#(( its actually been rainier lately

[5mind]

wait if fivey is having summer outfits, they should also have rainyday fits

[icequeenfemboy]

Hello there Yuki! Hope you don't mind answering a question for me! So I've asked someone from Virbank City about what its like living next to a big production centre like Pokéstar Studios. The answer was pretty interesting, but it also got me wondering about the reverse. So since you act for Pokéstar studios a lot, what's it like when you're working in Virbank City?

I haven't actually been working in Virbank City much lately, because my last movie's shot on location. Thank Arc for that.

Virbank's... groady. Loud. Colder than you'd think- colour grading goes a long way. Rainier than you'd think. There's a reason a lot of older movies were shot on indoor sets-- keeps the rain off your head. And you cannot get good coffee without paying an arm and a leg for it.

Unless you wanna be in pictures, I wouldn't recommend it.

[andawaywego]

A fic where Damie say their first “I love you’s”?

hey! yes! this! i’ve had a few requests for this and i hope you don’t mind, but i set it in a No-Ghosts, Modern AU bc why not? we see what i assume is Jamie’s first “i love you” in the show, which i may touch on later, but i wanted this quiet scene surrounded by the people they love first.

i hope you like it!

..

In the early hours of the day, the kitchen is chilly and mute, blue-gray sunlight drifting in through the windows to cast empty shadows across the counters and floors. The wind rattles through the house, sliding in through any gap it can find, and Jamie thinks that, if she tilts her head just so, she can hear the way the boards beneath her feet, the wood and stone surrounding her, bend and bulge to make room for it.

She tucks herself a little tighter into her sweater and looks across the table at Flora and Miles as they happily eat their cereal, talking to one another and Hannah. Owen is leaned back in his chair at the head of the table, his cup of tea cradled in his hands and steaming a little, still. Providing warmth, perhaps, where the house tries to leech it. Beside her, Dani shifts and their shoulders brush together and, as much of a jolt passes through her at the slight touch, the real magic is this:

That secret, little smile Dani sends her way after. 

Like they are each from a hidden world that belongs to only them—where they exist and twine together in one existence, away from the prying eyes of everyone else—and are only visiting this realm for breakfast, of all things. It says a hundred secrets they’ve whispered in the dark to one another, limbs laced together warmly beneath the sheets as they caught their breath, as they kissed slowly and loose-lipped. Learning and familiar.

It’s been six months of nights spent tangled together in Dani’s bed. Six months of dinner dates in the empty kitchen late at night; of drinks at the only pub in Bly and phone calls before bed. Six months of Dani slowly figuring out sexting and Jamie nearly regretting teaching her about it when she’s interrupted in the middle of the work day with a less-than-appropriate message or worse: photograph.

Six months after that first kiss in June when they’d been walking the grounds one evening. Jamie saying something about her lost family, her shadowed childhood, and Dani turning right then and there and just kissing her. Beneath the sunset-pinked trees at the edge of the property, the heat of the summer pressing down against her skin, sticking her tight to her clothes, as Jamie presses forward into it. 

Dani.

Jamie loves Dani. 

It’s been right there on the tip of her tongue for three full months. She’s come so close to blurting it out on more than one occasion that she’s talked to Owen about it. Hannah. She’s called Rebecca in London and asked for advice on when she’s allowed to just say it. More than once for each of them.

So often, in fact, that Dani might be the only person sitting at the table that doesn’t actually know.

It aches in her chest, rattling around and begging to be set free, but Jamie hasn’t yet. Is too frightened, perhaps. Or maybe there just hasn’t been a good enough time.

Whatever it is, Jamie can see her own pinching emotion reflected back at her from Dani’s smile that morning so clearly that it’s nearly blinding. She’s waxing poetic about wanting to spend a fevered hour beneath the heat of Dani’s mouth in her own mind when Miles’s voice catches her off guard.

“—this afternoon, Miss Clayton?” he is saying.

Dani tears her eyes from Jamie’s and blinks, dazed, then seems to catch up. 

“What’s that?” she asks. Then, “Sorry.”

But Miles doesn’t mind. Doesn’t even register her apology. Just repeats his, “I was asking if we’ll still be painting the school room today,” with little fanfare.

Understanding blesses the soft lines of Dani’s expression. “Yeah, of course,” she says. “You and Flora are going to have to put on clothes that can get paint on them, though, okay?”

Miles nods and Flora lights up the room with a smile of her own. “Oh, splendid,” she says. “I had a dream last night that we all painted a family of bears on the wall! One for each of us. Owen, yours had a mustache.”

“Did it?” Owen asks. “Sounds like a handsome bear.”

“Oh, he was.”

The conversation falls apart then, the children too excited about how they’ll be spending their day to settle down. That’s one of the funny things about Dani: before she showed up, it was like pulling teeth trying to get Miles or Flora to participate in anything resembling a chore. The school room is one that’s needed repainting for a long time—given the humidity of the rainier seasons and its position in the house, the paint has been chipping for years. Jamie always figured that, at some point, she was going to have to just give in and do it on her own, but, now that Dani is here, it seems she’s acquired three new sets of helping hands. Maybe it’s the years of teaching two dozen students in America, or maybe it’s just a special talent, but Dani has managed to turn the mundane into the extraordinary so many times that Jamie wonders sometimes if she might actually be Mary Poppins.

Wonders if that makes her Bert.

Briefly imagines dancing with a cartoon penguin and almost jumps out of her chair when a hand touches her arm.

But it’s just Dani, giving her a look that’s half-amused, half-concerned. “Sorry,” she says, but Jamie shakes her head.

“Don’t hafta apologize for touching me, Poppins,” she says, giving a little wink, and Dani’s cheeks blush pink. “Just caught me off guard.”

Beneath the table, Dani’s hand is still on Jamie’s arm, her grip loose and lovely, sparking like wires up and down the length of Jamie’s skin. She remembers that morning—Dani pressed into her back beneath the covers, one of her arms wrapped around Jamie’s stomach, her fingers moving fluidly and madly between Jamie’s legs. She clenches her thighs together and tries to calm down. 

It doesn’t work.

That’s the thing she’s learned the most often since that first kiss in the gardens: being with Dani is almost like being on fire all the time. Jamie can’t seem to catch a break, and she really believes now that she wouldn’t even take one if it were offered.

“You’re so pretty,” Dani breathes, but that’s clearly not what she’d meant to say. It just comes out in this drifting voice that Jamie recognizes because she has one just like it. Part of her is constantly reassured when Dani speaks like this that she is not the only one left dazed by their each interaction. 

“So are you,” Jamie says. “Before you ask, I’m going to go pick up the paint after breakfast.”

Dani’s eyebrows lift a little, then settle back down. That’s what she’d meant to discuss, apparently, and, now that Jamie has finished the thought for her, she seems a bit more in control of herself and the situation. 

“You’re a saint,” she says next and Jamie rolls her eyes.

“Hardly.”

Across the table, Hannah is getting to her feet and the children are doing the same, grabbing their used dishes and toddling after the older woman to take them to the sink. Dani and Jamie linger at the table for a beat, neither of them willing to release the other from their hold when faced with a long day spent beneath the watchful, innocent eyes of two children.

Finally, Owen stands up and they have no choice. Their only alternative is to spend the rest of the day sitting right there and Jamie thinks she’d end up getting a little stiff if they decided on that. 

Dani offers to take Jamie’s mug to the sink and Jamie smiles.

Says, “Thanks,” and watches her girlfriend make her way over, setting the dishes she’s carrying on the counter beside where Miles is obediently filling up the sink with warm, soapy water.

“Who’s going to be my dish-dryer?” she asks, her voice enthusiastic despite the content of her question. 

Still—magic as ever—Miles and Flora flood the air with eager I will’s and let me’s. 

Owen gives Dani an impressed look. Hannah just smiles and leans against the island counter. 

“I’m gonna head to the hardware shop,” Jamie says, seemingly to no one in particular, but it has its intended effect. 

Dani turns around from the sink and smiles over at her. “You really are a saint,” she says without a hint of joking.

“Just make sure the little gremlins are dressed and ready when I get back,” Jamie tells her. “Housework waits for no man.”

“Hear, hear!” Owen says and Dani laughs as she steps around the counter to reach Jamie, still standing there.

“If you think of anything else you’ll need, let me know,” Jamie says and Dani nods, reaching out to touch Jamie’s cold hand with her own. 

“I will,” she says. “Thank you. Again.”

Jamie shrugs. “No trouble. Won’t take too long.”

Normally, this would be the part where Dani would give her a quick peck on the cheek or on the lips and say her goodbyes. Just a quick thing because they’re half-a-year into being together and that’s the sort of thing couples do. Or so Jamie has seen on TV and is learning now—she hadn’t much experience before Dani. It’s happened so often in the past that it’s practically routine now, but things are different just then.

Something changes.

Because Dani does lean in and give Jamie a quick kiss on the lips. She does say, “Hurry back,” like she normally might have, but there’s an extra part thrown in at the last second. 

“Love you.”

Dani says it so quickly, so thoughtlessly, that Jamie responds before she even processes the significance of those two words.

She just says, “Love you, too,” and goes to pull away.

But, before she can, everything comes crashing into her like a freight train. Dani seems to be undergoing the same realization Jamie is given the way her eyes are wide and unblinking.

They stare at each other for a moment—seemingly forever. Dani stands in front of Jamie, the light from outside brightening her hair into a halo like an angel’s, and her blood is pumping swift through her heart and veins. It’s strange that all she’s doing is standing in the kitchen—Miles and Flora and Hannah and Owen standing just behind Dani—and yet she feels like she could very suddenly run to the moon and back without needing a break. 

Like she could fly or spread her arms around the world without an ounce of trouble and squeeze it tight. Like she should because Dani just said she loves her and shouldn’t that make her capable of anything?

She thinks so.

“I love you,” she hears herself say, slower this time, making sure that Dani understands.

Dani’s lips part just barely and she nods like she’s agreeing to something, but Jamie isn’t sure what. “I love you, too,” she says. “Hey.” 

“Yeah?” Jamie asks, her eyes tracing the gentle shape of Dani’s face, the dip of her nose and the slender arch of her neck. 

Dani leans forward a little, their foreheads brushing. “I love you,” she repeats.

Their lips brush together, soft and singing reverence in a kiss that can’t be sustained because each of them is smiling too much for that. Cool fingers wrap themselves around Jamie’s hands and it very suddenly doesn’t matter who else is in the room for this. It might as well just be them.

An ordinary morning. Breakfast in the kitchen and work to do later. After a night spent doing normal things; making dinner together and watching TV. Jamie vacuumed her flat and Dani wiped down her counters and then they fell into bed together because that’s what it is to love someone. 

That’s how you do it.

In the little in-between times. Love in offering your jacket when it’s cold; in pressing your chilled toes against the warmth of your other’s skin; in brushing your teeth side-by-side and holding hands when you’re waiting in line with your shopping basket at the market.

What is so frightening about that?

What better time to say it than when you can’t keep it contained any longer?

Nothing.

There isn’t a better time.

Easy does it.

Life ticks on around them—the children laughing and splashing one another with water, Owen making a joke that only Hannah finds funny, and that soft, green paint waiting to be picked up in town—but Jamie takes a moment to breathe. To let the puzzle pieces slide together, colors mixing in and stirring out smooth. Clean.

Leans in and kisses Dani again, longer this time, and says what she’s been wanting to say all along, which is this:

“I love you, Dani. I love you, too.”

..

[disneytva]

Matt Olsen Uploads The Douglas Furs Series Bible Of The Rejected Disney XD Series From 2015 All Art Belongs To Jesse Ledoux

Matt Olsen from Sly Cooper fame & co-creator of Douglas Furs uploaded in his website the series bible of the Douglas Furs a rejected Disney show for Disney XD who sadly was rejected.

The Douglas Furs is an original cartoon series about a community of animals living together in Douglas, an otherwise unpopulated corner of the deep forest Pacific NW. Though they hold down jobs, use complex machinery, and return their library books late, they still remain animals. It’s like William Shakespeare said, “A bear will always be a bear, even if he’s wearing overalls.”

Characters Names

Barry The Bear: Optimistic Bear with a big heart and that fixes all the problems,supports Douglas to the absolute max, innocence and naivete are components of Barry’s character, he’s no wide-eyed child, speechless and dreamy in the presence of wonder. Quite the contrary! Barry is a loud, active celebrator of every new experience. He loves life! Even the most normal, everyday things can get Barry excited and revved up to a surprising extreme. Though it’s also true that his rabid interest may change in an instant with the discovery of some new stimuli

Mary Margaret: Mary-Margaret attends Rutherberry Elementary, She is the Bullhorn’s star investigative journalist, a role which she takes very, very seriously. The position feeds her all-consuming curiosity, or as her peers simply call it, “being a nosy-pants”. Her efforts have single-handedly made the Bullhorn the most-read paper in Douglas, all but putting the “professional” paper, the Douglas Herald-Gazeteer, out of business. Mary-Margaret is the elementary-school age daughter of Douglas’ leading intellectuals. Her father, Myron, is a critical studies professor at the local university, while her mother, Dagmar, is Douglas’ most esteemed (and only) deep-Jungian psychiatrist.

Beverly:  Beverly is the single force that keeps Douglas functioning as a city. As Deputy Lieutenant Mayor, she performs all the responsibilities of not only her own position, but also the Mayor’s and several other government officials. She’s vastly overworked but somehow manages to hold it together, fulfill all her duties and put out the fires. Sometimes, literally. (She’s also a volunteer firefighter.)

Her hectic home life does not provide much of a relief from her career. She’s happily married to Garland, who in addition to being father and primary care-giver to their children, is a semitalented landscape painter. Her six kids, three sets of twins, are all very energetic and clamor for her attention.

Viktor:  Viktor was a celebrated Cosmonaut of what we would call vaguely Eastern European descent. On his final lift-off – a mission that would have sent him hurtling past Mars and Jupiter to be locked in orbit around Saturn – the rocket he was piloting failed, veered way off course and crash-landed in Douglas. (He suspects the rocket was tampered with by a jealous rival.).  Since that time, his main pursuit has been to repair the rocket and resume his mission. However, due to Douglas’s non-advanced state of technological development that goal remains far outside his reach. So, he remains an unwilling resident, but he’s gradually warming up to living in the township. Maybe.

Viktor is skeptical and even paranoid of almost anything outside his world. As such, he rarely leaves his home for fear of saboteurs. He’s not against helping others, but he wants all the information first and would really prefer it if there was something in it for him, too. This is probably a holdover from his Cold War-esque training.

Rainier Somersett-Psymthe:   Rainier is not only the wealthiest citizen of Douglas, he is also the town’s single-largest employer. He is the current scion of the storied Somersett-Psymthe lineage and, through no effort of his own, inherited the family business: the Silky Beast line of personal shampoos for Him and Her. Due to the hirsute nature of the population of Douglas and surrounding woodland areas, Silky Beast is in extremely high demand. Since the day-to-day running of the plant is handled by underlings, Rainier lives immune from responsibility and has plenty of free time on his hands. The main focus of Rainier’s efforts is feeding his fame. He has a continual hunger for attention and thrills to read his own exploits chronicled and discussed in the local paper. He is a strict adherent to the no such thing as bad press ideal and will perform any manner of ridiculous acts solely to guarantee his presence on the front page. 

 Barry and Rainier are roughly the same age and share many of the same memories of growing up in Douglas, albeit from completely different perspectives. Where Rainier lives in a gilded mansion built by his great-grandfather and passed down from Somersett-Psmythe to Somersett-Psmythe, Barry lives in a one-room yurt that he constructed himself. There’s still a bit of work to be done around the back. No one would ever consider them rivals. No one except Rainier, that is, who considers everyone his rival. It’s possible that Rainier could be envious of the simplicity of Barry’s existence and attempt to out-simplify him, but that hasn’t happened... yet.

Carl:  Carl is Mary-Margaret’s classmate at Rutherberry Elementary and the staff photographer for the school’s newspaper, The Rutherberry Bullhorn. His ability to fly means that he excels at aerial photography and can get shots from many different angles. Carl is drastically near-sighted and requires a large pair of corrective lenses to approach “eagle-eyed”. With the glasses on, he can see slightly better than most of the other animals in Douglas, but without them the world is a predominately blue and green blur. In a lot of ways, Carl fits squarely into the classic “nerd” stereotype, e.g., he’s quiet, bookish, shy, a little physically awkward, etc., but he has other qualities which don’t fall so easily under that sad rubric. His parents have imbued him with a strict sense of personal responsibility, justice and honor. It’s a code of ethics that has been handed down his proud family line for ages upon ages.  What Carl doesn’t realize is that he is also the subject of interest by many of the other girls at Rutherberry. Unfortunately he is too singleminded to notice their adoration, even when it is at its most blatant. He lives every single day on the verge of either making his feelings known to Mary-Margaret or giving up on her entirely

Mayor Trewfuss:  Quincy Trewfuss is the oldest citizen of Douglas and has served as the town’s extremely popular mayor for an astonishing forty-two terms. With one brief exception at the beginning of his career, each of those forty-two terms have been consecutive. At the close of his first two-year term, he declined to run for re-election and happily handed the mayoralty off to someone else.  Trewfuss is entirely unsuited for a life in politics. He is skittish, fearful, apprehensive, easily bewildered and opposed to any and all conflict. He lives in an eternal state of being overwhelmed. His frequent response to any crisis is to follow his natural tendencies and play possum. He literally pretends to be dead. It may have stopped fooling most folks a very long time ago but they understand that whatever calamity has come up has pushed him to the edge. So, in response, he is given time alone to regather his senses. As it turns out, it’s become a very effective tool for him. Those on the inside know that he is only a figurehead at this point. His deputy lieutenant mayor, Beverly, actually handles all the significant mayoral duties. Trewfuss reluctantly appears at ribbon cutting ceremonies, poses for photographs with civic leaders, sleeps his way through city council meetings and that’s about it. Still, he remains perpetually on the verge of a total nervous breakdown.

Link And Louie:  These two live in a homemade tin roof shanty just outside Douglas, beyond the treeline. Though they attempt intimidation, the town generally regards them as more of a nuisance than a threat. Link and Louie, of course, are oblivious to this and sincerely believe they are genuinely terrifying to the regular squares. Though they’ve never revealed how they ended up around Douglas, popular opinion holds that the last town they harassed, finally had enough and chased them out in a most embarrassing fashion. This accounts for the chips on their shoulders and their “somethin’ to prove” attitudes. Link is the instigator, with Louie always willing to go along blindly with any of Link’s plans. Though he’s never been tested, it’s a safe bet that Louie is not very smart. He lets himself be talked into a lot of Link’s fairly stupid ideas, most of which involve putting himself in danger of imprisonment or bodily harm, while Link remains safely at a distance. Link consoles Louie by claiming this as an occupational hazard, their biggest fear is Gordon The Sasquatch.

Gordon:  Gordon is supremely boring. His company invariably brings a slight level of discomfort to everyone he encounters. His stories are long-winded, circuitous and off-topic. He speaks in an exhausted, physically draining monotone. Still, it’s hard to say a bad word against him since he’s never done any harm to anyone. So, those he encounters will often endure the conversation out of kindness and for fear of hurting his feelings. He’s staggeringly sensitive. Now, this is not to say that he’s not without value. Gordon possesses great strength and is very tall. So tall, in fact, that his head is always out of frame or behind a tree branch or perhaps hidden by a low-hanging cloud. (The home viewer will never see his face.) Just on physical presence alone, he’s an intimidating force and may be called upon to act as anything from security to heavy lifting. In those situations, his size and strength becomes a large enough asset to overcome his crippling dullness. Even though he’s not a “true” citizen of Douglas – he camps nomadically in the woods outside town – he’s generally happy to be of service and always enjoys being around others. Gordon is also a budding folksinger and can often be found with an oversize acoustic guitar, singing his terrible songs to the ears of nature, since no one else – given fair warning – is likely to listen. Overall, he’d really like to meet some other sasquatches

Douglas is a township surrounded on all sides by dense Evergreen forest. Within this clearing is a fully-functioning community of various animals indigenous to the Pacific Northwest. The town is constructed of available materials with homes and buildings suited to each animal’s own preferences. For example, as a beaver, Beverly lives in a log cabin-esque dam on the river. Wood and stone dominate the local architecture, while brightly colored mosses, ferns, wildflowers and lichen provide the embellishments. Greens, browns, grays and blues dazzled up by pinks, yellows, oranges and purples provide the palette. Technology exists only to the level it is needed. 

Since the town itself is rather small, cars were never necessary and therefore, not invented. A refrigerator, on the other hand, is an absolute necessity. I mean, how else is one expected to keep one’s salmon puffs fresh? No specific number has ever been ascribed to the population of this small town – they’re not sticklers for data gathering – but as a sort of reference to its size, here’s some semi-useful factoids: 

• 1 TV channel. All of the programming is made in Douglas by Douglas for Douglas. Not surprisingly, a majority of the shows take place in Douglas. “Hot Douglas Nights” is appointment television.

 • 1 fire department and 1 hospital. Accidents do happen. Of course, when they happen to cartoon characters they’re hilarious.

 • 2 school districts, each with its own elementary, middle and high school. This is really only done so that the grammar teams have someone to compete with... er, I mean, with whom to compete. 

• 36 square miles in area. That’s the legal US definition of a Survey Township and, by pure coincidence, a remarkably close measurement of our own township. Go figure

 • 200 years old. Douglas was founded in the year 1812*. Of course, that’s by our calendar. Here, they use a completely different system to measure time. It’s like dog years, but then you have to modulate the formula for each species. It’s very complex. 

[deadwatcrs]

⟨  tom holland  ,  non-binary demiboy  ,  he/they  ,  22  ⟩   there  goes  ARTHUR ‘ARTIE’ HART  after  the  opposing  team’s  flag  ,  the  child   of  APHRODITE  who  was  claimed  to  CABIN TEN  eleven years  ago  .  wielding  their  SPEAR  ,  and  their  inherited  TELEPORTATION  at  the  ready  ,  they’re  sure  to  lead  their  team  to  victory  .  after  all  ,  it  was  their  demigod  prowess  that  proved  to  be  vital  during  the  arduous  and  decisive  JOURNEY TO FIND DAEDALUS AND THE MAP OF THE LABYRINTH  (  demigod  18  )  they  ventured  on  in  the  past  .  don't  let  their  feat  fool  you  though  ,  it  was  during  this  quest  that  they  were  challenged  by  their  FEAR OF ABANDONMENT AND LONELINESS  .  perhaps  that  is  the  reason  they've  chosen  to  side  with  the  titan  army  .

hello hello !!! so excited to be here with everyone :-) !!! i’m mira, i’m 20, i use she/her pronouns nd i live in the gmt+8 zone, so u can expect me awake when no one else is KJEHHSEJK i’ve been a fan of pjo since like,,,, i was 12 nd was literally convinced i was a demigod so u can imagine !!!! that when i saw this rp i was like !!!! [screams] 

anyways !! this is arthur ‘artie’ hart nd they are New so i’m still working out a lot of their story, but im v excited to see where they’ll go :-) i have a few connections regarding his story nd also just ,, slapped som stuff down from the app into here HEKJHESJK 

PART ONE.    THE BASICS.

name: arthur ‘artie’ hart. prefers to go by artie, as arthur is what his aunt calls him. age: twenty-two. zodiac: born on july 21st, 1999, making him a cancer sun, scorpio moon and leo rising. gender & pronouns: nonbinary demiboy. uses he/him and they/them pronouns. romantic orientation: bisexual.

PART TWO.     THE HIDDEN DEPTHS, THE SCRATCHED LAYER.

positive traits: compassionate / perceptive / mild-mannered. negative traits: pessimistic / evasive / easily jealous. mbti: ENFJ - the protagonist. moral alignment: chaotic good. what is their motivation?: artie is motivated, primarily, by the desire to never find themselves abandoned and alone. growing up with an absent goddess of a mother, a mother deep in her memories of a lover she’ll never see again and an aunt who tried to give them a foundation to grow from meant that their life was more or less marred by the concept of loneliness, of abandonment. 

artie wants, more than anything else, for no future demigods to feel the same way they did — and if that means tearing down olympus and getting rid of the gods, then they were willing to turn the other cheek, to contribute bare bones to take on the least amount of blood and ichor. aphrodite had never made a move to acknowledge him other than the obligatory favor of claiming him as her child, and the knowledge that she too had abandoned him pushed him to the side of the titans.

the choice to do the bare minimum is rooted in the fact that they are still very much attached to camp half-blood and everyone within it, as they had been there for half their life. it is a decision rooted in wanting the best for the camp and its campers even if the decision is a difficult one. after all, what have the gods ever done for the hundreds of children they’ve brought into the world?

what was growing up like?: for starters, artie appreciates that his aunt tried. their mother was far too wrapped up in memories of a lover long gone, and aphrodite had never once made an effort beyond dropping them off at their mother’s doorstep and then claiming them as her child eleven years later. growing up was difficult. like any demigod child, there were instances that could never be explained, like the time artie was in his room one minute and the living room the next without ever having touched his closed door and the time his backpack was torn to shreds while he was still wearing it. still, they had to push through childhood, often seeking comfort in the arms of their aunt when the monsters got too close. at eleven, a satyr brought artie to camp half-blood after discovering their teleportation ability (it was a stupid incident, and one artie is reluctant to tell again, but it ends with falling asleep while their foot was in a toilet bowl while walking to class). 

camp half-blood was a haven for artie as their heritage was unraveled. aphrodite claimed him a week after he arrived at camp, and he was immediately drawn to the change in lifestyle. it was a relief for all the pieces to fall into place, for artie to realize that they weren’t different. at thirteen, they became a year rounder camper after their aunt had encouraged them to stay, knowing their mother couldn’t keep them safe. their time at camp was divided into learning how to fight with a spear (a weapon that quickly became their go-to, the one weapon they were actually proficient with) and learning how to manage their ability. however, worry constantly nagged at them, as they realized they were only putting off a life alone. artie may not have been different, but there were very few people who lived like they did.

PART THREE.     THE EXTRAS, THE CONNECTIONS.

ambrosia tastes like the cranberry-walnut cookies their aunt used to make for them.

they have a little mp3 player because they absolutely cannot live without listening to music. it’s not connected to wifi or data, just a little device that hosts illegally downloaded music.

interchangeably uses he and they pronouns. gender identity was something artie struggled with growing up, as they never felt totally connected to their assigned gender at birth but didn’t feel totally disconnected from it either. it took a lot of google searches, long late night talks with the nymphs and his aunt and encouragement from their fellow siblings before they realized they were non-binary, and furthermore, a demi-boy. they do have a preference for people to refer to them with ‘he/him’ pronouns, while they tend to use ‘they/them’. of course, they don’t really mind what people use as long as it’s either he or them, and ultimately, artie is just happy he’s got this part of himself figured out.

handy with a spear. they tend to spin the weapon around their hand as part of their signature move, and yes, it is just to show off how good he is at spinning it.

pinterest here.

i.    this house burned down and we’ll take the memories with it.

this would be the person who artie is closest to and considers family. they would’ve been there for his every milestone, the person who had his back more often than not and vice versa. however, after artie is revealed to be part of luke’s army, betrayal strains their relationship. i can see this connection (in current times) focusing heavily on the fact that they’re both on directly opposing sides but want the other to be by their side, but being unable to switch sides themselves. this connection is also one heavily steeped in years and years of friendship, as artie has been at camp since he was eleven, and then switched to being a year-rounder at thirteen.

ii.    and where have the gods gone? taken by rainier gang.

artie didn’t want to switch to the titan’s side at first. he was convinced over a long period of time, and this connection focuses on the dynamic between artie and whoever took the time to convince him to switch sides. seeing as one of artie’s deepest fears is ending up alone and abandoned, maybe this dynamic focused on that aspect! honestly, i’m open to however this connection develops since it’s a pretty open-ended one.

iii.     for these are shared wounds. taken by emri kyung, salem poe.

in short, they have been artie’s sparring partner since he was a new camper. as a child of aphrodite, there was always that expectation that he’d be useless in a battlefield and this person took a chance on him, showing him everything he now knows about how to fight. they aren’t close by any means but there is comfort in intimately knowing what they’re like on a battlefield. how this dynamic develops depends on which side (or none, if they’re neutral!) the other person is on.

other wanted connections:

literally anything my brain is tiny LOL

[withabackpackandcamera]

September 22nd, 2020

Day 9: The Rainy Road Back to Anchorage

Today was Cynthia’s day. After conquering her most difficult and strenuous hike ever, I promised her that we could do whatever she wanted to do today. So, after we cleaned up the cabin, packed the car, and checked out of our cabin, our first stop was Resurrection Art Coffee House, a cool, trendy, and cozy coffee shop located inside of an old church right off the main road in Seward. Cynthia had found this place online prior to our arrival in Seward and yesterday, while driving around looking for breakfast, we briefly stopped by before deciding on getting food at Safeway. But today, we actually dropped in and hung out in the coffee shop for a couple of hours. 

Lounging in Resurrection Art Coffee House was actually quite nice! Not only was the vibe pretty neat with its inside aesthetics, big space, and the artwork laid out all around the shop, but the pastries and drinks there were delicious too! While Cynthia ordered, I looked around for a seat and luckily found some soon-to-be-open couches next to a large window upstairs that people were about to vacate. It was the perfect place to sit and chill as we ate our super delicious and flavorful blackberry rose vanilla scone and sipped on some hot London Fog. Oh, what a nice, chill, lazy morning. I can see why Cynthia decided to do this after a long day of hiking. Much needed and highly approved.

After we lounged for an hour or two, we decided that it was finally time to move on with the day given that it was already the early afternoon. We drove through Seward and toward Lowell Point because it was an area that I had marked on my map to check out. Originally, the plan was for us to check out the tide pools there but because of how horrible the weather was, we just drove out there to see the area before driving back into Seward. We also tried to see if there was a short walk or hike we could do while there but given how far the hike started from the parking lot and the fact that the weather was crappy and we didn’t pay for parking, we decided not to go for it and just turned around. 

Before leaving Seward for good, we stopped by the downtown one last time to actually stop by and look at some stores during their operating hours instead of after they had closed. We went into a couple of stores and looked around at the different gifts and merchandise they were selling. One store that I really enjoyed going into was The Ranting Raven Gallery, not because the artwork on display and on sale was that cool or anything; rather, it was because the store owner was very nice and we had a great and very informative conversation about the current state of Alaska and everything going on in the state. I always enjoy the opportunities I get to chat with locals and learn about their world from their perspective as I know that most things they enlighten me with are topics that I never would have learned about elsewhere when traveling or when at home. 

After stopping by The Ranting Raven Gallery, we stopped in a few more stores before hitting the road back toward Anchorage. On the way back, we briefly visited Moose Pass, a very small town right off the main highway. It was pretty small and there weren’t too many things to see there. However, what I did end up doing in Moose Pass was walking to the edge of town toward the water where I had previously caught a glimpse of a parked float plane. I walked over, looked at it from a distance, and took a few photos before making my way back to the car. 

Once we left Moose Pass, we drove on toward a small town called Hope, located at the end of a highway that branched off from the main highway. My first task once we got to Hope was to watch some of the Lakers-Nuggets Game 3 since there was cell signal in the area. I watched the game until halftime or so (they were playing pretty poorly, so I got disheartened) before stepping out of the car to explore Main Street in Hope. The old-looking buildings along Main Street seemed like they were preserved from a distant era of time and looked pretty cool. So I walked along the street both looking and appreciating the historic buildings around me. Because there wasn’t much else to see in Hope besides Main Street, I went back to the car, where Cynthia ended up staying, to start the real drive back to Anchorage. 

Because there were some very dynamic cloudy scenes on the way back, I took a couple of opportunities to get out of the car again to snap some quick photos before booking it back to Anchorage because it was getting darker quickly. During this drive, the rain started to come down again and continued until we were essentially back in Anchorage. It was one of the rainier drives we’ve had this entire trip. Once we had arrived back in Anchorage, we stopped by Spenard Roadhouse for dinner before dropping off our car at Enterprise. At Spenard, we ordered their Baby Back Ribs and Korean Tofu Rice Bowl. The food was great and we really enjoyed what we ordered. And because we had some leftovers (common theme this trip), we were able to take that home to enjoy later. 

The last task of the night was to return the rental car since we didn’t need it for our last day in Alaska. We returned the car and key and then took a Lyft to The Voyager Inn in downtown Anchorage where we checked in for our last night in Alaska. Because it was getting late, we decided to take it easy and rest in our large hotel room rather than do any night explorations, instead holding that off until tomorrow because we had the entire day to explore Anchorage. . 

5 Things I Learned/Observed Today:

1. Chugach National Forest is humongous and is the second largest national forest in the country. As you drive through south-central Alaska, you repeatedly see signs for the national forest everywhere! Supposedly, it is larger than the state of New Hampshire (at around 5.4 million acres) and is the furthest north and west of the country’s national forests. Because it is so far north, about 30% of the forest is covered in ice. 

2. Resurrection Bay is a fjord. I love fjords. They look so cool! But are hard to capture on camera...

3. The town of Seward was named after Secretary of State William Seward because he helped with the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. Its population is around 3000 people as of the last census in 2010. Because of the Gulf of Alaska nearby, despite having a subarctic climate, the Seward area has more moderate temperatures than would be expected. And Seward’s economy, as you can guess based on its location, is driven mostly by commercial fishing and seasonal tourism with many businesses closing shop after the summer peak season, just as we saw and experienced.  

4. After talking to a local shop owner in Seward, here is what I learned (from her perspective): Supposedly, the Alaskan governor is a “Trump Wannabe”. Essentially, that meant he was doing a terrible job and making decisions that would likely benefit a certain group of people that didn’t need more benefits and not helping out those people that actually make up the entirety of the state’s population. In one example, the governor supposedly made a decision to dig deep into the Alaskan Permanent Fund Dividend to give too much money to people who didn’t necessarily need it, thus depleting the fund’s money that could otherwise have played a vital role in financing more important tasks and projects like strengthening Alaska’s infrastructure, fixing Alaska’s roads, and funding higher education. 

5. Apparently, there has been a long, ongoing battle between locals and the government/private companies (in this case, the Pebble Mine Company) for the rights to dig for gold and copper at the mouth of a river where big salmon runs happen annually. As you can see there, there’s a very clear dilemma. And because of how corrupt the higher-ups are in Alaska and in the company, the conclusive decision about whether to dig or not has been crawling closer and closer to benefiting the private companies who want to get richer. That is, until recently, when video and audio leaked out revealing how corrupt and horrible the executives at Pebble Mine were. For more information, check out this article: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/25/politics/alaska-pebble-mine-executives-legislators/index.html

[because-icanhide]

Back (Jason Todd x Reader)

Word count: 1,085

A/n: Hi. So this isn’t my first writing, but is my first time posting on here. I finished this quickly for @psychovigilantewrites in honor of getting part 3 out. Heres something for you. I also didn’t really edit this and put everything I wanted to put into it cause i didn’t want to put all my energy into something no one would like or read so please tell me what you guys think and I’ll probably rewrite this later. I also have four more longer things I’m working on. sorry no smut this time

Edit: fuck me there’s a part where I was going to add more so I quickly wrote something in to come back to its please just ignore it.

uhh this is very based off of Taylor Swifts “Back to December”. You don’t need to listen to the song tho.

Trigger warnings I guess: Break up, missing someone, awkwardness 

...

You sat in the back of a cafe and waited for him. You let your knee bounce out of nervousness. You kept checking your watch, then the clock on the wall, thinking they would be different. Gotham was a lot gloomier than you remember. Maybe living in Metropolis changed your perspective.

This same spot, he would wait for you. He would usually have a book. You never knew how long he waited for you, but you knew he would be there. He knew your order by heart, but never ordered for you because you were often late. It was the most time you got together due to your conflicting schedules, but you didn’t mind because he was always there.

  Someone sitting across from you pulled you from your thoughts. He wore that familiar red hoodie. It was damp due to the rain. He had new scars on his face and hands. Probably more on other parts of his body, but you couldn’t see. His nose looked like it had been broken and reset a few more times than you remember. His eyes were still as blue as ever.

“Y/n? You there?” He waved his hand slightly. In front of my face. You blinked a few times.

“Yes, sorry. It’s just been a while. You look good.” You said sincerely.

“You do too.” He looked at his hands. The awkwardness made you want to crawl in a hole and die. You took a deep breath.

“I waited for you to order. I can go do that now.” You started to stand up and grabbed your wallet.

“No, I got it.” He stood up, making things so much more awkward.

“Uh, are you sure? I can get it.” You gestured to the counter.

“Yeah, I have Bruce’s card. Trying to put a dent in his bank account, see if he notices.” He held up the card. A smile made its way onto your lips.

“You’re still doing that?”

“Well yeah, gotta get payback somehow.” He walked over to the counter. You sat back down and watched him order. You were pretty sure he got a buffer, but it was hard to tell through his hoodie. Remember him working out and how fucking hot it was. Watching the movement of his muscles as he did push-ups. Watching the sweat roll down his chest and over his abs. You practically jumped his bones everytime you saw him workout. He had to stop working out with you around just so he could get stuff done.

He walked back over with our drinks. You mumbled thanks and looked down at it. A smile made its way onto your lips when you realized he remembered your order. You decide not to say anything, so he didn’t get nervous.

“So uh, how is Bruce and the others? I feel like I haven’ seen them in forever” You take a sip of your drink and look at him.

“They’re good. Bruce is a pain in my ass like always. Alfred is well, Alfred. Although he hasn’t failed to mention how he misses you. They all have. Especially the demon spawn. I think he had a crush on you.” He avoided eye contact with you. You smiled, trying to look past it.

“Oh, he definitely did. Girls can always tell.” You joked. He nodded softly. You looked down. You could tell his guard was up, and you didn’t blame him. You were surprised he even agreed to meet with you honestly. Things ended badly, and it was on you, you felt.

“It’s rainier here than Metropolis. I didn’t miss that.” You pointed out.

“You get used to it.” He simply said.

“I know… I used to live here. Remember? We used to sleep in the same bed.”

“Right.” he nodded. “Sorry…”

“It’s fine. How have you been? How’s… work?” You ask nervously. He shifted uncomfortably and looked away. He didn’t respond. You hit a nerve. You shouldn’t have brought up his work. You started to panic at his lack of response. Of course, you shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s the main reason you left him.

You couldn’t handle the vigilante life. Him coming home later than usual, thinking he was dead. Him coming back hurt. Being in constant danger because you were dating the Redhood. Him leaving to go on missions and not contacting you for days. Weeks sometimes. His past coming back to haunt you. Besides his alter ego, he was good to you. He did nothing but love and take care of you. Which is why he didn’t understand why you left. Everyone else in his life was okay with it, but you weren’t.

But after you left and moved away from Gotham. You would stay up and think about it. How none of it mattered. All that mattered was that you missed him. You two were good too and with each other. You stayed up at night and thought about how you wished you could go back and change your mind. You wished you stayed. You didn’t care about him being the Redhood. You just wanted him back.

“I’m really sorry how things went down that night… I-” You sighed and looked away. “I think about that night a lot. I wish things didn’t end the way they did. I wish things didn’t end at all, actually…” You bit your lip and looked up at him sheepishly. He was staring at his coffee. It was hard to read him, but you could tell he didn’t want to be there because that’s exactly how you felt.

Even though everything in your body was telling you to bolt, you decided to continue. “I miss you, and honestly, maybe I’m completely out of my mind for even entertaining this thought, but if we loved again, I swear I’d love you right. I’d go back in time and change it, but I can’t. If the chain is on your door, I understand, But this is me swallowing my pride, sitting in front of you saying I’m sorry for that night. It turns out freedom ain’t nothing, but missing you, Wishing I’d realize what I had when you were mine. I’d go back, turn around and make it alright. I’d go back, turn around and change my own mind.” Your words flooded out of you like they’ve been sitting there on the surface just waiting to be said, but only to him.

You inhaled sharply and sat up straight. Waiting for some sort of response. Waiting for his rejection to hit you like a bullet. You made eye contact with him. He looked like he was in shock. You couldn’t read him. You didn’t know what he was thinking. It terrified you. You scanned his face and his body language. You watch his lips part as he starts to finally speak.

[fogsrollingin]

Moonlight readings

Whumptober and The Zombie Bang are now over and I get to r e a d again 😭 It is so good to just eat some chocolate and read other people’s works. Oh boy. Living my best life with these fics 🥰️

First, I realized I hadn’t read any original fiction lately so I lit upon this incredibly fun, exciting, and interesting original work that I read inside about 2 days or something: Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks (of World War Z and Zombie Survival Guide fame; also son of the inimitable Mel Brooks) 

Summary:  As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier's eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined . . . until now. But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town's bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing--and too earth-shattering in its implications--to be forgotten. In these pages, Max Brooks brings Kate's extraordinary account to light for the first time, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own extensive investigations into the massacre and the legendary beasts behind it. Kate's is a tale of unexpected strength and resilience, of humanity's defiance in the face of a terrible predator's gaze, and inevitably, of savagery and death. Yet it is also far more than that. Because if what Kate Holland saw in those days is real, then we must accept the impossible. We must accept that the creature known as Bigfoot walks among us--and that it is a beast of terrible strength and ferocity. Part survival narrative, part bloody horror tale, part scientific journey into the boundaries between truth and fiction, this is a Bigfoot story as only Max Brooks could chronicle it--and like none you've ever read before. my thoughts: First, the ending was hilarious in a very good way to me. But back to the start: I adored the premise of a small cast of well-defined characters getting isolated and cut off from society and then threatened/hunted by monsters. The market on that formula will just never get saturated for me, lol. And then as the story continues to unfold, it just nails the suspense-action pacing and all while capturing such fascinating psychological reactions of its characters. Extra points for the clever, entertaining ways Brooks tears apart the romanticism of nature that many people tend to tout (without really being too harsh or mean towards those people). This book was a super fun ride.

The Cause Sanguine by glasslogic. Rated R, Dean/Sam, 48k words. Summary:  Dean is lonely and depressed following the death of his father in a hunting accident. Guilt and grief are causing his life to spiral out of control, so he takes a rare moment of sobriety to walk away from everything and move to a remote cabin in the wilds of Montana. But it’s a very different world up there for him than the town-to-town drifting he has known all his life. Overhearing gossip one night in a local bar, he gets into an argument over the reality of werewolves and stumbles out into the woods in an ill-advised attempt to prove his point. But things never go smoothly for Dean, and what he finds changes everything he understands about hunting, his father, and even his own purpose in life. Dean has seen and done a lot in his time on the planet, but nothing has ever prepared him to navigate the strange roads of a relationship with someone who is only human three nights a month.  ao3.org/works/337946 my thoughts: immediately feeling for Dean's grief and understanding his decisions to settle in little Sunvalley, Montana, the story gets off to a great start. Then the soft slow burn of learning who Sam is and how they develop trust and love is awesome. This was a really cool, sweet supernatural romance. Made me want to buy a fur rug, haha. There's a sequel I should check out too. This fic has been added to my animal transformations reclist.

Afterimage by paleogymnast. Rated NC-17, Sam/Dean, 27k words. Summary:  "If you had it to do over again, and you could change everything, would you?" When all appears lost, Dean Winchester—battered, weary, guilty, and alone—is given the opportunity to travel back in time and live his life over again with the promise that if he makes the one choice he was too afraid to make before, he will be able to change the future, and avoid the loss of everyone he ever loved and everything he fought for. But how? After all, he knows time can’t be changed… But with the help of a mysterious entity, who may or may not be the actual God of Time, Dean discovers time can be rewritten. Armed only with the ghosts of memories from his former life—afterimages of rewritten time—but not really understanding the gift he’s been given, the new Dean, an impossibly young 27-year-old hunter, once again turns to his estranged brother when their father goes missing. But when he takes a chance on forbidden love, will it be the key to saving the universe and averting the apocalypse, or will it only bring about the end even faster? ao3.org/works/4504065 my thoughts: Holy crap this author’s writing hijacked me the last week of October while I was still trying to churn out a lot of written work). I absolutely loved this story, loved how Dean pressured himself to admit his feelings for Sam during Bugs, how the author described/framed Sam & Dean’s relationship, and plot-wise how information on seasons 4 & 5 filtered into seasons 1-2ish Sam/Dean. It filled me with so much hope & happiness to imagine them besting their destinies like this with the help of Kronos. Also I'm such a sucker for soulmate tropes & loved how paleogymnast let Bobby and Missouri be cool about Sam/Dean. This fic will forever been found in my time travel reclist now. 

[pikapeppa]

Fenris/f!Hawke and the Inquisition: Choice

Chapter 66 of Lovers In A Dangerous Time (i.e. Fenris the Inquisitor) is up on AO3! 

In which Fenris tells the Exalted Council to shove it what the future of the Inquisition will be, and everyone gets to finally relax. **CANON-DIVERGENT SPOILERS ABOUND, so scroll on if you aren’t caught up and you care about spoils!**

Full chapter is ~7600 words, and includes some smutty smut. Read on AO3 instead. 

*****************

Fenris raised an eyebrow at Dorian. “Stop gaping at me.”

Dorian immediately looked away. “I wasn’t gaping. I don’t gape,” he said loftily. “I’m not a fish.”

Fenris grunted. “You could have fooled me.” In truth, he couldn’t blame Dorian for staring; Fenris couldn’t stop looking at his own skin, either. Every time he reached for a quill or picked up an apple or lifted his hand to run his fingers through his hair, the sight of his own unmarked hands was like a constant exclamation mark in his mind, perking his attention and reminding him that he was normal.

He wasn’t a mage. He wasn’t a marked and tainted slave, and he wasn’t a warrior whose magic had been forced into the marks on his skin. He was a normal man, and he was free. 

Nearly free, in any case. Hence the informal procession he and Hawke were leading toward the great hall where the Exalted Council were convened.

Dorian sniffed. “That’s offensive. I’m nothing like a fish. If I resemble any animal, it’s a graceful and vicious tiger.”

Sera snorted. “You are too like a fish!”

Dorian shot her a resentful look. “How dare you say such a thing?”

“Fish are flashy,” she said matter-of-factly. “You know, scales and that? Flashy fish, flashy you.”

“Hey, you’re right,” Varric said. “He is pretty flashy, with the buckles and the rings.”

Dorian tsked. “Flashy is one thing. Fishy is quite another.” He elbowed Bull’s hip. “Why aren’t you defending me?”

“Sorry, kadan,” Bull said. “I couldn’t focus over your flashy buckles.”

Rainier chuckled. “Even your fabrics are flashy now, Dorian. Is that the fashion in Tevinter these days?”

Dorian barked out a laugh. “Someone mark this day on the calendar! Thom Rainier uses the word ‘fashion’. I wasn’t aware you knew the meaning of the word.”

Rainier scoffed into his beard, and Hawke laughed and patted Rainier’s burly arm. “Hey, that’s not nice! I think Thom has a very appealing aesthetic.”

“Thank you, Hawke,” he said. Then he scratched his beard. “Er, what does that mean?”

Sera cackled and Hawke grinned, but Cole was the one to answer. “Big and burly, beautiful beard. The axe looks small in his hands, rough and rugged hands for running over my skin. I wonder if he’s single?”

Hawke’s jaw dropped in delight. Rainier’s eyes widened, and Varric chuckled. “Sounds like someone has an admirer.”

“No kidding!” Hawke crowed. She poked Cole’s arm. “Whose thoughts were those?”

He looked around vaguely. “She’s not here.”

Bull huffed in amusement. “Real helpful, Cole. Thanks.”

Varric rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, it’s got to be someone who’s seen the hero chopping wood behind the stables.”

Hawke tutted. “That could be anyone! Everyone in the Inquisition has gone by the stables at one point or another to visit the nuggalopes.”

Rainier grunted. “True. Those damned beasts are the most popular in the stables. Not sure why.”

Dorian smiled charmingly at him. “Some might say the same about you.”

Rainier snorted. “Oh shut it, Pavus.”

The others chuckled and continued to poke fun at each other, but the mention of the nuggalopes raised a fresh concern in Fenris’s mind. Damned nuggalopes, he thought ruefully. The problem wasn’t just the nuggalopes, in fact, but the Inquisition’s entire range of odd steeds. Who would look after them? Would Dennet be willing to take them back to the Hinterlands with him? Perhaps they could be gifted to the agents of the Inquisition who could use them best? 

He stopped himself before he could start sinking too deeply into the problem. This was an issue that could be delegated, likely to Josephine. It was absolutely not necessary for Fenris to worry about this. 

He smiled to himself. Then Hawke’s fingers slid gently over his wrist. 

He looked at her. She smiled up at him and twined her fingers with his. “How are you?” she asked. 

“I’m well,” he said, and he savoured the novelty of this statement actually being true. 

“Good,” she said. “Hang on to that feeling. Sounds like you’re about to get into it.” She jerked her thumb at the closed doors to the great hall. 

Fenris pursed his lips. Already he could hear Cyril’s raised voice through the doors. “... and now we stand on the brink of war with the qunari?”

“Yes,” Teagan snapped, “because this Solas provoked them in the first place!”

Josephine’s calm voice was the next to speak. “The Inquisition did not cause this threat. We informed the summit of the danger–”

“The danger posed by qunari spies inside your organization!” Teagan shouted.

Cassandra interrupted in a harder tone than Josephine’s. “Without the Inquisition, none of us would be here to complain.”

Hawke grimaced at Fenris. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” he said firmly, and he hefted the heavy tome beneath his arm: the same tome that Cassandra had once slammed down on a rough wooden table back in Haven’s little Chantry.

He pushed open the doors to the great hall. The assembled spectators turned, then immediately broke into frenzied murmuring.

“The Inquisitor! He looks different, non?”

“Where are his Dalish tattoos?”

“He’s not Dalish, you idiot. He was a slave. Did you not read The Tale of the Champion?”

“He’s so late! The Council started an hour ago! Do you think he was fighting qunari?”

“Perhaps he was allying with the qunari. I heard he lived with them for a time.”

“Shut your mouth, he’s the Herald. He would never.”

“His hand! The mark of Andraste is gone!”

“Does that mean Andraste has forsaken him?”

Fenris ignored them and made his way to the table where Josephine was sitting by herself. “You couldn’t wait for me, I see,” he murmured. 

She gave him the tiniest hint of a smile. “I tried, Fenris, believe me. You spoke to Leliana this morning?”

“I did,” he said. Leliana had coached him in what he was about to say – which was, of course, why Josephine was asking. 

He placed the tome on the table and looked up at the high table, where Cassandra was sandwiched between Cyril and Teagan. “I apologize for my lateness,” he said. “But you will be pleased to know I have reached a decision about the Inquisition’s future.”

Teagan’s eyebrows leapt up on his forehead. “You have reached a decision? That is not your choice to make!”

“It is, in fact,” Fenris said. He tapped the tome. “This is the writ from the late and revered Divine Justinia authorizing the reformation of the Inquisition.” He flipped open the book. “Here on page 147, it clearly states the following: ‘It is the Inquisition’s duty and goal to act in the interest of the people of Thedas. To protect them from the dangers borne of the Breach and to guide the return of peace to all nations where such guidance is so required. The Inquisitor's judgment shall be exercised to determine when those goals have been met.’” He looked up and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Cyril shifted slightly in his seat, but Teagan sat forward and glared viciously at Fenris. “You would abuse this power for your own gains?”

“My aim here is not to abuse this power,” Fenris said. “My aim is to point out that you have been correct. During the past two days, we acted beyond the bounds of this writ.” He raised his voice slightly so everyone in the room would hear. “In stopping the qunari plot to invade Thedas and to kill the leaders of every nation herein, the Inquisition acted beyond our bounds.”

A murmur of interest and alarm rose from the crowd, just as Fenris had known it would, and Teagan swelled with anger. “You – this is – don’t you dare act as though you played no role in this!” he shouted. “You had qunari spies within the Inquisition!”

Fenris bowed his head. “This is unfortunately true. An unfortunate truth that we seem to share with Orlais.” 

Another murmur, louder this time, rose from the onlookers, and Fenris breathed slowly to master his discomfort at the attention. At the high table, Teagan finally leaned back and glared at Cyril instead. 

Cyril shifted, then rested his fingers delicately on the table. “Be that as it may, Inquisitor, the Arl is correct. You stepped beyond your authority here at the Winter Palace. Your soldiers attempted to wrest control of the palace from the Orlesian guards.”

“That is true,” Fenris admitted. “And it is for reasons such as this that I have made my decision about the future of the Inquisition.” He looked directly at Cassandra. “A woman of great wisdom once told me that there is strength in picking up the mantle of responsibility when a guiding hand is needed. But there is also strength in knowing when to let that mantle go. In knowing that tyranny and complacency are always on the horizon, and to set power aside before we fall prey to its gaping maw.” He lifted his chin. “The time has come for the Inquisition to retire this mantle. We had a purpose: to close the Breach, to destroy those responsible, and to do our part in restoring order. We achieved these goals; we met our purpose. And thus I declare the Inquisition disbanded.” 

An outcry of surprise and interest rose from the gawking crowd, but Fenris ignored them; Cassandra was smiling proudly at him, and hers was the only reaction he cared about.

He smiled back at her, then bowed briefly to the Council before turning away. He caught Josephine’s eye, and the relief in her smile only helped reinforce his conviction.

He made his way along the aisle toward the exit and tried not to listen to the chatter of the crowd. As he neared the doors, his companions rose from the benches at the back of the room. Together as a group, they left the great hall. 

As soon as the doors of the great hall closed behind them, Hawke propped her fists on her hips. “Well! I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think this calls for some punch.”

Rainier and Bull murmured their agreement, and Sera did an excited little hop. “Punch! Punch! Do some punch!”

Dorian groaned. “Oh no, not that damned punch.”

Varric raised an eyebrow. “Sparkler, you love that punch. You said so two days ago.”

“How drunk was I at the time?” Dorian said archly.

“Pretty damn drunk,” Varric admitted.

Dorian folded his arms. “I rest my case.”

Hawke poked Dorian’s arm. “I would be offended by your attitude if getting you all terribly drunk wasn’t my favourite goal. Now come on, who needs a drink?”

Fenris huffed. “Dare I point out that it is barely ten o’ clock?”

Hawke raised her eyebrows. “Oh shit, you’re right. Well, I’ll throw some orange juice into the mix then.”

Sera laughed, and Rainier patted Hawke’s shoulder. “Always with a solution, Hawke.”

Bull grunted in agreement. “A solution for getting drunk at the least respectable times of the day: that’s a woman after my own heart.”

Dorian tsked and smacked his arm. “Are you trying to make me jealous? I’m standing right here.”

Rainier smirked at him. “As though we could forget. You know, with all the flashing buckles.”

“And the fishy scale fabric,” Sera added.

“It is very shiny,” Cole agreed, and Sera jumped and scowled.

“And the rings,” Bull said. “Do you really need so many rings, kadan?”

Dorian gave Fenris a pitiful look. “Fenris, they’re picking on me. Do something.”

“I can’t,” Fenris said pleasantly. “I have no authority anymore.”

Dorian scoffed. “Some friend you are. You know, just for this, I’ll be sure to call you on the sending crystal at all hours of the morning – even earlier than this. I shall call repeatedly until you are forced to take my calls, and I will tell you in exhaustive detail all about the trivial minutiae of magisterial life…”

Fenris turned to Hawke. “Remind me to destroy the sending crystal,” he said dryly.

Hawke chuckled and looped her hand through his elbow, and their group meandered leisurely through the Winter Palace’s halls. There was much lighthearted talk about a game of wicked grace in the tavern while Varric read to them from the first chapter draft of his new book, and Fenris listened contentedly without saying much. 

Hawke stroked his arm. “Are you all right?”

He gave her a chiding look. “There is no need to keep asking. I promise you, I’m fine.” He lowered his voice. “I should be asking how you feel. How is our turnip?”

She smiled and squeezed his arm. “I’m tired, but the turnip is great. Sucking all my energy, growing its little ears and fingers, you know.”

He smiled at her, then sighed and lowered his voice. “If I’m perfectly honest, I am tired too. What I really want at this moment is a bath and a nap.” After returning from the Crossroads and debriefing with Leliana, Josephine and Cullen, Fenris had barely gotten three hours of sleep last night. 

“Maker, yes,” she said fervently. “A bath and a nap would be so good.”

He raised an eyebrow, and Hawke smiled. Then she pulled him to a stop. “Change of plans,” she announced to the group. “I’m going to take a nap because I’m pregnant, and Fenris is going to rub my feet because I’m spoiled.”

Sera rolled her eyes. “Boring.”

“I agree,” Dorian said. “That’s very boring.”

Rainier shrugged. “I think it’s a good idea. Hawke should get some rest.”

Hawke batted her eyelashes at him. “Why thank you, Thom! That’s the kind of attitude I like to see in one of our baby’s many uncles.”

Rainier’s cheeks turned pink with pleasure. Varric folded his arms and shot Rainier a knowing look. “Suck-up,” he said.

Rainier scoffed. “Says the man who’s been tipping the servants to pay special attention to Hawke since we’ve been here.”

Hawke and Fenris looked at Varric in surprise. “You were?” Fenris asked.

He shrugged. “Eh, I might’ve done. It’s no big deal.”

Fenris smiled at him, Hawke threw her arms around his neck. “I was wondering why I was getting so much attention! Oh Varric, you shouldn’t have.” She kissed him on the cheek.

He patted her arm. “Really, Hawke, it was no big deal.”

Bull tucked his thumbs into his belt. “You’re excited to be an uncle. Just own up to it.”

Cole nodded. “He is excited. ‘Future and family for friends: they deserve it. They’ve been through enough. Babysitting will be fun when they’re in town.’”

Everyone chuckled, and Varric tugged his ear. “Come on, kid, don’t make me look too soft,” he mumbled. 

Hawke kissed Varric’s cheek once more before releasing him. “Can I take that as your standing offer to babysit whenever Fenris and I are on holiday in Kirkwall and we want some time alone to–” 

“All right, all right, go take your nap,” Varric said loudly. “We’ll be in the Gilded Horn when you guys are done being boring.” 

Sera elbowed Hawke. “I’ll save you some boring juice for the wee widdle!”

Hawke chuckled and flicked her ear. “Thanks, Sera. We’ll see you later.”

The others drifted toward the main entrance, still laughing and poking fun at each other, but to Fenris’s surprise, Cole stayed behind. 

Hawke squeezed his arm. “Go on, Cole, go play cards with the others! You’re getting better at bluffing every day.”

“Is he?” Fenris said dryly.

Hawke poked him. “Shh. He’s trying.”

Cole blinked at them. “It’s time. I’m going now.”

Fenris gave him a sharp look, and Hawke cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean? Go where?”

“It’s done. You helped,” Cole said. His customary vague gaze drifted from Fenris to Hawke. “Healing hurts, healing the sky, helping. There’s more to help, and I can help best from home.”

Hawke’s eyes widened. “Home? You mean… are you going back to the Fade?”

Cole nodded. “I will slip back safely, a spirit. Someone is hurting. He needs me to remember who he is.”

Hawke’s mouth fell open in surprise at the mention of Solas, and Fenris scowled. “He’s hurting? He is planning the murder of every person in this world!”

Cole shook his head. “He doesn’t want to hurt people. He isn’t that kind of wolf.”

Fenris opened his mouth to argue, but Hawke placed a hand on his wrist. “You know what, Cole? If anyone can get through to him, it’s you,” she said firmly. “He isn’t a complete asshole.  Not yet, at least. Can you remind him of that?”

“Yes,” Cole said simply. 

Hawke smiled at him, then pulled him into a hug. “What am I going to do without you exposing all my dirty thoughts in public?” she asked. “I’ll have to start telling them to random people myself.”

“As though that is any different than usual,” Fenris teased.

She shot him a quick grin, and he noted with a pang that her eyes were wet. A long moment later, she released Cole and rubbed her nose. “Don’t forget to say goodbye to Varric before you go, all right? He’ll be sad if you don’t.”

Cole nodded, then tilted his head. “It’ll be all right, Hawke. I’m not really gone.”

“I know,” she said softly. “Thanks, Cole.”

“Yes, thank you for your assistance,” Fenris said. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he held out his hand to shake.

Cole studied Fenris’s hand quizzically, then tentatively reached out and shook his hand. Fenris nodded, then released Cole’s hand. “We will not forget you,” he said.

Cole smiled. “Thank you,” he said. A blink of an eye later, he was gone.

Hawke sniffled. Fenris gently squeezed her waist, and she smiled brightly and waved her hand. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said hurriedly. “I’m not going to blubber too much, I swear. We knew everyone was going to go their own way eventually. Besides, we’re leaving too. And it’s not like we won’t all stay in touch.” She took his hand as they made their way toward their suite. “I mean, we’ll have to stay in touch anyway for–”

Fenris cleared his throat and kept his eyes ahead. There was no telling who was listening in the blasted hallways here. 

Hawke pulled a little face and fell silent. They walked the rest of the way to their suite in silence, and it wasn’t until they were inside with the doors locked that Hawke spoke. “Sorry,” she said. “It’ll take me a while to get used to the ‘no blurting out every thought in your head because you’re a spy’ thing.” She crouched beside an eagerly panting Toby and scratched his jowls.

“It will take time for both of us,” Fenris assured her. “Leliana knows that.” He patted Toby’s head briefly before shucking his formal coat.

Hawke grinned at him. “I’m excited to learn her secret cipher, though. Can I practice it by writing you dirty letters?”

Fenris smirked at her. “Dirty letters in Leliana’s secret cipher? That is hardly romantic.”

She giggled as she rose to her feet. “You like the idea. Admit it.”

He shrugged and hung his coat in the armoire. “Perhaps I’ll write dirty cipher letters for you,” he said casually.

She threw her head back and laughed. “Maker’s balls, yes! Please do! I like that idea even better.” She gave Toby’s head one last pat, then wafted into the bathroom and began filling the ornate bathtub. 

She started stripping off her clothes, and Fenris began stripping too. By the time he was padding over to the tub, Hawke was already sinking into the water with a sigh. “This is fucking bliss,” she announced. She playfully flicked some water at him. “Come on in, the water’s warm.”

He eyed the glowing runes inscribed on the inner surfaces of the tub. This was an Orlesian extravagance that he could actually appreciate. He stepped into the tub, then sighed in relief: the water was perfectly hot just as Hawke had said, and Fenris happily settled himself on the opposite side of the tub from her. 

He scooped some water in his hands and splashed his face, then briefly dunked his head beneath the water. When he rose to the surface and opened his eyes, it was to find Hawke smiling goofily at him. 

Her eyes were on his forehead. He instinctively reached up to wipe his face, then remembered why she was staring: the trio of lyrium marks on his forehead were gone. 

He lowered his hand and raised an eyebrow. “I really look that strange to you?”

She shook her head slightly. She was still smiling, and her eyes were roaming from his chin down to his neck now. “In the best way,” she assured him. “It’s going to be strange for a while. You’ll need to cut me some slack and let me stare.”

He huffed in amusement. “Fair enough,” he said. He picked up the loofah on the side of the tub and began to rub his arms – his plain, unmarred, tawny-skinned arms. 

He wiped his shoulder down to his elbow and then his forearm, and all the while he kept staring at his own skin. On the inside of his arm, a handspan below his wrist, he had a long fine scar from a nasty scrap during his flight from Minrathous. His hands bore a number of faint dark lines from the days when he was learning to climb trees and fight with daggers in Seheron, and the veins in his forearms stood out in sharp relief when he closed his fists.  

He gazed happily at the scars and veins: mundane marks of the type that anyone could have. The type that nobody would usually think about, and the type that Fenris had never really paid attention to before because the lyrium tattoos were in the way. 

Hawke shifted toward him with a soft whisper of moving water. “Let me do that,” she said. 

She was reaching for the loofah. Fenris gave it to her, and she settled herself over his lap. She squeezed the extra water from the loofah, then began soaping it up.

He let his hands sink into the water to rest on her thighs, and she smiled coyly at him. “I’ll need one of those hands, please,” she said. 

He lifted his left hand from the water, and Hawke lathered his hand with the loofah. She carefully washed the back of his hand, then his wrist, then smoothed the soapy loofah along his forearm to his elbow and his shoulder, and all the while her eyes were moving attentively over his unmarked skin. 

She sluiced some water over his skin to rinse the soap away, then began carefully washing his right arm. “So I had an idea. I think you and I should write a book.” 

“A book?” he said. “About what?”

“About the things we know,” she said. “Stuff we learned from the eluvians and from, uh… from Solas.” She made a little face, then began gently lathering his neck with her soapy hands. 

He gave her a skeptical look. “You want to write a book about the things he said?”

“Not just him,” she said quickly. “The spirit in the Vir Dirthara, too. And the things we saw, what those memory-books were like, meeting Mythal and all the shit she said…” She rinsed his neck. “And not just that, but the deep roads too. The Titan’s heart, the thaig where we found the red lyrium idol with Varric, all that.”

Fenris frowned slightly. “Just so I understand, this isn’t a fictional account you’re talking about.”

She let out a little laugh. “No no, that’s Varric’s purview.  I’m talking about a non-fiction sort of thing. Like a… a treatise or something.”

He raised his eyebrows. “A treatise? Like an academic text?”

“Exactly!” she said. “We’ve seen a lot of insane shit, Fenris. We’ve been through eluvians and into the Fade and we’ve met two elven gods and been to the deep roads how many times now?”

“This is true,” he said slowly. 

She shrugged and gently scrubbed his chest. “I just thought – I mean, if we’re…” She lowered her voice. “If we’re going to be Leliana’s intelligence agents, this is the intelligence we have. We spent the most time with Solas during the year that he was with us–”

“You especially,” Fenris pointed out. Then he regretted it when her smile faltered slightly.

“Exactly,” she said. “I just… I thought something good could come of it if we, you know, document it.”

He tilted his head and studied her thoughtfully. “Knowledge is power,” he mused.

She gave him a quizzical look, so he explained. “If we document this – all the things we’ve seen and heard…  if we publish it and share it with those we trust, those we know who won’t abuse it…” 

Hawke finished his thought. “You’ll be sharing the power with other people.” She smirked at him. “Solas would not approve.”

“Good,” Fenris said flatly. “He can operate as he sees fit, and we will do the same.”

Hawke smiled slowly. “Does that mean you’ll write a book with me?”

“It is a fine idea,” he said. “My answer is yes. I will write a book with you.”

She beamed at him, then playfully pinched his chin. “If you have time in between writing me those dirty cipher letters, that is.”

He smirked. “Of course.” 

She planted a happy little kiss on his lips before tapping his collarbone. “Come on, handsome, turn around now so I can wash your back.”

He took her hand in his. “Hawke,” he said.

She tilted her head, and he gently squeezed her hand. “You are not to blame for Solas’s betrayal,” he said quietly.

She dropped his gaze and picked up the soap. “No, you’re – it’s okay, you were right. I was too trusting. He was hiding all that shit from us the whole time, and I just–”

He tipped her chin up and looked her in the eye. “You are not to blame,” he said firmly. “You could not have known this. No one could have guessed at this.”

“But you do think I’m too trusting,” she said pointedly. 

He sighed and cradled her neck in his palm. “You see the best in people,” he said softly. “Even those who don’t deserve the boon of a second chance. It is the most infuriating and enthralling thing about you.”

She laughed lightly. “I think that’s a compliment, but I can’t be sure.”

“Take it as a compliment,” he said seriously. “This life would be bleak and cynical without you.”

Her face softened with surprise before lighting into a brilliant smile. She cupped his face in her hands. “You smooth talker,” she murmured. 

“Mm,” he agreed lazily. He lifted his chin, and she followed his wordless suggestion and kissed him. 

Fenris closed his eyes and relaxed into her kiss. Her lips were soft and plump, and her hands were sliding slowly down his chest. When her fingers trailed over his abs, his cock stirred beneath the water. 

He gently licked Hawke’s lower lip. Her breath caught as a tiny gasp, and the sound lit a thrill beneath his unmarked skin. She peeled her lips away from his, then kissed his chin and the edge of his jaw, and Fenris tilted his head back with a sigh. Her palms were splayed on his abs now and her lips were travelling along the line of his throat, and when she licked the line of his collarbone, he released a slow and luxurious breath. 

She gently nipped the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and a shiver of pleasure rippled down the back of his neck. He lifted his hips entreatingly, and Hawke settled herself more firmly on his  lap.

She tilted her hips low and pressed against him, rolling her hips in a slow and gentle grind over his cock, and his breath hitched at the teasing touch. The water was hot and soothing, but the tantalizing press of her body and the press of her fingers on his skin made him want a different sort of soothing heat altogether. 

She nipped his shoulder again, then gave his earlobe a little tug with her lips. “Do you want to get out now?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he breathed.

She smiled against his cheek, then shifted off of his body and rose to her feet, and Fenris greedily studied the curves of her bottom and the dip at the base of her spine as she stepped out of the tub. He exited the tub as well and roughly rubbed his wet hair with a towel, but before he could start drying his skin, Hawke reached out and took his hand. 

“Let me do it,” she said. 

He gave her a chiding look, but allowed her to take the towel from his hand. “You are aware that I’m capable of bathing and drying myself?” he said.

She wrinkled her nose playfully, then started dabbing his chest with the towel. “Indulge me. This gives me a good excuse to stare at you while pretending to be helpful.”

He shook his head in amusement. “You are shameless.”

“I really am!” she said brightly. “Thank you for noticing.” She moved around behind him and began smoothing the towel over his back. 

She followed the path of the towel with her fingers, tracing gentle lines over the span of his skin as she patted him dry, and by the time her hands were smoothing over his hips and buttocks, his eyes were closed and his breathing was deep and slow: all the better to savour the feel of her hands on his skin – his clean, unmarred, unmarked skin. 

Hawke pressed her lips between his shoulder blades in a gentle kiss. She slowly moved around in front of him, leaving a trail of kisses from his shoulder blade to his arm and finally his chest, and Fenris simply breathed and focused on the feeling of her lips on his chest and her hands on his hips. When her hands slid down his thighs, he shuddered and opened his eyes. 

Hawke was on her knees in front of him. She looked up to meet his gaze, and a rush of want pulsed through his chest and down to his cock. 

A grin lifted her lips – her raspberry-red lips that were mere inches from his eager cock. “You’re not too tired for this, are you?” she asked.

“No,” he said immediately. “No, I – no. You can – I want this.”

She smiled more widely, then leaned forward on her knees and brushed her cheek against his shaft. 

He jerked his hips, and Hawke let out a throaty little laugh. “Hold on, handsome. I have to dry you off first,” she purred. She began dabbing his thighs and calves with the towel, but her other hand was the one that was stealing all of Fenris’s attention: it was curving around the back of his other thigh, then along his inner thigh to graze his balls, and he shifted his hips restlessly at the teasing touch. 

She suddenly licked the tip of his cock, and he gasped. “Vixen,” he accused breathlessly. 

She chuckled again. “Hardly. I’m just doing my job, drying you off, making sure you won’t catch cold…”

He raised an eyebrow. “Catch cold from my legs being damp?”

“That’s right,” she said. Her tone was cheeky, but her eyes were moving slowly over his chest and his abs again as though to take in every inch of his unmarked skin. When her eyes returned to his face, he was surprised to find them shining with tears. 

He cradled her chin in one hand. “What’s the matter?”

She smiled and shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Absolutely nothing. That’s why I…” She let out a little laugh and wiped her eyes. “I’m just happy,” she said. Then she leaned forward and took his cock in her mouth. 

He gasped at the sudden heat of her mouth. She angled her head and took him deeper, and he gasped again and braced his palms behind him on the bathtub. His cock was sliding past her palate toward her throat, and her hands were firm on his hips and her skin was bare, and her nipples were dusky buds dappled with drops of water that were begging for his tongue… 

She suckled his cock, strong slick pulls of her lips and throat and tongue, and Fenris shuddered at the sheer unmitigated pleasure of it. Hawke was eager and voracious, taking his length with hungry pulls and palming his balls with the perfect gentle grip, and it wasn’t long before the pleasure was rushing through his abdomen and his cock, roiling and buzzing between his legs with an eagerness that her lips were pulling forth–

His climax burst in a sudden rush, and he shuddered and cried out. “Hawke,” he gasped. 

She gripped his thighs and suckled him firmly, and he shuddered again as she pulled every drop of pleasure from his pulsing cock. When she finally released him, he was leaning bonelessly against the bathtub for support, and she was smiling smugly. 

“Was that all right?” she asked. 

He exhaled heavily and lifted her chin. “You know it was,” he rasped. “Go lie on the bed.” 

She laughed as she rose to her feet. “Nice try, serrah, but I’m in charge today.” She playfully pinched his chin. “You go lie down on the bed.” 

He tossed her a skeptical look as he approached the bed. “I thought you enjoyed my bossy tone.”

“Oh, I do,” she said with relish. “But today I want to stare at my handsome husband.”

He huffed in exasperation and rubbed a hand through his hair. “Someday you will tire of flattering me.”

“Not a chance,” she said cheerfully. “But this isn’t flattery. Come on, lie down.” She pushed gently on his shoulders.

He sighed, but shuffled back on the bed and stretched out with one arm tucked behind his head. “There. Are you satisfied?” he drawled.

She shot him a quick grin. “I will be,” she said lasciviously. She kneeled beside his hip and ran her palm over his knee.

Her touch was unhurried and exploratory now, sliding carefully along his thigh and up to his hip, and Fenris watched curiously as her cheeky expression melted into a gentle sort of contentment. Her eyes roved carefully over his chest and his collarbones and up to his chin, and when her eyes finally found his face, they were shining again. 

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” she said.

He scoffed, and she laughed and poked his hip. “I know, I know, I’m being hormonal and dramatic, but I mean it. You – you’ve always been the most gorgeous man I’ve ever laid eyes on. But now, you’re…” She took a deep breath, and her eyes travelled over the blank tawny canvas of his skin. 

She met his gaze once more. “You know I loved your tattoos in a way. Not – not the tattoos themselves, but–” 

“I know, Hawke,” he said softly. “I know what you mean.”

She nodded. “I loved them for bringing you to Kirkwall. They… we wouldn’t know each other without your tattoos.” She smiled slowly. “But seeing you without them… This is so much better. This is what you wanted.” She skimmed her knuckles over his abdomen. “This was your choice.”

“Yes,” he whispered. 

Her smile widened. She lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles, then turned his hand over and kissed the inside of his wrist. 

He skimmed her cheek with his fingers. “Come closer,” he murmured. “Lie on top of me.”

She beamed at him. “Ooh, don’t mind if I do,” she said, and she straddled his hips. 

Fenris reached up and slid his fingers around the nape of her neck, then gently pulled her down until she was close enough to kiss. “You were my choice,” he told her softly. “Being with you – a chance for more time with you, to live the life I always wanted with you: that was my choice.” He stroked her throat with his thumb. “Losing the tattoos was a happy accident. The real choice I made was you, Hawke. I want you to know that.”

She laughed, and the sound was a little shaky. “I know,” she murmured. “And I want you to know you’re my choice too.”

“I know,” he whispered. And he did. If there was anything Fenris had ever been sure of, anything he’d ever known with unshakeable certainty over the last ten years, it was that he was the one Rynne Hawke had chosen and would continue to choose, forever and a day. 

He lifted his chin and kissed her. She smelled of the soap from their bath, and the skin of her arms and back was soft and supple beneath his exploring hands. He stroked her neck and her collarbone as she tangled her tongue smoothly with his, and when her hips started shifting restlessly over his cock, he leaned away from her kiss and squeezed her hip.

“Move up,” he murmured.

She blinked at him, and he slid his hand over her bottom and squeezed. “I want to taste you,” he said. 

She exhaled sharply and nodded, and a moment later she was shifting higher on his body to straddle his face. She braced her palms on the padded Orlesian headboard, and Fenris greedily studied her body as she settled herself over him: her perfect petite breasts and her perfect pert nipples, the planes of her belly and the dampness of her curls and the perfect primal scent of her desire as she lowered herself over his lips… 

He lifted his chin and graced her with a hungry open-mouthed kiss. 

Hawke gasped and arched, pressing herself closer to his mouth, and his cock jerked eagerly at the perfect sound. He wrapped his hands around her thighs to guide her as she rode his face. She was wet and fragrant and warm, and her clit was a perfect swollen bud, and every time he pressed it with his tongue, the most enticing little mewl of pleasure left her throat. The rhythm of her hips was a slow circular grind that matched the stroking swirl of his tongue, and it wasn’t long before Fenris was lost in the rhythm of her body: was Hawke driving herself higher with the rolling of her hips, or was he pushing her to her peak with the swirling of his tongue? He couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter, because all that mattered was Hawke’s pleasure. It was evident in the tension in her belly and her thighs beneath his hands, and it was evident in the desperate sounds she was making and the pulsing of her clit against his tongue, and when she pounded the headboard and cried out, he was so preoccupied with the taste and the scent and the smooth and silky feel of her pussy on his lips that he didn’t want to stop. 

She arched her spine and moaned and continued to ride his face, her movements jerky now in the throes of her pleasure, and Fenris kept feasting on the slickness of her flesh until she lifted herself away from his mouth. 

“Fuck,” she whimpered. She shakily slid off of his body and collapsed onto her back, and Fenris rolled onto his side and admired the rise and fall of her chest as she tried to catch her breath.

He smoothed his palm over her breast, and she gasped and arched her back like a bow. “Please,” she whined. “Please, Fenris, I–” She suddenly broke off with a little cry: Fenris was suckling her nipple now while thumbing the peak of her other breast, and her desperate gasps of pleasure were just as pleasing to his ear as the sound of her actual pleas. 

He pressed her nipple between his teeth, and she jerked and sank her fingers into his hair. “Please,” she begged. “I need you, I need you to fuck me–”

Fenris clasped her neck and kissed her, and a moment later he was stretched over her and pressing his palms to hers while he pumped his cock through the slickness of her folds.

He breathed hard as he slid through her smooth and creamy heat. She was slick and wet and waiting, and Fenris was sharing in that slickness with every slow pump of his hips, spreading her heat along the length of his shaft and sharing in her lust – sharing in this moment of increasingly desperate desire, just as he had shared every other important moment of his life with her… 

She mewled and twisted beneath him, and her nails dug into his knuckles. “Please,” she begged. “Fenris, please fuck me!”

He adjusted his hips and entered her in a smooth, hard thrust.

She cried out and curled her hips toward him, and he moaned against her throat. “I love you,” he breathed.

She gasped and jerked her hips, and he thrust into her once more. Soon they were rolling together in a smooth and driving rhythm, hips rising and falling together in time with their gasping breaths, and Fenris squeezed his eyes shut as her heat and her tightness and her treasured little moans all conspired to pull his pleasure to the fore. 

He dipped his head low and suckled her nipple, and she arched and jolted. “Yes!” she wailed. “Yes, yes, oh fuck, please...”

He gasped against the silken curve of her breast. The sound of her voice – fasta vass, her cries, her obvious pleasure, the obviousness of how badly she wanted him right now – no, not just now, but how badly she had always wanted him. How badly she continued to want him, despite the familiarity of the years that had passed and the arguments they always had and the exhausting battles they’d fought…

A rush of heat and longing and gratitude swelled in his chest and in his throat, and he gritted his teeth and fucked her harder. 

“Yes!” she screamed. “Fenris, please, I – fuck, I love you so much–”

His climax was sudden and hard, a surge of pleasure that forced a bursting of lights behind his closed eyelids and a sob of pleasure from his throat, and he kissed her hard and fucked her harder still as the ecstasy shivered through his fingertips and his calves down to his toes. 

When his pleasure finally ebbed away, leaving him boneless once more, he released Hawke’s hands and settled his head cozily on her chest. She instantly wrapped her arms around him and stroked his sweat-dampened skin, and he smiled lazily against her chest. 

She chuckled softly and stroked his hair. “Someone’s happy.”

He hummed in agreement. “Someone certainly is.”

“I’m talking about the turnip,” Hawke said. “It’s being nicely squished between mum and dad.” 

Fenris sat up in alarm. “Am I – kaffas, I’m crushing the baby? I can move–”

She burst out laughing and pulled him back down. “I’m teasing, I’m teasing! You’re fine. We’ll happily be crushed by you. It’ll make for an excellent story: ‘Former Inquisitor’s wife and turnip child smushed in post-coital cuddle–’”

Fenris rolled over so she was on top of him, then pinched her waist until she squealed with laughter. “You are an idiot,” he said affectionately. 

She grinned and smoothed her hands over his collarbones. “Only for you, Fenris,” she giggled. “Only for you.” She shuffled lower on his body and tucked her head under his chin. 

He smirked and closed his eyes. As was always the case, he knew that this peace wouldn’t last; Solas was a far greater threat than Corypheus had ever been, and now that the Inquisition was disbanded, they no longer had access to a network of contacts that spanned the entire south of Thedas. 

Not openly, at least, he thought. The Inquisition might be officially disbanded and its members might disperse, but its people had a new goal now. Leliana would spearhead the efforts against Solas with Josephine’s assistance, and Dorian would search quietly for support in Tevinter with Maevaris by his side. Bull’s Ben-Hassrath background would be a boon for collecting further information, and Varric had no small number of spies and underground contacts of his own. Cole would return to the Fade, and Fenris could only hope compassion would do the same good in the Fade as it had done on this side of the Veil. Sera and the Red Jennies would always be there to fight against those who would punch down, and when the day finally came that they would need a sword on their side, Rainier, Cullen, and Cassandra would be there.

This idyllic feeling of peace wouldn’t last. But for the first time in years, Fenris felt at peace. He was no longer the Inquisitor, and Hawke was no longer the Champion. They were going to find a house on the beach in Rivain, and they were going to have a child. They would work against the Dread Wolf in a quiet and careful way, and they would write a book about everything they knew so that they could share the power of that knowledge too. 

But in the meantime, they would live in peace. For the first time since he and Hawke had known each other, they would have the quiet and peaceful life they had always wanted. 

For the first time in years, Fenris felt truly free. 

[myhauntedsalem]

Horror Movies Based on True Events

Open Water (2003)

When a couple goes scuba diving in Open Water, their boat accidentally leaves them behind in shark-infested water. It’s based on something that really happened to American tourists Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who were left behind by a diving company off the Great Barrier Reef. By the time the mistake was realized two days later, it was too late, and they were never seen again. A shark attack seems not to have been the cause of death, however, as the couple’s dive jackets were eventually found. The jackets weren’t damaged, which suggested that the Lonergans likely took them off, “delirious from dehydration,” and drowned.

Borderland (2007)

When three friends head to a Mexican border town to have some fun in this movie, they get mixed up with a cult specializing in human sacrifice. The concept loosely stems from the life of Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, a drug lord and cult leader who was responsible for the death of American student Mark Kilroy.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

The iconic baddie Freddy Krueger kills teenagers via their dreams in Wes Craven’s franchise-launching film. Craven told Vulture that the idea stemmed from an article he read in The Los Angeles Times about a family of Cambodian refugees with a young son who reported awful nightmares. “He told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him, so he tried to stay awake for days at a time,” said Craven. “When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night. By the time they got to him, he was dead. He died in the middle of a nightmare. Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was denying. That became the central line of Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Black Water (2007)

Set in the swamps of Australia, this movie sees a group of fishers attacked by a humongous crocodile. It was inspired by an actual crocodile attack in the Australian outback in 2003 that killed a man named Brett Mann in an area that his friends said they’d “never, ever” seen a crocodile before.

Dead Ringers (1988)

In David Cronenberg’s movie, Jeremy Irons plays twin gynecologists who do messed up things with patients and ultimately die together in the end. Cronenberg adapted the movie from Bari Wood and Jack Geasland’s novel Twins, which was inspired by the lives of actual twin gynecologists Stewart and Cyril Marcus. TheNew York Times noted that the Marcuses enjoyed “trading places to fool their patients” and that they ultimately “retreat[ed] into heavy drug use and utter isolation.”

Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

The movie follows a cop and a priest who team up to take on the supernatural. It’s based on self-proclaimed “demonologist” Ralph Sarchie’s memoir Beware the Night, in which he tells supposedly true stories, such as the time he found himself “in the presence of one of hell’s most dangerous devils” possessing a woman.

Poltergeist (1982)

In Poltergeist, a family’s home is invaded by ghosts that abduct one of the daughters. The film was inspiredby unexplained events, such as loud popping noises and moved objects, that occurred in 1958 at the Hermanns’ home in Seaford, New York.

Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock’s essential film traces a woman who embezzles money from her employer and runs off to a mysterious hotel where she is (58-year-old spoiler alert) murdered by the man running it, Norman Bates. Bates is said to have been based on Ed Gein, a Wisconsin man who was convicted for one murder in the 1950s, but suspected for others. He also was a grave robber, and authorities found many disturbing results of that in his home, including bowls crafted from human skulls and a lampshade made from the skin of someone’s face.

Scream (1996)

The classic ‘90s slasher flick uses dark humor to tell the story of a group of teens and a mystery man named Ghostface who wants to murder them. But the real story ain’t funny. The movie was inspired by the Gainesville Ripper, real name Danny Rolling, who killed five Florida students by knife over a span of three days in August 1990.

The Conjuring (2013)

The movie stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as ghost hunters helping out a family in a haunted 18th-century farmhouse. The hunters, Ed and Lorraine Warren, are real people, as is the Perron family that they assist. Lorraine was a consultant on the movie and insists that many of the supernatural horrors really happened, and one of the daughters who is depicted in the film, Andrea Perron, says the same. She recalled an angry spirit named Bathsheba to USA Today:“Whoever the spirit was, she perceived herself to be mistress of the house and she resented the competition my mother posed for that position.”

Annabelle (2014)

The creepy porcelain doll from The Conjuring gets her terror on in this spin-off of The Conjuring. The ghost-hunting Warrens have claimed that there was a real Raggedy Ann doll that moved by itself and wrote creepy-ass notes saying things like, “Help us.” The woman who owned it contacted a medium, who claimed that it was possessed by a seven-year-old girl named Annabelle who had died there.

The Disappointments Room (2016)

Kate Beckinsale stars in the movie as an architect who moves to a new home with a mysterious room in the attic that she eventually learns was previously used as a room where rich people would cast off disabled children. It was reportedly inspired by a Rhode Island woman who discovered a similar room in her house that she says was built by a 19th century judge to lock away his disabled daughter.

The Exorcist (1973)

Two priests attempt to remove a demon from a young girl in this box office smash. The movie was based on a 1949 Washington Post article with the headline “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip.” Director William Friedkin spoke about the article to Time Out London: “Maybe one day they’ll discover the cause of what happened to that young man, but back then, it was only curable by an exorcism. His family weren’t even Catholics, they were Lutheran. They started with doctors and then psychiatrists and then psychologists and then they went to their minister who couldn’t help them. And they wound up with the Catholic church. The Washington Post article says that the boy was possessed and exorcised. That’s pretty out on a limb for a national newspaper to put on its front page… You’re not going to see that on the front page of an intelligent newspaper unless there’s something there.

The Girl Next Door (2007)

The movie follows the abuse of a teenage girl at the hands of her aunt, and it was inspired by the murder of Sylvia Likens in 1965. The 16-year-old girl was abused by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski, Baniszewski’s children, and other neighborhood children, as entertainment. They ultimately killed her, with the cause of death determined as “brain swelling, internal hemorrhaging of the brain, and shock induced by Sylvia’s extensive skin damage,”

The Possession (2012)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick star in the movie as a couple with a young daughter who becomes fascinated with an antique wooden box found at a yard sale. Of course, the box turns out to be home to a spirit. The flick’s “true story” basis came from an eBay listing for “a haunted Jewish wine cabinet box” containing oddities such as two locks of hair, one candlestick, and an evil spirit that caused supernatural activity. The box sold for $280 and gained attention when a Jewish newspaper ran an article about its so-called powers.

The Rite (2011)

In The Rite, a mortician enrolls in seminary and eventually takes an exorcism class in Rome, where demonic encounters ensue. The movie was based on the life of a real exorcist, Father Gary Thomas, whose work was the focus of journalist Matt Baglio’s book The Rite: The Making of an Exorcist. A Roman Catholic priest, Thomas was one of 14 Vatican-certified exorcists working in America in 2011. He served as an advisor on the film and told The Los Angeles Times that in the previous four years he had exorcised five people.

The Sacrament (2013)

In the movie, a man travels to find his sister who joined a remote religious commune, where, yep, bad things happen. It was inspired by the 1978 Jonestown massacre, in which cult leader Jim Jones led 909 of his followers to partake in a “murder-suicide ceremony” using cyanide poisoning.

The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece is about a man who is driven to insanity by supernatural forces while staying at a remote hotel in the Rockies. The movie Derives from Stephen King’s book of the same name, which was inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, where plenty of guests have reported seeing ghosts. The Stanley wasn’t actually used in the movie, however, because Kubrick didn’t think it looked scary enough.

The Silence of the Lambs(1991)

The Oscar-winning film tells the story of an FBI cadet who enlists the help of a cannibal/serial killer to pin down another serial killer, Buffalo Bill, who skins the bodies of his victims. FBI special agent John Douglas, who consulted on the film, has explained that Bill was inspired in part by the serial killer Ted Bundy, who like Bill, wore a fake cast. Ed Gein is also believed to be an inspiration, what with the whole skinning thing. And per Rolling Stone, 1980s killer Gary Heidnik was a reference for how Buffalo Bill kept victims in a basement pit.

The Strangers (2008)

Three killers in masks terrorize the suburban home of a couple (played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) in this invasion thriller. Writer-director Bryan Bertino has said the film was inspired by something that happened to him in childhood. “As a kid, I lived in a house on a street in the middle of nowhere. One night, while our parents were out, somebody knocked on the front door and my little sister answered it,” he said. “At the door were some people asking for somebody that didn’t live there. We later found out that these people were knocking on doors in the area and, if no one was home, breaking into the houses.”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 & 2003)

Ed Gein also reportedly inspired elements of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its remake. The movies are about groups of friends who come into contact with the murderous cannibal Leatherface. The original film memorably features a room filled with furniture created from human bones, a nod to Gein’s home.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976 & 2014)

The original film follows a Texas Ranger as he tracks down a serial killer threatening a small town, and the 2014 sequel of the same name essentially revives the same plot. Both are based on the Texarkana Moonlight Murders of 1946, when a “Phantom Killer” took out five people over ten weeks. The case remains unsolved

Veronica (2018)

The recent Netflix release follows a 15-year-old girl who uses a Ouija board and accidentally connects with a demon that terrorizes her and her family. The movie’s based on a real police report from a Madrid neighborhood. As the story goes, a girl performed a séance at school and then “experienced months of seizures and hallucinations, particularly of shadows and presences surrounding her,” according to NewsWeek. The police report came a year after the girl’s death when three officers and the Chief Inspect of the National Police reported several unnatural occurrences at her family’s home that they called “a situation of mystery and rarity.”

[theharellan]

ME SEEING THAT ONE THREAD WITH BLACKWALL: REAL FUCKING RICH COMING FROM YOU SOLAS. REAL FUCKING RICH

;))))

solas definitely sees the irony dw, although like. to mildly defend solas here, his terrible mistakes have never been self-motivated. like it’s telling of his character that the most selfish thing he’s done lately is fall in love. the guilt that drives him is of a completely different nature than blackwall’s, owed to a cause and a people rather than something done out of greed and cowardice. he outlines the differences between them best himself (emphasis mine):

Solas: There is little to say. I assumed we were alike. We’d seen war, knew its terrible costs, but understood that it was necessary. But there was nothing necessary in what you did. You did not survive death and destruction. You sowed them. To feed your own desires.

in blackwall’s crime he sees the acts of people he fought against in elvhenan. and rather than accept punishment, he ran, and his soldiers paid the price. betraying one’s own people is a really big deal for solas, who at this point in canon seems to desperately want to stop what he’s doing, but can’t. why? well, probably several reasons, although i think one is certainly that stopping would be a betrayal of them. that blackwall left them to save his own skin only compounds upon his anger that the initial crime was the killing of innocents for coin.

he might also be a liar, but he has a right to be angry. in a longer thread those conflicting feelings could prob be better explored, although i do enjoy banter. in that last response in particular he’s actually paying him a compliment, and agreeing with the faith the inquisitor put in blackwall in a roundabout way.he also has a decent perspective of how to use guilt as a self-motivator without allowing it to overwhelm, seeing as his own hasn’t stopped him yet. also, he does also apologise, once his own anger as ebbed. both because i think he reflects upon his own situation more and he genuinely thinks blackwall thom rainier deserves some forgiveness, there is no lie nor greed in the man who stands before him.

[noraryker]

BASICS

Name: Nora Ann Ryker

Gender & pronouns: Cis-Female, She/Her

Species: Human

Face: Amy Adams

Age: 39, October 29, 1980

PERSONALITY

Moral Alignment: True Neutral

Zodiac: Scorpio

Personality Traits:

Positive: Brave, Loyal, Determined, Passionate, Self-Reliant

Negative: Secretive, Judgmental, Cynical, Unforgiving, Obsessive

TV Tropes: Dark and Troubled Past, The Unfavorite, Amateur Sleuth,  Bully Hunter, The "I Love You" Stigma, Always Save The Girl (family edition)

HISTORY - TW: underage drinking, underage sex, drug use, alcohol poisoning, self-destructive behavior, 

There’s not a lot of things you could consider remarkable about Nora Ryker. Born the middle child in an upper-middle class family in Washington, she grew up comfortable - never wanting for food or clothing, but nonetheless dissatisfied. The middle child syndrome was strong in this one, as Nora often found herself fading into the background when compared to her older brother and younger sister. She received decent enough grades in the beginning, but not enough to compare with her younger sister's constant advanced classes. She might have placed silver at her district's cross-country running meets - but who would sit through that when her brother was going to state as star quarterback? Her parents loved her, they did, but between three kids and two full time jobs? They just didn't have time for the middle's tantrums. After a few years of struggling to make herself seen, Nora decided that if her parents weren't going to give her attention -  she would find it elsewhere.

Nora was twelve when a sophomore gave her her first taste of beer at a joint middle-high school track meet; and despite the way it tasted, she liked the impressed looks on her classmates’ faces. She learned early that the more daring you were, the more attention others would give you - and Nora couldn't get enough. Choked down gulps of beer graduated into quick shots of vodka, with Nora clenching her eyes to get past the burn in her throat. Liquor turned to weed when she hit eighth grade, and losing her virginity followed shortly after. She barely remembered the act itself. but she remembered the greedy, almost desperate way that he touched her. For that brief (brief) moment, she was the most important thing in the world to someone, and she loved it. As her siblings continued to try and earn their parents love and approval, Nora made it her mission to earn their disapproval. Boy, did she earn it.

If it was offered, Nora tried it. Liquor, drugs, sex - even harmless petty crimes, she did it all. Had anyone asked what prompted this change, she wasn’t necessarily sure that she could explain. All Nora knew was that the older she got, the more that void in her chest became harder to fill. By the time her parents noticed the changes in their daughter, it was too late. She started to push it overboard, sleeping with anyone (even her sister's boyfriend), and injecting anything into her body. She even wound up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning a few times. Her parents didn't handle their middle daughter the best either; the sounds of their past screaming matches still coming to mind every now and again. Once desperate for their attention, Nora now felt suffocated by them now. The more they pushed, the more she acted out, and the fights didn't end when Nora left for college either. All it did was turn into constant texts and phone calls.

Forestry was supposed to be a throwaway major, something to get her degree in so her parents would stop threatening to cut her off. Her adviser suggested it because she had grown up camping in the mountains, and Nora’s lack of interest was starting to wear on her. What no one expected was that Nora would fall in love with her major. The core classes were a boring joke, but the trips out into the wilderness actually eased some of the hollowness in her chest. She became less concerned with trying to earn love, and more concerned with the preservation and maintenance of parks. Nora couldn't seem to graduate fast enough -  with her overwhelming enthusiasm landing her an internship and then an eventual job with Mount Rainier's Park Service. She lost herself in those tall trees, going in one person and coming at another.

Truth be told, Nora doubts her life would have changed at all if it weren't for her niece showing up one day at her doorstep. Barely 16, Addison was all hard edges and secrets - filled with a type of emptiness that Nora recognized immediately. Of course, she was a little surprised by the arrival - Nora might have settled things with her sister over some past issues and visited every once in a while, but she'd never felt particularly close to her niece. Not initially. Still, she gave her a place to sleep, and a free meal whenever she wanted - without even batting an eye. Nora's sister seemed more than happy to leave her problem child with her problem sister.

With Addison, Nora understood that it wasn’t attention she was seeking but understanding. It’s what Nora had wanted in the end, after all. She never asked any prying questions, never stormed into Addison’s room to search for drugs, and most importantly - she didn’t demand answers to why Addison felt the way she did. Nora knew that it was a hard question. Truth be told, it was also nice having someone there to come home to as well. She was no longer the Nora fighting to find herself in other people, but every once in a while she’d still feel the barest traces of loneliness. She might not have sought to soothe herself with other people anymore, but it’d be a lie if she said having Addison around didn’t help her as well. The two of them formed an easy, silent companionship. Nora didn’t try to lock Addison down when she made the decision to leave, but a quiet part of her heart went with her.

Nora hasn’t let herself cry once about Addison’s disappearance - refusing to give in to despair. She can feel it flickering at the corners of her mind, but what good will crying do? Addison’s parents could spend their days praying for a savior and begging for their “baby girl” to come back, but Nora wasn’t just going to sit around. Nora was always one to act, and right now is no different. Her rougher edges might have smoothed out with time, but there’s still a hellion under her skin... and her trip to Blackrock isn’t going to be a short one.

CONNECTIONS:

*Note, Royan cannot think of any in-depth ones right now, so she's going to keep it short and sweet and just word vomit in a stream of consciousness.  If you had plotted a connection with the previous Holly and would like to keep it, please hit me up! I am open for anything

Any original ideas! As stated above, I'm open for anything! Bring the pain! Bring the drama! 

Roommates - She needs a place to stay. Motels are expensive and she knows she's going to be here a while so would anyone like to sublet to Nora?  [OPEN]

Bully Hunter - Nora hates bullies. She may not be the warmest person in town but Nora came to the rescue of this person, stepping in when something was going wrong.   [OPEN]

Coworkers - Luckily for Nora, being a former ranger has its perks in Blackrock. I was looking to have her transfer to this department to keep her money flow going so any other rangers, game warden, interns would be welcome connections  [OPEN]

The Pack - This one is really open to anyone in the pack, esp folks that were close to Addison. Despite being far away, I like to think that Addison still kept in touch with her aunt. Nora's been her confidante for so long, so I want to say she would have known maybe one or two names?  [OPEN]

Horny on Main - I have yet to be horny on main with either character, so if someone wants a one-night stand/sexual tension with Nora, I love it. Sex has always been a big distraction for her, so why the fuck not? Personally, though, I don't see Nora sleeping with anyone under 29-30 with light exceptions depending on the FC because some FCs just look too young for me to feel comfortable pairing with someone Nora/Amy Adams' age.  [OPEN]

SUSPICION - This person just really causes all the warning bells in Nora's head to go off. They know more than they're telling her, she's certain, and she will get the truth from her even if it kills them her.  [OPEN]

Short Connections I will keep adding to:

Drinking buddy.

Confidant - knows what she's going through and sympathizes with.

[shadow-of-a-whisper]

The Sentinel (series) Ficlet, Rated: M

Naomi waited until her son's mug of chamomile tea was half empty by her estimate, and most of the tense lines around his eyes had smoothed out. Then she pounced. "Blair sweetie, what's going on with you? And don't tell me it's nothing. Even Jim has noticed, and we both know how... unobservant he can be sometimes." That was rich, coming from her, but Blair didn't point that out. She was right, Jim had been side-eyeing him with concern for days. The man wasn't as subtle as he liked to think he was. Still, Blair just shook his head. "It's not something anyone can help with. I just need to figure some stuff out by myself. You wouldn't get it." Naomi huffed and drew herself up to her full height. Damn, he should've seen that coming. He really was slipping. "Try me. Even if I can't help, I can still listen. You need to get this off your chest, it's obviously eating you alive." Blair ran his fingers roughly through his wild curls in frustration. "I'm in love with someone, okay? I love him, and he's straight. I'm a fucking idiot, is that what you wanted to hear?" Naomi's jaw dropped, but Blair didn't stop. Now that it had started, it was all pouring out. "You never wanted to be tied down to one person or one place, and I get that. You never met anyone you wanted to stay for, despite it all. Someone who made staying feel like it was a gift, not a sacrifice. Good for you. But that's not what I want for my own life. I want stability, and connection, and happily ever after. I want that more than anything. So it doesn't matter if he doesn't love me the same way I love him, that he can't love me that way. Just being by his side is enough. It has to be." Naomi was already shaking her head, clearly flabbergasted. "What does Jim have to say about all of this? Does he know this guy?" Blair stared at her blank-faced, and waited for the penny to drop. After a few moments of honest bewilderment, her eyes slowly grew to the size of saucers. "Oh!" "Yeah Mom, 'Oh'. That pretty much sums it up. I haven't even dated any guys since before I met him." He didn't tell her that he'd figured Jim might be able to smell them on him or something. Turns out, he would've been right about that. "At first I just didn't know how he'd take it. By the time I realised that he'd be fine with me being bi, it felt like it was too late to bring it up. It's not like that would've made any difference. He's never looked at me like that. I don't think the idea has ever even crossed his mind." On the other side of the loft's front door, groceries in one hand and some mail in the other, Jim remembered the occasional whispers he'd overheard at the station. Uniforms gossiping about Blair, speculating about whether or not he was gay. Using words far less kind than that. Jim had glared them down when he could. He didn't care what Blair might or might not be, that was his own business, but those bigots didn't get to talk about his partner like that. Naomi's voice was achingly soft when she spoke again. "Baby, why would you do this to yourself? It just isn't healthy." Blair's smile didn't reach his watery eyes. "He's worth it. He's worth everything, every bit of pain and sacrifice, and so much more. He's strong, kind, beautiful. I'm not blind, I know he's an imperfect asshole, but that works out because I'm one too. We all make mistakes. He's suffered so much pain and loss, and he still lights up the world just by being in it. Sometimes I look at him, and I just want to tell him, show him how I see him, because I know he struggles to see that in himself. I want to make love to him, because he deserves to be loved. I don't know how anybody can fail to love him. I want to give him reasons to smile, to keep glowing like he does. I want to light him up every day for the rest of our lives. I can't walk away from that Naomi, I just can't. I'm strong enough to live with this pain, I'm not strong enough to live without him." Naomi set her jaw in a hard line, as outside the door Jim slid boneless down the wall, parcels forgotten. God, he'd been so blind. Blair's distress, something he'd been catching flashes of here and there for the last several weeks, was so visceral right now that he could feel it buffeting him all the way from the hall. A hummingbird heartbeat, accompanied by the rasps of harsh and shallow breaths, fulled his ears. The hint of salt from the beginnings of a cold sweat, along with the indefinable scents of misery and slight panic, flooded his nose. The cacophony of sensations washed over him with all the force of a crashing wave. Blair's emotions had always been a bit... louder, for lack of a better word, than other people's. To him, at least. But they'd never been anything quite like this. Distantly, his ears ringing a little, he heard Naomi start talking again. "Blair, you deserve that kind of love too. If you walk away now, you can always hold onto your golden memories of Jim, and pretend that he might have loved you back someday. If you stay and wait until he finds out, until he throws you out of the loft again, it'll break your heart. I honestly don't know if you would ever recover from that. Please baby, let me help you pack your things." The door slammed open, bouncing off the wall with a reverberating thud, as Jim stalked over to where they were sitting. Without saying a word, face expressionless, Jim pulled Naomi up over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Before she could do more than let out a startled bleat, he'd dumped her on the threshold with the abandoned groceries and slammed the door in her face. Nobody was packing a goddamn thing. He slid the recently installed deadbolt home, just in case. He went back to the sofa where Blair had just made it to his feet, his face pale and drawn. Jim wanted to die for ever putting that look on his Guide's face. Naomi didn't have a Goddamn clue what she was talking about. Of course Jim was in love with Blair too, *of course* he was. Oh. Ooooooooooooooh. Huh. Well, that was a surprise. In hindsight, it really shouldn't be. Some Cop Of The Year he was. Actually, it probably explained a lot. It definitely explained the way his heart was pounding, his veins filled with adrenaline at the thought of Blair slipping through his fingers. Blair let out a small, uncertain "Jim...", eyes lowered in mortification. That wouldn't do at all. Jim lifted a gentle hand to Blair's jaw, his midday shadow barely perceptible even to his sensitive touch, and encouraged Blair's face to turn to him. He was shit with words, but he tried to let everything he was feeling shine from his eyes. Whatever he saw there, Blair slowly went slack and open with wonder. Jim's breath left him in a quiet rush, as he let go and followed his instincts the way he only ever did with Blair there to Guide him. His eyes fluttered nearly shut as he leaned close, brushing his nose to Blair's cheek as he breathed him in. His senses were flooded with Blair's unique scent, mingled with the faint hints of 'unscented' shampoo and soap, the mild herbal scent of chamomile tea and the honey Blair had sweetened it with. The combination was heady and soothing all at once, the headache Jim had been sporting for half the day fading almost instantly to a barely-there throb. That was nothing compared to the tightness he felt in his chest as his lips gave chase, Blair's rising timidly to meet them. He kept it soft and chaste to start with, a little hesitant himself, uncertain how he'd feel about this new thing he was trying. He needn't have worried. The taste of Blair, added to his enticing scent, and the somehow unexpected scratch of the hint of stubble, punched the remaining breath from him in a shocked groan. He pressed his mouth hard to Blair's as heat shot to his groin. Blair whimpered, his lips falling open in response without thought or hesitation, his body pressing as close as it could get from the knees up. As if that had broken the spell somehow, Blair jerked back. "Jim, man, you have to be sure. I can't do this if you're not totally sure." Jim rested his forehead against Blair's, not ready to lose that precious closeness yet. "I want this, Chief. I have no idea what I'm doing here, but I know that I want to be doing it with you." Blair trembled with temptation, but he had to be strong. He couldn't afford to be careless with this. "And when you wake up tomorrow, with me in your bed, both of us naked? When it hits you, what you've done, and what it could mean for you? What then, Jim? I need you to really think about this. Think about who we work with, about your family. If we do this, I'm not gonna be able to hide it anymore, I wouldn't want to either. You know what that'll mean? Forget discrimination and unreliable back-up, we'd be breaking fraternization rules. Simon would have no choice but to separate us. We can't ask him to risk his career and IA's wrath for us. How long do you think you'll last before you zone or spike at the wrong moment, and people get killed? Even if you somehow survived that, you'd never forgive yourself." It was true, every word of it, and it was a hell of a lot. It was obvious that Blair had been thinking about it for a long time, Jim had some serious catching up to do. But he knew one thing clearly. "We'll figure it out like we always do, together. If we can't stay on the force, then we'll both go. I know that you mostly only joined for my sake. Yeah, you enjoy the work, but you still hate the violence of it. You're never gonna be happy about pointing a gun at someone, even for me." Jim wasn't wrong about that, but it wasn't the whole story either. "Jim, I could've worked things out at Rainier if I'd really wanted to. Edwards didn't have a leg to stand on when she ran me off like that, and my friends there all knew it. Academia had been losing its shine for me for a long time by then, the politics of it all. It just wasn't fulfilling anymore, not the way working with you is. What you said to me at the hospital about being a good cop, and offering me that badge, it meant the world to me. That you trust me to watch your back as your permanent partner, just blows me away." Jim acknowledged those words with another soft kiss before responding. "I do trust you Chief. That's why I don't want you at my back for the rest of our lives." He held on tight when Blair tried to pull away. "I want you at my side instead, where you belong. Between my skills and your smarts, we've got options. We'll find one that works for both of us, where we can be the team we're supposed to be, and still help people. One that doesn't have us both dodging bullets every other day. It's not like I'm gonna be young enough to pull that off forever." Blair's knees went weak, Jim's firm grip on his lower back and the base of his skull the only thing keeping him standing. "You'd do that for me?" Jim shook his head once, slowly. "I'd do that for *us*. Just like you would, like you did with that press conference of yours. You're not the only one who can pull off a grand gesture, Chief. Maybe Eli can find a spot for you on his next expedition, and I can finally take a turn following you around for a bit. I could be their security detail." Blair searched his face, but found only honest sincerity there. His love for the man in front of him, always a warm flame in the hearth of his soul, blazed through him in a rush of desire. His mouth crashed hungrily against Jim's without conscious thought, almost reflexively. Jim's body welcomed him back, pulling them tightly together again, legs tangling with each other. Somehow, that still wasn't close enough. When he pulled back, this time he pulled Jim with him. Jim followed him without question, like he always did, not caring where they were going. As long as it had a flat surface, even if that was just a bare bit of floor, then it would do.

[zf7]

NYTimes - The Scramble to Pluck 24 Billion Cherries in Eight Weeks

much like a good illusion cake, what starts off with a delicious detail of the high stakes game of of cultivating and delivering cherries zooms out into issues of essential workers, seasonal immigrant workers, and yet another thing to be thankful for and recognize how hard life can be out there.  that we can work from home safely and temperately and with stability and options is yet another thing that we should appreciate.

That could have been a disaster, because water likes to pool in the little divot by the stem. There it seeps into the flesh, making the cherry swell. Too much, and the cherry will burst through its own skin, causing splits; whole harvests can be lost this way. So dangerous is poorly timed water that cherry growers rely on fans, wind machines and even low-flying helicopters to dry ripe fruit before it is lost. Yet wind presents its own peril: It can knock cherries against one another or into branches, bruising them so that they’re rejected on the packing line, where fruit is sorted for size and quality with high-tech optical scanners. Rainiers, because of their color, are particularly prone to showing their past with telltale “wind marks,” tiny incursions of brownness on that golden skin. This cherry has just a few.

But it’s not to market yet. The window in which a sweet cherry can be picked for sale is excruciatingly narrow. Cherries don’t continue to ripen once they’re off the tree, the way a peach does, and once picked they don’t store for very long, even when refrigerated. If they’re too ripe, they won’t make it to the packing house, the truck or the airplane, the grocery-store display, your summery dessert. The sugar content must be Goldilocksian — neither too high nor too low. Wait even a couple of days too many, and it may be too late.

Paige Hake, the second generation of her family to farm this orchard, considered the cherry. Then she considered its neighbors, with their own wind marks, in the lambent heat of a June afternoon. She looked down the long green row of trees, lined with its strip of white plastic fabric, meant to reflect sunlight onto the undersides of the cherries, helping them color evenly. She consulted with her father, Orlin Knutson, who has been growing fruit on this stretch of dry sagebrush steppe near Mattawa, Wash., for 41 years, the last 31 of them organically. There was a refrigerated truck waiting by the gate, with a growing stack of full bins next to it. There was rain in the forecast, as well as more heat, and sugar levels in the cherries were rising as they spoke. They wanted to get these cherries harvested today; they were far enough along that it was probably now or never, a whole year of investment and work leading to this one afternoon. But it was getting late, and there were a lot of other cherries that needed to be picked, and today the crew of people available to pick them was smaller than they would have liked. She turned to me and pointed to the wind-marked cherry, still unsure whether it would be worth the cost of trying to get it to market. “Would you buy that at Whole Foods?” she asked.

The yellow cherry was one of a great many across the orchards of Washington State that were just beginning to ripen. Karen Lewis, who works with growers as a tree-fruit specialist for the agricultural extension service of Washington State University, has tried to calculate exactly how many individual cherries need to be picked during a whirlwind season that Jon DeVaney, the president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association, calls “eight weeks of craziness.” Multiplying all the millions of boxes by the number of cherries they can hold, Lewis determined that as many as 24 billion individual cherries must be plucked, separately, from their trees and placed carefully into bags and buckets and bins, each and every one of them by human hands.

Lewis thinks that people who aren’t used to thinking much about the source of their food, or who assume that the food system is as mechanized and smoothly calibrated as a factory, spitting out produce like so many sticks of gum, ought to spend some time contemplating that figure and what it means. “I’m here to tell you that people do not think we harvest everything by hand,” she says. But hands, belonging to highly skilled workers, are needed for every last cherry. During the harvest, many thousands of people are out picking by dawn, nearly every day, their fingers flying as they watch out for rattlesnakes under dark trees. (Compounding the labor crunch, this is also the time when workers in the region must hand-thin more than 100 million apple trees, so that the remaining fruit can grow larger.) Later in the season, many of the same hands will pick and place each peach and plum and apricot, every single apple — five and a half billion pounds, just of apples, just in Washington, just last year. “I think those numbers are staggering,” Lewis said.

The cherry industry has done everything it can to squeeze every possible bit of extra time into the season. Growers plant at a range of different elevations: Every 100 feet above sea level, one orchard manager says, buys you an extra day until maturity. And they choose different varietals that ripen at slightly different speeds — most red cherries are marketed to the public simply as “dark sweets” but are actually a genetically distinct array, whose different sizes and tastes and unique horticultural personalities are intimately known by growers and pickers. If everything bloomed and matured all at once, Lewis said, there’s no way there would be enough bees, enough trucks, enough bins, to make the scale of the current cherry harvest possible. Most of all, there wouldn’t be enough people. There already aren’t.

[ranawaytothedas]

The Stuff of Dream (Chapter 2)

Main Pairings: F!Lavellan/Solas & F!Lavellan/Cullen 

Word Count:  7645

AO3 Link - HERE

Summary:  A collection of encounters in the Fade between Tamaris Lavellan and Solas during the two years he was missing after the defeat of Corypheus.

Part 2 of 3

Part 1

A / N: This is just some fluff, with feels… and there some plot points but I wanted something fluffy at its core for this middle bit because we need more fluff in all our lives right!? I love Solas and Lavellan having a baby… it’s tropey I know but I love it… It’s my brand of trash… anyway, this is my best like domestic fluff with Tamaris and Solas in the fade. Rating - Mature just for safety

In the weeks since her first encounter with Solas in the Fade, he returned as promised nearly every night. Tamaris still struggled to grasp the depth of what Solas had told her of his past and plans for the future. He had explained a little more about his plans each night. While Tamaris saw the reasoning behind his goal to restore The People to their former place in the world. To her, tearing down the Veil and remaking the world couldn’t be the only way for them to achieve this. Solas told her it was but Tamaris knew there had to be a better way. 

She had been spending most of her waking hours in the Rotunda, in Solas’s old study that was now hers. Her position with the Inquisition was largely research-oriented, taking on many of the duties that Solas once held. Tamaris spending hours in the study, her nose buried in a book was not something uncommon. Most around her just assumed she was deep into research and not that she was carefully planning her part in her love’s rebellion. Tamaris spent each day at Solas's old desk, looking up at the murals that he had painted during his time at Skyhold. Studying his notes while Shivana played on a blanket nearby with her dolls, blissfully unaware of what her mother was planning. 

Tamaris was going to leave the Inquisition and everything she had known. Or rather that was her end goal. There was much work she still had to do first. Solas had positioned her as the main point of contact for his Agents already in place within the organization. It was a role that Tamaris was uncomfortable with at first, thinking she was going to have managed a decent-sized group, but really it was just three people who came to her most often. A young scout that only just joined, an older mage that had come into the fold with the Mages from the Circle and a quiet former Dalish serving woman, near Tamaris’s age, who worked in the kitchens. Though Tamaris suspected that Solas had more agents still hidden throughout the whole of Thedas.

The agents were all kind to her when they spoke but looked at her with fear in their eyes. Tamaris knew that they likely didn’t fear her directly. She was not known for being harsh or unpleasant to deal with. Rather, they feared displeasing Fen’Harel was a more likely answer. Of three agents it was Lenan, the former Dalish kitchen servant, that Tamaris took a liking to the most. Each afternoon she would bring Tamaris her tea and under the pot always a note. With all the latest gossip from the servents. Lenan would often sit and chat with Tamaris just about life and the events of the day. Simple conversation but it was usually one of the highlights of Tamaris's day. Lenan would always stop and greet Shivana as well. Offering her a sweet she had hidden the pocket of her apron with a warm smile. Once, Lenan had mentioned that she had once had a little girl, but a sickness took both her child and her husband years before. Tamaris felt for the woman and offered the opportunity to spend more time with Shivana. Which Lanan happily accepted. 

Lenan started lending Tamaris a hand with keeping track of Shivana, who had taken her first steps just days before she celebrated her first birthday. Though, Tamaris knew she had actually done it several nights before in The Fade when Solas had appeared in the treeline and Shivana spotted him. She pushed herself up onto on unsteady feet and toddled over to him, giggling the whole time. Solas had been so proud of her, the look on his face as he bent down to pick her up was an image Tamaris would never forget. His eyes bright and filled with joy. A broad smile plastered across his face. That’s the man I fell in love with. She had told herself at that moment.  It was a memory that Tamaris couldn’t share.  It was, however, one she cherished above all else and would for the rest of her life. 

On Shivana’s birthday, Skyhold was bursting with activity. Josephine had insisted on organizing an elaborate celebration for the event. Nobels, dignitaries and all manner of important figure in the political landscape of Thedas funneled into the keep to Celebrate the little girl’s first year of life. Even Varric had returned from Kirkwall for the occasion. As per usual, Dorian had attempted to micromanage every detail of the event. From the food to the clothes that ‘his family’ would wear, and even what colors the hall had been decorated in for the event. All had to be up to Dorian’s exacting standards. Tamaris thought it was all too much, repeatedly saying. “She is still so young, she will likely not even remember any of this..”

However, Dorian, backed by Josephine, explained that it wasn’t the point of an event like this. The point was, “To show the world that survived… you have locked yourself away in Skyhold for years now. This is your return to the world’s stage.” An idea that made Tamaris’s stomach turned. When time came for the party, Tamaris dressed in the opulent, deep purple dress that Dorian had sent in from the finest seamstress in Val Royeaux. Shivana was dressed in a matching gown of her own, though it was a pale silver rather than the deep purple. Cullen has not been left out of this family textile fueled nightmare. Even he had a suit that matched Mathras’s which Cullen was not happy about, in the least. He grumbled the whole time he dressed and Tamaris couldn’t help but sympathize as she struggled to get Shivana into her dress. The fabrics were heavy and embroidered with metallic threads, which caused them to be more style over comfort. Which should have been a hint at how the events of the night would unfold.

The party itself was not an event for a small child. Most of the guests were adults. They all brought gifts that were far too lavish and not practical. Save a few from Tamaris’s closest companions. Sera made a bright yellow blanket, which Shivana snatched up as soon it was handed her and rubbed it against her cheek. Varric gave the most thoughtful gift, he wrote a children’s story just for Shivana based off an old Dalish story from Clan Sabrae. This was something the writer had sworn he would never do, but he could not think of a more fitting gift for his dear friend’s child. The story was one that his friend Merril told him about a young girl who wished to join the Emerald Knights and the trials she endured to achieve her goal. Tamaris was near tears as she flipped through the pages of the book to see a little girl, that looked quite like her daughter featured in the drawing in the book. Varric was a little flustered by her reaction and tried to pass off most of the credit. “Merril and Bianca helped me with the pictures, I am a writer, not a damned artist. Really it’s not even my story… I just wrote the words down...” Tamaris didn’t say anything more than thank you as she hugged him. 

As the party continued late into the night, Shivana quickly grew overtired and cranky. When the point was reached that little Shivana had too much, it was Cullen who came to Tamaris, as she was catching up with Briala at the time. He had Shivana screaming in his arms, one arm out of her dress as she fought against Cullen trying to hold her. Tamaris apologize profusely to Briala, but her friend understood that her daughter was quite done with the affair.

“I’m going to put her to bed…” Was all she had intended to say to Cullen but his offer to go with her caused her to pause. It was odd, a few months prior she would have begged him to come with her not wanting to wage the nightly battle to get the headstrong little girl into bed herself. Yet, now that she knew that she would see Solas again in the Fade it felt odd to fall asleep in Cullen’s arms only to wake in the Fade to run into Solas’s. What she often found more upsetting was that she would rather spend more of her time asleep, in the Fade with Solas than awake living the life she had built with Cullen. Tamaris put on her best smile for him. “No, stay… Varric is going to get a game of Wicked Grace going… enjoy yourself, Cullen. We will be fine, I am just as tired as she is. I just hold it together better.” Cullen nodded and kept his thoughts to himself. 

Tamaris knew Cullen had growing suspicions that something had changed in the past few weeks. How could he not? She often asked herself. Tamaris was almost always sleeping when he returned to their rooms. They barely spoke or even saw each other. They hadn’t been intimate in weeks. He suspected that he did something wrong, overstepped with Shivana or something of the sort but it was far simpler.

She wanted to be with Solas. It was becoming harder for Tamaris to maintain her relationship with Cullen with each passing day. Each time he held her hand or kissed her cheek, she felt like she was betraying the man she really loved. Tamaris longed for it all to be over, but Solas had his carefully thought out plan. Everything in due course.

Tamaris spent the next hour trying to settle the now, one year down. Shivana was over-tired and fed far too much sugar by her ‘Uncle Dorian’ during the party. It took sitting in the rocking chair that Thom Rainier had made her before he left to join the Grey Wardens, as himself this time. It was the first gift she had been given for Shivana and it had proved the most useful. Before too long, the little girl was asleep, clutching the bright yellow blanket that Sera had given her. Tamaris took a moment to settle Shivana in her crib before climbing into her own bed a few feet away. 

After tossing and turning for nearly another hour, Tamaris finally drifted off to the Fade. 

When she awoke, the first thing she noticed was the forest she awoken was not the one she had created. It was still a forest, but it was like none that Tamaris had seen before. The trees were older and taller than most she had seen. The air was thick with the smell of sap and a flowery scent she couldn’t place her finger on. There was a small path that led deeper into the woods. Tamaris followed the path lit by soft glowing blue lanterns. The joyous echos of Shivana’s laughter could be heard long before Tamaris could see her as she made her way through the densely wooded forest.  While Shivana was a happy child in most people’s opinions. When she was with her father, it was a different type of joy. It was untainted but the outside world. He could make her laugh in ways even Cullen or Dorian, who were Shivana’s favorite people, could not. Solas had a way with her, that was just an unexplainable connection between parent and child. Her eyes were brighter when she was with him and it reinforced to Tamaris that she was making the right choice. 

The path led to a clearing with a small cottage in an architecture style Tamaris didn’t recognize. It reminded her of some of the ancient elven ruins she had seen, but it was far less complex in design. She was trying to figure out where Shivana and Solas had gone off to as she wandered through the clearing. Then out of the corner of her eye. Tamaris spotted Shivana toddling around the corner of the house. Solas following a step behind her watching her as she explored. A warm smile grew across Tamaris’s lips once she spotted them. Seeing them together never ceased to make her heart swell with pride. Her only wish was that it was more than just in the Fade. She wanted to see her daughter as happy as she was in her dreams, every day. Soon, a few months more than we will be together. She reminded herself that there was going to be an end to this and they would be together. 

 Tamaris stayed back for a few moments. She watched as Solas doted upon their daughter. Till as they meandered around the house Solas noticed Tamaris standing there. He smiled lovingly at her and lent down, scooping up Shivana in his arms. His hand lifted as he pointed over towards Tamaris. “Look, Mamae’s here.” He kissed her cheek as he balanced her on his hip, carrying her with him over to greet Tamaris. His free hand went to her waist as he leaned in a placed a quick peck on her cheek. “How was the party?” He asked with a hint of smugness in his voice that made Tamaris want to hit him for a moment. She settled with an eye roll and a disapproving huff. “Oh, it could not be that bad?”

Tamaris smirked as she leaned over and kissed Shivana’s cheek. Shifting her attention back to Solas. A bemused chuckle escaped her lips. “Dorian had matching outfits made for the five of us.” Her tone was light yet, there was an unmistakable bitterness in her voice as she spoke.  Solas was quite amused at the idea. He was holding back laughter which just earned him a scowl from Tamaris. “I would not laugh if I were you, remember regardless of what happens Solas. Dorian is still family now. He and Mathras seem to have a rather permanent arrangement. You already know his feelings on your general taste in clothing.” Her laughter was light like a songbird’s call. “I love Dorian really, but I would rather leave my wardrobe up to my own choosing.” 

Solas gave her a rather smug glance as his hand moved up her back. “He does not even know my actual taste in clothing.” Solas protested as Tamaris let out a soft chuckle as she smirked up at him. 

Shivana began to squirm in Solas’s arms eager to get down and back to exploring. “Alright, da’ean.” He mumbled softly as his hand slipped from around Tamaris as he turned away to set Shivana back down on the ground. As soon as her bare feet hit the soft grass she was off. While she wasn’t the fastest she did make it up with enthusiasm, clapping her hands as she laughed excitedly. 

How Tamaris longed for this to be what life was always like. Just enjoy this moment, the rest will come. Tamaris reminded herself as Solas took her hand. Her gaze shifted upwards. Solas had a soft smile playing on his lips as Tamaris leaned in resting her head against his arms. “So, did she at least enjoy the party?” Solas asked weary of the answer he was likely going to receive. 

“Not really.” Tamaris began. “I really do not think it was meant for her, it was more like her birthday was another event in Mathras’s attempt to play the Game.” Solas scowled briefly. Tamaris just nodded and shrugged, “Trust me, I am not thrilled about this either.”

“Why would your brother agree to such nonsense in the first place?” Solas asked as he glanced back towards Shivana who was looking at some wildflowers just a few feet away. 

Tamaris shrugged again. “He thinks if he gains some standing in Orlais and Fereldan that when Dorian is eventually forced to return to Tevinter that he, a Dalish Elf, will be able to walk into Minrathous without issue.” Tamaris knew her brother loved Dorian, but there was no way they were going to be able to have some life together in Tevinter. Their society was far from progressive, and that was just about Elves. The rest was another matter entirely. As much as Dorian jested he would just name Shivana his heir one day and really cause problems among Magisterium, Tamaris knew it was only a jest. Mathras still believed it could become truth. 

Scoffing slightly as he shook his head Solas looked down at Tamaris. “He is a fool… a moron even.” Solas pointed out sharply. It wasn’t that Solas disliked Mathras. He was actually quite fond of him, he had a good heart but a hot temper and was blinded by the appeal of wealth and status. A combination that Solas could relate to on a personal level. He had tried to show the young man the errors of letting his pride get the better of him. Mathras was a stubborn man, Tamaris was stubborn in her own way but she was not as inflexible as her brother had become during his time as Inquisitor. Solas let out another groan. “He really is far too stubborn for his own good.”

“I know, but he is in love…” Tamaris added with a small smile as she placed a hand on his chest. Solas rolled his eyes dismissively. Noticing this Tamaris pulled back and looked at him wide-eyed, her lips pursed together for a moment before she elaborated. “You know, I want his foolish plan to actually work.” 

Solas laughed softly as he leaned in to kiss her, with his lips nearly brushed against hers as he smirked. “I know, but that does not mean it will.” His lips brushed against Tamaris’s lips for a moment. It felt like such a normal moment between a happy couple just going about their lives. For the briefest moments, Tamaris forgot they were in the fade as she stood there looking up at him blissfully. Solas’s gaze moved back to Shivana as she wandered around the clearing enjoying her little bit of freedom. 

A happy sigh escaped her lips as Tamaris turned to watch their daughter play noticing the smile growing on Solas’s lips. “I am glad she is at least happy here,” Tamaris noted mournfully.

Solas slipped his arms around her waist as he rested his chin on her shoulder. “What do you mean?” Though he had never seen his daughter outside of the Fade, he had assumed she was just as happy during her waking hours. He watched as Tamaris’s gaze never left their daughter. He ran a hand across her stomach trying to get her to look at him. “Vhenan,” he uttered softly finally getting her attention. 

There were reasons Tamaris didn’t want to tell Solas what she meant. She knew that it would only hurt him, but he was a persistent man. As she let out a heavy sigh as she turned around to face him. Solas’s hands now resting on the small of her back. “Ma’lath,” Tamaris muttered as she went to kiss him but Solas shook his head and gave her a stern glare. “It’s complicated…” Tamaris grumbled as she turned her face away from his. 

His hands slipped from around her before he took her hands. “Show me…” he insisted looking deep into her eyes. Tamaris shook her head trying to dismiss him but Solas wanted to understand. “You know how to show me memories, show me the party.” His tone was soft but had a commanding tone that made Tamaris feel as if she had no choice in the matter.

Her head nodded weakly as she glanced back over to Shivana. “At least let us bring her, so she can dream that you were there…” There was a sadness that seeped through each of her words. Solas nodded but said nothing. Tamaris felt nervous as she walked the few feet to where Shivana was looking at a log on the ground. She smiled brightly at her daughter as leaned down. “Bae wants to see your party… should we show him?” Tamaris asked the child in a vaguely sing-song voice. The child giggled as she reached out for Solas who was walking up behind Tamaris. Shivana giggled as her tiny hands reached longingly out for her father. “Oh so Mae is nothing now, I see… go on… go to your Bae…” Tamaris teased as Solas smiled smugly lifting his daughter from her mother’s arms. 

He was quite pleased with how much Shivana had taken to him. She rested her head against his chest as she reached out towards his face with her hand. Solas smiled broadly as he captured her hand, “Hello, da’ean..” he beamed before kissing her fingertips. He glanced up at Tamaris who was watching, smiling. 

“She loves you, you know that…” Tamaris’s words weren’t meant to cut at Solas but they did. His smile waived for a moment as he glanced at Shivana who was still staring at him intently. 

“I know…” He muttered kissing her little fingers again. 

Tamaris nodded and smiled. “Good…” She noted bluntly before turning her back to Solas. “Remember that…” Her words were soft and they weren’t meant for Solas to hear but he did. Tamaris closed her eyes and slowly the world they had been standing in melted away and was replaced the warmth of Skyhold’s hall. 

It was Tamaris’s memory of the events of a few hours before. The hall was empty for the moment but decorated in pale pinks and soft silvers. The tables were covered with food and with a wave of her hand Tamaris was in a deep purple Orliasian gown. “Welcome to what I would have faced a Nightmare Demon again to avoid…” She gestured down to her gown, which was well made, beautiful but looked out of place on her. “I had to take a piss in this…. Just so you know.” She explained with a laugh. “Do you want to know how many people it took for me to piss wearing this dress? Do you know how much shit Sera gave me for having to hold this up while I squatted?” She asked gesturing to the large hooped skirt. 

Solas was standing back, still wearing his same sweater and leather breaches, holding their daughter still clad in her simple white dress, trying to do everything in his power not to laugh at her story and the dress in question. “You look beautiful..” He confessed softly. I was true, he did think she looked lovely. Though he always felt she looked beautiful and would still be beautiful if she clad in nothing but plaidweave. “What do you think, Shivana? Mae looked beautiful in that dress that was very obviously picked by Dorian.” He chuckled towards the end mention of Dorian, which Tamaris did not find amusing. 

“Uncle Dorian” Tamaris corrected quickly. 

Solas laughed softly and repeated. “Uncle Dorian... “

Her lips pursed as her arms folded in front of her chest. Her eyes closed again and when she opened them Solas was wearing the same outfit that Cullen had been forced to wear that night. It was similar in style to what they had worn to Celine’s ball, but the fabric was rich velvet, the tiny silver filigree throughout so that when it caught the light it seemed to sparkle. Shivana too was wearing her outfit from that night. A stunning silver dress, that actually looked quite darling on the child but was made of a horribly itchy fabric. Instantly Shivana started to wiggle in Solas’s arms trying to get out of the dress. She shook her head as she pulled the dress up over her head to take it off. Solas laughed softly. “I do not think she likes this dress..” With that Solas waved his hand and she was back in the simple white cotton sundress she had been wearing before. “Better?” He asked. 

Shivana giggled as she grabbed at the fancy jacket he wore before scowling again. His scowl, Tamaris noted and so did Solas. He chuckled softly at her expression of dislike for the garment. “I do not care for it either.” He noted before the suit morphed into what Tamaris could only assume was what he wore in the days of Arlathan. The fabric of his tunic was rich, deep forest green silk. Trimmed with delicate gold piping. He wore black leather breaches Over his shoulder was a black wolf pelt, which drew Shivana’s attention. Her twisted in her father’s arms as her hand ran through the fur. She giggled with delight as she ran her cheek against the soft fur.

Smiling deviously, Tamaris crossed her arms in front of her chest. “So, this is Fen’Harel…” There was amusement in her voice as she spoke, she had wondered for quite some time what the Dread Wolf really looked like. 

Much to Tamaris’s surprise Solas shook his head. “No, this is what I wore most days before they gave me that name,” he explained as he watched Shivana rest her head on the fur in his shoulder. As Solas glanced back over at Tamaris. He smirked as her puffy Orliesian gown morphed into a flowing gown that he viewed far more fitting for such a beautiful woman. 

A bright smile grew across Tamaris’s lips as she ran her hands over the deep forest green silk. The neckline dipped low, between her breasts. A detail that made Tamaris blush as she gestured to her cleavage. Solas chuckled as a devilish smirk played on his lips. The rest of the dress was flowing. Tamaris felt very much like some sort of divine creature wearing it. “So, this is what you would have me wear?” Tamaris asked sheepishly taking a step closer to Solas who looked quite pleased with his choice. She wondered if this is what it would be like when they were reunited.

Solas reached out, placing his hand on her waist. Drawing her closer to him, her body pressed up against his. He was blissfully happy in that moment. It was a rare occurrence. Solas often felt as if he didn’t deserve the love Tamaris still had for him. He had hurt her. Abandoned her. Through all the pain her love for him remained. Fortune had smiled upon him that she was so blinded by love to give him another chance. Every day he promised himself he would be the man she loved, not the man he was. It was a promise that Solas knew he may one day break, but he pushed the dark thoughts from his mind to focus on the love that was surrounding him.

A content sigh escaped Solas’s lips before he finally answered Tamaris’s question. “If I had my way…” He teased. In a more serious tone, he finished, “I would be happy with whatever you choose to wear as long as you are comfortable.” He paused and looked at her questioning. “You are comfortable?” 

Tamaris laughed as she nodded, “Yes, it’s a lovely dress.” Her hand slipped up around his neck to the nape of his neck. Her hand applying a slight pressure to the back of his neck, urging Solas to lean down so she could place a sweet peck on his full lips. Solas thought that feeling her lips pressed against his that he would never grow tired of the feel of her lips on his. Solas let out a pleased chuff as Tamaris took a step back, taking his hands. “Now that we are properly dressed, shall we go to a party?” Tamaris tried to muster amusement in her voice as she spoke but there was trepidation as well. She knew the evenings’ affairs were sweet for moments but most would not be what Solas had hoped for. Tamaris only hoped that he would be understanding.  She turned her back to him and focused all her thoughts on the events of the night. Like fog rolling in the room began to fill with spectral figures. Nobles whos faces Solas could not recall and the faces of a few of their old companions. 

The first thing Solas noted was there was not another child to be found. It appeared to be more of a grand ball than what little he recalled of children’s parties, though he assumed they may have changed some since his youth. There were hushed discussions in every corner and it took him a moment to find Tamaris, dressed in the puffy purple dress holding a rather sour-faced Shivana standing off in a corner looking panicked. Her eyes were wide, her lips drawn tight. Shivana was clutching on to her mother already overwhelmed by the affair. Her bright blue eyes looked upwards, pleading with her mother to leave this event before it had even truly begun.  

A wave of guilt washed over him, this should have never happened. He noted silently. I should have taken her with me. How did I not know she was pregnant? I left my family to lions. Solas struggled to maintain his composure watching his daughter entrenched in fear over something that should have been a happy affair. 

Tamaris stood a few feet away watching herself, the sadness of recalling the event radiated off her like the heat from a fire. She was never one for balls or parties. Playing the grand game turned her stomach. Tamaris wished that she had been listened to about the event even more as she relieved it a second time.

Even Shivana was becoming as she watched the spectral version of herself. Confused and upset, Shivana turned her head away and buried it against the pelt on her father’s shoulder. Her hands clutching at the fabric of his tunic holding on to him as she had held onto her mother.  Solas kissed the top of her head before whispering, “You are alright, da’ean.” Feeling her clutch on to him with so much fear, for the first time, rattled Solas as he held Shivana close. Wrapping both arms around her. “I have you, my sweet girl.”

Tamaris waved her hand. The echoes across the room shifted with the ease of smoke in the breeze. Crossing the hall Tamaris led to where she had sat earlier in the evening with Sera who held Shivana in her lap. “This was the happiest Shivana was all night.” 

Sera was bouncing Shivana in her lap, singing some ridiculous song that she was obviously making up as she went along. Krem and several of the other chargers sat around the table trying to entertain the small child with a set of nug plushies dressed in various garbs. One even had a set of horns and eyepatch. It made Solas chuckle softly. “Does she like them?” He asked softly walking up behind Tamaris.

She turned back for a moment, the movement of the echos still as her attention shifted away. “The toys or the Chargers?” 

“Both, I suppose?” He hadn’t thought if his daughter was fond of anyone really. He had assumed like most small children she like most people. 

Tamaris smiled broadly as she turned back to her memory. “Yes, to both.” She mused softly. “Krem makes her all these little plushies to play with, he says it gives him something to do. I think he loves to see her face when he walks into the rotunda with a new nug of some kinda for Shivana to play with. Dalish is really sweet with her, Grim has made laugh so hard she made herself sick because she finds the grunting highly amusing oddly enough… the rest of them are kind to her will go out of their way to get a giggle out of her.”  Which the echos were doing at that moment. They were making silly faces and holding her new toy just out of reach for a moment till she tried to squirm out of Sera’s arm to reach it. 

Solas couldn’t help but notice how protective Sera was being with his daughter. Her eyes constantly darting around the room watching the movements of all who came near. Her arms were wrapped protectively around the child, her freckle covered cheek resting against the top of Shivana’s auburn curls. “Sera?” He asked Tamaris softly curious to know her relationship with his daughter. 

“Sera loves her, like her own flesh and blood.” There was smile playing on Tamaris’s lips and it could be heard in her voice. “Shivana likes that she usually has something good to eat.” The happiness in Tamaris’s voice was not lost on Solas. Tamaris shifted her attention and as she moved across the hall once more the scene shifted. 

Now what played out before him was a slightly more distressing scene. Tamaris held Shivana in her arms. The child was sobbing and pulling at her mother’s dress. With a great deal of haste, she pushed through a crowd of people. Nobels, some with masks that marked them as Orliesain, others were more obviously Frelden. They all shot Tamaris dirty glances as pushed passed them. Their looks of disgust at his daughter’s distress caused Solas to seethe with anger enough that Tamaris turned back and watched him for a moment before asking. “Are you alright?” Solas nodded, unable to actually utter anything more than ‘mhm’ as he held their daughter closer. 

He rested his cheek against the top of Shivana’s head, the child hiding her face once more the uncomfortable memory. The spectral version of Tamaris had finally reached Mathras, who stood near Dorian as he told one of his lively stories to entertain the dignitaries. Her hand pulled at her thick fabric of her brother’s coat. Solas caught her asking, “Have you seen Cullen?” Her brother turned to her for a moment and gave her a look of disdain. It was like Mathras could not even be bothered by his sister’s troubles. 

“I haven’t a clue where he is, but could you do something about Shivana… the guests are starting to get uncomfortable.” Her brother spoke sharply to her. It something Solas had witnessed before. It has always unnerved him how Tamaris would just bow to her brother’s wishes when she was the one with the real power. He had spent so much time building her confidence during their relationship, he had thought that she would be able to retain it but from the exchange with Mathras it was obvious she had fallen into old habits. 

The look on her face as Mathras turned away ripped at Solas’s heart. Her eyes held back tears, her lips drew tight and thin as she took a deep breath trying to steady herself. Solas didn’t question the exchange as he had the others. It was very obvious what had happened. Walking up behind her he leaned forward and kissed her bare shoulder. “Ir abelas, Vhenan.” He murmured against her skin. The guilt over his absence overwhelming him for a moment. 

Tamaris cleared her throat as she turned to him. A smile crossed her lips briefly as Shivana looked up at her. A hand lifted and she trailed her fingers along his jaw, her smile turning mournful. “Ir abelas sul ahn ju'garas.” Her tone was soft but filled with regret. Solas looked at her confused as to why she was apologizing to him but Tamaris just shook her head as she turned away. Things shifted once more. 

They were now off in the Garden where Cullen had taken refuge from the party. Tamaris was walking briskly with Shivana, now screaming loudly, tossing her head back having quite the fit. Tamaris looked as if she was crying as well. Cullen raced towards them having leaped from his perch on a bench as soon as he heard Shivana’s cries. “Please, Cullen… just take her… I can’t do this.” Tamaris’s voice shook as Cullen took Solas’s daughter from her mother’s arms. Shivana went to him willingly, as she wanted him more than she wanted to be held by her mother any longer. 

A sharp stab of guilt hit Solas like lightning bolt as he saw how quickly Shivana settled in Cullen’s arms, He is the only father she has known, who is at fault for that? Solas asked himself as he looked at his daughter who was smiling up at him, her hand reaching up and brushing against his jaw. “Da’ean.” He muttered softly as he kissed the top of her head and cherished the fact she was at least safe in his arms in the Fade. 

Turning his attention back to the scene, Solas’s icy blue eyes narrowed in on the other man’s face. It was filled with concern and love. The look of a man, looking at his family. An anger he did not expect began to slowly fester deep within the darkest place of his soul. 

Cullen bounced Shivana with one arm trying to calm her as he pulled Tamaris into a tender embrace. “I told Josiephine that this was a bad idea.” He grumbled angrily as Tamaris looked up at him, tears still streaming down her face. This only seemed to upset Cullen more, seeing his heart so upset at that moment Solas could not help but relate to his anger. 

Cullen took a deep breath and looked down at Tamaris with a weary gaze. “You at the very least have to go back.” He didn’t want to point this fact out, that was plain but was something that needed to be said. Tamaris scowled and shook her head in protest mumbling before Cullen cut her off. “It’s only for a short while longer, but you have to play along.” Tamaris looked upset, like that was not what she had hoped to hear. A scowl grew across her face and Cullen scoffed. “You are still the Herald of Andraste. That means something to the people in there.” He gestured with free his hand towards the hall and Tamaris looked deeply upset. There was tension in the looks they gave each other, tensions that were not new. 

Tamaris’s eyes narrowed in on Cullen as she scowled. “It means nothing.” She snarled as she turned away almost storming off. For a moment Solas was proud for the first time that night, she seemed to attempt to stand up to someone. Something stopped her though. The heal of the pointed shoe she wore dug into the dirt as Tamaris turned around and gestured to Shivana. “Just, keep her out here or better yet, take her to our rooms because I know she is tired,” Tamaris added and Cullen gave her a warm smile. Tamaris didn’t return it, her eyes only focusing on Shivana.

Bouncing Shivana in his arms, Cullen beamed down at her. “We got this? Right pumpkin?” Shivana looked up in Solas’s arm’s hearing Cullen’s nickname for her. It was a small, instinctual thing that made Solas taking in a long, deep breath as his eyes closed. Cullen has his own pet name for it, it was something so small that it should not have bothered him as deeply as it did. Solas for the briefest of moments thought that was the worst of what he would witness that night. 

Cullen shifted Shivana in his arms to lift her up and smile brightly as he got her to giggle. “That’s my girl. Daddy swoops in and saves the day? Right, my little pumpkin...” Cullen’s voice stung deeper than any blade. Hearing Cullen call himself Shivana’s father was a thing Solas never thought of before that moment. He had assumed that he was just ‘Cullen’ and nothing more.

It wasn’t unknown to him that Cullen had assumed a certain role in his daughter’s life. Tamaris never hid that from him but he also never asked for details. Thus leaving him rather unaware of the depth that Cullen had embedded himself into their lives. That was his own fault. 

In an instant, he knew why she had to apologize to him. She had every intention of showing him this, even if she didn’t have to show it to him to make a point. Which he now saw was the point of the memories she had shown him. She did though, you know this. All the pain you have caused her, does she not deserve to cause her own in turn? His rationalization of why Tamaris had shown him such a moment did nothing to quell the guilt and rage that was brewing like a storm inside his mind. His crisp blue eyes finally fluttered open to see Shivana looking up at him confused. Flashing a brief smile he tried to show his daughter that he was alright, even though he was far from it.

Tamaris had stopped the memories, the echoes of the people faded away and they were left standing alone in the gardens at Skyhold. Solas kissed the top of Shivana’s auburn ringlet covered head, never wanting to let go of her again. She was his child. Tamaris was free to do with Cullen what she pleased, for the time being, so he could stake no claim to her other than she was the mother of his child. Shivana was another matter entirely. Solas’s jaw grew tight as he finally looked up at Tamaris who had turned around. 

Her eyes were heavy with sadness, her hands folded in front of her as she looked up at him. “The rest… is…” Tamaris didn’t finish her thought for she couldn’t bear to look the pain on Solas’s face. She knew that seeing Cullen with Shivana would hurt him, she wanted him to see what he left. There was even a part of her that wanted him to hurt because he was still not beside her when she awoke. He needed to see the life that should have been his. While he plan had it’s desired effect, Tamaris had never expected to feel such guilt upon seeing his pain. Her lips parted as she wanted to explain but Solas shook his head. He did not wish to hear any explanation. “Solas,” Tamaris started her eyes darting back to him for a moment. 

“No.” He said flatly as his hand ran down Shivana’s back. Tamaris was not going to control this conversation, not this time. Solas scowled as began, “So he… what?” Solas his voice seething with rage that he normal never let slip out. “Is her father to the world?” He scoffs, shaking his head. Tamaris gave him no answer, which was more than enough to answer his question. His bitterness shouldn’t have surprised Tamaris but it still hurt to hear and see how bothered he was by Cullen. “Of all the people you could have picked… The Templar… raising my child.” Tamaris was allowing him to have his moment, he deserved to be upset. What could have been more insulting to him than knowing that for most of her life thus far, his daughter had viewed a former Templar as her father? Nothing.  

Solas was barely holding his composure, he had to gather his head. It was not something that he could do in Tamaris or his daughter’s presence. With a few short strides and he closed the gap between Tamaris and himself. “I need some time to think..” He uttered with a sharpness that caused Tamaris to cast her eyes to the ground as he handed Shivana to her. To her surprise, after Shivana was settled in her arms and Solas had leaned in and kissed Shivana’s cheek. He then turned to her. “Ar lath ma, Vhenan.” He muttered with a great deal of sadness in his eyes as he leaned in and placing a tender kiss on her cheek before leaving them in the Fade.

When Solas awoke, in his chambers far away from the halls of Skyhold. He was livid. He shot out of his bed. Strode over to his desk and stared down at the various papers that detailed a carefully thought out plan. In all his plans he never factored in his own jealousy getting in the way. He wanted his family back. The idea that at the very moment, far away, Cullen had his arms wrapped around Tamaris made his stomach turn. He let out an animalistic growl before in a fit of rage his hands gripped his desk and in a single fluid movement, he flipped the desk. It came crashing to the ground with a solid thud, papers scattered all over the floor. If the noise of the desk being flipped was not enough to rouse any others nearby. Solas let out a frustrated, guttural scream. 

It wasn’t long before the door to his chambers was pushed open and the lean, hooded figure of Abalas stood in the doorway. “I take it things did not go well?” He asked flatly.

Solas’s gaze never moved from the floor, “What would have given you that impression?” He snarled. Abelas gestured to the desk and Solas snarled once more as he looked up. “The plans have changed,” Solas spoke sharply and there was venom dripping from each of his words. “We need to get them away from The Inquisition sooner than we had planned, which changes many things.” Abelas nodded. “I will not stand for that man…” He wouldn’t even think of speaking Cullen’s name. “Raising my daughter, being with my heart for a moment longer… I know this is selfish of me to ask you or anyone else to be apart of, but…” 

“She is your child. This is your family.” Abelas finished his gold eyes cast to the floor. Solas nodded surprised by the sentinel’s empathy for his situation. “Then no more explanation is needed, I will await further instruction.” Abelas left Solas standing over the overturned desk as he began to formulate his plan to get Tamaris and Shivana away from the Inquisition, Away from the Templar. 

[sarakuper]

Olympic National Park, Washington

Stop #14, August 19-23

I still feel like I’m on a high from the hikes we did in Mount Rainier. They were some of the best. Olympic is totally different. It’s also huge and offers so much diversity. We drove to our camping spot on the coast of northern Washington and it’s nothing like the coast of Oregon. The area we were in is part of Olympic NP and so it feels untouched and protected where as the coast of Oregon has tourist filled beach towns. It’s so wet in this part of Washington that everything is sooooo green and mostly covered in moss. We camped at Mora, one of the national parks campgrounds, and it’s well maintained and beautiful. While Sean was parking the camper I was supposed to spot him. Instead of stopping him in time I let him run the back left side of the camper up against a tree. I’m not very good at this stuff. Oops. Not much damage and nothing to worry about... I did the same thing with my car once a few years ago 🤦🏻‍♀️. Yes, I know, I’m a ding dong.

Jaxon has been going to bed with us lately. Just as Sean and I get into bed Jaxon will wait right next to us to for permission to come up. Then he lays right in between us and leans on me like a little spoon so that he can stare at his dad. He loves Sean so much, he almost never lets his eyes off of him. But this night Jax was not allowed on the bed with us. The night before he went through the garbage while we were sleeping. To our surprise we didn’t hear a peep; the fan drowned the sound. At some point in the night Sean woke up and found trash everywhere. This isn’t something Jaxon normally does, and we did have chicken bones in the trash that he’d been sniffing before we went to bed, but at this point it was his second time doing it this week and in the entire trip. So that’s that. Jax was punished. No snuggles or extra love for him this night!

The next morning we woke up for our first full day in Olympic national park. We slept in, then had a big breakfast before heading out for a quick grocery shop and exploration of the coast. There was only one dog friendly beach, so thats where we went.

That evening we drove an hour to Hoh, the rainforest in Olympic, for a short hike.

At night we finished a game of Kaluche and boy did Sean whoop my butt. So fine, he is way better than me, but I still enjoy playing :). He is beating me 21-10 now. I don't know how much longer I can handle losing, and I’m pretty sure he is trying to go easy on me.  

That night it rained for hours! While the sound of rain usually puts me to sleep it actually kept me up.. and Jaxon too! I heard him moving and rearranging himself to try to get comfy for hours. This shouldn’t have been a surprise since we were in a rainforest, but it proceeded to rain hard the entire day! Sean and I changed locations to camp a few hours north so we could explore a different area of the park, so it worked out fine with the rain.

We settled into our new campground also in the park as we prepared for a strenuous hike for the next day. And maaaaaan, this hike made me miserable. This was a 9 mile loop hike down into Valley with a 2,700 foot climb on the way back up. Its only rated as moderate on AllTrails, and my hiking abilities have improved so much on this trip that it must have gotten to my head; I didn't think twice about the challenge. We headed down for 4 miles and the views were less and less pretty. I mean, the drive to the trailhead and the trailhead itself was absolutely stunning. So we start our long decent down and pass only two other hikers coming the opposite direction who seem really eager to finish this hike, like it drags forever. We weren't even 4 miles in before I was wondering when it would be over. The hike was pretty, well yeah, because nature is! But it really wasn't anything special to me. Sean on the other hand loved it! Well we finally made it 4.5 miles into the hike and it was time for the climb back up. The next 2.5 miles up were killer. I literally cried at some points. I had to look down at my feet and count 100 steps before I allowed myself another break. At each switchback I would lay on the ground and tell Sean to leave without me and send a helicopter. The spoiled little girl in me came out as I whimpered “I’m not gonna make it”! 

Well, I MADE IT!! But it wasn't until mile 7 where the hike finally was beautiful and worth some effort. I kept cursing the trail; at this point Sean was waiting for me at the top. The last 1.5-2 miles were gorgeous and actually moderate, unlike the majority of the hike. We could have done this loop in the other direction and skipped the boring stuff, making it a 3.5 mile hike out and back. That, to me, would have been really enjoyable! 

Nevertheless I felt very accomplished I climbed that much. 

Next we are off to spend a long relaxing weekend with my cousin Ruthy and her husband John in their lovely mountain house. Thanks for reading, love you all.