could properly meet her lover from womanly core to womanly core. Her boobs came to a sudden rest atop her lover's chest with a wet slap, and she had the distinct feeling that her clitoris was being squished at an odd angle. It felt good, it felt nice, it felt tingly, it felt wet with something that wasn't pouring out of the shower faucet.

And it was wrong.

"Oh my Goddess!" she cried as she released Katherine's body and backed away, her face scarlet with shame. "I'm so sorry, Katy, I...I don't know what came over me!"

Katherine leaned against the wall for support, her legs shaking like jelly, her own face flushed with its own mess of emotions. Arousal. Excitement. Embarrassment. Confusion. Dizziness. All were present in her expression. "What...what was that about?" she asked in a hushed, breathy tone.

"I don't know," said Carol. "Just...feeling your naked body so close to mine, touching me all over like that, it...it got me so excited, that I just...I had to..."

"It...it's okay," Katherine stuttered as she pushed herself up. "It was just...unexpected is all. I never...imagined we'd get it on in here of all places. It was kinda scary...but also kind of hot too." For a moment, she smiled, seemingly half out of nervousness from the prospect of getting caught doing something so lewd in public, and half in arousal from the prospect of...doing something so lewd in public!

However, it faded as reality began to seep back into her. "But...something is up with you, Mommy. And I really have to know what it is now."

"Yes. You do need to know," said Carol. "Let's...let's just finish up here. The quicker we get home, the quicker I can start telling you."

#finding goddess #Carol #zenrist #zenrism

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inuyashasfangs · 6 years

Text

my moon and stars @strawberrylozenge tagged me to do this here @roseate-angel tag, so here i am!! thank you for taggin me; i love these things! (first answer’s here, remainder’s under the cut for length)

what movie do you wish you were a character in?

i concur with your answer of wanting to be in a ghibli film! the environments are always so calm and sleepy and full of love that the appeal is kind of intoxicating. romanticize ghibli water physics 2kforever

or maybe not even be in an existing movie and be put in my own little pixar short for pocket-sized feels

create your dream fragrance; what would be the ingredients and the name?

black cherries and woodsmoke. i like floral tones and natural, earthy musks; anything warm and sweet is really my jam. i’d call it sandpaper!

as a siren, what bewitching song would you sing to lure people to their doom?

*cracks knuckles* alright, i’m obsessed with siren mythos. i can go on about this stuff for days and days, you hear me? one of the origin stories for sirens (there’s loads) is that they were women aboard sea vessels in the 18th century that were, for some reason or another - usually impurity or mouthiness - bound by the wrists and ankles and thrown overboard to drown in the sea. later on, a wood carving in the woman’s visage would be affixed to the front of the boat; a patron saint of the sea craft, if you will.

unbeknownst to the men, the women they’d murdered and mocked with their gestures of recreation would be reborn in the form of sirens — angry, beautiful creatures with gnashing fangs and fluttering eyelashes known to entice men with their mellifluous voices and lure their ships into the craggy rocks they roosted upon, where the sailors would run aground and suffer a fate of splintering wood and raging waves, swallowed up in the same ocean they’d used to kill.

tangent aside, if i were a siren, my go-to call would be “sick of losing soulmates” by dodie, “boats and birds” by gregory and the hawk, “wings” by birdy, or “trade mistakes” by panic. they’ve all got a soothing quality to them and i love them all for separate but equal reasons.

*clicks shoes together three times* anywhere in the world (fantasy or reality) where would you go?

in terms of reality, i‘d love nothing more than to go to japan to visit all the shrines and get in tune with the nature of the countryside. riding a bike along a well-worn path with cicadas singing in the distance is my ideal spring afteroon.

as for fantasy? ahhh it’s tough but probably skyrim. i’m cheesy and like the idea of cat people and magic and pissing off the townsfolk with my repeated and unnecessary usage of my speed shout to run to the morning market.

the world of miss kobayashi’s dragon maid is just as appealing, if not more so. i want to meet tooru and hang out with fafnir and be absorbed into the sweet, gentle hijinks of kobayashi and her dragon friends. i’d be a water dragon glamored for the profession of baking and run my own pastry shop and teahouse.

similar to harry potter, if you could reside in a painting, which one would you choose?

the happy accidents of the swing by jean-honoré fragonard! i’ve always loved this one.

like the symbols associated with the gods and goddesses; what would be your chosen symbol/s to embody you as a person?

a water bearer’s carafe made of dragon’s breath opal.

if you were to create your own met gala theme, what would it be based on?

classical music. the idea is flowing silk and playing with shape and structure to convey the emotion of every piece. so say, a midnight blue gown based on für elise with a fitted bodice and romantic layering of the skirt.

(if the met sees this and decides to rip it, slide me a smol check of $20k, thanks!)

what seven objects would you choose to hide a fragment of your soul in?

my deku omanjyuu; the seed of a cherry tree; a bottle of ink; a piece of sea glass; my journal; one of the pins on my backpack; my vices & virtues vinyl

you’re whistling while you work, what animals would you like to come and join you?

a cat! a big cat. a clouded leopard. cats are slinky and graceful but also big fools and i would love to have such a large friend accompany me in my day-to-day work whistling.

like the story of swan lake; what mythical creature/beings from folklore, would you like to transform into by day?

an octopus or anglerfish mermaid. i just want sharp teeth and the freedom to splash around and dive for pretty rocks.

i tag (if you haven’t already done it!) @divinesheik, @magefeathered @shousanki, @cloudmask, @girlwithribbon, @kageyawn, @deafmic, @adamworu, @adziedoodle, and anyone else who wants to do this!

#tag games #long post #abt #phew!! this was a doozy to fill out and not ramble on bc i loved it so much!!!#but this was fun and i loved it!!

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pocket-anon · 6 years

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The Long Way Home (Epilogue)

It's finally done! Oh, thank God. *giddy laughter* It seems appropriate that I'm posting the epilogue to this story on a Wednesday, just as I did with the rest of the chapters. Writing this fic has been an insanely wild ride for me, fulls of high highs and low lows, and I really can't thank you all enough for the astounding things you guys have said about this story and the encouragement you gave me to keep pushing forward even when I really didn't feel like it. You're the best. XOXO

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Missed a chapter? Get caught up here.

Summary: After an unnaturally long life fraught with personal tragedy, Killian Jones has become known throughout the realms as the infamous Captain Hook, an opportunistic ne’er-do-well and one of the most formidable pirates to ride the waves. When he crosses paths with a mysterious young woman with no memory of who she is or how she arrived there, he recognizes the chance to claim a monetary reward that will constitute his biggest score yet. But a journey across the world to get her home leads to a series of adventures that reveal that her value lies in far more than gold and jewels. A Captain Swan Anastasia AU - sort of. (Captain Swan Enchanted Forest AU. Romance, Adventure, & Eventual Smut. Rated E.)

Warning: Brief but graphic depictions of violence, peripheral character death, and smut.

“Your face is going to get stuck that way, you know.”

Killian looks up from the rolls of parchment laid out before him on the low table in the sitting area by the fireplace, the wrinkle between his eyes fading and his features turning amused. “Afraid it will make me less handsome, Swan?”

Emma rolls her eyes and comes over, forcing him to sit back in the chair as she slides into his lap. “Seriously, you’ve been studying those plans for an hour.”

“You’ve seen the Jolly,” he says patiently, settling his left arm snugly around her hips and admiring the way the her face appears luminous and her hair shines like actual gold in the firelight. “You know how complex square-rigged vessels are. Building a few more for the fleet is no small undertaking. Failure to plan properly—”

“Yes, yes, I know.” She chuckles and touches her lips to his cheek. “But tomorrow’s a big day. We should go to bed.”

He hums, turning his head to meet her for a quick kiss. “I’d like nothing better.” He pulls back a few inches and tucks a stray lock behind her ear. “But I can’t tonight. Go to bed. In our bed, I mean.”

Emma’s back goes ramrod straight, and she cocks her head. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not staying here tonight,” he says, blinking at her as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.”

She narrows one eye, an incredulous grin hinting at her lips. “You can’t be serious. We’re already married.”

His brows flatten into a straight line of pure indignation. “A seafaring man—”

“—does not take superstitions lightly,” she chimes in, bobbing her head resignedly and rolling her eyes at him again despite taking great pleasure in how adorable her pirate husband is being. “I know, I know.”

As if on cue, there comes a knock on the door. Marcus enters when they bid it open. “Pardon the interruption, Princess,” he says with a little bow. “I came to see if the Captain’s things were ready to be moved to the guest quarters. We have the rooms prepared for him.”

Emma’s forehead creases at how she seems to be the last to know about Killian’s plans to spend the evening elsewhere, and her mouth opens and closes in unspoken protest as he moves beneath her to stand.

“I suppose I should be going,” he says, climbing to his feet after she clears his lap and leaning over to gather up his schematics.

She watches him set the papers aside on a bookshelf, and her jaw drops when he retrieves a small gunny sack that sits in plain view beside the washstand.

He slings it over his shoulder and eyes her pout with a soft smile. “Don’t worry, love,” he murmurs, coming back to her to plant a lingering kiss on her lips. “After tomorrow, there’ll be no getting rid of me.”

The corner of her mouth twitches. “Promise?”

The confident grin on his face makes her heart flutter. “Aye.” He leans in for one last kiss before heading for the door, waving off Marcus’ offer to carry the sack and throwing her one last wily smile over his shoulder before he disappears.

Emma nods to Marcus as the groom gives her a hasty bow and hurries after him. Despite her disappointment at having sleep alone, she catches herself grinning until her cheeks protest as she readies herself for bed. She studies her silhouette in the full-length mirror while she brushes her hair and bites the inside of her lip, anticipation stirring in her stomach. Tomorrow is a big day, she thinks again, forcing herself to take a deep breath in and out to try to quiet her excited nerves. A private smile pulls at the side of her mouth.

Understatement of the year.

* * *

Though it’s been busier than usual all week with the arrival of dignitaries and royal entourages and the delivery of food and flowers and other assorted provisions for the wedding, the courtyard becomes a virtual hive of activity just after daybreak. Squires bearing the colors of their individuals houses run to and fro, maids and grooms bustle by on their appointed tasks, and an intense cloud of chatter rises to Killian’s ears as he observes it all through the open guestroom window. His mouth quirks as he spies Alec and Thomas, as clean and well-dressed as he’s ever seen them, flirting with a pair of ladies-in-waiting, the young women tittering and flashing his men appraising looks before wandering away.

There’s a solid knock on the door, and Killian turns. “Yes?” He blinks with pleasant surprise when Emma’s father appears, dressed in a resplendent bright red coat with elaborate platinum beading that is truly fit for a king. “Good morning.”

“’Morning.” David holds up a small polished wooden box. “The dwarves just delivered this, and I thought I’d bring it up myself.”

Killian accepts it with a curious wrinkle across his forehead. “What is it?” He flicks the small swinging latch open and uses his hook to lift the lid. His brow arcs at the first glint of silver.

“As Emma’s husband, you’re entitled to a royal signet ring,” David explains. “You’re not obligated to wear it, but it’s yours now. You know,” he catches Killian’s eye and a wry grin tugs at his mouth, “as a member of the family.”

Killian blinks several times as he takes in the wide polished surface of the engraved sigil – the seven flowers above a lion that he’s grown accustomed to seeing everywhere now accented by a small object in the center of the chevron that separates them. His eyes widen as he recognizes the shape. “Is that an anchor?”

The King shrugs, his crow’s feet crinkling. “Hope you don’t mind us presuming. We wanted to make it yours. It was Emma’s idea.”

Killian licks his lips, a small swell of emotion rising in his chest at the idea of Emma and her parents collaborating on this in order to surprise him. “It’s amazing,” he croaks.

“I know you’ve already got several rings,” David says hastily, gesturing at Killian’s hand. He frowns when he realizes that Killian’s jewelry is conspicuously absent. “Which are…”

“Put away, mate,” Killian supplies, rotating his wrist to display his bare fingers. “Pieces of the man I used to be.” He sets the box down on a dresser and pulls the signet ring out, finagling it past the knuckles of his first finger. “This is a better fit for me now.” He admires it one more time before setting the box aside and looking up at his father-in-law soberly. “Thank you.”

David beams and claps a hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be a good day.”

Color blooms on Killian’s cheeks, and he chuckles. “Yes, it is.”

* * *

The wedding is like something out of a dream, but better and more magical than any of Emma’s girlhood fantasies. The bodice of her daringly strapless gown is covered in swan feathers that wrap around her torso and fan out over the top of the bustle behind her before giving way to yards of white organza that swirl and layer down to the floor like the foamy waves of high tide. She’s tried the dress on several times for fittings last week, but it isn’t until she sees herself in it today – staring at her reflection in the mirror with her hair done up in a romantic chignon at the back of her head and borrowed, jewel-encrusted earrings dangling from her ears – that the thrill of the occasion really sets in. She fingers the large, intricate, diamond-studded clasp that sits at her waist like a belt buckle and smoothes her hand down over her belly with her lip between her teeth. Everything is perfect.

Her mother looks weepy as she stands behind her shoulder and takes it all in, her hands pressed together and held up to her lips. “Oh, Emma. You look incredible, honey.”

Emma aims a watery smile back at her through the mirror, her heart fluttering in her chest. “The dress looks really good, doesn’t it?”

Snow nods eagerly, breaking into a happy laugh. “Yes, it does.” A knowing grin pulls at her cheeks. “You’re going to have such a wonderful wedding,” she says with a blissful sigh. “I probably shouldn’t tell you, but Killian has a few surprises waiting for you today.”

Emma’s brows angle upward. “Really?”

“Mm-hmm.” Snow’s smile turns dreamy. She steps forward and hugs Emma from behind, one hand wrapped around each of her daughter’s shoulders. “He loves you so much. I’m so happy you found each other.”

Emma runs her hand down the front of her dress again, fingers lingering momentarily just below her waist, and suppresses a happy shudder. “I am too.”

The Rainbow Hall, the same room where her parents were married, is sparkling with its namesake colors, sunlight spilling through the enormous, jewel-toned stained glass windows to glimmer off every surface and set the room aglow like a prism. Rainbow light, Emma thinks with a nostalgic grin as she walks through the grand double doors. A good place to celebrate True Love.

In the heart of it all, at the foot of the round central dais and surrounded by a endless sea of guests, stands Killian, handsome as ever in his long leather coat with his boots polished and his cutlass at his side. Emma catches sight of a new deep red vest peeking out from between his customary layers of black, and she smiles as it reminds her of the color hidden in the stone of the ring he’s about to give her once again. His lips part when he sees her, his shining blue eyes and his awed smile drawing her like a beacon as she makes her way down the aisle with her father on one arm and her mother on the other.

The dwarves stand at the front of the crowd beside spry old Granny Lucas and her granddaughter, Emma’s godmother, Red, and there isn’t a dry eye among them, least of all Grumpy’s. The crotchety little man sniffles as she passes, moisture glinting in the corner of his eye like a diamond, and Emma chuckles and flashes him an affectionate smile.

To her right she sees Killian’s men, hardly recognizable in clean clothes and freshly washed faces, and she beams impossibly wide and blushes at the wondrous expressions worn by Alec, Thomas, Martin, Smee, and even Roberts when they see her, the windblown girl who used to sit upon the top and dance barefoot on deck now looking like an angel come down from heaven. Her heart swells as she takes a quick account and realizes that every member of the crew has come, and somehow she knows that they’re here for her as much as they are their captain.

When they finally arrive at the dais, she exchanges tearful hugs and kisses with her parents before her father genially grasps forearms with Killian and the King and Queen step aside. She reaches for her husband’s outstretched hand, blinking back the sting in her eyes, and the two of them share a smile that feels oddly private despite being witnessed by hundreds of well-wishers.

“Ready, love?” he murmurs, squeezing her fingers.

She glances down and notices the new signet ring on his index finger, the clean, silver band over his thumb, and a vacant spot on his ring finger – a spot reserved now for her ring – and she chokes back a little laugh and nods.

He leads her up the steps, and she gasps when they’re met at the top, not by the bishop, but by her godfather, Lance, a majestic sight with his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and blood red cape draped over his gleaming suit of armor.

Lance’s face splits into a big, white smile, and his dark eyes dance as her mouth falls open. “Hope you don’t mind,” he rumbles jovially, “but I couldn’t let my favorite goddaughter be married by just anyone. May I have the honor, Emma?”

Emma shares a look with Killian, his smiling eyes confirming that he was in on this first little conspiracy, and she swallows the lump in her throat and nods her head hastily, willing herself not to cry before she can even say her vows in front of the whole kingdom.

Lancelot raises his voice to the crowd. “My friends!” he booms, “Once upon a time I had the great privilege of conducting another wedding ceremony in a field far from here between the then Princess Snow White and the man she has always called her Prince Charming. Not many people know that the King and Queen were married quickly and in secret long before their formal nuptials ever took place in this hall, but I remember it like it was yesterday.” He throws Emma’s parents a wink before letting his gaze fall back to the young couple in front of him. “As it is with you, she wore white,” he says to Emma, “and he wore black and red,” he tells Killian. “And as it is with you, there was no question that pair of them were destined to be bound together forever.

“You, Emma and Killian, are yet another reminder that what is good and new can come from the darkest of circumstances and that hope for something better is always worth having, even when that something is hundreds of years in the making.”

Beside her, Killian chuckles.

“Never lose sight of that hope or of each other, because they are what will sustain you if you must ever face darkness again,” Lance continues. “Do you, Captain Killian Jones, promise to take this woman as your wife and love her for all eternity?”

Killian’s eyes swim with emotion as he accepts his brother’s ring from Emma’s godfather and slips it into place on her finger, taking her hand back into his and stroking her knuckles with his thumb as he nods solemnly. “I do.”

“And do you, my dear Princess, promise to take this man as your husband and love him for all eternity?”

Emma blinks hard and suppresses a sniffle as she takes the simple silver wedding band from Lance’s outstretched hand and slides it home on Killian’s finger, a single tear finally escaping down her cheek when she looks back up at him and meets his widening grin with a breathless smile. “I do.”

The abrupt honking sound of Dopey blowing his nose off to the side makes her burst into a little giggle, and soft laughter ripples through the crowd.

Lancelot chuckles. “It is my great honor, then, to pronounce you husband and wife. May the love between you always be strong, true, and eternal.” He fixes Killian with a broad grin and nods. “You may kiss your bride.”

The applause from the assembled is deafening, the riotous cheers and whistles from the Jolly’s crew encouraging the dwarves to also let loose with enthusiastic calls, but it’s all largely lost on Emma as Killian’s arm snakes around her back and he pulls her to him for a kiss so long and so sweet that even those who still question the ability of a man like Captain Hook to reform for the sake of love are left believing in love’s power a lot more and doubting him a lot less.

The celebration that follows is an historic affair, with commoners and nobles alike packing the Great Hall. White roses appear to climb the stately oak columns that tower above the assembled like pairs of great trees, while gigantic, overflowing floral arrangements are scattered throughout the room and fresh new banners bearing the royal crest sway gently high overhead. Firelight from dozens of gold chandeliers and candelabras and the hall’s six huge fireplaces combines with the last rays of the setting sun that filter through the series of tall, arched doorways standing open along the west wall. The party extends to the expansive terrace beyond with guests passing to and fro, mingling and laughing and dancing beneath both the vaulted stone ceiling and the twilight-colored clouds to the lively melodies of a merry troupe of musicians that plays in one corner.

No sooner have Killian and Emma arrived at the hall when Blue’s telltale light appears and comes down to greet them. Around them, people crane their necks to get a glimpse of the fabled fairy as she hovers in front of the newlyweds.

“Congratulations, Emma, and to you as well, Captain,” she says with a warm smile. “No one deserves greater happiness than the two of you.” She gestures behind her. “Emma, at your new husband’s request, I brought you a special guest as a wedding gift.”

Their eyes travel beyond her, and Emma lets out a surprised cry as she recognizes the figure that starts forward from the crowd to greet them. “Maggie!”

The tavernkeep, now in a fine green cotton dress, opens her arms wide, and Emma bustles forth to accost her with an exhilarated hug. The pair laughs and sniffles at their happy reunion. “Oh, my dear,” Maggie hums, her voice thick, “I just knew you were no ordinary girl. What a sight you are for sore eyes, and what a stunning wedding it was!” She reaches one arm out and claps Killian fondly on the neck. “Well done, Captain.”

Killian chuckles, his cheeks flushing with pleasure. “Maggie.”

Emma turns and fixes him with wide, delighted eyes. “You did this too?”

“Well, she did this,” he says, nodding toward Blue, who continues to float next to them. He amiably drapes his arm over Emma’s shoulders as she tucks herself into his side. “But yes, I did ask. You and I might never have met had it not been for Maggie,” he points out, flashing the older woman a grateful smile. “It only seemed right to have her here to see us married.”

“It was the least I could do,” Blue adds kindly, “considering the sacrifices you made to keep the fairies safe from the Dark One. We owe you a great deal.”

“I pretty near fell over into the cooking fire when she first came to me though,” Maggie tells Emma with a laugh and a shake of her head. “Quite a shock to meet a fairy for the first time, though the news she brought was the best I’ve ever heard.” She reaches for Emma’s hand and gives it a squeeze.

Emma chuckles and squeezes back. “How long can you stay?”

“As long as you like,” Blue answers. “When she’s ready to go home, you know how to find me. I hope you all have a lovely time.” They watch as she arcs upward and soars out through the nearest doors, her blue light disappearing into the evening sky in a brilliant flash.

Emma turns back to Maggie with her brows raised hopefully. “You’ll stay, won’t you? At least a few days? You’ll be our honored guest.”

The other woman laughs and comes forward again to wrap her arms around both her and Killian in another motherly hug. “My gorgeous girl, nothing would make me happier.”

It’s a bit later in the evening when Killian reveals his third surprise for Emma, nodding covertly to Roberts as he and the Princess finish yet another demure formal dance on the side of the hall that has organized into an impromptu ballroom. Moments later, when he and Emma are dipping into their final bows, the sound of a fife suddenly pierces the air, and after several introductory notes, the entire group of musicians launches into a much more spritely melody with Killian’s quartermaster taking the lead.

Emma gapes as she instantly recognizes the tune, her cheeks glowing and her eyes bright, and they’re suddenly surrounded by the crew of the Jolly, the men clapping and whooping and launching into the familiar sea shanty with gusto.

The maiden, oh, the maiden, oh,

The sailor loves the maiden, oh!

Laughter bubbles up from her belly, and she barely has time to kick her high-heeled slippers aside and appreciate the scandalized sound Marcus makes before she finds herself being swept around the floor by each of the crewmen in succession. Tonight each pauses to kiss her on the cheek before spinning her into the arms of his comrade, and she cries out with delight when Alec busses her and then hands her over to her father, who’s left his sword with the Queen and stepped forward to claim his own turn.

The King’s pale blue eyes gleam with gratification, his distinguished features stretched into the biggest smile Emma can remember ever seeing him wear, and though he’s a little less sure of the steps than the rest of them, he acquits himself admirably, the pair of them chortling through the dance and springing back and forth across the floor with carefree, if slightly uncoordinated, abandon. And when at last his turn is ended, her father draws her forward and plants a heartfelt kiss on her forehead. “I love you, sweetheart.”

Emma sniffles. “I love you too, Papa.” She looks back up at him with wet eyes and giggles as he raises their joined hands and whirls her in Killian’s direction. The world around her blurs again until she lands back in her husband’s embrace with a happy shriek, her fingers closing instinctively around the curve of his hook while his arm winds around her back. Her heart gallops even faster as he grins devilishly and tugs her close.

“There’s my beautiful Swan,” he rumbles. “Shall we show them how it’s really done?”

She consents with a laugh and allows him to launch them back into the familiar rhythm of their favorite jig, her bare feet flying across the cool stone floor, and while it’s harder to dance in this gown than it had been in her trousers, she still manages to follow his lead without faltering, anticipating and complementing his step with ease. He sings again to her tonight, bellowing the tune unapologetically, and her smile feels permanently plastered across her face by the time the song is ended. Thunderous applause and cheers erupt around them, and Killian dips his head and silences her wild giggles as he kisses her for all he’s worth.

Unrestrained happiness threatens to burst from her every pore in this moment, and her face is alight when he finally pulls away. “That’s three surprises,” she pants over the din, clinging to him and stealing another quick kiss before grasping his fingers and his hook and dragging him toward the terrace. “Come on. My turn.”

The guests trail after them as she draws him out to the balustrade. Emma she releases him and turns, elbows falling to her sides and palms aimed upward, and Killian and the rest of the crowd watch, enchanted, as her hands begin to glow with tiny colored flickers that seem to penetrate from beneath her skin. Waves of rainbow light suddenly burst forth and rocket skyward, drawing every eye to the heavens. The beams expand into huge, amorphous swatches of multicolored radiance that illuminate the sky, and the surrounding gasps turn into excited cries when the hues then twist back in on themselves and explode into fireworks, glittering showers hundreds of feet wide raining down high overhead in shades of pink and purple and blue. Emma’s self-indulgent smile spans ear-to-ear, her skin humming as she channels all her love and joy into her magic.

Killian laughs and presses his chest to her back, looping his arms around her waist. “It seems I’ve been outdone,” he remarks, smiling against her ear as he marvels at her handiwork.

Emma chuckles, taking her eyes off her fireworks in order to shoot him a coy sideways glance. “And I’ve still got another ace up my sleeve.”

His interested hum sends shivers down her spine. “Pirate.” He presses a kiss to her cheek and raises his gaze back to the sky. “And when exactly do you plan to reveal this other surprise, Swan?”

“Eager, Captain?” She arches an eyebrow fetchingly, her heart skipping a beat beneath her ribs.

She doesn’t need to see Killian’s face to hear the smirk on his lips. “Naturally, when it comes to you.”

Goosebumps rise over her shoulders, and Emma funnels her pleasant shivers into another surge of magic, launching the last and most impressive of the fireworks in a kind of grand finale. She rotates her head toward him and inches her mouth toward his, the extreme brilliance of the lights casting them in a warm glow. “When we’re alone.”

He blinks, and his eyebrow raises in that way that makes her weak in the knees. “I suppose it would be bad form to just hang the rest of the party,” he growls, his breath warm on her lips, “and let your husband haul you off to your chambers.”

“Our chambers,” she mutters with a smug grin. “And yes, terrible form.”

His lashes flutter closed as he seals his mouth over hers. “Damn.”

* * *

They do manage to sneak away half an hour later, once the festivities begin to die down, their hurried footsteps and hushed, conspiratorial laughs interspersing moments spent pressed up against stone walls and kissing like lovesick teenagers.

Emma chuckles against him as they come up for air for the third or fourth time, grateful that the guards who are normally stationed in this particular passageway are down at the celebration keeping an eye on the guests. “If we keep doing this, we’ll never get there,” she says, her voice throaty. She sighs blissfully as his lips find her jaw and begin to work back toward her ear.

“The door’s just around the corner,” he points out, humming with pleasure at the little gasp she makes when he nibbles his way along her earlobe. He runs his hand solidly around her hip, relishing the idea of his Swan wearing feathers and simultaneously wanting nothing more than to get her out of them.

A mewl escapes her, and he feels her fingers delve into his hair. “Actually,” she breathes, trying to stay focused, “I had another stop in mind first, if that’s okay.”

Killian pauses and pulls back to fix her with a playfully chiding look. “Are you asking me to delay taking you to bed on our wedding night again, love?” he rumbles, his heart rate already quite insistent. “Because I may not possess that kind of self-control.”

She giggles. “Just one stop. It’s for my other surprise.”

He hums in mock contemplation, his fingertips brushing aside a loose strand of her hair and drifting down her neck affectionately. “I make no promises,” he warns, flashing his dimples like a scoundrel.

“Mmm.” Emma bites her lip. “I guess I better make it quick then.” She seizes the collar of his coat and poofs them away.

The smoke clears to reveal a dark room, and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim moonlight that shines through the few windows of what looks to be a storage room, the ghostly shapes of cloth-covered furniture surrounding them on all sides.

Killian cranes his neck around curiously, and Emma gently pulls away. “Um, darling? Where are we?”

“Just above our chambers,” she answers breezily. “At the top of the tower. I need to find something.”

“And what’s that?” He arches an eyebrow and glances around the room again as she moves closer to one of the windows, looking rather ethereal in her white gown beneath the pale light.

She turns, and he can tell by the way she freezes that she’s found her quarry, her eyes widening and a smile curving her mouth. “This.” She pulls at the sheet covering an object that’s long and rectangular and surrounded by decorative finials that reach chest-high.

Killian squints as he approaches for a closer look. “What is it?” He watches as she drops the sheet to the floor and runs her hand tentatively over the scalloped edge of... His eyes grow round, and his heart stutters. “Swan?” he croaks.

“It’s… it’s my old crib,” she mumbles, now looking shy and a little anxious. “I just…” She raises her eyes to him, her cheeks flushed and her lip between her teeth again. “We’ll be needing it early next year.”

His jaw slackens, and he’s never seen anything so wonderful in his life as the sight of her – his wife – glowing at him beneath the full moon and standing next to the crib meant for… for their child. Bloody hell. His stunned gaze darts toward her belly before fixing back on her rosy face.

“Is… is that alright?” Worry creeps across her brow.

It’s as though her words restore his ability to move, and he rushes her, scooping her into his arms and kissing her fiercely, his eyes starting to burn. “You’re…?”

He feels her relax and give in to heady laughter against his chest as she kisses him back and nods. “Mm-hmm.”

Killian pulls back and cups the side of her face with his hand, studying her with helpless adoration. “How long have you known?”

“Maybe a week,” she admits, eyes shining. “I wanted to tell you first.”

A baby. They’re going to have a baby. The most perfect woman in all the realms is going to bear him a son. Or a daughter. He realizes he doesn’t care which as he leans forward to capture her lips again. Emma sniffles against his skin and winds her arms up around his neck, her fingers curling along the base of his skull and her shoulders quivering slightly as she shudders with perfect contentment. She’s his. And this child is his. And he doesn’t bloody deserve either of them, but he’ll fight to his dying breath to keep them all the same. Because this is his life now. Emma and the little one growing inside her – they’re his life. And more than he has since arriving at the castle, he feels home.

“I love you,” he whispers, tracing her cheekbone with his thumb and swiping through the wet trail of a happy tear.

“I love you, too.”

He looks down at her stomach and lays his hand across it with the greatest reverence, and she laughs and lays her hand atop his.

“So what do you think, Captain?” she teases. “Are you ready for another adventure?”

Killian’s chuckle reverberates in his chest as he gives her belly another caress and then pulls her flush against him. She rests her head on his shoulder, and he presses a kiss to her temple, his heart rising to his throat as it suddenly occurs to him that he’s holding his new family in his arms. “With you, my love?” he murmurs, hugging her tighter and smiling into her hair. “Always.”

Thank you so much for reading! For a behind-the-scenes look at this fic, click here for a reader Q & A!

#csbb #cs ff #cs fic #captain swan #captain wench #captain duckling #cs ef au #cs anastasia au #cs au #cs au ff #ouat ff #ouat fanfic #my writing #the long way home

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deathbyvalentine · 4 years

Text

Prompts

Interview With A Vampire

Oliver practiced his smile in the mirror. His eyes sparkled, dimples appeared and the effect was almost enchanting. Almost. There was no getting around how prominent his fangs looked. His smile dropped. Did he risk being unfriendly? Or would a smile simply look like a concealed threat? He hated that he had to think of this, analyse his smile. But it was part and parcel of being a predator. The fangs didn’t go away just because your bad intentions did. And for the most part, his bad intentions had. He was a proud vegetarian and had been for almost fifty years, with only one or two messy slip ups here and there. Killing, ironically, was in his blood but it didn’t have to be in his mind. The logical part of his brain, the intellect and (he chose to believe) who he really was was repulsed at the idea of killing humans. He would have abstained from animals if he could without dying of starvation. The university made it easy. He could fill his days (read; nights) with books and study, the quiet age of the college walls providing him with an odd sort of comfort that most other places couldn’t provide. Perhaps it was just being around something that had stood since before he had been born. Nothing had changed much. A lot of Oxford colleges could have been snapshots of previous centuries, preserved perfectly. He could fit in with no difficulty. His odd speech or old fashioned manners could be equally attributed to the natural eccentricity of an academic as his immortality.

He wanted to offer that safety, that comfort to other vampires looking for a place to exist. He wished he could offer it to every one that came knocking at the doors, eyes red and desperate. But for some reason, money still existed and it still ruled their lives, which was so frustrating it made him grind his teeth. There were godlike creatures in the world, unliving, undying, and they were still at the mercy of something as uncouth as coin.

He smiled again, concentrating so the mirror actually showed him a reflection rather than cold empty space. It was an interview with a candidate he was preparing for. He could be himself.

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Purple

The bathroom again, the sink splattered with fresh dye. It was a familiar scene, one repeated every six months or so. The sink still held evidence of pink and blue, stained deep into the definitely-not-real-porcelain. Astrid stood in front of the mirror in just a bra and bed shorts, a pair of plastic gloves on her hands and a bottle in hand. Her hair was already saturated with it, though for the most part she had managed to avoid her skin. She was almost a pro at it after all.

It was the first time she had been purple. Her pink phase had lasted so long. Her blue only a year or so. It was time for a change. Purple was pink and blue together, herself and the Saints joined, no longer jostling for position. It was also something completely new, something that was just hers. She would enter the House of Jung as Violet, a new identity carved out by nobody but herself. Nobody had told her to want this, it was something she discovered herself.

She had an image of herself in the future that she wanted. Older, wiser, still beautiful. Running her dreamweaver cell, looking after the people in it. Not worrying about money or food or the Syndicate. Not relying on drugs to get through the day. Not giving herself to anyone that seemed like they might want her. Choosing who to sleep with because she wanted them, not because she wanted to be wanted.

It was hard to imagine Syn with her. She didn’t want to think about what that meant, either about the future or about her relationship. Maybe she just didn’t believe Syn would be faithful - and if she wasn’t, they were done. Really and truly. She believed that now. No second guessing. No take backs. She was worth more than broken promises. She peeled the gloves back and tossed them in the bin. She couldn’t wait to see what the new her was like. She hoped she liked her.

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Silence

What she liked most about night time was the quiet. Of course, in the suburbs of London nothing was ever truly quiet, but it was quieter. All the adults were asleep, as were the few children there was too. With her bare feet on lino and polished pine, she didn’t make a sound. There was something delicious about exploring at night, how moonlight gilded everything and made even the most familiar objects precious. All the same doors were still locked, the same spaces still open but it felt forbidden all the same. The long corridors stretched ahead and lead to unknown places.

It made her more aware of her body too. The catch of air in her chest, the heartbeat in her ears, the soft whispering of her hair loose from the constraints of plaits. Sometimes she felt or heard a deep rumbling darkness in her chest and she didn’t know if it was her or IT, so she ignored it, focusing instead on her thighs touching each other or the soft click of her teeth.

She tried to be back in bed by the time the sun came up, catching a few hours of rest before she had to get up to start the day. The sunrise didn’t interest her much. Sure, it made everything beautiful, but where was the mystery? The night had secrets. Some the cult scratched the surface of, but some others too, some she didn’t have the words for and couldn’t name. That’s what made it so interesting.

She wondered if her god was the one that curbed her sleep. That lead her to wander the halls restlessly, like the Minotaur or his prey. Sometimes she felt like there were eyes on her, she had always been told IT was watching. She couldn’t have been very interesting to watch - where was the appeal? The cult often said that mortals couldn’t understand IT’s ways, that it was unknowable. Well, she was unknowable too. Maybe like called to like. She settled back into bed and did not sleep without dreams. ________________________________________________________________

Catherine’s Eternity

She raced up the steps of the ruined tower, for once grateful about the lack of air in her lungs - she could run and not be breathless. Reaching the top, she only just managed to thump into a dubious battlement. The wind was fierce up here, wrestling the ribbon from her curls and sending it over and away. She laughed, letting her gaze follow it until it met the grey, raging sea. She loved it here, she loved the rocks and the salt and the dim sepia hue that pervaded everything. It was miserable and it was beautiful in it’s dank melancholy. She held out her arms, feeling the wind press against her, so eager to send her tumbling over the edge.

However, it was not the wind that embraced her a moment later, though it was just as cold as it. Cassius had followed her up at a rather more leisurely pace, seeing no need to rush. What she didn’t know is how he had stood for a moment, at the top of the crumbling stairs, and simply watched her for a moment, the raw almost fierce joy she was taking in the view, the world.

On the walk back to school, it started raining. Heavy, thick drops. The wind caught them and added to their power, drenching them both within minutes. They would get back to school and Catherine would lead him to her room, dry each other with warm towels, cocoon themselves in her repaired sanctuary.

This would happen forever, over and over, a hundred small details changing, but the essentials staying the same. The sea, the school, Cassius and Cathy.

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The rose realises it is an instrument of war

Grace did not know she was beautiful. This was obvious. The way she moved and talked and laughed betrayed the fact that she clearly held very little thought about how she looked at all. Other girls knew they had to perform for their keep - be it the glossy lips of the popular girls or the smudged eyeliner of the goths, even the neon stripes that daubed the cheeks of Klub Kids. It marked her out without drawing attention to what exactly it was that was different.

Of course boys responded to it. They coveted the thing that they could change. They could be the one to tell her she was beautiful, be the one to make her realise what girlhood meant in this world. Kiss her, covet her, leave their mark upon her in a way they could not with girls who walked in society. The entire fantasy would be ruined if she knew how she was. She had to stick to her lines and stick to her role, the Rapunzel in need of saving, the princess marrying the pauper. They thought that because she could not pretend, what they saw was what they got. They liked what they saw. Who wouldn’t?

They didn’t see her down in the tunnels. Her chest fluttering as she breathed in shallow, poisoned breaths. The thrum of her heart that was balancing on the impossible line of fearful and excited. The red flush in her cheeks, the glitter in her eyes, the surety that held her up when her spine would not. She had wrapped the necklace so tightly in her hand the chain left red welts in her otherwise unblemished skin. Dirt and sludge and gore had touched her shoes, her socks, one hand almost black from trailing it along the corrupted wall.

They didn’t see the new mask she carved out for herself. Of blood and ash and paint, found, not made. The voice of a god that echoed in her head. No, she was not herself. She was something better. A vessel, a hand, an extension. Why would she choose to be herself when she could be so much more? Not a girl, not a child, not anything people were so quick to decide on for her. Not something so easily swayed or marked or claimed. She still didn’t know she was beautiful. She also didn’t know she was frightening.

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you promised you’d keep my secret

you’re at a girl’s house and she’s put a red scarf over the lampshade. everything is rose and you can’t figure out if it’s meant to be romantic or if you’re reading too much into things. her room is nicer than yours, she had a dresser, a real adult one with an oval mirror and you suspect it is filled with make up. you don’t know how to put anything more than mascara on but she does. she manages to make herself like a doll every day, porcelain, precious. but not today. because it’s just you two. no school, no boys, no more-popular-than-you-girls. so her lips are pink not red, her eyebrows a little too fair and you can see her freckles. you love her best like this. silly, young, unpainted? maybe. you do love her when you sit on the edge of the swimming pool and she comes up for air, brown hair slicking to her skin like a selkie. or when she’s been running, her cheeks red and sweaty, chest heaving. you think it’s probably more because you’re alone.

she’s more herself when it’s the two of you. you don’t begrudge her this. being a teenager is hard. it never really occurs to you that you’re a teenager too. you excuse the others as if from a great distance away, your own childhood safely tucked away, happening where you can’t even see it.

anyway, you love her best when you’re alone. when she shares her white earphones with you and you singalong. when you babysit her little sister, excited at the chance to sleep in the living room with the leather sofas and big tv and close to the kitchen. when she talks about manga. when she lies beside you and you don’t dare to touch her. you worry she can hear your heart, that the whole city can. she can’t. never did, never does. this love you carry if not to your grave, your adulthood, which is basically the same thing. you never tell her. even when you’ve been enmeshed in your own lives long enough it would be a cute anecdote, something you could laugh about. you don’t want to laugh about it. fourteen year old you did not cherish many things but they cherished this. you want to keep it. let yourself have this one thing. let yourself love, never mocked, never the opportunity for the air to get in and rot it. you don’t talk anymore. which is fine, really. time and distance prised you apart. the memory got to stay. now when you think of her, you still get to hear the echoes of your heart. _____________________________________________________________

It’s your legacy but never open it

My mother killed herself when I was nine. I was diagnosed with depression when I was eleven. i never got the chance to ask her when she realised she was batshit, but i suspect it would have been around the same time. I don’t trust our family’s hormones, almost as much as i don’t trust our genes. We have what medical forms call ‘hereditary risk’ and what I call ‘prior form’. My family tree is a litany of a therapist’s wet dream. Uncle Henry who stepped in front of a moving car, breaking one leg and fracturing three ribs. He said the idea just popped into his head and he couldn’t think of a decent reason why he shouldn’t. So he did. Third cousin Edith who eat only plaster and brick dust for two months. Grandma Elizabeth who frequently spoke to fairies, leftovers from her childhood that never went away. You get the picture. After what happened to mum everyone had their eye on me and it turned out they were right to. My father caught it early. An alarmingly sane man, he was put on high alert when she passed. My brother seemed to get through it all alright but I became ‘unnatural’ in Grandma Elizabeth’s words. Granted, she thought I might be a changeling but she wasn’t wrong. It crept up slowly, like ivy smothering a tree. One day, the world was dark. Luckily, the reason why was instantly within reach, instantly understandable through a lens of chemicals and analysed childhood trauma. It surprised nobody, not even myself. It was then when I really considered opening it I suppose. No, not a vein, haha, very funny. The letter. I’m not sure I mentioned but I was the one to find my mother’s body. I wouldn’t have, had I not had a falling out with my then-best friend and stomped the great distance of ‘three doors down’ to cut our playdate short. I shall spare you the details. The important thing is that there were two letters by her body. One addressed to my father and one addressed to me. In an act of canniness I can’t really explain all these years on, I shoved the one addressed to me down my shirt. It crinkled next to my skin reassuringly. I kept it there even as I walked down the hallway and back out the front door to start screaming. Since then it became a talisman of sorts. I kept it inside my pillowcase, carefully removed during laundry days. I never read it. Her last words to me were in there, tucked up tight. If I didn’t read it, I could imagine what it said. Most days I imagined gothic heroinesque plight, pages and pages of soliques on the futility of life and how she thought she was doing the right thing by dying. Other days, when I was less generous, I believed it could be a plea for my forgiveness, which I could grant or not grant as I saw fit. After I got diagnosed, pills rattling inside me, I fancied it was a heads up about the entire affair, a last ditch effort to warn me of the misery still to come. i liked that thought. It made my depression another line tethering me to her. As I grew up those threads were harder and harder to find. My father eventually managed to heal from his grief and fill the family house with other joys (mostly poor carpentry). My brother could barely remember her. My other relatives mostly tutted before going on to eagerly inform me about whatever newest development had happened on our magical tour of psychiatry that was all family reunions. I did not particularly look like her but at least I could be mad like her. Years on, I still haven’t opened it. From fear, mostly. The problem is with fantasy is that reality has to live up to it. And how is a dead woman supposed to live up to anything at all? I suspect it’s meant to be through me but I’m not up to the job. An echo will never have the same power as a new note sung. I’m not even my own disaster - I’m hers, a generation later. I don’t know how to fuck up uniquely. Perhaps I can fool myself, if I never read this. I can pretend her shadow is my own.

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one by one, the lights went out

She wasn’t sure when Thiel left her. At some point she simply noticed that it was her, Blaine’s body and IT. Apparently sensing her intent not to move, the corridors leading away from the centre had flickered out, one by one, until this room was all that was left, dim and wanting. Careful not to jostle Blaine’s head which was resting on her lap, Grace’s hands moved up to her necklace. It rattled softly as she undid it, the gold chain pooling in her palm. She tossed it to the side as if it was simply a piece of trash. What did she need it for now? For the first time, she noticed her shadow was odd. It pooled around her, matching the pool of blood from Blaine and from her own head that surrounded her. Shadows and blood. It’s what everything came down to. IT was still on the ceiling, watching her carefully. She had done everything it had wanted. It had been her that killed Blaine, her that tipped him over and cracked his head open. She had finally managed a sacrifice.

She felt the dark wrap around her, in comfort or possession she wasn’t sure. Unlike Alex or Lucas, she hadn’t been promised or blackmailed. She hadn’t been threatened with reward or punishment. Which meant there was no script for this bit. No dynamic for her and IT. She suspected that nobody in the Church had managed to get this close. There was only her, high priestess and now, resident to the dark. She wouldn’t be leaving. The only way she could stay upright, not lose her mind from grief or terror was by staying with IT. The only thing alive that still loved her.

She leaned into the dark, closing her eyes, feeling the pain in her head, her hands, her thighs. This place had two things in abundance - peace and pain. She didn’t know which she needed more. Maybe she never would. But here she didn’t have to make a decision. Here, in her cage of many rooms, she was safe.

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City of Sirens - Cassiopia

Nobody fucked with her, right? She was the girlfriend of an Olympian, so tough she could break teeth, so angry she could break glass. She wore leather, she shot straight and she never met a drink she didn’t like. She had scars in six different places and she was pretty sure there was still shrapnel in her shoulder.

She was still frightened of Zeus. She understood wild, she understood power and she understood teeth and fighting and clawing to the top. She looked at the perfectly groomed man in the suit and could not reconcile it with all the things she knew he had done. He was a monster but a hidden one. He smiled with warmth, not just to flash his teeth. He always said the right thing. He had a firm handshake and nobody saw the trail of bodies behind him.

Almost as bad was his wife. Once, Zeus had flirted with her, despite her being Artemis’s. He had put a hand on her elbow, leaned in and said something heavy with meaning. In that moment, it wasn’t him she was afraid of. She knew what Hera did to the women Zeus took a liking to.

At the party, she was hypnotic. Her beauty was as if it had been carved from glass, her delicacy and the way she held Zeus perfectly as if she was always posing for a portrait. Which she was of course. The Family liked portraits. Cass had watched Artemis pose for a hundred of the damn things. She knew she wasn’t going to last when she didn’t appear in a single one. Enjoy it while she could. Take everything she wanted. Cut and run before the piano hit.

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Spell jars

He should have guessed a witch had moved in. The forgotten back garden, overgrown and wild was slowly being tamed. But not in the fussy, prescribed way so many of the terraces around here opted for, all fences and peonies, blue slug pellets sprinkled like confetti. Here, there was a section right in the middle, left uncut but scattered with wildflower seeds. The left side of the garden was pulled up, little labels stuck on popsicle sticks, stating what herbs, vegetables and whatever else she was growing. The right side was trimmed and left plain, for reasons that mystified him.

Oh well, he thought. He didn’t pretend to understand the whims of humans. He could see no anti-mole sentiment in her gardening ideology so resolved to continue his comfortable existence in the soil beneath the garden. It was not a hard choice to make. He was naturally inclined towards peace.

It was a Tuesday when he encountered the first. Right side of the garden, about three foot down. It wasn’t large. He could hold it in his two paws. It was a small, clear jar with a cork in the top. Inside there were shredded leaves, a few small stones that were pink in colour, what appeared to be ash and a small slip of paper, rolled up tight. He couldn’t help it - his mole nose twitched, trying to figure out if the leaves were tasty or not-tasty. The cork prevented the scent reaching even his most delicate nose. With his sharp little teeth and a lot of determination, he uncorked it.

There was a pop, a flash and a fizzle. The scent of citrus filled the small alcove he had carved out. But it was more than that. Something else had come out of the jar. A feeling of warmth filled him from nose to tail, making him shiver with pleasure. It felt like every summer day he had ever loved - not just in sensation. His mood lifted too, every worry and care melting away like butter on toast. He thoughtfully chewed one of the leaves (orange), lost in the simple feeling of enjoyment and brightness that dazzled.

He was not a stupid mole. He knew that clearly the jar had done something, something unexplainable. He knew the new lady of the house or perhaps another human had buried it. He knew he probably wasn’t supposed to find it (humans rarely factor in moles into their plans, unless they were his nemesis, farmers). He also knew that this was a wonderful experience and one he was interested in replicating.

From then on, he opened every jar his grubby pars could land on. Some were tiny vials, some were mason jars that he had to use his entire body to open. Once he had to bite through the safety seal, startling himself with the metallic crunch as it popped. He felt something different every time. In one instance, he was filled with so much confidence, he hissed at a fox that came snuffling around one of his hills. Another made calm wash over him like cool water. Not all of them were so pleasant. Rage occured, impotent and burning. He simmered in his set for a week before he could talk to any of his extended family or even his hedgehog friend. He wept once for two hours, his mostly-sightless eyes filled with tears. He kept taking them though, hoarding the opened jars in a room he had dug especially. He was becoming a mole of the world, collecting experiences without ever leaving his beloved garden. He understood a little more what it was like to be human and what the woman in the big house above was going through.

So he made a jar for her, to repay her for all she had given him without ever knowing it. The first layer was dirt from where the most worms lived - for nutrients and growth. Then dandelion roots, shredded thin so she would always survive. Lastly, his precious apple seed, lovingly sealed in the jar, cork forced in clumsily. He left it on her doorstep in the dead of night, under the full moon (this was when her jars usually appeared so he supposed it was correct). He wouldn’t get to see her open it. But then, she never saw him open hers. It seemed fair somehow. As above, so below, in all things. He slept soundly that night, surrounded by glass and treasure.

#prose #short stories #writing #story

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razberryyum · 7 years

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Gintama manga chaps 653 & 654

Dear Gintama gods and Sorachi-sama,

I would like to think that it's no coincidence that as soon as Umibouzu reappears with the solution to neutralizing Utsuro's Altana, the Earth's dragon pulse bursts out of control. As soon as Umibouzu started explaining the power of the non-Earth crystals and demonstrated how effective they were against the Tendoshuu zombies, I instantly had a feeling the weapon was almost too good to be true. If he is able to actually direct the Crystal Dragon Gate against Utsuro, then the Joui boys won't even need to fight him since they could just destroy him from a distance. Since I can't imagine that you would deprive us of the Final Boss Battle after building it up for so long, the only way to avoid such an anticlimactic outcome that I could think of would be if Umibouzu doesn't get to use the weapon against him at all. With the dragon pulse going haywire, I am guessing your intent is to have Umibouzu use the Crystal Dragon Gate against the Earth's dragon gate instead so that the Earth's dragon could be put back to sleep. It's obvious that Ane, Mone, Komako, and Sadaharu can no longer contain the Altana on their own, and since I refuse to think you would obliterate the inugami species by using up all their powers, it would make sense that they would need the help of the non-Earth crystals in order to succeed in their task.

The only thing I can't figure out completely is just how much Utsuro knows about the crystals and their power against him. After his encounter with Umibouzu on Rakuyou, I would imagine he'd have some inkling of what the non-Earth crystals can do to him since Umibouzu tested out a shard on him, but it's difficult to imagine that he would come up with this Earth destruction plan just to get rid of that weakness. It's almost too complicated to serve that purpose since it would not only require perfect timing that all the events would proceed like clockwork but also foreknowledge that Umibouzu would have his Crystal Dragon Gate gun created and finished in time to make such a timely appearance. Utsuro would have to have godlike abilities to be able to plan ahead to that degree and even you have to agree that would simply be too much. So I can only assume that Umibouzu's weapon will probably be a wrench in his Earth destroying plans after all, but knowing Utsuro, he'll most likely bounce back from that disappointment pretty quickly. I would fear for Umibouzu's life though; I doubt that Altana monster will be happy if Umibouzu does end up successfully saving the day with his new gun-arm.

As for the pickle that is the Hinokagutsuchi, to be honest, I'm strangely not worried about it. I know it is still hurtling toward Earth and things look very dire, but the fact that three of the Joui boys are still onboard actually gives me a little comfort since I truly doubt you will just kill them like that. I feel that Hata will indeed be the one to destroy the Death Star, but we will get a last-minute savior group appearing that will be able to transport everyone off of the vessel before that happens. I'm still waiting for the Renho to appear, and actually the recent anime episodes reminded me that Kagura's ex-boyfriend is also floating around somewhere out in space. Perhaps Dai-chan has heard of what is happening on Earth and is already on his way to help save the planet his ex is on. No matter what, I have faith that somehow, everyone on the Hinokagutsuchi will be saved after all. I mean, I can't say that it wouldn't be a completely gutsy move on your part if you decide to just let that thing destroy Earth anyway and end the series in such a shockingly blunt and brutal manner, and frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if in your more frustrated moments you have probably entertained such a conclusion, but I'd also like to think you at least like us poor readers enough to not destroy our hearts and souls like that. Or even if you didn’t want to do it for us, you'd do it for the number of years you've devoted to Gintama, so hopefully, such an ending will only stay in your darkest fantasies and never be made into a reality.

Last but not least, since it was a quick exchange between Yato father and son, I didn't want to put too much credence in it, especially since Umibouzu essentially shot down the notion, but for the record, if you do decide to one day canonize Gintoki and Kagura (when she's older) as a couple, I cannot say that I would completely object only because I love both of them so much. Their pair-up would of course destroy all my long-cherished OTPs involving the two of them, and I will feel sad about that for sure, but again, because it is the two of them, I will manage to overcome my disappointment eventually and be able to be happy for them. They have never been the ship I was on or prefer, but I do admit they are more than worthy of each other and actually, if I really think about it, I can completely understand how Kagura could grow to see Gintoki as more than a guardian: childhood admiration and affection can reasonably and naturally blossom into adulthood love and attachment. I think the harder sell would be Gintoki and his feelings toward her since it might take a lot more for him to see her as anything but his ward. You would either have to spend more time nurturing that relationship or do a dramatic time skip and just have us fill in the missing years using our own imaginations. Since I don't want the series to end, of course you know my choice would be the first option. But ultimately, it can be done, and I would be on board. Honestly, I would be willing to jump on board even if you were to pair up Kagura and Shinpachi (or Gintoki and Shinpachi). The bond between these three are so strong, I can definitely accept the alternate possibilities that will allow them to further cement their bond.

Finally, please spare our beloved Sadaharu and tiny compact-sized Komako.

Yours truly,

A silly fangirl with yaoi dreams

(^3^)

#Gintama manga chap 653 & 654 #Ane Mone Komako Sadaharu #GinKagu #Umibouzu #Utsuro #Yorozuya #Silver Soul Arc #Thank you Sorachi-sama

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moosebeans · 7 years

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All of the TØP asks!

Answered. After six months. Answered.

It took me ages so better appreciate it 😂I had to do it on mobile bc my laptop’s not working :D

*SELF TITLED*IMPLICIT DEMAND FOR PROOF: what’s your biggest fear?I mean, like except for death, probably not being enough (what a greeeaaat start)FALL AWAY: what was the last lie you told to yourself?‘That’s not wrong’THE PANTALOON: have you ever been deeply affected by a death?I don’t think so, because the last time someone from my closest family died was when my great-grandmother died and I was 6 then so I don’t even remember her that much.ADDICT WITH A PEN: have you ever felt that what you want the most is out of your reach?Hahahaha I’m feeling this almost everyday, next question pleaseFRIEND, PLEASE: have you ever had to talk someone out of making a big mistake?Yes. I won’t tell the details bc you know, privacy, but I’m incredibly happy I managed to do so.MARCH TO THE SEA: do you conform or go against the standards?I’m not a rebel but definitely I’m more of going against the rules, but only if they are wrong.JOHNY BOY: who in your life is sort of unsung hero?Let’s just take a moment to appreciate @has-a-crisisOH MS BELIEVER: someone whom you wish were more confident of themselves?@has-a-crisis and @itsskylerblue and @justanotherduke you guys are wonderful and I don’t understand why you can’t believe that 💛💜AIR CATCHER: have you ever been afraid to tell someone you love them?Not really. Maybe bc I’ve never been in love lmao but if you mean platonic love, I don’t really like telling that bc I’m always scared that that person will let me down eventually and I’ll be sad that they’ve meant that much to me and they knew that.TRAPDOOR: is there something you hide from everyone, even the people close to you?I tend to hide my feelings and my mental state bc I don’t want to overwhelm anyone with mine problems as they already have theirs :’)A CAR, A TORCH, A DEATH: do you love somebody do much you are willing to die for them?Definitely yes, buuttt I’d rather Live for them (what a Ride reference)TAXI CAB: what do you believe will happen to you after you die?Ok, so I’m trying to believe there is some afterlife, and if there is I hope I can get to heaven (or just the good option in general if it’s not heaven), but for now I can’t say I’m sure it will happen so like. idk manBEFORE YOU START YOUR DAY: what is the song that make you feel confident?You mean one? Here’s a whole list: fairly local, lane boy, famous last words, my songs know what you did in the dark, misery (by blink-182) and if I had more time I’d list much moreISLE OF FLIGHTLESS BIRDS: what holds you back from reaching your whole potential?My lovely insecurities, thanks for asking. Seriously, there isn’t any specific one.

*REGIONAL AT BEST*GUNS FOR HANDS: how do you redirect negative thoughts?I don’t really redirect them, I basically just try to forget them by listening to loud music lmao :’)HOLDING ON TO YOU: who do you come to when you need help?@has-a-crisis, @justanotherduke and, thanks to the time zones, (the only good thing about them) when it’s too late there’s always @itsskylerblue awake(the whole thing will just be about them I guess)ODE TO SLEEP: are you a night owl or an early riser?Definitely the night owl. Although I prefer to be called a bat.SLOWTOWN: a day you’d relive over and over again if you could?3/11/2016 my tøp concertCAR RADIO: do you prefer to listen to radio or your own music in the car?Lemmie tell you. The songs on the radio are NOT as okay as that one song suggests. But if it’s an actual long journey then crappy pop is a part of the aesthetic.FOREST: something that didn’t go how you had planned?Like my teenage years for example??GLOWING EYES: what are your dreams like?Well sometimes they are amazing and I wish I didn’t wake up. Sometimes they are messy and cause headaches. Sometimes I have nightmares. And they are absolutely the worst.KITCHEN SINK: have you created something that only you understand?I guess yes? Like, the art I draw is pretty easy to understand but still they surely are some aspects of it only I know?ANATHEMA: what bothers you the most?I’m just never enough. But I don’t have energy to do anything about that.LOVELY: best compliment you’ve ever received?“FUCK that’s good” about my art or “you’re literally alien goddess or what” :) RUBY: have you ever been unexpectedly inspired or affected by someone?Yes. No, you won’t hear details.TREES: someone you wish you could speak to?I’d say… to my mom. I wish I could tell her everything. But it’s not that easy.BE CONCERNED: have you ever questioned something everyone around you firmly believed?Like… does life even have sense?CLEAR: are you an introvert or an extrovert?You see. I’m an extrovert to people I like. But if I’m faced with people I don’t like I’m a total introvert.HOUSE OF GOLD: have you promised something you can’t fulfill until you get older?So many things, honestly, I don’t have time to list them.

*VESSEL*ODE TO SLEEP: have you ever asked someone for forgiveness multiple times?Yes.HOLDING ON TO YOU: do you write in cursive or print?Somewhere between (WHAT A REBEL I AM)MIGRAINE: favourite and least favourite days of the week? Why?Fave- Wednesdays bc I have easy school and I’m still not too tired with the whole weekLeast fave- Sundays and I won’t quote Migraine but more less that’s whyHOUSE OF GOLD: what kind of house do you want to have when you get older?Small but cozy and full of love :’)CAR RADIO: have you ever had anything stolen from you?That one bitch in kindergarten stole my my little ponies once. She got caught and she was defending herself by saying she had to take them on a walk because I kept them inside for too long. Other than that I don’t think so, except someone might have stolen my converse at school but they also might have been thrown away bc I forgot to take them home for winter break as I should SEMI-AUTOMATIC: something you wish you could change from your personality?Idk I could stop being such a salty bitch lmao SCREEN: have you ever pretended to be someone you’re not to impress somebody?I’ve lost count, but I actually don’t do it anymore bc, you know, I stopped giving any effs about whether people like me or not THE RUN AND GO: the last person at whose house you stayed? the last person that stayed at your house?My godparents and for the second one my cousinsFAKE YOU OUT: thing you seem to care about more than most people?I’m really insecure so basically everything that is about me that I don’t like and can’t really change GUNS FOR HANDS: the last lie you told to your parents?“Yeah, I’ll try to go to sleep earlier” or “no, I’m not sad”TREES: someone you wish you could see?(strictly see, no dialogue)I don’t know really? Because just seeing someone is so… not enough if you can’t talk TRUCE: what inspires you to stay alive?My true friends @has-a-crisis, @itsskylerblue and @justanotherduke, a.k.a. the ones I can always count on. Also that small amount of hope that it eventually gets better KITCHEN SINK: have you ever told anyone to go away even though you didn’t want to be alone?Many, many times

*BLURRYFACE*HEAVYDIRTYSOUL: have you ever had to put your dream on hold?Yeah, multi times.STRESSED OUT: whose opinion do you value the most?Probably my friends’ because I know they really care about meRIDE: a fantasy you would never act on?I’d never actually kill the people I sometimes want to.FAIRLY LOCAL: are you typically hot or cold?You mean as a person or do I feel cold or hot? Both answers are cold TEAR IN MY HEART: have you found the tear in my heart?I don’t think so.LANE BOY: have you ever stood up for what you believed in?Yes, multiple times actuallyTHE JUDGE: what’s scarier, the fear or what causes the fear?As a very anxious person I know it’s usually the fear.DOUBT: a doubt that you have that you wish you could shake?If I’m really good at anything or are people just nice to me.POLARIZE: where do you hide your problems?In my diary or in my head.WE DONT BELIEVE WHATS ON TV: do you more value material objects or the intangible?The intangible. I’m actually quite minimalistic so I don’t care about things that much anyway.MESSAGE MAN: when things get hard do you sleep or stay awake?I’m staying AWAKEHOMETOWN: where is your hometown?Warsaw, Poland. Unless you mean something metaphorical then idkNOT TODAY: do you let people get to you?It takes time. A long time.GONER: what is your blurryface like?My blurryface is a mess. Always in the back of my head. When it comes out, everything begins to be too much and everything loses its sense.

Well that was a ride. Congratulations if you actually read it all. Also sorry I’m answering this after literal six months.

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derpcakes · 7 years

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Love spells and parallels and nobody having a good time: Sola and Grainne

(Pictured above: men with defined foreheads and the girls they want to get with)

I woke up the other morning and said to myself “You know what I haven’t done in a while? Nitpicked the narrative flaws of Fate/Zero. I should make a post.”

Actually that’s a lie—but I was doing some reading and got to thinking about the story of Diarmuid and Grainne, which led me to think about how it folds into the story of Fate/Zero. There are two things that Fate loves to do but also doesn’t do nearly as much as I’d like it to: explore the parallels between Masters and their Servants (and between the legends/history of the past and the current world), and explore the fact that the fantasy society of the mages is a messed up and terrible place. Also give its female characters like, actual individual storylines and general respect, but that’s usually more a Zero-specific gripe, which goodness knows I’ve made before and probably will not stop making until I’m 102 and made mostly of cybernetics. All this and more under the cut!

So, let’s begin by saying that Diarmuid and Grainne is a weird story. It’s a great story full of tragic twists and rollicking adventure and Dia pole-vaulting over Fionn’s head, but whenever people say stuff like “it’s the greatest romance ever told!” I side-eye them really hard. Like a lot of star-crossed lovers tales (eg Romeo and Juliet, which gets the same brand of hype), I get the sense it’s not actually meant to be A Love Story so much as a story where love in involved and makes an entertaining mess of everything. Mostly, for me, because… it starts out in kind of a gross and twisted place. Grainne is betrothed to Fionn, and really isn’t keen on this, so she starts looking for a way out. Her motivation is basically just “I don’t want to marry some old dude”, which is simultaneously a shallow reason and a perfectly reasonable one. In any case, she goes to the knights if the Fianna, Fionn’s squad of younger and generally hotter warriors, to ask one of them to help her escape. She sees Diarmuid, and because of the love spot, falls in love with him instantly.

(Pictured above: Desire(TM) )

Grainne says “Hey sugarlumps, you should take me away from here” and Diarmuid responds that, uh, he can’t do that—it would be horribly disloyal to Fionn. Grainne invokes his other duties that he’s loyal to as a knight, which include protecting helpless women, and also sticks a geis on him that means he has to obey her order to run away with her. So, caught in this awful double-bind, Diarmuid obeys and carts Grainne away, leading to Fionn getting pissed and starting a years-long epic chase. Eventually Fionn settles down and recognises their marriage, and it all looks dandy for a while, but then Fionn leaves Diarmuid to die in the forest which proves he was probably not actually 100% mellow and chill about the idea after all. Then Fionn and Grainne end up getting married anyway, which even most writers and historians now are like “??? okay” about.

Anyway, the point here is that in both retellings of the story I’ve read, in two different books by two different authors, there doesn’t seem to be much of a sense that Diarmuid and Grainne actually legitimately fell for each other. It’s sort of assumed that Diarmuid (eventually?) falls for her because she’s a beautiful princess and that’s just what you do, but Grainne is under the spell of the love spot (which took her over without her permission) and Diarmuid ran away with her because she put him under a geis (without his permission, obviously). It’s a weird and consent-less beginning to what ends up as a convoluted tragedy. Even in Fate/Zero’s flashback to Diarmuid’s legend, you see Grainne pushing forward to kiss him and Diarmuid just… kind of standing there with his eyes open.

It’s not particularly romantic, and neither does he look super pleased about fighting his former comrades in the rain (or bleeding to death in the forest, obviously). Plus, this facial expression is I assume what happens after the geis is placed:

Maybe he did fall in love with her--we do see them embrace--but Diarmuid Had A Bad Time is what that whole segment really tells us.

Obviously the Diarmuid/Grainne/Fionn debacle is mirrored in the Diarmuid/Sola/Kayneth debacle, deliberately and in a way that means all the characters (except Sola, as far as I remember) are vocally aware of it. Kayneth obviously sees that his fiancée has fallen for Diarmuid and goes on the warpath ranting “this is just like in the myth!!” and Diarmuid also sees this happening and goes “not this shit again”. Annoyingly, but unsurprisingly I guess, we don’t get much of Sola’s perspective on this. We see her power grab and her sadistic treatment of her fiancée, who she clearly doesn’t like very much, and we see that she has Maximum Lady Feelings for Diarmuid, but… is she also aware of the legend? Does she have some inkling that she’s under a spell? How does she feel about this?

If she’s a parallel to Grainne, I feel like it would be a really interesting place to explore the idea of power and control in two very different time periods, the biggest clincher being that not much has changed. Sola has been shipped off to marry some old dude just like Grainne was, and like Grainne Sola seeks a way out. Whether Grainne had her own political ambitions or anything like that isn’t really gone into, but frankly her asserting that she doesn’t want to be married off to some old dude is agency enough. Sola takes it a step further by clearly wanting magical power of her own, which has been denied to her in favour of her taking the role of magic babymaker for a highborn family. Like I’ve talked about before, this would also be a neat place to contrast her against Tohsaka Aoi, who has also been groomed and funnelled into that role but deals with it very differently to Sola, but that is the pipe-est of pipe dreams since the writing team, somehow, seems to have even less bother and respect for Aoi than they do for Sola.

(Pictured above: Diarmuid saying “not this shit again”)

Anyway, both Sola and Grainne are in these positions that they don’t want to be—their agency has been removed by their families and the societies they live in, and they say “ugh, I want out”… and then end up in this weird, weird situation with Diarmuid when his enchanted face enchants them. In claiming power over him and using him as a vessel for their Way Out, tragic as the ending of that may be, they’re asserting agency and power, but also they’re literally under a spell. A substantial part of why both these women were drawn to him is because of mind-altering magic. Given that they have such a lack of agency already, how would they feel about being manipulated like this?

Especially Sola, who again, should know of the legend? In some lucid faraway part of her brain is she like “wait… what if I’m under the spell of the love spot? Shit!” and she just rolls with it anyway? Or is she totally turned to mush by the enchantment? Which is… well, probably the more likely answer, given how she spends her last spoken lines (after she gets her arm cut off and is, you know, bleeding to death or whatever) shrieking about how she needs the Command Seals to be connected to Diarmuid.

So her brain is turned to mush by the love spot and her last-ditch grab for some control over her own life is derailed—is this played as a tragedy? No, it’s just kind of there, in fact Sola’s grisly damsel-in-distress ending is almost passed off like a “serves the silly girl right” moment, in sort of the same vein as the “slutty” girls being murdered first in slasher movies. Her death forms just one notch in the delightful bloodbath of the End of Team Lancer, and by the end it really doesn’t mean anything, nor does her crush on Diarmuid really mean anything except that it meant Diarmuid Had A Bad Time, Again. And shit, there are so many more layers they could have gone into with Diarmuid himself, who has turn by turn had his agency ripped away from him by this enchantment on his stupid gorgeous face and by the more physical oppression of the Command Seals which can, geis-like, literally force him to do anything his Master wants—but they don’t go into that, so it leaves Sola even more two-dimensional.

(Pictured above: Sola, seconds before being dismembered, but already well into being derailed)

Fate/Zero touches on the mage world and how lowkey but ever-presently messed up it is, but this mostly takes the form of Waver’s storyline and the conflict between Kariya and Tokiomi and the whole “honey I fed the kids to bugs” thing, leaving things like Sola’s dilemma as implication rather than anything else. This place is awful, guys! Kids are being chewed on by bugs, mages routinely put themselves through physical torment to achieve Greater Power, everything is so aggressively archaic they don’t even understand fax machines, and people are treated as objects willy-nilly. Sola is, like Waver, someone who seems to be contesting the structure of this bullshit Hogwarts society by trying to claw her way to a little bit of power and agency when she’s been tossed aside to be used as a tool for Actually Powerful, more important people.

But—whether because she’s not a Master or because she’s a woman or because they ran out of time because this series has 21 McFreaking characters in its core cast—Sola doesn’t get a narrative to mirror Waver’s, or even much of a narrative. She’s kind of mean, she has a crush on Diarmuid, she’s even meaner, then she dies horribly. We never really get inside her head or see her as a foil to the myth in her own right. And having modern characters that are foils to the myths is one of the most interesting things that Fate can do! The mirroring appears, but will the modern character follow the path of their parallel, or divert from it? Will they react differently to similar circumstances, creating all sorts of interesting dynamics? Sola’s almost more interesting in that she’s parallel to a character who she doesn’t actually summon or meet, which could lead her to either blindly make the same mistakes or veer off in a totally different direction.

(Pictured above: what could have been a terrible but narratively interesting duo)

And awful as it is, a story about a woman under a love spell who realises she’s under a love spell, which hey, maybe comes to represent the world’s mission to take away as much of her agency as possible? could be a super interesting story!! Heck, go really meta and have her and Diarmuid both acknowledge what a crappy bind they’re in and have them bond over that or something. Or have her viciously manipulate him because he’s one of the first people she’s had power over before, and though she’s in a constant inner battle with her Maximum Lady Feelings for him, have her embrace that and try to carve out her own glory.

Sola’s shown to be smart, manipulative and at least a little capable as a Master; even if it did end up as a tragedy because that’s what a Grail War does to most people, it still could have been fascinating to have this woman actively fighting against the forces of nature and society for a position of power. Does it make her sympathetic? Does it make her a deliciously awful Cersei Lannister kind of deal? Does it draw up the legend in a new context and have all sorts of fun with intertextuality? We don’t know, because it never happened. Alas.

#OLOX AND HER OPINIONS ARE BAAAACK #fate zero #oloxmeta

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foxhenki-blog · 6 years

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Quantum Sigil Magic

FRONT MATTER

I’ve actually had a pretty magical week despite the lack of daily practice and it has really reinforced my belief that sigil magic behaves very much like other languages. When I was learning Ojibwe, it took a full calendar year before things started to bubble back to the surface of my brain and I was able to use them in daily life. Since I was primarily using the written form of the language to learn in the beginning, with spoken reinforcement from my instructor, I think that this behavior might be tied the act of visualizing language. There hasn’t been anything big, but there have been a few instances where some of my work is received much better than it has in the past, a few unexpected dollars cropping up in savings accounts, that sort of thing. They are, however, related to things I sigiled for at the beginning of year.

This behavior of the psuedo-spirits I’ve been anchoring in the ocean of my subconscious along with the themes in this week’s Lovecraft tale, ‘Dreams in the Witch House’, have really started the old steampunk floating armchair a moving about the cavernous library of my memory.

If sigils behave and act in similar patterns as language learned from written resources does, can casting sigils be extrapolated to different, maybe earlier (maybe more potent) forms of symbolic expression?

In keeping with the Lovecraft Magical Aesthetic, let’s travel back to Sumeria, the birthplace of the Necronomicon and the rituals used by humans to summon up denizens of the Cthulhu Mythos. Sumerian, in the real, is also the current front runner for the birthplace of the written word and the alphabets probably all of use today.

I have a number of tomes that mention the spermatogenisis of the word virus.

One of my favorites, ‘Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach’ by Henry Rogers, has this to say about written languages predecessor, three-dimensional word objects:

“From the period 8500-3000 OLD, a large number of artefacts known as tokens have been found. There are small clay objects of simple geometric shapes: spheres, cones, tetrahydra, cylinders, disks, lens-shaped disks, etc. tokens of this period are known as plain tokens. They are associated with the beginnings of agriculture [and] were used for record keeping… some have been found stored inside sealed, hollow clay balls forming envelopes around the tokens… these envelopes represented a way of safegaurding the record of the contract. If there was a disagreement, the envelope could be broken, and the evidence of the tokens would be inside.”

Extrapolating this practice into the context of modern witchcraft, this appears to be a very usable and possibly forgotten magical technology. If the origins of writing are in these three-dimensional object-symbols and the practice of encapsulating them as a form of binding, then it is plausible that the creation of three-dimensional sigils would be a potent practice. Moreover, instead of destroying the sigils, a common practice with paper sigils today, wouldn’t their encapsulation inside of a clay vessel serve a similar purpose? They would then forever be out of sight of the magician, existing only in her subconscious. The correlation with a binding or contract made real in the form of the clay sphere envelope is also especially potent. The magician is, in effect, binding the sigils, the psuedo-spirits, to their task. If the task is not fulfilled then the sigils could be removed from the vessel, and a new contract / ritual engaged until the magic is made manifest. A similar approach to these three-dimensional sigils could be through the use of 3D printing. In fact, as we will see later, this could be a good way to create and use the actual ‘fourth-dimensional’ sigils described by the narrator of ‘Dreams In The Witch House’.

Moving forward slightly forward in time we travel to the city of Uruk, in southern Mesopotamia, near the Euphrates river, Rogers begins the discussion of the genesis of cuneiform from the garden of tetrahedral language-forms. Cuneiform was the invention of scribes [probably early accountants] and, according to 'Writing Systems':

“We presume that the language is Sumerian, but the pictographic nature of the writing does not give any direct evidence for the language of the scribes…”

So it is not out of the question that the scribes were using another language or dialect. This ‘secret language’ that resembles Sumerian, yet with no intelligible correspondence relates directly to Lovecraft’s descriptions of the language and writing of Nahab, the witch in this week’s tale. Rogers continues, describing the work of the Urukian Occultants:

“The symbols were drawn with a pointed stick, or stylus… Numbers were written with a circular stylus: one impression for ‘one’, two impressions for ‘two’, etc… A rectangular slab of clay, known as a tablet, was held in one hand and the stylus in the other. Early symbols show strokes in all directions, but soon only the one which could be made without too much rotation of the the stylus were used.”

There are a number of implications for sigilmancy here. The primary one, which I believe fits right in with a Lovecraftian Magic Aesthetic, is the imbrication of technology and magic. Keeping with our assumptions that the Western Magical Tradition began properly in Sumeria, and that sigilmancy was an evolution of much much older symbolic magic from when mankind was a proto—post-simian glimmer on the landscape, then the clay tablet and stylus were very likely used to create sigils or to otherwise perform magical operations.

Thanks to Star Treks prop designers, we now live in a world where the writing with a stylus (or finger) on a tablet is once again the primary method of creating symbols. I assert that using a smart phone or tablet with a stylus to create sigils (that are then, once committed to the subconscious via the appropriate ritual, easily ‘burnt’, their existence, their light, extinguished with the swipe of a hand) is not only a valid and potentially highly effective form of sigilmancy, but a method (as in acting) of performing sigilmancy that is much closer to the origins of the craft then using pen and paper. One could even utilize the ‘low attention processing’ method described by Gordon White in his Rune Soup Premium Member course on sigils by setting the sigils as the tablets desktop for a certain amount of time prior to burning.

There is some precedent for technology-enhanced sigils, take the following quote from Benebell Wen’s ‘Tao of Craft’:

“Traditional Fu are rendered by hand with a calligraphy brush. However, I use a regular ink pen or ultrafine-point marker. *I have also found digitally designed Fu printed with modern technology… to be effective.* After all, block printing of Fu sigils has always been popular in East Asia. In block printing, the negative of a Fu sigil design is carved into wood blacks. Ink is applied to the block and the sigil stamped onto paper, and it is then empowered by a magical practitioner.”

Benebell, at the very least, is stating that sigils created using modern technology can become active spells in her experience. She gets at the heart of the ‘how’ in the next quote:

“The most critical aspect to an effective Fu sigil is the process by which it becomes empowered.”

I read this as saying that the medium of the sigil has less to do with its effectiveness than its message, or the message that the magician, to use her term, ‘empowers’ the sigil with. Wen continues:

“To empower a Fu sigil, it not only needs to be designed with particular symbolic representations… but every step of the process of empowerment must be thought through with care and precision…”

Sigils, as they are commonly understood, come from a culture that was driven by paper as a technology. If we look at the above statement closely, however, it does not relate specifically to paper, it talks about design and precision, and the use of the right symbols. This can be done in clay, 3D printed, or in pixels (you can’t get much more precise than pixels, right?).

IMBRICATIONS

Much to my delight, I found one of my all time favorite Christmas shows was available on Amazon Prime this year, the 1985 Rankin and Bass production of L. Frank Baum’s ‘The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus’. You can read a synopsis of the story at this truly amazing time capsule of a blog post from 2013 from the ‘Calvacade of Awesome’. The TL;DR version is this, ‘The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus’ is the most pagan Christmas tale you will every experience, this side of Krampusnacht, and was written by the theosophist creator of probably the most beloved fantasy realm in the entire world. I mean, seriously, just check out the primary character and mentor to Santa Claus, The Great Ak.

Click through the image if you have yet to experience this claymation jewel of the Christmas special pantheon.

Our first Imbrication this week is the band Heilung and their song Krigsgaldr. Heilung, according to my research [OK, it was one stray post on Reddit that mentioned it] compose songs in a variety of languages, including Old English and Proto-Germanic. That in itself is a solid layer on my own take on the tarot as well as being a common trope in much of Lovecraft’s work, the dead languages, unintelligible to all but a select few scholars. And yes, I’m aware that the group’s aesthetic is very probably hugely appropriative and based on likely false foundation of Eurocentric paganism, but goddamit, they own it, and that means something.

OK, I’ve been feeling pretty metal this whole week, so our second imbrication is from one of my all-time modern favorites, Mastodon. I chose their video for ‘Black Tongue’ specifically for the connections it makes to my arguments above about three-dimensional sigil objects and it being the actual craft and attention one puts into them that brings the pseudo-spirit to life. Check out this homeboy’s skills:

And for our last imbrication, another favorite of mine, The Sword, and their song ‘Maiden, Mother, and Crone’. The witch trinity is all kinds of important and reverberates strongly in the 21st century magical renaissance. The connection with this week’s Lovecraft tale is strong also, as Nahab, the ancient yet ageless crone, is the portal we must pass through to understand Lovecraft’s message fully. Check out The Sword below, its fantastic:

RIEMANNIAN SPACE TOURISM

‘Dreams in the Witch House’ is narrated (partially) by a university student by the name of Walter Gilman. Due to a strange fascination with the macabre (not really that strange among my cohort, I guess), Gilman follows local folk tales of a witch by the human name of Keziah Mason, also known by her witch name of Nahab. ‘Dreams’, so far, is the best example of Lovecraft’s technology-enhanced magic that I have read. The below quote just lays it all on the table:

“Non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with folklore, and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney-corner, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from mental tension.”

After reading that, I immediately thought of the path that Dr. Dean Radin is traveling now, specifically the taking of Magic, which is encoded in folklore, and applying it to theories of quantum physics, entanglement, and the like.

Lovecraft name-drops a few key texts in the beginning of the tale, the ubiquitous Necronomicon, the Book of Eibon, and Unassprechlichen Kulten by von Junzt. The narrator, Gilman, explicitly recounts the folk tales of Nahab using a combination of sigils and special diagrams that opened up paths between this dimension and the next, in effect, quantum sigilmancy.

The date that connects with this story is not an obscure you, but one recognized to have great power, Walpurgisnacht. There is also mention of Hallowmass, but Walpurisnacht is the clear focus.

Gilman secures a room just below the room where Nahab, in the Witch Trial era, was reported to conduct all of her magical congress. The room has odd dormers, that begin to obsess the student:

“As time wore along, his absorption in the irregular wall and ceiling of his room increased; for he began to read into the odd angles a mathematical significance which seemed to offer vague clues regarding their purpose.”

These details, and similar ones in Lovecraft’s work, have always connected this thin silver line between the world of architecture and that of the occult. It brings to mind the Hypnerotomachia Polifili and the author of that masterwork’s obsession with architectural details. I suppose, now that I think on it, this also maps to my theories about three-dimensional sigil objects. But I digress…

Along with the crone, Nahab, there is another entity by the name of Brown Jenkins. Lovecraft describes him as such:

“It had long hair and the shape of a rat, but that its sharp-toothed, bearded face was evilly human while its paws were like tiny human hands… Its voice was a kind of loathsome twitter, and it could speak all languages.”

I think that, if one is really serious about cultivating a Lovecraftian Magical Aesthetic, than Brown Jenkins is a way in, via journeying, an archetype that can be used to communicate with Nahab and her ultimate master, the embodiment of chaos, Azathoth. Gilman, our student, seems to have no problem conjuring up Brown Jenkins in his dreams:

“Of all the bizarre monstrosities in Gilman’s dreams, nothing filled him with greater panic and nausea than this blasphemous and diminutive hybrid, whose image flitted across his vision in a form a thousandfold more hateful than anything his waking mind had deduced from the ancient records and modern whispers.”

The potential journeying component aside, the real tech in this tale is the sigil. Take the next quote, for instance:

“a man might - given mathematical knowledge admittedly beyond all likelihood of human acquirement - step deliberately from the earth to any other celestial body which might lie at one of an infinity of specific points in the cosmic pattern.”

Many grimoire spirits promise knowledge of mathematics and science. I have always taken this as 'known' math and science, but now realize that it is very likely unknown, secrets yet to be revealed. This tale is a very good premise for a witchcraft-dominant future. Perhaps the knowledge of interdimensional / interstellar space travel is locked up with those spirits that can only be contacted via magic. This is taken even further in the next quote:

“Any being from any part of three dimensional space could provably survive in the fourth dimension; and its survival of the second stage would depend upon what alien part of three dimensional space it might select for its re-entry. Denizens of some planets might be able to live on certain others - even planets belonging to other galaxies, or to similar dimensional phases of other space time continue — though of course there must be vast numbers of mutually uninhabitable even though mathematically juxtaposed bodies or zones of space.”

Gilman, as the calendar moves from February towards the fated ‘May Eve’, becomes increasingly better at some very high level, and very new (for Lovecraft’s time) mathematics, presumably due to his nightly dream visits to dimensions of non-Euclidean geometry:

“Professor Upham especially liked [my] demonstrations of the kinship of higher mathematics to certain phases of magical lore transmitted down the ages from an inefable antiquity - human or prehuman - whose knowledge of the cosmos and its laws was greater than ours”

There is also mention of Riemannian equations. This specificity (always a sign of something important and encoded in the author’s stories), sent me down a bit of a wormhole into Differential Geometry and the mathematician Riemann’s contributions in this area.

I believe all of the strange vistas and worlds filled with unusual angles that Lovecraft describes in this tale and many others, are something very real to him, a visualization of what it would be like to be a tourist inside of Riemannian Space. I then got to thinking, could there be a Riemannian 3D printed sigil? And it turns out, that some brains in the Harvard math department have written a paper about just that sort of thing.

When trying to deduce that route to the most perfect Lovecraftian Magical Aesthetic, I try to pay very close attention to his landmarks and other details about place. ‘Dreams’ is filled with these breadcrumbs, which have lead me to a new theory about the town of Arkham, where ‘Dreams’ is set. I would like to assert that the town of Arkham is not a representation of Salem, MA. This is the common understanding among Lovecraft theorists. I believe that Arkham is, in fact, Ipswich, MA, and here is why.

First, is the mention by Gilman of Saltonstall Street. There is such a street, in a location that matches the narrators description, in Ipswich. The street does not exist to my knowledge in Salem. On a midnight tour of the dark city, the narrator describes crossing over the ‘Miskatonic’ river, the description matching a bridge over the Ipswich River very closely. In crossing the bridge, Gilman sees the crone Nahab in the real, and it so frightens him that the next time he was out, he avoided that bridge, instead taking an alternate route:

“An hour later darkness found him in the open field beyond Hangman’s Brook, with the glimmering spring stars shining ahead.”

This is another clue that Arkham is Ipswich, the location of the brook, and the road he takes to cross it, which the narrator calls ‘Peabody Avenue’, match Kimball Brook off of the Ipswich River, which is crossed by Peabody Street. At this point in the story, Gilman is being drawn north:

“After about an hour he got himself under better control, ans saw that he was far from the city. All around him stretched the bleak emptiness of salt marshes, while the narrow road ahead led to Innsmouth, that ancient, half-deserted town which Arkham people were so curiously unwilling to visit.”

If Arkham is, in fact, Ipswich, then Innsmouth can only be the town of Rowley, North of Ipswich and bordering on vast salt marshes. I mean, check out the images of Rowley over at ‘Historic Ipswich’ and you tell me that this village does not fit the degraded and foreboding descriptions of Innsmouth that Lovecraft offers us in other tales.

Further, towards the climax of the story, it is stated that:

“people at the mill were whispering that the Walpurgis-revels would be held in the dark ravine beyond Meadow hill where the old white stone stands in a place queerly void of all plant-life.“

I believe that ‘Meadow Hill’ is most likely ‘Castle Hill’. The great house, which incidentally is where ‘The Witches of Eastwick’ was filmed, was not built until 1928. If Lovecraft had visited Ipswich prior to ’28, and the pastoral area around the hill on which the house was built, it fits his description of ‘Meadow Hill’ above quite well.

Both place and timing is important when trying to get the best results from our magic. Not just accepting that Arkham is Salem because that is what the critics (read: not magicians) say, is a necessary step towards getting this right.

Something else that needs to be added to the work, comes from this description:

“They represented some ridged, barrel shaped object with thin horizontal arms radiating spoke like from a central ring, and with vertical knobs was the bug of a system of five long, flat traingularly tapering arms arranged around it like the arms of a starfish, nearly horizontal, but curving slightly away from the central barrel.”

This is a description of a sigil, which in turn is a symbolic representation of extra-dimensional spirit entities:

“living entities about eight feet high, shaped precisely like the spiky images on the balustrade, and propelling themselves by a spider-like wriggling of their lower set of starfish arms”

The last mention of place, Walnut Street, is likely a reference to Providence, as Walnut Street is directly adjacent the Providence Public Library, the building established in 1900.

Since this is the street that Joe Mazurewicz, the embattled Catholic on the ground floor of the witch house, below Gilman, whose incessant prayers had plagued Waler Gilman, retired to in an effort to find peace, its mention could be interpreted as a coming home for Lovecraft. This would place Providence in the role of a safe haven against the terrors of Arkham and Innsmouth, which would be in line with what is commonly understood about Lovecraft and his psyche.

The primary archetype of ‘Dreams in the Witch House’, the one that we can map back to the tarot, is not Brown Jenkins or Nahab, but the top of the tale’s demonic hierarchy:

“In the lighter preliminary phase the evil old woman was now of fiendish distinctness, and Gilman knew she wsa the one who had frightened him in the slums. Her bent back, long now, and shrivelled chin were unmistakable, and her shapeless brown garments were like those he remembered. The expression on her face was one of hideous malevolence and exultation, and when he awakened he could recall a croaking voice that presuaded and threatened. He must meet the Black Man, and go with them all to the throne of Azathoth and the centre of ultimate Chaos.”

In our Etteilla deck, Le Chaos, is card number one, replacing the Magician in a traditional deck. Chaos, or Azathoth, maps to the Pope or the Hierophant in classical tarot. For Etteilla, the definition of Chaos would likely be much closer to the Old French understanding of the word as meaning ‘a gaping void’ or ‘immeasurable space’. In Greek, ‘khaos’ represents ‘the abyss, that which gapes wide open, that which is vast and empty’. Our modern understanding of the word, ‘utter confusion’, didn’t take hold until the 17th c. Azathoth, in this mapping, can be connected to the gods Erebus or Nyx. We all love a good correspondence table.

According to Holistic Tarot, The Hierophant represents conformity, being consumed by impulses, repressing aspects of yourself (in our narrator’s case, most of his humanity), and concealment. It is subterfuge, concealed truths, and negative results from good intentions. Gilman’s intentions were innocent at first, but his connection to Azathoth through the conduit of Nahab and her familiar, Brown Jenkins, forced him to conform to Chaos’ will. Wen also maps the Hierophant card to Pope Clement V, the persecutor of the Knights Templar, which is an interesting wrinkle.

In closing, ‘Dreams In The Witch House’ offers us some of the clearest indications of place and how the ancient (arguably the most ancient) practice of sigilmancy has the potential to gain a significant power-up when connected with our modern technology, which in turn connects back to the origin of modern sigils. It also gives us a different lens through which to view chaos and, by extension, Chaos Magic. No longer a description of an ‘do anything you want’ type of magical aesthetic but one that draws its powers from the void that encompasses the majority of our universe.

#sigils #quantum mechanics #chaos magic

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