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gumnut-logic · 4 years ago

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Callisto (Arrival - Bit 2)

Prologue Incident - Bit 1 | Bit 2 Fallout - Bit 1 | Bit 2 | Bit 3 Voyage - Bit 1 | Bit 2 | Bit 3 Arrival - Bit 1 | Bit 2

Well, these posts seem to be getting longer. I’m pondering if I should make them shorter and more often.

As always, many thanks to @tsarinatorment @scribbles97 @janetm74 and @onereyofstarlight for their amazing support and who without putting up with my crazy this fic would likely not exist.

We are finally there and things can start happening. Wow, planning makes for longer fics apparently.

I hope you enjoy it ::hugs you all::

-o-o-o-

As the rest of the family exited the cockpit, Michael watched John deploy the last of the long chain of communication buoys into orbit around Callisto and held his breath.

The space monitor was frowning at his console as they both waited for that final connection to click into place.

A moment and John’s face relaxed.

And Michael with it.

His own board flashed up with a connection confirmed through the chained micro-tunnel drives.

John hit his comms. “Tracy Island, this is Thunderbird Excel. Do you copy?”

They waited.

A heartbeat.

“Thunderbird Excel this is Tracy Island. Great to hear your voice, John.” Even Michael could hear the smile in Kayo’s voice. “I have a lot of green and pretty lights here. Send me the tests and I will bounce them back.”

“Sending now.” John’s fingers darted across his board and Michael watched the system take on the workload and churn data all the way back to Earth. “And I must say, Kayo, it is lovely to hear your voice, too.”

“Looking forward to hearing yours often. Data incoming. Will apprise results.”

“Looking forward to it, Thunderbird Excel out.” John’s fingers flicked again and the comms signal closed.

“Thunderbird Excel?” Michael arched an eyebrow at the astronaut.

John shrugged. “Well, I think she’s earned it now, don’t you?”

“Mmmm.” He looked back down at his board. The thought of having contributed to creating an actual Thunderbird...

He was startled when a shadow passed over his hands. “You’ve done well, Michael. Thank you.”

He looked up at the red-headed Tracy floating beside him. John was an enigma. He was a brother like any Tracy, but unlike the eldest who hated him with a passion that saw no border, John was quiet, even kind. Michael had been working alongside Brains and John and occasionally the youngest, for over a year now, and while he doubted he and John would ever be close friends, there was a mutual respect.

Plus, the distinct feeling that if Michael ever laid a finger on any of John’s brothers ever again, he would not survive the attempt.

It was definitely the quiet ones who should be worried about.

Not to mention Eos.

Michael really wished he could get his hands on that piece of code.

But again, he felt that it would be his last action in this universe.

Not that John had ever threatened him.

He didn’t need to.

“Are you feeling okay?” Turquoise eyes were peering down at him.

“I am well. No need to worry.”

The astronaut smiled. “Good. Monitor the comm network and liaise with Brains regarding the T-Drive’s performance. Let’s see if we can cut down on the jumps on the way back. I’d prefer to go through as little of the nausea as possible.”

“Agreed.”

John arched an eyebrow and his lips curled up. “I’ll be in Thunderbird Five assessing the danger zone and coordinating with Thunderbird Three.”

“FAB.”

The astronaut stared at him for just an extra moment longer before pushing off Michael’s console and throwing himself towards the cockpit exit.

“Thank you, John.”

A flicker of a smile and the last Tracy disappeared through the door, leaving Michael alone.

-o-o-o-

Virgil hated the IR spacesuits. They were far too tight and left nothing to the imagination.

Also, the red baldrics clashed horribly with his green stripe enough to rip his eyeballs out.

But although his standard uniform was satisfactory for short forays into space, it was not enough for a space mission of this magnitude as it did not have the survival and safety mechanisms needed in an emergency. So, here he was dressed like some kind of spandex wearing superhero, his heavy lifting muscles providing a great anatomy lesson to any within eyesight.

“Looking good, Virg.” Gordon’s eyes were laughing.

“Shut up, Fish.” The aquanaut was used appearing all but naked in front of thousands. Hell, Virgil had nothing to be ashamed of, it was just difficult to keep a straight face in a professional capacity.

How the hell John lived in one of these things was a mystery Virgil had no interest in exploring.

The alternative was wearing something like Alan’s spacesuit, but that had its own issues regarding his exosuit and despite the...exposure, this was the best option.

At least he had a little security with the addition of his exosuit support padding and his harness – never leave home without it. That and his baldric covered a little of his modesty.

Didn’t stop his brothers’ comments though.

Alan actually snorted in laughter.

Scott raised an eyebrow, but then their commander was dressed the same and, much like John, was giving the Greek gods a run for their money in the process.

Virgil felt like a dwarf from The Lord of the Rings. What was his name? Gam? Gim? Gimli? Standing next to that bleached elf.

Virgil grunted. “Let’s do this, already.”

Okay, the grin on Scott’s face was both worth it and damned annoying.

Dad had chosen a version similar to Alan’s suit. Due to his health concerns, Virgil had recommended extra support with arm guards and greaves built into his boots. He had glared at Virgil, but Virgil was a Tracy and just as stubborn as his father and if he wanted to go on this mission he could damn well meet him halfway.

Dad wore the protection.

They had Uncle Lee’s ‘space skivvies’ measurements on file and the IR fabricators had churned out an IR uniform echoing their father’s. Considering the astronaut’s skillset, Virgil had coloured his baldric stripe as green as his own and thrown in some of his own kit.

The colour combination still ripped out eyeballs.

Thunderbird Three was nestled into the Excel much like she had been into the XL, but higher up, leaving the massive thrusters behind her and nestling instead of providing the main superstructure of the craft.

To compensate for the loss of One and Two, the Excel now had a third engine on her dorsal plane to offset the two massive pectoral lightspeed engines. Together the three engines provided the huge ion thrust needed to propel them vast distances. And when the T-Drive was required, the third would go dark, the original two engines would flare up and give him his next case of nausea.

Three still connected with Five for extra stability, but she was no longer mandatory for the Excel. Where the XL had basically been an exosuit for Three to break the lightspeed barrier, the Excel was now more Five’s exosuit as she was the one Thunderbird the Excel needed to operate at her best.

Johnny’s ‘bird now had wings.

Very, very big ones.

The cockpit was crowded but quiet as Alan smoothly disengaged Three from the bigger craft, spinning her in space and pointing her towards the moon.

Virgil shifted in his suit, uncomfortable as hell. Not enough to be world ending, but annoying. Beside him, his father glanced in his direction with a concerned frown.

“Are you okay, son?”

That, of course, prompted an equally concerned frown from Scott in front of him.

“I’m fine.” It wasn’t a complete lie, he could live with the suit. His arm was still aching and his stomach had yet to forgive him despite the food he had shoved into it, but he could probably get away with that.

The worst of it was the lack of sleep.

Scott’s eyes were far too knowing.

The medic in him knew that they were going into a potentially dangerous situation. Hell, they were in space right now, not exactly Tracy Island’s pool patio for relaxation. They needed to be alert and ready.

He had tried to sleep. He had sent all of his brothers to nap during the voyage out here. But he doubted any of them managed much.

He certainly hadn’t.

Scott knew because Virgil could see it reflected in those blue eyes of his. He still looked worn, though he tried to hide it, ever the professional.

Dad.

Dad was still looking at him with questioning eyes.

Virgil sighed. “I’m just tired. I can manage.”

Those lips pressed together, obviously displeased.

Typical.

His father was so like Scott in so many ways that having both of them to contend with on this mission was going to send Virgil grey.

It was okay for them to go out on a limb, risk their lives for the greater good, but if someone they cared about did the same, they were all worry and you can’t do that.

As if to emphasize that thought, his father’s frown fixated on Scott. Virgil followed his gaze, but from his angle could only see the back of his brother’s head.

Another glance at his father and the concern was clearly there.

Perhaps something was starting to sink into Dad’s head. Maybe he was realising what he was risking.

Who he was risking.

Three shook a little as she breached the minimal atmosphere of the moon. Alan was muttering orbital calculations. Each large planetary body was different and required a catered approach.

The Base had sent vectors and the conditions that constituted ‘weather’ on the barren moon, but there were many firsts in this mission and this was one of them.

For the benefit of the rest of them, Alan threw up a hologram of their approach.

The massive crater known as Asgard swelled on the screen. It was very bright, even in the weak sunlight. Probably ice. To the north of it lay an even brighter splash of white, rays extending out across the heavily cratered surface for miles.

As they sank, the horizon formed in a sharper curve than Virgil was used to. Sharper than Mars which was the only other planetary body beyond Earth’s Moon Virgil had ever set foot on.

“There it is.” Alan, ever enthusiastic in his element, pointed out a spot quickly growing on the display. “Callisto Base.”

It was a white cross with a massive airlock at its centre. Surrounding the arms of the cross was machinery, storage tanks and energy production facilities. It shone ever so bright, like a blunted star plastered on the side of the moon.

As they drew closer, the Tracy Industries logo could be seen branded across the airlock doors.

The base was a massive endeavour. Almost entirely underground taking advantage of a small crater in the Doh crater wall, it had capped the landform and sealed off the space creating a series of caverns to house the transport ships moving between the Base and the Jefferson or any other destination they chose.

Entirely self-sufficient, TI’s hydrogen technology gave it power, TI’s heavy duty excavation equipment gave them the power to dig the base out of the rock and ice. It had helped to find unexpected caves under the surface. All and all the Base was a robust structure, protecting its fifty-odd inhabitants from the hazards of living on an exposed and radiated moon.

“Callisto Base, Thunderbird Three requesting permission to dock.” Virgil was suddenly irrationally proud of his little brother.

Commander Walters answered immediately. “Permission granted Thunderbird Three. Hold in the airlock for repressurisation and permission to proceed.”

“FAB, Callisto Base.”

“One of these days, Jeff, you are going to tell me what that means.”

Both Alan and their father snorted.

As they approached, the big airlock doors slowly began to open, splitting the TI logo in half. The hologram stayed fixed on their destination, but Three pivoted her nose to the darkness of the sky bringing the ever-hovering presence of Jupiter back into view through Three’s windows. Alan flicked a wrist and the Thunderbird started lowering into what was now a gaping maw below.

Three slipped into the airlock and the doors closed behind them.

-o-o-o-

Alan was a professional, but he had to admit that he was internally bouncing around in joy. The air was still thick with tension, his family caught up in this thing with Dad, but Alan was doing his best to ignore it and focus on his job.

And oh my god, he was landing on his second moon of Jupiter! This had to be a first. He could go down in history as the first person to land on several moons, another planet and multiple random comets and asteroids.

Okay, so Virg and Scott had been with him, even Gordon on Europa – that had been one hell of a mission that still gave him both dreams and nightmares – but he had been the only one to land on all of them.

Alan Tracy, astronaut extraordinaire. He couldn’t help but grin as the airlock repressurised and the Callisto Commander finally gave him permission to land.

He slowed his ‘bird to a perfect touchdown as the secondary airlock doors closed above him.

He killed her engines and let her begin her cool down sequence.

The whole cockpit sighed a little in relief. A pause as if to reset and then everyone was moving.

-o-o-o-

Gray Walters rubbed the back of his neck as Thunderbird Three coasted smoothly from the decontaminating airlock into the main hangar. The pilot of that ‘bird had to be a Tracy. The huge red rocket barely fit nose to tail with only inches to spare between the two massive sets of doors. After all, they had never expected such a large craft needing to dock.

He had Kate to thank for arguing the hangar’s size...with Ju backing her up as usual.

The thought of his wife froze him for a split second. Ju was going to be okay. Jeff was here now. He had always been their good luck charm. Hell, the guy had survived eight years in space alone. Ju could manage a few days.

Couldn’t she?

“She’s docked.” Mary, his second, looked up from her station. “Shall I shunt her into a bay?”

“Leave her in central for now. We’re not going anywhere and they may need to leave in a hurry.”

“That will piss Benji off.”

“Benji can stew. His team still has a week left of their Jefferson rotation.”

“He will cite regs.”

Gray turned away. Let him cite regs. “This is an emergency and takes priority.” He sighed. “Run decon in the central core. Anyone not crucial to this operation is to steer clear of International Rescue. Lock off environmental systems. Keep the two crews contained to keep the risk of contamination as low as possible. We can’t afford an accidental bug in the system.”

“Will do.” She paused before bringing up the topic he knew she would. “What about Jeremiah?”

“What about him?”

“You need to tell them.”

“One thing at a time, Mary.”

“But-“

“First we find Kate and Ju.” He swallowed. They had to find Ju.

They had to.

-o-o-o-

Stepping onto a new world was never as grand as it appeared. Hell, landing on Mars for the first time had been a trip over his own toes’ moment.

Stepping onto Callisto was no different.

It was Scott who grabbed him before he could flip head over heels across the gantry. Changes in gravity always took time to get used to and less than twenty-four hours ago, it had been Earth oppressive.

Callisto gravity was a relief…if a little disorientating.

His eldest’s strong grip wrapped around his arm and held tight. Jeff looked over at Scott and was pinned with such worried bright blue eyes that his heart clenched.

All the tension, the argument, the resistance to his presence on this mission boiled down to the emotion in those eyes.

Love.

And fear.

Scott was terrified.

Jeff did it without thought or care for what anyone would think. He grabbed his son and yanked him into a hug, holding him close. The squawk across comms and the scrape of their helmets against each other did nothing to stop him.

“I’m sorry, son.”

“Uh...”

Scott’s arms wrapped around him, ever so hesitantly.

That hesitation hurt almost as much.

He clung that much tighter.

“Dad?” It was breathless.

He clung a second longer, but… Yes...right.

It was a moment stolen.

Because they were on a mission.

Jeff let Scott go.

His son pulled away slowly, not quite fully releasing him, and again those blue eyes were fixated on him in worry.

So much worry.

“You okay, Dad?”

Jeff straightened with more ease than he had managed in a long time and became aware of all the other eyes on him.

The ever-present echoes of Lucille’s beautiful brown eyes were assessing him. That was a given. But another two pairs of blue and a frowning fishy amber had him targeted as well.

He looked at each of them before turning back to the massive cavern around them. A mix of rock wall, structural support and storage, the docking cavern was lit with strong lighting, the red of Three reflecting on patches of frozen water embedded in the walls.

They were standing on a walkway that had been extended out to Three’s hatch. It was obviously of variable height and length and Jeff couldn’t help but admire the design.

He wondered who was responsible.

He wondered if it was Kate.

Her green eyes smiled at him at the back of his mind.

His lips pressed together as his sons and brother-in-law continued to shoot concerned expressions in his direction.

A breath.

“Let’s do this.” And he led them out and into Callisto Base.

-o-o-o-

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #Virgil Tracy #Scott Tracy #Alan Tracy #Jeff Tracy #John Tracy #the mechanic #callisto #Gordon Tracy

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phoenix-downer · 3 years ago

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The Princess of Light Chapter 4: Heart of the World

~2290 words. Angst, Romance, Fluff, Fairy Tales. For SoKai Week 2021, Day 4.

Summary: Princess Kairi is cursed to be without love when she is a baby. She grows up cold and without a heart to help her understand other people’s feelings, no matter how hard her parents try to help her. One day, however, she meets a mysterious prince from a faraway world, and he just might hold the key to breaking her curse.

Prince Sora met with Princess Kairi the next night, and the next, and the next. She thought it was because he liked the light pool too, and he’d also said something about his ship needing repairing. Though all of that played a role, she was blind to the real reason he wanted to see her. This continued for over a month with Kairi none the wiser as to his true intentions, for a girl without a heart cannot understand things the rest of us take for granted.

One pleasant evening in early autumn, the moon shone down on the two of them and the light from the pool shone all around them. Sora thought Kairi looked like an angel as she floated on her back, and she caught him staring at her.

“What is it?” she asked, searching his face. She thought he had a rather pleasant face, all things considered. “I keep catching you staring at me.”

“Don’t you know why?” he replied.

She tilted her head. “Could you explain, please?”

Sora figured her curse would make any direct confession on his end fall flat. It is also entirely too easy to overdo a romantic confession, resulting in one’s beloved running for the hills, so Sora decided a different approach might be best. Though the thought of Princess Kairi taking off running and creating a miles-long trail of ice behind her after hearing an overplayed, overwrought declaration of passion made him chuckle.

“You’re laughing?” she asked, her face one whole puzzle of perplexion.

“Not at you, at my own silly brain,” he reassured her. “Sometimes I get these really vivid images in my mind, and they make me laugh.”

Kairi gently drifted in the light. “Like stories?” she asked. Not much caught her interest, but stories did. Sora had told her many stories about Destiny Islands, and she always listened quietly and asked him questions afterwards.

“You could call them that, yeah,” he replied. “But I’m getting sidetracked. You asked me why I keep staring at you.” He took a deep breath. “Princess, have you ever… had feelings for someone?”

“Feelings?” She frowned and touched the hole in her chest. “Without a heart, I’m not really sure.”

“Then let me tell you how it feels.” Sora smiled and rested a hand over his heart. “Like you can’t wait to see that person. Your whole day improves when they’re there. Your heart speeds up when they approach. You feel like you can do anything if you have them by your side. And you would do anything to be with them.” He sighed happily and studied Kairi’s face. “Have you ever felt anything like that at all, Princess?”

“No,” Kairi said after a moment. None of those things sounded like the strange fluttering she sometimes got in her stomach. And none of the rest of it was anything she’d ever experienced.

“Oh,” Sora said, his head drooping. He sank deeper into the light pool. “I’m… sorry to hear that.”

She floated downwards to catch up to him till at last they were both at the bottom of the pool. “Why?” she asked. From here little trickles of light bubbled up from between the rocks, for the pool was some distance above the Heart of the World.

Sora stared at Kairi, at her face surrounded by light, and despaired over her being so in the dark about what he was trying to tell her.

“Love is the most powerful magic there is,” he finally said, at a loss as to how else to explain it, for it impacted the entire way he experienced the world. “It’s like a light in a dark room that illuminates everything else for me.”

She reached for where her heart should be, but instead the usual empty hole greeted her. Sora’s heart went out to her. She was trying so hard to understand what he meant, but she just couldn’t grasp it. The whole thing reminded him of trying in vain to hold sand in his hand and watching it slip through his fingers.

“I’d like to experience it someday for myself,” she said at last, and he thought he detected a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

“I hope you will,” he replied, his voice breaking on the final word.

She studied him for a few moments, then said, “Can we fall in again?”

He smiled sadly. This at least was familiar territory. He offered his hand, and she took it.

“Of course, Princess,” he told her. They fell in several times together, and hearing her laughter, seeing her smile… poor Prince Sora became even more smitten with her. He resolved to help her however he could. It was clear her parents had tried everything they could here on Radiant Garden. But maybe his parents on Destiny Islands could offer their assistance. Maybe there would be some clue or hint as to how to help Princess Kairi. The repairs on his ship had been completed, so he could go back and ask.

When it was time to go home, Sora bowed and said goodbye. Kairi tilted her head, as normally he simply told her goodnight. She looked radiant in the moonlight, with the wind playing with her hair and rippling through the grass beneath her feet, and his heart fluttered in his chest.

“Princess, I’m going home to see if I can find something that might help you,” he said.

“Oh, okay,” she replied, her voice sounding as if he’d told her he was having a sandwich for lunch tomorrow. He tried not to feel a little stung over her lack of sadness at their parting, but it hurt nonetheless. Still, it drove his resolve to find a way to help her.

“I don’t know when I’ll return,” he said, “but I’ll come back to you, I promise.” His hand curled into an upright fist, a gesture on Destiny Islands that meant you were determined to follow through on your promises.

Kairi hesitated for a moment, then said, “Okay. Goodnight.” He wondered if she’d understood him at all. What if, in his absence, she thought he’d left her for good and forgot all about him? The truth was that she didn’t have much experience with saying goodbye. The people in her sheltered existence were just always there, and she supposed they always would be.

As she and Sora parted ways, they didn’t notice the strange black bird perched in a nearby tree. Despite what the stories say, spooky black birds can hide in the shadows perfectly well, thank you very much. And this one did its job splendidly and returned to its mistress in her creepy castle and reported what it had seen.

“Diablo, thank you,” Maleficent said, petting its head as it perched on her shoulder. “This is very grave news indeed. You say this foreign prince was flirting with my pathetic excuse for a niece? That he’s searching for a way to help her?” Maleficent shuddered. “That’s not good. That’s not good at all. Suppose she starts to regain her heart. We can’t have that, now can we?”

Cursing Kairi further would be too obvious. No, Maleficent needed to do something more wicked and depraved than what she’d already done. That’s another problem with being evil. You soon acclimate to lesser evils and need greater and greater ones to give you the same twisted rush of delight.

“You say the princess is always playing in that light pool?” Maleficent said. “And now with that prince too? Well, we’ll have to do something about that, now won’t we?”

She cloaked herself in darkness and used it to travel quickly to the Heart of the World, which was in a cavern deep underground. Now, the Heart of the World is not a heart like you or I have; it is physical, but it is in the shape of a heart that children like to draw on scraps of paper, not the shape of an actual physical heart. At the time of our story, it was not as magnificent as it had been in olden days, but it was still big and red and bright. A single stream of golden light flowed out of it, and from there winded and curved through a series of tunnels and caverns up, up, up to the light pool guarded by the royal family. The whole thing was very beautiful, but to someone like Maleficent, who was twisted by the darkness, it was horrifying.

Reaching into her cloak, she pulled out a tainted dagger. Tainted objects like this one leave no mark on their victims, who die slowly and in great agony. It was how she had killed her own father, the former king, without getting caught.

With a cruel glint in her eye, she drew the dagger, strode to her next victim, and plunged her weapon into the Heart of the World. The poor Heart shuddered at the wound, for it is very much a living thing. Maleficent smiled wickedly and yanked the dagger out of the Heart, doing even further damage to it, then tucked it back into her cloak. While she could have used a single curse or spell to completely obliterate the Heart, that would not have satisfied her desire for revenge and petty evil in the slightest.

No, she wanted the Heart to slowly die and the light pool to slowly dry up. Her smile got bigger as she thought about what would happen next, and that smile turned into a cackle and then into a roaring laugh.

~~~

When Princess Kairi went to the light pool the next evening, she had two surprises. The first was that Prince Sora was not there to greet her like he usually was. She frowned, but the light pool was too enticing to leave alone for long, so she sat next to it and began removing her shoes and socks.

Now, Kairi had been visiting this pool every evening since her thirteenth birthday. She knew it better than anything else in the worlds. So when she was about to step in, she noticed there was slightly less light in it than there should be. She shrieked and raced the short way to the castle barefoot, leaving a trail of frozen grass behind her.

“Aqua! Mom! Dad!” she cried as soon as she arrived, panting for breath.

“Kairi?” Aqua called from a window a few floors above. She spotted the trail of frozen grass behind Kairi that was continuing to spread and yelped. “My lady, your feet!”

Kairi gasped as she realized what she’d done. Aqua was already to the rescue; she grabbed another pair of enchanted shoes and socks for Kairi and tossed them down. Kairi hurriedly put them on, and by the time she was done, Aqua had joined her and sent for Kairi’s parents.

“What’s wrong?” Aqua asked, for she could tell Kairi was very distressed.

“The light pool is drying up!” Kairi cried, her eyes wild. “It’s drying up! What am I gonna do?”

Aqua’s heart thudded in her chest, for if Kairi was right about this, then…

“Are you sure?” she asked, searching Kairi’s face.

Kairi nodded and fidgeted with a strand of her hair. “There’s less light than there was before. Aqua, what’s gonna happen to me? If it dries up, will I freeze?”

Aqua didn’t know what to say. They needed to investigate the issue further. But if the light pool dried up, then Kairi would very likely freeze to death. Right now it kept her warm and kept the curse in check, but if it was gone… The light enchanting her clothes would stop working too, and—

Before Aqua could say anything else, however, Kairi’s parents and a few guards arrived. After a brief explanation, Aqua went with her father and the guards to investigate the light pool, leaving Kairi with her mother to await the verdict.

This was any mother’s worst nightmare come true: her daughter in imminent danger. Especially because the queen partly blamed herself for the curse. If only she’d taken her husband's concerns about Maleficent seriously instead of insisting he try to reconcile with her, their daughter might not be in this situation. So while she did her best to soothe Kairi and reassure her, she was very scared herself. Especially when Kairi’s breath caught and she clutched her chest.

“Mom, I think the hole’s getting bigger,” she said. All of the queen’s careful composure fled at Kairi’s words, and tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. What if the hole consumed Kairi? What if it devoured her daughter till there was nothing left?

This was all her fault. If only she’d protected her daughter better.

Kairi frowned and touched the queen’s face. “Water’s leaking out of your eyes again.”

That just made the queen cry harder. Her poor daughter couldn’t even cry for herself and her fate. All she could do was purse her lips and tilt her head to the side as the queen shed the tears her daughter could not.

When Aqua, the king, and the guards returned, they confirmed that the light pool did appear to have a little less light in it. The next day, the difference was definitely noticeable. By the third day, the light pool had lost a good foot of depth, and Kairi felt ill. The hole in her chest kept getting bigger, and the enchantments for her clothes had weakened, leaving her colder than usual.

If the light pool drained completely, everyone feared the worst. While the royal family initially tried to keep what was happening under wraps, word soon spread, and the king and queen knew they would have to take action.

It was time to consult outside help.

#sokai #sokaiweek #sokaiweek2021 #sora #kairi #kingdom hearts #kh fanfiction #phoenix writes #phoenix-downer #angst #romance #fairy tale #fairy tales #the light princess #inspired by the light princess #the princess of light #chapter four #long post

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kookie-doughs · 4 years ago

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Y/N L/N AND THE HALFBLOODS

Percy Jackson X Reader -Y/N L/N met Percy Jackson and everything was now ruined.

CHAPTER 2: THE DAY I TRIED TO SWIM

Swimming. I've always loved the thought of swimming. I like beaches or even pools will do. But I've never gone swimming. The last memory I've gotten of swimming, I drowned. It was at a beach, I was around 3 years old. It was a stranger that saved me. My parents weren't around then. When they found out they declared I would never swim again, beaches or pools. Even though my last memory of swimming was pretty traumatic, I haven't stopped loving the thought of it. The way you just float on water as the waves carried you, the sound, the scent. I could help you with that... I know you could. Just come to me... We would fear nothing. We would fear nothing. Nothing can hurt us. ~ "Good morning..." I yawned scratching my eye. "Morning." Dad greeted. "Morning sweetheart." Finally waking up fully, I saw dad and mom in their casual wear. "Don't you have work?" I asked. "Baby, it's a weekend. Not to mention you have to tell us about your trip." Dad laughed and ruffled my hair. "If you're not busy... Can we go on a trip?" "Didn't you just come from one?" Mom spoke in a matter of factly...(?) "That was few days ago!! And I want to go on one with you guys!" I pouted. My dad joined the pout. "Yeah! I wanna go on a trip as well!" "Let's go on a trip!" We chanted. Mom groaned and waved her hand. "Fine! Fine! Where are we going?" "Let's go to Vegas!" Dad beamed. "Or L.A!" "I wanna go to the beach!!" "No, maybe and no. Vegas wouldn't be fun for Y/N, L.A might work, you know how the beach is." My dad and I grinned at each other. "Road trip!!!" We screeched and got up to hug mom. "L.A! L.A! L.A! L.A!" We took her hand and started jumping up and around. "Stop! Ready your bags, we're leaving tomorrow." "Today! So we can stay the night. Pleaseeee!!!" "We'll have work the day after tomorrow. Come on let's go today." Dad sang. He fluttered his eyes at her making me giggle. "Please! Please! Please! Please!!!" Mom sighed, "finish your breakfast and pack your bag. You'll be telling us what happened during the drive." She pinched the bridge of my nose and left to their room. "I don't have to pack my own~!" Dad struck his younger out and laughed. ~ D/N had an adorable backpack on and so did I. I managed to fit 5 set of clothes and some toiletries in mine. Mom and dad shared a duffle bag. "You ready?" Dad asked. Picking up D/N, I didn't bother answering and rushed towards the car's backseat. When my parents got on we drove. The ride was silent with only the sound from the radio and engine running heard. I glanced out to watch the scenery passing by. Imagining a shadow running and jumping around to catch up to the car. It's incredible isn't it? Yeah... Would you like to try? That seems scary... The shadow I had imagined turned towards me. It was pure darkness, they didn't have a face or any sort but I could tell they were looking at me. Why would you be scared? I can do it. It means you can too! I guess... We are one after all... Yeah... We are... Do you want to meet me? Their hand let out towards me, I lifted my hand in plan to touch theirs. I shrieked back when all of a sudden the shadow changed forms as if they was a bug in a game. Their head grew smaller and bigger than their body and their arm were longer than normal. Some parts of where the rest of their body were gone. I guess it's too soon... I'm sorry I scared you. It's just your parent hasn't claimed you yet... My parent? Who do you think it should be? I mean I already know who it should be but... I could change it if you want... I like my parents... Your comfort is my priority. And since you seem to already like what you have, I'll take that as a "I don't want to change." I'm not following... I'm saying, I'll call again. I hope you'll keep answering. Okay... ~ "Sweetie!!" I lazily turned towards the sound. "I'll answer..." I rumbled. "What?" I felt a hand of my shoulder. "Sweetie, are you awake? Can you hear me?" Regaining my sanity, I turned to see we had stopped at the side of the road. Both my parents were looking at me worriedly. "What's wrong?" I asked confused. "Baby, we're supposed to ask that... You were talking in your sleep! We thought it was fine until you shrieked!" Mom explained. "Are you having nightmares? Do you remember what you dreamed?" "No... I-I don't think so... I don't remember anything... I'm not sure..." "Sweetie," my dad took a deep breath. "Can you tell us about the trip? Everything you remember even tiny details?" I was confused with this task but I did it anyway. The more I told them the more attentive they got. I told them about me being in charged, how I imagined a teacher's existence the whole time, Percy Jackson and Mrs. Dodds. "Maybe we should hurry with this trip." Mom said anxiously. "I agree." Montauk... Will show you another world... What world? A world you refused to believe. Are you interested? Yeah. Let's go to Montauk ~ Mom is anxiously fiddling with her phone, muttering "pick it up" over and over. Dad was drumming on the steering wheel. Looking over me now and then. "Is anyone answering? She's did it again..." Dad sighed. "I kept hearing Montauk." "It's a beach. Let's stay away from there." Mom had her phone pressed to her ear while her free hand pinched the bridge of her nose. "We're literally a few miles away from that according to this GPS." "What's wrong?" I called to them. "Nothing, this stupid GPS took us somewhere else that's all..." "Where?" Curious, I looked out the window. I was dark out and I could faintly see bonfires. But what really got my attention was the beach. We were close to a beach. I don't want to leave. I want to see. As if my prayers were heard, the car stopped. "Huh?" My dad turned the key but to no effect. "Don't stop here, we're too close to the beach." This is where everything will change. Really? How? The sea will change everything. Swim. ~ Here I was in the middle of the beach. I don't quite understand how. I could see my parents frantically trying to catch up to me. I wasn't even moving. "Y/N GET AWAY FROM THERE!!" Mom cried. "Y/N THAT'S DANGEROUS COME BACK HERE!!" They're worried. If I want to swim, I should do it with them so they don't have to be scared. I took the step towards them but for some unknown reason I was sinking. I couldn't breathe. I was underwater. I'm drowning. And so it begins. I'm scared... I can't breathe. From here on. Everything will change. I don't want to change anymore. Let me go. It's too late. It's all his fault. Percy Jackson is the root of this all. What did he do? He found you.

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Taglist? @gayer-than-the-gayest-gay

#Percy Jackson #Percy Jackson X Y/N #Percy Jackson X Reader #Fanfiction #fanfictions #Y/N L/N #Y/N L/N and the halfbloods #Book 1 #Chapter 2 #Lightning thief #x reader

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lizzieraindrops · 4 years ago

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Chapters: 6/6 Fandom: Destiny (Video Games) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Eris Morn/Ikora Rey Characters: Eris Morn, Ikora Rey Additional Tags: 5+1 Things, Hello destiny sapphics; allow me to introduce myself, Femslash, if nobody is going to write the content i want to see then i will create it myself, listen. it's about perceiving the weak and wounded places in someone you love, and lavishing love and care upon them even when they won't admit they need it, it's about the Mutual Support, it's about being kind to them even when you don't know how to be kind to yourself, Light Angst, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, oh and ikora has the most Distinguished Bisexual energy i've ever seen so jot that down, it doesn't come up but you needed to know, this is all just a bunch of softness and tenderness don't @ me okay

Summary:

Five storms Eris and Ikora weathered and one they didn't need to.

The Shadowkeep weblore lives in my head rent free. Set post-Taken King and mostly during Shadowkeep.

“As I told Asher, there is a storm coming...” “Oryx is dead. We’ve weathered the storm.” Ikora is upset. She has yet to understand the bigger picture. “Yet his sisters would see his will done. There will always be another storm.” “Then let’s weather it together.” -Shadowkeep Narrative Preview #1

Many thanks to @hencegoodfortune for the beta read and of course for the memes.

Chapter: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | +1 |

Set just after The Taken King.

Eris knows she is not in the Hellmouth. Although the Tower has never felt the same since her ordeal on Luna, she recognizes it easily nonetheless. At every moment, the freshness of the open air reminds her that she is here, she is on Earth. She has been for some time now.

However, she has never forgotten how to move like a ribbon through the darkness, arcing undetected round predator and prey alike. She doubts that she ever will. Sometimes the habit returns of its own accord, and she’ll find her feet and hands floating weightless as she moves. Joints and muscle and sinew flex in careful concert to absorb every sound before it is made. The lines of lightly tensed limbs spiral seamlessly into the coiled core of her, tethering her in perfect silence. At the same time, she remains ever ready to fight, ready to flee. How often has Eris’ last, Lightless life lay along the knife’s edge of a split-second choice, the divergence between action and stillness, vengeance or survival?

Somehow, the smooth stone of the Tower’s level floors is harder to walk quietly on than the rough winding warrens through Luna’s porous rock. There are no edges to test with the edge of her boot, no uneven surface to ease her soles onto by swift and silent increments. There is only the unsubtle strike of heels on a flat, unforgiving surface. She makes the most of it, as every Hunter here does. Still, it leaves her uneasy. Her feet cannot quite keep to the ground.

Consequently, she often finds herself pacing, wandering from her post in the heart of the Tower whenever she grows restless. Every step falls lighter than the last, chasing silence in a meditation on weightlessness. It does not make her feel any better.

After so long underground, she is unaccustomed to the plenitude of open space here. While she has traced much of the Tower’s perimeters, the negative spaces in the centers of broad rooms and vaulted halls she leaves less frequented. She is too exposed there.

Yet maybe she is less affected by the empty space than the sheer number of souls that so often fill it. After so long so alone, they are simply so many, pressing at her survival-sharpened awareness from every angle. Not to mention she attracts too many of their stares in the crowded plazas. Although detection here is not followed by shrieking howls or the lightning strike of boomers, distrustful eyes still make her hunger for shelter. The choice to endure or to withdraw still needs to be be made. And whether well-meaning or ill-intentioned, a close approach still makes her instinctively recoil.

Eris has scraped out a place for herself here, lingering close enough to share with those who will listen the knowledge she has gained at a terrible price. But it has been made clear enough that she does not belong here anymore, not as she once did. If the condemnation of the Speaker and the only begrudging trust of the Vanguard’s Commander were not enough to tell her that, then the wary regard of most of the Tower’s populace would. So she holds herself back, toward the edges of things. It is difficult to do so at her station so near the Hall of Guardians, the greatest locus of Guardian activity on the planet. She draws herself to her full height and stands there proud, but never takes the ground she stands on for granted. When it becomes too much, like now, she paces.

This time, her pacing has led her to the edge of the Tower where her ship was once tethered. With how wary she has grown of exposed spaces, the open sky above that lays bare every courtyard and balcony should send her seeking cover - and yet, it does not. If anything, its incomprehensibly vast expanse calls to her. Strange.

Eris has traversed the spaces between planets with her own fragile body, with only a ship’s hull to keep the cold from swallowing what remains of her. Yet from Earth’s surface, a few mere miles of atmosphere transforms that emptiness, and its beauty holds her spellbound. It scatters sun into prismatic slices of light. The stars’ unblinking gaze softens into a flutter of eyelashes. No longer can she see the narrow spectrum of colors that humans evolved to discern; it has all faded into endless shades of the same hue. But the contrast of such brightnesses against the dark have become sharper than ever. Indeed, daylight has become a blaze to truly blind her. These stolen eyes of hers were made instead for depths and shadows.

Even so, she often finds herself staring out into the searing sky until her head aches. The sensations make her remember. She is no longer buried beneath stone, lost to this cosmos. She is free now, in some ways.

Eventually, her wanderings bring her back to the shaded refuge beneath the stairs just outside the Hall of Guardians. She is glad for this, too. Her station provides some small respite for her sensitive, ever-weeping eyes. And there she stays, until exhaustion drives her to rest, or else grief or fear or restlessness or her ever-smoldering rage drive her to pacing once again.

It’s true that many other eyes pass by that shadowed alcove of hers. Guardians constantly sweep in and out on either side of her, running and jumping and gliding up and down the stairs with urgent reports and important orders and burning questions for the Vanguard. They are so bright. Few of them spare a glance for her, these days, save for startled new Lights.

There are a few, though, who look upon her not with distrust or fear or begrudging tolerance, but with recognition. Once in a great while, cousin Asher will grace her with his inimitable company. It gladdens her heart, even when he merely stops to exchange research notes or brief insults. He cleaves to his research with a passionate vengeance, as does she. Unlike most, he pays more attention to her knowledge and her current work than her past. With the way he helped care for her in the months after her escape from Luna, she has come to hold him in close confidence.

On occasion, her friend the Guardian, who avenged her fireteam upon the very souls of Crota and Oryx, stops to greet her. Sometimes they bring her news from Luna or Mars. Words are few with that one lately, though. These days, their outgoing ghost is the one who relays whatever tidings they carry. The change leaves a cold shadow over Eris’ heart. Therefore, she values their quiet presence all the more. She fears for them.

Of course, Ikora’s is the kind regard she is subject to most often. Eris has never forgotten that Ikora believed her since the beginning. Most met her genuine warnings of inbound danger from the Hive with distrust, dismissal, or fear. Ikora not only listened, but met her with endless kindness. Even now, as the Warlock Vanguard steps into nearer chamber of the Hall for a brief consultation with Lord Shaxx, she spares a moment and a smile for Eris.

Ikora’s smile has always been warm and real and reassuring, a balm on the fibers of frayed nerves. Among the very few who welcomed Eris back to Earth, that smile was a signal of genuine care and safety that she homed in on immediately. The one directed at Eris now is subtle, a mere quirk of the lips. Yet it hints at the vast depths of passion and compassion below the surface, like a ripple that disappears swiftly on the surface of a deep, deep pool.

Ikora’s outward cool composure that obscures that intensity is not a façade. It is more an ingenius piece of architecture, a mighty aqueduct capable of holding and channelling the endless font of her inner immensities. It is an elegant and functional work of art well-kept and expanded over centuries.

The warmth that must be behind such a small yet genuine smile is palpable; it falls on Eris like the creeping warmth of sunlight, sinking in deep even though it scarcely touches her skin. Even the lower half of her face, where her many layers do not shield her from long-lost Sol, is still sallow and nearly as grayed as the dust of Luna. She hadn’t known at first, with the changes to her vision, not until Asher had told her. He never does shy away from the speaking of truth. In those endless years of darkness, the lack of light and loss of Light took something from Eris, sapped something vital, and left something strange in its place.

Yet Eris can feel the sun again, now. She can walk out into the courtyard at any time of day, find a south-facing wall to lean on, and bask in the radiating warmth like an ectothermic reptile.

Even without leaving the cool shadows of her post, another warmth still reaches her. Ikora offers her one more smile as she goes to return to her own station. Eris stands a little taller under the aegis of her regard, her spine the stem of a sunflower lifting her toward its steady kindness.

Eris takes not a single one of these boons for granted. Each one is a precious gift far beyond what she ever expected to experience again, after her descent into the Hellmouth. Yet none of it can quell her restlessness, for it springs from the same source as her gratefulness. It always comes back to what happened to her on Luna.

Each time she returns to her pacing, the Tower feels a little smaller. The scope of the sky distracts her for a shorter time. Now, even after her sworn vengeance upon the Hive has been fulfilled twice over in double deicide, the path of her vow still pulls her feet forward. She does not know where its shrouded course leads, only that there is still a threat yet to be met along it. More and more, she is certain that she cannot wait here to meet it, or it will be too late.

However, she never expected to leave behind wounds when she leaves. After she departs to sight the next storm on the horizon, she is haunted as often by the surprised hurt that she left in Ikora’s eyes as by the memory of her smile.

#eris morn #ikora rey #destiny 2 #eris/ikora #erikora #ikoris #destiny the game #destiny fanfiction #lizzie's adventures in writing #destinewt #long post #fic #HELLO I AM FINALLY HERE WITH THE FEMSLASH #apologies if i misled you with the o14 this is actually my usual abode #it's mostly written so look out for updates soon!#happy season drop have some sapphics #it's a beautiful day in a non-femslash-focused fandom and you are a terrible little lesbian here to cause problems on purpose #please talk to me about these ladies i love them so much #; ;

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throwinggrapesoffthebalcony · 4 years ago

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Literary Essay: THE LOVE DESTROYING THE PIECE

It brings back memories when realizing why I’d removed this material from How to grow roses in the past. This is the poetic tone that was breaking the thread of the main narrative, and why I’d struggled with it previously while trying to merge the pieces. I think the appeal, or the temptation, is to write an elaborate, ‘unfinished feeling’ novel; which doesn’t always result in a better novel. More elaborate works own the reader, while simpler works might be something a reader can more easily hold to their heart; when the last pages are read and the book is closed. This material - that I wrote while immersed in the love, under the title black holes and revelations - deserves life without being broken by any other narrative, or literary obsession. How to grow roses is life, removed from all that destroys me, while black holes and revelations is all that destroys me.

Does it fulfill you, this life of events that you live? From one event to another, is it happiness?

Sexual events and conversation are my formal occasions, like a rush to create a collage of experiences to blot you out; like bodies and hair and faces and legs and arms floating on the surface of the pool and I’m trying to stay under, while I’m still taken by the shimmering gaps coming down through. There is no escape from you. I’ll hold my breath forever if I have to.

Why was I always so quiet when she mentioned you or your parents or anything about you? No line for your strangeness. Should I have taken a number the first time that I saw your face. It’s too late. But I know it’s just about the options on that other plane. I will always be slightly confused and lost without you. And so I’m walking through this perfect neighborhood again like a lost child, sniffing at the base of perfumes to keep me from falling apart. And despite its worldwide acclaim, I have to admit it isn’t as beautiful as that neighborhood in the salt air with the breeze coming off the water, with the thought of you near. I can sit for an hour, drinking a glass of wine so still, that they don’t begin to fall. Two little puddles sitting there in each of my eyes that don’t evaporate or fall.

Whispering to the landscaping. Mental anguish is a greater burden than the physical sense. Like working with concrete, clothes bleached by the lime. Xxx telling me not to bother to look nice for this. Or mowing the neighbors lawns, afraid the whole time that a pretty girl might pass by and see me doing that. And there is something that is lacking, even when they let you experience them in every way, there’s something lingering in their imperial eyes, a futile thread embroidered in the bigger tapestry - not of your kind. Hey! I’ve got some royal blood of my own. But it’s a cry too late for that. Out at sea and looking towards the shore, for a glimmer of your blue jeep. You’re all alone and waiting for me to come in. You’ve got a beach towel spread out for us that says love. The currents there, that so frequently had me alone and drifted off. A hurricane, a little fun, and I’m miles and miles down the coast. Feeling at times like just letting it take me, from that little wooden house and the misery. Drifting past.

But what’s in brackets remains guarded. Easy to write, impossible to show.

And how can you miss something so much that you never had. What is it that one is missing, when one does not know what they’re missing?

…I look over towards the bed and think what if you were really there sleeping close right now. Let me kiss each of them. My doll, my love, open them like two little butterflies. And you look at me in that way that I’ve always prayed. The very thought leads me on. I can’t bear to close my eyes again and see you there. When I fall into bed as if onto you and close them they become the shape of yours. And now it’s completely back and I’m crashing out to the thoughts of you again. There are the pieces of you about this bedroom, as I’m crashing out to the thoughts of you again. And like a desperate voice drifting off, I’m still speaking to you. I’ll put on that expression of self control that I used to put on when you were mentioned by friends: a face, casual, distant, unconcerned and strong, while the mention of you with another boy took me under like nothing else ever could. Allison talking about someone we knew who’d been visiting you at your house and I wanted to go and vomit in her bathroom. Oh my god. Going and sitting on the lid of the toilet with my legs crossed, leaned over with my own hand going through my hair, while her and Kelly’s voices go on about college plans. And I even know what it’s like to be taken under by the rip-currents of a hurricane; held under, pressed against the sandbar until you’re sure you’ll never live to take another breath. And I was there saying under my breath again, What the fuck? It was like a cruel joke. What strangeness. What unlikeliness.

As if that one particular face never existed. Those eyes. The way your mouth spoke. And my heart was taken like a child takes a toy off a shelf. Like a glass heart off a mantle. And I couldn’t say a word. I couldn’t scream to wake up this girl, this woman, to make sure nothing was broken. And it’s as if I’m still watching you from a distance, through the glass panes of french doors and you’re on a couch, sitting there in this beautiful environment with a glass heart in your hand. As if you’re just almost seeing how special it is. And the phone rings.

Even if I were to end up with a woman as wonderful as Barbara, it would degrade even that in time. There’s no fortunate circumstance to withstand it. A house to survive a storm. And who would even want to live in a house like that with me. That is the beauty of a relationship, that neither has to worry that the other is looking off to someone else. Whether practical thoughts about someone you could be with or something that’s not possible.

Your phone number that I’ve acquired, sits by like a dare. Like a risk. To go on thinking that maybe it could happen is survival, an even keel. You’ll cut me short and I’ll burn. Why are you calling me and what do you want? That’s what I fear the most. I want to call you from some beautiful place, as if I were at some acceptable elevation, somehow on your plane. As if that’s all there was to it. Then a conversation would take place. A conversation between two people who are somehow apart of each other’s lives. And then I could go on. I’m trapped here instead, feeling myself becoming the worst part of this Hollywood scene. Escaping into less glamorous parts of the woods, trying to feel like I’m still part of a neighborhood, and not a transient area of those trying to feel like they exist. I’m so fortunate, but your eyes left me feeling like all those who aren’t. It’s a secret that your eyes left me feeling like I don’t exist. And I know it’s not purely you that had the power to do that, but it was the combination of you and your rejection of so much love. Like the perfect storm that I can’t outrun. I can’t wish it away. And the universe is so mysterious like that. While people tell me that the world is at my feet, my heads fallen into pieces. From that period of time in that neighborhood, I haven’t been free. I can’t see the world without this tint, this pattern. Corridors and hallways and courtyards destroy me. Windows, fucking windows. They’re not what they should be to me. And every other girl is a dead end.

I head this way towards Beverly Hills and Brentwood and then to the ocean. I stop along the sidewalk for a minute. Those funny little tendrils have mysteriously appeared from a hedge that looks to have just been sheared clean, maybe yesterday or as early as this morning. I stop and make believe that it’s the manifestation of your love reaching out for me. I feel over this beautiful bright new little jasmine tendril, perfect skin, in the air reaching out to wrap itself around something. If I stood here long enough, still enough, waiting, it would intwine. Nature has become something else to me, and I’m always looking for signs in it that you love me, that you’re thinking about me too. To save myself. And I don’t know if it’s childish or insane, that I feel it that way, that for a moment I really do feel like this foliage is you thinking about me. The modern world will laugh and tell me, that it’s just a hedge, it’s just a tendril, it’s just a young girl that looks like you, it’s just a twinkling star. That other world that I’m thinking about doesn’t exist anymore. In this one everything means something else and reminds me of something or someone else in that one. I haven’t seen you in years and I rub over these new little leaves as if no time at all has passed.

Wherever it flutters, is where I’ll be found. I’m chasing the butterfly of love, deeper into it when I should be forgetting. It’s fluttering around the memory of you. I’m still chasing it down. Up the Malibu coast. Beautiful butterfly, I say, I let go! I give myself up to fate and the tide if it really wasn’t meant to be. It shows itself and I run after it again without looking. It lands on the memory of you at the naval air station in a pair of aviator sunglasses, on that afternoon when I thought to myself at the Naval Air Station, that’s my wife sitting close by. Just a matter of time. A world of people. Like that life, with the blue angels glimmering by in array. And I was looking at you in those aviator sunglasses, looking up and away. You are a beautiful sight. The glare, the glimmer, the twinkle in my eye. xxx.

Love intwined is a paradise. Living in one, feeling nothing. I can only comment on it, like commenting on a painting. I’m the one that doesn’t feel this place. I’m the one that doesn’t feel anything. The past is greater than the future. It’s greater than the present. Screaming out your name is like sex in itself.

With no closure it keeps you in circles. And I lay down sometimes in some beautiful place, on the sand with the sea-breeze or in a garden and I feel the weight of love and I don’t want to get up again. After crying there is this stillness. And you’re just gone from waiting and all the games in this place called Hollywood. I don’t want to encounter the world anymore. Laying there through sunset and twilight, then staring up at the stars until finally getting up. I don’t want to die to this love of you. I don’t want to be non-viable, a flawed lover, a beautiful body but with half a heart for someone else. But I keep trying. Sex means more to me because I’m trying to save myself with it. The beauty of women means more to me because amongst them, there’s some chance of escape. I approach this beautiful girl dressed so beautifully with this look in my eyes. Love in the escape of love. It’s a serious look. There’s no way around me. The dress goes up. And I hold her there like that with her arms above her head and wrists together, looking over this figure and smelling this girl. And it scares her and she loves it, that I’m not cautious at all as she lets it happen with this boy that she’s never seen before. Oh my god what are you doing? An open window with the wind coming in. Morning. At least tell me where you work. It doesn’t matter anymore.

And I can’t forget. And it is a moment as if I’ve never reached for a phone before, as if calling from this phone and this esteemed environment would make a difference and somehow create an impression over the phone lines of a boy who might have something now to offer. I've had it shivering in my hand. She doesn't answer. After the beep, I only leave the ambient sound of that sunny room in a hotel before softly setting the phone down. A vacuous message hoping somehow, she’d hear this love, crackling through distance and time. I’m sweating and not even sure what in the hell I would have said to you. I say it to this beautiful air. Xxx I love you.

My punishment is the elegant hell of your indifference and aversion. And it’s a place where words mean nothing. Where we go about in silence with you not loving me. And I live forever with you in that house near the water without a word, trying to convince you in a waking dream to love me, to take a walk with me to the water. To lean against me and hold me from the breeze. I won’t hate anyone. I’m in too much the daze of this heavenly place. Have you ever had anyone see that aura of yours? Feel that from you. Dying with love to the sound of your laughter. Hold it off until it’s gone. Until there’s no life left in our light. It’s love like a radiating heart, and isn’t it like any fruit that forms then falls to the ground and eventually shrivels away. Closing my eyes beneath this lime tree tightly. They flutter off amongst the branches. One is me, the other is you. I take her hand, because nothing I’m writing about you can save me. As beautiful as that vision of you in a wedding dress is. I wasn’t the groom.

They haven’t fired me but changed the schedule around on me. There’s not enough of me left to argue about it. Just a little more disorientation. And if I thought humiliation by candle light was such a terrible thing, I would try the stark sunlight. Squinting on the way at this time of the late morning. The light’s so contrary to the way that I'm feeling; like morning sickness. But if anything, I must admit that the outdoor patio is really beautiful during the day. And all of a sudden it wasn’t an annoyance, but was almost like perfect timing, as if I was fated to work this shift, when there she was! In a way. Heaven sent! Sitting so mannerly, like a sight that I needed so badly. What a beautiful child. While waiting on her I'm a Prince to her every need. My pleasure through two courses. She’s only eaten a little piece of her cake, leaving the best part. I peak out at her. For a moment I feel pathetic but alive with my heart beating this way. I have that feeling again almost completely, like when you were near me, and it brings me to tears. She looks so much like you, my god. And the greatest signs come without the purposeful intrusions of man. Nature can be much more insightful and excruciating at times. Beautiful little girl sitting in such brilliant sunlight, don’t look at me please. Oh that precious face! An overlay of yours. Like cellophane. If you only knew. Darling do you know what it means to me? The cut of your eyes, of your mouth. I don’t know what her mother must think, when I can't help myself and I lean over and kiss the shiny hair on the top of her head. And thankfully there's what seems like an understanding look from her mother - so strangely as if she understands everything, brushing the little girl's hair back and smiling like part of the compliment, the universal love. And she should. And horribly, I'm wanting so badly to say to this little girl what I'd wanted to say to you. As if now was the chance. I’ve lost you in a life before. Let's not do this again! But it would be too strange for me to say those things to a nine or ten year old girl. And it would be too strange for me to beg them to come back again soon and to forever request me as their loving waiter! And if I could I’d take her home, and raise her, as if she were ours. It has me sweeping it up while watching them leave. It's fallen into a thousand pieces. What's missed that precious mouth, missed the plate, missed the table, missed everything but the floor. I hold that piece that’s left, trembling on a porcelain plate. Wanting to run out and speak to her one more time. I hold it between my fingers, this piece, the end, with white icing and a little lavender flower on it. Sweetness. So I’m not dead quite yet! Even while the scent of that little girls hair has me flat on the mauve carpet with my arms stretched out and staring at the ceiling with plenty of afternoon light left.

A poster of this little girl with a piece of cake in front of her and a big smile on her face, is all that I would ever need to decorate my room. And now it’s brought on an even greater flood. It’s washed me right back through those low stone Hewit gates.

Late that afternoon, you’ve never seen a happier writer, no white out. I paint my nails with it. Oblivious with the thought that another face like yours might be found.

This storm is so damn frustrating. Cursed. And it’s hard for me not to compare love. It’s like a tide line along the seawall and it hasn’t reached that point again, that all time record high again. I feel the tide of other girls rising, lapping at it like that green salt water in the wind, but it doesn’t happen and I always remain on the surface, the love and sex with other woman unable to sink me entirely or raise me to that previous love. There is that place with your name on it, exposed on a higher step on the seawall. While just the thought of the love I want from you so badly is drowning me. It washes over Ocean Drive. And any attempt at a relationship will fail again, predictably. Here it comes. Like a tidal surge. Like a sudden and unseen front. It comes through the screen windows of the apartment and takes me over. And I can smell that place. High school hallways. The salt water. You next to me. Contentment. My doll. I feel like these depths are running out of light. And I’m too young to live the rest of my life in the twilight hours. Forgive what I say about you at moments of weakness, at moments of desperation, when I think I can cast you out of my heart with words of denigration. Forgive that I’ve bathed my face and neck in holy water on a hot summer day, alone, on my way to the alter in a quiet and empty church to say such horrible things about you. I pray the Virgin Mary doesn’t think I’m speaking of her while trying to get over you. But of course this house is all knowing and would never be confused.

As memories begin to sprawl again and grow, one scene leads to the before and after and you’re there again at sea level in that sprawl of streets in the salty windy air. But it was clear that what was in the brackets wasn’t going to lead me to any kind of success here, at least not of the gilded kind.

I’m not here with some clear and lucid understanding of the industry and studio system, but moving through all of it like a drunk boy from one pretty face to another, from one pretty place to another at the mercy of the haziness of thinking about you.

And that’s not only where the relationships become uncertain, but also where the writing splits in two. It starts to ruin the life above the surface, the moments you’re granted that might not be with her. Writing how you feel is so difficult because of that. Because according to most people, you’re not supposed to feel like this. It is a show of weakness. Something’s wrong with you. It’s a flaw of masculinity that you can’t get her off your mind, and at the same time an offense to any other girl or woman who can’t take her off your mind. So it’s continually split while you’re hidden. Like this beautiful curd that has to be skimmed off of everything I write. Or like the pulp from the wine. Or like myself from my other self; that self loyal to you. I can say things in the brackets that I couldn’t mention otherwise. I suppose people use them for different reasons and find them in different ways, to keep things in or to keep things out. I couldn’t even say her name outside of them, even while I was desperate to bail this heart out of her. I felt like I was quietly wanting her so badly again amongst those streets. A few people knew how I felt. In high school you don’t trust just anyone to your vulnerabilities. And the friends that you’re with all the time, know it. They want to know what that sick look on my face is, when I’ve seen you with that other boy again. The most that they could do was mention when they’d seen you and what you might have said, in a loving way, giving me a glimpse. Although I knew it was just rubbing it in. They want to see me quiver, it’s all in good fun. I would just fall back, thinking, oh please don’t do this to me. But please, what else did she say, what was she wearing? Listening to every precious word about you. If I can’t have the first hand, then the second will have to do. Is it the shape of your face? Like a previous face in a previous life that I’d adored? Was it the cuddly warmth of your body that I felt when you were close? This energy in phase with mine. But a love, out of phase. Have I been chasing you for a thousand years, is that why it was so lighting quick into my blood when I first saw you. Amazing how a confident boy was all of a sudden turned to jello. Love at first sight. Like picking myself up from a high school hallway dream after that. Unbroken by the bell. Do you know what you’ve done? Maybe even without knowing it, you’ve destroyed every relationship that I’ve ever had since then. And it kills me, what reaction you might have at hearing me say, I love you. To look into those eyes, waiting. Like waiting for the final results. No reply. Wasn’t I beautiful?

Dallas is where your family moved on to. I was so sad when my mother told me that. Off to another world, one glamorous enough for you. So I flew a little higher up to live for a while. Not as high as that, so you were still way up there. With my toes at the northern, Austin city limits. I almost got all the way up there one time to look for you. But I only got as far as Temple. And I met this young blonde cheerleader there. And that’s a whole other funny story. I’m safe here with the thoughts of you. Somehow there’s a chance for you here. I feel like I’m somewhere.

But I still want to lay it at your door. I remember when we were still there and I wanted to write something and place it at your door in place of the errant knocks, but I wasn’t in that stage of life to do that. Spiral notebooks and attempts. It wasn’t all pared down yet. It was Corpus Christi and included all the people and faces that were there. And I don’t know if it was closer to what it felt like or not. I read through some of it and it’s just what happened. And being from there, there’s always the temptation to write it just as it was, to write a simple and heartfelt version. I start into something like that but then I don’t think that’s enough. As if to say, that’s nice, but not a nice enough ring for the girl that I love. Always feeling like I could never write anything more important than what I lay at your door. Confusion. Seeking perfection. I don’t even know what I’m expecting to come of it. Maybe it’s just for myself, just another attempt to free myself from it. And I’m looking over these scenes, these situations that I tried to express. With the names of all these other girls. And if there’s no freedom forward, then maybe if I delve further into the past, before I met you. And I spend a little time with those passages and it feels good. You’re not even in the picture yet. Like reversing the reel. A girl in a little yellow convertible Triumph, has my attention for a little while. And then I’m feeling like I could write an entire picture about Nicole. There’s an afternoon with some girl named Devin packing to go off to college. There’s a beautiful blonde girl named Jill that smells like suntan lotion. Then there’s going down Ocean Drive with Kevin Robinson, behind you, with you looking out the back window of your parents luxury car. And there’s the sound of his Porsche clattering and that feeling that I had at the sight of your face.

Freedom in the writing, isn’t freedom at all. Being able to write your name and not want to hide the way I feel, might feel like a breakthrough in the writing, but in reality has me right back where I was. Trapped in those streets. Progression in the work is not progression in life.

It’s stasis. Love is stasis.

And I don’t pick up the phone. She’s not you.

I’ve done as much as I can do to get rid of this love. And I’m sorry that I love love so much. I do want to just move through life with a half-numb practical mind or in drunkenness where everything is just a consideration. They are the lucky ones, never at the mercy of love. There are all these varieties of love. But you really touched my heart, for better or for worse, in a very different way than any other. And it’s this potent excruciating feeling of love without intimacy. And I crave it, just to throw my arms around you and hold you. Writing about us in a foreign land are the most comfortable pieces that I write; removed from that place and everyone that we knew. There are no bridges there, one thought doesn’t lead to the next like they should. Something’s broken, something’s burned. But here there is this atmosphere to hold it together, this aether, this talcum powdered air. And the faces, bodies, places, perfumes, every drop of it, is like a brilliant displacement to a perfect and faultless amnesia.

And when I work on it, what Barbara had asked keeps crossing my mind. What is it about? And if I can’t answer that question I shouldn’t be writing it. I don’t know what I’m trying to get to or what I’m trying to get at. What is it that I want to accomplish with it? Why have I used this opportunity as just another opportunity to speak to you instead of trying to make it here? What is it about? It’s about being in love with a girl that you can’t have, that just goes on like this horrible nightmare. And because it did’t come back my way, should I just pretend like it’s gone. Working on this labor of love while it dies inside of me. Does it turn to poison after so many years? How well does love keep? It’s still as fresh as a new born baby. I’m still shivering, thinking about that big round dial patio thermometer that looks like a clock under that green corrugated fiberglass roof, when a norther’s blown in and you can write things on the glass. And I’m standing there staring out the sliding glass doors again. So close, I could walk there even in this frigid weather without a coat on. I would survive, if only not left shivering at your door. That was never opened for this burning heart of mine. Melting down in the dead of winter on your esteemed steps. Perhaps there’s no one home, perhaps you love the sight of a boy freezing to death. At least be kind enough to throw me out an arctic sweater. Love and no arctic sweater. Forever like two frozen lovers.

That afternoon with the heavenly white thunderous, cumulus clouds billowing into the summer sky over the bay, high up into the atmosphere. I’m coming around that arch, coming to confess my love or to beg and the sweet breeze is blowing and I’m ready. I’m ready to make a fool of myself. I’m just going to grab you and kiss you. Then I see your cars next to each other. I was gazing, nearly transfixed, stopping like a dumb animal in risk of peril. Love is moving you in that direction and you arrived at that beautiful scene. And it might as well be a picture. But pictures don’t hurt this much. I should have gone to the door, interrupting that summertime interlude. Your two cars like two lovers in the sun. I should have cared less about my survival, or losing my cool. Only you can’t fight for love. There’s no war for it. There’s no place to invade for it. It must come by its own volition. And it’s so beautiful that nature’s created something so fragile and illusive, that makes it hurt so much more when it chooses not to land. And my arm and hand is outstretched and poised, waiting, trembling at the choice. Like watching the diminishing sight of a butterfly fluttering around into the blinding glare of the garden. Until I realize it’s not meant to be. But I can’t feel that way and I go further into the garden. It was a glorious avoidance that I still can’t understand. Don’t ever say why you didn’t love me, please. I’m sure there are reasons upon reasons. It’s what no other girl has been able to understand and it’s nothing that I could ever expect them to. You’re supposed to be there completely for someone else when you’re together. Someone unreachable has left me unreachable. I’ll let it ring. It’s not you.

Alone tonight at my discretion. A woman told me that it’s like lying, a lie of omission. That I didn’t mention that there was someone I felt like that about. And it’s true that you on my mind is lying to every woman that I’m with. I’ll see one of them tonight anyway. Barbara’s away and I go through these numbers that I’ve collected at the restaurant as if in a panic and it’s getting late. It’s wonderful, but it’s not that moment of decision at that precious age. Your decision not to. It’s not that moment of denial in the past that you put me on the cross with. Forever trapped in that pattern of streets. My writing is every variation of how it might have turned out. You opened the door and made love to me. I can write the truth in the disco version. I wanted you pregnant not even out of high school. I wanted everything that could be done between two people. Sitting there one night in that park, then a smile with a turn of the head with the wishful thinking of you pregnant in a cheerleading outfit. I was lost even then, a romantic amongst those going through the motions and looking forward to future plans. I saw what I wanted too early on. It would have been nice to have stayed who I was the day before I met you.

The sound of the clock goes on ticking on my expression of what it would feel like if you were here right now, and how wonderful that would be. It’s gotten late. And this ticking clock reminds me of that old Roman numeraled clock on the kitchen wall that was like the metronome of hell. Laying there in my childhood bedroom, with my arms like a summer field dreamer, but looking up at the cracks on the ceiling like another map, always about to fall in on me. Shotguns under bed and the boxes of shells like potpourri finely scenting my bedroom. Oil based paint in the kitchen hardened in the worst of ways, amazingly un-chipped by all the years of dishes thrown against the walls. They don’t make paint like they used to. It was when you could still die eating paint chips. They were like olive green lead walls. A wall splattered with food, and no one had wandered back in that night to clean it up. And when standing there in the kitchen in the near darkness, I thought about you and how beautiful you are and how close you were, and that you were only streets away. You were so close! Then I was counting you like sheep again, that never brought me any rest. You’re coming over my bed again. On a few occasions when I thought it could happen, I set the phone on the bed next to me praying you’d call me back. I laid there fingering that spiraled cord. I laid there with the thoughts of you laying next to everyone. Is that weird of me to have imagined you with other boys, and what you were like with them? The positions. I go quietly out the back sliding glass door in the middle of the night just to get as close to you as I possibly can. It’s windy, you know the air, and I go across the path of what I can’t have. Looking down your street as I pass it by, orbiting a little closer to the object of my affection. Did you ever feel the waves emanating from the flesh of a boy that loves you so much? Did you ever feel me walking through your dream while you slept. Did I love you too much from that little house to the sea? I’m not supposed to love someone this much! No one is supposed to love someone this much. There are no buildings or rooms or clocks in love. My eyes looking into your eyes didn’t leave you with anything? Nothing at all? And I know that silence can be as horrible as violence. Not to have you, not to be speaking with you was worse than violence, I swear. When I was in that house, in that little house growing up, in all the yelling and screaming and violence, I found peace in thinking about you. I hesitate as I pass your bending street, like the top arch of a heart. That way, for perfection and rejection! And sweetie I would have kept knocking on that door if it didn’t hurt so damn much. It never opened. So then, to feel nothing is perfection. It’s what I’m working on. It’s survival. Then an ocean drive, desperate weather, desperate words, cries for armageddon. There is no sea here! There is no ocean here. Just this black hole! Thank god, is that the end coming? A ghost jet plane coming into the naval air station with lights ablaze. No, come this way. Here’s your target, come and zero in on me. With spine against a palm I wanted the entire place destroyed. That black bay laughing as I cried, ‘If I can’t have you then no one can!’ It doesn’t work that way. And life keeps going on like the sound of water dripping in the sink, the clock ticking like a frigid metronome. Without you I’m lost in the woods. It’s cold. It’s later than I thought. I go out walking again in the middle of the night; here, not there.

And I reach the edge in the writing, where I reach the edge of how well I ever knew you. And I try to go on and go into that vague terrain a little bit further but it’s useless. I want so badly to write these scenes between you and me, with more conversation, with time spent together, with lovemaking. Limitations, limitations. I’m a fucking waiter; in the highest echelons of this craft, thinking about a girl who denied me any real time with her. How humorously cruel can nature be? That’s not a question for you. That’s a question for the universe.

What I’d taken Barbara before was so boring. It was a rosy picture, with not a mention of love, or obsession, with not a mention of violence; not in life or in thoughts. No house full of fights. No accidents. No mistakes. It was like the description of a coastal town, as if out of an encyclopedia that lasts forever because it’s merely the description of a pretty little place, not tied to anyone’s feelings, a pretty little sparkling city by the sea, without love, without hurt, without confusion. And who wants to read a diary about a miserable tiny wooden house with the wind blowing over all sides of it and paragraphs about fishing, about drum and redfish and speckled trout. And how my mother would prepare them, fresh in the skillet. And the worst part of delving back into it is delving back into it, still breathing in the air of that small wooden house, the smell of termite eaten wood and gunpowder. We no longer went hunting, if only because my father had somehow become soft hearted and said that he couldn’t pull the trigger on the fuzzy little creatures anymore: a buck had looked him in the eyes before dying. Before it was easy for him. A seven millimeter magnum on a high blind, under a Texas blue sky. Out of the scope, you can hardly even see it. It’s a long walk after to find it. But the weapons and ammunition persisted in dusty zippered bags through the years, cleaned and oiled once in a while, looking down the spiral with daylight at the end of it in my bedroom.

I remember looking into his eyes. And I couldn’t tell him that I loved you. And I couldn’t tell him that I was so proud, that at least it had been one of us; in this little area of wooden houses. I wished he’d married you and she hadn’t gone off into an open world again. I don’t know who they are? I can’t feel a part of it at all. And weren’t we all so anxious to get away completely from that place.

Every walk is amazing. I don’t know why I saw you and felt like there was no other. Like food coloring into a glass of water. Sitting there and watching my mother bake on a holiday and holding it over like an eye dropper. And you watch how it slowly spreads into the water and becomes inseparable, tainted. Always wondering if I’m tainted or fortunate to have this feeling of love. Is it a gift or a burden? I’ve spoken to others who’ve gone through life, having been in love, but never really really in love. Should I be jealous of that? I met you at Ray High School in the hallway. I knew something had happened to me when I staggered home. Not knowing if that feeling was sickness or happiness or joy. What just happened to me? Don’t let this be happening. Then I didn’t see you. That was such a lonely summer. So close but not in the same circles. Praying they’d converge in that strange place. How could I lose you in such a small town, only streets away. Those precious moments when I thought it was possible, I still turn in them. And somehow who we all chose and who we ended up with and who we tried, was all laughable to me. As if I could see too much in the future. Don’t you know that that one will be fat and bald in ten years. Don’t you know that one’s a babbling idiot. Don’t you know who it is that really loves you? Drinking and friends mouths left open at my mouth denigrating someone you were seeing. And I never mention that it’s because they’re dating you. Just that I hate that person as an individual, as a human being for some reason. I’m sure they suspect why.

And somehow here, in this world of the studio system, I can keep it alive. They can broadcast me up there on the hill. The dream story of my life.

In the mirror, it’s a quiet confrontation of the body, face, mouth, eyes, teeth - not with a Hollywood setting, but with the circumstances of my own life. Thinking back to high school and that little bathroom, rubbing that Obsession gel through my hair and practicing that line in the mirror. That line that means everything and means nothing. Will you marry me? I’m that boy in the mirror again in that little bathroom by the den, still in love with you. Is there some chance that you would ever need this face and body and love? Should I just let go and be devoured by time? I’m lost and tired of looking for you in all these other faces. Like letting go of that mirror with ornate gold frame in the living room that I would gaze at myself in before exiting the screen door. A mirror that was like something palatial in our little wooden house. I didn’t feel like I was owed you. But just that I love you so much. It’s just a thought that goes hand in hand with every look at myself in a mirror. How could I be so lucky in love, but not with you? That face, that voice, that heart, the one I wanted. Quiet desperation. Is it too late to smile onto you? A girl you love, and even nature itself wouldn’t give a damn whether you live or die. Every glance, every view is already like a freeze frame that you’ve moved on from. A place already empty of you and anything that you were feeling.

I’ve made the past a palace, like this magnificent scene of eating with my mother at the Crystal Confectionary, with something strangely profound about the light coming down. Meaning as well as she always means. She so humble and never wants to ruffle the feathers of perception. She doesn’t understand yet, that I’ve seen a greater vision of my life. And I’m trying to explain to her, that I’m like a cicada. I was born many lives before. Not wanting to, but asking, have you seen Jewels lately? Hoping there’s some mention of you, some mention of your life or what you might be up to. I think she knew I loved you. I think everybody did. Everybody had that look on their face looking at me when your name was brought up. And you can’t hide it. Always asking about your grandmother. Have you seen Jewels? Have you seen Jewels? Have you seen Jewels? A mother wants for her son what her son desires, with her heart so closely connected to the expressions on her son’s face. She was always too humble and polite to say anything negative. Always so calm with never a temper, such strange blood. And it’s not a mother’s place to tell her son that he can’t have someone that he loves, because of this reason, or that reason. Life goes on, just as it’s gone on before. Don’t speak to me like a child. This lunch is over! Oh mother, do you know where we’re from? Living a charade in this town, playing dumb. Take notice of nature, would you please. Shake off some of your modesty. I’ll let my blood take hold elsewhere. Dozens of races set into three boxes. Laughable. Let’s go shopping for fabric again. I’ll have to look through a thousand bolts of fabric. I’ll have to sit down and find the perfect Simplicity pattern. It’s either you look at the truth or you look away mom. I want to make a dress for her. I haven’t talked to my mother for months on end, but I’ll have to call her to find out how your grandmother spells her name sometime. You know it’s funny. My mother was always talking to her little old ladies while she did their hair about her son, how proud she was of me, and I always wondered if she ever mentioned me to your grandmother and if your grandmother ever mentioned me to you. I’ll never forget that movement of my mother, with one hand guarding the face of the old woman, and with the other spraying Tresemmé over some fresh hairdo. And the farther into fall the prettier it becomes. I remember as a child looking over those wigs, one that was silvery blue with big shiny curls on it, always thinking they were so beautiful, like works of art. And maybe I won’t have you until then. And I wonder if I’ll ever be able to say that I don’t want it now. Will that be possible to do someday. It would be interesting to see what would happen, if I had a wife and family someday and you came walking through the door, and you said that you couldn’t live without me. Better yet, you just come in and kiss me. I’m so curious as to what I’d do. And I’m not curious as a writer, I’m curious as a human being. And it’s a daylight revelation, when I find myself looking through this work that no one in the world should ever see, in which I’m this animal at the periphery of your life. Not of your ilk, even when I could never even figure out what your ilk was. Climbing up onto the aluminum carport and then up onto that little gray tar shingled roof, standing there looking that way towards the bay as if trying to see your house from there. Wanting to jump off your roof down into your pool. I’m dumbstruck in the sunlight, as if still in that breeze, as if every achilles, as if every bitter humiliation is laid out on full display. Asking myself, why is it so embarrassing to have loved someone who didn’t love me back? So there’s this annoying struggle between the revelation of my life and a disco version. And more of a temptation because Barbara was someone I felt like I could trust to tell everything to. Sex has us feeling so close so fast. And I’m always unsure if that’s self deception or not. It’s the most intimate thing that two people can do together. Then it’s divulging almost everything over a couple of glasses of wine. But it’s very different when you’re speaking to someone than writing it down. Speaking isn’t admitting to how you feel. It’s like talking about some restaurant that didn’t appeal to you and you’re never going back there. When you write it, you have to look at it. And you have to look at it again and again. It’s pared down to a classical sense, to love and the rejection of love. Well that plays been done, how many times? So it’s thrown out and I’m running to the disco. It’s much easier to write. And everyone has a wood paneled den to remember.

I don’t want to love you anymore. I want the chance to fall out of love with you. I want to be free of this feeling. I think I hear someone calling to me. I turn into the wind, there is no one there. It is this love that I’m consumed by. The wind and every memory of how it all got away. Like a moment, where after I was diverging from myself. I’m separated from you.

Although I miss the clouds. And of my entire life there, it is the impression of you that embodies the place. It’s like I was born again from the womb of your disdain for me. You are the port. When you appeared, my fate was sealed for sure.

Is it humiliation and embarrassment to love someone who doesn’t love you? I spend days on that concept. Pretending to save face, while the love is there in you. The tendrils and the vines and the thorns and roses emanating from inside you. And you go about like this with it just under the skin. Time is passing and I’m panicked in a calm sort of way. I can’t emulate the expressions of your face so perfectly anymore. And the memory of your voice that was like an adoration slowly sucking the life out of me has become slightly washed out by the voices of girls that sounded like you, off by so many degrees. Any of your attributes and I’ve been like a bee to honey. Stay just like that honey. From that angle you’d think… I remember hearing about you at some company picnic in a sundress, and even that second hand sighting of you brought such joy into my heart. Isn’t one tapestry as good as any other? Saying to yourself, well then any girl in a sundress will do. And you try to trick yourself into believing that.

The movements don’t make any sense. Everything breaks down to it. A love letter just becomes the ramblings of a boy on Hoffman street. That for you was only a lesser easement on the way home. The glimpse of your car streaking by was like a bullet. Didn’t you ever stop to think about the fate of the quickest way home? That burning streak left through my mind. We were meant to be. But was it always such a straight and easy shot through my heart? Didn’t you see the balconies and bell tower in the sky over my little wooden house with a flag waving for you. Did you ever notice the Christmas lights I left up half the year, hoping that you’d finally come in. Such a touching streak of a car, kept me feeling like there was some pursuit. My head turning with the instincts of a canine through a bay window. Have you ever seen a dog chase a car down the street to the bloodiest of paws? Well I sort of felt that way when I saw you go by. Slow that car and let me jump in. I promise not to drool.

And how can I just walk along so blasé, where it’s like picking the most beautiful place to suffer. There’s no time to dwell on a hummingbird in some war-torn place. But there’s time here to do that. To think that everything is a sign. To think that everything means something else. That everything is about love or disgrace. And how can you be there during the hours that you’re not? How to become a transcendental ghost to satisfy the calling and the calling. While the faces gather and the conversations and laughter take place without you. What it must be that is being said. My ears are burning. But my mother did her grandmother’s hair, how I would have loved to have braided Natalie’s. Those eyes falling closed with the tenderness. I remember looking at your face and listening to your voice that I loved so much, trying to get some trace of what had occurred during all the unseen hours, wanting to be part of your life. And when these young beautiful rich mothers come in with their daughters that look just like them, and I watch them sit and fix their hair that way. It’s like a breakdown just under the surface of this waiter’s calm. I bring a little ribbon. I want so badly to be part of their lives. But I’m the periphery. If someone isn’t part of your life, they aren’t part of your life, it’s that simple. It becomes fantasy. I’ve never been to Italy. I’m writing pages and pages about us in Italy. But it’s like this consciousness of a past life. I was there before and I know the love is real.

I avoid it (spiral notebook) for a few days and I know when I open it again it will leave me salty and shivering in that breeze of indifference again with a rosy pink carnation wilting in my hand waiting for you to want me too. I’d put it away into the clear plastic container like something that can be preserved for a lifetime. Hidden in refrigerator in the back little room, so my parents wouldn’t ask me what it was for. Bought on a whim at H.E.B.’s after a day of surfing. And I’d thought, I’m going to pin this on you. I’m going to walk over and knock and you’re going to open the door and I’m going to pin this on you even if you’re in a t-shirt or sweatshirt. The rest of our life, a coronation of love. And maybe because it’s where you were heading, I always picture you in a sorority girl’s sweatshirt all the time, with the Greek insignia on it. I don’t know if you even wear those. You’re precious to me. It becomes - in the wishful heart of a boy in love - a new reality of time, discontinuity, disco, like waiting for something now to end or fall into ruins. And I’ve been asked, where’d you get your patience? It’s absolute shock and the slow burn of love. That’s all it is. Not being able to go on with your life for one reason or another. The heart in stasis is patience. There’s no secret. You can’t fake it. I’m a product of the continuity of my life. Like layers upon layers of circumstances. And you become. They try every explanation. But it’s not a miracle and it’s not evil and it’s not un-human. It’s just someone with a ghost, someone without their soulmate that keeps walking along, looking around for another flower that makes him forget. And you’d think, that in a garden like this it wouldn’t be so hard to find.

It’s a sunny day on the island. And it’s just about the currents. The currents in the sweeping clouds. The currents in the water. I remember days when the wind was blowing so hard and the currents were moving so fast along the beach when you’d have to paddle so hard just to stay in one place. And you can’t let go of that place where you paddled out, or you don’t want to. And you’re looking towards the shore and you’re paddling and paddling. And your blue jeep is sitting there and you’re laying out on this towel beside it. And I can’t get a wave in and I’m drifting and I’m fighting the currents, paddling and paddling. And the windshield of your blue jeep is there glimmering. It’s like this strange dream where all I have to do is catch a wave in to you, but I can’t. And I just can’t. And there’s the exhaustion, and this droning love that just won’t stop. And suddenly it’s like it does something to me. And I can’t write anymore. And I’m just staring down at that scene as if looking from high above with the currents carrying me away from you. Sweeping me down that coast away from you in some strange twilight. And I know that I’m going to put it all away for a while again, and try to live life.

Love. Masochism. Self flagellation. Craft. Denial. It’s not a way out of it, paper and ink and typewriter. Taking the batteries out of the fire alarm. It leaves a soot mark on the bathtub porcelain. I ignore the banging at the screen door. That draft didn’t work; curling up and burning like rose petals.

Breaking Love

-Alan Augustine

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nadiarizavi · 5 years ago

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a different definition of stars- chapter 1: blue, a color, a feeling

@planceminibang SUMMARY:

Lance McClain was born for the spotlight. But after a surprise scandal, his mom gets worried that the fame’s starting to get to his head-- and Lance gets shipped off to live with his brother Luis and his family in the countryside town of Garrison, in the middle of Altea County, population barely breaching a thousand. In a new place where no one knows his name, Lance should be grateful to have a break from the lights and cameras-- but being a farmhand isn’t the life of glitz and glamour he was used to. And it’s definitely no picnic when the girl next door has blackmail on you.

RATED: T, TAGS: Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Minor Injuries, Cows, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Car Accidents, minor kallura

CHAPTER ONE ON AO3!

A/N: huge thank u to the mods !!! huge love to @zoedozy for making SUPER LOVELY ART that’ll be shared soon !! the fic is below the cut or you can read it on ao3! <3

Slap.

Lance withdrew his legs with a hiss, turning to the driver--his sister in law, Lisa-- who by now had turned her eyes back to the road, a satisfied smile on her face.

“The hell was that for?!”

“I told you four times to get your feet off the dash, Lance.”

Lance gestured to the dash, then at her. “It’s--look! I didn’t leave a mark!”

“And you’re adorable if you think that attitude’s gonna fly here.”

“Attitude--?”

“Lance.”

He slumped back into his seat, the dirt road causing the truck to bump and jostle along as it did. His eyes wandered back out the window-- miles and miles of grass and trees, cattle, hazy purple mountains in the far off distance. Not another car for miles. No music played on the radio--white noise. An unrelated buzz--Lisa told him that it was cicadas in the late summer--hummed in the air, and the sun was high in the afternoon sky. Cloudless. An infinite blanket of blue.

“How’s Veronica?”

Lisa was asking him questions again. Lance looked down at his shirt, tugging at a loose string, brows furrowed. How’s Veronica?

Mad at him.

Well, he couldn’t blame V for being mad at him. He was still trying to ice the burn from his parents being mad at him too.

He heard the shutter of a secret camera click in his ear, and Lance planted his forehead against the window.

“She’s fine.”

“Mami told me she didn’t come to send you off.”

“Busy at work. She has a life too, yanno. Outside of being my babysitter,” he grumbled. They drove past one, two cows. He should add on to that. “Sorry you got stuck with babysitting, by the way.”

“You’re family.” A pause. She was thinking of something to add on, too. “We want to take care of you too, Lance.”

The cicadas buzzed on.

Nadia and Sylvio were his next assailants-- running down the porch steps of a wooden, white ranch house at full speed, down the dirt driveway, and into his arms. He only ever saw the kids when the family came to Hollywood for the holidays, for summer vacation. They wore wide smiles, their teeth bright white, Nadia’s dark hair braided down her back, Sylvio’s hands were dried with mud. Lance couldn’t help but laugh.

Despite the circumstances, he could never resent seeing his favorite niece and nephew.

“You guys keep getting bigger. Stop eating your vegetables.” Lance said, bending his knees for Sylvio to wrap his thin arms around his neck, lifting him into a piggyback ride while Nadia skipped alongside them.

“Do actors need to eat their vegetables?” Nadia asked, a curious twinkle in her eye. She wanted to be just like her uncle Lance, she had said at Christmas the last year. Just like him.

For the moment, the reminder made his stomach twist in knots.

“Well, kinda.”

“Then I won’t stop.”

Sylvio wriggled against his spine, chirping directly into Lance’s ear. “Me too! I won’t stop, too!”

That made him laugh, the knot undoing itself for the thirtieth time that day, and he let the boy down as soon as the porch steps came to view. It was a big porch. It was a big house. Stark white, freshly painted. An oasis in the middle of a lifeless world. Lisa whistled for him, back down the driveway.

“Lance, you don’t seriously expect your pregnant aunt to get your bags, do you?”

Lance bolted back down, ignoring the sting in his chest when he reached the truck and looked down to his shoes; once pristine, white, now dusted. Lisa gave him a curious glance as she handed him his duffle.

“What’s wrong?”

“My shoes.”

And then she rolled her eyes, dropping the duffle into his arms. “You’ve got money. Buy new ones. Probably something better suited for the farm.”

He followed her dejectly--her and his rolling suitcase--back up the driveway, feeling perspiration on his forehead, in his hair. The late afternoon was hot, the sun oppressive against his neck. Sunscreen. That was definitely first priority once he’s settled in.

The air inside the house was cool and inviting, a welcome reprieve from the hot summer sun. The kids followed their mother and Lance like ducklings up the stairs, into the spare bedroom, inspecting Lance as if he were a new toy.

In a way he kind of was. All city and no country on him. He was dressed for first class travel, not for the dirt roads and cattle and buzzing cicadas.

The bedsheets were a shade of wet soil and smelled faintly the same. The lacy curtains were open, and he could get another view of miles of grass and purple mountains and an infinite sky. The wallpaper-- blue, white, floral--right out of a homestead decor magazine. There was a desk and a closet, empty save for boxes labeled ‘WINTER COATS’ and ‘XMAS DECOR.’ Lance dropped his duffle on the bed, watching the dust float up and catch in the light. Sylvio and Nadia set to inspecting the room itself, and Lisa let out a content sigh as she looked around. She threw him a smile.

“Nothing like Beverly Hills?”

“Don’t see an infinity pool out there,” Lance said, hoping he sounded funny. Please think I’m being funny, Lis.

She outstretched a hand to him, adjusting the sleeve of his shirt, following his gaze out the window to the sky and the mountains and the grass. “You don’t need a pool to see infinity out here, mijo.”

She started out the door again. “Let’s get the rest of your bags and get you settled in, right? Sylvio, Nadia, can you two go check on the chicken coop?”

The two were glad to oblige, racing down the stairs in fits of laughter, and Lance could only follow Lisa, dumbstruck, hand out to help her if she needed a hand down the steps. “You guys got chickens here too?”

She laughed, throaty and warm. “You’ll get to meet them tomorrow, I hope. I don’t know what Luis wants you to do yet.”

“Probably wrangle a cow.”

“We don’t wrangle anything here. You’re a farmer now, not a bull rider,” Lisa let out a breath, looping her arm through his as they left the cool air of the farmhouse and started back down the driveway, kicking up dirt as they walked. She was quiet, until they were back to the car, back to the luggage Lance toted from sunny California. “Your mama didn’t tell us everything, you know.”

Lance bit his lip, hoisting his luggage out of the truck bed and onto the road. “You can probably just google it.”

“I’d rather hear it from you, Lance. Not the tabloids.”

That was reassuring, considering his parents and Veronica preferred to read the tabloids.

He looked Lisa in the eye, and the knot in his chest twisted itself right back up. Lance wondered if there was a chance he could get an Eagle Scout badge for his impressive knotting skills in the last month, because this was one hell of a situation to be tied up in. And, hell, no sense beating around the bush with her.

“Uh, it was a DUI.”

Her expression fell.

“Lance…”

He remembered his luggage, one hand reaching for it, the other gesturing at Lisa. “No, no. I, uh, I don’t want you to say anything. It was my fault.”

She was still looking at him with a furrowed brow. Pity. Worry. Other emotions he wished he couldn’t see, couldn’t understand. “No one was hurt. Just me,” was tacked on quickly, almost too quickly.

She picked up the other luggage, and she squeezed his arm again, but pulled away quicker. “No, yeah, of course. You got lucky.”

There was ice in her words, and Lance could taste bile. His free hand went subconsciously into his hair, eyes back up at the sky, tracing the bumps and grooves of a healing, stitched wound, the sweat on his hands sliding against the sweat in his hair, and the infinity of blue began to break up and crack like a shattered windshield.

Lance closed his eyes.

He got lucky.

His first task was dishes, drying as Lisa washed, and the sound of a car honk outside and the ecstatic shouts of his niece and nephew almost made him screw it up. He sat the plate down on the counter, giving Lisa a wild look. She snorted.

“Luis is home.”

“Where’s he even been all day?”

“Hey, farm work is more than just staying on the farm.” She dried her hands, following the kids outside, and Lance could hear them chatter, hear his name be shouted in excitement by Sylvio. He shuffled along, tail between his legs; the nerves, the anxiety building back up again as he peered through the screen door. There was Luis, and a dog, and the door swung open. Lance stumbled back. The stranger just raised her brows.

“Oh. My bad.”

Lance peered down at her. She wore her hair pulled back under a baseball cap, eyes behind large, round glasses. She was dressed for work, dusty denim jeans and a loose tee covered in suspicious red stains, and in her arms was a crate full of mason jars labeled by fruit (and Lance’s suspicion of the stains dissipated). She looked around his age, maybe younger. Her amber-toned eyes eyed him curiously, and Lance wondered for a moment if she recognized him. They had television here in the middle of nowhere, didn’t they? She had to know who he was. Maybe she’s starstruck.

Her curiosity quickly turned to annoyance.

“Can you… please move?”

Right. He was blocking her path. Lance obliged.

“Sorry. Uh. Hey, I’m Lance.”

He followed her into the kitchen as she set the crate down, setting to unboxing the jars, reading the labels, organizing them by fruit on the counter. Lance watched her for a minute, listening to the sound of glass tinkle. He had about a thousand questions. Many revolving around the stranger in his uncle’s kitchen unboxing fruit preserves like her life depended on it.

“I’m Lance.” He said again, louder, hoping her silence was just because she didn’t hear him. “I’m, uh, Luis’s little brother.”

“Uh-huh.”

Silence. She picked up the now-emptied crate, turning around to face him. Nothing. No reaction, not even a little one. Lance blinked at her.

“Lance McClain.”

“Yeah. You’ve told me your name three times already.”

“I… I did.” He did. “And you are…?”

“Not staying.” She brushed past him, and Lance stared after her. No way. There was no way. He knew his brother was disconnected, but even Luis watched TV.

“Wait, you don’t… do you watch TV? Ever?”

She stopped, turning around, holding the crate against her hip as she gave him a bewildered stare. “You’re kind of a weirdo, Lance McClain.”

“You don’t know who I am.”

She shifted her footing.

“I do now. Why’s that matter? You’re special or something?”

“Yes. Wait, no.”

She raised a brow again, and maybe he was imagining the amused twinkle in her eyes. “O-kay. See ya around, Lance.”

Good brother manners told him to follow the girl back out, greet his uncle. But at the moment, Lance was having a reality check.

Out in the middle of farmer country and the first person he thought would recognize him… didn’t. Was this what a blessing was? Or maybe it was just a blow to his ego. Either way, it was devastating. He peered back out through the screen door, watching the stranger laugh and smile with his brother and Lisa, giving Sylvio and Nadia hugs. And he watched her whistle for the dog, and watched them disappear down the dirt road. He turned toe back towards the kitchen, grabbing the next plate they used for lunch and began to scrub it down, listening for the door to open, for anyone’s voice. It was a relief when the laughter finally carried itself through the foyer, through the kitchen, and Lance felt a calloused hand clap down on his neck.

“What, didn’t want to come say hi?” Luis pulled him into a half-hug, and Lance splashed dish water, a laugh escaping him.

“I wanted to finish these, man.”

“Dishes! I thought Mami was making up urban legends when she said you still knew how to do these.”

“Dickhead.”

Luis laughed, setting to drying Lance’s dishes, his eyes wandering to the jars stacked up neatly on the counter. “You met Katie, at least?”

“Was that the girl?”

“Isn’t she great? Smartest girl we know.” He gestured around the house. “Set up the wifi and TV and even fixed the truck last spring with her mechanic buddy. Complete wonder girl.”

“What the hell? She set up your cable and she apparently has no idea who I am.”

Luis slowed his motion with the dish towel, rolling his eyes. “You can’t be serious. You’ve barely been here a day and you have expectations.”

“It’d be like if you didn’t know who Leonardo DiCaprio was.”

“Leo is an international icon and you’re on a daytime drama. Perspective.”

Lance took a step back, eyes on the preserve jars. “It was just… weird.”

Luis glanced at him, smiling. “A good or bad weird?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, get used to it. Mami sent you over here because she knew you’d be out of the spotlight while this whole thing simmers down.”

He winced, involuntary, leaning back against the counter. Simmer down. That’s all this was, right? The press will stop seeking him out and some other celebrity will do something equally or more insane, and Lance and his car wrapped around a pole would be old news. Simmered down. Cooked and salted and chowed down and passed right through and the next meal comes along and the cycle repeats itself in a vicious self-sabotage.

It didn’t sit well with him, suddenly. A headache spiked where his skull had split opened and flowered, however many salted and simmered days ago. The bile came back.

“Yeah, when this all simmers down.” Lance said, a little too loud, and he faked a yawn. “Anyways, I’m beat. Jet lag and shit. When should I set my alarm?”

“I’ll cut you some slack. Seven A.M. sound good?”

“Good god, no.”

Luis threw him a well meaning smile. “Let me or Lisa know if you need anything, okay?”

“How about building a luxury pool and spa in the backyard?”

“Anything but that.”

They laughed together, shoving and shoulder-checking, and Luis followed Lance as far as the stairs, a grin on his face, a crinkle at the corners of his eyes.

“Make sure you stay knocked the hell out, because you’re going to need all the sleep you can get. You’re on farm time, now.”

Lance shuddered hard, overdramatic. “That’s scary shit, Lu. Love you. Goodnight.”

He bounded up the stairs a little too fast, sinking down into his four-post bed, onto a blanket of soil and stared up at a dark ceiling. The buzzing of cicadas was replaced by the chirps of crickets, and Lance squeezed his eyes shut, rolling onto his stomach. His fingers itched to check his phone, google himself, see if his co-stars were texting him; but he knew better. Now was not the time.

Simmer, simmer down, Lance.

The jet lag caught up to him, eventually, and he breathed in the scent of earth and sky.

#plance #plance mini bang #planceminibang #amaje fics #a different definition of stars

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metinthehallway · 6 years ago

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Heatwave Chapter 1:

Don’t Look Too Long At Something That Doesn’t Look Right

Hello! I wrote a lil sumn sumn and decided to share. I’m hoping to actually follow thru on this story as I’m feeling pretty inspired so fingers crossed it doesn’t float away. Anyway, if you decide to read I hope you enjoy! It’s 3.2k words and chapter numero uno of a kind of...supernatural...harry fic I’m starting. (Let’s hope this copies correctly and the format isn’t fucked up)(omg it’s so fucked up)

Summer arrived in full force that year, sweeping into Ferris Point on an oppressive heatwave that made your whole body sweat just by looking out the window and into the harsh sunlight splintering through the still, humid air. The only refuge Lila had was her dingy apartment, if you could even call it that. The converted attic of an old rickety church was advertised as a “studio apartment” and it was two rooms scarcely bigger than a shoebox. She guesses she shouldn’t complain as it was a roof over her head...no matter how often that roof leaked. And hey. It was dirt cheap.

Lila’s humble abode includes a small kitchen area and three pretty big circular windows all intricately stained glass and one square window that’s not. A full-size mattress resides on the floor next to a mug of lukewarm lemonade on top of a stack of books from the very minuscule town library, and a lamp behind the stack of books that looks suspiciously like the lamps at said library. A large and impressive peace lily sits treasured in one corner and a somewhat dusty dresser adorned with a plethora of trinkets and things in the other corner.

And of course; the air conditioner.

Lila’s beautiful and most prized possession during these hot, hot summer months in the state of New York. She found it off on the side of the road in May along with a small table balancing precipitously on three good legs and a loveseat with a multitude of mysterious stains on the seat cushion, back cushion and armrests. They sat behind a cardboard sign scrawled with one glorious, godsent word. Free. So Lila, only equipped with her dear and trusty bicycle, Lorraine, looked at her wicker basket nestled between the handlebars and back to the shining air conditioner beaming in the high afternoon sun. She then made a very important decision before her mile trek back to the run down church.

She clicked her tongue and heaved the air conditioner into her tan arms and staggered all the way home, leaving poor Lorraine to fend for herself before she came back for her at sundown and rode all the way home with a smile on her face. Lila had no reason to believe that this beautiful object, circa the late 70’s from the looks of it, would actually work. But the stiflingly hot nights that were already happening at the tail end of just spring was something she didn’t even want to entertain anymore. She needed this to work. And work it did. For two months.

On July 14th, the warmest day thus far, reaching 115 degrees, it had ceased to function. Her teeny tiny home was no longer a refuge from the heat but rather a prison to it. The heat rose so quickly and relentlessly through the top floor of the church that Lila barely had time to collect her things before going outside to seek some shade under a cool canopy of trees and hopefully not keel over from heatstroke.

With her bag on her back and the soles of her shoes melting on the gravel driveway, Lila set off into the mouth of the woods near her house. Every time she walked into the forest she found herself increasingly more comfortable navigating its slopes and turns. The forest was a safe place for her now.

One early afternoon in April when she found herself relieved of her desk duty at the local library two hours before her shift was to end, she looked out her clear square window into the budding willow trees. They seemed to open their arms to her, inviting her in.

Growing up, Lila would have to be dragged inside by her feet, kicking and screaming and throwing mud and clumps of grass at her mother who did most of the dragging. She would play outside in the sun until her skin was peeling and rolling around in the snow until her fingers were blue. The comfort and curiosity she felt amongst the wide open world of the outdoors was unparalleled and played a key role of who she was today.

That early afternoon in April when her shadow was only a sliver of her being, she wandered into the yawning forest. The bugs and little creatures were just coming out to bask in the moderate spring temperatures, waking up from their winter sleep and rubbing the crust out of their eyes. Snowdrop flowers littered the ground and patches of sunlight bounced off the damp tree trunks and onto the forest floor, not unlike the way water from a swimming pool looks, illuminated from its depths.

On her walk, she was careful not to get lost. There wasn’t really a distinct trail to follow as not many people from her small town ventured into the decently sized forest. She mentally marked trees and formations of rocks that stood out along the way, tripping over the majority of them. Before long, she stumbled upon a small clearing with long tendrils of deadened grass coming back to life and a steep drop off into a body of water. The small spring looked like it had just recently started moving again after winters ice with the water clogged with globs of grass and silt that rose to the top to make a murky appearance.

Lila, however, was in awe. The natural spring was relatively untouched and it seemed worlds away from her dingy church and monotonous job that didn’t pay nearly enough for a liveable wage. Her worries about rent and groceries floated away and disappeared into the sunbeams shining down on the water. The sweat on the back of her neck trickled down through her shirt as Lila worked to discard her sneakers and take off her clothes. She carefully made her way down short cliff on a small kind of natural stairway made of boulders and stood before the slow moving water.

Lila dipped her foot in the pleasantly warm water and swirled the silt around. She waded further out, cautious of sharp shale and any living critters, and found that the spring only really got about 6 feet deep at the center. She could touch the bottom if she submerged herself a few inches and popped back up to the surface, smiling wide. Lila spent the whole day soaking up the sun's rays like a lazy fat cat. She indulged in her own little accomplishment at finding a place so serene right before the thick of summer and fantasized about all the days she’d spend here.

Or so she thought.

With the heat wave and blue skies came a small drought. Nothing detrimental, just a few weeks where the dark, rich soil turned to dust and flowers began to scorch in the wretched path of the sun. It made everything ugly and surrounded by an orange hue. The trees even seemed defeated by gravity, panting like a dog and drooping towards the ground in hopes of extending their roots further to find any drop of water hiding in the earth.

This also meant that Lila’s dear spring had completely evaporated from the last time she visited, just yesterday. Given, the water was a bit low then, only coming up to her chest. But she didn’t think it could happen so fast.

As she walks under the shade of the forest in the pathway of trampled grass she drew out herself, she comes out the other side to the clearing full of wildflowers and sharp miscanthus grass. Lila peers over the cliff, expecting to see the sparkling gleam from the reflection of the water but discovering only a pit of rust colored dust gazing back at her.

There’s a strange haze that settles over her mind suddenly and she can’t seem to remember the last time she visited the spring, even though it was certainly less than 24 hours ago. There’s no way a body of water this big could disappear overnight. Lila shakes her head and chalks her confusion up to dehydration. She hasn’t been drinking nearly enough water as she should.

Heaving a deep sigh and wiping an exasperated hand down her face, Lila stands there for a couple of minutes feeling mildly defeated. She turns on her heel, accidentally kicking up an grotesque amount of dust that sticks to the obscene amount of moisture on her.

Coming out from beneath the lovely shade of willows and oaks, Lila walks straight past her church-home-hell and continues on the uneven gravel towards the heart of Ferris Point.

Ferris Point, population 1,559, is a small town in upstate New York. It consists of two gas stations, one movie theater, four competing bars, a handful of overflowing consignment shops and a 24 hour diner called Sandy’s Gateway Getaway but everybody calls it Sandy’s, for short. Sandy’s dabbles in a bit of everything, from inventive food specials of the day to questionable live “entertainment” to the ever-changing paint on its walls.

The owner, Beau, a bit of an eccentric, stout old man in his 60’s with an almost full head of hair and a matching full face of beard, inherited the diner when his father passed. Sandy’s is named after Beau’s late mother and stays as lively and indecisive as she was. Beau has a habit of painting the diners walls to whatever color suits his mood that month, and when he paints it’s the only time Sandy’s is closed.

This month, the walls are a light lilac color and a beautiful respite to the burning orange haze that’s covered the town. Lila heaves a sigh and this time it’s in relief as a blast of ice cold air envelops her body. The diner is relatively empty and she walks towards the first booth in front of the wall of windows to the left, taking it all for herself.

She dumps her bag on the glossy enamel surface of the table, accidentally knocking over the ketchup bottle and cursing under her breath as a few books coming flying out of the broken zipper. A group of elderly women sitting at a table in the corner shoot her somewhat of an annoyed glance as Lila interrupts their riveting book club discussion about whether or not Ms. Bennett really deserved Mr. Darcy’s undivided love and attention. She smiles sheepishly and ducks her head to look at the contents of her bag for her copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. She’s been on a reread of the series, her fifth one, and she never fails to get those gleeful goosebumps.

Beau, wiping down the long oval bar that takes up the entire back wall of the diner, looks at Lila and smiles.

“What can I getcha today, Ms. Lila? The usual?”

Lila nods and grins while Beau shouts her order out to the cook. Two pancakes with warm blueberry jam and syrup, a side of scrambled eggs and a cup of orange juice, with the pulp.

“Yes, and can I get your biggest glass of water? If you have a very big bucket then that’s fine too. Fill her up,” she says with a wink.

Beau shakes his head. “Is it still a fire hazard out there? I don’t even want to step outside to drive home. I think my engine might blow up just by going a few blocks over,” he chuckles.

“Yes sir,” Lila says. “And your car might just combust. My air conditioner finally kicked the bucket so I’m thinking of catching a bus into Harrisburg to find a cheap fan at the Walmart or something.”

Beau purses his lips, an action barely noticeable through the nest of grey hair surrounding his mouth. He makes a funny squelching noise behind his teeth and begins to talk.

“You know,” he says, “I think I might have somethin’ in the back for ya. It’s been there since the dawn of time practically. You’re gonna have to clean the dust offa it if by some miracle it works.”

Lila perks up and nods enthusiastically. “What is it? Is it a fan? An air conditioner? Please say air conditioner, Beau, please. I think I might suffocate in my sleep because of this humidity,” she groans out.

“It’s a big industrial fan,” Beau says with a chuckle. “If it turns on, you can call it yours. If you need me to, I can drop it off at your house when I leave. I take it you’re gonna stay here for a while?” he says, raising his eyebrows and pointedly looking at her already cozy set up. Her book is open face up in front of her and her feet are propped up on the cushion in front of her. Her phone is plugged into an outlet hiding just underneath the table behind the napkin dispenser and her bag has been turned into a makeshift armrest.

Lila laughs, a quick light sound, and she can feel the sweat already cooling her neck as she nods. She’s never felt comfier. She could sleep here, she thinks.

“Thank you so much Beau. How much do you want for it?”

“Don’t be silly,” the owner says, waving away her question. “It only collects dust back there anyway. I mean it.”

“At least let me pay you for bringing it to my house. But please don’t try bringing it up to my hallway. No offense, but you might break your back. I fear for the safety of my spine just carrying my groceries up those flights of stairs. It’s ridiculously steep so leave that to me,” Lila says with a grimace.

“Deal,” he laughs. He walks through the swinging doors to the back to plug the fan in. He walks back out and gives a quick thumbs up signaling that it works. Lila tilts her head back onto the plush seat, smiling, and closes her eyes. It’s something, she thinks. She thanks her lucky stars and hears someone make a shushing sound and the volume on the TV increase. The screen shows a weatherman standing in front of a map of the region and gesturing to the temperatures at each city on the map, reporting on this next weeks forecast.

“Well, folks, it looks like there’s no break in this heatwave anytime soon,” the man says with a click of his tongue. He points to the dot on the map saying Ferris Point as well as Harrisburg and Troy and all the towns around it.

“It seems this region in particular has been hit the worst with temperatures rising up to almost 120 degrees and with little refuge during the night as it drops down to 92 with the humidity at 81 percent. This week's forecast stays at a steady 110 degrees and above with little temperature fluctuation. Mostly sunny with little chance of rain until next Friday where hopefully, fingers crossed, a mean looking storm cloud heading in from the Midwest will break the wave and end the drought. This has been your local weather forecast with Bob Kadinsky, thank you for tuning in.”

The old-lady-book-club in the corner all visibly deflate at once while slowly fanning themselves with their paperbacks of Pride and Prejudice. As does Lila. She’s sick of the heat and sick of constantly being in a near dehydrated state for the past week.

Lila slumps back into her seat, diving into the greatest literary creation of all time, until her food is brought out. She practically inhales the warm and fluffy pancakes and is pretty sure she beat some kind of record for taking the fastest drink of water ever. She asks for a second mason jar of the icy cold goodness and gets comfortable again.

An hour in the women have left and the only people in the diner are Lila, the cook and one waitress typing something into the register with one hand on her hip. Beau left some ten or so minutes ago reminding Lila about the fan.

The sun is setting and a reddish glow enters the room, washing over the checkerboard tile and the vibrancy catches the fresh lilac paint on fire, it seems.

Just then, the bell above the front door calls out, signaling a new arrival. Lila pays no attention, mindlessly shrinking away from the hot air blowing into the back of her hair, entirely engrossed in the world of Harry Potter. She registers the sound of heavy footsteps that kind of drag across the ground walk up to the register and the sound of a throat being cleared.

“Hello, I’m sorry,” a male voice begins, deep and raspy and slow, like smoke curling up. “Was wondering if you could point me in the direction of the nearest store. I left my phone at home and the roads get a bit confusing here,” he says with a slight laugh.

“No problem sweetie. Turn left on Clark and Mallow, another left at the stop sign on Broad Street and continue onto Route 9 for about 5 miles. There’s a Walmart in Harrisburg, it’s the biggest building there, ya can’t miss it,” the waitress says with a steady click of her nails on the screen in front of her.

“Thank you ma’am, you’re a lifesaver,” the voice says, audibly relieved. Lila looks up just as he turns around and meets his eye. She’s never seen him before, which is strange, because everyone here knows everyone else here.

He’s about Lila’s age, if not a bit older, with dirt brown hair curling around his face and glowing red in the sunset, a couple strands around his ears wet with sweat. He’s got a bit of a flushed complexion and a permanent furrow to his nicely shaped brow that creates an indent just above the bridge of his nose, which is a bit of a pointy thing, but not overly. She’s almost jealous of how deep his Cupid’s bow is and how pink his lips are. Does he have lipstick on? she wonders for a split second. She can’t make out the color of his eyes behind his glasses but she can see the fiery sunset behind her in their reflection. It looks like the apocalypse has already happened in his eyes. He reaches up to push back a damp curl and an assortment of rings glint in the light.

He smiles at her with closed lips and nods as a brief greeting before walking out into the offensive air, the bell above the door yelling at him to keep the heat out. Lila stares at his figure retreating into a small, old looking car but kept in a clean condition. He looks a little funny, folding his legs up and crouching down into his seat. She watches his silhouette flip the visor down and pull out of the parking lot, going the complete wrong way the lady at the register told him.

She scoffs and turns back to the words illuminated on blood red pages. As the light dies down and dips below the horizon, setting the moon on fire, Lila finds herself stuck in the back of her mind, replaying the image of this man she’s never seen before, walking straight into the sun.

#thanks for reading!#i am impulse posting at 5 am #harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles au #summer #summertiiiime livings easy #heatwave #chapter 1 #supernatural #hs fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #hope u like it!

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dragonwitch77 · 6 years ago

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Death’s Flower ch 2

“Stupid kid. Stupid gods.” Snatcher grumbled, stomping down the seamlessly endless steps that descended down to his realm. A realm that only housed beings that had left the mortal world for good, where there is nowhere else to go when their life came to an end. A domain that had many names.

The Underworld. The Realm of the Death. The Underground. The Forsaken Place. The Domain of the Snatcher.

Pretty much those names were enough to fill in the mortals and gods alike of what was down there. Being the God of Death, souls of mortals were sent to his domain to be dealt with after their parting from the living world. It was his sole duty alone to do this task, whether he liked it or not.

And he didn’t mind it one bit.

In fact he liked that he was the God of Death. If it meant that others feared him and left him alone, then he didn’t mind reaping a couple hundred souls each day. It was fun to see others squirm in his presence, fearing when he might snap and attack them or prank them out of the blue. He may be the God of Death, but he had to have some fun once in a while.

He took in the site of his world as he reached the final step, standing on it as his eyes gazed over the world he ruled. Some would say that his domain was a dark place that didn’t even have a speck of light in it, but he could prove them wrong once they saw what a wonder his world was. It was like a kingdom of darkness, the only light coming from the pools filled with souls he had yet to judge, varying from bluish greens to deep purples and sky blue. As long as it wasn’t too colorful, his world was perfect.

“Boss! Boss!”

Almost perfect.

“What is it?” Snatcher sighed, stepping off the final step, letting the earth return to its natural state as it closed up behind him for another year before he could leave again.

His minion, one of many identical beings that swore their service to him, fell to the ground in front of him in a clumsy manor. Picking themselves up, they stood tall, or as tall as their pudgy small round body could only reach the height just half way to his knee. “Boss! Thank the Sisters you’re back! We just got a new batch of souls! It seems like a bunch a them had drowned.”

Snatcher rolled his eyes, sighing heavily. “That’s the third time this month. Honestly, how many idiotic mortals are going to die before they realize that fishing out in a storm is NOT a good idea?!” He walked past the minion, grumbling to himself as he went deep into his domain. “What’s the status on our current pools?”

“W-well, we’ve managed to sort out all the young and old into the pools they should go in. Few have tried to escape.” The minion followed behind him, listing off the things that had happened while the deathly ruler was gone. “The dogs were getting restless after you left so we set them lose on some damned souls to keep them occupied. A child recently died of an illness. Someone was stabbed to death. Moonjumper is here. And we still—OOF!”

The minion fell backwards, looking up at the long black hair of their master.

“I’m sorry.” The minion coward as Snatcher slowly turned around, his eyes illuminating in the darkness, staring down the minion. “Did I hear that right? Did you just say, Moon. Jumper. Is here?!” A deep growl emanated within Snatcher’s throat as his cape began dancing with power.

“I-I-I-I-I’M SORRY! We tried to send him away but he wouldn’t listen!” The minion shook with fear as the dark serge of Snatcher’s power radiated. “He insisted that he needed to see you urgently, but you weren’t here!”

“WHERE IS HE?!”

“AT THE TEMPLE! HE’S IN THE TEMPLE!” The minion openly wept as Snatcher growled with rage, running towards his home.

)*(

The home of the God of Death was, as the other gods described it, not as fancy or well lavished as all the other homes of the other gods and goddesses. It wasn’t made out of white stone marble, but black cracking earth and vines with sharp thorns that held it together. It was just as big as any home fit for a god, maybe even bigger than the rest of them, but was not very appealing to look at with crumbling pillars, broken floors, skeletons of the many deceased used for decorations and furniture, and bodies of past intruders hung on the ceiling to show as an example.

But while the other gods and goddesses would find the thought of going to such place disturbing if not revolting, there was in fact one god who did not mind Snatcher’s strange taste of design.

And the only god to get on his nerves.

“MOONJUMPERRRRR!” Snatcher screamed as he burst open the doors of his home, forgetting to restrain himself as his power tore the rotten wood off their hinges and clatter to the ground in pieces.

“Ah! So he finally arrives! Though I can see he’s quite angry as a beehive!”

Snatcher growled as he spotted the god sitting in his favorite chair with a bowl of grapes in his hand. “What are you doing here you pathetic excuse of a god?! You aren’t allowed in the Underworld without permission from me!”

The god merely grinned, plucking a grape and popping it in his mouth. “Permission from you? Oh how silly but true. While indeed most do, I however can pop in out of the blue.”

Snatcher stormed his way up to Moonjumper, slamming his claws into the seat’s armrests and growled dangerously. “I REALLY insist that you stop with your ridiculous habit of rhymes you—”

“Temper temper! There’s no need of this distemper!” Moonjumper rose from the seat, shoving the bowl in Snatcher’s hands. “I only came for a visit! Now that’s not such a crime, is it?”

The god giggled, going around Snatcher as he threw the bowl filled with fruit away. Most would say that the two were look similar to one another. But while their faces did seem to mirror each other, that is where the similarity ended. While Snatcher was thin, bony, pale skinned, golden eyes, had wild long hair that reached to the floor, covered in darkness and wore pants, Moonjumper was a class of his own with his short pure white hair, blue skin, bright red colored clothing with chains wrapped around his torso and neck, wild red eyes, and scars covering his face.

And majorly legless. Everyone could spot the lack of legs from miles away. And it was no secret to how he lost them in the first place.

“You little pest! How many times do I have to beat it in you that I do not want you here?! You have your own domain! Go use that instead of here!”

“I do not wish to be this pestering! I only dropped by to see what your mind is festering.” Moonjumper grinned, floated around Snatcher. “You seemed quite tense, I should know. Tell me, what’s bothering you so?”

“I don’t need to tell the likes of you!” Snatcher shoved past Moonjumper. “I know your tricks God of Corpses! Don’t think for a second that I won’t know what you’re up to!”

“But that is not true! I really came to see you!” Moonjumper followed him, keeping a distance between them in case the Death God decided to get a little… slashy. “Say all you want with your skilled tongue of lies, I can see it in your sad eyes.”

“Stop following me.” Snatcher growled. “I’ve already got enough to deal with, and your visit is not helping.”

“Indeed all this talking isn’t much help. Shouldn’t you be searching for the thieving little whelp?”

Snatcher froze in his tracks. He slowly looked over his shoulder, glaring at the other god behind him. “How… did you know something was stolen from me?”

Moonjumper clicked his tongue, waging his finger at Snatcher. “Oh silly Snatcher, can’t you see? There’s a connection between you and me. Though knowledge and memories we do not share, you tend to let you emotions go wild without care. Though it was only just very brisk, I could feel that the balance of the world is at great risk.” He grabbed to cloak that Snatcher never took off, pulling it up so that the tear was visible for both of them to see.

“For such a precious item that you deeply tend with care, seems that someone defiled it with a horrible tear.”

Snatcher swatted Moonjumper’s hands away, tugging the cloak close to him.

“This act is quite shameful, but who is very blameful? Mortal or god? This act has got me quite awed! For stealing a piece of the cloak that belongs to none other than you Snatcher, must be feeling deep satisfactory and rapture.”

“If it were a mere mortal that stole from me, they would die instantly when they touch the piece even by a little.” Snatcher glared at the tear. “No mortal can do such a task and get away with this without consequences. Even with help from another god, the task is impossible.”

“Ah! But to have a piece taken under your nose and gone! It seems that impossible was in fact improbable along.”

Snatcher shot a dirty look at Moonjumper. “… I don’t have time to deal with you. I have work that needs my attendance.” With that he stormed off, leaving Moonjumper to giggle madly at nothing.

)*(

“Thank you for coming Caitlin. I know this was sudden with what happened earlier today and with your help with the guests.”

“It’s no trouble! I was happy to help! Plus, I hadn’t had the chance to use my whip on someone for a long time now so I felt it was necessary for some practice.” Caitlin grinned, patting her trusted whip hooked on her belt. “Besides, I wanted to see the little cutie again~! I just can’t get enough of his tiny little fingers~!” The goddess purred, making Zaman laugh happily.

“Yes. Lyvia has certainly made a cute… child…”

“… Is something the matter?” Caitlin asked, noticing the sad look in Zaman’s three eyes.

“It’s nothing old friend. Just… Lyvia never showed any deep desire for anything other than looks before. I knew she had a soft spot for children, but… to go this far to make one. Without a partner no doubt. I… I honestly don’t know how to feel! I would never allow her to sleep with any man of course! She’s still too… too arrogant I fear. I feel like she only did it for attention and has no real desire to care for her daughter.”

“Zaman, old friend, do not worry!” Caitlin took Zaman’s hand between hers, grasping it tightly. “Your daughter is taking a big step. Motherhood is rewarding and learning. She will learn to be less immodest as she cares for her new child and learn to take her responsibility well. She now has someone who will depend on her and rely on her to take care of them. I’ve seen plenty of new mothers in my time and she’s no different.”

“But what if she strays from her duty as a mother? Children need constant care after all. I would know this well when Lyvia was but a small child herself and I had to raise her on my own.”

“Ah, but that is where you are wrong dear friend. You were not alone! You had friends who were willing to help. And now, your daughter has friends that are willing to help her raise her child when she is in need of that help.” She gave her friend’s hand a squeeze.

Zaman sighed, shaking his head with a smile. “You… are a very wise old friend. And very right. I’m still worried about her, but I will give her a chance at being a mother.” His smile grew wide as his three eyes gleamed with a spark of giddiness in them. “And it will be a joy to be a grandfather. After all, someone needs to spoil my grandchild!”

“Oh you!” Caitlin slapped his arm in good fun as the God of Time roared with laughter.

“Father? Caitlin? Can you come to the garden please?” Lyvia’s voice called out from the garden, catching both of the gods attention. They shared a look before heading over to the garden.

The garden was a beautiful place, filled with flowers and fruits, with decorations that wild the imagination of any mortal, and small animals that played in the trees and sang lovely songs gifted by the goddess herself. Lyvia was seated by the edge of one of the many lakes in the garden, watching the colorful fish swim about.

“Lyvia? Is something the matter child?” Zaman asked, approaching her quietly as her child was sleeping in her arms.

Lyvia continued to stare at the fish swimming in the water before slowly turning her gaze to the moon. “… Father? How, high are the walls surrounding the garden?”

Zaman, taken by surprise by the question, shared a glance with his old friend. “Well, very high my child. Why do you ask?”

Lyvia looked away from the fish, fixing her eyes on her father. “Is it not possible to make them higher? I… would like them to be taller.”

“Now why in the world would you want that? The walls surrounding the garden are very high already.” Caitlin questioned, one of her ears tilting down in confusion.

“I know they are high as they are now Caitlin. And you are right to question my sudden request.” Lyvia stood up slowly so not to disturb her child’s rest. “But, please understand. It’s for my child’s safety.”

“The walls are tall enough for you not to worry for her safety my daughter. I made them myself and with the finest builders! Why has this worry come upon you?”

“…”

“… It’s… because of him, isn’t it?” Caitlin’s ear flattened against her head, her tail dipping down low to the ground.

Zaman sighed. “Lyvia—”

“Please father! After what happened today, I’m worried for her safety! Not fearing the God of Death is one thing, but to laugh in his face is another! Have you ever met someone who has laughed in the face, the actual face, of death himself?”

Zaman’s mouth hung open, yet no words came out. “… well… no. I can not tell you who has done such a thing.”

“Exactly! You both have told me what he is like. He will not take this lightly! What if he tries to do harm to my child? Or worse, kill her?”

“Now now! There’s no need to worry about that!” Zaman placed his hands on Lyvia’s shoulders. “Snatcher has used his one day of walking on the surface of the living. And he may be the God of Death, but he’s never taken a life of a god before!”

“But… but what about the Dark Days?”

The two older gods cringed, looking away from Lyvia.

“… Snatcher… does tend to hold a bit of a grudge against others.” Caitlin spoke quietly, her tail swishing to and fro. “I’ve seen firsthand of what he can do when he’s pushed far enough. He can turn things rather ugly real quick.”

Zaman sighed, rubbing his neck. “He’s an unpredictable one. With a variety of tricks up his sleeve.”

“Please build the wall higher father! My child must be protected from his wrath!”

Zaman glanced at his daughter, looking deep into her pleading eyes and found great worry deep within them. He looked to his grandchild, seeing the peaceful look on her sleeping face. So innocent and untainted by the world.

“… fine.” Zaman sighed with reluctance. “I shall see to it that the wall gets built taller.”

“Thank you father!” Lyvia threw her arm around her father, hugging him tightly. “Thank you! Thank—Oh!” Lyvia pulled back as her child started to cry. “My poor baby, did mommy startle you? Oh, I’m sorry.” She rocked herself, heading off for her chambers.

Caitlin watched as the young goddess walked away, turning to her old friend with a deep frown on her face. “Would building the walls higher even make a difference? Snatcher is a crafty one and you know that walls won’t stop him if he really will go after her child.”

Zaman rubbed his chin, stroking his small beard. “He is crafty. Too cleaver for my taste, and, dare I say, smarter than me and the Sisters. And terrifyingly dangerous. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries anything, but I’m sure he wouldn’t try anything so soon. But then again. It wouldn’t hurt to prepare and add a little guard to the place.”

“Yes, but would it be enough to stop him? He can be very persistent on his tasks, nothing will sway him from what he sets his mind on.” Caitlin huffed. “To think… he was once one of us on equal ground.”

“Now now. The past is behind us all Caitlin. What happened, happened. There’s nothing we can do now but more forward with time of the future.”

“… Zaman… how… how can you be the only god I know who doesn’t hold on to the past without a deep grudge? Everyone else seems to still hold it against him for what he’s done but you—”

“Caitlin, let’s just say for now that we all were young back then. Snatcher may almost be as old as me and older than you, but sometimes, you have to look at all angles before you see the whole picture.”

Caitlin stared at her friend for a moment before sighing and shaking her head. “I love you old fool, but sometimes, even with the clearness of a cat, you still remain a big mystery to me.”

Zanam smiled. “Because too much curiosity can kill the cat.” He laughed as Caitlin gave him a solid punch to the arm, leading her back inside for a few drinks before seeing her off that night.

#ahit #ahit au #ahit fanfic #a hat in time #death's flower au #snatcher #cooking cat #moonjumper

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cherokeegal1975 · 6 years ago

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Chapter 1 of “Unexpected Cargo” by Meriah Smith

Running A desperate man fled through a desolate landscape east towards the safety of the weathered stones ahead. He hoped he had lost his pursuers for good this time. The day was already beginning to grow hot and he carried no water, no food and no gear to help him to survive for long and he needed to find shelter from the desert sun until nightfall. His dust colored robes and pants billowed back in the rising wind and he worried that a sandstorm might be approaching. It would a blessing if he found shelter in time. Jonathan Taylor Smith, who was sometimes also known as Desert Rat, didn't really know why he was being pursued so determinedly across the Red Sands Desert by King Richard's personal guards. He was just a political nobody that transported cargo and passengers; offered his services in various trades in general labor now and again. He had made himself an excellent reputation for always delivering his cargo to where it needed to go on time. Admittedly, not all of his cargo and business ventures were technically legal, but he never hauled anything immoral like slaves bound for the market (except on the rare occasions when he planned to liberate them), narcotics for pleasure or cargo meant for harm like weapons. Of course his trade might have been the reason why he was now being hunted, Johnny reflected as he tried to run even faster in spite of his exhaustion. They thought he had something they wanted. Just the night before they had captured his sand ship (a kind of multi-functional low flying hover craft that resembled a train) after a long chase along a dirt road that led away from the little trading post he had just left behind at the breakneck speed of nearly two hundred miles per hour. To the observer, his rust colored vessel looked like a boxy and ponderous near derelict, but it was capable of going over terrain that most wheeled vehicles would have difficulty with or found impossible to traverse. His sand ship could travel at greater speeds than one's initial impression would suggest as it sat still or floated slowly, almost silently over the ground. It could turn on a stone, stop dead in a heartbeat and accelerate from zero to one hundred and eighty in sixty seconds flat. It's interior and exterior were spelled to handle the physical stresses of the sudden shifts in speed without damaging itself, its cargo or its passengers. No matter how fast his sand ship sped above the ground, his ship and his cargo never suffered from the additional g-forces. The spells kept gravity at a steady normal, as if it were standing still. Johnny mentally cursed and mourned the loss of his sand ship as he panted through parched lips and his thick leather boots beat the ground with every running step. It had been his home as well has his main source of his livelihood and he was uncertain if he would ever get it back. However, he was not so blinded by the loss of all of his possessions that he couldn't remember to be grateful that he escaped before the guards or Prince Richard decided on the best way to kill him. And he thanked the Goddess of all Creation with every fiber of his being that they didn't catch Goldie and Little Girl. They would have killed Goldie outright and sold Little Girl back into slavery as a gladiator in the worst blood sport events some of the oasis towns had to offer. The very thought of Goldie dead and Little Girl winding up mad and broken of spirit from the abuse of her captors and fighting life and death battles just for entertainment, squeezed his heart with fear and worry. He would die to protect them both. He spared a glance up at the sky and was rewarded once again with the form of a young dragon leading him on towards the safety of the rocks and water just ahead. She carried what little supplies she managed to recover, with Goldie clinging to the base of her neck. This was his dragon that he had rescued from slavery and then adopted as his own daughter. He called her Little Girl because he couldn't think of what else to call her and she refused to respond to any other name. It wasn't her true name, neither he or Little Girl knew it. They hoped to find it together someday, if they survived being hunted. Little Girl would have let him ride her across the skies along with the rest of what she was carrying if she could have, but she was still too small to bear his weight. In her true form she was not much bigger than a Great Dane and she was yet unable to make herself any bigger by shape shifting alone. One day she would grow to the size of an African bull elephant, but she was only about ten years old now, not much more than a baby in dragon terms. She could only lead him on and carry Goldie the female desert rat he had befriended as a boy. He staggered up a long steep grade that led up to the big jagged rocks he was headed for. Just a bit farther...just a bit farther...then they could rest. Even now he could see the cave entrance that didn't look to be more than a mere shallow crack. He knew there was a concealed passage just to the right once he squeezed past the narrow opening. There was good shelter inside and a pool of spring water, its overflow trickled further back into the cave system, so no one from the outside would discover there was water here. Unless they had the assistance of a desert rat, a dragon's unfailing ability to find water even when it was miles away, plus his own working knowledge of the local landscape. His hunters neither had the assistance of his companions nor possessed his intimate knowledge of the desert. No self-respecting dragon would willingly permit herself to be domesticated by anyone and the royal guards hated desert rats. Like most city dwellers, they tended to kill them on sight whenever possible, which was not easy to do. Desert rats were intelligent, opportunistic, highly alert and magically gifted. Anyone trading in grains or other edible food stuffs had a terrible time keeping the tenacious rodents out of their stores. They could bring a trader to ruin in a matter of days without the proper wards to keep them out. Johnny stumbled and fell gasping; another one of those damned cramps had him in its grips again. He didn't know the source of what ailed him, though he suspected magic. The source of that magic might have been the princess that found him eight days before. She was recently widowed when her husband was killed for the throne by his younger brother. She had fled for her life, found Johnny and asked for his help. Warning bells went off in his head, but one look at those big dark eyes tearing up after he initially refused her and he had to relent. Johnny was tough as nails, resourceful and capable of cold practicality when needed. Yet by no means was he heartless; it was both his strength and sometimes his weakness. His good nature got him into trouble more than once in his thirty years of life. The princess was a competent white witch; she had drugged him somehow or cast a sleep spell on him shortly after he agreed to help her. When he had awakened, she gave him the royal seal, asked him to keep it safe for her until she contacted him again and requested its return. He accepted the task along with twenty-five pieces gold as a retainer. Yet he had sensed some other motive and that keeping the royal seal safe was just a cover for the real reason she needed his help. Before he could discover the truth, they had been attacked by Prince Richard's guards. He made his escape at Princess Elena's barked command to go while her own guards fought to protect her. He liked Princes Elena, but he wanted nothing to do with politics. Getting too much attention from royalty meant they might discover the less than legal cargo he sometimes carried. He would honor the contract that he made with the Princess to the best of his ability; he had a reputation to maintain. Besides, Elena could take care of herself. In addition to her personal guards she was powerful in her magics. Johnny had no knack for spells himself, so he could not divine what the princess had done to him while he lay in his enchanted stupor. Nor had he been able to ask any practitioners of magic along his usual trade routes. Since agreeing to help the Princess, every time he stopped for more than a few hours, Prince Richard's guards would find him again. Why Prince Richard wanted that stupid hunk of metal bad enough to kill him for, he didn't know. The cramps started just twelve hours after he had escaped capture from the royal guards. They started as annoying twinges he forgot about as soon as they passed, but the steadily became worse. The cramps would go from a dull pain nothing would fix, to so agonizing that it left him sick and weak until it passed and he could catch his breath. The constant dull pain passed in a couple of days, but the periodic attacks would come and go without warning. After four days of this, he realized couldn't continue business while trying to hide from the guards. So, he stocked up on extra supplies and headed out into the deep desert intending to stay there until things cooled down and Prince Richard lost interest in him. For three days the ruse seemed to work, relatively few people dared to live in the largely unmapped and completely untamed wilderness where water sources were unknown to the city dwellers and royal houses of the Red Sands. Johnny had grown up there and had lived with a nomadic tribe of honorable thieves since he was twelve years old. He knew how to survive in the desert far better than any of the royal guards that were chasing him. Then somehow they located him, after he had passed briefly through a tiny trading post looking for any useful local gossip. They chased him down with their heavy wheeled vehicles after he and his family had fled back into the Dune Lady, driving away as fast as his sand ship could go. He might have gotten away if they didn't have a powerful armor piercing rifle that took out his main engine before he could make it to terrain too rough for them to cross at any great speed. Little Girl had been sitting in the passenger seat in her child form holding Goldie in her lap when the sand ship suddenly dropped out of the air and skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, nearly tipping over sideways more than once as it came to rest. "Get out!" Johnny had ordered desperately as he leaned over them and shoved open the passenger door. "Take Goldie and fly away from here! Go find the other dragons and stay with them! I will catch up when I can." "Daddy, no!" she cried in protest as she hugged the frightened rat to her bare chest, terrified tears running down her cheeks. Already he could hear the guards approaching through the rapidly dissipating dust cloud. He couldn't fight them all, defend them both and he wasn't fast enough to escape them on foot. He had to get Little Girl to flee. "GO!!!" he shouted at her with a gentle shove toward the open door. "Fly into the sun as fast as you can! Do it now!" With a sob, the brave and beautiful child tumbled out of the passenger door and shifted into her true form with Goldie still in her arms. She did as she was told, flying into the sun as fast as she could. The guards fired their guns at her, blinded by the bright sun they missed their target and she was soon out of sight altogether. They had hauled him out of his broken ship and attempted to subdue him with great difficulty. He knew he couldn't fight them all, but he was determined to kill as many as he could before they killed him. He could at least buy Little Girl and Goldie some more time to get away. He managed to break free of the first guard that grabbed him, killing that one first with his pistol and then several more. They rushed him before he could reload, but he managed to kill three more with his curved short sword. He might have brought down a few more, possibly even escaped in spite of his initial misgivings, if he hadn't come down with another attack of those damned debilitating cramps that caught him by surprise and involuntarily doubled him over in agony. Johnny cursed the princess under his breath, face pressed in the dirt, as they pinned him to the ground and took his sword. They tied his hands behind his back with rough hemp ropes and hobbled his feet then stood him up again. He watched helplessly as they ransacked his sand ship's cargo hold, tore up his and Little Girl's few personal belongings and maliciously blew small holes into his ship's hull with their fire arms after they finished with their reckless search of his ship's interior. They found the seal. He didn't have time to hide the troublesome thing while he was busy running and hiding in the oasis towns that were his usual haunts. They "officially" declared him a thief, a murderer, and a traitor to the crown and he was to await judgment by his Highness King Richard...blah, blah, blah... Johnny didn't care, all he wanted was to escape, with his sand ship if possible and find Little Girl and Goldie. He wasn't loyal to any established government. How could he be a traitor to a kingdom that he was not a citizen of? The sun was setting when he had finally been captured. He soon learned that Prince Richard himself was coming in person to see him. The guards' orders were to remain until he arrived early the next morning. Johnny's heart sank. A personal visit by royalty in the middle of nowhere couldn't be good news. Out here, one could get away with murder and worse without anyone in polite society being any the wiser. The guards didn't feed him or give him any water. They kept his confiscated supplies and their own to themselves. Laughing and gaming with cards or dice, they would sometimes try to torment him by offering him food and water then denying it. After the second time, Johnny just ignored them, laid down and tried to rest as the night cooled uncomfortably. He didn't know how long he lay there, shivering on the still warm sand in the cold air. They had not provided him with a fire to keep warm and his only company was a single guard that watched over him grimly. It was clear to Johnny that he would rather be gaming with the others. Sometime later, he heard his guard say with a nasty chuckle, "Have a drink!" Johnny opened his eyes and then rolled out of the way barely in time to avoid being urinated on. The guards all looked up, laughed at him and cheered his antagonist as he put his private parts back into his loose fitting grey pants. They laughed again when Johnny doubled over in pain as he lay on his side, trying not to cry out as his lower belly cramped up. The mysterious attacks never lasted long, but they left him sweating and sick to his stomach. So far he managed to avoid vomiting; he needed to conserve his body fluids as much as possible. He didn't know how he was going to escape in his current condition, but he was determined to try once the opportunity presented itself. Until then, he let the guards think he was completely subdued. He tried to make himself comfortable on the sand again, trying not to shiver, trying to will his stomach to settle and trying to ignore the increasing ache in his limbs from being tied up for so long. Then to everyone's surprise off to the west, came a sweet singing voice with words no one could quite make out. It was haunting, achingly beautiful and filled with such longing that tears were brought to Johnny's eyes. He knew who it was and prayed that Little Girl would come back to her senses and fly away again. Even a few of the royal guards started to sniffle quietly; it would take a heart of stone not to be moved by the Little Girl's singing. Their leader barked an order for some of his underlings to go find the singer and bring her to him. While everyone was distracted by Little Girl, there was a soft almost inaudible scuffling coming up from behind him, then a tugging sensation at his wrists. Johnny smiled, he didn't know whether to praise or reprimand Little Girl and Goldie for coming up with this plan. He feared that they may be all killed before he got the chance to either. Goldie continued to gnaw as fast as she could through the tough ropes at his wrists from inside of his left sleeve so the guards wouldn't spot her. It was a good thing that Johnny's sleeves were so loose fitting because Goldie was the size of a small domestic cat. In about thirty seconds his rat's teeth made short work of the rough hemp rope and then she scrambled silently to chew through the rope binding his feet while hiding inside his loose pants leg. By now, all the guards were straining to see who the singer was through the darkness of the moonless night. Little Girl kept eluding the guards hunting her as she kept singing, no easy feat, even for a dragon. Johnny resisted the urge to sit up and stretch his limbs and instead remained unmoving with his hands still behind his back. He planned to wait until the last second to make a run for it. He looked up carefully at the guard standing next to him, he was staring fixedly to the west, head slightly cocked and listening intently. Goldie cut his ankles free and hurried back to his hands, pressing her furry back into his palms. To his surprise, a small sheathed hunting knife was strapped to her back by a leather cord. He grasped the hilt with his right hand and Goldie backed up to free the blade from its sheathe. Suddenly she leapt up onto Johnny's shoulder and then launched herself at his guard's black bearded face. She went for his eyes, viciously tearing at them with her sharp rat teeth before the man managed to dislodge his attacker. Johnny was on him a second after the guard had roughly dislodged the rat from his face with a startled cry of pain and revulsion. In one practiced move slit his throat to keep him from calling for help or try to stop Johnny from escaping. His limbs aching and stiff, Johnny none the less managed to flee with as much speed as his long legs would carry him, a blood stained Goldie following close behind at his heels. Fortunately, none of the blood was hers; she had managed to escape injury when the guard had thrown her. It only took a few seconds for his captors to realize what happened and they were after him with shouts and ringing explosions of gunfire. Little Girl circled silently as an owl above Johnny just out of range of the firelight, so she was nearly invisible in the darkness. Whenever a guard got to close to her father she spat fire balls at them with deadly accuracy and neatly evaded being shot by their fellows, flying quickly away from the area she had launched her fireballs; making herself an unpredictable and elusive target. She hated to use her fire on living things, but she would not allow the men to hurt her father. Johnny ignored the screams as they burned and he fled deeper and deeper into the desert. He stayed in the scant scrub and rocky places where the guard's vehicles couldn't go as easily as he and his companions did. The guards knew that so they continued to chase him on foot, but they couldn't keep up for long. For all of their special training, compared to him, they were soft and a little out of shape. They couldn't run in the desert all night with barely a pause. Johnny however could, because he had great stamina built up from many years of hard work in harsh conditions. And he had two other boons in his favor that they didn't have, he had a dragon and a high steep cliff looming ahead of him. At just inches above six feet tall, Johnny knew that his lean frame was too much weight for Little Girl to carry any distance; however she was strong enough to slow his fall. "We got him men!" shouted their leader from some distance behind as they tracked him with their electric torches. They saw the cliff too and assumed that he would stop once he got the edge. "Goldie?" he panted as he pointed to the cliff's edge. "Okay go," she squeaked as she guessed his plan. "Meet you below." Then she was gone, vanished into thin air. Trusting that Little Girl would see what he was up to and in total confidence in her, he ran even faster, almost heedless of his footing as he fled towards the cliff. "HEY! He's going to jump!" Someone shouted. ZZZZZING! A bullet was fired at his shoulder with the intent of slowing him down, but missed in a flash of greenish light he saw out of the corner of his eye. Little Girl hit the marksman in the chest with a fireball and he fell screaming and rolling in the dirt, trying to put it out. Too busy running for his life to contemplate the significance of what he had just seen in that green flash of light, Johnny filed it away in his mind for later and kept moving. "He's warded!" another guard shouted. "SHIT!" BANG-BANG! "Where is that fire coming from?" "Watch out!" "Hurry up! Don't let the prisoner get away!" The shouts of the guards barely registered in Johnny's mind. Just then he reached the edge of the cliff, heart leaping even higher into his throat than he knew possible, he gathered himself up and jumped as hard as he could before he lost his nerve. Little Girl screaming in horrified protest as he fell with his arms spread wide, she dove after him, catching him in a matter of milliseconds after his leap of faith. Johnny got a vague impression of a small dark mass falling past him as she caught him. She had been carrying something and had dropped it to be rid of the extra weight. Smooth scaled forelegs wrapped around his upper torso just under his arms, her hot breath gusting in desperate pants just above his head, Little Girl's feathered wings beat frantically to slow his decent to the rocky ground below. Johnny did his best to help her by trying not to move too much and cause his weight to shift around. He also tried to not act as terrified as he felt. If he panicked so would she, possibly causing her to make a fatal mistake. Thanks to the moonless sky, he couldn't see anything beyond Little Girl's beating wings. Below, it was almost pitch black at the base of the cliff and he couldn't see how fast they were descending. Fortunately Little Girl's eyes would have no trouble seeing in the dark; she could see well enough for both of them. Little Girl made high distressed whistling noises every exhale as she strained to save her father's life. Her wings beat harder as she redoubled her efforts to slow them down and he could literally feel her frantically slamming heartbeat between his shoulder blades where her chest was pressed firmly up against him. The controlled fall and the rush of wind seemed to take forever and Johnny began to worry they might not make it. Then he could just make out the starlit ground a few yards below his hanging feet. It was coming up fast, almost too fast. He gritted his teeth and braced for impact and he resisted the urge to tell Little Girl to slow down; he knew she was doing her best. "OOOFF!" he said as the wind was knocked out of him as he finally hit the ground and tumbled sideways. He nearly slammed into a thorn bush when she was forced to drop him a couple of feet off the ground to avoid crash landing on top of him and injuring them both with the impact. Fortunately the satchel Little Girl had dropped had landed in front of the bush and it served to stop his roll before he wound up in a rather prickly situation. He sat up panting and looked around to see if Little Girl was alright. She was fine...and she was seriously pissed off. She had landed a few feet away to his left with her eagle wings and elongated triangular head drooping tiredly. Tongue lolling, her mouth hung agape as she panted hard to catch her breath, causing her flanks to heave with every inhale and exhale. Her furiously glaring yellow gold eyes flashed dimly in the starlight as they fixed on him when she lifted her head. They were wet with tears that had been blown back during their decent. Her tail lashed back and forth like an angry cat. Her jaws still hanging open as she breathed in great steaming gusts of the cold night air, she bared her fangs and emitted a short growl. "Sorry Sweetie," Johnny apologized with complete sincerity as he tried to catch his own breath. "I'll make it up to you, alright?" Little Girl barked angrily, hopped on her forelegs, landing stiffly with a soft thump and kicking up small puffs of dust with impact of her front feet. Before she could make any further comment, her attention was suddenly diverted by a sound Johnny didn't catch at first. The shadowy form of her head had whipped to the right and upward, then she snarled viciously. Then he heard it as Goldie finally came out of hiding and curled up in his lap. Engine noise from some of the trucks as the guards started them. He knew there was a way to drive down from up there and it would be only a matter of time before they found it. He turned to Little Girl and asked, "Can you fly?" Little Girl lifted her wings experimentally and then chuffed an affirmative. "Good." Johnny grabbed the satchel with its unknown contents. Untying the sheathe from Goldie's back, he replaced the knife he had somehow managed to hang on to, placed both in the sack and gently tossed it to Little Girl. She caught it deftly in her forepaws as Johnny stood up with Goldie in his arms and placed her on Little Girl's withers. Goldie clung tightly to the dragon's feather mane with all four feet, readying herself for takeoff. Little Girl launched herself up into the air with Johnny running along behind her. They went like this all night, stopping only briefly to catch their breaths. Luckily, Johnny's attacks were not frequent and he managed to recover quickly enough not to slow them down too much.

(This book can be purchased as a paperback book or as a Kindle on Amazon)

#Fantasy #dragon #mpreg #hetrosexualmpreg #literature

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softpeetabread · 6 years ago

Text

University Life part 3

I’m so flattered by the positive reception to this au and the comments I received have encouraged me to continue. Thank you to everyone that’s taken the time to read this little tale. I have more in store and here is but a piece, which I hope can suffice until my next update. Enjoy!

[Part 1] [Part 2]

Katniss had to give Peeta credit for making it till the end of the day to crash and fall asleep, or at least until they made it back to his apartment. He didn’t even reach his bed and opted for the living room couch, even if it was probably uncomfortable. Nevertheless, she found a blanket in his room and covered him with it.

She had been at his apartment plenty of times to know where to find things. She prepared a mug with a teabag for when he’d wake up and started on dinner for them. They usually worked together to make meals, but Peeta needed his sleep and she would not disturb him just so they could cook.

Finnick came into the apartment some time later, a tired expression on his face. He’d probably had a long day as well.

“Did you replace my roommate?” Despite his exhaustion, he still managed to give her a mischievous smile.

“Please, you would be the one Peeta would replace,” she answered, her own playful smile on her lips.

“You’re like his mother. Look at you: making him food while he sleeps.”

Katniss shrugged. “Don’t be jealous just because this isn’t for you.”

After spending so much time with Finnick and Johanna thanks to Peeta, she had gotten up to speed with their jokes and jabs. Had she been a new friend and used that response she would have felt like she was being unnecessarily mean and biting. However, she knew her answer wouldn’t hurt Finnick since they tended to say worse things to one another. Katniss had simply adjusted and learnt from them all. Sometimes, harsh comments would get thrown around and Peeta would step in to defend her from his friends, but she wasn’t bothered because she knew she could hurt them with her words if she wanted to. There was a difference between being defensive and playing along.

By the time she finished cooking, Finnick had left to meet Annie at her apartment, leaving Peeta and Katniss alone once again. She heard Peeta yawn as he sat up.

“What a coincidence that you wake up just as I’m about to serve us dinner,” she said with a smirk.

“My stomach can sense quality food from a mile away,” Peeta answered, stretching his back. “What’d you make?”

“Your favorite: stew.” Katniss brought the pot to the table carefully, setting it on the center where the heat mat rested.

“I think you mean that’s your favorite,” he chuckled and got up to help Katniss set the table. “I’ll eat anything you make, though.”

“It’s not like you have a choice.”

Peeta pretended to be pensive about it. “Well, I could order something, but then I’d be wasting some good stew. And then, I’d get a long lecture from you about how awful it is to waste food. And then, you’d remind me of how long it took you to make it. I’ll save myself all that trouble.”

Katniss couldn’t help but laugh. Was she that predictable? “You are not only smart, but you are a wise man, Peeta.”

“I’ve learnt that I have to keep a woman happy or else I’d be facing her wrath,” Peeta shrugged.

“Don’t tell me your priority is to keep me happy,” Katniss said with mock sarcasm.

“Then, I won’t tell you.” He brought the plates to the table and Katniss served them dinner. “I do admit I have my priorities straight. It just so happens that one of them is to make someone happy.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that as she wasn’t sure who he was really referring to. “That person is very lucky… Now hurry up and eat your stew while it’s hot.”

“I could just heat it up!”

“It won’t taste the same!”

Peeta rested his face on his hand as he looked at her, laughing with amusement at their exchange. “There’s no winning with you.”

“You should know that by now.”

Putting his wisdom to use, Peeta kept quiet save for the chuckles he couldn’t help holding back, which made Katniss look away from him else she risked choking on her food. She had never laughed so much in her life, from what she remembered, until she got to know Peeta and now she couldn’t stop. The real winner was him because he got the last laugh out of her.

Gray eyes scanned the bottom of the pool until they located the colorful rings that had been arrayed in a line, each far enough for a challenge. There was a liberating feeling about swimming that Katniss loved and when she found out the gym had a pool—a bigger one than the one at the apartment complex—she was thrilled and couldn’t wait to jump in. She was practicing on reaching the bottom, which was the one skill she struggled with. Her dives were decent, her speed allowed her to reach the other end of the pool in about four breaths, and her strokes let her gracefully swim across without stopping. After doing this for years, it felt like a reward rather than a work out. It definitely felt like a cool down what with her being in the water, but her muscles still ached and she was more than sure that she would be sore the following day.

Peeta and her worked out together by running and he had showed her how to work some of the machines that appealed to her, but there were exercises in which they did alone. He did weights and boxing while she swam. If one of them finished early, they would wait for the other until they were done so they could leave together. She thought it was a good thing they didn’t depend on each other for all of their exercise routines and gave each other some space, too. Peeta had mentioned he only knew the basics for swimming like floating and not drowning, so Katniss didn’t insist on him to join her. She did offer to teach him and he agreed to it when their exams week would pass.

Katniss pushed through the water to swim downward and reached for a ring, lacing it around her arm as she reached for the next one. She managed to take three from the floor before she floated back up and took a deep breath, feeling how her chest ached and her lungs screamed. They didn’t look like much but pushing herself on the deep end of the pool took the most energy from her. Taking the rings was the easy part. She went back to get the remaining three after taking a few breaths and decided to call it a day.

She spotted Peeta sitting next to her things with a sketch book in hand. Katniss wondered how he had the ability to draw without difficulty, and it made sense to her why he would choose a career like architecture. Although, he could have also succeeded as a painter. She had been in awe at the canvases he showed her that were in his room, full of vivid colors and beautiful scenery. She walked towards him, wondering what it was that he was doodling.

“Drawing people swimming?” she asked raising an eyebrow.

“More or less,” Peeta answered with a shrug before putting his pencil down and closing his sketchbook. Only he found a way to carry that in his gym bag. ‘In case I felt inspired’, he had said to her once.

“May I see it when you finish?”

“I can show you right now, if you want.”

It must please Peeta that Katniss showed interest in his sketches, or at least that’s what it looked like to her. Not that there was anything wrong with that. If anything, she gave him encouragement and she admitted he looked adorable when he got enthusiastic. He flipped to the current page he was working on as she sat beside him, a towel wrapped around her to keep from getting water everywhere.

It was a rough sketch, but she could make out the figure of a girl standing along the edge of the pool and what looked like a braid that swayed to the side, as if she had shaken her head to get water off her hair. Her mouth hung open slightly as she realized Peeta had started to sketch her.

“I think your drawing looks way better than I do in real life,” she said, a playful smile on her lips.

“Hardly. I’m afraid about not being able to do you justice.”

Katniss rolled her eyes, even if it was flattering to be Peeta’s muse for one sketch.

“You could draw me as a fish and it wouldn’t make a difference.”

It was Peeta’s turn to raise an eyebrow at her. “I think I’ll draw your gills on your throat.”

“Don’t forget a fin on my back,” she added. “Make me look scary.”

Peeta put the notebook away as he spoke. “For me to do that, you would have to already be scary-looking, which you’re not.”

Katniss gave him a scowl, trying to prove her point that she was, in fact, as frightening as she claimed to be.

“Wow, you certainly terrified me,” Peeta said dryly.

“Good because I could be your worst nightmare.”

“Katniss, you’re as terrifying as a new born kitten.”

With the strap of her gym bag on her shoulder, Katniss began to walk away from the pool with Peeta beside her. “Just because I’m not as tall as you are doesn’t mean I can’t still scare the shit out of you.”

“I doubt it but keep telling yourself that.”

As she showered, she replayed Peeta’s words in her head and she somehow felt a bit bothered by the fact that he didn’t find her intimidating. She’d show him one day he should be scared of her. He may have been bigger than her in height and size, but he was an even bigger softy. She let it go after a while and breathed out, thinking about his sketch.

Why would he decide to draw her, of all people, anyway? She probably looked like a feral animal if anything, not some attractive swimmer like Annie or Finnick. Maybe Peeta would make her look pretty. He had such a talent for making even the most mundane things look amazing when his fingers created his artwork.

I admit this started off as a short story, but then it grew as I kept writing and I want to write as much as I can about the relationship between these two. I love banter, flirting, and flirtatious banter, so I hope I did something right here. Maybe this feels like these two instances aren’t related, but believe me, I’m following a sort of timeline. This matters to their story. I am open to suggestions about this au if anyone has any ideas they’d like to share with me! Whether it’s for their friendship or when they are dating (I promise, they will get together, just not today *winks*). Let me know what you think. I will update soon!

#everlark #katniss everdeen #peeta mellark #everlark fanfiction #fanfiction #university life #fran writes #I'm getting attached to this now #my writing is all over the place and i've been writing in 3 different times lmfao #I hope you guys like it!!

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inopinion · 7 years ago

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Can write something extremely sad and angsty? Like killing Clara or Farley and let the other one grieve? Or have still-alive-at-the-end Maven think about Cal's death? Turn the angsty grief over Shade into something tangible by including Mare (and Kilorn)'s childhood memories? Well, whatever suits you. Let your dementors runs free^^°

Oh boy… War, violence, just read the prompt and make a judgement call… Also, long. It’s really long.

Do me a favor and hit the reblog button. Asks, requests, prompts, always welcome.

@anyone-anything-canbetrayanyone, @spookysamos, @lilyharvord, @runexandra, @mareshmallow, @adraxsteia, @red-queen-united, @redqueenfandom, @mom2reesie, @iris-cygnets, @chaoslaborantin

Hindsight

Mare leaned back against the tree, Kilorn handed her a sandwich. She examined it for a moment. The bread was stale and hard, the filling made from mustard and eggs. The first bite threatened to crack her teeth, but it was food, and protein at that. The murmur about a supply convoy must have been true. Kilorn wasn’t as picky, she saw bite marks in the paper wrap. He chomped greedily. Their rations were the same, but looking up at him, calorie for calorie, he required more. Most of the men were shrinking into themselves at a faster rate than the women. But all was fair in the Scarlet Guard. Rations for one equaled the rations for any other.

Tick, tick, tick. Thunk. Thunk. Scrape. Clash.

She balanced her meal on her knee and covered her ears. Kilorn turned into her, his fingers pressed to his ear drums. His shoulder shielded her.

Boom! The mortar launched up in a wide arch and twisted down over the valley. Dust kicked up from the recoil. She watched the slight smokey trail marking it’s trajectory. Something launched up from the city and the shell exploded above the wall raining fragments. Tramy carried the next shell to the loading hatch. One of the tanks on the far side sent a shot. One of the seven motor launchers sent off rounds every minute.

“The rhythm is actually musical.” Kilorn remarked, tucking the crust into his mouth.

“Musical or maddening?

Tick, tick, tick. Thunk. Thunk. Scrape. Clash.She covered her ears again as the launcher just past Tramy’s prepared to fire.

Boom!

Less dust. More smoke. A long trail to the wall, an explosion.

Kilorn dropped his hands, ears less vulnerable for at least another five minutes. He rubs his hands on his knees. Mare can see his nervousness in the tap of his thumbs inside of his knees. She leaned her head against his shoulder and took a steadying breath. He aped her motions and the next boom went off.

“Farley wants a briefing at six. Command is sending you in tonight,” he said. His thumbs stilled.

That small message had been the most of his nerves. Mare and most of the New Bloods had been tattered by non-stop fighting and panicked calamities. It had been a hard march north and Mare let it all blend with her broken heart into often scathing and critical statements. But she was turning over a new leaf, as of that morning, when she learned that Cal had Archeon surrounded. The good news had almost everyone feeling more optimistic.

“I guess two days of artillery was a pretty good break,” she offered as evidence that she wouldn’t snap on him.

“Don’t get hot headed,” Kilorn started. He would have said these lines whether or not she’d taken his head off. But it was more pleasant when she wasn’t red faced and yelling.

“I won’t.”

“Don’t lose focus.” His hand moved to her knee, gripping tight.

“I won’t,” she let the annoyance coat her words. Optimistic wasn’t the same as being in good-spirits. “Not my first time, you know.”

“I know,” he pulled his hand away.

She tore the second half of her sandwich in half and set it on her knee. Her turn. “Don’t get antsy. Double check the orders before you send off a blast.”

“You hear thing wrong once and no one let’s you live it down!” he remarked, exasperated, but playful. He set the bit of sandwich back on her leg.

She pushed it back, insisting he take it. “And don’t get hurt. I’ve got enough to worry about at the front.”

“We’re miles away, they don’t have any guns that reach this far. We’ll be making sure breakfast is ready when you get back.” He winked and popped the sandwich into his mouth.

Their arguments and banter mixed with assurances formed the routine of the campaign through the western Lakelands. Both were comforted by the motions even if the knew every word of their script. And like always, Kilorn ’s hand wrapped hers and didn’t let go until his break ended. She rested her temple on her arms on her knees, folded up against the tree, moving only to cover her ears.

—-

Thirty airjets flew in five formations of six. That’s what the radio reported. Mare could only see three clusters from their position outside the city. The assumed destinations: Tuck and Archeon. Maven had Cal’s legion to worry about and the supplies from Montfort undoubtedly had given Cal an edge. A little siege on a small city was nothing in comparison. Mare bit her lip and hoped her family evacuated fast or made their way to the bunkers. She hoped Cal stayed safe, and didn’t waste the resources he co-oped from the Guard. She tried to block it from her mind, but she turned back, looking over her shoulder, squinting. Ella tapped her arm. There was nothing she could do but March forward.

Three hours of tit and tat at the front lines wiped the airjets from her mind. She had a wall the breach. Five Snapdragons circled in a 10 mile radius around the center of the siege. They must have arrived from the eastern Lakelands or some other base. They weren’t part of the plans, they were supposed to all be flying to bigger targets. Davidson dropped his position and came to her side, putting up a shield between Mare and the assaulting stoneskins and strongarms.

“can you Bring them down?“ He groaned, taking one direct hit after another. “We don’t have protection for the back-line.”

Mare reached and felt but just as she grabbed one it slipped away. She felt another and tried to snap off it’s battery as quick as a blink, but, again, it moved on. Their anti-aircraft canons roared blast after blast up into the path of the planes and brought down three. Another swept through, low and she mangled it into a hillside. While her concentration was fixed on downing one, another buzzed low behind them, the last one. The only snap dragon in the sky released it’s hatch.

The ground shook. Three… Seven… Fifteen… More than she could count, the bombs rumbled, exploded, bounced and then detonated. The whole line lost their legs and shielded their heads. But they were too far for debris to strike them immediately. It took seven long seconds for the wind to carry the first sheet of metal and spray of rock to them.

Mare watched the debris billowing up from their artillery line. From where all the reds in their auxiliary were stationed with the long-ranged mortars and the anti-aircraft. From where Farley commanded and her brothers were stationed. From where Kilorn sat in the communication booth, relaying information one side to the other.

“This isn’t real.” She murmured, standing up, the lone standing figure in their entire line.

Her ears rang. A whirling curled around the tone. Sweat dripped from her neck. She swiped it, watching it mix with the dust on her fingers. She rubbed the slippery grit between her index and thumb. Dust so fine she started to shake. Not dust. Not dust at all, ash. Feathery ash, some still slipping from embers to gray puffs, as it floated like snow flakes and danced like seed pods. It clung to hair and sweat on every body around her. It floated on top of the blood pooling on the ground next to a comrade’s amputated leg.

Still framed like a photo, Mare thought of winter. The silence of snowfall and the beauty of clean, pure white blanketing the Stilts before boots could churn it into the mud. She shook.

“Get down!” Davidson hollered, pushing her under him and raising his shield just in time to block the renewed assault.

She sucked in as she hit the dirt and tasted the carbon and minerals, then hacked it out again. Did she taste Bree on her tongue? Her whole body shook. Her fingers twitched. Her legs pushed and Davidson fell back on the heels of his hands. His hands gripped her but couldn’t hold against the jerking force of her limbs.

Mare course with a spectrum of purples from the faint pastel of lavender to the almost invisible darkness of violet. She could touch every pulse of every being around her. She could count the individuals, pin point their positions, sense which stood alone and which ones clustered. She charged into a purple abyss to the soundtrack of whirling tones and the flashes of her own making.

—

The smoke billowed up in blinding plumes. The inferno commanded its own breeze that flicked up dust and ash at the edges. Ash drifted from high up, carried out on the subtle wind. Mare didn’t know when she’d left the battle or how she’d left. She only knew she’d stood in a silent, still crater where the wall had been removed by a mortar and was out of things to kill. And the next scene she cataloged was the smoke miles away from the city walls. She stumbled. She stood. She ran. She collapsed and coughed on smoke the closer she came. She jerked up her red scarf filtering the largest of the debris.

Hulking forms smoldered. Guns. Tanks. Transports. Twisted panels and exposed wires. Craters. Deep gullies of dirt. A black-charred tangle with more legs and arms than just one person. Mare forced herself to look, examine, count bony protrusions and identify parts.

She searched for electronics, a current of life, an area untouched by the destruction. She searched for a communicator or a wrist watch. She even dug deep into herself to bring out the pulses of living things, but nothing called from the flames. She stumbled through the first curtain into a barren hole and reached out again. One slow pulse drew her through more black smoke. She tripped and gagged, vomiting next to the obliterated pile of red-stained stumps. She pushed forward to the pulse.

A hatch creaked open from the top of an overturned heavy tank. She sprinted forward, begging God after God for a familiar face. The soot-coated, grimacing soldiers that fell out, easing to the ground like they were landing on the moon, were not large enough to be her brothers. They weren’t tall enough to even be Kilorn. And certainly, they were not female. The pulse pulled her past them.

Down one edge of a still-hot crater and past the shell of a bomb, she scrambled. She swatted her arms to clear pitch-black smoke from her eyes dampening her face and the scarf with the stinging tears that fought the caustic chemicals in the air. She raced through plume after plume feeling the pulse grow stronger as she came closer. Mare passed it. She swirled in a circle looking for someone, anyone. She circled the pulse, upending hot metal plates and pushing aside limbs. She dug in the ground.

A soft white hand with a watch and less arm than wrist came to the surface. A watch that still ticked with quartz precision. One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Three-one-thousand. Four-one-thousand.

Somewhere in the distance, communicators and transports approached, though she could feel them more than hear them. She touched their wires and their batteries, felt the signature that meant they belonged to the guard. And she watched the hand on the watch turn.

Clara lost her mother. Clara lost her father. Mare reminded herself that that was a thousand times worse than losing one’s brothers, but she didn’t fully believe it. Parents were supposed to die first, before their kids. But pain is pain is pain is pain is life. Pain is her life, now. Or maybe it always was. And what hurts worse than lining up one grief next to another was that none of them had to die.

Mare watched the seconds on the watch tick by as they shoveled the last of the dirt onto the mass grave. Watched from her knees, where she fell from exhaustion, where her body failed her and yet didn’t have the decency to die.

There would be no headstone for Diana Farley next to Shade Barrow’s. There would be no headstone for Bree or Tramy. Nothing for Kilorn. Just a pit.

At least they were all together. Davidson said it first.

That was bullshit. Mare’s fingers flinched and flickered in near constant currents. They let her sit and look over the mound, one mourner among two hundred survivors while they packed.

After what she’d done on the front line, few dared approach to coddle or even comfort her. Not even Tyton attempted. His eyes widened whenever they did managed to meet. Her purple sparks rarely receded beneath her skin. Even incidental touches had wounded a few.

They tried to take the shovel from her. In fact, she’d been the first to start digging. She cut walls in one of the deeper craters, joined by a rotation of people. When her arms couldn’t lift the shovel, she stumbled up and out to the edge. Without the smoke, she faced the totality of the loss. She wondered a literal wraith on the surface of the earth, collecting a leg, an arm, a butchered hump of someone she’d failed.

She couldn’t make Bree, or Kilorn, or add together enough things to find Tramy. She couldn’t scrape enough from the soil to know where Farley would rest. She couldn’t see anyone just parts: teeth, clumps of hair, brows stains, white bones, black charred sticks. Burnt lumps of metal and scattered upholstered seats their own gruesome inventory–not enough to even make a transport from all that was left.

Mare counted the femurs, and the skulls, and the fingers. She counted everything. She added it together and couldn’t make it work. The scale was too vast; the absences too apparent. Reality was remade in a second’s decision. She could so clearly see the outcome if she’d chosen the other plane, that it sealed the nightmarish quality into place. Their pleading fell on deaf ears. She didn’t need to sleep, she’d surely wake soon enough.

Logic and theories and pleading didn’t swap the unbelieving out of her denials. She didn’t find enough of them so they must not be there. They must be somewhere else, anywhere else. Bree is with a girlfriend. Tramy is charming recruits. Kilorn is practicing his letters with his feet dipped in the river. Farley is rocking Clara back in her mother’s living room. The must be an answer to where they all went and why they weren’t there. A better answer.

On her knees, she watched the seconds tick. She waited to wake up. She waited for the reality that came with grounding the other plane. When the army packed to move on, she could wait for her family no longer. And some how, she walked on.

One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. She felt the quartz tick on her wrist. She timed her zombie steps. She stumbled the walk of the sleepless. She fell in line like every other soldier born destined for war.

—

Cameron, clustered in her own denial, stormed through the lines of new bloods. She grabbed soldiers with uniforms and looked for Farley. Wet streaks dribbled down her chin as each returned an anguished expression. She worked her way through the lines.

Mare hunched on the back of a cart full of what they could pull from the bodies and the wreckage. She hugged her knees up to her chest and stared blankly. Cameron almost missed her in her rush through the throngs. But Davidson pointed her to the cart.

Mare pushed her forehead into her knees so she wouldn’t have to face he rage, the accusation that Cameron’s outline would surely bring.

“What happened?” Cameron walked behind the cart. No response. She trotted and climbed aboard next to Mare. “What happened?” she sobbed.

“I fell for the decoy. I brought down the wrong jet.” Mare’s heart broke all over again.

“The wrong jet? You… the wrong jet?” Cameron lost her breath, and then she lost control.

Mare wriggled in discomfort. Discomfort she wanted. A smothering pressure that strangled her to the cusp of death. Again, no mercy for Mare. Cameron released her and screamed into an angry sob. Mare gasped air she didn’t want and her heart pushed blood she hated having.

–

I have ideas about what comes next, but I’ll just let this sit right here… for now… hit that reblog button if you wanna share with your friends.

#chaoslaborantin #red queen #fanfiction #kings cage #glass sword #mare barrow #odd request from a farley-stan #my writing

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tabarnaks · 7 years ago

Text

Note: this came out a lot more OCD-ish than I originally intended. Make of it what you will.

Warning for many mentions of blood but no graphic violence or anything

Semi continuation of this

Every time Keith comes back to the Castle, it’s like Hunk meets him all over again.

There are new scars, new stories to tell, a new look in his eyes that Hunk can’t quite figure out. Hunk can also see Keith growing more and more and more tired, the weight of the Blade’s missions growing on his shoulders with nowhere to go.

He becomes more quiet, more restrained, less Keith.

Hunk tries not to worry too much, tries not to tell him he shouldn’t be with the Blades when it’s so clearly taking a heavy toll on him because if there’s one thing that hasn’t changed about Keith, it’s his temper.

Hunk’s been screamed at in enough video calls by suggesting coming back to Voltron to know he doesn’t want it to happen in real life as well.

It’s probably not healthy, but he can’t be damned to care. What else, who else is he going to cling to in this war thousands and thousands of miles from Earth?

Who else is Keith going to cling to now that he’s not even with Voltron anymore?

But, it’s fine at first; the changes aren’t exactly subtle, but they’re not overwhelming, they’re not dangerous really.

The first big change is after their big battle and after Lotor comes into play. Keith’s more sullen, more nihilistic; he doesn’t stay with Hunk like he usually does, “I have to think.” is all he says to explain the sudden change.

After, he comes back less often, with scars that just keep getting bigger and in more dangerous places and with less stories to tell. Hunk makes sure to kiss every scar, to try and maybe make Keith understand that he’s still valued with the team, that Voltron wants him; needs him.

Keith comes back once, twice, three times, five times, ten times; he comes back until he doesn’t.

Hunk expects the Blades to send back a wooden box, like they do in old timey movies, for some reason. It’s all he can think about as Kolivan talks.

Hunk’s only saving grace as a strange, overwhelming numbness fills him is that Shiro doesn’t cry either hearing Kolivan’s words.

They don’t send him back in a wooden box. Why would they? Hunk hasn’t seen anything vaguely resembling wood since they left Olkarion’s forest.

No, they send him back in a metal box with a simple mechanism to open it. That’s when Shiro breaks.

The sight of Keith’s dead eyes - the Blades didn’t even think to close them - staring out into nowhere making him shake and sob. Lance and Pidge and Allura and Coran run to him, they’ve all been crying for days now.

Hunk… Hunk doesn’t feel anything. Maybe a little guilt.

He leans closer to close Keith’s eyes and sees the huge wound in the middle of his abdomen. It’s undoubtedly what killed him.

Maybe a lot of guilt.

He needs to wash his hands. The others look at him weird when he leaves.

Lance finds him later that evening, “Hunk, you know we’re there for you right?”

“I know you are.” His voice doesn’t sound like his, there’s no emotions, there’s nothing.

Lance frowns, “I don’t know if you’re being macho or anything, but you’re allowed to cry, Hunk. We all know you loved him-”

“I barely knew him.” The words leave Hunk before he has time to think. But as he says them, Hunk realises that it’s true. Keith was always faster than him, and with the Blades, he changed at the speed of light. There was no way for Hunk to keep up and learn to know him again when they were on two different ships.

Lance doesn’t agree, it’s obvious in his face, but he shuts his mouth and looks away.

There’s a moment of silence, and Hunk rubs his hands together nervously.

“We’re watching a movie tonight,” Lance tells him, “so we can distract ourselves from Keith for an hour or two and not go crazy. You should join us.”

Thinking about Keith makes his hands feel disgusting and sticky, like when his niece got cut really badly and he had to help stop the bleeding. The only part of Hunk that can feel anything right now tells him he deserves that feeling for giving up on Keith, for not trying harder to get him out of the Blade’s ranks.

“I’m just going to turn in early,” he answers.

He doesn’t sleep much that night, can’t manage it when his dreams turn sour so quickly.

They’re always about Keith; Keith dying, Keith screaming at him to do something to stop what’s going to happen to him.

They’re all bad, but the worst is without a doubt the one where Keith cusses him out as he’s dying. Curses him for not saving him, for not being the boyfriend he should’ve been.

Sure, Kolivan said that Keith didn’t have any last words, that he passed out seconds after he got into their escape shuttle, but Hunk can’t get that image out of his head.

Hunk wakes up sweaty and with his body covered in the same stuff his hands usually are. The stickiness drips onto the floor, drop after drop after drop after drop, spreading onto the floor the same way Keith’s blood must have while he bled out.

Hunk gets up and takes a scalding hot shower that lasts hours after that.

He avoids the team for as long as he can, until Pidge corners him in his room.

“Want to help me make some cake or cookies, or just bake whatever you want really?” she asks.

Hunk hasn’t touched fresh food since Keith. He doesn’t even remember if he’s been eating, the hours and the days just blurring together in one mass of nothingness.

Pidge looks pretty determined to get him out of his room, but Hunk just can’t.

“Not really.” he answers.

Pidge doesn’t look surprised by his answer, “How about messing with some tech? Matt brought loads from the rebels and some of it’s super awesome!”

“Look, Pidge, just give me another day. Or two.” Or three. Or ten. Or just give him until the numbness and the blood and the guilt finally kills him.

Pidge visibly deflates, “Okay. But after tomorrow, we’re coming to get you and you’re going to do something even if it’s just watching a movie. It’s not healthy to stay isolated like this.”

Hunk nods, and Pidge looks at him a few seconds before leaving. As soon as the door closes, blood drips from Hunk’s hands to the floor.

He shouldn’t be doing anything aside from waste away now that Keith’s gone. It’s what he deserves. That and the numbness.

That night, Hunk sleeps half an hour before Keith comes to haunt him again. As he takes a shower until morning, again, he’s damn glad the Castle doesn’t run out of hot water.

The shower doesn’t help with the blood and there’s only so long he can keep it running once the others are awake.

Hunk goes to the sink and washes his hands. Over and over and over and over and over. Until there’s real blood on his hands. The sight of his blood makes him feel marginally better, letting the guilt finally be replaced with the cool numbness he’s grown used to over the past week.

Allura knocks at his door shortly after.

“I said I would go tomorrow, just give me that time.”

“I’m not here for that,” she answers. She enters the room and sits on the bed, motioning for Hunk to sit next to her. He does, already feeling blood start to pool in his gloves. This can’t be anything good. “We’ve decided to bury Keith on your home planet, Earth. We will arrive there in a few cycles.”

The blood stops pooling, retracting back into almost nothing. That’s… Hunk hadn’t even thought about burying Keith anywhere.

He’d always just thought that they were going to leave Keith there, in his box, for everyone to see whenever they want to.

Now that he thinks about it, burying him makes a lot more sense.

“Are we gonna stay there long?”

“No. We can’t, it will attract the Galra. Though we will stay an entire Earth day for - what did Lance call it again? Ah, yes - for the funeral.”

The burial feels like it’s taken a huge weight off Hunk’s shoulders. He’s not sure why, maybe it’s because Keith will have his final resting place on Earth, but Hunk feels so much less guilty, so much less numb. He could actually cry right now if he was pushed.

“Are you eating lunch soon?” he asks.

Allura looks at him in surprise then she smiles weakly, “Yes, and there’s always a free spot for you at the table if you want to join us.”

Hunk’s not sure if he will yet, maybe as soon as Allura leaves he’ll be crushed by guilt again, but part of him wants to go and see the others, his team, his friends, again.

“I might.”

Hunk doesn’t end up going to lunch that day, too caught up in cleaning his hands. He knows that the others can’t see the blood, can’t feel it the way he does; but the what if they can hangs heavily over his head.

He manages to go to dinner though. They all smile when he comes, and Lance spends all of dinner telling stories about the times on planet that Hunk’s missed during his self isolation.

Lance isn’t as happy, as genuine as he usually is; Hunk’s known him long enough to be able to tell the difference; but he’s a welcome distraction. For the first time since Keith, Hunk actually laughs.

He feels horribly guilty about it after, especially when the Keith in his dreams taunts him about it, but in the moment, it’s nice.

After dinner, Hunk starts leaving his room more often. Some days are better: he barely needs to wash his hands to not feel disgusting, and others are much much worse: the blood leaking on the floor wherever he goes, no matter how many times he scrubs his hands raw until they bleed.

Most days though, Hunk just feels like he’s floating a bit above the ground. The numbness is still there, overwhelming every emotion except guilt as it’s always done since they got the news. It’s hard, it’s a whole load of nothing, but it’s liveable.

They go towards Earth slowly, only using wormholes to trick the Galra about where they’re heading, and by the time they arrive, Hunk’s almost forgotten why they were going there in the first place.

They land somewhere so remote, so far away from anything and anyone, and it feels like a punch in the gut. No one will ever find Keith’s grave unless they know where to look. Rationally, Hunk knows it’s for the best. The rest of him feels like he’s betraying Keith somehow.

His hands are absolutely soaked.

He doesn’t clean them. Instead, he volunteers to dig. The Castle can make a hole easily, but it’s not personal enough. They’re already burying him in the middle of nowhere, least they can do is dig his grave.

Shiro volunteers as well, and before Hunk knows it, it’s just Shiro and him outside, digging under the hot sun.

“I’m sorry,” Hunk blurts out. The blood is slowly covering everything, every part of his body, the very grave he’s digging. How is he supposed to look Shiro in the eye when he just gave up on Keith the way he did, when he basically killed Keith the way he did.

Shiro stops digging, “About what?”

“I gave up on trying to convince him to leave the Blades.” Hunk looks away, Shiro’s gaze is always so intense, it feels like he’s making a hole right into Hunk’s soul. “I killed him basically.”

“Hunk…”

“Wait, I’m not done. And after I essentially killed him, I wasn’t even sad. I haven’t even cried about his death!”

“Hunk, you didn’t kill him. He made his own decisions. And if we’re going by your logic, we’re all just as much to blame for his death as you are.”

Which… wasn’t wrong. His thoughts, his guilt wasn’t rational.

Shiro places a hand on Hunk’s shoulder, warm and grounding, “Hunk, he really loved you. I know he never showed it the way most people do, but he really did love you.”

That breaks through the numbness, through the guilt, through everything.

Hot tears fall down Hunk’s cheeks, making breathing and talking difficult “I miss him so much.” His voice is pitchy and it doesn’t sound like him again, but Shiro doesn’t mind.

Shiro who doesn’t hesitate for a second before hugging Hunk, listening to his grief stricken rambling, comforting him as best he can.

Hunk’s not sure for how long he cries. An hour maybe. Shiro’s there the entire time, and by the end, he’s crying too.

Hunk’s breathing is slowly going back to normal when Shiro says, “It’ll get less painful, you know.”

“Yeah?”

The sun passed noon a while ago now, and the others left the ship to see what was taking them so long. Shiro ignores them and just nods, “But we won’t ever forget him.”

“Yeah, we won’t.” Hunk agrees

#heith #hunk #keith #voltron #vld #lance #pidge #allura #shiro #a moi #(shh no one mention i literally wrote the reverse of this for heithweek)

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anxiousanimal · 8 years ago

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Favorite Adam moments

It’s Adam Parrish’s birthday and since he’s a character that has made me bite my fingernails and yell at the page and grin like an idiot and maybe even get a moist eye or two (this despite being spoiled to his ending), here are some of my favorite Adam moments in (I think) chronological order:

(Note: Some notable fav moments I omitted because I felt they fell more under “Pynch”. I admit the line between the categories can blur a little.)

Adam and his Spongebob ball:

Gansey joined Adam at his safely distant vantage point. In comparison to Ronan, Adam looked clean, self-contained, utterly in control. From somewhere, he had gotten a rubber ball printed with a SpongeBob logo, and he bounced it with a pensive expression.

"I convinced them not to call the cops," Adam said. He was good at making things quiet.(TRB ch7)

This scene is such a deft, innocent way of hinting that this character is going to be Trouble.

Adam sends Blue flowers:

As the woman headed back to her car, Blue turned the arrangement in her hand. It was just a spray of baby’s breath around a white carnation; they smelled prettier than they looked.

Calla commented, "The delivery must’ve cost more than the flowers."

Feeling around the wiry stems, Blue found a little card. Inside, a woman’s scrawl had transcribed a message:

I hope you still want me to call. — Adam

Now the tiny bunch of flowers made sense. They matched Adam’s frayed sweater. (TRB ch19)

Man, I wish I could just include all his scenes with Blue because their whole relationship is such a rollercoaster ride. Blue got to see the best and the worst of Adam Parrish, but I picked this moment because it’s hopelessly adorable.

Adam puts his head in Blue’s lap:

She’d given up and leaned back by the time Adam appeared. He stepped into the dim green shadow of the tree from the house side.

"Persephone said you were out here." He just hung there at the edge of the shadow.

Blue thought about saying I’m so sorry about your dad, but instead she just stretched out a hand toward him. Adam gave an unsteady sigh of the sort that she could see from six feet away. Wordlessly, he sat beside her and then laid his head on her lap, his face in his arms.(TRB ch41)

I’m thinking about the line “Adam had been starving for longer” in TRK. It’s both touching and unsettling how readily he opens up to Blue during TRB. There’s the sexism in seeing a girl as someone you can automatically confide in, but there’s also a boy who’s clearly starved for affection and hasn’t learned proper boundaries yet. In some ways he’s very emotionally mature, in other ways he has miles to go.

Adam vs Declan:

"You’re not going to fight me, are you?" Adam asked, as if he wasn’t nervous. "I thought that was Ronan’s thing, not yours."

It worked better than Adam could have imagined; Declan immediately fell back a step. Reaching into his back pocket, Declan withdrew a folded envelope. Adam recognized the Aglionby crest on the return address.

"He’s getting kicked out," Declan said, stuffing the envelope toward Adam. "Gansey promised me he would turn his grades around. Well, that hasn’t happened. I trusted Gansey, and he let me down. When he gets back, let him know he’s gotten my brother kicked out."

This was more than Adam could stand.

"Oh no," he said. He hoped Ronan was listening. "Ronan did that all by himself. I don’t know when you both are going to see that only Ronan can keep himself in Aglionby. Some day, he has to pick for himself. Until then, you’re both wasting your time." (TRB ch31)

What I love here isn’t just that Adam stands in the way of someone much bigger and stronger than him, that he knows what to say to get Declan to back off, nor that he does all that for Ronan. It’s that he then can’t help but yelling in Declan’s face about his and Gansey’s treatment of Ronan. Adam may be a careful sort, but if you step on his principles, goddammit, he’ll let you hear about it.

Adam and Gansey at the hospital:

This was where Adam always said something. Where he got angry. Where he snapped, No, I won’t take your damn money, Gansey. You can’t buy me. But he just turned that paper bracelet around and around and around.

"You win," Adam said finally. He rubbed a hand through his uneven hair. He sounded tired. "Take me to get my stuff."

Gansey had been about to start the Camaro, but he took his hand away from the ignition. "I didn’t win anything. Do you think this is how I wanted it?"

"Yes," Adam replied. He didn’t look at him. "Yes, I do."

Adam stopped. Climbing in jerkily, he pulled the door shut. He didn’t do it hard enough, so he had to try two more times. They were silent as Gansey pulled back into traffic. Words pressed against his mouth, begged to be said, but he kept silent.

Adam didn’t look at him when he said, finally, "It doesn’t matter how you say it. It’s what you wanted, in the end. All your things in one place, all under your roof. Everything you own right where you can see …"

But then he stopped. He dropped his head into his hands. His thumbs worked through the hair above his ears, over and over, the knuckles white. When he sucked in his breath, it was the ragged sound that came from trying not to cry. (TRB ch38)

God, this scene is so tense and awful and heartbreaking, and the car door that won’t shut just emphasizes the frustration so perfectly. He may have just escaped an abusive home, but it feels more like a defeat than a victory.

Adam picks the Magician:

He said, “I am. I’m — I’m pulling another card.”

He hesitated, waiting for her to tell him it wasn’t allowed. But she just waited. Adam cut the deck, laid his hand on each stack. He took the card that felt warmer.

Flipping it, he placed the card beside the nine of swords.

A robed figure stood before a coin, a goblet, a sword, a wand — all of the symbols of all the tarot suits. An infinity symbol floated above his head; one arm was lifted in a posture of power. Yes, thought Adam. Understanding prickled and then evaded him.

He read the words at the bottom of the card.

The Magician.

Persephone let out a long, long breath and began to laugh. It was a relieved laugh that sounded as if she’d been running.

“Adam,” she said, “finish your pie.” (TDT ch50)

I don’t know if I even need to explain this one. After reaching his lowest low and then being told that his future is bleak, Adam decides that no, screw fate, he’s going to take charge of his own future. It’s such an exhilarating moment and might be my #1 favorite.

Adam relieving Gansey’s anxiety:

“No, it’s not. It’s disgusting of me.” Gansey didn’t open his eyes. “Everything has gotten so ugly. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

Everything had begun ugly for Adam, but he knew what Gansey meant. His noble and oblivious and optimistic friend was slowly opening his eyes and seeing the world for what it was, and it was filthy, and violent, and profane, and unfair. Adam had always thought that was what he wanted — for Gansey to know. But now he wasn’t sure. Gansey wasn’t like anyone else, and suddenly Adam wasn’t sure that he really wanted him to be.

“Here,” Adam said, standing, fetching their history text. “Do the reading. Out loud. I’ll take notes.”

An hour passed this way, Gansey reading out loud in his lovely old voice, and Adam jotting in his overambitious hand, and when Gansey reached the end of the assignment, he closed the text carefully and set it on the upside-down plastic bin Adam used as a bedside table. (BLLB ch12)

I think this is such an Adam Parrish way of taking care of his friends. While he can often be harsh and hard, when Adam does reach out to help, it tends to be in a way that is tailored to the person in question. Here he can see Gansey’s facade unraveling and so he asks Gansey to read aloud under the pretext of helping Adam with his homework, something that soothes Gansey and leaves his dignity intact. See also: soothing Ronan after Whelk almost shot Gansey.

Adam gives Opal his watch:

As Gansey circled the tree, trying to look useful if nothing else, he saw Adam crouch in front of the hooved orphan girl. She continued staring past him as he unbuckled his cheap watch. He tapped the top of her hand, lightly, just so that she marked that he was offering the watch to her. Gansey expected her to ignore him or to reject the gift like she had Aurora’s rose, but the girl accepted it without hesitation. She began to wind it with intense concentration as Adam remained crouched before her for a moment longer, eyebrows knitted. (TRK ch8)

Another example of tailored caring, although of course, in this case it ties to very personal memories of Adam’s. Either way, it’s one of the best moments in the books.

Adam scries into headlights:

He spotted it, the headlights still on, engine off. Adam was crouched in front of it, staring unflinchingly into the headlights’ brilliance. His fingers were spread on the asphalt and his feet braced like a runner waiting for the starting shot. Three tarot cards splayed before him. He’d taken one of the floor mats out of the car to crouch on to keep from dirtying his uniform trousers. If you combined these two things – the unfathomable and the practical – you were most of the way to understanding Adam Parrish. (TRK ch18)

This is just a very Adam thing to do.

Adam sets out to find a demon, ends up back at the trailer:

The dust cleared and Adam finally saw where he had brought them.

He sighed. (TRK ch19)

I love that twist. He’s come so far at this point, but here’s this nasty little reminder that some things you don’t escape easily. Instead of letting it get him down, though, Adam lets it motivate him to save someone else.

Adam saves Ronan and Opal:

This was what had saved them from drowning. They had been lifted by the branches. Adam crouched on the other side of the pool, head dropped low like he was about to sprint or pray, his hands pressed to the rock on either side of him, knuckles white. He had placed a few small stones between his hands in a pattern that must have made sense to him. One of the still growing tendrils had tangled around his ankles and his wrists. The proper truth struck Ronan: The plants had not saved their lives. Adam Parrish had saved their lives. (TRK ch23)

Adam forced a demon-possessed magical forest to do his bidding. I thought covering them with leaves to protect them from the acid was a nice touch. .

Adam goes back to the trailer in the TRK epilogue:

He felt a sudden urge to save all these other Adams hidden in plain view, though he didn’t know if they would listen to him. It struck him as a Gansey or a Blue impulse, and as he held that tiny, heroic spark in his mind, he realized that it was only because he believed that he had saved himself that he could imagine saving someone else. (TRK epilogue)

Of course this had to be here. Not much explanation needed, but I do like that though Adam didn’t exactly happily wrap things up with his parents, that wasn’t the point. We see that he will be fine, he’s in a good place mentally, he and Ronan are going strong, he thinks of Gansey and Blue in admiring terms, he’s heading off to college and he wants to rescue kids like him in the future. We just know he’s headed for great things and that it’s all well-deserved. Such a perfect way of wrapping up his arc.

#adam parrish #ronan lynch #gansey #richard gansey #richard gansey III #blue sargent #persephone poldma #trc #the raven cycle #trk spoilers

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mikenips · 4 years ago

Text

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

I got back into bed after having my morning cigarette at three in the afternoon. Still half a cup of coffee. Just the right amount of Kahlua. Enough to catch the notes of rum through the vanilla hazelnut cream. But not overpowering to the point where you feel like shit for spiking your first drink of the day. It’s not even five o’clock here yet. A cigarette always tastes better when you smoke it in bed. But you gotta get your fresh air somehow. Probably won’t leave the house today. Lots of editing to do on the documentary.

Crawl back under the fleece pineapple blanket. Spoon a lump of sludge into my mouth. Oatmeal. Spent a lotta time avoiding the junk. A coworker turned me onto it during a morning shift when I drank too much coffee on two hours of sleep and couldn’t see cause I hadn’t eaten at all. I was always under the impression it would fill me up more. But it’s fuckin’ oatmeal. Just sits there. Clumps up in your stomach. Doesn’t do shit for ya.

Flip open the laptop. White rocks stuck in the holes over the speaker. Kief covered keyboard. I really should finance for a better grinder than that shitty plastic thing I’ve used since high school. Old reliable. Works wonders on grinding. But everytime you shove the top piece back in, clouds of kief mushroom around it. Settling in puddles of sweat. Every now and then the fingertips come back stained after a long editing session.

Camera lays next to the bed. Sitting directly in front of the trash can. A wall of VHS tapes stacked up next to the black cylinder. Can only distinguish the different objects by the masking tape. Chicken scratch Sharpied onto the cream backdrop. I really should’ve dated all of them. Not just the subject. Can better timeline the filmmaker’s journey by knowing when each segment of the film was shot. And now I won’t be able to track the dates. Who the fuck saves emails and texts anyways? Might be able to find a few from Instagram DMs. But that’s all up to how the artist wants to portray the story. Should the viewer discover chronologically? Or should they piece it together and learn with the filmmaker?

Check the Hamtown Rats Facebook group. It sounds like some gentrifier bullshit. Young white people moving into a two square mile city. Starting a Facebook group with all their friends that live there. Very elitist. Especially for a town where the majority of the population is below the poverty line and speak English as a second language. But after all this shit. More and more people come begging to live in the city that once had a dumpster running for mayor.

That’s literal too.

At least it’s a good way for neighbors to share shit they can’t afford to get on their own. Posting which alleys have the best furniture to trash pick. Or what bars have a pop-up kitchen each day. Or other general bullshit. Closest thing you can get to commune living here. Never know what you’re gonna see walking through this town. Which makes it so much more interesting what the citizens find to be newsworthy. That’s what you gotta love about this city. It’s a community of people that didn’t know where else to go. From the Polish immigrants that founded it. To the now growing middle Eastern population. To all the artists and drunks that can’t afford anywhere else. Everybody is a part of this community.

Last week people were tracking the journey of a wild turkey roaming the streets.

Today. The first image that pops up through drops of Stroh’s dried up on the screen, the image of a local legend. Sporting a fur coat. Mardi gras beads slouching his back. Bugler and beer in hand. Only eye contact with the camera was the eyeball earring a friend had made. Weird how it always looked to the side like that. Sparkles shimmering in the purple skin around his eyes smeared by a finger with blue eyeshadow. You never really were sure if he had gotten into a fight or just hadn’t slept in weeks. Come to think of it. Nobody ever had heard stories of him getting into fights. He had a collection of handguns. But no bullets. Anything was possible with Bart though.

Barf. That’s what his friends called him. The nickname dated back to high school. The burnouts he was friends with mocking him for puking when they introduced him to grass his freshman year. Boys will be boys. A good vomit joke always gets the laughs. And of course when you tell any guy to stop, they never do. So the name stuck. I can still hear him in the interview. “Fuck the name your family gave you. Blood don’t mean shit. I can get a transfusion whenever I want. A nickname reflects the person others see you as. And isn’t someone else’s perception of you better than your own?”

He had moved to the city after getting busted with a script full of Vicodin his first year at Wayne State. Grandma bailed him out. Mom said he could keep living with her after the bust. He was an adult now. Had to make his own decisions. But he couldn’t bring any junk into her house. So he got his own place in Hamtown. Moved in with a girl he was seeing. The split would happen not much longer after that. But she didn’t wanna keep the shitty apartment split front and back. So he took it over.

Sad to see the image. It was taken at one of his house parties. Nobody could pinpoint which one. Not surprising though. Anything was possible with Barf.

Skim over the stack of tapes. Find the one labeled “Barf.” Pop it in the VHS player. Something about capturing all that stuff on tape. Seems more real. Seeing the actual tape move from reel to reel broke down the illusion to me more than watching the Instagram story highlights or YouTube videos that circulated the internet. With all the fake news out there, you can never be sure where reality and illusion separate. But wasn’t that kinda the point of art? Or at least Barf’s body of work. Pushing the boundaries of reality and illusion.

He was a magician. Hard way to crack through the art world. But somehow Bart managed to slip through the cracks. To the bewilderment of some of the old heads that still were active in the DIY scene. The urban legends that inspire locals to pick up the axe and start shredding away the stump that still remains. Bart was slingshot to their status by his peers. Many of them leaving a much bigger dent on the stump of culture than Bart. Still, they cited him as a major help to their careers. As he kept standing in front of the stump. Curtain held over it. Hoping one day he’d pull away and it would all be gone. Some of us, kids my age that were sneaking into his shithole bar underage, believe the stump was never really there in the first place. These notions were all just in our head.

The snow gives way to the glimmer of a bottom lip grill. No top. Mouth hanging open. Gasping to the tune of “Zig Zag Wanderer” by Captain Beefheart. Black octagon sunglasses still on in the room dimly lit by rock god prayer candles and ritual candles melted straight to the glass table top. Greasy hair falling over his face. Hiding the chain stretching from the industrial piercing in his left ear to the diamond at the lobe. A knot of baby hair tangled in his right eyebrow piercing.

His head sinks into the penguin pillow. A gift his grandma gave him when he was a kid. The white face now gray. Almost as black as the outer color. Color chipping off his cracked fingernails. Purple kimono barely covers his sunken stomach. Skin detailing the texture of bone. One floating rib on his right side. Never was sure how that happened. “Can’t hold onto everything that hurts you.” It’s eerie thinking in other people’s voices.

“You ever do quads brooooooo…” His now baritone voice trails off as the nitrous canister falls outta the cradle of his arms onto the dirty carpet. The fiend in me wants to Hoover his carpets with my nose. Someone like him probably doesn’t give a shit how much he spills. Less getting in his bloodstream. But part of me says he does regular cleaning on his own.

From the TV you can hear Scooby-Doo scratching his ears. Doesn’t mute the PS2 game. Just turns the record player up over it. Gotta have that full sensory overload to really get in the head space. “You wanna know the real story of how I lost this tooth?”

“Sure.” It’s always a shock hearing your own voice on recording.

“So I woke up one day with the worst tooth pain I have ever experienced.” He rips a line of blow without even lowering his shades. Looks up and smiles. “Like ‘em? My buddy left them after a house show at my place. His going away party on Devil’s Night when he joined the navy. Used to run this really cool cassette label. Always did my part by providing him a venue for releases.”

His palms thunderstrike together. Shakes his hair violently. “Anyways. I shoved my whole phone in my mouth. Capture a nice pic of the inside of my tooth. Solid black. So I get it yanked out. Smoked three packs of Camel Blues through my nose while I waited out the dry socket. That was when they did that Camel through the decades promo. Still got some of the packs on my display of empties in the kitchen.

“Anyways. Fuckin’ sidetracked. What most people don’t know is I chipped the tooth at Jenkem. Managed to get this insane Aussie garage band to play while they were touring the US. Sold out show. And this one fuckin’ asshole I knew. Ian. He fronted some shitty indie band. Mac DeMarcore type sound. Until I opened the bar he only knew me as the bowling bartender. Even though I met him several times before working there. And the asshole had been to my house for parties!

“All these shitty indie bands lived in the burbs. But they loved coming to Hamtown and seeing the garage bands. Made them feel like they were doing something they shouldn’t be. And they’d smoke cigs at the bar. Play pinball and pool. Stand at the front of the pit. But stand completely still. Just kinda romanticizing our filth and flaws without having to see it at home. Ya know. Where daddy could pay to get them on Spotify playlists for publicity.

“So he begs me to let his band open. And they didn’t fit the bill. But they wanted a fuckin’ shit show. So we gave ‘em a fucking shit show! Sparked a joint during their set. Tried passing it to him while he played. But he refused. All the homies booed. Just dumb shit to make them uncomfortable.

“So the headliners go on. I’m tanked by this point. I mean. I was tanked when I unlocked the bar that day. But now I was just obliterated. And somebody hit me from behind in the pit. I fell forward. Bust my tooth on this asshole Ian’s leather jacket. That is standing completely fucking still front and center.

“Lost a third of the tooth. But left a pretty nice scratch on the leather jacket daddy got him that afternoon for his ‘big gig.’” I’m gonna miss that beautiful smile. The kind of innocent smile of a child unsure what’s going on. But knows he’s enjoying it.

#jenkem #novella #vague glimpses of beauty #grown up fucked up #somewhere the angels are screaming

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