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boundinparchment · 1 year

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Dream a Little Dream of Me - XVI

Celestia has a cruel sense of humor. He’s always known this, ever since his days as a student. But a soulmate? Really? Dottore/Female Reader Soulmate AU. Lore speculation, interpretations, etc. AO3 Chapter is Here.

You trekked up to the Akademiya, through the foyer, and off to the doors on the left, thankful for the low foot traffic at this hour. You should have been asleep by now.

The path changed from comforting stone to sturdy wood, the very tree of the Akademiya ushering you forth. Your steps were muffled by the spongy moss, soft beneath your heel as you passed orange flowers the size of a small child. The flora and fauna in Sumeru were unlike anything you’d ever seen so far, although greenhouses around Teyvat certainly tried.

Lanterns cast a warm, yellow light, illuminating the way ahead without polluting the light from the moon and the stars above. The tree’s path returned to stone as you reached a small landing, a pond filled with lily pads and large white blooms nestled against the solid bark of the tree. Off to the west, your gaze fell upon sharp spirals of what appeared to be wood, or perhaps another organic material, and beyond it, the desert proper.

You checked the letter again, to be safe, and then peered up the path ahead. The meeting place was a bit further, although you were certainly on the correct path; you’d followed the directions to the letter thus far. Continuing on, you walked up the spiraling pathway, up and up, only to come to a small fork as the stones diverged left and right, back into the branches of the tree.

And between them…

He cut such an imposing figure from behind. You hadn’t gotten the chance to realize that when you first encountered him, too caught up in the shock and then surviving the fight to truly admire him. Even without the bird across his shoulders and the soft blue tails that danced in the breeze, his posture would likely be as certain and rigid, his presence just as chilling. He shifted his weight as you approached and when he turned, you pushed away the pang of disappointment that his eyes were still covered.

“I’m not late, am I?”

You hoped not. You even left early, in the event you got lost.

“No, you’re quite punctual,” the Doctor replied. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been here; I have little need to be outside of the Akademiya of late. Shall we?”

He did not offer his hand, but rather, his arm. You slipped your hand into the crook of his elbow and he tucked his arm in, keeping you close. Perhaps it was just his coat but he didn’t so much as tense at the sensation or weight of your hand. You tried to quell the idea that the dreams in which you touched him, however gently, were getting him used to the gesture.

The Doctor led you off to the left, the pathway twisting tightly as it made use of available space in the tree itself.

“You have a busy day tomorrow, I don’t intend to keep you long,” the Doctor said softly. “But I thought perhaps you should see one of the marvels of Sumeru without the…overbearing bureaucracy and pedantic nonsense of the Akademiya interfering.”

Fireflies danced in the night air, flickering as they flitted from perch to perch, some hovering as though deciding where to go. You passed an intricate gazebo, white stone carved with such detail that it must have taken years just to do a single post. The dome held stained glass in shades of cerulean, aquamarine, and deep teal continued the motifs you saw in the Akademiya proper. The light from the fireflies made the colors glow in a way that the sun could never accomplish, as if the very glass was made for bioluminescence. Two similar structures ahead housed a beautiful purple flower in a large, wide, planter. The flowers, too, seemed to emit their own light, the petals themselves appearing to glow and shimmer.

You reached out and let the end of the petal curl around your finger as you gently ran your thumb across the flower petal. Although soft, you could feel the grain of the petal against the pad of your finger when you went in another direction; it felt more like velvet than a piece of a flower.

“Careful,” a gloved hand reached and pulled your wrist back gently. “The petals create a fine dust that permeates skin and can result in an allergic reaction if you aren’t used to it.”

You looked at your thumb and forefinger and found them stained a light lavender, as though you’d touched chalk. Your fingers tingled and your head swam, although that likely had more to do with the heady scent of the flowers themselves in such an enclosed space. The Doctor led you back out to the evening air and loosened his hold on you to pull out a handkerchief.

“I don’t believe there are any other pools of water nearby. If I may?”

Before you could respond, he’d pressed the corner of the material to his tongue and gently rubbed each afflicted finger. Initially, the pain worsened, as if it was being rubbed into your skin, before it subsided into a dull burn, as if you’d spent too much time under the sun.

“Thanks,” you murmured, flexing your fingers to test them. They still worked and you could still feel anything you touched.

“The fault is mine, I should have warned you. Shall we continue?”

The question was not so much an offer as it was an order. Not wanting to waste more time, you agreed, tucking your hand back into his arm and continuing upwards.

Above you, white flying buttresses soared and supported the tree, as if preventing it from leaning to one side. The workmanship rivaled the thin but detailed structures of Fontaine’s cathedrals and palaces. They gave way to a pavilion at the top, shrouded in full branches of leaves that never managed to obscure the view from the railing. You dropped your hand from the Doctor’s arm and wandered over to the edge.

“Out there is what’s called Old Vanarana,” the Doctor supplied as he came to stand beside you. “It has long since been corrupted by the Withering but according to legend, it was once vibrant and full of life.”

Now that you had the higher vantage point, you noticed that there was something eerie about the land. Dull, muddled, as if you were looking through dirty water or a factory window long since left to collect dust and smog.

“Have you ever been out there?” you asked.

“Once or twice. It isn’t favorable to those without Visions but even then, my specializations lay elsewhere. It is not the surface that intrigues me but the root cause, which has been ignored for a long time. The same can be said for the pyramid in the distance, the tomb of a king left unchecked for too long.”

You nodded, sensing that he either couldn’t discuss more or didn’t want to. You turned, your gaze instead resting on the building nestled into the tree. The entrance was flanked by two ivory columns, the sweeping arches of the door mimicking the Akademiya’s doors far below. Instead of blue and teal, however, the stained glass was light green, the color of new leaves, vibrant and lively and dotted through with what appeared to be constellations.

Humility overcame you, although you didn’t quite understand how. It was beautiful, of course, but the designs did not feel entirely mortal.

“Few have ever stepped inside the Sanctuary of Suristhana in centuries,” the Doctor remarked. “But it would be far more expedient for our purposes to do so.”

“We can just…” you gestured to the door and then looked up at him, baffled.

The name alone sounded as if it were sacred, intended only for those with proper intentions.

“The contents within are relevant to my work, if that eases your hesitation. The Sages would never even notice. In addition, they wouldn’t dare to question a Harbinger on a diplomatic visit. Not if they wish to keep what has been agreed upon.”

The Doctor walked ahead, pushing the door open with a single hand. Beyond it was nothing but darkness, a void that seemed to absorb every beam of light that came its way. He stood, head pointed towards you, waiting, his arm out in a welcoming gesture.

It felt like trespassing, you wanted to argue. Perhaps it was fine for him but you? You were already part of the collective that had angered at least one Sage. You didn’t want to push your luck.

But you couldn’t let this chance, what felt as if the last chance, to spend time in the waking world with your soulmate, slip between your fingers. Something in your gut tugged at your heart. How could you not use what little time came your way and finally put substance to the figure you knew only when your eyes fluttered closed?

You stepped forward and took the outstretched hand.

As you crossed the threshold, the world went dark and was as if you were stepping into another world. You felt like you were being turned inside out, backwards, swallowed and then spit out whole. When the room around you finally stopped spinning and you could feel the ground beneath your feet, you opened your eyes and gasped at the vast space before you.

“Traveling between gaps in the leylines gets easier with time,” the Doctor said, waving a hand dismissively. “Once again, apologies for not warning you.”

“It’s…it’s fine,” you mumbled, swallowing in hopes of keeping your dinner in your stomach.

It was like stepping into another world. The interior was so much larger than the entrance outside and you saw no sign of bark or wood, as if the tree itself no longer existed or was taken into consideration for the space.

You craned your neck around, your eyes sweeping over everything as the Doctor merely stood, waiting.

The structure inside resembled a hive, or perhaps the inside of a squash or vegetable, with the way the buttresses supported everything in sweeping arches at every point. Although you could easily see the ends of them high above your head, the ceiling itself was far, far beyond your scope of vision. Everything around you was white, gold, or verdant green. Doors dotted the external walls, sweeping arches framing them before their peaks soared upwards like branches reaching for the sky.

Beneath you, when you peered just over the edge of the walkway, was nothing but fog and the vague shapes of tree roots. Tangled between them was a glowing core that appeared to be more than just organic materials, pulsing with life.

The platform you stood on encircled the room and seemed to provide support to the beams that held up the massive structure in the center. Golden leaves encased a much smaller dais and curled to continue supporting the central pillar that was similar to the one far below. Panels of glass glowed from the inner light as the surface swam with various symbols, burning bright. They resembled moving chains but you caught a character of Common now and again that stood for either a 1 or a 0.

What rested within the golden leaves, encased in a green barrier, however, took your breath away.

A tiny figure with white hair was curled up, asleep, moving occasionally.

A child.

You swallowed hard. No child would rest here. You would have spotted posters and heard of a missing child.

The Doctor came to stand beside you again and he leaned in, whispering, “Look closer.”

You resisted the shudder that danced down your spine at his proximity, his breath on your skin.

The child’s clothes matched the very architecture surrounding them. Their hair was not just pure white but faded from pure snow into a green only seen from the richest of leaves or blades of grass.

“Is that…” you whispered.

“The Sanctuary was once a place for Rukkhadevata to meditate and work on the Akasha network. However, the Akademiya saw fit to repurpose it for Lesser Lord Kusanali, so she could learn directly from the Akasha itself. After the passing of their Archon, the Sages of the time felt it was not right for a child to be burdened with the duty of guiding the people. After all, how can a child be wise?”

You caught the derisive venom in his voice, far harsher than the usual tone he spoke of the Archons with. He continued, his words hot on your ear.

“Imprisoning those who could expand their horizons. Removing anyone who does not fit their definition of wise. I am no friend of the Archons but even this seems a bit drastic. But that is to be expected of old men who do not wish to relinquish their power.”

Your eyes were fixated on the sleeping Archon as the Doctor draped his arm around you, pulling you tight to his side and led you around the platform.

This time, before you stepped through the doors directly opposite the entrance, your companion placed your hand onto one of the straps holding the glowing core he wore. The decoration was warm but he was warmer, and just as solid as you’d expected.

“Hold onto me. Try to clear your mind and simply continue walking.”

You followed his stride beat for beat as you walked through the doors, thinking of nothing more than the warmth beside you and the steady thrum of energy pulsing beneath your fingertips.

This time, you arrived in a tunnel of steaming pipes and metal grates, the lights above humming as they emitted a harsh, revealing light. The setting was a far cry from the elegant architecture and sweeping ceilings but as you looked around, you noticed that the pipes and their joints, as well as the lighting itself, seemed to play off of the Doctor’s accessories. How odd.

“Where are we?” you asked, gazing around.

“My workspace. The Akademiya is not aware it exists but they’re so dull-minded that I doubt they would even think to consider checking their own infrastructure.”

He led you through tunnel after tunnel, weaving further and further into the lab. This was his domain, where he could truly delve into everything he dedicated his life to, you realized. His steps were a little quicker, a little peppier, like a child on their way to spend their allowance at the toy store.

Eventually, you reached a workshop that made the Sanctuary's scale pale in comparison. In one section was a desk and a set of chairs. The surface was piled with papers and books, a board nearby full of notes with photographs and string to denote connections. Most of the room was taken up by a hulking set of armor in a design you’d never seen before. It was easily the size of every ship you ever saw come in or out of Fontaine, if not larger.

“You…you made…” you gestured towards the giant suit of armor. “Just you?”

“No one else is permitted here. And you would do well to remember the power of a Harbinger, especially one of the top three.”

He brushed his gloved hand against your cheek before he walked towards the desk. You couldn’t help but marvel at the entire beast of a machine. And it appeared to only be half finished. Surely it wouldn’t just be a torso and arms?

“I can’t even begin to imagine how you did this,” you said. “A machine of this scale, all on your own.”

“Not a machine,” the Doctor replied, his tone harsh. “A God.”

He never made it a secret of where, exactly, he stood when it came to the divine. Hell, the second dream the two of you ever shared, he was quite clear that he didn’t exactly consider the divine to be part of the natural world. Or at least, he didn’t think the divine thought very highly of humanity, at any rate.

“It is not yet complete but it will be a God nonetheless once I’m through. So far, everything has proven successful. If the Divine can be manufactured, then, well, the possibilities are endless.”

You heard the whisper of shifting papers and the thump of books opening and closing and you turned to find the Doctor leafing through the materials on the desk in search of something. He sighed, hidden gaze scanning the surface, before settling back on you.

“If Gods can die, as has been seen in Liyue, as demonstrated during the Archon War, and be created by the hand of humanity…”

One of your first shared dreams came back to you with startling clarity.

“What of soulmates?” you finished.

“Precisely. In fact, there’s one particular possibility I wish to explore with you.”

The Doctor rounded the desk slowly, his arms behind his back as he crossed the distance between you, his pace as exact as his words.

“The bonds between those fated to meet and share a life together is incredibly unique to each pairing. There is no choice, not in the person nor the dynamic between them, for lack of a better phrase. Some are purely platonic in nature, the closest of friends, their lives wholly separate from one another. Others are of a more of a romantic nature, finding that the bond provides a basis on which a different kind of emotional connection is created…”

He stopped just in front of you, close enough that you could feel his warmth radiating but never actually touching you. A gloved hand reached up and brushed against your ear. He frowned but didn’t pull away, instead running a finger along your jaw before taking your chin between his thumb and forefinger.

“He never had the courage to find out, did he?” The Doctor whispered. “Foolish, foolish Zandik.”

Your face tightened as your brows knitted in confusion. Zandik? Who was Zandik? You never knew anyone by that name.

“Oh, that’s adorable. He never even told you his real name. This is truly going to be a fun little experiment, my dear.”

The Doctor chuckled, his other arm pulling you closer, holding you to him. His grip was tight and the more you tried to pull away, the tighter still he seemed to hold. He clicked his tongue in annoyance.

“You can’t even summon a weapon. You’re really going to put up a fight? Don’t waste my time any further.”

You felt a sharp jab in your neck and a rushing fire in your veins as your limbs went limp of their own accord. Your vision swam and you suddenly longed for sleep, your lullaby a wicked, rich laugh. The last thing you saw was a smile full of teeth, vicious and hungry; nothing like the smile you were so familiar with.

#fic: dream a little dream of me #il dottore #dottore #il dottore x female reader #dottore x female reader #soulmate au #time to see who was right on the speculation!

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kariachi · 10 months

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Headcanon: Across Pern, each Hold, cothold, Crafthall, and Weyr has dedicated space set aside for the farming of glows. There are several varieties of glow, owing to Pern’s expansive subterranean ecosystems, but the most commonly cultivated are the classic fungoid glows, coming in a variety of species with fruiting body sizes and light colors ranging from about the size of a grape to the size of a golfball and ‘classic’ ‘glow-in-the-dark’ green to electric blue. Cultivated species are typically short and their caps can be convex, ovulate, or umbilicate in shape depending on the species, with porous undersides.

Typically, when a new location is settled, the first group moving there will endeavor to include an individual experienced in the cultivation of glows, who will be expected to bring their own spawn. The construction of a glow farming area will be of utmost importance, second only to housing and hygiene areas, and usually placed in their own little corner a distance from the others. These locations typically consist of an open space with long, shallow troughs arranged in rows and columns throughout. How many depends on the size of the community, and it’s not uncommon for Holds, Crafthalls, and Weyrs to have more than one of these spaces. The minimum number is typically six troughs, however.

Inoculated substrate is placed in these troughs and tended in such a way as to encourage staggered fruiting. In this way the glow producer can ensure that as one load of glows fades another is ready to take it’s place. As each trough reaches it’s maturity and it’s fruiting bodies reach a point where they can be put to use, the substrate will be divided and placed into specialized baskets- woven in nature, but sealed with wax or pitch to retain moisture in the substrate- which are then distributed across the community.

One of the major forms of business of the Smithcrafthall is the production of mirrors- both glass and polished metal- to be used with glows. They produce light, yes, but the illumination isn’t that great. The use of specially-made glow-mirrors allows for more efficient use of light and serves to enhance the illuminating capabilities of the glows themselves. In public areas these are all-but built into the alcoves in which glow-baskets are stored, covering them in such a manner as to direct the light outward into work spaces or corridors. In private spaces they’re typically smaller and arranged to provide more precise lighting. Also adding to the illumination capabilities of glows is that their spores are also bioluminescent. Thanks to this, while the light given off by fungoid glows tends to diminish over time (the best illumination is found in the middle of the fruiting period, first growing as the glows themselves do and then diminishing as they begin to die off) the area around the glowbasket becomes also illuminated by the spores they’ve given off.

As the fruiting bodies reach the end of their usefulness after 7 to 10 days the baskets are replaced with a new batch, a job which- alongside tending the public baskets- typically goes to the children, fosterlings, or apprentices of the glow cultivators. Glowbaskets in private areas are often brought to the cultivation area by their owners to be traded for a new basket. The spent fruiting bodies are removed and either trashed, composted, or used as animal feed depending. The mycelium network is brushed free of spent substrate and, with the addition of new substrate, returned to the troughs to continue it’s cycle of production. Spores and loose pieces of substrate from the cleaning process are collected and taken to the fecal processing area.

Owing to their subterranean ancestry, fungoid glows thrive in the most available substrate in such areas, excrement. As one can guess, this fact makes individuals in this line of work of iffy social status, though they remain among the most valuable members of any community. The source makes no real difference, whether livestock, dragonkin, human, etc, whichever is considered least valuable as composting material goes to the production of fungoid glows. In fact, in small cotholds or young communities, it’s often the glow cultivators who are in charge of managing the community’s nightsoil. All communities will have a shed or barn dedicated to storing the manure, with an area nearby dedicated to preparing it into proper substrate, generally through breaking it up and sterilizing it in large, shallow copper pots over a fire. Sterilized manure, now proper substrate, is stored in another shed, where it’s inoculated with spores and shed mycelium and tended until it’s ready to join or replace the glows in the troughs.

Thanks to this heat-treating process, while the original manure has a... distinctive odor, cultivation areas and glowbaskets do not, having instead a more earthy aroma.

Glow cultivation, of all varieties, is what’s known as a ‘Smallcraft’. These are crafts that exist as their own guilds associated with one or more Crafthalls. Members of these smallcrafts often pursue education within the related Crafthalls- either beginning their education in these Halls before specializing or adjusting their education to be completed as a member of these Halls- but unless they specifically join the Crafthalls they remain members of the Smallcraft. Unlike members of Crafthalls, members of Smallcrafts are not required to study in a centralized location, but are required to work and study under a Master of the craft, though lessons in their craft are typically available in at least one of the Crafthalls with whom their Smallcraft is associated. Outside of the Halls, Masters take on apprentices at their own discretion. Journeyman testing is generally standardized at biyearly conferences, though Masters can give their apprentices these tests at their own discretion once again. Upon reaching Journeyman rank one becomes open to reassignment at the discretion of the MasterCrafter, either to expand one’s experience by putting them under other Masters or by assigning them to fill positions requested of the MasterCrafter by outside groups. Journeymen looking to advance in rank present their masterwork at the aforementioned biyearly conference, during which the Masters and MasterCrafter will judge their accomplishments and determine whether they should move up.

Examples of Smallcraft include- Midwives, Singers, and Luminures (our glow cultivators). Most Smallcrafts don’t tithe to the Weyrs, as their lack of centralization makes it more difficult and how widespread their work often is means they generally pay their due in work anyway.

MasterLuminur Kuntama was, as of the beginning of the Ninth Pass, centered in the Farmcrafthall, but the Smallcraft is also associated with the Beastcrafthall, with some work ongoing regarding potential dealings with the Fishcrafthall thanks to the ongoing experimentations of Master Luminur Adete.

#headcanons #this wasn't supposed to hit on the crafts but i guess we also have smallcrafts now

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duckapus · 3 months

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The Squid and the Magpie

Obviously the HMG plans weren't the only things the Grid would be interested in having Piper steal (just the most important ones). Of particular note is a small God Box fragment (this one's a cracked LED bulb about the size of a baseball) that lands in Luminos. It landed near a temple, which was a good thing because even if The Church isn't in the Muses' favor their priests/clerics/whatever other sort of spiritual leaders they have are still highly proficient in their selected Muse's magical branch Because Devotion, and apparently the programming behind Harmonian Light Magic is close enough to whatever's going on with the HMGs that a strong enough purification field spell can render the Anti-Meme corruption dormant as long as it's in place.

Obviously they send word to the Queen about this, and she tells their allies from other worlds. Due to Stupid Meme Adventure Bullshit the Haltmanns won't be available to deal with it (and conduct some research on the whole Light magic thing) for a few days, during which it'll stay locked away in the temple since they've clearly got it handled.

Anyway, Piper puts the limited shapeshifting abilities of her Nanosuit to good use by posing as a priestess who's next in the rotation for renewing the spell (it's a high-level enchantment that's blocking a literal eldritch horror for the better part of a weekend keeping it fresh is not a one-cat job). Tonio spots her at some point and his untrained clairvoyance instincts immediately clock her as both a fellow thief and not a Local, so he decides to introduce himself. Nothing like a little healthy competition, after all. Plus he does not like how that strange artifact Feels and she definitely seems like the exact sort of Wrong Hands that it shouldn't fall into.

So he confronts her in the storage room that they've converted into a temporary sealing chamber for the shard. There're some threats, some flirting (okay a lot of flirting because Tonio is basically Puss in Boots and Piper's mostly caught up in the moment), they get into a fight where between Tonio's magic and swordplay, Piper's tech and marksmanship, and their respective combat experience, they turn out to be pretty evenly matched. Then the temple's clergy notices all the commotion, and Nimbus, Mario, the Haltmanns and Valiant show up. The thieves both manage to escape in their own ways, Piper managing to bring the Shard with her as planned, much to Valiant's frustration.

And then Mario makes an interesting discovery; part of the aftermath of their fight is puddles of strange teal paint-like-goop, which he manages to identify as dyed Blooper Ink, specifically Blooper Ink from his world.

See, Cephaling Ink isn't exactly easy to come by if your body doesn't produce it. Harvesting a meaningful quantity is painful for the donor, it has no shelf life, and a lot of Inklings are racist, especially if you're a mammal that isn't one of the Judds. Plus ever since Inkopolis fell the nearest Splatoon city is Splatsville, so now you've gotta take long distance shipping into account.

Meanwhile Blooper Ink is functionally identical to Cephaling Ink when it comes to Inking Turf, aside from the lack of color variety which is easily solved with some food-safe dyes, and the lack of bioluminescence which doesn't really matter. It's safer and easier to get since it isn't literally what Bloopers are made out of, you can actually store and stockpile it for later use, it's not being gatekeeped, and the beings that produce it are abundant worldwide, especially in the Mushroom Kingdom.

All that makes it the Ink of choice for former Cephalings (so just Meggy and Piper as far as we know), as well as for the Kingdom's gradually blossoming Inksports scene, which started up thanks to some Inkopolis refugees deciding to reject their cultural biases and stay in the nation that helped them when they needed it most rather than move on to the Splatlands.

So, they know which universe the mysterious blue-and-black armored thief came from, and they know that she's probably involved in Splatoon-related activities. They also know that she was likely the thief at the Port Aurora HWC facility. They do not know her identity, or of her connection to The Grid.

#smg4 ocs #episode idea #scene idea?#eh. either way #piper fuji #tonio #mario #nimbus #commander valiant #worldbuilding #au lore #the grid #reminder: the grid as an organization is not good guys. they are bad guys with Standards #(and technically a branch of the Yiga Clan even if only their leader and a single agent know it)#who happen to currently primarily be in conflict with bad guys with Significantly Fewer Standards #might give tonio and piper a “enemies-to-rivals-with-benefits-to-lovers-who-are-often-on-opposite-sides” progression #just because i can

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shoppncarticles · 1 year

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The Chinchou Family

I wonder why Chinchou comes so early in the Pokedex, especially since it isn’t available for capture until about midway through the original Johto games. Weird.

Regardless, Chinchou is a very cute design! It’s based on a deep sea anglerfish, something I appreciate quite a bit. Its bioluminescence is embodied by its Water/Electric type, which likely makes Chinchou’s hunting habits all the more effective. Thankfully, Chinchou doesn’t take the more benevolent side of cartoon anglerfish and remains a predatory creature that uses its lights to lure and mesmerize prey while it catches them.

The only downside to Chinchou is that it lacks a proper anglerfish mouth, having a tiny mouth in comparison to the huge, toothy maw anglers typically have. It’s alright, though, since Chinchou’s circular little body is charming enough in its own way, and the dual lures add nicely to its general shape and outline. Of course, the most striking feature of Chinchou are its eyes! They’re super unique and do a nice job adding to its electrical flair.

Score: 5/5

Awesome angler!

…rather unfortunately, Chinchou becomes Lanturn when it evolves. Lanturn just feels like a really weird design as a whole, regardless of it following up Chinchou. It’s a somewhat bloated, almost featureless fish with anime eyes and flimsy little fins, with a branching pair of lures on its head. It works fine enough for a rather simplistic anglerfish design, I suppose, but it feels lackluster as a Pokemon design and especially mediocre as an evolution for Chinchou.

Why are Lanturn’s lures so small by comparison? Where are the little feet Chinchou used to have? Where are the cool plus-shaped pupil eyes??? Given what we’ve seen from the two Gold/Silver beta leaks, it seems like the general idea of Lanturn was designed and put into the game first, with Chinchou following as a pre-evolution some time later. It at least explains the discrepancy between the two, but I don’t know why the designers wouldn’t have gone back to edit something about either design to make them line up a little better.

The Pokedex at least confirms that Lanturn keeps its predatory habits at least, when it isn’t mentioning how Lanturn’s lures are visible in the deep dark ocean.

Score: 2.5/5

It’s still an anglerfish, at least.

[Gen 2 Archive]

#pokmeon #pokemon review #chinchou #lanturn

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sidhewrites · 2 years

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As a child, Katja's father told her that sirens live in the bioluminescent waters surrounding their small village, but she seems to be the only one who believes in them. Her belief is solidified after a siren saves her as a child -- and cements her fixation on sirens throughout her life, even through the tragedies and changes throughout the years.

Genre: Short fiction, wlw

Content Warning for thalassophobia (fear of open/deep water), near-drowning experiences, parental death, and some minor violence/gore.

Available in Ao3 here. // Project info

CHAPTER ONE.

I grew up watching the lights dance in the sea. I used to sneak out of my bedroom at night and climb to the very top of the lighthouse to watch them from above. My father usually caught me, but he was never mad. He would sit beside me, and wrap his favorite woolen blanket around our shoulders, and tell me what they were.

The blue, he said, was plankton. Tiny bioluminescent animals that glittered when they moved in the current. The green was algae, a type of plant that lived in the water.

But every now and then, on the dark moonless nights, or when the fog and clouds blocked out the stars, there was a third color. Tiny silver pinpricks of light, always traveling in pairs. The silver was something else entirely. The silver, he told me, was alive.

“Our harbor is special, Katja.” His breath turned to mist as he spoke. “Sirens live here, and you can hear their voices singing in the wind. Listen.”

I listened. I heard the wind blowing, the voice of the fishermen down below, the engines of cars in the distance. And somewhere, far in the distance, I thought I heard a song.

“They used to come to the surface once a month, and lure someone out to sea in order to eat them. For thousands of years, we chose someone ourselves as a sacrifice, or else they would choose for us.”

“What happened?”

He smiled and nodded behind us. “We learned how to borrow the sun.” The lighthouse’s beacon spun diligently, lighting up the harbor with intermittent flashes of yellow gold. “They can’t see in the light, so they stay away. That’s why you and I and all our family before us have protected the people here. Even if they don’t know the truth about it.”

And they didn’t know the truth. Not really.

I was five, with my little red backpack and wellies, walking to school all on my own for the very first time. The ice autumn rain was making my father sick. His joints ached, his asthma flared, and he was too ill to go with me. I remember the argument we had, how I told him over and over that I was smart enough to know my way around town. If I got lost or ran into trouble, I could just go to the general store and ask Jerzy for help. He and my father had been friends for many years now, and I knew him very well. And, after the last bell rang, I promised to come straight home and tell him all about my day.

The teacher was a kindly woman, fat and matronly, who learned all our names on the very first day. For the first half hour of class, she let us ask our own questions. Where did the sun go at night? How did cars work? Why did feathers float but pillows fall? Someone asked about the lights in the sea, and I raised my hand instantly.

“Yes, Katja?”

“Most of them are little animals called plankton, or plants called algae. They’re bioluminescent, so they make their own light.” I was so proud for not tripping over the difficult word.

The teacher -- I forget her name now -- smiled and praised me, before turning towards the blackboard. She drew pictures of a few plankton on the board, and taught us their names and how to spell algae .

My hand shot up again, but I didn’t wait to be called on this time. “But it’s not all algae. Only the blue and green lights are.”

Everyone looked back at me. I sat up a little straighter, proud and a little intimidated, to teach them what I had known all my life. “The silver lights are the sirens that used to lure sailors into the sea to eat them. They don’t anymore, though, because we invented the lighthouse.”

Most of us still believed the bedtime stories our parents told us. Sirens didn’t seem too much of a stretch, until one boy pointed at me and laughed. “Only babies still believe in fairy tales.”

Belief in me waned instantly, and a few of my classmates began to laugh along, if only to prove they weren’t babies. There were few things worse than being called a baby when you were five years old and already missing your first tooth.

I cried to my father when I came home that night. He was well enough to walk around freely again, and he carried me in his arms as I wept. I told him how horrible everyone was and that I hated them. That I wanted to stay in the lighthouse forever, and never, ever go outside again.

My father held me close. He told me I was allowed to be angry at them, but not to run away. I couldn’t just sit and hide. When I refused to sit for a story, he put me down. “Get your coat, Katja. I want to show you something.”

I only reluctantly followed him outside the lighthouse, and then down the steps to the breakwater jetty at the bottom of the cliffs.

“Step carefully,” he warned, “and always keep a hand on the rail so you don’t fall.”

I did as I was told, careful as I could be despite my childish rage.

The rocks were slippery with seawater and mist. Crabs scuttled out of my way as I stomped to the very edge of the jetty, holding my father’s hand.

He looked out at the grey water. A light rain fell, and clouds hung low in the sky. “Your mother was a siren, you know. She’s still very close by. If you listen carefully, you can hear her voice in the wind.” I knew this story by heart. Every time I asked about my mother, he told me how they met on a dark night under a crescent moon. She had been caught in a fisherman’s net, and he set her free.

But he didn’t tell it the way I was used to. He stopped, and let the water spray his face when a wave crashed. “Whenever you get angry, send your own voice right back. Scream as loud as you can into the wind, and your mother will hear it. She can’t come visit you, but if you’re loud enough, she can hear.” He knelt down next to me. “Are you ready to try?”

I wasn’t sure. I had never been allowed to scream before.

So he went first. My father took a deep breath and let out a roar as loud and long as his lungs would allow. When he finished, he seemed somehow lighter -- and weaker as well. Holding back a cough, most likely. “Now you,” he said.

So I took a deep breath, just as he had, and I screamed.

It became a habit of mine. The more I was mocked, the more I went to the jetty, and let out all my childish rage.

Not all my classmates turned against me at first, but enough did, and the number slowly grew. By the time spring reared its frosty head, I had become an outcast. They called my sirens mermaids , and told me that if I was so sure they were real, then maybe I should prove it by turning off the lighthouse.

“But then they’ll lure you in and eat you!” I cried.

“Maybe we’ll be lucky. Maybe they’ll only eat you.”

I ran away in tears, too fast for anyone to tell on me. My little red backpack bounced as I sprinted down the narrow streets, past the three traffic lights, and down to the jetty. Rain soaked my hair, and mist rolled in, until the rest of the world was a thousand miles away. I screamed into the grey. I howled and cursed and shouted until I was as loud as the crashing waves. Thunder boomed, but I was louder than even that. I screamed until my throat was raw, and when my voice finally gave out, I sat down and cried.

Night still fell early this time of year, quickly and without warning. I only noticed when I finally looked up. Two glowing points hovered at the edge of the rocks, lined with pinpricks of silver.

Lightning flashed. I had just enough light to see a young girl’s face with a maw filled with vicious teeth before the dark took over again.

Thunder came seconds later, and I flinched. Suddenly, I was too small and too far from home. I wanted my father, and his cocoa, and his blankets and stories. I wanted it so badly that I forgot his warning.

I tried to run.

I slipped.

Lightning flashed, and I saw the world tilt in stark contrast, first the rocks and the crabs, and then the icy slap of the water hitting my face. I could only just make out something in the distance coming closer, silvery points of light, as my vision faded out.

I had the vaguest memory of strong, small hands gripping my wrists, and then the rocky beach beneath me. Someone sang in a voice that made me want to cry. I felt empty, or maybe whole. I couldn’t tell, but it was all too much.

Another light flashed, and the singing stopped. Shadows fell over me. Larger hands lifted me up. My father spoke to me, but he sounded very far away.

I woke up properly a few hours later, very warm and very dry in a hospital bed. Machines beeped next to me. My arm was bandaged, and my entire body ached. X-rays glowed against a lit panel on the wall, and I remember the fractures in my arm and ribs.

My father sat beside me, petting my hair and singing one of his lullabies. His eyes were red and his voice hoarse. He’d been crying. “Katja, Katja,” he soothed, and ran his rough hand over my cheek. “What were you doing out there?”

“I saw a siren.” I said. The memory was still so clear in my mind.

Something inside him crumbled that I didn’t understand. “Oh my love.” His voice cracked. He kissed my forehead and held me close. The corner of his inhaler jabbed me from the inside of his coat. “Those are only fairy tales. They’re not real.”

“Yes, they are.” I pulled away, confused. “I saw her. She had glowing eyes and sharp teeth.”

He brushed my hair back, eyes glassy again. “You must have seen a fish. Lightning makes the world look strange.”

I shook my head. “But you said we protect the harbor from them. They’re afraid of the light.”

“We tell each other stories to make the world seem magical, Katja. Stories about Cinderella and Red Riding Hood. And Sirens. That’s all they are, my love. That’s all.”

My heart shattered. I refused to hear anything else he had to say. I couldn’t understand, couldn’t believe, how he could say something like that. He had told me a thousand different stories about the sirens. Even my mother was one of them. And now that I’d seen one, he was telling me they weren’t real.

It was worse than the children turning on me. I could bear losing their confidence, but not his.

But I learned my lesson about the jetty. I stayed on the land for years after that. I grew distant and angry, but I never stopped searching for those silver flashes of light among the blue and green.

I knew what I saw that night. I knew.

#writeblr #mystuff #writing #glimte #glimte 1 #reposting for to make it look prettier now #writers of tumblr #wlw #sirens #mermaids #lgbtq #lgbtq fiction #lgbtq fantasy #original fiction #short fiction #short story

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theflashdriver · 3 years

Text

Trial by Flyer (A Silvaze AU)

The campus was dark and silent tonight, the wind wasn’t whistling through the trees and what little star and moonlight would have shone its way to her was being blocked out by a thick wall of clouds. Blaze the cat, age sixteen, shouldn’t have been out here at so late an hour. Midnight had just passed, the witching hour had arrived, and yet, this feline witch was supposed to be long in bed. Instead, where was she? Sat at the bottom step of the outdoor amphitheatre, fingers steepled and her right foot tapping uncontrollably as she awaited her best friend.

The Marble Garden School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was a place of learning only for the chosen few and, as such, there were many serious rules that were mandatory to abide by. There were a multitude of simple rules that, if broken, could result in a severe punishment of expulsion; girls weren’t supposed to enter the boys’ dormitories (and vice versa), you weren’t allowed to cast nefarious spells on other students, there were to be no paid additional studies and, the rule that Blaze was currently breaking, all students had to be in their respective dormitory buildings before eleven at night. Just being out here was making her anxious, quadrupling her heartrate and making even the most minor of sounds all the more terrifying.

Blaze was a good student, well… a mostly good student; a good student as much as she could control being a good student. While she rarely raised her hand in class, only answering questions when she was called upon, she listened diligently to her lecturers, studied all she’d learned thoroughly every night, shirked social and extracurricular opportunities and took additional time at the library whenever possible. She put in more effort than any other student she knew of, that wasn’t a matter of pride so much as a fact that her teachers wouldn’t stop reminding her of. Whenever she did well on a test or whenever they wanted to give an example of a good student, her name would quickly fall from their lips followed by a heaping of praise.

Yet, despite all the praise she received and how good of a student she was, here the feline sat; so casually breaking curfew. It was as if she was trying to be caught even, a heavy bag sat beside her and she was dressed in the garb that she’d chosen as her uniform- a tall hat with a golden buckle and belt adorned her head ita long sleeved purple dress that frilled out at the cuffs and hem covered her body only to be topped by a purple-leather mantle, a set of thick purple tights with golden swirls decorating them and a pair of high heeled boots to match. The only aspect of her dress that wasn’t purple and gold were her gloves, stark white evening gloves that reached deeply into her sleeves. If she was seen, for a plain an outfit she’d tried to pick (from a very limited list of options) she’d be recognised on sight; a fact that was making it all the harder to not just run back to her-

A voice suddenly assumed the entirety of her mind’s attention, not entering through her ears but jumping directly into her brain, “Blaze! I’m so sorry, I’m running a little late. The groundskeeper was cleaning a mess outside the boy’s dorms, I had to sneak out through the window. I won’t be much longer!”

Quickly, Blaze raised her pointer fingers to the air and set their tips alight. Intricately, methodically, she traced a pair of intricate and overlapping sigils in the air and closed her eyes. The moment they were completed, she brought those fingers to her temples and thought in the loudest voice possible, “Silver. It is okay, I am glad you were not caught. I am waiting at the agreed location, please come quickly. Did you remember your notebook?”

A moment passed but no reply came.

Her fingers left her temples and her eyes flickered open but the symbols she’d cast had already faded from the air. A sigh slipped from her mouth as she recrossed her legs and resumed waiting, uncertain that her message had left her, let alone reached its intended reciprocate. He wasn’t that late, and the boy’s dormitories weren’t too far from the amphitheatre, but every second spent out her left more chance that they’d be caught. The moment he arrived, they could achieve the motive of their rule-breaking and quickly sneak back to their respective rooms.

Oh, who was she kidding; this wasn’t going to go nearly as quickly as she hoped.

It was as she had that thought that a twinkling of light, like a small cluster of stars had managed to split through the clouds, drew her attention. She looked up, frowning hard at the glow as she attempted to identify it; as it drew closer, she understood it to be the form she was awaiting. Silver the hedgehog, also age sixteen, was descending from the sky as though he was carried by a moonbeam; wrapped in cyan, psychic, light, his form was difficult but not impossible to distinguish. Before he arrived, the feline jumped to her feet and dusted herself off, quickly scanning their surroundings to make certain no one else had been watching them. He landed without a sound; standing next to her, still coated in energy, his height only just superseded hers due to the nature of his tall quills. If she wasn’t wearing heels of course, the different between them would be far clearer.

With the flaring of his fingers, the light faded from him but that new sight entirely perplexed Blaze. She’d noticed his lack of hat, thus being why she wasn’t presently taller than him, but not the lack of his other garb. Silver stood before her, dressed in a short-sleeved green t-shirt and a pair of baggy pyjama trousers.

“Silver,” She half whispered half grumbled, trying to keep her voice down but make it clear that she was perturbed, “Where are your robes, where is your notebook?”

His bright yellow eyes seemed to dance for a moment, looking to her before down to his own frame. As a realisation hit, his quills shot up straight and a hint of embarrassment overcame his muzzle, “Sorry, I forgot to drop the charm. I figured I’d be too bright if I tried to scout a path dressed normally, give me a moment.”

Like a chimneysweep dusting soot from his body, the symbols on his palms flaring, Silver began to pat himself down. With no more than those touches, he unearthed the outfit that he’d hidden- he wore open robes with flaring sleeves (cut with a keyhole window that exposed the upper portion of his chest fur), a set of baggy trousers and some thick boots with metal caps. That description made the outfit seem basic but, in truth, it was anything but that; head to toe, Silver glowed with a strange bioluminescence that matched the symbols on his hands. Scales and lines like mycelia flared additional light from seemingly random points on his person, forming jagged lines both across and up his visage. In some places it made sense, like on the buttons of his mantle and hemming his clothes, but in others it seemed nonsensical.

To conclude this transformation, he slicked his fingers through his quills and revealed what Blaze thought to be the most ludicrous cap worn by any student in this entire school. As if to compensate for the muting of his own overgrown quills, often having to be pulled back into a braid or ponytail, Silver’s choice of hat was so tall that its point had bent not three days beyond his arrival at this school. It was faintly glowing and cyan, alike the rest of his garb, but the underside of its large rim especially so. It looked as though his head was topped with a large, bioluminescent, mushroom cap with incredibly bright gills.

Reaching into his robes, he drew out his notebook and beamed at her, eyes still shining even while his hat tried its damnedest to obscure them, “There, is that better?”

Realising quite how intently she’d been staring at this magical display, Blaze quickly turned away and busied herself within her bag; though she’d thoroughly enjoyed the display, he was eating up their time. Under her breath, half hoping he didn’t hear, she murmured, “You’re so naïve.”

She pulled out her own notebook, flipping it open to her most recent writings. In a cursive, neat and elegant, font were two pages of heavily sourced notes pertaining to the history and practice of future prediction and other sorts of divination magic. She managed to walk beside him, still not looking to him, and show him the pages.

“These should help you start your essay, at the very least. All these books are available in the library but, if they’re taken out, I have my own copies that you can borrow,” She tapped one name in particular, “Look out for books and stories by and about her in particular, Amelia Rose. Her works are a lot older but, while I find them too flowery, they’re a very good source.”

She dared to throw a glance in his direction only to find him staring at the pages as if the several dozen names and notes were going in one of his ears and out the other. His words seemed to leave some kind of impact on him though as he managed to nod at them, “Amelia Rose, Amelia Rose, okay!” Blaze went to tear the two sheets free for him to slot into his own book, but a fumbling hand caught hers before he could, “Don’t worry about that, you need to write this essay too, right?” She looked to him incredulously only for him to start beaming again, “I learned a new spell, watch this!”

He shuffled his way just behind her, reaching around her shoulders. As if it was the most normal thing in the world, Silver plopped his notebook face town atop hers Almost immediately, Blaze felt her tail stiffen and bump against him as his arms came to rest atop his and his frame pushed so close to hers. Two of his fingers pushed against the back of both his pad’s covers and began to weave small circles. They traced from top left to right, gradually going along and down line after line after line. She watched as sparks of excess cyan energy, that which the book didn’t absorb, slipped from beneath his fingers and fluttered in the air before them. Quickly, the tenseness in her tail faded and she felt herself relax into his grasp, but she wasn’t thinking about that. She was simply enamoured by whatever it was he was doing.

So enamoured in fact that when he flipped his book in a single movement, uttering an overly pleased, “Tada!” It took Blaze a moment to come to her senses and realise what he’d done. Her words, her exact handwriting, had been copied onto the pages of his book. He’d learned this spell specifically so that she didn’t have to duplicate her notes for him, her notes could simply duplicate themselves.

“You’re so…” She went to reprimand for acting without explaining, for allowing his talent to swallow the entirety of her attention again, only to notice something comically foolish, “Your book was upside-down…”

“W-What? Oh, um…” He lifted it from hers, stepping out from behind her and squinting at the writing incredulously, “It’ll still work for studying though, right?”

“It should do,” She comforted him, but at the showing of his notebook a question rose to mind, “Did you get my message earlier?”

“Oh, yeah! You’re getting way better at telepathy Blaze,” He was smiling again, “You said it was ok and to come quickly, right?”

Ah, so the end of her message had been cut off. Her casting, even of that basic spell, was still far from perfect… unlike his.

While Blaze excelled at all things theoretical, she could easily write essay upon essay and was quick to learn that which she heard or could read, Silver was a master of practical magic. Without really understanding what he was doing, the hedgehog frequently found himself successfully casting spells on a whim and without particularly understanding their idiosyncrasies. To contrast this, despite putting in an equal amount of effort as her, Silver was especially bad at deskwork; he’d attempt to answer teacher’s questions and routinely be incorrect as well as, despite weeks of study, barely earn passing grades in written exams. Curiously enough, just as she mirrored his written ability, Blaze was lacking when it came to practical magical talent. When it came to offensive spells and fire magic, she was fairly adept at casting but anything beyond that seemed to be out of her reach. Telepathy was one of the first spells they’d been taught, and she still couldn’t transmit full thoughts, only brief fragments; abjuration, conjuration, transmutation and illusionary techniques, outside of only the most basic, were beyond her.

One would think that, for those reasons, the two wouldn’t get along but they’d formed a strong bond in their first year. It’d been very obvious to Blaze that the hedgehog was struggling, he wore his heart on his sleeve in such a blatant way, and she had taken some degree of pity on him. That pity had soon been corrupted by a mutual admiration of course, even during their first year (3 years ago) he’d shown such magnificent talent, and that admiration had forged the bonds of their friendship. They looked after each other, helped each other wherever possible and promised to come to the other for help… just as she had offered an exchange and asked him to break some rules tonight. She’d thought she’d have to beg but he’d agreed without hesitating.

“So, Friday’s test…” She led, knowing that day was only one more night away, “I know this is a little short notice, I thought I could maybe do this myself, but-

A pair of hands found hers, palm topped palm as her fingers held her tight.

“We help each other, Blaze. There’s nothing to worry about,” She caught his eye again and knew that he was being genuine, “Of course I’ll teach you to fly!”

Blaze’s gaze slipped from Silver. Her stomach was churning, it felt as though the world was spinning, the mere mention of that word and all it implied made her slightly sick. On Friday, they had their first real test of this semester- a flying obstacle course set up on the sports grounds, a small path that they had to complete. Even outside her difficulty casting a spell that would allow her to fly, Blaze had a rather significant fear of heights; when she’d arrived at her dorm room within the girl’s tower she’d almost panicked at the view from her window. For this reason, while other students had made the extracurricular effort to learn flight, Blaze had only just started to learn. She’d tried to find the right spell for her over the past few weeks, researching thoroughly, but none of them had worked with her specific type of magic.

“Alright, th-thank you Silver,” She managed to glance at him again, only to find that he’d leaned in closer, “What do you think the first step is?”

Silver’s hands slipped from hers, he fumbled with his chest fur in thought for a moment, “Well, it’s probably best to start at the beginning; you need to take off. From there, it’s just learning to control yourself; that gets way easier with practice!”

“Right, taking off…” She considered, still rather disgusted, “How would you recommend I do that? I don’t think your method will work for me.”

As if to exemplify why his method wouldn’t work, a gentle hue of cyan light overtook Silver’s frame and carried him into the air. He flipped to hover upside down, looking her in the eye as he sunk deeper into thought, “Probably not…” His eyes seemed to dance across her body, lingering on her hands before finishing at her feet, “I’ve been thinking about this for a while, you can make fire come from anywhere, right?”

With no more than a thought, Blaze allowed a pair of flaming plumes to emerge from her shoulders and dance in the windless night before having them vanish and growing a set of vague flame-wings, “Anywhere on my body, as much as I can muster.”

“Well…” He looked like what he was about to say was foolish, “What if you made yourself like a rocket? What if you shot fire from the bottom of your feet and pushed yourself into the air?”

It was, it was very foolish, “Silver, even if I could do that, it’d be incredibly unstable and almost impossible to balance. If my top half leaned over then I’d fly in just about any direction, I could race to the ground like a falling star.”

“I thought about that too!” He beamed, “What if you used your hands to make almost… stabilisers? Like what people put on a bike so they don’t fall over, only for flying.”

For as ridiculously as he’d phrased it, that was a fairly succinct counter to her issue. There was however a magnitude of issues still both swirling in her gut and with his plan, “Ok, but that presupposes that I can even make enough thrust to lift myself, Silver. I really doubt that I can…”

“Oh, have you tried before? Darn, I really thought it’d work…” He went back to thinking, almost seeming to scan her body again, but those words had made Blaze’s mind even more of a mess.

Her gaze broke from his and she hesitated again, looking at her hands and conjuring small flames. The rate with which flame emerged from her was something she could control but she’d never truly thought to, “Not really, no.”

“You haven’t? Can we try it then?” Her uncertainty must have been showing because he flitted back around, looking her in the eye, “I’ll stay right next to you, I won’t let you fall, I promise!”

She gulped, “Do you?” It was a question she already knew the answer to but worry was brewing in her gut.

“Of course, I’m here to help you, Blaze!” He insisted, preparing her arms as if she was already about to catch her, “I would never let you down.”

“Ok,” She took a deep breath, closing her eyes, “I’ll give it a shot…”

Blaze was rather unsure what to do with herself to become more aerodynamic, but she gave it her best. She pushed her heels together but kept her toes far apart, keeping her hands parallel but separate to her waist with her palms pointed towards the ground. Lighting a flame was easy, she had just done it with a thought, but producing a constant and controlled flame would be just a little bit harder. She focused her attention on the underside of her boots and centre of her palms, trying to pool all of her arcana evenly over those four spots.

A thought dawned upon her, “Should I I just let it go or should I jump and do it from the air?”

“T-Try just letting it go,” Silver’s voice cut through her focus, “It looks like you’re doing rea-

A single lapse in her concentration was all it took. As Blaze was trying to focus on his words, the seal keeping her flames from spilling free lapsed. A thunderous force, larger than any Blaze had tried to conjure before, burst from all of four of her extremities with an unrelenting roar and launched her straight up into the air. The moment she opened her eyes, Blaze was met with cloud but soon they passed and cracked to reveal an unending array of stars dancing around the moon. For a single moment, as her eyes lingered on the shining crescent above, she felt joy; she’d done what she thought impossible, she’d successfully taken off… but she was still soaring.

There was no ceiling to stop her and, much more terrifyingly, no safety net beneath her. She’d shot off without warning, she had no idea how fast she’d flown or what kind of noise she was making. It was possible she’d woken up the whole campus, it was probable that one of the nightguards had noticed! She was going to get them in so much trouble! As she glanced around herself in an attempt to find Silver, she forgot how important the positioning of her palms was and sent herself into an upwards corkscrew. Now spiralling, her hat having long fallen from her head, Blaze fought to regain control but soon found herself spinning on more than one axis.

Her focus and control waned, the fire at her limb’s ends snuffed and soon she reached the apex of her ascent. For the briefest of moments, she felt weightless, having tumbled up to mingle with the stars, but she very quickly found herself plummeting. With the wind rushing around her frame, Blaze couldn’t relight her form and, even if she could, her feet and hands were in such wrong positions.

She started to scream, the sound had just begun to leave her lips, when something soft found her back and hooked around the underside of her legs. She couldn’t have fallen for half a metre before that gentle touch had found her and brought them both to a standstill in the air. Lit by the moon more than his powers; Silver’s smile was huge and his eyes sparkled down at her. She’d landed in his arms; he was holding her back and beneath her legs, clutching her close to his body in an attempt to secure her. His face, his smile, it was all so close; she couldn’t recall anyone else ever looking at her like this, especially not after she failed.

“Are you alright? Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” He insisted, but before she could say a word his smile almost tripled, “You did it Blaze! You flew!”

“I-It was more like I exploded! Don’t be so naïve!” She tore her gaze from him only to be confronted by their current height. Despite her blush and false-fury, Blaze was forced to meet his gaze, “Don’t act like that was a success!”

“What’re you talking about, you took off!” He sounded so excited, “You managed to learn that so quickly, I was sure it’d be the hardest part, the rest should be a cinch!”

She felt him shift just a little, something popped into the corner of her vision; a certain black hat that’d been lost in her flight. Snatching it, simultaneously gripping him tight with her remaining arm, she used the garment to hide her face, “Stop being so naïve…it’s not going to be that easy.”

A brief silence overcame them and Blaze found herself shrinking further into her hat and, almost by mistake, deeper into his arms. Over the past handful of months, Blaze had been catching herself in these positions more and more often; every single time she had only herself to blame, though she’d usually berate him for his part in them. They’d be studying in the library, sitting side by side as they read, and her head would just so happen to find comfort on his shoulder, or they’d be walking across campus and she’d, eventually, notice that their fingers had intertwined. Prior to this year, Blaze hadn’t thought much of these occurrences, they’d just sort of happened, but idle gossip, fresh from the girl’s common room, had made her far more aware of these things.

Silver’s talent hadn’t gone unnoticed by their lecturers or, as Blaze had come to learn, their classmates. The bizarre bubbling sickness that Blaze had experienced when another student had expressed interest in the hedgehog and pried about their relationship was unlike anything she’d felt prior. Though she’d wanted to deny the rumour, she’d found herself entirely unable to.

Hesitantly, she flicked up the brim of her hat for a small glance at him. Despite her prior rudeness, he looked entirely unphased; the wizard in training was simply looking up at the sky and smiling, taking in the stars. The way the night-light seemed to colour his fur, let alone the expression it managed to put on his face, was just a little dazzling. It’d taken her a while to really understand it, but there was something rather… aesthetically pleasing about his form. Nothing she ever planned to admit aloud of course, especially not to him, but after that girl had mentioned it, the changes he’d undergone over the years and the way his eyes sparkled did make for a rather pleasing visage (even despite his silly robes).

Realising that she’d been thinking for much too long and noticing him turning back in her direction, Blaze quickly made a demand, “I want to try again.”

“Whenever you’re ready, I’m ready,” He affirmed, still smiling as his gaze returned to her, “You can stand on my feet if you want. That way you’d be up straight, it might help you get used to this.”

“It means I’ll be free of this embarrassing position, I’m willing to try anything,” She huffed but, moments later, caught herself and realised what she’d said. He was trying his best to help her, he probably didn’t even think this was embarrassing, “You’ll still… hold me, won’t you?”

“I won’t let go until you tell me too, I promise,” The hedgehog pledged.

She shifted in his grasp, clinging tightly to his shoulders, and, ever so gently, he slipped his hold from her legs. It took a little bit of fumbling but, eventually, she managed to perch herself on the tips of his boots. Despite how painful it’d surely be if they were on the ground, this change of position didn’t seem to bring him any discomfort as he glided his remaining free hand around her back.

The young witch peered over his shoulder and her gaze fell upon the thick cloud barrier beneath them. Up here, no lecturers or other students could see them; they were alone with the night’s celestial bodies. Though being above the clouds did frighten her, the fact that they couldn’t see the ground was making things a lot easier. She knew that Silver wouldn’t let her fall, she believed in his abilities, but having that a fluffy-fake ground beneath them was doing her a world of good. Gradually, she managed to shift some of the tension from her shoulders and hold him in a less life-or-death manner.

He seemed to notice the shift, “Alright, maybe you should start with your feet? That way we can keep holding each other.”

That made sense but, truth be told, letting go seemed a little easier than stepping off and into the abyss, “One foot at a time?” She hesitantly suggested.

“Try to use just enough energy to lift you but not to change how high you fly,” Silver recommended, “Once you’ve figured that out once, you should understand how it feels and be able to do it again.”

Blaze heaved a shallow breath and closed her eyes, “Okay… okay…”

She leant back just a little, allowing her left foot to depart from his frame. It took no more than a thought for her to produce a small flame but that would not provide enough thrust to keep her afloat. Slowly, gradually applying more power to her newfound thruster, Blaze felt precarious half of her body begin to shit up and away from the anchored half. Working down and up in smaller and smaller increments, she sought equilibrium for what must have been minutes before finally finding something close to it. She focused on the feeling of flames flowing freely from her heel, their exact measure and rate as well as the small pressure being put upon her knee and the greater one on the arch of her foot.

Once she’d held it for a few moments, she dared to open her eyes and look to Silver, “I think it’s time for the right one. Could you…” She hated the only way that she could think to phrase this, “Hold me a little tighter.”

Silver, without even hesitating, moved his hands to grasp the robes above her shoulder blades. The look in his eyes reinforced his prior promise and gave her all the motivation she needed. Her right foot left his boot and, though the shift in weight made her dip just a little, with its ignition, it was easy to make it match her left. Blaze found herself to be hovering, hanging in the sky by her own accord.

When she managed to tear her eyes from her boots, she found that his smile had tripled in size, “You’re doing it Blaze!”

“Sh-Shush,” She hissed, feeling herself grow redder as more flames sputtered from her soles, “I’m trying to concentrate.”

The feline took a moment; shifting the ball of her foot seemed to allow for a degree of dexterity on her part- if she angled her shoe correctly then the flames would correspond and allow her to drift. Slowly, gradually, Blaze managed to bring herself to circle the hedgehog and bring him to spin on the spot. Every time she dared to glance at him, she found an even greater look of amazement on his face. Eventually, finally, she decided to halt her practice.

“I think I’m ready,” She decided.

Silver simply nodded and, clearly trying not to disturb her, released the tension at his fingertips but did not shift his hands; he left that final move entirely up to her.

She slowly slipped from beneath his fingers but, just when as his arm were about to fall to his sides, dared to grasp his right hand, “I still want you to stay close though.”

Her movements were made more awkward and slow by her lack of an anchoring point but, soon, the two of them were gliding together. With each passing second of flight, as she acclimatised herself and grew accustomed to the movements, she felt the heavy iron ball in her gut gradually shrink. She refused to let herself think this was fun, especially not while she was holding his hand so tightly, but she did permit herself an internal admission that this wasn’t entirely awful. Skating over a sea of clouds, surrounded by starlight and hand in hand with her best friend? It was very difficult to think of this as awful, even if not seeing the ground was a huge part of it.

Tentatively, trying something new, Blaze managed to turn and face him while still flying in the same direction.

The shift came with a small increase in speed but Blaze took that in stride, “Is there anything you think I should try, Silver?”

“Well, the test is supposed to be fairly simple, it’s just a little obstacle course. It focuses on manoeuvring through the air…” He mused aloud before, in a serious tone, making a foolish suggestion, “If you’re alright with separating, we could play a game of tag?”

It was a childish proposition or, at least, that was Blaze’s first thought. Her second thought was far more positive though as she realised what his suggestion implied, his natural talent and experience flying meant that he could already soar to the academy’s standards. If she could even just follow his path then, surely, that meant she would pass too. There was only one problem- she’d have to separate from him.

Blaze brought herself to a halt, allowing her thumb to glide over his knuckles, “If I call out, I know you’ll come and catch me…” Something about this, assumedly the fact that her training had taken on such an embarrassing form, was rebolstering her blush, “But I’d like to hear you say it again.”

“If you fall, I’ll catch you, Blaze. I promise,” He swore, his smile totally vanished and his most serious face took its place, “You won’t even touch the clouds.”

Her fingers slipped from his, she was on her own in the sky, “So, how are we going to do this?”

“How about you fly away from me first and then, if I catch you, I’ll try to keep away from you?” He’d phrased it in such an honest way that, were it anyone else proposing it, she’d think they were being condescending. He really thought there was a chance that he wouldn’t be able to catch her and that he wouldn’t have to slow down so she could catch him.

Still, regardless of the difference between their skill, she was going to give this her best. Though it renewed that weight in her belly, even though she was certain that she would regret it mere moments later, Blaze pointed her toes skyward and rushed away from Silver, struggling to turn mid-air on order to see where she was going in this obstacle-less sky.

“W-Wait, Blaze, is that a yes?!” He called out and, by the sound of his voice, he wasn’t giving chase yet.

Deciding she needed this lead in order to make their game even remotely worthwhile, she didn’t answer him. Remembering the stabilisers she’d used for take-off, Blaze brought her hands to burn and, though she floundered for a moment, used their bonus thrust to shoot even further from him. That done, cloud after cloud vanishing beyond her feet, she dared to look over her shoulders and saw a cyan globule finally begin its shift towards her. Though she tried to fight it, a grin managed to wriggle its way onto her face as she looked forward. If she was bound to be caught and he’d surely gain on her soon, it was worth getting in a little practice… besides, he could surely use some training too.

With the simple quirk of her brow and through rolling her heels, Blaze feigned a movement left before shooting off towards the right. She didn’t even glance back at him after that, instead opting to try and alter her elevation; with a bit of effort, the young witch managed to align her body and crawl further into the sky as she flew away. Using her hands made all of this a lot easier, she could flare more energy into them to aid in adjusting elevation or simply increase the flames coming from one palm to force her path to bend.

“You’re doing great, Blaze!” A much too close voice called out, “I’m sure you’ll ace the test! You’re already so good!” It was getting closer by the second.

She’d known this would happen, it was an inevitability, but the pyrokinetic found that a competitive spark had stolen the spot of that metal mass in her gut. Her pulse was pounding, she knew her magic could hold out for another hour at minimum; she decided that the best way to learn was a trial by fire. Alternating hands and kicking as she went, Blaze managed to form eight quick zigzags before shooting left with all her will. Flare after flare burst from her limbs as she darted further and further above the clouds.

Unfortunately though, just as Blaze thought she was reaching the summit of what she could stomach, there was a flash of cyan light above. Blaze didn’t even have to glance to know what’d happened, Silver’s experience flying mean he’d clearly understood plotting the shortest route. Being in the lead was difficult, every harsh turn meant traveling further for the lead and a shortcut for the one behind. Simultaneous to that though, Silver was (perhaps unknowingly) about to teach her a technique she hadn’t even attempted yet. The only way to avoid him was to descend.

Blaze tried to lessen her output, but that proved far harder than increasing their potency. Once her upward thrust was spent, she began to plummet like a stone and fall feet first towards the clouds. Her hands flickered and sputtered as she tried to balance herself again, she straightened her back and shut her eyes tight as ignition after ignition failed to fully take hold. Finally, she managed to light her ignitions again… only to overdo it and rocket right back up. She shot right past him, very almost being caught.

As he rocketed up to give chase, frustrated, Blaze chose to continue to practice altitude control. Rather than snuff everything, she focused and manage to mute the flames on her feet. The difference was clear and immediate, she was slower and a lot shakier but this worked far better than trying to calm both sets of flames. She managed to drop directly in front of him only to then relight her boots and blast forward. The feline must have gotten too greedy and drawn too close because she soon felt something pad between her shoulder blades.

“Tag!” The moment she’d registered the touch, he’d called out as if they were kids on the playground.

She swivelled around in the air only to find he’d raced off in the other direction so quickly that he almost looked like a star on the horizon. Leaning into her movement, Blaze found herself flying faster than she ever had before. In the time it took to catch up to the grey wizard, Blaze had a moment to contemplate the rather miraculous change she’d experienced. She’d gone from being terrified of heights to dancing across the sky just like he could. Admittedly, she was certain those fears would return if she was on the other side of the cloud barrier or flying alone but flying around the test course with the instructors watching would surely prove easy enough. It’d been an exchange of tutelage, she’d given him notes and he’d helped her practice, but Blaze couldn’t help feeling a little indebted to her partner.

Some of that feeling waned when she caught sight of him and how he was flying though. The hedgehog flying with his back to the ground and his eyes trained upon her, he almost looked like he was sitting up in bed. Blaze understood why he’d chosen that position, it meant he’d been able to keep an eye on her and that he’d be able to fulfil his promise, but that didn’t stop it from stoking a more competitive aspect of her psyche.

It was just naivete, he didn’t know how cocky he was being, yet it still fuelled her drive! Blaze closed her fists for a moment, allowing pressure and tension to build in them just as she had when first taking off. It was terrifying to be frank but, knowing the direction she was rocketing and that the closer she was to him the safer she’d be, Blaze managed to steady herself and focus on building energy. Containing her flames slowed her in the short term, so much so that the grey hedgehog’s head cocked and he seemed to slow down. At the perfect second, just as she saw his mouth begin to open and the gap between them lingered around four dozen metres, Blaze reopened her palm.

Like catching a surprise shooting star out of the corner of his eye, he must have blinked in bafflement when he saw her for the first time. By the time he’d started to move she was already almost upon him, carried by sheer momentum more than thrust at that point, gaining more than a metre with each passing second. Finally, almost too late, he realised that he stood no chance of overtaking her- Silver’s arms opened wide and, with more than a little magic bolstering effort, he both was caught and managed to catch her.

Willing it as she entered his grasp, her flames snuffed themselves as any lingering momentum was absorbed by a combination of his psychic aura and fluffy body. Blaze found herself lying atop him, their muzzles very almost touching and the rims of their hats bumping. If it weren’t for the adrenaline currently coursing through her, she’d probably have had a lot more to say or complain about this situation but, for now at least, she was content to be back on the equivalent of stable ground.

“H-Hi,” He stuttered, plainly surprised and impressed by her showing.

“Hello,” She hummed, grasping at his shoulders to better secure herself, “How was that?”

His arms found her back and his smile quickly returned, she felt their bodies begin to descend, “You were incredible Blaze! You took to the air so well! You probably didn’t even need me for this,” That thought seemed to take the wind back out of his sails, “I-I’ll make up for the notes some other way… I’ll-

“You’re so naïve,” She cut him off, propping herself up slightly, “I wouldn’t have had the guts to come up here without you. You don’t have to worry about making anything up to me.”

The cloud barrier obscured her view of him for a moment or so but soon, she found his face and could see the grounds beneath. Weirdly enough, as she lay in his arms, it didn’t feel like the ground was all that far away. Or, well, that she wasn’t at risk of meeting it at ludicrous speeds.

Gently, slowly, he shifted upright and lowered the young witch to her feet before himself landing back near the heart of the amphitheatre. Now on the ground, a hold that’d once been for the sake of survival and security had transmuted into one born of comfort and kindness. Blaze found herself lingering in his grasp and in fact deepening her hold, the witch’s right arm managed to slip down and hold the small of his back. While she had performed subtle in this shift from practicality to affection, he wasn’t nearly so subdued in his shift. Her feet left the ground again as he hugged her with all his might, chortling as he did so.

When she returned to the ground for a second time and their eyes met again, bristles of heat crept across her muzzle. Without the moonlight, he was the only light for-

“And what time would the two of you call this?” A voice, tired and deep, sounded from one of the amphitheatre’s high seats.

Both their heads swivelled like they were about to be knocked off and their gaze fell upon a very cross and prickly looking figure, sat with a book in his right hand and crackling green energy in his left. The individual’s red eyes and dark robes, entirely lacking the oh-so-common hat most students and lecturers wore, gave away who they were and forced their joy to give way to panic and fear. Shadow the Hedgehog, the very lecturer who would be conducting the flying test, had caught them.

“Um,” Silver stammered, letting Blaze to the ground, “L-Late?”

“How astute,” He seemed to sneer, “And what say you of your current position, Blaze?”

“It’s my fault professor, I asked Silver to-

“N-No, it’s my fault!” Silver cut her off, “Blaze just wanted help, she did nothing wrong!”

“Endangering both your own and each other’s safety and being out of your dorms at such a late hour,” He tutted, “What kind of punishment to give you both.”

Blaze couldn’t help but throw a glance to Silver, the hedgehog looked entirely stern. No matter how they were dealt with, Blaze knew he would try to take it all on himself, just as she had. She was certain there was no way around it, that they’d both be punished, but, following a long and drawn out sigh, the usually cruel lecturer took a bizarre course of action.

“Pick up your things, go to your dorms and pray that I forget this infraction before I settle on a fitting detention,” Their eyes clashed again, confused, but before they could ask, the hedgehog gave a demand, “Well, go on, hurry along before I change my mind.”

They stood frozen for a second but, seeing his brows furrow, the two threw a quick glance to each other before rushing to pick up their things. He’d leaned in close as he went for his bag, “S-See you soon.”

“Yeah…” She managed to mumble, slinging her bag over her shoulders and allowing her shoulder to graze his, “Th-Thank you, Silver. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They were forced to part ways with that as their goodbye, Silver walking

“And do remember, regardless of clouds, if you’re going to make quite so much light at night then people are going to notice!” The old man concluded his chiding, likely returning to his book, “We’re hardly in the right position to see an aurora…”

The walk back to the dorms was lonelier than her walk there by a wide margin. Though they’d parted so suddenly, or perhaps due to it, she could still see his smile in her mind. When they met again tomorrow, she’d try to make it up to him, try to engage first contact like she had in the sky, but the more that wizard’s grin lingered the more embarrassed she felt. While the pyrokinetic doubted Professor Shadow was the type to gossip, if word of their actions spread then the rumours would only get worse. Hopefully no one else had seen them tonight but, by the sound of it, they’d been rather hard to miss…

#silvaze #Blaze the Cat #Silver the Hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog #silverxblaze #fanfiction

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butterfly-winx · 4 years

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More from Lynphea

Architecture ° Religion ° Treetop living

Seeing the way of life of Lynpheans that is so interlaced with the nature arund them, people of other cultures often stereotype them as lazy, hippy-ish and completely disregard the hard-working core of their culture. Worse is it even when off-worlders infantilise Lynpheans and see their living conditions as a sign of destitute and poverty.

It is true that Lynpheans have to do a lot of things by hand that residents of industrialised societies see as unnecessarily tenuous work, since through the structure of their society they are being serviced and don’t need to do the same. (Ie making their own appliances and clothes by hand or coping with limited sanitation in some areas.) But that doesn’t make them poor or unfairly left behind by technological development. In some cases, Lynpheans work less and in better conditions than some exploited workers in industrialised societies.

The Lynphean life is an adaptation to the living conditions they are given and their settlements are nothing short of engineering wonders. People are educated and by utilising the abundance of domesticable animals on the planet, both goods and knowledge go around the planet. If maybe at an extremely slow pace, compared to like Zenith where you can send a parcel around the planet in a day.

Flora’s treetop settlement is one example of such an architectural wonder. Trees reaching staggering heights of almost 100 meters are used as safe residences, far away from bottom layer predators and bugs, ever so closer to the sun in the thick tropical forests. Houses and huts are predominantly built on non-invasive platforms and connected by rope bridges and pulley systems. The connecting passages and lifts are laid out so that they are usable with mobility aids as well.

Treetop dwellings don’t just hold houses, but communal spaces, places of worship and sanitation systems, but most astonishingly tenable fields as well. Tightly grown branch systems are used (or created through generations of gardening and pruning) that is compacted with dirt and tightened with ranks and air-plants. The slow compostation of those layers carried up from the ground creates great permanent topsoil that people can not only safely walk on, but also plant vegetables for their consumption.

Sanitation remains a problem in the treetop cities though. People frequently prefer to build these in the vicinity of rivers for this reason, but large water-collecting basins and cisterns are the way to go forwards for many others. So while water can be made available on treetops, it is not there in abundance and certainly not as running water from a tap. (Flora low key lost her mind when she arrived on Magics and water was just there in the tap every time she opened it and when she asked how much there was of it, like how much was she allowed to use a day, people looked at her weird. Water is just available, it is there, they never had to think about it.)

Despite these difficulties, Lynpheans keep high standards of personal hygiene. They might not shower daily (because they don’t have showers as such), but they wash with rags and basins, allowing themselves longer soaks in natural freshwater when they descend from their homes.

Toilets are also taken care of in the form of outhouses. Excrement is composted as well as Lynphean diet is mostly plant based, further contributing to the treetop soil and its health. They are not very convenient to use at night of course, but needs must. They are illuminated by bioluminescent fungi and plants, because any other form of light would attract a whole host of unwelcome insects to the precarious location where you definitely don’t want to meet them during your nightly walk.

While shoes are definitely a bonus when walking on the ground with all sorts of stones and spikes, when in the Treetop village, most people go barefoot. It increases balance and offers better grip when walking on the thick branches. Even while in Magics, Flora prefers being barefoot when she is in the comfort of her home. Outside not so much because asphalt can get incredibly hot and dirty.

- - -

The belief system on Lynphea stems from their love for all things living. Their belief is that each spirit or soul is part of something larger, the Ghost that connects everyone and everything. Each soul is just a fragment that joins the whole in perfection when they pass away, only to be reformed into a new fraction in a new life. This is why they consider taking from nature like they would from another living body, from their own body. They are utterly respectful and take only what they need to survive. To them it is an exchange with the promise that they will prove something back.

Further, they even respect nature’s “personal space” so to speak and ask for safe passage with a small prayer rite whenever they need to travel or gather. They bring fragrant flowers or light an incense stick and bury appropriate gits (mainly fertiliser) at the roots of a tree where they wish to enter the forest outside of their home. Then each traveller introduces themselves and asks to pass through the are, promising to behave respectfully and asking to be left alone respectfully as well.

(This promise is often not fulfilled, because alas, insects listen to no god or spirit and they will swarm you. Thank the Ghost Lynpheans do have a solution to this particular problem: clothing woven from insect repelling grass. Worn over your underlayers it will keep you maximally bite-free!)

#winx club #worldbuilding #butterfly fic #lynphea #winx club lynphea

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apinklion01 · 3 years

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I thought of several headcanons for each element's egg for Flight Rising, feel free to add to them or use them with credit to me :D Earth eggs: Start out without any cracks, but slowly erode making it appear to be a rock from the area its in. most of them appear to be a sedimentary rock. A few can show igneous rocks, which often leads to confusion with fire eggs. When an egg is close to hatching, patches of the stony outside begin to fall off, showing a smooth eggshell that sparkles like minerals. Most dragons prefer to keep them to remember their hatchling's birth, and string them into necklaces. Wind eggs: When laid, the egg starts out with a singular swirl at the top. Over the following days, more swirls appear, giving it the illusion of them moving. the eggs are the thinnest out of the elements, and will move when there's an outside sound. When the egg is close to hatching, the swirls will start to thicken and then thin out, depending on when the hatchling is resting from its attempts to break free. Fire eggs: The eggs are laid near a hot lava surface, but are gradually pushed inside. Depending on what kind of lava it is, the resulting hatchling will have a certain heat tolerance. Putting it in magma is considered rather dangerous for both the parents and the hatchling, as they may not be able to survive without air. A lack of warmth or too much may cause the egg to rot. When they hatch, the rocky surface, covered in igneous rock, starts to crack, showing a fiery embryotic liquid inside the egg. Steam may hiss out, so new parents are advised to keep a small distance in case of flying hot eggshell pieces. Water eggs: Though commonly laid in salt water, it is possible to lay them in fresh water, as well as estuaries, or where both salt and fresh water meet, though this is quite rare. The resulting hatchling will have a tolerance for the water its laid in. salt water eggs only grow coral if they're laid in coral reefs. Most of the time the eggs are surrounded in barnacles. fresh water eggs are covered in algae or other sorts of material. When the egg hatches, it leaks bubbles, and a a result, parents are advised to keep a constant eye on their hatchling and take it to the surface for it to breath air in case they don't develop their water magic fast enough. Eggs are to be kept underwater for the majority of the incubation. If a storm causes the egg to drift ashore, the egg may not survive, and will rot. Ice eggs: Laid most commonly on tundra fields or nearby forests. parents are advised to avoid permafrost areas as the egg may develop a hard icy outside layer. The highest egg rot rates often occur from this mistake. An egg that does survive in a permafrost nest will be very tolerable to the cold, but will never be able to survive in warm or hot climates. Ice eggs may have different colors depending on the surrounding ice, but all must be kept cold. If they're placed in a warm environment, the eggshell will melt, and the hatchling inside may not survive or if not developed, will rot. Shadow eggs: Mostly laid in marshy areas or swamps, though a few have been known to be laid in a meadow or a field. Parents often cover them up in grass or moss to prevent other dragons from stealing them, though the nest may still be discovered since bioluminescent plants or fungi tend to grow near the eggs. The eggs start to glow brightly near hatching. There's a superstition that eggs born on moonless nights will have strong shadow powers, and those born in the day have the weakest powers, though this hasn't been proven nor disproven. Light eggs: The brightest and shiniest of all the eggs. Most parents lay them in nice fields or areas where the sun shines. They must be kept at an even temperature, though rarely will they be moved to the shade. Some clans sell the egg fragments as makeshift jewelry, though the majority will be eaten by the hatchling. A light egg hatchling in a total eclipse is seen as bad luck, but one born at the end of an eclipse is seen as good luck. Light eggs born at night are gifted with being able to see in the darkness, though there's also caution against one being born in a blood moon... Lightning eggs: Though also bright, rarely will they outshine light eggs. Most are kept in high places where lightning has struck, and parents consider it a blessing if an egg hatches in a storm. Their nests are mostly guarded by cacti or prickly bushes, though the parents will abandon the nest and create a more friendlier one upon the hatchling's birth. Some dragons place wires to attract lightning to the nest, however this practice is dangerous as it can cause fires, and harm the small hatchling. Nature eggs: start out as a seed from a tree in the area, though most commonly a coconut of all things. A sprout slowly grows, and when the egg hatches, a tree or similar plant will continue to grow from where it was laid. While an egg, its treated like a plant, given plenty of sunshine, a bit of water, and always kept in healthy dirt areas. Parents are hopeful if an egg hatches during a light rainstorm or a sun shower, as they might have stronger nature magic. However other creatures may mistaken the egg for a plant, so they'll resort to hiding them under a spiky bramble cover. The bramble cover is removed once the eggs begin to hatch, signified by the eggshell splitting open with roots. Plague eggs: Though translucent, the egg has a shell that appears to be like a snake egg. The eggs are meant to be kept in humid locations, though more often than not they'll be introduced to a puddle that'll contain diseases in the hopes they'll gain immunities. The eggs are kept in rotten carcasses to scare off any intruders or egg stealers, though the inside is often covered in any vegetation available. When born, the egg will release an unusual smell that isn't unpleasant. Parents are advised to prevent their hatchling from eating their eggshells, which are promptly thrown away into a fire. Arcane eggs: Unlike the other eggs, these ones float upon being laid due to the arcane area having an unusual gravity. The eggs sometimes make an unusual echo that most believe to be the hatchling's voice. Parents often make sure the eggs are placed into a small hollow cavern to prevent the wind from blowing them away. Some may even place spells to ground the eggs if they feel unsteady or are first time parents. Eggs will start to rotate near hatching, and when the hatchling escapes the egg, it'll create a small firecracker sound, and the hatchling will fall gently into the nest, covered in soft moss and vegetation, or sometimes into a parent's claws.

#flight rising #[[ thought of this after making the nature egg headcanon ]]#[[ and the rest followed afterwards ]]

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saecookie · 4 years

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Chapters: 1/3 Fandom: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who Rating: Explicit Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler Additional Tags: Polyamory, Fluff and Smut, OT3, Established Relationship, Threesome, Fluff, ALL THE FLUFF, this was supposed to be goofy and evolved into that big well of softness

Summary:

There's balance and there's care. Tonight was time for reciprocation, tonight they would be the kind of lover they usually were granted : worshippers, unwinder of sore muscles and whisperers of breathless praises.

The day had been pretty exhausting. Nothing too dangerous, for once – they had been lucky on that part. They had just let themselves wander into some of the lushest forest this side of Six6's southern hemisphere. There had been a lot to see, from the bioluminescence of the shrubs to the weird wavelength chanting of the flying mammals inhabiting the forest. Jack had seen his fair share of wonders during his time at the Time Agency, but he had never been able to just stop in childlike marvel as he was right now.

Unfortunately, what could have been a perfect, quite romantic outing was seemingly not for them. What had started as a leisurely stroll, chatting hand in hand ; had devolved into not finding their way back to the ship. They had had to walk for three solid hours at the end of their day, one already full to the brim of wonders. After two hours of trying to find their way back, they were weary, quiet rather than snapping at one another at each new change of direction. Jack could only glance for a few seconds at Rose or at the Doctor before they became annoyed at him checking up on them. Upon finally seeing the TARDIS, he had let the quietest relieved sigh. They were still silent and a bit on edge.

After that trainwreck of a trip back, Jack had gone straight into the galley. Rose and the Doctor had wandered a bit around the console room. It was their little ritual when coming back to the TARDIS, and it wasn’t his to invade. He picked a few things out of the pantry, made them some quick dinner and put it on a tray. Knowing those two, he made his way to the media room. It soon found them not particularly paying attention to the movie they had chosen, only for the sake of unwinding together. The soundtrack playing in the background was just enough to add a layer of comfort to being in each other’s presence. Jack would have denied it all, but he was already dozing shortly after putting his plate down. There was nothing to be done : he was warm, he was safe, and his favourite people were at arms' reach.

"I think she's fallen asleep."

The Doctor's voice was barely above a whisper, just enough to be heard above the lulling sound coming from the screen.

Jack faintly tried to blink the sleep away, to no avail.

"Mhm ?"

"I think Rose's fallen asleep."

Groaning himself out of his own drowsiness, Jack sat up against the back of the couch. Indeed, when he looked across the room, he could only see a Rose-shaped blanket bundled up in her favourite armchair. What a sight she was, all golden hair and pink fingers. The ups and downs of her chest were the only perceptible movements underneath the covers. A wisp of hair had fallen in front of her eyelids, and her head was slumped across the armchair at an angle that couldn’t possibly be comfortable.

After seeing her so annoyed during their walk back to the TARDIS, tense and frowning, giving only snappish answers, Jack took some time gazing at her. She seemed to already be in deep slumber, no worry lines in sight, her eyes faintly moving every now and then behind her eyelids. Peacefulness had finally settled on her features, lacking her usual playfulness but looking more like herself than she had all evening. She seemed warm and unworried, and that was honestly all Jack ever wanted for Rose. If he could have wrapped her up in that blanket forever and still shown her the splendors of the universe, he would have done so without a second thought.

"I'm taking her to bed. You should too, you're already half asleep."

That got a grunt out of Jack. For all the eye candy Rose was, his eyes still had trouble staying open. He tried to pay attention, but barely saw the Doctor crouching to get Rose and carry her out to her room. He could only hear the soft whispering and cooing noises, reassuring her as she stirred. Her huffs of disapproval stopped before they were even out of the door, Jack already asleep by then, smiling over the cuteness of his two favourite people.

He woke up to a soft touch to his shoulder. He leaned into it, still not exactly awake. For all the gruffness the Doctor was showing the world, Jack how he was actually always very careful in his touches, always light and gentle. Caring. In all his time knowing him, and from the moment the Doctor stopped considering him a safety hazard, he had been nothing but mindful of him. It had unhurriedly matured into caring, then bloomed into what they had now.

"Told you to go to bed Captain." There was a distinct chuckle under that faked sternness. Before even opening his eyes, Jack smiled at him and shuffled, getting himself more comfortable. The media room had always known how to make itself cosy.

"Mhm. Well, I didn't. Whatcha gonna do ?"

This time the chuckle was not hidden under any pretense. Jack peeked under his eyelashes. Those blue eyes were looking down on him, and he'd never get enough of that soft smile that felt like sunrise, the one the Doctor always saved just for Rose and him. It made him glow from the inside out, as if revealing himself, how he was really made of attention and care and love for people.

He must have dozed off again because the next thing he knew, a shudder made its way down his spine. Lips were brushing against his in a soft caress. If he had ever opened his eyes, they were definitely back to being closed now ; quietly enjoying the warmth they were sharing.

They broke apart as softly as they had met. He chased after those lips, after that taste of time they carried, the burnt tang of trouble. A light hum escaped Jack’s mouth as his eyes fluttered open. There was such an air of smugness about him.

"What about this ?"

Jack sat back up, displaying false thoughtfulness. He leaned in, almost falling in the Doctor’s lap. There was a warmth to their loose embrace, a tingly anticipation, the kind when you knew everything would fall together without the shadow of a doubt, but waiting for it to happen as you would the first bite of a birthday cake.

“Fine by me,” Jack purred in his ear.

There was something delicious in the closeness, the anticipation becoming expectation, building steady. It was with some eagerness that he pressed their lips back together, keeping it chaste at first though. It wouldn’t be said that Jack Harkness didn’t know how to build some good tension.

Then the Doctor’s hand found his cheek, palm cool against his chin. Tilted Jack's head up a little, deepened the kiss, and suddenly Jack wasn’t controlling anything anymore. A groan escaped him, unbidden. Being given directions usually turned his knees to jelly ; now, he was drowsy enough to be reduced to a puttering mess. There was something to be said about the firmness of the Doctor’s touch, the slowness of his motions, the intent behind every glance. It was empowering, it was raw, it was safe.

In one swift motion Jack couldn’t be bothered to identify, the Doctor got some more leverage over him. He whined when their lips got separated, panting heavily in the space between them, lost to the sensation of his lover’s attention solely directed on him. When the Doctor’s mouth fell to his throat, moaning was the only thing he could do. He fumbled for something to grab. All of this was too much : too fast, too soft, too intimate for his sleep addled brain. A series of open-mouth kisses were pressed there, insistent and feverish. He got pushed backwards at the shoulder, still heaving.

Jack could only let go and try to reciprocate the best he could, but he was sleepy, and everything was fuzzy, and there was a body draped across him now, and what could he do except be pretty and sigh happily ? Where they had previously been leaning sideways across the back of the couch, Jack was now a whimpering wreck against the armrest. He could feel the full weight of the Time Lord pressing him into the couch, his breaths shallow against his skin. It was making a lot of funny feelings bloom into his chest and into his throat, something fluttery. He somehow knew that the blush he was feeling on his cheeks was spreading on his chest, soon bared by his lover’s hands. His eyes were glassy, unfocused as the hand that wasn’t holding his jaw and neck in place trailed down, not bothering to unbutton his shirt and going for his trousers right away.

Rose definitely didn’t wake up to a soft touch to her shoulder. She woke up to high-pitch whimpers. Those were directed at her wall, which didn’t make sense considering that the TARDIS was a transdimensional being and all that jazz. She frowned, rubbing her eyes as the noises kept going, slightly muffled. She looked around her. Her room stared back. She must have fallen asleep watching tv, and one of them had carried her to bed.

How thoughtful.

It would have even been more thoughtful if they hadn’t promptly proceeded to wake her up shagging against her wall. If glares could burn holes, there wouldn’t be a wall anymore. It wouldn’t change a thing about the shagging, but maybe the TARDIS would consider sending those little pants and broken cries another way. They were lucky she liked them, or she would have already stormed out of her room and thrown some nasty words at them. Really, had they never considered respecting someone’s sleep schedule ? The day had been tiresome enough as it was.

She lay there for a few seconds, trying to just wake up, let the irritation abate. She stared at the ceiling, listening idly to her lovers. They were enjoying themselves, that much was obvious. And how she loved them ; how she loved them loving each other. She could actually have gone back to sleep— she was exhausted, her eyes were drifting close every now and then. Her body, apparently not so much. Lying in her bed, with pleas of more and yes and fuck from people who usually made her feel that way, was making her feel things. Some very, very nice, tingly things. Warmth pooled low in her belly, crawling out. It made her smile, in a lazy kind of ripple effect. They were right there, enjoying themselves : that simple thought was enough to content her.

Loving and feeling loved were two of the most wholesome, striking things. Seeing love blooming between people she cared about was another one. It was a new unexpected depth to the already unending well of all the love she felt just simmering under her skin.

She stayed there for a little while, well awake now, basking in their almost presence, letting herself fully feel the arousal pulsing within her to the rhythm next door. She really loved hearing them. Her hand came slowly drifting over her neck. That caused some new shivers in its wake. She could stay here, maybe help herself nicely back to sleep…

On the other hand, they did wake her up and wouldn’t it be the nice thing to do to let her have some fun too ?

In the end, they weren’t even against the wall. A wall. Any wall. From what she could see, waiting in the doorframe in her pyjamas, they were just making out like teenagers on the armrest. The back of the couch was hiding the rest of their bodies from her. They must have already brought themselves to an end : their kisses were lazy, their whispers barely audible but still there all the same.

It was enough to watch them for a little while, all chuckles and soft smiles and fumbling to get more comfortable. They couldn’t stray away from each other’s mouth for more than a few seconds. They traded kisses with laughter and eye crinkles. Their hands weren’t in sight, but she was ready to bet that they were in their laps, and not in a modest way.

She was so fond of them. That adoring wave washed through her, almost winning over arousal.

She must have made some sort of noise, because the Doctor was suddenly looking her way. A new sort of light was adorning his gaze. God, she loved this man. As if on cue, Jack looked her way as well. A slow grin brightened his whole face up. He looked silly, but he was her silly. He stretched his neck to see her around the back of the couch, putting him in an even sillier position. Still no hands in sight. Rose giggled, so thankful for the two men in front of her, for the ease between the three of them even after the day they had had, for the light they brought and the softness in their breath.

"Rosie ! Up for round two ?"

She bit her lip, the lingering annoyance at being woken up long forgotten in the wake of that thrilling feeling they never failed to bring her. The Doctor offered her a nod and a smile, already shifting to make some space for her. One of his hands came in view. The flashing expression on Jack’s face told her all she needed to know about what the other hand was already up to. And if fondness had battled arousal at some point, it was now a settled thing. She hurried around the couch, took the hand offered to her by Jack, and let herself be on the receiving end of their thorough affections.

#ficandchips #doctor who #dwfic #ninerose #nine x jack x rose #I'm back on my soft ot3 train #don't mind me

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aberrantforge · 4 years

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The Useless Race Megafeature: Ixitxachitl

Where do I even start. This was a race that was available for players to make their own character off of in DnD 3.5. They’re….well, they’re basically just stingrays that are chaotic evil.

Whats the chaotic evil aspect about them? well. I’m unsure, their write up in the wiki gives me basically nothing but supposedly they have territorial disputes with other sentient undersea races. Otherwise, they cant speak, walk on land, or breath air, and have no limbs otherwise, so the goal of this post is to make them close enough to the original write up but make them somehow worthwhile.

The Ixitxachitl, god even their name is annoying, are a race of aquatic stingray like fishes that have very little concept of personal space, land, and ownership of property. They inhabit the oceans and airways of the coastal regions of the world, usually annoying the local fisherman and if enough get together to start scheming they might make a full blown war against a small coastal village or fleet of ships.

Truth be told they have a rather nasty bite, while they have tails that look like it might have once been a barbed tail, they now aid in gliding and balancing in mid air. Thats correct, they can also fly. Kind of.

Ixitxachitl look something like a cross between a stingray and bird or pterodactyl. They have elongated necks that end in a sideways clamping jaw, four eyes and wings that allow flight, and while it might look like they have hind limbs, they don’t, It is actually the same wing, that has a cartilaginous limb like structure attacked to the main fin/wing that sort of act like hind limbs. Their jaws are the only actual bones in their body, filled with ever replacing teeth and a strong bite that is like an organic bear trap. They generally have a blue hue on their backs and white on their undersides, sometimes Ixitxachitl that live in the deep sea have black skin colorations of their tops and bioluminescence.

They have some capacity to form full sentences and speak common, though most don’t, and truth be told, they tend to toe the line between what a sentient race is and what are intelligent creatures. These Ixitxachitl do have a civilization, despite some not believing this statement. They have their gods, which is some aspect of the primary godly pantheon, and they do construct villages from corals and digging caves underneath the water.

Despite not having much technology, or the advantage of opposable thumbs, the Ixitxachitl can still make fierce adversaries. Merfolk know well enough that Ixitxachitl can be deadly if not careful, against landborne enemies their flight is used to advantage. They Have to be crafty, and it is the success of their race and why they have managed to live this long. They know how to use their own advantages that can outweigh their disadvantages, allowing them to conive and steal fish from fishermen, kill and eat patrols of merfolk and generally just be anywhere from a nuissance to an outright scourge.

Also they have formed some weird pact between cats, them, dogs, and racoons, they can speak with them telepathically and for some reason tend to stay away from each other. The reasons behind this are still fiercely debated by marine biologists to this day.

Ability Score: +1 to any three skills, -1 to str

Age: Ixitxachitl can live 5000 years, about.

Movement: 30ft fly, 30ft Swim, 10ft land.

Alignment: Always chaotic, very schemy for a race of flying stingrays.

Actually Just a Stingray, But It Can Fly, I Guess: Cannot hold items except with their mouth, and that imposes disadvantage with all tool usage checks. They cannot use weapons.

Sky Predator: While in the air, add +3 to armor saves against ranged normal and magical attacks.

Natural Attack: 1d8 Bite attack. gain +2 to checks to grapple onto a creature if they successfully bite a target.

Aether Flesh: Ixitxachitl have resistance to magic.

Variant: Deep Ixitxachitl: Lose Aether Flesh, Gain see in darkness and bioluminescence. Bioluminescence allows a creature to willingly emit a 15 foot circle of light as a free action, until the creature desires to no longer emit light or is knocked unconscious/dead.

Here’s a public domain image of a some eagle rays. Basically the same thing. Ixitxachitl area a cool race and you should definitely consider getting your DM to let you play one. Think of it as an Any % speedrun of a dnd campaign.

#dnd #dnd homebrew #dungeons and dragons 5e homebrew #dnd 5e homebrew #5e homebrew #homebrew #dungeons and dragons 5e #d&d 5th edition #5e #dnd 5e #dnd campaign #dnd ideas #dnd rp #dungeons and dragons #dungeonmaster #dungeons and dragons fifth edition #writing #aberrant forge #taser napkin

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etherealmrp · 4 years

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Welcome to Etherealm!

As a canon-only panfandom with a small laidback 18+ community, Etherealm is a semi-open sandbox focusing and encouraging player-driven plots, world-building, and character developments. We're third-person, paragraph style with no word count! When characters are suddenly taken from their own world without warning, they wake up on a seemingly desert island where a new life - and a new world - awaits them.

FEATURES

Mainly SFW but 18+ community!

Vast crossover of canons and fandoms!

Simple claim and application process

Tupperbox Bot for in-character posts

No word count to multi-paragraph replies

Monthly activity check!

Ability to request new location channels

Blacklist and trigger warning list

One moment, your life seems as normal as it can get for you. The next, your eyes fall close. You sink into a deep slumber.

And you wake up on the island.

Strangely-mundane, water for miles and miles, civilisation hasn’t seemed to touch the white sandy beaches, rocky cliffs and overgrown jungle, but yet there the lighthouse stands.

A beacon in the otherwise wild and empty landscape, for all the lost souls to see who wake up here, the lighthouse stands in decadence. Instead of going up, inside there is only a tunnel going down.

And down.

Underground, underwater, whether several minutes or several hours, the foyer of a secret city welcomes you.

A grande hall with walls made of crystalline glass, a dome deeply submerged into the water surrounds you. Only the light of bioluminescent fish and plants illuminate the room, yet you have no problems making out the huge double doors leading into the city.

Leaving the tunnel behind, you move across the marble floor, curiosity dragging you forwards, and as you approach, the doors open on their own, inviting you to take the next step of many more yet to come.

Welcome to Etherealm.

RULES & GUIDELINES

1. Respect. Our most important rule is to respect your fellow members. There is a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech, harassment, flaming or any form of bigotry, including but not limited to: racism, sexism, queerphobia, transphobia, ableism, elitism, etc. Best thing to do is be kind (including to yourself!) and think positive!

2. Members are required to be 18+ to join. As the first step to joining this server, you'll want to verify your age by simply posting it in #welcome-verification. This channel is private and no one but the Staff Team will be able to see your age, if you do not want to publicly disclose it.

3. Introduce Yourself. As the second step to joining this server, please be sure to #introduce-yourself and follow the provided template pinned within that channel! Not only will this help the community to know each other a little better, but will also help in letting us know your preferred OOC name, pronouns, any triggers for our list, favourite fandoms, etc.

4. Check Roles. Please remember to check and respect the roles of other members! Thanks to our #self-roles, members can assign their preferred pronouns, DMs and roleplay status, tagging preferences, etc.

5. Ready to Roleplay?. We know you’re excited to get started, but please do not post in any of the in-character channels until you've perused our taken #canon-list, claimed your character via submitting your completed Character Claim Form to the #character-registry and created your character's Tupper profile via #character-tupperbox.

6. Canon-Only. We are a canon-only roleplay and allow characters from nearly any fandom with the exception of unpublished works, anything geared towards a preschool audience, or anything deemed purely erotic in nature. With the exception of some larger fandoms (IE: Marvel, DC, etc.), players can only claim two canons not significantly connected per fandom. In addition, only one iteration of a character can be claimed unless differing significantly enough to be considered their own unique separate character. 7. Characters. The maximum number of characters that can be claimed is 13; however, please do not claim more than you can handle. First three characters are always free and can be claimed/reserved immediately, with any more requiring a five day wait from the last character applied for and for each character to have taken part in at least one in-character scene.

8. Activity. Due to the nature of panfandoms, all characters are expected to post at least once per month to be considered active on the server, although more is highly encouraged and recommended. Player activity is checked on the 8th of every month, meaning characters will have from the 8th of the preceding month to the 7th to post and share an example of their activity (see: for the current month's activity check channel). For any players unable to be active but wishing to save their characters, please notify us of any , although please be aware you may be asked to reconsider any additional characters after any repeated or prolonged absences.

9. No Plagiarism. Plagiarism is not tolerated. While the character concepts are being borrowed from copyrighted work, you are not allowed to copy and paste from Wikipedia or any other source unless properly quoted. Do not claim or present any material you haven't written as your own. Similarly, the same goes for artwork and please remember to credit when sharing.

10. No Godmodding, Metagaming, or Powerplaying. Do not control another character without the player's permission or take information only available OOC and use it IC. Similarly, be realistic when roleplaying out your character's capabilities and talk to your partner(s) about anything affecting their characters.

11. Mature Content. While adult themes are permitted, we operate a 'fade to black' policy in the SFW channels. Any mature, triggering or otherwise graphic content is required to be marked with a warning and censored, or else rped in the available NSFW channels. Any characters under 18 (or appearing to be) may only be involved in age appropriate relationships and are forbidden from participating in any sexual-related content. Please refer to the #blacklist-and-triggers for a more detailed listing on what, how and when to censor.

12. Writing. All roleplay posts must ideally be written in third person, past tense. Although we do not expect perfection and understand English is not everyone’s first language, posts must be legible. We have no word count, so you can write as much or as little as you like, but please be sure to give your partner(s) something to respond to.

13. Channels. All our channels are private channels! In order to join an ongoing scene taking place in a channel, please ask permission of all the players involved. The only exception to this rule are channels or scenes marked as open (see: #open-tagbox & #channel-directory).

14. Communicate. Please ensure to communicate with your writing partners! This can be regarding certain triggers and squirks, as well as establishing boundaries and getting permission when engaging in fight scenes (such as for potential injuries) or anything of a sexual and/or romantic nature. Any in-character conflicts should remain as such, with any out-of-character drama kept off the server.

15. Scenes. Please be aware it is one scene per channel. Once a scene has ended, a new scene can begin. If a channel goes a week without a reply, the scene can be 'paused' for the channel to be re-opened and the players involved in the paused scene can either headcanon an ending or else continue it at a later date once the channel is free again. 16. Time. Due to the mysterious nature of the world in-verse, the in-character channels operate on liquid time and players are encouraged to keep track of their own personal timelines. For this reason, characters can participate in multiple scenes at once and there is no roleplay lock.

17. Have fun!

Discord Link: Click me!

#discord rp #anime rp #fandom rp #multifandom rp #panfandom rp #etherealm rp #rp advert

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sciencespies · 4 years

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Elusive, Ultra-Black Fish Are Cloaked to Survive in the Deep Ocean

https://sciencespies.com/nature/elusive-ultra-black-fish-are-cloaked-to-survive-in-the-deep-ocean/

Elusive, Ultra-Black Fish Are Cloaked to Survive in the Deep Ocean

Fish have essentially three options to survive in the deep-sea where there are few places to hide: be big, be fast or be invisible. Being big and fast takes a lot of energy, which requires a lot of food. Being invisible, on the other hand, may be a better strategy for escaping predators and moving through the water undetected by prey. In a new study published last week in Current Biology, researchers have discovered an evolutionary tactic that gives some fishes an invisibility cloak. For the first time, an ultra-black skin color or pigmentation that protects 16 varieties of deep-sea fishes has been documented and studying the efficient survival tactic could provide insight into developing new synthetic camouflage materials as well as have implications for the understanding and treatment of skin cancers.

Ninety-nine percent of habitable space on the planet is in the ocean, and we have only begun to understand the diversity of animals that call the sea home and how they have adapted to unique underwater environments. The “mid-ocean,” which is not at the bottom nor at the surface, is an especially challenging habitat to survive in.

“You have no place to rest, you have no place to hide, you have very little food available, and it’s really dark,” says Karen Osborn, a marine biologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and one of the authors of the study. “There are all these weird things that are quite different than most of the other habitats that we think about, even the deep-sea floor. And subsequently, most of the animals that live out there look really weird.”

Enter the ultra-black fishes, several species that can move with stealth in this challenging environment. Osborn and her colleagues had been studying how the skin and surfaces of fishes and other animals help the animals to survive. Some crustaceans, for example, are transparent, but if light shines on them, they can be easily detected. These creatures have developed anti-reflective coatings on their shells to help reduce glare that would give them away to predators. While netting crabs, Osborn and her team happened to pull up a fangtooth fish, which, try as they might, the researchers just couldn’t get a good photograph of the creature. Why, wondered Osborn? It turns out, the skin of the fish was simply unphotogenic—the tissue was absorbing a whooping 99.5 percent of the camera’s light.

Other ultra-black animals, like birds-of-paradise, some butterflies, beetles and snakes carry the light-absorbing pigment along with bright, vibrant colors that combine to create an eye-catching display. Against the ultra-black, colors just pop. And the effect works to signal danger warnings to would-be predators and come-hither messages to potential mates. But rather than using the strategy to draw attention to themselves, the ultra-black fish in the middle ocean simply disappear.

Using microscopy to examine tissue samples from non-black fishes, black fishes and the ultra-black fishes, they found that the ultra-black fishes had unique patterns and organizing principles in the pigment cells of their skin.

(Karen Osborn / Smithsonian NMNH )

The fangtooth fish was one of 16 species of ultra-black fishes that the researchers have since identified. To be classified as ultra-black, the bar was high. Like the fangtooth, the researchers were looking for fish skin that reflected less than .5 percent of light across the visible spectrum. They collected deep-sea fish specimens from 18 different species and used a special black-reflectance light probe to measure the angles and the amount of light that were absorbed. They found that 16 of the species qualified. By comparison, man-made black materials reflect ten percent of light, and other black fish reflect two to three percent, giving ultra-black species a six-fold advantage when it comes to hiding.

“It’s a splendid exercise in quantifying blackness,” says Peter Herring, marine biologist and author of The Biology of the Deep Ocean, who wasn��t part of the study team. “Deep-sea fishes are routinely described as inky black or velvet black, so it’s nice to have some numerical basis. On an intuitive level one might think that just two percent reflectance would be good enough, but if you get a six-times improvement then no doubt an evolutionary [advantage] could have occurred.”

After seeing the results of the reflectivity measurements, the researchers dug deeper to find out how the fishes were capable of such expert-level camouflage. Using microscopy to examine tissue samples from non-black fishes, black fishes and the ultra-black fishes, they found that the ultra-black fishes had unique patterns and organizing principles in the pigment cells of their skin.

Every fish produces melanin; it is the same chemical found in human skin that protects from UV light. Melanin is produced in much the same way across species. But when researchers examined the tissue of ultra-black fish skin, the researchers found that their melanosomes, or the cells that hold the pigmenting chemical, were different in three important ways. The cells were more densely packed, larger, and capsule-shaped rather than rounded. Because of this structure, photons of light that hit the surface of the fishes’ skin are absorbed not only by the cell they hit, but the light also gets sucked sideways into the cells next to it.

“So basically, by changing the shape and the size of those granules,” says Osborne, instead of letting light that’s not immediately absorbed escape and signal their presence, “they control it so that the light goes into the layer and side-scatters into the granules next to it.”

To be classified as ultra-black, the bar was high. Like the fangtooth (above), the researchers were looking for fish skin that reflected less than .5 percent of light across the visible spectrum.

(Karen Osborn / Smithsonian NMNH)

But given the vastness and darkness of the deep ocean, how much of a difference does it actually make if a fish absorbs three percent of light or .5 percent of light, and where is that light coming from anyway? Because very little sunlight reaches these regions, any light that is produced is typically coming from another organism—like those that use bioluminescence—and there is a good chance that that organism is looking for a meal.

“There is a ton of animals down there, but their density is relatively low, which means you probably very rarely meet your lunch. So, when you do meet your lunch, you want to make sure that you catch it,” says Ron Douglas, a marine biologist at the City University of London who studies visual systems and who was also not part of the study team.

Water molecules scatter what little light there is and so the sight distance for most underwater organisms is not very far, says Douglas. “We’re talking probably inches. But let’s say if you can be seen from six feet or one foot, that makes a hell of a difference in terms of [escaping]. Reflective percentages of a couple of percent doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s very significant.”

The researchers investigating this evolutionary survival tool say that the tissue structure has wide applications. Melanin, a type of chemical that can release or absorb free radicals of oxygen that can damage cells, is packaged inside melanosomes, to keep it contained as it travels to the outer layers of the skin. Typically, these cells are loosely spaced out around the skin. In ultra-black fish skin, melanosomes somehow protect the skin without damaging the rest of the creature’s cells or organs even as they form a dense, continuous layer that might otherwise be indicative of disease. “Basically, these fish look like they have melanoma all over their body,” says Osborn. Oncology and dermatology researchers want to learn more about how the chemical is managed or controlled in fish skin.

In addition to creating a layer of camouflage, melanin can also absorb X-rays, radiation and heavy metals, which is why ultra-black skin in fishes has piqued the interest of material scientists. According to Osborn, Naval researchers, for example, are interested in how this discovery might aid them in developing coatings for submarines and other vessels. “If you were to make, let’s say, armor that had melanin on the outside, you would be great for night ops, or able to walk through Chernobyl and be safe,” she says.

“Everybody wants to be stealthy,” Osborn adds. And ultra-black fish have stealthy down to a science.

#Nature

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